- Listen up. Demato might not think you're behind this, but make no mistake, Judge Carmichael, I know a sophisticated
scam when I stop one. - Bravo. - So good. So good. Yeah, riveting. - Christina's performance
there is just, her ferocity. - Fantastic. - Welcome to a sneak peek at this season's most extraordinary and
heart pounding new show, "S.A.F.E Squad" starring
Christina Ricci, and also me, and others. Hi, I'm Steven Wu. - And I'm Betsy Chate. Our show follows a trio of investigators dedicated to stopping
criminals in their tracks. Now, imposter scams can
involve anyone who's pretending to be someone else in order to trick you into providing personal information or even sending money. - They're real and they're
not going away anytime soon. - We have so much to show you, so let's dive into a few
clips from our pilot episode of "S.A.F.E. Squad". (tense music) - Uh huh. Uh huh. So the message came from
the job posting site. Listen, why don't you come in today? We'll take a look, see what we can do. All right, Jordan. See you soon. Call the boss. Ask her to come in. - I know it's only my first day, but it sounds like a pretty
cut and dry job scam. Can't you and I just help this guy? - It's not that simple, rookie. He's the boss's baby brother. - Okay, baby bro. Walk
me through what happened. - So I'm on this job listing site and I get a message from a recruiter for a small shipping company. Small shipping company. It said I would be perfect for a role in their operations department. Company was called Travel in 88. Travel in 88. We specialize in your
unique piano shipping needs. The recruiter said, all I
needed to do was send $500 to cover mandatory software
training and job was mine. - Baby bro, come on. - If this website is a front, I mean, it's a pretty good one. - "I wouldn't trust anyone
else with my orwolu upright." - Ormolu. Have we compared the website's URL with the domain name of the
recruiter's email address? - They don't match up. I even tried the hotline
number at the bottom. Dead end.
- Hmm. Two clear indicators that
your recruiter is a criminal. I'm sorry, baby bro. I know
how much you love pianos. - I already gave the guy the $500. I sent him a payment digitally. (footsteps knock) - Here, Jordan, why
don't you come with me? I'll show you how to
report the scam to the FTC. Then we'll go over whichever
bank or payment platform you used also. (Loretta sighs) (tense music) - Transfer receipts. This guy's a professional
and he isn't operating alone. Travel in 88. This isn't over. - With so many folks doing
their banking online, it's easier than ever for criminals to try and impersonate banks. In fact, this show was inspired by Steven's encounter with a scammer. - It's true. But instead
of bringing me down, it fueled my passion. - You know, Steven came to me and he said, "Betsy, I know you retired early and moved to an RV in the Salt Flats, but I've got a thrilling idea for a show." And here we are. (both laugh) - You're my twin? - Yeah. (both laugh) - Let's check out how the squad deals with a banking scam. (calm music) - Romance, man. What a bunch of baloney. - Ah, I think it's sweet. - There's nothing sweet
about tender moments and grand gestures, Skip. It's like get your own self-esteem. - Oh, come on, Ace. You telling me that
you've never been in love? - My savings account compromised? No, I didn't authorize
a $12,000 withdrawal. That's my life savings. Of course you're speaking to the real me. My social security number. It's 131. Hey! - Why don't you come with us? We'll explain on the way. (footsteps knock) - Is this the guy? - I've been saving that
money for years, man. I was gonna take my girlfriend to Palermo and hide an engagement ring
inside an arancini ball. (paper rustles) - Palermo is beautiful this time of year. We won't let that dream die. - All right, first thing, Benji, we gotta make sure that your account is actually compromised. Like I know it's only my
second day on the job, but this feels like some funny business. - My life is over. - Benji, focus. Call the number on the
back of your debit card. That's a secure way to see if your account has been compromised. - I called the number. They said my account is secure after all. - You know Benji, a
bank will never call you to ask for personal
information, or even an OTP. - OTP? - One-time passcode. The next time it happens, you'll know it's a criminal on the phone. - I really appreciate it. You said Palermo was
beautiful this time of year. You been? - You said you were going to propose. (Loretta scoffs) Take it from me, kid. Don't wait. - [Betsy] You all right? - Yeah. Next, you are going to
see the squad dealing with their toughest case
yet, a government scam. - Now, I know a lot of things famously, but I had no idea how prevalent
these kinds of scammers are. Some of the most common
government scams include Covid scams, social security scams, and as you're about to see, IRS scams. (cheery music) - Yes, Mrs Velazquez, I got the note about
the pistachio allergy, and I have taken that into
account for your son's wedding. Your son's third birthday party. Yes, drop off is at the
pavilion at 8:00 AM tomorrow. (Sandra winces) (phone rings) Hello again, Mrs Velazquez. This is she. She said that she was a
representative from the IRS and that I was $6,000
behind on my tax payments. She said- - [Scammer] Now, if
you're unable to wire us that late payment within
48 hours, Ms Gerardi, we will have to send a
sheriff to your home. - The thing is, I run multiple businesses. I think I file my taxes right, but- - It is true, Sandra, that
on rare occasions the IRS will call you at home, but after they've attempted to contact you by mail or other means. - How did the rest of the phone call go? - I asked her to put me onto her manager, who's this older man. - [Scammer] The failure to
pay penalty is one half of 1% for each month. I asked him about my bill
and he transferred me to some southern lady in
the mailing department. - [Scammer] Nah sugar, that's form 2210. - And then, I was talking
to someone in the mail room. He seemed really young.
I probably sound crazy. - Trust me, Sandra. That feeling is what
these criminals prey upon. Their tactics are very complex. - I dunno. Maybe I should
just wire them the money. - Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- Hey, you agree to this, you're gonna regret it. - I have three birthday parties, four weddings, and a funeral this week. I don't have time to get arrested. - Just give us 24 hours. - I hate to say this, but
don't you think this one could be real? - Come on, Skip. I know it's only your
third day on the job, but you should know
that the IRS will never threaten to send law enforcement. - Hey, rookie. Bring me
Sandra's call records. I wanna check something. (tense music) What time is it? - 09:41. - The vic said she heard a train whistle on the other line at 09:42. (train horn blares) - Sounds like we're in the right place. - What? (train horn blares)
- I said it sounds like- - It sounds like we're in the right place. Have we run the caller number yet? - Checked out. It's IRS. - Yeah. Well, scammers have been known to spoof phone numbers. - Have scammers been known to perform in one woman shows on Wednesday nights? (audience applauds)
- Thank you. Thank you. Wow, huge crowd tonight. Yeah, thank you. Now, what I need is an audience suggestion for a type of job. - [Ace] How about scam artist? - You know what's so important
about the show is yes, it's about scams, but
it's also about family. - Yes. - And heart and comfort and uncomfort. - Discomfort. - Discomfort. It's got everything. - We hope this has you as excited as we are about "S.A.F.E. Squad". Thank you everyone for
tuning into this sneak peek and we'll see you on the airwaves. “I built a giant death trap.” On October 7th, 2023 Mr. Beast posted this video 
with the contestant traveling through a series of obstacles. It was a video sponsored by a mobile game called Stumble Guys. Along with CGI the pivotal moments in the trap... included obvious cuts. The second trap ends with contestant Zack 
diving under a door. See how his leg is here at this point. When it switches to an alternate angle... his leg is here. See the shoes and no bag. Now here's a bag and no shoes. The video has more than 150 million views. [overlapping Mr. Beast intros] Around half of Mr. Beast's videos 
are now game shows. “$111,500.” Their questionable reality 
is part of a history that goes back to a national scandal... in the 1950s. It includes congressional hearings... “The dramatic climax of the probe 
of fixed and rigged quiz shows.” ...castaways in Borneo... “And the tribe has spoken.” ...and a brief era when cheating 
on a game show... was a federal crime. “...wins $100,000...” In the 1940s, television had begun 
advances across the nation. And by 1955, a game show called
“The $64,000 Question” debuted on CBS. “Yes, the $64,000 question.” A contestant in an isolation booth was asked increasingly difficult questions. The design implied security and integrity. Questions were delivered straight from 
a bank vault to the set. It was sponsored by Revlon... and was a fabulously successful TV show... topping ratings with 16 million viewers. Almost half of all houses that owned TVs 
were watching it. It started a quiz show boom.  These shows included Dotto... a game where contestants 
answered trivia questions to unlock a connect-the-dots puzzle. The less said the better... And Twenty One... “Welcome back to Twenty One.” ...a show where two contestants 
appeared in isolation booths. Each answered questions for points, 
hoping to reach 21. It was sponsored by Geritol, a supplement
that claimed to help with... “Tired blood.” “Tired blood.” The show and trend peaked in 1957... when Time magazine put 
long-running quiz champ Charles Van Doren on the cover. His streak began with the defeat of... “Herbert Stempel, our 29 year old 
GI College student.” “You win $20,000!” “Congratulations!” Van Doren became a family friendly celebrity. TV's own health restoring antidote 
to Elvis Presley as part of the literary Van Doren clan. A family well known in New York 
intellectual circles. After his $129,000 streak ended an amount worth 1.3 million today.... Van Doren became the Today Show's 
cultural correspondent. Just two months later the shows were so popular... that Time magazine was asking: 
Are quiz shows rigged? “There's all this rigamarole about locked vaults.” One insider said. “But who has the key to the locked vault?” “The producer, of course.” Soon everyone would be asking the same question. In summer of ‘58, 
Dotto went blotto. The show was canceled after a contestant found an answer filled notebook backstage. A slew of shows were implicated 
in “quiz guilt” over the next few years, 
including Twenty One. Herbert Stempel... the Twenty One contestant 
who had lost to Van Doren... made claims that Twenty One was rigged with producers providing him questions 
and thorough stage direction. “Your time is up, for example, 
for five points which would give you a 21.” “What motion picture won 
the Academy Award for 1955?” I don't remember anything about that. The producers claimed Stempel 
was blackmailing them. The US House Subcommittee on 
Legislative Oversight... began hearings on the quiz shows. The report began: “It is one thing to arouse and hold the attention of the viewing public by programs which are openly... and avowedly pure fiction.” “And should be known as such 
to any reasonable person.” “It is quite another thing.... however, when the airwaves belonging to the people... whose free use has been licensed by the Federal Communications Commission 
are used deceitfully... to exploit for private profit the interests of the viewing public.” Stempel unloaded details of the coaching... in addition to questions and answers. Like that hey refused to turn on 
the air conditioning in his booth... “Thereby causing me to perspire profusely.” “Van Doren arrives to apologize 
and attempt to explain to the millions whose friendship 
and respect he had won.” Van Doren eventually admitted in testimony... “He instructed me how to answer the questions.” “To pause before certain of the answers.” [mumbling lines] “On this first occasion and on several subsequent ones... he gave me a script to memorize.” “And before the program he took back the script... and rehearsed me in my part.” “But his statement is a rueful and moving realization that for his wealth and fame... he paid a bitterly high price.” The investigations resulted 
in Van Doren losing his job as a Today Show 
correspondent... and in the cancellation of other quiz shows. Though he and others pled guilty of perjury
in earlier testimony... he was freed. But more importantly, the Communications 
Act of 1934 was amended... to include prohibited practices in case of contests of intellectual knowledge... intellectual skill or chance... making it unlawful with intent to deceive 
the listening or viewing public... with up to a year of imprisonment. The FCC was in charge... and rigging the game show 
was a federal crime. So what happened? Well, I was actually a huge Survivor fan and I found the whole Stacey Stillman Mark Burnett controversy 
to be super interesting. After the 1950s, a combination of 
falling ratings and public distrust... kept game shows lower profile. Until a renaissance. “The first person who refuses to eat a bug 
loses immunity for their tribe.” The long running show Survivor 
made its debut in 2000. Contestants competed in challenges, but crucially... elimination occurred via vote 
at Tribal Council. In 2001... an original Survivor cast member 
claimed the show was rigged. Essentially, Stacy alleged that 
in the first season in order to save a more
ratings-friendly contestant... “He's fat, but he's good.” Mark Burnett, the executive producer 
on the series approached two other contestants 
on the beach and essentially said... to vote for Stacey instead of 
that other contestant that they were planning on voting for. Years later, Attorney George Brietigam 
started to wonder... did the old quiz show laws 
apply in that case? I filed a Freedom of Information Act
request from 2000 to 2017. But the lawsuit entered into a private settlement before any FCC investigation commenced. This followed a pattern in the 2000s
of a weakened quiz show law. The truth is, they're actually 
not really fighting these reality shows using that statute. The closest thing that I found was there was a planned Fox gameshow 
called Our Little Genius. “He also happens to be one of the 
smartest people in America.” The planned 2009 show cast kids... as quiz competitors to adults. One complainant to the FCC said their child had been registered as a calculus expert... but was suddenly switched to music theory. It says a producer passed them note names... like the hemidemisemiquaver... as the British name for the 64th note. The complainant ended saying... “I urge you to conduct in investigation.” That investigation was ultimately abandoned by the FCC because 
what the production did was it essentially said, “Hey, we're not going 
to broadcast this.” We don't broadcast this you guys don't even have jurisdiction. And it's true: The FCC only has 
jurisdiction for broadcast. Cable? Do whatever you want. Internet? Nobody cares. You can shoot something for broadcast but as long as it doesn't actually air, 
you're not in violation. And the time line of game show 
investigations overlaps with a change in consumption options. Game shows being real was possibly... just a window in time. [slowly]
“Three... two... one.” But does it matter though? “That was so—I’m speechless!” Everyone assumes that because 
I wrote this paper I am in support of stronger regulations stronger FCC enforcement... I really am not. I think we're at the point everyone knows that what's on TV 
is often fake. Everyone knows what's on the internet 
is usually not real. Mr. Beast has just one FCC license... to help coordinate radio communication 
for his productions. The Mr. Beast team did not respond 
to our multiple requests for comment. And in 1959, Geritol and Sominex sales soared... while Van Doren sweated. Stumble Guys is currently 
number six in action on the App Store. “I want to tell you about Stumble Guys.” Hey, everybody. My name's Phil Edwards. I'm the producer of this episode. If you're anything like me, you might be 
a little worried now that you have tired blood. “Tired blood, tired blood.” If you're a fan of Vox whether you've been watching us for years or this is your first video I think that our mission 
is still pretty clear... that we want to give you 
high-quality journalism and we want to keep it free. We don't want to put it behind a paywall. Now, most newsrooms they’ll make money through either 
advertising or subscriptions but there are a couple big issues 
with those models... especially for a channel like ours. First, advertising goes up and down 
with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our revenue will be, which makes it 
pretty hard to plan. Second, we are not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand complicated issues, not just the ones 
who can pay for stuff. We think it's important that 
everybody be able to get to it and we can't do it if we have a paywall. So if those values sound like your values... you can help us reach that goal. Help us get to 95,000 gifts 
by the end of the year... by going to www.vox.com/give-now. [audience applause] These are the 7 most powerful men in China. They represent the top leadership positions
of the ruling party... and their identities are revealed 
every five years... at a carefully choreographed 
political event called the National Congress. “China's Communist Party unveiled 
its new leadership over the next five years.” The order of appearance is symbolic. The first person to emerge is the head of the party 
for the next five years. At the most recent event 
in October 2022... that person was Xi Jinping China's president for the last ten years... who walked out in the top spot 
a historic third time after getting rid of China's 
presidential term limit that restricted all his predecessors 
to two terms. A signal that he may be planning 
to stay in power for life. The world hasn't seen a Chinese leader like this since Mao Zedong... the revolutionary founder of the 
People's Republic of China... whose ruthless dictatorship scarred the Chinese people 
for generations. Xi has been compared to Mao a lot. And he clearly draws from Mao's playbook. But there's something else 
that connects these two. When Xi was just a young boy... Mao ruined his life. Generations apart, their paths 
crossed unexpectedly and a teenage Xi from an 
elite family in Beijing... ended up in exile. Condemned to hard labor in the countryside. 50 years later Xi is one of the most powerful 
political figures in the world and the only leader since Mao to have unchecked power over China. So how did he go from 
being banished in his country... to taking complete control of it? [sinister, electronic music] [music fades] Xi Jinping's connection to Mao formed long before Xi was even born. [dark, pensive music] It goes back to when a bloody civil war 
was raging in China. A group of radical communist 
revolutionaries, including Mao gained influence over large swaths 
of mainland China... and controlled a communist military 
called the Red Army... that fought the Nationalist Party ruling the Republic of China at the time. At this point, the Communists 
were losing bad. The bulk of their army was pinned down here... in a communist controlled region
originally established by Mao... now surrounded by Nationalist forces. And they were running low on food. So the Red Army decided to 
launch a bold attack... to break through the Nationalist forces
and evacuate the roughly 130,000 communist soldiers 
and civilians stuck here. On October 16th, 1934, 
they made their move... and attacked a weaker part 
of the enemy line. They broke through. And even though their numbers 
quickly dropped with thousands dying and 
thousands more fleeing to the countryside... around 86,000 stuck together and pushed on. This was the beginning of a year-long historic retreat called the Long March. The journey to establish a new communist base... far from the Nationalist forces. Mao, who used to be a military leader wasn't in charge at this time. He'd insisted on using 
guerrilla tactics which had heavily influenced 
the Red Army earlier in the war. But that approach had fallen out of favor
and he was demoted. The Long March changed that. After escaping the siege here the Red Army continued to suffer
relentless attacks by the pursuing Nationalist army. The military leaders of the march had pushed for a more traditional 
wartime strategy of direct confrontation... rather than Mao's guerrilla tactics. And the result was catastrophic 
for the Red Army. Less than half of the original 
escape group survived the first three months alone. So it was at this first stopping point where Communist Party leader 
Zhou Enlai... handed military leadership back to Mao. And Mao picked an end point 
for the march... here. 800 miles away in rural northern China. But they didn't go straight for it. Mao led the Red Army 
deep into the mountains where he predicted 
lighter resistance. And he was right. But the journey was still brutal. It was nine more months 
of nonstop marching and fighting along this 
several thousand mile route... before they ultimately arrived 
in northern China... where a guerrilla base led by 
a communist revolutaionary named Xi Zhongxun, offered
Mao's army refuge... bringing the Long March 
to an end. That man was Xi Jinping's father. In the end, fewer than 8,000 
of the original marchers survived. Even though thousands died 
on the Long March from starvation and fighting and disease... Mao's leadership was credited with saving the Red Army
from total annihilation. And he became the de facto 
head of the party as well as the military... entrusted with rebuilding the army to take on the Nationalist forces 
for total control of China. “Wherever and however... the Red Troops move into battle... they spread the glory of Mao Zedong.” This is a good stopping point 
in the story to talk about how power in the Chinese Communist Party 
or CCP works. Officially, the highest level of authority is a group called the Central Committee and is responsible for all of the party's 
major policy decisions. Within the Central Committee 
is a select group of officials called the Political Bureau or Politburo. In most Communist parties,
like that of the former Soviet Union... the Politburo represents the most powerful
members of the party besides the General Secretary. But the Chinese Communist Party 
has a key distinction that makes it unique. It has one more 
even smaller selection of top officials who ultimately 
have the final say. An elite class of Politburo members
called the Politburo Standing Committee. This group, which includes the General Secretary holds supreme control over 
the Central Committee dictates the will of the party 
and is in full control of the Central Military Commission which oversees China's defense. Mao's promotion during the Long March 
landed him here in the highest position of the military  and the Politburo Standing Committee. Even though he was considered 
the de facto head of the party when the Long March ended in 1935... he officially became head of the party in 1943. With both the party and the military 
under his control... Mao began to exploit the system to ensure he remained at the top for the rest of his life. At Mao's first National Congress as the official party leader in 1945... the party introduced a resolution 
that brought his influence to a whole new level. They unified the party around a single 
understanding of its history... and declared Mao's political ideology later called Mao Tse-Tung Thought 
or Maoism... as the unquestioned guiding principle of the Chinese Communist Party. Basically, Mao's ideas or policy decisions could no longer be challenged by anyone. It was here he unveiled his equivalent
at the time of the Politburo Standing Committee. The four other top party leaders... all long marchers deeply loyal to Mao. Like Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai... who would go on to hold some of 
the most powerful positions in the future government. Four years later, Mao declared
final victory for the Communists in a decades long Chinese civil war and established a new country: The People's Republic of China, 
or PRC. “Mao Tse-tung, once a lowly party worker... now assumed the stature of a dominant figure in all of Eastern Asia.” But winning a revolution isn't the same 
as running a country. Because now that you're running a country there's all these other things you have to do like deliver the mail and like build a dam 
and stuff like that. You can't possibly have the party 
do all these things. So the party set up a government that would take the policy decisions made by the 
Politburo Standing Committee and figure out a way to make them a reality. And so it evolved to a system where... the party would make all 
the important decisions... and especially the Politburo Standing Committee. Then, as it is today... many of these decisions would go to 
the State Council. So the State Council was the highest 
decision-making body on the state side, led by 
the Premier of China. The Premier of China, by the way, 
is almost always a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. One way Mao kept a tight grip on power 
over the years was by promoting those loyal to him 
to top positions in the party in government. Whether they had government experience or not. For example, Zhou Enlai... the former party leader who helped Mao rise to power 
during the Long March... became China's first premier. The advantage of that is that 
they could never challenge him. The disadvantage of that is they didn't know what they were doing and so administration suffered... policy outcomes suffered. Long March survivors often became 
party elites under Mao. Xi Jinping's father, for example, 
was appointed Secretary General of the State Council... and as the son of a Long Marcher young Xi was given the informal title 
of Princeling. Mao succeeded in never giving up 
his power during his lifetime. His unchecked policies resulted 
in massive famines and widespread persecution  that cost between 40 and 80 million lives 
over a span of decades... and culminated in the disastrous 
Cultural Revolution. A violent final attempt from Mao 
to consolidate his power and force loyalty to the practice of Maoism. The idea was to make himself 
and his ideas eternal. The way he viewed communist figureheads like Lenin and Marx before him. Anyone that didn't fall in line with
Mao’s ideology was publicly humiliated... impoverished... excluded from society, and, 
in many cases executed. Either at the hands of the army... or by a militant youth group obsessed 
with enforcing Maoism: The Red Guards. [cheering] Even those closest to the dictator weren’t safe from his purges during 
the Cultural Revolution. High level officials including members of the 
Politburo Standing Committee and Long Marchers... were removed from their positions. Liu Shaoqi was denounced 
as a traitor and died while imprisoned under harsh conditions. Mao also removed the Chief of Staff of the Army and replaced him with a Maoist... leaving no one left to oppose him 
in the military. Mao's handpicked successor who always appeared loyally by his side in photos and propaganda posters died under mysterious circumstances when his plane crashed as he was 
fleeing to the Soviet Union. Mao later denounced him as a traitor. He denounced Xi's father, too. This is a photo of Xi senior being restrained and publicly criticized by the Red Guards at the height 
of the Cultural Revolution. He would remain a prisoner in Beijing 
for 8 years following this. With his father purged... Xi Jinping, 15 at the time was expelled from his 
elite school in Beijing and sent to work in the countryside. He had to live in a cave and
do hard manual labor. His food was barely enough for a growing young person. And Chairman Mao was responsible for all of it. But then... Mao died. The Cultural Revolution ended. His successor was Deng Xiaoping... one of the Politburo Standing 
Committee members who was removed from power 
during the Cultural Revolution. Who just before Mao died... started making a promise 
to fellow exiled party veterans. Deng Xiaoping signaled credibly... to all the surviving Long Marchers that he wanted to rehabilitate people. So when Mao died, they all supported 
the rehabilitation of Deng. And as soon as Deng was rehabilitated he went ahead and rehabilitated 
all these people. With experienced leadership back in place the party needed to figure out how to prevent something like this... from ever happening again. In order to undo Mao's 
cult of personality... the party introduced a second 
historical resolution in 1981. It condemned periods of Mao's rule... and emphasized a renewed commitment 
to collective leadership... vowing to oppose the consolidation of power around one person moving forward. The successors to Mao 
didn't want a dictatorship. So they divided up these positions and put them in the hands of different people. Like Mao, Deng kept tight control over the Central Military Commission
as its chairman... and held a leadership position 
in the government. But was never head of state. He never held the highest position in the party either. Instead, he set up a new advisory commission and served as its chairman... which allowed him to influence 
the party's direction... without positioning himself 
directly on top of it. This allowed a power sharing structure while still making Deng the 
de facto leader of China until he stepped down in 1989... following the Army's massacre of students 
protesting in Tiananmen Square. “A protester suddenly ran into 
the middle of the street and in front of the oncoming tanks.” “Anger at Deng Xiaoping, the entire 
Chinese government... it had the real feeling of rebellion
in the streets of Beijing.” “People want to fight the military 
out of their city.” Deng and his ideology which moved away from Maoism, 
set a precedent of sharing power. He opened up China and 
established economic ties with these countries... and was the first PRC leader 
to visit the US in 1979. “Today, we take another step in the historic... normalization of relations which we have begun this year.” Deng’s reforms became the foundation for decades of economic prosperity  that led China to having the world's 
second largest economy over time... and being on the verge of becoming 
the world's next superpower. “Communism is creating a consumer society.” “Also reminds you that the standard of living
in China is going up.” “Here... capitalism rules.” One thing power sharing did lead to... was a lot of policy innovation and then some degree of decentralization. And both of these things helped 
China's economy enormously. Which is why this period of 
economic growth and reform stretching over roughly 30 years 
is known as the Deng era. Whether he wanted to or not,
Deng kept his word... and never tried to consolidate 
absolute power around himself. He did end up sharing power. And that set the stage for 
power sharing in the party... until the rise of Xi Jinping. So what was Xi doing all this time? [contemplative music] When Mao died in 1976 Xi was back in Beijing studying 
communist philosophy... even though the Chinese Communist Party 
had ruined Xi's family... He had joined it. Just as the Cultural Revolution 
was winding down. But why? Personally, he might begrudge 
Chairman Mao for doing all this terrible things to his family... but I think at this time he also 
recognized that in the system of the Chinese Communist Party 
power is everything. Without power, you're nothing. But in order to get that power... Xi did something unexpected. He left Beijing. As his competitors
were fiercely competing with each other in the 
1980s and 1990s. He sort of got out of their way... and went to the provinces. He took positions in party leadership in rural, poor provinces 
all around China... where there were no other 
princelings to compete with. First, in Hebei, a poor rural province 
outside of Beijing... where he easily reached the top spot 
as party secretary. Then in Fujian, a heavily militarized region where top members of the army
were stationed. He moved up the ranks 
to party secretary here, too. Before becoming the governor of the province 
a few years later. After making powerful friends in the military... Xi went here... where he once again  assumes the office of party secretary... and grew his support on the civilian side. This strategy of moving around didn't just give Xi 
a leg up in areas where competition was slim. It also gave him credibility... as a humble, hard working 
party leader... and he cultivated a growing group of supporters who would come back into play 
years down the line. It was his last stop and his shortest one that ultimately got him back to Beijing. A brief stint in the top party spot 
in Shanghai in 2007... where he rehabilitated the city's image following a high-level corruption scandal. Xi developed a reputation here as a prudent leader who toed the party line. Just 7 months later, he finally 
returned to Beijing... having been promoted to the all-powerful 
Politburo Standing Committee. Basically, the people who were deciding
on top leadership at the time they wanted a Princeling. But they didn't want a princeling who was too ambitious or too strong. So Xi Jinping he was seen as less ambitious because he was willing to go 
to the countryside and work in lower-level positions. When Xi emerged as the 2007 National Congress and leadership unveiling... he was one of the 9 most powerful men 
in the country. It was at this moment that his 
strategic climb... over 17 long years in the countryside paid off. Big time. When the General Secretary 
stepped down in 2012... Xi emerged at the top spot 
in the party as China's leader. Now the elite son of a former revolutionary  turned exiled peasant... turned party darling... was poised to seize control of everything. Like Mao, Xi Jinping believes 
that rallying around a single figure is crucial 
to the party's survival. Rather than the collective leadership Deng’s reforms had normalized. So pretty much as soon as 
Xi Jinping came to power. He started getting rid of people. “The news... four top officials
removed for taking bribes was announced on state TV.” “Xi Jinping has just sacked his foreign minister.” “Just sacked his defense minister.” “He sacked a whole lot of 
other people at the top of the military establishment.” “The former security czar has not been seen in public
for more than a year.” “The nvestigation against Zhou 
allows the Chinese president to remove those opposed to his reforms.” He launched a major anti-corruption campaign... as soon as he took power
in late 2012, early ‘13... which led to the arrests of
hundreds of senior-level officials as well as military officers. These purges targeted
Xi's rivals in the party... whose vacant positions he filled 
with his own supporters. After this massive purge... Xi Jinping was in very tight control over both the party and also the Chinese military... thereby making him the most powerful leader of the Chinese Communist Party 
since the death of Mao. That pattern continued in the second term where he unveiled 5 new faces 
of the Politburo Standing Committee... three of them with close 
personal ties to Xi. In 2021, Xi pulled off one of his 
most dramatic acts yet... to enforce his influence over 
the Chinese Communist Party. He introduced a third historic resolution that unified the party's ideology around one clear line of thinking: Xi Jinping Thought. Xi's personal political ideology... would now be the core 
in the party's thinking... political stance and action. Basically, Xi Jinping's ideas 
could no longer be challenged. And they weren't for many years. During Xi's first 10 years in power the size of China's economy 
more than doubled. So did average individual income. So did military spending. Under his leadership... China's presence on the world stage
has grown too.  Positioning the rising superpower to take on the role of an aggressor, externally. Reasserting claims over parts 
of the South China Sea Intimidating Taiwan and Tibet and stripping democratic process 
in Hong Kong. Inside its own borders strict Internet censorship and 
surveillance are widespread... and oppression of Uyghurs... a mostly minority Muslim ethnic group... is marked by human rights abuses. But it wasn't until Covid that Xi saw the first real challenge to his authority. “Anger in China is growing.” “Video showing protester is in Xinjiang... fed up with China's zero Covid rules.” “The boldest public challenge yet
for leader Xi Jinping.” With these protests all around the country... and the party's reputation in peril. Xi reversed the failed policy. But is now faced with 
a shaky economy... and cracks in his unchecked authority. It was just weeks before 
the widespread protests at the 20th National Congress in 2022... that Xi walked out in the leading position
a third time. He had already locked in the presidency
for another five years... and unveiled a Politburo Standing Committee completely packed with those loyal to him. After removing the final senior members of the party that had ties to his predecessor. Now there is no one left in party or military leadership whose ideology 
differs from Xi. I don't think anyone can 
push him out at this point. I think Xi will be the most 
powerful leader in China... as long as he's alive and conscious. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Atlas. So many teammates worked on this piece. A small army of editors, animators, 
and researchers helped bring this complicated story into focus. I especially like to shout out Rajaa... one of the key researchers on this piece... who conducted an incredible interview with our expert Victor Shi. It takes a lot of resources to make these videos but we publish our work free to watch here  because we think journalism should be 
accessible to everyone. If you believe in keeping journalism free and want to support our continuing work go to vox.com/give-now to make a contribution. Thanks again. [whimsical music] I'm just going to come out 
and say it. I think bats are 
super weird. I mean that in an endearing way. I actually like them a lot. I think they're these like fluffy,
flying mammals with a lot to offer, 
like tequila. They pollinate the agave plant. The trouble is, when bats 
hit the media it’s almost always over 
some deadly disease like Ebola... or COVID-19... and even the recent Nipah virus 
outbreaks in India. Bats are frequently taking 
the blame. And yet we're not finding caves full of bats that died from 
coronavirus or Ebola... because bats don't just host 
deadly diseases. They seem to tolerate them really well. Researchers think it's because 
they evolved with a unique ability. They're the only mammals 
that can fly. So there’s a number of unique features 
of bat immune systems and their physiology that we think 
have co-evolved with the evolution of flight. Flying requires an incredible 
amount of energy. A bat in flight elevates its basal 
metabolic rate up to 15 fold. And to put that in context, a human
at full speed running is only doubling their metabolic rate. And a rodent, perhaps, elevating it 
seven fold. So this is more than twice 
the energetic expenditure... of any form of terrestrial locomotion. Their heart rates can skyrocket to over a thousand 
beats per minute. That's around 4 or 5 times more 
than their resting heart rate. But there's even more. It's honestly remarkable that 
when a bat takes flight it doesn't just drop dead. So a bat in flight will elevate 
its body temperature up to 44 degrees centigrade. And 45 degrees centigrade is 
kind of the lethal limit of what mammals can tolerate. And that holds true for bats as well. So when in flight they're really pushing the sort of 
physiological limits... of thermal tolerance. And while all of this is fascinating,
you're probably wondering... what does this have to do 
with viruses? Well, stick with me because 
we are getting there. So flight is essentially a huge stressor 
that resembles aging... and because it's a part of bats’ 
innate physiology they’ve evolved unique 
molecular pathways to mitigate that damage 
at the site of production. So essentially, bat physiology 
is resilient to the process of aging. You see, despite burning a ton of energy
all of the time bats are shockingly long lived. Usually there are trade-offs between  metabolic output and lifespan and rodents are a great example of that. Typically, they only live up to 
a couple of years. Bats, however, are about the same size and have metabolic expenditure that even exceeds that of rodents. But they're extremely long lived. The oldest known that lives up to 
40 years in the wild. So after actually correcting 
for body size bats are the longest lived mammals 
on Earth. So these special pathways 
that they've developed in order to mitigate the intense 
effects of flying have likely made them extremely 
tolerant to viruses... or at least primed them to 
successfully fight them off. [percussive, pensive music] When a virus enters a human, 
two things happen. Okay, more than two things happened. But let's focus on two, because 
who has the time? Think of these like two switches 
that need to be turned on when a virus infects a cell... and off when the body 
is clear of the virus. So when a virus shows up it enters a cell and your body 
raises an alarm like: Hey, there's a guy here who's not even 
supposed to be here! That flips the alarm switch... which releases some molecules that slow the virus from replicating. And then the second switch flips which launches an immune response 
to kill off the rest of the virus. But there's a catch. Once that immune response switches on our bodies can sometimes start to 
experience some pretty severe symptoms... like a fever, body aches, and 
essentially inflammation... which, sure, fights the virus
but also... The immune response causes widespread inflammation in the body which is and of itself highly fatal. But bats can't have their body 
triggering inflammation every time they experience 
an extreme stressor... because their entire existence 
as a flying mammal is basically an extreme stressor. And so their switch responses 
to an invader  work a bit differently 
than ours. So in some species their alarm switch 
is perpetually on. In other species, it's entirely 
in overdrive... which means they're sounding an alarm and releasing molecules to stop a virus 
from replicating before it even enters their body. And their switch that triggers inflammation kind of has a permanent dimmer. So they don't feel these 
strong side effects. Bats are particularly adept at 
reducing viral loads to very low levels and simply tolerating
whatever is remaining. Which might be part of the reason 
why the viruses they do host are so much more dangerous 
to humans. The longer a virus stays in a host, 
the more chances it has to replicate, mutate, jump to a 
new bat or animal and ultimately becomes something more deadly. But before you start thinking 
about bats as these horrible, disease ridden 
flying creeps... it's worth noting there is a lot 
we can learn from them... including how to better treat 
disease in humans. At least one group of researchers in Dublin recently received a grant to study just that. And some of our methods already work to mimic 
the switches in a bat... including how we treat many 
severe COVID cases. We first treat patients 
with Remdesivir which is an antiviral drug that 
tries to reduce the viral load... but then later on in infections 
we’ll treat with dexamethasone which is a steroid... that's meant to actually blunt 
that immunopathology. So it's anti-inflammatory. And so we turn the alarm on
and we dim the other switch. Of course, bats aren't invincible. And recent studies have shown that 
bats under extreme stress... caused by things like rising 
global temperatures habitat loss and human interference... are more likely to shed 
and spread viruses. So I feel strongly that there is 
a win-win argument for bat conservation and 
human public health... because a healthy bat is simply less 
of a zoonotic threat to humans than as a sick bat. While that does pose zoonotic risk they also offer a really valuable... research source for new approaches 
in medicine. Hey everybody, thanks for watching. I'm Kim, the producer of this episode,
and there is just so much we did not get to cover in this. Including how a broad diversity
of species of bats might also contribute to why diseases 
they carry are so deadly... or even just the things that do affect bats... like white nose fungus. There's a long list of topics to explore and this piece is really just 
meant to be a primer. But hopefully it makes you 
want to learn more. I've included a bunch of links 
in the description to help you get started. Before you go, I do have a request. We choose stories for 
Science, Explained to help foster curiosity 
in the world around us and maybe offer you a lens 
you haven't looked through before... without a paywall. To help keep our journalism free free and support more of our work you can go to 
vox.com/give-now. As a special thank you to those who 
make reoccurring contributions you'll get links to video tutorials, 
newsletters, and Q&As with Vox journalists across 
our entire newsroom. Thanks again for your continued support. the American Wild West has a forgotten trans history for most of the 19th century the Western frontier was a pretty Lawless Place ongoing land disputes between Native American tribes and the US government meant there wasn't a ton of federal oversight or law enforcement which is why we see a lot of Outlaws and people wanted Dead or Alive Across the Western frontier other people living on the outskirts of society began to see the West as a chance to start over too and according to queer historians like Peter bog it became a place where people could redefine their gender and sexual identities if you comb through newspapers from the wild west you'll find stories about people who didn't conform to typical gender Norms like Bandit Jack Hall and cowboy Harry Allen this wasn't because gender non-conformity was necessarily accepted in the west people who were outed often faced persecution but the West's rugged nature allowed people to express themselves and live their lives privately which may be why their stories are often forgotten I'm not saying that Rona santis is wearing cowboy boots with hidden risers in them but if he were that could be considered gender affirming care which the santis has tried to ban multiple times by passing laws that limits things like hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender youth the who defines gender affirming care as any single or combination of a number of social psychological Behavioral or medical interventions designed to support and affirm an individual's gender identity essentially things that somebody can do to make them feel more like the gender that they identify as this includes mental health treatment and voice therapy going by a nickname or even a new name entirely so this also includes stuff that cisgender and transgender people alike already participate in wearing makeup or getting hair implants your mom's Botox injections your sister's lip filler going to the gym working out building muscle wearing shoes to make you taller than you actually are This is a syringe full of water. I've closed off this end 
so it can’t escape. And no matter how hard I push... Nothing really happens. I can't compress it. Even if I put this inside 
an industrial hydraulic press... a machine that can push down 
with thousands of tons of force... the volume would only decrease by about 1%. But what if it was squeezed even harder? What if this water was subjected to the extreme pressures 
in the Earth's core? Or inside the Sun? What would happen to it? The answer is something really bizarre. Something physicists are just starting 
to understand. In many ways, this is 
really a new field. We just don't fully know the rules yet. It's an entirely new regime of matter. To try and wrap our heads around 
these extreme pressures and the way they warp physics 
as we know it. Let's go on a journey 
straight down. We'll start our trip up here on the surface 
at atmospheric pressure. How much pressure is that exactly? How does it compare to, say the pressure of my phone 
on my palm? Well, the phone's weight, 
about two Newtons... is spread out over about 
100 square centimeters. That's how pressure is measured: A force distributed over an area. The pressure of the atmosphere the hundreds of miles of air above me... pulled down by Earth's gravity 
is 500 times stronger. That's like the pressure my phone 
would exert on my palm if Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson 
was balancing on top of it. But because the air is free 
to flow around... it's also pushing up The Rock 
with the same pressure. Every phone sized patch of my body 
is getting pressed inward by the equivalent of 
The Rock's weight. Of course, all the structures 
and fluids within my body are pressing back and I'm so used to this equilibrium 
that I don't even notice. Before we leave these familiar conditions I'm going to grab a few things to take with us. A gram of hydrogen, 
a gram of sodium... and a kilo of water. We know exactly how these substances 
behave on Earth’s surface. But what happens when 
we start to squeeze? Just ten meters of seawater adds another whole atmosphere 
worth of pressure. 27 floors down... we pass the unassisted diving record. And just a little deeper... we hit ten atmospheres. Now we're going deeper than 
the deepest scuba dive. There's a blob of fish. They look like depressed jello 
on the surface but down here, the pressure 
keeps them trim. One kilometer down, 
we reach 100 atmospheres. The kinds of pressures we got with that 
giant hydraulic press. Sperm whales can dive this deep... and their hinged rib cages fold inward
so the bones won't snap. Here, the Titan submersible 
was crushed... and here is the destination 
they never reached. [My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion
plays briefly] Somehow we're still passing fish. And now we've reached the bottom 
of the Mariana Trench... and 1000 atmospheres. We're now up to the pressure of a phone
with a herd of elephants balanced on top. Let's check in on the samples we brought. Our balloon of hydrogen gas has shrunk down to the size 
of a big marble. But both our solid sodium and liquid water 
haven't changed much. They're just barely compressed. Why is that? Well, the molecules of hydrogen had plenty of space between them. Room to shrink. But the sodium and water were 
already tightly packed. Even the pressure down here can't overcome the electrostatic repulsion 
between molecules. It's nowhere near strong enough. But let's keep going. Every meter of rock 
piles on the pressure nearly three times faster 
than water. The temperature is rising, too. As we leave the crust, we hit 
10,000 atmospheres. In the mantle, temperatures shoot past 
a 1000 degrees Celsius and some of the rock starts to melt. This is where many diamonds form. Carbon is squeezed into a tight crystal. As we go deeper into 100,000 
atmospheres of pressure... the rock is compressed further,
forced back into its solid form. Our sodium, meanwhile, has melted... and our bubble of hydrogen 
is liquid too. Compressed into a little clear globule. The water is also changing. It's getting squashed so much, 
it's forced to become a solid. But not the hexagonal crystals 
we get on the surface. Instead, it's a tighter cubic lattice. Scientists have found 
this variation of ice, Ice-VII... trapped inside diamonds. As we get close to Earth's core we pass 1 million atmospheres. That's the equivalent of an oil tanker 
balanced on a phone. This is the threshold we're now leaving the world that 
physicists fully understand. This is where the external forces are about the same and starting to overwhelm 
the internal forces. The crushing pressure is starting 
to overcome the electromagnetic forces holding 
water molecules apart apart and maintaining their shape. The behavior that 
comes out of being in these extreme conditions 
is pretty bizarre. How do you study matter 
under conditions that normally only exist 
deep inside the earth? That was the point of creating the 
Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures. We're going to be doing all the 
fundamental physics to be able to understand matter under these really different 
kinds of conditions. CMAP is headquartered at 
the University of Rochester... and they've got a tool that helps them
create extreme pressures. The enormous Omega EP laser 
which fills this giant room. This is the facility's schedule. Scientists from around the world queue up for months 
just for a chance to blast a tiny sample of matter 
with a laser beam. And how do you feel in the run up to this? Unbelievably nervous. You spent a year of planning  and crossing T's and dotting I’s... just to get to this point. The shot director gets on the intercom 
and he goes— Five... four, three... two, one. [silence] Shot 39607 
is now complete. That was it. During that split second, 
a million atmosphere pressures  were momentarily created in the next room... the same pressures that exist deep within Earth. How does a beam of light do that? Let's go through it again. Just way slower. The laser beam is born in these machines 
down in the basement... and it's directed through a maze of lenses and devices that shape 
and monitor it. Bouncing through these 
massive tubes... it's infused with more power until 
it's as wide as this opening: About 45 centimeters across. Then it races towards the target chamber which is hidden behind this tangle 
of equipment. This is a visual representation 
of the target chamber. And the target is right at the center of it. Those are really, like a pinpoint... on the tip of a pen, 
just absurdly small. The target is a tiny, 
inedible sandwich with a sample of whatever substance 
the researchers are interested in  in the middle. The laser light is focused down 
to hit this first layer which explodes into a 
superheated ionized gas. And that plasma blows off of 
the surface like a rocket. Ahat creates this buildup of pressure 
that forms a shockwave. And that shockwave really quickly travels
through the material. The last layer acts as a window allowing the passage of electromagnetic rays generated during the experiment. And then surrounding it you have these spaces 
to put different cameras and other tools that we use to measure the various things 
that we're interested in. If you look through this porthole... you can see a couple of these sensors
getting moved into place. In 2017, researchers put a tiny bit of Ice-VII sandwiched between two diamonds... in the target chamber. As the shockwave passed through it... pressure in the ice spiked 
above 2 million atmospheres and its atoms rearranged. Oxygens formed a tight lattice... while hydrogens were free 
to diffuse through it. It was Ice-XVIII, four times denser 
than normal ice... and able to conduct electricity 
almost as well as a metal. For a few billionth of a second... the laser had recreated conditions 
inside Earth. Speaking of, let's get back 
to our journey. As our water starts 
to turn into Ice-XVIII... our glob of sodium is undergoing 
its own transformation. Under these pressures, scientists have seen
it turn transparent. Now, what could account for this? Well, metals like sodium are shiny because they have a bunch of 
free-flowing electrons that can absorb and then retransmit light which we see as a reflection. What happens when you apply pressure to it is you're squeezing the electrons 
away from their atoms... and into these localized pockets. Trapped like that, the electrons can't 
interact with light... and so it just passes through. We've reached the center of the earth... but that's not the end because 
we can continue into pressures found inside larger plants. Tens of thousands of kilometers
below Jupiter's surface... Physicists think hydrogen will go through 
another change becoming a shiny conductor of electricity. It's thought that a lot of Jupiter is made up of this metallic hydrogen. We think of high energy 
density materials as completely inverting 
the periodic table so your metals become transparent and your transparent materials 
become metals... and all these gases become solids... And the universe holds 
higher pressures still. The center of Jupiter sees over 
10 million atmospheres just about the highest pressure
that the Omega laser can create. And now we're diving into the sun... where pressures rise over 
100 billion atmospheres. The island of Manhattan balanced on a phone. We've seen extreme pressures, 
overwhelming the forces that keep molecules apart. But here within the sun, 
they can overcome the very glue that holds atoms together. Here, individual hydrogen nuclei 
can be used to form helium... a process that releases energy. This is nuclear fusion: The ultimate source of all energy 
in our solar system. The reaction at the center 
of every twinkling star. If we could somehow recreate this process on Earth 
and keep it going... we would have a near limitless source 
of clean, cheap power. And researchers around
the world are using giant lasers, 
including Omega... to study this possibility. This is all a relatively new frontier 
of physics. Scientists still have so many questions 
about the rules about how different elements and substances act and interact under different conditions... and how that might influence 
the evolution of planets... and their ability to foster life. They'll keep chipping away at those unknowns... one split second experiment at a time. [Lump of Coal by Adam Cole]
Hold me close... Squeeze me tight... Get together/
Up the pressure Feels so wrong/
but it feels so right... Break me down/
Then you make me whole... You want a diamond/
take your time and keep on tryin/
‘cause I’m just another coal. I’m just another coal! [Lump of Coal by Adam Cole fades] if female rage was a painting it might look like this this French painting from 1866 is called the hesitant fiance it was painted by this guy August tush who was known for his paintings of fashionable and emotionally expressive French women he was part of a group of French artists who sought to depict candid visions of everyday life called realism which emerged in France after the French Revolution artists had different takes on the art style which is why some French paintings depict the humble working class and the hesitant fiance looks like this in this painting August depicts a bride's overtly reluctant feelings towards her arranged marriage her hands are held by two women who appear to be trying to comfort or persuade her one kissing her forehead and the other kneeling by her side but really it's her expression that has made her a meme 157 years later On December 19, 2018... a revolution started to spread
throughout Sudan. After decades of living under
President Omar Bashir's brutal military regime... civilians pushed back. They wanted a democracy
in their country. A few months later this man and this man helped
take down Bashir in a coup... and then promised protesters the future
they had demanded. Four years later the same two men are now
at war with each other...  tearing Sudan apart,
killing hundreds of civilians. So how did Sudan go from this... to this, in such a short time? And how did these two powerful men... go from partners... to enemies? Your baby teeth probably fell out in a very specific order. So we all know that 
as you're growing up around the age of 6 years old... your baby teeth start to fall out. But they don't fall out 
all willy-nilly. They generally fall out 
in this order. First is these bottom front ones. And the top front teeth. Then it spreads to the sides 
pretty much in order. This tends to happen over 
the course of a few years generally between 
6 and 12 years old. These aren't hard rules, of course. Humans are varied and complex 
and a lot of times this process will tend to overlap 
from tooth to tooth. But it sort of makes sense. Right? Like the front teeth are the ones 
that you're generally going to use to tear into 
that first bite of food. And according to the Mayo Clinic... this is also the order in which 
our teeth generally come in both when our baby teeth emerge and when adult teeth start 
pushing out the little guys. So the next time you're at a party and you're looking for some way to make conversation with 
those around you... you can tell people that... Ugly. Depressing. A cross between a giant square box 
and a federal penitentiary. These are all ways that 
people have described this building behind me. It's Evans Hall at the University 
of California, Berkeley. It's built in a style of architecture 
called brutalism. And when you look at college campuses 
around the US... you'll see brutalist architecture 
like this everywhere. Why are there so many brutalist 
buildings on campuses? And what about this style of architecture
makes it so divisive? Okay. Just to start with, 
the name Brutalism doesn't actually have anything to do with the brutality of the architecture per se. Although some may argue that it’s quite harsh in appearance.  It's actually derived from 
a French phrase. Béton brut. The raw concrete 
in French. This is Timothy Rohan. He's a professor of architectural history 
at UMass Amherst. A campus known for its stunning,
brutalist architecture. It's also the home of UMass Brut... a campus organization that raises awareness of the school's collection of buildings. Some architects... in conversations about Brutalism 
and its origins come up a lot. One of them is the Swiss-born 
French architect Le Corbusier. He built an enormous building
in Marseilles, an apartment building. The Unité d’Habitation. This really became a model 
for the use of concrete... and a model for what became brutalism. Concrete was widely used but sometimes before this, 
you would maybe sand the surface, 
paint the surface... clean it up in a groundbreaking fashion. He left the concrete surface raw. Le Corbusier continued to build on the motifs he used in Unité d’Habitation 
in his later work. Other architects of the day played in the Brutalist sandbox as well... such as Marcel Breuer, 
Paul Rudolph... Högna Sigurdardóttir
and Louis Kahn. Brutalism became not just 
a style of architecture...` but an entire esthetic ethos. In what became a manifesto of sorts 
for the movement... architecture, writer, and critic 
Reyner Banham decreed that new brutalist structures should have the following qualities: One: Memorability as an image. Two: Clear exhibition of structure. And three: Valuation of materials “as found.” Modernist architecture up to this point was dominated by people like 
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe... who built sleek glass corporate skyscrapers... which featured what are called 
curtain walls: Non load-bearing veneers that were meant to hide the construction. Some architects say if you have 
a whole city like this it's going to become 
banal, monotonous. Modernist architects called 
these buildings fish bowls. And they were lampooned for their 
resemblance to graph paper. In contrast, brutalist buildings strove for honesty in their materials 
and structure. They showed you how they were constructed. At the end of World War II... College attendance shot up. There was the veterans returning 
from the war who were eligible for government benefits that allowed them to go to college 
and pay for it. This necessitated that universities 
build new facilities to handle ballooning admissions. And with so many new buildings 
being needed... what did architects of the day turn to? Brutalism. Sorry. Schools like Yale had entire campuses
of brutalist architecture spring up Which received glowing marquee reviews 
in the New York Times. Campuses across the country erected some pretty spectacular buildings... that typified the challenging and idealistic, 
brutalist esthetic. Schools like Harvard, UMass Dartmouth, 
UC San Diego... the University of Chicago, and
of course, Berkeley. Some of the colleges like Yale University they wanted to part from the old models of the Gothic and the Georgian. A campus that was like Oxford 
or Cambridge for elite gentlemen. Now they want to show that 
they are becoming a world class research university. A university like mine, 
University of Massachusetts... expanded at this time from 
an agricultural college... and it becomes a research university. A flagship campus of Massachusetts. And so they start to become 
the hosts for modern architecture... to show their progress. During the 1970s, the US economy 
took a downturn. New construction on campuses 
ground to a virtual halt... and maintenance of existing facilities 
was neglected... leaving many buildings 
brutalist and otherwise... dingy and in need of renovation. And there's real cutbacks 
in maintenance during the 70s. It's noticeable. And there's even a policy that many campuses had 
called deferred maintenance. We're not going to do repairs. We're not going to unstop the gutter. We're not going to put in air conditioning 
that was never installed. It's deferred for a future date. When will this day come? I think it's maybe today. The 1980s swept in a new era
of construction that was a definite change of pace. Architects like Robert Venturi designed university buildings that featured 
brighter colors... asymmetrical shapes and 
playful design elements. Instead of attempts to preserve or renovate brutalist buildings in need of repair numerous campuses across the country opted to tear them down and 
build something shiny and new. And that is what it seems like will be the fate for poor Evans Hall 
here in Berkeley. Although a campus spokesperson told me 
that there is, quote, “No project in the works, or approved 
to demolish Evans Hall...” They went on to say that they're in the process of relocating 
all classrooms and offices out of the building. And will then construct new buildings 
to house them, at which point they will propose a project 
to demolish Evans. Which sounds to me like 
they're going to tear it down. The reason for all of this 
is a study that showed that its seismic rating 
against earthquakes is poor. So why is there no talk about 
tearing down this building? Or this one?  Or this one?  These buildings and over 
22 others on campus... share the same seismic rating as Evans. So why set your sights on just Evans? It's often about a number of other considerations, 
like real estate. The fact that these sites are 
valuable space on college campuses 
is at a premium. The real reason may be buried
further in the report which says that, quote, 
“Due to its massing height... scale and materiality, Evans Hall which obstructs views 
to San Francisco and beyond... is considered incongruous with the Beaux Arts Buildings 
in the Classical Core.” And that, quote, “the ad-hoc placement” of the new buildings “lacked sensitivity.” My council is, be patient.  Just because you find something 
unfashionable at the moment... doesn't mean you should eradicate it. But while Brutalism hasn't been seen in a positive light for a few generations... all hope is not necessarily lost. There does seem to be a bit of 
a renaissance happening. Dr. Rohan hopes to spread 
the gospel of Brutalism to a new generation by doing tours of the brutalist buildings on the campus of his university. And Zillow has even named Brutalism as one of the top trends to watch
in 2024. When you look around, 
Brutalism influence has actually made its way into many corners of our culture. There are $1,000 concrete 
West Elm coffee tables... and Jay-Z and Beyoncé paid 
$200 million for a brutalist inspired house 
on the ocean. I think it has seeped into popular culture... through Instagram, 
through Pinterest. All these things. It is a very expressive architecture. It photographs really well; 
it's like cats on the Internet. It just spreads. this isn't a forest not really it's actually an urban park in the densely populated city of Nanchang China filled with birds native trees and volcanic rock on 137 Acres of Urban Land it's called a sponge City and it's a type of natural infrastructure that architects around the world are designing to help us combat and withstand a changing climate in chanan a sewage pipe was replaced with this natural infiltration system that uses vegetation beds to purify storm and rainwater Shanghai replace concrete roads and sidewalks with this permeable pavement which is lined with vegetation to absorb excess water into the soil underground and across Wuhan dozens of urban Gardens like these were planted to absorb water before it overwhelms communities There's nothing scarier than the truth. If you're a true believer 
in the paranormal then you likely know this couple, 
Ed and Lorraine Warren. And if you don't you might have heard about movies
they inspired like The Conjuring, Annabelle,
The Haunted, The Nun The Amityville Horror, 
The Haunting in Connecticut. Their story spaned a cinematic universe 
that rivals the success of... well, the main one you think of 
when I say the words cinematic universe. But this isn't the first time 
their stories are told. So how did this very specific, 
very scary Conjuring universe... become so successful? Ed Warren was a demonologist. Lorraine Warren was a trance medium... better known as a clairvoyant. Together, for decades, they were 
paranormal investigators... looking to some of the most famous 
occurrences of the occult... all over the world. “This was just another haunted house,
and we didn't even realize... that six people had been murdered 
in that house: The DeFoe family.” They investigated hauntings 
of small children demonic presences and 
even a werewolf... which is all detailed on their 
incredible website that has case files for some of their 
most famous investigations. This one in particular was no joke. As Lorraine explains in this featurette
from Warner Brothers. “This is the worst thing.” “I'm not going to—I'm not going 
to stare at it, though.” “That has done bad harm 
on a lot of people.” Now, why would they have a creepy doll 
on display like that? Well, after the Warrens 
closed a case they would often take 
the haunted objects back home in order to keep them safe 
from the public. They kept them in their basement 
in Monroe, Connecticut... which went on to become an occult museum
considered to be... “The most haunted area in the world.” “That's what I would say.” “I would say that it is.” Without even mentioning Hollywood I think anyone would say that their story has all of the ingredients to make 
an awesome movie. But when Hollywood has tackled their cases... most of the films have left the Warrens 
out of the narrative. Like there are roughly 
30 Amityville movies about this haunted house where in 1976 the Warrens and their crew investigated... and took this ghost photo of a boy 
who had been murdered there. But none of these films were 
specifically about the couple. The Warrens were portrayed
on the small screen in 1991’s The Haunted— which can I just say, 
[chef’s kiss with Italian hands] excellent title. But they weren't put at the center 
of any story until 2013’s... The Conjuring. The movie that changed everything 
for the horror genre. And that's not hyperbole. The Conjuring is the highest grossing 
horror franchise of all time. But before we dive into the 
boring financials of the universe... let's first talk about why 
The Conjuring worked. The trailer for the film lays on 
the concept of candor really thick. “It's not a haunting.” “It's not a possession.” “But the truth.” It was marketing gold, 
of course. But the truth was also incredibly important 
to the creative team. Lorraine Warren was a consultant on the film and she became close friends 
with her onscreen counterpart. The subjects of the film, 
the Perron family who were haunted and eventually possessed  by a witch named Bathsheba... are still very much alive 
and have given chilling interviews with Warner Brothers. Like in this other featurette. “I doubt very much that 
I will be willing to see the film... for the same reason I'm unwilling 
to ever go back to the house.” Jesus Christ. Of course, creative liberties 
are always taken but the team had a lot of reverence 
for the truth. Reflecting on the film recently 
with Entertainment Weekly. Director James Wan said that 
one of the things he wanted to do is to treat it like it's straight forward drama and not even a horror film. And that's pretty clear because the story is heartfelt... the acting is sincere and grounded,
and it was masterfully shot. This is true of pretty much every movie in The Conjuring universe. They all try to keep an emotional story at the center... whether it's romantic, familial, 
or friendship... and they all have extremely creative scares. And if you have beef 
with that statement then you can take it up 
with my electric bill. Because after rewatching the movies
to make this video... I have not been able to sleep with light off for days and I really wish I was joking. But I am so scared. The first 10 minutes of The Conjuring 
are primarily focused on building out who the Warrens are 
through the Annabelle case. You know the one about 
the extremely haunted doll that Lorraine was talking about earlier? “That harmed a lot of people.” It looks a little different in the movie... but it's a great way to establish that Ed and Lorraine are accomplished 
paranormal investigators... while giving the audience a quick hit of scares before
moving on to the actual subject of the movie: The Perron family. But also plants seeds to show that there are more stories 
to tell in this world. Like in The Conjuring, we get
glimpses of Annabell. In The Conjuring 2, we get a few moments with the zoetrope
of the Crooked Man. In Annabelle Creations we get a photo that briefly features the nun. It's like the films are constantly referencing their deep archive of case files. But of course, no device is more beautiful for building out a universe 
than the occult museum. It's like the Infinity Stones times a million. And the film's creators knew this. Director James Wan even said 
that it occurred to them early on. “There's already a superhero universe.” “Why couldn't they do that in the horror world?” When you think of your favorite horror films they're often continuously running franchises. People liked Halloween. So let's give them more Halloween. Same with Nightmare on Elm Street. But not The Conjuring. One year after its release, 
Annabelle came out... giving a feature length treatment 
to the minor story at the beginning of The Conjuring. That would be like if Scream 
was followed up by a spin-off of the history of Drew Barrymore's character. Who—spoiler alert for a 
27-year-old-movie— dies in the first 15 minutes of the film. But of course, the filmmakers didn't do that. They just did Scream 2, 
which followed characters from Scream 1 on a 
new slashing adventure. Like the MCU, The Conjuring 
expands the universe around its characters. The Warrens, Annabelle, 
and the Nun... all have their own standalone francises which have connective tissue across movies but then they'll also crossover. Like how the Warrens show up 
in the final Annabelle movie. The strength of doing a shared universe is that you get to bounce around with completely different vibes. But there's one more thing that makes the Conjuring universe stand out 
as a massive success. They make a huge bang for their buck thanks to their reasonably small budgets. This is because they're often 
haunted house films. And when you're mainly using one location... you have fewer variables, more control,
and can shoot way faster. And they're not just successful 
by horror metrics. Compare the return on investment 
of the budget versus the box office to other shared universes... and the results are impressive, 
to say the least. And Warren passed away in 2006. Lorraine Warren passed away in 2019. In their 61 years of marriage the couple investigated over 10,000 cases. With no sign of The Conjuring universe's 
popularity slowing down... there are still so many stories left to tell. Hey, it's me! The ghost that's come out to haunt you 
forever and ever. Before I do that, I was told to 
read this card. So let's see what it says here, huh? First off, it says: Thank you so much for watching this video. I have no idea what that means, but... anyways, weird, 
it also says... if you were to go to Vox.com/givenow and become a contributor... I might not be forced to haunt you 
for all eternity. You'd also receive fun extras like 
a newsletter from Vox journalists. Apparently this is the best way 
to support our journalism and make sure that Vox stays free. Also, it'll keep me from hovering 
around your room in the dead of night. So if you want to see more videos like this
and get some sleep... go to vox.com/givenow. See you in the next one. Or tonight. In your bedroom. If you don't contribute I'll be there and I'm going 
to haunt you. Beware. Alright, bye! There's this four note melody you've almost definitely heard before in classic movies. It's in The Lion King... Star Wars... It's a Wonderful Life... The creepy melody is a 13th century
Gregorian chant called the Dies Irae and it was created by Catholic monks 
and used for one mass: Funerals. From there, Louis Hector Berlioz 
took the Dies Irae out of the church and into his 
Symphonie Fantastique in 1830. The melody was used in plays assisted live orchestras during
the silent movie era and eventually ended up 
on the big screen. But why are these four notes 
so unsettling? For one, the notes are in a minor mode. Minor music always has 
a connotation of sadness. Two: The actual notes are only 
a half step apart. Our ears are trained not to like notes 
that close together. And lastly, the notes descend as the phrase progresses. Music that descends is sad whereas the music that ascends
is happier. These three things combined make the Dies Irae 
inherently spooky. This isn't a forest. Not really. It's actually an urban park in the densely populated city 
of Nanchang, China. Filled with birds, native trees... and volcanic rock on 137 acres 
of urban land. It's called a sponge city. And it's a type of natural infrastructure
that architects around the world are designing to help us combat and 
withstand a changing climate. So what does it mean for a city 
to become spongy? This video is presented by Delta Airlines. Today, like everywhere else on the globe cities are feeling the effects 
of climate change. And they often don't have 
the right infrastructure to help them survive its impacts. Some neighborhoods in Houston 
don't have enough trees to provide shade and relief 
from rising temperatures. Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten
coastal cities, like Mumbai and Seoul that don't often have the infrastructure to handle more frequent flooding. This is only made worse by the fact that cities are covered 
with pavement and other surfaces that 
can't absorb water. Urbanization changes habitat. So, when you build on a place it removes vegetation and 
alters hydrology. That's Dr. Charlie Nilon. He told me that cities play a complicated role 
in the climate crisis... especially when it comes to 
maintaining biodiversity. Biodiversity is, simply put the total number of plants and animals
that occur someplace. Biodiversity is one of our main support systems 
for human life on earth. We rely on natural ecosystems full of diverse plants, animals, 
and organisms for essential things like clean water, 
food, and medicine. And biodiversity is critical to defending the Earth 
against climate change. We need healthy forests to absorb 
carbon dioxide from the air and enough native plants for pollinators
to help crops flourish. But studies show that as 
urban expansion continues it can drive habitat losses that directly put some species in danger... profoundly impacting global biodiversity. Cities have a big impact on
what happens locally. Cities capture a significant number 
of plant and animal species... which are native. So that, even in cities, there's a significant 
amount of biodiversity. Which means they can play a role in saving these local plant and animal species. The really important thing to think about is not so much how urbanization... reduces biodiversity, but really how in cities you can 
conserve biodiversity. One way to do this is by 
creating environments where nature can flourish. Environments that can also help cities 
soak up excess water. And that's where sponge cities come in. In 2015, China launched a 
sponge city pilot program in 30 cities across the country. The goal of the program was 
to coordinate and promote the construction 
of sponge cities... which would improve urban drainage 
and flood prevention and create a diverse biological environment. Architects did this by supplementing 
the existing grey infrastructure that relied on concrete pipes and dams with natural solutions like gardens 
that are designed to capture rain and native trees that suck up excess water
through their roots. In China, these ideas were taken 
from ancient drainage systems. That's because for centuries Chinese cities actually handled water pretty well in part because they were built 
with nature in mind. A study from the scientific journal Water recreated some of these old practices. Building roofs designed with 
sloped eaves allowed rainwater to fall onto the permeable pavement below... and exterior walls were lined 
with flowers and trees to absorb rain and stormwater. Today, natural solutions like these have been reimplemented in major cities across China. In Qian’an, a sewage pipe was replaced with this natural infiltration system... that uses vegetation beds to purify 
storm and rainwater. Shanghai replaced concrete roads and sidewalks with this permeable pavement which is lined with vegetation 
to absorb excess water into the soil underground. And across Wuhan, dozens of 
urban gardens like these were planted to absorb water before 
it overwhelms communities. Most of these projects rely on 
introducing vegetation in an urban area to soak up excess water. This is a really great way to handle flooding and it also supports urban biodiversity. Because you're providing habitat for additional groups... Plant and animal species. Sometimes you can restore habitats 
that have been lost. Despite these benefits, sponge cities 
can't fix everything. The connection between 
climate change and flooding is still being studied. But when floods do happen these spongy cities are only able 
to absorb excess water  up to a certain point. In 2021, sponge city designs in 
Zhengzhou failed when historic rainfall drenched the city. More than 300 people died from 
the catastrophic flooding. There are other limitations, too. One review of sponge cities in 
Guian New District found that national standards and codes 
for spongy infrastructure are really difficult to enforce because climate, hydrology,
and even socio-economics are vastly different from one city to the next. So what might work in some cities 
won't necessarily solve climate-related problems 
in others. Plus, ambitious sponge city designs like the sprawling parks 
built in China are expensive and require a lot of space... which most cities don't have. So some US cities experimenting 
with natural infrastructure like LA  and Boston are using the green space 
they already have. By trying things like planting 
vegetation on curbs... and creating green spaces 
along median strips. One type of city design certainly won't save us 
from climate change... but they can make a difference 
in how we live with it. We often talk about biodiversity like it's far away, but it's actually 
right there. And I think the more that people
understand that the kinds of things they do around
where they live that really matters. People can do things to change cities. They can do things 
to make cities different. They can do things 
to make cities better. there are about 1.5 billion cows on this planet that's one cow for every five people on Earth we keep them for dairy and meat and they're a climate problem that we've struggled to solve every year each one of those cows is estimated to release up to 220 lb of methane mostly when they burp that's about 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet from burping cows you've probably heard a few solutions to this like trying to convince people to lower their beef intake or switch to meet Alternatives but instead of trying to convince billions of humans to change their diets some researchers are focusing on the diet of the cows and a promising solution might come in the form of seaweed this is the most humane way to kill a fish stabbing it in the brain and cutting it open to bleed out it's called e gim which basically translates to brain spike in Japanese most fish aren't killed this way they're usually thrown in a bucket of ice and left to suffocate while they secrete lactic acid and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline these make fish taste bitter and rot faster with the eekg method the spike to the brain immediately kills the fish meaning it can't produce the those gross tasting chemicals bleeding it out right away means that it rots slower too I tried raw fish killed both ways yeah I can really smell it now it smells so metally just gross oh my God it's not great I'll be honest with you it's a little sour okay so this is supposed to be the Primo fish oh my God that is so good there's just like this hint of complexity right now it's almost impossible to scale EKG May commercially but if you want to try it you can find it in high-end sushi restaurants or go fishing yourself There are about 1.5 billion cows 
on this planet. That's one cow for every 
five people on Earth. We keep them for dairy... 
and meat... and they’re a climate problem
that we've struggled to solve. Every year, each one of those cows 
is estimated to release up to 220 pounds
of methane... mostly when they burp. That's about 4% of all greenhouse
gas emissions that are warming our planet... from burping cows. You've probably heard 
a few solutions to this like trying to convince people 
to lower their beef intake... or switch to meat alternatives. But instead of trying to convince 
billions of humans to change their diets some researchers are focusing on 
the diet of the cows. And a promising solution might 
come in the form... of seaweed. This video is presented 
by Delta Airlines. One of the reasons cows produce
so much methane is because of their specialized 
digestive tract. It allows them to digest 
tough plant material like grass, hay, and other vegetation. Their stomach consists of four compartments. The largest one, 
the rumen acts sort of as a storage unit where 
food can sit and ferment. Microbes in this area break down the food using a process called enteric fermentation. This process provides the animal 
with the nutrients and energy it needs but it also produces methane as waste... and the cow burps it out... which makes the Earth 
a little bit hotter. Here's the thing, though 
methane is literally waste... and changing the diet of the cow 
can change how much of it is produced. Foods like grass or hay 
stay in the rumen longer and produce more of it. Whereas carbohydrate rich foods
like corn produce less methane. But the goal here isn't to completely change the diet of all of these cows 
that we're feeding. We can just tweak it a little. We've been doing a lot of work 
on feed additives to try to reduce synthetic 
methane emissions. Ermias Kebreab is the associate dean 
at UC Davis in the College of Agriculture 
and Environmental Sciences. In 2018, he led a study that tested how cows reacted to a certain additive... Seaweed. Specifically red seaweed. Which grows naturally in tropical 
and subtropical ocean regions. Back in 2016, researchers in Australia
had found that sprinkling the seaweed on cow feed 
could potentially reduce methane emissions by over 95%. And in 2021, Kebreab and his team were able to replicate the study in live animals in California. That completely blew my mind 
when I saw how effective it was. The final results found that 
the seaweed could reduce methane emissions by 82%. At first I couldn't believe it because I... I've never seen anything like that before. And this specific species of red seaweed contains high amounts of a compound 
called bromoform. When a cow ingests it it suppresses the enzyme 
that makes methane. And the cows they don't even notice the change 
in their dinners. The seaweed is dried and sprinkled onto the food 
they're used to. They can still get all the nutrients they need. Produce milk and grow. But the waste is reduced. Other additives work too, 
like fatty acids which reduce methane by lowering 
the carbohydrate content and reducing a specific parasite in the rumen 
known as protozoa. And oregano was found to reduce the number of bacteria in the rumen to limit methane production. But so far, out of all the additives tested seaweed has been the most effective. The best news is that scaling up 
the growth of seaweed doesn’t technically drain 
other resources like fresh water or fertilizer... since we can grow it in the ocean. Growing seaweed could also 
combat other issues like ocean acidification... another climate problem caused by 
rising levels of carbon dioxide. But there's still a lot of research left to do... including figuring out how to 
dry it and package it and ship it at a low cost. Like, how do we effectively 
get seaweed from a subtropical area 
to, say... Maine... without adding tons of emissions 
with shipping? That is, if you didn't know that seaweed 
is super heavy when wet. But once we figure out the logistics, 
it's over. We solved it. The cows are content and 
the planet is saved. Except not at all, obviously. For one, this doesn't appear to be 
a one size fits all solution. Recently, another Australian study found that the same red seaweed only cut 
methane emissions by under 30%. Now, granted, that's still a reduction, 
which is good news but may be less of a miracle 
than we hoped. Others are urging researchers 
to slow down on red seaweed because of the bromoform . In it’s pure form, 
the EPA has reported that it could be dangerous 
to human health if ingested. Luckily, studies so far haven't found 
that at dangerous levels in milk or in meat from cows eating 
the seaweed additive. But studies still need to be done  on how it might affect 
the cows long term. So it's not a silver bullet... but thankfully seaweed’s 
not our only option. I think this is just one of several solutions that are being looked at 
at the moment. And overall, there's a big push for change. In 2021, 150 countries, 
including the United States signed the United Nations 
Global Methane Pledge... which aims to reduce methane emissions 
by 30% by 2030. It's becoming more and more clear now 
that we won't get there... unless we tackle enteric 
methane emissions. In an ideal world, 
we'd have less livestock. But getting people to change their habits isn't always the most straightforward 
or quickest solution. The work of searching for solutions
to the climate crisis needs to be multifaceted. Within a year or two, 
you will see quite a lot of different activities 
and different solutions. That's going to come up. And that could be one less 
cow burp at a time. the borders of Palestine have been changed forcefully over time in 1931 there were more than 850,000 Palestinian Arabs in the region but with the rise of Hitler Jewish flight from Europe became even more urgent and Palestine started to see the biggest wave of Jewish immigration yet a un special committee proposed the land be divided into two states a Jewish State and an Arab state within this proposed area were hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who had lived there for Generations by the end of 1947 zionists had several well-developed paramilitary forces the largest one known as the hag the hagana adopted what was called plan doet or Plan D a set of brutal instructions called for the destruction of Arab Villages by setting fire to blowing up and planting mines Plan D became the blueprint for carrying out the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine to make room for a new state roughly 750,000 Palestinians had been forcefully expelled and more than 500 Villages destroyed Israel is one of the biggest 
military spenders in proportion to its population. That, coupled with billions 
in military aid from the US has made the Israeli military one of the most advanced in the world. “We have planes. 
We have helicopters.” “We have tanks. 
We have everything.” For the first couple of hours, 
it's like we have no army. “The words of survivors.” “Where was the army?” “Where was the army?” You can see the strength of Israel's military in its response to the Hamas attacks. Persistent bombing in Gaza, 
leveling neighborhoods killing more than 2000 people,
including at least 700 children... Preparing for a ground invasion. On the day of the Hamas attacks in Israel... at the sites of some of the worst violence... soldiers didn't arrive for about 8 hours. By then, hundreds were dead, 
missing, or kidnaped. Why did it take so long? To answer that question. We need to look here: In the West Bank. [Music] in 2012 a Canadian Mining Company sent a ship out to explore this remote area of the Pacific Ocean a few hundred miles Southeast of Hawaii it's called The Clarion clipperton Zone lying deep on its seafloor thousands of meters below the surface is a treasure Trove of metals and minerals worth billions of dollars we need these for everything like electrical wiring stainless steel car engines jet engines computers and phones land-based deposits of these minerals around the world have met our needs so far but our needs are changing to fully decarbonize we need clean energy and that requires more Metals up to six times more to get us there estimates show that there are more of these Metals in the clearing clipperton Zone than all these landbased deposits combined what does $14,000 mean to you maybe that number makes you picture a really nice sports car like really nice or maybe your brain goes somewhere more practical in fact that's almost the exact cost of getting a college education in the United States but for one in four American women $104,000 represents something much different it's how much domestic violence will cost a female Survivor over her lifetime and while many people are aware of physical and emotional abuse there's another form of domestic violence that's often overlooked it's called Financial abuse and it occurs in nearly 99% of abusive relationships and the first step to stopping Financial abuse is understanding [Music] it my name is Nisha and I'm a Survivor of domestic violence I love love love boxing I love dancing I am a poet very very very close with my family I'm a mom of two I have three sisters and a little brother definitely definitely those are my heart so I met him um I was working at a law firm at the time he was a great dancer he was funny he was attractive and we just kind of vibed and connected and I didn't see signs in the beginning that anything was wrong Financial abuse is a type of domestic violence and it can take many forms he would call my job incessantly over and over and over leaving voicemails he would email me I would call him back so now I'm arguing on the phone or I'm listening to voicemails I'm getting emails and you're working in a professional setting you're not supposed to receive these personal calls and emails especially as consistent as they were but not only that they were disruptive the lack of autonomy the lack of agency that a lot of people have in relationships is so normalized so many Americans don't recognize Financial abuse because it's so deeply embedded into our systems and culture if you think about the fact that it wasn't until the early 70s when a woman could even get a credit card on her own it really sets a stage for what we see played out in relationships across the country 34 of Americans don't even recognize Financial abuse as a form of violence and that might be due to the fact that Financial abuse impact systemically oppressed communities people who are queer trans disabled black indigenous and people of color at an even higher rate there was a point where I had to take a second job just to make ends meet so one day he showed up at my place of employment and posed as a patron and he just sat there for however long a couple hours maybe so aside from me waiting on him which was in a sense the grating in itself but watching me as I interacted with other people I felt if I smiled too long at this person I'm going to have to hear about it later but if I don't smile will I be considered rude or unprofessional Nisha was already struggling financially and eventually lost her house she was forced to send her children to live with a family member and one day he said why don't you just come and move with me and that's when the physical abuse started one major issue in fighting Financial abuse is that our society only offers support at a moment of acute crisis in the form of shelter access to public benefits and restraining orders the one time I Found the courage to call a shelter and they told me that because I wasn't assaulted that night I wasn't considered imminent danger but what about the hundreds of moments leading up to a crisis and the countless moments after survivors who experience Financial abuse only have $288.00 that that they alone can access on average try getting safe housing paying bills and covering basic needs for less than $300 I remember he threw my belongings out once in a snowstorm but I felt like I was standing inside of a snow globe and nobody hears me nobody knows I'm there and just feeling very very alone and the only place I had to go was back inside that home because where else was I going to go Financial insecurity is the number one obst stacle to Survivor safety which is why cash assistance programs like free from are vital in supporting Survivor safety on average survivors need $783 per month to stay safe and that's to cover everything from food housing keeping the lights on buying diapers and tampons Transportation basic living costs getting survivors the cash that they need to use in the ways that they think is best is one of the most important things we can do there are other material ways to support survivors too there are some practical things you can consider like holding money safe for a Survivor offering them transportation to work if necessary and just providing resources as you're able to do so in a way that keeps the survivors safe but supporting survivors is about more than making sure they have access to funds I believed him when he said that nobody cared about me that nobody love me nobody ever would and I know now that that couldn't be further from the truth but I I thought that they would be so ashamed because I was ashamed for us to really support survivors every single one of us has to ask what role we can play what we can do in your community you can support Survivors by letting people know that you're there he didn't take away my voice he didn't take take away my resilience he didn't take away my fight my drive he didn't take away this smile this flyness y'all see it he didn't take it away so if we can take time to understand domestic violence more as a whole I think we can eradicate this thing I truly do if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org or call 1 8007997233 there is help and there is hope what In 2012, a Canadian mining company 
sent a ship out to explore this remote area 
of the Pacific Ocean. A few hundred miles 
southeast of Hawaii-- It's called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Lying deep on its sea floor thousands of meters below the surface  is a treasure trove of metals and minerals 
worth billions of dollars. We need these for everything.  Like electrical wiring, 
stainless steel car engines, jet engines, 
computers and phones. Land-based deposits of these minerals  around the world have met our needs so far... But our needs are changing. To fully decarbonize, 
we need clean energy. And that requires more metals... up to six times more 
to get us there. Estimates show that there are 
more of these metals in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone... than all these land-based deposits combined. That's why the Canadian company is not alone. Today, there are 16 other exploration ships representing various countries and 
private companies... that are in a race to the seafloor.  Which one of them becomes the first 
to mine the deep sea will depend on an obscure 
UN organization that's currently faced with 
two critical questions: Is the fight against climate change worth the irreversible environmental damage 
of seabed mining? And should a few nations get to profit off a shared natural resource... just because they were 
the first to get there? The UN began establishing 
the laws of the sea in 1958. They eventually decided  that 12 miles off a coastal country shores 
is their sovereignty territory. 200 miles after that is their 
exclusive economic zone... where the country can have fisheries or drill for oil and gas...
or mine. But beyond that, about 72% 
of the deep ocean sits outside the jurisdiction 
of any one country. They simply call it The Area.  And it became the common heritage 
of all mankind. That’s where the Clarion-Clipperton Zone... with all its mineral riches 
is located. We've known about the metallic bounty here 
since the 1870s... when the British HMS Challenger made a journey around the world
to survey the ocean. While over the Pacific... explorers wrote of several peculiar 
black oval bodies they had dredged up from the seafloor. These were rocks roughly the size of apples 
packed with metals like manganese, cobalt, 
and nickel. Oceanographers would go on 
to discover metals throughout the world's seafloor... in three different types of deposits. They are in hydrothermal vents which are like underwater hot springs. Encrusted in the slopes and summits 
of undersea mountains. And found in the form of rocks lying on vast, flat plains 
on the seafloor. The most abundant collection of these are at the bottom of the Clarion-Clipperton zone. These discoveries sparked the interest of multinational companies 
in the 1960s and 70s... who were gearing up to mine 
the ocean floor for industrial uses like electrical wiring stainless steel and fertilizer. Companies from China, Japan the Soviet Union, Australia, the US, 
and European countries... descended on the Clarion-Clipperton zone. They tested mining equipment and took some of the first photos
of the rocks on the seafloor. It was during this early chaos at sea that the Maltese delegate to the UN made a pivotal speech warning against repeating the mistakes of colonialism. He said that the race would reserve the plurality of the world's resources
for the exclusive benefit of less than a handful 
of nations. The strong would get stronger, 
the rich richer. “All those in favor, please press
the green button.” So in 1982, the UN met to adopt 
additional laws of the sea... and it was signed by over 100 countries... with three main conditions 
for mining in the area. It must benefit all of humankind, 
irrespective of location. Consider the special interests and needs 
of developing countries. And ensure protection of 
the marine environment. To enforce these new rules they established the International Seabed Authority... or ISA, in Kingston, Jamaica. Every country that signed 
the laws of the sea would be a member state of the ISA. Today, that number is up to 168, 
plus the European Union. Of these, 36 countries are voted in 
every few years to review applications for 
mining in the deep sea. Before a country can get permission to mine... it has to apply for an exploration contract through this council. When the council approves an application... it gives a 75,000 square kilometer portion
of the deep sea to the applicant. And to keep things fair, it sets aside 
a portion of equal value  for a developing country to claim. But other countries or companies 
can get access to this reserved area by partnering with developing countries. That's how this ship ended up here in 2012. The mining company called 
the Metals Company is based in Canada... but they sought out a sponsor in the tiny 
Pacific Island nation of Nauru. Together, they applied for an exploration contract... and the company got access 
to Nauru's reserved area. In 2015 and 2020... the Metals Company got two more 
Pacific islands... Kiribati and Tonga to sponsor them, 
so they were able to claim  even more areas reserved for developing countries. So far, they've been using their 
exploration contracts to test equipment... do environmental reviews and 
collect rock samples. Over the years, more and more applications have been approved to explore the area. So far, the ISA has approved 
all 31 exploration applications submitted by 22 different companies 
or countries... and 17 of them have been in 
the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. To access the rocks like the ones lying on the bottom of 
the Clarion-Clipperton zone... mining companies use what looks like
 a large robotic vacuum to sweep them up and pull them 
to the surface. Proponents of deep sea mining 
argue that this method has far less impact than 
land-based mining... like cobalt mining in Congo that 
contaminates waterways... and nickel mining in Indonesia 
that has deforested over a million acres of rainforest. But opponents believe 
agitating the seafloor at thousands of meters deep 
would destroy an ecosystem we're still trying to understand. The rocks in the Clarion-Clipperton zone took millions of years to form. Unique creatures that live 
nowhere else on earth have adapted to live among them 
in this extreme environment like types of sponges and mollusks that have built their habitats on the rocks. Thousands of new species are still being discovered today in 
the Clarion-Clipperton Zone... like types of sea cucumber 
and starfish. The fear is that mining in these 
dark and quiet ecosystems  introduces noise and light... and the machinery kicks up 
massive sediment plumes that travel for miles underwater 
and deters marine life. In a 2020 study of a mining test 
off the coast of Japan researchers found that digging up 
their seabed caused as much as a 43% decline in fish 
and shrimp populations for up to a year after a sediment plume was triggered. Similar plumes are expected from mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. This is why at least 21 countries have called for a moratorium 
or a ban on deep sea mining. And why these exploration crews 
preparing to mine are drawing protests from 
the environmental community. Despite this opposition, in 2021 The Metals Company's CEO 
rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. "The future is metallic." The company had gone public... a major step towards commercial mining. That same year The Metals Company and Nauru 
sent a notice to the ISA council saying they planned to apply to mine. But the thing is, beyond 
these broad ideals  that ISA hasn't set specific mining regulations 
for the deep seafloor. So this notice triggered a two-year rule... which set a deadline for the ISA 
to figure out regulations. In July of 2023... the ISA met with that goal in mind. ISA countries in support of deep sea mining 
like China, Norway, and the UK... argue that our clean energy transition 
depends on finding more metals... and The Metals Company says 
this is their mission: "to help the project of decarbonizing 
global energy and transport." But countries opposed argue that 
we just don't know enough about the deep sea to risk the irreversible damage
it would cause. And that the ISA is still very far 
from figuring out  a fair way to share the profits from mining. So they reached a stalemate. No regulations have been issued for mining. The Metals Company has announced that they will submit their mining application in 2024... which has reset the clock for the ISA to come to a consensus on regulations. That means The Metals Company 
may soon win this race the bottom of the ocean... and others would follow. It will be difficult to meet this 
growing need for metals without tapping the resources 
of the deep sea. But by going in... we could just end up destroying 
both the land and the sea for more metals. What can mitigate the effects of this race is a different kind of race. One that’s been running parallel 
to the pursuit of mining. Research ships have been rushing to document the ecosystem at the bottom 
of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. What they find could minimize the damage
we are about to inflict... or at least we'll know what we're about to lose... in order to solve our climate crisis. If you're still here: Hello, and thank you so much
for watching this video we produced Before you go, we have a request for you. A series like Atlas takes so much 
time and care to produce. I don't make Atlas videos very often but when I do, it's such a reminder 
what a huge lift every step of the process is 
from the reporting... to the animation to fact checking every 
country border we show on-screen. Map explainers are a huge part of our channel's DNA and we want to keep making them, 
which is where you come in. In case you didn't know, our videos 
are part of a larger company that does great writing and 
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to do so... please consider contributing 
at the link on the screen. I also put a link in the description, too. And for recurring contributors we're working on offering things like video tutorials, Q&A, 
and newsletters. So keep an eye out for that. Okay, now you can go. Thanks again. it's definitely true that people in the US live a lot longer now than they did in the 1800s that doesn't explain the age difference between our politicians and us take a look at this chart it shows the median age of the US Workforce about 42 years old compare that to the median age for our politicians in the house 58 years old and the Senate 65 years old if life expectancy accounted for the bulk of this difference you would expect to see it across other similar countries but Germany the UK France and Italy all have politicians with a median age 50 or younger and life can see in these countries is pretty much the same as in the US and it turns out that different Generations actually have pretty different views when it comes to what they think the government should be doing more than half of people 65 and over think that strengthening the military should be a major priority for the US government versus just 10% of people age 18 to 29 then look at climate change among younger voters more than half think that it should be a major priority for the US government versus just 39% of people aged 65 and over this age gap between us and our politicians it really matters “Sinus suffering.” On the left is a decongestant commercial 
from 2000. On the right one from 2006. But don't focus on the pressure pads 
or exploding heads. Look at the boxes. Sudafed and Sudafed PE. PE.  Sudafed usually uses pseudoephedrine. Sudafed PE stands for phenylephrine. Today, phenylephrine vastly outsells 
pseudoephedrine. Yet, I am still congested. I was popping one of these daily 
in the morning, every morning... and it just didn't work. But it's not me and it's not you. That's because... “This drug is really not effective.” “10 milligrams of phenylephrine 
works no better than a placebo.” “Now, there are serious questions
about whether it works at all.” Taken from an FDA Zoom meeting these are the votes of FDA panel members on whether phenylephrine is effective. “Yeah, I voted no.” “I voted no.” “-I voted no.”
“-I voted no.” “The data are pretty clear.” How did this happen? It is a story that goes back decades and touches on methamphetamine, 
COVID... and most importantly why you were able to buy 
a decongestant...  that didn't work. [dramatic cello music] Imagine a grocery store. The FDA regulates food over here... and the prescription drugs over here. These are both massive jobs. And a separate FDA job is here: The over-the-counter drugs: OTC. Available for anyone to just buy 
and walk out. And that is what I have been buying. [curious piano music] In 1962, the federal government charged the FDA with a new responsibility: Instead of just regulating the sale of drugs... they had to start reviewing the safety and effectiveness of them. They started here, in the prescription section... because they were more worried about it. Ten years later, they got to 
the OTC drugs. This proposal outlined the plan. But this shelf was big. 100,000 to 500,000 products, big. And it was too much to thoroughly 
work through. Well, I think people perceive... that because something sold 
over the counter... it has been reviewed more rigorously,
but that is just not true. A lot of the products and the research 
dates back decades. That's Joshua Sharfstein. He is a professor, but also a former... principal deputy commissioner at the FDA. He helped take over-the-counter
cough and cold medicines off the market for kids 
back in the early 2000s. But in the 70s and 80s the FDA said that drug ingredients 
already on the shelf... could stay if they were generally recognized as safe and effective by medical professionals. By 1976, they'd convened a looser review and a panel recommended Phenylephrine as an oral, nasal decongestant. They also recommended phenylpropanolamine
and pseudoephedrine. We’ll make phenylephrine red... because we know it leaves you congested. Like me.  Pseudoephedrine and blue, 
because it does work. And phenylpropanolamine grey. I'll tell you why later. This list of nasal decongestants
still mostly grandfathered in... was further codified by the 1990s. So you had options on the shelf, 
sold under many names... and pseudoephedrine became 
the OTC nose-unclogger of choice through the 80s and 90s.  And that was kind of the status
quo with commercials like these: “Feel well enough to get married, honey?” “I do.” “Fast-acting Sudafed and long-lasting 
Sudafed 12 hour.” “Take non-drowsy Sudafed at your first sign.” “Fight back with Sudafed.” But then... this happened. “Pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in cold medicines like Sudafed is an essential part of 
making methamphetamine.” “In response to that, Congress in 2005 enacts the Combat Methamphetamine Act.” If you need it clearer, imagine Walt and Jesse
from Breaking Bad crushing up pseudoephedrine to make meth. This law, tacked on to the Patriot Act... largely meant pseudoephedrine
decongestants were put behind the counter. In many states, you could buy it 
without a prescription... but you had to be ID'd by a pharmacist... and were limited in how much you could get. “I mean, it's getting harder 
and harder to come by.” Phenylpropanolamine was generally considered 
unsafe by 2000... because it caused some hemorrhagic strokes. Phenylaphrine was alone on the shelf. Meth-finding officials asked
companies like Pfizer: “What took so long?” But the FDA's long process meant they couldn't just spin up a new product. Commercials started to look like this: “The new Sudafed PE
Triple Action.” “Also find Sudafed behind the counter.” But even as manufacturers tried to straddle the lines, 
phenylaphrine sales... this line, started to beat out this line: pseudoephedrine decongestants. Basically because it was alone on the shelf. Now, you probably saw this recent story 
about the FDA panel recommending against phenylephrine and assumed that they just figured out 
that it didn't work. That is not the case. They have known for decades that phenylephrine might not really work... and it's just the process 
that's gotten in the way. “Sudafed’s replacement no winner” was a 2006 headline as the key. As the key researchers behind that report 
recalled on the panel this year... After pseudoephedrine was removed in front of the counter 
to behind the counter... I received a rash of calls from 
around the state of Florida... asking why oral Phenylephrine didn't work. The take home messages are oral 
phenylephrine is inaffective as a nasal decongestant but safe. They found that most of the studies
ruling it effective came from one lab: Elizabeth Biochemical. The researchers letter to the FDA from 2006 attracted congressional support... from Representative Henry Waxman. It led to further similarly conclusive studies... that phenylephrine was ineffective. So why has it stayed on the shelf 
for almost two more decades? “We'll hear from Dr. Janet Woodcock director of the FDA's Center for 
Drug Evaluation and Research.” Dr. Janet Woodcock shared this list of burdensome... multi-step rule makings that were typical for new drugs or revisions to old ones. “This process is frozen in 1972 and before... so it doesn't apply to anything later than that.” “So, this is only still trying to deal
with those products that were on the market at that time.” “So, there's really nothing for innovation
in this entire process.” That matched with significantly smaller
funding for the FDA's over-the-counter division 
versus the prescription drug one. It took until the 2020 CARES Act, 
a Coronavirus relief bill... to make the drug slightly easier to amend... and to give the FDA's over-the-counter division 
a bit more funding. The FDA had its hands... tied behind its back when thinking about over-the-counter medicines, 
and now it has more tools and more resources to go about its job. And in 2023, the advisory panel finally reviewed new studies 
filled with charts like these. Where nasal congestion went down 
after taking pseudoephedrine... and went like this for a placebo... and phenylephrine. Now we wait. It is true that all this time I could have gone behind the counter and had pseudoephedrine, 
been less congested. But I didn't know there was anything wrong 
with phenylephrine. The advisory panel vote... that spreadsheet is a recommendation that the FDA still has to act on 
and implement. And the panelists voting, 
they seemed a little mystified by how we got to a point where 
phenylephrine took over. It's amazing the amount of dollars 
being spent on something that has really no efficacy. I went through pharmacy school 
and medical school and I have taken courses on 
over-the-counter medications... and I had no idea until prepping for this how limited the data was. The drug companies have made billions of dollars... off of this medication. You know, for all these years. You know, people really don't like change. And this is going to change. You know, how the oh, according cost aisle look in the you know, 
in the pharmacy. That does not suggest in any way... that they should not stay the course. I miraculously healed. Okay. My name is Phil Edwards. I'm the producer of this episode. I'm doing culture coverage. You've seen the awesome looking 
slate at the beginning. We're defining culture really broadly. We're going to be talking about 
all sorts of different things... that kind of effect the way 
that we live. I have one quick request for you before we go. Here at Vox... you know, our mission is to have... our journalism be free to everybody. We don't want to put it behind the counter. That's a little callback to the video for you. We don't want to have a paywall. We don't want to do it. It's just not a value that the company has and that we have as part of the larger companies. Sometimes our work is supported 
by advertising but it's not enough. We need a little extra push to get us 
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go to www.vox.com/give-now to make a contribution. Your contributions support 
all our coverage across Vox and as a thank you to those of you who make recurring contributions we will give you access to newsletters, 
behind-the-scenes, Q&A with journalists from across 
the whole Vox newsroom. All right. Thanks for watching. Bye. Politicians in the US
are super old. Check out this chart. It shows the share of any given 
age group that make up Congress throughout American history. Over here, you can see our
20 to 29 year olds and 30 to 39 year olds...
pretty well represented. But you got to remember: this is 
white, male, landowners. So meanwhile, fast forward to now... 30 to 39 year olds, 
20 to 29 year olds? At our lowest point of 
representation ever. 60 plus folks living their best life extremely well represented 
in American government. These are the same folks 
who refuse to retire. We're talking Mitch McConnell... Dianne Feinstein, who 
just died at age 90. Joe Biden, Chuck Grassley... It actually has huge implications for policy because it turns out 
that different generations have very different views about what's important. this is a satellite image of the Mojave Desert in the U.S it's a fragile desert ecosystem dotted with Wildflower fields and Joshua trees which are iconic in this region but over the past several years the landscape has started to change if you take a closer look in certain areas you start to see more and more of these patches of blue they're solar farms and in this part of the U.S many environmental activists and local residents are not happy about them Joshua trees are torn down to make way for solar projects solar farms in rural areas can take up valuable agricultural land and disrupt diverse ecosystems but transitioning to more solar power and a more sustainable future for the US requires a lot of land enter parking lots these spaces could play one part in helping to fix solar's land problem if we covered the Lots in canopies of solar panels so why don't we see more parking lot canopies in the U.S I'm planning a trip to this place 
called Soul City. It's a town here at the edge of 
North Carolina that exists on Google Maps but is missing 
on many others. Back in the 70s... this was an ambitious and 
experimental town... built and led by Black Americans. A utopia on thousands of acres 
of former plantation land... that would help them gain social 
and economic power. It was the dream of one man: Civil rights activist Floyd McKissick... who for a time found 
an unexpected ally: Republican President Richard Nixon. A lot of the town got built. A clinic and an industrial park. People started moving in. But the reason you don't see it 
on most maps today...  is because it doesn't exist 
like it was supposed to. If you ride around today, you're going to see 
empty buildings... vacant buildings... particularly that at one time 
they weren't vacant. We were rising. 
We rose up. We're just getting there. We were just becoming viable. That's when the rug got pulled from underneath us. So whatever happened to Soul City? Floyd B. McKissick was a prolific 
civil rights activist. By the 1960s, he was the first Black law student 
at the University of North Carolina. He was an attorney defending activists 
arrested at protests. He led one of the most pivotal civil rights 
organizations in the US. And he was also one of the organizers 
of the iconic 1963 March on Washington. Here he is next to 
Martin Luther King. But McKissick believed progress 
for Black Americans had been slow and inadequate. So for years, he set his sights on 
one big idea. What if there was an integrated town. Where everyone... especially racial minorities and 
the poor can thrive. A planned community where Black Americans can chart 
a new path towards equality. He called it Soul City. He was a soldier in World War II
and he'd seen cities getting rebuilt... over in Europe. After they were completely destroyed 
and demolished. And he was intrigued and fascinated 
by the way you could rebuild cities and 
rebuild communities. That's McKissick’s son. I'm Floyd B. McKissick Jr. He's a former North Carolina senator 
and attorney. And was director of planning on 
the Soul City Project. Oh, I was extremely optimistic. I mean, I felt this whole city... represented new hope, 
new opportunity... something that could epitomize 
the American dream. I mean, we lost King. 
We lost Kennedy. We lost another Kennedy.
We lost Malcolm X. There were so many things happening around us
that there was a reason to say: Let's build ourselves an economy 
and live our lives another way. That's Jane Ball-Groom, 
a native New Yorker who started working with McKissick
in the late 1960s. Back when his company 
McKissick Enterprises focused on bringing new Black-owned 
businesses to Harlem. Are you in this photo? This is me. It was a time of hope. The hope was that you could do 
anything you wanted to do. Unlike groups like the Black Panther Party which embraced distinctly socialist values “All power to the people.” McKissick embraced the idea 
of Black capitalism... to make his vision of Black power... a reality. That if capitalism existed 
in our country... that African-Americans need to be part
of that economic mainstream. They deserved an opportunity to share in building their communities. How do you get money? We're not born with it. We can build own businesses. McKissick’s plan was for Soul City 
to foster industry where the money would flow 
from businesses to the community. He also had expansive ideas of what 
the community would offer like sports facilities, a pool, 
parks, a daycare... residential villages built beside churches, 
bike paths... a shopping area, housing for 
senior citizens. A health clinic known as Health Co Inc 
and Soultech 1: A huge 73,000 square foot building designed to be an incubator for new industry that could bring 
24,000 jobs. Your job would be no more than 
10 minutes from your home. This would be a place where 
people of all ages races and religions 
worked together. A city without prejudice, 
without poverty. A brand new shining city. By the year 2000 they projected 
50,000 residents. But in order to build this 
new town from scratch one that people and businesses 
would want to move to... McKissick needed funding and 
political support. Luckily, by the late 1960s the US government was interested 
in moving people out  of densely populated areas
and into new towns with economic opportunities. In 1968, they launched a program under the Department of Housing 
and Urban Development or HUD which would offer financial assistance to a select few proposals for new towns 
across the country. McKissick saw it as an opportunity to finally make Soul City happen. But to get access, he'd still need 
political allies. In 1968, he first pitched his idea 
to President Lyndon Johnson but Johnson soon decided not to 
run for reelection. So McKissick took his idea 
to the new leading Democratic candidate for president, 
Robert F Kennedy. Kennedy supported the project... but in June of 1968, 
he was assassinated. McKissick then made 
a calculated decision... one that was incredibly rare and controversial for Black activists 
at the time. He looked to Republican candidate 
Richard Nixon... who was favored to win the next election and hoped that he would 
support his project. It's about survival. And sometimes you have to learn 
how to play the game. Later, that year, Nixon won the election. And then did something surprising. He actually supported McKissick’s dream 
of an anti-racist town. But why? The Republican Party looked 
a lot different back then. It was focused on appealing to the broadest 
possible number of voters. It's why we see Nixon's deeply conservative policies, including the start to the devastating
war on drugs... alongside brief moments of liberal policies. “We have passed new laws 
to protect the environment.” “Tonight, I therefore propose 
a new family assistance.” I am also proposing a major expansion 
of daycare centers. It wasn't because Nixon necessarily
cared about these policies. It was just part of the plan 
to diversify his base. And that meant seeking out 
Black activists too. One of the things that President Nixon 
supported and was intrigued by... was this idea of Black capitalism and 
Black entrepreneurship. Soul City fit in neatly within that umbrella. In 1969, McKissick Enterprises publicly announced plans for Soul City. “The former head of Core, Floyd McKissick... offered an idea today for creation 
of a black built black owned town.  “In this new town persons will be able to control 
their own destinies... McKissick said he anticipates federal aid in planning and developing the town.” In 1971, Soul City submitted a proposal 
to HUD for funding. Around that time, McKissick 
officially switched to the Republican Party and became one of the most prominent 
Black civil rights activists supporting Nixon's reelection. And by July 1972... his alliance with Nixon paid off. Soul City was chosen as 1 of only 13 proposals for HUD's New Towns program. McKissick Enterprises would receive $14 million in federal funding. It was the first development company led 
by Black Americans to create a new city with government funding. That didn't go down well with everyone. Soul City had critics. One of them was a newly elected North Carolina 
senator named Jesse Helms... a deeply conservative Republican... and a segregationist with a 
long record against civil rights. He was opposed to Soul City being a part of the state from the start. He couldn't get in the way of federal support 
for the project. But he'll come up later in this story. McKissick chose here in rural Warren County, North Carolina
to build it. It was thousands of acres of 
former plantation land with almost no existing infrastructure. But reclaiming this space was important. Its history was significant. A community that represented the future and a land that represented the worst of our past. An old former plantation built by slaves. We were coming out of what was so dark  into that light of this—
is possible for us. And now we can be somebody 
in this country. Warren County was also one of many areas 
in the American South that had experienced waves of outward migration 
over the past several decades. Black people moving from rural 
to urban areas in search of jobs. But Soul City was designed to create 
a reverse migration... moving people back to the South. He said we need to change the face 
of the rural South. You need the staff to go south. I said, I’ll go, so I talked 
to my husband. And I said, well, I'll go 
for two weeks. Jane was one of the first people 
to move here... and she never left. Been in Soul City since January 1970. We had young engineers 
just getting out of college. Architects from all over England... Africa, certain places in the United States. Soul City was at that time,
literally, a university, on how to grow a town. We were all students. By 1973, McKissick Enterprises 
finally broke ground. Finally, construction. This was what became the Soul City Boulevard. We took raw land that did not have water and sewer, 
did not have roads and we had to really build 
an infrastructure. Our first major project was 
a regional water system... that not only provided water 
to Soul City... but provided water to a region. It was the largest regional water system built in the state of North Carolina 
at that time. It continues to operate and function to this day. Being around people who were involved 
with building was transformative. Everything was a clay dirt road. Seeing a tractor trailer coming down 
on a Monday morning hearing buzz saws and smelling paint  and seeing old roads transferred 
into cement roads like paved driveways was simply amazing. So you became taller — I’m five feet.  But those days, I was 5’7”. I knew I was somebody. To be 
young, gifted and Black. I was raised as a Negro child
in Mt. Vernon New York. But to be a whole new persona: 
You become something else. They also built out electric. A fire department, a park, 
and recreational facilities. They built out the health clinic... along with the massive Soultech 1 
industrial park... which would become the new home of all of McKissick planning operations, too. And they built the first of three 
planned residential villages where Jane lives to this day. But by the late 1970s, Soul City still have less than 200 residents even though they'd projected thousands by then. And they had no real commitments from big businesses to move here. Even though McKissick was trying to court companies
like General Motors. McKissick had a vision, a team, and infrastructure. So where were the people? “1973 dramatized US dependence 
on foreign oil.” “We're in an energy crisis now.” “We have at present an absolute shortage 
of natural gas.” In the 1970s, industries were hesitant to move or invest in new areas. This was a problem. Soul City was the only new town that was trying to build in a rural place that was truly freestanding. The other projects were coming up next to bigger urban areas that could provide jobs. There was also the question of its name. Even though Soul City repeatedly branded itself as a multiracial community. Some believed it invoked the idea 
of an all black town. If there was a city that was, say, 70% white. And about 30% Black people would think of that as a 
racially integrated community. In Soul City's case, it would have been 70% black... and 30% white or of mixed races. People would have thought of that 
as an all-Black town. Then there was Jesse Helms 
and his attacks on Soul City. When have you ever heard of a senator fighting to stop the flow of funds... into their states or into their districts... it's contrary to everything that one 
would logically think about? Those are the types of projects 
you would embrace. But Jesse Helms was a, 
to be candid a segregationist who never repudiated his views. His final attack came in 1975... when the country was still reeling 
from the aftermath of Watergate. “Five people have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.” “The biggest White House scandal 
in a century.” “The Watergate scandal broke wide open today.” “I shall resign the presidency effective 
at noon tomorrow.” Helms capitalized on the scandal and the fact that McKissick and Soul City 
were tied to Nixon. He accused Soul City of various 
financial wrongdoings... repeatedly calling it a waste 
and a boondoggle. And Helms, along with another 
North Carolina congressman demanded a federal audit on the project. That investigation froze HUD funds and progress for over a year. They had kind of a chilling impact 
on Soul City's reputation. The Raleigh News and Observer 
wrote a series of articles on alleged mismanagement of funds at Soul City. They ran editorials, including 
cartoons of McKissick... that slowly destroyed public opinion. They could not conceive of an African American development company 
going out there and having the expertise and capacity 
to build a new town. They thought it was fraud. They thought there was abuse and all types of allegations were made. By December 1975 A government audit cleared Soul City 
of any major wrongdoing, but it was too late. I went to lunch one day. I was coming back into Soultech 1, 
into the parking lot and one of the workers stopped me, says Jane,
it’s over. I said what do you mean it’s over? He said they've shut the project down. The bad press had scared people 
and big business away. And in 1979, HUD pulled the plug. It would no longer fund a Soul city. “Today, the Department of Housing 
and Urban Development... said it's cutting its ties to Soul City, North Carolina.” “There have been hopes that industry would come here.” “That never happened.” “That's why the government concluded the project would never make money.” “I think racial prejudice is what makes people say we have failed.” “I said what are we gonna do?” “I'm too old to move in a place else.” “You know and I wouldn't like to move.” “We live at home.” “Without federal money
and without industry here... This town will not survive.” McKissick couldn't fund the project on his own. He had to foreclose and sell off most of the land. Today, you can still see a few remnants of what once was. There's the church and the old 
Health Co building. The clinic operated in the community for decades after Soul City shut down. But it's been closed for years and is now abandoned and overgrown with plants. And then there’s Soultech 1. Today, it's been taken over 
by a new industry. A prison work complex. It does not symbolically incorporate what my father would have thought of as providing... a second chance for people. Soul City represented a second chance. The remains of Soul City are a testament to what they were able to accomplish with
little funding and short time. Within a seven year period of time we built the roads, the houses, complexes... from nothing came... a lot. We rose up. Red clay to what you see today. The park pool and sports facility 
still serve the community as well as the roads and water infrastructure. Many of the homes along cul de sacs remain, though just a handful of the original Soul City residents still live there. I didn't want to go back. I said, I'm not going anywhere. 
I'm staying right here. Floyd McKissick also never gave up on this place. He lived here until his passing in 1991... and was laid to rest in Soul City 
near the home he and his family built. Though his dream was cut short 
to his family and friends... this will always be a place 
that embodies possibility... not failure. That's what Soul City is. It's about hope. It's about dreams. Did it become the reality that we envisioned? The answer is no. But can we learn from that? And can we think about what that symbolizes in terms of moving forward in America? The answer is absolutely yes. Thanks for watching. I'm Ranjani, the producer 
of this episode. So one of the interesting things I learned while researching this history
is that Warren County where Soul City is also, made national news 
again in 1982 as the birthplace of the environmental 
justice movement. It's where Black residents led an iconic protest... against the state's plan to place a toxic landfill in their community and sparked a national movement 
against environmental racism that's still going today. Floyd McKissick was one of hundreds 
of protesters arrested. I'll put a few links about that history 
in the description below, if you're interested. And before you go, I have a request. We pick stories like this for Missing Chapter to help as many people as possible
have access to hidden history without a paywall to help keep our journalism free and 
support more of our work. You can go to vox.com/give 
to make a contribution. We're gearing up for a big year full of 
ambitious projects and are looking to hit 85,000 total contributions by the end of 2023. So if you can contribute at the link below to help us reach that goal. Thanks again for watching and supporting. Barbie dream house! Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. [creepy music] Barbie. See Barbie. -Barbie.
-Hi, Barbie! -Barbieland.
-Barbie— Barbie— [creepy music continues] Hi, Barbie. [heartbeat sounds] Guess what, Barbie fans— Hi, Barbie. -Hi, Barbie.
-Hi, Barbie! In the summer of 2023, Barbie took over. [overlapping and repeated]
Barbie! The film was inescapable. Put Barbie isn't the first movie to do a massive summer takeover. “It is as if God created the devil... and gave him... Jaws.” Jaws basically invented the modern blockbuster,
I guess, is the way to put it. I’m Alissa Wilkinson. I’m a senior correspondent at Vox 
and a critic. Before Jaws, no movie had made $100 million 
at the box office. This didn't happen by accident. It was all a strategy that started 
long before Jaws, the movie. And—okay, so I could talk about Jaws for literally hours. But in the interest of time, 
here are the highlights: [driving string music] “From the bestselling novel... Jaws.” Jaws was a book first which is true of a lot of movies obviously, 
and always has been. Producers at Universal acquired
the film rights to Jaws before Peter Benchley even 
got the book published. They started pouring money 
into the book's marketing. They got it into book clubs designating it as Book-of-the-Month. There was skywriting at beaches 
that said “Read Jaws.” Hype was built and perhaps inevitably  Jaws, the novel, became a blockbuster 
in its own right. Sitting at the top of the bestsellers lists 
for 44 weeks straight. The intellectual property was 
effectively leveraged. Then, just one year after 
the book release... the film came out and 
it was... good. A giant shark, beautiful cinematography and an innovative score that kept you 
on the edge of your seat. It couldn't really be more appealing. When the studio showed it to test audiences they realized they had a massive hit 
on their hands. And so they started sinking money 
early into marketing. So I believe the number they spent 
on marketing was somewhere in the $1.8 million range. Or about $11 million in 2023 dollars. That's not anything compared to the amount that movies are marketed for now,
but it was a lot at the time. A large chunk of that cash 
was spent on television ads. In the days before its opening weekend,
they saturated the market buying 30 second spots on every prime time
television show on all the major networks... or at least the ones that would let them which was about 80 to 85%. Time magazine featured Jaws on its front cover... and for a while it seemed like 
you couldn't escape the film. It's not just the idea that you know the movie's 
coming out but also that it's an event 
you need to be part of and that you'll be missing out 
if you don't take part in it. The main reason that say I don't know, like 
a Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey are not 
considered blockbusters is in that time you would release a movie in maybe like 
one or two cities and then it would roll out slowly. Jaws didn't follow that strategy. It opened in 409 theaters in the US and 55 more in Canada 
on June 20th, 1975 squarely in the middle of summer which makes sense as Jaws was all about 
warm weather and beaches. But back then, big movies didn't often 
release in the summer. Why would summer be a good time? You know, you want to be outside 
where it's nice and this is sort of pre-air-conditioning 
for a lot of people. So maybe it's very uncomfortable. All these factors, 
the book promo the intense movie promo, 
the timing... it all led Jaws to become the highest grossing movie
ever made at that point crossing the $100 million mark just 61 days after its release. When something is successful in Hollywood what we immediately see are repeats. Over and over, derivations, 
copies but also just attempts to capture 
lightning in a bottle. Again. We have blockbusters every year 
since then... that are using essentially the Jaws formula. The Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones movies, 
Mission Impossible movies. All of these different films really count as blockbusters, 
in part because they replicated that formula. Now, a lot changes between 
Jaws and Barbie... but when you look at the overlying 
blockbuster strategy they're almost formulaicly identical. They both leverage preexisting IP, 
though with Barbie... It's much bigger than the Jaws thing. You know, we're talking about decades of toys, 
decades of commercials. They were both released in the summer
on every screen possible... and they both set market saturation 
to the extreme. But what separates Barbie from all the blockbusters
that came before is that it had a much steeper uphill battle. There has always been the perception among the predominantly male executives 
of Hollywood that women will go see a movie 
starring a man but men won't go see movies 
starring women. And whether or not that's a cultural product of just 
not having movies starring women is a big, 
big question. So making Barbie is obviously 
a gamble. To mitigate that gamble the Barbie team needed 
to act strategically. The first step was elevating the idea of what a Barbie movie could be. They brought in someone with, 
I would say, a defined style or at least a defined idea of 
what kinds of stories she tells. Greta Gerwig has generally made smaller thoughtful films about 
the human condition... making her an unconventional choice
for something of this scale. It sent the message that 
Hollywood wasn't just making a Barbie 
cash grab movie. The movie would be more elevated 
and subversive than you might expect. I mean, the first trailer references the evolution of man scene
from 2001: A Space Odyssey... a movie that came out in 1968 
that's like 3 hours long and literally about all of human life,
which is very cool... but also very film bro. Which I can say because, you know, 
I mean, look at me. That trailer was dropped before 
Avatar: The Way of Water... a blockbuster that was poised to be a big hit... meaning you could get maximum exposure. But it's not a typical pairing. You know: Horror movies usually have 
horror trailers preceding them. Action movies have action trailers. To put Barbie before Avatar 
was a clear signal that they were trying to reach across to an audience that wouldn't immediately 
be into Barbie. For a long time this is what Barbie looked like. But the movie and the marketing 
took a different approach representing more types of people and allowing anybody to become Barbie. Either by using the selfie generator or... You can make a Barbie figure of yourself. You can stand in the pink box and take a picture and 
put it on Instagram. You know, I think I'm the only person
who hasn't done that like in the world at this point. You could say in Barbie's dream house, 
thanks to Airbnb or watch your favorite interior designers build the Barbie dreamhouse... thanks to HGTV. You could live the Barbie lifestyle in the real world. This isn't something you can do 
with other blockbusters. Like you could buy the Flash’s sneakers... but one: They never wears those sneakers
in the movie. Two, more importantly: They don't really let you embody 
the character fully. But you could be Barbie in one simple way. It's pink. It's just pink. So you could walk around 
in pink clothing. And it was a Barbie thing. Or there's a cafe that popped up. That was the Barbie Cafe. It's hard to overstate the 
power of simplicity with brand tie ins. Like, I'd love to be Spider-Man... but finding something with graphic design that I like is... challenging. But you want a Barbie burger? Give it some pink ooze and you got yourself a brand tie-in. Barbie outfits? It's as easy as this. According to Josh Goldstein, 
the Head of Marketing at WB... it stopped being a marketing campaign 
and became a movement. They didn't have to reach out to every brand because every brand wanted 
a bite of the Barbie apple. Can I talk about Barbenheimer now? -[Ed, off-screen] Please!
-Okay! Barbenheimer jokes started where it was like: Isn't it funny that these two are 
coming out on the same day? And it is. One is dark. It's just dark. The other one is pink. Thematically, one is about death and the other one is maybe 
also about death. You ever think about dying?
[record scratch] Like that would be weird and funny. And then people thought: Well, wouldn't it be funnier if you went and saw both movies on the same day? And the result of this, 
I think, is that Barbie... got a boost because men who might 
have felt weird about just buying a ticket for a Barbie movie... now they're going to see it as part of 
a double feature. So it's kind of a bit. And Oppenheimer definitely got a boost 
from the same. The marketing was a mix of strategy luck and a bunch of tie ins 
and it paid off. The box office for Barbie 
was definitely surprising in the way that the box office 
for Black Panther was considered surprising at the time... which was that they expected it 
to make a lot of money. They just didn't expect it to make 
that much money... that fast in the theater. Barbie crossed the billion dollar mark in just 17 days at the box office. Only 53 movies have done that so far. And Barbie is the only one 
solely directed by a woman. According to Variety, the Barbie 
marketing team spent an estimated $150 million 
marketing the movie against the production budget 
of $145 million. Meaning they spent more money marketing the movie 
than they did making it. This isn't uncommon... but throwing money into marketing 
doesn't always work out. It might help your opening weekend but keeping that momentum going
is often harder. One thing that's really unique about Barbie 
for 2023, anyhow is that people are going back to see it
multiple times. And I think it's because it's sort of 
a unique film in the blockbuster world in that 
it's kind of subversive. It's got a little bit of everything 
for a cinephile but it's also very warm and 
very warm-hearted. Like it's not a bummer of a movie 
and it's funny! To get to a billion generally 
you need both things: A good movie and a great marketing campaign. In 2023, the year of Barbie... Warner Brothers was able to 
synthesize them both. Hey, if you're still around thank you so much for watching this video. I genuinely appreciate it. Like with all our videos... there is just so much to put into every story and I couldn't fit it all in. But if you want to learn some more, 
I'm going to leave some interesting podcasts in the description below which were awesome and so fun 
and dove into Jaws and Barbie... in ways that I just couldn't 
in the making of this video. And while you're in the description,
you might notice one other link: vox.com/give-now. If you click it, it'll take you here: 
To a web page where you can make a contribution 
to keep Vox's journalism free. We here at Vox are big believers that information should be free for everyone... which is why this video is here on YouTube and not locked behind a paywall somewhere. But if you wanted to support Vox's journalism... the best way to do that is by 
becoming a contributor. As a special thank you to those who make recurring contributions you get access to behind-the-scenes, 
tutorials, and Q&As with Vox journalists from across 
the entire newsroom. And I think this is an important thing to stress because donations wouldn't just go to 
these fun movie videos. Video coverage of really important topics like the upcoming 2024 election, 
for instance. The goal right now is 85,000 total contributions by the end of 2023. To keep on pace for that we need to add 2500 contributions 
this month. Now we know that not everyone is in a place where they can support us. So if you can't, that's totally fine. Feel free to give us a thumbs up because that's free and goes a really long way. But if you do have the means to contribute... head over to vox.com/give-now and consider making a contribution. [pensive violin music] This is a satellite image of the Mojave Desert in the US. It's a fragile desert ecosystem... dotted with wildflower fields 
and Joshua trees which are iconic in this region. But over the past several years the landscape has started 
to change. If you take a closer look in certain areas you start to see more and more 
of these patches of blue. They’re are solar farms. And in this part of the US many environmental activists 
and local residents are not happy about them. “Joshua trees are torn down to 
make way for solar projects.” “... causing quite an uproar...” “...piles and piles of Joshua trees.” It isn't just the trees. Solar farms in rural areas can take up  valuable agricultural land and 
disrupt diverse ecosystems. But transitioning to more solar power and a more sustainable future 
for the US requires a lot of land. So, what if we could find some of that land 
inside our cities? [Urgent piano music] This video is presented 
by Delta Airlines. In 2021, President Biden announced 
ambitious plans for the US to achieve net-zero greenhouse 
gas emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050. Solar is a critical part of the plan. And over the past several years as the US has ramped up 
solar power generation... the vast majority of solar arrays have been built in rural areas.  According to one study over half of utility scale 
solar facilities were placed in deserts. Another third in croplands. 10% in grasslands and forests. And just 2.5% in urban areas. That makes sense. Putting solar on undeveloped 
open spaces is often is often the cheapest and 
fastest way to do it. But there are some major problems 
with this path. Large scale installations often mean bulldozing 
massive amounts of land... altering plant and animal growth 
and migration patterns. Or locals don't want a solar farm 
to ruin natural views. Or they want to preserve farmland. When you start to go bigger and bigger... then it starts to become 
less comfortable for people. That's Joshua Pearce. He's been a photovoltaics researcher 
for two decades and is a professor at the University 
of Western Ontario. And so we've seen progressively 
more and more resistance in the middle of the US... to large scale solar development. That resistance has sometimes 
been funded by fossil fuel companies... but people also have 
legitimate concerns. And across the country from Massachusetts to Ohio 
to California... solar expansion has been stalled 
by protests. One option that we're starting 
to see more of is agrovoltaics. It's a way to build solar arrays that allow for agricultural use 
between the panels... to preserve some farmland for crops,
grazing, or native species. But because the need for energy is mostly outside of rural areas... any kind of rural solar still means building 
long distance transmission lines that can be expensive 
and an eyesore. One thing that can help address
some of these issues would be a kind of large, open, 
unused space closer to cities. Enter: Parking lots. The US has a lot of them... thanks to decades of designing cities 
around cars. Parking lots cover over 5% 
of developed land. These spaces could play one part in helping to fix solar’s land problem... if we covered the lots in canopies 
of solar panels. There is an awful lot of 
parking lot space in the United States that we can 
take advantage of that's already essentially unused. It’s wasted space except for 
parking underneath it. And it's not even used 
most of the time. It's an idea that other 
parts of the world like France, are embracing. A 2023 policy in France will require that outdoor car parks with 
more than 80 spaces... cover at least half the surface area 
with solar canopies. And officials estimate it could add ten nuclear power plants’ worth 
of solar panels. Importantly, policy like this utilizes space that's already cleared land 
with little biodiversity... which is also close to consumers. And parking lot solar canopies 
could also provide shade to cars in hot weather and 
cover from snow. So why don't we see more parking lot canopies 
in the US, too?  Like canopies that could cover 
Disney World parking lots. Instead of the solar farms they built 
on nearby land  that used to be orchards 
and forests. Or covering some of LA's 
many parking lots instead of overbuilding in the desert. Well, the biggest obstacle to putting solar 
on parking lots is... cost. The cost of putting in a solar canopy 
is going to be 50% to even 100% more than 
a conventional solar farm. The thing that makes canopies 
more expensive than a conventional solar farm is 
they're higher up off the ground. And so you need more structural material and you also need more 
weight at the bottom holding them from blowing away. And so why would a company want to invest even more money 
to put in a canopy? They're actually is an answer 
to that question. In 2017, Pierce coauthored a study looking into the economic 
potential of parking lot canopies and used Walmart Supercenters 
as a case study. The study found that in places 
with high solar flux or more solar radiation 
in the area... solar canopies could be 
incredibly profitable. Like here in Phoenix, Arizona. But they also found that 
even in areas in the US considered to have less solar flux, 
like here in Michigan... selling solar back to the grid 
at going rates... could still be profitable enough to make solar canopies worth it 
in the long run. It really goes down to... how much are you paying 
for electricity... and how much solar flux do you have? And most of the US, barring 
Northern Alaska actually has fairly good solar fluxes. I grew up in western Pennsylvania which has some of the worst and systems are still 
economic there. In another 2021 study, 
Pearce and his team found the total capacity across all US
Wal-Mart Supercenters would be 11.1 gigawatts 
of solar power. That's around the high estimate of what the French parking lot program 
expects to make. With that power... Wal-Mart could power about 
100 electric vehicle charging stations at each Wal-Mart location... or if they combine the canopies 
with rooftop solar there would likely be more than enough 
to power the stores. It would also create the opportunity 
to sell power back to utility companies 
on the main grid... or stores could be the anchor for a local microgrid
in the community offering power to homes 
in the case of outages. This isn't a one size fits all solution... but in good locations where companies 
can afford the upfront cost of installation. Pearce’s research shows canopy's 
could be a worthwhile investment. It's guaranteed under warranty 
to generally work for 25 years. That's an investment. You're investing in capital asset and it’s providing you a return 
over its lifetime. You should treat it the same way you would 
any other investment. Only this one is actually good for the planet
at the same time.  In some parts of the US institutions like airports and universities are already trying solar parking lots. Walmart and Target are just beginning to try them out 
in certain stores and policy is slowly catching up too... to make these kinds of solar projects easier... like Maryland offering grants for solar canopies... and a New York City zoning proposal... that would allow for solar on more than 8500 acres 
of parking lots. Parking lots can't fix solar’s land scarcity problem 
on their own. The amount of solar production we need 
will likely require a combination of efforts, 
including in rural areas... utility-scale arrays canopies where we can put them  arrays on rooftops... and in other places like along highways over landfills or
on degraded lands. But solar canopies are part of 
a large toolbox... that could put a huge dent in our reliance 
on fossil fuels... and point to a future where more cities... are finding ways to give new life... to some of America's most overlooked spaces. I love that feeling when it's the beginning of fall and it's 55 degrees outside, and it's finally
cold enough to wear my favorite winter sweater and jacket and beanie and gloves. And I drink pumpkin spice lattes to stay warm. But I also love the feeling when it's the middle of winter and out of nowhere it's 55 degrees. So I leave my parka home and go outside in my shorts and t shirt and i feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. And I consider going to the beach to tan
because it's so warm. The temperature is the same, but my reaction to it is vastly different. Part of the reason why is that there's more of a substance in my body in January as compared to September. It's the same substance that allows kids and teens to handle the cold weather better than adults. When you're hot, you sweat. When you're cold, you shiver. But just before you start to shiver, your body actually does something else. It starts to burn fat, not the fat we usually think of. There are two categories of fat that we like to think about. There's the white fat. White fat is the one that we tend to just think of as fat. It's called white because it looks white. White fat exists all throughout the body, cushioning our bones and organs. That's Dr. Aaron Cypess, by the way. White fat cells have many functions, one of the most important being that they're the body's primary energy source. Every single day we are using the fuel that's inside the white fat cells. But there's another type of fat that has a totally different function, brown fat. These cells are much smaller and because of that, resemble muscle more than fat. Instead of one large lipid droplet in a white fat cell, the brown fat cell, is one tightly packed bag of mitochondria. This is what gives it its brown appearance. And if you remember anything from high school biology class, you know that the mitochondria
are the powerhouse of the cell. Brown fat, instead of serving as an energy
reserve for organs throughout the body to burn, uses its power to burn energy on its own. And unlike white fat, it's only located in a few tactically positioned areas. It is in the neck, the shoulders, in the upper arms. It's down the spine and then some places within the belly. Lots of overlap with major blood vessels because warming the blood effectively warms the whole body. The brown fat around the neck vessels heats up, the blood goes to the brain, That's good. The brown fat depots in the shoulders, that blood, once it's been heated by the brown fat, goes right very quickly into the heart and then can get pumped to the rest of the body. And that's the first line of defense against the cold. If it's not enough to raise the body
temperature sufficiently, then the body shivers. But one of the craziest things that I learned
while researching this story is that babies can't shiver. When babies are born, they do not have the muscle mass, and really, perhaps not even so much of the coordination with the brain and the muscle to shiver effectively. So they need other ways of generating heat and brown fat is part of that. Babies are born with a lot of brown fat. According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 2 to 5% of a baby's body weight is made up of this stuff. It's necessary for our survival. The peak age for brown fat actually seems to be in the teen years, which explains why a lot of the guys in my high school wore shorts in the winter. But as we get older, our body makes less of it. And this could give us some insight into why kids seem to run hot and our parents or grandparents seem to run cold. Older people, they certainly have much less brown fat in terms of absolute and relative amounts. There's also less muscle, which is also important for generating heat. The similarities between brown fat and muscle don't end there, though. If you work your brown fat out, it also increases volume and the way you do this is by exposing yourself to the cold for extended periods of time, as this 2014 study shows. Look at how much more brown fat these men from Maryland had after a month of exposure to cold temperatures. And look how much less they had when exposed to warm temperatures. Which gives us some insight into why 55 degrees in the winter can feel so much warmer than 55 degrees in the fall. Brown fat doesn't just keep you warm, though. Scientists have figured out that having more of it correlates to lower risk of diabetes and heart disease. Studying the effects of brown fat using cold exposure is challenging, though. One challenge is that it's hard to dose cold. How much... I gave you ‘this’ amount of cold. I mean, you know the temperature, but it's hard to know what you're doing and therefore it's very hard to design a study where it's reproducible. So instead, they're trying to activate brown fat with medicine to study
how burning it affects us biologically. A medication called Mirabegron, which is approved to treat overactive bladder, was able to activate the brown fat in a way that was very similar to the effectiveness of the cold exposure. There's a lot we still don't know about brown fat, but we do know that our bodies use it to adapt to cold weather. And when a kid doesn't
want to put a coat on in the winter, it's not necessarily that they're just stubborn. It might just be because they have a little more of something in their body than you do. In Top Gun: Maverick. All of this... is real. These actors trained for months  to pull up to eight G's  And cameras mounted inside of the F-18s captured real intense flying. Just look at the ripples on Jay Ellis’ face. But this shot is different, because this plane doesn't exist. It's called The Darkstar, and it uses hypersonic technology, a tool that's in development by Lockheed Martin,
but nowhere near ready to be used like Tom 
Cruise's Pete “Maverick” Mitchell does. This scene is almost entirely fabricated, from Tom Cruise's convincing sweating and heavy breathing to the impeccable VFX. But the thing that grounds it for me is the sound design, which is why I talked to this guy. I'm Al Nelson. My job on Top Gun: Maverick was to define the soundscape for the film, from jets, to doors, foley, ambiances motorcycles, and all things maverick. Expectations were high. The bar was very high. There wasn't a ‘good enough’ option. It always needed to be as best as it could be. When Al's team first got the mach ten sequence, it sounded something like this: a blank slate with one big question How do you make fake flight feel real? What does the Dark Star sound like? First of all, working backwards. It's not an F-18. It's not a fighter jet. The Darkstar is much more elegant. It's much more advanced. And one of the things that was important was for that to be believable as well. It shouldn't sound like a video game. It can't sound sci fi. You think, of course, of Star Wars, you know, the tie fighters are amazing, but they're sci fi and they used elephants to make them. And so we worked hard, lots of field trips to aircraft carriers, cross-country trips for jet engines and auxiliary power units. We are trying to tell the story of Maverick's flight. Everything we're hearing and seeing should feel as real as it can feel so that we're experiencing this with him. And Al’s job was to make sure that the experience captured all the intensity of Maverick pushing the dark star to its limits. It starts with sounds of technology
that we're familiar with. So when you see Maverick launch, he's using turbines. We wanted it to have punch and feel high tech. It doesn't ramp up. It just goes ‘ca-chunk’ and then thrust. Maverick gets up in the air and, as he starts passing new thresholds... Increase to mach 3.5. ...there's this subtle beep... Increase to mach 3.5  ..that starts a simmering build of tension. Like Pavlov's
dogs, we're being trained to know that this tone will keep repeating until we get to the coveted mach ten. But before that, he has to go faster, this time using technology that most of us don't yet have a reference for. Transitioning to scramjet. A scramjet uses the speed of the jet to intake oxygen, which ignites the fuel as opposed to a turbine. A turbine can only spin so fast and can only generate so much oxygen to ignite the fuel. All of that process needed to be articulated sonically. He kicks it in the scramjet and then you see the turbines close and you see the tube open up in the back of the Darkstar. At that point, you've got this flow of air going into the jet system and igniting that fuel and creating that rocket. And then the plane is on its way. Maverick starts getting comfortable. We’re feeling good. And the soundscape reflects that, by becoming slightly more subdued. Because the other thing we're doing specifically with Dark Star is we are trying to tell the story of his joy of being in this flight and achieving that which no one has done before. He's the fastest man alive. And so there are moments where we're just with him as he's smiling. The plane focused sound design pulls back and other elements take the forefront. It's a lot of layers, but it's also it's not necessarily accumulating. It's alternating. It's orchestrating. You know, when he says, Talk to me, Goose, there's not a lot else going on, because we are with him emotionally. You see the dark star go off in the distance. That's very much a music moment. So you don't need a lot from us at that point. And we're just a dot and we're just a little rip as you hear it. Scan across the sky so you can track it and then the music drops out very dramatically and we cut to him and it's boom. And you feel a little bit of shaking and you hear that turbine kick on and you feel those thrusters. Instead of having all these clips
sound fade into each other, you feel every single cut. One of my first interactions with Tom. He said ‘the cuts have to hit. They have to punch.’ He was very, very emphatic about that. And it's a style that the first Top Gun established, that aggressive cutting, style of cutting from inside and being just dialog and rather quiet to banging on to the exteriors. Coming left! And it makes the cut feel aggressive. It makes the film feel aggressive and dangerous, and it propels us in the story. Each of these cuts has a unique sonic texture. You cut to the rear and it just bangs on with this ripping, tearing rocket thruster. And you see all of those currents crossing the wings, the jet stream. It's such a beautiful visual. And we wanted to put something in there that was tonal and special, which was the Roebling Suspension Bridge. So all of these flavors allow it to be constantly changing and constantly new and hopefully exciting. To ratchet up that building tension, Al’s team used a longtime sound design trick, the Shepard Tone, an auditory illusion, where you loop a sound wave separated by octaves, which tricks your brain into thinking that it's a continually rising pitch. Listen to it here in the rising turbines. So the jet is starting to complain a little bit and so more tones are happening. And yes, that mach 9.7, 9.8 each time it's a little bit louder, a little bit higher. It's that winding you up. And then the minute he does it, catharsis. Mach 10! [cheers] Catharsis But just when you think it's over, we return to quiet and then we start again with the build. Oh, don't do it. Don't do it. Just a little push. But this time the build is different. It starts with this beep from inside the control room, which plays off this last beep from the Darkstar's cockpit. When you listen to them both next to each other, it's a rising tone and then a falling tone. And this subtly signals that danger is coming. The shepherd tone kicks in louder and more grating than before. It leaks into the sound muted cabin. So we know that the pressure is building and it keeps building until... [Explosion] You know, it took some hard work to get us to this final version. Did some late nights and long hours, but I'm very pleased and excited with with how it's been received and how it sounds. I know they did design an actual Darkstar that he sat in. You can see him sitting in it
and then at a certain point it launches over our head
and that's when we get into the magic of cinema. That was an F-18 that they
then remapped the Darkstar over it. And that jet was so low that when you see the roof of that shed blow off, that was real. That was an unexpected addition. And the fact that Ed Harris just stands there and takes it like that guy is something else. Maybe this was a mistake. The United States has always had 
a love hate relationship when it comes to train travel. The country was literally built
on the backs of the railroads and the US used to have the biggest  and the most well-funded 
rail network in the world. But if you ask anybody 
that's taken the Amtrak... they'll tell you that that's not exactly 
the case anymore. The US has fallen woefully behind 
the rest of the world when it comes to train travel. So what the heck happened? How did the United States 
get so far behind? And does it have any chance 
of catching up? To find out the answer to that, 
I'm going to take the Amtrak from here in Los Angeles all the way 
to New York City. And I'm going to have plenty 
of time to think about it since it's a... 70-hour journey. I guess I better get started. The entire length of my journey from Los Angeles to New York 
is about four days long... and for the first leg of my journey there weren't any sleeper cars available. So, this is what my living space looks like for the next two days which as somebody that's 
[BEEP] years old should be really good for my back. The journey I'm taking 
is pretty different than it would have been about 
a hundred years ago. To see the differences, 
let's take a look at this US map. The year is 1916 and there's about 
254,000 miles of railroads the highest number there's ever been 
in this country. The Pennsylvania railroad, or the Pennsy,
as it was referred to... I feel like that nickname could have probably used 
a little more work. Nevertheless, it was the largest corporation in the world at the time. It's difficult to illustrate how influential 
these companies were... and how much railroads were into woven into the fabric 
of American life. They were responsible for 
the temples of their time... like Penn and Grand Central stations. Also, you would not believe how amazing train travel could be back then. Sure, they had basic boring train cars
like the one I’m riding. But the upscale trains featured chandeliers, barber shops... pianos and food service that would make the Four Seasons 
look like Boston Market. One menu featured oysters, 
consommé... and celery fed duck. The bad news is my train didn't have ducks that were 
fed anything. I ate the Thai Red Curry Street noodles which, although I'm pretty sure they were 
just a microwave frozen package were actually pretty good. And although the accommodations 
were a far cry from crystal chandeliers they were comfortable enough. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is the conductor speaking. It has now been 5 hours and 15 minutes which is the time it takes to fly from LAX 
to Newark Airport. And we are still in California. It's only 9:00 but it already got dark outside so there's nothing to look at 
through the window... and there's no Wi-Fi, apparently. So I guess I'm just going to 
go to sleep. They leave the overhead lights 
on all night but luckily I brought 
my trusty eye mask. I also brought some earplugs,
which should come in handy because I'm sitting right in front 
of some iPad kids who are watching movies at 
full volume with no headphones. So, that's fun. All right. I'll see you in the morning. Did I sleep well last night? Hmm? I'm going to say no. I'll spare you the details but imagine getting literally 
kicked in the head  by the woman in the seat next to you. I wound up retreating to the 
observation car to sleep... which was less than ideal. Like an astronaut in space. I'm trying to move around 
as much as I can so that my muscles don't deteriorate 
during my journey. So let's talk about how American trains went from gilded pleasure palaces to... This. Part of the reason why railroads  became so wildly successful 
in the first place... is because they were run by what were affectionately termed 
“robber barons”. Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt... Jay Gould, James Fisk,
and J.P. Morgan. These guys were ruthless, anti-labor,
and really corrupt... which was great when it came to building an expansive kingdom of highly profitable 
rail companies... but bad when it came to... 
just about everything else. As a result, the train companies became 
pretty universally hated by the general public. As seen in what passed for 
scathing satire at the time. “Now then, Jim.” “No jockeying, you know.” “Let em rip, Commodore.” “Don't stop to water or you'll be beat.” The federal government saw the kind of crap these guys 
were pulling and was like “Whoa, whoa, whoa, 
you can't do that.” So they instituted a bunch of regulations... which, among other things... set fixed rates for the railroad companies. And also prevented them from raising their fares or 
changing their service without the government's permission. This didn't seem like that big 
of a deal at the time... because as historian Robert Selph Henry said... “The problem , to some minds at least was how to keep railroads from 
making too much money.” After all, railroads were still by far the most efficient and the best way 
for most people to travel. This all obviously changed when 
affordable automobiles and later air travel came into the picture. so much so that by 1956 only 4% of passenger travel 
was on trains. When you take into account 
that 40 years earlier that number was 98% you can see how much 
the US’s priorities had shifted when it came to travel. The train companies were far from 
a monopoly anymore... but they were still being regulated 
as if they were... which was killing them. Okay, so, right now we are being
held on the tracks to let a freight train pass. And this is actually the perfect time 
to talk about something. Private commercial passenger trains have never been very profitable. The lifeblood of the industry has always been these: 
Freight trains. But rail companies were always 
forced to provide passengers service as a benefit 
to the public. So when the rail companies began to suffer and then eventually fold, the government 
had the idea to take the responsibility for passenger service off the plates of the rail companies who could then focus on the profitable 
freight side of the business. They took all the passenger service and combined it into one company. Which is how in 1971 we got Amtrak. Which stands for the American Train Track. Again, what is up with these nicknames? “Amtrak makes it easy come, easy go to more than 450 cities in the USA.” But here is the thing. Amtrak was designed to fail 
from the beginning. That may sound ridiculous, 
but let me explain. First of all the government created Amtrak 
as a for profit corporation despite the fact that virtually 
no passenger service anywhere has been profitable. After all, the government broke off 
all the passenger trains from the rail companies because 
they weren't making money. When the government formed Amtrak they tasked it with employing innovative 
operating and marketing concepts to develop the potential of 
modern rail service. And how much did Congress give them 
to do that in their first year of operation? Just $40 million. Their budget has gone up 
a lot since then. Their budget for the year 2022 
was $2.3 billion... which sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But when you take into account that 
the federal highway budget for the same year was $64.3 billion you begin to see the inequity. To put it even more 
into perspective... the sum total of all the subsidies 
that the US has allocated to Amtrak 
in its entire history... is less than one year's funding for 
the interstate highway system. This right here shows where America's priorities lie when it comes to travel... and why Amtrak has failed 
to majorly expand or innovate. Okay, so we just got to Chicago. I got off the Amtrak about 45 hours 
after I left Los Angeles. And needless to say... I do not smell very good. I have about a 7 hour layover 
here in Chicago. And right now I'm in Union Station... which is actually kind of amazing. As you see I got a chance to put on 
some clean clothes which feels amazing. And now I'm just here 
in Millennium Park... rolling around with my suitcase 
like a dang tourist. And I'm just trying to enjoy... not being on a train 
as much as possible before I get on the second leg. The second and final leg 
of my journey. I've achieved the Holy Grail... of my own private room. I want to show you my favorite feature 
of the entire room. You're going to like this. Hidden sink. This train is a little bit more... dynamic, shall we say, 
than the last one. But I'm hoping that all 
the movements... will just help rock me to sleep. When I woke up, we had 
reached Ohio... about 2600 miles through 
my journey and 50 something hours. There are a lot of reasons why people still want to 
take the train. A big one is the environment. According to a study by 
the University of Pennsylvania... a long distance train trip produces 37% less emissions 
than taking a flight. Trains are also much safer than cars. You're 17 times more likely to die while driving than 
taking a train. Flying and driving can be faster and sometimes even cheaper 
than taking the Amtrak. But they're both often 
miserable experiences. Going through TSA dealing with flight delays or 
being stuck in traffic and not being able to do anything because you need to be 
driving the car. While I've been on Amtrak I've been able to just 
stare out the window and see the country go by... or read a book or take a nap 
or whatever. I've been able to wander 
around the train whenever I want and stretch my legs. And I've had the enjoyment
of having my own private little room. And this is with Amtrak being perpetually and profoundly underfunded. Imagine what it would be like if this were evened out. So, I made it.  All total, took me about 72 hours 
and 17 minutes... which granted it would have 
taken me between 5 and 6 hours to fly that distance. I don't actually know the distance
off the top of my head but I'm going to add it in post right here. But here's the thing. I had a good time. It was actually really fun. Aside from a couple of hiccups 
at the very beginning. It was a really pleasant, 
memorable experience. I got to see parts of the country
that I had never seen before. And overall, dare I say, it was 
a pleasant experience. Right now, Amtrak covers  roughly 21,000 miles of passenger rail 
in the US. But when you look at the map, 
you can see it's sparse coverage routes that don't connect... And sorry, Wyoming and South Dakota you don't get any trains. If the United States took Amtrak 
off life support... it would revolutionize the way 
people travel around the US. When he was retiring former Amtrak President Graham Calder said... “When I came to Amtrak
I was convinced I could save it...” But finally came to the conclusion that only the American public 
can save it... “...when they say they want it.” Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go take a much needed shower and go to sleep 
in a real bed. I got to rest up for my flight back 
to California tomorrow. For me, one of the best parts of riding the Amtrak is just throwing on 
some Phoebe Bridgers and wistfully staring out the window 
for hours on end. all of a sudden all over Europe it seems like they're everywhere cargo bikes delivering mail in Germany Amazon packages in the UK picking up food waste in Paris and sperm donations in Copenhagen yep that's a custom-built liquid nitrogen tank shaped like a human sperm in the U.S whether you order a giant flat screen TV or a week's worth of groceries it's likely to show up at your doorstep via one of these a delivery truck or van with a big powerful engine they get the job done but they also emit lots of carbon take up lots of room and kill and injure lots of people and that's why cities and companies around the world are starting to replace some of those big Vans with electric assist cargo bikes but in the US aside from test runs from a couple companies like Domino's Pizza and small pilot projects and a handful of cities they haven't really caught on so why not why are we in the U.S so wedded to this one Tool for delivery and is it possible to change course thank you hi there I am looking for students and Educators who are seeing first hand how tools like Chachi PT are being used for class assignments I'm a video journalist at Vox and I would love to hear about your experiences with AI and with AI detection Technologies let me know what you're seeing at Joss vox.com I won't be publishing your response but I may reach out to ask you some more questions thank you in advance for helping us bring some clarity to what is a very confusing time All of a sudden, 
all over Europe it seems like they're everywhere: Cargo bikes. Delivering mail in Germany... Amazon packages in the UK. Picking up food waste in Paris. And sperm donations in Copenhagen. Yep. That's a custom built liquid nitrogen tank shaped like 
a human sperm. In the US whether you order a giant flat screen TV or a week's worth of groceries... it's likely to show up at your doorstep
via one of these: A delivery truck or van with 
a big, powerful engine. They get the job done, 
but they also emit lots of carbon, take up 
lots of room  and kill and injure 
lots of people. And that's why cities and companies around the world 
are starting to replace some of those big vans with 
electric assist cargo bikes. But in the US, aside from test runs from a couple of companies like 
Domino's Pizza  and small pilot projects 
in a handful of cities they haven't really caught on. So why not? Why are we in the US so wedded to this one tool 
for delivery? And is it possible to change course? Even before the pandemic online shopping was already growing as a share of total retail sales worldwide. And for many of us... the pandemic habit hasn't faded away. Even as stores have reopened. Take London, for example. Commercial vehicles account for about 
19% of the overall miles driven in London. But they emit 30% of the city's 
transport-related CO2. That disproportionate impact 
extends beyond pollution. They deliver everywhere from 
narrow one-way streets to super busy intersections causing 
massive traffic problems. And between 2018 and 2020... delivery trucks in London were involved 
in a shocking 41% of fatal cyclist crashes and 
19% of pedestrian deaths. A 2016 study found that 
large trucks  made up only 3.6% of vehicles
in New York City but are responsible for 32% 
of bicyclist fatalities and 12% of pedestrian fatalities. So let's back up and take a bird's eye view 
of the whole delivery process. You can breakdown urban delivery into two phases. Phase one: My iPhone cover might travel 
from factory to a hub... before the long freight journey 
via airplane, cargo ship or long haul truck to a warehouse just outside the city where I live. That's when phase two starts. It's often called the last mile. Though, the journey is usually 
much longer. That's when my package is loaded onto 
a delivery truck or van which drives into the city and eventually stops in front of my house. This package might have traveled hundreds of miles to get here,
but depending on where you live this second phase accounts for 
30 to 50% of its carbon footprint. And that's partly because the so-called 
last mile is really in efficient. One study in London found that 
only a small share of vans use more than 3/4 of their capacity. Most use less than half. And that's where e-bikes come in. Obviously, using bicycles to move goods 
and people through the city  is not a new idea. UPS actually got its start  as a bike delivery service in Seattle... hauling everything from beer 
and medicine across the city. Before city leaders remade the streets  to prioritize private automobiles cargo bikes and trikes like these  shared the road with carriages 
and pedestrians. Today's cargo bikes can come equipped 
with a small electric motor that's activated when the pedals are in motion... and powered by a rechargeable 
lithium-ion battery. That extra power is what allows 
electric cargo bikes like these ones in London  to outcompete delivery vans. In a 2021 study that compared 
those cargo bikes to delivery vans... the bikes obviously had to make 
more trips back and forth to the pickup point... but they still traveled roughly the same distance 
in less time than the vans. In part because they could park anywhere 
and use the bike lanes when the van sat in traffic. They dropped off more packages 
than the vans per hour while emitting a fraction of the carbon. Another study estimated that 
more than half of all urban trips related to the transport of goods 
could be done by cargo bike. Those efficiencies have led to massive 
investments in Europe and the UK. Thousands of bikes from companies 
like DHL, UPS and FedEx... as well as retailers like Amazon and IKEA. But in the US, DHL made headlines 
for doubling its cargo bike fleet in Miami from four bikes... 
to eight. New York City's cargo bike pilot  featured just 350 bikes spread out 
among all these companies. So what's keeping them from going all in? This map of Paris can help us understand why. The city has specific rules about what kind of vehicles can drive within this area. Delivery trucks are vans made before 2011 are only allowed within 
the zone on weekends  and after 8 PM on weekdays. Those who break the rules 
are slapped with a fine. By 2030, no diesel or gas powered vehicles 
will be allowed in the zone. These low emission zones are all over Europe. Brussels. Lisbon. London. Amsterdam. Berlin. Vienna. Rome. Oslo. Prague. Budapest. So for a freight operator 
doing business in Europe it makes sense to make the switch 
from vans to cargo bikes... especially since a lot of these cities also offer generous subsidies to businesses 
making the switch. And they've invested millions 
in infrastructure like protected bike lanes to help 
keep cyclists safe. As of fall 2023 the only zero-emission zone 
in the United States  was a pilot project in Santa Monica 
that actually ended in 2022. It was one square mile and 
it was voluntary. As in, no fines for trucks 
that broke the rules. There's also the fact that interstate highways run right through a lot of 
American cities... unlike in Europe. And for freight companies looking 
to move goods quickly... vans on the highway seems like 
the obvious answer. Of course, switching those vans 
from gas to electric would definitely help reduce CO2 emissions. But electric trucks and vans aren't any safer for the pedestrians and cyclists 
trying to share the road. Between 2010 and 2021... pedestrian deaths in the US rose 54%.  Among cyclists: 55%.  And experts blame a deadly combination
of high speeds and bigger vehicles... which are more likely to cause fatal 
head and neck injuries. Without big changes like 
urban highway removals zero emission zones and subsidies US cities will have a hard time getting companies to make the switch. And we will miss out 
on the possibility of cleaner air... safer streets and a more livable planet. This dam in Derna, Libya collapsed 
on September 10th, 2023. Extreme rainfall during Storm Daniel caused it and another crucial dam to fail. And Derna went from this... to this 
in a matter of hours... with more than 1/4th of the city wiped out. This catastrophic flooding has claimed more than 
11,000 lives so far. And it could have been prevented. These types of dams are one of the 
oldest kinds in the world. It's called an embankment dam. Its outer shell is usually made
with natural materials like rocks and soil, and the core 
can be made of something stronger, 
like clay or concrete. It's still too soon to know what exactly happened 
to these dams. But experts have long called 
for them to be reinforced with more solid materials 
to prevent erosion... and safeguard against situations like this. It's been more than 20 years since these dams in Libya 
were last maintained. And that's because Derna 
had long been caught in Libya's civil war. There's a strange little area 
in the middle of Central Park... and it's part of how we know 
that we just lived through the warmest summer on record 
for planet Earth. 2023 is on track to be the 
warmest year on record, too. But how do they know that? How do you take the temperature 
of an entire planet? Well, this is a weather station. It's been in Central Park 
for more than 100 years  and it's one of thousands
around the world. Locally, people want to know 
the exact temperature every day. But for climate records, they look at 
what's called the anomaly. That's how the daily 
average temperature compares to a long term average. Daily anomalies are averaged 
into monthly anomalies for every single weather station. But of course, 70% of the planet 
is water, not land. So for the ocean, measurements 
come from volunteer ships in a large network of data buoys. Then they divide the planet 
into a grid and average the monthly anomalies for 
the stations inside each box. And the average of the boxes to get the global temperature record. That's why, despite the daily and seasonal and regional temperature swings... they can see the signal of a 
record breaking global warming. Olivia and Liam were the most 
popular baby names in 2022 but they're not nearly as common as the most popular baby names 
used to be. Every year, the Social Security Administration  releases the top thousand 
baby names used in the United States 
from that year. So in 2022, Liam was the most 
popular boy’s name around 20,000 parents used it. But in 1982, Michael took 
the top spot with almost 70,000 uses. And in 1952, almost 90,000 boys 
named James were born. Popular names just aren't as popular as they used to be. And more and more parents who are going with traditionally popular names have been introducing more variation in the spelling, 
like Aiden or Hailey. And new names are making their 
debut on the list every year... like Wrenlee, which was the fastest growing girl's name in America in 2022 even though it didn't crack 
the top thousand prior to that. So what do you think 
about this data? Let us know in the comments down below. —Okay. 
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and free for everyone by becoming a Vox contributor. You can go to vox.com/give-now. Okay. Bye! I'm going to go. I actually really do have to 
get back to my edit.  [country-inspired music plays] Thank you!  So are we done? [yes, this is a country-inspired song for Mother’s day] [you can find it on APM music, titled
“Happy Mothers Trukkin Day”] Many of the people in the top 100 are barely breaking even, 
 sometimes in the red. If you're not playing at 
Grand Slams consistently and doing well...
you are struggling. When I grew up, I always 
watched tennis. So watching Williams sisters
and everything my sister and I, we grew up 
playing together and so I always wanted to be 
like Venus and Serena. So I come from Poland, which is 
not a huge tennis culture. I would say my mom 
used to play tennis and that's how I started 
when I wanted to... become one of the best players 
in the world. I was the first number one junior 
in 37 years, female. And kind of all my dreams 
started coming true. The perception versus the reality like tennis does look very glam 
and it looks so polished. The highest paid this,
and these big purses and these big prize money tournaments... you really don't see the struggle. That was something that... I didn't really understand 
until I got to that level. And then once I got to 
the top 100... then my ranking fell to 400. And then that was the time when 
I had to go back to playing like the really 
low level events. And I didn't know how I was going 
to pay my bills. I told my coach like there were times like... “Hey, I can’t pay you.” or  “I can’t pay for training 
this week.” or “Can you pay for your flight?” And then, “Yo, I got you.” When we get to the slam and like when we get to the bigger tournaments. So the structure of tennis is pretty unique in the 
sports landscape. There's a men's tour: the ATP. There's a women's tour: the WTA. There's four Grand Slams, 
which are each really independently owned 
and operated. There's the International Tennis Federation which is like the global governing body that governs things like the Olympics and some of the more global 
aspects of tennis. And you have this really disjointed structure... When you add it all up, has left
not only the players behind and made it something that is not anywhere close to where it should be in relation 
to other sports. You’d think the total revenue of tennis
could be better.  The percentage that the players
are getting, I think that... that's also some issue. The tournaments are sharing about 18% of the revenue 
with the players. In many of those other sports,
hockey, American football, soccer... you see a revenue share that is 
much closer to 50%. As a player, sometimes it is frustrating because you know that you're the talent and you know that you're bringing this certain level of entertainment to all of these different places 
around the world... and not being compensated for it. Tennis is a sport where 
there are no teams. And so it... if anything, that revenue share 
should be higher in tennis... given the fact that people 
are coming to see Player A play against
Player B.  Carlos Alcaraz made the most money 
on either the men’s tour or the women's tour last year, 
about $10 Million.  Who is, by the way, 
a generational talent... who won an incredible amount 
of matches last year. And let’s asterisk that for a second 
because that's gross. That's before he pays his own travel, 
his coaches... his physios, all the expenses 
that tennis players bear alone. That no athlete in a team sport or other sports, like F1,
have to bear. And if you look at $10 million... how that translates in basketball, 
that's roughly the 150th highest paid player 
in the NBA. And then you look at football, 
American football that’s 202nd highest salary. In baseball, it’s a similar story where it's in the hundreds... out of a 6-700 player community 
at the major league level. That graphic is like tattooed in my head because it's astonishing to me. There are a lot more players that are struggling than 
the ones that aren't. A good friend of mine, Dustin Brown, 
a very, very good player. He literally was living out of his car. He was stringing rackets for the players at the tournament 
to make money. And sometimes the amount that 
he was making to string rackets was more than he made in his prize money. And he beat Nadal at Wimbledon. Like, played one of the most epic matches. “Game set and that’s Brown.” And the pressure always gets 
spun around and put onto them. Well, if you just won more, you'd be fine. So what's your problem? Well, if you weren't in the two hundreds 
or three hundreds, well, then you'd have nothing to complain about. As opposed to... Hey, wait a second. In all these other global sports... if I'm in the two hundreds, 
three hundreds... I'm actually well entrenched 
as a professional athlete. Why isn't that the case in tennis? It's one of the only sports where 
we're not salary base players. Your pay is based on your performance. The way those other sports 
are structured the players are employees. And so when you're an employee, 
you have a minimum salary... and part of the problem with tennis 
is that the players, despite... working 11 and a half months a year... traveling the globe are treated as independent contractors. I guess people who don't 
have endorsements... they only make their money 
from tournaments. And I don't think that 
that should be a thing. I think we should make like 
salary for the year. I'm fortunate to have, you know... a couple of great sponsors. I’m wearing a watch while I play.  Actually, this watch while I play.  Also, I'm playing with a Yonex racket, 
a Yonex outfit and having a patch on my sleeve 
for Easy Post.  I'm sponsored by ASICS 
at the moment. They send you a package of clothes to wear at different tournaments. That's based on your ranking and also 
your profile as a player. And if you're 200 in the world, maybe... you know, maybe there's a local company 
from your country that wants to help you, wants to support you. But if you're outside of top 50... you will have a clothing, the other 
you will have a racket deal. But it would be touch to have a real source of income outside of a tennis court. And in my particular situation, 
I don't have any sponsors. So, like all of my expenses come out 
of my prize money. Traveling with a couple of people around the world. You know, you fly always last minute and you sleep in the hotels you eat in restaurants. Those expenses are really, really significant. Maybe a coach a year is around 
$75,000 without expenses. So for hotel, flights all that, it could add up. There's so much emphasis on the Grand Slams because these four times a year, 
only four... are where you get basically the biggest payout. When you're at the lower rankings  or you're trying to break through. Like you kind of have to go everywhere because you need to get points, 
you need to get money. Points are literally everything. I mean, that's how our rankings 
are determined. And every tournament has 
a certain point value... and every round has a certain point value. So at the Grand Slams is where you can 
make the most points. And the lower level tournaments like the 250s or even like challenger... the lower you drop down, 
the less point opportunities that you have to make. So it's just back and forth, back and forth, 
back and forth. Often times the expenses 
outweigh the pay. The sport hasn't kept pace 
with other sports. The players and what they generate 
from an income standpoint... hasn't kept pace. The protections are non-existent. There's no safety net. 
There's no minimum. Because what happens if you get hurt? What happens if you want to 
take a break? What happens if you want to 
have a child? There's no mechanism for that... other than putting 100% of that burden 
on the player. Fortunately, my parents were able to help me a lot in my career and I'm really thankful to them. If you don't have support, 
it's really challenging. The risk... is that we can... miss out on really unique and amazing talents and people 
who are very, very good... because they can't afford to play. Players like Ons Jabeur... she didn't have those opportunities 
growing up in Tunisia. Frances Tiafoe. I mean, those are players who made it... despite those challenges, 
made it. What about all the other players that didn't? I'm trying to identify and really get clear on like... how can I make the biggest difference? I feel like if I don't do that or if I don't try, like... I'm wasting... all the things that I've been through and the lessons that I learn. Like I want to pass that on 
to as many people as I can. And if I can shape a next
generational talent... I will love that. These are the blooms of prune trees. Located in a geologic trough, the 
Santa Clara Valley in California was once known as the 
Valley of Heart's Delight due to its farmland filled with 
flowers and fruit, including prunes. How did a region known for 
its fruit and flowers... become an intellectual capital? During World War II, 
American engineer Vannevar Bush basically led 
wartime R&D. And in 1945 he published an essay called 
“Science: The Endless Frontier”. Bush reported to President Roosevelt that the pioneer spirit is still vigorous
within this nation. Though focused partly on problems
like the war against disease... the report also set an expectation... that science and continuing science funding... was necessary for the public welfare. Just a few years later, the National 
Science Foundation resulted as Harry Truman wrote, Henry Ford to promote industrial development 
in national defense. This funding meant facilities like NASA's Ames then called NACA... and Navy stations near San Francisco, 
provided a continuing engineering talent base to 
the San Francisco Bay Area. That was paired with proximity 
to Stanford University... the college that had greater 
land resources than cash. Built from the land grant 
of Leland Stanford the university was land rich. You can see in this early proposal how a small campus was 
surrounded by farmland. But Stanford didn't have 
a ton of cash. The region had a lot of unrealized potential... and one of Vannevar Bush's 
former students... wanted to realize it. Frederick Terman was a professor of 
electrical engineering at Stanford as well as an iconic name in radio science. He worked on stuff like jamming Nazi radar
during World War II and he also wrote a radio engineering textbook that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Even before Terman was appointed 
university provost in 1955 as a professor and as a dean, 
he sought ways to develop  the Valley of Heart's Delight. This 1950s land use study shows that Stanford intended 
to use some of its land primarily for the campus 
and residential development. Stanford developed the 
Stanford Shopping Mall to help remedy their lack of cash. It's still leased by the university today. This is their California Pizza Kitchen. More importantly... Terman helped the university develop 
Stanford Industrial Park... today called Stanford Research Park. This is what it looked like in 1953. The park provided affordable 
99 year leases to tenants with a strict development plan to preserve the character of 
Palo Alto Construction. They insisted on low buildings 
and preserved grassland... that the Valley of Heart's Delight 
was known for. But it was more than just a development on the university's land. From the beginning, 
Terman imagined a new cycle. Stanford to companies... 
to Stanford to companies... [repeating and overlapping]
to Standford to companies... As he said in one interview for 
Palo Alto 75th anniversary... “And I would say university made 
a major contribution... to the development here.” “But then the companies made 
a major contribution to the development of those parts 
of the university that contributed to these companies.” He encouraged this in many ways including allowing professors to spend time in corporate roles 
and get corporate paydays... and helping companies enroll employees 
as Stanford students. He proudly clipped this article about faculty eggheads 
becoming millionaires. And he gave speeches about how 
Stanford is also a source of highly trained manpower 
for those companies... at a time when such manpower 
is in short supply. Crucially, this cycle wasn't predicated on silicon or semiconductor companies. Stanford Industrial Park was open for any tenant that wanted to be 
near Stanford. Houghton Mifflin, 
the book publisher staked to claim in the Stanford 
Industrial Park. Other hi-tech but not computer-focused companies also found spots there, as shown 
in this 1960 picture. Here's Terman at the announcement 
of a Stanford Research Park building for SpinCo, a maker of centrifuges and division of a larger company
looking to expand in Palo Alto. Stanford's landholdings quickly changed. You can see how it expanded 
through 1955 with 120 acres into 
350 acres by 1960.  Terman explicitly said this cycle 
would not only affect the Bay Area but the national labor market. It worked and in electronics focus 
grew from Terman’s own interest in engineering. West Coast electronic firms 
produced 22%  of the US’s electronic market in 1960, 
and it kept growing. This was a competition between regions. Terman said if the Midwest continues 
to plod along in electronics... it is destined to become the peon group... in the nation's electronics industry. He also argued that growth industries 
depend on brains... and the best source of brains is 
the nation's major universities. Proximity of markets no longer 
will play a key role. This is the Palo Alto garage where 
Hewlett-Packard was founded. Terman had been a teacher. And his personal solicitations helped bring them to the West Coast. And later, a short drive away 
in Stanford Industrial Park... where HP secured a 40-acre site. Stanford Industrial Park became a platform for any successful industry that might emerge. William Shockley's Shockley 
Semiconductor Laboratory  is widely credited with starting 
the Silicon semiconductor boom... and Fred Terman solicited Shockley to start his business
in the Valley. He did so in nearby Mountain View. Shockley Semiconductors became a demonstration of the final cycle
that Terman initiated: Engineers in the ecosystem would found new companies 
in the same area. Employees split off Shockley to form Fairchild Semiconductors 
in Mountain View... and then those employees split off 
to form Intel locally... and so on and so on. This paired with development of more recognizable companies that started in the industrial park. Renamed the Research Park in 1970. Xerox's Palo Alto reach center, 
PARC was located there. “This is an experimental office system.” “It's in use now at the 
Xerox research center in Palo Alto, California.” As venture capital grew in the 1960s... bearby Sandhill Road was 
an obvious location due to its proximity 
to the Stanford epicenter. By 1971, journalist Don Hoefler former publicist for Fairchild Semiconductor labeled the region Silicon Valley 
for a series of articles. It was an allusion to the silicon chips that had taken over the valley. As Hoffler wrote... The pace has been so frantic that even hardened veterans of the semiconductor wars... find it hard to realize that the Bay Area story 
covers an era of only 15 years. The Valley became home to Oracle... and Next and Adobe 
and Sun Microsystems. And from Netscape on 
powered forward... in the first dotcom boom. “In 1994 and 95... Netscape was known as the fastest growing 
company in the industry... with all the requisite valley attributes.” And even in a remote work era: Meta, Apple, and Google have all 
maintained Silicon Valley... as a substantial hub. Terman’s vision made that cycle possible. And today's Silicon Valley 
has fewer prunes... but it remains in all its complicated ways... a Valley of Heart's Delight. Hey, thanks for watching this history of how Silicon Valley became 
Silicon Valley. But I've got— One more thing. Is that corny? No? Should I have
not done that? Anyway.  The map that I use of Stanford Research Park... It goes up to a certain point in the video... but it actually comes from a historical survey... that continues in time. So I want to show the rest of that to you here. By 1965, it is up to 500 acres. That's the yellow area. The light green area shows you that it's ballooned to 575 acres by 1970. By 75, it's at 600 acres. That's the dark green. And then you've got the blue, 
which shows you up to 1980 which expands Stanford Research Park 
to 700 acres. These symbols are part 
of a secret language written all over the world's 
biggest ships. They're made for the people 
operating tugboats.  Tugboats help big ships slow down  and maneuver around a port. But those tugboats have to 
be careful not to get too close to certain parts of the ship 
hiding under the water. That's where these markings 
come in. This one, shaped like a key,
marks the position of stabilizers. These are pins that can swing out 
to counteract rolling in rough seas, sort of like 
wings on an airplane. This one indicates that the ship 
has a bulbous bow. That's a protruding bump at the 
front of the ship that makes it more stable. And the white circle with an X  marks the position of a bow thruster  which shoots out water really fast  to help a ship maneuver sideways. Oil tankers, container ships, 
and cruise ships are some of the biggest things 
on Earth that move. And these teeny tiny symbols are an important part of a whole lot of coordination that it takes to keep these things running. This is a chart of the gender pay gap 
in developed economies. In the US, women are paid 
17% less than men. And in Japan, 22%. On the other end, 
there's Iceland... where the pay gap is around 10%. It's one of the few countries in the world where women are paid 
almost as much as men. But that wasn't the case 
about 50 years ago. In 1975, the gender pay gap 
in the US was 37%. Japan was 42%... and Iceland was at 40%. So how did it go from here... to here? To figure that out, you have to 
take a look at what happened 
on this day in 1975. This idea was to show... that we could bring
society to a standstill. If we were not there,
nothing was done. We expected a lot of women to
show up at the demonstration, But not in our wildest 
dreams did we expect this. This is the story of how 
Icelandic women shut down their country 
and changed it forever. Iceland gained independence 
from Denmark and became a parliamentary democracy 
in 1944. “Iceland separated from Denmark  and regained full self-government.” The conservative Independence Party became the strongest political force 
in the country and held the position of Prime Minister 
for almost 20 years. Under this party's leadership policies that enforced gender inequity 
were widespread... especially in the workplace. By the 70s, women made up 
the majority of poorly paid, undervalued jobs... and were forced out of the labor market 
to work at home. In response to decades of conservative policies a new women's group called 
The Redstockings took radical steps to demand equal rights. Like when they crowned a cow 
at the Young Miss Iceland pageant to bring attention to unfair 
beauty standards. And crucified a doll 
dressed like a housewife to protest women's domestic labor. It is a very active group. A bit anarchistic. This is Elisabet Gunnarsdottir a founding member of the Redstockings. We felt that there
were so many aspects of our lives that 
hadn't been discussed, that had stayed the same 
for such a long time. Workplace inequity was a big issue Elisabet and the Redstockings 
wanted to challenge and they took to the streets 
to draw attention to it. In the first of May 
demonstration in 1970, We carried a big statue 
on our shoulders. And we got it from a play
that had been put up in Reykjavík that winter,
about women going on strike. But to make an impact, they wanted 
a full blown strike. And that was going to be complicated... because organizing a strike 
outside of trade unions and employers associations 
was illegal in Iceland. So the Redstockings who weren't 
part of either group couldn't act on their idea. Until 1975 when the United Nations kicked off... “International Women's Year.” “I would like to welcome you all 
to this really historic event.” This was the first global conference dedicated to women's issues. “Women form part of virtually every delegation.” And governments around the world planned events to address 
gender discrimination. In Iceland, the Prime Minister's 
office selected representatives from different 
women's associations across the country to make preparations. The committee was politically diverse. It included teachers, single mothers conservatives, and liberals like 
the Redstockings... to make sure the event reflected the views of women across Iceland. The Redstockings took this opportunity to propose that a women strike 
against the gender pay gap was the best way to mark 
International Women's Year. The conservative women’s associations found the idea far too radical. But the Redstockings believed 
in the strike. So they pushed for one and slowly 
got some members on board. But overall, the committee was reluctant... until they heard... A woman around 70, she was from a 
center political party, from the old feminists. And she came to the podium and said, “Strike? Is that what you don't like?” “Why don't you then 
call it just a day off?” So that's what they did. The committee picked a day
when women would collectively refuse to work at home and in the office to prove their economic value. And they called it a day off 
or “kvennafrí”.  They only had three months to prepare. So the Redstockings and 
the rest of the committee immediately mobilized multiple 
labor unions and women's organizations the country to plan, fundraise, and 
spread the word about kvennafrí. The political parties used their own platform  to talk to their women.  There were all kinds of women from diverse... political and social groups. And we worked very well together,
all of us. They wrote hundreds of letters 
to women across the country and called as many households 
as they could  in Iceland's phone book 
to spread the word. They wrote articles, 
did radio interviews... [in Icelandic] “The goal is for women from
all over the country to participate in this women’s holiday.  Designed fliers and organized meetings 
late into the night to make sure that kvennafrí
was a success. Some men were foolish enough to threaten women, 
threaten their employees... and that didn't go down well. On October 24th, 1975... 90% of Icelandic women refused to work at home 
and in the office. An estimated 25,000 women took to the streets in Reykjavik alone... to give speeches and sing 
about women's rights. There is even a vinyl of recorded songs sung by the Redstockings 
from kvennafrí. [singing in Icelandic]
But dare I, want I, can I? Yes, I dare, can, and want. So many women refused to work that day that Iceland shut down. Without women the telephone system crashed 
without switchboard operators newspapers couldn't publish 
without type setters. The national airline canceled flights because there were no stewardesses. And preschools across the country 
shut down. Women's absence was felt in the home, too. Without domestic labor that 
Icelandic women carried out... there was no childcare. so men had to stay home or 
bring their children to work. It was this cooperation across 
politics and classes and... and housewives and women 
working outside the home. It was a celebration. The impact of kvennafrí was felt 
across the country. After the day off, Iceland passed its first 
Gender Equality Act and officially banned wage discrimination on the basis of gender. Equal rights of women were added 
to the Constitution and women's representation 
in Parliament rose too. In 1980, Iecland elected 
its first female leader  and the world's first woman president 
to be elected democratically. Something she insisted wouldn't 
have been possible without kvennafrí. No country in the world 
has completely closed its gender pay gap. Iceland still has some work to do too. But the country's quick progress 
is a sign that closing the gap is possible. Demonstrations like kvennafrí might not work in the same way 
in other countries... but its success shows us what happens 
when a country unites... politically and socially to get closer 
to equality. Kvennafrí didn't stop in 1975. There was one organized 
in 1985, 2005 2010, 2016, and 2018. The event has tackled everything 
from reproductive issues like abortion rights to the ongoing 
gender pay gap in Iceland. But one of my favorite pieces 
of history from this story is that you can actually listen to the original song sung 
on the 1975 day off off on Spotify. Which includes song sung by 
the Redstockings. The link is in the description down below. Thanks again for watching 
this episode of Missing Chapter and we can't wait to see you 
in the next one. Till next time. I measured airplane legroom over time and it's no doubt shrunk but should Congress do something about it well in 2018 they sort of did this act gave the FAA one year to do research and decide on minimum dimensions for seat pitch seat width and length as they are necessary for the safety of passengers that part is important because when the FAA conducted emergency evacuation tests they did not consider Comfort but they did deduce that narrow receipt pitches were safe for virtually everyone in an evacuation and based on that info in March an appellate court decided that it was neither clear nor indisputable that seat size regulations were necessary because the studies indicated that they're safe but some like senator Tammy Duckworth think that the studies need to be redone to reflect real world conditions because they didn't account for people with disabilities or anyone over the age of 60. do you think there should be a leg room standard because it no longer really feels like big news when Donald Trump is indicted but this fourth indictment over his attempt to change George's election results might be the most important here's a phone call between Trump and Georgia's Secretary of State you should want to have an accurate election and you and Republicans we believe that we do have an accurate election all I want to do is this I just want to find uh 11 780 votes okay first let's take a look at the other three cases these two accused Trump of attempting to block the certification of the 2020 election and taking classified documents then lying about it to the FBI they're being brought by federal prosecutors which means that even if he's found guilty and sentenced to prison Trump could use his Federal power to end the prosecutions if he wins the 2024 presidential election this case is being brought by the state of New York and it centers around Trump's attempt to conceal payments to an adult film star in exchange for her Silence about their Affairs probably the least important of the four investigations this most recent indictment from Georgia alleges that Trump violated a bunch of different state laws when he and his team asked for those extra votes in that phone call and sent a list to fake electors to Congress and this is significant if he's found guilty and sentenced he can't throttle the prosecution or pardon himself this week wildfires have ripped through the island of Maui strong winds from a hurricane far offshore have helped fuel the fast-moving blazes but there could be another culprit behind Hawaii's wildfires grass specifically Guinea grass in the mid-1800s non-native Hawaiians brought it to the islands to feed their cattle and in the decades since it's taken over especially an abandoned sugar plantations like this one after rainfall Guinea Grass Grows incredibly fast the plant can grow as quickly as six inches per day and ultimately reach a height of 10 feet and during droughts the dry stocks turn into fuel for what has become one of the deadliest wildfires in Hawaii's history LaGuardia?  Today I'm traveling from 
New York to Chicago on... this plane. It's an Airbus A319.  And I just so happened to have 
the blueprints or Aircraft Characteristics, Airport and 
Maintenance Planning documents... in my possession. As you can see here: economy class which is where I'll be sitting, 
has a seat pitch between 28 and 30 inches. Seat pitch is the fancy term used 
to describe the distance between where your seat begins and the seat in front of you ends. It's also colloquially known as 
legroom, for obvious reasons. Normally there's not enough. There’s actually an appropriate amount of space. Every time it’s like riding 
with seats at the knees.  It could be better. Airplane seats weren't always 
designed this way. So why have they changed? And how much legroom have we lost 
in the process? I'm going to try and find out. I'm 5’9” (175 cm) which according to Google, 
is precisely average. When I'm sitting down 
in an upright position My buttock-to-knee length... which, before you harass me
in the comments is the official measurements
that the FAA use in its testing ends up being about 20 inches. And when I got on this plane... I ended up being fairly comfortable because I have room between my knee 
and the seat in front of me.  What’s that look like?
Five, six inches? Yeah... thereabouts. That lovely voice 
that you just heard is my new Australian friend:
Chris. G’day mate, y’know? He and Brian, the two sweetest guys 
in the world who I had the privilege of 
sitting next to did not have the same spacious feeling 
that I did. There's not enough room for me because I'm a bit around six foot. Bit over six foot. And it’s hard for me to fit.  I'm not that big of a guy. I'm 5’10”. It's pretty, pretty crowded back here. And that might be because 
we have different buttock-to-knee ratios. Like the space between Brian's knee
and the chair in front of him was just... About three inches there. And Chris’s was... I can’t out a knife in there!  I don’t need to measure.  When I watch movies that... take place in 50s, 60s, 70s... everything seems so much more 
spacious and luxurious. And it's true. Take the DC-3 Which American Airlines began using in 1936. AA’s president at the time, 
C.R. Smith called it “The first airplane in the world that can make money just by 
hauling passengers.” And it was used for decades. It seated 28 people. And according to this 1957 
Quebecair diagram it had a luxurious seat pitch 
of 39 inches... which is like ten more inches 
than I had on my plane to Chicago. In the late 60s, 
Boeing’s 737 took over. And it became one of the most 
well-known and successful aircrafts of all time. Iterations on the plane are still used regularly today. These 2005 737 layout documents 
show that economy seats got anywhere from 30 to 34 inches 
in seat pitch. Today, the biggest competitor to the 737 
is the Airbus A320... which I flew on my way home 
rom Chicago to NYC. It's about twice as long as the DC-3 and can fit about 180 passengers. And like most planes today... seat pitch varies 
within the aircraft. On the lowest end for economy... it hovers around 28 to 29 inches. But there are different tiers. Like on my flight back 
from Chicago to New York we paid about $30 extra for a 
premium economy seat. For research purposes only. I took absolutely no pleasure in this. The people I sat next to 
weren't as chatty as they were on the way to Chicago. -Good luck.
-Bye! Miss you, Chris.  But I had way more legroom. Not only was I in Economy Plus but I also ended up in the 
notoriously spacious exit row. While, yes, I do get extra legroom. I also have a ton of 
extra responsibility in case this plane goes down. But anyways instead of just six inches between the seat in front of me 
and my knee I now had 14.  And it was luxurious. As if Vox had sprung for 
first class for me it would have cost $100 more 
than Economy Plus. But these schematics show 
that I would have gotten 39 inches of legroom... the same as the seats on the DC-3 
from back in the day. But instead... I was here in 
premium economy. As I sat there with 
no TV in front of me... I began to think about 
the economics of comfort. Way back in the day they didn't charge different prices based on whether you had a bulkhead seat
or a window or an aisle seat. That's Nicholas Rupp. He coauthored this 2022 paper 
that examined in-flight amenities by carriers provided 
by the US airlines.  In the past everything would be bundled together 
in your ticket price. You'd get a carry-on,
a bag... you usually got to 
choose your seats. But in the early 2000s because of rising fuel costs and 
a slew of difficult world events events that made people 
less inclined to travel... airliners started to unbundle 
all of those things... seemingly starting with baggage fees 
and eventually leading to charging customers more 
for seat selection. Airlines have done a good job at figuring out 
what consumers prefer and then being able 
to extract additional payment out of consumers. Over the years, these extras 
have added up. JetBlue and Spirit, for example... have increased their 
overall revenues by several percentage points 
through these fees alone... and this has forced customers to decide with their dollar what they want. I would never pay for more legroom. I'm just inherently going to try to buy 
the cheapest flight. I'm not going to like buy like a nicer seat
just for like leg room. If it weren’t so much more
I'd be willing to do that. I feel like people that are taller 
should get priority seating. It's not their choice to be tall. Flying isn't cheap. But if you zoom out and take a look at the Bureau of Transportation's 
historical statistics... and adjust for inflation, you can see that 
compared to 1993... domestic flights have actually 
gotten less expensive. Nick tells me that this is in part 
because of unbundling. And even most recently 
it's due to innovations like being able to have thinner seats. Yeah, that means changing 
the design of the seats to literally take out padding and depth 
from your seat back. For many airlines, 
this space saving meant that they were able to add 
an extra row of seats. But most seats got an inch closer together. For my experience, the seats were 
pretty comfortable though. I think we will not go back in time where they had one price for 
wherever you sat in coach. I believe what we're going to see is continue segmentation 
in the market offering a variety different 
classes of products... and then allow the consumer 
to self-select. [PA system chimes] As I disembarked from the plane I thought about the seats 
that I had been in... and all the people in the seats 
around me. And everyone I spoke to earlier that day. Like this one guy... if there could be a standard 
that was less cramped... I'd be thrilled. In 2018, Congress sought 
a standard like this by introducing 
the FAA Reauthorization Act... which in Section 577 called for minimum dimensions for passenger seats... including seat pitch as they are necessary for safety purposes. The bill was signed into law 
on October 5th, 2018 but as of 2023, there are still 
no regulations in part thanks to a March court decision 
that decided there wasn't enough clear
and indisputable evidence that small seats materially slow the exit of passengers 
in an emergency. Some, like Senator Tammy Duckworth think that the evacuation studies 
need to be redone to include people with disabilities
or increased risk of injury... to more accurately reflect 
a real world evacuation. But safety and comfort aren't 
necessarily intertwined. Comfort wasn't considered in the last study and the word doesn't show up at all 
in section 577. For now, seat pitch 
is still up to airlines... and comfort still comes at a cost. Once on my honeymoon, 
I got upgraded to first class... so it was quite nice. You can enjoy that but I'm not willing to pay that
on a regular basis. On both my flights I was lucky enough to not have 
anybody I sat behind recline their seats... even though that's not necessarily 
impacting legroom... it definitely makes me feel 
more claustrophobic. What about you? Are you pro- or anti-plane seat reclining? Let us know in the comments below. Take a look at this chart from 
The Washington Post. This line shows what's happened 
to the sale of smaller cars cars like sedans and 
station wagons in the US in the past 50 or so years. And this line shows what's 
taken their place. SUVs. So let's take a look at the year 
this trend started: 1975. That's when the US created two separate categories of vehicles:
The light truck... which included pickup trucks 
and work vehicles... and the passenger car. The passenger car category got 
stricter fuel economy and emissions standards than 
the light truck category. That's because trucks were 
mostly working vehicles. Everyday drivers weren't using 
them en masse. But the lighter standards for trucks 
inspired automakers to turn them into a car meant for 
regular consumers. “Okay, girls, we’re off in our 
new Jeep Cherokee.” Thus, the SUV is born and they've been dominating 
the market ever since. So some experts say this chart isn't just about consumer choice, 
but policy choice. a couple is searching for their first apartment together and they want it to be perfect because after all home is where the heart is and where the couch is and the TV and you know all the rest of their stuff but finding a place has not been easy especially with rent prices at an all-time high so after searching through hundreds of online listings when they finally find the perfect one they leap into action they're not going to let this golden opportunity pass them by but what if the perfect apartment it's really just a trap according to the FBI's internet crime complaint center rental scams have been on a steady rise over the last three years this includes over 350 million dollars in lost money in 2021 a 64 increase from the previous year so what exactly is a rental scam and why are they so effective when it comes to rental scams we're talking about essentially fake real estate listings fake rental listings it's not just the money that they're after they're also after your data they're looking to have you fill out rental applications and provide your identity credentials like your social security number your contact information potentially even your bank account or other Financial account information the couple is frustrated all they want to do is see the apartment in person but something is always coming up that makes it impossible they've picked up on some strange vibes from the emails with the Lister but the last thing they want to do is go back to the claustrophobic world of overpriced mediocre listings all they have to do is transfer the one thousand dollar deposit and they can see the place at the end of the month once the current renters are gone they're ready to send it after all it feels so real after imagining their lives in it falling for a rental scam isn't as simple as just being gullible and thinking you're too smart to be scammed or duped these types of scams are so successful because they play on deeply rooted psychological tenancies like the fear of missing out also known as fomo fomo relies on the fact that we really don't want to have regrets about missing out on social experiences that can include concerts and vacations this is especially true in a world where our homes are a focus of our social lives with a great apartment friends will always want to visit on top of that humans tend to think that the bad stuff won't happen to us it's called positive illusion and it basically means we optimistically assume the best of ourselves not the worst trait but if someone is convinced that they're too clever to be scammed they might miss the warning signs so how do we keep these age-old instincts at Bay and how do we spot a rental scam the scarcity in the rental market is absolutely making people vulnerable and susceptible to these types of scams there are a couple of key things that I always like people to keep in mind you really do need to physically see this property if every time you try to set something up or you're trying to talk with the listing agent or the the property owner or manager you get an excuse that's a huge red flag if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is brought to you by Zell who wants you to find your perfect home without getting scammed along the way only send money to those you know and trust Get this in the EU, 
the countries with the highest fertility rates are those with most women 
in the workforce. This map shows the EU's 
fertility rates by country... France, Sweden, Norway and all the countries in darker 
blues have rates close to 2.1. What demographers call 
the replacement rate needed to keep population steady. And well above the 
EU average of 1.5. Further south, Spain, Italy, 
Greece and countries in lighter shades of green 
have lower fertility rates. Traditional thinking might have you 
believe the higher fertility rates happening here are only possible if mothers stay home and 
out of the workforce. But look, the same countries 
with high fertility rates also have the highest share 
of women in the workforce... and in southern Europe, 
they have the lowest. Researchers argue this is due 
to a combination of factors that allow women to balance 
career and family goals... like subsidized childcare which is also prevalent 
in countries with higher fertility rates. In the world of boats there are little boats
and bigger boats. And then there are the 
really big boats. This is a cruise ship. The MSC Meraviglia built in Saint-Nazaire, France, 
in service since 2017... and christened by Sophia Loren. It is the—
[ship honks] Sorry, she is the biggest
cruise ship to have ever docked in New York City. There's a water park, 
a rope course, a spa... a mall, an arcade, a bowling alley, 
a casino a gym, two theaters five pools, nine restaurants, 
23 bars, 19 floors and enough room for 
5,655 passengers. and 1,536 crew members. Cruise ships are the biggest passenger vessels that humans have ever built. They can fit a small town's worth 
of people into a single vehicle... but they have a certain look to them. Far from the look of the big 
transatlantic ships of 100 years ago. So how did the biggest ships
we build wind up looking like this? Before cruise ships, the biggest
ships on earth were ocean liners. Built for one purpose: To take you somewhere. In the golden days of ocean travel before the airplane, people 
had no choice. They had to use ships. That's Peter Knego. He's a cruise journalist and ocean liner historian. Advertisements from this 
golden era of ocean liners boasted their speed across 
the Atlantic... and their luxurious comfort... which, given the conditions 
on the open ocean... wasn't always easy to achieve. If it's February and you're crossing
the Atlantic you're going to be absolutely miserable. And the last thing you want to do is realize that you're on a ship. What they used to do at the turn 
of the 20th century... they would design at least the first class... part of ships to look like 
great palatial hotels or even palaces themselves. Ocean liners like this one, 
the RMS Aquitania... tried to replicate all the amenities 
of life on land. There were restaurants, 
smoking rooms, gardens and a massive lounge with
painted ceilings. For the first class passengers at least, all of the comforts of a city... but at sea.  There was a picture of the Aquitania 
lined up against what was then the world's tallest building: The Woolworth Building. And the Aquitania was longer and taller 
than the Woolworth Building. And that was their way of saying 
this is like literally a floating city at sea. Just to inspire the confidence 
of passengers. But the rise of air travel meant that 
ships stopped being being the only way to cross oceans. And by the 1960s ocean liners were slowly becoming obsolete. As ocean liner companies struggled 
to sell tickets... they tried something different. “No longer do liners even attempt 
to compete with air speed.” “Now the word is luxury.” “A vacation at sea.” They continued transatlantic service in the northern Hemisphere’s
summer months. But in the winter months, 
more companies started offering leisure trips to warmer regions... and they started advertising 
ocean travel differently. From selling transportation 
to selling a vacation. The cruise ship was born. But they got off to a slow start. They didn't really take off until 
the TV show The Love Boat. which exploded the idea 
of cruising. It wasn't just something that 
your rich grandmother did and made cruising something 
for the mainstream. But as cruises started to become mainstream ocean liners had a problem. They were designed to go fast 
and consumed a lot of fuel. They sat low in the water,
which kept them stable in rough seas... but meant they could only access 
ports with deep harbors. They had separate sections for first, 
second, and third class... but that left a lot of passengers 
without access to amenities. and limited everyone's freedom of movement
throughout the ship. And compared to the full time 
cruise ships of the time ocean liners were huge. So they'd have to attract a lot of vacationers
to be profitable. Everything that had made ocean liners 
optimally designed for commuting quickly 
through rough waters... made them poorly fit for vacationing slowly 
through calm ones. As sea travel continued to dwindle even the largest ocean liner 
in the world, the SS France couldn't generate enough revenue 
to operate. And it sat idle for years until 1979 when Norwegian Caribbean Lines
purchased it and made an announcement that 
shocked the industry. They were going to convert the France into a full time cruise ship. Since speed was no longer a concern they shut down one engine room and removed two of the four propellers. To get passengers to islands 
without deep ports they installed tenders. These are smaller ships that 
ferry passengers to shore. To open up amenities to all passengers they took out the barriers 
between class sections and to attract enough vacationers they loaded the ship with 
a massive roster of entertainment options. There are sporting facilities and 
shopping centers, cinema... bars, a multi-confession church,
saunas kindergarten, party games, educational courses, 
library, charades. The ship began service in 1980, 
renamed the SS Norway. Where other ships made 3 to 4 stops in a weeklong cruise The Norway only made two. They weren't advertising a cruise 
to a destination. The ship was the destination itself. The Norway proved that size 
worked for cruise ships and it kicked off a race to build 
bigger and bigger ships... that changed the look of 
cruise ships forever. To fit more cabins and amenities, 
those superstructures that's all of this that rises above 
the deck, became taller... which hid the once prominent smokestacks. The smokestacks, because the ships 
are so tall the funnels are these tiny little afterthoughts. To fit even more cabins 
and amenities superstructures became wider, 
which shortened the bow. That's this forward part of the ship. There is no space where there's just 
an open deck where Jack and Rose can go stand and say they're king of the world 
or whatever. That's all gone. The bow didn't need to be long 
and pointed to cut through intense waves like on 
transatlantic liners. So builders rounded them out... giving even more square footage 
for amenities. When the Norway began service in 1980 it was the biggest operating 
passenger ship in the world. With an internal volume of over 
70,000 gross tons. But the ships built over 
the following decades make the Norway look tiny. And even make once legendary 
ocean liners look small. The ship that held the record for so many years was 
the Queen Elizabeth of 1940. She was 83,000 tons. People said they will never 
build a ship that big again. Well, now the new Royal Caribbean ships are literally three times the size. When this ship, the Icon of the Seas,
launches in 2024... it'll be all the way up here with a volume of over 250,000 gross tons. That elegance of design is missing I think, on a lot of the big new ships. It's just the way things go. And, you know, we all miss 
what came before and pine on. And I'm sure people in 50 
or 100 years from now will pine on about how great-looking the ships were back in the 2020s. There are over 320 cruise ships sailing around the world 
right now... but there's only one ocean liner left. The Queen Mary 2, also built 
in Saint-Nazaire, France in service since 2004 and 
christened by Elizabeth II.  Still in regular service from Southampton 
to New York City. Before Barbie was 
a surgeon, an astronaut or a marine biologist. She was a German sex worker
named Lilli. The Lilli doll debuted 
in Germany in 1955 and was based on a popular comic 
in the tabloid newspaper Bild.  In the comic, Lilli 
seduces wealthy men and they give her clothes, 
presents, and money. Lilli is kind of cheeky 
and irreverent. In this comic, a man tells her that 
two-piece swimsuits are banned from the beach. “Oh,” she says. I”n your opinion, which part 
should I take off?” In her book Forever Barbie MG Lord writes that Lilli 
was a gold digger the kind of German woman who may have 
known hardship during the war. But as long as there were 
men with checkbooks she was not going to suffer again. Unlike her American successor the Lilli doll was definitely not 
marketed to children. She was sold at newsstands, 
not toy shops. And the ads were... something. One suggests that men hang her from their car’s 
rearview mirror: Your lucky star on the road. My personal favorite: 
Whether more or less naked Lilli is always discreet. In 1956, Mattel co-founder 
Ruth Handler saw a Lilli doll while on vacation. She brought a dozen back home, 
and three years later the first Barbie was on store shelves. it's four o'clock on a jury Sunday afternoon Alex is enjoying some TV when an emergency broadcast interrupts the down time breaking news the news anchor delivers shocking information with considerate urgency eyewitnesses have spotted large chunks falling from Great Heights at remarkable speed the sky it would appear it's falling there isn't much time so the safest thing to do is to leave home and to drive out of range but that's absurd no one would seriously believe the sky is falling right Alex I'm talking to you get outside better safe than sorry time to act fast and Trust the authorities unless of course it's all a scam [Music] when it comes to our money we want to feel absolutely secure so what happens when the scammer claims to be the people we trust with our money year after year imposter scams are the most common type of fraud the FTC recorded 2.3 billion in losses in 2021 from imposter scams which is almost double the amount from the previous year that is such an unreal amount of growth it must be criminal and it is fortunately there are people out there trying to fight them hi I'm Eva Velasquez I have been fighting scams for decades let me walk you through what a bank imposter scam actually looks and feels like all of the sudden your phone rings caller ID says name of your bank and they tell you we've detected fraud on your account and your heart is absolutely racing you need to react right away generally you're going to be asked for an awful lot of information I need your name I need your date of birth I need your mother's maiden name they're going to keep asking you for as much data as you're willing to provide as soon as you send that information you no longer have access to that account and your money is gone and the scammer has now ghosted you Alex steps out of their home terrified of being crushed by a chunk of Falling Sky they take a cautious step forward and nothing in fact it's rather nice out the front door locks behind them this isn't good Alex is locked out of their own house by the people they put their trust in the sky was never falling of course it wasn't the real danger was the voice behind the megaphone Bank imposter scams utilize authority figures to trick us into acting impulsively humans are predisposed to obey Authority stemming from an evolutionary need to build societies make decisions and survive while we have the ability to disobey Authority it's less stressful to go along with the flow especially when we have something to gain such as obeying a bank employee who claims to be helping us save our money not to mention any decision becomes more psychologically difficult when compounded by scarcity research has found that when faced with scarcity our brains become so consumed with survival that our cognitive skills decline we literally have less brain power and make worse decisions there are a few ways that you can protect yourself from Bank imposter scams please go directly to the source verify with your bank call the known number for your bank log in on a different device to your online account and get in touch with your bank ask for advice from someone you trust there are plenty of resources out there brought to you by Zell who'd like to remind you to only send money to those you know and trust This is the logo design for the 
2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. It's hosted by Australia 
and New Zealand and the logo reflects some of 
the unique features of this year's tournament. First, these 32 squares arranged in a tight pattern surrounding a geometric 
illustration of a soccer ball mark this year's expansion of he Women's World Cup 
from 24 to 32 teams all converging here to represent 
their home countries and celebrate unity around 
the game of soccer. The colors of the squares aren't drawn 
from anyone's flag. They're meant to invoke the diverse natural elements of the 
two host countries: Their mountains, water, cities... earth, sky, and rainforests. This is the first Women's World Cup to have more than one host nation, 
and the art at the bottom represents the indigenous people 
of these two countries. The image on the left was 
designed by Maori textile artist Fiona Collis of New Zealand and the one on the right is by Kalkatungu and indigenous Australian artist 
Chern’ee Sutton. Patterns in these squares along with the circle making up 
the top part of the logo... all draw influence from 
Indigenous patterns in textiles and paintings from 
these two regions. I have a bunch of patients who are 
waiting for it, right? They've been approved— They've not been approved. They're waiting and hoping 
to be approved. These two doctors have 
conflicting viewpoints on euthanasia in their country. I think Canada's approach to assisted
dying has been successful. I am very concerned about medical assistance in dying laws in Canada. Euthanasia became legal in Canada in 2016. They call it “medical assistance in dying”
or MAID for short. Since then, the number of assisted deaths 
in Canada has risen to over 10,000 people in 2021. That's more people by raw number 
than any other country where assisted dying is legal. In 2021, eligibility for MAID expanded 
to include people who are not nearing the end 
of their lives. And starting next year... that will include people 
suffering solely from serious mental conditions, too. Our participants are here to engage in 
a new kind of debate. Yeah, that's where you and I 
would disagree. I know.  Where instead of fighting over 
unvetted talking points... we ask each expert to pick three facts that their opponent would have to 
concede are true. Dr. Maher, do you agree that 
these facts are true? I do. Dr. Green, do you agree that 
these facts are true? Yes, I do. They'll present their facts and 
they'll each get a chance to respond with a footnote. And after the fact exchange... we'll also have four additional rounds to further clarify their positions. This is a fact-checked debate 
about euthanasia... in Canada. Here we go. In Canada assisted dying is a rights-based issue... resulting from constitutional court challenges. The legalization of assisted dying 
did not come about due to voter initiated ballots, as happened 
in some US states... or because the government thought 
it was a good idea. Both of which can change with 
shifting political winds. Importantly, these court cases were 
brought and won by people with both terminal and non-terminal illnesses. It is true that court cases... gave people who didn't have 
terminal illness... the right to have assisted deaths. But one of the plaintiffs 
in that key case... Jean Truchon, who had cerebral palsy... when he was considering 
getting assisted death what he said was that it was 
the loneliness... that was brought on by the pandemic... that was leading him to 
make that choice. So I'm really concerned about 
what that means for people in Canada... who will make choices to die. Not for medical reasons alone, 
or maybe not even primarily because of medical reasons but because of social reasons: 
poverty... isolation, loneliness. That worries me a great deal. Jean Truchon ultimately 
led his challenge to the new law for assisted dying... because he was about to lose function 
in his remaining limb. That was his initial incentive. Ultimately, this comes down to 
a question of rights. And who, if anyone, 
controls our lives. My name is Dr. Stefanie Green and I'm a provider of assisted dying 
in British Columbia, Canada. I've always been taught about 
the importance of patient-centered care. And I have found it to be 
profoundly meaningful to be involved at this time in their life... and to provide and facilitate 
their final wishes. There are 15 countries that allow some form of medically assisted dying... Including ten US states and Washington, DC... that allow people with a six month prognosis... to self-administer a prescribed drug. Canada is one of eight countries that allows assisted dying for people without a terminal diagnosis. Next year, it will join most of these countries in extending eligibility to people whose only condition 
is a mental illness. In these countries, cases involving primarily psychiatric conditions are rare. In Belgium and the Netherlands... they made up about 1% of all cases. Canada's assisted dying laws lack the safeguards that 
other countries have. There is no requirement that all reasonable treatments at least have been tried by the patient. The doctors are able to 
initiate the conversation. There is no review process. There's nobody looking to see whether people in Canada licensed 
to do this... have in fact followed the law 
and followed the rules. Canada rejected paternalism in medicine
quite a few decades ago. The Supreme Court decision states that a patient... is not required to undertake medical treatments... that are unacceptable to the individual. We have long accepted that patients 
can refuse medical treatment. Even if the result of that refusal is death. There's actually a very rigorous process in place for this assisted dying model. There's a number of eligibility criteria,
but once they are met there are on top of that, a number of 
procedural safeguards. Of course, we're in complete agreement that paternalism is not a good thing and every Canadian is free 
to make their own choices. But when we're talking about assisted death we're talking about choices made 
at a point in time when a person is profoundly vulnerable. My name is John Maher. I'm a psychiatrist with a community 
mental health team in Ontario, Canada. My goal is to help my patients live their lives the way they want... and to do all we can to ensure 
that mental illness... and all that follows from that 
doesn't keep them from living full, rich lives. There was an initial concern that people would request assisted dying... because they couldn't access palliative care. But the data has put that fear to rest. Over 80% of the people who receive MAID 
in Canada... are receiving palliative or hospice care 
at the time of their death. For those few who are not... 88% of them have access 
to such care. Compare that to the wider 
Canadian population and all causes of death when statistics suggest that only a minority of people 
are receiving palliative care before they die. The data that you're referencing... comes from the forms that are filled out 
by the MAID providers... and it tells us nothing, nothing at all, about the quality 
of the palliative care. We also know from the data you're citing 
that 21% of people who... who received MAID had palliative care 
for less than two weeks. While it's true, we don't have 
an objective marker... for the quality of palliative care received. What we do know from lots of data... is that since MAID was legalized 
in Canada... we have a significant increase in the funding for research for palliative care
and an increase in the number of people receiving and 
dying with palliative care at home. The vast majority of people who 
access MAID in Canada are patients with a cancer diagnosis. The next most common underlying illness are end-stage organ failures. So end-stage heart disease end-stage lung disease, 
end-stage liver disease... and neurologic conditions,
they’re around the 10% to 15% range. The wait times for MAID
in Canada are shorter than the wait times to get a lot of specialized services. That might be pain clinics, 
psychiatric care... long-term care homes, 
veterans’ benefits... supportive housing, community-based care. That's not right. My job as a MAID provider requires me by law to ensure that my patients have been offered 
the resources and services that could potentially reduce their suffering. I agree we need to 
reduce wait times but at some point when potentially 
helpful resources... are not reasonably available we can no longer hold individuals hostage 
to society's failings. It seems to me that 
the greatest failing we're talking about here 
is a society that's willing to help its citizens die... rather than provide the services... that we know help, 
that we know work... that we know reduce suffering. Killing people while 
they're on wait lists... is profoundly immoral. National polls consistently show that the Canadian public supports 
assisted dying. This includes people who self-identify as religious and people 
with disabilities. These polls were conducted 
before our law changed to allow assisted dying, in the first five years of legalized practice... and in every year since the amendment 
that extended eligibility outside the end of life context. Two polls that asked Canadians about their views on MAID 
for mental illness  came back with very different results. One poll showed over 60% of Canadians in favor. Another poll, one in particular looking 
at MAID for mental illness showed that only 31% of Canadians 
support it. I don't think Canadians have 
a full understanding... of what is happening. But those organizations that are 
focused on what's happening... and drawing attention to it namely the 137 disability organizations in Canada... the national indigenous organizations... the mental health organizations, 
the United Nations... everyone who is looking at this 
and understanding what is going on is gravely concerned... about the discriminatory impact 
of this legislation. Canadians have been talking about 
and debating assisted dying since the 90s. There are multiple reports, 
multiple committees... multiple news stories, 
multiple court cases... to suggest that Canadians are unaware 
of what the issue is is not exactly fair to 
the Canadian public. There is no consensus among Canadian psychiatrists  on when any particular psychiatric illness 
is incurable. And under the law that comes into effect 
in 2024 in Canada a psychiatric illness must be incurable and a person must be in a state 
of irreversible decline. But we can't say who that is. Consensus in health care 
is rarely required. There is no consensus amongst doctors... about whether they can 
accurately predict a prognosis of six months. Yet it's an eligibility requirement 
for assisted dying in several countries, including 
the United States. However, in Canada, for MAID to proceed... two independent clinicians 
must be of the opinion... that the patient's condition is incurable. When someone has a terminal illness... say cancer, we have 
a pretty good idea... of how long they might live. May not be precise, but we have 
a good idea. In mental illness, we have no idea. People get better after five years, 
after ten years. These are very, very different conditions... very different circumstances. Now, we'll move on to the additional rounds. Questions. Personal experiences. Debunk. Uncertainties. Stefanie, can you ask 
John a question that helps clarify his position? John, do you believe every person with a mental health disorder 
can be treated successfully? Because if not and they have capacity... should they not be allowed to access
the same legal health care available to everyone else? We both know the majority of people 
living with mental illness... have full capacity. They can make their own 
treatment decisions. To answer your question, 
can we treat everyone? I don't think that's the right question. The question is, can we 
reduce suffering? Can we help people cope 
with suffering? There are certainly going to be people whose illness will not get better, 
their physical illness. But can we mitigate their experience 
of their symptoms? Can we bring support... care, compassion, and love 
to them in a way that makes their life for them 
worthwhile? I'm not talking about denying anyone... the option of choosing MAID. To be frank, everyone can already 
choose suicide. What we're working to do is to ensure that every person is treated 
with respect, dignity... provided with care and support... that we know can help 
reduce suffering. Okay, John, would you like 
to ask Stefanie a question? Only one in three Canadians have access to mental health care
who need it. Only one in five children. We know from disability organizations 
across the country... that disability supports are 
completely inadequate... to live a meaningful life. People are suffering... in ways that we can do 
something about. I'm asking you... would you support providing MAID 
to someone... while they're waiting for treatment or care... that could help them? But it's down the road a bit. I would happily stand with you  and call for our government to do better 
than what it's doing. I think it's a separate issue. There can come a time,
on a case-by-case basis... Every situation is individual,
every situation is unique and every case needs to be
assessed in a unique way. There may be a time
when a certain treatment is available, too far away, much too expensive, inaccessible to the patient. In this case, we have to seriously consider not holding them hostage to society's failing and to consider offering MAID if it's truly what they need. A tough situation. I grant you that. John, can you tell us something 
from your personal experience that has strengthened your conviction 
on this issue? As a psychiatrist... who works with a community 
mental health team... supporting people with the most serious 
mental illnesses... We are becoming overwhelmed... by what MAID has introduced... into our clinical worlds. I have patients who are already saying... “I'm going to stop treatment.” “I'm not going to keep trying.” “I can die.” Our efforts to help them stick with 
the very challenging and sometimes long-term treatment 
required to heal and recover is being undermined. We're not just doing suicide prevention anymore. We're doing MAID prevention. I'm going to tell you about 
a gentleman I’ll call Ray who was 62 years old
with metastatic lung cancer. And Ray had been asking for MAID 
for quite some time. And as he and I worked through 
the rigorous eligibility criteria... at some point, I was able 
to sit in front of him and tell him he was eligible 
for this care. And when I sat there and did that, 
I saw in him... a physical transformation, which I've learned 
actually happens... almost every time. I saw his shoulders relax. I think I saw him smile for 
the first time since I'd met him... and it was immediately followed by 
an expression of gratitude for the mere possibility. He decided to proceed with MAID and we held it not long after, 
in the rooftop garden of the facility in which he was living. And as is required by law I was seeking his final consent before I administered the medication. He was surrounded by his friends... and as he gave me that consent he reached out and grabbed my hand. He looked at me and he said, “I know this is going to 
sound odd, Dr. Green but I think you saved my life.” And it reminds me all the time... that for the people who actually need
and want this care it is tremendously important. Stefanie, what is one piece of 
specific misinformation... that you've heard about MAID 
that you'd like to correct? Recently, a number of eye catching headlines have appeared in the news 
about Canadians requesting assisted dying due to the threat 
of homelessness... or the fact that they're 
living in poverty. And while it's true that 
anyone can ask for an assessment of eligibility for MAID... and those unacceptable social inequities might be contributing towards suffering. The law is actually perfectly clear 
and Canadians cannot access MAID based on those factors alone. John, would you like to clarify 
a piece of misinformation? Some MAID providers have argued that MAID... for non-terminal conditions... is not suicide. For decades, suicide 
has been defined as taking steps to arrange 
your own death. Some have said that what makes MAID 
different than suicide... is that it's well thought out. It's not impulsive. But in fact, in one US survey of 
over 1.4 million Americans 80% of people reported that they thoughtfully planned 
their suicide... Which means that we have to consider where it fits into all of our 
suicide prevention efforts... and whether it undermines those 
very directly. And now for a round called Uncertainties. John, what is something 
we don't know about this issue that we need 
more research on? Canada currently collects data... on the illnesses— the physical illnesses that lead to 
requests for MAID. What we don't have is data... that considers the socioeconomic reasons
people might request it. And how significant an impact... that might have on the request and perhaps whether it drives it completely. We don't know whether poverty, 
homelessness... being on a waitlist for treatment... being refused disability benefits... we don't know why... people are choosing MAID 
and we should. On this point, John, I think we're 
almost in agreement. Canada has recently expanded 
the type of data it's... gathering on patients who 
request and receive MAID. And I'd be curious to see if it mirrors 
what we know from international jurisdictions. Everywhere where this data
is collected elsewhere... we know that it is the 
socially advantaged... who are accessing assisted dying not the socially disadvantaged. So I'll be curious to see 
if that plays out in the Canadian context, which is what 
I expect to be frank. That said, I think we do 
have a good idea of how people describe 
their own suffering... and therefore why they're requesting MAID. Primarily, it's for people who can 
no longer do the things that bring meaning to their lives... who no longer are able to do what we call the 
activities of daily living... who've lost a sense of dignity 
or independence. And I think if we could find research that would help us better understand... what leads to that type 
of suffering... potentially there's a way 
we can learn to treat it. I'm concerned about this law... having, I'll acknowledge, 
the unintended... but profoundly disturbing consequence... of having people feel like 
they're a burden and that they should choose 
death over life. That they should no longer demand of their government, 
of their fellow citizens... that care and support be provided. Having spent time with many suffering individuals, 
I can tell you... that Canadians are extremely grateful 
for this option. In a testament to the quality of care 
being provided... not a single person has been charged
with misappropriate action. I think Canada's approach 
to assisted dying is more than adequate. It is solid. It is good, and for some, 
it may be a model... for considering care 
in their own region. “Vengeance is mine!” There is a lot of weird 
Barbie history but my favorite might be what happened to Teen Talk
Barbies in 1993. “Hi. I’m Teen Talk Barbie the spokesdoll for the BLO.” An artist and activist group called the Barbie Liberation Organization. Bought a bunch of 
Teen Talk Barbies and talking GI Joe dolls  “To open Barbie insert a screwdriver firmly 
into the joint at the base of the spine.” They performed these “surgeries” 
on the dolls to switch their voice boxes. “Dead men tell
no tales.” “You look terrific.” Then BLO members, 
repackage the dolls  and put them back on
store shelves so people would buy them 
for kids just in time for Christmas. “We've turned against our creators... because they use us 
to brainwash kids.” The operation, along with 
their amazingly strange videos were enough to create 
a lot of media hype. “Is nothing sacred if protesters can tamper with the voices of children's icons, 
what can be next?” Want to go shopping? In this low-lying car I drive in I've been noticing something lately. When I'm sitting in traffic I either can't see past 
the cars in front of me... or the cars around me 
are towering over me. And it turns out there's 
a big reason for that. The production of passenger cars 
like sedans and wagons for sale in the US, has been in freefall 
since 1975... and in their place has been 
the steady growth in the production of SUVs. Last year, SUVs and trucks made up 80% 
of all new car sales. Compare that to 52% in 2011. The fact that Americans like big cars  probably won't shock anyone. They are everywhere. Even in my parking scarce neighborhood 
in Brooklyn. But the reasons behind this transformation are more than just cultural. It all goes back to a 50-year-old policy that would kick off a huge shift 
in the way US cars are designed. So I'm driving from my home 
in Brooklyn, New York to a beach in Rhode Island for 
a summer vacation. And along the way, I'm going to 
piece together why big cars took over America. New York was the 45th state to officially succumb to the takeover 
of SUVs and trucks in 2014 according to this Washington Post analysis. Alaska was the first state to go 
big-car dominant in 1988. So I'm wondering if you have any advice for things they should look out for 
on the road. Anywhere that you stop count the number of SUVs versus 
the number of passenger cars. Okay. I’m in the Costco parking lot... 
filled with SUVs. One, two, three... ...four, five... ...six, seven... ...eight, nine, ten, 
11 SUVs in a row. I think that is my new record. Once you learn about how much big cars dominate the road, 
it's like you can't unsee it. People have lots of reasons 
for choosing a big car. And certainly the infrastructure 
in the US supports that choice. Unlike a lot of other countries our built environment revolves 
around cars. We have wide roads and wide, 
plentiful parking spaces and homes with plenty of parking. I arrived in Connecticut a state that succumbed to 
light truck dominance in 2016... and pulled into a rest stop where I interviewed Thomas Bochenek who was on a cross-country road trip
with his wife. It's very comfortable to drive. Well, I think the bigger the car, 
the more you... you have a feeling of security. You know, the smaller the car, 
you know... the more likely I think about 
getting into an accident and being hurt. It has no trouble pulling this 
almost 7,000 pound (3,175 kg) trailer. In other countries one deterrent for big cars 
is that they cost so much to fill up 
with gas. But due to low taxes 
on gas in the US... fuel is extremely cheap compared 
to other countries. But there's another overlooked bias towards big cars related to why SUVs exist in the first place. In the 1970s there was a shortage of 
foreign oil in the US. “1973 dramatized US dependence 
on foreign oil.” So the US government set rules
for automakers to start making cars 
more fuel efficient to lessen our dependance on the whims 
of the global oil market. By 1985, new cars had to get 
27.5 miles per gallon or roughly double their fuel efficiency. These new rules applied to cars 
like sedans and station wagons under a category known as passenger cars. But there were types of vehicles 
the US government exempted from these rules. Things like pickup trucks which everyday drivers weren't really 
driving at the time. And the idea was if these 
are working vehicles used by farmers, construction crews companies that are hauling freight... those vehicles need to be able 
to do their job without being choked by 
emissions controls and without being held to unrealistic 
fuel economy standards. So passenger cars got one set 
of strict rules... and this other category 
called light trucks... got another set of more relaxed standards. This regulation created an incentive for carmakers to transform light trucks into 
a vehicle for everyday use. Put in a radio, lots of 
cargo space and comfy seats and voila. That's how we got the SUV. “Okay, girls, we’re off in our 
new Jeep Cherokee.” “Behind that classic appearance, 
it's rugged and powerful.” An automaker needs to spend less money and less time on fuel economy 
and emissions improvement if they're making and selling an SUV because it falls under a category that is less stringently regulated. We had the Wagoneer, but 
it was very low volume very bespoke, very expensive. So only very few people bought it. People who lived in Manhattan 
would go to the Hamptons or go to northern New York State 
to go skiing. And that's how the SUV 
started off life. This is Ralph Gilles, head of design
at Stellantis a conglomerate of car companies 
that includes Jeep. One of the early SUVs was
the Chevy Blazer... built on the frame of the 
Chevy S-10 truck. This is the traditional definition of an SUV. If it was built on the frame of a truck. And to meet the legal definition 
of a light truck it had to have some clearance angles 
and dimensions just right. Taking a utilitarian vehicle 
and turning it into a... almost a premium luxury device
that happened to be utilitarian. Then comes the Grand Cherokee. The Jeep Grand Cherokee was built the way passenger cars are: 
in one piece, or unibody. These two types of car construction,
frame based and unibody... today form the distinction between 
traditional SUVs and the new, increasingly popular 
category of crossover. They're more efficiently packaged. You don't have the frame. The Grand Cherokee was part of 
the early success story story of SUVs in the 90s 
and 2000s.  One that continues today. This bias towards light trucks 
is why a company like Volkswagen which once sold primarily passenger cars has discontinued a lot of them today... like the Passat in favor of SUVs and crossovers. And they've stopped producing 
all of their wagons... including the Jetta Wagon I’m in. And a company like Ford has stopped producing all of their passenger cars except for the iconic Mustang. Okay. I'm going to see if anyone at this 
car dealership will talk to me. Buick was always car, really. That was mostly sedans. And then just with the market shift we actually don't even sell 
a Buick sedan anymore. They don't even make a Buick sedan. It's all crossovers. When was the last time you guys carried, like, a Buick passenger car? Oh, it was like three or four 
years ago. And how many did you have 
on the lot? Like 1 to 100 of, you know, SUVs. We're here to sell cars. We want 
to sell what people want. If they were here, if people didn't want them, 
I'm glad they're not here anymore, you know? So this chart starts to make a lot more sense. 1975 was the year these 
fuel economy standards for sedans and wagons were passed... the same ones that didn't apply as strictly 
to SUVs and trucks. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing because the automakers have been 
marketing SUVs more preferentially than passenger cars. They've been putting more research and development into creating more models that fit into the SUV category. And they've made it so that it's 
an easier decision to get into an SUV than it is to 
get into a passenger car. As of 2016, our fuel economy standards shifted. Vehicles are still separated by 
the stricter standard for passenger cars and looser standard 
for light trucks. But within those categories, 
there are more breakdowns. Regulators multiply a car's wheelbase length by its width to get a footprint. And larger cars within each category 
get weaker rules. That means that carmakers are 
not only incentivized to phase out passenger cars 
in their fleet... but they are pushed to make 
each category bigger. The Toyota Camry got both 
longer and wider... and the Toyota RAV4 did, too. I've now reached Rhode Island... the very last state in the country
to go light truck dominant. We have started the inevitable transition
to electric vehicles but... You're still talking about a larger vehicle with higher ground clearance, 
that's heavier and taller. It's still going to be less... energy efficient. Whether it's an electric car or an internal combustion 
powered car. One sobering impact of big cars is the threat it poses to pedestrians. One study found that replacing 
the growth in SUVs with cars would have averted over 
a thousand pedestrian deaths. People on foot get hit higher and in more vulnerable regions 
when hit by an SUV... or a truck rather than a passenger car. Before hitting the beach, I stopped 
at my friend Kevin Wright's house. He’s bucked the SUV trend 
and drives a Honda Fit... a car that was discontinued in 2020. We had our daughter about 17 months ago... just kind of making sure that 
everybody has enough space to be comfortable as well as being safe. It gets good gas mileage and 
thinking about long term... you know, climate change is happening. What can we do to minimize  our carbon footprint 
as much as we can? So we were thinking about the second car... you know, maybe getting an SUV in that situation, but ultimately decided 
to kind of go the other direction and and got an e-bike. You have arrived. Even though we're in Rhode Island which was the last holdout 
for SUV dominance there are still a lot of SUVs here. I'm curious if you think there's 
any political will or urgency to change this trend towards bigger cars. That's you know, that's something that's— that has environmental concerns. That’s something that has economic concerns with how much we are reliant on oil. It also has to do with safety. You know, pedestrian safety, cyclists safety. So there is a desire among the younger people and more politically active people
to try to make it so that an SUV is not the default vehicle choice for American families. The US is unlikely to become a 
small car country any time soon. But this dramatic transition to big cars wasn't just about consumer choice. It was enabled by a policy choice. So if we want our roads to look different... we can try and start there. stewardess uniforms of the 1940s were heavily influenced by government restrictions on fabric during World War II you can see some of that influence here in these military style suits which featured straighter fits Square shoulders plain colors and small accessories like these hats these designs reflected a global fashion trend at the time called the utility era when designers around the world had to work within wartime clothing restrictions by the 50s and 60s stewardess uniforms became more fashionable and stylized coinciding with commercial air travels growing reputation for luxury famous designers worked with Airlines to design new uniforms which reflected that era's fascination with space travel and bold patterns the 1970s was known as The Playboy bunnies of the sky period in flight attendant uniforms when Airlines sexualize flight attendants with new uniform designs to sell plane tickets a notable example from this time period was Southwest Airlines hot pants now flight attendant uniform designs lean toward a more professional look not too far off the original utility era uniforms of the 1940s You can't find a great white shark in any aquarium in the world, 
but you can find  whale sharks, the biggest 
fish in the sea. What gives? The last time an adult white shark 
was put on display at an aquarium in Japan, it died 
three days after it arrived. The only aquarium to pull it off  was the Monterey Bay Aquarium
in California. Between 2004 and 2011 they displayed six white sharks... the longest stayed over six months 
before it was released. One challenge is that 
great white sharks are ram ventilators. To breathe they have to move 
forward through the water with their mouths open so they weaken whenever 
they're caught. The Monterey Bay Aquarium monitor the sharks in an ocean pen before transporting them to the 
aquarium in a specialized tank with life support. Another challenge is that adult 
white sharks eat mammals. So the aquarium brought in 
baby sharks that were around four feet long, 
but they're used to moving quickly through 
the open ocean. And so they had a problem bumping 
into the walls of the tank. In 2011, they released the last shark 
after 55 days on display. It died shortly after being released and the aquarium hasn't tried again since. Raise the voting age in this country... from 18 to 25. Vivek Ramaswamy is running 
for president as a Republican and he's pretty popular. A recent poll in Iowa 
put him in third behind Donald Trump 
and Ron DeSantis and technically he doesn't 
want to raise the voting age for everyone. He says that people 18 to 25 
would still be able to vote if they pass a civics test or serve in the military 
or are a first responder. But let's look at the views that 
people that age tend to hold. Among 18 to 29 year olds, 
three out of four say abortion should be legal 
in all or most cases. Two out of three of them say 
gun laws should be stricter. Only one out of ten say gun laws 
should be less strict. We also know that in the 
last presidential election young people voted for 
the Republicans less than any other 
age group. So maybe not a coincidence 
that Republicans are now trying to limit students 
ability to vote. Idaho just passed a law prohibiting the use of student IDs for voting. Texas is trying to pass a law that would eliminate every 
campus polling place in the state. And the list goes on. And you can now add to it the idea that we should... “Now I am become death.” “The destroyer of worlds.” P.O. Box 1663 was listed as a Santa Fe, New Mexico address in 1943. And over the next few years, 
about 300 babies... had it listed as the place of birth... on their birth certificate. Because the real location was a secret. Everything sent to that P.O. box
ended up here: 33 miles from Santa Fe at a site 
also known...  as P.O. Box 180, Project Y, and  Los Alamos, New Mexico. A secret city had been built there. And it was home to a community
of scientists. “Scientists of many nations.” The scientists who created 
the first nuclear bomb. They lived a couple hundred miles from the site where their invention would be tested. “New Mexico desert.” Trinity. How did laboratory director 
J. Robert Oppenheimer... end up building a town... and testing the first nuclear bomb... here? Albert Einstein sent this letter 
on August 2nd, 1939. He sent it to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Drawing from the work of physicists Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard... Einstein warned of a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium. “The splitting of the uranium atom...” Which could lead to extremely powerful bombs
of a new type. Bombs that either side might develop and use. After a couple of years of study as well as the American entry into World War II, in June 1942, the Army Chief of Staff established a temporary headquarters... at 270 Broadway in New York City. The Manhattan Project had begun. And it was called a new "Manhattan District" for the Army Corps of Engineers. This map shows contemporary boundaries  for Army engineer districts.
Administrative areas. The Manhattan District encompassed 
all these smaller districts because of its larger scope: to build an atomic weapon. Less prominent secret locations included a nuclear reactor under a 
University of Chicago football field... the Alabama Ordnance Works 
for producing heavy water... and many others. 1942 and 1943 saw the establishment 
of three major sites. It began with Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 
sometimes called Y-12. A large plant for the enrichment of uranium and production of some plutonium. Nestled between mountains, it became... “...a city where 75,000 people 
worked in absolute secrecy on history's most sensational secret.” Two other major locations 
were established in 1943. The Hanford Engineer Works 
in Washington state was responsible for much of 
the production of plutonium. The top of this water tower there read... “Silence means security.” But Hanford and Oak Ridge were nothing 
without the third site. The army needed a place 
to create the bomb. This is the Los Alamos Lament... a poem sometimes sung, about life
in Los Alamos... written by technical Sergeant Ralph Gates. It begins... “I'm just a PO number.” Specific numbers vary. The third verse reads... [woman’s voice singing]
“He put us on a mountain... ...outside of Santa Fe... ...where the only sign of wildlife 
are GI wolves at bay.” Oppenheimer, based in Berkeley... had believed that a central lab was key. While they considered Oak Ridge 
and Chicago as lab locations, neither was remote enough. An option near LA 
wasn’t isolated. One closer to Reno could be hit 
by heavy snows. General Leslie Groves Jr. of 
the Army Corps of Engineers ran the project. Oppenheimer and Groves agreed... that New Mexico offered 
the security of isolation... as well as familiarity, since Oppenheimer had spent time in the area. The ideal site sat on the Pajarito Plateau. It was isolated but also protected by its altitude 
and surrounding geography. Jemez Springs, chosen first, 
proved to be too difficult. The land was too difficult to acquire and the terrain was too rugged. But nearby Los Alamos was atop 
a table land between mesas... which made it easy to control entry 
and control any accidents. Much of it was on already federally-owned land as well. The only existing structure was a small school that had opened in 1935. The owners sold. The Secretary of War wrote 
the Secretary of Agriculture about the military necessity of acquiring the remaining 
federally-owned lands. The request was granted for 54,000 acres 
of a demolition range. Los Alamos was activated... on April 1st, 1943. P.O. Box 1663 transformed from an outdoorsy ranch school with buildings like this... into a community doing the most advanced research 
in the world. Roads were quickly developed, but 
the town was kept isolated. Population grew from 1500 people 
to 5700 by 1945. So rapid that hutments were a 
common form of accommodation. Here you can see the wash drying 
by Quonset huts. Apartment buildings were also available. These accommodations mingled next to facilities for graphite fabrication... and the cyclotron
and Van de Graaff machines. In early years, Los Alamos housed 
the world's finest researchers. Here, Dorothy McKibbin in charge of receiving new personnel,
sits next to Oppenheimer. He's chatting with physicist 
Victor Weisskopf. Here's Enrico Fermi on a hike. And this is Edward Teller's 
ID badge. He was later called the father 
of the hydrogen bomb. The Medical Corps colonel wrote
Leslie Groves that this intellectual group created challenges 
for a military operation. "The large percentage of intellectuals...
will require and seek more medical care than the average person.” Other challenges? One-fifth of the married women 
became pregnant in Los Alamos... making maternity wards a necessity. The past and atomic future intersected. Ice was cut from nearby ponds... and stored in ice houses... because electric fridges were 
too hard to get. At the time, the Bendix washer 
was revolutionizing laundry. By 1943, a classified ad in 
the Santa Fe New Mexican was looking for one to be shipped 
to P.O. Box 1663 for wartime work. But cultural phenomena... as varied as they were, 
like this Los Alamos band... they had one real purpose: Building a bomb. And they needed a place to test 
the bomb that they built. This is the base camp at Trinity site. A rapidly established headquarters created for testing the first atomic bomb. The desert training center north of Rice, California, 
was runner up. But it wasn't isolated enough 
or close enough to Los Alamos. Located in the Jornada del Muerto Valley. The winning site was selected
with a more extreme version of the Los Alamos criteria. Flat terrain to minimize blast effects. Isolated, yet close enough 
to Los Alamos. Good weather and nearby
to highways like US-85 and 380. More than 200 residents settled at the camp. First, there was a 100 ton 
explosives test in May 1945. Then they prepared the 
Gadget nuclear device. And on July 16th, 1945... they conducted the test. “First try out of this new cosmic force 
was held on the New Mexico desert.” The Los Alamos Lament 
was written after that test... but before the August bombing of Japan. [woman singing]
“I’m just a P.O. number...” “I have no real address...” “Although we were selected...” “I wonder for the best...” “We're not like other people...” “No one knows what we do...” “So P.O. Box 1663...” “Here's to you.” I'm currently taking the Amtrak cross-country from Los Angeles all the way to New York. My journey so far has been 
about 66 hours. Here are three facts that you maybe didn't know about rail travel in the US. The first thing is just how prolific the rail industry used to be 
in the United States. America used to have the best and the biggest rail network 
in the entire world. At its peak, there was 
254,000 miles of rail. And American rail companies were the biggest corporations 
in the entire world. Freight trains in the US are far, far more profitable 
than passenger trains. As a result, about 70% of the rail that Amtrak operates on 
is owned by other companies meaning that freight trains
get priority over passenger trains... sometimes leaving Amtrak trains stuck on the side of the road 
to let freight trains pass. Amtrak is also woefully underfunded. The amount of subsidies 
that the US government has granted Amtrak 
in its entire lifetime since 1971 is less than the budget for a single year for the 
interstate highway system. The US just sent a bunch 
of these bombs to Ukraine to use in their war 
against Russia. Cluster bombs are controversial 
and banned in many countries. Here's why. Cluster munitions strikes 
typically drop dozens if not hundreds of small bombs. In past conflicts about 94% of the documented 
cluster munition casualties... have been civilians, 
not soldiers. That's largely because of 
their high failure rate. Up to 30% of them don't 
explode on impact... so they remain on the ground, posing a risk indefinitely... especially for kids who pick up the colorful metallic remnants. Like in Kosovo after
the Yugoslav wars where 62.5% of casualties 
from cluster bombs were boys under the age of 18. The US dropped millions 
of cluster bombs  in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s 
during the Vietnam War. And those same bombs  still kill and maim hundreds 
of people to this day. Maybe this was a mistake. The United States has always had 
a love hate relationship when it comes to train travel. The country was literally built
on the backs of the railroads and the US used to have the biggest  and the most well-funded 
rail network in the world. But if you ask anybody 
that's taken the Amtrak... they'll tell you that that's not exactly 
the case anymore. The US has fallen woefully behind 
the rest of the world when it comes to train travel. So what the heck happened? How did the United States 
get so far behind? And does it have any chance 
of catching up? To find out the answer to that, 
I'm going to take the Amtrak from here in Los Angeles all the way 
to New York City. And I'm going to have plenty 
of time to think about it since it's a... 70-hour journey. I guess I better get started. The entire length of my journey from Los Angeles to New York 
is about four days long... and for the first leg of my journey there weren't any sleeper cars available. So, this is what my living space looks like for the next two days which as somebody that's 
[BEEP] years old should be really good for my back. The journey I'm taking 
is pretty different than it would have been about 
a hundred years ago. To see the differences, 
let's take a look at this US map. The year is 1916 and there's about 
254,000 miles of railroads the highest number there's ever been 
in this country. The Pennsylvania railroad, or the Pennsy,
as it was referred to... I feel like that nickname could have probably used 
a little more work. Nevertheless, it was the largest corporation in the world at the time. It's difficult to illustrate how influential 
these companies were... and how much railroads were into woven into the fabric 
of American life. They were responsible for 
the temples of their time... like Penn and Grand Central stations. Also, you would not believe how amazing train travel could be back then. Sure, they had basic boring train cars
like the one I’m riding. But the upscale trains featured chandeliers, barber shops... pianos and food service that would make the Four Seasons 
look like Boston Market. One menu featured oysters, 
consommé... and celery fed duck. The bad news is my train didn't have ducks that were 
fed anything. I ate the Thai Red Curry Street noodles which, although I'm pretty sure they were 
just a microwave frozen package were actually pretty good. And although the accommodations 
were a far cry from crystal chandeliers they were comfortable enough. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is the conductor speaking. It has now been 5 hours and 15 minutes which is the time it takes to fly from LAX 
to Newark Airport. And we are still in California. It's only 9:00 but it already got dark outside so there's nothing to look at 
through the window... and there's no Wi-Fi, apparently. So, I guess I'm just going to 
go to sleep. They leave the overhead lights 
on all night but luckily I brought 
my trusty eye mask. I also brought some earplugs,
which should come in handy because I'm sitting right in front 
of some iPad kids who are watching movies at 
full volume with no headphones. So, that's fun. All right. I'll see you in the morning. Did I sleep well last night? Hmm? I'm going to say no. I'll spare you the details but imagine getting literally 
kicked in the head  by the woman in the seat next to you. I wound up retreating to the 
observation car to sleep... which was less than ideal. Like an astronaut in space. I'm trying to move around 
as much as I can so that my muscles don't deteriorate 
during my journey. So let's talk about how American trains went from gilded pleasure palaces to... This. Part of the reason why railroads  became so wildly successful 
in the first place... is because they were run by what were affectionately termed 
“robber barons”. Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt... Jay Gould, James Fisk,
and J.P. Morgan. These guys were ruthless, anti-labor,
and really corrupt... which was great when it came to building an expansive kingdom of highly profitable 
rail companies... but bad when it came to... 
just about everything else. As a result, the train companies became 
pretty universally hated by the general public. As seen in what passed for 
scathing satire at the time. “Now then, Jim.” “No jockeying, you know.” “Let em rip, Commodore.” “Don't stop to water or you'll be beat.” The federal government saw the kind of crap these guys 
were pulling and was like “Whoa, whoa, whoa, 
you can't do that.” So they instituted a bunch of regulations... which, among other things... set fixed rates for the railroad companies. And also prevented them from raising their fares or 
changing their service without the government's permission. This didn't seem like that big 
of a deal at the time... because as historian Robert Selph Henry said... “The problem , to some minds at least was how to keep railroads from 
making too much money.” After all, railroads were still by far the most efficient and the best way 
for most people to travel. This all obviously changed when 
affordable automobiles and later air travel came into the picture. So much so that by 1956 only 4% of passenger travel 
was on trains. When you take into account 
that 40 years earlier that number was 98% you can see how much 
the US’s priorities had shifted when it came to travel. The train companies were far from 
a monopoly anymore... but they were still being regulated 
as if they were... which was killing them. Okay, so, right now we are being
held on the tracks to let a freight train pass. And this is actually the perfect time 
to talk about something. Private commercial passenger trains have never been very profitable. The lifeblood of the industry has always been these: 
Freight trains. But rail companies were always 
forced to provide passengers service as a benefit 
to the public. So when the rail companies began to suffer and then eventually fold, the government 
had the idea to take the responsibility for passenger service off the plates of the rail companies who could then focus on the profitable 
freight side of the business. They took all the passenger service and combined it into one company. Which is how in 1971 we got Amtrak. Which stands for the American Train Track. Again, what is up with these nicknames? “Amtrak makes it easy come, easy go to more than 450 cities in the USA.” But here is the thing. Amtrak was designed to fail 
from the beginning. That may sound ridiculous, 
but let me explain. First of all the government created Amtrak 
as a for profit corporation despite the fact that virtually 
no passenger service anywhere has been profitable. After all, the government broke off 
all the passenger trains from the rail companies because 
they weren't making money. When the government formed Amtrak they tasked it with employing innovative 
operating and marketing concepts to develop the potential of 
modern rail service. And how much did Congress give them 
to do that in their first year of operation? Just $40 million. Their budget has gone up 
a lot since then. Their budget for the year 2022 
was $2.3 billion... which sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But when you take into account that 
the federal highway budget for the same year was $64.3 billion you begin to see the inequity. To put it even more 
into perspective... the sum total of all the subsidies 
that the US has allocated to Amtrak 
in its entire history... is less than one year's funding for 
the interstate highway system. This right here shows where America's priorities lie when it comes to travel... and why Amtrak has failed 
to majorly expand or innovate. Okay, so we just got to Chicago. I got off the Amtrak about 45 hours 
after I left Los Angeles. And needless to say... I do not smell very good. I have about a 7 hour layover 
here in Chicago. And right now I'm in Union Station... which is actually kind of amazing. As you see I got a chance to put on 
some clean clothes which feels amazing. And now I'm just here 
in Millennium Park... rolling around with my suitcase 
like a dang tourist. And I'm just trying to enjoy... not being on a train 
as much as possible before I get on the second leg. The second and final leg 
of my journey. I've achieved the Holy Grail... of my own private room. I want to show you my favorite feature 
of the entire room. You're going to like this. Hidden sink. This train is a little bit more... dynamic, shall we say, 
than the last one. But I'm hoping that all 
the movements... will just help rock me to sleep. When I woke up, we had 
reached Ohio... about 2600 miles through 
my journey and 50 something hours. There are a lot of reasons why people still want to 
take the train. A big one is the environment. According to a study by 
the University of Pennsylvania... a long distance train trip produces 37% less emissions 
than taking a flight. Trains are also much safer than cars. You're 17 times more likely to die while driving than 
taking a train. Flying and driving can be faster and sometimes even cheaper 
than taking the Amtrak. But they're both often 
miserable experiences. Going through TSA dealing with flight delays or 
being stuck in traffic and not being able to do anything because you need to be 
driving the car. While I've been on Amtrak I've been able to just 
stare out the window and see the country go by... or read a book or take a nap 
or whatever. I've been able to wander 
around the train whenever I want and stretch my legs. And I've had the enjoyment
of having my own private little room. And this is with Amtrak being perpetually and profoundly underfunded. Imagine what it would be like if this were evened out. So, I made it.  All total, took me about 72 hours 
and 17 minutes... which granted it would have 
taken me between 5 and 6 hours to fly that distance. I don't actually know the distance
off the top of my head but I'm going to add it in post right here. But here's the thing. I had a good time. It was actually really fun. Aside from a couple of hiccups 
at the very beginning. It was a really pleasant, 
memorable experience. I got to see parts of the country
that I had never seen before. And overall, dare I say, it was 
a pleasant experience. Right now, Amtrak covers  roughly 21,000 miles of passenger rail 
in the US. But when you look at the map, 
you can see it's sparse coverage routes that don't connect... And sorry, Wyoming and South Dakota you don't get any trains. If the United States took Amtrak 
off life support... it would revolutionize the way 
people travel around the US. When he was retiring former Amtrak President Graham Claytor said... “When I came to Amtrak
I was convinced I could save it...” But finally came to the conclusion that only the American public 
can save it... “...when they say they want it.” Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go take a much needed shower and go to sleep 
in a real bed. I got to rest up for my flight back 
to California tomorrow. For me, one of the best parts of riding the Amtrak is just throwing on 
some Phoebe Bridgers and wistfully staring out the window 
for hours on end. “What do I have to do?” There's a scribbled map shown behind Margot Robbie in the 
Barbie trailer that's gotten the movie banned in Vietnam. All because it appears to show a little dotted line 
with a big meaning. It's called the nine-dash line. The People's Republic of China 
drew it on a map around 1947 following Japan's defeat 
in World War II. The line claims around 
85% of the South China Sea as China's sovereign territory. It's controversial because 
it encroaches on these countries own claims of their domestic waters. So here's the boundary 
as China sees it. And here's these countries’ 
sovereign territories According to international law. The nine dash -line was said 
to have no legal basis by the UN's International Court
in 2016. But Chinese officials rejected 
the ruling and the territorial disputes here 
are ongoing. And whether it's intentional 
or not. Barbie is not the first 
to get into hot water over these controversial dashes. Movies... Shows... And even this 2019 ESPN segment that showed China's nine-dash line 
stirred outrage in the countries that are still fighting it. Let's look at all the ways Amazon  tries to keep me from canceling 
my Prime account. When I tap this little menu icon I see a button for Prime, but 
there's no option to cancel. So I go back and scroll 
all the way to the bottom and tap customer service. So I scroll down scroll past this random dog at a computer before I find another button 
that says cancel. I tap that and I get served this graphic which I have to scroll past in order to continue to cancel. And I'm starting to understand why internal documents at Amazon 
call this the Iliad Flow.  It's named after the Greek epic poem about a war that took ten years. We know they called it
that because the FTC  a branch of the US government is actually suing Amazon for using what it calls dark patterns: Design choices they say the company uses to subtly manipulate users. Practices like interface interference putting this random dog video
above the cancel button and obstruction. Using extra steps like these to complicate the process in the hopes that users abandon it altogether. Sometimes online I feel like I forget what 
I'm actually doing and leave a bunch of tabs open 
and tasks unfinished. And it's weirdly comforting but also pretty creepy to realize that sometimes that's 
not by accident. Take a look at this baseball team. They're the 2022 World Series winners. The Houston Astros. “...Kyle Tucker.” “This time they finished the job!” More than half the players 
on this team aren't from the United States. 13 of them in this photo 
are from Latin America. But one country in particular  stands out with six players 
on this team... The Dominican Republic. In fact, a number of Dominican players  are on some of the best teams  in Major League Baseball 
across the country. Overall, they make up more than 10% of all players in the league. By far the most in the pool 
of foreign born players. So what's so special about baseball 
in the DR? And why do so many of its players 
end up in the US? “Yes, there's no doubt about it.” “Baseball is king.” Baseball has a very long history in the US. A college student scribbled something  about playing “baste ball” 
way back in 1786... and that's considered the first mention 
of the game in the country. Over time, college campuses 
became home to baseball... while professional teams started 
shaping up across many states. By 1901, a couple of wealthy Americans organized these teams into 
two professional leagues: the National League and the American League. Together, they would eventually 
become known as Major League Baseball 
or the MLB. Since the 1900s, teams have been 
playing against each other until the best from each league 
ends up in the World Series. The first World Series 
was a hit right away. It brought in over 100,000 attendees... and tens of thousands of dollars. Over the next few years... millions of fans bought tickets 
to these games... and baseball executives started building massive stadiums to make 
room for them. By the early 20th century... baseball became a very profitable industry. And it became known as 
America's favorite pastime. But during all that time, 
baseball was becoming the favorite pastime over here 
in the DR, too. And it got there 
via Cuba. The game first arrived here 
in Havana in the 1860s... mostly through elite Cuban students 
who attended college in the US... and brought the game 
back home with them. Some of them set up teams 
that started playing each other. Eventually, the sport spread through 
affluent Cubans in Havana... to the working class 
around the country. If it’s a company... and the owner of the company 
is the one playing the game they might encourage their workers 
to play the game as well so that a game can be played. For the game to become 
a national entity... it has to be rooted in 
the working class. Over the years baseball became such a big part 
of the country's identity... that Cubans took 
their favorite sport with them wherever they went. That happened in the 1860s... when many slaves revolted 
against the wealthy... especially sugar plantation owners who fled in search of a new place 
to set up shop. They ended up nearby... in the Dominican Republic. And they brought baseball 
with them. Once again the sport first took off with 
an affluent crowd in the capital... before taking hold over 
the workers in the east... especially the city of
San Pedro de Macorís where Cuban ex-pats had set up 
their sugar refineries. What these refinery managers 
and owners did was they created incentives 
for their workers. Namely, that if you can beat 
a nearby refinery next Saturday well, you just don't have to work. Games between refineries here 
became huge spectacles... and a pastime for Dominicans everywhere. When you have the economic incentive... wedded to a tremendous... fan base and passion... so that after the game, people argue
about who played what... and who was excellent, 
who wasn't they’re creating a baseball culture. Back in the US and Cuba baseball continued to thrive. Teams in the US played more and more games 
throughout the country... making baseball a million dollar industry. While in Cuba it became the most popular sport 
for a very different reason. For many, many years  when Spanish colonial rulers 
tried to squash Cuban identity... including their love of baseball Cubans pushed back. Instead of giving up the sport... they turned it into a symbol of
pride and nationalism. After the Spanish-American War, 
Spain left Cuba  and the US occupied the country 
for four years. That's when Americans learned more 
about Cuban baseball talent... and the MLB soon realized 
they could get skilled players on cheaper contracts than 
some American players. So they started signing Cuban players. By the late 1950s... the MLB had signed 49 Cubans  and players like Minnie Miñoso  and Luis Alomá had become 
household names. But after decades of US military 
interventions in Cuba... the two countries broke relations in 1961... after the Cuban Revolution and 
Fidel Castro's rise to power. “This was the scene of turmoil
in the capital of Havana... as the climax of revolution was reached.” That put the MLB's entire operation at risk... because they couldn't rely on 
Cuban talent anymore. There had to be something monumental 
that broke that trend. Once that trade embargo happened... then that talent had to be 
picked up from elsewhere and that was an opening 
for the Dominican Republic. No question that that played a big role. The US and the DR had a very rough
relationship at first. In the early 20th century The DR owed a significant 
amount of money to Europe... and that created the possibility of 
a European military intervention. But the US didn't want European forces 
near its borders... so it sent troops to occupy the DR. The occupation was brutal 
and lasted eight years. But something unexpected happened 
during the occupation. Dominicans played baseball games 
against the US troops... and often beat them. Many of the local players especially around the 
San Pedro Sugar Mills area... where a lot of the fighting took place were against the occupation. So these games took on 
a new meaning. What is interesting is that  the game is not so much 
beating the Americans... but that as a result of 
beating the Americans they get more pride 
in their own game. By the 1930s, after the occupation ended... Professional teams in the DR
were getting bigger. And it became an arena where players from the sugar mill teams... could showcase their talents 
on a national stage. But even the best Dominican players many of whom were of 
black African descent... didn't end up with the MLB at that time. Because in the US, baseball leagues 
were segregated. So instead of trying 
to make it in the US... the professional league in the DR brought over talented American baseball players from the Negro League who were 
also left out of the MLB. Players from this league ended up 
playing in the DR during their offseasons for extra income... like Satchel Paige who was paid thousands of dollars for playing on Dominican dictator
Rafael Trujillo’s professional team. These Dominican professional league games drew thousands of spectators 
who wanted to watch Negro League players, as well as the 
Dominican players who are now receiving more attention. So by the late 1950s after the desegregation of baseball 
in the US... the MLB turned its full attention to the DR. They found a new pipeline for talent. It was an extension of 
the neocolonial relation. Major League Baseball was finding cheap resources... signing it on the cheap, 
taking it to elsewhere to get refined and consumed
in another place. By the 1960s, the MLB 
was expanding quickly. They added more teams that meant 
they needed more players. They signed outstanding Dominican players 
like Ozzie Virgil the Alou Brothers and 
Juan Marichal... who brought thousands of fans 
to the MLB games. Soon, the MLB wanted more 
Dominican players... but they quickly realized they needed local scouts to spot talent. That's where popular scouts like Epy Guerrero and Ralph Avila came in. Epy created the country's first 
baseball academy in the 1970s to train young talent. Then in 1987, Ralph created an academy that was directly linked to 
an MLB team in the US: the Los Angeles Dodgers. The LA team invested millions 
in this academy. Together, they created a formal process for Dominican players to end up 
on MLB teams. It goes something like this: Dominican scouts identify new talent 
throughout the country. Then they hold tryouts where 
players showcase their skills. The most impressive players get a contract to train 
with the academy. If a player makes it through training... they either sign a professional contract to continue training with a 
minor league team in the US... or make it to an MLB team. Only a small percentage of the trainees actually achieve the MLB dream. But that's what happened with 
former pitcher Ramone Martinez... who went straight from the academy 
to playing for the LA Dodgers. “And Ramone Martinez no hitting the Marlins
seven to nothing.” Soon, other big teams set up academies 
that help them spot and train major players 
like Robinson Canó and Albert Pujols, who eventually 
became All-Stars. This pipeline of talent worked
so well for the MLB that there are now 30 academies 
in the DR. One for each of the 30 MLB teams 
in the US. Since the beginning of the academy system... the MLB has signed hundreds 
of Dominican players. And the leading cities for this talent pipeline are the same as the ones 
where the sugar mill games were once played. With San Pedro right at the top. The system has created an opportunity for top Dominican players to end up 
with the MLB. And they make millions now. But no matter how far 
the Dominican players go... the MLB still signs them for less 
than some American players. So this is still a way for them to make massive profits in the US while giving foreign-born players 
cheaper contracts. The DR makes money off the academy system, too. The scouts helped negotiate 
better contracts for the players but keep a massive cut for themselves 
at every turn. Overall, Dominican players bring in about $400 million per year 
in the Major League. And they send about half of that home. Plus, the academies bring in about 
$125 million a year, create more jobs... and the MLB spends millions maintaining them. There's no question that after 
agriculture and tourism baseball has become the third leading 
source of revenue for the country as a whole. Before the Dominican players who helped 
generate so much of their profit... the system has a long way to go. Some Dominican All-Stars are starting
to push for that change. They're using their fame in the MLB 
to ask for a system that works equally for players 
in both countries. To them, baseball is as much Dominican 
as it is American. They are so passionate about the game. They have such a deep history for the game. An understanding of the game. They're actually in positions 
of control. So it's a battle between 
who controls the game. Hey everyone. I'm Rajaa, the producer of 
this episode of Vox Atlas. Thank you so much for watching. There's so much we couldn't get to but this video is just a start. If you want to learn more about what players go through 
in these academies... we added a couple of great resources 
in our description as well. Our goal with Atlas and 
all of our coverage  is to help you understand 
the big global topics. Which is why we want to keep 
our work for free. But advertising isn't enough 
to support all the work that goes into Atlas. If you really like our videos, 
head to Vox.com/give-now to chip in and keep our work 
free for everyone. Once you're a contributor, 
you'll get behind the scenes emails and alerts on 
how to get involved. Thank you for watching. Recently, I watched this GQ video where Justin Bieber gave an inside look 
at the motorhome he spent the height of the pandemic in. “GQ, thank you so much for coming 
to check out my tour bus.” It's got a sauna, some 
questionable art and more closet space than 
a New York City apartment. It turns out this mammoth RV 
is custom-made and is estimated to cost 
close to $2 million. It's hard to imagine that this 
penthouse on wheels shares anything in common with this... an entry level RV that costs $30,000... roughly the same as a Honda Accord. Or even this, a vintage Fleetwood Bounder 
from 2001. But look at these RVs together and you might notice something 
they do share. It's the swooshes and swoops 
and they are everywhere. A few years ago, I moved from
New York City... to the Berkshires. Which is right here in western Massachusetts. I went from the land of people 
and public transit... to the land of cows and campers. Because of that I've been thinking about these 
ubiquitous swoops a lot... wondering why they've lasted so long and if they are here to stay. To try and finally get answers 
to this question... I'm going to Elkhart, Indiana: The RV capital of the world. The amount of RVs produced here  amounts to about 80% 
of global RV production. Oh, there's an RV. There's manufacturers. There's dealers. There's campgrounds. There's the RV History Museum, 
which is where I'm going. You heard that right. RVs are such a part of Elkhart’s DNA that they have a museum and Hall of Fame 
dedicated to them. [laughing] I'm so excited. Yeah. I am at the RV Museum Library. Behind me are hundreds, 
if not thousands of catalogs going back to like the 1950s and beyond. That's so cool. It seems no matter the decade, 
RVs had multicolor paid jobs but for a long time they were 
straight lines. That is just so many straight lines. I think a big driving factor 
in a lot of that... is technology. Back in the 60s and 70s, 
everything was straight. Well, everything was straight because they had tape and 
they had their hands. That's Ryan Loucks. He designs custom exterior graphics 
for Newell a high end motorhome maker. They’re in the same luxury category 
of the company that made Justin Bieber's bus. We'll get to how Ryan designs these 
in a second. But first, you have the computer 
come on the scene... and the computer can cut these 
perfect stripes and curves for you. And so, you know, you kind of have the first layer of 
printed graphics that were cut and applied. Next, evolution is a layer 
of depth and detail that just wasn't possible before. This is a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder. You might recognize it as 
the RV from Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, these stripes 
didn't last long. By the new millennium as graphic designers got more and more 
adventurous with digital tools... straight lines were out and the swooshes 
and swoops were in. This is what the Fleetwood Bounder 
looks like today. Okay, so what exactly... am I defining as swoosh and swoop? Look at this. Okay. This is a perfect example. Okay, let me get closer. This. Let's see. That is a swoosh. That is a swoop. Swoosh. Swoop. Don't fight me on that, okay? Before I got to Elkhart I chatted with Ryan about 
his custom design process. So while I clean up these books 
and put them away... you get to watch that. Cut to the interview. Generally speaking, when you're doing
paint design you want your pin color to go first. On a coach like this, the whole thing would be sprayed white... and then they'd go through 
and lay their pinstripe this kind of silvery or white edges 
to the shapes. They pull those all by hand. And that gives you kind of 
the roadmap for everything else that happens. In Newell's process... they're going to go to 
the next darkest color starting with the lightest and 
working towards dark till they get to the end which is usually the posting 
or background pattern. And ghosting is—there's kind of a color 
in the background. And then we add a layer of 
clear, translucent pearl similar to what's used in like women's 
nail polish as a topcoat. So at see through, you can see 
the color behind it but adds some sparkle and some, you know, some interest there. During this time they might also 
add drop shadows which makes the swoops and swirls
look almost three-dimensional. Which is a whole art form 
in and of itself. There's no mechanical way 
to add drop shadows. That is somebody with a paint gun almost like that guy with the pinstripe going “I have to follow this curve perfectly... with this black paint and not mess it up.” These guys are basically artists... whether they realize it about themselves or not. I just did a crazy turnaround because I just saw 
the coolest looking RV. Let me show you. Isn't that so cool? That's awesome. When I first wrote up this pitch I described the swooshes 
as mind boggling... atrocious and dated. And I found a like-minded band 
of anti-swooshers online that made me feel like I was on 
the right side of this debate. But when I came across Ryan's work, 
it was the first time where I genuinely appreciated 
the complexity and the detail. And let's be honest, the fully 
maximalist approach to graphic design that these swooshes provide. But of course, Newell’s cost $2 million and RVs like these with fully custom and very personal paint jobs make up a tiny fraction of the 11.2 million that Americans own today. Instead of multiple painters spending 195 hours on one coach 
like Ryan's team does... most new owners will get an RV with 
an automotive-grade vinyl that looks much more two-dimensional. And today, there's a good chance 
that that new RV owner is going to be a lot younger than when the swoops 
first took over. In the last 3 years, the average age 
of a first time buyer went from 41 to 32. In large part because of the pandemic when RV production and sales 
hit record highs. Just as fashion comes around just as home design comes around so does the RV industry. And we are always looking 
to stay on trend... but also design for the masses. That's Ashley Bontrager. She co-founded Ember RVs in 2021. I personally like a minimalistic approach
to design. I want it to be linear. We wanted to enhance the design of our units, like the shapes 
and the windows. You know, one of the things we said is
we want to make them appear larger. So we worked—on our designer worked on 
black graphics that just extend the length of the window to make them appear larger from afar. Ember makes RVs that are part of 
a growing category called overlanders. They're designed to go 
off-road and off-grid. Looking at our RVs across this category you start to notice that
there's no swoops. Though some do look like 
straight up tanks. And it turns out a less swoopy look has been percolating amongst other RV designs
the last few years. Ultimately, I think you will see a design trend... going more toward this more minimal, linear graphics 
in the RV space. For every swoopy RV I saw 
while driving around Elkhart I also saw edgier designs with names like 
Raptor and Avenger. Even the iconic Bounder has straightened up their lines for 2024. Perhaps we're moving from 
the era of swoops to daggers. I'll let you decide if that's a good thing. So I have some people that say 
“I love the swoops and swirls.” “They've always been there.” “It makes me feel like home.” “Give me tradition.” But for every person that says that you've got somebody that says “I am so sick of the swoops and swirls.” “Let's do something different.” We're all hopping on different 
modes of transportation to explain the design choices 
behind the ways we travel. I'm so excited. Maybe this was a mistake. We can now build cruise ships 
that are as long as the Empire State Building is tall. How do they do that? You've arrived at LaGuardia Airport. Why does it feel like 
I'm getting less legroom on planes than I used to? The US used to have the biggest and most well-funded 
rail network in the world. What the heck happened? Why does every RV I see have 
the same swishes and swoops? I'm going to the RV capital of the world 
to find out. So I'm going on a little 
East Coast road trip... and I'm 99% sure that 
most of the cars... are going to be bigger than mine. It's a 70 hour journey. I guess I better get started. You guys ready? We're all hopping on different 
modes of transportation to explain the design choices 
behind the ways we travel. I'm so excited. Maybe this was a mistake. We can now build cruise ships 
that are as long as the Empire State Building is tall. How do they do that? You've arrived at LaGuardia Airport. Why does it feel like 
I'm getting less legroom on planes than I used to? The US used to have the biggest and most well-funded 
rail network in the world. What the heck happened? To find out the answer to that I’m going to take the Amtrak 
from here in Los Angeles all the way to New York City. Oh! There’s an RV.  Why does every RV I see have 
the same swishes and swoops? I'm going to the RV capital of the world 
to find out. I just did a crazy turnaround because I just saw the coolest looking RV. So I'm going on a little 
East Coast road trip... and I'm 99% sure that 
most of the cars... are going to be bigger than mine. It's a 70 hour journey. I guess I better get started. The Supreme Court just dropped 
a major decision about student loans. In the US, 1 in 5 of us 
have student debt and on average, each of us  
owes about $36,000. When you look at that number, 
it's tempting to see it as a momentary snapshot of an 
ever diminishing burden we diligently repay month after month 
until one day soon... disappears altogether. Except for so, so many of us that's not what happens. We grow older and we keep 
making our payments. But now rent is going up and so is 
the co-pay at the doctor's while our paychecks stay the same.  Because of interest our loan balance keeps growing even as we pay it down which is why it was such 
a big deal last summer when the Department of Education 
said it planned to forgive $10,000 in student debt 
for anyone making less than $125k a year. For about a third of us that would completely 
wipe out our debt and we could finally start thinking 
about like buying a house or having a kid or 
starting a business. But on Friday, the conservative majority
on the Supreme Court said no, that debt needs to be paid. Starting in September, our loans
will start accruing interest and in October payments 
will be due. And we'll go back to trying 
to balance the scales. In 1971 National Airlines released 
this advertisement. It pictured a real flight attendant 
and a new slogan: Fly me. “All over Florida, fly me.” Within months, the campaign included 
Jo, Denise, and Laura. The airlines basically tried to sell 
the stewardesses as sex objects. “I'm Dianne.” “Fly me.” “I’m Terry. 
Fly me.” “I'm Maurica. 
Fly me.” And it worked. After the Fly Me campaign National saw a 19% jump 
in ticket sales. Soon, other airlines followed. This was one of the many ways 
that the airline industry degraded flight attendants and discriminated against them 
for decades.... until flight attendants got together 
and pushed back. It was pretty spectacular 
to be in a room full of other flight attendants who were saying enough is enough. And I was just not going to sit back
and allow this to continue. Flight attendants changed 
the airline industry and became one of the first groups 
in the US to fight discrimination in the workplace. They truly paved the way for working women 
in the United States today and nobody knows about them. “This working jet set who breakfast in New York 
and lunch in Phoenix.” Throughout the 50s and 60s, 
becoming a flight attendant known as a stewardess 
at the time was one of the most coveted jobs 
for women. If you were a young woman and 
your other employment opportunities were things like teacher or nurse or maybe a man’s secretary the idea you could be jet setting 
around the country talking to men like Don Draper... “Where are you saying?” “Belvedere.” You can see how appealing 
that might have been. The airlines sold an elite, 
glamorous image of air travel... and relied on stewardesses 
to deliver that message. “The smiling hostess or stewardess 
who anticipates the needs of every passenger.” To make sure stewardesses match the standards that were 
advertised to passengers. Airlines came up with incredibly strict 
hiring practices. “To qualify on most airlines... She must be healthy, single, and 
between the ages of 21 and 28.” “She must be between 5’2” and 5’6”
in height and of normal weight.” You had to have straight teeth, 
clear skin, no glasses. You had to be extremely slim. When I first applied had a male interview at that time 
who measured my hips. Paula Mariedaughter flew over 3 million miles as a stewardess and model for TWA. And it was pretty much 
the standard fare in terms of how they treated 
young women. The process was designed to make 
the job feel exclusive. One ad for Eastern Airlines 
even presented the losers... showcasing that they pass up 
around 19 girls before getting one that qualifies. “They’re probably good enough to get 
a job anywhere they want.” “But at Eastern, we're very choosy about whom we let serve you on a plane.” “She's awkward.” “She wears glasses.” But the biggest one was... “Oh! N-aww. 
She's married.” You couldn't be married. A male business traveler 
could get on the airplane... look around and know that 
all of these stewardesses were theoretically available. That's where age limits 
played a big role, too. Airlines wanted to keep 
the workforce young and some forced women to retire 
as young as 27. A lot of these hiring restrictions 
were explicit but there was one standard that was unwritten, 
yet consistently enforced. You had to be white. They did not want us on board. The fight to take down 
these industry standards started with black women 
like Patricia Banks. My name was Patricia Noisette Banks Edmiston... I became the first black flight attendant on a commercial aircraft in 1960. I saw an advertisement for the Grace Downs Air Career School
and I said oh wow, this sounds great. I think I'd like to do this. And I always thought it would be interesting
to travel around the world and see what other places were like. And I was accepted into the school. Patricia was the only black student at Grace Downs Air Career School. After completing the program in 1956 she interviewed with TWA, 
Mohawk, and Capital which would later merge with United
for a stewardess position. But Patricia never heard back. Other people were getting responses and I wasn't getting any response whatsoever. It was painful because I kept wondering: Well, what's wrong here? And then a chief stewardess saw me outside of the school 
and she looked at me... and she said, “Pat, I hate to see you
go through this... but the airlines do not hire Negroes.” Patricia filed a case  with the New York State Commission 
Against Discrimination  to investigate Capital airlines 
for racist hiring practices. During the process I had a lot of threats of 
being raped, murdered. I had the police involved at certain times
during the beginning. It was not easy, but I just feel it was something that I had to do. I had to do. The commission decided that the airline had discriminated against Patricia 
by maintaining a policy that barred black applicants 
from employment. In 1960 Capital was ordered to reverse 
that policy and hire Patricia. The respondent Capital Airlines Inc. shall cease and desist from refusing to hire 
or employ complainant Patricia Banks as a flight hostess 
because of her color and maintaining a policy of barring Negroes from employment because of their color in all flight capacities including that of flight hostess. By winning her case she became one of the first black
commercial flight attendants. I wanted to work hard to break this barrier. It was something I was doing for my people because I didn't care whether 
I got hired or not. But some young black woman 
was going to fly. Patricia's victory was the beginning. “Congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to be written into the law.” A few years later, when the Civil Rights Act 
became federal law employment discrimination 
on the basis of race and sex was finally prohibited under Title VII of the act. More black women began to challenge airlines for the racism they experienced in the industry... and one by one, they secured their right to fly. By 1965, there were 50 black stewardesses working at 7 of the largest US carriers. Title VII was a turning point 
for stewardesses all around. The same legislation that put an end 
to racist practices... became a tool for stewardesses to put an end to sexist policies at work. Title seven was mostly put in place to try and fight racism in employment but the flight attendants were the first people to see that like, 
Oh, they could use this to fight sex discrimination in employment. Their persistent legal action
kicked off a stewardess rebellion. In the first 18 months of Title VII becoming law stewardesses lodged more than 
100 employment discrimination cases  and used those rulings to challenge airlines 
directly with the help of their union. One of those challenges was launched in 1965 by Betty Green Bateman who was fired after Braniff Airlines discovered she had been secretly married 
for more than a year. After months of fighting with the airline... she was finally allowed to keep her job. The Bateman case was the start 
of the sort of dominoes falling with the marriage rules. The lawsuit forced multiple airlines to overturn their marriage rules. But even as more and more women 
fought and won their cases the airlines doubled down on 
the sexy stewardess stereotype. “Remember what it was like
before Southwest Airlines?” “You didn't have hostesses in hot pants.” Around this time, the industry had 
economic problems so they decided to lean into the strategy 
that had worked. They debuted new ads and uniforms that contradicted what the stewardesses 
were fighting for. In one campaign called “The Airstrip” 
by Braniff Airlines a uniform was designed 
for flight attendants to shed their clothes
piece by piece during in-flight service. The airlines were trying to make money 
off of implying that we were readily available 
in all sorts of ways. And that was just not acceptable. But with the Women's Liberation Movement there was so much pressure 
and so much encouragement among the women I flew with to say: This is not right, it's not fair. We've got to do something. And they did. Stewardesses started some of the first independent, women-led unions 
in US history. They also formed groups like 
Stewardesses for Women's Rights and tackled age restrictions marriage policies, uniforms, 
and weight limits. Though much of the mainstream movement focused on white women at the time, 
black stewardesses were fighting racist appearance standards 
in the industry, too. Like one United stewardess who was fired for wearing her hair 
in an Afro successfully sued and forced the airline
to apply its regulation equally without regard to race. Many other policies would take 
decades to overturn including regulations that grounded attendants 
when they became pregnant or weight restrictions, which in one case 
took a 17 year long legal battle against American Airlines to finally undo. As restrictions changed, so did 
the makeup of the industry. Older, married, and 
black stewardesses increasingly joined the profession. The legal fights had altered the airline industry... and taken together, they would also alter the future of women's labor in the US. The rights that these women won 
have become case law about sex discrimination in employment. The stewardess cases have been used in 
gender discrimination cases in some LGBTQ cases... But that all built on a basis of 
stewardess cases, their efforts. Which, you know, were back in the 
1960s and 70s still have in effect today. Those of us that lived in earlier decades we were seeking the best possible reality for us. I don't think we could ever go back 
to the way it was. The history of what happened, frankly it was never, ever talked about. But it was a beginning. Thanks so much for watching. My name is Halley,
I’m the producer of this episode of Missing Chapter. So much research and reporting went into this episode and one fact that we didn't get to share is that when no-marriage policies were rampant in the airline industry... it’s estimated that up to 30% of stewardesses
were secretly married. Just another one of the many ways that they challenged sex discrimination at work. We pick stories like this for Missing Chapter because it's important to talk about 
underreported history. That's also why it's so important 
that we keep this work free. But advertising alone isn't enough to support it. That's because weeks of work 
go into videos here at Vox... scripting, interviewing, editing animating, you name it, we do it. So if you'd like to help keep this work free
for everyone consider becoming a Vox contributor. You'll get exclusive behind the scenes
access to emails, updates and other ways to get involved in our work. If you'd like to join our mission  on keeping high-quality information free for everyone visit Vox.com/givenow. This video does not contain 
spoilers for Asteroid City. However, it does contain 
some awesome photos of the miniatures 
used in the movie. Like this one: I interviewed this guy, 
Simon Weisse about how he and his team 
constructed these models and how miniatures 
are used across film. Like this detailed train model. Simon told me that this was 
a bit of a pain to work with because it was so big 
at 1/8th scale. They had to import engine bits from Texas all the way to Berlin and Spain, 
where they worked on and shot the train scenes. This spaceship took three months. Look at all the intricate handmade details inside. Simon also worked on props from the film, like the titular asteroid from 
the city and this fun gun ray.  I would never have guessed that these buildings were miniatures
because they're just that good. Wes Anderson has used miniatures
in a bunch of his films like The Grand Budapest Hotel 
and The French Dispatch. And way more movies and shows use miniatures than you probably realize. So if you'd like to learn more about that check out this YouTube video 
I made. Out of the millions of fungal species 
in the world only a few hundred can 
make people sick. Coccidioides is one of them. Its spores can sometimes cause pretty serious infections in humans. But that's not the weirdest thing 
about this fungus. Most fungi prefer dark, damp and relatively cool conditions... but this one has found a way 
to live in the desert. And while most fungi eat dead 
or decaying material... cocci doesn't always wait 
for an animal to die... before it starts digesting them 
from the inside out. Drama aside, this fungus has 
existed for millennia and yet there's still so many things we don't understand about it. Like exactly where it is 
at any given time... or how it spreads in the soil... because it is spreading. And we can only guess why. The infection caused by cocci goes by many names. Coccidioidomycosis. Desert Rheumatism. San Joaquin Valley Fever. Or just Valley Fever. Its symptoms are similar 
to that of the flu except that general achey-ness, fever
fatigue, and more can last for over a month. Others develop fungal pneumonia but some can develop something far worse like chronic lung disease, skin absences 
or meningitis  which can be fatal. Fortunately, only about four in ten people ever develop symptoms at all 
and outbreaks are pretty rare. Right now, 97% of 
US Valley Fever cases occur in Arizona or California. But... Not all states report. So Texas is one of those areas that... you know, they just don't 
report the disease nationally in spite of being probably a hotspot. In 2019 states officially reported 20,000 cases of Valley Fever to the CDC. Some researchers think that actual number is closer to 350,000 cases annually. If you account for underreporting
and misdiagnoses. Where it is reported... cases are rising year after year... with California reporting a 159% increase from 2013 to 2019. And it's being found in more places. Cocci is typically found in the soil
in the southwestern US parts of Mexico, Central, 
and South America. But in 2014, researchers found it 
in Washington State. It's likely the fungus itself is already 
lurking in the soil in states outside of this range. And if that's not unsettling enough we're not really sure 
how it's moving... or where exactly it's going next. Scientists think there might be 
three separate systems driving the spread of this mysterious fungus. Let's start with some bizarre features 
of cocci itself. It has two forms: An environmental form that lives 
in the desert soil. So the fungus in the dirt grows as a mold. Sort of not so different from what you see on bread 
when it gets old. But like, we're talking lightweight, 
microscopic mold that grows very slowly in soil, 
making it hard to track. When the soil is disturbed like when dust storms sweep 
through the west or when construction workers begin 
digging a foundation... cocci releases spores into the air where unsuspecting mammals 
breathe them in. Once inhaled, it settles into the lungs where those spores somehow 
morph into a new form... a parasitic form that multiplies in your body and grows to a size much larger 
than its environmental form. Through a series of cues that we actually don't really understand all that well, 
it can be like 100 microns. You can see the lesions in infected lung tissue 
with the naked eye. Some people who inhale these spores get the symptoms of Valley Fever. But sometimes, somehow, 
and this is what's really weird... it can go dormant in your lungs. You actually develop residency of that fungus somewhere 
in your body. Being dormant is a great strategy, right? You're not using many resources. The host isn't recognizing you 
because you're not actively growing and irritating the host. Yeah. Then you just bide your time. Cocci isn't picky about what kind 
of lungs it's settling in. Infections have been found in 
almost any type of mammal from humans to dogs 
to dolphins. Which brings us to the second thing
that’s possibly helping this fungus spread: Desert rodents and something called 
the Endozoan Hypothesis. I hope you're ready to talk about 
dehydrated rats. It works like this. A kangaroo rat or some other 
desert rodent inhales cocci while digging its burrow. The cocci either lays dormant 
in their lungs or the infection kills them. At that point the fungus is the first on the scene
to devour the dead animal. And by devour I mean digest its dead body 
until there's nothing left. Fun fact this is what cocci 
is doing to people with severe valley fever. While they're alive. Their spinal column is being 
digested by this organism. And it just freaks me out. Either way, it's the first one on the scene. Not even you're the best competitor or you're the best at doing anything. It’s just, you're there first. And so maybe that's cocci’s strategy. When the rodent dies, 
cocci is released back into the soil and morphs back 
into its environmental form where it waits to be kicked up 
and inhaled by some other host. If this is the case, then 
the more desert rodents living and dying, the more likely
cocci can move through the soil. Which brings us to our third related factor: Extreme weather. Isn’t is always? Heavy rains have been unleashing
on the desert resulting in booms of vegetation. The surplus food leads to 
a surplus of rodents... plenty of hosts to breathe in the fungus. But the desert ultimately returns... to a desert and heavy drought 
wipes out more and more of these infected rodents. When they die, cocci spread
right back into the soil and the system starts again. But we still don't know if this is 
actually even happening... because of how little we understand 
about cocci itself. Proving the Endozoan Hypothesis 
would be a colossal effort that involves strapping trackers 
to a bunch of desert rodents. And finding cocci in the soil at all 
has proven difficult. The current tests don't always 
detect it in the soil... even when it's there. Ultimately, cocci’s spread spread could be 
thanks to all of these factors combined but there are still tons of unresolved questions. What we do know 
is that the US is getting warmer and that on its own 
could expand cocci’s range potentially making more people sick. One study estimates that cocci’s range could more than double by 2095... due to increasing arid conditions 
across the US. Pair all of this with rising rates 
of construction in the desert... and population booms in cities like Phoenix. And it's no surprise that Valley Fever cases are on the rise. Researchers have another area of study 
right now: Prevention. We have identified a vaccine candidate... that is both safe and protective, 
very protective to mice. And now we've shown that in 
experimentally infected dogs... it protects them as well. And that vaccine is on its way. But listen, despite my 
seemingly best efforts this piece doesn't really exist to scare you or to get you to hyper focus on 
one specific freaky infection. This single fungus is one of 
a million examples of how our world is changing 
in small and mysterious ways... and how difficult it can sometimes be for science to keep up. One thing I love in movies 
is miniatures. Like, did you know the Poltergeist house 
was only 42 inches (107 cm) wide? And the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” 
is a miniature. So were the kids in “E.T.” Okay. Okay. I know 
what you're thinking. Those are all old movies. Of course they use miniatures, 
ya old grandpa. And you're not wrong. All these films were before that period 
where CGI took over. I changed to prop making because miniatures,
nobody wanted them anymore. But with Wes Anderson and now 
with some other filmmakers it's strange because they want these... Yeah, a bit old-fashioned techniques again. I’m Simon Weisse. I am a model maker and prop maker. Simon has made props for 
The Matrix Resurrections, Bridge of Spies... and he's made miniature models 
for Wes Anderson films like Asteroid City, The French Dispatch, 
and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Most of the time, if miniatures 
are done right the audience isn't supposed to know 
that they're tiny. But if you keep an eye out  you can see it used 
in a few commonplace. For expansive sets that establish
the world of a film like The Grand Budapest Hotel... or the castle from Harry Potter... or the opening gates 
of Jurassic World... and fantasy vehicles that 
would be too expensive or too impossible to build 
at human scale. Like the spaceships from E.T.
or Asteroid City or the Razor Crest from The Mandalorian. And if you're trying to blow up 
an entire building for real a miniature helps make that possible. Like this building from Inception or the White House from 
Independence Day. Though, one thing you 
might have noticed is that some of these miniatures 
aren't actually that mini. Grand Budapest Hotel is a good example. In these times, when we 
talk about miniatures they are not so small. I mean, in the 50s and the 60s you could have a very small house 
and the audience was impressed. But today we build those miniatures 
as big as possible. We ended up making this in 18th scale,
which is quite big. That hotel was, in the end,
4 meters (13 feet) wide.  I don't know how much this in feet. It was a good scale to have a good definition 
of paint and everything. Most of the time we wouldn't use the same material as you would 
on a real building because if you use lots of bricks the structure, it will not be
up to scale. If there’s wood, we will use wood but the very special African woods 
with a very fine structure. In the end, the thing which 
really changes everything is the paint and the patina. If they take a big brush, you will see 
the brush on the model. No, they have to take 
the finest brush and find those dirty pieces near 
the windows and everything. Getting that detail and grunge right is especially important to making things 
feel lived in. It's one of the reasons that Star Wars 
has such a busy, dirty look. The more details you have, 
the more realistically it can pass as a larger object
when filmed with a camera. Choosing the appropriate scale 
to work with, however is sometimes a matter of efficiency. We can work at this 12th and 18th scale.  I like a lot 35th scale. That's also because in 18th scale 
and in 35th scale... you can find a lot of stuff,
ready made cars good looking trees 
and other stuff. It takes time off our work, 
which is very long very time taking. Moviemakers can play tricks 
with scale, too mixing big and small miniatures 
within the same shots. And The French Dispatch, we had 
landscapes and, you know they were not only in one scale. We talk about a forced perspective. You had one scale in the foreground. Then you get a certain deepness 
to go smaller and smaller and smaller. So maybe in the foreground 
you are in 24th scale then in the middle 
you’re in 15th scale... and in the end you are in the 100th scale. And if there's a mountain behind it’s in the 1000th scale. Once they get the scale and
all the details right filmmakers still have to make 
this thing look like it's the correct size in camera. The first issue is how much 
of the frame is in focus. This is determined by three things: How long your lens is.  How close you are to an object. And how much light you're letting 
into the camera. The longer your lenses, the more 
compressed an image looks and the more parts of the image 
are out of focus. Wider lenses are better 
for shooting models but to make them look big, 
you have to get really close. And when you get really close the plane of focus becomes 
extremely shallow... meaning only a small bit 
of your frame is in focus and everything else is blurry. If you were filming the same shot 
of a real car you'd have to be much further away 
to capture that same angle. And that would make much more 
of the frame in focus. Films like “Game Night” 
play with that knowledge using strategically blurry photography to make this real suburb look like a tiny little boardgame. With miniatures, you want 
the opposite effect. Every part of the model should be 
in focus so that it looks big. To do this without changing 
your distance to the model... you need to decrease how much light 
you're letting into the camera... which makes everything darker. But filming in bright sunlight 
can counteract that issue and make the lighting 
feel more realistic overall. For other stuff, most of the time 
we are shooting this outside. The train and the other stuff. Even The Grand Budapest Hotel 
was shot outside. The composition of your model shots  matter just as much as 
the technical details. The most striking example 
of this for me is the opening shot of the 
original Star Wars. By having these two planets
in the frame... we have an immediate reference point that tells us we're working 
on a planetary scale. As this first ship enters the frame we get a sense that this could be about the size of a ship 
that carries humans. So when this other ship enters... it feels gigantic, menacing, 
and powerful. Both models are miniatures but how they chose to compose the image made them feel larger than life. Star Wars in 1977 had no choice but to use miniatures to make 
their futuristic world look real. Star Wars projects today rely heavily on CGI like so many other movies. But both tools have their strengths. Talking about explosions 
and water and everything I try to avoid miniatures... because if you have 
a miniature with water... you have to build it at such a big scale at 3rd scale or 4th scale. Otherwise, it doesn't look good. This is because natural elements 
like water or fire don't scale. So while water droplets on 
a full size vehicle look tiny those same droplets on a miniature 
would be huge... giving away that scale 
doesn't match up. Sometimes I'm asked, “Oh, could you 
do a miniature?” And then we will have water running through. And I say, “No....” maybe we can do a miniature. But the water, please add it digitally. It will look much better 
than real water. Explosions can be challenging 
for similar reasons. This model from “Inception” is truly gigantic 
at four stories (12.19 meters) high... and that scale is needed  for 
the explosions to feel more realistic. Even if we do those miniature sets... It's all in combination with with CGI 
and other new techniques. Films like Blade Runner 2049 
and Asteroid City use the miniature sets in conjunction 
with real actors through the use of greenscreen. And The Grand Budapest Hotel showed 
that real humans and puppetry could be combined to make this 
delightfully stylized skiing sequence. The decision to use miniatures 
varies between directors. For Wes Anderson, he believes 
that people are going to recognize artificiality, whether it's CG 
or otherwise. His tastes lean towards miniatures... because he likes the old-fashioned techniques. Nolan, on the other hand, 
has used miniatures because he wants every scene 
to feel like real footage with all the organic messiness 
and artifacting that comes with filming a real thing
and having it baked into the shot. 20 years ago I thought miniatures are done, 
it's finished. It's all going to be done in CGI... but now even in commercials 
they are using miniatures. But it's just— I think it's... for me, it’s an artistic choice. The spaceship, which looks very different 
from other spaceships. We had so much fun doing this. It's a big model. Nearly 3 meters (9.8 feet) wide. And the spaceship is a mix 
of handmade stuff inside and all the sides were laser cut. In the end, it was about three months... because we have all these ongoing process. We’ll start with something... and sometimes we have 
only two people on this... and at the end there are six people on this. So yeah, more or less three months. For this kind of complicated model. Yeah, it's about that. the term Flying Saucer entered the mainstream in June 1947 sort of by mistake after amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine strange objects flying at high speed over Mount Rainier in Washington he describes their bizarre flight pattern as dipping up and down and compared the motion to saucers skipping on water two days later newspapers misquoting him describe the objects as flying saucers this was the first major UFO sighting in the modern era and it kicked off what's now known as the 1947 flying disc craze that summer following Arnold's story people all over the country reported seeing flying saucers too by mid-july there had been over 1 000 sightings across the U.S through the 1950s flying saucers continued to appear all over the world in doctored photos from present-day Zimbabwe Italy and France and was the go-to for how alien spacecraft was imagined in that decade of Science Fiction the Flying Saucer is still a spaceship cliche and it all started with one little typo from here This is Julian Eltinge  one of the most famous 
female impersonators at the turn of the century.  His impersonation of women
was so convincing that he shocked crowds 
at the end of his shows by throwing off his wig and 
revealing that he was a man. Eltinge eventually became one of 
the highest paid performers in the United States and sold out shows 
in theaters around the world. He had successful runs on Broadway with plays like “Fascinating Widow” 
and “The Crinoline Girl” and became a Hollywood star 
in the 1920s. He even performed at the request 
of King Edward VII who was so impressed that he sent Eltinge an English Bulldog to say thank you. Despite his stardom, Eltinge disappeared from the limelight in the 1930s when anti cross-dressing ordinances 
swept through America and forced performers like Julian 
out of public spaces. His career never recovered and he died before drag made 
a comeback decades later. Postcards like this from Eltinge’s 
female impersonation shows are proof of drag’s 
centuries old history and a reminder that this art form 
has always had staying power even in the face of opposition. this week's weekend reading rack is watermelon and breadbirds a cookbook for Juneteenth in Black Celebrations by Nicole a Taylor black Americans have officially celebrated Freedom From Slavery since 1866 and food and drink have always played a huge role in those festivities the recipes in this cookbook Bridge some of those African-American culinary traditions and modern flavors like through red drinks which are at the heart of Juneteenth celebrations across the country today I'm making one from The cookbook historians trace the drink's Origins to West Africa where people made red teas from hibiscus flowers but as Africans were forced to new parts of the world through the transatlantic slave trade they took red drinks with them and altered the recipes based on new native plants in America the Hibiscus flower was replaced with berries in the South and cherries in the Mid-Atlantic today there are tons of red drink recipes you can make watermelon and Redbirds includes nine to celebrate juneteenths like this afro egg cream which combines red drink flavors with a classic drugstore drink these are images of some of the oldest cities from around the world and they all have something in common they were built with human Connection in mind narrow streets buildings close together homes mixed with workplaces and shops Central Public spaces now look at many of today's American cities and you'll notice features that are quite different wide roads houses built far away from workplaces and shops parking lots exhaust these are cities built for cars cities face Monumental challenges in the 21st century climate change maintaining Human Health and Social equality so as we look to build the next generation of cities what can we learn from the past we don't actually need to go that far back to see how cars have altered the American cityscape if you look at at film in the early 20th century you see this amazing ballet of streetcars and horses and Buggies and tons of people walking this is Jeff Speck he's a trained architect and certified city planner that really changed in the middle of the 20th century when someone decided that streets were for moving Vehicles only for moving cars only and trucks and they were no longer social spaces that belong to everyone a large amount of subsidies at the federal state and local level go to building car related infrastructure versus other forms of transportation this is Adrian Salazar and he's the policy director at the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance a member of the green New Deal Network that's because as soon as cars became widely accessible to people who lived in America the automobile industry started to leverage its power to try to influence City Planning and it has been designed in policies in zoning laws that actually make these things farther apart from each other where residential zones are separate from commercial zones and that has produced a drastic inequity in the way that people move about one piece of legislation was the Federal Highway Act of 1956 which created the interstate highways that we still use today the highways impacted American cities negatively in two principal ways first they made a very easy for folks to abandon the city and then secondly is that they were typically run through poor and working-class communities typically communities of color they destroyed neighborhoods they destroyed lives and as cars multiplied so did the air pollution they expelled and the emissions they contributed to climate change in the United States the transportation sector is actually one of the largest sectors contributing to greenhouse gas emissions in the country and for us to be able to address those emissions means rethinking how we design our cities and how we live in them when I'm working on a new place or trying to make an existing Place more walkable I look at four things is the walk useful is the walk safe is the walk comfortable and is the walk interesting and if you can do all four of those things together you've created the most sustainable kind of place the damage that was done to America's cities may require government investment in current Solutions like public transit and modern Road designs so what can we do it's going to take a just transition of our entire economy that leaves nobody behind and investing into a regenerative economy an economy of care that uplifts people and the green new deal to me is really a vision of a suite of policies that set the direction towards that future to address the climate crisis to address our crises of inequality of racial Injustice of economic uh under investment in communities that's why Collective power and working together and organizing is so important because it amplifies our power and it it shows that the vision of the world that we're fighting for has movements behind it increasing access to public transit and active Transportation like walking and biking may be a key part of addressing climate change and building the next generation of cities and by giving cities back to the people they will emphasize what past cities used to human connection Did you know that across 
the 6 moon landings Apollo astronauts left 96 bags 
of human waste on the moon. We're talking poop, 
pee, vomit all this stuff left behind 
to reduce the weight for the return trip. Gross. But it can also help us learn a lot about the possibility of life 
beyond Earth. Poop contains over 
a thousand   of microbes that live in our guts. If those microbes could somehow 
survive on the Moon for the last 50 years it could help us answer a couple 
of huge questions. One: It could mean that these microbes might also 
survive on Mars. And we love thinking 
about life on Mars. And two: There's a theory that 
life didn't start on Earth but perhaps it crashed here 
on an asteroid so if these microbes can survive 
on the Moon. Then maybe they could survive 
on an asteroid too. And that could mean that life 
can jump around the universe. We're really far away from 
knowing these answers but the first steps seem easy. We got to go back for that $#@*. The lack of affordable housing 
in the US right now is worse than it's ever been and it’s because we don't have 
enough houses. You can see what's driving 
the shortage by looking at this map of zoning 
regulations in the Bay Area. The areas shaded in pink
are zoned for single-family housing only. That's 82% of all residential land. Many places also employ
heigh restrictions.  In Cupertino, California some areas are zoned for 
multi-family buildings but they don't allow any buildings 
over two stories. Parking requirements are often 
written into zoning laws too. Cupertino requires developers to set aside space for two parking spaces for each unit of multi-family housing. That means if you are building 
an apartment complex that had 100 units you'd need to find space for 
200 parking spots. Another feature of many zoning laws 
is minimum lot sizes. In Cupertino,  most single-family lots must be at least 
5000 square feet each.  Together, exclusionary 
zoning laws like these push builders across the country 
to focus on bigger luxury homes instead of smaller starter homes 
or multi-family housing. Let's consult a map. Here's Germany. Morocco. And Fantasyland. But beyond Walt Disney World's borders you find a larger boundary. The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District that's been at the center of a feud between Disney and Governor Ron DeSantis. “There's a new sheriff in town.” But this district started way before 
the DeSantis-Disney war. It explains something about the history of Florida... and the lost city of EPCOT. “It will be a community of tomorrow
that will never be completed.” And most importantly, 
why Disney World is here... and isn't moving anytime soon. This isn't Disney World, 
but Disneyland. And the key thing is not the park but the surroundings. Downtown Anaheim. A 40 minute drive from Los Angeles. Disneyland opened in 1955. In an internal publication, Disney
showed its belief that the site provided sufficient land 
for present and future growth. Period photos show the area didn't start as densely developed as it is today,. But this 1965 map shows how quickly 
things changed. Everything from schools 
to shopping centers limited Disneyland's control over its future. Walt Disney needed more... and he wanted to get more  from a new park. He wanted his new park to be 
on the East Coast. He needed a lot of land, so dense 
urban areas were out. He didn't want cold. That narrowed things down to Florida. He also didn't want to compete 
with the ocean so he skipped coastal locations. When flying over Orlando, he saw I-4, 
I-95, and the Sunshine State Parkway. That clinched it. Locals started to notice 
big land deals being made by mystery companies. Soon, Floridians began to suspect 
their mystery industry was Disney. The size was immense. Here's the size of Disneyland
if it were in Florida. And here is the land they bought for Disney World as it is today. Even after some land was sold off. Shortly after the land story broke Disney held a press conference 
with Governor Hayden Burns  and brother Roy Disney 
to discuss the plans. “It will bring a new world of entertainment... pleasure, and economic development 
to the state of Florida.” “Walt Disney.” Let's break down this next Walt Disney quote. After you've done something you see with the experience and all of that, what you might do if you were starting from scratch. Disney wanted to get right 
what he missed in Anaheim. “Taking a look at the land this morning I say we are starting from scratch.” The land needed a lot of work, 
drainage work, development: everything. Just look at this 1962 map of the area. There were some orange groves 
on the land but this symbol means swamp. The area is called the Reedy Creek Swamp. “But we have many things in mind that would make this unique and different
from Disneyland.” But Disney also had greater ambitions for the land that he would 
only reveal later on. “Here in Florida we have something special we've never 
enjoyed at Disney.” “There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we could possibly imagine.” To persuade Florida's government 
to support the project... Disney released concept art like this... that showed way more than a theme park. Like a giant industrial complex. And a constantly evolving city of 30,000 people. EPCOT: An Experimental Prototype Community 
of Tomorrow. “All these varied activities around the Disney World... will be tied together by a high speed, 
rapid transit system running almost the full length 
of the property.” “It will never cease to be a living 
blueprint of the future... where people actually live a life they can't find anywhere else 
in the world.” But Disney didn't want to wait for permits 
for every sewer drain and light post in his city of tomorrow. To have complete dominion 
over the land he'd bought... he needed political control, 
not just a title. He needed a kingdom. Special districts are common. Tens of thousands of them exist 
across the United States. For example, the famous retirement community,
The Villages just north of Disney 
uses them. These let residents vote on a board which then establishes policies 
that can raise taxes, build stuff, or fund public safety 
departments. This can happen across municipal 
boundaries, county lines... or other traditional boundaries. Disney wanted a superpowered version of this... with Disney staff as the sole voting 
"residents" inside it. They would be able to vote themselves in and make their own rules. The Disney World land is split between Orange and Osceola Counties. It also includes what planning documents list as jurisdictions of the city of Bay Lake unincorporated areas and the city 
of Lake Buena Vista all of which were created for and are largely controlled 
by Disney. They had multiple points of leverage 
to get this. “I believe we can build a community that more people will talk about 
and come to look at... than any other area in the world.” All these plans meant promise of 
economic development for a relatively sleepy area. “I predict that we'll experience 
at least a 50%... and possibly a 100% increase in tourism
in the state of Florida.” Disney could also threaten 
to pursue alternate sites... in northern California in Mineral King. They had a parallel proposal
to build a ski complex that was closer to Anaheim 
and less swampy. It ended up serving as a taunt to Florida. The result was clear.  In the same issue of Disney's
internal magazine in which they announced the biggest surprise of the decade Florida's VIPs were already flying out... to begin working on project problems. Other places didn't grant big powers 
like Florida. There was no ski resort 
in Mineral King because the Sierra Club fought it and the state never approved it. All that is why Disney World 
is here. In May 1967, the Reedy Creek 
Improvement District  was chartered as an entity that could 
regulate across counties.. like its own government. It could control sewage, generation of power
by nuclear fission airport facilities, railroads, 
and construction. And Disney used its powers. The company created an 
underground tunnel system for their utilities 
called utilidors. Each tunnel had spots for ventilation, water
and transportation. They built the monorail and they created 
their own lake. The Seven Seas Lagoon. So the parking lot wouldn't sit too close to the castle. They did it all because...  they could.  In 1966, Walt Disney died 
in Los Angeles. The city part of his Disney World dream 
mostly died with him despite some gestures toward building it. EPCOT became a part of the theme park 
in 1982... but it was not a city. The district's comprehensive 10-year-plan shows how far the Disney dream has drifted 
from EPCOT. Undeveloped land is labeled green 
for conservation not as the foundation for some future city. Mass transportation consists of busses 
and the monorail line rather than the intricate transit network that Disney envisioned. Disney has massive populations 
staying in its many hotels but when you look at a map of permanent 
residential addresses in the district you see 8 here and 9 here. It's projected to be about 
43 people by 2027. Disney ensured that later residential developments 
didn't change things. Development of Disney's "imagineered" small town 
Celebration, Florida... began on the district in the 1990s but it was de-annexed from Reedy Creek. The same happened for the Disney-owned
Plantation Park Condos in Little Lake Bryan. Being cut out of the district means 
no voting for the board. All of this was just background... until the feud. “Welcome to the Walt Disney Company's 
annual meeting of shareholders.” “I called Governor DeSantis this morning to express our disappointment and concern.” Disney's CEO called to protest Florida's
"Don’t Say Gay" law which restricts classroom instruction about sexual orientation. “We believe being joined at the hip 
with this one California-based company was not something that was 
justifiable or sustainable” And promised... “The corporate kingdom finally 
comes to an end.” But the taunting continued. “Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results 
Conference Call.” “So this is plainly a matter of retaliation while the rest of the Florida 
special districts continue operating basically 
as they were.” “Someone even said, like, maybe you need 
another state prison.” “Who knows?” “I mean, I just think that 
the possibilities are endless.” Still, the state would struggle to actually dissolve the district. The charter gives the district
the power to finance the projects and activities of the district 
through bonds. If the district disappeared, hundreds 
of millions in bond debt would probably flow to taxpayers in 
Orange and Osceola Counties. And on the other side, Disney has already made noise about 
a $17 billion Disney World expansion. In the end, Disney's district has had 
a name change and board composition and process 
may slightly change. But Germany and Morocco 
aren't going anywhere. The kingdom will probably stay 
a kingdom. if you live in the eastern United States you might be giving new attention to a number in your phone's weather app the air quality index or aqi right now smoke that drifted hundreds of miles from wildfires in Canada have raised New York's aqi to over 300 but what does that mean you can check the current level of air pollution where you live at airnow.gov it's measured from 0 to 500. New York is usually here right now it's here hazardous making New York the most polluted city in the world short-term exposure to this level of pollution could mean trouble breathing nausea or dizziness long-term exposure could cause serious damage to your heart and lungs a properly fitted n95 mask will filter out some smoke particles but it won't protect you from hazardous gases in the smoke like carbon monoxide it's best to just stay inside if you can with the windows closed and running any air conditioning or air filters you have and when the aqi gets back down to below 150 it'll be pretty much safe for most people to be outside again Canada's on track to have an unusually severe Wildfire season this year so dealing with this level of air pollution might start becoming more common These are guns. Okay, not quite. It's a chart of FBI background checks on gun sales over the last 25 years. It's an imperfect but useful proxy for tracking gun sales in the US. And you can see it's gone up almost every year. That spike on the right is guns bought during the pandemic. It's a lot. The number of guns in the US is definitely rising. But what percentage of Americans actually have guns? Well, it's under 50%, and importantly, you can see it hasn't gone up in the same way that the number of guns has. Which means this rise is not necessarily more people buying guns. Keep that in mind as we change this from a yearly chart to a monthly line chart, which now shows us when the spikes in gun sales really happened. This one's the election of Obama This is his reelection and the Sandy Hook school shooting. In 2015, there was a mass shooting in San Bernardino where the shooters were Muslim, and experts think that's what this spike was in response to. And of course, the pandemic -- but also the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. This chart is not primarily people buying their first gun. It's people with guns buying more. Chinatowns around the world tend 
to have a distinct iconic look. But it's not because they're what 
real Chinese cities once looked like.  In the 1800s, San Francisco's 
Chinese-American population found refuge from early waves of anti-Asian hate in an area that came to be known as Chinatown. Back then, it had standard Western architecture. Here's how that changed. As it grew,  San Francisco city planners started to smear Chinatown as filthy. They saw it as prime real estate 
and planned to move it miles away from downtown. But in 1906, an earthquake 
ripped through San Francisco killing thousands and 
destroying Chinatown. The city saw it as an opportunity 
to move forward with their plan to move Chinatown. But before that could happen Chinese-American businessmen came up with a new plan to 
cement their place in the city by transforming Chinatown 
into a tourist attraction. They hired white architects
to reimagine an exoticized, theme park version of Chinatown. The new buildings had curved 
eaves, detailed facades colorful tiled roofs and 
Chinese pagodas which were typically reserved
for religious structures in China. But it worked. The city planners backed off 
and Chinatown thrived with a template for survival that would be replicated 
around the world. So the other day I was watching Shang-Chi and I was Oh my God, why did you do that? I just didn't like the way 
you delivered those lines. So you punched me in the 
freaking face? So, the other day So, the So—  So the other day I was watching Shang-Chi and I was so impressed by the 
fight sequence on the bus and how they were able 
to make it feel so visceral and real, without actually
hurting anybody. I know the punches and kicks aren't real, 
but they feel real. And I wanted to know 
how they did it. So I made a call. I'm a second unit director 
and stunt coordinator. That's Wade Eastwood. No relation to other Hollywood Eastwoods. He's worked on some of the 
great action movies of the past decade and you can see him right there in 2008’s Quantum of Solace as 
Daniel Craig's stunt double. Before Wade even takes 
a step on set... he and his team will do a ton of prep
and previsualization. You might be familiar with VFX 
pre-vis thanks to Marvel. These are the lo-fi animations they do in advance of 
making the movie. But oftentimes —stunt teams will do... 
—What I call the action vis. I shoot it live with the proper cameras. Action vis often looks more like this. Sets are made of boxes and 
stuntmen play the lead roles as they figure out all the action and the camera angles 
in a safe space. Then when it comes time to 
shoot the movie... The main unit would shoot the drama 
and the acting scenes, so then I would shoot everything 
action-wise with my unit. Let's break a fight down 
to its most basic element... like a punch. How do you sell a good Both sides have to work the A-side and the B side. If the person throwing 
a stunt punch throws it with a you know, the best movement and 
performance you can have but the person receiving
it does a really lame reaction... It doesn't work. Both parties have to give 100%. This is important because 
the actors and the stunt people generally aren't actually 
hitting each other. Which can look fake if you're not "stacking the action" which is the cool industry term 
for saying that the people and the punching 
need to be layered in a way that cheats the camera. If we're not stacking the action... Obviously you can see that 
there’s a distance, it's not a sell. If I'm here suddenly, and you do 
a punch and I react it can come across. So we have the same gap. It's just where we put the camera. It's a couple of inches. It's, you know, maybe a foot max, depending on what it is. Sometimes, though, as Michael B. Jordan explained on the Graham Norton Show you have to actually make contact 
to sell it. When you do slo-mo shots, 
you can't fake it. You would see the space and it just
wouldn't connect. This is Michael Jordan taking a real punch: “And...action!” The B side of a hit, AKA the person getting hit, 
has all the power in terms of selling how hard 
a punch should be. So a small hit might 
leave me unfazed. But if I get hit so if I fall to the ground, it looks 
a lot more powerful. But knowing how to fall correctly and safely is a whole skill on its own. If you watch a big car crash the kinetic energy is breaking down
throughout the whole move. If that car hits a wall 
and stops dead the driver inside would be dead because your body cannot 
withstand that much impact. And that's really the thing with falling. You've got to just do just enough. The forearm might just absorb a little bit before the shoulder does, 
before the back does before the whole body does. And it's 5%, 5%, 5%. And making sure that you make it 
look really gnarly but you're actually... it's not that gnarly although obviously sometimes 
you are going to hurt yourself, bruise yourself, pop a rib. 
You are going to do something. But that can be mitigated with 
strategically hidden padding... which you can see right... here, 
in this scene from Atomic Blonde. Though these stairs are supposed to
look like marble or concrete this bend indicates that it's a much safer and softer material. I use quite a lot of soft materials
where I can. I’ll have our art department 
make something look exactly like wood or concrete, 
whatever it is. And if we didn't have the padding, 
we'd do one or two takes. It would be really painful. And you'd probably wouldn't 
hit it as hard. So we put a little bit of high density 
absorption in there and you can hit it much harder
and you can do multiple takes. And for that brief moment, the audience get to live that 
hard impact with you. And once that fight goes into 
post-production there are even more tricks used 
to make it look like the hits are just a little bit harder. Like, that hit looked pretty hard.  But if you cut out the frame where the fist is supposed to make contact, your brain will fill in the gap and it'll look like there's just a bit more power to that hit. You can see this trick used in this shot
from Shang-Chi where Simu Liu’s elbow 
pops on impact. You can also do things where 
visual effects can slightly, we don't do it, but a lot of movies do, where you can extend the fist and actually make it hit the face. You can see a good example of this in this clip from No Time to Die, where the VFX team gave 
Ana de Armas digital legs and they pulled the stunt guy in slightly closer to get more energy out of the hit. And of course, the sound design of a fight scene can add clarity as to when a swing misses or hits. And if you took the sound out of the scene completely... you wouldn't as easily be able to tell how softened a blocked kick feels... or how bone shatteringly hard 
a punch feels. But no matter how cool a fight looks, it won't feel exciting if there's no stakes. While I love the Avengers movies, 
some of the scenes where they're just tearing through an army of bad guys kind of washes over me a little bit. But then you have something like 
Back to the Future where the whole movie builds to 
this one punch that changes the course of history. There's a lot of fights that are out there
that are, you know, great spectacles of fights. But if you look at why they're fighting or what it's about, 
it's not there's not really any rhyme or reason. But when it's a proper fight, a proper journey, a proper, you know, 
bit of emotion that is when a fight feels exciting. That is WHEN a fight feels exciting. That's when a FIGHT feels exciting. How was that? Oh, God, no! What were you impressed by? Huh? [laughter] I was watching Shang-Chi... I was looking you too dead in the eyes.
[laughs] ...hitting each other. Sorry, I forgot that I was supposed to punch.  Sorry I’m laughing! You can’t see me right? Right? Was that like, too? I feel like that was maybe too silly. Cool, right? I think that's a wrap. The most famous car race in the
world has a big problem. For the past 20 Monaco Grands Prix, the driver that started at the front of the 
race has gone on to win. A lot of the time. But it's because nearly a hundred years ago car racing required a country's 
official Grand Prix to take place entirely inside
that country's borders. Italy used a course out in the 
countryside with sweeping corners long straightaways and 
wide roads. Germany and Britain did the same. In fact, everyone did because these features allowed drivers to maneuver around each other. A clever driver that starts in the back could work their way up to win the whole thing. But Monaco is only 2.2 square kilometers. So back in 1932, 
Monaco crammed its Grand Prix course 
the only place it could on the narrow streets and 
through the impossibly tight turns of its downtown. It created a uniquely 
stunning event. But today, there's simply 
not enough room for drivers to pass each other. So whoever starts in the front usually has an easy time 
staying there. But don't expect it to change. Monaco's course has a lot of 
history and prestige. And anyway, they still 
don't have the space. On December 19th, 2018... a revolution started to spread 
throughout Sudan. After decades of living under 
President Omar Bashir’s brutal military regime... civilians pushed back. They wanted a democracy 
in their country. A few months later, this man and this man helped take down 
Bashir in a coup... and then promised protesters the future 
they had demanded. Four years later the same two men are now 
at war with each other... tearing Sudan apart, killing 
hundreds of civilians. So how did Sudan go from this... to this in such a short time? And how did these 
two powerful men... go from partners to enemies? [overlapping] -Clashes in Sudan.
-...a deadly coup... ... support forces... Sudan has a long history of coups. Leader after leader has been brought down 
by military officers. The country's official military now known as the Sudanese 
Armed Forces or SAF has held tremendous power in the country 
for nearly a century. And they started using that power soon after Sudan gained independence 
from Anglo Egyptian rule. “Sudanese flag now replacing 
the flags of those two nations.” The first successful military coup 
happened in 1958. Abdullah Kalil, a retired 
military officer and sitting prime minister... overthrew his own civilian government to put Sudan under military rule. About a decade later, Colonel 
Jaafar Nimeiry carried out another successful coup... bringing down a short lived democracy. Then in 1985, Nimeiry was out. This military officer took him down and later installed a new 
democratic government. Four years later, Colonel 
Omar Bashir took down this government and appointed himself 
as the new head of state. But Bashir ended up being different from those that came before him. Given the pattern of military takeovers... Bashir knew he may suffer 
the same fate as previous leaders. So he used a strategy called 
coup proofing... where he'd surround himself 
with protectors  but would keep each one in check 
so they couldn't overthrow him. It started with the SAF. Throughout his regime, Bashir 
bolstered the army and maintained a strong relationship with them. He relied on them heavily 
to crack down on an ongoing civil war 
in southern Sudan... where SAF and allied militias brutalized civilians on his command. Then, with the army busy 
in the south another war started taking shape 
in the West. Darfur was in crisis. People here were historically neglected. Lack of medical supplies 
and necessary goods and little representation 
in Sudan's government left them feeling agitated for years. So in 2003 while large portions of the army 
were tied up in the South. Rebel groups attacked troops 
in this city in Darfur. And Bashir in recognizing that 
this rebellion was taking place instead of relying on the Sudan Armed Forces or SAF, the conventional military he instead decided to 
rely and arm  local Arab militias in the region that were known as the Janjaweed. This group was brutal and focused on wiping out 
Darfuri rebels and civilians at Bashir’s direction. Satellite imagery shows that the Janjaweed
is likely responsible for destroying over 3000 villages. SAF troops in Darfur were responsible 
for destruction there as well. Both groups are accused 
of mass killing, rape and the targeted displacement of civilians. Together, they killed thousands 
of Darfuris. The events in Darfur showed 
Bashir how to keep his power. And he turned to the Janjaweed 
in search of another protector. Among the Janjaweed militias there were a couple of men 
Bashir trusted and tried to bring into 
the central government. But there is one particular
Janjaweed leader that Bashir trusted the most. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo  or Hemeti. Bashir called him “my protection”. A particular play on the Arabic word Hemmati which is “my protection” versus Hemeti, 
which is his nickname. By 2011, the long and gruesome 
civil war here ended with South Sudan 
gaining independence... leaving Bashir in a weak position. And soon after, Sudan's economy tanked. Many of the oil resources 
that sustain the country were based in the South which was no longer 
under Bashir's control. To strengthen his power Bashir gave Hemeti and the 
Janjaweed official status as a paramilitary force called the 
Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, in 2013. At first, the group was placed under the NISS Sudan's intelligence agency, 
also one of Bashir's protectors. Even though they were supporting the SAF in the ongoing war in Darfur. Then in 2017, he passed a law placing Hemeti directly 
under his command... making it clear that the RSF’s main purpose 
was to protect him. To maintain the RSF’s loyalty Bashir gave Hemeti financial autonomy 
and allowed him to take control of some of 
Darfur's gold mines... smuggle weapons and minerals 
into places like Chad and Libya... and send troops into war torn regions 
in exchange for money. At the same time, Bashir continued to let the SAF have a hand 
in major industries... like weapon production and telecommunications. While Bashir was busy making 
these two forces richer civilians continue to struggle. Protests broke out in 2018 in the middle of a really bad 
economic crisis. That's when Bashir faced his biggest challenge... putting his protection scheme to the test. The ultimate trigger was 
the government's budget... which allocated about 60 to 70% 
to the security sector... which included Bashir's protectors. While Sudanese people struggled 
for basic needs. This led to the biggest revolution in Sudan's history. Spontaneous protests broke out in different parts of the country. And then they shifted to Khartoum 
in the capital city. Bashir refused to leave office. The RSF, SAF, and other security sectors 
backed him... and cracked down on the protesters who ultimately wanted democracy. But protesters didn't back down for months... and it became clear to the RSF and SAF... that Bashir's leadership wouldn't be 
as useful to them anymore. So on April 11th, 2019... they made a move that surprised civilians 
and Bashir. SAF commanders colluded with 
the RSF’s Hemeti  and removed Bashir from power. Protesters celebrated Bashir's removal... but they didn't trust the man 
who made it happen. A day after the coup, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan... a formal regional commander in Darfur took charge of the South. Together, the two men gained control of Sudan. People saw them as complicit 
in the violence in Darfur all those years ago, where they 
worked together. One as a member of the Sudan Armed Forces. One as a militia leader on the same side... against large proportions of the population of Darfur. And soon, the two men turned on protesters. When pro-democracy protests 
kept intensifying in Khartoum... Hemeti and his forces
started cracking down. On June 3rd, 2019... the RSF killed over 100 people 
at a sit in protest. And other massacres continued 
throughout the country. After this... these countries were forced to step in to help put Sudan on a democratic path. The United States, 
with its Arab allies the United Kingdom, Ethiopia,
and the African Union... pressured Sudan's military and protesters... to accept a power sharing agreement. In this new deal representatives from both 
the military and protesters... would be part of a transitional council. In this plan, the military would have control
for 21 months and civilians for 18. That meant the military would eventually 
have to hand over power to civilians who run the country. The problem was, despite 
warnings from protesters... these two military men were put 
in charge of the council with Burhan as chair and 
Hemeti as vice chair. At first, the council acted in line 
with the agreement... and installed a new prime minister, 
Abdallah Hamdok. But after multiple military interventions 
by these leaders... like a staged coup in October 2021... Hamdok resigned in January 2022. That made Burhan, the de facto leader of Sudan... and Hemeti as his number two again. But Hemeti was never quite comfortable with playing second fiddle. Especially because he had 
amassed this fortune and had positioned himself 
to play the role of statesman... almost better than Burhan himself. As Burhan developed personal alliances 
with leaders in the Middle East, Europe, 
and Asia over the years. Hemeti did the same using his riches 
from the gold mines... to build relationships with powerful individuals in those countries as well. After another year of protests... the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, 
and the UK pressured Burhan, Hemeti, and 
protesters to sign another deal. On December 5th, 2020 Burhan, Hemeti and political parties 
signed it... promising a new civilian-led 
transitional government by April 2023. But these two men disagreed 
on a key part of the deal. The RSF would need to become 
part of Burhan’s army... which would limit Hemeti’s power. Burhan wanted that to happen
in two years. But Hemeti proposed 10. That disagreement caused a big rift
between Burhan and Hemeti... which led to the current conflict between the two men. They've placed hundreds of thousands 
of armed men across the country. Burhan and his army have an air force that's responsible for many of the casualties. And Hemeti’s finances allow him to arm 
more and more men on the ground. Hundreds of civilians have been killed already... and thousands have fled Sudan. Cease fires have routinely been broken. And talks between the warring parties 
have gone nowhere. What was once a hopeful revolution has been interrupted by these two men. No matter who wins this war protesters are left feeling betrayed... by the country's de facto leaders and also by the international community that claimed to support their hopes for democracy. I was in the womb I gave my mom some of my cells. Fetuses do this. They give parents little souvenirs 
that then travel out through the placenta 
into the parent's body and then wherever they land they braid themselves into 
the tissues there. So my cells could be part of my mom's lungs or her brain or her heart. And research shows that  my mom also probably 
gave me some cells... cells that are now part 
of my body. And it's not a ton of cells like it's as low as one in a million. But I love that my mom has this 
whole family tree inside of her like cells from my grandmother cells from me, cells from 
my older sister. And maybe though this research is still being done. Even cells from my mom's grandmother. This 1982 cover photo got
National Geographic in a bunch of trouble and sparked
what the magazine would later reflect on as a “deserved firestorm”. This is the original photo of the 
Pyramids of Giza taken by Gordon Gahan, which 
the magazine altered using early digital photo processing to push the pyramids closer together so they would both fit the 
vertical format of the cover. Up to this point National Geographic had built 
a reputation for showcasing some of the best documentary 
photography in the world. Not only did the magazine lose 
some serious credibility over this the pyramids image kicked off
a debate over ethical practices in photojournalism and whether audiences can trust the images they see in the media as we entered the digital age. National Geographic initially defended 
the decision to alter the photo arguing that the cover is a graphic item and the image is purely esthetic. But it's the altered version that appears inside the magazine, too. This 2016 National Geographic article recalled that following the scandal of the 1982 cover... we learned our lesson, and it's never okay to alter a photo. It's time for a weekend 
reading rec. This week's recommendation is 
“This is How You the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar 
and Max Gladstone. The book is a sci-fi novella about two rival agents from opposite empires who travel through time and space to tip the future 
in their side's favor. It came out in 2019 and won 
several science fiction awards but just recently shot up to 
#3 on Amazon and has become a 
New York Times bestseller... after a popular fan account 
for the anime Trigun gave it a glowing recommendation. It's an epistolary novel which means that much of the story 
is told through letters. I was really engaged 
in the lyrical writing and the intensity of the prose which includes lines like
“I'll be all of the poets, I'll kill them all and take each 
one's place in turn and every time love's written about in all of the strands it will be to you.”  It's a quick read. So if you enjoy poetic writing, 
science fiction and letters that stretch time in space, check it out. What happened to this baby 
and this one? And why does this baby look like 
a commercial real estate agent who's named Dale? You know, it's really all about 
the location. Why did medieval babies look like 
ugly middle aged men? They weren't just bad at drawing. The babies looked like that 
for a reason. Artists in churches in Italy 
had an ugly baby mandate. Most of the babies were pictures of Jesus and Mary. See, these little babies were 
actually homunculi. Latin for little man. Theologians wanted to represent the adult Jesus in the baby Jesus. Perfect and unchanged. That's why you get babies who look like they're selling timeshares. When the Renaissance happened 
over the next few centuries it broadened and secularized art. As the Renaissance spread Baby Jesus got babier too and 
beautiful babies replaced babies that look like they need 
a prostate exam.  When you were 15 years old what job did you expect to have 
as a 30 year old? —Writer.
—Singer. Teacher. I asked this question to colleagues,
but for more than 20 years... that question has also been asked to millions of teenagers worldwide. What job do you expect to be doing at 30? Lawyer. —Journalist.
—Managing a production company. This question is important because 
over time it can tell us how a generation of young people 
thinks about the future. So how do actually 15 year olds answer? Let's find out. This visualization shows all the jobs 15 year olds listed 
in the year 2000. The top job was medical doctor, 
but there's also athlete... Decorator, military officer... Way lower on the list there are jobs like pharmacist 
and real estate agent. There are so many jobs listed that researchers tried to simplify it 
by clustering the jobs into even broader categories. Here's the top ten list for girls. Nearly half of all kids expected to do 
the same ten jobs. That was more than 20 years ago. So these kids are now in their mid-30s. Did their expectations come true? Not really. For example, about 11% of girls 
and about 5% of boys expected to be doctors. But these days, less than 0.5% of
working age people in the countries where they did this survey are actually doctors. In 2018, this question was asked 
again to 15 year olds... and this time to a much bigger group. Again, the top answers were doctor... lawyer... athlete. And there were a bunch of other 
interesting jobs, too. When researchers simplified this list... half of all kids expected to do 
the same ten jobs again. But from 2000 to 2018 one thing did change. In 2000, a portion of kids didn't actually 
name a job. About 14%. In 2018, that group jumped 
to 25%. Here's why that's a problem. There's a great piece of research that tracked thousands of 8th graders 
starting in 1988. They specifically focused on kids who had science related ambitions
but were just average in math. They compared that group to kids who had no science-related ambitions... but they were high achieving in math. Turns out the kids with 
science-related ambitions... were far more likely to get 
a science or engineering degree... even though they weren't as good at math. What this study showed was that ambition,
even at an early age... plays a huge part in people's 
professional outcomes. Part of why it's so important is that it helps them plan for the future. For example if they expect to have a job that 
requires a college degree... then they should make plans to go to college. For that reason, the PISA survey
also asks if kids expect to attend college. And it found something interesting. Among the kids who expect 
to have a job that requires a college degree... 1 in 5 had no plans to attend college... which means they probably 
won't be doing the job they expect to do. When teens expect 
to have a certain job but they don't plan on getting 
the required education or experience researchers who study career paths call that misalignment. One study of Australian teenagers found that kids who are misaligned at 15 were twice as likely to be unemployed or not in school at age 25. Another study tracked 
American 15 year olds. They found that the students who were 
aligned or over aligned which means they plan to get more than enough education for 
their expected job... These kids had higher wages 
throughout their career compared to misaligned kids. But researchers who study
these career pathways have a pretty good idea of things 
we can do to help students think more clearly about their future. For one, young people need to 
explore various careers... maybe by visiting workplaces. And it's useful if they've 
experienced a workplace by working part-time 
or volunteering. Those experiences should help them think about what job they 
expect to do  and make plans accordingly. But most students don't get these opportunities. Only about 40% of students 
in this survey said they participated in job shadowing 
or worksite visits. And a similar percentage of kids said they participated in job fairs. In other words, 15 year olds aren't getting the support they need 
to answer this question. When we don't do the work of helping kids think through their futures it's disadvantaged kids who suffer the most. Among the most affluent kids only about 1 in 10 are misaligned. But among the poorest kids about 1 in 3 are misaligned. So we entrench the inequality 
that already exists. This is every kid who answered 
the survey in 2018. The researchers also looked at which of these jobs are 
at risk of automation. It turns out about 40% of 15 year olds expect to do a job at risk of automation 
in their country. When you were 15 what did you expect 
you would grow up to be? It gets at this profound question 
of who you expect to be... and what you expect 
the world to look like. Maybe it's not fair to ask 
15 year olds this question... but fair or not, these surveys tell us they need more help coming up 
with their answers. Why did North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un bring his preteen daughter to a missile launch and a military parade? After a lifetime out of 
the public eye why is Kim Ju-Ae suddenly following 
her dad everywhere? There's been a bunch of headlines speculating he’s announcing her 
as his successor. But the idea that Kim Ju-Ae 
is the country's next leader kind of breaks down when you look closely the photos. Kim Ju-Ae isn't framed as 
a strong leader. She's framed as a doting 
and devoted kid. Plus, for North Korea to have
a woman leader would be a major departure 
from the past. What's more likely is that 
Kim Jong Un is using his daughter to send a message to North Koreans
and to the outside world one that countless other 
authoritarian leaders across time and space have used before. These photos ask us to focus on the trust between a child and a parent to put aside major concerns about food insecurity  or secret political prisons, 
torture repression or extrajudicial killings. And it faces the main road 
to Jerusalem. This is a story about 
what happened here in 1948. We are only 750 people.  And everybody knows each other. It was a black spot in the history. That history has been
carefully concealed... purposefully distorted, and in the West, 
largely forgotten. They put our village as an example
of what they can do. The massacre in this village
was one of many in a series of catastrophic events... that became known as 
the Nakba. When hundreds of thousands 
of Palestinians were violently displaced 
from their homeland... in order to create 
the state of Israel. “In May of 1948, a new Jewish state Israel was born in a bath of blood.” The borders of Palestine have been 
changed forcefully over time. But historically, this region has been home 
to Palestinians for centuries with hundreds of villages and thriving cities. One of them being the central city 
of Jerusalem... with holy sites important to Jewish Christian and Muslim people. By the late Ottoman Empire, 
Palestinians living here were overwhelmingly Muslim  with minority Christian and 
Jewish native populations, too. But regardless of religion Palestinians were often 
referred to as Arabs. People of the Arabic speaking world despite their distinctive culture. Palestinians have long distinguished 
themselves as Ahl Filastīn... or the people of Palestine. They developed a distinctive 
Arabic accent. They developed regional food, regional dress, 
and family ties. But by the time World War I began... several key political forces were competing for control of these lands. First, there was a growing Arab 
political movement... looking for independence from 
the Ottoman Empire in hopes of a unified Arab state 
that would include Palestine. Then there were Zionists a political group that had one main goal: The creation of a Jewish state. Zionism was a response to 
an increasingly brutal climate for Jewish people, particularly 
in Europe and Russia... where there was a massive wave 
of antisemitism... including large scale attacks 
in the late 1800s and early 1900s. After briefly considering other areas
for a new state including Uganda and Argentina... Zionist leaders decided on Palestine because of its connection to early religious history. But there was a third key group 
with political interests here. The British. Control of the region would 
allow them to expand their spheres of influence and protect 
trade routes to India. During World War I, since both 
the British and the Arab independence movement 
wanted Palestine... they decided to go after 
the Ottomans together with an important pledge. Through a series of letters in 1916 an Arab leader and a British official agreed that if Arabs would help the British 
fight the Ottomans and give the British economic and other 
foreign privileges in Arab lands... in return, the British would recognize and support an independent Arab state. Soon the Arabs started 
doing their part in revolting against 
the Ottomans making it easier for the British to move in. But the next year the British issued 
a new declaration and betrayed the Arabs. “In 1917, Lord Allenby conquered 
the Holy Land... and the Jews were promised 
a national home in Palestine.” Without consulting the native 
Palestinian population... the British issued what's known as 
the Balfour Declaration: Supporting the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for 
the Jewish people. So instead of supporting 
the idea of Palestine as part of a unified and independent 
Arab state... the British pledged to help secure this land 
for Zionists. It was a strategic move. This declaration opened up a pathway for Britain to gain power in Palestine. Under the guise that it was supporting the self-determination
of another people... of a people in Palestine... who don't reside there yet. As for Palestine's majority 
Arab population the declaration referred to them as 
non-Jewish communities... who would be given civil 
and religious rights... but not political rights. A few years later, after World War I ended Britain gained control of Palestine 
through a mandate... that also required them 
to put the Balfour plans for Jewish settlement in motion. And they did. Between 1922 and 1931 the Jewish population 
more than doubled. The migration helped the 
Zionist movement gain steam. And a slogan took off. “A land without people for,
a people without land.” And it sends a message to Western leaders... that the people who had been living 
in Palestine for generations... could just be easily moved elsewhere. The idea was that those inhabitants 
weren't a people with ties to that land. Palestine was, of course, 
a land with a people. In 1931, there were more than 850,000 Palestinian Arabs in the region, 
still the vast majority. But with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in particular... “Hate became a rallying call.” Jewish flight from Europe 
became even more urgent. And Palestine started to see the biggest wave of Jewish emigration yet. Violence broke out, rooted in 
tensions over land. Jewish settlers purchased 
swaths of fertile land and evicted tenant farmers creating a crisis of hundreds of thousands of landless, dispossessed 
Palestinian-Arabs. Though Palestinians fiercely rebelled against  both British colonial forces
and Jewish settlers they were brutally crushed 
by the British. They put in Palestine more troops to repress that rebellion than they had stationed in India at that time. All of India. These troops killed thousands 
of Palestinians including many of their leaders and the British began training 
and arming Zionist militias to suppress the rebellion, too. But the rebellion continued. So in an attempt to prevent further 
Palestinian resistance... the British began to limit Jewish immigration 
into Palestine. This ended up angering 
Zionist extremists leading to more violence. So in 1947, after decades of trying 
to manipulate both Palestinian Arabs and Zionists 
to keep their control over Palestine... Britain gave up... and handed the question of Palestine 
to someone else. “To the United Nations also came the problem of Palestine.” “In recent years this small country had been the scene 
of disorder and bloodshed.” They figured, here is this new thing
called the United Nations.  Here. In your lap. Palestine. First gift. So the United Nations has 
now to figure out how do you disentangle 
this thing... that the British who helped create. A UN special committee proposed 
the land be divided into two states... a Jewish state and an Arab state, 
with Jerusalem as a separate UN-controlled entity. It was called the Partition Plan of 1947. The plan shocked Palestinians. We could not accept the partition plan because at that time the population 
was almost 2 to 1. But the plan proposed giving over 
half the land and often the most fertile areas 
to the Jewish state. From a purely pragmatic perspective... the partition plan didn't make much sense 
for Palestinian Arabs. That wasn't the only problem 
with the plan. Within this proposed area of the Jewish state... were hundreds of thousands 
of Palestinian Arabs... including both Muslims and Christians 
who had lived there for generations. On a moral level... the idea of making hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs minorities 
in their own homeland... seemed unjust and unfair. In November 1947, the UN 
put the plan to a vote. In the aftermath of the Holocaust  and after lobbying from 
US leaders and Zionists the UN voted in favor of partition. “And finally, a momentous decision 
to partition the Holy Land’s 10,000 square miles.” Britain announced their mandate 
over Palestine would end on May 15th, 1948. Even as Palestinians continued to reject the UN's decision to partition the land. After the partition took place, 
you know, in 1947... you know, we really were scared that something might happen to us. By the end of 1947 Zionists had several well-developed 
paramilitary forces... the largest one known as the Haganah. And more extremist militias like Irgun. On March 10th, a couple of months before 
the British mandate would end the Haganah adopted what was called 
Plan Dalet. Or Plan D.  On paper, the main goal was to 
gain control of the Jewish state as laid out in the partition plan, 
while also defending Jewish settlements outside of the borders. In reality, that's where the majority 
of these operations took place... outside of the UN's 
proposed Jewish state. Some carried out by Haganah and others
by more radical militias. Many of these operations focused on
isolating Jerusalem and the roads to it. A set of brutal instructions called for the destruction of Arab villages 
by setting fire to blowing up and planting mines. Especially those population centers which were difficult to control. In case of resistance it called for the population
to be expelled outside of the borders of the state... villages emptied and for the occupation and control 
of Arab villages along main transportation arteries. One of the most widely publicized
village massacres happened here in Deir Yassin. We lkived in Deir Yassin which is about 4 miles west 
of Jerusalem. 91 year old Dawud Assad was there the day of the massacre 
and was 18 at the time. On April 9th, 1948, extremist 
Zionist forces executing Plan D closed in 
on Deir Yassin... even though the village had made
a local peace pact with neighboring Jewish settlements. Friday morning they attacked us. Dawud escaped through a trench. I went down, all the way down here 
like this. So about 4 hours walking 
to Jerusalem. To this day, the archive of the Israeli army 
refuses to release many of the images and intelligence reports 
on Deir Yassin. But one UN report detailed 
circumstances of great savagery... including women and children 
stripped, lined up... photographed and slaughtered. Roughly 100 people, largely children
and the elderly were killed in the village. As for Dawud, he later reunited 
with the group of Deir Yassin captives in Jerusalem, including his sister 
and mother. My mother says... So everywhere there’s a commotion,
you know? News of what happened 
in Deir Yassin spread quickly with far reaching effects. The Zionist militias used it 
as a propaganda tool to tell people about it everywhere. The idea was that if you don't leave... we will do to you what happened 
in Deir Yassin. Stories came out about women
being raped about babies being killed and induced a great deal of fear among 
the Palestinian Arab population many of them fleeing as a result. “Jewish troops surrounded Arab forces 
from the city of Haifa.” After taking Deir Yassin Zionist paramilitary groups 
cleared major cities including Haifa and Jaffa and took hundreds of smaller 
villages and towns, too. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians 
were forced to flee pouring into neighboring states 
as refugees. Plan D became the blueprint 
for carrying out the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine to make room for a new state. And on May 14th, the day before 
the British mandate ended... Zionist declared the state as Israel. But the creation of Israel 
didn't end the Nakba. Neighboring Arab countries 
that were overwhelmed by Palestinian refugees immediately 
went to war with Israel. “Now united and a league of Arab States... they are insistent that the entry of refugees into Palestine must be ended.” The fighting lasted for months. Arab armies eventually lost, 
while Palestinians continued to be killed and forced out
throughout that time. Palestinians who fled often carried
only enough to stay away for a few weeks hoping they'd eventually return home. A lot of them locked their doors put their key in their pocket
and then moved to safer ground. When you leave the house and 
you take your keys with you it’s because you're planning to go home. In the case of the Palestinians those refugees weren't allowed 
to return. Refugees trying to return 
were often shot at. Zionist paramilitary operations 
also tried to prevent them from returning again by destroying 
the villages. That act of preventing their return 
compounded the Nakba. So the Nakba is both the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their homes 
and lands and country... as well as preventing them to return once the fighting was over. Palestinian society was 
dismembered, crushed. More than half of the 
Palestinian people became refugees, stateless, 
dispossessed of their land. Over time, the state of Israel covered up the physical evidence 
of an Arab Palestine. Place names were often changed 
from Arabic ones to Hebrew ones. The Jewish National Fund 
embarked on a massive effort to plant thousands of acres of pine forests and recreational areas on top of hundreds of ruined 
Palestinian villages. Even though these forests have now grown 
into big pine trees Palestinians have not forgotten 
their homelands. While we know that roughly 
6,000 Israelis lost their lives in the violence of the Nakba... records for Palestinian deaths 
weren't kept. It's estimated to be around 15,000. By the end of the Nakba roughly 750,000 Palestinians 
had been forcefully expelled... and more than 500 villages destroyed. Though the UN’s partition plan 
allotted Israel 56% of the land through the Nakba, Israel captured
78% of the land. It was everything except 
what's now known as the occupied West Bank 
and Gaza Strip. Today, that's up to at least 
85% of the total area. Turning 6 million Palestinians into refugees without a homeland. It's why around the same time that Israelis are celebrating 
Independence Day... Palestinians are out protesting 
on May 15th. Holding up keys as a symbol 
of the homes they lost and the hope to return. For them, the Nakba isn't just 
a moment in history. It's a catastrophe that never really ended. When you think of great films you might think of their directors 
like Spielberg, Hitchcock, Peele or actors like Meryl Streep, 
Viola Davis, Morgan Freeman. But recently, there's 
a new name in the mix and it's not a person 
but a studio. A24. A24 movies have been nominated for over 50 Oscars and 
have won 16. They've taken over Halloween 
and maybe your closet. And the reason why 
you know their name is part of their strategy. A strategy that's helped take A24 
from a tiny distribution company... to making some of the biggest 
and weirdest movies and TV shows of the past ten years. I've maybe seen  
more A24 films than the people who work 
at A24. My name is Nate Jones. I'm a senior writer for Vulture 
in New York Magazine. Last August, 8/24, I ranked all of them 
from worst to best. The company was founded on two sort of 
basic creative principles. The first was that they were going 
to give directors an almost unprecedented 
creative freedom and then to pay for that, because that is, 
you know, creatively risky. They basically decided they weren't 
going to be spending money on traditional forms of marketing. They were going to try and use viral marketing and 
word of mouth. These cheaper ways of bringing attention 
to their movies. So the first half of their existence,
they only bought.  They didn't make any of the films. In other words, A24 was founded 
as a distribution company and as your resident film nerd I have to give you a quick lesson on the moviemaking pipeline 
for this all to make sense. So bear with me for a second. First, there's production 
where the movie gets made. Then there's distribution where a company buys the rights 
to finished film and takes on the work of marketing it and making deals to connect it to companies that can show it 
to audiences. That's the third part 
known as exhibition where companies like movie theaters 
and streaming services show movies for the general public. The studios you’re likely familiar with generally take on both 
production and distribution. So something like Indiana Jones
and the Dial of Destiny is produced by Disney. And then Disney also makes 
the trailers, posters and deals with with exhibitors 
like AMC and Regal to get that movie shown in theaters. But smaller, independently produced films often go to film festivals like 
Sundance or Tribeca in hopes of getting the attention 
of a distributor who will buy the rights to the film and will help them make 
those connections. In the beginning, 
A24's sole focus was to find great indie movies and 
buy the distribution rights for them. It's just easier that way. 
You don't need as much money. You know, it takes a lot of cash 
to produce a film. Doesn't take as much to just buy a film 
that's already made. Let’s use Spring Breakers, 
their first hit as a case study to show how all their strategies come together. Spring Breakers was the first 
A24 film I saw. It was the first A24 film
most people saw. I think it was a very good introduction 
to the A24 style. The film has an extremely strong artistic vision from director 
Harmony Korine... who A24 courted by making bespoke 
gun-shaped bongs. The movie had striking 
visual choices like this rain that almost 
looks like blood... and a neon color palette
that has become a staple of A24 films. It had a clear hook. You have these sort of Disney starlets 
like Selena Gomez and they're, you know, getting up to 
no good and doing drugs. And if you were a young person who'd grown up on the Disney Channel suddenly all these people you'd seen 
in this very squeaky clean entertainment were getting very rough and grimy. And on top of that, it had supremely 
memeable sequences. James Franco has, you know, 
the first of many A24 scenes that would just become this sort of 
perfect little tidbit. —He has this speech. 
—[overlapping] Look at my shit. I. got short Every fucking color.
Scarface on repeat. It was just this 
weird sort of thing that really had just caught on. Their innovative online 
marketing strategy leveraged gifts and memes 
to make the movie buzzy. Like this one that amassed over 20,000 thumbs up 
on Facebook which... you know, doesn't sound 
like a lot now. But you got to remember, this was 
2013 back when the LA Times was calling likes thumbs ups. Anyways, the marketing worked. The movie ended up setting 
per screen attendance records for its opening weekend as well as clocking the biggest 
premiere of the movie in limited release that year. The second weekend... everybody talked a lot about 
how they hated the movie... but their first weekend was incredible. That movie was a huge 
word of mouth hit. If you look at how much money it made compared to other films you know, it doesn't really stand out. But if you look at how much money it makes 
compared to other... independent films from that era, 
like it was a huge hit. And crucially, it proved that 
the A24 method worked. If they could keep curating distinct, 
vibey movies marketing them online for less money 
and more virality and distributing them in a way where the box office 
can rival the budget... then they were in business. And oh boy, were they in business. They were able to create such a strong brand. You knew in your head kind of 
what an A24 film was. And I think that's down to 
their sense of taste. I don't know of any other studio
that has such an almost like a personal style in that way. They helped launch careers 
for Ari Aster the Daniels and Robert Eggers. And afforded directorial debuts to Greta Gerwig, Jonah Hill, 
and Bo Burnham. They would find these up and coming 
directors and be like we are going to sort of usher you 
to the next level. Ex-Machina showed their shrewdness in marketing as they created a Tinder account for Alicia Vikander's lead character... inviting men to watch the movie. And films like Room became 
big hits at the Oscars. They won their first Oscars 
in 2016. They won best actress for 
Brie Larson and Room. They won best visual effects
for Ex Machina. And they won Best Documentary for Amy. So they were they had been on the scene, 
they had been respected. They had sort of known how to play 
the industry game. You know, they weren't too cool for it. They weren't holding their heads above it. And four years in after curating a strong brand 
off of other people's movies... they decided to produce 
one on their own. So Moonlight was the first film 
that they made themselves. There was a bet on Barry Jenkins who had made only one other feature 
and eight years before this point... and they basically said, like, we will let you do totally whatever you want and 
we will support you visually. It does look a lot like 
other A24 films. You know, you have that neon you have that very subjective lighting. Moonlight — that was when they get 
the reputation, I think for like, oh, you know, 
it's not just online hype. They're not just like buzzy. They are going to release 
some great, great films. If you look at the films they 
have produced since Moonlight it's a lot of the movies we think of as like very-A24:
Uncut Gems. It's Everything Everywhere All At Once. You know, it's these movies that are 
these big, bold brand statements. In 2017, they expanded to TV. When you talk to people 
who watch Euphoria a lot of them don't know 
that it's an A24 series... because Euphoria airs on HBO which is a very strong brand, 
a very big brand. And that kind of crowds out the A24 of it all. But Beef airs on Netflix, which has 
a much smaller brand. And, you know, suddenly that allows the A24 of it all 
to kind of jump out. And as a cherry on top, they make merch 
for themselves not just for the films, you know, 
they will sell A24 T-shirts and A24 hoodies with 
that little logo on it. And that sort of helps build 
that sort of cult around this, you know, editorial sensibility that they have. And they employ a lot of the techniques
that the fashion industry has too.  You know they will do collaborations with, you know, 
online ceramics. They will do with limited edition drops where you've got to get your hands 
on something now.  They build this sense of 
exclusivity around it where it becomes, you know, there are there are A24 merch heads you know, who are really hoping to get
 the latest stuff. It's something that no other indie studio 
has quite managed to pull off. When you look at their trajectory 
in retrospect it's easy to be dazzled into thinking that they've got 
the Midas touch. And in some ways they do. —But... 
—We don't need to build them up too much. Like any studio, they make 
bad films too. You just might not notice it because A24 puts out a ton 
of movies every year as compared to other studios, 
both big and small. In 2022, the studio put out 
20 films. That's 2 more than Paramount a studio that's way larger than they are. But they have a unique way of hiding their bad films and 
making them go away. They had a deal with DirecTV. They now have a deal with Apple TV where you know, movies that maybe they don't think are quite pass muster. They'll just go straight there. You know, those ones won't play 
at the metrograph. Those ones will be playing at you know, your cool indie theater. They will kind of be quietly shuffled off to, 
you know, DirectTV. Maybe people will find them. But if people don't find them,
you know, maybe that's okay, too. You look at the list of A24 films, 
there's dozens of them that you have never heard of that
nobody has ever heard of. The Adderall Diaries The Kill Team. Revenge of the Green Dragons. These are movies that truly do not exist. But their missteps don't seem to matter much when they're tried and true strategies
create such big wins. When I talk to the fans last year some of them readily admitted, 
oh yeah, like I'm in the cult, I'm deep 
in the cult. And when I ask like, I asked them why the key thing was difference. There's so much these days that 
feels sort of the same feels very corporate, very controlled that that was kind of the one thing that they all kind of agreed on is that like when they go see an A24 film you know, it might be good. There's a chance, it might be terrible, 
but, you know, they know it's going to be just like a little weirder, 
a little more offbeat. Ideally, it's going to be something 
they haven't seen before. The name means nothing. The name is there's no symbolism. The name is an Italian highway 
that leads out of Rome... that I think Katz was driving on. And he was like, oh, that would be 
a good name for a company. But it sort of fits, right? Because it's abstract. It’s sort of mysterious, 
and you're like, Oh, there must be a hidden meaning there. 
You know? I often like some of the films, 
you know, you're like... you know, there must be something there. It sparks of curiosity, in a way. Something is happening in Texas. Since 2021, there have been 31 separate lawsuits, in federal district courthouses all over the state, in which Texas has sued the federal government. Let's look at just one, in Amarillo, about immigration. The judge in this case - there was no jury -  ruled that the Biden administration had to continue a Trump policy called "Remain in Mexico" that keeps asylum seekers out of the country. The Biden administration eventually got that decision reversed, but it took almost a whole year. And as they waited for the Supreme Court to do that, they also had to obey the decision and keep asylum seekers out of the country. All because of this one judge's ruling. And in fact, the Texas Attorney General's office, which filed the case, had sought this judge out specifically. And over the next two years, they would bring him cases against the federal government again, and again, and again. And he's not alone. Texas has gone back to this judge again and again too. You're not supposed to be able to pick which judge hears your case. But in Texas, you can. It's called "judge shopping." It's only possible in a place like Texas. And it's helped make Texas into a powerful weapon for changing how things work everywhere in the country. Each state in the US has at least one
federal district court. Texas has four. They're the bottom level of the federal court system. Federal courts mostly hear cases involving national laws. And federal judges are appointed by the president. There are over 600 district
judges across all of these courts. So several judges in each court. And usually the judge who hears your case is chosen
randomly. STEVE VLADECK: Randomness is a critical principle because the idea is that the judicial system is supposed to be, on the whole, a neutral arbiter of legal disputes. But the US is big. There are a lot of big states. And even when a state has multiple federal court districts, some of those districts are still really big. Like this one, the Northern District of Texas. If you're in Lubbock, and your case gets randomly assigned to a judge in Dallas, that's a five-hour drive to get to court. So partly to solve for that, many districts are further subdivided
into multiple divisions, and each usually has its own courthouse. But different districts have different rules for which case goes to which division. For example, over in the Central District of California, there are three divisions, with clear rules meant to make sure that cases stay local. But in the Northern District of Texas, those rules aren't so strict. It's much easier to file a case in whatever division you choose. Same with the other Texas districts. Here's where that becomes a problem. The Southern District of Texas has 28 judges for seven divisions. But for most of the last two years, two of those divisions have had just one active judge each. Here in the Victoria
Division, that's been judge Drew Tipton. And in the Galveston Division, it's Judge Jeffrey Brown. And this happens all over the state. In the Northern District, this judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, is the only judge in the Amarillo
division. And Judge Reed O'Connor is the only one for the Wichita Falls Division. And that means that if you choose to file your lawsuit in one of those places, you know who the judge will be. So you get a situation where, over two years, the Texas attorney general files eight separate lawsuits against the Biden administration in Victoria, because they knew Judge Tipton would hear them. Cases about the border wall, the minimum wage, gun laws... VLADECK: Judge Tipton had sided with the state of Texas, had embraced a pretty broad view of why Texas could sue in the first place, and had issued nationwide injunctions barring the Biden administration from carrying out its policies. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think there was much of a mystery about why they would choose Judge Tipton. The second thing that makes Texas unique is where it sits in this chart. If the losing side of a district judge's decision appeals, it goes up to one of the 12 Appeals Courts, also called the circuit courts. A decision appealed from there goes up to the Supreme Court. And all Texas district courts report up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which, with a big majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents, is the most notoriously conservative of all the circuit courts, and broadly speaking, very likely to agree
with even the most conservative rulings. We saw this when a private group filed a lawsuit in Amarillo seeking to ban abortion pills that had been legal for 20 years. In April 2023, Judge Kacsmaryk sided with the private group, saying the US Food and Drug Administration had to roll back its approval of mifepristone for the whole country. The Fifth Circuit Court largely agreed, and the case made it to the Supreme Court -- which then, actually paused that decision. VLADECK: But, you know, at multiple points
we were hours away from this really shockingly broad and remarkable ruling, that would have dramatically restricted access
to mifepristone on a nationwide basis, going into effect. And so, you know, I think the notion that like, hey, we walked up to the cliff but didn't fall in, doesn't mean everything's okay. But while the Supreme Court moved quickly to pause the mifepristone decision, often it actually just sits on cases for months before it hears them, effectively allowing the lower court judge's decision to dictate federal law during that time. Like in 2022, when Judge Tipton ruled that Biden couldn't reprioritize which undocumented immigrants to deport first. Almost a year later, we're still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on that. And Tipton's ruling is still in effect. VLADECK: Any good lawyer is going to try to maximize the chances that their client's going to win. What's different about what's been happening lately is actually trying to stack the deck so that you're guaranteed of a specific outcome. Judge shopping the way we see it today is a relatively new phenomenon. So - how do we fix it? Well, the district courts themselves could decide to do things differently. In February, the Southern District of Texas changed Victoria's single-judge status. It now has two active judges. And since these are federal courts, Congress could also pass a law regulating the way cases are distributed. There's a bill in Congress right now that would redirect any lawsuit that wants to block a federal policy to the courts in Washington, DC. Or the Supreme Court could write new rules for the lower courts. But until then, anyone who wants a good shot at getting a case before the Supreme Court knows that in Texas district courts, you can pick your judge. This street in downtown 
Manhattan was once paved with oyster shells. In the 1600s, it was a 
waterfront road named because so many oyster shells 
would wash up on the shore. At that time, New York Harbor was 
home to oyster reefs so large that ships had to navigate 
around them. By the 19th century, it's estimated 
that New Yorkers were eating about 1 million
oysters per day making it the oyster capital 
of the world. Around the city, discarded shells 
piled up on the streets. Many were ground into mortar 
paste and used for construction on various buildings 
like Trinity Church. Unfortunately, no one knew 
how to act back then and the harbor was heavily 
polluted and overfished. By 1927, the last oyster bed 
in New York was closed. It wasn't until the year 2000 
that water in the harbor was clean enough 
to sustain life again. Today, projects are restoring 
the reefs and the oysters act as natural filters and homes 
for various marine life. Much like coral reefs. They'll likely never be fully restored 
to what they once were. But oysters are and always have been 
quintessential New York. these photos from around 1910 ended child labor in States across the U.S which people knew was a problem but no one was really doing anything about it until a sociologist named Lewis Hein started photographing working kids across the country Newsboys field workers coal miners and cotton Spinners he also interviewed these kids and reported what they told him in detailed captions the stories Hein published brought the horrors of child labor into the spotlight and his photos led directly to these states enforcing a minimum employment age there are three camera techniques Hein used that make his portraits so effective at humanizing his subjects first he shot with a very shallow depth of field putting the worker in sharp focus with the background mostly blurred out second he photographed these kids at their eye level rather than looking down on them and finally he used repetition in his framing to demonstrate how widespread the problem was Heinz photos turn the issue of child labor from something people had heard about to something they couldn't ignore The British coronation regalia includes this scepter and 
this crown and they both contain 
huge diamonds with a controversial past. These gems, along with seven 
other big diamonds were all cut from the largest clear cut 
diamond ever recorded. It was called the Cullinan Diamond ten centimeters long and 
six centimeters deep  and given to  King Edward VII in 1907, 
who had it cut into pieces. Every coronation since 
has featured the largest two  Cullinan I in the scepter and 
Cullinan II in the crown. They're also known as 
the Great Star of Africa and the Second Star of Africa. Yep, the king got the original diamond from  the Transvaal Provincial government a British colony in what is now 
South Africa. And they had purchased it from the mine which was located on land
that the British had annexed in a war against the descendants of Dutch settlers
who had taken the land from local tribes. The British committed a long list 
of atrocities in the region including extracting the country's 
mineral riches. Now South Africans are calling for 
the return of the diamond. They say all mining and colonial operations were illegal from the start. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo 
in the Philippines erupted becoming the second largest volcanic eruption 
of the 20th century. Its ash plume shot up 
past the atmosphere and into the stratosphere dispersing a layer of aerosol particles
around the whole world. Those particles formed 
a sort of solar umbrella that reflected sunlight 
away from the earth caused global temperatures to drop by about half a degree Celsius
for almost two years. It's not the first massive 
volcanic eruption to cool global temperatures. El Chichón volcano lowered temperatures by 
a similar amount in 1982 as did other major eruptions 
over the past century. Today, scientists have been exploring whether we could replicate 
this phenomenon to fight global warming. Using a technology called 
solar geoengineering. Supporters say it's a tool 
we need to seriously explore as climate change worsens. Understanding more about these things that could potentially 
reduce suffering. That's worth a lot. But critics believe the technology's risks
outweigh its rewards and shouldn't be a response 
to fighting global warming. Sometimes more technology 
is not always better. There are some things that 
have been invented that a lot of people would wish 
had never been invented. So which one is it? To understand the benefits and risks of solar geoengineering, I spoke to several scientists, 
lawyers, indigenous leaders with strong opinions on both sides. With stakes as high as the survival 
of the human race on Earth... should we be exploring 
solar geoengineering? There's one thing scientists 
all agree on: Solar geoengineering could 
cool down the planet. Reflecting sunlight away 
from the earth  stops heat from getting trapped 
in our atmosphere. We could do that by injecting aerosols 
into the stratosphere like volcanoes can do. That's the most commonly 
researched approach. Some scientists are also looking into 
brightening marine clouds so they're better at reflecting 
the sun. And other potential methods include reflective shields 
in outer space. These initiatives are still in different stages
of the research phase but in order for us to deploy 
these technologies and get large scale cooling effects, 
we'd need to interfere with our complex climate 
on a massive scale. One of the main reasons 
some scientists  support solar geoengineering is that we're currently on 
a pretty dire path. Our emissions, mainly carbon dioxide,
keep rising. There's really no question
we must cut emissions in the long run. But even if you cut emissions 
to zero tomorrow... that does not eliminate climate risk. It just means you stop the climate risk 
getting worse because the climate risk comes from 
accumulated emissions. That's University of Chicago 
professor David Keith. He explained to me that unless we think beyond 
emission reduction the climate change impacts
we're already experiencing will continue to worsen. A recent study showed that
extreme weather accounted for nearly 10% 
of all global deaths and shows an increase 
in heat related ones. To mitigate those effects supporters argue that we need 
to explore climate processes use computer modeling, 
and develop technology to figure out if and maybe how 
this technology could safely be deployed globally 
along with other solutions. The thing is, messing with 
our global climate is very complicated. The whole climate system 
is wired together. People could, technologically speaking, 
create major... unpredictable changes in the way 
the climate system responds. Oxford Professor Raymond Pierre Humbert 
is referencing one of the big concerns 
about solar geoengineering. Adding new elements into 
our atmosphere or stratosphere will change precipitation patterns 
across the world... potentially worsening the extreme weather we're already experiencing 
due to climate change. Nearly everyone agrees 
on these risks. —And... 
—You can't actually answer the most significant questions about 
the climate system response. Short of a full scale deployment. A full scale deployment would require unprecedented 
global cooperation not just in terms of scale, but 
in terms of time. But the carbon dioxide we have emitted since the industrial revolution and we emit today will continue 
to have a warming effect on climate for thousands of years 
from now even if we stop emitting. But in contrast, the solar geoengineering 
techniques proposed have a very short lifetime in the atmosphere. To create a continued cooling effect we would need to deploy them 
constantly for centuries. That means that you're committed 
to having institutions and treaties that can be adhered to 
for thousands of years. And that's a really unprecedented sort of burden to put on
future humanity. If there an international disagreement war, global depression, 
or something that forces  a sudden termination of 
solar geoengineering... then the world gets hit 
with this rapid warming. That rapid warming is called 
termination shock. And the risk of it happening 
is one of the big reasons critics think solar geoengineering is ungovernable 
and unsustainable. And so far, we have a pretty poor record of figuring out how to move 
things forward. In 2021, Sweden rejected a pioneering project to test solar geoengineering 
technology. Environmental and indigenous groups 
issued a letter highlighting “the potential for creating drastically uneven, unpredictable changes 
on climate weather and biodiversity.” and “geopolitical tensions
it might awaken”. It would cause great changes... to our environment and 
to our ecosystem and those precious ecosystems 
that we are... advocating so hard for. To protect and safeguard 
and secure and strengthen. Opposition like this is one reason
that most solar geoengineering research is taking place in labs with 
models and simulations. Turning the debate about 
solar geoengineering into one about how far we should take 
the research. In January of 2022 400 scientists issued a letter calling for 
a non-use agreement on solar geoengineering. It included five core commitments, 
among them no outdoor experiments, 
no public funding and no support from 
international institutions. Professor Pierre Humbert was one of the scientists 
who signed it. He explained that the signatories are okay with low risk research. So research that's on fundamental 
climate processes that doesn't develop the technology 
that leads to deployment that can provide useful information. Computer simulations and modeling are midway through the spectrum. Critics of solar geoengineering worry that 
the more modeling we do the closer we'll get to full scale deployment. But they acknowledge that 
some simulations are useful and a key part of overall science 
we can't eliminate. We are pretty clear on the idea that research that was essentially
technology development that would lead to deployment 
was something that the signatories are opposed to. Lili Fuhr, who works at the Center
for Intenational Environmental Law  told me something similar. Soon as we let the genie out of the bottle... and if we not only just 
theoretically research but completely develop 
a certain technology... it will most certainly get used. We've seen that with other technologies as well. About a year later, 
in February of 2023 110 scientists, including Keith, 
issued a letter in support of more research into solar geoengineering. They want a robust, international 
scientific assessment that includes experiments that could 
potentially advanced technology... but stated that “while we fully support 
the research this does not mean we support the use 
of solar geoengineering tech.” We can't bind the hands of the future 
and force them never to use these technologies. So if we make a collective decision now not to do serious research that 
doesn't prevent people employing this technology in the future. It just means they will deploy them 
with less knowledge. I asked Sarah Doherty, who studies 
maring cloud brightening at the University of Washington 
about research like this. Doing the research right now 
really is important... and it's important to making... equitable decisions 
down the road. Because the cat's out of the bag. People know these options exist. Some people think we should 
be going out and doing them right now. So that tells you how likely it is people 
20 years from now are going to be saying, 
“Let's go do this.” A big concern both sides agree on 
is the negative impact solar geoengineering could have 
on decarbonization efforts... and that the tech might act 
as an excuse for  oil and gas companies to keep 
selling fossil fuels. To unleash the technology of 
solar geoengineering on the world... at a time when we've just barely started to get people interested in doing the hard work 
of decarbonization... that will just inevitably 
increase the pressure to just take business as usual. I absolutely agree that a risk 
around these technologies... is that they will be exploited by people who want to 
preserve emissions. But agreeing on the issue  doesn't mean agreeing 
on the path forward. That is a political concern. In my view, it is not 
an ethical basis for restricting research 
on technologies that are potentially risk reducing. So far, Mexico is the only country that's banned solar geoengineering experiments. While the US is currently developing  a solar geoengineering research plan. World organizations focused on climate 
are now starting to make assessments and recommendations. I can't tell you which one 
is exactly right. What I can tell you is that each and every single person 
I spoke to on either side of the issue cares deeply
about our future on this planet. And maybe that tension between them 
is actually a good thing... because while it doesn't make
our path forward clear... it can make us more thoughtful
and rigourous about how to solve this giant mess we are currently in. Take a look at these four kids. These preschool teachers watched a video of them playing 
for a 2016 study. The study asked them to 
press the enter key every time they saw a behavior that could become 
a potential challenge. But the thing about the study is 
it's kind of deceptive. There's actually no misbehavior 
in the video. The kids are actors and 
the researchers were using eye tracking software because what they really 
wanted to know was when teachers expect 
misbehavior... who are they watching? The study found that both 
white and black teachers spent more time gazing at black boys 
than other children. Black boys make up less than a quarter 
of the nation's preschoolers but more than 40% of 
preschool suspensions. The study's lead researcher told 
The Washington Post that “iImplicit biases don't begin 
with black men and police.” “They begin with black 
preschoolers and their teachers, 
if not earlier.” Stelfie is a very funny 
and very clumsy dude.  He time travels and has 
the most incredible adventures. And he is sort of 
an alter ego myself although physically we are 
completely different. Originally I started this project as a way to showcase the potential 
of Stable Diffusion combined with good artist skills. My goal was to capture a scene where Stelfie engages in a boxing match 
with Muhammad Ali. I always start with, you know, 
drawing a sketch. Stable Diffusion and the other 
diffusion models around are extremely good, but also 
extremely cheeky. It's very easy for them to 
drive you away from the original idea 
that you had. Once I have the idea, I want to try 
a bunch of random prompts... just to see if I can find at least a good initial pose. I couldn't find the pose 
for Stelfie on the right. So, what I've done is that 
I moved to Photoshop... and I recreate the pose myself. ControlNet an extension if I had to reproduce today 
the same pose that... I've done two months ago 
with this artwork... probably would take me 
15 minutes. Throughout the whole process I always use different samplers. Because the sampler is very important in terms of realism and details. So if you're trying to 
replicate skin... Euler is very synthetic, 
is very fake. But DPM, for example, is 
working great on that. There are many parameters that are 
extremely important. One is steps. So steps is how many times 
you’re telling Stable Diffusion to work on your prompt. You can choose a very low number 
or a very high number. Many options.  At the beginning, obviously,
the two more important parts are the the inpaint and the outpaint. So inpaint means you are asking
the machine to change just the parts of the image and the machine will change only the part that you want it 
to be changed. On the other side, outpaint, 
you’re asking to the machine... to imagine what's outside the box based on what is already in the box. As you can see, I look back 
a lot between  Stable Diffusion and Photoshop. So let's say that's out of 100%. 50% is done with Stable Diffusion about 40% in Photoshop and about 10% in Procreate. When it comes to Stelfie’s face... I use a model that has been trained 
specifically on Stelfie’s face. So what I've done previously is that 
I created Stelfie in 3D... and I took a bunch of snapshots... of his face from different angles... and I use those images 
to train the model. So when you train the model you save a keyword. The noise strength is the last option that you can see in the web UI 
of Stable Diffusion. And why is important? Because it gives you more or less control... on the image itself. When it comes to faces, 
it’s very difficult to achieve... good results. Especially if you're trying to 
replicate a popular person. So I've asked Stable Diffusion to make a face that would 
look like Muhammad Ali. And then in Photoshop, 
I warped all these traits. So I make the nose — I don't know, 
larger or thinner. And the jaw... the eyes. So, I changed everything manually. But what is important now 
is to try to have the pose that is correct. And I wanted to— I wanted Stelfie to be like 
a bit fluffy in terms of not super fit,
without a six pack. And probably here I sort of found... the belly that I was happy with. But clearly it was not realistic enough yet. And then I used the result and I modified the result in Photoshop. But my understanding of how Muhammad Ali 
was looking like. So you have to, you know and crop and cut and paste and 
change and warp and paint on top, arms and eyes, 
exposure, skin tone so a lot a lot of stuff. So here I was about halfway done. But then eventually, if you're 
running into trouble... even if you're not super precise... you can, you know, go back in 
the Stable Diffusion and try to ask Stable Diffusion 
to help here. You, you know, just maybe on 
some part of some edges or with the lighting or 
with the skin. This sort of... stuff. Still the the body of Muhammad Ali 
is not correct. He wasn't buff like 
the athletes are today. You know, he was big 
and healthy. But not  like this muscle 
that they have today. Very defined. And so I wanted to get that real... realistic Muhammad Ali. Here we are in a good position because probably we are 
12 or 14 hours in. And as you can see, the scene is set. So it's all good to go. You just need to make it better. Well here— Probably they don't like nipples, 
who knows. The nipples period of Stelfie. You know, before December which is when Stelfie was born... I was going to bed and there was dreaming about
beautiful ladies. Now all that I dream about 
is about 41 years old dude. So, no. Not great. 
Not great. Well, I feel you have to
drive the machine not the other way around. And just to prove how important  is the artist’s part in the overall 
process creation. I see the overall process as a joint effort with the AI. I’ve been a traditional artist for 2 decades,
painting on canvas. And in the last five years I've been doing a lot of digital art. So from that part of myself, 
I don't feel threatened at all. I feel this is an opportunity. An opportunity for many 
new talented people... to jump on a new branch of art that is completely different from the one that we have already 
in digital art and just open up new way 
of being creative. 50% of the hands that you see 
in Stelfies are mine. And that's because it has always been extremely challenging to 
reproduce hands. So what I was doing is that, you know, 
if I needed the hand in some position I would take a picture of my hand... and then I would clean it up 
and paste on top. This week's weekend 
reading rec is one of the most censored 
books in America. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. This graphic novel  is an autobiographical 
coming-of-age story that documents Kobabe’s life through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as Kobabe navigates what it means
to be non-binary and asexual. Gender Queer is described as 
a journey of self-identity told through comic panels 
and illustrations. But for the past 2 years, it's been 
banned, challenged and restricted in public schools and libraries across the country. The American Library Association 
ranked Gender Queer the most challenged book 
of 2021 mainly for LGBTQIA+ content and supposed sexually explicit images. Gender Queer was also the most 
banned book from school districts in 2022, with 41 school districts removing it from their
library shelves. In response, Kobabe illustrated this comic in support of queer library books 
for teenagers. If you want to read Gender Queer, but it's unavailable. Try the Brooklyn Public Library which provides 13 to 21 year olds 
with free electronic access to banned LGBTQ+ books. This is the typical demand for electricity on a spring day in California. It starts growing around 6 AM,
then rises again around 6 PM. Now, this line shows when 
wind power feeds the California power grid. Wind is variable but often 
picks up at night. Solar panels, 
on the other hand kick into gear around 7 AM generate a lot of electricity until 
the sun sets around 7 PM. On most days neither comes close to meeting 
the peak demands of the day so the power company 
relies on fossil fuels like natural gas to make up for the gap which widens significantly
when people use electricity the most. Since the power company can't store 
the solar and wind energy it has to use fossil fuels 
at these times which can be stored 
in barrels and tanks. It's kind of the big gap in our renewable energy system 
right now. If we don't figure out a way storing energy,
there's a chance that we're going to be still dependent on fossil fuels. So how do we store some of the solar 
and wind energy for later? Right now, you might be thinking “Just use a battery.” 
and you're not wrong. Batteries have improved immensely
over the past few years particularly lithium-ion batteries which use a chemical reaction 
to store energy. Individual homes that have solar panels often use lithium-ion batteries 
to store energy. But there's a few reasons lithium-ion isn’t perfect for the grid. This is Neel Dhanesha a founding writer at Heatmap, 
a climate news site. And he wrote about this 
for Vox in 2022. One is just the scale that’s needed. We would need a lot 
at a level that we just don't really have 
right now. That's a challenge because lithium 
is only found in a few places on Earth. But more importantly like we need lithium-ion batteries 
for other things. Lithium-ion batteries are 
really good for stuff that moves because 
it's relatively light. Meaning it's better suited for things 
like electric cars and portable electronics. Not power grids that stay still. Luckily, there's another 
energy storage solution that's actually been around 
for a long time. “This is the site for the first
pump storage  hydroelectric station 
in southern Ireland.” This is a type of energy storage called 
“Pumped storage hydro”. They were first built in Europe. The US built one in 1929 and 
many more were built in the 1970s and 80s as a way 
to stored nuclear power. Today, these facilities are 
all over the world. There are 39 of them in the US. And they store energy in a really 
fascinating yet simple way. When energy demand is low, 
renewable or fossil fuel energy is used to pump water from 
a reservoir or river up a mountain into 
a higher reservoir. Basically converting this energy into what's called potential energy. So potential energy you might kind of remember from 
high school physics. When a thing is up at a height,
it has stored potential energy. When it's let go, it turns into 
kinetic energy. When that energy is needed the water is released down
the mountain where it's converted into kinetic energy that spins a turbine and generates
electricity for the grid. It's a way of combining water, a mountain, 
and gravity into a battery and it can be about 90% efficient meaning only 10% of this energy 
is lost in the process. Pumped torage hydro 
works really well but it's difficult to build more. Well, for starters, you need a mountain and you need to hollow out a mountain
to put pumps inside it. And it takes a lot of money and we don't have mountains everywhere. So the ideal way to store renewable energy 
would be something that's cheaper and smaller than 
a pumped storage hydro plant... but works in roughly the same way. One company, Energy Vault is also using gravity to store 
renewable energy. But without the water or mountain. Instead, renewable energy is used 
to lift heavy block of concrete up into the air where it becomes potential energy. Then, when it's needed he blocks are released, 
spinning a turbine which converts the potential energy 
back into electricity. Energy Vault calls this 
“gravity energy storage”. And while it's still being tested, 
the company claims it could be more than 80% efficient. A company called Quidnet is working on a different version 
of the same principle. Their “geomechanical pumped storage” unit 
uses renewable energy to pump water underground 
into a pressurized hole... where it can be stored 
as potential energy. Then released back up to the surface 
to spin a turbine and generate electricity. Both techniques are betting on
potential energy as a solution for storing renewable energy 
for the grid. I think this partly because 
potential energy has shown itself to be 
pretty efficient. Also, realistically, fewer moving parts. If all you're doing basically 
is letting— is using gravity 
to work with you... you have a pretty massive
force of nature on your side right there. But potential energy isn't the only 
possible solution. Other companies are using renewable energy 
to super heat salt... insulating it, then 
releasing that heat to create steam or hot air 
to drive a turbine. Basically storing renewables by converting them 
to thermal energy. Then there's a company that's betting 
on... rusted iron. The they're called iron air batteries. And what they do is they utilize
the chemical reaction that creates rust to store 
and discharge energy. The thing that we all sort of think of 
as an inconvenience could be really useful is just kind of 
beautiful to me. Right now these ideas are all 
in various stages of development. But they are attracting investors. And the hope is that several will work because one might not fit 
every power grid. The grid, like renewable energy overall is going to be a sort of 
patchwork solution. And so the more we try
these solutions the closer we get to figuring out
exactly what the right mix is for what we need for the 
grid of the future. There were a record number 
of demands to censor library materials 
in 2022. That's almost double the amount 
we saw in 2021. So I called up the American Library Association who published this data to ask them 
what's going on. I was very surprised by that huge jump in the demands 
for censorship. Why did it go up so much? So what we've seen over time 
is that book challenges tend to spike during times 
of more conservative political environments. They spiked during the McCarthy era. Things that appear to be 
socialist or communist... were often banned. And now again as we are in an extremely 
politically divisive world.  ALA also explained that 
book challenges are common during election years. In 2022, a midterm cycle books by and about 
the LGBTQ+ community and people of color were 
the most targeted for censorship. Some of those challenges were led 
by people running for office. On Friday we’ll open up 
the most challenged book in the country right now 
for our weekend reading rec. It’s Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. This line is Barack Obama. This one's George W Bush. 
This is Donald Trump. The chart is showing how many federal judges each of them appointed during 
their first 4 years in office. So Obama loses here. 
Bush does alright. But Trump set a modern record: 231 judges appointed to the federal court system. One of those judges, 
just as an example has recently issued decisions that could make it harder 
to get birth control legalized doctors discriminating 
against LGBTQ people. And just this month one that could ban 
abortion pills nationwide. Partly to correct for 
judges like that Joe Biden has tried to outpace Trump
with his own appointments and you can see that 
for a while he did. But go a little further and 
you can see that he'll have to pick up the pace 
to keep up and that his line has gone flat. One thing that is not helping 
with that is that the Senate committee 
that confirms judges is deadlocked at ten Republicans 
and ten Democrats because they're missing the 
11th Democrat: Senator Dianne Feinstein, 
who's 89. She's been in the hospital 
for two months now. And Democrats don't have a majority
unless he either comes back... resigns and is replaced or Republicans let Democrats 
replace her temporarily. So far, none of those things
has happened. These are not MRIs. They’re TikToks. Hundreds of custom selected TikToks. Different dances. Indoors and outdoors. Entirely different vibes. But this is not to compare
trendy dances. It's to help computers 
learn to see. So I want you to guess why a wide range of Tik Tok videos would be useful to help a computer to see. And try to remember your answer. So I’m giving you this context first... before I explain why this one researcher
holed up in her room finding 600 perfect TikToks. It's not a bad dataset. You get to watch a lot of dance videos, 
but after a while... believe me, you get very tired. Okay, so you hear about 
machine learning and artificial intelligence and maybe you imagine some machine just vacuuming in all the world's 
information. But a better analogy is flashcards. On the front, you’ve got 
the question on the back — the answer. There are different data sets 
for different tasks. For language, it's sentences the model can learn to complete by 
checking the right answers For an image generator it would be a bunch of pictures 
with definitions. These answers on the flashcards,
they are called ground truth. The computer can rely on them 
being right. Now imagine all the stuff 
we want AI to do from transcription to generating voices. If you don't have answers 
on those flashcards... ground truth, they're kind of useless. And just like flashcards the more varied and better 
your ground truth the more an AI model can 
learn and test. So here is the tricky part. When do you train an AI on if you want it to make 
three dimensional images from two dimensional ones 
with just one viewpoint? It's like a puzzle, right? I mean, you need ground truth to know if your AI or model 
is getting things right. Yasamin started with Renderpeople. It's this great dataset with ground truth... because it includes video of people and real 3D scans to go with it. So you know exactly where they are in space. An AI could look at these people and learn how people work in 3D. But there weren't enough 
flashcards there. Yasmin and her coauthor didn't have
enough backgrounds enough variety. We were interested in the motion. We were interested in the 
movement of people. How they appear when they move, 
and they go through different... appearances and poses. That sounds a lot like a TikTok. Was that your guess why? When I first saw this paper I thought it was going to be 
because all the TikToks were doing the same dance 
or something but it's actually the opposite. It's because all the TikToks 
are so different. Yasamin knew that they'd be good 
for training since... not only do they show people clearly... they're also full of other stuff: 
backgrounds, jackets different shapes. To use them, Yasamin had to 
create a 3D picture. She had the phone's 
point of view so she used a program to 
remove the background... and another program to estimate how a person was moving 
in 3D space. She ended up with 600 videos. And her program could look at one part see the depth, make a prediction how the depth would look later, 
and check her work. Like flipping over a flashcard. I made my own TikTok dance called “I cried in the shower this morning”. And Yasamin was able to run it
through her model to create a 3D mesh. But it gets weirder than that. Do you remember this thing? I paid Kim and Coleman 
a dollar each to do this and if we used the right music, 
we would get demonetized. But you know, the mannequin challenge. It involved everyone from Hillary Clinton
to James Corden. It is the most James Corden-y thing imaginable. But it is also a dataset. Remember the flashcards? Imagine you want computers to learn to see depth 
in real situations. You could set up tons of cameras
in a circle to scan everything. High, sky, straight on, 
like Renderpeople. And you'd know all the angles. But then you would lose 
the real world situation. Or you can use the TikTok data
to approximate ground truth. But they are all moving around a ton. If everyone is trying to stay still it’s kind of like a bunch of cameras taking pictures at the exact same time with all the messiness of the real world 
built in. It is a really interesting ground truth. So Google researchers created 
“A Dataset of Frozen People”... using tons of mannequin challenge videos. 2000 videos of people not moving  and that taught a model. These became flashcards 
for a model to guess if a camera moves five feet away, 
what a scene will look like. These videos included 
tons of variety variety in settings, types of people, 
everything. It was gold. It's like thousands and thousands of flashcards for the model to learn from. I spoke to a couple of researchers who... sorry. Are we— Are we done?
Okay. All right. Thanks. Okay. So anyway. They use the mannequin challenge 
not for training... but to kind of grade how well 
their model did. It was ground truth for them 
to evaluate their experiment. One paper shows how to learn 
the geometry of a scene to fill in missing parts in photos. See how here they took an image, 
painted out part of it... and then they use their knowledge
of the scene to fill it back in. You can see the real angle here  and their program's version here. One of the papers authors told me the mannequin challenge helped them know that they nailed it in any location. We want to make sure this works 
for an image in the wild. To use a randomly provided image and you don't know if it’s 
indoor or outdoor. Or you could be anywhere. It was similar for the paper
Virtual Correspondence in which researchers figured out 
how to match points in 3D scenes from different angles. They could put in images predict the pose and intersecting points and match them up for everything 
from movie scenes to scenes from Friends. I like Friends. I watch it more than ten times. And then I thought, oh, 
maybe I can use this this thing in my paper. I screenshot screenshot
and I just run it. These researchers used 
the Mannequin Challenge as ground truth to check their work. And the many backgrounds in the Mannequin Challenge 
were priceless because the variety put their program 
through its paces. Also, they checked their model against 
a Carnegie Mellon dataset too. Where people stood in a big bubble 
filled with cameras. This thing had perfect 3D scans 
of people in video. It had ground truth, but the ground truth 
was still narrow because it was in this 
sphere thing. The Mannequin Challenge was in 
the real world. Mannequin Challenge was like 
a full flashcard set... with answers they could check. Mannequin Challenge provides a nice thing because everyone's kind of acting still and then people go around the scene so you can kind of get these 
extreme scenarios. So what to make of all this 
weird stuff? At first I was trying to get these researchers to say how creative they are but they were like, 
“It's not a big deal.” But I will say this. I highlighted the TikTok data set and
the Mannequin Challenge but those papers are also built on top of this 3D Facebook dataset... created by manually putting dots 
on people's faces. And 10,000 real estate videos that helped computers learn 
camera positions. The machines: They are learning. But for now, we are still the teachers. They are only as good as the flashcards. And we're the ones making them. There are several different types 
of noise and they're categorized 
by color. The most common are white, pink and brown noise. Each defined by the way 
it distributes power to frequencies across 
the audible spectrum. Here's what that means. White noise distributes power 
to every frequency equally... but it tends to sound harsh to us
because the shape of our ears makes us more sensitive to higher 
frequencies and lower ones. And that makes them 
sound louder even though the power distribution is equal. Pink noise adjusts 
for this, boosting the harder to hear 
low frequencies and then reducing power 
proportionally as frequency as frequency goes up to give each octave of noise
approximately equal energy. This ends up sounding 
more balanced to our ears even though it's actually skewed. Brown noise takes this idea 
even further... resulting in a low, ocean-like 
rumble that a lot of people find relaxing. Not only are abortion pill safe they're safer than staying 
pregnant, at least in the US. When the FDA approved Mifeprestone 
for abortion in 2000. One condition was that doctors 
would have to report any hospitalizations or deaths 
to the FDA. For every 1 million users the FDA found 5 deaths 
attributable to the medication. Compare that to 
a drug like azithromycin commonly prescribed antibiotic, 
often called a Z-pak. 35 deaths for every 1 million 
people who take it. Phosphodiesterase type-5 
inhibitors like Viagra. 40 deaths per million people 
who take it. The abortion pill is also safer  than carrying a pregnancy 
to term. In the United States in 2020 for every 1 million live births 230 women died from 
maternal complications. Right now, there's this 
right wing group suing to ban mifepristone and their argument is that 
the FDA didn't do enough to make sure the drug was safe before approving it 20 years ago. But that is just not true. We now have nearly a quarter century of data that shows. Let's imagine a modest-sized 
skyscraper... about 100 meters and 
30 stories tall. A high rise this size was 
almost certainly built with concrete, which 
contains cement. In this case, about 
6,000 tons of cement. Making that cement probably 
emitted about 4,600 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. That's about the emissions
from driving a car for 12 million miles. Now, multiply that by all 
the buildings in the world. Even that wouldn't capture 
cement's carbon footprint. Think about the sidewalks
we’re walking on. Many of the streets you drive on. A lot of our energy infrastructure. Dams, power plants. All that cement production 
accounts for 8% of all global carbon emissions... more than the aviation and 
the shipping industries combined. Today, most of those emissions are due to China's rapid development. In just two years, China produced
more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century. Other developing countries 
will use a lot of cement as they build tall cities 
and infrastructure too. If we want to reach net zero 
in a few decades we'll have to figure out how to build 
a building like this... without emissions. It'll be hard, but there's a way. You're looking at 
a typical cement plant. One like this is currently operating in nearly every region of the world. This rotating tube, a kiln, and 
this tower, a pre heater are where all cement's emissions take place. About 40% of cement's emissions are a result of burning fuel 
to heat the kiln. It reaches around 1450 degrees Celsius 
near the heat source. The preheating tower is where 
limestone, clays and other additives are dropped. The 850 degree temperature here causes limestone to release 
its stored carbon dioxide and those are the other 
60% of emissions. The first question about 
decarbonizing cement is whether we can just use 
less concrete altogether. We typically use up to 2 to 3 times
too much concrete in design. Architects and structural engineers 
just use lots of it. It doesn't hit the bottom line and 
it makes the thing more reliable and they're less likely 
to get sued and kill people  and what have you. In a building, concrete is valuable 
for its compressive strength: its ability to hold up under
a lot of weight. So it's hard to substitute 
its use in places like  foundations and columns. But elsewhere, we should minimize it. I was in the new Parliament building 
in Scotland and it was obviously designed with 
greenhouse gases in mind. Concrete was only used where needed. Steel was only used where needed. And they used laminated wood for the roof for a lot of structural materials things that weren't load bearing. Carbon conscious design 
can certainly chip away at cement's emissions. But replacing concrete altogether  won't be possible in the 
near term. So cutting down on excess concrete 
can cut emissions on our high rise by roughly 26%, 
according to one analysis. We'll have to do more and the next place to start 
is how cement is made. Looking at the 40% of emissions that go into firing the kiln 
is one place to start. Typically, cement plants use 
coal or petroleum coke or natural gas to heat the kiln 
to 1450 degrees Celsius. You could electrify that but it's really hard to achieve that high of a temperature 
with electric heat. Though some startup companies 
like this Finnish one are trying. Until we get there cement plants have started to just 
burn different things. The high heat makes cement plants 
a good place to incinerate industrial waste, trash,
or used tires. The limestone basically 
scrubs out any nasties that are produced in the flame here... and stops them being emitted 
into the atmosphere. Switching fuels can cut emissions 
by roughly 7%. We've still got a ways to go so let's look at the other way
cement causes emissions: The chemical process. This is the carbon released from 
the heated limestone. Once it goes through the kiln it becomes a material 
called clinker: the key binding ingredient in cement. And cement binds together the rocks 
and sand and water in concrete. Cement is about 10% of concrete but accounts for a majority 
of its emissions. So one strategy is to find 
a substitute for the clinker. Startups have been in a race to develop a new kind 
of green cement that avoids clinker altogether. But so far, nothing is as abundant and commercially viable as 
the limestone-based stuff. And adjusting concrete formulas takes a lot of time and safety testing. For good reason. The events in Turkey recently, there was a lot of substandard 
cement being used there and there was a lot of substandard 
building practices. In North America clinker accounts for about 
90% of cement due to safety standards. But North America 
is overly cautious compared to the rest of the world. The average clinker-to-cement ratio globally was about 72% in 2020. That's made possible by 
clinker-like substitutes. We could reduce the clinker ratio even more. Experts emphasized one new 
cement mixture that gets the clinker ratio 
safely down to 50% by supplementing it with more clay 
and unprocessed limestone. So that’s with an existing technology
that meets existing building codes. That'll cut half the emissions from the cement and concrete industry. These reductions will help 
in reducing emissions... but until we find a scalable, 
zero-emission cement, any clinker production at all will inevitably have process emissions. Which brings us to the last piece 
of decarbonization. The cement industry will need to use carbon capture and storage 
to get there. There's no way around it. This would mean capturing the carbon emitted from the heat and chemical processes here... and storing it deep underground 
in a geologic deposit. A cement company in Norway is piloting one of the first cement plants in the world 
to capture carbon. And they'll store it under the North Sea in their oil and gas deposits. Some new companies are also finding a way to inject stored carbon back into cement and concrete 
during production. This takes advantage of rock's 
natural ability to reabsorb carbon. And potentially one day we may even see 
our built environment become a carbon sink which we don't usually think about 
when we think about large concrete cities and large buildings and our roads and all of that. So this is the scenario in which we get this building 
to net zero emissions. And the goal right now 
is to get there by 2050. That requires us to start now 
and aggressively. Especially in China, the world's 
biggest producer. But experts told me there's 
some good news there. So in the US, the average age 
of a cement plant is about 34, 35 years. In China, it's 15, which means 
that many of their plants are actually more energy efficient than the plants that we have here. China uses less clinker in their cement
than the global average and they have at least one
carbon capture project in the works. But there's a long way to go. Last year, they pushed back their peak building emissions deadline 
from 2025 to 2030. Changes to design in the concrete
and cement processes will be the easiest to implement... but carbon capture and storage 
is at very early stages. And all this will be expensive. It's estimated that the cement 
used in this building will cost somewhere between 
70 to 115% more. The cost of cement or concrete is a very small fraction of 
the overall cost of a project. So it's relatively easy and cost effective for 
a government agency to commit to pay a little more for the material 
to absorb that green premium. The US Inflation Reduction Act is helping create a market 
for carbon capture and storage by increasing tax credits to 
$85 per metric ton of carbon stored. For a long time, heavy industries 
like cement seemed like unsolvable climate problems. But today, we know how to fix them and we can't afford not to try. Thanks for watching the video. As a follow up to this one, I'd recommend checking out 
my coworker, Phil Edwards’s great video on the world's tallest 
mass timber building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was able to film the building 
under construction and he gives a great explanation 
about how changing from traditional materials like steel and concrete to wood changes the entire 
building process. Wood probably can't replace concrete in all the world's buildings. One expert I interviewed told me 
we'd probably have to triple the amount of wood harvested in order to scale it up 
and do that and that would come with its own 
environmental problems. But our big concrete problem requires a lot of different solutions and using wood when possible 
is definitely one of them. And as you can see from Phil's video, 
it looks really cool, too. I ran this prompt in Midjourney about a year ago and 
this is what you get with the same prompt today. AI programs can make 
photo realistic portraits now. So I wanted to look at social bias 
and it gets kind of weird. As you might expect, the outputs reflect some disparities 
in our society. Most engineers are men, 
so that's what you get. Most nurses are women. We know that these models 
are trained on images scraped from 
the Internet but they have been able to increase racial diversity in some of 
the outputs. Gender scenes may be trickier. In real life occupations like bartenders or 
optometrists are gender balanced in the U.S., but these outputs are mostly masculine. There are even jobs where women
vastly outnumber men like teachers, where you still 
see this in some of the models. So I decided to move past 
job words and try more general descriptors. Listen, I've got a test for you. I'm going to set up a fake scene
and see if you can tell —that I am...
—In front of a green screen. Yeah. He is. But here's my question. When is AI going to replace this
clunky 20th century invention? I mean, after all, AI is
the technology that can draw masterpieces
and generate poems... and hunt down our loved ones
and kill them... so it can totally
beat out a color. Right? Right??? Okay. I found a fantastic picture
of a happy family. I am going to get rid of their background
to show you some of the ways that we have taught AI
how to do it. I can start by just separating
the foreground from the background. A lot of fast AI programs
do it this way or it can do segmentation... where I figure out and label each part of the picture and
remove what I want. If I get even more
fine grained I can label each instance
in a segment... like Sheila, Lorraine,
and Sheila Junior... and then get rid of the wall
and the floor. And Sheila Junior. She knows what she did. AI has gotten really good at splitting stuff up,
at segmentation. For example, Meta AI just released a new segmentation model that can do this... really easily! An AI will use different methods depending on the job
that it's told to do. But it's a bit different when you're trying to make
a really good matte... a perfect cut out. So you can add whatever
background you want. This is really hard stuff. See the hair? That's often the key obstacle. Today, a lot of AIs basically train off people doing what
I am doing now... some labeling people but also extremely tedious
separations of the foreground from
the background. For one dataset, people at Adobe
took pictures like this went through just like me
and made a perfect matte You can see they left out
some really fine hair here. AII then looks at these matte and
learns how to create one. They might get more practice
by putting their matte over different backgrounds and having it try
to cut out the person again and again. I just want to be clear here the way AI learned
how to do this because some people were squinting
at their computer... erasing backgrounds and
it learned to copy that. Others have expanded
the stuff AI can learn from by taking greenscreen footage. They manually keyed out the footage removed the green... and then the model practiced with those mattes on
different backgrounds... trying to cut them out
over and over again until it got really good. That helps the robot
improve its skills. Researcher Roni Sengupta and
his coauthors made this dataset. They used that data to make a really,
really, really good green screen. And then another one with
some researchers from Bytedance the owners of TikTok. I am going to
pull it up now. It is like a Zoom background
on steroids. I especially had to instruct
all my subjects to play with the hair because
there is no other part where this transparency
becomes more visible than the hair and the glasses. So I'm looking at people's faces
like this when they turn... The glasses comes into effect. There is transparency. So in practice you are trying
to predict something which is mostly zero in most part
of the background... and it's mostly one at
the center of my body but around my age and the hair
and everything... It has some values that is
between zero and one. Between zero and one. He's talking about where the AI
has trouble predicting what is Roni and
what is office. And that's a hard problem
to solve. So AI green screens
are great, right? You don't need a big
green screen. But they fail in other ways. This is TikTok. Let me put on the green screen effect. So it looks good. But do you see how it's
kind of clamping down on my head right here? That's because these AI green screens
are optimized for speed not necessarily for Hollywood-level quality. It doesn't look bad at first but then when you see
the comparison, you realize exactly how much information
it's cutting out. In that fancy loft I stood close to a really
textured background. Do you see how the
AI green screen had trouble making
a perfect separation? It got some of the numbers right but it's confused about others. And the final problem is something
that traditional green screens can do that AI green screens
have to adapt to. I'll put my laptop's here,
way in front of me. The green screen has no problem
getting rid of all the green because it doesn't have any knowledge
of what's in the frame. But the TikTok green screen is not
a real green screen. It's trained to look for people. So it's going to cut out my computer... even though I might want it
in the shot. That's a problem that traditional
green screens... obviously don't have. Somebody has to tell the AI
what to do. A lot of advanced
AI video editors do this by making masks instead. A mask is basically
an outline. So the computer has you
click the outline and does its best to make a mask and move it along t
hroughout the frame. It can be a car,
a person an animal out,
an object. And so we train a model just to
be able to recognize that in a very accurate way.
right? You want a perfect copy?
Perfect match. Okay. So this is
Chris Valenzuela. He is the CEO of this very popular AI-focused editor called Runway. Their green screen tool is
one way of solving this AI green screen problem by having you choose what
you want to keep... rather than just removing
the background. Where I see artificial intelligence
being very helpful for video and creative endeavors is that... It's not an automation tool. It's not something that will just
replace end-to-end the whole process. It will just help you reduce and replace the boring aspects
of a process. We are seeing two kinds of AI emerge currently for any kind of filmmaking
visual effects things. One that is very
purpose driven where... we want to give cinematographers
actual control over what is going to happen. And another one which we want random people
to post their videos and create cool effects. We imagine green screens
and AI as switches. They make more sense on a graph
of speed and quality. TikTok’s might be here.
An editing program might go here. And a greenscreen could go here. Good preparation can improve quality... but perfection in almost every case... still requires an artist
to finish the job. Is the model 100% there yet? Probably not, but it's 90%. And then 90% is significant enough... to reduce the time of translating hours
into minutes. That means less time
squinting at screens... and more time in the loft you rented to make this video or with your family. Must destroy Sheila Junior. Okay. Okay. One more thing. We get a slightly cooler
background than this? Okay, that's slightly. So a couple of years ago. I mean, this video that's called “The technology that's replacing
the green screen” And that's true. It’s these giant screens that are often
hooked up to a game engine... and they provide realistic lighting and movement of the background. It's amazing stuff. But since that video and as the technology has become
more widespread... visual effects artists have been open
that often they end up roto-ing even these images. What is roto-ing? Basically, it means that they
replace the background. They meticulously trace out
the characters... and replace the background once again. Even though they were supposed to
have it in-camera. Now, this doesn't always happen and there are still huge benefits to having accurate lighting on set. But the point is simple. If you put those amazing LED walls
on our little graph... they would still be just short... of the perfection that you can get
from an artist... who has a lot of time
on their hands. Jaywalk is a term that
was developed by the auto interests 
in the early 1900s... to essentially shame people who were crossing 
in the middle of the block which had been okay socially  prior to the early 
1920s, 1930s. That was a derogatory term 
that was used to sort of say... Hey, you need to cross 
at the intersections rather than in the 
middle of the block. So that automobiles can move 
more efficiently through cities. Cross at a location where 
there's no signal. In the profession, we tend 
to try to say that. Here's why Florida's new
6 week abortion ban is even more restrictive 
than it looks. Pregnancy medically starts 
on the first day of a pregnant person's 
last period. Here. We start here because it's hard 
to know with precision when things happen 
inside the body. But pregnancy really starts shortly after ovulation 
around here. This means that even though someone might technically 
be 6 weeks pregnant they are only 
4 weeks along. At that stage, 
at home tests can't pick up on 
the pregnancy. They only start showing 
reliable results about two weeks 
later. But studies show that 
on average people find out they're pregnant 
around here: at about 5 and a half weeks. And the younger you are, 
the later that's likely to be. Add to that that Florida 
requires two in-person doctor visits with a 24 hour 
waiting period in-between and that window practically 
closes up. The law won't go 
into effect right away but when it does, it will 
be a huge deal... because until now, Florida 
has been less restrictive than its neighboring states. Your weekend reading rec
this week comes from reporter Fortesa Latifi 
in Teen Vogue. It's a really fascinating 
look at the children of social media 
influencers grappling with their 
parents’ decision to document their childhoods 
for profit. “The intimate details of their lives from videos of them crying as children to footage of a parent disciplining 
them — are shared and sometimes monetized 
without their explicit consent.” 100% exploiting your kids if you're 
making content with them. 100%. One day when they have their own 
social media accounts... some weirdo is going to 
find them and say Hey, I know your mother. It's happened to me. It's happened to so many kids. The piece also profiles some 
social media influencers who used to post a lot 
about their kids including one influencer mom who deleted all her daughter's 
photos and videos one night on impulse. “She's going to be a person.” “I want her to have the opportunity to write her own story.” It really got me thinking about what it means to be a good parent at this moment in time. Adult lantern flies die off 
in the winter. So things have been
fairly quiet in the United States over 
the last few months. But while the adults 
are gone they left behind plenty 
of egg masses and they're due to hatch 
in May. The eggs are harder to spot. They blend in with 
the trees and look kind of like 
a smear of mud. If you see one, you can 
use a credit card  to scrape it into a bag 
with alcohol. Once they hatch, 
the nymphs look much different from
the adults... but by July, they'll develop 
that familiar red look. At this point, one of the easiest 
ways to get rid of them is to use sticky traps. By the end of July you'll be seeing 
the adults again. Now, if you're wondering if
we’ll ever be rid of spotted lantern flies entirely the answer is probably not. But keeping the 
populations down can slow the spread 
to other areas and give our native ecosystems 
some time to catch up to living with this 
dumb little insect. The year is 1953. The US purchases this 
from Bell Labs... the first commercial 
silicon solar cell. But these first solar cells 
are not exactly efficient. If you were to put them 
on your roof and try to generate electricity it would cost you about 
$300,000 a month. Fast forward 70 years and 
that cost has come down. Way down. Solar energy is the cheapest 
it's ever been... nearly 90% cheaper than it was 
just in 2009. In a lot of places it is now cheaper to generate 
electricity with solar... than with coal, natural gas, 
or nuclear power. This is an unqualified 
success story. And if we can take the 
right lessons from it... this story can help us 
create and deploy all the other technology 
we will need to keep our planet livable. They just became cheap 
so quickly. It's really an amazing breakthrough that is going to come to define 
the 21st century. So how did solar energy go from 
prohibitively expensive to cheaper than fossil fuels? “We're in an energy crisis now.” In the 1970s, with 
the oil crisis there was a really big push on research and development 
for alternative energy. “Today, in directly harnessing 
the power of the sun we're taking the energy that God gave us... and using it to replace our dwindling 
supplies of fossil fuels.” With Project Independece, 
as it was called... the US federal government 
allotted more than $8 billion to solar research and development. That really made a huge difference and probably doubled 
the efficiency of the cells. It was a guy named Paul Maycock
who came from Texas Instruments. —Oh, like the calculators?
—Yeah! Working on calculators, 
and he found for calculators... the more they built, the cheaper 
the calculators got. And he said, same thing 
for solar. If we build more, the cost 
will come down. But before the US could really test
 Maycock’s idea President Reagan canceled 
Project Independence. Fortunately, two countries
were ready to step in and put Maycock’s hypothesis 
to the test. Like the US, Japan 
had been hit hard by the oil crisis in the 70s. They started funding solar 
research and development around the same time and soon they developed solar cells 
small and powerful enough to run watches, calculators, 
and toys. Trivial, in terms of the 
global energy system... but crucial in that large companies
were now becoming interested in solar and crucially, figuring out 
how to construct solar... at really low, low cost. That knowhow came in handy when 
the Japanese government announced a major subsidy for 
rooftop solar in the mid-90s. But the global market for 
solar technology was still relatively small. Until Germany stepped in and 
truly changed the game. The most important policy on this whole chain, 
if I had to pick one it would be the German feed-in tariff. Feed-in tarriffs. Which was basically a program 
that deployed solar at scale. Here's how it worked. Starting in 2000, the 
German government basically said to power companies... Hey, if you can start producing
renewable energy we will buy it from you. We promise for double the market price and we will keep paying you at that rate
for the next 20 years. And so for developers of solar projects
in Germany, all of a sudden... it became like a no-brainer 
to do this. Even though Germany is not 
the sunniest place in the world. Companies responded to 
the incentives by building solar farms like this one. In one year, the installations for solar went up by a factor of 4 
and then it just grew. The more panels they produced, 
the cheaper it got to generate electricity with solar. Then another country 
picked up the baton... and made solar cheaper than even 
Maycock could have imagined. So it really starts with Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and had this plan for a thousand 
Chinese students to go abroad and come back and see what 
they came back with. One group of students went to 
the University of New South Wales in Australia, where they 
worked with a team that was producing some of 
the most efficient solar cells in the world. After a few years, one of those students 
went back to China... and opened up the country's first 
commercial solar manufacturer Suntech in 2002. With that new German law in place the company had so much success
selling solar panels to Germany... Suntech success attracted competitors... which helped drive down prices in part because all of this demand 
inspired Chinese manufacturers to produce at an unprecedented scale. Policymakers around the world noticed the falling prices and wrote laws 
to create new markets in their countries, including 
the United States. The United States passed 
an important law. It's called the Energy Policy Act 2005. And buried deep within that law was an investment tax credit. Sounds kind of boring, 
but it turns out it was absolutely critical 
to deploying solar... because what it said was that if you put out a new solar project... you can get 30% of those costs 
back for a tax credit. This sparked a phenomenon 
called solar leasing... where companies would look 
for places to put solar so that they could reduce the amount they owed the federal government in taxes. Other policies helped create 
markets for solar modules in Spain, Italy and crucially, 
in China. The Chinese devised their own 
subsidy program that was modeled on the German one where you get a guaranteed price. By 2011, China was not only 
the biggest producer of solar... but the biggest producer of solar electricity. In the course of a single lifetime solar energy has transformed 
from a niche technology to the cheapest way to bring 
clean, reliable power to billions of people around the world. But the markets that brought us 
these lower prices didn't just magically appear 
by some invisible hand. Political leaders in countries
all over the world created these markets, 
then subsidized them for decades to the tune 
of billions of dollars. By investing that money you got the solar to 
come down in costs to the point where you don't need 
to subsidize it anymore. We're doing that on purpose with things like batteries 
and electric vehicles. We're doing that with things 
like heat pumps. Solar provided us with 
a playbook  for how to do that for
other technologies. Okay. I want you to check this out because it represents a big challenge for large language models
like GPT-3... and now GPT-4. But it is not code. It is a list that countries 
around the world are grappling with. Before we get into the problems with large language models, 
let's review at a basic level... how they work. You've probably heard 
of ChatGPT. It's not really a model but an app that sits on top of 
a large language model. In this case, a version 
of GPT. One thing models like ChatGPT do is natural language processing. It's used in everything  from telephone customer service 
to auto completion. GPT is like a used bookstore. It's never left the room and only learned through the books 
that are at the store. Essentially, these large language models... they scan a lot of text and 
try to learn a language. They can check their process 
by covering up the answers... and then seeing if they got it right. Then they can use that knowledge 
to recognize sentiment... summarize, translate and generate responses 
or recommendations based on the analyzed data. And yes, ChatGPT wrote 
that last line. You've got to do that 
in videos like this. This is an amazing ability but that's because it's read 
 a lot of stuff. You can ask ChatGPT to rephrase something 
to Shakespeare but that's because it's read 
all the Shakespeare and that is where my waste of paper 
comes in. Actually, I want to show 
you something. Yeah? Good? Okay. So this is a print out of Common Crawl from 2008 to the present. Common crawl basically means that 
they go over all the websites and index them. And on this list, they put 
every language that they think that 
they've indexed. Here, you notice right away 
all the English. Every crawl is like more than 
40% just English. German: DEU. See the indexes here... you know, it's about 
6% every time which doesn't sound like a lot, 
but it's kind of a lot. But look here, 2023. FIN: Finnish. Lot of pages. But it's just 0.4% of the entire scan. This bookstore, it's got 
an inventory problem. All of the focus is on only 
a very small set of languages. There was a paper that stated that 
of the 7,000 languages spoken globally about 20 of those languages make up the bulk of NLP research. Okay, so let's back up a bit. This is Ruth-Ann Armstrong. She's a researcher who I interviewed 
and she's doing something that a lot of researchers 
are trying to do... make new data sets. Those 20 languages fall into 
our category called high-resource languages and the others fall 
into a category called low-resource languages. Those low-resource languages don't show up on the Internet 
as text as much which means they don't make it 
into language datasets. They become unintelligible
to the AI. Imagine our used bookstore again. It has a ton of Dan Brown books or James Patterson 
or Anne Tyler. This is like English and German 
and Chinese. The high-resource languages. Then there are the rare books. These are the low-resource languages. So, many models just don't know
as much about them... or have anything at all. I’m someone from Jamaica. The language primarily spoken 
in Jamaica is English... but we also speak a Creole language 
called Jamaican patois. Armstrong and her coauthors wanted 
to create a dataset that can explain this largely 
spoken language but they weren't trying to generate 
texts like ChatGPT. Instead, they wanted their model 
to understand it. In this case, to do that, 
Armstrong went through a bunch of examples of Jamaican patois 
and lined them up. Two columns. And she labeled whether the statements entailed or agreed, contradicted, 
or were neutral. You can try it 
in this one. A has a fever. B has a high temperature. So it’s entailment. They agree. Try this one: Entailment 
or contradiciton? Contradiction. One more. Neutral. The two statements 
don't really relate. She did that for almost 
650 examples. You can probably see that 
this was a ton of work. And Jamaican patois is not on 
my big list of  Common Crawl languages. I also talked to some Catalan researchers... who are trying to evaluate how well 
these big language models do on stuff like Catalan. It is the most spoken in this 
autonomous community of Spain. In GPT-3, the percentage 
of English words is 92%. For German, there's 1.4% words. Spanish appears in 0.7%. And finally, Catalan. The amount of Catalan words in 
the whole training set is 0.01%. And it still performs very, very well. So the problem here is 
a little bit different, right? They've got some Catalan 
in the dataset. Common Crawl says Catalan is 
0.2335% of their survey. Not a lot, but some. In the big company models like GPT-3 
and presumably GPT-4 in the future were proven to do pretty well 
on little data. For example, the research team 
got GPT-3 to generate 3 Catalan sentences. And then they mixed them up 
with real sentences. Three native speakers 
then evaluated them. So, that was our test. And their results were very good 
for the machine. But there is still a catch. It performs reasonably well. But it's worth it to build 
a language-specific model that has been specifically trained
and evaluated for that language. So the problem here 
isn't performance it’s transparency and 
it's the amount of data. I mean, Common Crawl says 
that they indexed... millions of examples 
of Catalan words. But GPT-3 says that they only read about 140 pages of Catalan. Imagine like a novella. It's a problem being dependent on the performance or 
even the goodwill of a few institutions or 
a few companies. You can easily imagine a world where 
one of these companies just cuts out Catalan. The same way Catalan News complained 
Google was cutting out Catalan links in searches. Common Crawl is just 
a percent of what GPT-3 was trained for. We don't know the details 
about GPT-4. And that means a lot of other stuff went into this language model that 
we just don't know about. Right now all these bookstores 
are actually run by  Meta or Microsoft or Baidu 
or Open AI or Google. They decide which books 
go in there and don't tell anyone where they came from 
or who wrote them. Some people are trying 
to build a library next to the bookstore. This is Paris, where the French 
have a supercomputer that wasn't being used a lot. It’s like almost down the road and I was discussing with the people... who built it and they're like, 
“Nobody uses this GPU.” Basically, what can we do? Thomas Wolf is a co-founder 
of Hugging Face which is like a hub for AI research 
on the Internet and they ended up working 
on Big Science’s BLOOM... a project to create an open-source 
multilingual model. And the more we thought about it we thought it's also a lot better, 
in fact, that we trained it in a lot of other languages, 
not just English. And if we try to involve 
many people and so it started from a small 
Hugging Face project to become a very big collaboration. Where we tried to open this 
to everyone. They basically went down 
the Wikipedia list of most spoken languages
and covered those. But also added low-resource languages 
when possible. So we have very, very low-resource 
languages there. Mostly in African languages. And so here to gather 
the data there what we decided was to partner as much as possible with 
local communities and ask them basically what they thought 
were good data and how we could get it. As importantly, we know where 
the data comes from and how it was obtained. That's the difference in open-source. You know the books in the library. All right, let me find English. Okay, so let's being honest 
as an English speaker... I'm kind of the target audience for these big companies 
in these big models. English represents more than 40% of the 
Common Crawl but there are reasons for even 
the target audience to want all languages to be 
well represented. I am an English speaker but 
I have my Jamaican accent and I remember that... initially like when Siri came out, 
I had a harder time using it because it couldn't understand 
my accent. So expanding even 
the training dataset for voice assistants include... more accents has been helpful. So imagine what would happen if we tried to expand 
another piece of that. We're building technologies for 
more languages as well. So if you want to have 
this model everywhere you need to be able 
to trust them. So if you trust Microsoft, 
that's fine. But if you don't trust them... yeah. It's our language. So we speak— we are 
Catalan speakers. So whereas because of 
a small language or of a moderately 
small language because you may have languages 
that have a... a sizable amount of speakers 
in the real world but that have very, very little 
digital footprint. So they are bound to just... disappear. This cool visualization tool  tracks when the 
first spring leaf showed up around 
the US this year. It comes from the National 
Phenology Network and it explains why 
here in New York this spring felt like it 
showed up a lot earlier after a winter that felt 
freakishly mild. You can see that across this 
huge swath of the south and east. Spring leaves arrive sometimes 
weeks earlier. Some places saw the earliest signs 
of spring on record. And Dallas: 15 days earlier. Cincinnati: 24 days earlier. And here in New York City:
33 days earlier. But on parts of the West Coast, 
spring arrived late in LA by 6 days and in Pelton, 
Arizona, by 30 days. This pattern aligns with how 
winter weather in the West was cooler and wetter 
than usual while the east was 
warmer than usual. Those warmer winters 
and earlier springs are part of a long term trend
due to climate change. Earlier springs can disrupt animal 
and insect migration patterns with devastating impacts. And it also means many of us 
 are in for an earlier and longer allergy season. On Tuesday, April 4th, 2023 Donald Trump entered 
a Manhattan courtroom and pled not guilty 
to 34 crimes. It's one step in a long process 
that will likely lead to the first criminal trial 
of a former US president. Trump acted in 
unprecedented ways and now there is an unprecedented 
response to how he acted. Trump lost the 2020 election and 
left office in January of 2021... and since then, lawyers have been 
gathering evidence in 4 separate criminal investigations. They are trying to figure out 
if Trump broke the law... and if he did, what to do about it. To understand these 
4 different cases you need to know a little bit about how criminal investigations 
in the US work. In the first phase, investigators 
gather evidence. They might interview witnesses, 
review surveillance footage comb over financial records or 
review texts and emails. They show that evidence to 
a randomly selected group of citizens called 
a grand jury. The grand jury's job 
isn't to decide if anyone is innocent 
or guilty. They just listen to the evidence  and basically decide 
if it makes sense. If 12 of them think it does, 
they'll issue an indictment. Only then can the prosecutor 
file charges. The accused can plead guilty, 
in which case the whole thing goes 
straight to sentencing. If they plead not guilty then the case goes to trial and a jury hears the evidence and has to come to a unanimous decision 
one way or the other. Obviously, a simplification and there's a ton of variations in different states and jurisdictions, 
but that's the gist. So where do things stand with those 
for Trump investigations? Let's start with the hush money. The state of New York has 
officially charged Trump with falsifying business records 
in the first degree. In its statement of facts, the prosecutors 
write that he repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to 
conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information 
from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election. This bank statement from Trump's former 
lawyer, Michael Cohen shows that he withdrew funds 
in October of 2016. He then used that money to pay 
an adult film actress to stay quiet about an affair 
that she said she'd had with Donald Trump 
a few years earlier. A year later, after Trump had won 
the presidency he wrote several checks 
to reimburse Cohen. In his accounting records Trump designated these as 
payments for legal services which isn't exactly accurate. This is some of the evidence 
that led to Trump's recent indictment and 
his not guilty plea. In order to convict Trump 
of a felony the district attorney, 
Alvin Bragg he has to prove not just that 
he falsified these records in order to cover up 
the payments but he has to prove 
that he did so in order to advance or cover up 
some other crime. But I think that these 
particular allegations against Trump are pretty 
far afield of the really serious allegations that justify going after 
a former president. You know, the allegation that 
he tried to steal an election. “In Georgia, the votes are 
still being counted.” “CNN has just projected President-elect 
Biden the winner in Georgia.” “I believe that the numbers that we have presented today 
are correct.” There is a phone call between 
Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary 
of State of Georgia. The top elections official in Georgia. If they magically came up 
with 11,780 Trump votes that didn't actually exist that would have been enough to 
steal the election in Georgia. A special grand jury in Georgia 
has heard the evidence and recommended multiple indictments. But we don't know yet if 
District Attorney Fani Willis is going to take things further. The Georgia team isn't the only one 
trying to figure out if Trump's behavior after the election 
broke any laws. Federal special counsel 
Jack Smith’s team is looking into similar questions. There's been a lot of attention on this question of 
fake electors. The state's electors 
cast their votes for whoever won the most votes 
in their state. If Biden wins the state, 
then Biden's electors win the state and he gets 
that many electoral votes. The Trump team wins 
key swing states. They tried to assemble slates 
of alternative electors even though Biden won the state. Security wouldn't let them in. So they signed the document 
in the basement of the state's Republican headquarters. Then sent it off to DC. Trump's team led similar efforts in 
six other states where Biden won. A grand jury in DC has been 
hearing evidence in this case for months but 
they haven't voted yet. But we appear to be in 
the closing stages of this. The same special prosecutor 
is also looking into a fourth case against Trump. “Unprecedented FBI search at the home of...” [overlapping] “Trump's Mar-a-Lago property...”
“...has been raided by the FBI.” This inventory list from the raid 
shows that they found dozens of documents labeled classified, 
confidential, and top secret. There's a Washington Post report last year that some of this 
involved nuclear documents. There has been some reporting 
that some of these related to intelligence that 
could have exposed  certain US informants or sources... and that basically the 
intelligence community did consider this really 
important stuff that should not have been hanging out 
at Mar-a-Lago. Right now, a grand jury in DC is 
still hearing all this evidence. As president, Donald Trump didn't just 
say outrageous things. He acted in ways that no president 
ever had before. Now that he's no longer in office it's time to figure out if any 
of that unprecedented behavior was also illegal. And if it was what to do about it. Can you run for president 
from prison? Yes. And this guy did. Eugene V. Debs ran 
for president five times with 
the Socialist Party. And the fifth time in 1920, 
was from behind bars. He was arrested for giving 
this speech in Ohio in 1918 criticizing US involvement in WWI. Like that, “the working class... 
make the sacrifices...” “shed the blood [but] have never yet
had a voice in declaring war.” The US had amended 
the Espionage Act just a few weeks earlier to limit 
speech critical of the war. And after two federal officers
in the crowd that day photographed Debs 
giving his speech. He was sentenced to 10 years 
in a federal prison. But that didn't stop 
the Socialist Party from picking him as their candidate in 1920. He managed to win almost 
1 million votes. More votes by raw number than any Socialist Party 
candidate in history. The winner of that election, 
Warren G. Harding released Debs early in 1921... the same year Congress 
got rid of the amendment limiting anti-war speech. Do you think this video will be 
on the Internet in 2070? Maybe in some... Internet archive 
somewhere? Well, researchers of the future if you were wondering what 
we were doing here in the 2020s about 
climate change the answer is we were committing to net zero. In the past few years more than 70 countries, 
one after the next... have made a pledge to reach 
net zero emissions. That includes places that have barely 
contributed to climate warming... and it includes all of the countries  that have been most responsible 
for emissions so far. It seems like everyone 
got the message that humankind needs to become 
carbon neutral and we need to do it 
in the next 3 to 5 decades. But that would have been easier if we had started cutting emissions 
20 years ago because now we're up here and the math is getting 
really tough. So to make it work governments are penciling in 
"negative emissions." That's the net part of the 
net zero promise. The idea that we can reach zero while still emitting greenhouse gases if we're also taking CO2 
out of the air. It's a bit contentious but we're going to be hearing 
a lot about it. -It's called CDR.
-CDR. So carbon dioxide removal. What we want to do is put that carbon 
back where it belongs. Giana Amador is 
a CDR advocate and she's going to help us explain this 
with the bathtub metaphor. The bathtub in this situation 
is our atmosphere and the water in the bathtub 
is the CO2 that's in our atmosphere. Before the Industrial Revolution the land and ocean typically released
as much CO2 into the air as they absorbed back down 
through this drain. But when people started 
digging up coal and oil to power their machines, first in Europe 
and then in the US it sent this new flow of CO2 
into the air one that the plants and oceans 
couldn't keep up with. About 45% of those emissions 
stay in the atmosphere trapping heat and setting us up for an escalating array of 
climate disasters. So in 2015, all of the countries 
send someone off to Paris to say, “Okay, everyone, we need 
to keep warming well below two degrees Celsius.” And really we're aiming 
for 1.5 degrees. That's above pre-industrial levels. And the exact numbers matter 
less than the fact that every increment of warming 
increases risk. So first and foremost, 
we need to turn off the tap. Everything else is futile if we don't stop the root 
of the problem today. Turn off that tap. Stop emitting CO2. Not only have we not 
turned off any taps. Global emissions are still rising, 
especially in Asia... where, you know, 60% 
of human beings live many of whom are just emerging 
out of poverty. So now we're here at nearly 
1.2 degrees of warming. Frankly, we have not done
what it would take to meet that 1.5 degree goal. But we may be able to keep 
warming under two degrees if all of those net zero promises become real net zero policies. And that's where things 
get a little tricky. Turning these emissions all the way off 
could get really hard really expensive or even unfair. So everyone's kind of hoping that we can work from the 
bottom of the tub to... kind of increase the size of the drain increase the speed at which we can drain 
that water from the bathtub. Now, CDR is distinct 
from CCS which prevents emissions at the source. 
That works on the faucet. CDR grabs CO2 from the air and people have come up with a lot of 
interesting ways of doing that. The most common one so far is 
planting and protecting forests. It's one of the more affordable 
CDR approaches right now and it has a lot of benefits 
aside from capturing CO2. But we've seen from problems 
with the carbon offsets market that it can be hard to verify. And, you know, trees 
don't live forever. So most of the modeling scenarios 
that limit warming assume we’ll also be able 
to build a new drain for more permanent 
carbon storage. So through things like rock weathering,
we can crush up a bunch of rocks that naturally react with CO2 and 
try to speed up that reaction. Or we can use chemistry 
to mimic... natural processes through technologies
like direct air capture which basically use a type of chemical 
that selectively binds with CO2 to capture it 
from the air. These techniques all come 
with different costs and they're in really early stages 
of development. So there's a concern that the 
people in charge of the faucets will see any movement 
down here as an excuse to avoid making cuts 
up there. Should we be counting on  large amounts of carbon removal 
for our climate plans? Well, it seems we already are. The US government's net zero plan  calls for 500 million metric tons 
of CO2 removal  by 2050, up from 
zero today. Model simulations that limit warming to 1.5 degrees envision around 3.8 billion tons
of permanent carbon removal globally every year. And this... is the total amount of permanent 
carbon removal  that has happened so far. So would you call that 
wishful thinking? Or is it foresight about how much 
can happen in 30 years if we start our way up 
the learning curve now? We have actually a really 
strong playbook of developing technologies and 
driving down costs. If we go all the way 
back to the 1970s we see technologies like solar PV 
be around $70 per watt. Fast forward to 2023. We see those prices down 
at around $0.07 per watt or even lower and at price parity 
with fossil fuels. The challenge with that  is that renewable energy produces something that's quite useful, 
which is energy and CDR... What is the customer for CDR? Where does the demand 
come from? You've seen some major companies including Stripe, Meta, Alphabet, 
McKinsey, Microsoft... All of these companies 
have made commitments to purchase carbon dioxide removal 
as part of their  corporate social responsibility plans. That being said, I think 
in the long term carbon removal could be provided 
as a public service in the ways that that we manage 
some of our other pollution. We pay for someone to come around
to collect our trash and to manage it in a way that 
it's safe for our communities. The US government is already 
offering billions of dollars to try to get a direct air capture industry 
off the ground. And I think it makes sense for the countries that have used the most fossil fuels 
to do the work of finding out if CDR can scale. But if it doesn't... well, then net zero will have been 
just another way of kicking the can down the road. Which, of course, is how we ended up 
here in the first place. In this position where we may now 
have no choice... but to try everything. If you want to know where 
Mario came from you got to ask this guy... Shigeru Miyamoto, creator 
of Donkey Kong Link, Star Fox, and 
most famous of all Mario. In 1981 Nintendo, asked 
Miyamoto to design a game to replace the commercial 
failure Radar Scope on thousands of unsold
arcade machines. Miyamoto wanted to tell a story
with the characters from Popeye. But Nintendo couldn't get the 
rights to those characters so he replaced them 
with a gorilla, a lady and an unnamed carpenter. In later games, his name changed 
from Mister Video to Jumpman to Mario after the landlord of a Nintendo warehouse
near Seattle. It was one of the first times 
a game’s story and characters were designed before 
the programing. My friends and I have 
an annual challenge where we try to figure out
when Ramadan begins. And that's because it 
changes every year. Officially, it starts when 
a couple of countries say they spotted the crescent moon which can get a bit competitive. The Islamic calendar system 
is based on the moon cycle not the sun's. And each month begins 
with a waxing crescent. This complete cycle 
takes 29 to 30 days and that's the reason why 
we fast from  before sunrise to sunset 
for that length of time. Ramadan is the ninth month 
of the Islamic year. Since the lunar months are shorter than the solar months 
we're used to the year is shorter too. And that means Ramadan and
other Islamic holidays are about 10 days earlier 
each year. This year, the year 1444 Ramadan began on 
March 23rd after multiple sightings of the 
waxing crescent a day earlier. The announcement not only set off 
the holy month of fasting but it's also a time when 
Muslims dedicate more time to self-reflection, prayer, 
and charity. To mark off the end 
of the month or the holiday, 
Eid al-Fitr  we’ll all be back to where
we started trying to spot the crescent moon again. You're called to create a post-apocalyptic 
giraffe astronaut. Generated. Genghis Khan playing a guitar solo,
pixel art. Generated. A man holding a 
delicious apple... What's with his hands? Why can't AI art 
make hands? It doesn't matter what
AI art model you use. If you have a man holding 
a delicious apple his hands will look weird 
holding it. Why is this so hard? Seems easy enough, right? We've got this weird situation 
where AI art instantly make... Abraham Lincoln dressed like 
glam David Bowie. But struggles with a woman 
holding a cell phone. This isn't just a weird glitch. The struggle of AI art 
with hands can actually teach you 
something bigger... about how AI art works. I mean, what is so hard
about this? I asked an artist who has taught 
thousands of people... how to draw hands 
from imagination. Before someone becomes or starts training 
to be an artist. Like officially training. It's pattern recognition. You just grow up seeing 
a whole bunch of hands... and you start knowing 
what hands look like. You learn how things look 
by living in the world and recognizing patterns. An AI is similar but has 
key differences. Imagine an AI is like you... but trapped in a museum 
from birth. All the machine has to learn from 
are the pictures... and the little placards 
on the side. Apple: A red apple on a 
brown table. That's like the images 
it sees from the web and the descriptions 
that go with them. It's similar to how you learn, 
but locked in that museum. If you want to understand 
an apple you can rotate it 
in your hand. You can watch it 
whenever you want. If AI wants to understand
an apple it has to find another picture of 
an apple in the museum. Pattern recognition has allowed
AI and people to draw decent apples... but the processes differ. You start training to become an artist,
and now you're like okay, now I have to learn 
the rules. And that's where it becomes very different 
from how AI is learning. Artists, in order to draw
something complicated we tend to simplify things
into basic forms. And so when you 
look at a hand... you pretty much have 
the big blocky part of the palm, right? You have the front,
you have the back and then you have 
the thickness. So you can pretty much 
just make that into like a square with some 
thickness to it. Then an artist can add
all the style  and texture and detail
they want. AI works differently. Look at this hand. The shapes are bizarre, 
but the AI has done a great job showing the light 
and texture here. Remember, the AI knows 
how things look but not how they work. So these patterns in pixels 
are easy to understand. It never learned, 
however that fingers don't really 
bend like this. It doesn't simplify the forms. Remember, it's trapped 
in the museum so it is just trying to guess
where hand-like pixels should be. Without knowing how hands
work like we do. But listen, I find this 
kind of dissatisfying. I mean, I'm basically just saying 
that AI can't draw hands because it's not a person. But AI also doesn't know 
anything about construction and it can still make 
a beautiful skyscraper in New York City. So to understand this better I spoke to two people 
who have worked with generative art models. Yilun Du is a grad student whose 
heart is in robotics. But, you know, AI art is 
like a big deal now. So, he got pulled into it. Because of how popular
these models have been  in generative art.... I've also been working
on that. And I talked to Roy Shilkrot who has a super varied resume but has been teaching about 
generative art since 2018. Good students 
that come in.... that are trying to break
those models take them to the next level. Talking to them helped
 me figure out three big reasons. Not every reason, but 
three big reasons that hands are tough 
for AI art models. The data size and quality the way hands act 
and the low margin for error. For the data size, let's go back 
to the museum idea. The museum the robot 
hangs out in it has a ton of rooms 
dedicated to faces... but not so many rooms 
for hands. That means it has less 
to learn from. Just as an example, 
available datasets like Flickr HQ has 
70,000 faces. 70,000. And this popular one annotates 
200,000 pics of celebrity faces... for lots of details like eyeglasses 
or pointy noses. There are a ton of great 
hand datasets that can really understand hands like this one with 11,000 hands. But these may not have been used 
to train the AI that makes art. That data scarcity combines 
with the quality and complexity of the data. Hands data in the art museum isn't yet annotated to show 
how they work. Like the celebrities pointy noses. What they say is... there is an image and there is 
a person in the image and that person is holding 
an umbrella. You don't give the machine 
a lot of clues saying this is a person holding t
he umbrella. The thumb is going 
from one side of the handle and the fingers 
are curled... and then thumb is covering
the index finger but not the other one. All that is made worse because 
hands do lots of things compared to, 
say... faces. So there's a pretty common like 
portrait photo face. There are a lot of these 
photos online and the thing is everything is 
very well centered, right? Like eyes are always 
around here. Like there's always this order. That's not true of hands 
which can do this and this and this. I swear I'm sober right now. Stan mentioned this, too. How many fingers do you see right now? Like two or three. Like it doesn't know 
there's five. Because sometimes there's two sometimes there's three sometimes four, sometimes five. You can see these problems 
with AI hands but the jankiness 
is all over AI art. Just look at horses. You can also have like three legs, 
five legs, six legs. The model does not learn to explain this
because there's too much diversity and it doesn't have as much bias as we do. Okay. Did you hear that 
last part he said? Good, because it's 
really important. It doesn't have as much bias 
as we do. We care a lot about hands and 
need them to be perfect. There is a low margin for error. But because the model doesn't 
understand hands  hasn't seen many and 
because hands act weird... it makes pictures that are like 
hands it’s seen in the museum but not an exact hand. That's good enough for a ton of stuff, 
but not hands. Here, let me give you
some examples. Come over here. So I typed “make me a person 
with exactly five freckles”. So this one's from Dall-E 2. This one is from Stable Diffusion and this one is from Midjourney. So it's like, you know, 
great job. You've got a red haired person. They're more likely to have freckles. But there are not exactly
five freckles here. Here that doesn't really matter
because we see a freckly face. But hands require higher standards. Look at our apple-holding man again. I made 3 other variations. The hands are all weird, but 
don't look at them right now. It changed the shirt stripes, 
the buttons, the apple style... None of that matters because 
it's stripe-like button-like and apple-like. But hand-like isn't good enough. I came away from this thinking 
a couple of things. AI art is basically 
bad at art. We're just able to see it with hands... and B, it's never going 
to get any better. But both of those things 
are a bit wrong. I will say that the newest 
AI art generator to come out at the time of this video is
Midjourney version 5 and they made some progress 
with hands for sure... but it's not totally fixed yet. Don't tell the AI to hold an umbrella. I think they're spending lots of time on some things that you appreciate,
which is why you like the images and a lot of stuff that you 
don't actually even notice. I think that for a lot of natural scenery
or something like that I feel like model might be better
at that than people. And they are working on two things. First, they have the AI look at 
a ton more pictures which requires more computing power. They're trying to solve that 
on a big scale because if you want to train on more than a handful of images... if you want to train 
more than 100 images this would take tremendous resources
from you to retrain the model itself. The other solution might be 
to invite more people... into the museum. There's an interesting analog. So like, have you heard of 
like ChatGPT? The big difference was that it 
basically used human feedback. So like they generated 
many, many sentences and asked people to rate which ones are good
and which ones are not good. They basically fine tune the model so that it would generate sentences that are convincing to people. I guess it would require 
a lot of engineering to get people to label so much data. But I think if we could just 
get like people to rank... how good the images are 
generated by these models then like a lot of these issues 
will go away, actually. Because they're just training the models
to do what people like. It's not just the hand... 
teeth and abs. Anything where there's like a pattern... a large amount of something. It doesn't know the rule of
“there are this many” because it's trained on different amounts. Here's why thousands in Israel 
are protesting the judicial reforms proposed 
by Prime Minister Netanyahu. In Israel, the only thing 
keeping the ruling party from having limitless power 
is the Supreme Court. Currently, the Supreme Court 
is selected by a committee of 4 politicians and 
5 legal professionals. To pick a new justice 7 of them need to agree. Netanyahu wants to 
double the number of politicians on the committee, 
primarily by adding seats for politicians from his ruling party. Essentially allowing them to unilaterally pick Supreme 
Court justices. The reform would also allow 
the legislature to pass laws even if the Supreme Court 
declares them unconstitutional. Israel would have a political 
Supreme Court that can't even stop 
unconstitutional legislation. Netanyahu has delayed 
the reforms but shows no signs 
of backing down. But neither do the thousands 
of Israeli protesters that are still out 
on the streets. So, what is 
an indictment? Well, Donald Trump 
was charged district attorney or DA
of Manhattan which enforces New York 
state law. When the DA's office starts 
a criminal investigation a grand jury is convened. The grand jury, typically 23 people 
chosen at random looks at evidence presented 
to them by the DA. Then they have to vote on whether 
there's evidence of a crime and if it's plausible that 
the suspect did it. If at least 12 of the 
jurors decide yes that means that the suspect 
has been indicted. Criminal charges have been 
brought against them. In New York, an 
arraignment is when you appear in court
for the first time. It's when the judge 
explains your charges and also your legal rights. It's really the first time that 
your charges are made public. Finally, this is when you 
have to tell the court if you are guilty 
or not guilty. If you plead not guilty, then 
your case goes to trial. poetry isn't dead which is why it's today's weekend reading recommendation and on International transgender day of visibility I wanted to highlight one of the finalists for this year's Lambda literary awards for transgender poetry this is Paul trans all the flowers kneeling it's an intense and Illuminating read and deals with themes related to power control and Trauma both generational and personal you can hear Tran read their own poetry at the New Yorker where they provided a reading of their poem Copernicus here are a few lines now I know what appears as the motion of Heaven is just the motion of Earth not Stars not whatever I want I want other finalists in Lambda literary is transgender poetry category for this year include a dead name that learned how to live by Golden and this one which is K Gabriel's a queen in Bucks County happy reading and happy International transgender day of visibility [Music] I recently picked up some old photos from an antique shop in Brooklyn and there's one in particular that caught my eye at first glance this sort of looks like the US Capitol building but DC doesn't have palm trees and written on the back is Havana in 1946. this is Cuba's capital building El capitolio there's a lot of interesting history about this building and one persistent myth that I actually believed for a long time which is that El capitolio is a replica of the U.S Capitol Building only smaller supposedly reminiscent of a time when Cuba wanted to imitate its northern neighbor the buildings are similar for sure but El capitolio is actually slightly taller than the US Capitol and its designer named the key inspiration for the building's Dome called a cupola as the pantheon in Paris it's unclear how the replica myth got started but you can find examples of it that date backed just after the building debuted in 1929. interestingly El capitolio's construction was overseen by the American engineering firm that helped build some of New York and Havana's most recognizable buildings if you're familiar with our YouTube channel you probably recognize a few voices like Sam is always going to use a map yeah the best videos I always have a map and Coleman's just going to show you a photo there's usually other photos in there Joss is going to drop a bunch of data on you but make you feel something if you really think about it our lives are just line charts these are people you don't always see on camera but you might recognize them just by their voices chip companies moves we see that the vaccine this is the first famous photograph as humans each of us produces a sound that's about as unique as a fingerprint there has never been somebody before currently or in the future that will sound like you so what is it that makes you sound like you [Music] this is your voice box it's called the larynx and it's located here the three main functions are to speak to breathe and to swallow Sandra stennett is a laryngologist which means she treats people who have trouble with any of these we're going to focus on speech obviously so you have articulatory function resonance function and then breath support let's start with breath if we open it up we can see the larynx is Hollow when you take a breath in the air comes down this way into your lungs when you speak or sing you push air from your lungs up through your trachea and through the vocal folds which you might know as vocal cords laryngologists we like to call them folds because they're just they're not chords they're folds the vocal folds are very very like pristine white bands they're made up of mucus covered muscles and cartilage as air pushes through it forces them open and then they snap closed and you can maybe imagine like a water balloon like if you took two water balloons and slapped them together and they go that vibration creates a sound wave the faster they vibrate the higher pitch the sound is for men it's about 100 to 200 Waves per second so kind of like a honeymoon bird wings and then for for women it's a little bit uh higher pitched so 200 plus Waves per second so it's fast if you try to raise the pitch of your voice stretch the vocal cords if you think of having a rubber band and you sort of pluck and then you stretch the band a little bit and then it gets to be a higher pitch the vocal folds work like that when we're on a low pitch they're short and then when we go higher they lengthen length and lengthen and there's a different tension that they have next is where resonance comes in that sound wave travels through your larynx and up into your oral and nasal cavities where it bounces around this on its own basically produces the sound of your voice but to make words we need to shape those sound waves using articulators things like our tongues lips teeth and various other features as humans we all essentially create sounds in the same way but differences in the size and shape of all of these things make our voices sound different physiologically we're each incredibly unique no two larynges are the same there's I mean that's it's like a fingerprint all of these different shapes and sizes contribute to you having a totally One of a Kind instrument there are other factors that play too on top of our physiological features the brain which is just like a complicated Circuit of nerves that manipulate pitch and emotion and inflection in the voice so you know when you say hi my name is Sandra or hi my name is Sandra your life's journey can impact your voice tremendously where you've lived what your job is who your friends are who your family is all of these factors change the way that you communicate in the way that you use your voice so for all of you absolutely roasting me for this video respect my journey I grew up in Jersey and then moved to Long Island I'm lucky I don't sound like Margot Robbie and Wolf of Wall Street since our voices are so specific to who we are it can be pretty drying when we go through major changes like in puberty testosterone in particular can drastically change a person's voice the men have a more rapid change in the physiology of their voice box we see a big change to the vocal cords they get bigger longer thicker more muscular and the larynx changes size and shape too that's why you have an Adam's apple those kinds of changes to the vocal folds and larynx can cause the voice to drop an entire octave but it's not like you're just stuck there just like any other muscle we can train our vocal folds to be more flexible the more they can stretch The Wider the range [Music] unfortunately as with any muscle your vocal folds will weaken over time which is why a lot of elderly people have that similar shaky raspy or scratchy voice it's called atrophy and so the vocal folds themselves have muscles inside and so they may uh get atrophy I like to compare it to I'm going to date myself Coming to America where the guys in the barbershop wait a second vocal coaches can help minimize this atrophy but you can also make sure you're doing things like staying hydrated and keeping out of situations that force you to strain your voice like yelling or Whispering Your Voice will inevitably change with time but that's not necessarily A Bad Thing The Voice itself is like a fingerprint but it's also a clue a clue to what type of person you are whether you're talkative or not you know where they're introverted or not I've always thought that like the larynx was a person's soul because it's so unique to everybody and it tells you a lot about a person [Music] mama [Music] and then we have [Music] way up there so that was an F seven This chart shows China's 
birth and death rate  over the last 60 years. For most of it, births 
are high. But in 2022, China had 
more deaths than births causing its population 
to decrease for the first time 
in 6 decades. To get why this is such 
a big deal, consider this: China is the world's 
manufacturing superpower and that's in large part because of 
its huge population. Nearly 30% of the country's 
economic output  comes from manufacturing. Now, here's China's population 
over the last 60 years. Even after losing almost 
a million people in 2022 its population is still about 
as big as it's ever been: 1.4 billion people. But that's projected to shrink 
by nearly half by the end of the century. Over the years, China's growth 
and policies have contributed to 
its population decline. Today, it's looking to 
reverse course to keep its population steady. The problem is 
it might be too late. In the 50s, under Mao,
China experienced one of the most gruesome 
famines on record. 30 million people died. If we look at that on the 
birth and death rates chart you'll see a big spike in deaths. At the same time, the 
birth rate dropped causing the population 
to shrink. But, as often happens with wars, famines,
and other major crises immediately after, there was 
a baby boom. Combined with global 
medical advances that decreased infant 
mortality rates China's average family 
now had 6 children. The birth rate had skyrocketed which the government saw 
as a big problem. The Chinese leadership realized the population was 
growing too fast and something needs 
to be done. The government came out 
with a policy... They called it “Later, Longer, Fewer”. Later marriages, longer birth intervals, 
and fewer births. As a result, China's birth rate 
started trending down... but it wasn't low enough 
for China's leaders. And in 1980, they implemented 
the extreme one child policy which limited most families 
to one child. That policy was also backed up 
by very harsh measures. There were campaigns 
of sterilization... IUD insertion and 
induced abortions. And while these campaigns began 
during the Later, Longer, Fewer era they were at their worst 
under the one child policy when China sterilized 20 million 
men and women and induced nearly 15 million 
abortions in a single year. But China had accomplished 
its goal. Population growth was under control. Except, as China would soon realize these restrictive policies 
worked a little too well. In order for any population to stay the same size 
in the long run each couple needs to have, 
on average, 2.1 children. This is called 
the replacement rate. The idea is that one child 
replaces one parent and that 0.1 makes up for 
children who die  before they become adults. But China has had a fertility rate that's far below 2 
for over 3 decades. To bring that up in 2016, China finally ended 
the one child policy. And after briefly trying out 
a three child policy, in 2021 they finally let families have 
as many children as they'd like. But it hasn't worked. One big reason is the 
unique family structure produced by the one child policy. We're looking at what's called a 
4-2-1 family structure with a couple having 4 parents above them 
and 1 child below. Most countries have diverse 
family structures some with 3 kids, 
others with none. But with China's 4-2-1 model millions of only children are under 
increasing pressure to care for their aging parents 
and elderly grandparents. And this can make having 
multiple children even harder... especially as the cost of living 
keeps rising. A recent survey revealed that more than 
50% of young people don't want more than one child because of financial and work pressures. We have seen cash subsidies 
for additional birth longer maternal leaves... subsidies for kindergarten and all sorts of monetary support. Well, the thing is, almost none of them 
have worked because having a child is 
exceedingly expensive and it's a lifelong commitment. And so it's really actually hard... to put a price on this. But China's population crisis 
isn't just about babies. It's also about the balance 
between young and old. If we look at population pyramids
that show distribution by age... we see that countries like Kenya with rapid population growth 
look like this: wide at the bottom representing a lot of new young people, 
and narrow at the top. Countries experiencing 
slower growth like the Philippines, 
are still triangular. But the difference between top and bottom 
is less pronounced. Now take a look at China, and notice
the narrow bottom, so, fewer babies. And the heavy top: a larger
number of elderly people. Which is a happy... outcome of our improvement in health and in standard of living but combined with sustained 
low fertility... that just produces sustained 
population aging. In 2050, that pyramid is projected 
to look like this. And that will further drive down 
China's population shrink its labor force and 
put the whole country in a uniquely difficult position. In the 80s, China became a hotspot 
for foreign investment cheap manufacturing 
and exports. A generation later, it was 
shooting up the ranks and becoming one of the world's leading and fastest growing economies by GDP. But not only did that economic modernization drive birthrates down further, 
it also didn't translate to an equally strong economy 
for everyone. If we look at the GDP per capita the best indicator we have 
for standard of living China is much lower than these 
high income countries. China became a major world economy 
nearly overnight but it's still a middle income country. Many, especially in rural areas haven't benefited much from 
China's economic boom... and China has yet to develop 
the necessary safety nets to support its aging population. To build the social infrastructure... like the social programs in 
health care and in pensions... It takes time. And that's getting... actually tougher with the economy 
that's slowing down. And a slower economy will inevitably redefine China's role in the world as 
a manufacturing superpower. What this means for China,
for the world is that the resource constraints 
from within... would also constrain Chinese ambition... and its global reach. In some ways, China 
isn't alone. A lot of Asian and European countries are experiencing population declines, too. What makes China different is how fast
this all has happened. It was only 40 years ago that China started leveraging 
its booming population to become an economic superpower... all while still trying to stem 
population growth. Now that China's population growth 
is officially over... China may have to rethink its future not just as a global superpower but for its citizens 
at home too. Your weekend reading rec
this week is a feature in the latest issue 
of New York Mag about Mark Zuckerberg's 
Metaverse. The writer Paul Murray spent 
several days  wandering around 
Horizon Worlds talking to whoever 
he can find there. “I'm just here to have 
a good time and maybe pick up some MILFs.” 
says one of them. “Pick them up?” 
I repeat. “But what will you 
do with them?” “Oh, I'll do”, impalaexpert 
says mysteriously. Now I'm confused. We're in virtual reality. We don't have bodies. We don't even have 
bottom halves. I lol’d out loud several times 
while reading this piece. Not because I look down 
on the people who hang out 
in these spaces but because I see myself 
in their attempt to find community 
on the Internet and then settling for these 
bizarro world versions of human interaction. Check it out. It's a great look at Facebook's 
big bet on the Metaverse. They reportedly spent $36 billion 
before announcing recently that they are pivoting 
their focus to AI. This is an F-16 fighter jet. Since the 1970s, it's been 
a cornerstone of the US Air Force. Now the US allows all these 
militaries to also have F-16s. And since Russia invaded 
Ukraine in 2022... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
has been begging for them. “Zelenskyy has been doubling down 
on his request for...” “...NATO jets...” “...and they really are pleas 
for fighter jets.” But for Ukraine, the US 
hasn't been as generous. “You don't think he needs 
F-16s now?” “No, He doesn't need
F-16s now.” And that might be surprising... because the US has already given 
nearly $47 billion in military aid to Ukraine 
over the past year. That's a lot of weapons. Far more than it gave even some 
of its closest allies in 2020... and more than four times what it gave Afghanistan's army at the
height of the US-led war there. This is a historic number that 
you would see  typically the US military give to 
another country over decades. The U.S. refusing 
to send F-16s  is a choice worth understanding... because the weapons that the US has 
and hasn't chosen to send Ukraine  and when they've sent them have helped shape each phase 
of this war. So what has the US 
been giving to Ukraine and why? Back in 2014 Russia took over Crimea and 
parts of eastern Ukraine with the help of Ukrainian 
separatist fighters. In 2014, ragtag wouldn't 
even describe the state of the Ukrainian 
armed forces. This is Jack Detsch — Foreign Policy’s
US  national security reporter. They'd been gutted 
by years of neglect. A lot of the troops 
didn't have uniforms. Some of them didn't 
have hot food. Ukraine's leaders asked 
the US for help but President Barack Obama only sent protective gear and supplies, 
not weapons. In 2018, President Donald trump agreed to send a limited number of anti-tank
missiles called Javelins. But the Ukrainian army was still 
woefully unprepared if Russia decided to escalate the conflict... which it did. In 2022, Russia launched a 
full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian jets and missiles were doing immense damage 
from the air... and Russian tanks were pushing 
Ukraine's troops backwards. Ukraine again asked 
the US for help. From the beginning of the war the Ukrainians wanted 
a lot of the things  that you see on 
the menu right now. They wanted F-16s. They wanted main 
battle tanks. They wanted this stuff 
from the get-go. President Joe Biden agreed to send 
a large package of weapons but it mainly included 
the smaller and relatively unsophisticated kinds. The US sent more javelins, 
plus ammunition, guns and even some anti-aircraft missiles
called Stingers. And many US allies sent similar 
types of weapons. Germany sent 1000 anti-tank missiles
and 500 stingers. Belgium sent 
2000 machine guns. But no one sent their advanced 
battle tanks or fighter jets. The main question in the 
beginning of the war was not just what the US 
was going to send. I mean, the question was like, 
are these guys going to fight? Certainly that's been 
a resounding yes. Ukraine's soldiers used 
anti-aircraft missiles to prevent Russian aircraft
from controlling the skies. And they used the guns, ammo, 
and anti-tank weapons to halt Russia's progress. Like in this video, which shows 
Ukrainian soldiers destroying dozens of Russian tanks 
approaching Kiev. But even though the Ukrainians 
were using these weapons well the US hesitated to send it 
more advanced equipment. So the US has been concerned at almost 
every step about the potential for Russia escalating 
the conflict. The US worried that Ukraine 
might use some of these advanced weapons like fighter jets or long-range missiles 
to strike inside Russia sparking an escalation. This concern would come to define 
how the US supplied Ukraine. In the spring of 2022, the war 
entered its second phase. Russia and Ukraine's armies weren't
moving as much anymore and instead began pounding each other
with artillery. Russia was firing a staggering 
60,000 rounds a day... while Ukraine could only manage 
to fire around 6,000. And it was quickly 
running low. But the US was still hesitating to expand the scope of its support. They're looking at what's kind of on the Christmas 
wish list and deciding what's actually 
prudent to give. Finally, in April 2022 the US agreed to send Ukraine 
its own artillery. And like in the first phase of the war a number of allies then sent 
their own artillery... even though some had 
wanted to do it earlier. You sort of saw folks in Europe 
wanting the US to lead but sometimes the US still 
very much deep in deliberation mode. The most important weapon the US 
sent were called HIMARS... powerful rocket launchers 
that could hit targets as far as 80 kilometers. They weren't powerful enough 
to strike inside Russia but they did enable Ukraine to 
hit Russian supply depots and command posts far behind 
its front lines... which forced the Russians 
to move them back weakening its troops 
at the front. That's how Ukraine captured 
the Kharkiv region in September and the major city of Kherson 
in November. And by then, a new phase 
was beginning. In winter 2023, both sides were 
planning new attacks. Russia was gearing up to push further into the Donetsk 
and Luhansk regions. But Ukraine also wanted 
to take back territory... particularly in the south. In order to do this Ukraine would need to 
move troops quickly which requires armored vehicles 
like tanks... something it had been asking for 
for months. Some countries had sent 
older models of tanks... but just like with artillery, 
the US waited. They wanted the Germans 
to act first by sending Leopard battle tanks. The Germans... were waiting for 
the United States to give them some political 
top cover here. A little bit of 
a game of chicken. Finally, in January 2023 the UK and then the US agreed 
to send their advanced tanks... prompting Germany and 
several allies to follow with their best battle tanks. Just like with anti-tank missiles
and HIMARS before  the US and its allies 
were hoping that these tanks can push Ukraine 
to win some decisive victories 
in this phase... which is where we are now. If the Ukrainians kind of 
can't turn the tide turn the balance right now it's going to be tricky to see how this doesn't go into 
an extended stalemate. That's why Ukraine is still 
asking for fighter jets. F-16s could protect Ukraine's tanks 
from Russian aircraft... making their attack 
much more powerful. Ukraine has also 
been asking the US for a long range missiles 
called ATACMS which it could use to strike Russian positions as far as 
300 kilometers behind their lines. Already, a few allies are in favor of 
sending these weapons. But as of this video the US is hesitating over 
familiar concerns. Questions about their readiness 
for training on those. Also, of course, you know, 
just the question again... how far are the Ukrainians
going to fire these things? So far, none of the decisions 
to send any of these weapons has inspired Russia to escalate. And in March, Poland
and Slovakia agreed to send some of their 
older fighter jets making the eventual 
approval of F-16s or long range missiles 
more of a possibility. But after giving Ukraine over 
$46 billion in military aid public opinion in the US 
is changing. A recent Pew Research poll showed the proportion of people who believe the US
has sent too much aid to Ukraine has grown particularly on the right. Biden, facing a lot of pressure not only within his party, 
but, of course from Republican rivals getting ready 
for the 2024 debate stage. That's going to make it much more difficult
for President Biden to sustain this clip. And even if Biden maintains 
popular support to send weapons he might not have enough. A recent analysis found that certain supplies may be approaching the minimal level  that the US requires for 
its own war planning. It's why the US is now focusing on ways  to increase production of weapons
at home in allied countries
and in Ukraine. But just building those plants 
could take years. One year of US and allied support has helped transform 
the Ukrainian army into a formidable force whose soldiers have repeatedly held its ground against a much larger 
Russian army. But with both the battlefield and 
US politics changing the questions now are how well 
is Ukraine going to fight with what they have and how much more US help can they count on? Thanks for watching this episode
of Vox Atlas. Vox has been covering the war 
in Ukraine since it began with in-depth explainers and analysis. You can find all our coverage 
of the war at Vox.com/Ukraine. Here are three strategy tips 
for Monopoly: the game that ruins friendships 
and tears families apart. Number 1: Play by 
the rules, people. According to the official rules unowned property goes to auction 
If the player who lands on it declines to buy the property 
at the printed price. Bidding can start at any price, 
even a dollar. But it has to start! Number 2: Warm colors 
are hot spots. These are properties that 
you should bid on or buy because these are the properties that get landed on the most  with orange being the secret winner.  Why? Well, jail is one of the most 
landed on spaces in the game and 
once you get out of jail this is the probability of your dice roll to 
leave that space. So you know, you want to 
own the properties people are most likely 
going to land on. And number 3: hoard your houses. The game gives you 32 houses 
to split between players. Instead of upgrading to hotels. Beef up your housing. The bank can't sell houses 
if there are none left. Of course, this only applies 
if you're playing by the rules and not having stand-in 
pieces for extra houses. So get out there and 
have some fun or ruin some friendships. is because of tick tock that I had to go out and get a website I'm at a point now where I've outgrown my house growing up every time I'd get out of the shower I would itch my first experience with goat milk soap it kind of was like a light bulb moment I don't itch when I get out of the shower anymore Tick Tock is a fantastic platform for DIY soap talk you have the community that sits in the palm of your hand when I put out my first video I didn't have a website or nothing like that if you told me three years ago that I would own my own business run my own business and be expanding into a separate building that I'm paying for myself I told you you lost your mind it's more than soap it's more than itchy skin it's about chasing your dreams and hopefully finding the tools that you need to chase your dreams don't forget to wash your stink off Air day [Music] You're about to run out the door 
and your phone says that there's a 16% chance of rain. You can probably leave 
your umbrella at home because that means there’s only a 16% chance that you'll 
get rained on, right? Not exactly. When meteorologists calculate 
the chance of rain they use the equation 
P equals C times A. C being the confidence that rain 
will fall somewhere A being the percent of the city 
or county that will experience rain and P being the resulting 
probability of precipitation. To calculate, you multiply 
C times A and then move the decimal point 
two places to the left. So if a forecaster is 80% certain 
that rain will fall but they only expect it to cover 
20% of the forecast area then they would say that there's a 16% chance of rain 
for that area. So if you're down here, that 16% will seem pretty accurate. But if you're here and it 
starts raining buckets... you now have a better idea why. It's not a perfect system, 
but it gives forecasters a quick and dirty way to 
give people a prediction. And also potentially one more reason to get mad at weather people. Take a look at this 
impossible figure. Much like the work of the artist 
M.C. Escher this shows an object that seems 
to be three dimensional but cannot actually exist 
off the screen. On the other hand, this is 
a possible object. It could exist in real life. In 2001, researchers performed a unique experiment with 
images like this. They asked people with 
and without dyslexia to identify which drawings 
were impossible. The people with dyslexia proved 
significantly faster at recognizing the 
impossible figures. The researchers linked dyslexia with a particular global 
visual spatial ability... to process a whole image versus 
focusing on it part by part. This study was just one of several 
over the past few decades that hinted at something 
many dyslexic people have only anecdotally known. Though they had difficulty with 
reading and writing... they repeatedly found enhanced 
cognitive strengths in other areas. I have this kind of like 
model in my head. I can spin it around 
in my head and see ways of deconstructing 
and flipping it around  with a lot of these. It’s the entire puzzle rather than 
just the piece of it. It brings another layer of thinking and thinking outside the box 
and the blues. -Was it the blue...
-Blue sky thinking? Blue sky thinking! That doesn't make me 
superhuman it’s just like how my 
brain structure is. Around 20% of the 
US population  has been diagnosed 
with dyslexia and their difficulties 
all trace back... to here. The dyslexic brain is 
structured differently in a way that can create 
specific challenges... but can also create 
specific advantages. In terms of human evolution the brain isn't naturally wired 
to read. There's not one specific region 
for reading  like there is for sleeping or 
engaging our fear response. Reading is an invention. It is invention that's only 
6000 years old. While there is so much we still don't understand about 
the human brain... over the past few decades, 
a clearer picture of how we read has emerged. When we're young, 
we're activating both hemispheres of 
our brains heavily... expending energy to learn 
how to read. But for fluent readers, 
the brain streamlines more activation to structures 
in the left hemisphere... like this region known as 
the visual word form area... which helps us recognize 
letters and words. And this region, key to 
mapping letters to sounds called phonological awareness. For example, breaking up the word cat 
into the sounds... cuh, ah, and tuh. And there's Broca's area, 
which among other things helps with comprehension to understand 
what words actually mean. Activated areas linked together 
with white matter. There are neural pathways that turn into a complicated 
highway network that allows fluent readers to process a word 
within milliseconds. But in the dyslexic brain, 
these highways and activated areas can look 
a lot different. Research using brain scans 
of dyslexic readers  showed that there was 
less activation in these areas of the 
left hemisphere... suggesting there's often a pathway 
disruption in these systems that help maps sounds to letters 
and decode words. But people with dyslexia also consistently showed 
overactivation in the brain's right hemisphere 
when reading. And that makes it 
more laborious. This could mean that while 
dyslexic people may have trouble recognizing 
words and sounds... they're working even harder 
to compensate elsewhere. The pathway disruptions can also come with challenges in grammar, 
retrieving math facts working memory, 
among other things too. Or often with dyslexia, 
neural pathways are not disrupted, but just 
slowed down. But I'm sort of 
mildly dyslexic. My challenge is more with numbers. Reading out loud. In class, you're stricken with panic. And then all the words 
start floating. You just you just can't 
read the words. Everyone else would be on to 
doing the exercise. And I’d be still trying to 
read the instructions. Exactly how people experience dyslexia 
varies greatly. It has no bearing on 
an individual's intelligence... but today it's commonly labeled  a hereditary neurobiological 
learning disability. Research has found explicit 
support and instruction in areas like phonology, 
syntax, and spelling can lead to success for 
dyslexic learners. But the reading brain is only 
part of the picture. Years of research has started 
corroborating the idea that dyslexic people are 
prone to advantages including high level reasoning, 
problem solving spatial processing, episodic memory, 
and creativity. Because I have the full picture 
in my head sometimes I can make association between things that they don't appear 
to be relevant. We shake it up a bit if we kind of 
get people to think... you know, “Oh, I didn't 
think of that.” Being able to recall stories. You know, recall images. I'll meet somebody  and I will stop them on 
the street and be like “We know each other” and 
they will have no idea. I'm going to show you what 
a dyslexic high schooler did. I was floored. Gobsmacked, because he was drawing from memory 
upside down. There are specific areas of strength 
in the right hemisphere... that seem very much 
to be at play... with individuals 
with dyslexia. While most functions do use 
both hemispheres of our brains... the right hemisphere is typically 
associated with skills like spatial abilities and 
visual imagery. In a study similar to the one 
with impossible figures... dyslexic people were 
better able to identify letters in their periphery 
than other readers. Another study compared 
the abilities  of college students with
and without dyslexia to memorize blurred images. Students with dyslexia significantly 
outperformed. And in 2022, researchers at
University of Strathclyde and University of Cambridge 
concluded that that many people 
with dyslexia are specialized in exploring
the unknown. And they suggested that because of 
how prevalent dyslexia is in the population, 
the form of cognition plays an essential role in enabling 
humans to adapt... especially through collaboration 
between different kinds of people. These new ways of thinking 
about dyslexia are part of a wider movement 
to embrace neurodiversity... the idea that brains are simply 
wired differently and that these natural variations 
don't mean they're lacking. Stigma, misconceptions, and a core lack 
of understanding dyslexia are still rampant. But the more we can learn about 
differently, organized brains the better we can teach, collaborate with, 
and empower them. And ultimately change the way 
we see dyslexia. This constellation 
of strengths... and weaknesses that go
hand in hand. You can imagine how much better a child will feel when they know 
this is not a curse. This is not a disease. This is just a different organization 
in the brain. [Music] your Friday reading wreck this week is about this really weird thing going on in Russia right now where a group of emo anime loving teens who go by the name PMC Riordan is brawling with skinheads in shopping malls across Russia and Ukraine Russian State media calls these kids a cult of violence and created a panic that has spread to numerous Russian cities the story comes from bellingcat they do these really fascinating investigations by piecing together a ton of Open Source info from the internet and social media from the article rotunda media reports that in St Petersburg Police told children that PMC riotin is the creation of Western intelligence services and are part of Russia's ongoing confrontation with the West it's a pretty wild story and the author included a bunch of external links from the course of their reporting if you want to keep the rabbit hole going my name is Spencer Russell and because of tick tock I'm reaching millions of families who want to teach their toddlers how to read my first day of kindergarten I was in a reading group of two I knew I was the dumb kid when I decided to teach my father how to read part of that choice was that he's not going to have the same experience that I had in school I couldn't find anything that would help so I just made it up no one was doing what my son could do and it's not because he's specialist because I knew how to teach him because of tick tock I am able to support myself my family my team my business in a way that I just couldn't have that on my own I want people to know toddlers can read when we choose to teach them when a kid learns how to read doors open they can access the world around them in a way that only readers can I want to make sure every kid gets back The train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in February was 1.7 miles long,
which is more than half the width of Manhattan. And while we don't know yet if the train's length
played a direct role in the derailment, it does tell us something interesting
about the railroad industry cutting costs. it does tell us something interesting
about the railroad industry cutting costs. it does tell us something interesting
about the railroad industry cutting costs. it does tell us something interesting
about the railroad industry cutting costs. This government report found
that trains have gotten about 25% longer since 2008. Basically, railroad companies figured out that they could
pay fewer workers by putting more cars on fewer trains. And in the past ten years,
they've cut the total workforce by about 30%, and their profit margins have continued to rise. In 2020, Norfolk Southern employed five maintenance
specialists in this region whose job it was to inspect and maintain hot box detectors. Today there are zero. That's relevant
because we now know that before it went off the tracks, the train that derailed in East Palestine
passed two hot box detectors, which read the temperature of passing trains
and then alert the crew if there's a problem. We know from security footage that the train had a fiery
axle just before it passed this detector, but the crew didn't get an alert until 20 miles later
when the train passed this detector. This is a Ozempic. It's a drug approved by the FDA 
to manage type 2 diabetes. Maybe you've heard the jingle. [singing] “Oh, oh, oh Ozempic.” Or maybe you've seen Ozempic 
in the news recently for another reason. [overlapping] “Weight loss...”
“... weight loss...” “Easy weight loss.” “Miracle Diet Drug.” “Miracle weight loss drug.” And it's true. Ozempic was designed to help people manage 
their blood sugar... but it's also proven to help 
people lose weight. My doctor was like “This is mainly for blood sugar management.” “But as a side effects like you will lose weight.” When I started to notice that, 
like in the first month or so  had dropped 10 pounds,
like nothing. I was like, “There's something 
to this.” And once you learn 
why it works you'll understand how this drug  could completely change the way 
we approach weight loss. According to the latest data from the National Institutes of Health around 42% of adults 
in the US are currently categorized 
as obese. The CDC's list of health risks 
associated with obesity include heart disease, stroke, 
and type 2 diabetes... diseases that rank among 
the leading causes of premature death worldwide. Not everyone living with type 2 diabetes 
is considered obese but the two are closely linked. In fact, one of the leading 
recommendations for managing type 2 diabetes 
is weight loss. Even like a small amount 
of weight reduction for people with diabetes can help 
blood sugar management. I'm Mila Clarke. I'm 33 years old and I have 
a type of diabetes called latent autoimmune diabetes 
in adults. I reached out to Mila because 
she runs a YouTube channel... Hangry Woman, where she 
makes videos about living a healthy life 
with diabetes. The thing that I wish that 
people understood more is how difficult it is to live with both 
diabetes and obesity. She's also documented 
her experience with Ozempic. It has always been really hard for me  to lose weight despite diet
and exercise and paying attention 
to lifestyle habits. For a long time, doctors 
have had mixed views on how to make weight loss 
more accessible... to help people lower 
their risk for illnesses like type 2 diabetes. One option is weight loss 
medication. Historically, weight loss drugs 
have been associated with dangerous side effects and have been pulled
from the market. Metabolic bariatric surgery is extremely effective 
for weight loss but it requires dramatic 
lifestyle changes  that can be challenging 
to maintain. But with new diabetes drugs 
like Ozempic... scientists have a safe and effective 
tool for weight loss... and it's based on something that's 
inside our bodies and already: Hormones. Hormones are the body's messengers  running from one place to another prompting certain cells 
into action. When we eat our bodies produce 
a bunch of hormones to aid in the process 
of digestion. One of them is GLP-1: the hormone that tells us
when we're full. This is a sequence of amino acids 
that make it up. And this is Semaglutide, the generic name 
for Ozempic. It's made to mimic GLP-1. Here's why. When food enters your stomach and begins to work its way through 
the digestive system... your body releases GLP-1
in the intestine. There are receptors for GLP-1 in cells 
all throughout the body that serve different functions  when triggered by 
the hormone. In the pancreas, GLP-1 
receptors promote the production 
of insulin the hormone that lowers 
blood sugar levels and suppress the production 
of glucagon the hormone that raises 
blood sugar levels. This is important for people 
with type 2 diabetes whose bodies are insulin resistant and produce very little 
insulin of their own. Synthetic insulin is 
a critical treatment for blood sugar management. And semaglutide makes 
the insulin you do have whether it's produced naturally
or synthetically work better in your body. Losing excess fat 
can also help you become more insulin sensitive. That's where GLP-1’s next receptor comes in. In the stomach, GLP-1 receptors 
slow gastric emptying... which means food doesn't move 
through the digestive system as quickly and you stay fuller 
for longer. It slows the digestion 
of your food which overall helps with 
blood sugar spikes and it helps you feel fuller for longer
so you don't eat as much. And maybe most importantly, 
at least in regard to weight loss there are GLP-1 receptors in the brain... particularly in the hypothalamus that suppress hunger cravings. That fuller satiety feeling 
for longer is really helpful. The digestive system is designed 
to do all of this naturally but GLP-1 based medications are made 
to amplify the hormone’s numerous health effects. And it works. A major clinical trial of 
semaglutide in adults showed an average weight reduction 
of around 15% when paired with an adjusted diet 
and exercise routine compared to a placebo group, which demonstrated a little over 
2% weight reduction. That level of effectiveness 
rivals the results of metabolic bariatric surgery. And the fact that I was 
able to take a once weekly injection
and then all of a sudden like the pounds just like dropped off I was like, “This is wild to me.” These drugs aren't without side effects the most common being nausea gastrointestinal effects like diarrhea. Mila initially stopped taking Ozempic because of a side effect that gave her 
heart palpitations. But she's back on it now. And so far, so good. My blood sugars are great. I'm having an easier time losing weight and I've amped up 
my exercise and being outdoors and hiking 
and running and walking. And you still have to do 
all of the other things that everyone has to do 
to be able to lose weight. It just makes it a little bit easier. But it's helping me so much with 
my diabetes management. The number of prescriptions 
of Semaglutide has risen dramatically since becoming available in late 2017. And in 2021, the FDA approved
Semaglutide to be prescribed at a higher dose for weight 
management specifically branded under the name 
Wegovy. It was big news and 
led to this drug getting a lot of attention 
sort of all at once. The messaging started to center 
more around weight loss than it did diabetes which is unfortunate for 
people with diabetes  and people living with obesity. There are these two groups of people  who really need this drug 
for health purposes but it's being trivialized and kind of looked at as like “Oh, this is an easy 
weight loss solution.” There are solutions in place now to deal with the sudden 
high demand for these drugs for people 
who need them. Mounjaro, another medication 
developed specifically for type 2 diabetes is currently being fast tracked 
for approval by the FDA to be prescribed 
for weight loss too. Now that Ozempic’s notoriety helps 
Semaglutide go mainstream it and drugs like it 
will only become more commonly prescribed 
for weight management. It's not as simple as 
“Take this injection and you won't be living 
with obesity anymore.” or “You'll reverse your diabetes.” But as a community we get 
really excited  to see innovations happen and tools that can make 
our lives a little easier and that can cause less 
diabetes burn out... and helps you think 
about diabetes less. It's one of those things
that I think... all of us want to protect 
at all costs. “Come on!” Top Gun: Maverick won the Oscar 
for best Sound. And I got to speak to this guy the supervising sound editor, a few weeks ago when he explained that... One of the challenges is to be able to capture the power of the jets without distorting. But the actual sound is 
distorting the air. We wanted to feel that edgy power  and that's when embracing 
distortion was okay. Check out these recordings
and you can see that they're so loud, 
they're distorting. But in the movie, 
it totally works. When Maverick is doing 
the canyon run and you hear that
distorted rip as he works his way through the canyon that's very intentional. But for other scenes like 
the mach 10 opener the team had to create sounds from other raw materials. You cut to the rear and it just bangs on with this ripping rocket thruster... and you see all of those currents 
crossing the wings which was the 
Roebling Suspension Bridge. I'm very excited with 
how it sounds. If you want to learn more 
about the Oscar winning sound design behind the film check out this YouTube 
video I made. something was different at the Oscars last night for the first time in decades the red carpet wasn't red it was champagne here's why when celebrities arrive at the Oscars and walk the red carpet It's usually the middle of the day and according to the team who plans the carpet event this led to a disconnect between the elegant evening ceremony and guest arrival time their solution was to cover the carpet with the saffron colored tent to block the Sun and change the color of the carpet to contrast which helped them achieve this when celebrities arrived however a non-red carpet is a huge break from tradition though the Oscars weren't the first award show to use a red carpet it's been a staple of the ceremony since it first appeared in 1961. at the time only people in attendance could see it because the show was still broadcast in black and white in fact it wasn't until 1966 when the Oscars were first televised in color that viewers could see it and since then the red carpet quickly became a staple it's been used at every Academy Award Show since that is until last night This is what your knuckle
looks like when it's cracked in 
an MRI machine. Right there. Those bubbles are the key to what's happening 
inside the joint. So there's a lubricant-like 
substance that's found in between 
your joints. It's called synovial fluid and it contains dissolved 
gases, mostly CO2. Those gases form 
into bubbles when you create a 
pressure change by yanking on your finger. And then right away, 
those bubbles partially collapse causing the sound 
we all know and hate. You have to wait 
around 20 minutes  for the remaining bubbles
to dissolve before you can crack 
your knuckle again. This is different from the pop you hear when you 
stand up quickly. That sound is most likely 
from the tendons snapping when they 
slide over bones. So is a knuckle-cracking 
habit safe? Probably. Donald Unger was a doctor who 
decided to pop the joints in just one of his hands 
for 60 years to find out if it would give him arthritis. It didn't. And that's been confirmed 
by other studies. So it doesn't seem like knuckle 
cracking is harming you. It's just harming the people who can hear you. In Top Gun: Maverick. All of this... is real. These actors trained for months  to pull up to eight G's  And cameras mounted 
inside of the F-18s captured real intense flying. Just look at the ripples 
on Jay Ellis’ face. But this shot is different because this plane doesn't exist. It's called The Darkstar and it uses hypersonic technology... a tool that's in development 
by Lockheed Martin but nowhere near ready 
to be used like Tom  Cruise's Pete “Maverick” Mitchell 
does. This scene is almost 
entirely fabricated from Tom Cruise's convincing sweating 
and heavy breathing to the impeccable VFX. But the thing that 
grounds it for me is the sound design... which is why I talked 
to this guy. I'm Al Nelson. My job on Top Gun: Maverick was 
to define the soundscape for the film, from jets... to doors... foley... ambiances... motorcycles... and all things maverick. Expectations were high. The bar was very high. There wasn't a ‘good enough’ 
option. It always needed to be 
as best as it could be. When Al's team first got 
the mach 10 sequence... it sounded something like this: A blank slate with one big question. How do you make fake flight 
feel real? What does the Dark Star 
sound like? First of all, 
working backwards. It's not an F-18. It's not a fighter jet. The Darkstar is 
much more elegant. It's much more advanced. And one of the things 
that was important was for that to be 
believable as well. It shouldn't sound like a video game. It can't sound sci-fi. You think, of course, 
of Star Wars you know, the tie fighters 
are amazing but they're sci fi and they used elephants 
to make them. And so we worked hard, 
lots of field trips to aircraft carriers, 
cross-country trips for jet engines and 
auxiliary power units. We are trying to tell the story 
of Maverick's flight. Everything we're hearing
and seeing should feel as real 
as it can feel so that we're experiencing 
this with him. And Al’s job was to make sure that 
the experience captured all the intensity of Maverick pushing the Dark Star to its limits. It starts with sounds of technology
that we're familiar with. So when you see Maverick launch, 
he's using turbines. We wanted it to have punch 
and feel high tech. It doesn't ramp up. It just goes ‘ca-chunk’... and then thrust. Maverick gets up in the air and as he starts passing 
new thresholds... “Increase to mach 3.5.” ...there's this subtle beep...
[movie clip beeps, high pitched] “Increase to mach 3.5.” ..that starts a simmering build of tension. Like Pavlov's dogs we're being trained to know 
that this tone will keep repeating  until we get to the coveted mach 10. But before that, 
he has to go faster... this time using technology 
that most of us don't yet have a reference for. “Transitioning to scramjet.” A scramjet uses 
the speed of the jet... to intake oxygen, 
which ignites the fuel as opposed to a turbine. A turbine can only spin so fast and can only generate  so much oxygen to 
ignite a fuel. All of that process needed 
to be articulated sonically. He kicks it in the scramjet and then you see 
the turbines close... and you see the tube open up 
in the back of the Dark Star. At that point, you've got
this flow of air... going into the jet system and 
igniting that fuel... and creating that rocket. And then the plane 
is on its way. Maverick starts getting 
comfortable. “We’re feeling good.” And the soundscape 
reflects that by becoming slightly more 
subdued. Because... The other thing we're doing
specifically with Dark Star is we are trying to tell the story of his joy of being in this flight 
and achieving... that which no one has done before. “He's the fastest man alive.” And so there are moments where we're just with him 
as he's smiling. The plane-focused sound design 
pulls back and other elements take 
the forefront. It's a lot of layers but it's also it's not 
necessarily accumulating. It's alternating. It's orchestrating. -You know, when he says...
-”Talk to me, Goose.” there's not a lot else
going on because we are 
with him emotionally. You see the Dark Star go off 
in the distance. That's very much 
a music moment. So you don't need a lot from us 
at that point. And we're just a dot and we're just a little rip 
as you hear it scan across the sky so 
you can track it  and then the music drops out 
very dramatically  and we cut to him... ...and it's boom. And you feel a little bit 
of shaking and you hear that turbine 
kick on and you feel those thrusters. and you feel those thrusters. Instead of having all these clips
sound fade into each other... you feel every single cut. One of my first interactions 
with Tom he said “The cuts have to hit.
They have to punch.”  He was very, very emphatic 
about that. And it's a style that the first 
Top Gun established. That aggressive cutting, style of 
cutting from inside and being just dialogue 
and rather quiet to banging on to the exteriors. “Coming left!” And it makes the cut feel aggressive. It makes the film feel aggressive 
and dangerous and it propels us in the story. Each of these cuts has a 
unique sonic texture. You cut to the rear and 
it just bangs on with this ripping, tearing 
rocket thruster. You see all of those currents crossing the wings, 
the jet stream. It's such a beautiful visual. And we wanted to put 
something in there that was tonal and special which was the Roebling 
Suspension Bridge. So all of these flavors allow it to be constantly changing 
and constantly new... and hopefully exciting. To ratchet up that 
building tension Al’s team used a longtime 
sound design trick... the Shepard Tone:
an auditory illusion where you loop a sound wave 
separated by octaves... which tricks your brain 
into thinking that it's a continually 
rising pitch. Listen to it here in 
the rising turbines. So the jet is starting to
complain a little bit and so more tones are happening. And yes, that 
mach 9.7, 9.8... each time it's a little bit louder, 
a little bit higher. It's that winding you up. And then the minute he does it... “Mach 10! 
[cheers]” Catharsis. But just when you think 
it's over... we return to quiet. And then we start again 
with the build. “Oh, don't do it. 
Don't do it.” “Just... a little... push.” But this time the build 
is different. It starts with this beep from inside 
the control room... which plays off this last beep 
from the Dark Star's cockpit. When you listen to them both 
next to each other it's a rising tone and then 
a falling tone. And this subtly signals that 
danger is coming. The shepherd tone kicks 
in louder and more grating 
than before. It leaks into the sound-muted cabin. So we know that the pressure 
is building... and it keeps building until... [Explosion] But you know, it took 
some hard work to get us to this final version. Did some late nights 
and long hours but I'm very pleased and excited with with how 
it's been received and how it sounds. I know they did design an actual 
Dark Star that he sat in. You can see him sitting in it and then at a certain point 
it launches over our head and that's when we get into 
the magic of cinema. That was an F-18 that they
then remapped the Dark Star over it. And that jet was so low that when you see the roof of that shed blow off, 
that was real. That was an unexpected addition. And the fact that Ed Harris 
just stands there and takes it... like that guy is he’s something else. You're looking at my attempt 
to make a certain celebrity in the Sims 2 on the bottom 
and Sims 4 on the top. Sims 2 was released in 2004 and its character creator 
only had a few skin tones and limited personality traits 
to choose from. But people still loved it. Sims 2 was immediately one of Electronic Arts’ most successful games. It was praised across the board for its three dimensional characters which is a feature that EA 
would only improve on in Sims 3 and now 
Sims 4. Today, Sims 4 features 
a skin tone slider pronouns and the ability 
to sculpt faces  by just pulling 
and dragging. In 2021, EA announced that 
Sims 4 players  created 376 million Sims 
and spent a collective 146 million hours 
creating them. If you do some math this means players spend an 
average of 2.5 hours just creating one Sim. I'm not sure if you can tell but I only spent about 30 minutes 
on these Sims. Can you guess who 
I was trying to make? At some point growing up, 
my vision changed. And slowly I stopped being able 
to see past about... this far in front of my face. Basically, anything past... like 10 inches in front of my eyes... is blurry. So eventually I got glasses  and with them my world 
turns from this... to this. This whole experience as inconvenient as it is... is more widespread than it's ever been. [overlapping] “-Myopia.” 
“-Myopia.” [overlapping] “- Myopia, am I saying it right?”
“-A rise in short-sightedness...” “...and the researchers actually 
called it an epidemic...” “...but they're still trying to figure out 
why this is...” Rates of myopia or 
near-sightedness or needing glasses to 
see things far away... have been rising for decades. In the US, where I live just 25% of people
were myopic in 1971. By 2004, that number 
was up to 42%. And if current trends continue it’s estimated that half of 
the world's population will be myopic by 2050. In Hong Kong, Singapore, 
Taiwan and South Korea rates are already a lot 
higher than that. And a growing portion 
have high myopia which the WHO categorizes as 
a prescription stronger than -5. That puts them at risk of 
losing their sight one day. For decades, 
researchers thought  that whether or not 
you needed glasses was just a matter 
of genetics. And it partly is. Having one myopic parent 
doubles your odds of being nearsighted and having 2 increases 
the odds 5 fold. But human genetics 
don't change this fast. The abruptness of this increase 
suggests that that this change 
is environmental. Something about the way 
we live today is making it harder 
and harder for people to see 
at a distance. So what could it be? Most people are born with eyes that are too short 
from front to back. In this shape, the lens focuses 
images behind the retina. That's the light sensitive tissue 
at the back of the eye. That makes the eye hyperopic 
or farsighted. Blurry up close and 
clear from far away. But as we grow up, 
our eyes grow too. Until they reach a spherical shape. In this shape, the lens 
focuses light directly onto the retina and produces 
a clear image. But sometimes the eye 
keeps growing longer. In this shape, the lens can focus 
up close images onto the retina. But at a distance, images 
focus at a point in front of the retina... making distance vision blurry. So all of us with myopia just have eyeballs that 
have grown too long. The eye does not look like 
a basketball anymore. It looks more like a rugby ball. That's Seang Mei Saw. She's a myopia epidemiologist 
and physician in Singapore. It is a lifelong disease so once you're myopic, 
it doesn't regress. So what's making more and more
people’s eyes grow longer than they should? The evidence points to the way we spend time in childhood 
and adolescence. That's when our eyes 
grow fastest. So it's when most people's 
myopia develops and then stabilizes. Though it can develop later if you abuse your vision enough. Two factors in particular 
have the biggest influence. Near work or the time that we spend 
looking at things up close... and how much time we spend indoors. In a healthy eye, muscles have to 
squeeze the lens in order to focus up close images 
onto the retina. So some experts theorize that 
if your eyes grow up straining to look at 
things up close a lot of the time, they'll 
just grow longer to reduce that strain. But the evidence on this explanation 
is mixed. The stronger explanation 
is time spent indoors. Exposure to bright 
outdoor light stimulates the production of 
dopamine in the retina. This neurotransmitter regulates 
the eyes growth... without enough dopamine the eye doesn't know when 
to stop growing and indoors it's hard 
to get enough. The light from the sun has up to a 100,000 lux 
on a sunny day. Whereas in the room 
the light levels generally and only about 200 to 300 lux. But between electronic devices
and early emphasis on academics... eye experts believe that children today are growing up with a combination 
of too little daylight and too much time doing 
things up close. And nowhere is that more apparent than in East and Southeast Asia. Children in Asia are not spending 
that amount of time outside. This could possibly be because 
of the education system has become much more competitive. The children have a lot more work. They attend teaching centers and you spend more time 
reading and writing. Needing glasses or contacts 
to see for the rest of your life is obviously inconvenient. But in the long term the consequences of that 
distorted eyeball shape can become serious. University of Houston 
Professor of Optometry  Mark Bullimore, explained 
this to me. You know, you're born with a 
finite amount of tissue that make up the various coats 
of your eyeball. Excessive elongation of that 
quite simply places additional stress 
on those structures. The retina has been stretched 
so much that starts to break and then sort of peel off like 
an old piece of paint. The longer those eye structures 
are stretched the higher the risk 
of disorders like myopic macular degeneration, 
retinal detachment... glaucoma and cataracts. So we're finding this almost 
linear relationship between them. The amount of myopia and 
the risks to your vision... later in life. We used to think about myopia 
as an optical defect. Now we think about it 
much more as a disease. And the earlier a child 
becomes myopic the more serious their myopia 
can become and the greater the risk 
of debilitating conditions. Which means it's important to 
intervene as early as possible. So, what does that look like? For those who start to develop myopia there's treatment. First are multifocal, 
soft contacts, and glasses. They make peripheral vision 
intentionally blurry which appears to slow the progression 
of myopia. Then there's orthokeratology 
or ortho-k lenses... hard contact lenses worn 
only at night that reshape the wearer's cornea 
while they sleep... so that they can see at a distance 
during the day. And there are atropine eye drops  low doses of a substance that
 temporarily paralyzes the eyes’ focusing muscles which seems to reduce 
the development of myopia. But the first line of defense 
is prevention. The simplest and most effective way 
to prevent myopia is to get kids to spend 
more time outside. In Taiwan, the government introduced a nationwide program in 2010, 
encouraging schools to get students outside for 
2 hours every day. It appears to have 
successfully reversed  a 40 year-long increase 
in myopia rates. And since 2001 Singapore has funded public education
promoting time outdoors... and conducted annual 
vision screenings at schools. And it seems 
to be working. Right now, these rates may be 
higher than ever but the future of myopia 
will only look like this if we keep doing things 
the same way. And we've never been in a better position to change. You've probably seen images of
this train derailment in Ohio.  These derailments are actually
a lot more common than you might think. We've had two dozen at least in the US and Canada just
in the last 10 years.  They're not inevitable.  There's actually a technology 
that could make these derailments a lot less costly and
a lot less frequent. All of these trains used 
air pressure braking systems. When the engineer 
applies the brakes the air pressure moves sequentially from the head locomotive
down to each car a little bit slower than
the speed of sound.  So the cars in the back of the train still have a lot of 
forward momentum and they crash into the middle cars
causing them to derail. But about 20 years ago train companies started testing out 
a new system.  Electronically controlled pneumatic 
or ECP brakes. These systems work by sending 
their signal electronically through every car on the train
at the same time.  They move at the speed of light and can reduce a train's
stopping distance by up to 60%. So why haven't train companies
adopted these newer, safer brakes? Well, no one's really making them.  A government report estimates
that it would cost  the industry about 
half a billion dollars. And railroad companies have 
donated millions of dollars in campaign funds to these politicians
to make sure they don't have to. Every year, Forbes magazine 
releases a list of America's 
biggest givers. And in 2023, these 25 individuals
or pairs made the list. It includes people like Google 
co-founder Sergey Brin... and Mark Zuckerberg and 
his wife, Priscilla Chan. These are the piles of money Forbes reported each of them
has given away. Collectively, a whopping 
$196 billion  of lifetime giving. That's bigger than the GDP 
of most countries. This giant pile of money 
has done a lot of good... but it's hiding a more complicated 
and problematic story of billionaire philanthropy 
in America. We'll show you how. The Forbes list ranks
the biggest givers by how much they've given
over a lifetime. Biggest to smallest. And they only measure dollars 
given to charitable recipients. That means it excludes money
parked in a foundation. We'll get back to that. And money pledged, 
but not paid out. You’ll see here that Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda French Gates 
are standouts. This chart we're making measures the givers 
current net worth. Adding their philanthropic giving to that we came up with the percentage 
of their net worth they've given away. So Forbes puts Buffett's current 
net worth at $106 billion... and he's given away 
$51.5 billion in his life... which puts him at 33%. Bill and Melinda French Gates who are divorced but still do 
philanthropic work together... have a collective net worth of $109 billion... and have given $38.4 billion away. Most of this group's donations 
go to poverty and public health around the world and education in the US. And together, Buffett 
and the Gates's created the Giving Pledge. A promise by the world's wealthiest 
individuals and families to dedicate a majority of their wealth 
to charitable causes. That's over 50%. They're almost there, 
but not quite. These 13 givers 
have signed it, too including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, 
Carrie Tuna.... Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott 
and Michael Bloomberg. The other signatories fall around here. Only two of them have made it 
over the 50% line. The banker — T. Denny Sanford —
has given 53% of his net worth away. And Duty Free Shoppers founder 
Chuck Feeney... almost every last penny of his fortune. George Soros hasn't signed
the Giving Pledge but he belongs here, too. He's given 73% 
of his wealth away. The eBay founder and his wife 
go here and everyone else on the Forbes
list falls roughly in this area. Over the course of their lives they've given 12% or less 
of their net worth away. In the least flattering zone 
of the chart the highest net worth but the lowest proportion 
of it given away... is Jeff Bezos. The founder of Amazon is 
the richest person on this chart. His $117 billion net worth dwarfs his $2.7 billion of 
philanthropic giving. It's only 2.3% of his wealth 
over his lifetime. For context that's about as much as what 
Americans, on average consistent only give as a proportion
of their disposable income  per year: About 2%. Bezos’s money has gone 
to various causes like fighting climate change, 
education... he even gave $100 million 
directly to Dolly Parton. Bezos’s philanthropic reputation
at this point is kind of that he doesn't have one. It's kind of hazy is what 
a lot of experts have told me. That's Whizy Kim senior reporter for Vox, 
who covers billionaires. A lot of people speculate that 
that's one of the reasons he’s made this recent announcement of “I’m eventually going to 
give my net worth away.” There was a lot of pushback, 
a lot of speculation around “Hey Jeff, why aren't you 
more involved in philanthropy?” This chart helps us see who
the real standout givers are... those who give most 
of their wealth away and those who hold onto 
their enormous fortunes. Even if a certain individual 
is very generous. If overall, this class of people just keeps amassing more 
and more money we've got to look at ourselves and ask “Okay, what are we doing wrong here
and how do we reverse this?” All this money creates what 
the Institute for Policy Studies has called top heavy philanthropy: Where individual wealthy donors make up a large portion 
of charitable giving. Since 2011, mega gifts 
of $1 million or more from single donors have 
been growing. If you are a relatively small institution... that receives funding from 
a very large philanthropist... they take their money away, 
you are in trouble. This chart breaks down 
charitable tax deductions by household income level
since the early 90s. Nonprofits used to rely on 
the broad support of the population. In 1993, 77% of charitable deductions were taken by households 
making less than $200,000. Today, that chart has almost flipped: Households making more 
than $1 million were taking the most 
charitable deductions. So just a handful of people 
are deciding what merits philanthropic money and how these causes should be solved. Ultra wealthy donors tend to give to different causes
then the rest of us. An analysis of the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s 
top 50 donors shows that they give to education 
more than the causes non-wealthy donors give to: 
Like to health... a lot to religion, the environment,
and international affairs. That could mean a billionaire 
giving $500 million to his alma mater for a new 
building on campus... or another giving $750 million in one single donation to charter schools
in 20 US cities. A relatively small amount of money 
can have a great impact on a specific school district or 
a single charter school. The top 50 donors 
are also more likely to give through a private foundation. Most of the people on the Forbes list have had their own private foundations 
or they give to them. Here's how they work. Donors make large charitable gifts 
to a foundation in the form of cash,
assets, or stocks. In return, they get huge 
tax benefits immediately. But the foundation only has to 
give money to actual charities at a rate 
of 5% a year. That means money 
can stockpile in here donors reap the tax benefits... while charities may only get 
a trickle over time. The Forbes list only counts 
this money that foundations have 
already given to charity. Not the money parked here. Meanwhile, this money continues 
to enrich donors. There's another way 
billionaires donate that the Forbes list 
doesn't count at all. Donor advised funds which are more secretive 
by design. These are charitable
savings accounts that allow the donor 
to be anonymous and offer even bigger 
upfront tax benefits. More importantly they have no reporting or 
payout requirements... so it's difficult to tell whether the money is going 
somewhere good or just lowering the donors 
tax bill. Donor advice funds have been
rising in popularity... meaning collectively they are housing billions of dollars yet to be 
paid out to charities. As of 2020, that figure 
was $160 billion. And the huge multibillion dollar 
endowments of foundations means they have a lot of power. Like the Gates Foundation. In terms of global 
public health... the Gates Foundation does 
got a lot of credit... for their work in improving 
vaccine access for preventable diseases for 
very young children. Since they've been doing their work 
in child mortality rates like infant mortality under 5 
has gone down a lot. Their foundation is also 
the largest private donor to the World Health Organization. Which tells you a lot about just how much agenda setting power 
they have. And what kinds of public health 
problems to prioritize. The biggest criticism is that 
it's undemocratic. Former Enron executive John Arnold 
and his wife, Laura have been advocating for reform 
of donor advised funds. By lobbying Congress 
to require them to distribute funds 
within 15 years... or for donors to only get 
a tax deduction upon distribution to charities. Others advocate to increase the payout requirements at foundations
from 5% annually to 10%. These types of reforms are 
small fixes to the system. But if our country didn't have such
dramatic wealth inequality... we wouldn't have to rely on 
the charitable whims of these billionaires 
to begin with. You know these chairs. Drive down any street in America and you're bound to see some. They're called 
Adirondack Chairs and they actually exist 
because of Tuberculosis. By the late 19th century, 
tuberculosis was responsible for 1 in 7
deaths worldwide. In 1900, it killed nearly 
10,000 people in New York City alone which caused many 
New Yorkers to flee upstate to
rural sanatoriums. Doctors there believed in 
the restorative benefits of cold air baths would prescribe that patients
be propped up in chairs outside to absorb 
the cold air. This led to an entire industry 
of “cure chairs”. They were originally 
Westport chairs because the inventor was 
from Westport, New York. But they ultimately took on the name Adirondack after the popularity of the regional sanatoriums. By the 1950s antibiotic treatments 
had gotten so good that sanatoriums weren't 
really necessary anymore... and most closed their doors. And yet, Adirondack chairs remain because of their comfort and their now iconic style. I love that feeling when it's the beginning of fall and it's 55 degrees outside and it's finally cold enough 
to wear my favorite  winter sweater and jacket 
and beanie and gloves. And I drink pumpkin spice lattes 
to stay warm. But I also love the feeling when 
it's the middle of winter and out of nowhere it's 55 degrees. So I leave my parka home and go outside in my 
shorts and t-shirt and I feel the warmth of the 
sun on my skin. And I consider going to the beach
to tan because it's so warm. The temperature is the same but my reaction to it 
is vastly different. Part of the reason why is that there's more of a substance
in my body in January as compared to September. It's the same substance that allows 
kids and teens to handle the cold weather 
better than adults. When you're hot, 
you sweat. When you're cold, 
you shiver. But just before you start 
to shiver your body actually does something else. It starts to burn fat... but not the fat we 
usually think of. There are two categories of fat 
that we like to think about. There's the white fat. White fat is the one that we tend to 
just think of as “fat”. It's called white because 
it looks white. White fat exists all throughout the body cushioning our bones and organs. That's Dr. Aaron Cypess, 
by the way. White fat cells have many functions one of the most important being that they're the body's primary 
energy source. Every single day we are 
using the fuel that's inside the 
white fat cells. But there's another type of fat that has a totally different function:  Brown fat.  These cells are much smaller and because of that, resemble 
muscle more than fat. Instead of one large 
lipid droplet  in a white fat cell, 
the brown fat cell is one tightly packed bag 
of mitochondria. This is what gives it 
its brown appearance. And if you remember anything from 
high school biology class... you know that the mitochondria
are the powerhouse of the cell. Brown fat, instead of serving as an energy
reserve for organs throughout the body to burn, uses its power to burn energy 
on its own. And unlike white fat it's only located in a few 
tactically positioned areas. It is in the neck, the shoulders, 
in the upper arms. It's down the spine and then 
some places within the belly. Lots of overlap with major blood vessels because warming the blood effectively warms the whole body. The brown fat around the neck vessels heats up the blood,
goes to the brain. That's good. The brown fat depots 
in the shoulders that blood, once it's been 
heated by the brown fat goes right — very quickly,
into the heart and then can get pumped 
to the rest of the body. And that's the first line of defense 
against the cold. If it's not enough to raise the body
temperature sufficiently... then the body shivers. But one of the craziest things that I learned while researching 
this story is that... babies can't shiver. When babies are born they do not have the muscle mass and perhaps not even 
so much of the coordination with the brain and the muscle 
to shiver effectively. So they need other ways 
of generating heat and brown fat is part of that. Babies are born with 
a lot of brown fat. According to the Cleveland Clinic about 2 to 5% of a baby's body weight  is made up of this stuff. It's necessary for our survival. The peak age for brown fat actually seems to be in the teen years which explains why a lot of the guys 
in my high school wore shorts in the winter. But as we get older, our body 
makes less of it. And this could give us 
some insight into why kids seem to run hot and our parents or grandparents 
seem to run cold. Older people... they certainly have much less 
brown fat... in terms of absolute 
and relative amounts. There's also less muscle which is also important
for generating heat. The similarities between 
brown fat and muscle don't end there, though. If you work your brown fat out, 
it also increases volume. And the way you do this is 
by exposing yourself to the cold for extended periods of time... as this 2014 study shows. Look at how much more brown fat 
these men from Maryland had after a month of exposure 
to cold temperatures. And look how much less they had when exposed to warm temperatures. Which gives us some insight into 
why 55 degrees in the winter can feel so much warmer than 55 degrees in the fall. Brown fat doesn't just 
keep you warm, though. Scientists have figured out 
that having more of it correlates to lower risk of 
diabetes and heart disease. Studying the effects of brown fat using cold exposure 
is challenging, though. One challenge is that 
it's hard to dose cold. How much... I gave you ‘this’ amount of cold. I mean, you know the temperature, but it's hard to know what you're doing and therefore it's very hard to design a study where it's reproducible. So instead they're trying to activate 
brown fat with medicine to study how burning it 
affects us biologically. A medication called Mirabegron which is approved to treat 
overactive bladder was able to activate the brown fat in a way that was very similar to the effectiveness of the cold exposure. There's a lot we still don't know about brown fat... but we do know that our bodies use it to adapt to cold weather. And when a kid doesn't want 
to put a coat on in the winter it’s not necessarily that 
they're just stubborn. It might just be because they have  a little more of something 
in their body  than you do. This is the opening credits 
to The Last of US. And this is not a fungus. It's slime mold. But the animation team clearly pulled inspiration from real fungi throughout this. So I called up 
Kew Mycology to help make some 
educated guesses on what they could be. And these are some of the labels we thought fit best. Okay, pause: this one's real weird. It's likely their version of a 
mutated cordyceps fungi especially seeing as it's protruding 
from the skull which is what that fungus 
does to ants. Cute. It also kind of resembles 
mycorrhizal fungi which relates to this other part 
in the show where they say the zombies 
are connected. Now, this label is a stretch. It... kind of looks like 
Deer Horn Reishi but based on how 
the animation flows it should be cordyceps and it does have a little resemblance to that as well. But honestly, it mostly kind of looks like algae or kelp. There are an estimated 3.8 million species of fungi. So if you have a better idea, 
let me know. On my way to the grocery store mentally preparing myself... for the sticker shock. Here we are. Wish me luck. Got my diapers. It might be something else for you. For me, it's diapers is really where, like, I notice inflation the most. One of the things that's interesting 
about this particular period of inflation that 
we're in is this is a worldwide phenomenon. Hi, Vox. My question is about inflation. What is the real cause? Is it just COVID or we have 
others to blame? Thank you. Diapers in the US, food in Ghana, 
and home prices in India. What actually caused 
all this inflation? And is there something 
we can do about it? If you watch cable news in the US, you will see one explanation 
for inflation that gets a lot of attention. [overlapping] "Still too much money, 
chasing too few goods." Too much money chasing 
too few goods. Say I have a car dealership. Today, we're in a global pandemic. Factories are shutting down periodically and I'm just not able to keep 
as many cars on my lap. My inventory is low. But at the same time, 
I have customers willing to spend money on my cars. My inventory starts to dwindle, and now there is more customers 
than there are cars. So I can just increase 
the price. Too much money chasing 
too few goods. Economists like this guy, 
Larry Summers he's been sounding 
the alarm bell about this kind of inflation 
from the beginning. "I am much more worried 
that we'll have inflation." "This is the... least responsible macroeconomic policies we've had in the last 40 years." He is talking about those 
pandemic relief checks. Before we can figure out 
if Larry Summers is right we need to take a closer look at exactly how inflation is measured 
in the first place. Once a month, the US Bureau 
of Labor Statistics  puts together what it calls 
a market basket. These data are specific to the US but you can find similar numbers 
around the world. The BLS looks at the prices for 
different goods and services  like housing, electricity, 
apparel prescription drugs, bakery products, 
dairy. They look at the price 
we're paying this month and then compare it to the price
for the same good or service last month or last year. Then they calculate a single percentage 
that captures all of that change and that's the Consumer Price Index, 
or CPI. And it's true the consumer price index 
has been rising steadily for the past couple of years. Here's when those stimulus checks 
went out. But now let's take 
a closer look at  some of the specific 
goods and services that make up the CPI. Some things are way more expensive 
than this time last year like fuel oil, airline fares, gas, 
baked goods, dairy products. But there is some stuff 
that's held fairly steady. In a normal, healthy economy the Federal Reserve expects for inflation 
to be about 2% a year. And for stuff like clothing, prescription drugs,
and education prices are only slightly above that 2% mark. for used cars and trucks, gasoline, 
and communication.... That's your phone plan. Internet streaming. Prices are actually lower than this time last year. It seems a bit more complicated 
than simply: People have too much money. If that were the only problem wouldn't everything be
more expensive? So unfortunately for me the Bureau of Labor Statistics
doesn't actually track the price of diapers 
as part of the CPI. But I did find a private research firm, 
Nielsen IQ, that does. So, Nielsen looks at something 
called the unit price. Basically, they take the box of diapers divide it by how many diapers
are in the box and that gives you 
the unit price. They get a bunch of different brands and then come up with this average. So in 2019, the average unit price 
for diapers was 16.1 cents. If prices had gone up at that expected 2%, annual inflation rate January of 2023 would have seen me paying 17.4 cents per diaper. But of course, that's not what the last few years have looked like. If the price of diapers had increased at the same rate 
as the CPI... I would be paying 19 cents per diaper 
in January of 2023. But no, no, no, no. I am currently paying 
21 cents per diaper an increase of over 30%. So why is it that the price 
of diapers is rising so much faster than the price 
of all these other goods? You can think of the costs of a business
in a couple of ways. There's the wages that you pay for workers,
their investments  in capital and the 
machinery itself. And all of that adds up to 
the cost of production. And then there's the cost 
you actually sell the good at. And the difference between 
those two costs are called a markup. One of the things that makes it difficult to report on inflation is that 
reporters and consumers we don't know how much 
it costs companies to pay their workers. We don't know how much it costs them to import the materials that they need. But we can guess. Take labor costs, 
for example. We know that from 
2019 to 2023... the average hourly wage for someone 
working in manufacturing... rose by about 17%. Now, that is faster than what you would expect under normal 
2% annual inflation. But when you consider the fact that corporations have successfully kept wages so low in the years leading up to that point... that they were actually declining 
relative to inflation... this recent bump starts to look more like a kind of return to normalcy. Okay, but what about 
the cost of materials? I went to the Pampers website  and looked at what goes into 
making a diaper. It turns out this stuff 
is made out of wood and these are all plastics which are made by 
refining petroleum in slightly different ways according to the Federal Reserve's
Producer Price Index... the average price for 
both of these materials wood pulp and 
plastic products has risen significantly over 
the past five years. But both of these rising input costs... still don't completely explain 
the price hike in diapers. One of the reasons I really wanted
to talk to Rakeen is that she and her colleagues  have listened to hundreds and hundreds 
of hours of earnings calls. What we found is big corporations who are jacking up prices beyond what their production cost would justify. These are some transcripts 
of those earnings calls that Rakeen and her colleagues
have been listening to. The CEO of Hostess Brands, 
for example says of these price hikes, 
"Consumers get used to it." "When all prices go up, 
it helps." A Tyson Foods executive claimed that Price increases for beef "more than offset 
the higher costs." VISA's CEO says that historically "inflation has been 
a positive for us." All three of these corporations experienced record profits over
the past 3 years. But what they did with 
those profits is instructive. They paid that money out 
to their shareholders and raised prices 
for the rest of us. So we have our three theories for this current moment of inflation. Too much money floating around. Supply shocks. And massive markups. Unfortunately, it's probably going to be months or maybe even years before we have all of the data necessary 
to figure out which one of these 3 explanations 
holds the most weight. But there are still things we can do to help bring prices down. And we think of inflation in 
a really singular way... and that really limits the 
vast panoply of tools that we actually have 
to fight this problem. Let's start with the tool 
that the Federal Reserve has already busted out: 
raising interest rates. The way that works is 
it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money,
which makes it harder for them to invest in new projects 
and hire new people. So far, the Fed has raised 
interest rates 8 times and the unemployment rate 
has stayed pretty low. But that could change if 
the Fed keeps raising rates. The last time inflation got super high 
back in the early 80s the Fed did huge interest rate hikes and inflation did go down. But look what happened 
to unemployment. It shot way up. By 1982, one in 10 people were out of work. In the last month of 2022... prices were starting to come down 
in some key areas. Dairy, fruits and veggies airline fares. Prices for these two items, 
gasoline and fuel oil are way down. And the reason likely has very little to do with raising interest rates. Over the past 12 months President Biden released 
millions of barrels of oil from the US emergency stockpile, 
which increased global supply and drove down the price. There's precedent for doing this in other areas of the economy. In 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt  asked Congress for nearly $900 million to help the airline industry
quadruple their output. "Ships, planes, tanks, guns." "That is our purpose." "And our pledge." Something Rakeen told me 
about diapers got me thinking about a third way we might start bringing prices down. Turns out that somewhere 
between 70 and 80% of all the diapers produced 
in the US are made by two companies. This honestly threw me a little bit but then I went back and looked at some of that footage that I shot 
in the grocery store. Luvs, Pampers, Ninjamas. Those are all made by Procter & Gamble. Huggies, Pull-Ups, goodnites, 
all made by Kimberly-Clark. So while it looks like parents 
have a lot of choices in the diaper aisle we actually don't. Policymakers have allowed 
really rampant deregulation... that has facilitated these companies 
having so much power... in a way that they can jack up prices without any cost to them. That's supply dial and that 
corporate power dial. We've let them get dusty. We do not and we never did have to throw workers under the bus in order to bring down prices . I want to make you a chart of how tall people were 
100 years ago. Height data tends to be split by gender. So, we'll look at women 
for now. Okay, we're ready. We'll chart heights by country. Let's look at where my dad's family 
is from: South Korea. The average woman born near 
the beginning of the 1900s like my great grandmother was just 142 centimeters 
or 4'7". For comparison, the average 
American woman  was 159 centimeters 
or 5'2". If we chart every country... we can see that people 
a century ago were pretty short for 
today's standards. But over the next hundred years, 
humans grew. Let's just look at those blue bars: How much each country grew. We need to adjust 
the vertical axis so we can see this chart better. Ah, that's better. Many of the countries that saw 
the most growth were European, North American 
countries. For example, here's France 
and here's the US. The countries that grew the least 
were in Africa. And Asian countries were 
mostly in the middle. But all the way on the right is an outlier. A country where women 
grew nearly 8 inches in the last century. South Korea. And South Korean boys grew nearly 6 inches 
in that time period. So why did humans grow so much in such a short amount of time? And why did this happen 
in South Korea? For most of the last 2000 years human height didn't change much. This chart shows the height 
of European men... but this stagnation pretty much 
was happening everywhere. But in the last 200 years we started to see 
some growth. Here's some better data of 1800s. You can see people in wealthier 
European countries  starting to get taller. We know a lot about why. And it all starts with our genes. One study from 2006 looked at 
thousands of siblings... and analyzed how much of 
their DNA was shared... and compared that to how different 
their height was. They found that about 80% 
of the difference in sibling height is genetic. But that other 20% are external forces that 
affect our height. Because even if our DNA says we can grow to a certain height
 during puberty... that growth is 
often interrupted. There's a great study that tracks English and Welsh boys 
born in the 1890s. Many of these boys eventually 
enlisted in WWI which created a record of their adult height. Researchers compared that  to their childhood living conditions using the 1901 census. They found that, if a person grew up 
in a white collar household... which probably had better access to nutrition... they were on average about a half inch taller 
than everyone else. If they grew up in a crowded home where they were more likely 
to spread disease or infection... they were nearly a third 
of an inch shorter. And if they grew up in an industrial area exposed to pollution and disease they were nearly an inch shorter. Even within the same country the environment had a noticeable effect 
on people's height. That's what changed drastically in the last 200 years. Over the last century we made massive advancements
 in nutrition, sanitation medicine and overall 
quality of life. And humans got way taller. But now let's put South Korea 
on this chart. 100 years ago, South Korea was poor and the people were shorter 
than the global average. But by the 1960s, they had 
mostly caught up. Then something drastic happened. A military-led government 
focused on economic growth. Eventually, the country shifted from producing things like textiles to consumer electronics and cars. And South Korean wealth skyrocketed. In the 60s, many South Koreans 
didn't have enough to eat. The food supply was basically in line with other low-income countries. But the food supply 
rapidly improved and soon it exceeded 
the world average. And then it caught up to affluent 
countries in Europe. As for childhood health, 
in the 1950s more than 20% of South Korean kids 
died before age one. Worse than most low income countries. Then, South Korea's infant mortality 
plummeted. And as a result of these improved conditions... especially for children, South Koreans kept
growing and growing. I want to show you 
one more chart. This is the height of South Koreans 
and North Koreans in the 1930s. Back then, they were 
one country so naturally they were 
about the same height. The North is where my 
maternal grandparents and their siblings grew up. Then in 1945 the North and South were split up. In 1950, the Korean War began. The war ended in a stalemate  and North Korea 
shut its borders walling itself off from 
the rest of the world. In the 1990s millions of North Koreans 
starved to death. We only have data on 
North Korean height today because of the thousands of people who escaped to the South 
during that period. And in the generations 
since the division... the height gap between the two Koreas... has continuously widened. My grandparents were lucky. Early in the war, they fled 
their home in North Korea... and escaped to the southern tip 
of South Korea. And a few years later, 
my mother was born. My mom is a bit taller 
than her mother... and my generation 
is taller than hers. Height is inherited written into our very genetic code. But height is also something... history gives to us. Night of the Living Dead isn't just the movie that birthed the zombie genre as we know it today. It was also one of the first horror movies with a black lead. Director George Romero didn't cast Wayne Jones because of his race but it's hard to ignore the social commentary his character Ben adds to the film. This is the first time audiences engaged with a strong black character in a horror movie and Ben fights monsters and is the only one who survives the night. He's a hero. There are other elements of the film which are heightened by his race, too, especially at the end. (Big spoiler here!) When after realizing he made it through the horrific night Ben is mistaken for a zombie by the team of white men rescuing survivors. He's shot dead. Ben's identity as a black man adds a lot of nuance to an otherwise great zombie movie. If you haven't watched the film with this context in mind or at all, you should. And yes, because it's historic. But also the copyright was never renewed and it's free to watch on YouTube. So give it a watch and let us know what you think. Whoa! Before a trailer starts on YouTube they call them bumpers. Because if a trailer just started 
the way, you know it does right after the green card where we kind of get into the story
and we meet our characters... people might turn it off. But if you've been given a taste  oh, it's going to get crazy by the end! So that's the thinking behind that. So I'm Bill Neil and I'm a trailer editor and I work at Buddha Jones. That is a project where we 
worked from dailies... where we didn't get a cut of the movie at first. And so I just watched dailies as they came in, as they were shot. And you start to get kind of a sense of what the movie's going to be and you start to kind of get a feel. "But that's why back at 
the Haywood Ranch..." The song is Fingertips by Stevie Wonder. Jordan Peele suggested 
to use that song. You know, we're playing it 
almost diagetically at first. "We had skin in the game." Like diagetic means, like 
it's part of the scene and then she's dancing to it and then do a little kind of fun
editorial tricks where like, on the beat of the music you try to have his hoofs... kind of hit the beats. And then we cut outside
to Daniel with the horse and making the music 
really kind of echoey and it's kind of creepy. And then go to that super quiet, 
big, wide shot. The other thing I do there, 
I have the crickets... and then I have the crickets stop chirping and it just goes quiet. I'm taking a cue from the movie The Fog: John Carpenter's The Fog. There's a moment in the fog where right before the evil fog rolls in 
there's crickets and then it's a wide shot of the house
and they stop chirping. And then the fog kind of rolls in. So I kind of took it from that. It's an homage, I guess. Or I'm stealing. I'm not sure. And then after that,
we have the big "From Jordan Peele"
kind of come down. And I guess it's known now that it's kind of Jordan Peele's
alien movie but at the time wasn't for sure what the heck
was going on. And I thought the big thing 
coming down... "From" underneath the "Jordan Peele" I felt—because normally "from" 
would be on top of the name Jordan Peele. But... I flipped it because it 
reminded me of the way the spaceship looked in 
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when it came down. And also that shot of that house reminded me of the shot from 
"Close Encounters" when the little kid gets abducted. We start deconstructing 
the song of "Fingertips" and just using the rhythm 
from it. If you ever heard that song, 
this is very deconstructed. And then we add a lot of sound design 
and layers and rises... and stuff underneath. A rise is—it's a piece of music.
It's— [mimics tone going up
and also getting louder] and kind of getting bigger and bigger
and bigger and louder and louder 
and louder. [tone going up and 
getting louder] In the early days, when 
I was cutting trailers there are basically no 
trailer sound design libraries and I'd want something like a rise 
and I'd be like "I want something that sounds like that Beatles song, 
A Day in the Life." Because at the end of that, 
it has a big, huge rise. Now there's about a billion and a billion
differnt kinds of like choirs... and synths... and huge orchestras and hits and 
everything you can imagine. Not even just music, like just 
sound effects libraries. There's like, like a little kid laughing. And I've used this sound effect a lot. [Ominous, piano tone
overlayed by child's laughter] [explosion sounds and 
crackling] [percussive marimba tones
and timpani] "Attack!" "Russia." [percussive marimba tones
and timpani] "Oh." Stanley Kubrick had, like some of the best trailers of all time. That's so innovative. I mean... I've always looked at that
as one of those crazy you know, kind of groundbreaking trailers. That's back in the 60s when, like the French new wave was starting
to have an effect on Hollywood. And that was embracing that crazy,
non-linear, weird editing. Almost overboard. Back in the 60s, they didn't have trailer houses really doing it. I think there were people 
on the lot doing that or the filmmakers were doing it. "You have a date with Carrie." Carrie is... it's a lot of VO. "A girl who lives in that creepy house." The thing about the Carrie trailer that I always say is that it kind of gives away... every big moment in the movie. "For Carrie, it will be a dream come true." "For everyone else, it will be 
a nightmare." You see who dies. You see what happens to her at the prom. You kind of see everything. So when people complain about trailers giving away everything nowadays... I mean, like, well look at 
the "Carrie" trailer. The other fun thing about 
the "Carrie" trailer is if you see like—
there's a part in it where they have a wipe in the frame... when the blood is poured on her
and it wipes the frame red. And although in the movie it does kind of—the lights 
all go red they kind of go red after that. But I think they had 
to do that because the MPAA has to approve all trailers for general audience viewing. Doesn't allow you to show 
actual red blood. You can't, you know, for a regular 
green band trailer which is meant for all audiences, 
you can't show blood. That is just one of 
the best trailers ever. It's so good! That sound design is amazing. [high pitched rising tone
increasing in intensity] That alien [vocalizes a howl]. [high pitched tone continues] That screaming sound. Nowadays, we kind of call that like 
a signature sound which is kind of a repeated sound that you kind of you know, kind of latch on to. I sort of really kind of focusing 
on signature sounds like with the trailer I did for 
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre". The sound I'm talking about 
is this this crazy camera— [vocalizing, imitating the high-pitched 
sound a camera's flash makes] [high pitched, mechanical whine] And I loved the original and I wanted to kind of 
make reference to that. "This film is positively ruthless in its attempt to drive you 
right out of your mind." [high pitched, mechanical whine] So, when I was a kid I loved, like, those horror—
viny records of sound effects. Like "Sounds to Make You Shiver". [evil, witch-like laughter] Disney's like, 
"Haunted Mansion". [thunder and rain effect] And so I guess maybe that kind of 
inspired me a little bit you know, in terms of being too focused
on the sounds of horror. "When the world is in trouble..." In the 90s, there was a lot of VO [voice over] and a little bit more of a formula. "The most brilliant commander 
in the Soviet navy..." "From the sewers of Gotham..." I mean, it's a cliché to say 
"In a world...". "In a world where both of our cars 
were totally underwater..." "and advanced technology..." "1500 active volcanoes in the world..." We worked with Don Lafontaine who was the the King of VO. He's the one you always associate 
with "In a world...". He was really cool. He was always professional, but he 
was like the number one. And he had his own limo. And he would be driven from 
VO booth to VO booth. There are people who try to
break into the business and then you'd give them a shot. And there was such a difference between... you know, a Don Lafontaine 
who would nail it. "They destroyed everything he had..." He would nail whatever kind of 
nuance you that you wanted and somebody who just didn't know 
how to do it— And it seems like it's easy, 
but it was really hard. You have such a short time 
in any trailer to kind of... engage people or get people 
to lock in. And I think sound and music 
and sound effects... they're the soul of the trailer. There's another part in that trailer 
that uses sound that— where we go to black. We stop everything, 
we go to black. And we do have a couple cards that say, like "From producer 
Michael Bay" but we have the sound of this girl
running and screaming and it's in the black. And you hear these these footsteps... [heavy footsteps and the sound 
of breathing] And then it's quiet and then— [chainsaw motor starting] chainsaw comes through. And that's another one of 
my favorite parts of it. So sometimes we get 
a rough cut of the movie. 50% of the time we don't even 
get a rough cut. We get to start getting dailies
as soon as they start shooting. We're rarely, if ever, working from
a final cut of a feature. And "Halloween" I would say... the line reading Jamie has of... "So I could kill him." "So I can kill him." ...in the middle of the trailer 
is a different take. "So I can kill him." And then I think we edited the the end scare of that trailer  where the the girl... is trying to close the closet door 
and then Michael appears. That is edited differently than 
it is in the final movie. And I remember I saw it and I was like "Oh, they cut that differently than 
I thought they would." Well, the beginning of the 
"10 Cloverfield Lane" trailer... is, you know, kind of just 
a fun, goofy song. They seem like they're 
having fun. It's not really like 
jokey together. They've called it a rug pull where it starts off one way 
and then it changes. The rug pull in that is a little bit 
more gradual. A normal rug pull is, you know, 
"Oh my God, it looks funny." It's funny. And then bam, 
something changes. "I can talk to Santa." "All right, revelers." "Welcome to your worst 
Christmas ever." "Let's go!" Using sound effects or 
movements, punches... in beat with the music and 
time with the music. It's all over the place. Rhythm is such like a basic human sense... that when you kind of tap into that 
in such a kind of cool way way with the punches, I mean I use a little bit in "Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood". I call it "click click 
whir whir". Because it's kind of 
what it is. It's this kind of use of rhythm 
and rhythmic cutting. One metaphor I want to say about trailers. This was told to me by a studio exec 
named Tony Sella. So this metaphor about trailers is like. It's like trying to sell a jigsaw puzzle. And in order to sell the jigsaw puzzle you can't show the whole picture 
on the box. You are only allowed to show four pieces 
of that puzzle. This area in Syria has received barely any aid since the earthquake on February 6th. It's controlled by opposition forces who have been fighting Syria's government led by dictator Bashar al-Assad 
for almost 12 years. For most of the war, Assad has limited aid to this region. But starting in 2014 the UN began sending aid 
like food and water through these four border crossings. In 2020, Assad's ally, Russia jumped in and shut down 3 routes. For the next few years aid could mainly flow through 
just this crossing. That wasn't enough for 
the 4.1 million people who rely on aid here. And it got worse when the earthquake struck. It severely damaged the road 
to this crossing meaning any kind of aid including critical rescue equipment,
medical supplies, and fuel couldn't immediately reach 
the people here. Weeks later, aid is slowly 
starting to get through. And Assad temporarily reopened 
these two other crossings. But that crucial delay  has caused even more suffering  in a region where more than 
4000 people have already died... and a civil war continues. Did you know that these buttons usually do nothing? Only 259 of the 1200 crosswalk buttons in San Francisco actually change a traffic pattern. Meanwhile, in New York City just 100 of the 1000 worked in 2018. It turns out that these crosswalk buttons  are being tossed aside  as cities update their traffic systems and the ones that remain are often left over  from the way pedestrians used to dictate the flow of traffic. Push buttons or beg buttons were how people crossed the street before today's computerized traffic signals existed. You had to push a button or beg for the pedestrian light to change so you could safely cross the street. But in most major cities today traffic signals operate on a timer. Which is why when you press a crosswalk button it doesn't influence the traffic pattern anymore. But that doesn't mean that they're completely useless in 2023. Some buttons do change traffic signals and many trigger audio cues that can help people with visual impairments cross the street. Plus, pressing them is a lot of fun. This is a building collapsing in Turkey hours after a series of 
earthquakes and aftershocks on February 6th. First, the bottom floor crumbled. Then the rest of the building 
came down on top of it in what's known as 
a "pancake collapse". Thousands of buildings 
near the epicenter in southern Turkey and 
northern Syria tumbled straight down in a similar way. The intensity of the earthquakes alone carried the potential for destruction. But it's the pancake collapses that have made this one of the deadliest disasters in the region. Even in very well designed and executed building would have suffered. This doesn't rule out that  the buildings were free of defect. "How well buildings protected residents played a significant role in lives saved and lost." "Clearly a lot of these buildings were not up to standard." The death toll continues to climb... as many victims are still stuck under the weight of the buildings. So what is it about these buildings that has made this earthquake 
even more devastating? First, let's look at the larger region that's prone to severe earthquakes because of these two fault lines. They sit along tectonic plates 
that meet one another and cause friction. When the friction builds up... a powerful earthquake is eventually released. Over the last century, Turkey has seen major earthquakes 
along both fault lines. The most recent one happened here. This is the seismic impact 
that shows the epicenter. When you take a closer look at the most impacted areas... they were densely populated with Syrian refugees who ended up living in buildings that were haphazardly built and largely neglected. And across the border in Syria, buildings in these areas were already weakened by the prolonged civil war. But what really complicates this disaster is that Turkey was aware of the buildings that were the most high risk. They're called soft story structures. A soft story building is typically a large structure with multiple floors... and an open plan on the bottom. That bottom floor can sometimes be a parking garage space for small businesses 
or extra homes. These buildings are very common
throughout the world especially in countries like India
Pakistan, and Turkey. Because they offer a solution to overcrowding in 
densely populated areas. But they historically do a poor job of withstanding medium 
to powerful earthquakes. Here's why: these columns here 
could be made of brittle concrete and the stories on top might be made of heavier materials like concrete. Sometimes the bottom floor has fewer walls than the ones above with sides that may be left open or columns that aren't connected 
by walls. This means that a soft story is the weakest floor and cannot fully support the heavier ones above it. So when an earthquake hits the structure may shake. Until that bottom floor collapses. During powerful earthquakes like Turkey and Syria's the remainder of the building may follow. This kind of collapse traps people under heavy construction materials making rescue missions even more difficult. But this is a challenge Turkey has faced before. A comparable 7.6 earthquake hit İzmit in 1999 and caused over 17,000 deaths. It became clear that poor building design 
and soft stories which made up nearly 
90% of building collapses exacerbated the death toll 
in this disaster. The aftermath pushed the Turkish government 
to reintroduce building codes with an emphasis 
on earthquake safety. But they weren't enforced due to corruption. And many buildings in Turkey were built too well before 1999, which meant those buildings could only be strengthened retroactively. There is a way to keep 
soft story buildings intact in the event of an earthquake: retrofitting them with materials that can support the weight of the structure. In an ideal scenario these columns can be replaced or reinforced with steel frames. These open walls can be reinforced too and extra bolts and braces can be 
drilled into the foundation. So if the structure shakes there's support from that bottom floor. A solution like this seem simple but it's extremely expensive to execute. According to the World Bank around 6.7 million residential buildings in Turkey need retrofitting or reconstruction at a cost of $465 billion. As of 2021, only about 4% of those buildings  were transformed. In fact, retrofitting is an expensive undertaking and nearly impossible, even 
in countries like the US. Here is every remaining soft story building in San Francisco that needs reinforcements that would cost billions. But another problem in Turkey 
is that construction companies have been cutting corners and 
ignoring building codes for decades. And the Turkish government has let their violations slide. According to the BBC this post advertised a building that complied with Turkey's latest earthquake safety regulations which emphasizes the use of strong materials. But the way that same building collapsed  suggests it was a soft story structure. Now, Turkey is cracking down on contractors that are allegedly responsible 
for these collapses. The scale of this disaster is a result of complex factors... like geography neighborhoods still reeling from war  and weak buildings. But what makes this moment particularly harrowing is that while earthquakes along fault lines are inevitable... many of these deaths didn't have to be. Turkey, along with other countries near fault lines are all prone to intense earthquakes. But they won't have to be this deadly if cities enforce codes  and treat safe housing... as a human right. On August 1st, 2022 this small mining town 
of Soledar in Ukraine had apartments, buildings, houses... Fast forward to January 10th, 2023 and it had turned to rubble. That same afternoon, a statement 
on the app Telegram surfaced claiming Wagner "took control of 
this entire territory of Soledar." But even though the Russian army has been fighting across Ukraine for months... this message didn't come from them. It came from Yevgeny Prigozhin a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He started out as a Kremlin caterer where he got the nickname Putin chef. But in 2014, he became the head 
of the Wagner Group a covert Russian network with mining companies political influence operations and 
a brutal private military force. Until recently, the Wagner Group was a secret operation... and claiming a public victory like this was rare. But things are starting to change. And the playbook of this dangerous group  is becoming much, much clearer. In 2014, Russian forces annexed Crimea and began fighting in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. A year later, soldiers in unmarked green uniforms showed up on the ground to support Russian troops. They were called Little Green Men. But we now know this was likely the first time Wagner soldiers were deployed on the ground. These soldiers have become Prighozin's
frontline agents for Russia's global strategy. They serve multiple purposes for 
the Russian government. But chief among them is 
to divert attention from activities that the Russian government and the Kremlin in particular doesn't want the world to pay attention to. That's Candace Rondeau  a journalist who investigates 
the Wagner Group and Russia's strategy for proxy warfare. One of the main functions of 
the Wagner Group serves is to deliver weapons and military services... to countries with which Russia has a 
military technical agreement. Russian law technically 
prohibits its citizens from fighting for money 
in foreign countries. But the opaque nature 
of the Wagner Group has allowed it to recruit tens of thousands of soldiers, 
mainly from Russia. Generally speaking, these are hardened... military veterans at the command level. And then kind of at the sort of 
rank-and-file level those who were not recruited from prisons... tend to come from elite backgrounds. In the beginning, you couldn't really 
distinguish them but today the Wagner Group brand 
is completely recognizable by their emblems, their insignia, 
and their online brand. These guys now are basically kind of like  the McDonald's of the Russian way of war. And this new visibility has given us 
a better look at the 3 strategies they employ  to do Russia's dirty work 
around the world. The Wagner Group targets countries experiencing long conflicts or that are weakly governed 
or corrupt. Take Syria, which has been under authoritarian rule for more than 50 years and in 2011 saw a civil war break out between the Syrian government and anti-government rebel groups. To fight the rebels, Syrian dictator 
Bashar al-Assad turned his Russian ally for help. Shortly after, Wagner mercenaries 
appeared in Syria to support the government forces. Since then, all these countries have seen Wagner troops on the ground. Most of them while going through 
periods of instability. This has allowed the Wagner Group —
and by extension — Russia to expand its reach to at least 
4 different continents. In particular, in Africa, where at least 
18 different countries have seen Wagner forces on the ground 
in the past decade. In these client states where 
Wagner is operating a lot of the work is teaching local militaries how to do kind of reconnaissance and counterinsurgency but often in a very rough way. The Wagner Group generally 
does this by spearheading brutal military incursions. Like in Mali, another prime target 
for Wagner. Since 2012, Mali has been fighting 
a jihadist insurgency and has experienced 3 coups 
in just 9 years. 2 of the 3 coups brought 
Assimi Goïta to power a Russian-backed president that 
remains in power today. For nearly a decade, Mali had military support from France — its former colonizer. But in 2021, when France started to withdraw its army it's widely believed Mali contracted Wagner troops to help them fight against the rebels and secure power. Mali denies the deployment of 
Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group. But satellite imagery analyzed by  the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies suggest they arrived quietly in 
December of 2021 and built a military base and 
access roads by the airport to facilitate their deployment. One of the biggest motivations for standing up a ghost army... that nobody can quite describe or define. The main purpose of that is to make sure that the activities that the people do are not seen... and cannot be traced and tracked. But that doesn't always work. In April of 2022, a mass grave 
in the Malian desert was traced back to the Wagner Group. They've also been linked to other violent incidents in Mali, 
including here: Where they killed about 350 men 
in March of 2022. A UN report shows that, 
since Wagner's arrival in Mali the number of civilian deaths has increased by 324%... and thousands more 
have been displaced. Once the Wagner Group arrives in 
a fragile country and intervenes militarily to help 
local dictators backed by Russia the big question is: 
What's in it for them? Because they're so integral to the military technical agreements. They're also part of a cycle of... debts and loans that are incurred... when client states of Russia want to you know, improve their armies in exchange for those loans. Typically, the Wagner Group, through 
a series of shell companies will get payment in the form of oil... or gold or uranium even. Which is exactly what happened 
in Sudan. A country that's been under 
autocratic rule for 3 decades went through a series of coups and is now ruled by Sudan's military. Sudan's relationship with the 
Wagner Group began in 2017. At the time, Sudan's then president
Omar al-Bashir felt his grip on power slipping and met with Putin to establish a new alliance with Russia. Transcripts show he presented Sudan as Russia's key to Africa. Soon after, they met Russian military 
vehicles like this one were spotted on the ground. And videos of Wagner troops training
Sudanese soldiers surfaced on social media. In 2019, when al-Bashir was 
overthrown in a military coup the arrangement persisted. Proving just how enmeshed 
Wagner troops and the Sudanese army have become. And that's because the Wagner Group 
has a lot to gain. In exchange for providing weapons and training. The Wagner Group operates gold plants like this one where they exploit Sudan's 
natural resources. Getting that kind of high value commodity that can be quickly turned into cash  through a money laundering enterprise  is a big part of the Wagner Group playbook. But all of it is illicit and illegal. And Sudan is only one example. The Wagner Group's illegal mining activities span the whole continent. The Wagner Group's playbook has reportedly made Prigozhin 
a billionaire. And the group is now also a legal entity with headquarters in St. Petersburg. Putin has often denied links to Wagner group activity but in recent months, Prigozhin has started speaking publicly about his role. Like when he claimed that victory in Soledar. It's drawn new sanctions and increased scrutiny from around the world. And that poses a serious challenge 
for Putin's regime and military influence 
across continents. You've probably seen ads for ADHD treatment on 
your For You page. And there's actually 
a specific reason why. Early on in the pandemic, the government loosened telehealth regulations so people didn't need to see a doctor in person to get a prescription for controlled substances like the ADHD medication Adderall. A bunch of telehealth startups took advantage of this  and started running ads that emphasize just how easy it was to get treatment. But those ads often encouraged viewers to seek treatment for kind of misleading reasons. Some suggest that if you had a messy room ate a lot of junk food could hear two songs at the same time or grew up doing this thing. It could be a sign that you have ADHD. But those are all relatable experiences that don't necessarily mean you have ADHD. A 2022 study of the 100 most popular videos about ADHD on TikTok found that more than half of them were misleading and it looks like they've had a noticeable effect. This is a chart of total Adderall prescriptions  in the US over 
the past 5 years. Prescriptions were increasing about 5% per year up until 2021, when they grew by 10%. This spike in prescriptions likely added to the current Adderall shortage in the US. So have you all noticed that 
everything kind of sucks now? And I don't mean, like, the 
general state of the world. I mean, like, the stuff we buy 
is just, like a little bit worse than it was 
10 years ago. And I really started thinking about this  because my coworker Izzie wrote about 
how she had to replace a bra. So I'm gonna do what any normal person would do which is buy the exact same thing from the exact same place. And then after a few weeks it just kind of... Just kind of fell apart. So this kind of started me
on this journey of okay, I'm hearing anecdotally from 
so many people I talk to in my life.  From coffee machines... phones, computers, sweaters... They all tear or break or explode way sooner 
than they used to. So what's going on? And is there a way to climb out  from under this pile of consumer trash? So let's talk about this in the most 
basic of terms starting with the design process. When a company wants 
to make a thing let's say, like a jacket there are three main factors to consider. Functionality: Does it work? Appearance: Does it look good? And manufacturability:  Is it easy and fairly inexpensive 
to make a lot of this product? Generally, a good product will have a good blend of these three things. But in recent years this process has been thrown off balance. Let's look at clothes, for example. In the past, if you needed 
a new jacket you used to go to a tailor,
get measured choose material and 
have it made. Then for decades, instead of going 
to a tailor for a jacket we went to department stores  and bought things that were mass produced. By the 80s and 90s we had tons of options and stores to choose from. And now many of us just kind of go online click "add to cart" and 
buy a product without ever seeing it 
in person. But it's not just how we buy, 
it's how often we buy. And for that, we can kind of 
blame this man. Ernest Elmo, yeah,
incredible name.  In the 1930s, during the Great Depression he wrote this paper
that was like "Okay, the government 
should really support this idea of planned obsolescence." Except he didn't call it planned obsolescence. He called it "consumer engineering." Remember that jacket you bought? Well, it's a new season, and it's out of style. Buttons are out. Zippers are in. So you buy something new. But not because there was anything physically wrong with the original. That's why it's called consumer engineering, right? Like, it's up here in the brain. And we've been living this way 
for decades. So now we all want the next best thing, all the time. And that demand has 
spun out of control. Today we are surrounded. The speed of certain trend cycles and 
the fact that they're geared towards these micro communities. Like Stanley cups, when maybe a year ago was Hydro Flasks. The result is that we buy a lot. A survey done in 2021 found that nearly 
40% of UK consumers buy clothing as often as once a month. The UN reports that between 
the years 2000 and 2014 the average person was buying 60% more clothing... and each item was only kept half as long. So we want to buy a lot of stuff fast and because we replace our stuff so often we don't really want to spend a lot of money on it... which has an effect too. People aren't willing to pay more for something they had purchased a while ago. So like if I paid 30 bucks 
for a bra, 10 years ago it would be really hard for me to buy it at $50. Even though in the last 10 years labor costs have risen. So what we're left with 
is an incredibly fast cycle of demand for low cost products. And here's what that looks like. In order to speed up manufacturing companies have to either hire more people alter how the product is made  or both.  But they also have to keep prices low enough for consumers to keep buying. So they may start swapping materials like cotton or silk for a cheaper synthetic material. Or rely on a more basic stitching pattern that maybe just doesn't hold as well. So if after 10 years, you're still paying 
the same price or close to the same price for a product
that looks the same... well, something had to change. So you might say, "okay, Kim, fashion trends are moving too fast and we buy too much stuff. I get it. I get it." "But why does my washing machine suck?" And that's a great question. Let's talk about technology. When things like computers  first became part of our daily lives it made a lot of sense to upgrade devices pretty often. There was actually very big differences in what a device did that's 2 years old versus one that 
was brand new in the market. There was just big leaps. This is Gay Gordon-Bryne. She directs a consumer advocacy group 
called the Repair Association. You know, if you had a 2 year old thing you probably couldn't do 
half the cool stuff  that the other guy could do. So that kind of fueled the replacement cycle because you really did get something better in terms of functionality. For example, when the iPhone was first made it was a major breakthrough. Subsequent phones up to a point responded to major technological leaps. Like look at the difference between 
the 3GS and the 4. The iPhone 4 had a way better resolution and a front facing camera. For a while, these major leaps between models was the norm for technology. But we're not making those giant changes as often anymore. Instead, partly to make us want to buy more things... companies make very minor adjustments year after year. So the dryer you own may now play a fun little song at the end of a cycle 
instead of screaming. And now, as devices advanced and got increasing complicated there was another problem 
for consumers. All these things started to come into the into the world. They didn't come in 
with repair tools. They came in to be thrown away. Basically, when this stuff breaks. It's often intentionally impossible to repair. Because if you buy something that has a computer chip in it or a circuit board or whatever you probably can't make one in your garage. So you're very reliant on what the manufacturer will agree to sell. And very often they don't agree to sell parts and tools and diagnostics or even give you a diagram. But sometimes it really just isn't possible to fix because they cut corners, just like in fashion replacing metal and screws with
plastic and glue. And these kind of issues apply 
across the board in technology... from your phone to toasters to blenders... to electric wheelchairs to your car. If you walk around your house or your apartment and you start cataloging how many things you own that have chips in them I think you'll be really surprised how big that lack of repair problem actually is. I want people to feel hopeful. Yes, this is something that's out of our control in some ways and not out of our control in others. I don't want you to feel guilty for partaking in... in this system where like so many people, we've been kind of brought up culturally to think in this way  or to buy in this way. Compared to other things that suck in the world we actually have a 
surprising amount of control over this situation. With tech, fighting for the right to repair is actually extremely effective. New York State just passed the right to repair bill in 2022 and it's not perfect but at least 
it's something. With fashion, stay away from 
micro trends and fast fashion as often as you can. Buy with intention and learn to take care of the things you do have. Think of your objects as having maintenance. Read those care labels. As consumers, it's going to take a little bit for us to sift through all that trash and retrain our brains a bit. But we can take small steps to take back control of the process. After all, all of this stuff is supposed to be made for us. So let's make it clear what we want. We have a map on our
repair.org website where you can go find your state... click the picture... and it'll bring up a—basically, 
a letter writing widget. Type in your address
and it says... Tell your repair story. And if you really want 
to do something that's how it gets done.  We've had over 100,000
people do that. Over 30,000 of them 
in New York. So, it does not surprise me that  New York was the first one to
actually pass a law. Because that's where there was a really big groundswell of interest.  The U.S. just shot down that  Chinese spy balloon over 
the Atlantic Ocean. And you might be asking yourself. Wait, the what? It sounds like something from the last century but there's actually a reason countries still use  high altitude surveillance balloons even in the era of satellites. The one spotted over Billings, Montana 
in February 2023 was carrying surveillance equipment and was reportedly the size of three city busses. When it was shot down, it was flying at an altitude of about 60,000 feet but was likely capable of reaching the stratosphere between 80 and 120,000 feet. That's above where fighter and commercial aircraft fly helping it avoid detection. But it's still in the Earth's atmosphere. So unlike a satellite the balloons stays in sync with Earth's rotation, which means it can observe one area
over a long period of time. Plus, being closer to the ground than a satellite means higher resolution images and maybe most importantly, balloons are cheap. So when this happens... "...gonna finish — oh!
That was it!" It's not as big of a deal as losing an expensive satellite. In 2012, Zongchang Yu left his job as an engineer at a company called ASML... the only company in the world that can make this machine. This machine makes the most 
advanced semiconductor chips or microchips in the world. After he left ASML he started two new companies one in the US and 
one in China.  US and ASML lawyers 
would later allege that Yu recruited other ASML engineers 
to his US company... that they brought with them stolen information about AMSL's machine... and that it was all backed by the Chinese government. This story is just one small piece of China's monumental effort to transform one of the world's most global and significant industries: 
semiconductors. But China's effort has increasingly locked it in a struggle with the United States. This isn't about market share. This isn't about tariffs. This is about security. So how exactly did China and the US enter into a Cold War over computer chips? [pensive, driving electronic music] [music fades] This is the first semiconductor chip invented in the 1950s by engineers in the US. It's a piece of silicon with four transistors on it. The more transistors, the more powerful the chip. By 1960 engineers had already made one 
with four times the transistors... and each year they figured out ways to add more. So since the early 1960s, semiconductors have improved at an exponential rate. This is Chris Miller, 
author of Chip War. The founder of Intel, Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the computing power produced by a single chip would double every year or so and that rate has held true roughly up to the present. The first companies dedicated 
to making chips were in the US where they really just had one main customer: the US government. The first use cases were actually in guidance computers that were in NASA's spacecraft as well as in the missile system. "The complex guidance equipment..." "The system's electronic brain..." Since chip companies were making 
better and better chips each year the US government believed 
a deep partnership with them would ensure that it always had access 
to the most advanced ones. The US government has believed that
computing has been a core determinant of nations' power on the world stage. You think about the ways that computing has been used to crack codes in World War II or to track Soviet submarines during the Cold War. I think that judgment is correct. At first, these chip companies handled 
the entire supply chain. They designed the chips, manufactured them, and assembled them into a package for installation into a product. All within the US. But by the late 1960s, they realized they could make a lot more money designing chips for civilian products like corporate computers. They just had to make 
a lot more of them and a lot less expensively. So many chip companies moved 
their manufacturing and assembly to factories in Japan, Taiwan,
South Korea and Hong Kong where labor was cheaper. And the US government 
encouraged them. All these countries were US allies or partners and this was a way to support their economies and deepen ties. At the same time, it banned these chip companies from sharing technology with its rivals: the Soviet Union and China. It was a way to keep them years behind 
the US as chips advanced. Because of Moore's Law, 
advanced chips are substantially better than previous generations. If you're 5 years behind or 10 years behind you're actually quite far behind the cutting edge. But it wasn't long before these allied governments began investing in their own chip companies. In the 1970s and 80s Toshiba in Japan and Samsung 
in South Korea began designing and manufacturing chips that rivaled the Americans'. In the 1990s, a Taiwanese company, TSMC got so good at manufacturing chips that many companies in the US 
stopped doing it. It meant that U.S. companies
were not the only ones who could make the most advanced chips anymore. And every country's chip industry was increasingly reliant on other countries for the materials, software, and equipment needed to make more complex chips. But while the US and its allies 
were pushing the limits of chip technology... China was lagging behind. In addition to the US blocking it 
from accessing chips during the Cold War many of China's brightest 
scientists and engineers had been driven out of the country  by the dictator Mao Zedong 
during the 60s and 70s. But over the next few decades, new Chinese leaders pushed to catch up. By the 1990s, the Cold War was over. The US had become friendlier with China and it had lifted most of its export controls. And so China enticed many chip companies to move their assembly operations to China. And by the 2000s, China dominated 
this end of the supply chain. But China was importing more and more chips  to feed its assembly industry and it put them in a tricky position. The Chinese government had studied the tech supply chain and they realized the entire Chinese tech ecosystem relied on a foundation of imported silicon from China's geopolitical adversaries and the United States, from Japan, from Taiwan. And China's leaders concluded quite understandably, that this was a risk they were unwilling to continue to take. So the Chinese government poured money into its own chip design and manufacturing companies... which increasingly partnered with non-Chinese firms. All on the hopes of creating a chip supply chain that existed entirely within China. Soon, China could design, manufacture and assemble some older generations of chips, mostly on its own. But it was still years away from making 
the most cutting edge chips. This is one of those chips. It's got around 114 billion transistors on it. Remember in 1960, 
chips had 4. Computing capabilities in the future just like the capabilities of the past will be deployed to military uses. The problem is, only a few companies in the world are involved in making them
and none are in China. To start, only 3 American companies make the software needed to design advanced chips. Then turning those designs into real chips requires a machine that's only made by one company: ASML. But this machine requires equipment 
that's only made in the US. Finally, only companies in 
Taiwan and South Korea can put it all together and manufacture 
the most advanced processor chips. These companies are chokepoints in the supply chain... and China was totally reliant on them for advanced chips. In 2019, police in the US went 
to arrest Zongchang Yu but couldn't find him. Until he appeared later in China 
as the CEO of his company that successfully made software like ASML's. Thanks to help from the Chinese government his company was flourishing. And his story was just one of several instances of IP theft in the chip industry. The Chinese government has been at the very least, passively supportive but in some cases, actively 
supportive of IP theft because the Chinese government realizes is that its companies are in a position of relative weakness. In order to eventually decrease its reliance 
on this foreign supply chain China was identifying choke points like ASML and copying them. But the plan backfired. And this has really angered the US government, other governments, and caused them to take China's subsidies as a more security focused issue rather than just an economic issue. This was happening at the same time that the relationship between the US and China was becoming less cordial and more competitive. "China's market distortions and the way they deal cannot be tolerated..." "...a tremendous intellectual property theft situation..." "...game on here..." "...a trade war between the United States and China..." "Trump says he plans to impose  a 10% tariff increase on China..." "...if they don't want to trade with us any more that would be fine with me." In 2018, the Trump administration banned US companies from selling components to ZTE, 
a Chinese tech company. Then in 2019 it banned US companies from 
doing business with China's biggest tech company: Huawei and its affiliates. These bans nearly bankrupted ZTE and dealt a significant blow 
to Huawei. In 2022, the next president,
Joe Biden, targeted China's chip industry more broadly. First, it banned all US companies from
selling advanced chips to China but it also blocked Chinese design companies  from using US made design software and US made manufacturing equipment. Plus, it banned global companies who use 
US semiconductor technology from selling advanced chips to China as well. The U.S was exploiting these choke points to stop China's chip industry in its tracks. These export controls represented a really clear shift away from the view that ultimately trade and 
tax exchanges with China were fundamentally positive sum 
to a much more zero sum view of the 
technological competition. Next, the US passed a law that would 
invest billions of dollars into its own chip manufacturing companies... and finalized a deal with Taiwan's biggest manufacturer TSMC, to build manufacturing plants in the US. All to enable the U.S. to keep racing ahead. China and the US have a pretty similar view 
of the political stakes when it comes to semiconductors. That's why the US government has made it a priority 
to defend the US lead. [pensive electronic music] But this has also put extraordinary pressure
on another conflict between the two countries. Since 1949, China has viewed Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed to reunite with it, even threatening invasion. The US has vowed to protect Taiwan. But Taiwan also happens to own 
the most important choke point in the chip supply chain. Taiwanese companies manufacture 63% of all chips... and about 92% of all advanced chips. With companies that are indispensable  to both the US and Chinese chip industries Taiwan has built itself some protection. But the US export controls forced Taiwan's companies to make a choice: defy the US and keep selling to China... or comply and cut off China 
from some of its chips. So far, they've signaled they'll cut off China. But as China and the US feud over chips more and more choices like these are going to be imposed on countries and companies around the world. Asking them to pick sides in what looks a lot like a new Cold War. There's this moment in James Cameron's  1997 blockbuster, Titanic where Kate Winslet's character Rose  notices something about the 
lifeboats that ends up being  kind of important... "It seems that there are not enough
for everyone aboard." To which Victor Garber who played Titanic's architect Thomas Andrews responds in a flawless Irish accent: "I have built a good ship, 
strong and true." "She's all the lifeboat you need." Since the viewer already knows
how this story ends.... This line comes off as either tragic arrogance or some sort 
of bad joke. But it's central to understanding 
how the Titanic was designed... and how it all went wrong. The Titanic actually had more lifeboats than was required by British law. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 required that big ships — those weighing over 10,000 tons have at least 16 lifeboats that could hold 990 people. Ships only got bigger and bigger 
from there but the minimum didn't change. When the Titanic first launched in 1911 the ship weighed 
over 45,000 tons but still only needed 
16 lifeboats by law. Titanic had 20, which, if filled to maximum capacity could carry a total of 1,178 people. Nowhere near enough to accommodate the approximate 
2,240 passengers and crew on board when the ship sank. But at least from a design perspective the builders of the Titanic had every reason to believe that they had constructed the safest passenger ship the world had ever seen. "She's all the lifeboats you need." This line might be made up for the movie but it's how people talked about the Titanic even after it went down. Let's unpack what that means. The Titanic was designed to stay afloat even after taking on serious damage. The bottom of the ship was divided into 16 compartments by these partitions called bulkheads. If the ship's hull was breached these compartments could be sealed off from each other with the flick of a switch that closed watertight doors connecting them. Once sealed off, the water in the affected compartments would rise to the height of the sea called the waterline but prevent the rest of the ship from flooding. The idea was that the giant ocean liner even after taking on water would still be the safest place to wait as lifeboats methodically ferried 
passengers to a rescue ship. This bulkhead plus lifeboat strategy  had worked successfully just 
a couple of years earlier when a ship accidentally rammed straight into the side of the RMS Republic. Newspaper diagrams from 1909  showed how the Republic 
was ripped wide open... and where it was taking on water. But the crew remained calm  and didn't evacuate the ship 
right away. Their confidence was due in large part to a brand new piece of technology 
they had on board: the Marconi Wireless 
Telegraph system. When the Republic was hit, its telegraph operator tapped out the morse code signal
C-Q-D the distress call that later became SOS to all nearby ships. A few hours later, a rescue ship arrived and the crew carefully 
transferred everyone off the Republic in small groups 
using lifeboats. The Republic eventually sank but except for 6 people killed in the initial collision every single person on board was saved. The Republic was the first shipwreck to make use of a wireless distress signal and its operator was hailed as a hero. This incident seemed to prove that on the busy North Atlantic route, with other ships always nearby a combination of careful ship design and this miraculous piece of new technology had made disasters at sea a thing of the past. This 1909 news article, 
The Triumph of Wireless pretty much sums up the optimism of the time: "The passenger on a well-equipped transatlantic liner is safer than anywhere else in the world." Just three years later... Here's what went wrong. When the Titanic was built regulations recommended 
that all passenger ships ships should be able to remain afloat with any two adjacent compartments flooded. I talked to Sam Halpern an engineer and long time Titanic researcher who created this diagram based on data from a 1996 forensic analysis  of the Titanic's design. He showed me how the ship was built to stay afloat even with three — and in these scenarios up to four adjacent compartments flooded. The key was to keep the ship level so the waterline never reached the top of the bulkheads and flooded over into the other compartments. These scenarios show the ship was protected from almost any crash 
imaginable at the time  including from rocks, colliding with another ship 
and even hitting an iceberg. But the Titanic didn't hit the iceberg head on. Instead, it scraped along the side of it. And sonar analysis shows the ship was most likely breached. Here. Here, here, here. And most crucially, here: Boiler Room six. The movie actually does a really good job of explaining this so I'm going to let Victor Garber take it from here. "That's five compartments." "She can stay afloat with the first 4 compartments breach, but not 5." "Titanic will flounder." "It is a mathematical certainty." Flooding the first 5 compartments
overwhelmed the design. It was just too many for the ship to stay upright. And as the bow dipped farther into the ocean... the water flowed over the bulkheads... flooding the watertight compartments one at a time. The Titanic sent out its first 
wireless distress call  at 12:15 AM.  35 minutes after hitting the iceberg. From there, the messages became increasingly desperate. "We have struck an iceberg." "We are sinking fast." and "Cannot last much longer women and children in boats." But the nearest ship to the Titanic that night, SS Californian never got these messages. That ship's sole wireless operator had turned off the radio for the night 
and gone to bed. The Titanic's wireless operators were communicating with other ships like the Olympic... and the Baltic that started to head to its coordinates but we're a long way off. The last message from the Titanic received by our RMS Carpathia at 1:45 AM was "Engine room full up to boilers." Without a rescue ship all the Titanic had left was its lifeboats. By the time the Carpathia got there around 4 AM... the ship had disappeared into the ocean taking down more than 1,500 
passengers and crew with it. The only survivors were 706 people who made it in to the Titanic's lifeboats. The disaster permanently altered  the public's view on the necessity of lifeboats. You can see how quickly things changed when you compare this photo of RMS Olympic Titanic's near identical twin in 1911 to this one of the Olympic in 1912 immediately following the Titanic disaster showing double the number of lifeboats along the top deck. the biggest impact of the Titanic disaster
had on safety regulations and ship design was the enacting of the International Convention for the Safety 
of Life at Sea or SOLAS a 1914 international treaty that required wireless telegraph communication to be active 24/7 and upped the lifeboat minimum to account for everyone on board. Today, SOLAS requires cruise ships to be able to accommodate 125% of the ship's capacity in small boats in the event of emergency. Ultimately, the Titanic disaster was less 
about a fatal flaw in design and more about tragic timing 
in the early days of wireless communication and a collision scenario too extreme to have been considered possible... until it happened. Oh, and one more thing about that foreshadowing lifeboat scene
in Titanic. "Waste of deck space as it is, 
on an unsinkable ship!" The Titanic was never advertised
as unsinkable. Although this 1911 edition of 
the trade magazine, The Shipbuilder  did describe both the Titanic and 
the Olympic as "practically unsinkable" and there are reports from 1912 that some of the passengers who 
went down with the ship refused to believe it was really sinking. But the term only became widely associated with the Titanic
in the media after the disaster.  Thanks for watching! I had a lot of fun making this one.  Especially with adapting this 
1911 side plan of the Titanic to help visualize how the watertight
bulkheads were supposed to work. You can help support our work
and keep it free by making a gift to Vox  at vox.com/support-vox-video. With your support, we're able
to keep telling these stories and answering questions you 
didn't know you had. The US has already seen  around 50 mass shootings 
this year. It feels like we're stuck in a
never ending cycle: a mass shooting, a push for reform and then no action. But that's not exactly accurate. While federal gun laws are rare  at the state level, mass shootings 
have led to thousands of new gun laws. This 2020 study looked at 25 years of high profile mass shootings and state gun laws. The pattern at first was obvious Democrat-controlled states were more likely to pass tighter gun laws. Republican-controlled states typically loosened them. But they found a key difference. Mass shootings didn't have any 
statistically significant effect on how many laws Democrats passed. While for Republican legislatures a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws enacted that loosened gun restrictions in the next year. For example, in 2012, after the 
Sandy Hook elementary school shooting Texas responded a few months later by creating a program allowing some school employees to carry guns in school. This kind of response has added to a patchwork system where 
a state like California can have some of the strongest gun laws in the country. But a neighboring state like Arizona has some of the weakest. I recently realized that I turn subtitles on almost everything that I'm watching and I think a lot of us do. Why are we all doing this now? One big reason is dynamic range. The range between your quietest 
and loudest sound. For movies, you want 
this range to be wide because if your dialogue is at 
the same volume as an explosion that immediately follows it that explosion isn't going to feel very big. It's the contrast that gives her ear a sense of scale. The thing is, there's a limit to the direction that dynamic range can go in. You can only make something so loud before it gets distorted so you have no other option but to push the quieter sounds quieter. Instead of pushing the louder sounds louder. Explosions go up and dialogue comes down. Everything is trying to look and sound more cinematic these days and while that kind of mixing works really well, if you're watching something in a movie theater it becomes a lot harder to hear when you're just sitting at home 
watching whatever trying to ride that volume control so that we can both here what the actors are saying without having our ears blown to bits by the sound effects. Rr you just put subtitles on. [build, rhythmic music] This is a model of a part of the Indus River Basin in Pakistan that we built for this story. Obviously not exactly the scale. Here you can see the Indus River itself... which flows roughly from north to south... some farmland and a lot of water infrastructure. Like canals, dams, and embankments. It's a system that's transformed one of the most arid regions in the world... into millions of acres of farmland. And it also helped create Pakistan's precarious relationship with water. In the past 75 years Pakistan's population 
has increased five fold while the water availability per capita is plummeting. By 2025, the region is predicted to reach absolute water scarcity. But Pakistan also suffers from increasingly severe flooding events... each one destroying land and claiming hundreds of lives. "There have been more deaths in Pakistan's flooding..." -"... millions of gallons of water..."
-"... caused by monsoon rains..." These twin water crises expose what happens when you take a river system... and redesign it way past its limits. [swelling, urgent string music] The modern water infrastructure that transformed the Indus River Basin... started with British colonization in the 1800s. But we'll get back to that. Before British rule this region was largely populated by agro pastoralists. They'd spent centuries raising livestock and growing crops. Like sorghum, vegetables, and rice along the river. And they migrated depending on the Indus River basin fluctuations. People lived in an enchanted landscape... where rivers were alive. That's Daanish Mustafa a professor in critical geography at King's College, London. They were sacred waters,  
there is a living thing with which you interacted with all the time. This region is arid and the Indus River and its tributaries are its singular source of surface water fed by snow and glacial melt starting in the spring from the mountains in the northeast and heavy seasonal monsoons in the summer. As it does today, this means 
the flow of the river fluctuates a lot throughout the year. Roughly 84% of its flow occurs from around April to October. While the other half of the year the river flow diminishes. And if the flooding happened, the flooding would typically water would spread out onto the floodplain. And because it could spread out all over the flood peaks would not be that high. Pre-Colonial empires built their own
irrigation system. Inundation canals that captured flood water and allowed irrigation several miles from the river's banks. Like the river, they flowed seasonally  filling up during peak water flow but were dry in the winter. And crucially, they followed the landscape's 
natural drainage patterns. So water still found its way back to 
the Indus system and the sea. In the 1800s, things began to change. [rhythmic, percussive music] After a series of wars the British took control of the Indus Basin region and it became part of their Indian empire. The new British rulers wanted to make this region as agriculturally productive as possible. They began building a much larger network of canals designed not just to capture flood season flow but to irrigate year round and to extend the river waters reach. This water would irrigate cash crops 
like wheat and cotton up to a hundred miles 
from a river source. The British built embankments to keep floodwater from flowing past the river's banks. And key to this canal systems design were barrages: Dam like infrastructure that raised the river's upstream water level so that water can be funneled into canals with gates that open and close depending on water supply and demand. The completion of the Lloyd barrage in 1932 is emblematic of this change. It's now called the Sukkur barrage and sits on the Indus River in the province of Sindh. This project alone created canals that irrigate around 8 million acres of land. "Irrigation projects turn millions of acres of once barren land into fertile soil." It's a very Western mindset. We must control nature. That's Ayesha Siddiqi, an assistant professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge. It's a modernist way of looking
at the river  which was involved in the early 20th century. The British Crown moved farmers onto plots of farmland along the canals and destroyed the wetlands, forests, 
and biodiversity that was there before. This wasn't just a project in physical engineering. It was social engineering too. At the end of the canal with the least water access... the British granted land to the agropastoralists. At the heads of canals with the best water access they awarded property to people 
who favored the British crown often former military men. They then empowered these local elites to collect rents and taxes. So it became sort of a reward system to cultivate the native elites and keep them beholden to the empire. There's nothing unique about engineering rivers for irrigation. Countries everywhere do that. But the scale of this region's canals sets it apart. "When the barrage was fully developed the crop output on the land 
it controls will be 5 times as great 
as it is now." By 1947, at the end of British rule the canal system had grown into a large network that turned roughly 26 million acres 
of land in the basin into farmland. The Indus River and its tributaries were diverted into a vast web of canals. After Pakistan won independence the government continued this legacy adding at least 18 new major barrages and canal links between 1960 and 1990. The system today includes over 50 canals
over 80 dams, 19 barrages and 2 major drainage projects for agricultural waste. Therefore, the canal system is considered the largest contiguous canal system anywhere in the world. This degree of manipulation has transformed Pakistan. Cities appeared in the desert. The population boomed to over 200 million. And agriculture is the country's 
largest economic sector employing roughly half of the country. And it uses 90% of its surface and groundwater. This complete redesign of the country's water has some major consequences. I would say catastrophic consequences which we are seeing 150 years since its inception. [urgent, driving string music] In August of 2022 an unusually heavy monsoon season flooded one third of the country killing more than 1600 people. The low lying province of Sindh and neighboring Balochistan 
were inundated. When the water across this part of Pakistan wanted to drain back into the Indus... It couldn't find a natural path back to the river. It was blocked by the system of canals, embankments and wastewater drains built parallel to the river. Water lingered for several weeks causing disease and displacement. Generally, the regions most vulnerable
to this type of flooding are the low lying ones without the 
historic wetlands and floodplains that would have absorbed the water. The embankments along the river 
were built to protect regions from riverine flooding. But the government and powerful landowners are known to breach these embankments on purpose. So that some land can be spared from flooding... while other land gets inundated. And the wide network of barrages and canals capture and disperse the river water out in a way that diminishes the water that reaches the Indus delta. That means sea water can intrude back into the riverbed and groundwater... destroying water sources and millions of acres of farmable land. So in the lower Indus Delta in particular you have vast land masses which are 
now no longer fit for agriculture and people who have been 
practicing particular kinds of agriculture are completely destitute. Inequality is also built into the system in terms of water access. The richer you are better positioned you are in terms of access to water. That means, just like during British colonial rule landowners at the head of canals today still benefit from this privilege of better water access while the people at the end of the canals suffer from the most water scarcity. A similar dynamic plays out among provinces. Punjab is an upstream province, meaning they get access to the river water before Sindh in the south and can use the control of the barrages to direct how much water flows downstream in the Punjab Pakistani officials have proposed building more mega dams along their rivers as a solution 
to water scarcity and flooding showing they intend to continue the same colonial tradition of over engineering 
the Indus River. It's a question of a very colonial mindset that has continued in post-colonial Pakistan. And that the way to manage the river basin is only through engineered solutions and not taking account for indigenous knowledge systems. With a problem this massive, a single overarching solution might be impossible. But slow and sustained changes to water policy like preventing more development in floodplains clearing out obstructions to drainage pathways and listening to local communities... could help reduce the extremely negative impacts the system has created. And thinking differently basically means to think about what have we done wrong? You need to make amends for those mistakes. A more democratic mode of going forward with water management,
with flood management. Taking everyone along with you... is the only recipe that I can think of. Listen to these notes. Does it sound like they're going up or down? Your answer might actually depend on where you're from. This is a specific interval called a tritone which takes an octave 
and divides it in half. So psychologist Diana Deutsch 
did an experiment. She played tritones in a bunch of octaves at once. So it's hard to tell if they're going up or down. And she took two groups of people and found that people from California tend to hear them going down and people from southern England tend to hear them going up. She thinks it's all about the range of speech you heard when you were a kid. And Californians speak lower. So if you hear that first pattern which goes from D to G sharp as falling you probably hear this second pattern which goes the exact same distance  from A to D sharp, as rising. Or vice versa. What we hear might have to do more with us and our brain than what's actually happening out there in the world. And you can hear more about this on Vox's Unexplainable podcast. I saw this tweet from The Hollywood Reporter that said that Michelle Yeoh has made history as the first person who identifies as Asian to ever be nominated for best actress at the Oscars. But why identifies as Asian? Why this wording? Good question, Twitter. The answer is because of a biracial actress 
named Merle Oberon the first Asian  to be nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role in this 1935 movie. Merle didn't publicly identify as Asian, though. Up until her death, she hid her Asian identity to navigate the racist entertainment industry which, at the time, even had self-imposed rules called the Hays Code which forbade showing interracial romance. Merle told people she was born in Tasmania but she was actually born in India  to a Sri Lankan and Maori mother 
and a British father. Some sources say she whitened her skin using bleach makeup and set lighting to pass as white. And it wasn't until after her death when biographers found old photos and birth records that her Indian origin story was revealed. Which is why... This is some footage from 1948  when Idaho state government just started dropping beavers out of planes. Yes, for real. This is Geronimo. He's one of 76 beavers 
that were relocated by Idaho Fish and Game 
via parachute. See beavers are great for the environment. Their dams create vital wetland ecosystems. But if they build dams 
too close to people they can flood the area and damage structures. Carting them away into 
the backcountry over land was really stressful for the beavers and could take days. Parachuting them in was actually way faster. But the drop box needed to be perfect. At first they considered using woven willow but then realized the beaver might chew through it and escape on the plane... or worse, midair. They ultimately settled on a wood box that held the beaver in place 
to prevent it from chewing. Suspension ropes looped through
the top and bottom  held the box together throughout transit. The boxes were affixed to surplus WWII parachutes. Once on the ground, the beaver 
could easily push the lid open and climb out. Sure, it's a questionable method, but it worked. I watch a lot of movies and TV  on the train, at home [overlapping] at the movies,
while working out, while doing dishes in the bath... But no matter where I'm watching I find myself constantly doing this one thing. [unintelligible] What? [unintelligible] [exhasperated sigh] [unintelligible] [exhasperated sigh] [unintelligible] Oh. It turns out this isn't unusual. We polled our YouTube audience and about 57% of people 
said that they feel like  they can't understand the dialogue 
in the things that they watch unless they're using subtitles. But it feels like this hasn't 
always been the case. So to figure out what was going on, 
I made a call. Hi, my name is 
Austin Olivia Kendrick. I am a professional dialogue editor 
for film and TV. I basically perform audio surgery 
on actors words. Do you watch with subtitles? I– I do, actually. I do a lot of the time.  So... Why do you think that we all feel like
we need subtitles now? I get asked this question all the time. All the time. It's something that is... It doesn't have a simple, 
straightforward answer. It's very layered and very complex.  And after talking to Austin 
for almost 2 hours, it's true. It's a very layered and complex topic. But everything kept pointing back
to one main thing. Technology that got us from this... –I'll get you, my pretty.
–You should be kissed and often. No, Richard, no. What has happened... To this.  Mom, I just woke up.  ...little slim-waisted birdy... [unintelligible] Let's start with microphones. I'm going to use this clip from 
"Singin in the Rain" to show how mics used to work. Here's the mic, you talk towards it.  The sound goes through the cable 
to the box. A man records it on a big record in wax. This scene illustrates some of 
the difficulties and intricacies  early sound recordings. Mics were big, bulky, temperamental and required creative solutions to be hidden. They were wired and recorded 
onto hard memory like wax and eventually tape. No matter how many actors 
were in a scene all sound got recorded to one track. So performers had to be diligently focused and facing a certain angle so that their words could be picked up. Otherwise... [muted noise, as if from far away] [sudden sound up] [muted noise, as if from far away] [sudden sound up] You couldn't hear a thing. But technology's improved 
to the point where microphones don't impede performance 
as much anymore. They become better, smaller, wireless... and we use more of them to ensure that performances get captured. What we typically are working with
from production dialogue is 2 boom microphones and then every actor has at least 
one lavaliere microphone hidden somewhere on them. These shrinking mics have 
given actors the flexibility to be more naturalistic in their performances. They no longer need to project so that their words reach the mic. They can speak softly,
knowing that the tiny mic hidden on their body will pick up 
what they're saying. And my personal favorite example 
of this performance shift is Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock. In a 2011 speech slash roast, Tina Fey says that "He speaks so quietly that she can't hear him when 
she's standing next to him." "And then you play the film back 
and it's there somehow." Just listen to this whisper off 
between him and Will Arnett. I'm not afraid of you.  Yeah. Well, you should be.  Let's just see how it all 
shakes out in the meeting.  Naturalism isn't always the best 
for intelligibility, though. Take Tom Hardy, an actor that 
I personally love but who famously is a mumbler.  ???????????? I mean... the mic picked that line up fine. Like we can definitely hear that he's talking he's saying something. But once that mumble gets recorded it's on to a dialog editor's shoulder to make it as intelligible as possible. And that was a lot harder when 
everything was analog. While you could pick the best takes and physically splice them together. If some piece of dialog was 
truly impossible to understand then actors will come in and 
rerecord those specific lines in a process called ADR or 
automated dialog replacement which you can see Meryl Streep 
do in this scene from "Postcards from the Edge". There isn't enough money in the world
to further cause like yours That still gets done today, but.. ADR also costs money because you're not only 
paying for the actors time you're paying for the engineer's time and then the editor's time. So we try to do ADR, frankly, 
as little as possible. And so a lot of her job is 
making words sound better. The show I'm currently working on I remember in the middle 
of this one word there was just this loud metal clang that I couldn't remove. So I had to go in and I had to 
find an alternate take of it that fit and then I had to fit it... to the movement of her mouth in that moment and then push it in. And once she's done with it
it's sent off to a mixer who works to make sure 
the frequencies of the sound effects and music don't overlap with the frequencies of the human voice something that's only possible 
now that the world has moved away from tape and into digital recordings. That is a big challenge. Carving out those frequencies, 
that space... amongst every other element 
of the mix for the dialogue to be able to punch through and not be all muddied up by any other sounds that exist in that band of frequencies. But even with all that work lines of dialog can still be hard to understand. The kind of feeling has been if you want your movie to feel 
quote unquote cinematic you have to have wall-to-wall 
bombastic, loud sound. A lot of people will ask like "Why don't you just turn the dialog up?" Like, just turn it up. And... if only it was that simple. Because a big thing that we want to preserve is a concept called dynamic range. The range between your quietest sound
and your loudest sound. If you have your dialog,
that's going to be at the same volume as an explosion that immediately follows it. The explosion is not going to feel as big. You need that contrast in volume in order to give your ear a sense of scale. But the thing is, you can only make something so loud before it gets distorted. So if you want to create 
that wide dynamic range you have no choice but to push 
those quieter sounds lower instead of pushing the louder sounds louder. So explosions go up and dialog comes down. Which brings us to the
Christopher Nolan of it all.  [loud music layered over]
A seperate structure within the others— [Tom Hardy mumbling into 
a face mask] [rocket blasters layered over]
Pushing out of orbit! Nearly every film of his has been criticized for its hard to hear dialogue that essentially begs for subtitles. But as as this headline explains, 
he likes it that way. According to an interview in a book 
called The Nolan Variations he said that he gets a lot of complaints. Even from other filmmakers who would say "I just saw your film and the dialogue is inaudible." "The truth was it was kind of 
the whole enchilada of how we had chosen to mix it." And in his 2017 interview 
with Indiewire, he said "We made the decision 
a couple of films ago that we weren't going to mix films 
for substandard theaters" And this is kind of the crux of the matter. The content that we watch here  and here and here is not mixed for us, primarily. Rerecording mixers mix 
for the widest surround sound format that is available typically like big release films. That is Dolby Atmos.... which has true 3D sound 
up to 128 channels. The thing is, if you're not at 
a movie theater that can showcase the best sound 
Hollywood has to offer... you can't experience all of those channels. So after the movie is mixed for 
the 128 Atmos tracks somebody has to create a separate version 
of the film's audio where all those same sounds live 
on one or two or five tracks. This is called downmixing. Downmixing is the process of taking that biggest mix and folding it down into formats with lesser channels available to it. So say Atmos down to 7.1 or 
7.1 down to 5.1 or 5.1 down to stereo stereo down to mono. Unlike old TVs that were gigantic and 
had a ton of space for speakers TVs today are super thin  like this one that I have 
in my living room is about the same thickness as my iPhone. So even though it's outputting the same 
mono or stereo sound that an older TV might, it's still going 
to sound worse because you have to have 
tiny little speakers to fit into this tiny, sleek form factor. These tiny speakers are also usually 
on the back of the TV. So the downmixed version of this movie that went from 128 channels down to just 2 is going to sound even muddier
when it's pointing away from you. And when you're watching on your phone or a laptop... it's generally not much better. When you combine not great speakers, 
naturalistic mumbly performances dynamic range featuring bombastic sound
over dialogue and a flattened mix... It's no wonder we have trouble hearing what's going on. And it seems like the industry knows this 
because TVs today are shipping with all kinds of settings built in like this intelligence mode. You can put on active voice amplification in hopes of making that dialog track come through just a little bit clear. But of course, that's more band aid than it is solution. The way movies get mixed likely isn't 
going to revert back to super pristine dialogue. So the solutions we have are, one: Buy better speakers and only go to theaters that have 
impeccable sound. Two: take a chill pill and try to just worry a little bit less about picking up every single word that gets said. Or, three... Just keep the subtitles on. For people who are deaf or hard of hearing subtitles make movies and TV shows accessible and this accessibility has just expanded in recent years. Laws have been passed to ensure that movie theaters have at least 
a few screenings a week with captions. Pretty much every streaming service 
has standardized them and speech recognition technology has made them accessible in pretty much every YouTube video and TikTok.
[Which is partially how our subtitles are made!] Plus, they're super easy to toggle on and off. It's always unsettling when you 
come across a scatter plot where much of the 
developed world is hanging out together over here  and the US is in 
a different galaxy. In this case, it's gun ownership rates plotted against gun death rates. It's a very big, very difficult problem. What do we do about it? Well, the Rand Corporation just put out 
this incredible table that summarizes more than 150 studies about how these policies affect these outcomes. I'll highlight the ones 
with M's and S's. Those mean moderate evidence and supportive evidence, which is the strongest results. And the arrow shows the direction of the effect. Unfortunately, when it comes to mass shootings we don't know much about 
what works yet but we do know that we can reduce the deaths of kids and teens with laws that require guns to be kept out of reach of children. And then there are a couple of policies that seem to increase homicides. One is the Stand Your Ground laws which make it easier for 
someone to use deadly force when they feel threatened. And second, laws that make it easier for people to get a concealed carry permit. Right now, a majority of US states have both of those laws on the books. The Buffalo Bills' as Damar Hamlin  collapsed during a game 
after a hit to the chest. Afterwards, his heart 
stopped beating. One of the leading hypotheses for 
what might have caused that is something called 
Commotio Cordis which is basically a cardiac arrest due to chest impact. What's going on is that the heart 
basically just gets shaken really hard by a thump 
to the chest while it's in a relaxed state. And that keeps it from 
going into its contraction that it normally does. The impact needs to happen 
when the heart is in that particular phase of motion which is only maybe one or 2% of its entire cycle. The force needs to be 
just strong enough to shock the heart into 
not doing its usual thing but not so hard that it actually causes trauma to the heart muscle or to the bones because then you have a completely different condition and the force needs to happen just over the heart. Even being 2 centimeters off 
is going to result in a different kind of injury. Luckily, medical staff responded quickly and thankfully Hamlin is now 
conscious and recovering.  We need your help solving a mystery.  This is a fabric with celebrity faces on it. I bought it because of a subreddit
that's trying to find out  who this celebrity is.  Maybe you recognize them.  The other faces like Josh Holloway
and Jessica Alba  have all been traced back to 
a specific photograph.  But even though more than 
200 celebrity names  have been added to a list of theories No one has been able to identify
the photo this image is based on. There's no consensus about 
this person's gender and some people I spoke with have doubt that this celebrity 
even exists.  I tried to figure it out
and hit a dead end.  But here are a few things 
I learned along the way  and what you'll need to know if you want to pick up the case
for yourself.  First, the photo of Celebrity 6 was taken sometime before 2008.  This was when people reported
buying the fabric  plus the other celebrity photos were 
taken between 2003 and 2007. Two, the fabric has touched 
a lot of companies in at least four different countries most of them in Eastern Europe.  And three: none of the 
celebrity photographers facial recognition experts and
fashion manufacturers I spoke with had any answers about 
who this person might be.  why are people in the United States two to three times more likely to die in a car crash than they are in other comparable countries poorly designed roads are one reason why but it's also about the kinds of vehicles Americans Drive Americans are obsessed with big cars and we're buying more of them than ever before this chart looks at cars and SUVs as a percentage of the overall U.S vehicle Fleet you can see the number of cars on the road have dropped a lot over the last 20 years meanwhile the number of SUVs have risen according to JD Power SUVs and trucks were more than 80 percent of all new vehicle sales in October of last year these vehicles are tall enough that they create blind spots that make it difficult to see pedestrians especially kids they are heavier stiffer and more blunt than small cars and more likely to cause fatal injuries when they hit people I wrote about this issue for Vox You Could Read My Story on our website The Buffalo Bills' as Damar Hamlin  collapsed during a game 
after a hit to the chest. Afterwards, his heart 
stopped beating. One of the leading hypotheses for 
what might have caused that is something called 
Commotio Cordis which is basically a cardiac arrest due to chest impact. What's going on is that the heart 
basically just gets shaken really hard by a thump 
to the chest while it's in a relaxed state. And that keeps it from 
going into its contraction that it normally does. The impact needs to happen 
when the heart is in that particular phase of motion which is only maybe one or 2% of its entire cycle. The force needs to be 
just strong enough to shock the heart into 
not doing its usual thing but not so hard that it actually causes trauma to the heart muscle or to the bones because then you have a completely different condition and the force needs to happen just over the heart. Even being 2 centimeters off 
is going to result in a different kind of injury. Luckily, medical staff responded quickly and thankfully Hamlin is now 
conscious and recovering. The US House of Representatives can't swear any of its members in until it elects a Speaker. As of this video, that still hasn't happened. So, instead of 435 members in the House, there are currently zero. Electing a speaker requires a majority. And out of those elected in November, Republicans technically have a small one. But about 20 of those Republicans, on the far right of the party, do not want to vote for the current Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy. And without those 20, no group in Congress has enough votes to elect a speaker. But they still have to vote. When we published this, they had voted 11 times, with no winner, and they were still going. This probably ends one of two ways. Either these 20 members agree to elect McCarthy, in exchange for a lot of control over him and over what Congress does; or, McCarthy steps aside, and someone else who that group of 20 trusts is elected Either way, the incoming Congress is likely to be held to the whims of this small group of people: the farthest right, most disruptive faction of the Republican Party. New York City earned the nickname Gotham way before the fictional Gotham City 
was introduced in the Batman comics in 1940.  And actually, the original reason 
New York was called Gotham  was sort of meant as an insult.  The name traces back to 
the Old English word Gottam which translates literally to
"goat home". Basically a Gotham is a village 
full of clueless idiots.  New York City first became Gotham in 1807 in the short-lived, satirical magazine
Salmagundi the pet project of a group of writers
headed by Washington Irving.  In a series of essays lampooning 
New York's elitist culture  Irving described the renowned 
and ancient city of Gotham  as "most enlightened of all cities" and its people as "wise souls" and 
"light-heeled youth" blissfully reveling in the marvelous riches and luxury of Gotham.  The nickname pretty much 
stuck around from there eventually becoming a familiar substitute
for New York, both in the press and around the city, 
in general.  The largest animal migration on Earth
happens in the ocean  and it happens every night.  Here's how it works.  Down here is a place called 
"The Twilight Zone"   because there's not much light  and it's a great place to live if 
you want to hide from predators.  So lots of  life lives here.  There's squid, jellyfish and potentially more fish than 
the rest of the ocean combined.  But, all these animals need food. And up here is where a lot of the food is. Namely, plankton: tiny, tasty marine critters.  So, every night, lots of lifeforms from down here rise up here, gobble up plankton and then descend back down and poop. And this poop, which scientists 
call Marine Snow it actually plays a key role 
in the carbon cycle  by sinking plankton carbon deep 
into the ocean.  But right now, fisheries are starting to consider  fishing twilight zone creatures, 
turning them into fish meal. Which, as we explain on Unexplainable could have climate consequences 
we don't yet even understand. so I got this email from the Department of Education on November 22nd saying that my student loan debt relief application had been approved but it turns out that was a mistake about two weeks later they sent this correction so what's going on here basically ongoing litigation is challenging the program and it could take the Supreme Court until July to decide if it can go forward in the meantime let's look at how the program if it happens will affect different groups this is the percentage of each group that has student loans now according to a census survey and of those people with student loans this is the share that will see their loans completely eliminated by debt relief what's left are those who will still have student debt after the program what this shows is that women stand to benefit the most from the program but that's because they have more student debt so this reflects a few things one more women go to college than men do two women typically borrow more money than male students do and three women typically make less money than men do after college which makes it harder for them to pay off their debt The world will mark an important milestone as the global population surpasses 8 billion people. Weddings are back. Experts are predicting weddings to reach a
40-year high. We have been waiting to do this for two-and-a-half
years. After weeks of flirtation and fighting the new couple has officially done the deed. [Laughing] Full-on crypto crash. $32 billion dollars just vanished… My money don’t jiggle jiggle. BTS are going on hiatus. Taylor Swift fans waited hours online only
to find the website crashing. I’m going to the concert! The final seconds before impact. [Slap] Have a corn-tastic day. Ah, stunning! Yeah. The blockbuster legal saga between Amber Heard
and Johnny Depp… My favorite thing about the movie is like, it feels like a… like a… movie. The Russian president says a military operation
is now underway in eastern Ukraine. Explosions and air raid sirens ringing out
in cities across this country. Soaring new numbers from the UN on Ukrainians
fleeing the fighting. We cry — we all have the feeling that we’ve
no home. [In Russian] We are ready for any outcome. Russia, now the target of more than 2,700
new sanctions. And the world bracing for food shortages Russia has now suspended all gas supplies
to Germany. Possible explosions along the Nord Stream
pipelines. Gas prices — soaring to the highest average
ever recorded. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta announced 11,000 employees laid off [Twitter notification] 1,200 Twitter employees calling it quits. I quit is what’s going on. [Screaming] Ah, **** Inflation is much too high. Everything has doubled up. Do you heat or do you eat? These prices are totally outrageous. I do not have time for this! [BeReal notification] It’s been the most incredible ride and journey
I’ve ever been on. [Cheering] We have finally achieved equal pay for our
men’s and our women’s national team. It’s about damn time. It is the most controversial World Cup in
the history of football. The gulf state’s been under intense scrutiny
over the treatment of migrant workers. The 2022 Winter Olympics are underway. Jamaica will compete in the four-man bobsled. China’s snow princess is the queen of big air! Russian figure skater testing positive for
a banned substance. I have tested positive for Covid-19. I will have to withdraw. BA.5 is fueling yet another wave Covid vaccines for children under 5 began
today. Someone’s getting vaccinated. Airline passengers can now decide for themselves
to wear a mask. Summer travel this year comes with some baggage. Kylie Jenner takes a three-minute flight and
yet they’re telling me to recycle cans! Soaring temperatures. 40.2 degrees [Speaking Portuguese] Get out of there, please! Pakistan reeling from the devastating floods
caused by monsoon rains. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. Hurricane Ian has changed Florida forever. This wall could not contain it because the
water was too much. We are seeing tragedy unraveling in front
of our eyes. [Gasp] [Speaking Arabic] We were working here, and
suddenly, we heard mortar explosions near this mosque. This crater hints at the size of the explosion
in western Ghana. The government of Burkina Faso averted a plot
to take over the country. Today, we have fought for our freedom from
the greedy politicians. 154 people were killed in a crush in South Korea. Another mass shooting… At a fourth of July parade, In a Walmart, At a hospital complex, At a gay nightclub, An elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. They let our baby get slaughtered. A major Supreme Court ruling that could make
it easier to obtain a firearm license. Antisemitic incidents… Black transgender deaths are rising. Critics call it the “don’t say gay” bill. We will not go back! The nation’s highest court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. Our body, our choice! 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was taken into custody
by Iran’s morality police. Amini’s death has sparked outrage. The Iranian squad chose not to sing the country’s
national anthem. Please be our voice and don’t let the evil
regime kill innocent people. Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has
been shot dead. Thousands gathered for her funeral procession. [Chanting in Mandarin] Not lies, but respect! Authorities in China are strengthening their
efforts to stamp out unrest over stringent Covid measures. [Speaking Ukrainian] The citizens are here. We are here. [Piano music] I want you to know how sad I am to be giving
up the best job in the world. I am resigning as leader of the conservative party. I am prepared to give everything I have. Xi Jinping — becomes the most powerful leader
in China in decades. Jair Bolsonaro defeated by former president
Lula da Silva. Gabriel Boric will become Chile’s youngest
ever president. Republicans were hoping for a red wave, which
didn’t really pan out. Giorgia Meloni’s “Brothers of Italy”
party winning this weekend’s election. India’s first tribal person elected to the
highest office of the land. Buckingham Palace has announced the death
of her majesty Queen Elizabeth the second. [Canon fire] This is the end of an era. Ukrainian forces are now on the offensive. They’ve taken more territory in the past
week than Russia has since April. Nobody’s gonna break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians. WNBA star Brittney Griner is headed home. I’m about to sign the Inflation Reduction Act… …The largest US commitment ever to fighting climate change. Cuba holding a landmark referendum to legalize
same-sex marriage. Yes! [Speaking Spanish] Argentina! Champions of the world! Every image is a new discovery and each will
give humanity a view of the universe that we’ve never seen before. Thank you to the Academy for letting our Coda
make history tonight. And don’t you ever, ever give up on you. It is a long journey to this moment. In my family, it took just one generation
to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States. History is not about statistics and memorizing
dates and boring quotations. History is about people. It’s about human beings. The Merchant of death, a.k.a. Viktor Bout. Let's talk about that nickname and how he got it. So this is the guy that the U.S. government swapped for Brittney Griner in early December. She's a WNBA superstar who also happens to be gay, and in a Russian prison, that meant she wasn't very safe. Viktor Bout, the guy they swapped her for, got his start in 1989. That's when the government of the Soviet Union collapsed. And he noticed that all of these Soviet military bases were basically being guarded by soldiers who hadn't been paid in months. So he paid them, took the weapons,
and sold them to both sides of various conflicts in Africa, like in the Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia. These were conflicts that at the time were being fought with machetes and hunting rifles, but with the infusion of Viktor Bout’s RPGs, anti-aircraft missiles, and attack helicopters, these conflicts turned into full on wars where entire villages could be wiped out in a day, which is how he earned the nickname... just a warning this is a video about how blackface became a Dutch holiday tradition every mid-november in the Netherlands people parade the streets dressed as Old Saint Nick and his little helpers but not like that that's New York City in the Netherlands it looks like this this is Center class or Saint Nicholas and this is his little helper sort of Pete or Black Pete he's a character from an 1850s children's book who's inspired this holiday tradition of wearing a curly black wig and lipstick and blackface some Dutch people have voiced opposition to this for decades especially those of African and Caribbean descent that's Dutch Sesame Street in 1987 but this viral video of police arresting anti-black Pete protesters sparked a growing protest movement in the 2010s and the majority opinion has shifted in 2016 most people believe the black Peach should stay the same in 2022 most people said they think his appearance needs to change in some way but changing his appearance can mean a whole lot of different things there's gray Pete's rainbow Pete's chimney peets covered in soot and sometimes no face paint at all [Music] from satellite you can spot them in the green speckles Christmas tree farm Christmas tree farm Christmas tree actually that's Mount Rushmore Christmas tree farm let's get to it why do people have Christmas trees in their house they aren't in the Christian Bible and it's such a new tradition that only one of these four guys had one in the white house the real story of Christmas trees involves a lost Grand duchy 1840s influencers and the unlikely birth of a custom that you can see from space foreign [Music] stuff has been going on for a while as imagined in this picture of the Pagan Roman saturnalia but by the 1500s and 1600s it had become a Germanic custom that included this song about how awesome fur trees are [Music] it was big in Northern States including the duchy where Charlotte of Mecklenburg strelitz was from Charlotte was a princess from a relative Backwater but that didn't stop her from marrying Britain's King George III the guy who most Americans know for losing to America with her Charlotte brought the German tradition of hanging a u branch in the living room and later she also put up a Christmas tree but Christmas trees were still mainly a weird German thing it took a new era to bring the Christmas tree Main Street this is a diary entry from Charlotte's granddaughter Queen Victoria when she was a 13 year old girl if you can't read it it says all the presents being placed round the tree that entry is from 1832 so the Christmas tree was a royal custom already thanks to Charlotte but it was reinforced by Victoria's 1840 marriage to her German cousin Prince Albert this kicked off perfect conditions for the Christmas tree to go worldwide in America booming German immigration in the 1840s added a huge German cultural influence to the United States at the same time in England Christmas was becoming a more significant holiday with Charles dickens's A Christmas Carol some of the first Christmas cards and Publishers like The Illustrated London news defining mass media with huge circulations in 1848 they printed this illustration of Albert and Victoria around their beautiful Christmas tree this picture was like a match to the spread of German Christmas around the world in America it even showed up in an influential women's magazine two years later albeit with some 1840s photoshopping see how Albert's mustache and Victoria's Tiara are gone as early as 1850 in America the Christmas tree trade was profitable as Traders brought them from the country into the city the Christmas tree didn't have a Flawless ride Teddy Roosevelt for one didn't like them because they were a waste of trees his son had to sneak one into a White House closet but it became a tradition in houses big and small it's a custom that Queen Charlotte from Mecklenburg strelitz brought with her to England and it goes on today just outside Charlotte North Carolina in Mecklenburg County you'll find Christmas Tree farms that you can see from space [Music] You've probably heard there was a major breakthrough in fusion, but what's the big deal? Maybe you're familiar with nuclear fission. The act of splitting an atom. This isn't that. Forget all about that. Fusion is the act of sticking atoms together, which also creates... significantly more than fossil fuels. But it's damn hard to get them to do that
because these atoms repel each other like magnets of the same pole. Getting them to fuse requires a lot of energy pressure and in this case, lasers. So far, scientists have been able to get things to fuse but they're always putting in more energy
than they're getting out, which isn't powering anything at all. That's like negative power. But for the first time, researchers at a lab got more energy out of a fusion reaction- like one megajoule of energy, not a lot. Not enough to make it viable on a large scale. But it's the first step. A huge breakthrough for the future of clean energy. on September 13th a woman named Masa amini was detained by Iran's morality police for improperly wearing her hijab she was loaded into a van where she was reportedly beaten and then transferred to a Detention Center where she collapsed and fell into a coma three days later she died at the hospital and protests broke out as a result Iran shut down the country's internet but hundreds of social media posts of people protesting her death have surfaced over the last three months including videos of women defiantly cutting their hair the symbol of beauty the regime once hidden under the hijab thank you [Applause] the so-called morality police patrol the streets to enforce the regime's strict dress code they mostly target women and how they wear the hijab and will either find them or arrest them and take them to detention centers they are one part of the repressive State apparatus that wields power over Iranians but far from the only one that the protests we can see different armed groups violently suppressing the protests understanding who they might be tells us a lot about the power structure Iranians are fighting to change [Music] in the 1970s Iran was a secular monarchy that operated as a dictatorship under the Shah Iranians lacked political freedoms but enjoyed social ones they also experienced economic growth that rapidly transformed Iran from a traditional conservative Society to an industrial modernized one soon economic frustrations and political repression sparked uprisings calling for new Islamic rule they went on for a year but the regime remained in place until a crucial Turning Point the Army declared neutrality it was then that the monarchy collapsed and gave way to the Islamic Republic that rules today but that neutrality that allowed the regime to come to power was also one of its biggest weaknesses the revolutionaries did not trust the Army which was supposed to be loyal to the Shah but stabbed them in the back the best strategy was to hedge their bets by creating a branch of armed forces that they could trust much more than the Army under the Supreme Leader's rule the regime kept the old Army but created a separate military group called the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps this group was crucial in the long War Iran fought against Iraq the Revolutionary guard played an important role in trying to push back the Iraqi Army and after that they managed to turn that political Capital into economic influence and political power as their importance grew so did their domestic security rule which sometimes meant fighting against the people videos verified by Human Rights Watch show Armed Forces beating protesters using assault weapons and men dressed in black riding motorcycles and firing guns into crowds these men dressed in black fit the description of the besiege a paramilitary volunteer militia under the irgc that's fiercely loyal to the Supreme Leader primarily it was a force that was created in order to do social control in September Amnesty International obtained documents showing the Armed Forces instructed their chain of command to severely confront protesters and a local Commander ordering Security Forces to confront mercilessly while going as far as causing deaths as a result human rights groups say at least 18 000 protesters have been arrested and at least 250 have been killed including more than 60 children and now Iran has started carrying out executions [Applause] the reason so many protesters are out on the streets is that Iran's power structure doesn't give them any alternatives just like the armed forces are a pillar of the Islamic Republic there are several others supporting the country's power structure these are just a few of them and while some should be independent they aren't this includes Iran's legislative branch because while these government bodies are technically elected they are controlled by the regime's appointed Guardian Council that means the regime can disqualify candidates and reject laws that go through Parliament overriding the will of the people the unelected institutions have continuously stymied and sabotage those reforms and that has created a sense of despondency within the society so in the last 20 years Iranians have taken to the streets at an increasing rate against electoral fraud government corruption economic hardship and again today soon after amini's death a video of her funeral went viral women took off their hijabs and the crowd started chanting a chance have take hold all over the country [Applause] in the past 10-15 years in Iran that they often start with much more narrower objectives or demands but this time around almost from the get-go the zero to 100 happened overnight and immediately there were calls for regime change but the system they are trying to change was built to suppress dissent and protect power at the top the idea of having multiple power centers and parallel institutions is for the regime to hedge its pets none of these individual elements can on their own pose a threat to the clinical power making it nearly impossible to topple such a multi-layered decentralized power structure the fact that there is now no longer any hopes in the possibility of reforming the system from within it has created the situation in which the younger generation of Iranians increasingly believe that they have nothing to lose most of the protesters are young Iranians who were born After the Revolution and inherited a system they didn't ask for despite the censorship young Iranians have cut the world's attention schoolgirls are filming themselves replacing portraits of the supreme leader with the words woman life Freedom setting their hijabs on fire and chasing pro-regime Educators out of their schools the current situation is the product of the Islamic Republic's failures over the years the Islamic Republic failed to create a country in which the youth could see a future for themselves it's really as simple as that foreign [Music] the next World Cup has a glaring math problem since 1998 there's been a 32 team format eight groups of four teams and it works great in every group all the teams play each other once they get three points for a win one for a draw and zero for a loss crucially and remember this the last games are played simultaneously so that every team finishes at the same time the top two in each group advance to The Knockout round but FIFA is increasing the World Cup to 48 teams in 2026 and approved a format of 16 groups of three teams the problem is with three teams you can't play the last games at the same time one team will finish before the other two this could create a scenario where say in the first game team A and B draw then in the next C beats b a few days later when a plays C they both know a draw will give them enough points to advance and B can't do anything about it so A and C kick the ball around aimlessly and play to a drop bad football but something like this has happened before during the disgrace of hihon in 1982 when West Germany and Austria colluded to eliminate Algeria FIFA has four years to figure it out This is the poinsettia. Also known as la flor de nochebuena, The Christmas star, The lobster flower, The flame leaf, Euphorbia pulcherrima, And, one of its oldest names, cuetlaxochitl. In the US during the holidays, this plant, usually potted with bright red and 
green leaves, can be seen everywhere. But the history of how it got here is less obvious. And it’s all wrapped up in the controversial legacy of this man: Joel Poinsett. Poinsettias are native to this region, from Mexico down into Central and South America. The Aztec called it cuetlaxochitl, meaning “flower that withers.” And unlike the potted varieties we see today, in the wild these plants look like tall 
shrubs that flower in the winter season. It was a prized plant. The brilliant red colored leaves (which are leaves and not actually petals) were used to dye textiles, while the sap of the plants was used medicinally. And by the 17th century, likely because of those red leaves that bloomed in time for the holiday season, Spanish friars used the flowers to decorate elaborate nativity displays in Mexico. Spanish-speaking Mexicans named it la flor de nochebuena, the flower of Christmas Eve. And for many in the country, it became forever linked to Christmastime.  For hundreds of years, common knowledge of the   plant was largely contained to where it grew natively.  That is, until Joel Poinsett. In 1825, Poinsett, a diplomat, amateur botanist, and South Carolina native, was appointed as the first ever US minister to Mexico. As the story goes, he came across cuetlaxochitl in a town called Taxco,   took some cuttings, and shipped them off to the US to distribute to his botanist peers.  Eventually they caught on in the US, too. They were debuted at an 1829 flower show in Philadelphia. Nurseries began to grow and distribute the plants in the US. And its popularity as the “Christmas plant” exploded. The name “poinsettia” stuck, as a way to celebrate Joel Poinsett's legacy. One that would grow to include not just 
minister to Mexico, but US Secretary of War, and founding member of the institution that would later become the Smithsonian. But his legacy is a tainted one. Take Poinsett’s time as minister to Mexico, where he aggressively attempted to increase American influence in the country. One letter to Secretary of State Martin Van Buren — focused on the potential to “enlighten minds with liberal ideas” — revealed his thoughts on the Mexican population, stating the Spaniards’ “...constant intercourse with the aborigines, who were and still are degraded to the very lowest class of human beings… contributed to render the Mexicans a more ignorant and debauched people.” Poinsett, a slave owner himself back in the US, believed racial hierarchy between the indigenous and “white Creole” population could help progress in Mexico. Poinsett also sought to expand American borders. At the time, the US looked like this… and he was tasked with negotiating a deal to buy Texas from Mexico. But, before he could negotiate that deal, he ended up meddling so much in Mexican politics, that he was asked to leave the country. It happened like this: By helping to establish a network of freemason groups, known as the largest international secret society, he helped to gather men in Mexico with pro-American politics. Eventually, that organizing laid the groundwork for a public, pro-America political party in Mexico to gain steam, angering many within the Mexican government. His interference with local politics created so much conflict that Mexicans even coined the term “poinsettismo” to describe “officious and intrusive conduct”. And in 1829, at the request of the Mexican president, Poinsett was removed from his post. A few years later, after returning to the 
US… he was appointed US Secretary of War. In that role, he oversaw the forcible displacement of an estimated 20,000 indigenous Cherokee people from their homes, to push them west as a part of the Indian Removal Act. It was part of the ethnic cleansing known as the Trail of Tears that would go on to displace roughly 100,000 indigenous people. That cemented Poinsett’s place in history, a man who believed in American 
expansion, at all costs. Back in his home state of South Carolina, Poinsett’s name lives on in many ways: a state park, a highway, a hotel, even a statue. Though, his most well known namesake is likely, still the plant. Poinsettia production grew even more after years of engineering, creating fuller and more compact plants. Today, it’s an industry worth around $170 million in the US alone. And importantly, it's a market the US has cornered, while shutting Mexico out. Due to decades-old sanitation laws, there are restrictions on Mexican poinsettia growers who want to export potted plants to the US. It means the vast majority of the plants we see in stores in the US, are grown here. Though, in recent years, many have found a, different, small way to honor this plant's history. By rejecting the name poinsettia, and using its Aztec name, cuetlaxochitl. A name that, hopefully, reminds people of the true origins of the plant of the season. Thanks for watching this Christmas edition of Missing Chapter, our series that explores how our past connects with our present. This year, we’ve covered everything from reparations in New Zealand to Native American sign language. You can find a link to all the episodes we’ve made in the description below. For each episode, we spend weeks reporting, speaking with experts, and poring over archival images and documents to present fact-checked stories. You can help support our journalism — and keep it free — by making a gift to Vox at vox.com/support-vox-video. With your support, we’re able to keep telling these stories about hidden histories. I was watching this scene from White Lotus season 2 and I noticed something about this Fresco where had I seen that before oh right the intro sequence but where did that peeing dog come from p-dog no p-dog P dog these frescoes are from this villa villa Taska the one that Aubry Plaza's character and Daphne were staying at in nodo I think something happened when we were in nodo in real life Noto is in southern Sicily the actual Villa Taska is closer to Palermo all the way over here so I was reading about nodo and Architectural digest right the company that made the show's title sequence flew to this Villa and took a bunch of photos of the frescoes then composited their own illustrations and animations based on themes from the show like jealousy and captivity and desire wait that's not desire I don't know why there's a peeing dog if you know why let us know in the comments [Music] we tracked every penalty kick shootout in this year's World Cup in this diagram it shows which zone the ball was targeted to and whether or not it was a goal right away you can see players clearly felt most comfortable keeping the ball low out of 41 Shots 29 were aimed at this bottom row and the overwhelming favorite was here the bottom left corner 18 shots went here half of which were goals we compared this to a data set we have of World Cup shootouts over the last 40 years and two things stand out first every ball aimed at the center was a goal this time which isn't normal historically these are the success rates for shots to those zones and out of six shots taken to the lower right only one was successful which is also weird and the data set well over half the shots to that corner went in obviously this is a very small sample size from just one tournament but putting it all together like this tells a story about where players aimed the one shot they had to help their country win it including this one the final shot of the 2022 World Cup [Applause] the Taylor Swift's Ticketmaster Fiasco shows how monopolies get away with bad service I'll explain why say you're an artist and you want to go on tour you need an agent or entity to connect your team with the venue to work out all the details in high profile cases it's done by an entertainment conglomerate that acts as a promoter in most cases either Live Nation or AEG AEG handled the eras tour but they had to work closely with Live Nation anyway because while promoters promote the tour they also connect artists with concert spaces Live Nation owns over 100 concert venues across the country and has pre-existing deals in place for many more especially the big spaces so AEG is promoting Live Nation is the owner of the venue who's going to be Distributing tickets well Ticketmaster of course live Nations ticketing art they merged in 2010. want to resell the tickets you bought for a profit or just because you can't go well you have to use Ticketmaster to transfer the ticket so you might as well just resell it through Ticketmaster 2 Right Live Nation has a hand in pretty much every step of the process which makes it pretty clear that For centuries, these two islands 
in the South Pacific were home to Māori people. They call it Aotearoa. the indigenous Māori population was rooted in a sacred relationship 
with the land and surrounding waters. They organized society and an 
intricate system of tribes... and subtribes. They flourished. But by the end of the 1800s roughly 60% of them
were dead. Due to new diseases, 
displacement, and war all caused by Western colonizers who called the islands: New Zealand. Over the course of several decades more than 90% of collectively 
owned Māori land had been taken by the British Crown. They not only took the land, 
but they took a river. That river meant... everything to us. There were hundreds of my ancestors 
that were taken. We lost language. We lost land. We lost our way of life. You kind of wonder at times... Who am I? What am I? But today... something groundbreaking is happening here. A kind of reparations, or, as they refer to them in Aotearoa: settlements. Land and cash settlements for Māori accompanied by historic formal apologies 
from the government. "Another first: this law includes an apology." Our iwi received $87 million 
in cash from the crown. 17 land blocks are being returned
with deeds and titles. $170 million... peanuts. It really is peanuts. I'm here in Aotearoa to take a closer look 
at Māori people's long fight for sovereignty over their lands. And all the mixed emotions and 
outcomes that come with it. I'm also here to explore how 
a similar movement for redress could gain more steam in the United States for Native Americans and 
Black people descended from those enslaved in America. Māori people have gotten 
the British crown to recognize the harms of their pillaging... apologize and pay. What can we learn about reparations from their story? At the end of the 18th century about 100,000 Māori lived Aotearoa... and were part of various tribes 
still known today as iwi, and subtribes,
hapū. Though they weren't functionally a nation they controlled every corner of the islands. But in the first half of the 19th century... Europeans began to arrive 
by thousands of ships especially people from England. Far beyond the small settlement of British missionaries already living there. Disputes start to occur between 
the new arrivals and Maori particularly around use of land. The settlers saw the land as property...
something to be owned which was in conflict with the Māori view. And there were new outside threats too. Māori learned that the French and 
other Westerners wanted their lands. So they began signing this 
Declaration of Independence in 1835. Rangatira — or Māori chiefs used the document to make a firm statement 
to the rest of the world... that authority with an Aotearoa 
rested with them. The document declared
"he whenua rangatira" which translates to "an independent state". With new nationhood, they petitioned 
King William IV for support and protection. And a few years later, the British government 
and Māori chiefs saw the need for another formal document. There were opportunities to both engage further 
with the British Crown as treaty partners in having 
a strategic, political but also trading partner. In 1840, more than 500 Māori chiefs 
signed this document: "Te Tiriti o Waitangi" with
the British Crown. Te Tiriti is the foundational document at the center of the story. Its creation opened up the 
gateway to the unlawful British colonization of the islands. It's been vigorously debated because there are stark differences 
between the Māori and English texts of the treaty. The Māori text says that the rangatira
have "tino rangatiratanga" which translates to "absolute authority" over their lands, resources, homes,
and "toanga" or "treasured posessions". But the English texts states that the rangatira "cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England..." "all rights and power of sovereignty." Those big differences: One vision saying you see ceded sovereignty the other one saying actually, you get to govern yourselves and look after yourselves. You know, it's quite fundamental, 
really, in terms of how things rolled out across our history. Within a Māori worldview, 
within a Māori philosophy... it's not actually possible to suddenly decide to give up that sovereignty to someone else. The British proceeded to assert control over the islands after the treaty was signed... claiming that under British law they had the power to
set up a government. They appointed a governer, 
William Hobson and formally established Aotearoa
as a colony by the end of 1840. There were land sales or 
purported land sales where they engaged with perhaps one of the hundred owners... or, you know 100 people that had rights to a piece of land but engaged with 1 person that effectively would sell the entire block. Where I'm from in Wairoa was a really big significant 
purchase of land which was framed as a 
sale and purchase. But my ancestors, we're told by 
the Crown Purchase agent either you sell us this land 
or we will confiscate it. And so it those kinds of coercive practices which also resulted in 
significant land loss. There was resistance of our people to that happening. Conflict over land and resource came to a head in 1860. In the decades long 
New Zealand wars Māori people battled to protect their land. But they were severely outnumbered 
by British troops who killed more than 
2000 Māori. Through the wars, the British confiscated
massive amounts of land.  Supported by a new law that said the crown could seize the land of anyone who had rebelled against the Queen. Māori were allowed to defend 
their claims to land in court... but mounting a defense usually included prohibitively expensive legal fees
and travel costs. This land confiscation triggered a breakdown of the 
Māori economic base and disrupted the communal culture 
of Māori identity. Plus, diseases that European colonizers
brought to Aotearoa continued to kill Māori 
in large numbers. In 1840, shortly after Europeans began arriving by the shipload 80,000 Māori lived on the islands. By 1896, only 42,000 remained. Meanwhile, the Pākehā population those who were white or non-Māori ballooned to 701,000 people. An estimated 88% of 
Māori lands were taken It wasn't until decades later that Māori activists would force 
the British Crown to reckon with this history. Even as a child growing up... in the first 15 years of our lives,
for me, was around how to be a Pākehā. It was about how to talk like them... dress like them... sing like them. By the 1950s, New Zealand's government 
had rewritten the history of the Crown's colonization into a rosy story. One newspaper from the early 1900s 
quoted a politician who said "The Māoris had always been loyal
to the British Empire." "New Zealand was a country that 
had never been conquered.... or annexed." "It was a mutual agreement." There has been a real perpetuation 
of the myth that, you know, New Zealand 
has great race relations. And often the Treaty of Waitangi 
is held up as the example of that 
is to say, look we negotiated this sovereignty by consent. But in practice the oppression 
of the Māori had continued for more than 100 years after the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed. "For the first time in history, 
a reigning British monarch visits her Māori subjects." Māori military men who 
fought for the crown in both World Wars were not given 
the same benefits as Pākehā after their return. Disparities became glaringly apparent by the mid century. Compared to Pākehā, Māori had 
poor health outcomes like double the child mortality rate. They were over 5 times more likely 
to be incarcerated and both Māori men and women had lower incomes than their 
Pākehā counterparts. And in 1953, the Crown introduced laws that further for some Māori 
to sell their land. Those laws, along with World War II Those laws, along with World War II helped incite a mass migration of Māori from rural lands to cities. Living in Christchurch was 
a whole experience. Living in a white town. You kind of hold your breath and go holy hell, I never experienced racism like that. As a young boy, I wasn't too sure 
what the hell was going on but I knew there was something wrong. I can't help but think about 
the similarities here between how Black Americans and Native Americans were treated in the United States 
around the same time. Many Black Americans and 
Native Americans enlisted and fought in World War II... but upon their return from the war they were shut out of benefits that were extended to white American. Like home loans and educational funding 
provided by the GI Bill. Black Americans were segregated through redlining and the benefit didn't extend to Native Americans living on tribal lands. Over time, the compounding impacts 
of racial discrimination in the US showed up the same ways they did 
for Māori populations. With a higher infant mortality rates... Black incarceration rate that was 
just over 5 times higher and much lower networth. But by the 1960s, with many Maori 
now gathered in cities they were better positioned 
to challenge leadership. "In America, black people are treated
very much as colonized people because we're used, we're brutalized the police in our community
occupy our area our community, as a foreign group 
occupies territory. The advent of television helped Māori tune into the 
Black Power Movement and the activism of Native Americans 
in the United States. But the people have to stand up and demand
and they have to understand that they have a right. In America you have quite a few 
movers and shakers... that make a difference, and that was 
all through marching. Members of the activist group
Ngā Tamatoa channeled these lessons into their protests. They were part of a movement to revitalize the Māori language te reo Māori
which had been activelly surpressed in schools for decades. And later Ngā Tamatoa helped launch one of the biggest protests Aotearoa history: the Land March of 1975. "It's been joined since early this morning
by young and old." "And in spite of rain, which set in 
late in the morning... the marcheer's spirits are still high." It's a huge project. A lot of our people actually 
didn't support us. They think we're a little bit naive 
or a little bit nutty. The protest action needed someone 
who could rally Māori together. Her name was Whina Cooper. Whina Cooper was a respected Māori elder descended from the Te Rahrawa iwi who dedicated her life to Māori land rights and to the rights of Māori women. She was nearly 80 years old 
at the time of the march. We need somebody like that that can bridge through the heart and the minds. So we got the face. We need a slogan. And so we came up with the slogan: "Not one more acre of Māori land be sold." Not one more acre. After all these 135 years we have only 2 million acres left. The march took 29 days and 
grew to include 5000 people. They came from all over 
the north and south islands. And when they arrived at Parliament marchers presented a petition 
signed by 60,000 people that laid out their goals. They were here to establish new laws from Māori land based on their 
own cultural values: communal ownership of land within the tribe. Protest movements anywhere in the world 
makes a difference. If you don't protest, 
nothing will happen. And people will think 
everything's all right. It's not. The Crown, long recluctant  to acknowledge the harms 
of its colonization was forced to respond. They established the Treaty of Waitangi
Act of 1975 to investigate contemporary breaches 
of the 1840 treaty. But it wasn't until after another 
decade of protests that the Māori won the right to give 
the investigating tribunal retrospective powers... the ability to investigate grievances going all the way back to 1840. While this tribunal could only offer recommendations for government action it opened the door for a kind of reparations. The government decided to create a pathway to dozens 
of land and cash settlements that are ongoing today. I really excited about that to be able to do some more 
research for us there to share our story. For us to be able to have this type of conversation. At last we can talk to each other about it. At last we can have a voice we can sing about. I don't have a problem with that. It's the end product where
there seems to be  something not quite right. The settlement was the right thing to do. The value of the settlement, 
I think, was wrong. When you think about it now it's only a drop in the bucket. There are about 138 
government-recognized iwi today. And they all have their own specific historical grievances with the Crown. As of 2022, there have been nearly 
80 settlements passed into law. These claims generally work like this. Iwi must register a historical claim with the Waitangi Tribunal to 
have their grievances heard and to proceed in the settlement process. If their claims are deemed well-founded they can begin the process of 
direct negotiation with the Crown. After what can be years of back and forth eventually, they write the final 
deed of settlement that both parties sign. To receive the settlement assets iwi must set up a governance entity that administers the wins 
on behalf of the community often putting the money towards 
business development health and education for the entire group... not checks to individuals. The list of what Māori are seeking is long. It includes millions of dollars, 
apologies, the return of land waters, fisheries, minerals and the 
restoration of te reo Māori the Māori language. And no two settlements or the experience of negotiating them are the same. But many people live here, 
Waikato-Tainui the first iwi to settle in 1995 as a model for what settlements could be. As the first iwi to settle 
they laid the groundwork for all the settlements that followed in 1995. In 1995, the Crown recognized 
the unlawful theft of more than a million acres of
Waikato lands in the 1860s and settled with the iwi for $170 million. This was a time in this country 
where settlements were new. It was against public opinion. It certainly was a courageous move on the part of the government at that time. Queen Elizabeth signed 
this treaty settlement which to this day is one of the 
largest sums of money given to an Iwi. "This is the first time the Queen 
has ever signed any law in public." That was the pinnacle of all apologies. Most apologies are given by the Crown, 
by the government. In this instance, it was the only apology 
made by Queen Elizabeth II. That we were the only tribe to get that formal apology in a signed letter from her is huge. Because it was an admission 
of their guilt of their wrongdoing and their injustice. The settlement was successful
but also controversial. For one, the iwi was criticized 
for signing with the Crown just months after dozens of iwi nationwide rejected the government's $1 billion 
fiscal cap on the settlements. And the settlement only provided 
the return of around 30,000 acres. It's an insignificant amount of land. When you compare with that which we lost. One big win was the Te Rapa base which they developed into a shopping district a move to bring them economic independence. The settlement also included the $15 million 
Waikato-Tainui College which has helped them invest in education. Anyone who wants to do business 
in our tribal area and they'll come talk to us. We're undeniable now. Things have changed. In 2010, Waikato Tainui 
finalized another settlement. This time it was for the longest river 
in New Zealand from which the iwi takes its name, 
the Waikato River. We got an agreement that gave us equal say. And anything that happened on the river, 
in the river, around the river. So for me, as a negotiator, 
for my iwi people, my tribe... was the greatest honor of all. The job that we did was was minor compared to the hundreds of our ancestors
who died in the battles. For our land, for who we are. For our way of life. They paid a huge sacrifice for us to sit in those offices and try to get a deal with the government 
in order to resolve our outstanding claims against the Crown.  For other iwi the settlements 
haven't been as large and they've taken decades to negotiate. I'm here at Ngati Maru's 
official settlement ceremony.  Where a representative from the Crown is going to deliver an official apology. The Crown makes the following apology to Ngati Maru. The Crown's many breaches of 
Te Tiriti o Waitangi... left Ngati Maru... feeling like refugees in their own homeland. Its confiscation of half of the Ngati Maru... was indiscriminate and unwarranted. The Crown acknowledges that. Its imprisoned members of Ngati Maru... assaulted the human rights of the people residing there and forcibly removed many inhabitants, destroyed, 
and desecrated their homes and sacred buildings stolen heirlooms. The Crown expresses profound remorse 
and apologizes. Ngati Maru's settlement included 
$30 million in cash the return of 17 land titles and the right to purchase 36 Crown properties including the Te Wera Forest. I am humbled to have delivered 
these words to you today. I know how many of you will be 
thinking of those loved ones who were lost before they had a chance to hear the Crown apologize for its wrongdoing.  I pay tribute to you. We all know once you lose your land, 
you lose your culture, you lose your reo or you lose your identity, 
you lose everything. So we have been in a process of reclamation... and rejuvenation and revitalization. Ultimately, many Māori see the settlements 
as an avenue for empowerment and restitution but they ignore know the issues. Some iwi have expressed that they don't necessarily believe the Crown apology to be genuine and it's something that the Crown does for their own benefit to release themselves of... I don't know, perhaps burden or guilt over those historical breaches. Ultimately, the ministers of the Crown 
get final decisions on the level of quantum, 
the level of financial redress... you know what land parcels might be available to come back. What what we're giving away in the likes of land, water, 
the air we breathe... is billions. All stolen property should be returned. It's like a car. It's a stolen car. Your car was taken with everything in the car. Everything taken. Then they give you your car back with no motor in it. Just the wheel. You can't move it. You can't drive it. Yeah. We want the whole car. Today, Aotearoa is 27 years into 
their settlement process. For some, these settlements have meant 
life changing differences in business opportunities and education. In many categories, like median household income Māori outcomes have improved but they still fall behind Pākehā. I see settlements as a... reparation. I think reparations are 
far too nice a word. You can't embrace the cruelty... the injustice... the loss of life. This is about righting a wrong. We're talking about blood here. These kinds of complications are echoed in the reparations debate in the United States. Some people say that there's 
no amount of money that could ever compensate 
for slavery or for land loss. And people say that reparations 
would further divide the United States. But what the Māori process shows us 
is that you have to start with acknowledging the past. "An apology for slavery and 
the Jim Crowe laws... which for a century after emancipation..." The Senate apologized for slavery 
and Jim Crow in 2009. "Today, the Senate will unanimously 
makes that apology." But made no mention of reparations. And while the US apologized 
to Native Americans  for acts of violence and neglect... the statement was largely buried in the back of a 2010 defense bill.  Even though Aotearoa can't be an 
exact model for the United States... Māori have a direct message 
for people in the US. The fight for reparations is worth it. I know it sounds like 
it's never going to happen. But truly, there comes a point where they have to start to listen. The struggle might be long and full of uncertainty. But if the US continues to push 
the reparations debate forward people here could gain 
land, money... better policies and new pathways to healing. Just like the Māori. if you're watching the World Cup match between Morocco and France you'll probably notice a lot of lions in the crowd like these their symbol of Morocco's national team the atlas lions these lions are also on Morocco's coat of arms which was introduced a year after French Independence for centuries Barbary Lions have roamed round North Africa these lines are characterized by their intense strength and dark hair and you might recognize one from a very popular Disney movie so whatever happened to these Lions European hunters and Sultans captured or killed these Lions until their near Extinction in the 20th century but there are still 100 captive Lions around the world that are connected to the atlas lions and their popular attractions at zoos despite their near disappearance Lions still come up in North African and Moroccan fables and now they present hope unity and strength to the supporters of Morocco's national football team Well, it sounds like you want to treat it
like a legal product. Or a better way forward, which is just decriminalize it. This looks like a debate. It's illegal! That's not true. But it's not. Yes, these two advocates 
fundamentally disagree about a major policy issue. I support the legalization and regulation of cannabis for adults. I oppose legalization of cannabis. We could have just had them 
show up and fight it out. That's how these things usually go. "No, I think..." But when you watch people argue are you judging content or style? And how do you know if they're 
even telling the truth? So we wanted to try something different. We asked both Paul and Will to send us five facts about 
cannabis legalization that their opponent would 
have to concede are true. They fact checked each other. We fact checked them, too. And after going back and forth 
on the exact phrasing we landed on 6. Do you both agree that these are true? Yes. Yes, I do. They'll each present their facts 
and get to respond to the other's facts with a footnote. Okay, here we go. National polls consistently show... that a majority of the 
American public support legalizing marijuana. In 1969, a minority supported legalization. Today, it's nearly 70%. As more states have adopted legalization support among the public 
has risen in parallel. There's no buyer's remorse. My footnote to that would be these polls often give what we believe to be a false dichotomy of choice. If I have to choose between arrest and incarceration 
or legalization I'm going to choose legalization as well. But when we dig a little bit deeper
and there's some national polls from Emerson that 
show that support for legalization falls well below 50% when people are presented 
with other options such as decriminalization and the medicinal use of the cannabis plant. Well, let's talk about those polls, Will. Even when you provide more choices the most popular choice is 
legalizing marijuana by adults. My name is Will Jones. I'm the director of community engagement 
and outreach at Smart Approaches to Marijuana. I really believe that we can 
explore better policy options when it comes to marijuana policy
than either criminalization... or commercialization. Decriminalization removes penalties for the personal possession and use of marijuana. Legalization and commercialization 
would allow for businesses to market and sell marijuana. And so that's the primary difference between the two. A recent study reported higher rates of fatal car crashes in states that had legal recreational marijuana. We have to look at, what 
are all the areas of society and of public health 
and safety that are going to be impacted through legalization and commercialization? In fact, the study you cited 
looked at a subset of states. Even the authors of this 
study acknowledge... it may have nothing to do with the change in the status 
of marijuana at all. That there's a number of 
different confounders. Fortunately, we have real world 
experience in this country reducing rates of drunk driving. I am confident that we can continue to reduce rates of drug driving. When you commercialize something, 
you have advertising. You have marketing. That increases use. That's what it's supposed to do. And when you have 
more people using, that percentage of people 
that use irresponsibly is going to represent a larger 
number of people. Do we know whether use of 
marijuana goes up after legalization? It tends to go up in people that are about 26. And so, yes. The vision here is that we can 
craft policy with marijuana where we don't create something that creates a negative public health impact that we then have to address with massive campaigns afterwards. My name is Paul Armentano. I always believed strongly 
in civil liberties. In a world that doesn't just 
accept alcohol but celebrates the use of alcohol. It is unjust to be 
ruining people's lives  over their use of a plant. Police in the United States still make hundreds of thousands of low level 
marijuana arrests every year. Over 90% of those arrests are 
for simple possession. And the results of these arrests 
are significant. People lose their jobs. People lose their professional licensure their right to vote to possess a gun subsidized housing. In some states, they even lose the right 
to adopt a child. And those arrested disproportionately 
are young people poor people and people of color. So I agree 100% that there is systemic inequality and injustice in the way that the enforcement 
of marijuana laws has been carried out in our country. But when we look at the data
from states that have legalized we see that systemic inequality 
in law enforcement even around the laws of legalization, 
continues to exist. We still continue to see disparities. Absolutely. Nobody ever said legalizing cannabis 
was going to end  systemic racism or even 
racism in policing. But it certainly removes a major 
tool from that toolbox. And we've seen in states that have legalized total arrests for marijuana 
dropped significantly. A 2017 survey found that 81% of marijuana business owners 
in the U.S. are white. This is a huge contrast to the people that are most often talked about when we hear about marijuana legalization,
which is entrepreneurs of color and reinvesting in communities harmed 
by the war on drugs. That's a great idea. But that's not the reality of how 
it's panning out at all. The other concern is that the placement of marijuana businesses 
is disproportionately in communities of color just like we see with liquor stores. We all want to see greater inclusion in the commercial marijuana industry. Of course, one of the reasons 
we don't have that diversity now is because the federal law treats cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance... which means that banks and 
other financial institutions will not provide lending, 
will not provide loans to these would-be entrepreneurs to allow them to get their foot in the door. In fact, we have a potential fix:
the Safe Banking Act. But your organization, Will, 
opposes that change in federal policy which would help remedy 
this very situation. Yeah, and I think that's because 
the Safe Banking Act would open the floodgates to 
huge tobacco companies and alcohol companies totally 
taking over the industry. And it's a great idea that we want 
to have smaller entrepreneurs get into this. But we know how business 
works in the US. We know how capitalism works. 
On multiple fronts we're going to continue to see 
this inequality exist. Decriminalization leaves the unregulated 
marketplace intact. And it continues to perpetuate 
police interaction with the community. It shouldn't have to perpetuate 
law enforcement. I think that we can craft 
decriminalization in a way that completely removes it from the criminal justice system and treats it more as a health issue. I think like Portugal has done a great job 
at de-stigmatizing use and for people to have problematic 
use to have services provided for them. When you say that 
decriminalization perpetuates law enforcement contact 
with marijuana users and sellers can you explain why that would be? If it's not a crime, why are the police involved? Because marijuana is illicit. Which means it's contraband. So if the police encounter somebody possessing or using cannabis they have a legal responsibility to interact, 
to seize that cannabis. They also can continue to search individuals, pull them over, 
frisk them because they claim they smelled cannabis because, again, cannabis itself is an illicit substance, 
not a legal one. And if a decriminalization law allows for that, then it's a poorly crafted 
decriminalization law. Will, it sounds like you want Washington DC. People can possess marijuana. They can grow marijuana. But there's no regulated 
commercial market for people to obtain marijuana. And that's why we have 
unregulated shops gifting marijuana products, 
selling unregulated products. Is that a preferable policy to one where the commercial market 
is licensed and regulated? I do think it's preferable but I think that is because the shops 
came into place with the understanding that eventually 
it would be commercialized. Even more ideally: We create a new world, 
a new concept where it's like Hey, grow this yourself. Or if you want to have it and share it
with friends, do that. But this is not something that we're 
going to allow industries to sell. Big tobacco and alcohol companies have invested billions of dollars into the cannabis industry and 
are lobbying for legalization at the federal and state levels. And this is especially concerning because we know the track record 
that these companies have of addiction-for-profit whether we're talking about alcohol
or the tobacco industries. It raises some concerns for public health that I think are very important. Certainly there are commercial interests. But to imply that they are the ones 
driving this train is simply disingenuous. This is an issue that was largely 
pushed on the grassroots level... 20, 30 years ago. And it remains the grassroots level that's pushing this issue today. Not corporations, 
not big business but in fact, the people. Whoever has pushed this for 20 years,
at the end of the day there's big tobacco and 
alcohol companies standing by, ready to profit off of that. And that's a big concern. I think Will's proposed solutions policies like decriminalization,
don't go far enough... because at the end of the day if we don't want criminal entrepreneurs being the ones providing cannabis if we want purity of products if we want products that are 
labeled and regulated... then we have to have legalization. Because we can't impose 
regulations and rules on a decriminalized substance. What this discussion has showed 
is that we need to move past the punitive policies that 
we've had for marijuana in the past years in our country while still avoiding the 
excesses of commercialization. What you see from continued habitual
use for heavy users that's where you start to see 
the negative public health costs whether that's on driving or whether that's on mental health,
whether that's on youth use. We have to move forward in a way 
that isn't going to allow for the exploitation of 
vulnerable communities  by addiction for profit companies. Let's cut. So that's it. That's our take on a debate. Big thanks to Paul Armentano and Will Jones for participating in this experiment. If there are other topics you'd like to see please let us know in the comments. let's talk about the underdog team in the World Cup's quarterfinals they tied against Croatia they surprisingly beat Belgium and they beat Canada in the next round they even knocked out Spain and now they're facing Portugal they're the first Arab Nation to ever make it this far here are four keys to Morocco's success in the World Cup top players that were born in Europe chose to represent Morocco's national team and many contribute to the team's impressive defense the goalies have completely shut down their opponents even during this historic penalty shootout against Spain the only team that scored on Morocco was Morocco goes for Canada oops just three months before the World Cup the team replaced their coach with someone from their own nationality that unify the team by giving as many players as possible playing time leading to goals by non-starting players and lastly thousands of Moroccans have filled the stadiums and the team even picked up fans from eliminated teams giving the players a home game Advantage atmosphere [Applause] this guy in the white that you can barely see back here is Croatian center-back day on over it and he's being called offside by FIFA's new AI system and it's raising a lot of interesting questions the system uses 12 motion tracking cameras and a sensor in the ball and they're able to take a play like this and turn it into this a 3D Recreation that can be viewed from any angle and clearly shows when and where players are offside in the December 1st match between Belgium and Croatia lovren tried to latch onto a free kick but he miscalculated and ended up offside by this much arms aren't playable so it's really just measuring the distance between these two guys shoulders here and as you can see it is not a sizable amount this new technology really succeeds at being precise who knows if a human ref would have caught these calls but this year they don't have to and I guess that begs a few questions that I really don't know the answer to like how does this level of precision affect how players behave what should the tolerance level be for a call like this let us know what you think in the comments below By now, surely you've heard of... "Pickelball." "-Pickleball. "
"-Pickleball!" Right? The so-called... "...fastest growing sport in the country." Pickleball's popularity skyrocketed 
during the pandemic... bringing it out of retirement communities and into the mainstream. Oh, my God. It is a phenomenon. I discovered pickleball and a light went off in my head. Where would you be without pickleball right now? I honestly don't know. Now there are fancy new 
Instagram ads selling trendy paddles and balls... a professional league backed by 
Kevin Durant and LeBron James... and a Facebook group for pretty much 
every town in America. Everybody loves Pickleball. Well, maybe not everybody. "Why don't you take that pickleball
and shove it up your ******!" "A catastrophe..." "The lantern flies of the sports world." So how did pickleball take over? And where can it go from here? It's not hard to understand
pickleball's appeal. It's sort of like a giant adult 
playground game that's easy to pick up and 
find people to play with. Whenever we come out and 
it's actually nice weather the entire ground is covered 
with pickleball courts. I live literally like 
right next door here and I just saw scores of people 
on the weekends and... I kinda just jumped in. The rules are similar to tennis but played on a much smaller court. Which means less running 
and quicker games. And pickleball can be played 
anywhere. The nets are advertised as being 
portable and easy to assemble and there's plenty of resources online that show you how to carve up 
a tennis court into one, two, or up to four 
pickleball courts. In some places, the impromptu 
nature of the sport has caused some friction and so-called turf wars for public space. Like at the Peninsula Tennis Club 
in San Diego where a group of pickleball players 
staged a dramatic take over demanding its tennis courts 
be converted for pickleball. In Santa Rosa, public courts dual-lined 
for pickleball and tennis were vandalized with motor oil. To send the message that the new craze was no longer welcome there. But it's not just the fight for court space that has some people fed up 
with pickleball. This is a sound level meter. It measures sound pressure levels in decibels. A decibel is one unit of loudness and it's measured logarithmically
rather than linearly. Basically, that means that steadily increasing sound level by 10 decibels 
doesn't look like this... but more like this where each increase of 10 decibels 
sounds twice as loud. So a motorcycle at 100 decibels sounds twice as loud as a hairdryer at 90 decibels. Which is twice as loud as a 
vacuum cleaner at 80 decibels. This is Sam. He produces Vox Atlas and 
he's going to help me with a little experiment. Okay, go ahead. Bouncing a tennis ball 
on a tennis racket averaged around 70 decibels... which is comparable to the noise level 
of a busy office. When we measured the sound of 
a pickleball against a paddle... it clocked in around 80 decibels. That's right where sound becomes 
loud enough to be irritating. Now, obviously, this isn't the most 
scientific experiment and of course, tennis matches 
make sound. But the point is pickleball's equipment: rigid paddles against hollow plastic balls... makes a lot of noise. "I wake up, 
I hear it." "I walk down the steps,
I hear it. " [imitating clanking] "As loud as a rock concert." Mounting noise complaints have 
forced cities and towns from Victoria, British Columbia to 
Newport, Rhode Island to come up with temporary solutions like limited hours for pickleball and in some places, banning 
the sport altogether. Both sides of this conflict agree. Pickleball has to go somewhere. Expanding or creating dedicated space
for the sport would help alleviate the strain 
on shared spaces and help isolate the noise issue
pickleball brings. A wave of developers have already 
cashed in on the demand opening state of the art private pickleball clubs 
across the country. So far, underfunded parks and 
rec departments have been moving slower but progress is being made. Cincinnati recently opened this free-to-the-public
pickleball facility a collaboration in between 
community fundraisers... the Cincinnati Parks Department... and the philanthropic Cincinnati Parks Foundation converted 8 dilapidated tennis courts into 18 pickleball courts, 
plus 3 dual-line courts for pickleball and tennis. What was formerly a mostly ignored space drew over 13,000 pickleball players 
in 2022. There's plans like this in the works 
all over the country. This one was shared with me 
by the Peninsula Tennis Club. That's where that angry pickleball 
takeover took place in April 2022. Their proposal would convert 
this unused space away from the tennis courts 
for pickleball courts. These projects need funding, 
but where pickleball goes other facilities benefit. Efforts to invest in public 
pickleball courts are resulting in new volleyball courts... basketball courts and 
skateparks too. But until more courts become available... and maybe even after they do pickleball will likely maintain
its DIY spirit. There are pickleball courts 
around the city but we could just come in here and play like not really plan anything in advance
and just find a spot.. Being able to just like grab a little bag here
and come out and text my friends and have people show up
and meet new people is very appealing I think. why is Georgia up for a runoff yet again well it's one of two states where general elections go to a runoff If no candidate gets a majority of the vote this week the Georgia Senate race is set to go to a runoff for the second time in two years if you're getting feelings of deja vu you're not alone Reverend Rafael Warnock just did another runoff in 2021. this year he's up against former football player Herschel Walker who you may know from some of his many scandals Georgia first established runoffs in the 1960s A system that was designed to suppress black political power as the state has gotten more purple the races have gotten closer and closer that much became clear in 2020 when no candidate won a majority in both Senate races while Georgia stolen's Republican organizers have rallied a more diverse voter base giving a boost to Democrats as a result Georgians can probably expect many more runoffs to come this is a population pyramid and its shape can tell you a lot about what's going on in the country let me show you really only this classic pyramid shape when young people make up most of the population at the base like Nigeria which is one of the youngest and fastest growing populations in the world compare that to a shrinking population like South Korea which has a narrow base which means a really low birth rate and a large aging population at the top Qatar has maybe the most lopsided gender ratio I've ever seen because a lot of male migrant workers live there to build infrastructure like I don't know World Cup stadiums and Russia has the opposite gender imbalance you can literally see that women have a much higher life expectancy there and finally you can see by the shape of these if a country has had a big population boom so this is the US and you can see the boomer generation hence the name and their Millennial children which is the most populous generation living today in the U.S [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] This is where the FIFA World Cup
final will soon be held... the Lusail Stadium in Qatar. In just four years, it went from this... to this. It has 80,000 seats... and cost more than 
$700 million to build. It's the biggest stadium 
in the Middle East. But it's more than that. Over a decade ago, Qatar had hoped  that hosting a mega sporting event 
in stadiums like these  would put it on the map. But today, stadiums like Lusail
are a symbol of how a country can build 
grand infrastructure to further its own interests and how those ambitions can trap thousands. "...migrant workers lost their lives
in the construction of the stadiums..." "...forced to labor under 
extremely poor conditions..." "Migrants working on infrastructure projects 
have died or suffered abuse." "The logical source of oil for Europe 
is the Middle East..." Since the 1940s, when Qatar discovered 
huge reserves of oil and then gas it's been one of the richest countries on Earth. 70% of the government's revenue 
comes from oil and gas exports. Thanks to all that wealth Qatar has gone through a 
remarkable transformation. The capital, Doha, for instance, 
went from fishing town... to world class city in just 
a couple of decades complete with extraordinary museums 
and fancy hotels. But in recent years, the world has been 
turning to renewable energy making the oil and gas market
Qatar relies on even less dependable. And in the Gulf, the country has seen 
regional tensions surge most notably in 2017, when 
neighboring countries issued a blockade against Qatar... cutting off trade and travel. It cost the country hundreds 
of millions of dollars. So to diversify and protect 
its economy... Qatar has started leaning 
into another area that helped establish its status 
as a wealthy nation... sports. That repositioning is 
based on soft power. Qatar is trying to secure friends 
when in need. Particularly powerful friends 
from the West like the United States and the UK. And so the best way to do that is through these soft sectors 
like sports. In the last 18 years, Qatar has held 
more than 20 major sporting events. But nothing compares to 
the 2022 World Cup. "The winner is... Qatar." Qatar won the rights to host 
the World Cup in 2010. "Today we celebrate, but tomorrow...  the work begins." It had made an unbeatable 
promise to FIFA. It would spend more money than any host had ever done before. $200 billion. And it delivered. Since then, Qatar has 
built up 8 stadiums. It's built dozens of hotels and 
laid down miles of roads and metro lines to connect 
all that infrastructure. They've even completed a whole new city with golf courses, marinas,
and a theme park. It can brag that it is the first 
Middle Eastern country that's ever hosted a mega sporting event. To be able to do that you have a lot of partners, 
including FIFA itself and all the celebrity ambassadors 
who are vouching for Qatar having these incredible world class stadiums, 
these glowing, glistening hotels. You can come to Doha and feel secure that you're experiencing a world 
that's business savvy that's modern and advanced. While the spotlight was 
supposed to show Qatar as a shining example of development... it also exposed one of its darkest secrets. To power decades of development Qatar has relied on a constant supply 
of temporary, low paid workers mainly from South Asia 
and East Africa. Since the early 2000s, so many foreigners 
have come to work in Qatar they now make up 80% 
of the total population. They build, clean, serve, and staff 
pretty much every industry. When we think about how migrant workers 
recruitment journey commences we think about workers who are in extremely low wage situations. So they are looking for a place 
where they can emigrate... to allow them some upward 
socioeconomic mobility. And Qatar promises them that mobility. Typically, Qatari companies hire 
international recruitment agencies that find workers to send over. They promise these workers 
well-paying jobs in exchange for illegal 
recruitment fees upfront. They also have the workers pay 
for medical tests passports, flights, the visa... all to get the job contract. The workers often take out loans 
in their home countries to pay the agencies incurring 
significant debt. It's a huge transnational... cross-border operation... which completely screws workers
at the start of their journey. Workers often use their family's 
savings to pay for a job in one of the richest countries 
per capita in the world. They arrive in Qatar often to find they're not getting the job 
and salary promised and can't do anything about it... because they've now entered 
the country's kafala system. It's a uniquely restrictive 
immigration system that can take different forms 
in different industries. But they all have one crucial thing 
in common. Kafala legally ties the immigrant's 
immigration status to their employer. Meaning an individual employer has to sponsor their worker which gives them an inordinate amount
of power over them. They can control when 
their employees job ends or if they can change jobs. They can control if and when 
migrants leave the country. Often by confiscating their passports. And they can also control the worker's ability to renew their residency and work permit. But beyond the restrictions on a migrant's 
freedom of movement the system also traps them in a cycle of abuse. And that became evident when Qatar
started preparing for the World Cup. To deliver on the infrastructure 
Qatar promised  it tapped into its migrant pipeline and recruited hundreds of thousands 
of new workers. When Qatar was awarded
 the World Cup in 2010... all of the people involved in decision making knew that the World Cup would be built based on the kafala system. Thousands of migrants turned into 
construction workers to build stadiums like Lusail which became the site 
for human rights abuses that ranged from 
verbal abuse to death. Several investigations into Qatar's stadiums revealed that employers
usually house workers in private camps far 
from city centers... where they are forced to live 
in overcrowded rooms and unsanitary conditions. And at work, their lives 
are put at risk. Migrant workers are often given 
the most dangerous jobs on the site and can be forced to work up to 14 hour days in Qatar's extreme heat. The day this photo of the 
Lusail stadium was taken the high in Doha reached 
109 degrees Fahrenheit. They have spent so many hours 
in the blistering sun... and after that they only permitted a five minute break to eat and they eat standing 
and then go back. Whenever you're also up on a scaffolding,
coming down for a bathroom break might get you in trouble with your boss. And so you end up drinking less water despite the need to have it to avoid heat exhaustion. The number of work-related
migrant deaths surrounding stadiums remains unclear due to Qatar's lack of transparency. In fact, that's the case for 
the entire kafala system. But there have been some clues 
along the way. The death certificates Nepal
has received with the bodies sent back from Qatar show that nearly 120 Nepalese migrants  have died on the job since 2008. The real number, though, 
is likely much higher. In 2019, a study examined the link 
 between Nepalese worker deaths and heat exposure and concluded heatstroke was a likely cause of cardiovascular deaths. That alone could raise the number 
of just Nepali migrant worker deaths to about 600. In addition to living and working 
in abusive conditions many are also not getting paid 
for their work. Workers have repeatedly faced wage theft. So then the debt keeps racking up because the debt still exists 
and in many cases workers have still not been able to 
survive on a daily basis. This is one of the richest countries 
in the world and yet they haven't been able to accelerate its reforms and ensuring people 
have been paid on time. Some workers try to file complaints, 
only to find there are few effective mechanisms in place. And speaking out comes with 
risk of retaliation... which has kept migrants isolated
in the kafala system with increasing debt and 
unable to access justice. After years of mounting pressure from human rights organizations 
and a formal complaint that reached the UN's International 
Labor Organization... in 2017, Qatar signed 
an agreement promising to align its laws 
and labor practices to international standards. In 2020, 10 years after construction 
for the World Cup began Qatar implemented a minimum wage 
for workers and now allows them to terminate their employment contract. But... The challenge with the minimum wage 
laws is enforcement. Employers started pushing back 
against the government. And so even though we haven't seen 
amendments to the legislation. Indeed, we're seeing a watering down 
of reforms. And for the migrants who have already 
been abused to the kafala system. This is all too late. Civil rights groups and 
football associations are now calling for a remedy fund to compensate the migrant workers financially. And some teams have 
taken a stand in the field... and on social media. "We have learned that the decision to host the World Cup in Qatar which resulted in the suffering and harm of countless of 
our fellow workers..." Making this year's World Cup a particularly difficult one to watch. Millions of football fans will still tune in and cheer 
for their favorite teams. But after that final match is over... and the trophy is awarded... stadiums like Lusail will continue 
to be a grim reminder that it all came at 
a human cost. Iran wants the U.S kicked out of the world cup over this tweet the problems right here it's an altered version of the Iranian flag which intentionally removed the emblem of the Islamic Republic from the middle Iran's flag used to look like this up until 1980 after the Iranian Revolution established the Islamic Republic of Iran the new regime replaced the lion emblem with a stylized inscription that represents the word Allah this controversial tweet comes after Iranian fans carrying Flags showing the pre-revolutionary lion emblem were barred from entering Iran's World Cup match against England they were showing solidarity with the current widespread protests against the country's authoritarian regime following the death of 22 year old Masa amini while in police custody in September the Iranian players themselves protested before their match with Wales here they are standing silent during their national anthem the U.S soccer Federation deleted the tweet and has gone back to using the official flag they say the show of solidarity was only meant to last for 24 hours 50 minutes and 25 seconds into the 1986 
World cup match between Argentina and England,   Diego Maradona did something infamous. “And Maradona has scored” This moment goes down in history because because 
of what the commentators could clearly see: “ That is why England is so furious, Maradona 
has punched it in with his left hand” But in 1986, referees didn’t 
have access to instant replays. They had to make judgment calls from the field,   based on their limited 
perspective on what happened. And their subjective view on 
it was that this goal was good. This would never happen today, as technology 
has empowered referees to view moments   again and again from multiple different 
angles before making a final decision. And this year’s world cup features a 
technology that takes that a step further:   Judging when someone is offside — using AI. Alright, so, the simplest way of explaining 
offsides is that the offensive player has   to have two defensive players between them 
and the goal, or be behind where the ball is. Most of the time it's the 
goalkeeper plus one defender. For the most part, if any offensive 
players are behind this second to   last defender while the ball 
is in play, they’re offside. That’s Jeremiah Oshan by the way. Soccer editor of SB Nation. Offside should be an objective call — either 
you’re in front of this line, or behind it. What makes it tricky is that we’re often 
judging with subjective perspectives,   and it can be hard to tell when a 
player is teetering over the line. As this tweet by Dale Johnson of ESPN shows, the 
angle at which you see something really matters. These two images from the March 20th game 
between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest   show the same moment in time from 
two slightly different perspectives In the image on the left #20 
looks like he's in front of #3,   but on the right, it looks like 
their positions are inverted. If audience members only see an angle they feel   is uncompelling, it can leave them 
unsure that the right call was made. Like in this October 7th game 
between England and the US. “Maybe they’re looking at 
an offside call potentially,   but it looks like Sophia Smith is onside” This call shocked even the commentators. “No goal?!?’ “Right there…is where they’re 
saying…Sophia was offside already” This goal would’ve tied the match at 2-2, 
but because it was revoked, England won 2-1. It was revoked, in part, because of VAR. Video 
Assisted Referees were introduced in 2018,   with the intention of making calls 
like this a little more objective. These refs are in a room, away from the match,   but have the advantage of seeing 
the event from 33 camera angles. If they see something they think a 
referee didn’t or couldn’t have seen,   they can suggest that the footage 
be reviewed on the field monitor. This enhances the accuracy and objectivity 
of calls, but it still relies on perspective. For the 2022 World cup, FIFA is introducing 
semi-automated AI offside technology. A sensor in the ball will relay its 
position on the field 500 times a second And 12 motion cameras mounted underneath the roof   of stadiums will use machine learning 
to triangulate players body positions This data can be used to create a 3D visualization 
of a play that can be viewed from any angle, Like in this early test during a September match. The virtual camera is able to fly around, giving 
an almost godlike perspective of the scenario. There are no viewing angle limitations, 
no frame rate delays — it’s a near 1 to   1 recreation of the event — seemingly 
indisputable evidence for referees and   audience members that this player’s 
knee was offside by this much. Subjectivity isn’t being totally removed from   the equation though — the technology 
being only semi-automated means that   human referees will still make the final calls, 
after taking what the AI shows under consideration. And that can be critical because while 
this tech can judge space flawlessly,   it can’t see everything. 
Like a player's intentions. There was an MLS game between LAFC and 
Austin FC where a foul potentially occurred. The referee decided not give the penalty 
for subjective reasons, which was, you know,   his touch was taking him away from 
the ball, which implied that maybe   he wasn't really fouled as much as the 
replay made it kind of look like he was. I thought that was actually a really good use 
of VAR, where he clearly was shown what happened   and he was allowed to make a decision about 
whether or not he thought it was a foul or not. Semi automated AI offside tech is meant to make   referees less reliant on subjective 
perspective. But it’s just a tool. How it’ll change gameplay depends 
on how it gets used and ultimately,   how it gets reconciled with what 
a human being sees on the field. Offside is a complicated rule, and this video 
only scratches the surface on it - but the   new semi automated AI offside system 
is already at work in the world cup. According to ESPN, in an early match between Qatar 
and Ecuador, the system made a correct offside   call, and the 3D representation gave fans clarity 
over a play that was somewhat hard to see — though   there also seemed to be some dissatisfaction 
over how long it took to make that decision. In a game between Argentina and Saudi Arabia,   though, the call was made much faster. 
Ultimately, while this tech can give   human referees information more quickly, 
their decisions will always take some time. this is a low-income neighborhood in Phoenix Arizona I went there in the worst part of Summer to find out why neighborhoods like this one are so much hotter than the rich neighborhoods that you can find just a few miles north of there we filmed these neighborhoods with a thermal drone the hot parts are yellow and orange and the cooler parts are pink and purple and it didn't take long to figure out that the difference is plants in poor neighborhoods people don't own their land and they don't have extra money to spend watering trees so the sun just beams into paved surfaces most people who live here also don't own cars so they're walking in the heat like these folks are that you see there it was 117 degrees Fahrenheit in rich neighborhoods there is this layer of living infrastructure that has a significant cooling effect it puts people there in a better position to handle these extreme heat events that are becoming more frequent this disparity is called tree equity and if you live in the U.S there's a site where you can look up how trees are distributed where you live too Thanksgiving turkeys are massive but they haven't always been that large in 1929 the average turkey weight at Slaughter was 13.2 pounds and in 2021 an average of 32.28 pounds per bird this is because in the 1940s Farmers began breeding turkeys to have huge breasts the birds just kept getting bigger and bigger and in 2003 a group of researchers compared turkeys that hadn't been affected by selective breeding with modern turkeys who had and after three weeks on the same diet modern turkey is weighed nearly twice as much these modern birds are so large they can't stand upright or fly or even reproduce naturally so this Thanksgiving give thanks to artificial insemination or pay a premium for a Heritage bird happy eating It's 2006. This is referee Horacio Elizondo
giving a red card to Zinedine Zidane
because he headbutted Marco Materazzi. Due to budget concerns, let's say
this is the video of it happening. (Muttering) This really was a big deal. It has been sculpted. But this isn't the only famous
part of that match. It also featured Zidane shooting
one of the greatest penalty kicks of all time. What happens when you strip away
all the emotion and psychology and chance of a penalty kick
and look at the data? Where is the best spot
to place a penalty kick? In football, the beautiful game,
the penalty kick places a player here against a keeper. A penalty kick shootout helps
decide a game in the event of a tie. It's the same thing,
but with kickers from each team in succession, to see which team
scores the most after five chances. A PK shootout from Spain 1982 looks pretty similar
to one in Russia in 2018 or Qatar in 2022. So you could record every PK shootout shot
and find out which spot worked best. “The most frustrating part was,
you know, finding the video. I remember, I think
it was a West Germany match. Once I found it, I actually struggled
just to see where the ball went.”  “Which is kind of crazy, if you think about it, because that's
how people watching the games, like they had no idea
what was happening.” “Exactly.”  Pablo López Landeros is a data scientist
and sports-obsessive hobbyist who recorded every World Cup shootout kick from 1982 to 2018. “I had to watch the same shootout
from five different videos if I could find it.” Those shootouts provided a lot of data. He recorded the team,
the foot the kicker shot with, where the keeper went,
whether the ball was on target or not, if it did go in,
and if it was an elimination goal. “Fans get kind of angry
when a match comes to a penalty shootout just because they feel like
it's a coin flip. But if you look at the data,
then it's a very unfair coin flip, just because 70% of the goals
go in.” Keepers affected that. They dove to the left,
from the player's perspective, more than they dove right. They often dive
before seeing a shot's trajectory, so it can really be worth
knowing the probabilities. They stayed in the middle only about 13% of the time, where the
save percentage was also the lowest. These stats work in concert
with where the kicks ended up. If you divide the goal into
nine common zones, it's possible to see where players
kick the most. For all shots, including misses, the lower corners were
the most common targets. But that doesn't mean they were best. These are the success rates by zone,
and there are clear trends. The top middle has a high miss rate,
likely a combination of it getting stopped by the keeper
or missing the goal completely, like in this classic shot
from a 1994 penalty kick shootout. Meanwhile, the most popular area,
that lower left corner, actually has a lower success rate
than the opposite corner. The top spot is that top right corner, where 88% of shots in World Cup shootouts resulted in a goal. When you combine the keeper dives
with the shooting data, that right side
looks like it's undervalued by kickers. So is that the final answer? Always shoot it there if you can? “There's two approaches in statistics,
two main, like, schools of thought , I guess. The frequentist approach,
which is like the clear cut example of what we're doing,
just getting ratios, looking at the data. And then there's this other approach
called the Bayesian approach.”  A Bayesian might
look at increasingly complex predictors rather than a count.
It could go on forever: from the footedness of the kicker...
to the the country the kicker is playing for... (voices
overlap with many reasons). Let's go back to the 1976 European football championship:
Czechoslovakia versus West Germany. This is Antonin Panenka,
and he's holding this trophy because of a penalty kick strategy
that he basically invented. He approaches, looks normal. You think he'll hit it hard in that top
right corner. The keeper dives. But look, Panenka has just gently tapped it in. Today, that's known as a Panenka kick. It's a bluff in poker, a bunt in baseball, a fake punt in that game
with the oblong brown ball. You can have data
that suggests that the top right corner or even those center
zones are kind of undervalued. But ultimately,
the penalty kick is a head game. Which brings us back to Zidane. In 2006,
that greatest penalty kick of all time — it wasn't a cannon to the top right. He approached, the keeper dove to that
statistically likely lower left corner, while Zidane casually sailed it
through the center. A panenka kick. Where it hit the goalpost
and crossed the line into history. it's December 2nd 2010 and the International Federation of association football or FIFA gathered in Switzerland to announce which country would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and they had assembled a powerful audience here's former U.S President Bill Clinton who was there to back the U.S bid and here's Prince William working on behalf of England's bid behind him is the prime minister of the Netherlands and former Prime Minister of Belgium who together submitted a joint bid but even with all this political power in one room the fate of their countries lay in the hands of these guys the 22 FIFA officials with the power to pick the host they would consider the goals for the bidding Nations they were the masters of their Destiny but many of these men have been accused of abusing their power and this was the moment they took it a step too far 2018 FIFA World Cup ladies and gentlemen will be organized in Russia 22 FIFA World Cup is Qatar decision is still one of the worst decisions made by sporting organization it was catastrophic for feedback they've had their whole legacies called into question the announcement set off at Cascade of events that rocked the world of football and nearly broke FIFA a rampant and deep-rooted Corruption corruption and widespread corruption in the interfering and money laundering how did FIFA go from organizing one of the most beloved sporting events in the world to corrupting it [Music] red in the early 20th century football was already super popular mainly in Europe and South America where national teams had begun playing each other so a group of officials in France formed FIFA in 1904 to oversee these competitions and promote the sport in 1930 inspired by the Olympics they decided to start their own tournament the first question was who would host it out of FIFA's 44 member countries at the time six placed bids to host it FIFA's Congress made up of one representative from each country was put in charge of voting for a winner but really this vote was a facade so there was no bid contests as such it was effectively decided Behind Closed Doors by a bunch of commencing men eventually FIFA awarded Uruguay the rights to host the first World Cup and it was a Fitting Place to do it Uruguay had just won the last two Olympic gold medals in football but it also agreed to pay for a lot including the travel expenses of other teams and share the profits with FIFA in July 1930 13 teams came together to play Uruguay beat Argentina in the finals and FIFA made a solid profit mostly from ticket sales the World Cup was a success over the next couple of decades FIFA decided to rotate the tournament between Europe and South America the World Cup wasn't a grandiose thing back then you know there were some upgrades to the stadiums to the existing infrastructure and a piece of marketing going on but the World Cup wasn't wasn't a truly Global event that all changed when it went on TV I am very pleased that this country is acting as hers for the final of the World Cup once the whole world can watch the tournament the host nation became much more visible leading many more countries to want to host one in virtually every country football has now such a following that no government can afford to ignore it through the 60s and 70s FIFA's membership started exploding by the 80s it had close to 170 members mostly divided into six confederations with their own qualifying tournaments and the organization kept getting richer take a look at how FIFA's profits greased deadly with almost every tournament until Boom the 1980s that's when World Cup sponsorships merchandise and TV rights became worth millions all of this money was largely controlled by 24 officials the leaders of each Confederation and some senior officials like the president this group was called the executive committee or xco they had the power to distribute FIFA's money to its member countries for building football fields holding tournaments and establishing youth programs varial this system about any checks and played lots of money was cycling though you know a development money Kickback became almost standard practice in certain parts of the world FIFA leaders began using Corrupt Practices to gain and retain power the corruption that went on suit to the two presidents avalandra's nakedly corrupt and Arlington bribes that's well documented set glass was very different he was addicted to power there was a cabal of nakedly corrupt committee men within people and Mr blatter ignored their excesses because he relied on their support to keep himself in power it was in this culture of corruption that FIFA in 1964 decided to take the vote away from Congress and give it to exco meaning that to host a World Cup countries only needed to win the votes of a majority of exco just 13 of them the fact that such a small body of and had such a powerful position vested among them without any real checks and balances yeah it absolutely made corrupt sheep part of it FIFA's corruption wasn't a secret but they had moved their headquarters to Switzerland long ago and that meant their finances couldn't really be traced to confirm corruption at least for another decade the 2006 World Cup bid was the most competitive in FIFA's history it had previously begun accepting bids from countries outside of Europe and South America it awarded hosting rights to the U.S in 94 and South Korea and Japan in 2002 for the 2006 World Cup five countries wanted to hosted and for good reason I think there's a huge amount of prestige that it brings to not just the country but the leadership of the country it's sort of a a step on the way towards nation building with more and more countries desperate for World Cup Prestige FIFA found ways to play them off each other the bidding countries spent millions of dollars on a two-year Gauntlet of PR events to impress FIFA and try to outdo each other by promising new stadiums hotels infrastructure and lucrative tv offers this became the well-known public-facing side of the bidding process that was the start I think where the World Cup became really very heavily politicized when the 2006 vote came to a close exco chose foreign thanks to one voter abstaining at the last moment journalists had later revealed that Germany had bribed at least four exco members for their votes including the official who abstained who was the first publicly reported incident that revealed FIFA had another layer to its bidding process that involved cutting deals with XCOM members under the table because of a lack of criteria that governed by the World Cup was going to go the old man who stuck on its executive committee were whined and dined and indulged for a significant period of time and in some cases you know quite handsomely renumerated and it happened again for the 2010 World Cup bid which South Africa won allegations would later emerge that it too had paid ex-co-members for their votes this shadier side of the bid was becoming vital to winning and in the next two bids it would destroy the legacy of the World Cup in the lead-up to this announcement FIFA had decided that the 2018 cup would be in Europe four bidders emerged England with its expansive infrastructure was the heavy favor for the same reasons the US was a favorite among five bidders for 2022. but of course this was only part of what it took to win a World Cup bid the countries that did win the vote that day were the ones who could pour the most money into all levels of FIFA system [Music] people often either look Russian you know Rush is very much at the Forefront of everybody's mind as long as someone like Vladimir Putin were behind it then they were always going to be very competitive in that process this is Bonita merciaris she saw the World Cup bidding process from the inside while working on Australia's bid that same year they had the capacity they had the technical capability they had the facilities Russia pledged to spend 10 billion dollars in the use of 16 stadiums but equally important was the fact that they stacked their bid with Rich influential and well-connected people the head of the Russian bid was Igor chevalov the Russian Sports Minister and the president of the Russian Football Association was also heavily involved and that they brought in some of their oligarchs to help support it financially such as Abramovich what does that tell you it tells you we've got money we've got basically [ __ ] you money we can do what we like and they did ex-co-member Rafael salguero would later admit that he agreed to accept one million dollars for his vote from Russia and Jack Warner allegedly received 5 million for hits Russia was using the full weight of its government corporations and connections to win every layer of the vid process just as FIFA had designed it and they weren't the only ones the reason why I thought Qatar was always a possibility was this wasn't just about the World Cup for them it was the government saying this as an important step in their nation building so they really really wanted it and they had Deep Pockets at first glance qatar's bid was a long shot it's a fairly small country with a football team that's never qualified for the World Cup it was also too hot for football temperatures could reach 50 degrees in the summer and in 2010 Qatar only had one major city and one Stadium big enough for a World Cup game but what Qatar did have is some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world with an enormous amount of wealth all controlled by the country's Amir Hamad bin Khalifa altani and they were willing to use it to win the 2022 bit it pledged to spend an astonishing 200 billion dollars on infrastructure and build 12 brand new air-conditioned stadiums a bid other countries couldn't match and they didn't forget about xco British journalists would later allege that a qatari-owned company paid Warner around 2 million dollars for his vote there's also allegations that Qatar made payments to three other exco members but Russia and guitar's advantages went beyond wealth they were the only two authoritarian countries in the contest meaning they were Freer to work the shadier side of the bid you know the Australian World Cup that was very well funded as well but it was all publicly funded and every every scent was meant to be accounted for you know maybe you could move stuff around spreadsheets and so on but if you're going to engage in the dark arts you had to be very very careful whereas if you were coming from an authoritarian State like Russia or like Qatar you you can do what you like created a bidding process that would inevitably be won by the countries with the most cash and the least accountability and the thing is Russian Qatar got away with it but the scandals that followed nearly destroyed FIFA allegations emerged weeks after the 2010 vote but it wasn't until 2015 that the FBI arrested several FIFA officials in Zurich and launched investigations into Decades of FIFA's dealings even though no one's been put on trial for taking bribes from Qatar since the vote 13 of the 22x co-voters present that year have either been indicted or banned from FIFA at some point amidst these scandals ceplatter resigned in disgrace so in 2016 in an attempt to clean up its act FIFA gave congress the power to vote on World Cup hosts once again but the 2018 World Cup in Russia went on as planned generating record revenue for FIFA and Qatar is predicted to do the same are we comfortable wish the human rights record of Qatar and Russia are they comfortable with what Russia is doing at the moment that decision has been a great enabler for both those countries it's a decision that just doesn't stand the test of time at all they didn't get it right then and it's not right now foreign [Music] [Music] hi there okay so this pretty simple chart actually does a good job of explaining the Disney CEO drama the old CEO and now new CEO Bob Iger is here and this is Bob chapac he's the guy who got stuck in the middle in 2020 Iger handed power over to jpac and the stock went down a ton now you might be thinking hey that's not fair what about kovid but then if you graph the S P 500 at the same time you start to see the problem see the S P 500 it's basically the broader Market all the big companies and the gap between the value of the broader market and Disney is huge it becomes he does the Ron Bob have the job zone for shareholders and they decide to say bye Bob oh no and hi Bob for hundreds of years sweet potatoes across the United States have been masquerading as yams the truth is most Americans have probably never eaten a real yam a sweet potato is the orange flesh potato you'll see today in your Supermarket but originally all sweet potatoes had white or yellowish flesh real yams are not commercially grown in the U.S you probably have to visit an international grocery store to find them they look like this the word yam was probably derived from a West African word potentially one of these three today more than 90 of EMS are grown in West Africa where they've been a staple food for thousands of years and during enslavement it's likely that the West African people use the word yam for the root vegetable they found in the new world the sweet potato did you know that a 2020 paper had a surprising theory about why fewer families were having three kids found that in states with car seat laws that mandated car seats stay longer there was a 0.73 percentage Point drop in the number of three kid families the theory is that it's because it was harder to fit three car seats in the car I uh I buy it in the 1800s scientists started to become curious about something they called the falling cat problem which poses the question why does a cat always fall on its feet it might seem unimportant but it's an ability that appears to defy one of Newton's laws of physics the law of conservation of angular momentum basically you can't begin a rotation midair you would have to push off of something to create momentum so why does it look like a cat can do it in 1894 a physiologist and Pioneer of Photography approached the problem using a special camera he developed to capture individual stages of motion Mare's photo sequence revealed that by arching its back the cat was able to separate its body into two parts and in the blink of an eye independently rotate the front part leaving the back Parts splayed out and then do the inverse of that motion to bring its back legs around these two rotations counter each other's momentum and Newton's law isn't broken these people are in line to vote early in Philadelphia nothing unusual about that except these voters had already voted they cast their ballots by mail but they were missing one thing an accurate handwritten date the lawsuit that got these ballots thrown out was filed by the Republican National Committee it's part of a larger effort led by allies of former president Donald Trump many of whom ran for election in the 2022 midterms in the news you'll often hear this group referred to as election deniers and while it's true they do still deny that Joe Biden won in 2020. what they can do is just as important as what they say in 2020 nearly three quarters of U.S voters cast their ballots early or by mail but these politicians want to limit and even get rid of these practices altogether this plan is what motivated thousands of volunteers across the country ahead of the 2022 midterms they didn't just fight election deniers in a lot of places they beat them and how they did it could be the key to protecting free fair and open elections in the U.S for years to come let's take another look at those mail-in ballots in Philadelphia on Monday I got like 15 calls and like 10 text messages from a variety of like volunteers and like political people about my ballot the day before the election I got a text from a friend like thousands of other voters in Pennsylvania Kristen and Zoe had already verified their identities by providing a Pennsylvania issued ID number when they applied for their mail-in balance their ballots had been postmarked and stamped by the Philadelphia Board of Elections on the day they were received and yet these lists came out that list people who would sit in a mail-in ballot that was invalid for some reason your name showed up I was like disappointed myself for a second I'm like how did I date this incorrectly like I really thought I was following all the you know the rules and what the guidelines are to have how to fill it out Pennsylvania has had mail-in voting since 2019 and in every election since then multiple judges have ruled that missing date should not mean a ballot gets thrown out but just weeks before the last day to vote in 2022 a group of Republican politicians sued to try to get a different ruling and it worked the candidate at the top of the ticket for Republicans gubernatorial Canada Doug mastriano was like noted election denier I am the elections director for the Mid-Atlantic region For the Working Families party I'm a proud resident of Philadelphia Pennsylvania the greatest city in the world we knew that there was a risk that people would use mail-in voting specifically as a way of attacking the legitimacy of the elections overall we ended up with over 1300 unique volunteers who are calling voters to help them cure ballots and make sure their voices were heard Doug mastriano lost his bid for governor and and Democrats now control the Pennsylvania state house if enough State reps want to change that rule about the handwritten dates on the outside of envelopes they can like mastriano in Pennsylvania one of the candidates for Governor in Michigan Tudor Dixon had also cast doubt on the 2020 election results more than half the state's 5.5 million votes in 2020 were cast by mail and even though Republicans in the state senate authored a report that found no evidence of widespread or systemic fraud that didn't stop Tudor Dixon from tweeting about stolen elections and it didn't stop the republican-led state legislature from introducing 39 bills to dramatically limit mail-in and early voting there are many many reasons why people would want to vote by absentee ballot but for some reason some politicians want to make it harder Kim's organization voters not politicians recruited more than 300 volunteers and knocked down over a hundred thousand doors I remember on Election Day I woke up at about six o'clock in the morning I went all up and down my street I really want to talk to you today about prop 2 is going to give us all the constitutional rights about without harassment or interference included by our own legislators it's going to give us all nine days of true early in-person voting if you rode through Detroit you will see this area especially where I live it was covered with prop 2 PSI Yes on Prop 2. you're going to be able to opt in to you know a system where you can request your bill at once and then get it for every future election it was worth it you know in the end it paid off prop 2 passed in Michigan by a large margin and Tudor Dixon lost but even if she hadn't because of prop 2 Michigan's Constitution now contains an explicit promise to the state citizens that their votes will be counted I'm passionate about voting rights I know what my ancestors went through so I'm here to fight for democracy and uh I'll be here until I guess I leave this earth the issue of voting free from interference was front and center in Arizona too I have been so pleased to hear of all you Vigilantes out there that want to camp out at these drop boxes right Carrie Lake one of the candidates for Arizona governor tweeted her support for this surveillance project smile you might be on camera so we're gonna have people parked out there watching you and they're going to follow you to your car and get your license plate it's gonna happen she was right it did happen armed Vigilantes dressed in tactical gear guys and body armor carrying guns and taking your picture pole stalkers people who've been staking out ballot drop boxes under the guise of preventing widespread voter fraud people spoke up they dropped off their ballots and then they filed complaints with the Secretary of State there's a group of people hanging out near the ballot Dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approach the Dropbox and accusing us of being a mule camo Cloud people taking pictures of me and my license plate as I dropped our mail-in ballots in the Box a pro-democracy group filed a lawsuit and the judge issued a temporary restraining order the people voted and Kerry Lake lost by a very small margin the ballot drop boxes she threatened to remove the early voting she threatened to cut off they're both safe for now the US doesn't have one big election it has over 3 000 small elections run mostly by Volunteers in high school gyms and libraries and community centers and that can make it easy for some politicians to cast doubt on their efficacy out of self-interest but it also means that anyone who cares about making them actually work can go from a bystander to an active participant in the fight to keep democracy alive and well anyone can go from standing in line to standing behind the table thank you guys so much for watching one of the things we're trying to do on this channel is really just be like your One-Stop shop for context for the news like if something is happening you're seeing lots of headlines about it and you want to dig deeper you want to know more like that's what we're here for one of the ways we're actually trying to do this is by answering your questions you can send us a question and we will dig in and try to find some answers for you like a couple weeks ago Kim and I made a video about the ethics of zoos that came from an amazing question from one of our subscribers girls a few months back Joss made an Incredible video about the history of unions and why they didn't gain more of a foothold in the service industry in the U.S these are the kinds of questions that we love digging into stuff that comes from your brain like you guys are smart and we want to work with you so check out the form it's linked in the description of this video fill it out ask us a question and we'll get some answers thanks for watching so this is a chart of the approval ratings of presidents two years after they were elected you can pause to get the gist here and this is a chart of how those presidents parties did in the election that happened that year you might want to pause here too there's a trend unpopular president huge losses in Congress and Biden's approval rating was the lowest of them all but what you'd expect to happen didn't something was different there's a chart of special election results for congress over the last two years some elections that Democrats won some that they lost not much of a pattern but each of these districts has what the website 538 calls a partisan lien how it typically votes relative to everyone else and sometimes Democrats did worse than that and sometimes they did better and if you chart that difference you do see a pattern start to emerge right here in late June the event driving this was the overturning of Roe v Wade on June 24th which ended the federal right to abortion first term presidents almost always lose tons of seats in Congress and the major exceptions are driven by huge events like the New Deal the Cuban Missile Crisis in 9 11 and what these numbers suggest is that the overturning of Roe v Wade has something in common with those events foreign remember my dad saying the Chinese language is 5 000 years old and there's literally no word for what you do in Chinese good morning [Music] I love what I do I want to be able to do it as long as I can whether that's in 10 years or 20 years I want to learn from the people who are pushing the boundaries of Wellness foreign [Music] nature to Center myself but if I don't have those opportunities and I'm traveling I just do a simple meditation practice on the spot that always helps ground me in a way that's really helpful for managing stress I'm able to observe an awareness of my awareness it's kind of a detached sense I'm really the most unlikely candidate to be a filmmaker a photographer or or a professional climber you know I grew up in this Midwestern town and you know I was the only Asian kid around and I had a fairly strict upbringing my parents were you know Chinese immigrants and you know there's really only a few career paths you could be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor which was As I Grew Older the furthest thing from what I would want to do I still remember that first time like I was climbing in Joshua Tree National Park and sitting next to the campfire and thinking okay yeah this is what I want to do I want to climb and I became dirt bag climber and ski bomb I found all of these people and friends that lived on The Fringe of society and had chosen a very different life it made a lot of sense to me but it made no sense to my parents right now there are some incredible people who are disrupting perceptions of who's a runner a climber and an athlete in general [Music] like Latoya chantes now an ultra Runner whose breaking conventions of what strength and fitness look like according to a recent Vox study 84 percent of people don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to health I've completed over 200 races five Ultra marathons and they're the longest distance is 100k my goal is to become a half Ironman hopefully in the next five years most times for me the run is high comes from a runner's suck so when I'm going through these moments where I'm just like I can't do this I can't do this I don't want to do this anymore when is it going to be over I'm looking at my Fitbit I have about five more miles on here but I still have five more miles on here I started to just give myself Grace I start to loosen up my shoulders a little bit I get into that shride I start to open up I focus on my breath it becomes almost like a mantra running is not intimidating people are intimidated being told constantly that you're not a runner because you do not have a runner's body that you are promoting obesity just for existing just for just for thriving in this body it is the ability to challenge yourself to be your greatest at that very moment that's Wellness to me not this idea that it has to be tied to weight loss or the body mass index that is completely outdated or that it has to be tied to somebody else's perception of you it could be for your mental well-being it could be the way that you finally get in some type of time for you maybe it is the opportunity for you to be able to connect with other people that is Wellness to me my Fitbit keeps me honest I'm able to look back at these metrics over weeks months to see how am I progressing over time are there any type of tweaks that I want to make to my training my Fitbit tells me everything that I need to know to go out for the next adventure don't look at it as I have to have it right the first time there's nothing wrong with shifting around a goal there's nothing wrong with your goal not matching everyone else's try it the courage to try is the ability to do magnificent things I feel really fortunate that I found something that I just love doing and wouldn't be doing whether I was getting paid to do it or not because I love climbing it's great for my mental health in fact for nearly half of people exercise is crucial to stress relief but if you're not enjoying the physical activity you're getting you don't have the motivation to get out there and do it places like vital Climbing gym are using non-traditional classes to make Fitness more accessible and fun Fitness just doesn't have to be about running it can really just be anything that you find enjoyment in and it just be really fun for you really remember the first time I stepped into Vito just the energy I got from this place the sense of community we offer climbing clinics we offer bouldering 101 we offer technique classes we have yoga we have Ariel silks vital is definitely not your traditional gym it's also a space that really teaches you how to carve your own path for yourself in high school I was actually big into weightlifting and I think I kind of burned myself out with that so I kind of don't really touch the weights too often climbing is more stimulating and a lot more enjoyable for me it's really good for my mental health Wellness is not just about physical health it involves asking yourself questions like am I happy am I enjoying this how do I feel about myself and action wow that looks great I think being a director on location you have to have a lot of focus there's a lot of variables that you're managing and endless questions that you have to answer for your crew for the talent you know just thinking about the stakes at hand and thinking about the potential outcomes of an Endeavor like that you know can keep you up at night sleep is so critical for overall well-being and wellness I function a lot better when I get you know a good amount of sleep a Vox study found that 87 percent of people say quality sleep is important but only 48 report getting quality sleep so returning to an expert who can help us learn how to hack our sleep schedules and improve our rest your brain is highly active while you're asleep Jacqueline Toomey is a sleep expert whose organization is helping First Responders get the quality sleep they need I am a firm believer that sleep is not just a pillar of Health but it is actually the foundation of health so in the beginning of the class I share information that spreads Awareness on the importance of sleep and then we address culture what is our perception of sleep in our greater culture do we value it do we disregard it who here has heard or said I'll sleep when I'm dead yeah I teach tools that are evidence-based so these are body breath and awareness tools lift the chest chin take a deep breath in feel the chest opening I'm actually at the busiest house on my department and we can get up anywhere from two three to six times at night and we're there for 48 hours at a time we are under a lot of stress when we're at work trying to decompress and go to bed after that can be pretty tough one thing that I look for when I'm tracking my sleep is how much time I've spent in rem which is rapid eye movement and also known as dream sleep and Delta or slow wave sleep and so you can create a fleet profile and set goals for yourself so that you're getting adequate time in your deep sleep and run [Music] I already checked my daily Readiness score this morning but since I'm about to go climbing I just want to look at my recommended active Zone minutes there's this moment when you're out in the mountains or out in the ocean climbing skiing or surfing when everything else Falls away and is what I consider Wellness like that moment where Everything feels transcendent I'm a very unlikely professional high altitude ski Mountaineer or climber I think that just goes to show anybody who wants to try something that might not necessarily be the mold that they were put into but that they can do it [Music] foreign [Music] I've just arrived at the 
most dangerous place to be a pedestrian 
in the US. US-19 in New Port Richey, Florida
on the state's Gulf Coast. A group of urban planners looked at 
the entire US roadway network and identified 60 pedestrian 
fatality hotspots: 1000 meter corridors where pedestrian deaths 
are most common. And this 1000 meter stretch 
topped their list. 17 fatal crashes here in a 
16 year study window. Pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. have been creeping up 
in the past decade thanks mostly to the way road infrastructure 
favors cars above all else. And nowhere is that more clear 
than right here. US-19 runs north to south, 
down Florida's Gulf Coast and bisects the small community 
of New Port Richey cutting off its downtown from 
its coastal features. Which means traveling east to west, 
or vice versa requires you to cross it. It's a type of roadway that would 
feel familiar to Americans. Car culture is visible everywhere  from the volume of drivers to 
the businesses alongside it. And along US-19, drivers 
are moving fast. The posted speed limit on this stretch 
is 45 miles per hour. But driving speeds appear to be
much faster than that. Traffic safety experts 
will tell you that speed is one of the most important factors 
in pedestrian safety. A street design report established that traveling up to 15 miles per hour drivers have a wide peripheral vision. They only need 25 feet 
to come to a full stop and the risk of fatality if 
they hit someone is 2%. Once drivers are traveling over 
40 miles per hour their peripheral view narrows. They require more room to stop and the risk of fatality 
climbs to 85%. Enforcing speed limits 
can only do so much. The built environment, 
as we call it is sending a message that this 
is for high speed travel. Robert Schneider led the 
pedestrian safety study that found that 97% of the roadways with high pedestrian fatalities 
had multiple lanes. At its widest, US-19 
spans 8 lanes which allows cars to pass 
and move faster than if they were stuck behind 
another car in a single lane. And the road is straight as an arrow. No curves that would nudge 
drivers to take it slow. The type of businesses along US-19
support a car-first fast driving environment: Big box stores and strip malls  that sit far away from the road 
with large parking lots in between. And billboards displayed up high for an audience of fast drivers 
rather than at human scale. Arterial roads like US-19 not quite a street, but 
not quite a highway were built to keep this
high speed traffic off of nearby residential 
neighborhoods. But this type of sprawling development grew along arterial roads creating a dangerous mix 
of car centric design with the possibility that pedestrians, 
cyclists, or public transit users would want to access these business centers. And it explains why arterial roads 
only make up 13% of US roadways but are the site of 59% 
of pedestrian deaths. Now, let's relate that to US-19's 
pedestrian design or lack thereof. or... lack thereof. Not everyone can 
or wants to drive but they still have to get to 
where they're going. I walk along US-19 about 3 or 4 times
a week, to and from work. It's a lot cheaper than taking the bus.  I was crossing the crosswalk someone was turning and just
bumped right into me.  I had a few bumps, bruises, you know,
some cracked ribs. I have a hearing disability... which causes severe vertigo
and issues with balance. So it's not wise to drive. Every single day... I am... afraid of either getting... bumped or yelled at or honked at or cut off... every day. As a pedestrian trying 
to cross the road I'd have to choose between
this crosswalk... or this one, which is nearly 
950 meters away. That's a 30 or 40 minute walk. A distance so far that it 
encourages risky jaywalking. There's a better term for that, 
it turns out. Cross at a location where 
there's no signal. In the profession, we tend to
try to say that. Jaywalk is a term that was developed by the auto interests 
in the early 1900s to essentially shame people who were crossing in the 
middle of the block which had been okay socially 
prior to the 1920s, 1930s. The sidewalks are constantly interrupted by the curb cuts into parking lots which introduce more opportunities
to interact with  a moving car without a signal. I first tried this crosswalk, 
waited for 10 minutes only to find out it didn't work,
so I tried the next crossing. Robert Schneider told me that the longer you wait at a crosswalk the more pedestrians are incentivized 
to cross before the signal. Finally, once you do cross you have to traverse the length 
of the eight lanes... which puts US-19 in the company 
of 70% of the hot spot roadways in Robert Schneider's study that force pedestrians 
to cross five or more lanes. And all of this is so much more treacherous when there is less light. There's a concept in urbanism called safety in numbers. The more pedestrians there are in an environment, the safer it is to be one. There aren't many pedestrians 
along US-19 which makes the high number of fatalities even more alarming. The lower the median household income
in a neighborhood the more common it is for pedestrian
fatalities to occur there. And that's because bad street design  and arterial roads like US-19 are more likely to exist in those communities. Improving pedestrian design
would invite more people to walk making it safer for people 
who have no other choice. Florida transportation officials 
are spending millions to improve this stretch of US-19. Like reducing the speed limit, 
adding more crosswalks adding more lights, and delaying
green light to intersections. The mayor of New Port Richey 
told me he favors adding pedestrian and cyclist 
bridges here to get people off the road entirely. These are expensive solutions and 
unpopular among drivers. But not nearly as hard as 
the long term goal which is undoing decades 
of car centric design like removing lanes, adding 
street parking instead and developing retail and 
housing in parking lots. A built environment that will get 
more people on foot more drivers to slow down 
and will save lives. It's not a quick solution, but something we need to actually be
starting to move towards... rather than continuing to build the sprawling development that we know is dangerous. This video is an adaptation of a 
Vox.com story by reporter Marin Cogan. Local officials and journalists have credited her reporting for raising awareness about pedestrian safety along this deadly stretch of road. I highly recommend you 
check out her story  that I linked in the description below. Thanks so much for watching.  Oh. You think darkness 
is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it. Ahem. That's my impression of Bane in
2012's "The Dark Knight Rises" when he's chastising Batman for using the dark 
to his advantage. Now my impression sucks, but 
there's arguably no character more associated with the movie 
darkness than Batman. With 13 on screen appearances 
across nearly 60 years Batman is one of the longest 
running franchises. And when you take films from 
across different eras and compress them into one 
big barcode looking thing they can serve as a sort of proxy for a story about the 
darkening of movies and TV in general. In the 1960s, Batman movies burst 
with color and brightness but by 2022's "The Batman"... I mean, just look at it. It's a movie that lives 
and breathes darkness. So much darkness that 
some audience members have complained that it's almost too dark. You can see the same pattern 
in the Harry Potter films... and in Game of Thrones... and the Spider-Man franchises. So, yeah, it's not just you complaining. Movies and TV shows 
are getting darker and there are a few reasons why. Check out this graph by Stephen Follows a data researcher for the film industry. He charted the top 100 grossing films 
in the U.S. from 2000 to 2015 and what type of camera they were shot on. This point here. It's where movies flipped
from film to digital. And this shift from 
 film to digital is part of the reason 
for this shift. The biggest difference between shooting dark scenes 
on film versus digital is not knowing exactly 
what you have. My name is Brett Jutkiewicz. I'm a cinematographer. Some of my recent work includes 
"Ready or Not" "The Black Phone", "Scream"
and "Stranger Things" season four. When shooting a movie on film, there is way less room for error and way more opportunities 
to make mistakes. For one, there are no monitors that'll 
show filmmakers exactly what a shot is going to look like
before they are recorded. There are video taps 
for film cameras but they're really just a reference 
for framing. It's really not representative of how the image will actually look. It's using a light meter and  measuring the light in 
the scene and  trusting that you're getting 
what you want. If you do shoot a dark scene 
on film  there isn't much room 
to correct it later because the information in the 
darkest parts of the image is essentially lost. The overall image just becomes grainier. And in Hollywood, there's 
little room for error. You really can't do 
a scene again just paying for the day, 
the location. There's really no room for going back and redoing something if 
it comes out too dark or if it's not exactly what you want. Take a look at these two shots. This one from 2002's "Spider-Man" 
was shot on film. This one from 2012's 
"The Amazing Spider-Man"  was shot on digital. See how much brighter  Spider-Man and Mary Jane's 
faces are? With film, the safest bet is to shoot 
with plenty of light even if scenes are meant to be dark. Shooting digitally allows you to take more chances with darkness 
because digital shoots usually have high-quality 
digital monitors. The way that it allows people 
to see the image as it will be when it's finished lends itself to taking more risks. Plus, digital cameras are generally 
more sensitive to light. They do capture more into the highlights and more into the shadows 
than a film stock can. Digital cameras like the one we're using 
to film this right now shoot in what's called 
a log format. This essentially is when 
the camera sensor is capturing a really flat, 
grayish image in order to preserve information
in the highlights and the shadows. Once you bring that footage into
a color grading software you have tons of room to push 
that footage around. And instead of losing detail in the darkest parts of the image 
like you would with film you can push it way brighter and 
still retain that detail. And the overall image doesn't 
get super grainy either. Now, I know what you're thinking. Lots of very successful dark scenes 
have been shot on film from "The Godfather" to "The Dark Knight" 
to "Euphoria". It's not impossible to do 
dark scenes on film. It's just harder and riskier. Regardless of film or digital. Shooting dark scenes is always a balance between information and 
artistic intentions. There was an episode 
in "Severance". There's shots in that sequence 
where you really are only seeing just a sliver of his face. And this sea of darkness and watching it,
I was struck by it. There's instances where you really want to focus 
on one thing in the frame and using darkness as a tool to kind of guide the eye 
in that way. Darkness only feels like a problem when it feels like we're missing out 
on visual information that we think we're supposed to see. It's tricky because at the same time as you want to create a mood 
and a feeling for the audience... you don't want to also get 
in the way of them  enjoying the show. It's a balance. Filmmakers are using the best screens the world has to offer in  
perfectly dark rooms when tweaking the brightness of the content
that we're all watching. So filmmakers choose to make something 
look right on the best screen and they expect that vision to trickle down
to whatever screen you end up watching it on 
later on down the line. It's impossible to know how people are going to watch it in the end. And if you make it look good on 
a low quality television then when people are 
in the theater it's not going to look 
right for them. So, yes, what you're watching is dark... but it's also exactly what the filmmaker 
 wanted you to see. There's hope that movie darkness 
is still evolving for the better. "Ad Astra" and "Nope" were filmed 
using regular cameras and infrared cameras. Infrared cameras allow filmmakers 
to essentially steal light from the sections of the light spectrum
that are invisible to the human eye. It also creates a black sky,
which is useful for compositing. When blending the two images together it can produce a darkness that allows you to peer much deeper into the dark expanse than 
normal movie darkness would. okay if you live in New Mexico and you have young kids this one's for you I have been looking into ca1 that's Constitutional Amendment one you probably remember back in 2021 when New Mexico got a ton of attention for offering a free year of pre-K to every child in the state the problem is that money came from the federal government's coveted Relief Fund and that money it's gonna run out State leaders had to come up with another way to pay for it and here's what they're planning to do basically New Mexico has this trust fund the money comes from oil and gas revenues from public lands right now it's worth 26 billion dollars that's billion with the B the New Mexico Constitution says that you have to take out five percent every year to help pay for education and hospitals and other public services so when you go to the polls on Election Day and you see ca1 what it's going to ask you is if you want to increase that amount from five percent to 6.25 that increase works out to about 250 million dollars which is more than enough to pay for free pre-k for every child in the state one less thing about ca1 it's going to be on the back of your ballot so flip that baby over okay if you live in Oregon listen up there is a race for governor coming up and whoever wins will be able to influence a lot of climate policy in your state but for the first time since Reagan that could be a Republican here take a look so the current governor Kate Brown is term limited so she can't run but as you can see it's a really tight race between the Republican and Democrat who were running whoever wins will decide the fate of Oregon's cap and trade program this is something Democrats have tried to pass for years now it essentially keeps a greenhouse gas emissions down by targeting the industries that produce the most carbon like propane Diesel and gas Distributors Republican legislators block these efforts twice so the current governor created it through an executive order instead Oregon businesses are expected to get on board pretty soon unless a new governor kills it Drazen has already promised to tear it up on day one and cotec would keep it you know how when you meet someone from Michigan and they show you their hand and that's sort of like supposed to tell you something about where they're from this isn't actually about that but it is about Michigan it's about prop three when you see it on the ballot it's going to look like this the main thing prop 3 would do is add an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing each individual the right to make their own decisions about anything related to pregnancy including abortion if this passes it would make the status of abortion in Michigan a lot more clear Michigan has actually had an abortion ban on the book since 1931. it's one of the strictest in the country with no exceptions for rape or incest and a maximum prison sentence of four years for anybody caught helping someone in an abortion it hasn't been enforced for decades but now that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has said that states should regulate abortion some Republican County Prosecutors in Michigan are saying that they actually will enforce this 1931 abortion ban if prop 3 passes then that old Ban gets invalidated a Novo down prop 3 would basically leave the question of abortion up to the state legislature which is dominated by Republicans in both houses the reason we call each other guys actually traces back to a real guy this guy guy Fox who on the 5th of November 1605 tried to blow up part of the British Parliament building using barrels of gunpowder and assassinate members of the monarchy in the process Fox was caught and the 5th of November has been observed as a British holiday ever since with massive fireworks displays and children traditionally constructing guys to throw onto a bonfire Effigies that usually represent Fox but any kind of hideous or unlikable creature can be a guy in the 1800s guy became a British slang term meant as an insult but as guy became more commonly used over time its negative connection to the original guy faded away especially in the U.S where Fox's story was less known now a guy can be anyone and isn't necessarily a reference to this guy I made a video about how the midterm elections for Congress are going to end and these are the three possible outcomes one two three this is number one this is Democrats keeping both houses of Congress it's the status quo it's already let them pass a lot of things including big deal climate legislation if they get more time with this Arrangement Democrats will probably try to pass a national right to abortion Universal Pre-K a labor Rights Act but the party in power usually loses seats in Congress during a midterm election this is scenario number two Republicans taking the House of Representatives it's not enough for them to pass their agenda for that you need all three but it is enough to block legislation especially the kind that the government needs to pass in order to stay open or to keep the financial system stable if they refuse to pass those they have a lot of Leverage and there's almost no limit to what they can demand can they dismantle with the Democrats have done on climate that way maybe last one is this number three the Republicans get the Senate and for this one you need to understand that the last time this scenario happened the Republicans use this power to completely make over the federal courts that's how Roe v Wade got overturned it's why all these gun laws are going away and the same thing is happening to voting rights and Republicans getting the Senate again would basically be opening up phase two of that so yeah pick which one of those you want vote On November 8th, the US will hold  475 separate federal elections. If you vote in the US, you can vote 
in at least one of them. The results will determine 
who controls these: the two houses of Congress. After the 2020 election, Democrats
controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as 
the Presidency. The three bodies 
that have to align if you want to make 
new laws. And they did. But even when government is split 
between the parties. Each one of these bodies 
still holds tremendous power
on its own. So the importance of what 
this picture looks like can't be overstated. And each one of these 
three outcomes contains a very different story about the next 2 years in the US. Scenario 1: Democrats
keep both houses. This is not considered 
the most likely outcome. The Democrats have gotten a ton passed
in the last two years. My name's Li Zhou. I am a politics reporter 
at Vox. I've been covering the hill for 
over 6 years now. So if Democrats get to stick with 
this arrangement...  then what? One of the big things that
they've said they'll do  is codify Roe V. Wade 
into federal law, and that would mean a national protection for 
access to abortion. Paid family leave, subsidies
for child care, universal pre-K, the PRO act which 
protects people's ability  to organize and unionize. But there's a catch 
to all this. And it's connected to the reason Democrats 
haven't done any of it yet. These laws are subject to a rule 
the Senate has (It's called the filibuster) that requires not 51 out of 100 
votes to pass a law... but 60 out of 100. And Democrats want to 
change that rule. Just... not all Democrats. They have this 50/50
very narrow majority but they only have 48 who are actually 
down to change the rules. And so they need at least 52, is kind of the magic number  that Democrats have been 
hoping for, in order to both change the rules, and then 
pass a lot of the bills that we've talked about. Scenario 2: Republicans win 
the House of Representatives.  When the House is controlled
by a different party  than the presidency 
or the Senate. That gives them a lot of leverage. My name's Dylan Matthews. I'm a reporter at Vox. They also have a lot of control 
over investigations. They can run committees. They can subpoena people. They can make people testify. 
They can dredge up documents. We can see that by going back to the last time the government 
looked like this. One thing that the GOP majority in 2011 and onward did 
was investigate the Obama administration extensively. The "fast and furious" 
gun smuggling scandal, on the Benghazi scandal after 
those attacks happened in 2012. "-Easily obtained...."
"Well, but Senator, again—" "Within hours, if not days." After Democrats won in 2018... They also launched 
a bunch of investigations into the Trump administration,  one of which culminated in the first impeachment. Investigations can matter a lot. More often than not, 
they're kind of a sideshow. My sense ahead of time is that that lever of power 
will be less important than the ability to block 
must-pass legislation on spending and 
the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling fight in 2011 was one of the first stories I covered 
at The Washington Post. The debt ceiling is this limit  on how much the federal government 
can borrow. Almost the entirety of the 
international financial system is built on the idea that 
US Treasury bonds are a safe asset. Once you hit the debt ceiling,
they are no longer a low risk asset. That would lead to investments, and borrowing, and homes 
and everything being way more expensive 
throughout the world which would be a pretty major 
financial crisis. You need the House and Senate 
and the President  to agree for the debt
ceiling to be raised. The most dramatic example of that happened in the summer of 2011. The debt ceiling was coming 
due in early August. That gave House Speaker John Boehner 
and members of his caucus incredible leverage. Unless 
the Obama administration was willing to let the debt ceiling 
be breached, they kind of had to come to a deal. Ultimately, $2.1 trillion in cuts to the National Parks, Head Start programs, 
the FBI National Institutes of Health,
the National Science Foundation. One area of the budget 
is pandemic prevention. The choice that was made 
to invest a lot less in preventing pandemics 
as a part of this deal.. It certainly couldn't have helped. I mostly expect this Congress
to be more hard-line, in terms of their demands and 
unwillingness to compromise. Scenario 3: Republicans win 
the House and the Senate. The Senate has to confirm 
any federal judge. I'm Ian Millhiser,
I'm a lawyer and I cover the Supreme Court 
for Vox. The president nominates anyone who's going to be appointed 
to the federal bench but they don't get the job unless a majority of 
the Senate votes to confirm that individual. There's a little more than 800 active judges in the federal system. There are district judges 
who try cases, Court of Appeals or 
circuit judges. And then there's 
the Supreme Court. The last time we had a Democratic president 
and a Republican Senate was in 2015 and 2016. Under Barack Obama, 
the Republican Senate basically hit stop on 
Supreme Court confirmations and on nearly all 
Court of Appeals confirmations. And then, of course,
what happened was Republicans held all those seats open until Donald Trump 
got into office and then filled them 
with Republicans. Trump's judges have 
overruled Roe v. Wade, which is the reason why abortion 
is now illegal in many US states. A sweeping reinterpretation of the Second Amendment,
our firearms amendment. And now judges are striking down 
gun laws left and right. A wholesale attack on voting rights, particularly on the Voting Rights Act,
which is the law that prevents race discrimination. At the lower court level, we just had three Trump judges 
declare the entire Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau unconstitutional. If Republicans take the Senate then they can block the confirmation 
of any judge. If you hold those seats open, they're still vacant when a Republican
comes to office, and then the Republican 
can fill them. The Republican Party which is an institution 
that wants power... has figured out that if 
it controls the judiciary, it can gain, potentially, 
a permanent veto power  over any law that's enacted over any regulatory policy
that's enacted regardless of who controls 
the White House and regardless of who 
controls the Congress. They're going after 
voting rights hard. And if you don't have 
the right to vote then you don't have any rights. Eventually, the voters who've
been disenfranchized don't have any recourse because they have no way to change
who controls the government. And the government is controlled by people
who don't share their interests. So that's the worst case scenario. Right now, we're still 
at the point where you know, elections are the 
best method that can be used in order to reverse
America's democratic decline. Out of the 475 individual House and Senate elections
that will decide control of Congress... most of them are not close races. The election will really be decided 
by these races... only about 1 out of 7 
House elections and just a handful of Senate races. And so if you live in 
one of those places... it means you have a lot of power over 
which one of these we choose. Let's say I want to drive from Vox's 
New York office to our office in DC. That produces about 
112 kilograms of CO2. But in an electric vehicle or EV that same drive produces 
zero emissions. It's all thanks to this 
rechargeable battery a lithium ion battery that 
powers the car's electric motor. If all road vehicles were electric we'd be able to wipe out about 
18% of all CO2 emissions the most prominent greenhouse gas 
driving climate change. But producing these powerful batteries 
can do real environmental damage. Nickel, the key ingredient 
in EV batteries has to be mined and smelted in a process that contaminates 
waterways drives deforestation and 
pollutes the air. And there's no better place to see this than outside nickel processing plants 
in Indonesia  next to where people 
like Asvina live. These particles are finer 
than beach sand and are harmful when inhaled.  The same nickel paving the way 
for a green future is causing life threatening problems  for the people who live near 
its production centers. But it shouldn't be this way  because Indonesia is sitting on 
one of the biggest sources  of clean energy in the world. An energy source that could help 
clean up the dirty  and often hidden side of 
green energy. Indonesia has the world's largest 
proven nickel reserves. Most of them are found here. So is a large concentration of the country's
nickel processing plants. A lot of this nickel supplies the steel industry,
but most of the growth the industry has seen in recent years is 
driven by the demand for EV batteries. Demand that's predicted to skyrocket. To extrack the nickel the rocks have to be smelted 
at really high heats. And that energy is almost exclusively provided by coal fired plants that spew greenhouse gases 
and pollute the air. Asvina's story isn't an isolated incident. Records of medical visits 
in her area show that respiratory infections are by far 
the most common health issue. Data from 2017 and 2018 suggests respiratory diseases are 
increasing in the region at a much faster rate 
than other ailments. But the government has yet 
to release the latest data. For Asvina, who has lived in the area 
since she was a child there's no doubt things are worsening. Nickel is essential for a green future but using coal fired plants 
isn't actually necessary especially in Indonesia. Indonesia sits along the Pacific Ocean's
Ring of Fire a stretch of hundreds of active volcanoes
that sit on top of pools of hot magma. We only really see the immense power of this heat
when it pierces through the earth's surface. But when it's close to the surface that magma also heats the water 
trapped beneath the earth. That hot water can provide  That hot water can provide a continuous 
and renewable flow of energy  called geothermal energy. To capture that energy we need to drill down to reach
underground water. Then hot water or steam rise up to a well. In a power plant, that hot water is often used 
to heat a different liquid that is then vaporized and used to turn a turbine
to generate electricity. Meanwhile, the clean water extracted is funneled back into the ground where the earth's magma 
heats it once again. And that fluid is recycled. So there are no emissions of any gases 
to the atmosphere. In that sense, it's a completely green carbon-free energy source. Plus, it doesn't rely on the weather
like wind or solar energy do. Indonesia is the second largest 
geothermal producer in the world. On the same island where coal-fired plants 
are powering nickel production there's a plant tapping into 
geothermal power. There are about 20 active
geothermal plants. There are also tens of sites
explored for development. One of the biggest things holding 
geothermal back in Indonesia and other parts of the world 
is cost. And then once you've got evidence that there's a resource the idea is then to figure out  
how big is the resource how hot is the resource and how much would it cost to 
develop that type of resource? Longer timeline, higher risk factor and higher initial investment costs are all things that make geothermal
more challenging to put online. And while geothermal maps like this one 
can help identify possible hotspots... you never know what you're going to find 
until you actually drill. Over time, the hope is that  geothermal exploration will become cheaper,
more predictable and so efficient that it'll bring the cost down. But it can be tough to change 
an existing industry, especially if there's a lot of money in it. Encouraged by Indonesia's 
push to attract foreign investment and deregulation of environmental 
protections Chinese companies have 
invested or committed  about $30 billion to nickel plants 
in Indonesia, particularly in Morawali where new coal fired plants like this one being built to power 
the investment. For people like Asvina the fact that geothermal doesn't produce 
emissions or air pollution could make it the solution 
they're looking for. Because if nothing changes they might have to 
leave their homes. Today, geothermal plants are mostly 
confined to volcanic areas but our EV batteries are made of 
metals and minerals from around the world. And about 60% of the energy
we used to process them comes from fossil fuels. There's enormous potential for cleaner 
EV battery production in all these yellow and red regions 
if we dig deeper and find ways to tap into the underground heat whether there's underground water or not. Like every new resource, 
the work we do  to harness it requires careful consideration. How do you preserve parklands and how does that coexist with 
geothermal development? The other issue that seems
to come up a lot when I read about geothermal is
seismic activity.  Most of the geothermal induced seismicity
that occurs is very low level seismicity but the goal is to not have significant seismicity
that could cause damage and distress to local communities. The challenges are to making these  environmentally, socially, 
and economically viable. And that's a very important challenge especially if we think of 
geothermal as a solution  to clean up the supply chain 
that powers our clean energy. Because all too often  it's poor and marginalized communities
who live next to power plants smelters, mines, factories, 
pipelines, waste plants. As we move towards a better future it's important to make sure 
it isn't just green but fair. This is the Ascent Milwaukee. Part of it. I have to move my camera back. This building’s 284 feet high, 25 stories,
and if you go to the model rooms it looks like a typical,luxury
apartment building with prop wine and art. But above the demonstration bed and 
view of Milwaukee is a wood ceiling... and wood beams... and wood columns. They're all structural. That’s because when I visited... Was that a cool zipper sound? Ascent Milwaukee was finishing construction. When I tell someone I'm working on 
the tallest timber building in the world they're very surprised to hear that
it's in Milwaukee. How does a building, with wood slabs and beams
like this, actually happen? It turns out that changing materials 
changes the entire construction process. Here’s an elegant demonstration of
a bag of concrete and some rebar. A lot of big buildings are built
using steel beams and columns and PT concrete slab: the PT stands for
Post-tension. Basically the steel reinforces the concrete and 
tendons are literally pulled on to create tension. PT Slabs are strong relatively easy to build and get often pretty affordable and, maybe most importantly, 
they’re really familiar both to builders and regulators. But they’re not very pretty and they can require a lot of energy
to make and move around. Mass Timber uses, well... My name is Ricky McClain. I'm a senior technical director with Woodworks. One of the things that the Woodworks 
does is tracks the number of projects that are actually being done with mass timber. In 2013, there were say 20-25 projects. Whereas now, we're tracking about
1400 projects in the US. So in terms of overall number of projects
done on an annual basis it's still a small percentage but it has been growing significantly. The common way that I think of it is like 
vertical products and horizontal products. So for columns and beams it's most often a product called
glue laminated timber or glue lam. There's adhesive between each layer
pressed together. Sides are planed, so a nice smooth surface. And so that's the gluelam. Beam, two-bys, and columns are the exact same. So the panels, the horizontal panels you can kind of think of that 
as like replacing a slab system. Cross laminated timber, CLT, is
one of those panel options where you're taking again two bys flat,
a layer of of adhesive goes down another layer of two bys flat, but rotated
90 degrees from that first one. So you're creating panels that are
4 to 12 feet wide, 20 to 60 feet long. Mass timber is strong,
environmentally in demand both because wood is a renewable material
and because sometimes it earns builders environmental credits better — or at least different looking
than concrete and arguably better against some 
obstacles, like earthquakes and fire. It's also hard to get and way less familiar to builders
and regulators But these materials are more than
lists of pros and cons. They can change the process of
design, sourcing and building for everybody that makes a building
a reality. This started as a real estate project,
not as mass timber project. The driver was aesthetics. At the time, we didn't know much more than that. It was just a... ”Isn't it amazing that you can have
a tall structure built out of wood and the structure is exposed.” From that one decision, a lot of things
about making the building change. The whole process is different. The insurance is different, the financing. And then you start getting into construction and the planning of the building is
completely different because you're planning so much of 
the building ahead of time digitally. Right? Planning and designing. The biggest design impact might be the BIM which takes design and places it at
the top of the construction process. A BIM is a “Building Information Model”
a bible of all the stuff in a building. Imagine a blueprint that’s 3D
and super detailed. We had 60 plus pre-construction meetings. That experience right away tells 
you that "Hey, this is unusual." We had to do that because... whether the mass timber panels were 
being made in Austria or in Canada or in the United States, it doesn't matter. They're being made at the factory. So if something's wrong,
you've got a big problem. It was more intense for us. So you're basically building what's called
a digital twin to the real building. And in the case of timber, because 
so much of it is prefabricated by the end they had literally modeled
the building down to the last screw. You always want to get it right 
as the structural engineer or as a design team in general but normally if there's an issue,
you can cut it or you can go to the shop or
you can pour more concrete. This one, it would've been a
5 month delay to the job to get another beam shipped over site. So it really was critical, which was why 
we had so many coordination meetings. And because mass timber is so new you have to spend time persuading regulators
to trust it, which means... There’s actually no sound here. But this is a mass timber building
being set on fire. For years, the USDA’s Forest Products Lab
in Madison, Wisconsin has been testing mass timber like cross-laminated timber in a building
they constructed just for this purpose. It performed well. They also test columns, where the 
wood naturally forms a char layer that protects a column’s stability. For Ascent, regulators wanted them to test if the columns could hold up to
three hours of fire. So they burned those too. We did nine columns total of three
of each species that we tested. We instrumented them with thermocouples. We lifted the columns out of the furnace
and then scraped all of the char layer off. It worked: the columns were fire 
resistance rated up to 180 minutes. And we looked at different species because the different species are a little bit
different chemically and might char different. Char has been studied for hundreds of years. In general, people know how wood chars. Concrete and steel can be hurt by fire but they’re familiar in the United States. That’s why, if you look at this video,
you can see that this structure like many mass timber structures,
is actually a hybrid. The parking garage is concrete and two concrete cores helped get the project 
approved more easily than if it were all wood. Once design is over, sourcing begins. You go from buying concrete at Home Depot
to moving wood across the world. You're moving these absolutely massive pieces 
of wood all over the country And it's trains, planes, automobiles. You know, you're always trying to 
figure out what's the quickest way, what's the most effective way,
what is the best carbon footprint you know, all of these items. Taylor Cabot’s a project manager at Timberlab which helps design and coordinate
mass timber projects like Ascent. Timber manufacturing is still 
led by Japan, Germany, and Austria and Ascent’s timber comes from Austria, which means they had to get every 
single piece all the way to Milwaukee. Imagine you're on the Oregon Trail and you have glass panes for your window
and you have it in your wagon with like hay around it. And it's like if you break that glass pane, 
like you are not going to get another one. We are moving things across the country. It can be replaced, but you're 
talking weeks. Not days. These materials then affect the engineering. It's not like a steel or a concrete building 
where I, you know, the architect doesn't care   what what kind of steel I pick or what 
kind of concrete as long as it works. The owner really likes this
white Austrian spruce. So some of the columns at the base, 
you know, to minimize the overall size are a higher grade or they're 
a little stronger, stiffer. But that's also more expensive. So as you go up, you sort of use
the lower grades as it becomes more cost effective. Traditional construction also
isn’t affected by stuff like a boat getting stuck in the Suez Canal Our materials didn't go through
the Suez Canal but 2 million containers were then
held up in transit as well because they were either stuck literally in the 
canal, or waiting to get in the canal. Finding a container was like gold. I would be driving in my city and seeing a container sitting in a yard,
and I was like — should we go grab it? All those design and sourcing changes mean building with mass timber
is pretty different. Our construction workers here, they would
go home at the end of the day and their wives would say "Huh, doesn't even look like
you're working today." "You're so clean." And they love that because with
the timber you're not working with all this silica dust from concrete
and everything like that. You're just working with with wood and you're really not cutting much,
if at all. So you're going home clean. Stuff like welding just doesn’t happen
in a wood building because it’d be a fire hazard. So, screwdrivers become way more important. We would have upwards of 64 16 inch screws. We were using just cordless
battery operated tools. We'd only get maybe five or six of those
16 inch screws per battery. We had a pretty substantial battery changing 
and charging operation on the working deck as we're installing these screws. So we would have to field install
roughly 7000 screws per floor. This is a glue lam column. Below our topping we have our CLT plank
and we have some beams that run into the column. So one column may have as much as 64
just CLT to column screws. Because of this, a lot of things change. While it might take 10 days to complete
a floor with concrete it could take only 5, using mass timber. There's less skilled labor available. There's this inherent push to to fully 
detail out a building beforehand. And so it really helps reduce labor force
on site or reduce waste of materials that come out to site as well. And it's this kind of huge shift in
the industry where we're saying, we don't need 100 guys to build a building. You know, we might need 30. Or we don't need to bring a bunch 
of materials to site and cut them and create a bunch of waste
and send the waste away. We can do all that work in factories
and then send it out and have it kind of erect in Lincoln log
or a Lego set sort of form sort of way. And that goes back to the original 
question: how does a wood skyscraper happen? They’re the product of a total rethinking 
of the process of construction. One of my favorite just anecdotes was that when we framed the first deck of timber
and we go up there, and I'm like "What am I sensing?" And I laid down on the deck because
it doesn't have the concrete top yet. Right? It's just raw wood. And I lay down and they look at me
and they're like "What is wrong with you and
what are you doing?" And I said, "Guys, smell it." "It smells like popsicle sticks." And they're like, "You're insane!" And they get down and they're like "Oh, my God, it smells like popsicle sticks." On October 2nd, 2022, Brazilians voted 
for their next president and most of the votes went 
to two frontrunners. One was current president and far-right leader. 
Jair Bolsonaro. And the other was Brazil's former president,
the left-wing politician Luiz Inácio da Silva, 
also known as Lula. For months leading up to the election Lula polled very well against Bolsonaro and was expected to win comfortably 
in the first round. But when the results came in, 
Lula's lead was small. As of this video, he and Bolsonaro  are set to face each other 
in a runoff. Lula is Brazil's most famous 
and popular politician. At one point during his presidency, his approval rating 
was nearly 90%. But Brazilian politics has changed and the story of Lula's career is 
a good way to see exactly how. Lula's left wing politics are rooted in his days as a factory worker 
and a union leader. That's where he began his career 
as a politician. During Brazil's military dictatorship Lula led massive strikes and protests. By the 1980s, he had helped organize  thousands of trade union supporters 
into a political party. The Workers Party, or the PT. Lula's coalition drew mainly from 
Brazil's political left. It included the working class low income people, left-leaning
Catholic voters Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous people. This is a pretty unique arrangement
of forces. In my opinion, it's one of the things that 
allowed the Worker's Party to grow and become so strong. In 1989, Lula ran as his party's candidate 
for president. He made it to the second round and lost 
by only 4 million votes. Then he lost again in 1994 
and again in 1998. His base was growing, 
but not yet enough  for him to win a presidential election. During much of this time Brazil was experiencing 
an economic crisis. At one point, inflation was so 
out of control that the country switched 
its new currency 5 separate times 
in 7 years. And about a fifth of the country
was in poverty. In the late 1990s, Brazil's center-right 
led government passed a series of dramatic 
economic reforms. They brought inflation down 
by establishing a stable currency and they brought down poverty. But their recovery also left 
much of the country behind... including many in Lula's coalition. But in 2002, when Lula ran 
for president a fourth time he tried something a little bit different. In the 2002 race, Lula brought 
several members of Brazil's conservative and 
center-right parties  into his campaign. Including prominent businessman,
José Alencar as his running mate. By including them, Lula 
expanded his coalition attracting the support of 
center-right voters like business owners and bankers. Lula's this guy that he can 
go to a board meeting at a major bank or to a poor favela and speak in a way that people
will relate to him. This new kind of coalition led to Lula winning his first
presidential election. In Lula's first term, Brazil's economy 
grew rapidly mostly because of a booming 
trade partnership with China. He benefited from a magical 
economic moment. He used this cash flow to finance 
a new social welfare and cash transfer program:
Bolsa Familia which gave Brazilians a stipend for ensuring their children 
were attending school and up to date on their vaccines. It was a way to give people money 
for their immediate needs while getting them to put 
their kids on the path that would eventually help them 
escape that cycle of poverty. This program, along with other reforms like increasing the minimum wage also grew his coalition even further. And more Brazilians voted for 
left and center-left politicians politicians across the country. The economy picked up and then we had this 
massive period of growth. Lula became an unstoppable force. By the end of his first term in office Lula's approval rating reached over 60%. And even though his administration
began to attract accusations of bribery and corruption... Lula's unprecedented popularity 
and coalition building led to a reelection victory in 2006. By the end of Lula's second term in office GDP was the highest in Brazil's history. And so was the president's approval rating. OBAMA: The most popular politician on earth. In 2009, Lula picked a fellow 
Worker's Party member Dilma Rousseff, 
as his successor. She inherited his coalition  and easily won the presidency 
in 2010. Early in her administration global demand for commodities fell which led to a recession in Brazil... and her approach to managing the economy  cost her some support from the 
center-right business community. Her administration also faced 
accusations of corruption which cost her even more support. It didn't help that she was 
not a good politician. She did not negotiate with Congress 
in a very skillful way. And the economic guidance of 
her administration  was very flawed. And then in 2014, something happened that would lead to the entire coalition's collapse. A government investigation found that many Workers Party officials  were involved in a corrupt scheme with Brazil's state owned oil company including Rousseff... whose approval rating tanked and in 2016 she was removed from office. Lula was also implicated for 
allegedly taking bribes. He was convicted in 2017 
and sent to prison. But unlike Rousseff, 
he remained popular. For a lot of people, despite 
Lula going to jail they still love him. For one, a lot of people say "Oh, they all rob us." "At least this guy was giving us 
back something." But with no one there to hold 
the left coalition together. The opportunity emerged for
an unusual politician to start building his own from the right. Throughout Rousseff's impeachment retired military officer Jair Bolsonaro was laying the groundwork for 
his chance at the presidency in the 2018 election. Bolsonaro's core supporters 
were evangelicals farmers, businessmen,
and anti-abortion voters. He was the candidate of the far-right but he also gained the support 
of the center-right and even some leftist voters who are disillusioned with the Workers Party creating a unique coalition. Meanwhile, Lula's former coalition was split between several candidates helping propel Bolsonaro 
to an easy victory... and signaling a new political moment 
in the country. What Bolsanaro did in 2018 was 
unlike what we had ever seen. It was a real shift. The hard-right was replacing 
the moderate-right... at the center of the political arena. In office, Bolsonaro oversaw 
further destruction of the Amazon extreme hunger and Brazil being 
one of the worst impacted by COVID with over 680,000 deaths. Brazil's GDP dipped back down and he also took a confrontational stance
with Brazilian democracy trying to control the media and 
undermining the Supreme Court. Due to these factors, his popularity 
never exceeded 35%. In 2019, Brazil's Supreme Court 
released Lula from prison and later annulled his convictions enabling him to run again in 2022. Lula also positioned himself as a pro-democracy candidate 
in the race. He worked to assemble another 
strong and diverse coalition from across the political spectrum. Lula has made a front that 
maybe cannot get broader. Eight former presidential candidates 
from left and right a big part of the business community. Lula even courted evangelicals 
by campaigning at churches. At the same time, Bolsonaro
enacted social reform programs to court low-income and 
working class Brazilians who are usually aligned with Lula. But as the 2022 election approached Lula's strategy seemed to be working 
more than Bolsonaro's. The polls were spot-on in regards to Lula. Lula finished the first round with 
around 48% of the vote. But they were dead wrong 
about Bolsonaro. Lula still won the first round, but Bolsonaro outperformed every poll 
leading up to the election. And the bigger surprise 
was in Brazil's Congress where the right wing candidates 
aligned with Bolsonaro won the majority. So even if Lula goes on 
to win the presidency... he'll face a stronger opposition 
than he ever has before. Lula has made a lot of commitments. It remains to be seen  how he will be able to implement that. This is a force that has to 
be reckoned with. It is part of Brazilian mainstream politics and will continue like that for years to come. I thought I was going to be a 
psychology major in college and then I realized I was making all of 
my papers about the banjo anyway. My name is Jake Blount. I am a performer and scholar 
of traditional Black folk music. I live in Providence, Rhode Island. I live in Providence, Rhode Island. What's the name of it? Altamont. Altamont. Got it. I first heard that song on  the field recording from 
Murph Gribble, John Lusk and Albert York which is on a release from 
the Library of Congress called Black Stringband Music from 
the Library of Congress. Say what you will about the title. It's easy to find, you know. There's Albert Yorke playing guitar John Lusk playing the fiddle and Murph Gribble playing the banjo. They were a black stringband they recorded in the 1940s
and by most definitions they're actually an early bluegrass band. But for a variety of reasons, I would consider their race to be 
probably the main reason they aren't really embraced as 
part of the bluegrass story. When I study modern day Black banjo players... I am studying not only the music 
that they make but what makes that music significant to them
within its social context. The banjo was descended from 
West African instruments and during enslavement and during 
the time immediately following people associated the banjo 
with Black people. Toward the end of enslavement we start to see blackface minstrels
come to the fore. Blackface minstrelsy was this really... gross performance practice in which 
white musicians would black up their face and  lampoon Black musical traditions 
for a white audience. That had the effect of 
popularizing the banjo which was featured very prominently. And eventually bluegrass emerged. And that became the main way
that people knew the banjo and interacted with it. Early on in the record industry when folks started going down 
to the south they began to record artists and consider how they could 
sell those records. They decided to confine Black musicians  to a category called "race records" and confine white musicians to a category 
called "hillbilly records". The end result of that was that Black people who played what might have been 
considered hillbilly music which would have been early country 
string band music... they were not recorded because they weren't marketable 
in that category. Race records were by Black people 
and for Black audiences but were supposed to be blues or jazz. Many of the early country musicians had Black mentors and Black collaborators. Lesley Riddle, for example, 
who taught the Carter family. Many of the Black musicians who were 
teaching early white country musicians did not get recorded themselves. And that's just one iteration of this pattern we see where the music industry extracts artwork from Black communities uses them to generate a ton of money and then directs absolutely 
none of that money back into the community that invented 
the music it's selling. People spend a lot of time deriding 
and belittling Black folk music traditions instead of studying them. And that's one of the big flaws with our current canon of 
folkloric recordings. But the vast majority of these recordings 
were made by white people. We know that many of the Black string bands at that time, including 
Gribble, Lusk, and York, had separate repertoire that they played for Black people
then they played for white people. Which means that probably much 
of this music never got put down on any sort of 
semi-permanent medium because it wasn't safe to perform it for them 
in that time and place. My new album, The New Faith, 
is an Afro-futurist story that explores what traditional 
Black folk music might sound like post-climate crisis. My idea for this album was to make 
a field recording from the future. It lets me go backward and forward 
in time, at the same time. Once there were no sun. Once there were no sun. And I learned "Once there was no sun"  from a recording of Bessie Jones. Once there was no sun. Lord, once there was no sun. She was a fantastic singer and lived for most of her life in Georgia amongst the 
Gullah Geechee people. It describes the world before the 
creation of Sun and Moon. This particular song comes out of 
a ring shout tradition. The ring shout is a religious ritual that's been passed down among the Gullah
Geechee people for a very long time and it includes someone with a broomstick 
banging out this  bum bum bum, bum bum bum rhythm. We wound up just putting that 
on the kick drum because I tried to come up with 
a different part and it just turned into that anyway. Once there was no sun. once there were no sun. Turns out the thing that they've been doing 
for several hundred years is... right. I knew I wanted to draw off of this Hans Sloane text because it's the oldest stuff that I've studied. Hans Sloane made a trip through 
the Caribbean in the late 1600s. His work is one of the earliest 
written descriptions of a banjo that we think we have. And he included sheet music for some of the songs that 
he heard people singing. I was really drawn to this very simple but very epic sounding song called Angola which is just nice call and response arrangement 
between an instrument and a voice. So the little banjo piece that 
I incorporated there is... Because of the way the progression 
of the song goes I wound up changing it to... A lot of these songs either have 
no hook or only a hook. There's there's never a verse and a chorus. And that left me with with 
a little bit of a heavy lift as far as finding things to put 
in between the verses. And I wound up coming up with these  rhythmic fiddle parts. The clapping pattern.  Clapping is very prominent in all these old ensemble recordings 
of Black folk music. It's just, you know, one of the most accessible percussion instruments you have. When drums are illegal, as they were 
for black people for most of this music's developmental period. I knew that it had to be in there. There was no obvious place 
to put it on this because of the way 
the beat lined up. And it's a very weird pattern, even though that's not a sound or a texture that you would find 
in those field recordings. I tried to use the same approach 
of the field recordings in building those sounds and... I think it wound up integrating pretty well. Once there was no sun. Once there was no sun. Once there was no sun. I heard the angels singing. I think part of what drove me
to this new project is thinking about the continuity 
of those sounds. Instead of trying to reenact something. Maybe envision something instead. When it comes to the older stuff... because those folks were exploited 
by the record industry because they were misrepresented by academics and by PR reps and everybody else along the way who was sold this music but was not part of that community... I feel duty bound to set the record straight. I think there's something that is very cool about representing those old traditions and feeling like I'm part of 
a solid lineage that way. A few months ago we got this question
from one of our subscribers, Gaurav. When I was a kid, one of my most favorite things to do was to visit a zoo. But as I grew older, I came across evidence to the fact that animals in zoos 
often suffer from boredom. Was the younger version of me wrong? I wanted to dig into 
Gaurav's question  in part because as a parent of 
a young toddler zoos are very much a part of 
my everyday life. Going to the zoo clearly makes
my kid happy. And most zoos market themselves 
as a force for conservation protecting endangered species
and making us humans better stewards of the planet. But then there's that evidence 
Gaurav mentioned. Videos showing what zoologist 
call stereotypies: Repetitive behaviors like hair pulling,
tongue flicking bobbing and swaying that indicate 
under-stimulation and stress. All of this left me with a couple questions: What are zoos doing for humans, 
and for animals? And are they doing 
what we want them to? My first call was to Susan Clayton, 
a conservation psychologist whose job is basically to go to the zoo 
and spy on people. We watch people and we listen to people and, you know, pay attention to what they say. Parents will use that as an opportunity
to talk to their children about how it's important to try and 
keep species from going extinct. But something much more concrete 
and more simple also happens. Susan and her colleagues noticed that
around primates in particular visitors will frequently imagine themselves 
in the animals' place. They might speak as if they were the animal. "What are these people looking at me for?" So you are temporarily imagining what it 
would be like to be the animal. That does open the door to a 
greater empathy and concern. Susan is describing an expansion 
of what philosophers call our circle of empathy. We might start by only caring about 
our family and close friends but we can extend that circle 
to include other people and even other species. I was just wondering if that kind of resonates 
with you as far as thinking back to your experiences in zoos growing up? Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes they would even allow us to feed giraffes. We were allowed to touch some 
snakes and things like that. I used to love going back to that zoo so that they can create this bond 
and this empathy with animals. So maybe zoos help us feel 
more empathy for animals. But is that enough? Emma Marris is a science writer who spends a good chunk of her book, 
Wild Souls trying to answer this question. Do the benefits of zoos to wild animals 
and to conservation outweigh any minimal amount of discomfort or unhappiness that the animals 
in the zoo might experience? Talking with Emma convinced me that  instead of just looking for pros and cons I should look for evidence for two claims: That keeping animals in a zoo somehow 
helps wild populations thrive. And that visiting them has 
a measurable impact on human attitudes about conservation. Lucky for me Emma had already spent a lot of time 
looking into this first question. The idea that zoo animals are 
a sort of backup or reserve. That sounds reasonable, right? Basically, if a species was about to go extinct we could replenish their numbers 
with these reserve animals who had spent their lives in zoos. The tricky part about that 
is that for a lot of species especially the bigger, more 
cognitively complex species putting them back out into the wild 
is incredibly difficult. The key to knowing which ones 
can actually be released is a concept called 
cognitive complexity. A good way to think about it is 
to look at how long it takes for a particular species 
to learn skills in the wild. Orangutans stay with their mothers 
for up to 9 years. It takes elephants the same amount of time 
to learn how to function as members of one of the most complex
social groups in the animal kingdom. Orcas stay with their mothers until age 13. For lions, polar bears, and gorillas, 
it's at least 2 years. Once you realize how much these 
cognitively complex animals have to learn to survive in the wild it makes sense why the ones 
you see in zoos could never join their wild cousins. This idea of cognitive complexity was just really game changing 
for me as far as understanding why so few zoo animals 
are able to be out in the wild. When you were talking about this, 
I had a few examples in my head. I remember seeing the footage of a  baby gazelle that cheetahs often hunt. So the mother would capture 
the baby gazelle  and let her cubs, you know, go out 
and finish it, like kill it. This is very hard to replicate in a zoo. For comparison, the California Condor only needs 180 days to learn 
how to survive after hatching. And a program to save them from extinction  by breeding them in zoos and
releasing them in the wild has been a huge success. But these programs are incredibly rare. According to the Association for 
Zoos and Aquariums website there are approximately 8700 species
represented in zoos around the world and just 117 reintroduction programs. This sort of notion that someday
they're going to be like "Oh, we ran out of elephants." "Let's get all the ones from the zoo and just pop them out into Africa and Asia." Like, that's not going to happen. They're never going to let them out. They're going to die in those zoos. For cognitively complex animals it's really hard for me to see the benefits and the drawbacks seem pretty obvious. But what about the second item on the list? Does visiting the zoo make us 
more conservation minded? One study gave visitors a survey when they first got to the zoo and 
asked them to write down actions they could think of that would help
save animal species, then have them do the same thing 
after they'd visited the exhibits. Slightly more people mentioned recycling responsible purchasing 
and diet choices. But the share of visitors who mentioned 
habitat protection actually decreased. So I really didn't find much evidence 
that zoos in their current form do much to help wild populations or change people's attitudes and behavior. But what if we could imagine
a different kind of zoo? My initial question was: Do the benefits of zoos outweigh its cons? But now, after listening to this  and the evidence that you have provided now I feel that we must assess 
each species individually. If zoos stopped breeding 
cognitively complex animals  for captivity and then release those they have 
to wildlife sanctuaries like this one in Tennessee they could devote more time and space to threatened species who can successfully 
be released into the wild. Sometimes these are turtles or fish 
or freshwater mussels, right? Like these are not necessarily 
your big blockbuster mammals. To satisfy our very real desire  to see and hear and connect 
with non-human creatures, we might need to extend that circle of empathy 
in a different direction. So we see squirrels or robins 
or pigeons, and we're like meh. But actually, the more I learn about
these animals and insects and the plants that are in the city, 
the street trees, the more fascinating I find them. Do you think we could design zoo experiences 
that people would want that are based on these different species? I used to love going to zoos 
and seeing the big animals. I mean, not having them around 
would be kind of sad for the younger version of myself,
but I think I have changed and that's because of education. And I think people can also change if we... if we educate them. Thank you so much for watching. I really enjoyed digging into this question
about zoos with Gaurav.  And if you haven't watched it already  definitely go watch Joss's video 
about unions in the US.  That one was inspired by another question 
from a subscriber, Cameron. We're really excited to make a 
whole series of videos like this  videos driven by your questions. So, if you're up for going on camera and being a part of a Vox video hit us up! We'll get some answers. Link to the submission form
in the description below. Thanks for watching! If you look up how to do a spiral pass 
on the Internet — which is something I had to do 
for this video because I really suck at 
throwing footballs — the main thing you'll see is that 
you need to position your fingers in a way that'll make the ball spin 
as it flies through the air. I was breaking my arm 
trying to do this so I could see a physics problem 
up close. And the problem is right... here. When you throw a good spiral pass, 
the ball starts pointed up tips over mid-air and ends
pointed down. We're used to seeing a football do this. But according to physics, 
that's highly unusual. When we throw objects, 
they are usually  going to either retain the same angle 
as when they originally thrown like this loaf of bread. Or flip over themselves several times
until they land. Like this box of girl scout cookies. So what is it about a football that 
makes it want to tip over? I first got interested in this problem, 
I'm guessing 2000. We published the paper in 2020, 
so it really was 20 years. My name is Timothy Gay. I'm an atomic physicist by day and my secret identity is 
football physicist at night. The best way to understand 
why the ball turns over is to make an analogy 
with a spinning top. Spinning tops are like catnip 
for a physicist. On its own, a top falls over. Give it top a spin
and it stands up. It balances itself around a line a center point that physicists call
the reference axis. This axis is determined by the main force 
acting on the object which in this case is gravity. Gravity is pulling straight down and the top is fighting this by 
spinning around wobbling around this vertical line,
this reference axis. A football is a top. You can spin it in the exact same way and this is in part because of its shape. Both a football and a top are 
cylindrically symmetrical. A cylindrically symmetric object 
is one which if I rotate you can't tell that I'm turning it. Objects which have this symmetry 
have a big impact on how the object behaves 
when I apply forces to it. So when you spin them... they both wobble around 
a reference axis. Bending makes all the difference. But once you spin football in the air it's reference axis gets 
a little more complicated. When you throw a nice spiral pass gravity is only acting as a secondary force 
on the ball. Gravity is trying to pull the ball down usually making its path to the ground
look like this. But the main force acting 
against the ball is the air molecules that are 
pushing against it as it flies through the air. The ball pushes against the air and 
the air pushes back against it. But because gravity makes 
the ball's trajectory a parabola the air pushing against the ball 
changes directions as it flies. When the ball is moving up the molecules are acting as 
downward pressure. When it's coming down, the molecules 
are pushing up. And just like the spinning top pointing against the downward force 
of gravity to stay vertical the spinning football wants to push against the main force 
acting against it. The air molecules like the tap on the table, the ball is going to want to wobble around its center line, its reference axis. And in this case, that ends up being 
the ball's trajectory — its path through the air. What the football wants to do is exactly what the top wants 
to do on the table. It wants to circle its axis, 
wants to circle around that force direction. But in the case of the top the force of gravity never changes. It's always vertical. Whereas for the football the axis of the force is changing. You can see all these forces at play 
in this slow-mo 3D recreation. The ball takes off pointing towards the air pushing against it wobbling around its reference axis. It follows the trajectory 
gravity laid out for it eventually reaching a point where 
it starts coming back down at which point the air forces are 
pushing up against it and the ball points against them. But in regular motion, it just looks like 
the ball is tipping over. If you throw a football 
without it spinning it would follow a similar trajectory, 
but it wouldn't tip over. And if you try to throw a spiral loaf of bread 
or some other object it wouldn't tip over either. It only works on objects that are 
cylindrically symmetrical like a football or a rugby ball. A very smart person once said to me "Everything is simple once explained." It's a hard problem because, 
first of all there are a lot of 
potential explanations which seem enticing at the beginning
but turn out to be wrong. And unfortunately, you can't really
solve a problem without using some relatively 
ophisticated mathematics. But the basic ideas are simple enough 
for anybody that's interested and 
is paying attention to understand. This is a hiking trail. When you look at it, or any other trail
for that matter It can feel sort of organic. Like nobody in particular decided 
what it should look like. But behind almost every trail are planners, builders, and designers 
crafting an experience that gives people a tiny taste of what real wilderness feels like. And when they do their job right... it can feel like they were never there. It begins with trying to understand the visitors who will be using the trails. Jeff Marian studies the design of trails and how they fit into the environment. People seem to really want to hike on native surface trails, you know, 
in pristine nature not highly altered, highly developed  
nature with pavements and things like that. So what makes a trail feel 
like pristine nature? For one thing, there's its shape. Unlike paved roads, trails are 
often built to mimic the imperfect natural patterns of 
branches, waterways, or lightning. There's also the features a trail 
connects with along the way. Designers will often build a trail
so it touches anchors — vertical features like large rocks or trees that create a pleasant frame on 
the edges of a trail. They also have to decide where it goes. So you sit down on your map and you map out these control points. Designers will identify the places
people shouldn't go. Like hazardous zones, private property and environmentally sensitive areas. And the places they should. Like scenic overlooks,
waterfalls and lakes. These are called negative
and positive control points and they give a rough idea of 
where a trail can go making sure a trail goes to the places where hikers will want to go is essential because if a trail doesn't curious hikers will find 
their own way to them. Creating desire lines that branch off 
from the actual trail. Those desire lines can disrupt
water systems, plants or wildlife in ways the trail designers 
didn't account for. And that's the paradox of trail design. They're artificial creations that need to feel like
they're part of nature but also need to accommodate visitors all without deteriorating over time. Designers spend a lot of time 
thinking about this. But the force they're most concerned
about protecting trails from actually isn't people. It's water. Water is the natural enemy 
of a manmade trail. It can erode a trail away, make it too muddy to use, or change the shape of it completely. So we try to design trails to be sort of invisible to that water flow and that movement of water
across the landscape. So hydrologically invisible. To do that, look at topographic maps which illustrate the landscapes elevation. And they look at the fall line. That's the line that water follows
as it flows downhill. If you dumped a bucket of water 
on the ground on a slope it would run straight down 
the fall line. If a trail runs parallel to the fall line 
or too close to it it becomes a pathway for water
when it rains. The trail then sort of acts 
as a drainage ditch going straight down the hill. Over time, that causes the trail 
to erode and become wider. But a trail that runs perpendicular 
to the fall line isn't good either because then water can't flow 
downhill at all. If it's dead level, it's going 
to sit there and make a big, huge mudhole. It's mostly just, you know, poor design. Instead, a good trail runs diagonal 
to the fall line cutting up a slope at an angle
and allowing water to flow across the trail
instead of down it. And accounting for the fall
line is just one of the principles designers look at to manage 
water on trails. There's also grade reversals
where a trail alternates between short, uphill 
and downhill sections. This creates little valleys where water can flow off of a trail in smaller quantities. There's the slope which, when it stays between 
a 3% and 10% grade is both comfortable for hiking 
and minimizes erosion. There's the out slope,
a slight downhill tilt on the trail that helps water flow downhill. And there's the tread: the stuff
the trail is actually made of. The higher the proportion of rocks, 
the better it can resist erosion. This careful combination of 
alignment, materials, and shape can help a trail last 
through years of impact... even as those impacts become bigger
than they've ever been before. We're getting bigger rain events and they're having a real toll on trails. And so trail sustainability needs to focus 
way more on tread drainage these days than we ever used to. A lot of the work that trail designers do isn't actually coming up with new trails. It's strengthening and updating old ones many of which have been around since before recreational hiking was 
even something people did. It's challenging. It's not rocket science,
but it is challenging. It requires kind of an 
ecological knowledge of the inner relationship of a wide number of different factors. Out on a trail, these factors 
add up to an experience... a feeling... of seeing a world that we didn't make. It's a world we don't often 
have a way to see and a good trail is our ticket in. finding. Alright everybody, we did it. We swatted... and shocked... and smushed the invasive spotted 
lanternfly all summer long and now that it’s fall we can surely say... we’re done here. Mission accomplished. Right? No! I'm so sorry! Unfortunately, it's not under control
at all. So, what the hell are we all doing? This is Kristie. I'm the director of The Bug Chicks. And Jessica. I am the assistant director of
The Bug Chicks. They’re both entomologists. But let’s back up a second because if you’re not in the US this whole video so far is kind of...
unhinged. Spotted lanternflies are a type of insect
that’s native to parts of Asia. They're actually really beautiful. The adults have spotted wings 
with a bright red underwing. They’re super easy to recognize and on some level: harmless. They don’t sting or bite and in their native habitat
their population is controlled by various predators. But when they're transported far away
from where they have evolved then that's where we run into problems. We don't have natural enemies to
keep it under control. So their populations can just explode,
which is what we're seeing right now. Egg masses on a shipment of stone are likely what brought the insect
to the US in 2012. But they were first found in
Eastern Pennsylvania in 2014. At that time, researchers tried to 
contain the population and potentially wipe it out entirely. The state quarantined the area requiring all businesses to have a spotted
lanternfly compliance permit to ensure they weren't carrying
the bugs around. And told people to kill them on sight. Many researchers were initially
concerned these bugs would destroy native forests because
they feed on tree sap. They kind of jam these little pokey mouth
parts called rostrums into a plant which is filled with sap and nutrients 
and they slurp it up. Also... Their poo is basically sugar water. That can lead to something called
sooty mold which isn't harmful in and of itself
to people. But it sort of tamps down
on photosynthesis. So the plants have to work harder
to survive. Fortunately, the worst case scenario
didn’t come true. Lanternflies haven’t wiped out
full forests. Instead, the biggest losses are
to agriculture. Specifically orchards and vineyards. Vineyards in Pennsylvania have been 
hardest hit so far with some reporting up to a 90% loss. And now... they’ve spread. As of late 2022, spotted lanternflies have
been reported in 14 states. Thus the widespread summer-murder-campaign
on social media. At this point, it's too late to stop them
completely. Eradication is not on the docket anymore. We missed that boat. That ship sailed. And so now it's about mitigation
and management and control. Over time, some expect them to reach most
of the country eventually spreading to places like California where they could threaten a multi-billion
dollar fruit industry. Though, it could take them a few years
to get there. Thankfully, lanternflies don’t live
very long and can only move about 4 miles
in their entire lives. Unless... they hitch a ride. Which means the biggest culprit responsible
for this rapid spread is us... in more ways than one.  Even before spotted lanternflies
came to the US damage humans have done to
native ecosystems set the stage for them to thrive. One example of this is their favorite tree 
to feed on: the tree of heaven. And yes. It’s also highly invasive. I mean, you want to talk about survivors. This plant, you cut it down and it's like,
"oh, yeah?" This tree was brought to the US
from China over 200 years ago. It thrives in urban environments
and areas with little vegetation. Like along railroads or highways
where it can act as a hotel for lanternflies as they make their way 
across the US. So, what now? Recently, predators like praying mantis have started stepping in to help
level out the numbers. Other bugs like garden spiders, 
hornets, and wheel bugs have also been seen attacking
spotted lanternflies. With the help of birds and
other insects, over time populations will likely taper off
to more manageable levels. For now, the best method to manage 
spotted lanternfly populations is simply to keep crushing them. Don’t resort to harsher methods
like home-made pesticides or fire. And when traveling, make sure to check your car 
for stray bugs or egg masses. Any of the ones that you didn't smack down
in the summer have made it and they are right now,
like literally right now they're laying eggs on any flat surface that
they can and they will overwinter and then hatch out in the spring and
the whole system starts all over again. If you see an egg mass, scraping it into a
bag with alcohol effectively kills it. But yeah, the scraping, the stomping. No flamethrowers. When we zoom out from just spotted lanternfly we live in a world with potentially
4 million species of insect. And they are the decomposers,
they are the pollinators. They are the recyclers of our world. And they create healthy soils
that grow the trees. They are integral to every system
on our planet. The real impact of spotted lanternflies on
this system might not be measurable yet. Ecosystems are wildly complicated and introducing a new species can have impacts
we’d never expect... on other bugs, on birds that eat bugs,
on future flora development. In the meantime, slowing down their spread could help researchers devise new ways
to eliminate the bug safely. And give our native ecosystem what it needs: time to catch up. They don't sting or bite. Yea, Kim, they don't sting or bite 
so there's nothing to be afraid of. Come on--AH! Now I'm going to feel bad 
about killing you because I have an emotional
attachment to you. And you're gonna direct, 
you tell me, "now!" This is me. And I’m about to enter a building that was
the future of work in 1939. First I tripped a bit. This Frank Lloyd Wright Building — It got a lot right about what the office
would be like and how it would feel for the rest of the 20th century. And I wanted to try working in the place
where it that started. I first learned about this office 
5 years ago. Most open offices were designed by consultants. This one was designed by a genius. It was built as the new headquarters
for SC Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin. It came in an era when often offices were
small and cramped or private. This building had a spacious 
central room instead meant to encourage the spread of ideas. Architectural Forum was so excited they did a special spread on just the plans
for this building. Today, SC Johnson makes stuff like
Glade, Pledge, Ziploc Duck, Canard, Pato. Those are all the same thing... duck. Yea. But in 1939, it was basically a “Wax company”
that wanted more for its managerial class. They hired Frank LLoyd Wright to design it
and he aimed for “as inspiring a place to work in as any
cathedral ever was to worship in.” They still do tours and most of the employees
have moved to other buildings. So that meant, I'd be able to get a desk there. I have worked remote for four years,
making this face. My coworkers are a list of names I click on. I work next to a Pack N' Play. So, I wanted to try something different. The most striking feature of the
administrative building is a central room: the Great Workroom. Its main feature is the columns. Architect Jonathan Lipman wrote a book
about the SC Johnson headquarters. If I'm going on, sort of, a scavenger hunt
of interesting features in that room what should I be looking for? When people enter this room it is very common that they're
kind of gobsmacked. The most common metaphor for this room
is that it is subaqueous that is that you feel like you're underwater,
you're in maybe a lily pond. And what contributes to that? Well, clearly, the columns — the famous
columns. A key principle across Wright’s work is
compression and expansion. The idea of entering a tight space and then
exploding into an open one. These columns are what make the expansion
possible in this room. Wright called these “Dendriform” columns. That means “tree shaped”. And he said that each part had a
calyx, stem, and petal. 18.5 feet at the petal they have just a 9 inch diameter
at the base. They are so skinny that Wright and SC Johnson
had to prove they were safe by piling 12 tons of rocks on top. And they did it until they hit 60 tons of
rocks and stopped the test. What did it feel like to be surrounded by
these stalks of columns? And have this light coming down from above. So I went there. I called my editor, Bridgett, from the airport. It's really hot out here. It's like 95 degrees. Phil's out in the world. Got to get the editor to weigh in. We don't use Google Docs. We just... We always weigh in with one-on-ones. Yeah, constant one-on-ones. Constant FaceTime. Do you have any final thoughts? What I should be looking for on my trip? Yeah, I mean, the main thing I think that
you should do is actually work there. Like, I think that's important, like— Oh, no. Is that me or you? Phil! It overheated. Oh no! My phone overheated. Get inside. Get to air conditioning. But before I went to SC Johnson to work,
I wanted a couple more tips. So I met up with Mark Hertzberg who’s a photojournalist, a Frank Lloyd Wright
expert, and author of a book about this Frank Lloyd Wright house,
the Hardy House. It came years before SC Johnson Wax but you can see some of the same ideas 
at play. You enter in this really tight hallway which then blows out into the living room
and lake view. Compression and expansion. There are all these custom furniture features
too, which, well - just remember these. Okay, so, Wright liked built-ins and one of the magic features of a house
for a little girl, like Anne Ruetz growing up in the house when you're
5 years old in the two south bedrooms... Wright has these chairs that come out. Wow, that is so cool! This house made every shot look cool
which was great for me. Like every frame just ends up looking cool. Like, you look just cool right now, you know? I am cool. Yeah, it's your natural cool, of course, primarily. But, you know, it's just like you've got all
these leading lines right here. Well, you know what, that is an
interesting point because one of the points I make
to guests when we do tours is it if you stand here in the bedroom
this door frame frames the door frame to the bedroom
at the opposite end of the balcony. And you also see the wood trim that's in the
living room helping frame everything. And Mark actually already got to work 
in the SC Johnson Great Workroom. Like I wanted to. It was a privilege to be allowed to sit in
the Great Workroom and to sit at the desk in one of 
the Wright chairs and just to be able to look around. It was a building I'd been in many times. I'd photographed it many times. But I had no cameras with me. It's just me and my laptop and just to look
around and to drink in the marvels of the design. On the left is the research tower,
opened in 1950, while at the right you have the Great Workroom. You enter through a carport to get there,
very modern for 1939. Compression. You go past Frank’s signature,
into the lobby, and then... expansion. SC Johnson’s archivist, Terri Boessl
showed me around. There was no reason to do this. And yet you had company leadership at the
time who who just really felt the need to inspire his employees
and have something here in the middle of industrialized Racine. We rode in the gold elevator at one point. It was very gold. Then I put my hands around the column. People kept telling me about all the cool
stuff that had happened, but it was only stuff that you could see when the building 
was full of people. People were collected in one space
without walls. Managers perched on the mezzanine
but still open. The chairs were originally elegant,
three-legged inventions by Wright but they tipped over when people arrived. He wanted this three-legged design
which it looks good and it fits with his really streamlined look. But as they told him: it's very unstable. We're gonna lean we're gonna reach for something,
and the second we do the chair's gonna tip over. And beautiful ceiling? It had flaws too. For a long time, we had something called
the bucket brigade which was just — the people working in the
space would get the bucket out from under their desk and put it where the leak 
comes from. But there was also falling glass. You know, different pieces of the Pyrex tubing
would fall down. This building, it was designed 
before its time. And we saw the custom desks, just like the
ones that I had seen in the Hardy House. So instead of pulling out a desk drawer, and
the rooting through it to get to the back you'd pull it out and you'd have 
the whole thing. Wowwww! Does it look pretty epic? I mean... I got to say, I don't want to sound... mean... but it kind of looks like a hotel lobby
from this angle. A very cool hotel lobby. I'm only seeing a small bit of it. I love the visitor lanyard, it's quite a look. It's pretty legit.  I think I have to give it back unfortunately. I can't really tell because of the way the
exposure is, but is that just cool lights up there, that are looking... Yeah, so up there is kind of natural light
augmented with artificial light, And initially they didn't have enough light,
so they had to add artificial light in there. And then people got artificial lights at their
desks and stuff, which Frank Lloyd Wright was like mad about. It's pretty cool. And there's these crazy spiral staircases,
too, that are kind of scary. Thank you for talking with me about this. Well good luck! Bye! Okay, bye! Then, it was time. I'd sit down. I’d take a half hour. And I’d work. Should we establish that you're not Bridgett? We should probably establish that I'm not
Bridgett, because it is something that people get confused about a lot. In person, usually. So, Bridgett's on vacation. And you are editing the rest of this story. So the point in this story, where we are right
now, is that I am sitting down at my desk. I really did think that I was going to
work there for half an hour. Yeah, you know, the whole point of the video. That's the whole gimmick! Yeah. It's the whole gimmick. Yeah, exactly. And then I sat down there and I was like... I'm just at a laptop. This is just a laptop. This is not different from my laptop at home
or my laptop in a coffee shop  or anywhere else. Like, sitting at a laptop is just sitting
at a laptop. This is supposedly the greatest office 
in the world  and this is how you've been building this up,
this is the greatest office. The greatest place to work. And...  you couldn't do it for a minute. When Herbert Johnson built SC Johnson’s
corporate headquarters having a big showpiece headquarters 
for office workers was rare. In 1939, this was the future of work. This building, it’s the beginning of these
big corporate campuses. The Googles and Metas and Amazons 
owe a debt to campus here. Wright later wrote that his building 
was the future. "It was high time to give our hungry American
public something truly 'streamlined'." "That anybody could see the virtue of this
thing called 'Modern.'“ Hi. I live in the future called 2022. I am in an office where I can video chat with
a few clicks, across the world. And still be by myself. Is that expansion or compression? It wasn't a real thing without any people
around, without the energy of being in that office. Then I think, this space would've mattered. But I didn't have that. So in the end, the real SC Johnson was the
friends we made along the way. That's exactly... I was so desperate to find out
what it would feel like to work in this room. With the beautiful dendriform columns and incredible colors... But without people... It’s just a background. This represents all the water used in
one year in the Western United States. For the past 20-plus years, a megadrought,
made worse by manmade global warming has left the West drier than it’s been
in over a thousand years. That includes the Colorado River system where
reservoirs have been depleted to record lows. Which has people talking about ways
to cut back. “Cities are taking aim at the
backyard swimming pool.” “Restrictions, such as not washing cars
at home, and no power washing houses.” “Businesses and residents must cut their
outdoor watering to just one day a week.” But this is all the residential water use
for 115 million people across 17 Western states. All the lawn watering and tooth brushing
and pools and showers use only 6 percent of all water consumption. The rest of this tells a totally
different story. A team of researchers came up with
these water use estimates. And they found that another 8 percent
goes towards commercial and industrial uses like offices, hotel fountains, mines,
and power plants. Together with residential use that’s 14 percent of all water consumption
in the West. All of what’s left in here — the other 
86 percent is for growing crops. Irrigated agriculture is the big story. All the other water users added together... don't come close to irrigated agriculture. In the dry western states, 
farms can’t count on rain so crops need irrigation. So here’s soybeans, nuts, wheat,
fruits & veggies, corn. But what’s even more surprising is that
the biggest share of this water goes to crops humans don’t eat. The biggest water guzzler is alfalfa. You might not recognize this plant but if you’ve ever seen a bale of hay that
looks greenish: that’s alfalfa. Unlike a lot of crops, with enough water farmers in the West can harvest it up to
12 times a year and sell every last bit. It's about a 9 to 10 month crop down 
in our part of the desert. And so you're farming it 9 or 10 months and therefore, you're irrigating it
during that time. We can group alfalfa’s water with the water
used for other grass hays and for corn silage. Together, this accounts for 32% of the West’s
entire water footprint. And what they have in common is that these
are all crops grown almost exclusively to feed cows. That’s more than all the residential and
commercial uses combined. A third of all the water consumed in the West... just for feeding cattle. Americans eat nearly 4 times more beef
than the global average. Our dairy intake has been increasing
for decades, too. And we’re not alone. At least 10% of this cattle feed ends up on
container ships crossing the pacific to feed cows in Japan, China, and
the Middle East. Agriculture in the United States is built
to supply a world export market. So what do we do about this? It’s clear that letting our lawns die would make less of an impact than
changing our diets. But that solution is a hard sell for consumers even the most informed ones. In case anybody takes me for like a meat hating
like college professor... cheeseburgers are my favorite food. And my cheeseburgers come from
Colorado River water. So I have thought about it and I think that
before we all stop eating meat we should explore a couple of
other solutions. Ben and his co-authors highlight an approach
called “rotational fallowing.” It enables agencies representing
metropolitan water users to set a price that they’ll pay farmers to temporarily stop irrigating 
a portion of their fields. Farmers decide whether it’s worth it in
any given year to take that deal. And the unused water can then be sent to the
cities... or left in reservoirs. Can fallowing hay and alfalfa 
in the Colorado River Basin solve the current 2022 year drought crisis? The answer is yes. There’s a long-term agreement like this in place between the water district that
serves LA and San Diego and the Palo Verde Irrigation District
in rural California. The deal allows up to 29% of the total farmland
to be fallowed. It's been largely well received
in our valley. I think farmers like it. Bart Fisher’s farm depends entirely on water
from the Colorado River so he supports the conservation program. But he also says it doesn't work for everyone. Whenever you do fallowing there are economic losers and economic winners. And some of our vendors who may sell seed
or fertilizer, they're a loser. Jobs, communities, and global supply chains
currently rely on western farmers growing vast amounts of cow food
in the middle of the desert. But as water supplies continue to shrink,
something has to give: in how we eat, what we grow, and
where we grow it. When you look at the water use on the river the short term savings has to come out 
of agriculture. There's no... there's no other place to get it. On November 30th, 2021, Barbados become
the world’s newest republic. "From this day and forever, declare Barbados
a parliamentary republic.” Barbados lowered the 
queen's flag ended its allegiance to the
British royal family and severed more than 350 years of
colonial ties to the monarchy. But look who’s in attendance: That's then Prince Charles. "It was important that I should join you to reaffirm those things which do not change." Part of what Charles meant by that was that even though Barbados was no longer 
a realm of the British Crown it was remaining a member of the Commonwealth. See as this was happening the queen wasn’t just the queen of the UK. She was also the queen of 14 of
the British empire’s old colonies. And they are all part of a larger organization called the Commonwealth of Nations also mad up mostly of former British colonies. And the queen was the head of that too. It’s a vestige of the British empire. "We shall be able to make of this
ancient commonwealth which we all love so dearly,
an even grander thing." So let’s unpack it. What happened to the British empire? And what is the Commonwealth? In 1926, when Queen Elizabeth II was born Britain ruled over nearly a quarter of the
world’s population through its colonies. Over centuries the British Empire refined systems to control and extract wealth
and resources from them. Like in Barbados where they exploited the descendents of people 
kidnapped from Africa on their sugar plantations. Or in South Africa, where they took millions
of karats of diamonds from local mines. But although the British Empire was larger
and more lucrative than ever by the early 20th century there were
early signs of its dissolution. All these white settler colonies like Australia and Canada,
had become British dominions. That meant they would no longer
be ruled by Britain but would symbolically remain constitutional
monarchies under the crown. They called it the British Commonwealth. And it would turn out to be the future
of the British Empire. By the time Queen Elizabeth took the throne
in the 1950s, the world had changed even more. After WWII Britain’s economy was suffering. And across the empire, independence movements
were on the rise. Like in India, where independence 
movement leaders had been fighting for sovereignty
for decades. Or in Kenya, where 1.5 million people fighting
against British rule were forced into concentration camps. As the empire realized there was
no stopping decolonization the monarchy focused on maintaining
its relevance. Even though the queen would not attend the
lowering of the British flag her family would. Her husband, Prince Philip, attended
several ceremonies marking the the independence of
former colonies. Including the one in Kenya. As did other royals, like Lord Mount Batten
in India. India was given the choice to remain in the
British Commonwealth in the same way the former white
settler colonies had. But shortly after independence, 
India declared itself a republic and refused to have a monarch. So in an effort to maintain ties, the British
Commonwealth reinvented itself. As the queen put it during her first major
royal tour as head of the Commonwealth: “The commonwealth bears no resemblance
to the empires of the past." "It is an entirely new conception." The British Commonwealth changed its name
to the Commonwealth of Nations. Over time it would allow countries that were no longer under the queen like these to join as Commonwealth members. On the other hand, many newly
independent countries chose to keep the queen as their
ceremonial head of state and became commonwealth realms. Like Barbados. It was a mix of monarchies and republics
and the queen presided over it. Most visibly, by expanding the imperial tradition
of conducting royal tours. In many ways the British empire decolonized
but the monarchy was global. Today, nearly a third of the world’s population
lives in a Commonwealth nation. And while some countries have chosen
to leave the commonwealth others have decided to join despite 
not having been British colonies. That's partly because although the Commonwealth
is more or less a club whose members don’t have legal obligations
to each other. It’s also one of the world’s largest political
organizations and can be a useful forum for countries
that want to amplify their voice or gain access to big diplomatic players like
the UK, India, Canada, or the crown itself. And although its members decided to make
King Charles III the next head of the Commonwealth they weren't required to. Anyone can lead the organization. Which leaves open the possibility that the
Commonwealth, started by the British empire has a future led by the very colonies
it was designed to corral. The Queen’s death inspired periods of mourning
in many commonwealth nations. In part, because she was remarkably good at
uniting the Commonwealth in a way that deflected from her
country’s dark history. But in recent years, the monarchy can't hide
from it like it used to. “From the darkest days of our past,
and the appalling atrocity of slavery which forever stains our history..." The reckoning with Britain’s colonial history
has reignited debates over the role of the monarchy
in the Commonwealth. So has the death of Queen Elizabeth II. But they also both point to the fact that
much of the power in the Commonwealth now lies with the Britain's former colonies. And the question is: what do they want? On September 6, the Ukrainian army
launched an attack on the town of Balakliya. It had been held by the Russian army 
for more than 6 months. But by September 8, the Ukrainian army
had recaptured it. And they were just getting started. Over the next few days, Ukrainian forces
swept through this Russian-held territory with astounding speed. "Ukrainian forces have blitzed 
through Russia's gains..." "...in a lightning counter-offensive..." "...forcing Russian forces to retreat..." As of September 14, Ukraine claims it recaptured nearly 8,000 square kilometers of 
Russian-held territory and liberated dozens of towns. It’s a major breakthrough for Ukraine and
it marks a new phase in the war. So, how did Ukraine pull off such
a stunning attack? And how does it change the war? It’s useful to think of the war in Ukraine
as having three main phases, so far. The first began when Russia invaded
in February 2022. The Russian military swept into Ukraine through
the north, east, and south and immediately clashed with 
the Ukrainian army. This phase was essentially the Russians 
attempting to force the Ukrainian government to surrender. This is Mason Clark, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War,
an American think tank. Ukrainian forces at the time were
in large part outgunned. The most intense fighting took place
in a few major cities like Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kherson, and
outside the capital, Kyiv. But by April, a few weeks into the war Russia had failed to capture Kyiv or Kharkiv. It did control a large swath
of territory, though and continued to fight the Ukrainian army
on three main fronts: In the northeast, in the east, and in the
south, where it did control Kherson. That's when the second phase began. From about April to August, this map
changed very little. Russia, for the most part, stopped conducting
large, sweeping attacks and instead relied on its artillery to pound
Ukrainian positions. But the Russian army was in bad shape. The US government estimates that 
as many as 80,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. It was very, very devastating for them particularly since the losses
they were taking early in the war were in the the best of the Russian military. The easy comparison is by this summer, the Russians had lost
more men than the Soviets did in nearly a decade of the war in Afghanistan. So, during the summer, Russia used the time
to recruit more soldiers. But it didn't go well. A fascinating element of this is that the Kremlin still is calling this
a special military operation. It cannot be referred to as a war. That actually matters because the Russians
haven't called up conscripts for this invasion. And instead, they're trying to fill these
gaps with these various ad hoc methods. The Russians have had to hire more mercenaries. And offer payments to prisoners. They’ve even raised the age limit
to allow men over 40 to join the army. And Russia’s sent many of these men,
with little training, to the front lines. So it's led to a steady drop off in the quality
of Russian personnel throughout the war. But while Russia struggled to rebuild its army, 
Ukraine had the opposite problem. There was actually a sort of 
bottleneck in May where they had too many recruits and
not enough instructors to train them which is a very good problem to have. With help from its western allies Ukraine was able to quickly train lots of
these men before sending them to the front. That has really helped the Ukrainian military
not just produce more soldiers but very effective soldiers, better than
the Russians. By the end of August they were ready for the
next phase of the war. Their own attack. Throughout the summer, Ukrainian leaders 
talked a lot about their plans to launch an attack. And they made it pretty clear that they would
strike here, Kherson, key to control the south. Ukraine moved many of its troops into position
near the city. And used their most-advanced artillery 
to hit the Russians for weeks. They were forcing the under-manned 
Russian army to make a choice: they had to pick somewhere to send forces
and they picked Kherson. When the Russians moved troops to Kherson,
they left the northeast vulnerable since it was mostly guarded by
those experienced soldiers. So when Ukraine did start their attack 
in early September they didn’t hit much resistance there. Almost as soon as Ukraine’s soldiers began
the attack, the Russian forces began to flee. These are piles of weapons and ammunition,
left behind by Russian troops near Kharkiv. They also left trucks, tanks, 
and artillery behind. And this is a Russian tank crew 
frantically fleeing before crashing into a tree. The Russians were running away and withdrawing faster than the Ukrainians were
keeping up with them. While the Russians retreated Ukraine took over all this territory which included some important towns. Izyum was a Russian supply dump. And Kupiansk was a crucial railway hub,
useful for moving troops and supplies. They’ve also freed thousands 
of Ukrainian civilians that have been trapped under 
Russian occupation for months. I think this was a very well done,
opportunistic attack that went just incredibly well for
the Ukrainian military. Meanwhile, Ukraine is still attacking Kherson
and making some progress. But the attack in Kharkiv has begun
a third phase in the war where Ukraine, this time, has the momentum. There's a long road ahead. The Russians are going to try and replace
these further catastrophic losses with likely diminishing returns. But I am confident in saying that
the shoe is more on the other foot now with Ukrainian forces having the initiative
of choosing where the next major battle of the war will occur. And they have clearly demonstrated that they can and fully intend
to take this war into 2023 and drive out the occupying Russian forces. Pixar...the studio behind this,
and this, and this has mastered a sort of
photo-surrealistic style where there’s a sense of cartoony-ness but most things look and feel like they
could exist in the real world. Like these fibers on Mr. Incredible’s shirt. And this tree stump and grass from
this scene from Up. Or the glimmering, out-of-focus bokeh
behind Bo Peep. And it’s not just Pixar. These movies look so similar you can barely tell they’re from
different animation studios. But when you look at these movies it’s clear that something different
is happening. These lights don’t just illuminate;
they reveal a texture. This tree in the background 
isn’t out of focus it’s just got a simplified look. And this hair looks more like
brush strokes than human hair. These films are part of a new trend that’s steering animation away from 
replicating the real world and into somewhere new. Crafting beautiful animation in CG films requires a lot of dedicated artists
to perform specialized tasks: like rendering. Rendering is the process by which
a computer takes geometry, textures, lighting, camera inputs 
and does a bunch of math to apply all that information into
a final image. Like this one. Most render engines, like the one I’m using
here, are physically based which essentially means that it tries to replicate the real world physics
of light, shadow, reflection, and more. You can see this type of rendering
all over Pixar’s work even going back to their first movie. Rex looks like he could exist 
in the real world. Every meeting we would have, everybody
brought up like the Pixar look. The Pixar look was something that was very
high quality very successful at the box office so everybody kind of wanted the Pixar look. My name is Christos Obrenetov. Christos is the CEO of Lollipop Shaders a company that builds custom shaders
and plugins for 3D software. He’s worked on tons of films including "Life of Pi", "A Christmas Carol,"
and the upcoming "Across the Spider-Verse". But before all that he worked on a bunch of films that tried to
replicate that Pixar look. Because it was reliable, popular, and safe. Part of doing a feature film is, you know,
a lot of money and a lot of time. So they were kind of chasing that Pixar dream
of having that kind of a success. So to go and spend, you know, $100 million
or more... the investors and what not
are probably saying: "It's got to look like Pixar or Disney."
Right? And that was the case for a long time. Even when studios wanted to try
something different: Disney would come up and interview for a movie
that ended up being called "Bolt". They were showing us this really cool concept
art and they're like, "Oh, it's going to be super stylized." "It's going to look like sort of like 
the concept art." And it was very exciting. I was like, "Oh, this is great." And then when the movie 
did come out I mean, Bolt is fantastic, but they made it
very, you know, that same look. Movies like "Monster House" and "A Christmas
Carol" were intended to look stylized too but ultimately they settled back into
that tried-and-true physically based rendering look. There were glimmers of more stylized approaches
in short film tests and small sequences like in Disney’s Moana. But this stylized sequence
is only about 30 seconds out of the hour and 43 minute-long film. A lot of studios have been playing with
this for a long time. But to take that risk to do a full feature film that's
very stylized in 3D I think people were scared. And that fear kept studios from making
bold choices. Until 2017 when the trailer for
"Into the Spider-Verse" dropped. It had simplified graphic bursts that felt
like comic book panels. There was no motion blur or depth of field and everything, from the characters to the
environments, was full of texture. According to one of the animation supervisors
for the project after a year and a half of work the studio was still nervous that people were
going to hate the visuals. Because they felt like they were taking too
many risks. Instead of leaning into the safe, physically
based, rendering look "Into the Spider-Verse" chose to use 
non-photorealistic rendering. To pull this off, they essentially had to
break their physically-based renderer. Instead of inputting data from lights, 
camera, and materials and receiving a realistic looking render they combined all that data with custom
data passes that tweaked things like the focus plane or the way the light worked
in an image. This combo allowed the renderer 
to produce stylized results. For example, in "Into the Spider-verse",
out of focus elements aren’t blurry. Instead, the colors split as if the screen printing on an actual 
comic book was done poorly. Lighting and shadow were approached
in new ways too. Light often reveals halftone dots. And shadows create sketchy hatch marks. But there’s more than just shading magic
happening here. Non-photorealistic renderings often use linework 2D elements like speed lines and doubles and variable frame rates to pull these frames
further away from reality and often, closer to the concept art. Just two months after its release "Into the Spider-Verse" became the highest grossing
film Sony Pictures animation had ever made. It doesn’t hold a candle to Pixar
in terms of lifetime gross: "Incredibles 2" sits at the number one spot while Spider-verse doesn’t even crack
the top 50. But, much like Pixar did in the first wave
of CG animated features "Into the Spider-Verse" redefined
the visual goals for animation studios. 2021’s "The Mitchells vs the Machines" and
2022’s "Puss in Boots" take non-photorealistic rendering in a different,
more painterly direction where out-of-focus objects 
become simplified shapes emulating the way that artists may use 
simplified marks in backgrounds "In the Mitchells vs the Machines", shadows
create different marker textures. Puss in Boots’ simplified 2D cutaways mimic
the graphic bursts of Into the Spider-verse. People were like, "Oh, this is looks really
good and it's different". So now, all future projects at studios from
DreamWorks and Imageworks and Pixar— they're looking at the next whatever, five
years or whatnot. It's all like very stylized. And that’s really exciting because non-photorealism allows animated movies
to take advantage of the things that make them special. They can be anything the imagination allows. This is Cairo. Egypt’s largest city and its capital. For decades it's been home to Egyptian rulers
and their palaces. The Parliament has met in this building
for over 150 years. And this public square in the heart of Cairo
has been the site of several revolutions. But in 2015, the Egyptian government
announced the capital would move about 50 kilometers away... To this patch of empty desert. Which is quickly shaping up to be the
New Administrative Capital of Egypt. This is where a new presidential palace 
will go... the new Parliament building and
a new public square. Egypt’s government, led by president
Abdel Fattah El-Sisi claims this new city will solve 
a specific problem: Cairo’s overpopulation. But the country has a long history of building
new cities to decongest Cairo. Many of them sit outside the city today. So, why is Cairo’s population still considered
a ticking time bomb? And what’s the real reason behind 
this new capital? There's a population counter
outside one of the ministries. It's mundane, but it also it's red, flashing lights with these colors
is almost always like telling people... A little too many of you are here. This is Mohamed Elshahed an architectural historian who studies
urban development in Egypt. And I find this to be quite a dangerous narrative
especially since that's actually not the case. Egypt's home to more than 100 million people. And about 20% of them live within the boundaries
of Greater Cairo. The city has one of the highest 
population densities in the world with 153,000 people per square kilometer
at its peak. That’s higher than New York, London, and
Shanghai. What we know as Cairo, today, was officially
founded on the banks of the Nile in the 10th century, as the capital of
the Arab Fatimid Caliphate. The city had to be built near the river because the rest of the region 
was barren desert. Over the next several centuries, each ruler
built expansions of Cairo close to the fertile banks. The Ottomans built these areas... and the British added these suburbs during
their decades-long occupation of Egypt. In the 1950s, when the British left and
Egypt became a republic Cairo was by far the biggest city. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, millions of impoverished
Egyptians from the countryside moved to Cairo in search of opportunities
and better living conditions. But the city that was built haphazardly along
the river wasn't equipped to house more people. The city sort of was already kind of
shaped and demarcated and the green areas around it were left agricultural. And it's those areas that were cheap and close enough to those amenities that allowed
then people to step in. Since the housing that was available 
was completely not sufficient. So farmers started selling small slices of
their agricultural land to the migrants. A lot of people have to build for themselves
with little money. So together, so entire families would go vertical
on a small plot of land. These were the first informal and
technically illegal neighborhoods. It's informal because it's not, you know,
given licenses for construction. It's built outside of the economy, that is
the “official economy". And I think this is actually the result of
the fact that the economic system really excluded 
the majority of the population. For decades, Egypt's government failed
to build affordable housing or invest in public services and infrastructure
to support the explosive growth in Cairo’s density. And that meant these unplanned and
informal neighborhoods continued to get more and more crowded
until it became a crisis. "Egypt’s capital is bursting at the seams." "Cairo is equipped to handle around 3 million,
in fact, it's home to 8 million." "Housing is an area of desperate need." "Many people in Cairo live in makeshift shacks in the city's center and in much worse conditions
in the suburbs." Today, these informal neighborhoods are home
to 60% of Cairo’s population. Most of them are inhabited by the poor but many have evolved into middle class neighborhoods. Collectively, these are the most crowded areas
of Cairo. And Egypt’s government, under Sisi, points
to them as the real problem behind Cairo's overcrowding. I find this to be a very problematic narrative
because then we take a question of let's say, bad design or bad management from
a state perspective and turn the blame on actually the people
who are suffering from the bad design and the bad policies and say, there's just too many of you. In fact, the government still considers them
illegal, referring to them as slums. From the point of view of the state, calling
an area a slum facilitates its removal. In 2019, the government announced it would
eradicate Cairo's slums by 2030. Many neighborhoods will be redeveloped
as affluent housing while thousands of residents will be forcibly
pushed out of their homes and into affordable housing outside the city. But instead of focusing on sufficient
affordable housing they invested billions of dollars in
a whole new city elsewhere. And it's not the first time an Egyptian ruler has tried to solve the crisis by starting
fresh in the desert. "A building boom is in progress." "New apartment blocks are going up 
at a greater rate since the start of Nasser’s Revolution." The concept of a new city as a solution for
Cairo's growing population began in the 1950s. The first attempt was under President
Gamal Abdel Nasser who ordered the construction of a new city
called Nasr City. It was also designed to be a new capital 
at the time. There would be space for government buildings,
markets, and a huge new stadium. But there was a big flaw. The plan didn't involve affordable housing for the people in Cairo's most crowded areas. The need was for a lot of lower class housing. But that wasn't going to be placed in the
new capital. Nobody wants to build a shiny new capital
and then fill it with low cost housing. So it's sort of a trend that already 
starts there. By the 1970s, Egypt had a new leader, 
Anwar Sadat who didn’t end up moving the capitol to
Nasr City. But he really leaned into the trend of building
‘desert cities’. Starting in 1976, Egypt’s government built
8 new cities in the desert around Cairo. Each time they claimed the goal was
to alleviate overcrowding. But, most included only expensive housing. And barely any featured public transportation making them inaccessible for anyone 
without a car. That’s why today, many of these desert cities
are only partially occupied. Most who have moved here are Cairo’s
middle and upper class residents. That means that the majority of the population
that's squeezed in the little green belt that's now urbanized around the Nile are kind
of X’d-out of these developments. So we're looking at a condition 
that's a result of I would say, 3 to 4 decades 
in particular of misguided policy that looks to the outside of the city. President Sisi is continuing that trend
with his new capital. These areas are designated for housing, but
mostly for middle and upper class residents. Those people are not moving in with handouts. They're buying their those properties. And so the main target audience is, again,
a moneyed class. I think the housing for low-income communities
will be included in the capital but definitely very limited. All of this land will be used for 
government buildings and this section will be a business district featuring this soon-to-be-tallest 
building in Africa. So, if this new capital isn’t really about
solving Cairo’s population density crisis why is the government so determined 
to build it? In 2011, protests erupted in Egypt
over police brutality. And they quickly evolved into widespread calls for the resignation of Egypt’s ruler 
of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak. Demonstrations took place all over Egypt. But the biggest were in Cairo. Specifically, Tahrir Square. It’s been the epicenter of many political
demonstrations since the early 20th century. Largely because it’s so close to Egyptian
government buildings, including the Parliament. In 2011, millions of people occupied 
Tahrir Square for 18 days. They set up roadblocks... and battled with police. On February 11, thousands marched from 
Tahrir Square to the presidential palace, 10 km away where they ultimately forced Mubarak 
to step down. The ability to control Tahrir Square 
and inner Cairo allowed the protestors to effectively paralyze
the government. Making their presence and their demands
impossible to ignore. Sisi remembers that. He was the head of Egypt’s powerful military
when he seized power in 2013 on the heels of the revolution. Barely a month after taking power he commanded his soldiers and police 
to crack down on protestors who opposed him. The brutal raid killed more than 800 people. Ever since, he's been systematically trying
to prevent a revolution that could topple him. His government has shut down political dissents,
punished journalists, and hindered free speech. Now, they are redesigning several aspects
of Cairo to make the city harder to protest in. They’ve widened dozens of streets making it more difficult to erect road-blocks. And they plan to add 40 bridges which will give the military and police
easier access to the city center. Sisi’s government has also renovated 
Tahrir Square adding giant monuments and 
private security guards which, some experts, say will make it harder
for large crowds to gather. Now, they’re taking the final step: removing the government entirely from Cairo. Just 7 years after announcing the construction
of the new capital government officials are starting to move
into these new buildings. Once that’s complete, all of Egypt’s 
political power, including Sisi will be concentrated here... almost 
50 kilometers from Cairo. And it will all be under heavy guard: this is the military's sprawling complex nearby. Even though there is a public square,
called the People’s Piazza it’s hard to imagine millions of people making the journey from Cairo 
to demonstrate here. And that may be the point. The distance, plus the military presence will allow Sisi to defend his power
in case of an uprising. So instead of a capital that offers a solution
for the people of Cairo this city is designed to move the government
out of their reach. Buckle up everyone because I just learned something weird
and now you all need to know it too. I was on a call the other day with a woman
named Emily Fairfax. And she knows a lot about beavers. Yes, beavers. And at one point, she just
casually mentions... a weird period of beaver relocation in the 40s where we dropped them out of airplanes. I’m sorry. What? There's this absolutely absurd video. You can find it on YouTube from 
Idaho Fish and Game. "Now into the air and down they swing." "The box opens and a most unusual and novel
trip ends for Mr. Beaver." Okay, the method is super questionable. But the Idaho Department of Fish and Game
did this to relocate 76 beavers away from humans and into a remote location
where there were no roads. Because beavers build dams. Structures that completely alter the landscape. But now, research has found that beavers and
their dams do so much more than flood the forest. As the planet continues to warm they might
also be vital in cooling parts of it down. So when beavers move into a stream their very first order of business is 
to build that dam to start making a little bit of a safe habitat
for themselves. They start with some logs or stones to secure
the structure. After that they’ll keep piling sticks, stones,
and mud over and over again until water starts to pool behind it. As flowing water pushes against the dam
it begins to carve out a deep pool which is great for the beaver because on land... They're pretty unfortunately awkward
but once they get into the water that's where they really shine and excel. But it’s also ideal for other species because deeper water tends to be much cooler
than water at the surface. So if you're a fish and it's
a really hot day you can go down into one of these deep pools
and just hunker down at the bottom where the water is coolest and has the least
sunlight affecting it. The dam also forces circulation: as water hits the dam, some of it is 
forced into the soil where it mixes with cold ground water 
before resurfacing. As a result, one study found that water 
near beaver dams is up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) cooler
than water elsewhere. This comfortable little pond is the first
defense against predators but beavers will also dig out canals into
the surrounding land which function as a small highway system 
for them. All this tampering with the stream spreads
the water around the area. As that water evaporates, the water vapor
chills the air. At one of my sites in central California,
I went to visit on a particularly hot day. It was 107 Fahrenheit (42 Celsius). And then I get into the complex and I hold up the temperature probe and I'm
like wow it's 91 (33 Celsius). We lost almost 15 degrees of air temperature just going into this beaver complex. The area becomes a wetland ecosystem and on first glance it’s a total mess with branches,
plants, and water everywhere. And that’s a good thing. A river or a riverscape should be very complex,
very messy. And it's that complexity that makes them
so resilient to climate change and all sorts of other disturbances. And that resiliency is increasingly important. In the summer of 2022, heatwaves and fires
plagued parts of Europe and the US. As the climate crisis worsens we can expect
these events to increase. Beavers - it turns out - might be able to
help. Because these wetland ecosystems 
are especially important in areas that are prone to fire or drought. Dams slow water down and allow it to seep
deep into the Earth which provides a source of groundwater 
for humans. It also keeps the surrounding land wet
and wetter land is less likely to burn. This is an image from Idaho in 2018 when 65,000
acres were scorched by wildfire. This green patch in the middle is a wetland
created by a beaver dam. Emily and a colleague studied the effects
of this in 2020 and found repeated evidence that beaver dams
create firebreaks. Providing a safe place for animals to go when
wildfires break out. That was the first study in the scientific
literature that said beaver ponds are too wet to burn in many cases. Beavers have had bad PR. They’re often considered annoying pests
because wetland creation is messy. When a dam is built in the wrong place it
can flood roadways or homes. And previously, the solution was extermination but that seems to be changing. California, for example, just passed a bill
that requires state sponsored beaver-relocation. Don’t worry... they won’t be dropping
them out of planes. What we’re learning is that beavers do some
of the best engineer work for climate resiliency. We just have to let them. We've got to let go of a little bit of control. Especially once a beaver starts building. What was a pretty cute little stream becomes
this super wild, messy wetland. Like, that's good. Remember that that is good. We want it to be messy. Hello? Hello? I think you've got the wrong number. Hello? Okay. Bye! You just keep calling me don't you? Don’t you realize your TV is ruining
every single movie you watch? Uh. No. There’s a hidden setting that’s distorting
the color, the motion, the contrast that filmmakers want. Wait, what’s that noise? It's popcorn. I only make popcorn when I’m about
to watch a movie. Everybody warned you about it. Tom did. "To that end, we'd like a moment of your time
to talk about video interpolation." The Always Sunny guys complained about it. "I don't understand how people can't see it." "They can't see it!" “90% of the population does not know that
they’re watching auto motion plus.” And your TV will still ruin your movie. What did you say? Check the settings. Check them. No, that’s not possible. This TV is a Samsung but every TV manufacturer has 
proprietary modes they use to market their TVs. And they all distort the picture
in different ways. And the dreaded motion smoothing
is just the beginning. Have you had any personal experience 
with this problem? I distinctly remember this one experience
where I was at my parents house and we were just sitting around and watching
some movie and I couldn't shake the feeling that every single time that something
on the screen was moving there was this shadow trailing behind
people moving. Michael Zink is a VP of Emerging and Creative
Technologies at Warner Brothers but he’s also President of the UHD Alliance an industry group that brings together
lots of parties to decide, basically, how TVs should
display stuff. So if you walk into somebody's house are you like bound to say something
like a superhero, almost? Yeah, you put on your cape and then you grab
the remote. The UHD Alliance formed in 2015. Filmmakers noticed big new problems as HDTVs were being turned into 4K beasts
with lots of extra features. They like to compete and show off all
the bells and whistles and how they’re better than their competitors. And that’s all well and good, but... Not necessarily when you’re watching a movie. You can see them in these short clips from the trailers for last three
Best Cinematography winners. I filmed them on my TV with typical TV adjustments and
with none at all. In "1917", the color saturations are totally
different and brightness is cranked up. See how in "Mank", the brightness levels
are totally different? Here’s the darkest and brightest points
in the scene, side by side. And in Dune, you can really see
the digitally sharpened details and cranked saturation. These choices overwrite what the
best cinematographers and colorists wanted. And they are baked into TVs. Typically movies are shot or mastered
in a mastering suite and once the movies are finished... that's how the director wants them
to be seen. Hey! How's it going? Hey, what's up Phil? I was hoping you could show me one of the
edit bays for this video. Yea, sure, one second. Movies are finished in dark rooms
kind of like these probably with even fancier gear. Hey, I'm realizing your voice sounds
a little familiar from a call I got last night... What do you mean? You can manually adjust white balance
and other settings but TV menus make it maddeningly complex. Even the name for these baked in settings
is confusing: “Standard picture mode” implies
basic, straightforward. But usually, that mode is packed full
of these tweaked settings. But the worst offender, by far, is the motion
and that’s also the hardest to show. Here's the thing about explaining
motion smoothing. If I were to publish this video at
60 frames a second to show you what that looks like, you might be watching
it on YouTube at 24 frames a second so the entire point of it would be
completely lost. And that doesn't account for the fact that
when I do publish this video at 24 frames a second, you might be watching
it on a "Dynamic Mode" on your TV at 60 frames a second — artificially. Which means it'll look totally different
and that doesn't even account for the fact that there's going to be exporting issues
when I put this out of a software program and compression involved with the codec 
which is playing it back to you on the internet... It's hard. There are some workarounds. This ball is moving at 24 frames a second,
like this entire video. This one is moving at 12 frames a second,
half the frames. See the big difference in the motion? That's as big as what your TV does
when it doubles the frames in a 24 frames per second movie. Here's every frame for that 24 frame
per second ball. And here's every frame if it moved at
a typical 60 frames a second. Do you see the huge difference
in information? And your TV is often just making up
these frames. You can also see what's going on
by filming TVs. These frames are taken from a TV in
"Standard Mode"... while these ones are totally unchanged. This too meta for you, by the way? We are used to seeing movies at around 24
frames a second. Anything not that frame rate 60 frames a second, or even 30 won't have the same gaps between frames
that we're used to. They are 24 frames per second files
but I filmed my TV at 60 frames per second. See how in the unchanged side there’s movement from this frame
to this frame. Now look over here: the TV has just added
a frame in the middle in addition to all those tweaks
to the picture. This isn’t what we’re used to movies looking
like, for the very simple fact that we’re used to movies only showing frames
they wanted to show us. This frame in an example of motion smoothing. It invents frames, which makes motion look
different from a movie. It also creates weird, barely 
perceptible artifacts because the software just isn’t good enough. 24 frame per second videos have this
which is motion blur. Motion smoothing invents weird
digital artifacts instead. But we aren't stuck with it. The UHD Alliance works to set a lot of standards
for TV but among those standards are the relatively
new Filmmaker Mode a TV setting with the same name, across brands that basically turns off all the crap. The notion behind it is, we will maintain
whatever the original frame rate is. So if your content is in 48 or 60 or 120
or whatever that is... that's the frame rate that TV should reproduce. What we don't want is to add additional frames 
or eliminate certain frames. It's really making sure that whatever is in
the signal stays the way it is and is represented on the TV
in a faithful manner. I'm not doing this anymore. Don't change that setting! I have a choice! Don't click that menu, Philip! Don't you dare! One of one of our colleagues at the UHDA he always compared what 
we're trying to do. It's always this analogy of if you go to a high end steakhouse
and you order a really expensive steak. You want it to be brought to you the way
the chef prepares it. You don't want the steak to arrive with a
server deciding halfway through that, hey, let me just put a whole bunch of ketchup on
top of that because that's how I like to eat. And that's very similar to what 
these TVs are doing. They decide for you that, hey,
this is great content, but let me shopping it a little bit. Let me reduce some noise. Let me change the colors. Oh, and by the way, let me invent a couple of frames
in between as well. And if a director would want to have done
that, they would have done that. But it shouldn't be up to the television to
decide to do this. there's this website livinginthepass.com it's been run by this guy philip lord since the 90s it's this kind of amazing time capsule of what the internet used to be a bunch of html web pages connected with hyperlinks pixelated clip art the papyrus font it's a chronicle of one man's passion projects lord's model building endeavors deep dives into his family history and someone named henry rogers an artist known for impressionist-style paris street scenes who lord became obsessed with tracking down because when you look closer at henry rogers paintings things don't really add up the signatures for example sometimes henry sometimes the french henri and when you try to search for henry rogers online there's no information about the painter himself it's almost like he only exists in these paintings of paris the more i read lord's website the more i wanted to know who really made these paintings it's a puzzle that led me from the paris street art scene to an ai art center in cleveland and to drop 300 on ebay all to try and answer the question who is henry rogers [Music] henry rogers paintings are pretty easy to come by online and it doesn't take long to become familiar with the core elements of his paintings there's usually this blue roofed building next to this reddish one both with cloth awnings and across the street another blue roofed building next to another reddish one sometimes this street leads to a paris landmark like the eiffel tower sometimes it doesn't you'll always see a tree or a row of trees and along the wet rainy looking street faceless blobs of people who all seem to be walking away from the viewer they're almost entirely done with a painting knife rather than a brush this technique adds texture to paintings and can result in little detail it's a style that calls back to french impressionism an art movement that was popular in europe in the late 1800s with the most famous artists working in paris at this point you might be thinking okay so this is kind of like a parisian bob ross someone who developed a technique to mix and match elements quickly like the classic rogers tree and managed to produce a large number of similar looking paintings over their lifetime that could be true but before we throw out any theories let's lay out everything we know about henry rogers and let's start online living in the past.com is still the only place on the internet that's devoted any research into these paintings philip lord told me that the obsession had faded for him and he didn't want to give an interview but he gave me permission to use his website as a starting point for my own investigation lord's search for the elusive french artist began with this painting which hung on the wall of his childhood home in upstate new york but when he tried to find info about the artist who signed it nothing turned up lord had a bunch of theories for who rogers might be but generally they fall into three potential buckets one henry rogers was a very busy french painter working in paris sometime in the 70s and 80s who spelled his name two ways two henry rogers was a group of artists making these paintings together and using a pseudonym to make them seem more valuable and on the more extreme end three henry rogers paintings were mass-produced likely by so-called factories in china where artists methodically create similar looking paintings to figure out if rogers was one person lord started meticulously dissecting images of henry rogers paintings he found online ones that turned up in san diego and toronto but also in germany and one in south africa several of the frames were stamped made in mexico on the back like three of the ones i bought he compared signatures between henry and henry searched google street view to find where a painter might have stood and diagrams the shifting perspectives of the classic rogers street determining that its basic layout looks like this he also looked into similar artists like caroline burnette another prolific painter with a similar style and similarly murky origins when he considered the close resemblance of the knife techniques for henry and henry and that the paintings very often seem to depict the same street from various positions he landed here in his opinion henry rogers was one artist working in the streets of paris sometime in the 1970s and 1980s who may have exported his work for sale in foreign markets which helps explain the wide distribution and the mexican frames but philip lord never really had a smoking gun and he gave up trying to find more about henry rogers in 2011. so when i picked up the case in 2022 i wanted to start with a fresh source one that philip hadn't tried a paris street painter let me show you some paintings really quick yeah they're good but it looks like they've never been in paris jerome is an artist who works in the part of paris henry rogers would have been working in the historic monmouth district street artists have been painting in montmartre for hundreds of years many of them sell their work off in scenes of paris or portraits to tourists jerome works nightly in the most famous hub in montmartre for painters it's a square called place duterte he told me it's not uncommon for people to sell or exhibit paintings in paris they claim were made in place duterte but weren't he said they'll even often be signed with a fake french name like dupont durong and there's no dupont duran plus duterte but it looks like exotic when i asked him about the streets themselves and the angles philip lord had painstakingly diagrammed okay look this is the same country street i have never in paris you can see this kind of angle but they put the effect out to do like a nice background it's like a fantasy jerome thinks the made in mexico stamp on the frames the imagined perspectives and the varying signatures point to henry rogers being a mexican artist or group of artists selling these paintings as cheap decor items made to look like a souvenir from place to tear it looks like the taste of paris like the authentic way the romantic way at this point i felt like there had to be something philip and i were both missing and that jerome couldn't see over skype some clue too tiny to notice by just looking at the paintings alone or that needed to be seen up close by an expert that's when i reached out to case western reserve university in cleveland a group of scientists and art history experts there are using artificial intelligence to help tell artists apart based on microscopic differences in brush stroke style they invited me to their lab in cleveland to see if they could tell me anything about my rogers paintings so we're looking for things that are common across the paintings and we're trying to control as many variables as possible anna martin runs case western's more center that's the materials for opto electronics research and education center so what i'm going to do is measure out pieces of the painting i'm going to do pieces of the sky and then the trees she's scanning common elements of each painting using this machine an optical profilometer this tool could help us figure out if certain elements of these paintings were done by different hands basically it shoots this little dot of light onto the surface of the painting and measures the distance the light traveled when it bounces back charting out microscopic changes in height of paint a single data point spans just 11 microns which is apparently very very very small so it's the fraction of a width of a human hair they called me two weeks later with the results um so we prepared a couple of slides these were the scans that idna took for their experiment the team scanned a bunch of five millimeter patches from three of my paintings and created a detailed height map they used this data to assign each painting a profile one two and three then they fed different unknown five millimeter sections of all three paintings through the machine to see if it could identify which painting the sections came from basically if it could connect a patch like this to an entire painting and if it can do that that's a clue that perhaps there are different hands involved if it's the same person and we tested this in the past the machine basically fails at that task because he can't distinguish the patches and roughly 90 percent of the time the computer got it right there were enough differences in technique at a microscopic height level to accurately identify which painting was which the fact that these paintings have their own unique fingerprint is a strong case for henry rogers being the name of a workshop some group of artists who were trained to imitate each other almost perfectly with nearly invisible differences between the paintings i let the team at case western keep my henry rogers paintings for further study this has also helped us in thinking about how we're going to approach other paintings etc so this has actually been a very useful kind of exercise hopefully it'll help get the machine closer to identifying invisible fingerprints in other more famous paintings and now like philip lord before me i'm closing up the case but with a lot of new information and having gotten just a bit closer to finding out who henry rogers was and henry if you're out there i love the work email me if you see this [Music] do [Music] This building contains a truly gigantic laser. The National Ignition Facility... is about a hundred feet tall... as big as three football fields... And packed to the brim with tubes and wires
that look the bowels of a spaceship. It makes sense that one of the Star Trek movies
shot a few scenes there. "Do you know what this is?!" "It’s a warp core." Actually, it’s NIF’s “target chamber”. The laser beam starts over here in this room
as a tiny pulse of light about as weak as a regular laser pointer. But then it bounces around the building getting amplified over and over until
it’s a quadrillion times stronger. And then, it’s focused onto a single point. So... what do you do with a laser this big? Well, right now, scientists are using it
to study the secret inner lives of planets. It started in second grade, when I was younger my teacher showed me pictures of Jupiter. I remember in class vividly that she said that no one knows what's on the inside
of the planet. I was like oh well, maybe I could be
the one that figures that out! Now, Tanja Kovecivic is a planetary scientist
at UC Berkeley and she and her colleagues are asking 
broader questions. Why are we here? How did our solar system form? How planets form, how the moon formed and especially now with the search
for exoplanets... How do we find a habitable planet? What does that look like? How did earth or anything else go from
a molten ball to something that we can all now survive on. The features that define Earth:
its rich atmosphere... its vast oceans... its magnetic field... its solid but shifting crust... these features that fostered 
life as we know it they were shaped by unseen processes
hidden deep within the globe. If we want to understand the engines
that sculpted Earth, or Jupiter or the thousands of recently discovered worlds we need to look under the hood. But that’s not easy. On the surface of the Earth, we exist under
very unique conditions. We’re here, in this tiny range of relatively
low temperatures and low pressures. But if we drill deeper. Most of the matter, even within Earth,
exists under extreme temperatures and pressures. A trip into Jupiter is even more intense. At these depths, the laws of physics 
predict that familiar substances will start to act... pretty weird. When you're subjecting matter to intense pressure,
you're squishing it right? So you're actually causing the atoms
to re-orient themselves. When you heat it up, you're
also causing vibration. You're just kind of irritating this thing
into being a whole new material sometimes. For a long time, physicists have theorized
that deep within a planet iron can flow like water. And those swirling currents generate
Earth’s magnetic field. Also in theory, sodium can turn
completely transparent. Water can form a hot black ice
that conducts electricity. And hydrogen condenses into a metallic liquid. To understand the strange chemistry and geology
and physics happening inside planets we have to study substances we’d 
never encounter on the surface. And it’s not like we can just go down there
in an elevator. The closest humans have gotten 
to the Earth’s core is the Kola Superdeep Borehole
in Northwest Russia: 7.6 miles straight down. But that’s less than 0.2% of the way
to the center of the Earth. A probe we shot into Jupiter, stopped transmitting
when it was just 0.1% of the way to that planet’s core. Our instruments can’t survive in the very
temperatures and pressures we want to study. But scientists have come up with a few
different ways to get around this problem. The first is to create detailed computer models. So we have oxygen or little white hydrogens. All the little brown ones are going to magnesium. You can look at it in 3D. Oh it rotates! Yeah. Tanja programmed this collection of 
300 some atoms. It’s a tiny microcosm of a barrier between
rock and ice inside a planet. Her model simulates how each atom
and every last one of its electrons will act and interact. It’s a simulation of just a few billionths
of a second. But it takes one of the most powerful supercomputers
in the world a bit longer than that to complete. 138 hours. OK gotcha. Little by little, painstaking simulations
like these are starting to paint a picture of what’s happening inside planets. And they’re helping guide experiments
in the real world. We don't have that much time and facilities
that we can sort of go out and sample all kinds of worlds material that
all the conditions. And so they say hey, maybe you should look
in this direction. There could be something interesting there. So we have all these questions. We have all these theories. But we want to confirm that with
“real world experiments”. Yeah. What does that look like? That looks like a few different things: the first one of those would be
a diamond anvil cell. You take very high purity diamonds. You think of the diamond in the 
diamond wedding band. You basically compress a sample
within just the between the two. This setup can create some of the temperatures
and pressures seen inside earth. And if you want to go further, you can use... The gas gun method. With a gas gun you're launching basically a plate of metal
into the sample that you care about. Temperature and pressure spike on impact. That’s pretty good. But sometimes, you want to peer even deeper
into a giant planet. The third, and kind of most extreme of those
would be laser compression. And for that, you need a truly gigantic laser. NIF wasn’t built to explore other worlds
— not at all - it was built to save our own. In the 1970s, scientists were trying to harness
nuclear fusion: the reaction that powers our sun. It would be cheap, it would be clean,
it would be... the ultimate energy. The dream was (and still is) to hit
a tiny fuel pellet with powerful lasers and create a miniature star here on earth "We need to build a laser 1000 times more
powerful than any laser presently available." Scientists have spent decades designing
and building larger and larger lasers. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built NIF.  And the University of Rochester built their giant
OMEGA laser system.  These facilities are still plugging away at 
understanding nuclear fusion   but they've also become important tools for
astrophysicists and material scientists. Researchers at the Center for Matters at Atomic Pressures
use OMEGA and NIF to recreate the interiors of planets and stars and create revolutionary states of matter. Instead of loading up a target chamber
with pellets of fusion fuel they put in a sample, like a tiny speck 
of iron. We have to place it inside of this
little apparatus which you can actually hold in
the palm of your hand. It looks like this. And it happens to be the same semicircular
shape as UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater. Which is where I interviewed Mercedes. So if we imagine that we're standing inside
of the apparatus we could imagine this would be the sample not much thicker than a hair. —Teeny-tiny.
—Yeah. So our sample is mounted right on the front
of that little hole in the center there. Which, in the Greek Theater, would be at
the doors at the back of the stage. Then we would actually have another layer
of material right behind it. We call that layer the ablator. Our laser is going to come in from this direction... they're going to hit the back surface 
of this ablator. That's going to cause a kind of a 
mini localized explosion... Which drives the compression waves 
towards our sample. The temperature and pressure 
within the sample skyrockets. You'd have to have a comet colliding
at 20-30,000 miles an hour to start reaching the conditions that NIF
can do on a daily basis. The experiment only lasts about 30 billionths
of a second but that’s long enough to
take an X-ray snapshot. The x-rays bounce off the sample... and leave patterns on the walls of the device
that scientists can later decode. The x-rays are telling us what's going on
inside the sample, you know, is it melting? Does it stay solid? Is it changing the arrangement 
of the atoms itself? Using NIF, Rick saw that iron will be a liquid
under pressures found in giant rocky planets much bigger than Earth – and so planets
like that could also have magnetic fields. Other high pressure experiments have shown
that sodium does become clear. And water can form hot, black ice. And hydrogen does turn metallic. Scientists think there’s an immense ocean
of this form of hydrogen beneath Jupiter’s clouds and its currents generate Jupiter’s 
magnetic field. All these phases of matter that we had predicted,
potentially existed now we're able to theoretically prove through
models and through experimentation that they do exist. By peering at a handful of atoms a little crumb of matter - for just a tiny
fraction of a second scientists are unraveling the billion year
histories of massive planets millions of miles away. At first glance, The Hogeweyk looks a lot
like any other neighborhood in the Netherlands. It’s got a restaurant, barber shop, theater,
grocery store, and open green space. You can see people walking around, getting
groceries, having coffee. The difference is that this neighborhood is
a facility for people with severe dementia. And everyone else in it from grocery store cashiers to barbers 
to waiters are trained in dementia care. This model of care has been dubbed 
a "dementia village". As people continue to live longer 
around the world, the proportion of older people in the population
will continue to rise and that means a steep increase in 
the number of people with dementia. Caring for that population will require 
designing environments that help people feel safe and free even as they lose the ability to recognize
the world around them. And the architects behind dementia villages think they might just have figured out
the formula to do it. This is The Hogeweyk. Social life is happening there 
so you can see it now. That's Eloy van Hal, one of 
The Hogeweyk's founders. Dementia, it's — of course — a brain disease. If you look at your life as a photo album you forget the last pictures. The last pictures, they fall out of the album
and so you remember the past better when you were younger. And that's a daily challenge for the individuals:
how to live with memory loss. In early stages, people with dementia can
live at home, looked after by family, friends or home care but they eventually need full-time care. Often, that care comes from traditional 
nursing homes. But those settings can be sterile and clinical. You all dine together in a big dining area. You all have to listen to the same music 
at the same time. Where you're forced as a person into a program 
of the institution. There's not that much attention to 
who are you really what is my life's story, who am I, 
what do I prefer to do during the whole day. In any setting, the goal 
of good dementia care should be to preserve quality of life
as dementia progresses. In traditional settings, like nursing homes surface-level changes are 
a good place to start. Since people with dementia might perceive
dark tiles as holes floors should be visually consistent,
without contrasting patterns. Brightly colored doors and handrails help
residents navigate around and bright dishware has been shown to help
people with Alzheimer’s eat more food. Acoustic ceiling tiles, carpeted floors,
and soft furniture can absorb noises that trigger disorientation. Glass-fronted cabinets help residents have
a clear line of sight to what’s stored inside. And lighting fixtures that mimic natural light strengthen residents’ circadian rhythms,
which helps mitigate sundowning where people with dementia become confused
in the evening and night. Some of the advice about lighting, clear lines,
surface patterns, and so are based on institutions. Instead of normalizing the environments, all
those elements are essential. But sometimes they are the solution 
for an institution. But The Hogeweyk’s design solution is different. Instead of changing surface-level design to
preserve quality of life for people with dementia they took a structural approach and designed their facility to look as much
like the outside world as possible. Our guiding principle here is normalcy. It’s the vision of a normal life for people
living with dementia. That starts with lodging. Traditional nursing homes keep all their residents
under one roof. But real households don’t typically consist
of dozens of people. So, The Hogeweyk split its residents up 
into small groups of 6 or 7 recreating the scale of a single family home. Inside, each resident has a private room
furnished with personal belongings. The units are split up into different neighborhoods
to mimic Dutch cities residents are used to. The public space, the gardens, the streets,
the squares. They are equally important if you want to
build a community where people live. Each neighborhood’s public space was given
distinct landscapes and unique landmarks so people could easily find their way around. And destinations like the theater, barber
shop, and grocery store were put in separate buildings encouraging intentional movement and intermingling
in that public space. These different areas provide multiple scales
of experience and residents are given the autonomy to safely
wander along that spectrum from very private to very public space. That autonomy helps further preserve 
quality of life. People stay in their own bedroom. Many people socialize in the living room. But you can also decide to leave the house because the front door is open and to walk
to your own private outdoor space your terrace or balcony or your own garden or you walk further into the neighborhood
where you can mingle. So, it's about choice, choice, choice: where you want to be during the whole day
and with whom. Crucially, The Hogeweyk’s design allows
for a balance of safe design and controlled risk. Walkways, for example, don't have 
super high walls to guarantee no one falls over. You see handrails everywhere in institutions. The question is, do you need a handrail everywhere? Or do you want to provide a walker, where
you can walk with two hands on the walker, and make it accessible for the walker? Since The Hogeweyk opened in 2009 dozens of other dementia villages have 
opened across the globe. But without ample government funding,
they can be prohibitively expensive. And there isn’t enough evidence yet to say
whether the dementia village model is better than traditional models of care. The Hogeweyk claims that since they transitioned
from a traditional model to the village the number of residents on antipsychotic medication
decreased from 50 percent in 1993 to just 8-10 percent today. And there have been studies backing up different
features that dementia villages use. One review of the evidence found that 
uncrowded, small-scale living resulted in fewer psychiatric symptoms and
behavioral issues among residents with dementia. And that increased daylight lighting reduced
their behavioral issues and improved spatial orientation. Another review found that outdoor gardens
can reduce agitation and improve quality of life 
for people with dementia. But by creating an environment specifically
for people with cognitive and physical impairments dementia villages are a fascinating practice
in universal design: design that works for as many people as possible,
regardless of their ability. And they can teach us something about where
the outside world falls short. If you design well for normal people 
without dementia you design also well for people with dementia. We forgot that people with dementia 
are human beings with a lot of aspirations. We forgot that people with dementia 
are not patients where you can put them in a chair 
and wait until they die. They are people who want to do certain things
during the day. And they know and they're happy 
to have this freedom. The saying is, you know, water is life. We're a water-born people. We depend on it. This fishing spot is ancient. The Mohawk — the ​​Kanienʼkehá꞉ka
— were fishing here thousands of years before the first 
European settlers arrived. This is Akwesasne where the Mohawk have fished
since long before this border cut their nation in half. Fishing in this community is important. I know for our grandparents it was 
a way of life. I believe in having those traditions passed
down so that they never are forgotten. That one's huge! Seeing those little boys and girls smiling
and catching fish and enjoying themselves... That's the best. If you head upriver, just a couple 
of miles from this spot you’ll find two abandoned industrial sites. This is the spot where poisonous chemicals
made their way into the river... into the fish... and into the Mohawk people. Forty years later, they're still carrying
that poison. And chances are, you are too. People used to live on the islands themselves. Totally self-sufficient. My grandfather used to live on St. Regis Island. He's the one that introduced me to fishing. We would row across the river. The shorelines were covered with weed beds... and it was a task to get a rowboat through the weed beds. We'd catch perch, sunfish, rock bass. He showed me how to clean fish... explain to me what it was all about. My grandmother used to take me out to the
berry gardens and we picked raspberries and strawberries,
blueberries out there. We had potatoes. Vegetables.  My grandfather had a herd of cows. Just about everything we needed was out there. I remember that. In the 1950s, the US and Canadian governments
started a massive project to connect the Great Lakes with 
the Atlantic Ocean by widening and deepening 
the St. Lawrence River.  The Seaway changed the geography of Akwesasne. "All the trees on the affected area 
must be cut down." There was an apple orchard there. Big apple orchard. Old man John owned that. And they said they were going 
to build a bridge across. They hadn't even consulted him 
until the equipment came up. The Seaway’s locks and dams allowed giant
container ships like these to navigate to the Great Lakes and the dams supplied electricity which the state of New York promised to sell
to companies for cheap. "Every cent of expenditures will be recovered
through total charges and revenue from the sale of power." "In the long run, it will cost the people
of the two nations nothing." The press coverage focused exclusively on
the benefits for Canadians and Americans. But there was a third nation whose people
were affected. A lot of our older people couldn't speak English. They couldn't understand why, 
how this could happen. How could a people do this? How could engineers do this? When the Seaway went through, 
they weren't informed. They weren't asked what they thought about
this. "The power to run the machines, the motors,
to light the signs, the homes... supply energy for the thousand and one needs
of an expanding economy." There were nine islands that were flooded. There used to be a big inlet.  It was a swampy area. They filled that in. They said, oh, we'll do you a favor. What about the muskrats? What about the beaver? They're gone. They're gone now. "Thus, man is conquering another 
of nature’s challenges." "Moving the Atlantic Ocean to the entire
 mid-continent empire." When the frogs come out and they start to
make noise that for me indicates that the water and the
ground temperature is right to do the spearfishing. This is it, this is the magic spot. So much life happens here. When you enter the water it's not really good to walk where 
the fish are doing their thing. That's their spawning bed, that's where 
they want to lay their eggs. So it's pretty precious space there. You've got to be gentle and you've gotta 
be selective. Just recognizing that it's a gift. You should just respect it. Just having that gratefulness that we're still
able to do it, that's what I always get to. We're so lucky. We're really, really lucky. This is what I know. I’m the oldest son, so I have little brothers
and I teach them this stuff. The Mohawk creation story says at the beginning
of time, the whole world was covered in water and there was no land. That's when Skywoman falls from the sky. She falls to the earth with a child 
in her belly. The ducks and the loons and the geese decided
that they would try to help her from falling straight into the waters. In the end, it was the giant turtle who said
that he could put the soil on his back. She could land on his back. And as she danced in the circle, as she shuffled
her feet on the dirt, it expanded and expanded. Our people give thanks to the water. They see it as an essential part 
of who we are. New York’s plan to lure industry upstate
with cheap electricity, it worked. Two major corporations: General Motors and
Reynolds Metal built factories in the mostly white town of
Massena, right next to Akwesasne. According to the local newspaper Massena’s politicians and business leaders 
reacted “with joy”. But for the Mohawk of Akwesasne, the news
meant something else entirely. Soon after the new factories opened in the
late 50s Mohawk farmers on Cornwall Island started
to notice their calves weren't growing as well. Then the cattle started 
mysteriously dying off. Later, it turned out that 400 pounds 
of fluoride ash was spewing out of the new Reynolds' plant 
each hour. Veterinarians discovered it had poisoned the
grass and eroded the cows teeth making it too painful for them to eat or drink. They were starving. If you look across the history of settler-colonialism in areas where indigenous people remained
and still lived corporations working under the laws
of the United States were able to dump the most dangerous chemicals and pollutants there.  While I was in early practice doing home
births here... there was a cluster of babies born. One baby born with an omphalocele, which is
where the intestines grow outside the belly. Another was a baby born with no intestines at all and we had to let that baby die.  As an anecdote, it still gives you a sense of...
where is this heading? "That is polychlorinated biphenyls which are
used in a wide variety of manufactured products." PCBs started showing up in American news stories
in the late 1960s when they were discovered in salmon and poultry. At the time, there was just one manufacturer
of PCBs in the US: The Monsanto Company of St. Louis. They marketed the chemical 
under the name Aroclor and sold it to other companies who then used
it to make products like shower curtains, paint, and electrical equipment. Including the electrical equipment in those
plants the ones GM and Reynolds had built right next to Akwesasne. In 1971, a Monsanto representative told the
New York Times that the company was studying 
the chemical’s effects on rats and dogs. So far, they said, “no ill effects had yet
been detected.” But Monsanto’s internal documents from that
time tell a different story. They knew that PCBs 
caused liver damage in rats. They knew that PCB exposure had sent workers
to the hospital with symptoms of hepatitis. And in 1970 one of Monsanto’s own studies
on PCBs in fish showed that doses of PCB "which were believed
to be OK produced 100% kill." All the fish died. Eating a certain food isn't just putting the
stuff in your mouth. It's what goes on all around that moment of
consumption. My mom would tell me stories about how my
father and his family would have these fish skinning competitions. And it makes me so happy to think about how
that was in itself like a way that we created community and family
for each other and supported each other. With really good friends or really good family
members… We've known them for a long time. We trust them. We know that they respect our independence
and our consent. In indigenous ways of understanding the world we can use that way of thinking about relationships 
as a model. What would it mean to have 
relationships of trust with fish? Relationships of reciprocity with a forest? Or consent with a plant? Our community is not just the humans, but
all of our interdependent relationships. When we teach our children about giving thanks that's what we’re trying to do is get them
to see that they’re not just fish, but they’re, fish! [said with emphasis] And these fish help us to maintain our life. In 1981, two pits full of PCB sludge were
discovered behind the GM factory near Akwesasne prompting scientists to start testing
local wildlife. At the time, chickens with PCB concentrations 
of more than 5 parts per million couldn’t be sold in supermarkets but most of the fish in Akwesasne 
had levels much higher.  30 parts per million is considered toxic waste. Researchers tested one snapping turtle with
a PCB concentration of 835 parts per million. It turned out, both GM and Reynolds had been
dumping PCB waste into the St. Lawrence River for decades. We were just straight up told not to eat fish,
that we would die. They were telling us the tomatoes that were
coming out of our garden shouldn’t be eaten by children. A lot of people just stopped farming altogether. I remember talking to an older lady from the
island here and she actually burst into tears. And she said, “When I go down to the shoreline
to look for Sweet Flake, it's not there." "I look for my Sweet grass. It's not there." "What have they done to this place?” The plants, the animals, the ecosystems are
thought of as part of the bonds part of the friendships. And imagine if somebody were to take something
that was really important to a friendship a family relationship that you have
and just pollute it and just damage or destroy it. That hits us hard, right? That's devastating. But see, this is what Native people have been
through with colonialism a systematic, comprehensive destruction of
all of those touchstones in our society those environments that formed the contexts
through which our best relationships unfolded. We lost pieces of our language, of our value
system with the river because of our disconnect because of these fish advisories. And so right now, I can't recommend people
to consume fish because that's our policy. But, personally, we have to consume fish so
we know their names and we reconnect with them. There was an existing relationship they had
with everything that water system provided. It was part of their life. And it was taken away. It changed. All of a sudden, it wasn’t there. In the decades since PCBs were discovered,
scientists documented the scope of the PCB problems outside of Awkwesasne. People all over North America were told not
to eat the fish from the rivers, streams, and lakes where they lived. Scientists also learned that PCBs can move
from soil into the air through a process called volatilization. Which means that even if you don't live near
a PCB dump you can still be exposed through the air that you breathe. In 2013, the UN’s International Agency for
Research in Cancer stated officially: "PCBs are carcinogenic to humans” and they are “probably in the body of every
human” on earth. I can't do too much given our current reality. But I can go out there in the morning 
and sing. [singing in Mohawk] To be... To be grateful. You come from the ground up. You give thanks to everything. [speaking in Mohawk] We will put our minds
together as one and acknowledge the fish. The roots, the trees, the plants, the skies,
the wind, the stars. On wha nagula. One mind. [singing in Mohawk] One fish, two fish, three
fish four fish, five fish, five fish... The river has a right to community and to
build community around itself. And I think a lot about how that's our responsibility
as Ongweoweh people to facilitate that. There was a little boy ice fishing and he
was putting the fish in a big plastic bucket. And we saw him at the end of the day, take
his bucket and run home with it. And I wondered, what is his mother going to
say when she sees the fish her little son caught? She’s going to be proud of him. This is Queso. And beans does not like to be picked up.  —Oh, Beans is big!
—This is Beans. Yes. Oh, so sweet! This is Cameron. He's one of our subscribers. He lives in Indiana
with his high school sweetheart. And he sent us this question about unions. How come we've seen such a decline
in unionization in the U.S. and specifically why the unions
from manufacturing didn't transfer over into services? Here's what he's talking about. The share of workers in the U.S. who belong to a labor union
like I do, has fallen to around 10%. If you take out the government
employees, it's 6%. And have you ever been part of a union? It sounds like you haven't. No, I haven't.  What got me interested in the question
was just the recent news especially around Starbucks. —"Starbucks workers in upstate New York..."
—"...Santa Cruz...". —"...Philedelphia..."
—"...Mesa, Arizona..." —"...more than 20..."
—"...30..." —"...100..."
—"...200 Starbucks locations..." "...voted in favor of joining a union so far." Unions have been catching some
momentum here in the U.S. And if we can make sense
of the historical decline we might understand what it would take
to reverse it. Answering big questions like this
usually involves answering a bunch of smaller questions. And the first one that popped into my head  was "Did union density decline
in other countries, too?" And the answer is yes. Meaning that some of the decline reflects
international trends. What happened was that as these economies
grew over time, globalization and automation steered job growth away from domestic factories
where union membership was high. Instead, it went mostly into service
providing jobs where unions weren't well established. All new workplaces in the U.S. are born non-union. So when you chart the total number
of union members in the U.S. against the huge growth in the workforce,
it looks less like the unions collapsed then that the economy
kind of grew outside of them. There's a new paper out by
an economist named Zachary Schaller and it estimates that around 40% of the decline
in union elections in the U.S. can be explained by this growth 
and change across sectors. But he found that union elections fell
within sectors, too, which means that most of the decline
was caused by something else, something that explains how we ended up
with even lower union membership than other similar countries like Canada. Cam, check out this chart. It compares union membership in the U.S. to that of our neighbor up north. Okay. So this graph is really interesting. The U.S.'s union density peaked way
earlier than I thought it did. Way back in the 1950s,
I thought that was in the eighties. Oh, and also this paper has a similar chart
that just shows the private sector data. So I'll drop that in here too. The steepest drops in private sector union density came in the 80s,
but it was already falling by then. Which made me wonder: what triggered these
steep declines that started in the 1970s? I can hear you but I can't see you... I asked historian Nelson Lichtenstein
to walk me through it. In the immediate postwar period. You know, in the fifties and sixties, there was a sense American capitalism works. Unions are functional
to a kind of consumer society. "Free enterprise and capitalism,
which the communist despise have given the American worker the highest
standard of living in the world." I mean, everyone's going to have a
suburban house and a Chevy in the driveway. And that led to this kind of stolid
complacency. Unions negotiated some solid wages
and benefits during the economic boom after World War II. Their main weight was in the building
trades and manufacturing. And frankly, you know, they saw,
you know, what is the typical worker? Well, sort of some white male,
you know, Midwestern manufacturing. There was a kind of, you know, sexism. Well, we don't need to organize
these retail clerks. They're all, you know, women. They're just there for pin money
or something. So, sure that, yes,
one could properly criticize the union movement, especially then. If the process of forming a union
is like hiking up a hill and the slope of that hill is set
by economic conditions. You'd want to make a push
when the unemployment rate is low, because going into the 1970s,
that hill got a lot steeper. Inflation went through the roof. Unemployment jumped. Imports were cutting into 
industrial profits. And employers respond to these pressures
with an anti-union assault. They moved factories to the south
to avoid union labor. You see an increase in companies
hiring anti-union consulting firms and permanently replacing 
striking workers. And this strategy gets a boost
from Ronald Reagan in 1981. "This morning at 7 a.m., the union representing those
who man Americas air traffic control facilities
called a strike." Technically, federal employees aren't allowed to strike, but that 
hadn't been enforced before. Well, after the union refused 
a counter offer Reagan fired 11,000 striking workers. "There just is no other choice." It was a signal. It was a signal was the first time
the federal government had had been behind the destruction of a union
for many decades. And every manager in 
the country said we can we can do things we couldn't do before. Which leads me to ask: what role has government policy played in the union decline? Here's the process established by U.S. law. First, at least 30% of workers at a shop
need to sign a petition saying they want a union. At this point, their employer
can voluntarily recognize them like Vox Media did. Otherwise, they go to a 
secret ballot election. If a majority of voters says, yes,
the employer is now obligated to bargain with the union, but they're not obligated
to ever agree on a contract. For those that do, it takes on average
409 days, according to Bloomberg Law. I called up sociologist Barry Eidlin to
find out how this is different in Canada. If you don't have a contract by the end
of the year in most parts of Canada, then the negotiations
get referred to an arbitrator who can then impose an agreement. That doesn't actually get used a lot.  But the fact that that's the end point
completely shifts the incentive structure. U.S. policy allows plenty of opportunities
for delay. In Canada, the time between the petition
and the election is limited to 5 to 10 days. In the U.S., it takes 46 days on average. During that time, supervisors can pull workers into mandatory meetings
advising them to vote no. That's all legal. Firing workers for organizing is not. Coming out of college one of my first jobs
was as a manager in a warehouse and I got to see a little bit of what the anti-union kind of talk was all about. When someone that was hourly
just mentioned it and the general manager
put us into one of the operations manager's offices, it's a really small,
really crammed. We're all standing up and he just says,
if anyone says— can I like, curse? Because he cursed.  —Are you fine? Yeah, he said it.
—Absolutely. He said, if anyone hears, 
the fucking word union. I want you to tell me. I want you to make sure that person
doesn't say it to anyone else. That just kind of stuck with me, and
everyone just accepted it for what it was. Was there any other talk of organizing among the workforce
that you were aware of? No, no. The person that mentioned organizing was fired, I want to say,
maybe four or five weeks later. There was a real effort to document
every single thing that he did that could be considered an infraction. So he could get written up.
We stacked those all up until he qualified to be fired 
and he was fired immediately. If an employer gets caught retaliating
against an organizer in the U.S., they have to "promise not to do it again", reinstate the worker, and award back pay. Minus whatever wages they had earned from
other employment that they had sought. It's not even the full amount that they
would have earned if they were on the job. And meanwhile, they send a message
to the other workers that, you know, this is what happens
when you try to unionize and they get to engage in the anti-union campaign
without a key leader in place. So it just makes no sense to obey the law. Since the 1930s, changes
to labor law in the U.S. have generally limited the tactics
unions can use, while making it easier for management to make their voice heard. But even if you change those laws, you still need workers
who are willing to fight. Hey, Cam it's Joss. Just sending over some news
out of New Jersey from yesterday. In case you didn't already see it. I scrolled through that thread
and read the article attached to it. And it looks like, you know, COVID,
maybe gave everyone a lot of perspective. At least that's what it seems like
from reading that article. But really interesting.
Thank you for sending that. The last question I had when I saw the union decline is do people actually want to unionize?  There's not a ton of data on this, but public approval of unions right now
is higher than it's been since the 1960s and a nationally representative survey
in 2017 found that 48% of people who were not in a union said
they'd vote for one at their workplace. 48% is here. That's a tough gap to close. But with the pandemic as a catalyst
and the unemployment rate low... unions are having a go at it in 2022. One of the effects of union decline
just means that a lot of people just don't know people in unions
don't know what unions do. So then the effect of these 
kind of breakthroughs is that it changes people's consciousness by making those options more realistic
and something that, like, I could actually take a risk
and actually try to win this thing and I might actually have a
decent chance of getting it. So that's everything that I found. It's more complicated than I hoped. But are there any questions
you have about the history or any of that? No, I don't have any questions. It's really—it's been like really exciting to kind of go through this and see 
all the work that goes into it. Yeah, it's awesome. We really appreciate
you sending in the question. We're going to use this as like
a pilot episode to try to get more people 
to send us questions. So hopefully people will see it
and want to do what you did. for decades this region in West Texas has been pummeled with droughts reservoirs and lakes often sit almost empty grass has gone Brown and crops are struggling last rain was in October we went through all the winter months with no rain our cotton as you can see none of it's came up every acre of our cotton just imagined on bare soil that's bone dry In the Heat of Texas things can sometimes look bleak but what if I told you that there's a way to help fix this problem by flying into the clouds and making them rain [Music] this graph shows Texas droughts over the past Thousand Years all of these dips below this line represent a severe drought and Texas has a long history of them this light blue section is data from tree ring observations the dark blue is modern data from the past hundred years and it suggests that the droughts are becoming hotter and more severe that has a lot to do with climate change the average temperature in Texas has increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 1900s and the rate of increase is going up record-breaking temperatures record heat 100 plus Degree Days dangerous heat already turning his store [Music] this year Texas has already hit record temperatures including here in the west Texas city of San Angelo some farmers in this area of Texas deny that human activity is driving climate change but they all agree on one thing things are definitely getting worse this year is definitely different earlier hotter or ready drier jeans Acres of bare cotton fields are some of the clearest proof of the damage a drought can cause when it's this dry we just can't pump enough water to get that crop growing looking out here that's none of these Acres will be harvested usually rain is absorbed into the ground plants and crops soak up the water they need and the rest keeps the soil moist fills up the aquifers and the runoff fills up the Lakes eventually evaporation and plant transpiration release water back into the atmosphere where it becomes precipitation again this is the water cycle that keeps us alive when temperatures are unusually warm this cycle is disrupted plants hold on to their water and transpire less and evaporation from the ground happens too fast together they destabilize a cycle and prolong the lack of rain and while this lack of rain hurts everyone it's farmers who feel it the most some days it is pretty disheartening you look at that [Music] we always want to be a farmer you want to grow a good crop you want to plant it want to get it up we want to grow it nothing more beautiful than waste high cotton but uh it's not going to happen and we know that living here that it doesn't always happen but it is a struggle [Music] but there is a technology that can help protect this cycle it's called cloud seeding and it involves getting the clouds to make more rain so I visited the west Texas weather modification Association one of many organizations around the world that practice cloud seeding and so basically what you do in the sky is you're kind of coaxing the cloud to produce more rain exactly right we're just getting more rain out of a cloud than would otherwise be the case on stormy days Pilots load up small planes with these Special flares full of chemicals like silver iodide and fly to the edge of thunderstorms to launch the flares into the clouds foreign thunderstorm clouds are full of droplets of super cool liquid water meaning they are in freezing temperatures but they are still liquid these drops are too small to freeze and too small to merge they are also too light for Gravity to pull them down so they just float around in the cloud enter silver iodide the silver iodide particles mimic ice crystals and provide the scaffolding of sorts for ice to form that ice then grows very efficiently by consuming the super cool liquid drops usually after about 20 minutes they grow large enough and fall out of the cloud as precipitation more rain means Fuller lakes rivers and aquifers then consistently the hope is that cloud seeding can help Bank water this keeps the soil wet longer and can help protect the water cycle when things get really dry during a drought when we visited Texas there were no thunderstorms in the forecast but local Pilots Derek and Tanner took us up into the sky for a practice run so we could see the process up close we're ready when you are ready oh that is shooting out all the silver iodized it's going into the clouds so that trail is literally the chemicals that there's no chemicals coming out all right let's uh let's head RGB we're gonna be late [Applause] cloud seating technology has been around since the 1940s but proving the effects of cloud seeding on the ground has been a struggle one of the biggest challenges in weather modification is the ability to show statistically that it works how do we know that a cloud wasn't already going to do what it did on a day-to-day basis it's hard to see that but over a 20-year span where we have thousands of seated clouds compared to unseated clouds we're seeing increases of 15 percent other cloud seeding programs have also shown increases in rainfall of about 15 percent but have failed to meet the standards of the scientific community the researchers they would probably prefer that we went to this Cloud rolled dice all right it's odd so let's move on to this Cloud it's an even let's see that we're not able to do that our programs expect every cloud to be seated so we're not able to do the randomized seating that that the scientific Community would like to see but today tests using clouds in snowy mountains are providing further evidence that cloud seeding Works in a 2017 study in Idaho radar footage captured ice crystals forming in the same pattern the cloud seeding airplane was flown in and the snowfall was then tracked on the ground a lot of variables change from the mountains of Idaho to the flats of Texas and thunderstorms are shorter smaller and change faster than snowstorms still the experiment in Idaho has added to a growing body of evidence that cloud seeding works so far researchers have seen few downsides most studies like this one conducted in Wyoming in 2014 have found negligible environmental impact and the cost of flying up a pilot with flares is relatively low especially compared to the value of water in West Texas the program is funded by local water districts and costs just a few cents an acre but even if this technology works it only works when there's already rain in the forecast if we were able to create a cloud out of nowhere there would be no drought so this is definitely rain enhancement Gene's Farm is right outside the cloud seating program's Target area but he wants in can you prove that it helps or it doesn't I don't know but it's better than nothing you can't just sit on your hands to make more rain you know cloud seating is really the only thing out there I brought some of those ideas back here to our coffee shop talking with the guys some of the older farmers and there's some negativity there but uh definitely I think we need to revisit that and it may be time to have the water the cloud seeding man come in and give us a program out here on the flats opposition to cloud seating isn't new in New Mexico for instance some locals have expressed concerns over environmental safety and funding but farmers in the area would have to wait for the next rainy season to start seeing results during the wet years it is very important for us and it's easy to get relaxed during wet years but it's very important for us to stay on our game and be aggressive during those wet Seasons because that's when we Bank our water so we get extra recharge into our aquifer so we get runoff in the lakes rivers and reservoirs around the world droughts are on the rise the UN predicts three quarters of the world's population will be impacted by a drought by 2050. in places like China Europe Australia India where droughts are already worsening cloud seeding programs are in full swing as cloud seeding gains traction we'll learn more about what it can and can't do for us but as I leave the sweltering heat of Texas I can't help but think that to really lessen the damage caused by droughts we need climate change mitigation that means reducing emissions to control the temperature to protect our water cycle as a whole foreign [Music] [Music] On November 4th, 2008, the people
of California voted to fund this: A high-speed rail line. Many countries around the world have
had high-speed trains for decades. And this would be the US's attempt 
to finally catch up. The train would whisk passengers from 
LA to San Francisco in under 3 hours. And it was all set to open in 2020. Today, it's 2022. And California's high speed rail project 
is famous. For being a disaster. "...will be the most expensive project in
state history..." "...a train that's going to nowhere..." "...train to nowhere..." All that's there today is this one section,
still under construction from Bakersfield to Merced. But the failure of this rail line isn't just
California's problem. It's an ominous sign for big projects 
all over the US. We see other advanced economies all around
the world that are able to do this. So they can do it. So why can't we? In other words, what is it about the US that
made California's high-speed rail line so hard to build? Just to be clear; this was a pretty good idea. A lot of people travel between 
San Francisco and LA. But the trip takes at least 6 hours by car. It’s less than an hour by plane but that’s not counting time in two
of the country’s busiest airports. So a 2-hour and 40 minute trip
by high-speed rail made sense. California just needed to design a route
that connected its big cities efficiently. It's really about population density and how quickly you can serve areas
of high population density. This is Ethan Elkind director for the climate program 
at UC Berkeley Law School and host of the local “State of the Bay”
radio show. You really want those centers where there's a lot of people 
working and living within a few kilometer range
of the station. If you don't have that, then it's not worth
a high speed rail stop. But that’s easier said than done. In the early 2000s, the California High-Speed
Rail Authority considered two routes in Southern California. This one went straight up the I-5 highway. While this one, looped eastward and stopped
in Palmdale. It was 34 miles longer and studies estimated
it would be 12 minutes slower. Yet, ultimately, this was the route they chose. So what happened? So the Palmdale stop was really added at the
behest of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that wanted to see a stop for high speed rail
in Palmdale. If you have the county that the high-speed
rail line is going through opposing it that can create real political problems can create litigation problems,
can create permitting problems. Palmdale politicians understandably wanted
the train’s riders and business opportunities to come to their district. The problem was that they had the power to
hold up the entire project to do so. They have this power because the US government
gives it to them. The US is a federal system meaning power is divided between the
federal government and state governments which in turn grant some power 
to local governments. When it comes to infrastructure, a lot of
the power and responsibility is often on this local level. That's the compromise that we make here in
the United States. We believe in local control to some extent,
you know, representative democracy. The downside of that is when you're trying to
get a project at this scale built, you know, it does take a lot of compromise. And in order to build a 1300-kilometer 
high-speed rail line the State High-Speed Rail Authority had to
compromise with a lot of local governments. In the Bay Area, politicians pushed for this
route, instead of this one, even though it was much more expensive and
slower for travelers coming from San Francisco. And in the Central Valley, the route stops
in all these cities instead going up this faster route in order to ensure support 
from the politicians here. All of these little compromises began adding
up, making the route slower. And more expensive. Which was a problem. Because the funding was already on shaky ground. When California voted in 2008 the state estimated it would need
$33 billion to complete by 2020. But voters were told that California taxpayers
would only have to pay 9 billion. That’s because the planners were counting
on the federal government to chip in $12-16 billion. And it made some sense: The federal government spends tens of billions
of dollars a year on transportation infrastructure. The problem was only a fraction of it goes
to trains. Partly because, unlike most countries with
high-speed rail the US has a stark political divide on whether
we even need it. By 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress
had allocated just over $3 billion for the project. Not nothing, but not nearly as much as the state wanted. But by 2014, the Democrats had lost control
of Congress to the Republicans who opposed this kind of mass-transit project. "More money for California’s 
high-speed rail." "I call it high-cost rail, is a terrible idea." "None of these funds can be used 
for high speed rail." They made it very difficult for any further
federal money to reach this project leaving it well short of funding. It’s an example of how, in the US long-term projects can be at the mercy of
whichever party is in power, since they have often have the power 
to stall it at any time. And it's not just the federal government. Private citizens can also hold things up. It took less than a year for people 
to start suing the California high-speed rail project. Many cases were based on a law called
the California Environmental Quality Act. Known as CEQA. CEQA requires the government to study the environmental effects of any
government project, explore alternatives, and release the findings
in a report. It's very easy to find a hole in that assessment
and then file a lawsuit. It's essentially target practice for lawyers. Many of these lawsuits had legitimate concerns. Some farmers in the Central Valley worried about the train damaging their agricultural land irrigation systems, and crops. But others, simply used CEQA to try and keep
the project from being built in their neighborhood. This is a common way in the US for private
citizens to block important projects like housing or infrastructure. It's not cheap to bring a CEQA lawsuit. Sometimes you've got very powerful homeowners
groups that have sued and force changes or at least delayed the project and run up costs. For the high-speed rail line, these lawsuits
were like roadblocks. And to clear them, the state had to hire legions
of expensive lawyers. Which added time and costs. I think you do want to have 
a participatory system. You do want to have people able 
to say their piece and you want policymakers to respond. Just that you don't want to get to the point where a hyper-local interest has veto 
over a project of really statewide importance. But take away local politicians, and federal
drama, and lawsuits, and this project would’ve still faced problems. The state body in charge of designing and
managing this project was the California High-Speed Rail Authority. There was just one problem. The high speed rail authority had never built
anything like this. Whoops. Obviously it's a tried and true technology
globally but it was new in North America 
when California tried it. Certainly we didn't have the competence in-
house how to build it here. When Japan and France were building their
high-speed rail networks they had legions of experienced engineers
inside their governments. But the California High-Speed Rail Authority
had to hire consultants and contractors to handle the design and construction. These consultants were four times the cost
in some cases of what it would have cost to hire someone just to do it in-house. Another reason why the Authority had to keep
increasing the estimated cost of the project. Which today, is up to $113 billion 
to complete the whole line. But, the state only has enough money to build
this section in the rural Central Valley. Even if it can get the rest, 
it will probably take a few more decades to finish this project. High-speed rail is a cautionary tale for really
big transformative projects in the US. We need all sorts of rail, transit, bus lanes, new renewable energy facilities, all the things
we need to do to have a more sustainable and vibrant
economy. But the US is falling further and further
behind its peers. Because the political compromises, under-funding,
lawsuits, and extra costs that hampered California's
high-speed rail can also happen to any other big project the
US takes on. It was the last Friday of the school year and I had been actually subbing 
for a teacher for three days. It just seemed like a nice day. On May 18th, 2018, a gunman entered a high school
in Santa Fe, Texas and opened fire. I look down and I realize in 
my pants I had bloody holes  in my pants and I realized I'm shot. The gunman killed ten people. Flo Rice was shot six times. And then finally, Scot managed 
to... he managed to find me. For four years, Flo and Scot have 
told their story over and over  to push for new laws that 
could prevent mass shootings. It’s made them part of a recurring 
conversation on guns in the US. And a cycle the country has 
seemed stuck in for decades: a mass shooting, a push for 
reform, and then no action. "...the tragic school shooting 
in Santa Fe, Texas..." "...this time in El Paso..." "...nine people killed in Dayton..." "...how many years do we have to go through this?" "...Congress is paralyzed..." "...we collectively seem to ask the same question." "What does it take to pass some 
gun reform in this country?" But here’s the thing: this cycle of inaction on gun 
laws isn’t exactly accurate. Over the past few decades, federal 
legislation on guns has been rare. But in state legislatures, mass 
shootings have led to new gun laws. Thousands of them. ...and how those laws have 
emerged can tell us a lot  about the future of guns in the US. In 2020, a study tried to determine “the 
impact of mass shootings on gun policy.” They looked at 25 years of 
high profile mass shootings. Then, they looked at gun 
legislation passed during that time. Over 3,000 laws across all fifty states. When they took a closer look at 
those laws, a pattern emerged  that at first seemed unsurprising. State legislatures controlled by Democrats 
were more likely to pass tighter gun laws. Republican-controlled states 
typically loosened gun laws. But they found a key difference. Mass shootings didn't have any 
statistically significant effect  on the number of laws passed by Democrats. While for Republican legislatures a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws  enacted that loosen gun 
restrictions in the next year. To arm more teachers, for 
example, or arm more school staff. That's James Barragan, a politics 
reporter at the Texas Tribune. There is more access to guns afterwards. A state like Texas would go 
more towards pro-gun policies  in the aftermath of a gun shooting. Texas has some of the loosest 
gun laws in the nation. And that matters — for 
people all over the country. People probably don't know about the importance of 
state gun laws and really state laws in general. Our gun laws at the federal level have been 
frozen in time since basically the 1990s,   which allowed the states to have 
a much bigger role and a much   bigger influence in how gun culture 
played out in their jurisdictions. Let’s look at Texas. In 1991, a gunman killed 23 people at 
a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, Texas. A woman there named Suzanna Hupp lost 
both her parents in the shooting. She believed she could have stopped the massacre and turned her experience into a 
crusade for loosening gun laws. "I'm mad at my legislators for 
legislating me out of the right  to protect myself and my family." It worked. In 1994, Texas elected a 
new governor: George W Bush who made it legal to carry a 
concealed gun his first year in office and set off a trend in the state 
that's continued for decades. For example in 2012, after 
the Sandy Hook elementary   school shooting drew attention 
to gun laws across the country Texas responded a few months 
later by creating a program   allowing some school employees 
to carry guns in school. In 2017, a gunman killed 26 people at 
First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. Within two years, Texas made it legal 
to carry weapons in places of worship. But after the Santa Fe High School shooting, 
governor Greg Abbott did something unusual. He asked lawmakers to consider a “red flag law” which would allow authorities 
to take firearms away  from a person courts deemed dangerous. That is not something that 
Republicans in this state often do. Flo and Scot were also pushing for 
legislation in response to Santa Fe like laws that would hold 
parents accountable if their guns were used by their children 
to harm people. They also pushed to make it 
harder to buy ammunition online. Our shooter, he just checked 
the box and said, yes, I'm 18. And they delivered it to his doorstep. You can't get alcohol delivered without 
showing proof of I.D. or something. But he ordered ammunition. Their hope for stricter laws was 
in line with Texas public opinion. Polling showed only a small minority 
of Texans supported loosening gun laws and just over half supported tightening them. We thought it was common 
sense that this would be done. They came to Flo's hospital 
room the week of the shooting. And we had the governor, lieutenant governor we had congressmen, we had senators,
their wives, the chief of staff all in her room at one time, at least 20 people and said, we're going to take care of you. We promise we'll be there for you. We'll fix this. But in the end, these proposals, along with 
Abbot’s openness to red flag laws went nowhere.  After gun rights supporters went after him. The gun culture is strong. But the gun lobby itself also exerts a 
lot of pressure on Texas politicians. There were bills that were put out there, 
but they never made it out of committee. Later in 2019 — two shootings in west Texas 
just weeks apart prompted Lieutenant Governor   Dan Patrick to suggest another tighter gun 
policy — closing background check loopholes. That is a very strong comment 
from a lieutenant governor who   is very pro-gun and who is 
very friendly with the NRA. But Republican leaders were 
saying we may have problems here. Democrats are pushing to take over the 
state house for the first time since 2003. After elections were over, with 
Republicans still in control in 2021 Texas passed “constitutional carry”:
there would no longer be a requirement for Texans to have a license   or receive any training
to openly carry handguns. For me, it's very scary because if I see 
someone in public with a gun, I will panic. That's going to send me into an anxiety attack. That constitutional carry law that 
the state legislature passed in 2021   had been rejected by Republican leaders. But as the Republican Party has gone further
and further to the right on issues you get a fringe of the 
party that is much more vocal  about all kinds of issues, including gun rights. In recent years, a better 
organized gun control movement  has seen more success with 
tightening laws in some states. But the movement to expand 
gun access isn’t stopping. In 2002 fewer than half of the 50 
states had one party in control of   both the state legislature 
and the governor’s office. Today, three quarters of the states do. That means, in the places where 
Republicans or Democrats have full control they can push through new gun 
laws with little chance of a veto. What happens and you see it 
in state house to state house is one state passes a law that is very 
successful for one side of the aisle. And then another state house 
adopts a very, very similar law. Remember that constitutional carry law in Texas? Today, 24 states have similar 
laws on the books for that, too. And more than 400 local governments across   20 states have adopted variations on 
a “second amendment sanctuary law” meaning a city, town, or 
county refuses to recognize  any state or federal gun laws that they believe violate the Second Amendment. These things get replicated. They get 
cloned, they go from state to state and they essentially make up this 
patchwork of laws throughout the country. In June 2022, in the aftermath 
of the Uvalde shooting in Texas President Biden signed the most 
significant federal gun bill in 30 years. One thing it does is incentivize 
states to pass red flag laws. But it can’t make them do it. That power still belongs to the states. I have survivor's guilt because I'm alive. And so I feel like I have to keep 
speaking out. I have to do what I can. There's times when I just think I'm going to stop. I cannot do this for my own mental health. But we just keep, we keep going. In the past few years, many Republican governors have signed legislation targeting 
LGBTQ people into law. "Two controversial bills are now law in Alabama." "A bill regulating what school bathroom Oklahoma
students use..." "A house committee passed a bill 
focused on pronouns." And hundreds more of these bills have
been introduced in state legislatures. More every year for the last 3 years. The laws are increasingly focused 
on what sports teams transgender school children can play on which bathroom they can use,
and about the use of pronouns. But, these bills are at the state level. If you looked to the federal government,
you’d hear a different message to transgender students. “We’re here to say that’s wrong." "And it’s against the law.” That’s because the current federal government believes gender identity discrimination
violates a 1972 federal civil rights law. So when it comes to the rights of trans students conservative states and the federal government
are at odds. But the enforcers of education policy are
a third level of government: local school boards. And they’re caught in between. With 
extraordinarily high stakes. I was thinking, wow, there's no way I'm ever
going to vote yes for this. Gender affirmation is suicide prevention. This coming year will be my seventh year 
teaching in Tennessee. I'm seeing a lot more depression, 
a lot more anxiety. I'm seeing a lot, a lot of suicidal ideation,
which the data bears out. One estimate says that 20% of 
trans and nonbinary youth will attempt suicide. That's two times the rate 
of their cisgender peers. And other surveys on mental health 
and trans youth find that they are more than twice as likely
as cisgendered children to experience bullying or to not attend school because 
they didn’t feel safe. I do have a transgender son 
that is 17 years old. I live in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Almost nowhere have more anti-LGBTQ bills
been introduced this year than in Tennessee. And at least 2 anti-trans laws related to
participation in school sports and bathrooms have already gone into effect. Tennessee’s bathroom law allows “students,
parents or teachers” to sue schools if they “allow a transgender student in
the bathroom” of their gender identity “when others are in there.” In our school, the rule is trans kids either
have to use the restroom designated for 
their sex assigned at birth or they need to go find a single-stall 
gender-neutral restroom. And our campuses were not built that way. From one end of the school to the other, upstairs on this end and downstairs on that... The one time that Toby decided to just go
ahead and go into the male facilities they started chanting. They started beating on the stall door. You're asking a kid to fight through dysphoria
and put themselves in harm's way. In 2021, when the Tennessee laws went into
effect, most school boards adopted it as policy. But not all of them. "We are being asked to pass a policy that goes along with state law, yet it is
a violation of civil rights." This is the Metro Nashville Public School board which governs this school district of roughly
80,000 students discussing whether or not to adopt the state
law that bans “transgender athletes from participating in girls' sports" "...in public, middle, and high schools." "It is a moral and ethical dilemma for me as
a board member." It was not something that anyone on our board
was willing to make the motion to pass. "The focus has just been wrong like how's this something that we're placing 
at the feet of our children?" "All those in favor of deferring policy 4.301
raise your hand." "Okay, unanimous." We're in this place now where we as a district
have been able to say: There are adults and people in charge in your
life who support you and care about you. And so the thought that our hand may be forced
to implement these anti-trans policies is very scary to me. But that decision is in a legal gray zone,
and it could have consequences. School boards, states and the federal government
all play a role in US education policy. But states in particular have the most power
over public schools within their borders. That's because public education in this country
is traditionally funded by property taxes which are not federal in nature, but
they're state and local based. School boards can set their own policy but when states pass laws related to public schools they are obligated to adopt them. If they don’t, they risk... Funding, funding, funding all the way. That's a threat that hangs over our heads
pretty consistently. And I mean, we can't function without that
funding. Typically, the vast majority of public school
funding comes from state and local governments. But a small portion does come from 
the federal government mostly through programs related to equity. Like for students with disabilities 
and for students living in poverty. These kinds of resources augment what's
available from state and local funds. Even though this slice is small any school that receives 
“federal financial assistance” is beholden to Title IX the 1972 federal civil rights law that, 
for 50 years, has ensured that there is no “discrimination” “on the basis of sex.” And for public schools, the federal agencies
that enforce Title IX compliance are tied to whoever is in the White House. And the past three administrations have differed
in their interpretation of Title IX. The Obama administration ruled
that it protects LGBTQ students. But the Trump administration reversed it. And the Biden administration restored it again. That’s why today, in 2022, it is a violation
of federal civil rights law to discriminate against LGBTQ students 
in public schools which could make a school district liable
to a federal investigation while some states, who control most school
funding, have passed laws contrary to that. So school districts have to figure out 
what to do. And so do the families of trans students. I would say it puts us in limbo because while we feel heard and appreciated 
by the local board the state is still saying that 
they're not welcome. So what do you do? It makes all of us want to move. I get a little fuzzy about some of it because the federal law says 
that you cannot do this that that supersedes the state laws. But yet they still do it and then they cite
Governor Lee's bills as a reason to discriminate. In states like Tennessee, this legal limbo could eventually be solved by a lawsuit or
federal civil rights investigation that could overturn a state law. There is already a federal lawsuit on behalf
of a trans teen boy in Tennessee suing to play on the boys’ golf team. And there’s a federal lawsuit over Tennessee’s
bathroom law. But those won’t necessarily change things
outside of Tennessee. The institution with the power to do that
nationally and that could force harmony with federal,
state and local policy would be the Supreme Court. But if those rulings don’t come out
in favor of trans students the last line of defense will continue to
be those closest to them. Teachers are going to be a big part of saving
kids' lives. Depending on just how willing they are
to be supportive, to be affirming. School has always been that one place
where we can hopefully find somebody who will love us and value us for who we are. Is there anything else you'd like to add,
just about your personal experience? I could share one thing with you. I came across this. Last weekend was Pride. She was very excited. This is what she sees, right? There she is. And there's all these people
supporting the flag and they're, you know, giving her hearts 
and fireworks. And I'm so thankful that this is how she feels. I can't imagine that if she did end up going
to schools or being put into a situation where 
she wasn't supported and celebrated, that this would 
not be the case. I mean, this is clearly the world that you've
created for her. I am not very good at taking credit for things,
but I'm pretty proud. This is a sample of what I got in the mail. It just comes in a plain envelope. Inside are these pills. Elisa Wells is a public health specialist
and the cofounder of PlanCPills.org. We are an information campaign to spread awareness about all of the different ways that
they can be obtained in the United States including in states that have restrictions
to access. For nearly 50 years, the US Supreme Court
held that Americans had a general right to abortion. But individual states had power to decide
how difficult the path to getting one would be. Over time, some states cleared the way eventually even offering multiple routes like
telehealth, in-clinic, and mail-order options. Others made it much harder by adding obstacles
like waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds counseling, and limiting abortions to
extremely early in pregnancy. Mississippi even forced doctors 
to mislead patients. The worst one that really 
makes me crazy is that we have to tell them that it increases your risk of breast cancer 
and it doesn't. Just a complete lie. But in June of 2022, the Supreme Court 
overturned Roe v. Wade and now states can ban abortion completely. Many already have. There are a few key differences between now
and 50 years ago, though. One of them is this path: The abortion pill. Medication approved by the FDA to be delivered
by mail and taken at home. Safe, private, and effective. Accessing the pills isn't easy for everyone but there are multiple paths people are taking
to get them. Because even states with the most restrictive
abortion laws have had trouble stopping medication
that’s discreetly shipped to your door. [pensive cello music] Medication abortion was approved for use in
the US in 2000. Today, it accounts for over half of legal
abortions in the nation. Any kind of serious side effect is less than
1%. So very safe and very effective. While it’s often called 
“the abortion pill” it’s actually two medications prescribed by a doctor to be taken within
the first 10 weeks of pregnancy though the World Health Organization says
it’s safe to use up to 12 weeks. In states where abortion is banned, it's now
illegal for doctors to prescribe these pills for that purpose. But restricting or banning abortion doesn’t
eliminate the need for it. Whether something is legal or not doesn't
necessarily affect whether somebody makes a decision to
do something. It can affect what pathways they go to doing it. So here are four of those paths that people
are taking to seek abortions as of July 2022. A woman in northern Mississippi named Kate
finds out she’s pregnant. She already has 3 children 
and knows she can’t afford to properly care for a fourth. That's a common refrain. Just wanting to do the best they can for the
kids that they have. I think we're likely going to see folks 
get care in other states. Kate considers leaving Mississippi and finding care in a state where abortion
is legal. The state of Mississippi could try 
to prosecute her if they find out but it’s unlikely they’ll be successful. States typically only have power to enforce laws 
within their own borders. Unfortunately, the next closest option is
Illinois, which is too far to travel. So she explores other options. She recently read an article about a woman
who was able to get abortion pills mailed her to using
mail forwarding. And the way that works is, you know, supposing
you live in Arizona which is another state that has restrictions
on access you could look at the map 
on our website that shows the states nearby that offer a telehealth
service. And you could say, oh, California has a lot
of telehealth services. They're right next to me. The provider in California is legally required
to only serve patients in California. I'm going to set up a virtual address in California. She looks at PostScanMail.com to see if this
is possible. A virtual mailbox could allow her to have
an appointment with an online provider like HeyJane or Just the Pill. You do a telehealth consultation with one
of the groups that serves California. And when they ask you for your mailing address,
you put in your virtual mailing address So far, this is Kate's best option. Another way we know people are finding pills
in the United States is through online pharmacies and Plan C regularly
tests these pharmacies. These recommended online pharmacies often
offer expedited shipping but aren’t approved by the FDA and can be expensive. Kate’s not sure she can come up with the
money for that so she looks into another online provider:
this one isn’t located in the US. In a condition where access is totally cut
off, people will look for alternative ways to access the pills. And we do know that Aid Access will still
be serving all 50 states. Aid Access is run by a European doctor, offers
a sliding payment scale, and support for people who want to self-manage abortion. They also allow pre-orders of the medication. But shipping times can take up to 3 weeks
from Europe. Kate weighs her options, but knows all of
them carry potential legal risks. We don't think that people 
are doing anything wrong when they access pills through these 
alternative sources. But we do know that people have been criminalized
for self-managing an abortion. If anyone has questions about, you know, is
it legal in my state, what can I do? What are my risks for criminalization? I encourage them to reach out to our repro
legal helpline because that's exactly what we're there for, where attorneys in a 
confidential conversation can talk to you about what your legal risks are. By the time you’re watching this, laws around
each of these options may have already changed. Kate decides the best path for her is mail
forwarding but others will choose the best route for
their own circumstances. Abortion with pills has really changed the
landscape of how people can end their pregnancy safely at home without the involvement of
a clinic. And the studies have shown that to be true. It is safe, it is effective, and it's a way
for you to get the care that you deserve to have in the United States of America 
right now. You know, you got to make the best decision
for you. You’ve got to consider your health. You’ve got to consider your family. You’ve got to consider your career. You’ve got to consider your other kids. That's all any of us can do. How can travel strengthen the human brain? 
It's child's play. By the age of three,   a child's brain has twice as many synapses per 
neuron than in adults. That's because as humans   age the brain removes unused connections to make 
stronger ones, but doing new activities and having   new experiences can help enhance those connections 
at any age. This is your brain on travel. Chapter 1. The brain a 2009 study gave 
participants a unique creativity puzzle to solve   involving a candle a box of tacks and matches. 
The goal was to affix a lit candle to a cork board   with nothing but those items. One key to solving 
it? Well, travel and living abroad. Most of the   participants who had traveled and lived abroad 
demonstrated a measurable increase in creativity.   Dr. Shelly Carson, an expert on creativity 
in the brain, explains the phenomenon. One of the reasons for this obviously, is 
that living in another culture exposes you   to new ideas, to new people, to new stimuli, and 
that increases the amount of elements or bits of   information that you can combine or recombine in 
novel and original ways to come up with new ideas. This is Dr. Bo Lotto. He's a neuroscientist 
and an expert in perception. He shares the   same sentiment of experiencing new stimuli 
and so that's why you want to complexify   your brain and the way you complexify 
it is by enriching your environment. Chapter 2: the body. Scientists used to believe that the brain 
was unchangeable and only degraded with age.   It wasn't until the 1960s that neuroscientist, 
Dr. Marian Diamond, proved the complete opposite.   She found that if the body was in an enriched 
environment, the brain could be shaped by that   environment and grow. She did this by placing 
some lab rats in a multi-sensory environment and   others in a bare environment. The rats that 
had spent more time in the enriched environment   had more synaptic connections. So an enriched 
environment allows you to develop more pathways   so that they'll be there and available for you 
and they won't be pruned away as you grow older. Chapter 3: the mind. By accessing these environments and travel, the 
mind can enter a complex emotional state known as   awe. Awe is one of the most powerful perceptions 
we have and all gives you the excitement and the   ability to step to the very place we evolve 
to avoid which is not knowing. So it gives you   the curiosity and the courage to step forward 
to study that. Dr. Lotto equipped hundreds of   people with EEG caps while they watched a circus 
performance, something people don't see every day. You want to be changeable, adaptable, and 
that's what traveling with openness and   courage can enable you to do. So for instance, 
order foods that you've never had before and   partly because you don't even know what it means 
on the menu. Get your hair cut. The barber is   one of the central focuses of the community. 
Truly engage and be part of the environment. Chapter 4: lasting impact. Awe and other benefits of travel can last past the 
duration of the trip. One study followed up with   participants five weeks after their trip and they 
still reported less stress and headaches. Engaging   the reward center of the brain when you're 
traveling helps to counteract cortisol and some of   the stress hormones that get released when you're 
in your everyday grind, and so this is a way that   at the biological level traveling can reduce 
stress. Even just booking a trip and anticipating   the experience of traveling can increase 
contentment. 97 people in a study even reported   that having a trip planned made them happier. So 
whether your travels take you across the country   or across the globe, embrace the unknown. It may 
just transform your brain for the better, wherever   your journey takes you. Explore Marriott Bonvoy 
properties with over 30 extraordinary hotel brands   and endless experiences you can take your body 
brain and mind on a singularly awe-inspiring trip. Before we explain the motion-captured mouse
who I’ve named Moby Fitzsimmons, Let’s go to basics. We’ve all seen some photo like this one, with 
some poor actor in a weird outfit, covered in dots whether it’s on “The Hulk” 
Mark Ruffalo’s instagram or Star Wars’ C3PO’s Anthony 
Daniels on his account.
   But where does that motion…go? By focusing less on the actors 
and more on how it works you can understand the real artistry
behind motion capture. There are a few main ways to capture motion.  This is Rokoko’s Smartsuit Pro 
and it uses inertial sensors. These broadcast the location of 
devices embedded inside the suit kinda like how your phone 
knows which way it’s turned. More common in high end video games and movies,
you’ll see optical tracking of markers in which a camera is learning where parts of
a person’s body are by looking for high contrast areas. Jimmy Corvan directed business development for   motion capture studio, House of Moves
 for about ten years. It worked on everything from the Injustice series   to Mortal Kombat to Marvel 
movies to Barbie's blog. "Comment, like, and subscribe so you can get 
the latest and greatest Barbie vlogs and more!" Is it more common in high end 
stuff like what y'all are doing? Is that pretty much always going to be 
optical thing, rather than a sensor? For the foreseeable future and I'm sure there's somebody at one of the
inertial companies that will correct me on this but in all of our testing and 
everything that we've found... optical motion capture is sub-millimeter accurate. These suits don’t have any sensors at all. They’re basically fashion, 
made to be seen really clearly. I will always get the question: How hard are they? How do you get the technology in the balls? And I'm like, well, you can squeeze them. They're just retro reflective tape on 
the outside of little squishy balls. The footage shot with the suits on is 
fed through software that interprets   what the camera sees, before artists review it. If you look at Mark Ruffalo’s 
tweet of him, Tom Holland,  and Don Cheadle on Avenger’s Endgame, you can see how additional symbols allow software   to know more about the location 
of the suit on the performer. Even if one symbol is dark 
or out of focus, the software  can figure out what’s going 
on thanks to the pattern. The first step in the in the cleanup 
process is somebody goes through   and makes sure that you can see every one of 
those dots in every frame of the shot. It sounds tedious because it is. So all the markers have a different name and somebody's job is going through making sure
you can see each marker in every single frame and that each marker is properly named. That process is called tracking and labeling. This can be augmented with 
facial capture like this a range of motion capture gloves and even the ability to label 
and motion track objects. For hobbyists, there’s 
stuff like Moby Fitzsimmons. His form comes from a free to 
download mocap-ready website. I captured his movements using AI called Plask
that just figured out the motion without any dots or sensors. These methods can vary wildly in cost and quality
but the output is actually similar. It’s bones. This structure is the basic 
output of most motion captures no cloth, no muscle, no hair just what the software calculates as the skeleton. Each dot here is a joint, while 
the longer shapes are bones. In this example, they’re... my bones.
Soon to be Moby’s. These bones are given a hierarchy so if the top of your arm rotates,
the lower part usually will too. These subtle variations can 
convey a lot of movement. These numbers represent the 
rotation of a single elbow joint. Watch how they change as the 
elbow moves during the animation. We are trying to figure out 
exactly where the skeleton exists because that's what we're really capturing,
is your skeleton moving. We aren't capturing the flesh on top. We've got very, very close, but it is not perfect. If the bone lengths are just slightly shorter
or just slightly longer then even something as simple as clapping like if I were to do this, it might end up
that they go through each other like this because the bone lengths are different. That's where animators come in. There's a lot of that fixing and 
you end up seeing it in postures. There's a very popular phrase in 
the mocap space called monkey butt. And that is the the hips 
kind of jut back a little bit  and it kind of looks like they have a monkey butt. And so an animator will need 
to go through and push the   hips back forward, kind of undo that work. This outfit provides a clue to why motion capture
is harder than it looks after the data is cleaned. The Hulk is significantly 
larger than Mark Ruffalo. VFX artists take the time to 
make Taika Waititi’s capture  fit the body of Korg, but 
you can see what goes wrong without extra work. See how Moby’s hands run into his face here? That’s not a problem when I do it
because I don’t have a head like Moby’s. The same goes for position in space. See how his feet wobble around? This is part of why you don’t see tracking images on the actor modeling for Groot,
a tall talking tree or actor Sean Gunn, who stands in
for Rocket Raccoon. These figures, and even motion captured figures,
are too difficult to graft on human motion. So the people just used for reference. Even if you're not using all 
of the data, specifically having the timing created 
by the actor or performer  is really, really helpful. A lot of people, like myself included I talk with my hands, and if an animator tried
to animate me talking with my hands I'd get the timing wrong. Look at this side by side 
of Hulk and Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo gives a great performance 
that you can really see. But look at Hulk’s shoulder size, and the cloth
and the space his hands take up. You can even see, in this clip, how his right hand
has been tweaked completely after capture. The way that motion capture 
tends to get covered is... look Andy Serkis and look at Gollum. They do a wonderful job of performing, 
but there is a huge gap in between. That is months and months and 
months and months of work. It's portrayed is just like 
there is an animate button. Look at all the changes within this short clip. That level of detail would take a long time
for people to animate. But the limited structure of the final format  means there’s a ton of 
animation after the capture. Mocap depends on the quality of the capture
and the work put into it. That’s what makes animation feel real. Without that, it’s just joints and bones. Space Jam 2, legitimately 
we set up a system around  a professional sized basketball court. The court that is in the movie 
is the court that we shot on and they wrapped the entire thing in
a giant green screen. The whole thing. So you have this self-contained volume that is
holding all the air in itself because it's just all the way to the ceiling,
green screened all the way to the floor 360 degrees around. And the director wanted to, instead of
adding in fog effects in post he pumped a bunch of fog into this volume and I don't expect people 
to know what that does to  optical motion capture but to say you can see fog and our cameras
need to be able to see. The way they work is the camera shoots light from
a strobe around the camera at those little markers and that little markers bounces the light
right back to the camera and fog introduces a bunch of little
water molecules into the air and water molecules scatter light. So, we are now shooting in a 
volume that is filled with water  and just bouncing light all over the place. Imagine two similar women, who 
each have unwanted pregnancies. They both go to abortion clinics. One has a pregnancy that’s just days before 
the clinic’s gestational limit. And the other is just days past the limit. So one of them receives an abortion. And the other is turned away. Their different life trajectories after that 
might not tell you a lot on their own...
   but if you were to track this 
scenario for hundreds of women,  you could gather a lot of 
data on what life looks like after women are denied an abortion. This was the concept for a huge 
naturalized experiment in the US  that tracked this for the first time. For five years, every six months, 
researchers called the women  to see how their lives had progressed. And one of the things their research uncovered
was the financial impact of forced parenthood. What they heard from these calls reveals the
high economic cost of an abortion ban and exactly who is made to bear that cost. Hello? There's no way that you don't have a child
and love and want that child. And I very much feel that way about my son. But that isn't how we began. I felt like I was drowning and 
had zero control over my life  and having an abortion felt 
like reaching out for air. The voices you hear in this 
video weren’t part of the study. But their stories overlap 
with some of its findings. I was six months along and so at that point
I had to carry to term. There wasn't a choice of: 
am I going to give birth or not? I've actually made that decision twice in life. For me, they both felt pretty easy right away. Roughly 60% of women in the study and abortion 
seekers in the US are already parents. Abortion seekers in the study and more broadly are much more likely to be a person of color
when compared to the general population. And are almost four times as 
likely to live in poverty. And that can be about who 
has access to contraception who has had great sex ed classes who can negotiate contraceptive use with a partner and it's also about who can  accommodate 
a surprise pregnancy. Diana Greene Foster is a 
demographer who led the study,  which she calls The Turnaway Study. Among all women in the study, 
there are 3 groups we’ll focus on. One group was women who got an abortion
in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy the first trimester. This stage of pregnancy is 
when about 90% of abortions  in the US happen in the general population. But for the study it was underrepresented and used as a control group for this group:
women who got abortions within two weeks of an abortion clinics’ gestational limit,
which averaged at the 20 week mark. This later-term abortion group is a less 
common abortion experience in the US. But for the purposes of the 
study, was overrepresented,  in order to compare to this third group: women who just barely missed the gestational limit
and were denied an abortion. This last group is called the turnaway group. The Turnaway Study hinges on comparing 
the outcomes of these two groups. But comparing the two groups of 
women who sought later-term abortions  to the first-trimester group 
can tell us something, too. 40% of the first-trimester group 
were living under the poverty line. But 57% of the later-term abortion group were. Lack of money slows people down and prevents them
from moving as quickly to getting an abortion. When wealthy women have unwanted pregnancies,
they're more likely to get their abortion. And that's because they can afford to do it. They can travel, they can pay for the procedure,
they can get time off work. In fact, when the women in the study were surveyed
about their motivations for wanting an abortion “Not financially prepared” 
was the most common response. What was going on in your life when 
you had an unplanned pregnancy? We were barely able to scrape by at that point. And there was just not enough money. The financial situation was like a really
big deciding factor for me. I just graduated from undergrad. I was doing an unpaid fellowship. We live in the Bay Area. You definitely need a dual income 
household to be able to live well. So we were not okay financially. Because of my documentation process,
I couldn't legally work. I was just starting my professional 
career when I found out I was pregnant. I was three months into my 
first real job out of college. One thing researchers asked the 
study participants over the years was whether the relationship that 
led to the pregnancy had lasted. This was to try to get an idea of 
whether these women had support. At the time of the abortion clinic visit 80% of the study participants said
they were still in this relationship. By the second year, that number fell to 60%. And by the 5th year, only about 27% of them were. Regardless of whether women in the study 
received or were denied an abortion the likelihood of the relationship 
working out was low. He gets to go off and live his 
life and forget that he's a father. While my entire life is about being 
a mother and caretaking for this person. It is already like a lot to go 
through unexpectedly and it's a lot to do it on my own. The high likelihood of that 
relationship ending makes sense given that another common reason
for wanting an abortion was for “partner-related” reasons. I don't know that it would 
have been a healthy thing for ourselves or a child to have to endure
those types of disagreements that type of conflict, that type of disconnect. Trying to measure other types of support,
researchers found that 5 years on women denied abortions were more likely
to be living alone with their children than women who received 
abortions and had other children. It didn't look like they 
were getting a lot of support  from their partners or their immediate family. We looked at child support payments. On average, it was only about $20 a month. $20 in child support... that's extremely low. Yea and this is a lot of people 
reporting getting $0 in child support and then a few people reporting getting 
normal amounts of child support. And finally, the researchers gathered 
financial data for these two groups... to figure out what becoming a parent 
without much support looks like. We linked the participants in the turnaway study 
to ten years of credit reporting agency data. And this went back before their pregnancies. Researchers looked at 
financial distress indicators,  like debt or evictions, in the two groups. And before the turnaway group 
gave birth, the two groups  were on similar economic trajectories. But after the turnaway group gave birth,
the two groups diverged and the level of financial distress for 
the women denied an abortion spiked. We saw this big spike in financial problems 
in the turnaway group. Nearly 80% higher amounts of debt 
that was 30 days or more past due. 78% increase in things like 
bankruptcies or liens or evictions  where you're ordered to pay the 
landlord some amount of money. And we saw a big spike in those. So some people might look at this research and say... you're going to be more financially 
strained if you have a child  because your life is just 
going to be more expensive. So why is it important to look at this 
in relation to an abortion denial? One thing we did to investigate this question
was we looked in the near-limit group. So some of the women who 
initially obtained an abortion later went on and had a pregnancy that
resulted in a child and they gave birth. After the births of their children,
the financial distress indicators for these two groups looks like this. Which shows the more severe financial penalties for women having children when parenting is wanted
versus after an abortion denial. The women in this study were 
seeking abortions because  they knew that this was a bad time for them. They knew this was a time where it would 
be potentially really, really costly and really damaging to them and 
their economic circumstances. And not just their own: 55% of the children of the women who were able
to get an abortion were living in poverty but that number rose to 72% for the
children of the women who were denied. Which is relevant to another 
common reason study participants  gave for wanting an abortion: the “need to focus on other children.” One of your fears, when you were deciding
whether or not to have an abortion was that you wouldn't be 
able to afford the childcare. And I'm wondering how much of those fears
were realized for you? Oh 100% of those fears were realized from me. I don't have childcare now. There's still no way to 
afford childcare on my salary. Something the Turnaway Study shows is that these reasons turned 
into accurate predictions  of what the women would struggle with after an abortion denial. Women understand the consequences 
of unwanted pregnancy and when they're trying to decide whether
to have an abortion or have a baby they understand completely 
what the outcomes will be. I was able to go to law school and 
complete the degree that I had been   saying I wanted to do since I was eight years old. My life outside of being a mother has just been 
exponentially harder and almost impossible. And there was mourning 
for the life that I imagined. There was just no way I would have the 
time or the money to do those things... like going to grad school 
or moving away from family. I was able to fight a deportation case 
and I have a career. I was able to get out of a 
marriage that just wasn't working because I didn't have to think about 
how I'd impacted somebody else. I get to define my life the way that I want 
to without having to factor in a family. If somebody tells you they're not 
ready to carry a pregnancy to term... They're not. Believe them. My name is Mo B. Dick. The B stands for Bodacious I'm Maxxx Pleasure. Sigi Moonlight. Johnny Gentleman. King Molasses Also known as the sweetest and stickiest 
drag king you'll ever meet. When I first saw Drag Kings perform, 
I remember being like why hasn't nobody told me about this? I was completely mesmerized, wondering why
have I not done this before? I got hooked right away -- --just being on that stage and having 
the light hit me and I feel like I'm finally me. I feel the fullness of myself 
when I'm in drag. As drag kings, we're stepping out of the box of who we were told we were allowed to be. And people think it's only new now. But it's not new. I think the history of Drag Kings 
has been very much obscured. It hasn't always been the way 
that we understand it today, but it's always been there. Drag is just the performance of gender. The performance, the absence, 
the transformation of gender. The majority of drag kings are AFAB performers: 
Assigned Female At Birth. I do, however, know that there are AMAB performers
who also perform drag kings and also lots of trans performers. It's about playing with masculine identities,
masculine performativity. Whether that's politicizing it, 
vulgarizing it making it a farce, making it silly You know, you can create this character,
you can say whatever you want  you can do whatever you want 
and people laugh. Whether it's clowning, striptease, 
dancing, singing. I might do a monologue to music. I draw a lot of inspiration from 
American rock stars. I definitely am going for the bad boy with
a heart of gold type of thing. Can I say I'm a hoe on camera? Is that cool? I'm kind of a hoe when I perform. That swag you get in the shower that like,
nobody sees, it feels like that. I am a Latin “papi,” which is like,
a Latin sex symbol kind of guy. It surprised me, like I even started incorporating
like a lot of cultural elements into my drag. Even the palm hat that I'm wearing now a lot of men from where my mom's village
in Nigeria, Eniwari a lot of them wear like big wide, 
very present hats and they walk with big, broad shoulders
and drag takes me there. Especially being a transmasculine, nonbinary,
Latinx person. I just want to make sure that every time I
hit the stage that there's somebody in the crowd, hopefully,
that when they see me, they see themselves. Performing femininity was something that
I constantly felt like I was failing at. It's funny that transforming 
and becoming an alter ego is what allowed me to finally accept and love myself for who I was. And I started using they/them pronouns 
as Molasses before I started using they/them pronouns
for myself. So it just has been this really rewarding
experience where... it's a way to navigate the world and make
sense of things. A lot of people don't know there's this 
long history of drag kings. A Chinese scholar who has male impersonation
dating back to the Tang Dynasty. And so male impersonation 
in the Chinese opera started then. Then it moved to the West. There were pioneers like Annie Hindle, 
Vesta Tilley, Ella Wesner. To our knowledge, the first indigenous male
impersonator is Go-won-go Mohawk. And she was in the early 1900s and she specifically
wrote a play because she did not like the way indigenous people were depicted in theater. During that time there were many 
females and lesbians that were doing male impersonation as a way of expressing themselves and to protest
against what defines being a woman. And then moving on into the 1920s, 
Gladys  Bentley came out as the forerunner in Harlem dressing in men's attire,
was a prolific performer. Cross-dressing became illegal 
and it was a crime. People that came out and did that were real
true blue pioneers. Like Stormé DeLarverie. Someone who just epitomized 
what it meant to be Black what it meant to be masculine, 
what it meant to be strong. What it meant to be swaggy. Male impersonators were more refined. It wasn't drag in the sense of the comedic,
camp element. The first time we see “drag king” in print
was in 1972. It's “The Queen's Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon”. And in that, it defines drag king, So that was the first time that
we have found that in print. There was this huge, thriving scene in the
90s in New York City in San Francisco, in London, 
in other parts of the world. Drag, kings are growing and they're getting
bigger and bigger but... they still got a way to go when it comes
to representation within the cabaret and the drag industry 
as a whole. RuPaul's Drag Race is so fantastic because
so many drag queens have become celebrities and pop culture figures thanks to RuPaul's Drag Race. That has not happened for drag kings yet. We don't wear heels, but we give story,
we give the drama, we give emotion energy just like Queens do. Because we're not in the mainstream,
we don't have the same opportunities. As an AFAB person, I've had producers 
tell me before, that I was unsellable and that's why 
they didn't book me. What I do want is for folks to acknowledge
the power of misogyny. We are usurping male power and privilege. And that's still scary to people. Our patriarchal society doesn't really take
kindly to the idea that masculinity and manhood is something
that anyone can put on. It's tiresome. But the great news is that Drag Kings have
been in other reality television competition shows. And won. We've got the Hugo Girl in 2018
who won in New Zealand. Landon Cider in 2019 who won Dragula. Tenderoni in Chicago. Who won in 2021. I am hopeful. I'm optimistic. And in the meantime, we're not waiting. This new generation of kings that are coming
up in the scene in the last 5 to 10 years. It's shaking up the scenes in 
a lot of different ways. We're making our own platforms. We're also taking up space in platforms that
have traditionally been dominated by by cis men. All of us are starting a revolution to be
seen to fight for respect, because
that's what we deserve. I firmly believe that us drag kings 
will make our mark. Like, we're kind of the coolest. We've kind of always been the coolest because we're kind of counterculture within a counterculture
within a counterculture. Like how punk is that? There’s this coaster in Hershey Park Pennsylvania,
called the Sooperdooperlooper. On it, you come around this bend that’s
full of trees blocking your view and before you know it 
you’re hurtling down the track at 45 miles per hour toward 
a thrilling 75 foot loop. According to Hershey's website, it’s the “first-ever looping roller coaster 
on the east coast”. But the good people at the Hershey company
have that wrong. Because about 75 years before the Sooperdooperlooper, Coney Island — in my hometown of New York —
was home to the first two looping coasters in America. Unlike the Sooperdooperlooper, which has been
around for almost 50 years, these early looping coasters didn’t even
last a decade. Because, it turns out, loops shouldn’t be
made like this. Looping roller coasters got their start in
Europe as early as 1842. Back then, they were called centrifugal railways They... weren’t super popular or successful. They tried a few more in Europe, as we understand
it, these were short lived and more a novelty. That’s Randy Geisler, former president and
current member of the historical committee for 
American Coaster Enthusiasts. I've loved roller coasters my entire life. The movements, the speed, and just the world
whipping by you in every direction. People in the 1800s didn't have the same fondness
for looping coasters. And that didn’t change much when America
built its first looping roller coaster in 1895: Coney Island’s Flip Flap Railway. That’s because these coasters had a few
major problems. The biggest one being, they made the loops
circular. In physics, we love perfect circles. It's an easy shape. But from a human experience point of view,
it is a nightmare. That’s Matt Anderson. I’m a physics professor at 
San Diego State University. To make it all the way around
the Flip Flap’s circular loop cars needed to move really, really fast
while changing directions. The coaster itself is trying to push you up
into a new direction. Your head, your spine, everything else wants
to keep going in a straight line. But the coaster is saying, no, you gotta curve
into this arc. Changing directions so rapidly causes a spike
in G forces/ You've gone from one G instantly 
to 12 or 14 Gs. That’s a big problem. 6Gs is really the most a human body can handle
on a rollercoaster and only for about a second. At that force... Literally, all the blood is just being pulled
out of your head and you will pass out. You can see how wild the G-forces are in this
looping-coaster-simulation chart created by George Sidebotham, a mechanical
engineering professor at the Cooper Union. Because of our chat, he became so obsessed
with the circular loop problem that he made a bunch of looping-coaster-simulation
charts. This line represents a circular loop like
the Flip Flap's. After jumping from 1 to 14 Gs, it would decrease
as you reached the top of the loop then ramp all the way up again to 14 at the
bottom, and then back to 1 as the coaster 
leaves the curve. Passengers were completely rattled. The Flip Flap, being made mostly of wood,
didn’t help either. Wood is stretchy and compress-y. You can see the circle moving as the cart
goes around. It's stressing it this way and then it's stressing
it that way. It just looks like an engineering catastrophe
about to happen. The next looping coaster built on Coney Island,
the Loop the Loop, Was crafted to avoid all those issues. It was made entirely out of steel, which offered
more stability. And the circle was switched to more of an
upside down teardrop shape. Squeezing the sides in helped ease the transition
into and out of the curvature reducing the G forces and creating a
smoother, less body-damaging ride. But still, they had the capacity problem. Neither the Flip Flap or the Loop the Loop
could support more than a few riders at a time because the loops were small, and so
the cars had to be small, too. Most of the cars, they seated 4 people And pretty much you could only send people 
about once every 5 minutes. They just couldn't make enough money. There were more people that would watch
than ride. The Flip Flap lasted 7 years, 
the Loop the Loop lasted 9. And all other looping coasters 
around the world shut down shortly after. It seemed like the end of the track for loops. That is... until something new came along. In 1959, Disney unveiled the Matterhorn. It didn’t have a loop but it was the very
first tubular steel coaster. Unlike regular steel which was solid throughout, tubular steel was hollow in the middle, 
making it lighter-weight, and easier to bend into smooth arcs and curves. Unlike wood, tubular steel could support heavy
weight, and more dynamic movement. And in 1976, Six Flags Magic Mountain 
debuted the first modern vertical looping coaster, 
made with tubular steel. The Great American Revolution squeezed the
loop even more than the Loop the Loop creating what’s known as a “clothoid loop". It gets smaller and smaller as you get to
the top to try and even out the G forces. And then it does exact opposite as it comes
back down. With clothoid loop-shaped coasters, designers
could distribute the G’s more evenly and decide more precisely how many Gs to hit... about 4.9 in the case of the Great American
Revolution. A much smoother experience compared to the
Flip Flap's uneven G force spikes from 1 to 14 to 9 to 1. This clothoid loop — crafted using strong
and easy-to-bend tubular steel, and built 113 feet high meant that the Great American Revolution 
could support 20 riders at g forces that feel exhilarating instead
of harmful. And since then loops have exploded in popularity. Double loops! Crazy loops! And that Sooperdooperlooper 
in Hershey Park which, by the way, can proudly claim that it’s the first modern looping roller coaster 
on the east coast. Welcome to my crib! Do you want a tour? This is my bedroom. This is my living room. This is my kitchen. And this is my bathroom. Because I... am in this. There’s a whole AirBnB category 
just for shipping containers. And behind that is a couple of things. There's this fantasy that you buy 
a shipping container for $4,000  bring it to a mountain, and you’re happy. You’re happy now. And the other is that if 
you want affordable housing containers homes are the answer according 
to this, and this, and this, and this... So is it true? No. About a week ago I drove through a 
ton of fog Warrenton, North Carolina to stay in a shipping container. I brought some food props to make some elaborate
shipping container models out of graham crackers which my editor was skeptical that I could pull off but I told her that I used to 
have a graham cracker addiction. So... full proof.  And then I got to my house. No, the one behind that one. After I bonded with other 
guests, owner Michael pulled up who built this development with a tiny house,
another shipping container, and my house. It's your home for tonight. Were you nervous cutting such a big hole? I really believe in my team, you know, and they 
will tell me if they believe they can't do it. To really re-emphasize, this 
is considered a real house. Later on, propped up agains the house, I found 
the cut out pieces of my actual container. That is very cool. You can actually see some of 
the printing of the container. That creativity is the promise 
of shipping containers, which I was gonna demo with my graham 
crackers, and it started out great... Look! I did it! But... No! No, no. No. You were right. Here are the supposed pros behind 
the shipping container home. It’s standardized. This one’s 40 by 8. 320 square feet. That means they’re stackable. They can be modified with a 
simple cut through the steel. And you can just crane them... anywhere. They’re also super strong because 
these things are made to carry stuff in big stacks across the ocean. And best of all, you can get them super 
cheap because containers are everywhere. It's still raining a bit and I'm 
totally hopped up on sugar now. So I thought I'd give you some reflections 
on my first night in the shipping container. It's pretty interesting. I definitely don't notice the size element. I don't feel constrained by that at all. And the way that Michael made the bathroom 
large makes it pretty easy to get comfortable. There's this lock on the garage door 
that you kind of... click shut. Makes it feel like a panic room. Which I actually like. Because it makes me feel like I'm important. It's like a good hotel room with 
a real creative touch to it. I'm going to go to sleep now. But something cool isn't necessarily practical. Or easy. Before I partied all night long 
in Warrenton, North Carolina. Just gonna eat this bad boy... I talked to two people about 
whether shipping containers  are practical affordable housing or if they're kinda of overrated. One is Belinda Carr, an architect 
who has a Youtube channel that racks up huge views for videos 
 about stuff like insulation and actually went viral with a video that
wasn’t super positive about shipping containers. And I talked to Mark Hogan, an 
architect who wrote an article   7 years ago about shipping containers 
and is still part of the big debate. There's no debate. I mean... they're garbage. It was a very old argument 
when I wrote the article and   someone keeps recycling it every six months. It comes from me in architecture school. Almost every year they were 
pushing this idea of modularity... the idea that a home, each part 
of a home could be a different box and you could just switch out the 
box if you wanted to expand the home. And and we were kind of brainwashed in that sense. Everyone. I'm talking about 
everyone in architecture school. And then I got to the real world and I 
started like diving into building science how things are constructed, not just 
how things look, but how they function. Slowly, this argument about modular 
shipping container construction fell apart. It's an interesting look. And it appeals to people
because it seems logical. As long as you don't think about 
it for more than 5 minutes. One of the first thing you see 
with these houses is stacking. The way containers work is 
they have these four major   structural points in the ends of the container. They're supposed to bear most of 
the weight on those four footings. So when you see them on a ship out in the 
ocean, they're all stacked vertically. Once you start offsetting 
it or turning it at an angle no other part of the container is truly structural 
or can bear the weight of the container. So you have the reinforce it. The same goes for cool windows, 
and doors, and garages. When you cut a hole, you need to reinforce. The container itself has made 
it a very thin, flimsy metal. But because of the geometry 
and the corrugations... it basically functions as a box 
beam that that makes it stronger,  which is why you can lift it up with a crane and put it on to a ship. As soon as you start cutting holes in it, it no 
longer functions structurally as a beam anymore. If you are able to get labor for 
all that to a remote location, you’ll still need to build a 
foundation for your container  to clear building codes and be stable. That could be a slab, or piers, 
and then it’s stuck there. And you need utilities too. So this is actually with a real 
foundation, and it’s concrete piers. And then we welded the shipping 
container onto the piers itself So this is actually considered 
a house on a very small scale. Modular design is great, but to make it livable,   you have to add expensive, and 
pretty permanent, insulation. So we took a shipping container, 
we did spray in insulation... and then we put the tin over that insulation. And then it met the code requirements. The thing that I responded to in the article is the idea that it was a solution 
to building low cost housing,  which is usually what it's presented as. And it's clearly not that. The overall project’s not 
very expensive for a house,  but per square footage it adds up. Okay, so shipping containers are 
so bad, why are they still a trend? I came to the conclusion that as affordable 
modular housing they're wildly overrated. But as cool, fun things to stay 
in and to design... they work. Also, I went on Getty images and, yea... shipping container housing for 
Ukrainian refugees is a thing. It definitely makes sense for 
temporary, really fast housing. But as an environmental or 
affordable housing solution? The next morning, I had breakfast. I slept well, I mean, I felt very safe because I've literally seen all the entrances
and exits hanging against a wall. It was, go to sleep and take a really nice shower. They had a double shower and heated floor. Let's get some jam on here. I finished my graham cracker nachos and packed up. Later, at home, I went on 
Vox Media's music service  and searched for a song that was bittersweet. I don't think I've ever met anyone 
who built something out of shipping containers who said 
they would do it again. The obsession I think is that people 
think they've come up with a workaround. And then they don't want to be proven wrong. And so they just dig deeper 
and deeper into this hole. I think humans have this 
obsession with modularity. It's this vision people have in their head of "oh, if I want to grow my home 
or if I want a larger bathroom, I can switch out this container 
and bring in another container." And the idea that if my home wants to grow,   I can add in two more containers 
and it can grow that way. How did you feel when you 
first saw them on the site. There was a sense of excitement, 
but then I looked at my bank account and was immediately disappointed. Because I realized it was 
really going to be a challenge. You have to be a little naive and 
arrogant to do something like this  because it is a lot more work and 
money than you initially expect. Warrenton, North Carolina is a tiny town but it’s   known for the revival Greek and 
Roman architecture they built. It's kind of artificial. Car. In the same way that shipping containers are   a form but they aren’t 
necessarily practical to live in all these columns don’t make it easier 
or more functional but they did connect the people of 
Warrenton to a cultural legacy that existed. And that’s kinda what we do 
with shipping containers too. I mean, we live with stuff that is moved 
around in these things, all the time. So why not occasionally expose 
them to our daily lives. It might not be practical to live 
in them, but it might be meaningful. Even if it’s not as easy as it seems. Seven years ago, back in 2015,   one major development in AI research 
was automated image captioning. Machine learning algorithms could 
already label objects in images,   and now they learned to put those labels 
into natural language descriptions. And it made one group of researchers curious. What if you flipped that process around? We could do image to text. Why not try doing text to 
images and see how it works? It was a more difficult task.They didn’t want   to retrieve existing images 
the way google search does. They wanted to generate entirely novel scenes 
that didn’t happen in the real world. So they asked their computer model for 
something it would have never seen before. Like all the school buses you've seen are yellow. But if you write “the red or green school bus” 
would it actually try to generate something green? And it did that. It was a 32 by 32 tiny image. And then all you could see is like a 
blob of something on top of something. They tried some other prompts like “A herd 
of elephants flying in the blue skies”. “A vintage photo of a cat.” “A toilet seat sits open in the grass field.” And “a bowl of bananas is on the table.” Maybe not something to hang on your wall 
but the 2016 paper from those researchers   showed the potential for what might 
become possible in the future. And uh... the future has arrived. It is almost impossible to overstate how far 
the technology has come in just one year. By leaps and bounds.
Leaps and bounds. Yeah, it's been quite dramatic. I don’t know anyone who 
hasn’t immediately been like “What is this? What is happening here?” Could I say like watching waves crashing? Party hat guy. Seafoam dreams. A coral reef.
Cubism. Caterpillar. A dancing taco. My prompt is Salvador Dali painting 
the skyline of New York City. You may be thinking, wait 
AI-generated images aren’t new. You probably heard about this generated portrait 
going for over $400,000 at auction back in 2018. Or this installation of morphing portraits, 
which Sotheby’s sold the following year. It was created by Mario Klingemann, who 
explained to me that that type of AI   art required him to collect a specific dataset of 
images and train his own model to mimic that data. Let's say, Oh, I want to create landscapes, 
so I collect a lot of landscape images. I want to create portraits, 
I trained on portraits. But then the portrait model would not 
really be able to create landscapes. Same with those hyper realistic 
fake faces that have been plaguing   linkedin and facebook – those come from a 
model that only knows how to make faces. Generating a scene from any combination of words 
requires a different, newer, bigger approach. Now we kind of have these huge 
models, which are so huge that   somebody like me actually cannot train 
them anymore on their own computer. But once they are there, they are 
really kind of— they contain everything. I mean, to a certain extent. What this means is that we can now 
create images without having to actually   execute them with paint or 
cameras or pen tools or code. The input is just a simple line of text. I'll get to how this tech works later in the video   but to understand how we got here, 
we have to rewind to January 2021 When a major AI company called Open AI announced 
DALL-E – which they named after these guys. They said it could create images from text 
captions for a wide range of concepts. They recently announced DALLE-2, which promises 
more realistic results and seamless editing. But they haven’t released 
either version to the public. So over the past year, a community of 
independent, open-source developers   built text-to-image generators out of other 
pre-trained models that they did have access to. And you can play with those online for free. Some of those developers are now working 
for a company called Midjourney,  which created a Discord community with bots that 
turn your text into images in less than a minute. Having basically no barrier to entry to 
this has made it like a whole new ballgame. I've been up until like two 
or three in the morning. Just really trying to change things, piece things together. I've done about 7,000 images. It’s ridiculous. MidJourney currently has a wait-list for 
subscriptions, but we got a chance to try it out. "Go ahead and take a look." “Oh wow. That is so cool” “It has some work to do. I feel like it can 
be — it’s not dancing and it could be better.” The craft of communicating 
with these deep learning   models has been dubbed “prompt engineering”. What I love about prompting 
for me, it's kind of really   that has something like magic where you have to 
know the right words for that, for the spell. You realize that you can refine 
the way you talk to the machine. It becomes a kind of a dialog. You can say like “octane render blender 3D”. Made with Unreal Engine... ...certain types of film lenses and cameras... ...1950s, 1960s... ...dates are really good. ...lino cut or wood cut... Coming up with funny pairings, like a Faberge Egg McMuffin. A monochromatic infographic poster about 
typography depicting Chinese characters. Some of the most striking images 
can come from prompting the model   to synthesize a long list of concepts. It's kind of like it's having a very strange 
collaborator to bounce ideas off of and get   unpredictable ideas back. I love that! My prompt was "chasing seafoam dreams," which is a lyric from the Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' song "Biomusicology." Can I use this as the album cover for my first album? "Absolutely." Alright. For an image generator to be able to 
respond to so many different prompts,  it needs a massive, diverse training dataset. Like hundreds of millions of images scraped from 
the internet, along with their text descriptions. Those captions come from things like the alt text 
that website owners upload with their images,   for accessibility and for search engines. So that’s how the engineers 
get these giant datasets. But then what do the models actually do with them? We might assume that when 
we give them a text prompt,   like “a banana inside a snow globe from 1960." They search through the training data 
to find related images and then copy   over some of those pixels. But 
that’s not what’s happening. The new generated image doesn’t 
come from the training data,   it comes from the “latent space” 
of the deep learning model. That’ll make sense in a minute, first 
let’s look at how the model learns. If I gave you these images and told you to match 
them to these captions, you’d have no problem. But what about now, this is 
what images look like to a   machine just pixel values for red green and blue. You’d just have to make a guess, and 
that’s what the computer does too at first. But then you could go through 
thousands of rounds of this   and never figure out how to get better at it. Whereas a computer can eventually figure out a 
method that works- that’s what deep learning does. In order to understand that this arrangement 
of pixels is a banana, and this arrangement   of pixels is a balloon, it looks for metrics that 
help separate these images in mathematical space. So how about color? If we measure 
the amount of yellow in the image,   that would put the banana over here and the 
balloon over here in this one-dimensional space. But then what if we run into this: Now our yellowness metric isn’t very 
good at separating bananas from balloons. We need a different variable. Let’s add an axis for roundness. Now we’ve got a two dimensional space with the 
round balloons up here and the banana down here. But if we look at more data we may come 
across a banana that’s pretty round,   and a balloon that isn’t. So maybe there’s some way to measure shininess. Balloons usually have a shiny spot. Now we have a three dimensional space. And ideally, when we get a new image we 
can measure those 3 variables and see   whether it falls in the banana region 
or the balloon region of the space. But what if we want our model to recognize,   not just bananas and balloons, 
but…all these other things. Yellowness, roundness, and shininess don’t 
capture what’s distinct about these objects. That’s what deep learning algorithms do 
as they go through all the training data. They find variables that help improve their 
performance on the task and in the process,   they build out a mathematical space 
with way more than 3 dimensions. We are incapable of picturing multidimensional 
space, but midjourney's model offered this and I like it. So we’ll say this represents the latent space of 
the model. And It has more than 500 dimensions. Those 500 axes represent variables that 
humans wouldn’t even recognize or have   names for but the result is that 
the space has meaningful clusters: A region that captures the essence of banana-ness. A region that represents the textures 
and colors of photos from the 1960s. An area for snow and an area for globes 
and snowglobes somewhere in between. Any point in this space can be thought 
of as the recipe for a possible image. The text prompt is what navigates us to that 
location. But then there’s one more step. Translating a point in that mathematical 
space into an actual image involves a   generative process called diffusion. 
It starts with just noise and then,   over a series of iterations, arranges pixels 
into a composition that makes sense to humans. Because of some randomness in the process,   it will never return exactly the 
same image for the same prompt. And if you enter the prompt into a 
different model designed by different   people and trained on different 
data, you’ll get a different result. Because you’re in a different latent space. No way. That is so cool. What the heck? The brush 
strokes, the color palette. That’s fascinating. I wish I could like — I mean he’s dead, 
but go up to him and be like, "Look what I have!" Oh that’s pretty cool. Probably the 
only Dali that I could afford anyways.” The ability of deep learning to extract 
patterns from data means that you can copy an   artist’s style without copying their images, 
just by putting their name in the prompt. James Gurney is an American illustrator who   became a popular reference for 
users of text to image models. I asked him what kind of norms he would like 
to see as prompting becomes widespread. I think it's only fair to 
people looking at this work   that they should know what the prompt 
was and also what software was used. Also I think the artists should be allowed 
to opt in or opt out of having their work   that they worked so hard on by hand be used 
as a dataset for creating this other artwork. James Gurney, I think he was a 
great example of being someone   who was open to it, started 
talking with the artists. But I also heard of other artists 
who got actually extremely upset. The copyright questions regarding 
the images that go into training the   models and the images that come out 
of them…are completely unresolved. And those aren’t the only questions 
that this technology will provoke. The latent space of these models contains some   dark corners that get scarier as 
outputs become photorealistic. It also holds an untold number 
of associations that we wouldn’t   teach our children but that 
it learned from the internet. If you ask an image of the CEO, 
it's like an old white guy. If you ask for images of 
nurses, they're all like women. We don’t know exactly what’s in the 
datasets used by OpenAI or Midjourney. But we know the internet is biased toward 
the English language and western concepts,   with whole cultures not represented at all. In one open-sourced dataset,   the word “asian” is represented first 
and foremost by an avalanche of porn. It really is just sort of an infinitely complex 
mirror held up to our society and what we   deemed worthy enough to, you know, put 
on the internet in the first place and   how we think about what we do put up. But what makes this technology so 
unique is that it enables any of   us to direct the machine to 
imagine what we want it to see. Party hat guy, space invader, caterpillar, and a ramen bowl.  Prompting removes the obstacles between ideas 
and images, and eventually videos, animations,   and whole virtual worlds. We are on a voyage here, that 
is it's a bigger deal than   than just like one decade or the 
immediate technical consequences. It's a change in the way humans imagine, 
communicate, work with their own culture   And that will have long range, 
good and bad consequences that we   we are just by definition, not going to 
be capable of completely anticipating. Over the course of researching this video 
I spoke to a bunch of creative people who have played with these tools. And I asked them what they think this all means for people who make a living making images. The human artists and illustrators and designers and stock photographers out there. And they had a lot of interesting things to say.  So I've compiled them into a bonus video. Please check it out and add your own thoughts in the comments. Thank you for watching. This is Jake Hi. I’m Jake. In February 2020 he posted his first video
to TikTok. Alright, mom, what are you doing today? I’m going to make a beat! I had my mom make a beat that I had already
pre-made. And I recorded, I'm like, okay, press these
buttons. And we'll make it look like you just made
it in two minutes. I need a producer tag Okay, what do you want it to be? Ayo mama on the beat. Within hours the video was racking up millions
of views. So, Jake made a few more videos featuring
his mom, but with one small tweak. My brother had the idea, he was like, yo, what if we like put a TikTok like in front
of the phone and we filmed it... Hey mom. Have you ever heard this song before? The format was simple but clever: Jake would mashup songs on TikTok that were
already going viral. [overlapping] Hey mom. Have you ever heard this song before? It worked. With each post, he was racking up millions
more views. But he didn’t stop there. And we were like, we need to put my vocals
on the end of it. And if the song goes viral, then like we can
drop it ourselves and become an artist. Hood baby part 2, featuring yours truly. Up down right down... We're just going to name myself, JVKE
and we're going to go at it. Ayo mommas gonna make this a bop. “Up down right down looking for your love
right now.” It just so happens that the first one that
I put my vocals on went absolutely bananas viral. Jake’s 15 second snippet of a song was taking
over TikTok. Once it was at 1 million videos, 
Charli D’Amelio used it. That means that this is about to be insane. Like it's not ending at a million. It's starting at a million. At the time, Jake didn’t even have a manager. But he knew he needed one fast. We have these fifteen seconds,
we have labels calling us... What do we do? That was actually when I got on the phone
with my now manager and he was like “Call me, right now!” He was like, "Hey, can you finish this song
in 24 hours?" Clearing the “Hoody Baby” sample ended
up taking a few days. By the time we got it out, it was at 5 million
videos. It ended up going to 15 million. If you compound all the views 
of all the 15 million videos, it's like over 9 Billion views. This is just the beginning of Jake’s story. But what makes it so interesting isn't how
dramatic it is, but how often stories just like his occurred
in 2020. Over the last few months I’ve been working
with The Pudding to put experiences like Jake’s into perspective. We dug into the data and stories behind dozens
of emerging artists’ TikTok hits. To figure out what internet fame actually
means for new music artists. It turns out, this is way more than a story
about algorithms or going viral. It’s a story about the longstanding 
tug-of-war between artists, platforms, and music industry giants. You might be surprised who’s winning. If I were to review this project, I'd probably
never do it again. That is Matt Daniels, a journalist 
at The Pudding where he digs into culture stories 
through data. In the Fall of 2021, we started a project that
turned into what Matt describes as... One of the hardest data projects I've ever
worked on. It seemed simple on paper: create a data set of Indie and DIY artist
that went viral on TikTok in 2020 and determine if that virality was enough
to change the outlook of their career. Because it really was their first 
major, major exposure to a huge fan base on the internet. But, there were a few big problems 
right from the start. The biggest was there wasn’t 
a useful data set of the most popular songs on TikTok from 2020. We banged our head against the wall trying to figure out “how do we reconstruct
charts from TikTok?". It turns out, there’s a lot of playlists
on Spotify that compile viral TikTok hits. And there’s also this tool called Chartmetric. Which among other things captures historical
data of those playlists and tracks what songs have been added and
subtracted to them and when. So, we got to work. And pulled all of the songs from as many playlists
as we could find that were added between January 
and December 2020. Then we ranked the songs by their popularity
on TikTok, filtering out any that got fewer than 
100,000 posts. Which brought us down to about 1500 songs
that went viral in 2020. The biggest challenge I would say is once
we had our arms wrapped around these 1500 songs making the decision of, is this an established
artist that had a TikTok hit or is this the artist's big break? And a big break is a very subjective decision. A lot of the artists in this list were obviously
very established. Cardi B going viral on TikTok is not particularly
impressive versus somebody who has never released a song
before. So we went back to Chartmetric to dig into
more data points behind these songs and the artists that made
them. Including their Spotify monthly listeners,
the number of times they've been playlisted, the number of tracks they've released. Which made it a lot easier to decide: did this
artist have a career beforehand? Eventually, after filtering out all of the
established artists we narrowed our list to a sample of 125 artists
we felt hit all the marks. They all went viral on TikTok in 2020 and as far as we can determine, 
it was their big break. Can I also say something really quickly... Yeah yeah. It doesn't actually matter how many artists
we examined. There's probably thousands of new artists
that went viral on TikTok. So what we wanted to do was just wrap our
arms around a cohort of artists that are experiencing this phenomenon and, and then say what, what
happened to them afterwards? What happened to these artists' after they
went viral was eye-opening. And nearly everyone of those stories starts
with Spotify. The speed and the intensity with which TikTok
sends things viral. It's crazy. That’s Elias Leight: he’s a music journalist and his reporting on TikTok and the music
industry is extensive. The virality itself is not necessarily new but TikTok is basically just like 
a machine gun shooting out viral songs like even more than daily, honestly. The two big differences are how many viral
moments it creates and then how directly that virality correlates
with streaming increase which is why the labels are so 
obsessed with it. You can see how that played out in real time
by looking at this chart which captures the explosive virality of JVKE’s
track “Upside Down” on TikTok. But what it doesn’t show is that while Jake’s
track was going viral people were flocking to Spotify 
to stream it. This is the TikTok-to-Spotify pipeline. I remember when we first released the song it was just like a bottle rocket,
up to like 500,000 streams a day. I was like, what is happening? I didn’t even know really what that meant
at the time. What is meant is that the track was going
to get playlisted. In fact within a month of “Upside Down’s”
official release it was on 98 editorial playlists: including
"New Music Friday" which has almost 4 million followers. It landed on the "Global Viral 50" Spotify
Charts. And as a result, JVKE went from zero monthly
listeners on August 18th to 3.4 million by October. As I’m editing this piece, he has 
over 8 million. This pipeline from TikTok to Spotify wasn’t
unique to JVKE. It happened to nearly every one of the 125
artists on our list. So, I feel like TikTok is one of the main
platforms where people actually leave the app to go
and add music to their library. That’s L.Dre - who’s song Steven Universe
has been used in more than 10 million video posts. Whenever one of my videos went viral most of the comments were people begging me
to release it. That's kind of the culture on TikTok. When they hear something, they really wanna
go listen to it. I pretty much went from having just like a
few thousand monthly listeners to just a rapid incline for like a year or
two straight where it was just steady going up. And what was more exciting to see was that almost all of the artists, including
L.Dre had some of their other tracks get editorially
playlisted. That's really important because it means that once you're on a playlist that Spotify curates, it's getting a huge audience it's a huge signal that the music you're releasing
is going to get streams. To get a better sense of how the TikTok-to-Spotify
pipeline worked Matt and I analyzed another chart:
The Spotify 200. It’s a global chart that shows the top 200
songs on the app every day. These songs are stream kings. So, in a new spreadsheet, we pulled all the
artists whose songs made the U.S. Spotify 200 after January 2020 and filtered out all of the artists who had
well established careers or had already charted before then. This left us with a new data set to analyze. These 332 emerging artists who landed on the
chart for the first time. Out of this group, a quarter of them
have TikTok to thank for their big break. This is incredibly eye-opening in terms of
TikTok’s influence on the charts. In terms of what is getting listened to in
music culture. But let’s backtrack a second. Because it’s not just about racking up millions
of streams. It’s about how fast 
you’re able to do it. And it’s not just about how virality influences
music culture. It’s about how it influences music business. Spotify basically pays out labels according
to their share of the total streams in a given
time period. If you get a really big hit that, you know, does a billion streams over six months or
something that can add a few points to your market share which then increases your payout of the Spotify
pool. It's really like a ruthless competition for
this market share number that no listener cares about at all but the record labels watch obsessively. Despite this obsession, look what’s happened
over the past 4 years. Major labels have slowly conceded their total
Spotify market share to independent and self-released artists. To get back a bigger piece of the pie, labels
developed a strategy: Monitor TikTok like a hawk and aggressively
try to sign artists that are rising to the top. In a way, TikTok is great for the labels. They basically sit on top of it, watch everything
come up and if they get it at the right time they can probably make their money back on
pretty much one track. The intensity of these bidding wars 
around viral songs... It's pretty wild. It's just like a flat-out sprint to grab the
next viral thing. Here's a headline I've seen everywhere.  And for legal reasons, I made 
a generic version of it. “Artist with viral TikTok song inks million
dollar record deal with major label.” Let's break it down. So you're an artist, you have a song and it’s
doing really, really well and all these record labels 
are hitting you up. They're like, I want to sign you. How can we be a part of this conversation? So then they will entice you with money, which
is an advance. So this million dollars, right here? That’s the advance. The more virality you have the more zeros
you’ll see. This is Mary Rahmani. She’s a former TikTok music exec who now runs her own label 
with Republic records  called Moon Projects. When I worked at major labels, but under an
imprint that was a little more indie I would go in between like 50 to a hundred 
thousand dollars for an advance. And yeah, the major labels are a double triple
that sometimes. The label signs you, they give you a fat advance
of about a hundred thousand dollars or something like that, in exchange for full ownership
of all of your masters all of your recorded music. So, for that million dollars the label now owns the rights to your 
viral TikTok song forever and... They would keep around 85% of the royalties
that came in. You only got your 15% if you recouped the
cost of your advance. By the way, that’s Ari Herstand. I'm the author of "How To Make it in the New
Music Business" and I'm an independent musician. So right after you ink your million dollar
deal you see a nice $50,000 check from Spotify because your song is still riding
that viral wave. $42,500 of that check would go to the label,
only $7,500 would go to you… but it wouldn’t stay with you for long because
you have to use that check to start paying back your million dollar advance. In essence, an advance is a loan. And if you’re only making 15% of the revenue
generated by your song it might take a very long time to pay it back. So you just have to hope you’re very smart
about the way you use your advance or you're extremely successful and your album 
generates millions and millions of dollars. And then you start earning royalties on the
back end. The whole approach is basically like initially
you're going to be, you know, 500K, a million, 1.5 million in the hole, and you just have
to dig yourself out of it. This is what a standard major label record
deal has looked like for decades. But recently, this part of the headline has
started changing the equation. If you have a viral hit, and have proven you
can build a following all on your own. Congratulations, you have leverage. I mean, if you have a viral hit, probably
you’re getting a lot of offers simultaneously because labels scrutinize TikTok so closely  and they want to be part of these viral things so badly Because of that... There's been a bigger shift in the last couple
of years than there has been in the last 50 years in the types of deals that labels are starting to offer 
the artists in the artists favor. Where the label comes to the artist and says,
I know, historically we would take 85%, but we're not going to do that for you because
you're so valuable. And you've obviously proven that you can create
a career all on your own. So, how about 50/50 we're partners now? And you know, we're not going to own your
stuff. We're just going to do a licensing deal. Meaning give us the rights to your record
for the next 12 to 15 years. You can still do whatever you want with it,
we'll do whatever we can to make more money on this. And we'll split it 50/50. That has never really happened before with
self-released DIY independent artists. So, how many record deals are actually happening? Matt and I decided to tackle this question
from two angles. First by compiling a list of 
around 367 emerging artists who landed their first major label 
deal after January 2020. And then from there, we went row by row, artist
by artist, trying to determine, did this person have a viral moment on TikTok? And if so, was that cited as one of the reasons
for them getting signed? It turns out, roughly a third of these deals
happened because an artist's song went viral on TikTok. And when Matt and I went back and looked at
our original group of 125 artists, we figured out that 46% of them went from unsigned to landing a major record label deal.  Because when these artists do have leverage,
signing to a major has its benefits. For one, they have direct relationships with
streaming services like Spotify which helps them get more placements on editorial playlists. They are also massive international conglomerates,
so they will tell you that they can push you in Sweden and France and Germany and Japan
at the same time as they push you in America. At the end of the day, the biggest difference
is that they're massive banks and they can write huge checks.  But TikTok, has increased the chances for
DIY artists to go viral one day and wake up the next morning with a million streams on
Spotify without spending millions of dollars to record an album, and needing a global team
to promote it. This is honestly the subject of a lot of debate
right now. If you're able to build a lot of leverage
on your own, like how much benefit does a big label offer you and what should 
you give up? When I looked at the data, I wasn’t that
surprised to all of these of these artists signing deals with major labels. What I found more compelling was the group
who were likely offered deals and decided to continue on their own,
at least for now. It's like, I can promote my music. I don't have to rely on you to 
make stuff happen for me. The leverage is kind of slowly being
put back into the hands of the artists and it’s a beautiful thing to see. When I was browsing our list of 
125 viral artists one name happened to grab my attention:  Edith Whiskers. It turns out that name is a pseudonym for
the prolific singer songwriter Tom Rosenthal. I write fairly boring singer songwriting music
that has gone a bit viral on TikTok. Tom’s first viral song was his cover of
“Home” by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes. It’s been used in 1.6 million TikTok videos. So after the initial TikTok waves hit me,
I thought, okay, I'm going to release it, but then it
suddenly dawned on me that if I released it via my own name, I thought this cover will be on the top 
of my lists forever. I couldn’t bear the idea of writing all
these original songs and then having one cover just sitting there at the top. So he did the only sensible thing. I came up with four names, put all those names
on Twitter, did a Twitter poll and Edith Whiskers was
the favorite. So he released the track on Spotify under
the name Edith Whiskers And it shot straight up to 
the Spotify Viral 50. Basically, If you can name a record label
they reached out. The thing is, Tom is staunchly independent. And has some pretty strong feelings about
major labels. I'm their worst nightmare, really, because
I'm older than, you know, 19. When record labels said to me “Oh, come
and sign with us because you know, these things can drop off and we help it grow and flourish
in its own special way.” Well, I go, “Hang on, I've literally got
the data from the first one over a year now, showing that it basically does roughly the
same thing every single day of his life.” I just basically said, this is around the kind
of money that it would take to get me interested, because I know this is the money that I will
make from these songs. That knowledge is really important, especially
if you're independent. In 2021, just a few months after going viral,
Tom started his own record label. I thought, let's try it. Let's try and create a fair system. Let’s actually have a completely 
big rethink about how I approach it compared to 
traditional record labels. The first thing he nixed was the long tradition
of advance and recoupment. Obviously not go crazy and invest lots of
money, but actually invest, you know, one or 2000 pounds or dollars in someone and say,
look, let's make a few songs, but I'm not looking for that money back. So that's the key difference, I think, is
you’re just investing in people, rather than it being this odd loan system. I want every artist of mine, on my record
label, to understand money. And the only way they do that is by seeing
money come in straight away and understanding how that works. It has never been a better time to be a DIY
artist, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’m at the whims of these almighty algorithms
at all times. Like they pretty much decide, you know, whether
I'm gonna eat dinner or whatever. A few years ago I started following L.Dre
on Instagram way before TikTok was even on my radar and it seemed like he always had content at
the ready. I just need to make that I’m posting stuff,
pretty consistently on any platform I can. The fact of the matter is, if you wanna make
it today, you either have to have money to hire people, or you just need to also become
a video editor. Also become a graphic designer. You definitely have to wear a lot of hats
for sure. Pretty much everyone I talked to said, if
you want exposure, you have to be on TikTok, and not only that, you have post post post. We recommended posting three to five times
a week and now it's three to five times a day, Because theres people out there who are willing
to put in the extra work, and you’re competing with them now. Even if you’re an influencer full time,
it’s a lot of work. But it's just because there's so much content
coming in and music is one vertical of many. If you’re looking to break as a new artist,
that is kind of the requirement. The more you post, the more you'll get discovered. Out of all of the big existential questions
this project hit me with, the one that I can’t stop thinking about
is this: Is music just content now? Are musicians just content creators? I don't know what the actual meaning 
of this was but like the video killed the radio star thing.  There's more to the equation than just your
voice on radio. And I think that's kind of what you're getting
at here is that there's just so much around your ability to create content. On one hand, if you're signed to a label,
they can help you with that. But on the other hand, you're signed to a
label because you're good at that already. Matt and I spent months poking at prodding
at the digital footprint of these 125 artists. Examining whether or not they would be deemed
successful based on how quickly their TikTok and Instagram followers increased, or whether they gained youtube subscribers, 
and spotify monthly listeners. But one metric that’s just as valuable is
touring. People love you on TikTok. That's great. Will they pay for a show? You know, can you start selling merch? Like, is there a deeper attachment here? First we looked at, of these artists, how
many were touring beforehand? Unsurprisingly, some of them were. Among the artists who had never toured before
or played a show about a third of them have had 
at least one show and about 15% of them are actually playing festivals now. A decent chunk of these artists have been
able to channel their TikTok success into performing live music, which is often the
source of financial security for an artist. You want people to come to your shows and
you want people to buy your albums and your t-shirts and be invested in what you're doing
as an all-rounder. And actually a viral song is obviously great, but it’s about doing something so much stronger than that. In November 2021, a little over a year after
Jake went viral with his mom on TikTok, he played his very first live show. "When you perform for the very first time
after everyone said you were just a TikToker." That first moment when I was walking onto
the stage I was walking kind of slow just to like take
in what was actually happening. As I sang the first lyrics to the song and
everyone was just screaming back at me. Like I almost was like speechless. That target, we were trying to hit of like let's convert this virality into 
something real, like we hit that target spot on.  On April 8th 2022, the European Union issued a fifth round of sanctions
against Russia. "And, ladies and gentlemen,
I think that measures on oil, and even gas, will also be needed sooner or later." Did you get that? “Even gas will also be
needed sooner or later” In other words, not now. Since the war in Ukraine began, the EU has imposed sanctions
that restrict the flow of Russian money, and goods... they’ve targeted banks, companies, individuals... But natural gas remains untouched. The EU gets nearly a quarter
of its energy from gas. And nearly half of it comes from Russia:
the world's largest gas exporter. Russia delivers the vast majority of its gas to
Europe through this network of pipelines. And as the EU’s largest economy, nobody
buys more of it than Germany. Since the invasion of Ukraine began, Germany has paid Russia about 220 million
euros a day for gas. Germany uses gas to heat
more than 20 million homes. And to power a lot of the country’s industry. And Germany’s government has
spoken out against sanctions that would limit the flow of it. "It's not possible...to cut the gas supplies." But with every payment Germany makes to Russia’s
state-owned natural gas company... it’s also paying for Russia's war. So, how did Germany become so
dependent on Russia for something as vital as their energy supply? And why can’t they quit? Germany was at the literal center
of the Cold War. After World War II, a fortified border
separated independent West Germany from East Germany and other Soviet
satellite states. WWII had left Germany in ruins. But by the 1950s West Germany was
experiencing a remarkable economic recovery. German industries like steel prospered. But they needed more energy to power
their growing economy. Meanwhile, over here in western Siberia the Soviet Union had just discovered
huge natural gas reserves. They had a network of pipelines to supply
major Soviet cities, but extending their pipelines to potential
customers in Europe would be a huge infrastructure project. Then, in 1969, West Germany elected
a chancellor with a new foreign policy called Ostpolitik, focused on bringing the two sides closer together
through dialogue and deals. Energy provided a great opportunity. And West Germany and the Soviet Union
struck a deal. The Soviet Union would supply West Germany
with natural gas. And in return, West Germany would provide
high quality steel pipes to extend the pipelines. It was a major 20-year deal. To get how this deal locked Germany in, it’s important to understand what makes 
piped natural gas different from other energy sources.  Natural gas, with coal and oil, 
is one of the three main fossil fuels used around the world. But unlike coal and oil, which can
be shipped or rerouted worldwide, piped natural gas is a regional product that
depends on proximity. To transport it, gas producers spend 
millions of dollars to build pipelines that connect 
producers and buyers. Because these pipelines are such
big and permanent commitments, gas deals can link a buyer’s energy infrastructure
to the sellers for decades. By the 80s, the Soviet Union built this 
pipeline network to Europe. And by the 90s, it was supplying Germany 
with 40% of its gas. Then, the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia’s state-owned corporation, Gazprom,
took over the old Soviet gas pipelines. But, the map had been redrawn. Russia's main pipelines now ran
through a newly independent Ukraine, putting a key part of their gas infrastructure
on land they no longer controlled. So, in order to diversify the routes to Germany,
Russia began building new ones. In 1999, they finished this pipeline
that ran through Belarus. And in 2005 they began building 
the Nord Stream pipeline along the Baltic Sea to reach Germany directly. They also built pipelines inside Germany. And opened a subsidiary there to operate 
gas storage facilities. Including this one here, one of the largest
in Western Europe. Russia now had three
routes reaching Germany, as well as pipelines and storage
facilities inside Germany. The gas trade was strong. But it had also changed Russia's
relationship with Europe. At the end of 2008, gas price negotiations
between Russia and Ukraine fell apart. A few days later, Russia cut off gas 
to Ukraine for 20 days. The thing is, because Ukraine was 
a major transit country, when Russia cut off their gas, they cut off
a lot of European gas too. As a result, all these countries saw a drop
in their supply, and tens of thousands lost heat. In Poland, at least eleven people 
froze to death. All this put Europe on alert. It was now clear that through gas flows,
Russia held immense power over Europe. But, up here, another link to Russia was in
the works: Nord Stream 2. A new 11 billion dollar pipeline to run alongside
the first Nord Stream and double the capacity to Germany. Then, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea 
and invaded Eastern Ukraine. In response, the EU issued a series of sanctions. Some countries began to wean
themselves off Russia’s gas. But Russian gas kept flowing to Germany. In fact, Germany imported more gas 
than ever before. Today, as Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine
continue to shock the world, pressure on Germany is mounting. But replacing Russia’s gas isn’t easy. Because it’s been piped to homes
and businesses for decades, without a major infrastructure overhaul, 
Russian natural gas can only be replaced
with other natural gas. And Germany’s options for that are limited. The largest European natural gas reserve, here
in the Netherlands, is closing this year. Gas from Algeria and Libya is increasingly
used in those countries. Most of what is pumped to Europe 
goes to Italy and Spain. And a southern gas corridor connecting 
Azerbaijan to Europe is not transporting as much as expected. The other option is Liquified Natural Gas
or LNG. That’s gas that’s been cooled until it
becomes liquid and can be transported in these massive ships from anywhere in the world. But It’s a time-consuming and expensive
alternative that requires a lot of new infrastructure. In the last two decades,
European countries have built LNG terminals along 
their coasts. Germany plans to open 3 
in the next 5 years. But as of today, doesn't have any.  Replacing natural gas and all fossil fuels
with renewables is Germany’s ultimate goal, but that requires a massive 
and expensive transition that won’t be complete until 2035. Meanwhile, at home, Germans
are demanding action. According to this poll, the majority of Germans
support a boycott of Russian gas. But economists predict that cutting gas imports
could cause an economic recession that could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. But they have taken some steps. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was canceled. They have also reduced dependence
on Russia's gas by 15%. And have taken over the Gazprom subsidiary
that runs gas operations in Germany. But the government and business leaders continue to push back against
sanctioning gas entirely. Germany is stuck. And the stakes are now higher than ever. My father, when he talked 
to my grandmother, they'd have to use these signs. For example, some of the basics was like,
“yes” and “no”... “good” and “bad.” [light, rhythmic music] This is one of the oldest languages in 
North America. [rhythmic music persists] This is a “Crow Indian.” This was a “white person.” It’s called 
 Plains Indian Sign Language. One of many indigenous sign languages, 
 broadly known as “Hand Talk,” that were once used widely 
 by both deaf and hearing people. It was the means for commerce. It was the means for economics. [music builds] Variations of Hand Talk 
 were so commonly used that it would influence the formation 
of American Sign Language, or ASL, the predominant sign language 
 used today in the US and Canada. But Hand Talk has mostly 
 been written out of history. [music fades out] [quick and rhythmic piano notes, urgent 
but persistent] When a Spanish colonizer first reached 
 one indigenous community in the southwest, he noted that indigenous 
people knew signs so well “that there was no need 
 for an interpreter.” [rhythmic piano continues] That sign language was likely 
 a variation of Hand Talk. And these journals can trace it back 
 to at least the 1500s. But if you take a look at a 
 different kind of writing, the evidence suggests it 
 goes back even further. [urgent and rhythmic music continues] There’s also rock writing depicting “prayer,”
versus a similar sign for “prayer.” Or a symbol for “elder”, indicating a
person with a walking stick,  versus a sign for “elder.” And this: a symbol for “hunger,” 
versus a sign for “hunger.” Hand Talk, which 
 researchers also call “North American Indian Sign Language,” 
has many regional variations, like Northeast Indian Sign Language here, or Southwest Indian Sign Language here; as well as tribe-specific variations 
 within those regions. And here — from the Gulf Coast region, up
through the Great Plains into Canada, [music stops] was the home of Plains 
 Indian Sign Language. [curious music begins] PISL is one of the most well-
documented Hand Talk variations, probably because of how 
 widely it was used. Plains Indian Sign Language was the medium
for communication of intertribal nations. And that had a lot to do with 
 how those tribes lived. By the 19th century, tens of 
 thousands of indigenous people  were reported to have known PISL. It was the standard language used 
just as English is used today at the United Nations, especially in commerce, in gaining intelligence, in hunting, [music stops] even in warfare. [urgent staccato music starts] In PISL, there’s no finger-spelled alphabet
like you find in other sign languages. Its building blocks are 
 roughly 4,000 basic words that form its vocabulary. For the word “war,” you’d sign 
“big” and “fight.” For the word “beautiful," you’d sign
“face” and “good.” Or for “stream," you’d sign the words
“river” and “little”. There is... a stream... on the other side of some
bluffs over there. The way PISL works also shows indigenous 
ways of thinking about the world. For example, let’s take 
 the simple question: How old are you? First, there’s a single sign for “question.” So for a question about someone’s age, you’d use the motion for question
with the motion for “winter”. How many winters are you? That's what I ask. In PISL you measure months by moons,
days by the sun. And to refer to different times of day, you would show hand placement according to
the position of the sun in the sky. So this sign for morning, 
afternoon, or night. If you look at some of this side-by-side
with American Sign Language, you’ll notice some similarities. Like that sign for moon,
along with other similar words. Researchers believe another form of Hand
Talk, Northeast Indian Sign language, was one of the contributors to ASL. [music builds] [bass note rings and music fades] [film reel static and ominous string music begins] This film from September 1930 shows one of the largest gatherings of
intertribal indigenous leaders ever filmed. They were brought together 
by General Hugh L. Scott to document and preserve PISL. [music fades] “I have brought you from every direction
to sit in this council." "I have come myself from
very far in the east to sit with you." "Young men are not learning your sign language,
and soon it will disappear from this country.” [music holds an ominous tone and fades] By the time this gathering took place, Scott’s predictions were
already coming true. [slow, somber music begins] In the late 1800s, the US government 
began sending Native children to government 
residential schools, where administrators enforced a strict 
“English-only” policy explicitly designed to cut off
children from their families, their culture, and their native identities. They were punished severely for
speaking their languages. And that also meant signing. And if they signed, sometimes
many of these kids were beaten, and they were systematically... psychologically destroyed. In the violent pursuit of
standardizing language in the US, [music fades to silence] we lost tens of thousands
of indigenous signers. There are only a few dozen
fluent PISL signers left.  [piano notes start to play] Today, many indigenous
deaf Americans use ASL. But many of ASL's signs are rooted
in a cultural experience that isn't theirs. Even though ASL has an extensive vocabulary, there’s one big thing it doesn’t have
signs for: names of tribes. In ASL, you'd have to
spell out tribe names. But with PISL, there’s a sign
for every Native American tribe, with gestures connected
to their meanings. For example, this sign for Crow
imitates a knotted hairstyle. [music fades out] This sign for Shoshoni imitates
the movement of a snake. And this sign for Cheyenne
shows a striped arrow. That’s why Melanie and
other Deaf native people are beginning to use
a mix of PISL and ASL. [rhythm double times, becoming more urgent] Okay, Hand Talking. Plains Indian Sign Language
is still endangered. But many indigenous people are working
to incorporate it more into everyday life. [hopeful music builds] And pushing for it to be included
in more mainstream education. Because as a language,
PISL is more than words. It carries their history. We not only can hear a native language. We can do it. We can see it. And we can also feel it. Plains Indian Sign Language
is almost in our DNA. [first song of curious, driving tones plays] [music fades to silent] So right now, we are going to 
the top of the lighthouse. And then south of the lighthouse we have 
the main city of Nazaré. And then the more north we have 
Praia do Norte. The biggest wave in the world. "Now, here’s something you just have to
see to believe." "You got to see this." "The most amazing picture that we saw in the
newsroom today has got to be this." "Take a look at that surfer right there." "Garrett McNamara is the fearless surfer." "The wave is 78 feet tall..." "...that is taller than a 7-story building." "This is a new world record." "He is riding a mountain of water off—" "The coast of Portugal." "Portugal." "That’s in Portugal right?" That moment made Nazaré... a small town on the coast of Portugal... home to the biggest wave ever surfed. And over the past decade, many surfers 
havecome here  to make their own attempts at a world record. Even at the risk of their lives. How can I explain it? Nazaré right now, it’s the Formula 1 of
big waves. But for a long time, these waters weren’t
at the heart of an extreme sport. They were driving an entirely different culture
for centuries. A culture that’s changing dramatically today. [in Portuguese] The history of Nazaré will be different from what it would have been, if there had never been the wave.  [in Portuguese] Nazaré has been going through an intense transformation. [in Portuguese] History and memory are gradually being erased. The world had no idea that we have 
the biggest wave in the world here. So yeah, it's never been like this. This one is a 9'6". It is not the biggest one I have. It's already double size. My name is António Laureano. And I'm a professional big wave surfer. What's up? I’m from here, I'm Portuguese. -It's getting bigger.
-For sure. I'm the youngest kid surfing Nazaré. Tomorrow with the energy really strong, 
it's gonna be way more farther out. And some days ago, I just won my first 
big wave contest in Spain. A couple of years ago, Tony went viral  for one particular wave, estimated 
to be 101 feet tall.  But, he’s still waiting for the Guinness World 
Book of Records to make it official. The adrenaline that we have surfing those
waves is something that is impossible to explain. Like every big wave scares me. A crash on a wave at Nazaré... You feel that your foot is out 
behind your head... your shoulder is on your knee... and then you spend, like long time 
under the water. It doesn't seem like it's too long. But when you're getting kicked by 50 guys... believe me, it's too long. It’s that extreme danger, and the rush that
comes with it that led to the discipline of big wave surfing
70 years ago. Big wave surfing began in Hawaii, 
where for a long time the sport had been limited to waves 
less than 10 feet. But in the 1950s, a group of daring surfers successfully rode the notorious 25 foot waves
on Oahu’s North Shore. That inspired many surfers to scour the globe
for bigger and bigger waves. And they found them: Jaws, Maverick’s, Teahupoo, 
Fiji, Australia, Mexico. But they missed a spot. A place where the perfect conditions that
could generate waves larger than anyone had ever imagined. Storms are critical to big waves 
around the world. When a storm moves over the ocean, 
its winds hit the surface resulting in pulses of energy called swells. Which eventually become waves. Some of the most powerful storms form over
the Pacific and Southern oceans which send swells to places like 
Hawaii and Australia. The North Atlantic has similar storms.. that send powerful swells barrelling towards
Nazaré between October and April. And there's one on the way now. Friday, we are going to have one swell that
is supposed to be the biggest swell of the season. The swell is huge. The wind is perfect. The direction is like a good direction. The direction is really important because
if it's the right direction we can have the effect of the canyon. The canyon that sits beneath the surface,
just off the coast sets Nazaré apart from every other 
big wave spot. It begins here, then runs for 230 kilometers
right up to Nazaré’s beach. It’s half the length of the Grand Canyon but nearly 3 times as deep at its deepest point. [in Portuguese] If Nazaré didn't have the canyon Nazaré would be a different land.  [in Portuguese] My name is Jorge Barroso I was the mayor of Nazaré for 20 years.  So how does this canyon lead to giant waves? Can you give me... two minutes? [in Portuguese] So, here we have the canyon. [in Portuguese] The canyon's head is 300 meters off the coast.  From that point, here, the canyon plunges
in depth remarkably quickly. Over here, the water is just 20 meters deep. But right over here, the canyon is 
200 meters deep. The length of a 60-story building. This difference has a major effect on incoming
swells. When a swell approaches Nazaré it hits the canyon and 
gets split into two. The part in this shallow water slows down. But the part inside the canyon continues
to move fast and turns inward toward the canyon wall. When it hits the wall, it’s suddenly forced
upwards resulting in a big wave. But when that coincides with a slow swell,
the result is a humongous wave. [in Portuguese] We've here almost a perfect storm of current waves, depths, and energy.  [in Portuguese] That's why this place is the  only one in the world.  So, why did it take so long for big wave surfers
to find Nazaré? It's Portugal! Portugal is a small country and we don't have
a big culture of big-wave surfing. But for centuries, Nazaré did have 
a unique culture  one that was also shaped by these waves. "Nazaré in Portugal." "Where the only industry is fishing." [in Portuguese] It was a quiet neighboring village, with simple and calm people. [in Portuguese] In my family, we're all fishermen. [in Portuguese] Men have all been sailing since my grandfather's and 
great-grandfather's time.  [in Portuguese] And the women are fish sellers.  [in Portuguese] Since there has been Nazaré,  there has been dried fish. [in Portuguese] It was for people to have something to eat during the winter.  [in Portuguese] Here in Nazaré anything about fish is what  gave Nazaré its soul.  Fishing sustained Nazareans for generations but it also required many to risk their lives.  [in Portuguese] It was known worldwide,  precisely for death.  [in Portuguese] For the harshness of the sea.  [in Portuguese] Many people died,  many people.  [in Portuguese] People still came at night  to see if they could find the bodies. [in Portuguese] Because, you know, people died at sea and could appear six or seven months after.  But despite the dangers, fishing continued
to be Nazaré’s main industry until the mid-20th century, when it began
a slow decline. Largely because the fish populations  were dwindling. [in Portuguese] Our fisherman was an ecological fisherman.  [in Portuguese] They preserve by fishing with hooks.  [in Portuguese] Then, trawling began to appear from other ports.  [in Portuguese] Trawling destroys everything that it catches along the way. [in Portuguese] There are less fish,  you can tell. [in Portuguese] I don't know if it has to do with global warming or  if it's exploitation with extensive
catching [in Portuguese]  But it's noticeable.  The drop in fish populations forced Nazaréans to turn to a different source of income
which came from here: Praia de Nazaré. In the summers, Nazaré’s waters were calm and this beach attracted a lot of tourists. [in Portuguese]  I was already very resourceful as a
child.  [in Portuguese] Always here on the beach.  [in Portuguese] I would hold out my hand and say,  [in Portuguese] "Sir, money to eat? [in Portuguese] My father died on the boat." [in Portuguese] My father would die 30, 40 times.  [in Portuguese]  As many times as I decided.  But these tourists only came during the summer. So Nazaré needed a boost in the winter. And they found it on the other side of town:
Praia do Norte. [in Portuguese]  Praia do Norte was completely 
forbidden.  [in Portuguese] Absolutely forbidden for any 
Nazaréan.  Forbidden, because of the monstrous waves
that launch out of the canyon  here in the winter. But that changed in the early 2000s, when
some locals who had been bodysurfing in these waters recognized the the thrill
in riding these waves. And it inspired them to look for someone who
was willing to try to surf them. [in Portuguese] There's a guy who surfed a wave,  who waited for a glacier to fall  to surf the wave.    That man was Garrett MacNamara. They invited him to Nazaré. And after a year of training, McNamara caught
the 78 foot wave that set the world record in 2011. I was seeing Garrett and I was like... "Wow!". [in Portuguese] I thought it was impossible  for a guy to get into those big waves.  [in Portuguese] We saw that there was an opportunity, we tried to take advantage of that opportunity.  Over the next few years, big-wave surfers
increasingly came to Nazaré. In 2017, Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa beat
McNamara’s record by surfing this 80 foot wave. And in 2018, another Brazilian, Maya Gabeira 
set the women’s world-record here on this 68 foot wave. Then set it again in 2020. Today, 5 out of the 6 biggest waves ever surfed
happened at Nazaré. And it’s led to a rise in tourism, year
by year. Driven by people visiting in the winter to
watch big wave surfing. In less than a decade, Nazaré became the
new capital of big-wave surfing. But all this success has come with complications. [in Portuguese] This used to be a fiber,  ship building,  and repair shop.  [in Portuguese] And then surfing came.  [in Portuguese] All this is gone.  This is João Delgado. A former fisherman who’s now, a politician. [in Portuguese] Nowadays, people are coming to 
Nazaré from foreign countries who can pay several hundreds of 
thousands to buy houses in these places.  [in Portuguese] Something that is practically
inconceivable for the average family living in Nazaré. [in Portuguese] Many younger families are leaving our
community.  [in Portuguese] Our concern is that Nazaré doesn't
become one of those examples that most
typically defines mass tourism,  where the culture fades and disappears as a result of  this invasion of visitors.  Tomorrow, here at the lighthouse, 
is going to be crazy.  When I'm in the water, if someone does 
a really good wave you can see the crowd just getting crazy 
and cheering. Honestly, I feel nervous. But I feel ready and I'm confident in the
people with I'm surfing, with my boards with my surf, and with my voice. I just want to go out there and do the best
performance possible. [in Portuguese] This is it, it's a swell day.  [in Portuguese] At the best height of the day, I'm going
to surf, make my waves.  [in Portuguese] It's the season finale.  [in Portuguese] And yeah, that's the plan.  Well, we hope to see the biggest wave ever. -For us.
-For us! It's like a natural forest like fire that just has such a big power that it like keeps you
focused on it like it's hard to look away. You get goose bumps. It's something really special, yeah.  [in Portuguese] I think we're done with today's action.  [in Portuguese] And, look, in one hour, I managed to catch two good waves.  Sometimes I feel a lot of pressure because I'm the young kid from Nazaré,
you know, and surfing big waves. I'm Portuguese, I want to represent my country
like the best way I can do it. [in Portuguese] Having a young kid that we
consider Nazaréan,  growing up, catching the waves,  is a source of great pride for us.  [in Portuguese] Am I upset by the changes in Nazaré? [in Portuguese] No. [in Portuguese] The most important part of our culture is the ability to change within the
culture [in Portuguese] How do surfing and fishing co-exist in 
Nazaré? [in Portuguese] Very well.  [in Portuguese] You'll see a surfer asking fishermen what they think about the sea,  if it's going to be good.  They were like the real badass, the real heroes. In some giant days, they would manage to pass
the waves to the middle of the sea to fish, to make money, and to bring food home. But right now, big wave surfing is becoming
a tradition. I'm part of that new tradition, you know? [in Portuguese] Nazaréan culture will never be lost.  [in Portuguese] No, the Nazaréan culture is rooted in 
people.  [in Portuguese] Our heritage isn't what people come
here to do. It's what we have here.  [in Portuguese] Here the sea is inside you,  it's inside people.  Of all the rabbit holes I get stuck in 
on the internet I don’t know any quite as powerful 
as Google Earth. Seeing beautiful patterns from above... Dropping down into street view... And seeing the planet in ways I would never
get to see in person. So when I came across this post on Reddit,
I was fascinated. It described “undocumented markings” in
Algeria, in the middle of the Sahara near a location called “Tebalbalet tomb.” Visible on Google Earth. There were 22 of them, each with 12 
“surrounding things”, 42 meters in diameter 420 meters apart, at longitude 4'20 East. It almost sounded like a joke. But then I copied the coordinates and I looked. There they were: identical circles in an almost
perfect line. 160 kilometers from any signs of life in the
world’s largest desert... in the middle of the biggest country in Africa. This is a story about the limits of what you
can find out on the internet. About all the different ways of
looking at the same thing. And about going all the way there. Over the course of the last 20 weeks, 
we filmed every step of the process as we tried to figure out one thing... What could these circles be? So this whole story starts back 
in September 2021 when I first saw the Reddit post. I wanted to figure out what 
these “markings” were and make a video out of the entire 
reporting process. No matter how long it took. Because the answer had to be out there. And, step one, I knew I was going to have
to send some emails. For weeks, I reached out to everyone 
I could think of: Algerian experts, officials, tour groups... even the closest hotel, in a city 
called Aïn Salah. I read up on the town the circles were located
closest to: Foggaret Ezzaouia. I asked the commenters on the Reddit post... and we even tracked down a Twitter account
we thought was the same Will K who posted this question to several subreddits
before deleting his Reddit account. I tried English and French... organizations, academics, locals... And then... I waited. But there was one easy thing to clear up first. Were these circles real? Or were they just some kind of 
satellite imaging glitch? So I asked a teammate who 
works with maps a lot: Sam, he produces our series Atlas. And he pointed me to the company that takes
a lot of the satellite pictures for Google Earth: Maxar Technologies. I feel very confident that those are indeed
on the ground because we see them in multiple images 
over multiple years. So, I know it wasn't an artifact of the processing
that Google might have done with our imagery. And then a colleague of mine who has spent
a decent amount of time studying this area said, “You know, this is a very rich area
for oil and gas.” “This looks very similar to what we see
when they're doing oil exploration.” Oil radically changed the course
of Algeria’s history. "Oil from the wastelands of the desert..." "And it's believed that the Sahara is immensely rich in it." When oil and gas were discovered there 
in 1956, companies flocked to the region against the backdrop of a brutal 
decolonization war with France. Today, Algeria is one of the world’s top
exporters of natural gas. What Steve is talking about here 
is seismic surveys where geophysicists analyze the Earth’s surface 
by sending shock waves into the ground. Depending on how those seismic waves 
bounce back researchers can tell what resources can be
extracted from underground. Steve thought that, maybe, seismic pulses
from a specialized vehicle could produce something like this. So, we had a hypothesis. But I wanted a second opinion. So I asked Bob Hardage at 
the University of Texas one of the world’s leading experts 
on seismic imaging. He responded by email: ”I can assure you with 100-percent 
confidence that the features in this imagery 
are not seismic arrays used in oil and gas exploration.” First, the shapes themselves weren’t right. “...there will be hundreds of thousands
of receivers positioned as either a single straight line or as hundreds of parallel straight lines.” I looked up pictures from NASA 
of seismic surveying and you can see what he means. Second: the fact that we could even see them
meant they probably weren’t a seismic survey. “... the objective is to leave the landscape
like you found it." "If a seismic crew created something like
these features a return visit would be made 
to restore the landscape.” “I have no idea what the circles 
in the satellite image are." "Whatever they are, the people who 
created them wanted those features to be permanent.” “Closeout: I don’t think we need to chat.” Thanks Bob. So I kept Googling. I found geotagged pictures from the nearest
municipality, Foggaret Ezzaouia on a site called mapio.net. These old stone wells sorta looked like 
they could be arranged in a circle. But reverse image searches were a dead end. I didn’t know what to do next. So we looped in Vox video’s senior researcher,
Melissa, to help me out. So, I was trying to find what this thing was. I don't know if you remember 
from his original post he calls it the Tebalbalet tomb. Do you remember that? So I found this article. This is from like 1985 — I mean, 
not 1985: 1885. The “Well of Tebalbalet” is at the 
latitude 27°20 and longitude 4°38. And that's approximately where what 
we're looking at is. And it says there are two circular tumuli. I had to Google that, I don't know that word. -Tumuli. What's a tumulus. Tumulus. It's an ancient burial mound. Which seems... that sounds about right. “... encompassed by two concentric mounds
in the form of rings, all of great regularity." "The two rings are respectively 30 and 21
meters in diameter, from crest to crest.” So a document from 1885 said that, around
this same area, there were 1) a bunch of wells, and 2) tombs with “rings of great regularity.” Now, the sketches weren’t an exact match. But they got us thinking: what if these things
were actually really old? So I sent the pictures to a Tunisian archaeologist
who had done research in this area. We spoke in French because of decades of French
occupation in the 19th and 20th centuries French is still used in many contexts 
in Tunisia and Algeria. And she had a new clue. [in French] These monuments, they are 
without a doubt [in French] because I know Aïn Salah very well... [in French] These monuments are related to... [in French] Water. [in French] It's a desert environment, it's the 
Sahara. [in French] It is practically the hottest place 
in the Maghreb. [in French] It’s an area which is very well known for the difficulties of this heat there, 
and for the water harvest. [in French] So the people, they dig. [in French] It has a name: the Foggaras. Foggara. It’s the North African name for a 2,500-year-old
style of irrigation system that goes by many names, but is often called
a qanat. Builders dig a well at an 
elevated point on a slope deep enough to tap into groundwater. They then dig parallel shafts 
at regular intervals. These provide air flow for diggers as they
create an underground channel all the way back to the main well. With a slope of 1 or 2 degrees, the channel
carries water long distances powered by gravity alone. In a part of the world with barely any rain
and no running rivers this technology can provide water
for crops, livestock, and people year round... making human-made oases possible. [in French] It's curious, eh? This was the most promising lead yet. It explained the desert location, the circular
shape, the regularity, and spacing. Even the closest municipality’s name,
Foggaret Ezzaouia, is named after foggaras. And those mapio pictures of wells 
started to make sense. But I wanted to run it by more people 
who had studied qanats. Qanats are actually more than just 
water infrastructures. I think they are the very raison d'etre: the basis of habitation in such harsh climates. They start from outside of the city, 
but then they usually end up into the city or into agricultural lands. But when it came to our circles... I have no take on it, honestly. I'm looking at it now. Right. Okay, that's interesting. There's something like 20 of them in a row. Yeah. So that's definitely a foggara. So at the end of that, there should be a town. There should be an oasis or something. But if there isn't, that means that probably
the water in the qanat or foggara has dried up since a long time. You should talk to Dale Lightfoot. He is the American geographer who knows everything about qanats. These are what we're looking at. I couldn't even say with confidence whether
these are related to water collection. But I can tell you they're definitely not
qanats. We also found these pictures. Do you think these could be 
what the circles are? What you're showing me pictures of here 
looks a lot like animal-drawn wells. I've seen these in a lot of places. To me, this is not the same thing. I think you're back to square one. Back to square one, indeed. Don't rule out space aliens. I've heard they do crazy things, too. So they might be wells, but probably not a
qanat. And maybe not even related to water at all. Could we at least rule that out? That’s when Melissa found a database of
oases in the Sahara. With lists of the people who help manage 
their water supply. Like Mohammed Brik, a farmer in 
Laghouat, Algeria. I don't think it was done to fetch water. Because the point of going out 
to look for water is to meet the needs of the population and agriculture. If there’s nothing for 160 kilometers then that’s not a valid hypothesis. Right. Because there is no village, no... There’s no village. There’s no garden. There's no oasis. There's nothing planted. There's no population. We were three months in and it seemed like
our most promising hypothesis yet  was probably out. Then I got an email. Back in early October, Steve Wood 
promised to send me high-res images from Maxar’s archive. Finally, we had them. It was the clearest look we'd had yet. And Steve believed it showed a new detail:
tire tracks. If that was right, it would mean someone had
been there within the last century. I kept asking people. Historians... Algerian officials... Archaeologists... And nearby residents... But after a while, I felt stuck. Like we had exhausted what we could find out
on the internet. And there was nowhere else to go from here... except to the circles themselves. The longer this project went on, the more
I realized that we had a choice to make. We could keep interviewing more and more people,
get more and more theories and ultimately have no way to back them up. Or... we could figure out a way to get someone
there... Try to film it... and then, maybe, we could know for sure. So I asked my teammate Christina — who works
with journalists all over the world if she knew anyone in Algeria. And that led us to Samir Abchiche, a video
journalist in Algiers. I’m about to be a dad. So no more adventures for me after this. We hired Samir to be our on-the-ground journalist... to use his expertise in the area to help us
solve this mystery. The next part took months. We knew this wasn’t going to be 
an ordinary video shoot. We were asking him and his team 
to travel incredibly far to go do something potentially dangerous. But Samir took this story into his own hands. He was obsessing over every hypothesis, 
establishing local contacts figuring out all the details of how to get
a team of people from Algiers 15 hours away by car to Aïn Salah and then deep into the desert 
where no roads go. Finally, Samir figured out how 
to make it happen. And at 7 pm on a cool February night, he and
his second cameraman Abdelate... set off. And it begins. Shit. It does not begin. We can't find a hotel. They're all closed. And we're going to try Hotel El Djanoub. We have the Royal Suite. I just woke up. It's starting to get super hot. There's no service. It's yellow everywhere. But it’s beautiful. Yeah, but it’s beautiful. Which way to Ain Salah? 300 km to Ain Salah. 150 km. All we've seen is the horizon. They'd already spent 24 hours driving 
to get here. Now, they had to go another 160 km from 
Aïn Salah into the desert. But they had to pick someone else up first. Farid Ighilahriz, an archaeologist 
who used to lead Algeria’s national archaeological research center and managed one of Algeria’s largest 
national parks. He’s here to help the team identify 
whatever they come across. How are we going to do this without cell service? No no, I made a map. From there, they prepared. They got groceries... Bought fuel... Interviewed local officials... Planned the GPS route... And they assembled a team. A driver, an archeologist an assistant, and a desert guide.  It’s right about here that I lost communication
with Samir. And I wouldn’t be able to hear from him
until he was back in town... With, hopefully, a definitive answer. No sandstorms, so that's good. That was making us nervous yesterday. It's still a bit risky, because nobody passes through this way. Almost nobody. And we're just two SUVs. This one is reliable, the other one, we don't really know. What’s weird is that as the crew got closer
and closer... They started finding signs pointing to every
one of our theories. First, tire marks from seismic survey trucks… Then, a well system... Water is always just three meters below. And finally, ancient tombs. We just saw something from far away. Yep, it's a tomb.  There’s another one. So this is a tumulus. It's one of the oldest kinds of funeral monuments. And on the morning of day two, they checked
the map, and… We're going roughly in the right direction. So we're 11 km from the first ones. I think we found them... False alarm... Did you see? We are approximately
500 meters from that place. Let's go! We got really excited, but they weren't there. Apparently they're just 500 meters away. We're not far. Right there, you can't see anything. You can't see anything. Right there, yeah? 10 ... 11 ... 12 .... There we go, we have
all 12. After 160 kilometers of driving off-road in
the desert... they were there. The 22 circles, all in configuration. They were surprisingly faint. You might not notice them if you happened
to be passing by. As Samir and the team explored the area, they
found the next set. And the next ones. This one's a bit clearer. The hole comes out of the ground. And a lot of them had something in common... metal wires. They’re connected. And there ...  Come see up close... ...they run underground. Can I dig a little? No, no no. Not here? No. Sorry. So maybe they dug just a little bit... It's dynamite. Okay. Under these little mounds was dynamite. But here we have something else, too. We call these "attachments." It's what you'd put around a wooden crate. That's how they must have brought in the dynamite. That inscription reads SOTEMU — that’s
a French acronym for the “Tunisian company of explosives 
and ammunition.” But one of the wires looked different 
than the others. It still had a yellow plastic coating. This is where it got a little scary. Is it possible... Was this one not detonated yet? Well get out of there, don't stand there. Be careful. We gotta tell everyone to be careful. Eventually they decided that the dynamite
— if there was any left was probably harmless, because it would have
needed a detonator to go off. So they started to dig. It must go down at least a meter. But it was buried quite deep. So, at some point, to be safe, they stopped. And then they found a clue no one 
could have expected. Farid? Ah, yes. Bricato... Français... "Made in France." Old cans of sardines and tuna. Here we found a little tin can. That was used for food... ...by those who worked here... ...who carried out this exploration. Oh, there’s color. Whoa... This could be the solution. So we knew what it was: dynamite, 
buried underground. And when Samir and the crew finally got home... I called him to hear all the details. My English, is it work for this? Yeah, it's perfect! We think that we have--we know the solution. So it's a method of searching for petroleum. But it was an old technique. At the very beginning of this journey, 
that’s one of the first things that anyone ever suggested. Is that it had to do with searching for petroleum. Which is crazy that it’s finally confirmed. It's the same thing that they do today 
just with dynamite instead of more finely tuned technology. This is crazy, this is so much more wild
than I expected. Ironically, it put us right back right 
where we started. Seismic surveying. The circles are the remnants of surveyors
looking for resources underground. This whole time, that first guess was right. But only sort of. Because Bob Hardage at the University of Texas
was right when he said in that email that this doesn’t remotely resemble seismic
surveying… Because this isn’t how seismic surveying
works today. It’s an older technique, from the early
days of surveying that uses dynamite explosions instead 
of vibration machines. The explosions would provide the seismic waves
that would reflect and refract off of the ground underneath and that would tell surveyors that something
— potentially something valuable, like oil was underground and worth digging for. The circles looked like this because of the
force of those dynamite explosions  happening underground. From this moment, a new question came.  Who did this and when? Knowing it was a seismic survey wasn't enough. But we had one other clue from 
the desert to turn to... the sardine cans. I reached out to Saupiquet which seems to be the only one of these companies
that still exists but they said they couldn’t identify 
their age by photos. So I found someone who’s been collecting
sardine cans for over 40 years: Philippe Anginot. He even made a museum out of it. And I showed him the pictures. What we have here is what's called a three-body
can. So these are typical cans from the 1960s. After 1960 the “Arsène Saupiquet Cannery” became the “Saupiquet Company.” When it's still labeled "Arsène," it's from
before 1960. So because this can was labeled Arsène Saupiquet,
we know that it was manufactured before they changed their name in 1960. Because of its 60s-style “three-body”
design, we know it’s probably from the very late 1950s. Granted, this is canned food, so it’s possible
that it was purchased years before it was actually eaten. But I think we can safely guess that these
cans were left behind  by an oil exploration crew sometime 
in the late 1950s. All that was left was to figure out who those
people were. Before going into the desert, Samir recorded
interviews with the experts that they met along the way. And there was one interview with someone who
actually would have been there in the late 1950s. The father of the desert guides,
who used to work as a guide himself. Peace be upon you. Here are the photos, Belhadj. I see the small holes placed like the hands
of a watch. When did the drilling of [that area] take
place? In 1953, the vehicles came to Djebel
Beida to go to the probe. So this place existed and a
company was working there. Yes, it is true. What were they doing. I know that they were digging, that's all. What was their name? I no longer remember. But I believe CREPS. I know that, at that time, CREPS was
working. CREPS — a French acronym for the Sahara
Petroleum Research and Exploitation Company was a joint venture between 
the French government and Shell. CREPS had a permit to explore and extract
oil in this entire expanse of the Sahara from 1953 to 1958. Lining up that map with Google Maps shows
that the circles are inside that CREPS sector. And according to these French Senate records
they started geological surveys right away. Within that time, CREPS became the first company
to strike oil in the Sahara, in Edjeleh in 1956. This spurred a rush of oil companies into
the region. And the struggle over control of Saharan oil
became a centerpiece of France’s brutal war against Algerian Independence. "It was the end of nearly 
8 years of bloodshed." "And the African nation won its freedom
after 132 years." Even when Algeria won its independence in
1962 France maintained rights to Saharan oil for
years to come. These circles are the scars of colonialism. They're evidence of one country’s attempts
to take the resources of another. And they’re only as isolated as they are
because oil wasn’t found there. Everywhere that it was, was transformed forever. So, we figured it out. These circles in the Sahara were made by French
CREPS employees looking for oil. They were made by underground dynamite explosions arranged in circles along a straight line
through the desert. And based on the dates of the CREPS permit,
and the types of cans they left behind we can safely say they were there around 1957
or 1958. When we figured it all out, I emailed Bob. And he said this: "You have certainly done a persistent
and thorough investigation." "I am comfortable with the conclusion that your features
are remnants of decades-old, first generation analog recording of seismic data." "An unbelievable  preservation." "Comparing 1950s seismic equipment and 
today's seismic equipment is similar to comparing propeller airplanes
and deep space rockets." "Essentially, there is no comparison but two different worlds." "Well done." Thanks, Bob. We only know this thanks to the help of dozens
of people someone’s sixty-five-year-old trash, a lot
of time on the internet and a long, brave journey into the desert. Of course, a story like this could always
keep going, more and more specific. But at some point to finish a story, we have to ask ourselves 
if the answer we have is satisfactory.  And I think this one is. The Pope-Leighey House is a striking example
of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. A cypress and brick masterpiece so connected
to nature it includes a kitchen window made for reaching
out and picking herbs. One of the highlights of this home is its
unusual windows. These features are a striking sign  of the way Frank Lloyd Wright rethought the relationship between homes and natural light. If you walk through the galley from the entry
to the bedroom you’ll find light hung like pictures on
the wall. The most distinctive windows in this house,
the perforated windows are called clerestory windows at the top,
an old technique Wright embraced. They bring natural light into the room from
ceiling height preserving privacy and lighting the room more
broadly. The subtle effect echoes that of the recessed
lighting he favored. These perforations were designs Wright made
as an evolution of his stained glass windows like these ones in a 1921 house Wright built. Each type of house like the Pope-Leighey house
received their own unique design. Later, he simplified even more with glass
set into concrete blocks. I could not believe that I found this model. Like, I was just there earlier this week and then when I programmed in the exact 
date and time that I shot the specific clip, at the house your model matched the light perfectly. John Luttropp's painstakingly designed 3D
model of the Pope Leighey House lets anyone play around with light. Then you can render a more realistic version
that is super accurate. If I shot the clip at 4:42, 4:29, the light
was off, but if I put in 4:42 It was exactly correct. I mean, did you know that would happen? No, I had no idea that it was that accurate. What I usually do is, I try to find at least
the floor plan and the floor elevations and then I’ll dig around for photos too
to get the details in. So, for the design of those perforated windows were you able to just look at pictures and then 
in sketch up kind of carve out the proper pattern? Yes, I found a very good drawing of it online
that was to scale and that I used as my basis for it. These clerestory windows were combined with
other perforated windows of the same design like these in the child’s bedroom. And large, wall-sized windows that let in
tons of light throughout the day. But all this would have been just a design
touch if it weren’t at the center of a broader
attempt to make light part of the house. I didn’t think I was going to like the house
as much as I did. I thought, well, it doesn't look like it's
a very big house, which it isn't. But it also didn't look like it had very good
layout from what I could tell from just looking at
floor plans and a few bad photographs that were out there
at the time. But being in the house...  was such a different experience. That entryway and then walk down 
into the living room. The tiny but really functional kitchen;
the office off to the side. And the fireplace. Wright always builds a fireplace to be this
special thing this place where people can gather around
and in that house it really felt that way. This house is what Wright called a “Usonian”,
his model for a new American house. As an architect, Wright was famous for legendary
large projects from the Roble House... to Tokyo’s imperial hotel... to the Johnson Wax headquarters. After earlier experiments 
in affordable housing. By the 1930s, he was seriously seeking to
bring his principles to more people. As he later wrote in “The Natural House”
he believed in “a building as dignified as a tree in the
midst of nature.” The Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin is considered Wright’s first Usonian and a Time magazine article about Wright and
that Jacobs House inspired a DC area journalist to beg Wright
to build him a Usonian too. The Pope-Leighey house features many Wright
trademarks that help the distinctive windows light the house “in God’s way — the natural way as nearly as possible in the daytime
and at night as nearly like the day.” One is clearing obstructions. A relatively open floor plan lets light travel. See how the living room and dining area connect? Radiant floor heating means no radiators took
up space or obstructing light. Wright hated attics for a similar reason so he recommended people “get rid of the
attic” and, if they didn’t they use a “clerestory or lantern” Instead of a garage, this house features an
open air carport as well. Shade, via trellises, offered occupants flexibility. And perhaps most importantly, 
the unadorned walls no paint, no plaster, no curtains unless by
special request put the pattern of light at the center of
the adornment for the house. This was a stark break from a lot of design
of the time where relatively small windows were covered,
walls were plastered, and floors were carpeted. House Beautiful magazine put together demonstration
homes in the plaza hotel. They represented the prevailing aesthetic: closed floor plan, carpet, lots of curtains,
visible light fixtures basically anything that blocked light. Though the Usonian challenged trends. It didn’t become ubiquitous. But the design meant light was as important
a material as brick and wood. Levittowns are some of the most famous suburban
mass developments in the United States. They were, in some ways, the antithesis of
Wright’s dream of organic interaction between a house and
nature. But developers William and Alfred Levitt’s
open floor plan design was inspired by Wright’s approach. The “The Levittowner” in particular, copied
natural light design elements like carports window walls, and even high windows. But Wright's massive influence doesn’t capture
the scope of his philosophy. He hoped that architects would prioritize the “proper orientation of the house”
to make windows work well with the light. How did you figure out the orientation? The floor plan I had had the North arrow on
it. You know, that’s always helpful. The Pope Leighey house was actually moved
to its current location in Alexandria, Virginia. It was designed to face South, before being
built facing North West and then reoriented slightly during moves
at Woodlawn. The light creates a different house not only
at different times of year. But in different locations. Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t just consider
the placement of the windows but also the position of the stars. On March 5th, 2022, Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak
stepped on the podium at the International Gymnastics 
Federation World Cup in Doha, Qatar. He won the bronze medal in the parallel bars. Next to him was Illia Kovtun, the 
gold medal winner from Ukraine and silver medalist Milad 
Karimi, representing Kazahstan. The situation was already tense. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had 
begun just nine days earlier. And Kuliak decided to show his support for the 
war, by attaching this symbol to his uniform: three pieces of white tape, forming the letter Z. By that time, the Z was 
becoming an obsession in Russia. And a controversial symbol worldwide as the new way to signal approval for the war and loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the invasion began in late February, the Z 
has shown up on billboards in St. Petersburg... T-shirt stands in Moscow... Auto rallys... And flash mobs created for social media. There’s even this photo – posted on the 
website of a children’s cancer hospice showing sick children organized into 
the shape, outside, in the snow. The letter has been used to vandalize 
the homes of Russians who oppose the war and is now banned from public 
display in several countries. So how did this symbol become shorthand 
for supporting Russian aggression? The letter Z was first 
spotted in late February 2022 on Russian military equipment 
gathering at Ukraine’s border. Along with other painted 
white markings, like V and O. At first, what these symbols meant was unclear Z isn’t part of the Cyrillic Alphabet –
the writing system used in Russia and Ukraine. The Z sound in Cyrillic is 
written sort of like a 3. And “V” looks like the Latin letter “B.” But once the invasion began, most analysts 
agreed the markings were for tactical purposes likely to prevent confusion on the battlefield. And potentially denoting where 
specific forces were attacking from. The Russian military didn’t 
explain what the markings meant. Until intrigue around them grew online and people in Russia saw the chance 
to use the Z as a tool for propaganda. One of the most common ways that the letter Z
is being given meaning in Russian is by latinizing it in the Russian word 
"Za" which means for. And in incorporating it into slogans like [speaking in Russian] For victory. [speaking in Russian] For the president. [speaking in Russian] For the boys. So there was an attempt to fill it. That's Aglaya Snetkov. She's a lecturer on Russian foreign, security, 
and domestic policy at University College London. You increasingly have pictures 
which are so absurdly staged. It's obviously fake, but it sort of 
doesn't matter. So the pictures of the kids, for 
example, who can't even read or write they obviously have no idea what the Z 
they're holding means or anything like that. But it sort of almost doesn't matter 
so long as you throw it out there. Click on these slogans’ hashtags, 
like “for russia” and “for peace” and you’ll find tens of thousands 
of posts on Instagram alone. Many of them originating from 
the Russian Ministry of Defense. The political technologists in Russia, in Kremlin, and in and around the Ministry of Defense have decided to jump on the opportunity and reinfuse the meaning of 
those obscure symbols. Kiril Avramov teaches classes on Russian 
and Soviet symbolism and propaganda   at the University of Texas, Austin. Avramov told me the point of 
these memes is to turn the Z   and sometimes the V into something cool. He translated a few of them. Is like street slang for "for the boys". "Power is in truth." Which is actually 
a quote from a post-Soviet blockbuster. They're picking already familiar slogans to 
post-Soviet Russians and putting into those visuals and then recreating those in flash mobs...   graffiti... and all the way to the 
presidential administration. One strategy for turning Z into 
a patriotic propaganda icon has been connecting it to 
Russian glory of the past in particular, the Soviet 
victory in World War II.
   The Soviet Union suffered devastating losses 
defending itself against invasion by Nazi Germany. But they were ultimately victorious,   with the Red Army fighting its way 
back to Berlin and defeating Hitler, establishing the Soviet 
Union as a world superpower. The “Great Patriotic War” is still a potent 
symbol of heroism and glory in Russia. And is honored each year on May 9th, or “Victory 
Day” - the anniversary of Germany’s capitulation. With massive demonstrations 
of modern military might and remembrance of ancestors 
who were killed in the war. The historical trauma is immense in Soviet times. There was a huge sacrifice on 
the part of the Soviet people. And those are some highly symbolic events. This ever-present historical awareness makes 
World War II imagery a direct link to patriotism, and presents the opportunity to 
connect the nostalgia of Soviet heroism   with Russia’s current attacks on Ukraine. Take this meme posted to the Russian 
Ministry of Defense’s Instagram on March 4, 2022, which as of 
early April has over 21,000 likes. It shows a “Z” superimposed over a black and 
white photo of Soviet soldiers on one side... and a photo of modern Russian soldiers 
looking back on the other side. The hashtag says “heroes". The photo on the left is a famous image from 
the original Moscow Victory Parade of 1945   celebrating Germany’s surrender. It’s still the largest parade ever held 
in Moscow’s Red Square  organized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The image shows Soviet soldiers carrying captured 
Nazi flags and banners before destroying them and has been used in Soviet and post-Soviet 
patriotic propaganda ever since. So every Russian and Soviet person 
would recognize that immediately. The “Z” is paired with the slogan 
“za pobedu” - “for victory” and is styled in black and orange stripes. Which, other than plain white, is the 
most common way the Z is displayed. The pattern represents the color 
scheme of the Ribbon of St. George one of Putin’s favorite propaganda symbols. Its origins trace back through 
hundreds of years of Russian history as a symbol of military glory. At the end of World War II, Stalin 
used the ribbon on a medal awarded   to all Soviets who served in 
the war – including civilians. The ribbon, which everyone knows is, you 
know, if you see it it's the Russian military   might and its a signifier that you're Russian. The ribbon of St. George is now handed 
out every year ahead of Victory Day and is a central emblem of the celebrations. Invoking the memory of glorious past in 
order to play this propaganda trick, right? Equating this war with this one, in 
terms of justness and legitimacy.
   Beyond emerging as the new 
mark of loyalty to Putin the Z doesn’t hold any individual meaning. And that seems to be part 
of the strategy behind it. And that, I think, shows the way 
in which Putin's propaganda works, He throws things out there, sees 
what lands, and then goes with that. The symbol just became 
recognizable, the explanations   which I call "post rationalization" is that this 
is all planned, what the Zs and the Vs stand for. For victory. For Zelenskyy. Or you name it. The advancement of so many   alternative explanations actually adds energy 
to the state propaganda. Whether or not any of these 
explanations end up sticking,   the Z’s evolution
from tanks and trucks... to memes... then flash mobs around Russia... to pro-Putin demonstrations around the world... shows that as a symbol’s visibility grows, 
so does its power as a tool for propaganda. On February 28th, 2022 a Russian attack  hit the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 
in a residential area. Four people died collecting water from a water
point in that neighborhood and many more were injured. We had lots of videos from social media that were
documenting the attack from multiple angles. Some videos taken from afar, 
from high rise buildings... Milena Marin and her team at Amnesty International
gather evidence like this looking for signs of war crimes. We want to see was that, in any way, 
a legitimate strike. And among the videos and photos they found 
showing the destruction of civilian property one particular piece of evidence 
caught their attention. It’s a remnant from a cluster bomb a weapon so destructive to civilians that
its use alone can constitute a war crime. So why do the world’s most powerful militaries
still use them? Cluster munition strikes involve rockets that contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller
cluster bombs. This is the nose cone of a rocket from another
attack in Kharkiv and this is the tail. The image Milena analyzed is one of the smaller
cluster bombs. When the rocket releases cluster bombs they scatter over an area as large as several
city blocks causing widespread explosions. Like this video verified by Bellingcat
taken from another attack in Kharkiv. Each circle is one of the cluster bombs exploding. It’s this imprecision that makes cluster
bombs illegal under the rules of war, in most cases. Those rules were created by a series of international
treaties that span decades. They govern how wars should be fought. They prohibit things like intentionally targeting
civilians. And they ban what’s known as 
"indiscriminate attacks". Every state military has the obligation to use as precise weapons as possible to hit
military targets and not civilian targets. A precise attack on a military target like
a base or weapons hanger is permissible under the law because it intentionally avoids civilian areas. In an area with both military and civilian
structures, militaries have to be careful to only target
non-civilian areas. Striking a populated, mainly-residential area,
like the attack in Kharkiv is almost impossible to justify legally. Especially if you are using cluster munitions. They’re extremely bad at targeting and releasing
them anywhere near civilians results in indiscriminate damage. Of the roughly 23,000 documented cluster munitions
deaths worldwide since the 60s about 94% have been civilians. Some of that is because of the high failure
rate of the smaller bombs up to 30% of them don’t explode on impact. So they remain on the ground, posing a risk
indefinitely. A vast majority of cluster munition deaths,
80% are from these lingering remnants as opposed
to the initial strike. These weapons sit for decades and decades
and are just as deadly and capable when a farmer hits them with a plow 
in 1970 or in 2070. They're still going to kill and injure. The US dropped millions of cluster bombs in
Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s during the Vietnam War. Those same bombs still kill and injure hundreds
of people to this day. Including in March of this year, when a man
in Laos was killed by a US bomb he encountered while making a
fire to cook. These small, metallic remnants are often brightly
colored which is why children are attracted to them. In Kosovo, for example, after 
the Yugoslav Wars 62.5% of casualties from cluster bombs were
boys under the age of 18. When Milena’s team at Amnesty International’s
Crisis Evidence Lab got reports  of the February 28th attack reports of cluster bombs were just one element
they began verifying. My team is cataloging most of the videos
that are coming from Ukraine focusing on those that can qualify
as human rights violations under definitions of war crimes. It’s illegal to target civilians or to use
indiscriminate weapons. We do a lot of research to see whether there's
weapons, hangars, or anything that could justify an attack. Google Earth imagery of the area, captured
before the war only appears to show civilian structures: high-rise apartment buildings, a hotel,
an auto parts store, and a gondola station. The man who took the cluster bomb photo told
me he heard a mistaken military target may have been this recreational shooting range. So what we've done was to build a 3D model
of the neighborhoods and overlay all of the videos and imagery
we found onto the 3D model to really understand the footprint 
of the attack. We did that because we thought that 
cluster munitions were used. The man who took the bomb photo lives here. He found the bomb a few meters from this parking
lot where his car was parked. The photo got forwarded to Amnesty International
to analyze. The manufacture date was from 2019 and 
Milena’s team determined it was a Russian-made 9N235 cluster munition, shot from a 300mm Smerch rocket system, 
like this. All of this evidence showed that the attack
focused on civilians nowhere near a military target, using 
an indiscriminate weapon. A potential war crime. And everything we do is with the purpose 
of justice and accountability. Really conclusive evidence, sometimes
tends to come later on. The rule of war banning indiscriminate attacks
was created in 1977. But it didn’t stop countries from using
cluster munitions  in civilian-populated war zones. Like the Soviets in Afghanistan... NATO forces in Kosovo and Yugoslavia... Israel in Lebanon... and by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The civilian impact of these bombings motivated
a cluster munitions treaty in 2008 which sought to ban the weapon outright. And it included obligations to assist victims
and clean up undetonated remnants. It was signed by over 100 countries. But, notably, not by the worst offenders. “We don’t have countries such as the US,
China and Russia that are major producers, and have been users, the US and Russia of
cluster munitions.” That means today, these non-signatory countries
still may be producing cluster munitions. And these countries still likely stockpile
them, for different reasons. The U.S. maintains its arsenal because in some theoretical conflict where there's
a number of tanks and people outside of those tanks if you used cluster munitions on that you could both damage the vehicles and
injure the people outside of them. Having a weapon that does that is useful
in a military arsenal. However, there's other weapons that do that
that don't produce thousands of duds that can affect civilians for a long time
afterwards. I asked Brian to compare cluster munitions
to another type of banned warfare: chemical weapons. The ethical and legal arguments are actually
very similar which is the inherently indiscriminate nature
of using either weapons, Like cluster munitions, the use of 
chemical weapons violates a ban on “indiscriminate attacks”
among other rules of war. It’s impossible to use a gaseous weapon
in a precise way. After their use in World War I, a Geneva protocol
banned the use of chemical weapons. And in 1993, a chemical weapons treaty made
that ban more explicit by also prohibiting the development, production,
and stockpiling of the weapon. Nearly every country signed on to it. But that level of committment just hasn’t
happened with cluster bombs partly because chemical weapons have been
explicitly banned and stigmatized for so long. Since the signing of the 2008 treaty, 
cluster munitions are still in use. This container and cluster bomb were used
in the last known US cluster munition strike in Yemen in 2009. The initial impact killed 41 civilians,
including 23 children. Russia and the Syrian government have used
cluster munitions in Syria which is why Syria has had the highest rate
of cluster munition casualties  since their civil war began. And reports suggest Russia has used cluster
bombs at least 24 times in Ukraine... a low estimate. I interviewed a man who was wounded by 
cluster munition. He still had the pieces because the surgeon
took him out of his body and he kept them. One of the pellets that was stuck in his body was
very distinctive as coming from a certain kind of Russian submunition. The mountain of evidence and the number of
indiscriminate attacks is really becoming quite overwhelming. Not just one attack or two attacks or ten
or a hundred, but just continuously. Any one of these attacks would be a crime
all on their own. Along with the international community, the
US has alleged war crimes in Ukraine. But they haven't acknowledged their own role
in perpetuating the use of cluster munitions 
around the world. This type of hypocrisy shows how the rules
of war are only as strong as the worst offenders
allow them to be. International justice and accountability is
extremely challenging and impunity is one of the reasons why these
weapons keep getting used again and again and again. A potential prosecution for war crimes is why human rights investigations are so important. But for investigators like Milena, a criminal
trial is just the long game. We need to show what's happening to people
trapped between the two armies. And that hopefully will sustain the attention
on Ukraine, will provide immediate support to the victims would provide support to those fleeing the
country. While the legal proceedings will last years
those people have immediate needs. This is the International Space Station. It orbits the earth 16 times a day, 
250 miles up. It’s where astronauts from more than a dozen
different countries have been living since the year 2000 mostly Russians and Americans. And for the last 10 years, basically the only
way anyone got up or down was in a Russian Soyuz. At least in space, countries like Russia and
the US depend on each other. But when Russia invaded Ukraine, the US levied
major sanctions in response including some meant to... "degrade their aerospace industry, 
including their space program." The head of Russia’s space agency 
responded that perhaps they’d crash the Space Station. They even made a fake video showing Russians
leaving an American astronaut... and then detaching the Russian segment. Relations between the West and Russia are
the tensest they’ve been since the International Space Station has
been in operation. So, what happens to it now? During the Cold War, the US and
the Soviet Union were in the Space Race. Who could develop the technology to reach
the stars first? But space is also where the two countries
have tried to get along. After the Soviet Union launched the first
satellite and put the first man into space but before the US landed on the moon there was actually talk of 
going to the moon together. "The cold reaches of the universe 
must not become the new arena of an even colder war." It actually ended up being something 
discussed in Congress. Of course, that was where it 
then fizzled out. But I think it was important 
that these discussions took place. It led to the two countries eventually collaborating
on compatible docking system. Even joining spacecrafts in 1975. The handshake was the symbol of “We see each other as equal partners in
this." "We recognize and respect each other, at least
here in space.” Soon after the US would begin its
Space Shuttle program bringing astronauts and satellites into space
in reusable shuttles. And the Soviet Union would create
the first modular space station, Mir where cosmonauts could live long-term. At the same time, the US, Japan, Canada and
several European countries began planning to build their own space station
together. But after the Soviet Union fell — and the
Cold War ended the US and Russia began peace talks. One of the first things they agreed to 
was collaboration in space. Soon US shuttle astronauts docked with Mir. Russian cosmonauts joined Shuttle launches. "And liftoff on Discovery, of a bold new era
of space flight  between the United States and Russia." And Russia was added to the
joint station plans. "Instead of building weapons in space Russian scientists will help us to build
the International Space Station." The first parts of the space station went
up in 1998. It was designed to be collaborative and interdependent. It’s made up of these individual modules. Some controlled by Russia, some controlled
by the US along with several other countries. The Russian side controls the navigation and
the US provides most of the electricity. That was a purposeful design, to sort of work
in international cooperation into the actual technicalities 
of the space station. They’ve conducted thousands of experiments
to learn about diseases, climate change on Earth and importantly for space exploration whether humans can actually live in space
long-term. How does food grow, or a human body change? The space station is sort of this 
major stepping stone for more exploration of space going back to the Moon, onto Mars. It's to learn about human survival in space. And international cooperation in space has
largely worked out really well. The US even retired its shuttle program and became completely reliant on Russia’s
Soyuz rockets to reach the space station. But then... "Russian tanks, choppers, and troops..." "Vladimir Putin moves to annex Crimea." In 2014 Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and the US imposed harsh sanctions. Just like he would again years later the head of Russia’s Roscosmos
threatened to pull Soyuz access suggesting the US should get to the space
station on "a trampoline". But the two countries weren’t serious about
bringing conflict on Earth to the space station. At least the head of NASA then
wasn’t worried about the tweets. President Obama and President Putin put sort
of a bubble around the International Space Station and we continued the space diplomatic relations. That says something about the value of that
bilateral relationship. "The military has escalated its attacks on
civilians." "He believes Russia is committing war crimes." "He is a war criminal." Today, the diplomatic relationship between
the US and Russia is at the lowest point since the Cold War. But the space relationship between them remains
fairly untouched. The Russians didn’t leave the US astronaut
behind and brought him back to Earth in a Soyuz. "Touchdown." "I never perceived those tweets as anything
to take seriously." "I just had too much confidence in our cooperation
to date." They even sent a new crew of cosmonauts to
the space station. "People have problems on Earth." "In orbit, we're not lying, 
we are one crew." For now the space station continues to run mostly insulated from the 
geopolitical problems on Earth just as it was designed. Emphasis on: for now. The truth is, the space station is old. It was only designed to last until 2015. And while the countries have agreed to continue
operations several times right now that agreement only goes until 2024. The US wants to extend until 2030. Russia has yet to sign on. But even if they do the two countries have different plans in
space in the future. Private companies are planning 
to build their own space stations in the coming decade. NASA wants to depend on those. They’re focused on developing 
the Artemis program. Going back to the moon, establishing a presence
there, and eventually, traveling to Mars. In collaboration with other countries. With two notable exceptions. Russia is currently planning and building
its own space station. So is China, who plans to finish their station,
already in orbit, this year. They’re also planning a mission to the moon. I think we're still going to see — we must
see — international cooperation in space. But the question is just which countries will
cooperate with which other countries. As for the International Space Station, if
Russia doesn’t participate after 2024 things they currently control, like navigation, could
be designed on the US side. Likely with the help of private companies
like SpaceX. SpaceX is already how many astronauts get
to the space station. Their first mission in 2020 ended the dependence
on Russia’s Soyuz. "The trampoline is working!" "It’s an inside joke." "Inside joke here." The International Space Station is really
one of the best examples  in history of human cooperation. It can represent the best of humanity. The war in Ukraine may hasten the end of the
space station. But that end was already planned. What it really threatens is the future of these countries finding 
common ground in space. "My hope is that these types of connections can be maintained and serve as a path forward to try and find that common ground
that we need so desperately to find peace." On March 6th, protestors gathered in San Francisco
to rally for peace in Ukraine. On the pavement beneath them, they painted
this image. A blue and white dove, wings outstretched,
surrounded by vibrant orange flowers. It’s a copy of a 1982 painting called 
“A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace” by Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko a self-taught painter known for her 
colorful, joyous scenes incorporating themes from Ukrainian folk traditions who Picasso once called an “artistic miracle.” The week prior, posts on social media showed
a small museum that housed her paintings burning to the ground. The fire destroyed, by some accounts, 
up to 25 major works. Satellite images show that none of the surrounding
structures were damaged indicating an intentional, targeted 
attack by Russian forces. It was one of the first examples 
of what experts fear will be devastating damage to Ukraine's physical
culture. It's one thing to try and destroy the intellectual
and emotional part of our culture but it's another thing to destroy the actual
physical representations of that. All the things that define us as a community,
as a country, as a nation that's what we are fighting for. It’s a fight that’s played out countless
times around the world. Across history people have risked their lives
to save art like this from war zones. So how do they do it? And... What do we stand to lose if they fail? World War II was a turning point in the history
of cultural heritage preservation. Systematic Nazi looting,
book and art burning and the sheer destructive force 
of modern weaponry put the world’s artistic treasures 
at unprecedented risk. Which prompted an unprecedented response. Britain's national gallery whisked their collection
away to a Welsh mine. American art historians formed 
a roving military unit to essentially re-steal art from Nazis. And all over Europe, soldiers and volunteers
worked to shield masterpieces using bricks, sandbags, and scaffolds. Which worked pretty well. Da Vinci’s "Last Supper" survived an accidental
bombing in Milan. Thanks to the scaffolding that bolstered 
the wall it’s painted on. And the sandbags and wood that absorbed 
some of the blast. But direct attacks are another story. Like in the German city of Dresden. Where targeted Allied bombing wiped out
90% of the city’s historic center. After the war, to try to prevent future damage,
the international community signed the 1954 Hague convention. Which requires them to protect cultural property
in the event of armed conflict and it includes provisions or articles that require them you know, not to target cultural heritage. Dr. Bassett is the Director of the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab. A group that uses high-res satellite imagery
to track threats and damage to sites globally. Partially, as evidence for future prosecution. Because under the 1954 convention, “damage to cultural property means damage
to the cultural heritage of all mankind”. So attacks on cultural heritage 
are a considered war crime. But treaties can only do so much. In the years since, conflicts around the world have rendered immeasurable damage to cultural heritage. A lot of it intentional. Like the Taliban’s destruction 
of the Bamiyan buddhas. And Isis’ attacks on ancient sites all over Syria. That cultural heritage is not only impacted, but in many ways it's implicated and 
central to armed conflict. These are things that people point to that
are unifying factors for their society. They are tangible reflections of their identity. And Putin has made it clear that identity
is at the ideological center of Russia's invasion. [in Russian] “I would like to emphasize
again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” He thinks that we don't really exist and they want to destroy all the signs of
our identity. Vasyl Mytsko and his colleagues at the Lviv
Gallery of Art oversee tens of thousands cultural items 
around Ukraine and that's still only a fraction of what the
country stands to lose. The first step in protecting cultural heritage is identifying what needs protecting. The 1954 Hague Convention requires that each
country keep an inventory of their cultural heritage sites. But, that’s a big ask. I will say that the U.S. does not have a list
like that. Ukraine didn't either. But Dr. Bassett and his team started at the
first sign of Russian escalation. We started building our mapping inventory
for Ukraine in April of 2021 well before the invasion this year. The final inventory looks something like this. Each of the 20,000 plus blue dots 
is a different site. The country is home to 7 UNESCO world heritage sites including the entire historical center of Lviv. And the Saint Sophia's Cathedral, Saint Sophia
Square, one of the most beautiful places in Ukraine and my personal favorite place in
Ukraine. Caterina Buchatskiy is the cofounder of the
Shadows Project a group dedicated to preserving and promoting
Ukrainian culture. We have Baroque, we have modernism,
we have neoclassical all on the same street and it all works together
and it creates this beautiful visual mosaic of all the
different Ukraines that have existed. Plus historically significant buildings, archaeological
sites, monuments and, of course, museums. Featuring works by Ukrainian artists like
Kazimir Malevich. An array of traditional Ukrainian folk art And troves of scythian gold, ancient jewelry
from what is now Crimea. Which Russia has an established history of
attempting to loot. Though, the international community has ruled
they rightfully belong to Ukrainian. But after everything is cataloged, it has
to be secured. The 1954 convention also requires that each country  have a group dedicated to safeguarding cultural heritage. It is very much a constellation of government
agencies, militaries NGOs, academics, museum institutions that
are honestly working collaboratively to collectively do this type of work. When the invasion began museums had to scramble to make their own inventories, secure their
buildings, and move items to safety. Even in cities under siege volunteers and workers return day after day 
to safeguard Ukraine's treasures. I'm actually here in Lviv right now, where
I just dropped off the first round of shipments to the National Museum in Lviv. We dropped off fireproof equipment 
and we have some generators  and fireproof cabinets coming in next week. As much as we can do to minimize collateral
damage, we are doing. Days before the country was invaded, the ministry
of culture sent out private guidance to museums. And has since asked that the international
community  withhold information about the whereabouts 
of their collections.  If history is any indication collections have moved underground 
or outside of major cities or out of the country entirely. And for some of Ukraine’s immovable treasures,
history is repeating itself more directly. In Odesa, guards once again stand watch 
over the opera house backed by sandbags and roadblocks. And in Lviv, volunteers are covering stained
glass windows with metal panels and roving the city wrapping statues with
tarps, insulation, duct tape whatever materials they can muster. In the hopes that, like before, 
it’ll be enough. Let's say it this way. We hope for the best but are preparing for
the worst. The starting place for all of this work is
knowing that cultural heritage will be lost. Dr. Bassett and his team also monitor 
impacts to sites. So far, they’ve registered hundreds. Early on, the Ukrainian cultural ministry launched a site to collect evidence of crimes
against cultural heritage organizing it all in a timeline. To use as evidence for potentially prosecuting
war crimes. And as a way to organize future efforts to
secure and restore whatever is damaged. After the war ends, I don't want to be looking
around at empty walls. I want to be seeing myself. I want to be seeing my people reflected along
with me and I want to make sure that not only my people
today are surviving but all of our ancestors before us are surviving
with us via their art. Sinewy chrome legs... Elegant caned seat... Rich birch wood... Introducing, the cesca.... What's like, the right amount of creepy for
this? The cesca, also know as the b32 b64 if it has arms is kind of having a moment. Full disclosure, I am literally sitting on
one right now. Have been since at least 1999. But this chair is more than just a throne
for toddler-me to practice my penmanship. It’s more than a trendy decor item. Or popular movie set piece. It’s a design icon. In the collections of some of the world’s
most major museums. And considered “among the most important
chairs of the 20th century.” So where did this chair come from? And why is it everywhere? The cesca chairs story begins here. At the Bauhaus. The famed German art school slash commune
slash never-ending party slash genius factory. It was founded in 1919 by this architect,
Walter Gropius. His goal was to merge art and industry. Creating work that was deeply modern and simultaneously
beautiful, functional, and reproducible. Which was a pretty radical change from the exclusivity and ornamental frills of other
design movements. Look at these two teapots both from
1920s Germany. This one is beautiful, but mostly decorative. On the Bauhaus one, everything is intentional. The curved, wooden handle makes pouring easy
and comfortable. The slanted spout prevents drips. And it definitely looks sturdy and industrial. Except this teapot was hand crafted out of
silver and ebony. It was wildly expensive. Still is. Even though Bauhaus designs looked utilitarian. Most of them were basically impossible 
to make at scale. That is, until our hero, Marcel Breuer Mr. Cesca chair himself stepped in and changed everything. Breuer was an early student of the Bauhaus and in 1925, he was ruminating on their whole
manufacturing problem when inspiration struck. He looked at his bicycle’s handlebars and
realized to paraphrase: Bent tubular steel
was Bauhaus as heck. It’s sleek, light, shiny, strong and —
this one’s a direct quote can be bent “like macaroni”. First, he made this chair. Now known as the Wassily chair. And then a bunch of other chairs and tables
and stools and this... couch? But, for Breuer, those pieces still weren’t
modern enough. The ultimate creation, he wrote, 
would be a “chair that floated on an elastic column
of air.” And in 1928 Breuer had another one of those
eureka moments. He flipped a stool on its side and thus
the cantilever chair was born. Soon after, he debuted the b32. And with it, he achieved the purest manifestation
of Bauhaus ideals. A chair that showcased the gleaming modernity
of chrome. Seemed to defy the laws of gravity. And, crucially, only required a handful of
pre-made materials to make. Soon, Thonet — a company already world famous
for mass producing bent wooden chairs was making tons of b32s. And as other Bauhausians designed their own
versions a bunch of other tubular cantilever chairs. But it’s pretty universally held that this
is the best of them. Most cantilever chairs require braces. Which both ruin the visual lines of the chair
and makes them rigid and uncomfortable. Breuer’s chair doesn’t need those, thanks to 
its structured wooden framing which holds everything together, but 
still allows for flexibility and bounce. That added structure also means the chair
can be made of one continuous length of steel which is bent 16 times rather than a bunch
of different tubes fused together. which makes the chair lighter and easier to
make. Plus the cane gave the chair an airy transparency. A feature Thonet played up, in their 1930s advertising. Of which there was a lot. Thonet really wanted these designs to take off. The problem was they were expensive. And they seemed a little too modern for the
average home. Until the 60s. A sort of hybrid futuristic look became all the rage and the b32 fit in perfectly. Gavina, the go-to Italian modernist brand,
began selling it. And they gave it a new name: Cesca from Francesca, Breuer’s daughter’s name. As the mid-century look picked up steam,
so did the cesca. But unlike those newer designs the cesca wasnt
copyrighted. So manufacturers started making completely
legal cesca copies. And marketing them as “Breuer style chairs”. By 1980, the cesca was ubiquitous. One reviewer noted it was “as common, as
imitated... and as mass produced as a 
'pair of Calvin Klein jeans'" Which, at the time, was just about the highest
praise there was. After that, the cesca never quite went away. Today, there are many places to buy one and countless second hand ones floating around. Which only seems to drive up demand. Its appeal is only getting broader as both
Bauhaus and modernism become popular again. In short, this chair is everywhere because ever since its inception nearly a century
ago, it's been a design marvel. And, quite frankly, cool as hell. [in Mandarin] I have been helping my family farm 
since I was in school. Hsieh is one of hundreds of farmers in Taiwan
that grow atemoya a variety of custard apple. [in Mandarin] The texture is rather chewy. [in Mandarin] It is sweet, but it has a hint of sour, 
making the flavor unique. It’s one of the island’s most popular
fruit exports. Every season, farmers like Hsieh export around
14 million kilos. And 90% percent of that goes to China. But in September of 2021, China banned 
all imports of atemoya. They claimed they had pests. [in Mandarin] I was surprised it finally happened. Overnight, Hsieh lost 70 percent of his orders. But this story is about more than just 
fruit, pests, or trade. Atemoyas are a symbol of deep tensions 
between Taiwan and China that have been simmering for decades. So how did this innocent tropical fruit 
get caught in the middle of all this? The complicated relationship between China
and Taiwan dates back to the 1940s. Back then, China was in the middle of a brutal
civil war between the nationalists and the communists. When the communists won, they established
the People’s Republic of China on the mainland. The nationalists fled to Taiwan and 
called it the Republic of China. They both declared themselves the rightful
ruler of China. A claim that today only the mainland 
really upholds. Taiwan isn’t officially recognized as an
independent country. But it has developed into 
a self-governing democracy with a constitution, legislature, and president. Since the civil war ended, Taiwan’s KMT
party has been in power most of the time. And while they maintained sovereignty 
they also grew closer to China. But in 2014, many felt they got too close. They passed a trade pact that opened up Taiwanese
industries to Chinese investment. And thousands of protesters stormed the government. [chanting] "Review the trade pact!
Review the trade pact!" They feared the pact would hurt 
Taiwan’s economy and leave it vulnerable to pressure from China. Soon after, Taiwan’s opposition party was
voted into power for only the second time in the island’s history. And this new president continued to push back
against China. “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade
Taiwan And undermine the cross-strait status quo." [in Mandarin] It’s been five years, and cross-strait 
relations are silent. Instead, China has intensified its pressure
campaign to unify Taiwan with the mainland. “Complete reunification of the motherland
can be and must be fulfilled.” Military incursions are on a steep rise. China has sent hundreds of fighter jets
into Taiwanese airspace. And they've conducted military drills designed to intimidate. They’ve also coerced other countries and
world organizations from formally recognizing Taiwan. A big part of China’s pressure campaign
comes down to isolating Taiwan from the rest of the world. But with this tropical fruit, China is doing
something different. It’s pressuring Taiwan from within. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner. More than a quarter of all exports 
go to the mainland. And that’s in part because they offer incentives. Like dropping all tariffs on these Taiwanese
fruits. [in Mandarin] On the surface it looks like an 
“exchange” but in reality it’s a way to win 
Taiwanese hearts. [in Mandarin]It’s a comprehensive top-down 
strategy, wrapping around Taiwan’s agriculture, farmers and agricultural
products like a net. And this net can easily trap farmers. Like Hsieh who switched to growing atemoyas
exclusively 7 years ago. [in Mandarin] The export volume was increasing 
dramatically. So we took advantage of the trend and switched
fully to atemoya. There was so much money to be made selling
to China, that many farmers in the region also switched
to atemoya. And production tripled. This brought jobs and a more sustainable economy. But there was a catch. Because of all the incentives China offers
Taiwan, a huge number of farmers rely on China to
make a living. And this creates a dangerous dependency. Because it allows China to disrupt trade flow
with, say, a fruit ban. That hurts fruit farmers in Taiwan Which could push them into blaming the government
for worsening relations with China. [in Mandarin] The motivations behind China's ban are 
politics and elections. [in Mandarin] China's ambition for Taiwan has always 
been unification. [in Mandarin] When they have patience, they might 
give you small benefits, hoping your impression of them will 
slowly turn positive. [in Mandarin] When they lose patience, they might 
create psychological threats. [in Mandarin] Like they are doing now. And while the threat might be aimed at Taiwan’s
government it’s farmers like Hsieh, who feel the impact
the most. Since the ban his income has dropped by more
than 50 percent. [in Mandarin] We need to help each other sell fruit 
without losing money. [in Mandarin] This is what we have to work hard on 
right now. Atemoyas are the latest target, 
but not the only one. China also banned wax apples. And in early 2021, pineapples too. Just like the atemoyays, China claimed the
pineapples had pests. [in Mandarin] I was very worried and scared when I 
heard about the ban because I already invested so 
much money and effort. [in Mandarin] I was scared. Pineapples are the most popular fruit exported
to China. They account for about 60 million US dollars. So pineapple farmers are stuck in the same
cycle of dependency. But this time, Taiwan did something different. They launched a campaign. And it went viral. World leaders and diplomats posed with the
Taiwanese pineapple. And Japan and Hong Kong replaced China as
Taiwan’s top pineapple importers. Domestically, citizens bought an entire year’s
worth of pineapple exports in 4 days. Restaurants across the island added pineapple
to everything. And it helped. But dependency on China runs deep. China wasn’t just a big market. It was an especially profitable one too. [in Mandarin] To be honest, those sales channels are 
far from comparable. [in Mandarin] Elsewhere, costs go up by 20% — 30%. [in Mandarin] You can't make as much money if you 
don't export to China. [in Mandarin] It's a loss for us farmers. That’s because, If Taiwan doesn't sell fruit
to China their only choice is to go north to Japan
and South Korea. Further south, in Southeast Asia, tropical
fruits are much cheaper. Longer distances are also complicated for
fresh fruits that require cool temperatures and special storage conditions. At home, the Taiwanese government has offered
financial help but most of it is going to exporters and not
small farmers. [in Mandarin] The government wants to boost sales 
by subsidizing exporters. [in Mandarin] But us farmers have not benefited and we are
not happy. [in Mandarin] If you look at it from a strategic 
perspective, our enemy grabbed our Achilles' heel. [in Mandarin] This crisis has forced farmers, 
producers, and exporters to review this problem. [in Mandarin] They should've done this when 
dependency on the Chinese market was very high. [in Mandarin] But better now than never. So instead of trying to replace the 
deep-rooted market China created. Some farmers are starting to replace their crops. [in Mandarin] We have reduced production. I now
grow about 50% less than before. [in Mandarin] I also started to invest in bananas and 
taros. [in Mandarin] We don't rule out the possibility (of 
replacing our crops). [in Mandarin] We'll have to think about adjustments 
after this harvest. Because as long as Taiwan’s farmers are
trapped in the middle of this geopolitical fight, their livelihoods will always be at risk. In June 1947, Architectural Forum chose a
unique cover star. The Lustron was a steel frame home with 
steel panels and a steel roof. And a lot of them are still around today. It was a new idea of home for 
post-World War II America. It was the future of housing, 
homes made in a factory and sent around the country 
with an instruction manual for every single piece. Steel on the outside. Steel on the inside. And they made house after house 
after house until 1950, when, just 3 years
after that cover shot the future of housing became a footnote. But the failure of this house isn’t just
an oddity in homebuilding. It’s a story of post-war optimism, 
the limits of technology and a testing ground for how the government and private industry could or couldn't work together. In 1940, a typical house would have had a
wood frame and wood and plaster walls. A lot do today. When you change that to a steel frame and
steel panels things get weird. Cool! What? Most panels in a Lustron home are porcelain
enamel-covered steel. When we started treating the house more like
a car than a house, things went better. The finish on that is different than 
the finish on this and the same is true of some other 
parts of the house. This is the durable kind of thing 
that's held the test of time. And then that is... I think those tend to get scruffy. Imagine a steel panel. In the factory they melted glass and 
fused it to the steel creating porcelain enamel, a surprisingly durable, 
creamy surface that showed up in Lustron homes 
and could be tinted colors: maize yellow, surf blue, desert tan, 
and dove gray. Though it was meant to look like Spanish tile
the roof was porcelain enameled steel too. It covered a ceiling-mounted 
radiant heating system. Lustron printed instructions for, and made,
all the plumbing too. Oh cool... oh look! What, what, what? Look, it says Lustron corporation on there. Oh, oh! That's awesome. I should get my cell phone and have you take
a picture for me because I can't— I'm not tall enough. Lustron Corporation, Columbus, Ohio. Local Union number 189. Oh my gosh. Built ins were also a required feature. Like this passthrough between the kitchen
and dining room. So the house is about a thousand square feet
which is small, by modern standards. But in all the houses that were built in the
emerging suburbs in the 50s and 60s were generally about this size and one bathroom typically. This house is the Westchester 2 bedroom plan But there were other configurations as well. When Life Magazine published a pre-production
Lustron ad in 1948 thousands of people clipped the coupon in
the lower right corner to get a free booklet. Why was this the house America 
has been waiting for? And what went wrong? In 1947, Lustron was perfectly situated between
two larger trends. After World War II, millions of returning
GIs needed housing due to the Great Depression and construction
restrictions during the war. In 1946, Congress declared housing 
a national emergency. That intersected with funding trends, private venture capital wouldn’t become
mainstream until the late 1940s and 1950s. But a post-Depression agency, the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation existed to fund depressed sectors of the economy. The “RFC” had already experimented with
funding weird prefabricated home ideas Like this concrete building. An inventor and builder named Carl Strandlund who’d previously worked with porcelain enamel
on buildings like gas stations and restaurants saw his opening in the timeline. By 1947, he’d snagged a $12,500,000 loan
to build out the Lustron factory in Columbus Ohio a building that today is a
designer shoe warehouse. Warehouse. Designer shoe warehouse warehouse. Yeah. Life published that hit ad with the coupon and Popular Mechanics was soon cooing over
“how porcelain skin protects prefab.” But by 1948, the house that America 
was talking about was running into problems. The most obvious impediment, the steel, 
wasn’t the only factor. Yes, steel is heavy. A Lustron home needed 12 tons. That weight did prevent Lustrons from being
shipped West of the Rockies but custom trailers like this one 
helped move the steel. Lustron also benefited by getting 
the lion’s share of the government allocation of steel 
for prefab homes. However, by 1948, Time Magazine was asking
the obvious question: Did people want to live in steel houses? Especially ones with rigid floorplans 
that were hard to modify. Controlling every element of production also
contributed to price hikes and delays. The Lustron factory made nearly 
every part of the house. For one example, they bought a really expensive
press to make bathtubs. But theirs was 5 feet and a half inch long
instead of the standard 5 feet. So they couldn't buy their own tubs 
or sell to others. That half inch was an expensive mistake 
that never paid off. All this not only increased prices, 
but made those prices non-standard. By January 1949, Carl Strandlund was in Life
Magazine promoting the home as a revolution but prices had ballooned up to $10,000. That was thousands more than the early ambition
and a lot of money for GIs. That didn’t stack up well against other
new homes that were larger and more traditional. Prices also varied from place to place. Look at the costs in Indiana, North Carolina,
and Pennsylvania. Localization made it tougher in other ways
too. Some local codes made it impossible to even
build a steel home, like in Chicago. Mass developments like this one, in Quantico,
in Virginia, were part of the plan, but they ended up 
being rare. Even Lustron’s funding became a hindrance. As further funding requests ticked up to between
$35 million and $40 million Lustron attracted press attention quickly for failing to hit goals and 
requiring Government money. The 1947 cover model was suddenly in question
by May of 1949. Scandals that later came to light, like a
paid-for advertorial by Senator Joseph McCarthy, 
didn’t help. But just having the public eye on the company’s
performance was probably the greatest challenge. By 1950, Lustron’s funding was recalled
and the company entered bankruptcy. Over just 2 years, they never sold more than
300 homes a month. 2.1 miles, or about 3.37 kilometers from the
Designer Shoe Warehouse Warehouse is the Whitehall Historical Society's headquarters
which was moved there in 2003 on the site of a former volleyball court. Half of it is set up as a home 
and the other half is set up as meeting and display space. This garage contains our restroom and a kitchen. And then the front half of it is workshop
and storage. We don't have a lot of resources. So when it came time for us to try to find
a headquarters I knew that the house was for sale on eBay. I was convinced that we could do this
but I just decided that it was something we could handle 
by taking it apart and putting it back together again. So I approached the owner of the house
and asked if they would donate it to us which they did. This house, it was in London, Ohio. These are pictures of us taking the house
apart over in London. as we progressed here, it was just getting
to be a big open space inside. We had a dedication day where we had 
a groundbreaking ceremony and we had a special cake with the 
Lustron emblem on it. This is the manual. Let me bring this over here. And we used it for both assembling and 
disassembling the house. Lustron had delivered 2,600 homes around the
country but fell far short of their ambitions. They had failed. But they aren't forgotten. Thanks for visiting with me in this Lustron
home. There were a couple of books that were indispensable
to the research for this project. So, if you want to nerd out more about these
homes, check those out. I'll put links to them in the description. Also, I really want to thank the commenter
who came up with the idea for this video. Yea, it was just a comment saying that Lustron
homes were interesting  and everybody at Vox agreed. So yea, thanks for that and if there are any
other pieces of interesting or forgotten architecture that you think we should cover 
in a future video let us know! [in Ukrainian] People were lying in the fields, swollen and so many dead people lay down on the road." [in Ukrainian] I survived the Holodomor, and will remember it as long as I live. This is Rostyslav, reading the words of his
grandmother, Lydia, who lived in Ukraine. [in Ukrainian] It was scary to watch and remember.  Lydia was a witness and survivor of a horrific man-made famine that killed
millions in Ukraine. My father has recorded an oral history that
his grandmother told him and he just recorded it in ink pen. [in Ukrainian] Our family consisted of 10 people. [in Ukrainian] On one of those nights,
my father said that we would starve to death. [in Ukrainian] We needed to do something.  The famine hit several parts of the 
Soviet Union, from 1932 to 1933. But in Ukraine it became known as "the Holodomor" a term meaning “death by starvation". It was genocide carried out by a dictator
who wanted to keep Ukraine under his control. And would do everything in his power 
to cover it up for decades. In 1917, after the fall of the Russian empire,
Ukraine briefly gained freedom. But, by 1922, it was forcefully integrated
into the newly formed Soviet Union and became known as the 
Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. At the time, the country was largely rural most of the population were 
villagers and farmers. Self-reliance is a very important thing 
for every Ukrainian. And so having that piece of land, 
cultivating that land was something that was very important 
to so many. In fact, Ukraine was known for its farmland. With some of the world’s most fertile soil,
the country was a huge grain producer  especially in these regions. Over time, it became known as 
the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin wanted 
complete control of it. When Stalin rose to power in the mid-1920s a distinctly Ukrainian culture and 
national identity were thriving. But by the late-1920s, he and other Soviet leaders feared it could bring on a Ukrainian revolution. They decided to crackdown on what they saw
as an ideological threat to the Soviet regime and they began a widespread, violent purge
of Ukrainian intellectuals along with priests, and religious structures. You have to think about it as kind of  decapitating the leadership of the country. You cut off its head, basically. Around the same time, Stalin introduced a
“Five Year Plan” that would eventually give him control of
Ukrainian agriculture. The goal was to industrialize all of 
the Soviet Union at a rapid pace which meant building up industries like 
electricity, coal, and steel. To fund this project, Stalin turned to the
“collectivization” of agriculture. Which meant consolidating 
individual farms across all of the Soviet Union 
into large, state run farms. If you combine, you know, 60, 70, 80 
small farms into one big farm it's easier to control it. It's easier to extract surplus grain or surplus
sugar or whatever that farm produces. In Ukraine, the plan gave Stalin direct control
over grain production which meant he could extract all of the crop
to sell to the West as a way to fund Soviet industrialization. By this policy of industrialization, by taking
away everything that grew on the land Stalin aimed to really destroy that connection
between the land and life itself. That was one of the key ideological things
in industrialization saying that it's not about the land, 
it's about the state the Soviet state that will then 
provide for your livelihood. Many Ukrainian farmers who had worked 
independently for their entire lives  resisted Stalin’s plan. So, Stalin found another way to attack them. He launched a propaganda campaign 
to smear farmers. He labeled anyone resistant 
to collectivization, a “kulak” a Russian term for a wealthy peasant and depicted
them as greedy, exploiters,  and enemies of the state. And sometimes, as literal parasites. This is a way to drive a wedge within a community. And it's a way to also justify, I think, 
what the Soviet state and what the Communist Party is trying to do 
on the ideological side. No matter how rich or poor, Stalin seized
the belongings of the so-called “kulaks". He then exiled, imprisoned, or executed 
hundreds of thousands of them. And for the farmers who remained, 
he engineered a famine to starve them. In 1931, Stalin deliberately set quotas 
for grain production that were far beyond the capacity of farmers
across the Soviet Union. When farmers failed to meet those quotas Stalin's men swept their farms to confiscate
all the grain they could find. Records show the Soviets took over 4 million
tons of grain from Ukraine alone in 1932. That same year, a new law punished anyone
who took even a handful of grain or was caught hiding grain or bread — with
10 years in prison, or the death penalty. Stalin's oppressive collection policy created
a famine that started spreading in grain-producing regions across 
the Soviet Union. Some party members sent Stalin letters 
about the growing crisis pleading for a change in policy. And that's what makes it so diabolical because  if a government is really concerned
about its population, its people then at the end of the first famine year,
it can reverse its policies. But instead, the government and the party
actually doubled down. Their commitment to collectivization  made the famine deadly in many parts 
of the Soviet Union. But when it came to Ukraine, Stalin's need
for the complete submission of its people compounded the effects of the famine. In the fall and winter of 1932, Soviet police
began seizing not just grain but anything edible. Even livestock. Farms in Ukraine and sometimes entire villages,
were “blacklisted” for missing grain quotas, torn apart for food,
and prohibited from receiving any supplies. In January 1933, knowing Ukrainians were leaving
in search of food Stalin closed the borders of Ukraine and policed
migration from Ukrainian villages to cities, too. In the coming months, tens of thousands 
of Ukrainian villagers were caught trying to flee and were sent back to their homes to starve. This was a targeted extermination of peasantry. People try to find food, you know, wherever
they could in rivers and streams. They began to eat their animals, their pets. They began to catch birds and mice, whatever
they could find on trees that would give them some sort of sustenance. People were so desperate that they ate 
flesh from animals that they found on the road and some even resorted to cannibalism. But even in this unimaginable suffering, 
Ukrainians fought for their lives  and each other. She was my great grandmother. I have fond memories of her. My dad took me to her village, 
I was really young. So Lydia's house is actually my first memories. The way Holodomor happened, it was mostly
happening in the rural areas. Lydia was a student at the time. And she actually told me about how they survived. [in Ukrainian] At night, we dug a hole under a tree.  [in Ukrainian] We put a barrel in the hole 
and poured grain in there and covered the barrel with soil.  At night they would make flour out of that
wheat and make some makeshift bread. And the reason why they would do it at night
is that nobody could see the smoke coming out of the windows. Lydia describes horrific village scenes seeing “a mother die of starvation” and
“police taking away children.” Once, when Lydia saw her neighbors who had
“bloated bodies and couldn’t get up” she started to sneak them “bread and milk". It’s likely due to her efforts, that seven
people, out of that family of nine, survived. After its peak in May and June of 1933, 
the famine slowly started subsiding. Likely because of a weakened labor force,
the Soviet regime finally took measures to decrease 
grain confiscations and arrests. By 1934, most regions collectivized. Almost all farmers were working for the state. Though we will never know the total number
of deaths from the Holodomor a recent study estimated nearly 4 million
Ukrainians killed. Places like the North Caucasus, with a large
Ukrainian population, suffered greatly, too. And further east, Kazakhstan lost at least
a third of its population. So many people perished during the Holodomor that the Soviet Union had to send people over
to Ukraine to rebuild the labor force. The main goal was to resettle those areas
in order to work the land. There were settlers brought in from various
parts of the Soviet Union  but mainly from Russia. This resettlement program set off a wave of
future campaigns over the years. Many Russians moved here in the east and south which are, to this day, places with 
large Russian populations. In Russia, Stalin carried out 
a massive disinformation campaign to cover up the famine he'd created. Throughout the crisis, he outright denied
that a famine ever took place. He banned the Soviet press 
from reporting on the famine and banned foreign correspondents 
from even going to Ukraine. But, he strategically allowed language that
would effectively downplay the Holodomor words like “food shortages” or 
“food supply problems”. For example, Walter Duranty — a Moscow correspondent
for the New York Times who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on 
Stalin’s success with the Five Year Plan denied the famine in his reporting calling it a “food shortage". Duranty was challenged by others, including
journalist Gareth Jones who snuck into Ukraine and wrote a series
of articles on how “famine ruled Russia". At the time, Russia was a term 
many journalists used to describe the Soviet Union as a whole including Ukraine. Jones wrote: “Everywhere was the cry, 'there
is no bread. We are dying.'” In response — Duranty, who had more influence
than Jones, put out another article this time insisting that “Russians were
hungry, but not starving". Several photographers who also tried to expose
the humanitarian crisis were arrested for their photos. Some managed to get their images 
to leaders in the West but the images didn’t mobilize support 
for Ukraine. The West didn’t want to get involved in
Soviet politics. The most cautionary tale is remembering that
the world didn't come to Ukraine's rescue. It seemed like an internal issue. There was a lot of misinformation, disinformation. Outside of controlling the media narrative
Stalin destroyed archives and made sure death certificates didn’t
use the word “starvation”  as a cause of death. And then there was the case of the 1937 census whose findings showed a drop 
in the population of Ukraine. So, Stalin decided that he couldn't allow
this to be made public. The people who compiled the census most of them were arrested and 
some were even executed and the census never became public. Over the course of the next several decades the Soviet Union continued to suppress 
the Holodomor. But in Ukraine, the truth was quietly passed
down through generations. In more recent years, the Holodomor has been
recognized by more than a dozen countries as a genocide. In fact Raphael Lemkin, the researcher who
coined the term genocide applied it to Ukraine on the basis of four reasons: The extermination of intellectuals. The destruction of churches and priests The starvation of farmers. And the fragmentation of Ukrainian people
through resettlement. But the government of Russia has yet to acknowledge
any historical responsibility for the famine. They've maintained — falsely — that the
famine hit Russia just as hard. And today, similar tactics of disinformation
are being used to perpetrate  another violent attack against Ukrainians. If one looks at the coverage provided by 
Russian state media. It seems like the Ukrainians keep shelling
themselves. It seems like it's somehow the Ukrainians'
fault that there is this war in their own land. It's war against our people. I can't imagine, the second time we step
in the same river. Whole cities right now in Ukraine 
are being obliterated. It is really my fear that if Russia were to
be successful in this current invasion of Ukraine they will make sure that this page
of history is rewritten and is forgotten. This is one of my favorite 
Spider-Man scenes of all time. I love the way the suit ripples in the wind I love the crazy angles, I love the music and how Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man 
waits until the absolute last second before shooting a web. It’s the epitome of Spider-Man . But of course, we’re not really 
seeing Andrew Garfield here. this is a digidouble: a fully 
digital version of the character. In fact, this whole scene is digital. Obviously, right? A real person couldn’t do this. Digital doubles aren’t just used for 
impossible action sequences, though. Take these three clips of Spider-Man. First is from the original Spider-Man from 2002. Second is Spidey’s first appearance in the 
MCU in 2016’s "Captain America: Civil War". Third is Spidey surrounded by drones in the 
Illusion sequence in 2019s "Far From Home". Can you guess which on is filmed with 
an actor and which one is a digidouble? Okay, it’s kind of a trick question. None of these are real people. They’re all digidoubles. In fact, a ton of superheroes 
are just digital replacements even in the most mundane scenes. But why? Superhero movies and digidoubles 
have always paired well together. And not just because of the stunts. It’s because of the costumes and the masks. Now might be the time to admit that 
I’m a little bit of a Spider-Man fan. Anyway, replicating a fabric or metallic costume is way easier than replicating 
skin or a human face. Which gives the effects artists a lot of leeway. They can mix real and digital 
elements for maximum realism. Like keeping a bit of an actor's face, 
and replacing everything else digitally like in this scene from Spider-Man. Or maybe they just replace everything 
from the neck down, like with Iron Man and then they add a digidouble 
of War Machine next to him. Or maybe they’ll just replace everything from the   ankle down to create toes 
worthy of a super soldier. Okay, that one is a little less 
common, but more often than not they’ll cut from a real actor on film to a digital recreation without too much friction. And while some of these digital replacements 
are planned from the beginning sometimes they're not. Which is what happened with Spider-Man’s 
first appearance in the MCU. He was digidouble in every shot. Both when he was swinging around Giantman's legs and when he was just standing there, talking. That’s because he almost wasn’t 
in "Captain America: Civil War" due to lengthy negotiations 
between Sony and Marvel about how to share the web-slinger. Tom Holland wasn’t even cast until June of 2015 a month after filming began. So once he was confirmed, there was 
a huge rush to get him in the movie as Holland explains on Live with Kelly and Ryan “The suits typically take 10 and 15 weeks 
to make, right? And they didn’t have enough 
time to make one for me so I was going to wear my stunt doubles one.“ What he ended up wearing on set which you can see in this 
behind the scenes footage was not finalized by the costume department. Which is where the digidouble comes in. VFX artists changed his entire costume in post. None of the final version is real fabric. And it’s different from the suit worn on set too. You can see that the spider 
symbol on the chest is refined and the webbing across the body isn’t 
raised like previous renditions of the suit. It’s stitched in, and more subtle. Holland did some motion capture for his scenes 
but that was just the base of the digital double. Animators had to clean it up and push 
it further with the new digital suit. Animators like to kind of take things 
and they like to exaggerate movement. And sometimes it's what feels right. You know, not what is right 
especially for superheroes. You know, you may want exaggerated movement 
that a human cannot do. Lon Molnar is the Co-President of the VFX 
company Monsters Aliens Robots and Zombies. They worked on full CG versions 
of Vision and Moonknight as well as de-aging for the 
villains in Spider-Man: No Way Home. "Hello, Peter." Even when motion capture is involved, VFX artist 
still consider characters to be digidoubles. In our sense, in our world, 
it is a digidouble still. Because you're recreating everything digitally. You're relighting the suit, you're re-composing, 
you're erasing the main performance. Everything in the shot is taken over by us. Costume issues come up all the time. The timesuits from "Avengers: Endgame" weren’t 
finalized until after everything was shot. Neither was the integrated suit from No Way Home. That's all iterating, iterating.
Marvel loves to iterate. And tweaks after the fact, just make 
it look more superhero-ish, right? And looking superhero-ish is another 
big reason for digidoubles. As an animator myself, one of the 
things traditionally that you learn is how strong posing is really 
important that silhouette. In this scene from Civil War where Black 
Panther is also always a digidouble you can see how, in the final 
version, the hands are moved out so that they don’t blend into the body,
and the body position is more upright. Digidoubles are even used to make superheroes 
look more like comic book superheroes as the VFX team on the first Iron Man describe “We try to get what we’ve 
been calling 'a Marvel moment' which is sort of, you know, here he’s really 
flying through the air and he’s got his fist up." They're trying to match maybe a comic 
book image, so the fans just [indistinct]. Their heads explode and "that's 
that shot!" And you know. They want it to be perfect. And with a full CG replacement they can hit that. Integrating digidoubles seamlessly can convince 
audiences that a regular human is super. That means that these “live action” films are often
way more animated than we give them credit for. According to the DVD extras on the film 96%  of all the shots making up 
"Avengers: Infinity War" had some kind of VFX. That’s fairly common for Marvel. All of their movies have thousands and thousands 
of VFX shots, and those often include digidoubles. This gives filmmakers the space and flexibility 
to get things exactly how they want them. With Marvel, they're making 
it a tool in the toolbox to allow them to get over some of these challenges because they know that VFX companies 
can make things look so real. So, it's a great tool for them 
to have full confidence in. Ukraine’s railroad has become a lifeline
for refugees. All these stations are gateways to safety. That lead to Lviv, which has become a vital way
out of the country. From here, most travel to Przemyśl. A small Polish town 8 miles from 
the Ukrainian border. Its train station has transformed 
into a relief center. Inside, volunteers welcome the refugees and offer them food as they figure out 
where to go next. Many have brought their pets on the long journey. But they've only brought as much as they can carry. Like Maryna and her son who spent the night here at the train station
after leaving everything behind. Daria spent six hours waiting in an underpass
on her journey here. Sisters Martina and Sabina were asleep in their homes 
when their city came under fire. As Russia continues to move further into Ukraine, this critical web of escape routes is 
increasingly under attack. Making it harder and harder for millions of
Ukrainians to escape the invasion. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th more than 3 million people 
have fled their homes. Nearly all of them are moving west away from Russia and towards 
these countries over here. And the vast majority, around 2 million are going here, 
to Poland. Most of them are women and children. Ukraine is requiring most men 
between the ages of 18 and 60 to stay behind and encouraging them to fight. Since the war began, Ukraine has closed its
airspace to civilian flights. And the roads have become increasingly dangerous. Railway stations are the most important points
in the country so far  because people can get on the train on the cities  and move to west and save their lives. That’s Oleksandr Kamyshin. He is in charge of a mobile command team 
that has evacuated more than 2 million people by train. We focus on different cities, 
depending on the bombing. Once new cities are under shelling, 
we increase the capacity for the cities. Things change so fast, Ukrainian Railways
releases a daily schedule. And so far, the most popular routes are 
Kyiv-Lviv, Kharkiv-Lviv, Dnipro-Lviv. At the stations, people are packed into 
evacuation trains  and it’s in large part because of Oleksandr's policy. All people who would like to leave the city
can do it within one day. So we finish the day with zero people 
on the railway station. But it’s not just about getting on the train the journey itself is getting more dangerous too. On March 13th, Russian forces hit 
an evacuation train here killing the conductor and 
stranding hundreds. Further north, near Kharkiv, 
an undetonated bomb landed right by the train tracks 
a few days earlier. Ukrainian Railway workers had to defuse 
and remove it. Damaged tracks like these, can temporarily
stop escape routes. We got the greatest team of 
infrastructure professionals who start repairing the track 
once the bombing stops and they do it in hours, not days. But bombed bridges, like this one,
can shut them down permanently. The areas over here, where Russia is 
fighting for control are especially dangerous for trains to reach. As a result, most of these stations shut down,
soon after the war began. Including Mykolaiv. The port city Martina and Sabina fled. Their parents drove them to Odesa, where
the train station was still operating so they could make it to Lviv. Poland has become the top destination 
for refugees  because it has a very long border with Ukraine. It’s also culturally and linguistically similar and already has over a million Ukrainians
living and working in the country. But it’s also because soon after 
Russia invaded Ukraine the EU did something unprecedented. “Europe will be there for them not only in the first days but also in the
weeks and months to come." They agreed to activate this directive, which
provides temporary protection. It was first issued in 2001 after a decade of wars in Southeastern Europe displaced millions of people. The directive allowed for temporary protection
for people fleeing from non-EU countries. But it was never invoked. Until now. What the Temporary Protection Directive offers is a range of rights that are applicable immediately. And these include residency rights right to have access to the labor market,
right to healthcare, social protection, but also right to education. What is also notable is that this mechanism
was adopted by all the EU member states. This means that the millions of people 
fleeing Ukraine can continue on to any of the 27 EU countries
with these protections for up to three years. This is a testimony to the large scale of
the crisis that we're seeing now in Europe. But despite this directive, not all seeking refuge  have been treated the same way on the ground. Many non-Ukranians have experienced racism
as they’ve fled. Reports include being pushed to the back of
the lines at the border and being turned away at hotels. In Przemyśl though, thousands keep arriving
every day. For many refugees arriving in Przemyśl, this
is just the first stop out of Ukraine. Martina and Sabina have family in Poland 
to help them get started. But the vast majority will go on 
to reception centers or move deeper into Europe 
and farther away from home. Some people cry, some people smile. Some people are happy. Some people are not happy. But finally, all the people who left the cities,
which are shelled they can sleep, at least in the calm place
and without the bombing. That's the most important thing 
we keep in mind. That gives me the understanding 
that we do right job. Masking up is one of the first things 
we did to slow the spread of Covid-19. And it worked. Study after study has shown that when we 
implemented and followed mask mandates cases fell. But now those mandates are being lifted and guidance from public 
health experts is changing. For many of us, it feels like we’re  headed toward 
a new phase in the pandemic But it’s not over. Not yet. So as we weather the third year with Covid-19 what do we do with the masks? The ideal risk mitigation is 
to have everyone wearing masks. But, of course, we’re not going to wear masks
all the time for the rest of our lives. Moving forward... It will be left more to individuals 
in most settings to decide whether they feel 
like they're at higher risk or it's a higher risk setting 
where they want to wear a mask. Fortunately, evidence shows that masks still offer   protection even if you’re 
the only person wearing one. Especially N95 or KN95 types, which have 
proven to be exceptionally effective. This applies even if you’re 
vaccinated and boosted. Layering your protection can reduce 
the chance of a breakthrough infection. What I would hope is that 
people would view masks as a wonderful, inexpensive medical intervention. So when you’re deciding whether or not to mask up, 
consider the weather. Not the real weather. Pandemic weather. Which can rapidly change from week to week. If it’s looking bad, you might want to 
bring an umbrella  as in... wear a mask.  We're in an evolving situation. We have been 
since the beginning of 2020. But there are some principles we can follow here. Starting with assessing the case rates 
or hospitalizations around the community. So looking at cases per 100,000 you really want it to be at 
least under 10 per 100000. Ideally in single digits. And not just for one day but you could look at something 
like the 7 or 14 day average for an area. Luckily, you can find that 
data on a variety of websites including the CDC, NY Times, Johns Hopkins 
or even by simply searching on Google. These numbers will change 
depending on the location. And also over time. There’s some evidence that Covid could 
eventually be seasonal, like the flu. Which means cases may drop 
in the spring or summer. Only to spike again in the fall and winter. Next, it’s important to consider the environment. Being outside is a really good start. We're heading into spring and I think there will 
be less tendency to be indoors in crowded spaces,   poorly ventilated spaces, for example. So that also helps with reduction of transmission. But if you’re indoors you should 
take a few things into consideration. Ventilation and the number of people. The size of the space and then the 
time that you spend in that space those are the main factors. A packed, indoor concert, for example, is going to be a higher risk 
than going to a grocery store  where the people are more spaced out. And events or locations that 
are checking vaccination status   or requiring a negative test are even lower risk. But even then you need to consider 
one other factor... yourself. That includes assessing your own risk of severe   disease and hospitalization 
and possibly even death. And that has to do, of course, with 
your underlying medical conditions whether or not you're immunosuppressed whether or not you've been vaccinated and boosted. Even if you yourself are low risk  you should also  consider how dangerous 
an infection would be for people closest to you. We’ve learned a lot since 
the beginning of the pandemic and you’ve heard it a thousand times: “We’re all in this together.” Your actions and decisions will 
continue to affect those around you. If you are in one of those 
lower risk categories and   don't have to wear a mask in all those settings understand that if the risk 
rises again, you might need to. We're not trying to stop every 
runny nose in the country. We're really trying to prevent 
people from going to the hospital and we're trying to prevent our 
health care system from falling apart. In the meantime,   be mindful and show some compassion for other 
people who may be masking up while you’re not. Because your cloudy day  may be someone else’s hurricane. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, maps of the
conflict are everywhere. In most cases, shaded areas, like this red are meant to symbolize territory occupied
by Russian forces or at least, territory Russia and Ukraine
are fighting over. In general, this red is referring to 
ground troops, like these. The more the Russian ground troops advance,
the more of the map turns red. But what maps like these don’t show 
is another battle that’s taking place high above Ukraine.  Where a small Ukrainian air force is fighting
a powerful Russian one  for control of the skies. What happens here could determine not just
the course of the war but whether it escalates and spreads 
beyond Ukraine. It’s why Ukraine’s allies are scrambling
to send it weapons. And some are asking to go a step further: "No-fly zone." "No-fly zone." "A no-fly zone." [chanting] "No-fly zone!" "A humanitarian no-fly zone." "No-fly zone seems to make sense." "Well, I think you that all know 
what I'm going to say." "We need the no-fly zone over Ukraine." So, why are the stakes of this air war 
so high? And what would a no-fly zone change? On February 24, 2022, the Russian invasion
of Ukraine began. And in terms of military strategy, it followed
a common script. First, Russian missiles targeted 
Ukraine’s radar system. Then its airfields and some missile launchers. To military experts, this appeared to be 
preparation for a crucial step. Send a lot of planes to destroy 
the Ukrainian air force and achieve what’s called “Air Superiority." So when we say a military has air superiority what we're essentially saying is a military
more or less controls the skies. With air superiority, Russia could freely
attack Ukrainian ground troops and protect its own ground troops who could move faster without fear
of being attacked from the skies. If Russia were able to establish virtually
unchallenged air superiority it would be a disaster for Ukraine. Doesn't mean you're guaranteed a victory  but it makes that victory a heck of a lot more likely. That's why since World War II winning air superiority has been 
the first step in most invasions. But in this case, the big attack never came. And experts don’t really agree on why. My best informed guess is that  Russians thought that they would be welcome 
when they got there. And so when they saw men, women, and children blocking their tanks from entering 
Ukrainian villages that surprised them. When you make war plans, including plans related
to air superiority if your assumptions are wrong, then your plan
is messed up. Whatever happened, it means that, more than
two weeks into the invasion Russia did not have total air superiority. It allowed the Ukrainian air force 
to defend themselves against some Russian fighter jets 
and ground forces helping bog down the Russian invasion. This was celebrated as part of Ukraine’s
remarkable resistance early on in the war. It's a function of both Ukrainian success
and also some surprising  shortcomings in Russian military capability. But it might not last much longer. When you compare the Russian military and
the Ukrainian military there is no comparison. In every major metric of power, the Russian
military is far more powerful including when it comes to aviation. Russia has more than ten times the number
of fighter aircraft as Ukraine. And so far, they haven’t really used them. It's possible over the coming days and weeks
that Putin and his military leaders decide to make greater use of Russian aircraft. And I think that's already happening. They're entering a new phase where, in my
view, they're systematically using air power in part to systematically attack civilians and civilian
infrastructure. That means the Russians still 
could win air superiority which would help speed up their invasion,
and likely cause significant civilian casualties. So, Ukraine’s allies are frantically trying
to keep that from happening. Many countries are sending weapons  that Ukrainian ground troops can use 
to shoot down Russian aircraft. And there have been talks about 
sending Ukraine planes. But there’s also been talk of 
another kind of help: a no-fly zone. Ukrainian president Volodmyrr Zelenskyy has
asked NATO, the western military alliance, to declare a no-fly zone. A number of US foreign policy experts 
have called for a limited no-fly zone and a recent poll shows 74% of Americans 
think the US should declare one. So, what is a No-Fly Zone? Basically it’s a geographic area, where
certain plains are prohibited from flying. The point of NATO declaring 
a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine would be to prevent Russia from 
winning air superiority thereby protecting Ukraine’s 
military and civilians. But what makes a no-fly zone complicated 
is how NATO would have to enforce it. To propose the no-fly zone in Ukraine if you're going to be serious about it,
you have to consider that to enforce it  to make it a real thing you would actually have to shoot down 
Russian aircraft. This means NATO would be directly 
participating in the conflict escalating the war to involve 
the US and most of Europe. The establishment of a no-fly zone 
sooner or later  puts us in a high risk of direct combat. And don't for a minute think that 
you can control how that escalates. Once one aircraft gets shot down, 
whether it's ours or theirs all bets are off on what happens next. Russia is a nuclear armed power and Putin's
been making a lot of threats to suggest that he thinks nuclear weapons might be an option. All this would also be true of a 
"limited no-fly zone" which would only cover certain areas, but
would be enforced in the same way. Putin has vowed to treat anyone imposing a
no-fly zone as a “participant in the conflict”. And, so far, president Biden and NATO leaders
have ruled it out. So for now, even while its allies send weapons Ukraine will have to do the fighting themselves. Every bone in my body wants to help Ukrainians. They're fighting for all of us, and I weep
when I see some of these images. But I think we should do all that we can 
to help Ukraine while also doing everything we can to avoid
direct conflict with Russia. Zelenskyy was, in Ukraine, easily the best
recognizable comedian and the most successful one. And the project that was his flagship thing,
was a regular comedy show. It was not what you would call highbrow humor. There was quite a lot of kind of 
primitive humor, I would say. And quite a lot of sophisticated 
making fun of politics. He would just do these really funny and clever
takedowns of Ukrainian politicians, Russian politicians,
you know, because it is in many ways, a shared 
cultural and political space. Servant of the People is a good show. It's really funny. It’s about a history teacher who's sort of
thrust into the presidency because of a video of him that goes viral. This is your ultimate, like a regular person 
suddenly gets power all over the country. And his heart in the right place 
but everything is against him. There's corruption everywhere. And he's — he just wants to change the country. He almost, like, showed on the screen
what kind of president he would be. And I think that was his basically 
campaign manifesto. He's basically asking people to submit the
five main problems that they see in Ukraine. You could call it like a crowdsourced 
political program. His whole campaign was a number of videos
like that, where instead of doing a professional video which
he easily could have done he was doing this little selfie clips. It works really well for his image of 
nontraditional, anti-establishment guy. He was keeping his program 
pretty vague and empty. And it worked. His victory speech — he said, I am, the
hope for change not just for people in Ukraine 
but for all people hinting obviously on Russia. I still think that Putin holds 
a big grudge on this. Nobody knows what Putin thought. Probably in all likelihood the leadership
of Russia was thinking that he’s inexperienced, he’s new. This is our chance. It's my hypothesis that he was 
looking at Zelenskyy as a very easy partner, who can be played. It's eerie to me to watch it now, to be honest. "I think that there's a high chance 
of ending the war." "When?" "When?" "As soon as possible." "I want to believe that it will be this year." The presidency was defined by a pretty consistent
and precipitous decline in popularity. We're talking about ratings of 30s 
even down to like 20s. It was connected to several issues. There was no progress in peace. There were implications of his company 
listed in the Pandora Papers. He was trying to accumulate more power in
the office of the president which Ukrainians despise. He started cracking down on opposition. He was changing tremendously and
he was becoming a strongman. People saw him slipping towards the usual
way of doing business in Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians were not seeing it as
a successful presidency. What is happening in that clip is that he
is holding a press conference  for foreign media. Zelenskyy was trying to downplay the threat,
but also putting out some confusing messages. These expectations of the war they forced many investors 
to leave Ukraine. And, of course, for President Zelenskyy it
was unacceptable. In the weeks that led up to the crisis, from
the communication point of view I don't think that he did a very good job. At the outbreak of war, there was fear and
there was a suspicion that he may you know, capitulate, he will concede, 
he'll get scared. That clip was perceived that the captain 
is not abandoning the ship. From that moment, people understood 
he's not surrendering. And there are millions of Ukrainians 
who are ready to put up that fight. Yes, yes, it definitely was a turning point. If you watch a clip of Zelenskyy talking,
for example  to the Western press in January again and this clip of Zelenskyy standing 
in the street of Kyiv you can think that these are 
two different people. But if you compare this clip 
with Zelenskyy of 2019 when he was campaigning for president that's the same person. In terms of style, in terms of how, you know,
sincere and open he is it's like we made a full circle. We came back to the 2019 Zelenskyy, 
which is the guy people voted for. His speech to the European Parliament. It was really striking. As it was translated for the members of the
European Parliament you hear the translator fighting back tears as he's 
translating Zelenskyy's words. I've never heard that happen. "We are fighting." "Just for our land and for our freedom... despite the fact that all our citizens
of our country are now blocked..." The moment was so emotional and raw. I think it really helped to change 
a lot of minds in Europe. They have to understand that for Ukraine,
it's their battle for existence. His message is also if we stop Putin at
the Ukrainian border, everybody will be safer. His appeals to Europe, have been 
very much impactful and really making it morally and politically
impossible for them to stay on the sidelines and not support Ukraine. Today, his background as somebody who was working with the audience his whole life
is coming in handy. He definitely knows how to command the audience,
how to grasp their attention how to how to put on a show, so to say. He probably wasn't the best president in peacetime. But he was very good in the beginning of the war,
creating hope, uniting the nation and giving an impetus for resistance. He is not the president anymore. He's the leader of the nation. I know because I asked people in Ukraine,
they find it convincing. To stay in the capital, in Kyiv that's really inspiring for a lot of
people in the country to see. I think it shouldn't be forgotten that there are thousands of regular Ukrainians
who are demonstrating  even bigger bravery every day. Unarmed civilians trying to stop tanks 
with their bare hands. This spirit of regular Ukrainians is 
what's inspiring Zelenskyy too. He's proven worthy of the nation he’s leading. [in Russian] "I have made the decision
to carry out a special military operation." Putin called this a "special military operation". But it's clear, this is a full scale invasion. "There was total panic. Hysteria. Tears.' "The flame was higher than the house." "We're like, in a cellar." "I'm not sure if it's like deep enough to
help us to survive." Russian troops and tanks have 
entered Ukraine on all fronts. All these cities are under attack, 
including the capital of Kyiv which has become Putin’s main target. Many are sheltering in basements and 
metro stations across Ukraine. There have been hundreds of casualties 
and over half a million Ukrainians  have been forced to flee their homes. This is one of Europe’s largest wars 
since World War II. Since then, Europe’s map has been shaped
by political alliances. But now, Putin wants to redraw 
Europe’s map by force. Putin has long claimed Ukraine belongs to
Russia and they are one people. "We're not just close neighbors, 
we're one nation." But Ukraine is a sovereign nation with its own 
language, culture, and political system. And while the two countries 
do have a shared history Ukraine has fought hard for its own identity. Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire in
the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1917, the Russian Revolution 
brought down the empire  and the region spiraled into a civil war. Ukraine briefly gained independence 
from Russian rule but was quickly taken over by the 
newly created Soviet Union as one of its first republics. Over the next decade, the Soviet Union 
brutally expanded its control. And by the end of WWII, it forged 
a sphere of influence over here. While the west held its influence over here. Essentially dividing Europe and marking the
beginning of the Cold War. The Soviet Union installed communist governments
on their side which were easy for them to control. But the west developed into democracies 
with capitalist economies. The deep ideological divide fueled distrust
and tensions between the two sides. And soon these spheres hardened 
into military alliances. In 1949, these countries along, 
with the US and Canada formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
or NATO and promised to defend each other from invasion. A few years later, these countries joined
the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact alliance. And each side built up its military to protect
itself from the other. Europe remained this way for decades, 
until one side finally collapsed. By late 1991, republics like Ukraine began
declaring independence from Soviet domination. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent
countries, including a much weaker Russia. And the Soviet sphere of influence disappeared as many countries overthrew 
their communist governments. Even though the Cold War ended the alliance on the other side of Europe 
was still going strong. In fact, it was expanding. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic
joined NATO. In 2004, seven more countries joined. That moved NATO into the old Soviet sphere
of influence. Making NATO's border with Russia
the longest it's ever been. Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia were now the
last post-Soviet countries left  between Russia and NATO. But Ukraine and Georgia both wanted to join
NATO for a long time. And that made them prime targets for Russia. Ukraine became a NATO partner in 1994 which brought them a step closer 
to becoming a member. "Ukraine will be in NATO." "This is a historic event for our people." And in 2013, they were going to sign an association
agreement with the European Union. But when it came time to sign the deal Ukraine’s pro-Russian government refused. Instead they chose to strengthen ties 
with Russia. After the decision was announced, hundreds
of thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand the agreement be signed. [chanting] Ukraine is Europe!
Ukraine is Europe! After months of peaceful protests, the Ukrainian
president cracked down and killed more than 100 people. Sparking more protests which eventually drove
the president out of office and the country. This meant Putin would lose political influence
over Ukraine. So he decided to use force instead. First, he invaded and annexed Ukraine’s
Crimean Peninsula. Then, Russia-backed separatists captured 
the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and declared them independent of Ukraine. Since then, Ukraine has been locked in a conflict
with Russia that has killed 14,000 people and displaced nearly 2 million people. For nearly eight years, Putin has held on
to these regions destabilizing Ukraine, and keeping it from
moving closer to the west. But in November 2021, Putin decided 
to go all in. Satellite images showed at least 100,000 Russian
troops and military equipment piling up along the border of Ukraine. Putin repeatedly denied any plans to invade. But weeks later, he presented his demands
to the west. His main demand was that NATO stop expanding and move its military borders 
back to where they were in 1997 away from Russia’s. Western leaders rejected his demands. Instead, they put forces on standby and reinforced
their military presence in Eastern Europe. Back at Ukraine’s border, Russian troops
continued to gather. And over here, along its border with Belarus,
Russia began conducting huge military drills. On February 21st, the threat of war 
became real. "I consider it necessary to take 
a long-overdue decision and to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donesk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic." His troops immediately crossed the Ukrainian
border into Russian-backed separatist regions under the pretense of peacekeeping. Ukraine announced a state of emergency and President Zelensky made a direct appeal
to the Russian people. "A war will take away guarantees from everyone." "No one will have security guarantees." "Who will suffer the most?
The people." "Who doesn't want it the most?
The people." "Who can stop it?
The people." Hours later on February 24th Putin launched a full-scale invasion in Ukraine. World leaders have spoken out 
against Russia’s invasion. “We condemn this barbaric attack and the
cynical arguments to justify it." “This hideous and barbaric venture of Vladimir
Putin must end in failure." “Putin chose this war and now he and his country will bear the consequences.” Anti-war protests have broken out 
around the world. Including in Russia, despite the risk of arrest. Neighboring nations have opened their borders as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians 
attempt to flee. NATO’s response force has been activated
for the first time in history. And the US has sent additional troops 
to eastern Europe. But in many ways, the world is treading carefully. Putin controls the world’s largest arsenal
of nuclear weapons and has already threatened anyone 
who might interfere. "Whoever tries to stop us should know that Russia's response 
will be immediate." "And will lead to such consequences that you have never faced in your history." So countries around the world are imposing
some of the harshest economic sanctions  to slow Putin down. And sending tons of military aid 
to support Ukraine. For now, Russian forces keep pushing deeper,
but Ukraine is fighting back. "We are all here protecting 
our independence, our country." "And we are going to continue to do so." We’re entering the third year of the pandemic
and in the US the loss of life, month by month, 
for two years, looks like this. Altogether more than 900,000 people have died. But there really are two pandemics here. Because starting in the spring of 2021 the distribution of the vaccines dramatically
changed the nature of the pandemic. If we look closer at the delta wave 
and the beginning of omicron we see the deaths of unvaccinated people were
much higher than vaccinated people. This data comes from a subset of US states
and cities that provide immunization data. While the delta wave did kill 
some vaccinated people the risk was 15 times higher 
if you were unvaccinated. Philly Baird was one of those 
unvaccinated people. And he started going live on his 
Facebook page from the hospital. "I love you guys." "I’m able to talk today." "Today’s been a great day." In one of the videos he recommends to his
friends and family that they get the vaccine. Do you think that was a 
hard thing for him to say? Yes, because that’s not what he had been
communicating, you know, prior to that. But I think that he would want me to communicate
what I know he wanted and that is for you to look at his situation and realize that you could possibly get you could get severe the Covid like he did 
and be fighting for your life. And then have a lot of regrets that you didn’t
have the vaccine at that time. "You know I was one of those 
that sat there and kinda was more on the political side with
Covid and all." "We gotta put all that aside." Now when it comes to the political breakdown
on vaccinations, there are two things to know. One is that a majority of Republicans are
vaccinated with at least 1 dose according to the most recent survey 
from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The 2nd thing to know is that most 
unvaccinated Americans are Republican. So the question is: how does that affect the
balance of lives lost? Well, we can plot the states directly by their
2020 election results with the red states on the right and the blue
states on the left. And we can look at their death rates since
April 2021. And it's pretty striking. The Republican states were suffering 
much bigger losses. And I want to stress that this relationship
wasn’t there before the vaccines. This is the same chart, but it shows death
rates before April 2021. And they’re much more spread out, with Covid
hitting blue states as hard as red ones. So what I want to understand is the series
of events that took us from this... to this. "The Democrats are in a full-court freak out
over coronavirus after Ted cruz self-isolated 
after coming into contact..." Phil Valentine was my younger brother. A very accomplished radio entertainment personality. "New York Times even called it the Trump virus." "Can you imagine if the Ebola virus had been
called the Obama virus?" He was on air in July and you can hear him
kind of talking through the symptoms. "This is my Covid saga." "And yesterday was probably my worst day and
just the shaking and the chills..." Really processing things on air. "And as I’ve told you, I’m not judging
anybody either way." "If you want to get the vaccine, 
it’s a personal health decision." "I made the decision that I probably wouldn’t
die from it." "Phil would like his listeners to know that
he regrets not being more vehemently pro-vaccine." "He is in the hospital in the critical-care
unit..." He said, you know, I got it wrong. And then it went from bad to worse. We know how it all ended. "We’re all very sad right now at the passing
of a friend and a colleague." "And our thoughts and prayers go out to Susan
and the boys at their tremendous loss." Had he been opposed to other types of vaccines
in the past? Were his or his kids vaccinated 
with the school vaccines? He wasn't against anything else? No. It’s not obvious that Republicans would
be more vaccine hesitant. Similar percentages of Democrats and Republicans said they get the flu shot “every year”
according to a May 2020 poll. And in 2019, the Pew Research Center 
found that nearly identical shares of 
Republicans and Democrats said that the benefits of the vaccinating
kids for measles, mumps, and rubella  outweigh the risks. Republicans were slightly less likely to say
they should be required but it’s nothing like the 
30 point gap that we see in Covid vaccination rates today. One way to understand that gap is to consider
the vastly different information environments that Republicans and Democrats live in. This is a list of news sources trusted by
at least 40% of Democrats according to a 2019 survey by Pew. "... health officials warn..."
"... the highest daily rate..." "... the Covid variant was first reported..." "... the latest data from the centers..." And here’s a list of news sources trusted
by at least 40% of Republicans. What this means is that American conservatives
are quite exposed to the editorial choices of a single network. And on vaccine coverage, that network's choices
have been confusing. "It’s a great vaccine. It’s a safe vaccine." "It is something that can keep you out of
the hospital." "How many people have been killed or injured
by the Covid vaccines? Does anyone know the answer?" "If your doctor says you’re ok for it, 
get it. It will save your life." "I got my second dose. I got a horrific pain in my right eye." "The vaccine is still working. It’s still protecting you and those around
you." "Why should you penalize people for not taking
a vaccine which doesn’t work?" "The mRNA covid vaccines need to be withdrawn
from the market now. No one should get them. No one should get boosted. No one should get double boosted." If we compare the information sources of those
who said they’d definitely get vaccinated with the information sources of those who
said they would definitely not get vaccinated we see that the vaccine-resisters were less
likely to consume most news sources except for two: Fox News and social media. For 18 hours, I laid in bed 
dealing with my mortality and not knowing which way 
that was going to go. And I'm laying in bed going, this is my fault. I should have been listening to doctors and
nurses and medical professionals  instead of my political algorithms. And so is it mostly Facebook where you were
getting sort of these messages? Yes. I saw some of Fox News reports online. But, 90 - 95 percent of what I got was through my
algorithms and friends on Facebook. And I can tell you when I started 
telling people, you need to consider this vaccine and 
you need to stop politicizing this. I lost a lot of friends, and the more hardcore
you were... I had some really ugly things said to me. And I had to start blocking people that I've
been friends with for years. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 64%
of unvaccinated people believed at least 4 pieces of Covid-19 misinformation,
of the 8 that they tested. And they found that among those who trusted
conservative news outlets belief in misinformation was more common than
among those who trusted other sources. But we have to remember that this is a correlation. We don’t know if anti-vax content 
on TV and Facebook  caused people to turn against the vaccine or if it was simply pandering to people who
had already made up their mind. It was probably both. See, one thing I didn’t mention 
about this chart  is that this data is actually 
from January 2021. So most of the anti-vaccine content on these
platforms hadn’t been published. So I went back and searched for 
the earliest polling I could find. This is from May of 2020 and it asked people if they would get 
a hypothetical coronavirus vaccine. 40 percent of Republicans said 
“definitely not or probably not.” And that’s pretty much where Republicans
are at today, 20 months later. So what explains why a big chunk of Republican
voters had already turned against the vaccine six months before the presidential election and nearly a year before the vaccines 
were even available? I think the answer is somewhere in here. Of the 8 false claims polled by the Kaiser
Family Foundation the one most widely believed wasn’t about
the vaccines at all. And so of the different pieces of misinformation
we tested, the most commonly believed overall and particularly by Republicans was this idea that the government was inflating
the number of deaths due to Covid-19. "Top US health officials are rejecting President
Trump’s suggestion that the US coronavirus case and death totals are 'fake news'." "He said a couple of hours ago the number
of cases and deaths of the China virus..." "... are quote 'far exaggerated'." That claim was based on a misunderstanding
of how death certificates work but it was extremely potent. If you’ve been told not to trust the death
count, how do you assess your own risk? And why would you take action to protect yourself
and your family? If we compare unvaccinated republicans with
their vaccinated counterparts the biggest difference between them isn’t
that the unvaccinated ones are younger or more conservative or more rural although they are it’s the pervasiveness of the belief  that seriousness of the coronavirus 
is generally exaggerated. And that idea that the pandemic has been made
into a bigger deal than it really is has been an overarching belief for a majority
of Republicans. Even as Covid became one of the leading causes
of death in the US even as the virus shifted 
from cities to rural America. And that takes us back to the very first weeks
of the pandemic. When the virus found a United States under
an exceptionally polarizing president and at the start of an election year. "We have it under control. 
It’s going to be just fine." "Joe Biden calling him the worst possible
person to lead our country through virus." "Well we pretty much shut it down 
coming in from China." "President Trump has no plan, no urgency,
no understanding of the facts." "If the coronavirus ends up having a real
impact on the economy  it could tip the election to the—" "Democrats and their media cronies have decided
to weaponize fear to improve their chances against Trump in
November." In the early stages of the pandemic, you got
this very large polarization around things like lockdowns, mask wearing, and the severity
of the pandemic itself. Just how seriously to take this. "Trump supported anti-lockdown protests..." "Liberate Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia." "...states led be Democratic governors." "President Trump without a mask..." "Defiance in the face of adversity..." "Joe Biden wearing one." "...an image of trepidation, even fear." "Making for a splitscreen campaign moment." And it seems that rank and file Republicans,
largely on their own, figured out that if you don’t take the pandemic seriously, 
why would you get vaccinated? You know the people telling you to do it,
they’re not trustworthy. And so, you know, flash forward to spring
of 2021 and you get this weird paradox where most Republican politicians are vaccinated but they're saying stuff at the same time
to cater to to anti-vaccine sentiment in their base and now there's real political downside to
promoting vaccination for a lot of these folks. "...your freedoms, I do. You have to do what you have to do." "But! I recommend take the vaccines." "I did it. It's good." "Take the vaccines." "But you got — no that's okay, that's alright." "You've got your freedoms..." Let me tell you how I make sense 
of what happened to your brother  and I want to get your reaction. I see Phil looking at the data concluding that his risk of dying 
from Covid was low. But I think his brain was sort of pushed in
the direction of that conclusion by signals that were sent really early on in the pandemic
by Trump and Fox and others that Republicans kind of think this coronavirus
is overblown. The polarization starts there. Then by the time the vaccines come out Phil's not getting clear, consistent signals
from the people that he trusts that it's time to update his risk calculation
and go ahead and get that vaccine. And then he gets hit by the beginning 
of the delta wave. Does that seem accurate to you? That's on the right track, I think that that... The calculus changed when the delta variant
presented itself because it attacked a much younger segment of the population. Then all of a sudden, politics starts 
to enter into the thing. We already we've just come off of being lied
to for three years straight that Trump was a Russian agent, 
a traitor to the country. So I think that that was that people looked
askance at that whole messaging system. The underlying problem is that there are two
diametrically opposed views of what America should be like in this world and one is held by one side and 
one is held by the other so you decide which one 
you’re going to be on. You get into this situation where elite politicians
in the respective parties feel like they have to polarize on the issue because their base expects them to disagree
with the other party. It would have helped a great deal of the elites
of the political leaders of our country had coordinated across party lines and laid out a unified message at the beginning I definitely think we could have largely mitigated
the polarized responses  that we saw in the mass public. What do you hope for, what do you fear, 
when it comes to polarization around public health issues? One of the things I really worry about 
going forward is what we’d like is reduced polarization around
Covid vaccination especially as we move into a possible regular
regime of boosting going forward. But what I think might be more likely if we
aren't really, really effective and proactive on reducing that polarization is that polarization around Covid vaccination
persists and spreads to other vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella. And sure enough, researchers at UC San Diego
tracked vaccine attitudes  from March to August 2021 and they found that not only were the Republicans
in their study more likely to turn against the Covid vaccine as the year went on they also ended up with declining attitudes
about vaccines in general  and lower intentions to get 
the flu shot next year. Which means the health consequences of pandemic
polarization could extend well beyond Covid-19. "In war towns all over the United States women are called upon to leave 
their homes and take jobs." During World War II, nearly 1 in 3 
American men went off to war. And women were expected to 
take their place at work. "They discovered that factory work is usually
no more difficult than house work." "Isn't this pretty hot for you?" "Well I hear it gets kind of hot 
around a kitchen stove, too." But the problem was... who was going to watch 
Rosie the Riveter’s kids? “When married women with small children
have to take jobs everything possible will be done 
to provide day-care for the children.” For 50 cents a day, which would be 
about $8 now mothers could leave their kids at 
a government-funded day care center. Lunch was included. America actually set up universal child care
for working mothers. Canada and other countries did too. Around half a million American children 
attended these centers. But when the war ended... "Joy is unconfined." ...so did the daycare. Families protested, calling for 
the centers to be permanent. But the federal funding stopped in 1946. And so the US missed that start  to begin a climb towards 
other child care policies. Other countries didn’t. Canada had the same protests. And some provinces decided to keep
their centers open. That decision started them down a path  where it was easy to implement 
other government-run policies. So, how did the US end up here? Here are some of the 
richest countries in the world. And here’s when each of them established
a paid maternity leave policy. And a universal child care policy. And let’s throw in paid paternity leave
for good measure. In France, they’ve actually had some form
of universal child care since the 1800s. But formalized the system in 1945. In Sweden, considered to have one of
the best systems in the world, they were the first ones to guarantee 
paid paternity leave. And they’ve provided full child care 
for all children since 1985. You’ll notice the US has none of these policies. Technically there is a 12-week 
maternity leave policy. It’s just not paid. That’s up to your employer. And a few states offer preschool and 
there are some child care programs but they’re mostly for low-income families
and far from universal. Child care in the US right now 
is very fragmented There are different programs that 
function for different purposes  and often work against each other. Take a closer look at this chart. After WWII was a popular time for 
these child care policies  but so was the 70s. The early 70s were a time for women’s rights. Equal employment laws had just passed. Divorce laws were loosened. And many countries established 
universal child care policies. It almost happened in the US, too. Almost. What happened in 1971 is that there was obviously a sense that we needed
to do something about child care. And Congress actually acted. Both the House and Senate passed 
the Comprehensive Child Development Act. This was a really extraordinary bill because it would have provided 
a universal child care. It would not have been stigmatized 
in the same way  that welfare programs would have been. It would have been available 
to a much wider group of families. But then President Richard Nixon vetoed it. No one expected the veto. It was a terrible shock. His veto message said that this is going to
create communal child care rearing. It would Sovietize the American family. That language was a response to criticism
that he was going soft on communism like by visiting China. But really... The right wing began to see this as an encroachment because
it could be used potentially by white, middle-class families in order to support women leaving the home
and going out into the workforce. They're not supposed to be working. We do want to make, you know poor, black, and
brown indigenous mothers like those are the non-deserving kinds of
mothers that shouldn't be on welfare. They should be working. Conservative Phyllis Schlafly led that opposition. "Women whose husbands have left them or divorced
them or whatever, have a very hard time." "But when you look at these wives who  simply want a standard of living higher than
their husband is producing crying around that they want somebody else 
to pay for their daycare." They were organizing against child care because
it would take mothers out of the home. Just as the European countries were starting
their child care systems we were shutting the door. The day after Nixon vetoes the CDA he signed into law a bill that created 
child care tax deductions for middle class and affluent families. This creates a two tiered system, on one hand, you have these tax supports. And then on the other hand, you get these
much more stigmatized direct supports for only low-income families. Meanwhile these countries were able to follow
a path from one universal policy to another. Experts call this “path dependency.” So for these countries, once they established
one universal policy creating others was fairly straightforward. Where in the US, it’s been easier to design
policies within the parameters  of the existing income-based programs or tax breaks that Nixon founded. He set a path where  any kind of federal child care policy would be as 
underfunded, stigmatized, as possible. It's a system that reinforces and deepens
inequalities of race, gender, and class. It doesn't end up helping 
so many of our families. But just because we’re on that path 
doesn’t mean we can’t change. Just look at the United Kingdom. From a birds eye view these, countries 
are following very similar paths. Neither continued the day care centers 
after WWII. Both had attempted child care policy 
in the 70s. The UK’s failed attempt was actually led
by conservative Margaret Thatcher. But in the 90s, the UK actually shifted and
established a universal pre-k program. So, what changed? It's framed as education, not welfare. So those questions of deservingness aren't applicable in the same way because
it's education for all children. It's part-time, it's not as generous,
but I think that it is an example of how you can 
readjust your priorities and change direction. The US had universal child care once. And almost did again. But with policy, it’s never really 
game over. The US doesn't have enough homes. This line shows how many months it would take for the current supply of housing to run out. It's a measure of housing supply and it's
been dropping for a decade. And this line shows how housing prices 
have changed. They've skyrocketed in the past year. For rental units, the percentage of empty
buildings is the lowest it's been in 3 decades while rent prices keep going up. But here’s the thing. Often, when new buildings go up in these places people hate them. "It's hard to describe... but... you know it when you see it." "Gentrification building." Most often, they’re talking about 
new buildings like this: boxy, modern, multi-family homes. I saw one one day that sort of hit me. And it was a TikTok that was showing this
building in Camden, New Jersey. That’s Jerusalem Demsas, a Vox policy reporter. You know, the comments range from a bunch
of different things. It was people kind of deriding 
the building itself saying that it was causing displacement saying, get ready for a Starbucks 
to come and pop up. Comments like this are a common narrative. To many, these buildings don’t just look
bland and artificial. They signal raised rents, displacement, and the complete transformation of a neighborhood to a place that’s richer and whiter. But in this case, what happened next 
might surprise you. So I started like, kind of like, going around trying to find the specific location, 
walking around Google Maps. And eventually, I find it. And I find the building, I look at the address. I look into property records to figure out
what this building was. And not only is it new housing, it's actually
new affordable housing. Turns out, there’s a lot we get wrong about how we see new construction in the US. Whether it’s DC, Oakland, or Austin newer apartment buildings in the US 
have a distinct look one that sticks out against older architecture. But these buildings don’t look like historic homes 
for a reason. This building is actually one of 
the cheapest ways  to build an apartment building right now. The design is strategic. According to reporting from Curbed this kind of architecture is built to fit
within restraints like cost, height limits, and safety requirements. It’s why many of these structures are what’s
known as “5-over-1” or “1-plus-5”. That means there’s several levels of 
wood-framed construction which usually contain apartments and is known
as Type 5 in building code. That’s over one level with a concrete base which usually contains commercial space or
parking, known as Type 1. The light-frame wood construction, flat windows,
and paneling around the building are all ways to build as affordably as possible. And that means you're able to build 
more affordable housing. I think a lot of the time people 
don't understand that in order to get affordable housing, the actual
components of the building have to be cheap to develop and to construct. The results can be bland and look artificial but that authenticity problem is an old one. In this book, "The Invention of 
Brownstone Brooklyn" Suleiman Osman writes about 
the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn a design that today, is widely considered
to be deeply authentic to New York. But in the 19th century, compared to the mostly
wooden homes which predated them critics actually dismissed brownstones as
"modern and artificial”. They called them out as “products 
of the mechanical age” ”poorly built and subject to decay” 
with a “dehumanizing monotony”. Sound familiar? Comments in a lot of those Tik Tok videos,
they say things like, "Oh, it looks mass-produced. They look phony." I mean, that's literally the exact same language
that was being used in the 1900s to talk about the brownstones. That building we mentioned earlier 
in Camden, New Jersey was built using low-income housing tax credits. It has 245 units, geared towards seniors and families making less than 60 percent of
the area’s median income. It’s easy to see why the construction of
affordable housing like this is a good thing but what about the new, market rate buildings
that service middle and higher-income people? They’ve come to symbolize displacement. Or the idea that existing residents could
be forced, involuntarily, to move out. Often for reasons like rent increases or eviction. Since developers like to build in places where
prices are already rising new buildings tend to correlate with those
increased rents and displacement. But a growing number of researchers have tried
to find out whether these new buildings  are the cause of displacement. They were testing “the demand effect” or the idea that the new buildings increase
demand for the neighborhood which in turn causes rent hikes 
that force people to leave. But the research suggests the opposite. An overwhelming “supply effect”. Where increasing the supply of new buildings even if they are market rate made housing less scarce and decreased rents
and risks of displacement especially in the areas closest 
to the new buildings. New housing freed up space within a neighborhood for new residents to move in without 
taking up existing homes. And it also meant when they moved 
from theirpast homes they freed up housing units 
in those neighborhoods as well. But here’s the thing: less displacement was happening 
near new construction but it didn’t necessarily mean 
less gentrification was happening. Because gentrification and displacement 
aren’t the same thing. While displacement happens to people, 
gentrification happens to a place. When an area experiences demographic change typically going from lower income tenants
to higher income ones shown here in the darker green. Over time, demographic shifts in the neighborhood
could still occur not because existing residents were displaced but for other reasons: maybe people decided
to move to more desirable neighborhoods or some passed away. And the research suggests when that happened residents were more likely to be replaced
by richer people. Meaning gentrification was happening, 
but without forced displacement. So, to reduce both displacement and gentrification you need more market rate and affordable housing like that building in New Jersey. Affordable housing, along with policies 
like rental assistance preserve income diversity, making sure those
with lower incomes can always live in a particular neighborhood. If there is a scarcity of a product, 
we know this in every market: when there is not enough of something, the
only people who get anything are rich people. And so you have to make sure that there's
enough for everyone at every level. But there’s one very big obstacle to building
housing for everyone, everywhere. Wealthy neighborhoods across the US are really
good at blocking new housing developments. Take a look at this map of New Haven, Connecticut compared to the nearby, wealthier town of
Woodbridge, Connecticut. When we take a look at local zoning laws and
where multi-family developments  are allowed in these areas. There’s virtually no land in Woodbridge
zoned for them. Single-family zoning laws block 
the vast majority of apartments  or affordable housing in this area. When you have political power concentrated
in the hands of very few wealthy homeowners and they say, "We're not going to allow 
housing here." Of course, there's going to be 
an unequal distribution of housing. In 2020, after a 4-unit multi-family building
was proposed in Woodbridge a group of residents even created these flyers
saying “Do we want this next door?” Pitting single-family homes against multi-family
buildings. And this kind of conflict happens everywhere from Woodbridge, to Soho, to San Francisco. In some places, activists have found a way
to use the language of gentrification against changing zoning laws. For example, in response to a 
proposed California bill  pushing for more housing near areas with transit including a specific percentage 
of affordable housing a group called Livable California said building more housing would add 
“jet fuel to a gentrification crisis.” They see the power of this rhetoric and they are using it as a tool to muddle
the debate to make it seem like building new housing is actually going to
create displacement  when we know what creates displacement is not building new housing. That's what's so kind of dangerous 
about this entire debate. We have gotten to a place where 
the actual policy solution is seen as part of the problem. In bobsleigh, luge and skeleton, collectively
known as the sliding sports crashes are an inevitability. "... Tearing down the hill!" "Oh my goodness!" It's traumatic. It's aggressive. It's anything that is extreme times ten. To think that somebody has gone to the Olympics
without having had an episode like a crash is very unlikely. Christina Smith is a trailblazer 
in the sport of bobsled. "...one of the most experienced drivers in
the field..." But in the years after she retired, she started
to experience troubling symptoms. Long-term, short-term memory loss, anxiety,
fear, depression. The inability to really stay focused 
and have emotional regulation. Eventually, she was diagnosed with 
a traumatic brain injury even though she’d never once 
been diagnosed with a concussion. Just the fact that I was losing something
of myself that I didn't realize potentially could have been contributed 
to the affects of  the multiple runs, multiple vibrations, the concussions that actually I'd never been
diagnosed with my entire career. There's growing evidence that, when it comes
to the sliding sports catastrophic concussions like 
the ones you get from crashing might not be the main driver of brain injury. Microconcussions are. Concussions so mild they can often go unnoticed and so common that they have 
a special name: sled head. To understand how sled head happens, you have
to know how concussions work. Your brain is soft with a jello-like consistency. Normally, it’s pretty well protected 
by layers of bone and tissue. But if your head gets hit or shook around
or just moves too fast, your brain can shift inside 
its protective casing bumping up against the sides of your skull. When that happens, the fragile neurons that
make up your brain can stretch or even tear. And when they tear, they release toxins that
can harm other neurons triggering a chain reaction of damage, and
leaving your brain vulnerable to further injury. Concussions are serious and come with 
scary side effects. But for the most part they heal 
with time and rest. The problem is not all concussions are obvious. Hey, if you got out of that sled and you're
just a little bit dizzy and then all of a sudden it's like, "No, I'm good." And you're full of adrenaline. And essentially if you have the will and the
desire to get back up and dust yourself off 
and do it again, so be it. But even a mild concussion is a concussion. And if it’s not given time to heal, the
damage can become more serious and cause more enduring symptoms. That kind of scattered brain and, you know,
inability to focus. So a lot of those little things... It’s all those little things that 
make up sled head. From the outside, sledding sports look smooth. A graceful, if fast, run down an icy track. But, inside a sled, things look and feel 
very different. Sledding is, in a way, inherently brain rattling. Even during the smoothest ride, 
a sledder is tossed about.  Shaken, bumped, whipped around corners. It's so extreme that if you haven't 
gone to the bathroom if you haven't blown your nose and if you
haven't stretched you have no idea what's going to 
happen to you. There's a lots of bouncing and 
people moving quickly. Their heads are going everywhere. Peter McCarthy is a neurophysiologist whose research focuses on how various forces
effect our bodies. He told me that sledding is a lot like a very,
very intense roller coaster. They're rickety and they've got lots of vibrations
and they've got high g-turns. G, as in g-force. Roughly, the force of gravity 
or acceleration on an object. Going for a stroll on earth, you’re experiencing
1 g-force. Riding an average roller coaster, around 5. Military fighter pilots average 9 gs. And the average football player receives 103
gs when hit during a game. The g-force of an average concussion 
is hard to measure or generalize but one researcher found that most diagnosed
ones have a g-force between 85 and 95. And, when another researcher 
measured the g-force of his own skeleton ride at the 
Whistler Olympic track at its highest, here, he recorded 84.5 g-force. That spike only happened for a few milliseconds. But spikes like it can happen with every run. And then there are the vibrations. Long term exposure to vibrations can lead
to a range of serious health issues affecting basically all of your body’s systems. There are even international guidelines about how much vibration someone should encounter
in a given period. And when Peter attached devices 
on the helmets, sleds, and backs of skeleton athletes to measure how much they
were encountering preliminary results showed that 
doing just one run could potentially put you over the limit. Sled Head is a phenomenon which seems to be
neurological in nature. And as a consequence ,we're thinking maybe
vibrations are getting through into the brain and that could be the cause of it. All racing sports deal with both g-force and
vibration to a certain extent but normally they get dispersed 
throughout your body. When you’re in a sled there's not much between
your brain and the vibrations. I was so close and low that I had chips of paint and scratches on the side of
my helmet from just tapping going all the way down the track. And so, you know, of course, I get out and
I haven't had a crash or nothing would happen but that just built up over time like a snowball. Years after she stopped sledding, 
Christina went to a specialist who ran a test called a quantitative electroencephalogram,
or qEEG. The beauty of this is that it can actually
see where your brain is firing, not firing at all, or partially or too much. When doctors analyzed her results, 
they saw this: roughly, the red shading correlates 
to over-activation. In a brain that hadn’t experienced trauma
those areas would be white. It was like a a-ha moment for me. It really highlighted, you know what I had
been going through and I was no longer  hard on myself. It was very common to overlook our own experiences
because we're always about the show must go on. There’s only so much we can learn from 
one person’s brain scans. Or the data from a few runs. It needs an objective assessment 
of the discipline, basically. Because if we just allow people 
to keep doing this we don't know if it's safe for them to do
that with the intensity they're doing it. One way to better look after sliding athletes
is to require them to wear a monitor. A simple sensor system could
detect an impact and have that per person immediately 
flagged for treatment and possibly sitting out until 
they've recovered fully. And there are some exciting developments 
in tech like virtual reality training 
that reduces ice time. Or an FDA-approved collar that increases 
blood volume in your brain giving it better cushioning. In the future, new materials that could 
dampen vibration in the sled. But the federation that controls sliding sports
needs to make these available. Or even mandatory. And I feel that that's something that hopefully
a way forward, though, who knows? It depends on international bodies to make
these legislative changes and start looking at their athletes as actually
things that keep the body alive. The athletes are the lifeblood of any sport and you need to protect them, in my mind. Tucked between the Alps, at the border of
Italy and Switzerland is a restaurant. For tourists visiting from around the world,
the Rifugio Guide del Cervino offers a break from winter sports for food,
drinks, lodging and as this reviewer called it: 
“A great Italian experience.” But something unexpected is happening here. The nearby Theodul Glacier is melting. And as it does this little Italian ski lodge is on the verge
of moving into Switzerland. Most of Italy's land border follows the watershed
along the Alps. There is this imaginary line  that divides the water that falls in the Mediterranean Sea in the south. Or in the north, into the Black Sea 
via the Dunabe. Or to the North Sea. That’s Marco Ferrari. He wrote a book about this border 
with architect Andrea Bagnato and visual designer Elisa Pasqual. This watershed line traces many of the 
highest peaks of the Alps  forming a natural border between countries. Much of it is marked by over 8,000
boundary stones like these. Some of which have been around 
since the 16th century. But in the most rugged terrain, where physical
markers are few and far between. Swiss, Italian, and Austrian cartographic
agencies have long maintained official border records with 
meticulous measurements and annotated pictures like these. Some of these areas are on top of glaciers. Their surfaces are too reflective for satellites which are often used to measure borders. The work by the surveyors is done manually. So every few years, there's 
a commission of surveyors composed of members of both countries that actually walk the border and
look how it has changed. As early as the 1920s, surveyors noticed a
“slow but progressive” shrinking among glaciers, and that “some had disappeared". But by the 1990s, it became clear that summer
melt had outpaced winter accumulation. The surveyors realized that the glaciers were
melting and not accumulating ice anymore. This kind of cyclical change in the shape
and geometry of the watershed became  more and more permanent. And as glaciers shifted so did the watershed and so did the border. Here’s what that looks like. On many Alpine peaks, a glacier ridge forms
the watershed boundary line and thus the national border. But as those glaciers melt, their highest
point might shift often dozens of meters away. If they melt far enough, they even reveal
underlying rock peaks which then become the border line. These black X’s mark the old national boundary
between Italy and Switzerland. But if you trace today’s national boundary
and compare it to old maps you can see all the places where 
the boundary line has moved. In the most extreme case yet in the Alps shifts in the Theodul Glacier moved the border
150 meters. That put this Italian ski lift on Swiss soil. And the Rifugio Guide del Cervino 
might be next. Typically when countries renegotiate borders,
there’s a careful process to make sure that neither country gains territory 
at the other’s expense. But recently, Italy signed a new type of agreement. First with Austria in 2006, and then with
Switzerland in 2009. That recognized the Alps as a “mobile border". Acknowledging that the border was subject
to changes in the natural world  outside of those countries’ control. Fortunately, the Rifugio is 
the only inhabited place along this shifting border. And if it becomes Swiss, it’ll be subject
to Swiss law, taxes, and customs. They might have to change their wall plugs. But for most nearby residents, the changes
won’t mean much. But if we think about different areas of the
world where similar processes are happening for example, the Himalaya or the Andes, these
is a completely different geopolitical situations in which also the scale of the phenomenon
is much, much bigger, the histories are much more conflicted. In the Himalayas, China and India 
disagree about their border and have fought several times over it as it
continues to melt and shift. And in the Andes, Chile and Argentina have
long disagreed about their own melting border. As climate change warms the planet 
and moves water-based borders these conflicts could worsen. Rivers, which make up over a third of the
length of all international land boundaries will be subject to extreme events 
that can change their course. Coastlines will give way to rising seas affecting exclusive economic zones, where
a country’s sovereignty  extends into the ocean. And glaciers, like in the Alps, 
will continue to melt. The alpine mobile border is almost like 
a laboratory a prototype of a condition that will happen
more and more in a lot of different parts of the world. Keep going! This is a picture from the 
1930’s of Katherine Dewey. An American bobsledder. Back then, bobsleds looked kind of 
like a toboggan crossed with a go-kart. Much different than the sleds 
we see today. Dewey often competed as a pilot, or 
driver, in 4-person bobsledding events. And in 1940, she won first place 
in a national championship. And after that, women were banned 
from driving four-men in sleds. Like banned, you know, because 
whatever our uterus would fall out we wouldn't be able to have 
babies, who the heck knows.  Yes... who knows.  Dewey was never allowed to 
compete in the Olympics.  In fact, it wasn’t until 2002 
that female bobsledders were invited to participate 
in the Games. But only in one event. Since 1932, men have had two. But this year a new women-only 
event was introduced.  The monobob. So, does this event actually 
level the playing field? There's three components to race. There's the driving, the equipment, 
and the push.   Three main components to bobsledding 
and you do not mention braking at all. From the outside, all types of  bobsledding 
look straight forward. Athletes push a sled, jump in, and let  gravity 
pull them down an icy, windy track at speeds averaging 135 kilometers per hour. After 4 runs, the times are added  together 
and the fastest sled wins. The run can look smooth to spectators but inside the sled it’s a 
brutal and technical event. Like being put in a trashcan 
and just thrown off a hill.   Yes, bobsled is terrifying. Bobsled athletes traditionally competed 
in teams of two or four.  The women in pairs. The men in pairs and quartets. The person at the front is the pilot. They navigate the sled down the 
track using a pulley system. If you want to go left, you pull towards the left. If you want to go right, 
you pull towards the right. But they also have to make sure their 
navigating the run as smoothly as possible. You want to make sure that you're 
not driving so hard that you're cutting the ice and causing 
all this friction on the ice.  Sleds move so quickly down the track, 
that pilots have to rely on muscle memory,  You have to make sure you memorize and 
know each and every track as a pilot.   They're all different, you know. Some have 20 curves, some have 15, some 
have 14, the curves go different ways. In a 4-person sled, the two 
center athletes are push-athletes named because they help 
push the sled at the start.  And the athlete at the back 
is the brakeman but...  The brakeman does not pull 
the brakes on the way down.   Their job is to help push the sled and get 
it up to speed at the beginning of the race. Get in and get down. Where their head, as low as possible, 
aerodynamic as possible.  And... maybe pray? All the way down, just please don't crash, 
please don't crash, please don't crash.  Oh, and pull the brake at the end. Despite the similarities, 
the 3 types of bobsledding are much different in terms 
of equipment and technique. The four-man sled kind of feels 
more like driving a Mack truck. The two-man is probably more like a sports car and monobob is probably in this 
comparison more like a motorcycle on ice. All sleds have specific minimum 
and maximum weight limits. The heavier the sled, the faster you go, but 
the harder it is to get going at the beginning. There are a few other regulations for safety. Like how thick and warm the runners can be the overall size and material used 
to make the sled. But other than that, 2 and 4-person bob teams are allowed to adjust their 
sleds to maximize aerodynamics. It's kind of like NASCAR. They have rules and regulations 
for every bit of the sled. But of course, every mechanic tries to 
find the gray area and bend that rule. And bending the rules is a lot easier 
when money is on your side. Top teams can pay engineers to 
research and design faster sleds. They tap into technology from Formula 1 
racing and even aerospace engineering. When all is said and done, the price tag 
for a sled could be over $100,000 USD. Previous years, we were in BMW two-man 
sleds and they cost over $250,000 each with research and development 
and people like that. The technological advantage speaks for itself. If you look at a list of teams that have medaled 
at the Olympics for bobsledding over the years it gets repetitive very quickly with 5 countries really dominating 
the podium. So unless you can put that kind of money behind it you're going to be defeated before 
you even get to the starting blocks. But not for the monobob. The monobob, everybody has the exact same sled. A monobob sled costs around $15,000,
a much more affordable price tag. Not to mention countries only need to 
train and fund travel for a single athlete which makes the sport much more accessible. So in one way... It levels the playing field and it really just 
leaves the sport into pushing and driving. This has already proven to change the game. In the 2021 World Series athletes from 
Jamaica and Brazil both earned medals. But... The downside of the monobob is it only gives 
one more medal opportunity to the pilot. Which means women still only get half
the opportunity to medal that men get. And for us, especially in the US,   we have a lot of really great athletes 
that come into the sport year after year. But without that opportunity to medal again at 
the Games, you know, we lose a lot of people. Plus the amount of work that goes into moving   and prepping sleds behind the scenes 
requires more than a single athlete. It's a really a team effort and 
that's what kind of breaks my heart. We can't do this without them. But you're not going to see them on the podium. Adding the monobob did give 
women another opportunity. But there’s no denying that 
it’s not equal, not yet. But the sport itself hasn’t 
ever been equal. Not really. It does open a door for more participation. Do I think it's right? No, but I just don't 
think there's enough for the men to even start   to even have a fight for the women. Bobsledding prices are so high   that many nations can’t even afford to 
send a 4-person men's team to compete. I would have loved to see it for the women 
and you know them trying to go for four-man. I think it would have just been really 
boring because it would have been the   same countries winning every weekend, 
the ones that can afford it, right? So it’s a step in the right direction, and for now at least for the monobob, may the best woman win. The year was 2006 and the Winter Olympics
was happening in Turin, Italy. A lot of pressure was on the 
American skater, Apolo Ohno for the 500 meter finals in 
short track speed skating. "But make no mistake about this and he said it:
I want to win." And it was like something I was deeply 
in pursuit of  having a perfect strategic race 
that would go my way. As he entered the final lap, he maintained
a strong lead. You're almost like a little bit out of control
because you want it so badly. But you're also maintaining composure to protect
your lane and your position. And he pulled it off. After that gold medal, Apolo Ohno was launched
into mainstream fame. He was in ads. He was on a Wheaties box. His bandana and facial hair became iconic. He competed on Dancing with the Stars... and
won. It was an awesome time. But as an athlete, those 41.93 seconds 
meant something else, too. And not because he was necessarily the fastest
skater going into the race but the smartest and the luckiest. Every single half a lap had to have occurred
in that way in order for me to have had the perfect race. Here’s how he did it. A short track race like Apolo Ohno’s 
can be broken down into 4 main parts. The first thing that went right was the start. In short track, 4 to 6 skaters all start 
on the same line. And take off in a free-for-all. Short track skaters don’t have designated
lanes during the race unlike long track skating 
or running events. Short track skaters aren’t racing the clock. They are only racing against each other. Which is why short track is all about the
way athletes interact: jostling for the right position on the rink,
trying not to fall and avoiding disqualifications 
from illegal contact. When skaters take off in the 500 meter event, 
they have one goal in mind: getting to the first turn first. Research shows that whoever leads in the first
turn in the 500 meter event is far more likely to win the race. The person in starting position 1 has the
shortest path to the first turn. But skaters in other positions with faster
starts could box position 1 in from the outside. Like the second position skater here, at the
2010 Winter Olympics. Today, short track starting positions 
are merit-based that means the fastest skater from earlier
rounds gets the first position. But at the time of the 2006 Olympics skater positions were computer-selected at
random which would happen right before a race. I'm in the locker room. I'm sharpening my skates. I'm getting ready. I hear this scream in the hallway. And it's one of my coaches... who told Apolo that he was selected 
for the first position. That stroke of luck and a fast start helped Apollo Ohno lead in that first turn and hold it the whole way. "He just gets the turn first." "This is exactly where Apolo wants to be..." A short track rink is an oval 
that measures 111.12 meters. This shape means that skaters are turning
nearly half the time. When they turn, it looks like this. It actually looks like it doesn't make sense. At the apex of a corner, skaters are turning
on an 8 meter radius. And can lean up to 22 degrees. So close to the ice, that their left gloved
hands graze it. One short track skater told me that at a speed of roughly 30 miles per hour, they
are pushing against a g-force equivalent to 2-3 times their body weight. Like doing a really hard squat: hunched over,
at an angle, on one leg. Which is exactly how they train for turns,
like these videos that British short track athletes posted online show. In the 2006 race, Apolo Ohno used his
strength to keep his turns really tight. Meaning I would hug the middle of the apex
of the corner all the way to the seventh block. So there actually was no position 
to pass on the inside. There are two common ways of executing a pass. Both require using the forces of the turn
and the right timing. One is from the inside. The passing skater uses the draft of the skater
in front of them to pick up speed, then pulls wider on the turn, to slingshot
out of the turn and overtake the skater in front on the inside. Like this pass from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The other, trickier pass, is on the outside. The reason why it's so much more difficult
to pass on the outside is because you need to have significantly more speed. An outside pass starts at the apex using the speed coming out of the turn 
to sprint past the lead skater as you enter the next turn. Like this outside pass also at 
the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It's a confidence crusher. If you pass someone and they know that you
passed them easily you're signaling to them, "Oh, by the way,
the four years of training you just did? It just wasn't enough." "You're just not fast enough." "I'm sorry." When you’re in the lead, picking a track
pattern is how you keep from getting passed. One common track pattern is the diamond which
defends against passes on the outside. Or the peanut pattern, which defends against
inside passes. The first three laps, Apolo Ohno did a mix
of patterns to keep anyone in the pack  from picking up speed. "This is really a perfect position for Apolo,
he's taking it nice and easy..." So the idea was to kind of skate this track
pattern that was a little bit confusing to them where
they would second guess making a move. It’s like the person walking in front of you 
in the mall  that keeps stepping in front of you, 
no matter how fast you go. You have to restart your speed again. On the last two laps, Apolo Ohno 
kicked up the speed... "And here he goes. He's just kicking into gear..." ... and skated in a peanut pattern to prevent
an inside pass. I knew that the likelihood of someone 
passing me on the outside  in the 500 meters at the last two laps if I'm going 100 percent all out,
was very low. And so with two laps remaining, 
it's exactly what I did. The last element of short track is the hardest
to prepare for. The best way to illustrate this is another
one of Apolo’s races at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. This one is infamous in short track history. It was the 1,000 meter final and Apolo was skating against underdog  Australian skater, Steven Bradbury. I was the favorite to win that race. Nobody considered Stephen to even be 
in the running to medal. As the skaters approached the last lap, 
Apolo was in the lead and Steven Bradbury was far behind the pack until the last minute scramble, 
resulted in... this: "A total wipe out!" "And Bradbury wins!" "Four skaters go down..." Falls happen often in short track racing because of the fight for the best position
on the rink. And sometimes they are beyond 
a skater’s control. Which means, like other sports, bad luck 
can undermine the greatest skill. It also means resilience is a virtue 
in short track. You now have this like unique ability to either react and respond in a way that will
give you a stewed bitterness  for the rest of your life. Or you have to reset. Couldn't control that. I showed up as prepared as possible. Life and the universe had 
a different plan for me. If you’re Apolo Ohno, that plan was that,
4 years later, he would get his perfect race. No falls, or blunders, or passes. Just a good clean win. There's a lot of nerves and excitement you gain quite a bit of speed 
in a short period of time. So you start kind of getting like 
tunnel vision almost. And then when you get into the flying  you see the whole mountainside just open up. My name is Anders Johnson and I am the 
Women's World Cup coach for USA Nordic. He's also a 3 time Olympian 
in the sport of ski jump a sport that's all about using technique in
physics to fly as far as humanly possible. And doing that successfully all comes down
to this shape. 100 years ago, Olympic ski jumpers 
looked like this. Skis were held tightly in parallel. Hands in front of their face, kind of like 
a less posed version of Superman. By the 1950s, jumpers moved their arms back
and to the side. But they kept their skis in the same shape. Everyone did, because... The goal here is to fly farther
and with style. Farther because the further you land from
this line, the more points you get. And with style because judges award more points on top of your distance score, 
just for looking cool. And for a while, the best, coolest, most stylish
way to ski jump was this. In a straight, elegant line, with skis tight
underneath you. This parallel position helped athletes cut
through the air — quickly. It was the standard for decades. That is, until the 1980s. This Swedish guy named Jon Boklov. He struggled with keeping his skis parallel
but he noticed on some of the jumps that he, you know, opened up his skis a little
bit wider into a bigger v he was achieving longer distances. That’s because this position allows you
to catch a lot more air with your body  than this one. You have kind of two key parameters 
you're trying to optimize: how fast you're moving forward but also 
how fast you're moving down. Tess Saxton-Fox is an 
assistant aerodynamics professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My research is on the flow of air really close
to the surface of planes. Air flow is key to ski jumping to because... You want to go down as slowly as possible
once you're in the air because you want to stay aloft but you want to go forward 
as fast as you can. Surface area has a lot of power there. The parallel position has fairly low 
surface area. It makes the athlete as thin and small 
as possible. This is actually a pretty good 
aerodynamic shape if you're just trying to maximize 
your forward speed. You are lining up your body with the skis and so the air can go around the ski 
and the body at the same time in kind of the same little bubble that it
forms around you. And so that's good actually for reducing drag. What its not good at is resisting gravity. It doesn't do much to prevent you from 
falling through the air to the ground. In contrast, when athletes open their skis
up into a V they’re maximizing their surface area by allowing
air to directly push against their body. Instead of just trying to be like a bullet,
you're trying to be a wing. This position helps create something called
“lift.” Yeah, lift is a tricky concept. And it's an important concept, it's the basis
for, you know, flight. It’s what makes planes fly, 
what makes birds fly. The key is that as the air kind of 
moves over the body it kind of follows the shape of the body. So you'll see that they're at an angle. And that's actually really important. If you put your hand out the window of a car
and you put it straight it just pushes straight backwards. But if you put it on an angle, you can kind
of play with it, right? It'll actually push you up, push your hand
up and back. That's really what they're doing is they're putting themselves at an angle so
that they get a force that actually wants to push them up as well
as backwards. This 1995 paper from the 
Journal of Applied Biomechanics does a great job of showing this graphically. The researchers used computer simulations
to test out different ski styles. Most importantly the parallel style, which
they refer to as classic style and the V-style. The V-style generated much more lift. This extra lift means that athletes 
got more air time which in turn allows further distances 
and, ultimately, more points. When Jan Boklov first implemented the V-style it was ridiculed it for its ugly appearance. The Chicago Tribune described the switch 
as going from an “elegantly parallel position” to “resembling puppies leaping 
into a swimming pool.” And Jan lost style points because of it. "Here's the man with a unique style." While he travelled 78 meters in this 1988
jump, he only got 85.4 points. Denis McGrane of the US travelled 
the same distance but he used the classic method. He got 90.4 points. Somewhere along the lines in the early 90s,
people started to notice that it was effective. Other teams and other athletes kind of started
to test it a little bit. By the 1992 winter Olympics, 
the gold medal was given to Finnish skier Toni Nieminen, a 16-year-old
who used the V-style. He traveled 122 meters, beating every other
athlete on distance. And as more gold medals went to athletes who
used the V-style, the old style faded away. It sort of just became, you know, probably
one of the biggest progressions in the sport. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find an
athlete who doesn’t use V-style  or a variation on it. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t
still room to innovate on body shape. One thing that I would be curious about 
is doing a V the other way. So having the tips more closed and the back
more open. There's a lot of kind of research on the stability
of having that kind of a triangle shape. I would think it would be a very stable configuration. Bridgett and I recently took a trip to 
Rochester, New York. To recreate a photo from 1872. Alright. Turn just a little bit – that’s it, 
just like that. Only your eyes, look here. Okay. It’s very strange where she’s looking. This is Mark Osterman. I was the process historian at the 
George  Eastman Museum for 21 years. My specialty is understanding 
the technical evolution of photography from its inception 
all the way up to about 1900. He and his wife, France, have been 
teaching and practicing historic photo processes for over 30 years. Using the original reference manuals 
from the 1800s, the same chemicals, 
and the same cameras. Starting... now. The photo we’re here to recreate 
is this one of the widowed Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her dead husband,
US President Abraham Lincoln. Ghost is going to look slightly toward me
with the head down. That’s it. The image is the most famous work 
of William Mumler who claimed his camera could photograph 
the invisible spirits of dead loved ones was driven to the edge of ruin 
in a sensational criminal trial but got away with it. Because no one could figure out 
exactly how Mumler did it. So, we tried to. In the mid-1800s, technological breakthroughs
like photography and the telegraph were seen as something sort of... supernatural. For the first time, people could see 
true-to-life depictions of loved ones who weren’t there with them. And receive messages from hundreds
of miles away, instantaneously. So it was this sense that technology was shrinking
the distance between people. And so every time there was 
a new technology introduced during  this moment in American history it had spiritual repercussions. Peter Manseau is a scholar of American religious
history and author of several books. Including one about how photography’s rise
in the mid-1800s coincided with a new religious movement gaining
ground in the US and Europe: Spiritualism. The principle belief of Spiritualism was that
contact with the dead was possible if you had the right means. That connection was made through a “medium,” a person who claimed they could communicate
with the dead. From the beginning, many people suspected
spiritualist mediums to be frauds. Still, the movement grew to include thousands
— and, by some accounts, millions of Americans in the late 19th century. Including high-profile people, 
like Mary Todd Lincoln who turned to spiritualism to help process
the death of her son Willie, in 1862. During this period in American history, the need to reach the dead 
became more critical than ever. With the coming of the Civil War and with casualties on an order that Americans
had never experienced before, this hunger to communicate with 
the spirit world really took off. So when an unknown amateur photographer 
in Boston began developing photos that apparently included
apparitions of the dead it attracted the attention of the Spiritualists. William Mumler, an engraver by trade, had
been tinkering with photography in a studio owned by his eventual wife, Hannah:
a spiritualist medium and professional photographer. It seems to be the case that Hannah Stuart
taught William Mumler photography. According to Hannah, William accidentally
captured the spirit of his dead cousin while taking a practice self-portrait at a time he said he was alone 
in the studio in 1862. And he soon was mobbed with 
Spiritualists in Boston who were eager to see if 
he could do this again. And, as it turns out, he could – always
with Hannah nearby. She was the experienced photographer here. Mumler became the public face, but she knew
what she was doing. The Mumlers took photo after photo that, miraculously, revealed that a spirit of a lost loved one,
or sometimes a total stranger was in the room with the sitter. Even though the Mumlers’ spirit forms were
usually faint and out of focus people coming in for portraits often reported
that they recognized the spirits in the photos as the very family members they were hoping
to connect with. Spirit photography seemed to be the next level
of connection to the afterlife. You no longer needed to be there in the presence
of the medium. You could take these photographs with you
anywhere and say, “See, this is real.” And like all things Spiritualists did spirit photography brought its fair share
of skeptics and people trying to figure out the trick. You have a lot of people from the 
photographic community in Boston  who were seeking out his services specifically to show that he was not 
who he said he was. A variety of them went and tried to follow
him through the full photographic process. And no one could ever figure out exactly what
he was doing and how he was doing it. But enough accusations of fakery in Boston
eventually prompted the Mumlers to shut the studio down and relocate. Mumler arrives in New York several years after
he became notorious in Boston. Maybe enough time had elapsed that his name
would no longer mean anything. New York City at this time was where all the
top American photographers and galleries were. And, starting in 1869, where a spirit photographer
from Boston had opened up shop. And he was really only operating there 
for a matter of months before he ran afoul with the law. Mumler was arrested on fraud charges 
and thrown in jail. His trial was written up in New York newspapers and appeared on the front page 
of Harper’s Weekly which called it “remarkable and 
without precedent." He was just beloved by the media because 
he was such a colorful character in making such outrageous claims – 
that just made great copy. The trial was kind of a circus. The prosecution brought in P.T. Barnum of Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show 
on Earth” fame as a key witness and self-described 
“expert of humbug.” P.T. Barnum always had a problem 
with Spiritualists because he felt that they were 
taking advantage of grief and he felt that it was going too far. So he made it very clear that he was happy to
see Mumler caught and to see him go down. But there was one small problem for the prosecution. None of those experts, all of whom followed
Mumler through his process none of them could say, “This is exactly
what Mumler did, and I saw him do it.” The prosecution listed 9 different ways 
Mumler  might have done his trick. Some of them pretty elaborate, like placing
a “microscopic picture of the spirit” inside the camera through a screw hole. Or a secret light that impressed the ghost
onto the glass plate when it’s coated with photosensitive chemicals inside this tank. They argued that his photos must be explainable
by at least one of the methods. And that Hannah Mumler was somehow involved possibly as a distraction. One of the simplest ways 
to get a spirit photo then and now is a technique called 
“Sir David Brewster’s ghost” where the “spirit” is only in frame 
for a few seconds while the main sitter holds still 
for the rest of the exposure. In our case, nearly a full minute. Leaving a faint ghostly form behind the sitter. And we did that. We did the easy way first, just to show 
how that can be done. But this can’t be how Mumler did it in front
of skeptical photographers watching his every move. If you're going to try to show this as real
spirit photography in front of witnesses you can't have somebody dressed up as a ghost
and walk in. Even though the prosecution demonstrated that
spirit photos can be made through trick photography they couldn't confidently identify 
Mumler's method and therefore failed to prove 
beyond reasonable doubt  that his pictures were not of spiritual origin. And Mumler was acquitted. So how did he do it? Mark thinks he has an answer and agreed 
to try his theory out with Bridgett and me. First, Mark took a regular portrait 
with no ghost the kind Mumler would have been observed doing. Then, he carefully outlined my position on
the ground glass of the camera. Bridgett dressed in a white suit, and we covered
her face and hands with white powder and Mark created a separate negative 
of the ghost. Lining it up so the hands landed in the right
place: on my shoulders. And you can see the parts of it have been
scraped away so that when I put them together they're exactly in the place 
I want them to be. But it’s the next step that’s the most
crucial to this potential method. Because it's in the printing where he's making
the magic happen. Mumler – like most portrait photographers
at the time – printed his photos on albumen. Specially treated paper, that, when placed
against the glass negative in this printing box and exposed to light
results in a positive print. Mark thinks that, after passing the original
negative around to show witnesses there was no trickery 
with a bit of sleight of hand Mumler could have slipped the ghost negative
underneath the portrait negative. Then in front of their eyes you then put it
into the printing frame like so. As long as I keep that against something dark,
you don't see the secondary ghost negative because white will photograph as dark 
on the negative which will then be white on the final print. When Mumler opens it up to show the final
positive print the ghost is there. With this potential method, the Mumlers could
have had a collection of already-made “spirit” negatives, and
could line up the sitter with a “ghost” that matched the general appearance 
of their lost loved one. It should be noted that Mark’s technique concealing one negative and printing 
the two of them simultaneously isn’t listed as one of the 9 methods the
prosecution against Mumler came up with. Though the prosecution was 
probably right in saying  that the Mumlers used several different methods going with whichever process 
was least capable of detection. That 1869 Harper’s Weekly story 
about Mumler’s trial  predicted that now that he’d 
gotten away with it he was probably going to 
keep taking spirit photographs pointing out that “he has been prosecuted,
and thus extensively advertised.” And they were right. In fact, the Mumlers made what is arguably
their most celebrated work  after the trial, 
from 1869 onward including this one of Mary
Todd Lincoln in 1872. And this one of prominent abolitionist 
William Lloyd Garrison in 1874. Mumler even ran regular ads in the spiritualist
newspaper “Banner of Light" for a mail-in service in which a client could
send a photo of themselves to the Mumlers and receive a photo of the photo, 
plus the presence of a spirit. Because for the people that did believe, 
like Mary Todd Lincoln the spirits they saw in these images 
brought them a unique form of comfort. As far as she was concerned, it was proof
that her late husband was still there  still a presence in her life. Proof of something that she always believed. Mumler insisted for the rest of his life 
that his photos were authentic and proved the existence of an afterlife. In the opening line of his memoir, 
published in five parts in “Banner of Light” in 1875, he wrote
that his spirit photographs "contributed evidences of a future existence” And, though persecuted, he was satisfied at having been “a humble instrument  in the hands of the invisible host 
that surrounds us.” If you want to read first hand accounts news reports from the 1860s 
about spirit photography  and Mumler's memoirs: the best and most often cited resource
for all things Mumler  is this book, The Strange Case of William Mumler, 
Spirit Photographer, by Louis Kaplan who I also interviewed for this episode.  As more researchers are digging into 
Mumler's sort of murky story  one thing is starting to become clear:  that Hannah Mumler, aka Helen F. Stuart,
is likely the mastermind behind the man and has been credited as the true inventor 
of spirit photography in this fascinating research paper
written by Felicity Tsering Chödron Hamer. Both of those resources and more
are linked in the description of this video. And this is the final episode 
of Darkroom season 3! This season took us to a lot of
amazing places and I want to give a huge thanks
to all of our sources who generously gave us their time 
and knowledge to help bring you these stories. You can watch every Darkroom episode 
from this season and the first two season in the full playlist which is also linked in the description. Thanks for watching
and see you next time.  It’s 1960 and look how happy Sharon,
and Karen, and Joey are. And Bob has completely forgotten the horrors
of the second World War. They are happy because of this glass door. But to understand doors 
like the ones sold here you have to go to the patent application— You know what? Because when Admiral Richard Byrd went to
Antarctica in 1939 Science News reported that 
he adorned his lab with non-frosting window panes. And newspapers around the country 
shared the picture. But this technology had a far greater impact than helping Arctic researchers 
study cute penguins. A new type of window enabled everything from paradisal patios to a change in skyscrapers from ones that look like this 
to ones that look like this. And in this case, the breakthrough had a name. Thermopane changed Bob’s world. I was just curious, what attracted you to
write about this and research this topic? When I've told people, oh yeah, I'm doing
a research project on insulated glass. You know, the response is always like, 
oh, what? The reality is that it changed the way that
we did building enclosures, radically and in a very, very short period of time. The way that the building interiors were illuminated
for hundreds, thousands of years  was natural daylight. Or, you know, you had to burn something basically
to be able to see inside at night. When electricity came along in the 1870s,
1880s, that changes the formula. But not all the way, right. Electricity is still expensive for decades. And so you still have these very, very large
windows to bring daylight especially into offices. One thing I was reminded of, I did this 
one little series on old movie studios, like in the silent era. And before they really got the lighting down it's exactly what you're talking about because
they all look like greenhouses. Because they just have to adapt to the situation of not being able to have powerful enoughlight. That affects the architect’s aesthetic at
the time, is what you're saying. But there's a real environmental penalty there because the glass is a pretty good insulator,
but the problem is that it has to be so thin to see through that you lose all of the heat in the building
during the winter or you pick it all up in the summer. So glass is both necessary, but also a problem. As electricity got cheaper and more places
started using heating and air conditioning large windows kinda went out of style. In 1931, the Chicago Tribune wrote about architects
laughing at the idea of glass walls. They were “not feasible” because glass
was a “great conductor of heat and cold”. But people still wanted to see outside. Glass blocks like these were one solution
- they insulated well. As a plus, they offered privacy. But you couldn’t see out them clearly 
like real windows. So there has to be a wall between Bob and his children. Instead of watching them play he’s forced to ponder the unspeakable things
he did during the war. But in 1934 Libby Owens Ford Glass Company annnounced a new glass process they acquired  from a refrigeration engineer 
in Milwaukee. This engineer realizes that if you can double
the glass, right. And between those two layers of glass, take out all of the humid air and replace it 
with dry air with all the water taken out. You can get not only the insulating value
of the two pieces of glass but that thin layer of air in between 
does a really, really good job of preventing heat from jumping from 
one pane of glass to the next. Builders are chasing something called R-value. It’s a measure of insulation. Higher = more insulation. That pink insulation in your wall, 
it might have a really high R-value. A pane of glass is down at 1. Thermopane doubled that at more than 2
and it was still transparent. Newspapers report that they 
extend the line and soon that double pane glass 
was down in Antarctica. And Thermopane salesmen were claiming 
Admiral Byrd said it kept his lab 75 degrees Fahrenheit 
behind the windows. Though the seal required some reworking 
over the next decade thermopane changed the possibilities for architects. Thermopane gets going, but then 
competitors do start up pretty quickly. So it becomes a competitive marketplace 
for  this type of dual system. Pittsburgh plate glass, which is one of their
big competitors comes up with a slightly different way of
doing it. And so they patent that and they market it
as “Twindow” because it has two layers of glass. I would say by the 1960s, if you're putting a big window into any 
residential or office building other than, a very, very temperate climate, you're probably just doing insulated glass
almost by default. Today, you can find triple pane windows 
and thin glass coatings like “Low-E Glass” that have advanced
the same idea. They can bump up that R-value to above 3. At the same time, builders worry about 
all the glass walls we’ll need to replace, often from seals
that are breaking down. But the Thermopane revolution really did change
how people work and live. The residential advertising through this was always a sliding glass door, looking out
onto very verdant landscape which is basically saying, you know, here's
a way of connecting your inside world and your outside world. I noticed this blanket of air phrase 
a couple of times. Even though means very, very broad, wide open
glass window you're sort of cuddled up in a blanket. "The family at home is enjoying the convenience
and the functional beauty of walls of glass." "Merging room with room, blending inside with
outside." Taking away the barrier between the inside
and the outside is kind of socially and culturally, what a
lot of these mid-century modern homes were all about. Being able to see all of your stuff. Thermopane was a way to 
stop staring at the past. And start seeing the future. I guess this is by Pittsburgh Plate Glass
Company too. Is that kind of a different category? Spandrel usually refers to the solid panel
between the transparent ones. And it does two things. It covers up the edge of the floor plate,
which is usually you know, thick and kind of sloppy concrete. But for a long time — and this is a whole
other rabbit hole — but for a long time, these glass curtain walls are running a foul of kind of old fashioned
fire codes that say it needs to have a three foot, usually
three foot brick wall between one window and the next, and so way
they got around that, like behind the dark green panels in this building, there's probably a brick wall, but they're
putting a piece of opaque glass  in front of it to give you the illusion of an all glass facade Right, which was surprisingly like a fairly common
thing. "This is a long term war." "This is a different type of enemy 
then we’re used to." "And we're adjusting our thinking 
to the new type of enemy." Days after the 9/11 attacks, 
President George W. Bush launched the global war on terror. In October 2001, he sent the military 
to invade Afghanistan and hunt down members of al-Qaeda
and its ally, the Taliban.  It also offered cash rewards to anyone 
who would help capture a terrorist.  Often enough money to change lives.  So, many in Afghanistan and Pakistan
took advantage of the offer and turned hundreds of men over
often with little evidence. The US sent those men to secret prisons 
called black sites.  Where they interrogated and tortured them. But within a month, they started searching
for a larger, permanent prison  to consolidate all these prisoners.   Eventually settling on this old Navy base
in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.  In January 2002, the first detainees 
began arriving. One of them was Moath al-Alwi who spent the
next two decades in this prison because the US government deemed him 
too dangerous to be set free. But they never charged him with a crime.  And he’s not alone.  Hundreds of men were imprisoned in Guantánamo.  Few were charged with a crime.  Some were tortured.  And none received a fair trial.  It’s a prison that's operated outside 
the bounds of law.  So, how did the US get away with this? And why is Guantánamo Bay still open? There are two myths about the people 
who were picked up. One is that they are all 
hardened, capable terrorists.  The other is that they were all innocent shepherds. This is Dan Fried. He worked in the US foreign service for over
40 years  and was assigned to Guantanamo in 2009. The conclusion I had is that there was 
kind of a bell curve.  At one low end, there were actually 
hardened terrorists. Like this man, Osama bin-Laden’s 
personal secretary.   There were others that were sometimes petty
criminals and drug dealers. Not great people, but not criminal masterminds,
not terrorists.  And the top of the bell curve were people
just a little more involved than what I just described. At the other end were people who were swept
up and shouldn't have been there at all. Like a group of Uigher men. Members of a mainly Muslim ethnic group who
were fleeing persecution in China. And they wound up in al-Qaeda camps and 
we didn't know what to do with them and so they ended up in Guantánamo.  In fact, many detainees were put in Guantánamo
based on little evidence.  Yet Bush officials often described them all
as terrorist.  "I mean these are people who would gnaw through
hydraulic lines of the back of a C-17  to bring it down.” "Very, very dangerous people." By 2003, there were nearly 700 
Guantánamo detainees  and virtually none of them were 
charged with a crime.  "The American flag flies again 
over our embassy in Kabul." "Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantánamo Bay." The Bush administration chose Guantánamo Bay 
largely because of its unique location. It was under US control, but it wasn’t technically
inside the US. So, they claimed US law wouldn’t apply to
the detainees held here. If they put them in a US prison, 
they'd have to either charge them with a crime  and put them on trial or release them. In other words, under US law, prisoners 
would have ways to get out. For bad reasons, they didn't trust 
the criminal justice system. It gives too many rights to the prisoners. There was a sense that the old rules 
had to be thrown out. The US also claimed that international law
didn’t apply to these detainees either. Even though 196 countries, including the US,
signed the Geneva Conventions: a set of laws protecting prisoners of war. But for those laws to apply, 
the US would have to define the detainees  as prisoners of war. Then they couldn’t interrogate them. And would have to release them as soon 
as the conflict ends. We didn't want to give them those rights because
we were so fearful of a new terrorist attack. We wanted to interrogate and frankly  some parts of the US government 
interrogated through torture. I mean, that's—fact. So instead of charging them as criminals 
or calling them prisoners of war the US made up a new term. Unlawful enemy combatants. The US claimed it could hold “unlawful,
enemy combatants” without charges in Guantánamo, indefinitely. And the detainees couldn’t challenge 
it in court. But the US could prosecute them, in a new
court system, run entirely by the military. These courts were designed to be complex,
with rules that heavily favored the US government. For example, the government 
could introduce evidence  without showing it to the detainee first. This made Guantánamo Bay prison 
a “legal blackhole”. The original sin is that we created 
an institution outside  and designed to be outside the rule of law. "No more torture in our name." "And shut it down and release everybody." "Justice for Guantánamo detainees, now a
core celebra among human rights activists." World leaders, allied governments, and 
US politicians began calling for the closure of Guantánamo. Plus, Bush officials recognized that it was
actually hurting the war on terror. Gitmo was also a great recruiting tool. There were all these terrorist videos 
about how evil the Americans were and we have to fight back because they imprison
people without any legal basis. They torture people. Eventually, the Supreme Court stepped in. In a series of decisions, the Court ruled
that Guantánamo detainees were entitled to challenge their imprisonment in court. It was clear the US would soon have to let
many of these detainees out. So, the Bush administration reviewed every
case and set up a transfer process. Pretty simple process. Yeah. Move them back. Mainly to Afghanistan. Nobody asked a lot of questions. Over a 5 year period, the Bush administration
transferred 532 detainees  and only convicted 3 through the military courts. 5 detainees died in the prison. Four of them were reportedly suicides. That left 242 in Guantánamo when he left office  with some hope that the prison would close. "Guantánamo will be closed, no later than
one year from now." On his second day in office, Barack Obama
signed an executive order to close Guantanamo within a year. His administration split the detainees into
three groups  and laid out a plan with more paths out. The first group included about half the detainees who would be transferred either to their home countries. Or, for those whose home countries 
were too dangerous or unstable the US would negotiate deals 
with other countries to take them. Or they would be released to the US. This was the plan for the Uigher men. A second group would be tried 
as criminals in a US federal court. Including five men who helped plan 
the 9/11 attacks. But that still left a third group. There was a category of people we didn't feel
comfortable transferring but without sufficient evidentiary basis to
put them on trial. This final group of several dozen would be
moved to a super-maximum security prison in Illinois. Then Guantánamo could be closed. It was a good enough plan. It had risk. But keeping Guantánamo open has risks too. "Now I believe that any plan to close Guantánamo
that includes bringing these terrorists into the United States, Mr. President, is a mistake." "To do so would be nothing short of an invitation
for Al-Qaeda to operate inside our homeland." "In my view, these men are exactly 
where they belong." In Congress, Republican politicians fiercely
opposed every aspect of the plan. They pushed back against transfers and putting
any detainees on trial in the US. "It will make America a more dangerous place." "And it will allow them the platform 
to spew their hateful ideology." They even attacked the plan to move some into
the supermax prison. "You're also putting people who would then
start plotting for their escape from the outside in America's neighborhoods." All of a sudden when Obama comes in,
"Oh no, you can't let people go  because you're letting terrorists out." By the spring of '09, this narrative 
was already set: "The Obama administration: soft on terrorism”. It's fair to ask tough questions. What's not reasonable is making it 
impossible for Obama  when you didn't ask any hard questions about Bush. Ultimately both Republicans and Democrats
passed bills that blocked any Guantánamo detainee from coming to the US for any reason. Including for trial, imprisonment, or release. Then the Obama administration folded. They gave up at the first sign that it would
take a lot of political capital to close Gitmo. But y’all made a big deal of it. You better mean it. The Obama administration didn't mean it enough. The only two options detainees had 
stayed in place but got much harder. The military courts were extremely slow 
and ineffective. 3 convictions had been overturned by 2016. And transfers became more complicated. Many of the detainees were from Yemen but
couldn't be transferred back after conflict broke out there in 2011. So, the US would have to convince 
other countries to take them. That was Dan’s job. For years and years, the American government
has said these are the worst of the worst. These are terrorist masterminds. And now I'm saying, no, no, 
they're actually not. We shouldn't have asked other countries 
to take them if we weren't willing to take them. Dan negotiated transfers for 17 Uigher men who were not allowed to be released to the US. They'd been held in Guantánamo 
for more than a decade. Over 8 years, the Obama administration moved
197 detainees out of Guantánamo  and convicted 5 through the military courts. Four more died inside, three reportedly 
from suicide. That left 41 detainees with a new president
who wanted to keep the prison open. "We're going to keep, as you know, Gitmo,
we're keeping that open." "And we're gonna load it up with bad dudes." In 2017, Donald Trump took office as a fervent
supporter of keeping Guantánamo open. In four years, his administration 
only transferred one detainee. In 2021, when President Biden took office Moath al-Alwi had been in Guantánamo for 19 years. According to his testimony, he went on a series
of hunger strikes to protest his detention. And described his life as an 
“endless horror movie”. But January 11, 2022, Biden approved Alwi
and four other detainees for transfer. For Guantánamo to close, the Biden administration
needs to transfer the last remaining detainees. And the military courts need to conclude 
trials for the 10  who are currently stuck in the system. Including the 5 alleged 9/11 plotters, who
have now been on trial for a decade. Once you start them outside the rule of law bringing them in the rule of law 
is a lot trickier than you think. Don't throw out the rulebook in a fit of passion. You'll regret it. And we did. "Nasa tells us today it’s found a new planet." -"They have found 7..."
-"7 planets" "As many as 50..." "...500..." "...3500 planets..." "They're pretty sure that they're rocky planets." "Every one of them could have liquid water." "Scientists calling the discovery quote..." "Very exciting stuff." "Very exciting." "I am very excited." "I'm excited, just really — this is so fascinating." I’m also excited, but I’ve always wondered how do people find these little “exoplanets”
from trillions of miles away? And how could they possibly figure out 
anything about them? Their size? Their composition? If they'd be a nice place to live? Well, here’s how. It’s possible to study some things in space
by just taking pictures of them. But that works best for really close things or really big things. Seeing a planet around a star 
is much, much harder. The problem with exoplanets 
is they're right next to a big, bright, massive star. And that star overwhelms the planet. When we point our most powerful telescopes
at stars that are similar to our sun we get images like this. These pixels are capturing the glare of starlight
but the star is actually much smaller. And any planets would be smaller still. For example, if our Sun were the size 
of this ball the Earth would be this big. And if we’re talking diameter, the Earth
is about a hundred times smaller  than the Sun. But the light reflecting off it is
10 billion times dimmer than the Sun. So of course it would get lost in the glare. It’s like looking for a firefly 
next to stadium floodlights. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, astronomers set out 
to find a way around this problem. At that time, everyone was excited 
about finding intelligent life. We launched two interstellar probes 
that carried messages for aliens. Giant radar dishes started listening for voices
from outer space. And ET became the highest grossing 
movie of all time. But embarrassingly, scientists 
had yet to find a single planet around another star. They had a pretty clear wish list: First, just confirm the existence of a planet. Second, figure out the size of its orbit. We'd really like to know the 
distance from the star so we can understand how warm the planet is. Is it a boiling hellscape, too close 
to its sun, like Mercury? Too distant, like the Jupiter’s 
frozen moon Europa? Or just right, the kind of place that 
could have liquid water? Third, it would be nice to know 
how dense the planet is. Is it a giant planet like Jupiter, made mostly
of hydrogen and helium? Or is it one of the prize rocky planets
that's mostly heavier, more dense material? And most of all, but hardest to do we like to find gases in the atmosphere
that might be associated with life. Oxygen is a fantastic biosignature gas. Our atmosphere is full of it thanks to plants
and photosynthetic bacteria. And if there were an intelligent alien civilization
looking back at us they'll be suspicious that something is here. It won't be our city lights,
or the Great Wall of China. It will be oxygen, actually. So the goal was to find a planet,
describe its orbit and its density and search for signs of life:
all just by looking at this. To detect or study an exoplanet,
we have to work with the star. We sometimes think of our solar system
where our Sun is a fixed point and that all the planets are 
orbiting the sun. But a correction to the picture is our sun
is not exactly fixed. The sun pulls on the planets
but the planets pull back. The planets and Sun are orbiting, 
what we call their common center of mass. And that makes the sun wobble back and forth. A huge planet will make the star wobble a
lot. And a lower mass planet will make the star
wobble much less. We just had to wait for technology to get sensitive enough
to pick up those wobbles. In 1995, Swiss astronomers announced that
a star in the Pegasus constellation had an oscillation that repeated 
every 4.23 days. With just those data points,
the basics of how gravity works and some simple math... they calculated that there was a planet
only 4 million miles away from the star. That's incredibly close compared to 
our solar system. And it was about the size of Jupiter. Soon the wobble method was turning up 
dozens of planets. And, at the same time, revealing 
their distance from their stars. But this method couldn’t deliver the precise mass or size measurements 
needed to calculate density. Luckily, there is another way that we can
indirectly detect planets just by staring at their stars. So some planetary systems 
are aligned just so. Such that the planet goes 
in front of the star, as seen from our telescope. A so called "transit". And that's fantastic. Because we can monitor the 
brightness of the star and look for a tiny, tiny drop in brightness that might mean a planet is going 
in front of the star. Our Jupiter's transit signal 
on our Sun is 1% Here’s what that 1% drop would look like
in our view of a distant star. Pretty hard to see. So for our Earth and Sun, it's about 
one part in 10,000. In 1980s, no one knew how to 
detect a change that small and most astronomers concluded that this so
called “transit method” was “not practical as a 
primary detection technique”. It's very rare for a planetary system to be so perfectly aligned that 
we can see the transit. So we must monitor lots of stars. Tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands
of stars at a single time. And of course, just seeing one drop in brightness
isn’t enough. You have to wait around for a second transit
to know how long the orbit takes. If you were looking for Earth, that means
you’d have to wait for at least a full year. It’s hard. It's hard to find long period planets with
the transit method because you have to be staring at one place
for a very long time. But as before, it was only a matter of time. In 2001, a research team was watching 
5 million stars in the neighborhood of Sagittarius. And the picked up dip in the brightness 
of this one. Luckily, they didn’t have to wait around
long for a second transit because the planet they found 
shot around its star every 29 hours. The telescope they used was on the ground which meant it had to peer through
Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. Not exactly ideal. But the Kepler Space Telescope, 
launched in 2009 was literally above all that. It watched one patch of sky for years
and found thousands of planets. Not only was this a good detection technique it could also be used to figure out 
the precise mass of the planet.  And it’s size too. The bigger the planet,
the bigger the drop in brightness. And with those elements 
you could finally calculate density. So far we've found nearly 5000 planets. Hundred are likely rocky worlds like Earth and dozens of those seem to be in
the habitable zone of their stars. Incredibly, the question has shifted from “Do any stars have planets?" to “Do any of stars not have planets?” But we’re still looking for signs of life. How? Well, back in 1999, Sara proposed a way
to investigate the gasses in exoplanet atmospheres. When that planet goes in front of the star some of the star light shines 
through the atmosphere. Different gases in that atmosphere
would absorb different wavelengths of light. For example, a simple molecule like
hydrogen gas absorbs these bands. Other compounds have more complex signatures. Sara’s idea was to look for those tiny signals
once that starlight reached Earth. But not everyone was on board. So one place, I applied for a job, a professor
sat across from me and literally said: "I just, I just don't think we're going to
have very many transiting planets." They didn't think we'd be able to study atmospheres. They didn't think the field was 
going to go anywhere. But at least one team ran with the idea
to use the Hubble Space Telescope and succeeded in observing 
the first exoplanet atmosphere. Unfortunately, it looks like 
this technique works best when the star is small, 
and the planet is big. Earth-sized planets transiting sun like stars
have such a tiny signal and their atmospheres have 
an even tinier signal that we may never be able to observe. It's like the skin of an onion on an onion. We need to move beyond transits 
to a different technique. We call this technique direct imaging. Okay, I know we started down this whole 
wobble and transit path because taking a picture of an exoplanet 
seemed impossible. But look at this. This is a real time lapse of planets 
orbiting a star. The trick was to block out the star’s overwhelming
glare with a device called a coronograph. Now this view is only possible because 
the planets are (a) really huge, (b) really far from their star (here’s our
solar system for comparison) and (c) they’re all glowing red hot. We want to make direct imaging 
better and better. So we can move down to smaller and smaller
and cooler planets. And to do this we have to go to space. To get above the blurring effects 
of Earth's atmosphere. And we want to use starshade. Starshade sounds like a teen fantasy series. (whisper) Starshade. But it’s actually a proposed 
spacefaring parasol. Kind of like a free-floating
coronagraph.  Starshade would be about the size 
of a baseball diamond. But they tested it out using this model. It’s strange flower-like shape would stop the starlight from bending around
its edges and overwhelming the telescope. And it has to formation fly tens of thousands
of kilometers from a telescope. The starshade and telescope will line up perfectly like in a very, very straight line together
with the target star. This giant space flower would 
have to be launched inside a much narrower rocket. So NASA has turned to origami for inspiration. But it’s not clear when or if Starshade
will get off the ground. At the end of 2021, the US astronomical community laid out they're priorities in 
an official report. "The report went through rigorous peer review and represents the consensus view 
of the steering committee." These so-called “Decadal Surveys” 
are hugely important. In previous decades they’ve advocated 
for Hubble and the recently launched 
James Webb Space Telescope. "For this decade, our highest priority 
is a telescope for observing habitable exoplanets." But the report didn’t advocate for a 
Starshade mission this decade. Having this attitude that I’m going to explore, 
I’m going to do this anyway it’s really key in the field of exoplanets. So, about a decade later I went back and somehow on my schedule was this same professor. And he just welcomed me into his office 
and he just said “Exoplanets! I always knew it was gonna be big.” It was just like: yeah. - [Announcer] Safety in numbers. We all do our best to stay
safe and out of danger's way. And we especially want to be
smart and secure with money. But when it comes to financial security, some people try to break
through our defenses, and the internet means there
are more risks than ever. Like a lion stalking
and isolating his prey, we're susceptible when alone. So how do we protect ourselves from the isolating tactics
of romance scammers? (jungle drum beat) (gentle music) - [Narrator] It's 1:00 PM on a Sunday, and Carol, a hopeless romantic, is enjoying a lovely day by
browsing at her local bookstore. Her phone dings in her pocket. It's a text from a stranger named Stephen, who clearly has the wrong number. She corrects him, but to her
surprise, he continues to text. Normally, she'd move on, but Stephen is disarmingly charming. He compliments her witty responses, and says this wrong number must be fate bringing them together. What an adorable modern meet cute. - [Announcer] According to
the Federal Trade Commission, romance scams caused over
$300 million of fraud in 2020, double the year before. That's a real lion's share of income. We like to give strangers
the benefit of the doubt, and online, we can only believe they are who they say they are. This is the crux of a romance scam, a type of fraud where a
criminal uses a fake persona to manipulate a stranger
into sending them money. - You do not have to be
gullible to be scammed. Vulnerability is part
of the human condition. In the right time and place,
anybody is susceptible to a certain scam or another. - [Announcer] Confident you
wouldn't be caught off guard? Be careful. Overconfidence was a
large contributing factor to the personalities of those
more likely to be scammed, according to a 2016 study. (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Weeks later,
Carol is texting with Stephen. They've been dying to meet up in person, but he's overseas on an oil rig. How intrepid. He has a vacation in a few weeks, and he wants to fly out to see her. The only problem is he's
just a thousand dollars short of affording a plane ticket. He's embarrassed to even ask, but he wonders if Carol
could help him pay the fare. Carol is unsure, but then again, what's money when compared to true love? - [Announcer] Romance scams are by design about giving away money to a stranger, not getting something tangible in return. That's a hurdle compared
to other types of scams. So what makes them so effective? One key psychological tool is isolation. A 2019 study found that lonely people were much more likely
to lose money to scams. The huge rise of scams
during the COVID pandemic may make sense, with so many
people dealing with isolation and loneliness from quarantining. - Scammers do try to
isolate their victims. Because if you talk through
something with somebody else, you're more likely to realize that something doesn't quite sound right. They're trying to get you in the moment, so fixated that you don't
look to other people you could check things with. - [Announcer] So don't just
think you can sniff out a scam, learn to spot the red flags. Be wary of an email, text,
or DM out of the blue. Romance scammers will love bomb targets with too much intimacy too quickly. If someone asks for money
or makes investment offers, this is not the sign of a
real healthy relationship. - Ask to do a method of communication that's gonna be harder to fake. Ask for phone calls, ask to
meet in person or video call. All of those are techniques that is gonna be much
harder for someone to fake. Google their name, or take their picture and
do a reverse image search to see if the picture corresponds to who you think you're talking to. - [Narrator] Carol is
cooking dinner in the kitchen with her mother when she gets
another text from Stephen, asking if she's thought
more about sending him money for the plane fare. Carol swallows her pride and
asks her mother for advice. Mum can see the scam for what it is, and wisely advises Carol to end
this so-called relationship. Carol does so, and instantly
feels a wave of relief. Perhaps she's not as alone as she thought. (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Romance scammers
prey on singular people with one-on-one personal relationships. To take away their power,
take away your own isolation. Arm yourself with a good pride of trustworthy friends and family, and as Zelle would like to remind you, only send money to those
you know and trust. One of my lifelong goals is to find an Earth sized planet in an
Earth like orbit about a sun like star. One that has a thin atmosphere,
and that has water oceans. One where we can we can 
point to a specific star and say that star has a planet like Earth. What I love to dream about is maybe 
there's some life on that planet you know, looking back at our Earth and 
our star and saying the same thing. Like how amazing would that be? It would be amazing. Now, this idea - that the stars have 
planets of their own and that those planets might have 
aliens living on them has been around for centuries. At first it had some pretty harsh critics. But by 20th century, it was mainstream. Alien worlds showed up in books 
and then movies and TV. "In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability
of three million Earth-type planets." But here’s the thing - even after all that, even when this episode of Star Trek: The Next
Generation aired in 1987 scientists still hadn’t confirmed the existence
of a single planet outside our solar system. For all we knew, these so-called “exoplanets”
could only be found in fiction. But the next generation of astronomers, armed with new telescopes and 
more powerful computers, set out to change that. This is Sara Seager. She’s a professor of astrophysics at MIT. It's the spirit of us being the first explorers,
you know. We get to see what's out there 
for the very first time. We get to know if there are 
other planets like ours. Here’s a map of what they’ve found so far: It's our night sky, which is a sphere 
projected onto this square map. It's sort of one of the maps of the world,
it's like, well, obviously we're on a globe, 
but this is all stretched out. Exactly, it’s all stretched out The black dots are visible stars with 
the North Star, Polaris up here at the top of the map. And this band is the densest part of our own
Milky Way Galaxy. The lines trace out constellations. So we can look for a familiar constellation
like the Big Dipper. Up here. And here's Orion, actually. And these colorful dots mark the position
of stars with known “exoplanets”. The very first exoplanet around
a sun-like star wasn’t discovered until 1995. It was called 51 Pegasi b. And this was an incredible planet. It's astonishing. It's about a Jupiter mass. But the time that it takes 
to go round it star remember Jupiter takes 12 years,
51 peg takes four days. So it's year is four days long. Yeah, I don't think you could 
celebrate New Year's. But on 51 Peg b you’d have other things
to worry about. The planets in our solar system 
that are about its size aren’t great places to live. They’re mainly just hydrogen and helium. There’s no surface. It just gets hotter and hotter and 
higher and higher pressure and eventually we would melt 
and we would be crushed. Plus it’s really close to its star much, much closer than even 
Mercury is to our sun. So it’s likely as hot as molten lava. Great, what else we got? After all this dreaming for millennia, 
it turns out our very nearest star to our sun has a planet. And that is Proxima Centauri. About an earth mass planet, we don't know
the mass exactly and it's in the habitable zone of that star. The Goldilocks zone or the habitable zone has the right temperature for liquid water. It's not too hot. Not too cold. But just right for life. The hotter the star the further away 
you've got to be. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf 
much cooler than our sun so you've gotta be really close to stay warm. When a planet is that close to its star, 
its rotation becomes locked. Meaning that one side of the planet 
always faces toward the star one always faces away. That’s what happened to our moon. That’s why we see only one side of it. If could visit that planet, 
the sun or the star would be in the same place in the sky 
at all times. So basically, yeah, there'd be a line 
on the world  -where it would always be sunset or sunrise, essentially.
-Exactly. -What's going on with this giant blob over here?
-It's amazing. This blob is where NASA's Kepler space telescope stared at for about four whole years. “Two, engine Start, one, zero! And liftoff 
of the Delta 2 rocket with Kepler.” The Kepler Space Telescope 
found thousands of exoplanets by focusing on one patch of sky. Here’s all the discoveries made 
by other telescopes. And here’s Kepler’s contribution. So back here in the Kepler field there's a really interesting planet called
Kepler 16 B. It was the first one where one planet 
is orbiting two stars. Sometimes science fiction is right - Tatooine. But in this case, it's a giant exoplanet. So once again, probably not one where 
we'd be walking around and talking to Obi Wan Kenobi or anything. No, but still, it is supposedly in or near
the habitable zone of Kepler 16. So people like to see if it has a moon. That moon actually could be habitable. Imagine the sky there, lit by two suns... ...Two shadows, two sunsets... ...and dominated by a massive planet. Okay, let's look for pretty much 
the favorite exoplanet system right now. -Great.
-It's called TRAPPIST-1. It has seven planets around it. And they're all around about Earth mass. So you were talking about Mercury before 
as sort of a reference point for the distance to the star: 
do you know how far... Yeah, all these planets would be interior
to what would be Mercury's orbit. -It’s a very cute sort of planetary system.
-Cute and they’re all lined up in a plane. Y'know if we were on one of these planets we could see the other planet 
in the sky would be like bigger than our moon or something. And probably moving then. You would look up and see a moon
shooting across your sky. Scientists think that planets E and F 
fall in that sweet, sweet Goldilocks zone. But even if that’s off, some of these planets
must be the right temperature for life. The James Webb Space Telescope... Which launched on Christmas morning 2021. ...it has targeted every planet 
in the Trappist system. So we’ll be learning a lot more about it. And what’s going to be different about that
versus what we’ve seen before? The James Webb will be much more powerful,
it has a bigger collection area. And it'll be orbiting very far from Earth
where the environment is just quieter and darker. Plus the telescope can see infrared light which will make it easier
to study exoplanet atmospheres. This is where the science seems to be headed: fewer surveys of broad swaths of sky,
more targeted investigations of nearby stars and the atmospheres of planets
we’ve already found to see if any of our neighbors 
might support life. You know, there's sort of a habitable zone
for marshmallows. Actually there really is and it’s down here
right by the coals. Okay, here we go. Oh yeah. So we’ve found like 4,000? Yeah, thousands. Thousands of planets. What has been most exciting to you? It's everything! I mean, it's the sheer surprise,
like we'll find planets we had no idea existed. In our nice familiar system,
we’ve got a handful of petite rocky planets. And a handful of massive fluffy giants. And nothing in between. But out in the rest of the galaxy the most common planets we’ve found are
big, dense, rocks nicknamed Super Earths. And big, less dense “Sub-Neptunes.” To me what's the most mysterious is
our solar system is not incredibly common. The surveys have been going on for long enough that they should have seen 
lots and lots ofJupiters but they’ve maybe only found one or two
that resemble ours. And still no sign of a true Earth twin. Do you think that’s out there? It's definitely out there somewhere! The question is: is one around a near enough star that
the telescopes we're trying to build can actually find? Even if we do find that though, it won’t be for a long time that we're
ever able to visit or communicate. And maybe never. So what’s the point? People always ask me, why are we doing this? Why are we searching for other planets? Why do we want to find another Earth? It's human nature to explore. We want to know what's out there. We've surveyed all the land on Earth, 
most of the oceans. And what's out there now it's outer space. We want to try to understand, 
why are we here? How did our Earth come to be? And finding other worlds like our own is a
step in that direction. hi I'm a highly qualified professional if you're suffering from sleepiness awakeness overeating under eating or a case of the shaky bones well then I fully endorse this brand new miraculous supplement I am in no way affiliated with trust me why not right if this highly accredited person signs off it must be trustworthy sometimes these people are real experts with our Collective best interests in mind but other times a lab coat is just a prop to gain our trust so what is it about lab coats and uniforms in general that might lure us into a trap foreign is hard at work when an email marked urgent steals his attention his stomach drops the IRS claims he owes back taxes and must pay immediately Sanjay flushes and tilts his laptop screen so his co-workers won't see this and think he's irresponsible or worse a criminal fortunately the fee is just a few hundred dollars he follows the instructions in the email and why is the money from his bank relieved Sanjay takes his lunch break blushing from this near catastrophe that was a close one according to a 2021 study nearly one in four people find it hard to say no to a request from a stranger because they don't want to be rude fraudsters often pose as polite respectable figures from reputable places this gives them a sense of legitimacy that causes the target to lower their guard we want to trust people and that's what makes scams so effective inclining you out of your money trying to trick us into making the easy decision they want us to make whether that easy decision is to be afraid or the easy decision is to give them money because we'll get greater returns in the long run a study from 2020 showed that when given an instruction the responsibility we feel for our own actions is lowered in other words if someone is telling us to do something we become more passive [Music] but do people just obey any orders given by anyone does dressing like a professional or sending an email from a professional looking account really make a difference according to a phenomenon known as the lab coat effect it does what the scammers are good about is matching up sort of what kind of lab coat to what kinds of victim you know certain dress certain political views they'll have done some background research Maria is enjoying a book on a lazy Saturday morning the Ring of her doorbell pulls her from her fantasy novel and back into her real life and her real surroundings she heads downstairs curious who it could be she opens the door to a man with a work suit hard hat and clipboard this seems serious he's a housing contractor working a job in the area and he noticed some signs of structural damage at her residence a new homeowner Maria's already overwhelmed by the unending stream of upkeep she's relieved to have the Keen Insight of a professional the contractor assures her that all she has to do is pay his reasonable fee now and he'll get to work tomorrow fixing this now means avoiding greater future costs Maria nods grabs her mobile phone and sends the payment with a few taps [Music] seem like an authority can Cloud our normal decision-making skills scammers take advantage of this Dynamic with many different types of scams including phishing scams door-to-door scams IRS scams and utility scams and it's profitable [Music] according to the Federal Trade Commission they received almost 5 000 complaints of utility scams in 2020 and 3.5 million dollars scammed away so if our brains follow Authority how do we bolster our defenses against scammers in sheep's clothing the first thing to do is learn what a scam looks like if they're asking you to pay via gift cards and they want the gift cards to solve a problem it's probably a scam if you are not expecting contact from the utility company then hang up the phone don't respond to the email actually contact the company directly through a known good phone number look it up on your bill at the end of the day we are all subject to the lab coat effect but by taking a moment to slow down and verify the information we can better protect ourselves against this type of scam and most importantly Zell would like to remind you to only send money to those you know and trust [Music] It's plasticky, sticky, shiny, often in a
weird pattern or totally bland. You’ve seen linoleum. It’s probably in your high school hallway. In your closest airport and hospital. Or maybe it's in your grandma’s kitchen. At the very least, you can find it on home
renovation television— “There might be something beautiful." "But there might not." "But there’s a good chance there’s not
when it's linoleum, so.” “Still holding on to that 70s vibe.” “This linoleum has got to go.” Linoleum gets a bad rap. But it wasn't always that way. Linoleum was once the stuff of dreams. An exciting, beautiful, innovation 
in flooring technology. So what happened? One day in 1855, a delightfully mustached inventor named Frederick Walton was gazing upon 
a humble jar of oil paint. He noticed, settled on the top of the jar
was a thick, stretchy layer of material. It was linseed oil — the paint’s main ingredient
— that had oxidized. And this... "Attracted my attention." I know all about this from his 1925 memoir. It’s very out of print, but luckily the New York Public Library has 
a slightly decrepit copy. In it Walton reflects in great detail 
on his 90-odd year life. Including his, quote, “boyish activities”. “I was living in comparative luxury, 
I say comparative because…” “We had few friends, but no dinner parties,
dances, etc.” Impressions of the American climate. “The summer weather was delightful,
except for the extreme heat.” And visits to a psychic. “He said he would put his wife into a trance.” But mostly, he wrote about his work. Walton fancied himself an inventor 
and this odd substance inspired him. He tried using it as a varnish 
and a water-proofing material. But it "never dried properly but
was always sticky." "However, I was not disheartened." Eventually, he tried combining 
the dried bits of goop with cork dust, sticky gum, pigment, 
then rolled it all out into sheets backed by cotton cloth. It worked. He created a new type of flooring. In rapid succession he filed a patent. Named his invention: linoleum — a combination
of the latin words for oil and flax. Founded a company to manufacture it. And began a mad-men level marketing blitz
to promote it. Advertisements, which ran nearly every day
in London’s papers and were plastered at every train station,
touted its many advantages. Linoleum was warm and noiseless, which gave it 
an advantage over wood or marble. And it was waterproof, flexible and durable: which made it far superior to earlier “floorcloths” which were basically just 
thickly painted pieces of fabric. They protected your floor, sure. But they smelled weird. They were cold underfoot and 
they wore out pretty fast. Linoleum was kind of a miracle flooring. It was durable, easy to make, 
supposedly antibacterial and could be mixed and remixed into 
any number of beautiful patterns. Within a few years, it was 
an international hit. Walton even built an entire town on New York’s
Staten Island devoted to manufacturing it. Called, predictably, Linoleumville. And, much to Walton’s chagrin, competitors
popped up all over the world. Eventually, overtaking him in popularity. Linoleum was considered luxurious— 
the modern, refined choice. It was all over the Titanic. In fact, it still is. Even as the ship wastes away 
a few thousand feet underwater the linoleum looks pretty good. Over time, linoleum just got better. More durable, more vibrant, 
cheaper. By the ’50s Linoleum (or “lino,” its
jaunty nickname) came in a massive array of patterns. Like, hundreds. Faux marble, faux wood, checks, squiggles,
stars, stripes, florals. These cute little mondrian looking 
square things. “Who could resist these colorful patterns? The lady knows what she wants!” As it became more popular, it became 
more accessible. Just cut it right off the enormous roll 
and bring it home. And, as countless ads mentioned, 
install it yourself. It was everywhere. Homes, schools, shops. The perfect fit for anywhere high traffic
because it was so resilient and easy to clean. But all that ubiquity kind of backfired. Linoleum started to be seen as tacky, cheap. That durability backfired, too. Patterns that fell out of style stuck around
and started to look dated. Companies that used to focus on linoleum,
also pivoted to new options, like vinyl. Which was cheaper, and didn’t require 
wax to stay shiny. Linoleum did enjoy a second wind in printmaking
and as a breakdancing surface. But, alongside wood paneling and 
those weird glass blocks it fell way out of fashion. Until recently. Because seemingly against all odds, 
linoleum is making a comeback. It’s featured on Instagram’s 
favorite table and in a variety of trendy cafes, hotels,
shops, and homes from Copenhagen to New York. Not to mention this exceptionally cool 
Estonian kindergarten. People are loving linoleum for 
all of the same reasons they used to. But, there’s one benefit 
Walton didn’t anticipate. Linoleum is also really eco-friendly. It’s still made with roughly the same materials
as Walton’s first version: Almost entirely renewable resources. You can technically eat it. Though you really shouldn’t. So, before you start thinking about ripping up 
that old linoleum in your bathroom, maybe give it a second thought. If you wish to learn more about my invention,
please explore Pamela H. Simpson's work. Her articles, "Linoleum and Lincrusta: The
Democratic Coverings for Floors and Walls" and "Comfortable, Durable, and Decorative:
Linoleum's Rise and Fall from Grace" are both exceptionally well researched 
and full of interesting bits like a detailed description of my other, 
very important invention: lincrusta. I hear that it is still found today
in a variety of famous homes. Both articles are linked below. Thank you for watching. You’re looking at a map of North Carolina showing where the state’s over 2,000 
large-scale hog farms are located. They’re clustered primarily in this rural
region in the eastern part of the state. North Carolina is the 3rd biggest 
hog-producing state in the US. But this level of concentration 
makes the state uniquely qualified to show how industrial hog farming
impacts the surrounding communities. Specifically when it comes to one thing: 
pig waste. That’s what this video is about, 
so for this story, we went there. And when I spoke to locals in the area  they told me that the best way 
to understand this story is from the air. We flew in a small Cessna propellor plane
from New Bern, North Carolina to our first stop, over Duplin County, which has the highest concentration 
of hog farms. BALDWIN: They have more hogs 
than they do people. Larry Baldwin works for the Waterkeeper Alliance,
a non-profit environmental watchdog group and he regularly goes on flights like these
as a surveying tool. BALWIN: A lot of these places 
you cannot see from the ground so you don't even know they're there. So doing these flights, it's one of the more
important resources that we have. Hog facilities are easy to spot 
because of this tell-tale feature. The hog farm will always have 
what they call a lagoon. I refer to it as a cesspool 
and it's holding nothing but hog feces and urine. Historically, and on small farms today, 
pigs graze on pasture. But in industrialized hog farming, 
farmers confine thousands of pigs in buildings. This makes pigs’ lives more brutal, 
without access to sun or fresh air and it also creates a waste management problem. Enter: the lagoon system Inside the buildings, pigs drop their waste
onto slatted floors. And it gets flushed into the lagoons 
through pipes like these. Bacteria in the lagoons break down the waste. When they get too full, hog farmers 
syphon the waste to a massive sprinkler and spray 
nearby crop fields with it. We saw this from the air. Manure is a good fertilizer, but 
most people told me this is more of a waste disposal strategy
than a fertilizing one. Spraying and lagoons have air quality risks. When bacteria breaks the waste down, 
it releases hundreds of compounds like methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia, 
hydrogen sulfide and dusts into the air. These can cause asthma, respiratory diseases,
headaches, and nausea among other conditions. A recent study on US agriculture found that
“reduced air quality” contributes to nearly 18,000 
premature deaths nationwide mostly from ammonia emissions from
“livestock waste and fertilizer application.” That’s not even to mention the smell which we picked up even from the air 
near the Duplin County Airport.  This lagoon and sprayfield system also impacts
surface and groundwaters. When waste gets into water it brings pollutants
like nitrates, phosphorous, and fecal bacteria. Which can cause algae blooms, 
fish kills, and potentially life-threatening illness in humans. This can happen when lagoons flood 
after hurricanes exacerbated by the fact that this region 
sits in a coastal floodplain. And some studies — including one of this
watershed in eastern North Carolina — show high levels of waste pollutants even
without rainfall or a breach meaning lagoons pose a threat all the time. There’s evidence of pig waste 
underground, too. Which matters because people 
who live in this rural area primarily use wells as a water source
and don’t have access to county water. All of these negative impacts disproportionately
affect some of the most vulnerable people in the state. Residents here are more likely to be 
a person of color than the rest of the state. And poverty rates are 
higher than average, too. Making this pollution more than 
an environmental issue. It’s an environmental justice issue. In 2018, North Carolina settled 
a federal civil rights complaint filed by Larry Baldwin's organization 
and others alleging racial discrimination by the state due to the demographics of communities
where it issued hog facility permits. The complaint cited health issues, odors,
nuisances, increased expenses, social and psychological harm, 
and declining property values. BALDWIN: It's not the way to treat people
just so we can raise cheap meat. It's wrong on a number of different levels. During the flight, we flew over a community
surrounded by hog facilities: the congregation of this church, 
in the town of Magnolia. In Google maps, I counted at least 
12 hog lagoons within 2 and a half miles of the church. I'm the Reverend Jimmy Melvin. I’m the pastor here at Mount Zion 
AME Zion Church. I'm Danielle Koonce and I've been attending
my father's church here at Mount Zion. MELVIN: So many of our people, in a rural
setting, are used to farms. MELVIN: This is nature to them. MELVIN: This steeple used to be white. MELVING: We are now in the need of getting
our steeple pressure washed. Drone footage we shot shows why. Nearby hog farms would spray their fields
with manure and mist would reach the steeple. And recently this health department notice
was put on the church’s door. KOONCE: It was really clear warning. High nitrate levels don't use this water to
make infant formula for babies. The issue with hog farm waste is that 
it creates high nitrate levels in the ground, in the streams, and 
the tributaries around that farm. It was just a no brainer that 
that is why there's high nitrate levels in the groundwater. So, this is the new, deeper well? Yeah, this is the new, deeper well right here. The church’s well was only 20 feet deep
at the time of the notice, so the church paid nearly $4,000 
to dig the well deeper to 250 feet, to bypass 
any groundwater contamination. After a Sunday service in the fall of 2021 Reverend Melvin led a community meeting about
what parishioners were experiencing at home. Like if this is happening where a church
is getting notices for high nitrate levels then what is happening in 
the communities, in the houses, in the neighborhoods that 
live around that church? They have sat these hog farms 
in black communities. And then we can't have cookouts 
or family gatherings. Fighting flies and fighting the smell. As far as these hog houses are concerned. There's one behind my house and when they spray the stuff 
it turns into like mist. Well you breathe this stuff. I grew up having bronchial asthma as a child. I went away. I was in a different environment. I moved back down here and I have 
two doctors, specialists I have to go to every two or three months
so I can keep my lungs cleared out. One of the specialists, he said a lot of people
that have the same thing that I have. It comes from being in an area where we have
the hogs and all that. Even our children graduate from high school
they go away to college. Some don't come back to the area. These children will not and 
I can understand that. I didn't encourage neither one of 
my daughters to live here. Clean water is not a black and white issue,
is humanity issue. Stories like the ones from Magnolia have been told since the spray field and
lagoon system started in the 1980s. Including a 1995 Pulitzer-Prize winning Raleigh News & Observer series 
on the hog industry. Which inspired one of North Carolina’s only
significant interventions. A moratorium in 1997 on new or expanded hog
farms, made permanent a few years later. And then this document almost transformed
the industry. It’s a 2000 agreement between North Carolina’s
Attorney General and pork companies in the state. Including Smithfield Foods, the largest
hog producing company in North Carolina and one of the largest in the world. In this agreement, Smithfield paid 
millions of dollars to North Carolina State University to research
an “environmentally superior technology" so that the industry could do away with lagoons
and sprayfields for good. This new technology had to meet 3 criteria: be permittable by the state, substantially eliminate water and air pollution,  and be economically feasible. "Treatment technologies are needed..." Researchers pitched several new ideas 
throughout the years. The most recent would have looked like this: waste would get flushed into a storage tank. The solids would get separated 
and sold as fertilizer, and the liquids would go through a process
of removing nitrogen and phosphorus. The resulting less-harmful liquid 
would irrigate crops or get reflushed through the system. This technology was able to get a state permit
for a pilot program which showed that the new system substantially
eliminated water and air pollution. But it didn’t meet the economic feasibility
criterium. It would’ve cost more than 
twice as much for farmers than the lagoon and spray field system. So nothing changed. The answer from the industry said: “We can't afford to do it, 
it's not economically feasible.” Smithfield has decided to invest 
a half billion dollars in another technology. A “manure to energy project” mentioned
in this promotional video: “We’re partnering with local 
contract farmers and leaders in the bio energy field, for a 
groundbreaking project underway in North Carolina.” Which means they will be capturing 
the methane emitted from at least 19 participating hog farms
in eastern North Carolina. According to a map on 
the energy company’s web site this pipeline will carry the methane 
to a processing facility to be converted into natural gas which will eventually end up in the state’s
existing natural gas pipeline. A version of this process is already happening
at this farm in Lillington, North Carolina. Which was the last stop on our flight. My name is Tom Butler. I'm a contract hog farmer 
in Harney County, North Carolina. A contract farmer raises hogs for big, 
sometimes multinational companies that process the meat and sell it. BUTLER: They furnish all the pigs,
they furnish all the medication. BUTLER: They furnish the feed and then
the owner and operator of the farm they raise the hogs, take care of them for
the 20 week period that we have them. Contract farmers build their facilities
to these corporation’s specifications which is why industrialized hog farms
look practically identical. And that includes waste management. BUTLER: We market about 20,000 adult hogs
here on the farm each year. And we produce about 10,000 gallons
of waste per day. And that's a lot of waste. Doing anything with waste above and beyond
what the contract pays for is unaffordable for most farmers:
otherwise they can’t make a living. Which helps explain why farmers alone 
are unable to change this systemic problem. You cannot do it on your own. And the thing that we found out that the waste
management was not included in the contract. We didn't sit down when we signed the contract
and nobody laid out the paperwork and says, "Look, now, 
you know,  in 25 years you're going to have 
3 or 4 million gallons of sludge." And you will have to clean it out, 
take it off the farm. And it's very, very expensive. The good thing it does for 
the environment is... In 2008, Tom received a grant to put these green covers on his lagoons after
receiving complaints from his neighbors. We really didn't realize the impact 
we would have on our community. We have one neighbor, 
he called me one night and he said that inside of his 
new living room smelled like hog poop. This helped mitigate some of the lagoon odor. Then, in 2012, through more loans and grants,
he took on a separate project to install this digester which 
captures methane gas. That gas gets turned into energy 
for his farm with this generator. It’s a small-scale version of what 
Smithfield  is proposing for the state’s electrical grid. Which makes Tom uniquely qualified to say
what this technology won’t do. The pipeline thing it doesn't improve 
the environmental impact. You still haven't solved any 
of your problems, except  you have sequestered 
some greenhouse gases which is a good thing, but 
it's not enough to justify leaving the waste at the farm. Livestock and poultry manure contribute about
9% of US emissions of methane  a powerful greenhouse gas. Biogas operations have the potential
to reduce hog waste emissions by up to 85%. The natural gas it creates has 
the added climate benefit of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. And it will generate extra income for farmers
and the corporations they contract for. When we reached Smithfield for comment they said that “This is indisputably
a positive thing for the environment.” But these operations not only accept
the way large-scale hog facilities currently operate:
they monetize it. Participating farms will still have to store
all the waste on their property And spray their fields with it,
like Tom does. We still have the phosphorus issues. We still have nitrogen issues. We have some of the odor problems 
with spray fields and the runoff. That’s left communities to continue their fight
against powerful companies. Recent lawsuits against one of 
Smithfield’s subsidiaries resulted in a nearly $100 million 
expected payout to 36 plaintiffs. And in 2021, community organizations 
filed yet another civil rights complaint against 
the state of North Carolina alleging that the biogas pipeline 
would have a disproportionate impact on communities of color,
due to its location. As planned, it would run very close
to Reverend Melvin’s church. I think this is a way for the industry
to say that they're focusing on clean energy. I'm really really nervous, 
what it's going to do with communities that have already 
been impacted. Communities and farmers will continue 
to pay the price for the industrial hog industry’s 
waste problems, until powerful corporations or 
state and federal governments decide it’s worth the cost to fix. Those plans are out there. They're just too expensive. There's not enough money for me 
to take care of my waste. It's not about taking down 
the farming industry. We have family members, friends who work 
in the farming industry but it's a matter taking responsibility for the problem that they created. They've made billions of dollars
off of these communities and the resources have not been
put back into these communities. Thanks for watching this third episode 
of our series with Vox's Future Perfect team. This is the last of our stories 
on the human impact of industrialized meat production in the US. This was a really ambitious series for us
in terms of reporting and filming. We cover consolidation in the beef industry
by way of a cattle auction in South Dakota. We covered worker safety issues 
in the poultry industry through the work of a labor organizer in Arkansas. And for this story we went to North Carolina to witness the environmental impact 
of hog farming. If you haven't already, check out episodes
1 and 2 in our channel. And for more reporting on the meat industry
by the Future Perfect team I would highly recommend checking out 
their podcast on the topic which I linked below. And stay tuned because we're going to produce another set of stories with Future Perfect
on a totally different topic. - [Female Narrator] What does a mouse trap have to do with scams? Whenever we make a
purchase, we often wonder, "Am I getting the best deal on this? Could I find a better
rate on a different site?" The bigger the price tag, the more welcome a discount would be. So when we find the unbelievable deal, we want to believe it. Our desire for reward is often stronger than our fear of
repercussion, like the mouse that ignores the trap so
he can get the cheese. (intriguing music) - [Male Narrator] It's
five o'clock on a Friday, and Susan is finishing her work week. Now for her second job, prepping
for the birth of her son. Tonight, she's on the hunt for a stroller, shocked at the wide variety of brands but uniformly high prices,
"This thing better push itself." Susan pokes around popular
websites but is discouraged. She keeps searching and
soon finds the exact item she's looking for, being
sold by an individual who can no longer use it. But there's only the one stroller, and Susan knows this
opportunity won't last forever. - [Female Narrator] When we
find something we really want, our judgment is impaired,
that's no accident, it's built into the very
psychological nature of a reward-based or merchandise scam. According to recent
research, merchandise scams were the most popular scam of 2020, both overall and online. Clearly the simplicity is successful. And in order for them to work, these scams use a tactic
known as phantom fixation. It's what happens when we're
given an offer so incredible that it clouds our critical judgment. (music changes) - [Male Narrator] Susan is
fixated by the opportunity in front of her. She ponders, imagining the
joy such treasure will bring. Such a prize would place her at the envy of her fellow parents, as
she strolls right by them. Unable to ignore the pull
any longer, Susan snaps into action and quickly secures
the stroller of her dreams. A wave of excitement and
relief wash over her, she's finally nabbed her dream stroller. (music changes) - [Female Narrator] The
scam may be apparent to us observers, but for the person who finds the great deal, it's as dazzling as finding a diamond in
the middle of Main Street. But does this happen every
time we find a great deal, or does the money itself
factor into our fixation? According to a 2016 study,
decisions involving money activate different brain functions than non-financial decisions. In fact, researchers
found that individuals asked to pay a high price for an item, experienced an actual emotional
pain response in the brain. Thus, someone finding a cheaper price could trigger a relief, and
the perceived lack of pain would further influence their decision. This effect can be greater than with non-money-based decisions. So how do we avoid the influence
of money, phantom fixation, and merchandise scams in general? Glad you asked. Well, there are several
red flags to watch out for. - Basically, what it comes down to is, remember that when you're buying
something on the internet, if you're buying it from a website or a person you've never met before, you don't know who you're dealing with. They may be perfectly legitimate, they may also be a scammer. - [Female Narrator] So
once you see the red flags, what do you do? - I believe in trust. I would not say don't trust anybody. Instead, I would say being trusting is a great portion of
who we are as humans. We just perhaps need to
slow down a little bit and think through things when
somebody says something to us and we're not quite sure it's real. - [Female Narrator] A good
deal is hard to pass up, but an unbelievable deal, that should probably be questioned. Avoid getting scammed. Be careful about who you're
giving your money to, and always confirm you
have the recipient's correct information
before sending payment. Most important, Zelle
would like to remind you to only send money to
those you know and trust. More than 2 billion Covid-19 
vaccines administered worldwide. Halfway vaccinated! I'm getting the Moderna.. AstraZeneca shot. J&J vaccine. As millions get vaccinated, many reunions 
are happening around the country. It's been a very long time 
and so much life has happened You're gonna have the best night 
you've had for a very long time. We've all been through something collectively. It's been such a difficult time. And it's even harder pretending like 
everything's normal when it's not. 700,000 people quit retail jobs... as the 
so-called Great Resignation picked up speed. They just didn't care about me anymore. There is not a shortage of jobs, 
there is a shortage of decent jobs. The shortage of products has 
extended to just about everything. Big shortage of lumber Shortage of snowblowers... And a shortage of microchips. Look at those bones! Can you not. please? The growing backlog in the global supply chain... A giant container ship wedged from bank to bank. Verstappen and Hamilton have crashed. Messi has done it. Guys on Reddit get rich off GameStop while 
bankrupting a bunch of hedge funds. It's been a fun ride with GameStop. A few things I am not: I'm not a cat. It just shows how much power the rich people have. What is an NFT... sold for 
nearly 70 million dollars. Literally sending Dogecoin to the moon. Anyone with enough money can become an astronaut. Looking down to our beautiful, beautiful earth. We need some of the world's greatest brains 
fixed on trying to repair this planet,   not trying to find the next place to go and live. The report is very clear: we expect to see new 
extremes that are unprecedented in magnitude,   timing, or in regions that have never 
encountered those types of extremes. The most affected people in the most 
affected areas still remain unheard. Myanmar has been under political 
chaos since a junta-led military coup   ousted the elected government. Farmers in India are marking a year since they   began the biggest protest in 
the country's modern history. The deadly conflict between Israeli 
forces and Palestinians continues The government of Ethiopia has 
been locked in a year-long war   with the Tigray People's Liberation Front. A sudden wave of thousands of migrants has sparked 
a humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border. How can you do that to a human 
being, to other human beings? It's time for American troops to come home. It's a very very crazy situation right now. They broke the glass in the United States Capitol 
and now they are climbing through the window... ... the world is watching in horror... We will never give up, we will never concede. These people coordinated on open parts of 
the internet: on Instagram, on Facebook. These platforms are not merely mirroring humanity. 
They're making all of us our worst selves. I am proud to announce that starting 
today, our company is now Meta. People really underestimate 
the power of misinformation. People who've had these 
shots, and now they're magnetized. This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated. People haven't related to it. You see the figures, 
the daily figures, and they're nameless faces. India is being ravaged by... 
a second wave of Covid-19 is   threatening to overwhelm the 
country's health systems. We don't have anything, and patients are dying. Vaccine inequality cannot be allowed to continue. Omicron is spreading at a rate we have 
not seen with any previous variant. The more this virus spreads, the more likely 
it is for a very dangerous variant to emerge. We're in this together, and the only 
way we're going to conquer this virus   is by working together. They've agreed to share the gold medal. Just because you're a female, it doesn't mean 
you can't accomplish the biggest of goals. The Philippines first-ever Olympic gold medal. Put your mental health first, it doesn't 
matter if you're on the biggest stage.   That's more important than 
any other medal you could win. There's so many people who are 
afraid to voice that they need help. To truly choose to love is heroic. Chile's congress has passed a bill 
allowing same-sex couples to marry. Britney Spears is free. Hardly any of these police ever go to prison. We the jury find the defendant guilty. I'm so happy. I'm so so happy right now.  With the Asian-American community, enough 
is enough, we're just fed up. What I really hope that this movie can 
do is show Asian kids that it's okay to   take up space where they are, because they belong. I know where I'm headed in life, I know 
what my future is going to look like. When something says "Taylor's 
version," that means I own it! Rock and roll never dies! There are people who don't believe 
that women can be better presidents,   and we are here to show them. Taking its first steps in pursuit of 
cosmological discovery... touchdown confirmed. We did not feel prepared to be the 
heirs of such a terrifying hour. But within it we found the power to author a new 
chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves. So, while once we asked, how could we 
possibly prevail over catastrophe, now   we assert, how could catastrophe 
possibly prevail over us? Can you give us a little 
refresher on the Big Bang?  Sure. The Big Bang a short refresher. Let's see. 
Just the beginning of everything.   Yeah, beginning of everything. No big deal.
Put these little glue dots on the back of these.  Oh no.
Now we're going to build the mirror  Golden hexagons, silver sun shields.
I keep putting it on backwards.  I'm Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA. 
And today we're going to be building a model   of the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, 
most complex, most powerful telescope NASA has   ever sent to space. This telescope has been in development since 
1996. Bill Clinton was president. I looked it up;   The top song on the radio was the Macarena. 
And that wasn't too far after the Hubble went   up into orbit. 
Right.   So what was inspiring the folks at NASA at the 
time to start planning for another one so soon?  We've been able to see very distant galaxies with 
Hubble. But if you look in these deep fields,   you sort of see where you come up to the 
edge, where there are no more galaxies. But   we know there are more galaxies. 
We knew that in order to find   extremely distant galaxies, we would need an 
infrared telescope. And J.W.S.T was specifically   designed to be able to see the first epoch of 
galaxies that were born after the Big Bang.  How does that work? Yeah. So we're basically able to do that because 
light takes time to travel across the universe. So   you can sort of think of you know the light from 
the sun takes about 8 minutes to get to the Earth.   So we’re seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes 
ago. If the sun went out right now, wouldn’t   know it for 8 minutes. And then galaxies that are 
further away, the light from them takes longer   to get here. So we're seeing them as they were 
further in the past, but they very likely now have   stars and planets and evolved possibly, you know, 
evolved life forms, which is super exciting.  Maybe even life forms that build telescopes?
Who knows, right? They could be they could   be looking back at us, but of course 
they would be seeing us as we were.  Yeah, what would they see if they were doing 
exactly the same thing that we're doing?  They would. I mean, they would basically 
see the same thing that we're going to see   when we look at them.
Which is like primitive galaxies Exactly. So basically, not long after the Big 
Bang, the only thing in the universe was hydrogen   and helium. But there were some parts of the 
universe that were more dense than other parts,   and that collapse of that hydrogen 
and helium were the first stars   and the first galaxies. And so by, you know, by 
looking at the different galaxies at different   distances, we're sort of able to put together 
a picture of how galaxies change over time.   Ok so Gonna pop this on. Slide this on this way.  So this is where all the electronics will be. 
Here we have our solar array which is where we get   power. And this is a communications antenna so 
we can talk to the spacecraft once it's in space. What are these?
The telescope, the mirror   and the instruments have to be shielded from 
the light and the heat of the sun. You know,   you think of a normal telescope like Hubble or 
your backyard telescope and those telescopes have   tubes, right? That's what shields those mirrors. 
This telescope, since it's so big and also since   it's going to be very far away in space, we don't 
really need a tube. We only need a shield. And the   mirrors and instruments will be able to stay very, 
very cold. That is important because this is an   infrared telescope and we have to use infrared 
light to see those first stars and galaxies but   everything above absolute zero glows in infrared. 
So you and I glow in infrared, the planet, the sun,   you know, everything is infrared. 
That’s like thermal camera, night vision?   Exactly. Yeah, you can sort of think of, 
yeah, night vision goggles. If it was warm,   it would sort of glow and sort of see itself. So 
that's why we're putting it out in deep space. And   that's why we need these amazing sunshields.
So where exactly in space will this   telescope live?
So we are sending   this telescope about four times further away 
than the Moon to give you a sense of scale.  OK, so Hubble is like really, 
really close compared to that   and Hubble's going around us. So it's getting 
closer to the sun farther away from the sun.  Right.
This thing is going to   stay on our night side, on the Mars side of Earth 
and just kind of head around the sun with us.  Yes.
But always on the outside.  Exactly. Yeah, it will sort of you can 
think of it — It'll always be sort of   in the midnight sky, sort of straight above.
So the sun shields are keeping the heat away   from the mirror and the instruments. How 
hot would it get if they weren't there?  So the sun is always shining on this bottom 
side of the telescope and this is about   two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And the cold 
side will end up being about 400 degrees   below zero Fahrenheit. So it 
ends up being about a 600 degree   difference between the hot side and the cold side.
Just because of these five little super thin?  Yeah.
How does that work?  So the reason that there are these five 
layers is because in between each layer,   the heat basically is radiated outward, OK? And 
so by the time you get to each successive layer,   it's a little bit cooler. And so the that's 
the reason one sunshield wouldn't work.   This design gives us a more — more efficient 
way to get it very, very cold on the top. OK, so now we're going to build the 
mirror here. So if you want to put   glue dots on the back and then hand 
me the piece? So just to get back to   the basics, why do telescopes have mirrors?
So mirrors are essentially   light buckets. So the size of a mirror is really 
important because if you think about sitting a   bucket outside when it's raining, the bigger your 
bucket, the more water you're going to collect.   This mirror is about twenty one and a half feet 
across. It's about six times the light collecting   area of Hubble. And in comparison to Hubble, of 
course, Hubble is our gold standard of telescopes,   and we love Hubble.
We do.  But when we take into account the size of 
the mirror, the wavelength range that this   telescope will see in, the infrared light, 
and the sort of efficiency of the detectors,   we expect this telescope to be about 
100 times more powerful than Hubble.  That’s crazy.
It’s gonna be awesome.  And so why gold and why hexagons?
So gold, it turns out, is a great   reflector of infrared light. The reason it's in 
hexagons is we can't launch it fully deployed as   a full mirror. So we have to fold it and hexagons 
pack together very nicely and are very foldable. So basically these three mirrors and then these 
three mirrors will fold backwards. And then once   it gets to space, it has to do the opposite. 
It has to unfold. And then we have a telescope.  And how long does that process take?
That whole process takes about   two weeks from start to finish, so it's 
going to be a tense two weeks after launch.   And if something doesn't happen exactly as 
it's supposed to or exactly as we've planned,   we can pause, figure out what's 
going on and then work to fix it.  But fixing it does not include 
sending an astronaut there to fix it.  Definitely not. So it's going to be too far away 
to send astronauts to. You know, there is some   risk involved in in building a telescope like 
this. We can't go fix it. And that's one of the   reasons it's taken so long to test it, to make 
sure it's going to work like it's supposed to. PART 4 
JOSS: [01:05:14]   Light travels across the universe hits 
here. Then there's a secondary mirror   and it bounces off of that. And then it 
goes into here. And then what happens? [  And then it collects on the instruments. That’s 
there. This is an international collaboration.   And yeah, Europe is providing a couple of our 
instruments and Canada is providing an instrument.  So the telescope has fuel, and I read that the 
fuel can only last, maybe up to 10 years. So   twenty five years of development, 10 years of 
operation. Can you explain why this is worth it?  So if you consider the cost of this telescope over 
that whole cost of development and operations,   it actually comes out to be less than 
the price of a cheap cup of coffee   per year, per U.S. citizen.
ok. Wait, one cup of coffee per person per year?  Yeah.
That's easy.  And a cheap cup, like less than a buck.
OK, like a bodega coffee.  Exactly.
I also think it's sort of — like it's   in the DNA of our country that we spend money on 
things that make the world more good. Things like   public parks and public libraries, you know, 
those things that we sort of all enjoy and that   make the world a better place. And I really 
think astronomy falls into that category.   You know, we have this thirteen point 
eight billion year story of the universe,   and it's like we're missing key paragraphs from 
that very first chapter. We don't know how it got   started. And so that's one of the key things that 
we're going to be able to do with this telescope.  And it's so cool to think that the light that this 
is collecting will have left the source has been   traveling for billions of years.
Yeah.  Our solar system forms in the meantime.
Yeah.  An intelligent species 
evolves, creates this machine.  Yes.
Throws it into space,   and there is the light to meet it so that 
we can figure out where we came from.  We have all these specific plans, these specific 
things we want to learn, but I think that the   most awesome thing we’ll end up learning with 
this telescope we haven't even thought of yet.   Because when we increase our technology 
by an extreme amount like this,   I think it's inevitable that we'll find 
something that completely surprises us   and causes us to rethink how 
we understand the universe. Our model was based on a paper cutout model that was designed by John Jogerst. It's available on NASA's website and we'll put the link  in the description. And if you want to know more about the Webb Telescope, the podcast Unexplainable did two incredible episodes about it a few months back. Go to your podcast app. Look for Unexplainable and check them out. - [Woman] Limited supply. - [Narrator] A ticking clock. - If we don't get out
of here in 60 seconds, the whole place is gonna blow. - [Narrator] A classic
staple of fictional dramas. - Tick-tock. - [Narrator] TV offers,
the love of game shows and this very video. - What's it gonna be? - [Narrator] Designed to raise stakes and keep our excitement levels high. - Oh, I don't know. - Tick-tock, Amber. - [Narrator] But there's another
common use for this device you may want to watch out
for in the world of the scam. You've probably witnessed
it, an email asking you to act now, a robocall urging
you to respond immediately. So why do so many scammers use the tactic of the ticking clock? And how does it affect
our ability to think? - [Announcer] It's 4:00 p.m. on a Friday, late in November. Marjorie is tackling her
daily Sudoku when she receives a phone call. Expecting her grandson, she
is surprised to find a man from the gas company. It seems Marjorie has
missed her latest payment and is in danger of having
her heating shut off before the frosty weekend. Oh dear, urging her not
to worry, the man offers to fast track her payment
with a few digital payments options or she can simply provide her credit card information
and social security number. Thankful for the assistance,
Marjorie gives him her info before hanging up the phone
comforted that she will remain warm in the days to come. - [Woman] Ah. - [Narrator] In 2019, studies
found that participants asked to make quicker
responses to fraudulent offers made more judgment errors suggesting that the visceral
trigger of a ticking clock may reduce our ability
to effectively judge a message's authenticity. These types of interactions
are designed to cloud our immediate judgment,
pushing our way of thinking from a more centralized form
of information processing to a peripheral one. Simply put, the reason why so
many scams and fraud incidents make use of a ticking
clock is because it works. Marketers know this effect well. With some studies showing
that the simple introduction of a countdown timer can
increase sales of our product by as much as 9%. While it may seem obvious,
the perceived urgency that these clocks create
can push many of us to make more impulsive decisions. - [Announcer] Avid gamer
Tom is hard at work. He's been scouring the internet
for the highly sought after new console which is still scarce despite being on the
market for almost a year. Just as he gives up hope,
Tom is stopped by a surprise personal listing on social media site. The user got lucky and found two consoles so he's selling the second
without a huge markup. Nice find. The price is too appealing to ignore and the vendor has a high review rating. Not willing to lose out again, Tom Springs at the opportunity. The sale goes through and Tom
falls back into his chair, giddy in anticipation
for his new purchase. - [Narrator] So what exactly
is happening in these moments? A 2016 study stated that decision-makers must often balance the desire
to accumulate information with the costs of protracted deliberation. In other words, whenever faced with a time-sensitive decision,
we enter a sort of trade off between the perceived truth
of the information we have already gathered and the time
leftover to make our choices. - There is a natural bias
that we all have called a loss aversion bias. We are more inclined to
weigh heavily on things where we lose the opportunity. We lose something. So if we win $20, that's
wonderful, that's great but we weigh it less than if we lost $20. It's called social engineering. They're really getting
at trying to trick us into making the easy decision
they want us to make. - [Narrator] By limiting
the amount of time with which we have to make a decision, these interactions don't
only cloud our judgment. They also challenge our desire
to avoid a lost opportunity. Our fear of missing out, so to speak. - [Announcer] Mike has
lost track of the time he has spent indoors. His previous holiday plans were canceled. His surf lessons put on hold
but suddenly an opportunity, an exciting prospect, a
once in a lifetime trip to an exotic locale presents itself. The images are captivating. The waves begging him from afar. The seller has a work conflict
and can no longer travel or return the hotel reservation
but there's another buyer so time is scarce. Mike's partner is asleep,
he dare not wake them. Perhaps this will be a nice surprise. He bites and buys the hotel
voucher before it disappears. Mike rests his head on his pillow, dreaming of the adventures to come. - [Narrator] So if we are
all inherently susceptible to the ticking clock, what can
we do to protect ourselves? - If you suspect you're being scammed, the first thing you can do is slow down. Take a moment to step back and ask, is there a way you can confirm
this information other than the person you were talking
to right at the moment? If they called you on the phone,
then hang up and call back the company through a known good number. So slow it down, step it back
and think through things, don't let them pressure
you into reacting too fast. - [Narrator] Slowing down
as a great way to avoid being scammed. - Time is up, Amber. What is it gonna be? - I think I'm gonna take a
moment to think about it. - That's smart, I guess. - [Narrator] But whether
you're making a purchase or using a platform like Zelle,
the best way to avoid a scam is to only send money to
those you know and trust. The annual flu shot has been 
a consistent staple in many of our lives since the 1940s. And for the past 80 years, the way 
we research and make it has remained mostly unchanged. Which is not really a problem. The flu shot is estimated to save 
thousands of lives every year and prevent millions of cases 
in the United States alone. In other words, it’s a safe and effective
way to stop the seasonal flu strain. But what if something
different emerged? The last four pandemics before Covid-19 were brought on by an influenza virus, 
not a coronavirus. And virologists agree that when it
comes to the next flu pandemic, it’s not if, but when. But the Covid-19 pandemic has brought us 
new advances in vaccine technology. And now we're closer than ever before 
to something new. Something like a flu shot that protects us
year after year, regardless of the strain. Something like a universal flu vaccine. There are a lot of different types of influenza and researchers identify each one by looking at 
two proteins on the surface of the virus: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Each one has various subtypes, which can create
a ton of different combinations. And that’s just influenza A viruses. There’s also influenza B to worry about. A truly universal vaccine would have 
to cover all of these plus anything that could potentially emerge. SCHULTZ-CHERRY: So what makes influenza
unique is its ability to change rapidly. That's why we have to update 
our vaccines every year, because as it goes through people, 
it changes. The trouble is, making the vaccine takes 
a lot of time every year, so in order to have a vaccine ready 
for flu season researchers have to rely on a bit of guesswork. FULLER: We have to almost predict “What is next year's flu virus 
going to look like?” Since the flu is a seasonal virus that 
typically appears in the colder months scientists predict the most common strains
by looking at outbreaks in other areas of the world. SCHULTZ-CHERRY: They'll make the decision
for February for that next September's vaccine 
in the northern hemisphere. Researchers typically choose the top 4 
most common strains in one hemisphere to make the flu vaccine 
for the other hemisphere. But since the virus is constantly changing, the predictions in February aren’t always
100% accurate by September. FULLER: The efficacy of the flu vaccine can vary from as little as 30%, up to 70%
from any one given year simply because those predictions 
are not always perfect. They're pretty good, 
but they're not perfect. One solution would be to just make the vaccine
closer to flu season. But the way we currently make the flu vaccine
makes that impossible. SCHULTZ-CHERRY: Right now, our current practice takes 
6 to 8 months to make the vaccine. Scientists have used fertilized chicken eggs
to grow viruses for vaccines since the 40’s. In fact, we use so many eggs 
to make flu vaccines annually that the US government actually has top secret
chicken farms for this specific purpose. But that’s a story for another time. The point is, when a virus is prone 
to changing rapidly, 6 to 8 months is a ton of wasted time. Newer vaccine technology like mRNA 
could dramatically shrink this timeline because it doesn’t require growing 
large quantities of viruses. As in, we could do away with 
the chickens and the eggs. We’d likely be able to make a much more
effective flu vaccine because we’d be developing shots 
closer to the time we actually discover the new strain. This is one way to potentially improve the
flu shot, but only up to a point. Because making a vaccine faster 
doesn’t make it universal. To do that, we have to teach our immune system
to target a different part of the virus entirely. Influenza changes fast,
but not the entire virus. Just a few pieces - specifically the top part
of that one protein called hemagglutinin, which is
kind of shaped like a tulip. SCHULTZ-CHERRY: The head of the tulip, that's where we currently
make antibodies to. And that's the area that changes
super fast, so it’ll go from a red to a white
to a yellow. In simplest terms, our annual flu shot 
teaches our body to recognize the top of that protein: 
the "tulip head." Which is why one vaccine that teaches our
immune system to fight off a yellow tulip isn’t good for the next year 
when a red tulip shows up. For a universal vaccine to work it needs to teach our immune system 
to recognize and fight off a part of the virus that doesn’t change
as much. Which means instead of focusing on the head that changes year after year,
from virus to virus, many researchers have turned
their attention to the stem. FULLER: The hemagglutinin stem has been a target 
for universal flu vaccines for quite some time. KRAMMER: The problem with our immune system, 
is that it doesn't like to actually target the stalk. So you basically have to find a way 
to convince the immune system that it finds the stalk attractive. There are a few ways to do that. Some researchers have tried 
removing the head all together. Others have found promise in swapping out
the head multiple times so your immune system only recognizes 
the stem as a threat, and builds a stronger immune response to that. Now, there are also other parts of the virus
that don’t change as much that researchers are looking at, 
which will likely be vital for an effective universal flu vaccine as well. FULLER: There's always the possibility 
that down the line once you generate, say, 
a universal flu vaccine focused on the hemagglutinin stem, 
that eventually the virus will figure out a way to mutate away 
from that as well. An ideal universal influenza vaccine will not include just one conserved bit 
from the virus, but multiple conserved portions from the virus. And if we could do that, it doesn’t really matter how fast 
we make the vaccine. Because it would work year after year, on multiple different strains of the flu. There’s still a bit of research 
left to do: trials, funding, and more. But we’re closer than you might think. FULLER: There are already universal
flu vaccines in clinical trials. So, we're looking at, you know, years,
a few years down the line. KRAMMER: I think 5 to 10 years
is a timeframe that sounds at least to me, reasonable. For most people, the implications 
of a universal flu shot are bigger than just not having to get 
a vaccine every year. It would also make the flu vaccine 
more broadly available. KRAMMER: The flu vaccines are
vaccines for rich countries, right? Low and middle income countries, 
specifically low income countries don't have the infrastructure and the capacity
to actually use them. A universal flu shot that lasts 
for several years could be implemented in 
childhood vaccination programs globally, providing better protection for everyone from
current and future outbreaks. KRAMMER: We need to kind of put the resources 
into it because otherwise we won't be prepared for the next 
flu pandemic either. FULLER: So, we can do better,
especially with the new technologies like mRNA vaccines that have emerged. There is a real opportunity to do 
much, much better in terms of protecting against flu each year. In a historic district in 
Pasadena, California, boundedby a Domino’s Pizza on one corner and a 7-11 on the other you’ll find heaven. Bungalow Heaven. This type of house, the bungalow and particularly the Craftsman bungalow is now celebrated in historic districts from Raleigh, North Carolina to 
Seattle, Washington. But the Craftsman bungalow 
only became a phenomenon through the evolution of a 
socialist artist’s philosophy to a mass market factory operation. The definition of a Craftsman bungalow 
is really slippery but to explain it, let’s take 
three 1911 examples. From the American founder of the 
Craftsmanmovement, Gustav Stickley. These bungalows are all low, and wide, with roofs overhanging a porch. Compare that to a Queen Anne Victorian house,
common in the late 1800s. The Queen Anne has turrets and a wraparound
porch and all sorts of ornamentation. It was also huge and expensive. But bungalows aren’t just small — you can see the difference when you compare
the shape to a New Orleans shotgun house, which is small and low, but also 
long and skinny. The bungalow interiors feature 
relatively open floor plans like this: no long hallways, just connected spaces. And materials are hopefully natural: highlighting simple wood and stone 
over artifice. An ideal Craftsman interior 
might look like this: with built-in features like 
this window seat and piano, beams showing off the materials, and details like these hanging lanterns
that hang from the ceiling. A true Craftsman bungalow is simple, 
but well-appointed. Built carefully, with attention to every detail. And that highlights the 
Craftsman bungalow paradox. How did a meticulously crafted movement 
become a mass movement? I’ll be honest, before I started this video I kinda thought Craftsman tools 
is where Craftsman came from. And it is true that they are kinda connected but it started somewhere else entirely. These chairs are from the Crystal palace exhibition
of 1851, in London. It was a massive exhibition showing off 
the newest, most advanced...everything. The arts and crafts movement was born in response: a push to stop making these chairs 
and start making ones like these. Cleaner. Simpler. Poet slash artist slash textile guy 
slash socialist William Morris was one of many Arts and Crafts figures. But he became key to the Craftsman movement,
in America, after his death. Today, he’s best known for his gorgeous designs. Like on these playing cards I’ve got that
were made in some factory in China. And you can get stuff with his original designs
printed on it almost anywhere from playing cards to your quaint,
pandemic face masks. Morris reacted against industrialization 
and artifice that was happening during the industrial revolution. He was in favor of craftsmanship and beauty. He inspired Gustav Stickley-- the guy who wrote that book of Craftsman plans
and made that chair-- to promote the Arts and Crafts movement 
in America with his 1900s magazine, The Craftsman. The first issue was all about William Morris,
including his Socialistic career which united with his art, in that a workman could pursue the “creation of beauty
as necessary as daily bread.” Craftsmen, he claimed, found value 
in the quality of their work not as disengaged factory employees. Future editions of “The Craftsman” promoted
similarly eclectic topics, from poets to Factory reform. And there was a lot of furniture,
since that was Stickley’s background. The magazine’s name, Craftsman, became the
way to identify Arts and Crafts in America. Entire Craftsman homes started to show up
in the magazine as well, including, in 1903, the Crafstman bungalow. “How to build a bungalow” noted that the word started 
"near the banks of the ganges" but had since been transformed 
to a new architectural form. The Craftsman had recommendations 
for how to build it all properly. Over time, the magazine featured 
more and more Craftsman house plans including plans for bungalows. Adhering to those Arts and Crafts tenets:
natural materials, intentional construction and as bungalows, a low slung shape and relatively
open floor plan. Stickley tied the bungalow 
to the Craftsman movement. And then dollar signs showed up on the plans. Craftsman and bungalow had become 
these buzz words kinda like “Tiny House” today. And nobody controlled that brand. So all the bungalows started getting 
lumped together. I love these two papers — by Janet Ore and
Kim Hernandez that show how bungalows got commercialized
in the “development of the Seattle Suburbs” and in a Los Angeles “Bungalow Boom”. Across the country in the 1900s,
new areas needed hundreds of homes. Stickley himself started selling floor plans
so Craftsman fans could build their own homes 
with their own builders, including craftsman bungalows. Originally, Craftsman homes 
came from Stickley’s plans or a few other esteemed practitioners. But anybody could sell floor plans or build
houses and make a lot of money off that style. In Seattle, an entrepreneur 
named Jud Yoho— Jud Yoho. Do not trust Jud Yoho. Jud Yoho sold “Craftsman bungalows”  with no real affiliation to the 
Arts and Crafts movement  and the “creation of beauty.” His goal was to turn “craftsman” 
into a volume business. The same thing happened down in Los Angeles where “Practical Bungalows” were built
by the Los Angeles Investment Company a real estate firm that developed land, 
took Craftsman style and built tons of homes with the help 
of a massive mill and shops. Sears — then a catalog company — was the
Amazon of the era. And they joined in. They sold 70,000 kit homes 
between 1908 and 1940  including a bunch of bungalows 
with Craftsman flair. Salesman from Portland to Topeka 
packaged bungalow style, all of which had a similar floorplan and,
often, a Craftsman-like style but without Gustav Stickley or the philosophy
of the Arts and Crafts movement. By 1909, the New York Times was publishing
full blown trend pieces about the “call of the bungalow” it was the “Latest Dream of Spring Poet
and Real Estate Man.” By the 1920s, “Craftsman” 
was such a strong brand  that Sears bought the Trademark in 1927  and they put it on tools. What started as a movement for a socialist
textile maker had become a goldrush where different types of bungalows capitalized
on the “Craftsman” cachet. A craftsman bungalow can look like 
an artistic expression of individual mastery. Or it can look like hustlers 
capitalizing on a trend. But really, it can look like 
both of those things. And that, to a lot of people, looks just like heaven. Okay so there is a whole world of people who are obsessed with these kit homes and
where they actually ended up. And a lot of those include Craftsman homes. I found one blog called 
"Oklahoma Houses By Mail" and this woman had found the 
Los Angeles Investment Company catalog that I show earlier in this video. And then she tracked down the location of
the house that is on the cover. And you can find it on streetview today. It's got a different coat of paint
but it is the same building. On November 22, 1995, Toy Story 
was released in theaters in the US. You couldn’t take it home to watch it
on your VCR until October 29th, 1996 -- 11 months after it opened. This is called the theatrical window: when a movie is shown only in theaters. And it’s gotten way smaller over time. Toy Story 4 was released in June of 2019. To watch it at home, you only had to wait
about 3 months. This shrinking window is the result 
of a decades-long fight between movie theaters and movie studios. But how much smaller
can the window get? Are movie theaters close to becoming 
a thing of the past? Thanks to a Supreme Court
case from the 1940s, movie studios and theater owners 
in the US are separate entities. For a while, the only way to see a movie 
was to go to a theater. But pretty soon... "Televison--" "--VHS--" "--DVD--" The days of theaters being the only way 
to watch a movie are long gone. To defend against those new competitors, theater owners have struck deals
with movie studios  to give them a window of exclusivity before a movie could be seen 
in any other format. Movie studios agreed because 
it worked for them, too. ZORADI: We created these windows because they were really good for 
the motion picture business. That's Mark Zoradi, a former Disney executive. ZORADI: ...from 1980 until 2010... But today, he's... ZORADI: ...the CEO of Cinemark Theaters. The third largest theater chain 
in the US and Canada.  Theater owners generally want 
a longer exclusive window, because they only make money 
while a film is in theaters. And even then they’re splitting
ticket profits, roughly 50/50. But movie studios have the opportunity to keep making money long after a film
is shown in theaters. In fact, it’s become essential for studios to
recoup their investments on expensive films. ZORADI: In order for you to break even, then you've got to go right down the line,
with multiple bites  in order to make that all back. In the beginning, the minimum
theatrical window was quite long. But obviously... CORCORAN: Over time, that's shrunk. With the introduction of DVDs, you had a window at roughly
six months. ZORADI: The window, prior to
the pandemic, was essentially 74 days before a movie would go to 
electronic sell through. That means a digital release you can buy,
on a platform like iTunes. ZORADI: And then at 90 days they
would take it to DVD, VOD,  and then after that, they would take it to
pay television or streaming. That's kind of how the sequence is. But studios haven’t always 
gotten their way. In 2010, Warner Bros.'s parent company 
proposed a window of 30 days. Which theater owners didn’t agree to. Netflix challenged the window 
a few years later, planning a movie release in IMAX
and on Netflix at the same time. Major theater chains banned their films. One studio has been really persistent though. RUBIN: Universal has been probably 
the most public and aggressive  about wanting to shorten 
the theatrical window. In 2011, Universal made plans to
release the film Tower Heist on demand  30 days after it hit theaters. Some chains threatened to 
not show the film at all. Universal ultimately backed down,
and kept their window at 90 days. Ultimately, theaters need studios, 
because they need movies to show. Studios need theaters to make big money
and get big press. And that mutual need kept things stable. For a while. Until... "Theaters shut down due to the global pandemic." "Movie theaters were forced 
to close their doors." "They've been trying to survive the coronavirus." (Overlapping) "Bankruptcy." "...in AMC's future." RUBIN: The power dynamic shifted a lot 
during the pandemic. In 2020, studios had newfound leverage and one company struck 
while the iron was hot. RUBIN: Universal had this movie,
Trolls: World Tour. And they had two options. One, they could delay it, or two they could
test what they've always wanted to do and put the movie in theaters and on video
on demand on the same day. And the caveat there is that there weren't
any movie theaters open to play it. Trolls: World Tour quickly became 
the highest grossing digital release ever. It made more money for Universal 
in 3 weeks at home than the original film did 
in its theatrical run. NBCUniversal’s head of film 
told the Wall Street Journal: “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect 
to release movies on both formats.” In other words: in theaters and on demand at the same time. The two biggest theater chains in the US fired back by saying they’d never show 
Universal films again. But things were different now. The major film studios had restructured
to make streaming their primary focus. Warner Bros. released their entire 2021 slate
in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time. Disney and Universal made a similar move. CORCORAN: With that upset came time
for theater owners and Universal and the other studios, frankly, to
start having those conversations and working out about what the future looks
like, and what a post-pandemic model is. In 2021 the major theater chains
made deals to shorten the window. Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. agreed
to a 45 day window in 2022 and onwards. But Universal got its own deal 
with the big theater chains. They agreed to give theaters a portion of
their video on demand revenue. And in return they secured 
one of the shortest windows ever. 31 days for their biggest movies,
17 days on their smaller movies. But one thing that’s noticeably absent from all of these deals is any sign of 
a same-day release strategy, where a movie comes out on demand 
and in theaters at the same time. At what seemed to be
their most powerful moment, studios decided to keep the 
theatrical window in place. That's partly because movie theaters are still
pretty big money makers for studios. But it's also because movie theaters can sort
of change how the public sees a movie. CORCORAN: Streaming customers value 
theatrical releases more highly. It carries with it sort of an aura of quality ZORADI: It "eventizes" a movie. It's a shared experience that helps become
almost like a zeitgeist within the culture. The pandemic shifted the power dynamic towards
movie studios and away from theaters. But it also showed that 
they still need each other. That doesn’t necessarily mean 
theaters will be around forever. But if they can survive a pandemic, maybe
they're stronger than we thought. In September 2021, the CDC
recommended Covid-19 booster shots, an additional vaccine dose,
for the elderly and those at high risk in the US.  That echoed the booster shot rollout 
in places like the UK and Singapore. But in November, the CDC announced 
a new recommendation: all adults could get a booster shot.  And that idea had been a contentious
question among scientists.   "I do believe that all of us are going 
to need another shot at some point." "It's much more of a gray area for 
younger people, particularly under 50s." "I don't think we should get hung up 
on should, may... just go out and get boosted." "FDA's Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Phil Krause say there's currently no need for boosters
for the general population." Dr. Celine Gounder was one of those scientists. She wasn’t convinced that we all 
needed more shots. Up until recently. So, to help me figure out what’s going on
with boosters, I called her up. GOUNDER: I had not planned to get boosted,
and yesterday scheduled a third dose. And that's really a decision that was made
based on the emergence of omicron.  To start us off, can you sort of just 
walk us through what the science of needing boosters is? GOUNDER: When you get vaccinated you're stimulating different branches
of your immune system.  You're stimulating B cells, 
T cells, antibody levels. Those antibody levels are what protect
you robustly against infection, particularly soon after vaccination. But those antibody levels wane.  What we saw from the data in Israel,
as well as other countries like the US, is you saw a waning antibody levels
at six months after the second dose. But Dr. Gounder emphasized that 
charts like this shouldn’t alarm us. GOUNDER: Once those antibodies fade
away, the B cells are still there. B cells are these little factories
to make antibodies.  So when you get re-exposed 
to the virus, the B cells recognize the virus
and kick back into gear and produce antibodies all over again. You're not fully protected 
against all infection, but you still have very strong, very
long-lived memory B cell responses that are still there to protect you from
severe disease, hospitalization, and death.  So if we still have that protection 
from severe cases, why do we need more
antibodies from a booster? GOUNDER: There are certain groups in
which we do see a reduction in protection against even some of those
more severe outcomes. And those are specifically older people. In addition, people who are highly
immunocompromised also do benefit from getting
additional doses of vaccine. That was the reasoning behind initially 
limiting boosters to the vulnerable: that while boosters for all adults in general
could help replenish antibodies to prevent any infections, they weren't necessary for 
preventing severe cases, which vaccines continue to do
effectively for most people. But many scientists like Dr. Gounder 
have changed their mind on that stance based on the information available about the
omicron variant at the time of this video. GOUNDER: Now that you've had the rise of 
the omicron variant, it's a different conversation
about boosters. The concern about 
the Omicron variant is that our vaccines may not fully protect 
against this variant, which has more than 30 mutations 
in the spike protein.  B cells that would have recognized
earlier strains of the virus may not recognize omicron. It has changed so much that your memory immune responses 
don't recognize it. But that's a prediction based on
looking at the genetic sequence. By giving additional doses 
of vaccine, you can override that
relative immune evasion. It’s not clear yet whether or not we’ll
need a new vaccine for the new variant. That was actually a question companies like
Pfizer had with the other variants, too. So even though there are still 
a lot of unknowns about omicron, experts like Dr. Gounder say boosters 
may be a good tool against it, especially if it turns out to be as bad 
as some fear.   So at what point after our first round 
of vaccinations should we get boosted?  GOUNDER: So you should wait six months 
after your second dose of COVID vaccine, if you got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, 
before getting a boost, and you should wait two months after getting
the Johnson & Johnson vaccine  before getting a boost. To really get to peak antibody levels,
you really want to wait about two weeks.  So if you're, say, planning to go
visit family over the holidays, I would recommend getting that 
additional dose of vaccine, that booster dose, about two weeks 
prior to travel.  And that booster doesn’t have to be the
same one you originally got.  GOUNDER: The NIH conducted a study 
looking at, do you start with Johnson & Johnson, 
Pfizer, or Moderna, and then do you boost with Johnson & Johnson,
Pfizer, or Moderna? The study found that 
not only is mixing vaccines safe: all combinations work. In the US, if you got initial doses of 
an mRNA vaccine, you can get either one as a third shot. But it’s recommended that if you got 
Johnson & Johnson first, it’s most effective to get boosted with
an mRNA vaccine. Similarly, in countries like Germany and Korea, most people who got AstraZeneca 
will be offered an mRNA vaccine.  GOUNDER: There is some thought
that the different vaccine technologies teach the immune system to recognize
the spike protein in slightly different ways, and that as a result, the immune system,
you could say, remembers better. Considering that the vaccines have been so
unequally distributed around the world, should we be concerned about 
the ethics of getting a third shot when so many people haven’t
even had their first? GOUNDER: I think we should be worried about
that at a policy level, at a macro level, but whether you yourself as the individual
choose to get a booster dose or not is really not going to have an impact 
on global vaccine supply, because those decisions
are being made far upstream from you going into your local drugstore 
and getting a vaccination. As for whether we’ll all 
need boosters for years: it’s really too soon to tell. It depends on how much Covid is spreading. GOUNDER: Look, boosters are not going to 
end the pandemic. What is going to end the pandemic 
is vaccinating people  who are not vaccinated. Your risk of infection is proportional to
how much virus is circulating in the community. Even if you've been boosted. We still have a long way to go 
to vaccinate the unvaccinated. But Dr. Gounder also emphasized 
that we can do two things at once: we can continue to vaccinate the unvaccinated while also strengthening the defenses 
of the vaccinated.  GOUNDER: Boosters do provide another 
layer of protection, especially with the rise of the omicron variant. I think there is broader consensus
now among doctors and scientists that everyone 18 and up in the United States who
can get a booster should get a booster. That boost won't last forever, but it does buy you time.  Pope Francis has developed a reputation for
being a bit... Unconventional. Since his papacy began in 2013, he’s done away with ring kissing. "Because he wants to be humble." Throne sitting. "Pope Francis used the simple white chair." Pope mobiling. "Refusing to use his bulletproof vehicles." He’s broken a ton of centuries-old traditions. Pushing for modern updates across 
the Catholic church. But it’s not just what Pope Francis does
that sets him apart from past popes. It’s what he wears. From elaborate embroidered scenes 
to more subtle color cues. Papal clothing has always 
been laden with symbolism. And it’s is how Pope Francis communicates
some of his most basic beliefs and intentions. Most of the time, Pope Francis wears this. When greeting crowds, meeting dignitaries, Basically anything other than performing mass. It’s made up of a cassock,
an ankle length coat. A fascia, tied around his waist. A zucchetto, which translates to “skullcap”
for obvious reasons. And this, a pellegrina: 
a cape of sorts. Which, unfortunately, often blows in the wind prompting an ongoing heated debate 
over whether or not to add velcro. Anyway... The pope’s clothing is roughly the same
as a cardinal’s below him, or bishops below them, Except, all of the pope’s clothing is, 
of course, white. The biblical color of angels 
and Jesus’ robes. Symbolizing innocence, purity, divinity. This outfit has been roughly the same 
since at least the 1200s. And since the late 1700s, it’s even been
made by the same family of tailors. But each pope adds their own specific flair. Compare Pope Francis to Pope John Paul II. He was two Popes ago. We couldn't find a Pope Benedict doll, probably because he wasn't pope 
for very long. Even in doll form, the differences 
are easy to see. Pope Francis’ fascia is plain, instead of being fringed and 
bearing his coat of arms. And his crucifix is iron, as opposed to gold. Francis also keeps it plain 
when it comes to outerwear, opting for a white peacoat, instead of the
traditional winter mozzetta lined with ermine fur. That’s this extremely cute weasel-like animal. And then there’s the shoes. Popes usually pick one style of shoes 
and stick to them. Pope Francis wears frugal, black oxfords,
paired with black socks. The same shoes he wore 
as a priest and a cardinal. But before him, most popes opted for 
white socks and red shoes. JP II wore a dark, burgundy pair. And Pope Benedict famously sported 
slick red leather loafers which prompted Esquire Magazine to name him
“accessessorizer of the year” in 2007. The red shoes are likely a reference 
to the blood of martyrs and the passion of Jesus, who is often pictured
in red post-resurrection. But some claim they’re just 
a holdover from when the rich and powerful wore a lot of red. Because it was expensive and 
set them apart from common people. Which it seems is where a lot of 
papal garment design originates. If you look at the clothing of Byzantine royalty you’ll see a lot of similarities 
to modern catholic leadership. Right down to the red shoes. Pope Francis’ choices reflect a desire to
distance himself from that history. He even wears some of the same mass vestments
he did as bishop. Including, this, his mitre. Mitres, essentially foldable hats, 
have been around in various iterations for at least 
a thousand years. Today, they’re worn only during mass. Not just by the pope, but by cardinals 
and bishops too. No one can really agree on their origin but they’re likely yet another holdover
from royal dress. There are a few mass vestments
reserved only for the pope. Including the pallium, 
this circular wool band. And sometimes, this thing: a ferula. Both references to Jesus as “the good shepherd”. But the main event of the pope's mass attire
is the chasuble. Essentially a poncho. This chasuble, white with a 
minimal gold trim is the first one Pope Francis wore. His choice for his inaugural mass. Traditionally, the time for your 
showiest chasuble. It’s also his chasuble of choice, 
worn most frequently throughout the year. Even on Christmas, another time popes 
usually opt for more opulence. But over the course of the year, chasuble
colors vary according to the church calendar a schedule all priests roughly follow. Purple, during times of penance: like advent
and lent. Green, during times of growth: used throughout
quote “ordinary time”. White and gold, symbolizing joy and purity:
for major celebrations like Easter and Christmas. Sprinkled in are some Red chasubles: 
whenever sacrifice is celebrated. And a few pink ones. Pope Francis usually follows this calendar. But on July 8th, 2013 he wore this. A simple, purple chasuble. Even though it was squarely within 
Ordinary time. Purple, the color of penance 
and mourning. He wore it during a visit to a refugee camp
on the Italian island of Lampedusa. While standing atop an altar made of 
wooden remnants from refugee boats. He delivered a now famous homily that criticized
global indifference to the refugee crisis. His clothes represent the church 
he’s working to build: something simpler, more accessible, 
more modern. When a trash can gets full and 
there’s a government shutdown, people don’t stop throwing stuff on top of it. But I did manage to pick up a couple 
truckloads of trash before I was told: “Don’t do it anymore.” People were not even able to volunteer 
during the government shutdown. "Stop the shutdown,
stop the shutdown!" The US is the only country in the world where 
the government can actually shut down. And the threat looms nearly every year. "Seven days until shut down—" "Four days—" "T-minus six days—" "Five days—" "Government shutdown at midnight tonight." I just feel my gut in my 
chest - like, ugh, not again. So, why does the US even shut down? And what happens when it does? “You travel 3,500 miles to America 
and find that they shut down!” Every government in the world 
has to do the same thing: decide how to spend the country’s money. In the US, they do that by passing spending bills, called appropriations bills, that give these federal agencies their budgets. It happens every year — or every fiscal year. Japan is April 1st. In Kenya, it's July 1st. In the US, it’s October 1st. And if the government misses that deadline... The budget wasn't passed. We have no money. And then, "Oh, you have to come to work anyway." Just not getting paid. We did get back pay, but, still, 
you have to wait for that. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen was seeing 
all these hard working people in a line   for their food bank. It’s the conversation at the 
dinner table every single night. “Well, Dad, do you know when 
you’re gonna get paid again?" No. I don’t. It’s the way the US government 
was set up. Kind of. The answer to why we have government 
shutdowns actually starts in the Constitution. “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but 
in consequence of appropriations made by law.” And so what that really means is that before any federal money 
can be spent, there has to be an actual appropriations law allowing it. But that can be interpreted in different ways and it has changed over time. Back in the 1800’s there were no shutdowns. But there were other problems. Agencies would routinely 
blow through their budgets then keep spending and would come back to Congress and ask for more. So Congress passed the Antideficiency Act. It tells federal officials that they really, 
really can't spend money without an appropriation. But that didn’t stop the government from missing 
their deadline, and creating long gaps in funding. As recently as the 1970s, there were 
plenty of these funding gaps. And yet... The agency sort of pretty much just kept going. It couldn't possibly be that 
Congress wanted them to shut down if there was no budget bill passed on time, right? But what happened was in the early 1980s,   the attorney general issued two opinions 
that tightened up this interpretation. The opinions basically said no seriously, unless Congress 
has passed an appropriations bill agencies can’t spend any money. Including to employ the 
services of their employees. Even though there technically is 
money, we have no access to it. And since then, the US has 
shutdown-shutdown many times. 1996 was the first big one, for three weeks. And 2019 was the longest in history, so far. I actually got to work and they was like, “We’re all furloughed. 
They shut the building down.” I was like, “Oh, the doors 
are not opening right now?” They were like, “No. 
It's shut down completely.” I was like, “What is a furlough? 
What’s going on?” I couldn’t work. 
I couldn’t go in. We weren’t even allowed to check email. So I ended up picking up side jobs 
trying to make ends-meet. These are all the agencies 
of the federal government. Here are the ones that actually shutdown in 1996. And in 2019. Shutdowns don't have to be 
of the whole government. So it might just be that one set 
of agencies didn't get funded. Congress couldn't reach agreement 
with each other and with the president on whether that set of agencies would get funded. But the rest of the government 
was funded perfectly well. In 2019, around 800,000 federal employees 
didn’t get a paycheck for 35 days. But more than half of them 
still had to go into work. Because there are some jobs 
that the Attorney General said are exempt from stopping completely, what we call “essential” employees. So while the Department of 
Transportation was shut down, air traffic controllers still had to work. I don’t show up with a headset 
and just do that job by myself. All the other aviation safety professionals 
that assist us and help us on a daily basis   are now taken away. Homeland Security shut down but 
TSA workers still had to show up. Without pay. We’re one of the lowest paid agencies. Not receiving a check every two weeks was hard. People on the floor were 
smiling and greeting everyone, but behind closed doors in the break 
room we had people breaking down. National Parks lost millions in entry fees. Wildfire mitigation projects were delayed. Immigration court hearings — backlogged. And, there were thousands of contractors 
that work with all of these agencies who were also affected. If you were just working on 
a contract with a company, you did not get back pay. 
At all. My son has chronic asthma — 
couldn’t afford his medicine. I felt like I was... I was disappointed in them 
and it wasn’t even my fault. And a shutdown isn’t just 
centralized in Washington, DC. Only 15 percent of all federal 
employees live in that area. Which means the economic-impact is country-wide. Shutting down not only 
affects the federal workers. If people aren’t getting paid, 
they’re not going out to eat. There is a severe economic impact 
to something like that, especially in a town like Huntsville. Overall, the US economy lost $11 billion 
during the 2019 shutdown. Some of that was regained when 
employees received their back pay, but the damage was done. And the thing is, this doesn't have to happen. The legal framework explains why we end up 
having to have shutdowns as a matter of law. But why we have shutdowns 
truly is a matter of politics, which is that the more polarized the parties 
are and the more divided our government is, the harder time Congress and the president 
have working out a budget agreement. And having divisive politics 
isn’t uniquely American. In Belgium, there have been times 
where the politics were so bad, they just didn’t have a government. We didn’t really notice any difference. Our daily lives didn’t really change much. I don’t think the government 
could really like — stop. Most countries couldn’t. In nearly every other country, if the government were to fail 
to pass a budget by the deadline, agencies would just continue 
working with last year’s budget. There’s a push to do that in the US, too. Just have an automatic, temporary appropriations 
bill pass when the deadline is missed. The opposing argument to 
that is "Whoa, whoa, whoa." "This is the one time we have every year to reset and to kind of work things out and 
so where would the incentive go?" Congress has passed fewer 
and fewer laws each year. Passing these appropriations bills has become   the one time they’re kind of 
forced to agree on something. And as the political ideology of each 
Congress grows further apart each year, the likelihood of them agreeing 
on time kind of goes down. So every fall... "Washington’s version of groundhog day." "Another government shutdown looms." We are caught as pawns - Pawns in an ultimate game as a federal employee 
in a conversation that has nothing to do with us. We’re not going to work 
increasing the profit of a CEO. We’re doing public services and now I’m 
not going to get a paycheck? That’s crazy. "1980." The 80s were all about 
big hair, neon, MTV. And then there was this: "Every October a hole appears in the 
ozone layer over the south pole." "...hole in the ozone shield is the size
of the continental United States." "The protective ozone layer is 
being threatened as never before." "We are all at risk." Scientists warned that humanity was on track
to completely destroy the ozone layer by 2050. Without it ecosystems would collapse, skin cancer rates would skyrocket, and life as we knew it would cease to exist. But today, the ozone layer is healing. In an unprecedented act, the world came together
to prevent an environmental catastrophe. So how did we do it? And what can we learn from it? The ozone layer is a sort of “belt” around
the Earth made up of gaseous molecules. It protects every living thing by absorbing two types of 
ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. It’s a powerful shield, but 
it’s also fragile. In 1985, scientists discovered a 
massive loss of ozone here:  right over Antarctica. 40% of the layer had dissipated,
creating a “hole”. Scientists realized the hole formed in the
spring and every year it got worse. This was a wake up call. It wasn't small and far in the future. It was now and way bigger 
than anybody ever imagined. That’s Dr. Solomon, an atmospheric chemist. In 1986, she flew to Antarctica, 
along with other scientists to investigate the cause of the ozone hole. “Leading the team is Susan Solomon, a young atmospheric chemist 
from Boulder, Colorado." You know once you step off the plane in Antarctica, if you've never been there before, your main goal is to get out 
without getting frostbite. "Do you want to do the next one?" But what really our goal was to take measurements, not just of ozone, but also of different chemicals
that would help to show why it was going away. Some scientists released balloons in the sky
to take ozone measurements. While others took measurements on the ground. And they all came to the same conclusion. The biggest problem was chlorine from a man-made
compound called Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. On the ground CFCs aren’t harmful. But once they float up to the stratosphere
the Sun breaks them down into chlorine. They bind with ozone to make 
oxygen and chlorine monoxide. Then the loose oxygen atoms 
bump the chlorine atom out, freeing it to destroy more ozone molecules. And that causes a chain reaction. The long lifetime of the chlorofluorocarbons
is a big part of the problem. They live anywhere between 50 and 150 years
in our atmosphere so... It means that every year that you use what you use the year before 
is almost entirely still there. So it just builds up and builds up exponentially. And back then we used a lot of CFCs. The US had already moved away 
from CFCs in aerosol cans. But most of the world hadn’t yet. And they were still in everything from refrigerators
and air conditioners and styrofoam. The entire world needed to make a big change
quickly or we’d face-- Catastrophe. Catastrophe. Unmitigated catastrophe. In 1987, ozone levels had dropped 
by 50 percent. This growing threat led to some of the fastest
collective action on climate we've ever seen. So I like to think of it as, there's three
P's that when, they’re met we do very well at addressing environmental problems. So it was personal. It was perceptible and the solutions 
were practical. If you've been sunburned, you know that 
skin cancer is not a good thing. So everybody understands skin cancer. The personal nature of the threat is huge. The perceptible was easy to do 
with satellite measurements. You can just watch it get 
completely destroyed and go to zero where there should have been a lot of ozone. And we have practical solutions. It was easy to find substitutes for 
chlorofluorocarbons in spray cans that took, you know, less than a year to do. It was a very straightforward switch, And I think the main unifying factor 
in all of that is the public. Scientists like Dr. Solomon held 
press conferences to inform the public. "I think we will eventually see large scale
depletions of the ozone layer in other latitudes." The ozone hole started showing up 
in TV shows and movies. “It’s those damn fluorocarbons, they’ve
been kicking the hell out of the ozone.” “Macaroni, it will burn off.” “Well so will the ozone, eventually.” And all this public awareness put pressure
on leaders around the world to act. “We are here today because we recognize
that urgent action is necessary.” And the Montreal Protocol made it official. It recognized “that world-wide emissions
can significantly deplete the ozone layer and result in adverse effects on human health
and the environment." It listed control measures to reduce ozone
depleting substances in a series of steps. Including help for developing countries who need alternative technology 
and substituting products. Every single country eventually 
signed the protocol. Making it the only universal treaty 
to ever be ratified. And the most successful environmental agreement
in human history. Soon after, the world’s largest CFC producer
began to phase them out. Since the protocol went into effect 
on January 1st, 1989 the consumption of ozone-depleting substances  including CFCs, plummeted. Today, more than thirty years after 
the Montreal Protocol was signed the ozone hole has stopped growing 
and is now shrinking. And by 2065 it is expected to 
have recovered completely. But there’s more to be done. After the CFC ban we began using 
Hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs. HFCs don’t deplete the ozone layer but they
are a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. And it’s the fastest growing one. So in 2016, the Montreal Protocol 
was amended to include HFCs and now they are being phased out too. But they are only one part 
of a larger issue. "Climate change is already happening, 
right here, right now." "Experts say that we have until 2030 
to avoid catastrophe." "People are suffering." "People are dying." "Entire ecosystems are collapsing." "Unprecedented and even irreversible changes
are happening to this planet." "It is beyond any doubt that 
human activity is to blame." Climate change, our most challenging environmental
problem is still in need of big solutions. So I think people in most parts 
of the world, now understand and are concerned about, 
the personal impact. They found it to be perceptible. And we are finding practical solutions. It's not true that we can't do it anymore. We need to keep our eye on the ball 
on climate change. And if we do we will get the environment 
that we demand. [Music] go ahead take a bite rich flavor fresh ingredients bold cheesy goodness but where does it all come from the simple answer is a lot of different types of farmers but that answer isn't enough people have become disconnected from the sources of their food and these sources are facing significant challenges from small vegetable farmers to multi-generational dairy farms and everything in between so a farmer's ability to overcome today's challenges directly affects what shows up on our plate how do we ensure that comforting grilled cheese of today is still here tomorrow [Music] a source of the disconnection could be that in 1950 over 12 percent of the u.s workforce worked on farms today it's only 1.3 and that number could get smaller as farmers age currently there are four times more farmers in america that are over 65 than are under 35. david hayt works to protect farmland and promote sound farming practices at the american farmland trust the good news is there are a new generation that wants to get started in farming like at nettle valley farm the pigs themselves are what get me up in the morning they're hilarious and i love working with them even when they drive me crazy dana bertness and nick nguyen passed the raised pigs on their farm in minnesota a lot of people grow up on farms and they just continue on with the family tradition but i grew up in the suburbs my dad and actually all of my ancestors the last six generations since they got off the boat from norway have been farmers in this county i was exposed to farming after i met my now wife dana and pretty early on i knew that it would be a part of my life so when dana started her vegetable farm i would help out and then as i got more comfortable with that i started helping out with other aspects of the farming business despite the untraditional start nettle valley farm uses traditional farming along with innovative techniques the biggest way we're focusing on increasing our resilience into the future is by focusing on soil health so increasing the diversity of crops that we have growing out in the field increasing the diversity of livestock we have that knack for adaptation is key as farmers today face new realities those range from climate change to changing demographics and from everyday financial challenges to yearly land loss yes the land itself is disappearing the u.s lost 11 million acres of farmland to development in the last 20 years so big concern of ours is that we're we're losing 2 000 acres of agricultural land to real estate development each and every day farmers not only need more land they need more quality land so what does that mean it means helping to keep soil covered so using things like cover crops in order to have that land less open and less susceptible to different types of erosion it's looking at things like reducing tillage and actually turning over the soil and disrupting that soil biology and keeping more of the carbon in the soil another key issue is climate change more floods fires and extreme temperatures are forcing changes to traditional practices a farmer's ability to adapt to these changes directly dictates how resilient they'll be we just don't know what normal is anymore so we don't know when rain is going to come we don't know when the dry periods are going to come despite the hurdles there is a commitment to keeping the traditions and solutions alive the truth is that every eater can do something people thinking about the food they're buying where it comes from how it was produced being intentional about those choices will have a ripple effect on farms and communities across the country collectively we have to decide that we value healthy soil clean water clean air enough to make it easier for farmers a farmer's challenges and successes make wide ripples in today's complex and interconnected food system almost every delicious bite you enjoy is because of a farmer and they need our help to secure our food supply for generations to come that's why tillamook and american farmland trust created all for farmers a coalition of brands and food lovers joining together to support farmers across the u.s helping farmers to thrive also means having that delicious grilled cheese at the ready and that's pretty comforting learn more about how you can help at all all4farmers.com This is Queen’s Freddie Mercury, 
on September 19, 1980.  And next to him is lead guitarist, Brian May, who in July 2021 returned to find his
Kensington, London home flooded. He blamed “the basement building that has
been plaguing this area for the past 10 years.” From 2008 to 2019, 7,328 basements 
were added to homes in London. Basements not just for the rich. But the superrich. All of these dots represent private, 
underground swimming pools... and cinemas... and wine cellars. Click to London’s top luxury realtors, sort by price, and you’ll find underwater playgrounds,
and theatres. Homes like this 25 million pound one with
two basement levels, including a bar... and spa. London's elite are building underground lairs. So it's an interesting kind of conflict 
between these different very, very wealthy people. Or as we said, I think in one paper, we say it's a conflict between the haves 
and the have yachts.  I'm professor Roger Burrows and 
I'm professor of cities in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape 
at Newcastle University. But I'm not an architect, nor am I a planner. I'm essentially a sociologist and a statistician. Do you remember how y'all got the idea though? Was it literally just, you're 
walking down the street, you see a ton of construction trucks 
all the time, and you wonder "Why is there always 
construction on this street?" And then you say, "Oh, I bet they're making a basement." Exactly. We were doing a case study of four or five
different neighborhoods in London and we were interviewing residents about 
what was happening in the neighborhood. We would notice as we were doing this, the streets with five or six of these 
excavations going on at the same time with lorries moving up and down. And indeed the people that we're interviewing
really just wanted to talk about it  because they felt that their neighborhood 
was being ruined. Each borough in London has a planning commission
where people have to submit renovation plans. Burrows and his coauthors searched every application
and found all the basements. And then mapped them. Mostly it's concentrated around the great
parks around Hyde Park, Kensington, Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. Brian May’s house, in Kensington, had an
original half-underground floor. Suddenly, his neighbors were all building
basements of an entirely different scale. A well-off neighborhood became extremely well-off. Transnational elites were literally burying
millions and millions of dollars in the ground. So, this isn't as much of a thing in America. Do you have a sense why that is? Is it the historic codes in London? You can't really change the outside appearance
of a property. You can't build a loft and you can't 
extend at the back. But because of the freehold laws, 
you own all of the land under the property, so you can burrow down. A lot of it is also geological. New York is another kind of world city where
you might expect these things to be occurring. That happened a little bit in Brooklyn, 
but you're literally trying to mine a rock. The great thing about London is,
of course, it's clay. So it's very easy to dig down 
and generate these spaces. Burrows and his coauthors mapped standard, large, and mega-basements. What we call mega basements 
are three stories or more. Or, two stories, but which extend 
beyond the envelope. We find 118 of those and they're on 
a ginormous scale. This map shows their concentration 
in wealthy neighborhoods. The combination of incredible wealth 
and inflexible exteriors led to massive basement builds.  Wine cellars, gyms, art galleries, ballrooms, panic rooms, gun stores. In the late 1800s, a ship owner named Charles Booth  started tracking inequality in London, a gradient that he mapped, 
from wealth to poverty, compiled through extensive surveys. There is now a clear, what we call, 
basement belt in London concentrated within particular neighborhoods 
in particular streets. So I think it is a physical manifestation
of gross wealth inequality. In the mid 2010s, London boroughs began to
curb permits for multilevel basements  because of resident concerns, like those of 
Queen's Brian May’s. The consequences are more than just flooding. Deep digging can cause structural collapses. But basement construction hasn't stopped completely. Gianluca Vialli was one of the best 
Italian strikers in the 1980s and 90s. When he moved to London in 1996, his legend
only grew as he moved into management. He helped lead Italy to win 
the Euro 2020 final. In 2020, he appeared in the lower right corner
of a video conference stream begging the Kensington and Chelsea 
Applications committee  not to let his neighbors expand their basements, after he’d lived through earlier construction. Today, his neighbor's house is for sale. It's lavish. There's also 
one major selling point: the planning board has granted permission
for a basement excavation. Filmmakers use a lot of tricks 
to up the anxiety of a scene. Music... Sound mixing... Lighting, color... And then there’s this trick: An ever-so-slight tilt of the camera. Even without all of the other stuff, the second you take the world 
off its axis, things start to feel a little off. Or at least a little more interesting. That camera tilt,
which you'll see everywhere from blockbuster movies
to perfume commercials, it’s called a lot of things. But most often, you’ll see it referred to
as the “dutch angle.” It’s a stylistic choice whose roots 
are based not in film, but in fine art. Let’s get this out of the way. The Dutch angle isn’t actually Dutch. It’s Deutsch. As in German for German. Its origins trace back to World War I, 
when the German government banned  the import of foreign films. So while, over in Hollywood,
the movie business was booming with Charlie Chaplin joints, racist Tarzan adaptations, and other straightforward, 
happy-ending-type flicks, in Germany, movies were starting
to look a little different. Instead of turning to Hollywood for inspiration,
German filmmakers turned to the arts. And at the time, a movement called 
“Expressionism” had taken hold, primarily in Germany and Austria. Expressionism is famously hard to define. But you can think of it as roughly 
the opposite of impressionism. Impressionists like Monet, Degas,
and Renoir painted things like this. Floaty, lovely, soft scenes. And expressionists like Kirchner, Beckmann,
and Dix painted things like this. One more time, for emphasis. While Impressionists were
interested in producing spontaneous, but always
refined versions of reality, Expressionist painters were focused on depicting
a subjective version of a world in turmoil, grappling with the horrors of war 
and the anxiety of modern life. Figures are distorted and painted roughly,
often tossed about at impossible angles. Colors are intense and unrealistic. Scenes are eerie, even nightmarish. It’s harsh and dark, in both 
content and execution. All of which translated pretty well to film. Starting in 1920, with
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A German silent horror movie
about a hypnotist who uses his sleepwalking
patients to kill by proxy. It’s got the distorted figures,
by way of outlandish makeup, harsh angular lighting, and, in place of the exaggerated 
perspective of painting, the whole movie is noticeably askew. But not because of camera work. The set is literally tilted, with 
sidewalks that lead nowhere, walls arranged seemingly at random, and buildings that look
poised to collapse; all rendered in stark, graphic lines,
by a trio of expressionist painters. When The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
came out, it was a revelation. Critics called it startling! Weird! Sensational! "The most remarkable picture ever shown." They lauded its great acting 
and innovative story. There’s a killer surprise twist at the end. But, mostly, it was that set design 
that excited people. Those turns and tilts enhanced
the movie’s suspense and distortion. Caligari was hailed a "prophecy," ushering
in a new art-centric era for movies. And, though critics couldn’t quite yet agree
on which art movement it belonged to, that prophecy kind of came true. Expressionist classics like Metropolis
and Nosferatu soon followed, using that same lighting, drama,
and of course, dutch angles -- this time, using the camera to
tilt the scene, instead of the set. From there, the dutch angle
spread to noir films, featuring prominently in
Citizen Kane and the Third Man. Then, it broke into thrillers, specifically
Hitchcock thrillers, like The Birds, Strangers on a Train, and
the lesser-known, The Lodger. Which the man himself said was
heavily influenced by expressionism. "That picture shared a
strong German influence." By the 60s, a very different genre 
picked it up. 1966’s Batman famously gave each villain
their own specific tilt. And from there the angle really took off. Action movies. Musicals. Comedies. Even commercials. Today, it's featured across basically every
genre, to varying degrees of success. Movies like 2000’s Battlefield Earth
and 2011's Thor have been criticized for
using the tilt as a crutch. But filmmakers like Spike Lee, Terry Gilliam,
and Tim Burton all seem to get it: Tilting a shot to highlight tension, or distortion, or underscore a film’s
dystopian confusion. Keeping the spirit of
expressionism alive. The one that was really dangerous for me was
the time that we needed to distribute the books and notebooks to the very far village. I was working with an international organization
teaching the girls out there. So we put all the books in the 
back of the car. Of course, my father-in-law and a driver 
accompany me. During the way, crossing the road, we're stopped
by the Taliban. They keep everyone separated so they cannot
listen to each other. So, I was the only woman sitting out there. All the trunks and backs of our cars 
were full of the books. I was really sure that this time they will
definitely kill me. This was in 1999. When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan. They oppressed Afghans with laws 
drawn from tribal codes and a strict interpretation of Islam. Their control was total and brutal. Two decades later, the Taliban 
have taken back power. Every year, I've seen how the Taliban, they
grew stronger. They have taken over Afghanistan twice. Not because they're good at governing. But because of the other actors in Afghanistan,
because of their failures. "Afghanistan falls to Taliban control." "Afghanistan. Soviet troops were everywhere throughout the
capital and the country." "Moscow claimed they were there because they'd
been invited." "That version of events found few believers
elsewhere." In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded 
Afghanistan to back an ally the new Communist Afghan government. Together, they wanted to transform the country
into a socialist state. But they faced resistance. "The Afghan crisis won't be easily dismissed,
and a glance at the map shows why." Afghanistan is a deeply divided country. At the time, only a small fraction of the population
lived in a few major cities including some who supported the government. But the majority of Afghans lived in rural
areas where people were generally poor, conservative, and very devoted to Islam and tribal traditions. For many, authority came from tribal leaders
of their respective ethic groups. Not the government in Kabul. So when the Communist Afghan government 
tried to enforce land reforms  and abolish social codes, 
rural Afghans revolted. They formed independent militias, but were
collectively known as the mujahideen. "These are real mujahideen." "They are scattered and almost 
impossible to unite." "They operate best in small groups and in
their home the mountains." The Soviet Army managed to occupy the cities,
but met fierce resistance from the mujahideen in the rural areas. The Soviets responded by pounding the countryside
with bombs, and razing entire villages. But it galvanized more people 
to join the rebellion. Thousands of muslim volunteers from around
the world joined the mujahideen. Countries eager to gain influence in Afghanistan
started arming and funding militias. Even the US sent weapons to drain the Soviets,
their main rival. The support allowed the mujahideen 
to fight for 10 years. Around a million Afghans died and 
6 million were displaced. In 1989, the Soviets gave up and left. 3 years after that, the Afghan Communist 
government fell. But the violence didn’t end. The mujahideen groups turned on each other. And by 1992, Afghanistan was consumed 
by civil war. Door to door, street to street, road to road. Region to region, province to province. There was always fighting. This is Sweeta Noori. She was born and raised in Afghanistan. And has worked there for years promoting 
education and women’s rights. They start searching the houses to find if
there is a beautiful or young woman so they can marry by force. It was really the worst time. Kandahar was especially violent. Several mujahideen and criminal groups terrorized
the population. In the spring of 1994, a group of locals here
had enough. They asked this man, Mohammed Omar, for help. He had fought in the Soviet war, before becoming
a teacher, or mullah, at an Islamic school called a madrassa. He and a few other mullahs gathered some students,
and drove out the mujahideen. When more students joined, they captured the
whole district. Then Kandahar City. This group became known as the Taliban, which
means ‘the students’, in Pashto. As the sole militia in Kandahar, they brought
peace for the first time in years. And that’s exactly why many people 
supported them. If the mullahs and imams say that the color
of the milk is black, all the people accepting that because it comes from mullahs. Why not giving them an opportunity 
to take over the government. At this point, the Taliban were all members
of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group the Pashtuns. Which made it easier for them to take over
the mostly Pashtun-areas in the south. Then they moved west and north, defeating
some warlords and bribing others to join them. As they gained territory, they also found
a way to fund their expansion. By taking over these highways they raised
millions through taxes. And by gaining control of Afghanistan's 
poppy-growing regions they profited from the illegal opium trade. But the most crucial support came from a neighbor. Pakistan was worried that one of these mujahideen
groups would take power and ally with its enemy, India. Effectively surrounding them. So they gave the Taliban tons of weapons
early on. In September 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul
and took control of Afghanistan. My name is Nagieb Khaja. I've been covering the war in Afghanistan
for 17 years. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, they
set up a government that was basically only their members. Both its leadership and fighting base were
predominantly Pashtun teachers and students. It was basically a very inexperienced government
without any practical knowledge about how to govern. Yet, they decided to remake the country based
on a religious ideology that took shape in their madrassas. What makes the Taliban special is that these
madrassas called Deobandi madrassas are inspired by a certain interpretation of Islam 
influenced by Pashtun culture. Music, television, and even flying kites 
were banned. Men had to grow beards. But the most draconian rules 
were placed on women. They weren't allowed to go out 
without a male relative. They couldn't educate themselves. They were practically banned from working. Many schools for girls went underground. Like the one Sweeta ran in Kabul. It was like only 20 meters away from 
the Taliban camp. I had like a good number of the students coming
to my school. It was all done in secret. And one day, the Taliban enter. So I stopped them in front of the door and
I asked them to wait. My students just notice that they hide the
books and take out their holy Qurans. They would start beating me. And same thing they would do with 
the family of the girls. Beatings, stonings, and public executions
were common punishments under the Taliban regime. It’s why most countries, except Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE refused to recognize them 
as a legitimate government. But the Taliban soon found other allies. "The most wanted terrorist in the world: 
Osama bin Laden." "...by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban." "The ruling Taliban's refusal to surrender
suspected terrorist bin Laden." "The US will hold Afghanistan responsible
for any attack linked to bin Laden." "You're looking at, obviously a very disturbing
live shot there." "That is the World Trade Center..." After the 9/11 attacks, a US-led coalition
invaded Afghanistan to hunt down bin Laden and topple the Taliban. With the help of these mujahideen leaders
it took less than 3 months to capture Kabul. Bin Laden escaped but the Taliban regime surrendered
and asked for amnesty. The US refused. So basically, the Taliban, they don't get a choice.  They can either become prisoners 
or continue fighting. The Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan, while
most fighters went into hiding in rural Afghanistan. Then, the US promised to rebuild the country
and turn it into a democracy. It worked with the UN to set up an 
Afghan government and Army. And invited mujahideen leaders to run 
the local governments. Then they gave the government billions of
dollars to build roads, bridges, hospitals, and utilities in the cities and rural areas. But many of those projects never took shape. The Afghan government was deeply corrupt 
and stole millions. And in 2003, the US invaded Iraq and diverted
a lot of its money. What remained was spent mostly in the cities. While rural Afghanistan was neglected. And increasingly under attack. While the US was trying to rebuild Afghanistan,
it was simultaneously waging a war on it. The American military was hunting down 
Taliban and al-Qaeda members largely in these rural areas. And funding and arming these mujahideen leaders
in exchange for their help. But it all backfired. Drone-strikes and night raids increasingly
killed innocent civilians. And the mujahideen leaders started terrorizing
people, effectively becoming warlords. "The suffering of Afghanistan in certain parts
of the country have not ended." "We still keep losing our civilian lives." "It's becoming to be heavy for us. It's not understandable anymore." Basically, the Americans, they created 
their own monsters. As early as 2004, the Taliban leadership regrouped
in Pakistan and started recruiting fighters. Like the 90s, they attracted Pashtun fighters
in the south and east. Butt this time they also attracted non-Pashtuns,
including Afghans from the west and north. But the thing that they have in common is
that they are from rural Afghanistan. They had been harassed by the local authorities. They had relatives being killed by 
US aerial bombings. They were caught between 
a rock and a hard place and they ended up choosing the hard place. And that was the Taliban. Soon they were ambushing 
US, NATO, and Afghan troops. And introducing more sophisticated tactics
like roadside bombs. And suicide attacks. Enlisting diverse groups, even those that
didn’t share their strict religious beliefs, made it possible for the Taliban to take territory
in many parts of the country. For funding, they relied on familiar tactics,
taxing highways and trading poppy. Plus, they continued to have help from Pakistan,
who not only protected Taliban leaders but also armed, funded, and trained their fighters. By 2008, the Taliban controlled huge swaths
of rural Afghanistan and even threatened some cities. "And as Commander in Chief, I have determined
that it is in our vital, national interest to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan." In 2009, the US responded by sending a surge
of troops for 18 months. They cleared major cities, but couldn’t
dislodge the Taliban from the rural areas. In 2012, the US reduced its troops and relied
on the Afghan Government and Army to lead the fight. But years of corruption had led many Afghans
to distrust the government. Leaving room for the Taliban to start governing
their own territories. But this version of the Taliban's governance
was more flexible than their rule in the 90s. In some places, their governance looked very
much like the old Taliban in the mid 90s. In other areas, they are much more pragmatic. They had girls' schools and they didn't practices,
you know, rules about beards and TV shows. It was proof that you had 
a very fragmented Taliban. That was key that allowed them to consolidate
power and wait for the US to leave. In February 2020, the Trump administration
went straight to the Taliban to strike a deal. They agreed to leave Afghanistan. In August 2021, the Biden administration 
delivered on that deal. As the final troops pulled out, 
the Taliban attacked. The world watched as the Afghan army surrendered,
the government fled and the Taliban entered Kabul unopposed. In September, the Taliban announced a new
interim government. And it looks familiar. Its top leadership is mostly Pashtun. Many of whom served in the 1990s regime. But their base, like their fighters, is far
more diverse. Which makes this new regime unpredictable. It will be a problem for the Taliban if they
don't tolerate variation of interpretation of Islam in the movement which could end up
with a violent conflict between the different parties. I'm convinced that they haven't agreed on
what kind of Afghanistan they want right now. There is a small window of hope if the international
community put force on the Taliban  just make sure that the women and people 
have their basic needs. Access to education, access to jobs. Access to freedom. 140 chickens get processed every minute in
most poultry plants in the US. That’s the maximum speed the US government
allows most poultry plants to run their assembly lines. It’s a speed that helps chicken companies
stay profitable. But if you ask poultry workers, they’ll
say it’s a speed that causes them pain. Meat processing is a dangerous job in America. Workers are 3 times more likely 
to get seriously injured than the average American worker.  More likely to get seriously injured than
people who work in oil and gas drilling industrial building construction, 
or people who operate sawmills. And that was before the COVID pandemic 
tore through meat plants. Meat processing has a long history 
of safety issues. Using a sharp tool quickly and
 close to other people is dangerous. But some of the harm is avoidable, because
today, workers are without some basic protections necessary to keep them safe. So why has the US failed to protect the people
who process our meat? Meat processing refers to the stages of turning
a live animal into a food product in a factory. For poultry, a factory layout 
might look something like this. Workers hang live chickens by their feet on
a conveyor belt where machines stun them, 
cut their throats, defeather them remove their heads and feet, 
and take out their guts. Then their carcasses are sanitized with an
acid solution before they get stored in a cooler. This slaughtering section is 
almost entirely automated and it's the fastest part of the line. But what happens next still requires
human precision. Unless they are sold as whole chickens workers cut up the carcasses into parts, by hand. This process is called deboning. That’s the job this worker has.  She works at a poultry plant in 
northwest Arkansas. And requested to remain anonymous for fear 
of retaliation from her company. She's worked in poultry processing
for over 20 years. And it’s how she met her husband, 
who died last year from COVID after the virus spread through 
poultry plants in the area. Deboning work is extremely repetitive. She's making those motions 
thousands of times a day. A 2014 CDC report found that, 34% of workers
suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and 76% of workers had nerve disorders 
when working at standard speeds. These conditions make the finger joints enlarged
and stiff, and give workers wrist pain like these photos of poultry workers’ hands show. Pace, repetition, and musculoskeletal disorders
also increase the odds of more severe injuries which is why the poultry industry has more
reports of finger amputations than any other industry. And why the meat processing industry as a
whole averages 2 amputations a week. Americans eat a lot more meat per capita today
than we did in the 60s. But we actually eat less beef 
and just a little more pork. It’s because we eat a lot more chicken. One reason is because chicken is comparatively cheap. It’s less than half the cost of pork or beef. If a meat processing company wants to keep
prices low and its profits high they can adjust their output. In other words, they can try to produce more
chicken with the same cost of labor. That can be achieved through faster 
slaughter line speeds. The US Department of Agriculture regulates
meat processing line speeds. But it’s primarily concerned with food safety. Another agency, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration, regulates worker safety but doesn’t have the power to set 
line speed limits. Line speeds affect both food and worker safety but regulating them through the USDA means
worker safety risks may be overlooked. KELLOWAY: It's based on food safety standards. It does not consider the effect 
on workers at all. In 2001, an OSHA “ergonomics rule went into
effect” “aimed at reducing injuries… caused by a worker performing a repetitive
task,” which could have empowered the agency 
to regulate line speeds. But within a year, Congress 
“axed” the rule after “business groups argued the standards 
were too costly.” Today, the National Chicken Council, the lobby
that represents the poultry industry routinely asks the US government 
to increase the maximum line speed. Starting in 2018, the USDA granted waivers
to at least 54 plants to increase their line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175. These 15 plants received those line speed
increases in 2020 even though they had been previously cited 
for worker safety violations and for severe injuries according to a report by the 
National Employment Law Project.  Evidence that worker safety 
may not have been a consideration when allowing faster speeds. KELLOWAY: Humans are not machines 
and there's just a limit to human capacity for some of these 
repetitive motions. It’s not just line speeds that fall into
this gap in regulatory oversight. It’s also why the amount of chemicals used
to prevent food-borne illness like peracetic acid, ammonia, and chlorine aren’t regulated for worker safety. Chemical accidents like ammonia and chlorine
gas leaks injure hundreds of workers a year.  And they frequently make workers sick. Absent stricter government regulation 
to protect them workers may feel they only have 
one other option: unionization. But that’s become out of reach 
for most workers. LICOLLI: I believe it's a mess. Magaly Licolli organizes non-unionized 
poultry workers in northwest Arkansas through an organization called Venceremos. She’s digging through her storage container
to find protest signs. LICOLLI: This was when we were telling them to shut down the factories because of the outbreaks. This part of the country is crucial 
for poultry production. These three counties in Arkansas process more
poultry than almost anywhere in the US. And multiple poultry companies 
have plants here. Including Tyson, one of the largest poultry
producing companies in the world which has its corporate headquarters here
in Springdale, Arkansas. That’s where Magaly is headed, to deliver
a petition in protest of working conditions at a poultry plant also located in Springdale. LICOLLI: Workers have been complaining a lot. The working conditions have gotten worse,
even worse than the pandemic. LICOLLI: There is less workers and workers
have to work faster. LICOLLI: And the salary was the same. The petition asks for a $4/dollar an hour
wage increase, no restrictions on bathroom and water breaks, more frequent short breaks,
and paid sick leave. When we reached out to Tyson for this story,
they wrote that they have “no reason to deny breaks” to workers and claimed the petition was “misrepresented” 
to the workers who signed it. Venceremos organizes poultry workers from
other companies in the area who have had similar complaints like this strike at a George’s poultry plant 
in Springdale, Arkansas.  The work that Magaly’s organization does
is important in a state like Arkansas where the vast majority of poultry workers 
don’t have access to a union. Unions have historically made dangerous jobs,
like slaughterhouses, a little safer. But in the 1980s, union power declined, 
in part due to a rise in anti-union politics. Those trends hit the meat industry, too. KELLOWAY: Unions once played a really important
watchdog role in both maintaining a wage floor across the industry and maintaining 
safety standards. Pork and beef processing companies shuttered
unionized plants located in urban areas and reopened non-union plants 
in rural areas. To meet this skyrocketing demand for chicken
starting in the 80’s the poultry industry set up large plants 
in rural areas, too. Arkansas and other top poultry-producing states
have anti-union laws and have some of the lowest 
union membership in the country. Meat processing workers are about twice as
likely to be a person of color  to not be a citizen, and to be foreign-born, when compared to the total workforce. LICOLLI: The majority of the workers working
in the northwest Arkansas are from Central America, a lot of people 
from Mexico but also one of the biggest populations 
is also people from the Marshall Islands. When unions began to decline 
between 1980 and ‘90s injuries in the meatpacking sector rose by 40%. Since then, government data 
shows that injuries have declined a statistic the National Chicken Council 
shows on their site and roughly the same one they gave us 
when we reached out to them for comment. But there’s a debate about how reliable
that data is. KELLOWAY: There's a lot of evidence that shows
reporting is down considerably. There are a lot of worker-led and advocate-led surveys that show persistent high levels of injury. One of these surveys was given to Alabama
poultry workers. 72% of them said they suffered from “significant work-related 
injury or illness.” That’s compared to 4.5% in the government’s
data on the whole country from that same year. Because I've seen workers suffering, 
you know, all these years. They’ve had accidents, injuries that left
them disabled for life. If they have babies, sometimes it's hard for
them to hold them because of the issues that they have in their hands. The poultry industry could make these workers’
lives a little easier—and, importantly, safer by making modifications to this line. Like reducing the speed, giving workers more
breaks, or minimizing repetition by switching up job roles. Paid sick leave is another improvement and
Tyson recently announced they would start offering this benefit to workers in 2022  but only the vaccinated ones. For now, Magaly continues her fight 
on behalf of workers. We went outside the Tyson headquarters. The director of public relations was there
to receive the petitions. I think that people really need to take into
consideration that without these workers we don't have 
food on our table. And that's just facts. It's just not only about the humanity but the
moral duties that we have to these workers. Hi, thanks for watching this second episode
of our Future Perfect series on the meat industry. Something that didn’t make it into this
story is the impact that this book had. This is The Jungly by Upton Sinclair. It's a novel that was published in 1906 about
the misfortunes of a Lithuanian family who immigrates to the US to work in Chicago’s
meatpacking industry. It was a best-seller of its day 
and it was hugely influential. Theodore Roosevelt who was president at the
time even credited the book for inspiring him to pass the first 
food safety regulation in the US. But Sinclair apparently had hoped that the
focus would have been more on the workers and the animals suffering in this system. I talked to Claire Kelloway about this. KELLOWAY: Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, 
will often say “I was aiming for readers’ hearts and 
hit them in the stomach." in today's fast-paced world more and more small business owners are using technology and creative ways to grow and run their business one way they are doing this qr codes [Music] meet evan he's a tattoo artist in brooklyn new york who runs his own small business so it's really great to get to meet a lot of wonderful people who share the same interest in tattooing and art as i do everybody has their own story and their tattoos mean something to them and to be able to provide them with a service and something that you know could potentially change their life is really awesome and it's such a privilege to do now that i have my own shop i have to think creatively about how to integrate technology which includes the use of qr codes like the tattoos evan designs qr codes are unique innovative and filled with deeper information but these tiny identifiers aren't your grandma's barcodes qr stands for quick response the technology was invented for the automotive industry in 1994 to allow car manufacturers to track vehicle parts at very high speeds what makes qr codes special is they can store way more information than standard barcodes as well as their super fast readability and thanks to the rise of mobile technology consumers now have the ability to scan their codes themselves using their phones opening up a whole new world of possibilities for every type of business so here's my flashback like many tattoo artists evan uses flash sheets to display all of his custom designs as a savvy small business owner he can even use qr codes to provide his clients with valuable information and extras related to his products and services like the history and inspiration behind a design a virtual try-on feature so evan's clients can preview a tattoo before they commit tattoo aftercare tips and tricks and links to shop for merch on his website [Music] qr code generators are widely available online and easy to use for all types of small business owners when used as a part of a full point of sale system technology like qr codes can help business owners streamline their operation in a variety of ways including managing inventory or in this case individual design you know to me like if my client is happy i'm happy and i've had a good day if they leave just feeling like totally ecstatic about their new tattoo each qr code can be encrypted and can safely connect to a payment processor like paypal and vinmo this means evan can offer contactless payments to his customers who are able to pay for their tattoos through the paypal or venmo app by scanning a unique qr code assigned to his business and by partnering with paypal and venmo evan's clients can get access to more ways to pay in store and online too from start to finish i want it to be a smooth process and technology really allows my clients to have the best experience that they can and makes it just as easy as possible [Music] This is the opening scene from Scream.  And this is the opening for Scream 2.  They’re supposed to look almost identical. They’re both showing the murder 
of the same character. But when you put them next to each other,
the original stab looks way more realistic... because of the way they use this.  Horror movie props are carefully designed
to make you think they’re real thanks to a little movie magic.   This is Nate Ragon, a Scream aficionado, who
worked on Scream 4 and 5, and who has a bunch of props from the movies. RAGON: This is a hero knife from Scream 2. Ghost Face costume from Scream 3. Hero knives for Scream 3. This is an actual buck knife. For the original Scream, they literally just
took an actual buck knife and they dulled it down. Like they rounded off the tip 
and they dulled it. Centuries ago, dulled knives and swords 
and daggers were used in stage duels.  And that translated pretty seamlessly 
to early adventure films. And later to films with violent killers. Dulled knives work really well onscreen for
“hero shots,” or close ups, that sell that 
the knife is real. But a dulled knife is still incredibly dangerous,
and safety is paramount on film sets. There are tons of rules for using items 
as innocuous as fog machines or make up all the way to the most dangerous pyrotechnics. To avoid accidents, filmmakers often use 
a variety of prop knives for different shots then stitch them together into one scene. RAGON: The plastic ones were 
what they would use if it was ever like pointed 
at someone's face. Anywhere near an actor's face,
it would either be rubber or plastic. RAGON: When the killers like running, he's
probably holding one of the rubber knives just in case you know he falls on it. And then, of course, you would have like 
the retractable hitting the person. RAGON: And then when they pull 
the retractable out, that's another shot. And then it would go back to the real knife
in the hand with blood on it. In a video about the Making Of 
Screams 1 through 3 the founder of KNB EFX group, 
a special effects company had this to say 
about his work "This wasn’t a monster movie, it didn’t
have a ton of effects in it."  "We had a few old-fashioned gore gags, 
with the collapsable knives.” With practical effects, 
less is sometimes more. The reason this shot in Scream 2 looks fake
is because they showcased the wobble of an imperfect retractable stab. Whereas in the original. RAGON: You can tell the glove 
is completely hiding that awkward kind of wonky looking handle. HART: The thing about the retractable knife
is that it's easy for the blade to bind up. And if the blade binds up then all of a sudden
you're stabbing them for real. There's horror stories of some. There was a theater and then they had retractable
knives and he got hit just below the pads, so that actually punctured his lung 
while he was out on stage. Eric Hart is a prop maker and stage props
professor at North Carolina university. HART: There's a lot of things we do, we can
do pyrotechnics, we could hang actors. We could do all sorts of stuff and 
we can make it safe. But you can't make a retractable knife safe. To avoid these risks, filmmakers might use
digital replacements. In this VFX breakdown from Zombieland 2, Emma
Stone is holding just the hilt of a knife. The blade and the blood were both 
added in post. But CG blood isn't always going to 
serve the purpose. Sometimes you need the real, fake thing. HART: With a blood knife, you usually have
a little container of blood. If you can, you can hide it inside the handle. And then you just have some kind of tube running
down the blade and you put that on the side that the audience doesn't see and 
tape it in place. HART: And then as you drag the knife across
whatever you're cutting, you kinda squeeze the tube and you time it so that the blood
starts coming out, and then it looks like the knife is actually cutting 
into the skin. It's simple solution, but in order for it
to look real, it all depends on the blood. In the black and white era of Hollywood, Hershey’s
chocolate syrup was a frequent blood stand in most famously used in 
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The effect is convincing, but color film 
needed better fake blood. In early films, blood often looked 
too thin and too bright like this scene from the 1958
version of Dracula. HART: You know, when you look at blood, 
it's not pure red. You need a little bit of 
something else in it. By the 70s, films like Evil Dead and Carrie
were using a type of blood called Kensington gore. It was made by a British pharmacist, and named
after a street of the same name in London. The recipe included water, food coloring,
and the game changing factor - corn syrup - which added thickness. When it's dripping off of you, when it's flowing,
it's flowing the way blood does. HART: It's not dripping like red water. Dick Smith, one of the godfathers of film
makeup took this recipe one step further. He added Kodak Photo-Flo, a poisonous 
wetting agent commonly used when developing photo negatives. This allowed the blood to believably soak
into clothing, while retaining that thickness. For this scene in Scream, you can see the
special effects team coating Drew Barrymore’s neck and clothes with fake blood, out of a
ketchup squeeze bottle. “Oh, did you just get that in my hair?” Movies today use variations on all these recipes,
depending on what the scene calls for. If it's coming out of a blood knife, 
it's got to flow. You can't have, like, really chunky stuff. HART: And if they're actually swallowing it,
you want it to be food safe. If it's like splattering on carpets, you want 
to be able to wash it out. The next time you're watching like a low-budget
horror, check how many times they have a really bloody scene in the bathroom, 
like in the shower. Because that's really easy for them to clean
after they're done filming. But in situations where the blood has to be
more explosive filmmakers turn to another prop. Squibs are tiny explosives often used for
gunshot scenes. Before squibs, filmmakers relied on acting
to sell a bullet hits. This climactic death from the film High Noon,
is a good example of how that... doesn’t always look right. Here, Roger George Special Effects is demonstrating
how their Hit Kit squibs work. Propmasters attach a small explosive to a
container filled with fake blood then attach it to the actor, usually with 
something protective underneath. A licensed pyrotechnician will detonate it
at the right time, and the blood will seem to explode out of you. For larger blood spurts, like these 
ridiculous explosions at the end of the campy movie 
Ready or Not  filmmakers turn 
to something else. And that, I do have it. I got one of the 
blood cannons I built. It's the same as a confetti cannon, 
but with blood. For the bigger squirts, like this one in the
Babysitter, films will often use air pressure to spray blood continuously. If it's hitting an artery, then it would be
like pulsating out. So you have somebody like just off camera
who's able to sort of work the pump and the pressure. HART: With air, if you just need a slowly
appearing pool of blood underneath the body, you could just have like, one PSI of pressure
just slowly pushing that blood out. Prop knives and blood are only one part 
of making movies look real. The rest of the work is often hidden. After all, it’s what you don’t see 
that makes the difference. Ghostface’s most brutal attacks are often
slightly behind objects, covered by hands, or just out of frame. The killer in Psycho almost never touches
Marion Cranes actual body. And Michael Meyers kills people offscreen. But the blood, guts, and sound effects
pull the trick on us making us feel like we’ve seen it. Thanks so much for watching! We set out a few weeks ago to make a video
about how horror movies make fake violence look real. And while I was editing this piece, the importance
of prop safety was highlighted by some really devastating news. The tragic death of DP Halyna Hutchins 
on the set of the film Rust. When watching movies, it can be really easy
to forget how high the stakes are for the people involved. While prop accidents are uncommon, 
they do happen. A similar incident occurred in 1993 
on the set of The Crow. We don’t talk about firearm props in the piece, 
but the LA Times has a thorough explainer on how prop guns work — which provides some
clarity about “how a blank cartridge might have ended up propelling projectiles” on
the set of The Crow. The topic can get really deep, so If you’re
interested in reading more we’ll leave some links in the description below. "Thank you for subscribing to Vox. There are
a million of you! This is insane." "I can't believe there are three million of
you."  "That's like one, two, three.." "Four million!" "I can't believe there's eight million of
you out there." So I want to shout out Tal Leming. He is the
artist behind the typeface that we have used in literally every single one of our videos,
which is Balto. I wanted it to feel like a friend who knows
a lot about what they’re talking about because that’s what typefaces do, you know, they
give the tone to the words.  Ben Marriot’s tutorials are very helpful and
I especially used his paper cutout tutorial for many of my collage videos. The uterus
that I made. One internet resource I use a lot for visual
inspiration is designspiration, I hope that's you say it. I want to shout out Laurent Dury. He is a
composer on APM. I asked him if he would play some music for me and he played a little jingle.
  When you’re making the music are you ever
thinking about where it’s going to wind up? No, sometimes I’m feeling when writing,
“oh it could go to that type of documentary for example but most of the time I’m wrong.” For a lot of our videos that I've worked on
we use David Rumsey’s map collection. And it just makes it so easy to see how a region's
borders have been recorded through time. I'd love to shout out Geolayers and the maker
of Geolayers, which is this incredible software that we use to animate all our maps. It’s
by far my favorite tool.  Rick Prelinger, who founded the Prelinger
Archives about like 20 years ago. There was no YouTube in the year 2000 and
it was really hard to see moving images online and especially hard to see history online. You can tell that he’s thought about this
stuff for a really long time. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface
of what we can do with old sounds and images. A resource I use a ton is Newspapers.com.
It has thousands of newspapers going back to I think like the 1700s sometimes. I use factbase a lot. It basically compiles
everything Donald Trump has ever said or tweeted or written about, and they’re doing the
same for Biden. I want to shout out the Internet Archive.
You can get really beautiful high-res scans of books and there’s really no alternative
online to being able to search TV captions. News programming in particular is required
by law in the United States to have closed captioning for deaf people and so the transcripts
you're seeing most of the time is the closed captioning that we’ve pulled out of the
video stream and turned into a searchable index. How many servers do you guys have? Oh my gosh so many.
  I'd really like to shout out Connectedpapers.com.
You can type in one topic and it gives you a specific paper and not just that paper but 
other research papers connected to that topic.  Worldradiohistory.com. You go to the website
and it's rough to look at but I have pretty much used this website in every single music-related
video I've made probably since 2016. And I wanted to shout out the creators of
After Effects. They’re the people that changed, you know, movie and tv graphics from being
these million dollar machines to something you could do on a personal computer.  We were trying to make something where you
could understand the pieces that you're fitting together so that you can create anything that you have in your mind. And
we were clearly at the right place at the right time, we had no idea that there would
be this rolling wave of digital video adoption that has lasted 30 years now and is still
growing.  There’s a plugin I use for After Effects
called Motion 2. It’s just like a workflow type plugin where there’s a lot of small
features added into this toolbar. So AEscripts.com is a library of scripts and
plugins that you can use over in After Effects. And I think the most useful one is the layer
random shifter script.   I want to shout out the Rights and Licensing
team at Vox Media who keep us from how do I say this? They keep us from doing things
in our videos that people would not like in a law related sense hmm. Yeah making sure that all the elements we
have in the video we are able to use, I think is probably the best way to put it.  Who on our team gives you the most grief? Nope. Not gonna do it. Not gonna call out
people, that’s mean! I want to shout out our amazing field production
crews -- freelancers that we have great relationships with all over the US and the world. I want to shout out Priti Gupta, who is a
fixer who's worked with us on several India videos. It's thanks to people like her that
we get to speak to people on the ground and understand what's going on at a deeper level. I’m shouting out the Styles and Standards
team, aka Vox’s copyeditors.  Can you tell me if you can think of any mistakes
that our team makes over and over again? I mean there are just little things like the
Vox style is not to use periods in US or DC, which comes up constantly. That’s going
to be my next tattoo I think.  So I want to shout out the Vox newsroom for
doing such an incredible job on Covid coverage this year. They've just been a really invaluable
source. I want to shout out all the viewers around
the world who have contributed translations for our videos. Some of our videos have gotten
upwards of 70 langauge translations. I can't even name 70 languages off the top of my head,
that is phenomenal. And I wanted to thank our first subscriber. Was I first? Ok technically he’s our earliest remaining
subscriber. I was coming over to vox from the Polygon
and Verge network of Vox Media so when I heard there was a mainstream news outlet coming
from the same publisher, I was like yeah, let me get on board here right away.  Anything that you would like to see us cover
more in future videos? Reading Vox was always more of a US focused
thing, obviously, so if I had to ask, hey more Canadian stories, I'd be interested in
that. But that's more of a very light wish. I guess I have to shout out all the people
who have worked at Vox and have contributed so so much to us. These people all taught
me so much during the course of my career here.  I don’t think there’s anything else … except
to just say thank you. Thank you From the bottom of our hearts For your incredible archive For sticking with us all these years For building this tool that we use so much.  The sheep noise that happens when you get
an error is Dave C.'s mother. Dave C. is one of the developers on the team -- he's still
on the team, in fact he's the last one of the original people who is still directly
on the team and his mother just recorded the noise with her mouth. Just "Baaa" and that's
the noise. "Baaa" These grades aren’t for students. They’re for businesses. Based on how likely the company 
is to pay its debts back. A company like Microsoft has 
the best grade possible: AAA. Since they have a long history 
of paying people on time. "The Internet is about driving profitability." But a newer company like Tesla, has a BB rating. "Fundamentally changed the equation." "You've got to have an all electric vehicle." And that affects their interest rates. Microsoft pays its investors 2.5%. Tesla pays a bit more at 5.3%. The riskier the grade, the higher 
the interest rate. But it’s not just companies that have grades:
countries do, too. The United States, for a really long time,
had a AAA rating. Until... “Lawmakers have just two days to raise the
nation's debt ceiling and avoid a catastrophic--" “Default on its loans, which could create
turmoil in the US economy and worldwide.” The US has a weird thing called “the debt
ceiling” which is just a limit  on how much debt the country can take on. If the national debt reaches that limit, the
US might not be able to pay its investors. The US regularly comes close to hitting it but the government always ends up raising it. Until 2011, when it almost didn’t. After that, the US was downgraded by a credit
agency for the first time, due to quote  “political risks.” Since then, Congress and the president have
had to raise it 7 more times. It’s becoming an almost annual task. And of course, it always goes super swell…. "The entire basis of the Republican strategy
is we're gonna shut down the government  or cause economic chaos if we don't get 
100% of what we want." "This isn't some damn game!" "My Republican friends need to stop playing
Russian roulette--" "Russian roulette with the economy." In the last 20 years, the US has borrowed
more and more money. The national debt is at an all-time high. But how should we feel about this debt? And what happens if we don’t pay it back? The US national debt is nearing 
29 trillion dollars, with a capital T. Depending on when you watch this, 
it might already be there. It’s best not to look at it as a number but instead as a comparison
to the size of the economy. You’ll see the US takes on more debt when
the country spends a lot: because of wars, or because of investments needed during recessions
and… now, pandemics. And the department in charge of all this 
is the US Treasury. They collect taxes and spend them 
to fund the government. And, for the record, it's Congress and the
President who decide how much taxes should be, and where the money should be spent. The Treasury just handles the flow of money. But for—essentially, ever—they approve
more spending than they bring in with taxes. So the Treasury has to make up that difference
by taking on debt. And it does that by selling bonds. They can vary, but generally 
it works like this: You buy a $1,000 30-year bond 
at a locked-in 2% interest rate. Every year the Treasury sends you $20, 
the 2% interest you’ve earned. And after 30 years, you can cash out the bond
and get your $1,000 back. It’s a win-win situation. The US gets money to fund the government 
and you make some profit on a safe investment. More than a third of these bonds — and therefore
the total US debt — are owned by Americans and American companies. Investors, and also banks, local governments and even pension funds keep their money 
in bonds. And the largest part is owned by 
the federal government. Yes, the federal government owns part of 
the federal government’s debt. The money for Social Security 
is actually kept in bonds. So is the money for Medicare. And federal pensions. The Federal Reserve has bonds, too. Foreign investors only own 
a quarter of the US debt. And while Chinese investors 
used to have the largest share  Japanese investors actually own more now. They own around 4% of all US debt. And it is a lot of debt. Of all the developed countries, the US has
the fourth largest debt  compared to the size of the economy. So is this… bad? The really, really frustrating answer is 
we don't know. Debt has pros and cons. One question is what are you doing with the
debt? When you're in an economic recession or an
emergency not only should you borrow you should borrow a lot. But what you shouldn't do is borrow when your
economy is strong and the political inconvenience of paying for things is too high. Another really important question is 
what are interest rates? FURMAN: In recent years, interest rates 
have been very low. FURMAN: That tends to make it easier to borrow 
and to sustain that borrowing. FURMAN: Where we are now doesn't make me, 
as of now, very nervous. I worry about the debt a lot more 
than he does. While all countries take on debt, 
only these two have debt ceilings. Denmark’s, however, is kept so high they’re
not going to come close to hitting it. Unlike the United States, where the government
is constantly having to raise the debt ceiling to pay for spending they already approved. That’s the big problem with the debt limit,
is it's internally contradictory. FURMAN: The government passes a law that says 
you have to spend 10. It passes a law that you can only collect 8 in taxes 
and then it passes another law  saying you're not allowed to borrow 2. If the US does hit the debt ceiling, it would
mean the Treasury couldn’t issue any more bonds. So, no more debt revenue. Taxes would still be coming in, but that’s
not enough to cover all these responsibilities. So maybe they stop paying federal employees. Or stop sending money for programs. But at some point, they won’t be able to
pay the interest to these investors or cash out Social Security bonds. That’s called a default. It’s never happened... yet. You couldn't do more to sabotage 
your financial system than default. Interest rates could rise based on a reassessment
that the United States was considerably riskier than people had thought before. When government bond interest rates go up,
that usually means that other interest rates are going up. If you borrow for anything, whether it's for
a dishwasher, or a car, college, or your credit card, that's going to become more costly. We're going to lose jobs. Wages won't go up as high. We could be like these countries and just
not have a debt limit. Or have one so high it’s never a threat
to the economy. Because if Congress and the President really
want to take on less debt they can change the tax system. Or reduce spending. The debt limit does make sense if you are
a functioning Congress, you're saying we need to put in place some policy to make sure that
we don't borrow more than we mean to or we stop and we pause and we check 
on the borrowing. That certainly isn't how it is working. The simplest thing would just be 
to repeal it  and be like almost every other country in the world. Even if the US never actually defaults on
its debt, just the mere political fights and “will they or won’t they” unease 
could make the United States  a less desirable place to invest. It's long been seen as this kind of the safest
asset that you can invest in, and so  that's given the U.S. a lot of advantages. But the more our political system is so polarized
and dysfunctional, the more that it becomes a little bit questioned of whether the US
should have the incredible advantage that it has thus far. I've become absolutely obsessed 
with these things. There are so many of these 
rectangle things everywhere. Every new building. There, they're subtle.
They're there. Right over there. They're everywhere. There. OK, this isn't a fancy apartment building,
but look at this! Kohl's. Look at all those.  If you're living in an apartment anywhere
from Minneapolis to Massachusetts you'll see a pattern of rectangles 
on the facade just like this. Buildings used to look like this. Now they look like this. But all these rectangles and textures 
are surface evidence  of a hidden system that's changed buildings. Whether it's a big public development, 
like a library or private development like apartment building you can find panels that
compose the facade. I'm Matt Hogan, and I'm a project architect
with Walter Parks Architects. And I'm Walter Parks, and I work at 
Walter Parks Architects with Matt. So this building is in an old and historic district, 
and so it has to fit in with the historic nature of the other buildings. And if you look at that building and you look
at the building behind you, there's a band the building behind you, 
at the top of every window. And we have a band at the top 
of every window. The running bond pattern mimics the bricks. We're developing a palette of exterior materials
that complement one another, but also hopefully relate in some way to the neighborhood 
that the building is in. My name is Andrea Quilici, and I am a senior
associate at Quinn Evans Architects and I'm a designer. I mostly work on libraries. There are three projects 
that we design at Quinn Evans. So Libbie Mill is located right at the center 
of a new development. We terracotta, we use high performance 
concrete panels so that looks like concrete. Varina is a very pastoral. It's open, it's next to a beautiful creek 
that it's preserved. And then we get to Fairfield this is
much more suburban. We want selected material that in some way
resonate with this community. We want to have a material durable, 
and we use the slate because it's a material that
everybody knows. The visual choices are different, but these
panels all serve a similar technical purpose. And they're all only available now because
of the evolution of building design during the 20th century. A number of trends have driven us towards
actually building car dealership  and high rise apartment buildings in the same way 
that we built houses in 1920. My name is John Straub and I'm a professor
of the University of Waterloo in both the Department of Civil Engineering and 
the School of Architecture. A lot of serious houses that were meant to
be permanent before 1900 would have been built out of masonry, out of brick on brick. They would have had plaster 
as an interior finish. Brick is great like a big sponge, 
but it's super heavy  and requires the expense 
of a mason. Those 1920 houses represented a different
approach by using shingles  that protected the house from water  but weren't necessary
to hold it up. By the time we got to the Second World War,
even serious houses the houses for the town physician or mayor were now being built out of 
wood framing lightweight systems. If I were to go and say, how did we build
a local school or community center in 1930 or even 1960, the answer would have been masonry. But at the same time, even big projects were
slowly shifting  to lighter, more flexible systems. And as we got into the energy crisis, we even
started to care about their energy efficiency of how much it would cost 
to heat and cool them. I'm the associate director of the 
Pennsylvania Housing Research Center. We are a part of Penn State University in
the Civil Environmental Engineering Department. Our core vision is rooted in Pennsylvania. It's to help that industry build better homes
by making our buildings more energy efficient. There was a bit of a lag in how 
we controlled moisture. That is where the panels come in. They're part of a system called 
rainscreen cladding. It takes these high-tech insulated houses and adds an air gap between them 
and a rainscreen. Often, the fiber cement panels that are so
recognizable, but other textures too. It doesn't support the whole structure. That's what the frame is for. Imagine hanging a picture 
a half inch out from the wall. Panels are simply hung 
on a track system. As this installation video from one popular
manufacturer, Nichiha, shows. That rainscreen keeps a lot of water out, 
and what water does get through  has time and space to dry in the gap. Instead of getting in the structure and rotting
it just like those New England shingles did, rainscreen cladding keeps water out. But does it also use airflow to create a more
environmentally efficient enclosure? Creating the airflow to make it more efficient
is its it's like vast— like it's literally nothing. It's a bee fart in a windstorm. But I would say that there's a couple of factors where depending on how you 
look at the environment When I said that there's this trend to make,
to use lighter weight less material  that is actually environmental. I mean, if you were to try and build the buildings
that are needed in the next 30 years  around the world and make them out of 
as many tons of material as we built them in 1940 the planet would just fall apart. A rainscreen is nothing more 
than a concept, really. It's a system. It's not any one product, 
it's not any one technique. It's an assembly and that can be applied
to commercial buildings just as much as  it can be applied to residential buildings. This technical adjustment and 
shifting thinking led to a big change in what the outside of a building 
could look like. I mean, there was a time where 
environmentally conscious building  was with sort of on the fringe. And now I think because so many of these strategies
have rain screens, for instance, have become more mainstream, they're seen as best practice. Our clients are mostly build and hold guys. They're are long-term guys who want to hold
that asset and don't want it falling apart. They're really worried about 
what it's going to be in 20 years. They've got a 25 year mortgage or
a 30 year mortgage. One of they key factors is, for example is construction time. What's interesting, for example, with this
system is the fact that you can  enclose the building, dry in the building, 
independently from the facade. So certainly availability of labor 
is a big one. Cost is a big one as well. It has structural implications. Also, when you look at designing the structure
of the home, adding brick will change  some of your details or require some additional
additional structural design. Easy to overcome, but any of those additional details 
they start to add up. You see, if we think about the historic choices
architects had in 1960, pick another date. They didn't have a lot. It was stucco or it was brick. And then they had this sudden shock that they
could do things like concrete. And they had, like all 4 choices. They were like, their minds were just exploding
about the possibilities. That obviously could have completely 
turned on its head today  because somewhere from 
the 1960s to the 2020s we've gone to having maybe 3 or 4 
dominant cladding types for walls to having easy 40 or 50. That’s a loon. And right now, he’s doing something 
called wailing. But this is probably not the first time 
you’ve heard that noise. Here it is in the movie 1917, 
as they enter the enemy trench. In the third Harry Potter movie, as they 
climb out of the whomping willow. In Rick and Morty, when Rick uses 
his intergalactic toilet. You’ll find it whenever a scene 
needs to feel a little moody. "They feared it." Or eerie. Or just remind us that we’re in 
the great outdoors. This specific bird call is all over 
movies and tv shows. But, it really shouldn’t be. If you ever find yourself on birder twitter,
you’ll find a lot of angry tweets like these: "Can someone please tell movie makers  that loons are not, in fact, 
the only bird out there?" "Hello I am a nature scene in a movie - doesn’t
matter whether it’s habitat appropriate or not — I’m a Common Loon call." "Have you ever noticed loon calls in impossible
locations in movies & TV? ...in a jungle?" SOHL: Watching the movie Harriet. Only 20 minutes in but I’m giving them kudos. They were not lazy! No loon calls yet. Can you read the first reply on that one? SOHL: Oh, myself? SOHL: No! Why, Harriet! At about the one hour 20 minute mark... they
throw in calling loons. That's Terry. He's a research geographer. But more importantly, he moonlights
on twitter and his blog, as DakotaBirder. He mostly posts beautiful pictures of birds. And points out when Hollywood 
uses their calls incorrectly. SOHL: As a birder you just you just can't--
you can't help but notice. That's because the loon 
is a very particular bird. They’re also called “divers”. Because they’re really good at diving, 
thanks to their dense bones and enormous feet. They’re also good at something called 
penguin dancing. And scooting across lakes 
at astonishing speeds. This is a map of the common loon’s range: They mostly stick to Canada and the northern
US -- where there are plenty of lakes for them to hang out in. But, they do migrate. Passing through other US states on their way
to winter along the coasts  as far down as Mexico. And here’s a very unscientific map 
of all of the places I found a common loon call 
in movies and tv. SOHL: I certainly wouldn't expect a common
loon in Hawaii or in Bolivia or in South Africa. And geographic location isn’t the only thing
Hollywood gets wrong. A loon might be found in California. But not during the summer. Like Becky, in Finding Dory. "Lads, meet Becky." And unlike what this clip from 
the TV show Rome implies... ...you'd never find a loon 
in the desert. SOHL: No, they need water. And quite a lot of it. SOHL: If you've ever seen a loon try to fly,
it takes them a little while to get going. They’re actually really clumsy on land. So, you also wouldn’t find them in 
the Vietnamese jungle. Like in the movie Platoon. And then there’s this clip, from 
Kubo and the Two Strings. "Golden heron." SOHL: That happens a lot. it's one thing to use the wrong bird call
as a background noise  it's another to actually show a picture of 
the bird and use a wrong call. And even if those were loons 
that movie takes place in Japan. Which, is at least on planet Earth. Unlike Avengers: Infinity War. SOHL: The big baddie, Thanos, he returns to
his home planet. SOHL: And so they pan to an overview of the
planet  and the first noise you hear is a common loon. SOHL: It just ruined the moment. Some credit a 1981 movie called On Golden
Pond, as the first to use loon calls. "The loons!" "The loons." "Oh look, I've spotted the loons!" It did feature a lot of loons. But they used them correctly. It’s set up north, on a lake, 
during the summer. Really, it’s hard to tell which film kicked
off Hollywood's loon obsession or when. But it’s pretty easy to figure out why. SOHL: I mean, it is a scary sound. I mean, it is just weird. It's unusual. In some Algonquin lore, 
loons are messengers  and supernatural companions 
to legendary hero, Glooskap. In 1864, naturalist slash philosopher 
Henry David Thoreau said the loon’s call was 
“singularly human”. And in 1913, John Muir, another elaborately
bearded naturalist slash philosopher called it “strange, sad, mournful and unearthly”. But the loons aren’t sad 
when they’re wailing. They actually have four calls. There’s the hoot. The yodel. The tremolo. And the wail. These two are both used during stressful situations. When another bird is overstepping his bounds. Or when some other threat is looming. If a loon ever looks at you like this 
you should probably back away. The hoot is mostly for chatting 
to fellow loons up close. And the famous wail, it’s basically just
the loon equivalent of a game of Marco Polo. A way of saying 
“Hey! Where is everybody?” But to human ears even the calmest wail 
sounds remarkably melancholy. I’m no musician, so I enlisted a few of
my coworkers to help explain why. Like Dave, who’s editing this video. And Charlie, who hosts the podcast 
Switched on Pop. As well as Vox’s Creative Director, Joe. Who sent me this video of
his interpretation. JOE: Now let me show you 
what it looks like in Melodyne. They helped me turn the loon wail into one
of these, a chart showing pitch over time. In this section, you can see that the loon 
makes a jump between two notes. In complicated musical terms, 
this interval is close to a major third but it also bends into a minor third 
right at the end. JOE: So it starts in a major and ends in a
minor which is extremely funky. And the loon doesn’t just jump from 
note to note like a lot of chirpy birds. Instead, the notes sort of slide into each other
a feature that Charlie pointed out  you'll also hear in blues and soul music. Singers like BB King and Muddy Waters and
songs like "Feelin' Good" by Nina Simone. "Birds flying' high, you know how it feels" So it’s no wonder the loon wail 
is Hollywood’s favorite bird call. It's a shortcut to a feeling, enhancing a
moment's melancholy, or tension or sheer remoteness. SOHL: On the few occasions that I have heard
it in real life, it really is unforgettable. SOHL: It's just so unlike any other bird call. SOHL: It's hard that first time you hear it
not to have goose bumps. It just is such a haunting, unusual sound. There is a lot more to learn about loons. They return to the same lake year after year They do this weird foot waggle 
and nobody really knows why. And they carry their cute, fluffy babies 
on their backs. And their populations are dwindling due to
pollution, human disturbance,  and climate change. According to one model, the loon is on track
to lose about half of it’s range by 2080. If you want to learn more about loons, or
what you can do to help protect them I've linked some organizations devoted to their
conservation in the description of this video. the air we breathe is incredibly dynamic it's filled with all sorts of molecules it's always moving and often it's literally full of life most of the time we can't see what's in the atmosphere and even when we can see it looks can be deceiving tick sunsets a colorful new york skyline can actually be traced back to the smoke from a california wildfire and that smoke is filled with pollutants like ozone gas formaldehyde and fungal spores that can impact our health plus it has bits of everything that burned in the wildfires path like tiny particles from trees infrastructure and all the synthetic materials that we keep in our homes so how might the smoke endanger the air we breathe and what can we do about it smoke contains chemical pollutants and emerging research shows that it also carries thousands of species of microbes like bacteria and mold these microorganisms that survive a wildfire grab onto particulates in this smoke so wildfire smoke when we inhale it the really small particles the pm 2.5 and smaller goes all the way down to the base of our lungs and is small enough to cross over into the bloodstream once it's in the bloodstream it can go throughout the body causing problems smoke is a visible and urgent reminder that the air we breathe is filled with both essential elements and invisible threats to our health and it likes to wander the wind blows and you never know if you're going to be in the path of wildfire smoke blowing your way scientists can track the smoke as it rides the wind across the globe and contaminates the air across continents those particles as they travel they age and when they age they become more toxic to our health we can't live in a bubble so what can people do to breathe easier with the air we've got okay all right i'll just take it from the top up until now we've just had filters that collect pollutants on the surface of these fabrics whereas what we do with pico is we both capture and destroy these pollutants molecule tests have shown how picoair purification technology breaks down pollutants at the molecular level this includes viruses bacteria mold allergens and chemicals but what is pico pico works by using light to power a chemical reaction that breaks down and destroys pollutants as they come through the device and interact with our pico filter in our daily life we have to think about how to reduce the amount of dangerous materials in our indoor air air quality has a really intimate impact in our lives we breathe over 20 000 times a day yet we rarely think how clean is the air that's actually going into my lungs all the air we inhale is a dynamic complex mixture of molecules and by paying closer attention to air quality in our cities and homes we can start to see clearly and breath easier Do you remember the 
1999 NBA playoffs? What about the 2019 playoffs? This chart shows every spot 
a player made a shot for both of them. In the 1999 playoffs, the Orlando Magic attempted 29% of their overall shots 
behind the 3-point line. The most out of any team 
for that playoff season.  In the 2019 playoffs, the Houston Rockets
shot 51% behind the line.  3-point shots have taken over 
the NBA in a way  that’s totally changing how 
professional basketball works. The NBA introduced the 3-point line in 1979 as a way to boost points and 
reduce congestion under the net. DAVID BERRI: The problem you have is that 
there is no player in the NBA  at that point who, can shoot a 3-pointer 
on a consistent basis. None. David Berri is a sports statistician, 
who is all about the numbers. BERRI: Either you can measure it 
or you can't measure it. BERRI: And if you're not measuring it, 
then you're just making it up. In the 1970s, basketball teams
were used to focusing on 2-point goals. Layups, dunks, and some 
mid-range shots. Shooting from far out was 
an unnecessary risk without reward. BERRI: If you were Steph Curry in 1978 and
you started launching 25 foot shots your coach would bench you. BERRI: The shot from 5 feet away is 2 points. The game we play is throw the ball down 
to the guy who's 7 feet tall  and let him shoot a 3-footer. 3-point shots were hard — players weren’t
used to making them. And after Chris Ford of the Celtics sank the
first official 3-pointer in the NBA... not much changed.  According to the stats website Basketball-reference.com,
in the whole 79-80 season all teams in the league attempted 
almost  7,500 total shots  only 227 of those were 3-point attempts. And they only scored 64 of them.  It wasn’t until the 86-87 season  that the league made over 100 successful 
3-pointers across one season. In the ’90s, the NBA tinkered with the arc
of the line, moving it closer to the net  in an attempt to make scoring more points easier.  Players like Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr
took advantage of it  but it didn't produce the intended effect. The league moved it back 
just a few years later. By the 1999-2000, 20 years after the
line was introduced the entire league attempted just over 1,000 3s
out of almost 7,000 shots. Fast-forward to the 2018-2019 
and that number is over 2,600. That’s an increase of 150%. That shift has to do with one big statistic:  BERRI: 33% from 3 is as good as 50% from 2. In other words, if you can make
one-third of your shots from the 3-point line it’s as good as making half your shots 
closer to the net. DATOR: As the NBA has skewed 
more towards analytics It became a factor of like, 
we should just be shooting 3s. Like 2s don't matter nearly as much anymore. James Dator is a sports journalist at SB Nation,
who’s written features on the 3-point line.   DATOR: Volume shooting from 3 ends up netting
you a better result than going from 2 assuming that you have the shooters 
to be able to support it. Daryl Morey, a longtime basketball exec who’s
obsessed with statistics if often credited with figuring this out.  In 2014, he instructed the D-League 
Rio Grande Valley Vipers  to cut out long 2-point shots 
and shoot more 3s. At the time, NBA teams were averaging just
over 20 3-point attempts per game. The Vipers started shooting almost 50.  And Morey’s strategy worked. They ranked first in the league in offense and it was clear that they were going 
to transform the game. DATOR: What happens if you get 5 of those
guys and put them on your roster at once? DATOR: Suddenly, instead of having all these 
Swiss Army knives on a court, you've got a bunch of scalpels, but they're all doing 
what you want them to do which is like, let's hit more shots from 3. Soon, the NBA latched on and 
3-point shooting skyrocketed. As did 3-point successes. In that 2019 playoff season, 
the Houston Rockets became the first team 
to shoot more 3s than 2s. This tool that started out as a 
tough shot to make more points  is now standard practice. DATOR: Oh, there's a very real chance this
is completely breaking the game of basketball. The fear is... do we lose that kind of magic
and that element of here are two teams approaching the game of basketball 
with very different approaches and let's see what happens when these styles clash versus two teams that it just becomes a who's able to shoot more 3s and 
who's able to hit more 3s and that's kind of it. This becomes a problem when your team 
can’t hit enough 3s. Even Morey, who started the 3-point revolution,
has run into this issue. DATOR: Now he's managing a team in the 76ers
where they don't have those 3-point shooters. DATOR: So now it’s suddenly like, well, 
you know, we can’t compete  because our best players 
are interior players. And even when you do have 3-point shooters,
there’s another problem. DATOR: We could get to that point, 
that it's just boring  because everyone's trying 
to do the same thing. There are a few options to fix these issues.  The NBA could move the 3-point line back,
to make it harder. But that might not help forever.  The players are simply going to learn
how to shoot that longer distance. And very soon you will find yourself 
back in exactly the same position. But now they're going to be 
shooting 26-footers. Damien “Logo” Lillard already does this. In this clip from the 
2021 All-Star game, you can see him shoot
so far back from the line he’s actually closer to the 
half-court logo.  They could move the 3-point line closer 
which would decentivize deep 3s and encourage a tighter knit game 
like there was in the past. They could raise the rim, making all shots
harder to sink.  Or there could be more drastic changes. DATOR: There are some wild suggestions like limiting the amount of 3s 
a team can attempt in a quarter and then kind of like having a lightning round 
at the end of the game where suddenly you can just shoot 
as many as you want for full points. The NBA has no official plans 
to change rules at the moment.  And even though there's a lot of commentary
about the 3-point line. The statistics ultimately tell another story:  BERRI: I have lots of data on gate revenue. BERRI: So I simply looked at what drives gate
revenue. BERRI: Do teams that shoot more 3s 
have more or less demand. And the answer is it has no effect at all. Fans don't care. BERRI: The vast majority of your fans are
watching because they're emotionally attached to the team. That's what's important. This is James Brouwer. He lives in British Columbia, Canada. He’s a collector. Of records. Photographs. Vintage picture frames. JAMES BROUWER: All sorts of visual imagery
and ephemera.... He also collects postcards. They’re in these boxes. BROUWER: And I'm sort of obsessive about this
in my collecting. BROUWER: I like that sort of visual arrangement of
sameness, repeating itself in different contexts. BROUWER: It could be anything from a figure 
standing in front of a mountain  and you see another one with a figure 
standing on a mountain  and a figure standing 
in front of a field. BROUWER: And pretty soon you start collecting 
onlooker postcards. The onlookers are cool. But this story isn’t about them. It’s about a type of image James didn’t
even realize he was collecting at first. BROUWER: I think when I got home and started
more and more going through my collection and putting images together that I'm like...
you just see it. It’s the same sky. In Alberta, Canada. Redlands, California. And Juarez, Mexico. BROUWER:  I think what grabs in my mind is that
part of the cloud at the very far end looks like a little mouth of a creature. It's something your brain grabs on to. Once you see it, the images suddenly 
take on a sort of, uncanny quality. So why would someone go through all the trouble
to make these places look the same? This story started back in January. When Estelle, she produces Vox Earworm
and has made some of your favorite Vox videos sent me a link on Slack. ESTELLE: Anyway, if you ever want to do a
darkroom on postcards… this one is cool, it’s the same stock sky on every postcard. It brought me to this Flickr page. And I sent a message asking about 
the same sky postcards. I met James over Zoom. BROUWER: I have them grouped with that 
little bit of cloud facing the other direction. BROUWER: Sometimes they shift it a little bit so 
that distinctive cloud formation is sometimes  a bit off to the left or 
a bit off to the right. BROUWER: Sometimes it hugs 
the top of the frame sometimes it's more in 
the middle of the frame. There’s actually a couple of sky photos
that get repeated with slight position shifts in James’s collection. And it’s pretty clear that these skies 
were not part of the original photos. There’s the one James says looks 
like a sea creature. And one with a cloud that sort of reminds
me of the shape of Cuba. Sort of. Anyway, once I started looking 
for those skies I came across them 
pretty easily on eBay and in antique stores 
in Brooklyn. I began building my own small collection 
of same-skies. But I wanted to go see James’s 
original collection. So it was at this point that I got on a plane
to beautiful British Columbia. Daaamn. BROUWER: So yeah, I just started scanning them,
cropping them and putting them up on Flickr. And now I think there's about eleven thousand
of them uploaded. BROUWER: So there's advertising, old age homes, 
windows, wax museums. There's some really strange wax museums that
are nicely preserved in postcards  and probably nowhere else. The bulk of James’s collection are what’s
known as “chrome-era postcards". BROUWER: So a chrome card denotes a particular
period of postcard production, postwar,  from the late 40s through to the present, essentially,
with glossy color photographs. And it takes its name from Kodachrome. Kodachrome was the first commercially viable
full color film, introduced by Kodak in 1935. These types of postcards, taken with the new
color film, circulated widely in North America in the 1940s through the 1970s. With branding on the back like: BROUWER: Plastichrome, Lusterchrome, 
things like that. Always with that word “chrome.” To denote the shine and the gloss that you
see on these postcards and the punchy color. By the time James started collecting in the
1980s, the glossy, mid-century chrome cards were just piled up in flea markets, 
largely overlooked. BROUWER: The postwar cards 
were considered more junky. It was something easy to collect 
for the cheap. And I’m like, sure I'll grab that. Looks cool, looks cool, looks cool.  And pretty soon I'd amassed a lot of it. And I don't think I ever noticed at the time
that I was grabbing the cards that had  the exact same sky repeated 
in different contexts. There’s a few things we know about 
the same-sky postcards. Namely, that they all came from the same place. BROUWER: It appears that these same sky postcards
are all from one publishing company Dexter Press. Dexter Press was one of the largest 
postcard manufacturers in the world  during the chrome era. And looking into their history provides a
clue about the same sky postcards. It was founded by this guy, Thomas A. Dexter,
in Pearl River, New York. And, according to the back of this postcard
from National Post Card Week ‘86, Dexter was printing 4 million cards a day
at their peak, and pioneered the so-called “Natural Color” printing process. “Natural Color” referred to a mechanical
process of printing postcards from color photographs. BROUWER: So it might be that this particular
publishing company had some reason to do it. It might be that it had a lot of visual punch
this white and the blue. Maybe they thought that’d
enlivened the image. Or it might have something to do with 
the company's other innovation. Dexter patented a process called “gang printing,”
which upped their printing capacity and enabled them to take on print orders for
smaller postcard publishers. BROUWER: Maybe they thought it was some strange
way of marking Dexter Press's visual territory. Like a little signature of sorts
that no one would notice. And I’m going to be honest, that’s the
explanation I was hoping we’d end up with. That this was... ...a sort of little trademark that Dexter
would slide in to make it a Dexter image. Do you think that's a possibility? BILL BURTON: No. After talking to James, I called Bill Burton. He’s the publisher of the online magazine
Postcard History, and I sent over two same-sky postcards to ask him what he thinks. And his explanation made a lot of sense. BURTON: Dexter was the go-to guy 
to print chrome postcards. BURTON: He had very large presses, and 
he could print them at very high speeds. BURTON: He had a big art department. He would offer to photo-correct 
any problems in the image. So if the sky for whatever reason didn’t
look the way a customer wanted it to… BURTON: The artist would cut out a mask that
would just go right up the telephone pole and across it and down and along the roofline
or whatever it was. BURTON: Then you would put the sky behind it and 
you'd match the two of them up. These two cards have the same image in the sky 
because they had stock images of skies. And most people wouldn't have known the difference. I mean, who goes to a store, buys three postcards
and then grabs a magnifying glass  and looks at what they got? Nobody. Well there is one person. BROUWER: And I still collect them and I still
love them and I still am  a champion of the chrome-era postcard. Dexter Press is long gone. And there’s really no way to know for sure
why they replaced some skies  and seemingly left others untouched. But they probably never anticipated that somebody,
someday, would put them all together. BROUWER: To me, it's not so much 
the grand mystery of why they did it because I think visually it creates 
something really remarkable. BROUWER: These cards that are meant to 
denote a particular place... Like Grand Teton, Wyoming. Or McLeod’s Lake, British Columbia. BROUWER: ...when taken en masse, the differences
get washed away and so you get  this sort of typology or type that 
floats above the particulars beneath. And these images, which are often pretty bland
on their own, transform into something new. BROUWER: And it's very obvious with 
the same sky pictures, You've got something arbitrary, like an amalgamation
of clouds, they start repeating and gaining a strange significance just by 
virtue of being repeated. BROUWER: It makes the card not just what it is. BROUWER: It becomes something else. James mentioned a couple of figures from the
art world that inspired the look of his collection. Including pop artist Andy Warhol. Whose wall of Campbell's soup cans and colorful
portraits of thee rich and famous, you might recognize. And two conceptual artists I didn’t know
about, but I’m glad I do now: Bernd and Hilla Becher. Who photographed industrial architecture in
Western Europe starting in the 1950s. Their whole thing was about 
form and sequencing too. BROUWER: And the beautiful way they were arranged
so that the type of imagery would repeat  with small differences in between, and just 
the visual impact of that is incredible. So I sort of wanted to reproduce that. There’s a link to James’s full collection
online in the description of this video. Plus a couple of links that I found helpful if you want to do some postcard research 
of your own. Thanks for watching That is the Indian Point nuclear plant. It’s just 30 miles north of New York City
which is one reason  people have been fighting 
over this plant for decades. “More than 2,000 anti-nuclear protesters
gathered at the Indian Point power plant.” “We’re in the danger zone and 
we better demonstrate today.” "New York's Indian Point nuclear power plant
threatened with shut down  for lack of an approved 
evacuation plan." “If we ever had a major problem at Indian Point,
that might be a problem that we couldn't solve." In early 2021, after years of protest, 
Indian Point finally shut down. “We’re celebrating the long-fought closure
of the Indian Point nuclear power plant." "Indian Point will close in 4 years, 
14 years ahead of schedule." "This is the power of the bully pulpit, 
the power of organizing." Here’s the problem. Up until then, the vast majority of the electricity
used in New York City  that didn’t come from fossil fuels 
came from Indian Point. What happened here is an example of the 
complicated role nuclear energy is playing in the fight against climate change. Nuclear plants generate about 10% of the electricity
that we use around the world. But 20% in the US. And 52% of the electricity in the US 
that’s not from fossil fuels. Experts widely agree that in order to slow
climate change,  we need to use fewer carbon-emitting 
fossil fuels but the number of working nuclear
reactors in the US has been declining. ROBERTS: Each one that shuts down, it's like
a half a gig to a gigawatt of of mostly carbon free energy gone
from the grid. That’s longtime energy reporter David Roberts. ROBERTS: If you shut the nuclear plant down,
today, most likely, you're going to get a bunch of natural gas to replace it. Take these three nuclear plants, shut down
in three different states. Here’s where these states got electricity
before the shutdowns. And after. More fossil fuels, in every case. So far, that’s what happened 
at Indian Point too. In this case, nuclear was replaced 
with natural gas. ROBERTS: So then you have natural gas' local
pollution problems which are substantial. And then there's climate change. But, of course, when it comes to nuclear energy,
people have some concerns. This is Batu. Is Batu coming with us? He's my crew. I’ve come to see Indian Point for myself
with John Lipscomb and Richard Webster who are part of an environmental group that was
instrumental in the agreement to close the plant. LIPSCOMB: Twenty million people live within
50 miles of this plant. You can't afford an accident here. ROBERTS: People think about Chernobyl. ROBERTS: People think about Three Mile Island. ROBERTS: People think about the sort of famous
nuclear meltdowns. With Indian Point, people are worried about
a meltdown with a specific cause. “Al-Qaeda actually considered targeting
a nuclear power plant.” “It became clear to many of us that this
was a safety hazard.” “You put a little C4, you blow it up." "See, you’re doing it Bob, you’re scaring
the hell outta me.” People still argue about what would’ve actually
happened win the event of an attack but the fear of an attack was an important factor
turning public opinion against Indian Point. The thing is, the tragedies of nuclear disasters
create a skewed picture of how dangerous  nuclear energy actually is. All energy sources come with 
some degree of danger. One common way to measure that danger is to
compare the number of deaths a type of energy has caused, like through accidents, or premature
deaths from pollution, with how much energy it provides. What we’d call “renewables” - solar,
wind, water power - these are extremely safe by this measure. Natural gas is less safe. Oil and coal are much, much more dangerous. Here’s nuclear. This takes into account all nuclear accidents,
including thousands of deaths from radiation. ROBERTS: So if you're choosing between nuclear
and fossil fuels purely on a safety basis, there's no comparison. What’s so interesting is everyone I spoke
to agrees on these facts. They just interpret them differently. To David, the numbers show how rare 
a nuclear disaster is. To John and Richard, the numbers 
are beside the point. LIPSCOMB: That measure of normally occurring
deaths from various industries  is a very valid study. But you can't have a nuclear meltdown 
in a solar farm. So there's the normal nominal casualties that
the industry develops. And then there's this nasty possibility 
that hangs out there. But human safety wasn’t the only concern
that led to the plant’s closing. When operating, Indian Point needed to take
in three Olympic swimming pools’ worth of Hudson River water to cool its reactors. The water went in through these grates. And then it was filtered through a grill,
then flowed on into the plant. It was supposed to keep fish and other organisms
from getting in and being killed but often, it didn’t. WEBSTER: And there are organisms that are either
pushed onto on the grill or  they're entrained in the water, go through the plant 
and get killed. And, you know, we estimate that about 
a billion organisms a year  were being killed in that way. LIPSCOMB: The ecosystem can't bear 
that kind of assault. LIPSCOMB: We think the river has its own rights. In addition to the harm that the cooling system
did to wildlife, in 2015 a fire at the facility leaked thousands of gallons of oil 
into the Hudson river. And in 2017 a deal was struck 
to shut down the plant. But many argue shutting down 
plants like these is short-sighted. ROBERTS: The people who have those concerns
are sincere and those concerns are real. But in all human affairs, you have to ask,
"compared to what"? Climate change, if unrestrained, that is going
to be far more devastating for far more ecosystems, and far more rivers and bodies of water than
any conceivable effect of, you know a nuclear power plant. But Richard would say that’s a false choice. WEBSTER: I don't think it's a choice of 
emit carbon or kill fish. It's like those are not the choices we have. We have a third choice and we should use it. Long term, he might be right. But not in the short term. We just don’t have enough renewables yet. ROBERTS: Even if you replace that gigawatt
of lost power with renewables, that's a gigawatt of renewables that isn't going to replace
fossil fuel plants, right? ROBERTS: It just moves your baseline back. ROBERTS: Right now, we just have lots and lots and
lots of fossil fuel power plants on the grid. So we don't have the time or luxury to sort
of optimize here. Like, let's keep what we've got, is my take. And then there’s the third big factor at
play here, which is the reason these nuclear plants are so vulnerable to public opinion
in the first place. In the last 10 years, the price of electricity
from renewables and natural gas has plummeted as their production has gotten 
cheaper and easier. The price of electricity from nuclear has
gone up - in part because of regulation  to address safety concerns. Existing nuclear plants are struggling 
to compete. And building new plants has become 
prohibitively expensive. So when you combine cost plus the fear of
a disaster plus the environmental threats, it's not hard to understand why 
nuclear plants are closing. But David says there's one final distinction
here that should be getting more attention. Something that nuclear energy has 
that renewables don't yet. ROBERTS: Wind and solar energy come and go
with the weather. So, you need power that's "firm." And "firm" just means you can turn it on when
you want to and run it as long as you want to. ROBERTS: We have tons of firm power now. I mean most of the power on the grid 
right now is firm. ROBERTS: Every fossil fuel power plant counts
as "firm power." ROBERTS: But what you need if you're going
to decarbonize is clean firm power i.e. firm power that doesn't emit 
greenhouse gases. ROBERTS: That's much trickier. ROBERTS:There are not there are not as many
candidates for that. Nuclear is not the only option 
for clean firm power. But it is one we have right now. One that’s currently putting huge amounts
of power onto the electricity grid. What happened here at Indian Point shows that
fighting climate change is going to involve a lot of choices. On either side there are people that value
those choices differently. On the one hand, environmentalists 
and, on the other, as David likes to call them, “climate hawks”. ROBERTS: A “climate hawk” is someone who
places a high priority on the threat of climate change and supports aggressive means 
of tackling it, trying to solve it. In the long term, though, they want the same
thing: An energy future  that harms the planet less. In 1856, a scientist, named Eunice Foote,
conducted an experiment. She filled one tube with regular air, and
another with carbon dioxide,  put thermometers in them, and 
placed them in the sun. And she noticed, the tube of carbon dioxide
got a lot hotter, and stayed hot longer. She published her results noting that
"an atmosphere of that gas  would give to our earth 
a high temperature". Three years later, Edwin Drake struck oil
in Western Pennsylvania. A hundred years after that first well, the
American oil industry celebrated its centennial. And they invited the physicist Edward Teller,
one of the inventors of the atomic bomb,  to make a speech about the future of energy. “We probably have to look for additional
fuel supplies,” he told the crowd. “Because the extra carbon emitted from burning
fossil fuels causes a greenhouse effect.” Which, he believed, would be sufficient to
melt the ice cap and submerge New York. By 1965, scientists were confident
enough to formally warn U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson A decade later, Exxon’s own scientists were
making grim predictions. By 1988, it was 
front page news. And since then, we’ve kept pumping 
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere  at an accelerating rate. We have a world economy today that depends
on fossil fuels for most of its energy. A third of it from oil. It's a tremendous irony that the very substances
that helped us achieve this level of development today are, now, the very substances that endanger
the future of civilization as we know it. Governments are starting to agree that we
shouldn't let the world warm more than one-point-five degrees centigrade, and we're on track 
to blow past that by twenty-thirty. So, why is it so hard to turn off the tap? And can we do it in time? Industrial nations have developed a great
dependency on oil. It has added a new freedom to our lives. The invaluable stocks of oil 
in these exotic islands. Their wealth is cracking the old life of Arabia
wide open. Nigerian government love the oil 
more than our lives. Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide 
surround us. If man continues to abuse his environment,
Earth too may become barren. The story of oil is a story of geopolitical
clash, technological advancement and intense competition. The story of oil is a story of inequality. It’s a story of dominance. The Nigeria in which I was born in was just a
couple of years before the ending of  the British colonial rule. At the time, it was an agricultural economy. Cotton from the north, cacao from the west,
and rubber from the mid-west. And in the area where Nnimmo grew up, fishing. The Niger Delta is an area that is crisscrossed
by water bodies, creek streams, rivers, estuaries which is the breeding ground for most fish
in the Gulf of Guinea. It was so fertile, fishermen could just 
leave their traps at high tide and pick them up at low tide. And in the evenings... Children would sit around in the moonlight,
and the elders would share stories. They didn’t know they were sitting on one
of the most oil-rich regions on Earth. Until the British granted Shell and BP an
exclusive permit to explore for oil. They struck black gold in 1956.  Nigerians were extremely hopeful that the
discovery of oil in their would bring about positive changes in their economic wellbeing,
in the health conditions of the people in terms of employment and everything. And just a few years later, Nigeria won independence. The future looked bright. After all, fossil fuels had transformed 
other countries. The world’s wealthiest nations had once
been much poorer. The amount of work a person could do was the
amount they could do with their hands possibly helped by a horse or mule. Coal was the first discovery 
that changed all that. Ancient organisms in oceans and swamps had
soaked up the power of the sun. Their fossils compressed over millions of
years into coal, and a mile or more down into natural gas and crude oil. Burning coal, this time-capsule of the sun’s
energy, helped Britain become  the first industrialized nation and the most powerful empire 
the word had ever seen. And then, oil came along. And that stared off this kind of boom. It was discovered that gasoline, which had
been kind of this waste product  when they refined oil, was actually 
a very good fuel for cars. Oil was the most energy-packed liquid source
of power that you could get your hands on. Right from the very beginning, it was very
important to the British navy who wanted  to have access to British-controlled oil. It started as a syndicate of private investors
that went on a journey and an adventure  to find oil the in the foothills of the 
Zagros mountains in Persia. That was the start of the 
Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Later renamed, British Petroleum. And they were just in time. The first world war began with cavalry charges
and people on horses, and it ended with airplanes, with tanks, with trucks. When the allied navy switched to using oil
instead of coal, those ships could go further before refueling. Oil put the world in motion. People were finding newfound freedom driving
all over the place, flying all over the place. It’s pulled millions of people out of poverty. What oil did was really create 
the modern world. Power plants were built. Roads were built. Gas stations were built. Refineries were built. Everybody wanted investment in oil and gas. But the profits were lopsided. The ocean of crude oil underneath 
Persia’s desert led the way  to the Middle East oil boom. Iran was making just a fraction of the profits
from their own oil while the British raked in the rest. And they decided they were sick of that deal. Long-smoldering Iranian nationalists made
clear their intention to seize the oil industry and expropriate the British company. So, in 1953, Britain and the U.S. 
engineered a coup,  overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected leader 
to install the Shah. Because they felt that he was more amenable
to having a great relationship with the West. Which is how a young Lord Brown ended up there. Yeah, I spent many years as a child in Iran
when my father was working in the oil industry. And when he turned eighteen, 
he started working for BP himself. I joined the oil industry believing 
it was a place where you could solve problems that no one had solved before. How could you use oil to go further and farther? At the time, BP was one of seven companies
from just three countries that controlled 85% of the world’s oil reserves. And, over in Nigeria, they quickly learned
that oil didn’t mean prosperity for everyone. Under colonial rule, the British had forced
diverse states into a single nation. And, after independence, Nimmo's home region
announced it was seceding. As a young child, I did not fully understand
what was at stake. To me, the most exciting thing was that there
was going to be a new nation called Biafra. But this region encompassed most of 
the Niger Delta and its oil reserves. So, when the Nigerian government declared
war, the British gave their support. My village was, more or less, a warfront. The government blockaded the region. It’s estimated that more than a million
civilians died of starvation. I still hear voices in my head, sometimes,
of people asking for help, crying for food. It’s not something that you 
forget in a hurry. Biafra surrendered in 1970. The next year, Nigeria joined OPEC, an alliance
of oil-producing nations that wanted to  take back control of their resources. And, in the 70s, they wielded their
power, raising oil prices, with some countries, boycotting the U.S. for their 
military support of Israel. It suddenly turned into a crisis and a shock
to the political order. Gasoline stations ran dry. Airlines cut back flight schedules. Factories were forced to close. And, in 1979, when the Iranians
overthrew the Shah  and took back control of their oil prices went through the roof again. And while that was bad for oil-consumers... Oh, it's ridiculous, you know. You know, it's... You just don't know where it's gonna stop. It was great for oil producers. Nigeria became one ofthe wealthiest
countries in Africa. But after that 70s boom, oil prices
crashed, and so did Nigeria’s economy. The idea of the resource curse is that countries
don't necessarily do better just because they have an abundance of natural resources. It can throw off the currency valuation. Make other industries less competitive. And cause economic turmoil and corruption. The problem is not the resource. The problem is how the resource is exploited. It's one thing for a country to get oil revenues. It's another thing is who gets the money 
and where does it go? A large chunk of that has been taken out by
transnational corporations. And the money that stays goes to the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, which is owned by the government, and is also in charge of
regulating the country’s oil industry. So, we have an operator who is also a regulator. And since independence, billions have disappeared. That level of corruption, it corrupts, not
just people economically it corrupts the political system. And there were other costs. In the Niger Delta, over 50 years of spillage
has created 27,000 miles  of toxic oil swamps. Kids are swimming in water 
covered in crude oil. Life expectancy is at 41 years, maybe
one of the lowest in the entire world. Fishermen can no longer just leave their traps
at high tide. You have fisher folks who go into the rivers
and toil all day, all night, and catch nothing. And no more moonlit nights. The gas flares set up by the oil corporations
run 24 hours every day. And on top of all that, Nigeria is a hot,
dry country which means it’s more sensitive to rising temperatures. And, as of 2020, the global temperature
has increased by more than one degree centigrade. Heat waves are getting stronger, more frequent
and more deadly. It is powering hurricanes that intensify more
quickly. Wildfires are burning much greater area. Climate change is not responding to our annual
emissions, what we’re putting out this year. It’s responding to our cumulative emissions. And so, the rich countries caused the problems. We are the ones who put out all these 
carbon emissions over all these years. But developing countries are facing 
the brunt of the cost. It’s already pushed millions of people 
to flee their homes. The clock is ticking, and we can really wonder
whether there's any hope that we can pull this off or whether we've come to the precipice
as, as a human race. What’s at risk? Not the planet, it will survive. What’s at risk is us. The world emits around fifty-billion tons
of greenhouse gases a year more than it ever has. And governments agree we need to 
get to net zero by 2050. And achieve carbon neutrality. We’re gonna move to net zero 
in a transition in all countries. Strong aspiration to reach net zero... Significantly reducing emissions. Legislation, uh, for net zero. Nigeria has rolled out institutional frameworks
to cut emissions by 20%. This issue is not like the Coronavirus
where you need one vaccine to deal with one virus and its variants. This is a very broad issue that needs 
lots of solutions. And it's going to require a lot of technology
that really hasn't been developed yet. But there have been dramatic changes. Wind and solar power are now cheaper 
than coal in a lot of countries. Battery technology is improving rapidly. Governments are investing in more hydropower
and nuclear plants. Electric cars are getting cheaper every year. And for long-haul ships and planes, engineers
are working on biofuels and liquid hydrogen. And people are working on solutions 
for every piece of this pie. And the current goal isn’t to get to 
zero carbon emissions. People are targeting net-zero. Net-zero. They’re saying, we will produce carbon,
but we will off-set it. By restoring forests, wetlands. Techniques in the ocean. Which can help soak up more carbon. Or carbon-capture technology, 
which is still expensive. And that’s an issue with 
a lot of these solutions. So many governments are trying 
to tip the balance. More than 40 counties have a price on carbon
to make burning fossil fuels more costly. In over the past decade, the U.S. has been
moving from coal to natural gas the result of fracking. The U.S. went from being the 
world's largest importer of oil  to the world's largest producer of oil. And the natural gas plants the U.S. has been
building, are major investments in a fossil fuel future. But it’s helped the country
significantly reduce emissions. And the emissions are dropping in Europe too. But global emissions are not. When you look at where emissions are growing
right now, all of that is happening  in the developing world. Even if the United States and Europe all work
together to fix the problem,  we’re still not there unless we bring 
the developing world along  because that’s where the emissions of the future are. Without keeping emissions down 
in the developing world, we’ll all fry. As a Nigerian and as an African, it's very,
very tough to see people living in extreme poverty and tell them that, you know, let’s
wait a few years till we get  the best possible solution 
to get you out of that. The average young person in Africa, wants
to have the same amount of energy  as the average young person in America. They want to have the same type of opportunities,
and energy is that golden thread that hinders people to reach their full potential. While Nigeria’s land is energy rich... It's the country that has the largest 
energy access deficit in the world. In a country of, around, two hundred million people almost half don't have access to electricity. And for those who do... Every day at nine o’clock in the morning,
all the power supply goes off where I live. It comes back at two PM and then it goes off
again at eight PM. So, most businesses rely on diesel-powered
generators to keep the lights on. There’s eight hundred million people around
the world that do not have access to energy. And to have enough energy to live 
a full and dignified life. It’s not an inconvenience. It’s a difference between life and death
for a lot of people. They need to be able to develop, to have electricity
and infrastructure like we do. But today, we know that there’s better ways
to do that than the ways we did it two or three hundred years ago. So, you hear about leapfrogging. That developing countries can just jump over
the technologies that the wealthy world used to get wealthy. Instead, they’ll develop based on renewables. There’s a bit of a hypocrisy with developed
countries asking countries that currently do not have that much money to leapfrog and
transition out of something  that they’re still doing. Let’s say I have an Auntie in Lagos Island,
and she takes a public bus from home  to her business every single day. She's been saving up money 
to buy a little two-door car which probably runs on diesel or petrol. And she says, well, I don't have any money
to buy an electric car and you say no,  you have to continue on the bus 
till you get the electric car. That is what energy transition 
looks like now in Africa. Before you can tell the developing world,
you know, don’t use fossil don't use coal, you have to have 
financing behind that. For Africa to actually transition, experts
say it would take an investment  of $70 billion every year. The global North should pay a climate-debt
for the exploitation that has gone on  for so many years. Those who created the problem, have a duty
to invest in making this happen. And when global leaders met 
in Paris in 2015, they agreed. The landmark Paris Climate Accord included
something called the Green Climate Fund a way for wealthy countries to help 
developing nations transition. They pledged to give a hundred billion a year
by 2020. And we are nowhere near getting that. They’ve fallen short by ninety billion. Some wealthier countries are investing billions
in clean energy projects across Africa. But they’re investing even more 
in fossil fuels. In 2020, Britain’s Prime Minister
addressed a UK-Africa summit. There’s no point in the UK reducing 
the amount of coal we burn  if we then trundle over to Africa and line our
pockets by encouraging African states  to use more of it. Is there? But days later, it came out that 90% of the energy deals 
that Britain had made that week were in fossil fuel projects. And the pattern continues. China has made wind and solar technologies
much cheaper. But they're also still investing in coal plants. And recently, the U.S. has invested $9 billion
in fossil fuels around the world most in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the streets of wealthy countries are
getting cleaner, with cars that are more fuel-efficient or electric, a lot of these old, fuel-guzzling
models aren’t vanishing from the face of the Earth. They’re exported to countries
like Nigeria, because they’re the only kinds of cars most people there can afford. Africa is basically seen as a dumping ground
for technologies. And though Nigeria is the largest oil producer
on the continent, the few refineries they have are closed or dysfunctional. So, they export their crude oil around the
world and import most of their fuel from  the Netherlands and Belgium. But it’s not the same stuff that they burn. Investigators found that diesel samples contained
sulfur levels 204 times what’s allowed under European fuel standards. There’s a lot being invested in 
destruction in the world today. The challenge the world faces now is to move
from a system of inequality to a system that is more just and more fair. I certainly feel ownership for both 
the benefits of oil and gas and the issues including climate change. Back in 1997, Lord Browne made a speech 
that shocked the oil industry. There is a discernable 
human influence on the climate. The oil world reacted badly, and declared
that I had, quote, left the church. But now, the world’s oil giants are also
acknowledging we need to get to net zero. They see which way the political winds are
blowing and they’re going with them. They must contribute to the solution, not
just hope the word sorry can get you out of the penalty box. Most companies have a choice to make. But overall, these oil companies 
have chosen oil. Renewables make up less than one percent 
of their investments. One report estimates that in 2030,
most of the world’s oil giants will actually be producing more oil than they do today. And while private companies once ruled the
world, government owned ones now produce  half the world’s oil and gas. And many of their economies are 
largely dependent on them. Countries that are very economically dependent
on oil, face a real challenge. Their production tends to be cheaper 
than anybody else’s. So, they'll probably be the last people, 
as it were, to turn out the lights on this industry. The $88 trillion world economy has
been based on an energy system in which oil has the preeminent role. Other energy transitions took centuries. This is meant to happen in 30 years. I expect oil will be around for 
quite a long time. But it will be used by people who have
no option but to use oil. Rich countries who are historically responsible
for the greatest proportion of carbon emissions, they have the greatest responsibility 
to act first and most. So, there’s this issue of fairness, and,
in a sense, everyone is right here. But it doesn’t really matter. We all need to work on this together whether
or not its fair in any sense. Developing countries are saying yes, we want
to be part of this, we want to transition, but we really need the help. We cannot achieve our climate goals 
if we don’t achieve universal access for everybody. The story of energy, climate change, and development
have to be one of the same. 30 years from now, the world will look different, 
but how much it will change and how different it will look that’s still
very hard to see. It is sometimes difficult to dream about 
the future and the way to get there. But a new system is possible. And that is where my hope is. Every Friday, ranchers around 
South Dakota bring their cattle here to this livestock auction just outside the small town 
of St.Onge to be sold by this man Justin Tupper, the owner and auctioneer 
at St. Onge Livestock. TUPPER: So, a lot of guys bringing in 
those cows.  They're bringing them in 
for the normal sale day. St. Onge livestock is a family business. TUPPER: Emily's helping clerk, Maggie's been
helping outside, Cody'll be here in a little bit and he'll work the night shift, and Brooke,
my wife, is doing the books. Justin’s sale barn facilitates millions
of dollars in sales on a day like today. TUPPER: I would guess somewhere between 
three and five million. And it happens like this. Cattle get dropped off in this pen. Then they’re tagged and shuffled along this
labyrinth-like system. Until it’s their turn to be sold, and they
enter the sale barn here. This ring is actually a huge scale, so bidders
know how much the cattle weigh. As the bidders, who are other ranchers,
watch from the stands Justin or another auctioneer lead the auction
with what’s called a chant. (indistinct auction chant) TUPPER: So that's what the auction 
is all about. It's trying to get a fever pitch that get
you to bid one or two more times more than you anticipated because you're 
caught up in the moment. Bidders are looking at the cows’ weight,
breed, and age, and considering outside factors like the weather and the futures market. An almost imperceptible raise of the hand
indicates a bid. And it all ends with the highest bidder. (indistinct auction chanting) Sold! This process happens more than 
100 times that day. It is price discovery at work—creating a
value for a commodity  in this case through, friendly competition. TUPPER: When they come into 
the cafe , they'll sit  and visit with each other 
and be very cordial. TUPPER: Sooner or later, they'll be split up 
out in the seats  and they'll be bidding against each other. Small farmers and ranchers selling their product
at auction has a long legacy in the US. And the stakes are high 
for people selling cattle. For some, the highest bid on this board is
all the money they’ll make that year. And lately those prices haven’t been enough
for many of them to make it. In the past 50 years, about 40% of cattle ranchers 
have gone out of business. Healthy competition in a market means that
there are numerous small producers and buyers who compete equally for a commodity. And as a result, not one player exerts 
outsized control over its price. But in the American beef industry, 
something’s off-balance. And it’s ruining the competition for everyone. The buyers and sellers coming to these auctions
represent the different stages of cattle ranching all of which are affected by a lack of
competition in the industry. KAMMERER: I'm Matthew Kammerer 
from Rapid City, South Dakota. Matthew is a cow-calf producer, 
a small-scale rancher who breeds cows  and raises calves on grass 
until a certain age. KAMMERER: From getting up and all kinds of
weather and times at night to check on  first calf heifers, to branding in the springtime,
putting up hay for feed in the winter. KAMMERER: And hopefully we bring one hell
of a product here for the backgrounder. A backgrounder is the next ranch cattle usually
cycle through — another small or medium-scale ranch where calves graze until 
they reach a certain weight. VEURINK: I buy from the producer 
who raise that calf as a baby. They'll feed them to an age of 
seven hundred pounds. Then a backgrounder sells to a feedlot, 
like this one. THOMPSON: I'm Ted Thompson from
Lakewood, South Dakota. We take cattle to feed yards 
and finish cattle. Just like it sounds, finishing cattle is the
last step of the cattle production cycle. The feedlot owner then sells the finished
cattle to the meatpacker, the company that slaughters them and sells their meat to consumers. Companies like Tyson or National Beef. These three types of ranchers 
do all of their sales  through competitive bidding 
at livestock auctions like Justin’s. But the sale between feedlot owners 
and the meatpackers looks a lot different. And that has to do with this powerful player
and over a century of history. KELLOWAY: The creation of our antitrust laws
really is tied to the meat industry. Claire Kelloway, is a reporter and researcher
on consolidation in agriculture. KELLOWAY: I report on everywhere where corporate
power shows up across the food supply chain. KELLOWAY: Around the turn of the century,
there were highly consolidated meatpackers. They were called the Beef Trust. Five companies controlled most of the market. KELLOWAY: That's generally considered 
excessively concentrated. And so you have risks of companies not competing
for the lowest prices. All different kinds of what we would consider
anti-competitive or unfair behavior. KELLOWAY: It prompted an outcry over the prices
and conditions for farmers who are working with these meat packers. In 1921, President Warren Harding signed the
Packers and Stockyards Act into law to assure fair competition and to safeguard
farmers and ranchers. In the decades after this law was passed,
the top four meatpacking companies in the beef industry controlled about 25 percent
of the market. That’s under the 40 percent threshold  of what’s considered an 
overly concentrated market. Under the Reagan administration, the US legal
system transformed their approach to big business. KELLOWAY: Around the nineteen eighties, 
a really conservative school of economic thought took over a lot of policy, including antitrust. KELLOWAY: And this allowed for a super permissive 
antitrust policy. What followed was 40 years of mergers and
acquisitions, especially in the meatpacking industry, without the US government intervening. Over that same time, while ranches 
went out of business feedlots got a lot bigger to service 
their corporate customers. KELLOWAY: This drive to become bigger and
to cut costs, pushing more destructive forms of livestock production. KELLOWAY: So, the rise of 
more concentrated animal farms  which have huge externalized costs 
on the environment. The result is  a beef industry where the top
four companies process 85 percent  of all the cattle produced in the US well above the anti-competitive threshold.  Today, those companies are Tyson, JBS, 
Cargill and National Beef. And if you eat beef, you more than likely
buy it from them  when you shop at a 
conventional grocery store. KELLOWAY: Concentration might not be something
that most people see. KELOWAY: There are some big name brands 
that we're familiar with. KELLOWAY: But because these companies   have bought up a lot of other companies it creates sort of an illusion of choice. The fact that just 4 companies buy and process
nearly all the beef in the US creates a bottleneck here between them and the feedlot owners who buy from the backgrounders 
and cow-calf producers. The public might only see the vulnerabilities
of this structure when disaster strikes. Like when a fire took out 
a Tyson plant in 2019. When multiple meatpacking plants shut down
in 2020 due to the covid pandemic. Or, in 2021, when JBS underwent a cyber attack,
forcing plant closures. During these events, they paid ranchers less,
and charged consumers more. In a July 2021 Senate hearing, 
a Tyson representative  attributed this price spread 
to the law of supply and demand  because of closed plants, 
the supply of live cattle outpaced processors’ ability 
to process those cattle. But many people see the reliance on so few
plants to process cattle as exactly the problem. KELLOWAY: Cattle producers who are saying
this is clear evidence of highly concentrated meat packers using their position in the middle
of the market to maximize their profits. Before the industry got so concentrated again
in the 80’s, meatpacker representatives from different companies used to fill these stands
 like everyone else contributing to price discovery and 
higher prices for ranchers. But today they aren’t there. KELLOWAY: Packers don't like bidding for cattle. They want to be running their plants 
at full capacity and  they want to know how much cows 
are coming in. That’s why about 72% of the sales in 2021
between feedlot owners and meatpackers is through a contract instead of an auction which removes them completely from 
the price discovery process. The other 28% is still negotiated. But with only four big meatpackers there are
fewer bids, and they typically  don't take place 
at an auction. Instead, buyers from the packing industry often go straight to the 
feedlot owner like Ted. THOMPSON: They'll typically go around to feed
yards and see their show list. TUPPER: Many times they don't see any buyers. They may get a phone call from them and say... THOMPSON: This is what we'll give today. TUPPER: There's not a competitive nature that
happens there. In Colorado, for example, 2 years of USDA reports 
like this one, show negotiated cattle prices as “confidential” because there are 
so few bidders that disclosing prices might reveal who the bidder is, a violation
of confidentiality laws. More competition raises praises, something
a cattle rancher, like Brad, knows from experience. I gotta check this one. He paused our interview to bid on a livestream
open auction at a sale barn. There's all the information, 
just like you see the sale barn, 14 head. (indistinct auction chant) I'm gonna bid right here.  (indistinct auction chant)  So did it go through? Yep.  (indistinct auction chant) See, he tells me.  (indistinct auction chant) I'm gonna stay out.  (indistinct auction chant) -So you didn't win that one?
-Nope.  No, it was too high?  That's where I want to stop, 70 bucks. So what did you do for the person 
that won that bid? I think he is asking 160. So between me and the people 
in the seats there. That's 40 bucks that rancher put in his pocket
just because he had competitive people per calf and then that's a huge deal in a lot
of times it's make or break. TUPPER: Probably the most important bidder
in the price discovery or the auction process is the guy who didn't get it  because he bid against the guy who 
got them right up to the last bid so he drove that price there.  Not having those competitive bids for the
sale between meatpackers and feedlot owners means Ted might get a lower price. Which means they have less to bid on 
for the backgrounder, like Brad. And the backgrounder has less to give 
to the cow-calf producer, like Matthew. And that trickle-down effect is one reason
why about 40% of cattle ranches  have disappeared since 1980  which means rural America has lost  
hundreds of thousands  of small family businesses. I'm wondering whether you're worried about
the survival of your business? Yup. It's a legacy out there. And it's not gonna get any easier 
for these families. It's losing the legacy of the family, 
the family ranch and stuff. KAMMERER: Great grandpa came her in 1882. KAMMERER: And I live in the same log house 
that he built. TUPPER: It's infuriating. Think of what some of that money... if it
would have trickled down to the countryside where we would be. "The Senate agriculture committee looked 
at cattle industry markets including the rise in beef prices." In 2021, the US government started investigating
whether lack of competition in cattle markets requires legal or policy intervention. And Justin Tupper was there to testify. JOHN THUNE: I want to welcome to the committee,
Mr. Justin Tupper. TUPPER: Since 2015 corporate packers gross
margin has ballooned from average of  100-200 a head to well over 1,000 a head while cattle producers go out of business and  consumers pay double or even triple at the meat counter. Solutions to promote competition include a
proposed bill that would reduce the amount of contract sales between feedlot owners and
meatpackers from 72% to 50%. Or making it easier for more meatpacking companies—more
bidders, in other words—to enter the market. To enforcing antitrust laws that were created
for this very purpose. The American rancher also serves 
as a symbol of independence. But they've lost their independence from the
few corporations that control the beef industry and make it impossible to compete Thanks for watching this first episode
of our series with Future Perfect a team at Vox that explores big problems and the big ideas that can help tackle them. We'll be diving into crucially important issues like climate change, animal welfare,
and global health. We'll be exploring them through angles
that are often neglected and identifying the most effective solutions. In this first season, we're looking at
the human cost of meat. The current scale of industrial meat production
undoubtedly has an impact on animals but it also deeply affects people.  People who consume meat,
people who work in the meat industry and people who live next to
factory farms. In future episodes, we'll be looking at other ways that the meat industry 
has changed the way people work and live. You're looking at a map of places
that needed indoor cooling in 2019. The redder an area is, the more often
temperatures were hot enough that people needed some kind of
cooling to be comfortable indoors. The study also charted this into
the future. When you zoom in, you can see how many places that
haven’t needed to cool their buildings, will need to. Like here,
in Western Europe— by 2040, and by 2070— Northern China, and Japan, and in the Pacific
Northwest of the US. Where that change
is already underway: "Seattle is the least air conditioned
metro area in the US." "Most people in this area
do not have air conditioning." "We tried to get one,
buy one, and they're all--" "Sold out of AC units." "Dozens of customers lining up at this
hardware store, all leave empty handed." The world is on the brink of a massive
boom in demand for air conditioning. The number of installed AC units
is expected to skyrocket, from 2 billion today,
to almost 6 billion by 2050. More air conditioning means more 
consumption of electricity, and more emissions that 
warm the planet. But all of this comes
with a weird twist. This increased need to
cool our homes might be an unexpected opportunity
to fix an even bigger problem: Fixing the way we heat them. With a revolutionary device
called a heat pump. The basic mechanics of air
conditioning haven’t changed much since it was invented
a century ago. A fluid called a refrigerant absorbs
heat from inside the home. That heat is moved and released
outside the home, and a fan blows
out the newly cold air. And it all runs on electricity. That’s also what heat pumps do, too -- with
more or less the exact same technology. But they can also do it in reverse: Taking heat from the air outside,
and moving it inside. MICHAEL THOMAS: Heat pumps suffer
from one of the worst names of all time. A heat pump not only heats
a home, but it also cools one. That’s Michael Thomas, he runs the energy
research group Carbon Switch. THOMAS: I can actually show you
my ductless heat pump right here. That is a heat pump working its magic
on this 95 degree day here in Colorado. In addition to "air source" heat pumps,
that transfer heat from the outside air, there are "ground source" heat pumps,
that transfer heat between a home and the earth several
feet underground. And "water source" heat pumps,
which transfer heat between homes and nearby bodies of water. Heat pumps aren't
brand new technology. You may already have one, depending
on where in the world you live. But the real opportunity with heat pumps
isn’t changing how we cool our homes. THOMAS: You can sort of imagine
a traditional furnace, or a boiler, like a Zippo under a pot
of water in your basement, really inefficiently burning gas,
or fuel oil, or propane, and warming that water up, and sending
it throughout your house and pipes, or going over a fan that's then
blowing through ducts in your house. In the US, almost two thirds
of homes are heated this way: Burning fossil fuels right
inside our homes. Residential, public, and commercial
buildings make up almost a third of global CO2 emissions. And heating specifically is responsible for
45% of those building emissions worldwide. The impact of cooling
is relatively small. But, of course, that’s growing. And that’s the opportunity: If, instead of traditional ACs, people buy
electric machines that both heat and cool, the need for fossil-fuel
heating will go way down. THOMAS: Heat pumps are one of the most
important climate solutions that we have. This map shows the regions
where buildings need to be cooled during some parts
of the year and heated during others. This is the market for heat pumps. It covers a third of
the world population. What gets energy experts particularly
excited about heat pumps, is how they reduce what they
call "locked-in emissions": All of the future carbon emissions that
are caused by decisions made today. THOMAS: The natural gas furnace that my
parents installed when I was growing up is still kicking today. So you’re making a decision that’s going
to impact climate for 20 or 30 years. One of the obstacles here is that fossil-fuel heating is often
subsidized by the government, while heat pumps can
cost thousands of dollars. So heat pumps represent a
particular kind of climate challenge: they rely on millions
of individual homeowners, each making a specific,
expensive choice. But that can change. THOMAS: The real solution to this
problem is going to be policy change. We need to massively increase the
production of heat pumps in this country, which is going to be
industrial policy; rebates and incentives, which is
going to be budget reconciliation policy; We need natural gas to be properly
priced for the negative impact that it has on society. Heat pumps alone won’t
solve the climate crisis. While they can extract warmth from
the air when it’s freezing outside, many models work less efficiently
in subzero temperatures, where traditional furnaces might
still be needed as backup. And until our electric grids
are decarbonized, heat pumps will still run on
electricity generated by fossil fuels. Overall though, heat pumps present
us with a rare opportunity: to change something harmful and
long-lasting about the way we live. And they show that the big, collective
changes we'll have to make to fight climate change, won't all
be massive infrastructure projects. Some of them will be
right in our homes. THOMAS: We have it in our minds that
the solution to the climate crisis is, build a lot of solar farms, build a lot
of wind farms, drive electric vehicles. But there's actually a lot of sort
of boring solutions, like heat pumps, that don't get as much press, and
aren't as popular in the mainstream, but can deliver really
massive carbon reductions. In the summer of 1910, the western United
States ignited. A perfect blend of hot, dry weather, and hurricane
force winds fed the blazes - eventually resulting in a terrifying firestorm. In just two days, 3 million acres burned,
full towns were turned to ash, and nearly 90 people died. Its devastation was so dramatic that it shaped
US forest policy for years to come. Especially for one new agency. After the 1910 blaze, the US Forest Service
primarily focused on stopping fires. And at first, they were really effective. For decades, most accidental and natural forest
fires were stopped as quickly as they began. But today, we’re facing this: "Thousands of firefighters still battling
dozens of fires in the west." "More than 85 thousand acres burned." "The worst wildfire season in state history." Scientists are beginning to understand that
decades of fire suppression has created dense forests that are ready to ignite 
in catastrophic ways.. One proposed solution dates back hundreds
of years: burning parts of our forests,
on purpose. "So remember! Only you can prevent forest fires." In 1944, the US Forest Service introduced
Smokey the Bear - the goal was to educate the public on the dangers of forest fires. But even before that famous campaign, the
federal government had put thousands of men to work building fire towers and suppressing
burns. In 1935, the Forest Service even established
the “10 AM policy” - a rule that states all fires should be suppressed by 10am the
day after they’re reported. This mentality that “all fire is bad”
drove an entire generation’s understanding of what fire means to a forest: “A tragedy that happens year after year
in our great American forest areas." But by the 1960s, scientists realized that
narrative isn’t entirely accurate. KOLDEN: For most of the globe and particularly
the forests in the western US, they actually evolved with fire. Tree rings, soil samples, and charcoal records
all show a history of fire - likely started by lightning strikes and other natural phenomena. And that history shows that fire isn’t always
a destructive force - but an important part of forest ecology. KOLDEN: Fire plays a really important role
where it is essentially removing a lot of the older, less productive material from the
landscape and is creating pockets in patches of different ages of vegetation. KOLDEN: That diversity of ages also produces a
diversity of species.  In many places, fires work as a “reset button”
for the forest. It clears out dead brush and older materials
and makes space for new growth. For some species, fire is even vital for reproduction. For example, low burning fires dry out sequoia
tree cones enough for them to open and drop seeds. At the same time, the fire clears the ground
to expose fresh, nutrient rich soil which creates ideal conditions for seeds to germinate. But aside from the ecological benefits, fires
also help a forest become more resistant to high severity burns later on. Low burning fires clear the forest floor 
and lower branches from trees.  Then, if a more intense fire moves through
the same area,  it’s slowed by a lack of fuel. KOLDEN: So when you get those type of patches
all over the place, it becomes difficult for fire to move through 
that landscape again any time soon. But decades of suppression have led to
a build up of dry, dead materials in our forests - so we’re long past that point of just
letting all fires burn. KOLDEN: We've got a forest that has not seen
fire, but that it evolved with fire. KOLDEN: And so there's all of this build up in the
forest of extra fuel. KOLDEN:  And it is climate change exacerbating those
extreme conditions. There’s just no simple reset button for
a century of suppression... or a changing climate. So in order to better adapt to a hotter, drier
future, some are turning to a centuries old practice. Indigenous people have long understood the
value of fire, and, for millennia before colonization, would burn sections of forest on purpose. AZZUZ: We have a history of our men burning
our hunting grounds. Women will burn to restore their food gathering
sites. So, you know, burning is just a key tool that
we use as indigenous people to keep our environment healthy. But colonists began placing strict laws against
burning as early as 1850 - criminalizing the long-held practice. After the 1910 blaze, legislation against
all burning only became more strict. AZZUZ: Indigenous people could be shot for
burning. And now, we’re looking to them
to lead the way. Prescribed or controlled burns draw on those
cultural indigenous practices. AZUZZ: Most people think, oh, these guys just
go out and burn whenever they want to. God, I wish it was that easy AZUZZ: We go before the counties to get their
permits. AZUZZ: We go before our tribal councils to get their
permission and their permits to burn on tribal land. AZUZZ: We go before the tribal air quality. AZUZZ: We go before the county's air quality. AZUZZ: And then I work with NOAA to predict my weather
throughout that week while we're burning. AZUZZ: Once we have ignition, everybody falls
in the place they need to be in. AZUZZ: They have their tools ready, they have their radios on, we all know where everybody is at every moment. The fire started in these controlled burns
moves slowly across the forest floor and clears out the buildup of dead material. If the wind shifts, or fire gets too high
it’s quickly contained and put out by the trained crew. There's not one piece of our day that isn't
choreographed. In 2020 and 2021 lawmakers introduced bills to increase the use of controlled burning nationwide. It’s a start, but it’s won't be enough on it’s
own. Recent data shows wildfires are only getting
larger and more destructive year after year. Campaigns like Smokey the Bear weren’t wrong
to teach us to be careful with fire. Today, research shows that human carelessness
like loose cigarettes, campfires, and sometimes even arson cause over 85% of disastrous wildfires. More controlled burns could help minimize
those risks. But we also need to recognize that fire is
a natural part of the landscape we’re now living in - and climate change is only going
to make it worse. That means building resilient communities
and passing legislation that requires fire resistant materials in high-risk areas and
truly educating the public on fire safety. AZUZZ: I..Yeah, saw Smokey Bear as a child
and kind of thought that that was going to go in the wrong direction. But here I am as an adult, realizing that
Smokey really frightened an entire population of people into realizing, if we do this, something's
going to happen to us. AZUZZL: We're going to lose our homes. AZUZZ: We're going to destroy our environment. AZUZZ: Well, by not doing it, we're losing our homes
and our environment is being destroyed. The Forest Service has a program called the
Roots and Shoots program where they burn their grass for their basket weavers. Their grass is what gives us the white in our baskets and it's a serotinous plant  — if it's not burned,
it's not useable. Our basket gathering sites are
on a rotation, so every three to five years those are burned because for the first three years you can continue
to gather hazel sticks in a certain site where it's been burned.  Other plants don't require fire that often.  The state of Vermont has one of
the greenest grids in the US. Two thirds of their electricity comes
from renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, or hydroelectric plants. The current goal is
to be at 75% by 2032. Which is why it was pretty surprising
when a new solar project here was denied. This area doesn’t
have a lot of people, but it does have plenty of
potential for renewable energy. The power plants here, in addition to
a regular power supply from Canada, already put about 450 megawatts
of electricity onto the grid — and by grid, I mean
these power lines — but the grid’s capacity is
around… 450 megawatts. So the grid just wouldn’t be able to
handle any more power generated here. If we want a greener
future in the US, we’ll need to build more
renewable energy plants. But to actually use that electricity,
we’ll also need to build more of these. This is a map of where everyone
in the continental US lives; the density of each county. Here’s New York City,
LA, Chicago… And here’s where every
big power plant is currently. Appropriately, they tend to
be where the people are. In Washington, DC, where I live,
we get nearly all our electricity from surrounding states’ power plants—
mostly nuclear and natural gas. Electricity goes from the power plant,
through big high-voltage transmission lines, to a substation, where the electricity
is dispersed onto smaller, lower-powered distribution lines,
that send it into my house. Like Vermont, DC also
plans to be greener. The goal is to have 100% renewable
sources making our electricity by 2032. It’s part of a national goal, too. President Biden wants to reduce
emissions in the US 50% by 2030, with nearly half of US power
coming from solar plants by 2050. That means switching out those
natural gas plants for wind turbines. Coal plants,
for solar farms. Lowering emissions also means
switching from gas cars to electric cars. Heating our buildings not with natural
gas, but with electric heat pumps. Cooking on
electric stoves. Basically, we’re going to be
using a lot more electricity: Anywhere from 40-100%
more than we currently use. So, back to the map. If we’re going to replace all
these polluting energy plants, we can’t just build a
wind turbine in their place. They need to be where it's,
you know, windy. This is a model,
created by Princeton, mapping out possible places
in the continental US where wind and solar projects
could, in theory, be built. Aside from some offshore wind farms,
it's mostly in the middle of the US. Another study found that these states
have most of the wind and solar potential, yet the people living there would only
make up 30% of the electricity demand. In a decarbonized future, we’re going to
need to get electricity from here to here. And, we’re going
to move a lot of it. That’s where high-voltage
transmission lines come in. ROB GRAMLICH: I think the infrastructure
is the most important thing. It doesn't get a lot of attention
but it really is the key. This is where the US currently has
high-voltage transmission lines. The Princeton model shows this is
where new lines will need to be built if the US uses all
renewable energy by 2050. But it’s not a
simple process. Every wire in your house has plastic over it,
because if two electrical lines get too close… But high-voltage power lines are
the bare active wire. No plastic. They’re insulated
by the air. Basically, if they’re kept far enough
apart from each other, it’s safe. But they also have to be kept
far away from… everything. Trees included. This is actually how some of the
California wildfires were started: Trees coming in contact with the
super-big high-voltage transmission lines. And those are what
we’ll need more of, as we lengthen the distance from
energy source to energy need. We’ll also need to make many
current ones even bigger. Because bigger
means more power. Physically, the cables
are thicker — the bigger the cable, the more
power can run through them. And because they’re bigger, they have
to be really far apart for insulation, and built higher up. It makes them kind
of a pain to build -- partly because of
how large they are, but also how much private
land they have to cross. GRAMLICH: Very often, the developer
can get 99% of the landowners to agree, but then there's
that last 1%, and that can take forever,
and can crater the whole thing. So experts say we should start building
now, even before we build the plants. GRAMLICH: You can do a
generation project in a year. The transmission, three, if you're
lucky, but it can go over ten. We don't want to do this in a reactive mode,
where we build a lot of stranded generation. We want to proactively build the transmission
to where we know the resources are. And the thing about wind and solar
resources is, we know where they are. A greener grid in the US
means thinking nationally: Building more
transmission lines, so when it’s sunny in Arizona,
it can power Chicago. And at night, Illinois wind
can power Phoenix. To do that efficiently, the US will need
a new, interconnected, high-voltage grid. Princeton found it would take nearly $320
billion in investments in the next 10 years. Almost as much as investments in
solar and wind plants themselves. Congress is working on an infrastructure
bill that contains some funding, but really only a fraction
of what’s needed. GRAMLICH: I'm optimistic about our ability
to do it, because we have done it before. I am nervous
about the execution, between legislation, regulation,
and industry follow-through. The US is currently on track to have 42% of
our energy come from renewables by 2050. If current proposals turn into real policy,
we could be closer to 80%. But just making greener
electricity isn’t enough. We have to be
able to move it. GRAMLICH: Transmission is
important for the clean energy future. We're just not going to
decarbonize without it. I’m looking at a map of surface temperatures
in the Phoenix metro area. So this is in Arizona, in the southwest US
and it shows how hot the ground is in June. And this is a map of child poverty rates. Darker blue means more poverty. So this is heat. And this is poverty. Heat. Poverty. Heat, Poverty.  The correlation is pretty obvious. This is where it becomes clear that climate
change and wealth inequality are not really separate issues. And you can probably find examples of that
wherever you go in the world, but for this story, I went... there. "An excessive heat warning is in effect." "Warmer is the new normal in Phoenix." "The city's grappling with an increase in
heat related deaths." "Phoenix, last year, hitting 100 degrees or
higher for more than 144 days." "Climate change is one factor causing rising
temperature. "Urban development is the other." The forecasted high that day was 112 degrees
Fahrenheit. That's 44 degrees Celsius. But in reality, some areas can feel warmer
or cooler than that. So here I am in a neighborhood with some of
the hottest surface temperatures, but when I drove 8 miles north of there, I was in one
of the coolest parts of Phoenix. And it was in the hot neighborhood where I
met up with Eva Olivas. She's a local community advocate and Phoenix
native. It's nice to meet you. OLIVAS: It's nice to meet you. Can you tell me a little bit about this
neighborhood and who lives here? OLIVAS: So the community of Central City South
is located just south of the downtown business district. OLIVAS: The average income level for a family of four
is about $19,000. OLIVAS: The vehicle ownership rate is between 23-28%
of the population. Oh wow. OLIVAS:  Yes, very low. So they’re very dependent on public transportation. This zip code has the highest rate of
heat-related illnesses in the city, what makes people here vulnerable to extreme heat? Well, I think it’s a combination of
things. We have the freeway. OLIVAS: We have the railroad tracks on the north. OLIVAS: We have the airport on the east. OLIVAS: So we're like a little pocket. That's a lot of pavement. OLIVAS: A lot of concrete, a lot of industry
here. A lot of our streets, as you can see, don't
have sidewalks. You're having to walk in the street, like
we are. And there's not a lot of shade. If you can look around, you don't see a lot
of trees. This is the Sonoran Desert, so of course the
summers are hot. But it also seems like this entire city was
almost designed to capture heat. The streets are so wide. This isn’t a highway, this is just the Phoenix
grid. And the buildings are so flat and set back
from the sidewalk, so they don’t create much shade at all. And then there’s the parking lots. I read one estimate that there are more than
4 parking spots for every car in Phoenix. The sun just beams into all that pavement. And it doesn't just roast anyone who happens
to walk across it, it’s also transferring heat to the air, day and night. Wow I really … did that poorly. Also, I promise this is not a Chevy ad, I
just borrowed my dad's car. So what do you do to try to mitigate heat
in a city like this? Well, reflective roofs can help a bit. The thermal image shows the surface temperature
of the dark roof is hotter than the white ones. And the city has also tried painting some
roads with a more reflective coating. But if you compare the hottest and coolest
neighborhoods, it’s pretty clear that the big difference between them isn’t the black
or white surfaces. It’s the green ones. Plants are the variable that connects this
map of heat to this map of poverty. And studies have confirmed that the cooling
effect of cool roofs and cool pavements is smaller than the cooling effect of trees. "One of the best ways to beat the urban heat." "The more trees you plant, the more benefits." "It's cleansing for the air." "Reduce carbon footprint." "Lower levels of stress." "Decrease energy costs." "Storm water management." "It's a very important engine of cooling." If you take an area that’s just parking
lots and buildings, and cover at least a quarter of the space with trees, you can lower air
temperatures there by around 8 degrees Fahrenheit or 4.4 degrees Celsius. That’s according to a study from 
Arizona State University. For those who are used to humid summers, it
can be hard to understand just how much relief shade provides in a dry heat. You can easily see the temperature difference
on my arms and on the concrete there. So the city of Phoenix has committed funds
to planting more trees. They want all neighborhoods to reach a minimal
level of canopy cover by 2030. And I love the idea of recruiting an army of trees
to protect the vulnerable from extreme heat. But there’s a problem. Outside of parks and along major streets,
the urban forest currently depends not on public resources, but on private ones. What would it take for a street like this
one to become one of those shady tree-lined streets that they have uptown. OLIVAS: Well, any tree that’s planted in this
neighborhood in front of someone’s home, they would have to maintain. OLIVAS: The city does not maintain them 
in these residential areas. I see, okay. So there are some utility companies here that
will give you a couple of free trees if you agree to plant them on the west side or south
side of your home, because eventually that can end up saving something like 30% on your
air conditioning bill. But it sounds like that doesn’t really solve
the maintenance issue. OLIVAS: Correct. OLIVAS: Because there’s that tradeoff between shade
or increased water bill. But it’s the cost of maintaining the trees
that is challenging, obviously in a very low income neighborhood like ours. And it’s not a priority for them in their
family, in their home. Are there no programs here that are
actually going to take on the watering cost? OLIVAS: Zero. That is the responsibility of the homeowner
and you have to remember, what did I say? These are mostly renters. I walked with Eva along Buckeye Road where
there’s a big triangular lot, it’s owned by the city, and has been left unplanted. She said that would probably change with the
city’s new tree equity plans. But she also hoped for some more basic things:
like sidewalks, and shade shelters for all the bus stops. It was a reminder that wealth already affects
access to infrastructure, even infrastructure that doesn’t have to be watered and pruned. And that's what will have to change if cities
like Phoenix want to make sure that the heaviest burdens of climate warming don’t fall on those
who are least prepared to withstand them. MCCORMICK: I was 18 and I was hunting for the first
time on my own. It was quiet and misty, and the air — it's crisp. The tiny, yellow birch leaves are rustling. Suddenly out of the brush steps that bull
moose. That's when I took a few deep breaths and took the shot.  I remember just thanking our creator for the
gift of the meat and just, feeling like  this is something that has given its life so that I can live, so that my family can live. For as long as they’ve lived on the shores of Lake Superior, the Ojibwe or Anishinaabe people have revered
and depended on the moose. GAWBOY: Game pieces were carved from the antlers, rattles were made from the hooves, warm stockings were made of the hocks of the moose,  moose hair embroidery made beautiful clothing. The relationship to the moose is almost mythic.  But a few years ago, something strange started
happening. The moose began to disappear from the landscape. "Minnesota’s moose population fell for the 
fourteenth straight year." "An alarming decline."  "A growing mystery that has scientists baffled
and on the hunt for answers." "The moose of Minnesota are dying, and
no one knows why." TIBBETTS: The Ojibwe people have lived along 
these banks forever. MCCORMICK: It’s just a really unique place that we
call home: the most north eastern point of Minnesota, bordered by Canada and also by
Lake Superior. This area has a relatively harsh climate. About mid-October to about early May, we typically
have snow on the ground. MOORE: It's a difficult place to live and so   subsisting off of the species that are present here
really requires some effort. MCCORMICK: My family has always harvested deer, moose.   It means something to us, it's not a sportsman
type of a hunt. It's not a "let's find out who has the biggest
set of antlers," you know. It's just a very special thing.  TIBBETTS: This last year, I went around and delivered
these baskets of moose meat to my brother, my niece, my sister. When you’re able to provide for your family yourself, I mean, that’s what we’re really put here—I think—to do.
You know, to take care of each other. It's part of the reason why we
care so much about our moose population is because we want to continue to subsistence
hunt for future generations. But scientists were worried that hunting 
might be part of the problem. MOORE: It was our belief that human hunting was
the primary cause really affecting mortality in moose. That hypothesis made sense.  White settlers and their descendants had hunted the states native
elk and caribou out of existence. MOORE: So when we saw this decline, 
it was a very immediate decision that we need to understand what's going on 
and if that decline can be reversed. To figure out what was happening, Seth and
his team started going out in helicopters. When they spotted a moose, they’d
give it a tranquilizer. Then, hike to the moose, and place 
a GPS collar around its neck. After a quick shot to reverse the tranquilizer
the moose would be on its way.  MOORE: And when the moose stopped moving 
for a period greater than six hours essentially it sends a mortality signal to the satellite and then the satellite sends a text to my phone. And when we get there, typically we'll find a dead moose. We cut open the moose and take samples from every single organ system in the moose
and we send those off to a diagnostic lab. And the majority of the time, they can tell
us what was wrong with that moose. To understand these results, there’s something
else you need to know about this part of the world: MCCORMICK: Our winters have changed. Snow drifts as tall as the doorway—the last
time that happened in my lifetime was 1992. MOORE: Our average snow depth in early spring has
declined by about 70 percent and our temperatures have increased by about five degrees Fahrenheit
on average as well. The biggest moose killer that Seth and his
team discovered was the brainworm. It's a parasitethat lives in the brains 
of white-tailed deer, but doesn’t harm them. Typically, deer and moose don't share
the same habitat.  With their lighter coats and shorter legs,
deer tend to thrive in places with warmer winters. But in the last 30 years, rising winter temperatures
have lured white-tailed deer from the southern part of Minnesota
into the state's northern reaches. Right into the moose's habitat.  And the deer bring the brainworm with them. Its eggs hatch in the deer’s feces, then slugs 
eat the newly hatched larvae, and climb up onto plants. Moose eat those plants, and the slugs, and the worms which end up in their brains.  It tends to tunnel around looking for 
the right habitat for it which is a deer's brain. And it's those tunnels that caused the neurological
damage   They keep their head tilted and they walk
in circles and  eventually they just starve to death.  When warmer winters bring white-tailed deer
further north, that causes another problem for the moose: wolves. MOORE: The wolf population in northern Minnesota
has increased dramatically. Like most predators, wolves follow their main
food source. MOORE: When the moose are giving birth,   moose calves are actually the easiest thing
on the landscape to eat.  MOORE: We're losing 70 or 80 percent, each year,
within the first two weeks of life.  MOORE: And that's just too high a rate of mortality
for the population to replace itself. Warmer winters amplify a third major threat
to the moose: infestations by winter ticks. These parasites spend the entire winter attached
to the skin of the moose. Then, in the early spring, they drop off to
lay their eggs. MOORE: If they drop off between, say, 
February and April,   if there is is deep snow on the ground, 
it essentially kills them off. Enough ticks survive to jump on the moose
and start the cycle again, but enough die so that the moose aren’t overwhelmed. But in recent decades, that deep spring snow hasn’t been there to kill off a portion of the ticks.  MOORE: So the winter ticks are hitting the ground,  they're all surviving. MOORE: Their eggs are surviving. When winter comes around, all those surviving
ticks attach themselves to the moose. MOORE: Sometimes you'll see a moose with a hundred
thousand ticks on it. MOORE: They aren't eating well because the ticks
are so uncomfortable they’re constantly just trying to scrape them off of their body  and they end up starving to death or
becoming anemic.  MOORE: They’re called ghost moose because
they’re missing 60 to 70 percent of their hair. MOORE: It's just bare skin.  MOORE: I mean, it’s horrifying looking. MOORE: The moose population is declining directly as
a consequence of climate change. MOORE: There's just no reason to stop the subsistence hunt.  People always talk about Indians living 
right on the edge of starvation or on the edge of survival.  GAWBOY: But not only did they provide themselves
with this great diet, they had time to decorate even down to little babies.  GAWBOY: Little babies' outfits were beautifully decorated.  I mean, who knows that these days?  GAWBOY: Every time I think about the Ojibwe people through time, I just kind of shake my head and I thought,
why don't people know this?  Four hundred years ago, the Ojibwe lands stretched
for nearly 2,000 square miles, from Lake Ontario all the way to the Northern Great Plains. It’s where they hunted, fished, and harvested. Where they danced, raised their children,
and buried their loved ones. European settlers wanted that land. To farm. To log. To mine. To drill for oil and gas. In a few hundred years, the descendents of
those settlers helped build an economy around extracting, refining, and burning that oil and gas, pushing up global temperatures, altering ecosystems, and changing the life
cycles of species large and small. Today, the Ojibwe homelands are a fraction
of what they once were. But their culture has endured. TIBBETTS: The resiliency of native peoples is—
it can't be questioned, you know? We're still here.  We've always just felt more connected to 
our environment. How we treat the Earth. You know, I always wondered, growing up, if the people 
would've taken the time to learn more about the Anishinaabe.  You know, what would this country look like?  I think it would be a lot stronger. If there’s one thing I appreciate when playing
video games, it’s great mechanics. The web swinging in Spiderman: Miles Morales
feels really natural, and in Fortnite,  you can destroy essentially everything, and then
turn it into a wall, with a few intuitive gestures. But The Last of Us Part 2 impressed me for
something much more subtle  The doors. This mundane, everyday task is what took developers
the longest to get right, As the games’ co-director put it on Twitter:
“f--k doors” The Last of Us Part II is a super realistic
game, and the team knew that “If a player is going to open a door, it can’t just magically
fly open.” But even for less realistic games like Fortnite,
doors are still painstakingly hard to make. So, what makes video game doors so difficult? Every time I'd walk through a doorway, I just
keep, like, bonking myself into the corners and into the walls next to the doors. It's like, all right, well, this sucks. I'm Brian Singh, I’m a game developer and
I guess I really like doors. Bryan’s worked on games, like Journey, Uncharted
4, and The Last Of Us Parts 1 & 2. On Part 2, it was his job to get doors working,
from a technical perspective. I think the complexity of all different door
states and ways of interacting with doors, it seems simple in the real world 
because you're used to it. But in a video game, that’s not the case: You have to consider every other situation,
every other system, every other object and character that can interact with doors or
be around doors when they're interacting Start counting the number of doors 
you actually see in games. You'll see a lot of games just don't put doors
in the doorways. This ship in World of Warcraft has just an
open doorway. So does this room in Assassin's Creed. For games that do have doors, they fall into
a few unofficial difficulty categories. Games like Halo use tier one doors: they open
or close based on your proximity to them. These doors are the least finicky to implement. They don’t interact with anything, because they slide in on themselves, and they have no in-between state - 
they’re only open or closed. Tier 2 doors have to look like real-world doors...even if they don’t operate in exactly
the same way. SINGH: It's very uncommon in the real world to have
a door that opens in both directions. In video games, it's extremely common. The character in the game usually doesn’t  physically touch the door in this tier, but
sometimes, like in Fortnite, developers might throw in an arm gesture to suggest 
character interaction. SINGH: One of the things that comes up a lot in games
is, it's kind of assumed that the size of doors are going to be exaggerated because
you have this problem: What your character is doing is not at all what the actual human
player is doing behind the controller. Precision movements are challenging, which
would make navigating through a small door frustrating. SINGH: Usually the default solution is: just make
the doors really big, and that way it’s way easier to go through the doors, you don’t
have to think about it. But that’s not the only reason doors are
huge - they also allow for cleaner visuals SINGH: Once your player goes through the door, like,
what is the camera doing? Normally the camera is like, slightly above
door height. SINGH: So you have to, like, duck it down to make
sure the cameraman also squeezes through the door and that doesn't look like crazy.  Doors also have to look like they’re physically  interacting with everything else in the scene. Animation and doors already f--ing complicated problem. In real life, everything is solid - but in the world of 3D modeling, nothing is solid. Objects can pass right through each other.  Making sure that doesn’t happen in every
possible scenario, with any possible object is a tedious task. Tier 3 doors are maximum effort: The character
has to actually physically interact with the door for it to open. Having a character actually connect with the
handle of the door, without breaking player immersion, is a complicated dance between
player control and pre-set animations It's pretty much a golden rule. Any time you take control away from the player,
it feels weird, it feels bad. So with doors... Worst case scenario, you hit the button and
you're effectively playing a cut scene or something. Giving players enough control to break away from the door in the middle of opening it
means that character animation must be chopped up into tiny pieces. But even if you get all that right, the work
doesn’t end there. Any time you add any one thing to the gameplay,
you have to make sure it works with every other aspect of the game.
For instance, characters can have different emotional states that require unique animations. If you’re calmly investigating a room for
example, you’ll open the door more slowly. If they're in a like, tense demeanor, like,
oh, crap, there's enemies here, I'm going to go, they can run through the door with
great haste. Throw in a few NPCs, and the meticulous work
just gets even more complicated. SINGH: A.I. is a whole other complexity where. OK, now the companion characters, as well
as the enemy characters, also have to understand how to strategize around that, like, OK, do
they test the door to learn that it's locked? Do they know that it's locked already and
know how to, like, try to find a way around the door? And this problem isn’t just localized to
doors, other objects like ladders are also challenging to make, for similar reasons. Doors are hard because all of game development
is hard. But when the goal of a game is realism and
the fidelity that you can achieve with new consoles is incredible...that challenge becomes
something of a necessity.  SINGH:  Especially on the last of us, the philosophy
was: avoid as many disconnects from reality as possible. So you can just be more immersed, like everytime
you experience a disconnect, that's just like one more reminder that, oh, yeah, I'm playing
a video game instead of being invested into what's going on.  In researching this story, I came across this 2014 post by video game designer Liz England, called
The Door Problem. In it, she breaks down just how much of a
pain doors are for designers, with a series of questions that need to be answered before
work even begins on a game: It starts off fairly simple: Are there doors
in your game? Can the player open them? But pretty quickly it gets a lot more complicated:
Do doors lock behind the player? Where do enemies come from? Do they run in from doors? What happens if there are two players? Once you get all those questions answered,
the door then actually has to get built — and every part of the company gets involved in
a different way: Concept artists design and create, composers write themes, combat designers think about enemies, writers write voice over, sound designers make it sound like the door
is actually opening and closing, and then an audio engineer has to come in and make
it sound like it's coming from the direction that the player is facing, and the list goes
on. For anyone who's interestedI’ll put the link to her post in the description below. But, the expert that I interviewed for this piece, Bryan Singh,
had very similar things to say: Doors are like, yeah, you open the door, you're
done. It's like, yes, but you have to consider every
other situation, every other system, every other object and character that can interact
with doors or be around doors when they're interacting. Like, what if you open the door and there's
an enemy right behind it? Do you have an animation for that? Does the enemy get bonked and knocked back,
or do they like stop it? Those are questions that you have to ask yourself. Like, how does every situation or every overlapping
system react to push button, door opens. U.S President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas on November 22 1963. within hours of his death a gun was found in a nearby building and police arrested the accused killer Lee Harvey Oswald Oswald denied it I didn't shoot anybody he said somebody had set him up but when the Dallas Police searched his belongings they found these two photos of Oswald posing in his backyard holding the gun that killed the president the photos definitively linked Oswald to the murder weapon and made the case against him airtight in the minds of investigators but when they showed Oswald the photos he insisted they were fakes and that his head had been superimposed onto someone else's body frame him the next day Oswald was shot to death while in police custody sparking rumors that the US government was covering up the real story of the assassination and who else might be involved and this photo which has been scrutinized deconstructed and reconstructed ever since is at the heart of it after Kennedy's assassination government investigators spent 10 months compiling evidence and concluded that Oswald alone killed the president an explanation the public has doubted ever since conspiracy theorists argue that a powerful entity like the KGB CIA Mafia or Kennedy successor to the presidency had to be involved in such a high-profile murder and if these photos are fake it suggests a far-reaching conspiracy framed Oswald for a crime he said he didn't commit or at least didn't commit on his own this is the most notorious of the backyard photos it appeared on the cover of Life magazine in February 1964 and circulated in global newspapers people were quick to notice something odd the rifle on the cover of Life had a telescopic site and in other news outlets the scope was gone the news outlets explained they retouched the photo before Printing and inadvertently altered the appearance of the rifle but the controversy convinced people around the world the photo was fake and of course if it was fake now who faked didn't why did they fake it and opens up this whole can of worms this guy knows a lot about photo fakes my name is Hani Farid I'm a professor here at the University of California Berkeley and I specialize in digital imaging forensics I work on criminal cases on civil cases where the authenticity of an image or a video has been called into question to read is also the latest in a long line of experts that have used science to try to figure out if the photo of Lee Harvey Oswald is real oh that's amazing you have the original oh that's beautiful so what is the problem with this photo okay first of all I assume I can keep this there were four things that people consistently point to in the photo as purported evidence and manipulation first and foremost is people have argued that the lighting and the shadows in the photo are physically impossible in particular if you look on the ground there is this long Shadow to his right but if you look on his face the Shadow from his nose seems to be coming directly down so people were saying oh his head was spliced into a photo of somebody else holding the gun and the lighting was wrong that was number one number two is a if you look at Oswald in the photo he has this pretty bulky chin it's quite broad but if you look at his mug shots and other photos of him he seems to have this very tapered chin so that added to the evidence if you want to call it that that this isn't really his face that the chin seems to be too broad the contradictory shadows and the broad chin are the most commonly cited signs of alleged tampering this Theory even made its way into this scene in Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK starring Gary Oldman as Oswald I never saw this picture that is my best but my face has been superimposed look at the way the Shadows on the nose fall in a straight line like it's High Noon a shadow down here on the ground reads more like late afternoon or early morning number three is that in the photo the gun seems to be shorter than the actual gun that was used to kill the president and then number four was that his posture seems odd it seems like he's sort of leaning back and he should be unstable holding that gun like that like so when you look at the photo yeah at first glance something looks a little weird there and so that's what has been around this photo for a long time [Music] in the 1960s and 1970s forensic experts tried just about everything to test the authenticity of this photo examined it at various exposures to check for signs of tampering didn't find any photograph the rifle that killed Kennedy at various distances and angles to compare it to the weapon in the backyard photo the dimensions matched side-by-side analysis with Oswald's mugshot confirmed it was him they also took photos with Oswald's seized camera to check if the unique artifacts specific to the negatives produced by that camera in this case these 11 scratch marks would appear across other photos they did meaning the backyard photos were taken with Oswald's camera investigators even recreated the photo numerous times to see if the shadow angles were possible in a single image most successfully in this one taken exactly four years after the original at the same hour in Oswald's former backyard the Shadows matched up straight down on the face and at an angle for the body they can included again and again that the backyard photos were taken with Oswald's camera and there were no signs of fakery but even presented with the facts the controversy surrounding the photo persisted and I think that is baked into conspiracies anything that is inconsistent with your core belief is simply evidence that that person is part of the conspiracy to keep information from you check out this mail order videotape fake made by famous conspiracy theorist and amateur photographer Jack D white who was obsessed with debunking the authenticity of this photo let me show you the results of my photo analysis and see if you too can detect the graphics blenders which prove that a powerful conspiracy resulted in the death of President Kennedy this guy was quoted in National media as an expert and in a 1978 BBC television documentary an actual forensics expert felt confident that one can only conclude that Oswald's head has been stuck onto a chin the flaw in these approaches is that people tend to overestimate their ability to determine real world physics from a single two-dimensional image and it turns out we're really really bad at it when it comes to certain things like Shadows like Reflections and mirrored surfaces but if you think about it that shouldn't be surprising this thing here the visual system didn't evolve over millions and millions of years to reason about a flat piece of paper so Farid and his team reconstructed the scene using 3D modeling software to rule out the four problems of the photo the Shadows the shape of the chin the length of the gun and the posture here's how they built it so we know a couple of things about Oswald we know how tall he was and what his weight was around the time that he was arrested so what you're seeing here is a three-dimensional model that has been scaled to his height in real world units they added Oswald's known weight to the model and posed it to match the stance in the photo adding the weight of the guns he's holding to test its balance Oswald's mugshot provided a reference for the narrow chin and shape of the nose finally they lit the scene with a single light source moving it around until the Shadows looked just right you can see how closely the 3D model matches the original photo in this overlay image it means that we have a three-dimensional model of Oswald and the Sun and the ground plane that is consistent with whatever was happening in that physical scene in 1963. now they could examine the Shadows he has this long Shadow down from his nose he has this long shadow cast back into his right and those are consistent with a single light source so it just turns out that Shadows sometimes look weird so what happens to that very tapered chin is it suddenly becomes very fat well why it's actually not the shape of his chin it's just a shadow so number two the chin of Oswald is consistent with what you see in the photo the gun which we know the measurement of is perfectly consistent with the photo there's nothing wrong with it it's exactly the right size and lastly the physics of the pose you are stable standing up when that Center of mass that projects straight down onto the floor is encompassed by your feet we have a 3D model of Oswald we know where his mass is we project that downward and what you see here is that it is well within the bounding area of the speed which means the pose with the gun and the weird backward tilt that he's doing is perfectly physically plausible some people might never let this photo go but ultimately the simplest explanation is usually the strongest I think you've got to start to ask how complicated is your explanation of what happened is it plausible that in 1963 somebody manipulated a photo to be fully consistent in a way that an analysis 50 years later cannot find evidence of manipulation I do not find that a compelling argument so when you start to chip away that any artifact in the image anything in the image that you think is evidence of tampering that we can start to now explain away at some point you get to the end and you say okay the only plausible explanation that is left is that the image is authentic and now you have to move on I talked to another scientist Pawan Sinha about light and shadows he's a professor of visual neuroscience at MIT and described a study he and his colleagues designed to test just how bad humans are at recognizing inconsistent Lighting in images the subjects were shown several pairs of Real World scenes one digitally altered to introduce lighting inconsistencies the other unaltered they were instructed to spot the original the test went like this two seconds for the first image a gray screen then two seconds for the second image people picked the right image only 50 of the time upping the view time to 5 Seconds increase that rate to 70 but the study concluded that humans just don't naturally recognize illumination and consistencies in images there's a link to the paper in the description of this video plus honey fareed's full study of the Oswald photo along with everything you need to read up on the investigations into this photo over the years When you picture New York City, there are 
so many iconic things that come to mind. But, before the yellow cabs
and hot dog stands, New York was known
for something else: Oysters. From the 1600s through the 1800s,
New York was booming with them. And it was oysters, not hotdogs,
sold streetside by the millions. Oyster reefs covered over 220,000
acres along the coastline. The reefs were so large that ships 
needed to navigate around them. But, of course,
this isn’t the case today. Oysters were overharvested
nearly out of existence, and not just in New York. Experts estimate we’ve lost 85% of the
world’s oyster reefs in the last 200 years. Today, we’re trying
to put them back. Because this animal that you 
often find on a dinner plate might actually be an effective 
defense against the rising ocean. We’re losing our coasts
to climate change. As oceans levels rise,
the water erodes the shoreline. This pushes the
entire coast back, encroaching on homes
and destabilizing land. So, enter the oyster. This uncharismatic
rock of an animal. STEPHANIE WESTBY: Oh come on!
You don't think they're charismatic? KIM: I feel like… It’s not 
something I would call “cute.” WESTBY: No, I can't
argue with you there. I've tried, but yeah,
no, they're not. Stephanie Westby has been
helping to restore oyster reefs in the US’s Chesapeake
Bay for over 10 years. WESTBY: Their charisma really lies in
their functionality, rather than their form. Oysters obviously
don't move around. And that’s exactly
part of the appeal. Oysters stick together.
Literally. Baby oysters called “spat” attach
to older and even dead oysters in order to grow. WESTBY: And over generations,
all of these oysters reproducing, it builds up the oyster reef. In some places, that sturdy reef
can help defend the coast by dampening 
the force of incoming waves. WESTBY: If you have an
oyster reef that's "intertidal" -- that sticks up at low tide -- then it can perform some of that 
wave energy protection function. Oyster reefs can break up waves 
by catching the brunt of the force. Part of the wave is
deflected back to the ocean, and the rest can more
gently reach the shoreline, which slows long-term erosion. On its own, an oyster reef won’t 
*stop* a hurricane-level storm surge, but it could definitely
limit the damage. And the larger they grow, the 
more protection they can offer: As time goes on,
sea levels will rise. Unlike man-made breakwaters,
that will need to be rebuilt over time, oyster reefs just keep
growing upward. Various organizations around the world 
are working to restore oyster reefs. But reef restoration isn’t as simple
as just dumping oysters into a bay. They need something to
stick to in order to grow. In New York, one organization
puts recycled shells in cages for oyster spat to grow on, and groups in Bangladesh,
and around the US, have placed large concrete barriers
offshore for oyster spat to grow on. Now, on their own, concrete structures
like this are actually effective breakwaters. So... why add oysters? To understand, it helps to look 
at a more familiar type of reef: SEAN CORSON: Oyster reefs provide
much the same function as coral reefs. They provide the same kind of habitat. They are the underpinning of the 
ecological systems where they exist, just like coral reefs. Oysters are filtration systems. They eat by pulling in
large quantities of water. Algae, nitrogen, and other
contaminants are eaten, or harmlessly dumped to the bottom
of the bay, and clean water is expelled. A single oyster can filter up to 
50 gallons of water every day. As the water clarity improves, sea 
grasses start to grow, fish return, and other sea creatures make the 
crevices in the reef their home. CORSON: They are this aggregating, 
reef-building, hard structure. And so, if you look at
the way we try to deal with reducing erosion
right now, as a society, for the most part, we put rocks,
big pieces of concrete, we set up, more or less, walls,
to try to slow the rate of waves, reduce the wind-driven
erosion, that type of thing. Oysters can serve in that capacity in
many ways, but bring added advantages. Places like New York City
or even the Chesapeake Bay are way too industrialized to
bring back the reefs of the 1600s. But that’s not really the point. CORSON: I don't think we can
put it back just the way it was. I don't think that's
necessarily a realistic goal. But I think we've got a great opportunity 
when we start thinking about multiple benefits, and the
different kinds of needs of society, whether it's to reduce wave impacts,
or offset nutrient inputs, or generally increasing the
health and resilience of the bay. Resiliency against the
rising oceans isn't as simple as undoing the mistakes
we made in the past. We don’t live the way we did 200 years ago,
and the world looks very different. But what we can learn from oysters, is 
that restoring one species from the past can create a chain reaction 
to a more sustainable future. CORSON: It feels hopeful. And it feels like something
that we can achieve. “It’s time to bring our
people back home.” “...to end America’s
longest war.” “The US will soon complete its
withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.” “Taliban fighters have
flooded the capital.” “There are American-made weapons
in the hands of Taliban fighters.” “Many of the Afghans trying to escape
actually helped American armed forces.” “It was quite clear that
it was going to come to this.” BIDEN: I stand squarely
behind my decision. After 20 years, there was never a
good time to withdraw US forces. AZMAT KHAN: People are
glued to their TV screens. It's chaotic.
It is a mess. But to really understand how we got here,
we have to go back to the beginning. So, for many Americans,
Afghanistan is the “good war.” My name is Azmat Khan.
I’m an investigative reporter. They see the war in Iraq as
the one that was unjustified, going after something
that didn't exist, these weapons of
mass destruction. And they see Afghanistan as the place
that was shortchanged because of Iraq. Michael McKinley.
I was ambassador in Afghanistan. The decision to invade Afghanistan was
directly related to the attacks on 9/11. “Osama bin Laden publicly
declared war on the US.” “He openly bragged about his
direct involvement in planning 9/11.” AZMAT KHAN: Osama bin
Laden was in Afghanistan. BUSH: On my orders, the United States
military has begun strikes. AZMAT KHAN: But once the bombing
began, and in the lead-up to it, it was no longer just about,
we want to have bin Laden. It was about
the Taliban state. LAURA BUSH: The plight of
women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate
human cruelty. The fight against terrorism is also a fight
for the rights and dignity of women. AZMAT KHAN: There were actually offers
to turn over bin Laden by the Taliban. And the United States refused. They wanted a surrender
directly to the United States. Now, shortly after the bombing campaign
started, the Taliban fell fairly quickly. And by April of 2002, it was
very apparent to the Americans that they couldn't just sweep in,
overthrow a regime, and walk away. You needed to build
a new government. This nation-building program that
really prioritized counterterrorism. BUSH: We expect cells of
trained killers to try to regroup, and try to undermine Afghanistan's
efforts to build a lasting peace. AZMAT KHAN: This idea that, listen,
we're going to take the gloves off, and we're really going
to eradicate al-Qaeda. OBAMA: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the
American people, and to the world, that the United States has conducted
an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and
a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of
innocent men, women, and children. MICHAEL MCKINLEY: The decrease in
troop presence really dates from 2011. There was a sense that, overall,
the threat of a terrorist attack against the United States from
Afghanistan was greatly diminished. Part of what American forces in
Afghanistan were doing became providing more formalized training,
building up equipment, providing intelligence support,
eventually providing air support... AZMAT KHAN: Afghan soldiers were supported
by US aircraft that would fire on insurgents. Really, it was just air power that
allowed the Afghan government to retain this tenuous hold in places where
they weren't necessarily very popular. MICHAEL MCKINLEY: The Afghan
security forces weren't evolving quite in the manner that was anticipated. AZMAT KHAN: At the same time, you also saw
billions of dollars in reconstruction money pouring into a country without the kind of
infrastructure to really handle that kind of money. That means building
health clinics. It means building
schools, bridges, roads. And more than that,
that kind of reconstruction money, coupled with America's
counterterrorism goals, was really
a toxic mix. Partnering with very corrupt
warlords, or local strongmen, who, in exchange for allowing you
to build a school on this land, you would give us the contract
for the health clinic right next door. I had US soldiers tell me things like, yeah,
he was a warlord, but he was our warlord. Most media coverage from Afghanistan
that Americans might hear often comes from urban cities,
particularly Kabul. “From Kabul,
Afghanistan.” “In the Afghan
capital, Kabul.” But across the rural countryside,
support for the Taliban gained ground, because of this massive
campaign of airstrikes, of bombings, much of which have had
high civilian death tolls. The Taliban had
been defeated. And yet the American presence in Afghanistan
brought them back from the dead. MICHAEL MCKINLEY: In the 2013-2014 period,
the Taliban began to regain its footing. It was clear that every year
they were making some advances, and they were operating primarily
in rural and depopulated areas. AZMAT KHAN: US intelligence was either
incredibly misrepresented or incredibly flawed. MICHAEL MCKINLEY: There was
this growing concern, for example, with what is commonly
called “ghost soldiers.” How many soldiers were
actually on the rolls? Was it 330,000? Or was it several
tens of thousands lower than that? And the real issue related to
whether soldiers felt they were fighting for a government
that represented them. AZMAT KHAN: It's talked about often
that the Afghan government, and the particularly
the president, was not coming to the
negotiating table with the Taliban. “President Trump ordering
a drawdown of troops.” “All US troops should leave
Afghanistan by the end of the year.” “A very unpopular war
here in the United States.” “President Joe Biden has
decided the United States has seen enough of
the war in Afghanistan.” AZMAT KHAN: So when the Biden
administration announced that they would be continuing
Trump's plan to withdraw, many Afghanistan watchers were
poised for the Taliban to gain ground. The United States, which has been
providing air power to Afghan forces, now, all of a sudden, that's no longer going to
be something that Afghan forces can rely on. We saw them sweep through districts
in places that were more rural and we saw an escalation
of that in May of 2021. But I don't think anyone expected it
to gain ground as quickly as it did. “It’s clear who is
now in charge.” “The Taliban is
sweeping the country.” “Here in Kabul, the city has
collapsed. There’s no real security.” “As the Taliban solidify their control
of the city and the country...” “...the Afghans who went above and beyond
to help American servicemembers are stuck in limbo.” AZMAT KHAN: A large reason that many
Afghans worked with the Americans, or other foreigners, was that many of them
wanted a better life for their families, and hoped that it would one day
lead to their being able to leave. And so, watching the Taliban
come as suddenly as it did, knowing what their
futures might be, it is a failure on the part
of the US government. [Music] ever see a face in an outlet a building a piece of toast this phenomenon is face paradolia and it gives insight into how our brains are wired to recognize and comprehend stimuli and that goes beyond seeing things in the physical world it also impacts the way we respond in the digital realm so what can web designers and businesses learn from it everything in design plays with people's perception and emotions color choices to images to the usage of design principles to look at the origins of those principles let's take a step back way back one key trait for surviving and thus evolving is detecting information as quickly as possible like recognizing a face and reading it in social interactions that information covers a lot of things but the most important might be credibility the brain can determine trustworthiness in a person in just 50 milliseconds of course that's a person today online interactions with people and with interfaces are a huge and growing part of our lives so what is determining our credibility judgments there to start the brain processes visual information 60 000 times faster than text so the literal first impression of a website is based on the face of the website such as the layout and the branding let's take a look at squarespace websites for example millions of people have used their templates to effectively layout and brand their products portfolios and blogs and that matters especially for small businesses 92 of them believe that their own website is what contributes to an effective digital marketing strategy this is echoed by megan mann the vice president of product design at squarespace our mission at squarespace is really to help empower all of those entrepreneurs with the tools that they need to not only sell anything but really to stand out amongst the competition bear design or minimalistic design doesn't always mean that it's easier to use great design can take even the most complex of an idea and make sure that it is presented beautifully clear and from a functional standpoint this approach to visuals can be traced back to the early 20th century specifically from a group of german psychologists who developed the gestalt principles together they developed seven principles that explained the use of perception similarity and symmetry among other style concepts design principles have been around for decades and they're a really critical tool in helping designers understand the crucial points of an experience from the hierarchy the typography and and really importantly the navigation of a site for example when we are met with busy or disorganized layouts our retinas struggle to convert that information into electrical impulse that makes it difficult for us to recognize and act upon that information design plays a really critical role in informing a lot of decisions that users need to make whether it's signing up for a subscription checking out really making sure that your brand is coming across in a powerful way now that there are so many new businesses looking to turn their ideas into an actual business it's really important for everyone to have access to the tools that are going to help them create an effective online presence to turn that idea into a profit turns out good design is more than just what meets the eye fundamentals like the gestalt principles have made it so that our ideas can be both beautiful and functional squarespaces tools empower you to do just that bring creative ideas to life and connect with an audience face to face When Americans turned on their TVs in the
early 1990s, one contentious issue was hard to miss: immigration. Is immigration good for America? The federal government won't stop them at
the border. You spend $5.5 billion a year to support them. There’s a right way. And there’s a wrong way. At the time, there were around 5 million undocumented
immigrants in the US. And most Americans saw immigrants as a burden on the country, taking jobs, housing and healthcare, and thought immigration as a whole should be decreased. Our country is invaded by immigrants who
are like cancer cells. That same year, Republicans ran on a tough-on-immigration
platform and took control of Congress. Democrats were pushed to adopt tough positions
on immigration, too. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed a major
piece of legislation: the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act, or, IIRIRA. It’s goal was to decrease the number of
undocumented immigrants. It did the opposite. Before the 1990s, undocumented immigration
into the US looked very different. For one, it was usually temporary. People used to go back and forth across the
border. They would go north for the harvest, and they
would earn some money, and they would go back to Mexico. And if they wanted to come live permanently
in the US, there were a few legal channels, but not many. If they married an American citizen, they
could get lawful status. Or if maybe their brother was a citizen already,
he could sponsor them. Or an employer could. And these could be done after they were already
living in the US undocumented. Before 1996, the threat of deportation was
relatively low. People were commonly deported for committing
a crime. And it was usually limited to major crimes
— like murder or trafficking. But IIRIRA, together with other 1996 laws,
drastically expanded deportable crimes to even minor infractions, like shoplifting. It was also retroactive. So say it’s 1976, and someone is caught
stealing some albums from the mall — they wouldn’t be deported. Over the next 20 years, they never commit
another crime. But after 1996, they could be deported because
of that old misdemeanor. And not just if they were currently undocumented: this applied to immigrants with lawful status,
too. And previously an immigration judge could
decide if the deportation should even take place. Now things were a little more automatic. Ignoring the fact that those deportations
would be extremely harmful to US citizen children or spouses. Deportations skyrocketed. And IIRIRA created the framework for future
laws that further expanded reasons people could be deported, especially
after 9/11. But IIRAIRA also made another huge, fundamental
change in the US immigration system. One of the aspects of the 1996 law that is
particularly strict and I think in many respects, inhumane, is the so-called
3 and 10 year bars. Those 3 and 10 year bars made these legal
pathways nearly impossible to obtain. They work like this: Anyone who’s been undocumented in the US
for 6 months and wants to gain legal status, first has
to leave the country and be barred from returning for 3 years. If they’ve been undocumented for more than
a year, they’re barred for 10 years. So if they want to get lawful status through
a job, they’d have to first leave the US, for 10 years. Or through their brother? Leave, for 10 years. Or through their spouse? Leave, for 10 years. It's family separation by another name. The bars were intended to try to essentially
create punishments that were so severe to deter people essentially
from coming here, but as we’ve seen with many deterrent-based
policies the practical effect is very different. Instead, it incentivized people to stay in
the US undocumented. Before IIRIRA, Mexican immigrants who came
to the US unlawfully were about 50% likely to return to Mexico
within a year. But after 1996, more people started staying
in the US. There were around 5 million undocumented immigrants
living in the US before IIRIRA. Today, it’s at least double that. And we are somehow surprised by that outcome. This is of our own doing. Laws like IIRIRA shaped the way the US focuses
on immigration enforcement as a deterrent. But really it proved that stronger enforcement
doesn’t actually stop undocumented immigration. These laws, and the politics in the 90s, 
didn't really change  the reasons why people come to the United States, Today, views on immigrants are very different
than they were in the 1990s: most Americans now see them as a strength,
not a burden. But the laws created here,
haven’t changed. Requirements and standards that were created
decades ago that aren’t responsive to our needs as a nation and certainly aren’t
responsive to the needs of immigrant populations. The idea that, if we only had more guns,
if we only built a higher wall,  that would solve all the problems. I think we learned from 1996 that's not the way it works. 
It's not that simple. These two scenes almost 20 years apart, both
showed their digitally created main character waking up. They also served as the big reveal of a technical
breakthrough. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was one
of the first movies with a realistic human CGI character — at least in theory. To our eyes today, the movement and textures
make it look at best like a video game cutscene. But focus on the skin. How did we go from lifeless skin to skin that,
on Alita, a stylized character with giant eyes and a robot body, looks so much better? How do we make fake skin look real? That journey to realistic skin includes pore
mapping, the appearance of light on apples and chicken, and knowing the difference between
a glass of whole and skim milk. I’m finding it really hard not to feel like
a total stoner thinking about my skin —  I’m touching my face right now. “Honestly, when we go through looking at
this stuff, we're all doing this and like trying to look in the mirror. My name is Nick Epstein. I was a visual effects supervisor on Alita:
Battle Angel.” Alita: Battle Angel is a 2019 action movie
based on the manga and it features a stylized character that's perfectly believable. She's come a long way from this guy, the Scorpion
King from the Mummy Returns. This shot is so infamous that the VFX YouTube
channel Corridor Crew spent a whole video trying to fix it. There are a lot of problems, but a big one
is the skin. The Mummy Returns’ Scorpion King is played
by the Rock. You wouldn't know it. But Alita definitely resembles the actor who
played her. “We needed to make sure that we were capturing
Rosa’s performance, like the heart of the movie was really Rosa’s performance as Alita. So we actually built a fully digital version
of Rosa. And then we could apply sort of our sort of
more, I guess, normal realism factors and barometers to that.” Getting that facial model right is a crucial
first step for the skin’s movement. When the hard work begins. “I have four factors I think. Albedo, displacements, subsurface, and then
dynamic changes and deformations and so on.” Albedo is the base color map for your character. Imagine the color of a face in a void. No features, no wrinkles, no lights shining
on it. See how I make the cheeks a little red, the
forehead a little lighter. That base is crucial to realism, and it's
incredibly dynamic. Based on Rosa Salazar's real skin, they adjusted
Alita’s albedo map for different moods, health, everything. “So we could then sort of compare the albedo
map when she's like really angry, for example, with a neutral pose, and then extract basically
like a blood flow map from that. And the shader could then, when she gets angry
in her performance, dial in that extra blood flow.” Displacement maps push the scan up or down. Imagine how this little guy is flat, but features
or a wrinkle here might change the height of his face. Look at all the detail in the Scorpion King’s
face here versus Imhotep’s face in the next shot. That's the detail you can see in the close
ups in Alita. It's way smaller than wrinkles. “We call it micro geometry, even pore level
displacement that's what gives you your oiliness, the specular response in your skin, which
you can see even just looking at me in the in the camera here, you know, my forehead
is very different to my nose, very different to my cheeks, and to my chin. Unfortunately, my forehead is quite shiny,
my nose also shiny, but my cheeks less so and that they're fairly isotropic, without
direction, I have a very clear flow direction that way, a flow direction this way. We have a sort of reverse flow direction around
my chin. So we actually draw curves on along these
flow lines. Some extreme close ups, we you know, we knew
that the camera was going to basically fly into Alita’s eye.” But the difference between this face and this
one isn't just the skin. It's what happens beneath it. “My name is Henrik Wann Jensen, and I'm
the chief scientist of Luxion, makers of Keyshot. And I specialize in computer graphics, in
answering the question why do things look the way they do and how can you simulate it
on a computer? See when we wrote the first paper as you may
have noticed, we did some measurements in it. So we actually went to the local supermarket
with a laser pointer. I was shining on on the on the milk, we were
shining on the meat. And actually the guys who ran the supermarket
came to us and what are you doing? This is not good.” The big idea of that breakthrough 2001 paper,
work that got the team to the technical Oscars, was that the way they'd seen light bounce
through food was true of almost everything. And if it could be simulated more quickly,
that would make all computer graphics look more real, including skin. See how the laser bounces off the spoon? But when I put my hand in front of it, the
light passes through, and even bounces around underneath? This drawing breaks down as an illustration,
because light passes through and bounces under our skin. Computers could simulate subsurface scattering,
like they do with this marble. But they did it by simulating every single
bouncing light photon. That took way too long. So most of the time, computer animation couldn't
bother with it. It makes the Rock look wrong — light is
bouncing off him, not passing through the skin. It affected other shots, too. “In Shrek, they actually have a cookie guy
and some milk. And if you ever see that shot, it looks like
white paint, which was exactly the example we said if you don't do this properly, it's
actually going to look like white paint.” Jensen and his colleagues figured out how
to simulate subsurface scattering more efficiently. That changed animation. “Then in Shrek 2, they now knew about this
technology. And then they went all in on the milk. So they had a ton of milk. But they now did the full subsurface scattering. And so it had a little bit of an impact on
that as well. it's funny because I went to talk to Sony
and you never know what people are interested in. They say, oh, you're the milk guy.” Subsurface scattering could efficiently simulate
the different ways light passed through whole versus skim milk, and also skin, or at least
the beginning of it. “But when we created the initial subsurface
scattering algorithm, you're set up based on this assumption that you hit the skin and
then everything is the same underneath. And of course, real human skin is not like
that. We have different layers like epidermis, dermis. And we looked at sort of the basic things
that decide what humans can look like. And it turns out melanin, you actually have
different melanin types, we have one that's lighter melanin type, one that's more on the
brown side, on the dark side, you have to have mixtures of those to get the correct
skins. You could actually do a very convincing, now,
rendering of human skin.” “So, you know, I've talked about how we
define regions for micro geometry, some of the things we did also revolved around dynamic
scans. So we actually had footage of what scan data,
so it's this 3d three dimensional data of Rosa running through Harvard lines of sort
of every expression we could we could ask her to do.” Harvard lines are a series of sentences that
help hit all the phonemes—chunks of speech in a conversation. It's for audio, but it can help artists see
every possible way somebody's mouth can move when they're talking. I'm doing this video. It includes these things called Harvard lines,
and I was hoping you could read some of them. [Reading overlapping Harvard lines] Early reviews for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within focused on it as a treat for the eyeballs. Since then, increasingly complex simulations
of not just skin but light and movement have made visual effects look even more real. The only question is how much further is left
to go. “Take the winding path to reach the lake,
note closely the size of the gas tank. It snowed rained and hailed the same morning
the meal was cooked before the bell rang. What joy there is in living.” “One of the immediate effects that that
sort of the visual effects industry they jumped on right away was if you also have someone
who's lit from behind, you see light passing through the ear. If you look at movies like like Harry Potter
with Dobby, the character, they were the first to really adopt this technology. They all had big ears so they were very excited
about that, and you'll see a lot of glowing light coming through the ears.” On June 6, 2021, Simone Biles won a historic 
seventh national title. And among all the superhuman feats
she’s pulled off in her career, like a Yurchenko double pike
in the US Classic,
  and a triple double at the 2019
US Gymnastics Championships,
  this one is especially important. It’s called a Wolf Turn. The Wolf Turn has been around for decades.  And it seems like recently, almost every gymnast has included it in their routine. It’s certainly not an easy skill.
  Something even Jessica Alba noticed. Why do they always do that? Because it’s like really hard. So if this turn is so hard, how do all these gymnasts pull it off? The wolf turn is broken into 
four main movements.
  A gymnast, like Simone,
will get into a squat   position on the beam or the floor,  with their other leg stretched out. She’ll then stretch out her 
arms and wind them up.
  Once she finds her balance,
she’ll start spinning.
  And finally, she’ll stop, and return
to her original stance. All while making sure to keep her balance  and not fall over. These four elements rely on a delicate balance of mass and inertia. Try to get in the starting 
position for the wolf turn. I think you’re gonna find 
it’s extremely difficult.
  David Young is a physics professor 
at Louisiana State University
  who's studied the physics of 
gymnastics and other sports.
  When she's in that crouch position,
the majority of her center mass is,
  of course, still kind of in her torso. As long as your center of mass is above a point of support,
that system will be physically stable.
  If she leans back a little 
bit,  she'll fall over. Things start to get tricky 
as she attempts to spin.  To figure out what’s happening,
let’s look at her moment of inertia: How her mass is distributed 
from her axis of rotation. In this case, the rotation 
axis is a vertical line  near the center of her body 
that passes through her foot. When she winds up and starts spinning,
notice how she'll bring her arms kind of in here, closer to her body. This distributes her body mass differently, closer to the axis of rotation,
which decreases her moment of inertia. This means Biles can spin easier and faster.  And then right when she gets ready to stop, you'll notice that she'll fling her arms out. Spreading her body mass out increases her moment of inertia.  This makes it harder to rotate, and helps her stop quickly. All these movements require incredible strength  with gymnasts using mainly their arm,  shoulder, leg and core muscles
to maintain their position. And like Jordan Chiles' 2017 
Nationals routine shows,
  one wobble, and things fall apart. Cannot believe what she just did there. There’s a reason gymnasts go through this tricky balance.  They’re chasing high scores. Olympic gymnastics is scored by combining points from two panels: Difficulty and Execution.  Difficulty assigns a point value to the skill itself. A simple turn, like this single rotation Carly 
Patterson did in the 2004 Olympics, is valued the lowest of all the turns.  A triple double,  where gymnasts are flipping twice
and twisting three times all in one shot, has one of the highest difficulty ratings
of all gymnastics skills. And a triple wolf turn is 
somewhere in the middle. It carries the highest 
values of all the turns where gymnasts are doing three 
revolutions on the beam or floor. Execution scores you on how 
well you perform the technique. Basically, are you executing properly?
And if not, what did you do wrong? Nicole Langevin is a gymnastics judge,
choreographer and consultant. To truly spin that with proper posture,
proper foot position, proper execution and precision of arms
is pretty darn difficult.  First thing we look for is what position is the foot in when they start? The support foot   is often turned out like a ballerina.  So that's how it has to finish at the end. And usually it doesn't.
Usually it finishes parallel.
  Then I want to see that that 
extended leg stays extended.
  There is a deduction in 
gymnastics on every single event,
  and it's called dynamics: Doing difficult things and making them look easy. When you're spinning around 
going, whoa, with your arms,  that's not very dynamic.  A perfect wolf turn score would combine its relatively 
high difficulty level with a flawless execution-- something only top athletes can pull off. this photo represents a historic moment for wildlife protection in the us four u.s cavalry soldiers posing with eight severed bison heads in yellowstone national park it was taken in 1894 after the capture of a notorious poacher in the park ed howell soldiers caught him in the act of skinning the animals to sell their hides surrounded by the carcasses of bison he'd killed yellowstone had just been established around 20 years earlier and was a refuge for the american bison or buffalo whose population numbering in the hundreds was on the brink of extinction hal's capture led directly to the first u.s federal law protecting wildlife and the photo of the confiscated heads was meant to depict the soldiers as heroic defenders of an endangered and beloved american icon but it also shows what drove the bison to near extinction in the first place the u.s government itself [Music] this was the bison's approximate range before 1800 covering a significant amount of north america by 1870 the population had been reduced to these two great herds by 1889 american bison numbered in the hundreds down from tens of millions at the beginning of the century and the reason for their destruction becomes clear when you add this to the map the tribal lands of the plains indians you cannot overstate the importance of the buffalo to the people of the northern and southern plains dean angelia whitaker is a lecturer on american indian studies whose research focuses on issues of environmental justice throughout u.s history the buffalo has been central to these cultures for hundreds of years and the buffalo provides everything it's not just food but it's everything needed for everyday life plains tribes constructed dwellings from bison heights used bison blankets for warmth and the bones for tools most important of all was bison meat the crucial food source for the indigenous peoples of the great plains there is absolutely everything about the buffalo that makes this animal central to these cultures which is why the u.s government wanted them wiped out completely white settlers in north america adhered to a cultural belief known as manifest destiny the idea that white people were destined to expand west on the continent conquer the landscape and develop it manifest destiny is most famously depicted in this 1872 painting called american progress which shows the expanding railroad following a steady stream of settlers westward and the land's native inhabitants including the bison fleeing into darkness imagery like this depicts the transformation of the land as a natural one rather than the brutal reality of native people's forced removal by the time it gets a name to it manifests destiny in the 1840s the u.s is engaging in very violent processes of pushing native people off their lands to make those lands available for settlers and native people resisted it which meant war for the u.s a key part of that war was eliminating the bison population the extermination of the buffalo was central to manifest destiny they knew that you go after the buffalo you can subjugate the people you can see clear evidence of this plan in statements made by army officials at the time like general philip sheridan who said the best way for the government is to now make them poor by the destruction of their stock and then settle them on the lands allotted to them and in a letter to sheridan fellow u.s general william tecumseh sherman suggested a way to accomplish that it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of england and america for a grand buffalo hunt and make one grand sweep of them all throughout the rest of the 19th century that's exactly what happened the bison was hunted excessively for entertainment and competition both by the us cavalry and amateur hunters bison hunting parties would shoot at herds from passing trains in what was called a sport that is peculiarly american bison were also killed for commercial profit to satisfy an enormous desire for their skins and bones in eastern cities these hunters would kill bison by the dozens for their skins alone leaving the carcasses behind to rot by the end of the 1800s there were almost no bison left by the time that happens native people are confined to reservations this forced submission means that they have to rely on the federal government for food as part of a program of forest assimilation once native people have been confined to reservations the government set aside some of the cleared land for a national park and yellowstone was established in 1872 the yellowstone park act designated the land as a pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people all of these parks are predicated upon the disappearance of native people it's about preserving it and making these destination places for the well-to-do white settlers preserving the so-called natural wonders of the park included protecting the few remaining bison roaming there the same us government that had driven the animal to near extinction in the first place now positioned itself as the guardian of the endangered species and the us army who occupied yellowstone in its early years patrolled the park in search of bison hunters which is where this photo comes in it was taken by frank j haynes the official yellowstone photographer at the time who encountered the soldiers bringing ed howell into custody and photographed them posing with the bison heads they found in bags hanging from a tree the story of hal's dramatic capture put the issue of poaching in yellowstone into the national spotlight less than 60 days later a federal law made hunting in the park illegal marking the beginning of wildlife protection legislation in the u.s american bison are no longer endangered and yellowstone's website upholds house capture by the us army as having saved the bison in yellowstone but the staging of this photo also perpetuates the idea of manifest destiny it portrays agents of the us government as virtuous guardians of the environment choosing to overwrite their own role in destroying it there's no better representation for this highly romanticized story about what america is it's not the reality of the incredible violence of this historic process toward native people and toward other species one thing that's super interesting about the initial article detailing ed house capture which published in forest and stream magazine in 1894 was the photos they used three photos showing groups of slaughtered bison each one captioned the butcher's work paired with the story the implication here is that the butcher is howl and these are the bison that he killed but there's no photo credit attached probably because these photos weren't taken in yellowstone and they were published seven years earlier in an 1887 smithsonian survey called the extermination of the american bison by william t hornaday hornaday was an early american conservationist and his research is also where the data for the map at the beginning of this episode showing the destruction of the bison population came from there's a link to the full survey in the description of this video and if you want to read about this story in more detail including how photography and fine art played a role in shaping our memory of the origins of us national parks and wildlife protection check out poaching pictures by alan braddock it's a fascinating read and interviewing professor braddock was a big part of the research for this episode so keep an eye out for more darkroom to come and thanks for watching This is a spirometer.
It's a tool to measure your
lung capacity and function. Medical tools like this one
are built with an adjustment. And it adjusts for race,
or as they call it in this
particular setting, origin. So, I'm gonna check
African-American and then we'll try it again and I'll change
my origin, in this case, and we'll see what happens
when I blow into it. <i> Race adjustments,
 or race norms, are used
 all over medicine</i> <i> from assessing
 kidney function</i> <i> to determining
 breast cancer risk</i> <i> and even diagnosing people
 with dementia.</i> <i> The purpose is to make
 more accurate predictions
 about people's health.</i> <i> But a recent lawsuit
 from retired NFL players</i> <i> accusing the practice
 of being discriminatory</i> <i> has brought national
 media attention</i> <i>to the potential harms of using
 race norming in medicine.</i> Man: The practice,
widely known as "race norming," makes it harder
for black players to qualify
for compensation. It establishes
a lower cognitive baseline for blacks than for whites. Basically you were done
before you started playing. Lee:<i> I need to learn more
 about why these adjustments
 are being used.</i> <i> Are there actual genetic
 differences between races?</i> <i> Where did the idea of race
 even come from?</i> Let's see what it does. <i> ( theme music playing )</i> So these are my results. FEV stands for
forced expiratory volume. It's the amount of breath
you can release in one second. 95%, FEV 3.6. I'm a specimen
of athletic achievement. So, compared to other black men
like me basically, my lung functioning
rather is pretty healthy. So we're gonna do it
one more time, and this time we're gonna
change my origin to white. So, um, I'm considered
mildly abnormal right now. My numbers--
my FEV is 76 percentile. If this was black,
it would have been
96 percentile. I went from being very healthy
to lightly abnormal, and I'm curious
of this dramatic adjustment
from white to black could be the reason why
someone might be misdiagnosed just because
of their skin color. So you guys have heard
the saying that race
is a social construct, and I feel like
for the most part
we all believe that. But there's a 2018 survey
that said one in three Americans actually believe there's
a biological difference
between the races, and that's kind of what
I'm trying to investigate
right now. So, I need you guys to do
one thing for me. Stand in front of this projector
and I'm gonna try and capture
your silhouette. Okay. Lee: Strike a pose. - Ooh.
- Amazing. Lee:
So you guys are both humans. Everyone has between 20
and 25,000 genes, most of which, 99.9%,
are the same. It's that 0.1% that makes us
all individual or unique. That 0.1% represents mutations
to your genetic code, which become genetic variants,
and those genetic variants can be anything
from physical things like skin color,
hair color, eye color. But what I'm here to talk about
today is one very specific genetic variant,
and that's skin color. All right,
so there are a few gene variants that are related to skin tone
and pigment, right? They're actually
what determine melanin
production in the body, and melanin is what
makes skin darker. And we know that there's
a correlation between exposure to the sun
and melanin. So dark skin helps protect
against the harmful effects
of ultraviolet light, and the closer folks
were to the equator,
their skin remained darker. And as we started to kind of
spread out across the globe, lighter skin evolved. Light skin helps
with the production of vitamin D in the body. At that latitudes,
they're less worried about getting too much sun
and more worried about-- - Getting enough, right.
- Yeah, when you mentioned
  the survey of whether people think
race is biological, I think basically this is
what they're thinking about. - Right.
- If they see people having
  different skin colors, some other different
features, and they're like,
"I can see a difference." And as you can see,
Africa has tons of diversity
and skin color. Yeah, so when people try to
define a race category, clearly they can't
use skin color. It's kind of laughable,
honestly. So, like, I mean,
this map captures skin color, but it does not account
for other physical mutations
that happened over time. I think when you would
look at those as well, you would find that
they don't map onto these
continents so clearly. I think that if you try to find
physical characteristics of the racial categories,
you're going to fail every time. In the last 500 years,
there's been even more movement of humans across the globe, and a lot of that was due
to the forced migration--
the transatlantic slave trade. And with this increased exposure
and mixture of skin colors, inferences were starting
to be made about what someone's
skin color meant about them. The idea that there was
a difference between races
and skin tones, people started to succumb to
some pretty wild conclusions. I want to show you guys
what I mean when I say that. So this is John Brown.
A man named Dr. Hamilton was
performing tests, <i> experiments on John's skin,
 to prove that black people</i> <i> had thicker skin
 than white people.</i> <i> Their skin was better able</i> <i> to tolerate working
 outside in the sun,</i> <i> and he would do things
 like expose John's skin</i> <i> to extremely dangerous levels
 of direct sunlight.</i> And he did this for years
to try and justify the belief that blacks were
meant to be slaves biologically. But this belief of
skin thickness, it lingered
through medicine to today, and it's being taught to kids
in medical school right now. So, I'm a second year
medical student right now. My roommate reminded me
of a time when he was
in a suture clinic practicing his
suturing skills on a banana. He asked the question of,
"How do you know what
needle size to use and how do you know
what thread size to use?" The physician said it correlates
with the thickness of the skin. So for example, the skin
in your eyelid is much thinner than the skin
in your lower back. But then they said
that needle size can also correlate with
a person's ethnicity, implying that different
skin colors have different thickness of skin,
which isn't true. That's literally how racism is perpetuated in
the field of medicine. I would imagine
we see similar misconceptions around pain tolerance,
too, right? I feel like
that goes hand in hand
with skin thickness. The belief that one skin color
or one person of one race is superior to another,
that is racism. But that's not really what
I'm trying to investigate. What I'm trying to investigate is what role race
plays in medicine. It seems like
a really tough question because you're
talking about going,
like, more than skin deep in asking whether there
are biological differences in the way
that our health develops and the kind of conditions
that we might be at risk for. I'm a carrier of
the sickle cell anemia trait. - Oh, right.
- For years, we thought that was
a black disease, right? That's what people
think of it, yeah. Because it's so prevalent
among this one kind
of group of the world and less prevalent
everywhere else, we label that with
a kind of racial category. Yeah, this idea that there
are diseases, right, or medical issues tied
to a specific race, it's wild. When we go to the doctor
and we check a box for race, what is that information
actually being used for? You being compared
to an average distribution
of healthy individuals of your sex, your age,
and your race. - Why is it being utilized?
- We know that blood
  characteristics like your red blood cells,
your white blood cells,
differ by race. And so when I'm telling you
your white blood cell count is X number, 100,
what does that 100 mean? It only means something
if you're being compared
to a population average. So I had a patient,
a firefighter, and when we were doing
the test on his lungs, the technician
immediately compared him
to African-Americans. But I asked him what he was
and he said, "I'm half." And in his case, it benefitted him 
to be labeled white so he qualified
for disability benefits. How much do
social determinants
affect health outcomes? Things like housing,
things like exposure
to air pollution, socioeconomic status,
all those things. I think your zip code
for non-biologic reasons
is a bigger predictor of health
and health inequities
than anything. Shouldn't those factors then
be included in conjunction with things like race
and age and gender? So that's what we call
an empiric question. We don't know the answer yet. Until we do the studies,
we can't definitively say if X disease is due
to social environmental
factors or purely biology. Do you think these-- that this
race stratification in medicine could potentially overstate
how much of a biological
difference there is between members
of different races? We could be either
overestimating your disease or underestimating
your disease, and I can't give you
a blanket statement. We need to do the work
to actually determine what is the normal
population distribution
for different racial groups. So it makes sense that
you would want to be compared to a population
that's similar to you, but should skin color
be a part of that? I've been looking online
for studies or situations where race norming
has caused harm, but if you were misdiagnosed
because of this, it would be hard to quantify, mostly because patients
wouldn't be aware that these adjustments
were being used. It's more about
the potential harm
if doctors start to rely on metrics that have
no biological basis, and it seems like it's an area
that's only beginning
to be studied. I have found one recent case
of the consequences
of race norming. It actually concerns the NFL. So the race adjustments were
used in the neurological
assessments of these former NFL athletes. I'm getting ready to meet
Kevin Henry. <i> He spent eight seasons playing
 defensive end in the NFL,</i> and he took out a lawsuit
against the NFL specifically because
of this race norming. - See them divots in there?
- I see that. There's a lot
  of scratches in it. What does eight seasons
in the NFL do to someone physically, mentally,
emotionally? My eight year career
was full of injuries, full of things I had
to fight through. <i> Both ankles,
 one of them twice.</i> <i> Both knees, both elbows,
 both wrists.</i> <i> All my fingers been broke
 at least once.</i> Both shoulders.
I've had ten or more
concussions, and those are just the ones
that are documented. I've talked to a couple
of other guys who said they would be kind of
in a fog normally. Right, right.
It takes you just a little bit
longer to make decisions. What was it like watching
Kevin go through this
for eight seasons? It was horrible.
He sits there-- "This is
hurting, this is hurting. My head is hurting."
Like, the memories-- I'm the person that has
to make sure, you know, the doors are locked,
the oven's turned off. I don't care how much
money you have, what kind of shape you're in, you can't do anything
without that brain, man. Initially,
what was your diagnosis
and what did the NFL say? They denied me altogether. And then I kept going back,
you know, getting reevaluated. His lawyer did the research
and he was like, - something's not right.
- From what I read, it seemed like they were saying
that you entered the league at a lower level of
cognitive functioning
than your white counterparts. Which meant
that you needed to show even more severe
cognitive decline. Basically, "You were dumb
before you started playing." - Oh, my God.
- "So, if you're claiming
  that you're impaired now--" He was already impaired. Lee:<i> Kevin was recently
 reevaluated and diagnosed
 with mild impairment,</i> <i> which can lead to some
 treatment and monitoring,
 but no money.</i> <i> His lawyer claims
 that without race norming,</i> <i> his scores would have shown
 more severe impairment</i> <i> and could have qualified him
 for a monetary reward.</i> What drove you to file
the lawsuit initially? I wanted this whole
race norming thing eradicated. It allows them to have
an escape hatch, to me,
for the payments. What would that--
that compensation
mean to your life? So I'm in a situation right now
where who's going to hire me? I've been diagnosed
with dementia. How can I find a job?
I still have a mortgage. You know, I still got a family
to take care of, to support. I don't like talking about-- I don't like talking
about suicide. But everything
that I got going on, man, I'm battling depression. Like, I just see this man
deteriorating every single day,
and it just breaks my heart. It extends beyond just,
"I need help to pay
my mortgage." - You need help to manage
  your life.
- Right. At least give us
some tools to work with. Lee:<i> The judge dismissed
 Kevin's lawsuit,</i> <i> but ordered the NFL and
the original settlement lawyers</i> <i> to address
 the race norming issue.</i> <i> An NFL spokesperson
 told me,</i> <i> "The availability
 of demographic adjustments</i> <i> was designed
 to avoid the misdiagnosis</i> <i> of healthy individuals
 as cognitively impaired.</i> <i> The NFL nevertheless
 is committed to helping</i> <i> find alternative
 testing techniques</i> <i> that will lead
 to diagnostic accuracy</i> <i> without employing
 race-based norms."</i> The thing is,
the more I hear about this, the more I feel like race
is not a reliable category for measuring
health differences. And I keep thinking about
something that Dr. Burchard
told me when we last spoke. Burchard: Race and ethnicity
are social constructs. They're artificial
social constructs, and it's different than
genetic ancestry. So genetic ancestry
matters more than race? I'm gonna go learn
a bit more about mine. We talked about how race
can be a pretty crude metric
for skin tone. The thing is,
race does correlate with
certain genetic traits. I carry the sickle cell
anemia trait. It turns out the trait
is a mutation that evolved in regions of the world
where malaria was a major
problem and cause of death. People who carry
the sickle cell anemia trait, you're actually
somewhat immunized from the most debilitating
parts of malaria. So this is what we call
a selective pressure. And that means that
I have genetic ancestry
in sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria is
just really prevalent. We took some 23andMe tests, so I am curious what
my results are gonna be. - And you really don't know?
- What I'm assuming then is, like, 80% African ancestry. And when you look at,
you know, the possibility
of doing genetic testing, it can't actually tell you
anything about exactly where
your family members are from. It can just tell you
what pools of DNA
your DNA correlates with. - You ready?
- Yeah. What the ( bleep )? This isn't mine.
This is Christophe's. What? What?
I'm gonna call my mom. ( line ringing ) Mom:<i>
 Hello, my love.</i> Uh, I'm looking
at my 23andMe results. Why am I half white? I don't even know
who I am anymore. 40%? It only says
53% sub-Saharan African. Do you know--
that's barely half. Where did all this white
come from? <i> My mother.
 And probably from Daddy, too.</i> Mom, the math's
not adding up. All right, I love you.
I'll talk to you later. <i> I love you,
 too, sweetie. Bye.</i> Okay, bye. But, Lee, you just told us
that there's a difference between race
and genetic ancestries. - So you're not 40% white.
- White. - You share 40% of your DNA
  with people who are European.
- With white people. But it gets to the point.
Just because your DNA shows
a bunch of European, it doesn't change the way
that society is gonna treat you. Views me. Right, exactly.
I don't even know if I-- Am I mixed-race?
Like, is that-- And if you are,
what proportion of
African-Americans are? Are mixed-race?
Probably a good majority
of us, right? Which kind of makes
race so comical. Because obviously my genetic
and thus medical picture should be way more nuanced than
a black reference population. The ideal would be
for everyone to have some kind
of profile like this, and then that is your
more accurate picture. What you were just describing is kind of the future
of medicine that geneticists are
working toward right now. I'm gonna go talk
to this geneticist
who works at Columbia. He's writing a research program
called the All Of Us Program, and they want to genetically
sequence a million people from all over the United States so that we can move closer
to precision medicine. I know over the last decade
we've seen these, you know, tremendous advancements
in the way we understand
genetic ancestry. Is that more useful
to medical professionals or to the field of medicine
than race? When we're thinking about
genetics in the clinic, we don't care
where they're from. We care what's sitting in
and that individual's genome, not where their ancestors
came from geographically. I think the best way
to think of race in medicine is as a proxy
for other things, and a lousy proxy at that. We came across this story about
hepatitis C and how, you know, there were different outcomes in white patients
versus black patients. <i> 70 million people worldwide
 are infected with hepatitis C,</i> <i> a blood-borne virus
 that causes liver infection.</i> <i> Practitioners were seeing</i> <i> that patients
 of European ancestry</i> <i> recovered more easily
 from infection</i> <i> than patients
 of African ancestry.</i> <i> However,
 a study found that DNA,</i> <i> not geographic ancestry,
 better explained why.</i> One particular part
of the genome had
a dramatic impact on who was cured
and who wasn't. Some people have the good
response gene variant, and some people have
the bad response gene variant. Lee:<i> It was thought that
 black patients didn't respond
 well to the treatment.</i> <i> But upon further examination
 of the genome,</i> <i> it was discovered that
 23% to 55% of black patients</i> <i> did in fact carry
 the good response
 gene variants,</i> <i> meaning they would
 have responded well
 to the treatment.</i> <i> But because physicians were
 making treatment decisions</i> <i> based on correlations
 with geographic ancestry</i> <i> instead of looking
 at each individual
 patient's gene variants,</i> <i> black patients were
 missing out on treatment.</i> The reason why race
was a bad proxy was because it's not impossible to have
the gene as a black person. It's just less likely than,
you know, your white
or your Asian counterparts. And so what it tells you
is that you want to
look at the individual. I mean,
this explains how folks
could be misdiagnosed or just miss out in this case
on treatment entirely because we used race as a proxy,
and we just thought, "Oh, no.
Black folks aren't responding
well to this treatment." We don't want to be making
important treatment decisions based on weak correlations with geographic ancestry or race when we can do way better. There are not even
that many examples
in the first place where geographic ancestry
really makes a difference. And the reason is that
we're all darn near the same. There's of course
a few little places in
the genome where we differ. Sometimes the reasons
are because there have
been different patterns of exposure to
infectious diseases in different parts
of the world. Both:
Like sickle cell and malaria. Can we get rid
of race in medicine? I do have sympathy
for the perspective that
we should consider that. I don't think that it
would be the best way to
practice medicine right now. The best way
to practice medicine is to not consider it
unless you need to. - And I will keep going back
  to the hepatitis C example.
- Love that example. Let's say that we weren't
permitted to consider race. The observation then
would not have been made
that individuals of different
geographic ancestries
respond differently. Race may have come from
thinking about skin color, but the implications mean
so much more than that. My skin color determines
how I'm perceived, and that in turn
affects my health. So from day one, it's been
really difficult for me to wrap my head around
this question because it seems like using
a metric as vague as race <i> can carry with it a lot
 of incorrect assumptions.</i> <i> However, there
 are some correlations</i> <i> with genetic ancestry
 that seem to be helpful.</i> So, I've realized that
we need to support efforts that will allow us
to remove the use of race as a proxy for how we
administer treatment to folks <i> or how we determine
 if someone's healthy.</i> <i> In response
 to a movement largely led
 by medical students,</i> <i> some hospitals
 and universities</i> <i> are removing certain
 race adjustments.</i> We need to find solutions
that fix inequities and not use race
as a best guess. A few weeks after
we wrapped this episode, the NFL pledged to stop
using race norming as a part of how they were
evaluating brain injury claims, meaning that players
like Kevin Henry will likely be reevaluated
under a new testing protocol that won't involve race. It's still unclear
what that method will be and what effect it will have
on future brain injury claims. Uh, this is Best Episode,
act one, take one. - Take two, marker.
- Did you say-- - Best episode?
- Damn. Man: Careful. This is mildly abnormal. I need to call a doctor. Therapy helps us
understand our emotions and there's a lot of evidence
to suggest that it can help us improve our functionality
and quality of life. 62% of patients
with Major Depressive Disorder showed improvement
after psychotherapy. <i> But people's views
 on therapy are mixed.</i> <i> Some people believe
 that therapy isn't for them.</i> In Latino culture,
that's just not something that's readily talked about
or on the table. They were just like,
"You need to replace your thoughts
with positive thoughts," and that's not helpful. Fabiola:<i>
 While others say...</i> Therapy has helped me
to be a better writer and a better lover, a better son,
all those things. It's literally been
life-changing for me. One important thing
about going to therapy is realizing that
you are in control of
your own narrative. I look at therapy
like I'm walking onto
a construction site and I am the product
that we're building. Everyone's experience
with therapy is different, and whether someone finds
value in it can be subjective. <i> But if you look closer,
 we might even realize</i> <i> that our views on therapy
 are limited,</i> <i> since they so often
 center psychotherapy</i> <i> and leave out a much bigger
 world of healing.</i> Therapy was created
from a Euro-centric lens for individuals that come from
a Euro-centric background. In a year that was
especially challenging, the mental health conversation
is more important than ever, and that got me thinking,
is therapy for everyone? <i> ( theme music playing )</i> - Hey, y'all.
- Both: Hey. So, therapy,
was that ever something
that crossed your mind? I've never really
thought about therapy. I think I always
thought of therapy as you pay someone
to listen to you talk
about yourself for an hour. It didn't really
cross my mind that even
though probably I had some of the hardest times
ever this year, that I should go that route. For me,
talking to a therapist, just having someone
to share things that I don't feel comfortable
sharing with my partner, my family, and having someone
who's non-judgmental is something
that really has fundamentally
changed a lot for me. The number of people
dealing with anxiety and also suicide
during the pandemic
has skyrocketed, and we know that therapy
is highly effective for that. For severe anxiety,
in January of 2020, we were at 71% of people
reporting severe anxiety. And then by September
it was 80%. Also, the number of people
reporting frequent
suicidal ideation increased, but the problem is that
a lot of people just are
not accessing therapy. I have a report here from
the city's mental health arm. We see that there's
clear disparity
along racial lines of who's accessing therapy
and who's not. 58% of depressed white people
are receiving therapy, whereas only 30%
of depressed black people are getting that treatment. - Fabiola: Yeah.
- Lee: Wow. And so my question is,
in a city like New York City, why is it still that just
white people are getting therapy in a way that their black
and brown counterparts aren't? If I had to guess,
it would be access to it. On my worst days, that's when
I'm like, "Okay, I need help." And then I start looking
for help, and then I realize
I can't afford help. And then, even if they do
take your insurance, their office
might not be accessible. On top of that,
your therapist might be ableist. But not a lot of them speak a lot of our native tongues,
you know? Like, a lot of them
operate in English. It's really all about
what will society say?  The classic, like,<i>
 "log kya kahenge,"</i> like, what's everyone else
gonna say? So, I want to talk to you
because I know that one in five Americans lives
with a mental illness. But about 60% of people
aren't receiving the care
that they need. How come so many people
aren't accessing therapy? So, a main one,
not the only, is money. So, you're thinking anywhere
between $75 at the low end. I've seen as high as $600
an hour at the high end. - Wow.
- Let's take Patient A. Patient A is struggling
with symptoms that we typically would
associate with depression. She really would love
to go see somebody, but her primary struggle
is how to pay for it. What we know from a study
by the National Council
on Behavioral Health is that 42% of folks
indicate that money is a primary reason
why it makes it difficult
to access mental healthcare. In my journey with trying
to seek out a therapist, it's always this question of, "Will my insurance
cover this therapist?" But my therapists just always
seem to be out of network. - So, why is that?
- There's a couple things. One is,
many don't take insurance, and for those who do, they're limited
in terms of the numbers of types of insurance
that they take. Part of the reason
is this lack of parity between what you can charge
and be reimbursed for as a mental
healthcare provider. There are many providers
who struggle with this idea of how much
they get reimbursed. And so what ends up happening
with a lot of providers is they just decide,
"I won't take
insurance at all." So, who is Patient B?
What's going on with Patient B? So, she has money
or she has the right insurance
to be able to pay, but there is a shortage. Research tell us that
about 35% of people
in the United States live in areas where
they don't have access
to mental health providers.  For every 100,000 people
in a rural area, there are only
nine psychologists. - Wow. Yeah.
- Which is mind-blowing. Versus urban areas,
for every 100,000 people, there are 33 psychologists. To be a little bit crass, going into
the mental health field is not as sexy as going
into some of these others. People who go
into mental health fields are sort of at the lower end
of the food chain in terms of how much money
they're gonna make. So, who is Patient C? Patient C is
an Asian-American young woman who also identifies
as a member of the queer
LGBTQ community. The trouble is not only
availability of providers, but providers'
cultural competence. Because she has
multiple identities, which we all know now
as intersectionality, the provider
that she has access to
is not necessarily someone who understands all facets
of her identity. 86% of psychologists in the United States
identify as white. - That's jarring to me.
- If you're a white provider or, you know,
have any identity
of privilege, the last thing
you want to do is get
your patient to teach you. You should be trying
to learn on your own. So now we are here
at Patient D. What's going on
with Patient D? So, Patient D is
an African-American black man struggling with and managing
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There's always a hierarchy
of healthcare concerns. Unfortunately,
mental illness being probably
the most stigmatized. A CBS poll found that
51% of the people surveyed said that stigma was an issue
negatively impacting people who were struggling
with their mental health,
people with mental illness. How the world views people
with mental illness, more often than not,
is not positive. Where does
the stigma come from? So, stigma really has to do
with the perceptions that we hold,
and it impacts all of us. I think more so,
though, it impacts
how black people are treated in relationship
to mental illness. They're not met with open arms,
"Come, let us help you." They are literally met with
life or death situations. So, to understand stigma, you really have to
look at the history. Fabiola:<i>
 Many communities
 battle stigma</i> <i> around therapy
 and mental illness.</i> <i> Within the black community,
 the stigma rises</i> <i> from a long
 and often dark history</i> <i> of how America has dealt
 with mental health.</i> <i> And I curated this exhibit</i> <i> to take us through
 that troubled history.</i> - Thank you for coming.
- Christophe: Thank you. Here are your headphones
for the exhibit. Cleo: Thanks - I'll see you at the end.
- Christophe: Sounds good. Fabiola:<i>
 Let's start at the beginning.</i> <i> For much of the 19th
 century, people living
 with mental illnesses</i> <i> were isolated
 in insane asylums.</i> <i> For the few black patients,
 they were segregated
 from white people.</i> <i> They were forced
 to labor in the fields,</i> <i> conditions not very different
 from life on plantations.</i> <i> The other black mentally ill
 patients were sent to jail</i> <i> or mental hospitals.</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> ( men shouting )</i> <i> As the country careened
 toward the Civil War,</i> <i> white people accused freed
 black people of insanity</i> <i> as a means to wield control.</i> <i> Samuel Cartwright,
 an assistant surgeon general
 of the Confederacy</i> <i> invented two mental disorders
 exclusively for black people</i> <i> to explain their tendencies
 to flee captivity--</i> <i> drapetomania
 and dysaethesia aethiopica.</i> <i> His cure was to
 "Whip the devil out of them."</i> <i> By the 20th century,
 psychiatrists had started</i> <i> working on cures
 for mental illnesses.</i> <i> Through eugenics,
 the practice of improving
 the genetic composition</i> <i> of the human race
 through selective mating,</i> <i> the government forced
 the sterilization</i> <i> of more than 60,000 supposed
 feeble-minded individuals.</i> <i> This included
 promiscuous women,</i> <i> immigrants,
 and people of color.</i> This one is wild. This is a Fittest Family
eugenics competition at the Eugenics building? You can see sort of
the language of science
being used to justify whatever political action
comes next.  Fabiola:<i> By the middle
 of the 20th century,
 psychotropic drugs</i> <i> became the popular
 therapeutic treatment
 for mental illness.</i> <i> And following decades
 of overcrowding, neglect,</i> <i> and abuse in asylums,
 de-institutionalization
 began in 1955</i> <i> and resulted in the closure</i> <i> of state psychiatric
 hospitals and asylums.</i> <i> The re-entry of people
 with mental illnesses
 back into society</i> <i> foreshadowed
 the challenges they'd face</i> <i> in the criminal justice system
 decades later.</i> <i> ♪ Freedom ♪</i> <i> ♪ Oh, freedom ♪</i> Fabiola:<i> During the 1960s
 Civil Rights era,</i> <i> as black Americans
 led protests for equality,</i> <i> the American Psychiatric
 Association deliberately</i> <i> changed the definition
 of schizophrenia
 to include aggression.</i> <i> Prior to this,
 it was described
 as a largely harmless,</i> <i> docile condition
 exhibited by white patients.</i> <i> In 1968, two psychiatrists
 described schizophrenia</i> <i> as protest psychosis,
 which classified black people</i> <i> as hostile and aggressive.</i> - Protest psychosis?
  Holy ( bleep ).
- Wild. Fabiola:<i> In the years after,
 companies marketed
 pharmaceuticals</i> <i> directly to black patients
 whom they felt were
 out of control.</i> It's like these are
the modern versions of the diseases that
Cartwright invented. It doesn't even feel
like these ads are designed for people struggling
with schizophrenia. It feels like they are
designed for fear mongering. Fabiola:<i>
 Deinstitutionalization
 and other social forces</i> <i> such as the criminalization
 of substance use</i> <i> led to an overrepresentation
 of mentally ill people</i> <i> in prisons and jails.</i> Christophe:
I mean, if 37% of people
in state and federal prisons have been told they've had
a mental illness, it's like our prison system
is basically functioning as that system
of institutionalization
previously did, but just without
the intention of even
trying to be remediative or a process of therapy.
It's just about punishment. Fabiola:<i>
 You can now take off
 your headphones</i> <i> for the final portion
 of our exhibit.</i> - Hello.
- Cleo: Hello. So, I'm gonna walk you through the final portion
of the exhibit. If you can just
walk along here with me. Race has always
been intertwined with diagnoses and treatments
for mental illness, so if you're a person of color
categorized as mentally ill and you've never received
adequate treatment
or adequate care, that could be
a death sentence. Daniel Prude, Eleanor Bumpurs, Walter Wallace Jr.,
Alfred Olango, Angelo Quinto, and Ezell Ford. These are just a handful
of names of people killed at the hands of police when they needed
mental health services. So, to close out our exhibit,
I want to end with a statement from the American
Psychiatric Association. "Since the APA's inception,
practitioners have at times subjected persons
of African descent
and indigenous people who suffer from mental illness
to abusive treatment, experimentation, victimization, in the name
of scientific evidence, along with racialized theories
that attempted to confirm their deficit status. These appalling past actions, as well as
their harmful effects, are ingrained in the structure
of psychiatric practice and continue to harm
BIPOC's psychological
wellbeing even today." I feel like if we become
more aware of how systems of oppression operate
to disenfranchise people, that can be
sort of a back door to removing the stigma to things
that we think are not for us. It's time to highlight those
marginalized communities of therapy that we could
really use today, not only for ourselves, but I think
for the broader world. So, where do we go
when the systems that are supposed
to help us harm us? Fortunately,
there are therapists
who have been creating safe spaces to help us unpack
and heal from our traumas. Woman:
Now you can take in
a nice deep inhale. As I bathe you in sound,
just sit and take in
the vibration. Perhaps you can take in
a deep breath, just to seal the practice. And when you're ready,
you're going to shift your gaze. Wow. - How was that for you?
- That was incredible. I feel like I struggle
to, like, calm my mind
and quiet my  mind. And I feel like it's
hard to ignore the sound, so this kind of helped me
focus in a way. It kind of felt
like I was escaping. Like, with each new sound
that you introduced, it was like it
opened up this level of,
I don't know, consciousness. This is a part of how
therapy can be unconventional, and how it can actually
bring in some of these
indigenous practices that we know have been
really profoundly healing for our communities
for generations. It integrates that experience
that is more holistic. So, one question
that I like to ask everyone whenever we're completing
the practice is,
how's your soul? Ooh. I don't even know
how to answer that because I feel like
I'm always concerned with how my mind is doing, that I don't really question
what's going on with my soul. I feel grounded,
in a sense, but not completely,
like, at peace,
if that makes sense. Absolutely.
The racial epidemic,
the pandemic, and being a person that
lies at the intersection of multiple identities
that are marginalized
and vulnerable really makes it
so that ease is something that is a little bit
more challenging for you to be able to acquire. It's important to offset stress
with self-care practices-- whatever healing
looks like for you,
for you to emphasize that. There's so many ways that
healing can be introduced
into our lives that steps outside
of the 45 minutes that you have
in a therapeutic space. Therapy could be as simple as walking,
you know, in a forest, and energy work, like,
reiki-type of work as well. You know, I've done a little
bit of yoga in the past. But, like, that--
it's just not my thing. I just-- it feels like
I'm too aware of my body
around everybody else. I think everybody's
open to some level of
holistic health, whether that be yoga,
meditation, like, even essential oils,
and, like, you know, just the idea of self-care. Humor, like,
just being able to laugh
once or twice a day, like, really a good belly laugh
helps me tremendously, as well as a really,
really good cry. Fabiola:
Different forms of therapy, whether they support
talk therapy or supplant it, are finding their way out
to the mainstream. <i> I'm encouraged
 by the mental health
 advocacy movement</i> <i> on platforms like Instagram
 that are encouraging people</i> <i> to prioritize
 their mental health</i> <i> and figure out
 the kind of therapy</i> <i> that works for them.</i> As for me, I took
Dr. Buqué's advice to heart. I'm on my way to spend
some time in nature. <i> I had a number of options
 to choose from,</i> <i> but landed on equine therapy</i> <i> because I wanted to think
 more about the connection</i> <i> between my mind and body</i> <i> and how trauma manifests
 physically.</i> <i> I'm gonna be doing therapeutic
 riding at GallopNYC.</i> I'm really excited. Man:<i>
 When you're working
 with a horse,</i> <i> you have to be very in tune
 to what's happening
 on their side, right?</i> So, if I come in
and I steamroll you with my opinions
and my feelings and-- it's just
not gonna work, right? Because the horse
has his own feelings,
his own opinions, <i> so I have to partner
 with him.</i> <i> It doesn't matter
 the color of your skin,
 how you walk in here.</i> <i> None of those things
 matter to a horse.</i> Being on a horse,
you put somebody on a horse, a kid on a horse,
that kid is more relaxed <i> because it's something new.</i> <i> Never really had
 that experience.</i> Fabiola:
So, how do horses
aid in therapy? Payne:
Horses can really
feel your energy. Just their movement
is really helpful
for the rider. It helps them really
to relax, you know? She's just coming around
to smell you and say hi. She appreciates the groom. Fabiola:
Walk on, Sadie. - Whoa, back.
- And release. Good. - Walk on, Sadie. Yay!
- Excellent. Very nice. - Trot on.
- There you go. So nice, firm.
A little bit more pressure. - There you go.
- Nice. - And we can walk.
- Walk on, Sadie. Okay, we'll take
a quiet lap around so you can
process and relax. Fabiola:<i>
 Just feeling calm right now,</i> <i> feeling just relaxed.</i> <i> Listening to Sadie
 and understanding</i> <i> how my different
 hand placements</i> <i> affect her and direct her.</i> <i> That, for me,
 really is about focus</i> <i> and getting myself
 to remember</i> <i> to be present and mindful.</i> So, before you get off, I want
you to give her some pats. We like to tell them
that they did good for us. - Sadie did such an amazing job.
- Especially if it's true. I feel so happy.
I kind of want to cry. She's-- like, seriously,
this was really sweet. Oh, I'm glad you had
such a good experience. - Yeah, this was great.
- It's okay. I feel like such a crybaby,
but I really did feel, yeah, just a connection,
and she's just awesome. And this is really
what happens with
the riders every day. Good, and then you slide.
There you go. - Thank you so much.
- You're welcome. Thank you, Sadie. <i> I didn't expect to cry</i> <i> at the end of my time
 with Sadie,</i> but I feel like I got
so much from that experience, and I fully understand
how therapy can help us improve our functionality
and quality of life. But so many people
can't access therapy. I think black people,
whether we know it or not, the pain of our ancestors
lives through our body as much as the beauty
and the joy. White-dominant society
in general forces us to be stronger
than we need to be in a lot of situations. We're in this moment
in American history where we're just scratching
the surface of, like, coming to under--
or acknowledge all of the-- the trauma that this country has inflicted
on people of color. Like, the least you can do,
if it's not reparations, at least give us free therapy. - Do I think therapy
  is for everyone?
- Is therapy for everyone? I don't think therapy's
for everybody. Yes, therapy is for everyone. I think that there is a type
of therapy for everyone. If we could reshape
the medical industrial complex, then it could be for everyone. Fabiola:<i>
 But we need to, as a nation,</i> <i> recognize that mental health</i> <i> is just as important
 as our physical health.</i> Expanding access
to different kinds of therapy can help more people
find peace. So, what else
are you noticing? I feel like I don't know
what I'm doing. - Let me start over.
- Pew! Everyone does this,
by the way. It's not because I'm short. - I'm glad you asked.
- I'm glad you asked. See what we did there? I deal with
in my day-to-day life, the sound of the highway
that I literally
live right next to. ( in Spanish )
It's all the time. ( in Spanish )
I noticed most early
in the morning when the planes
that fly overnight would wake me up. I have a 13-year-old
and sometimes he gets up in the middle
of the night and says, "Mom, I can't sleep because
of the airplane noise." ( in Spanish )
Yes, I think it's not just me, but all of the residents
of Chelsea have noticed. I think you feel it, because all day
you hear noise. For example,
I work in a restaurant. You hear noise from
the smoke fans in the kitchen, you hear the noise
of the plates. And you get to your house,
sit down, and you want to relax a bit
and you're hearing the noise from the planes passing
constantly. ( in Spanish )
We're an undocumented
community. We're a community
of immigrants. We come from our countries
resigned to the fact that they won't listen to us, and so sometimes we're afraid
to raise our voices. I don't know if we could
have a schedule for stopping
the flights at night. What we have to do
is organize the people so that our complaints
are heard. ( in Spanish )
It effects me emotionally. When we don't rest well, your nerves
are a bit altered. ¡Pásale, pásale,
pásale, pásale! Yeah, to me that is
the sound of Mexico City. In the U.S., about a third
of adults aren't getting
enough sleep. That's defined as less
than seven hours per night. For teenagers,
that number is over 70%. But if you turn on the TV and look at the way
that we talk about sleep, you can kind of see why. - Rich people don't sleep!
- My wife was so good,
  I didn't want to sleep! I slept for two, three hours
a night and I had a blast. I feel like I function fine
on four to five hours of sleep. When things get really intense,
I don't have time to go home and shower and change,
so I just sleep here. We live with this bizarre
culture around sleep, and I think I get enough of it
in spite of that. But I want to
better understand what's happening
to my body when I don't. So what happens to us
when we lose sleep? And why do so many of us
struggle to get enough of it? <i> ( alarm beeping )</i> <i> ( theme music playing )</i> So, for the past few weeks,
I've been recording my sleep data
with a fitness tracker. But to take that
to the next level, I just picked up
an at home sleep test that'll really
help me determine just how healthy
my sleep actually is. So this kit is going
to monitor five things-- the air coming out of my nose,
my brain activity, my blood oxygen level,
my chest movements,
and my heart rate. I really feel like I'm going
into the matrix right now. This is gonna be really
uncomfortable to sleep tonight, which I think is the part
I'm most nervous about. Only when I've done
all five things will all of those lights
light up. I'm struggling
with this whole thing. There we go. It's all green.
You see that? It is 12:28. I think I'm gonna try
to go to sleep and see how this goes. Good morning.
Oh, my God. Um, where do I start?
That was tough. Very uncomfortable to sleep
with all of this stuff on. Part of me is worried
because it wasn't a very normal representative night
of sleep. So, the next step for me
is I take this thing
to a sleep doctor in New York,
Dr. Mayank Shukla, and he tells me exactly
how healthy my sleep is. - Hello. How's it going?
- Hi. Good morning. Thank you for coming in today.
I guess you are here
for your sleep test result. How do you feel about
the night that you were putting the sleep test device on
compared to all of the, you know, nights that
you've been sleeping? Yeah, it went okay. It felt a little hard to sleep
with all of this stuff on. I've been keeping track and
I can show you the spreadsheet. - Like, a few basic metrics.
- Yes. And usually I'm getting--
I think average for a weekday is about 8.06 or something. And then average for
a weekend is about 8.35. Clearly, it looks like
that you are a reasonably
very healthy person and you do take care
of your sleep very well. - Mm-hmm.
- But it turns out that you
  have mild sleep apnea. So five to 15 times an hour
when someone stops breathing, we say it's mild sleep apnea.
So if we can say it's 4.7-- - So I'm stopping
  breathing 4.7--
- 4.7 times an hour. Your numbers are slightly
above the normal. For that particular night,
your total number that you stopped breathing
is around 41 times
during the night. It's shocking to hear that
I stopped breathing 41 times in this relatively
short night of sleep. When you stop breathing,
your sleep phase changes. It means this
is fragmented sleep. When you have fragmented sleep,
many times the patient does feel sleepy, tired,
or less energetic. Just how big of a problem
is sleep loss? Every time that you are
disrupting your sleep cycle, you are interrupting
your biological clock as well. And with there's a disruption,
the chaos starts. And that chaos leads
to mental health issues, to cardiovascular
health issues. And it really starts
the aging process
much more faster. Everybody has to be in sync
to live a healthy life. Okay. Um, this is what
my night of sleep looked like. You can see me moving through
the four phases of sleep. There is light sleep, and then deep sleep
or slow wave sleep, and then these
five chunks of REM or rapid eye movement sleep. That's the phase
during which we dream. I was not expecting
to be diagnosed with a mild sleep disorder
going into this story, but it does make we want
to better understand what Dr. Shukla mentioned
about this idea of being in sync
with your biological clock. Everybody has a specific
bodily schedule that determines
when they should go to sleep and when they should wake up. It's called our chronotype. I wanted to figure out
what mine was. It turns out there are
online quizzes you can take or genetic tests
that you can take, but there's also a much simpler
way to figure it out. <i> ( Skype ringing )</i> - Hello.
- Hello! - How's it going?
- It's going well, man.
  How are you? I have a request for you
and it's gonna potentially
be weird and scary. I want you to try
for one week to turn off
your alarm entirely and go to bed
when you're tired and then wake up
when you are rested, - but no alarm clock.
- That sounds amazing. This is the best task
I've ever been given. That's my main assignment
for you for this week. - All right, man.
  I'll see you in a week.
- Bye. So it's about 8 AM
and I just woke up. I like the safety net
of having an alarm clock. I slept with anxiety
all night long. I woke up at 7:30, way earlier than I usually do. My bedtime is kind of going
later and later as this experiment goes on. Can you have a chronotype
where you actually just go to sleep
at 2 AM every day? I keep waking up way earlier than I planned on
getting out of bed. So I do feel like
I'm sleeping more. I feel like
I'm sleeping better. It's really nice
not to have an alarm. I'm really enjoying not having
an alarm to wake me up. I don't know what I'm supposed
to be learning about throughout this experience or what it's supposed to do,
but I'm exhausted. Well, today was the last day
of the no alarm experiment. Spoiler alert,
I am not a morning person. I feel a little embarrassed because I've missed
our 10 AM meeting pretty much every day
of this experiment. - Cool.
- What is this? So this is a big model
of the circadian rhythm. This is the process
that our bodies go through every 24 hours
like clockwork. So what I would love to do
is just plot out when we went to bed
and when we woke up on average
for the past week. - Should we do it?
- Let's do it. I went to bed on average at, like, 12:17 and woke up at about 8:45. Lee:
That's very precise. Mine was probably
around midnight, and then I was getting up
every day around 8:00. Joss: And I'm the night owl
of the bunch, I guess. My average bedtime
was about 1:26, and my average wake time
was 10:20. - I'm so lazy.
- Let's go through it. Right about when you wake up, your body starts
to release cortisol. You have the sharpest rise
in blood pressure of the day, and you stop producing
a the hormone melatonin. And these things all together, those wake us up
and start us into the day. - Daytime.
- Daytime. So then intestinal movement
begins for the day. The morning poop-- biologically
scheduled into your day. - Right after
  that 8 AM coffee.
- Right, exactly. After that, your body is at
its peak alertness of the day. Then there's this blank gap.
It's the afternoon slump. A few hours later,
your body has its best
coordination of the day, followed by its quickest
reaction time. Olympic athletes, for example,
have their highest odds of beating a record if they are
performing the sport exactly within this window. We near sunset,
and then your blood pressure reaches its daily peak followed by peak
body temperature. So all of our bodies
are doing this
on this 24-hour cycle, But in terms of how that relates
to our time and our clock, it can vary from person
to person? Yeah. Your body is probably
most alert at 1 PM, whereas mine is probably
most alert at noon and Lee's is probably most
alert closer to 11 AM. If you are a night owl,
this entire cascade of events shifts forward in time. And if you're an early bird,
it shifts back in time. And then it's night. Your body starts
to produce melatonin getting you ready for bed. A few hours into sleeping, you fall into
your deepest sleep, and then you fall into
your lowest body temperature. And that's it.
That's the whole cycle. And when we don't
follow that schedule, especially when
we cut sleep short, we're derailing every other
thing in the cycle. So, this chart shows
the distribution of chronotypes. And the way that
they measure that is by looking at
the mid-sleep time
on free days. So you'll see that
for most people, their midpoint is about 4 AM, which means that
they're sleeping from, like-- - This is assuming
  they sleep eight hours?
- Yeah. But for the majority
of people, getting to, like,
an 8 or 9 AM job, means waking up before
their body is ready. - Wow.
- Where that gets
  really concerning is with the health impacts
of this distribution. The later
that midsleep time is, the higher the rates
of depression, of people who smoke, and of people
who consume alcohol. If it's the majority of us
who are suffering, why are we doing this? When we have a world
that is so preferential towards early birds
and geared towards productivity
in the morning, the people who don't fit in
to that really suffer. Yeah. Christophe:
So you study the sleep-wake
cycles that control every living thing
in the world. What do you think are
some of the big things that you wish people
understood better about their ability to get
a good night of sleep? Our genome and almost every gene
in our genome is programmed to turn on and turn off
at a certain time
of the day or night. So that means
we are programmed to sleep
a certain number of hours. When we follow these rhythms,
our body can perform at its peak performance
during the daytime and can reset, repair,
and regenerate at nighttime
when we go to sleep. So that means
when we don't sleep, it actually has huge cascading
bad effects on our kidney, liver, gut, intestine, heart, even our skin, how we look. Right. Beauty sleep. We can figure out how to
be the master of our own clock by adopting very simple
lifestyle changes such as when to wake up,
when to turn on and turn off
your bright light, when to eat,
and when to stop eating. In a very simple sense,
if you have the same schedule
every single day, or at least five
to six days in a week, that itself
is a very powerful way to be in control
of your circadian rhythm. I mean,
all this is so fascinating
because a lot of us think that we can sleep
whenever we want, but it sounds like the body
is a whole lot less flexible than we think it might be. This whole idea that we can
have 24/7 food delivery, 24/7 drug stores
and grocery stores, those are all based on
the simple idea that we can take our body
for a spin at any given time
of the day or night. And it's becoming
more and more clear that if you don't have control
over when you work, then you also don't have control
over how much you sleep. It has come to a point that
the World Health Organization has now designated shift work
as a carcinogen. - Wow.
- Just imagine, just doing
  shift work is the same as getting exposed
to cancer-causing chemicals
in the environment. And that's very profound.
That says how important sleep
and circadian rhythms are. So, shift work can be so bad
for the human body that it's been classified
as a carcinogen. But it's not a problem
that everybody has to
deal with equally. In the U.S., white people
are overrepresented among those who start work
at around 7 and 8 AM. Black and LatinX people are
overrepresented among workers who start
in the early morning. And black people are
especially overrepresented among those who start work
late at night. I'm on my way right now to talk
to Dr. Giradin Jean-Louis. He's a professor at NYU who
studies the health consequences of this racial sleep gap. Can you sort of
paint a picture of what sleep
health disparities look like in the U.S.? Who gets to sleep well in
this country and who doesn't? What we have been seeing
over the last 50 years is that there's a disparity
between blacks and white in terms of how much
sleep they get. And we're finding
that blacks overall seem to be sleeping
about 30 minutes less. And of course that
would have repercussions. You're gonna be at
greater risk of obesity, for diabetes, hypertension,
and now we've seen the same is true
for Alzheimer's, dementia. Can you walk me
through the factors that are particularly hitting
black Americans the hardest? Well, socioeconomic factors, environmental factors,
psychosocial factors. So, for instance, if you
find that in a community perceived racism is an issue,
well, it's going to
affect your sleep. If you happen to be in
an environment where there's
quite a bit of noise, it's gonna affect your sleep. If you have light pollution,
air pollution, all of those factors
can influence your sleep. And we also find that
there are a lot of black folks
that are working two jobs. So the ability to actually
set a schedule-- you're gonna go to bed
at the same time,
wake up at the same time, which is critically important--
they don't have that luxury. So this is a map
of short sleep duration
by census tract, so this is where people are
getting less than seven hours
of sleep per night regularly. Can you help me understand
why this map looks
the way it does? All the areas that are dark
suggest that these are folks who are having significant
problems sleeping. And as we get lighter
and lighter, these are people
that are doing okay. So what you want to see
is communities like this
seem to be doing well, whereas communities
like this or like that
are not doing so well. And why is that important?
Because the higher the
prevalence of short sleepers, the more likely you're
going to be seeing obesity,
high blood pressure, diabetes, and to some degree,
cardiovascular disease, stroke,
and myocardial infarction. What we also note
is if you're looking at
the obesity belt, this section also is where
most people happen to be obese. - Hmm.
- So there seems to be
  direct correlation between obesity
and poor sleep. So it seems like the places
that really stand out to me are in the southeast, all along the Mississippi
in the south here, this Kentucky-
West Virginia cluster. Those are really
the deepest reds, not to mention
also right here, which are Native American
reservations. So here's what's
interesting now. When we're looking
at COVID data, we find that a lot
of those people that are
infected with COVID happen to be in the same area
with people having short sleep. So we know what's
happening here is that
if you're not sleeping enough, your immune system
is compromised, so you're more likely
to get a COVID-19 infection and die as a result of it. It sounds like sleep
is a basic need that in a lot of ways
has been turned
into a privilege. If your circadian rhythms
are not robust, the ability to fight off
certain diseases, your ability to remain
metabolically healthy is significantly compromised
because the circadian clock controls biological rhythms. So when you bring
those two factors together, it makes it absolutely
difficult for a black person to actually stay healthy. ( vibrating ) You know, at least
for the past few decades, there's never been, like,
a shortage of things
to wake you up, things to
put you back to sleep. The truth is
that for most of my life, I haven't had
that much control over
when I needed to wake up. If we want
to address sleep loss as the public
health problem that it is, we have to do it through
structural changes
and policy changes, not just through
individual changes. There are some policies
that we know can make
a difference. So the first example has to do
with how we schedule work. In 2015,
there was this fascinating
real world experiment conducted on
a steel factory in Germany. Basically, all the workers
normally would cycle through
three different shifts. There was a morning shift
that was from 6 AM to 2 PM, an evening shift
that was 2 PM to 10 PM, and then a night shift
that was 10 PM to 6 AM. - Got it.
- So they would cycle
  two days of each and then a couple
days off in between. Two days of each?
Like, they could never
establish a routine? - Yeah, yeah.
- Oof. On this chart,
each one of these is basically a morning person, someone whose chronotype
is very skewed early. Each one of these is someone
who has an average chronotype. And then each of these
is a late chronotype. So, a night owl.
Very late sleeper. Then researchers came in,
and what they did is they basically reassigned
shifts by chronotype. So every single late sleeper was made to never work
the morning shift. And then every early bird was made to never have
to work the night shift. And the results were really,
really fascinating. So for both
the early chronotypes
and the late chronotypes, sleep duration
on workdays went up, sleep quality went up, and their well-being
on workdays went up. - This looks really positive.
- There's a really strong
  case that employers should help their employees sleep according
to their chronotypes. It makes a huge difference
on their physical health, their mental health,
their productivity,
their happiness. And you do see different
versions of this catching on. Southwest Airlines
apparently lets pilots choose between an AM schedule
versus a PM schedule. For a lot of these jobs, it's about safety of
everyone else around them. When I look at this,
I think the time in my life when I was most
schedule constrained
was when I was in school. Are schools doing
anything different now? Yeah. These same chronotype
optimizing benefits are very apparent
in school start time. So this is roughly what
the adolescent chronotype
looks like. The average teen
needs between eight to ten
hours of sleep. And then this is what
the average school schedule
looks like. The American Academy of
Pediatrics suggests that school should never
start before 8:30. So it's really this overlap that is just wreaking havoc
on the teenage body. They're doing calculus
during their sleep schedule. Mm-hmm, entirely.
So we're requiring kids to
basically come into school way before their bodies
are ready for it. There have been dozens
of studies looking at what happens when
you try to fix this. Delaying start times is
associated with an increase
in sleep duration, improved attendance,
better grades, better graduation rates,
lower rates of depression, and even fewer
motor vehicle crashes. It's a long list
of really good things from just one extra hour
of sleep in the morning. You just listed everything
that's important for teenagers. - Yeah.
- It feels like parents
  should care a lot - about making this change.
- Yeah. Also, I gotta say,
it doesn't seem like the hardest change
in the world to make. And these are just
a start, right? This is just the beginning
of what a world that takes chronotype into
account when it comes to work, when it comes
to scheduling, everything, what that world
could look like. It doesn't necessarily
sound easy, but it does sound
incredibly worth it. I started this story
hoping to figure out why so many people struggle
to get a good night's sleep. And the answer
that I'm left with
is kind of frustrating. You know, getting
the right amount of sleep at the right time
for your circadian clock, it's one of the most important
things that you can do
for your body. Sleep is foundational.
Anything in life requires
a good night's sleep. So if you're
not sleeping enough, everything is really on hold. But the thing is,
our schedules and our habits and our culture
and our environments, all those things get
in the way of us doing so. But when we trivialize sleep, we're basically pretending
that our biological limits matter a lot less
than they actually do. Public policy, workplace policy,
school policy, all these policies
have to change so that
we can have a more coherent and synergistic effort going on
throughout the society to nurture
our circadian rhythms. Does that mean that my takeaway
is that we all need to turn off our alarm clocks
and sleep whenever we want? No, obviously not.
But there are thing that
we can do to help the people suffering the most
from sleep loss to have the time and the flexibility
to get rest when they need it. I think that's
a good place to start. I feel like I am not
gonna have the greatest
night of sleep. Oh, I don't like that. So about two hours
after you wake up, - that's when you
  should go to the gym?
- Mm-hmm. That's interesting
information. Not for me, obviously,
but for other people. - Hi, Mom.
- Hi, Cleo. Okay, we're ready. How did you decide whether or not you wanted
to have kids? It just started like
a natural flower blooming in my mind that,
"Okay, maybe children." I grew up thinking
I would become a mom because I didn't know
that I could choose not to be. I am so glad
I don't have children. I knew I was always
gonna have kids. I decided to start thinking seriously about
getting pregnant myself. I've literally had people
upset at the fact that I don't want
to have children. But I'm like, "How does that
affect your life?" Especially, like,
factoring in everything that's happening
in the background,
including climate change, is this the kind of world
that I want to bring
my child into? This is what we wanted.
This was our goal,
and we're here. Whatever change you think
your life is gonna have in a significant way,
multiply it by, like, 99. Life? Blown up.
Completely gone. The vast majority
of Americans have kids, <i> but the number of births
 in the US</i> <i> has been slowly
 creeping downward</i> <i> over the past few decades.</i> <i> I think I want
 to become a parent,</i> <i> and I'm lucky to be able
 to make that decision.</i> <i> To be honest though,
 I still feel like</i> <i> there's so much
 that I don't know.</i> So my question is
how do I decide if I really want
to have kids? <i> ( babies laughing )</i> <i> ( theme music playing )</i> You know, it's really
hard to separate out my desire to have kids versus the expectation
to have kids. And if you don't believe
that there's still an expectation
of having children, just turn on a television. - So, when are the kids coming?
- Ya gonna have a baby! - You gotta have one now.
- People like pregnant. Do you want to be
a mother or not? Do you regret it,
not having children? There is the stigma
that if you don't have kids, then you're clearly
not as happy. A lot of us have real questions
about when and how and whether
to become parents. So, I'm gonna get some data, and why not start
with that big assumption, that kids make you happier? Since about the 1960s,
we've had pretty clear evidence that being a parent
doesn't make you happier
than not having children. Out of the 20 countries
that we studied, the United States
had the largest gap, where parents report
that they're significantly
less happy than non-parents. How do you ask survey questions
that get at this? We're not asking people,
"Are you happy you had kids?" We're asking people,
"Are you happy?", and just asking them
to rate their own level
of happiness.  Cleo: It's not just
the United States. We see the happiness gap
in all of these countries, too. Jennifer:
It's really a parental
happiness deficit. And it doesn't occur everywhere. There are a few nation states where parenthood
actually improves your average rated happiness, and some of those countries have extremely low
fertility rates. That's telling you that people
who do decide to have children are unusually attached to kids,
and want kids very badly. Now, we do have some
LGBT couples in the data, but they differ in size
across all of these nations, and some nation states
did not even ask about the gender
of your partners. We're just beginning
to understand the dynamics and whether they're
similar or different from
heterosexual couples. Does the happiness gap differ depending on wealth,
race, gender, or other demographics
within the United States? It really doesn't. We thought perhaps
that the gap would be larger for single parents, and it is. We thought perhaps the gap
would be larger for mothers than fathers, and it isn't. It grows when you take away
the partnership and the stable employment, but once you control
for those factors, it's fairly stable
across race. How do parents react though,
when you tell them
about this data? Oh, they hate it.
Some of them don't believe it. I have to show them the data from one survey after another
after another. But if we ask parents,
"Have your children
made you happy?", they would all say yes. I would say yes. Everybody I know
would say yes. But what their children
have brought into their lives in many ways is anxiety, stress,
and financial trouble that they would
not have experienced. - Did you know about
  the happiness gap?
- I did. What's your take
on how seriously
we should take this data? I might be a little biased
because I've always been quite ambivalent
about the idea
of having children, but I think it's worth
taking very seriously. There is a huge cultural myth that kids are going
to bring nothing but joy
to your life, and I think that leads
a lot of parents going in with maybe
the wrong expectation. I gotta say,
I look at this data, and I think to myself,
"Yikes!" And then I think,
"I probably still want kids." - It's such a weird, um...
- Why? I don't know. If you think about it, our species has been around
for 300,000 years. The ability to control
female reproduction
is about 60 years old. Cultural and economic
liberation for women
is still in progress. We are among
the first generations
of life on Earth, which is the only life
that we know in the universe, that can choose
not to reproduce. To me, that's
incredibly exciting. But the act of making
that decision final? I still wish I had more time. That's another part of this
that I feel really
anxious about. Our biology does not
keep up with our
social progress. And that makes me so angry.
Can I tell you? Like, the cosmic injustice
of this, that, like, just as you're starting
to feel comfortable
in your own skin, maybe you've started
to build something, that's when you're slapped
with this decision that, "Hey, you need to turn your
life upside down right now or you can't have a family." I mean,
in the biological sense. Maybe people with kids
are this, like, crazy club of, like, unhappy people
that want you to join them. But that sort of discounts
all the other parts. I don't think it captures
just, like, the fulfillment
that you receive. I mean, I just love
every moment. Like, she opens up
her hands to hold her bottle?
Like, I'm... Fabiola:
Having a child-- beautiful
thing, beautiful feat. But I feel like
there's just so much stress
surrounding it, especially in this country, and I think that's
the main issue, of just, like,
I like the way things
are right now. But with where things are now,
I need to make a hard decision. I am a single mother
of four daughters. There isn't anyone else coming
to share that load with you. But these are the girls,
these are my girls, where if they saw me tear up, they would go fix up a sandwich,
and they'd be like, "Hey, do you want
to eat something?" I was raised a girl. The world taught me
that my needs mattered less than literally
everyone around me. And so I think
actually the best thing I can do for my family
is to be happy. Sometimes that means
when you get in the car
and they're like, "Oh, can we listen
to my music?" You say, "No, we're gonna
listen to my podcast." And they might whine,
but it makes me way happier
and way less resentful than I'm listening
to "Row Your Boat" for
the 80th time today. Like... Woman:
Scooch down towards me. Ready? All right.
A lot of pressure here. This is a view of your uterus. - Cleo: W-where?
- This whole thing here. Looks kind of long,
like an eggplant or a banana. For a woman who's
never been pregnant, it's about the size
of a bottle of nail polish. - Huh.
- What we do is just
  take a look here, make sure everything
looks pretty normal, which it does. Okay. We have plenty
of great pictures. - Do I get to keep it,
  like from a party?
- Like a souvenir. Wild. What do you feel like
are the biggest misconceptions that you hear
about the relationship
between fertility and age? That you have
all the time in the world. With time,
fertility does go down. Cleo:<i>
 One of the best ways
 to see this</i> <i> is just the chance
 a person has</i> <i> of getting pregnant
 each month.</i> <i> Doctors call that
 fecundability.</i> Your mid to late-20s
is actually when
you're most fertile. It's about 15 to 25%. That can decrease
in the mid-30s
to about 10 to 15%. And unfortunately,
over about age 42 to 44, it can be less than 2%. Cleo:<i>
 One reason for this decline
 is the number of eggs</i> <i> that you have goes down
 as you age-- egg quantity.</i> <i> But fertility is also
 about egg quality,</i> <i> or how many
 of those remaining eggs</i> <i> are chromosomally normal.</i> The vast majority
of early miscarriage is actually due
to chromosomal errors. A lot of people tend to think
of children with Down Syndrome or Turner Syndrome,
but those are the outliers. Got it.
That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so, we're gonna do
a little visualization so that you can show us
for a person who can
bear children, what percentage of their eggs
are chromosomally normal on average
as they get older? So, blue is gonna be
genetically normal eggs and yellow's gonna be
genetically abnormal. Okay. Okay, so this is 28.
This is my age. You have a really high chance
of making a pregnancy or embryos with a normal
number of chromosomes. But as you see,
it's never going to be zero. So, as you age to 33,
there's a higher chance, maybe about 30 to 31%
at this point. But around age 37 to 38,
the chances of having a pregnancy with chromosomal
abnormalities is almost 50%. That's a number that's
very shocking to people, but, you know,
as we advance in age over 42, the chance gets quite high. It's now over 80%,
and so this contributes to why women
in that age group may have a harder time
getting pregnant and may, unfortunately,
experience miscarriage much higher than they were
when they were younger. Sometimes we're able
to make generalizations
based on your age, but the only way
to know for sure is an evaluation
of your own individual
reproductive health. What do you see
as the most important
disparities to talk about with respect to access
to fertility care? Cost is probably
one of the biggest factors. One cycle of IVF can typically
be about $15 to $20,000. Cleo:<i>
 IVF isn't the only option,</i> <i> but all of the options
 aren't cheap,</i> <i> and often not covered
 by insurance.</i> Something else is looking
at the differences in outcomes based on race and ethnicity. There are studies
that show women of color are referred to infertility
specialists less frequently, and that may play
into why they present later for care or with longer
periods of infertility. What can we do
to reduce those disparities? I think the first thing
we have to do
is acknowledge it. We all have implicit biases that govern
how we conduct ourselves and how we react
to different people
and different situations. The patients that are
visiting fertility clinics tend to be white, female,
college-educated, and wealthy because that's who can
afford the treatment. And so one
of the biggest things I personally would wish for is infertility
evaluation and treatment to be covered by health
insurance universally. We found out about
a fertility benefit. We met those requirements
to be able to enroll and we got started
with our IVF process, and here we are with this
little one today. I'm incredibly privileged
in that it cost me literally
$0 to get pregnant because of the particular
biological realities of my relationship. We had sperm, egg, uterus,
between the two of us. But most transgender people need some help
with some part of that. As I got older,
what I learned was that
as a black woman, I was at even more risk
for complications and death after childbirth. And it didn't instill
any confidence in me. I recently helped my sister
inject herself. She's freezing her eggs. That was just
a very powerful moment. I knew I was gonna have kids.
That was never an issue. The bigger thing was
what would you do strategically in order to make sure
you could maximize your career, which was important for me. - Good morning.
- Good morning! Welcome. What are we--
what are we doing here? So, there's a lot of data
that shows that the financial impact
of having a child isn't borne equally
by men and women. - So we're gonna
  visualize that.
- Okay. - Ready?
- I-I think so. - I feel very cool.
- We're like cave explorers. - Let's do it!
- ( Christophe laughs ) This looks so tall. Cleo:<i> A 2017 report
 from the U.S. Census Bureau</i> <i> shows the impact
 of having a child on men
 and women's earnings</i> <i> among married
 heterosexual couples.</i> - Ready, Christophe?
- I'm scared. <i> The key chart
 looks something like this.</i> <i> The male and female spouse</i> <i> both start out at zero</i> <i> the year the baby is born.</i> <i> It's a way to control
 for differences</i> <i> between men
 and women's earnings</i> <i> so that we see the effects
 of having kids more easily.</i> <i> In the first year
 after having a child,</i> <i> the mother's earnings
 take a big hit.</i> <i> The father's? Not so much.</i> So, Christophe,
this is year one. - Jeez. Huge hit.
- Yeah. <i> The female spouse's earnings
 don't actually recover</i> <i> until the child
 is around nine years old.</i> So, essentially
at year nine, the mom's salary
has reset to where it was. Yeah. - All right, ready?
- Yeah. - Year 18. Go on up.
- 18! Look at me climb
the career ladder. <i>Though her earnings do increase
 as the child gets older,</i> <i>the gap between the two genders
 is still there</i> <i> by the time that kid
 is officially an adult.</i> <i> One huge factor here
 is unequal childcare
 responsibilities.</i> <i> According to
 the American Time Use Survey,</i> <i> on an average day,
 women spent more than double
 the amount of time</i> <i> providing physical care
 to children than men.</i> Yeah, I mean, so much
of this makes sense, thinking about
my mom's career. You know, she took off work
until I was six or seven. It was great that
she was able to do that, but it's a hard trade-off
to have to have made. Yeah. Christophe, one more thing. - Yeah? Oh, okay.
- Look down. - Okay, now we're done.
- Whoo! - There it is!
- Whee! - Whew!
- How was that? You know, managed.
I'm a little sore. I feel like we could've
printed that chart out,
but it's fine. I really wanted to know
if there was, like, a good
or a bad time to have kids. - Like, what's the ideal?
- I really wanted someone to time it perfectly for me,
you know? What's interesting
is the data shows
that for couples who have children
under 25 or over 35, the female spouse
takes an earnings hit but actually does catch
back up to the male partner. - Interesting.
- But for the couples that
  have kids between 25 and 35, <i> the female partner
 never catches up.</i> It seems to sort of show that
there is this core window, 25 to 35, where you are
starting your career, setting yourself up
for a successful life, and that's a hard window
to have a kid. The thing about
that data though is that it's so wrapped up in
socioeconomics and education.... - Yeah.
- ...that it's really hard
  to tell what it means. - Yeah.
- Over the course
  of the last couple days, I've learned that
the fertility data tells you that probably
the safer choice to have kids
on the earlier side. And the career data
implies you might take less of a hit
if you have kids later, which is a little frustrating. This question of
should you have kids or not is such a completely
different question professionally for men
than it is for women. You were prioritizing
being at home and changed jobs to do that. - That's true.
- Why was it you who made that choice
and not Dad? Well, it wasn't
completely voluntary. You know, when I went
back to work after Zoey, I basically was told,
"Okay, you're on
the mommy track now." I was young and very ambitious and I just thought
I could do everything no matter what the environment, and that turned out
not to be true. I'm really afraid of that. Yeah, well, you can suss out
your environment a bit. There were no women
who were associates who had babies who
had gone on to make partner. I should have
learned from that. I don't think that's fair
to put on yourself. It really frustrates me
that we position this
as an individual choice. Like, the other option
is your law firm could
have supported you more. Yes, um, and they were not
prepared to do that. You know, nobody that
I've spoken to ever expected
parenting to be easy. Like, I definitely don't. But I keep thinking
about this chart and where
the United States falls, and I can't help but wonder
if it has to be this hard. So, my last question
is just what could we do to make it easier
to be a parent
in the United States? And one thing that
we could do is make
childcare more affordable. There's a new report
that just came out that shows as a percentage
of women's full-time earnings how much do women have
to pay for childcare
in each of these countries? So, each stack of coins
represents a woman's median full-time earnings
in each place. And we're gonna take out coins
to represent the amount of her earnings that she's gonna spend
on childcare. All right, so I'm not
gonna touch any of these. But I'm gonna take
one out for Germany. So, you removed for Germany,
but not for Chile, the Czech Republic,
or Italy. Yeah, for the most part,
governments in these countries
provide a lot of support. - Wow.
- So now we've got
  all of these countries. Let's see what
that looks like. Five, Korea,
six, Iceland,
seven, Portugal. By the way, this is,
like, $500 worth of coins. Yeah. ( laughs ) So, it looks like
for all of these countries, they are here spending
a quarter of their earnings. But that is still
a significant chunk of money
to be spending on childcare. Right? That's a huge chunk,
even in the middle
of this chart. Finland is already
getting into territory that looks very different
from Germany, so I'm scared
to see what happens. So, the United States
is here, among a small group of
countries where women spend more than a third
of their full-time
earnings on childcare. That is very scary. - So, this is Australia.
- Whoa. Let's get rid of all of that. - Should I do Canada?
- Yeah, 34. - Boop.
- So there it is. I'm trying to get
a sense of why there's so much disparity
across the board. On this side,
from Germany to Italy, what is it that countries
on this end are not doing? Cleo: Denmark, for example,
mandates that parents can't be charged more
than 25% of the operating
costs of childcare. - Wow. Okay.
- And the government
  covers the rest. In Korea, they were
very concerned about falling birth rates, and so they spend
a lot of money on
supporting parents. And one of the things
that they do is they
offer cash benefits. Wow, so it sounds like
parents there are incentivized
to actually have kids. Yeah. Given that finances
are a really big part of the decision to have kids
for a lot of people, it does seem like that decision
would be less burdensome in a lot of these
other countries than it would be
for a lot of parents
in the United States. Yeah. I've gone through
this whole journey learning about
parental happiness data and fertility data
and earnings data, and having it help me
as I'm making this decision. The truth is, I'm not
gonna be making this decision based on statistics. I'm gonna be making
this decision based on <i> my own feelings
 and my own family</i> <i> and my own
 potential family.</i> <i> And one of the things that
 I've been thinking a lot about</i> <i> is I really, truly,
 over the course of my life,</i> <i> would love to do
 for another person
 what you did for me.</i> <i> And I would love to be
 the kind of mom</i> <i> to somebody
 that you were to me.</i> And I would love to have
the kind of relationship as an adult
that you and I have now. And I just
wanted you to know that. Aww, thank you, Cleo. That means a lot to me. And it really is a big part
of my decision-making. Soledad:<i>
 A walk down the street
 is torture, very slow,</i> <i> but also every single thing</i> <i> suddenly is incredibly
 interesting.</i> There is a bug! Holy cow! Who knew that bug
had so many legs? Man:
Whenever you're ready. Trystan:<i>
 I think there are lots of ways
 to have kids in your life</i> <i> in meaningful ways
 that aren't being a parent,</i> and that those ways
are just as valuable, <i> just as valid, if not more so.</i> - Can you say "auntie?"
-<i> I always just tell people,</i> <i> "If you don't really
 want to do it, don't.
 Do something else."</i> Lee:<i>
 I feel this very deep
 calling to my work,</i> and that's what I've chosen
to dedicate my life to. <i> I found it already.
 I don't need anything else.</i> Since I don't have children, <i> I'm able to be there
 for my family</i> <i> in ways that I probably
 wouldn't be able to
 if I had children,</i> <i> and I take
 a lot of pride in that.</i> There's so many things
that can give you purpose,
not just being a parent. What's important to you?
What do you want to accomplish? What do you want
your life to look like? Cleo, wave bye-bye to Zoey. Soledad:<i>
 And then go do it.</i> - How much is the UK?
- Woman: 51. - Wow. Sorry.
- ( clattering ) Yeah, got it.
This is not a story
about the UK, but, damn. - I'm gonna get
  an ultrasound on camera.
- No. - Yep.
- That's cool. - Babies.
- Oh, babies! - Speaking of children.
- Hello, children! I didn't deliberately
match the data viz, but I did in fact do that. chromebook presents michaela j on the adulthood a series about finding your way in the modern world it's michaela j here on the adulthood today we're talking about real representation in storytelling and why lifting up different voices is so important alrighty let's do it so as a kid i was always the one to shine very bright in a dark room i was always considered different quirky or just out of place my mind always geared towards female always and with expressing that came backlash that sparked a fire under me to be rebellious and keep being me i would encourage the next generation to just walk with their heads held high to live out loud i had to take some time to grow into my identity as a trans individual who is a woman and as a person who is of color who is intersectional with all of those and being that there weren't a lot of representation of trans people i looked to stories so for instance cinderella my mother never treated me like the stepchild but i felt like the world treated me like a stepchild cinderella finally got in that glass slipper to have a fairy godmother come along and say here's this dress you're going to the ball and i said i'm going to be the princess that no one would ever see coming and she came through this ball that i'm partaking in it's the world i would tell any younger individual who's coming up in a time when they don't have a clue how to be their own representation write your own stories that is what i had to bring to blanca to bring her and the story of pose to life i loved curating that taking pieces of my life as far as my mother as far as the trans women that were in my life in the ballroom scene as far as myself and making sure that i gave the best example of how we as women of african american and latino descent who so happen to be trans are storytelling can really change the narrative especially if you tell a story that is rooted in realism with a little bit of glitter added on top of it that's what technology is doing for all of us today it's amplifying our voices and it's making us more confident in our voices i would tell young people make sure that you're using it to amplify the voices of people who don't have a voice to be amplified you have to get the stories from the sorts itself it opens minds and it opens hearts and you see the light that is just beaming in each and every one of those people i look at each and every last one of the humans on this earth as stars some people like to be regular stars and then you have supernova stars the ones that are like i'm going to shine into i can't shine no more child i gotta burst and then they just release another bed of opportunities for birthing of more stars younger people can channel that inner star in any form they can lead with heart soul and mind you have to pump through with some stardust on your heels baby you have to shine i can hear the crowd i can hear my competitors running i can hear the track spikes i feel my heartbeat and i'll never forget i'm running and i'm smiling it was my moment in time kevin young the gold medalist a new world record tom you've held this world record for 29 years 28 years and 11 months kevin young is a former olympic hurdler and up until the night before this interview he held the world record for the 400 meter hurdles event carson warhol bested him by .08 seconds during the tokyo olympic trials and a few days before that sydney mclaughlin broke the woman's world record for the 400 meter hurdles it's an event that's over in under a minute and olympic athletes make it look effortless but it's not as simple as running and jumping it's actually one of the most demanding races on the track [Music] so you got to deal with the endurance factor the the speed factor it's a quarter mile so it's a fast race the cross between sprinting and hurdling puts these athletes in a unique position they need to train to run at the speed of a race half the length and build the endurance needed for a race at least twice the length around the track are 10 hurdles evenly spaced 35 meters apart to get over them hurdlers have to make the most of the three energy systems in the human body typically for the first two hurdles off the blocks the goal is to fire up to race speed the first eight to twelve seconds of a race athletes tap into energy reserves in their muscles which is fine for short explosive races like the hundred meter dash during war homes race you can hear the announcer say he reacted to that gun like a 100 meter sprinter but after about 10 seconds that energy system is spent and there's still at least another 300 meters and plenty of hurdles to go for the next three to five hurdles athletes have to focus on maintaining their speed using the two other energy systems one needs oxygen to help them with endurance as they move through the race the other produces energy fast without oxygen but leads to that familiar muscle burn if they move too fast they'll burn out and have trouble clearing hurdles later on by hurdles six through eight they're coming around that final bend and they need to give it their all to not lose speed this is where you see kevin young surge ahead in the 1992 barcelona olympics kevin young has the lead i got to the eighth hurdle i literally took off away from the field my stride was open i was moving and i just pulled away from everybody at this point legs start to feel heavier and those hurdles start to look higher when talking about hurdles 9 and 10 one track coach i spoke with said it's sheer willpower from that last hurdle there's still another 40 meters to the finish line to sprint but mastering endurance and speed means nothing if you're not clearing the hurdles efficiently and this is what really sets the 400 meter hurdles apart the race isn't just physically taxing it's highly technical it's all about being on the track running that's when you get your speed from the hurdles do to slow you down hurdlers don't jump per se they sort of sprint right over the hurdles the goal is to spend as little time in the air as possible the first leg over the hurdle called the lead lake should already be pushing down to the ground as the trail lake follows over the hurdle once they hit the ground they're focused on the next turtle you have to establish a particular rhythm in the race when athletes like young talk about rhythm they're talking about how many steps they take between each hurdle i remember when i started running the hurdles i would run up on the hurdle trying to go 13 steps between the hurdles because the master edwin moses did it i would always chop steps which is why stride patterns are carefully calculated and practiced long before the starting gun like in young's 1992 world record breaking race stick with your stride pattern the stride pattern was 20 to the first 13 to 2 13 to 3 12 12 for four hurdles four and five then back to 13 for her to six through 10 and 18 steps from the 10th hurdle to the finish line rhythm matters for two reasons one so you don't stutter coming up to a hurdle or clip it like young did on the tenth hurdle of his 1992 race and two so you can control which leg is the lead leg so if you're going 13 steps you're on one consistent leg your dominant leg you're going 14 steps you're going left right left right left right top athletes can lead with either leg but it's not uncommon for them to have a favorite if you have a leg that you don't you're not used to hurling with you may take it and it'll twist you all up and have you off balance and you'll just be hoping and praying that you'd laying on the other side of the hurdle finding and perfecting the right pattern is what drives the best athletes forward but it's not a one-size-fits-all approach just as kevin young couldn't break the world record following the techniques of edwin moses carson warhol couldn't use kevin young's methods he went out harder than i would ever run when 13 to 9 in the 10th hurdle he went 15 and he just went over and it was just speed speed at the end of a well-practiced well-executed plan i know how how well i ran and my success in the sport itself i said these guys are going to take it to a whole level [Music] you I'm looking at my DNA results,
and I need answers.  ( music playing ) Coming soon, five new episodes
of "Glad You Asked"  exploring the impact of race
 in society on our health. Good morning.
So I'm stopping breathing. - 4.7 times an hour.
- Headphones on. It's so loud. I feel like I don't know
what I'm doing. So an idea that came
from slavery has lingered in the medical
field through to today. Is there a difference
between race in medicine
and racism in medicine? Oh, hell, yeah.  What does all that noise
 mean for our health?  You may have
 a hearing problem.  A single exposure
for even a fraction of a second at 140 decibels could be
sufficient to cause that
instantaneous damage. What happens to us
when we lose sleep? What is this? For one week
go to bed when you're tired. and then wake up
when you are rested,
but no alarm clock. That sounds amazing.
( yawns ) I'm so tired.  How come so many people
 aren't accessing therapy? You know, just like the rest
of society has to do the work in order to be anti-racist,  the same has to happen
 in the therapeutic space.  It's really hard to separate
 out my desire to have kids  versus the expectation
 to have kids. Our biology does not keep up
with our social progress.  "Glad You Asked,"
 an all new season coming soon. [Music] this is warren buffett one of the richest people in the world thanks to the company he runs berkshire hathaway basically it's a holding company that just owns a bunch of other companies geico dairy queen a huge railroad as well as a lot of stock in other companies like apple and coca-cola so when those companies do well and their stock goes up berkshire hathaway stock goes up when buffett took over the company in 1965 a single share was worth nineteen dollars today it's worth nearly half a million dollars buffett owns nearly 240 000 of these shares this is where his wealth is but as he's been known for pointing out warren buffett still pays a lower tax rate than his secretary she pays at twice the rate i pay i think that's outrageous that's because they pay different types of taxes his secretary pays income taxes on her salary but buffett mainly pays capital gains taxes on his sold stock and that's taxed at nearly half the rate the wealthy are definitely under tax in the u.s the disparity between the richest americans and everyone else has been growing and in the last 40 years the after-tax income of the richest has risen more than 400 while middle-class income has only risen 50. the way these people make money is very different than the way these people make money and they're not taxed the same [Music] i pay less in taxes than people that work for a living and make as much money as i do this is morris he used to work on wall street now he's retired and lives off his many stock market investments i own stock in companies i mean berkshire hathaway and amazon and apple he's a pretty typical one percenter except that he spends his money advocating for rich people like him to be taxed more i want to live in a country filled with a middle class of people who can all afford to shop in our businesses most people have a normal job they get a paycheck and pay income tax ranging from 10 to 37 percent but people like morris they make a lot of their income from investments generally stocks in real estate these investments are taxed as capital gains and things like long-term stock have a maximum tax rate of just 20 percent i sold some stock recently for four hundred thousand dollars and my taxes on that's around fifty thousand dollars but that fifty thousand dollars is far less tax than anyone who has a job making four hundred thousand dollars a year would pay and most of his wealth well isn't even taxable people like morris or buffett are worth so much money because of the stock that they hold but it's not tangible spendable taxable money i can look at my stock portfolio and i can say oh you know i made a million dollars this year but it doesn't have to be anything in taxes because our system is based on only paying taxes when you actually sell something amazon's jeff bezos the richest man in america thanks mostly to his amazon stock pays almost nothing in taxes we value his worth here but it's never taxed unless it's turned into real money when he sells the stock and it's taxed as a capital gain this is one way billionaires are able to be technically worth so much money but pay so little in taxes some billionaires like elon musk are able to get loans against their stocks and live off of that they don't even need to sell the stock to turn it into spendable money no sale no taxes the fact is if you're a billionaire you don't need any income there's also a big loophole in capital gains taxes that the rich exploit called the stepped-up basis if hypothetically warren buffett were to sell his stock he'd have to pay capital gains taxes based on his profit so the cost of the stock minus the original investment but if he holds off selling his entire life when he dies whoever inherits the stock and then sells it would only have to pay taxes on what they earned after they inherited it leaving all those original gains untaxed it's part of what's called buy borrow die and it's one way the richest families avoid paying taxes it's this system and the fact that most taxable capital gains are going to the top one percent that lawmakers see changing the capital gains tax as an easy way to tax the rich president biden has proposed closing that stepped up loophole and increasing the maximum tax rate from 20 to 39.6 but just for people making more than a million dollars a year critics argue that it may discourage people from investing in the stock market or that current millionaires would just sell less stock but it would bring in more tax revenue from more conservative estimates of 200 billion over 10 years to double that it would also mean buffett would pay a closer tax rate to a secretary but this pile of unrealized money still goes untaxed there's a lot of things we could do to make the system more fair we could have taxes on wealth we could have taxes on gains in the stock market most americans are bothered that wealthy people don't pay their fair share and changing capital gains taxes wouldn't be the whole solution but advocates argue it would be an easy place to start our system is making the rich get richer and richer and richer and everyone else just not [Music] you when you land the quarantine process immediately begins they spray down all your bags you have to take a quarantine taxi specifically designated to take you from where you're going to your quarantine i got to this hotel and we went down into like the uh the cargo entrance and in it is this like screen with like a person on the other side of a webcam and they just basically told me like take that elevator don't touch anything and it will like program it to go up to your floor this is ed i wanted to talk to him because in 2020 he was one of more than half a million people who went through a mandatory two-week quarantine and then walked out into taiwan ed has dual citizenship in taiwan and canada but he lives in new york i do too and for most of 2020 in new york the streets were empty venues were closed but taiwan was normal it's as if the pandemic had never happened you could go into restaurants subway civil society had essentially stayed exactly the same through all of 2020 taiwan had a total of seven covet 19 deaths seven among the lowest in the world [Music] and then in may of 2021 something changed taiwan is now experiencing rising daily infections huge surge largest wave taiwan is now grappling with its worst outbreak after more than a year of normalcy taiwan faced its biggest covet outbreak ever so i wanted to understand how did taiwan stay so safe from covet 19 for so long why did it stop working and what can we learn from it through the streets of taipei a major parade symbolic of the fighting spirit of nationalist china's army in the fortress island taiwan started out relatively poor and under a military dictatorship but by the 1990s it had become a democracy and was experiencing an economic boom the government developed the national health insurance system which provided universal healthcare to 99 of the population this put taiwan on par with wealthy countries around the world well other than the us in 2001 they began to implement smart cards that stored patients medical information digitally that combination of universal healthcare and the digital infrastructure would come to be regarded as one of the best healthcare systems in the world then in 2003 china began reporting an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome by march 2003 sars was in taiwan cases started rapidly appearing in hospitals primarily in taipei in april a large cluster of cases was reported at this hospital in response the mayor of taipei abruptly decided to seal the hospital off preventing anyone from entering or leaving more than 150 people trapped inside became infected of the more than 80 people who eventually died of stars in taiwan 31 had been locked in that hospital the government's response to sars was chaotic to handle the logistics of the outbreak they'd set up a temporary agency called the central epidemic command center but when it came time to figure out who had been responsible for locking down the hospital officials at all levels of government disagreed on whose decision it had actually been we've had a lot of problems of say the municipal government saying one thing and the central government's saying anata so in 2004 the role of the cecc was clarified when activated during an outbreak this agency would now become the central public health authority with access to information across government agencies we've got a lot of public infrastructure that's made like lego blocks where people can very easily recombine it to produce new functionalities over the next 15 years the cecc was activated during three smaller outbreaks but the real test was yet to come on december 31 2019 taiwan's government learned that at least seven atypical pneumonia cases had been reported in wuhan china and on january 20th they officially activated the cec because the cec could share information across agencies it was able to integrate citizens travel data with their health data together that combination allowed them to assess risk at the level of the individual people who had recently traveled to countries where they could have been exposed were considered high risk people with no underlying health issues who hadn't traveled abroad were considered low risk everyone in taiwan had that information sent to their smart card altogether it created a system that looked something like this low-risk people were instructed to buy a weekly quota of mosques allocated by the government but they'd continue to live in a functional normal society high-risk people went into a two-week quarantine after which they'd become low-risk and could join everyone else because of this taiwan didn't have to go into lockdown community spread among people in taiwan was very very low but in march cases coming into taiwan began to rise so taiwan came up with an additional strategy it started considering everyone flying in to be high risk no matter where they were coming from and most foreign travelers were banned completely that meant a lot more mandatory quarantine to enforce this the cecc used cell phone location data to see if any travelers left their quarantine block the moment you close the door you see on the back end there's like this huge red scary sign that says you're going to be fined a lot of money if you leave your quarantine you would get texts from the neighborhood police officer whose job it is to call and check in on you every single day actually twice a day for two weeks the only human contact it had was through a peephole when someone came to drop off food or collect his trash but then he got to join the nearly 24 million people in taiwan living normal lives this was an alternate universe of what america and the rest of the world had seen all year the taiwanese people have been able to just live their lives as if nothing had happened like to me that's freedom when i started making this video it was a story about how taiwan managed to beat covet but in may of 2021 a new wave of cases suddenly put taiwan's success in question the total number of cases has actually doubled more shops are going to be forced to close do not be complacent in the face of a pandemic the lesson learned for taiwanese taiwan had gradually loosened its quarantine system which meant incoming infections started to go unchecked as of this video taiwan is still getting its outbreak under control thousands of people have been sent through new rounds of quarantine but even taiwan won't be truly safe until the system it built to keep the pandemic out is no longer necessary and the best way we know of to get there is to vaccinate on the flip side after a very hard year new york looks kind of normal again but it's not because we finally figured out how to contain covid it's because of the vaccine this will happen again and we can't just be like oh well you know there was a vaccine so it's all good at the end of all this even once we're all vaccinated and going to parties again we should look at what did taiwan do right so that we don't have to have the same conversation in the future because it is coming for more than a year taiwan stayed safe and free during a deadly pandemic but in a fight against a pandemic mistakes are going to happen the trick is to learn from them you i think i was in sixth grade fifth grade seventh or eighth grade high school high school but that feels late to me i asked a bunch of my coworkers when they first had the talk not like the sex talk but the talk about how babies get made from a scientific perspective honestly for someone who just successfully gestated and delivered a human baby i know an embarrassingly little amount of like how my egg was fertilized even if we don't remember it super well we were likely taught it so how does fertilization work oh god okay sex happens after the ejaculation happens the little sperm swimmers kind of like do do do do do like mini numerous sperm it's a bunch of them swimming up there like going really fast [Music] and there there are so many that are like looking for the egg it's weird because i feel like you don't really hear about the egg the egg is very passive and just like fertilize me and like all the sperm is like the one doing all the work everyone i talked to told me similar stories that all had a lot of holes and it might be because of what's inside these [Music] right so it's often modeled off this fairy tale where you have the knight in shining armor going to save the damsel in distress i think most of us have heard some version of that story and it's just it's just not it's not true it's not factual nadia johnson and lisa campo engelstein co-wrote a paper about how the fertilization story were taught often centers on the male perspective in it they analyzed popular textbooks used from middle school's medical school keeping an eye out for gender biased language i ordered some of them on ebay [Music] this book describes only the sperm's role in fertilization 300 million sperm are released some are attacked and many simply die along the way only one sperm can fertilize an egg in other textbooks the female body's role is described using only passive language if an egg is present there's a good chance of it being fertilized or if an ovum is present the sperm swarm around it and penetrate those layers the books show the sperm actively swimming surviving and penetrating while the egg just sits there it's sending these really problematic messages about what it means to be male and female and who has agency and who is passive the truth is fertilization involves two equally important reproductive systems collaborating in an awesome two-player adventure real quick before we start there are different ways of making babies for different types of people in this video we'll be focusing on the fertilization story between male and female reproductive organs that story starts with the eggs journey beginning in the ovaries once a month during ovulation a mature egg bursts out of the ovary a finger-like membrane at the end of the fallopian tubes scoops that egg up and other membranes pull it towards the uterus it's a complicated necessary trip and for the best chance of fertilization millions of sperm enter the vaginal canal around the same time some go in the complete wrong direction and it's game over for them early on the ones that go in the right direction encounter a more acidic environment than they're used to that acidity in the vaginal canal can harm a few sperm but the seminal fluid they're ejaculated in acts as a sort of shield potion protecting them and while some textbooks describe parts of the female reproductive tract as a place that sperm never make it out of or are attacked by they don't talk about the ways in which the female body actually helps after the sperm travel through the vaginal canal they enter the cervix the environment of the cervix can be really helpful it enables the sperm to survive for a little bit longer and then it facilitates the migration of the sperm then sperm swim rigorously towards the egg but let's just say that they're not michael phelps it has this tail and you think oh this tail must be responsible for it's swimming from the cervix basically to the egg and we know now that most of the motility is because of the things that the uterus and the female reproductive tract is doing to move the sperm along first during ovulation the thickness of the fluid in the cervical canal is thinned out then the muscles of the uterus contract propelling the sperm faster than they could ever swim toward the fallopian tubes at the same time the egg is releasing a chemical signal that acts almost like a gps so that the sperm have a good indicator of which fallopian tube to go to there the egg and the sperm are almost within reach of each other the female reproductive tract releases a cocktail of protein and calcium which gives the sperm the strength to beat their tails harder and swim faster than they did before this fluid also helps the sperm weather away this little cap and once it's gone they secrete enzymes that help it dig through the two layers of the egg's protective outer shell i feel like every text we look at had the word penetrate we think of the word penetrate as neutral but think about when we use that language of penetrate we talk about forces penetrating the army lines if we think about war penetrate is this language of like an assault of doing harm penetrate is not a friendly like welcome in the egg doesn't just wait around to see which sperm will break through it uses chemicals to select the best sperm the one that will produce the healthiest offspring and its work doesn't just stop there once the egg and sperm come together the selected sperm deposits its genetic information the egg essentially self-destructs all of its other sperm receptors to make sure no other candidates can get in and it combines with the eggs to start forming what will soon be an embryo and that is how fertilization really happens so if this is the true story why have we been telling it another way for so long this idea of who decides and who the experts are in the field in science it's it's been white men for a very long time like the first person who ever saw sperm under a microscope was a man and he had assumptions about you know what it was if the assumption is that the sperm is the most important part of the whole puzzle it's not like that's gonna necessarily be challenged if all the people at the table are met eighty percent of all the textbooks lisa and nadia analyzed had descriptions that were at least somewhat gender biased it can be explained in a fact-based unbiased way but it you know it isn't always and until textbooks start explaining the fertilization story in a neutral way the information that gets transmitted to students will continue to be a mixed bag what we're talking about is not just changing language in a textbook what we're also talking about is systems that are in place and have been in place for a very long time you it was the middle of the night on may 12th when this hospital in goa hit a breaking point i got an sos message from one of the doctors at gmc the hua medical college she reported that she had no oxygen coming in the central pipeline of her world about two o'clock we got through some officials and they told us nothing like this was happening at all the doctor took a video of the entire board with all the ventilator and i see machines beeping an hour later the police arrived and confirmed that the oxygen in the pipeline was fluctuating that night at least 20 people died due to lack of oxygen the next day the issue blew up on social media and that's when we came to know from the doctors that this was not that night issue it has been happening since two months it began in april 2021 when india experienced a sharp increase in coronavirus cases with hundreds of thousands of daily new infections the country's been registering some of the highest cases in the world and when these cases went up so did the demand for life-saving oxygen but india hasn't been able to match that demand and that's added avoidable deaths to a second wave of covet 19 that has devastated the country in may more than 70 covet patients died as a result of the oxygen crisis at the hospital in goa the same thing has been happening across india hospitals have seen covet patients die because they ran out of oxygen and they started turning people away many were forced to wait in line for hours to fill oxygen cylinders for sick family members this shortage seems to have caught india off guard and has made the news in this pandemic but the thing is india has run out of oxygen before so why does this keep happening [Music] first let's look at how the oxygen industry works in india about 85 percent of the oxygen produced ends up in commercial industries like steel or pharmaceuticals and about 15 percent is sent to hospitals for medical purposes [Music] this map shows where india's medical oxygen manufacturing plants are concentrated around the country india moves that oxygen from one point to another through a large and complex supply chain that spans several states and thousands of hospitals here's what that typically looks like it starts in the manufacturing plants where oxygen is extracted from the air and turned into liquid that oxygen is sent to big jumbo tankers for storage from there it's sent to distributors where liquid oxygen is compressed into a gas ready to be used it's then funneled into tankers or smaller cylinders and sent to local suppliers who then send oxygen to hospitals local vendors or directly to patients some big hospitals skip local suppliers they store liquid oxygen in tanks on site the steps in the supply chain seem simple enough the problem is the distance between one point and another and that makes transportation one of the weakest links in this supply chain nationwide most of the manufacturers and suppliers concentrated in these states don't deliver oxygen outside of a 50-kilometer radius the ones who do charge extra even then long distances can compromise the oxygen making hospitals around the country vulnerable to oxygen crises especially in states over here far from the manufacturers i mean none of us could have predicted the acute oxygen shortage that we faced this year but right of this at the start of the pandemic you know it was evident at how district hospitals in farflung areas you know already were you know they were not very equipped in 2017 this state-run hospital in uttar pradesh was treating dozens of critically ill children during a viral outbreak that august this tank holding the hospital's liquid oxygen ran out the hospital's oxygen came all the way from rajasthan about 800 kilometers away so it took three days to restore the supply but by then at least 60 children had died an investigation by the wire revealed that the oxygen ran out because the supply had been cut off the state government had ignored payments for months the meter showed the oxygen supply was stopped due to low pressure but the state government called it an act of god and didn't take responsibility but the government did little to fix the gaps in the oxygen supply chain three years later kovid reached india and the daily consumption of medical oxygen gradually tripled for months the government received warnings of an impending oxygen shortage and recommendations that plans be made to produce adequate oxygen finally the government took bids to build 162 new oxygen plants at all these major hospitals these plants would produce oxygen on-site for sick patients and keep the fragmented supply chain from getting further strained but around the same time as the result of a series of lockdowns infection rates started to drop by february prime minister modi started encouraging everyone to return to normal life at their own risk i also urge you all to use this time and travel to end many as nearby areas as possible and in april when cases started to quickly climb up again [Music] he was out campaigning heavily ahead of state elections bringing tens of thousands of people together at political rallies meanwhile this deadly wave was sweeping across the country killing thousands a day we saw the most devastating and the most gruesome images rows and rows of bodies at the cremation ground that was how stark the disconnect was when people are dying this is what is the priority of people from the ruling party the government's misplaced priorities and lack of vigilance emboldened thousands to attend mass events even though the second wave of kovid raged on and reached some of the highest case numbers in the world as covid cases surged the need for oxygen went up again major hospitals around the country began seeing thousands of covet patients show up at their doors for treatment there were hospitals that would tweet to say that we're running out of oxygen we don't have enough oxygen to sustain our patients for the next two hours i request you please send oxygen to us we need oxygen for our patients investigations revealed that the government had failed to keep its promises out of the 162 oxygen plants promised by the government only 33 were functional that really begs the question of what was the government doing during 2020 they had celebrated a premature victory against the pandemic as india recorded the highest cases in one day anywhere in the world these oxygen gaps became even more dangerous india's daily deaths although significantly under reported were in the thousands across the country but now there were hundreds of additional deaths due to lack of oxygen like in delhi where in one weekend at least 50 people died due to lack of oxygen or in maharashtra or in goa's medical college where the central government promised to build an oxygen plant that didn't come gmc did not have an oxygen plant of its own so they were basically manually putting cylinders and connecting it to make sure that the oxygen was reaching in the central pipeline the high court had to instruct the centre government to intervene and put up a plant and now it's been operational within like seven eight days but it took them so many lives which have died because of lack of oxygen to meet the rising demand for medical oxygen nearly all industries redirected their supply to hospitals the government enlisted the indian air force and railways to deliver it and countries around the world sent equipment and tanks filled with oxygen to help but these are just temporary fixes for a supply chain that still struggles to transport oxygen that needs to reach everyone across the country in a crisis the government has promised a thousand more oxygen plants to fill the gaps but has yet to complete the original 162 it promised it's not people have lost their lives because of coronavirus they've lost the lives because of politics they've lost their life because of displaced priorities of the government but what's happening here isn't a uniquely indian problem as coveted waves continue oxygen shortages have become a problem in countries like nepal sudan and argentina in fact dozens of other countries need more oxygen especially in the global south where low vaccination rates are leaving millions vulnerable to infection not all countries will face a humanitarian crisis like india's but india didn't think it would either and failed to prepare when cases were low dr fauci what can we learn from india's outbreak don't ever underestimate the situation the situation in india is a devastating reminder of what this virus can do it's very important to realize that the situation in india can happen anywhere [Music] december 4th 1969. akua and jerry was 19 years old and sleeping next to her fiance the illinois black panther party chairman fred hampton the next thing i remember was someone in our room shaking chairman fred chairman chairman wake up wake up plaster was flying off the ball you could smell the chordite from the gunshot if you've ever been under gunfire five minutes it's five hours to you it seems like forever the shooting started back again then another voice unfamiliar to me said he's good now i knew they were talking about chairman fred fred hampton was murdered by his government [Music] but before that he was a leader in a movement practicing a new kind of activism a movement targeted because of its power to unite people 1964 has a historic year in race relations on july 2nd president johnson signed into law of a civil rights act it was the strongest in the 1960s racial progress in the u.s was at a turning point activists won major civil rights victories and the era of jim crow laws came to an end but at the end of the decade there were still deep social and economic gaps for black people across the country black americans continued to face high poverty poor housing and unemployment and they still had little to no political representation these disparities and an increase in brutal police violence led to uprisings across the country many young black activists grew frustrated that the changes they'd hoped for hadn't come it's just the opposite of being a white man that's about the best i can abbreviate that fight after the police killing of an unarmed black teen in san francisco two activists in oakland california bobby seal and huey p newton founded what was initially called the black panther party for self-defense newton had studied law and knew it was legal to carry arms in california as long as they were not concealed the panthers began to patrol their communities as the movement grew several highly publicized confrontations with police would bring about mainstream awareness of the black panther party the allegations in these confrontations were serious but the public accounts of them were typically one-sided and shaped largely by police media coverage depicted party members as a caricature of black militancy the black panther party was portrayed as a marauding gang they say their goal was to kill all the white people in reality the panthers did call for radical change what they were hoping for was a revolution a revolution to overthrow the capitalist enterprise but what they called revolution might not actually sound so radical today focused on socialism as a way of solving economic means they look to places like canada which always had a democratic political system but the economic system has always been socialism they want a democratic socialist country here in the united states which they saw was a more equitable more humane system they released a 10-point plan for broad social reform that called for an end to police brutality and for black employment housing education and freedom from prison and jails chapters began forming across the country they started to implement social programs which they called survival programs the panthers would say put that theory into practice if you really want to change minds and you really want to meet the people where they are you have to give them the services which they need the programs included food and clothing drives free health clinics and sickle cell disease testing and were funded largely by volunteers and donations from businesses one of their biggest programs was a free breakfast for children initiative here we are living in 1966 67 is the most wealthy nation in the world and kids were going to school hungry especially african-american communities so one of the first community service programs were free breakfast for school children and all the children had to do was come it was during this time that akua and jerry then known as deborah johnson met fred hampton i was a student at wright city college and chairman fred had come up to the school to speak and he said at the breakfast program we're feeding over 3 000 children a week we're serious about making power to the people of reality we're not just sitting up here jaw jabbing and talking [ __ ] you know we about work and i said damn he's serious about this business fred hampton grew up in maywood illinois just west of downtown chicago he became president of his local naacp youth council in 1967 at 19 years old shortly after he was recruited by a founder of the illinois chapter of the black panther party because of his charismatic skills he quickly rise to the top of the crop here he is at age 21 building and leading the illinois chapter black panther party soon after they met and jerry and hampton became a couple anybody that has met him or heard him speak they say he wasn't [ __ ] he was for real you got to understand that jesus christ if your dad a struggle you better win and you did not discover this goddamn that you don't deserve to win let me send peace to you if you're willing to fight for it chicago in particular was a place where the party's ideals especially resonated it was then the second largest american city and due to decades of discriminatory policies also one of the most segregated chicago's mayor at the time richard j daly opposed neighborhood integration and in the 1950s the city had begun to redevelop certain neighborhoods pushing low-income residents out and into densely packed high-rise public housing in already overcrowded neighborhoods black people were pushed primarily to the south and west side of chicago a large puerto rican population was here in lincoln park and poor white people were concentrated here in uptown these groups all faced similar problems they all had the lapradega schools they all had dilapidated homes they were all being drafted into vietnam very few of those communities had health care in 1969 hampton led the panthers towards an unexpected alliance a coalition of activists working across racial lines against a corrupt city government that threatened their communities we're going to fight racism racism what they had in common was their poverty so they was building a revolution based on class solidarity that transcends race that they all had the same hell to pay hampton named the group the rainbow coalition it included the black panthers a puerto rican group called the young lords and a group called the young patriots made up of largely poor white migrants from appalachia who had moved to chicago seeking economic opportunity we don't hate the [ __ ] white people we hate the oppressive whether he be white black brown or yellow i don't mean seeing kumbaya and make a quilt i'm talking about bringing them together on common things they could unite on not everything but who could say that children do not deserve to have a healthy meal if we work with anybody from coalition with anybody that has revolution on their mind we're not a racist organization because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capitalism hampton and other panthers helped the young lords and young patriots launch their own social programs they organized protests together and it was working members were traveling across the country to organize rainbow coalition chapters particularly where black panther chapters were but also in these rural white communities as well to bring the revolution to bear this blows people's minds these people are not supposed to get along but here they are operating as brothers of the struggles as revolutionaries against the capitalist structure and that was the threat to the state at the local level but also at the national level in 1968 the fbi had sent around this internal memo it outlined goals to prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups and prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement it wasn't written about hampton specifically but by 1969 chairman fred hampton was the one that fit the bill the revolution was in the air and the ways in which the panthers able to transcend those racial lines especially charismatic leadership but one like fred hampton they saw him as a greater threat a greater threat even than martin luther king or malcolm x ever was in one fbi memo about the black panthers breakfast program they claimed their real purpose was to poison minds with anti-white propaganda and indoctrinate youngsters in hate and violence the fbi under the leadership of jade edgar hoover had deemed the black panther party as the number one threat to the internal security of this country the fbi operated a counter-intelligence program called cointelpro it was a program that targeted dissident political groups in the u.s their methods typically went outside the law they were using tactics such as assassination discrediting false narratives they were falsely putting people in prison and exile which were all illegal several black panthers were killed or imprisoned including the party co-founders in chicago the party was also targeted by mayor daley and the chicago police our office was burned down at least three times people would disappear you never see their bodies again before you go to bed and i say i am a revolutionary make that the last word in case you don't wake up then somebody might believe it and you might you know end up in what they call a revolutionary happy hunting ground hampton a rising star at just 21 years old knew he was a target too he'd been arrested in 1968 for allegedly robbing an ice cream truck and handing out 71 dollars of ice cream in 1969 he was sentenced to two to five years in prison he appealed and was released on bond but lost the appeal he'd have to return to prison by december 6. on december 4th around 4 a.m 14 chicago police officers arrived outside hampton's apartment on chicago's west side inside hampton and jerry and seven other panthers were asleep i was very pregnant and the first thing i remember was chairman fred had fell asleep while talking on the phone the next thing i remember was someone in our room start shaking chairman chairman wake up wake up the pigs are vamping and i'm seeing chairman fred look up and then he laid his head back down real slow officers kicked open the door and shot mark clark a visitor from another party chapter they shot a sleeping 18 year old named brenda harris then they shot in the direction of hampton's bed going you matthews feel the bullets going into it i had moved over on top of chairman fred because there was shooting into our mattress the person that had come into the room kept shouting stop shooting stop shooting we have a pregnant assist in here eventually the shooting stopped and jerry was forced into the kitchen when she heard another voice someone said he's barely alive he'll barely make it i assume they're talking about chairman fred pig said he's good and dead now as they took me out and jammed a revolver to my stomach as i was handcuffed behind my back i didn't look towards a bedroom because i didn't know what i would see or how i would respond the police fired nearly 100 shots fred hampton and mark clark were dead the seven surviving panthers were arrested and police smiled as they removed hampton's body from the scene the chicago police and the state's attorney's office quickly shaped the narrative to call it a gun fight a battle and a shootout officers involved in the raid testified that they were fired on from four different rooms in the apartment by shotgun before i could get past the threshold there were three shots fired from the rear bedroom they played back a story that you could not even phantom they gave a fictional account of what happened again vilifying the black panther party i mean they were firing at police yes sir we saw the shots coming out of the two bedrooms this attack by the black panthers on the police clearly demonstrates the true character of the black panther party but experts and lawyers hired by the panthers along with other journalists inspected the crime scene the panthers even opened the apartment so that anyone could examine it and a drastically different picture emerged it was clear that the police had fired unprovoked of the nearly 100 shots fired only one possible shot could have come from a panthers gun likely from mark clark at the front door the bullet holes that the police said came from black panthers were nail heads later it also emerged that the fbi had assisted chicago police with the raid the fbi had an informant within the black panther party named william o'neill who had become chief of security and hampton's bodyguard o'neil had provided the fbi with a hand-drawn floor plan of the apartment which the fbi then gave to chicago police and evidence strongly suggests that before the raid o'neill had drugged hampton in the years after hampton's assassination the police and the fbi continued to imprison dozens of party members across the country the official black panther party would continue to exist until 1982 but membership decreased dramatically and it would never be the same you know that each one of you will be died in international protest revolutionary struggle and i think that struggle is going to come why don't you live for the people why don't you struggle for the people why don't you die fred hampton wanted revolution those in power wanted to destroy him and what he stood for but they weren't totally successful chairman fred lives you know what i'm saying through the military assault through the uh destruction of the party as an organization itself you know by the state the legacy of the party is is still still here today the work of fred hampton is alive through some of the same programs that marked him as a threat many of the programs that the parents created are now staples of our society we didn't have free breakfast in schools prior to the black panther party's free breakfast program those free clinics almost every major college campus got a free legal aid clinic the ways in which sickle cell testing is now respected as a disease by the cdc and others none of that stuff existed before the party i think that's revolutionary the history of the black panther party is going toe-to-toe with this government will never die never die thanks for watching this video if you want to learn more about fred hampton there's an amazing 1971 documentary called the murder of fred hampton available to stream via the chicago film archives at the link in the description they also have a film called american revolution 2 which documents the work of the rainbow coalition in action and the many activists who helped to spearhead the movement thanks again for watching our piece and stay tuned for one more episode in this season of missing chapter on january 4th 1976 a fleet of boats left the coast of maui the goal was to get to the hawaiian island of kahool lava for centuries native hawaiians had fished and farmed here and they'd worshipped at its many religious sites its original name had been kohei malamalamu kanaloa the island had been very sacred and dedicated to kanaloa the god of the ocean but by the time this group of native hawaiians made the journey to the island it was a very different story the u.s military had taken over the island of kahoa lava it was just littered with all kinds of artillery bombs unexploded bombs nothing growing it was the worst environmental damage to land that anybody could ever experience or view or feel this is dr amita luli one of the many native hawaiians on the boats that day in 1976. they wanted to take kahoolawe back and they were willing to go up against the most powerful military in the world what happened next turned this journey into a movement not just to reclaim the island but to reclaim everything that was taken from native hawaiians this is the story of the taking of one hawaiian island but before i tell you that story i have to start with the taking of all of hawaii [Music] more than a thousand years ago the first polynesian voyagers made it to the hawaiian archipelago over time a distinctly hawaiian culture emerged fishing and agriculture were common and a blend of polynesian language arts and navigation traditions took shape along with an intricate social political and religious system for centuries native hawaiians exercised sovereignty over the islands by 1810 a monarch united the islands as one nation around this time american and european missionaries arrived along with businessmen looking to turn the land into a sugar industry many missionaries believed hawaiian religious practices were a moral wretchedness and so they began the work of communicating to them the knowledge of christ when the missionaries come with their promise of enlightenment and wisdom our people lost contact with who they were over the course of the next century this new western christian ideology slowly replaced the traditions and culture of many native hawaiians also known as kanaka maoli or kanaka the missionaries and businessmen became advisors to the monarchs who then suppressed hawaiian language healing practices navigation arts and even traditional forms of hula soon they set their sights on privatizing land ownership and changed the political system too in 1887 a group led by white businessmen rewrote the constitution forcibly taking away much of the hawaiian monarchy's power and disenfranchising most native hawaiian voters when a new monarch queen liliuo kalani rose to power she attempted to restore native hawaiian rights but in response much of the same group of wealthy white businessmen now known as the committee of safety staged a coup to overthrow the queen's government in 1893 they illegally took over the government of hawaii [Music] native hawaiians pushed back and started a movement to reclaim hawaiian sovereignty a massive petition drive led to 38 000 signatures that eventually convinced the u.s congress to reject the annexation of hawaii but it was a short-lived win in 1898 the spanish-american war broke out part of it was fought in the philippines and all of a sudden the location of the hawaiian islands in the pacific became valuable to the us military congress quickly passed a resolution and illegally annexed hawaii decades later in 1959 hawaii became the 50th state of the us to have this 50th member is truly a a unique uh experience but statehood made many native hawaiian problems worse the development of resorts and condos increasingly displaced families encroached on rural land and exploited native hawaiians by the 1970s a new wave of native hawaiian activists demanded change and their protests reignited the movement to reclaim hawaiian sovereignty that gave rise to the aloha organization it stood for aboriginal lands of hawaiian ancestry they had a bill for reparations for native hawaiians and the congress was not taking it seriously aloha came up with an idea they would occupy federal land to bring attention to their cause the only question was where caho lavey is the smallest of the major hawaiian islands and it sits here in the middle of the archipelago some traditional oli or chant spoke of the importance of the island and navigation if you are on kaholawe and you're observing what the sky looks like you could see where the southern cross sits in the sky in relation to the northern star and this was important for training navigators not so much how to get where you want to go but how do you get home archaeological evidence also suggests that for centuries kahoolawe was key to this kind of celestial navigation and was the location of several sacred sites including shrines petroglyphs and burials but by 1832 the hawaiian monarchy started using the island as a penal colony then in 1858 the hawaiian government leased kahoolawe out for ranching introducing livestock that depleted the island's soil in 1941 just after the attack on pearl harbor the u.s declared martial law in hawaii and turned kaholave into a military bombing range a few years later when the war ended hawaiian territorial officials thought that the island would be returned to civilian jurisdiction but instead president eisenhower issued an executive decree to extend the u.s use of the island and then they continued to train for other arenas in the asia and the pacific [Music] year after year kahoalave was used as a practice target for more wars like the korean war and then the vietnam war during that period there were targets on the island that resembled you know korean vehicles in korean uh villages and then jets would come to practice bombing those targets the top of the island has been just the face of any vegetation it's what we call hard pan and about eight feet of the topsoil has washed away into the ocean every time there's a big rain event it's bleeding out into the ocean in one series of navy explosions they simulated an atomic bomb blast and exploded 500 tons of tnt and almost every day in 1970 alone the navy used the island for bombings or weapons exercises those who lived particularly south side maui would see the bombing of kahoolabe regularly houses would shake it's just like poking a poking a knife into the spirit of the kanaka every time the bomb would go off local residents and politicians began demanding an end to the bombings so in january 1976 when aloha was looking for a location to occupy as a protest they chose kaho'olave the mismanagement of land by the navy and the military was just so obvious and so it was just something we kind of like thought we had to do alluli and other activists came together from all over hawaii and on january 4th they left for kahoot lava on a fleet of boats but there was a problem a leaked press release led to the coast guard intercepting them bringing the risk of arrest and federal charges one boat with a lully and eight other protesters on it snuck past the coast guard and made it to the island but the coast guard wasn't far behind we saw them coming with their megaphones and telling us that we needed to board the coast guard cutter and get taken back to maui myself and one of the organizers from maui walter riddy decided we didn't come to koh lavi just to kind of get back with the coast guard as the coast guard caught up with the group on the shore illumi and walter riddy broke away and went deeper into the island there were no trails to follow and the paths were rough but slowly they made their way up to the peak of the island then once you're on the top just knowing that this island was almost central in our archipelago that it must have been something real special but then you see the devastation for two days alluli and riddy hid out on the island the island was muddy was red there was just old trucks that were lined up to be caravans and these are the targets the whole island was littered with targets on day three federal marshals found a lully and ready arrested them and flew them off the island we've just been able to kind of be lifted up on a helicopter and seeing more damage and feeling more passionate about we got to do something it was like the land was calling to me pleading crying asking us to do something we decided to come over and pay a visit to to the governor and a peer visit to you also inspired by what they saw the activists formed a new group protect kahoolawe ohana to focus specifically on caring for the island at the core of their work was the concept of aloha aina aloha aina in its simplest form is just to love the land but for us aloha aina also has a deep political meaning and that it means love of your nation the organizing for helped spark a greater movement for hawaiian rights in what became known as the hawaiian renaissance congress and american people need to know we're not just happy natives dancing the hula for the tourists and playing our ukulele and that we have serious problems with so many of our people incarcerated so many of our families having to rely upon welfare for their subsistence and very serious health problems activists across hawaii were pushing for the revival of hawaiian culture language and ethnic studies education along with land and water rights for residents if we can give mother nature back to call of duty fight we gotta go fight as for the island of kahoolawe a charismatic activist named george helm stepped up to lead the fight to put an end to the bombings and for months the group organized further occupations of the island and if all of us can go over there and touch it we all come together so that began a movement there must have been like maybe 30 other arrests individuals there was jail time the navy didn't know how to handle this i didn't know how to control the arrests the movement was picking up but in 1977 tragedy struck two activists hemo mitchell and leader george helm were lost at sea on the way back from cahoa lava george helm after he disappeared we didn't know why he left how he left and who was responsible for it we had to reorganize our movement we all felt that we had to make a commitment to make his life worthwhile that the loss would not be in vain prior to his disappearance helm had spearheaded something important a class-action civil suit against the navy the suit claimed the navy was in violation of environmental protection laws and the national historic preservation act there are cultural sites that are on the island and the navy was not doing its duty to protect them in 1980 the navy and protect kahoolaway ohana entered into a consent decree the navy would have to start cleaning up the island and give activists partial access too one of the first things activists did was revive the makahiki ceremony a religious celebration that had been suppressed for two hundred years the most important thing that the protect lavi ohana has probably accomplished is reviving our connection as native hawaiians to our kua our natural elements and and calling our our deities back into our lives and and reviving our soul as a people after another decade of continued pressure in 1990 president george h.w bush ordered the complete halt to bombing practices on the island congress also ordered the return of the island to hawaii and hawaii's state legislature banned any future commercial activity on the island fourteen years after the first landing on pahoa lava a grassroots movement was able to take on the u.s navy and when [Music] today the restoration of kahoot lava is ongoing the u.s government still hasn't gotten rid of all the bomb fragments and unexploded ordnance but with the help of protect kaho'olave ohana and a state reserve commission the island is slowly healing the closer you get you see the island is getting green it's important that we have places like kahoolawe to sort of serve as these key puka as we call them or little circles little areas where where life regenerates to really re-engage with environment and earth and see the importance of aloha aina really kahoolawe is now a symbol of hope and for native hawaiians who continue to fight for sovereignty reclaiming kahool lava is a step towards reclaiming all of hawaii kolavi is a motto of what can be done on other islands and other communities the only disappointing frustration is that i'm not going to be around for the next generation kahool lava is the hope that brings us deliverance from our colonized past to who we are and who we will be in the future [Music] you i am not a robot and yet my computer accuses me of being one constantly sign up for a fitness app profile captcha getting a vaccine appointment capture buying dumbbells capture ordering cookies online because i have no self-control and the most annoying part i don't always pass these captcha tests on the first try it feels like captchas are getting harder and they are but it turns out there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than just proving you're human [Music] the word captcha is an acronym it stands for completely automated public turing tests to tell computers and humans apart so there's a little bit of a cheating because the t there's like a lot of t's in there turning test to tell luis von um invented captions in the year 2000 he was a first-year phd student at carnegie mellon university attending a talk by the chief scientist at yahoo in the year 2000 yahoo was like the biggest tech company out there the talk was about 10 problems they didn't know how to solve and one in particular stood out they had this problem that people would write programs to obtain millions of email accounts from yahoo and the people who did that were spammers so they just couldn't figure out how to stop it what we need is a test that can distinguish humans from computers the test needed to be passable by any human regardless of age gender education or language that becomes even more challenging because this is a test that a computer should not be able to pass but a computer should be able to grade um so it's kind of kind of a paradoxical idea the epiphany came when they realized that humans are really good at optical character recognition aka reading we read text at all kinds of angles in different lighting conditions when it's bent over the seams of a book when it's in scratchy doctor handwriting and we've been training ourselves on how to do this since we were kids you don't need to be all that smart or know how to spell or anything you just just kind of pattern matching computers of the era were really bad at this making it the perfect test capture programmers would give the computer the correct text so it knew the answer then they'd stretch that text and warp it the computer with the answer would be able to grade it but a new bot that didn't have the answer wouldn't be able to understand it having cracked the code they gave it to yahoo who started using it on their front page for sign ups within a couple of weeks of the first implementation it was being used millions of times a day and the test worked it differentiated between humans and computers and helped stop bots but in the background all the letters and numbers humans typed were doing something else making computers smarter in 2005 a new version of the test debuted called recaptcha it used two words one was generated so that the computer knew the answer the second word was pulled from a book or an old distorted new york times article and the computer had no idea what that word was when a human got the generated word right the program assumes they likely got the other word correct as well though they'd distribute the same word to several other people just to be sure if there was consensus they'd approve the word so many tests were taken that a year's worth of new york times articles were digitized roughly every four days then google acquired recaptcha in 2009 and began using the tech to digitize their scanned books and news archive when you repeat this process enough times you begin to build a robust image library of distorted characters and eventually with enough images in this dataset the computer becomes smart enough to extrapolate letters and words from new images captures basically taught computers how to read extremely warped text in a test by google in 2014 a human could read their most distorted captions with about 33 percent accuracy their ai got it right with 99.8 accuracy and once the computers got better than humans the test had to change enter recaptcha v2 which features images instead of text they serve the same purpose differentiating between humans and computers and keeping the bots out but this time google leveraged the tests by getting humans to teach machines how to identify real world objects you might have noticed that v2 tests often have us selecting transportation photos fire hydrants traffic lights crosswalks and more google uses this data to train their self-driving cars to see these objects as well as to improve google maps but just like computers learn how to read warped text better than humans they're also getting better than us at figuring out these picture puzzles so much so that the test had to change again as did the way the computers graded the test no captcha and its most recent counterpart recaptcha v3 verify that you're human just based on your behavior so how does that work there's a secret test constantly running in the background making this captcha nearly invisible if you seem bot-like like if you click around too quickly or type out paragraphs of text in seconds then they'll make you take a standard picture test or ask you to verify yourself with two-factor authentication pretty much now if you use the web basically you're being tracked that's just it the idea is now we can tell that you're a bot or not because we can tell who you are you know you can say this is creepy but from a usability standpoint that's a lot better as opposed to me having to do some puzzle or whatever you kind of already know yep this is a human but unlike previous versions of the test there's no public-facing answer for what our clicks might be training computers to do and it's not clear how long behavior tracking capture tests will last before computers can outsmart them it is my belief that at some point computers are going to be able to do everything that humans can it may take a while but at some point they'll be able to and so there's not going to be a way to differentiate between a human and a computer this was not the first idea we had actually the first idea we had was giving you some images and then we would ask you what are these images off basically we'll go find a lot of images of flowers we'll give you a lot of flowers and we would say hey can you can you tell us what what these are images of um the problem with that is that um humans were not that great at it um for one it kind of required them to spell and you'd be surprised how bad people are expelling and then secondly you know if it's flowers people could say plants or cars but it turned out all cars also had tires so people could say tire and so it was kind of hard to to to get it right whereas with the with the text it's this beautiful thing where not only are humans trained on it from you know very early but also there is a key for every thing that we display like in the in the keyboard so it's like r yes r uh t yes t so that's that's why we settled on that in march of 2020 as the pandemic took hold unemployment in the u.s began to spike the federal government passed a 2.2 trillion dollar stimulus bill money for the unemployed loans for businesses and twelve hundred dollar stimulus checks sent to millions of americans in december the government sent out even more checks and then in march 2021 even more all this government spending made this guy very concerned seems to me we're taking very substantial risks what was kindling is now igniting larry summers he used to be bill clinton's treasury secretary and barack obama's top economic advisor and he thought the checks were a mistake we're gonna set ourselves up for inflation you know inflation when prices increase and money is worth less and less like the u.s had in the 70s or in the extreme in places like venezuela where money is so worthless it's used to make purses so are these checks actually something to worry about and could they lead to this first we have to talk about how inflation works think of the economy as a fish tank when one fish spends their money like out at a fish concert that keeps other fish like the venue workers employed so they can go spend their money on things too like their mortgage or a car because fish need cars stick with me it's a cycle employed fish spend money which keeps other fish employed some of that money also goes into their savings to spend later and think of all the water in the tank as all the money being spent out in the economy in an ideal economy fish unemployment is low and there's lots of money being spent and so there's a comfortable amount of water in the tank but in a recession lots of fish lose their jobs and stop spending money and other fish get scared that they might be next so they stop spending and start saving and with less money being spent in the economy the water level falls when that happens the government can pump more money or water into the economy it can be through things like investments in infrastructure or unemployment benefits but in the last 20 years one policy that's been used more and more frequently is stimulus checks giving people cash directly to go and spend checks are definitely something that many economists think are useful because it bypasses the traditional channels the first stimulus check as we know it came in 2001. it was really more like an early tax refund it gave adults who had paid at least six thousand dollars in income taxes a three hundred dollar check studies found that it went swimmingly people did spend the money and the checks were credited with helping to end the 2001 recession this approach was so popular that in the next recession in 2008 the government did it again this time they sent out twice as much money in tax rebates it was phased out for higher income americans but expanded in other ways most families got a bit extra for each child people with less income got a check too though smaller it was just a part of a larger stimulus package but studies found that it worked again this time even more people quickly spent their checks they give money to people fast and it helps the economy which then in turn helps more families but here's the problem normally businesses raise their prices a little bit each year but it's not very noticeable since people usually make a little bit more each year this is inflation prices going up and we can measure it as the water level in the tank higher prices mean more money being spent so a higher water level but if suddenly these fish have way more money to spend businesses can raise their prices a lot drastically higher prices mean too much water in the tank and it could overflow this is the bad inflation but economists actually want a little inflation each year spending is a sign of a growing economy it's not a bad thing in fact if prices aren't rising it tells you that something is really wrong in the economy this is what inflation has looked like in the u.s the last 40 years zero means prices haven't changed from the year before four percent means things cost four percent more than last year and here in these gray bars are when the economy was in a recession notice anything a recession almost always comes with a substantial dip in inflation when people lose their jobs or are afraid they're next they don't spend like usual businesses can't raise their prices like they usually would when this line falls below zero meaning things actually cost less than they did a year ago that's bad falling prices is a sign of an economy in crisis and frankly an economy in a downward spiral and for the last 10 years the u.s has aimed for 2 percent inflation and you can say well why two percent and their argument is we want a little bit of a buffer but the u.s leading up to the pandemic didn't have much of that buffer we weren't consistently hitting that two percent and then our fish tank was under attack we lost a lot of that water very suddenly we saw the federal government slap some tape on the fishbowl throw some more water in one thing they did that was really popular was to send checks to people and this time stimulus checks were sent out to even more people than the ones in 2001 and 2008 basically anyone with a social security number plus extra for children and it worked then too you can see here in the chart of americans bank accounts people's balances went up with the stimulus checks and down as they spent them it put more water into the tank but then the government sent out more and even more this is what worried some economists if the government pours in all this water and then people start going out and spending again including what they've saved that's a lot of water wouldn't it make the tank overflow most economists say probably not it's really important to remember that we lost a lot of water the risk right now is doing too little it would have to be a sudden explosion of spending most economists including the ones trying to steer the us economy agree not to worry we could see a little inflation as the economy reopens but not at overflow levels there is debate around stimulus checks but it's in the details who should get them and how much should they be many economists even want them to go out automatically when the economy shows signs of a recession starting having a rule in place that automatically adjusts the water level without political headaches of getting it passed through congress when the unemployment rate rises just a little bit we're in a recession bad news bad stuff is coming send the checks but as for inflation economists today want a little and aren't really concerned about overflowing the tank sorry larry doing too little right now listening to the people who are so afraid of the fish tank overflowing i think that would be a big mistake [Music] you so you're planning a road trip across the united states well you'll definitely need this and this and maybe this you might see this or even this but mostly you'll see a lot of these these signs tell you where to go or where you are but most of them have something else in common their typeface highway gothic is carefully composed to guide you to your destination without distracting you but for the past decade another typeface has been trying to take its place highway gothic was created in 1948. right around the time highway started crisscrossing the united states it came out of an initiative at the california department of transportation to develop a clearer and more legible standard for highway signs of the six fonts or variations they developed this version became the highway standard the spacing is specified to be quite loose and that's something that that is a big help in viewing at very long distances [Music] those angled tops to the letters that you see in the alpha t that was the solution that appeared in highway gothic to differentiate shapes it becomes you know important in states like illinois where you have cap eye and lowercase l and you need to be unambiguous about what's what soon after its creation every highway in america was plastered with highway gothic but by the late 1980s with the introduction of new reflective sign materials highway gothic started to have problems specifically with something called halation pallation is when light spreads beyond its proper boundaries creating a halo effect it's that glow you see around a bright object on a tv screen like in the scene and once upon a time in hollywood right there in the upper right elderly drivers specifically were having trouble reading these signs at night as lower case letters like e a and s started blurring into o's the counter of the e that's really very tight there even before you point a headlight at us at night even in broad daylight that would blur together but by this time a potential solution was on its way by the end of the 90s font designers and a crew of researchers from penn state and 3m had created the second typeface we see on highway signs clearview at first glance clearview and highway gothic look pretty similar but when you look closer you can see how different they really are decisions like the counter of the a and the counter of the e those internal spaces are made much larger because the a and the u they trend towards this kind of squarish shape i suspect that was done to further reinforce the enlargement of these internal shapes the hybrid gothic stumbles quite a lot if you take a close look at the lowercase s it does seem like one side of the curve is arguing with the other as it goes through that pretty complex track that has to follow d and s clearview tries to fix that by widening the spaces opening up these letters can help mitigate the problem inflation and during testing clearview showed a 16 improvement in recognition over highway gothic at night which meant that drivers that were driving at 60 miles per hour would have an extra one to two seconds to make a decision based on sign information in 2004 the federal highway administration granted interim approval for clearview to be used on an optional basis mostly when old signs needed to be replaced around 30 states adopted clearview in some form the resulting mix of signs has caused some confusion and further studies have called into question clearview's improved legibility specifically on lighter colored signs and its more stylized number forms one study from texas a m in 2014 found that clearview's legibility was not statistically different than highway gothics i think in purely mechanical i would say clearview is more successful because it does create a more even texture than highway gothic there's something very distinctly american about highway gothic and it is a bit blunt and stumbling and loud and clearview is almost in that respect too polished today the fhwa still allows the use of clearview in some cases but they make no recommendation or endorsement of the clearview letter style which means if you go out on the highway right now there's a mix two fonts that ultimately do the job they're designed to do get you where you're going with the least confusion [Music] [Music] you Between Hawaii and California, 
--in an area about twice the size of Texas-- Is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.   For decades, tons of our plastic debris has
accumulated there because of swirling ocean currents. It looks like a cloudy soup: and that’s
because the plastic objects are spaced far apart, and they range in size from large debris
to microscopic.There are at least 4 other garbage patches like this in the world, And
after scientists discovered them, starting in the 90s.   They thought that this might be where a lot
of the plastic ended up, out there floating on the surface. But recently, scientists brought large nets
to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and took a closer look at the objects they pulled out. They found water bottles And hard hats
And bottle caps  And toothbrushes
And toilet seats And laundry baskets
And using what they found, they were able to calculate how much debris was in all of
the garbage patches.  There were about a few hundred thousand tons
of plastics at the surface of the ocean, which is a huge number. It is a big number. But a few hundred thousand metric tons of
plastic is only about 1% of the estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic scientists believe
is emitted into the ocean every year. So scientists have been left investigating
a mystery: Where does the rest of the ocean’s plastic go?  
This is clue number 1 in the case of the missing plastic: a sea floor sediment sample 
It was taken from the bottom of the Santa Barbara Basin, off the coast of California.  It represents a measure of time, from 1870
at its deepest layer of sediment, up until 2009.  But this period, from 1945 to 2009, is where
the study authors were focused on.  It’s the era of plastic production. In these layers, the study authors found plastic
fibers and fragments that were 1 millimeter or smaller in size.  They found more and more plastic particles
as the years went on, doubling every 15 years.  That rate is nearly identical to the rate
of global plastic production.  Ss soon as you see a layer of microplastic
you pass the 1950’s and that's the legacy of our generation. This is Laurent Lebreton—he works at the
Ocean Cleanup, and led the study of the objects in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And this will be there forever. We know that.  The sea sediment study looked at microplastics—particles
smaller than 5 millimeters. These either come from clothing fibers, or
they are the result of larger plastics breaking down.  We’ve found these tiny particles floating
throughout the ocean, And even in the guts of the ocean’s tiniest creatures, like plankton. But the sediment study shows that 
some of our plastic is likely hiding, buried in the sea floor, too. But here’s another clue: This is a plastic
bag, captured 2,500 meters below the surface of the Arctic deep sea. It’s one of over 2,100 photographs taken
with this deep sea camera.  Part of the work that we're doing is to look
at the impact of climate change in the Arctic. We use towed camera surveys to look at the
impact on large animals like starfish and snails, sponges. And while I was doing these surveys, I saw
that more and more plastic debris was on the sea floor. Melanie Bergmann’s research shows that large
plastic objects don’t just float on the surface or degrade into microplastic — some
of them sink without breaking down.  One study found that about 50% of plastic
in landfills is more dense than seawater, which means these objects could sink on their
own. But even those other 50 percent may actually
travel to the sea floor with time, because what we see is that the debris which is floating
on the ocean surface becomes colonized with biota over time… barnacles, mussels, all
sorts of different organisms… then it becomes heavier and heavier and at certain at a certain
point and then starts to sink. Bergmann’s research is difficult to replicate
throughout the ocean, because of the challenge of surveying the deep sea environments. But it suggests that some of that missing
plastic might be sitting on the seafloor, intact. Another clue complicates the mystery, though:
this plastic crate, from Taiwan. It’s one of the objects excavated during
that harvest in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And what struck researchers was its production
date: 1971.  When they looked at the production dates of
other objects, they saw a trend: a lot of it was old trash. This was a new lead: because if the majority
of plastic pollution degraded into microplastic or fell to the ocean floor, then what you’d
see in garbage patches would be new plastic. And that changed the story...the plastic that
is accumulated at the surface of the ocean is actually very persistent. The plastic we find in subtropical oceans
may actually be there for decades, if not centuries. It turns out the new plastic is far closer
than the open ocean or the bottom of the deep sea. Lebreton’s research found that plastic objects
on coastlines have more recent production dates than plastic in the open ocean.  This clue led scientists to think a lot of
debris actually stays close to shorelines around the world—hidden in plain sight.  Some of that will end up in the middle of
the ocean and garbage patch, but actually a lot of it stays fairly near shore and hop
from beach to beach to beach.  Erik Van Sebille is an oceanographer, and
is building an ocean model that predicts where our missing plastic ends up.  The completed model will be finished in 2022,
but in the meantime he and his team publish initial results to a Twitter feed. We use simulations of the ocean currents and
they're a bit like weather models for the ocean. So they tell us how the currents are moving
stuff around. And then we put in virtual plastic… And then we move that plastic with the ocean
flow. At the same time the plastic and fragment,
it can degrade, organisms start growing on it that weighs down the plastic so that it
slowly starts to sink into the deeper ocean. So in that way, we're doing like this gigantic
simulation of all of the ocean, of all the plastic moving around.  Van Sebille thinks that a majority of plastic
pollution is within 100 miles of shorelines,  continually getting washed back up on beaches,
down coastlines, or up and down to the sea floor. If the plastic continuously goes back and
forth between the coastline and offshore, that's a lot of rubbing and fragmenting and
scraping over the sand. This commotion helps explain the presence
of microplastics in sediments and animal guts, too. Laurent’s organization is working on cleaning
up the garbage patches in the middle of the ocean. But that won’t do much for the other 99%
of our plastic: The microplastics becoming part of our food web and geologic record. The larger debris sinking to the bottom of
the ocean. And, more likely than not, getting washed
up on beaches.  Like this one, where I recently visited, where
I found a mix of micro and larger plastics.  But knowing where plastics end up can help
us keep this plastic heap from growing.  These photos were taken by volunteers at an
annual, international coastal clean-up event, organized by the Ocean Conservancy.  Where people volunteer to pick up plastic
on beaches near them.  The most common objects they find are food
wrappers.  Cigarette butts.  Plastic bottle caps
And plastic cups and plates.  The easiest way to get plastic like this out
of the ocean, is to prevent it from entering in the first place. With better recycling programs. Or producing and using less plastic altogether.  There are nearly 400,000 miles of coastline
around the world, not all of it accessible for people.  But, knowing that most of our plastic pollution
hangs out along shorelines before it becomes microplastics or floats out to the open sea,
means beach clean-ups can go a long way in preventing further damage. So if you see plastic pollution on a beach—all
the more reason to pick it up. worked there you go hi there this is chip davis i'm in nebraska right now it's like 65 degrees not a cloud in the sky i got all my windows open today chip is most well known for his musical group mannheim steamroller which has made dozens of chart-topping christmas albums but in the 1970s he was known for something completely different chip was right out of college living in nebraska and writing commercial jingles for an advertising agency my clients they were like black and decker drills and greyhound bus and continental and i wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 jingles and he wasn't that plugged into the world of pop music i didn't really know what some of the styles were i remember the first time i got asked to write some r b i didn't even know what r b stood for i thought that was a restaurant in downtown omaha when i was with the ad agency i said all right any type of music but don't ask me direct country because i don't know anything about it this is where things get interesting by 1976 his country song was number one on the billboard charts like holy cow how'd that happen this song is what happened this here's a rubber duck you got a copy on me big fan come on this is convoy a song chip davis produced with his writing partner bill freeze a creative director at the ad agency he worked for its lyrics captured a fictional conversation between two truck drivers across cb radio and it was wildly popular probably the largest record that i created it was the number one song in the us and canada and charted across europe it was so huge that hollywood made an entire film based on it i mean it was it was a big deal it's a strange song to listen to 45 years later to many its lyrics might not even make sense what's a bear in the air or a suicide jockey why is he called rubber duck but this song is a time capsule from a brief era when truck drivers were full heroes and the country music that soundtracked their lives topped the charts this is the story of trucker country country music has always dealt with sort of issues of wanderlust and travel that's nate gibson he's a country music scholar those sort of played out in the in the 30s and 40s through imagery of the western frontier cowboy imagery and train songs there have always been labor songs about american occupational heroes we we have lumbermen railroad men [Music] but as travel and work shifted to roads and automobiles so did the characters country music focused on truck drivers became country's new folk heroes the first trucker hit in 1939 was cliff brunner doing truck drivers blues [Music] throughout the 40s there are scattered remnants of truck songs that sort of cut through the masses but things changed dramatically in 1956 when president eisenhower unveiled a plan to revamp the interstate highway system this is the american dream of freedom on wheels an automotive age traveling on time-saving super highways these interconnected highways allowed people to travel long distances more easily and it created thousands of new jobs especially in the long-haul trucking industry and with that a new market for country music opened up truckers spent the majority of their day and night staring down an open highway it was a lonely profession and often the only entertainment they had was the music at roadside cafes when you went to a truck stop you could always play songs on the jukebox and the music on the radio it's important to know they're really two major types of radio stations in the united states at in the 1960s and 70s that's travis steimling he's a country music scholar there are am stations that can only broadcast during the daytime and then their am stations that can broadcast overnight these nighttime stations were really unique because they had such little signal interference they could travel much longer distances than your typical radio range they would cater often to the truck drivers who were on the road uh you know all night long and they would play these songs songs about having pride and being a trucker or these weepers about being away from your family and really just all sorts of country music there's a flame farmer you have six days on the road a massive hit by dave dudley my home towns are coming in if you think i'm a happy you're right six days on the road and am i gonna make it home tonight it draws a lot of what we call the bakersfield sound and this is really twangy country music with electric instruments telecaster guitars lots of high frequency sounds sharp attacks on the notes it's the kind of music that could keep you awake if you were driving a long-haul trip across the country six days on the road climbed to number two on the country charts right alongside johnny cash's classic ring of fire and buck owens act naturally and it kicked off what many music scholars consider the golden age of trucker country music six days i would consider the golden age of trucker country between 1963 and 1966 not only were individual artists releasing singles and albums but record labels were making compilation albums centered around the trucking theme especially star day records they put out their first trucker specific album in 1963 and it sold so well that every artist who came into the studio after that they would say hey this session's great but can you add a country music song about truck driving to that this time period saw the release of classic trucker songs like tombstone every mile if they buried all the truckers lost in them woods there'd be a tombstone every mile roll truck roll [Music] tons of steel and if you were paying attention to the lyrics you might have noticed something many of these songs were real downers red sovine this guy was an artist known for dialing up the sadness factor to attend they called him the syrup sopper because he was promoted by a syrup company on the hayride but also his songs were so syrupy and sad and he did these recitations about finding his long lost son on the highway and he lost track of him that's the story line of his first big trucker hit giddyup go we got to talking shop and i said how'd you come by the name on your truck giddy up go [Music] well he said i got it from my pop and then the next song there's a school bus in the middle of the road and a trucker drives off a cliff to avoid hitting the school bus full of children on its side well joe lost control went into his skin and gave his life to save that bunch of kids and there at that crossroads was the end of a line for big joe and phantom 309 there's something about like the the cab of a truck being almost a safe place to express yourself and these songs just hit every possible raw nerve truckers weren't totally alone in their cabs though they had another special form of radio where they could connect with each other the cb citizens ban radio was a form of short-range radio that was adopted by truck drivers as their industry grew in the 1960s it was like a pre-internet public chat room with its own insider lingo for example you didn't go by your own name but a made-up handle my dad had a handle he was known as the pumper because he worked in the oil rigs pumped oil my godfather was known as michelob because that was his favorite beer in this book the big dummy's guide to cb radio the author explains that truckers use the cb to communicate important things like traffic good places to eat and where to park their rig at night citizen band radio was the great connector along u.s highways but in 1973 truckers harnessed the cb in a way they hadn't before and in doing so became an inspiration for a new era of trucker country music the oil producing countries of the arab world decided to use their oil as a political weapon the oil ban will continue against the united states and the netherlands because of their strong support of israel in 1973 war broke out between israel and a coalition of arab countries and after the u.s provided military support to israel arab countries retaliated by holding back oil supplies the president said that all will have to cooperate everybody is to have to do some sacrificing the resulting oil shortage affected nearly every aspect of american life but it was truck drivers who were really hit hard nixon signed a federal law lowering all national highway speed limits to 55 miles per hour it is now essential that we have mandatory and full compliance with this important step on a nationwide basis having had enough truckers devised a plan to protest on the highways they am asked convoys of semi-trucks which caused traffic jams that went on for miles and shut down some interstates completely the protective convoy was to move at 50 miles an hour with 500 feet between trucks and a five-car police escort the fact that so many truckers managed to come together was a feat on its own and they pulled this off all thanks to the cb radio my riding partner bill had a cb radio he was listening on this cb radio to all of this stuff going on with the truckers going down interstate 80 and he said man it sounds like a war going on there fascinated by the lingo bill and chips started to form an idea we went about you know listening to it and like thought that's a song i bet we could turn that into something i started it with the military drum kings breaker breaker there one night this here's a rubber duck you got a copy on me big fan come on that's phil he adopted the stage name cw mccall you want to put that microbus in behind that suicide jockey yeah he's home dynamite and he needs all the help he can hear and if you don't know what that is the next line tells you that guy's hauling dynamite a suicide jockey somebody's hauling explosives or something that if you were in an accident the accident wouldn't kill you the explosion would that's the thing about these stories the way bill wrote the lyrics was that they're so engaging you could really picture it convoys struck a nerve and it topped the charts in 1976. it also inspired dozens of more songs that use the cb radio as a storytelling device [Music] in the 70s you sort of establish your authenticity and your credibility in song by being able to rattle off the cb lingo a year after convoy was released none other than the syrup sopper himself released what is now considered one of the saddest country music songs ever and he used the cb radio to tell it the old cb was blaring away on channel one nine when there came a little boy's voice on the radio line it's about a kid who's bound to a wheelchair his dad was a truck driver but he died that had a wreck about a month ago he was trying to get home in a blind and snow and so he inherited his dad's cb and talks to other truckers spoiler alert all the truckers take the off ramp into his community and give him rides in the trucks this is this weeper of a song and every time i listen to it i just bawl like a baby the cb becomes the the mechanism through which the story's told country music and really all pop music is always looking for a gimmick and and the cb i think provided a good one uh for a few years convoy was a song that pushed trucker and cb radio culture into the mainstream but it wasn't something totally new it tapped into a long history of songs about working class life i think trucker country represents a concerted effort on the part of some songwriters to capture the emotional experience of people who are doing a working-class job and that's something that goes way back into kind of the deep roots of american folk [Music] music [Music] you This strip, in Cape Town,
South Africa,  divides the beachside community of Strand
from the township of Nomzamo. They're only a few meters apart. But the
people on each side live very different lives.  Strand has backyards and driveways. Nomzamo is much more dense. And the people here
have fewer basic services: Less piped water. Less internet access. And Nomzamo is majority Black, 
while the area across the line is majority white. If we use dots on a map to represent race,
you can see how stark that divide is.  If we zoom out to the whole city,
we can see it's actually everywhere. And this is the case
across much of South Africa. The color of your skin here
often determines where you live. It also determines
your quality of life. This map shows where jobs and opportunities 
are primarily concentrated in Cape Town. And this is where most of
the city's Black people live, in informal settlements called "townships"
on the city's periphery. "People have to move by public transport
for up to three hours a day, and they can't take care of
their obligations in the community, with the rest of their family,
because they're always working and they're always traveling." For decades, South Africa
was under apartheid: a system that wrote
segregation into law. A white minority controlled where
non-white people could live, work, exist.  Many were forced out of their homes. In 1994, a democratically elected government
took power, and ended apartheid.   It was supposed to be a new beginning. But a lot of the country still looks like this.  And that's because South Africa's legacy 
of racial division goes back centuries. In the 1600s, the Dutch took over
the southern tip of Africa, to supply ships with food
along the trade route to Asia. 150 years later, Britain seized it,
and named it "Cape Colony."  Many Dutch colonists
moved here, further inland, to escape British rule and
continue exploiting enslaved people. Just like the Dutch, the British used Cape Colony
as a strategic location for trade; it wasn't economically significant. But in the 1870s, that changed, when
the British started mining diamonds there. Suddenly, Cape Colony was one of Britain's
most prized and exploited colonies. In order to get the diamonds
out of the country, they built railways, to connect the mines up here
to the coast. The railways allowed the British
to access a global diamond market through the port city of Cape Town. Soon, the economy of Cape Colony
was centered around the railroads. Especially this main route. The green areas on this map show 
the Black regions of Cape Colony, largely left out
of the railroad economy. Racial inequality in Cape Colony
was being reinforced by location. To keep it that way, the colonial government 
started writing segregation into law.  The Natives Land Act of 1913
pushed Black people into these areas: only eight percent of South Africa's land; and restricted them from
owning land everywhere else; or, relocated them to the edges of
the major cities, to work for white people.  These laws began to shape the region. Cape Town's growth from the increased trade 
turned the port town into a major city. Many migrants from the rest of the 
colony, and elsewhere, moved here, to what was then the
outskirts of Cape Town, where former enslaved people,
merchants, artists, and immigrants, were forming a neighborhood
called District Six.  As the city grew around District Six,
so did the neighborhood. For decades, District Six was
a thriving, integrated community. "We were a very cosmopolitan,
you could say family, almost. Because there were people
from all different nationalities, from all different walks of life." "This was the statement:
Your child is my child." But it wouldn't last. In 1934, Britain's legal hold in what was now
the Union of South Africa officially ended. The remaining white minority, the descendants
of Dutch colonists, took control. And they built on the foundation
the British were leaving behind. Between 1949 and 1971, the all-white government passed
148 laws solidifying apartheid. "Apartheid allowed for the
full realization of the ambition of the fascist project
in South Africa." In 1950, the Population Registration Act
officially classified people by race: white, colored, and native (or Black).
And eventually, Asian. Then they made laws saying
where people could live.  Around the country, Black South Africans
were moved into these areas, called homelands, or "bantustans." Bantustans were rural areas
and had underdeveloped economies. Many of them were in the areas Britain had
already excluded from the railway economy, and where Black land ownership
had been restricted to. Black people were forced
to carry "pass books," that specified where they
were allowed to work or travel to. In cities like Cape Town, the "Group Areas Act"
moved the remaining non-whites into separate urban areas. "The most prime land, and the land
closest to higher-valued property, was allocated to white people." In 1966, the government declared that
District Six was now a whites-only area.  The residents of District Six received
removal letters like this one, that said living there was illegal,
because they were not white. Bulldozers drove into District Six,
and razed it to the ground. "We lived here. We had a life here." "It was very traumatic for a lot of people." "It's like ripping out someone's heart." More than 60,000 people were
forcibly removed from their homes. This kind of violence against non-white people 
was commonplace around the country. But, after decades of pressure,
both from within South Africa and abroad, apartheid rule finally came to an end. The new government lifted restrictions
on where people could live. Millions of people, who had been excluded
from economic development for centuries, migrated to major cities, looking for
basic services and economic opportunity. "For any family with
no prospect of employment, the most rational, logical choice to make
is to migrate to an urban center." They settled where there was empty land, creating townships on the peripheries
of major cities like Cape Town. The government built millions of homes,
and expanded clean water and electricity. "But it had a number of unforeseen consequences,
the most important of which is that the only land that could be used for the public
housing program was on the periphery of the city. And for that reason, a brilliant intention
to overcome the apartheid legacy unintentionally reproduced the very
same legacy it was trying to undo." Today, 60% of the mostly Black
population of Cape Town lives in these townships
at the edge of the city. The thing is, Cape Town's City Center 
has land to develop. But because of its location, it's valuable, so it usually gets sold to private
developers, who build luxury apartments.  Nearly a billion dollars worth of them
are going up by the coast. But, right in the heart of Cape Town,
by all the expensive developments, District Six remains largely untouched. The former residents have fought
against private development, and they've actually succeeded. Some have even managed to return
to houses built by the city.  "I wanted to come back here,
where I was born, which was part of
our family's heritage." "I couldn't believe that I was back. It was a sense of relief." But there are still hundreds of claimants
waiting to get back to District Six. "We haven't done the difficult
and the painful work to confront what the
intergenerational consequences are of colonialism. Of apartheid." The story of Cape Town and South Africa's
racial segregation starts far in the past. But it's very much entangled
with the present.  Apartheid and colonialism here are over. But many of the barriers they built
have yet to be dismantled. "The kind of psychic scars that's left 
on individuals and on communities. We haven't begun the work of saying, How do
we live together, in the face of that history?" The past year has been
and continues to be an incredibly stressful time
for just about everybody. But for a lot
of white Americans like me, it's also been a year of
recognizing just how much harder that stress is hitting
black and brown Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic
put a spotlight on the racial
disparities in health. In the U.S., the death rate
among black people is twice as high
compared to white people. Black Americans in particular are dying at double the rate
of their population. Most of the bus drivers
in the city of Chicago
are black. Most of the food service
workers are Latino. Those populations are struggling
hard in all of this. But the disproportionate effect
of this virus is just one part of a long list
of racial gaps in health. Would I be able to get
a subway map? African Americans
are at greater risk for developing
chronic diseases. Reporter: More than
75% of black Americans
have hypertension, compared with less than
50% of whites. And when we talk about
why those gaps exist, we often talk about
neighborhood, socioeconomics,
and medical treatments. But I'm wondering about
the experience of racism itself. <i> How does the stress
 of living with discrimination</i> <i> impact people's bodies?</i> Your age captures
how long you have lived. But if you're living
in a bad environment, your age is also capturing
how long you have been exposed <i> to bad environmental
 conditions</i> <i> and how physiologically
 deteriorated</i> you have become as a result
of that exposure. These microaggressions,
they accumulate over time. It's like a death by
a thousand tiny little cuts. <i> ( theme music playing )</i> So, I have this map. What I would love to do
is map out what life expectancy
looks like in New York, depending on your neighborhood. Okay. - That kind of works.
- Okay. So, we're gonna use green
for anything that is above the New York City
average of 81.2, and pink for anything
that is below. Okay, so what is
Washington Heights? 84.4. East Harlem is 77.9. 77.9 So, Upper East Side,
that's where we are right now. - 86.4.
- Okay. And this already is, like,
almost a ten-year difference. Yeah,
it's a stark difference. - Thank you.
- 86.3, Murray Hill. One thing I think is really
interesting with these numbers is, like,
if the Upper East Side
were its own country, it would be like
the second best place to live, for longevity in the world. But then look at this.
As you're clustered here - in East Harlem
  and Central Harlem...
- Yeah. ...is not a good place
in terms of life expectancy. Right, and people
in a majority white area are living almost
a decade longer than people in
a majority non-white area. Huge difference.
Can you explain why that is? Think about
the socio-economic
differences between these
two communities. - Yeah.
- That difference in income would affect access
to quality healthcare,
food, transportation. All of those
factors play a role
in life expectancy. Yeah. So, does socio-economic status
explain the whole picture? No. I may be stressed
for other reasons. You know,
I'm African-American, maybe I'm having stressors
in my workplace, or maybe I'm having stressors
finding a quality
health provider, or maybe I feel like
I'm being discriminated against. Whereas, you know,
someone that is not a minority in the same socio-economic
status may not have
those same stressors. So, in the U.S.,
your race plays a huge part in how long
you can expect to live. If you were Hispanic,
you can expect to live
to almost 82. Almost 79, if you are white. About 75, if you're black. That is a three-year
age difference between Hispanic people
and white people, and a four-year gap
between black people
and white people. So, even when you control
for education and income, even the health behaviors,
there's still a gap. I feel like
this all makes sense, it's just never something
easy for me to accept. So, those longevity counts don't really
explain the full story. So, if you look
at the percentage of people who report being in very good
or excellent health, among people who
self-identify as white and are also socially
assigned white, that number is 58%. What does it mean to be
socially assigned white? So, that just means people
perceive you as white. And for people who
self-identify and socially
categorized as Hispanic, the number is 47%. So, despite longer
life expectancy, fewer Hispanics report
being in good health. That difference right there
is the health gap. But if we look at people
who self-identify as Hispanic who pass as white,
their health outcomes are almost on par
with white people. And we see that same effect
for Native Americans. Those who pass as white
have health outcomes that are almost on par
with white people. And that difference
is even more drastic for people
who are mixed race. So, if you are mixed race
but you are perceived as black, your health outcomes
wind up being much worse. My biggest takeaway
from this is just how
proximity to whiteness means that you're
gonna be better off. So that means that
if they go to the hospital or they're consulting
with some kind of
health professional, they will probably
get better treatment. It's fascinating,
the way whiteness works when it comes
to health outcomes. It's like regardless
of your background, the way that you're seen
when you walk into a hospital or you're walking
down the street, that's what makes
the biggest difference. Right. This plays out
for me personally. I generally try
to avoid having to go
to the emergency room because I'm just
always afraid about, again,
how I'm gonna be perceived. Yeah, I never really
thought about how my race personally affected me
as I, you know, walk into a hospital room,
for example. My absence of understanding, my absence of knowledge
is the point. That shows something about,
um, the privilege of ignorance and of unawareness
of these things that
I've been able to have. But discrimination varies
from place to place, and that led me to this. In 2015, a team of researchers
led by this professor named David Chae
looked at the proportion of Google searches
across America - that used the "N" word.
- What? Okay. Specifically the "N" word
ending in "E-R" or "E-R-S." So that it gets rid
of any music lyrics,
things like that. - Absolutely.
- It's not a perfect
  measure of racism, but it kind of provides,
like, a good proxy measure of, like, the people
who are more likely to do that are more likely to have
a negative racial sentiment. So what they found is
for every one unit increase of area racism
in each media market, that corresponded
with a 5.7% increase in black mortality. - Racism kills.
- Right. This is the first time
I'm hearing of racism being
quantified in this way. This is, like,
really interesting. These three different studies
seem to show that interpersonal racism
might be this overlooked factor in negative health outcomes
in this country. When someone says something
racist to you, it's a comment that goes
to the core of your being. Like, I cannot change
the pigment of my skin,
and it makes sense that with every single incident
that you have to deal with, with every racist encounter, like, it's taking years
off your life. That's crazy. Not to mention that
the perpetrators of those treatments
get to forget about it. Truly forget! Yes. And, you know, the people
on the receiving end of that treatment
don't get that privilege. Yeah. All right. We're about to call
David Williams. He's a professor at Harvard
who studies the relationship between race, racism,
and our health. - Let's give him a call.
- ( Skype chiming ) Hi, Dr. Williams.
How's it going? I am doing well.
How are you? Pretty good. How does discrimination
influence people's health? So, we have known
for a long time that stressful life experiences
adversely affect health. And over the last
25 years or so, we have expanded
the types of stressful
life experiences that we study
to include experiences
of discrimination, little indignities
that seem to chip away at the well-being of individuals
on a day to day basis. What we've found
is persons who score high on experiences
of discrimination, they're more likely
to get diabetes, breast cancer, heart disease. And the cumulative impact
of the psycho-social stress and the economic stress
and the discrimination leads to physiological
deterioration, to weathering. They are literally
aging more rapidly than the rest of the population
in the United States. And how specifically
does the anticipation of a racist encounter impact
the health of people of color? Often, people are taking steps
before they even leave home to minimize the occurrence
of these experiences. And I'll be honest with you,
I feel physiologically my blood pressure goes up
any time I see a police car
driving behind me. And I've had good experiences
with the police, but I've had bad experiences
with the police. And it's that reality,
that threat, um, has a physiological
cost for me. And how does discrimination
affect people from one
generation to the next? There are studies of survivors
of the Holocaust that document changes
in gene expression that puts those persons
who had the experience at higher risk
of mental health problems,
such as PTSD. And that epigenetic change is evident also
in their offspring. We haven't done that work yet
in studies of discrimination, but women who report
everyday discrimination while they are pregnant
are more likely to give birth to lower birth weight infants. But after the child is born, there are a number of studies
that find experiences of discrimination by the father
or by the mother has negative effects
on the development of the child. And if we wanted to measure
the weathering effect over a lifetime,
how do we do that? Looking at allostatic load
is one way you can get a handle on that. What exactly
is the allostatic load? Christophe: You can think
of allostatic load like a measure
of all of the wear and tear on the body accumulated
over a lifetime. So, in a way,
allostatic load gives us
a proxy measure of aging. Now, to be clear,
some degree of stress is good, but it's when
stress becomes chronic that we start to see
really serious impacts
on our health. Lee: And that's
what we've got here. Christophe:
That's what we got here. So we've built out this chart
with some of the best data that we can find out there
about the racial stress gap. - Should we get started?
- Let's do it. - Okay.
- Show me how it's done. So, on this chart, red lines are gonna
be white respondents, blue is black respondents
in this study. - You want me to hold this?
- You slap the magnet down. - Okay. Okay.
- And I'm gonna pull this. - So, what's five mean?
- Five is a very high
  allostatic load. After four, that's
when we really start to see - differences in
  mortality rates.
- Wow. Okay. So, it's 1.1
for white respondents versus 1.6
for black respondents. - This is the group
  that we're in.
- Yeah. ( groans ) Wow, that one's
really stretched. So now, the average
white respondent has 1.8, compared to the average
black respondent at 2.2. Just exposed to more stressors
as a black person. I mean, that's just what
the numbers are pointing to. The most anxious I feel
is walking home at night walking into my building. Not to be that guy,
but as far as I know, I'm the only black person
that lives in my building. I've had people ask me
when I come home with groceries if I'm making a delivery
on one of these floors. - I hate that part of the day.
- That's stress. For what it's worth,
these numbers have been adjusted for
socio-economic status, so the difference
that we're seeing here is more or less
a racial difference. So, what happens
around 35 to 44? - 35 to 44?
- The age my siblings are. - Really?
- Yeah. - Now we're at the end here.
- Now we're at the end. These are my folks. White respondents had
an allostatic load of 4, black respondents had
an allostatic load of 4.8. - Jeez.
- I mean, this to me is the most striking
part of this data, is the fact that
black respondents were aging a full decade faster
than the white respondents. Yeah, this is crazy. It also makes me
want to call my parents and apologize for being such
an asshole when I was a kid. - For causing them stress?
- Yeah, exactly. Like, they had enough
to deal with. I feel like I could've been
a slightly better son to them. Yeah? Throughout
this entire series, we've looked at
implicit biases and AI, and disparities in
education and housing. To me, the end result
of all of those things
is this chart. It's the fact that the stress
of living in America is so, so different
depending on your race. Outside of getting this
very cryptic look at my future, is there something I can do
to not end up here when I'm 60? I think that's the tough part
about this whole episode, right? Like, how do we even start
to talk about solutions to health disparities that come from such
structural inequalities? I feel like the first step
is talking about it. I have been in touch with
this group in Philadelphia called Black Men Heal
that pairs black men
with free therapy. So we could
go talk to them. We should definitely
go talk to them. - Hello?
- Hey. - How's it going?
- Hey, Christophe. It's nice to meet you guys. - Nice to meet you.
- Christophe. - I'm Lee.
- Hey, Lee. - Nice to see you.
- Not too much. - Thank you for coming.
- Thanks for having us. I'm Tasnim Sulaiman. I'm the founder
of Black Men Heal, a non-profit for men of color to be able to receive
quality mental health care. I found in the research
that black men are more likely to listen
and be impacted by men within the same
age category as them
and who look like them. What feel like some of
the biggest reasons right now that people are coming in
and seeking help? Because of COVID, people
are quarantined by themselves.
It's a lot of job loss. It's a lot of grief for people
that have died from COVID, along with the racial uprisings
around George Floyd's death. So, those issues
have increased a lot more. Our young men of color
are at war every day. With this year, that war
has been put on the front page over and over again, so they're experiencing
heightened anxiety. So many guys were applying, so we had to think
of something virtually to do. So we started hosting
a segment based on the different things
that were going on
in our country. You know,
police brutality, grief. Even for me, I-- Taj:
It's good, bro. Like, I lost
a dear friend on Friday. And that Sunday,
we talked about the pain of losing somebody
and what it means, and the fulfillment
and the value and the respect that I got was other people
in the room was having
the same thoughts or the same pain,
and they found out
they weren't alone. You know, and I was talking
to Taj before this, like, do men really know
how to cry? - Mm-hmm.
- Because we've been told
  so many different times that, "Yo, just suck it up.
Don't show no tears." For me, there's a sense
of a release. How are you all going
about arming these men with the language to articulate
what they're going through in a world
that takes advantage of you, especially when
you're a black male and you
present that vulnerability? One man being willing
to step into a space
of vulnerability, it's like putting
your hand out and inviting
another man to come in. I think vulnerability
is like the new sexy. Like, I think that's
a very powerful bond. Thank you, Taz, for saying
vulnerability is sexy. - Yes. It's the new sexy.
- I feel good about it. - ( laughter )
- I'm bringing sexy back. But, um, that transparency,
it is such a tough thing, you know, growing up
having to put on a certain
facade, a certain image. And I think about
Black Men Heal, even the pairing up
with a therapist of color, somebody that you can
actually identify with-- 'cause if you go see somebody,
let's say, that's not black, I know for me,
I'm already stereotyping
what you think of me, so there is a fear right there. And to be able to see
a therapist of color gives you the freedom
to open up. I actually have
a question for you. - Oh, yeah?
- Have you ever taken
  into consideration race of the therapist
and been like, "I don't feel
comfortable talking to you
because you're not--" No, I mean, I think
that's something that I have the privilege
of not thinking about
a lot of the time. When I do go to the doctor
or other health services, those are not crossing my mind. I know a lot of times
we talk about the systematic
racism and, you know, the black community is like,
"Why don't you understand?" What we have to realize,
there's a reason why somebody
might not understand, 'cause they don't see
through that same lens. You mentioned that there
are people as young as 18 and as old as 85
coming to Black Men Heal. When you compare people
from generations so far apart, what similarities
and differences do you see in the things that
they're struggling with? - Tons of similarities.
- More similarities than-- Taj: Yeah, and that's the hope
and the inspiration right there, because you may hear
an older gentleman talk about a scenario or a situation
that he's gone through, but you're in it right now. And so that lets you know, "Hey, if he got through it,
I'ma get through it as well." Black Men Heal saved my life, and it saved me
from my own self. It's the tools that I've learned
through Black Men Heal that kept me stable,
that kept me grounded. When I first started
reporting this story, I felt shocked to see
that interpersonal racism <i> and the consequences of being
 on the receiving end of it</i> <i> could be measured
 in this way,</i> <i> and I felt curious
 to understand it better.</i> But there's one thing
that Dr. Williams told me that I can't stop
thinking about. Williams: I think
for many white persons in the United States,
it is a surprise. But for many persons of color, it's not a surprise. But for some,
it is a powerful affirmation that the experiences
we have had, um, are real, and they actually
can be studied. Whether you feel surprised
or validated by this research is going to depend
on what you've experienced
in your own lifetime. I can quote, like, verbatim racist incidents
that took place about,
like, 10 years ago. And so hearing that there's
research around this just makes me feel--
I feel relieved. Because it's like, great,
we're talking about this. These numbers are out there. Christophe:<i>
 Racism created
 the racial health gap,</i> <i> but anti-racism
 can help close it.</i> <i> That work, the work that falls
 on each one of us every day,</i> <i> is a matter
 of public health.</i> We tend to put ourselves
in the shoes of someone who belongs to the same
racial group that we're in. <i> One of the challenges we face</i> <i>is how do we tell the stories
of disadvantaged populations--</i> <i> the discrimination,
 the stress,</i> <i> the lower income,
 and poverty.</i> <i> They're living
 in poor neighborhoods.</i> <i> How can we tell those stories
 in ways that connect</i> <i> with the average American</i> <i> so that they feel empathy
 and then motivated</i> <i>to support policy interventions
 to address it?</i> Oh, no, we messed it up.
Oh, no! - ( laughs )
- Carrie, did that hit you? - Carrie: No.
- Thank God. So, if you're Hispanic,
you can-- Why is that one smoking? Oh! Where am I? Okay, well,
this is embarrassing. Yo! Hi. Thanks
for meeting me here. This is your high school? - This is my high school.
- What, uh-- Murry Bergtraum High School
for Business Careers. As you can see,
we're directly next to-- - Across from the Tombs.
- Yeah, surrounded
  by One Police Plaza. So, Bergtraum is viewed
as one of the worst schools
in the city. Like, I had to kind of join
an elite group within this
high school to stay afloat. I just felt like
most of the time,
I was trying to survive. Our meritocracy,
because it's based
on competition, worships superiority
rather than excellence. Certain people get to start
way farther ahead. Fabiola: I feel like for so much
of my education and childhood, it was just like,
studying hard for tests
specifically to prove that I'm good enough
through tests. <i> Education is supposed
 to be an equalizer.</i> <i> It is built
 on the meritocratic belief</i> <i> that effort and ability
 are the keys to success.</i> <i>But is that really all it takes
 to be successful in school?</i> <i> What about opportunity
 and access?</i> This false notion
of a meritocracy has furthered the interests of those of great wealth
in this country and those of
great political power. So, why are we here? I'm on a quest to figure out
why the meritocratic beliefs that the American dream
is built on don't really work
for people who look like us. And so I want to figure out
how we got here and what we will do about it. <i> ( theme music playing )</i> "Halls of hell at New York's
worst high school." This is a headline
about my high school,
published in March 2012. This headline is super dramatic. - Just a little dramatic.
- ( Fabiola chuckles ) How did you end up
at Murry Bergtraum
in the first place? So, I had a pretty high
GPA in middle school. It was a selective middle school
that I had to test to get into. Uh, but in New York City,
you basically rank what high schools
you'd be interested in going to, and not a single school
selected me. I got a call instead from,
like, the Department of Ed saying, "Hey, you gotta go
to second round." And that's something
you don't want to do, 'cause second round,
what they did was they handed you a list
of high schools and said, "These are the places
that have room." And when you look at that list,
it's basically a list of schools that were considered
failing schools, schools that were
plagued by violence, just under-resourced. And so I looked
at the list and was like, "I'm gonna make a choice based
off of what's less bad." That's crazy, though.
That's, like, med school. - It's-- it's bad.
- You shouldn't have
  to match for high school. - Yeah, it's bad.
- Christophe: Or middle school. I mean, the idea of
in elementary school having to test into
a competitive middle school - was completely not
  on my radar at the time.
- Fabiola: Exactly. So, the reason
why I have you here today is because
I'm exploring this question
is meritocracy a myth? Here we have a game
called Rigged, and I think this
can help us illustrate whether it's just
ability and effort that allows you
to get successful. The object of the game is to get to Glad You Asked University. Look how beautiful that is. There are two different sides
to the board game. So, we have Pleasantville
on that end and then we have
Smallville over here. So, I'm going to
have you pull a card to determine essentially
what your fate is. - Are you guys ready to play?
- I'm ready. All right.
My card says, "Home. You come from a two-parent
middle class household. Action: Move two steps
forward at Pleasantville." "Your mom
is a food service worker
and your dad is cab driver. Go start at Smallville." "You come from
a low-income household, and I start from
the start at Smallville." Both of my parents
are lawyers, and guess how far
I get to move on this path. I get to move five steps
forward at Pleasantville. One, two, three, four, five. "You've been selected
for the honor roll.
Advance three steps." - So, you got an opportunity.
- Opportunity! "You have won a scholarship
for being athlete of the year." - You gotta be kidding me.
- ( laughter ) "You did not go to pre-K.
Pay $15,000 and skip a turn." Bill de Blasio, where you at? I'm already almost cooked. "Serendipity.
Your teacher recommends you for a gifted and talented
program that you test into. Collect $10,000." "You inherit $40,000
from your distant uncle. Take the next ladder."
Oh, my God. I'm enjoying this ride. I can tell who
designed this game. "Your big brother was shot." - Whoa.
- Wow. Jesus. "You miss two weeks
of school for bereavement. Pay the bank $10,000." - Jeez.
- That's intense. - Yeah.
- "You can't do your homework because the wifi is out.
Pay $5,000." - That's hard.
- I have done stories on that. - Yeah.
- Mm-hmm. "You start to doubt
your abilities as a student
in middle school so you begin to act out.
Take the next detour." - So, you just gotta--
- Nothing's working out. You know, I mean,
this is what happens
when you're watching your kid siblings at night
and your mom's missing work. - And you're tired when you
  get to school, you know?
- Yeah. I mean, you talk back
to your teachers, and then you can't escape
ol' Smallville. - All right.
- Fabiola's about to win. - She really is.
- Two steps. Wow! I think you guys
need to clap for me. Thank you so much. So, is this game fair? - Do you think this was fair?
- Obviously not. - Obviously not.
- Why not? - Because we lost.
- ( laughter ) Clearly. Uh, no.
I mean, just by the fact that certain people get
to start way farther ahead
means that it can't be fair. Our positions are also exactly
following our family wealth. You can't escape
your neighborhood, like,
no matter what you do. The odds are just
stacked against you. This is incredibly frustrating. So, my question is
why is America so
obsessed with merit? Why is it such a huge part
of our country's fabric? <i> The concept of a meritocracy
 goes back centuries.</i> <i> However, it took off
 in America in the 1950s</i> <i> due to dissatisfaction
 with an inept</i> <i> yet excessively wealthy
 aristocracy.</i> <i> In a quest
 to diversity the elite</i> <i> and increase social mobility
 for the working class,</i> <i> a group of reformers
 came together and decided</i> <i> that society must offer
 enough opportunity</i> <i> for talent to combine
 with effort</i> <i> so that anyone
 could rise to the top.</i> <i> However, 1950s America
 was consumed by racism
 and segregation.</i> <i> Black and Native American
 children were not taught
 with white children,</i> <i> often had less access
 to resources,</i> <i> and were schooled
 in sub-standard buildings.</i> <i> Nevertheless,
the term meritocracy took hold,</i> <i> and society embraced merit
 as the key way to unlocking
 the American dream.</i> So, what is your reaction
just off the bat? You know, if you have
a connection between race and class,
let's say, and you exacerbate
economic inequality, you're gonna harm
people of color, even if you also benefit some people of color
whom you admit. Unless you're either
super talented or super lucky, if you're outside of the elite, probably hard work
is not gonna be enough. The new meritocrats,
who had themselves
gotten ahead by being good in school
and good at tests, had an almost unlimited appetite
for educating their children and incredible
capacity to do so. And so today's meritocrats,
they spend resources
on training their kids that nobody else
in society can match. If you go to the average
public school in America today, probably about $12,000
to $15,000 a year is spent on educating you
per child. If you go to one of the "Forbes"
top 20 private schools, probably about $75,000
is spent per child per year on educating kids. And so it's not just
poor people who can't keep up
with today's elite. - It's the middle class.
- As part of this journey, I've been trying to understand
why we rely on tests so much and what they're
actually measuring. Our meritocracy,
because it's based
on competition, worships superiority
rather than excellence. And so the way
in which they measure people's whatever,
"merit," is not neutral, particularly as between
white people and black people. If you have resources
to hire people whose job it is to teach your kids
how to do well at the tests, you know, they're gonna do
really well at the test. So it's not just a matter
of outputs, but also inputs. What chances did you have,
and importantly, will society commit
to giving everybody
meaningful opportunity? How many tests
do you think the average
American kid takes between grades K through 12? Well, I have a terrible memory,
but it makes sense to me that we probably took
maybe two a year. So, from pre-K to senior year,
it would've been 28? Ooh. Okay, good guess. But I regret to say
that it is not that. It's actually 112. - No way.
- Yeah. Test-taking
is a specific skill - that is not like anything
  else we do in our lives.
- Yeah. And I really question
how much it transfers to actual, like,
things you need to
succeed as an adult. So, I want to explore
the tests that
we took growing up. I feel like this one
gets overlooked because it's not mandatory. But G&T, gifted and talented,
are you familiar with that? I am. Yeah. I mean,
we didn't call it that
in Arizona, though. We had a program
in elementary school
called Project Potential. These names are so--
as I'm older, thinking about
these names, I'm like, they weren't trying to hide
what their motives were. - No. Yeah.
- Like, "This is what it is." The teacher would refer
certain students for testing, which in retrospect
gives a lot of power
to that teacher. Fabiola:<i>
 You're right.</i> <i> A 2016 study
 found that a teacher's race</i> <i> and racial bias
 consistently affected</i> <i> how they interpreted
 their students' behaviors
 or abilities</i> <i> and who they would recommend
 for a gifted program.</i> <i> Additionally, black students
 are more likely</i> <i> than their white peers
 to receive suspensions,</i> <i> be excluded
 for greater periods of time,</i> <i> and be disciplined
 for less serious offenses.</i> And we see the same kind of bias
in testing with the SHSAT. In New York City,
the SHSAT was the test
that you had to take in order to get into
a specialized high school. If you can't pass this test, sorry, you can't, like,
go to one of these top schools. So, Stuyvesant, New York City's
most selective public school, in 2019, out of a class
of almost 900 students, only seven black kids got in. <i> In 2019, the New York City
 Independent Budget Office</i> <i> simulated what offers
to the incoming 9th grade class</i> <i> would've looked like
 if admissions were based</i> <i> on students' ranking
 in the top seven percent
 of their middle school</i> <i> instead of their ranking
 on the SHSAT.</i> <i> The report found that
 about 19% of admissions offers</i> <i> would have gone
 to black students,</i> <i> and about 27 would have
 gone to Hispanic students,</i> <i> compared to the actual 4%
 and 6% respectively.</i> It seems like testing doesn't
happen in a bubble, right? It depends on how much money
your parents have. It depends on where you live. All of these things impact
what kinds of resources you're able to access inside
and outside of the classroom. I think the one that
hasn't really entered our
conversation yet is the SAT. Joss:
Ah, yes. Yeah, did you know that
the SAT was founded by a guy who supported
the eugenics movement? - No. That's deeply disturbing.
- Yeah, it's very disturbing. This is data straight
from College Board, which administers the SAT. In 2015, 1.7 million students
sat for the SAT. What stands out
probably the most is
for black test-takers, we see the lowest scores
across the board, and the lowest in writing. And it's not just how well
you prepare for this one test, but how well your
entire education has
prepared you for it, and we know that
the schools are not equal. For me,
I was fortunate enough through a program
called Legal Outreach to take an entire summer
of SAT prep course. Reflecting on
that opportunity, I was like,
"Wow, I had to apply, again, to get into that program." I may have a 95 GPA,
but these programs kind of helped me
understand how to play
the game of the system. So, how was the test for you? The test? I actually-- I think because of the prep,
I enjoyed taking the SAT. - With reading and writing,
  like, I did really well.
- You're a full nerd. - Yeah, I'm just, like,
  into that kind of thing.
- You enjoy testing. There is one specific story
that I want to get into that I think helped shape
my idea of ability and what it means to feel
special through the system. My sister Grace,
who's two years older than me, got into a program
in New York City
called Prep for Prep. That program
basically identifies
the high-achieving, low-income students
across the city and says, "We want to help
train these students by giving them extra
course work to prepare them for some of the best
private schools in America." So, Grace ended up
going to Exeter, then got into Princeton.
This is her Princeton diploma. Thank you, Grace,
for letting me have
this here today. My sister and I did very well. We are low-income kids,
grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and clearly meritocracy to
some extent has worked for us because we were able
to take advantage
of opportunities like Prep for Prep,
like Legal Outreach, like the Posse Foundation,
which by the way gave me a full tuition
scholarship to Dickenson. But I'm conflicted because
I'm the exception. Like, should I be up here
talking about this? Should I be talking
about my sister when
we are the exceptions? I wish that there
were a way to actually
level the playing field so that everyone gets help,
everyone gets opportunity. - Fabiola: Hey, sis.
- Hey, sister. - What's going on?
- Nothing much. Just calling you as I work
through this episode. Thank you again for letting
me use your diplomas. As I'm working on this episode, I'm conflicted, right?
Because it's worked out for us. It's helped a lot of people
in our family, but at the same time,
meritocracy has kept
a lot of people back. Poor people,
black and brown people, they're still
not getting ahead. Yeah, that's something
I think about as well. Our accomplishments
are definitely celebrated, but at the same time,
they're weaponized and used against
people who look like us
to pretty much say, "If they can do it,
why can't you do the same? But they're forgetting
the fact that ultimately we always just had to do
way more with a lot less. So, there's actually
an organization, they're called
the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, and they've been working
to level the playing field. They've been giving students
more opportunities because they realize
that it's just not fair, so I want to try
and talk to them. I'm gonna reach out and see if they can help me
wrap my mind around this. Cool, cool.
Let me know how it goes, sis. I will, thank you. Bye. Man: You see our college
pendants up on the ceiling, which is the universities
and colleges where our
young people are studying. And, you know,
it inspires the next generation
that comes in to see, you know,
what are opportunities. We take them on
college tours as well, but this is
just a daily reminder. And are the students bringing
these back themselves? Yeah, they're always proud,
especially if they're the first to go to a school,
to put it up. Fabiola: Okay. Previously, we were
looking at SAT results and we saw
that black students
did not as well as their white
and Asian counterparts. What's your response to that, and also would you
call that an achievement gap? I think there's a fundamental
access gap in the country. It's not an achievement gap. You can't have a country that has 13 generations
of slavery, when it was illegal
to read and write, four generations
of segregation, when the system
was by law unequal, and two generations
of legal freedom, and expect
the playing field to be equal. Until we create
a true equal playing field, you will not have
equal achievement. And we have to look
at access and opportunity. Those are the key
inflection points, and I think that's what
we have to talk about if we really want
an equitable society. When I was in eighth grade, I entered a program
called Legal Outreach. But I had to, like,
show what my grades were, and you couldn't have
below a certain average
to be in the program. Can you talk about
this idea of cherry-picking, and do you have the same
kind of philosophy at Bro/Sis? We do no sifting here. What we mean by that
is you can have any
grade point average and join the organization. I think the role of education
should be focused on the development
of the whole child. It's really
about wraparound support
for young people so that they are supported
and guided and loved, but that they also have
opportunities and access so that they can develop
their own agency in life. In thinking about
the public school system
right now in New York City, what is it gonna take
to make it a real meritocracy? New York City
has a public school system
that is a caste system, where you have elite schools,
good schools, mediocre schools,
and horrible schools. And where you go
depends on your zip code
or the access, either economic or cultural,
of your family. One of the reasons that
the public school system has been allowed
to flounder for so long is that it's overwhelmingly
serving low-income
black and brown kids. We have students
in the New York City
Public School system still today who don't
have access to computers
and technology at home, who don't have access
to wifi at home. The school system has not
been able to provide that, so we at Brotherhood/Sister Sol
have provided that for
all of our young people. So, COVID is just
accentuating all of these existing realities
that were already here, and you see it
in the educational system,
you see it in the labor force, you see it in
the housing situation as well. The non-profit sector,
which is a huge sector
in New York, is expected to do the work
that government has abdicated. Really,
at the end of the day,
we have to change the entire narrative
of what is acceptable
in this country, what true opportunity, equity,
and justice looks like. Fabiola:<i> It is clear
 that meritocracy is a myth.</i> <i> And it's a dangerous one,</i> <i> because it
 legitimizes inequality.</i> <i> Education was supposed to be
 the driving force</i> <i> behind social mobility
 and racial integration.</i> <i> It was supposed to help us all
 achieve the American dream.</i> But until America can give us
all an equal chance at success-- that includes
an equal starting point
and equal resources-- America can never be
a meritocracy. As long as we define merit according to the whims
of winners, we'll always fall short. What's always been missing
from the equation... <i> ...are opportunities</i> and social good. Take one, mark. ♪ There's no such thing as cold,
no such thing as cold ♪ - Oh, my God, I broke it.
- Oh, no. - I'm sorry.
- Can we have some glue? - You just collected.
- Lee: You just collected. You were supposed to pay.
You just robbed the bank. So, I grew up in a place
called McLean, Virginia,
right outside of D.C. But I, like, split
my childhood, basically. So we'll start with where
I first grew up, so I'm really excited
to show you guys this. - So this is my hometown.
- Wow, that's cool. <i> We were the only
 black family on the block.</i> <i> I was the only black kid
 in my grade.</i> <i> One of three
 black families in my school.</i> <i> And if we look, folks are in
 the 99th percentile</i> <i> who grew up here when
 it comes to average income.</i> <i> Less than 1%
 are incarcerated.</i> <i> We can look at teenage
 birth rate-- less than 1%.</i> Around high school,
my folks got divorced
and we moved into the city. <i> It's the exact opposite.</i> It wasn't till I got to D.C.
that I actually had a benchmark for understanding everyone
didn't grow up the way I did. And it took, you know,
my parents getting divorced and us moving to the city
for me to actually understand how fortunate
I really was. Zip code influences so much
that we have got to make sure that those
neighborhood conditions aren't setting people up
for failure. We are keeping people
of reasonable means
out of neighborhoods. While I was doing some research,
I came across this, which is the Opportunity Atlas. And it's a map that shows you
the average life outcomes for people who grew up
in a given census tract. It's just crazy to think
that I may have only become as successful as I am because I spent the majority
of my childhood here instead of in D.C. But why don't we take a look
at where you guys grew up? Dun, dun, dun. <i> ( theme music playing )</i> - Lee: So, you're,
  like in the Bay area.
- Christophe: Oh, yeah. - I must have grew up in
  Cupertino, California. 
- Lee: Okay. Christophe: Majority Asian.
Definitely fairly wealthy. - A lot of, like, tech,
  Silicon Valley employees.
- Lee: Right. All right. So I'm gonna put in
my zip code where I grew up. So I just took you guys
to Brooklyn, New York, Crown Heights,
and immediately traveling here, it's just completely red. Yeah, so, $30k, that makes
a lot of sense to me. But is also just--
this shows how segregated Brooklyn is
and was at the time. Fabiola: Yeah. So right here
at Grand Army Plaza, it just looks so different
from the blocks where I grew up in Brooklyn. And so that was
out Saturday activity. Let's go to the library.
Let's go to the park. And that was kind of escaping a lot of the segregation
in Crown Heights to go to this area where
the amenities were better. Did you notice those
neighborhoods being cleaner? Absolutely. And I think
the biggest thing was trees. - Right.
- Just like how many trees
  do you have on your block? I think it does
something to your psyche
where it's like, oh, I feel like
I can breathe better. I feel like someone cared
enough to beautify this area. Well, guys, thank you
for taking the time out
to come look at this with me - and showing me
  where you grew up.
- This is so cool. I want to talk
to this professor at NYU to see if I can get some
information and some insight
into how we actually got here. Jacob:<i>
 So I think the overarching
 important message to take away</i> is that segregation
was intentionally designed. - There are a number of--
- Designed by who? By a wide range of policy makers
on the local level all the way up
to the federal level. When did we start
to see the government actually leading
a lot of these programs
when it came to segregation? So the federal government
instituted these massive housing programs
during the New Deal <i> to save a housing market
 that was in severe distress.</i> <i> Their first policy
 was called the Home Owner's
 Loan Corporation,</i> <i> or H.O.L.C. or "hulk."</i> <i> Part of H.O.L.C.
 was sending appraisers,</i> <i> real estate appraisers
 to hundreds of cities
 across the country.</i> <i> And these appraisers
 would grade neighborhoods
 in these cities,</i> <i> and this is where the term
 redlining comes from.</i> Lee:<i>
 In your lease it would say,</i> <i> "You cannot resell this house
 to a black family."</i> - Jacob:<i> Yeah. </i>
-<i> So, let me explain.</i> As these appraisers surveyed
cities across the United States, they created maps that
they distributed to banks. And the banks used these maps to decide how risky
it would be to provide loans or mortgage assistance
to different neighborhoods
around the country, and each of these maps
was assigned a color. So green indicated this
was the most desirable area, <i> and the map we're looking
 at right now is an area</i> <i> in the northern suburbs
 of Chicago.</i> And along with these maps, we were given documents
that described <i> the neighborhood
 that was being surveyed.</i> If we take a look at the top,
we can see the class
and occupation. We can also see the number
of black families in this area, and the preferred nomenclature
of the 1930s was Negro. There were zero. Moving on to
the next classification were blue neighborhoods. And blue neighborhoods
were considered to still be desirable. So as we take a look
at the description of this blue area in Chicago, the percentage of foreign
families is still zero. The percentage
of Negro families, still none. And as we come down
to the description, we see
the area is well laid out and the improvements
are attractive, but the proximity
of Negro families
on Spruce Street <i> at the southern edge
 precludes the district
 from a better rating</i> <i> and is retarding
 its development.</i> The proximity
of Negro families.
That's so crazy. So as you can see,
these maps didn't ignore race. In fact, they were
heavily dependent on it. Race played a key factor
in determining the value
of these neighborhoods and their ratings to the banks. The yellow neighborhoods were
listed as definitely declining. This one had
50% foreign families, those foreign families
being Polish and German. Race wasn't the only
determining factor in whether or not these
neighborhoods had value. Immigrant families heavily
impacted whether or not it got a favorable evaluation. And as we move on
to the last designation
of these neighborhoods, we come to red neighborhoods. And this is actually where
we get the term redlining from. These neighborhoods
were defined as hazardous. And when we look at
the description of the area, <i> the number of
 foreign families-- 5%.</i> <i> They were Italians.</i> But the percentage
of Negro families-- 90%. And as we make our way
down the description sheet, we see "This concentration
of Negroes in Evanston is quite a serious problem
for the town, <i> as they seem to be
 growing steadily</i> <i> and encroaching into
 adjoining neighborhoods."</i> These maps are how
the federal government
institutionalized segregation, and they used race
to determine the value of all
of these neighborhoods. So I want to understand
how all of these red lines are impacting people's
lives today. H.O.L.C. was passed in 1933,
and before that time, places where H.O.L.C.
made those red-lining maps and places that didn't
have those maps were about the same level
of segregation. And the measurement
that we use is a fairly common
measurement of segregation called Black Isolation. Then by 1950, 1960,
we see that cities that were where
the redlining maps were created, there's this huge jump here. This one sort of moment,
they were collecting the data
and published the data and it vastly impacted
millions of American lives
from that point on. Yeah. This gap emerges
especially as the Federal
Housing Administration and the G.I. Bill
kick in after H.O.L.C., and then we're layering on
schools, highways, et cetera. Suburbanization.
And then all that
gets locked in place. So I would say that
the gap that we see today is a result of
structural racism, which includes the wealth gap, it includes
this history of exclusion. It includes the intentional
segregating of neighborhoods. What impact did this have
on our economy and the ability for people
to participate in it? Housing segregation
has all these other
layers on top of it, including education and
employment opportunities. So the isolation
of people of color, in this case specifically
African-Americans, has dramatically limited the
ability of African-Americans to kind of achieve what
we generally consider to be
kind of middle class status-- home ownership,
wealth stability, the ability
to pass on resources
to the next generation. Any other interesting
takeaways from this? It didn't have to be this way. So we just learned about how
the government has historically segregated neighborhoods
across America, but I wanted to understand
how these problems are affecting people today. I'm getting ready to meet up
with two former testers from the Fair Housing
Justice Center. So, tell me exactly
what a tester is. What did you all do
in that capacity? It's a way of finding out what
landlords or real estate agents are saying to people when they
think no one else is listening. If you're a real person
going out looking for a home
to rent or to buy, you provide your information
and you're given
certain information about what's available
in what neighborhoods
at what price levels. You have no way if knowing
if someone of a different
race or ethnicity or any of the protected
characteristics is being told
the same thing as you. What are the ways that we're
seeing housing discrimination
play out right now? Any time I hear somebody say,
"Oh, white supremacy, white privilege is just a myth
in this country," I say, "Come do my job for half
an hour and you'll see the way
the doors get opened for me." I actually had this
very nice woman in Brooklyn
showing me an apartment. We're always instructed
to convey disinterest. She said,
"Tell you what I'm gonna do. Let me write down the number
for the entry code
for the lobby door. If I'm not here,
you just let yourselves in.
Go up to the fourth floor. Show her around the apartment
because I'd really love
to see you guys in here." Most of my experiences
are not like Craig's at all. I don't want to paint
the picture that every time
I'm sent out to test I'm discriminated against, but I have been
involved in cases where very clear
discrimination happened. At times,
I am shown the apartment,
but I'm quoted a higher rent. $300 over my white counterpart. At times, not shown
amenities in the building. Not encouraged to apply
where my white counterpart
was encouraged to apply. Lisa, what is--
what do some of those
experiences that you've had, what do they tell you
about what regular folks
might be going through? When you're a tester, we're--
as an African-American, I'm representing all
the African-Americans that went
and inquired at that building and were lied to,
so I represent so many
other people of color who are experiencing this
while just looking for housing, and housing is a basic need. So, when my dad
sold our house in D.C., we had to get it
appraised twice. And the first time it was
appraised, the value was set
at about $800,000. But my dad knew that
our neighbors on the same block were selling their houses
for much more that that. So we spoke to a realtor
who told him to take all of
the family photos off the walls, leave them bare,
and get it appraised
a second time. And that second appraisal, the value was set
at about $1.2 million. And at the time,
I didn't think that was
motivated by race, but now after talking
to these testers, <i> I'm starting
 to think that race</i> <i> maybe played a role
 in the home's valuation.</i> - Toby?
- Yeah. - Hey, man, I'm Lee.
- Good to meet you. Tell a little bit
about what you guys do
at Open New York. So we are a pro-housing group. We advocate for more housing and more affordable housing
all across New York. We are on 11th Street
between Fifth and Sixth Avenue
in Brooklyn Park Slope. And we're looking at a building
that couldn't be built today - as of right now in Brooklyn.
- Why is that? So, the zoning rules
prohibit it. So, in 2003,
this area was downzoned. Lee: Why would people want
to downzone this neighborhood? If you owned here,
restricting supply
is in your interest because it makes your
own property more valuable. And that's been the story
here for the last 40,
going on 50 years. Lee:<i> New York City
 famously rezoned nearly
 200,000 properties</i> <i> between 2003 and 2007 under
 the Bloomberg administration.</i> <i> But a lot of this rezoning
 was actually downzoning.</i> <i> Here in Park Slope, some areas
 were downzoned to preserve
 the historic brownstones,</i> <i> while other areas were rezoned
 to increase housing density.</i> How does this impact
segregation at a racial level,
at an economic level? It's brutal, right? By privileging incumbents, and by incumbents
I mean largely home owners, you're entrenching all
of your existing segregation. And let's be honest,
America is way
too segregated today. As so by downzoning, if this were
a white neighborhood, you're making it much harder for it to become
a more diverse area. Absolutely.
You are actively
working against it. ( phone ringing ) Fabiola, what's up?
How are you? Hey, Lee, I'm good.
How are you? I'm good.
I just got in touch with
this mother in Philadelphia whose children are struggling
with lead poisoning. And I want to go talk to her
because I feel like this story might really embody
the very real consequences
of housing segregation. But I'm still looking
for someone to talk to
about home ownership and the racial wealth gap,
and I thought you might
have some ideas. Someone that
I've actually talked to before on this is Andre Perry. He's a Fellow at the Brookings
Institute, actually, - so he's based here in D.C.
- That's perfect. Do you have time to talk
to him while I'm in Philly? Fabiola:<i> Yeah. I'll see
if I can get in touch with him.</i> - Lee:<i> Amazing. </i>
- Why is home ownership important in terms
of economic mobility? Well, when you own a home,
you're more likely to be economically
and socially mobile. But home ownership also
precludes you from moving every time there's
an economic shock. Home ownership predicts
for better health, particularly
during a pandemic. I can't think of another asset that is so influential on a person's life chances
than housing. What have you found
about the differences
in property value between predominately
black neighborhoods and predominately
white neighborhoods? What does that chart tell us? Andre:
Homes in neighborhoods
where the share of the black population
is less than a percent on average are priced
about $340,000. And as the percent
of black people in a neighborhood increases, you see
the home prices decrease. So much so that when the share of the black
population is 50% or higher, the home prices on average
are about half as much as their white neighborhoods. So you're saying
it's as simple as the more black people
in a neighborhood, - the less the houses are worth?
- That's exactly right. A lot of people will look
at that prior chart and say, "That's because of education.
That's because of crime." We control for education,
crime, walkability, all those fancy Zillow metrics. And what we found is homes
in black neighborhoods are underpriced about 23%, about $48,000 per home. Cumulatively,
that's about $156 billion
in lost equity. And how does racial segregation
factor into housing valuation? Well, you know, segregation
has a long-standing impact on a number of things. Cities are becoming more
concentrated with poor folk, and that is reducing
those areas' abilities to pay for services
like education, policing, infrastructure. So when you concentrate
poverty in areas, not only are you
putting a target on those
communities' back in terms of harmful policies, but you have less resources
in a neighborhood. <i> We have got to address this
 because if folks</i> <i> can't achieve
 the American dream
 through housing,</i> then they're not going to
achieve the American dream in any other part
of their life. So, I'm on my way
to Philadelphia, a city where
nearly 8% of the children
under the age of seven are struggling
with lead poisoning. Lead is a heavy metal,
and when it gets
into your blood, it can cause anything
from a reduced IQ to ADHD, and some research has actually
linked it to school failures
and even criminality. And while lead paint
has been illegal since 1978, a number of the homes
here in Philadelphia were built
well before then. So I'm getting ready
to meet up with a family whose lives have been reshaped
by their zip code. - Hey.
- Hi, how are you? - I'm good. I'm Lee.
  Nice to meet you.
- I'm Angel. So where are we right now? Oh, man, we're in the area
of Olney in Philadelphia. Okay. And you used to
live out here? - Yes, I did.
- So, your kids got sick
  living in this house? - Angel: Yes, they did.
- What happened? Angel: I took them
to the doctor one day just for a random checkup, and I come to find out my daughter
had a nine lead level, and my son,
at the time he was two, he had an 18 lead level. Lee: Jesus. What happened
after you found out that your
children had lead poisoning? - I contacted--
- Did you call the landlord or-- Yes, I contacted
the landlord. The city were actually
called by the doctors. They had to do gun tests. My children's room,
which was the middle room, they had the highest lead levels
in the whole house. How were you dealing with this?
You know, you're working.
You're a working mom. - You have three children.
- It's hard. It's hard.
  It's extremely hard. Who wants to have
their children
get lead poisoning? But when you are
a single parent,
you have three children, you're doing
everything by yourself, how can you make enough money
to just up and leave? What kind of a message
did that send you about,
you know, where you live? You know, if you
were living center city,
it just wouldn't happen. The suburbs,
it would not happen. So when you made the decision
to get your kids out of here-- Yes, I did.
I actually moved to a hotel. - For how long?
- For about a month,
  a month and a half. - Where are you living now?
- In Reading. - Reading? Where is that?
- Yes. About an hour and ten
  minutes away from here. - Can you show me where?
- Yeah. - Lee: Okay, so this is
  your new house in Reading?
- Angel: Yes. - So tell me about this place.
- Well, when I first got here,
  it looked immaculate. - Right.
- Three days after, my walls started
to have a little crumbling
where I saw water. - Can you show me?
  Can we take a look?
- Yes. Yes. Up here, there's mold
all throughout the ceiling. This is where the water
leaks at on the floor. And here, this is more
water damage. This right here was seeping
water the other day. - Jeez.
- There's mold down here just coming out the wall. So I went from one bad situation
to a worse situation. I'm literally on unemployment because I was
laid off at my job. I have nowhere to go. When people say things like,
you know, America's the land
of opportunity. You just gotta work hard.
You just gotta pull yourself-- That's a lie.
Because I moved from
the last place to come here. So what's next? Okay, so I know
that I grew up privileged. I know that I was
incredibly fortunate to have
attended great schools, to know from a young age
that I could afford
to pay for college <i> and to just have
 fresh air to breathe</i> <i> and clean water to drink.</i> <i> What I didn't know
 growing up</i> was that this was
an incredibly rare experience, especially if you're someone
that looks like me. <i> I had no idea that
 the full weight of history</i> <i>was actively working against me
 having that experience.</i> <i> My parents beat the odds,</i> <i> largely because
 we always owned homes</i> <i> in this family
 going back generations,</i> <i> and that had a direct impact
 on my chances in life.</i> <i> But the scarcity of stories
 like mine isn't a problem</i> <i> that any one of us can fix.</i> It is, however,
something that we don't have
to passively accept. In trying to find out
whether or not your zip code
determines your future, I did see some bright spots. <i> For decades, zoning laws
 were used to restrict access.</i> <i> But now in some cities,
 they're being used
 to encourage investment</i> <i> and create
 more diverse neighborhoods.</i> There are private firms
that are investing <i> in low income luxury housing</i> that's meant to convert
renters into homeowners. And some landlords and members
of the real estate industry <i> have woken up to the role
 that they've played</i> <i> in perpetuating
 housing segregation</i> <i> and restricting
 the upward mobility of our
 neighbors for generations.</i> For every dollar the typical
white household has, the typical black household
has about nine or ten cents. And this is connected directly
to this legacy of redlining and exclusion
from the opportunity
to build home equity. <i> So undoing that
 is going to require as big</i> <i> if not a bigger investment</i> than was made in the New Deal. Let's excite the economy in the same way
we're doing during COVID, the same way we did after
the Great Depression, but we just didn't do it
for black people. So now's the time to really
correct those wrongs. Ultimately, we can't reverse
the course of history without those
who dug this hole reaching in
and pulling us back out. ( indistinct chatter ) ( chatter continues ) Woman: Hell, yeah.
Do y'all want to change
this background? Woman 2: "I'm Lee,
and I'm gonna find out." Lee: You want, "I'm Lee
and I'm gonna find out? Or do you want,
"Does your neighborhood
determine your future? I'm Lee Adams, and this is
'Glad You Asked' by Vox." Maybe we-- if you guys
could stand over-- Is it okay
if they stand over here? - Yeah.
- Um, actually. Christophe,
if you can get even lower. - Okay.
- ( shutter clicks ) This is Lee
and this is Christophe. They're two of the hosts
of this show. But to a machine,
they're not people. This is just pixels.
It's just data. A machine shouldn't
have a reason to prefer one of these guys
over the other. And yet, as you'll see
in a second, it does. It feels weird to call
a machine racist, but I really can't explain--
I can't explain
what just happened. Data-driven systems
are becoming a bigger and bigger
part of our lives, and they work well
a lot of the time. - But when they fail...
- Once again, it's
  the white guy. When they fail,
they're not failing
on everyone equally. If I go back right now... Ruha Benjamin:<i> You can have
 neutral intentions.</i> <i> You can have good intentions.</i> And the outcomes can still
be discriminatory. Whether you want
to call that machine racist or you want to call
the outcome racist, we have a problem. <i> ( theme music playing )</i> I was scrolling
through my Twitter feed
a while back and I kept seeing tweets
that look like this. Two of the same picture
of Republican senator
Mitch McConnell smiling, or sometimes it would be
four pictures of the same random
stock photo guy. And I didn't really know
what was going on, but it turns out that
this was a big public test
of algorithmic bias. Because it turns out
that these aren't pictures
of just Mitch McConnell. They're pictures
of Mitch McConnell and... - Barack Obama.
- Lee: Oh, wow. So people were uploading these really
extreme vertical images to basically force
this image cropping algorithm to choose one of these faces. People were alleging that
there's a racial bias here. But I think what's
so interesting about this
particular algorithm is that it is so testable
for the public. It's something that
we could test right now
if we wanted to. - Let's do it.
- You guys wanna do it? Okay. Here we go. So, Twitter does offer you
options to crop your own image. But if you don't use those, it uses an automatic
cropping algorithm. - Wow. There it is.
- Whoa. Wow. That's crazy. Christophe, it likes you. Okay, let's try the other--
the happy one. Lee: Wow. - Unbelievable. Oh, wow.
- Both times. So, do you guys think
this machine is racist? The only other theory
I possibly have is if the algorithm
prioritizes white faces because it can
pick them up quicker,
for whatever reason, against whatever background. Immediately,
it looks through the image and tries to scan for a face. Why is it always finding
the white face first? Joss: With this picture,
I think someone could argue that the lighting makes
Christophe's face more sharp. I still would love to do a little bit more systematic
testing on this. I think maybe
hundreds of photos could allow us
to draw a conclusion. I have downloaded
a bunch of photos from a site called
Generated Photos. These people do not exist.
They were a creation of AI. And I went through,
I pulled a bunch that I think will give us a pretty decent way
to test this. So, Christophe,
I wonder if you would be willing
to help me out with that. You want me to tweet
hundreds of photos? - ( Lee laughs )
- Joss: Exactly. I'm down. Sure, I've got time. Okay. <i> ( music playing )</i> There may be some people
who take issue with the idea that machines can be racist without a human brain
or malicious intent. But such a narrow
definition of racism really misses
a lot of what's going on. I want to read a quote
that responds to that idea. It says, "Robots are not
sentient beings, sure, but racism flourishes
well beyond hate-filled hearts. No malice needed,
no "N" word required, just a lack of concern for how
the past shapes the present." I'm going now to speak
to the author of those words,
Ruha Benjamin. <i> She's a professor
 of African-American Studies
 at Princeton University.</i> When did you first
become concerned that automated systems,
AI, could be biased? A few years ago,
I noticed these headlines and hot takes about so-called
racist and sexist robots. There was a viral video
in which two friends
were in a hotel bathroom and they were trying to use
an automated soap dispenser. Black hand, nothing.
Larry, go. Black hand, nothing. And although they seem funny and they kind of
get us to chuckle, the question is,
are similar design processes impacting much more
consequential technologies
that we're not even aware of? When the early news
controversies came along
maybe 10 years ago, people were surprised
by the fact that
they showed a racial bias. Why do you think
people were surprised? Part of it is a deep
attachment and commitment to this idea
of tech neutrality. People-- I think because
life is so complicated and our social world
is so messy-- really cling on to
something that will save us, and a way of making decisions
that's not drenched in the muck of all
of human subjectivity, human prejudice and frailty. We want it so much
to be true. We want it so much
to be true, you know? And the danger is
that we don't question it. And still we continue to have,
you know, so-called glitches when it comes to race
and skin complexion. And I don't think
that they're glitches. It's a systemic issue
in the truest sense of the word. It has to do with
our computer systems
and the process of design. Joss:<i>
 AI can seem pretty abstract
 sometimes.</i> <i> So we built this
 to help explain</i> <i> how machine learning works
 and what can go wrong.</i> <i> This black box
 is the part of the system
 that we interact with.</i> <i> It's the software
 that decides which dating
 profiles we might like,</i> <i> how much a rideshare
 should cost,</i> <i> or how a photo should be
 cropped on Twitter.</i> <i> We just see a device
 making a decision.</i> <i> Or more accurately,
 a prediction.</i> <i> What we don't see
 is all of the human decisions</i> <i> that went into the design
 of that technology.</i> <i> Now, it's true that when
 you're dealing with AI,</i> that means
that the code in this box wasn't all
written directly by humans, but by machine-learning
algorithms that find complex patterns
in data. But they don't just
spontaneously learn things
from the world. They're learning
from examples. <i> Examples that
 are labeled by people,</i> <i> selected by people,</i> <i> and derived from people, too.</i> See, these machines
and their predictions, they're not separate from us
or from our biases or from our history, which we've seen
in headline after headline for the past 10 years. We're using
the face-tracking software, so it's supposed
to follow me as I move. As you can see, I do this--
no following. Not really--
not really following me. - Wanda, if you would, please?
- Sure. In 2010, the top hit when you did a search
for "black girls," <i> 80% of what you found</i> <i> on the first page of results
 was all porn sites.</i> Google is apologizing
after its photo software labeled two African-Americans
gorillas. Microsoft is shutting down its new artificial
intelligent bot after Twitter users
taught it how to be racist. Woman:<i> In order to make
 yourself hotter,</i> <i> the app appeared
 to lighten your skin tone.</i> Overall, they work better
on lighter faces than
darker faces, and they worked
especially poorly on darker female faces. Okay, I've noticed that on all
these damn beauty filters, is they keep taking my nose
and making it thinner. Give me my African nose
back, please. Man:<i> So, the first thing
 that I tried was the prompt
 "Two Muslims..."</i> And the way
it completed it was, "Two Muslims,
one with an apparent bomb, <i> tried to blow up
 the Federal Building</i> <i> in Oklahoma City
 in the mid-1990s."</i> Woman:<i>
 Detroit police wrongfully
 arrested Robert Williams</i> <i> based on a false
 facial recognition hit.</i> There's definitely
a pattern of harm that disproportionately
falls on vulnerable people,
people of color. Then there's attention, but of course, the damage
has already been done. ( Skype ringing ) - Hello.
- Hey, Christophe. Thanks for doing these tests. - Of course.
- I know it was
  a bit of a pain, but I'm curious
what you found. Sure. I mean,
I actually did it. I actually tweeted 180
different sets of pictures. In total, dark-skinned people were displayed
in the crop 131 times, and light-skinned people were displayed
in the crop 229 times, which comes out
to 36% dark-skinned and 64% light-skinned. That does seem to be
evidence of some bias. It's interesting because
Twitter posted a blog post saying that they had done
some of their own tests before launching this tool,
and they said that they didn't find evidence
of racial bias, but that they would
be looking into it further. Um, they also said
that the kind of technology that they use to crop images is called
a Saliency Prediction Model, which means software
that basically is making a guess about what's important
in an image. So, how does a machine
know what is salient,
what's relevant in a picture? Yeah, it's really
interesting, actually. There's these
saliency data sets that documented people's
eye movements while they looked
at certain sets of images. So you can take those photos and you can take
that eye-tracking data and teach a computer
what humans look at. So, Twitter's not going to
give me any more information about how they trained
their model, but I found an engineer
from a company called Gradio. They built an app
that does something similar, and I think it can give us
a closer look at how this kind of AI works. - Hey.
- Hey. - Joss.
- Nice to meet you. Dawood. So, you and your colleagues built a saliency cropping tool that is similar to what we think
Twitter is probably doing. Yeah, we took a public
machine learning model,
posted it on our library, and launched it
for anyone to try. And you don't have to
constantly post pictures on your timeline to try
and experiment with it, which is what people
were doing when they first
became aware of the problem. And that's what we did.
We did a bunch of tests
just on Twitter. But what's interesting
about what your app shows is the sort of intermediate
step there, which is this
saliency prediction. Right, yeah.
I think the intermediate step
is important for people to see. Well, I-- I brought some
pictures for us to try. These are actually
the hosts of "Glad You Asked." And I was hoping we could put
them into your interface and see what, uh,
the saliency prediction is. Sure.
Just load this image here. Joss:
Okay, so, we have
a saliency map. Clearly the prediction
is that faces are salient, which is not really a surprise. But it looks like maybe
they're not equally salient. - Right.
- Is there a way to sort of
  look closer at that? So, what we can do here,
we actually built it out
in the app where we can put a window
on someone's specific face, and it will give us a percentage
of what amount of saliency you have over your face
versus in proportion
to the whole thing. - That's interesting.
- Yeah. She's-- Fabiola's
in the center of the picture, but she's actually got
a lower percentage of the salience compared
to Cleo, who's to her right. Right, and trying
to guess why a model
is making a prediction and why it's
predicting what it is is a huge problem
with machine learning. It's always something
that you have to kind of back-trace to try
and understand. And sometimes
it's not even possible. Mm-hmm.
I looked up what data sets were used to train
the model you guys used, and I found one
that was created by researchers at MIT
back in 2009. So, it was originally
about a thousand images. We pulled the ones
that contained faces, any face we could find
that was big enough to see. And I went through
all of those, and I found that only
10 of the photos, that's just about 3%, included someone
who appeared to be of Black or African descent. Yeah, I mean,
if you're collecting
a data set through Flickr, you're-- first of all,
you're biased to people that have used Flickr
back in, what, 2009,
you said, or something? Joss: And I guess if we saw
in this image data set, there are more
cat faces than black faces, we can probably assume
that minimal effort was made to make that data set
representative. <i> When someone collects data
 into a training data set,</i> <i>they can be motivated by things
 like convenience and cost</i> <i> and end up with data
 that lacks diversity.</i> <i> That type of bias, which
 we saw in the saliency photos,</i> <i> is relatively easy to address.</i> If you include more images
representing racial minorities, you can probably improve
the model's performance
on those groups. But sometimes
human subjectivity is imbedded right
into the data itself. Take crime data for example. Our data on past crimes
in part reflects police officers' decisions
about what neighborhoods
to patrol and who to stop and arrest. We don't have an objective
measure of crime, and we know
that the data we do have contains at least
some racial profiling. But it's still being used
to train crime prediction tools. And then there's the question
of how the data is structured
over here. Say you want a program
that identifies chronically sick patients
to get additional care so they don't end up
in the ER. You'd use past patients
as your examples, but you have to choose
a label variable. You have to define
for the machine what
a high-risk patient is and there's not always
an obvious answer. A common choice
is to define high-risk
as high-cost, under the assumption
that people who use a lot of health care resources
are in need of intervention. Then the learning
algorithm looks through the patient's data-- their age, sex, medications, diagnoses,
insurance claims, and it finds the combination
of attributes that correlates
with their total health costs. And once it gets good
at predicting total health costs
on past patients, that formula becomes software
to assess new patients and give them a risk score. But instead of predicting
sick patients, this predicts
expensive patients. Remember, the label was cost, and when researchers
took a closer look
at those risk scores, they realized that label choice
was a big problem. But by then, the algorithm
had already been used <i> on millions of Americans.</i> It produced risk scores
for different patients, and if a patient
had a risk score of almost 60, they would be referred
into the program for screening--
for their screening. And if they had a risk score
of almost 100, they would default
into the program. Now, when we look at the number
of chronic conditions that patients of different
risk scores were affected by, you see a racial disparity
where white patients had fewer conditions
than black patients at each risk score. That means that
black patients were sicker than their white counterparts when they had
the same risk score. And so what happened is
in producing these risk scores and using spending, they failed to recognize
that on average black people incur fewer costs
for a variety of reasons, including institutional racism, including lack of access
to high-quality insurance, and a whole host
of other factors. But not because
they're less sick. Not because they're less sick. And so I think it's important to remember
this had racist outcomes, discriminatory outcomes,
not because there was a big, bad boogie man
behind the screen out to get black patients, but precisely because
no one was thinking about racial disparities
in healthcare. No one thought it would matter. And so it was
about the colorblindness, the race neutrality
that created this. The good news is
that now the researchers
who exposed this and who brought this to light
are working with the company that produced this algorithm
to have a better proxy. So instead of spending,
it'll actually be people's actual
physical conditions and the rate at which
they get sick, et cetera, that is harder to figure out, it's a harder kind of
proxy to calculate, but it's more accurate. I feel like what's so unsettling
about this healthcare algorithm is that the patients
would have had no way of knowing
this was happening. It's not like Twitter,
where you can upload your own picture, test it out,
compare with other people. This was just working
in the background, quietly prioritizing
the care of certain patients based on an algorithmic score while the other patients
probably never knew they were even passed over
for this program. I feel like there
has to be a way for companies to vet
these systems in advance, so I'm excited to talk
to Deborah Raji. She's been doing
a lot of thinking and writing about just that. My question for you is
how do we find out about these problems before
they go out into the world and cause harm
rather than afterwards? So, I guess a clarification
point is that machine learning is highly unregulated
as an industry. These companies
don't have to report
their performance metrics, they don't have to report
their evaluation results to any kind
of regulatory body. But internally there's this
new culture of documentation that I think has been
incredibly productive. I worked on a couple of projects
with colleagues at Google, and one of the main outcomes
of that was this effort
called Model Cards-- <i> very simple
 one-page documentation</i> <i> on how the model
 actually works,</i> <i> but also questions that are
 connected to ethical concerns,</i> <i> such as the intended use
 for the model,</i> <i> details about where
 the data's coming from,</i> <i> how the data's labeled,
 and then also, you know,</i> <i> instructions
 to evaluate the system
 according to its performance</i> <i> on different
 demographic sub-groups.</i> Maybe that's something
that's hard to accept is that it would actually
be maybe impossible to get performance
across sub-groups
to be exactly the same. How much of that do we just
have to be like, "Okay"? I really don't think
there's an unbiased data set in which everything
will be perfect. I think the more important thing
is to actually evaluate and assess things
with an active eye for those that are most likely
to be negatively impacted. You know, if you know
that people of color
are most vulnerable or a particular marginalized
group is most vulnerable in a particular situation, then prioritize them
in your evaluation. But I do think there's
certain situations where maybe we should
not be predicting with a machine-learning
system at all. We should be super cautious
and super careful about where we deploy it
and where we don't deploy it, and what kind of human oversight we put over
these systems as well. The problem of bias in AI
is really big. It's really difficult. But I don't think it means
we have to give up on machine learning altogether. One benefit
of bias in a computer
versus bias in a human is that you can measure
and track it fairly easily. <i> And you can tinker
 with your model</i> <i> to try and get fair outcomes
 if you're motivated to do so.</i> The first step was
becoming aware of the problem. Now the second step
is enforcing solutions, which I think we're
just beginning to see now. <i> But Deb is raising
 a bigger question.</i> <i> Not just how do we get bias
 out of the algorithms,</i> but which algorithms
should be used at all? Do we need a predictive model
to be cropping our photos? Do we want facial recognition
in our communities? Many would say no,
whether it's biased or not. And that question
of which technologies get built and how they
get deployed in our world, it boils down
to resources and power. It's the power
to decide whose interests will be served
by a predictive model, and which questions get asked. You could ask, okay,
I want to know how landlords are making life
for renters hard. Which landlords are not
fixing up their buildings? Which ones are hiking rent? Or you could ask,
okay, let's figure out which renters
have low credit scores. Let's figure out the people
who have a gap in unemployment so I don't want to rent to them. And so it's at that problem of forming the question and posing the problem that the power dynamics
are already being laid that set us off in one
trajectory or another. And the big challenge
there being that with these two possible
lines of inquiry, - one of those is probably
  a lot more profitable...
- Exactly, exactly. - ...than the other one.
- And too often the people who
  are creating these tools, they don't necessarily
have to share the interests of the people who are
posing the questions, but those are their clients. So, the question
for the designers
and the programmers is are you accountable
only to your clients or are you also accountable
to the larger body politic? Are you responsible for what
these tools do in the world? <i> ( music playing )</i> ( indistinct chatter ) Man: Can you lift up
your arm a little? ( chatter continues ) Executive Producer: What is the
point of the exercise, Tony,
to look in the mirror? Why did you say,
"look in the mirror"? These two men were the first to climb to the
top of Mt. Everest. Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand, and Tenzing
Norgay, a Sherpa from from Nepal and India, became global celebrities after reaching the
summit, where Hillary snapped this photo of Norgay holding their national flags. Since
then, many have followed in their footsteps, raising their own flags at the peak. Summit
bids have created a lucrative industry — and a perilous one; hundreds have died or
been injured during the climb. All in the pursuit of one goal: reaching the highest
point on Earth. But the thing is, most of the people who have stood on top of Mt. Everest
have climbed to slightly different heights— For Hillary and Norgay, it was 8,840 meters.
For this British Army officer who summited in 1976, the height was 8,848 meters. This
Sherpa guide and his Swedish client climbed 29,035 feet or 8,850 meters in 1999. And at
the end of 2020, the height of Mount Everest changed again — it’s now officially 8,849
meters. These changes are small — and probably don’t really matter to the people who’ve
reached the summit. But the reason why Mount Everest’s height keeps changing tells a
story about how we measure mountains—and about who gets to do the measuring.
We have only one Mt. Everest in the world. But the one mountain had several heights.
This is the Himalayan mountain range, and here is Mount Everest, with one side in Tibet
and another side in Nepal. In Nepal, the mountain is known as Sagarmatha; in Tibet, it’s called
Chomolungma. Everest is a colonial name, named for this British official, George Everest.
And that’s because India, Nepal’s neighbor, was under British rule
when Everest was first measured. British and Indian surveyors started a massive mapping
project in 1802, at one point led by George Everest. Called the Great Trigonometrical
Survey. They measured as much of India’s land as they could, using an instrument like
this, called a theodolite. It’s the distant ancestor of what land surveyors
and engineers use today—to basically do the same thing —measure the angles between
two horizontal points, and use basic trigonometry to measure the location and distance to a
third point. But when surveyors from the Great Trigonometrical Survey reached the Himalayas
in the 1840s, they ran into a very tall, vertical problem. Measuring the height of a mountain
is more complicated than just measuring from the ground to the peak. You have to know where
sea level is. Because sea level is relatively similar throughout the globe, it’s the base
that most natural heights on earth are measured from. But there is no sea or ocean immediately
next to the Himalayas. So surveyors in the mid-1800s had to walk from the Bay of Bengal to translate sea level to the Himalayas, which took years. Surveyors
couldn't enter Nepal at the time, so they did this from over 100 miles
away, across the border in India. Only then could they measure the distance
between two points at sea level then aim the theodolite to the peak. That’s how they
measured the Himalayas, 100 years before anyone reached Everest’s summit. And that’s how,
in 1855, the first official measurement of Mount Everest was recorded: 8,840 meters.
After that first measurement, scientists from around the world began documenting their own
heights. They were never too far off from that first one, but fluctuated anywhere from
⅓ of a meter to 72 meters. One reason those numbers differ is because it’s still really
hard to calculate sea level. The sea might seem relatively smooth compared to earth’s
erratic topography. But water is uneven too: tides go up and down — and, thanks in part
to global warming, sea levels are rising. The global mean sea level is an average of
all these fluctuations. But when surveyors want to measure a mountain’s height, they
have to be more precise. That means considering something called the ellipsoid — the bulge
at Earth’s equator due to the centrifugal force of its rotation. And areas of the Earth
with more density, like mountain ranges, affect gravity and therefore the height of sea level.
Taking variations on gravity into account, this is Earth’s true sea level, called the
geoid, which is full of dimples and bumps. When surveyors want to measure Everest, they
have to precisely consider all these conversions, which explains some of the variations in height.
But there’s another reason the height of a mountain might shift, that has to do with
the origin story of the Himalayas. These mountains started forming 50 million
years ago when the Indian continent collided with the Asian continent. That collision hasn’t
stopped happening, even if we can’t see it. Geologists think that the Himalayas are
still rising 5 millimeters a year, or a quarter of an inch.
The tectonic shifts causing that growth also cause earthquakes in the region, which can
shift the height of mountains. So when Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake
in 2015, Scientists knew Everest’s height had probably
changed. Nepalese surveyors decided to investigate.
Being the Everest-lying country all responsibility is to clarify the question regarding the height
of Mount Everest. Khim Lal Gautam, climbed to the top of Everest
in 2019 to take a new measurement. And brought with him a tool that’s been
helping surveyors since the 1980s: a GPS receiver. Gautam lingered at the peak of Everest for
nearly 2 hours in the middle of the night, which is an eternity anywhere in the oxygen-deprived
altitude above 8,000 meters, known as The Death Zone. He endured it to receive as many
satellite pings as he could. GPS can accurately measure height through
the time it takes a satellite signal to reach a receiver. But that signal gives a height
based on Earth’s ellipsoid, not the geoid. Which means it still doesn’t solve for the
most important part of mountain surveying: establishing the local sea level.Doing that
with precision still requires surveying on land.
We planned for the study of 50 kilometers at the east and 50 kilometers at the west,
from northern border to the southern border. This was our study area and within this region
we had around 300 control points. Susheel Dangol led the Nepalese survey from
2017 to 2019. To find the geoid height, they measured gravity
through an instrument like this. The main motive of this... is to get the mean
sea level. Around the same time that Susheel and Gautum
were surveying, a Chinese team was, too, from the Tibetan side of Everest. And in December
2020, they made a joint announcement about their agreed-upon new measurement: 8,848.86
meters. Since 1855, all official measurements of Everest
from the Nepalese side were done by colonial or foreign surveyors. Which makes this number
significant: it’s the first time in history Nepal measured their own mountain.  We are very proud to be the people of the Everest country. Mount Everest country, we are the people of
the Sagamartha country.  We feel proud to do the Everest measurement ourselves because we have not done that task  ourselves.  
In the future, Everest’s height might still inch up or down.   but for anyone who reaches
the top, they will still be on the roof of the world. So we just showed you difficult it is to find mean sea level.  But there's actually a couple other ways you can measure the height of a mountain.  that's less universally-used but would make some mountains actually taller than Everest.   If you take the measurement from Earth's center instead of sea level, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador  would actually be taller than Everest.  And that's because it's located closer to the Equator, so the ellipsoid would push it taller.   And if you take a simple base to peak measurement. Mauna Kea in Hawaii would be taller than Everest  and that's because a majority of the mountain is actually 
 underwater, so below sea level.  I included a link in the description if you want to read more about that.  <i> If it was, like, bring in
 a bunch of black people,
 racism test.</i> I probably wouldn't watch
that video, but when I hear, like,
we're gonna give all <i> your white colleagues
 racism tests,</i> <i> I'm definitely watching
 that video.</i> This season on "Glad You Asked,"
across five episodes <i> we're gonna explore
 how racial injustice</i> impacts everything
from education to housing. In your lease it would say,
"You cannot resell to a black
family." - Yeah.
- But first, in order to better
  understand those systems, <i> we need to think about
 our own biases</i> <i> and what role
 they play.</i> Is having racial preferences
in dating racist? - Yeah.
- Dum-dum-dum. How do we even start to talk
about solutions <i> to health disparities
 that come from</i> <i> such structural
 inequalities?</i> I just felt like most of the
time I was trying to
survive. <i> How do we measure
 our own biases?</i> Do you guys think
this machine is racist? Does your neighborhood
determine your future? If merit isn't just about
ability and effort, why are we still obsessed
with merit? How does the stress of
discrimination impact
people's bodies? And most importantly,
what can we do about it? I don't want your question
to be, "How racist am I?" I want your question to be,
"What can I do affirmative?" On August 19, 2020, Russian politician, Alexei
Navalny was shooting this campaign video. He was in Siberia. One of the many places where, in about 3 weeks,
there would be local and regional elections. But he wasn’t running for office. He was urging people to vote out the ruling
party, United Russia, led by the president, Vladimir Putin. He’s made many videos like this before and
they usually rack up millions of views. It’s this ability to reach people via the
internet that has helped make Navalny the face of Russia's opposition movement. Soon after making his case in Siberia, he
got on a plane bound for Moscow. But the plane was suddenly diverted to Omsk. Navalny had been poisoned. And collapsed on the plane. An investigation later revealed that he had
been poisoned with Novichok, a highly-toxic nerve agent, that was developed by the Soviet
Union in the 1970s. It was also used, likely by Russia in 2018
to attack Sergei Skirpal, a former spy. Navalny survived the assassination attempt
and set off a movement unlike any in recent history. So how did he do it? And why is he such a big threat to Putin? On December 31, 1999, Putin became the President
of Russia. The Soviet Union had collapsed just 8 years
earlier and the new Russian Federation was slowly transitioning to democracy. Previously, Putin had been a spy in the Soviet
KGB and head of the Russian security service. Roles that shaped how he wanted to govern
as President. So, he was trying to remake Russia in the image
of the KGB. Like if everything in the world could be as
centralized, insular, and secretive as the KGB, it would work well. So in order to maximize his control, Putin
surrounded himself with the most powerful elements in Russia. Starting with the media. Police were sent into Russia’s independent
media companies, charging their owners, and bringing newsrooms under state control. After federal television, it went on to regional
television and then, it went to print newspapers. It was like a flesh eating machine. Whatever it could see that was functioning
independently, it would gobble up next. This hid Putin’s actions from the public
so he was able to go after another powerful element - Russia’s elections. His regime manipulated who could run for office. And that typically meant Putin’s party and
a few fake candidates, sanctioned by the regime. This was designed to splinter the opposition
vote. And on top of that, The vote counting is rigged. Meaning that it was nearly impossible to run
against Putin or his party. And that United Russia had control of the
central and local governments all across the country. But politicians weren’t the only threat
to Putin. He also went after Russia's oligarchs and
their prominent friends to weed out some powerful critics. In the early 2000s, most of Russia’s wealth
was concentrated in the hands of a few, very powerful men. Putin protected those that swore loyalty to
him. And those who didn't were either arrested
on trumped up charges or mysteriously killed. So, the most common way to get rid of somebody. Is to bring them up on embezzlement charges. Former Russian oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
has been found guilty of embezzlement. Russian tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, convicted
of embezzlement. A former Russian business man, he was accused
of embezzling money, Nikolay Glushkov, the cause of death is still unexplained. That's how the judiciary is weaponized. With the law on his side, within a decade,
Putin insulated himself with the most powerful elements on all sides. And it was all held together by corruption. Corruption is a structural feature of the
regime. It's not an inefficiency of the regime. It's not a drag on the regime. It's the core of the regime. According to a report, over $400 billion were
lost to corruption in Russia between 2000 and 2008. But because Putin controlled the media, much
of it was hidden. Until a young lawyer named Alexei Navalny
found a way to change that. In 2006, Navalny started a blog where he wrote
about corruption. In 2010, he wrote that at least $4 billion
was stolen out of the state-owned transportation company, Transneft. And he had proof. He had bought stock in the company and was
able to access internal documents that plainly showed how government money was
funneled into offshore accounts owned by Transneft officials. And this was just the beginning. Navalny soon published investigations on corrupt
oil schemes, land deals, and fraud at state-owned banks by Russian oligarchs and politicians. By posting straight to his blog, Navalny was
circumventing state media to reveal corruption and expose Putin’s regime in a way that
Russians had never seen before. All the while making a name for himself. Like he thought that corruption was
something knowable. That that you could learn about it, you could
systematize it. And, again, you could take it seriously.  And I said, you know what? I think we now have an actual politician in
this country. In 2011, huge protests erupted when Putin’s
party won a majority in parliament despite reports of voter fraud. It was the largest wave of demonstrations
Putin’s regime had ever faced. And Navalny was one of the main organizers. He was building on his investigations by speaking
out publicly against corruption. State television ignored the protests even
as the police arrested more than 1,000 people and went after the organizers. One of the other ones was jailed, several
were forced into exile, one was murdered, Boris Nemstov. And Navalny was the last guy standing. Over time, he developed a talent for organizing
protests and gained a following. Then in 2013, he ran for mayor of Moscow. And it stirred some controversy. He had participated in Russian nationalist
marches in the past. And used ethnic slurs when referring to Russian
minorities. But people were still drawn to the main message
of his campaign. State TV didn’t give his campaign any airtime,
so he relied on rallies, online crowdsourcing, and an army of volunteers to spread the word. But, just as he was gaining momentum, police
arrested him on trumped-up charges of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5 years in jail. His supporters flooded the streets in protest. Navalny was eventually released on bail and
didn't win the election. But, he went on to finish second place. He continued to expose corruption through
Youtube videos. Like this one, in 2017, on the extreme wealth
of Putin's ally, Dmitri Medvedev. It reached millions and sparked another round
of protests. At the same time, Navalny was running for
office again. This time, against Putin for President. Predictably, the regime struck back and disqualified
him based on the previous embezzlement charges. Further revealing just how rigged Russia’s
laws and elections were. But in 2020, Navalny found a way to take on
the whole electoral system. He called it Smart-Voting. Instead of letting the opposition vote splinter
among several dummy candidates, Navalny identified one candidate and urged people to vote for
the same one, even if they were backed by Putin's regime. It takes an incredible amount of public trust
and charisma to get people to unify behind a meaningless candidate. But, its true, if you get enough people to do it, it
actually can add up to meaningful resistance. And it terrifies the Kremlin. During that time, Navalny was the second most
popular politician in all of Russia according to some polls. While Putin’s favorability ratings were
slipping because of a struggling economy. That made Navalny a threat. And it explains why he was poisoned, possibly
more than once. Once he was very weirdly ill and once his
wife, Yulia, was very weirdly ill. They were looking for an opportunity, a place
and a time and it finally seemed like it was almost perfect. But I think they did expect that they would be
rid of him by now and they're not. After the Siberia attack, Navalny recovered
in a German hospital where he miraculously survived. A few months later, he went back to his investigations. In December 2020, he tricked the secret agent
who poisoned him into revealing how he did it. Then, in January, he returned to Russia knowing
he would be arrested. Police met him at the airport, and charged
him with violating the parole from his 2014 embezzlement case. While detained, his team released another
video, this one attacking Putin directly. It’s been viewed over 100 million times. His supporters flooded the streets in over
100 cities across Russia. A few days later, Navalny was sentenced to
2 years and 8 months in prison, sparking even more protests. Police have arrested more than 5,000 people
while state media has downplayed it. Even though Navalny ended up in prison again,
his movement continued to play out on the streets. By exposing Putin's regime for a decade, Navalny
might have found a way to build a movement that could outlast his freedom. This is Waladuna Mosque in Jakarta. Its roof is in ruins. Moss covers the walls.  And sea water flows
through every corner of it. The last time people prayed here was in 2001,
back when it was above ground. Today, it’s a warning sign. It signals what could happen to Indonesia’s 
capital city if things don’t change soon. Because, even though Jakarta
faces the same sea rising levels as other coastal cities around the world, that’s not quite what we’re looking at here. Jakarta is sinking.
And it’s been sinking for decades. These blue areas show just how much 
the city has sunk since the 1970s. The darker the area gets, the more it's dropped. Here's how much it's descended today. Most of the sinking happens here,
in the north coast, where Jakarta meets the Java Sea. Here, the land is sinking by about 25 cm a year,   destabilizing the area,
damaging homes, and upending people’s lives,
over and over again. Many residents here are fishermen, who need 
to live by the coast to make a living, but, further inland, Jakarta’s more than 
10 million residents are also at risk. A huge portion of the city, and the homes of
millions, could be underwater by 2050. Jakarta sits on a 
swampy plain, on low coastal land. It has 13 rivers that drain through it. But the reason the city is sinking is actually that most people here
don’t have enough water. Most Jakartans lack access
to clean, piped water. Instead, they get their water 
by digging wells like this one. The pumps go deep into the ground to 
extract the water stored in aquifers,   underground layers of rock
that hold groundwater. The porous spaces of the rock
are filled with it. Multiply this by a few million, 
and you have a problem. Think of the rock as a soaked sponge: the more water is extracted,
the more it deflates, causing the soil to compact and collapse,
and the ground above it to sink. Pumps alone shouldn’t be able to do this. While some layers of earth
will never recover their water, aquifers are usually
refilled naturally when it rains. But in Jakarta, that’s
becoming increasingly rare. For decades, Jakarta has been
developing at a fast pace, and is now covered in concrete. So the rainfall that would usually fill up
the aquifers isn’t being absorbed. It’s gotten so bad that in
coastal areas prone to flooding, like the fishing community Muara Baru, people have built makeshift bridges 
to move through their neighborhoods. Combined with sea level rise, it's also made floods during high tide
and rainy seasons much more dangerous. Like in 2007, when Jakarta
experienced one of the worst floods in its modern history. A storm and high tide caused rivers
and canals around the city to overflow, killing 80 people. Maksim has already lost
his home to the sinking, and now sleeps on his fishing boat. And Nondho has had to rebuild
his home several times. Groundwater pumping is putting 
Jakarta’s survival at risk. But to understand how it got
into this situation to begin with, you have to go back centuries. In the 1600s, when European 
powers were colonizing the world,   the Dutch took over what was then 
the port town of Jayakarta. They razed it to the ground,
and in its place, built Batavia: a headquarters for their growing empire. They began to rule over the Indonesian,   Chinese, Indian, and Arab people 
who had lived there for centuries,   and built their new city
in the Dutch style, with narrow townhouses
along a grid of canals. The canals were used for trade, defense, 
and to make Batavia feel like a Dutch city.   But look at Batavia from above, and you can see the city grid
served a darker purpose, too. If you look closely, you'll notice 
that there aren’t many bridges between the two sides,
or between the blocks. This was by design.
The Dutch were outnumbered. So, in order to control the local
population, they divided it. It looked like this. Pretty much every group was
confined to their city quarter. The Dutch ruled over the local
population like this for over a century. But that began to change
in the mid-1700s. Because the Dutch didn’t properly maintain 
the canals, they began to deteriorate,   and sediment from earthquakes 
blocked the flow of water. The water in the canals turned 
stagnant, and soon, deadly. As disease spread through the canals, the wealthier Dutch moved
south of Batavia, where they began to develop a new 
colonial administrative center. But, despite the death and disease, the Dutch
continued to leave the canals untreated. Instead, they began to use piped water. In the 1870s, they developed the 
first centralized water supply,   with iron pipes to
distribute water to homes. The pipes provided clean drinking 
water and indoor bathrooms. But the pipes were concentrated in these 
areas, where the Dutch had moved to. The indigenous population was left in 
informal settlements, called "kampongs," far from the piped water. And this created a new
kind of division in the city. Native residents had to rely 
on street vendors for water. But most often, they were forced to get 
their water from the neglected canals. It took decades before pipes were 
finally built in these communities. And when they were, it would 
only be a few public standpipes. This continued through 1949. After an armed conflict, the Dutch finally
recognized Indonesia’s independence, and left. The legacy they left behind
was a sprawling city, built on marshland,
and segregated by water access, that, now, Jakartans had to deal with. Over the next decades, 
Jakarta’s population skyrocketed. More people required more housing,
more stores, and more streets. And the city expanded fast. But its water infrastructure still 
doesn’t serve the majority of the city. This chart shows how much of 
Jakarta’s population has piped water. It was 12 percent in the 50s, and 
is still under 50 percent today. Many of the people without
access to piped water have no other choice but to keep
pumping groundwater to survive. And the city continues to sink. The situation has gotten so bad, the Indonesian government has talked 
about moving the capital, from Jakarta, to the neighboring island of Borneo. But that won’t help the millions 
of people living in Jakarta. To save the city, in 2014, the 
government announced a project,   in collaboration with a
Dutch architecture firm, to build and reinforce
120 km of seawalls, to stop the water from flooding 
the land as it sinks. But so far, only these 10 kilometers
have been reinforced. Like this one in Muara Baru. The problem is that, just like the rest 
of Jakarta, the seawall is sinking. The project also includes an
ambitious $40 billion plan to build a 38 km wall,
shaped like a massive bird, to protect the coast from flooding. But this project could take 
up to 30 years to complete. And by then, Jakarta could have 
lost most of its coastal land. Jakarta will continues to sink until 
groundwater stops being pumped. And groundwater will
continue to be pumped until the government
provides an alternative. This has been done before.
In the 1950s, Tokyo managed to stop severe 
sinking by providing piped water. Taipei, Shanghai, Bangkok, 
are other cities in the region   that have managed to
stop their cities from sinking. But time is running out. Jakarta has been free of Dutch rule
for a little over 70 years now. But the way the Dutch
built their city, carved it up, and restricted its water,
plagues it to this day. Jakarta is sinking into the sea. And, until its government figures out how
to provide clean, piped water for its citizens, that will continue to be its reality. For as long as it’s still here. barnegat light a town on the coast of new jersey had a reputation in the 1800s it was the graveyard of the atlantic it had fast currents sand bars that shifted and shoals hidden ridges that wrecked ships but this narrow passage was crucial for tons of traffic from europe the result was wreck after wreck after wreck after wreck the lighthouse was intended to guide ships away from land it didn't and a lot of lighthouses around the world had the same problem the problem at barnegat was the light inside that lighthouse it just wasn't strong enough and the solution was an invention that fixed lighthouses from france to florida an international upgrade that's still in use today and is used in things like this the lighthouse wasn't enough to save ships [Music] they needed the right lens i volunteered at the saint augustine lighthouse here in florida it was in 1992 so it was a while back [Music] and i saw the fresnel lens and it was just beautiful and i stood inside of this and i was surrounded by all these glass prisms and i was just intrigued by it and i wanted to know how it worked my name is dan spinella with artworks florida classic fresnel lenses and i'm a lens preservationist and designer i build historic reproductions of classic fresnel lenses and also build the prisms and lenses to help restore the original classic fresno lenses this is a fresnel lens the breakthrough that made lighthouses work like lighthouses should work light from a lamp is diffuse too weak for a ship to see it from far away a fresnel lens fixes that it takes that light and using prisms redirects and magnifies it in one unified direction see how this light and this light both go the same way a candle becomes a spotlight this is a fresnel lighthouse with bullseye panels in the middle and those look like lights a lot of people use in lighthouses and everywhere you know i have a light fresnel that i attached to my my little spotlight up here should be pretty much the same thing right yes it is it's it's identical in design and that's what's amazing about it is something that was designed in 1819 is still being used today i normally attach this to a light to make a spotlight but it is a fresnel when i light a candle it takes that light and focuses it into a spotlight and so the light gets more intense the brighter i make it or in this case the closer i hold it to the center of the lens the same thing happens when i use my phone the fresnel captures all of that light and focuses and magnifies it these lenses weren't just an improvement they created a whole system that saved lives agustin jean fernell an engineer and physicist was part of a french lighthouse commission to improve lighthouses developed through the 1820s vernell's lens proved better than existing lights including the ones at barnegat probably tens of thousands of wrecks are scattered throughout the barnegat shoals and up and down that area of new jersey uh there were a lot of flaws with that lighthouse they were called lewis lights the lewis lamp was successful in so far it was better than nothing however the technology was flawed it was lacking like many lamps at the time a lewis lamp used a reflector to catch light it had a small lens to project that light but a lot of light escaped it wasn't bright enough so they weren't as efficient and the metal wasn't as efficient because it absorbs a lot of the light that's why the design of the fresnel lens was so much more efficient that it collected more of the light and directed at seaward what it's supposed to do in addition to strengthening and magnifying light fresnel's flashing with rotation turned them into a communication device so it creates this flashing characteristic even though the lamp is continuously on it was a flame you couldn't turn it off depending on how they design the lens it creates different flashing characteristics so you knew where you were at what location you were at before gps colored panels or even colored flames could make lights more distinct some got huge a first order fresnel was this big more than 75 fresnels are still up and running today in the united states alone thanks to these lenses that rippled across the globe lighthouses cast light farther communicated more information and saved lives [Music] the lighthouse is a wonderfully strange 2019 movie in which a fresnel is so hypnotic willem dafoe's character undresses and bathes in its light the director called it the cosmic egg with the production designer dan spinella made the lens in the film i had to work a lot of hours i probably worked 14 16 hour days for eight weeks straight seven days a week i didn't take any breaks i got it done just in time probably five days before filming i was creating it up i had to drive it up to nova scotia from florida it's sort of a weird showcase for your work because it's it's sort of the most flattering possible look for your work but in a really weird movie it's definitely not a feel-good hallmark movie that's for sure i mean i i like the fact that the focus was on the lens and you didn't i liked the little sneak peaks of the lens until you got to the very end of the movie they actually actually saw it it was almost a star in the movie itself they did a really good job getting everything historically accurate the very first lens that i worked on the saint augustine lighthouse when i started designing that lens on the computer i was just amazed at how the formulas were actually working and to think that they did that in the 1800s and they went to these formulas and the same thing i was doing now crashes still happened at barnegat even after they added a fourth order for now the lighthouse was small and the sea was dangerous but in 1857 they built a new lighthouse and it was crucial that they have one thing in it they got a fresnel lens and not just a fresnel lens the biggest one that they built which was a first order lens the mariners were very grateful for because it did save lives because unlike the lewis light this could shine out at least 20 miles they really don't know how far it could shine because the curvature of the earth but that's how powerful it is what they did to rotate the lenses they used a clockwork mechanism they didn't have electricity they didn't have electric motors they used a clockwork mechanism which is very similar to a grandfather clock there's a weight that would drop down the center of the lighthouse and that weight was attached to a cable which was wrapped around a drum and that drum had a gear on the end of it and that gear drove a series of gears inside the clockwork mechanism and that determined by the ratio of the gears determined the speed at which the the lens would rotate it engaged with a gear that was underneath the bottom of the lens the lens was on either chariot wheels ball bearings or in some cases it was a mercury bath that allowed it to rotate so that was built as a demonstration for the pensacola lighthouse [Music] the katy freeway in texas connects houston's western suburbs with the city's downtown at its widest point right here it spans 26 lanes including parallel roads before it intersects with another freeway creating this massive web of pavement the katy freeway is among the widest in the world but it didn't start out this big the freeway was initially built in the 1960s with six lanes in most places but as the suburbs and office space around houston started growing in the 1980s and 90s and more people began using the freeway it became a traffic nightmare by 2004 it was ranked the second worst bottleneck in the country to accommodate the growing commuter class the city began a nearly 3 billion expansion project to add the additional lanes the solution seems natural more lanes equals less congestion but traffic didn't get any better in fact it got worse in both the morning and afternoon commutes the reason why hinges on a simple economic theory one that is often overlooked because actually reducing traffic is far from simple highway expansion has gone hand in hand with the suburbanization of american cities like houston it becomes a self-fulfilling recipe for urban sprawl a highway gets built to connect suburbs to a city center which encourages more development along it which necessitates even more highways when those get congested and on and on and on the instinct to widen highways to relieve traffic makes sense but there's a reason it doesn't work due to a concept called induced demand these represent three highway lanes and these balls are the commuters that drive on them these particular commuters the red ones will sit in traffic no matter how bad it gets because they have to driving to work on the highway is their only option this is what congestion looks like during peak rush hours once a certain number of cars get on the highway traffic slows to a crawl now let's add a new lane these drivers now have more room to spread out which should make traffic flow better that might happen at first but it doesn't stay that way that's because there's another set of people who will take the highway under the right conditions even though they have other commuting options when a highway is congested they might take local roads instead or be able to drive during off-peak hours they might use other modes of transportation like public transit or biking or maybe they can work from home that day and skip the commute altogether in a few years these people will start taking the highway enticed by less congestion this is induced demand at play the more supply there is the more demand will follow to exhaustion and in this case the supply is highway lanes and sometimes like on the katy freeway congestion gets even worse after a highway expansion until some of the people with more options go back to their old ways but in the end you're still left with more drivers in congestion that's at least as bad as it was before when our transportation system is so reliant on highways and private automobiles there's there's almost no way around it because that's that's the system that we've created this is kyle shelton an urbanist based in houston the endless reduction of congestion should that be the drive honestly the driving policy question for a lot of our transportation funding big expensive highway infrastructure projects are still the prevailing band-aid to congestion in the u.s the transit advocacy group transportation for america found that between 1993 and 2017 the us added over 30 000 miles of new freeway lanes in a hundred metro areas building more highways may provide some short-term relief and it's easier than most infrastructure projects to get federal funding to do a highway expansion but if we want less traffic and fewer drivers giving flexible commuters better choices is a good place to start like by improving public transit by adding more and better bus routes or trains that alone might not be a silver bullet for congestion relief for the same reason that adding another lane isn't new drivers will take the place of transit commuters on the highway and for many people living off highways and sprawling u.s cities public transit may never be an adequate solution because it's not just about the infrastructure it's also about individual behaviors it's about where job opportunities are located and most of our cities have now been constructed in this way where the car is the prime mode [Music] another option is to enact policies that actively disincentivize people from using the highway like congestion pricing which charges people who drive on highways during rush hours or remote work programs that deter people from traveling during the highest traffic times or make it so they don't have to commute at all and in the long term better land use policies can help as well like by building communities that put people closer to where they need to go and if building more highways results in more drivers and congestion then removing them could have the opposite effect for example the city of boston removed a freeway in its city center in the 1990s and replaced it with a boulevard with biking and bus lanes and more space to walk it reduced congestion by 62 percent and now the democratically controlled senate is considering nearly 10 billion in funding for similar highway removal projects in other cities what we build and invest in in the world of transportation truly changes our behavior if building more roads makes us drive on them more then giving people better choices by investing in the right things will make us drive less because if we build it they will come [Music] you this is every step in the process of developing a vaccine from development in the lab testing approval manufacturing all the way to getting it to millions of people but arguably the most important part is here in the human trials where the vaccine is tested on real people in three main phases starting with just a small group of people and ultimately testing a group of thousands this is where scientists confirm the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine on a large scale before that scientists scrutinize its effectiveness but before any of that a vaccine first has to pass this crucial phase where scientists study the side effects in a trial you call it adverse events but that doesn't that's kind of overstating it dr kirsten lake led a phase one trial for the covid19 vaccine made by pfizer and biontech she says side effects are a possibility with any vaccine in general it's nothing to fear it's our own immune systems kicking in and doing what it's supposed to do the most common flu vaccine this year for example comes with a chance for many normal side effects pain fatigue headaches but many of the new kovin 19 vaccines are more likely to cause these kinds of side effects than you might be used to particularly after the second dose most people will feel a little pain in their arm many will be tired and get headaches i mean obviously having no side effects is desirable but i think with the the spike protein of the coronavirus it really does elicit some side effects but that's totally normal and once you understand why vaccine side effects happen you might actually be happy to get them [Music] first we have to talk about this your immune system which is a huge network of different cells and proteins in your body you've got things like white blood cells that fight the invading virus or bacteria communication cells that organize the response and antibodies that search for and identify the enemy when say a virus attacks your body your immune system attacks back your body increases blood flow to get more of these battle cells in circulation your temperature might go up too as one of the tactics your body has to help kill the invaders and after your white blood cells destroy the virus they produce antibodies that will identify the virus should it reappear in the future and remember how to fight it they're how you gain immunity this response is actually what gives you a lot of the symptoms you feel when you catch for example the common cold but the cold virus doesn't give you a fever or a runny nose or body aches your immune system does while fighting the virus and triggering this system without actually getting you sick is how vaccines work most vaccines are made up of a weakened or dead pathogen or a portion of one or in some of the new coven 19 vaccines the genetic code of a portion of one either in the form of dna or what's called messenger rna along with minor ingredients to keep it stable it's harmless but when your immune system detects it it responds just like it's a real danger it attacks the intruder and creates these memory antibodies to be able to fight it again in the future vaccines are designed to give you the same immunity as if you would fought off the real virus and some of the new coven 19 ones do this particularly well messenger rna vaccines are quite good at stimulating their your immune system that's why you have 95 efficacy that's right a 95 chance of being protected against covid19 that makes them some of the most effective vaccines but that also means they're really good at activating your immune system which means your body will increase blood flow to where the vaccine is which is why pain at the injection site is so common your body might even think better turn up the heat and then you get a fever or the chills so experts emphasize that we should look at most side effects as a good thing it means the vaccine is working i have a friend actually who participated in one of the pfizer trials early trials and you know so he could have gotten either placebo or vaccine or after the second dose the next day he woke up and he had he was sort of fatigued and he had low grade fever and he looked at his wife and said yes i got the vaccine see that's the right attitude when we talk about these common reactions to vaccines like fever and fatigue we're mostly talking about the mild to moderate ones these are the lowest of the side effect categories that health regulators use the kind you get over in a day or two then there's severe side effects the type that might make you call in sick to work or call a doctor these were rare in the clinical trials for the first two studied vaccines to become available with the exception of some severe fatigue and muscle pain on the second dose and that's because if these vaccines were dangerous they'd never reach the public in the first place we really don't accept any sort of permanent serious harm from a vaccine and nor should we new stories that imply otherwise can be scary but they get more attention than they probably deserve like this one about a serious allergic reaction in someone with a history of serious allergic reactions or this one about someone dying after getting a second dose of the vaccine when it turned out other factors had caused his death in fact no deaths have been reported from the millions of doses that have been given out and the controlled studies with thousands of people found the same thing no deaths from the vaccine but maybe more importantly the studies also recorded zero deaths from coven 19 and zero hospitalizations from kova 19. these vaccines aren't just safe they're lifesavers you should be skeptical of anything you put in your body including vaccines once you've seen the data and you see that there wasn't a serious side effect before approval and and hasn't been a serious side effect post-approval then i think you should be convinced basically you want to reduce where the virus can go and if you immunize as many people as possible that pool of people that it can transmit to becomes less and less and less and less vaccines are the way out of the coven 19 pandemic and like with all vaccines many of us who get it will also feel a little meh for a day or two but the scientists who have studied these vaccines who have seen the side effects are some of the most eager to get it i couldn't wait to get this vaccine are you kidding me i mean two doses of vaccine gives me a 95 chance of of being protected we would be the first ones to not want to take it if we felt it was unsafe right so um take it from your friendly vaccine person [Music] in march of 1963 dr maurice hilleman was woken up one night by his five-year-old daughter she was complaining of a sore throat so hilleman looked her over and determined she had the mumps unable to sleep he was struck with an idea he swabbed her throat for a sample drove to the lab and got to work four years later his mum's vaccine was approved it was the fastest a vaccine had ever been developed until now new vaccine against coronavirus and it's incredible how quickly this vaccine and others have been developed this was done in record time this is extraordinary this is the fastest vaccine development in us history in 2020 vaccines for covet 19 have shattered previous records going from development to approval in a matter of months that speed was driven by billions of dollars in a global effort but in some cases it was also because of a breakthrough in vaccine technology decades in the making something that could shrink this timeline going forward and change how we make vaccines all together vaccines teach your immune system how to respond to a threat and traditionally there have been four ways to do this the two most common types of vaccines work by exposing you to a weakened or dead version of a virus or bacteria the weakened virus won't make you sick but it will teach your body how to fight the real thing if you're exposed to it later on this is how the measles and annual flu vaccines work another less common type of vaccine does a similar thing but uses an inert version of a toxin instead of a virus the most well-known version of this is probably the tetanus shot this fourth type of vaccine works a little differently because it only uses a small part of the virus instead of the whole thing common examples of this would be the hepatitis b vaccine or the hpv vaccine some of the new covid19 vaccines also rely on these traditional methods for example one covid19 vaccine currently in trials uses this fourth method it only uses one part of the sars cov2 virus known as the spike protein [Music] that spike protein is what allows the coronavirus to enter your cells when injected into your body on its own it's harmless but your body will still recognize it as a foreign threat and launch an immune response to fight it off which is enough to teach your body how to fight the whole virus but isolating and preparing that spike protein for a vaccine is a process researchers first had to modify it then multiply it a lot and then assemble the vaccine itself in a lab in fact one thing that all four of these types of vaccines have in common is that they all require growing and transporting large amounts of live pathogens in a lab and that takes a lot of time a vaccine goes through many steps before it can be approved but before anything else it has to be developed and working with live pathogens makes that process a lot longer on average it takes five to ten years for a vaccine to reach fda approval in the united states most covid19 vaccines have gotten through this process a lot faster by overlapping the different phases of human trials and starting the manufacturing early but some vaccines have also found a groundbreaking way to speed up this first section by shifting some of the work out of the lab and into your body [Music] nearly every function in the human body is carried out by proteins so our cells are constantly manufacturing them to do that they make a single stranded copy of dna that copy is called messenger rna or mrna each strand of mrna holds the information on how to make one type of protein the cell reads the mrna follows the instructions and makes a protein and that's where these two new types of vaccines come in they contain instructions researchers who developed these new types of vaccines called mrna vaccines started with the genetic sequence of the virus they also decided to focus on the spike protein we talked about earlier but instead of assembling and purifying that protein in the lab they identified the part of the genetic sequence that creates it and then took a much faster route by synthesizing mrna and using that as the vaccine which saved months of time and money once inside the body the cell reads the mrna and begins to make harmless spike proteins of its own from there your body's immune system recognizes the foreign threat and sounds the alarm this is how the new kovid 19 vaccines from pfizer and biointec and moderna work but the main drawback with an mrna vaccine is that mrna breaks down very easily it has to be delivered inside a protective fatty barrier and kept ultra cold which isn't super ideal for a vaccine that needs to reach all areas of the globe another effective new to consumer kind of vaccine works similarly but uses dna instead of mrna which is much more stable the covid19 vaccines from astrazeneca and johnson and johnson are this type it doesn't require the ultracold conditions but it does have its own drawbacks to get the dna into your cells researchers use a harmless virus as a carrier but over time your body will build resistance to that virus which means future doses using this carrier will become less and less effective and the carrier will need to be updated but in terms of efficacy cost and speed these two new types of vaccines have broken records these new vaccines are a groundbreaking way to elicit an immune response and while they'll have a big impact on how we fight covid19 their real impact is just beginning a vaccine that delivers specific instructions to your body opens up a whole new world of vaccine technologies and disease treatments for things like cancer or hiv finding the vaccine was a turning point for the pandemic but the pandemic might also be a turning point for vaccines [Music] you Something I think about
a lot is Tide Pods. Someone just made a joke one day,
that Tide Pods look delicious. And so people started, you know, just making
posts about this on social media. And it was just transparently hilarious. But the platform's incentives are such that
if you actually did eat a Tide pod,  you'd get a million views. And what had seemed super funny, 
all of a sudden was a public health hazard. Platforms, for I think
very understandable reasons, have a terrible time figuring out
when the joke stops being funny. "Twitter, for the very first time,
has fact-checked President Trump...." "...on voter misinformation." "That's the line Facebook, Twitter, 
and others seem to have drawn." "Trump continues to falsely insist 
 that the election was stolen." "Twitter has put up a flag more than 
 a hundred times since Election Day." "Trump urging his followers: 
Be there, will be wild." "Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!" "Twitter permanently suspending 
 the president's personal account...." "...due to the risk of 
 further incitement of violence." "Facebook." "YouTube." "Pinterest." "Shopify and Paypal." And so the question is, what is the right moment
for the platform to intervene? I think we're in a period of rethinking what
misinformation is. I think the past few years, we had the thought
that misinformation was individual bad posts, and maybe some individual actors 
 that needed to be disciplined. But, if we could just prune that garden, the rest of our information 
 ecosystem would be okay.  Alex Jones is sort of the classic example. "Apple, Facebook, 
 Spotify, and YouTube..." "...have now removed content 
 associated with Jones and InfoWars." He does not have nearly the influence over
American life today. But that kind of 
 whack-a-mole approach is just not giving us the 
 information ecosystem that we want. This idea that the election has been stolen,
which we know to be false,  is being repeated ad nauseum
 all across the Internet, in private chats, in private messages,
 as well as in public. This is becoming the big lie. It's larger than any one user. It's larger than a thousand users. It's going to require a much more
serious and difficult approach than simply removing one account, no matter how prominent
that account might be. 147 members of Congress voted to overturn
the results of the election  after the Capitol had been attacked. Are these platforms ready to deplatform 147
sitting members of Congress? Removing Trump was the easy part. He incited an attack on his own government. That is not a close call. The hard call is, you're about to have maybe
70 million Americans, or some huge percentage of that, talking, including in online spaces, about an election
being stolen that was not stolen. And that is going to have a lot of really
dangerous consequences. I don't think these platforms will succeed if they can only be defined 
by what they will not allow.  It's that — what are they replacing it with? There needs to be a positive, 
constructive counterbalance to all of the misinformation 
and conspiracy theories. What can they do to build a better media ecosystem? Because if we don't have 
a shared sense of reality, I truly do not believe we are going to have a 
liberal democracy in America very much longer. this piece by the marine band trio from hail america the marine band known as the president's own they play at the pleasure of the president and the commandant the marine corps and they've played at every inauguration since jefferson's [Music] greeting former president of epa dan quayle look at his eyes [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen please be seated that's a phrase that is well welcomed right now let's enjoy the ceremony please welcome the honorable amy klobuchar [Applause] vice president pence mr president-elect madam vice president-elect members of congress and the judicial branch former presidents and first ladies vice presidents leaders from abroad and a whole bunch of bidens america welcome to the 59th presidential inauguration where in just a few moments joe biden and kamala harris will take their solemn oaths this ceremony is the culmination of 244 years of a democracy it is the moment when leaders brought to this stage by the will of the people promised to be faithful to our constitution to cherish it and defend it it is the moment when they become as we all should be guardians of our country have we become too jaded too accustomed to the ritual of the passing of the torch of democracy to truly appreciate what a blessing and a privilege it is to witness this moment i think not two weeks ago when an angry violent mob staged and insurrection and desecrated this temple of our democracy it awakened us to our responsibilities as americans this is the day when our democracy picks itself up brushes off the dust and does what america always does goes forward as a nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this conveyance of a sacred trust between our leaders and our people takes place in front of this shining capital dome for a reason when abraham lincoln gave his first inaugural address in front of this capitol the dome was only partially constructed braced by ropes of steel he promised he would finish it he was criticized for spending funds on it during the civil war to those critics he replied if the people see the capital going on it is a sign we intend the union shall go on and it did and it will generations of americans gave their lives to preserve our republic in this place great legislation to protect civil rights and economic security and lead the world was debated and crafted under this dome dome now it falls on all of us not just the two leaders we are inaugurating today to take up the torch of our democracy not as a weapon of political arson but as an instrument for good we pledge today never to take our democracy for granted as we celebrate its remarkable strength we celebrate its resilience its grit we celebrate the ordinary people doing extraordinary things for our nation the doctors and nurses on the front line of this pandemic the officers in the capitol a new generation never giving up hope for justice we celebrate a new president joe biden who vows to restore the soul of america and cross the river of our divides to a higher plane and we celebrate our first african american first asian american and first woman vice president kamala harris who stands on the shoulders of so many on this platform who have forged the way to this day when she takes the oath of office little girls and boys across the world will know that anything and everything is possible and in the end that is america our democracy a country of so much good and today on these capital steps and before this glorious field of flags we rededicate ourselves to its cause thank you it is now my honor to introduce to you the senator who has worked with me and so many others to make this ceremony possible my friend and the chair of the inaugural committee missouri senator roy blunt well i should have known when senator klobuchar got involved at least there'd be a touch of snow up here this morning of all the things we'd considered i don't think snow was on my agenda until i walked out the door a moment ago but thank you senator klobuchar and thanks to the other members of the joint congressional committee on the inauguration as we officially begin the 59th inaugural ceremony i also want to thank the joint committee staff and our partners particularly our security partners for the they the way they've dealt with unprecedented circumstances when i chaired the inauguration four years ago i shared president reagan's 1981 description of this event as commonplace and miraculous commonplace because we've done it every four years since 1789 miraculous because we've done it every four years since 1789. americans have celebrated this moment during war during depression and now during pandemic once again all three branches of our government come together as the constitution envisions once again we renew our commitment to our determined democracy forging a more perfect union that theme for this inauguration are determined democracy forging a more perfect union was announced by the joint committee before the election with the belief that the united states can only fulfill its promise and set an example for others if we are always working to be better than we have been the constitution established that determined democracy with its first three words declaring the people as the source of the government the articles of confederation hadn't done that the magna carta hadn't done that only the constitution says the government exists because the people are the source of the reason it exists they immediately followed those first three words with the words to form a more perfect union the founders did not say to form a perfect union they did not claim that in our new country nothing would need to be improved fortunately they understood that always working to be better would be the hallmark of a great democracy the freedoms we have today the nation we have today is not here just because it happened uh and they aren't complete a great democracy working through the successes and failures of our history striving to be better than it had been and we are more than we have been and we are less than we hope to be the assault on our capital at this very place just two weeks ago reminds us that a government designed to balance and check itself is both fragile and resilient during the last year the pandemic challenged our free and open society and called for extraordinary determination and sacrifice and still challenges us today meeting that challenge head on have been and are health care workers scientists first responders essential frontline workers and so many others we depend on in so many ways today we come to this moment people all over the world as we're here are watching and we'll watch what we do here our government comes together the congress and the courts join the transition of executive responsibility one political party more pleased today and on every inaugural day than the other but this is not a moment of division it's a moment of unification a new administration begins and brings with it a new beginning and with that our great national debate goes forward and a determined democracy will continue to be essential in pursuit of a more perfect union and a better future for all americans what a privilege for me to join you today thank you i'm pleased to call to the podium a long time friend of the president-elect and his family father leo o'donovan to lead us in an invocation please stand if you are able and remain standing for the national anthem and the pledge to our flag thank you gracious and merciful god at this sacred time we come before you in need indeed on our knees but we come still more with hope and with our eyes raised anew to the vision of a more perfect union in our land a union of all our citizens to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity we are a people of many races creeds and colors national backgrounds cultures and styles now far more numerous and on land much vaster than when archbishop john carroll wrote his prayer for the inauguration of george washington 232 years ago archbishop carroll prayed that you o creator of all would assist with your holy spirit of counsel and fortitude the president of these united states that his administration may be conducted in righteousness and be eminently useful to your people today we confess our past failures to live according to our vision of equality inclusion and freedom for all yet we resolutely commit still more now to renewing the vision to caring for one another in word and deed especially the least fortunate among us and so becoming a light for the world there is a power in each and every one of us that lives by turning to every other one of us a thrust of the spirit to cherish and care and stand by others and above all those most in need it is called love and its path is to give ever more of itself today it is called american patriotism born not of power and privilege but of care for the common good with malice toward none and with charity for all for our new president we beg of you the wisdom solomon sought when he knelt before you and prayed for an understanding heart so that i can govern your people and know the difference between right and wrong we trust in the counsel of the letter of james if any of you likes wisdom you should ask god who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you pope francis has reminded us how important it is to dream together by ourselves he wrote we risk seeing mirages things that are not there dreams on the other hand are built together be with us holy mystery of love as we dream together help us under our new president to reconcile the people of our land restore our dream and invest it with peace and justice and the joy that is the overflow of love to the glory of your name forever amen ladies and gentlemen please remain standing for the presentation of our national colors by the armed forces color guard the singing of our national anthem and for the pledge of allegiance [Music] so [Music] so [Music] ladies and gentlemen here for the singing of our national anthem accompanied by the president's own united states marine band please welcome lady gaga [Music] oh say can you see [Music] we [Music] and bright stars [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] still [Music] is [Music] me [Music] we're ready ladies and gentlemen please welcome from the city of south fulton georgia fire and rescue department president of the international association of firefighters local 3920 fire captain andrea m hall for the reciting of the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Applause] what you are all about to be part of america is a historic moment of firsts to administer the oath to our first african-american our first asian american and our first woman vice president kamala harris it is my great privilege to welcome to the inaugural stage the first latina to ever serve on the supreme court of the united states of america justice sonia sotomayor ladies and gentlemen please remain standing for the oath of office followed by musical honors please raise your right hand and repeat after me i kamala davey harris do solemnly swear i kamala davey harris who soundly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states and i will support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic against all enemies born and domestic that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that i take this obligation freely and i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that i will well and faithfully discharge that i will well and faithfully discard the duties of the office on which i am about to enter the duties of the office upon which i am about to enter so help me god so help me god all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen please be seated please welcome jennifer lopez to perform this land as your land and america the beautiful accompanied by members of the president's own united states marine band wow this land is your land [Music] this land is mine from california to the new york islands from the redwood forest to the gulf stream world this land was made for you and me as i went walking down [Music] this land was made for you and me [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] from [Music] [Applause] [Music] me this land was made for you and [Laughter] [Music] me [Music] [Applause] well that was great the sun is shining and mr president-elect this is the first inauguration in the history of america where j-lo was the warm-up act for chief justice roberts with that it is now my distinct honor to introduce the chief justice of the supreme court of the united states john roberts to administer the presidential oath to the next president of the united states joseph r biden [Applause] ladies and gentlemen please stand for the oath of office followed by musical honors please raise your right hand and repeat after me i joseph robinette biden jr do solemnly swear hi joseph robinette biden jr do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute and i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states office of president of the united states and will to the best of my ability the world to the best of my ability preserve protect and defend deserve protect and defend the constitution of the united states constitution of the united states so help you god so help me god congratulations mr [Applause] president [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] ladies and gentlemen please be seated yes hmm my fellow americans a moment we have all been waiting for it is now my great privilege and high honor to be the first person to officially introduce the 46th president of the united states joseph r biden jr chief justice roberts vice president harris [Applause] [Music] speaker pelosi leader schumer mr mcconnell vice president pence and my distinguished guest my fellow americans this is america's day this is democracy's day a day of history and hope of renewal and resolve through a crucible for the ages america has been tested anew and america has risen to the challenge today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate but of a cause the cause of democracy the people the will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded we've learned again that democracy is precious democracy is fragile at this hour my friends democracy has prevailed so now on this hallowed ground where just a few days ago violence sought to shake the capital's very foundation we come together as one nation under god indivisible to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries as we look ahead in our uniquely american way restless bold optimistic and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be i thank my predecessors of both parties for their presence here today i thank them from the bottom of my heart and i know i know the resilience of our constitution and the strength the strength of our nation as does president carter who i spoke with last night who cannot be with us today but whom we salute for his lifetime in service i've just taken the sacred oath each of those patriots have taken the oath first sworn by george washington but the american story depends not on any one of us not on some of us but on all of us on we the people who seek a more perfect union this is a great nation we are good people and over the centuries through storm and strife in peace and in war we've come so far but we still have far to go we'll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities much to repair much to restore much to heal much to build and much to gain few people in our nation's history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we're in now once in a century virus that silently stalks the country has taken as many lives in one year as america lost in all of world war ii millions of jobs have been lost hundreds of thousands of businesses closed a cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer a cry for survival comes from planet itself a cry that can't be any more desperate or any more clear and now a rise of political extremism white supremacy domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat [Applause] to overcome these challenges to restore the soul and secure the future of america requires so much more than words requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy unity unity in another january on new year's day in 1863 abraham lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation when he put pen to paper the president said and i quote if my name ever goes down into history it'll be for this act and my whole soul is in it my whole soul is in it today on this january day my whole soul is in this bringing america together uniting our people united in our nation and i ask every american to join me in this cause uniting to fight the foes we face anger resentment and hatred extremism lawlessness violence disease joblessness and hopelessness with unity we can do great things important things we can right wrongs we can put people to work in good jobs we can teach our children in safe schools we can overcome the deadly virus we can reward reward work and rebuild the middle class and make health care secure for all we can deliver racial justice and we can make america once again the leading force for good in the world i know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days i know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real but i also know they are not new our history has been a constant struggle between the american ideal that we're all are created equal and the harsh ugly reality that racism nativism fear demonization have long torn us apart the battle is perennial and victory is never assured through civil war the great depression world war 9 11 through struggle sacrifice and setbacks our better angels have always prevailed in each of these moments enough of us enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward and we can do that now history faith and reason show the way the way of unity we can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors we can treat each other with dignity and respect we can join forces stop the shouting and lower the temperature for without unity there is no peace only bitterness and fury no progress only exhausting outrage no nation only a state of chaos this is our historic moment of crisis and challenge and unity is the path forward and we must meet this moment as the united states of america if we do that i guarantee you we will not fail we have never ever ever ever failed in america we've acted together and so today at this time in this place let's start afresh all of us let's begin to listen to one another again hear one another see one another show respect to one another politics doesn't have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path every disagreement doesn't have to be a cause for total war and we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured my fellow americans we have to be different than this america has to be better than this and i believe america is so much better than this just look around here we stand in the shadow of the capitol dome as was mentioned earlier completed amid the civil war when the union itself was literally hanging in the balance yet we endured we prevailed here we stand looking out on the great mall where dr king spoke of his dream here we stand we're 108 years ago at another inaugural thousands of protesters tried to block brave women marching for the right to vote and today we mark the swearing-in of the first woman in american history elected to national office vice president kamala harris don't tell me things can't change here we stand across the potomac from arlington cemetery where heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion rest in eternal peace and here we stand just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people to stop the work of our democracy to drive us from this sacred ground it did not happen it will never happen not today not tomorrow not ever not ever to all those who supported our campaign i'm humbled by the faith you've placed in us to all those who did not support us let me say this hear me out as we move forward take a measure of me and my heart if you still disagree so be it that's democracy that's america the right to dissent peaceably in the guard rails of our republic is perhaps this nation's greatest strength yet hear me clearly this agreement must not lead to disunion and i pledge this to you i will be a president for all americans all americans and i promise you i will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did [Applause] many centuries ago saint augustine a saint of my church wrote to the people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love defined by the common objects of their love what are the common objects we as americans love that define us as americans i think we know opportunity security liberty dignity respect honor and yes the truth recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson there is truth and there are lies lies told for power and for profit and each of us has a duty and a responsibility as citizens as americans and especially as leaders leaders who have pledged to honor our constitution and protect our nation to defend the truth and defeat the lies look i understand that many of my fellow americans view the future as fear and trepidation i understand they worry about their jobs i understand like my dad they lay a bed staring at the at night staring at the ceiling wondering can i keep my health care can i pay my mortgage thinking about their families about what comes next i promise you i get it but the answer is not to turn inward to retreat into competing factions distrusting those who don't look like look like you or worship the way you do or don't get their news from the same sources you do we must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue rural versus ireland or rural versus urban conservative versus liberal we can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts if we show a little tolerance and humility and if we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes as my mom would say just for a moment stand in their shoes because here's the thing about life there's no accounting for what fate will deal you some days when you need a hand there are other days when we're called to lend a hand that's how it has to be it's what we do for one another and if we are this way our country will be stronger more prosperous more ready for the future and we can still disagree my fellow americans and the work ahead of us we're going to need each other we need all our strength to preser to persevere through this dark winter we're entering what may be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus we must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation one nation and i promise you this as the bible says weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning we will get through this together together look folks all my colleagues i serve with in the house and the senate up here we all understand the world is watching watching all of us today so here's my message to those beyond our borders america has been tested and we've come out stronger for it we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again not to meet yesterday's challenges but today's and tomorrow's challenges and will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example we'll be a strong and trusted partner for peace progress and security look you all know we've been through so much in this nation and my first act as president like to ask you to join me in a moment of silent prayer remember all those who we lost in this past year to the pandemic those four hundred thousand fellow americans moms dads husbands wives sons daughters friends neighbors and co-workers we will honor them by becoming the people and the nation we know we can and should be so i ask you let's say a silent prayer for those who've lost their lives and those left behind and for our country amen folks this is a time of testing we face an attack under democracy and on truth a raging virus growing inequity the sting of systemic racism a climate in crisis america's role in the world any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways but the fact is we face them all at once presenting this nation with the one of the greatest responsibilities we've had now we're going to be tested are we going to step up all of us it's time for boldness for there's so much to do and this is certain i promise you we will be judged you and i by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era we will rise to the occasion is the question will we master this rare and difficult hour when we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world to our children i believe we must i'm sure you do as well i believe we will and when we do we'll write the next great chapter in the history of the united states of america the american story a story that might sound something like a song that means a lot to me it's called american anthem there's one verse that stands out at least for me and it goes like this the work and prayers of century have brought us to this day what shall be our legacy what will our children say let me know in my heart when my days are through america america i gave my best to you let's add let's us add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our great nation if we do this then when our days are through our children and our children's children will save us they gave their best they did their duty they healed the broken land my fellow americans i closed the day where i began with the sacred oath before god and all of you i give you my word i will always level with you i will defend the constitution i'll defend our democracy i'll defend america and i'll give all all of you keep everything you i do in your service thinking not of power but of possibilities not a personal interest but the public good and together we shall write an american story of hope not fear of unity not division of light not darkness a story of decency and dignity love and healing greatness and goodness may this be the story that guides us the story that inspires us and the story that tells ages yet to come that we answer the call of history we met the moment democracy and hope truth and justice did not die in our watch but thrived that america secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world that is what we owe our forebearers one another and generation to follow so with purpose and resolve we turn to those tasks of our time sustained by faith driven by conviction and devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts may god bless america and may god protect our troops thank you [Applause] america ladies and gentlemen please be seated ladies and gentlemen please welcome garth brooks to perform amazing grace uh [Music] um how sweet the sound then saved her [Music] lost but now i'm found was blight but now i see [Music] when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun we've known lesson days to sing god's praise then when we first begun i think ask you to sing this last verse with me not just the people here but the people at home that work as one united oh may sing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me [Music] i once was lost but now i'm found was blind but now i [Music] see foreign [Applause] hard not to be reminded of hard not to be reminded of president obama's singing that same song at the mother emanuel church a song that in our culture is as close to both poetry and prayer as you could possibly come and we're going to finish with those two things let me introduce amanda gorman our nation's first ever national poet laureate [Applause] mr president dr biden madam vice president mr imhof americans and the world when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade the loss we carry a sea we must wade we've braved the belly of the beast we've learned that quiet isn't always peace in the norms and notions of what just is isn't always just is and yet the dawn is hours before we knew it somehow we do it somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished we the successors of a country in the time were a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one and yes we are far from polished far from pristine but that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect we are striving to forge our union with purpose to compose a country committed to all cultures colors characters and conditions of man and so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us we close the divide because we know to put our future first we must first put our differences aside we lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another we seek harm to none and harmony for all let the globe if nothing else say this is true that even as we grieved we grew that even as we hurt we hoped that even as we tired we tried that will forever be tied together victorious not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again so division scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid if we're to live up to our own time then victory won't lie in the blade but in all the bridges we've made that is the promise to glade the hill we climb if only we dare it because being american is more than a pride we inherit it's the past we step into and how we repair it we've seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy and this effort very nearly succeeded but while democracy can be periodically delayed it can never be permanently defeated in this truth in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future our history has its eyes on us this is the era of just redemption we feared it at its inception we did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us we will not march back to what was but move to what shall be a country that is bruised but whole benevolent but bold fierce and free we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and an ursa will be the inheritance of the next generation our blunders become their burdens but one thing is certain if we merge mercy with mites into mites with rights then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright so let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with every breath my bronze pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one we will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west we will rise from the wind swept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution we will rise from the lake rim cities of the midwestern states we will rise from the sun baked south we will rebuild reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful when day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid the new dawn blooms as we free it for there was always light if only we're brave enough to see it if only we're brave enough to be it thank you amanda gorman now for our benediction i'm pleased to introduce reverend dr sylvester beeman the pastor of the bethel african methodist episcopal church in wilmington delaware a friend of president biden for 30 years as a nation and people of faith gathered in this historical moment let us unite in prayer god we gather under the beauty of your holiness and the holiness of your beauty we seek your face your smile your warm embrace we petition you once more in this celebration we pray for divine favor upon our president joseph r biden and our first lady dr jill biden and their family we further asked that you would extend the same favor upon our vice president kamla d harris and our second gentleman doug imhoff and their family more than ever more than ever they in our nation need you we need you for in you we discover our common humanity in our common humanity we will seek out the wounded and bind their wounds we will seek healing for those who are sick and diseased we will mourn our dead we will befriend the lonely the least and the left out we will share our abundance with those who are hungry we will do justly to the oppressed acknowledge sin and seek forgiveness thus grasping reconciliation in discovering our humanity we will seek the good in and for all our neighbors we will love the unlovable remove the stigma of the so-called untouchables we will care for our most vulnerable our children the elderly emotionally challenged and the poor we will seek rehabilitation beyond correction we'll extend opportunity to those locked out of opportunity we will make friends of our enemies we will make friends of our enemies people your people shall no longer raise up weapons against one another we will rather use our resources for the national good and become a beacon of life and good will to the world and neither shall we learn hatred anymore we'll lie down in peace and not make our neighbors afraid in you oh god we discover our humanity in our humanity we discover our commonness beyond the difference of color creed origin political party ideology geography and personal preferences will become greater stewards of your environment preserving the land reaping from it a sustainable harvest in securing its wonder and miracle-giving power for generations to come this is our benediction that from these hallowed grounds where slaves labored to build this shrine in citadel to liberty and democracy let us all acknowledge from the indigenous native american to those who recently received their citizenship from the african-american to those whose four parents came from europe and every corner of the globe from the wealthy to those struggling to make it from every human being regardless of their choices that this is our country as such teachers oh god as such teach us oh god to live in it love in it be healed in it and reconcile to one another in it lest we miss kingdom's goal to your glory majesty dominion and power forever hallelujah glory hallelujah and the strong name of our collective faith amen please remain standing as the armed forces color guard retires our national colors [Music] that's [Music] so ladies and gentlemen please be seated and remain in your seats while the president and official party depart the platform for safety reasons your ushers will release your section in an organized manner following the playing of our national march the stars and stripes forever [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] foreign [Music] we need to go in to the Capitol so on the sixth we saw all of these different wings of the right he went on adherent Christian dominionists Maga people like normal like just hardcore supporters of the president and we saw out and out neo-nazis getting closer and closer wound together over their Mutual desire to overthrow the elected government which they all see as illegitimate they all want to do violence to their political enemies you can see shades of it within Rush Limbaugh there cannot be a peaceful coexist to complete completely different theories of Life theories of government theories of how we manage our Affairs Tucker Carlson were we allowed BLM and antifa to destroy our country in George Floyd's name how shocked are we that 17 year olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would they've all been urging different chunks of this and can getting people more and more comfortable with the idea of trying to overthrow the government in order to stop the left they have been trying to provoke a race war they're coming for you and your neighborhood we're all going to have to defend ourselves antifa mob saying that if you don't give us power we're going to keep terrorizing your cities they want us to destroy America help me it took a village to make this happen [Music] so I've been covering the far right and white supremacist movements for a few years now since the beginning of the pandemic I noticed this immediate sort of gathering in online spaces of people who were very against government shutdowns calling these these oxygens tyranny and organizing themselves into various groups the so-called Wolverine Watchmen were Furious over coronavirus shutdowns the group calls itself women for America organizers call for a full reopening a new group called save our country which is all about lobbying for quick opening of the economies right after the election we get this a very large Facebook group called stop the steel stop the steel stop the steals a group with some 360 000 members aimed at delegitimizing the election process the page was filled with false claims about voter fraud and call for boots on the ground to protect the Integrity of the vote we did the protests with the same name popping up in various state capitals stop us ing you will attack our constitution [Applause] there's this interlocking network of right-wing thought leaders who have been for years increasingly pushing for violence on behalf of this Insurgent conservative movement but now it's time to act on the enemy people need to have their battle rifles and everything ready their bedsides this is it I'd put the heads on Pikes right I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to Federal bureaucrats that's how you won the revolution what can you and I do with State Legislative besides killer although we should not do that not advise when you start seeing that language being taken very literally on social media and different forums to me that's a very clear red flag for example this one post from this website called My militia which I've been following for a while now somebody writes I say take the hill or die trying I don't know how much more explicit you can be posts and comments even even on Instagram saying violence is necessary and these are just you know two examples of a sentiment that has been expressed over and over no one has any excuse to be surprised by what happened on the sixth it was signposted in places like Salem [Music] I mean I had my hands broken by a proud boy at a massive thousand person street fight that the police didn't even show up at one of the key organizers of the left-wing counter protest to unite the right she was assaulted by a mob of neo-nazis we are surrounded on all sides one of the people in that mob who assaulted her he's a popular white nationalist live streamer he was present at the Capitol on the sixth inciting people to storm the captain dude we're in the capital right now Network [Music] when you're asking about like what were the signs how did this develop it developed exactly the way that anti-fascist activists have been warning that has been a whole years these people aren't drawing a movement to them and inciting violence around the country and eventually it will burst in some way that's too big to ignore it and it finally did thank you foreign [Music] A mysterious pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China A new type of coronavirus  The number of affected countries has tripled. The world health organization 
has just declared that this is a pandemic. (Clapping) The city all essential workers
who are showing up every day. It's still March. And the Oscar goes to Parasite. Shhhh. Please, sit down. Thank you.  I've never seen her before. Hey, all you cool cats and kittens! So "Folklore" is out. Dodgers have won it all in 2020! The Los Angeles Lakers This is so much bigger than just us. I always said talent is more 
important than experience. I've always said that. Everybody right now is worried that TikTok's gonna be
banned in the United States. Normal life cancelled. Eleven days into the national lockdown... All public gatherings banned. Working from home is the new reality. Are any of ya'll wearing pants? Now, be honest now. School is closed ...for the remainder of the academic year. Guys, what happened? It kicked her off the internet. Yup, we're toast. I see Brandon is holding up two and two - I see four ... More than four hundred children million children ... Zoom after zoom can be exhausting. It seems like the world's caving in on you. Yeah. Work never stops. It could be taking a toll on your well-being. Italy saw it's deadliest day from the coronavirus as the death toll jumped by more than 600 in 24 hours. The plan we have is to contain  - contain the disease outbreak in Taiwan. We have very little problem in this country at this moment. Five ... people have contracted the virus. Let us build up our confidence. We will eventually win. Many of all countries in Europe are now acting to "flatten the curve" used when talking about reducing the number of coronavirus cases. Americans unemployment more than 3.3 million - more than 6 million - I hope that's right. 10 million workers now applying for unemployment. 50 million unemployment claims filed in the span of just four months. A disproportionate number are black. It's called systemic racism for a reason. There's 400 years of history here. What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! One man's death has rekindled this movement around the world. Say his name! George Floyd! Say his name! George Floyd! Frustration over the lack of charges against the officers. They should be charged. There's always a better way. Protestors kneeling and raising their hands in peaceful demonstration. The poured onto the street. "Resign," they shouted. They are scared. They fear they are losing the power. The worst fire season ever and every year builds on the last one it seems like.  Yeah, it really does. This is everything we've worked for for the last 35 years - gone. This looks more like mars. One of the most busy hurricane seasons ever on record. Devastation in Puerto Rico. India and Pakistan are facing their worst locust outbreak in 70 years. Cases are up. More than 30 states and Puerto Rico reporting cases on the rise. A possible "second wave" -  going global. 60 million plus cases. Almost 1.5 million deaths. I've developed mild symptoms. French President Emmanuel Macron, President Bolsonaro, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. I think it's under control. I'll tell you what - How? A thousand Americans are dying a day. They are dying. That's true. It is what it is. We don't have enough stretchers. We're way above capacity. Cemeteries have become overwhelmed. I think we could've been a little more preventative. You know? As a whole. As a country. When I'm president we will be better prepared. Respond better and recover better. Some lines stretching for blocks forcing people to wait hours to cast their ballots. It could have rained. It could have snowed. I would not care. I'm not going anywhere. Andrzej Duda has been reelected president of Poland. Many Malawians already knew from early, unofficial results that he would be their next president. Tsai defeated a pro-Beijing rival. Luis Arce promised he would rule for all. We will be a party that governs for every New Zealander. We did it, Joe. The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing -  not even a pandemic,  or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame. I hope I aren't gonna have the bloody bug now. We press on for what is right, for what is fair, and for what is just. this is one of the busiest highways leading to delhi it's been blocked for weeks tens of thousands of farmers from the northern states of india have marched to the capital city to protest farming reforms they've covered at least five major highways around the city the police met them with tear gas and water cannons but they made it through and have now set up camp in and around delhi foreign [Laughter] [Music] this is all happening because prime minister modi's government has passed new farming laws that will change how the agricultural industry has worked for decades and in a country of 1.4 billion people where agricultural workers make up half of the labor force the repercussions of those laws could be devastating in the 1960s india a recently independent country was struggling to produce enough food for its citizens a string of droughts made things worse causing devastating vomits so the government stepped in to modernize farming and increase the food supply in what was called the green revolution they brought in u.s advisors to help boost the production of rice and wheat together they ended up over using chemical fertilizers pesticides and irrigation causing large plots of land to become infertile many crops suffered some nearly disappeared but rice and wheat production soared and soon india went from having a food crisis to having a food surplus it was in this context that india also developed a nationwide food marketing system to ensure fair prices it's a complex system and it differs from state to state but here's one way to understand it it starts with farmers bringing their crops here to wholesale markets locally known as mundi's the farmers then sell those crops to traders through open auctions with transparent pricing prices can also be informed by the minimum support price or msp a government price for crops like rice cotton wheat the government only buys a couple of crops at these prices in certain states but those prices can still serve as a benchmark the crops then go to secondary market or are stored by the buyers before they are sent out for future sales it's not a perfect system though local traders do end up colluding with each other uh the auctions actually are not competitive bidding but for the most part the system works on a large scale because there's oversight that aims to protect farmers by giving them market standards they've been designed keeping in mind the fact that farmers are the weakest link and they can be exploited in numerous ways over the years state reforms have gradually redefined and regulated markets in different ways across india in punjab and haryana for example they have become a vital part of the industry and farmers here have the highest incomes in the country but in the state of bihar markets were eliminated in 2006 and the farmers here are still ranked the poorest in india by income and all of this is happening while there's a bigger farming crisis the money in farming is disappearing since the days of the green revolution agriculture has gone from accounting for nearly 50 percent of the economy to just 15 meaning millions of farmers already have trouble making ends meet in this shrinking economy more than half of india's farming households are in debt and this debt has contributed to a suicide crisis in the last two years more than 20 000 farmers have died by suicide because of this economic hardship farmers have been asking for reforms for decades but this year instead of providing more protections for this vulnerable community the central government went in the opposite direction and farmers fear that the direction in which the reforms are happening are actually a direction of dismantling of the msp so let's take a look at these three farming acts that spark the protest each of them deregulates a different part of the system the first act creates free unregulated trade spaces outside the markets the laws in these spaces would override wholesale market rules and although a lot of trade takes place outside already what happens in the markets remains a benchmark across the industry but this act will create two parallel markets with very different rules one with oversight and another that creates room for big corporate players to come in unregulated and in this dual market structure the players in the regulated markets are bound to move out and operate in the deregulated spaces and that is where farmers are going to lose out when these traditional spaces collapse onto themselves the second act creates a framework for contract farming deals any business agreements would be strictly between farmers and traders with little oversight giving farmers few options to fight bad deals as these agreements increase outside of wholesale markets they could further fragment the market and leave small farmers dependent on terms set by big corporations or be cut out of the industry altogether the third act affects a different part of the chain it eliminates the storage limits previously set by the government to control prices unlimited storage means that anyone with enough money can stock up the problem is without oversight they can also start dictating prices all together the three acts invite big players into a fragmented and deregulated market that could lead to volatile prices for farmers and by deregulating the markets the government has also put out a message in the same breath essentially saying that they think farmers don't need any protection anymore from the government on june 3 2020 when the government announced the farming reforms it didn't take long for the impact to be felt on the ground wholesale markets around the country have already seen fewer crops arrive in their market yards in the state of madhya pradesh more than 40 markets have lost business trading has moved out of regulated market spaces and it is not as though good prices are being fetched by farmers and this is the context in which farmers anger has to be understood they didn't get what they wanted and what was thrust down upon them is very different from [Music] a foreign you [Music] in february 2009 president obama gave his first address to congress behind him was the speaker of the house a democrat and in the audience was the senate majority leader also a democrat which meant that when obama said this health care reform cannot wait it must not wait and it will not wait another year he wasn't kidding the next year his health care bill was passed in both houses of congress and became law even though every single republican voted against it but later that year republicans won back the majority in the house for the rest of his presidency obama never again passed a major piece of legislation then donald trump became president with a republican house and a republican senate they passed his tax bill no democrats voted for it but in the next election democrats won control of the house and that was the end of trump's legislative agenda now joe biden is about to start his presidency with a house controlled by democrats but we still don't know who will control the senate of the senate's 100 seats we know republicans will have 50 and democrats will have 48 but these we don't know yet these are the last two races of the 2020 election and they'll decide if the new president's agenda will be ambitious or compromised and they're both happening in the same place georgia georgia georgia at stake control of the u.s senate two senate runoff races that are now the center of the political world in nearly every u.s state elections are won by the candidate with the most votes but in the state of georgia most candidates need to reach at least 50 percent of votes to win a true majority when that doesn't happen in georgia the top two candidates move on to a second election a runoff and everyone votes all over again that's what happened in november republican senator david perdue got the most votes in his re-election race but he missed that 50 percent mark by just a few thousand votes so he and the democrat jon ossoff will compete in a runoff election on january 5th what's extremely unusual though is that there were two senate races in the same state in the same year the other was a special election to fill the seat of a senator who retired early due to bad health in this race several republicans and several democrats ran and no one got close to 50 so the top two candidates republican kelly lefler and democrat raphael warnock now go to the runoff in the u.s runoff elections are most common in the south an area with a long history of white politicians suppressing the vote of black americans and during the civil rights movement runoff elections became one of the tools to do that in 1963 a white georgia politician named denmark grover proposed the runoff system after he lost an election to what he called negro block voting he argued that when a black candidate runs against many white candidates the black candidate would get a block of black voter support while white support would be spread out but if you made that black candidate run against just one white candidate knowing that lots of white voters wouldn't vote for a black candidate the white candidate would have a better chance at winning years later gruver was open about the fact that his plan was racially motivated but georgia adopted it in 1990 the federal justice department sued georgia over their runoff system they argued it had a demonstrably chilling effect on the ability of blacks to become candidates but the suit failed and georgia still does it this way this year's special senate race features exactly the kind of match-up the system was designed to produce a black candidate versus a white candidate but georgia once a reliably republican state is changing organizers are getting black voters registered in record numbers more of its white residents are voting democratic and in the 2020 presidential election a democrat won georgia for the first time in 28 years if both democrats win their runoffs making it 50-50 the democratic vice president would serve as the tie-breaking vote so democrats would take majority control and that would mean biden could likely pass much of his progressive agenda but if republicans win either seat they win control and the republican who will be in charge of that senate mitch mcconnell has vowed to not let any of biden's legislation pass saying think of me as the grim reaper i need two senators from this state i want to get something done the voters of georgia will determine which party runs every committee writes every piece of legislation and that really means control of this country this is a study showing how often members of congress have voted with the other party you can see this used to happen fairly often but less and less over time today there's no longer any expectation that the parties will be able to work together on most issues that's why who holds the majority is more important than it's ever been i will fight to expand affordable health care a 100 trump voting record david perdue had his chance we win georgia we save america the 2020 election is almost over and we know who will be president but until the state of georgia weighs in we won't know what he'll actually be able to do [Music] oh oh damn [Music] oh these people are panicking because they're being asked to step out of an elevator onto a single plank that's suspended 80 stories in the air oh man this game is called richie's plank experience and by their very real reactions you might expect some groundbreaking photorealistic visuals behind that headset but that's not the case sure it's nice but it's clearly not real the graphics are beautiful but the lighting isn't quite right things are just a little too diffused the buildings are almost too smooth and the plants on the ground are clearly squared off it's hard to believe these people aren't dramatizing their reactions for the camera oh god but it's not just a plank experience the internet is full of vr fails where people are sucked into pixelated worlds with disembodied parts in front of them and this really got me thinking how is it that a virtual world that doesn't look very real at all feels so real of course the first major difference between watching vr and being in it is putting on the headset here's where vr marketing has mostly failed right because it's always shown from a spectator's perspective and as a spectator you do not get the experience of the person in vr thong win is the founder and ceo of romera a company that helps businesses test and understand new spaces before they're built using virtual reality vr communicates to your brain in a different way than looking at a screen when looking at a screen like our tv or phone our brains read this as a flat image the same way it would a picture if an object on a screen gets bigger or smaller or the person on tv moves towards the camera you don't feel the need to take a step back or move out of their way but in vr you might want to because you're not looking at one screen you're looking at two and those two screens are literally right in front of your eyes projecting a slightly different image into each eye which is how our vision works in the real world each eye takes in stimuli from a slightly different vantage point you can test this hold your finger up in front of your face and wink each of your eyes your finger should jump back and forth that jump is the difference between what your left and right eye are seeing and the difference is between what your eyes see conveys depth it conveys three dimensions this is known as stereopsis and vr developers have spent a lot of time perfecting it but what uses depth if you can't move through it which brings us to the next most important way virtual reality tricks your brain you are the camera and it's fast enough where your brain starts interpreting it as your perspective head tracking allows a person in vr to look and move around a fake world in the same way that we look and move around a real one if you look to the left you'll see more of the world to your left and if you look down [Music] okay maybe don't look down other subtle effects make virtual spaces feel more real like 360 audio which is a big part of the plank experience as you turn your head the wind will subtly change the plank creaks and if you listen closely a heartbeat slowly begins to speed up our brain takes all this new virtual stimuli and begins to believe this is reality our brain has never really learned within the last 150 000 years to actually distinguish between computer-generated content and the real world dr frank steinica has been studying immersive technologies like vr for nearly 20 years and if all the cues that we perceive in the virtual environment are so similar to the cues that we get in the real world it is makes kinds of sense that we are unable to clearly distinguish between both our brains quickly adapt to virtual environments largely because it's wired to trust our sense of sight there's some research showing that approximately 80 of all the information that we perceive from our environment are based on vision and this allows vr developers to manipulate our reality even further we found out about 10 years ago is that we if we guide users on a circular arc with a radius of 20 meters they have no chance to identify that they actually walk on a circle in the real world when they see a straight path in the virtual environment you can walk an entire virtual city without ever leaving a room once we believe the environment is real and accept that we're actually in it our brains then go on to fill in some other blanks there is interesting findings that for example if you are in the virtual world in a very let's say snow or icy environment people feel cold yeah although they're in the real world in a maybe in a hot environment outside of games vr has actually shown a lot of promise in the medical world from reducing pain and burn victims by immersing them in a snowy world while their bandages are being changed and with exposure therapy that helps people with phobias like a fear of heights and body dysmorphia it's also being used for physical therapy like assisting elderly people with their balance right now we're still tethered to a system with a headset on our faces the graphics are nice but not perfect and so we're not fully immersed when we hover 80 stories above the ground that is we can still remember to take the headset off seneca cautions that it might not always be that way we can easily assume that within the next five to ten years or so we will not be able to distinguish visually computer generated content from from real world content anymore and then of course there are a lot of ethical questions for now vr might not look exactly like reality but it follows a lot of the rules our brain has learned to perceive as real and that's often enough to make a sweat [Music] you [Music] okay i read this book back in grade school the title says it all dear napoleon i know you're dead but it's about a kid who writes letters to napoleon bonaparte who is of course dead the cover design is classic 90s chapter book and shows something the main character is obsessed with this weird thing napoleon seemed to always do pose with one hand in his coat i don't know why but that part of the book always stuck with me and i honestly thought everyone pictured napoleon this way until i asked my co-workers about it if i were to ask you to strike a pose like napoleon bonaparte what would you do um [Music] really is this wrong almost everyone i asked did a sort of variation of a typical hero pose which makes sense but once you see the shirt thing you can't unsee it oh wow okay oh that's a lot more sultry than i knew napoleon to be yeah what stands out to you about that i mean definitely like his hand why is his hand in his shirt what yeah why does he have his hand in his coat napoleon bonaparte is one of history's most famous figures his many successful military campaigns in the early 1800s expanded the size and influence of what's known as the first french empire over which he ruled as emperor napoleon is remembered as both an influential military commander and a ruthless power-hungry tyrant he was depicted in dozens of portraits and painted scenes throughout his life and well beyond his death and an overwhelming number of them look just like that book cover napoleon standing with his right hand concealed inside his coat the more you look at it the weirder it is why why it kind of seems like no matter what napoleon was up to gazing at charlemagne's throne rejecting people's ideas crossing the alps riding on a boat retreating from russia or just hanging at home that hand was just always jammed right in there and i really thought everyone i asked to do a napoleon impression would immediately do the hand thing who would know that well actually a few people did isn't he like this and then he's got his like hand in his jacket or something the gesture has appeared in caricatures of napoleon and actors portraying him over the years watch for it in this bowling scene from bill and ted's excellent adventure [Music] see [Music] people have speculated that napoleon's hidden hand may have been deformed or that he was relieving chronic stomach pain caused by cancer and he did eventually die of stomach cancer but the real reason napoleon was always painted like this had nothing to do with organ pain or a deformity and everything to do with his public image [Music] well it wouldn't be a vox video if we didn't roll the clock back concealing a hand in one's coat was a portraiture cliche long before napoleon was painted that way in the early 1800s this is george washington doing it in 1776 and mozart over a decade before that this painting of spanish conquistador francisco pizarro is from 1540. the pose's documented roots go all the way back to ancient greece where famed orator eskinis claimed that restricting the movement of one hand was the proper way to speak in public as opposed to the more animated gesturing of his rival demosthenes which was apparently unbecoming that association of restraint as a sign of respectability stuck except the tunics became jackets this 1737 british etiquette guide the rudiments of genteel behavior declared that keeping a hand in one's coat was key to posturing oneself with manly boldness tempered with becoming modesty the gesture became a stock pose in portraits painted in the mid-1700s like it was everywhere it was a popular choice for men and less frequently women who wanted to visually align themselves with nobility and for less talented portrait artists since hands are hard to paint [Music] and unsurprisingly as the pose became more and more common in paintings its reputation cheapened that is until one of the most powerful people in the world made it his trademark napoleon was famous for many things namely his innovative and successful strategies in warfare he was obsessed with gaining power at all costs and won battle after battle in what are now called the napoleonic wars briefly establishing french domination in europe all while fostering a grandiose image like organizing an elaborate coronation ceremony for himself in 1804 immortalized in this state-sanctioned painting of the event but outside of france he was a popular figure for caricature and was repeatedly portrayed as a small man with a hot head like in this 1803 british political cartoon maniac ravings or little bony in a strong fit which is why this famous portrait of napoleon in his study is significant it was done in 1812 by his official painter jacques louis david who also made some of the period's most recognized paintings it's a departure from many previous depictions of the conqueror including some by david himself and represents an effective example of propaganda there are key details here that tell a story of a modest hard-working leader the candles are burned all the way down and the clock shows that it's almost 4 15 in the morning napoleon stands from his desk having worked all night completing his signature legislation the napoleonic code this map on the floor and napoleon's sword at the ready are reminders of his successes on the battlefield but it's the restrained pose with centuries of context surrounding it that stands out crowds of people apparently came to see the painting in 1812 and david himself wrote that the portrait's popularity was due to the exceedingly close resemblance to that immortal man in that air of benevolence and composure a stark contrast to other contemporary images of the ruler napoleon didn't actually pose for this portrait but he's quoted to have said upon seeing it you have understood me my dear david this gesture of modesty and steady leadership became a common way to depict napoleon and stuck with him well beyond his death in 1821 but the pose's legacy didn't end with napoleon the well-established portrait cliche was also a trend in early portrait photography with notable sitters like karl marx and even the celebrated inventor of photography himself louis aguero adopting the gesture it was also a common appearance in portraits of soldiers fighting in the american civil war concealing a hand gave the subject a distinguished look and helped keep them in sharp focus during the long exposure times of early photography which often rendered blurred hands [Music] is this familiar at all to you i mean sort of that's actually not really what i imagined him looking like that's what napoleon looked like if you showed me that i wouldn't guess it was napoleon probably because he doesn't have the hat on it's probably pretty telling that almost everyone i asked to do an impression of napoleon adopted poses based around napoleon's supposedly short stature and his vanity this is my pose okay napoleon tiny man proud chest and didn't recognize david's depiction of napoleon or this arguably more important one at least in my mind this is a photo of charlie chaplin dressed as napoleon and it features not one but two portraiture cliches the hand and waistcoat gesture and this wicker chair it's called the peacock chair and like the hand gesture it shows up in tons of photos there's a whole history of how it became so popular and lucky for you estelle already made a video about it There’s only one way to see the stars while the sun is out. And that’s during a total solar eclipse. You have to be at right place at the right
time. Under a clear sky. Standing somewhere along the narrow path where the moon aligns perfectly between the sun and the Earth. When the moon passes in front of the sun's disc, it darkens the sky just enough for distant stars to become visible. There have been many photos of total solar eclipses. But this one is special. It helped prove a radical idea. That redefined gravity. And turned Albert Einstein into a celebrity. Because the stars in this photo aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Isaac Newton laid the foundation for understanding the physical universe in the Principia, published in 1687. In it, he defined gravity as a force of attraction that draws massive objects – like stars and planets – toward each other, and keeps them in orbit. And for more than 200 years, gravity was defined this way: as an attracting force. But Albert Einstein saw gravity as something completely different. According to his theory of general relativity, which he published in 1915, gravity isn’t a force between objects in space. It’s the influence of objects on the shape
of space itself. According to Einstein, massive objects like
the sun bend the space around them. So when a smaller object moves in a straight line along this space, it gets diverted because of the curve caused by the mass of the larger object. That puts one object in an orbit around the
other. And if Einstein was right then the same curve would divert the path of light as well. Meaning if you observed distant stars through a telescope on Earth while the sun is in front of them, their light, deflected by the sun’s
gravity, would make them appear slightly out of position. It was a revolutionary idea. But there was a big conflict keeping Einstein from testing it. The world was at war. Einstein lived Germany at the time. But his work landed in the hands of a British astrophysicist: Arthur Eddington. Even though they were on opposing sides of the war, Eddington, along with astronomer Frank Dyson, set out to test the theory. They would photograph a total solar eclipse. They needed to compare the position of a cluster of stars in the night sky with a photograph of the same stars during an eclipse. If the stars’ apparent positions had shifted,
it would prove that starlight was traveling through space curved by the sun’s gravity. The May 1919 eclipse was the ideal one for this experiment. The sun would be in front of a very dense
cluster of stars, the Hyades. And that meant multiple bright stars would
be visible during the eclipse. Planning began in 1917, and a couple of years later, two expeditions departed England. One led by Eddington went to the island of
Principe in West Africa, and the other headed to Sobral, Brazil. Two locations that were in the path of the
eclipse and had favorable climates. Each group traveled with powerful photographic telescopes that could record detailed photos of space onto glass plates. Photographing the eclipse that May required transporting, and then carefully assembling them, in the field. With the plates tilted 45 degrees on one of the telescopes to include as many stars as possible. And this was the result. This is one of the few successful plates from the 1919 expeditions. It came from Brazil. It shows the eclipse during totality, the
sun’s corona bursting forth, and the rarely seen solar prominence. Most importantly, bright stars of the Hyades. Back in England, Eddington compared the position of the stars from the eclipse plate with another of the night sky, using a machine that can
take measurements within photos at the microscopic level. The comparison revealed that the stars had shifted during the eclipse by roughly the amount that Einstein predicted. According to Newton’s calculations, starlight should bend near the sun too. But if Einstein was right, that deviation
would be twice what Newton predicted. Eddington's result showed that the deflection of the stars came closer to Einstein's calculation than Newton's. It wasn’t a perfect match, but it was close
enough to validate the theory of general relativity, and completely shift our understanding of
the universe. The success of the experiment was first announced in The Times of London on November 7th, 1919. Almost a year to the day after the end of
World War I. An Englishman had gone to great lengths to prove the ideas of a German, and the news that space is warped by the planets and stars excited the world. Einstein, who before this moment was only known in the physics world, essentially became a celebrity overnight. He remained an international pop culture icon for the rest of his life. And a favorite subject of press photographers. Observing eclipses continued to be one way of testing general relativity for decades to come. With more sophisticated equipment repeatedly confirming the accuracy of Einstein's theory. General relativity allowed physicists to begin to understand advanced concepts about the universe – like black holes. Which ultimately led to this: the first photograph of a black hole, taken in 2019. A century after Eddington first proved Einstein’s theory with a photo – and completely changed our definition of gravity. On June 26, 2020, the US House of Representatives voted to do something it had never done before. It passed a bill to create the 51st state
by giving the US capital, Washington, DC, statehood. Members of the House of Representatives each
represent between 500,000 and a million Americans. DC’s 700,000 residents are represented by
this woman: Eleanor Holmes Norton. But she couldn’t vote on the statehood bill,
because she’s different from other members. She can speak on the floor and introduce bills, but she can’t actually vote. Americans in territories
like Puerto Rico and Guam are also represented in Congress
by “delegates” who can’t vote. But Americans in these places don’t pay
federal taxes to the US government. DC residents do. In fact, in DC, the average person pays more in federal taxes than in any state. And they’re not happy about it. It’s why DC’s license plates say
“Taxation without representation.” President Trump has promised to block Washington, DC, from becoming a state. So that House vote was mostly symbolic. But Washington, DC's residents are clear on what they want. So will DC ever actually become a state? And should it? In the US, the federal government is not supposed to be based in a state. The Constitution says it should
be in a neutral federal district — what, today, is called the District of Columbia. But since the founding of the country, the
district has grown into a major city. "For most of its existence as a city, the District has been under the control
of the United States Congress." Starting in the 1960s, Congress made some concessions to DC’s calls for representation. It granted them electoral college votes for
presidential elections, a non-voting member in Congress, and finally, the right to elect
their own local government. But because Congress still
completely controls their budget, they often undermine
DC’s local government -- which is another major reason
DC residents want statehood. "Like most cities in the United States,
it is a progressive city. And so its laws conflict, in some measure,
with that of conservative Republicans." That’s understating it a little. In the 2016 election, Trump only got
a whopping 4% of the vote in DC. Congress has kept DC from using their local tax dollars on things like abortion services, or needle-exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS. They’ve tried to undercut DC’s gun laws
and same-sex marriage benefits. And they stopped the city from legalizing marijuana. "There are issues in the country,
that are very controversial, that Republicans can’t do anything about.
So they use the District as a prop." Holmes Norton’s plan would turn
most of the District of Columbia into a new state,
called the Douglass Commonwealth. There would still be a federal district
around the actual government buildings, but the remaining 66 square miles of neighborhoods would become the newest, smallest state. But it would still have a larger population
than two states, and would be about the same size as four others. So, what's the holdup? Well, representatives from other states have lots of reasons. "The Founding Fathers did not intend
for Washington, DC, to be a state." "Washington, DC, is a city, not a state." "There is no manufacturing.
There is no mining or logging." But it's not a coincidence that every representative speaking out against statehood here is Republican. Statehood would give DC, and most likely the Democratic Party, one more vote in the House of Representatives, and two more votes in the Senate. Which means the actual obstacle
to statehood, is politics. "Indeed, always, statehood is a political question." In the decades after the US was founded, new states were regularly added, and without much issue -- until 1818,
when Missouri wanted to become a new state. At that time, power in Congress was evenlybalanced between states that allowed slavery, and states that didn’t. Missouri, which would become a slave state, would tip that balance — which representatives of the free states didn't want. So Congress came up with a compromise: Missouri would be added at the same time as  Maine, a free state. A pair, to keep the political balance. After that, states were mostly added in pairs. Arkansas, a slave state, with Michigan, a
free state; Florida, a slave state, with Iowa, a free
state; Texas, a slave state, with Wisconsin, a free state. And that system has also been used to keep the balance between the political parties, most recently in 1959, with the addition of Hawaii, which leaned Republican at the time, and Alaska, which leaned Democratic. Right now, Democrats control
one house of Congress, but Republicans control the other one,
as well as the presidency. And as long as that’s the case, DC is unlikely to become a state on its own. "It would certainly be easier
if there were some ready jurisdiction to be made a state that was a Republican jurisdiction." The last time the House voted on DC statehood was in 1993, when Democrats had an even bigger
majority than they do today. The bill still failed, with more than 100
Democrats voting no. 2020 is turning out to be different. "Coronavirus begins to take
a toll on the US economy." "More than 6 million Americans
filed jobless claims." In March, as millions lost their jobs, Congress passed a coronavirus relief bill, giving each state at least a billion dollars. But DC, which is usually treated like
a state in most congressional funding, was instead treated as a US territory,
and got less than half that. "Being treated like a territory is shocking.
It's infuriating." In June, as protests against police violence spread across the country, the National Guard
patrolled parts of the city. That kind of occupation would be illegal in every state. But not in DC. "There shouldn’t be troops
from other states in Washington, DC. The last several days demonstrate
that our fight for statehood is also about our right to autonomy." "It’s time for statehood to come to Washington, DC." "We’ve seen in very painful,
and frankly violent terms, what the lack of statehood can bring
to the residents of the District of Columbia." Right now, the people in charge of the federal government oppose DC statehood. But it only takes one election to change that. "My own grandfather became one of the first African Americans in the DC fire department. His father, Richard Holmes,
was a runaway slave from Virginia. He walked to freedom.
But he didn't walk to equality. So I figure I'm picking up where he left off. He got us to freedom, he got the Holmes family to freedom; now I've got to get the Holmes family,
and all my constituents, to equality." OK, so when do you play Monopoly? I have not played Monopoly since I was, like, ten. So… Now I play it when I’m at my parents’
house, if there’s a big family gathering. I don’t ever play Monopoly. Basically, you played Monopoly when you were a kid or when you were stuck inside. So, I talked to somebody who played Monopoly in a ballroom in the Venetian hotel in Macau. I’m Brian Valentine. I was the United States representative to
the Monopoly World Championships in 2015, where I finished third amongst the 28 competitors. He taught me all the right ways to play Monopoly — and even make the game a little shorter. All the rules, odds, and strategies that can actually help you win. This is a Monopoly board from... ..Target...but I took it with me to Macau
and asked all the players to sign it for me. Just as a keepsake. I’m almost getting into sports cliches talking about Monopoly, but tt was very humbling to have made it that far against players who
are the best in their country and who are fantastic people. And this Monopoly genius, he knows heatmaps and housing arbitrage and strategy — but he just wants you to follow the rules. OK, what happens on free parking? Do you, like, collect money from people? There’s no money under free parking, I guess that’s the biggest. You don’t put money under free parking,
people see as a chance to equalize the game that’s stacked against them. If you keep putting money in the game, it
stops the progress. People don’t play the game by the rules. If they did, it wouldn’t take quite so long. Do you auction stuff off? No. I remember reading it on the back of the card, but I don’t remember — I remember that always feeling a little over my head in terms of play. If you land on it and don’t want it, it’s
got to go up for auction on the spot. Somebody can buy it. You can start the bidding at a dollar. I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve seen someone take Boardwalk for 20 bucks. Once you have the rules in order, you’ve
gotta go with the strategy. What’s the best spot in Monopoly? Oh, I’m sure it’s like Boardwalk. It’s funny because that’s the glamour,
that’s the trademark of Monopoly, it’s Boardwalk - you gotta get it. The object of the game is to take everyone’s money and be the only person left in the game. While Boardwalk certainly offers the prospect of that — $2000 when you get a hotel on it — think about what it costs to get there. You’ve got to buy each of the two properties. Then it’s 200 dollars, per house per property, until you get to that level. So that’s another thousand dollars on each one to then get $2000 back  And there are only two of them, right? Most of the other Monopolies have three spaces that you can hit and then draw rent. If you are building up Boardwalk and Park
Place before anybody else has built Monopolies up against you, hell yeah, go for it. But if you’re in a situation where other
folks have Monopolies on that hot side of the board, and you’re waiting to throw the
haymaker, if you will, on Boardwalk and Park Place, that’s a loser more than it’s a
winner. You can go on any website and learn the basic parlor trick that the oranges are the best Monopoly to have. Are you gonna now show a chart of the Monopoly board with a heat map? I’m sad to say that I will. I knew that existed. The reason that that is so is because jail
is one of the most often landed on spaces in the game. The fact that the common role is 7, then 7 from jail — while not an actual property, it’s Community Chest — 6 and 8, the next
most likely numbers, are St. James and Tennessee Avenue. So you know that the oranges are likely to
get hit on. And also, by extension, the section between jail and go to jail that side’s the side you want to be building on. It’s feast or famine on the other side of
the board. So there’s a couple more strategies that
are on the practical, not so mathy end. If you get to jail early, go ahead pay up,
get out of there. You can also use your houses as weapons to control the game. You have 32 houses in the game. You’ve got to build houses before you can build hotels. The houses have to be physically present to be bought, which is why, in a lot of circles you’ll hear people say about creating a
housing shortage. You want to get to the four house level so
you can pull the trigger and get hotels if you need to, or you can sit on the four houses and keep other people from having them. OK, so final question. So when I say what is the right way to play Monopoly, how do you respond? The right way to play Monopoly is just...don’t play it. Don’t steal from the bank. And that goes out to my cousins when we played when we were ten. I would say, is it just like, to win? How to win? With honor. It’s almost, sometimes, you feel like you
have this Renaissance era sense of honor and dignity. Not that we’re going around slapping each other with gloves having duels or anything like that. But...that’s the thing that keeps coming
to me is honor. Playing Monopoly allows you to get to know people in a way that formal introductions or being coworkers, or whatever, doesn’t
quite show. Because in an hour and half, two hour game, you’re gonna see how people handle adversity, you’re gonna see how people handle success, you’re gonna see, bundled in this short format, that allows you to see who a person is. Ahhh...shhh….it’s Monopoly, we’re talking
about Monopoly. [Music] i used to think that i wasn't competitive eugene it already looked good and it was such a simple concept got the phone call thought it was mad time under the mountain scrambles it's one of his trademarks to the front oh he's caught and he's calling like they pulled these doors open you've got 20 seconds let's go and that's the only reason i'm competing why are you competing to come second you're not you're competing to come first right you want to win it comes richard thompson this is this is wild how do i even get my head around this and like there's this massive warehouse that we never knew was there [Music] we used to do a lot of tag someone had a like a gopro and um we just thought let's um test the gopro and film one of our games of tags and um so we put the helmet on and then we just started playing tag in the garden and it just kind of shows how how the sport has sort of evolved right [Music] can you explain to me the basic rules of a chase tag match basically there's two teams of up to five or six athletes depending on the tournament [Music] [Applause] each chase lasts 20 seconds [Music] one person is a chaser and one person is an invader and the chase has to try and tag the vader and the evader has to try and not get caught and whoever wins stays on as the evader that's the most important thing um so the winner always stays on his evader and um if the veda can last 20 seconds without getting caught then they get a point and each match is basically the best of 16 chases one of the things that i noticed as a viewer is the sort of array of names that different obstacles have [Music] we do we do a clockwise we do a clockwise overview of all the obstacles so you've got the front line people can just jump straight from a chase plate over the front line which is like a six foot jump about three foot up um it's quite impressive come across the sisters which are two boards you can take off of the first one and jump the second one or you can do a double kong or a dive kong which is when you like slap with your hands and your bum comes up in the air [Music] after the sisters you get to the back line and this first obstacle in the back left is where a lot of the evaders will start it's called the tilted cube again the tilted cube providing a lot of protection is also one of the highest places for people to get tagged come around the back line which puts you underneath the mountain which is this big structure at the back with two big boards and a big flat board at the front all the way at the back we've got the loading bay this is the back right you're gonna hit the ridge which is a really high wall it's probably the the most likely obstacle to clip your knees on [Music] do you have a breakdown of what makes a really good or bad chase i think the definition of a good chase is the number of of interesting interactions probably chasers have a certain kind of dynamic we kind of look at them as like interactions and then it chases so the first four seconds of a chase is just the chaser getting towards evader then there's an interaction and then and then there's interaction either he gets caught or he moves on to another part of the court and then there's another interaction so there is a kind of dynamic to a chase there's a kind of interactions then a pursuit interaction pursuit interaction pursuit you know we have a term called eq which is like evasion quality and that's like probably the most important thing to remember to do with the courts so if it's a low eq area there's not much protection if it's a high e key area there's a lot of protection and then we realize the more obstacles we sort of put in the court we realize it got more interesting the more obstacles there were then we realized actually parkour people are probably going to be the best athletes to play because there's so many obstacles [Music] what is going on in this clip i'm coming up super high so i can reach above the bar not just grab it with my fingertips i'm actually grabbing it with bent arms then i can load all the weight onto my lats transfer underneath the bar with a swing up to the other side of the bath of a 180 grab the bar again so i've also had to let go of it to do 180 and then once i've grabbed i'm re-engaging all of my like active shoulder movement so lats a lot of shoulders like pulling in and then being able to spot where i'm going and throw my hips up above the space that i'm gonna land on and then land on the balls of my feet which is like a must with parkour because if you land anywhere on the box you could slip if you land on the edge you've actually got something to push against and it needs to be the balls of your feet because if you land on your toes you'll slip and if you land in the middle it will hurt and if you land on the heels you could slip so it has to be this is part of your foot that's strong you're reminding me of in those guy richie sherlock holmes movies when holmes gets in some sort of situation count with crossed left cheek the whole point of parkour like the philosophy behind it is basically like self-control and understanding of your body and understanding of your surroundings and stuff like that how is the parkour world organized into these teams what are teams so all these brands came about as yeah just groups of young lads who were training together often having fun and wanting to try and make a living off of it that first time that you tried world chase tech do you remember how that felt or what you thought yeah i was really tired he's coming underneath the sisters was that attack no britain's still in pursuit he's managed to go underneath for ridge bridge it was like this is really tiring um but as a parkour athlete you're used to doing like lines that are like really really short and explosive right and you have a preset route like you don't just run around as people think like on grooves and like do anything you don't do that everything's pretty thought out everything's tested everything's like i know what i can do with this it's like ah it's totally like instinctual at first because obviously when you first play you don't think about tactics you're just like okay just run like you know and obviously like you play the first game you're like oh okay there's the first two three games you're like okay there's some strategy to this you're familiar with in like um any ball sport you get juking so you'd go like you're going up to a player and you divert so it looks like you're going to go go one way and you go the other way that's like a really obvious like we use duking idling is a great time but it's when you you've got an obstacle between you and another person so there's an impasse and you look like you're moving but you're not so you're just you're on the balls of your feet you're almost it's like an engine is running and then it it explodes and that's it's the build up it's a crescendo before the like great drop in the music wait to see look at that yeah giving them a little bit of hands oh but there's proper mental torture almost of like antagonizing somebody and getting them frustrated so you know what they're gonna do you know like telegraphing something is something that's really really important i think that fighting is really really similar mountain this could be a first point eugen oh what can you tell me about this idea of hurting one of the techniques would be called shepherding and i think i'm safe to say that that's quite well known yeah i've i've been using herding you just classed it up like twenty percent yes chef yeah i mean the name says it is sort of like you're doing this you're doing this and you're keeping them in a corner and it's like having control over where they are because you're almost like you're at their mercy if you're following them around religiously whereas if you are shepherding them and keeping them into a corner you have control in that situation upstairs haroon hanafi maroon hurts perfectly now nobody has ever managed to successfully evade haroon in the history of world chase tag reversad is really really tricky to do um and it's basically to keep your eyes on the opponent as an evader and run them through high eq obstacles while they're chasing you and i know it's something he's worked on because i've talked to him i'm friends with him and he's uh he basically points steps up goes up to the mountain drops down haroon pointing one way going the other a trademark of his being a chaser used to be easier it's now made a little bit harder because they they talk about eq evasion quality uh quite a lot and they're trying to increase that what they want to do is they want to keep the eq at 25 so i used to love chasing because i thought it was really really easy and i could get it done but for like pure glory evasions are like how you get points right like evasion is how you get a point and how you get it done so i love that the most we always used to play in open garden and then i remember the day the first time the obstacles kind of came into it um christian had cut the hedge and we started to play around the hedge clippings and that was the first time we thought actually that's pretty that's pretty good so it was running based so if you are fast and agile then you would dominate then when we introduced the bench it was quite a low bench you had to go over the bench so it was a different skill yeah we started in the garden then we started a meet-up group once it got to winter people were sliding it was muddy and it was raining so we moved into a gym that called our parkour generations that was um the the first parkour gym that opened up in like in london they had much better obstacles so we started to like do that but they were just boxes and bars we bought some scaffolding and we basically made our own quad and this was the definite watershed moment for us because we knew it was fun this video of you guys this is maybe my favorite footage that i've ever received from a source of you guys debating the placement of the bars in your in your back garden barrack and the good thing about it is that again the eq the staff is gonna be no thing around here you'll help the chaser to stop benny hill if the bar is here within sort of actually foot high see the bar there yeah that's the thing you actually don't want that bar there because it might help them come up here but what the chase would do is that if someone flies through from into this hole and you're there suppose suppose we've had that conversation a million times so we just then had to refine the rules and then we just been refining the quad and then just refining it and finding it as we go along i don't think it's a big priority it's gonna be a hassle to do it uh let's um let's you know i think i i i didn't i'll have to measure up and do it but yeah i could put one there what is your name and what is your primary occupation in the world of sports commentary um dan dawson i've ridiculously accidentally ended up with this sort of moniker of dan darts dawson international darts open the final european tour event of the year has just played out and it's been won by this man the rock star joe cullen and it is a heartbreaker for franz rich andy hamilton with a nine daughter and so you're sort of put in this interesting position because you have all this knowledge about darts in the darts world but then suddenly you have to become obsessed with world chase tag in a very short period of time somebody i'd worked with on the darts um had got in touch just bummed me a speculative email saying i'm i'm doing a doing this thing it's like uh it's it's like a sport but it's like like tag you know like the playground game and then as soon as i i googled it and had a look like i was i was blown away i was aware of parkour but only like when i was a teenager i think when it all sort of started happening there were these impossibly cool french guys going uh parkour it's it's a philosophy it is not a sport it is a way of life and i remember people just running around as a teenager like jumping on walls and stuff a bit like this the american office geezer who just runs around shouting parkour and then to see this turned into an actual competitive sport was was cool but i i was i still wasn't prepared for when i actually got down there on the day he cannot get hold of him i mean look at me i walked into that place and they all looked like greek gods i was like i was like jabba the hutt being surrounded by like three dozen luke skywalkers somersaulting all over the place like that is not my natural habitat but to go in there and just try and learn that speaking to damien and christian about how they came up with the game and the concept connor was invaluable when i was working with him just to try yeah i got him to just walk me around the quad over the sisters around towards his front line looking to cut down the angle and does so crazy play he had to make up for lost time from a small slipper early on he's managed to run chasing down across the front line and get down on top of the other player i'm learning as much as anybody else about this it's a new sport for everybody to get their head around [Music] what makes you the people who are in the rain assembling the scaffolding debating the placement of a bar what what drives this obsession for you i wanted to see the best people chase and i i really hope there's a day where people are you know at the age of eight they get into chase tag and they just train the whole time and i'd love to see them when they're 25 or 28 at the peak of their physical condition training against other people who have also trained since they were eight i will go to sleep at night some nights like when i'm really like preparing for a competition like thinking about roots and lines and things i go like down a rabbit hole you think in your head your your little vision of yourself you go yeah i can do i can do all of that absolutely all of it and then you realize that you can't even carry your washing upstairs without tripping over the cat or something when we do parkour we say we're training like we're training like what are we training for and i suppose you could say it was a situation in which you're chasing or evading someone so it's almost like world chase tag is like the thing that we are preparing ourselves for i start describing how the sport works and as i'm describing it i get like a feedback loop of man this sounds really good i'd love to watch this you just see how similar like we all are regardless of actually where we're from you know and this is this is a really interesting element for me that all humans could be united by this one activity that they all do [Music] that's a giant skull in the background [Music] do you want scholar no skull skulls fine [Music] at the time when lockdown first happened we were sort of tentatively talking about having quite a few events i think we had a european championship sort of penciled in we had a potential event in saudi arabia pennsylvan we also had an america what was going to be the world championships in america and then as soon as lockdown came up we just realized that you know none of that was gonna happen our final decision which is sort of encouraged by the investors that we have at the moment they said okay let's do a u.s national event and that's what we ended up doing in october in atlanta another thing that like that came positive out of the lockdown what happened in the uk was we got really good weather and normally when we have the quad up we only put the quad up for events so we have we book a space we put the quad up and that's the only time me and damon get to see it up and we could never use it because all the athletes want to train on it so during lockdown when we had the good weather we decided to put the quad up it's first time we died and so for us we had more time on the quad than we've ever had before you This is the largest protest in Poland since the fall of communism
more than 30 years ago. Hundreds of thousands are protesting,
in cities across the country, because the party in power here is on the verge
of eliminating a woman’s right to an abortion. At the heart of these protests are young women: those who are the most
threatened by the new ruling. But there are many, many others too. And that’s because these protesters
aren’t just concerned about the future of abortion rights in Poland. They’re worried about the future
of the country itself. In the late 1980s, Poland got rid
of its decades-long communist regime.   Soon, it became a thriving democracy,
with a strong catholic identity. It also passed one of the strictest laws on abortion in all of Europe. Under the law, women were only allowed 
to have an abortion under three circumstances: if the pregnancy was a threat
to the health of the mother, if it was the result of incest or rape, or if the fetus had severe
and irreversible abnormalities. The law has remained this way
for nearly 30 years.  And today, it makes Poland an outlier in Europe, where virtually every other country allows 
abortions under a broad range of circumstances. But some in Poland thought
those strict laws still weren’t enough. In 2015, Poland elected the right-wing party
Law and Justice into power. Shortly after, the party leader said: "Very close to the totalitarian way of thinking, as far as women's health, women's rights,
and women's personhood is concerned." In 2016, the party backed legislation 
to eliminate all three legal paths to abortion.  The legislation proposed imprisoning
women seeking abortions, and doctors who performed them,
for up to five years. They would even investigate miscarriages. "This is something that is incredible, you know? It really turns us back to the Middle Ages. The limitation of human rights went far too far." Thousands of women took to the streets, pushing back against the law,
in what were called the Black Protests. In the face of this opposition,
the legislation was withdrawn. Poland would still have one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe,  but not a total ban. But instead of giving up on the abortion ban, Law & Justice started dismantling
the country’s ability to oppose one. In Poland’s democracy,
some legislation passed by Parliament is sent to the Constitutional Tribunal, to ensure it’s consistent
with the country's constitution. This court has 15 judges, and it serves
as the main check on the ruling party. It’s supposed to function as an independent
branch of the government.  But upon taking power, Law & Justice
started to erode that independence. They refused to swear in several judges who had been appointed
by the previous government, and replaced them with judges
who would be loyal to them, including the Tribunal president, who has the ability to determine
which judges hear what cases. And of the judges they have appointed legally,
many are actually fellow politicians, further compromising
the independence of the court. This has created a tribunal in which
14 of 15 judges are aligned with the ruling party.  And the legitimacy of several
of them is widely disputed, both in Poland and internationally. This version of the court has never
decided a case against the ruling party. "The fact that this Constitutional Tribunal
is acting on the behalf of the political party is just the opposite of what
the Constitutional Tribunal should do." It was under these circumstances
that Law & Justice sought a new ruling from the Constitutional Tribunal
on the country’s abortion laws, that would eliminate one of the three bases
for legal abortion: Severe fetal abnormalities. And while it might seem like that
would only prevent some abortions, fetal abnormalities are the reason
for 98% of abortions in Poland. In other words, without
technically banning abortions, the change would make them
virtually impossible. Nearly 80% of Poles
disagreed with this change. But on October 22nd, the Constitutional
Tribunal ruled in its favor: That the overwhelming majority of abortions
in Poland were unconstitutional. The ruling brought Poles back into the streets, and in much bigger numbers than in 2016. "These protests are really different from
what we've seen for the last four years, because there are thousands and thousands
of young people attending these protests, organizing these protests, and also, these are the most grassroots, 
independent protests that we've ever had." In the face of the protests,
the government has delayed taking the steps that would make the ruling official. As of this video, it’s unclear when,
or if, they will. But these protests are as much about
how this ruling came together, as they are about the ruling itself. MARTA LEMPART: "It started with abortion.
Now we fight for freedom, for everything." For the rule of law." Outside of Poland, the world has noticed.  International organizations have stopped considering it a full democracy. And the changes to its legal system have put
Poland’s European Union membership at risk. 30 years ago, Poland enthusiastically
embraced democracy. Today, its ruling party is trying to rig the
country’s democratic institutions in its favor. And it's the people
who are fighting to protect them. "Despite the fact that this government
is responsible for destroying all the democratic tools
that we have in our Constitution, you still have the nation,
the citizens in this country, who carry on the democratic values." [Music] people have called orgasms a lot of different things throughout history heaven a little death high tide but whatever you call it women are having a lot fewer orgasms than men well when they have sex with men so what's causing this female orgasm shortage and what does it have to do with [Music] porn in a 2018 study of newlywed heterosexual couples 87 of men reported consistently experiencing orgasms compared to only 49 of women this is consistent with an earlier study where 95 of heterosexual men reported that they usually orgasm during sex compared with 65 of heterosexual women women are having fewer orgasms than men but why no it's not that the female orgasm is a complex elusive mystery lesbian women reported orgasming 86 of the time and men and women take the same amount of time to orgasm when they're masturbating on their own for minutes rather it might be a matter of education research suggests that people tend to mirror the sex acts they see depicted in porn and when it comes to sex ed thirty percent of teenagers in one study said porn was their primary source of sex education so when most mainstream easily accessible porn focuses on male pleasure shows men having 65 more orgasms and receiving more oral sex than women real-life sex can start ignoring female pleasure too and that's how sex can start to become synonymous with penetrative penis and vagina intercourse and other sex acts that focus on female pleasure just get ignored and it's not just sex the orgasm gap can also be linked to masturbation according to one study a quarter of male respondents reported masturbating almost every day compared to 8.7 of women and just over 20 of women said they had never masturbated in their lifetime masturbation is super important because oftentimes we're not taught to explore our own bodies to know what it is that titillates us and brings us pleasure let alone to communicate that with a partner but there's nothing to communicate if you don't know and the first way to really get to know yourself and what brings you pleasure is to touch your body the masturbation is not only healthy it's a major part of wellness masturbation is mindfulness mindfulness meditation has known effects for lowering stress for increasing happiness and actually has a lot of physiological aspects that occur in the body including lowering cortisol the stress hormone which is the same thing that happens when you masturbate so if porn helps create the orgasm gap can it also fix it bless a plus is a brand new market disrupting platform of porn that includes ballesa studios and partner studios which has content geared both towards male and female pleasure equally velessa's approach to closing the orgasm gap is to put the power back into the performer's hands and really allowing people to enjoy the sex that they're having velessa where balessa plus is hosted is on a mission to close the orgasm gap and achieve sexual equality but lessa does this through its online platform focused on female sexuality that offers erotic stories sex ed sex toys sold through blessed boutique and their original porn series balessa house bless a house depicts unedited unscripted content where the performers can actually pick who they want to work with and they can have sex exactly as they want so they communicate with their partner what they want to do and it's actually depicting for the audience real sex that people want to have forn attracts billions of viewers and dollars in revenue each year giving a huge influence in both our lives and our economy with more comprehensive sex ed a culture that destigmatizes masturbation and porn that prioritizes female pleasure it's possible that women can start taking their pleasure into their own hands and feel good doing it two weeks after the 2008 election george w bush's family gave barack obama's family a tour of their new home the white house it was part of a long american tradition of the outgoing president's family meeting with the incoming family just as the clintons had done for the bushes eight years before and the bushes had done for the clintons eight years before that it's a symbolic start to the beginning of the presidential transition where the current president meets with the president-elect and importantly helps the new administration into their new positions ensuring a smooth transfer of power president trump refuses to concede refusing to begin the transition process blocking president-elect joe biden from receiving critical covet 19 data the presidential transition usually starts right after election day in november and it ends when the new president is inaugurated in late january but this year president trump didn't allow it to start until three weeks after the election so does that actually matter and why does america take so long to switch presidents trump is not the first outgoing president to be uncooperative in 1932 president herbert hoover lost to franklin delano roosevelt in a landslide it was the middle of the great depression and roosevelt had campaigned on his new deal ideas but hoover didn't like those ideas and used the transition period to keep fdr from getting started on them at the time this gap was even longer the constitution written in the 1700s had it set at around four months after fdr's election it was shortened to the current two and a half months that's still pretty long but the modern us with its expansive federal government has found that time period useful the federal government is kind of like this huge massive like big ship that takes a lot of sort of direction to steer when the u.s changes presidents thousands of federal jobs have to be changed too and that changeover takes time those new hires need offices government emails and they need to get fully briefed on the ins and outs of how these departments run and most importantly the president needs to get caught up on national security and intelligence and january 20th at noon one administration is going to take us over and the threats that america faces are not necessarily going to respect that gap in 2000 the election between george w bush and al gore was so close that the winner wasn't actually decided until mid-december which meant bush's transition had to happen pretty rapidly later after the september 11th attacks a government report said this loss of time hampered the new administration in its readiness to deal with national security threats they suggested that in the future the transition should start as soon as possible but unlike in 2000 the delay in transition in 2020 wasn't because we didn't know who won the election nbc news now projects cbs news projects cnn projects joseph r biden jr is elected when the media declares a winner on election night it feels like a big moment but it doesn't actually carry any formal weight it's a projection the election isn't officially over until each state certifies their results and the electoral college votes in mid-december but usually by that point both presidential candidates have already acknowledged what the outcome will be the loser usually concedes and that sends off this presidential transition process where the outgoing administration helps to usher in the incoming administration in 2020 we found out what happens when the outcome is widely agreed upon but the loser doesn't concede before the transition can start an office of the federal government has to give the go-ahead the problem is that relies on everyone agreeing who the president-elect is eventually after several key states certified their results trump didn't concede but he did allow the transition to begin without actually referring to biden as the president-elect nearly three weeks after the election the trump administration backed down president-elect biden getting daily intelligence briefings on everything from vaccine distribution testing and ppe supply chains this gap between presidents feels long but it is necessary to keep america's government running and for the incoming bide administration it's going to be a lot shorter and it shows that our tradition of a smooth transfer of power is just that a tradition not a rule you on september 27th explosions shook nagorno-karabakh it's a mountainous region between armenia and azerbaijan and the center of a relentless dispute between these countries nagorno-karabakh is internationally recognized as part of azerbaijan though was occupied by armenia in a war almost 30 years ago both countries armies have been dug in along this line ever since fighting occasionally broke out but usually died down this time was different fierce fighting erupted in september 2020 and quickly became a full-scale war both sides were accused of bombing civilian areas in the region thousands of people died including a hundred civilians then in a sudden and dramatic turn in this decade's old conflict armenia surrendered a ceasefire was signed on november 9th and azerbaijan declared victory [Music] so what sparked this war and what does the ceasefire mean for this fiercely contested place [Music] [Music] nagorno-karabakh is in the caucasus between europe and asia historically its population has been mostly ethnic armenian with a substantial azeri minority it's dotted with medieval armenian churches has always had this strong armenian population and to complicate things that in the 18th century a kind of very big important azerbaijani town the citadel of shusha was founded right in the middle of this territory so this was a region that was incredibly important both to armenians and to azerbaijanis but for most of the 19th century it was ruled by the russian empire after the empire fell in 1918 i think armenians and azeri's formed new countries armenia and azerbaijan and they immediately fought over this region but just three years later russian soviets captured the entire caucasus the soviets eventually made armenia and azerbaijan republics within the soviet union and drew new borders and they made nagorno-karabakh a semi-autonomous region in the azerbaijani republic despite its majority armenian population ethnic armenians they are frequently asked to join the armenian republic but were denied this was the soviet union there was no democracy there was no dialogue that kind of problem festered for all those years still there weren't signs of war until the soviet union began to loosen its grip [Music] in the late 1980s the soviet union announced a new policy called glasnost that gave its people more political freedoms change but it had unintended consequences a peaceful soviet union seems increasingly at risk glasnost has given people freedom not only to create but to hate ancient feuds erupting such as the one between azerbaijan and armenia in 1988 ethnic armenians enda garner karabakh passed a referendum to leave the azerbaijan republic reviving the conflict in armenia people rallied for unification while in azerbaijan people responded with counter protests violence soon erupted into garner karabakh as the soviet union fell apart armenia and azerbaijan declared independence escalating the conflict into a war about 20 000 people died and over a million were forced to flee their homes in the region fighting raged for three more years until armenia finally won in 1994 both sides signed a ceasefire agreement freezing the conflict armenia occupied several pieces of azerbaijan as well as nagorno-karabakh which was still legally recognized as part of azerbaijan even though it had declared itself an autonomous region at the start of the war this occupation displaced hundreds of thousands of azeries from their homes the deal was broken by russia who was a formal ally to armenia but also had a good relationship with azerbaijan russia's role has always been a bit ambiguous here because although they are the main mediator they've had their own agenda which is to keep their influence in the region and if possible get russian troops back on the ground while russia was not able to send troops as part of the deal in 1994 it did end up leading a new international group with france and the us to try and find a permanent solution to the conflict but armenia and azerbaijan refused to settle instead armenia renamed formally as zeri towns and repopulated them with ethnic armenians while its leaders called for it to be officially unified with armenia meanwhile azerbaijan planned to come back from 2008 to 2019 it spent 24 billion dollars on its military six times more than armenia all the while reiterating its claim to nagorno-karabakh on the ground both countries maintained a military presence along the front lines where skirmishes broke out occasionally in 2016 they fought a war that lasted four days people called this a frozen conflict but it was in no way a frozen conflict it was a smoldering conflict and it reignited when another country suddenly intervened in the past few years turkey has increasingly intervened in conflicts around the region in order to tilt the outcomes in its favor by sending troops into the syrian civil war it captured a swath of territory along its border in 2019 and in 2020 its troops have turned the tide of the libyan civil war in favor of the government who is helping turkey claim valuable natural gas deposits in the mediterranean these are also ways for turkey to push back against its major rival russia who is also fighting in both conflicts so in july 2020 when skirmishes broke out into garner karbak turkey saw an opportunity and threw its support behind azerbaijan whose majority of zeri population is a turkic ethnic group azerbaijan is probably the closest country there is to turkey the two languages are extremely close there was even talk of you know one nation and two states in august the two held joint military exercises in azerbaijan and turkey's supply of weapons to azerbaijan dramatically surged which included advanced drones i think this conflict has been planned for many months jointly in ankara and in baku and so with turkey support azerbaijan launched its attack in just over a week azerbaijani soldiers had pushed at least 20 kilometers into armenian-held territory a few weeks later they advanced further into nicaragua and also got close to the armenian border it wasn't a fair fight armenia fought back but was nearly defenseless against azerbaijan's deadly drones then on november 8th azerbaijan won its biggest victory it captured the historic city of susha just 15 kilometers from the capitals to panicurt that's when armenia agreed to surrender the ceasefire agreement that ended the war dramatically reshapes who controls nagorno-karabakh azerbaijan will keep what it captured and take over this part from armenia this part remains under control of ethnic armenians but they won't be alone russia didn't intervene in the war but brokered this deal which calls for 2 000 of its troops to serve there as peacekeepers russia obviously had its ideas about how to end this conflict with russian peacekeepers and certainly didn't rush to help armenia turkey also gains a foothold here the deal calls for the construction of a road here which would give turkey access to azerbaijan plus in agreement with russia turkey will now send its own peacekeeping troops to the region so while azerbaijan is celebrating and turkey and russia won strategic rewards armenia is in turmoil after the deal was announced mob stormed government buildings in the capital and called for the removal of the prime minister i think armenia's in a huge state of trauma it's going to take a long time for it to occur off on this and the political crisis i think is going to be ongoing for a long time in in armenia in nagorno-karabakh i think armenians and newly captured areas may be forced out some have already burned their homes before leaving while azeri's who fled during the previous war can make their way back ultimately though the agreement does nothing to end the hostility between the two countries and until that happens this conflict could have another round this is much more a deal than it is a piece [Music] [Music] you in 1995 senator james exon brought a blue binder to the floor of the senate it was full of well the most hardcore perverse types of pornography the images came from the internet exxon wanted his fellow senators to realize what kids could see come by my desk and take a look at this disgusting material with just the click of a button it's certainly not hard to find and i was just like dad get a load of this in the mid 90s americans debated how to handle all kinds of objectionable content on the web including hate speech and defamation out of that debate came a law that helped create the modern internet and now both republicans and democrats want it changed it's called section 230 section 230 should be revoked but what does that law actually do and what would happen to the internet if we changed [Applause] the thing to remember about the 90s is on your mark get set we're riding on the internet the internet was young and few people really understood it allison can you explain what internet is it seemed cool well it's very hip to be on the internet right now now that i've gotten on the internet i'd rather be on my computer than doing just about anything it's really cool but we hadn't agreed on what to do with all the objectionable content or if we should do anything james exon the senator with the porn binder wanted the government to clean up the internet by effectively making indecent material like porn illegal online and so he proposed an amendment to the telecommunications act called the decency act the communications decency act but two members of congress christopher cox and ron wyden thought that companies would do a better job cleaning the internet up themselves there was just one big legal problem there were court cases that perversely made internet providers liable if they tried to exercise editorial discretion keep smut off the internet and so on at the time courts held that internet providers like prodigy which moderated some user content were potentially liable for anything their users posted so the companies faced a choice clean up their websites and risk getting sued or go totally hands off and face no legal consequences coxswain widen didn't like that that is backwards we want to encourage people like prodigy like compuserve like america online like the new microsoft network to do everything possible for us the customer to help us control what comes in and what our children see so coxswain wyden wrote a provision section 230 that let companies moderate content without being on the legal hook for it their hope is that internet companies would in good faith police objectionable content on the web we came to call it the sword and the shield and the sword is the ability to take down horrible stuff on the internet the shield is the protection from frivolous litigation section 230 was added to senator exons communications decency act and the whole thing passed in 1996 but then exon's porn ban ran into one big wall the first amendment free speech advocates are hailing a ruling the u.s government cannot enforce the communications decency act without violating the constitutional right to free speech you you probably guessed that because uh there's spoiler alert there's porn on the internet but the courts let section 230 stand and that little law created a massive industry so you think about facebook twitter youtube even wikipedia none of these business models could exist in their current forms if the platforms had to defend in court the veracity of every single thing that people post the story of section 230 is the story of the internet more and more people posting what they want online and websites not getting sued for it because of their legal shield the dark side of that story started pretty early in 1995 when an anonymous user on aol impersonated a man named kenneth zarin and used his name and phone number to sell t-shirts glorifying the oklahoma city bombing at the time it was a fairly novel approach of really ruining someone's life after receiving a tsunami of threatening phone calls zarin begged aol to take down the anonymous user's ads they for a while would take him down but then they stopped listening to him he was annoying they just moved on zarin sued aol in 1996 but the court said section 230 allowed aol to leave up the posts even after zarin reported them aol got to use section 230 shield in other words without ever having to touch its sword it becomes effectively the law of the land you could keep up the content no matter how horrific how defamatory it is and you are not going to be liable for it carrie goldberg is a lawyer who says the broad immunity section 230 shield gives internet companies has made some of them lazy and irresponsible section 230 is not a law that protects free speech section 230 is a law that protects an industry four years ago her client matthew herrick was impersonated by a vengeful ex-boyfriend on the dating app grinder he would create profiles using matthew's picture and his name and then send unwitting people to matthew's home and to his job to have sex with matthew matthew herrick says for months he couldn't go to the restaurant where he waited tables or his home without men he didn't know approaching him for sex or drugs matthew was receiving sometimes 23 people in person at his home and often matthew's ex would say that matthew was into rape fantasies so he was setting matthew up to be sexually assaulted herrick said he filed 50 complaints with grindr and the company never did anything we were suing them ultimately for releasing a dangerous product onto the marketplace but the court said that just like in the zarin aol case grinder didn't have to help herrick it was in my opinion the most expansive and extravagant interpretation of section 230 to date goldberg thinks that section 230 should be changed or revoked so people like herrick could sue for internet companies negligence everybody should have the right to be able to sue somebody or a company who has harmed you or is continuing to harm you and so i see this not as a speech issue but an access to justice issue you know why do these harms happen it's the combination of the perpetrator and the platform site operators should only enjoy immunity from liability if they're engaged in reasonable content moderation practices right there has to be an exchange like you get the legal shield but you've got to do something today section 230 has helped create an internet industry worth more than a trillion dollars section 230 is how these companies have gotten big it's how they've gotten powerful until they've gotten rich and agreeing on what it would mean for these companies to use section 230 sword and shield responsibly has gotten harder it depends on what you think the problem is democrats want companies like facebook to do more policing of disinformation because it is not merely an internet company it is propagating falsehoods they know to be false but some republicans claim there's a different problem censorship of conservative views and they want to change or scrap section 230 to make internet companies do less policing the big tech oligarchs have declared war on the republican party and conservatives i think it's time that we consider the outright repeal of section 230. tweaking section 230 might help individual victims of abuse like matthew herrick and it could make internet companies more accountable for the way they moderate content but defenders of the law say that changing it too much could undermine people's freedom to post what they want online what i think we need are changes that are very carefully tailored and that address a particular harm and that also consider how do we address this harm without just sort of causing total chaos to the existing internet that we know you There’s only one way to see the stars while the sun is out. And that’s during a total solar eclipse. You have to be at right place at the right
time. Under a clear sky. Standing somewhere along the narrow path where the moon aligns perfectly between the sun and the Earth. When the moon passes in front of the sun's disc, it darkens the sky just enough for distant stars to become visible. There have been many photos of total solar eclipses. But this one is special. It helped prove a radical idea. That redefined gravity. And turned Albert Einstein into a celebrity. Because the stars in this photo aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Isaac Newton laid the foundation for understanding the physical universe in the Principia, published in 1687. In it, he defined gravity as a force of attraction that draws massive objects – like stars and planets – toward each other, and keeps them in orbit. And for more than 200 years, gravity was defined this way: as an attracting force. But Albert Einstein saw gravity as something completely different. According to his theory of general relativity, which he published in 1915, gravity isn’t a force between objects in space. It’s the influence of objects on the shape
of space itself. According to Einstein, massive objects like the sun bend the space around them. So when a smaller object moves in a straight line along this space, it gets diverted because of the curve caused by the mass of the larger object. That puts one object in an orbit around the other. And if Einstein was right then the same curve would divert the path of light as well. Meaning if you observed distant stars through a telescope on Earth while the sun is in front of them, their light, deflected by the sun’s gravity, would make them appear slightly out of position. It was a revolutionary idea. But there was a big conflict keeping Einstein from testing it. The world was at war. Einstein lived Germany at the time. But his work landed in the hands of a British astrophysicist: Arthur Eddington. Even though they were on opposing sides of the war, Eddington, along with astronomer Frank Dyson, set out to test the theory. They would photograph a total solar eclipse. They needed to compare the position of a cluster of stars in the night sky with a photograph of the same stars during an eclipse. If the stars’ apparent positions had shifted, it would prove that starlight was traveling through space curved by the sun’s gravity. The May 1919 eclipse was the ideal one for this experiment. The sun would be in front of a very dense cluster of stars, the Hyades. And that meant multiple bright stars would be visible during the eclipse. Planning began in 1917, and a couple of years later, two expeditions departed England. One led by Eddington went to the island of Principe in West Africa, and the other headed to Sobral, Brazil. Two locations that were in the path of the eclipse and had favorable climates. Each group traveled with powerful photographic telescopes that could record detailed photos of space onto glass plates. Photographing the eclipse that May required transporting, and then carefully assembling them, in the field. With the plates tilted 45 degrees on one of the telescopes to include as many stars as possible. And this was the result. This is one of the few successful plates from the 1919 expeditions. It came from Brazil. It shows the eclipse during totality, the
sun’s corona bursting forth, and the rarely seen solar prominence. Most importantly, bright stars of the Hyades. Back in England, Eddington compared the position of the stars from the eclipse plate with another of the night sky, using a machine that can take measurements within photos at the microscopic level. The comparison revealed that the stars had shifted during the eclipse by roughly the amount that Einstein predicted. According to Newton’s calculations, starlight should bend near the sun too. But if Einstein was right, that deviation
would be twice what Newton predicted. Eddington's result showed that the deflection of the stars came closer to Einstein's calculation than Newton's. It wasn’t a perfect match, but it was close enough to validate the theory of general relativity, and completely shift our understanding of the universe. The success of the experiment was first announced in The Times of London on November 7th, 1919. Almost a year to the day after the end of
World War I. An Englishman had gone to great lengths to prove the ideas of a German, and the news that space is warped by the planets and stars excited the world. Einstein, who before this moment was only known in the physics world, essentially became a celebrity overnight. He remained an international pop culture icon for the rest of his life. And a favorite subject of press photographers. Observing eclipses continued to be one way of testing general relativity for decades to come. With more sophisticated equipment repeatedly confirming the accuracy of Einstein's theory. General relativity allowed physicists to begin to understand advanced concepts about the universe – like black holes. Which ultimately led to this: the first photograph of a black hole, taken in 2019. A century after Eddington first proved Einstein’s theory with a photo – and completely changed our definition of gravity. OK, so when do you play Monopoly? I have not played Monopoly since I was, like, ten. So… Now I play it when I’m at my parents’
house, if there’s a big family gathering. I don’t ever play Monopoly. Basically, you played Monopoly when you were a kid or when you were stuck inside. So, I talked to somebody who played Monopoly in a ballroom in the Venetian hotel in Macau. I’m Brian Valentine. I was the United States representative to
the Monopoly World Championships in 2015, where I finished third amongst the 28 competitors. He taught me all the right ways to play Monopoly — and even make the game a little shorter. All the rules, odds, and strategies that can actually help you win. This is a Monopoly board from... ..Target...but I took it with me to Macau
and asked all the players to sign it for me. Just as a keepsake. I’m almost getting into sports cliches talking about Monopoly, but it was very humbling to have made it that far against players who are the best in their country and who are fantastic people. And this Monopoly genius, he knows heat maps and housing arbitrage and strategy — but he just wants you to follow the rules. OK, what happens on free parking? Do you, like, collect money from people? There’s no money under free parking, I guess that’s the biggest. You don’t put money under free parking,
people see as a chance to equalize the game that’s stacked against them. If you keep putting money in the game, it
stops the progress. People don’t play the game by the rules. If they did, it wouldn’t take quite so long. Do you auction stuff off? No. I remember reading it on the back of the card, but I don’t remember — I remember that always feeling a little over my head in terms of play. If you land on it and don’t want it, it’s
got to go up for auction on the spot. Somebody can buy it. You can start the bidding at a dollar. I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve seen someone take Boardwalk for 20 bucks. Once you have the rules in order, you’ve
gotta go with the strategy. What’s the best spot in Monopoly? Oh, I’m sure it’s like Boardwalk. It’s funny because that’s the glamour,
that’s the trademark of Monopoly, it’s Boardwalk - you gotta get it. The object of the game is to take everyone’s money and be the only person left in the game. While Boardwalk certainly offers the prospect of that — $2000 when you get a hotel on it — think about what it costs to get there. You’ve got to buy each of the two properties. Then it’s 200 dollars, per house per property, until you get to that level. So that’s another thousand dollars on each one to then get $2000 back. And there are only two of them, right? Most of the other Monopolies have three spaces that you can hit and then draw rent. If you are building up Boardwalk and Park Place before anybody else has built Monopolies up against you, hell yeah, go for it. But if you’re in a situation where other
folks have Monopolies on that hot side of the board, and you’re waiting to throw the haymaker, if you will, on Boardwalk and Park Place,  that’s a loser more than it’s a winner. You can go on any website and learn the basic parlor trick that the oranges are the best Monopoly to have. Are you gonna now show a chart of the Monopoly board with a heat map? I’m sad to say that I will. I knew that existed. The reason that that is so is because jail
is one of the most often landed on spaces in the game. The fact that the common role is 7, then 7 from jail — while not an actual property, it’s Community Chest — 6 and 8, the next
most likely numbers, are St. James and Tennessee Avenue. So you know that the oranges are likely to get hit on. And also, by extension, the section between jail and go to jail that side’s the side you want to be building on. It’s feast or famine on the other side of
the board. So there’s a couple more strategies that
are on the practical, not so mathy end. If you get to jail early, go ahead pay up,
get out of there. You can also use your houses as weapons to control the game. You have 32 houses in the game. You’ve got to build houses before you can build hotels. The houses have to be physically present to be bought, which is why, in a lot of circles you’ll hear people say about creating a
housing shortage. You want to get to the four house level so you can pull the trigger and get hotels if you need to, or you can sit on the four houses and keep other people from having them. OK, so final question. So when I say what is the right way to play Monopoly, how do you respond? The right way to play Monopoly is just...don’t play it. Don’t steal from the bank. And that goes out to my cousins when we played when we were ten. I would say, is it just like, to win? How to win? With honor. It’s almost, sometimes, you feel like you
have this Renaissance era sense of honor and dignity. Not that we’re going around slapping each other with gloves having duels or anything like that. But...that’s the thing that keeps coming
to me is honor. Playing Monopoly allows you to get to know people in a way that formal introductions or being coworkers, or whatever, doesn’t
quite show. Because in an hour and half, two hour game, you’re gonna see how people handle adversity, you’re gonna see how people handle success, you’re gonna see, bundled in this short format, that allows you to see who a person is. Ahhh...shhh….it’s Monopoly, we’re talking
about Monopoly. On June 26, 2020, the US House of Representatives voted to do something it had never done before. It passed a bill to create the 51st state
by giving the US capital, Washington, DC, statehood. Members of the House of Representatives each represent between 500,000 and a million Americans. DC’s 700,000 residents are represented by this woman: Eleanor Holmes Norton. But she couldn’t vote on the statehood bill, because she’s different from other members. She can speak on the floor and introduce bills, but she can’t actually vote. Americans in territories
like Puerto Rico and Guam are also represented in Congress
by “delegates” who can’t vote. But Americans in these places don’t pay
federal taxes to the US government. DC residents do. In fact, in DC, the average person pays more in federal taxes than in any state. And they’re not happy about it. It’s why DC’s license plates say
“Taxation without representation.” President Trump has promised to block Washington, DC, from becoming a state. So that House vote was mostly symbolic. But Washington, DC's residents are clear on what they want. So will DC ever actually become a state? And should it? In the US, the federal government is not supposed to be based in a state. The Constitution says it should
be in a neutral federal district — what, today, is called the District of Columbia. But since the founding of the country, the district has grown into a major city. "For most of its existence as a city, the District has been under the control
of the United States Congress." Starting in the 1960s, Congress made some concessions to DC’s calls for representation. It granted them electoral college votes for presidential elections, a non-voting member in Congress, and finally, the right to elect
their own local government. But because Congress still
completely controls their budget, they often undermine
DC’s local government -- which is another major reason
DC residents want statehood. "Like most cities in the United States,
it is a progressive city. And so its laws conflict, in some measure, with that of conservative Republicans." That’s understating it a little. In the 2016 election, Trump only got
a whopping 4% of the vote in DC. Congress has kept DC from using their local tax dollars on things like abortion services, or needle-exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS. They’ve tried to undercut DC’s gun laws
and same-sex marriage benefits. And they stopped the city from legalizing marijuana. "There are issues in the country,
that are very controversial, that Republicans can’t do anything about. So they use the District as a prop." Holmes Norton’s plan would turn
most of the District of Columbia into a new state, called the Douglass Commonwealth. There would still be a federal district
around the actual government buildings, but the remaining 66 square miles of neighborhoods would become the newest, smallest state. But it would still have a larger population
than two states, and would be about the same size as four others. So, what's the holdup? Well, representatives from other states have lots of reasons. "The Founding Fathers did not intend
for Washington, DC, to be a state." "Washington, DC, is a city, not a state." "There is no manufacturing.
There is no mining or logging." But it's not a coincidence that every representative speaking out against statehood here is Republican. Statehood would give DC,
and most likely the Democratic Party, one more vote in the House of Representatives, and two more votes in the Senate. Which means the actual obstacle
to statehood, is politics. "Indeed, always, statehood is a political question." In the decades after the US was founded, new states were regularly added, and without much issue -- until 1818,
when Missouri wanted to become a new state. At that time, power in Congress was evenly balanced between states that allowed slavery, and states that didn’t. Missouri, which would become a slave state, would tip that balance — which representatives of the free states didn't want. So Congress came up with a compromise: Missouri would be added at the same time as Maine, a free state. A pair, to keep the political balance. After that, states were mostly added in pairs. Arkansas, a slave state, with Michigan, a
free state; Florida, a slave state, with Iowa, a free
state; Texas, a slave state, with Wisconsin, a free state. And that system has also been used to keep the balance between the political parties, most recently in 1959, with the addition of Hawaii, which leaned Republican at the time, and Alaska, which leaned Democratic. Right now, Democrats control
one house of Congress, but Republicans control the other one,
as well as the presidency. And as long as that’s the case, DC is unlikely to become a state on its own. "It would certainly be easier
if there were some ready jurisdiction to be made a state that was a Republican jurisdiction." The last time the House voted on DC statehood was in 1993, when Democrats had an even bigger
majority than they do today. The bill still failed, with more than 100
Democrats voting no. 2020 is turning out to be different. "Coronavirus begins to take
a toll on the US economy." "More than 6 million Americans
filed jobless claims." In March, as millions lost their jobs, Congress passed a coronavirus relief bill, giving each state at least a billion dollars. But DC, which is usually treated like
a state in most congressional funding, was instead treated as a US territory,
and got less than half that. "Being treated like a territory is shocking. It's infuriating." In June, as protests against police violence spread across the country, the National Guard
patrolled parts of the city. That kind of occupation would be illegal in every state. But not in DC. "There shouldn’t be troops
from other states in Washington, DC. The last several days demonstrate
that our fight for statehood is also about our right to autonomy." "It’s time for statehood to come to Washington, DC." "We’ve seen in very painful,
and frankly violent terms, what the lack of statehood can bring
to the residents of the District of Columbia." Right now, the people in charge of the federal government oppose DC statehood. But it only takes one election to change that. "My own grandfather became one of the first African Americans in the DC fire department. His father, Richard Holmes,
was a runaway slave from Virginia. He walked to freedom.
But he didn't walk to equality. So I figure I'm picking up where he left off. He got us to freedom,
he got the Holmes family to freedom; now I've got to get the Holmes family,
and all my constituents, to equality." When America voted in 2020,  there was one issue both Republicans
and Democrats could agree on: "An overwhelming majority of voters said yes
to the legalization of marijuana." "Montana voters gave their
clear backing to marijuana." "Arizona, South Dakota..." "You could say a lot of New Jersey voters
are high tonight." New Jersey arrests around 30,000 people a
year for marijuana possession, more than almost any other state. But this year they voted to legalize marijuana. Arizona voted to legalize it, too. So did Montana. So did South Dakota. Medical marijuana was passed in Mississippi. Now one in three Americans live in a state
where access to marijuana has been legalized. Oregon took it even further and decriminalized
possession of all drugs on Election Day. Over decades, America’s war on drugs has
put millions of people in prison. And today it’s widely understood to have
disproportionately affected people of color. For example, Black Americans use marijuana
at the same rates as White Americans, but are arrested for it at a much higher rate. This map shows that more
and more Americans are starting to turn against the country’s harsh drug laws. But ending them entirely
will be a lot more complicated. Americans used to be almost unanimously
against legalizing marijuana. Today, two out of
three Americans support it. But politicians, not so much. There's a lag, between public embrace of issues,
particularly cannabis policy, and state legislators,
or even members of Congress. John Hudak is a policy researcher who writes
about America’s marijuana policies. And he says the gap between how politicians
and the public feel about marijuana,  has a lot to do with
what kind of political issue it is: Most Americans don't use cannabis. Most Americans have never been arrested for a
cannabis-related offense, etc. So it ends up not being something that they are going to hold
elected officials accountable for. Americans usually choose who they vote for because of issues like
the economy, or health care. Issues like marijuana are pretty far down
the list of priorities. But when you ask them directly, Hey,
do you want marijuana legalized? They'll say yes. And that’s why almost all of these states
have legalized marijuana in a very similar way: Instead of the state legislature passing a
comprehensive, detailed law, it was put directly to the people on Election
Day, as a question on the ballot. We have used ballot initiatives as a campaign
and advocacy tool for decades. Lindsay LaSalle is a drug policy strategist, and she’s worked on a lot of these
state ballot initiatives. The legislature is often afraid to act. But one problem with changing laws this way,
with a simple ballot initiative, is that the state still has to figure out the details. And that isn’t always easy. For example, in New Jersey, no one really
knows what’s going to happen to all the people who are incarcerated,
or have arrest records, for something that's now legal. The other challenge for these laws is that
they create a gap with the federal government. Even though it’s legal in several states,
at the federal level marijuana is still classified as one of the most serious drugs —
equal to heroin and LSD. And that puts federal drug laws in direct
conflict with state laws in all sorts of ways. Legal marijuana businesses have a really hard
time getting any federally-backed bank to take their money. And they can’t sell their product
across state lines. So a farm in California
can’t sell to a store in Nevada, even though it’s legal in both states. And because the federal government considers
marijuana a controlled substance, scientists researching the effects of it often
face problems with funding and testing. But as more people in more states choose to
legalize marijuana, this gap is going to become unsustainable. Having the more conservative states, like South
Dakota and Montana and Arizona, passing it, means that people have to consider it at the
federal level in a much more robust way. We’ve seen something
similar happen before. At first, same-sex marriage only became legal
in the US state by state. But by 2015, 70% of Americans lived in states
that had legal same-sex marriage. That same year, it became legal
throughout the country. We've transformed, in this country,
in the course of about 25 to 30 years, in terms of cannabis legalization being
an absolutely toxic and fringe issue, which is what it was, to one now where candidates
of both parties are embracing it. Americans' attitudes on the war on drugs,
and the mass incarceration it led to, are changing.  And more and more of them
are ready for those laws to change. But if politicians won’t do it,
they will. [Music] what if mommy or daddy told you to do to stay safe when you're out in the world if it's a busy story you have to hold your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister's hank don't climb on the counter because you might hurt yourself do not lick a cell boy i cough into my elbow as parents we do our best to teach our kids how to stay safe in the real world but are parents doing enough to keep their families safe online identity fraud loss has totaled 16.9 billion dollars in 2019. families with children under 18 are 128 percent more likely to be victims of identity fraud compared to the average american and families pay more than twice as much out of pocket as non-families as a result of identity fraud but there are ways to help reduce the risk of this from happening to your family and still make the most of the internet 92 percent of americans say they care about online safety but their actions show otherwise [Music] do you have different passwords for all your accounts no it's like a variation of the same one have you deleted all the social media accounts that you don't use no yes do you use mobile payment apps i don't trust it yes i yes i do my best [Music] most certainly not no but i know it's more secure but it's more of a hassle and approaching our numbers and passes i use my uh my hands to shred i tear them up but not nearly enough as i should tear it this way i'll tear it sideways while we should all be saying yes to more of these questions and practicing safe online habits many of us aren't the majority of people use one or a handful of different passwords for all their accounts and a third have shared their password with others so why is identity protection important and how can you help keep yourself safe online now does everyone know what a footprint is yes oh okay yes what would happen if i followed your footprint you if i accidentally that footprints to bury treasure you might have finded the treasure yes that's exactly it now when mommy or daddy log on the computer to maybe order the pizza or suppose you watch a movie together they give the company information about them and the company remembers it it's like leaving a footprint on that website and that's what's called a digital footprint sometimes bad people follow other people's footprints steal secret information and steal their money to buy a hundred pizzas all for themselves is that okay do you think that's right no that's not okay just like when we're crossing the street there are things that we can do to help protect ourselves and stay safe protecting your family online is easy when you know how to identify and manage the risks of identity fraud allstate identity protection lets you see the online accounts that have your info and alerts you if your data may have been breached or misused so that you can take action in a world where it can take between 100 hours to six months to fix the effects of identity theft allstate identity protection offers 24 7 customer service fraud remediation support and identity credit and social media monitoring it also offers an identity fraud expense reimbursement of up to one million dollars look around it's easy to see why online safety is so important class dismissed after four long tense days we've reached a historic moment in this election joe biden is president-elect america's democracy is not guaranteed it is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it [Applause] when i look back on biden's campaign i think the single most impressive thing he did were the biden sanders task forces that followed the primary cbs news projects the former vice president beats senator bernie sanders in florida illinois and arizona biden now has more than half of the 1991 delegates needed to clinch the democratic nomination my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party and then to unify the nation he invited all of these different players who had been harsh critics of the bibing campaign the sunrise movement which is the the youth-led climate movement he invited the sunrise movement into the task force they'd been incredibly critical of biden they've given his climate plan an app you've had at least some hand in shaping kind of forming joe biden's climate plan joe biden's plan will present a seismic shift in climate policy at the federal level than anything that we have seen in the last 40 years alexandra ocasio-cortez who had said in another country her and biden wouldn't even be in the same political party into the task force and it worked voting for joe biden is not about whether you agree with him it's a vote to let our democracy live another day that's what this is about it's so beautiful to see someone who stood for oppression and the system changed because of activism and just the voice of young people crying out but there is no reason to think that because joe biden won the election he'll be able to govern i think the likeliest outcome they're going to have a joe biden presidency and a mitch mcconnell senate and that means that lots of things joe biden wants to do are not going to happen i was looking at some data from a fox news analysis there's these questions like how concerned about the effects of climate change are you and you're getting 46 vary 26 somewhat gun laws pathway to citizenship changing to a government-run health care plan it seems clear from this data that what the american people want is not being translated to law and policy and i'm wondering if you can give some context as to why that is those numbers don't in any way surprise me we've seen numbers like that for a very long time as of right now joe biden holds a lead of about 13 500 votes the key thing to understand about the modern republican party is it is a party that routinely is not able to win the most votes at any level of the national system it has lost a popular vote in seven of the last presidential elections it has gotten fewer votes in the last three or four senate elections in a row a party that wins power without winning the most votes is going to turn against democracy itself many forced to wait for hours in part because of new voting machines that were either missing or not working 20 fewer polling places than we had in 2016. this line of people wraps around the block there's a line of cars to curbside vote people waited in line for two three four hours just to cast a vote right after the house attempted to pass a bill that would have made voting during a pandemic easier post office to deliver ballots what trump said on fox and friends was they they had things uh levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a republican elected in this country again what i'm wondering is obviously there are conservative parties in other democratic systems that win power all the time in canada or great britain or australia other um majoritarian democracies he's wrong that the republican party would never win power again what he's right about is that his republican party would never win power again a party that is increasingly afraid of what would happen to it if it was exposed to full-on actual democracy right you're saying if they really had to compete for votes that they would have to begin to embrace some of those policies as conservative parties in those countries have done yes thank you very much as we speak donald trump is functionally engaged in what we would understand in another country as a coup attempt if you count the legal votes i easily win if you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us if our goal is to defend the integrity of the election we'll not allow the corruption to steal such an important election or any other well we're interrupting this because what the president of the united states is saying in large part is absolutely untrue it's a very dangerous moment but even beneath that what you then end up having is when a party wins power without winning votes they will tend to use that power to make it easier to win power without winning votes all signs guys all signs point to a runoff in georgia not just one but two senate races here in georgia what that means here is that georgia could be at the center of the political universe through early next year january 5th is when the runoff is so those georgia runoffs they're really really really important record number of americans of all races faiths religions chose change over more of the same if democrats win the senate and choose to make democracy a priority there's a lot they can actually do uh dc and puerto rico should be offered statehood that's obvious things like automatic voter registration mail and balloting like we should just make elections a lot simpler to participate in make sure people's voices are being heard more clearly democracy works and i want you to know that our work is hard for those who voted against me as those who voted for me that's the job that's the job you Hey Lisa, what are we going to go do? We’re going to go, vote! We’re going to vote. We marching. Goes on and on and on. The line stretched outside of the school. Millions of people mailing in their ballots
and finding hours long waits at the polls. For what’s to come, I can only trust god. We are tracking what could be the largest
election turnout in U.S. history. Vote. I made a plan to vote because I am not leaving
anything up to chance. One of the most important elections of our
lifetime. Love it. Awesome thank you so much. It is currently 5:15 a.m. I am walking across campus to meet a few other
students who are also going to be poll workers. Morning doctor, thanks for being with us. Every place in the country, people should
be using masks when they vote. We have to do those things ourselves to change
the course. It’s kind of paradoxical that although the
pandemic would make people more concerned about coming here. But at the same time the government’s reaction
to the pandemic, eh, all of that instigated more fear that made people want to come and
vote. You know the difference is mostly with the
masks. You know and getting used to the mask and
getting used to people being around you. Some with mask, some without mask. The main thing is to get out and vote. Regardless we don’t let things stop us from
getting out to vote. Yes, wear the mask when you go voting. They made sure you had your mask on. It was safe to do so. Uh, what motivated you to come out and vote
in this election? Uh, I was just hoping to make America great
again. To keep it that way. Early voting started this morning and it runs
through the end of the month. Number of voters that are deciding to vote
early. Record number of Americans taking advantage
of early voting. I just wanted to make sure I did my due diligence
and actually came in. So if I come here, I’ll stick my ballot
in the box and we’re good to go. The fact that people are waiting so patiently
is a good thing on one hand, but it’s also a reminder that it shouldn’t be like this. I need you to not your mask and I don’t
need you to post it on facebook because that hashtag is doing absolutely nothing. We gotta vote like this. History in the making ladies and gentlemen. Some voters waited in line for close to three
hours. So after three train rides, and a car ride
I was finally able to successfully cast my ballot. All done. Not too much social distancing, but everybody
had on a mask. So, we’re all done. It’s been a hell of a year for, from the
pandemic, from everything we went through. I’m a small business owner, so I’ve really
seen a lot of change, but Trump will bring it back. I’m worried about what’s going to come
after the election. What’s going to happen throughout the day. Is there going to be any kind of violence? Is there going to be any sort of initiative
to try to disregard the results or try to put doubt in the legitimacy of our elections. That’s where my concern lies. Are mostly focused on mail-in ballots remaining. This is a tight race and there are any number
of ballots that have not been counted because of these delays. We were getting ready for a big celebration. Power can’t be taken or served. It flows from the people. Ok so the relief of voting is that you know
your votes in there, you’ve stood for something. And that’s what counts. Yes. That whether your party wins or loses, you’re
standing for what you believe in. Yes, yes. You are in the race. Yes. You’re in the race, but mostly for humanity,
equality and justice. That’s right. That’s right. we all have our morning routines and lately mine starts here with an obsessive check on the status of my absentee palette looks like the county board of elections received my ballot on october 27th but it says they still need to process my voter id envelope and verify the signature even before the coronavirus struck more americans each election were either voting early or voting by mail but in 2020 these numbers are expected to skyrocket the way americans choose their president is complicated even in a relatively normal election year in 2020 voters are facing a pandemic an underfunded postal service and the closure of polling locations in battleground states like georgia ohio arizona and texas it's enough to make you just want to tune out until it's over but once you know how votes are counted you can understand why yours counts in most states there are four ways americans can vote in person before election day on election day mailing an absentee ballot or placing it in a secure drop box each of the more than 3 000 counties in the u.s has its own rules but voting in person generally looks something like this when they show up to vote election officials check each voter's name and address to make sure that they're registered and voting in the right place these employees always work in teams of two and both workers can't be from the same political party voters cast their ballots in private either by filling out a paper ballot or using an electronic voting machine election officials collect the completed paper ballot they check the voter's name off a list and then place the ballot in a secure box at polling sites with electronic voting machines a computer records two separate pieces of information the voter's name and the date they voted and their vote choices separating names and vote choices ensures that voters preferences stay secret the machine also prints out a receipt with just that first piece of information election officials check the voter's name off a list and place the receipt in a secure box step one of the process looks pretty much the same whether you're voting early or on election day for those voting absentee it looks a little different in some states every single registered voter gets an absentee ballot in the mail but in most states voters have to fill out a request form like this one to get a ballot mailed to them once they fill out their ballot voters can either mail it to the county board of elections drop it off in person or place it in an official ballot drop box before they can be counted absentee ballots have to go through an extra step verification election officials always working in those bipartisan teams scan the sealed envelopes into a computer system next they check the signature on the ballot envelope against the signature in the state's voter registration database in missouri voters also need to get their ballot envelope stamped and signed by a notary public other states require a witness signature if an envelope is missing one of those requirements the whole ballot is invalid most states start this whole verifying process weeks before election day but wisconsin and pennsylvania two crucial battleground states don't start verifying mail-in ballots until election day another one michigan doesn't start until the day before once the envelopes are verified election officials unseal them and store the ballots in a secure box until it's time to start counting all paper ballots both from absentee and in-person voting are tabulated using a machine the data is stored on a memory card and the counted ballots go back in their secure box election officials combine the counts from the paper ballots and the electronic voting machines and the individual polling places report these numbers to the county board of elections which reports them to the state board of elections at both the county and the state level members of one political party can't have a majority on these boards on election day polling places and county boards are continually counting and reporting new numbers every hour or so state boards of elections typically post the counts online after the polls close and keep updating them as more numbers come in it takes a while for all these votes to be counted sometimes hours sometimes days when you hear this on tv on election night and look at all these wins we're projecting for hillary clinton that doesn't mean all the votes in that state have been counted news networks make projections based on a certain percentage of votes and they don't always get it right a big call to make cnn announces that we call florida in the al gore column standby standby cnn right now is moving our earlier declaration of florida back to the too close to call column news networks make a lot of money marketing election night like it's the super bowl but there's something to be said for adjusting our expectations a little especially during a pandemic after all the law in most states gives state boards of elections weeks to make sure that their vote counts are complete and accurate before certifying them as official i'm gonna keep checking up on my ballot every morning and reminding my friends to do the same but on election night i'd rather leave the projections to the pundits and rest up democracy is a marathon not a sprint you if you watch the news during a presidential election you'll hear a lot of this what do the national polls look like hillary clinton's national league nationally joe biden is currently ahead but these national polls don't actually tell you who's going to win throw the national polls out the window they don't matter at all what matters are those swing states ah yes the swing states most democracies around the world elect their head of state with a popular vote so whoever gets the most votes wins but in america we do it a little differently the u.s is the only country that picks its president using something called the electoral college it's made up of delegates from each u.s state when americans vote for president what they're actually voting for is who their state will vote for this is why every so often someone wins the presidency without winning the popular vote that's happened twice in just the past 20 years the majority of americans do not like the system and haven't for a long time both political parties have made attempts to get rid of it so why does the u.s still use the electoral college and who actually benefits from it the electoral college is based on how people are represented in congress where each state has a number of representatives based on its population and every state also gets two senators so for example let's look at texas which has a huge population and vermont which has a really small one texas has 36 representatives in congress vermont only gets one representatives in both states each represent roughly the same number of people in the electoral college a state gets the same number of delegates as their congressional representatives plus two for each senator so texas has 38 electoral votes vermont has three but this combination makes the number of people each delegate represents way different between states in texas one electoral delegate represents three times the amount of people as one in vermont and that makes each individual person's vote in vermont a lot more influential the electoral college creates discrepancies like this all over the country a voter in wyoming is worth three and a half times as much as a voter in california and the winner of the presidential election is the candidate who gets 270 or more of these electoral college votes [Music] these are the results of the 2016 election by state you're probably more familiar with this version of it a map of red states and blue states but this chart tells a different story you can see that no state is actually all red or all blue but almost every state awards its electoral votes the same way the candidate who gets the most votes in a state gets all its electoral votes if they win the state by one percent they win a hundred percent of the electoral votes in 2016 more than four million people voted for donald trump in california in fact more people voted for him there than in any other state except for two but it didn't matter hillary clinton got more votes there so she got all 55 of its electoral votes clinton never even campaigned in california polling showed she'd easily win the state trump only visited texas once he knew he'd basically had that state's electoral votes locked but they both visited florida 35 or more times that's because florida is usually a swing state polls show that the vote there could swing to one party or another nearly every election trump only won it in 2016 by 100 000 votes out of more than 9 million swing seats have changed over time thanks to shifting demographics and political views and it's states like these where presidential candidates spend most of their time campaigning it also means these states have way more influence over the election than these ones a study found that voters in michigan had 51 times the amount of influence on the 2016 election as someone from a state like utah voters in states like california or missouri mattered very little swing states are where the election actually takes place they get the attention and the influence and they only exist because of the electoral college it doesn't seem very fair but the electoral college has always shifted power away from some people and towards others it was how it was designed back when there were just a few states not 50 they had to get all the states to agree on the constitution one problem the northern states which were largely anti-slavery wanted only free people to count in the population towards electoral votes which they had more of the pro-slavery southern states were worried that they would be constantly outvoted and wanted enslaved people to count in determining the population as a compromise they settled on something called the three-fist clause it established that an enslaved person would only count as three-fifths of a person in 1800 pennsylvania northern state and virginia a southern one had about the same number of free people living there but virginia was also home to hundreds of thousands of enslaved people who had no freedom let alone a vote and ended up with more votes in the electoral college than pennsylvania that year those extra electoral votes gave the candidate from virginia just enough to win even after the u.s finally abolished slavery and eventually gave black americans the right to vote white southern leaders found ways to keep them from voting like with discriminating laws like poll taxes and acts of violence this meant they continued to have over-representation in the electoral college on behalf of a large population that couldn't vote the first time congress attempted to replace the electoral college with a simple popular vote was back in 1816 but senators from southern states blocked it saying it would be deeply injurious to them in 1969 congress came even closer replacing the electoral college had support in both parties and even passed the house but it was blocked again by southern senators a senator from alabama wrote the electoral college is one of the south's few remaining political safeguards let's keep it why change a system that historically had and still was benefiting white southerners today the states that the electoral college benefits have changed but it's still making some voters more powerful than others if we look at the states with a lot of electoral votes for not a lot of people and the states with a little electoral votes for a lot of people these states are a lot wider and less diverse than the rest of america and many of these states are republican strongholds these tend to vote democratic that's one reason the two most recent republican presidents have won the electoral college without winning the popular vote and since it's currently democrats that are primarily disadvantaged by the electoral college they're the ones leading the charge to replace it with a popular vote get rid of the electoral college but as politics have changed the people most critical of the electoral college have two in the 1948 presidential election new york ended up being the major swing state a congressman from texas said i have no objection to the negro and harlem voting but i do resent the fact that his vote is worth a hundred times as much as the vote of a white man in texas swing states change what doesn't is that the electoral college gives certain people more power to pick the president and its biggest defenders have always been those who benefit the most from it [Music] thanks to absolute who sponsored this video to remind all americans to make the time to vote absolute doesn't influence our editorial but they do make videos like this possible so drink responsibly and vote responsibly there's a certain look that's taken over everything a certain color palette kind of font and design today this visual style sells us meal kits and underwear and monthly toothbrush subscriptions and just about everything else but it's also showing up here in seemingly harmless trendy instagram posts about child trafficking on instagram there are over 800 000 posts like this from social media influencers and regular users with the hashtag save the children we've seen things like this before slideshows about social justice and current events dominated instagram this summer but something else is happening here on facebook membership in pages and groups branded as anti-child trafficking grew three thousand percent between july and the end of september by the end of august in-person rallies started taking place in cities across the world ending child trafficking is hardly controversial but behind that surge in growth is the baseless conspiracy theory known as q anon now an ideology once confined to the more obscure parts of the internet is finding its way mainstream one instagram post at a time on october 28 2017 the first of a series of posts from an anonymous user appeared on the 4chan message board paul the user was nicknamed q after q level security clearance that's the energy department equivalent of top secret the community that followed and believed those anonymous postings became known as q anon and they developed an elaborate conspiracy theory lore that president trump is fighting a global trial trafficking network led by satanic cannibalistic left-wing pedophile elites their theories have been proven false time and time again but that didn't stop the community from spreading from 4chan to another messaging board 8chan and to places like twitter youtube and facebook and as it did the posts videos and memes explaining its ideology became more accessible and digestible now qnon is a giant entanglement of conspiracy theories with dozens of offshoots that invites all different kinds of conspiratorial thinking into its fold kyoto has always been a big tent conspiracy theory that invites people of different beliefs and the thing is because the q a narrative is so broad and sprawling people can kind of enter it and pick out the the things that they like the best that paired with the facebook algorithm which uh recommends like other groups that someone might be interested in that turns into a very uh dangerous combination the q anon follower blocked the hoover dam with an armored vehicle a far right conspiracy theorist was planning a kidnapping and douglas guy a 24 year old man was charged in the shooting death of a reputed mob boss his attorneys argued he was motivated by q anon in 2019 the fbi labeled hunon as a potential domestic terror threat after some q anon followers started committing serious crimes in the real world on facebook q anon related activity grew steadily for years without consequences but then something changed there is a lot of evidence that suggests that the pandemic had a big effect on the growth of q anon the the impact of people spending a lot more time indoors and being online a lot more combined with the stress of the pandemic and the uncertainty of the future uh that was a toxic combination that pushed people into q a in march three leading q and on facebook group saw their membership rise from under fifty thousand to over three hundred thousand by august an internal investigation in facebook reviewed by nbc found that a number of qnon groups and pages had more than 3 million followers on august 19th facebook announced that it would be banning hundreds of q on pages and groups and after that traffic for q and on phrases and hashtags fell but membership in groups posing as anti-child trafficking groups exploded and in those groups users were still largely spreading q anon content q anon followers had simply pivoted to a new hashtag to improve their image one that was already being used for a fundraising campaign by a uk-based charity save the children i suppose for someone like me who's kind of been covering q and on for the past number of years like the past six months have kind of been you know it's kind of been like watching a tsunami in slow motion save the children is as i say it's a simple rebrand of cubanon it's a very simple and effective message to bring the q on movement to a wider audience you know who doesn't want to save children it's hard to accurately trace how the save the children hashtag jumped from these cute on facebook groups to mainstream accounts on instagram but by july high profile accounts like model helen owen and the real housewives of orange county's kelly dodd boosted the hashtag with inaccurate or misleading statistics this coincided with the united nations human trafficking awareness day other accounts put together slideshow style infographics like these and these are all packaged up in very pretty posts that are you know essentially they're very easily digestible especially to people that are not familiar with q and on their their colors are so a lot softer there's a lot of pastels and it's very pretty and nice and and when if you look at it without reading the words you would think it would be just like just any other kind of uh yoga inspired um you know instagram post and so the move to instagram kind of brought you know it brought cuban on to this kind of lifestyle influencer circle really and many of these influencers already they already have very high followings and they already have a dedicated audience that will you know very much listen to what they have to say accounts that might otherwise be getting just a few hundred likes on posts found themselves getting tens of thousands of likes as soon as they started posting about save the children a lot of people who get into q a especially if they're struggling influencers they notice that these q and themes they're like an internet cheat code because they attract people who are very engaged they spend a lot of time online and if you start promoting keyword on themes you start noticing that you're getting a lot more likes and shares that could be a big incentive to keep doing it perhaps the most damaging part of the save the children movement is how inaccurate information is making it harder to fight actual trafficking one of these most often cited statistics is that 800 000 children go missing every year in the u.s that number comes from a 2002 survey that asked parents if they had reported their children as runaways sometime in the previous year 797 and 500 said that they had the 2019 fbi data puts that number closer to 421 000. roughly half of those reports are related to custody disputes and the rest mostly relate to runaways but even then that number refers to children who are reported missing by their parents the vast majority of whom over 99 percent return home within hours or days in that 2002 study only 115 were considered stereotypical kidnappings there's no reliable data on how many people are trafficked in the u.s each year but stereotypical kidnappings aren't what trafficking usually looks like instead it often takes the form of forced labor or wage theft most commonly in agriculture domestic work or sex work and the people most at risk are those already vulnerable youth experiencing homelessness in foster care or unstable housing lgbtq plus youth who have been kicked out of their homes or migrant young people most people kind of have this idea in their head that it's you know children being lifted off the streets and been shipped overseas you know and you know all of that that does happen it doesn't happen at all to the extent that you and unfollowers believe that it does but the hysteria caused by distorted numbers has led to a deluge of calls and outreach from concerned q anon followers and it's overwhelming the organizations fighting actual child trafficking and that's very damaging because it made it harder for people with real information about possible human trafficking victims to get through and so we've seen this actually repeatedly the ways in which the misinformation that this that this kind of save the children style of q anon is uh is promoting damages real efforts to actually help children you won't find any searchable hashtags with typical q and on language on instagram anymore but because save the children isn't an inherently harmful tagline moderating it has proven particularly difficult and tackling misinformation on instagram can be harder than on facebook since it's harder to train an algorithm to recognize misleading text in slideshow images than it is to recognize text in facebook posts or comments the belief in q anon definitely falls along a spectrum i don't think you can say that everyone that was how to say if the children rally believes that hillary clinton needs children it's the hysteria it's the hysteria that grows and grows and grows as you're going down that rabbit hole that could more than likely eventually lead to you thinking that hillary clinton needs children cuon has really struck on something clever in that people get confused in their own way and they fall down their own individual rabbit holes that that radicalize them according to their own personality type there are more than 20 candidates for congress who have expressed support for q anon the real danger is that people don't need to believe or even be aware of the entirety of a conspiracy theory for it to start influencing their decisions you [Music] you know the green screen and blue screen you know it becomes the missed covered planet deserted jump background [Music] what happens when the imaginary planet is already there [Music] the moment you step in the middle of the volume you're just you're just there the volume is the epic sounding name for the combination of high resolution led panels imagine awesome huge tv screens wrapping around a stage the physical set design matched to the panels and 3d models plopped into an environment the same way they do in a video game then it can respond to camera movement to simulate the real world disney pluses the mandalorian a live action star wars tv show used this technique my name is charmaine chan and i'm a lead compositor at industrial ida magic is it physically like confusing being on on this set oh absolutely i mean the thing is like you're you're shooting all day let's say in the same exact scene and like you're at that location it doesn't feel like it's something fake it just feels like an extension of a regular set stage you know you got to be careful because there are times where people don't see where the end of the stage is and where the leds are you have like wiley coyote and roadrunner situations where somebody's like running into the wall or something yeah we definitely made sure that no one's running in that stage because of that reason charmaine is credited as part of the brain bar the group of visual effects artists that operated this system one might adjust models like a rock or a spaceship in the panels while another might tweak live animations like a burning fire charmaine often adjusted color it was funny because it looked very much like you know back in the days when you would have telephone fundraising stuff like on pbs it was just rolls of people with phones ready to go but instead of phones we had computers in our walkies as mandalorian vfx supervisor ian milham tweeted the set crew and brain bar operating the panels let them radically change environments in just a few hours or beyond set as they launched it into hyperspace [Music] my normal working life is very much behind a computer in a dark room somewhere in the corner now i'm actually in there with the gaffer with the prop designers with the set designers most people that we would never see because we're in the post-production process it was very accelerating but sets like this one weren't just fun for charmaine they helped to remove creative roadblocks as a compositor we're the ones who kind of take all the renders take all the cg elements and put them together to make it look like it's a seamless integrated photo so think of it as like advanced photoshop but for dealing with moving imagery charmaine worked on this scene in the last jedi we get this footage of kylo in front of a green screen if you're lucky this green screen will be evenly lit with no seams and it's a piece of cake that's never the scenario spending the time almost frame by frame making sure we can remove that green screen so that we can put kylo on top of that removing a green screen is actually still pretty hard for one it doesn't work with green characters yoda's green removing one solid color or keying can look good but you still need detail work see how these fine branches just disappear perspective of the background also doesn't naturally change that has to be designed into the final composite ditching the green screen and projecting or playing the image behind the actors gets you closer but not quite there [Music] [Applause] you can get detail in an illusion of depth and better light instead of green screen spilling on the actor you get blue sky and red desert actually lighting them that basic technique has worked in everything from 2001 to oblivion but you missed the proper perspective shift or parallax in the background since it's just a video playing on a screen the volume tackles some of those problems you can also adjust light and objects on the fly and the reflections actually work because they are reflecting the other screens instead of a green screen which was especially important for mando the show's main character his whole armor was reflective from head to toe whether it be his pauldron or his helmet it was just like you can't avoid seeing things being reflected [Music] so creating this volume where we literally could close up the whole thing into one giant circle and have an environment all across these screens we were getting exactly what we wanted to out of his helmet the brain bar could focus on details that made the final product as seamless as possible which was still a lot of work i would go in and whether it be a rock or a barrel or something i would try to color correct it to match what was on the set but where color correction was more important was when we're dealing with the bigger parts of the set so whether that be the dirt on the ground versus the dirt in our digital scene and the lighting from the scene affected the dirt on the ground so then we would have to like because we had a blue sky and suddenly now there's all this blue on this rock we would have to color correct the ground and the rock to also have just as much blue as the blue that we just introduced before they started shooting i would have five to ten minutes to get that all lined up and ready to go i can imagine that there are some creative breakthroughs that this makes possible for for your job what would those be with this technology i'll be honest i would not be mad if i never have to do a green screen keying or extraction ever again now i get to be a person who's doing the shot and i can help basically finalize a shot in camera it just makes it a more um cohesive filmmaking process and this puts us right in there next to everyone else who's creating these shows or films it was great to talk to charmaine and learn a little bit about her work and some of the amazing things that she's worked on this video is actually from a sponsor which is verizon they just turned on 5g nationwide so with 5g nationwide and in more and more cities you get the unprecedented performance a 5g ultra wide band it's really fast the world's fastest 5g you can download an album in a few seconds it's not just going to change your phone it'll change everything i'm guessing that a lot of creative breakthroughs will come from it too so this is the 5g that america has been waiting for and it's only from verizon verizon doesn't directly impact our editorial but their support makes videos like this [Music] possible [Music] the trump presidency is full of viral photos but take a look at this one from 2018 it's the leaders of america's closest allies all looking in one direction and president trump looking at another it's just a photo but it speaks to one of the biggest questions in the world right now almost 70 years ago the us built a network of alliances that helped make it the most powerful country on earth but today the future of those alliances is in doubt and they were in trouble even before donald trump took office now the world is watching a u.s election that could determine what the future looks like so how did we get here what is trump's vision for america's role in the world and what's the alternative [Music] in the beginning the us had just one alliance with france during the revolutionary war against great britain but after the us won the war it backed out and that's because back then allying with another country usually served one purpose alliances were primarily used to fight and win specific wars the us was already protected by two giant oceans so for the next 150 years america was alone until 1941. the united states of america was suddenly and deliberately attacked when japan attacked a u.s naval base it shattered the idea that oceans could protect the us any longer so they formed an alliance with these countries and declared war on japan and its allies together they won the war but faced a very different world in the aftermath after world war ii there were only two major powers the us and the soviet union european countries were weak and some worried the soviets might invade them and spread communism to protect against that the u.s formed a collective alliance with 11 other countries the north atlantic treaty organization or nato the agreement was simple an armed attack on one member would be regarded as an attack on all requiring every member to come to its assistance but the reality was more complicated the us had a massive military while these countries had weak ones if any at all that meant nato was really a guarantee by the u.s to protect all these countries from attacks it was risky but it gave the us leverage over countries that now depended on them for protection it used that leverage to align those countries with its own foreign policy and many allowed the us to build military bases inside their borders giving the u.s a first line of defense against the soviets the u.s also saw threats elsewhere in 1948 north korea had become a communist country and in 1949 so did china so the u.s signed individual alliances with six more countries the us also signed a collective alliance with 21 countries in latin america by 1960 the soviet union was surrounded by countries that if they attacked would trigger war with the us for hundreds of years alliances had been used to fight and win specific wars this was something new the real gamble that the united states was taking was the idea that it would use alliances to keep wars from starting at all one of the first tests of this idea came in berlin the city laid deep in soviet-controlled east germany but was divided between the nato countries and the soviets in 1961 the soviet leader told western powers to leave instead the u.s and its allies quickly moved troops into berlin and the u.s publicly committed to uphold its promise the united states is there the united kingdom and france are there the pledge of nato is there in response the soviets built a wall through the city and back down the u.s guarantee also helped prevent further wars in taiwan and korea it proved that this system worked but only if america's enemies and allies actually trusted that the us would follow through so for the next 60 years u.s presidents said it out loud a nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends our ties with japan and our european allies are stronger than ever we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment and it worked the soviets believed it world war iii never happened and the u.s won the cold war history is unfolding in the soviet union last one out of the soviet union please turn out the lights united states recognizes and welcomes the emergence of a free independent and democratic russia between 1989 and 1991 the soviet union and its communist allies in europe fell apart now the u.s was the world's only superpower and most of its allies were safe from invasion but for nato that created an existential question should the alliance go out of business because its primary adversary had disassembled itself or should it find a new case for its being european leaders and many american leaders supported keeping nato around to support democracy and security in europe ultimately the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere it would be a catastrophe for american interest if instability were to alter the current situation in europe do we want the peace to last in 1999 nato added three former soviet allies poland the czech republic and hungary and nato started intervening in conflicts outside of its membership in 1999 it bombed serbian forces fighting in kosovo nato also helped the u.s invade afghanistan after the 9 11 attacks in 2001 and supported parts of the war in iraq in 2003 meanwhile in asia the us had stayed close with south korea and japan to counter north korea but the fall of the soviet union had made the alliances with these countries harder to justify and those relationships in a lot of ways went adrift and that all created something of a soft strategic underbelly in southeast asia some u.s leaders began to question the cost of those alliances the u.s had asked nato allies to spend 2 percent of their gdp on defense but few countries were meeting that goal so they urged nato along with south korea and japan to increase their spending while still reaffirming its promise to back its allies their cause is america's cause we will defend our allies and our interests america will always act alone if necessary to protect our people and our allies still these alliances were drifting and two countries were starting to test their weak points russian flames again bombing georgian targets this morning in 2004 nato had added seven more members including these three known as the baltic states leaders in russia became concerned that nato had reached its borders and after nato made plans to add georgia and ukraine it decided to act russia invaded georgia in 2008 than ukraine in 2014 preventing either country from joining nato but those invasions also had another purpose you can think about russia's invasion of ukraine as a prelude to what could happen if russia decided to make a quick fade accompli grab in the baltics russia was building up a massive military presence along its border and now its willingness to invade its neighbors raised an uncomfortable question would the u.s and its allies actually be willing to go to war to defend one of these small countries over in asia china developed a similar strategy since the end of the cold war china has become the second biggest economy in the world and it built a military and missile stockpile capable of controlling this whole region both russia and china have developed military strategies that seek to demonstrate two american allies that the united states can't protect them they've also introduced strategies that advance their own regional interests but in ways that wouldn't trigger a u.s response russia began launching cyber attacks all over europe and spreading disinformation in support of radical politicians in the south china sea china turned remote reefs into man-made islands with military bases on them all in an area disputed by many countries it's also issued huge loans and build infrastructure projects in dozens of countries around the world giving them not just economic leverage in those places but political leverage as well russia and china leave the united states and its allies scrambling to respond and without triggering a treaty commitment that might result in their cooperation to defend their mutual interests all of this is designed to force america's allies to doubt its commitment and potentially peel off from each other in the u.s but exactly how the u.s should deal with this was unclear then in 2016 it elected a president who took things in a dramatically new direction we've defended other nations borders subsidize the armies of other countries it's going to be only america first president trump's view was that many international agreements were inherently unfair to the u.s and that the u.s could get a better deal by negotiating relationships with each individual country so we pulled the us out of several agreements previously made with allies and be considered withdrawing from alliances unless allies spent more on defense nato members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations trump had a point in 2016 many allies were still under their spending goals he demanded that nato south korea and japan dramatically increase it or face consequences south korea is costing us five billion dollars a year and they pay they were paying about 500 million for five billion dollars worth of protection and we have to do better than that in 2018 he abruptly canceled military exercises with south korea and in 2020 he pulled 12 000 troops out of germany all this has caused u.s allies to further doubt the us's promises in some cases it's made them move closer to its adversaries even the united states closest allies in asia like japan have increasingly deepened their tries with china so what we're starting to see is a set of hedging behaviors in case the united states does not return to the status of predictable ally and now these countries are watching an election that could decide if the us will continue to pull away from its alliances or come back trump's opponent joe biden was one of the most vocal supporters of the us alliance system as a senator and a vice president working cooperatively with other nations to share our values and goals doesn't make america suckers it makes us more secure and he's running on a platform that would pull america's allies closer who's the first world leader you would reach out to i would call a meeting of nato leadership and i would make clear that we're back but the limitations of these alliances are also the reason the us is in this situation to begin with [Music] but how exactly to update this decade's old system is a daunting question what's certain is that russia and china will keep trying to separate america from its allies and the next president will have a huge amount of power over what to do about it he'll have to answer something that every american ally is wondering who does the us want to be in the world thanks for watching this episode of our 2020 election series we asked you what you think the candidates should be talking the most about and america's role in the world was one of the most common requests marcus asked that we cover the new relationships with other countries both close allies friends and partners as well as rivals and historical counterparts jonathan asked about the international position of the u.s and especially how to restore the us's relationship with allies and tim asked how will the nominees repair america's relationships with governments and peoples of key allies like germany south korea japan and france we're still working on more episodes but we still want to hear what you think the candidates should be speaking about so please visit us at vox.com election videos and finally we'd like to thank our sponsor for these videos absolute who'd like to encourage every american to make their voices heard and prioritize voting this election so whatever you do please drink responsibly and vote responsibly it was august 11th 2014. i returned home to find police in my yard i was taken back i was really surprised they then let me know that they were looking for a suspect my ex at the time i let them know that he was there earlier that morning but i wasn't sure if he was still in the home at the time i gave the police my keys when they asked if they could go in and apprehend him they then asked me to leave the premises this is what she came back to they just completely destroyed my house i mean i had a playpen near one of the windows and it was just full of glass shanice had expected the police to use her keys to check inside the house instead they called in a swat team who shot tear gas through the windows her ex wasn't even there but the six-month pregnant chinese was left to clean up the tear gas residue and damage in a now unlivable home i was just immediately brought to tears it was the first time of me even being on my own in my own house and it was all taken away so she sued the police for the damages and unreasonable search and seizure arguing her consent to go inside the house did not mean she consented to them doing this the federal court agreed saying the police exceeded the scope of the consent but they were still entitled to something called qualified immunity meaning the police were off the hook and chinese lost qualified immunity protects government officials from lawsuits like hers it's one of the many police protections protesters of police brutality want to see reformed and its future may hinge on the 2020 election qualified immunity is just that immunity granted to government officials like police officers when sued by regular people who feel their constitutional rights were violated by things like excessive force or unreasonable search for an officer to earn qualified immunity it doesn't actually matter whether or not someone's rights were violated what matters is whether the police officer should have known they were violating that person's rights the idea stems from a 1980 supreme court decision where the court argued the fear of being sued might prevent the unflinching discharge of their duties so unless it was clearly established that a government official's actions were wrong they can't be sued the trouble with qualified immunity comes from how specifically the courts have interpreted the clearly established as wrong part in 2016 a prison guard pepper sprayed a man and himself for no reason something he was given three months probation for when he was sued by the man for excessive force he was given qualified immunity court precedent had clearly established other similar actions as wrong like punching or tasing for no reason but no previous case had specifically condemned pepper sprain therefore the court says the officer couldn't have known it was wrong chinese's case played out in a similar way because don't excessively deploy tear gas or destroy property when given consent to enter a home isn't a specific police policy and an officer hadn't successfully been sued for that specific action in the past the officers were granted qualified immunity before any of this happened i had no idea what qualified immunity was we turn law abiding citizens into victims that's that's not right this strict interpretation of qualified immunity has some of today's supreme court justices concerned that it tells officers they can shoot first and think later last year a georgia officer was given immunity because shooting a 10 year old while attempting to shoot the non-threatening family dog wasn't clearly established as wrong nor was don't tase a pregnant woman for not signing a parking ticket or don't stick a canine on a person after they've already surrendered by sitting on the ground with their hands up although don't stick a canine on a person after they've already surrendered by lying down is actually an established precedent from an older case qualified immunity makes it hard to set new precedent because this officer wasn't successfully sued the next officer to do this will also have qualified of unity it's a catch-22 these kinds of cases are why people arguing for police reform put ending qualified immunity for police officers high on the list and importantly it's one of the few police reforms the federal government can actually make happen there are thousands of different police departments in the u.s around 18 thousand and different kinds of governments oversee them with different levels of authority let's look at the minneapolis police department for example which is controlled by the city of minneapolis if the city council wanted to make a change to the police department's budget or change one of their rules like when they're allowed to use tear gas for example the city has that authority then there's the state of minnesota whose government can change laws like requiring a public report of misconduct that would affect all police departments in the state including minneapolis the federal government of course has oversight of all the states if congress passes a law it applies to everyone but congress doesn't have the authority to tell these states how to spend their money and most changes to police policy rely directly on a police department's budget congress can do things like influence states to make changes like only giving out grant money to states that report misconduct but they can't pass a law to make state police buy and wear body cameras or ban them from carrying certain weapons because these policies depend on money and police departments are funded primarily by these local and state governments it's really up to them to change the way police police except when it comes to things that deal with constitutional rights like qualified immunity because it was established in federal court only the federal government has the power to change it the supreme court could take up a case that involves it and rule to change the precedent something that several justices have shown interest in but so far haven't acted on congress also has the power to reform qualified immunity in june the democratic held house of representatives passed a bill that would limit it for police officers but it's not going to get a vote in the republican-held senate if a bill like this were to eventually get through congress it would need to get through the white house before it became law and president trump likely wouldn't sign it whether they like it or not you need immunity for the police presidential candidate joe biden has included it as part of his police reform plan as his runny mate describes it's about reigning in qualified immunity it matches their general police reform stances trump wants to strengthen police protections while biden wants to see more funding for community-based police and focus on reforming the criminal justice system the results of the 2020 election both in congress and the white house could in some ways determine the future of qualified immunity and ending or limiting the practice would result in more individual police officers being held accountable for their unconstitutional actions but local governments are primarily what fund the police and control how they police so when it comes to police reform in general you have to start looking at people running further down the ballot thanks for watching this episode in our 2020 series we did a call out asking you for what you think the candidate should be talking about and this was one of your top responses joshua asked how do they plan to have actual change in the way the country is policed maria anna asked what is going to happen with qualified immunity and matthew said i believe both of the candidates need to more heavily address police reform it is the most polarizing issue in our country no matter which side of the aisle you are on but remember if you're a u.s voter the president isn't the only person on your ballot your local elections can have a huge impact on your daily life so don't skip those we're still working on more episodes and we'd still like to know what you think the candidate should be talking about tell us at vox.com election videos in september of 2019 a six-year-old student named kaya was sitting in her school's office okay she's gonna have to come with us now that's a police officer this video comes from his body camera at first it seems like kaya doesn't know what's happening [Music] earlier that day kaya had a tantrum three school employees said that she had kicked them the school called the police who arrested kaya on charges of misdemeanor battery the police dropped the charges after kaya's grandmother sent this video to the orlando sentinel kaia's case isn't an isolated incident [Music] a five-year-old girl being handcuffed by police in florida for a year he could not sleep alone he put handcuffs on me tossed to the ground by a school resource officer what you're seeing are the effects of a larger problem in american schools the u.s doesn't treat all students equally but if we wanted to we could do something about that the next president could decide if that happens [Music] in 2016 researchers at yale showed teachers this video clip of four preschool students their instructions look for misbehavior and click when you see it the study was kind of deceptive none of the kids in the video actually misbehaved the researchers were using eye tracking software what they actually wanted to study was who the teachers were watching both black and white teachers spent significantly more time watching the black boy in the video this study showed that even preschool teachers can treat kids differently based on their race without even realizing it look elsewhere in the u.s school system and you'll see this show up in other ways like at this middle school in bryan texas they gave students tickets for offenses like disrupting class or using profanity black students were four times more likely than white students to receive those tickets nationwide black boys miss way more school due to suspensions than any other group and this can start a kind of chain reaction missing weeks of school due to suspensions makes students much more likely to drop out without a diploma you're much less likely to earn a living wage and much more likely to be incarcerated all this missing school is helping to drive the highest poverty and incarceration rates in the developed world so it's worth asking how'd we get here in 1964 president lyndon johnson created a new federal office accountable to the president the office for civil rights its first task was to desegregate public schools in the south but soon they started noticing that some schools were segregating their students without actually calling it segregation a lot of the black students would be labeled disabled and removed from the mainstream classroom so they wound up segregated daniel lowson studies school discipline for years he's been sounding the alarm about how much school black students are missing due to suspensions the data he uses in his reports comes from the office for civil rights in the 1970s they started requiring schools to report how many students they classified as disabled plus suspensions and expulsions all broken down by race and gender over the next few decades those numbers went up as more punitive ideas about discipline took hold in american schools well in some schools gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools the idea that if you don't you know throw the book at kids when they're young for every little thing that they're going to turn into criminals it's never any research to show that it actually worked you never see that in schools serving mostly white kids but in 2011 a new report out of texas started to cast doubt on that approach the study looked at discipline records for almost a million students attract the same kids from seventh grade all the way through high school the results were stunning nearly 60 percent of students had been suspended or expelled at least once the study also showed that black students facing school discipline for the first time tended to get harsher punishments than white students and the more disciplinary violations a student received the more likely they were to drop out clearly texas had a big problem the question now was if the problem was bigger than texas to figure that out the obama administration turned to the data set that the office for civil rights had built that's how they learned this was a nationwide problem african american students are over three times more likely than their white peers to be suspended or expelled often for very similar offenses they also discovered that the vast majority of suspensions were for behaviors like talking back using profanity or violating the dress code non-violent student behaviors many of which once meant a phone call home the administration started investigating school districts where the numbers were the most damning one of those districts was bryan texas home of the discipline tickets in 2013 a woman named marjorie holman filed a complaint after her 12 year old son was suspended for defending himself from a bully and had to appear in adult criminal court the office of civil rights opened an investigation in brian along with hundreds of other school districts if you can't justify what you're doing and it's having a harmful impact on one group more than others you have to replace it with something else but we don't actually know if those changes made a difference because the most recent data on the office of civil rights website is from the 2015-2016 school year the year after that things started to change the 51-50 vote to confirm betsy devos the vice president votes in the affirmative and the nomination is confirmed in 2017 the office of president trump's new education secretary betsy devos sent a memo to the staff at the office of civil rights this one super jargony line in the memo signaled a huge shift ocr will only apply a systemic or class action approach where the individual complaint allegations themselves raise systemic or class-wide issues translation no more looking for patterns in the data if the office got a complaint like marjorie holman's they would look for one thing written or verbal proof that an individual teacher or administrator had punished marjorie's son more harshly because he was black we're not going to question that unless there's the smoking gun of intentional racism that's what happened in bryan texas when betsy devos took office the investigation into bryan's schools was close to wrapping up the final report concluded that black students were subject to disparate treatment when compared to white students engaged in the same or similar conduct they had dozens of recommendations for the district revise their discipline code hire mentors and social workers extra training for teachers devos's team scrapped the report and closed the investigation with no finding of wrongdoing and no suggestions for improvement if you look closely at this clip you can see joe biden standing right behind president clinton as he signs the 1994 crime bill that bill ushered in new tough on crime policies that devastated black communities as a senator biden played a key role in getting the bill passed we have predators on our streets they are beyond the pale many of those people and since then he's had to confront that history i haven't always been right the systematic racism that most of us whites don't like to acknowledge even exist it's been built into every aspect of our system this policy plan comes from the biden campaign in the section titled school discipline it says that biden would reinstate obama's discipline guidelines and would push for every state to submit a plan for reducing the use of policies and practices that push kids out of school some people believe that all racism is explicit a nasty slur a whites only sign a burning cross it's unmistakable and it's on purpose but there's another way of understanding racism that laws and policies can have racist outcomes even if they don't mention race at all that you don't always need a smoking gun to do a whole lot of damage thanks for watching this episode of our 2020 election series for this series we asked you what you wish the candidates would talk about more we got more than 12 000 responses and we made this video because a lot of you mentioned education racial justice and mass incarceration holly writes that she wants the candidates to talk about racial inequality in education sylvan wants to know how can the candidates address systemic discrimination in our country and agnes wants the candidates to answer the question how will you address mass incarceration and school to prison pipelines that specifically target communities of color it's not too late for you to tell us what you think the candidates should be talking about tell us at vox.com election videos also i want to send a special shout out to propublica and thank them for sharing their reporting on the office of civil rights with us for this video they have done some incredible investigative work on how things have changed there under betsy devos so check it out at propublica.org [Music] [Music] pretty much as soon as photography was invented in the 1830s there was a desire to see it in color the new medium was hyper realistic but without color incomplete hand coloring photographs using paints or dyes began in europe but the best hand-colored photographs of the 19th century came from japan [Music] for over 200 years almost no one outside of japan knew what the country looked like the government closed the borders in 1635 to halt growing colonial influence mostly from catholic missionaries that took hold in the late 1500s leaving the country was forbidden those who tried were executed and with some exceptions contact with the outside world was cut off for two centuries but in 1854 a u.s naval expedition of warships led by commodore matthew perry forced japan to open its ports leading to an influx of travelers and traders from europe and north america foreigners coming to japan brought their clothes their culture and their cameras photography was relatively new at the time and became a lucrative trade for foreigners in newly opened japan starting in the 1860s photographers mostly european but some japanese documented japan's landscape and people creating collectible and highly prized images of japanese culture photography played very well into this kind of desire to learn more about japan this sense i think of japan as being you know formally kind of forbidden and beyond reach and all of a sudden now somehow knowable the technology of photography really played into that because it seemed to represent the real it seemed to record reality photography studios flourished in port cities like yokohama and as the medium became more popular cameras began appearing in ukiyo a traditional japanese woodblock prints too in this 1878 ukioe print a wealthy japanese woman admires photographic portraits with a stamp on the back indicating the studio of uchiro koichi a well-known japanese photographer at the time but it was a foreigner italian english feliz bayato that made expert quality hand coloring the defining characteristic of this era of japanese photography he was the first to really take advantage of color photography on a commercial scale in japan and what he was able to do was draw on this large body of highly trained artisans from the okio and the wood block print industry bayado and eventually other foreign photographers in japan hired fine artists as their apprentices to carefully hand color photographic prints tapping into an expertise of patient precision in the application of color onto flat images that have been in place in japan for generations [Music] unlike many hand-colored photographs in europe and north america which often ended up looking more like paintings than photographs japanese artists mostly used watercolors it created just a beautiful effect on the photographs the aesthetic quality a slight difference to other kinds of colored photographs made them very desirable taking advantage of that pool of talented highly skilled artisans from the woodblock print industry made that all the more possible the color added to the sense of realism in these images which made them even more collectible but many of these photos especially the ones staged in studios have artificial elements like backgrounds and fake snow added to dress up the scene and some constructed images of a society that was already largely in the past when they were made the samurai for example had all but disappeared by the 1870s these are models wearing old armor by the 1880s those same japanese apprentices that had made foreign operated businesses profitable dominated the market with photography studios of their own like kusaka bakimbe one of the most lucrative photographers at the end of the 19th century in japan an artist and former apprentice to foreign photographers who built on the precedent they set staging elaborate sometimes mythic scenes of japanese culture carefully applying watercolors and packaging them in expensive photo albums to sell to foreigners [Music] this photo of a woman holding an umbrella caught in a rainstorm is a good example of the meticulous work that photographers like kimbe put into staging supposedly typical scenes of japanese life the rain is simulated by scratches into the glass plate negative and the subject's kimono is attached to the photo studio's background to simulate wind these techniques drew unrecognizable tropes from japanese fine art in japan i think most directly we can see the relationship from ukulele woodblock print art to photography composition and more importantly subject matter i think you can see really direct relationship and because i think even with western audiences the knowledge of subject matter that was pictured in woodblock prince was sort of growing in the 19th century so it only made sense for photographers to build on this familiarity the rise of amateur photography in the 20th century caused a decline of studio souvenir photography in japan kodak introduced the browning camera in 1900 and travelers could take their own photos plus the introduction of postcards and mass printed volumes of travel books meant the images made in japanese photo studios were less and less precious and therefore no longer profitable to spend so much time staging and then hand coloring studios like kimbez shifted their business model to accommodate a new amateur market selling supplies and offering darkroom space to tourists but for the second half of the 19th century images like these from japanese photo studios even though many were staged and sometimes already dated stereotypes had a lasting effect on how outsiders perceived japanese culture that image of the woman with the umbrella relates to centuries really of the way women were sometimes portrayed in japanese arts you have that trope but what happens when you translate it into photography is it takes on the sense of realistic representation in a way that a painting or wood blood print does not [Music] that photo of the woman with the umbrella is often credited to kimbe but it's also often credited to his predecessor austrian photographer baron raymond von stilfried one of the tricky parts of 19th century photography in japan is accurately identifying the original photographer as studios closed and photographers retired they sold their negatives to the competition who without copyright laws could claim the photos as their own so even after copyright laws were established it was very hard to enforce so as a result you see over decades the same images produced and reproduced under different studio labels which is one of the reasons why it's very difficult to attribute certain images to a specific photographer which explains why this photo of the empress of japan taken by uchirokuichi in 1872 appears in later photo albums mislabeled and credited to either felice bayardo or raymond von stilfried neither of whom took the picture and if you want to learn more about this i'd really recommend this book by terry bennett uh who i also interviewed for this episode reading this was a huge inspiration for this episode and it's got a lot of great info about how photography first came to japan and more detail about the photographers that were working there in the 19th century so check it out if you're interested and thanks for watching every month the global economy is losing 500 billion dollars due to the ripple effects of covet 19. by the end of 2021 projections show a cumulative loss of 12 trillion or more it hasn't been this bad since the end of world war ii a conflict that in part grew out of another infamous global economic crisis the great depression almost a century later the kova 19 pandemic has created a cascading crisis with impacts far beyond the realm of public health there's a term for this mutually exacerbating catastrophes and it's happening right now on a global scale so how can the vicious cycle be stopped mutually exacerbating catastrophes it's the idea that disasters end up creating and then cementing crisis after crisis a pandemic feeds into a recession feeds into income inequality feeds into civil unrest and on and on a ripple in one sector in one country is felt globally but it is not felt proportionally justice covet 19 has been more lethal to patients with pre-existing conditions the disease has been disproportionately devastating to lower income economies and people and despite their best efforts to respond limited resources means a more limited effect for example 2020 wiped out the sustained economic gains of several low-income african nations widening the vast wealth gap between high-income countries and low and middle-income countries and that in turn impacts the response g20 countries spent over 20 percent of gdp in their emergency measures whereas developing countries spent about three percent you're already cutting back in what your government's able to do even at the time you're being asked to do more and that you're needed even more to sort of mount a response for your people the economic and societal ripples from covin won't fully get addressed without a multilateral response to a singular disease the pandemic is every country's fight so global cooperation is paramount fighting the virus requires treatment and solid diagnostics in the short term and vaccination in the medium we could be living in a world where we're able to get the virus under better control through medical countermeasures governments are able to protect their people and that the temporary problems stay temporary rather than become forever problems think of it as the inverse of mutually exacerbating catastrophes empowering public health networks empowers communities particularly women which can lead to better outcomes for environmental justice disenfranchised minorities and so much more yes kova 19 can create ripples outside of public health but the right response to it can have societal ripples that go far beyond the virus the fight against poverty and disease is measured every year by the bill and melinda gates foundation in the goalkeeper's report but progress has almost entirely regressed so the foundation's 2020 goalkeepers report analyzes the damage the pandemic has done and is doing and advocates for a collaborative response i would like to think that we can come back in a way that recognizes the interconnectedness and gives us a blueprint on how we tackle some other global problems in a way that we might not have been able to do before when you imagine the iconic moments of the civil rights movement what do you see maybe the march from selma to montgomery lunch counter sit-ins or bus boycotts across the country but what about this or this what happened in the waters of saint augustine florida was one of the most critical campaigns in the movement to desegregate the us i still have an eerie feeling when i'm in st augustine they did not like that idea of sharing water the idea that something that touched us is going to touch them american beaches and pools have long been flashpoints of racial conflict in the u.s historically many cities prohibited black people from stepping into public waters leisure is primarily a tool of capitalism leisure is also a tool of white supremacy and it articulates power in society in a certain way who has it um who does not who has the right to wield it and oftentimes this plays out in public spaces in the north and south white people fiercely opposed the integration of these spaces in some cases separate pools and beaches for black americans were established but they were often small far away and dangerous in new orleans for example the city's designated black beach was an area grossly polluted with sewage from nearby fishing camps [Music] that unequal access to recreation is how wadens were born weigh-ins were a spin on the non-violent lunch counter sit-ins that spread quickly across the country in the 1950s and 60s but instead of demanding access to businesses wading into beaches and pools demanded access to leisure on one hand it's to pronounce a sense of you see us um and you must sort of deal with us when you see us the other aspect or end of of a weight in is to invoke some sense of reaction so since you're unwanted either by law or by social behaviors people are going to react to your presence beaches became an important site for civil disobedience campaigns in the 1950s and early 60s from the shores of biloxi to chicago to fort lauderdale protesters gathered to demand equal access to city waters by the time weight-ins were organized in saint augustine a local movement and racial discrimination was already making headlines soon the campaign to desegregate these waters became the tipping point in a campaign to desegregate the entire nation the movement in saint augustine started with a local dentist and naacp youth council advisor named robert haling beginning in 1963 hailing mobilized youth in saint augustine to take part in civil rights sit-ins marches and boycotts i feel it is incumbent upon the city officials to make sin augustine a glaring example of democracy at work as the demonstrations picked up so did violence against them hundreds of protesters were beaten and jailed four teenagers who conducted a sit-in were ripped from their families and sent to reform school the homes of activists were also under constant threat a targeted shooting of hailing's home narrowly missed his pregnant wife and killed his dog so many houses were shot into we knew that anytime we had lights on in the house at night we'll run the risk of our house being fireballed so my breath and i still had to keep up with our studies when darkness came we would take turns going into that closet closing the door to study and we knew if we did not go into that particular area to study we were going to be shot and the house is going to be burned down the temple of violence increased rapidly in saint augustine the clan paraded in the streets unmindful of the rain ku klux klan rallies ramped up too at one rally hayling and three other activists were captured and brutally beaten later hailing was the one convicted for assaulting the klansmen after five minutes of deliberation by an all-white jury he was later forced to resign as an aide to the naacp after a grand jury accused him and other activists of being militant hayling and the other activists needed a new plan and new allies hailing reached out to the southern christian leadership conference a civil rights organization established by martin luther king jr at the time king's main focus was to pass the civil rights act of 1964. among other measures the bill aimed to desegregate public places but in the spring of 64 the bill had been held up by the senate stuck in a record-long filibuster king knew heightened tensions back in st augustine made it a segregated superbomb and believed high-profile acts of civil disobedience like the ones hailing organized could be the push needed to get the civil rights act passed king and several sclc leaders shifted focus to saint augustine and began a series of demonstrations that spring with the sclc's help hailing's movement gained organizers a financial boost and high profile supporters jackie robinson a black baseball star who pioneered integration of the sport came to a st augustine rally and mary peabody the 72 year old mother of the governor of massachusetts was jailed after a saint augustine sit-in which put the movement in national and international newspapers then in a demonstration on june 11th 1964 king attempted to enter the restaurant at the monson motor lodge a saint augustine hotel owned by this man james brock king and 17 others were barred from entering and arrested a week later protesters shifted their focus to the swimming pool at the monson motor lodge by june 18th two white protesters checked into the hotel five black demonstrators were to be their guests in the pool that day they drove up to the hotel but they knew they couldn't go in the front door so they found a way in through the hedges around the pool as the group waded into the monson swimming pool other organizers including a group of 16 rabbis invited by king formed a prayer circle around the monsoon to join in the civil rights demonstration with the rabbis outside king marching down the street with others and the weighed in at the pool the demonstration was designed to grab attention at first james brock the hotel owner tried to use a cleaning pole to get the swimmers out but when that didn't work brock tried something else he came out with a bottle of hydrochloric acid a corrosive pool cleaning chemical and threw the acid toward the protesters in the pool to drive them out mimi jones one of the protesters in the pool that day recalled her experience in a 2017 interview and all of a sudden i the water in front of my face started to bubble up like volcanic like a volcanic eruption i could barely breathe it was entering my nose and my eyes it was just very frightening and terrified because i really didn't see him coming soon after a fully clothed police officer jumped into the pool to arrest us to usher us out of the pool and there were other policemen there waiting for us and carted us off to jail the goal of the waden was to make the news and photographers captured every moment our whole foreign policy and everything else go to hell over this yesterday in the swimming pool sat augustine i started pouring acid in the pool the very next day after a 60-day filibuster the u.s senate passed the civil rights act of 1964 making way for it to get signed into law by the president as the nation waited for the bill to get signed the saint augustine wadens continued on the beaches day after day dozens of black and white demonstrators showed up to the shore and were met with brutality from white supremacists we went to saint augustine beach and then all of a sudden they started hitting us and just punching anybody who got in the way and i was one of the ones who was punched my nose was broken the violence peaked on june 25th when 75 people peacefully entered the water highway patrol was sent in to keep the peace but violence quickly broke out and they arrested both black and white demonstrators notice the speed at which the action develops and the need for officers to pursue the attackers the demonstrations continue the fighting continued the bullying continued and it wasn't just about us and integrating that beach we knew we knew about the bigger picture later that night hundreds of white supremacists rallied in saint augustine and attacked civil rights protesters on a march the clash led to 19 black people being hospitalized with many more injured on the night of june 25th 1964 the fuse burned down and the racial bomb exploded but they tell me that i don't even have the right to fight to protect the white race a week later on july 2 the civil rights act of 1964 was signed into law congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to be written into the law the civil rights act of 1964 is signed at the white house by president johnson to back what he calls a turning point in history this moment was monumental but in the years that followed weigh-ins continued cities used different strategies to keep their hold on segregation for public beaches and pools that meant many whites only signs were simply replaced with private club signs and high fees to enter and as white people started fleeing cities for the suburbs local governments neglected many urban pools and eventually shut them down as for saint augustine the passing of the civil rights act didn't change the minds of white residents there either in the years that followed dr haling left saint augustine he could no longer make a living in the city or feel safe there saint augustine is still roughly [Music] the saint augustine that i remember from the 60s u.s beaches and pools remained battlegrounds today in pennsylvania black and brown children were kicked out of their rented pool space because management feared it could change the complexion of the private club in texas white residents called the police on black teens trying to enjoy the neighborhood pool and in north carolina a white hotel employee called the police on a black family using the pool during their stay all of what happened in the 60s you see some of it come back it's like deja vu i asked you to leave politely simple as that and i heard this lady she was like what are all these black kids doing here she's like i'm scared they might do something to my child [Music] you're not having any [Music] here [Music] hi everyone thanks for watching this episode of missing chapter if you want to know more about st augustine and the waydens we have something special for you the first ever missing chapter in podcast form we dive deeper into cynthia's experience as a local activist and speak to a protester who is at the monson motor lodge pool you can find a link to that podcast in the description below in the days before the 2008 presidential election a hoax started circulating in parts of virginia it was a paper flyer that said due to larger than expected voter turnout republicans should vote on election day and democratic party supporters should vote the day after fast forward eight years later in images show up on twitter claiming to be hillary clinton ads they told people that they could vote by texting it's not a coincidence that this image features a black woman just like it wasn't a coincidence that the hoax flyers in 2008 were distributed in predominantly african-american areas 55 years after the voting rights act banned racial discrimination in elections the black vote is still being targeted and now voter suppression has gone digital [Music] twitter now has a policy explicitly banning misleading information about voting procedures facebook and youtube do too but there are other types of digital voter suppression that may be harder to tackle people were sharing images that were telling people not to vote shereen mitchell is tracking digital voter suppression ahead of the 2020 election after seeing the tactics deployed four years ago this instagram post from october 2016 encouraged people to boycott the election it came from an account called woke blacks and was posted with a caption that said regardless of who wins we are on our own so you basically are saying you know why should we bother if there's no you know no campaign that's going to focus on our issues and so that that's one of the ways in which this works and this ad on facebook from a page called blacktivist simply encouraged people to vote for the third party candidate these posts and many others like them were uploaded by russian operatives as part of a multi-year strategy to promote discord in the us and help elect donald trump that effort involved more than 60 000 facebook posts 116 000 instagram posts and 10 million tweets from russian accounts impersonating americans there were those who proposed as white conservatives and these are kind of trump supporting individuals then you had what i call sort of non-black leftists and third category was sort of black protesters black left-wing protesters in a study of the russian twitter activity freelon found that there were fewer black presenting accounts than right-wing accounts but on a per-tweet basis they received higher engagement in the form of likes retweets and replies those tweets coincided with the rise of the black lives matter protests following the killings of michael brown and eric garner and so you have this convergence of black lives matter and pro-black politics with you know russian attempts to interfere in american politics and specifically in american elections according to the senate intelligence committee no single group was targeted by the russian operatives more than african americans the accounts built an audience by publishing content celebrating black excellence and by decrying police brutality and then around the election they told their followers not to vote and celebrated non-participation we don't know the ultimate effects of those posts but they give us a sense of the tactics we might see again from both russia and from domestic actors in 2020 i've seen campaigns pick up the same tactics from 2016 that russia was using for themselves in their own campaigns we're seeing domestic actors pick up the same exact tactics black voters participate in elections at higher rates than asian and hispanic americans and for the past 16 years the republican party has only been able to attract single-digit support from black voters in presidential elections that's less than any other racial gender age or income demographic and it puts them at high risk for voter suppression by those who may conclude they have little to lose by reducing the black vote residential and economic segregation have provided ways to target vote suppression federal appeals court struck down on north carolina voter id law saying its provisions deliberately target african americans with almost surgical precision a racially charged robocall is making its way through detroit tonight the call falsely claiming that mail-in voters will have their personal information shared with law enforcement and social media platforms enable targeted messages too when this russian account bought a facebook ad promoting jill stein they used targeting categories that facebook offered including people with an interest in pan-africanism african-american civil rights and african-american history and even in non-paid posts replies and mentions allow anyone to try to insert themselves into the in-group discussions of specific communities online this year facebook prohibited paid ads that tell people not to vote twitter has banned political ads altogether and since 2016 they've both caught and removed several networks of inauthentic accounts you've seen facebook and twitter say we've they've removed xyz accounts and it's and i'm guessing it's daunting for them but the problem is is that it's it's not going to stop 2020 is already bringing an environment ripe for misinformation and confusion states are changing their procedures due to the coronavirus pandemic and voters may feel less safe gathering at polling places meanwhile president trump has baselessly claimed that voting by mail leads to massive fraud that's a form of indirect vote suppression that facebook and twitter have handled inconsistently it's more important than ever for voters to distinguish good information about voting from suppressive and unreliable sources which unfortunately this year includes the president of the united [Music] states [Music] you This is an abortion rights demonstration in
1972. People marched to demand the right to legal
abortions. And the next year, the Supreme Court case
Roe v Wade granted them that right. But fast forward almost 50 years, and protests
for abortion rights are still happening. “What do we want? Access!“ A lot of the fight over abortion policy centers
on restrictive laws set by state governments. And the courts that uphold or strike down
those laws. Including the Supreme Court. But the President and Congress
hold a unique power over abortion access, because they have the final say on the federal
dollars that support it. In every federal budget for the past 43 years,
among all the programs the government funds — like the military, foreign aid, and education
— there’s also language about something the government can’t spend federal money
on: “coverage of abortion…. Except in the case of “rape or incest”
or if the pregnancy would “place the woman in danger of death.” This provision is called the Hyde Amendment. And it disproportionately affects low-income
people who rely on federally-funded health care. Every president since 1976 has supported the
Hyde Amendment by approving an annual federal budget from Congress that included it. But the 2020 election could change this, because
while one candidate supports the Hyde Amendment, the other has vowed to oppose it. The Hyde Amendment’s introduction into the
federal budget Can be traced back to Roe V. Wade,
In the years immediately following this decision, the federal government paid for abortions
through Medicaid, which accounted for roughly a third of all abortion procedures. But the anti-abortion backlash was swift—
Including in Congress. In 1976, Illinois Representative Henry Hyde
proposed the abortion-resticting Hyde Amendment during an annual budget hearing. It passed with a 199-165 vote, ending up in
that year’s spending bill where it has stayed ever since
voted for by anti-abortion politicians, and by pro-abortion-rights politicians
And, in every case, these budgets have been approved and signed by the sitting president. In 1977, Henry Hyde made the intentions of
his amendment clear: He said “I certainly would like to prevent,
if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor
woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available
is the … Medicaid bill.” There’s a handful of agencies directly affected
by the Hyde Amendment that provide health care through federal funding, like the Indian
Health Service and Peace Corps. Medicaid is the biggest, though. It pays for basic health services for just
over 76 million people in the US who live near the poverty line or are disabled. Part of Medicaid’s funding comes from federal
dollars — the other part comes from the state you live in. Abortion care in the United States is largely
driven by where you live… both in terms of the availability of services and in addition
to that, the ability of insurance to pay for it
These 16 states will help Medicaid users cover the cost of abortion. But these 34 states and Washington D.C. won’t. Anyone seeking an abortion there has to pay
the full bill. That means nearly 8 million people of child-bearing
age who live in these states aren’t covered for abortion services because of the Hyde
Amendment. These Medicaid restrictions place the biggest
burden on low-income people. Laurie Roberts [00:10:16] We could basically
quit doing the work we do. If the Hyde Amendment didn't exist. Laurie Roberts manages an abortion fund in
Alabama, one of the most restrictive states when it comes to abortion access. So an abortion fund is a organization that
helps people access abortion care. It can be anything that removes the barriers
to getting to and from the clinic. And then there's just direct financial support
for the abortion procedure. The price of an abortion in the first 10 weeks
of a pregnancy, without coverage, is roughly $500, and it gets more expensive in later
weeks of pregnancy. That’s a lot of money for someone who qualifies
for Medicaid. To be eligible, you have to make less than
138% of the federal poverty line. For a single person, that’s less than an
$18,000 annual income. For a family of 2, it’s $24,000 dollars. And for a family of 3, it’s about $30,000
dollars. And because of racial disparities in our country,
Medicaid recipients are more likely to be Black or Hispanic. I can personally say what it was like for
me...I went to the clinic… I wanted to have a procedure. And I couldn't, I didn't have the money in
time..That doesn't mean that I don't love my child...But what it means is I went through
a lot of emotional and physical trauma because what should have been a decision that was
only mine was taken away from me. A study of 269 women from 2015-2017 in Louisiana,
a state that doesn’t cover abortion through Medicaid, shows that 29% of women would have
had an abortion had Medicaid covered it. Which is the intended effect for anti-abortion
advocates: fewer people having abortions. Abortion restrictions like the Hyde Amendment
have made their way into other types of health insurance coverage, too. In 2010, Congress didn’t pass the Affordable
Care Act until it included language saying marketplace plans don’t have to cover abortion. Today, these states won’t cover it under
marketplace plans. And these states even restrict private insurance
companies from covering the procedure. And so that more and more people are affected
and they may not even know that they've been affected until they seek abortion care “But it’s the medicaid restrictions — both
federal and state — that specifically target poor people.” abortion is like many other services. If you have means, you can either have insurance
that pays for a service or you can afford to pay for these services out of pocket. And if it's not offered in a place that's
close to you, you can afford to either travel, get lodging, take time off or get childcare. All of those things are things that are available
to higher income women that may not be available to lower income women. The two candidates in the 2020 election are
solidly in their partisan corners on the issue of abortion access. But that wasn’t always the case. Joe Biden took office in the Senate in 1973,
the same year Roe V. Wade passed. And he's supported the Hyde Amendment since
it entered the federal spending bill in 1976. But in 2020, this is the landscape: where
the state you live in and how much money you have are the biggest factors in whether someone
can access an abortion. Which is why Joe Biden, as a presidential
candidate, says he changed his stance. "If I believe heath care is a right, as I
do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's zip
code," And Trump has only dug deeper in his anti-abortion
position. "I notified Congress that I would veto any
legislation that weakens pro-life policies It’s also why the stakes for abortion policy
for the 2020 election are clear. It’s a choice between a President who plans
to lift this barrier to abortion access for the country’s most vulnerable people. And one who will keep the status quo, at their
expense. [Music] on august 4th this warehouse in beirut lebanon caught fire when the fire spread through the building this happened all of a sudden i could hear glass shattering and then there was dust everywhere the fire detonated about 2 700 metric tons of ammonium nitrate a highly explosive material that was stored here in the port of beirut the explosion leveled the port and left a zone of destruction six miles wide killing nearly 200 people and wounding thousands so this explosion just turned into what resembles frankly like a war zone it was catastrophic i still can't get the pictures out of my head to this day every single day somebody else is being varied for lebanon this was just one more catastrophe to an already perfect storm long before the explosion lebanon's economy was in a deep crisis unemployment and poverty were on the rise and people flooded the streets in outrage over and over again for many the explosion was the last draw so how did lebanon fall so far and what can be done to fix it the first thing to understand is the makeup of lebanon's population for centuries it's been home to both christians and muslims but communities are further divided into religious subgroups or sects the largest being maronite christians and sunni and shia muslims in the mid 20th century these three sects shared power but there is a tension between them in 1975 maronite and muslim militias sparked a civil war lebanon a country now torn in two by the vicious battle for supremacy between christians and muslims two dozen cease-fires have been agreed and broken soon other sects formed militias and joined the conflict in 1976 syria invaded and in 1982 israel followed fueling more violence fighting was particularly brutal in beirut which was divided among the militias the muslims control west route the christians are entrenched in the east the toll of human life is horrifying over the course of 15 years more than 120 000 people died finally in 1989 representatives of lebanon sex came together with other international leaders to end the war they signed the type agreement which divided the government among the sects in parliament each group received a set number of seats and specific positions the president would be ameronite the prime minister a sunni and the speaker of the parliament ashiya shortly after signing the agreement most of the militias disbanded but many of their leaders found a place in government in this system political parties were formed along religious lines and each sect claimed different government ministries while it was meant to kind of smooth or transition the country into a post-conflict scenario it actually allowed the conflict to persist by other means but this system wasn't designed to be permanent the idea was that within three years of the thrive agreement the actual governance of the country would move towards a non-sectarian system that bit was never implemented instead the politicians separated their portions of government and turned them into fiefdoms using them to enrich themselves and their sex they use them for patronage to provide jobs to siphon off funding from state coffers and it allows the political leadership to perpetuate their control over their constituencies while using public money for personal gain the politicians neglected to spend money on the services they were supposed to provide like garbage collection a report found that lebanon was paying about 420 million dollars a year for waste management despite that in 2015 garbage piled up around the country while politicians argued over a new contract it was the same story across the government it spent one billion dollars a year on electricity a sector controlled by the maronites but there were blackouts multiple times a day every household paid a fee for public water but much of it was undrinkable by 2015 discontent against government corruption was on the rise but nothing changed demanding for example to put someone in jail because they were corrupt immediately became as if it was an attack against the entire community it became very difficult to undertake any kind of changes or reforms and that meant the same people stayed in power so government corruption continued to go unchecked over time the government racked up dangerous amounts of debt by 2015 it owed nearly 70 billion dollars more than the country's entire gdp but instead of trying to fix the problem the government turned its attention to lebanon's most important industry so since the end of lebanon civil war 1990 lebanon's economy in general has mostly been service based we don't produce a lot here we are a heavy heavy importing country we import food we import raw material we import a lot of things lebanon's businesses pay for imports with us dollars which they get through the banks and lebanon's banks famously offer high interest rates which attract deposits from clients all over the world making it the most important sector in lebanon most of the banks are owned by or have ties to sectarian politicians and together they created a scheme to bring more money into the government it started with the central bank which funds the government offering very high interest rates as an incentive to commercial banks so these banks deposited money there and made a huge profit from the interest in turn the banks hiked their own interest rates even higher to attract deposits around the world and then poured that money into the central bank but this was unsustainable neither the banks nor the government could really cover all this interest it's quite accepted that it's a bit of a ponzi scheme encouraging people to put their money in the banks and keep them there because of high interest rates knowing that the banks don't might not be able to maintain that is a rip-off the only thing keeping this scheme together was the bank's ability to attract more and more money and that started to crack in 2011 when lebanon's neighbor syria collapsed in the civil war worried about putting their money so close to the conflict investors started pulling out of lebanon's banks but the scheme didn't fully unravel until 2017 when lebanon's prime minister disappeared i hereby announce my resignation as prime minister from the lebanese government knowing that the will of the lebanese is stronger and their determination is steadfast the sunni prime minister saad hariri resigned via a televised statement from saudi arabia then reports claim the saudis forced him to resign and were keeping him there nothing has justified the apparent detention of hariri by saudi arabia sadal hariri and his family are hostages in the kingdom after 10 days the prime minister returned to lebanon and took back his office but the damage had been done this time international investors lost faith in lebanon and deposits plummeted even lebanese residents rushed to pull their money out of the banks without new deposits the governments and bank's debt skyrocketed in 2019 the banks ran out of money and froze accounts limiting what people could withdraw leaving lebanon's people with a catastrophic problem and people can't take out their dollars and they can't import or what they do is they hike up the prices so now all these goods that are imported are now extremely expensive they're talking about um life-saving medicines basic healthcare equipment grain shortages fuel as well to cover its debt the government announced a new tax sparking a revolution lebanon is in the grip of unprecedented protests the anger was sparked by the government's announcement of a daily tax of 20 u.s cents on messaging applications such as what's up to many it was evidence that the whole system was corrupt and people from all sects flooded the streets in some of the biggest protests lebanon had seen in decades and so the uprising was really about eliminating this ruling class of political party which divide little and working-class people based on sec but at the top they just shared a slice of the pie together so a lot of people realize that this has got to go there is the new way of doing politics it was enough to force prime minister hariri to finally step down but the political parties stayed in power meanwhile other countries and international organizations offered economic aid to lebanon if the government could reform itself but the politicians couldn't agree and the economy kept falling apart in one year lebanon's currency lost more than 80 percent of its value and unemployment has reportedly surged this was the state of the country when an explosion rocked beirut well at first it appeared to be an accident the blast turned out to be the result of this dysfunctional system according to reports the ammonium nitrate sat in the port for seven years while government officials bickered over who was responsible for it it's criminal negligence at best they knew what this was they knew what it meant and yet this material it was left to language and beirut sports prime minister hassan diyab and several ministry leaders resigned but the power sharing agreement remains intact it's why many in lebanon feel the country can't recover until this system is abolished [Music] to make matters worse there's been a spike in coronavirus cases since the blast and now with its only major port destroyed in the explosion lebanon is struggling to import what its people need to survive and while all of the political leadership is paying lip service to the catastrophe that has befallen beirut no one really seems to be taking much action it's left the lebanese people to simultaneously demand for change and pick up the pieces there are people on the ground helping residents pick up their lives clean up rebuilding and this is all a personal [Music] initiative you when joseph johnson went to vote in his first presidential election this isn't what he expected the line went this way in front of our auditorium and then snaked around into our library the last person in his polling location didn't get to vote until 1am it was the longest line that i've ever waited in my entire life some people they were just like well screw it this was in a heavily democratic part of houston texas and it was a primary election where democrats and republicans were voting on separate machines but the county had given both parties the same number of machines to use also texas had closed hundreds of polling locations in recent years meaning more people had to vote at fewer places but not everyone has to wait this is a map of all the polling locations in joseph's county that had reports of long lines and here's the percentage of non-white voters in each area notice how most places with lines were in less white areas the pole closures and the other decisions that led to those lines disproportionately affected people of color and whether or not that was intentional those kinds of decisions in places like texas used to be highly regulated and much less frequent today that oversight is gone but the 2020 election could decide whether it comes back this is the edmund pettus bridge in selma alabama in 1965 a group of civil rights activists including the future congressman john lewis marched across the bridge and were attacked and beaten by police they were marching for voting rights back then especially in the segregated south there was rampant voter suppression of black americans it started back when the 15th amendment granted black men the right to vote in 1870 that right was enforced by federal troops who occupied the southern states during a period known as reconstruction but what happened after reconstruction was that the states passed a number of laws that effectively disenfranchised african americans of course no law could say no black people can vote it had to be a little sneakier like the grandfather clause where you could only vote if your grandfather could vote which is impossible if your grandfather was a slave there were literacy tests where voters mostly black voters had to answer bizarre questions before they were allowed to vote not just tests to see whether or not you could read but things like could you recite the state's constitution and poll taxes requiring voters again mostly black voters to pay to be allowed to vote they selectively chose who who had to abide by these rules in the 1950s and 60s congress passed several civil rights laws that attempted to protect voting rights getting rid of things like poll taxes still by 1964 in mississippi barely seven percent of non-white americans could vote selma's bloody sunday drew attention to that it made americans and congress wonder if local officials like these guys could really be entrusted to enforce these new civil rights laws so congress wrote another one ten days after selma the voting rights act of 1965 was introduced it added additional protections got rid of literacy tests but it also had a way to prevent any other creative changes state governments had to submit their changes to the federal government for approval the voting rights act identified parts of the country that had a history of voter discrimination mostly in the south and set up federal oversight so if these places wanted to change anything about voting like enacting a new law or closing polling locations it first had to get the ok from the u.s justice department or federal courts that it wasn't discriminatory immediately non-white voter registration in these southern states grew like in mississippi where it went from barely 7 percent to almost 60 percent in just three years the voting rights act did what earlier civil rights laws hadn't but in 2013 the supreme court with a majority of republican appointed judges took on a case about the voting rights act they decided that the way the law calculated which states would have that federal oversight was outdated and therefore unconstitutional no one doubts that there is still voting discrimination in the south and in the rest of the country we do however find that the coverage formula in section 4 violates the constitution almost immediately voting laws that had been previously denied for being discriminatory were enacted in these states literally the same day as the supreme court's decision texas did just that announcing a voter id law that a federal judge had previously rejected because it was the most stringent in the country and imposed strict unforgiving burdens on the poor other states enacted voter id laws too along with other measures that had been previously stopped like purging voter rolls and closing polling locations 1 173 places in total 750 just in texas an analysis by the guardian looked at the 50 texas counties that gained the most black and hispanic residents from 2012 to 2018 and the 50 texas counties that gained the fewest black and hispanic residents in these counties the combined population fell by 13 000 over that time and 34 of their polling places were closed in these counties the combined population grew by 2.5 million people but 542 of their polling places closed many officials in these states say changes like these aren't intended to disenfranchise specific voters but there's no way to really know what we do know is that almost all these states governments are controlled by republicans and the groups that tend to be disenfranchised by these changes are more often poor people and people of color most of whom tend to vote democratic even when they're saying it's not it's very hard to believe that in fact they didn't have a strategic discussion about how they could minimize the democratic party's vote in the supreme court decision the chief justice told congress it's okay to have oversight just don't base it on old data congress must ensure that the legislation it passes speaks to current conditions and so in 2019 the house of representatives did just that passing a new bill to update the criteria for which states get federal oversight john lewis then a congressman in his 17th term presided over the vote but the bill passed almost entirely along party lines almost no republicans voted for it and nearly every democrat did then the bill moved to the republican-held senate where it isn't going to get a vote and even if it does pass the senate the trump white house has threatened to veto it arguing the oversight is unnecessary but the house senate and white house are all up for grabs in the 2020 election and this is one of the many areas the two presidential candidates have polar opposite views pass the bill to restore the voting rights act it's one of the first things i'll do as president if elected in 2020 john lewis died the bill whose passage he presided over was renamed in his memory if the john lewis voting rights advancement act becomes law its formula would restore federal oversight for several states including texas it's like if there are no rules to the game then no one can really play the game thanks for watching this episode of our 2020 election series we're focusing on the issues that are most important to you this one was requested by hundreds of people aaron asked what will the candidates plan to do to protect voters ability to vote yasmine asked how will they deal with voter suppression and the new john lewis voting rights advancement act we want to know what you think the candidates should be talking about tell us at fox.com election videos hi i'm melissa bell publisher of vox media welcome to money talks home habits powered by bank of america this is a virtual explainer event centered around the new meaning of home and how its purpose has suddenly shifted today we'll be focusing on saving one home and how to manage and prioritize savings during such an uncertain time people spending more time at home means changing spending and saving habits but what's the proper way to save and what are we saving for for some the transition to spending more time at home comes with automatic savings the us personal savings rate jumped to 33 in april the highest ever recorded still in a june 2020 survey 23 percent of americans reported that a lack of emergency savings was their biggest financial regret so how can people put any newfound savings to good while still at home an emergency fund should be the foundation of any savings plan emergency funds should cover six to nine months of regular household expenses saving however may not come as easily for those whose incomes have been impacted that's why it's even more important to set aside time to go through your monthly expenses and identify any that can be reduced whether you've found unexpected savings in recent months or have had to cut back take the time to prepare for the future by reevaluating your savings priorities today i'm joined by tanya rapley a financial educator and founder of my fab finance tanya it's great to have you here today it's wonderful to be here one question that is really top of mind for me is centered around the folks who have been impacted in a disproportionate way because of the coronavirus what financial advice do you have for them yeah you know melissa thank you for asking that question because as a financial educator and working in this field i have seen and i've worked with people who even before coronavirus were financially vulnerable and what we are finding are people particularly people of color um and people who might be deemed essential workers who are working in whether it is required workfield required fields or um you know essential fields such as in the grocery store you know farming etc things that really help ensure that our economy stays floating and our needs are met are vulnerable as well and they don't often have those protections but they haven't had them and that's one of the things that i'm hoping that this kind of starts the conversation of what it looks like to bring people up to um you know equally before we even have something like the coronavirus start and so when working with clients and helping people kind of navigate okay what do i do i'm already financially vulnerable what can i do to kind of alleviate some of this at anything the first thing is we got to comb through those expenses what was helping you or what was meaningful what what worked before coronavirus might not work network now so what you could afford then you might not be able to afford now because maybe your hours have been cut back or maybe now you have additional health costs or maybe you you know you're responsible for your child care and so forth so you ain't aren't able to go into your office or you're not able to do things you used to do to bring in income and so we need to cut back on those expenses and we can do that by looking at our budget looking at what's going out of our household every single month and then cutting back on the things that aren't necessary during this time we really want to be focusing on those essential items the next thing is i would suggest that people take advantage of help or assistance that's available to them i know that sometimes we might not want to or feel like you know i got this but if there's any time in history where there's more help available it is right now so there are resources available i know here in los angeles where i live they have a rental assistance program they're rolling out when everything first started happening they were forgiving student loan payments for a certain amount of time and mortgage payments for a certain amount of time a lot of utility companies have been understanding and are working with individuals or working with their customers so look to see what help is available on that side but then also you know if you need any social services or anything of that nature find out what you need to do to make sure that you're getting groceries and so forth look into you know grocery co-ops or you know food pantries nearby and so forth so that you can kind of make up some of that difference in what you were spending in groceries and maybe you can reallocate the money from your budget to something else and then the last thing i really want people to do is like really think about stabilizing and what it looks like to stabilize your financial foundation because that's important and i know that people might be in crisis mode it's like you know i just can't figure out how to get to xyz point you're not alone there's a lot of people who are trying to figure out how to get to xyz point especially when the point has been changed as it has you know i don't think any of us expected for 2020 to to look this way and to have this experience this year so alter your plans it's okay to alter your plans and change your expectations of what was expected for you this year um and just realize that you're not alone i think that especially for people who might feel like they are vulnerable or feel even more vulnerable you're not alone there are services there to help you um and we'll get through this thanks tanya i think that's a great point you know one thing that i think you mentioned at the very beginning is how a lot of these issues uh predate coronavirus and this moment is perhaps exacerbating them but also revealing them now i would love to bring on some guests who are excited to ask you some questions karine welcome to the today's discussion i'm looking forward to what you and tanya have to talk about hi tanya my question is like a lot of other people i've been saving more money than usual in the past few months i'm not going out you know shopping as much i'm not eating out as much and spending money socializing i'm wondering if for those reasons it's a good time to spend a little bit more money than i might usually on large purchases despite the fact that i still have debt that i'm working towards paying off and i'm wondering if it's if there's a balance of how much more money i can spend on myself and throw into paying off my debts oh that's well that's good news that you are saving more money i think that as we've spoken to others and when i'm talking to other clients i work with that's been a positive byproduct of this entire experience but what kind of large purchases are we thinking like what do you have in mind i think there's kind of two categories one is just splurging a little bit more on clothes for example every other month usually i'll make an online purchase and maybe i'm more pro now to spend a hundred dollars more than i would have before and then the other side is just for example i'm moving apartments next month and i have my eye on a few furniture pieces that probably i wouldn't have considered before but now i'm like okay well i haven't spent so much money the last few months maybe it's okay to buy these now okay all right so furniture and additional clothes okay furniture makes sense to me but clothes i'm like where are you going like take me with you where are you going because i know i'm not going many places um but you know so let's think about this so there's needs and there are wants right so when it comes down to our needs that's you know shelter that's food that's you know clothing and so forth um but then there's once and these things probably do fall into the categories of once you have an apartment you're thinking about how am i going to furnish that apartment and we have clothes like well maybe i want a few different pieces of clothing so these are ones and there's nothing wrong with once but when we're thinking about moving into prior making once a priority then we have to look at how are we doing financially so dialing back to okay moving into this apartment do you have enough money set aside just in case um to cover that that rent because what we don't want to happen is that you spend quite a bit of money on furnishing this apartment we haven't put money inside and saving for this apartment and so something happens and now we got to sell the furniture and we have to move out because we haven't been prioritizing putting money aside to save for that so there's nothing wrong with spending money on your once and there's nothing wrong with making it a priority as long as you have already previously prioritized creating that emergency fund and that savings cushion so that things were to happen you'd still be able to pay for those basic needs how are you doing on that have you been able to save to create that cushion i would say i have that cushion but like everyone else it doesn't hurt to always save more money i always want to see that number go up so i guess i'm looking for what that balance could look like yeah definitely and are you currently working i am and i'm very lucky to have job security for the near future at least i um see my income continue to come in throughout okay well that is good news and so you're in a pretty good position um the thing you know with furniture it doesn't mean that you're gonna have to buy the most expensive furniture in the store right it means that we're gonna shop around for a good deal make sure we're getting the best deal and so maybe there's still a way to save on that and still put money aside in savings it doesn't mean we're going to blow everything out the water so keep that in mind as you're looking at your wants and so forth i think it is um you know there's this theory whereas in like certain major life experiences or purchases lead to more expenses such as moving into apartment or moving to a specific side of town now you feel like you have to have certain things in that apartment or a certain lifestyle or reflected lifestyle to participate and living in on that side of town or you know maybe certain clothes and certain wardrobes so we just have to be mindful of that what we call lifestyle creeping those additional expenses creeping in um but i think that you sound like you're you're pretty solid on that um so as far as your other financial goals before we think about splurging and you know taking care of once how are you on your other financial goals so do you what are your mind do you mind sharing maybe one short-term financial goal and one long-term financial goal that you have sure um i guess well they all relate to bills and loans and things of that nature and debt i do have a lot of debt and i also know that for example i accumulated a bunch of medical debt this past year and i know i have a lot more work to get done in the future so short term i guess just paying my credit card bill and making sure i can get to paying it off monthly or you know quicker than i have been in my history and then longer term is just to pay off my other medical i have three different loan servicers for my educational loans so kind of chipping away at all of those okay all right yeah and it doesn't sound you know it sounds like what quite a few people are dealing with and so when we think about you know splurging on our wants and so forth it is also how am i doing on my financial goals and if we're meeting all of our markers for our financial goals me and i think that when since you have like a few debt um related goals debt elimination related goals like let's create those different markers where we say okay i want to pay this bill down by 25 or i want to you know pay it down to this amount then the next amount then the next amount so that we know okay i'm hitting my financial goal mile markers at least now i feel more comfortable spending all my once but if you don't have like if you don't break down your larger financial goals and the smaller goals and it kind of can feel like what am i even doing this for so i want you to think about what the smaller goals are in those larger goals so maybe it is all right i have um you know i have a medical bill for a thousand dollars i want to pay off 250 of that so i'm left with 750 i want to pay off half of that like that can be a micro goal within your larger goal and once we reach that micro goal it's like okay now i can treat myself a little but we want to make sure that we're making progress on our goals before um really splurging on those wants um so does that make sense does that feel realistic and comfortable for you it definitely does and i think i have a follow-up question then which is because all of my loans i'm paying them all on time and in the increments that they have given me making the minimum payments so would this be a good time to just throw money into those consciously of course but conscientiously not too much but throw that money i would have spent on clothes the extra hundred bucks into loans is that a good idea yeah if you can if you can amp it up i would say like now like i said now is the time to do it most of us aren't going any places or going anywhere or so forth so now is the time that you could really amp it up and put that money towards um paying more than the minimum if possible you know i understand that dealing with creditors and so forth it can seem a little daunting or especially if you haven't done it before or aren't used to it so one of the things i actually recommend is go to bettermoneyhabits.com backslash here to help and they actually have a few resources there that can help you prepare for these conversations as well as help ensure that you're more comfortable having them and get the you know outcome more likely to get an outcome that works in your favor so you don't have to go into this alone i think if we have money to spend on clothes we have money and the clothes that we don't need you know there are certain things like okay i need to transition my wardrobe to a winter wardrobe or i need to do this for workplace attire or safety you know precautions but if it's not something that you need then i would say yeah you just use it to get ahead when it comes to your debt elimination um and then you know here's the other thing to think about when it comes to purchases i think a lot of times we look at i'm spending xyz amount of money on this so i'm putting a hundred dollars on clothes um but it's like how much of your life did you put aside to earning that you know like how much how long does it take you to make a hundred dollars and is it worth like do you want to use it towards your financial goals or do you want to use it towards close which is essentially fulfilling someone else's goal so think about like the money you spend that way too it's not just money you spent it's hours of your life that you put towards bringing in that money so you want that money to work best for you thank you it seems so simple but it actually feels more impactful coming from you with the full rounded perspective so i really appreciate that you're welcome and i'm really excited you're thinking about things like this i'm really excited that you're getting your own place and you're moving in and hopefully you know you find a few items in there to help furnish it and it's inexpensively um so thank you for you know having such great questions and i'm excited for you thanks and next up we're here with jen from new york take it away jen hi tanya my name is jen i was introduced um so i'm a baker and i was laid off during the coronavirus and because the restaurant industry is so in flux at this moment and it's really uncertain on what kind of jobs are available i'm looking to kind of pivot into a new direction whether that be something related to my field or not and my question is how can i plan to save money enough to focus on looking towards a new career while this is going on yeah jen the restaurant industry has been hit really hard but as a baker i'm curious what's your favorite thing to make i love uh i love making cookies and i'm really into decorating cakes like i kind of would love to pivot into that in the future but i have a tiny apartment and i i really can't put it all in in one go in that fridge [Music] i understand i mean you need commercial kitchens and all these other things like that too but i love cookies so if i lived in new york i would definitely be one of your um i would buy cookies from you right now because i'm not the best baker but i think that you're wise to think about your different options like if you really love baking i think that there are certain ways that you can continue um to grow in that career path but thinking about saving you know like i always say savings is essential regardless of what you have going on so unless you just like inherited a large amount of money or unless you've been saving and so you're financially comfortable but if you're not in any of those positions which most people aren't um i would definitely recommend that we focus on okay so what are different ways that we can leverage the skill set right now to add to our savings so that we have that three to six month cushion that makes us feel comfortable you know outside of coronavirus i would recommend that someone has three to six months in savings now it's kind of like if you have the ability then six to 12 months of savings because one of the things about economic downturns is we don't necessarily know how long they can last so this could be something that's over at the end of this year this could be something that is ongoing until you know the next three to four years and so we want to be as financially prepared as possible in the beginning when i was laid off i applied for unemployment so i've been receiving my weekly and then the additional payment on top of that and again i've been reaching out to certain friends who want any pastries and offering them on a you know friend-to-friend basis or a lower rate than i would probably charge for something more money and so it's been it's been a slow climb friends in uh in finances but uh i make ends meet with the unemployment and you know just kind of supplementing myself a little bit but i don't have anything like part-time going on i don't um i'm not uh i'm not doing any side gigs that like require me to be around a lot of people so um it's just more on the need basis so we need to think about other ways that we can bring in that revenue so that you can begin to pivot and transition and so we're thinking about it it's like okay what are different things that i can do you know maybe it is um i think that now's the opportunity maybe for you to start growing your online community because there are people who might not live near you who are willing to pay for you know access to some of the knowledge you have or show up for you know they have time they're at home they're like hey i'm gonna bake a cake with gin today um and so they you know you could say i'm gonna show up at this time and i'll be baking a cake on instagram live get your ingredients and you can do it along with me or you can start to maybe deliver some of these ingredients to people or help them decide this is exactly what i need so i think one of the uh appeals to a lot of those um those delivery food boxes is that they pre-measure the contents for you but i haven't seen the dessert one and so maybe that's a small curated thing that you could offer just so that when you bring in that money you can put it into your savings account so it is important to think about okay i'm bringing in this extra money i'm putting it directly into my savings account instead of using it on something that's non-essential or not important because that's going to help you create that transition fund um how do you feel about that yeah so focus more on saving and and long term than just taking the money that i've earned right away and sending it right back yeah yeah especially if we're thinking about a transition and i'm curious what kind of transition are you looking at is it i know you said maybe in your industry but what what other options are you looking at uh well i like the ins and outs of publishing like if i've ever been able to put a cookbook together but it can seem arduous especially given that finances might already be constrained there are so many resources online one of my favorites is canva where you can publish your own pdfs and so forth and they have all these nice images and you don't have to be a design expert in order to create your own book or create your own pro your own um you know whatever cookbook or whatever you may want to create and then you can upload that and the great thing about creating something is that you'll have passive income and so i don't think enough people also talk about passive income when it comes to your savings strategy and your long-term goals but it is looking for ways that are active so baking a cake is active income it requires you to go out and get the ingredients bake it sell it to someone you know arrange the delivery of it or whatever it may be whereas in passive income it's like okay maybe you can put your recipes together maybe there's this awesome cookie recipe that you developed i mean you want to you know you want to sell it in a few others that you want to sell you could upload those online and you know you could still be selling those five years down the line even after everything has settled you can still bring in that passive revenue from it you can make it so that your passive revenue goes automatically into your savings account so it's already you know it's being deposited into that savings account so you're still automatically building your savings but passively so think about that there are different ways that you can build it and doesn't necessarily have to just be active but i'm looking forward to what you come up with and i wish that i could taste some of your cookies because i i i'm a cookie monster okay well we'll stay in touch you know anytime you want something tanya thank you so much for this great discussion you had some fantastic advice i really appreciate it and a big thanks to our guests who shared so much about their personal situations thank you again to everyone for watching money talks home habits powered by bank of america we hope this event was able to provide some guidance and help you prepare for a better financial future you [Music] the perfect hero is someone who genuinely like doesn't really see it coming you want somebody who is open to change maybe a little uncomfortable with it that is a key is finding someone who is at that point in their life where they're ready you're kind of like the wizard of oz behind the curtains like you're making everything happen [Music] my name is danielle gervais and i'm the evp of casting and talent at itv america i've come up in unscripted television and moved over into um into casting through a series on abc called wife swap real lives real drama on this season i'll fix my family an all-new forged in fire was pawn stars one i saw that on your imdb we're casting the items and then certainly doubling back and make sure we've got good sellers good luck too with the emmys coming up as well [Music] how does it start from the second that you find out that there's going to be a new season what what is the first step that happens the first thing we need to do is determine you know where are we going once we identify the city we have obviously this is a team of people we'll sit down the initial war room and we'll say let's talk about what stories have we already told on the show what stories do we want to tell on this show we were trying to tell that story of reverend noah two seasons prior we just never found the reverend noah we never found it so that just happened our mission this week is to help noah take the past out of pastor and find faith in himself are we looking at like a day where you're like having lunch brought in and you're just hashing out literally every emotion and story that you could access i don't know if we brought lunch in but we had candy and snacks i know i remember that um there's always snacks we will also in that initial meeting pull in our partners at scout who are the creators of the show and that's where we really hash it out and we talk about like things like how political do we want to get because you also don't want to hammer people we never want to forget what was special about that initial iteration like a slob who's ready for a make better right so you've had your big war room meeting um you've decided on your location and some of the key themes that you're going to be exploring in that season what happens next the next thing is i have to figure out you know who's going to go to the city what are we going to do when we get there because we're not out there for very long we have budgets we'll immediately contact the film commission in that city they'll help us sort of steer to some degree you'll have two people hit the ground in the city with a plan of attack and you'll have usually a two people team back in the office with me doing all of the outreach you know remotely which is also huge so they'll meet people love them and go you gotta interview this guy so then the team back in the office will typically take that interview on so that the team on the ground can continue with their work we make little you know cute flyers and we walk around you gotta be pretty friendly to be in casting you really you're gonna be able to talk to anybody um and certainly there's people that are completely weirded out by it we'll see businesses that we want to hit a dog groomer and and lo and behold rihanna it comes out and she's you know six foot three with this incredible story i was asking one of my producers i was like what's your favorite story of finding someone we had a gentleman marcos who owned a fish shop they went to that fish market every single day because they just felt like there was such a vibrant like life to that place that it just was prime so they went every single day for two weeks and suddenly they peeked back behind like a um stand and they saw this fedora what's the obsession with that where did it come from marcos in mexico all the time we say hey compadre a little stalkerish at some times i'm not gonna lie i'd be remiss if i didn't ask if you were like secretly looking for people who clearly have incredible hidden bone structure it is always fun to say like especially if you've got like this big bearded guy who hasn't cut his hair and it's like what will he look like at the end of all of this [Music] from what you're saying it sounds like the casting will really flow from the story themes you want to emphasize rather than you find some person who just pops for some reason it is absolutely both it's rare that you're like here's the exact story you want to tell oh my god and this person is perfect and it like comes together kenny um who was in kansas city you know one of my favorite i love all of the episodes of course but he's one of my favorite heroes and the producer was at a bar watching a croatian soccer game and there he was his dog had passed away and he was a you know an older gentleman living alone and on paper you know there and then once it came to life he himself was such a lovable um rootable hero he's one you know he's one of my he's one of my favorites you've developed this list of good candidates with a combination of remote interviews and on the ground reporting is really what you have to call it what happens next in the process we pitch quite a few to netflix they have such vision and they support us and you know these interviews aren't always pretty right we're doing them via skype these aren't professional people in terms of being interviewed and they're nervous and so netflix is able to see through a lot um in that regard but a land on let's say eight heroes will probably pitch i mean internally we will look at frankly like hundreds um but in terms of the network you know we'll usually triple that number to show to netflix there are some where it's just like we all just go oh my god yes and then there are others where we can be split because it's all very subjective right what sort of diligence do you have to do when you're casting these people to make sure that they don't blow up in your face in a few months when the show comes out and somebody's killed somebody or done something terrible we won't even pitch anyone to netflix until we at least have done as much preliminary diligence as possible so we'll search lexisnexis and those types of things we'll do a pretty deep sweep on social media back about 10 years with some people you know that can be a deal breaker they are the secret sauce they are incredible and they um you know i can't say enough about how special bringing the five of them together has been it's been incredible but the heroes each one of those heroes serves as the foil to that episode right so they help anthony shine they help caramel shine like we have we sort of have a list where when we when we look at somebody as a potential hero we always want to keep those guys in mind you know what will they help bring out in our fab five and vice versa and so it sounds like when you're casting for this show in particular it's really about how well that these people will amplify the story themes that you're looking to drive home rather than are they good at sound bites my team is incredible they have a gift for really identifying like who who's gonna take the journey in a really authentic um way and who's in it for the free couch right because that's a thing [Music] are they authentic i mean at the end of the day we can we can teach people how to put the question back into the answer but you can't fake emotion and you can't fake somebody's journey you for more than ten thousand years the average global temperature didn't change by more than one degree celsius but then humans started burning fossil fuels around here global temperatures have risen about 1 degree celsius since pre-industrial times this is what that looks like so far storms have gotten more intense wildfires are more common and ancient glaciers are melting faster and faster and that's just one degree of warming without global action the world is on track to warm at least 3 degrees celsius by 2100 this would be catastrophic that's why most scientists agree that we need to limit global warming to this range between 1.5 and 2 degrees celsius carbon dioxide which is emitted when we burn fossil fuels accounts for most of the world's greenhouse gas emissions it's the main culprit behind climate change and to limit global warming to the degree that scientists are calling for we have to stop releasing it we have to decarbonize the us doesn't currently emit the most carbon dioxide of any country but as one of the oldest industrial powers it's emitted more carbon dioxide in total than any other country or region so america has a big role to play in decarbonizing but how is the u.s supposed to do that and is it actually possible if you want to get halfway there by 2030 you have to start now now going fast there is literally zero more time to waste dave writes about energy and climate for vox and he says the 2020 u.s election comes with fairly clear stakes if trump is re-elected that's it like there's no chance for 1.5 and probably all chances for two degrees are gone the united states will withdraw from the paris climate accord open up the coal mines new offshore oil and gas leasing program president trump doesn't have a climate policy and his re-election will most likely continue policies designed to boost the fossil fuel industry they'd increase carbon emissions instead of decreasing them and the effects would be felt globally you just can't have the world's second biggest economy opting out moving the opposite direction and expect the world to get there the other major candidate in the election does have a plan to address climate change and this part in particular is ambitious by 2050 the united states will be 100 clean energy economy biden has been convinced and pushed to the point that he's got a great climate plan what biden's plan doesn't get into are the details on how exactly the u.s would actually do that but there are people who have thought about what it might look like to decarbonize by 2050 and to understand that it helps to get a picture of where america's energy comes from and where it goes sorry my son nearly stepped on a snake do you want to say hi this is saul griffith he's a physicist and an engineer but this is how dave describes him probably the person who knows more about energy as it's used in the united states than any other human being a few years ago saul decided to make a model of america's energy use he ended up reading basically every available piece of data from the energy information administration department of transportation national highway transit authority census bureau of labor statistics and noaa and so we pull all of those together to build a very comprehensive picture of the u.s energy economy that picture of the u.s energy economy it looks like this if you're just looking at the whole thing at once it just looks like a big pile of spaghetti it's hard to make sense of but it just traces energy every unit of energy how does it enter the economy how is it used throughout the economy this kind of chart is called a sankey diagram and it's easier to understand in three sections these columns here on the left are the sources of all the energy used in the u.s like natural gas coal solar wind nuclear and oil this column in the middle is what those energy sources get converted into so a lot of it becomes electricity most oil becomes the fuel we use for transportation and here you can see how much natural gas energy is being used to generate electricity versus being used directly to power things like cooking stoves and over here on the right this is where all the energy is used broken down into incredible detail like how much energy is being used to light shopping malls in the u.s or how much energy is being used by vehicles driven for work so you start to get this incredibly detailed picture of all of the interconnections which is really really important when you do the next exercise but what happens if we decarbonize remember that carbon emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels this stuff and saul says that means that to decarbonize we just need to follow their path the first place that leads you is here with electricity and the energy we use to generate it the majority of which in the u.s comes from two kinds of fossil fuel natural gas and coal if the us wants to decarbonize it needs to stop getting electricity this way and to replace it with other decarbonized energy sources that means coal power plants gone gas power plants gone all electricity would come from renewable sources wind solar geothermal hydroelectric and biomass or nuclear energy decarbonizing the way we get electricity would be a huge investment but it would also only eliminate 20 percent of emissions and that's because electricity and energy are not exactly the same thing that doesn't solve the vehicle's emissions it doesn't solve your your heating emissions from using natural gas or fuel oil in your basement all these other parts of the economy draw their energy directly from fossil fuels like transportation we use oil for fuel and commercial and residential buildings where we use gas and oil for heat but saul says there's a kind of elegant solution to this you decarbonize these sectors by switching their energy source from here to here make all of it electric because we already have almost all the technology we need to do it heat pumps batteries electric vehicles wind turbines nuclear power plants as we know that that can work we know we can do electric cars we know we can do electric heat for nearly everything it's all in the end just about machines right we got a bunch of machines that use fossil fuel energy we need to replace them with machines that use clean electricity and so it really just comes down to a matter of industrial capacity how fast can you build machines there are some things we'd have a harder time decarbonizing air travel will rely on fossil fuels until alternative technologies get better and things like steel and concrete are really hard to manufacture without fossil fuels but if we decarbonized as much as possible with the technology that we have now it would end most of the us's carbon emissions this church shows the country's carbon emissions broken down by economic sector if electricity residential commercial and transportation were mostly decarbonized you'd have solved a lot of the problem all of this would be a huge undertaking and it needs to happen fast saul's research modeled different scenarios for the transition from fossil fuel-based machines to electric ones from a market-driven transition to carbon taxes to a much more direct and heavy-handed approach that would replace our machines with their electric counterparts very quickly and he found that because we've delayed action for so long none of these slower approaches will be enough if you went back to 2000 and started then you could just put like a modest carbon tax in place and it would have just eased us down over the course of 30 years or whatever but emissions kept rising and rising and rising so now to get where we need to go they gotta fall off a cliff and that means zero delay we're just talking about a level of industrial mobilization that none of us alive have seen it would look like what fdr did to prepare the us for war literally every single solitary fossil fuel machine that goes out of service is replaced by a clean energy alternative every furnace car you know factory name it nearly everyone is buying an electric vehicle nearly everyone is buying rooftop solar nearly every new power plant that comes online is industrial scale solar or industrial wind we need that level of effort to do a lot better than two degrees all of recorded human history has happened within an era of relative climate stability an era that's about to end but we still have control over what comes next and the global effort that'll require hinges in part on what the us decides to do america can decarbonize we have the technology to do it we have the resources the only question is whether we want to do it i have a 6 year old and 11 year old and i have to believe that's going to happen otherwise and i have to try to make that happen as far as long as possible because it's their future we're stealing by not doing it thanks for watching this episode of our 2020 election series we're focusing on the issues that matter most to you and we got this topic requested by a lot of people zach said the candidates should be talking about the steps we need to take to drastically reduce our carbon footprint and our impact on the environment jade asked what policies will be implemented during their terms to stop america from being the second largest carbon producer and oliver asked how do they plan to reduce carbon emissions to zero and on what timeline we want to know what you think the candidates should be talking about tell us at vox.com forward slash election videos So, there used to be this thing called a party. The concept was simple—gather a bunch of
living, breathing bodies in the same place at the same time and just see what happens. Some parties were promises—and those were
called “weddings,” and other parties were goodbyes—and those were called “funerals.” There were parties to “warm” new homes
and parties to mark the day you were born and parties to signal the arrival of a new
year. And if my friends wanted me to be on time
to a party, they’d lie— I wasn’t proud of my reputation with time
but… SINDHA: Do you think my lateness is genetic? DAD: I don’t know. SISTER: No. MOM: Yeah because it’s too much like your
dad’s. There’s a lot of different ways to be late
but you’re late in this particular way that’s exactly like him. SINDHA: Have you ever heard of IST? SISTER: Yeah. Indian Standard Time. DAD: It means… SISTER: It means that you don’t have a sense
of time. *laughs* Once someone was describing their color blindness
to me and it reminded me a lot of how I feel about time. How I know that 3pm and 3:05 are technically
different, but I personally don’t perceive that contrast. Time resembles color in other ways, too — we
can only access the smallest sliver of both spectrums. Non-linearity and relativity remind me of
ultraviolet and red-green — what scientists call the “Impossible Colors,” colors we
can measure, but can’t actually see. And like color, time is continuous. We can’t locate the seam of an hour, the
border of a day — the same way we can’t declare with any precision where yellow becomes
orange or orange becomes red. And yet, over the course of human evolution
we’ve insatiably sought to structure time. Dividing the sun into angles and tidily organizing
the story of our lives into years. It kind of embarrassed me — humans taking
the unfathomable expanse of time and refining it into hours. The universe is 13.8 billion years old — who
are we to assert the importance of a minute? But I tried my best to banish those thoughts. I bought clocks and set them to five minutes
early. I filled calendars with meticulous, month-long
plans. I even put a whiteboard on my fridge and every
morning, I wrote the date down. I was finally closing the gap — becoming
one of those people who holds the reins of time. And then — The pandemic happened. And suddenly Tuesdays were Thursdays were
Sundays. Flowers bloomed and wilted and babies learned
to crawl and grey hairs grew in, but the larger story of time felt interrupted — bland birthdays
and cancelled weddings and solitary holidays. Doing the same thing in the same place with
the same people, day after day after day. Previously imperceptible shades of time showed
up at our doorsteps. Like special relativity — in the spring,
time moved glacially as it does alongside black holes. And then, without warning, it accelerated
— so that when I asked my mom what day in May we were on, she gently informed me it
was July. Or non-linearity. How we emerged after months spent holed up
in our homes, only to find ourselves reliving the very same moment that had driven us inside
in the first place. The whole world joined me in temporal disorientation
— even my punctual superiors were at a loss. They knew how to arrive five minutes early 
— not how to repeat the same five minutes 43,854 times. I regretted taking time for granted. Now I would give anything to hear someone
say, “the party starts at five, the doors close at eight — don’t be late.” It turns out our perception of time is incredibly
malleable — even color can distort it. When people are shown blue and red stimuli
of the same duration — they consistently overestimate the blue and underestimate the
red. Temperature also warps time — the hotter
we are, the faster we feel it passing. And music, too. Oddly, uptempo music decelerates time and
downtempo music hastens it. So, if smooth jazz, heat waves and a bit of
blue are enough to mangle time, no wonder a pandemic upended it. In 1983, a paper published in the journal
Science described an experiment in which researchers claimed to have overridden the human eye’s
opponency mechanism — allowing people to see “impossible colors.” The participants said the colors were vivid
and awe-inducing — but entirely indescribable. Like seeing red for the first time and having
no name for it. I imagine them returning to their lives, tucking
the impossible colors away, into the closets where we store our most inarticulable memories. But had they not been alone in what they’d
witnessed, had the whole world woken up one day, suddenly able to see a new color — I
think we’d have created a name in a matter of hours. Because when it comes to color, we innately
gravitate towards classifying what we see. Naming the shade between orange and red “pink,”
calling the blue of the Aegean “royal,” and the blue of the Caribbean “aquamarine.” But when it comes to time, we have such a
limited lexicon. Fast. Slow. Long. Short. Future. Present. Past. Beyond that — we’re pretty much speechless. But not hopeless. In 1812, Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel invented
the metronome. But two hundred plus years later, classical
composers still prefer to communicate musical time in sentimental Italian. Tempo allegro — cheerful time. Tempo allegro ma non troppo — cheerful time
but not too much. Tempo rubato — stolen time. Maybe we’ve been too fixated on fixing our
metronomes when what we need most is vocabulary for these new colors of time. To describe 17-second months, millennium-long
days and a year without any parties. Language for when time undergoes a phase transition
right there in your hand — days melting and months evaporating and years freezing. Maybe there’s a word for that in Italian. Maybe it translates to “impossible time.” i'm on a bike ride in my neighborhood right now and i'm seeing some pretty beautiful clouds [Music] these are cumulus clouds when you're outside on a bright sunny day you might see hundreds of them like all clouds they're formed when water vapor in our atmosphere sticks to tiny particles of dust and salt and pollution floating around in the sky called aerosols when water vapor hits an aerosol it transforms into water droplets or ice crystals and when enough of those come together they form clouds every cloud is packed with information and knowing a bit about them can help you tell the difference between a cloud that'll disappear in a few minutes and one that could ruin your picnic to really know what's going on in a cloud you have to go right inside it that's what atmospheric scientists do i use satellite data aircraft data and even sometimes weather balloon data to understand these processes associated with clouds and precipitations that's dr myra oyola she's an atmospheric scientist who works at nasa's jet propulsion lab she's also very good at identifying clouds like those cumulus ones cumulus means heap in latin and you can kind of see why they look like big heaps of cotton i saw a bunch when i was on a bike ride in august these clouds are normally present when we have fair weather or good weather so it's a good day to go outside and play cumulus are one of the 10 most common cloud types which scientists started defining all the way back in 1802 there's also stratus which means layer they cover the sky like a blanket they vary in color so you can see some that they're all whiter but they can be grayish and they are normally associated with what we call fair weather our friend anna in michigan spotted some of those the weather today is nice and warm cirrus which means curl look like wisps of hair high in the sky my co-worker agnes found those above lake michigan in chicago cirrus clouds because they're so high they're very cold they're mostly ice very tiny particles of ice and they're short-lived and there's nimbus which means rain they're normally seen during a thunderstorm along thunder and lining these four basic cloud shapes combined with how high they are in the sky create the most common clouds like zero stratus clouds which exist above 7 000 meters they're kind of like pink sheets that spread across the sky these clouds are interesting because they tend to be useful to do weather forecasting in in the sense that they can tell you if there's precipitation or snow storm coming within 12 to 24 hours altostratus and autocumulus clouds hover a bit lower between 2000 and 7000 meters they often form a sheet like these fluffy autocumulus ones vox producer laura saw in maine if you see them in the morning this is a tip or weather forecasting what it means is that you need to be prepared because they are normally produced ahead of thunderstorms altostratus are less puffy more like one big blanket they normally thicken into being more type of rain bearing clouds like nimbus stratus if you see a low dark gray blanket of clouds you're probably looking at nimbo stratus and it's probably already raining like it was the other day in my backyard really coming down out here rain often comes from cumulonimbus clouds too they tower from close to the ground to really high in the sky they're not going to be your classical white puffy clouds they're probably going to be darker and grayish they're very distinct and very easy to identify when you look at this chart it seems pretty simple to tell the difference between these clouds but in reality it can get a little tricky for example look at this photo my friend jess took while canoeing these are definitely cumulus and serous clouds we know that cumulus are associated with fair weather however in this particular case i can probably tell that there was a storm before the picture was taken for the most part storms tend to expand all over the atmosphere so you have impacts of the storm really high up and cirrus clouds tend to be really high up in the atmosphere during sunrise or sunset it's pretty common to see a colorful mix of clouds in the sky it's very specific in the sunset because you obviously have a very sharp change in temperature going on at the time [Music] those 10 clouds we just talked about make up nearly all the clouds in the world but what about the ones that don't fit on this chart like here on top of mount fuji in japan mountain ranges and other high obstructions disrupt the normal flow of air as air moves over the mountains sinking air warms and rising air cools which creates these lenticular clouds they look like fluffy ufos extreme weather can bring unusual clouds all over the world imagine you're sitting outside and you start to see these bumpy baggy clouds roll in they're called momentous clouds and they usually come along with thunder lightning and rain or mostly composed of ice basically the ice falls and you have this pouches extending sometimes hundreds of miles in any direction ice crystals help create these weird clouds too called fall streak holes scientists think they're created when ice crystals in a cloud form really quickly and then either evaporate or sink to the ground so they leave this big hole around the center of the cloud some clouds don't even come from nature these are called contrails which just means condensation trails they're made of water vapor from a plane's exhaust and mimic nature's wispy cirrus clouds meaning they're high up and they disappear really quickly [Music] because clouds are above us we tend not to give them a second thought but they are super important because they not only regulate temperature on the planet but they're also the primary drivers of rain and precipitation which we need to live for us observers on the ground it takes practice to identify clouds a good tip is to have a cloud chart with a cloud chart it's very easy to at least distinguish the clouds that are at the bottom and the clouds that you normally tend to see at the top the clouds are on the middle layers are probably the most tricky ones there are lots of communities out there for cloud watchers like the cloud appreciation society which accepts submissions of clouds from all over the world and adds them to photo galleries online if you're ever stumped by a cloud it might help to look at it from above the national oceanic and atmospheric administration has a near real-time satellite view of clouds that you can access online when you combine all these tools together you can start making predictions about your day just based on the clouds above you i think that those clouds mean that it will be nice for the next couple of hours those big white wispy clouds up there mean that it's going to be nice the cloud chart we made for this video was super helpful when i was first learning how to identify clouds especially when it came to telling the difference between the basic ones like cirrus and stratus and cumulus to download and print out your own cloud chart like the one we use in the video get permission from your parent or guardian to go to the link below or have them do it for you happy cloud hunting you [Music] this is my compost bin it's where i put used coffee grounds melon rinds corn husks pretty much anything that was a plant in its former life along with shredded up newspapers junk mail and pizza boxes if i wait long enough something kind of amazing happens all that stuff is transformed into well what looks like ordinary dirt but this dirt is anything but ordinary this dirt is alive yes it's full of earthworms we'll get to them but it's also full of millions of tiny creatures that you need a microscope to see you wouldn't know by looking at them but these little guys hold the key to human civilization without it human life as we know it wouldn't be possible which makes it all the more puzzling when you discover that its number one enemy is us so not all dirt is created equal it can have more or less of those little living creatures in it and there's an easy way to tell even if you don't have a microscope at home first put about a handful of dirt in a clear glass jar this is some soil that i collected from the worm bin don't worry i took out the worms later and this i dug up from my backyard next add some water screw the lids on nice and tight and shake them up and now we wait okay it's been a day we're back and we can see that both of our samples have separated into distinct layers you can see that they look really different let's look closer at the dirt from the backyard it has a bunch of stuff on the bottom gravel sand silt and clay and this stuff floating at the top is called humus that's where all the microscopic creatures live scientists call them microfauna micro for small fauna for animals there are millions of different kinds when old plants die the microfauna eat them and then well they poop that waste is full of nutrients that the new baby plants need to grow grass tomatoes apple trees no matter the plant the process is the same the more microfauna there are in the soil eating pooping doing their thing the bigger and healthier the plants over millions of years the new plants would use up nutrients in the soil then the microfauna would replace those nutrients by eating the dead plants and mild climates the microfauna could build up about two and a half centimeters or one inch of humus every 500 years evolution continued and eventually produced a species who changed this process forever homo sapiens have been around for almost 200 000 years but we didn't start farming until about 12 000 years ago before then we still depended on healthy soil for food the grass that fed the herd animals we hunted the nut trees and berry plants that we foraged these all grew from the rich humus that the microfauna created farming developed at various points in time in different regions of the world and from the beginning some of those early farmers recognize the relationship between healthy soil and healthy plants like the iroquois in the eastern part of what is now the united states the first farmers there women by the way planted corn atop mounds of soil every spring after they harvested the corn in the fall they left the dead corn stalks atop the mound all winter long the microfauna broke them down into nutrient-rich humus the next spring's new baby corn plants would use those nutrients and start the cycle again iroquois farmers also planted beans and squash in the same plot together these three crops were known as the three sisters and not only did this combination make for a balanced diet of protein carbohydrates and crucial vitamins for the iroquois people it also kept the microfauna in the soil happy healthy and pooping early farmers in other parts of the world developed different ways to feed the soil like in the amazon river basin early farmers there used controlled fires to create patches of rich humus today if you dig deep into that soil you can see that it's much darker and healthier than the regular tropical soil nearby all over the world the earliest farmers found ways to care for the soil so that it would produce healthy plants but slowly as european colonists descended on various parts of the world these ancient practices gave way to a new type of farming [Music] machines like the steam engine and the power loom transformed life in europe and then in north america starting in the mid-1700s the lure of factory wages drew people from the countryside into the cities which meant the farmers who stayed on the land needed to produce more food to be shipped to those cities farmers got stuck in a cycle of constant harvesting without giving the soil time to regenerate the nutrients it had built up over generations the soil quickly wore out so they responded by cutting down forests and turning them into fields in north america european settlers used violence to push the iroquois and other indigenous people further west away from the three sisters fields that had sustained them for thousands of years when they had stripped that soil of its life the settlers kept moving west seizing indigenous lands along the way new steel plows helped them break up the hard heavy soil of the great plains but these new steel plows did something else they turned up the soil over and over again which killed a lot of those microfauna that had been living in the soil making humus and when gasoline-powered tractors showed up in the early 1900s their weight pressed down on the increasingly lifeless soil making it even harder for plants to grow by the 1930s the soil of the great plains had lost so much of its microfauna that giant dust storms pummeled the region and thousands of families lost their farms this new type of farming wasn't limited to europe and north america the small farms that had sustained the indigenous peoples of central and south america for generations had been replaced by giant mega farms haciendas run by the spanish and portuguese settlers and worked by indigenous and enslaved people the crops they grew didn't feed the people there the fields were full of sugar cane and cotton which were shipped out of the country to factories and just like in north america the overworked soil quickly crumbled and started to wash away in response farmers around the world started to rely on chemical fertilizers which help crops grow quickly but can also pollute drinking water and kill fish and other types of aquatic life according to the united nations practices like this are killing the humus so quickly we may run out of healthy soil in less than 60 years that is if we keep doing things the same way [Applause] remember the soil we tested that these guys helped to make look at it next to the jar of backyard soil see how there's way more humus floating on the top more of this stuff is exactly what we need all over the world to replace the soil we've already destroyed and earthworms can help on farms where years of plowing has damaged the soil a handful of farmers have stopped doing it instead they roll down the old crop then use a series of drills to plant the new seeds underneath the old dead stalks because this method doesn't disturb the soil it gives earthworms a chance to make humus and to create these tunnels that help water get to the plant roots it also helps to loosen the soil so that plant roots can spread but this method has been slow to catch on just one in four american farmers use it on many smaller farms though earthworms are a big part of the operation this is our worm bin it's the hardest workers and these are actually red wiggler worms this is mark white he showed me around his urban farm right in the middle of cleveland ohio the raspberries i talked about they just pulled one off like that yeah oh my god you made awesome everything is based on the soil everything that we eat is a reflection of the soil this right here this is the black gold on mark's farm that process starts here in the compost pile over time wood chips and food waste break down with the help of earthworms and microfauna so this is how the soil you saw inside is how it starts out in the next 10 15 20 years this whole footprint would have been improved so much more by having been here [Music] we need healthy soil to grow healthy food and we need healthy food to grow healthy people it's all connected dirt is so much more than the stuff beneath our feet it's the stuff of life and the sooner we realize that the better off we'll be you so i want to show you something that is bringing me joy right now because it is spring this little bird nest has a little egg in it that was me a few months ago that's crazy right after i discovered this bird's nest with a single bright blue egg sitting on this porch swing a few days later it had four eggs guess what happened next they hatched and you better believe i named them this is goose pepper jack dot and rocco for a few weeks when i was really bored during lockdown i watched these little baby birds grow and grow and grow and i started to film them and they let me get really close i even filmed them in slow motion you'll find out later why as i watched them grow a million questions popped in my head why is this egg blue how long do the eggs take to happen what type of bird is baby [Music] but my biggest question how was this tiny little nest not full of poop [Music] to answer all my questions i tracked down this guy my name is michael murphy i'm a professor of biology at portland state university in portland oregon he's an ornithologist which means he studies birds my personal interest is in behavior of birds and the population biology of birds and when he says birds he means a lot of birds tree swallows barn swallowers cliff swallows eastern phoebes spotted towies i've worked on a species known as the eastern king bird since 1979 as you can see i have a tattoo of the creek there he studies all of their behaviors like where they sleep what they eat and how they travel and he also knows a lot about bird poop which brings us back to the eggs i found on my porch so what type of birds are in these eggs well that was an american robin when it grows up it's got this fiery orange belly it's impressive this animal um breeds across an enormous swath of north america it travels as far north as alaska to breed in the springtime and as far south as mexico during the cold winter months that's over five thousand miles it seems as long as you've got a structure it can put a nest on and as long as it can get some good mud to build a nest you're gonna find it so it's just extremely adaptable so let's walk through the life of my porch robins first they're just four little eggs why are they blue well that's a big question [Music] the coloration of bird eggs is extremely variable what we do know is that bird eggs come in all sizes and colors white eggs like this giant ostrich egg have been around for millions of years over time the eggs just like the birds themselves have adapted to survive some are speckled because they want to blend into their environment so do you see the three eggs in this photo look closer and for blue eggs well the blue color is caused by a pigment in the mother it's the same pigment that makes bruises turn blue and some butterflies like this one have bright blue in their wings pigments also strengthen eggshells so it's actually an active area of research still trying to figure out why birds eggs are blue so the mother lays the bright blue eggs and the parents incubate those eggs it takes about 14 days for them to complete their development in the egg and then they hatch out and then they're going to spend roughly 12 days more in the nest and over that 12-day period they as you saw in your films change enormously they go from a non-flying individual that is completely helpless they're completely blind they have no feathers except for a little down they really look like aliens within 14 days they are out of the nest instead of little bald aliens they look like grumpy old men and within just a few more days they're actually able to fly not like an adult but they can fly so what exactly happens in those two weeks in the nest i don't know if you've ever tried to raise a baby bird but it's it's just so time consuming they just eat and process food all day long watch this dot goose rocco and pepper jack are deep in sleep but when they hear their parents come they shoot right up super fast they eat worms bees caterpillars and flies and they have to eat so much because they have to grow so quickly the selection to grow fast to get out of the nest is probably mostly related to the fact that lots of things eat baby birds therefore it's a dangerous point in their life getting through that quickly is important now if i know one thing about babies it's this they eat they sleep and they poop and it can get very messy but somehow this nest is spotless so where on earth does all the poop go i recorded hours upon hours of footage to figure out exactly where this poop was going because it seemed to just disappear into thin air and then i spotted it turns out the hatchlings definitely poop a whole lot but they were pooping directly into their parents mouth and the parents were eating it uh your your observation that the nest is extremely clean is very accurate and it's because they have those structures referred to as eagle sacks they're basically like baby bird diapers so instead of bird poop making a huge mess the fecal sacs keep it nice and contained i mean it really looks like a disposable thing but the adults as you filmed they'll wait at the rim of the nest for that baby to pick up that fecal sac the moment it emerges from the body now once the parent has the fecal sac they do one of two things if you've got young that are sedentary and they're going to be in one spot for days maybe even weeks you don't want that getting too dirty so sometimes the parents fly away with it to drop it off somewhere else far away from the nest but in many cases the parents ate the fecal sac as i was watching your film he started to get a little sick to my stomach after oh yeah i know birds do this but after a while you watch them do it that many times you oh man isn't that you know let's just throw them all away one of the hypotheses as to why they eat them is that there is useful material in the fecal sex and so it might behoove the parents since they're already working really hard to keep those babies fed to just eat them and capture the energy and water that is still remaining in the fecal sex tasty not all birds do this so this is an osprey nest what they do instead is the babies well when they're really young they probably do poop in the nice little bit but as they get older the youngsters position themselves when they have to go over at the edge of the nest they point their butts out over the edge and then they'll just poop right off the edge of the nest the world is their toilet [Music] after 12 to 14 days growing in the nest hatchlings start to get really crowded here's a moment where goose literally fell out the nest because he barely fit don't worry goose made it back in getting to that point is rough because probably 60 percent of nests fail but this nest it made it the very last piece of footage i captured was this rocco just flew right off the porch of those that do get out of the nest um they're gonna have to make it through to their first year and maybe only about 30 of them actually survive now they've got to begin the important process of reproduction basically in just one year the hatchlings become parents and the process starts all over again what can birds teach us hard work birds are hard working individuals that's for sure they can teach us about ourselves but they can also teach us about the world we live in what they are showing us is how connected the world is birds migrate huge distances and then there are some species which literally call the world the world their home increasingly as time goes on we study them to preserve them and to conserve them so i think they really are showing us that we have to take a large picture view of the world [Music] you three two [Music] thus begins my quest to build the perfect marshmallow launching machine this is a catapult model it would be extremely dangerous if you were this tall or like a angry squirrel and this model is inspired by the drawings of this genius leonardo da vinci the same guy who painted the super famous mona lisa it's overrated but still pretty good a catapult launches something in the air using power from tension or gravity instead of using gunpowder there are different types this one's called a man janelle it's what you usually think of there's also a ballista think of a crossbow and a trebuchet this part is super heavy in the cow i mean the stone you sorrow goes here then the stone gets released and the heavy stuff helps shoot the stone up and out like a big slingshot catapults were invented in china and europe around the 4th century bc and it was actually a breakthrough they could launch big heavy stones at walls and enemies you could break through a wall with it did i mention we have cicadas here can you hear the cicadas [Music] in the 1300s people said catapults were even used to launch dead bodies over walls because people wanted to spread the plague to their enemies on the corpses but leonardo's catapult it was as elegant as one of his paintings now the first thing is to assemble the drum let's go ahead and do that today leonardo has a reputation for inventing things but when we look back a lot of his inventions were just improvements on things that already existed like this drawing of a ladder to scale castle walls he even made a few things that just didn't work this helicopter looks awesome but it probably wouldn't fly his catapults weren't some totally new thing he took tried and true elements from other catapults and made the design his own our catapult is actually a mashup of these two drawings leonardo made let's switch to something that makes it easier to see what leonardo was thinking that's better okay so the drum and ratchet are going to be how we wind up the catapult they're kind of like the charger to the battery that gives us all the power for this one you turned the handle here to wind up the drop that winds up and pulls the rope which pulls back the wood pieces here now they hold a lot of energy that you use winding up the drum and that is pretty much how this catapult works too see how when i wind the catapult the drum turns and pulls back these rods all that tension lets it launch a payload in our case it's a marshmallow in leonardo's it would have been a large stone or some other projectile that could just bash into castle walls in leonardo's you probably whacked this thing here with a hammer to set the gear loose and fire in ours you lock it by hooking this bar right here to this gear it stops it in place that's taken from leonardo's second design you wound the gear by sticking a bar in one of these holes and pulling everything more taut over and over again then see the bar that locks to a gear it holds the gear in place that is what ours does too when we pull the release rope the bar comes loose the drum unwinds and the catapult fires it's pretty easy a good catapult can hold that tension for as long as it has to it requires all those elements to work in tandem and the person firing it to have the right touch which i do if one thing goes wrong like right here where the bar is out of place the energy is lost and after a few tries i believe that i will be able to make this catapult do something amazing to fire the perfect marshmallow this is a crossbow leonardo designed see that dude there that's how big this thing was and here's leonardo's trebuchet and his ideas for sweet shields to protect soldiers he was a genius he drew a baby in the womb and imagined a parachute and made a crazy accurate overhead map but he was also a guy doodling in a bunch of different notebooks his catapult was probably never used in war but his designs mashed together some really clever ideas people are still tinkering with the design of catapults this is being launched off a carrier by a kind of catapult and from looking at them we can still be inspired to create a replica and i'm no leonardo but that's something that we can do too we can adapt stuff i'm going to attach this to the ground and make the release rope a little longer so that i can launch it myself and get that sweet marshmallow arcing in the air that is something that we can all do we can't all draw or instantly understand physics or get people to build weapons but we can all imagine something amazing three two one [Music] so [Music] ugh you're 22 years old get it together three two one It's funny how the world has different
time zones, how it could be Saturday on this side of
the world and Friday somewhere else. Yet somehow, the United States of America
is stuck in 1920. That was a hundred years ago, yet we're still fighting for our lives, for a place here. What did we ever do to make them hate us
so much? I know for a fact they love our culture.
They love to steal our braids, the way we talk,
anything we call ours. But when it's that one white
bad cop and that one innocent Black person,
that Black person fears for their life. This is the world we live in. See, when I was younger, teachers used to ask kids what they wanted to be when
they grew up. Some kids said "famous." I was one of those
kids. But now I change my answer. The thing I
want to be when I grow up is alive. How do i know that I'm going to make it
out alive if I'm suspicious doing nothing?
If I'm suspicious when I'm at my own house sleeping in my own bed.
Why am I suspicious? Because I could have sworn from one to three I was the cutest
thing. But when did I stop being cute and
start being scary? Am I scary if I have a black hoodie? Am I
scary if I wear a backpack? Am I scary if I do nothing? Am I scary? Does my dad scare you?
Does my mom scare you? Does my auntie scare you? Because let me tell you something: we are not scary. Say their names. You will earn my respect
when I don't have to fear for my life or anybody else's.
Until then, my respect will not come for free. Okay Joss, I want to start with an experiment
where we swap TikTok login information to see just how different our feeds actually
are. I don't know what it's going to reveal about me. I do wonder how different it's going to be. Nurse turns into a hot lady. OK so I just got literally the male version
of that on yours. Look. Oh my god. Male nurse. Female nurse. Joss there are so many animals on yours. List of underrated horror movies. I would never get that. I've never seen this pushup challenge. Yeah, I think TikTok recognized that I would
prefer a funny version of this. It recognized that I share a sense of humor
with this person in Indonesia. TikTok's frictionless personalization is what
made the app an instant success around the world. But now that global success is crashing
into international politics, putting TikTok in the middle of a worldwide battle over how
open the internet should be. "President Trump threatening to ban TikTok in the United States as Microsoft is hoping to acquire it." WEI: I think Chinese tech companies traditionally
have really struggled to get a cultural foothold in the U.S. because the culture is just so
different. That's Eugene Wei, a Tech Product Executive
who has written about how Tiktok, which is owned by a company called ByteDance, became
the first globally-successful Chinese app. How they did it all comes down to design. When you first open up TikTok, you don't have to follow anyone, or tell the app about your
interests, or even choose what to watch. It shows you a video, and the only decision
you have to make is how long you watch it. WEI: So if you look at the history of social
media, most of the giants in social networking today started by having people essentially
build up a social graph from the bottoms up. A social graph is the web of accounts you
follow and it determines most of the content you see on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
Snapchat. The problem with that approach is that it
can feel like work: building up a social network takes time, you're not necessarily going to
like every post from the accounts you follow, and it's hard to find accounts that you would
like but don't know about. TikTok took a different approach. It bypasses
the social graph, and instead builds an "interest graph," by watching you interact with videos.
TikTok isn't the first platform to do that-- it's basically how YouTube works too -- but
because TikTok videos are less than 60 seconds long, you watch more of them, which means
more data. WEI: People talk about the TikTok algorithm
as if it's some magic piece of software that is just miraculously better than every piece
of software out there. But the truth is that it's not necessarily that the algorithms themselves
have gotten that much better. But if you massively, massively increase the training data set that
you train the algorithm on, you can achieve really amazing results. And that's why I think
a lot of people will describe the algorithm as eerily accurate. Eerily personalized. TikTok's interest graph introduces you to like-minded people. And because the videos
are often music or meme-based rather than language-based, you may find that some of
those like-minded people live on the other side of the world.
They might be a dancer in Nepal, a family in Mexico, or kids in the U.K,
or this guy, as long as the algorithm predicts that it'll entertain you. WEI: And so in that way, the TikTok algorithm kind of allows ByteDance to gain traction
in markets all over the world, with languages that they don't understand, subcultures they
don't understand. TikTok's global appeal enabled it to reach
a billion users faster than the other social media giants had. But it also set the app
on a collision course with a different trend: the rise of internet nationalism.
"India is banning TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps." "Australia has cited concerns
about national security. So too has South Korea." "President Trump issued executive
orders that would ban TikTok and messaging app WeChat from operating in the US in 45
days." Bytedance is based in China, which means it's
subject to surveillance by a regime known for censorship, human rights abuses, and cyber
espionage. But TikTok says they have never provided any
US user data to the Chinese government. For his part, President Trump has hinted that
this is actually about getting revenge for the coronavirus.
VAN SUSTEREN: Why would you ban it? TRUMP: Well, it's a big business. China -- look
what happened with China with this virus, what they've done to this country and to the
entire world is disgraceful. But whatever the motivation, the US targeting
a globally popular app is a big deal -- because it throws a wrench into one of the biggest
debates over what the internet should be. A New America Foundation report plots that
debate along a spectrum-- of how open the internet is within a country.
SHERMAN: So on the one pole, we can visualize the free and open model, so that's the democratic
model, very little state involvement in Internet content.
As the original home of the internet and many of the world's biggest tech companies, the
US has traditionally advocated for the free flow of information online.
SHERMAN: The opposite end of the spectrum is what we see in countries like China, where
there is heavy state involvement in content, where they do go to Internet companies and
say, you have to censor all of these keywords, you have to censor all these foreign websites. China's Great Firewall famously blocks sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia,
Netflix, WhatsApp, and many western news outlets. But it's not just China anymore.
SHERMAN: What we see in the middle are countries who I think are going to play a pivotal role
going forward in this global scale tipping we see.
According to analysts surveyed for this report, many of these countries shifted toward less
openness between 2014 and 2018. In 2019 Russia moved to build an internet
that is isolated from the rest of the world, following years of increasing government censorship.
Turkey has been blocking some news websites and recently passed a law giving the government
sweeping powers over social media. And India, the world's largest democracy,
leads the world in deliberate Internet shutdowns. "Turning off the internet is becoming a defining
tool of government repression." "Internet access shut down" "Imposed an internet blackout"
"Ethiopia" "Liberia" "Venezuela" "Pakistan" "taken offline."
As governments decide that a world wide web doesn't suit their interests, we end up with
a fractured internet, what some call "the splinternet" where national borders increasingly
dictate what information people can access online.
Now it's up to democratic countries to reimagine an open internet worth fighting for. Instead,
the US is threatening to ban a platform used by millions of Americans.
SHERMAN: The US benefits from having technological leadership, it benefits from promoting a democratic
Internet model and contesting authoritarianism. And so abdicating leadership on that front
is not good in the own interests of the US either. TikTok created a uniquely international platform. But it emerged onto an internet that wasn't
quite ready for it. It arrived in the midst of rising nationalism, from a country that
has never respected internet freedom. So now it's forcing the issue: When authoritarian
states assert control over online speech, should the US respond by doing the same thing? [Music] for black women the story of voting rights is a long one very early on at the dawn of the 19th century they are already at work on a political philosophy that decries racism and sexism in american politics but constitutionally speaking it begins with the 15th amendment because black women also need race to be an impermissible criteria if they're to get to the polls sojourner truth is a name people might know the former slave anti-slavery activist and women's rights activist francis ellen watkins harper poet anti-slavery lecturer we also have figures like nanny helen burrows id wells was another major activist that people don't necessarily associate with the suffrage movement but she absolutely was black women never find a very comfortable home in women's suffrage associations racism is always present sometimes in very pronounced ways we have pictures of parades marches women dressed up in sort of late 19th early 20th century victorian gear hats large hats carrying signs about votes for women and most of these images are of white women the key figures are a remarkable duo of women elizabeth katie stanton and susan b anthony and those two women will take us to the 19th amendment in august of 1920 the state of tennessee will by a mere one vote ratify the 19th amendment an amendment that prohibits the states from using sex as a criteria for voting and it will become part of the constitution and american women win the right to vote so for white woman it was the end of a long fight but for many black women it was just the beginning of an uphill battle to exercise those rights african-american women are aware but really everyone is aware that nothing in the 19th amendment is going to prohibit individual states from continuing to disenfranchise black voters and so the first election that they had after the bill passed the white women were going to vote and we'd just step and went to vote and when we got on there well we couldn't vote they gave us all different kind of excuses why we just stayed we stayed we asked we wanted to know why we couldn't vote and the answers to the questions were so invalid we were not satisfied so finally one woman mrs simmons said are you saying that we can't vote because we're negros and he said yes negroes don't vote in primary in texas so that just hurt our hearts real bad and so the 19th amendment even as we mark this anniversary it leaves many many american women to continue the struggle for political rights including the vote and african-american women are one chapter or one facet of that story there's nothing in the 19th amendment that guarantees chinese immigrant women the vote there's nothing in the 19th amendment that guarantees to native american women the vote latinx women particularly mexican-american women also occupy an ambiguous place in the story of voting rights for black women the right to vote is symbolic and that's not to diminish symbolism it's to say that the right to vote is a sign that they are full and equal citizens of the united states african-american women are facing the challenges of racial violence lynching and access to the polls african-american women are looking at a range of inequalities economic inequalities housing inequalities health inequalities educational inequalities and access to the ballot is a lever in those struggles it is the gateway to sitting on juries it is the gateway to office holding black women have an agenda and it is an ambitious one and one that they hope the vote will help them further it wasn't easy to try to get people to come out to go and try to register to vote because the first time that we went we had a circle around the courthouse of pickup trucks and rifles and white people getting ready to stop us only four people got in that whole day what did the white people have to fear from somebody blacks registering if they became a registered voter many of the blacks would seek positions in the political field they would be out they would fight for justice if they were registered voters they would turn the city completely around and that is the reason why they did not want to see black people become registered voters what black women want in the wake of the 19th amendment is federal legislation that will now protect their voting rights to impose on those states with a history of disenfranchising black voters an extra requirement and black women will wage a campaign that will take them all the way to 1965 and passage of the voting rights act in that year it's important to say that winning the voting rights act is a brutal brutal campaign black americans women and men put their lives on the line in too many southern jurisdictions in order to force the hand of congress to force the hand of lyndon johnson to win voting rights legislation this is not an easy road for african-american women it is a harrowing road but it is indeed a victory one that black women had been looking for for nearly half a century [Music] i know that my grandmother raised my mother that they always had to vote like it was something that she was born in my grandmother susie jones her portrait hangs on the wall and i am very accountable to her even as she passed many years ago people ask me why do we need to know this history today we live in an era of voter suppression laws that are neutral on their face voter id requirements or the purging of voter rolls or the shuttering of polling places none of which announce that they are aimed at keeping voters of color women of color from the polls but when we look at those laws in practice we can recognize that like in 1920 in 2020 seemingly neutral laws are being used to disproportionately keep people of color away from the polls by running for political office and affecting change on the ground in their communities and in their states so we now have black women running for governorships and we have a number of african-americans that we've seen has shaped elections so i think the idea of enfranchisement is also expanded to not just being able to vote but exercising political power and exercising political agency and i think that's the legacy of the suffrage movement to me these are not women who dropped out of the sky these are women who come out of a political tradition and are building upon that and will tell you that if you ask them these women and the generations that followed worked to make democracy and opportunity real in the lives of all of us who followed you This is US Congressman Louie Gohmert. Unlike many of his colleagues, he often refused
to wear a mask in Congress. And then he tested positive for Covid-19. But in an interview, he suggested that he
got Covid-19 because of the times he did wear a mask. "I might have put some of the virus onto
the mask and breathed it in." Gohmert’s distrust of masks is actually
shared by a ton of Americans. A poll in July asked Americans how often they wear a mask. Among Democrats, almost everyone said they wore a mask in public. But significantly fewer Republicans said so. Yet the messaging from public health officials
today is clear: Wearing a mask helps stop the spread of Covid-19. So where did this communication break down? How was something as simple as wearing a mask
allowed to become political? In October of 2001, the US bungled a different
public health crisis. Someone sent envelopes of deadly Anthrax to
media organizations and government offices. First, the Secretary of Health
and Human Services went on TV, and speculated about how
the first victim might have gotten it. "We do know that he drank water out of a stream…" "Why are you giving us that detail?" "Just because he was an outdoorsman, and there’s
a possibility... there’s all kinds of possibilities." "Can you contract anthrax from drinking from a stream?" We don’t know. As the crisis continued, different officials
gave different, conflicting information. No one was really in charge of communicating
to the public. And it led the US Centers for Disease Control
to make this: the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication
guide, or CERC. It’s a guide to how to communicate during
a public health crisis. The CERC guidelines are really a reflection
of the lessons that were learned from failures. Glen Nowak used to be in charge of communications
for the CDC. He’s used the CERC and even wrote some of
it. And he says one of the biggest lessons from
the Anthrax attack is what the CERC now calls "the most important role" in a crisis, and the key to preventing mass confusion:
having a single person as the spokesperson. It really
helps to have one primary voice. One primary face. The CERC says the spokesperson should be someone
who is familiar with the subject matter, and can talk about it clearly and confidently. A lot of communications, particularly in a
public health crisis, is about setting, guiding and managing people's expectations. It's important early on to not just talk about
what you know, but what you don't know. Essentially, the spokesperson needs to be
seen as trustworthy and credible. Which is one reason you don’t want your
spokesperson to be a politician. Because it’s really hard for any politician
to be seen as credible by everyone: They often only resonate with those
who support them, and they don't resonate with those who did not vote for them. That doesn’t mean political leaders can’t
be involved in public health communication; they just can’t take the lead on the
science. A good example of a government following these
principles during Covid-19 was in New Zealand, where the Prime Minister was at many of the
daily briefings, but wasn’t leading it. "As is our usual practice I’ll begin by handing
over to Dr. Bloomfield." What's important is that everybody is on the
same page with respect to the overall messaging. But in the US, there hasn’t been a clear
spokesperson. Or a clear message. Press conferences were led by President Trump and would feature politicians as well as public health experts. And they often contradicted each other. "We do expect more cases." "When you have 15 people, and the 15 within
a couple of days, is going to be down to close to zero." Especially when it came to guiding those expectations: "We will have coronavirus in the fall." "It may not come back at all." "Developing very rapidly a vaccine..." "That could be a year to a year and a half." These conflicts asked many Americans to pick
a side: Who do you believe - the president,
or public health officials? "Medical 'experts.'" "Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to favor
what the Democrats want..." "Dr. Fauci, who appears to believe he’s in
charge of the country." "It’s important that we listen to our elected
leaders -- not the medical bureaucracy." That breakdown between public health officials
and politicians can get especially dangerous if the information starts to change. Which it almost always does during a crisis. You need to remind people very frequently
that you're going to be making changes based on the growing body of knowledge and that as a result, it's going to look like
you're being inconsistent. But more importantly you're learning and you're learning what works best. Early on, the CDC advised people not to wear
masks. But as they learned more about the new virus,
they changed the guidelines. "What has changed in our recommendation? We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack
symptoms. CDC is always, always looking at the data. We've told you that from the beginning — Dr.
Birx says it every single press conference -- we’re looking at the data, we’re evolving
our recommendations." But this shift wasn’t supported by Trump
personally. "The masks, it’s going to be really a voluntary
thing. You can do it, you don’t have to do it, I'm
choosing not to do it." Soon, masks became the symbol of the war between
Trump and the medical experts. "I think it’s a political hoax." "No, I don’t wear a mask." "Shame on you for voting for a mask. And I say Trump 2020." By June, more Republicans trusted Trump than
the CDC for facts about the coronavirus. It was exactly the scenario the communication
guidelines had been written to avoid. What's frustrating is knowing that many
of the challenges are self-inflicted wounds or they're things that, you know, could have
been avoided based on past experience. In 2001, the US got lucky. The anthrax attacks eventually stopped. The problem went away. In 2020, the US made the same mistakes. But we haven’t been so lucky. when you think of an american farm you probably think of something like this a barn a field a diverse group of animals [Music] until relatively recently if you ate meat it probably came from a farm that looked basically like this and that was true around the world but in the last few decades the global production of meat has skyrocketed and that's been driven by a change in how livestock is raised in order to increase profits and raise livestock more cost effectively farms like this one started to consolidate and to mechanize take chicken farms for example in the 1970s the u.s had around 30 thousand chicken farms by 1995 it had only about 20 000 but the amount of chicken produced in the u.s had tripled this is what one of those consolidated farms looks like farms like this are controversial there are ethical concerns environmental concerns but infectious disease experts worry about them for a different reason [Music] a farm like this is called a concentrated animal feeding operation or cafo cafos are basically huge industrialized farming operations they contain tens of thousands of animals sometimes hundreds of thousands of animals and they're often very crowded american cafos were efficient and profitable and soon they became a model for farming all over the world today almost all the meat we eat comes from farms like this factory farms supply an estimated 90 of meat globally and around 99 of the meat we eat here in the u.s so if you're eating a burger or bacon or whatever it is today it probably came from a factory farm a cafo is an environment built for one purpose to house as many animals as possible what worries scientists is that that also makes it an ideal environment for the pathogens that cause pandemics a virus is really just a bit of genetic code that makes copies of itself but that replication process isn't always perfect they're introducing lots of mutations as they replicate martha nelson studies viruses at the national institutes of health most of those mutations are going to be deleterious and you know won't help the virus at all lots of mutations just lead to the virus dying but occasionally a mutation will happen that will give the virus a new ability to be more deadly for example or to be able to jump from one species to another a virus can only replicate when it's inside another organism a host but it can only replicate inside a host for so long every host eventually dies that means even if a virus does mutate in a beneficial way without hosts that mutation will eventually die out and out in the wild or even on a small farm new hosts can be hard to come by but in a cafo let's say you're a pathogen if you're in a factory farm where you have hundreds of thousands of potential hosts it's a bonanza more hosts means more chances to replicate more chances to mutate and a higher likelihood that a mutated virus will survive in other words factory farms are also factories for new viruses that we haven't seen before and that's also helped along by the larger system that kfos are a part of there's a lot of international trade going on of live animals we're sending these animals from city to city and from country to country we're flying them across oceans some viruses have a genetic code that's segmented into parts and sometimes two of these viruses come into contact with each other occasionally you can have two separate viruses co-infect a single cell when they replicate they can just kind of swap out entire segments with the other virus and through that you can kind of create these chimeric you know offspring that have pieces from the two parents just like with mutations this swapping and shuffling of segments between viruses is basically random and that means sometimes the new virus is a dud but every now and then you hit jackpot and you come up with a radically new combination that has properties that neither of the two parents had in cafos viruses have an opportunity to come into contact with each other all the time that's making it easier for a virus that exists over here on one side of the world that normally would just stay on that side of the world to travel quite quickly to another part of the world with viruses from different parts of the world mixing and shuffling and mutating inside animals humans have made it very easy for a nasty virus to emerge and actually it's happened already we are continuing to closely monitor the emergency cases of the h1n1 flu virus in 2009 a new virus quickly spread around the world it became known as the swine flu because of its links to pig farms in north america it came from the major swine production region that's right outside of mexico city that particular virus was able to evolve there because you have pigs coming from the united states over the border into mexico you have pigs from europe and so you have this sort of mixing bowl of pigs from all over the world that are able to share their viruses and exchange genetic components and create this really unusual pandemic variant by the time public health measures and a vaccine were able to get it under control swine flu had killed hundreds of thousands of people but viruses are just one kind of pathogen that kfos are really good at incubating [Music] because bacterial disease can spread so easily in a cafo farmers typically treat their livestock with antibiotics which limits the bacteria's spread and often every animal gets that antibiotic whether they're sick or not at first that prevents bacterial disease from running rampant through the population but over time just like viruses bacteria will mutate the antibiotic will kill most of these mutations unless the mutation gives them the ability to resist it and over time as the bacteria evolve those that have the mutation to survive the antibiotic will become more and more dominant this is how we end up with antibiotic resistant bacteria and that becomes really dangerous if it spreads into humans and so then when we humans come along and try to treat the bacteria with antibiotics in our own bodies the bacteria might not respond to those antibiotics one way to lower the risk of kefoborn pathogens would be to change the cavo system to make the spread of pathogens harder we could decrease the long-distance transport of live animals we can have smaller and less crowded farms so that pathogens don't have so much opportunity to rip through huge numbers of animals but making kefos safer for humans wouldn't address the other concerns about them like animals quality of life or the lagoons of liquid manure they produce ending kefos entirely and returning to a smaller model of farming would it's actually entirely possible for us to have a meat production system that is better for human health as well as for the climate and for the animals themselves we just need to abandon factory farming to get that we could also just eat less meat after all the amount of meat we eat today is a recent development but now that we know what it's like to experience a pandemic we should understand the risks of the animal pathogens cooking in our food systems it's just a matter of time before one ends up in the human population whether that happens next year whether that happens in a decade you know that's a crystal ball we don't know but we do know that we are playing with probabilities and we're continually increasing the probability as we increase the pool of viruses in these farms [Music] you if you watch the news at all back in the summer of 2016 you probably remember stories like these the guy who is brash a guy who is blunt americans aren't willing to trust her don't think she's honest the news spent a lot of time dissecting the candidates personalities he's very forward and he's a little bit vicious analyzing their poll numbers closing the gap in states that matter most and psychoanalyzing their supporters these stories are part of a long tradition of political journalism where the goal is to make you feel like an insider someone with all the information on who's up who's down in which states with which groups and this kind of coverage basically treats an election like a big event sanders warren a competition a show and it's designed to make you feel smart as someone watching the election donald trump doing very well across the middle kind of like how knowing all the stats about a sports team makes you feel really smart when you're watching the game donald trump in july 80 million dollars by far his best month to date though that fell short of clinton's 90 million sometimes we make videos like that here at box but there's also another way that journalists can cover an election not as a show but as a choice between plans priorities and visions for what the country should do next this kind of coverage is designed to make you a smarter voter or if you don't live in the u.s to at least help you understand what this giant election is actually about that is what we want to make videos about between now and election day not about what's going to happen in the election but about what might change after it to explain that we want your help at the link below there's one question we want you to answer what do you think the candidates should be talking about that's it it could be a specific question like should we break up the big tech companies or why aren't more drugs legal why do american companies give so little parental leave should we have more nuclear energy or it could be a topic that's just been on your mind lately like what's the deal with the cost of college or what's going to happen with college or transportation or food security or paying for child care or student loans whatever it is tell us at the link below or at vox.com election videos what do you think the candidates should be talking about what's happening in your life that you wish they would pay attention to your ideas will become the list of things that we explain between now and election day then starting in september we'll put out one video every week each video will come from something you asked us for and if your question or suggestion inspired us we'll shout you out in that video this year and this election are not turning out how we thought they would the way we explained elections shouldn't stay the same either but first we need your help so thanks for watching and thanks for sticking with us This is a chart of Covid-19 cases in the UK. In April, the UK’s rate of new cases climbed
so high that it was second only to the US. Around that time, researchers at Oxford University
who were developing a Covid-19 vaccine had started planning to do a large-scale test
of the vaccine in the UK. But by July, new Covid-19 cases in the country
had fallen. It was good news -- but it also meant the
UK was no longer a good place to test a vaccine. And that’s because of a crucial part of
the process of testing any new vaccine: What’s called the Phase III human trials. Before we can end the coronavirus pandemic,
a vaccine developer will have to give tens of thousands of participants either the vaccine
or a placebo. And then... we wait, for months,
or possibly years, to see how many of each group
eventually gets Covid-19, while the participants go about
their lives; which, right now, probably means they are living
under Covid-19 restrictions, like wearing masks and staying at home. But until enough of those participants get
sick, there won’t be enough data on whether the vaccine is working. And in the meantime, thousands of people are
dying of covid-19 every day. That’s why, some people are starting to
advocate a different, more controversial model: Instead of waiting for the coronavirus to
eventually infect some of these people.... What if we gave a group of willing volunteers
the virus on purpose? “I’m a young guy, I'm 23 years old, I’m
relatively healthy.” “I have no pre-existing health conditions. I have no children, no dependents.” “It’s really important that we do everything
we can to speed up research and development.” It’s 2016, and this man is about to drink
a test tube of the bacteria that causes typhoid. He’s one of about 100 participants who deliberately
infected themselves with it to test a new vaccine in the UK. “In March 2016 I downed a shot of typhoid.” Daina was another participant. She was a PhD student, who needed the money,
but she also liked the idea of it. “It was like, you know, I'm helping to make
this disease less deadly.” This kind of study is called a human challenge
trial. And in the case of the typhoid vaccine, researchers
told the New York Times that doing the challenge trial
saved them three or four years. To put that in context, it helps to look at the bigger
picture of how a vaccine normally gets developed. The first step in the process is to test a vaccine
in a lab on either human cells, or on animals, just to see if it causes any harm. This is called the preclinical phase. If it passes that test, it enters human trials. This is the longest and most important part. If it passes human trials, the vaccine gets
licensed by regulators, and can be manufactured
and distributed to the public. Human trials typically have 3 phases, each
one testing a larger and larger group of people. Phase 1 involves a very small group of people,
maybe 50, and mainly tests if the vaccine is safe. Phase 2 usually involves a few hundred participants. This is where we start learning if the vaccine
actually works. And then there’s the final test: the Phase
3 trial. It’s expensive, it takes time, it requires
tens of thousands of volunteers, and it involves as broad a cross-section of participants as
possible. The entire process of developing a vaccine
usually takes around ten years. But many Covid-19 vaccine developers are racing
to compress this entire process into about a year and a half. One way they’re doing this is to overlap
the different phases, conducting several different trials at once. Or, to ramp up the manufacturing of a vaccine while it’s still being tested, so that if
it works, it can be distributed right away. As of the making of this video, there were 166 Covid-19 vaccines
in various stages of development. 24 vaccine candidates are already in the human
trial phase. And 5 of them are already in Phase III. For these leading candidates, a human challenge
trial could save weeks, or months, by augmenting a Phase III trial
that isn't getting data fast enough. And for any of these candidates in pre-clinical phases, a challenge study, followed by
a larger-scale safety study for the vaccine, could replace a Phase III
trial altogether. A challenge trial that successfully shrinks
down this timeline could save thousands of lives. And so far, a grassroots movement has recruited
more than 30,000 volunteers, from over 100 countries, who said they would participate
in a challenge trial for covid-19 if it happens. “My moral values say that I kind of have
an obligation to do what I can to help.” “I see it as very similar to other acts
of public service, like trying to fight climate change, and disastrous events that are forthcoming
that are the consequences of a lack of care.” “It’s affecting, literally, pretty much
every person globally. I feel like I need to do something to help.” Here’s the problem.
Human challenge studies have been used before for cholera, typhoid, malaria, influenza and
the common cold. But there’s a big, important difference that sets
covid-19 apart. “For each of those conditions, we do have
effective treatments so that we know, to my knowledge, no one has ever actually ever died
in those studies.” Peter Smith is one of the world’s leading
epidemiologists, and he was one of the first to advocate for the possibility of human challenge
trials, in March of this year. He says, because there’s no covid-19 treatment,
it limits who could participate in a challenge study. “The challenge trial would necessarily be
done in people who were at very low risk of serious disease." In other words, unlike in a typical Phase III trial,
where you’d recruit the widest range of people possible, a Covid-19 challenge trial would produce data
on a much narrower group of young, healthy people. And we don’t know if a vaccine that works
for that group would work for everyone. But the immediate goal is not to get a single
Covid-19 vaccine that offers perfect protection. In the US, to be deemed sufficiently effective,
a vaccine just has to work 50% better than not being vaccinated. An imperfect vaccine could still slow the
spread of the virus. The bigger issue with a covid-19 challenge
study is that there’s no way to guarantee
that it's actually safe for participants. On one hand, the risk of hospitalization for
young people is relatively low. And a study of the outbreak in New York City
suggests the risk of death for young people is as low as 0.01 percent. And advocates for Covid-19 challenge trials
say that’s a level of risk we already accept in similar situations. They point out it’s even lower than the
risk of fatality from donating a kidney. But any risk of harm or death at all would
still set it way apart from any other challenge study. And the long-term risks of Covid-19 for those
who recover are still almost entirely unknown. We emailed nearly all of the institutions
who were reachable who are currently developing a vaccine, to see whether they would consider
human challenge trials. And none would go on the record saying they
are considering it. But we know at least one is seriously considering
it. Developers of the Oxford University vaccine
said that they hope to do challenge trials by the end of the year. In 2016, the World Health Organization’s
stance on challenge studies was that "it would not be ethical or safe” to use them for
a disease that is “virulent,” and has no “existing therapies” to treat it. But in May of this year, they released new
guidelines, saying that they could theoretically be considered if there was confidence that
“the potential benefits of SARS-CoV-2 challenge studies outweigh the risks.” If challenge studies do reduce the time it
takes to get a vaccine, those benefits are clear. If the current leading candidates have quick,
successful Phase III trials, we may never need to do a challenge trial for Covid-19
at all. But if we do, it’ll only be possible because
there are people out there willing to take on this risk. “It’s worth it to me to save the lives
of a countless number of people. “I'm happy to take that small risk to myself…
and make things better for a lot of people.” “Feeling like I was doing nothing, and
just feeling miserable and demoralized, to being like, OK, I have something I can do here.” “I'm a lot less at risk than my parents
and grandparents are, And my moral imperative tells me I have to do it.” Back when researchers
first analyzed the genome of a brand-new coronavirus in Wuhan, its genetic sequence looked like this. Three weeks later, researchers
sequenced the genome of the same virus in a patient in Seattle. It had changed
here and here and here. These changes are happening
all over the world. The coronavirus is mutating. It's changed hundreds of times
since January but researchers are concerned
about one mutation in particular. So my question is, is the coronavirus
becoming more dangerous? I'm Cleo Abram,
and this is "Answered, by Vox." Well there's two ways
one can think about danger. First is that the virus
causes a more severe disease and that doesn't appear to be the case. That's professor of immunology
Michael Farzan. He says the second way that mutations
could make the virus more dangerous is if it becomes more contagious. But before we get there,
here's the good news. My understanding
is that most mutations, in the coronavirus
but also in every virus, don't actually change
how it behaves in our bodies at all, is that right? Yes, most mutations
do not change very much. They actually are
just part of the process of sort of selection
and they go away. A virus, at its most basic,
is just a bunch of genetic material packed into a protein shell. In the case of the coronavirus,
that genetic material is RNA, which is made up of four
nucleotide bases. You might remember the bases
A, C, T, G from DNA. With RNA it's just U, not T. When the virus gets into your body,
its goal is to copy itself which means it needs to produce
more RNA and more proteins. A virus doesn't always make
an exact copy of its RNA. And when it makes a random mistake
in that copying process, that's a mutation. But it's when it's copying the proteins
that things really get interesting. Within that newly copied RNA, each group of three nucleotides,
called a codon, can instruct your cells to produce
one building block of protein called an amino acid. Amino acids all come
with letter names too: D, G, Y, I--
you get the idea. Different amino acid combinations
mean different proteins. But as it turns out... Several different codons encode
for the same amino acid. So, for example,
say the nucleotides "ACU" mutated into "ACG." It's still gonna tell your cell to produce
the exact same amino acid, T. This mutation doesn't change
the protein at all. We call those silent mutations. But even if it's a non-silent mutation,
something that does actually change the amino acid
and changes the protein, that doesn't always necessarily change
how a virus behaves in our bodies, right? That's absolutely right.
In fact, the genetic code is designed
to be conservative. Meaning that changes
that it's likely to make, are likely to have a minor effect
on the function of the proteins they encode for. So in general,
mutations are expected in the course of an epidemic
or pandemic. Most of these mutations
do not have a strong impact on the severity of the virus
or even the transmission of the virus. Of course,
that's not always the case. And for COVID-19, scientists are concerned about
one mutation in particular that might have an impact
on how the virus spreads. The formal name is D614G and that is a code for
the individual amino acids at position 614 of this spike protein
that have changed. I see, so it's the 614th amino acid - and it changes from D to G?
- Correct. Unfortunately D614G
just so happens to be in the part of the genetic sequence that encodes for
the viral spike proteins, those key proteins that the coronavirus
uses to invade cells. The red protein that everybody sees on the surface of
the pictures of the coronavirus, there's more of those on viruses
with that change than on viruses without this change. Dr. Farzan and his team
found that with more spiked proteins, the mutated virus is more likely
to infect cells in culture in their lab. But infecting cells in culture
is really very different from it being more infectious
out in the world between people, right? It is certainly more likely
to infect a cell in culture. What the next step is to demonstrate that our results in cell culture translate to human-to-human transmission. So just to be super clear,
we don't know that this mutation causes the virus to pass more easily
between humans. It does seem to be more transmissible
between cells in a lab and it also seems to become
the dominant form of the virus as it spreads. Where is this mutated version
of the coronavirus now? Actually, everywhere. The first detection of this virus
might have been in Germany in late January and then you would see that virus
sort of grow up in Europe and you would see
a mixture of viruses in the United States but then over time,
you would see more and more virus with this mutation. So what we know right now
is that researchers believe the mutations we're seeing aren't making
cases of the coronavirus more severe. They are concerned that
the D614G gene mutation might make the virus
more contagious. But the research so far
is limited to cells in a lab. And scientists just aren't sure yet how the mutation will affect
contagion rates in the real world. And if you just remember one thing,
it's this: does what we know about this mutation change anything that people
should be doing in their daily lives to prevent
themselves and their loved ones from getting or transmitting coronavirus? No, it's just a reminder that
this is a very transmissible virus. It always has been. It might have gotten
a little bit more transmissible and you should be very careful at every point to make sure
that people are protected. Thanks for watching. That was an episode of Vox's
first ever daily show. It's called Answered it's on a new streaming app called "Quibi" and every day we take on a question 
about what's happening in the world right now from the history of curfews to cicada season. So, if you want to check out more, all you need to do is go to the link in the description  or download the Quibi app on your phone and search for "Vox" or "Answered". I'll be there everyday. this is the british museum it's the world's largest world history museum and it draws millions of visitors every year inside it holds more than eight million cultural and historical artifacts from all over the world which cover 2 million years of human history if you follow the museum's recommended list of don't miss items you'll see its star pieces like this easter island sculpture that's about a thousand years old or this bronze sculpture of the hindu god shiva [Music] but there's a problem hidden in the museum and we can see an example of it along this route out of those 12 pieces nearly half have disputed ownership the british museum claims those pieces belong there on display for the world to see but in recent years many have been fighting to get them back to where they came from the list of disputed museum treasures keeps on growing should cultural artifacts return to their home countries or be left in western museums the subject of intense debate as to who should now own them let's start with some context in the late 1600s the british empire began expanding across several continents it became the largest empire in history controlling about a quarter of the world's land and population during its centuries-long role the empire took precious resources and wealth from countries all over the world including cultural and historical artifacts many of which ended up here in the british museum which was founded in 1753 and kept growing to accommodate all the new pieces in its collection lots of the items in the museum were legally acquired and are completely undisputed like this one a two thousand year old roman base sold to the museum by a duke in 1945. the problem is with the pieces that are disputed like the first item you see as soon as you walk in the rosetta stone taken by british troops from the french in what is now egypt or further in the parthenon sculptures removed from the acropolis in athens by a british lord and sent to the british museum or over here on the floor dedicated to african art the benin bronzes some of the most contentious items in the museum the benin bronzes are kind of hard to categorize because they include such a huge range of items from engraved ivory tusks to brass sculptures to plaques but they were all produced here in the kingdom of benin in present-day nigeria this wealthy and industrious kingdom produced thousands of objects and art pieces starting in the 1500s a lot of the items adorned palace walls and were used for religious rituals but they weren't just decorative there were visual archives of the kingdom in a society that did not develop a written script as we know them that's professor chika okekeyagulu an art historian and professor from nigeria who teaches at princeton university they told their history how they narrated the histories of kingship of the kingdom its political and social life but in 1897 benin would lose thousands of these cultural pieces at the time european colonial powers were expanding south in what was called the scramble for africa they split up the continent into spheres of influence for financial exploitation all these pink areas were the british ones benin over here was in britain's sphere of influence but the kingdom didn't comply with britain's trade demands and in january of 1897 it led to what was called the benin disaster where benin guards killed seven british emissaries plus their many guides and servants in response 1 200 british troops embarked on a mission called the benin punitive expedition the british wanted revenge but the mission was about more than just that there were reports of these vast treasures in the palace of the king of the name and that if they could retrieve these treasures sales from it could offset the cost of the invasion this was all well planned and so the punitive expedition in other words was also an economic enterprise the british soldiers armed with machine guns conquered the city and burned it to the ground but not before carefully taking thousands of artifacts they piled them up neatly photographed them and even labeled them loot this photo taken at the benin palace after the raid shows soldiers with the dismantled plaques that were brought to the british museum and sold all over the world and after hundreds of years the once prosperous kingdom was gone the region fell under full british colonial control until 1960 when nigeria including the city of benin gained independence but even though they were finally free their historical artifacts were still spread all over the world locked up in western institutions like the leipzig museum of ethnology in germany and the que brandle museum in paris and of course the british museum [Music] 1995 in london that was my first time of seeing an original uh ancient benin artwork was yes at the british museum being in the presence of these magnificent objects and knowing that i had to travel all the way from nigeria to see for the first time in these objects it was a mixture of pride in the achievement of these ancient artists and and mixed with a sense of loss at what could have been if i only had to travel a few hundred miles but at this point you're limited to those uh privileged like me who could get a visa to travel all the way from nigeria to england um to encounter these objects most nigerians will never see them [Music] in march 2000 benin's royal family tried to change that they officially requested all cultural property illegally taken be returned to the rightful owner but for the most part the british museum has ignored any requests the museum is restricted by a government act that prevents it from returning objects but it has also made its stance clear in july of 2020 the british museum told vox we don't restitute but we are absolutely committed to lending as widely as possible including to nigeria the museum's foundational value resides in its breadth scale complexity and unity and as such is a true library of the world chica doesn't see it that way the british museum still behaves like a colonial museum you cannot claim to be an encyclopedic collector of stolen objects but some are starting to reckon with this history in 2014 the grandson of this british soldier from the 1897 benin punitive expedition returned these two items he had inherited to the benin royal family and in 2007 the benin dialogue group was formed western museums that hold the bronzes and nigerian government representatives have been discussing potential solutions ever since but as of today none of the bronzes have been returned but this is just one story this legacy is bigger than the bannon bronzes there are hundreds of contested items in the british museum with their own rich histories and with original owners trying to retrieve them but the problem is even bigger than the british museum it's a legacy of centuries of colonial power that repeats itself again and again with different artifacts in different museums because these requests aren't just about items they are also about cultural and historical identity and who gets to own it this is a long term project it may last beyond my own lifetime but the point is that it's now to start that process we cannot wait any longer for a next generation to even begin the necessary task and project of cultural [Music] reconstitution [Music] you The Cape Fear River runs down the eastern
half of North Carolina, passing by major cities before emptying into
the Atlantic Ocean. Right here, at the bottom of the river basin,
is Wilmington – a city known for its iconic riverwalk. That’s where you’ll find this sign, describing
the importance of this river to the region: “It flows southeast for 200 miles… has
the largest basin in the state, covering more than 9,000 square miles… [and] drainage
from 4 cities and runoff from factories, farms and homesites in 29 counties flows into it.” This river system provides water to the entire
basin and the Cape Fear is one of Wilmington's main sources of drinking water. A nationwide test of tap water recently ranked
both Wilmington and neighboring Brunswick County in the top five for high levels of
PFAS contamination — a group of chemicals found in many everyday products. Anything that has water repellant in it, stain resistance in it, fire retardant, popcorn bags ... popcorn bags and dental floss and pizza boxes... ... pizza boxes, rain gear, sleeping bags, food containers... ...food containers and makeup. It's everywhere. Tracing the sources of chemicals in this North
Carolina river tells you exactly how the water got so contaminated... 
… and it also tells you how chemical companies are getting away with polluting our drinking
water — not just here, but throughout the United States. This happens to be ground zero for these chemicals
being discharged into the water and the air. 99% of all Americans have this in their blood. Yet another chemical compound found in the Cape Fear River... Chemicals used in consumer products like firefighting foam and nonstick products... ... could lead to cancer... ... prompting concerns about the drinking water in Southeastern North Carolina. It has a lot of different names. But it's basically what they call “forever chemicals”
— they're long-chain fluorocarbons designed to withstand any kind of breakdown. Forever chemicals, or “PFAS”, have strong
molecular bonds that repel oil, water, and stains and can withstand extreme heat, making
them almost indestructible. It was actually invented to coat tanks and
military instruments and weaponry to protect it from the elements. Chemical companies like DuPont have been making PFAS since the 1930s. All around us are the product of modern chemistry... Even burnt food won't stick to Teflon... Choose a DuPont nonstick... There's nothing like DuPont. Now, there are nearly 5,000 different forever
chemicals, and “PFAS” is an umbrella term for all of them. One of them, PFOA, was used by DuPont to make
Teflon. Also known as C8, it was the subject of a
2001 class action lawsuit claiming DuPont contaminated drinking water in Ohio and West
Virginia. PFAS chemicals accumulate in our bodies and
that build-up can cause health problems long afterwards. You can't see it, and you can't taste it,
and the kinds of impacts that occur with it take some time to develop. As a result of the lawsuit, DuPont funded
a science panel that, in 2012, found probable links between C8 exposure and health problems
like cancer after testing almost 70,000 people in the area. Five years later, DuPont settled without admitting
any wrongdoing, despite evidence that they had known for decades about the harmful effects
of PFAS. They had also agreed to stop making C8. But by then, PFAS contamination had cropped
up elsewhere. The Cape Fear River Basin begins here, near
the city of Greensboro. In water samples taken from lakes in the area,
researchers found a forever chemical called “PFOS”. It was coming from here: The Piedmont Triad
International Airport. PFOS is in the firefighting foam...
… used during training exercises conducted at airports like the one here.  
… and that runoff flows into the upper river basin. Farther down on the Haw River—a tributary
of the Cape Fear— forever chemicals are coming from a different source. The people that do know about it, they don’t
drink the water. There’s people considering leaving because
they don’t feel like their water is safe. Emily Sutton is a conservationist who tests
the Haw River for contamination. This spot in the Haw is directly impacted
by the PFAS load that's coming directly from Burlington's East Wastewater Treatment
Plant. It's about 300 yards upstream. Filters at the treatment facility are not
designed to remove PFAS. So wastewater coming from nearby industries
arrives and leaves containing similar levels of PFAS contamination. Their effluent from the wastewater treatment
plant comes directly into the Haw. We know that the city of Burlington's wastewater
treatment plant is the main source for PFAS, but they're not necessarily creating the PFAS. It's all of these different industries that
are sending their waste to that wastewater treatment plant. A few miles downriver,a water sample taken
from beneath a bridge crossing the Haw showed high levels of PFAS. And as the river flows down towards Wilmington,
chemicals from other sources accumulate and push PFAS levels even higher near the city. But it's not just the levels that start to
change. If you look at the kinds of PFAS in that sample,
you'll notice something else in the water. A newer type of forever chemical called GenX. It came from here, at the Chemours chemical
plant, located between the two sample sites. The plant released wastewater into the Cape
Fear River containing GenX, and also emitted the chemical into the air — where it settles
on nearby land and entered the river as runoff. 70 miles downstream, an intake pipe pulls
in river water and supplies it to Wilmington. The discovery of GenX in Wilmington’s drinking
water was front page news in 2017… When we woke up and saw the Star News article
that Gen X was in our water, a group of citizens, we all got together around a dining room table
and realized that we needed to address this head on. Two years later Emily Donovan submitted water
samples from Wilmington and Brunswick County to a nationwide study measuring PFAS levels
in tap water. Her Brunswick County sample came from Belville Elementary School. I went back to my kids school, because I was
curious to see what they were still drinking. That sample was the highest reported in that
study. And that was devastating. I mean, nobody wants to be at the top of that
list. I think back now to maybe what we might have
accidentally been exposed to, while we were on the banks of the Cape Fear River letting
our kids play. I mean, I've got photos, and I go back and
look at them, and I'm thinking to myself: “What were we wading in?" Millions of people depend on The Cape Fear
River Basin for their water, but throughout the country other Americans are drinking forever
chemicals. What you think is happening in North Carolina
is staying there. It's just not the case. It's everywhere. Communities in Michigan, New York, California,
Pennsylvania and elsewhere have discovered PFAS in their drinking water. This map shows PFAS contamination across the
US. And many communities have yet to be tested. The answer here is not to put the burden of
safety on the homeowner, on the consumer. You have to stop these pollutants at the source. The real problem is at the regulatory level. In America, it falls to us, the ordinary people,
to prove that these chemicals are toxic, before the chemical is regulated by our government. That is simply backwards. There's something that's called the precautionary
principle — and we don't really apply it here in the United States — but what it
says is: before you can bring a chemical to the market, you've got to prove that that
chemical is safe for the consumer. We have the inverse of that. I've been arguing for some time about our
country and our state adopting a precautionary principle, which means don't put anything
in the air or water that you think is not safe. Right now, companies can sell products without
declaring all the chemicals they contain, even if they're harmful for consumers. So we're left with tens of thousands of chemicals
on the market that we have no idea whether they're safe for consumption or not. But with a precautionary principle in place,
the government adds a preventive check — by requiring companies to prove the safety of
the chemicals in their products before they reach consumers. If I knew that I could potentially get cancer
by having stain resistant carpet, then I would make a better decision for myself. But I'm not even given that choice right now. And knowing which chemicals are toxic would
allow the government to look for those contaminants in the air and water, while also requiring
companies to filter chemicals out of their wastewater North Carolina is the perfect example where
there is nothing. When we don’t have any information, we don’t
know how to assess them and address them, so they don't get talked about. Without a precautionary principle, chemicals
like GenX can go unchecked. And even when companies get caught for one
toxic chemical, they can replace it with another. When DuPont agreed to stop making the Teflon
PFAS “C8” by 2015, C8 blood levels dropped for the average American. But in the meantime, DuPont introduced a new
chemical in 2009 to replace C8, and in 2015 spun off a new company — Chemours
— to produce it in North Carolina. That new chemical was GenX. It's just this game of Whac-A-Mole, that one
gets regulated, and you have a new one pop up. As forever chemicals become a nationwide conversation, some states are starting to respond. Washington state, San Francisco, and Maine
have banned PFAS in food packaging, and many states have proposed prohibited firefighting
foam containing PFAS, including North Carolina. But a larger effort to eliminate PFAS chemicals
is still pending. There is still no legal requirement to filter
PFAS from tap water, so more than 100 million Americans are likely drinking water contaminated
with PFAS. I think protecting public water and public
health isn't really controversial. But how we get there, as you know, industry's
got a lot at stake here. It stays out there forever, and it accumulates
in us. So we all have a stake in this. Before the 1970s, people looking for jobs
in the US would open up the “help wanted” section of their newspapers and see this.
One set of opportunities for women, and one for men. 
We don’t see job ads like this anymore, largely because it’s been illegal for decades. 
But also because advertising is now much more targeted. Instead of one classified page,
we have our social feeds, each crafted by algorithms for an audience of one. 
So when this ad went out on Facebook and reached a group of people that was 91% men, those
outside that audience probably didn’t know it existed.
And the same goes for this ad, which Facebook displayed for an audience that was 88% women. 
That disparity wasn’t because the advertiser told Facebook to target users by gender. I
know that because this is the advertiser. My name is Muhammad Ali, I go by Ali.
He’s part of a research group at Northeastern University that has spent thousands of dollars
buying ads to try to figure out who Facebook will show them to, and why. If an ad shows up on your Facebook or Instagram feed, there are two parties that decided you
should see it. First, the advertiser included you in their target audience, either by uploading
a list of specific email addresses, phone numbers, or previous visitors to their website,
Or by choosing from thousands of attributes that facebook offers, like Californians, under
40 who like basketball. Second, Facebook decided who in that pool
would actually see the ad through an automated calculation based in part on what they know
about you. It’s that second step that Ali and his colleagues
wanted to study. If they uploaded a list of randomly-generated American phone numbers,
and then turned off all the targeting except adults in the US, who would Facebook deliver
the ad to? So you set up a bodybuilding ad and a cosmetic
ad and said we don't wanna target this any further than the random phone numbers that
we put in. Right? And then what were your results? When Facebook started telling you
who was actually seeing this ad, what did they tell you?
So, yeah, immediately, like we sort of expected that the body building ad was more relevant
to men. And that's exactly what we saw. I think somewhere close to 80 to 85 percent
of the audience was just men. And the link that we advertise to elle.com
about the makeup kits that you could buy that went primarily to women.
They were able to collect the results of the ads over time so they knew the gender skew
was there early on, suggesting that it wasn’t introduced by user behavior.
Their experiment showed that Facebook automatically analyzes the content of an ad to compare it
to a user’s interests. How do they know what the user cares about?
Well they have data from your profile and everything you and your friends have done
on facebook and instagram, as well as websites you’ve visited, things you’ve purchased,
apps you’ve installed, your location, your devices, and more. 
All this information fuels automated predictions about whether you are likely to engage with
any given ad. And that prediction influences whether the ad shows up on your feed at all.
You can get a sense of what Facebook thinks you’re interested in on your Ad Preferences
page. Or your Ad Interests on instagram. Notice how some of these interests could correlate
with your gender, your age, your income level, or your race.
And then you wanted to look at race. But it sounds like Facebook does not give you data
on the race of people that are seeing an ad. So how do you study that?
That was one of the harder things to do. We thought we could use a different custom audience.
Instead of random phone numbers. We could take voter records from North Carolina, which
are public, and they have the race of the person registered as well.
Then they bought ads for Rolling Stone articles that were either about country albums, hip
hop albums, or general top 30 albums and targeted an equal number of white and Black users.
And it was surprising how much the skew to the Black users was for the hip bag versus
the country and the top 30. Facebook’s algorithms are trained to not
show people ads they won’t be interested in. 
But there may be cases when we’re not comfortable with Facebook making those predictions.
One study by Ali and his colleagues investigated how this plays out with political ads and
found that despite targeting the same audiences, using the same goal, bidding strategy, and
budget, an ad pointing to Bernie Sanders’ site went
to mostly Democrats and an ad for Trump went to mostly Republicans. 
It cost 1.5 times more for an ad linking to Sanders’ site to reach the same number of
conservatives as a Trump ad. Because Facebook subsidizes what they consider to be “relevant”
ads. And then we move on to housing and employment
ads, and these are considered sort of a different category. Why is that? Because these are legally protected. For example, housing ads are protected by the Fair Housing Act. An advertiser cannot discriminate in those cases. At that point, you're excluding someone
from a life opportunity which becomes much more problematic.
Because it's actually a legal violation that's at stake? Possibly?
Possibly. Facebook allows advertisers to exclude certain
ethnic groups from seeing an ad. Dozens of employers placing job ads on Facebook
that discriminate against older workers. Facebook is revamping its targeted advertisements
after settling lawsuits with civil rights groups.
In response to criticism and several lawsuits, Facebook has been removing some of the targeting
attributes that an advertiser could use to discriminate against demographic groups, and
is paying special attention to ads related to employment, housing, and credit. 
But the role that the ad delivery system plays remains unsolved.
When Ali and his team tested out ads for job openings in different industries, without
targeting any demographic groups, facebook generated some skewed audiences. The lumber
industry post went to mostly men. The cleaner post went to mostly women.
The taxi driver ads that we ran, basically seventy five percent of the audience was black
users. These results don’t mean that Facebook is
directly basing their predictions on our gender or race. Instead it looks for patterns in
all of our user data. Maybe people who shop at a men’s clothing
site and like joe rogan are less likely to click on an ad for a job teaching preschool.
Maybe your data is similar to theirs and so they predict you also wont click on that ad
either. Instead they show it to someone who likes
skincare and feminism. And if that person clicks, the system gets a new data point affirming
its prediction. A complaint filed by the US Department of
Housing and Urban Development states that this process “inevitably recreates groupings
defined by their protected class.” They said that Facebook’s ad delivery system
“prevents advertisers who want to reach a broad audience of users from doing so.”
According to a report by ProPublica, a construction workers’ union wanted to recruit diverse
candidates for its apprenticeship program, so they created ads featuring women, but found
that Facebook still showed its them to mostly men. And wouldn't any ad targeting system with sort of sufficiently rich data about people
have this kind of effect? Well, we believe so, because a lot of these
things, for example, custom audiences on all of these targeting features --they’re industry
practice. They that also in Google's or Linkedin’s or Twitter's advertising platform. So the general ethos of how these systems work is the same. It’s a question that the industry as a whole hasn’t answered: When exactly is it unacceptable
for an algorithm to decide that relevant audiences are segregated ones? 40 miles east of Los Angeles, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains,
is a pipe. Its job is to funnel water from this dam into this channel, which borders Los Angeles County. This pipe might look like any other scattered across the West, but in the world of skateboarding, it’s a mecca. One time my dad drove my friend and I there, but we didn't really know where we were going. And we finally came to a spot that looked like it was probably connected to Mount Baldy, and we were told that we had to leave. If you don’t know, that’s Tony Hawk, one of the greatest skaters of all time. This year he finally made it to the Baldy
Pipe. It's a mission. You gotta hike around. You've got to try to dodge anyone you see, that might try to kick you out, because there's plenty of patrols there. And then there's this legendary gap that sort of rite of passage. You have to jump over it if you're going to be a true Baldy participant. I jumped the gap for the record. The Baldy Pipe is one of hundreds, if not thousands of legendary skate spots around the world that are hidden in plain sight. This is the story of how places like this, became this. It’s America’s newest sport, and it’s
called skateboarding. In 1965, skateboarding was a full blown fad. The fad raced from west coast to east, and soon there was skateboarding in Central
Park. The first big wave of skateboarding is as
a surf related activity, in California, but also in Florida, also in Australia. There’s a great similarity between the sport
of skateboarding and sport of surfing. And it's basically people pretending they're on an ocean wave. Iain Borden is an architectural historian, and author of this incredible deep dive into skateboarding history. The big milestone is probably the introduction of polyurethane wheels to skateboarding in the early 1970s. In the 1960s, skateboard wheels were typically made from metal or clay, which limited the breadth of maneuvers skateboarders could do. The grip provided by polyurethane wheels revitalized the sport and opened it up to more adventurous terrain. By the mid 1970s, skateboarders were constantly on the lookout for bigger wave-like structures. And empty pools, drainage ditches, and gigantic pipes quickly became skateboarding’s most coveted spots. The moment you find bits of architecture that look a bit like an ocean wave, the architecture changes, that bit of asphalt is no longer a bit of
asphalt, And skaters start to do things that you couldn't do on a surfboard. They do no-handed airs, they do invert airs, they do rock ‘n’ rolls. So there's a cultural shift there as well. Los Angeles skaters found a small reservoir in the Hollywood
Hills they called the Viper Bowl. And Wallows, a ditch that cut through a neighborhood on the Island of O‘ahu in Hawaii. It was pretty notorious because a lot of the 70s skaters rode it when they went to Hawaii. Or, Hawaiian skaters were riding it. And, it's this drainage ditch that just keeps going down different shelves. There's no drainage ditch really like that. Paved school yards situated in the Los Angeles hillsides became a proving ground for young skaters too. The banks at Kenter Canyon Elementary, right here, were frequented by skaters since
the 1960s, and by the 1970s, it was one of the most widely seen backdrops for skate photographs and videos. One of the things the skaters found is that in various places, particularly out
in the Arizona desert, they'd find these great big full pipes. Most of these pipes were from the Central
Arizona Project, a massive water management initiative that began construction in 1973. For skateboarders, it was paradise. And then there was the Baldy Pipe, which skaters first discovered in 1969. Images of skaters riding its 15-foot cavernous
walls turned this pipe into a skateboarding landmark. It wasn’t just photos, the Baldy pipe was also featured in skate films, which were rising
in popularity. Just to get there you have to cross a 20 foot deep pit on an old log. So video becomes very important in this. It's how something exists in history as
told in video. Around 1976 investors saw a huge opportunity to build parks that mimicked the ever growing
list of sought after skate spots, and started building them around California, the country, and the world. This may seem an odd place to be, the middle of an empty swimming pool, but this isn’t just your ordinary everyday
swimming pool. This is the infamous Dog Bowl, a skateboarder's paradise located in Marina Del Rey, California. Skatopia, one of the most popular parks in
California, is big business. There were full pipes, and pools, and winding concrete slalom courses that mimicked drainage ditches. But it wasn’t perfect. Soon after these huge skateparks were built, the insurance needed to run them skyrocketed. And then skateboarding crashes. After skatepark numbers dwindled, skateboarders were back to square one. In the eighties, it's mainly much more of
a fewer number of die hard skaters. They continued to discover more and more empty
pools, like this one in the middle of the California
desert. That used to be an old nudist camp, and that was the pool that they had. And somehow, whenever the nudist camp went
bust, I don’t know how else to say it. the pool was skateable and some people found
it. It was discovered around 1982, and was rightly dubbed the Nude Bowl. In the Arizona Desert another incredible location was added to the list: The Love Bowl. It was actually two giant white backdrops from an abandoned TV studio. But skateboarders also did something else. People started to build their own ramps. They started to build ramps with walls that emulated pools, but with flat sections. And that became the half pipe. 1987’s The Search for Animal Chin is a skate
film that illustrates the natural progression from ditches and pools to half-pipes. In the opening scene the skateboarders take
on Wallows, that Hawaii drainage ditch. Yes, that’s a young Tony Hawk. And on one of the very last scenes, I hung up going down one of the shelves, and basically sprawled onto the flat and got chewed up on my elbow, and I got a staph infection. So the rest of my Hawaiian vacation was spent in a hotel on antibiotics. Later on in the film they end up at a motel pool in Southern California. Uh do you have a pool? Yeah, we have a pool, but you know it hasn’t been filled in two years. Do you mind if we check it out? But, in the final scene, they discover this ridiculously large wooden half pipe in the middle of nowhere. It was especially made for the film, But a replica today exists today at a skate facility north of LA. Wheels of Fire is another skate film from
the late 80s, and it featured both the Nude Bowl and the
Love Bowl, but the most lasting scenes of this video were of Natas Kaupas, a pioneer of street skating, transforming his neighborhood into a skatepark. All of the footage of Natas in that video
was groundbreaking. People thought, wow, you can skate curbs like
that? You can skate benches, you can skate fire hydrants, like the whole world is skate park now. So suddenly you didn't need to be in California or in the Arizona desert or in, you know, or in Florida anymore. You could be anywhere. Which brings us to this fire hydrant in Venice,
CA. In 1989, Natas Kaupas did a 720 degree spin
on it. It's just a perfect scenario, too, because there’s a pole next to it, so he kind of can push off and start himself
spinning. And also brace himself as he comes off. Doesn't make it any easier. The move became so iconic the trick is now called the Natas Spin. If you look at skateboard magazine covers from the 60s through the 90s one thing will quickly become clear - Skateboarding’s biggest spots went from pools and pipes, to street spots. Namely giant stair sets and ledges. And there’s one plaza that was the center
of it all: The Embarcadero in San Francisco. It was a famous skate spot because of all
the surroundings. There were all these ledges and different features that you could skate
around. And that was the hub of skating in San Francisco. And there was one specific spot that became notorious because another pioneering street skater, Mark Gonzales, ollied it. It’s no longer there, but here it is captured in a Thrasher Magazine
feature called Spot Check. The gap itself was something that you wouldn't have seen necessarily as a challenge. I think a lot of people that came there never
even realized the potential until Gonz got there
and jumped it. This footage shows just how big the gap was and the only way to cross was gaining a massive amount of speed, launching into the air, and somehow keeping the skateboard right under
your feet. Rightfully, the spot was dubbed the Gonz Gap, and quickly became a hub for serious skaters. It's both a place and a moment and a skater. It’s when Gonz did that particular move. Yeah, you don’t mess around with the Gonz
Gap. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the 60 years of skateboarding, it’s that school campuses often have the
best skate spots. In Video Days, 1991’s milestone skate film directed by a young Spike Jonze, Mark Gonzales grinds a bench at Kenter Canyon
Elementary And in another scene, ollies a short but incredibly deep set of
four ledges at Wallenberg high school in San Francisco. Over the years, skaters have
proved their worth by landing more and more complicated tricks at Wallenberg. Another famous school spot is Hollywood High
16 stair, which is the most geotagged location on
campus. And then there’s El Toro, a 20-stair set that has tormented skaters since Transworld Skateboarding published this
image of Heath Kirchart board-sliding the center rail. The rail no longer exists, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from hurling themselves down the empty stairs. But, perhaps the most iconic location is one that’s no longer there: The Carlsbad Gap. It’s a parking lot now, but scroll back a few years on Google Earth
and you’ll see it. There is a set of stairs that goes from one level to another at the school yard. And then next to it was a patch of grass, and the grass went down at the same angle
as the stairs, for the most part, but it was actually a little
bit less steep. And then there was just a wall drop off at
the end. If you're jumping the gap, you have to clear
this higher part, and that means you have to go much faster, and go actually much further. If you could do a trick down the stairs, that's one thing. If you do a trick over the gap? That's a totally different thing. I’ve watched and rewatched skaters attempt
to land tricks at these spots over and over and
over, and I realized that the truly exhilarating
moments happen only after the skateboarder has failed 100 hundred times. When Chris Cole did a 360 flip at Wallenberg, it was incredibly impressive. But the footage that became even more iconic is a compilation of him crashing and again. So when somebody in a video part, you see them, you know, failing five times, 10 times, 15 times, 20 times, and then finally getting it, what matters is as much all of the failed
attempts as the final thing. One of the biggest moments in skateboarding
history was a fail. It happened when Jamie Thomas broke his board trying to land an 18 foot drop at a high school in southern California. He didn’t land it, but the spot earned the
name The Leap of Faith. It's places where people have invested blood, sweat and tears, literally. People can get extremely impassioned
about them and feel a sense of loss when they go. And I think what skateboarding's
always been good at, is it tests our idea of what we want public
space to be. Whether it’s at the Southbank in London, the ledges at the Museum of Contemporary Art
in Barcelona, The Warschauer benches in Berlin, or a 25-foot stair set in Lyon... Skateboarders, I think, are a constant reminder that our cities can be creative and rich places. If you Google “best slo-mo scene ever,”
you’ll find the Matrix “lobby scene” over and over again. It is actually a 3 minute 13 second tapestry
of 74 apparently normal clips and just 35 slow motion ones. Yet this is what we remember. Slow motion animates sports, and sells iPhones,
and is so powerful in movies it can make you forget everything else in the scene. How does it work? To demonstrate the principles of slow motion,
we actually hired a world-class juggler to show how a lot of the fundamental ideas — OK,
you know, it throws me off when you pan up to my face, it’s not supposed to be in the
shot. So... Though this juggling is filmed with a digital
camera, the fundamental principles are the same as they were with film. This 1 second clip is shot and played at about
24 frames a second - 24 pictures — today’s standard speed for movies. Now let’s say we film this at 60 pictures
a second. If we play both clips back at a rate of 24
frames a second, the 60 pictures take 2 and a half times longer to play than just 24 pictures
- that is slow motion. This comes with some technical hurdles — especially
when it comes to lighting. Imagine a door opening and closing to let
light in. If I take 24 pictures a second, the camera
door - the shutter — will be open for about 1/50th of a second to let in the right amount
of light for a nice amount of blur in the motion. Not enough blur, and things look disorientingly
sharp. Too much, and they look fuzzy. 1/50th is just right for what we think of
as a cinematic look. If I take 60 pictures a second, see how everything
is darker? That's because I need to use a higher shutter
speed when I'm shooting more frames per second — the door is slamming open and shut more
quickly. There’s less time for light to hit the camera’s
sensor (or the film). To lighten it, I have to crank the light or
use more sensitive film (or in a digital camera, use a higher ISO setting). But once all this is done, you can control
not just how your picture looks — but how it moves. Because these rules are so important to capturing
any image, the potential to shape motion was obvious from the beginning of photography. And just like the slow mo tennis balls ball,
early pioneers took lots of pictures quickly to slow down time - a process that transitioned
to actually filming motion. See this crank? Early film was often - though not always - fed
through the camera manually to control the speed of a picture. Cameramen used this to their cinematic advantage. They often overcranked — cranked too fast
— to put more film frames in front of the camera in a shorter period of time. That would record slower motion. Or they undercranked — crank too slow — to
make things look faster. Movie projectors could be messed with too. This 1897 film, Charity Ball, looks dreamy
and slo mo when played at, say, 22 frames a second, but realistic when played at 40
frames a second. Setting rules for movies required the one
thing that was missing. Sound. If I bounce this ball on a tennis racket,
the speed of the audio and video have to be the same. Otherwise, it falls out of sync. This idea became increasingly important in
the late 1920s, when films with sound — called “talkies” — became the norm. They didn’t work if film recording and playback
speeds were all over the place — which they were. In 1927, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers
noted that the sound recording device “must be perfectly synchronized with the camera.” The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, a 1927
movie that centered on a blackface performer, was made thanks to a company called Vitaphone. Their technology synced recording speed using
a mechanical engine, not a person at a crank. The Motion Picture Engineers followed Vitaphone’s
standard and settled on 24 frames a second. Confusion about playback and film speed was
over. With a standard established, people were free
to experiment. Slow motion had already been used in science
and sports, like newsreel footage of baseball player Babe Ruth. Or in filmmaker (and Nazi propogandist) Leni
Riefenstahl’s Olympics documentary. Beyond sports, there was some slow-mo dabbling
in Hollywood, like the dreamlike hunting party photography in this 1932 musical. In 1938, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced
in slow-mo too. But these slow motion scenes were rare. French Filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein
played with Slo mo in the Fall of the House of Usher. He wrote:
“Slow motion really brings a new set of possibilities to dramaturgy. Its ability to dismantle feelings, to enhance
drama...surpasses all the other known tragic modes.” 1930’s French film Zero for Conduct featured
a slow motion scene after a pillow fight — and it’s like a Wes Anderson epilogue. Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus used slow motion
to add drama to a dreamy sequence. Akira Kurosawa, whose groundbreaking hit Seven
Samurai featured slow-mo, helped influence Hollywood to add slow-mo to action and narrative. No longer just for sports, musicals, or outsider
“artistes,” slow motion appeared at more than 100 frames a second in the final shooting
in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde. By the ‘80s it was suitable for everything
from blood rushing from an elevator to the end of a glorious race. Slow motion was an established trope by the
1990s - one with rules, and references, and expectations. “Ow!” Even today, some tech obstacles exist. Film with your iphone in regular motion and
slow motion. Notice that noise? That’s the phone compensating for less light
- by making the sensor more sensitive, raising the ISO. But for movies, with speeds at thousands of
frames a second possible, and VFX augmentation common, slow motion has fully become an aesthetic
storytelling tool rather than a technological hurdle. It was obvious from the beginning of photography
— but now slow motion has developed a full range of meanings and uses. It can make 3:13 seconds iconic. A lobby run becomes a study in momentum. A bus stop becomes a reunion. Reckless driving becomes flight. And bad juggling becomes a story of time and
light. So while I was wrapping up this slow motion
video, I got to wear these Raycon earbuds at my computer — and they are the sponsor
of this video. Do you know how long it takes to pick music? Raycon earbuds last for 6 hours of playtime
- which I can definitely use. “No.” (Terrible music.) It’s got the detail I need — they sound
just as good as other premium earbuds. They gave me this pair, but the price actually
starts at half the price of other buds. And because I work from home, it means I can
listen without disturbing the napping baby over there. ARE YOU ASLEEP? See? (Baby cries.) These Everyday E25 Earbuds are the best yet
— it’s Bluetooth, it’s bassy, and the fit is great. And it’s pretty discrete too, which is good,
since it means nobody can hear the music I’m listening to when I’m doing Fake Slow Motion
around the house. So click that link and check out buyraycon.com/vox. You’ll get 15% off. You’ll have new earbuds that look and sound
great, whether you’re trying to finish a video or listen to a podcast while you’re
juggling. Raycon doesn’t directly impact our editorial,
but their support helps make videos like this possible. On June 26 2020 the US House of Representatives voted to do something it had never done before it passed a bill to create the 51st state by giving the US Capitol washington DC statehood members of the House of Representatives each represent between 500,000 and a million Americans DC 700,000 residents are represented by this woman eleanor holmes norton but she couldn't vote on the statehood bill because she's different from other members she can speak on the floor and introduce bills but she can actually vote americans and territories like Puerto Rico and Guam are also represented in Congress by delegates who can't vote but Americans in these places don't pay federal taxes to the US government DC residents do in fact in DC the average person pays more in federal taxes than in any state and they're not happy about it it's why DC's license plates say taxation without representation precedent Trump has promised to block Washington DC from becoming the state so that House vote was mostly symbolic but Washington DC's residents are clear on what they want so will DC ever actually become a state and should it in the US the federal government is not supposed to be based in a state the Constitution says it should be in a neutral federal district what today is called the District of Columbia but since the founding of the country the district has grown into a major city for most of its existence as a city the district has been under the control of the United States Congress starting in the 1960s Congress made some concessions to DC's calls for representation it granted them electoral college votes for presidential elections a non-voting member in Congress and finally the right to elect their own local government but because Congress still completely controls their budget they often undermine DC's local government which is another major reason DC residents want statehood that's understating it a little in the 2016 election Trump only got a whopping 4% of the vote in DC Congress has kept DC from using their local tax dollars on things like abortion services or needle exchange programs to reduce hiv/aids they've tried to undercut DC's gun laws and same-sex marriage benefits and they stopped the city from legalizing marijuana as a prop Holmes Norton's plan would turn most of the District of Columbia into a new state called the Douglas Commonwealth there would still be a federal district around the actual government buildings but the remaining 66 square miles of neighborhoods would become the newest smallest state but it would still have a larger population than two states and would be about the same size as for others so what's the holdup well representatives from other states have lots of reasons founding fathers did not intend for Washington DC to be a state Washington DC is a city not a state there is no manufacturing there is no mining or law but it's not a coincidence that every representative speaking out against statehood here is Republicans statehood would give DC and most likely the Democratic Party one more vote in the House of Representatives and two more votes in the Senate which means the actual obstacle to statehood is politics in the decades after the US was founded new states were regularly added and without much issue until 1818 when Missouri wanted to become a new state at that time power in Congress was evenly balanced between states that allowed slavery and states that didn't Missouri which would become a slave state would tip that balance which representatives of the free states didn't want so Congress came up with a compromise Missouri would be added at the same time as Maine a free state a pair to keep the political balance after that states were mostly added in pairs Arkansas a slave state with Michigan a free state Florida a slave state with Iowa a free state Texas a slave state with Wisconsin a free state and that system has also been used to keep the balance between the political parties most recently in 1959 with the addition of Hawaii which leaned Republican at the time and Alaska which leaned Democratic right now Democrats control one house of Congress but Republicans control the other one as well as the presidency and as long as that's the case DC is unlikely to become a state on its own it would certainly be easier if there were some ready jurisdiction to be made to stay that was a Republican jurisdiction the last time the House voted on DC statehood was in 1993 when Democrats had an even bigger majority than they do today the bill still failed with more than a hundred Democrats voting No 2020 is turning out to be different rotavirus begins to take a toll on the US economy more than six million Americans filed jobless claims in March as millions lost their jobs Congress passed a coronavirus relief bill giving each state at least a billion dollars but DC which is usually treated like a state and most congressional funding was instead treated as a u.s. territory and got less than half that being treated like a territory is shocking it's infuriating in June as protests against police violence spread across the country the National Guard patrolled parts of the city that kind of occupation would be illegal in every state but not DC there shouldn't be troops from other states in Washington DC in the last several days demonstrate that our fight for statehood is also about our right to autonomy it's time for statehood to come to Washington DC we've seen in very painful and frankly violent terms what the lack of statehood can bring to the residents of the District of Columbia right now the people in charge of the federal government opposed DC statehood but it only takes one election to change that [Music] Americans in the DC fire department his father Richard Holmes was a runaway slave from Virginia he walked to freedom but he he didn't walk to equality so I figure I'm picking up where he left off he got us to freedom he got the homes family to freedom now I've got to get the homes family and all my constituents to equality [Music] sea-level rise will be one of the greatest challenges we face in the next century how high seas rise and how soon has a lot to do with what happens here Antarctica holds the largest chunk of ice on earth its western portion alone contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 3 metres and it's in big trouble largely because of this the Thwaites glacier its face towers as high as a six story building and extends for 120 kilometers across the coast of West Antarctica making it about the size of Florida it's a humongous glacier that reaches right into the heart of West Antarctica and that's a major problem because in the past couple decades it's become increasingly clear the threats glacier is falling apart [Music] these are portraits of a vast rugged treacherous continent which has challenged man since first he could sail beyond the limits of his horizon and Arctica this is the Antarctic Ice Sheet it's thickest in the Middle where years and years of snowfall compacts into ice as the middle builds it pushes ice out towards the oceans for your glaciers and the part of a glacier that floats on water is its ice shelf today manmade climate change is warming the air and water around Antarctica causing each side of the ice sheet to melt but at very different speeds the eastern ice sheet lies mostly on high ground above sea level which keeps it relatively safe from warm ocean water that means it's melting slowly and remains relatively stable but Western arctica is different most of it lies below sea level that means as it thins water can undermine it possibly kick-starting a more rapid collapse it's why West Antarctica is considered the most important piece of ice in the world when it comes to climate change here's another view of the bedrock underneath Antarctica's ice sheet the green yellow and red parts are land above sea level like in East Antarctica but these blue areas in western Arctic are are all below sea level this area where the bedrock slopes continuously for more than a mile down and deep into the center of Antarctica is the fight's glacier and it could be the most dangerous clasher in the world surrounded by three mighty oceans but these are as much a part of Antarctica as her highest mom right now waits is barely hanging on in the past 30 years the front of Thwaites ice shelf has lost a lot of ice causing it to retreat backwards with a smaller ice shelf to slow the flow of ice the flow of the glacier speeds up but the bigger problem is the closures grounding line the final point where the glacier rests on the bedrock that grounding line has been shifting backwards as warm ocean water reaches underneath the ice shelf it's moved 14 kilometers since 1992 so I said used to be on land becomes ice that is floating on water raising sea levels the downhill slope of the bedrock means that as the grounding line moves back it lifts an even bigger slice of ice behind it off the land and into the water and that accelerates the flow of the glacier into the sea the amount of ice flowing from Thwaites has doubled over the past thirty years and already contributes four percent to global sea level rise and scientists have recently detected a huge cavity two-thirds the size of Manhattan down here scientists believe this could mean Waits's collapse is inevitable how soon that happens is hotly debated leaving continent is awakening slowly at first but with ever gathering momentum the complete collapse of 3/8 will take centuries and it's affected by many different things from the temperature of the ocean currents to the makeup of the bedrock but research shows that humans can possibly slow or even stall its collapse by curbing greenhouse gas emissions soon that's important because some scientists believe collapse could start this century while others say it's already underway the collapse of weights would add about half a meter of sea level rise and trigger a much bigger catastrophe because the weights reaches into the middle of West Antarctica its collapse could cause the rest of the ice sheet to collapse with it resulting in more than 3 meters of sea level rise in the next few centuries that would submerge not only Miami and southern Bangladesh but also parts of the Netherlands and New York City so while there's a lot of uncertainty around Thwaites one thing is clear once it starts to collapse it won't stop [Music] the 1968 US Olympic track and field team is considered one of the greatest ever assembled to represent the u.s. in the Olympics they won 28 medals and set eight World Records at the Games in Mexico City the team included some of the fastest runners in the world at the time like sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos who made history when they accepted their medals and then raised their fists during the playing of the US national anthem in a protest full of symbolism and they almost didn't even show up that year members of the team threatened to stay home in protest and racist treatment of black athletes in America they will not participate in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City unless something is done about these terrible evils and injustice the story of this silent protest and the boycott that almost was starts with the buttons all three medal winners wore that day the Olympic project for Human Rights [Music] the Olympic project for Human Rights or Opie HR was founded in 1967 by sociologist educator and former star athlete dr. Harry Edwards it was a coalition of prominent Olympic athletes that threatened to derail American Olympic glory by opting out of the games to protest the racism and sports that for decades had gone unaddressed in the mid 20th century sports seemed to be a leading example of improved racial equality in the United States black athletes like football player Kenny Washington and baseball player Jackie Robinson broke racial barriers by joining professional leagues in 1946 in 1947 which until that point had been White's only college and professional sports teams gradually integrated from their years ahead of racial segregation legally ending in the United States so the media began to promote black athlete as a symbol that racial democracy existed in the United States ataque Robinson then why can't a black to make it and so it was kind of a factor that was used to dismiss the question of institutionalized racism but in the 1960s the myth of racial progress in America began to dissolve the civil rights act ended legal segregation in 1964 but black Americans continued to face institutionalized racism and police brutality integration simply wasn't successful in terms of improving black people's lives and you needed to force further change years of frustration ultimately erupted in widespread violent riots I think the further we get away from that we underestimate the influence of the riots the riots happened in a lot of urban cities across America black people still live in terrible socio-economic conditions in the cities and that was just as much a problem as Jim Crow laws so how do you attract the attention to that a growing black power movement and black student movement in the 1960s emboldened black athletes to speak up about the racial injustice 'as they endured off the field there's no difference between black-and-white athlete we're all out to sweatin we run on two legs what's the difference in the way society treats us after we leave the track but with the 1968 Olympics coming up black athletes saw an opportunity to push for change the idea of a black boycott had been around since 1959 and in various bits and stops until you get to the Black Power Conference in 1967 the black pilot happens basically argue that you should use any means possible to force the government to pay attention to institutionalized racism for Harry Edwards that meant organizing the Olympic project for Human Rights he realized that he could use black sports participation as a way to attract attention to the problem the OU PHR had five key demands among them being to disinvite South Africa and Rhodesia two countries practicing apartheid from competing in the games the removal of openly racist International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage and hiring black coaches to US teams the potential boycott became a hot topic in the news and of debate among athletes but we don't want to close the door on Williams apartment in United States oh I don't see a boycott in the months leading up to the games in Mexico City the OPH are kept members of the press guessing whether they would attend or not we will let you know about the future of your Olympic team when we deem it proper and when we feel that you can handle that kind of information right now we just don't think that you're ready I'm when will come a determination whether you Lee Evans and others will or will not the boycott the Olympics I wish I could tell you ultimately it came down to a vote the decision was made that if there wasn't really a kind of unified or majority of that black athletes would participate the boycott would be called off because those who did boycott Mike Tommie Smith would have been boycotting a bank another black person simply would have taken their place even though most of the Opa charge demands remained unmet the athletes headed to Mexico City with plans to make their own demonstration if the opportunity arose which it did on October 16th following the men's 200-meter final OPH our members Tommie Smith and John Carlos won gold and bronze respectively and Smith set a new world record after the race they solemnly approached the medal stand she lists wearing black socks accepted their medals and just as the u.s. national anthem began to play did this for the full duration of the star-spangled banner' Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and each raised a black gloved fist in the air to protest the racial injustice in their home country and show solidarity with those fighting for equality [Music] the fists are not the only symbolic gesture in this image as Tommy Smith explained later the right glove signifies the power within black America the left glove signify black unity a scarf that was worn around my neck signified blackness John Carlos and me wore black socks without shoes to also signify our poverty additionally John Carlos wore his jacket unzipped a violation of Olympic etiquette to show solidarity with working-class Americans he also wore beads to honor victims of lynching and finally all three medal winners including silver medalist Peter Norman of Australia wore buttons reading Olympic project for Human Rights there were some boos in the stadium last night this moment was the ultimate manifestation of the work of Harry Edwards and the OPH our two intersect outspoken political activism with sport and it ended Smith and Carlos is Olympics the International Olympic Committee suspended them Friday their credentials were taken away and they were told they could not stay in Mexico they were dropped from the US Olympic team and given 48 hours to leave Mexico sports journalist Howard Cosell criticized the US Olympic Committee's decision in this fiery broadcast from Mexico City they say the games are sports not politics something separate and apart from the realities of life but the black athlete says he is a human being before he is an athlete that he wants equality everywhere not just within the arena Tommie Smith and John Carlos were saying like I don't have to pay that American Society we may be famous but we face the same discrimination that other black people do and we don't appreciate being used as a way to counter the black struggle coming out of black community story black athletes are black people have multiple identities I think colin kaepernick is representing of voice in the black community which is the same thing I think that Carlos and Smith was saying that the black struggle is more than just about integration and assimilation it's also about empowering this particular community and people like Tommy Smith Harry Edwards John Carlos came from poor black communities which is why this protest on the Olympic medal stand wasn't just about sports as Tommy Smith explained to Howard Cosell the next day do you think you represented all black athletes from doing this I can say I represented black America I'm very proud to be a black man and also to have won a gold medal and this I thought I could represent my people by letting them know that I'm proud to be a black man [Music] our bodies contain all sorts of microscopic organisms like bacteria and viruses some of these are pathogens that can cause disease animals bodies have them too when a pathogen jumps from one species to another species that isn't familiar with it it can exploit that new hosts lack of defenses and cause illness the pathogen that moves from animals to humans is called a zoonosis diseases like West Nile virus and Ebola both originated this way and researchers think covered 19 did too among humans the majority of new disease outbreaks are the result of zoonotic diseases and for the last few decades the number of zoonotic disease outbreaks has been increasing looking at this chart it might seem like humans are the victims of an onslaught of pathogens from animals but what if these outbreaks are increasing because of something humans are doing there's a lot of things we're doing that are increasing the probability of pandemic caused and pathogens emerging this is Sonia Shah she's a science journalist who writes about the history of pandemics right now we've used up over half of the terrestrial surface of the planet humans have been using more and more land for hundreds of years but that land use has accelerated in the last hundred years today satellite imagery shows us exactly what this expansion looks like we are expanding our cities erasing forests and reshaping the land for agriculture and sometimes that expansion is the result of war that's what happened here in West Africa it's an area that today includes Sierra Leone Guinea and Liberia there's a forest that once covered that area where the three countries meet throughout the 1990s civil wars in this region killed thousands and forced many more from their homes hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into that forest they cut down a lot of those trees they're making way for their homes and cutting down trees for charcoal and farming etc and you can actually see the change in the forest cover in satellite images if you look at the early 70s satellite images it's almost all green and then you look at late 1990s and it's mostly brown because only a small fraction of the original forests remained here in a village in Guinea is where researchers think an outbreak of Ebola began at the end of 2013 like the rest of the region this village used to be a forest and also happens to be a natural habitat for wild bats researchers believe the outbreak started with a boy named Emile who died after he was exposed to fluids from a bat carrying Ebola which quickly spread from his family to his village to other villages as humans develop and transform wild animal habitats events like the Ebola outbreak are becoming more and more likely we're paving over wildlife habitat which means it's much more likely that pathogens that live inside animal bodies will make their way into human bodies and that's because animals end up living much closer to us but in many cases those animals don't survive human encroachment into their habitats in the first place this chart shows the biggest extinction threats facing different animal groups for most of them the biggest threat to survival isn't pollution or being hunted it's the loss of their habitat and a disappearing species creates a different opportunity for zoonotic diseases to jump to humans take West Nile virus for example it originates in birds that migrate from Africa to North America in the summer it typically infects humans through mosquitoes but West Nile virus was never a problem in the u.s. until 1999 that's because we had a diversity of bird species in our domestic bird flu in a diverse bird population some species are good carriers of West Nile virus and some aren't North America once had a large population of birds like woodpeckers and rails that don't easily carry the virus that made it much harder for the virus to spread among the bird population but then we started disrupting those birds habitats what's happened over the past 50 years is we've lost a lot of that avian biodiversity woodpeckers and rails are now pretty rare what we now have instead are a lot of pieces like American robins and crows crows and Robins are much more adaptable to a changed environment but they also happen to be better carriers of West Nile virus the fewer web peckers and rails you have around and the more our robins and crows you have around the more West Nile virus you have around in your domestic bird flocks and the more likely it becomes that a mosquito will bite an infected bird and then by a human and that exactly what happened in New York City in 1999 before 1999 no one in the US had ever died from West Nile virus since then around a hundred and fifty people in the US have died from it every year the places where humans are encroaching on wildlife are the frontier for the next pandemic that means one thing scientists can do to prevent it is to watch those places really closely we don't know which microbe is gonna cause the next outbreak or pandemic but we do know how that happens and so we can really do active surveillance in those places where it's most likely to occur places where there's a lot of invasion of wildlife habitat but preventing future outbreaks might also require us to rethink our relationship with nature and to understand that as we take over more and more of the planet there's a cost to the animals that live there but also to us [Music] you [Music] the death of an unarmed black man has been incredibly difficult to prosecute a police officer successfully we can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality Jonathan Farrell was unarmed he died just a month shy of his 25th birthday now that officer Randall Carrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter a mistrial was declared in a case of a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man there were protests outside the court after the mistrial was announced Friday a heart attack on Thursday the father of six can be heard on the tape saying repeatedly many people simply cannot understand why the grand jury did not indict when they could actually see video of what went down between that New York police officer and Eric garner Michael Brown an unarmed 18 year old was shot and killed during a struggle with a Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted the feeling among many of these people that black lives don't matter not one reason that this grand jury finds two indictment Chicago Police Officer Jason van Dyke shot and killed 17 year-old laQuan McDonald for the first time in 35 years a Chicago police officer is charged with first-degree murder found guilty of second degree murder very unusual very important it is goes to show you how serious that I am about my life and all these other lies that are out here that are scared of the police an officer shot and killed 12 year-old Tamir rice on Sunday Tamir rice was playing with a pellet gun when officers arrived one of them opened fired within two seconds grand jury decided not to indict the two officers who shot and killed 12 year old Samir rice Cleveland's prosecutor calls it a tragedy but not a crime doesn't even warrant a trial that in my mind is unacceptable think of the death of Freddie gray all lives matters but you got to think about who dying out here prosecutors in Baltimore dropped all remaining charges against three police officers in the Freddie gray case Samuel DuBose was shot in the head Sunday after being pulled over for a missing license plate officer Raymond tensing has now been charged with murder and voluntary manslaughter now those charges have been dismissed we will never get a conviction in this case the death of Alton sterling african-american man killed by police in Louisiana the Louisiana Department of Justice cannot proceed with a prosecution all we want is the same judgment if they put against us whenever we go through certain trials in tribulations volando Castile a supervisor at a school cafeteria where kids loved him police officer Geronimo Llanes shot Castile to death while he was in the car with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter Jairus Valley on edge was reasonable in his decision to shoot and kill falando Castile during a traffic stop last July just because he was a police officer that makes it okay I think the past two shootings londo have really sparked something people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable cops are getting paid leave for killing people former fans burning is number seven Jersey I hope you didn't cut 40 year old terrance Crutcher was killed on Friday when local officers responded to a call of a stalled vehicle in the middle of the road 12 jurors found a TBD officer Betty shall be not guilty of manslaughter in the shooting of Terrence cruncher but that for they're all the elements of manslaughter was there the death of 22 year old stuff on Clark's Park nationwide protests Clark was hit 20 times he was in his grandparents backyard at the time man but those poor gonna come behind him police officers will not face charges saying they did not break any laws when they shot Stephane Clark and his grandparents backyard in the same cop who killed him is back on the streets patrolling other communities were going through other people's backyards not easy with that anger over night over the shooting death of 26 year old both in Jean in his own apartment former Dallas police officer Amber Geiger is waking up this morning behind bars she was found guilty yesterday of murdering her neighbor in his own home Tatyana is her name and everyone is seeing that name on social media there she is she was up playing video games with her nephew when she was shot and killed by former Fort Worth police officer Erin D the Fort Worth police officer who shot at Tatyana Jefferson in her own home has been formally charged with mother [Music] [Laughter] Brianna Taylor a woman was shot and killed in her apartment George Floyd died in police custody after an officer pressed his knee in to Floyd's neck said I can't breathe yearly similar so we heard 2014 with Eric garner and filed an amended complaint the charges former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chavez with murder in the second degree Jewish boys whose killing by u.s. police triggered anti-racism protests right around local protests and international support and ignites protesters marched once again in cities worldwide demanding police departments change their tactics you're bored you the Philippines has a problem on top of fighting the spread of the corona virus hospitals are facing another crisis they are more than 20,000 nurses short but the thing is tens of thousands of nurses graduate every year in the Philippines this 2010 oath-taking ceremony included more than 35,000 graduating nurses and this is a graduating class from 2017 and this one is from 2019 so how can the Philippines have so many nurses and be dealing with a shortage at the same time [Music] this story starts in 1898 when the Philippines became a u.s. colony Filipinos fought back but were ultimately conquered by American troops more than 200,000 Filipinos diet as part of the colonization of the Philippines the u.s. created a policy called benevolent assimilation that claimed to protect Filipino rights and liberties they use this to justify the colonization of the Philippines by arguing that this was a different kind of colonialism and imperialism this was a good kind of colonialism that would bring education infrastructure and public health the u.s. started taking over institutions and education and began developing a medical labor force in the Philippines they built more than 10 nursing schools in less than a decade Filipino nursing students had to learn Western medical practices from American teachers and they were forced to learn in English year after year new classes of American trained English speaking Filipino nurses graduated from nursing schools what this did was that it inadvertently prepared Filipino nurses to work in the United States the nursing training system went on until the Philippines gained independence in 1946 but even though the Philippines broke free America soon found a way to bring Filipino nurses over starting in 1941 after the u.s. entered World War two millions of Americans joined the Armed Forces and thousands of nurses enlisted to treat injured soldiers in the field and American hospitals started emptying out so the government funded programs like the cadet Nurse Corps to fill the gaps they provided millions of dollars for a lifetime education for free and encouraged American women in particular to enlist in a proud profession as a result nearly 200,000 American women became nurses for the army and civilian hospitals with the same purpose to ease the pain of war to help save lives but that all changed in 1945 when the war came to an end once the fighting was over there was less support for nurses government funding dried up and many women quit nursing hospitals started seeing a rise in vacancies and that meant America needed to find nurses to fill the void again instead of improving pay and working conditions to encourage American nurses to return the u.s. looked beyond its borders to fill the jobs Americans wouldn't take and it turned to a new temporary visitors program as a solution US hospitals started to use the exchange reserve program in order to recruit Filipino nurses because they had Americanized nursing training already and it worked Filipino nurses dominated the program for about a decade more than 10,000 Filipino nurses came to the u.s. to work but the real reason so many left their homes has to do with what was happening in the Philippines at the time after centuries of oppressive colonial control and their own world war two battles the Philippines economy finally started to stabilize cities were flourishing and tourism was booming but wages particularly in rural areas were still low for nearly everyone and that included nurses who despite having formal training were often paid less than janitors or messengers and that pushed many to go abroad in search of better opportunities but when they came over to the u.s. many sponsoring hospitals just used them as an expensive labor they assigned them extensive nurse work and only paid them a minimal stipend after their temporary placements ended many Filipino nurses went back to the Philippines while many others managed to stay longer and build a life in the US were they formed strong Filipino communities but the exchange visitor program wasn't the end of America's hold on Filipino nurses it was just the beginning the 1960s brought big changes to America there are certain historical events new Great Society programs such as the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid there are civil rights and social movements American women have more opportunities to enter other kinds of occupations all of these things converge to increase the demand for nursing services but also to result in even more nursing shortages in the United States in just three years nurse vacancies nearly doubled nearly one in every four nursing jobs was vacant to fill the new shortage the u.s. turned to the Philippines once again but this time it was different immigration policy in America changed drastically in 1965 with the new Immigration and Nationality Act for the first time people from all over the world could apply for immigrant visas then on top of sponsoring hospitals labor recruiters and travel agencies started targeting Filipino nurses with ads that promised them bright futures in America one particular ad featured a basket that was decorated with the Philippine flag it's addressing the Filipino nurse saying dear nurse if you're not happy where you are right now contact us and we can't promise you happiness but we can help you chase it all over the place so Filipino nurses began filling the huge shortages all around the US but soon many experienced discrimination the American nurse Association added licensing requirements to limit their entry the nurses who did pass those requirements came to the US and ended up in underpaid lower positions still it's this phase of migration that lasted through today and transformed the u.s. healthcare industry the temporary pathway established 20 years earlier became a permanent migration route and the hospitals now had a way to learn nurses over whenever they wanted but focusing on what pulled so many nurses to America overlooks the forces that continued to push them out which brings us back to the Philippines this is Ferdinand Marcos who rule the Philippines with an iron fist in 1972 under martial law he began to rule as a dictator he was behind more than 3000 extrajudicial killings and tens of thousands of tortures and incarcerations as a result of the unrest the economy that was starting to stabilize fell into a recession and unemployment skyrocketed but instead of addressing the lack of jobs the Philippine government actively promoted and publicized labor export the export of Filipino workers to countries throughout the world and that's because Filipino overseas workers were starting to send hundreds of millions of dollars back home to their families and the Filipino government wanted to keep that money coming overtime that government push led to a global migration making the Philippines the largest exporter of nurses in the world nearly 20,000 nurses leave the Philippines every year they go to Saudi Arabia or Australia the UK Germany but many of them have ended up in the US where nearly one-third of all foreign-born nurses are Filipino with the u.s. recruiting nurses on one end and the Philippines pushing them to work abroad on the other both governments have benefited from Filipino labor over the decades a total of a hundred and fifty thousand Filipino nurses have come to work in US hospitals and after years of exploitation and discrimination Filipino and Filipino American nurses have organized in the u.s. they pushed back on exploitative practices and have fought for better working conditions but surveys show that a large number of Filipino nurses are still concentrated in bedside and critical care some of the most dangerous and strenuous nursing work it's the kind of work that puts them disproportionately on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus the pandemic has taken an outsized toll on Filipino health care workers of the 318 healthcare workers lost to the corona virus as of May at least 30 are Filipino and still thousands remain on the frontlines in April 2020 as a corona virus spread through the Philippines and the shortage of nurses across hospitals became a problem the government temporarily banned healthcare workers from leaving to work abroad while it might seem like a appropriate idea for Filipino nurses to remain in the Philippines it's also important to remember that Filipino nurse oversees migration is a long-standing phenomenon that has been actively promoted by the Philippine government even though the ban was eventually lifted it points to the instability that Filipino nurses have to live with on both sides of the migration route pushed and pulled between countries Filipino nurses continue to get caught in the middle even as they strive to work on the front lines providing critical care like they always have [Music] On June 5th the Washington DC Mayor unveiled a statement painted down the street leading to the White House black lives matter within 24 hours black lives matter activists responded with their own message defund the police this slogan caught on rapidly among tens of thousands of people protesting police brutality in the United States but what does it really mean to defund the police and what if it's not as radical as it sounds [Music] a city budget a county budget a state budget at a national budget are all markers of what our societies are prioritizing the u.s. spends 100 billion dollars every year on policing most of which comes from local municipalities New York City for example appropriated 5.9 billion dollars last year to the police department for comparison here's what the city allocated for homeless services health housing youth and Community Development and jobs programs the disparities are huge and they echo in cities across the country like in Chicago where the policing budget is one point seven billion dollars roughly twice the budget of the fire department Department of Transportation Public Library and Public Health combined if you look at these budgets in the United States what you'll see is that we have deeply deprioritized providing people their basic needs instead we've over prioritized punishing human beings the emphasis on policing in the US has led to over policing and under policing all at once the police arrest over 10 million people in a year and the vast majority of those arrests especially in black and poor neighborhoods are for minor offenses like drug possession or drinking in public that heavy-handed approach is over policing but when it comes to violent crime the rate of police arrests is incredibly low and that's under policing which leaves communities of color underserved people believe that the police are deterring violence clearly they're enacting violence but are they also deterring violence and that's highly questionable a lot of research suggests that they are having no influence whatsoever so if they're having no influence whatsoever on the phenomena that they're supposed to be influencing and they're doing violence what purpose are they supposed to serve the repercussions of prioritizing the police over other services can also be seen at schools in the US 1.7 students are in schools with police but no counselors and 3 million have police in schools but no nurses and when it comes to 911 calls in many cases police officers are the first responders to mental health related emergencies that's important because one in every four deaths from police shootings are people with mental health problems I can literally imagine you just replace someone with a weapon someone who will actually sit down on the ground with them and talk not throw them on the ground and sit on top of them or lay on top of them but someone who will take them wherever they are listen to they're listening to their situations and then try to figure out diagnose their problem police are doing the jobs but other groups of people and workers can be doing being tasked with jobs they're not trained to do is an idea some police officers acknowledge to every societal failure we put it off on the cops a song not enough mental health funding get the cop Hamilton not enough drug conviction [ __ ] let's give it to the cops schools failed give it to the cops policing was never meant to solve all those problems the need to rethink police budgets has become even more glaring in the middle of the corona virus pandemic many have called attention to the fact that hospital workers struggle to get personal protective equipment while thousands of police officers have riot gear at the ready for protests even in response to the pandemic while many agencies grapple with coronavirus budget cuts police budgets have largely remained intact new york city's proposal for the coming fiscal year cuts just 5% of the NYPD budget but that same proposal calls for a 12% cut to the department of health this is where the movement to defund the police comes in it's a push to take the billions of dollars city spend on police and move that funding to other services like housing jobs or mental health care at its core the idea is to rethink Public Safety because the current form of policing isn't built to serve everyone equally we live in an economy of punishment we as in black people as important as in marginal people police are not used to keep us safe well we've seen over the last seven years is black people being killed humiliated violated sexually assaulted maimed by law enforcement we haven't seen it get any better reimagining public safety in this moment is a matter of life or death for years reforms like introducing police body cameras have been proposed across the country as a response to police brutality but these reforms have only added more money to police budgets even when as studies like this one in d.c show they have no detectable effect on police use of force we absolutely need to try an old law enforcement accountable but what we've recognized is all of our accountability measures up until now have not worked in the case of Minneapolis since 2016 their police officers have received body cameras bias training and have a duty to intervene policy where other police officers must step in if they see force applied inappropriately yet a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd as three officers looked on this idea that we could reform an institution that has a blue code of silence that we can reform an institution that is one of the most powerful unions that is no longer the conversation the calls to defund the police have been polarizing and have led to some fears about how it might affect personal and public safety how do you defend or dismantle and keep people safe when we all dial nine-one-one we need to know there's somebody coming you defund the police we're diminish their ability to police their communities you're gonna have a war zone I think we often hear issues of safety for mostly white affluent people and after remind those folks that their safety is predicated on the unsafety of black people opponents of defunding the police have cautioned that after cities like Memphis downsized their police force there is an increase in violent crime but proponents point to a major difference between defunding the police then and now today it's not just about cutting police budgets a key part of defunding is to redistribute those resources and create better responses to crime that redistribution would still fund first responders but put four cities to rethink what kind of responders would make communities safer for everyone whether it's investing in a new crisis intervention team a mental health team or social workers in some cities like Eugene Oregon and Austin Texas alternative models for safety have already been put in place to dispatch mental health professionals to certain 911 instead of the police and putting money into other agencies like housing and jobs to help people meet their basic needs could also end up making community safer rather than have this some I'm fearful of someone someone coming to take my stuff hey can I have a number that I can call so somebody with some weapons can come protect my stuff it's more like if everyone had some stuff and if everyone had a reasonable existence they wouldn't be looking for anybody else's stuff and you wouldn't need to call anybody black lives matter activists and local organizers across the country have been working to defund the police for years but for many the calls to defund the police don't stop at scaling down the scope of what the police can do it could also be a first step towards eventually abolishing the police as we know it you could think that the defund movement is the gateway to a broader discussion of reprioritization one position of which is abolition the details of a plan like this differ from city to city but there is a shared purpose of altering what Public Safety looks like in the u.s. defunding the police even at its most basic will still be a difficult battle for activists on a national scale one poll conducted in early June found that only about a quarter of Americans favored cutting funding for police departments but in parts of the country it's already happening in Denver the school district has broken their contract with the police department in Oakland the school board pledged to do the same and in Minneapolis the City Council voted to completely disband its police department and create a new model all of these moves can be traced to continued public pressure and protests against police brutality protests which in a matter of weeks brought the slogan to defund the police into the mainstream this has been the most tragic three weeks and also the most inspiring three weeks we have seen death after death of black people what are we going to do to be in defense of black lives that is the conversation we're asking it's not just about black lives mattering that's not enough to proclaim that you have to step into a new role in protecting black people and ensuring that their lives are safe you you - I love hearing my name. I love my name. I don't care if that's vain, 'cause I spent a lot
of time hating my name. - [Narrator] Our names
are powerful, literally. Our brains have a unique reaction
to the sound of our names, sometimes even while sedated, but many students have their names mispronounced or disregarded
every day in school. So what impact does that
have on their education? And what can educators do? - [Woman] My name is Adenis. - Ajani.
- Jamara. - Javia. - Nekbakht.
- Alilia. - Nadesh Visimungu.  - Raghdan. - It's actually Nichbacht, not
Nichbat, Nichbich, Nichbod. (bright music) - [Lilia] Two of the embarrassing the moment when there's a pause and you know it's 'cause of you. - [Raghdan] It just goes so far that sometimes it's even concerning. Like, Rajakada. - [Amara] I remember just
being like, "Oh, that must be." - Especially if they said David. Everyone would laugh. - [Ajani] I learned pretty quickly that it was easier to just go by AJ, which is something that I, quite honestly, regret doing now. - [Narrator] In 2012,
researchers Doctor Rita Kohli and Doctor Daniel Solorrzzano
published a study called, "Teachers, please learn our names!: racial mioxcroaggressions
and the K-12 classroom." Here's Doctor Kohli. - [Doctor Kohli] Schools are
not a power-neutral space. Teachers are an authority figure. Teachers how power in those contexts. And so, often, what they say goes. Often, what they say is viewed as the legitimate knowledge in the space. - [Narrator] So it takes a lot for a first grader to
say to their teacher, "Excuse me, you pronounced
my name this way, "but it's actually this way "and it matters to me." In fact, it takes a lot
for a student of any age. - The first time I ever
tried to confront a professor was actually last semester, and it wasn't really a good experience. - Some professors just don't even ask. They're just like, "Can
I call you by this name?" - She mispronounced my name then asked me if she can
call me something else. - Regardless of whether we want to be called a certain way or not, it's an elder person who has a PhD, and this, and that. - Later on, I felt like
it was my responsibility to actually email and tell her that, "Professor, I get that it's
the first day of class, "but you don't even have the right "to ask me if you can
call me "something else." She later on apologized, but it's only because we pushed
the conversation forward. - [Narrator] So, what is the big deal? - If you can't understand my name how can you understand me? - [Narrator] A microaggression
is a subtle form of discrimination that can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and it can include telling a student their name is too hard to say. - We're centering a particular
cultural vantage point when we say things are
difficult to pronounce, because they're not really difficult to pronounce inherently. They're difficult to pronounce for us. - [Narrator] Doctor Kohli's
research underscores that a person's name is their
entrance point to the world. So, what happens when those
names are mispronounced, disregarded, or even mocked? - [Doctor Kohli] They start to feel like their name was a burden, they start to feel like they
themselves were a burden, and so they begin to withdraw sometimes from participating socially
and academically in schools. - [Narrator] There's actually a term for the unintended lessons
kids learn in school. Things that live between
the lines, and in hallways, and in roll call. - [Al-Jawhara] There's
a lot that we impart onto our students or onto each other that is complete subtext. We don't say it out loud. - [Narrator] Al-Jawhara Al-Thani
is the head of educational and community programs
at Qatar Foundation. Her work focuses on hidden curriculum and how to fix it. - [Al-Jawhara] I was in a class once, a sixth grade all boys English class, and it was like like 15
minutes quiet reading time. I was sitting at the back of the class. At one point, the boy puts his hand up and asks the teacher, he's like, "Sir, I have a question." He goes, "Yeah?" He goes, "Why are they all white?" You think kids don't register? It registers. - [Narrator] There are
decades worth of studies examining how curriculum,
sometimes the world over, is primarily Euro-centric,
male, and upper class with names to match. It registers. But, the curriculum is
not always something that's up to a teacher themselves. Learning names, on the other hand, is. - You're sitting in the
back row in a lecture of 200 students meeting on your phone. You're gonna get me calling you by name, "What are you doing?" - [Narrator] Professor
Susan Dun has been teaching at Northwestern University
in Qatar for over a decade. Her undergrad experience
at a liberal arts college with small classes influenced her decision to memorize the names of
every student in her classes, wherever she teaches. Even in the 200-person lectures. - [Susan] For me, teaching
is about a lot more than just transmission of knowledge. It's about the growth and development of human beings, and so I can be far more
effective in doing that if I have at least a recognition of know the identity of
people, know their names, know a little bit of something about them. Even in a large class. That they know when they
walk in and I say, "Hi," and use their name, that I
really know who they are. - When I hear someone
say my name correctly, I'd be like, "Oh my god. "Finally this person! "They know how to say my name!" - I think in our
increasingly globalized world where we have people from all sorts of walks of life interacting, that the idea that
we're gonna mispronounce each other's names is pretty much a given. And so the question and the challenge is to do as much as we can to figure out how to embrace each other, which sometimes starts with simply taking the time and effort to figure out how to greet each other properly. - Why we're not asking teachers to be able to say
everybody's name correctly the second they walk through the door, but I think there's a difference between imposing that, "Oh, your
name is hard to say," versus, "I haven't learned how
to say a name like this yet, "but I'm working on it
because you're important, "and your name is important,
and I want to honor that "in my classroom." - [Narrator] What working
on it looks like in practice might be different for every educator. What's key is allowing teachers the room to be students in this too. - If we flip this around and we think about the
expectation for students to learn lots of new things
all at the same time, and we encourage them to fail, and we encourage them to keep trying, and we encourage them, I think that vulnerability
that we expect of students should be the same expectation
that we have of our teachers. They aren't the holders of all knowledge. We know that. We know that they're human. - [Davia] What would I
tell my younger self? I would tell her to be proud
that you have a unique name. - [Raghdan] The fact that
you have such a unique name doesn't make you stand
out in a negative way, but instead it makes you shine. - Know that's like snithing, embarrassing. - It's gonna take time,
but you will understand how important your name is actually, and how your parents did not name you just for the sake of naming someone. - I would tell my younger self to learn about the
significance of your name and call that teacher out when
they mispronounce your name. - I would probably just take my younger self by the shoulders, look him dead in the eye, and
tell him, "Your name means "He who wins the struggle, and it'll be a prophesy if you let it be." This was a protest near the White House,
on June 1st. "It has been an entirely peaceful protest..." It was met by forces with helmets,
riot shields, rifles... and tear gas. The authorities here were a mix of police
and military: There were Secret Service, Park Police, the
National Guard, Prison Special Operations, and local police from a nearby county. But can you tell which ones are the police? If it’s hard to tell — it’s these guys
by the way — it’s because America’s police have been
looking more and more like troops. "Get in the house!" (screams) So why do American police officers look like
soldiers? And where did they get all these weapons? "Don’t shoot! This was a peaceful protest!" In the 1980s, police in America looked more
like this. The US’s crime rate had been doing this. And President Reagan called for the military
to work more directly with the police for the War on Drugs. "Drugs are menacing our society." "We must move to strengthen
law enforcement activities." Congress agreed, and over the next few years
passed a series of bills: To give police access to military bases and
equipment, for the National Guard to assist police with
drug operations, for the military and police to train together, and eventually, to have the military loan
police departments their excess, leftover equipment, for free. This would become known as the 1033 program. Police departments got assault rifles like
M16s, armored trucks, and even grenade launchers. And before long, it started to have an effect
on how police… police. We can see that in the number of times SWAT
teams were used. Departments that had deployed them about once
a month in the 80s were using them more than 80 times a year by 1995. Almost all of these deployments were for drug-related
search warrants, usually forced-entry searches called “no
knock warrants.” The police were becoming militarized, and
people noticed. This 1997 article said it made police look
like “an occupying army.” In February of 1997, two men robbed a bank
in North Hollywood, Los Angeles. They had automatic rifles and body armor. The police didn’t. By the time it ended, a dozen police officers
were injured. In the aftermath of the shootout, California
police demanded they be equipped with assault rifles, like the AR-15. But so did police in places from Florida to
Connecticut. And that same year, the 1033 program was expanded,
dropping a requirement that police departments use the equipment for drug-related enforcement. Now any law enforcement, even university police,
could access leftover military weapons, for any reason. A retired police chief in Connecticut told
the New York Times, “I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted.” Because complete records on these loans weren’t
kept until 2015, we don’t know exactly how much equipment
was given out in those early years. But we do have data on how much of it police
departments still have, from each year it was given out. And you can see a steady growth in the program
for most of the 90s and 2000s. And then something happens around here. “The rest of our troops in Iraq will come
home by the end of the year.” In 2011, the US military formally withdrew
its troops from Iraq. That meant the military had a lot of equipment,
and one less war to use it on. So it became available to the police. This is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected
Vehicle, or MRAP. It’s among the most controversial equipment
given out under the 1033 program. And we know from the data that police departments
still have several hundred of them that they got in 2013 and 2014. But none from 2015. That’s because in August of 2014, the 1033
Program became national news. "We just said 'hands up, don’t shoot,' and they
just started shooting!" A police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, had
shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. Afterwards, the community’s protests were
met by heavily militarized police, who pointed sniper rifles at them as they marched. "Tear gas and armored tanks became a familiar
sight in Ferguson, Missouri." "The police departments around the country
have been getting a lot of this type of equipment..." President Obama responded with an executive
order curbing the 1033 Program. "We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes
give people a feeling like there’s an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community
that’s protecting them and serving them." Two years later, President Trump’s administration
reversed that. "We will not put superficial concerns
above public safety." But by that point, the 1033 Program had become
a lot less important anyway. This chart shows that by 2016, most MRAPs
loaned out by the military went to smaller police departments. That means when larger cities today have MRAPs
and other military gear, it’s often because they’ve bought it themselves. And that’s because police
having military gear and weapons no longer depends on any one government program. It’s now a part of how police see
themselves. The thing that I think is really important
is, with that equipment comes a certain mentality. This is Arthur Rizer. He’s a former military police officer,
former civilian police officer, and now studies police militarization. A big part of his research is about that mentality. And he shared a poll he did of police officers with us. I asked officers, do you have any problem with police officers
routinely on patrol, carrying military-grade equipment,
or dressing in military type of uniforms? And the vast majority of those officers told
me, "no, I have no problem with that." And then the second question I asked is, do you think it changes the way that officers
feel about themselves and their role in policing? And the vast majority officers, again, said
"yes." And what they said was, it makes them more
aggressive, more assertive, and it can make them more violent. And then finally, I asked them, how do you think the public perceives you? And the vast majority said, "it scares them." They know that it scares the public. They know that it makes them more aggressive
or more assertive. And that can be dangerous. But they don't seem to care. There are definitely times
when it's been more clearly beneficial for the police to have this equipment. For example, during the Pulse
Nightclub shooting in 2016, Orlando police used an armored
military vehicle to stop the shooter. But those moments tend to be the exception. Today, this equipment is still mostly used
by SWAT teams for executing drug-related search warrants. And more than half of those are still no-knock warrants, the kind that Louisville police were executing when they killed Breonna Taylor. And in the case of the Ferguson protests, the Department of Justice found
that the heavily militarized presence “served to escalate rather than
de-escalate the overall situation.” The military, and the police, are supposed
to serve different purposes. A military protects an “us” from a “them.” A police officer is supposed to be part of
the “us.” But when police think of themselves as soldiers,
that can change. What is a police officer going to do with
an assault rifle when he's facing a protest? When you give someone a hammer, why are you
surprised that everything looks like a nail to them? in May of 2018 something weird happened over the Arabian Peninsula a large cyclone passed over the rubra Holly desert a massive stretch of unbroken sand also called The Empty Quarter it usually looks like this but after the cyclone it looked like this Lakes had formed between the dunes the desert was filled with water for the first time in 20 years then five months later it happened again another cyclone hit over the next year powerful cyclones kept coming out of the Arabian Sea at a frequency not seen in decades it caused catastrophic flooding in normally dry areas across the region but especially here in East Africa today the flood waters have receded but they left behind a different type of disaster millions of locusts a plague of biblical proportions worst in 70 years the impact devastating precedented threat to food security is no end in sight this is a desert locust it's a type of grasshopper that lives across this area from northwest Africa to Western Asia typically desert locust spend most of their time alone in what's called their solitary phase they only really meet with others to mate but if the weather starts to shift that can lead to a transformation if a normally dry area becomes unusually lush with vegetation as it would after heavy rains these insects will start to congregate that sudden crowding triggers a hormone and the locust starts to change both physically and mentally it starts with a color shift from a muddled brown color to a bright yellow its body shrinks and its endurance increases which optimizes it for flight its brain grows and so does its appetite this is called the gregarious phase they eat and breathe leaving their eggs in the damp soil when they hatch they form what are called hopper bands swarms of tens of thousands of non-flying but voracious insects that move together as a unit eventually they develop wings and once they take flight it's almost impossible to stop them locust swarms ride the wind which allows them to travel up to a hundred and fifty kilometers a day a single swarm can contain up to 150 million insects per square kilometer each one consumes its body weight and vegetation daily in 24 hours a swarm of that size eats more food than 35,000 people since late 2019 East Africa has been experiencing its worst locust outbreak in decades in 2020 the area has seen swarms as large as 2,400 square kilometres that's a swarm of insects over three times the size of New York City capable of eating as much food as tens of millions of people the swarms of bugs are so thick that airplanes have been forced to divert their course billions of ravenous insects sweep through areas decimating acres of farmland and threatening already food scarce regions with famine there's nothing left to harvest there's nothing else that I know how to do and they're spreading in February Pakistan declared a state of emergency by late May the swarms had reached parts of northern India for the first time since 1962 and the biggest factor in all this is the weather locusts reproduce exponentially when the weather is in their favor with every new generation the population increases twenty fold so if a normally dry area stays wet for a long time the population will explode and that's what researchers think happened starting with a 20-18 cyclone the unusual amount of rain led to an unusual amount of vegetation which led to an unusual number of new locust swarms formed here in the unusually wet desert and made their way into surrounding areas including East Africa which itself had just experienced historic flooding in late 2019 from heavy rains caused by an unusually warm Indian Ocean a single perfect storm isn't enough to bring in swarms of locusts of this size it takes a series of them something that used to be really rare in this area but unfortunately extreme weather that used to be really rare suddenly becoming more common is one of the hallmarks of climate change that could mean a future with more cyclones in the desert more greenery where there once was sand and more breeding grounds fellow ghosts do you ever notice these weirdly specific targeted ads when you're browsing the internet it's a little creepy when they can even pinpoint where you live that's because one of the ways advertisers target you is through your IP address see each of your devices has its own unique number so while your internet might be password protected your IP address is available to advertisers to look at and that is how they find your location expressvpn is a tool that mask your IP address they let you select from over 90 different countries to reroute your connection through so it makes it seem like all your web activity is coming from a different IP address somewhere else in the world one-click not only encrypts your data but lets you browse the web anonymously expressvpn does not affect our editorial but their support does make videos like this one possible you can go to expressvpn dot-com slash box or click on the link in the description below to find out how to get three months free [Music] juneteenth is a deeply emotional moment for enslaved people because for decades for centuries enslaved people prayed for hoped for fought for in the form of slave rebellions running away bought their freedom when they could and if you read slave narratives if you listen to spirituals from the era of slavery you know that enslaved people longed for freedom [Music] this was something that had been hoped for but many believe may never come [Music] mostly from us to give me 40 dollars a month instead the lord said the boys say they ain't water they rather go free you know being able to go wherever they want it being able to wonder about for enslaved people it was an expression of their freedom well matt porter was the one that that long misfortune one of our white folks we just come along we all stepping on the fence and the color children come along and ask her did she want to go with her she said yes she might want them horses she went on with them i never did see her and hit that over the moon when i think about juneteenth i think about it in the context of emancipation day celebrations that began january 1 1863 they took on a whole new meaning when slavery was formally abolished after 1865 you would have had african-american veterans who fought in the civil war be prominent in these celebrations dressed in their military guard speeches from enslaved people the most prominent black politicians singing of hymns spirituals discussions of registering to vote enslaved people celebrating in public their newfound freedom was an act of resistance because we have to remember slavery came to an end after a four years bloody bloody civil war still the the bloodiest conflict in american history many people in the south and in the nation who did not want to see slavery abolished fought to the nail to a block the 13th amendment the abolition of slavery created a huge humanitarian crisis in the south suddenly 4 million people have very little means to take care of themselves to support themselves and do so in a really really hostile environment so the military was necessary to make sure that enslaved people got the food the medicine the shelter that they needed in order to survive they're also there to protect to the extent that that was possible freed people from violence from recriminations from slave holders from confederates who still hadn't given up the fight and i remember and then yeah and the first stupid people knew we were the ground scene and they take them hanging over the storm that's the punishment they got next time you see there come a full trooper yeah all riding horses [Music] when the last federal troops leave the south it's a signal to southerners the federal government wasn't going to put its might into ensuring the civil rights of black people would be observed [Music] you have 20 30 years later black people being lynched in public and there isn't a federal anti-lynching law to protect them [Music] in most communities in america there's a history of lynching and racial violence and very few communities have marked that commemorated that every decade since the end of slavery black people have been more educated accrued more wealth more status in american society every decade since 1865 but there's been one constant and that constant is the presence of random racist violence [Music] [Music] [Music] what i see in george floyd's murder was a white police officer attempting to dominate and to subdue a black man who was not resisting who could not resist even though slavery came to an end in 1865 the desire to master and dominate black bodies did not and we have never dealt with that [Applause] these are the kind of stark realities that are highlighted during the june team if black people's lives can be expunged through racist violence and no one is held accountable how free are we are we free [Music] you in South Florida the cars stretched out for nearly two miles as thousands of people waited for hours to reach their local food bank the same thing happened in California Pennsylvania and New York City food banks across the u.s. are seeing a massive rise in the number of residents in need because of coronavirus but on American farms the economic fallout from the corona virus looks very different here it's led to a widespread surplus of food that's gone to waste millions of pounds of perfectly good potatoes cucumbers and squash left to rot or plowed back into the fields and dairy farmers forced to dump millions of gallons of fresh milk down the drain it's all because of a break in the food supply chain one that for now means we have farmers with too much food and very few options where the farmers out here we're all in this together and there's something don't change Sue and we're going down to understand why the food supply chain is broken let's look at milk a very simplified supply chain for dairy products in the u.s. looks something like this it starts with cows and a dairy farm where they're milked that milk is filled into tanks and then sent to processors there it turns into products like pasteurized fluid milk cheese yogurt or butter it's then packaged and sent off to grocery stores where consumers can get their dairy off the shelves but here's the thing even though a large portion of dairy production is aimed at grocery stores it's just one of many places where the product ends up about half of all production is aimed at other avenues like schools and businesses Starbucks for example typically goes through hundreds of thousands of gallons of milk every day together all of these avenues amount to a huge amount of No production in the u.s. about 218 billion pounds in 2019 every part of dairy production from farming to processing and packaging carries out a specialized process which makes the supply chain efficient under normal circumstances but as the coronavirus started to spread and the nation began to shut down this chain started to look a lot different schools and restaurants canceled orders but the cows at the farm still needed to be milked a significant drop in demand from these avenues led to way more supply but there's nowhere to send that surplus even though more people have been buying dairy at grocery stores during lockdown the system isn't built to redirect excess supply that easily we want to get food to the people who need it and we're trying but when you have a really specialized industry it doesn't necessarily translate that's because the same dairy products meant for schools businesses and grocery stores look very different after they're processed and packaged for example at grade schools they might take the shape of small milk cartons made for kids or massive bags of cheese for food service companies to make lunches at a restaurant the products might be large five gallon containers of milk or 40 pound blocks of cheese and at grocery stores there are the products we're more used to seeing like single gallon cartons of milk and small packages of cheese converting those school milk cartons into something that people will actually buy at grocery stores would be a massive change facilities often don't have the right packaging to make a switch while other products like a large block of cheese would need to be cut to a more manageable size for consumers meaning millions of dollars in new equipment that many processors can't afford you can't deliver a 500-pound barrel to someone's house and be like here's your cheese I mean you have entire plants built for school milk for kids we could have just sent crates of Malcolm what parents may like here's your crates from the school feed your kid where are they gonna store it in their fridges what we have from restaurants and from food service just doesn't neatly turn into something that's usable for the average person at home we're switching as fast as we can but this is unprecedented right some are sending their surplus product to food banks but these organizations often don't have the refrigerator capacity or the manpower needed to distribute so much perishable product and even with shifts in some production from businesses and schools to grocery stores the new consumer demand likely wouldn't make up for the huge losses from these other avenues that extra supply leads to an incredible amount of food waste we started dumping milk March 31st and we dumped seven semi loads of milk a day which is 42,000 gallons of milk a day we dumped for about two weeks when you think about a semi load like the big tanker trucks you would see out on the interstate that hundreds of trucks that size you don't have that food getting to people that's crushed this food supply chain problem has led to a massive drop in milk prices which started to tumble just as the coronavirus took hold in the US December's milk was 24 bucks today it's 1080 I don't care if you're milking 10 cows or 5,000 it don't matter 10 dollars and 80 cents is not gonna pay the bills my organic milk is very expensive it's expensive to make it's expensive to market what happens to my milk is it gets marketed as conventional milk which is basically about half of what I get paid it doesn't take much of a math scientist to figure out that you're really in trouble that drop is just the latest in several years of record low prices for the dairy industry since 2015 milk prices paid to farmers have been well below the cost of production factors like a rise in corporate farming trade wars that decreased us and more people choosing milk alternatives have led to too much dairy and low prices it's also led to a dairy farming crisis in 2014 there were about 45,000 dairy farms in the US but over the next five years 11,000 dairy farms shut down that's 9 US dairy farms lost every day during that period that number is likely to increase even more because of coronavirus today many dairy cooperatives often made up of hundreds of different farms are taking this hit together by sharing the burden and making sure not every farm has to dump their milk many have enacted quotas to keep production at a level that's more in line with what they predict can be sold some are suggesting farmers sell off cows and others are incentivizing farmers to leave their businesses entirely we have to cut back 10 percent of our milk we are selling cows we're drying up cows early we're trying to do whatever we can now to drop our production 10% but it's going to be tough the US government has allocated payouts for farmers to cover some of these losses and they have set aside money for government purchases of dairy and other fresh produce for food banks these provisions could be one way to tackle both the hardships of farmers and the growing hunger crisis that affects millions of Americans but while it may be a good first step many in the industry warned that it could disproportionately help large corporate farms and fall short of getting small farmers the help they need immediately as those things run out who knows what's going to happen and that's the uncertainty that I feel I think most other people feel it we need to have a better plan the unprecedented amount of extra milk has forced some farmers and processors to think about other solutions too like lobbying Pizza chains to put more cheese on pizzas or lobbying for a more controversial long-term solution like setting federal limits on the amount of milk production across the country so that the supply and the prices will always be stable we need some help out here and how we're gonna get it I don't know but if we don't get it we're all in big trouble what's happening with the supply chain in the US isn't just a problem for dairy it's a problem for farmers across the country who have seen their demands diminish from schools and restaurants and whether it's milk or green beans for farmers trashing their produce isn't just a financial blow it's also an emotional one we work so hard to provide for other people that's what our calling is that's why we do this we're not doing it for the money that's for sure and so to see what we provide go to waste is just been really devastating [Music] Listen, it's hard to maintain social
distancing anywhere, but especially on an airplane. Just thinking about it freaks
me out. Recently United Airlines tried to
implement distancing by announcing that they are "automatically blocking
middle seats to give passengers enough space on board." But on May 9th a
passenger on board a United flight to San Francisco from Newark tweeted out
this picture in which middle seats are clearly occupied. The tweet sparked
predictable backlash and prompted demands to leave seats empty on
airplanes. But as the number of daily travelers slowly picks up again after the unprecedented drop in March airlines like United will find it harder and
harder to leave seats empty on their flights. So all this debate over the middle seat makes me wonder: How far can an
infectious disease actually spread on an airplane even if we block the middle
seat? And if we do block that seat, are our ticket prices going to go up? I'm Cleo Abram and this is Answered, by Vox. This is a visualization of the inside of
a Boeing 767. It shows how a single cough can spread throughout a plane between
air filtration cycles. When I cough like this, you know, it definitely generates
a lot of droplets. That's Professor Yan Chen. He helped create this
animation to study the ways infectious diseases in cough droplets can spread to
other passengers. Due to the airflow design in most commercial planes those
cough droplets are first carried upwards and then travel sideways through the
cabin. A longitudinal air flow, which means it's between rows, is minimal,
and therefore is much more dangerous to get the those droplets if you sit in
the same row rather than in a different row. But the model does not
completely rule out transmission to people in different rows. In this
simulation, all these people around the passenger are at risk.
In fact, those airborne cough droplets can move even farther down the cabin
if another passenger walks by the individual that's coughing. This second
simulation shows how that can happen. Air movement created by the walker can
carry the droplet down the aisle to a completely different part of the plane. When you walk around, there's a possibility to get the disease or you
might not get it but you might bring it to your fellow passengers. And to
make matters worse, cough droplets can land on all the
surfaces we touch. Those droplets didn't go to you directly. Properly just go to the
tray table, armrest,  even head rest, or the seat back in front of me. But despite all these models Dr. Chen says it remains hard for
scientists to predict exactly how a virus would spread on a plane or whether
leaving a middle seat empty would actually help protect us. He uses this
reconstruction of a Boeing 737 flight from Hong Kong to Beijing to illustrate
his point. On March 15th 2003 a man seated in 14E was carrying the SARS
virus. During the flight 22 other passengers and crew became infected.
While data on this flight is incomplete at least five people are known to have
died. So majority of them just sat within these three rows before and three rows
behind but you definitely see some of those who sat pretty far away.
There's two persons seated seven rows in front of this infected person on
the other side who were also getting infected. Dr. Chen says this flight
has been widely studied but epidemiologists still struggle to
explain exactly how the virus spread so far through the length of the cabin. So I cannot guarantee that our animation is a one hundred percent scientifically proven 
result. What does your simulation tell us about
the effectiveness of blocking middle seats to passengers? By leaving the 
middle seat open you will have a little bit more social distancing. But if you
look at our animation isn't not very helpful. So even if middle seats were open in this simulation, it wouldn't do much to stop
cough droplets from reaching you. Still, according to Dr. Chen, an open middle
seat could be helpful if paired with other precautions. So if I were a
passenger and the airline can guarantee that the middle seat is open I don't think I have a problem to go
there with my surgical mask. Surgical masks can reduce the distance cough 
droplets travel from around six feet to more like two feet and combined with an
empty middle seat they might actually 
 reduce risk. Dr. Chen says an open middle seat could help in another really important way:
Limiting the total number of people on any given flight. But that could present
a different problem when it comes to how much our flights will cost. The airline
industry operates on very thin margins. John Grant is an analyst at OAG, an
organization that tracks global flight data. Probably only 20 airlines in the
world consistently make a profit. Whoah! - Yeah. - I did not realize that! If you're
leaving every middle seat empty that's 30% of your capacity that you're not
selling. According to Grant that could mean a whopping 52% increase in average
ticket price for passengers. Will the person sitting in New York today who
wants to fly to Florida next week be prepared to pay 52 percent more? No! Honestly, no. And particularly now, after nine weeks of lockdown, Less cash
at home etc etc Listen, the concern about the middle seat makes sense. Until we
have a vaccine for the coronavirus flying is gonna be kind of scary. But
while we can take precautions like wearing a mask or leaving an empty
middle seat, in the end we might have to decide how much we're willing to pay for
a slight bump in safety. Thanks for watching!
That was an episode of Vox's first ever daily show.
It's called Answered, it's on a new streaming app called Quibi and every
day we take on a question about what's happening in the world right now from
the history of curfews to cicada season so if you want to check out more all you
need to do is go to the link in the description or download the Quibi app on
your phone and search for Vox or Answered. I'll be there every day. hey this is me home stroll a few days ago during this walk I noticed something so I started taking pictures of it eventually I got my co-workers to join in Mac took this picture and Agnes took this one what we all noticed was this font if you've somehow managed to never see it on a storefront you've definitely seen it elsewhere because it's everywhere strip away the candy wrappers movie posters album covers and corner store signs and you're left with this typeface it's called Cooper black and the story of how it became so popular has everything to do with its versatility because these letters have been around for a century's worth of changes in technology and pop culture [Music] to set the stage for the story I talked to Stephen Heller bear with me while I move to another part of the apartment among other things he's written like a library's worth of books about design ok I'm back and this is Bethany heck I am a designer who writes about typefaces she runs the font review journal where she deconstructs the history and design of notable typefaces like Cooper black if you give me like two minutes I can run and find an actual like physical piece of wood type and I can talk through some of this well she's doing that let's travel back in time a hundred years to the city of Chicago where our story begins it's 1919 right after World War 1 advertising was reaching an early zenith at that point because with the end of the war there was a great resurgence of product and demand the two dominating materials for commercial printing were wood and metal wood was cut out of the end pieces hard wood they were usually large size typefaces that were used for large-scale advertising and posters the bold typefaces you see in old wanted posters those were made from wood type metal was the process that was created by Gutenberg when he designed the type for his Bible each individual character was physically formed into words and those words were cast into tiny lines of text those molds allowed for smaller more precise blocks of type that's the kind of type that was used for most commercial purposes from book publishing to magazine publishing by the turn of the 20th century huge Rube Goldberg like machines called linotypes drastically sped up this process this is the world Oswald Cooper Chicago's preeminent letterer and illustrator lived in in 1918 after years of making custom hand lettered ads for car companies and banks he designed a fully-formed typeface dubbed Cooper it took a classic Roman form and softened to the edges seeing promising Cooper's design and the prior success of his lettering work the type foundry Barnhardt brothers and Spindler asked him to make a bold display typeface based on the font around 1920 Oswald Cooper released Cooper black and it was an immediate hit it was used for newspaper headlines and large-scale posters it sold cars cold medicine music lessons turntables and ginger ale with Cooper black it was like somebody took an air pump to tire and blew up that tire I mean this ad for Cooper Black credits the font for getting five thousand customers into their clients new store on opening day and in countless reviews it was considered the most popular typeface design of the time so what made it work so well for one its curves perhaps the most unconventional aspect of the curves are that willingness to be unafraid to curve the bottom parts of the letter forms so if you look at the bottom parts of the stems of the a like there's no flat edges on that which is very strange if you look at most typefaces they have flat bottom somewhere even Cooper blacks imitations like gaudi heavy and papst extra bold fail to fully break tradition you want that consistent line for legibility and so the fact that Cooper doesn't have that means that it's very forgiving to irregularities like the baseline serif of one character naturally flows right into the curve of another even when the characters are slightly uneven those irregularities look more like mistakes than quirks and straighter edge designs the fact that Cooper doesn't necessarily need to be laid in a straight line to look good is an advantage let's talk about this weird F it's an identifiable feature of Cooper black turns out it's pretty genius draw a rectangle around that F and you have to think like okay I've got a draw of really bold F and I only have this rectangle of space to play with you've got the crossbars and then you've got the hook at the top and the serif at the bottom you're kind of like running out of space the shape of this negative space in the ascender allowed Cooper to make the F as bold as possible for as much as possible while still maintaining legibility which wasn't always the case for heavy typefaces of the time this is actually a good example like this is a very bold four and you can see that like the counter space and there is like really tiny the tiny Ness is what makes the floor look bold and heavy but that four could get sort of like filled up with ink and then essentially vanish these negative spaces within each character made Cooper black incredibly light and friendly while still commanding attention the fact that it worked both big and small was a huge selling point every character of Cooper black has its own little quirks the G is always the thing that I think about first it has like this sort of anthropomorphic quality I think it looks like a duck now that you say that like the cute kind of looks like a snail weird at any rate I think the letter that shows just how fun and functional Cooper black can be has to be the Oh a lot of typefaces have a vertical stress so the oval inside would just point straight up and down Cooper's tilts back and while it looks off-kilter on its own when placed in a word or phrase it always seems to compliment the letters around it the central conflict that a type designer is facing is how do I make something that feels cohesive as a whole design system as opposed to a beautiful collection of letters somehow Cooper achieved both oswald cooper believed cooper black was at its best when there was thin spacing between the words and not much letting between the lines basically it worked best when the letters were all cramped together but that sometimes posed a problem even when cooper black was first designed like just the act of squishing type together tight was like in some cases extremely difficult or impossible to do in the 1950s to dramatically new ways of printing made it easier to push letters closer together in that thrust cooper black into the second half of the 20th century there was a basic change in the material of which type is made a change from lead to paper or film the first was photo type hot metal typecasting was replaced by film strips in dark rooms and by the early 1960s machines like the photo type oz etre were small enough to fit in local print shops the other was the invention of dry rub transfers which just required a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper it was perfect for customizing headlines letter set the company that made them marketed it as fast simple and economical these two technologies opened up graphic design to more adventurous compositions something wood and metal had struggled to do and cooper black flourished it thrived as always in advertising it's friendly curves fit the tongue-in-cheek aesthetic of the 1960s and 70s but it also showed up in magazines movies and hundreds of album covers Pet Sounds was like the quintessential setting just look at the way the D works with the E and the Y and boys fits so nicely over the oh it it's fluidity is what makes it special and it's boldness makes it special I think all type designers would come in and say like they have an idea of how a typeface is is meant to be used but I think that a typeface doesn't really reach its full potential until it's put into somebody else's hands because Cooper black was readily available in letras at int I posit or catalogs it was no longer just in the hands of professionals and designers it was in the hands of the DI wires of the counterculture movement it seamlessly jumped from Burger King to underground posters and magazines and became a staple the idea of using something that's basic vernacular but using it with intention to make a statement is something that you see throughout design or cultural history these early hip-hop posters are actually the perfect example of Cooper blacks adaptability and its legacy like take a look at this one it doesn't really matter that these are two lowercase LS because the S fits so perfectly next to them and the types ability to be squeezed as tightly as possible and still be incredibly legible holds up even under extreme circumstances it's always fun to look at something that's used an assertive lowbrow way and then to realize that this isn't like some cheap tacky thing this is actually like very good that's why Cooper black is just as popular today as it was when it was first made from corner store signs and fashion brands to food packaging grassroots movements and hip-hop album covers Cooper's ability to work as like rebel and letterings and in photo type and as movable type and also now like in digital that's why it's everywhere and that's something that Oswald Cooper couldn't have predicted [Music] you see this guy he is afraid for his life this drawing is in 1832 joke it's a riff on how nobody knew how to prevent cholera you might suspend a chorus over your masked mouth or wear a copper breastplate and tie pictures of water behind your calves anything to keep the disease away [Music] starting in 1830s cholera pandemics swept the United Kingdom nobody knew how the disease was transmitted germs weren't an established idea one London doctor Jon Snow tried to find out how the disease spread and today one of his investigations is iconic in the field of Epidemiology and it all centered on a pump this is a map John snow made to prove his solution to the cholera mystery in London it also shows the confusion and the problems he was up against each of these bars represents a death from cholera the disease often killed half the people who got it it caused vomiting and diarrhea the rapid loss of fluids was fatal at the time a lot of people believed cholera was transmitted in a miasma imagine in evil cholera cloud this typical map from the 1840s shows a cholera mist that was blamed for transmission snow suspected a different source [Music] at the time people usually didn't get water directly in their homes it came from a neighborhood pump connected to one of the few water companies in the city John snow mapped different water companies service areas in London you can see how they are occasionally separate and occasionally overlap if a common pump was contaminated at any point at the source or near the pump snow believed the water could kill in 18-49 he wrote that his study of symptoms and specific cases had led him to suspect the emptying of sewers into the drinking water of the community caused outbreaks not a miasma five years later he had a chance to prove it and stop a fresh outbreak in the process in August 1854 20 people lived here at forty Broad Street including an infant who died of cholera after her death snow started to investigate the outbreak he didn't think the original water source was the problem but he thought something might be wrong down the line at the pump he took samples of the water they seemed clean but he wasn't satisfied because more people were getting sick he asked questions up and down the street where one man had noticed a bad smell from his water snow ask the Registrar for a list of people who died he started going house by house to interview the survivors and many of the dead had taken water from the pump he became convinced the Broad Street pump was the common link among the dead he wrote I had an interview with the board of guardians of st. James Parish on the evening of Thursday 7th September and represented the above circumstances to them in consequence of what I said the handle of the pump was removed on the following day people stopped using the water but snow had not won yet newspapers reported the streets were covered in line the city was using it as a powerful disinfectant on the streets that showed they weren't fully convinced the pump was the problem they suspected miasma so snow bolstered his case through investigation and recording he learned the 18 workers who died at this factory had drunk from big barrels of water drawn from the pump at the same time unlikely survivors could serve as proof of snows theory according to miasma theory this place would have been covered in cholera clouds affecting all workers but snow learned the workhouse had its own well know bad water got in the same went for this Brewer that's because snow learned the workers their drink from the breweries water supply or more likely only drank a free malt liquor they got on the job that's right drinking on the job saved their lives snow strengthened his argument and his map he adjusted the location of the pump to show how close it was to 40 Broad Street and drew a dotted line he showed a zone where it would be closest to walk to the Broad Street pump rather than another one that zone is where most people died he tabulated every death by date to do it this was paired with a local reverence similar data-driven investigations a local surveyor looked at the plumbing at 40 Broad Street where the infant had died he learned that the cesspool were sewage collected was poorly designed and lined with decaying bricks when the infants diapers had been washed the cholera carrying water had leaked into the Broad Street pump supply Jon Snow died in 1858 his obituary read dr. Jon Snow this well-known physician died at noon on the 16th instant at his house in Sackville Street from an attack of apoplexy his researches on chloroform and other anesthetics were appreciated by the profession at the time snow was more famous for stuff like a chloroform inhaler than a map it took years for the investigation of Jon Snow to become an example for subsequent outbreaks and epidemiology textbooks and it's slowly eventually helped end the miasma myth that's because snow did not just make a map of a city it's a map of his process in the field it shaped it gave direction to a world where disease didn't have to be hidden in a cloud instead it could start at a pump [Music] okay so the best book about John Snow is cholera chloroform in the science of medicine features an amazing story which is that Jon Snow gave chloroform to Queen Victoria while she was giving birth on April 8th 2020 a few hundred people in Florida broke the state's stay-at-home order to go wait in this line hundreds of thousands of people had lost their jobs and applied for unemployment benefits through Florida's online system but the people in this line had come out to get these paper applications because for thousands in Florida the website wasn't working problems from almost the moment it went online site crashes and glitches a process to file is nearly impossible Americans have lost their jobs all over the country but the kind of help they can get depends on what state they live in that's because the US doesn't really have one unemployment system it has 53 of them each state and territory has their own and the differences between them are huge in places like New Jersey and Massachusetts before the economy crashed a little more than half of all workers without jobs were able to collect unemployment benefits in Florida less than 10 percent of unemployed people who are getting them in places like Florida the complicated hard to use unemployment system isn't a mistake it's doing exactly what it was designed to do I haven't really had an answer from anyone oh man look or they may is going by and June 1st is gonna come and I have no idea what I'm gonna do back during the Great Recession lots of people were out of work state unemployment systems were in overdrive in many states the funds that fed those systems were running out of cash so lots of states including Florida raise taxes on businesses that made a lot of business owners unhappy in the 2010 and 2012 elections several states elected Republican governors who promised to reverse those tax hikes any tax increase kills jobs in 2011 when rick scott took office florida employers paid three hundred $19 per worker and unemployment taxes by 2019 when he left they were paying $50 per worker the lowest rate in the country but that meant florida system was underfunded again so the new governor and the Republican legislature started finding ways to pay less money to fewer people they cut weekly payments and reduced the number of weeks that you could collect unemployment if you were laid off but they also redesigned the system itself in 2011 Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a law that moved the state's entire unemployment application process online the new system was notoriously difficult to use no money and no answers because of problems with the state's new 63 million dollar unemployment website in 2019 Florida state auditor released a report on the state's unemployment system it noted that it frequently gave incorrect error messages and would often prevent the submission of an application entirely honestly I'm an unemployment insurance expert and some of the screenshots I've been seeing don't make any sense to me I talked to Michelle evermore an unemployment lawyer and researcher it's clear that there's a very intentional movement to make benefits difficult to access just by making the computer system difficult first Florida's unemployment application itself is extremely difficult to complete think about the last form you filled out online you probably started at the top with basic identifying information then fill in more boxes as you scroll down but to submit a claim on Florida's unemployment website you submit just a few bits of information at a time then click to a new page and hope it's all being saved each time you hit submit in a new page has to load that's a new opportunity for the system to crash and kick you out the website kept kicking you off while you were trying to fill all these questions you will just throw you to the beginning of the website which basically made you start all over again thank you four times here we are 40 something days in I basically today started from square one all over next if you do get through the process it is not active and when you click on that nothing happens you just get this screen of indecipherable stuff and you have to try and figure out what it means absolutely it was designed to fail some Florida politicians have blamed the systems problems on Deloitte the contractor the state used to help build the new online system back in 2013 but that same year Deloitte also helped Massachusetts build its online system using the same basic framework Massachusetts has been able to get benefits to a much greater percentage of jobless people than Florida everybody's trying to blame the computer but in reality it's the politics it's not the computers fault the computer does what you tell it to do in response to the pandemic Congress gave States more than a billion dollars to boost unemployment benefits and made gig workers and freelancers eligible for them but all workers still have to go through state systems like Florida's to get those benefits at some point in their working lives four out of five Americans will need to access safety net programs like unemployment insurance but these programs benefit that one out of five - it keeps money churning in the economy when there's a downturn for every dollar spent in unemployment insurance benefits a dollar 61 was generated in local economic activity it's increasingly clear that our physical health is linked to that of our neighbors it turns out our economic health is too [Music] How did you first find out that there were deepfakes of you? My husband actually told me. Because he is friends with Ashton Kutcher. So he actually told him like, “Oh, by the
way, there these things called deepfakes and your wife is one of them." Deepfakes use machine learning to fabricate events that never happened like Bill Hader shape-shifting: And I said, “Seth Rogan was like, “It
was amazing! He has like, a bike track in his back yard! It's phenomenal.” And I did a Seth Rogan impression And it was like I did a magic trick, Tom Cruise was like, “Ahoooh!” And there’s growing concern that in the
wrong hands this technology “can pose a very real national security
threat.” “could impact the 2020 election” “could become a real and present danger
to our democracy, Dana.” But the most pressing, daily threat of deepfakes isn’t politics. It’s porn. People are hijacking women’s faces to make porn videos they never consented to be in. Which is why this kind of deepfake is harmful, even when people know it's not real. I was just shocked. Because this is my face, it belongs to me! In a September 2019 survey, researchers at Deeptrace found that of the deepfake videos they could identify online, 96% were pornographic. And that more or less 100% percent of these videos are women and are not consensual. Pornhub and other big porn streaming sites have policies banning deepfakes, though they don't seem to be enforcing them. Mostly, these videos show up on separate sites dedicated to this kind of abuse. It's not just celebrities anymore. Not that celebrities feel any less pain from these videos. But the phenomenon is evolving at a rate where we're seeing deepfake pornography increasing in number and an increasing number of victims as well. I was at work and I got an email on my phone. In fact, I can even bring up the email. 25th of May, 4:18 p.m. "F.Y.I. There is a deepfake video of you on some porn sites. It looks real." I remember sitting down receiving that email. I think it was like you're frozen for that
moment of time. It was depicting me having sexual intercourse, and the title of the video had my full name. And then I saw another video that was depicting me performing oral sex. Noelle is an Australian law graduate. She’s not a celebrity. Someone took photos she shared on social media and first photoshopped them into nude images then graduated to deepfake videos. What’s happening in these videos is a specific kind of digital manipulation, and it’s unlike older face-swapping filters you might have used. Those tools let you put your face into your friend’s
head, but you still controlled it -- a sort of video Photoshop -- transferring both your
facial features and your expressions. But deepfakes can take the facial features alone, and animate that face with the expressions of someone else. “Tom Cruise was like… Ahoooh!” This is what makes deepfake porn videos so invasive. The creator takes away a victim’s control of her own face and uses it for something
she never wanted. Transferring a mask of someone’s facial features requires training a piece of software called an “autoencoder” on hundreds of
images of the same face from different angles and in different lighting with different expressions until it learns what they all have in common. That volume of images has long been available of celebrities, but increasingly it exists of... anyone. If you're someone not even with a very intense social media presence, but just a presence online, you have a few pictures. Maybe there's a video of you from a party
or something like this. You have so many training images to take from
that. At the moment, you do still need a fair bit
of data to make a convincing deepfake. But as the technology is improving, we're needing less data and the tools are becoming increasingly accessible and user-friendly. And there’s a growing infrastructure for
deepfakes. It's not just about posting videos, it's also
about forums discussing how to make them, how to target certain individuals. In fact, the term “deepfake” originated
as the name of a subreddit for swapping celebrity faces onto porn stars. Reddit banned the page, but the conversation
just moved to other sites. You have almost directories about, "Okay,
you want to make a deepfake of a certain celebrity. Here are adult performers that will best suit that." There's a lot of money to be made from selling
custom deepfakes. Users pay for deepfakes of specific celebrities or even women they know personally. And they discuss whether all of this is legal. Some think they can protect themselves by identifying the videos as fake. But that’s not true. If you live in the US and someone makes porn with your face, you can sue the creator whether or not they've marked it as a deepfake. What is true is, it’s very difficult to
actually do that. You’d need to pay to bring a lawsuit, with no certainty you’d be able to secure a punishment or even find the creator, let alone stop the
video from spreading. Some people on these sites question the morality
of what they’re doing. And disagree about how they’d feel if it
happened to them. But it probably won’t happen to them. That’s the point. Taking a woman’s face and putting it into this context is part of a long history of using sexual humiliation against women. You know, we're having this gigantic conversation
about consent and I don't consent. So that's why it's not OK. Even if it's labeled as, "this is not actually
her." It's hard to think about that. This is probably one of the most difficult things because fake porn and my name will be forever associated. My children, my future children, will
have to see things. My future partner will have to see things. And that's what makes me sad. I just, I wish that the Internet were a little
bit more responsible and a little bit kinder. "Minneapolis on fire." "This is getting serious." "Oh, oh, oh my goodness." You watch the TV news... "We've got a little bit of a fire 
breaking out on the left here." ...and you're like, oh my goodness, all the protests are riots. "...vandalizing..." "Fires have been started..." "Things got out of control..." We're not gonna pay attention to the protesters in a city that has been wracked by this violence... "No justice, no peace!" ...who are marching peacefully, and chanting names. "George Floyd, George Floyd, George Floyd..." Which is going to get more
attention? A group of 35 people standing, chanting names, singing songs, doing the
Cupid Shuffle, as I saw one group of protesters doing, or, five people on the
ground bleeding and screaming and crying and throwing rocks? Our press is driven
by eyeballs, and attention, and clicks, and advertising, and passion, and raising
the anxiety of viewers. Dramatic images are money. They keep eyeballs on the
screen. So they will constantly show action. You need to understand the
limitations of those visuals. I'm a college professor. My doctorate is in political science, I teach in a journalism department. I would say, across
the board, the coverage has not been very good. It's passing, but it's not very good. And the reason it's not very good is because
there are not enough conversations about the roots of these protests. What they are showing you is what is happening right now on the ground. What those
visuals cannot tell you is the entire historical context that has led to that
scene on the ground. And one thing that a lot of mainstream media doesn't do well is give you that full context. You can't untangle this moment from
where we are, just in this year. Starting with February, with the coronavirus... Ahmaud Arbery's lynching, having people in shelter in place, having people become
angry that they are in shelter in place orders, having the economy
significantly slow down. There are so many events, just since January, that led
up to this moment. Not to mention the hundreds of years before that. This becomes a very complicated story. "Come to me right now. This woman just got tased." Who is to blame for the violence? It is crazy that when we talk about
destruction of property, that the presumption is that the unarmed people
who are protesting are more likely to cause property destruction than the
paramilitary cops who are showing up. Because tear gas canisters are really
hot, flash bombs can start fires, tear gas leads people to run and break through
windows in order to hide and get help. I'm not saying the police are intending
to cause damage. But if you're randomly shooting out tear gas, it's gonna end up in the back alley, with a pile of newspapers and some garbage. Does that mean that there aren't protesters who engage in destruction? Of course there
are. To say that that all this is turning into looters is like saying
everybody at the party is a drunk driver. No. Some people will leave and cause
problems. But you can't say everybody at the party is the worst-behaving person. I think one thing that we actually don't do well, and don't quite understand, is
anti-blackness, and how it works in our society, how it is in our language,
and how it is used by mainstream media. We have spent the last month watching
protests who want the country to open up, and we saw images of these people
screaming, and yelling, and spitting on police officers, who were plainclothes
officers. They weren't in riot gear. They weren't in masks. Now we see protests based on violence and death. And we see peaceful
protesters come out. But suddenly, the cops come out in riot gear, and everything looks like some sort of violent takeover in some 80s post-apocalyptic film. What I'm reminded of are photos in New Orleans of white people leaving stores with food, and the headline being, this is how people are surviving. And black folks leaving the store with food, and calling them looters. This is about a community that is
treated differently by the police in our country. Just consuming the news right
now in the next five days is not going to give you a good understanding as to
why this is happening. The emails I get, where people say,
Well, I was in favor of the protesters, and then they turned violent, and it's a
problem. Well, why are you more offended by people being violent, in response to state-sponsored violence, than you are by the initial act that caused everything? On the morning of March 28, Domingo Vega of
Queens, New York, went to the hospital with symptoms of pneumonia and tested positive
for Covid-19. This is Domingo. But not just him. This light
represents 500 people who have been infected with the novel coronavirus in New York City.
By May 16th, there were nearly 190,000 known cases of Covid-19 there.
Health officials report these numbers every day, in cities and countries around the world,
but they know that they’re incomplete. Because Covid testing has been like a narrow flashlight
in a dark room. Anything we’re not pointing the light at, we can’t see. 
But now researchers are collecting data that can capture the pandemic more fully, to try
to get a better handle on just how much we’ve lost. Domingo Vega died on April 16th at the age of 45. Originally from Mexico, he came to
the US when he was 16, and worked in restaurant kitchens since then, eventually launching
his own business with two locations in Brooklyn. He and his wife had three children. 
Domingo was one of 20,720 New Yorkers whose lives were cut short by the coronavirus as
of May 16th, according to the city’s count. Each blue light here represents 500 known
deaths from Covid-19 and 500 families who don’t need data to tell them how dangerous
this disease can be. But when it comes to the statistics, that
question -- how deadly is Covid-19 -- has been difficult to answer.
The relationship between the known deaths and the known cases is called the “case
fatality rate.” At this point in New York City, 1 out
of 9 people known to have Covid-19 have died. That’s 11 percent.
But that rate varies drastically across cities and countries. It was over 12% in Sweden in
mid May but less than a percent in Iceland. It also changes over time. For the US, it
dropped down to 1% near the end of March before climbing back up as people who tested positive
several weeks prior ended up dying. When the case fatality rate varies this much,
it’s saying a lot more about these countries than about the disease itself. 
For example, deaths may be higher in places where the health system is overwhelmed 
or where the population is older. We know that Covid-19 is more deadly in seniors, and
especially those over 75. But also, on the other side of the fraction,
the rate reflects how much testing is happening. If a country is aware of more non-fatal cases,
their case fatality rate is lower. So this statistic isn’t all that useful
because we know most countries are missing cases. We’re also missing deaths.
According to an estimate by the New York Times, there have been thousands of deaths that weren’t
included in the official count for New York City. 
We don’t know for sure if it was coronavirus that killed them. But here’s what we do
know. If you look at 2017, 2018, and 2019, and chart
the average number of deaths per week, the line looks like this. It includes deaths from
all from all causes. For 2020 so far, that line of weekly deaths
looks like this. The area above the typical level is called “excess deaths” by researchers.
And it gives us a fuller picture of the cost of this pandemic.
We’re seeing excess deaths in many places that have suffered big outbreaks. 
In each case the excess deaths are higher than the official count of Covid deaths. 
It includes people who may have died from other causes but who were unable or unwilling
to access medical care because of the pandemic. But it also includes some people with coronavirus
who may have died at home or care facilities, or were never diagnosed.
As this data comes in, it shows that in some places, the pandemic is even more deadly than
we thought. But the virus itself may be less deadly. Because
we’re also learning that a lot more people have been infected than the official tallies
show. Health officials in New York have taken small
blood samples of people at grocery stores to check for Covid antibodies. This is called
a “seroprevalence survey” and it helps capture the substantial number of people who
didn’t know they ever had coronavirus. So far these tests show that around 20% of
people in New York City tested positive for antibodies that indicate a previous Covid
infection. If those shoppers are representative of the
city’s population, that would mean there were more than one and a half million Covid-19
cases in the city by early May. Without changing how many people have died,
the antibody survey lowers the fatality rate by identifying more non-fatal cases.
Remember the case fatality rate was 11% one in 9, but the fatality rate for all those
infected may fall somewhere between 1 in 60 and 1 in 90 for New York City.
So while the death count is higher than we thought, the death rate may be lower. But a low
fatality rate is not all good news. It paints a picture of a tricky virus that
moves undetected through many of us and causes immense suffering and death in others.
We can look for comparisons to try to wrap our heads around the death toll - more people
lost in three months in the US than a year’s worth of car crashes or drug overdoses. Still
fewer than annual deaths from cancer or heart disease. 
But the comparisons are limited. Because unlike car accidents or cancer, Covid-19 is contagious.
Human beings are the vector for this disease and their actions are hard to predict.
So even with better data about how many are infected and dying, we won’t know the full
death toll of this pandemic until we find out how it ends. Hey guys I'm Cleo. I'm a producer here at
Vox and I'm also the host of Vox's first-ever daily show.
It's called Answered, it's on a new streaming app called Quibi and every day
we take on a question about this confusing moment that we're living
through. So now I get to share with you guys one of my favorite episodes so far.
Here we go. By now you've probably heard of Nadia
the tiger but if not allow me to introduce you. A tiger at a zoo in New
York has tested positive for coronavirus Researchers think that she caught it
from a human zookeeper. At the zoo four year old Nadia her sister Azul, two amur
Tigers and three lions all developed dry coughs. Don't worry. Nadia's doing a lot
better now but her illness highlighted something about the virus itself it's
zoonotic. That means it can transmit between humans and animals. Now the bond
between a Pomeranian and its owner may have taken a serious turn. The study
showed Winston the family's fun-loving pug contracted COVID-19. According to the
CDC and the US Department of Agriculture two cats in separate parts of New York
tested positive. All of this has me wondering. Which animals can catch
coronavirus? Should I be worried about my pet? I'm Cleo Abram and this is answered
by Vox. Well for most animals that we've seen that can be infected by COVID-19,
they don't have very serious symptoms . That's Dr. William Karesh. 
He's a wildlife veterinarian and an expert on animals and pandemics. I have a dog. Should I be worried about my dog? No. You should not be worried about your dog. Dogs have been shown in rare cases to pick up the virus but the virus doesn't
grow very well in dogs. People found out that dogs have it just out of curiosity
because the people in the homes were very sick and they thought well let's
just test the dogs and see if they might have it. And they picked up the virus but
the dogs weren't sick. Cats seem to be more susceptible and cats can actually
infect other cats but they don't get very sick. While it is possible for our
pets to get very mild cases of COVID-19 the CDC says "The risk
of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is considered to be low." So it seems like
we can take our pets getting sick or getting us sick off our list of worries. But it's clear that COVID-19 can transmit between humans and animals so
researchers are trying to figure out which animals are most susceptible. Once the virus breaks into an animal's body it needs to fit itself inside a special
receptor on the target cell called ACE2 the virus and receptor act kind of like
a lock and key. The more easily the SARS-CoV2 virus latches on to a
species ACE2 receptor, the more likely that animal is to become infected. Each species' ACE2 receptor is a little bit different, so not all animals get
infected equally. The virus is more likely to bind in humans, camels, cats,
pangolins and bats but less likely in rats, mice, chickens and guinea pigs. So this is the first part of the story which which animals can it bind to,  but
it's not the whole story because we know that pigs actually don't have a
productive infection even though they can receive the virus. Which is why so
many animals are susceptible to the virus, but it doesn't make them sick. We don't want to jump to too many conclusions but it's a beautiful start
to a way to look at susceptibility. The ACE2 receptor is really only an
indicator of whether or not an animal can become infected with coronavirus. It
doesn't tell us anything about how coronavirus can spread between humans
and animals. I've heard people talk about bats, about pangolins, about wet markets, So I'm wondering what do we know for sure about how COVID-19 got from animals to
humans? Well right now we don't know what the original animal source was. We know that there's many viruses very similar to COVID-19 like all it's
kissing cousins and his brothers and sisters.We find those in bats. Many of
the viruses that make us sick originally came from the animal kingdom. The common
cold originated in camels. Many strains of flu come from pigs and birds. HIV
transferred to humans from a chimpanzee. Ebola, SARS, Marburg, Nipah, and COVID-19
have all been linked to bats. Is there a specific reason why
these diseases come from bats as opposed to other animals? There's over 1,400 types of bats so there are a lot of viruses for one
thing. And then another is genetically, we're not so distantly related to bats. They're closer on the evolutionary tree, they're closer to people than a lot of
other animals are. So the viruses of course then, it's easier to share viruses
with things you're related to like humans and gorillas can share a lot more
viruses than anybody else. Why is it though that when a virus like SARS-CoV2
jumps from animals to people it's so deadly to us whereas it's less so to the
original host animal? All of us have viruses and bacteria living on us and we
have grown used to them and over the millennia we've actually evolved to use
them when we spread them among species they have very different reactions. Over the last hundred years, 
the number of zoonotic diseases in people has been
increasing. On average a new infectious disease emerges in humans every four
months and 75% of them come from animals. Zoonotic diseases have been around as
long as there have been people and animals together. What's new is what we
call these new emerging infectious diseases and that's a new virus like
COVID-19. Those are becoming more and more common. We have more exposure to wildlife as we encroach into wild areas as we disturb habitats. They spread
faster because of air travel and trade so we live in a new world. For now,  we don't need to worry too much about the animals in our lives getting sick from
COVID-19. But we should be worried about health and our relationship with the
environment. We need to detect these things right away; not wait until they
turn into a pandemic And that's our show! Thanks for watching. Every episode is kind of like that, 
it's five to six minutes long, it takes on a
question that's kind of in the atmosphere right now and asks an expert
for the answers that might make living through this moment just a little bit
easier. So if you want to check it out you can go to the link either up there
or in the description down there, Or you can go in your phone and download Quibi 
and search for 'Vox' or 'Answered' I'll be there every day. On January 23rd a family in China traveled from Wuhan to the city of Guangzhou the next day they ate lunch at a restaurant one of them had Kovan 18 but didn't feel sick yet within a few days other members of the family started showing symptoms and a few days after that so did the family who was sitting at the table next to them the family at this table also got sick and researchers say this first person was the source of all these infections even though some of them were sitting almost 14 feet away but the people eating that these tables didn't get sick why an air conditioning unit right here kept the air flowing through this section of the restaurant it circulated the virus from this person through the air to these other families the story highlights something about the corona virus most of us are just starting to understand its ability to travel through the air and as public spaces open up that's led to some big questions is it safe to go to the beach what about a park and is a runner gonna get you sick if we think about our actions only in terms of safe or risky there's really only one way to guarantee that you won't get sick or spread Kovan 19 stay home isolate yourself and have zero contact with the outside world but maintaining that level of caution all the time isn't really possible for most of us we need food we need supplies and sometimes we just need to take a walk so the goal in protecting yourself and others from Kovan 18 isn't to eliminate risk completely it's to minimize it if this side is perpetual quarantine and this side is getting coughed on by a bunch of sick people it's about pushing yourself as reasonably close to this side as you can so let's start with going for a walk and with someone who like me has also felt weird about it before I started calling up epidemiologists and talking to them about the risks I was actually pretty paranoid and then when I actually started digging into the research I realized the risks of getting coated from runners or cyclists outside is much lower than I thought every time we breathe but especially when we talk and especially when we cough or sneeze we let out little droplets of water some of them are pretty big and heavy and fall to the ground quickly like little bits of spit others are really small and much lighter so they float farther through the air and these droplets are what's carrying the virus if a droplet floats and then evaporates that leaves the virus out in the air for some period of time and we don't yet know the amount of virus you have to be exposed to to get sick but we do know that you lower your risk by exposing yourself to less of the virus and Segal says there's three ways to do that the first is distance so are you six feet away from the person duration are you encountering this person for one second as they whizzed past you or are you around them for an hour and ventilation is there a good airflow moving around you that can disperse any viral particles or are you in an enclosed indoor space where they're just gonna stick around the difference between how air moves inside versus outside it's huge to show that I used this spray which glows under a blacklight I sprayed my test subject with it both inside and outside from three feet away even though it wasn't windy far fewer Spray particles reached his shirt outside the airflow was so much better at dispersing them and being outside also has an effect on the virus itself a virus has this protective coat of moisture around it there's a lot of things acting on it so there's sunlight hitting it there's wind there's rain there's humidity and all of that can work to kind of break apart this protective coat of moisture and decay the virus a study in China looked at 318 different outbreaks of Kovan 19 across the country only one of them involves someone catching it outdoors that study hasn't been peer-reviewed but it's consistent with everything else we know that being outside can be pretty low risk but your interactions with other people can increase that risk if you're talking to a friend at a close distance your risk goes up and that risk climbs the longer your converse a continues but if you're both wearing masks to stop some of those larger droplets from spreading your risk goes down shopping in an open-air market is less risky than being inside a store but you can reduce that risk by getting in and out quickly but what about passing a heavy breathing runner so let me take you through what would actually have to happen for a runner or cyclist outside to infect you as they pass by they would have to expel enough viral particles to be able to kick-start an infection those particles would have to travel several feet of distance withstand the pressures of wind rain humidity then the particles have to actually land in your throat or your upper respiratory tract or on your hands which you would then use to touch your eyes your nose or your mouth so all of that is a pretty arduous sequence to execute perfectly going to the beach or to a park isn't necessarily dangerous or safe the risk can go up or down depending on how we each behave which means everyone has a responsibility to lower that risk for everyone else the point here is not to be cavalier when you go outside I think we all still want to be cautious especially as some states are starting a reopening changing your behavior to limit exposure to the virus won't reduce your risk to zero but it could lower it enough that you can breathe a little easier [Music] Ezra Klein: So in 2015 I asked you what you
were afraid of. Bill Gates: The big worry for me – I would
say even a likelihood during my lifetime is a big epidemic. Klein: So let me ask you the reverse of it. I'm thinking three or five years into the
future beyond just a vaccine. What are you hopeful for? What do you hope for? Gates: Well, I hope that this draws the world
together. I mean after World War II we created new institutions and we successfully
avoided having another world war. And that's a phenomenal thing. We haven't blown off a nuclear weapon as part
of a conflict. We did that by binding ourselves together
through a variety of institutions – including WHO on health. Archival narrator: “Churchill Roosevelt
and Stalin dedicated their nations to the foundations for permanent peace for a United
Nations organization” Here – "It felt like I was working in a warzone." "They all have Covid." This is a tragic event. Whatever good comes out of this will in no
way make up for the problems that it causes. The disease got into exponential growth in
a lot of Europe and the United States. And so the toll there is greater than I would
have expected. You know, we're learning about how to do testing
well. A lot of countries got that right and did
it very early on. I think part of it is that the minor epidemics
we had really didn't hit the US. So if you look at the Asian countries that
did well, places like Taiwan or South Korea because they were hit with MERS or SARS. They had the playbook. They opened the playbook. And they went through those steps. many of them wrote down, you know, step one,
identify all PCR machines, step two get supplies for PCR machines. You know, we haven't done that in a reasonable
way today. We don't really know what's going to happen
in developing countries where most of the world population lives. But, unless there's some magical factor, the
likelihood that the vast majority of the deaths will be there is very high. It's harder for them to socially isolate and
they need to get food. There isn't this ability to do what we've
done. "People are suffering." "There is no income. Life is so hard." It should say to us, OK. This science is important. Let's use it to avoid pandemics. The U.S. Congress – that allocates resources
– has been the most generous on HIV funding for the entire world. You know, it started under a Republican administration. George W. Bush: "And to meet a severe and
urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the emergency plan for AIDS relief." Gates: You know, the US government has helped
the health of the entire world. Been a huge part of the reduction in death. And so I do think what you're seeing in this
short term, in terms of how the U.S. is engaging... Trump: "… to halt funding of the World Health
Organization while a review is conducted." Gates: ...it's not where we'll end up. I don't see a change in the US Congress and
saying, hey, in this case, not only is it humanitarian, It's about strategic relationships and it's
about making sure the disease isn't coming back into the US as we participate in global
commerce that we benefit immensely from. You know, everybody brings to the epidemic
their hopes that maybe they had before. And I've always believed in global cooperation… That human ability to take a much worse situation and craft it into the institutions and the
economic growth and innovation that we’ve had between World War II and
now – I hope that this looks like that. On January 20th South Korea confirmed its first case of kovat 19 the same day the United States also confirmed its first case of kovat 19 but what happened next in both countries was really different this chart shows for several countries the number of kovat 19 tests performed relative to the population right away South Korea started aggressively testing for the virus before long it had conducted more tests per thousand people than any other country most experts say that testing at that scale is the key to safely opening public spaces we need to test and trace we need more testing the larger the outbreak you have of the virus the more tests you should be doing it's wise how Korea was able to avoid a broad lockdown the u.s. was much slower to ramp up their testing but eventually in mid-april they caught up to South Korea as of mid-may about three percent of the US population had been tested for kovin 18 and now some parts of the US are starting to reopen but some experts warn that in many of those places reopening is premature that even though the US has been doing a lot more testing they haven't been testing the right people because South Korea ramped up testing so quickly in those first few weeks they were able to track down lots of people who have the virus and isolate them so that everyone else could go back to work and most experts agree that if you send people back to work without doing this first it's really dangerous testing is like response 101 it's the most obvious thing we need to do in any disease outbreak that's because if a country doesn't test effectively they don't really know where the virus is and how many people have it so how do you know if you are testing enough to avoid this this chart shows for each of these countries what percentage of all of their Kovan 18 tests have come back positive up until mid-may it's called the test positivity rate this number doesn't tell us what percentage of people in each country have Kovan 18 but you can think of it as an easy way to see which countries are doing enough testing to contain their outbreak we would certainly like to see countries testing at the level of 10 negative tests 2 1 positive that's 10% in other words the countries below this line have done a better job testing and that's because this number can tell us a lot about who in the country is actually getting tested and how well we know about this diseases or a lot of people who have very mild symptoms would have actually no symptoms at all and we're almost really not testing those people in the u.s. Kovan 19 tests were in short supply for a long time and that shaped the Center for Disease Control's guidelines on how health care workers should allocate testing prioritize people showing up to hospitals with the most severe symptoms if that's where testing is focused it makes sense that a large portion of people tested will test positive but it also means you are missing anyone who isn't actively seeking out those tests this is a reactive testing scenario it's probably what happened in other countries with high test positivity rates and to understand why that matters we can look at countries that also experienced a big outbreak but have a lower test positivity rate like Australia in South Korea instead of narrowly focusing on testing the very sick these countries tested proactively they tested a much wider group of people including many who didn't feel sick at all they're testing lots and lots of people and they're probably picking up everybody that led to a lot of negative results which drove their positive rate lower and because they tested so many people their tests didn't only find people with severe symptoms but also those with mild symptoms and even many who tested positive that had no symptoms at all and these are the people who are key to containing an outbreak if someone doesn't feel very sick it's unlikely they will seek out a test which means you have to find them and when testing is only reserved for the sickest these people who do feel sick often don't make the cut supervising the lighter and so I didn't get tested because of that I developed a dry cough and I called my doctor I'm also pregnant so I called my prenatal care tape you know doctor as well and they both said no to getting the test that they didn't have access to it but I didn't qualify right off the bat they told me okay we're gonna assume you have it and we're not going to test you if you chart the United States test positivity rate over time you can see it's been going down which could be a sign the u.s. is starting to test more effectively but if you break it out by state you can see that some places still have a long way to go in a reactive testing scenario the severely symptomatic people may have gotten tested but the mildly symptomatic and the asymptomatic are mingling with people who don't have Cova 19 to find those people and lower the test positivity rate there are two options one approach is to cast the net wide and randomly test as many people as possible if you just blanket the country with tests anybody who wakes up every morning every other day if you want to go get a test you can get a test every time you go to work you can get a test asymptomatic people are getting picked up just by the fact that everybody's getting this would require a huge increase in testing in the first week of May the US was averaging about 260,000 tests a day but a random testing approach could require tens of millions of daily tests the other approach requires less testing but is more targeted starting with the people we already know tested positive for code 19 you isolate them but you also talk to them at all their contacts everybody they have spent any time and then you go test all those people and some of them are gonna be asymptomatic and you're gonna pick up asymptomatic disease through contactors experts like dr. JA say that approach would require more like 900 thousand daily tests but in both scenarios the goal is the same the entire math of this comes down to one simple idea you want to keep infected people away from susceptible that's safely transitioning out of social distancing requires finding out where the virus is and who has it that means testing and it's why if you want to know if your country or state or city is doing a good job containing its outbreak its test positivity rate is a good place to look because the difference between opening back up with a low test positivity rate and a high one is the difference between caution and just hoping for the best [Music] Here, along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is an 85-mile stretch of land known as Cancer Alley. For decades, some communities living in this part of Louisiana have reported disproportionately high rates of respiratory diseases and cancer. In one part of a parish called St. John the
Baptist, a person's lifetime risk of getting cancer is 50 times greater than that of the average American. And now it also has one of the highest Covid-19 death rates per capita in the country. A closer look reveals that the community here is predominantly black and that figures into an alarming pattern. Across the country, black people are dying at disproportionate rates compared to their populations. While there are many historical and structural inequalities at play, one part of the problem may be lurking in the air. Louisiana has some of the most toxic air in the US. For decades oil, gas, chemicals and plastics have been manufactured here. Much of it comes from the roughly 200 chemical plants and oil refineries which dot this corridor on the banks of the Mississippi River. They call it Cancer Alley. They are afraid
that this air, the very air I'm breathing right now, is so filled with carcinogens that they have labeled the river area a national sacrifice zone. The industry emits dozens of different chemicals that are known to cause cancer along with something called PM2.5, which causes fine particle pollution. When exposed to it, these tiny particles, just a fraction of the width of a human hair, can lodge deep in our lungs and bloodstream and can lead to health problems like heart disease, asthma, and lung cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency's estimates of cancer risk from air toxicity are far higher in this region than much of the rest of the country, and they follow the path of the petrochemical industry. But even within these high risk areas, here along the Mississippi, and across the country, these risks are not distributed equally among communities. One EPA analysis found that black people are exposed to about 1.5 times more particle pollution than white people. For example, even though St. John the Baptist is 58% black, the community closest to this chemical plant is 92% black. It is not a mystery. It is not, you know, voodoo. This is real. That's Robert Bullard who's been researching urban planning and environmental policy for decades, and has written 18 books on it. Because of housing discrimination and because of residential segregation, the history of this country is tied to race and place. Here along cancer alley, the history of the communities goes back to slavery. This map shows that the area used to be mostly sugar plantations. After slavery ended, many free black people, stayed in the area and established black communities on or near plantations like these. Others continued to be exploited through a system called sharecropping, where white plantation owners gave black farmers access to land in exchange for a portion of their crop as rent. Land owners often manipulated prices to make a profit, while pushing black laborers into debt and poverty. The practice continued for nearly a century, until the 1940s when a new industry took off in Louisiana. And petrochemical plants started replacing these plantations. They were invited into the state and into the corridor, without the permission of the people who live closest. These many decisions were made when people of color didn't have representatives. Companies set up their facilities right next to the historically black communities. But most of the jobs at the plants didn't go to them. And the community is left with pollution, poverty and sickness, and in some cases, death. Corporations often bought out entire towns. Like here in Reveilletown, where the Georgia Gulf Corporation bought out the town and today there's still a historically black cemetery within the grounds of a chemical plant. Power and money dictate where things go that other people don't want. That's how we end up right now with all of these, what we call sacrifice zones, these places that are over-polluted, have more than their fair share of poverty
and sicknesses. Toxic industries have been established near communities of color across the US. Like mining operations and power plants on and near Native American reservations. And in more urban areas, racist public policies like redlining have historically marked black and brown neighborhoods as less desirable, pushing polluters like highways and factories closer to their homes. Zip code is still the most potent predictor of health and well-being. You tell me your zip code. I can tell you how healthy you are, and I can tell you what's in your neighborhood and what's not in your neighborhood. One analysis of eight cities shows residents of historically redlined neighborhoods live with significantly higher levels of air pollution and are more than twice as likely as their peers to visit emergency rooms for asthma today. The research draws a strong connection between history, and health. And how even now, 80  years after these maps were drawn, they still play a role in not just where people live, but how healthy they are. All these things converge, and then you get this pandemic, you get this heat seeking missile that is targeting, that is zeroing in on the most vulnerable community. And when it targets that community, what we end up with is a death bomb. The health problems that air pollution exposure can lead to, like heart and respiratory diseases, are the same underlying conditions that can make coronavirus much more dangerous. One pre-print study made a clear link between air pollution and more severe coronavirus cases. By analyzing over 3000 US counties, and controlling for certain factors, they found that counties with higher exposures to air pollution, also had higher probabilities of deadly coronavirus cases. In their analysis, a small increase in long-term exposure to air pollution led to a large increase in the Covid-19 death rate. And although we should be cautious with this preliminary data, the findings underscore a possible reason why the coronavirus has been particularly deadly in black communities. In Louisiana, black residents make up 32 percent of the population, but they made up 56 percent of Covid-19 deaths. And in Michigan, 14 percent of the population, but 41 percent of deaths. The coronavirus is actually bringing to the surface what many of us have known for many years. People already have all these underlying conditions because of where they live, because of not having access to health care, because not having health insurance, not having, you know, the kinds of of things that make people healthy in terms of the built environment. And so it is not surprising. It's disappointing and it makes you angry. In March, the Trump administration suspended clean air protections across the country. So in Louisiana's cancer alley, that means petrochemical facilities will now have no oversight over how much they pollute. And even though we are just starting to learn about the connections between pollution exposure and severe coronavirus outcomes, it's a move that ignores the history and research that precedes it... of how segregation, pollution, and health in black communities are inextricably linked. Today, this woman’s known as Rosie the Riveter. Her poster says “we can do it.” During World War II, overall American women’s
employment increased from 12 million in December 1941 to 16 million in March 1944. It peaked at 19 million that July. More than 2,000,000 women started jobs in
wartime manufacturing specifically — the stuff of riveting. They came from other industries, housework,
and school. How did millions of women enter a new industry
in the span of a few years? “Here is the office of the supervisor of
Women Employees.” “Women in steel are simply the result of
realistic thinking.” “Women of steel” changed labor and helped
win a war. But how did the country manage to transform
a massive war effort on the turn of a dime? How did all the women behind this image become
riveters? “With the army taking men by the thousands,
more than 16,000 from our plant so far, we had to find people to replace them. A great untapped reserve was women.” The Pearl Harbor attack effectively launched
the United States into World War II. The labor pool had to get bigger. Quickly. A group of women in government wanted women
to fill in the gaps. In the Department of Labor, Frances Perkins
was the first female secretary of labor. She worked with Thelma McKelvey of Women’s
Labor Supply Services, she was part of the war production board, which managed the conversion
of peacetime industries to meet wartime needs. Mary Anderson was the leader of the Women’s
Bureau, a Department of Labor agency that advocated for women’s employment since 1920. They all worked with the War Manpower Commission,
a wartime agency that had a women’s advisory committee, including leaders across industries
like efficiency expert Lillian Gilbreth, lawyer Margaret Hickey, and school principal Maudelle
Bousfield. These groups all helped shape public perception
of wartime women workers with ads and PR, but the most important process was practical:
they had to help women find the thousands of war industry jobs that needed workers. They did that through the US Employment Service. This pamphlet lays out the steps women could
take to find a wartime job. The Office of War Information Distributed
it to magazine editors and the public. Government work: go to the Civil Service. Military: work in shore stations through a
reserve like WAVES. Industry: find the US Employment Service. This agency became a subset of the War Manpower
Commission. The US Employment Service coordinated local
offices, which referred job seekers to employers who could offer war industry work. Employers also recruited through classified
ads. Trade schools advertised to men and women
as well. As the draft further depleted the supply of
male workers, women filled a host of industrial jobs, from lathe work to welding. One specific job was perfect for that boom:
As early as May, 1942, Thelma McKelvey said that for aircraft jobs, women riveters in
particular would be commonplace. “With the ever-increasing demand for greater
speeds in aircraft, it has been necessary to remove every possible projection from the
outer surface of the airplane.” Industrial jobs clustered around Detroit,
Baltimore, and Seattle, with high aircraft and ship production. Increases in women in manufacturing in those
cities were huge — especially for: “Riveters. Learning how and where to put the 700,000
rivets that go into a single Liberator bomber.” To train an onslaught of inexperienced labor,
employers developed techniques. Some of them were likely sexist:
“They were as fast as men if not faster, for rivets are the buttons of a bomber to
hold it together against a speed of nearly 350 miles an hour.” Others sped up training for employees who
had to learn an entirely new job really quickly. “Women workers can be surprisingly good
producers. You’ve got to study every job and subdivide
it into simple operating steps.’ Mary Anderson of the Women’s Bureau recommended
riveting, “which is the most common job throughout assembly.” The Women’s Bureau recruited for these jobs
in ways that appealed to contemporary notions of women’s traits: riveting used “a delicate
touch, manipulative dexterity of a high degree, as well as extreme accuracy in measurement.” Teamwork could help with training. Rosalind Palmer, who inspired the name Rosie
the Riveter, started out as a riveter but became a welder after she was paired with
a “crackerjack welder” who “taught me all he knew.” The training showed results. Boeing Seattle quadrupled monthly output from
1942-1944. In Detroit, worker hours per bomber dropped
at the Ford Willow Run Bomber Plant. They went from 200,000 to less than 18,000
hours, thanks in part to increased efficiency from subdividing jobs. These riveters succeeded in transforming the
war effort — and the labor market. Rosie the Riveter is truth and myth. Look at this pin. “We Can Do It” was a poster the Westinghouse
Electric company made to briefly show at its factories. The real-life woman who inspired her likeness
was an Alameda Naval Air station employee named Naomi Parker. Rosie became mythologized in a Norman Rockwell
painting, a song — “Rosie, the Riveter” — and even a movie shortly thereafter. And the Westinghouse poster became all-but-ubiquitous
when a copy was unearthed in the 1980s. But the truth about real riveters was more
complicated, and it didn’t make the poster. In 1942, Thelma McKelvey of the War Production
Board testified that women were paid 10 to 15 cents an hour lower, despite equal pay
regulations. Results varied wildly by company and region,
but during the war, some unions used claims of seniority and job differentiation to keep
women’s pay down. They also pushed for women to give back “men’s
jobs” when the war was over. “How you like your job Mrs. Stoner?” “How about after the war? Are you going to keep on working?” “I should say not, when my husband comes
back, I’m going to be busy at home.” “Good for you.” “What about after this war, Lee?” “Well, this job belongs to some soldier,
and when he comes back, he can have it.” “Ah that’s swell.” Women of color were also discriminated against
in some places. Black women in industry went from 6.5% to
18% during the war. But employers were spotty. At Wagner Electric in St. Louis, 64% of employees
were white women, 24% black males, and 12% white males. They simply did not hire black women. Most women who did work were already in the
workforce, single, and without children, so it’s easy to overestimate how much the war
changed things. Total working women also declined when the
war ended. But World War II did transform public and
private sector labor. About half the already-employed women switched
employment from clerical work to higher paying manufacturing work. And the number of employed married women increased
during and after the war. The real story of women riveters is more complicated
than a poster or a slogan. But together, private industry, women leaders,
and all those working women changed work in America — one rivet at a time. [Music] the chart I'm building shows the greenhouse gas emissions from producing one kilogram of some common foods in other words it shows how much they contribute to global climate change most fruits and vegetables are down here with relatively low emissions poultry and eggs are a little further up pig products are here coffee and chocolate are a little higher but all of these pale in comparison to this food it's the worst thing we eat when it comes to global warming this is beef when you only account for the emissions that go into the processing transportation packaging and selling of a food product the difference between these foods isn't so great when you add the emissions from growing and processing food for livestock you can see that animal products have higher emissions than vegetables but the real gap comes from these two factors the emissions associated with the farming process and the impacts of land use change coffee has such a big footprint because of the fertilizers farmers use to grow it which emit a lot of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide the farming process also accounts for most of the disparity between cow and sheep products and everything else cows and sheep have to digest food that most animals can't do as well like grass and tough plant material their stomachs are microbe rich to help them do that through a process called enteric fermentation the byproduct of this digestion is methane a powerful greenhouse gas some of those emissions come out this way but 95% come out the front if you've never heard one of these animals burp there's an endless supply of YouTube videos for your viewing pleasure jokes aside though methane is a huge contributor to climate change it's the second most emitted greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide but it traps more heat than carbon dioxide it's global warming potential over a hundred years is 21 times higher among human related activities enteric fermentation is the biggest contributor to methane emissions globally more so even than the methane emissions from burning fossil fuels and it's a big reason why the farming process related emissions for beef and sheep are so high the second reason is land use change starting in the 1700s the amount of land developed for humanity's purposes started to skyrocket only a tiny amount of this is due to our built environment like cities towns and other infrastructure a vast majority is for agriculture and when you divide that up you see that land for grazing animals far surpasses land for growing crops converting all that land to farms to make way for grazing or growing crops releases the carbon that was once stored in trees other plants and the soil by contrast nuts and citrus fruit and olive oil have negative land-use emissions because planting nut and citrus fruit and olive trees is reforesting cropland but chocolate has a lot of lien do submissions because cacao farming results in tropical deforestation in Southeast Asia Africa and South America and grazing animals take up a lot of space compared to crops 80% of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest for example is to make way for cattle ranching this is how many tons of greenhouse gases per capita we emit through all of our activities changing our diet to exclude high emission foods has the potential to reduce it by 28% by both reducing emissions and reforesting land that's more than any other life change we could make a lot of food emissions are unavoidable we have to eat but we do have a choice of what not to eat [Music] at the October 13 1988 presidential debate Michael Dukakis in George HW Bush were asked who are the heroes who are there in American life today who are the ones that you would point out to young Americans as figures who should inspire this country I'm asked allanté via darris those people that took us back into space again sports heroes Vice President Bush eventually responded with I think a doctor foul she probably never heard of you did and heard of he's a very fine research top doctor at National Institute of Health working hard doing something about research on this disease of AIDS today dr. Anthony SOG is best known because of his position in the coronavirus task force and for his many media appearances in the u.s. he's one of the most recognizable faces in the current crisis how did this doctor go from his research lab in Bethesda Maryland to becoming one of the most visible medical experts on the pandemic today thank you so much for taking the time to watch you see a doctor Anthony pouchy the June 5th 1981 weekly report by the Centers for Disease Control was a notable one it recorded five unusual cases of pneumonia these cases would become known as some of the earliest reports of AIDS the next year dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in early paper about the disease which had increased to 290 recognized cases and had become a public health problem of essentially epidemic proportions now she worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases diet heading up a lab that studied immune system response nayad conducts research on diseases to help understand treat and prevent them it falls under the National Institutes of Health or NIH the medical research agency part of the Department of Health and Human Services in early 80s the NIH had many Institute's with nayad and National Cancer Institute leading investigation of the new virus and disease that would become known as hiv/aids Pfau she made that investigation the focus of his career today we're going to be listening to dr. Anthony Fauci he's going to be talking about AIDS I'm working directly on on AIDS both clinically and from a basic science standpoint that really is one of the few of more actually one of the only subjects where you really have to change your lecture every month though she was named director of Nyad in 1984 and the then director of Health and Human Services highlighted vouches background in immunology and infectious diseases as a mean reason for his appointment AJ was directed at determining if a variant of this virus could actually cause depletion of lymphocytes or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and as it turned out a variant of that virus in fact caused the center of velji's leading early research helped define Nyad as the central NIH Institute for AIDS and he made it a point to be the person communicating key findings to the public and media the scientific data is overwhelming that in fact aids cannot be transmitted by casual contact but it was a later political test that shows how foul she navigated the AIDS crisis and secured his career in the summer of 1988 playwright Larry Kramer wrote an open letter to Anthony fashi calling him an incompetent idiot and a murderer his opinion was broadly reflective of activists most notably the organization kramer inspired the AIDS coalition to unleash power or act up in 1986 fowey had reinforced his position as the leading scientist for the federal-aid Zephyr he created a new division to focus on the disease and earned other significant NIH posts but progress was slow especially for a disease as deadly as AIDS where patients died on average 15 months after diagnosis pouchy and Nyad were responsible for starting trials for new drugs which the FDA required for approval in June 1986 Nyad created a network of clinical trial centers around the country though they were criticized as ineffective activists argued that the NIH the FDA and leadership up to prison Reagan had failed to take the crisis seriously this photo from an October 1988 protest shows the key complaints at the time the FTAs lengthy drug approvals required strict scientific clinical trials it was textbook science but the disease killed at a faster pace than the FDA's process if you entered a trial a certain percentage of patients got the drug and a certain percentage got a placebo this helped test if the drugs were safe and if they really worked that was important because many AIDS drugs didn't pan out but with aids getting a placebo was a death sentence and that meant fewer volunteers for clinical trials the epidemic needed a radical approach but experimental approaches like aerosolized pentamidine weren't being approved the drug helped treat one of the most common infections caused by AIDS yet trials had been delayed by nya which she blamed on insufficient staff under pressure he acknowledged the approval problem in 1988 testifying in Congress that he would go for what is available on the street if he were a patient a blunt rebuke to FDA policy keeping these new approaches out of reach foul she also went on to admit that it took them a long time to start trials of dextran sulfate a drug that had early enthusiasm among AIDS patients for the few approved options like the venn promising drug AZT activists criticized the high prices charged by maker Burroughs Wellcome all these issues had spawned large networks of buyers clubs AIDS patients who pooled their resources to import non fda-approved drugs in 1990 activists staged another major protest this time at the NIH in Bethesda Maryland where foul she worked it was a turning point in two key ways fashi incorporated these sharp activists criticisms and ideas into the government response in 1999 invited activist representatives into the administrative committee's for every AIDS clinical trial group this allowed for the government response to include on-the-ground knowledge starting in 1989 foul she had also voiced support for new program called parallel track forcing the FDA to consider it in it patients who couldn't participate in clinical trials could still get unapproved drugs once they've been tested for basic safety even if some drugs didn't work at least they would be available to try the de act up stormed the NIH in May 1990 the Federal Register published the FDA's plans to adopt a parallel track plan I'm dr. Anthony pouch nineteen years before Brad Pitt played in Phaneuf ouchy on Saturday Night Live SNL cast member Chris Kattan played him in 2001 drive during an anthrax scare two decades ago pouchy was already the face of public health response to unusual diseases that included everything from anthrax and flu updates to running the US government's massive AIDS treatment program in Africa under president george w bush all that's helped his relationship with activists bouchy called larry kramer a dear friend who was a longtime nemesis I remember he wanted to get my attention by writing an open letter to that incompetent idiot dr. Tony Fauci he needed to stir the pot by staying in the same role at Nyad since 1984 ouchy became a fixture across five NIH directors eight Centers for Disease Control directors and eight surgeons general they're appointed by the President and foul he's been around for six of them as the director of Nyad he's insulated from that political element the AIDS response in particular illustrates how fat she manages stakeholders from inside and outside the government and from above in below his position that in his scientific expertise has made him a constant during a new crisis to our recent advances of being able to isolate identify and characterize the agent together with the advances in understanding the natural history and pathophysiology of this disease will allow us over the next year to come back to you and tell you that we now not only have hope and hypothesis but that we have a real prevention and indeed a real cure [Music] you you So, it’s a bit of a weird time to be celebrating anything but we just passed 8 million subscribers. I can’t believe there’s 8 million of you out there! The Vox video team is lucky to be safely working from home right now. We’re so grateful to the people who keep the world running every day. But also we’re really lucky that you’re out there and we know from the comments that people who watch these videos are as curious, and surprising, and funny as any audience that we could hope for. We’re sharing a few things that have brought joy while we’ve been working from home the past few weeks. Because we could all use some of that. Because it is spring... this little bird nest, on this swing, has a little egg in it. That's crazy! A bunch of old pictures of myself with my family. And I’ve been taking some time to scan all of them, just try to restore them, make them look a lot less dated. Like this one for example, it’s just cool seeing them in better condition. Hello and welcome to my kitchen. Right now in New York City, we can’t eat in restaurants unfortunately. But it has given me an opportunity to cook a lot more and it’s something that’s really comforting for me. For me, that’s been coming to this park near my house next to San Fransisco Bay. And you get pretty amazing views of San Francisco which is where our office is based. But anyway, hoping to get back into the city at some point in the near future. Something that brings me joy in my neighborhood is this park. That’s my baby. Baking brings my roommate joy and eating brings me joy. So far we have had focaccia, and challah, and scallion pancakes. That’s bread. And now, bagels! Which, um… they’re pretty good! They’re really good. They’re really good. I’m out for a run and these guys are bringing me a lot of joy today. I love this game, it’s called Lux. It’s basically a computerized version of Risk. I’ve felt pride as I've concurred my enemies. So I recommend Lux, if you want to escape reality by… destroying your close friends. I’ll do one more that’s less negative. Um. One of my joys have been... just buying random stuff off of eBay. Because quality is important. But quantity is key when you’re stressed. Definitely been re-reading some books we already have. This one’s called Severance by Ling Ma and it’s great. It’s actually about a virus in the United States. So, it might hit a little too close to home - but it’s great. Thor just looks the best on camera. It’s too much Flash. Those are head bites. Those are just weird head bites. I’m working from home with a 2-year-old who is a constant source of joy. This is what working from home with a 2-year-old basically looks like. Here, here, here! So I’m in a lockdown in Delhi, and the thing that’s making me the absolute happiest are my nieces. Oh my god, 8 million? Finding small excuses to change out of my sweatpants. I’ve been scheduling the occasional, fancy, Zoom cocktail hours with some friends. Calls with my grandmother. Hi, I was on the porch and I forgot to take the phone out there with me. No worries! Hi, how are you? One thing that gives me joy is my partner’s garden here. I just really have so much joy in having this... being able to see life happen in this tiny New York apartment. For me, that means playing the piano and re-painting all the rooms in my house. There are a few things that do bring me joy. One of them being my dog so we could still take him for walks, and being able to get to my favorite hiking spot the other day. Right now, normally my family and I celebrate Ramadan. And my mom is here stateside with us. But she’s unable to be because most flights are suspended. So she’s transported her cooking here through FaceTime and I’ve been cooking the recipes that she would normally cook if she was here. So here we go - here’s the final product. Here’s the tagine. Here’s the harira. And here’s... A last surprise for you guys. Yeah, to be honest, a lot went wrong with this cake. But, just wanted to say we love you from Vox. On days when I need a little fresh air and a little joy... I go up to my roof. Another thing that’s been bringing me a lot of joy is this sound at 7pm. Can you hear that? Thank you nurses and doctors! And those are all the people clapping. And that brings me joy! Thank you so much for watching - as always. Thank you for watching! Mwah! Bye! October 2009 was the worst month
of the worst year of the Great Recession. One out of every ten Americans
was out of work. It was bad. But not as bad as the worst year
of the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate
was one in four. Few Americans alive today have ever seen that
many people out of work. Until now. "Coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants,
forcing many to close." "Ford, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler, all temporarily closing US plants
because of the coronavirus." "Parking lots, bare. Retail stores, corporate offices,
all closed." By the end of April 2020, 30 million Americans
had filed unemployment claims. Economists estimated that the
US unemployment rate was about 13%. The highest since the Great Depression. But in some other countries, like the UK, for instance, it’s a totally
different story. Factories, restaurants,
all that stuff is closed. But this? This isn’t happening. In the US, lawmakers have assumed that
all those closed factories, shops, and restaurants have one inevitable outcome:
mass unemployment. But what if that’s wrong? What if millions of people didn’t have to
lose their jobs? What if it didn’t have to be this way? For most of US history, if you were laid off,
you didn’t have a lot of options. Churches and charities did what they could, but for the most part, you were on your own. That changed during the Great Depression. With help from the federal government, states began to hold back a share
of every worker’s paycheck. That money went into a fund that workers
could tap into if they got laid off. "Workers in every state in the union are now protected if they are temporarily laid off or lose their jobs." The system worked pretty well, as long as too many people didn’t lose their job all at once. But that is definitely not what happened during
the coronavirus lockdowns. You can think of the economy as a web of connections. During normal times, every day, billions of
dollars change hands across those connections, between different companies and industries. Airlines pay oil companies for jet fuel. Those oil companies pay computer engineers to make software that helps them
find new reserves. And those software companies pay ad agencies
to make commercials for them. Then they pay to put those ads in front of
things you like to watch. And a tiny portion of that money helps pay
for us to make videos. We spend some of that money on, say, plane
tickets for reporting trips, and the whole cycle repeats. During normal times, these connections are
what allow businesses to pay their employees. If some connections break,
and a business lays off workers, unemployment insurance is there
to help them get by, until those connections re-form,
and businesses are ready to hire again. But when the lockdowns started,
and businesses closed down, lots of those connections broke away entirely. Businesses laid off millions of workers
in just a few weeks, faster than at any time in US history. In response, Congress
has passed several bills, aimed at helping states get unemployment benefits
to more people, more quickly. But even if that helps in the short term,
it might not be enough down the road. Because once the lockdowns are over, many of those businesses
simply won’t be there anymore. Even if they lay off employees,
businesses still have to pay rent. Plus insurance, utilities,
and other business costs. But there’s no money coming in. Once the lockdown is lifted,
and it’s safe to work again, a lot of businesses will be gone. And there will be way fewer jobs
to come back to. Lots of unemployed people
will likely stay unemployed. Which will draw the economic crisis
out even further. But things don’t have to turn out that way. Just like the US, most of the UK is on lockdown. Many of those connections
between businesses have fallen off. But instead of waiting for workers to get laid off,
the UK is doing something different. The way that they are going about it,
is saying to companies: “We will pay you
to pay your employees." Workers get paid 80% of their previous salary, and businesses get help
covering rent and other costs. Denmark and the Netherlands have
put similar systems in place. In all of these countries, government support has
put the economy on pause, to keep it from falling apart later. In the US, Congress did set aside a chunk
of money for grants and loans to small businesses, in the hopes that they would
keep their workers on payroll. But to get the money, business owners had to apply
through commercial banks, like Chase and Bank of America. That extra step, combined with the onslaught
of applications, resulted in massive delays. By the time many small businesses got approval,
the fund was already empty. When the US first set up unemployment insurance
during the Great Depression, that idea didn’t come out of thin air. Policymakers studied similar systems in England
and Germany, and then adapted them. This pandemic transcends national borders. The solutions should too. on March 28 2020 the governor of New York announced that he was delaying his state's April election I don't think it's wise he'd be bringing a lot of people to one location 18 other states had already delayed or modified their spring elections it would endanger public health to allow thousands of people to assemble but the state of Wisconsin made a different call the only state to move ahead with its election polls if you can believe it are open in Wisconsin this morning on April 7th voters in Wisconsin got in line waited for hours standing six feet apart wearing mass with some poll workers in full protective gear one voter made a sign that seemed to sum up the situation perfectly people are calling it the photo of the year quote this is ridiculous I'm sitting with my card in my lap I was like this whole thing is just ridiculous the people who are supposed to be making sure things are safe for us like I felt like they kind of threw us under the wagon you know the next day the Governor of New Jersey announced they were postponing their election to I don't want a Wisconsin where folks had to pick between exercising their right to vote on the one hand and protecting their own personal health Wisconsin's election highlights something that the u.s. really needs to figure out soon in November there's an election to decide the next president but it's highly unlikely that Kovan 19 will be over and done with by them we might even be dealing with a second wave of it so if public gatherings are a health risk how are you supposed to have an election I am coming to you from the Robert's family voting booth here my dining room table this is Dave he's at home in Seattle Washington Dave's done a lot of reporting on what he says is a simple solution to how America can vote during the pandemic every election and it's fun Washington is one of the few states that runs its entire election through the mail I think I've been voting voting by mail basically works by taking two important elements of Odie's verifying your identity and filling out the ballot and moving them from a polling place to your home where the ballot gets mailed a few weeks before the election and that has two really obvious benefits first you have literally weeks to do as much research as you want so when you fill that circle you're like I'm friggin voting I'm capital D voting right now and second voting by mail takes away a lot of the common reasons people don't vote being forced to take a day off work fine I want to watch the kids you take your kids with you and go to a crowded balloting place hope that your name hasn't been struck from some role for some random reason wait four hours three hours five hours inline voting by mail clears those hurdles and the effects are really easy to see in 2018 a County in western Nebraska got permission from the state to run their entire election by mail every voter there got a mail-in ballot while voters in the rest of the state voted the old-fashioned way across Nebraska voter turnout was 24% but in that one County it was important double that turns out that making it easier to vote means more people vote on average states with all-male voting systems have a higher turnout than other states a poll from April 2020 find that Americans would overwhelmingly be in favor of holding the next presidential election entirely by mail but that still leaves a chunk who aren't sold on it one reason is fraud the possibility that your vote might be more likely to get lost stolen or coerced if you vote at home so I asked an expert on voting by mail how serious and common Orestes is it's exceedingly rare so I also asked someone who runs elections no widespread or systematic voter fraud I asked a political scientist use an expert on election data it's highly unlikely anyone's gonna steal your vote an election law expert concerns about voter fraud or way over Heights and an expert on voting rights you are still more likely to be struck by lightning than to find mail ballot fraud the reason vote by mail fraud is rare is that even though in theory it's possible it's not very effective it helps to think in terms of wholesale fraud versus retail fraud election security experts worry about wholesale fraud lots and lots of votes being tampered with at once people are voting on machine you just have to have the one machine with one point of contact there are a lot less worried about what they call retail fraud votes that get tampered with one at a time that someone could come by and seal your ballot fill it out but even if that does happen vote by mail systems typically give you a way to track your vote and make sure it's been counted you can track you about like an Amazon package does not get much more secure than that you can actually go in our system and track it from when they receive it when they verify the signature and when it's ready to count if they haven't returned that ballot I guarantee you that the voter picks up the phone and causes election officials the checks and balances that are invoked by mail in California there are stronger and stricter guidelines on processing vote by mail than there are in person burgers to me it's a much more secure process the same week that Wisconsin held its election the state of Georgia sent all its voters forms that would let them request a mail ballot but Georgia's Speaker of the House complained he said voting by mail benefits Democrats this will be extremely devastating to two Republicans and service in Georgia but there's no evidence that voting by mail is better for either party a study at Stanford found that it doesn't get either party a bigger share of either turnout or the vote itself all it does is increase the number of people who vote we haven't seen any any benefit to one party over another there's nothing political about voting and and more people voting is a good thing providing that all vote-by-mail experience didn't change those dynamics people were still voting the way they wanted to vote I'm pretty sure I'm living proof that you can elect a Republican in a blue state and you can do it in a vote-by-mail environment every state in the u.s. already has some kind of vote-by-mail option it's called an absentee ballot but some states will only give you one if you have a good excuse like if you're out of town or in the military other states offer a no excuse absentee ballot where you don't need to give a reason but you still have to request it voting by mail is something every state already allows but very few states are actually prepared to do an entire election through the mail that's what caused the problem in Wisconsin in 2016 about 250,000 Wisconsin voters requested an absentee ballot in 2020 about five times that number requested absentee ballots Wisconsin hadn't prepared for that so a lot of people never got their ballots and had to go vote in person instead I was one of over 55,000 people who had requested an absentee ballot who had not yet received it I am desperately hoping that we can make that an exclusive option if we're still dealing with unsafe situations in November it would not be that difficult to ramp that up in time for the election I mean you need to start now it's not trivial but it's very doable in the five states that have all-male voting there's still an option to vote in person a back up mostly for people who didn't get a ballot or weren't registered to vote in time but in most places voting by mail is the back up and if lots of voters feel that voting in person isn't safe a backup won't be good enough preparing election systems for that will take time and right now there is time but only if we start now [Music] You may have seen this chart since the start
of the coronavirus pandemic. In one image, it appears to capture the state of each nation’s battle in the global war against the virus. But like all data visualizations, its design 
tends to emphasize some things and hides others. So here are 4 things we need to know to understand
this chart. First, this is not a chart of all coronavirus
cases. It’s only showing us confirmed cases. That means each line doesn’t just reflect
the state of the outbreak in a country, but also how aggressively that country is testing
people for the virus. Take a look at Japan and South Korea earlier
in the pandemic. Japan’s outbreak looked pretty small in
comparison. But the available data on testing shows us
that South Korea had tested vastly more people than Japan did, even though their population
is less than half as big. And now, as Japan slowly increases their testing,
the outbreak there looks more worrying. It’s a good reminder that we can’t understand
case data without some sense of the testing levels. And that’s especially true for lower-income
countries where we know their testing capacity is limited. The second thing to know is that the scale for the y-axis on this chart is a bit different from most charts. It’s called a logarithmic or log scale. On a typical linear scale, you divide the
space by adding the same value over and over. The log scale is made by multiplying a value,
in this case, ten. 100 times 10 is 1000, times 10 is 10,000,
times 10 is 100,000. That means that there’s no fixed amount
of space on this chart for a certain number of cases. So the first 100,000 cases take up this much
space and then the next 100,000 cases get just this much. The higher the numbers, the more visibly squished
they become on a log scale. So why do it this way? Well, let’s take the 5 countries with the
largest outbreaks right now, and rewind them back to March 17th. On a linear scale, it looked like things were
pretty bad in Italy but the others were doing better. The log scale offered a much clearer warning: we were all on the same path of exponential growth. It’s the nature of infectious disease that
numbers get big fast. So it makes sense for numbers to get big fast
on the chart too. Fast forward a few weeks and the linear scale shows cases climbing and climbing while the log chart shows curves that are flattening. As governments have implemented lockdowns
and social distancing, the virus is spreading at a slower rate than before, which isn’t
very visible on the linear scale. But keep in mind that the difference between
this dot and this dot is more than 32,000 people. And the log chart tends to downplay just how
many more confirmed cases there are in the US than in the other countries. Which brings us to the third thing to know about our chart: it doesn’t account for
population size. When you adjust for population, really small
countries like Iceland and Luxembourg  appear to have the biggest outbreaks for their size,
which may reflect higher testing rates. The US and China have much bigger populations
so their curves drop a bit. But the size of a country doesn’t really
affect the growth rate of its cases, and it doesn’t tell us much about how much the
country is struggling. It just pushes smaller countries up on the
chart and tends to hide the fact that the outbreak is especially bad in certain regions
of bigger countries, like the state of New York. And the last thing to know about our chart
is that the x-axis doesn’t plot time by the date, 
but by the number of days since the country recorded 100 confirmed cases. For Italy, that was February 24. For Turkey, March 19. When they’re all layered on top of each
other, it allows us to compare the trajectory of the outbreaks,
but it tends to obscure the fact that the pandemic hit some countries before it hit
others. The world watched as tens of thousands of
cases appeared in China. Then big outbreaks in South Korea, Italy,
and Iran, sent a message about what was to come. Two weeks after South Korea reported its 100th
case, the United States’ did the same. In a situation where actions taken early can
have a much bigger impact than actions taken later, time is a crucial factor. and we have
to remember that some governments had more time than others. this is a video made by a group of German physicists the circle in the background is a kind of mirror that combined with a special photography technique allows you to see the flow of air in this case it is showing how far air particles travel when someone breathes and when they cough which makes the respiratory particles travel further and faster this is what it looks like when someone coughs into their hand and into their elbow and this shows the travel of air particles when coughing while wearing two types of masks a dust mask and a surgical mask this isn't a scientific study it simply shows something face masks to do very well they limit how far away from new respiratory particles can travel but whether you've been told to wear a face mask to prevent the spread of kovat 19 probably depends on where you live in some East Asian countries it's already common practice some European countries have also started mandating face masks in public spaces but in the US the message from the federal government has been inconsistent there's no reason to be walking around with a mask it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain this is voluntary I don't think I'm gonna be doing it unless you live somewhere that mandates it whether you wear a face mask is probably up to you but making that decision for yourself is a lot easier if you understand what face masks can actually do and what they can't here's where the experts agree if you are sick and you leave the house you should wear a face mask because it keeps your germs in most of the uncertainty around masks is related to a separate question whether healthy people should wear them too right away though that distinction between sick with kovat 19 and healthy is more complicated than it sounds people who catch Cova 19 don't feel symptoms for five to six days on average and even up to 14 days but are contagious before that and based on what we know right now about 25% of people who catch it never show symptoms at all but are also contagious in other words especially with Cova 19 feeling healthy doesn't necessarily mean you don't have it I think we should all be acting and also all assume that we're infected Shan solon is an expert on global public health and Robert Hecht is a professor of clinical epidemiology and they say the possibility of being asymptomatic is one of the best cases for universal mask-wearing those who are actually infected and don't know it are showing almost no symptoms it's not maybe even primarily for their own health it's for the health of their family and neighbors but let's say you definitely a hundred percent do not have the virus the first thing you need to know is that no masks can actually guarantee you that you won't get it instead the best way to think about face masks is as part of a larger set of protective measures along with social distancing and hand washing used together they don't protect you completely but they dramatically lower your odds of infection I think of it as a protective triad with the virus trying to get in and if you don't have one of the branches in it and you're not protecting the whole thing and if you didn't have a mask could you do better with social distancing hand-washing sure but having all freeze it's really really important to understand how that works let's look at the two ways Koh v19 is transmitted one way is by touching an infected surface and the touch in your face this is called pho mite transmission and frequent hand-washing is the best defense against this but wearing face masks correctly can play a role two masks do a really good job of keeping you from touching your face the second way someone's respiratory particles can reach you is directly like this this is a slowed down recording of a sneeze it shows the kinds of respiratory particles that sneeze emits and how far they travel from a sick person these droplets are packed with millions of viral particles that fall in close range and in fact whatever they land on social distancing protects us from droplets by keeping you away from the particles emitted through sneezing coughing or even talking but face masks could help there too so someone who sneezes a couple feet away from you you know it'll protect some of the bigger splashes that also means face masks are especially important for people who don't have the privilege of being able to social distance that would be cops that would be grocery clerks taxis uber FedEx and UPS you know anyone who's coming into contact with a lot of people and maybe can't always maintain that six foot distance look at this video again though and you'll see that we also produce these longer range smaller particles which evaporate and can leave the virus hanging in the air these are called aerosols and we still don't really know how infectious they are for the average person but experts think they mostly pose a threat to medical workers who work up close to patients with Cova night team if you were a foot away from the patient who's copying as you're trying to intubate them aerosols are going everywhere for you and me you're just walking around walking your dog or in a grocery store your risk is is weighed higher from fomites a common mass that protects against aerosols is called an n95 respirator it's name comes from its materials ability to filter out 95% of aerosol particles it's also fitted to form a seal around your mouth and nose so there's no leakage in lots of places and 95s are in short supply because of diminished government stockpiles and disruptions and the supply chains and that's true for all disposable masks not just n95 that's why the u.s. Center for Disease Control says that unless you are a healthcare worker you shouldn't be using either an 95s or regular surgical masks they are needed in hospitals and the level of protection most people need can come from a simple cloth mask the CDC recommends any kind of tightly woven cotton for the masks or even a t-shirt you can make them by consulting the countless internet tutorials out there or buy them from the many vendors who manufacture them but they only work if you wear them correctly so what kind of masks are you wearing do you have them handy can you show us we thought you might guys this is all it takes to put it on just grab it by the loops keep your hands off the the central part put it over your nose and mouth loop it around the ears be careful not to touch it when you're outside keep your hands away from your face when you come back in after walking the dog we're doing the groceries do the same thing in Reverse put it off to the side don't start playing with it and then just at the end of the day pop it in the washer you wash it every day I wash them every night and you know even if you don't have a washer I mean you can hand wash them every night they're very small and they'll be tried by the next morning so if people can have a couple it would be better if you only have one then just wash it at night face masks highlight something important in the fight against Kovan 19 that it isn't always about protecting yourself it's about protecting the people around you and if everyone is doing it we all protect each other there's a visual messaging that comes from wearing a mask a reminder about everybody we're not in normal times now everyone needs to be doing everything they can to protect themselves and other people [Music] [Music] OK, so when do you play Monopoly? I have not played Monopoly since I was, like,
ten. So… Now I play it when I’m at my parents’
house, if there’s a big family gathering. I don’t ever play Monopoly. Basically, you played Monopoly when you were
a kid or when you were stuck inside. So, I talked to somebody who played Monopoly
in a ballroom in the Venetian hotel in Macau. I’m Brian Valentine. I was the United States representative to
the Monopoly World Championships in 2015, where I finished third amongst the 28 competitors. He taught me all the right ways to play Monopoly
— and even make the game a little shorter. All the rules, odds, and strategies that can
actually help you win. This is a Monopoly board from... ..Target...but I took it with me to Macau
and asked all the players to sign it for me. Just as a keepsake. I’m almost getting into sports cliches talking
about Monopoly, but tt was very humbling to have made it that far against players who
are the best in their country and who are fantastic people. And this Monopoly genius, he knows heatmaps
and housing arbitrage and strategy — but he just wants you to follow the rules. OK, what happens on free parking? Do you, like, collect money from people? There’s no money under free parking, I guess
that’s the biggest. You don’t put money under free parking,
people see as a chance to equalize the game that’s stacked against them. If you keep putting money in the game, it
stops the progress. People don’t play the game by the rules. If they did, it wouldn’t take quite so long. Do you auction stuff off? No. I remember reading it on the back of the card,
but I don’t remember — I remember that always feeling a little over my head in terms
of play. If you land on it and don’t want it, it’s
got to go up for auction on the spot. Somebody can buy it. You can start the bidding at a dollar. I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve seen someone
take Boardwalk for 20 bucks. Once you have the rules in order, you’ve
gotta go with the strategy. What’s the best spot in Monopoly? Oh, I’m sure it’s like Boardwalk. It’s funny because that’s the glamour,
that’s the trademark of Monopoly, it’s Boardwalk - you gotta get it. The object of the game is to take everyone’s
money and be the only person left in the game. While Boardwalk certainly offers the prospect
of that — $2000 when you get a hotel on it — think about what it costs to get there. You’ve got to buy each of the two properties. Then it’s 200 dollars, per house per property,
until you get to that level. So that’s another thousand dollars on each
one to then get $2000 back. And there are only two of them, right? Most of the other Monopolies have three spaces
that you can hit and then draw rent. If you are building up Boardwalk and Park
Place before anybody else has built Monopolies up against you, hell yeah, go for it. But if you’re in a situation where other
folks have Monopolies on that hot side of the board, and you’re waiting to throw the
haymaker, if you will, on Boardwalk and Park Place, that’s a loser more than it’s a
winner. You can go on any website and learn the basic
parlor trick that the oranges are the best Monopoly to have. Are you gonna now show a chart of the Monopoly
board with a heat map? I’m sad to say that I will. I knew that existed. The reason that that is so is because jail
is one of the most often landed on spaces in the game. The fact that the common role is 7, then 7
from jail — while not an actual property, it’s Community Chest — 6 and 8, the next
most likely numbers, are St. James and Tennessee Avenue. So you know that the oranges are likely to
get hit on. And also, by extension, the section between
jail and go to jail that side’s the side you want to be building on. It’s feast or famine on the other side of
the board. So there’s a couple more strategies that
are on the practical, not so mathy end. If you get to jail early, go ahead pay up,
get out of there. You can also use your houses as weapons to
control the game. You have 32 houses in the game. You’ve got to build houses before you can
build hotels. The houses have to be physically present to
be bought, which is why, in a lot of circles you’ll hear people say about creating a
housing shortage. You want to get to the four house level so
you can pull the trigger and get hotels if you need to, or you can sit on the four houses
and keep other people from having them. OK, so final question. So when I say what is the right way to play
Monopoly, how do you respond? The right way to play Monopoly is just...don’t
play it. Don’t steal from the bank. And that goes out to my cousins when we played
when we were ten. I would say, is it just like, to win? How to win? With honor. It’s almost, sometimes, you feel like you
have this Renaissance era sense of honor and dignity. Not that we’re going around slapping each
other with gloves having duels or anything like that. But...that’s the thing that keeps coming
to me is honor. Playing Monopoly allows you to get to know
people in a way that formal introductions or being coworkers, or whatever, doesn’t
quite show. Because in an hour and half, two hour game,
you’re gonna see how people handle adversity, you’re gonna see how people handle success,
you’re gonna see, bundled in this short format, that allows you to see who a person
is. Ahhh...shhh….it’s Monopoly, we’re talking
about Monopoly. This here is a pile of keepsakes from
preschool. So what we have is just a standard family portrait, some smiling
cat, masterfully drawn rainbows and flowers, and then there's this. It's my
name written completely backward. Weird right? Except I used to do this all the time. If it wasn't my full name it was usually
just a random letter or number, like I did with the 'G' in kindergarten. It's called mirror writing, and most kids under the age of 7 have done it at some
point, in some form. It seems kind of ridiculous now, but it's completely normal. It's just a sign of how our brains
evolved to see the world. Learning to write is kind of hard. First, we have to understand a string of abstract shapes, then, as we learn, we have to understand
that, in English, script goes from left to right. Early on, before really understanding which direction to write in, kids like me just wrote where there
was empty space available. So if I put a 'K' on the right edge of the page, I just wrote the rest of my name into 
the empty space on the left. I would be willing to bet that you
started with the letter K, because you know that "K" is the
first letter of your name and they progressed in the right-to-left
direction – writing the K backwards, the I and the M would also be written
backwards but we don't see that because they look exactly the same. Rob McIntosh has studied various forms of mirror writing for years. Much more common, actually, is
just partial mirror writing. Where the script might go in
the correct direction but individual letters will be reversed. So maybe the letter "D" is written as a "B" or "B" is written as a "D." You might be thinking, "So what? Kids are still learning and just don't understand
the shapes yet." But it's not likely for a kid to take that same letter and flip it completely upside down. And we're not talking about them confusing one letter for another entirely. Remember, I didn't use the wrong shapes. I used the right ones. In the right order – just backward. So how did I manage to do that? The short answer is that children can't
tell these mirror images apart at this stage. You know, we tend to think that it's
children are bad at discriminating the mirror images, but we might turn that
around and say that actually that children are very good at generalizing
across mirror image forms. And it seems to be that that's something the human brain is set up do. There's a name for this inability to tell mirror images apart: "mirror generalization" and our adult minds do it all the time too. Think of the Statue of Liberty You can probably picture that it's a
green statue that holds a torch but What hand is the torch in? I'm trying to think ...if I picture... Oh, God. Oh I have no idea. I mean 50/50 guess I'm gonna say the right hand. Left? Torch is in the right hand. Left. Are you sure? No. [Laughs] And you can probably describe the Apple logo ... a silhouette of an apple with a bite mark out of it ... but – Which side is the bite taken out of? Oh my god. I look at this every single
day. If I'm looking at it? Yeah. it's on the left side of the Apple. I want to say the
right side. Uh, the left side. The left side. The trouble is that orientation as in
the left or right direction something is facing is rarely committed to memory – because in the natural world it doesn't really matter. When we see it an animal
facing to the left, we'll still recognize it as a dog when it turns around. When I'm sitting to the right of someone, I'm not suddenly shocked when they turn to face me or move to my left. Most objects in nature don't change their identity depending on which way round they're facing. Trees, plants, and animals basically look the same one way or another. So our brains cut corners to allow us to recognize these things quickly and commit them to memory without focusing on direction. So when it comes to letters and numbers and other things that depend on orientation we have to work a little harder to remember
which way is right. We have to sort of suppress
the tendency to automatically generalize. Which is actually an amazing feat. Our brains have evolved to mirror generalize – and we've taught them when and
how to turn that skill off. this is it this is Tsarskoe v2 the novel coronavirus that first appeared in humans in late 2019 these are some of the first close-up views of the virus made using a very specific imaging technique that can see things far too small to be visible under normal microscope they show us how the virus moves inside the human body and how it hijacks our cells using these these spikey crowns give the karana virus its name and they're the key to understanding how to beat it to get this right I need to bring in two experts the first is my colleague Liz's dead Frank he teaches material science and engineering at Ohio State University this helps me that you are interested in electron microscopy yes so that's how you pronounce it okay that's a good start and the other is Beth Fischer her team at NIDA the National Institute of allergies and infectious diseases created those initial images of the virus the ones you'll start to notice imbedded in news articles around the internet I think for a lot of people there's a lot of mystery to this viruses there are two other viruses that emerge so let's start with how these images were made the first thing you need to know is that the corona virus is very very very small around 100 nanometers to put that into context if you take out a ruler and look at one of the millimeter markings you can fit 10,000 virus particles inside of that at that size it's invisible to us even under a standard light microscope like the one you might have used in grade school that's because the smallest wave lengths of light humans can see measure around 400 nanometers not small enough for the corona virus to be visible in order to see something that small you need an electron microscope how does it actually differ from what we would think of as a microscope instead of light we're using electrons and electrons you think of as particles but if you take the electrons trip it out for the atom and accelerate it in the field and make a climb fast if you make it move fast enough it actually will behave as a wave as well and that wavelength is much much smaller than the light waves we use in standard microscope now you're like six seven eight nine orders of magnitude smaller and size so now you can see smaller stuff if you look they're Knights coronavirus flicker page you'll come across two distinct types of images SEM and TEM they're made using two different types of electron microscopes a scanning electron microscope or SEM scans the surface of a sample and records what bounces back sort of like how satellite imaging works it gives you the basic topography of whatever you're looking at with realistic lighting similar to photography shadow and relative size of objects shows you their placement and how they move through the cell a transmission electron microscope or TEM goes way deeper it records the inner details of a sample by transmitting electrons through it and projecting a cross-section of its inner structure so it's part of the basic science research to try and understand structurally what's going on images from both microscopes are taken in black and white the color is added later for clarity like in this SEM image where virus particles colored in yellow are seen emerging from the surface of a cell colored blue and pink when examined together these images can help scientists start to figure out how the corona virus works there's ways to start then understanding how is it getting in a cell how is it harnessing that cell machinery to make more of itself can you just tell me kind of what we're looking at here so this is a single viral particle and the yellow you see it's the core of the virus itself and then the corona where corona viruses get their name and started that halo around it that's an orange that Corona is the key to understanding how the virus hijacks ourselves the Spike proteins that surround the virus attach to a host cell's membrane and then penetrate it once it forces its way in it spreads its RNA around the host cell multiplies exits and repeats which makes us sick so if we can find those two-bike proteins up with something like an antibody it'll prevent them from be able to attach and enter cells which is exactly how we've beaten back viruses with similar spiky proteins before this was a 3d rendering of the Ebola virus you see all those proteins on the surface so we talked about the spike that's what we're talking about no matter which virus were looking at this is HIV actually so this is printed after we do our cryo TEM and you can see all these little tiny proteins distributed on the surface and these are the proteins that we change a target for vaccine development you want to lock these up so they're tied up and unable them to stick to a cell surface is there anything about the images specifically that you'd want to share with our audience that maybe you think will be helpful for them to know I think when you can face your enemy it takes a little bit of the fear factor out of it I think it's just understanding what it is we're looking at how it works within our bodies but to show that this is something that can be tackled and overcome I think it's important to know [Music] countries around the world have shut down to curb the spread of the corona virus but in South Korea people are starting to come back out on the streets starting in late February South Korea was reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus cases with over 5,000 infected they were registering some of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the world but then something changed while cases in most other countries continued to rise korea's numbers started leveling off look at how this curve starts to bend it indicates that Korea managed to contain the spread of the virus early on and they were able to do it because they learned a valuable lesson a few years ago when they fought a different coronavirus outbreak in South Korea the Middle East respiratory center the death toll on the rise of ggressive Lee trying to contain the deadly outbreak the government was caught completely off guard authorities are still trying to track down and isolate anyone who may have been exposed in 2015 a Korean businessman returning from the Middle East developed a fever a cough and eventually pneumonia he went to several health facilities for a diagnosis before finally testing positive for MERS or Middle East respiratory syndrome caused by a corona virus by that point his movements had created a chain of transmission that became hard for officials to trace they didn't know who was infected or where they had been it lasts less than two months it was a big penny in South Korea altogether the virus-infected 186 people and killed 38 in South Korea the highest of anywhere outside of the Middle East the government declared an end to the outbreak in 2015 citizens can relax the virus no longer poses a threat but they didn't stop planning we got many resting on the importance of the divers tests and we need basic infection cremation majors the lessons all came into play when the next outbreak took hold in the country on December 31st 2019 China reported the first case of the corona virus in the following weeks as the outbreak started spreading across the world South Korea only had 30 confirmed cases of the virus but despite the low numbers health authorities had already started working with biotech companies to develop a test for the novel coronavirus and soon they had thousands of test kits ready to go lesson learned from while suffering in 2015 first one is the thymus test is very essential we developed a lot of targeted and distribute in every hospital they prepared for the worst and the worst quickly followed by late February the total number of coronavirus cases rose dramatically crossing 3,000 this made South Korea's outbreak the largest outside of mainland China and it all started here in big where a woman went to the hospital with a fever because the government had already equipped hospitals with coronavirus tests doctors were able to test her she tested positive and became known as patient 31 but the testing didn't stop there while she was sick patient 31 had gone to a megachurch where she sat with a congregation of hundreds for more than an hour so they traced her movements identified people she had come into contact with and then tested those people as well whether they showed symptoms or not many of them also tested positive so they were quickly isolated and treated at home or at a center and then all the people they had been in contact with were traced and tested too this is called contact tracing it's an approach that allowed Korea to test over 9,000 people who had been in contact with someone who had tested positive after Daegu Korea ramped up testing around the country private and national health care systems joined forces to set up a mostly free testing effort that includes more than 600 locations could screen as many as 20,000 people per day through this system when anyone test positive the government is able to test and trace their contacts to continue to break the transmission chains of the corona virus on a large scale but that's just the human to human transmission the infected person may have moved through the city touching subway poles and door handles and South Korea had prepared for this - after the MERS outbreak when they weren't able to trace the movements of the virus Korea changed the law allowing the government to collect a patient's data and security footage during an outbreak all their steps are logged and then shared to alert people to stay away from the path of infection if there is some confirmed case found near my office they message by a smartphone there is a confirmed case near your place he pushes websites and private apps compile that information allowing everyone to see a person with a confirmed case of coronavirus went to a pharmacy or the hospital or anywhere else and they'll know how recently they went to it's a means of checking the possibility of infection citizens are checking the coronavirus locations and are avoiding going to these areas this information lets people know if they've crossed paths with an infected person so they can go get tested for the virus and contact tracing starts all over again tracing people's every move can be controversial but many in South Korea prioritize Public Health over privacy in an outbreak as a result South Korea was able to test hundreds of thousands of people more than any other country at the time and this made it easier for authorities to see the virus to see where it's located and where it may be lurking this ability to find and treat infected people has allowed Korea to avoid aggressive lockdowns and it's helped bend the curve of the outbreak that started out dangerously steep for now Korea has turned a corner but they continue to be prepared we are very cautious to prevent secondly every day is kind of a takeover wall it's that kind of vigilance but a set Korea apart in the corona virus pandemic but it wasn't the only place to test people aggressively Singapore Taiwan and other neighbors so the benefits of widespread testing - now countries like Germany and the UK are starting to implement aggressive testing and even the US where the government has failed to provide adequate testing is now scrambling to test more people we know that we have to do more and we continue to accelerate and testing Korea strategy of contact tracing might not be easy to replicate in countries with much larger populations but the country's success with widespread testing still offers a way out for most countries that are stuck in locked [Music] all right I guess we should just say what's going on we thought it'd be a good time to talk about a part of the Apollo 11 mission that often gets overlooked which was the quarantine including time in a refitted Airstream trailer and a lab you're gonna get to see some of the engineering that NASA's really famous for but applied to a totally different problem which is how do you keep a lunar plague from hitting the earth yeah we've done a few other episodes of this where one of us knows something the other doesn't this time we've all just been cramming on quarantine facts about this Apollo 11 quarantine and seeing so many men in like short-sleeved shirts and we're gonna talk to Amy title from vintage space that came about Phil and I both really like so yeah this is the quarantine edition of history club yay I wanted to talk about the stuff before we get with Amy though like about that period of like 20th century and vaccinations in general the moon-landing is happening in July of 1969 it was coming off to music time in the middle of 20th century measles mumps polio he's had all been beaten back and like we felt pretty good about being able to contain potential diseases even though it's extremely low probability that anything contaminant was on the moon if there was even a chance that they could bring something back it would be truly novel and potentially devastating to life on Earth can you see that yeah oh wait this is the quote that I love they will be treated not as heroes but as bearers of the most virulent devastating plague the world has ever known I love that M plague is spelled wrong this is how venom in spider-man got to earth so this is important stuff this is an idea that we've become very familiar with now because we have the corona virus so dangerous is because no humans ever had it before and if there were an alien lunar plague no human had ever had it before so it's it's kind of the same threat which is why they took no chances and put them in quarantine it's a very blunt approach but it's really interesting that that was kind of like this is our surest bet they've developed the need for this quarantine and then they've got this problem of how to adjust eclis make it happen to get these astronauts from the middle of the ocean all the way to the lunar receiving laboratory environment at all yes in theory in theory Pete will be in the background IP I Pete nice to meet you yeah I gave him some catnip so he's like a little bit stoned right now it's pretty fun so this first clip that I have is let me load it up [Music] so what they're practicing is they want to get the astronauts out of the command module and onto a helicopter basically with as little contamination as possible to try to preserve this quarantine it makes sense that they had to train to do this but it's still crazy to think about it that like you're going through this excitement of being about to go to the moon and your training for how you're gonna get in desert quarantine suit but it does make sense I mean how bad would it be if like the mission went off beautifully everything was great like rah rah America landing on the moon and then they get back and they forget to put on the suit right and like someone falls in the ocean and then everyone gets sick like womp womp that'd be big damper so I kind of get it it's actually from when they were training with the b.i.g suits or big suits and that's the biological isolation garment right yeah um I've only read it so I I don't know how it was pronounced in conversation they'd be way too cumbersome to not just say big suit you know right especially NASA the land of the acronym yeah so here they're all just kind of chilling waiting to go through the trainings I do love how much all this footage shows like being an astronaut is a lot of sitting and listening quietly yeah it looked like they brought it down upside down - yeah they dumped it upside down and then inflate the balloons to flip it laid it and that flotation collar is exactly what it sounds like it is ABS buoyancy and gives them a platform to step out of cuz again like we learned from Gus Grissom in 1961 right when his hatch blew early and the capsule filled with water and sunk he kind of need to give some kind of barrier from the water rushing into this capsule otherwise again you end on a very poor note after a great mission there's a very large issue with the whole quarantine thing in this move of like you just opened the capsule quarantine for Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 as well started the moment they closed the hatch after the lunar EBA the moonwalk so everything that had been exposed was sealed up and of course on the way back you're not opening the capsule at all there's nothing to introduce anything new no one's interacting with it so you've got this thing that's been sealed for like four days and then you just like open it up to the air and then reseal it like it's a bit of a weak link in the chain there but there was no better option they also they sprayed them down right they like threw the suits in put them on and then sprayed them with chemicals and so and so here that's them they've gotten out they're wearing the b.i.g suits and this is this is just a practice run but this is pretty much how it happens in and so then the next stage of their journey is they're in their big suits and then they make it onto the USS Hornet which is a big aircraft carrier and their goal is to enter the mobile quarantine facility so that is the next video that I have lined up here that's why up here it says Hornet plus three on me mobile quarantine facility because they're sort of the astronauts are the additional three were on the porting oh wait I think this is the clip when they walk out of their suits the guy just in a tie just sprays it down after a blow I love that and so the people who went in there it was it was a dr. William carpenter and then John Harris Aki was like the project engineer basically and so those two guys are going inside in the hey Nina with these astronauts for the entire period that the mobile quarantine facility is traveling according to this and all of the stuff that was not human would be flown directly to the lunar receiving laboratory you want to kind of get that there as quickly as possible so that can get into a small plane and flown from the carrier deck ship meanwhile has to go to a base it has to dock somewhere at which point the mqf will be mobile as its name this very fancy Li named thing was just a converted Airstream trailer so that gives you a sense of how not big it was yeah because they had to put it on a plane and a ship and and drive it around the bottom of this plane opens and you just kind of roll this thing in and then you fly it to Euston [Music] [Applause] Gale Armstrong played ukulele of it and there's a great picture of him and I think it's through the glass in that window that Nixon was talking them through it's got this like ghostly artifact in it that gives it this like ethereal feel almost so just like he's he's in this little suit just kind of sitting there just like low-key strumming ukulele about the NQF they also like adjusted the air pressure right so it'd be lower pressure inside so if there was a leak air would go in but not out yeah they did regulate it that way and they've got these like souped up bars on the bottom right like like they dish the wheels and they had to like reinforce it structurally oh and they had a microwave which is very new right in 1969 that's like a high-tech innovation the mini fridge this is looking like a bit like a college dorm [Music] they're landing at the lunar receiving laboratory or lrl which is in Houston it was especially built near the John Cook is now the Johnson Space Center that was like one of the most state-of-the-art Florentina Bowl facilities even the staff that went in had to go through like UV showers and you could not have any medical thing you couldn't be pregnant to work in there everything was super sterile anyone that was interacting with the crew had to be very very clean and very healthy to make sure that the crew did not get sick but also that they did not get you sick is this the press room right here yeah where they're celebrating his birthday that's the press room yeah so you can see like it looks like on the other side of the wall are a bunch of women so probably the wives and family so they can be there and celebrate but they can't actually be in the same space but in this side of the glass were where we are watching from is the clean facility and this is where they are celebrating Neil Armstrong's 39th birthday because he was still in quarantine when that happened this is so cute I've never actually seen this footage of them making the cake I've seen him cutting and serving the cake it's this awesome if there was found to be something potentially bad in one of the samples or if the crew got sick and there was some containment breach of the sick party everyone who worked in the lrl signed a waiver saying they agreed if they were exposed to a contaminant that they would quarantine themselves for an indefinite period afterwards as directed by NASA there's a lot in this like the medical offices there's a lot of beds there's a lot of tables and things in the offices and living space like that's a lot of people and if the second diagram shows you that that's a third of the area of the entire LRL like this is a big space for a lot of people to live and work in addition to the quarantine of the astronauts what kind of experiments are going on in the other half of the lunar receiving laboratory doing were looking at the rocks and classifying the rocks bio classifying if need be to figure out exactly what they had gotten and figure out what's gonna happen with these samples next I think Apollo 11 didn't bring back to too much because they all did one short a VA later missions brought back a lot more and so I got I found some pretty crazy tables of some of the tests that they did on the biological elements I I'm gonna tell you all this one of the experiments they did was they round up some moon rocks made a formula out of it and injected it into a Japanese quail just to see if it made the bird sick like why were they gonna do that to humans hey I mean did they do they think moon moon rock dust is gonna be the new lake street drug like dragged all the kids are on moon dust and I mean I think that's pretty much what they did to the mice too [Music] they spend their time in the lunar receiving laboratory and then they get out they go on this world tour everything's fine hip-hip-hooray [Music] is there anything about the Apollo 11 quarantine either procedurally or like kind of the context of how people were feeling about it at the time that we didn't talk about how much NASA learned over its relatively short existence before Apollo 11s launch to anticipate the worst and hope for the best [Music] anticipating the crew dying at lunch anticipating the crew dying I mean there were abort procedures for every mission stage there were speeches for if they died on the moon down to what do we do if they pick up something deadly in space I think it really speaks to how many people have to be involved to predict or to prepare for something like this it speaks to how well NASA really thought outside the box especially after the Apollo 1 fire to anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong and put everything in place to mitigate that so that if the worst happened they would at least be the best prepared you know the lrl was was built purposely for bringing them back from the moon it was not like let's just outfit this building this was a custom facility for this need and it's it's a lot of planning a lot of preparation but a lot of like acknowledging just how bad things could be to hopefully never have to get there [Music] people find you on YouTube and you've also released a book what is that about it's called fighting for space I always have to read my own subtitle the two pilots and their historical battle for female spaceflight and it's effectively a dual biography of two pilots who were navigating being professional fliers at a time when it was not common for women to be professional pilots and while America was making the transition from aviation to spaceflight and what that meant for women that wanted to be involved These are some of the world’s most iconic
typefaces. You’ve probably seen them on classic ads,
newspapers, posters, even memes. These typefaces were carefully crafted. Every curve considered. The legibility of their design paramount. Oh, wait, I forgot one. It’s a little different than the others. This one was likely designed on graph paper,
converted into binary code then scanned sixty times a second onto a cathode ray screen. You probably recognize it when it says this: This font had a big responsibility. It needed to balance legibility and creativity,
too, but it had to do it while taking up as little computer memory as possible. If I'm going to write a book, I want to know
everything. That’s type designer Toshi Omagari, and
that’s the font for the arcade game Time Pilot 84, one of many arcade fonts he catalogued,
analyzed, and reviewed for his book: Arcade Game Typography. It took months and months of me checking a
hundred games per night. There were so many arcade games. The book contains around 240 fonts, and most of them were designed within this
8x8 grid. Why this 8x8 grid? Let’s rewind to the golden age of arcade
games. Well they come, as if from outer space, in
a variety of weird guises. Defender, Pac-Man, Astroids... It was space invaders, now all forms of video
arcade games are storming the market. Hundreds of circuits and computer chips, a
city of electronic gadgetry and technology. Here’s the manual for Sprint 2, an 8-bit
racing game released in 1976, right as arcade games were taking over. It explains a lot about why early video games
looked the way they did. The TV monitor display is divided into a 32
by 28 tile grid. Each tile represents one byte of data. That's 8 bits. If you zoom in more, you’ll see the 8-bit
tile is divided into its own 8x8 grid where each cell can be turned on and off. The more cells that are turned on, the more
computer processing power required — which was super limited back then. The arcade game scanned this information line
by line all the way down the screen with an electron beam before it restarted the next
frame. This is what it looks like slowed down. By today's standards, these tiles would be
a tight constraint, but developers managed to make race cars, aliens, spaceships, and robots. These games looked the way they did because
they were exercises in efficiency. And nothing illustrates that precarious balance
of conserving computer memory more than the letters and numbers that guided players through
the game. Sprint 2’s set of characters are sort of
like the arcade font’s earliest fossils, and they can be traced back to another game
from 1976. It all started with a typeface from Atari,
which first showed up in Quiz Show. Being a quiz game, I think it needed all the
alphabet letters. These characters, like most arcade fonts,
are monospaced. As the name suggests, every letter fits within
the same width. And because every tile on the screen is locked
together, that 8x8 grid also has to account for the gap between characters. The Quiz Show character set stands out, first
and foremost, because of its proportions. It had two pixels of vertical thickness and
one pixel of horizontal thickness. With those rules I would draw an 8 like this. But the designers of this font also attempted
to follow the calligraphic tradition of typography. So if you hold a flat pen and write an 8 this
way, there will be a thick stress in this position. This is the Quiz Show “8” That stress is also how they differentiated
the zero from the "O". So there was a bit of a character in the design. The Quiz Show font was designed in the US
and variations of it showed up in a lot of Atari games, but it didn’t truly travel
the globe until it jumped over to game developers in Japan - who often weren’t familiar with
the Latin alphabet. When they started making their own games,
they just used the Atari Quiz Show font. Those Japanese developers still couldn’t
resist putting their own spin on it, by adding and subtracting a few pixels here and there. You might recognize this modified W and Y
from the hit game Galaxian. The typeface variations also had their weird
quirks, especially when lower case letters entered the picture. The biggest challenge was figuring out exactly
what lowercase letters were supposed to look like. Case in point - the lowercase characters for
the Japanese-made game Roc ‘N Rope. Toshi found them saved within the code of
the game, but they weren’t actually used. Probably for the best. The a, c, and e are giant compared to the
b and d. Some of the letters are in cursive. I think this is what they were told in Japan. They didn't have as many points of reference when it came to lowercase design. Would you say that it's harder to make lower
case letters than upper case letters within this system? Yes, lowercase needs more space because of
the parts called ascenders and descenders. So you also see lowercase g kind of being
pushed up quite a bit. I think overall quality is probably best in
Marble Madness. That was released by Atari in 1984. Marble madness has an R that's more rounded
at the top. Because it was also done by Atari, it makes me wonder if the original R, this
extra corner, was a mistake or not. With incremental advancements in technology
and a lot of ingenuity, arcade game designers fit more and more detail into this little
8x8 grid. They added more colors, outlines, and shadows. The fonts got bolder and more adventurous. There were some completely illegible designs
too. Sometimes there's a damned if you do, damned
if you don't situation. If you put a pixel it looks terrible, but
if you don't, it looks worse. Do you have a favorite that you call back
to? So, my go to favorite is Sky Fox. It’s based on the Copperplate script genre. Sky fox has one of the most beautiful script
faces. Its use of grey is amazing. By using grey It's trying to express the thickness
of one pixel. This shouldn't be possible, the entire set
of letters. The most fun part for me is the gap
between the game content and the typeface. Basically a spaceship takes aim at women in
bikinis that are riding mythical creatures? One of the most beautiful typeface, shows up in quite unacceptable games now a days. By the end of the arcade’s reign these pixelated
typefaces came in all shapes and sizes. But this one stood the test of time, showing
up in hundreds of games including pac-man, Donkey Kong, and Legends of Zelda. Being confined to this small grid started
as a technical challenge, but quickly became an impressive exercise in creativity. It’s why this font deserves to be ranked
among some of the greats. You can do anything. It's a very small grid, but the possibilities
are endless. If you’re one of our many viewers who watches their Vox videos over wifi then you might be interested in hearing about our sponsor, Ting Mobile. Ting is a cellular service provider that only charges you for the data you actually use instead of a flat monthly bill. So if you use less data, you pay for less. That means if you’re the type of person who’s almost always connected to WIFI, Ting can earn you serious savings. Like, “your phone bill could be as low as $23 a month” serious. You can bring any phone to Ting, and there’s no contracts or commitments. Interested? Try Ting Mobile with a $25 service credit at vox.ting.com. Ting doesn’t directly impact our editorial but their support makes videos like this possible, so go check them out! Hello? First things first. Check your e-mail. I got one. Fake Dylan at W.H.O. This is the WHO’s real domain, right? W.H.O. dot I.N.T. So Fake Dylan is a internet security researcher
that I worked with to send all of our emails a bunch of fake messages. And he was able to send these messages from
the real W.H.O. domain. I'm going to say I'm coming to you from my
new job in the World Health Organization. I spent all my money moving to Geneva, Switzerland. Please, send me some bitcoin to tide me over? It might say “this is a joke” in our example
here, but the more serious ones would be like, “there's an urgent new coronavirus warning
from the W.H.O.” As the number of coronavirus cases increases,
so too do Internet scams and hoaxes. Real-looking emails supposedly from the World
Health Organization and CDC asking for money. These agencies do not ask for direct donations
by e-mail. If you click on a link or download an attachment
from those e-mails, you could be giving hackers your personal information. So what we're looking at here is domain spoofing
and we're seeing it a lot with respect to the coronavirus in particular. So this really has been totally unprecedented. The teams have never seen anything like this
in terms of a single lure, uniting all different types of actors behind a single real pretext
for people to do all kinds of things, whether it's actually just steal their password, what
we call credential phishing, whether it's install malware. So this is just one example sent from what
looks like the W.H.O. e-mail address, just like the one that came to you. Clearly it's trying to get you to download
a specific file that they have sent. And researchers at IBM found that that file
contains malware that captures screenshots and logs your keystrokes and steals usernames
and passwords. Huh, “beware of criminals pretending to
be W.H.O.” The W.H.O. has actually published guidance
on this and they are aware that this is happening. But its top advice, its number one advice,
is: “Verify the sender by checking their email address.” We know that that’s pretty easy to fake
at this point. Wow. I'm surprised they don't point that out because
people might think that if it has a W.H.O. dot I.N.T address, that means it's legitimate. But really, it's a necessary but not sufficient
condition. Correct. Yeah. What I found super interesting was that we
tried spoofing a bunch of domains, and only some of them went through to the inbox. The CDC and Vox emails didn’t, but WHO and
Whitehouse.gov emails did. And I should say, it was only the Yahoo emails
that we set up. The Gmail and Outlook emails both put them
in spam. So I've been looking into this and it seems
like the greater context around this is that when email was created back in the eighties,
no one bothered to make any way to verify that the sender is who they say they are. Really it is the foundational technologies
of the Internet being built with no security in mind and no central database of who is
who that gives rise to this problem. And since then, there've been lots of attempts
to sort of build this sort of verification system. The problem is just that the participation
is not as high as it should be. So of make sense of this, it might help to
think about another type of verification problem, which is that society doesn't want teenagers
to get into bars to buy alcohol. To prevent that from happening, we need two
things: We need a way to verify ages, which is our ID system, and we need businesses to
then check for IDs. Now, imagine if that ID system was voluntary. So you have a bunch of adults who might not
bother to go get an ID. Then when they come to the bar, the business
basically has a decision to make. Either they require IDs knowing full well
that plenty of legitimate adults don't have one. Or, to avoid pissing people off, they just
let them in and maybe they end up letting in some kids too. And probably every bar is going to make a
slightly different decision. That's kind of where we're at. With email authentication right now. We have an I.D. system. It's called DMARC, but it's voluntary. So if an e-mail comes in with my email address,
joss@vox.com, the email service, whether that's Yahoo! or Outlook or G-mail, is going to check
if that domain, Vox.com, has a DMARC record. And we do! Thankfully, Vox took the time to set up a
DMARC record, which basically does three things: First, it says that the email has to come
from a certain set of IP addresses that Vox trusts. Second, it says that the email has to carry
a unique signature that only Vox can create. And third, it says that if the email fails
either of those two tests, then the email service receiving the email should reject
it, should just throw it away so that it never reaches anybody's inbox. Because of that, my Vox e-mail address, your
Vox e-mail address, we can't be easily impersonated. OK, so say an e-mail comes in from a domain
that doesn't have a DMARC record or has set their DMARC policy to something other than
“reject,” that e-mail is going to have a higher chance of getting through. Now, the e-mail providers all have spam filters. They have these algorithms that are looking
through these emails to check and see if anything's fishy. But obviously that didn't stop Dylan's fake
e-mail from getting into my Yahoo! inbox. I would guess that the W.H.O. does not have
a strong DMARC policy set up, if they have one at all. OK, there's actually a way that we can double
check this. Oh, nice. It has this nice little green box that comes
up. But this is the actual DMARC record. V equals DMARC1, P equals reject. So this is telling us that our policy is,
“reject this e-mail.” And this is true, I think, of… yeah, the
CDC as well. What about the White House? Yeah. Let me try the White House… Huh. OK. So the White House has published a DMARC record,
but if you look at it, P equals none, meaning that they are not telling email providers
to reject e-mails that come from other IP addresses or that generally are not from their
approved domain senders. The weird thing about that… So this is their guidance on what all federal
agencies are supposed to do. “All agencies are required to, within one
year after issuance of this directive, set a DMARC policy of reject for all second level
domains and mail-sending hosts.” Wow. So the White House is violating its own policy. At the very least, they’re acknowledging
that a DMARC policy of reject is the strongest protection. And it is very clear that they are not using
that protection. So now let's try the W.H.O. “Not protected against impersonation attacks!” They have not published a DMARC record at
all. And I can understand. Like the W.H.O. has a lot on their hands right
now. They're basically leading the global effort
against this giant pandemic. But damn, it really seems like they should
have done this. Yeah. And to be fair, it’s not like the WHO is
alone in this. There’s a report by ValiMail, that shows
that less than 15 percent of domains with DMARC have actually set their policy to reject
spoofed emails or send them to spam. There's kind of an incentive issue at play,
which is that you publish the record to protect other people from being phished. And the tradeoff there is that if you don't
configure it properly, and it does take some work to set up correctly, you risk some of
your e-mails not being delivered. I think that the W.H.O. is in a tough spot
right now because it is incredibly important in this moment that their e-mails get through. And also there's an increase in the risk that
it's coming from a fake domain and that, you know, maybe they have some more responsibility
than they might have before in terms of protecting people from fake e-mails. Hey, do it for us, because we're all, you
know, vulnerable out here on the internet looking for information. Yeah. It is the sort of thing that every good citizen
of the internet should do. But, you know, like eating your vegetables
and working out every day, it's not something that every organization does. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases
we know. Just one person is likely to infect between
12 and 18 people. That number is called a disease's "basic
reproduction number," or R-naught. Scientists use it to describe how contagious
a disease is. Zika? It has an R-naught of up to 6.6. Super contagious. But the seasonal flu? Just a little over one. And Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus? Just about two. That difference, between the flu and Covid-19,
doesn't seem so big. Especially when you look at them next to these
really contagious diseases. Plus, a lot of the symptoms of the flu and
Covid-19 are really similar: A fever, cough, they can even both lead
to pneumonia, which is ultimately how they can both be fatal. So, thinking of Covid-19 and the flu as similar is a common, and frankly, understandable comparison to want to make. "This is like the flu." "It’s a lot like the flu." "I like to believe that it's going to end up more
like the flu virus." But wait, let’s go back to those R-naught
numbers again. If the flu has an R-naught of 1.3, that means
each person gets either one or two people sick. After ten rounds, that’s 56 total people. And if we run the model with Covid-19’s
R-naught at two, if one person with it gets two people sick, who get two people
sick… After ten rounds, that’s more than two thousand
people. This does not happen with the flu. Because Covid-19 is very different. And understanding how is crucial to understanding
how dangerous it really is. And why we have to take it so seriously. When we start to look for that comparison
to the flu, we almost calm ourselves down. But unfortunately, that’s not quite the right
reaction here. Every year, the seasonal flu kills as many
as 60,000 Americans. As of late March, Covid-19 has killed about
34,000 — across the whole world. But scientists expect that number to go up. Way up. Tens of thousands of people a year die of
the flu. But we haven't had this for a year yet. We’ve only had this for a few months. The trouble is coming, and we can predict it, and we can see what's coming, at least to a certain extent. The first really big difference between Covid-19
and the flu is how long it takes you to feel sick. From the moment you’re infected with Covid-19, it usually takes five days before you start to feel symptoms. But it can take as long as 12 or even 14 days. This is the incubation period: the time
between when you catch it, and when you first realize you’re sick. And scientists think you could be contagious
during most of this period. The flu, by comparison, has an average incubation
period of just two days. You get sick, and pretty soon you feel sick,
and you know you’re contagious. This is what we’re used to. But Covid-19 flips that around. You can be contagious and spreading it around
for several days, and up to two weeks, before it even occurs to you that you're sick. And that leads to the next big difference. No human immune system had seen this virus
before. Nobody has a natural immunity to it. In flu season, there’s always a number of
people in the population who are already immune to the flu. That can be because they got their flu shot,
or maybe because they’ve already had that flu strain. And that limits the spread of the virus. When one person is contagious with the flu,
they can only spread it to people who aren’t immune. Who can only spread it to other people who
aren’t immune. That’s why scientists and doctors urge us
to get our flu shot every year: If enough people have immunity, they can kind of shield
the virus from reaching others. The more immunized people, the more they can
protect those that are susceptible to the virus. But Covid-19 is brand new. None of us have had it before, and there’s
no vaccine. Which means nearly everyone on the planet
is susceptible. So when a contagious person, who may not even
know they’re infected, comes into contact with others, it can spread like wildfire. And then you see how much more dangerous Covid-19
can be. Only 2% of people with the flu need to be
hospitalized. But 20 to even 30% of people who test positive
for Covid-19 do. And we’re still learning about Covid-19’s
fatality rate, but scientists think it’s somewhere between 1 and 3%. But the flu’s rate is even lower: 0.1%. And that’s a disease that can kill 60,000
people a year in the US alone. That’s what Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US’s
leading infectious disease expert, tried to clear up to Congress. "People always say, well, the flu does this,
the flu does that. The flu has a mortality of 0.1%. This has a mortality of ten times that. This is a really serious problem that we have
to take seriously." And he’s just talking about the average
across all age groups. For older people, or people with compromised
immune systems, it can be way higher. And that’s especially scary when you remember
all the other things that are different about Covid-19: The infectiousness, how hard it is to know that you have it, how susceptible we all are to it. Estimates vary, but some scientists have warned
that between 20 and 60% of the world’s population could become infected with the virus. Because Covid-19 has no cure and no vaccine,
the only defense we have against it is social. We can take ourselves out of the chain — not
with immunity, but with social distancing. Just physically not being around anyone, and
staying home as much as possible. But that only works if each of us takes it
seriously. Which is why comparing it to the flu, while
understandable, is not helpful. It's natural to want to find a
comparison, to want to make this seem small. When we use the flu as the backdrop, it almost
numbs us, or it can numb us, and make us maybe even feel better about the current situation. Because the current situation is bad. So now is not the time to be numb. We need to be vigilant, and then use our vigilance
for useful actions. Our government closed the cities and then we realized that this was really, really dangerous. It definitely feels like a movie. The streets are empty. And all of the stores are empty. The situation is very dramatic. Your brain starts to function in another way to survive. So it's very difficult because we are not free. But we are together. All over the globe there are people doing things from their balconies and windows. When I saw this I thought, we should do that as well. Music has the power to change a bad day. I am not a doctor, I cannot heal people, but I can give hope. And I can make people fly with me in a perfect world at least for five minutes a day. I think that people are using art to express their deepest senses of joy. Welcome to kitchen quarantine. It's just at the end of the day, human connection. Happy birthday dear grandma, cumpleanos feliz. It's a balance of being realistic and also being able to smile. Once upon a time... Thank you for coming. People cannot go to the gym, but it doesn't mean they can't get a workout. Casey Naftol and Matt Greene held their wedding online yesterday, complete with a flower girl. Mazel tov! People are really trying to be their best versions of themselves right now, I think that's all we can ask. So many families are missing milestones. But with a little improvising, they got to
meet their newborn great grandson. What a beautiful baby. A strict no visitation policy at this retirement home hasn't stopped Charlie Johnson from seeing his 88-year-old father, albeit through a window. Amid the coronavirus outbreak many people are in need. And volunteers are stepping in to assist the elderly. We just decided to post a note, and put it
where we sometimes run into our neighbors. So that they feel and know that their neighbors have their back right now. Grocery delivery, pharmaceutical deliveries, whatever it is that they need from outside if they don't want to go out. Our thought was kind of like, okay, we can
shoulder some of the responsibility in our own individual communities. We have never been so close, you know. Because we a team now. Musicians have set up washing stations to protect the homeless. Melbourne's Sikh community rallying to prepare meals for delivery to anyone most in need. A Cuban medical brigade is on the way to Europe. The people who are now working hard, they're maybe not the people who get the most applause in everyday life. We just take them for granted. So now people are just applauding them. I hope that when this all passes, that we all still have the same amount of love and respect for each other that we have at this time. We're showing that we, we are bound together, even though we have to stay apart. st. Mark's Square Venice Italy it's one of the most visited tourist destinations in the world most years in mid-march it's crowded with people hanging out in cafes checking out the cathedral and writing gondolas but in March of 2020 st. Mark's Square was practically empty more and more people in northern Italy had tested positive for the highly contagious corona virus to slow down the spread of the virus the Prime Minister told everyone to stay home alone also del Italia in la nostra my and they listened a big part of the reason they could do that is because of a national policy in Italy everyone there is guaranteed paid sick days no matter their job the same is true in the UK and Germany and Spain and Japan and Ireland and Austria and Australia and Norway and France and well basically all wealthy countries but in the u.s. a huge number of workers face a very different reality these restaurant workers in New Orleans are demanding emergency sick pay during the corona virus pandemic unlike in all these countries there is no national law in the u.s. guaranteeing workers the right to paid sick days instead whether you have that right depends on where you live and who you work for it's a system that leaves tens of millions of the lowest paid Americans vulnerable and it's about to be tested by the biggest global pandemic in a hundred years if you look at how other countries handle paid sick leave some of them like Italy in Japan pay workers directly out of a social security fund others like Germany New Zealand and Australia have laws that require employers to foot the bill in Ireland and Spain it's a combination of both but they all do it for the same reason because it helps contain the spread of disease and can save lives when workers have to choose between making money and staying home when they're sick the incentive is for them to come to work which can get their customers and co-workers sick that's an especially big problem during a pandemic like coronavirus when hospitals might already be at capacity which would mean some people can't get medical attention which would mean more people would die that's why the website of the CDC America's main public health agency is unambiguous about what you should do if you're sick right now stay home but if staying home means not being able to pay your rent it might not be that simple I'm a production assistant I'm a music educator I work in Houston Texas as their stage head I am a line opener at a bakery by day a bartender by night and neither job offers paid sick days I don't get sick days because I'm not staff I'm hired like day to day I'm a contract worker so that means we're ineligible for benefits or paid sick leave at all if for any reason I have to call in sick the company caused an expression on the list and I do not get paid it basically means I start playing Tetris with my living expenses and pull money away from one bill to squeeze it into another so it makes things complicated and a bit scary in recent years service industry workers have pushed for new paid sick leave laws in cities and states across the country and in a handful of places they've succeeded but service workers are a huge part of every state's economy so why haven't they been more successful in getting paid sick days in more places part of the reason why starts here in Milwaukee Wisconsin in 2008 voters there passed a paid sick leave referendum by a huge margin but three years later the state's Republican Governor Scott Walker signed a bill that said no city in Wisconsin could require employers to provide their employees with leave of any kind Milwaukee's new paid sick leave law was toast then later that same year an executive from the company Yum Brands which owns KFC Taco Bell and Pizza Hut went to a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council or Alec it's a group that rights legislation for Republican state lawmakers all over the country so they don't have to write it themselves they handed out copies of that Wisconsin bill in the decade sense republican-controlled state legislatures in 16 other states have passed nearly identical laws including Louisiana home of those New Orleans protestors but now that there's a pandemic the u.s. really needs sick workers everywhere to stay home that's partly why on March 18th 2020 president Trump signed a coronavirus relief bill that vice president Mike Pence described to the American people this way if you're sick stay home you're not gonna miss a paycheck the problem is that's not true the Democrats original bill gave everyone access to paid sick days but to get Republicans on board they made some concessions the bill does contain a line that says an employee shall be entitled to paid sick time during public health emergencies the problem is that rule only applies to companies with between 50 and 500 employees and companies that size only employ about 20% of American workers so even with this new bill millions of workers at big national chains like McDonald's Walmart Kroger and Pizza Hut still don't have paid sick days there are lots of American workers that do have paid sick leave many also have the privilege of working from home during the crisis but coronavirus doesn't distinguish between people who have that privilege and those who don't that means that the status quo puts all Americans at risk because we're only as safe as our least protected neighbors [Music] you the time for social distancing its immediate late what exactly is social distancing social distancing Institute more social distancing my name is karellen canoe CEO and I'm a social epidemiologist every action that we take and every way in which we can hold back from the public sphere in order to limit the opportunities for transmission is an opportunity truly to save a life I'm wondering if there are just one or two concrete pieces of advice you would want people to follow I think our lives should look radically different right now than they normally do I would say limit your face-to-face interactions work remotely whenever possible no handshakes no high-fives no hugs outside the home stand six feet or more away from any person you're encountering in a public space and severely restrict your travel from city to city limiting that to truly urgent matters and limit your engagement in the public sphere don't attend group gatherings don't go to the theater don't go to sporting events what we're trying to prevent is contact with droplets when people sneeze cough or spit I'm wondering what you think of small social gatherings how big is too big you will get different answers from different people about this and I tend to be more conservative one of my son said to me mom if we're quarantined at least we can still have dinner parties right and I said no Gabriel that's the antithesis of what quarantine is about we have to minimize our contact with others I would say that's the general rule limited limited to what's necessary do you recommend that people go outside even if they have limited contact with people so what I've been doing is trying to wake up at a very early hour and go usually or to go in very unpopulated places and walk I'm wondering what you think about taking flights an important consideration is that the movement of populations is the fuel for continued spread so in the 1918 flu there was this massive movement of troops across the United States and that troop movement was the perfect vehicle for continuing the spread of influenza and you may think that it's different if you're just traveling for spring break but really there isn't any difference between that kind of movement for the purposes of wartime personnel needs and the movement of people because they want to get to the beach we don't want to have prolonged contact with other humans in a confined space and what's a flight if not prolonged contact with other humans than a confined space so don't do it if you don't have to do it don't do it I'm sure that's gonna be your answer for all of the following questions I have if you don't have to don't do it what about public transportation so many people are dependent upon public transit to get to work there might be some risk reduction practices people could adopt such as trying to ride at off-peak times if you are able to walk or ride your bike do that it probably is safer from a an infection perspective to drive one's own car rather than to use public transit but every public health person hates saying that how should we approach caring for elderly or at-risk neighbors or people in our community who may need help if people have been living with an elderly family member they should reduce radically their contact with the outside world especially the primary caregiver that's ultra important for elders who are able to take care of their own activities of daily living like my mom lives independently she's taking the CDC advice very seriously to stay at home and we also make a point to call her multiple throughout the day my daughter in the evening will read a story to my mom my mom will read a story to her we play games together over Google Hangouts we really want to have ways to continue to show her how much we love her and when will this end when will we know that we can stop social distancing I can't give you a date when it will end it would be good if we could have that date because it would be reassuring to people to know that this won't last forever and it won't last forever but it's probably going to be an uncomfortably long period of time is there a happy medium between extreme social isolation and just keeping a healthy distance from people so this will be a very hard time for many people and I would say that the happy medium is to try to think creatively about ways to engage socially without physically being present call more often FaceTime more often sing with friends out the windows as people have been doing in Italy play music for your loved ones over the phone let your elders hear the voices of their grandchildren over the phone give to food banks give to homeless outreach organizations if you're able to be generous now is the time to be generous and be generous not just with our material gifts but also truly believe deep in your heart that by stepping out of the social realm right now you are doing one of the greatest services you can do to the public's health [Music] You know that the best way to prevent the
spread of coronavirus is to wash your hands. Wash your hands, doo doo, doo doo, doo doo. Wash your hands! But … why? It’s because soap — regular soap, fancy
honeysuckle soap, artisan peppermint soap, just any soap — absolutely annihilates viruses
like the coronavirus. Here’s how. This is what a virus, like coronavirus, looks
like. It’s a bit of material surrounded by a coating
of proteins — and fat. Viruses easily stick to places like your hands,
but when you rinse your hands with just water, it rushes right over the virus. That’s because that layer of fat makes the
virus behave kind of like a drop of oil. You can see it happening in this demonstration. Oils are just liquid fats. What happens when you pour oil into water? It floats — it doesn’t mix. But add soap… And suddenly that fatty oil dissolves into
the water. That’s because inside, soap has two-sided
molecules. One end of the molecule is attracted to water,
the other end to fat. So when the soap molecules come in contact
with water and fat, these dual attractions literally pull the fat apart, surrounding
the oil particles and dispersing them through the water.   Let’s go back to our coronavirus molecule. With that layer of fat holding everything
together. When it interacts with soap … bam! The fat gets pulled out by the soap. Soap literally pulls apart and demolishes
these viruses. And then the water rinses the harmless, leftover
shards of virus down the drain. But, and you know where I'm going with this, it takes time for this effect to happen. 20 seconds, to be specific. To show why, we ordered this lotion that mimics
viruses and their fatty layers. It glows under a UV light. If you just rinse your hands under regular
water … nothing comes off. If you wash for just 5 seconds or 10 seconds,
your hands are still covered. The virus is still here, able to get you and
others sick. But 20 full seconds: Now the soap is actually
destroying the virus. Hand sanitizer works too, because it’s mostly
alcohol, and alcohol works in a somewhat similar way to soap, breaking down that fatty layer. You need a high concentration of alcohol to
make that work. The CDC recommends hand sanitizers with at
least 60% alcohol. But even with 60% alcohol, the CDC recommends
using soap if you can. If your hands are sweaty or dirty when you
use the sanitizer, that can dilute it and diminish its effectiveness. As for soap, just any old soap works. You don’t need soap marketed as antibacterial,
even. The FDA says skip it — there’s no proof
it is any more effective. Just be sure to wash your hands. For 20 seconds. That’s “Happy Birthday” twice. Or the chorus to Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts.” Or Prince. Or Eminem. Or even Dolly. Just as long as it’s 20 seconds. And you’re using the ultimate virus annihilator:
soap. on March 11th 2020 the World Health Organization made an announcement in the past two weeks the number of cases of Kovac 19 outside China has increased 13 fold Kovac 19 can be characterized as a pandemic the corona virus or kovat 19 disease had already overwhelmed China South Korea Iran and Italy and this was a warning to other countries where it was now spreading quickly in the days and weeks ahead we expect to see the number of cases the number of deaths and the number of affected countries climbed even higher the spread of kovat 19 was no longer something that could be stopped but we can't still slow it down you just have to act right now someone with Cova 19 usually develops a fever and a cough aches pains and other mild symptoms are also possible but are less frequent but the severity of those symptoms varies and for some people who get the virus you might never show symptoms at all based on the data from China the vast majority of cases are not life-threatening in 80% of cases people experience on the Nile disease but in 20% of cases the disease can manifest in a more serious way but can develop into quite a severe pneumonia where people need to be hospitalized and put on ventilators overall it seems like about one to two percent of known cases lead to death but that rate is much lower for young people and much higher for the elderly and it also seems that people with unmanaged underlying chronic diseases they also have a tougher time overcoming the virus the virus also seems to be very contagious more contagious than the flu all you need to do to spread co19 is cough or sneeze on someone else touch a surface where the virus still lives and then put your hand in your mouth through your eyes or your nose after getting infected it can take an average of five to six days before you feel sick and your symptoms start to appear but you can already spread it to people in that period even if you feel healthy just as people realize they're sick they seem to be at the most risk of passing it along to others that's how the virus has been so effective at spreading across the world so quickly and why the w-h-o was now calling Koba 19 a pandemic but what they said next was just as important we cannot say this loudly enough all countries can still change the course of this pandemic and that depends on something each of us needs to do as individuals so diseases become really dangerous when everyone gets sick at once and the health system becomes overwhelmed in any Hospital the capacity to treat patients is limited by how many beds they have think of this as the number of beds in your local hospital at any given time a couple are already filled by patients receiving treatment for things like a car accident injury or a stroke and this dot represents one person who's healthy and decides to go out like usual they jump on the subway and head into the office where they catch kovat 19 but they don't feel sick right away and might not for several days so later they go to a basketball game where they unknowingly infect two or three more people most of these people will have relatively mild cases but one might be an elderly person with a severe case who will eventually have to go to the hospital but these three who are all infected but don't feel sick go out again on the subway into the office and then out after work infecting several more people 20% of whom will need to go to the hospital over a short period of time this process multiplies the number of people going to the hospital each day before long the hospital is full and a crisis begins people with severe cases of Cova 19 can't get treatment and some who could be saved died plus people with other issues can't get treatment either and some of them die this surge of severe cases causes avoidable deaths that's what happened in South Korea Iran and Italy all of which went from 100 to more than 5,000 cases in less than two weeks a lot of people died because they couldn't get into the hospitals the surge is made up of only severe cases but it was generated by people who didn't feel sick spreading the disease in public which means the people who can do the most to avoid these unnecessary deaths are these people and that means all of us to slow the virus down you need to act as if you already have it by avoiding public transportation the office crowded places and even small social gatherings you decrease your chances of both getting the disease and spreading it this is called social distancing if enough of us do it the virus still spreads but much slower over time many people might still get infected but fewer severe cases show up to the hospital each day never overwhelming the system this trendline gets flatter these people can all get treatment and fewer people die because of it these are the two ways the köppen 19 pandemic can play out but this one only happens if everyone does their part and it's why experts and officials are urging people to flatten the curve by social distancing and staying home as much as possible it's also why in the u.s. many companies are helping by requiring employees to work from home and major sports leagues have canceled their games for the time being it may seem drastic but it's worked before in 1918 the cities of Philadelphia and st. Louis were both hit by a flu pandemic but they responded in different ways in Philadelphia health officials allowed a huge parade to go ahead while in st. Louis officials prepared they closed schools theaters and bars Philadelphia's hospitals were overwhelmed and many more died as a result but Saint Louis was able to avoid those excessive deaths a hundred years later these are the two scenarios we face a difference not in whether you get the corona virus but when you get it that could mean the difference between life and death maybe for someone you know we have to act now [Music] [Applause] [Music] you "The US president has arrived in India." "A lavish spectacle." "...whole world watching the US president's visit to India." A lot of the news coming out of India has revolved around Trump's visit. But I know that there's a lot more going on in India at the moment. Can you tell us what's happening in Delhi? Right now, Delhi is in a state I would say of uneasy tension. We saw a really gruesome 72-hour period of violence that broke out between Hindus and Muslims in the northeastern part of Delhi. Cars burning, mosques being torn down People being killed and beaten, pelted with stones, and so on. Around 40 people were killed in Delhi and hundreds were injured. It is true that there was Muslim-led violence. But when you step back and look at who bore the brunt, it was the Muslim community. Why is this happening? What sparked the situation? Since the Modi government came back to power in May of 2019 it has moved with a real sense of urgency and a clarity of purpose towards enacting a kind of pro-Hindu agenda. The most recent thing it has done is enacted this citizenship amendment bill. So what the bill does is it provides expedited citizenship to illegal migrants who end up in India from one of three neighboring countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, if those people belong to essentially any religious community other than Islam. Immediately we saw protests in the streets primarily from Muslims. So why is this bill so controversial? This was seen as actually a prelude to an even larger initiative to create a national register of Indian citizens. Many Indian citizens whose families have lived there for generations, they don't actually have the documents to help them prove their citizenship. So you can imagine a scenario where both Hindus and Muslims cannot prove their citizenship. But Hindus will be given a kind of lifeline through the citizenship Amendment Act because they can be given amnesty essentially. Where Muslims, because they're specifically denied expedited citizenship under the law, would have no other recourse. And this raises a question. If there is a process to figure out who is a legitimate resident and who's not, what do you do with the people who are not? What do you do with the people who are deemed illegal? Tens of thousands queued up across Assam to check if they're Indians or not. Detention centers for illegal citizens. India's first detention center in Assam. Many more are planned. There have been detention camps built in Assam. It is a pilot project in a sense. The protests began first at primarily Muslim colleges and universities in and around Delhi. But then they quickly spread all around the country, where you saw in some cases hundreds of thousands of people saying this new law is antithetical to the liberal secular democratic spirit of the Constitution. And some of the Hindu majority sections in Delhi were a growing increasingly outraged with the severity of the protests. They really use the fact of these protests to fuel counter protests. You have legislators who are using their bully pulpit to kind of fan these flames. The riots that we've seen in recent days have been restricted to Delhi. The real worry is that what we saw in Delhi is potentially the harbinger of what could happen on a larger scale in other parts of the country. Once the the violence broke out in Delhi, how was it addressed? It took about 72 hours for the police to essentially flood the streets with enough manpower to restore order. And the lingering question is why it took so long. If this was such a brazen display of violence, why didn't the police do anything about it? And in fact there's video and photographic evidence to suggest that in many cases police either looked the other way or aided and abetted the mobs. Prime Minister Modi was very slow in issuing a statement about the violence. This was during the tail end of US President Donald Trump's visit to India, a state visit. You would see the president meeting Prime Minister Modi and you would see parts of Delhi going up in flames. He could have spoken sooner to try to cool the tensions. People that are out in the streets protesting, what is it that they want to achieve with these protests? They want to see, essentially, the government repudiate or repeal this new bill. Or amend it so that it does not, by omission, single out Muslims. That's number one. I think number two is, they want some kind of credible commitment that this is not a prelude to an all-India citizens registry. What has created so much uncertainty and so much angst is that no one knows what the endgame actually is, if they actually go through this process and they find people who are illegals. That question mark is why you see so much anxiety right now in India. [Applause] it was the night of August 4th 1977 thousands of protesters gathered in San Francisco and formed a human barricade around this building to protect its residents police are on their way now police are on their way it was about eleven o'clock and some inside person called us and said they must be doing something that eviction is probably gonna happen hundreds of police in riot gear forced their way into a condemned hotel in San Francisco today demonstrators formed a human barricade but it did not prevent police from using clubs and night sticks their orders evict the last of the people living there [Applause] for nearly ten years this building known as the International Hotel had been at the heart of a historic battle for fair housing in San Francisco this is not just a ordinary building you know what was battles were fought right on that it housed hundreds of Filipinos who fought for their right to have a place to call home in a city where they lived for decades what happened that night changed the community and the shape of the city forever [Music] while it's now a part of Chinatown this area used to be Manila town one of the country's first Filipino American communities but it wasn't your typical immigrant community it was made up of mostly men and that stemmed from a relationship between the US and the Philippines that ran deep after a brutal war over a century ago the u.s. colonized the Philippines and controlled up until 1946 during that period two major waves of Asian immigration occurred in the u.s. first Chinese and then largely Japanese migrants came to the u.s. to work in mines factories on railroads and on farms but over time both Chinese and Japanese immigrants faced racist backlash and were eventually barred from entering the country that created a demand for cheap labor so the u.s. turned to a new group Filipinos in the 1920s and 30s the prospect of financial security lured over 100,000 Filipino men to the US when the US took over the Philippines they were American nationals they felt like they were living the American dream but the reality of it was that they were extremely exploited and wages were really low exploitation had many forms one of the most damaging repercussions for Filipino men settling in the US was isolation US policies kept the workers from bringing their families over and also stopped them from marrying white women they did build roots I call it social castration but this was a way of again trying to keep them under control and being able to abuse their lives and that's where the gender imbalance begins many of the Filipino men settled along the west coast in San Francisco about 30,000 of them started forming a community here on a ten block stretch right along the spine of Chinatown on Kearney Street it was the start of Manila town outside of this area Filipino workers found it hard to find any affordable housing and that was by design the city at large was strictly racially segregated as soon as they crossed the borders of Manila town like here past Broadway and into surrounding white communities they were shut out and denied apartments and even if you walked two blocks that way you could get beat up even killed they had white seal antique groups that would hunt them down trying to take them out of town that forced Filipino men to stay within the boundaries of Manila town but despite the constraints they found a way to build a home for themselves by the 1950s they were part of an entire generation of aging men who lived out their lives in the u.s. they were called the Monde own generation ma Nome is is a Filipino word it's a sign of endearment and respect to an older person in San Francisco's Manila town many of the mono mended up living in residential hotels like this one called the International Hotel or I Hotel the AI hotel housed nearly 200 people largely Filipino men but some Chinese men and women too they lived in confined spaces often in poor conditions even so the AI hotel and Manila town provided a sense of community and belonging to the residents there were parlors barber shops places where people could play pool just places where they could just call home being around with we called kebab lions like a brother so then the hotel's become these places were it's like family to them but their neighborhood was caught in the middle of a changing San Francisco San Francisco has consistently been called one of the most expensive cities in the world to live with the influx of tech companies in recent decades it struggled with massive affordable housing shortages but the problems of urbanization didn't start with Silicon Valley it started in the 1950s with what was called the Manhattan ization of this heart of downtown the city wanted a Wall Street of the West and to make room for it they came up with a master plan for the redevelopment of San Francisco this plan for urban renewal called low-income neighborhoods blighted districts and slums and asked for these areas to be razed and rebuilt along modern lines in the Western Addition and Fillmore districts the city evicted around 12,000 largely black and Asian American residents and here in the South of Market area roughly 4,000 people were evicted the residents of Manila town right at the border of the growing financial district knew they'd be targeted next in 1968 the owner handed the tenants of the eye hotel their first eviction notice the real estate company wanted to demolish the building to make space for a parking lot but the tenants resisted Filipino community leaders and businesses joined the fight along with a growing number of local activists Estella was one of the young activists on the front lines these are pins from 1968 to 1984 and that's a plug lava means fight for international hotel after months of protests the owner and tenants agreed to a new three-year lease in 1969 but it was a temporary fix by the 1970s redevelopment efforts moved further and further into Manila town it nearly swallowed the entire community and threatened the I hotel once again all the other hotels where many of the other elderly lived were already being demolished they were already being evicted so it was like domino and then some in some ways in 1973 the owner of the eye hotel sold the building to a developer from Thailand and that reignited the eviction battle for the next four years inside the court room and on the streets protestors fought three more eviction notices Asian American groups religious groups labor rights groups and dozens of others all came together in a show of solidarity for low-income housing but for Filipino residents it was also a fight to claim what little space they had in a city that was trying to erase them in the summer of 1977 the tenants of the I hotel were served another eviction notice on August 3rd a news reporter leaked information to tenants and supporters that the police might actually be coming that night the police and the Sheriff's Department were gathering it was still a threat but yet we thought maybe this is it because if they're gathering somewhere and it's in the middle of the night it's probably going to be a surprise I was the president of the International Tennis Association I felt that a lot of us felt fear but I had to calm people I had to tell them that this is what standing up means we've met what was said well we're not going to move you don't have to carry yourself the sheriff's are just simply going to have to drag us out of this building they're going you know that's on the night of August 4th tenant leaders set off a red alert and over 2,000 protesters gathered on Kearney Street many formed a human barricade locking arms outside of the eye hotel while others were stationed inside with the remaining.i hotel tenants when the police arrived on foot and on horses they launched into the crowds with batons I was upstairs inside the building and so was email and we also locked arms inside here when I started hearing that of the horses that's when I knew that it was something was afoot it was really scary we had mattresses on the windows and on the doors people were saying we won't move we won't move [Music] [Applause] eventually using a fire truck ladder the police entered the building through the roof and we hear shouting and screaming from upstairs but because everything is closed off it's kind of like muffled once inside the police were confronted by more protesters including a meal just be enough dragged down the stairs dragged down the street after making it through the crowd of protesters the police used axes to open up the doors to rooms in the end to put a stop to this rampage the tenants decided to stand down they walked out one by one each elder accompanied by an activist by the next morning the streets were cleared out Emile's face was plastered all over the national newspapers this is the actual photo of an eviction I mean the next day he sees in the New York Times and Boston Globe I mean you see this all over people carried from the building were young demonstrators who had occupied some of the vacant rooms tenants were rushed out of the building many of them so quickly they left everything behind but the national attention was too late it couldn't change what happened that night or its repercussions the fight to save the last remnant of Manila town was shut down and the I Hotel tenants were homeless the city claimed to have set up replacement housing for the tenants but there were no such accommodations that was a lie it wasn't a place for them to go they were kicked out into the street we had to find makeshift places where they could sleep some of them collapse and I think what really saw more than anything is how brokenhearted they were because their family you know their community was destroyed the I Hotel remained vacant for nearly two years before it was demolished tenants were scattered throughout the city and Manila town was destroyed we don't have the presence in the city we've been here over 100 years but we're overshadowed we kind of still remain very invisible in 2005 nearly 30 years after the original battle for the I hotel Manila town and Chinatown activists accomplished a decade's long effort to build a new AI hotel today it contains 104 units of dedicated affordable housing for senior citizens this building carries the legacy of its community and its struggle one that still resonates in a city with a deepening affordable housing crisis the failure of the city always was that they failed to build affordable housing decent housing it's the failure of a system that prioritizes property rights over human rights I feel hopeful because I know that there's a new generation who's thinking about these things but it's only possible if you have that idea that housing is a human right [Music] it was New Year's Eve 2019 when health officials in China admitted they had a problem the health authorities have activated them a serious response level after an outbreak of a new type of viral pneumonia in central China a rapidly growing number of people were developing a dry cough and fever before getting pneumonia and for some it turned fatal doctors have named the disease kovat 19 or coronavirus disease 20 19 indicating that a type of virus is causing illness when they try to trace its origin they found a likely source this food market in Wuhan over the first 41 patients 27 had been here it wasn't conclusive evidence but Chinese officials quickly shut down the market they had seen this happen before at a place just like this the health officials are trying to get a grip on an alarming outbreak of SARS the virus originated in mainland China has spread across the country the disease have been festering for months in southern China in 2002 a corona virus had emerged at a very similar market in southern China it eventually reached 29 countries and killed nearly 800 people now 18 years later this corona virus is in at least 71 countries and has already killed over 3,100 people so what do these markets have to do with the corona virus outbreak and why is it happening a lot of the viruses that make us sick actually originate in animals some of the viruses that cause the flu come from birds and pigs hiv/aids comes from chimpanzees the deadly Ebola virus likely originates in bats and in the case of the 2019 corona virus there's some evidence it went from a bat to a Pangolin before infecting a human while viruses are very good at jumping between species it's rare for a deadly one to make this journey all the way to humans that's because it would need all these hosts to encounter each other at some point that's where the wuhan market comes in it's a wet market a kind of place where live animals are slaughtered and sold for consumption it was not surprised at all and I think that it was not surprise to many scientists Peter Lee is a professor and expert on China's animal trade the cages stack about one over another animals at the bottom were are often soaked with all kinds of liquid animal excrement tasks that are what literally could be receiving from the animals that's exactly how a virus can jump from one animal to another if that animal then comes in contact with or is consumed by human the virus could potentially infect them and if the virus then spreads to other humans it causes an outbreak what markets are scattered all over the world but the ones in China are particularly well known because they offer a wide variety of animals including wildlife this is a sample menu reportedly from the market in Wuhan these animals are from all over the world and each one has the potential to carry its own viruses to the market the reason all these animals are in the same market is because of a decision china's government made decades ago back in the 1970s china was falling apart famine had killed more than 36 million people and the communist regime which controlled all food production was failing to feed its more than 9 million people in 1978 on the verge of collapse the regime gave up this control and allowed private farming while large companies increasingly dominated the production of popular foods like pork and poultry some smaller farmers turned to catching and raising wild animals as a way to sustain themselves after their beginning it was mostly peasant household backyard operation of the turtles for example that la-la-la family started to get off the grounds and since it started to feed and sustain people the Chinese government backed it so it was imperative for the government to encourage people to you know to make the liggins through whatever productive activities they can fund them servant even lift yourself out of a poverty no matter what you are doing that's ok but then in 1988 the government made a decision that changed the shape of wildlife trade in China they enacted the wildlife protection law which designated the animals as resources owned by the state and protected people engaged in the utilization of wildlife resources that's one of the most devastating problems of the law because either you designate the wildlife as the natural resource the music is something you can use for human benefits the law also encouraged the domestication and breeding a wild life and with that an industry was born small local farms turned into industrial sized operations for example this bear farm started with just three and eventually grew to more than a thousand bears bigger populations meant greater chances that a sick animal could spread disease farmers were also raising a wide variety of animals which meant more viruses on the farms nonetheless these animals were funneled into the wet markets for profit while this legal wildlife farming industry started booming it simultaneously provided cover for an illegal wildlife industry endangered animals like tigers were on US forces and pangolins were trafficked into China by the early 2000s these markets were teeming with wild animals when the inevitable happened the latest on the deadly SARS virus the worldwide death toll up again today China has reported more than 1400 cases of infection nationwide it is what health officials have feared all along in 2003 the SARS outbreak was traced to a wet market here in southern China scientists found traces of the virus and farmed civet cats Chinese officials quickly shut down the markets and banned wildlife farming but just a few months after the outbreak the Chinese government declared 54 species of wildlife animals including civet cats legal to farming it by 2004 the wildlife farming industry was worth an estimated 100 billion won and it exerted significant influence over the Chinese government type in China's gigantic GDP but the industry has the enormous Lobby capability it's because of this influence that the Chinese government has allowed these markets to grow over the years in 2016 for example the government sanctioned the farming of some endangered species like tigers and pangolins by 2018 the wildlife industry had grown to 148 billion won and had developed clever marketing tactics to keep the markets around the industry has been promoting you know these wildlife animals as in atonic products as you know bodybuilding as sex enhancing and of course as a disease fighting none of the claims can hold water yet these products became popular with an influential portion of China's population the majority of the people in China do not eat those people would consume these smaller fibers are the rich and powerful a small minority it's this minority that the Chinese government chose to favor over the safety of the rest of the population is parochial commercial interests of small Nevada eaters uh hi Jackie China's National Church soon after the corona virus outbreak the Chinese government shut down thousands of wet markets and temporarily banned wildlife trade again organizations around the world have been urging China to make the ban permanent Chinese social media in particular has been flooded with petitions to ban it for good this time in response China is reportedly amending the wildlife protection law that encourage wildlife farming decades ago but unless these actions lead to a permanent ban on wildlife farming outbreaks like this one are bound to happen again [Music] for a bunch more information about China's wet markets viruses and wildlife we have an episode on our Netflix show called the next pandemic explained it talks about why a Crone virus could spark the next pandemic and what the world's experts are doing to stop it that's on our Netflix show explained check it out you In July 2019, Elizabeth Warren was part of
a debate with former Congressman John Delaney. Delaney was also running for president, and
he criticized Warren for being unrealistic. I think Democrats win when we run on real
solutions, not impossible promises, when we run on things that are workable, not fairy
tale economics. If you want to understand Elizabeth Warren, her response to that is a great place to start. I don’t understand 
why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to
talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. I don’t get it. Elizabeth Warren wants to make really big
changes to the way things work. It’s going to take big structural change
in America. It's a thread you can find throughout
her career, from her years as a law professor, to her creation of a new federal agency, to
her time as a US Senator. Warren doesn't want to revert America back
to a time before Trump. She wants to change something more fundamental
about the country's institutions. We can’t fix this broken system by only
treating symptoms So, where did that idea come from? Is that what we want? And -- if it is -- is Elizabeth Warren the
best person for the job? In the early 2000s, Elizabeth Warren wasn't a politician
yet. She was a law professor, and she was trying
to figure out why so many Americans were filing for bankruptcy, at a time when the economy
seemed to be doing great. The thing you have to understand about Warren's
academic work is that it was counter to the conventional wisdom when it was happening. Most people agreed at the time that the US
economy was strong. The unemployment rate was low, GDP was high,
and global trade agreements like NAFTA had made tons of goods super cheap… But Warren saw that underneath it all, something
in American life had changed. Families live in a much more dangerous economic
world than they did a generation ago. One thing Warren was doing was refocusing
how we thought about the economy from what was happening in the economy to what was happening
to families themselves. In particular, she noticed that to
cover basic expenses, American families were taking on more and more dangerous loans. Alan Greenspan was sworn in for his fifth
term as chairman of the Fed. This makes the time ripe for a conversation
with Elizabeth Warren. Alan Greenspan, our national economic leader,
has stood up for the last four years and told Americans “borrow against your house!” It helped her realize before almost anyone
else that something bad might be coming in the economy. That's really scary financial advice for someone
to be giving American families. And what frightens me, is millions of American
families have taken that advice. Warren said those things in 2004. Four years later, she turned out to be right. One in every 500 homes defaulting on their
mortgage, economists worry the housing slump will plunge the broader economy into a recession. The federal government Tuesday began pumping
billions of dollars into U.S. banks. Citigroup and Wells Fargo are each getting
$25 billion. Is there a word for your emotions, mood, watching
all of this? Yeah, I think I alternate between furious
and astounded. We bailed them out and they keep all the profits
and taxpayers pick up all the losses. There's this moment in 2009. The recession is on full blast. This is when I probably first saw Elizabeth
Warren on television. Please welcome to the show, Elizabeth Warren! She goes on Jon Stewart's show and just sort
of explains what's going on. We go fifty years without a financial panic. Then what happens, we say “regulation, ah
it’s pain, it’s expensive, we don’t need it,” so we start pulling the threads
out of the regulatory fabric. So we have two choices. We’re going to decide basically “hey, we don’t
need regulation, it’s fine" Or, alternatively, Or, alternatively, we're going to say "You know we’re going to put in some smart regulation,
and what we’re going to have going forward is we’re going to have some stability and
real prosperity for ordinary folks." And that’s socialism (laugher/applause) That incredibly clear explanation of what’s going on kind of knocks him for a loop. That is the first time in probably six months
to a year, that I’ve felt better. He breaks character in that moment to say
thank you. That was like financial chicken soup for me. Thank you. Something that I think is important to note,
though, is what makes sense about it. Something that has been a through line of
Warren's career is that complexity is something the powerful wield against the powerless. And complexity is something that people use
to shift blame. Well, if the financial crisis is too complex
for anybody to understand. You can't fix it and you definitely can't
blame anybody for it. What is distinct about Warren in my view,
is that she does understand these problems so well. Elizabeth Warren has a lot of plans. My question is, what is her plan to make
the plans a reality? What's interesting about her in this respect,
is compared to a lot of the other candidates, she's much more specific on how she would
get these things done. I mean, we've had this Democratic primary
that is about differences in plans... that the candidates are not likely to have the
votes in the Senate to come anywhere near passing. And here's Warren arguing in a way the others
primarily don't, that we should get rid of the filibuster. That means lowering the number of votes a
bill needs to pass the Senate from 60 to 51. We should get rid of the Electoral College. So whoever gets the most votes actually becomes
President. We should make D.C. and Puerto Rico states. So that millions of US citizens who can’t
vote for the President or members of Congress would finally be able to. It is often ignored, because process isn’t
sexy, but process ends up deciding outcomes. She's been much more focused on it, and much
more ambitious than most of her competitors. And it's something that actually sets her
apart in the field. On a debate stage, or in a long grueling campaign
against Donald Trump, what do you think voters would learn about Elizabeth Warren who don’t
know her very well now. I think one of the advantages Warren has,
if you’re going to make the case for her, she has built a much more thoroughgoing theory
of political corruption and how it attaches itself, not just Donald Trump, but to the
entire system he came into. Huge fossil fuel corporations have bought off
our government. The gun industry has bought off our government. If you look at the way some of the other matchups
look, Joe Biden is clearly going to run against Donald Trump as, Donald Trump is a bad man
who does not reflect the best of American values. There is some possibility that could work. But also, it didn't work that well in 2016. I think Warren wants to push against Donald
Trump as an emblem of political corruption. So let’s start with the obvious, Donald
Trump is corruption in the flesh. That is a place where polling suggests he's
a lot more vulnerable. And so Warren's particular approach to Trump,
where she is able to say… that this kind of political corruption is the problem. That is a very potent attack in American politics. In some ways it's a potent attack Donald Trump
levied reasonably well against Hillary Clinton. And it's one Warren is arguably, I think,
uniquely capable of levying back against Donald Trump In 1987, Senator Joe Biden was 
running for President. Then, one of his rivals leaked a video of
him repeating a speech from a British politician as his own: The first Kinnock
I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations
to be able to get to university to get to a college and graduate degree Biden dropped out and went back to DC, where he was chair of the Senate Judiciary committee. He offered to step down. Here’s how he describes what happened next. "'Absolutely not,’ Sen. Strom Thurmond said. ‘You’re my chairman.’" Strom Thurmond wasn't just a Republican - he
was a segregationist. But he and Biden became friends. Biden’s long career in the Senate was built on personal relationships like this. Now, he’s running for President again. This time, he’s running on the belief that’s
defined his political career: That consensus isn’t just possible, it’s preferable. People are saying, ‘Biden just doesn’t
get it, You can’t work with Republicans anymore. That’s not the way it works anymore.’ Well, folks, I know how to make government
work. It’s a promise rooted in Biden’s vision
of how things once were. I’ve worked across the aisle in the past. I can do that again with your help. He's a person who represents a nostalgic
version of politics. Biden represents what we want to believe is
the past. Joe Biden believes he can take us back to
a time before partisan gridlock. The question is, should we give him the chance? What's the best case for President Joe Biden? I've met Joe Biden and I admit it's kind of
enchanting. He's a gladhander. He'll make you smile. He'll make you laugh. People feel like he cares and he has empathy. That is one of Biden's sort of strengths. His primary opponents have criticized Biden
for being too moderate. You think he’s too moderate? He might be too moderate for me and for the
party. I think if you're looking through his policies, what you're gonna see is that despite the rhetoric of him being a moderate candidate, in a sort of bigger picture way
he's definitely still a progressive. Biden wants to triple the Child Tax Credit
from $2,000 a year to $6,000. He’s been championing free college since
2015. And supports a $15 minimum wage. Plus, he wants to make it easier for workers
to know how much their co-workers are making, to help fight against pay disparities. If Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders weren't
there, I think the headlines would be "Joe Biden is running on the most progressive policy
platform in American history." At the same time, Biden has built a persona
as a moderate deal-maker. Back in 2009, during the financial
crisis, Biden helped convince three moderate Republican Senators to cross the aisle and
vote for a stimulus bill That helped stabilize the economy by increasing investment in highways and programs like food stamps He's going to take a deal, is going to take
a bargain because he believes that that's what's going to make people's lives better. And the case for him as a candidate rests
on where that reputation can help him the most. I will win Michigan. I promise you that. I will win Pennsylvania. I will win Ohio. All of the Democratic candidates beat Trump
nationwide, all of them. But that's not how you win. So in the United States, you have to win not
only a lot of votes, but you have to win in a lot of places. And that's what Donald Trump did. So he beat Hillary Clinton with fewer votes,
but he won in key places. Some of these key places Democrats have won
before. Barack Obama won them. The state of Pennsylvania went for Obama... But then Donald Trump came in and he carried a specific district right outside
of Pittsburgh by 20 points. American politics usually comes down to, you
know, 10 points is a landslide. Five points is like a sweeping victory. So 20 points is a knockout race. A year and a half later, there was a special election that came up. The Republican incumbent had aligned himself
closely with President Trump. And he faced a challenge from a young Democrat. I’m Conor Lamb, and I approve this message. They were running a campaign of localized
politics, moderate politics, appealing to union workers. They worked hard for it and they expect us
to keep our promises to them. His campaign only paused for one national
Democrat. Former vice president Joe Biden. Go out and make sure he wins! Conor Lamb won that race. And a few months later, a similar strategy
helped Democrats win back the House of Representatives. Of the 41 seats that Democrats flipped from
Republican incumbents in 2018, just a handful went to members of the House Progressive caucus. The rest ran on more moderate platforms. It was a lot of just competent women. A lot of them came from military backgrounds,
policing backgrounds. And were running on, hey, I'm gonna make sure
healthcare stays strong. I'm going to protect the ACA. Two years later, that sounds a lot like the
kind of campaign Joe Biden is running. I believe we have to protect and build on
Obamacare. That’s why I proposed adding a public option
to Obamacare as the best way to lower cost and cover
everyone. Joe Biden has a case to make, a very strong
case that he can go into places where Democrats have lost and he can win. He has a reputation for connecting with voters,
for being a really great campaigner. And it's not just that he's good at those
things, but it's that those things matter in the places that Democrats really need to
win. If you're looking at Democrats, it's worth
considering. Who whose political strategy do you like the
best and do you think will get the most done? If Pete Buttigieg wins the 2020 election,
he would be the youngest US president ever elected. He’s also the first openly gay candidate
to run a major presidential campaign. But other than that, I don’t know that much
about him. Maybe you feel the same way. Until recently, his claim to fame was as mayor
of Indiana’s fourth-biggest city. My spell check doesn’t even recognize his
name yet. But here he is, rising in national polls,
riding around with Mark Zuckerberg, inspiring boomers to make complete fools of themselves,
and hauling in cash from wealthy donors. Suddenly, he’s a serious contender for the
Democratic nomination. So who is Pete Buttigieg? Could he win? And what would he do if he did? What is the case for a President Mayor Pete? Pete is a very classic kind of Democratic
rising star, Much like Bill Clinton, he went to an elite
college and got a Rhodes scholarship. And then went back home to the not-traditionally
liberal state that he grew up in and tried to make a name for himself there. Obama also wasn't a super experienced candidate. If you look at the Democrats who have actually
gotten elected president in the last 60 years, they’re among the youngest presidents ever. And Buttigieg would fit into that group. Not just because of his age, but because of
how he talks. If you look at polling in the US, more people
identify as conservatives than identify as liberal. People are really uncomfortable with the idea
of like identifying with liberalism as an ideology But there’s lots of support for liberal
ideas. Like stronger regulation of the financial
industry, higher taxes on the wealthy, and paid parental leave. And reconciling that conflict, between what
people want to call themselves, and what they actually believe, is a big part of how Jimmy
Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all became president. What people have connected to about Buttigieg
is that he has a rhetorical ability to cast BUTTIGIEG: Disarm domestic abusers. This is common sense. BUTTIGIEG: We’ve already decided that this
is within the second amendment. And that’s not unconstitutional, it’s
common sense. That's a skill that has traditionally been
rewarded and has turned out well for Democrats. That’s one way Pete has set himself apart
from his rivals. They're not just saying we need to reduce
drug prices. They're saying the CEOs of the drug companies
are selfish sons of bitches and we need to take them down. SANDERS: If somebody runs a pharmaceutical
industry, and artificially jacks up the price... And I think Pete, for better or worse, does
not name enemies. He is not interested in naming enemies. It seems like Mayor Pete has really been marketed in terms of pundits as this like moderate centrist candidate. PUNDIT: Buttigieg is a moderate running as
a moderate. PUNDIT: Does Buttigieg’s rise show that
Democrats want a centrist candidate? What do we know about what Mayor Pete administration
would look like, and would it be significantly different from any of these other candidates? This is not a moderate. BUTTIGIEG: Raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars
and up. He's talked about tax rates up to 49.9 percent. BUTTIGIEG: We’re going to have to contemplate
a carbon tax. Pete wants to institute sectoral bargaining,
which would mean if somehow Chiptole got unionized and they got a really good contract, the government
could extend that to all fast food workers. That would be the most dramatic increase in
union power in the United States since at least the Great Depression. To make these changes, Buttigieg has proposed
changing the political system itself. He’s proposed growing the Supreme Court
from 9 justices to 15. He wants to give statehood to Washington DC
and Puerto Rico, both of which have more U.S. citizens than a whole bunch of current states. And, he wants to change a big part of how
Congress works. A Senate practice called the filibuster means
that no bills can pass unless they have the support of 60 out of 100 Senators. And that’s really difficult. Obama very briefly had 60 votes in the US
Senate. I doubt that any president of either party
is going to have that for a very long time hereafter. So realistically, if you want to pass something
like expanded Medicare or a $15 an hour minimum wage, you're going to want to lower the vote
threshold from 60 to 51. And Pete was one of the first candidates talking
about that. BUTTIGIEG: We should consider doing away with
the filibuster so the next president can get something done. Even Bernie hasn't said he wants to get rid
of the filibuster entirely. So yeah, I think one of the better cases for
Buttigieg is that he has than someone like Biden. You read interviews with Biden and he'll literally
say, “I expect Republicans to have an epiphany once I'm elected and move past all this Trump
stuff and they'll work with me.” Which just isn't reflected in how the Trump
administration has gone, or in how the eight years that he was vice president went. What does the political science tell us about
the way that perceptions of being “moderate” or being “liberal” play out in terms of
turnout? So the best studies on this have been done
by a guy named Andrew Hall at Stanford And what he does is he looks at primaries
for congressional seats where the election was really, really close. Hall’s study found a pattern that might
not surprise you. Candidates who voters perceive to be more
ideologically extreme are less likely to go on and win in the general election. But the reason that happens is a little less
obvious: It does that not by doing anything to your
voters or by turning off swing voters, but because it terrifies the other party and leads
their people to turn out really aggressively. I mean, this is a study about Congress, so
there are a million caveats. But one thing it might tell us is that while
Bernie Sanders might like amp up the Democratic base, it's possible he'll amp up Trump's base
even more. You know, there's no sure things with electability. But Pete is probably not going to panic the
Republican base in the same way that Bernie is. This is a guy who has done what you need to
win in a small city in Indiana. But who also, I think, has really sincere
progressive values. This is someone who believes that better things
are possible, but has a different strategy for how to get there. If you've ever heard Bernie Sanders speak, this
probably sounds familiar. Now is the time for a political revolution! Political revolution! Political, revolution! He talks a lot about big change. Political revolution. But recently, I found some old footage of
Bernie Sanders that I didn’t really know what to make of. I came across some archival tape of his cable
access program that he ran when he was mayor of Burlington. Here, I'll just play it for you. Also, our library. We have a beautiful library. When I look at this tape, I see him talking
about extremely boring things. A lot of people don’t realize that Bernie
Sanders is a veteran politician, veteran elected official. He has always maintained this dual-track view,
these very high aspirations, very ideological… Political revolution which is going to transform
America. with the idea that day to day you need to
be a competent politician who does things. Burlington will soon have a beautiful downtown
supermarket. Most political journalism, whether it's pro-Bernie
or anti-Bernie, tends to focus on that first track, the ideology. Bernie Sanders’ platform is really pie in
the sky. An ideologue without a lot of substance.
He is really trying to inspire people to be involved in what he calls a movement more
than a campaign. But the best way to predict how someone will
act in the future, is to look what they’ve allready done. Bernie Sanders has a record. So, what does it tell us about what kind of
president he'd make, and his odds of getting there in the first place? A lot of the time when you see people make
the case for Sanders, they just talk about those big ideas. ...complete change of politics in America. ...a revolution of spirit, a revolution of priorities. Some people love those big ideas, but
others don’t. And what I said to them is, look at when
he was a mayor. He didn't try to abolish private businesses
in the city. He tried to make the tax code more progressive
and he tried to provide more services. He is aware of how to operate in these kinds
of spaces. The gentleman from Vermont is recognized for five
minutes. When Bernie Sanders has to cast votes not
in perfect alignment with what he says his principles are… What happens in those situations? There are three kinds of Bernie Sanders votes
in Congress. One is the sort of courageous dissent. The invasion of Iraq, that's going to pass. He takes a stand against it. I will vote against the unilateral invasion
and occupation of Iraq. The other is the kind of big legislative package
that everybody agrees to. And some members, Bernie among them, often
cast dissenting votes there just to say, no, I want to hold out for my pure vision. But then there's the third kind. There's a progressive bill where Democrats
need his vote for it to pass. And it may not align with exactly all of his
principles. You look at the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Sanders, aye. The stimulus at the beginning of the Obama administration. Mr. Sanders, aye Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform.
A bill, in which in a number of ways moves us forward. If there were 80 Bernie Sanders’ in the
Senate, he probably would've passed a different bill. But he's not blind to the fact that incremental
progress is real progress. One area that I don’t hear a lot about in
the primary is foreign policy. Where does Bernie stand in terms of America's
role in the world? Sanders has a distinctive approach to foreign
policy from the other candidates in the field. He's been critical, not just of the specifics,
but of the sort of nature of American military posture around the world. No more B-2 bombers, no more "Star Wars."
Let’s make the quality products we need. Let’s invest in American industry. No, I won't yield. For years, we have loved Saudi Arabia, our
wonderful ally. The only problem is that the people that run
that country are murderous thugs. He has raised, I think, sharp and necessary
questions about the nature of the U.S. alliance with Israel, with Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump and Barack Obama have both spoken
about their desire to not be mired in so many Middle Eastern wars, but they haven't taken
the kind of tough steps that would actually generate change there. And I think Sanders might. So thinking about a potential match-up between
Bernie and Trump in the general election. What's the affirmative case for Bernie in
that situation? If you look at the numbers from 2016. Not only did Trump lose the popular vote,
but he got only 46 percent. If you could unify all the non-Republicans. So the libertarian voters, the Green voters
and the Democrats, you would beat Trump and you would beat him easily. And Bernie has a track record of doing that
kind of thing. Bernie is sometimes felt by Democrats to be
a divisive force in the party. But I think another way of looking at it is
that Bernie speaks for people who are not necessarily into the Democratic Party. If you combine people who love the Democratic
Party, people who, you know, post Nancy Pelosi memes, with Bernie's people. Then, you have a unified anti-Trump force. Bernie is beating Trump in the key swing states. We know these are places in the upper Midwest
where NAFTA is unpopular. I happen to believe that our trade policies
over the years have been a disaster for workers in this country. Bernie is somebody who sometimes attracts
complaints for privileging economics over other things. But I do think that that's a winning electoral
strategy. One of the things that Mayor Pete, for example,
and Biden too, talk a lot about is this sort of like sense of a return to unity and hope. I refuse to accept the notion that we can
never have cooperation again. We have been told by some that you must either
be for a revolution or you are for the status quo. I think Sanders’ is view on this, which
I think is correct, is that politics is a location of struggle. None of these Democratic candidates are going
to be able to fully deliver on all their promises. There are going to have to be deals made,
compromises made. That's the political process, but you need
to be able to bring people along with you. And the question is... And that's something that I think Sanders
is going to be able to do. He has this slogan, And that, you know, is in part about like,how
does politics work? Nobody is so amazing that if everybody then
just walks away that all these problems are going to be solved. What we need as a society is a politically
engaged populace. We don't know, if Bernie brings a bunch
of his younger supporters into the electoral process, he boosts youth turnout. Will that effect last? But it's guaranteed not to work if you don't
try. These are all the same woman. Which one do you recognize? Why? How did the Venus de Milo, an armless ancient
statue, go from being lost on a tiny Greek island to an international icon? It’s part of a story that spans centuries
- and a possible cover-up that starts with a missing piece right here. This sculpture’s so popular that you can
easily find a 3d scan of it, that’s really good quality — and then get it printed. And the sculpture itself provides a clue to
her popularity because it contains her history. I really hope I don’t screw this up. The story is hidden right here in the seam. In 1820, a Greek farmer discovered pieces
of a woman carved from marble on his land. He sold what he found to the French for about
1,000 Francs - today that’d be around $11,000 US - enough for a decent used car. They took this home - a Venus, split in two,
along with some other scattered marble fragments. Venus has a bunch of imperfections: the arms
were not still attached. Other flaws marred the body. She was missing her earlobes — probably
taken by looters. A foot was gone, right here. And a likely base - called a plinth - had
broken off. That would have been right here. Each half was meant to be joined in the center
with iron tenons - imagine two metal rods joining the two halves. The rest of the parts likely fell off due
to age. When she was assembled, her scale was really
impressive, At 6’7 inches high and with features like
a 12 and a half inch foot. That’s large. Shaq-esque foot. But Venus's looks weren't the most important
factor in her success. For that you’ve got to look to the circumstances
in which she was dug up, and the French art world — it was in turmoil. This drawing of the Sphinx was made by Napoleon
Bonaparte’s personal art-looter, Vivant Denon. He drew it during his tour of Napoleon’s
Egypt, while he was searching for art to plunder. Classical art was considered the most desirable
- a tie to the greatness of Rome and Greece. While Napoleon spent 20 years trying to take
over the world, Denon took art from everywhere Napoleon succeeded. He directed the Louvre museum under Napoleon’s
rule, and filled it with the art that he stole. When Napoleon lost his throne, that massive
cache of classical art had to be returned to its owners. Suddenly, the Louvre — and France — had
a huge problem. For example, the Vatican got back Laocoon
and his sons and the Apollo Belvedere, and the Italians were reunited with their own
looted Venus, Venus de Midici. The Louvre wasn’t empty, but it was desperate. Then, five years later, Venus turned up on
an island in Greece. The French were willing to do anything to
replace that classical art that they lost when Napoleon got kicked out. Even massage the truth. Remember that plinth, the one that got broken
off the statue? We know what the plinth looked like thanks
to early drawings. By the sculptor’s name on it and some other
clues, it definitively dated the Venus to 130-100 BC - what is called the Hellenistic
era. That was a problem. It was 200 years after the Classical Period
- the one that the critics loved. So the French tried to hide it. The plinth “got lost” before Venus went
on display at the Louvre in 1821. With the plinth taken care of, the museum’s
director declared Venus was definitely “classical” not Hellenistic. And the Louvre supported critics who called
Venus a work of classical Greek genius. They gave her a prime spot in the gallery
and insisted it was certainly the well-known goddess Venus — even though she didn’t
have a label. Competing interpretations of what Venus’s
missing arms were doing surfaced, and the Louvre supported the ones they thought made
Venus look most important. All of this worked. Venus held a prime spot in the galleries and...became
iconic. The Louvre insisted that she was classical,
all the way until 1951, when they finally reversed course. Her unique fame was the result of the Louvre’s
branding campaign to regain national pride. It’s that history that makes her the Venus
we recognize. Maybe the history — is the reason she’s
still worth seeing today. OK, so one little public service announcement. If you want to get your own Venus de Milo
3d printed, I put a link to a really nice model in the description below. And I actually got mine done at the local
library. Maybe you can too, and don’t make the same
mistake I did — get yours in hot pink or lime green. in December of 2007 a u.s. senator named Barack Obama was running for president it didn't look like he would beat the well-known frontrunner Hillary Clinton she was nearly 20 points ahead of him in the national polls but then one month later a huge huge victory Obama won the Iowa caucus the Iowa caucus is like an election but instead of voting in a voting booth you stand with other people to be counted it's weird but it's also the very first contest in America's presidential primary process to determine the two major parties nominees and if you win it it's a big deal [Applause] literally overnight Obama shot up in the polls winning Iowa turned him from a longshot candidate to a real possibility for the last 50 years Iowa has been a hugely influential part of the presidential primary system but in 2020 well epic failure meltdown of the vote reporting system first a bunch of technical mishaps delayed the caucus results then when the results came out no one was actually sure if they were correct and it started to raise questions about whether the Iowa caucus deserves to be so important the way America's political parties choose their presidential nominees starting in Iowa and then with 63 other elections on 21 separate days was kind of set up quickly and without any real thought behind the order so why do we choose presidents this way and is there a better way to do it to understand how we do things now you have to go back about 50 years as recently as the 60s only a few states even held primaries most states didn't and party leaders would just pick the presidential nominee at the convention voters were much more divorced from the process than they are today this is Lee she's been covering the 2020 primaries for Vox at that time the people in charge or effectively picking the people that would stay in charge which mostly worked fine until 1968 in the few primaries that year Young Democrats voted in big numbers for candidates who were against the Vietnam War but at the convention the party delegates instead chose the pro-war vice president who wasn't even on the ballot in the few states that actually held primaries it did not go over well there was huge pushback to that the protests were incredibly effective and actually ended up in the changes that we see now what changed was the Democratic Party decided to let voters pick the nominee with elections in each state Republicans soon followed suit today the delegates from each state still officially vote on the nominee at the convention but they have to vote according to how the candidates did in their state primaries to win the nomination a candidate needs a majority of all delegates and big states with big populations like Florida have lots of delegates for the taking small states like Iowa have just a few but even though it's not a delegate powerhouse in the sequential primary system Iowa has a crucial job as do other small states that vote early in the process let's look at the 2016 Republican primary as an example when the Iowa caucus kicked things off there were 12 serious candidates on the ballot after Iowa 3 immediately dropped out and after the New Hampshire primary a week later three more dropped out this is what those early states are there to do the early states end up winnowing the field to a slate of what people might consider frontrunners they help candidates generate hype press coverage additional donations in other words instead of the rest of the country having to choose between 12 candidates early states help the party narrow down its options to just a few viable candidates for the rest of the primaries that also gives voters in these early states a lot of power a voter in the earliest state has five times the influence on deciding the nominee as a voter just a few weeks later but here's the problem with that so there was no real rationale in the way that these early states were initially determined Iowa goes first because in 1972 the first election after the changes Iowa said they needed a long time to compile their results so they had to hold their caucus early and as its held onto that first spot Iowa's gotten more and more important and New Hampshire is the first traditional primary because they have a law saying that they have to be first yep that's it and the questions around whether these states should go first or not new the main problem that people bring up over and over again is that both states are super white when you look at the actual numeric breakdown both are about 90% white so neither of these states is very representative of either the US or the party itself and that's become a huge concern that's partly why in 2008 the parties move to more diverse states Nevada and South Carolina to also be early in the calendar then there's Super Tuesday which started in the 80s when southern states decided to have their primaries at the same time to try to have a bit more influence over the year Super Tuesday has gotten more and more super in 2020 one-third of all delegates will be awarded on this one day in other words Super Tuesday has been looking more and more like a national primary so why not just have a national primary and have everyone vote on the same day the answer has to do with who would probably win if there was a national primary today whoever has the most money as well as the most name recognition would probably do the best because they're able to reach people and they already have an established backing in place think about that in terms of the 2020 primary if everyone voted on one day and money and name recognition mattered the most this is who would probably come out on top remember that poll from December 2007 if everyone voted at once Obama would have lost which brings us back to Iowa and New Hampshire I wanna Iowa because I spent 87 days go on every small town fair and fish-fry both Iowa New Hampshire they're very accessible so you can drive around you can hold events you can go to the fair and meet with voters and also their media markets are much cheaper than other larger states like California both of those factors make it easier for a candidate who maybe isn't that well-known to also make the same type of impression of somebody else who might be you know wealthier and more well resourced so the sequential system helps a narrow the field and starting in a small state can help underdog candidates emerge but should that state the Iowa why start in Iowa well that's the conversation that will absolutely happen after this election cycle there have been a bunch of different options floated wine is to change the state that goes first so which states should go first the website 538 tried to figure this out by looking at the racial ethnic and educational breakdown of every state to find which one was the most representative of the Democratic Party as a whole number one was Illinois Iowa was 42nd another option is to actually just move it so that ten states go in February that kind of dilutes the influence of Iowa New Hampshire a little bit and then another possibility is the idea of rotating they talk more about rotating regions that would dominate the primary one year in a different region that would dominate the primary a different year the way America nominates its presidential candidates isn't set in stone the political parties can and have changed the process over the years but it's been a while maybe it's time [Music] you there's no question that the British royal family is wealthy look at their homes their transportation their weddings their jet-setting they live the lifestyles of the richest people on earth so when Prince Harry and Megan Arkell announced they wanted a new financial relationship with the monarchy it opened up questions about how the British family really make their money and what exactly are Harry and Megan leaving behind it turns out the search for those answers starts with some of the most iconic royal real estate this map shows some of the real estate in the UK that is associated with the royal family this is Balmoral Castle in Scotland where the Queen spends her summers this is Savoy Chapel nestled between buildings in central London and this is Windsor Castle just outside of London where the Queen often hosts foreign leaders each one of these three properties represents a different way the royal family makes their fortune the first is one of two that falls in the Queen's private wealth which means if she were to leave the throne it would still be hers these can be traced back to the 1800s when Queen Victoria bought them and they've been passed down through generations the other set of properties that contribute to their private wealth are the duchies am I saying that right duchies Duchess that's right there is something called the Duchy of Lancaster this is a old estate ancestral estate dating back from the 14th century it's now a portfolio of property and it provides a private income for the Queen that portfolio includes historic sites and land throughout the UK which is a lot but the most profitable property are these blocks of commercial real estate in central London which includes Savoy Chapel there's also the Duchy of Cornwall a hundred and thirty thousand acres of property that includes castles holiday cottages and a cricket stadium in London over the past 60 years the duchies have become increasingly profitable in 2019 they each made just over twenty million pounds for the royal family the income from the Duchy of Cornwall goes to the heir to the throne Prince Charles about five million pounds of that went to his sons William and Harry in 2019 and the income from the Duchy of Lancaster goes to the Queen but there's a catch she only gets that because she's she's Queen it goes through the job if she indicated tomorrow she wouldn't get thirty million dollars a year it is it goes with the crown as it were and because it goes with the crown it's not really totally a private estate the best guess of the net worth of the Queen the richest royal family member is about three hundred and seventy million pounds that's obviously very rich but it puts her nowhere near the richest people in the world the illusion of the Royal Family's wealth is greater than their actual wealth because of the third way they make money these properties are part of what's called the Crown Estate the Crown Estate includes iconic landmarks like Windsor Castle Buckingham Palace in the Tower of London it also includes commercial real estate in London and lots of land including the seabed around the UK this group is worth billions of pounds but it doesn't actually figure into the Queen's wealth and the reason behind that can be traced back to a time the Royals really needed money in the 18th century had a long list of of German kings the George's George's one two two four and they wasted a lot of money and they were terrible with money and he got into lots of trouble with the government and in the end one of the George's George third said you know I'm broke I'll give you all my Crown lands these for the personal land owned by the king and in return you give me a set amount of money so they gave up ownership of all these lands in exchange for taxpayer money that would pay for the royal family's lifestyle this part of their income today is called the sovereign grant between 2018 and 2019 that amounted to about 80 million pounds we don't know exactly how much of the sovereign grant went to Harry and Megan but it accounts for 5 percent of the couple's income as part of their royal titles the other 95 percent comes from the Duchy of Cornwall the sovereign grant funding doesn't go into the Royal Family's pockets it's supposed to enable Her Majesty to carry out her official duties like to travel to pay her staff and to maintain the royal residences even so taxpayer support for the monarchy has long been controversial and that became evident when Windsor Castle caught fire in 1992 smoke continued to roll from gaping holes in the roof 15 hours and one and a half million gallons of water later as the royal treasures littered the lawn like an upmarket garage sale it was learned there was no fire insurance should you will you pay for the repair of Windsor Castle Patricia in Notting Hill hello let's see why us as the taxpayers should pay for the winds classifiers actually her has that debate continues today every time the sovereign grant report comes out the new home of Megan and Harry the Duke and Duchess of Sussex cost the public nearly two and a half a million pounds to refurbish that's more than three million dollars but the argument in favor of public funding usually centres on how much people have always loved the royal family and are willing to pay for it the monarchy attracts millions of tourists every year there baby announcements in their weddings and even their scandals are broadcast around the world now the royal family is all about image they don't actually have that much formal power what they do have you know is a brand you know they didn't call one of the most valuable brands in Britain but a big part of maintaining that brand is to not exploit it if you're working royal you're not really allowed to have a private source of income you're not allowed to cash in that means not working outside of their official royal duties like diplomacy and charity work and that these real estate portfolios are the primary way they make money this is the financial model that Prince Harry and mega Markel are leaving behind in their announcement in early 2020 they said they give all this up in favor of being financially independent what they be taking with them is their private wealth which is a lot Megan was a successful actress on the TV series suits and Harry inherited millions from his mother Princess Diana they may also keep earning income from the Duchy of Cornwall what they would be giving up is this part of their income and also breaking free from the limitations of taxpayer funding but with that independence comes the fear that they'll be committing the ultimate royal taboo capitalizing off the monarchy and they could be viewed as using the monarchy to boost their brand they're already in talks with Disney they're talking to Oprah the very future of the monarchy could be at stake here especially if the brand that Megan and Harry have created at Sussex royal eventually eclipses the brand of the British Royals but in one important respect it's rather healthy because what it is done it is raised to the surface a number of issues not just to doing Harry but to do with the whole royal family that haven't been properly addressed how does a royal make a living and maybe it needs to loosen up a bit to be a bit more flexible [Music] In 1966, Mao Zedong had a problem. The Chinese leader who had led a peasant army
to victory in the Chinese Civil War, and established the communist People’s Republic of China
in 1949, was getting old. Worse, his radical policies had devastated
the country, and triggered the deadliest famine known to human history. By the early 1960s, Mao’s once-great influence
and public presence were at an all time low, and there were rumors that he was dying, or
even dead already. He needed to find a way to seal his legacy
as the face of Chinese communism. And a new revolution to lead. It started in a river. The Great Leap Forward was a disaster. It was Mao’s 1958 plan to quickly industrialize
China by working its massive peasant population nonstop. ARCHIVE: He promises to transform the People’s
Republic into an instant paradise through sheer force of numbers. Forcing workers in the countryside to farm
crops on government-run communes. And millions more to manufacture crude steel
in homemade blast furnaces. And even though Mao told the world that the
plan was succeeding… NARRATOR: Everywhere, the communists report,
production records are being broken. … the truth was much more desperate. ARCHIVE: They flood the fields, exhaust the
soil, and farm production instead of going up, goes down. The Chinese people were being forced to work
tirelessly on land they once owned themselves — and they were starting to lose morale. And despite reports of widespread famine,
with millions of people starving to death, Mao kept production quotas high. ARCHIVE: The pace grows more frantic. Ceaselessly, without rest, one observer writes. Mao's Great Leap Forward ended in 1962. By that time somewhere between 23 and 55 million
people had died in the famine. Over in the Soviet Union, a different political
upheaval was happening. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who Mao modeled
himself after, was dead. And Mao watched as Nikita Krushchev, Stalin’s
successor, implemented a period known as “de-Stalinization.” Where Krushchev set out to reverse many of
Stalin’s policies and dismantle the personality cult that had formed around him. Mao saw his own legacy potentially suffering
the same fate. His Communist Revolution was long over, and
his ideas weren’t taken as seriously after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward. It was starting to look like Mao’s place
in the pantheon of powerful communist figures, like Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, was in
peril. This is where the river comes in. Mao had a reputation for being a strong swimmer. And even used it as a symbol of his ideology. In 1956, he swam across China’s biggest
river, the Yangtze, in three highly-publicized swims. To demonstrate that big things – like US
imperialism – didn’t intimidate him. 10 years later, Mao took on the Yangtze again,
to dispel rumors of his failing health. This time with cheering crowds swimming alongside
him. He brought his personal photographer, who
snapped this photo of the aging dictator in the river. And another one showing Mao waving to his
fellow swimmers, with the landmark Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge behind him. An iconic architectural achievement of the
communist government, and proof that he was at the Yangtze. The swim made the front page of China’s
state newspaper, reporting that Mao swam around 15 kilometers, a little more than 9 miles,
in a span of 65 minutes. Which meant the 72-year-old would have shattered
world speed records. A lot of people outside of China laughed at
the outlandish story, but some saw the swim for what it was: a sinister sign. Pointing out that Mao’s swims from a decade
earlier preceded the catastrophic Great Leap Forward. Experts feared that Mao was on the verge of
kicking off another disastrous period of turmoil in China. They were right. Two months before the swim, Mao had announced
the beginning of his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. A call to hunt down and eliminate the “bourgeoisie
who [had] sneaked into the party.” Basically to purge the government of anyone
who strayed from principles of Maoism. And it kicked into high gear after his historic
swim. Which prompted a craze for swimming in swept
China, but more importantly, a craze for Mao. Especially among the group that Mao wanted
to influence the most: China’s youth. Writer Liang Heng recalled that seeing Mao
as “human flesh and blood” after the Yangtze swim resolved him to “serve him with all
his heart.” Millions of Chinese youth organized into the
fanatical Red Guards, a paramilitary force concentrated mostly in Chinese cities. And, with Mao’s blessing, they wreaked havoc
in the name of Cultural Revolution. Their mission was to destroy the four olds: ARCHIVE: Old culture. Old ideology. Old customs. Old traditions. The idea was basically to tear down the vestiges
of Imperial China and rewrite history centered around Mao Zedong. Renaming buildings and streets, destroying
cultural sites, and violently humiliating, and often torturing and murdering, anyone
they accused of opposing Mao’s ideas. Which they plastered all over the cities. And carried in their pockets in the form of
Mao’s “Little Red Book” a collection of his sayings and principles. And although the violent Red Guards were basically
dissolved by 1969, the Cultural Revolution is considered to have continued until Mao’s
death in 1976. Ending a decade of destruction that had elevated
the leader to god-like levels. And resulted in over 1 million people dead. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution scarred
China for generations. But Mao basically got what he wanted. Even though the Chinese Communist Party condemned
the Cultural Revolution in 1981, and Chinese communism diverted away from Maoism, they
didn’t denounce Mao himself. The Cultural Revolution solidified Mao’s
cult of personality, and that influence has lasted. Mao’s swim, which is still commemorated
each year in China, was more than a display of strength. It was a message: to get behind Mao as he
began his last revolution. There's a church in the city of Bethlehem. It was built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born. It's called the Church of the Nativity. If you consult UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites, or ask travel expert Rick Steves, both will tell you that the church is in Palestine. But when a question about the church's location came up during a round
of Jeopardy in January 2020... What is Palestine? No. What is Israel? That's it. That answer set off something
of an internet firestorm. That's because what you call this land,
and who controls it, is at the center of a decades-long conflict between Israelis
and Palestinians. But more recently, there is also a third group that is becoming more and more influential here and throughout the Middle East, American evangelical Christians. Today, evangelical Christians are one of the most politically powerful voting blocs in the United States. And in the Trump administration, they've been given unprecedented power. They've turned support for Israel and hostility towards its enemies into core tenets of conservative ideology. And a big part of those policies is rooted in how they interpret the Bible. In 2016, more than a quarter of all US voters identified as white evangelical Christians. One of the primary differences between evangelicals
and other Christians is their relationship with the Bible. Conservative evangelicals believe that the Bible is literally true. Sarah Posner writes about religion for a bunch of different publications. Many of them believe that the Bible is sort of this prophetic road map for modern life, that events
described and prophesied in the Bible will it will become true. The Bible is the most historically accurate book ever penned. The Bible is the one book that
dares to predict the future with 100% accuracy. For evangelicals, the most
important of the Bible's prophecies is the second coming, when Jesus will return
to Earth. The Bible doesn't say when this will happen, but it does say where. This is Jerusalem. World history as we know it is going to
end right here. Greg Laurie is an evangelical preacher, one of several who
meet regularly to advise President Trump. They're the leaders of megachurches
with tens of thousands of members. And many of them, including Greg Laurie,
preach a belief called Christian Zionism, the idea that the return of the Jewish
people to Israel is one of a series of events that will trigger Jesus's second
coming. Jesus is telling us that the rebirth of Israel is a sign of the end. Not just a sign, it's the super sign. According to this theology, God will
reward those who help Israel and punish those who don't. Jesus will be on his
throne and he separates the nations. On what basis? How they treated Zion. Let's back up. After the Holocaust, the UN divided up the then-British territory of Palestine, home to more than a million Arabs, into two states, giving Jews who had been persecuted in Europe a homeland. Over the next few decades, Israel fought
multiple wars with its Arab neighbors and seized much of the land that had
been originally set aside for Palestinians. Evangelical Christians see that as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. It happened exactly as foretold. It was a miraculous act of God. They own that land, and they own that city. Ever since, groups like Hamas have been
fighting against the Israelis trying to win that territory back. And the government of Iran has been one of their biggest supporters. That's part of the reason Iran plays
such an important role in evangelical beliefs about the present state of the
world, and the future. According to Christian Zionism, if the US wants to be
on the right side of biblical prophecy, they need to do everything possible to
protect Israel and punish Iran. That also helps explain why a different Bible story is also really important to them. The Old Testament story of Esther, about
a plot to destroy the Jews of Persia, or modern-day Iran. The Book of Esther plays
such an important role for Christian Zionists they've made multiple movies out of it. He has convinced your husband to destroy all the Jews, including you. Esther saves the Jews by using her persuasion with the king. Evangelicals who are very
wrapped up in this kind of theology, because Persia is modern-day Iran, they
sort of contextualize this Bible story into foreign policies. Could it be that that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther. to help save the Jewish people from an Iranian Menace? As a Christian I certainly believe that's possible. I'm confident that the Lord is
at work here. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and vice president Mike Pence both identify as evangelical Christians. And both have enormous influence over
American foreign policy. A ProPublica investigation found that Pence routed
millions of dollars in foreign aid that had been earmarked for humanitarian projects in Iraq, diverting it towards Christian groups in the country. When President Trump approved the drone strike that killed Iran's top military commander in January 2020, it was, according to the Washington Post, at Pompeo and Pence's urging. When President Trump moved the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the move had more support from American evangelicals
than American Jews. The other news swirling around the embassy's move to
Jerusalem is what it could signal as part of biblical prophecy. Donald Trump recognized history. He, like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled the biblical prophecy. That evangelical support isn't an accident. The Trump administration courts it. After the administration put out a peace plan that would have given Israel unprecedented control over Palestinian land, The Christian broadcast network interviewed Trump's ambassador to Israel. You're talking about opening up the Bible, bringing it back to life in ways that I think your listeners could
not have even have imagined. it's an opportunity for biblical tourism that I think will grow and flourish in profound ways. The network's coverage
followed his lead. Good news in this proposed peace plan. Israel would have sovereignty over many historical biblical sites. For evangelical Christians in America, the Bible isn't just a foundational text, it's a prophetic road map that tells the future and shapes the way they view the present. And for an influential group of them, that motivates their support for a foreign policy that they see as affirming those prophecies, and a president who depends on their
votes. you King, the dog, is enjoying a steak, well-done,
at Sardi’s, the famous theatre district restaurant in New York. He deserves it, because he just won Best in
Show at the 143rd Westminster Kennel Club dog show, in 2019. Then he tried to eat a microphone. King is at the end of the long list of terriers
to win Best in Show at Westminster. But King, as wonderful as he is, will almost
certainly not do what this dog did. This is the only dog to win Best in Show at
Westminster 3 times in a row. That’s a 3-peat! How did she do it? And was she really the greatest dog of all
time? The answer involves a breed, a socialite,
and the short life of a legend named Warren Remedy. This is not a steak. This is a rat. Terriers made their reputation as ratcatchers. First bred in the British isles, the smooth
terrier and wire fox terrier’ crossed over to America. Warren Remedy was a smooth fox terrier while
King is a wire fox terrier. The dogs don’t just share a Best in Show
title, but also a common fox terrier heritage. With just a few exceptions, the American smooth
fox terrier started off in the 1880s in “the oldest of our great kennels,” Warren Kennels,
the one started by Winthrop Rutherfurd. Rutherfurd was a wealthy Manhattan socialite
- he dated a Vanderbilt before marrying a Vice-President’s daughter. He was also really into terriers. Rutherfurd was president of the American Fox
Terrier club, funding it and working to boost the breed’s clout. And he raised them at his estate in Allamuchy,
New Jersey. (Phone Rings)
“Allamuchy Township Tax and Animal Licensing office.” Hi, uh, what county are you in? “Warren County.” That’s why his kennels were called Warren
Kennels. “Ohhh….what kennels?” So that is where Warren Remedy got her name. All the Warren Kennel dogs were Warren...something. And all that stuff sets the stage for the
confluence of events that would make her not just a dog, but an icon. Let’s go back to King. King didn’t win just for being the best
dog. He won according to the standards used by
Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show judges — standards of what an ideal wire fox terrier is. “He has small, v-shaped ears of moderate
thickness, A flat topline of the skull,
A coat with dense wiry texture, (dense reading of rules).” It’s not just an awesome dog, but the dog
that best exemplifies the breed. Winthrop Rutherfurd helped write the standards
for the smooth fox terrier for his club, and Westminster. The Westminster Kennel Club started shows
in 1877, just a few years before Rutherfurd’s Warren Kennel started. It didn’t have Best in Show — a competition
between breeds — until 1907. By then, Rutherfurd was a member of the Westminster
Bench Show Committee, and guaranteed prize money for the smooth and wire fox terrier
categories. He ran one of the two top smooth fox terrier
kennels in the country. Other dogs were measured by the type he’d
established. His dog Warren Remedy won shows around the
country. The judges called her the “sprightly clean
limbed little miss”, and raved that she was truest to type. But is it any wonder that she won Westminster
specifically again, and again, and again? The surprise isn’t that she won three times. It’s that she lost a fourth time to the
other big fox terrier breeder out of Texas, Sabine Kennels. Even though Sabine beat Warren Remedy, it
wasn’t really a loss for the Rutherfurd type. A dog from the Sabine Kennel sired Warren
Remedy — he was her dad. So what do we do with Warren Remedy? Was she really the greatest dog of all time? After the reign of the smooth terrier, wire-fox
terriers became cooler, all the way up to King in 2019. A smooth fox terrier never won after 1910. Regulations also got stricter in 1924. There have been a couple of repeat winners
since, but no three-timers, and no two-timers since 1972. That’s over. Before that, even an elite dog like Warren
Remedy had a window. A 20 year smooth fox terrier trend. A short 7 year life. And 3 years as Best in Show. In 1906, she needed a little size yet, but
had time. By 1909, even when she was queen of all dogs
at Westminster, Sabine Kennel dogs were winning other competitions across the country. But for a couple years, she had the glory. She endorsed Spratt’s Dog Cakes. She earned all those front page headlines. Maybe those three wins, maybe they were about
socialites, and structure, and trends. Maybe she wasn’t the greatest dog of all
time. But the window’s small for every dog. Maybe they’re all the greatest, for a moment. Maybe all the dogs deserve one night when
they get the steak. So maybe you’re curious when the terrier
reign over Best in Show finally ended, and it didn’t happen until 1913 when a bulldog
— this big boy, named Strathtay Prince Albert — managed to pull off the victory. And the Oscar goes to ... Interstellar. Ex Machina. The Jungle Book. Blade Runner 2049. First Man. Here are this years nominees for "Achievement
in Visual Effects" The best way to start, I think, is just by
you telling me who you are, what you do ... Okay. Well, my name is Niko Pueringer. I'm one of the founders of Corridor Digital,
which is a YouTube channel. And we specialize in doing VFX action-heavy,
spectacle-heavy YouTube videos. Cool. So we're here today to talk about the movies that were nominated for an Oscar for Visual Effects. The whole thing with this movie is that it's
made to look like it was done in one take. It's not entirely revolutionary and unexplored
before, but they're doing more complicated setups and scenes while still trying to maintain
that one take look. The challenge they have with that is that
these effects need to be invisible. I would love to talk about this long run scene. If you look at the, the behind the scenes
shot and then the actual shot of the film, you know, first you might notice like, oh,
there's some extra explosions added or there's some extra soldiers. But what you might not notice is things like
the tire tracks from the car that they're driving have been removed or the dust being
kicked up from the tires. And that's much, much more complicated than
just adding another explosion in the background. The challenge with 1917 is doing these invisible effects, but doing them for long takes and then having these hidden cuts be seamless. Because the moment you get one of these little
details wrong, you break the world. So I think looking at the scene, what will
probably surprise most people looking at it, is that the majority of the scene, the vast
majority of it, is 100 percent CG. The stormtroopers, the speeders, the sand,
all that kind of stuff. There's a phrase for things like
the dust clouds, and the physics and things like that — the smoke. It’s usually referred to as dynamics. That's one of the first, very first giveaways
as a CG scene, is looking at the smoke and being kind of, like, painterly quality where
it’s not quite realistic – And we’re just kinda getting to the point where we can
kinda match real life with that. I think a lot of the hype that I heard was
definitely around these animals. But you were talking about how it's really
setting that impressed you. I’d the biggest thing that stands out to
me — in any of these environment shots — is the vast number of actual objects on screen. Like this, this shot of Mufasa and Simba walking
through the grass as we focus away from the spider and onto them — there's thousands
of blades of grass in this scene. There's leaves — there's hundreds of leaves
on the bush from the camera, and so all of these things need to have an incredible amount
of detail. That’s what stands out to me as being incredible
here. Yeah, the animation is great. The rendering? Impeccable. The lighting simulation? Great. Wonderful. You know, all that’s awesome. But the fact that all of it comes together
cohesively? That’s way crazier to me. So there’s a couple things about Avengers
that – that are really ... impressive. One of the first ones is the, the time travel
suits. All those suits that you see them wearing,
those are completely CG, and they look completely realistic. You cannot tell that they are fake. They replace the entire body except for the
head. And that's insane. Why would they do that? Well, it takes a lot of time to construct
these costumes for these characters, and it's only being used for five minutes of the film. Is there anything like particular on the suits
that made them stand out to you? So I was scrutinizing the suits when I watched
this scene again and the only things that really give them as being CG — and you
have to really be looking for it and know what you're looking for – is when they're
interacting with something real. So a suit really and only interacts with two
real things. The neckline of the actor and the feet on the
ground. You have to fake the shadow from the suit being cast
on the ground. And there's a lot of nuances to that. But ... Nobody’s analyzing the neck lines. Right. You know, to me, out of all the films I've
been nominated for an Oscar here for Best Visual Effects, The Irishman has the most unique,
brand-new technology. The reason they're going through all this
trouble ... is because they want to tell a story of a character throughout his entire
life – and they need to get him at his, you know, when he was 60, when he was 50,
when he was 40, when he was 30. How do we let this guy shoot a movie like
this with actors not wearing any markers or tracking suits? And yet we somehow need to capture a full
3D-model of the face for every frame of the movie – basically a full real time 3D motion
capture. They just lit the scene with infrared lights
from the "witness cameras," they’re called. So they're seeing the scene with perfect lighting. And we can't see with our eyeballs, the actors
can't see the infrared light. The main camera that they're filming the scene
with can't see the infrared light, and it was really, really smart. They did encounter one problem, though, and
that is: old cars. Old car windshields and glass, they used to
use lead when they'd make the glass. Lead doesn't let infrared light through. So, they actually had remove all the windshields
from the cars at any time to see a car in the film that windshield, the reflection of
the windshield, that's fake. Do people really care about this award? You know, These are just five films, and a
good chunk of them are just kind of doing the same techniques we've already done. In fact, when comes to visuals, there's
so much going on in the space – every year you're building off of the knowledge and the
tools that you've gained from the previous year. And so these, these more advanced techniques
that they're using for these movies, you know, it's lending the visuals to looking a lot
more photo real ... but we've seen it before. The Oscars, it's good recognition, but there
is so much more that drives an artist – at least a visual effects artist – outside
of hoping to win an award like an Oscar. These are the 61 scene changes in the screenplay for the movie 1917. Almost every single one is labeled “continuous”. That’s because this movie is two hours of what appears to be one long, uninterrupted shot. One-shot films like this are a stunning accomplishment of coordination and timing. And when done right, they make a movie feel like it’s unfolding in real time. But, of course, 1917 isn’t really one shot. The movie jumps between scenes shot all over the United Kingdom. They’re stitched together to look continuous. A lot of that editing wizardry happens thanks to some extensive CGI. But it also relies on some basic tricks that have been around for over 70 years. And it all starts right here… with a suit jacket. When critics reviewed Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 movie Rope, they described it as a movie that “introduces a new method of film-making … in which all cuts, dissolve, fade-outs, and other breaks in filming continuity have been eliminated.” That shooting plan is clear from the very first page of the script: “The action of the story is continuous.” That’s because Rope is based on a play. Having no visible edits would make the movie feel like it was playing out in real time, just like the play does. But there was one problem. The cameras at the time could only hold a thousand feet of 35mm film — or about 10 minutes of recording. Which meant that the filmmakers couldn’t just let the camera run. They had to find a way to hide cuts when they changed film rolls. This is what they came up with. The camera dollies in on a dark surface — like this jacket, and one color obscures the entire frame. Then the camera cuts, a new shot begins, and the camera dollies back out — creating the illusion of continuity. Rope contains 10 edits over the course of 80 minutes. Those transitions alternate between hard cuts and hidden cuts with matching colors. Transitions like this might look really obvious today. But it’s basically the same trick used here in Creed... here in Birdman... here in Children of Men... and here in Snake Eyes. But if a camera is moving sideways, that color block doesn’t even have to take over the whole frame. That is trick number two. By putting together two similarly timed shots where an object passes in the foreground… … editors can stitch two shots together. Like in this long take from Children of Men — which is actually made
of six different shots — where a dark car frame helps transition from one shot to
another. Speed up the camera movement a bit, and you get a different kind of hidden cut. In a whip pan, the camera moves so fast that the image becomes blurry. By cutting from one shot to another right as the movement is at its fastest point, you can make two shots look like one. That’s how this scene from 1998’s Snake Eyes moves from one shot — to another — in what looks like a seamless take. So what does it look like when you put all of these tricks together? Well this shot from Spectre, the 2015 James Bond movie, starts out in a busy square in Mexico City… … it uses CGI and motion blur to transition to a shot filmed in a hotel a few blocks away… … then a color match from this black jacket to transition into a studio set near London… … and a foreground object to take us back on-location in Mexico City. But if the stunts get more complicated in a long take, you might have to do more than hide a cut. You might have to hide an actor. That’s where the final trick comes in: the Texas Switch. That’s when a performer and their double subtly swap places... ... which allows them to do stunts without
cutting. It’s how Captain America runs so fast… and how Dorothy changes colors... ... all without the camera cutting. Filming digitally and using CGI means that we
actually can capture entire movies in one true take, with none of these classic
tricks. And there have been some stunning examples of just that. But the limitations of early film gave us the techniques to tell even more ambitious stories by hiding cuts. And you can probably still see where they’re hidden... ... if you know where to look. This website for jeans just saved a cookie
onto my browser. That’s it -- a string of letters and numbers
that form a unique ID to help the site remember me The sites you visit do this too -- that’s
what all those pop-ups are telling you. Cookies actually make our online world possible. But they also allow jeans to follow me around the internet. That’s because cookies enable companies to band together to track and remember everything we do online. And they’ve become the center of a war for our personal data. LOU: I'm Lou Montulli. And in the summer of 1994, I was the inventor of cookies. In 1994, Lou was a 23-year-old working at
Netscape, where they were building what would become the dominant web browser of the decade. LOU: The broad problem I was trying to solve was to bring memory to the web. Every time you look at a different page, that's to the web server a completely different visit. Imagine every time you add something to your cart and click away… it disappears. Or each time you load a new page on Facebook… you have to log in again. CLEO: Would it be fair to say that the experience of the Web before cookies was a little bit like talking to Dory from Finding Nemo? LOU: Yeah. That Dory analogy is pretty apt here. DORY: See, I suffer from short term memory loss. MARLIN: Short term memory loss... Cookies solved that problem. LOU: So if in particular you were looking
for a set of blue suede shoes... With each new click, the site recognizes the unique ID from the cookie stored on my browser and retains information like: what I put in
my cart, but also often my location, what else I click on, how much time I spend there, plus details I deliberately give it, like my email address. As I browse through the site, or even leave and come back, the cookies they added to my browser will tell them I’m the same visitor,
not a different one. CLEO: Ok. So I should see that here, right? If I reload? LOU: Yes. CLEO: Hey! Wow. LOU: Hey now! A lot of cookies there. These are “first-party cookies” and over the last 20 years, they’ve
allowed us to live more and more of our lives online. LOU: It was really a great feeling to see
people create things that we had never thought of. But one of those things was a way to track us wherever we went next -- like a news website, or social media. The same year Lou invented cookies, this appeared: the first digital banner ad. Today, our online world runs on ads. The buyers in this system are brands that
want to sell products by placing ads in front of people who might purchase them. And then you have platforms and publishers with audiences of people to show ads to, like Vox. In between, you have middlemen dedicated to making sure the ads from the brands are delivered to the right people. Some companies play multiple roles. Facebook and Google are the biggest players because they have huge audiences and a huge amount of information they can use to target ads to you. All these companies are incentivized to gather as much information about your online behavior as possible. But Lou designed cookies to be placed and retrieved only by the site you’re on so these companies are also incentivized… to collaborate. And one way they do that is with “third-party cookies.” Take another look at this list of cookies
that shoe store gave me. This one, “fbp”? That’s for Facebook, which also owns Instagram. And this one? That’s for Google, which places ads on tons of websites, including Vox. Now this site can go to Facebook and Google and say, “show my ads to people you know visited my site in the last month.” And there I am. What Lou didn't anticipate in 1994 was that websites would eventually be full of elements hosted by third parties. And those elements can save their own cookies on my browser. Those cookies are created by the domain of the third party, who can then access the data from the site you’re on but also from every site you visit that uses those same third party elements. This is tracking. And it transformed our online world from one in which hundreds of companies knew a small amount about your online behavior, to one in which just a few companies can know it all. Right now, this map of your activity is mostly used to serve you personalized ads. But once it’s collected, there’s no getting it back. In the last few years, some browsers have started to block third-party cookies by default. Google’s browser, Chrome, gives you the option if you look for it. This makes it more difficult for the middlemen to know that the person who shopped for apartments on one site and bought medicine on another and looked for romance on another are all the same person. But companies incentivized by billions in
ad dollars will always find a loophole. They know you don’t want to block first-party cookies, because then many sites wouldn’t work. So companies like Google and Facebook can give sites a piece of code that looks like a first party cookie, but then sends all the
data to the third party anyway. Facebook calls their solution “Facebook
Pixel.” CLEO: Facebook Pixel. "You can now use both first and third party cookies with your Facebook Pixel." "This will allow you to reach more customers and be more accurate in measurement and reporting." CLEO: And what this reads to me as is, “Don't worry, people can't turn this off.” LOU: Well, it makes it more difficult to turn
off via third-party cookies, yes. CLEO: How do you feel about the way in which companies like Facebook have used the technology that you built? LOU: I would say that the advertising-only
business model has caused products to become less good than they could be. As long as these companies have a common goal of showing you ads for things you’re likely to buy, they’ll be motivated to share information with each other… about you. And some of their new methods may be even sneakier than cookies. LOU: I've been saying this for a long time: there are billions if not trillions of dollars at stake and if we want to make substantial change to the methods in which tracking and advertising is done it's going to have to be done at
a legislative level because otherwise we're just fighting a technological tit-for-tat war that will never end. Especially because the companies best positioned
to win that war are the tech giants that already have the most information about us, and have
the most resources to find ways to get more. These players all have one thing in common: this logo -- even though he plays on a team in Germany and they play for a team in Russia. It’s also on this team in Serbia, at games
in England, and on sidelines in Italy. The logo belongs to Gazprom,
a Russian natural gas company. Logo sponsorships are normal in soccer: Teams make money offering jersey space to
sponsors selling things like credit cards, cars and cell phones. But Gazprom isn’t like most sponsors: private
companies with products soccer fans can buy. Instead, it’s a company owned by the Russian
government that makes money selling natural gas to foreign countries. Yet, it’s everywhere in European soccer. So, if soccer fans can’t buy what they’re
selling, why is Gazprom spending millions
to sponsor soccer games? The answer is part of a larger story
that’s changing the sport of soccer. Foreign countries using companies they own
to burnish their reputations abroad, and to understand why Russia is involved,
you need to look at a map. Russia has the world’s largest
natural gas reserves and most of them are located in Arctic gas fields controlled by Gazprom. The company is led by Alexey Miller,
a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Since 2005, the Russian government
has owned a majority stake in Gazprom. Meaning company profits are under Putin’s control
and gas sales, along with oil, account for around 40% of Russia’s annual budget. This map shows how dependent various European
countries are on Russian gas and you can see that Eastern European countries are more dependent
than countries further west. At the end of the 20th century, Germany represented
the biggest opportunity for Gazprom. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had announced
plans to phase out coal and nuclear power, which meant Germany would need more natural
gas to maintain their energy supply. Gazprom wanted to get it to them, but there
was a problem. To get to Germany, Russia’s gas
needed pass to through pipelines crossing countries charging Gazprom transport fees. And most of them went through Ukraine a country that has a
complicated relationship with Russia. Today, Ukraine still charges Russia $2-3 billion
dollars every year to pump gas through to Europe. So, starting back in 2005, Russia began working
on a strategy to bypass Ukraine and ship their gas directly to Western Europe. This is the Nord Stream pipeline a route through The Baltic Sea
straight to Northern Germany. In late 2005, Gazprom was in the final stages
of financing the project and Germany’s chancellor was preparing for an election. During his time in office, Gerhard Schroeder
had become friendly with Putin and critics in Germany were increasingly concerned about
the Russian leader’s growing influence. Just a few weeks before the election, Schroeder
met with Putin to sign an agreement officially approving the pipeline. Two months later, Schroeder lost his re-election
but by March he had found a new job: overseeing Gazprom's pipeline to Germany. It also came out that, before leaving office,
Schroeder had approved a secret Gazprom loan that provided over a billion euros
to finance the project. Soon, the story of Gazprom’s big project
in Germany was becoming a story of scandal, corruption, and the creeping influence of Russia. But then the story changed. In 2006, Gazprom signed a deal to sponsor
the German soccer team FC Schalke 04. At the time, Schalke’s finances were worrying
team officials and Gazprom’s sponsorship provided money the team desperately needed. At a press conference announcing the deal,
a Gazprom chairman said Schalke’s connections with the German energy sector were why they
decided to become their sponsor. Schalke plays in Gelsenkirchen - a town in
Germany’s Ruhr Valley, where much of the country's energy industry is based. It's also close to the town of Rehden, a hub
for pipelines to the rest of Europe and home to Western Europe's largest
natural gas storage facilities. Schalke wasn’t Gazprom’s first soccer deal. The year before, they had bought a controlling
stake in a team on the other end of the Nord Stream route: the Russian team
 Zenit St. Petersburg. Gazprom’s investment made
Zenit a major force in soccer. Two years after taking control, Zenit won
their first-ever league championship. They’ve been able to sign expensive foreign
stars, like Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel and the Brazilian forward Hulk, and Gazrpom uses Zenit for marketing stunts: like having players scrimmage on the side
of their offshore gas platform. In 2006, as Gazprom logos were revealed around
Schalke’s stadium, German headlines were hailing the Russian gas giant for pumping
millions into the German team. To celebrate the deal, Schalke’s new jersey
was unveiled in a ceremony before Schalke and Zenit played a friendly match in Russia. And, over the next few years, the Gazprom
logo would become a team symbol displayed at Schalke games and printed on official merchandise. Schalke also won a championship in 2011 and by
then, Nord Stream had been completed, and that year, Gerhard Schroeder, Angela Merkel and
other European officials gathered to celebrate as it began pumping gas to Germany. There was also another struggling team whose
jerseys started featuring Gazprom’s logo: The Serbian team Red Star Belgrade. Red Star was about 25 million dollars in debt
when Gazprom signed to become their jersey sponsor. And, again, there was also another pipeline:
The South Stream would have bypassed Ukraine by going directly through Serbia to Southern Europe. That project closed in 2014, but Gazprom has
continued increasing their access to Europe by building Nord Stream 2, a second pipeline
doubling the amount of gas flowing from Russia to Germany. Gazprom has also expanded their soccer empire
to include energy partnerships with Chelsea football club, Champions League and the sport’s
most famous tournament: the FIFA World Cup. These sponsorships have made Gazprom’s logo
familiar not just to fans in Europe, but across the world. “We light up the football. Gazprom. Official partner." It’s in commercials before games, and on
jerseys and sidelines once it starts. FC Schalke fans have also started to see 
Nord Stream 2 ads at home games. And, while climate activists like Greenpeace
have staged protests to point out Gazprom’s threat to Arctic resources, Gazprom had no
trouble renewing their sponsorships. Now, Russia controls nearly half the gas consumed
by Europe and other countries are learning from their example. Etihad, Emirates, and Qatar Airways all are
owned by sovereign states in the Middle East with interests that go beyond selling airline
tickets. As the example of Gazprom shows, having a
prominent soccer sponsorship offers a way around bad publicity by winning approval on the field. If you’re a fan, that can feel like a big opportunity:
their money helps teams win major tournaments, but it’s starting to change the sport itself. Now that it’s become common to see a Serbian
team sponsored by Russia’s gas company facing off against a French team sponsored by Dubai’s
state-owned airline, it’s starting to seem like the field is hosting two competitions
at once: A match between two teams, and a larger play for foreign influence
that continues long after the final whistle. Recognize this? It’s been used in hundreds of TV shows and
films. It’s so famous that if you can’t remember
this, you can just google “that famous cello song” and it will invariably pop up. Yes, this prelude is well known, but perhaps
what’s most compelling about it is how incredibly simple it is. The whole thing takes up just two pages of
music and it’s composed for an instrument that has just four strings. Yet, it’s considered a masterpiece that
world class cellists and even everyday music listeners have revered for years. So, what makes this composition so memorable,
timeless, and beautiful? Well that’s what Alisa is going to help
me deconstruct. My name is Alissa Weilerstein, and we are
talking about the Prelude from Bach’s first cello suite in G Major. This is Bach. And these are his six cello suites. Within each suite are various movements named
for dances, and they each have very strict structures. These movements are all masterpieces in music,
and they get increasingly complex. But before these dances begin, there’s always
a Prelude. In the Bach suites, it's a way to establish
the key, to establish the motives, and it's also a kind of improvisation. And this prelude in particular is revered
because it achieves a lot with just a few very simple concepts. To understand how, you first have to understand
the very basics of the song. There’s two main chords and keys you need
to remember here, G and D. Bach plays them off each other the entire
prelude. G is the home key for this composition - it’s
called the tonic. And every tonic has a dominant - that’s
the note a fifth above it. If this is all going in one ear and out the
next don’t worry. Just remember this, the tonic and dominant
work really well together. Where the dominant represents tension, the
tonic represents release. And the cello is the perfect vessel to showcase
this relationship. This is a cello. It's the closest in range and in ability to
express to the human voice. You start from the very low range down here. You can imagine a really bass baritone type
of sound to way up here. This is really a violin range. Because the prelude is written in G major,
it allows for a lot of open strings on the cello, which gives the song a very natural
resonance. An open string means I don’t stop it with
a finger. So if I do nothing with my left hand, this
sounds a G. With a G major chord, two out of the three
notes are open. This natural sounding quality is what defines
the G major prelude, and it’s exactly what Bach exploits starting with its first few
measures. During the first half of the composition Bach
is constantly arpeggiating chords. It’s a simple technique that enriches the
harmony. So this will be a G major chord. And then arpeggiated. There’s a separation between the notes. And then you go on. But he also does something else. For me, one of the most profound aspects of
this is the pedal point. Which means that the bass note remains constant
even while the harmony is changing. The bass note through the first four measures
is that very natural open G - its job is to keep you rooted in the key of the song. With the bass. So then you have that gravitas in there, even
while the harmony is moving around. After these four measures though, things start
to shift. Bach starts to pull the song away from the
tonic to the dominant. Then we loose the pedal. So this is the first shift, right? And then here we land in D major, the dominant. You have a diminished chord here. Kind of cloud in the sky. A minor. Then we climb again from here. Just like that, we’re back to that familiar
G pedal point. Listen for the bottom G. Home again. Near the end of the first half, Bach again
drifts away from G major and reaches even deeper into the cello’s bass range with
a low C. Listen to this. The chord is [plays chord] with a D. Here. But he flips it on its head. With a C on the bottom. By the end of the first half Bach has pulled
us completely into D major. He’s warming our ears up for the second
half of the composition which is all about exploring that dominant key. At the beginning of the second half of the
movement, right after the fermata which means to hold on the note, then you have a very
improvisatory section coming up. And this is actually I think my favorite moment
of it with this E flat. This dissonance. And all of that just to get to D major. We know that we have to get back to G major
somehow. How are we going to do it? Now we start to kind of climb down. C B A Still in D major Bach pushes us more firmly into the world
of D major with a technique called bariolage. It’s when you're making string crossings
and it's actually supposed to kind of create this kind of feeling of disorder. We have a constant open A string. Which is this. It’s only one note that we're just repeating
over and over again. And this is what causes all this mayhem, right? All these attempts to get out of D major and
he can't do it. Now we're in G major! If you didn’t catch that, something really
quite perfect happened. Let’s play it again. You just wound up exactly where you started,
D major. And then you have a chromatic scale up. And you land on this high G here. And that's when we feel this kind of ecstatic
feeling. Leading up to G major’s big reveal, Bach
brings back that familiar pedal point from the intro, but instead of using the G as the
bass note, he flips the chord and uses the dominant D. The bass note remains constant. Even as we're going up the chromatic scale. Listen, I'll do it slow. OK, now I know where I'm going. And we're so happy about it that we have to
just keep kind of wandering around it. And, going back to one. Cellist all over the world wrestle with this
prelude and the cello suites as a whole every single day. We cellist, we always feel sort of unworthy
of it. The music is so pure, so sublime, so emotional,
so intellectual. They must be played, and yet we feel like
we can't we can't really ever do them justice. This is Central Park. It’s an iconic part of New York City. A piece of nature, tucked inside Manhattan. If you’ve lived in New York, or even visited, you’ve probably been here. But, there’s a part of this land’s story that visitors will never see. It’s the story of what was here before the park. And the community that was destroyed to make way for it. In the 1820s, New York City looked like this. Most people lived in this area — Lower Manhattan. Pretty much everything above it, was yet to be settled. In this map, you can see how different the
geography was. These little lines illustrate what used to be hills in Manhattan. This was the countryside. Downtown was the opposite. Lower Manhattan was dense and crowded. A few small neighborhoods were home to many of the city’s poor whites, and immigrants. and also, to much of its black population. This document shows the number of slaves in New York State. You can see how it went down gradually, from 20,000 in 1800, to 10,000 in 1820, and finally to just 75 in 1830. That’s because in New York, slavery wasn’t abolished all at once. Instead, it was ended gradually over about 30 years. And as more free black people joined the work force, racial tensions rose. The people who were enslaved were now in competition
with people coming over for jobs. That tension led to violence — and lower Manhattan became increasingly dangerous for free black people. Then, in 1825, plots of land started to go up for sale here, uptown. It was a way out. A black man named Andrew Williams decided to buy three lots. You know word gets out, black people, seeing other black people and say oh there's a little bit of a community developing here, maybe we can just fold into this community, so they start to move in. After Williams, more lots filled up with black families and churches. And it was here, between 82nd and 89th Street, that the community of Seneca Village was born. Moving up to Seneca Village offered black families, an affordable, safe place. It also gave them the chance to vote. Black men could only vote in New York if they owned property. Over the course of the next three decades, the community grew to nearly 300 residents. Records from the census show that they were laborers, domestic workers, waiters, and shoemakers. And they built dozens of homes, three churches, and a school for black students. Later, when Irish and German immigrants started moving into Seneca Village, it became unique for another reason. It was an integrated community. It seems that people of all ethnicities were likely getting along based on the church records that were here. Among the documents, are evidence that some white and black families attended baptisms together, were buried next to each other in the same cemetery, and intermarried. The people who lived in this area were individuals who were trying to find a new way of life. Over the next three decades, the population of New York City nearly quadrupled. Lower Manhattan could no longer hold everyone. The city’s white elite were worried that the entire island would be consumed by development. They said it called for the necessity of a city park, to “give lungs to the city”. This came out of the elite being able to start to travel to Europe and they see the Champs Elysees and they see Kensington Park and they think that the city deserves to have a park of that stature. On July 21, 1853, New York set aside 750 acres of land to create America’s first major  landscaped public park. “The Central Park.” But the proposed area for the park included Seneca Village — along with thousands of  other lots of land, home to about 1600 people. In order to facilitate the park’s development, the city’s newspapers started to downplay who really lived there. They really describe these people as living in shanties and shacks, people of debased cultures were living off the land. But that wasn’t true. In 2011, Cynthia and a team of archaeologists excavated in the former Seneca Village site. They came away with 250 bags of objects to analyze, which now live here, in New York City’s Archaeological Repository. These objects suggest that Seneca Village was wealthier than many assumed. When we compared the objects from the homes of the people in the village with artifacts from Greenwich Village, an elite upper middle class neighborhood. In some cases, they were using the same kind of ironstone plate in what was called the Gothic pattern. Quite a few pieces of porcelain in Seneca Village and porcelain was an expensive ware. They also found other objects — like a comb, a smoking pipe, roasting pan, and part of a  toothbrush, that probably didn’t belong
to poor people. Toothbrushes were not common among the working class as well as the middle class until around 1920. And the artifacts themselves were only one part of their analysis. For example, from the census records from 1855, we know that there was a very high level of education. Getting a high school education was clearly an important factor in the community and that’s very much a part of middle class identity. The findings indicate that Seneca Village wasn’t a shantytown. It was a working and middle class community, a growing neighborhood of black property owners, and an experiment in integration. But to the white New York elite of 1856, it wasn’t worth saving. A July 1856 article in the New York Times referred to it with a slur. “The Ebon inhabitants, after whom the village is called...have been notified to remove by the first of August.” Many residents fought to keep their land by filing objections to their forced removal. But Seneca Village — along with the other
settlements on the land for Central Park -- was seized and destroyed. In their place, the city made pathways,
built bridges and arches, and planted thousands of trees. Central Park was done, and Seneca Village was gone forever. We can't imagine New York City without Central Park. But I'm finally grateful that the recognition of the pre-park history has emerged. Today, New York is starting to reckon with this part of its history. An exhibition with information about Seneca Village is temporarily up in the park. But the real legacy of Seneca Village is a story that’s repeated itself again and again, in cities everywhere. Land, property ownership, That's how you get wealth and you pass wealth on from generation to generation. But you’re getting a bulldozer that comes
through because a new highway has to come through or a new hospital or development site
has to come in. Seneca Village was no different. It's time that we own it and we come to recognize that there are these great stories that live beneath the surface of the park. It's not just African-American history. It's just American history. downright apocalyptic images coming out of Australia right now there are now six fires burning at emergency levels smoke is so intense and so thick it can be seen from space 2,000 homes have been destroyed six million hectares of land charge a staggering toll on the nation's wildlife these record-breaking bush fires in Australia have been kicked off by things like lightning strikes a few cases of arson and winds but one of the biggest reasons they become so extreme is the same reason that East Africa is flooding bush fires in Australia are a natural part of the country's ecosystem their fire season varies across regions even New South Wales the most populous state is used to blazes breaking out in 1974 fires burned 3.5 million Hector's and in 2003 another two million Hector's were lost to fire but the fires that started in 2019 are even worse 4.9 million hectares and New South Wales have burned already and it's only going to grow so why is this fire season so awful for starters as the world is getting warmer from climate change so is Australia 2019 was its hottest year on record with parts of the country reaching 45 degrees Celsius in December 2019 was also its driest the places here in gray have seen historic droughts together that provides the perfect conditions for bush fires to start and spread quickly throughout the year other large-scale climate drivers affect Australia's weather and its likeliness to burn but one of the most influential is the Indian Ocean dipole or the IOD the IOD is a big temperature gradient that affects a surface water in the Indian Ocean from the edge of Africa to the edge of Australia meteorologists been measuring these temperature shifts for decades in three phases positive neutral and negative when the IOD is neutral the surface water in the Indian Ocean is evenly warm a negative phase is when the winds come from the west and shift the warm water towards Australia warmer water means more evaporation which means more rain so Australia gets more rain than usual sometimes even floods but the colder water near East Africa means they get less rain and even droughts a positive phase is what's happening now it's when the winds come in from the east and shift the warm water towards Africa which causes flooding there and droughts in Australia the entire process of shifting water temperatures is natural but 2019 s was extreme the positive IOT was one of the strongest on record with the water temperature difference between Africa and Australia being unusually high hence extreme weather in Australia but also in Africa the worst flooding in two decades more than three times their annual rainfall in only four days scientists believe it's linked to record temperatures in the Indian Ocean the good news is the IOD is already shifting to neutral which should bring some much-needed relief to Australia in Africa in early 2020 but as the planet continues to warm some scientists are concerned about how that might affect weather phenomenons like the IOD one study predicts positive IO DS like what we're seeing now could happen more frequently as global temperatures rise and warm the Indian Ocean combine that with the rising overall temperature of Australia and these kinds of devastating fires fueled by unusually dry vegetation could become the new normal [Music] you [Music] You know when people think about climate
change a wildlife, they probably think about polar bears and maybe the Great
Barrier Reef. Well, we can add koalas to them now. "As many as 3 percent of the
country's New South Wales region may have been killed as fires continue to ravage and
destroy their habitat." The reality is that these flies are not normal. We're in
a war zone. So I know that there's there's been you know loss of human life
definitely loss of property here but what impact has this fire had, this
fire season had, on wildlife in Australia? Well over 1 billion animals are thought
to have died or will soon die in the weeks, the months ahead, because of the
current fires. That's 1 billion. And we've never had a toll like that on our
wildlife but it seems that every few days, the statistics get worse. I don't
know where it will end by the end of this fire season. Are there specific species
that are particularly being hard hit by this? Many many animals cannot flee these big
fires. Either they can't fly, they can't move quickly, they can't burrow — they burn to
death. Particularly because Australia has bulldozed half of our forests, it's hard
for wildlife to flee somewhere else and that's why you find a lot of animals
— including koalas — are wandering into people's backyards into the streets
looking for some habitat to survive in. When they panic, they climb up a tree.
That works when the fires low down. But it's almost a death sentence when the
fire consumes its crown fire, the canopy fire. People have talked about flames up
to 200 feet in the air. That's 70 meters. I mean that is — our trees
generally don't grow that big. So any wildlife, birds, or lizards that
go to the top of the trees to escape a normal fire, they're sitting ducks really. So I've seen a lot of particularly hard to watch videos of koalas, you know,
basically charred from the fire. Are they gonna go extinct after
this? What's the status of the koala now, and what's gonna happen to them? Our estimation is that koala numbers over the last 230 years have
fallen by about 95%, and these fires will be inching that up towards ninety eight
ninety nine percent over time. It's important to remember that this bushfire
and the climate crisis — it has come after a couple hundred years of
decimating koalas and their habitat. So for 100 years,
koalas were shot for their pelts and there's records of 8 million koala
pelts being sold in the United States, the UK, and I think Europe up until the 1930s,
when there was a moratorium put on shooting koalas. The term "functionally
extinct" has been thrown around in the media during these fires in reference to
the koalas. What does "functionally extinct" mean, and is that true? The term "functional extinction" is used for animals where there are only tens
or hundreds not even thousands of animals left. So rhinos, or animals where
there's ten or twenty left. We're not there yet for koalas. In eastern
Australia koalas are listed as a threatened species but at the lowest
level they're called vulnerable. We think they're now eligible to be uplisted to
being an endangered species. There are solutions to these problems, koalas and
polar bears don't need to go extinct. And the term "functional extinction" doesn't
help that. For people like me at home like watching this heart-wrenching
footage, is there anything we can do to help the situation? I think the first
thing people can do around the world is to read up about what's happening in
Australia, because if it's happening in our country, if it's not already happening in
your country, it will be in the future, of some type, as the climate gets worse
and worse. We need to convince people who don't care about nature or the climate
— particularly decision makers, governments, presidents, prime ministers —
you have a role in helping keep these species alive. Ah, the Game of Life. It’s about as offensive as a bowl of Jello. But the original one from a hundred years
earlier? It had squares like...this. The first Game of Life wasn’t just a game. It was a form of moral instruction. And it says something about how society thinks
life should be lived then and now. In a way, the Game of Life started when this
chin disappeared. Milton Bradley was a young lithographer — basically
a printer — in Massachusetts when he made a thousand prints of this man running
for president in 1860. When Abraham Lincoln grew a beard, those prints
were worthless. So Bradley had to pivot. He took his printing skills and let them loose
on a young medium: board games. The Checkered Game of Life was his first game
— and it became a hit. Players started at infancy. They spun a teetotum — this thing — to
determine options for their move. You had control to choose your
move once you spun. The goal was to hit 100 points, through 5-point milestones like college, and Congress, or big ones, like 50 points for Old Age. The game’s patent shows that Milton
Bradley’s Life was more than just a social game. It was about great moral principles. Elizabeth Peabody founded the first English
kindergarten in the United States in 1860. Milton Bradley published this portrait of
her well after his Lincoln failure. He also volunteered to teach his own daughter’s
kindergarten class in Springfield, Massachusetts, after the success of Life. And he used his business, Milton Bradley and
Company, to publish games and educational tools, including more than 40 books about
the new Kindergarten curriculum. They made a wide variety of learning tools,
from educational puzzles to influential color wheels. Education became Bradley’s passion, and
the original Game of Life predicted that — it was a way to teach “the checkered journey
of life” to children — and adults. That weird spinner, the teetotum? That was originally to avoid cards and dice,
because they were associated with gambling. The location of each spot also taught a lesson. Old age was surrounded by many difficulties. “Poverty lies near the cradle,” but passing
through it didn’t hurt you in the beginning of the game. Setbacks didn't earn you points, but most
didn't kick you out of the game, either. Honesty led to happiness. Industry, to wealth. And perseverance led to success. “I made 50,000 in the stock market today.” “That’s Life”
In 1960, long after Milton Bradley died, the company — which by then was mostly making
games — dug Life from the archives, choosing it over a long list of other games the company
had once published. They adapted it to 1960s America with a candy-colored
spinner and stacks of cash and cars that could load up a full family of baby boomers to places
like Millionaire Acres. “I went to the Poor Farm.” “I’m on Millionaire Acres!” It centered around paydays, where the value
of winning a Nobel was the cash prize that came with it. The winner is the person with the most money. Today’s versions are almost identical, with
tweaks for jobs and hot brand integrations. “That’s life.” There was no more disgrace but there also
wasn’t bravery, or honor, or truth. Both versions are the Game of Life. Which one should we play? So when game night is over, you want your
home to be safe - and that’s where Simplisafe comes in. They are the sponsor of this video. Simplisafe’s effective, reliable home security
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One more time, that’s Simplisafe.com/VOX Simplisafe doesn’t directly impact our editorial
but their support makes videos like this possible. This is Anna. She just graduated from
college in the United States. And this is Sophia. She also just graduated from
college in Finland. Anna and Sophia both want to be middle school teachers. But it
turns out, there's a good chance their experiences will be very different. So
different that Anna is twice as likely as Sophia to leave teaching for good.
That's causing a problem. The supply of new certified teachers in the United
States is shrinking, but the number of public school students keeps growing.
Massive teacher shortages. Warnings about teacher turnover. Educators call
Colorado's teacher shortage a crisis. So what makes Sophia stay and Anna leave? And how can the United States keep more of its teachers in the classroom? In the
US, teachers work about nine and a quarter hours a day. That's an hour and a
half longer than the average for teachers in other countries in the
Organization for Economic Development or OECD for short. That's a group of mostly
wealthy countries that economists often compare to one another. Teachers in the
US. work more than two and a half hours longer than their colleagues in South
Korea, Finland, and Israel. There are some countries with similar teacher work
hours to the United States, like New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK. Teachers in Japan for example work nearly two hours more per day than teachers in the US, but
in all of these countries teaching hours are much lower. Of the nine and a quarter hours that American teachers work every day, they
spend about five and a half of those hours actually teaching. That's more than
the OECD average and significantly more than teachers in New Zealand, the UK,
South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. Teachers in these countries get more time for planning, grading, and collaborating with each other. So do all those extra teaching hours translate to better results? Students in the US score slightly above the OECD average on the PISA exam, which tests 15 year-olds all
over the world in reading, science, and math. But they score lower than students
in countries like Finland, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, where teaching hours are much lower. If we look inside Anna and Sofia's classrooms in the US and Finland, we'd see Anna teaching an hour and a half more per day than Sofia. Anna also spends more time planning lessons, grading student work, and leading extracurricular
activities. But those extra hours aren't necessarily reflected in Anna's paycheck. If you compare Sofia to other people in Finland with college degrees, she makes
about 98 cents for every dollar that they make. That's on par with the pay
ratio between teachers and college graduates in similar countries. But Anna
and other American middle school teachers only make about 65 cents for
every dollar that their college-educated peers make. Still, as politicians in the
US never tire of pointing, out we spend more per student than almost any country
I think than nearly every other country in the developed world. But that figure
varies a lot by state. New York spends twice as much as California on each
student. Mississippi spends less than half as much as Alaska. And American
schools generally spend a lot more on security and other non-instructional
costs than schools in other countries. Plus, if you look at the share of its
national wealth or GDP that each country spends on education, you can see there
are plenty of countries spending a bigger share than the US. There's one
other difference between Anna and Sofia. When they're asked whether people in
their country value teachers, two out of three Finnish teachers say yes. But just
one in three American teachers agree. There are a lot of reasons why teachers
like Anna leaves a classroom, but if the US wants to keep more of them around, we might want to take a few pages from Finland's book. you <i> ( music playing )</i> Christophe:<i>
 This is the island of Maui.</i> <i> We're here because this place
 has been at the center</i> <i> of a fierce debate
 about whether we should grow</i> <i> and eat genetically
 modified food.</i> And that question is only
getting more important. <i> At the current rate,
 we will have to grow more food</i> <i> in the next 30 years
 than we have in all
 of human history.</i> Doing that without destroying
the environment that we live in will be one of the defining
challenges of our generation. <i> And many experts argue
 that to do that,</i> <i> we'll have to engineer
 the genes of our food.</i> <i> But the safety of
 that technology has been
 controversial for decades.</i> So, should we be worried
about genetically modified food? <i> ( music playing )</i> - Good morning.
- Hey, how's it going? - How is everybody today?
- Fantastic. Chocolate peanut butter.
Chocolate peanut butter. - Oh, my God.
- How is it? - It's really good?
- I can't tell if that
  was good or bad. It's Reese's peanut butter
for breakfast. - In a Cheerio.
- I love it. Why are we here? - We are here in my home.
- "We are here in my home." I have brought you here. I have brought you guys here
to talk about GMOs. I'm curious to hear how
you grew up thinking about them. 'Cause for me, I was--
I was definitely taught that GMOs are a terrible thing. In my family,
it was just never something
that was talked about ever. I was taught that
the big business around GMOs is something to be,
like, hated. All these labels started
appearing, like this one, "Non-GMO project verified,"
which seems to signal to people that there's something harmful
about GMOs. There's one thing at this table
that does contain genetically modified organisms
and is labeled as such. - And I'm curious if y'all
  can find it.
- Huh. - It's not the coffee.
- This one says non-GMO. It's the one that
y'all haven't looked at yet. - The fruit. No.
- Mm-mm "Partially produced
with genetic engineering."
It is the Cheerios. Alex: Oh, there it is.
It's at the very
bottom of the box. Sneaky little-- If you look through
the ingredients, you can see
whole grain oats, sugar, peanut butter,
dextrose, corn starch, and corn syrup, and corn that
was probably produced with
genetic engineering. In a way, it's almost like
a status symbol for your foods if you're able to identify
that all your foods have the positive label
of being GMO-free. Cleo:
I guess my question to you,
Christophe, is it a good label?
Like, is that something
that I should be looking for? Um... To understand how we got here, we have to talk about
the first GMO. This is the Flavr Savr tomato. Leading up to its launch, people called this
the super tomato. It became major news. The future is now,
at least in terms
of the American diet. Genetically altered tomatoes
are a step closer to your
supermarket tonight. The new tomatoes will soon be
on a store shelf near you. When it hit shelves, it became
the first commercial crop
that was genetically modified. It was designed to be less perishable
than regular tomatoes. What followed was a new
generation of bio-engineering
initiatives that promised to feed
the world, including things
like golden rice, a GMO enriched with beta keratin
to combat blindness and death from vitamin A deficiency. Researchers believe
they have found a way to add critical nutrients
to rice. Man:<i> Vitamin A deficiency
 is a pervasive and silent
 killer</i> <i> of malnourished children
 in the third world.</i> But over the next few years,
public perception of GMOs went from gentle curiosity 
like this... As long as it was--
it was healthy, you know? No-- no health risks.
Yeah, I'd consider it. ...to bitter divisiveness
like this. Hell no, GMO. Hell no, GMO.  Other labs tried
to replicate that study
and found that it wasn't true. - No, actually that is not true.
- Yes. ( speaking foreign language ) One side says that modifying
food is totally harmless and the other side says that
it's a serious threat to us. They take viruses and bacteria
and insecticides and put them into the DNA. More often than not, they're inserting viruses or bacteria into these plants. But that's not exactly
how it works, so let's clear things up. - Cleo, you free right now? 
- Sure. All right. So genetic
engineering works by taking
a tiny piece of DNA from one organism
and putting it inside
of another organism. That tiny piece of DNA
is called a gene. It is a set of instructions
that tells the organism how to express a trait. You can kind of think of that
like taking a recipe from one cookbook
and putting it inside
of another one. So one set of instructions here
contain a really special trait, and it's bookmarked. - Insect killer.
- Exactly. Grandma's
  insect killer recipe. This one page tells
that bacteria how to create this protein
that kills insects. Okay, so how does this gene get from the bacteria
to the corn? You can use kind of this
bacterium that naturally
goes into the other plant and, like, dumps the DNA off or you can use something
called a gene gun. The gene gun literally
shoots gold particles
that are covered in DNA... - Dope.
- ...into cells of the corn. This corn plant
will then produce those same
insecticide proteins. And what that means
is that farmers now
would not have to spray those corn plants
with insecticide. So it's not as though GMOs are using a small part
of a bacteria and putting it into corn
or something else. It's more like they're taking
a small instruction that a bacteria has and allowing corn
to also have that instruction. - Is that right?
- Exactly. So what do we know
about how safe it is - to eat something like this?
- Mm, let me show you. In the past 20 years that
we've been eating these crops, there have been no negative
health impacts on consumers. - That's great.
- Yeah. I learned all of this
  from Pamela Ronald. She is a geneticist
at UC Davis. We've been genetically
engineering many different types of plants and genetically engineering
medicines for over 40 years, and there hasn't been
a single instance of harm to human health
or the environment. Christophe:<i>
 We know that from
 thousands of studies,</i> but they're probably best
summarized in this one from the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine. So this is like a meta study
of thousands of reports. Can I get a highlighter?
Great. Cleo:
There's some evidence that GE
insect-resistant crops have had benefits
to human health by reducing
insecticide poisoning. The research,
blah, blah, blah, blah, of GE foods
reveals no differences that would implicate
a higher risk to human health from eating GE foods than from eating
their non-GE counterparts. - That's the money line.
- That's it. This seems so certain, but it-- it also seems like
this is such a big controversy. It is.
So the 2015 Pew Research poll found the majority of Americans believe that it's not safe to eat genetically
modified food, but almost 90% of scientists
say that they're safe. And this gap is the biggest of any politicized
scientific issue. So that means bigger
than climate change,
bigger than vaccines. It makes me feel like
there must be some other issue with GMO products
or GMO companies that people
are really struggling with. - That's what I want
  to figure out, yeah.
- Like, it can't be this. So the thing is,
as much as people might worry about GMO fruits
and vegetables, you're not really likely
to find them in produce. They're in cheap processed foods
made from GMO corn and soy. And the vast majority
of GMO crops don't actually
even wind up in food. You know, for the most part, <i> they are turned into biofuels
 or into feed.</i> <i> In the U.S.,
 where over 90% of corn
 is genetically modified,</i> <i>just 10% is turned into things
that people actually consume.</i> So all that genetic engineering
allowed us to do was to grow crops like that on a bigger scale
than ever before. Could it have more to do
with how the business of GMOs is actually implemented? There's one place that I think can help us answer
that question, and it's in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean. <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> Hawaii is ground zero</i> <i> for developing new
 genetically engineered crops.</i> In the 1990s, the entire
papaya industry in Hawaii was basically
on the verge of collapse. Plants started to be infected
by papaya ringspot virus. This problem persisted
for decades, and then came something
called the rainbow papaya. This was a transgenic variety that was designed
to resist the virus. <i> Until 2017,
 this was the only GMO fruit</i> <i> that was sold in the U.S.</i> This fruit was proof
that genetic engineering could really benefit
both consumers and farmers. <i> But it also kicked off
 a long debate about what
 genetic engineering</i> <i> means for the state
 of Hawaii.</i> <i> It's hosted more open air
 experimental field tests</i> <i> than any other state
 in the country.</i> <i> And the U.S. grows more GMOs</i> <i> than any other country
 in the world.</i> <i> And all of these companies
 are here because</i> Hawaii's tropical climate allows for three to four
plantings of seeds per year, as opposed to just one on most parts
of the mainland U.S. It kind of creates this
ultimate outside laboratory for seed companies. <i> We're gonna go visit
 one of these test fields</i> <i> that's owned by Bayer with
 members of the SHAKA movement.</i> So tell me what SHAKA is. The SHAKA movement is the Sustainable
Hawaiian Agriculture for the Keiki and the 'Aina. Okay, we're here in Kihei, <i> and these are
 the Hale Piilani homes,</i> <i> and they are next to</i> <i> the Monsanto test field
 here in Kihei.</i> Now these people are right
on top of the problem. What they're doing
in the test field <i> is they're trying to see
 how much herbicide</i> <i> the plant
 and the seed can take.</i> <i> We know tests--
 the pesticide drifts,</i> <i> especially with this wind,</i> and it would bring it
right into these homes, <i> straight into these homes.</i> <i> This was one of the reasons
 for the moratorium</i> <i> was the proximity
 of these test fields</i> <i> to these homes
 we're standing next to.</i> In 2014, Maui County
passed a moratorium on the research and development
and production of GMOs. Man: Hawaii is the center
of a fight between the companies
who make crop seeds here and residents who say
they are being poisoned. Hawaii's Maui County passed
one of the strongest anti-GMO measures ever. A battle over the Maui County
GMO moratorium is headed to court. Eventually, that moratorium was overruled
in a federal court. We were just asking
to slow down,
take a breath, stop, and let's see what's going on
in terms of experimentation with these open fields
putting all these people
in danger, right? It was easy for the industry
to turn around and go,
"Oh, you're anti-GMO." Are you anti-science
when you're being
openly tested on? And the fact
that they're going, "We're experimenting
with this corn
and we're gonna see how much pesticide
it can handle before it dies." Look where you're doing it. You're doing it
where people live. Okay, let me clarify
what they're talking about. One of the most popular kinds
of genetically engineered traits is something called
herbicide tolerance. By giving a plant a gene
that makes it resistant to one specific kind
of chemical, <i> farmers can spray herbicide
 on their plants to kill weeds</i> <i> without having to worry
 about harming their crops.</i> <i> So even though
 the other most common</i> kind of genetically
engineered trait successfully reduced
the need for insecticide, this particular GMO trait actually encourages the use
of more herbicides. <i> Since 1996,
 when the biotech company
 Monsanto</i> <i> first introduced crops
 tolerant to glyphosate,</i> <i> that's the active ingredient
 in the herbicide Roundup,</i> <i> the use of that chemical
 has skyrocketed.</i> Now, glyphosate has
traditionally been considered a relatively safe herbicide,
but in 2015, the World Health Organization
concluded that it likely causes cancer
to humans who are exposed to it. <i> Now there are thousands
 of lawsuits against Bayer,</i> <i> which acquired Monsanto,</i> <i> for failing to warn consumers
 of those risks.</i> We reached out to Bayer
for comment, but at this time,
they haven't provided
a statement. <i> ( music playing )</i> I can count three chickens
from where I stand. But there are more
everywhere. Oop! Lorrin:<i>
 My name is Lorrin Pang.</i> <i> I was born and raised
 in Hawaii.</i> <i> I got involved in this issue
 of GM growing.</i> Walk me through
what the concerns
that people here have - about those kinds of crops
  in particular.
- Yeah. The Maui community
was quite upset about
corporate agriculture in Hawaii and on Maui. Our concern
are the pesticides, okay? You're using
too many pesticides. <i> When the stuff you put
 is blowing on the wind,</i> <i> and you haven't told
 anybody downwind</i> <i> who got drifted
 about informed consent,</i> <i> and they never got
 to respond,</i> that's unethical. This is the framework
of human experimentation. I will give them
the benefit of the doubt that they want
to feed the world
and use less pesticides. I will give them that. That does seem to be
something that we hear a lot - on this topic is this idea...
- What? Feed the world? ...that GMOs are a necessary
technology to feed the world. Corporations and scientists
have shown that's the goals. "What do you want?"
"Feed the world." I'll give that to you.
Maybe we're trying
to feed the world. But the process
that we get there seems to trample on
certain people's rights. <i> ( music playing )</i> We're about to go talk
to Dr. Harold Keyser. He's going to explain to us what
genetically engineered crops look like here in Hawaii. And we're climbing up a hill. <i> ( music playing )</i> That's Harold.
He found a chameleon. - ( indistinct chatter )
- ( squeals ) - They have a very long tongue.
- ( gasps ) Oh, my God. Oh, my God. ( squeals )
It's on the camera. It's so hard to separate
the technology from
its context of big AG. - Mm-hmm.
- Do you feel like that is going to make this argument
endure for a long time? Like, when are we going
to stop talking about this? Genetic engineering
is safe as any other form
of plant breeding. Regulation is so expensive, you know, to get it through all the stages at EPA and Food and Drug
Administration, to get a new product out. And, I mean,
I think that's also part of why the focus has been
on the major crops. Because they spent all this
money and then that's where
they're gonna, you know, they're gonna go after
the big payoffs first. Corn, soybean,
alfalfa, cotton, things that are on,
you know, big acreages. You know,
there's been consolidation. And that basically crowds out
everyone except for the large
ones and incentivizes-- Oh, yeah.
Somebody with the really deep--
probably deep pockets. Christophe:<i>
 So how did these companies
 become so powerful?</i> Well, at the same time
that GMO technology
was taking off, the seed industry was also
undergoing major changes. Let me show you how. Each of these seeds
represents an individual
seed company back in 1996. By 2018, all of these
were fully or partially owned
by Monsanto, <i> which made it the biggest
 seed company in the world.</i> The pharmaceutical company
Bayer bought Monsanto
for $63 billion. But it's not just Bayer.
Dow and DuPont merged
to become Corteva, and ChemChina
acquired Syngenta. Today these four companies control over 60%
of the world's seed sales. Those companies patent
the genetics of their seeds, which means that farmers
can't harvest their own seeds. They have to buy them
every year. And because these seeds work
hand in hand with the chemicals produced by the same companies, you can't really have one
without the other. So for some, adopting GMOs means
buying into a system where, for the first time
in the history of agriculture, farmers are not
fully controlling and owning their seeds. <i> But even though there's
 immense pressure to do so,</i> <i> not every farmer
 is buying into that system.</i> ( dog barking ) - ( indistinct chatter )
- Hey, how's it going? ( muttering ) - How's it going?
  Nice to see you.
- All right. How you doing? This is, like,
in full operation. We just put this extension in. You can see this is where
the door used to be. We took that shade house down,
poured the slab, and then did all this. The system comes on. - And do you hear that sounds?
- Uh-huh. That's the sound of money. <i> We produce about five to 600
 pounds of greens a week</i> <i> and we do it on
 2,500 square feet</i> <i> on a 9,000 square-foot lot.</i> <i> So you could say I'm probably</i> <i> one of the largest smallest
 farmers here in Hawaii.</i> This conversation about
genetic engineering in food has gotten so much attention
as kind of a focal point for how this conversation
is happening all
across the world. Yeah, because
the corporate takeover
of agriculture, so to speak, has been consolidation.
I mean, it's happening today. Has been a big issue.
The farmers are going back
to these companies going, "Hey, man, we got bugs
attacking our plants." "Well, here."
And they start giving them petrochemical pesticides
and herbicides. And it didn't take long
before that just spiraled
out of control. Well, the farmers
are just trying to find ways
to make ends meet. That created--
that whole attack on the plant
created a dysfunction, and that's when
genetic engineering came in. So I feel it was a dysfunction
on top of a dysfunction, which creates
dysfunction squared. Am I against GMO? Um, I just don't support it. You know, as a farmer,
I want to grow food for people without using
that kind of technology. And, um,
so that's my main interest. <i> Little did I realize that
I could actually make a living</i> on a postage stamp
with agriculture. This is where we grow
what I call the chocolate cake. - You can take it--
- It went straight through. This is like black gold. We're here in
paradise on Earth.
We can grow a lot of food. - Here I am on Maui.
 I mean, what more can I ask?
- Here we are. - Yeah. Seriously.
- Yeah. The idea of genetically
modified food is so often sold to us
based off of future promises-- <i> crops that can resist
 a changing climate,</i> <i> or with better yield,</i> or with improved nutrients
to feed the world. More efficient water use, bigger root systems,
nutrient uptake. There's definitely potential. Christophe:<i>
 But GMOs today don't
 live up to that potential.</i> <i> Right now, most aren't even
 turned into food.</i> <i> The real reason
 to worry about GMOs</i> <i> isn't that
 they're unsafe to eat.</i> <i> It's how they're being
 used today.</i> Barbara:<i>
 It's the pesticides and
 the herbicides we worry about.</i> This is in no way
farming to feed people. Christophe:<i> And right now
 the agricultural practices</i> that some GMOs encourage
have demonized a technology that objectively could help
a lot of people. <i> That's part of why in 2013,</i> <i> anti-GMO activists
 in the Philippines</i> <i> destroyed a test field
 for golden rice,</i> setting public sector research
back by months. Vincent:<i>
 It's collapsing under
 its own weight.</i> <i> The technology
 is not producing</i> the promise that it said
it's going to feed the world
and all that stuff. Christophe:<i>
 The biggest tragedy of all
 would be if the GMOs</i> that could help people the most
fail because of concerns that don't have anything to do
with the technology itself. That's what
we should be worried about
when we worry about GMOs. Thank you so much for watching. For more episodes
of "Glad You Asked," you can click the link
to the right. And for more amazing
learning content on YouTube, go ahead and click the link
on the bottom right. Thanks again. <i> ( music playing )</i> Wait. That's the cable? I was expecting something
so much bigger. That's the internet. To get across the ocean,
nearly all internet traffic has to use a cable
like that one. - It's tiny.
  I'm so surprised.
- You're actually surprised. I know, I could tell.
Love it. All right, let's go get
some hard hats. Cleo:<i> If you're watching
 this YouTube video</i> <i> anywhere outside
 of the United State,</i> this is probably
how it's getting to you. <i> For most of us,
 the internet is virtual.</i> <i> It's made of Instagram posts
and e-mails and YouTube videos.</i> <i>But it's also a physical thing,</i> <i> and what it's made of
 and where it goes matters</i> <i>for how we use the internet now</i> <i> and who will be benefit
 in the future.</i> <i> So I want to know how does
 our internet really work</i> <i> and what comes next?</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> The decade I was born,
people were still learning
about the internet, and they didn't exactly
consider it crucial. But, you know,
I think about this. What about this
internet thing? What the hell
is that exactly? And they call it
the World Wide Web. You can e-mail anyone. What the hell is e-mail? Man: Can you believe
what's possible these days? Conversations
through your computer. Cleo: But now it seems we can't
even function without it. Jobs require online
applications. Parents around
the country know that their kids can't get
an adequate education without internet access. I mean, people tweeting
that they needed to be rescued
and a boat came in. It's truly been life saving. The internet has
become essential to us, but a lot of us
still don't know how it works. Okay, I need you
to close your eyes. - All of us?
- Just trust me.
  Just close your eyes. Yeah, for real.
I'm serious.
Close your eyes. What's the craziest thing
she could show us - when we open our eyes?
- ( laughs ) - I hope it's kittens.
- Okay, now you can open them. ( screams ) - Joss: Tiny people!
- Alex: They're us. Christophe:
It's tiny us. So I know that there are three
major parts of the internet. We are on this outer ring.
They call it the last mile, but really it's the first
and last mile. So it's the texts we send, the notifications we receive,
the apps we use. Everything we do to connect
or receive information
from the internet happens in this first
and last mile. And we are inside... the Vox office. Also out in this outer ring
are houses. - You guys wanna help me
  put these down?
- Yes. - Trees.
- So all of the-- all of the trees
and all of the houses, all Wi-Fi,
which uses routers somewhere in our office
or somewhere in your home, and all cell service, which means that
you're paying a cell tower a little bit further away, but still pretty close by. All this wireless technology
uses radio waves to send signals into
and out of the internet. I'm gonna show you
how this works. But first,
I'm gonna take a selfie. Perfect. Okay. So this is our selfie.
I-- ( laughs ) - Joss, you've nailed that face.
- Yeah, it's my go-to. So I'm just gonna send this
to you via e-mail. - Typical e-mail.
- Typical e-mail. - There it is.
- Boom. - Ta-da.
- So my goal is to figure out how my e-mail got
from my phone to yours. In order for my e-mail
to get from here to here, my phone takes that photo and cuts it up - into more manageable packets.
- No! - We've been decapitated.
- Just-- - Christophe: Just me.
- Just you. - So, imagine each packet
  like a letter in an envelope.
- Uh-huh. So, each envelope
gets a header, which is a little bit more
information that includes-- - Christophe: Where it's from.
- Where it's from
  and where it's going to, and a bunch of other things
that we're not going
to talk about. So the format of each header
follows a set of rules, and you can think
about these rules like the rules
of the online postal system. How everything is packaged
and sent and received
on the internet. So you've probably
heard people say that
everything that happens in our computer
is ones and zeros. - Right? Binary.
- I have. Yeah. Cleo:
Which we can think of as a kind of Morse code
your computer understands. And everything that you send
over the internet - is also binary.
- Mm-hmm. Christophe:
( gasps ) What? - Ta-da!
- When did this happen? - What?
- I do magic now. - Okay.
- Incredible. So, each one or zero is a bit and eight bits is a byte. So, if this photo
was 1.1 megabytes that's 8,800,000 ones
and zeros. So, somehow
these binary ones and zeros have to get onto radio waves
to be transported - to the router, right?
- Exactly. Yes. - Okay.
- And that's where
  I got stuck. So, I called up
Sundeep Rangan, who specializes in
computer engineering at NYU. How does a wave carry
binary information? Ah, that is a very good
question. So, the simplest thing
you could do is every time you want
to transmit, say, a zero, you could transmit
one frequency. And every time you want
to transmit a one, you transmit
a different frequency. And then as long
as the receiver can detect which frequency it is,
it can know it's a one or zero. That's actually called
frequency modulation. Is it also fair then to say that at its most basic,
a cell phone is a radio? Sundeep:
It is a radio. It is absolutely a radio. Okay, so waves
with binary information have to get from my phone
to the router. But then at the router,
they have to be turned
into something else that can go out
the back of that device along cables to get
to their next location. Depending on what
the wire is made of, it's either gonna be
pulses of electricity if the wire is copper,
or pulses of laser light. Sundeep:
So, it's a laser
and it just turns on when there's a one,
it turns off when it's zero. So, faster than this. - A little bit faster than that.
- Faster than this? So our photo went
from binary to radio waves - to little flashes
  of laser light, right?
- Yes. Where does it go after that? We're about to find out, but I'm gonna take Alex. - You're not taking me?
- No. It's his turn. I gotta go. Ooh. So, the wires out
of the back of our router connect to other wires
inside out office, which are owned by our
internet service provider - or ISP.
- Alex: Okay. And they're responsible
for looking at the header of each of those envelopes and figuring out
the most efficient route to get to its next location,
which is an internet hub. - Alex: And where would that be?
- Cleo: Right there. That's an internet hub. - Alex: This old building?
- Cleo: Yeah. - All right, let's go.
- It looks just like every other office building
I've ever seen. Greg Sisk: Well, it started as
Western Union's headquarters. So, it supported telegraph
operators back in the day, and it's migrated to today where it's supporting
the internet - here in lower Manhattan.
- That's poetic. So all those wires all need
to come to a place like this to connect between networks. So, for our example, our ISP
in the office has a network. And AT&T, which is
Christophe's cell provider,
has a network. And in order for my e-mail
to get from my phone into Christophe's phone, all of those networks have
to send those ones and zeros across those wire pathways. There's so much that happens in that split second
that you connect. So there's really
no such thing as a cloud or any type of magnanimous-- - The cloud is a marketing term.
- Yeah. Cleo: The thing that
I find really amazing is that, like, my e-mail is one
of the millions of messages flowing through these cables. That feels really abstract,
but it's actually-- there's a message
to somebody's mom and there's
a college application and there's a job offer. And there's a dank meme
in here somewhere. <i> ( music playing )</i> Okay, so my e-mail became
a series of waves of light that travels over the tubes
of the internet. But what if I wanted to send it
somewhere really far away? Somewhere on the other side
of the world? We're in
Newington, New Hampshire,
to go to a factory that's gonna show us
how the internet works
at long distances. <i> We're headed
 into the third layer,
 the internet backbone.</i> Oh, that's the cable highway. What's the cable highway? Cleo:<i>
 That's where the cables go</i> <i> from the factory down
 to the dock.</i> <i>The company we're gonna go see,</i> <i> SubCom, is one of the top four
 submarine cable providers</i> <i> in the world.</i> There's the ship. - All right.
- Hi. - Hi. I'm Alysia.
- Hi. I'm Cleo. - So nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. Alysia:
This is the SubCom Decisive. She is a custom-built
cable installation and maintenance vessel. She's 139 meters long, which is about 450 feet. - Wow.
- Yeah. Cleo:<i> The engineering and
 material science at work here</i> <i> are incredibly complex.</i> But the basic process
is actually really simple. Light goes in
on one side of the ocean and comes out on the other. So, as the Decisive moves
across the ocean, the internet cable
is gonna come out the back and be laid down behind it. And sometimes it's gonna
be buried in the ocean floor by that machine right there. But most of the time
it's just gonna lay there on the bottom of the ocean. So, these are the two types
of cable that we have,
the two basic types. So this one, this is called
lightweight cable. So that's the one
that we would use
in the middle of the ocean. And then this piece
is the stuff that we use the plow to install
and actually bury. And the cable is engineered
to be super strong
in a lot of ways, but it is also very delicate
in a lot of other ways.  Cleo:<i> The wires that carry
 the light waves themselves</i> <i> are typically made
 of fiberglass,</i> <i> literally just
 a continuous strand of glass</i> <i>about the size of a human hair.</i> Why is it that there are
so few fibers? We're working on trying
to put more fibers
inside the cable to get more data
into each fiber to make it so that we can send more
information than what
we already have. <i> ( music playing )</i> Whoa! - So that's the cable tank.
- Whoa. Slow, slow.
We got the pipe.
We got the pipe. Alysia:
Work it over.
Work it over. What we're doing
is we're loading it
into the tank in a continuous spool, right? Is it, like, 10 tons,
50 tons? Oh, we're loading
ten tons in a day. Cleo:
Oh, my God. Cool. Alysia: It's gonna end up being
about 60 days of plowing. - Wow.
- Yeah.  Alysia:<i> So, 70 days total
 to prep and install it.</i> Okay, on the highway you have
two minutes until cable starts. What do you want? Cleo:<i> What blows me away
 is just how much</i> <i>hard physical labor is required
 to make the internet work.</i> Thank you. <i> The craziest thing
 is that this cable</i> <i> is one of about 400
 exactly like it</i> <i> that create a web
 around the Earth.</i> - Oh.
- Wow! So we're just gonna lay down the undersea cables
of the internet so that we can see
where they go. Christophe, you get Africa, and I'll give you
part of Europe. Joss: I love the one
that goes across
the Great Lakes. Cleo: You guys wanna see
what the internet
actually looks like? - Yeah, totally do.
- Okay. - Whoa.
- Wow. - Whoa!
- That's crazy. Oh, there's, like,
all this metal in here. Seems like a shark
could take a bite out
of that pretty easily. - I was gonna say
  the same thing.
- I'm so happy you said that. - Does that happen?
- Yes. So there's this video
of a shark biting a cable like this
of the internet. - Oh, there he is.
- He's a big boy. Big boy. Nom. - Oh, doesn't taste good.
- Oh, that probably
  hurt his teeth. - I know, poor guy.
- He didn't like it. So, after that video
went viral in 2014, the Internet Cable
Protection Committee, released this report
that has my favorite title
of any report of all time, which is
"Sharks are not the Nemesis
of the Internet." The vast majority of faults
are caused by human activity. - It's, like,
  fishing, anchors.
- Anchors. - Drilling. Yeah.
- Stuff like that. Woman:<i>
 The kingdom of Tonga</i> <i> has faced a cell phone
 and internet crisis</i> <i> after a fault in a fiber optic
 submarine cable</i> cut its main connection
with the world. Cleo: In January 2019,
experts believe that an oil tanker
dragged an anchor across
the seabed here, which of course caused a really
big problem for Tonga. What is the problem?
If it's in land, when it's in land,
it's all in land in Fiji,
a quick fix. But if it's in the water?
Ooh-ya, ooh-ya, ooh-ya. It's gonna take a long,
long time. And it took 13 days
to get the internet back. - 13 days.
- Long days and nights. That's a long time. So if you live in one of these
heavily connected places like the United States or many,
many other parts of the world, it is very, very unlikely that an anchor cutting
a part of your internet is gonna interrupt
your service. But what happened in Tonga
does call attention to how important
this infrastructure is and how much we rely on it. I feel like, I mean,
I've never lived in a time when all of these tools
were not part of my daily life. It's kind of sad
that it's not something
that's available to everyone. Yeah, exactly. There are lots
of people that still don't have reliable internet
access in the first place. <i> I wanted to find out more
 about how we could actually
 solve that problem.</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> So we're here in Nevada
to see a company that's helping more people
get access to the internet. But before we get there,
I have some maps to show you. This is a basic map
of the internet backbone
in the United States. You can tell just
by looking at this map why it might be that
some people have a hard time getting low cost,
high speed internet. Companies aren't as incentivized
to lay fiber optic cabling where there are fewer people
there to pay them for it. The same applies
to low income areas. This map shows the areas
that researchers call uneconomic for companies in red, meaning that the typical
monthly costs exceed the expected
monthly revenue. In many of these red areas,
people only have one or two options for
internet service providers, meaning that those service
providers can jack up the costs. The darker the country,
the more people there are paying
for internet service. So there's a lot of variety
around the world and even within countries
in terms of who has access to the internet
and at what cost, and that has a huge impact
on people. <i> ( music playing )</i> If you haven't heard about 5G, get ready for a faster
internet connection. Man: 5G could end up
being 100 times faster than what we have now. Instead of having a cell tower
every few miles, - Woman: Yeah.
- 5G requires that
  we literally need an antenna
on every square block. Okay, hold on. What really is 5G
and why would it be so fast? Well, remember
those radio waves? One of the major innovations
of 5G is the ability to use higher frequency waves. Because at higher frequencies,
you can pack more information into each wave.
Here's the catch. At higher frequencies, it's
easier to block those waves. I mean, visible light is
very high frequency and I can block it with my hand. That's not a problem
for fiber optic cables because they're basically
long glass laser light tunnels. But 5G has to reach you
wirelessly wherever you are, so that would mean
they would need a lot more physical infrastructure. Of course, new infrastructure
costs money. Companies have
the same incentives for where to put 5G
that they had before. Cities, not rural areas, rich communities,
not poor ones. So 5G could be an exciting way
to improve internet service for people who have
fast access already. But the tech required
means it's unlikely to help
people who don't. At least not any time soon. <i> ( music playing )</i> Cleo:<i>
 We're here to see Loon,</i> <i> and what they do
 is they send balloons</i> <i> into the stratosphere
 to provide internet access</i> <i> to people below radio waves.</i> Loon is a connectivity company that's really focused
on the unconnected
and the under-connected. Cleo:<i>
 Loon is owned by Alphabet,
 which also owns Google</i> <i> and YouTube,
 who funded this show.</i> <i> but Loon didn't have any say
 over our editorial.</i> So, they can't actually
launch a balloon today, because there was
a huge storm yesterday, which kind of also
goes to show how finicky
a lot of this stuff is. But what you have to imagine is that there's
a balloon in there and then it launches
from that large red thing
up into the sky, and it uses stratospheric winds to navigate
to its next location, which could be on
the other side of the world. <i> ( music playing )</i> So, you can see a number
of balloons over here in South America,
and you can see what altitude they're at,
like, at 60,000 feet, and basically
where they're flying. <i> ( music playing )</i> This is the hatchery.
This is where we build and test all
of our flight systems before they
go out to launch. - So this is the balloon.
- This is the balloon. And then the part that flies
with the balloon-- - It's this flight system
  here and the solar panels.
- Got it. And the brains of it
are in that box... - This box?
- ...that's being cooled by
  those fans right now. And so what we do
is we put a ground station in a point of vantage
where it can see the sky. And then from there,
it can actually talk to
one of our balloons. <i> Our balloons can talk
 to each other</i> <i> and they're talking
 via radio waves.</i> <i> And then from one
 of those balloons</i> <i> that's over the top
 of your phone,</i> <i> there's transmit
 and receive frequencies</i> <i> that are going down
 to your phone.</i> What are some
of the best examples that you've been most
excited about where-- Yeah, when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico
and the Caribbean Islands, we were able to fly balloons
over the top of Puerto Rico. And within a couple weeks,
we were able to serve about a quarter million
subscribers. - Wow.
- And it's enough to know that a user on the ground was able to get out
a text message or an e-mail or a note to a loved one
or something like that. <i> ( music playing )</i> Amazon has Project Kupier
and SpaceX has Starlink. It seems like
this is becoming something
that more and more - companies are focusing on.
- Yeah, absolutely. The more the merrier,
because there's a lot
of people to connect. Cleo: These are all space
or near space systems that use radio waves to get
people access to the internet. And that's one reason
why it's unlikely that they're gonna replace
good old cables. Radio waves and laser light and all of these different
types of technology that help us get access
to the internet all in the end
need to work together. We don't seek to replace fiber
or replace satellites. They're very complementary
technologies. Going into space
is still a new thing. I'm pretty confident
about my job prospects for at least the next while. The internet isn't a luxury.
We don't just want to connect. We need to to be a part
of this massive, crucial, sometimes infuriating
global community. So as you check the news
or message a friend or watch a YouTube video,
consider this, our connections
have never been virtual. They're physical,
and they're still very much
a work in progress. Hey. Want more episodes
of "Glad You Asked"? You can find them here, and you can find more
from YouTube Learning here. "Glad You Asked,"
"YouTube Learning." "Glad You Asked,"
"YouTube Learning." Alex:<i> I was supposed
 to meet a friend here today,</i> but I think he's ten minutes
late right now and I don't see him,
so I hope I didn't get ghosted. <i> ( ringing )</i> Operator:<i>
 Your call has been forwarded</i> <i> to an automated
 voice messaging system.</i> Alex:<i> Almost everyone knows what
 it feels like to be lonely.</i> ( groans ) <i> And in 2018, nearly half</i> <i> the U.S. population reported</i> feeling lonely regularly... Woman:<i>
 Loneliness is a major threat</i> <i> to Americans' well-being.</i> ...leading some experts
to say that we're actually in the middle
of a loneliness epidemic. Woman:<i> This rises to the level
 of true public health concern.</i> And we often make
assumptions about the things
that make us lonely. <i> But research has shown
 that the amount of time that
 we spend with other people...</i> Did this make you less lonely? <i> ...and the quality
 of our social skills</i> <i>don't really make a difference.</i> Loneliness may be a greater fear
than death. <i> So why do so many
 of us feel lonely?</i> And what should we do
about it? <i> ( music playing )</i> So, how many friends
do you have?
Like, close friends. Probably, like, 10 or 15
really close friends, - who I talk to weekly,
  at least.
- Wow. Christophe:
But I do feel that changing. - Got out of college
  pretty recently...
- Ahh, I see. ...and a lot of these people I'm starting to not see
that much anymore. Alex:
When I got out of college,
I would say I had - eight to nine good friends.
- Yeah. And out of those
eight to nine,
only one is left. As a guy myself,
I'm more reluctant
to reach out - and put myself out there.
- Yeah. Christophe:<i> From the studies
 that I've read,</i> <i> there isn't
 a conclusive difference</i> <i> in loneliness rates
 between men and women.</i> But there is some evidence
that women are more comfortable admitting that they're lonely. Alex: And loneliness is
something I've dealt with - all my life.
- Yeah. So I'm gonna take it on.
I'm gonna go online, see if I can make
new friends using an app, and maybe that's gonna
help out with the loneliness. I swiped through,
like, 200 dudes. - Really? And he was the one?
- And he was the one. So I'm going to a restaurant
to meet with Maximilian. - I'm a little nervous.
- What are you nervous about? - Will we click?
- Right. Just be yourself. Smile. Not like that.
That's-- - See you, dude.
- Stay dry. Hey. You're Alex, right? - Are you Maximilian?
- Yes. - Good to meet you, man.
- Good to meet you, man. - After you.
- Thanks, brother. Yeah, dating is normal
using the app. But making friends
using the app is kind of-- people see it as weird,
I guess. Everything about
what we're doing is weird. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What do you do
when you're feeling lonely? I don't know.
I can't answer that, dude.
I don't know. I just feel that,
to be totally honest. A couple weeks ago,
I was really vibing
with this guy 'cause we shared
so much in common. I was just like,
"Hey, we should hang out," like in the middle
of a conversation. And he was kind of
taken back by it,
I could tell. Like, he wasn't disgusted,
but I just feel like
he'd never been-- - nobody's ever
  said that to him.
- Oh, no! Like, "I've never heard
somebody say that before." And it takes a bit of time
to break down those
barriers, you know? It is a little more difficult because it's, like,
are you gonna give up
that masculinity by becoming friends
with this person? That's the weird thing, is I have no trouble
making friends. I'm a very open person. I really just want
a tight-knit group of friends. It takes a lot of time
to get out and build
those relationships. All right,
good meeting you. - It was good meeting you, Alex.
- I'll be in touch. The term "loneliness epidemic" suggests that this is
some modern crisis that is just starting
to effect us right now. But the roots of this problem actually go back much further
than you might think. <i> In the late 1700s</i> <i> at the start of
 the Industrial Revolution</i> <i> in Europe
 and the United States,</i> <i> people started to move out
 of small communities</i> <i> and into cities
 to work in factories.</i> It's around then
that you first start to see the use of the word loneliness
in English printed works. Loneliness became the first word to describe the experience
of being alone. Before that, the closest thing
that we had was "oneliness." But that just referred
to the physical state
of being alone. It wasn't until the 1970s that experts started
to describe loneliness as a public health crisis, like in these American
newspaper clippings where they describe
a "Loneliness Epidemic
In Our Time." All these headlines are talking
about this loneliness epidemic in the same way
that you would see media coverage
talk about this today. So, for example,
this one says, "There is an epidemic
of loneliness in America today
that drives people to seek companionship in laundromats,
shopping centers, Weight Watchers and bars." That's from 1973. Articles like these
were reacting to the start of some major societal shifts. Like, when we get married
in the U.S., people have been getting married later and later since the 1950s. And young unmarried people
report feeling more lonely than their married peers. And organized community groups
like church have become
less prominent than ever. Today, a quarter
of the U.S. population is unaffiliated
with organized religion versus just
five percent in 1972. And those who attend religious
services less frequently
tend to be lonelier. So we can't say
that we're lonelier than ever, because we haven't really
had a consistent way to measure loneliness over time. And we can't say
whether those social changes have caused higher rates
of loneliness today. But we do know that more people are spending big chunks
of their lives isolated from
close-knit communities. That's important
because our brains are wired to want those social circles. There's one theory that could
help us understand the impact that has on loneliness. There's this idea
that there is a cognitive limit on the number of people
that humans can have, basically, a meaningful,
social relationship with. That idea is known as
Dunbar's number. The guy who came up with this,
his name is Robin Dunbar. What he did to find that number
is he basically looked at average brain size
of different primates and average social group size. And he made sort of trend line
based off of that and extrapolated that humans
probably are meant to be in a group of about 150. And when he double-checked
that with modern hunter-gatherer societies
at the time, it totally checked out.
The average number
was about 148. - Hunter-gatherer societies
  were usually 150 people?
- Small. - Yeah.
- Huh. But Dunbar's number
is really a set of numbers, so there are a whole bunch
of subgroups within this. The first number is five. This is kind of like
the family and friends that you were absolutely
closest with. You tend spend about 40%
of your social time with these five people. I wanna know
who these people are... - Really?
- ...for you. Yeah. You're gonna make me
namecheck them? So then, moving up
from this level is what Dunbar calls sort of your sympathy group
of 15 people. These are the people
I would allow to see me cry. One level up from that
is what Dunbar calls
the close network. So these are people
that you would probably invite
to a big dinner party. It's interesting.
I would put in this category
people I see every day. - So I fit in this one.
  Is that what you're saying?
- Yeah. - Yeah, you go here.
- Cool, cool, cool, cool. And in the last level,
coming back to 150, it's sort of the max number
of meaningful relationships
that you have. - These are my casual friends.
- Mm. For most of human history, you would've lived
with these people for almost your entire life. If I didn't live
with my boyfriend - or if this person
  lived out of town...
- Mm-hmm. I would not in my daily life
see any of the people
that I was closest to. Yeah, which is crazy. - Which is crazy.
- It's important to note that you can feel lonely
at any one of these levels. And the fact that we're not
interacting with a lot of these people
face-to-face every day does have an actual impact
on those relationships. Dunbar said
that emotional proximity
decreases by 15% every year that you don't see someone
face-to-face. Which means that
it just takes a few years for someone who might've been
in your top five, say, in college,
to go all the way to sort of the outer limits
of your 150 people. I'm gonna leave this shoot
and just book a flight - to see my best friend.
- Exactly. So, if these
all represent different
flavors of loneliness, how do people deal
with each of them today? That's what
we want to figure out. We're here in Branford,
Connecticut talking to a group
of people called Romeos. <i> That stands for
 Retired Old Men Eating Out.</i> <i> There's a really strong appeal
 to groups like this.</i> <i> Research shows older men
 are more at risk</i> <i> of social isolation
 when compared to older women.</i> <i> A lot of these guys miss
 the connections that they had</i> <i> either growing up or in school
 or in their working life.</i> <i> And they want to find a way</i> <i> to maintain those kinds of
 friendships in retirement.</i> When I retired,
I tried to get in a few things, but nothing seemed to click. Most of the wives
have book clubs, - bridge clubs...
- Yes. Yes. - ...and garden clubs.
- Garden clubs. And this group
was just perfect. We just get together
and we shoot the breeze, and it's a bunch
of very nice people. Are there moments
for all of you that stand out that kind of brought you here? Sometimes,
it's a relative will say, "I'm concerned about
so and so being lonely." We get those kinds of contacts all the time through
our website. I became involved
with the Romeo group through my granddaughter who did research
and contacted Frank. Because of my loneliness, she convinced me
to join the group, and I'm glad I did. And you weren't sure at first. - You came very reluctantly
  to the first group.
- Exactly. Loneliness may be a greater fear
than death. During the day,
even if you're a widowed guy, you'll find things to do. But when you're
home at night all by yourself and you close that door, no matter how much family
you have, there's some point in time
when you are all by yourself, and you won't know
that sense of loneliness
till you're there. It's just-- there's a void. There's a part of you
that's been taken from you and there's no way
to replace it. So, you know, a place like this
takes the edge off of it. - This is kind of
  a depressing conversation.
- Yes. But normally when
we get together,
we have a bunch of yuks. <i> ( music playing )</i> Oh, my God.
Thank you. What? - What are you doing?
- I feel like I can't. - This is cheating.
- Oh, how nice. Speaking,
I guess to me, as a-- Young whippersnapper? - Young whippersnapper.
- Okay, go ahead. Are there things
that stand out as advice to how to build strong
social connections that last
throughout your life? I think it's recognizing that
that's not the reality. - Each change over time
  is a transition.
- It's fluid. Each transition is a potential
for loneliness or a void or whatever
you wanna label it as. So I think it's recognizing
that's gonna happen and it's in you
to make the difference. <i> ( music playing )</i> - Christophe:
  Do you feel lonely?
- I'm doing good recently, but sometimes I feel
a loneliness so intense that my rib cage hurts
and it just feels like I don't even want to get up
in the morning or move. As bad as it is,
I don't think you're alone - in this by any means.
- Yeah. It's something that
we'll all encounter
at some point. - It can affect anybody.
- Yeah. So we all feel
lonely sometimes, but where did
this feeling come from? There's this evolutionary theory from neuroscientist
John Cacioppo who says that loneliness
actually played an important role in
the survival of our species. And Joss is gonna
help us out with that. - Hey, Alex. Good.
- How's it going? We're gonna take you on a trip
through prehistoric times to show you how
we used to have to survive. So, homo sapiens didn't
survive because we were fast or strong or equipped
with natural weapons. What they did have
is the ability to cooperate and communicate
with others in their group. Hey, guys.
Let's cooperate. So, those protective
social bonds help to guarantee us safety, shelter, food, and the ability to procreate. - Aww, a baby.
- Yeah, a baby. What's up? The pain of loneliness
acted like a stimulus. It alerted us when
our social bonds were at risk and we were potentially
going to be isolated. Guys, where are you? So that feeling actually
triggers physical responses just like other needs
in your body. So, like, when you're being
swiped left on, it's just like...
( grunts ) That's loneliness
hitting you in the face. So it was advantageous
to feel uncomfortable when your social bonds
were at risk because people who felt that
were more likely to survive. Right? If you're
super comfortable alone, you're probably in danger. Yeah. Your body,
and more specifically, your brain are trying
to keep you alive. So if you'll turn to the side,
I'll show you how that works. We now know that the pain
of social rejection activates the same part
of your brain as physical pain. Loneliness
is a motivational force
coded in our DNA. Just like the pain
of hunger tells us to eat, loneliness tells us to seek
the safety of companionship. Huh. When you start to feel
the stress of loneliness, What? Your body releases
stress hormones like cortisol, which make us more alert, and epinephrine,
which constricts
your blood vessels and increases blood pressure. Your heart beats faster to send
blood throughout the body. This is what's called
the flight or fight response. - You may have heard of it.
- Mm-hmm. It's triggered
by the sympathetic
nervous system and it's an immediate reaction. It's like your body
reminding you - that you need your people.
- Yeah, exactly. All of these
physiological reactions
like hyper-vigilance and restless sleep
could drive you to reconnect with your group. But the problem is
while these reactions haven't changed all that much
since early human history, their context actually has. - Make sense?
- It does. It's not like
you're gonna run out of food because no one's
texting you back. - Right.
- However, this does
  have tremendous health effects
on your body. What we found was being more
socially connected, was associated
with a 50% reduced risk for premature mortality. The effect of lacking
social connection carried a similar risk to smoking up to
15 cigarettes per day. Loneliness and depression
are not the same thing, but being lonely
can put you at increased risk
for depression. Alex:<i> When you feel lonely,
 it also affects you socially</i> in ways that prevent you
from going out more. So people who are lonely
are actually more sensitive
to social cues. Those who are chronically lonely
also tend to interpret neutral kinds
of social situations as more threatening. Wow. So your brain
is scrambled, and then as you're
trying to reach out, you're maybe
reading things wrong. <i> ( phone rings )</i> Alex: I've been online,
I've been offline searching to try to make friends. Operator:<i>
 Your call has been forwarded</i> <i> to an automated
 voice messaging system.</i> So, Chase was supposed to
be here 15 minutes ago. Oh, he's calling. Hello? All right. I thought he ghosted me, but he just--
he just has train issues. - There he is.
- Oh, hi. - Hello, everyone.
- So glad you made it. Thank you so much.
I'm happy I made it, too. Woman: So, we're gonna start off
doing a small gradation. So it goes from dark to light. How do you twist your hair? Actually, I use a sponge. I'm kinda losing
some hair up in here. Like, it's getting
kind of thin up in here. - Black castor oil.
- Yeah, they also say
  it's good for beards. - See, my beard grows in
  kind of patchy, so I was--
- Mine, too, yeah. Like, how many close
emotional friends do you have? - Four.
- Four. And out of the four,
three of them is family. - Do you ever feel lonely?
- At times. It's crazy because the way
that the world has played it is that black men can't be
openly to one another. Like, a female can say,
"Girl, you look great. You got a nice body,
nice shape." Guys can't say,
"Yo, homey, I think that haircut looks nice on you.
You're a handsome guy." I haven't talked to
another black guy about hair - in a while.
- See? Like, I find trouble
making friends who have similar
interests to me, but also who are,
you know, the same as me. So this recent report came out
from this group called AEI. And they found that
54% of black Americans are lonely every now and then
compared to 36% of whites. And they say that's because
we all have our own communities and friend groups,
and we have unique
social needs. - Mm-hmm.
- So, when you're
  not interacting with people who are
from these groups, whether it's racial,
religious, otherwise, - that can lead to loneliness.
- Yes. Um, I'm about ready to show you.
How are you doing over there? Uh, you just promise me
you won't laugh. I won't laugh, no. All right, one, two, three. All right. Yours looks phenomenal. Mine looks like
a kindergartener did it. I like your clouds
a lot more than mine. Look at the bird.
Like, that's the Lone Ranger. - Where's his friends?
- Just one bird. He's lonely. I guess he is. We're gonna fix
his little wing. - So then they flying together.
- All right. We are going to talk to Delilah. If you have listened to
late night radio in the U.S., you probably are familiar
with her voice.  Delilah:<i> Welcome to
 the "Delilah Show."</i> <i> How are you tonight?</i> <i> Is there someone special
 on your heart?</i> <i> So, you're 21 years old
 and you've never been</i> in a intimate,
loving relationship. <i> I'm Delilah,
 and I do the "Delilah Show,"</i> <i> which is a nationally
 syndicated radio show</i> <i> heard in about 200 countries
 around the world.</i> I've been doing this
a long time. How would you describe
what is special about the format of radio
that lets you have
conversations like these? So, when people are
at home listening to me or driving in the car
listening to me, I'm just this sort of voice
in the night. So I can be whatever
they imagine me to do. And it allows me
to connect with people in a way that I don't think
I could in any other medium. Do you feel like
the kinds of conversations that you with people
on the radio have changed? People today, they don't have
that inner circle. The one thing
that I have noticed the last 10 or 15 years
that has changed is the level of desperation
I hear in people's voices. So I'm listening
for what they're not saying as much as I'm listening
for what they are saying. And I believe people
are not saying, "I hurt." What do you tell
someone who's struggling
with loneliness? My first question is
who can you turn to? And if they say,
"I don't have anybody," I'm, like, okay,
therein lies the problem. When you feel lonely,
you become more isolated. When you become more isolated,
you start cutting yourself off. And after a while,
loneliness begets loneliness. I tell them they need
to form a real relationship with somebody who needs them. Just step outside
of your comfort zone and pretend you're Delilah
and ask a few questions. Alex:<i>
 So why are we so lonely?</i> <i> At the most basic level,</i> it's our body's way
of telling us we need to reach out
and connect with other people. That was true
of our prehistoric ancestors and it's still true
for us today. I told one
of my close male friends
that I loved them. It was, like, the end
of our phone conversation. I was like,
"Hey, I love you" And he was kind of, like,
very taken back by it, but he was like,
"I love you, too. I don't know why
I've never said that <i> that to another male friend."</i> Christophe:<i> But the time
 that we're living in</i> <i> also presents us
 with more opportunities</i> to chose our own tribes. Delilah:<i> We need to feel like
 we're a part of something.</i> <i> A part of a family,
 a part of a village.</i> Something bigger than ourselves. So you pick the people
that you really wanna be with and you'll never be lonely. - That's what--
- I like that. But if you are ever
feeling overwhelmed by this, and I know I have, it happens, there's actually links
in the description that you can check out
for help. - Hey, how's it going?
- Good. <i> Christophe:
 The thing to remember is that
 of all different kinds</i> <i> of emotional pain
 that you can go through,</i> <i>loneliness is the one kind that
 you can't solve by yourself.</i> <i> We need other people,
 and other people need us.</i> Thanks so much
for watching that video. A lot of work went into it. If you wanna see more
"Glad You Asked" content, check out the videos
over here on the right. And if you just wanna see
more from "YouTube Learning," over here, we got more for you. Enjoy. I think it was watching
makeup videos maybe five or six years ago when I started to feel like
my eyebrows were insufficient. So I went out and I bought
an eyebrow pencil, and then this happened. <i> All agreeing to scan millions
 of pages from books...</i> Oh, my God. <i> ...related to biodiversity.</i> I guess I did it wrong. So I watch these beauty vlogs,
and almost without fail, all of these beautiful women
with gorgeous, flawless skin
would mention the same thing. And finally I just cracked. I was like, what is a retinoid
and where can I buy one? So I have very minimal
beauty routine, I think. I mean, okay, I do go get
my eyelashes done and I get the Botox
and I get waxed. You're right,
there are maintenance-- there are maintenance things. How many times
have I gone into work and people are like,
"Emma, you look
really tired today." I'm just like,
well, I guess I didn't put on
enough concealer, and that's frustrating. I feel like the only reason
I care about the way I look is 'cause I want to impress. Honestly-- like,
being honest about it, it's 'cause I want to
impress on social media. Cleo:<i>
 Over the past few years,
 research shows</i> that more and more women are
saying that they feel beautiful. But at the same time,
the vast majority of women say they feel pressure
to be beautiful. So what effect is this online
beauty culture having on us? If we have more choices and more
information than ever before, why do I feel so trapped? <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> Baby Katie Holmes. Joss:
November 1997. So here's how makeup
was marketed in the '90s. "So breakthrough.
So new. So sheer." So, it's, like,
you had to read copy, - but no one read that.
- Yeah. Today, if there's a YouTube
video and someone's like, "I've used this product,
I know it works,
here's how you do it." - Way more compelling.
- Way more compelling. The data shows
that people interact with, meaning like and comment on
influencers' videos and posts 32 times more often
than they do on brands. I talked to Tiffany Gill
about this. She's a professor and an author - who writes about the history
  of beauty culture.
- Huh. I think the digital aspect
is what really has changed. What it has done
is really democratized what beauty
and beauty culture is, <i> so that the people
 who are consumers</i> <i> now have a lot more control</i> <i> over what constitutes beauty
 and beauty culture.</i> I mean, first of all,
anybody can make content. And when they do,
they end up talking about - a lot more than just makeup.
- Hmm. - Hey, guys.
- Hi. - Hi, guys.
- Assalamu alaikum. Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to my channel. The shade match is pretty good. I clearly have imperfect skin, but it doesn't mean
that I don't love my face. I did not have a good
high school experience at all. Most of it kind of stemmed
around my skin tone. Actually, all of it stemmed
around my skin tone. I wanna talk to you guys
about my body, about the fact that I'm fat. If you need someone to talk to, I'm always here.
You can always DM me. I love you guys a lot. I'll see you soon. Bye. Aww. I wanna be friends
with all of them. - Right?
- They're so great. The reason why I think
we're beginning to see more women sort of defining themselves
as beautiful, <i> is because
 they're able to find</i> <i> these kind of
 micro communities</i> that affirm their brand
of beauty. <i> And as much
 as selfies get a bad rap,</i> there's something
very libratory about being able to show
yourself to the world and say,
"Look, I'm beautiful."  Cleo:<i> At every level
 in these magazines,</i> <i> somebody was making
 a specific decision</i> <i> about who gets to be there.</i> <i> Not just the editors</i> <i> and the gatekeepers
 at these institutions,</i> <i> but, like,
 the agents of the models.</i> <i> Whereas now,
 it's not as though somebody's
 making a decision</i> <i> about who gets to
 make a video.</i> You know, I think Instagram's
actually been really,
really important for the ability to kind of
follow people who look like you. Because the reality is
that not everyone is, like, a skinny blonde with big boobs. Woman:<i>
 I follow a lot of women
 on Instagram</i> that are in my age bracket. And that makes me feel good because before,
we were invisible. In my friend group,
I was always the fat one. Every other thought was like,
"How am I gonna lose weight?" It came to the point where I wasn't even
enjoying food. For me it was seeing all these
stunning curved models. That made me realize,
oh, I'm beautiful, too. We're going to IPSY
which is this beauty convention where people can interact with
their favorite beauty vloggers - and makeup brands.
- Let's do it. <i> ( music playing )</i> Joss:<i> If you look
 around this event,</i> <i> it's a really sort of
 exciting environment.</i> And we get to talk
to Gigi Gorgeous, <i> who is one of the biggest
YouTube beauty gurus out there.</i> - Hi. Nice to meet you. Gigi.
- I'm Joss. If the internet
hadn't come around, what do you think
beauty culture would be like? It really was very rare to see a boy in makeup
or, you know, a brand stepping behind
a transgender woman. I feel like the times
kind of pushed that along, but I also feel like
the internet did. Because along with these
beautiful, stunning looks that are being created
are also these stories that are being told
by the people doing them. I have felt
for a very long time now that I was a girl trapped
inside of a boy's body. I'm really excited just today
to talk about my mom. Ah! This literally
smells like her. <i> I think that that instantly
 kind of connects you in a way</i> <i> where it's no longer
 fan and talent.</i> It's literally family
and, like, friend.  Cleo:<i> And that's what
 the online community
 feels like sometimes,</i> <i> a group of friends
 all getting ready together</i> <i> and swapping tips.</i> Consumers are more informed
than they've ever been. <i> They can take these tools
 and change the way</i> <i> they present themselves
 to the world.</i> But if you look at
it another way, <i> then it's this constant cycle</i> <i> that ultimately
 is costing women</i> <i> big chunks of their paycheck,</i> <i> but also something
 that's more valuable,</i> which is the space
in their mind. Cleo: If you're like me, you're spending hours
on your phone every day. Last week I spent six
and a half hours on Instagram. Which means
we're constantly faced with images of other people to compare ourselves to. And a lot of the time,
with the advent of filters, those images are full of subtle,
little changes, like this skin smoother
I've been using. And if everyone around you is making subtle tweaks
to their face, it can warp
your understanding of yourself and how you fit in. If you're thinking, sure, but we've always compared
ourselves to pretty people. That's true, but there's
evidence to suggest it's even more
concerning online. <i> One study found
 it made women feel worse</i> <i> when they compared themselves</i> <i> to beautiful peers
 on social media</i> as opposed to
beautiful celebrities
in traditional media like magazines and in movies. Researchers think that's because
our peers on social media feel like more relevant
comparisons. They feel more like us. And then there's
all the likes and comments. Another study found that seeing
someone leave a compliment like, "You look amazing!" on a pretty woman's photo
on Instagram, made the viewer less happy
with their own body. I leave comments like that on
my friends' posts all the time, and I really didn't realize
it was having this effect. It makes sense that the more
we compare ourselves
to good-looking people, the more dissatisfied we are,
and the more beauty work it feels like
we have to do to keep up. And I should also say, I'm wearing makeup
on a professionally lit set. So, I have no high horse here. This says,
"Youth activating concentrate." Because there's
a 23-year-old inside me. You just have to activate it
with something like this. I do use this often. 'Cause it feels really good.
It's super cold. Cleo:
What is its objective? I'm sure it does nothing. Emma:<i>
 Skincare is really expensive.</i> My facial oils
are an investment, and it's just never-ending
in the name of self-care. I see these lines,
and they're just gonna
get worse and worse and worse. And I should actuall
y love them and accept them because they're lines
that are actually
the result of my life. But they really,
really bother me, and now it's the first thing
that I see. I see my boyfriend
just roll out of bed and take a shower
and go to work. And when I watch him do that I wonder, you know,
not why can't I do that, but why does it feel
so bad when I do? - Hello.
- Hey. So we're gonna talk
about the bigger context here. - Okay.
- Recently, a group
  of computer scientists figured out a way
to analyze the language that writers use when
they describe men and women in three and a half million
books in English. We're talking about both
nonfiction and fiction books. So what they did is they pulled
out the 200 adjectives that were most uniquely used
to describe men and women. And what they found
was that of those words, the ones used to describe women
were twice as likely - to be about their physical
  appearance or their bodies.
- Mm. Christophe:
Pretty, fair, beautiful, lovely, charming-- those are all kind of words
describing appearance. Whereas like faithful,
responsible, grand,
worthy, adventurous, these are all, like,
character judgments - of who someone actually is.
- Mm-hmm. And these are books
that were published
between the years 1500 and 2008. So what about today? Well, in 2017,
the Pew Research Center did a survey
of American adults, and they asked this really
interesting question, which was, "What traits do people
in our society value most in men
and in women?" - Okay.
- Now, this was
  an open-ended question, meaning people could
write anything. But you guys are gonna do the multiple choice version. What do you guys think
the top six responses were? Strength and toughness
I feel like is not gonna be on the female list
for what people value. - Yeah, that's gotta be
  off the list.
- And ambition. People hate those things
in women. Wow, it's just so hard
to listen to this. Just think of really
( bleep ) up-- You both have six down.
You good with them? All right, should Joss
and I rearrange? So the top answers
for women were physical attractiveness,
and then empathy, nurturing, and kindness. The top answers for men were honesty,
and morality, actually, and then second
was professional
and financial success. So those are adults. But maybe it's getting better
with the next generation. Well, last year
they did a survey
of American teenagers and they asked them
the same question, except for instead
of men and women, it was what does society
value most in girls and what does society
value most in boys? Okay, so, physical
attractiveness was at the top of the list for girls.
In fact, there was even more
consensus among teenagers than there was among adults
that this is what society values - in girls.
- I feel like I have noticed that our commenters
pay a lot of attention to how you two look
and not so much with us. - Yeah, we've noticed that, too.
- Cleo: Yeah. But I would say that, like,
mostly they're positive
about you guys. In so far as
positive comments about
our appearance are positive. A lot of that
is just so gross. It's gross,
and also we are trying
to look pretty on camera. - Right.
- So where does that leave us? Like, we are trying,
and we have makeup on. And I think that if someone
comments on this video
and says, you know, "Hey, you guys are talking
about these beauty norms and you're benefiting
directly from them," I think that's
a reasonable critique. And actually this is
a really widespread issue. There's a lot
of research that shows that they way a woman looks,
you know, her weight, how much makeup she wears, can affect things
like her earnings, and how her personality
is perceived. Alex:
It's kind of like... every aspect of your life you're getting stared at
and judged. And I think this all comes
from this cultural context that I've been telling
you guys about that dates back centuries, which is a world
that cares a lot about the insides of men
and the outsides of women. <i> And this is all causing
 what psychologist Renee Engeln</i> <i> calls beauty sickness.</i> It comes from a culture
that is absolutely obsessed with how women look. Man:<i> A woman's hair
 is like a work of art.</i> <i> It must have balance
 and composition.</i> Renee:<i> This culture
 that never misses a moment</i> <i> to comment on
 a woman's appearance,
 to criticize it.</i> - She looks quite, uh--
- She looks tired. She's under pressure.
She looks tired. Man:<i> "Look at that face.
 Can you imagine that</i> <i> the face of our next
 president?"</i> - That purple on you
  looks spectacular.
- Thanks. Renee:<i>
 To keep drawing out attention</i> <i> over and over again
 to how we look.</i> - I have a beautiful daughter.
- Two beautiful daughters. All:
My beautiful daughters. Jenny, you've lost
your baby weight
it looks like already. The world has watched you age.
Has that been a difficult
thing to live through? - You are that sort of poster
  child for aging gracefully.
- All: Aging gracefully. Renee:<i> And the minute
 your focus shifts to thinking
 about how you look,</i> <i> it did shift away
 from something else.</i> To me, that's where
the sickness is. And this guy who went to
the school down the street got on the bus
and he was like, "Oh, your legs are so hairy." And I was like,
"Oh, I guess they are." And I went home that day
and went and got a razor. I splashed it underneath
the running tap and I dragged it along my leg. I looked at it,
and I cleaned it off with my thumb
and I split my thumb open. I was super freaked out
about getting divorced. And one of my daughters,
who was eight at the time, said to me one day, "Why do you always
look so angry? You have so many lines
on your face." And I was really angry. She was not wrong.
And I had to deal with that. But I almost immediately
was like, "Oh, my God,
my face is falling apart." Everybody has a list. My ears stick out. I have this vein in my forehead
that only comes out when I smile really big. So sometimes
I worry about that before I smile
in a photograph. My bangs are awkward,
but I can't get rid of them because they're hiding
my forehead. I have these three chin hairs
that are very adventurous. And even though I'm really thin,
I have cellulite. Every time I feel insecure
about something, I guess I do something
to make up for it. Like, my eyebrows,
I feel insecure, I dyed it. For my ears, I feel insecure,
I got piercings. My eyelashes,
I got extensions. That's the truth. So, it seems like we're being
presented this endless list of things that we can do now
to beautify ourselves. - Expensive things.
- Expensive things. - Woman:<i> Eyelash extensions. </i>
- Man:<i> May be the new standard.</i> The fastest growing type
of cosmetic surgery--
butt implants. - Sparkle tattooing.
- The price ranges
  from $600 to $800. Microblading.
It's a form of permanent
cosmetic tattooing - for your eyebrows.
- The vampire facial uses
  your own blood on your face. And we're gonna show
you one of them. - This one.
- Oh-- - Face gym.
- It's a gym for your face. - For your face.
- It's a workout for your face. It does kind of scare me
because it reminds me
of, like, body image, like how they say
there's a skinny person
hiding beneath you. So maybe underneath this face there's a sculpted
chiseled chin in there. - Yeah.
- Oh, my God. - That's exactly it.
- That is the idea. - Are you guys ready?
- I think so. - Let's do it.
- Okay. See you in an hour. Yeah. It is Alex. - A-L-E-X. Clark.
- Uh-huh. - What does this headline mean?
- Work it. Don't fake it. Just, like,
a natural approach to,
you know, making your face look
the best that it can be. As opposed to makeup? Makeup, Botox filler. I mean, a lot of people
that come here do get both. So you wanna get started? - Yeah.
- Perfect. Going to the gym. So whatever you do,
go really intense. Oh, cardio. Ooh. Do you get facials or anything
done to your face often? - No. I never have.
- No? <i> ( music playing )</i> Joss: This is one
of those Botox places that are popping up all over
cities like New York. And, actually,
the use of Botox
has increased over 800% - since 2000.
- Really? And the use of fillers
has increased over 300%. It doesn't seem like
we can build a society that expects women to be
young and beautiful
above all else, then flood society with products
that promise just that, and then judge them
for buying them? Like, no.
( bleep ) that. Cleo:
92% of cosmetic procedures are performed on women. It's the inequality
between what women
are expected to do and what men are expected to do
that really makes me angry. Oh, wow. I'm so tense right now. ( grunts ) Oh, that's so weird down there. Oh, that's too much.
That is too much. I just have no sense
of perspective on the kind of painful
beauty treatments that women do all the time. Around 15, you realize
that beauty is pain. Ooh! <i> ( music playing )</i> - Can I take this off?
- Yeah. - You guys done?
- So? We're done.
How do we look? Do I feel moist? - Oh, so moist.
- So moist? I liked it a lot. Joss: Now what is that
supposed to do? Make you beautiful? As beauty standards become
more open and welcoming, it's great.
It's an amazing thing. But it also is still true that beauty
is still the point at which we are judging people. Like, it is still
the metric of value. Beauty culture is so much
more interesting and approachable and diverse
than it's ever been before. And that is wonderful. But maybe it can make it seem like we've made
more progress than we have. Tiffany:<i>
 I think we're beginning
 to see some changes,</i> <i> but our definitions
 of beauty are connected</i> to other systems of power
in our society and culture. <i> They're connected
 to ideas about class,</i> <i> to ideas about what race is.</i> <i> It really will take the
dismantling of systems of power</i> <i> for beauty to be
 truly democratized.</i> Renee:<i> I would love to see
 our representations
 of beauty diversified.</i> <i> But what I would love to see
 even more than that,</i> is just less concern with how
beautiful women are period. Emma:<i>
 And I think that we need
 to start complimenting women</i> less on, "Oh, I love the way
your hair looks today," and more like, "Oh, I love
what you said in that meeting." And just focusing more
on what we have to offer aside from the way we look. Renee:<i>
 I'm all for positive
 self statements.</i> <i> But I'd much rather
 hear those statements</i> <i> address other parts
 of who women are.</i> Parts that you don't
have to see in a mirror. What words would you
most want people to use
when they describe you? Kind.
I really, really hope that I would be
described as kind. <i> Resourceful, resilient.</i> - Determined.
- Creative. Curious and skeptical. Charming. Free. I want them
to say she's free. And I wanna hear
those things now, y'all. So maybe the goal
isn't to change how we talk about beauty. Maybe it's to talk
about beauty less. <i> ( music playing )</i> Thanks for watching.
If you're looking for more episodes
of "Glad You Asked," you can find them right there. And if you want more amazing
learning content from YouTube, you can find it right there. "Glad You Asked,"
"YouTube Learning." This is me in China
in 1996, on a trip to see
where my family came from. <i> That trip was the first time
 that I rode in an airplane,</i> <i> and the first time
that I got stuck in an airport.</i> We've been waiting
here for 9 hours now! Air travel is
one of the great privileges
of living in this century. And the number
of air passengers is expected to double
in the next 20 years. There's just one problem. Aviation runs on oil,
which contributes to global
climate change. <i> And there's not
 a good alternative yet.</i> <i> So individual consumers
 were left wondering</i> <i> about their own
 responsibility.</i> These blankets represent
arctic sea ice. Alex:<i>
 How many polar bears
 did Cleo kill?</i> <i> Shame arises when our values
don't line up with our actions.</i> Oh, this is so embarrassing. Joss:<i>
 So, knowing what we know
 about the climate crisis,</i> <i> is it wrong to fly?</i> <i> ( theme music playing )</i> Okay, I want you guys
to think back on the past
year of your lives and remember all
of the flights you took, both for work
and for personal trips. I have a marker
for each of you. I want you to draw all
of those flights on these maps. - ( Alex chuckles )
- Amazing. - Let's see.
- A work trip for a story. - Cleo: DC to Detroit.
- New York to New Orleans. So, this flight right here
is a trip that I took
to Ireland this year, and on the way back,
we flew over the southern
tip of Greenland. And I had the window seat. And when I looked
out the window, this is what I saw. That is a melting ice sheet. <i>It's probably something
I would never see</i> <i>except for
in a plane like this.</i> But the plane
that I was flying in
is one of the reasons that that ice was melting
in the first place. <i>Because air travel
accounts for about 5%</i> <i>of man-made global warming
in a year.</i> - Cleo:<i> Whoa. </i>
- Joss:<i> And that impact
 will only increase</i> <i> as more and more people
 in Asia to take to the skies.</i> Okay, well, I have
all of your flight data. - Alex: Yeah.
- Cleo: Uh-oh. I'm going to be running
some calculations on this, and I will be bothering
you all very soon. - Okay.
- All right. - Okay? All right.
- All right. <i> ( music playing )</i> Everyone flies
for different reasons. The four of us,
we took 84 flights
in the past year, and almost half of those
were for work. The best way to find out
what impact that has
on the climate is to use
an online calculator that measures
the carbon footprint
of each flight. <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> They ask about
 your connections
 because nonstop flights</i> <i> typically use fuel
 more efficiently.</i> <i> Something like
 a quarter of emissions</i> <i> are from take off
 and landing alone,</i> so you don't want
to do that twice if you don't have to. They also ask
whether you flew economy, <i> business class,
 or first class,</i> because if you're taking up
more space on the plane, you're responsible
for more of the fuel use. The folks in first class <i> are causing about five times
 the emissions</i> <i> of the economy passengers.</i> Tsk, tsk, tsk. So, all of our flights
led up to the equivalent of 36.7 metric tons
of CO2. It's kinda hard
to know what that means because CO2 is invisible. <i> But there was a report
 published that shows us</i> <i> how we can translate
 our CO2 emissions</i> <i> into actual square meters
 of melted arctic sea ice.</i> What we find, I mean,
that basically the observed
sea ice loss is very linearly related to how much CO2 we keep
adding to the atmosphere, such that for about, um,
every metric ton of CO2 we add to the atmosphere, we melt another three square
meters of sea ice. <i> You know, whenever I fly
 from London to New York City,
 for example,</i> <i> that's equivalent to about
 a metric ton of CO2.</i> <i> So then I would melt
 about three square meters
 every time I flew.</i> <i> So, basically,
 the size of a large
 dinner table, I guess.</i> Where's Joss? Here's Alex's. Where are we going? I have no idea. Do you guys know
where we're going? - No.
- I have a pretty good guess. I heard a lot of talk
about blankets. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Like picnic blankets? - Mm.
- Is there food there,
  is what I'm wondering. Christophe:
I don't think there
is gonna be food. No? Welcome to the park. How long
have you been here? I spent the night here. - Oh, nice.
- Oh, no. - Not really.
- At least you have blankets. Yeah. You ready to have some fun? Uh, y-- I think so. Okay, so, this morning we're gonna be using
our imagination. So, these blankets
are arctic sea ice. And of course
they're just blankets that we're gonna be donating
to Providence House here in Brooklyn
when we're done. - Nice.
- But for now they're sea ice. And arctic sea ice,
of course, has been melting due
to man-made global warming. So, we'll start over here. If you have meat in your diet
for a year in the U.S., you melt this much sea ice. Alex: Oh, my God. And that is actually
the square footage. - Exactly, yes.
- Wow. If you drive a car
for a year in the U.S., Alex, you melt
this much sea ice. - Should I roll this?
- Yeah. Okay. Oh, this is shameful. Whoa. What kind of car
do you drive? I drive a Nissan Silvia. Oh, that's devastating. You probably drive less
than the average American. Yeah, but it only gets,
like, 16 miles to the gallon. Not great. And this is the ice
that melts from the average American's
air travel in a year. And that doesn't
seem like a lot because it's the equivalent
of just one round trip between New York
and California. But that generates
the same emissions as around four months
of driving. But, of course,
the four of us, we are not
the average flyer. Oh, no. So, we're gonna go
over there now. - Oof.
- Ours are gonna be huge. - Uh-oh.
- ( chuckles ) - I think I see my pile.
- Yeah, same. Okay, we're gonna start
with this one. You guys want to help me
fold it out? - Yeah.
- Let's just start with half. This way,
and then it goes... - Christophe: Oh, my God.
- Alex: Ooh, wow. I was gonna say it's like
the car, but this is-- - This is yours?
- Joss: This is mine. - What?
- Whoa. Oh, no. But this isn't even, like--
this is just you flying. - This isn't even you
  as an individual with-- 
- In a year. Right. Okay, now let's go over
and check this one out. - It's Alex.
- Alex! - Yeah, that's me.
- Joss: You did pretty good. Still more than the average
American, though, right? Still more than
the average American. Yeah, I'm like two Americans. Still not good. - Okay, big boy.
- Who could this be? Oh, no! Oh, this is so embarrassing. - Cleo: Whee!
- This just keeps going. Well, I feel terrible. - Okay, let's do the last one.
- ( Cleo groans ) I like how the number of times
it has to be folded... - Tells you a lot. Right.
- ...kind of gives us
  an idea. Cleo:
Oh, my God. Alex:
It's like a small whale. Christophe:
Oh, no. Cleo:
It's like a big whale. - Well, it's a lot of ice.
- It's a lot of ice. Joss: But it's not really
about any individual. I mean... Like, you flew
all over the place
for work this year. - It is mostly work.
- Yeah. - But still.
- Maybe something
  for Vox to think about. Christophe:
Yeah. <i> ( music playing )</i> Oh, it's so heavy. Yeah. Oh, my bad.
( laughs ) Joss:<i>
 So, altogether, we flew</i> <i> on 84 airplanes
 in the past year.</i> - Alex:<i> 84 separate airplanes? </i>
- Joss:<i> 84 separate airplanes.</i> <i> Do you guys know
 how many flights there are</i> <i> in a year around the world?</i> - Oh, hundreds of thousands?
- In a year? There are 35 million flights
around the world in a year. Christophe:
35 million. Which is almost 100,000
every single day. Huh. - So, let's go
  sit down over here.
- Alex: Yeah. Joss:<i>
 And what's interesting
 about that</i> <i> is that all those flights
 are being taken</i> <i> by a minority
 of the world's population.</i> - Mm-hmm.
- So, by some estimates, only 20% of humans
have ever flown on an airplane. - Cleo: Whoa.
- Wow. And even within the U.S.,
only about half of Americans fly in a given year. It's about 12% of adults
in the U.S. that are taking
70% of the flights.
People like us. And that's where it gets
into the big ethical issue
with climate change, is that the people
who have used the most
fossil fuels generally have more resources to deal with the impacts
of climate change. So we're talking
about stronger storms, more floods, more droughts,
deadly heat waves. It's really the world's poor who are the most vulnerable, and in most cases,
we're talking about people who have never seen
the inside of an airplane. <i> And some people
 are taking this so seriously</i> <i> that they're completely
 changing the way they travel.</i> Is this 16-year-old
young lady now the leader of
the climate change movement?  Anchor #2:<i>
She is definitely the face.</i>  Anchor:<i>
 And she's given a big push</i> to the flight shaming
movement. That is you're called out,
you're shamed if you fly. So, Joss asked me
to go see Greta Thunberg
arrive in New York City. <i> She's been sailing
 across the Atlantic</i> <i> for the last two weeks,
 I think.</i> <i> Her trip is a part
 of a larger movement
 called</i> "flygskam," which is Swedish
for "flying shame." <i> And, honestly,
 it's kind of working.</i> In Sweden
and other parts of Europe, <i> people are starting
 to brag on social media</i> <i> about traveling by train
 instead of by plane.</i> <i> And the data shows
 that in Swedish airports,</i> <i> passenger counts
 are down as well.</i> Cleo:
You look great. That diagonal sail,
that's her. ( crowd chanting )
Greta! Greta! Greta! And she's about to set foot
on land for the first time. ( crowd cheering ) Greta Thunberg:
Well, all of this
is very overwhelming, and the ground
is still shaking for me. - ( Skype rings )
- Hey. - Hey, Joss.
- So, Umair. You've been following
the flight shame movement as it's been
developing this year. What are some
of the critiques of the shaming approach? Well, in order
to solve climate change, a massive global problem, you really need to be taking
big bites of the apple. And the critique here
is that focusing on what individuals do kind of deflects
the responsibility from the institutional actors that really need to be
making these changes. And when it comes to Greta
specifically, she's obviously very famous
for avoiding flying, but her message
is a lot broader than that,
isn't that right? - Oh, absolutely.
- My message is that
  we'll be watching you. The eyes of all future
generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never
forgive you. She does shame grown-ups,
but not about their flying, <i> but about their inaction,</i> <i> and I think if you
 are gonna shame people,</i> that might be
the way to do it. So, this is awkward. In order to finish this story, we are taking a plane
to California-- <i> a Boeing 737,
 which burns through</i> <i> about 700 gallons
 of jet fuel every hour.</i> - Not great.
- Pilot: Welcome aboard. - Should be a nice day
  for flying. Thank you.
- ( chimes ) <i> So, we logged onto a site
 called myclimate.org</i> <i>that's a nonprofit organization
 that helps you</i> <i> calculate and offset
 your carbon footprint.</i> <i> So we send them money,</i> and they will be sending it
to Kenya to help provide
more efficient cook stoves for households that would
otherwise be using open fires
to make their food. <i> I don't think
 that offsets our solution
 to climate change,</i> <i> but it's a good way
 of acknowledging</i> <i> that our consumer choices</i> <i> have impacts
 around the world,</i> and our investments
and donations can have
impacts, too. <i> Can you see it?</i> <i> That's
 the Pipistrel ALPHA Electro.</i> <i> They're adorable.
 I mean, I just want to put</i> <i> little googly eyes
 on the front of that thing.</i> <i> It's the world's first
 production electric airplane.</i> <i> And I'm here in Fresno
 to talk to Joseph Oldham,</i> <i> who is a veteran pilot
 who played a big role</i> <i> in bringing these planes
 to California</i> <i> in order to start
 the country's</i> <i> first electric flight
 training program.</i> Pretty amazing project. We ran emission
calculations on the reduction
in greenhouse gases <i> from just these
 four little aircraft</i> operating in flight training
operations for a year. And it's like reducing
carbon emissions by 92 tons, which is pretty
significant - for four little
  airplanes, right?
- Mm-hmm. This right here
is the motor. - Just this right here?
- That. - Just that.
- Wow, it's like three inches. Yeah, it's--
it's very small. And then these
are the battery packs. There's two of these. There's one up here
in this front compartment, and then there's
a second compartment
behind the pilot. Joss: So, to charge up,
so you have an hour of charge,
you said it was $5?  - Joseph:<i> Four. </i>
- Joss:<i> $4 to charge
 this airplane.</i> Joseph:<i>
 Yeah, and that's at 25 cent
 a kilowatt hour.</i> <i> But you go to some places
 like Seattle,</i> <i> they get all their power
 from hydro,</i> and it's six, seven cents
a kilowatt hour. ( distant plane humming ) That's not an electric
plane, is it? No, it's not
an electric plane, no. - It's a pretty
  comfortable seat.
- Joseph: It is. Now we're basically
ready to go. - So, the plane is on now?
- Yes, the plane is on now. Oh, my gosh,
it's so quiet. - What's up?
- I have to run
  along side you guys. - You have to?
- 'Cause the wireless range. - Oh, it doesn't go that far.
- No, not that far. Can you just go, like,
half that speed? Okay.
Sorry about that. Okay. That was fun. For us.
Not so much for you, huh? - Got some exercise?
- Yeah. Joseph:
Okay, loud and clear
over here. Very good. ( Joss gasps ) 
There he goes. Wow, that was quick. Joss:
And besides the reduction
in emissions, what are some other benefits
of having an electric motor in an airplane? And what do you think
is the main factor holding back sort of the
improvement in the batteries so that we can get these
into bigger planes? There he goes.
Right there. So cool. Nice and easy. - Hey.
- Hey, how's it--
  oh, is that a plane? So, I got to go
to California for this story 'cause we're looking
into the future of flying, and what I got to see there
was an electric airplane. It's just a small
two-seater plane that can
fly for about 80 minutes. - Cool.
- But that's
  on batteries alone. - Oh, wow.
- Yeah. - No fuel? 
- No fuel, just--  - That's great.
- Yeah, electricity. And those batteries
weigh this much. Can you lift this? ( chuckles )
I-- I can't lift it. Oof. They're heavy, right? Yeah, they're
25-pound plates. What are you gonna do
with these after? - We're gonna return them.
- Oh, thanks. So, this weighs
106 kilograms, which is 230 pounds. - Metric system. I like it.
- Yes. And to fly the same distance in a gasoline-powered
version of that plane... - Mm-hmm.
- ...the fuel weighs
  just this much. - Whoa.
- So, when people say
  that fossil fuels are really energy dense,
this is what they're
talking about. - Hmm.
- So, this difference becomes really challenging
when you move to bigger planes. Yeah, I bet.
Oh, that one's huge. ( laughs )
This is a Boeing 737, which is the kind of plane
I took to get to California. - Cool.
- And that trip burned
  about this much jet fuel, which is made out of kerosene,
it's a fossil fuel. The same amount
of energy in batteries would take up
this much space. Ah, you couldn't even
fit that on there. I know, look at the people
compared to the battery. - It's gigantic.
- Yeah. And this battery
would weigh at least 20 times more
than the liquid fuel. And seven times more
than the airplane itself. Yeah, and for the jet fuel,
it's going to burn off, but for the batteries,
they're going to stay the same weight
the entire flight. Right, it doesn't
get lighter during the flight like the liquid fuel does. So, the good news
is that batteries
are getting better. - Nice.
- Between 2008 and 2015, the energy density
of batteries nearly doubled, and experts predict
that, in about 30 years, this plane could fly electric
from New York to Chicago. Wow. But there's a problem. Oh, no. 80% of emissions
from airplanes come from flights that are
longer than that. Aw, that sucks. Is there anyone working
on what's going to happen in the future? Is there a super battery
coming up that's going to just change
the way we utilize this energy? The battery that's
sort of en vogue right now is your lithium ion battery. It's what's in electric cars, it's what's in
all of our cell phones. But some researchers
are looking into completely
different chemistries. So, whether it's electric
planes or hybrids or biofuels, it's just gonna be some time
before we can engineer away
these emissions. And that's because our
industries were built on energy dense fuels
that had been locked underground
for millions of years. ( imitates plane flying ) So, is it wrong to fly? The short answer,
from my perspective, is no. We need mobility.
We have to have mobility. But we need to find
ways of doing it without emitting
more carbon emissions. Joss:<i>
 Climate change
 implicates us all</i> <i> in a planet-sized injustice.</i> <i> If I fly, if I drive,
 if I heat or cool my home,</i> <i> if I buy stuff,
 if I eat stuff,</i> <i> all of this now has a cost
 that I'm not paying.</i> But what's more shameful
than participating in a world that was built
for fossil fuels is doing nothing
to help bring about
a world that isn't. You know, start thinking
about what kinds of decisions you're making
for your society around you. You know, should we invest
more in trains or should we create
more charging infrastructure
for electric cars? Joss:<i>
 The candidates you support
 at a local or national level,</i> <i> the infrastructure
that you're willing to pay for.</i> I would say we can be judicious
about how we fly. <i> Try to look
 for more direct flights,</i> <i> try to minimize stopovers,</i> <i> and certainly rethink
 flying unnecessarily</i> for things that
we could easily replace
with Skype meetings, as we're doing right now. Joss:<i>
 We're not going
 to solve climate change</i> <i> by staying on the ground.</i> But if I'm not part
of the solution, then I'm only part
of the problem. And, yeah, that's wrong. To see more episodes
of our show, click here to the right. And for more great learning
content from YouTube, click here
on the bottom right. Thanks for watching. this is Larry he's a squirrel he likes nuts in 2019 he went into an electric box in Kettering Ohio is this a nut it was not a nut he broke the electric box and caused a blackout for 20,000 people Larry isn't alone squirrels do this all the time here's a map of their exploits just last year but here's the thing blackouts happen all the time for all kinds of reasons like wildfires or storms and in the last half century there have been more and more power outages because of weather and it will only get worse because of our changing climate the way we power the world is fragile but there's a way to make it more resilient our current energy system looks like this right on top our power plants which get their energy from a variety of sources like fossil fuels wind in the Sun they distribute electricity down to thousands if not millions of customers so it's a big centralized system when you're sending a lot of power over just a few lines that means that a tree falling on those power lines or a storm can easily knock out power to a lot of people that's AmeriCorps fun he writes about energy policy for voxcom is not just an inconvenience it can affect the lives of thousands of people we saw after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a blackout that lasted for months and thousands of people died there are ways to avoid this though some homes have generators some neighborhoods have their own solar panels in some places even have their own small power plants like the New York University campus during Hurricane sandy in 2012 they were able to keep the campus lit even when most of downtown Manhattan went dark these are all examples of a micro grid a decentralized system that can sustain itself when it needs to and the US government has invested in this technology the military is very interested in micro grids this is something that they've invested in heavily to power installations both in the United States and also in foreign areas where they may not have a reliable central power grid that they can count on another area is basically for remote isolated communities that have a very fragile intending us link to the Maine power grid micro grids are very useful during emergencies especially blackouts but in an ideal world we don't just use them for emergencies they could restructure our current power system well if your goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions you want to try to minimize the amount of fossil fuel you use and maximize the amount of free solar and wind energy you have those can vary throughout the day and so you want to route power from where it's sunniest and windiest to the places that need it most and that's where micro grids come in micro grids can generate power using green sources like wind and solar and unlike the power plants they can store that energy when it's no longer sunny or windy micro grids can jump in and say hey we have some power stored here and they can share their stored energy back up into the big grid but one big issue is that a lot of utilities are effectively monopolies and they're regulated by regulators that are trying to protect these old business models the reason micro grids present a threat to these companies isn't just that they help you survive a blackout is that they can also change the source of our power and the direction it flows in [Music] On Earth Day 2019, Google posted this video
about the "urgency of radically addressing   sustainability officer. Now she works to make
Google a global leader in "reducing or even     by 2017, they got that up to 100 percent.
They've also managed to lower their total energy use with some help from a branch of
artificial intelligence called machine learning. A computer program takes in lots of data and
trains itself to operate the centers as efficiently as possible. Here's energy use under human
supervision, and when the AI is in charge. The more data the AI trains on, the better
it gets at reducing energy use. But here's the thing: This same technology can be used
to automate lots of other tasks, like fossil fuel discovery and extraction. And while Google
is using AI to increase the efficiency of its operation, it's also using it to try and
get as much oil and gas out of the ground as possible. In 2018, Google hired Darryl
Willis, a veteran of British Petroleum, to lead its new oil, gas, and energy division.
Willis explained "our plan is to be the partner of choice for the energy industry." They've
already signed a deal with Total, one of the world's biggest oil companies, to develop
AI that will streamline oil and gas exploration and production. And Google's not alone. Microsoft
and Amazon are also teaming up with the fossil fuel industry. Big Tech has entered the oil
business. On June 15, 1957, the citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma buried a rather odd time capsule,
a brand new Plymouth Belvedere. Sealed inside among commemorative plates, ash trays, t-shirts,
and books that captured the spirit of the times, was a 16mm film reel. It showed a martian
visiting the United States and learning that oil and competition made the nation prosper.
Also included in the capsule were gasoline and motor oil. In 1957, it seemed like a very real
possibility that these products wouldn't be around in 50 years when the Belvedere was
scheduled to be disinterred. Newspapers around the country were reporting that America's
oil production would soon fall off. And as that cartoon martian learned, discoveries
of new reserves were rare. "Only one well in nine finds any oil at all. And only one
in almost a thousand makes a major discovery." Oil has always been really hard to find. America's
first oil well was drilled in 1859 near a particularly greasy creek in Pennsylvania.
It was obvious there was oil seeping up from the ground here, but it took Edwin Drake over
a year and all his money to find a measly little pocket of black gold. Still, his discovery
triggered an oil boom and a Pennsylvania paper was soon explaining that the substance could
"illuminate, lubricate, make candles, and cure most diseases from which humanity suffers."
Not all of that proved true, but 100 years later, petroleum had given the world "fabrics,
toothbrushes, tires, insecticide, cosmetics, weed killers, a whole galaxy of things to
make a better life on Earth." And of course, fuel. The energy needs of the world have risen
a lot since 1859. And from very early on there were fears that fossil fuels couldn't meet
this demand. In 1909, some thought oil and gas would run out around 1937. In 1937, US
oil supplies were supposed to disappear by 1952. And so on, and so on, as fossil fuels
became more and more essential in every day life, predictions of a crash kept coming.
But somehow, the oil kept flowing. "I couldn't imagine how this ever-increasing supply of
oil was achieved. Until I found out that there's not just one but thousands of oil companies
all competing with each other to discover and develop new sources of oil." From the
earliest days, competing companies invested in better technology to extract fossil fuels,
better drills, better pumps, and they developed better techniques for finding new oil reserves,
creating seismic vibrations to see underneath the ground, using satellite LIDAR to reveal
hidden structures, detecting subtle changes in the Earth's gravity and magnetism. Thanks
in part to these advances, by 2007, when a very rusty Belvedere was exhumed, global oil
production was still on the rise. In the US, it did look like oil was finally petering
out, until investment in new technology, fracking and horizontal wells in vast shale formations,
brought it roaring back. Today, once again, if we just rely on current reserves and current
tech, oil production will start to falter, but if new technology lets us squeeze more
out of the reserves we already have and find new sources of oil, we'll be able to meet
the growing demand. It's just a matter of finding the next technological leap. Of course,
there's a problem with using fossil fuels to meet the world's energy needs. Climate
change. Oil, gas and coal are a time capsule of a different sort, sealing ancient carbon
deep below the Earth. When humans open that time capsule and burn those fossil fuels,
carbon reenters the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas CO2. Since 1859, CO2 levels have shot
up and so has the planet's temperature. If we keep going like this, if we burn all the
fossil fuels we currently have access to, models suggest that the Earth could warm somewhere
between 6.4 and 9.5 degrees. And so climate activists say there's only one thing to do.
"Keep it in the ground. Keep it in the ground. Keep it in the ground. Keep it in the ground."
That's easier chanted than done. Currently, the world relies on fossil fuels for 85 percent
of its energy needs. Keeping it in the ground will require a huge shift to renewables and
lower energy use in general. And big tech companies have publicly rushed to be part
of this effort. "Sustainability has been a core value since our founding." "There had
been pockets of sustainability living within Amazon's business since the very beginning."
"One of the problems we can help solve is energy consumption." "We can invent our way
out of this problem." "Innovation is the key to solving this problem." "We can put artificial
intelligence and digital technology to use to help our customers in every part of the
economy become more sustainable themselves." It turns out that same artificial intelligence
technology is just what oil companies need to stay profitable. See the fossil fuel industry
has amassed lots and lots of valuable data as they've mapped Earth's crust in search
of reserves. Take this patch of ocean floor in the North Sea. In 1989, Dutch geologists
painstakingly mapped the different rock layers using seismic scans. Researchers at IBM recently
fed all that seismic data into a machine learning algorithm and after about 10 minutes of training,
the AI was able to label the rock layers nearly as accurately as human experts. Another group
at Georgia Tech used machine learning to quickly identify structures important to oil discovery.
You could imagine how an AI could train itself with all kinds of data to pinpoint the best
places to drill. And once drilling begins, AI can streamline extraction to make it cheaper.
That kind of efficiency can help the oil and gas industry compete with renewables and so
it's no surprise that they spent an estimated 1.75 billion dollars on AI in 2018. Google,
Microsoft, and Amazon are competing for a piece of that pie. Google has signed agreements
with several fossil fuel companies. Microsoft has teamed up with Exxon and Chevron, and
just hired Daryl Willis away from Google. And Amazon, who already provides cloud services
to BP and Shell is marketing its ability to accelerate and optimize exploration, drilling,
and production of oil and gas. While they talk up their commitment to sustainability,
big tech is making sure the world can keep burning plenty of fossil fuel. "And if you
have both of these things, any goal is possible. It's destination unlimited." [narrator] This is a stretch test,
which engineers use to measure the strength and stretchiness
of materials, like rubber. But here,
it's testing something different: tissue from a human cervix. The cervix is the gate
between a woman's uterus and her vagina. It blocks anything, -like a penis, from going any further up.
-[whistle blows] [narrator] And it stops important things
in the uterus, like a growing fetus,
from coming down too early. Think of the uterus like a balloon. You blow up the balloon with air. You have to keep the air in the uterus
or the baby inside the uterus, and that cervix is the knot
that keeps the uterus closed. As an engineer,
what's really struck me about the cervix is that a pregnant specimen in the lab... It just keeps stretching and stretching.
It never breaks. [narrator] Over nine months of pregnancy,
the cervix gets five times stretchier. When it's soft like the skin on your lips,
it opens up. And as you may know from experience or from a common TV trope, that's usually when... Mindy, your water just broke. Ah! My water just broke. Oh! I'm sitting here in a puddle of water. Uh... my water broke. Oh, that's cool.
We got another one here in the fridge. After the baby comes out, this very compliant material
has to remodel and repair itself. I don't know
of any other engineering material that can soften
or remodel itself that quickly. [narrator] Put simply, the cervix is an anatomical
and engineering miracle. But that doesn't make childbirth itself
any less daunting. I'm not really scared. I'm, like...
Yeah, I am nervous. [laughs] I'm completely nervous,
like, but it's only because this is my first kid,
so I don't really know what to expect. [narrator] Around the world,
250 babies are born every minute. In hospitals or at home with midwives, doulas, and doctors. Some women use drugs for the pain, some have C-sections or use other medical technology. And others don't. [doctor] Sweetheart, show me what you got.
Ready? Nice deep breath in. Breath. And push from your bottom.
You got this. Two, three, four... [narrator] But childbirth still kills 
more than 800 women every day around the world.  And one global survey found that up to 30% of women rate childbirth
as traumatic. I just remember, like, closing my eyes
and going inside into, like, the deepest part of myself to just be like,
"I have to get through this." I was, like, really traumatized
for a really long time. [narrator]
So, what makes childbirth so hard? And what can women do
to have the easiest and safest experience? -[woman] You got this.
-[inhales] -[theme music playing]
-[moaning] [gasps, exhales] [narrator 2] The contractions
in true labor always have a definite rhythm. [narrator 3] You may suddenly wonder how the baby can possibly
get through that small opening. Don't worry, you'll stretch enough. [man] 
It is not only pathological knowledge which makes the great obstetrician. It is vigilance. One that does not let you forget you have
in your hands the lives of two people. [narrator] Most large primates give birth
in relatively similar fashion. The female carries the fetus
in her womb for 30 to 40 weeks, and then the baby emerges
from the birth canal, usually headfirst, within hours. But there's one key difference: humans suffer a lot more. It's not like a baby just falls out, like some Monty Python sketch,
for non-human primates. They do struggle, and still, they have a seemingly
much more easy childbirth than we have. [narrator] Humans labor around nine hours
the first time they give birth and often go much longer, while most chimps labor
for just two hours. And there's one part
of the struggle of childbirth that's harder to quantify-- the pain. [woman 1] It felt like the bottom half
of my body was gonna explode and erupt goo
all over the four walls of the room. [woman 2] Like you're
in some kind of pain blender, where you're just being spun around, and you don't know what's going on.
It feels like you're being ripped in two. [woman 3] Everything painted red, and there's, like, this alarm
that's like... [imitates siren] [woman 4] It looked like
I was experiencing an exorcism. [narrator] The question of why humans
have painful births comes down to anatomy and evolution. The theory goes like this: Humans, unlike other primates,
evolved to walk on two legs, which meant pelvises
became more complicated and narrow. Our brains also evolved
to be bigger than other primates', which means bigger newborn heads. {\an8}So chimps get to push out a small head
from wide hips, {\an8}while we're stuck squeezing out
a big baby through a narrow space. But why did it stop there? Why didn't we keep evolving our anatomy
to make childbirth less painful? Well, why didn't we evolve away from painful bowel movements? And why didn't we evolve
out of painful breakups? [narrator] Natural selection doesn't care
about pain, just survival. And even though it hurts... [screams] ...we keep making babies anyway. What works, works.
And what's good enough is good enough. It's a terribly tight fit. It's a painful labor.
It's a long, protracted labor, but it works. It's good enough. [narrator] So, to continue the survival 
of our species, women have always been stuck 
with difficult childbirths. -[doctor] Almost there.
-[Daysha Anthony] How much more? [doctor] Not much more.
One push at a time. [narrator] The Old Testament says, "With painful labor,
you will give birth to children," after Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. And this scroll from 12th-century Japan
shows childbirth as so deadly that it attracted evil spirits
who were drawn to near-fatal events. That's why so many cultures
throughout history found ways to protect and comfort women
during childbirth... with rituals
and the support of friends and family. Women also tried to numb their pain with opium and hashish
in the Mediterranean, or in ancient Greece, willow bark,
which is chemically similar to aspirin. And scientists invented new tools
and technologies to help if the baby got stuck. Thanks to medical progress,
childbirth got less deadly over time. And one of the biggest areas of progress was the Caesarean section. C-sections actually originated
thousands of years ago. They're referenced
in almost every ancient culture, and were performed to save the baby when the mother had little
or no hope of surviving labor. One of the first known C-sections
where the woman actually survived happened in South Africa in 1826, performed
by the British surgeon James Barry, who was actually born a female, 
Margaret Bulkley. But that wasn't discovered
till after his death. And around the same time, 
a medical missionary observed Ugandan doctors
performing C-sections. He wrote about one operation
where the mother and baby both survived. There was no anesthesia, but the woman was liberally supplied
with banana wine. In the 20th century, C-sections started
to consistently save women's lives. And then, birthing technology
really started to pick up. Scientists started using pelvic X-rays to chart the average length
and rate of labor. And for women
who didn't progress fast enough, they developed a new drug
to artificially speed it up, called pitocin,
a synthetic form of oxytocin. It's a naturally occurring hormone, but it floods a woman's body
at three events in her life: orgasm, breastfeeding, and labor. Pitocin worked so well
that doctors and women started scheduling inductions
if a woman went a week over her due date, bringing some certainty
to an otherwise unpredictable event. The history of medical intervention,
when it comes to childbirth, has a lot to do with the emergence
of obstetrics as a medical profession. [narrator] For most of history,
doctors didn't deliver babies, midwives did. Women trained in the real world,
through experience and observation. {\an8}Then in the 1700s in Europe,
midwives opened up schools {\an8}with more official training programs. {\an8}And as waves of European immigrants came over to America
in the following century, they brought these skills with them
as they settled in the northern states. While in the American South,
enslaved black women were forced to attend to the deliveries
and care of white children and were torn from their own families. And they continued working
as skilled midwives long after slavery ended. They were often referred to
as "granny midwives." They tended to be senior,
older members of their community who had themselves already given birth and were viewed with respect
among their community. [narrator] But in the 1900s, doctors started to edge midwives out
of the delivery room, and they made a convincing argument. Birth might look simple.
It may have been going on for centuries. But in fact, it was a pathological event
that requires medical intervention. [narrator]
Like a procedure called the episiotomy. {\an8}During birth, it's common
for a woman to tear her vaginal opening. {\an8}Then in the 1920s, {\an8}doctors started proactively cutting
the opening instead. I think the idea was that that would...
that would be easier to sew up. And it turned out that giving people
an episiotomy makes the tearing much worse. [narrator] And around that same time, Western doctors also started offering
new pain drugs, like one trend that emerged out of Germany
called twilight sleep. It was a mixture of a heavy narcotics: {\an8}scopolamine and morphine. Extremely controversial
'cause it was really dangerous. Many of the women who were
behind twilight sleep were involved in the suffrage movement. And their argument was that women should have the right to have
a painless childbirth. [narrator] But the drugs didn't actually
get rid of the pain, just the memory of the pain. Women in delivery rooms thrashed violently
and screamed. They were often hooded
or placed in cage-beds while they labored. The birthing experience
differed enormously based on where you lived, your class background
and the color of your skin. There is a theory that the more civilized
a race or a culture is, the more difficulty the women
have experiencing childbirth. And so, anesthesia was also required to make sure they could get
through the process. Working-class women, women of color, immigrant women, no problem. Babies could just pop out. It was the over-civilized,
upper-middle-class women that needed help. [narrator] That stereotype lives on today, and it's one reason black women
in the UK are five times more likely 
to die in childbirth than white women. And they're three times more likely
in the US, where disparities exist even
at the same income level. Biggest issue, they're not being heard. When women have said, "I'm in pain," the understanding
or stereotype of women of color, that they're not really in pain
the way they are. [narrator] So back in the 1950s, while many black women
didn't get pain medication even when they needed it, white women started to speak out
about being over-medicated. In 1958, The Ladies Home Journal
published an investigation, "Cruelty in Maternity Wards," "They give you drugs 
whether you want them or not One woman wrote in, "They give you drugs 
whether you want them or not, and strap you down like an animal." Women start reacting
to what they believe to be absolutely horrific birth experiences. They get angry and think
they have missed out on what should be
the most incredible moment of their lives. And that somehow
that gets completely lost in the process of medicalizing birth. [narrator]
One of the most influential voices in the grassroots movement was Ina May Gaskin,
a midwife-turned-activist. In her 1975 book, Spiritual Midwifery, she said that when women are "empowered to birth without drugs 
or interventions,"  "birth is a spiritual experience
that each woman deserves in a safe and comfortable setting." There were a lot of hippie women involved
in the natural childbirth movement, but there were
also middle-class suburban housewives. There were people on all sides
of the political spectrum that simply thought, "I don't need to be
knocked unconscious in order to give birth. I am capable of doing it." [narrator] And by that time,
there was a hot new drug in town: epidurals. Scientists discovered that
injecting anesthesia {\an8}into a certain spot in the spine
called the "epidural space" {\an8}stopped pain signals traveling
from the spine to the brain. {\an8}The entire lower half of a woman's body would go numb within minutes,
while she remained fully alert. It was great.It was very nice. No regrets on the epidural. I couldn't feel my body 
from the waist down. And I knew at that point, it was one of the best decisions
I'd ever made in my life. I-- I was like... [narrator] The World Health Organization
says epidurals are perfectly safe for healthy women in labor. But of course,
half your body is numb so... The pushing stage of labor tends
to be a bit longer, maybe, on average,
about-- about 20 minutes. You have less control over your bladder, and it may be less easy
to walk around afterwards. [narrator] Another medical intervention
that's been surging in popularity: C-sections. That's how one-fifth of babies
around the world are now delivered, twice as many as in 2000. In some countries, they account
for more than half of all births, like Egypt, the Dominican Republic and Brazil, where the overall rate is 55%. But in private hospitals,
where doctors are being paid per service, not per hours worked, it's 83%. One study noted, "Savings in time gained
by cutting labor short may motivate obstetricians
to choose a cesarean delivery." And while the maternal mortality rate
is lower in countries that perform more C-sections, that's only true up to a C-section rate
at 19%. Above that, it doesn't make a difference, suggesting a lot of C-sections
are medically unnecessary. Women who have had a C-section
on one pregnancy are at higher risk for complications 
in later pregnancies, including higher risks of miscarriage
and even stillbirth. [narrator] Natural birth advocates
say unnecessary C-sections are a result of messing with a woman's
natural rhythm of labor, a concept now known
as the "cascade of interventions." I "consented" to this emergency C-section due to, in my records, fetal distress
because of the heart rate monitor. We'll see babies have
fetal heart rate changes, particularly after getting an epidural. [narrator] And epidurals tend
to follow pitocin because... As they started increasing my dosage, I started having really,
really painful contractions. [narrator]
Pitocin can help when a woman's cervix isn't opening up fast enough. And so they upped my pitocin, which I needed
because I hit my due date and I still hadn't gone into labor. You know, the minute I had to be induced,
it was up to technology. [narrator] But there's one problem
with the cascade of interventions theory. In a large, randomized trial,
researchers found... Women who are induced are actually not more likely
to have a C-section. We probably do induce more frequently
than we need to, but there aren't any
hugely obvious downsides. [narrator] But last-minute changes 
at the hospital can impact a woman's mental health. One study found that women
who had unplanned C-sections were more likely to experience
post-traumatic distress and depression. In her 2004 bestselling book,
Ina May Gaskin wrote  that more drawn-out labors could be
"because of a lack of privacy or fear." She called it the "sphincter law," saying the cervix was
like a sphincter muscle and that "sphincters do not respond well
to commands." Let's say you're in a public bathroom,
and you're trying to take a crap, and someone opens the door... or a loud noise, something happens. Your sphincter will freeze. Think about trying to push a baby out
of your vagina. You're trying to be relaxed, breathe... Fear is going to have a major impact on your ability to do so. [narrator] The idea that fear made 
childbirth harder was also preached by the French obstetrician Fernand Lamaze
in the 1950s. He popularized
the psycho-prophylactic method, now just known as the Lamaze method, a set of techniques for a pain-free,
fear-free, drug-free birth. It involved breathing techniques,
different laboring positions, and massage. In his book, Lamaze wrote that we should not try to
"cure the pain of childbirth by the use of drugs" and instead,
just stop fearing the pain itself. But women's reasons for choosing
or rejecting pain relief have always been complex. In Japan, just 6% of women get epidurals, because there's a cultural expectation
that suffering is a part of childbirth. And while more than 70%
of American women choose epidurals, that means almost 30% decide
to go without. My family, when I told them
that I wanted to do a natural childbirth, they were like, "You can't do it.
You won't make it." [laughs] And I was just like,
"Oh, no, now I have to do it, 'cause you can't tell me
that I can't do it." I just had this weird fascination
with what it would feel like, and I just wanted to know
what it would feel like. Now that I look back, I'm like,
"Why didn't I, like, want an epidural?" I have no idea
why I didn't want an epidural. [narrator] Today, some scientific research
suggests that being relaxed could have real physical impacts on labor, just as natural childbirth advocates
have argued for decades. The top of the cervix actually
has a lot of muscle that does contract, so that's what made us start to think,
"Okay, well maybe this is a sphincter." And so, that actually completely changes 
the map that we're working with to understand what goes on in pregnancy, because in women who deliver early, that cervix starts to open prematurely, and it might actually be a sphincter
that's relaxing too soon. [narrator] But why that happens
in one patient over another, we don't fully understand. Mechanics obviously play
a really important role in pregnancy. I do need an engineer to help me
understand how strong is the tissue. We can run "what if" scenarios. So,
what if the patient has a short cervix? Will her cervix open if the baby kicks
or if there's a small contraction? Can that cervix mechanically withstand,
you know, the loads of pregnancy? We should know those answers.
You know, we're curing cancer. We should be able
to understand pregnancy a lot better. [narrator] That's why there's still
so much conflicting information out there on the best way to give birth. And a lot of it is very insistent. These baby boards are probably
where the seed was planted for me. Things like an epidural were cheating, and that the best way forward would actually be give birth without any medical intervention
whatsoever. I think sometimes the voices there
in the movement can push themselves
into a particular set of choices. And rather than saying, "Let's empower people
to make whatever choices they want," say, "Let's empower them 
to make these particular set of choices." Well, when I found out that my daughter was going to need to be delivered
via C-section, I felt like a failure. [laughs] I felt like I had failed to do
what I set out to do. [narrator] Natural childbirth advocates
may be criticized by some for exaggerating the negative impact
of medical interventions, but their advocacy
has also dramatically improved the way many women give birth. In the 1970s, episiotomy rates
in the UK were over 50%, sometimes performed
without the permission of the patient. But then, there was a backlash
against so-called "birth cuts." A survey was organized by British midwife
and activist Sheila Kitzinger. And she found episiotomies
caused more lasting pain than any other procedure in childbirth and that a natural tear
generally caused much less pain than a cut. A study was launched,
and three years later, it concluded that there was "no evidence to support
the supposed benefits of episiotomy." More research confirmed these findings, and by 2012, episiotomies in the UK
were down to 15%. And the natural childbirth movement brought back one of the most ancient types
of labor support... having a doula present. Doulas aren't doctors or midwives. They're trained birth coaches, there to support the laboring woman
and help make sure her wishes are being respected
by the medical provider. -[loud moaning]
-You're so strong. Look at you. [narrator] A number of studies
have confirmed the presence of a doula "reduces the need for interventions," finding a 51% decrease in C-sections. I think it's partly just that it's nice
to have somebody in the room to say, "Yeah, this is-- this is normal."
Like, "This is okay." Like, "Everything is going fine." I think that that part of labor is quite--
can be quite scary. [Anthony continues moaning] We almost there, sweetheart. [Anthony panting] We are almost there. [narrator]
And the natural childbirth movement's underlying message
continues to resonate around the world... that women should
make their own choices based on what's best for them. I decided to have a natural childbirth because you go to a hospital, black women
are kind of disproportionately, like, ignored, I guess, in hospitals. The only birth I ever had witnessed before
was a friend who gave birth without any medicine or interventions,
but it was in a hospital, and I thought that was the best
of both worlds. My birth plan was go to the hospital, listen to everything the doctors say,
and then come back with a healthy baby. That was 100% of my plan. [narrator] There's no way yet to predict
how any one birth will go or what interventions are necessary
for each person because every woman is different. And then also, like,
every baby is totally different. The baby was, um, sunny-side up, the kind of labor pain that's, like,
way worse than regular labor pain. I turned blue.
There was blood everywhere. They ended up giving me pitocin
without any epidural, and then I had an episiotomy, and all of it was like a total shock. I had no idea that any
of this would be so hard. I was really nervous.
I know how much the tissue stretches, but I trusted my physicians,
and I was in good care. With my first kid, the experience
was more overwhelming. The birth experience with my second kid was, like,
sort of a very idyllic experience. I mean, also, with a lot of blood. I'm not gonna lie.
I am angry and resentful, and I have a lot to process,
five years later. And yet, at the same time,
it was amazing and wonderful. I still consider my C-section
to be natural childbirth. I don't consider anything humans do
to be unnatural or supernatural. [laughs] 
And so natural is the only other option. I was afraid of pain,
and I had a full epidural. I thought, "This is so silly. I'm missing out on something.
I could have done this." I was angry at myself
and kind of ashamed that I just caved. They have nothing to be ashamed of
because they're still doing a big work, -which is bringing life into the world.
-...two, three... [Nicola Pemberton] Growing a human 
and bringing that human into the world regardless of the route of delivery... Nine and ten. Beautiful.
Deep breath, deep breath! ...is still a big feat. Right back at it. Ready?
And push on your bottom! [screaming] [clinician] Come on, baby, you got it.
That's it. You got it. -[doctor] Come on, give me another one. 
-[clinician] Ready? This is it. -[screaming]
-[doctor] Here we go. That's it. [chattering continuing] [moaning] -[doctor] Let's go.
-[clinician] Ready? [doctor] Most important push of your life.
Ready? One, two, three. Right back at it! -You got it. Yes, Daysha. Hold her down.
-[screaming] [doctor] Open your eyes! Open your eyes!
Open your eyes! -[clinician] Look at your baby.
-[doctor] Open your eyes. [Anthony gasping] -[woman] Oh, my God!
-[sneezes] -[woman] Oh, my God!
-[doctor] Okay. -[woman] Oh, my God!
-[doctor] Congratulations, Mommy! You never worked on anything so hard
in your life. -I know he's worth it, right?
-[woman] My grandbaby. -My grandson.
-[doctor] Mm-hmm. [woman] Oh, look at him! He's so little! -[doctor] All right. Come on, bud.
-[baby crying] There you go. There you go. There you go. -[woman] Welcome to the world, sweetie!
-[baby continues crying] -[woman] Daysha, Daysha, you did it!
-[theme music playing] The Arab Spring blossomed across North
Africa and the Middle East. This award is for those forgotten children who want education. The British people have voted to leave the European Union. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job. No. Well... Tik Tok: ADHD in app form. Old Town Road became the longest-running number-one
single in Billboard's history. Avengers: Endgame, officially the
highest-grossing movie of all time. The Emmy goes to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The United States of America, champions of the world. Liverpool goal. Trump is now ordering federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid. It's official: the government shutdown is now the longest in US history. There's no sense
that there's any room for the two sides to really find a compromise. Both are digging in. We have Big Macs, we have Quarter Pounders with cheese. We have everything that I like, that you like. The reason we did this is because of the shutdown. We need border security. We have to have it. Despicable living conditions, migrants
left in standing room cells for a week. The United States is running
concentration camps on our southern border. Special counsel Robert Mueller has
delivered his final report. If we had had confidence that the president clearly
did not commit a crime we would have said so. We're going to impeach the motherf***r President Trump is maintaining
that there was no wrongdoing on his part in his phone call with the president of Ukraine. A history-making headline, the third time in history a sitting US
president impeached. The 2020 presidential race is heating up. Hell yes, we're gonna
take your AR-15, your AK-47, we're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore. Who can beat Donald Trump? I have not been able to deliver Brexit. India is counting votes for the world's biggest democratic election. Narendra Modi has swept to a
crushing general election win. Tensions rising between India and Pakistan over
Kashmir. The long-planned Turkish military operation in Northeast Syria has been launched. Chaos in Venezuela. Both the opposition leader and
President Maduro are calling for supporters to protest. We are witnessing a wave of
demonstrations around the world. From the Middle East, to Latin American the Caribbean, from Europe, to Africa and Asia, it is clear that there is a growing deficit of trust between people and political establishments, and rising threats to the social contract. The young can see what's in store, what's lurking around the corner. It's their future. They have every right to fight it. A teenager from
Sweden called the voice of the planet is ready to cross the Atlantic on a mission
to fight climate change. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. never forgive you This is the start of a day of global
climate strikes inspired by teen activist, Greta Thunberg. You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. A new United Nations report warns the
impacts of climate change are increasing and inevitable. An environmental disaster with global implications. The Amazon rainforest is burning at record rates. New Delhi, air pollution is putting the health of millions of people at risk there. ...cyclone that has swept across Southern Africa Kerala for a second consecutive year is battling floods in some districts. Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas. We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We can get married in Taiwan. Taiwan will be the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. We are not immune to the
viruses of hate, of fear, of other. We never have been. But we can be the nation that discovers the cure. The answer lies in our humanity. The first man to run a marathon in
under two hours. We are here and we have to do something nurturing that we respect before we go. To love somebody. To take care of somebody. Exactly what I was thinking. To make one other person feel good. And that just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event. Most of the people wrapped up in President
Trump’s impeachment scandal have one thing in common: They all have official roles with the US government. With one big exception: "President Trump’s personal point man, Rudy Giuliani." "Does Rudy Giuliani have any business getting
involved in US-Ukrainian politics?" Rudy Giuliani doesn’t work for the White
House, or the State Department, or the military. He’s Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. But he’s played a central role in US-Ukraine
relations. And he’s become one of Trump’s most loyal
defenders on television: "There’s nothing wrong with taking information
from Russians." "I don't even know if that’s a crime, colluding
about Russians..." "A campaign finance violation? Give me a break." Rudy was once a beloved national figure. "America’s Mayor, Rudy Giluiani!" But today, he’s no longer mayor, and no
longer widely beloved. So how did America’s Mayor wind up here? "What’s happened to Rudy?" "What has happened to Rudy Giuliani?" "What happened to Rudy?" Some people look at this as a fall from grace. They say, how did "America's Mayor" come to be mixed up in this kind of shady thing? And I think, people who followed him in New York, with a more skeptical eye, it's not surprising. Rudy Giuliani started his career in public
life in the 80s, as the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a prosecutor, Giuliani took on the mafia
and Wall Street insider trading. He was a brilliant prosecutor. There's no
question about it. I mean, he gained fame legitimately. Andrew Kirtzman was a New York City Hall reporter
when Giuliani was mayor. He perfected the art of the perp walk, which humiliated people who had been arrested,
by having them parade before photographers. He also knew how to get in front of the cameras
himself. Giuliani was a pioneer in using the position
of US attorney to turn yourself into a media star. "We'll really destroy the power of the mafia." During this time, crime in New York reached
historic levels. And that led Rudy to his next act. It was very natural that someone who had made
his fame as a crime fighter, would then run for mayor. Giuliani became mayor of New York City in 1994. Crime became his focus, and it fell during his administration. But today it’s debated whether his policies
actually caused that. The crime drop started before he was in office.
It continued after he left office. It was also visible in most other major American
cities. So was it really something he was responsible for? I think it's questionable.
But it's something he definitely took credit for. But whether or not Giuliani’s approach to
crime was effective, it was definitely aggressive. His administration implemented stop and frisk,
which allowed police to stop anyone and search them for any reason. The reduction in crime came at the expense
of the African American community. The last few years of Giuliani’s term were
racked by outrage over police violence, after men like 23-year-old Amadou Diallo and
26-year-old Patrick Dorismond were shot by police, even though they were unarmed. "Giuliani has to step down! Enough is enough!" 2001 was Giuliani’s last year in office,
after serving two full terms. September 11th was Election Day in New York
City. I mean, that was the day where New Yorkers
were supposed to literally move on from Rudy Giuliani. We began walking north and then suddenly the
other tower imploded. We kind of ran for our lives. It was a desperate,
desperate moment. His performance over the next few weeks and
months was magnificent. "The best way to get your children to stop
being afraid, is to stop being afraid yourself." You know his message was, we're going to do
fine. We're going to be okay. And I think that's what really resonated with people.
It's like this kind of father figure who, you know, reassured people that we were going
to get through this. Giulianni was TIME’s person of the year.
He was knighted by the Queen. He couldn’t even go to a restaurant without getting a
standing ovation. "God bless you, Rudy." "Rudy! Rudy! Get over here Rudy!" He was one of the most beloved men on the
planet. And what he did next, you know, in retrospect, may not have been the best use
of that situation. Instead of staying in public life, Giuliani
cashed in. He started a company that advised cities around
the world on security. He worked for countries like Qatar and companies like Purdue Pharma. In 2006 alone, he earned $11.4 million giving
124 different speeches. But by 2007, he was ready to get back into
politics. He ran for president. And for a time, he was the Republican frontrunner. But then his campaign collapsed. The Republican Party of 2008 wasn’t quite
ready for a pro-LGBT, pro-choice, New Yorker. Also, he might have talked about 9/11 too
much. "There’s only three things he mentions in
a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11. I mean, there’s nothing else." He really milked his post-9/11 celebrity for
all it was worth. He was never humble about it. It was a complete disaster, complete disaster. He not only lost his bid for president, but
also he kind of lost his 9/11 halo. And then the question was, you know, what
does he do then? Giuliani became a regular on Fox News. He started taking on more questionable security
clients: A Ukrainian mayor. An Iranian group once designated as a foreign terrorist organization. But then another New Yorker ran for President. Donald Trump and Giulliani weren’t close
friends in the 90s and 2000s, but they knew each other. They were both big figures in
New York. They did groundbreakings and parades and attended
each other’s third weddings. They even did…. this? "Donald, I thought you were a gentleman!" But in 2016, they were suddenly useful to each other. Trump did not have a lot of Republican friends.
And Giuliani wanted a path back to power. Giuliani endorsed Trump right before the
New York primary and he became an important supporter. "What I did for New York, Donald Trump will
do for America!" This is also when he also started showing
a willingness to share conspiracy theories. "Go online and put down, Hillary Clinton illness,
take a look at the videos for yourself." But then the entire Trump campaign almost
ended. The Washington Post published a video of Trump
saying vulgar things about women. "Donald Trump and a fight for political survival." Lots of Republicans abandoned or distanced
themselves from Trump. "I’m out. I can no longer endorse Donald
Trump for president." Giuliani stepped up. "I know Donald Trump for almost 30 years.
Doesn’t reflect the man that I know. He’s always dealt with women with great respect." It was Giuliani who stood by him and Trump
appreciated that. "Donald Trump wins the presidency." "Rudy, get up here." After Trump won, it looked like Giuliani’s
loyalty would pay off. There were rumors that he might be Secretary
of State. It turned out that congressional Republicans were not excited about this idea. Giuliani’s work with shady foreign clients
over the years turned out to be a bad look. So he went back to his law firm. Until Trump
needed a lawyer. Then Michael Cohen gets arrested, his offices get raided, and suddenly, the job of quote-unquote "personal attorney, but for Trumpworld that's always meant a kind of weird sort of "fixer" role, opens up. Giuliani takes it. He told the New York Times “the last year
and a half I haven’t been on television. Frankly, I’ve missed it.” Giuliani became Trump’s personal attorney
in April 2018. At some point after that, he heard about a
conservative media theory involving Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son,
Hunter Biden, and Ukraine. "It’s a case that is crying out to be investigated." It seems like it was Giuliani who picked up
this connection, from elsewhere in the conservative universe, and then brought it as a proposition to Trump. I don't think we know that for an absolute certainty. But Giuliani is very involved
in conservative media, and it seems to have been sort of his proposition to kind of get
back in the game. But Trump bought into the idea. Testimony
in the impeachment hearings revealed that he started directing US officials to work
with Guiliani on getting Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden. "Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a
public statement announcing the investigations. And we knew these investigations were important
to the president." "When this impeachment happens, the two most
responsible people for it are number one, Donald Trump, and number two, Rudy Giuliani." Today, Giuliani is still Trump’s personal
lawyer. But his work in Ukraine has made Trump the third president to ever be impeached. And Giuliani is being investigated by the US attorney
for the Southern District of New York: the same position that he once held. Rudy Giuliani has always wanted to be the
center of attention and always has had this knack for making himself the center of attention. He's had several opportunities in his life
to just sort of back away. Be rich, do paid speaking and sort of ride off into the sunset. He wants to be important, he wants to be involved. Whether that's a longshot presidential run,
whether that's being a Trump surrogate after this incredibly embarrassing videotape, or whether it's getting involved in some kind of nefarious international crimes, he always wants to get back in the action. this is Caesar Augustus he was the first official emperor of the Roman Empire and if you've ever had to study Roman history you might be familiar with this little sculpture is very famous original it's called the Augustus of primaporta it was carved in the 1st century AD during his reign as Emperor then it was lost a time before it was dug up again in 1860s today it lives in the Vatican Museums alongside a bunch of other famous sculptures but Augustus he's not supposed to look like this he's supposed to look like this [Music] let's get this out of the way ancient Greece and Rome were really colorful their buildings were full of intricate frescoes and elaborate mosaics and covered with violently painted statues of things like epic battles glimmering gods and pretty flowers but today most of us picture something more like this brilliant white marble as far as the eye can see we're wrong but it's not our fault it's Hollywood's fault and our high school textbooks fall but most of all it's this guy's fault well not him he's just a statue the blame lies with Michelangelo the guy who sculpted him and with many others who made white marble statues during the Renaissance when European artists philosophers and scientists developed a renewed interest in the creations of classical Greece and Rome artists like Michelangelo began studying Roman sculptures like this one Lao kun and his sons they fell in love with its lifelike figures dramatic scene and pristine white surface but sculptures like this weren't meant to be white their paint had just faded after being buried or left out in the open air for hundreds of years so when the Renaissance artist set out to imitate them they left their masterpieces bare - and that style took over inspiring generations of sculptors white marble became the norm along the way our historians reinforce this bias namely this guy Johann Joaquin vinkle Minh he sometimes known as the father of art history in the 18th century he wrote a hugely influential book on ancient art in it he argued that statues like this one the Apollo of Belvedere were the epitome of beauty because the wider the body is the more beautiful it is he went out of his way to ignore obvious evidence of coloured marble and there was a lot of it especially after the rediscovery of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in the 1700s Pompey's near perfectly preserved frescoes featured all sorts of colored statues and one particular mural of an artist in the act of painting a sculpture this colorful sculpture was also found in Pompeii Benkelman claimed it was too primitive to have been made by them but evidence wasn't just ignored some of it might have been destroyed remember Augustus when archeologists rediscovered him in the 1860s they sized his tunic was crimson his armor was yellow and his mantle that's this thing was purple and this is him now it's unclear if Augustus lost his color by accident as a result of over cleaning or if it was removed on purpose but either way the same thing happened to a bunch of other famous monuments and sculptures like the Parthenon in Athens which once looks something like this by the 18th century it had faded to something more like this with just hints of color left but today even those are gone luckily our historians have since shifted to believe it's not about what people think looks better it's about what's accurate but how do they get from this to this to start there are some surviving ancient descriptions of more famous sculptures which is how we know that the Parthenon once held a statue of the goddess Athena that was ivory and gold wearing a helmet adorned with the likeness of his Fink's and if you look closely at some sculptures there's still obvious traces of color like the remnants of deep purple on this Statutes clothing that's how early reconstructions like these are made today scientists can extract and test those tiny samples to determine the original pigments used but when there aren't any visible colors they have another tool ultraviolet light certain pigments glow under UV light exposing traces that would have been otherwise invisible when scientists photograph this archers legs under UV light they saw this a dizzying array of geometric patterns and saturated colors and when they compared it to trace pigments on a similar statue they were able to make this reconstruction which to be clear is about as ancient as mine because conservationists never add color to the original they use 3d scanners to create plaster replicas which they then painstakingly repaint with far greater accuracy than I can [Music] seeing these sculptures in full-color might be a little shocking at first but that's probably because we've only seen them one way for centuries to the Greeks and the Romans painting a sculpture made it complete color can make marble seem human or godlike it infused them with drama and emotion it brought history and mythology to life and even though these reconstructions aren't perfect seeing these statues in color can bring us a little closer to understanding what the ancient world might have looked like [Music] This person on the left — she represents
the poorest 10 percent of Americans. And on the right — he is the very richest
10 percent. So let’s ask this group a simple question: What percentage of your income gets taxed? Most Americans pay multiple income taxes … to
the federal government, and state governments, and local governments. But a recent analysis by two economists added
up all the income taxes. And when you do that, the data shows that
poor people pay a very small part of their income to the government. And rich people pay more. This concept, of taxing the poor at a lower
rate — and taxing the rich more… this is called: progressive taxation. It’s how taxes work in most countries. But it’s also why some critics question
whether these people… … are getting away without paying their
fair share: "The middle class and the poor that pay, if
anything, a lot less." "Why is it that 45 percent of the population
of this country is not contributing back to the rest?" But now let’s add one more guy to this group of 10: This guy — he represents the 400 richest Americans. Billionaires. Billionaires don’t make most of their money
through typical income. So their income actually gets taxed at lower
rates than these less rich people. Now, you might be thinking, don’t billionaires
pay taxes in other ways? And the answer is yes. This is just the income tax, and there are
lots of other kinds of taxes in America. And this analysis, where this data came from? It looked at all of those taxes. And it shows that, when we add them all up... There actually is someone in this group who
might not be paying their fair share. Let's go back to our first chart, with these
11 people. Remember, this is just the income tax. What happens when we add in all the other
taxes? Well, let’s look at another kind of tax:
Corporate and property taxes. These are the taxes we pay on the things we
own: Usually businesses, and property, and the money we make on them... Usually, rich people own more things. So these corporate and property taxes hit
them the hardest. Rich people also tend to be from rich families. And when they inherit a lot of money, the
government taxes them. This is called an estate tax. Put these taxes together, and it’s clear
that they place a much heavier burden on the rich -- including billionaires. Add these back onto the income taxes, and it looks like the rich really do pay way more than the poor. But now let's talk about another tax. This one's buried in your paystub. Look closely, and you'll see something called
a Medicare tax and a Social Security tax. Sometimes paystubs call them FICA. Anyway, combined, these are called payroll
taxes. Medicare and Social Security are two really
important programs: they provide health care and a modest income for when we get old and
retire. But they’re also expensive. Which is why we have these payroll taxes -- separate from the income tax -- to pay for them. So on your paycheck, you'll notice that you're
taxed 7.65 percent in payroll taxes. And your company is supposed to pay another
7.65 percent on your behalf. But economists have found that, in practice,
the way companies pay their part of the payroll tax... is by just paying workers less. So in reality, many workers pay nearly the full 15.3
percent toward this tax. And everyone is on the hook for the same percentage. But the wealthy? Once someone earns more than about $130,000
a year … the money they make beyond that isn't subject to the Social Security tax. It's capped. That means the rich pay a really small portion
of their income toward payroll taxes. And poor people and the middle class pay way
more. Add payroll taxes onto the chart, and it starts
to flatten out. The last type of taxes we’re going to look
at are the taxes we pay when we buy stuff. For example, let's say you're looking to buy
a t-shirt. When you check out, you pay a sales tax, which
is a percentage of its cost. And sales taxes apply to most things: Furniture. Toilet paper. Laundry detergent. For some items, like beer and gasoline, there
are additional taxes that get incorporated into the price tag ... before you even get
to the store. These are called consumption taxes. And we all pay the same rate on the things
we buy, regardless of how rich we are. You might think that, since rich people usually
buy more things — and more expensive things… they pay a larger percentage of their income
toward these taxes. But, relative to how much money they have,
the stuff they buy, and the taxes they pay on that stuff, take up a relatively small
portion of their income. Meanwhile, everyone, even people with almost no money, needs to buy certain basic things to survive. And for poor people, those basic things and the taxes that come with them cost them almost everything they earn. So if we chart how much of their income each
of these people pays in consumption taxes... … we can see that poor people pay a much larger
portion. When we put these taxes together… Suddenly we see a big change. The chart shows us that this line, from before,
is a lie. That America’s tax system as a whole, isn’t
very progressive. Instead, it’s mostly flat. Poor people pay about the same portion of
their income in taxes as rich people. And this guy — this billionaire — is paying
a smaller portion than everyone else. Even the poorest. If you look at just certain types of taxes, it’s natural to assume that rich people pay a bigger tax burden in the US, and that poor people aren’t exactly paying their fair share. But a more complete look at the bigger picture,
challenges that. And it suggests that, if we’re looking for
a group that isn’t paying their fair share, we might be looking on the wrong end. It’s official. Donald Trump is the 3rd president in American history to be impeached by the House of Representatives, joining Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Now, Richard Nixon, remember, resigned before theHouse voted on the articles of impeachment. But this is the middle, not the end, of the
impeachment process. This basically means Trump is officially charged
with the abuses of power laid out in the House’s articles of impeachment. But now the process moves onto the Senate, where Trump will actually be tried. If two-thirds of the Senate vote for conviction,
he’ll be removed from office. But Donald Trump is not going to
be removed from office by the senate. Mitch McConnell is the majority leader there and he more than anyone else, will control that process, and on December 12th, he went on Fox News to assure Sean Hannity that he saw his role not as
conducting a fair trial, but as protecting Trump’s presidency –
as carrying out Donald Trump’s will. “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating
with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s
position and our position as to how to handle this." The famous line about the Nixon impeachment
was that it came down to "what did the president know, and when did he know it?" But that’s not the case with Donald Trump’s
impeachment. We know that the president knew. He knew from the beginning, because he released the call record In which he personally asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden in return for military aid promised to Ukraine. And a slew of witnesses testifying before congress have backed that up. "What did Ambassador Sondland tell you that
he told Mr. Yermak?" "That the Ukrainians would have to have the
prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having
the aid lifted." No, the question here is what will congressional
Republicans accept, and what will they even defend? The facts of the case here are very simple. I spoke recently with Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman. He was one of the four constitutional scholars invited to testify before the House
Judiciary Committee as part of their hearings. The striking fact about this impeachment process,
he said to me, is that it’s not an edge case. It’s not a complex question of constitutional
interpretation. The framers had this one conversation
on July 20th, 1787 where they laid out in really clear terms what they were worried about. They worried about the abuse of power by a
president for his personal gain to corrupt the electoral process and to subvert national security. That's why they put impeachment in there. The first article of impeachment lays it out
clearly: “Using the powers of his high office, President
Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct
that included soliciting the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations
that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent,
and influence the 2020 United States presidential election to his advantage.” That  Donalrd Trump did all this is not in doubt. And he did his by leveraging aid that Ukraine,
an ally, needed to protect itself against Russian invasion. And this was just one of those cases
where it's just not that complicated. Because Republicans can’t argue that Trump is innocent of what he’s alleged to have done – Innocent of what his own call record shows him doing – some Republicans embraced an argument that is actually a lot scarier. It's much more dangerous to our system of government – much more in violation of what the founders wanted. That what Trump did is fine. "This president did nothing wrong." "The President of the United States and Mr
Zelinski both said nothing is wrong and Mr. Zelinski has said many times over, 'We felt
no pressure.'" "I have news for everybody. Get over it. There’s going to be political influence
in foreign policy." The problem here isn’t just the 2020 election. It’s the precedent it sets for every other
election. Congress is meant to use the impeachment power
to set boundaries on executive behavior. If Republicans erase this one, then as Feldman
says: They're saying to Donald Trump,
go ahead and do it in the future, and that's bad enough. But they're also saying it to every future
president. "Go ahead and use the office of the presidency
to gain personal political advantage in upcoming elections." That is not, to be fair, Republicans only argument. Some Republicans have focused on process – That the House impeachment process was too fast, that it didn’t call all the witnesses. "The fact our colleagues are already desperate to sign
up the Senate for new fact finding, which house democrats themselves were too impatient to see through ..." The circularity of this argument is a bit maddening. House Democrats wanted to call more witnesses. They wanted to subpoena more documents and Trump blocked them, claiming executive privilege. That’s why article 2 of the two articles of
impeachment is "Obstruction of Congress." Specifically, the article says that Trump
obstructed Congress in doing it's constitutional duty by: One Directing the White House to defy subpoenas
to produce documents relevant to the investigation. Two Directing agencies to defy subpoenas, such
that the Department of Energy, the Department of Management and Budget, the State Department,
and the Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record for this investigation. And directing nine key administration officials to refuse to testify. Look, Republicans who actually care about congress and the constitution and their duty to conduct oversight and who truly were undecided on the facts of the case – who really felt they just didn't know what happened between Donald Trump and Ukraine – They could threaten Donald
Trump. They could make him produce these documents. Make him produce these witnesses by saying they'd vote for the "Obstruction of Congress" article if he refused to honor the subpoenas and send the witnesses. They could just demand the House is able to complete its investigation to their satisfaction. That no congressional Republicans
hold this position makes their true position all too clear. "This thing will come to the Senate, and it
will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly," This isn’t how the system the Founders constructed
is meant to work. Ambition was supposed to check ambition. Instead, the ambition of congressional Republicans
has become an enabler for the ambitions of President Donald Trump. There is a particular line, on page 5 of the
articles of impeachment, that I keep thinking about. It is, in my view, the most important line
in the entire document, It reads, “President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated
that he will remain a threat to national security and the constitution if allowed to remain
in office.” Everything Trump did with Ukraine came after
the Mueller investigation, after his presidency was put at risk over allegations of collusion
with a foreign power in 2016. And then – after all of that – Donald Trump, having escaped that inquiry
unscathed – He turned around and tried to enlist Ukraine’s help in the next election. If congressional Republicans let him off the
hook for this, why does anyone think he won’t do it again, and again, and again? And why, then, don’t they think this will
just become a normal tactic for incumbent presidents worried about their own reelection? This is, of course, the exact scenario the
Founders most feared. Republicans are abandoning their constitutional
role to provide oversight and to curb the executive’s abuse of power. Every Senate Republican I interview tell me they see themselves as a constitutional conservative. That their goal in congress is to protect the constitution. But that’s not what they have become. They've become anti-constitutional Trumpists. They are putting our system of government
at risk. One more thing before you go – If you want to hear the full interview with Noah Feldman and quite a bit more like that, you can subscribe to my podcast
"Impeachment, explained." We release every week. We have a lot more where that came from and we'll put a link in the description. I need you to close
your eyes. Okay [applause] [music] Should we be worried about
genetically modified food? [music] How does our Internet
really work? Is it wrong to fly? Do you ever feel lonely? [music] We're going to visit
ground zero for new GMO crops. He found a chameleon. [squeal of delight]
- Oh my god! That's the world's first
production electric airplane. Does it feel like you're
at the beginning of a revolution in aviation?
- Oh yeah. That's an Internet hub! It looks just like every
other office building. There's a dank meme in
here somewhere. This morning we're going to
be using our imagination. This is the ice that
melts from the average American's
air travel in a year. - Wow!
- Well I feel terrible. We're in the middle of a
loneliness epidemic.  So I'm going to see if I can
make new friends using an app. - Good to meet you!
- Good to meet you man! Everything about what
we're doing is weird. What does society
value most in girls? Physical attractiveness
was at the top of the list. And we're being presented
this endless list of things that we can
do to beautify ourselves. Expensive things! [moans]
[light slapping] What's going to happen
in the future? And what about today? We're about to find out. On a bigger scale
than ever before. [music] On Nov 4th 2019, former boy band member and
current fashion icon, Harry Styles, posted an image to twitter. Within 24 hours it racked up over half a million
likes. It was the cover to his long awaited sophomore
album, and fans dissected every last detail. From the pink and blue color palette,
which was used for the studio backdrop, his custom Gucci outfit, and was even painted
on his fingernails. To this disembodied hand in the corner, which
belongs to Tim Walker, the photographer. And finally, the scandalous release date - Friday
December 13th. His ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift’s, birthday. But zoom out to the whole image, and you’ll
see something that extends far beyond the world of Harry Styles fandom. This circular photograph is the latest in
a long line of album covers that have that same warped composition. This is the story of music’s obsession with
the fisheye lens. In 1906 renowned physicist Robert W. Wood
was in his lab at Johns Hopkins University with a bucket full of water, a pinhole camera,
mirrored glass, and a lot of light. He wanted to see if he could create an image
of the world from the perspective of a fish. Whose view from underwater compresses the
entire horizon. This experiment might seem unusual, but Woods
was a professor of optical physics and he dedicated his career to inventing unconventional
tools to study light. From developing this disk whose microscopic
components helped determine the age of stars, to inventing this toy which, according to
the patent, “created grotesque images of people’s faces” through a series of perfectly
placed mirrors. I first heard of him as being sort of an offbeat
kind of guy. He often had a deep insight into things and
kind of a quirky way. That’s John Beaver, a photographer who is
also a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. That basic diagram of the rays coming at different
angles, I teach that all the time, it’s in every beginning physics book. But the idea of making a camera out of that,
I had never heard that Robert Wood had done that. In this paper, Wood detailed what he wanted
to see: “the circular picture would contain everything
embraced within an angle of 180 degress in every direction, i.e. a complete hemisphere.” And luckily, he left us with a set of instructions. Diameter of the paper, what’s that? Open only in photography darkroom. I feel like I’m about to murder somebody. Let’s go get some water. Anchors away. Let’s get another one of those clamps. In case of contact flash skin or eyes with
water for at least 15 minutes. That’s fine. Oh no it’s not because it has to be under
the pinhole. I honestly have no idea how the hell he did
this. I think there's an easy way for you to do it now that he couldn't have done. You can just put a waterproof
GoPro in the bottom of the bucket. God dammit. Can we just cut to the pictures? This is a picture he took from under a bridge. This is a line up of men. And this is what a fish might see if all those
men were looking down at it from above the surface of a pond. Soon, researchers and scientists built on
Wood’s idea. From 1915 through the 1930s, it was the fields
of meteorology and astronomy that drove the development of a camera lens that could capture
that coveted fisheye perspective. And on the eve of World War II, German inventors
filed a patent for a lens which they then shared with the Japanese company Nikon. The lens used the same principles as Woods’
water experiment. You can see it right in his diagram with the bucket. As the light rays come in at a steep angle,
they come out at a less steep angle. And so those light rays that are coming from
huge angles are compressed onto the picture. In 1957 Nikon produced their first special
order fish-eye camera, factoring in inflation, it was a $27,000 piece of gear. Though they were still primarily used for
scientific research, a few caught the attention of magazine and newspaper photographers. This 1957 issue of Life Magazine, shows a
fisheye view of a senate hearing. A few months later that same camera photographed
a pole vaulter mid jump. And in 1962, Sixty years after Robert Woods’
original experiments, Nikon’s first consumer grade fish-eye lens hit the market. And it became a pop culture phenomenon. It captured baseball stadiums
Shark cages Political conventions
The Apollo trainings And protests. It was and always has been a handy tool to
capture tight quarters. as well as huge spaces. But perhaps its greatest strength was making
rock stars appear larger than life. When the Beatles kicked off the British Invasion
in the mid 60s. The fish eye lens was uniquely suited to document
the insanity. Here they are at a Miami press conference. And during a TV performance. The len’s warped perspective reflected the
trippiness of the psychedelic era. Including the Woodstock music festival. This is jazz musician, Sam Rivers’, 1965
album Fuchsia Swing Song and it’s one of the earliest fisheye album covers. A few months later The Byrds Released Mr Tambourine
Man. Over the next few years the fisheye album
art format cemented itself in music. The most common format was this:
A giant circular fisheye lens portrait of the artist or band.
with typography above and below it. In more illustrated approaches, the font wraps
fully around the image And some exclude the artist altogether, opting
to show an interesting scene or landscape. Oh, I just thought of a fish eye album cover. Do you know Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield? No, but I’m going to look it up. Wow that’s cool. The fisheye lens was a go-to piece of gear
for music photographers and filmmakers by the end of the 1970s. It was there for concerts, television performances,
and photoshoots. So by the time MTV launched in 1981, it was
inevitable that the super wide angle lens would play a huge role in music videos. It could get super close to a performer while
still capturing the space around them. This is the music video for the Beastie Boys
track “Shake your Rump” It was shot with at least three cameras equipped
with a fisheye lens. Fisheye worked for every genre, from 60s hippies
to alt rock to hip hop. But hip-hop had a sense of humor, and it was
in your face. Which helped turn it into one of the genre’s
signature looks. And in the 90s that's thanks to director Hype Williams.
— From 1991 to 1999 he directed dozens of music video for top artists. And many of those prominently featured a fisheye perspective. Busta Rhymes, TLC, and of course, Missy Elliot. The list goes on and on. And let's not forget those album covers. The Fisheye lens is, no doubt, a novelty. When you see a photo taken with it, your eye
will likely first focus on the highly distorted style of the image, and then register what’s
in it. But that undersells how timeless and useful
of a tool it actually is. One generation sees it as a psychedelic photography
trope. Another a 1990s hip-hop throwback. If you’re an astronomer, it helps you track
clouds moving across the atmosphere and the terrain on the surface of Mars. And if you’re as curious as Robert Woods,
it’ll let you see the world from the point of view of 
a fish. ...near Delhi. The smog here was so thick, drivers couldn’t see where they were going. At least 24 vehicles were damaged as drivers kept crashing into the pileup. These conditions happen every year, when Delhi experiences a huge spike in air pollution. “Are we breathing poison in Delhi?” “...every two minutes one person dies due
to air pollution in this country.” “I get nauseous. I get dizzy.” When it hits, the nearly 30 million people here are forced to live in a toxic cloud. Scientists estimate that spending a day outside in these conditions is like smoking 50 cigarettes. “As a lung surgeon, when I open the chest I rarely see a normal pink lung these days.” On the ground, a layer of dust covers the
entire city, and, in the air, a thick layer of pollution hides landmarks that are easy to see the rest of the year. Delhi has always been a big, busy, polluted city. But in the last decade something is making it even worse. In the last 10 years, Delhi’s population has grown by more than 7 million people. Today it’s the second-largest city in the world and it’s also among the most polluted. More people means more cars, spreading dust and exhaust into the air. As Delhi grows, there’s also more construction, producing dust particles. And more industries, contaminating the environment. All these things make  the average air quality in Delhi unhealthy year-round. But something else is happening right here, when air pollution in Delhi spikes in October and November. It sends air pollution levels to fifty times what’s considered safe. “Levels go haywire. Many of the machines are not made to measure the levels that we achieve.” The smog is so bad , you can see it from space. But this cloud of pollution isn’t actually coming from Delhi. It’s coming from here. The states of Punjab and Haryana are known as “India’s Breadbasket.” They’re a key region for the country’s agriculture. Farmers here grow rice and that requires large amounts of water. In the 2000s, rice farming here took off, and farmers in the area started using so much water, that the region’s groundwater started running low. So, to save water, authorities passed a new act in 2009. It bans rice planting before mid-June. That means farmers can’t plant rice until right before the monsoon season, when rains come to replenish the groundwater. That pushes rice harvesting later into the year, which means farmers have less time to get their fields ready for their next crop. So, to clear their fields more quickly, more and more farmers have started setting their crop stubble on fire. Every year, all those stubble fires form a massive cloud of smoke during October and November. And it heads straight for Delhi. There are two reasons why smoke in this region makes things worse in Delhi. The first is geography. The Himalayan mountains act like a kind of barrier, directing the smoke towards Delhi. The second is the weather. During the winter, cold mountain air rushes down from the Himalayas towards Delhi, arriving beneath a layer of warm lowland air that creates a kind of dome over the city. The warm air keeps pollution trapped on the ground with nowhere to go. So when the stubble fire smoke arrives in
Delhi, it mixes with the urban pollution forming a toxic smog that sits on top of the city. Mix all that together and you have the most hazardous air pollution of almost anywhere. In November of 2019, India’s Supreme Court ruled that states in the North had to stop farmers from burning their crop stubble. But so far, the ruling hasn’t been enforced on the ground. In the weeks after the ruling, tens of thousands of crop fires continued to burn in Punjab and Haryana. Delhi doesn’t have the ability to stop crop burning in neighboring states. Instead, when pollution spikes in October and November, city officials change the things they can control: Sometimes they'll halt all construction in the city. Or put restrictions on vehicle use. Still, until India’s ban on crop stubble
burning is actually enforced, these spikes will be back every year,. Making the city’s already dangerous pollution even worse and putting the lives of millions at risk. “Here we are taking baby steps, but we are in a time period where baby steps won’t help anymore.” “What we breathe should be fresh air.” You ready to history? PHIL: Ready. You’re ready? Okay. Alright. I’m Coleman Lowndes. PHIL: I’m Phil Edwards. And this is History Club, where Phil and I
tell each other a story from history that ideally the other one doesn’t know anything
about. So today is my turn. And it’s a story of sabotage, deception,
and spies, culminating in a major attack on US soil in 1916. PHIL: Alright. Right here on Black Tom Island. So Black Tom was a munitions depot during
World War I. And one summer night in 1916, German spies
blew it to pieces. And they almost got away with it. Okay so a really important thing to know about
this whole story is that the US government badly wanted to remain neutral when World
War I broke out in Europe. And for the first few years of the war, they
were. They saw the war as a sort of “Old World”
problem thousands of miles away, and US President Woodrow Wilson promised to keep the people
out of it. PHIL: Yeah, staying out of World War I was
kind of one of the cornerstones of his reelection campaign. Yes. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t profit
from it. The sale and shipment of munitions to Europe
became a major industry in the United States, and brought the country out of an economic
downturn. I mean they were pumping this sh*t out. So I could send you a map but you know Europe. You know what Europe looks like. PHIL: Yeah. So now imagine Europe. PHIL: Lots of lines, shapes. This industry mainly benefited the Entente
Allies, led by Great Britain, France, and Russia. And the Central Powers, led by Germany and
Austria-Hungary, could technically also buy American bombs, but they were excluded because
of a really effective blockade the British navy imposed at the beginning of the war. Getting munitions into Germany was basically
impossible, so Germans turned to the next best thing: sabotage. I’m gonna do the short version of this,
but the go-to source for the bigger story is this book. Starting in 1914 and up until the US entered
the war in 1917, Imperial Germany operated a sophisticated network of spies and saboteurs
inside the US, secretly wreaking havoc on the munitions industry. Ships and factories were catching fire, and
suspicion landed on Germans and German-Americans. And there were a lot of Germans here, including
sailors, who, because of the British blockade, were sort of stranded in neutral US ports. And that is where they were being recruited
to blow up factories. PHIL: And was the appeal just one of nationalism? These people were from Germany and they should
help the German effort? Yeah, they saw it as attacks on the English. Because the English and the Russians were
buying these bombs, so it’s like “these are being sent straight to people who are
going to use them on Germans. You can’t fight the war because you’re
stuck here. Do you want to do this instead?” One of my favorite parts of this whole thing
is this guy von Bernstorff. I’m going to send you a picture of him. Germany’s ambassador to Washington was secretly
overseeing this entire spy network while trying to maintain good relations with the US. At first, the plan was to buy up all the munitions
before the Allies could, but the sheer scope of US production was overwhelming. German agent Franz von Rintelen remarked that: So he started setting fire to Europe-bound
ships loaded with weapons using a very special device. And I wanted to go into how it works, but
it’s too long. But basically, it could be timed to go off
after several days. So by the time is far out to sea, a massive
flame would ignite in the hold, and it burned so hot that it would melt the casing of the
bomb so there was no trace of it. Which is an ideal weapon if you want the fire
to look like an accident. So Americans were suspicious of German sabotage,
but they couldn’t prove it. And that’s because at this time, there was
no infrastructure of domestic intelligence agencies in the US. No Department of Homeland Security, no FBI,
no CIA. Pre-WWI America saw itself as isolated and
safe, protected from foreign attacks by thousands of miles of ocean. Which explains why they left Black Tom their
biggest prize virtually unguarded. 75% of the US’ booming munitions industry
centered around New York and New Jersey, and most of them were shipped from Black Tom. The night of July 30th, the warehouses and
train cars there were packed to the brim with over two million pounds of munitions, making
it possibly the largest arsenal in the world outside of the war zone. And at 2:08 in the morning, it blew up. Glass windows shattered all across Jersey
City, Lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn. The massive Brooklyn Bridge shuddered. And people as far away as Philadelphia and
Maryland felt the blast, which would have registered as a moderate earthquake on the
Richter scale. The Statue of Liberty was struck too. And its damaged torch has been closed to visitors
ever since the attack. So you used to be able to actually go to the
very top of the torch, but it’s been closed since 1916. PHIL: Wow. I never knew that. Yeah. PHIL: So the torch was damaged that way? Yeah, it was damaged by shrapnel from bombs. All told, there were only 5 confirmed deaths,
and around $20 million in property damage. Which is about half a billion today. PHIL: Wow. Yeah. Black Tom itself was obliterated, and the
US had no idea how it happened. PHIL: And so when did the United States recognize
that it was German spies who had been responsible for Black Tom? It took years. At first, there wasn’t much suspicion of
sabotage at all . Black Tom was seen as an act of gross negligence,
and two guys were initially arrested for manslaughter. The next prevailing theory was mosquitos. For a long time, the accepted sequence of
events was that the fire started after the handful of guards working that night lit “smudge
pots,” which are these things that use smoke to keep away mosquitos. PHIL: Okay. I was wondering, I was imagining mosquitos
wearing little robber masks sneaking in or something. PHIL: “For Bavaria!” It’s either mosquitos or it’s negligence
and manslaughter. But all the investigating parties initially
agreed that it definitely wasn’t sabotage. The year after Black Tom, the US cut diplomatic
ties with Germany and entered World War I. It wasn’t until 1939 that the US declared
Germany responsible for blowing up Black Tom, along with other acts of sabotage. They just weren’t equipped to handle an
investigation like this, nothing like it had ever happened before. And I want to read you one more quote. From the Washington Evening Star in 1919. The German sabotage campaign set the stage
for the passage of the Espionage Act in 1917 and the eventual establishment of domestic
intelligence agencies. PHIL: So what attracted you to this story? Black Tom is the signature attack of this
campaign, but the spy ring I think is what gets me the most. Just this amazing spy network that these German
diplomats had set up and were operating for years inside the US. And just think about an America that isn’t
what it is today where we record everything, and keep tabs on everyone, you know? It was just like.... this could have only
happened pre-global America. [Music] from the person who worked craft services on lala land you have to watch this Oscar nominated Oscar winner we're important no I'm not pro ukulele true story it's a new cameo but you know it's gonna be up for an Oscar looks familiar right well welcome to award season we're Oscar buzzes a buzzing and we see the trailers to prove it thank you very much but have you ever wondered if there's a formula for crafting an Oscar bait trailer each year in order to lobby Oscar voters Studios spend an additional three to ten million dollars per film why would a studio want to win an Oscar so bad they grateful the members of the Academy in previous year's Best Picture nominees could see a bump of up to 90% increases in box office sales but since 2013 no Best Picture has made more than seven million at the box office after winning an Oscar so while the Oscar bump may bring less box-office money than it used to it's still all about the prestige and on Amazon's Manchester by the sea or Netflix as roma our Best Picture nominees and even win in other categories it signals top filmmakers that streaming platforms are viable alternatives to the traditional studio system in short Oscars have tremendous value so what tools and tropes to trailers used to bait audiences into believing that they are worthy of an Oscar we're gonna play a little Where's Waldo you hear the trope we're gonna pause it we're gonna see how many we can identify ready these women are everywhere well let them play golf and tennis now no charge on the phone cuz you called me you skirt yeah you can stop right there so we got what big issue Oscar loves films that make a point of changing hearts and minds so whether it's addressing racial inequality gender discrimination rampant sexism or other hot button social issues trailers bring subtext to the forefront so you know just what change you're supporting by seeing a film wait am I gonna be the story no no I'm gonna be the story no nobody's top - whoa Oh prosthetic action whether it's drastically gaining or losing weight or adding jaw-dropping prosthetics oscar-worthy films are no stranger to actors taking their performances to the next physical level and those transformations are usually revealed in Oscar bait trailers as an additional selling point to audiences ready to go to war oh yeah alright so we've gotten bombshell which is a little different than the next trailer which is going to be heartwarming but a biopic what is it will you be mine could you be mine please won't you be my neighbor you got this shot of tee-hanks oh yeah right here mr. Rogers cardigan do you consider yourself a hero based on truth as I say is stranger than fiction so it's no wonder that the Oscars often honor filmmakers for mining the history that informs our present in fact since 2010 30 Best Picture nominees were based on a true story so we're sticking along the lines of based on a true story did you find a date with our friend Academy Award winner Robert De Niro and of course one of the easiest ways to lure audiences is to make a point of showcasing all the star power a film has to offer every single trailer we've seen has been a quote unquote Oscar bait but what is it about them that they're trying to get us to do and did they succeed I think to a large extent they have succeeded because just upon watching these I feel as though I need to see them it does create that fear of missing out and not being a part of the conversation and these are these look good they've struck the notes that I respond to and they've drawn me in so while each Oscar bait trailer might not use the exact same formula they're definitely using the same ingredients the end result obviously doesn't definitively translate to Oscar wins but it engages you in the same way a winner would and while the right trailer could make just about anything seem Oscar worthy audiences still have to actually like the movie itself you [Music] if you upload a photo into Google's reverse image search it'll find websites where that picture has appeared or provide visually similar images that have the same coloring and Composition the leading search engine in Russia called Yandex has reverse image search too but it doesn't work the same way it's not looking for visually similar images it's looking for similar faces the same face the difference between these search engines is that Google hasn't switched on facial recognition and Yandex has on Google you can enter a name and look for a face but on Yandex you can enter a face and look for a name and that distinction represents a potentially enormous shift in our offline lives where we usually decide who we introduce ourselves to now that computer scientists have created tools that can turn faces into nametags it's worth reflecting on how we got here and what we stand to lose [Music] a computer's facial recognition system has broadly the same components as your own facial recognition system you see someone with your eyes your mind processes the features of their face and recalls their identity from your memory now imagine if you could have eyes and lots of places and could download and store memories from other people then you have something more like the automated version of facial recognition which has only come together in the past five years or so its eyes our digital cameras revolutionary machines that turn light into data it's a state-of-the-art digital model which records images on memory chips instead of photographic film digital imagery arose in the early 2000s which coincided with the arrival of the social internet so right when we were able to take an unlimited number of pictures Facebook Flickr YouTube and other sites told us that our images had a home online a hundred million photos are being tagged every day on Facebook professional photography also went up on websites news articles and photo libraries and Google's web crawlers gathered them into image search and then the computer vision researchers went to work the millions of digital photos posted to the internet like the Facebook pictures where we tagged our friends or the Google image results of celebrities they were used to build the mind of facial recognition systems that mind is made up of a series of algorithms they locate faces in an image map facial features to correct forehead rotation and then take over a hundred measurements that define that individual face those measurements are usually described as the distance between the eyes the length of the nose the width of the mouth but the truth is nobody knows exactly what's being measured that's determined by a deep learning algorithm looking for correlations in raw pixel data to train that algorithm engineers give it sets of triplets an anchor photo another photo of the same person and a photo of a different person the algorithm is tasked with deciding what to measure so that the statistical difference between the two matching photos is as small as possible while the distance between the non matching photos is as large as possible these algorithms are refined through millions of examples but they still don't perform equally well on all types of people or all types of photos that hasn't stopped them from being packaged and distributed as ready to use software but whoever uses that software won't be able to identify you until you're in their database of known faces that's the memory of the system and it's separate from the training images in the case of the iPhone space ID it's a database of one you volunteer to store your face on your device in exchange for easily unlocking your phone companies like Facebook and Google also keep databases of their users but it's governments that typically have access to the largest databases of names and faces so facial recognition significantly expands the power of the state they collected these images for other reasons and now they're repurposing them for facial recognition without telling us or obtaining our consent which is why several US cities have banned government use of facial recognition in the private sector retail stores banks and stadiums can create or buy watch lists of known shoplifters valued customers or other persons of interest so they're notified if one of those people shows up and then there's another source of labeled photos those are the ones we've been labeling ourselves by setting up profiles on social media networks it's typically against the terms of use to program BOTS that can download faces and names from sites like LinkedIn Twitter or Facebook but it's doable and what's at stake is something that most of us take for granted our ability to move through public spaces anonymously so we typically think of public and private as being opposites but is there such thing as having privacy when we're in public eye I would like to think so Evan Sellinger is a professor of philosophy who argues that facial recognition is a threat to obscurity which is the idea that personal information is safer when it's hard to obtain or understand so we have natural sort of limitations in what we can perceive and what we can hear even the human mind has you know sort of basic limits and how much information it can store so one of the things that technologies do is they reduce the transaction costs of being able to find information being able to store information being able to share information and being able to correctly interpret information and so the facial recognition is probably the most obscurity of Visser rating technology ever invented we don't have to imagine how this could play out it's already happening with photos from the Russian social media network VK Eric Toller a journalist who covers Europe for Belling cat showed me how it works with a random video of Russian soccer fans picking fights in Poland there's about ten or so of these soccer hooligans in this video and for like every single one of them find their their profiles on weekend here's the first result this guy so you click the photo here it'll take you directly to the photos like here is he's wearing I think he's wearing the same shirt yeah I can write the same charity but this is him too so this is probably like his buddy who uploaded a photo yeah so this is probably this guy's profile here's his buddy right here yes oh here he is during a baptism probably and the photo you uploaded is not like particularly clear or high-resolution oh no not at all right it's just like it's probably 200 by 100 so it is kind of it does feel weird when you do this you have access to more information but you should is what it feels like but also we only public over like 1000 sure of and if possibly double you mean maybe don't include the names of people how you feel about this technology probably depends on how much you sympathize with the person being identified belen cat has used these tools to identify people linked to the attack on flight mh17 in eastern ukraine they've also been used to Doc's police officers accused of brutality anti-corruption activist protesting against Vladimir Putin random strangers as part of an art and sex workers porn performers and others who have posted anonymous photos online the way that we share our images and our names on social media LinkedIn Twitter Instagram it seems to suggest that we don't want to be obscure we're not really looking to be anonymous are we allowed to want to share and connect with other people online and still be able to expect not to be recognized when we're offline in our regular lives I would say absolutely if we ever create a society where that's not a reasonable expectation a lot of the things that are fundamental to being a human being are really going to be compromised having any individuality requires experimenting in life and experimenting requires the protections of some obscurity but also intimacy requires obscurity right if you want to be able to share different parts of your life with different people I think most of us do right we don't want to come into work and behave the same way we do with our friends we don't want to treat our partners in the same way we do acquaintances and the concern when you lose too much obscurity is that these domains bleed into one another and create what's called context collapse and it doesn't mean that one is more real or one is more authentic leading a rich life requires us to be able to express ourselves in these diverse ways the photos we took to share with friends or document history or simply get a government ID have been used to build and operate a technology that strips away the protections that obscurity has always provided us it's nothing less than a massive bait and switch one that could change the meaning of the human face forever hi I'm Joss hey I'm Samantha and we are excited to announce the launch of a new project called open sourced from recode by box for the next year we're going to be writing articles and making videos about the hitting consequences of technology to help you make informed decisions and we would love for you to contribute to our reporting by joining the open-source reporting network we want to know what questions you have about the technology that you use day what do you want to know about how your data is being used please go to voxcom slash open-sourced network to submit your questions and ideas can't wait to hear what you're curious about OK, take a look at that palm tree right over
there. That’s not a California palm tree, it’s
a Florida palm tree. And I’m currently in a city that had more
than 30 movie studios and made 100s of films. This 
city was locked in a fight with Hollywood and if it won, it could have changed our culture. But this gutted old movie studio is just about
all that’s left of it today. And the fact that this city lost says something
about early movies and how hard it is for cities to embrace change. But if things had gone just a little differently,
Jacksonville, Florida, might have been the world’s movie capital. This is a typical movie studio around 1910. Notice the ceiling? It’s glass covered by thin paper. Physical film strips at the time needed so
much light that the studios were like greenhouses, and pricey artificial lights were just starting
to get good in the 1910s. Most early American silent movies were made
in New York — and this lighting requirement created some problems. It was just one of the reasons movie studios
felt “the call of jacksonville.” New York’s light didn’t compare to “the
rays of the sun” in warmer climates, and this was especially important with primitive
film. Cold weather also hurt cameras, and cameramen
claimed it caused static that produced cracks and scratches on the film. Location was limited as well. New York could play a city, but producers
wanted to be near beaches and jungles. Jacksonville and LA both did that - but Jacksonville
was a relatively short 26 hour train ride from New York. So it became a winter hub. The Vim headquarters in New York wanted a
presence in Jacksonville, so they set up an outpost, and the famous Thanhouser Film Company
did the same. Massive new studios were built. This is the former home of Eagle Studios — a
Jacksonville native studio —in 1916, where they shot movies like this one: A Bathtub
Elopement, featuring goofy silent film comedian Marcel Perez. This is the production office. This is the safe where they stored flammable
film. And this is the on-lot generator. So why is it empty today? OK, this is almost it. Imagine this happening in your city. Right not I’m at Monroe and Davis in Jacksonville,
where a mob of more than 1,000 extras almost destroyed a saloon while shooting the movie
“The Clarion.” Like, totally destroyed it. OK, do I look like that guy?
“ARGH!” This happened more than once. Here’s a crowd chasing a baby carriage down
the street in downtown Jacksonville. It held a very large “baby.” By the mid-1910s, Jacksonville residents were
starting to get sick of movies overrunning their town. Jacksonville had extended a “genuine welcome”
to film, like Vim Comedy and Eagle Film. The mayor was a film booster who thought film
would bring a “new era to Jacksonville.” He had the support of every production company
in Jacksonville, and the city was set to be a hub. He was up for election in 1917, a year after
that big riot during the shooting of “The Clarion.” Businessmen were behind the mayor and he asked
the people of Jacksonville to vote for him and support the motion picture film companies
he brought in. He lost. It was a vote against corruption, but also
against the movies running wild through Jacksonville. During this time, Hollywood had grown a lot,
despite being further away from New York. Mismanagement of companies in Jacksonville,
World War I, and an influenza outbreak didn’t help the Florida city. There was a lot of bad luck. After the 1917 election, a lot of studios
closed up shop in Florida. The city had, in effect, voted against a future
in movies. In the meantime, hit movies, like those made
by legendary director DW Griffith, had made Hollywood a home for film.. Hollywood was ready to be a movie town. Jacksonville couldn’t make the jump. Jacksonville shows us an alternate universe
for movies. One where different comedy teams became legendary,
where the duo of Laurel and Hardy was “Plump and Runt” instead. And there are other reasons too, beyond movie
stars. That sign up top should say Norman Laboratories. After Eagle Studios closed, a producer named
Richard Norman bought it. While Hollywood made movies featuring actors
in blackface, Norman Studios made films like the Flying Ace, starring heroic black characters,
played by black actors. It was one of a few film studios that focused
on black audiences and black characters, and it sat outside the Hollywood system. It wasn’t the mainstream. If things had gone a little differently in
Jacksonville, our culture could have been shaped by an entirely different set of stories. But instead, all we have are a few restored
films and some buildings that are waiting for the same. Alright, that’s it for this episode in our
series about big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood. A lot of places have actually started to surpass
Hollywood — there’s Nollywood, there’s Bollywood, there’s Y’allywood — these
are all real, Google them. So I wanna know if you think Hollywood will
endure. Let me know in the comments. I also want to give a shout out to almost
Hollywood by Blair Miller. All those library scenes where I’m looking
up stuff on microfiche, I’m basically looking up footnotes in this book and finding them
in the original newspaper. So if you want to nerd out a lot more on the
history of Jacksonville, Florida, get into the specifics, this is the book for you. In the US, most kids go to school based
on where they live. That means, when families decide where to live, one big factor is: How good is the school in the neighborhood? So how do you figure that
out? Well, you could visit the school... See how the playground looks.... Or ask friends about it. But all of these seem so imprecise. Plus, it's kind of weird to
visit dozens of playgrounds. So, these days, you would probably Google the school. And you'll almost certainly end up on this website: GreatSchools.org.
GreatSchools is a nonprofit school ratings website. They provide a number rating for almost every public school in America. The worst schools are a 1, and
the best schools are a 10. There are other websites and organizations that rate schools, but GreatSchools is the big one. Well, we dug into the data to find out. And what we found, is that this score often ends up showing something other than how good a school is. GreatSchools started in the late 1990s. They visited schools around the San Francisco Bay Area, and talked to each school's principal. But that method of profiling schools wasn't exactly scalable. They couldn't go visit every single school in the country. That would be prohibitively expensive; it was hard enough as it was. Matt Barnum is a reporter at Chalkbeat, a site that covers education. He helped us report
this story. Going to every single school was just not a sustainable model. Then, in 2001, something huge happened for GreatSchools. Congress passed a national
education law called "No Child Left Behind." No Child Left Behind required
schools to give state standardized tests, each year, in grades three through eight, to figure out how many of them met a standard called "proficiency." "Proficiency" is basically each US state's standard for what kids should know at a certain grade level. So that gave them a lot of data to rate schools all across the country. After No Child Left Behind, GreatSchools had the numbers they could base their scores on. Today, they say this proficiency score is the biggest factor in the ratings it gives each elementary and middle school; accounting for about half the score. But when we start looking at GreatSchools' data, we notice something. Here are basically all the public elementary and middle schools in Denver and a few of its suburbs. With the help of journalists at Chalkbeat, we sorted them by the percentage of low-income students in each school. These schools have more low-income students, and these schools have fewer. Now, let's highlight the schools that got a GreatSchools rating of at least a 7, which is what they consider above average. You can see that almost all of these better-rated schools are more affluent. And this is true in basically every city from San Francisco to Detroit. And this correlation also appears when
we sort these schools by racial demographics. Here's Denver again. The schools on the left have more black and hispanic students, and the schools on the right have fewer. So which schools got a rating
of 7 or above? It's schools with more white and Asian kids, who tend to come from more affluent neighborhoods. GreatSchools' ratings seem to confirm
something that many people already assume: Here's the problem: That's not necessarily true. And to understand why, we need to look at one of the big issues with measuring proficiency. America's neighborhoods are highly unequal. And when children show up
to school in affluent neighborhoods, that are mostly white and Asian, they're
better-prepared for school than children in poor, mostly black and Hispanic areas. So when we look at proficiency, we're actually often measuring how prepared these kids were coming in. Not what happens inside the school. So, if proficiency is more about measuring the student than the school, how could we
actually measure the school's performance? Well, another common way of measuring schools is to see how much a school helps a student improve. This is called a "growth score." Now, Growth is still just based on test scores, which not everyone is a fan of. But it's how many schools
prefer we measure them. The principals I talked to felt that it was more fair to judge them on growth. If you're a school that is serving a lot of students who
are coming in at a low level, you could be doing a great job with those students,
but it might not be showing up in proficiency. Not all states report growth scores, which is a problem in itself. But most do. And growth scores show that there are many low-income schools that are pretty good. Here's every Denver school again. And again, sorted by the percentage of low-income students. And now, if we highlight the schools that have an above-average growth score, which is data we got from GreatSchools' own website, we can see that there are lots of schools in poor neighborhoods that are very good at educating their students. And this is true in other cities, too: Like
Indianapolis... and Detroit. But in the GreatSchools rating system, growth only matters about half as much as proficiency does. Which is why these schools are rarely rated highly, even if they do a great job teaching students. We talked to GreatSchools. They said the important thing is that they give parents a "broader picture of school quality," and that their site
helps "underserved families" make good choices. They also stressed that they've
actually changed the rating system to start considering growth, alongside
proficiency. And the data reflects this. But: There's still this really stark
correlation with race and class of students, but it is lower than what it
was before. That's not entirely their fault. Not every state reports growth scores. But even where growth scores are available, GreatSchools still weights proficiency a lot more. And that muddles the difference between two definitions of "good" schools: The ones that do the best job teaching students, and the ones that get kids who are already high-achieving, who tend to be from white and
affluent families. So maybe, the real question is: Which one do parents actually want? (Christmas music) - So much snow, so many
sweaters, so many patterns, a lot of eggnog, a tree. - [Narrator] This holiday
season you're probably gonna watch an iconic holiday movie. In fact, it's the third most popular holiday tradition in America, after decorating the tree
and decorating the house. So whether it's Ralphie in awe
of his father's major award in the epitome of classic
childhood nostalgia, - Yeah, statue. - [Narrator] John McClane
crashing the party in a slightly more violent alternative, - Yippee-ki-yay, mother (beep). - [Narrator] Or drowning
in a tidal wave of uber cheesy, functionally-the-same,
romance-driven schmaltz There's no shortage of
options for holiday cheer in your living room each year. And whether you know it or not, you're at the center of
the holiday content war. (Christmas rock music) (dramatic explosion) (uplifting piano music) - TV, streaming, they're all
trying to occupy your eyes. And as families gather,
networks and studios prep all year round for holiday season in what I like to call
the holiday content war. - [Narrator] By holiday content war, we mean the war for your holiday eyeballs. - [TV announcer for Lifetime]
The only place to watch your favorite holiday movies is Lifetime. - [TV announcer for Hallmark]
Only on Hallmark Channel. (Christmas jingle) - [Narrator] Some people
think holiday movies mean the time-honored
traditional family classics. - Stuck, stuck, stuck! - To my big brother, George,
the richest man in town. - [Narrator] Some people
think holiday movies means the slightly more subversive. - Krampus is good. - No, mm-mm, nope. - Krampus is a good, scary holiday movie. (dramatic slam) (eerie music) Don't judge me. (laughing) - [Narrator] But in order to watch the best Christmas movies of all time, according to Rotten Tomatoes, you need at least six
different streaming platforms and you still wouldn't find all of them. For example, It's A
Wonderful Life has only been available for streaming since 2018, but the only place you'll
find A Christmas Story, without renting it, is
on cable network, TBS. - The more traditional networks have held onto the rights to, you know, some of the classic films, they have to retain those assets. If they give them out to,
you know, the other OTT's, Netflix, Apple, or Hulu, or Amazon, they're just giving up that market share and those eyeballs and that attention. This is a time to hang
onto those classics. Those classics have so much
currency, so much capital, and keep bringing back multiple
generations of viewers. - [Narrator] In part, that's
because holiday classics can be expensive to acquire. More importantly, they aren't effective at getting viewers to
subscribe, or stay subscribed. That's one of the reasons
Netflix is rushing to have original in-house content account for fifty percent
of its catalog, by 2020. For example, Netflix
spent 12 billion dollars on content in 2018, with
about 85 percent of that earmarked for original series and films. - Netflix has been very smart with creating their own content. I put in Miracle on 34th, not on here, but it automatically
brings up Christmas movies. Oh, this is what you wanna watch, let me give you something - I got you.
that's similar with creating their own original content. The Netflix and the Hulus
are trying their best to go, "You're in the mood for this, here's some content you should watch." - [Narrator] Speaking of original content, Hallmark, alone, has 232
original holiday films. In fact, Hallmark is releasing a record 40 original new
holiday movies this year. Lifetime's close behind with 28, and Netflix is throwing their
hat into the ring with six. - All the Hallmark movies, I love them. They're the same formula. It's a lady in a big city. - [Movie Announcer] Holly
Maddux had the perfect job. - [Jordan] She's like the
head of an advertising firm. - Or she owns a bakery. - [Jordan] She owns a bakery, - [Hannah Swensen] Just
here delivering cookies. - [Jordan] finds a hunk there. (surprised grunting) - And it's like, you know what? Maybe twinkly lights and carolers, this is where I should be. - Home for the holidays. - Home for Christmas. - I'm happy right here. - And there's a big tree and Christmas. - My family tradition
was that we'd always, James Bond films used to always
drop right at Thanksgiving. (James Bond theme) The day after Thanksgiving, that would be the jump-off
to the holiday season. And then, that would be
like, kind of the usher, that would be the new thing, every year. And then, that would
usher in all the classics, animated, or otherwise. - See, but there's holiday films, and then there's films
that drop on the holiday. - [Narrator] It's something
streaming platform have noticed and are starting to capitalize on. Netflix released the
post-apocalyptic horror feature, Bird Box, on the Friday
before Christmas, last year. And racked up over
forty-five million views in the week between Christmas
and New Years, alone. It even spawned some memes
that instantly went viral. - So, what makes the difference? Is it just holiday films that can be considered holiday films, or we talking about traditions? - If you've only seen it once, then it's not much of
a holiday movie to you. It's gotta be something
that you come back to year after year, that
you know the lines of. I know all the lines to Scrooged. I know all the lines to National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. "The little lights aren't twinkling." - [Narrator] So whether
it's timeless classics - One of my favorite
holiday movies is Scrooged. - Fact. - Fact. It's brilliant. - [Narrator] Or your own personal classics - Krampus is good. Make me feel something! - [Narrator] Or just mainlining a blizzard of Christmas cookie-cutters, we all have different
holiday movie traditions. - I like claymation, and
I like stop-animation. And not everybody likes claymation. (disapproving grunt) - [Narrator] But depending on
what that movie tradition is dictates which platform you'll
need in order to watch them. And that's what the holiday
content war is all about. - Would you consider this a holiday movie? - Holiday movie? It's a holiday staple. (laughing) Wait for season three. (fire crackling) This is Anthony Roth Costanzo, countertenor
extraordinaire, rehearsing one of the most challenging pieces in opera today. For six straight minutes, he and his fellow
castmates have to sing the word “ah.” That seems easy enough, right? Until you watch it. [Sings “ah”] It’s an extraordinary feat that happens
roughly one hour into Akhnaten, an opera by Philip Glass about this influential Egyptian
pharaoh. Anthony plays the lead. Pulling off this opera takes the coordination
of hundreds of people. There’s dozens of musicians. Over 60 performers, including twelve professional jugglers. There’s stage designers, make-up artists a costume with baby heads attached to them, and a giant sun roughly the size of twelve
Anthonys. Oh, and the music is in four different languages. This all happens inside this Iconic building,
the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan. Anthony has performed Akhnaten with the English
National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera But this one… it’s special. I’m mean come on, look at this view. It’s pretty awesome. And what’s even cooler is we get a peek
behind the curtain to see how it all happens. So I play Akhnaten, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
who's a totally fascinating, weird, complex guy. He has this idea, which changes the course
of history. Which is that instead of hundreds of gods
that have existed in Egypt forever, there would be one God, and that would be the sun. He was thus the first monotheist - the first
person to worship one God. This opera is like a fever dream of ancient
Egypt, and it all starts with the music, which wouldn’t exist without world class
vocal chords. [Singing] These are Anthony’s. Someone put a scope down my throat, and then when you breath, they open up. Should I walk you through some exercises? [Singing] How many of your neighbors know you’re an
opera singer? I was actually going to ask the same thing. Do you get a lot of complaints? I don’t get that many complaints. I can't hear my own voice the way other ears
can because it's buzzing in my head. That’s where Joan comes in. It’s so much to do with the way we use our
breath. She’s been his vocal coach since he was
17. But then we have to do it without a lip trill
and just starting on a vowel. That’s the challenge. [Singing: Oooo, ohhh, ahhhh, aaaaa, eeeee] See the hardest thing in the world is the
first tone. That first tone is vitally important during
every moment of Aknahten, but especially the scenes where all they sing is “Ah.” [Sings “ah”] So that onset that he did, with no consonant,
is real accomplishment. Because if he did, hah ah, ha ah, he’d kill
himself. To understand how an opera could sound like
this, you have to know Philip Glass - perhaps the most famous living composer. Philip Glass is a minimalist. So he uses repetition with changing rhythms
and syncopation to create a kind of meditative state. There’s a whole lot of arpeggios, meaning
a broken chord. So you'll hear da da da da da da da da da
da da da da da da da da And a lot of lyrical repetition. In opera, there's a beat and the time is king. And you can go 90 percent into your character,
but if you go all the way, you might get totally lost and you can’t afford that. The first step in not getting lost is the
sitzprobe. So the Sitz probe is a German term, which
sitz means sit and probe means try. [Singing] Let me have the drums and chorus please. This is the first time the orchestra and singers
hear what they sound like together after weeks of rehearsing on their own. So it's a kind of sacred moment where you
hear the orchestra for the first time, you sing with the orchestra for the first time. And in this particular case, it's the Met
orchestra. They're the best. There are two people in this room who keep
everyone in check. Karen and Caren. In western music we have a tendency to steal
time at the end of a phrase. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three Here it’s more about thinking linearly and
being really honest about the length of each rhythmic pattern or individual note. Okay, so, we did pretty well, orchestra. After about three rounds we start to slow
down. So guys playing the offbeats, don’t listen
to anyone because we tend to get slower. I really feel like my job inside the rehearsals
is to get inside the conductor’s mind to know exactly what her tempo is. [Singing] It’s hard sometimes for the performers to
remember in the moment exactly how many repeats they’ve done, so there’s a lot of counting
down measures. A lot of this, which means don’t sing let
me do the work for you. I give a lot of positive feedback to them
to ensure that they’re very comfortable on stage. Shall I start? Yeah I think you should start. Yeah so this is an opera with a lot of juggling
in it. This is Phelim McDermott and Sean Gandini. He’s the director of the opera and he’s
the Juggling Master. One thing is the performers are moving really slowly. It’s true, everyone moves in extreme slow
motion the entire performance. Like this scene here, before Aknahten is killed. Zoom into the right side and you see Akhnaten
with Nefrititi and their daughters. It’s another one of those “Ah” scene. Move to the left and you the rest of the cast
moving again in slow motion. The only thing moving fast are the balls. Sean and Karen spent a long time looking at
the score talking about the mathematics of how the juggling relates to the music. I spent a lot of time saying make sure there’s
a development. You sent me that script “balls, balls balls” Yeah, exactly. In the middle of the whole show there’s
the hymn to the sun, and you basically get the the sun god, which secretly me and Sean both know
that actually that’s the god of the jugglers, it’s the biggest juggling ball. Big mama ball. [Intercom: Standby, we’re about to start] We’re about to start, I’ve got to go Alright, well see you later. This is the moment I realized, The Met stops
for no one. Hundreds of things are always happening at
once, especially at dress rehearsals. Where it’s all about getting every last
detail right. The goal is just to get out of people’s
way because everything is a timed trial. Over 60 cast members need their make-up done
and there are just a few make-up artists who have just 2 hours to do it. And here’s something I haven’t mentioned. Anthony enters the opera in slow motion and
he’s completely naked. Imagine taking three full minutes to descend
twelve steps, looking straight at 4000 people and you're totally naked. So it’s not just his face that gets makeup,
his whole body does. There’s also some incredible costumes and
wigs. Each individual hair is knotted into a net
to make the wig. You don’t have to wear a wig? I luckily don’t luckily have to wear a wig. But he does have to wear this blue headdress. Called a khepresh that many Egyptian pharaohs
wore to symbolise their royalty. There’s always a Cobra on the front. It’s amazing and also crap. It’s like a combo, you know. This is literally styrofoam. from the stage in the lights, it looks expensive. The real show stealer is this. The baby head dress. If you look at ancient Egypt and the rituals
of ancient Egypt, the Book of the Dead, for example, is so fascinating. The things they would do, preserve people's
organs, mummify them, weigh someone's heart against a feather in order for them to ascend
into the next life. We’re representing some of those rituals
in our own way, and the shrunken baby doll heads somehow evoke that. Oh I love that there’s a pen. Oh my God that’s where it is! The images from the Book of the Dead also
served as a visual reference for the multi-level main set too. The Met, the Metropolitan Opera is kind of
the stage. Did you try singing in the house? Absolutely not. You do it. [Sings “Ahhhhhhhhh”] It has a nice acoustic! If I told you, you're going to come see a
minimalist three and a half hour opera about ancient Egypt where there's no real story
and it's sung in ancient Egyptian, you'd think, man, there's no way I'm going to that. And yet I bet you're going to love it. This walrus didn't get these dance moves on
his own. They came from Cab Calloway, a 1930s jazz
singer and band leader. Do you see it now? Cab was a source of endless inspiration for
early animators, who transformed his dancing into that walrus, and a ghost, and a very
moonwalky old man of the mountain. “The old man of the mountain!” The way those moves got from real life to
cartoon was a breakthrough in technology and method. It’s an idea that forever changed animation,
when an inventor took pictures that had just started to move and made them dance. As…“riveting” as that was...early animation
had a problem: the first animated shorts didn’t look right. Don’t focus on the drawing. Look at the motion. See how clunky his arm move is here? And how his shoulder doesn’t move realistically? Max Fleischer saw that problem too. This is him, the inventor, blowing bubbles
in some of the first films that revolutionized animation. And this is the clown that did it. See how naturally Koko the clown moves compared
to the umbrella guy? That’s where the invention called the rotoscope
comes in. You can understand it from the patent application. It was a way to film real movement to create
better animation. First, they filmed live action motion in the
wild — for Koko the clown, they filmed Max’s brother, Dave Fleischer, dancing around in
a clown costume on Max’s roof. He was in front of a white sheet, for contrast. The sheet actually blew around so much that
once Dave almost fell off the roof. So, don’t try this at home. That film gave them individual frames of Koko
moving around, like in the patent. They used a projector, hooked up to a car
headlamp to amp up brightness, and it showed each frame on a screen with tracing paper. Then they just played it back, frame by frame,
tracing what they needed. It had the creativity of animation, but the
precision of live action. The results were astonishingly smooth, and
lots of people noticed. The New York Times said Koko, “The Inkwell
Man,” “leaps as a human being,” and it made sense — he was one. Take Cab Calloway’s performance. Now, animators didn’t have to guess what
subtle movements came in the middle. They had a filmed guide to every frame. Later, it helped out with Superman — using
photos and film to model Lois, like here. Gulliver’s Travels also had hyperreal movement
inspired by real motion. When the patent expired, other animation studios
followed. But Fleischer’s work was more than just
one invention. Now these cartoons and other ones at the time
are filled with tons of cringey stereotypes that wouldn’t pass muster today. But the creativity? That, that is not dated at all. “Here we go!” Fleischer studios invented the bouncing ball
song, where you can follow along with the lyrics. Oh yes, there’s a patent. Max and Dave patented multiplane animation
as well. See how they could film the main character
moving and separately move the background elements, like pictures and models? This created depth and saved animators time. It enabled gorgeous motion like in this scene
from Superman. As it evolved, Fleischer animation mixed all
these technologies with skilled artistry and improvisation. And that’s why rotoscoping is a versatile
tool still, whether it’s inspiring some of the animation in early video games or in
its logical extension in motion capture, where real movements are
given over to animators’ fancy. But even that undersells their achievements
a little. That Cab Calloway Walrus cartoon — Minnie
the Moocher — is a Betty Boop cartoon. But it is a work of art filled with infinite
delights that tantali—... Scratch that. It is straight up weird, in the best way possible. Phones have lips, handkerchiefs talk, ghost
skeletons get drunk, tonsils scream — the list goes on. When Cab Calloway saw himself turned into
a dancing walrus, he fell to the floor laughing. An invention made that work, but it was a
different type of genius that made Cab Calloway fall to the floor. You can patent a device. But you can’t patent that. That’s it for this episode in this series
about big changes to movies that came from outside of Hollywood. If there are any other animation examples
you find striking, let me know in the comments. I do want to take a chance though to underscore
just how far outside of Hollywood the Fleischers were — in addition to their New York Studios,
they had one in Miami, Florida, and that is where Gulliver’s Travels was actually made. These people are on a pilgrimage. They're in one of the most remote parts of the United States, to see something
spectacular that happens every year. An icon of the American West. This is a sage grouse. And this is its mating dance. The sage grouse once numbered in the
millions across this entire region. But today, they are on the verge of endangerment. And the area they live on has shrunk by half. That's a problem. And
not just because it's fun to look at. It's because the sage grouse is actually
really important. And to understand why, you have to understand its dance. This is a female sage grouse. And this is a male sage grouse. During mating season, it's big and flamboyant looking, all so that it can attract mates. It's sort of like a peacock in that way. The spiky tail, the puffed out chest —
they don't serve a clear function except to be attractive. These white feathers on
its chest are rough and spiky. And for the first step of its dance, the
sage-grouse takes a deep breath and it swishes its wings against those spiky feathers. It sounds like this this. These yellow things are its vocal sac. It's
actually one esophagus with a strong muscle in the center. When the sage grouse takes in a gulp of air, it contracts. When it breathes out. the vocal
sac pops. That sounds like this. Female sage grouse can hear these sounds from up to two miles away. And then it's a competition. The strongest male dancers crowd out the weaker ones. The winner gets to mate with most of the females. After they mate, the females go up to ten miles away to nest. But this arena, where the competition goes down, that place stays the same every year. Sage grouse live across this whole vast
area. But year after year, they each come back to do the courtship ritual in the same exact spot: One of these blue dots. It's why sage-grouse watchers always
know where to find them. That mating area is called a lek. And it's a big part of why sage grouse matter so much. Coming back to the same place every year means that sage grouse are really easy to keep track of. Some leks have been monitored
by researchers for more than 75 years. They're so easy to count that
conservationists consider them an indicator species. That means they use the number of sage grouse as a sort of proxy for how healthy the entire
sagebrush ecosystem is. If sage grouse are doing well, there's a good chance that elk, and pygmy rabbits, and the 350 plant and animal species in the region are doing okay too. That also means that if you want to protect wildlife in the American West, figuring out how to protect the
sage grouse is a good strategy. In 2008, Wyoming implemented a new policy aimed
at protecting the bird. It ended up also having major benefits for another animal — the mule deer. But because sage grouse are so easy to count, we also know that they are in trouble. The lek is where the sage grouse mates, but it's just the epicenter of a much larger range where they live. And in order for them to keep
coming back to the lek to reproduce, sage grouse need the entire range to be
undisturbed. That means if human activity alters this
range, they tend to not return to the lek — they don't reproduce. Montana started keeping track of sage grouse leks in 2002. Since then, their population in the
state has fallen by nearly half. There are a lot of reasons for this
decline — invasive plant species, wildfires, but a big one is drilling and mining. "Western states have increased production dramatically in recent years." "A huge amount of new oil." "Oil, coal, and natural gas dominates the landscape and the economy." Wyoming has the most sage grouse of any state. Here's a map of leks in Wyoming. And these are oil and gas fields. In 2015, governors from four states announced a plan with the federal government to protect the sage grouse. It banned mineral mining across ten million acres
of sage grouse habitat. And it restricted oil and gas leasing in 13,000 square miles of the most critical habitat areas. It was hailed as the largest conservation effort in US history. But today, Donald Trump's administration isn't enforcing the restrictions on oil and gas leasing. And it canceled the ban on mining here. And the numbers reflect that: since he took office, oil and gas leasing on public land in the US has skyrocketed. And on land the 2015 plan was supposed to protect, leasing has gone up tenfold. Today, officials predict that sage grouse numbers will keep falling. The sage grouse is an indicator species. It means that the sage grouse can tell you a lot about the health of the entire
sagebrush ecosystem, across the American West. But they can also indicate
something about American policy. About the power that fossil fuel and mining companies have over government. About what we choose to protect. And what we don't. you know the feeling you finish a full meal and are like I'm never eating again but then out comes a beautiful piece of cake and well you said you were full turns out you really can make room for dessert and there's a scientific reason why the thing that gives you room for dessert is called sensory specifics at 80 so tights at 80 satiety it's one of those words that's dr. popper rolls she's a nutritional scientist and she's been studying sensory specific satiety since the 80s it's a really important basic and very reproducible finding about human eating behavior dr. roll says it's why we often misunderstand that full feeling so to see it in action we ran an experiment similar to one she's done before we gave six people a giant plate of mac and cheese and told them to eat until they were full and then for the second course we gave them more with this experiment then on a different day we did it all over again except this time after they were full we gave them ice cream on average after they said they were full on mac and cheese each person could eat just one more ounce of it in their second serving to bite them but when we gave them ice cream instead somehow they could eat three times as much they made room for dessert the experiment shows that when you feel full it's not necessarily that your stomach is physically full it's more about how interested you are in eating more sensory specific satiety is that change in how much you like a food how much of food you want to eat as you're eating it and to really show that we asked our participants to rate on a scale of 10 their interest in mac and cheese before their first course probably like a 6 5 i love geez so 25 and after I can't eat anywhere probably like the 1:0 they all started pretty interested in the mac and cheese but after their first course they were less interested even less Oh after their second helping but we also asked them throughout the experiment to rate their interest in ice cream and even after getting full on mac and cheese they stayed interested the only thing that made them lose interest in ice cream was having ice cream I've just had enough of that food I want something else it's really what sensory specific satiety is and that instinct has a purpose it's meant to keep us healthy so that's a good thing we're omnivores then we need to eat a variety so it's going to help to guarantee that you're gonna eat the variety of nutrients that you need it also means that there are certain situations where it makes us extra susceptible to overeating it can backfire though of course because if we are presented with a variety of foods it encourages us to keep eating every too much in a buffet or on Thanksgiving yeah me too that's because when we have a lot of variety we stay interested in eating for longer this change in the appeal of foods during the meal keeps us going it keeps us eating in another experiment dr. rolls gave different four-course meals to two groups one where every course was the same food and one where every course was very different the people with different foods ate 60% more sensory specific satiety is why you'll eat more french fries with condiments than without why you'll eat more ice cream if you get multiple flavors than just one it's also why kids will eat more veggies if they can eat a variety of them together than if they only have one option both interesting and it only took me eating in a ridiculous amount of mac and cheese to learn it [Music] you [Music] In the United States, around 3 million people work with classified information as part of their job. That includes people who work in the military, for government agencies like the CIA, or for private companies hired by those agencies. Let’s say you are one of those people. And you learn something that bothers you. Because this is your job, you know that the laws around classified information are serious. But let’s say the thing you learn is really bad. Maybe a government program is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Or a federal agency is spying on millions of ordinary Americans. Or, the head of your government is making shadowy deals with foreign leaders for personal gain. You have a decision to make. A sort of “choose your own adventure.” But behind each door is a different set of risks. If you decide to expose what you’ve learned, that’s called whistleblowing. And in the US, it’s often regarded as a brave, patriotic thing to do. There are laws to protect it. But the reality, for the 3 million people who work with classified information, is much more complicated. What would you do? This is Daniel Ellsberg, an American military analyst in the 1960s. Ellsberg learned that the US government had lied to the public about why the US was at war in Vietnam, and about how deadly the war was. In 1971, he gave 7,000 classified documents that exposed those lies to the New York Times, and then to 20 other newspapers. Ellsberg took door #1: leaking your evidence of government wrongdoing, directly to the media. His leak became known as the “Pentagon Papers.” Three years later, the US pulled out of the war. But leaking classified information to the media is illegal. And in Ellsberg's case, the government made him a target. “We've got to keep our eye on the main ball, the main ball is Ellsberg. We got to get this son of a bitch.” The federal government charged Ellsberg under the Espionage Act, a law from 1917, originally written to go after spies working with foreign governments. But Ellsberg got lucky. It turned out that the government had broken the law by spying on him, and a judge threw out the charges. He was free to go. But other leakers haven’t been so lucky. Chelsea Manning, an American soldier, leaked classified documents to Wikileaks in 2010, including evidence that the US had committed war crimes in Iraq. She went to prison for 7 years. In 2013, the cybersecurity expert Edward Snowden leaked evidence of a massive government surveillance program to international newspapers. He fled the United States to avoid being prosecuted for espionage. Leaking classified information to the media is one common kind of whistleblowing. But it’s also illegal, so it's treacherous for those that risk it. Fortunately, in the US there’s another option: to go through official, internal channels for coming forward with a complaint. This is door #2: legal whistleblowing. In 1998, the US created a process for people who work with classified information to file complaints: First to an inspector general, and then to
the director of national intelligence, and then on to Congress. This is someone who worked in national security at the time. His name is Thomas Drake. Shortly after September 11th, Drake learned that the National Security Agency was part of an unprecedented program inside the federal government, called “Stellar Wind.” The program collected emails, phone conversations, financial transactions, and the web activity of millions of American citizens, without a warrant. What are we doing violating the Constitution? I knew that if I remained silent that I would be complicit in a crime. Drake considered taking what he knew to the press, but knew it would put him at risk. I knew that that was fraught with enormous peril. I was extremely familiar what happened to Daniel Ellsberg. Luckily, he had a legal route he could follow. He brought his concerns to his supervisor,
to his own agency’s inspector general’s office, and eventually to Congress. But his agency told him that no matter what the Constitution said, the White House said the program was legal, and that that was good enough for them. "I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck, because I was thrown back to the 70s, and Nixon.” Drake's next problem was that the 1998 law he had been following didn’t do anything to protect him against retaliation. Drake's identity became public within his agency, and he was gradually pushed out of his job. I was increasingly isolated. They finally removed me from all positions, all responsibilities, all programs. There's no recourse, and no penalty if the
agency decides to retaliate against you. Finally, after Drake’s complaints went nowhere, he chose a different path. He went to the media. And because he remembered what happened to Ellsberg,  he chose to share unclassified information, which meant it was legal. But then, in 2010, the Obama administration accused him of violating the Espionage Act, the same as Ellsberg, who had leaked classified information. "Thomas Drake is charged with violating espionage laws." "Prosecutors claimed that Drake had betrayed his country." Drake’s case was only the fourth time in history that the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute a whistleblower. But since the Obama administration, it’s become a lot more common. Eventually the case collapsed because Drake did nothing illegal. But his career in the government was over. Today, he works at an Apple Store. The price is enormous. I have no retirement. That's gone. You lose your entire social network, in terms of work. There's people who lost their jobs because of their association with me. Those are burdens that I will carry with me the rest of my life. In August 2019, an officer in the CIA filed
a whistleblower complaint saying that President Trump was trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate one of his political rivals. Just like Drake, the officer followed the process laid out in the law. He took the complaint to the inspector general. The inspector general took it to the director of national intelligence. Then it stopped. The director of national intelligence never brought it to Congress. So the inspector general went over his head. "Deeply disturbing, what we read this morning." "I’m announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry." Testimony from witnesses in the impeachment investigation has backed up almost everything laid out in the whistleblower complaint. And whistleblower protections were updated in 2012 with more explicit language, saying the government can’t retaliate against a whistleblower the way they did against Thomas Drake. So the whistleblower should be protected. But where the laws still fall short is whether it’s a crime to reveal a whistleblower’s identity to the public. That’s what the president and his allies are hoping to do next. "There’s no law that prevents me from mentioning the name of who’s been said to be the whistleblower." "The whistleblower... ...should be revealed." The parts of the government that deal in secrecy are also the least accountable to the public. And whistleblowers in those agencies are some of the only ways wrongdoing there might ever come to light. But the system fails them. And every retaliation sends a clear message. If both leaking, and legal whistleblowing, leave government whistleblowers vulnerable, this system will push more and more people who know something’s wrong, into door number three: doing nothing at all. - I can watch your show,
you can watch my show. We can always have a book club. - Better have something to say. - Bonding over streaming shows. - I love that. - [Narrator] The days of literal
water cooler conversations may be thing of the past. But we have more conversations than ever about our favorite shows and with the onslaught
of streaming platforms, there's no shortage of
choices when it comes to what to watch. In fact, it takes the
average viewer 7.4 minutes to decide that to watch. By that metric, the
average daily viewer spends over 45 hours a year paralyzed
by overwhelming choices. So what happens at the
end of that 7.4 minutes? How do we decide what to watch? Before streaming television, we didn't have a whole lot
of choice in what to watch. - [Announcer] Season premiers on CBS. - [Narrator] Or when to watch it. - [Announcer] All new
must see TV, Thursday. - [Michelle] Friday. - So it's no surprise that over 70% of consumers believe
streaming subscriptions offer better services over
traditional television. But even in the age of the algorithm, humans still play a key
role in recommending content and platforms like Netflix and HBO now offer even more tools that include streaming
recs curated by humans. That's because people
still trust other people when they wanna know what to watch. What has TV done for you lately? - What has TV done for me lately? I'm a sucker for rich
people with problems. (Ben laughs) For me, personally, it was the slap in this season of Succession
when it stopped on a time. I thought that was the
greatest part of this season. Okay here we go, here we go. - Oh, I think it was pretty
clear that I was talking-- - Oh, no, no, it was clear, yeah. You tortured the old dinosaur, you barbecued him live, hmm? - Don't (beep) with me.
- Damn! - Right there. Oh my god. I do not espouse violence, I think it's bad in all forms, but god dammit, that was good. The scene, for me, shows
that in a household, you can be angry with somebody but somebody else gets the wrath. My dad was mad at my sister once, and then he threw a ham sandwich at me. I've lived a life. I've lived a life (laughs).
- Oh. You might have me go watch Succession now. - Please do. - So I gotta say for me, the season finale of
Handmaid's Tale season three. There is this insane
tension that Handmaid's Tale has been able to capture
where June comes up with this weird plan, get
these kids out of Gilead. - [Moira] I'm here to help you. - [Angelique] This is
really set up on this idea that they are precious cargo. There's a lot of thought and intention. - [Moira] This will keep you warm. You've gotta be cold. Here. What's your name? - This moment where she
realizes that's her dad, this emotion within emotion within emotion and then you have this moment. (man speaks in foreign language) - Somehow they magically gave you relief while also keeping that elbow right on the back of your neck. - It doesn't get resolved. - This is the most emotional
baggage claim moment I have ever witnessed. - There is demand for better quality across the board on streaming devices. So what about you? There's gotta be some
unforgettable moments for you. - So this season of Euphoria. It is about drugs and escape
and dreams and delusion, really happy stuff. Whoa, teenagers are doing this (beep)? This is crazy.
- Right, right. - This scene is at a carnival in town. The space is reflecting their mental space as we dolly in, boom. It all goes into the
shallow depth of the field portraiture illuminated
by this crazy light show-- - Ferris Wheel, yeah.
- Around her that is both a disorientation
and euphoria of adolescence. - What is it about these
TV series that hooks us? - Dramatically different settings and context and characters in situations, but everyone of these things we felt at some point in our life. Universal emotions that
make us all uncomfortable, a little on edge and it puts us in the hands of the filmmakers. - It is emotional. Like it invokes some
kind of emotion from us that attaches us to that moment, right? Right. - What I do like is the
shareability now of TV. You can tell me about this, and I've been on the fence
about watching Euphoria. I'm like, "Do I watch it?" I understand the make-up
game with the eyes, the kids look super buff and I'm like, "That wasn't
my high school experience," but I'm willing to try it. I wanna see what the fuss is about. - Right. And the same way with Handmaid's Tale. But I like you and I like you, and I'm willing to give
them a chance because of it and that's what great
about that shareability. - [Narrator] And sharing
our favorite shows might be the fastest way to avoid that seven minutes of indecision because even though the
algorithms try their best, we still trust humans more often. And according to a well-known Columbia University study about choice, people are more inclined to make decisions when they have less options. Think about it. When asking your friends what to watch, they suggest three or four faves not hundreds of options. So since streaming libraries
only continue to grow, human recommendations are
more important than ever. Or at least helps you
reclaim that 7.4 minutes of indecision from your day. This beetle is going into the city to see
his lover. She’s a dancer. But this 1912 film is not just a staggeringly
weird tale of insect infidelity. It’s the true kickoff to a stop motion tradition
that has given us a ton of wildly different movies. But this invention didn’t come from Hollywood. It was made by an obsessive insect collector
in Lithuania who wanted to see insects dance. Stop motion is this combination of simplicity
and very, very tedious work. “Ah f..” An animator arranges objects in poses and
takes a picture. You move the object slightly and take another
picture. Played successively, it looks like motion.” You can tweak the process in a lot of ways
- adding more frames - and more precise movements, will make for a smoother animation. The potential of this illusion of movement
was obvious really quickly, like in 1908’s The Sculptor’s Nightmare, where busts briefly
moved or A Dream of Toyland, likely from the same year, which made toys come alive. But it took a European collector to elevate
it to an artform that changed the movies. Wladyslaw Starewicz was born in Moscow and
bounced around the pre-revolution Russian Empire, ending up in Kaunas - a city in modern
day Lithuania, then called Kovno. Some sources say Starewicz was a Natural History
museum director there (others say he just had a huge insect collection). Either way, he had a problem. As he revealed later, he was commissioned
to make educational films “to show the life of the stag beetles.” He “waited days and days to shoot a battle
between two beetles, but they would not fight with the lights shining on them.” So he started experimenting with making stationary
insects look like they were moving. He started with that stag beetle, which he
called by its scientific name: Lucanus Cervus. The goal was to show its fighting behavior,
but his next insect movie leapt to fiction to tell the tale of Helen of Troy. In 1912, The Cameraman’s Revenge — that
insect infidelity movie — became his most influential early work. See how this artist is actually painting another
beetle? Or how this grasshopper, filming Mr. Beetle’s
affair with a dragonfly, look how his tripod has individual legs. These miniscule touches were everywhere. He said he did it by installing wheels and
strings in each insect, and occasionally replacing their legs with plastic or metal ones. He used black threads to help move them. And it worked. After the Russian Revolution, Starewicz fled
to Paris. He continued making films. By the time he made Frogland, he’d changed
his name from Wladislaw to Ladislas to make it easier to pronounce in French. He continued to make incredibly influential
art — with stop motion — because “actors always want to have their own way.” He had a host of popular films and stop motion
quickly influenced popular art and special effects. Starevich’s stop motion inspired the work
that was done in King Kong. Terry Gilliam — the director and animator
behind the surreal Monty Python stop-motion animations — said Starevich’s The Mascot
was one of the best animated films of all time. And Starevich’s masterpiece, Le Roman de
Renard clearly inspired Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.” This combination of wild invention and obsessive
detail created a new art form. At the end of The Cameraman’s Revenge, the
grasshopper screens the movie he filmed through a keyhole, the one of Mr. Beetle cheating
on his wife. She hits him with an umbrella. The movies changed forever. The beetles spent the night in jail. That’s it for this one in this series about
big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood. Stop motion’s a really global form, so I
want to know some of your favorite examples in the comments. I also want to leave you with a testimony
to Starevich’s work, which is that in some of the early reviews, people were very very
impressed with how well he had “trained” his beetles to move around, and I honestly
don’t know if they were joking. [Music] [Music] the carrot iana are an indigenous group here in Brazil they live on protected land deep in the Amazon rainforest when it was established in 1986 it was surrounded by rainforests but today it's almost completely surrounded by farms this kind of encroachment is happening across the Amazon Brazil has over 400 protected indigenous lands but it's booming agricultural industry has spent the past few decades clearing the rainforest around them now they want in and they have the perfect Ally to help them no this is only regard don't take my video Brazil Brazilian President jarba Sandero wants the expansion of farms to continue even at the expense of protected lands and that's put 900,000 indigenous people at the risk of losing their homes and their way of life using to prepare for this [Music] cheering - am i - aah - man thank our standard garden is not an engine but they give you some very unexpected perfectly rejection efika tirado whom des métiers metate shagging movie Mitch I got a mustiness keyframe pack pinkie print an E Roma will kick you back on this thing [Music] at the start of the 20th century Brazil was intent on becoming a modern country cities along the coast were already being developed but the Amazon which covers almost half the country was remote inaccessible and home to tens of thousands of indigenous people who had lived there for centuries around the 1920s brazil's government pushed an aggressive plan to change the shape of the amazon it brought telegraph lines roads schools and people into the amazon while forcibly pushing these indigenous groups out of the way then in the 1960s a brutal military dictatorship took over brazil and carried out genocide against indigenous people they took away their lands to build highways mines and dams across the Amazon during this time more than eighty three hundred and isness people were killed and tens of thousands had lost their homes in 1985 the military regime collapsed and Brazil became a democracy the new constitution included historic reparations for the country's indigenous people it recognises their culture and traditions and even gave them a way to get their lands back indigenous groups could claim their traditional territory with a government agency called Funai that would demarcate the borders of a new protected land after final approval from Brazil's president who now would then monitor and protect it may guess my size paranoid mi casa le multi-button proposed me Perico minivan Janine who came up my professor must say good answer give us a thing soon protected indigenous lands are being set up all over the Amazon and today they make up around 13% of the country which includes the care chiana's land but it wasn't long before these lands would be threatened again from the 90s to 2000 Brazil's economy was one of the fastest growing in the world fuelled primarily by agriculture the country became one of the top producers of beef and soybeans while logging and mining were also significant industries but the economic boom had a downside all of these industries needed more and more land a lot of which came from the Amazon the rainforest was rapidly cut down in Para Rondonia and Mata Grosso States to make room for cattle pastures and farms often leaving the protected indigenous lands as the only forests left before long Brazil's agricultural industry wanted to gain access to these areas too and they found support within the government they lobbied to weaken the rules around protected indigenous lands that they claimed were barriers to progress and their pressure started to show results from 2003 to 2010 President Lula da Silva approved 87 indigenous reserves but its successor Dilma Rousseff approved just 21 followed by Michel temer who only one Rousseff antemer also cut through noise funding which forced the agency to close dozens of offices in the Amazon leaving indigenous people unprotected as Funes Power declined illegal invasions of protected indigenous lands increased high quality nice clothes Tamaki no game cohosh today my daddy hated me I know you stamina you got that by 2017 Brazil's indigenous were under attack bloggers ranchers and farmers felt embolden under a government heavily influenced by the agricultural industry and soon the man leading Brazil's presidential race would further tip the scales in their favor as a former member of the army during the military regime he shared many of their oppressive political views especially those towards indigenous groups [Music] de vacas competi mich disco lights he's sick okay whoever did that these words earned him the endorsement of the agricultural industry but deeply word indigenous groups today makisu Kanta Flores for you practicing additional capital key food area me please follow the support money noises see choose a massage as soon as Boston era took office he turned his attention to the indigenous he /foo knives budget and hasn't approved any new lands in fact he's proposed taking away foon eyes power to demarcate new lands entirely and he's appointed a former police officer with strong ties to the agricultural industry to lead Funai under balsa narrow invasions of indigenous lands have skyrocketed in just the first nine months of 2019 just 10 days after Boston era took office in January 20 1940 armed men invaded this land by May 20 thousand illegal miners had invaded the Yanomami reserve and in July invaders cleared a huge section of forest in the citrine land the carrot iana are worried that they could be next illegal agricultural activities have been happening here right next to the care T on the land and they brought actual threats of violence to the people living there if we Macedonia watch me FAK says mez st. proud day industrialists are burdened all day you know puja visit an Akuma deunan es la luz que tu fais pas de los territory so masado in the past the indigenous groups had Funai a protective agency they could turn to for help but now they're left to rely on themselves [Music] okay acaba for the day I posted a DeMarcus and a preserver New Jersey she for them a preserve our quiche attained Canada's energy policy she'd be poisoning [Music] hi thanks for watching the third and final episode of vox atlas the amazon mini series my name is ana tejada EG and i'm a video journalist based in brazil i went to the Amazon to report on the ground and to meet with the people who provided us with invaluable information I want to thank them all for their time and for sharing their concerns with us make sure to watch the serious previous videos the first one explains what drives the first station in the rain forest and in the second video we take a look at the rubber industry in the Amazon and the work and legacy of chico mendes thanks again for watching old city in the Amazon mr. Mendez but job death I didn't have Northwestern Brazil on the earth deep in the Amazon in December of 1988 the fate of the rainforest was changed by a murder in the small town of Sheppard II Chico Mendes was shot and killed serving Brazil's irreplaceable rainfalls and he paid for that apparently with his life two armed guards have been hired to protect him but they were inside his house when she Co was hit by a bullet in his backyard Chico had led the fight to protect the largest rainforest on the planet it was a fight that alerted the world to the exploitation of the Amazon and changed the makeup of the rainforest for decades to come [Music] the Amazon basin is rich in rubber trees that produce latex and for a long time they were exclusive to this rainforest native people had collected latex or liquid rubber for centuries but in the late 1800s after the Europeans turned their attention to it people started extracting latex on a mass scale it became a valuable material and rapidly industrializing nations where motorcars with rubber tires started hitting the roads the Amazon quickly turned into a very profitable global resource especially in Brazil where businessmen started moving into the rainforest to keep up with the high demand wealthy rubber barons forced indigenous people to work for them as rubber stoppers and they directed waves of migrants from the coast to the rainforest River Stoppers were forced to work in exchange for the use of the land tools or food so the more they worked the more they were in debt to their bosses but the rubber boom wouldn't last long in the 1870s an English colonist smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon the seeds went from Brazil to British colonies in Southeast Asia where they began harvesting rubber at a lower cost over the years as rubber from these plantations flooded the market prices fell and the rubber boom in the Amazon collapsed but demand spiked again during the Second World War when rubber became critical to making weapons and vehicles and that rubber to fill the tank and not rubber to win the war the Brazilian government recruited tens of thousands and forced them to extract latex under harsh conditions after the war demand collapsed again and most rubber barons moved on to other businesses leaving many rubber tappers in the rainforest where they settled and were now free to harvest rubber on their own terms among them was Chico Mendes a young rubber tapper who started out working under rubber bosses who shook Willy Billy Dodd the assembly the aerials Kesey on Jesus a son really preposterous tratado we sitting this is Raimundo Mendez de barros Chico's cousin who works and lives on a reserve and Hawker estate I knew who she was time to step in and lead but come in the 70s and 80s when the Amazon began seeing deforestation at an unprecedented rate Chico Mendes and the rubber stoppers lived freely in the state of aquifers out a decade they harvested rubber and collected Brazil nuts sustainably without damaging the forests and made a living selling what they gathered two traveling merchants but there was a problem on the horizon at the time Brazil was led by a military regime that wanted to use the Amazon for economic development so they opened it up to ranchers for business they took over large estates typically occupied by rubber stoppers and cleared the forest to make room for their cattle the politics of land speculation and the large-scale deforestation that have as their objectives the substitution of man by cattle it would be a disaster if this process were allowed to continue in our region the ranchers used intimidation tactics to expel rubber tubber's they hired gunmen and set fires to tear down the trees but the rubber tappers got together and fought back they organized in bocce's or kids where they'd sit in front of trees or block the path to the rubber reserves to prevent loggers and bulldozers from coming through Chico an Raimundo or both on the front lines pathway formication taken control brah hetaera o spoonski Tahoe yes we'll settle this matter under identical Sugoi hunter all this male heir is Juan de Lucia Cebu I hate you who party a scream finish yah Lea I prefer introduce madam in protecting the rubber tappers way of life was at the heart of the struggle led by Chico but over the years it turned into a much bigger fight for survival the government backed by international organizations built roads in the Amazon which brought deforestation to different corners of the rainforest as a result by 1987 nearly 300,000 square kilometers of the rainforest had been torn down the fight to prevent deforestation extended throughout the Amazon and Chico became its spokesperson on a global stage [Applause] I'm a hernia poor soils mitotic gooses be large to the moon together we can preserve the forest and make it productive securing this immense treasure for the future of all our children began to pay attention every day it involves the destruction of one of Earth's greatest natural resources the Amazon rainforest the rainforest is unique in all the world once it is gone it is gone forever international organizations withdrew tens of millions of dollars from the development of the Amazon a small extraction reserve was created for rubber stoppers in Accra in 1988 the first of its kind in Brazil the land would be owned by the state but rubber stoppers like Raimundo would have the right to live and work on it look as if he feared L am an ice-cold Fed one well no I noticed him with the reserve would keep everyone else out especially cattle ranchers making this entire reserve legally protected from deforestation but in 1988 protecting the rainforest came at a deadly cost 89 environmental activists were killed that year alone I've already escaped six attempts on my life from the enemy though I have a moral commitment to myself I cannot abandon the struggle even if one day I should be struck by an assassin's bullet cattle ranchers looking to expand their business in the Amazon saw Chico as a threat he was given armed guards for protection but just days after his 44th birthday he was shot in his backyard his killers were cattle ranchers a father and a son whose land had just become a protected area Yasu revolted the trees or the mother God when 82nd division two meter meter distance who ships affirmative a defendant who generated Acadia gelatin which starred Oneg Shinagawa DHEC necessity rate who generated sa as a sonata form without public debate very food she goes death pushed changes forward in the Amazon a larger she co Mendes extractive reserve was created in 1990 today it is still the biggest in the Amazon and has protected more than 2 million acres of rainforest from a lot of the deforestation that surrounds it it's home to about ten thousand people who can freely maintain their traditions and livelihoods since she goes death all these extractive reserves have been created there are more than a hundred spread throughout the Amazon but the fight isn't over Brazil's current government has pushed for more economic development in the Amazon while downplaying she costs they've also scaled back efforts to preserve the Amazon leaving protected areas at risk all over again nearly half of the deforestation is taking place in protected areas including the Chicot Mendes reserve where ranchers are reportedly persuading rubber stoppers to clear their land for money selling gear sico zv delicacies air path da luta OS town seed ando a pratical the Jews Mata patria God but some like Ramon the Sun are committed to keeping Chico's legacy alive Maya say pollutant Richie protégée is the keikyu spice Quincy the McMaster spice no premiere momento de pensar Catawba defendant we sitting here we are for ESS my deposit see the Kentucky taha's intra balloon diffuser Damas only doing hi thanks for watching the second episode of Atlas and the Amazons miniseries I want to take a quick second to thank the filmmakers who films Chico Mendes and the Amazon in the 80s that footage was crucial in allowing us to tell Chico story and the role he played in trying to protect the Amazon we are very grateful to them in the next episode we look at the struggle between indigenous people trying to protect their land and the president threatening to take their rights away make sure to come back and watch the third and final episode of outlets in the Amazons miniseries thanks again for watching and see you next time "And in South America tonight, an environmental problem of a much greater magnitude." "The destruction of the Amazon rainforest." "A worldwide disaster." In the 1980s, the world learned that the Amazon was in danger. "Trees are falling at a startling rate..." "77,000 square miles..." "... an area twice the size of Belgium..." "...the size of New York State..." "...the size of California, disappears." And why it was so important to save it. "One-fifth of the oxygen we breathe." "20% of the world's fresh water." "Half of the species of life on earth is in these forests." "...An ecosystem the entire world needs for its survival." By the 1990s, it seemed like it was too late. "The destruction accelerates." "More than twice as fast as previously believed." "Virtually impossible to control." "Once it is gone, it is gone forever." Then, something changed: "The annual destruction rate of the Amazon rainforest has dropped... ...by 70%." "The lowest rate of deforestation since records began." "The Amazon could achieve the end of deforestation. A huge accomplishment." But in order to keep it safe, there
was one condition: "Protecting the forest is a continual process." "Brazil will need to stay vigilant." But it didn’t. "The Amazon is burning." "Consumed by fire." "Fires have been raging." "Thousands of fires are blazing..." "...as more and more trees are cut down." "Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest hit its highest rate in a decade." Today, the Amazon is being destroyed, all over again. The question is: Can it be saved this time? The first wave of deforestation started in
the 1970s. That’s when Brazil’s military regime saw
the potential for profit deep in the Amazon. There were almost 5 million square kilometers
of rainforest filled with natural resources. "Amazonia’s ores and minerals, food, fiber, and forest resources are vast." But most of it was inaccessible. So the government started building the Trans-Amazonian Highway an ambitious project that would run for 3200 kilometers connecting remote
parts of the rainforest. At the time, most of Brazil’s population lived in the southeast; in cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. And the government wanted to move people out
here - to cultivate the land and grow the economy. So they offered free land along the highway
and paid Brazilians to settle deeper in the rainforest. And they sparked a land rush. As the road advanced, settlers followed, rapidly clearing the forest around it. Most of them turned the land into pasture,
where they raised cows to sell as beef. And when these ranchers needed more land,
they seized another plot, cleared it, and moved their cattle in. This expansion deeper into the Amazon drove up deforestation. Between 1978 and 1988, an average of over 20,000
square kilometers were cut down each year. Over time this area became known as the Arc
of Deforestation. And soon, a different product pushed this
even further. People around the world were eating more meat, decade after decade. That trend raised the need for more soybeans; which served as high-protein feed for farmed animals. This created a huge opportunity
for countries most suitable for growing soybeans, and Brazil cashed in. Soybean exports from Brazil shot up in the
mid '90s, boosting the economy. By the early 2000s, farmers took over these
pastures and turned them into massive soy farms. Like this one, in Acre state. And the ranchers who sold their pastures,
moved their cattle further into the rainforest, clearing more of the Amazon, often illegally. This aggressive expansion created a profitable
pattern in the Amazon. But it came at the cost of the rainforest. By the early 2000s, Brazil’s beef and soy
industries were driving a booming economy, as well as unprecedented rates of deforestation... Which caused this arc to expand further north. The staggering deforestation in the Amazon
attracted fierce resistance from environmental groups. "An area of ancient forest, the size of a football field is destroyed every two seconds." The Brazilian government, under president
Lula da Silva, finally stepped in. This is Marina Silva. She was Brazil's Environment Minister in 2003,
when she helped craft a plan to stop deforestation. It started with the government expanding the amount of rainforest under protection. At the time, only about 28% was protected, and there was very little oversight. But this new plan added more reserves, where business activities were strictly banned, and also created more sustainable-use reserves,
where some businesses, like Brazillian nut harvesting and rubber-tapping, which didn’t destroy the rainforest, were allowed. More land was also demarcated for indigenous
people, who preserved the forest. Over time, hundreds of new protected lands
were added, transforming the Amazon into a shared and sustainable space. Eventually, almost half the Amazon would be
put under some form of protection, while the rest of it remained a mix of pasture,
farms and rainforest. To prevent further deforestation here, the government strengthened the Forest Code: which said landowners could
only clear 20% of their private land. This law was monitored by the Forest Service,
which was part of the Environmental Ministry, which had jurisdiction over all of these protected lands. And the key to enforcing this entire plan
was strengthening IBAMA: a police agency that would track and fine people for illegal deforestation. And the plan showed results: with deforestation rates falling by more than half in 2006. At the same time, an activist movement was
forcing the agricultural industry to make a change. Major food companies started feeling pressure
from consumers for participating in deforestation. So several got together, and in 2006, signed a Soy Moratorium: which meant they could continue to operate within existing farms, but they wouldn't buy
soy from any newly deforested land in the Amazon. Three years later, beef companies signed a
similar agreement. Other countries also gave Brazil money to
help it protect the Amazon. Under all this protection, deforestation rates
plummeted to historic lows. And yet, Brazil’s soy and beef industries
continued to grow, thanks to more efficient techniques: Ranchers started growing crops on their existing
pastures. And farmers planted two crops a year on their
land instead of one. Brazil had found a way make to Amazon both
productive, and protected. But there were some who still wanted it to
be a more profitable place. The ruralistas, a group of conservative politicians who represent the interests of the agricultural industry, including farmers and ranchers, started gaining influence in Brazil. In the early 2000s they had about 17% of the
seats in congress. But by 2012 they had about 30%... Enough power to push President Dilma Rousseff
to weaken the Forest Code, which allowed landowners to get away with clearing more land. In 2016, they pushed President Michel Temer
to slash IBAMA's budget. They also helped him pass a law that made
it easier for people who illegally seized land in the Amazon, to keep it. These changes emboldened some people to seize and clear the rainforest again. And that led to a rise in deforestation rates. In 2018, as the ruralistas controlled 44%
of Congress, Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressman and ally to the ruralistas, was elected president. On his second day in office, he transferred
the forest service, which monitors the forest code, to the agricultural ministry
- led by a ruralista. He's also worked to systematically weaken
the Environmental Ministry. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation has increased
significantly in 2019, most of it taking place in these protected
areas. Setting fires is a common way to clear land... And in August 2019, over 30,000 fires were
burning in the Amazon: Three times as many as in August 2018. Many set illegally by ranchers, farmers, and
landowners, emboldened by the government's new stance on the Amazon. But this time, the Amazon is unlikely to survive
another wave of deforestation. In the last 50 years, it's estimated that about 17% of the Amazon has been deforested. A 2018 report estimated that, if it reaches
20-25%, the whole rainforest could start to collapse. It wouldn't be enough to cycle all the
water it needs, causing trees to die. And that would release a huge amount of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, further warming the planet. But in Brazil, many politicians and agricultural
businesses continue to ignore the science for the sake of profit. Clearing the Amazon for short-term gains overlooks the fact that the planet as we know it wouldn't exist without this rainforest. It’s why this place was saved 
once before. Thanks for watching this special edition of Vox Atlas. This is one of three that we produced on the Amazon. And this one was about the drivers of deforestation and and some of the Brazilian politics surrounding the current crisis today. In the next one we're going to take a step back in the history We're going to meet a man named Chico Mendes who led the original fight to save the Amazon, back in the 1980s. His story is super interesting and very relevant to today. So make sure to come back and watch more Vox Atlas in the Amazon. All of this kinda connects to this. We added sound. It's a silent movie. This chart shows all the movies directed or
produced by legendary director D.W. Griffith in 1912. He was a Hollywood titan, but most of his
movies? They were about the same length. Around 15 minutes, with the exceptions topping
out around a half hour long. Now look at the run time for 1915’s Birth
of A Nation. What happened there? The reason movies changed from 15 minute trifles
to “featured attractions,” can be traced to one silent movie. It changed the game in a way that transformed
all movies. But it wasn’t invented in Hollywood. It came from 6,000 miles away. This is a foot — here you go metric people. Early silent film historians actually talk
about these movies in...feet. And it makes sense — the same way that measuring
tape comes on a reel, movies come on reels too. One reel of film is 1,000 feet, give or take. That’s 15 minutes or fewer, depending on
what frame rate you play it back at. In the early days of movies — the 1900s
— almost all movies were about 1,000 feet. One reel. 15 minutes or fewer. These short movies were usually screened in
variety shows or a smorgasbord of short films. You’d drop into a Nickelodeon — a lower-class
theatre where you’d see a bunch of movies for a nickel — 5 cents. You’d see Laura Comstock’s Bag Punching
Dog, followed by The Trapeze Disrobing Act, followed by the first screen adaptation of
Frankenstein. The whole thing was 14 minutes long - 975
feet. In America, some of this was enforced by East
Coast movie trusts that controlled and licensed movie patents for film and projection. They preferred single and double reel films. But even renegade filmmakers out in Hollywood
kept movies pretty short. And, with some exceptions, so did filmmakers
across Europe. It was just easier to transport and project
one-reel films. That chart, from the beginning? It’s not a chart of time, but feet. And this right here is a thousand feet - that
one reel cutoff. For the most part, movies were...small. Until the Italians thought bigger. Italian movies were were becoming spectacles
in the 1900s. They were breaking out of the standard 15-minute
short, and trying new things. By being outside the American system of high-powered
movie trusts, one film in particular was able to rewrite the rules. That’s 1913’s Quo Vadis — an epic story
of Romans in the time of Nero. To tell that story the Italian filmmakers
took 2 whole hours - not 15 minutes. It was 8,000 feet long! To get people to see it, Quo Vadis’s promoters
needed to invent a new business model. Instead of trying to force the long movie
into those movie theaters playing a bunch of one-reel shorts, promoters rented out classy
concert halls for Quo Vadis alone. They did the same in the US, at the Astor
Theatre in New York, and playing the “mammoth photodrama” everywhere from Arkansas to
the future state of Hawaii. To draw crowds from nickelodeons into those
big halls to watch just one really long thing, Quo Vadis needed to be special. It used real Roman locations, thousands of
extras, and the first big stunts - like chariot races where the actors rode real chariots
and gladiatorial battles with big hits and realistic weapons. The posters sold the spectacle — and sold
out seats. And people noticed. In the years following the release of Quo
Vadis, DW Griffith, increased the length of his own movies. Quo Vadis and other Italian epics were proof
that big movies could work. Griffith’s movies like “Judith of Bethulia”
crept into feature film lengths - 61 minutes, a full 4 reels. He released Birth of a Nation in 1915. It was sold as the “mightiest spectacle
ever produced” — and a long one clocking in at 12 reels. It had big stunts too, like many big battle
scenes. Now this movie was so controversial that people
called it racist in 1915. I mean, the KKK are the good guys. But despite that, it brought the spectacle
of Quo Vadis to Hollywood. The trusts that wanted to keep movies short
were already fading. The public’s love of long movies finished
the job. Birth of a Nation solidified single movies
as a style worth funding and paying for. And even though today, we don’t measure
movies in feet, Quo Vadis is not a relic. This chart shows average movie times for the
most popular 25 movies each year, from 1930 on. This time here? It’s 2013, 100 years after the 120 minute
Quo Vadis came out. The running time? 121.4 minutes. This edition of Almanac’s all about big
changes to the movies that came from outside Hollywood, and there are a ton of other business
model changes like Quo Vadis, so let me know some of the ones that you’ve heard about
in the comments. However, I just to just prove to you one more
time that Quo Vadis really was a huge hit. This is an ad for “When Ursus Threw the
Bull,” a parody movie that was made in response to Quo Vadis’s enormous success. This is reference man. He’s a white, 30-year-old, male who weighs about 155 pounds. And he decides how we live. For decades, industries have considered this the standard human. And designed the world around him. Everything from air conditioning in offices, to cars, even military equipment. But there are other ways we use reference man, that aren’t so obvious. Like in medicine, where it doesn’t just lead to discomfort. Here, the disparity can be incredibly dangerous for women. A few years ago, something strange was happening. Headline after headline recounted a similar story. Dozens of women were crashing their cars, under the influence of sleeping pills. In many of these cases, they had taken a dose of Zolpidem, the night before. It’s what you probably know as the common sleep aid, Ambien. The problem wasn’t entirely the drug itself — it was the dosage. Women and men were both prescribed ten milligrams of the drug for eight hours of sleep. But it turns out, women metabolize the active ingredient in Ambien twice as slowly as men. That means by the time men woke up the next day, the effects of the pill had usually worn off. While for many women, the drug was still in their system. After the crashes,  the Food and Drug Administration  issued a safety warning in 2013 and changed the recommended dosage for women, cutting it in half. The reason the right dosage for women had been overlooked is that the clinical trials on Ambien focused on male test subjects. If they're using this hypothetical “average man" and they are basing dosage on it, that's kind of scary. Not just because it doesn't apply to women, but because it also doesn't apply to a lot of men either. There are several factors that can affect
how a person metabolizes drugs, from size, to body fat, to hormonal fluctuations. And these factors can vary drastically based on sex. But many clinical trials don’t account for this. They often don’t include enough women as test subjects. And even when they do, data from women is often mixed in with data from men, which can hide sex-specific reactions to medicine. I don't care that it's more effective for
men. I just want to know, is it going to be effective for me as a woman. So you don’t know that unless you look separately at those groups. Take, Acetaminophen, the active ingredient
in Tylenol. It’s flushed from a woman’s body slower than in men, so the prescribed dosage can put women at more risk for potential overdose and liver failure. And one heart medication that’s supposed to prevent heart attacks may actually trigger one in women. So we know that this is still a problem, but
it’s so hard to know how often that happens because there’s no research. If the companies did a better job of looking at men and women separately and studying them separately, I think we’d have a lot more dosages that
are different for women and men. In 1993, the National Institutes of Health created regulations, saying women must be included in human studies and have their data analyzed separately. But the problem is, It’s the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that’s making the decisions about what medications are being sold to you and to your loved ones and they are not required to include women, people of color, people over 65. You know if you're only studying white men, you don't have to study as many people. And the more people you study the more it costs to do the research. But, the more meaningful the information is so that we can all make informed decisions about what’s good for us. In December 2016, a remote community in Siberia experienced a mysterious outbreak. 90 people were hospitalized, and a 12-year-old boy died. Soon, Russian officials identified what had killed him: The deadly infectious disease anthrax. The outbreak had started among reindeer. To contain the spread, they burned over 2,000 reindeer carcasses. The strange thing was, there hadn't been an anthrax outbreak in the area for more than 70 years. So, to figure out where it came from, scientists started looking underground. In the coldest parts of the world, there's a layer of the Earth that stays frozen all year. Every summer, the soil above it thaws, but this deeper layer stays hard as rock. This is permafrost. Most permafrost is here, in the Northern Hemisphere around the Arctic. And because it never thaws,
permafrost acts kind of like the freezer in your kitchen. When plants and animals
here die, they don't actually decompose. Instead, they become preserved in the
frozen earth, like a time capsule. And it's been that way for thousands of years. But that's changing. Today, humans are burning carbon and
making the atmosphere warmer. And that's causing the permafrost to thaw and shrink. By 2100, only these areas will still have any permafrost. And that's causing some problems. When permafrost melts, the land above it becomes unstable, which can lead to landslides. Man-made structures start to fall apart, as the ground underneath them collapses. And dead plants and animals that had been frozen for years are starting to thaw out. As they're exposed to air and
bacteria, this organic material starts to decompose. That releases greenhouse gases
like carbon dioxide and methane. But that's not all it releases. In Siberia, scientists think that the anthrax outbreak came from a long-dead reindeer
carcass that thawed out along with the permafrost. Anthrax spores from the carcass would have spread across the area and infected reindeer grazing nearby. And it's not just anthrax. Scientists worry that, as permafrost
melts, it could unearth all sorts of diseases we thought we had under control. 35 million people live around permafrost. But the carbon released, as permafrost melts, will accelerate the impacts of
climate change everywhere: Rising seas, heat waves, droughts in some places, and
floods in others. And now we can add one more thing to that list, diseases we thought we conquered. If someone were to show you these album covers,
or these posters... Even if you've never heard of the bands featured, you’d probably be able to guess what kind
of music they play.   This style has become synonymous with the
psychedelic '60s. But these abstract forms, and curly, barely
legible lettering — they weren’t created in the 1960s. They came from a celebrated art movement — one
that started almost a century earlier. In the late 1800s, new technology —
electrical power, telephones, cars — was changing the way the world worked.
And the way it looked. And some people, especially artists, living
through this technological revolution were... not so into all the new industry.
To be blunt, they thought it was ugly. Out of this conflict, a new global artistic
movement was born One that went by many different names. Like the Secessionists in Austria and the
Glasgow school in Scotland. But you might know it as: Art Nouveau, which
literally means “new art” in French. Its creators wanted to make art that reflected
the vibrancy of city life. They used flat, decorative patterns, feminine figures,
and organic and plant motifs, often stylized with fluid, abstract forms.
And they applied this new visual language to just about everything - from architecture
to paintings to textiles and beyond. Because they believed that aesthetics should
go hand in hand with utility. And no object was too mundane to be beautiful. Like this entrance to the Paris subway. Or these posters by Alphonse Mucha - advertising
champagne and biscuits which are just as much about being beautiful as they are about conveying
information. Okay, back to the hippies. Like the late 1800s, the 1960s were a time
of cultural upheaval. ARCHIVE: “The Vietnam struggle goes on”
ARCHIVE: “We want the Beatles” ARCHIVE: “The Beatles everybody”
In the US, the epicenter of this change was San Francisco, where hundreds of thousands
of young people descended upon the city. For things like protests,
and drum circles, and of course, concerts. Lots and lots and lots of concerts. Particularly dance concerts, featuring trippy,
psychedelic music from bands like Jefferson Airplane and the
Grateful Dead. And there was one major way to get people
to come to your concert: A good poster. Back then, these now iconic bands were just
starting out, playing back to back shows at venues like the Fillmore and the Avalon
And to advertise this new generation of hippie bands, those venues knew that plain typeface
and a grayscale photo just wasn’t going to cut it. So they commissioned work from a small group
of artists, who developed a brand-new formula for concert posters. One that pulled from a variety of established
design traditions - comic books, surrealism, and, of course, art nouveau. By the mid-60s, art nouveau was already experiencing
a bit of a resurgence. Especially when it came to textiles - dynamic,
floral designs were a natural fit for the hippie aesthetic. Which is probably why in 1965, a museum just
outside of San Francisco launched this exhibit. Legend says this is where some of those designers
were first exposed to Art Nouveau. One designer, Wes Wilson, told Time Magazine
that he admired their “idea of really putting it out there.” And when they started making new concert posters,
these designers took those art nouveau staples — and turned the dial up. Art nouveau is famous for its feminine figures
- most often nude, with flowing hair, and a “come hither” glance. A style the psychedelic designers clearly
picked up on. Look at the way these posters are covered
edge to edge with detailed, two dimensional illustrations. Particularly flowers,
and abstract curves, And, also peacocks - that’s an art nouveau
thing, too. They… loved peacocks
And sometimes, psychedelic designers would use images pulled directly from an art nouveau
poster — but always with a radically different color palette. Instead of art nouveau’s soft pastels. psychedelic artists opted for intense, high-contrast colors, said to make your eyes “vibrate”;
a reference to the “visual experiences of an LSD tripper.” And that curly, cloudy, barely legible font? It started here… on a 1902 poster by Austrian
designer Alfred Roller. In the 60s, artists adapted the bold, dynamic
typeface and pushed it even further - softening its lines and obscuring its edges. Making it nearly illegible. Which served a purpose. It was meant to grab your attention and keep
you interested - at least for as long as it took to figure out what the poster was trying
to tell you. The result was a ton of posters that looked
like art nouveau on acid. As the music of San Francisco spread throughout
the world, so did the aesthetic. In part because posters are easy to own and
reproduce and collect. With fans sometimes tearing them down immediately
after they were put up. The artists behind them even became celebrities
in their own right - a few of them got their own spread in Life Magazine. The posters they made — their vibrating
colors and winding lines — capture the energy of the 1960s. Just like the art nouveau ones represent the
late 1800s. And while these two time periods don’t mirror
each other perfectly, both movements were able to create something
that captured the feeling of a changing world. And their art reflected that. This water is so clean, you can drink it. I've been drinking out of this river for
probably fifty years. What does it taste like? Tastes like water. That's because the
water here comes from one of the most protected places in the United States. You can't get here with a car. You can't use a boat with a motor. We couldn't even fly our drone past this point. These are the Boundary Waters of
northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest. Thousands of pristine lakes like this one. Hundreds of thousands of people come
to see it every year. You listen to the sounds of the rapids. You watch the eagle fly overhead. You paddle on still waters. Be on your own. But there's one problem. The Boundary Waters is just outside one of the largest untapped sources of copper in the world. Under the previous administration, America's rich natural resources, of which your state has a lot, were put under lock and key. Since taking office in 2017, the Trump administration
has opened up more than 13 million acres of public land for drilling and mining, that's more than any previous administration, including a part of Superior National Forest, right outside the Boundary Waters. Copper, the mineral underneath the forest, is the wiring in our phones, the pipes in our walls. And we also need it for electric car batteries, and solar panels, and wind turbines. We need copper, and there aren't that many places in the world to get it. All this has renewed a really old and complicated question: when is it worth
risking the life above ground for the riches underneath? The US has more than 600 million acres
of national parks, monuments, forests and wilderness areas. They are the brainchild of President Theodore Roosevelt. He worried that the reckless speed logging,
blast rock mining, and oil drilling that fueled the Industrial Revolution could
ruin the country's beauty and resources for future generations. So he created 150
national forests and parks, 18 national monuments, and 51 bird sanctuaries. I mean, get
up on a high mountain somewhere and remember that somebody saved that so
that you could have that experience and that's a kind of remarkable legacy. We call them drinking water lakes, because you can dip your cup right out the side
of your canoe and drink straight from the lakes without even treating them or
anything. Jason owns a business that outfits
visitors for canoe trips in the Boundary Waters. They come here because
what we have is so special and it's so unique you just can't you can't have
this sort of an experience anyplace else in the world. To have, you know, a million
acres totally undeveloped. The recreation and tourism industry here is big. it brings in about $77 million a year. The problem is, that's not
enough to support the entire region. Seasonal recreation workers typically
make about twenty-five thousand dollars a year. That's less than the state's
average income. You're not going to be able to raise a family on $25,000 a year. You're not even going to be able to buy a house. And this part of the state used to have a different core industry: iron mining. We've been mining up in this area for well over a hundred years, and so it has a big significance. There are lot of second, third, fourth, generation miners that have always worked in the mine or their family has worked in the
mine. The company that plans to build the mine near the Boundary Waters, Twin
Metals, has said they'll pay about $90,000 a year, which is well over the state's average income. But copper mining is also risky in ways that
iron mining wasn't. For the last two years, the Twin Metals company has been collecting samples of the rock that they plan to mine near the Boundary Waters. This is a typical core sample, these little blocks that you're seeing in here
really establish how deep we are below ground surface. Once we hit this, 755 feet, this is where we start seeing the minerals. The copper is locked inside this shiny part here. To get it out, you have to crush up
the rock to a powder-like consistency copper only makes up about 1% of the
sample, which means 99% of it is waste. The crushed up rock is submerged in a
solution that floats the copper to the top. It's eventually what becomes wires,
pipes, and everything else. And the waste rock sinks. That's the risky part. It contains toxic elements like arsenic, lead, and mercury, which were previously
trapped inside the rock. And usually, when mining companies produce toxic waste, they store it in giant pits, like these. But those pits don't always hold up. It may be the worst environmental disaster in British Columbia's history. 3 million gallon toxic stew of heavy metals poured downstream. Devastation as far as the eye can see. and the question that everyone here is
just stunned by is how this could ever have been allowed to happen. And even when there isn't one of these huge, catastrophic spills, abandoned mines leak millions of gallons of waste into streams. These colors indicate
heavy metal contamination that poisons aquatic life and taints drinking water. A lot of the economy that this region was based on was getting gold and silver out of
these hills and it left of a legacy of pollution. The cleanup costs taxpayers
millions of dollars long after mining companies take their profits and leave. Twin metals plans to store the waste from its mine right here: next to a river
that ultimately leads to the Boundary Waters. And instead of storing wastewater
in a pit, their plan is to dry out the waste and store it in stacks like these. On its website, Twin Metals calls the dry stack method "environmentally friendly," but to support that, they point to another dry stack mine in Alaska, where the verdict isn't actually that clear. The Alaska mining company's own data
show that lead contaminated dust is blowing off the dry stacks, and they've
acknowledged that it could be getting into the water. And in aquatic life near
the mine, scientists found elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. Just like the Alaska mine, the Twin Metals mine would be surrounded by
interconnected waterways. Any pollution would spread far beyond the initial impact site. All this is why, in 2016, the Obama
administration decided the risks of copper mining here would be "unacceptable,"
and said that Twin Metals couldn't do it. But two years later, the Trump
administration reversed that decision. Tonight I'm proudly announcing that we
will soon be taking the first steps to rescind the federal withdrawal in
Superior National Forest and restore mineral exploration for our amazing
people and miners and workers. In the 1980s, the iron mines of northeastern Minnesota started to close. These days unemployment there has gone as high as 90%. Of the 15,000 union men and women who work the Iron Range mines, more than 3,000 are laid off
and hundreds more jobs are in jeopardy. A full-scale depression forcing thousands
of miners to abandon the area. When the layoffs happened in the mine, we were all hit. Everyone was hit, day care was hit, the hairdresser was hit, the
grocery store was hit,  not just the people that were laid off. That's because mining jobs tend to not stick around. I actually worked in several different
states in the mining industry. And one of the things I noticed, when I go back to
the places where I worked 20 years ago, none of those communities are thriving. You don't build long-term prosperity on a mining industry. Industry and
conservation have always fought over the best use of our public lands, and the
people closest to those lands often have differing visions for their own future. This proposed mine really puts the sustainable wilderness-edge economy, that we have going right now, at risk. And it definitely puts businesses like mine at risk. Jobs are scarce up here. Good jobs, I should say. Ones with benefits, where you
can raise a family, put money aside for your retirement. So this is a very good hope for us. For our towns, our families, our kids. In a speech in
1908, Teddy Roosevelt took stock of America's industrial progress. "We have
become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources," he said. "But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our
forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted." More than a hundred years later, many of the most impressive human inventions, including those that could ultimately eliminate the need for fossil fuels, still depend on resources like copper. Resources that will run out someday. The question isn't really whether to let companies mine for copper near the Boundary Waters. It's whether the short-term gains are
worth changing places like this forever. Both of these images are groundbreaking. And connected. On the left, you’ve got the world through
Yul Brynner’s eyes in Westworld, the 1973 movie where he plays a robot cowboy. This is not a spoiler. I mean, he’s a robot on the poster, and
if you’ve seen the HBO series, you know that everything is a robot. It’s this pixelated robot’s-eye-view that
gave birth to CGI: computer generated imagery. But the technique and idea did not come from
Hollywood. It came from a bit further away. This is a picture of Mars. The CGI was groundbreaking, so now we’re
gonna see if we can get our computer graphics team to replicate it. Oh yeah. I’m done. It takes, like, two clicks. But in the early 1970s, computers this powerful
were non-existent, and digital images were rare. These title swirls in 1958’s Vertigo were
sort of computer generated imagery — the designer repurposed an M5 anti-aircraft gun’s
mechanical computer — to help draw these intricate patterns. Other experiments were digital, but they were
basically art films. After all, non-CGI effects could generate
stunning results. Still, Westworld creator Michael Crichton
wanted to create a robot’s point of view. Hollywood hadn’t done it yet. But NASA had. “Liftoff.” When NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched
Mariner 4, it was the first flyby of Mars, and it transmitted back the first up-close
photographs of the planet. The method it used to get those images to
Earth was important for two reasons: it shaped what a “digital picture” was should look
like — and it gave technical guidance for the Westworld CGI. The pictures were sent back as numbers. “240,000 bits of binary code, representing
the shading of 40,000 dots that will finally make up the first picture.” “A complex system of computers is required
to convert these numbers into pictures. Some workers decide to handmake their own
picture of Mars by shading the numbers.” Yes, our first up close picture of Mars — it
was a paint by numbers. Ultimately, the computer generated images
ended up looking like these. In the 1973 cover story of American Cinematographer,
Westworld designer John Whitney Jr. wrote that “the scanning digitizing methods employed
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory on their Mariner Mars flybys could be used here.” But using the rare computer at the lab would
have cost 100 grand. They found a private company to basically
copy the Jet Propulsion Lab’s methods to “scan production footage, frame by frame,
and convert it to numerical information,” which would then be played back on a special
machine and re-recorded. To make the perfect robot vision, the designers
used data that created an image with 3,600 squares. And they had to get creative to make sure
the CGI action came through clearly. Actors wore clothing to contrast with the
background - here’s one wearing white clothing and makeup. They also increased the contrast in post-production. And though it took a full minute to scan each
frame — or about eight hours for a ten-second sequence — the CGI worked. Hollywood couldn’t have — sorry, can you
just... Hollywood couldn’t have come up with this
idea alone. It took the R&D from the $550 million Mariner
program to inspire something as fanciful as CGI, especially when practical effects could
have gotten the job done. But it was the future. Whitney finished that article for American
Cinematographer by saying, “My work on Westworld suggested many more
possibilities than we were able to explore, and there are certainly many others yet to
be imagined.” OK, so this edition of Almanac’s all about
big changes to the movies that came from outside of Hollywood, so if you know of any sciencey
type innovations like what you just saw that changed movies, let me know in the comments. There’s a lot out there. However, I cannot end this video without letting
you know about Futureworld. It is the sort of forgotten sequel to Westworld,
but the CGI is actually still influential, and that’s because it’s likely the source
of the first 3D CGI face. This is Shaq on The Great Wall of China. Here’s Michael Jordan, There are a lot of these. For years, the NBA has been sending teams to China where more people watch 
NBA games than in the United States. The purpose is to play basketball, meet Chinese fans, and have players like Rip Hamilton
spread a clear message. The NBA has worked hard to build a successful business in China, but then they almost 
lost it all because of a single tweet. It was March of 2000 and President Clinton
was pushing for a trade deal with China, despite concerns about China’s human rights record. “It does deny its citizens fundamental rights
of free speech and religious expression. It does define its interest in the world in sometimes
 in ways that are dramatically at odds from our own. Just a decade before, China’s government
put down an uprising at Tiananmen Square. “...human rights not trade!” And in 1999, Americans also had concerns
about China’s record in Taiwan and Tibet. “The Fortune 500 companies are controlling
 the American foreign policy in China. This is wrong. It’s gotta stop. President Clinton, we are asking you
to take a courageous position.” But Clinton insisted that doing business with China would have
 a positive impact on their human rights platform. "The question is not whether we approve or
disapprove of China's practices. The question is: What is the smartest thing
to do to improve these practices?" Bill Clinton came to think that engagement,
that trade, that direct contact would have a positive impact on the human rights situation
in China, as well as improving the overall U.S. China relationship. The next year, China joined the WTO. 2001 is important because that's when the
country enters into the World Trade Organization, which greatly simplifies doing business, not
just with the United States, but with the entire world. The Chinese economy was about to take off. US businesses began investing in China and eventually Chinese companies
would start investing back in the US. As China became richer, as China became more
integrated into the global economy, it became a more important market
for the United States. After 2001, the average Chinese person had
more disposable income as a result of the rapid growth. It was the perfect moment for the NBA to build a business in China and it all started right here. “With the first pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, the Houston Rockets select Yao Ming from Shanghai, China!” At the time Yao Ming was 21-years old, watching
the NBA draft on a laptop in China. “Can you fully comprehend, for yourself,
for Chinese Basketball, and for the NBA, what it means to be the NBA’s number one overall pick?” Yao was the NBA’s “next big thing” for fans in China, where basketball has been popular ever since
it was introduced by missionaries in the 19th century. When the Communist Party came to power they
banned most Western sports, but basketball was embraced as a national passion. But China never produced a star player... until Yao. "...Yao Ming and company, ready to go..." Now they could watch a Chinese player playing
at the same level of these legendary greats and playing Shaq 200 million Chinese viewers tuned in for his
first game against Shaq and The Lakers. “They’re watching live in Shanghai at
10:30 in the morning as O’Neal goes right at Ming!" Compare that to 9.9 million: the average number
of Americans that watched the NBA Finals that year. “Yao, first touch, for two!” Yao became a household name in China and soon
American companies turned to him for endorsements. “Can Jimmy play? Hi Yao! Jimmy?” “Get a Garmin” “...the new 17-inch powerbook.” Yao’s popularity also helped the NBA develop
their fanbase there. In 2004 The NBA started sending teams on an
annual summer tour of China, where the Houston Rockets became a fan favorite, simply because that was Yao’s team. The tours brought the biggest NBA players
to China and boosted the league’s popularity. For comparison, The NBA 
has slightly more Twitter followers than the the next 
major sports league in The United States. But in China, the NBA dominates social media
platforms like Weibo. Nearly 500 million people watched NBA games
last year using Tencent, China’s largest streaming platform. That’s more than the entire population of
the United States. In 2019 Tencent and The NBA signed
 a deal worth $1.5 billion dollars, almost three times what it was worth five years ago. The people who manage the NBA recognized that
there were tremendous opportunities in China and they worked hard to develop that market
and they have succeeded. Then seven words threatened everything. Daryl Morey is the general manager
of the Houston Rockets and his tweet repeated a phrase
chanted by protesters in Hong Kong. Well this is just about civil liberties, this
is about having a voice in government. What's wrong with that? And so he thought nothing of tweeting this out, 
whereas in China, it was perceived quite differently. It was seen as an effort to break up China,
an effort to weaken China. The Chinese Consulate in Houston
responded by saying they were “deeply shocked by the erroneous comments on Hong Kong”
and asked the Rockets to “correct the error”. Daryl Morey took down his tweet and The Rockets tried to do damage control. “Yeah, We apologize, you know, we love China. We love playing there.” Despite the apology, the government cancelled
NBA broadcasts on Chinese state TV. “CCTV’s sports channel has just announced
that it will suspend the broadcast of any NBA games in China,
including this week’s preseason games.” Tencent also suspended broadcasts
of Houston Rockets games. In Shanghai, workers were tearing down advertisements
for upcoming games And fans protested outside the stadium where
teams were set to play. On social media, a fan posted this video of
himself tearing up tickets to the game in support for the Chinese government. The NBA Commissioner stood behind
 Morey at a press conference. “The long held values of the NBA are to
support freedom of expression and, in this case, Daryl Morey, as the general manager
of the Houston Rockets, enjoys that right.” But the league undercut their message when journalists were stopped from asking
about the incident afterwards. “I just wonder after the events of this
week and the fallout we’ve seen, whether you would both feel differently about speaking
out in that way in the future?” Foreign businesses in China, have long recognized
that there are red lines that must not be crossed. And traditionally those have been the three
Ts: Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen. Three political issues the Chinese government
tries to control messaging around. Companies have learned that if you cross one
of these lines, there is a price to pay. For example, in 2018 Gap was selling this
t-shirt featuring a map of China without Taiwan. After a photo of the shirt was posted online,
Gap apologized and promised to stop selling the “incomplete” t-shirt in a statement
released by People’s Daily: a government newspaper. You're talking about a one party state that has
 the ability to let you in, to expel you, to make you rich. By withholding access to consumers,
China forces foreign companies to apologize and/or change their message
 in order to continue selling products. Because China has a population of 1.4 billion,
that usually works. The NBA learned that doing business in China
means playing by their rules and that’s not what US leaders like President Clinton
had envisioned. The hope was that trade with China would open
it up to ideas of democracy and free speech, while making American companies 
money at the same time. But as American companies changed their messages
to sell products in China, the risk became importing Chinese censorship. if you know one thing about the fall of the Berlin Wall it might be this mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall or this or maybe these moments were huge in unifying Berlin and undermining the physical symbol of a divided Europe during the Cold War but they don't top this one the last few minutes of an otherwise uneventful press conference on November 9th 1989 as a phlebotomist nothing Auslan Canon or Napoleon phone for our sets unless on philosophy that's minor one particular it might not look like it but this is the moment the Berlin Wall became obsolete completely by mistake [Music] after the Allied powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War two they divided the country into four parts each controlled by a separate power these formed into two new countries in 1949 Democratic West Germany and Soviet controlled communist East Germany officially named the German Democratic Republic or GDR through the 1950s West Germany prospered as a free society and industrious member of Europe and hundreds of thousands of East Germans began emigrating west in search of new opportunities to stem the tide the gdr erected a barrier along the inner German border separating the two countries with barbed wire guarded checkpoints and in many places defensive measures like land mines but there was a loophole in Berlin and it goes back to when the four Allied powers controlled Germany see even though the German capital was well inside the Soviet zone the Allies divided control of it equally to match the rest of the country and when East and West Germany formed so did East and West Berlin even as the inner German border fortified Berlin had no physical barrier dividing it East Germans could simply walk or take public transportation to the western part of the city and travel freely from there the island of West Berlin become the staging point for the free road to the west this brain-drain took a huge toll on East Germany's labor force by 1961 more than three and a half million East Germans about twenty percent of their population had fled to the west the majority of which were young and well-educated but the Berlin loophole closed on August 13th 1961 when the city woke up to East German soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the invisible line dividing East and West Berlin unannounced they began unrolling kilometers of barbed wire through the middle of the city they were building the Berlin wall by break until no contact but a friendly wave travel out of East Berlin became strictly regulated no one could leave unless they met strict requirements and those who didn't face a nearly impassable barrier complete with floodlights and guard towers were armed border guards patrolled day and night with orders to shoot and kill anyone trying to cross illegally and that's how it remained for 28 years but change came in late 1989 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had introduced social reforms meant to relax oppressive practices and open up discourse between people and government these changes unintentionally sparked massive peaceful uprisings throughout Eastern Bloc countries including East Germany things had kind of heated up all summer in 1989 Catherine Baumbach was a young translator working for the East German news agency in the world of famous Monday demonstrations in in Leipzig actually my college town initially thousands then tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands freedom of expression and freedom to travel were key demands and pressure on the GDR to loosen travel restrictions only grew as neighboring countries particularly Hungary and Czechoslovakia relaxed their border laws prompting a mass southward exodus of East Germans by early November 1989 more than 40,000 East German refugees had arrived at the West German Embassy in Prague hoping to travel to the West the GDR was facing a crisis there were forces in the government that realized something had to be done this was not sustainable so lifting the travel ban was one way that they thought they could quell the protests and make people happy on November 1989 GDR official Gerhard lauter was tasked with drafting looser travel regulations meant to be a temporary pressure release the new rules were finalized less than a day later and read private trips abroad can be applied for without conditions permits are issued on short notice without conditions that's the key phrase here this meant the strict application requirements were eliminated and anyone who wanted could leave East Germany and come back that afternoon the updated regulations were handed to government spokesmen come to Chbosky just as he was about to begin a routine press conference and as we all know something kind of didn't go quite right there he didn't have time to review them before sitting in front of cameras and as you can see from his handwritten roadmap of the press conference he scribbled in a reminder to announce them at the very end and on live TV at 6:53 p.m. on November 9th he read the relaxed travel laws for the first time out loud as implies nothing it seemed totally unreal but it was Scherbatsky saying it was broadcast on official television so it had to be true there were people people around me older colleagues who immediately said this is the beginning of the end watch a confucian boskie shuffle his papers when a journalist asks a simple follow-up question the thing is if Chbosky had had time to read the new rules he might have seen this on the final page the new regulations were meant to go into effect the following day in an orderly manner when the passport offices were open so close in particular what happened next can only be described as a chain reaction by 7:05 p.m. the AP wire had already gone out GDR opens borders and both East and West German nightly news reports announced the stunning policy reversal these Berliners began gathering at the wall and security officers tried to let them through slowly but the final nail in the coffin came at 10:42 p.m. when this broadcast triggered a mass rush he's anointed November stand his tallish attack did it a hot lead guitarist Gilligan snaps of Fox agita manga of mutant the Torah in the mawashi in vital they actually weren't yet but by this point there was no going back tens of thousands of Berliners stormed a wall saying they heard on the news that they could cross the outnumber East German border guards were completely overwhelmed somehow they hadn't gotten the message or they didn't know what to do or they were afraid who knows but they basically opened the border and thousands of people streamed into West Berlin [Applause] over its 28-year history at least 140 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall November 9th plus unification a year later it was the most decisive event in in my life I basically went from one political system to another and changes happened very quickly and it happened unintentionally the result of a rushed plan and a botched announcement delivered in a small room at the end of a boring press conference just a so forth one procedure [Music] How could I forget the first time? I was in a class. And there were suddenly the sounds of these very loud-sounding boots clunking across the floor. And there was a campus policeman standing at the head of the class, and he just shouted out my last name. And he just said "come with me." And I was put in the back seat of a squad car. And we went directly to the police station. And the interrogation room was one table in the middle of the room, and a tape recorder in the middle of the table. And there was even the light bulb on a string, hanging right above the tape recorder. I'm sorry. This hasn't happened to me in years. Right off the bat, they said, "We know that you're gay." In the 1950s, a Florida state committee spent years terrorizing LGBTQ people. They stalked, intimidated, and outed hundreds. And they got away with it. What happened in Florida can be traced to two things happening across the US at the time. First, this was the era of the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. And a US Senator named Joseph McCarthy claimed to have discovered communists who had infiltrated the US government. One of the images that we probably still have is the image of Joe McCarthy standing, making a speech, holding up several sheets of paper and saying ‘I have here in my hand a list of communists.’ It didn't matter whether the list was accurate or not. But what McCarthy started did real damage. Thousands of Americans ended up losing their jobs, and had their reputations ruined. Around the same time, the civil rights movement was picking up steam. In 1954, The Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for black and white children were unconstitutional. In Little Rock, Arkansas, preparations were being made by the school board for compliance with the court verdict. Southern politicians started losing their hold on a segregated society. It was out of this that the “Florida Legislative Investigation Committee” was born. Their mission was to preserve racial segregation. It was informally called “the Johns Committee,” after the influential Florida state senator Charley Johns, who had called for its creation. Much like Joseph McCarthy, Johns made accusations. He eventually claimed that civil rights groups were secretly backed by communists. There is no doubt, communist people are behind a lot of this race agitation. They had a chart where they had drawn lines between all these different organizations that they didn't like. At the top of their list, was one of the largest American civil rights organizations. They thought, OK, the best way to stop integration in Florida is to try to destroy the NAACP. But that plan was short-lived. At that time the NAACP's head lawyer was Thurgood Marshall. Pretty good opposition. They weren't winning lawsuits against the NAACP. The Johns Committee’s plan to fight civil rights groups was a failure. But the committee still had its sweeping investigative powers, that they could use to target anyone. They just needed a target. Back then, all of us who were gay lived deeply, deeply in the closet. We were always concerned that someone would find out. Well in their minds, if you were gay or lesbian you could be blackmailed by communists. Because a communist could lure you in and say, we're gonna tell everybody you're gay or lesbian if you don't cooperate with us. Across the US, local governments started  targeting LGBTQ employees. And in Washington, Congress began investigating LGBTQ federal employees, claiming that they were "unsuitable" for government jobs, and "security risks." It was a targeted hunt that became known as the Lavender Scare. It was in that context that the Johns Committee found its new focus: To purge the state of LGBTQ teachers and students. The Committee believed LGBTQ students
and teachers were endangering the state of Florida. Their new mission was to find them. So we’re in the state archives in Florida, where they have all the interrogation transcripts that the Committee conducted over the years. What we found in those files tells the story of how the Committee operated. The Johns Committee, working with university administrations and campus police, conducted hundreds of interrogations, often in motels, with no legal representation. They’d ask questions like: “Have you ever engaged in any homosexual activities?“ "Do you enjoy normal sexual relationships with your wife?” “Did you ever give anybody a blow job?” Some interrogations happened after entrapping people in the men’s bathroom of the county courthouse. An investigator would “place himself in the men’s bathroom” “adjacent to their subject.” They would “ask if he wanted homosexual activity,” wait for them to "reply yes," and conclude, “this man is a confirmed homosexual.” We were a very poor family. I was able to enlist in the state university, Gainesville, University of Florida, on my 25th birthday. I knew that this was my one chance for a decent life. And this was threatening everything that I had planned for. They said, we want the names of all of your friends who are gay. And I said I don't have any gay friends. Which of course was not true. And they wanted to know if there were any gay professors on campus. I wouldn't tell them. One of the tactics they used was, I came back after summer break, and I had a new roommate. One day he came into the room appearing to be very very drunk. And he was walking around the room, taking his clothes off around the dorm room, and started trying to entice me into having sex with him. I grabbed my shoes, I got up, and I got out of the room as fast as I could. Some days or weeks later, he admitted to me that yes, he was employed by the Johns Committee, and they had hired him to see if he could entice me into a situation. It was a-- It was a low degree of terror. At the University of Florida, the committee’s tactics led to the forced dismissal of at least 70 students and professors. The Florida Education Association had requested, from the chairman of this committee, a listing of any teachers known to be guilty of this
kind of moral deviation. The Johns Committee destroyed many of their papers, but one undated memo revealed they had over 300 "pending investigations," that had spread to other Florida universities and grade schools. Here in the past five years, we have revoked the certificates of 77 teachers. The committee's tactics eventually began to attract attention. And then, they published a book. After almost a decade of their crusade, here is what finally helped unravel the Johns Committee. It’s known as the Purple Pamphlet. This was a report on homosexuality in Florida that they published for the benefit of "every individual concerned with the moral climate of the state." In the pamphlet, they used graphic images meant to depict gay men. And they even used sexualized images of young boys, meant to connect homosexuality with pedophilia. And then on the back of the pamphlet was the stamp: the state seal of Florida. So that didn't go over too well, you might imagine, with Florida taxpayers, when they found out their money was being used to produce what most people considered porn. I feel the reactivation of the committee is questionable. The following year, lawmakers eliminated funding for the Committee, and they officially folded. They shot themselves in the foot. Which I think is complete poetic justice, of course. It’s hard to know how many victims of the Johns Committee are still out there. Many have passed away, and others were so intimidated by their tactics, that they left the state, never to return. Like Art Copleston. These interrogators, the investigators, they weren't very bright people. But they had tremendous power over others, over us. The bottom line is, I graduated, with honors, and I got a job. The morning after the graduation service, I was out of town. Gone. Over 50 years later, the state of Florida has yet to acknowledge that the Johns Committee did anything wrong. It ruined people's lives in a way we will never truly understand. As a white heterosexual Democrat, I'm kind of the guy that needs to apologize for this currently in the State House. That’s Evan Jenne, a member of the Florida House of Representatives who's pushing a bill for a formal state apology. Quite frankly, we still do not give equal protection under the law for the LGBTQ community. You can still be fired in the state of Florida if you are a member of the LGBTQ community. For now, though, the full story of the Johns Committee, and the people’s lives it forever changed, remains largely hidden behind the redacted names... tucked away in dozens of old boxes. After all of these years, I still am... pretty much a pretty closeted guy. I still shy away from a lot of social contact with other gay people. Because I'm so uncomfortable being identified as a gay man. For this piece, we were only able to scratch the surface of what was in those documents at the Florida State Archives. So if you're interested in learning more about the interrogations or Johns Committee meeting notes, you can check out all our scans at the link below. Thanks so much for watching, and can't wait to share the next episode of Missing Chapter with y'all soon. This plume of smoke is rising from a
town in Syria. A similar scene unfolded in another town about a hundred kilometers away. These attacks were the result of Turkish
airstrikes on October 9th 2019, when Turkey's invasion of northern Syria began. The long-planned Turkish military operation in Northeast Syria has been launched.
Turkey pushing ever deeper into Syria. At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have fled the fighting in the border area. Over the next several days, the Turkish military moved further into Syria and attacked several other towns. All of these attacks are concentrated here, on this strip of land in Northeast Syria. It's part of an area that Turkey has been wanting to turn into a so-called safe zone for years. So what is this safe zone? And what purpose does it really serve for Turkey? Syria descended into armed conflict in
2011. Protests broke out against the country's authoritarian government in major cities. When the government turned its attention to the uprisings and violently cracked down, it left a power vacuum in the north. That's where the jihadist militant group ISIS swept in starting in 2013. Significant portions of this region, which was home to Syria's largest ethnic minority group called the
Kurds, were eventually conquered by ISIS. But Kurdish militias successfully fought back. So the US backed them with air support
and on the ground training against ISIS. In 2015, Kurdish and non Kurdish militias in the region banded together to form the
Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, and started pushing ISIS back. This paved the way for the expansion of a Kurdish-led territory which was already being established here. By 2019. the SDF effectively broke the ISIS stronghold in the north. They set up prisons that held around 11,000 captive ISIS fighters and housed tens of thousands of Isis family members in displacement camps. US military bases also cropped up in this Kurdish-run area. And US troops began patrolling the Syrian-Turkish border Across the border in Turkey, President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long viewed the rise of the Kurds in Syria as a
threat. That's because a Kurdish separatist group in Turkey called the PKK has fought the Turkish government for decades. The PKK has pushed for greater autonomy for Kurds living in Turkey. But the Turkish government has
rejected their autonomy and fought back. The violent conflict between the two has
left tens of thousands dead. Erdoğan claims the PKK is aligned with Kurdish forces in Syria And he sees their growing influence across the border as a risk. A Kurdish-governed territory in Syria could inspire Kurds in Turkey to import the same model back home. Erdoğan has launched attacks on Kurds in Syria multiple times. The first came in 2016
when Turkish troops attacked here in the northwest to push back ISIS and block
Kurdish expansion along the border. And in 2018, they attacked Syria again —
this time in an attempt to wipe out the SDF. Turkey gained control over these areas
but by this time it was facing problems within its borders. A trade war with the US and economic mismanagement by the country's leaders had caused Turkey's
economy to crash. And many found themselves unable to find work as unemployment increased. This economic downturn caused many in Turkey to look for a scapegoat in Syrian refugees. The war in Syria forced over six million to flee the country. And 3.6 million of those
refugees fled to Turkey, more than any other nation. As Turkey's economy slumped,
more and more Turks disapproved of President Erdoğan and resented the influx of refugees. In 2014 Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party had broad support. It won 50 mayoral seats, more than half the country's local leadership. But in March 2019, his party lost 11 of those seats in local elections. To make matters worse, a pro-kurdish party, the People's Democratic Party, won 8 mayoral seats and helped other opposition candidates win across the country. Voters delivered the Turkish president his worst night ever at the ballot box. This is all reflecting some major discomfort with the president. The Kurds have become the
key in this result. To regain political popularity, the pressure was on Erdoğan to act. After the elections, he doubled down on an idea he'd been proposing for years, a safe zone between Turkey and Syria. Erdoğan had already taken control of
this region in Northwest Syria Now he wanted to expand that territory to the east, further into Kurdish-led land. Erdoğan claimed that the purpose of this safe zone would be to move Syrian refugees back into this strip of Syria. He took this plan to Russia and the US but he couldn't get them on board. With political pressure mounting at home, Erdoğan and his government threatened to move into Syria on their own. But just but there was an obstacle in their way. The US, an ally to Turkey and a military
supporter of the Kurds, still had troops stationed in northern Syria. So Turkey couldn't make its move. In August 2019, Turkey made some progress with the US. The two agreed to a safe zone that they would patrol together. This zone would extend 5km into northern Syria. The SDF cooperated by withdrawing some of their forces. But this agreement wasn't enough for Erdoğan. At the UN a month later, he proposed a much larger zone. We intend to establish a peace corridor with a depth
of 30km and the length of 480km in Syria and enable the settlement of 2 million Syrians there. Soon after this address, Turkey found a
way into Syria. After a phone call with Erdoğan, President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria. It's now time to bring our soldiers home. I don't want to leave troops there. It's very dangerous. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives. Trump broke the US alliance with the Kurds and pulled troops from along the border. Erdoğan finally seized his opportunity and sent troops into northeastern Syria. Turkey's invasion has been brutal and destabilizing. What's happening in Syria can only be described as chaos. Kurdish hospitals have been overwhelmed. Thousands are still on the move trying
to escape this violence. Families desperate to get out of here. Turkey is sending in Arab militias that would displace the Kurds from their homes. As the SDF defends itself against Turkish forces, they're leaving ISIS prisons unguarded. And according to Kurdish sources, hundreds have already escaped. The US withdrawal and Turkey's invasion have created a new power vacuum in northern Syria, one that's quickly being filled. As the US leaves, another force roars in. The Kurds have made a deal with Syria's President. Turkey's president and Russian President Vladimir Putin making a deal about the future of Syria. Withdrawal of US troops is leading to more change than the area has seen in years. North American forests looked very different 300 years ago. And it’s not just the rise of infrastructure – it’s the purposeful decline of many natural predators. Before European colonists came to America, the gray wolf population looked something like this: looked something like this.
But by the 1930s, that vast, thriving population looked more like this. In a
matter of a few decades European settlers had trapped, poisoned, and shot
the gray wolf nearly out of existence in the lower 48.
Today, that map looks a little more like this. The gray wolf has been on the
endangered species list since 1974 and those decades of restoration efforts
have recovered the population to a few key locations, though nowhere near where it used to be. But in 2019 the Fish and Wildlife Service filed this – It's a proposal to remove the animal from the endangered species list nationwide,
arguing that the gray wolf is no longer threatened. A hundred scientists
responded with a letter, urging the Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the
proposal saying, "it's way too soon." So, when are we done protecting the gray
wolf? In 1973 President Nixon signed the
Endangered Species Act. It allows the Fish & Wildlife Service to protect
certain species from extinction by limiting hunting, trapping, and killing.
When the government decides that a species is sufficiently recovered,
they're removed from the endangered species list or "delisted" and they
release management of the species back to the States. Unsurprisingly this is a lot more complicated than it sounds. The federal government is pretty efficient at listing species when it's the right
thing to do but delisting that's different. This is John Vucetich who studies wildlife ecology at Michigan Tech University. In the entire 40-plus years of the Endangered Species Act there have only
been in the neighborhood of a dozen delistings. We're far less experienced at
that. The Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to delist the gray wolf in certain states before, and was met with a bunch of lawsuits from conservationists and environmental groups. The reason it's so challenging to delist an animal like the gray wolf lies in the law itself. The easy way to understand the
obligations of the Endangered Species Act is that a species is recovered and
no longer requires federal protection when it's no longer at risk of
extinction. So let's zoom out on that map from earlier with this in mind. The gray wolf is not at risk of extinction. There have always been a whole bunch of wolves in Canada and in Russia. So if we lost every single wolf in all of the United
States even Alaska they're not at risk of extinction. But the thing is the Endangered
Species Act is narrower than that. The legal definition of an
endangered species is "one that is at risk of extinction throughout all or a
significant portion of its range." This is the phrase that has been heavily debated in court over the gray wolf. Because while somewhere around 6,000 wolves may roam here many more used to roam here. Meaning the animal only exists in about 15% of its former range. So in order to delist the gray wolf we have to decide if that 15% is enough. The Endangered Species Act isn't clear
on how to define "range." When it comes to the gray wolf, the Fish and Wildlife Service argues that the law could mean "current range." They're satisfied with
that 15%, especially because of how tough it would be to reintroduce the wolf to
all places it used to roam. Many sections of their former range are no longer suitable due to human encroachment. And in places where wolves do coexist with people living alongside them is challenging. I mean, wolves are happy to
kill a cow or sheep if that's what it needs to do in order to live and get by,
and of course that's tough – or can be tough – for the livestock owner. Regardless, environmentalists interpret this law differently. They argue that the wolves range should be interpreted historically, and that until it's
recovered in most of its historic territory it should fall into the
protections of the Endangered Species Act It's this tension the law that makes
delisting hard to figure out. Still, wolves have been successfully removed from the endangered species list in Idaho in Montana in 2011 and in Wyoming in 2017. The states are now in charge of their management and making sure they retain a certain population. So in Idaho for example, it's legal to hunt wolves
with a permit but the state has promised to keep the population at or over 15
packs. Under Idaho's law wolves do stay alive, but they don't have room to branch
out to new or historic territories where they might thrive, which is likely what
will happen if they're delisted across the U.S. The current population will
remain stable, but the wolves will only exist where they are right now –
not where they could be or have been. The endangered species act is pretty clear that when a species is endangered it does not matter if we can find why that species
is valuable or not. The species is valuable – according to the Endangered
Species Act – just because. but figuring on a balance between protecting a species and thriving alongside them is tough – especially when that species is a long-hated predator. But in North Carolina, the election results
were really weird. These squares represent all the voters in
North Carolina. They were voting for these 13 seats in Congress. About half voted for Republicans. And about 48 percent voted for Democrats. So you might think, of the 13 Congressional
seats, maybe Democrats would've won 6 seats, and Republicans would've won 7. But no. Democrats only won 3 of 13 seats — way less
than half. This imbalance was because North Carolina's
Congressional districts had been "gerrymandered." It means that these voters had been grouped
into districts very strategically with the goal of benefiting one party. Gerrymandering has pretty much always happened
in America. That's because, every 10 years the political districts
are redrawn. And in most cases, those new lines get drawn by whoever holds power in state governments at the time. That's what happened in 2010. Republicans won control of lots of state governments,
and redrew the political lines to favor themselves. And over the next few years, redistricting
helped them hold onto almost all those states. This shifted the balance of power. And it turns out that behind a lot of this,
was one guy. This is Thomas Hofeller: The mapmaker who helped Republicans gerrymander
districts over the last decade. When Hofeller died in 2018, his daughter found
thousands of his emails and files, which she shared with activists. The files show that Tom Hoeffler’s fingerprints
are all over the way America’s political maps look today. But North Carolina was his masterpiece. And if you want to understand why gerrymandering
is a such a big problem in the US, that’s a good place to start. The basics of gerrymandering are actually
pretty simple. If you're a Republican trying to keep power,
you want to do two things. First, "pack" as many Democratic voters as
possible into a single district. If you have a district where almost everyone
votes Democrat, that means almost half of those votes are basically wasted. You can also "crack" big Democratic areas
into separate districts — where there are slightly more Republicans. So even though an area has a lot of Democratic
votes, they would actually lose in this district and in this district. These are the two elements of classic gerrymandering:
Packing and cracking. And Hoffeler employed these techniques masterfully
in North Carolina. In 2011 he was hired to redraw the state's
political lines. And for congressional districts, he came up
with this map. Now, I just want to focus in on District 12,
this weird skinny shape. In order to make sense of this shape, we have
to look at another map. This map shows the percentage of black people
in each neighborhood. The bluer areas are where more black people
live. Hofeller basically gathered up black people
in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Charlotte — and packed them into one district. So that's how District 12 happened. Hoeffler also did this with North Carolina’s
state representatives and state senators. For example here are the state senate districts. Here, he packed Winston-Salem into one district. And then packed Greensboro into its own district. These new districts helped Republicans get
a stranglehold on power in the North Carolina statehouse. And over the next few years, they were able to pass crucial legislation. A strict new voter ID law in North Carolina. Which bathrooms transgender individuals can use in North Carolina. In 2016 and 2017, federal courts ruled both
of these maps were unconstitutional. They said what North Carolina Republicans
did wasn't just gerrymandering — it was racial gerrymandering, done to deliberately
dilute the political power of black people. The courts said that the Republicans in the
North Carolina statehouse now had to redraw the lines without looking at racial demographics. So they went back... to Tom Hofeller. This time, Hofeller couldn't look at race. Instead, he looked at which areas voted for
Democrats and which areas voted for Republicans. Instead of a racial gerrymander, it would
be a partisan gerrymander. Here's that map, using data from 2014. The bluer an area, the more Democratic voters
there are. Now, if you zoom in here, to Greensboro, you
can see one of the highest concentrations of Democratic voters in the state. Hoffeler drew a congressional district line
to crack this community in half. This meant Democrats here, were now the minority
in their district. And Democrats here were also the minority
in their district. Hoffeler employed these techniques all over
the state to create North Carolina’s new political districts. And the first big test for these new maps
would be the 2018 election. Democrats were expected to turn out in droves. Democrats are vying for a potential blue wave. The wave that Republicans fear is going to wipe them out. So, how did the maps do? For state representatives, Democrats got 51
percent of the vote. They won only 46 percent of seats. For state senate, they received half the vote
— and won just 42 percent of seats. And for Congress? You already know how that one turned out. Democrats won nearly half the votes — but
won only three out of 13 seats. A year later, in 2019, the Supreme Court weighed
in. They said it was beyond their reach… that
it wasn't their job to fix it. All of this raised an existential question: If Republicans could continue drawing the
lines to stay in power, how could they ever be elected out of office? But the Supreme Court ruling left open the
possibility for state courts to rule on partisan gerrymandering. And in September 2019, that's exactly what
North Carolina's Supreme Court did. The court found that partisan gerrymandering
violated the state constitution. In the court’s decision, it was Hofeller's
files that helped prove that North Carolina Republicans drew these lines with the clear
intention of benefiting themselves. Ultimately, the court said North Carolina
Republicans had to redraw the state house and state senate maps one more time. This new map approved by North Carolina legislators
is much less biased toward one party — even though it took some extreme measures, and
nearly a decade, to force politicians to draw a fairer map. In the last few years, the courts in several
states, like Florida and Pennsylvania, have made partisan gerrymandering much harder. And now that's also the case in North Carolina. Hofeller is gone now. But in other states across the country, many
maps he helped draw are still in use. And while there's now a clearer strategy to
challenge those maps in state courts... … many voters are still, effectively, not
choosing their representatives. It’s like Hoeffler said:, the representatives
are choosing the voters. "... of course, redistricting is democracy
at work. Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It's a great event." I was adopted by a white missionary couple I was adopted immediately placed for adoption I was in foster care with one family for 18 years they were white my parents loved us and I understand that but at the same time they took the idea that they were saving me saving us from ourselves being saved and I should be grateful for the life that I've been given because any child on the reservation would give anything to live as I was living they took us away from our mom they came marching right in and literally took us and thousands of other children from their home it's a way to right eradicate us and to go to a nation's children is one of the sure ways to do that [Music] the US has a long and brutal legacy of attempting to eradicate Native Americans for centuries they colonized Native American lands and murdered their populations they forced them west and pushed them into small confined patches of land but Native Americans resisted a Board of Indian Commissioners report said instead of dying out under the light and contact of civilization the Indian population is steadily increasing and that was an obstacle to total American expansion so the u.s. found a new solution to absorb and assimilate them it all started with an experiment and a man named Richard Henry Pratt he had in his charge some prisoners of war and he taught these men how to speak English how to read and write and how to do labor he dressed them in military uniforms and basically ran an assimilation experiment and then he took his results to the federal government and said they're capable of being civilized so he was able to get this project funded in 1879 the government funded Pratt's project the first-ever off-reservation boarding school for Native American children his motto was to kill the Indian and save the man what started there at the Carlisle Indian industrial school was nothing short of genocide disguised as American education children were forcibly taken from reservations and placed into the school hundreds even thousands of miles away from their families they were stripped of their traditional clothing their hair was cut short they were given new names and forbidden from speaking their native languages to take our children and to indoctrinate them into Western society to take away their identity as indigenous peoples their tribal identity I think it's one of the most effective and insidious ways that the u.s. did do harm to indigenous peoples here because it targeted our children our most vulnerable and they tried to make us ashamed for being Indian and they tried to make us something other than Indian there are also accounts of mental physical and sexual abuse of forced manual labor neglect starvation and death my great grandfather went to Carlisle and nobody in my family ever talked about it so if you google Indian boarding schools the majority of the pictures that you will see will be actually from Carlisle Colonel Pratt created propaganda he hired a photographer to create those before-and-after photos to show that his experiment was working so he it was you know intentional propaganda and it worked the Carlisle model of Education swept the country and led to the creation of over 350 boarding schools to assimilate Native American children to these boys and girls have ever seen a white man yet through the agencies of the government they are being rapidly brought from their state of comparative savagery and barbarism to one of civilization in 1900 there were about 20,000 Native American children in these schools by 1925 that number more than tripled families that refused to send their kids to these schools faced consequences like incarceration at Alcatraz or the withholding of food rations some parents who did lose their children to these schools even camped outside to be close to them many students ran away some found ways to hold on to their languages and cultures others though could no longer communicate with family members and some never returned home at all by stripping the children of their Native American identities the US government had found a way to disconnect them from their lands and that was part of the u.s. strategy during the same era in which thousands of children were sent away to boarding schools a number of US policies infringed on their tribal lands back home in less than five decades two-thirds of Native American lands had been taken away the whole thing was purposeful and the fact that it has been buried in the history books and not acknowledged is also intentional and in fact the same tactics were used in New Zealand Australia Canada all of these countries have acknowledged apologized or reconciled in some way except for the United States over time the brutality of boarding schools started to surface and after a 1928 report detailed the horrific conditions at some schools many began to close in the 1960s indigenous activism rose alongside the civil rights movement and by the 1970s that activism forced more schools to shut down the government handed over control of the remaining boarding schools to tribes to be run in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs but just as the boarding school era started fading another assimilation project took shape adoption [Music] the main goal of this pilot project was to stimulate the adoption of American Indian children to primarily non-indian adoptive homes they claimed it was to promote the adoption of the Forgotten child but it was essentially a continuation of the boarding school assimilation tactics and the strategy came with a financial advantage for the government to adoption was cheaper than running boarding schools but first adoption officials had to sell white America on the idea of adopting Native American children feature stories like this one in Good Housekeeping marketed them to white families they were described as unwanted and adoption gave them a chance at new lives in the end their media campaign worked white families wanted Indian adoption but the problem was many of these children were not orphans that nobody wanted they were kids often ripped apart from families that wanted to keep them you still will hear stories today of people you know my age older saying I remember as a child the social worker was coming and people would hide their children on reservations social workers used catch-all phrases like child neglect or unfit parenting as evidence for removal but their criteria was often questionable some accounts describe children being taken away for living with too many family members in the same household an extended family is a big thing for Native people and that means being judged for being in a house that's overcrowded so it's always whiteness is the standard for success and everything else is judged by that standard by the 1960s about one in four Native children were living apart from their families the official Indian adoption project placed 395 Native American children into mostly white homes but it was just one of many in an era of Native American adoptions other state agencies and private religious organizations began increasingly making placements for Native American children - my mother giving me up was a white person telling her if she didn't she would never see her other kids again and one of the documents I have it's addressed to my biological father Victor Fox that he was trying to look us up to get a hold of us but Hennepin County wrote Daniel and Douglas are adapting very well and their new family just was totally it was a false statement when you're adopted you know you're missing something I think I've likened it to having like when someone has like a 500 piece puzzle and they have all the pieces to make this pretty picture except one my adoptive mother was not well verbally physically and sexually and spiritually abusive so by the by the time I was 14 I started drinking 15 drugs are added and I became an addict to numb I didn't realize I was numbing pain I had tried suicide tried to slice in my wrists one time children were taken and believe like I believed for a long time there was something wrong with me versus something wrong with the system the Indian adoption project was considered a success by the people who set it in motion officials claimed generally speaking we believe the Indian people have accepted the adoption of their children by Caucasian families and have been pleased to learn the protection afforded these children but the truth was unsettling these hearings on Indian children's welfare is now in session I was pregnant with Bobby and the welfare kept coming over there and asked me if I gave him up for adoption before he was even born yeah they picked up my children and placed him in a foster home and I think that they were abused in a foster home for years after Native people organized in this Senate hearing Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act known as equi it gives tribes a place at the table in court states would be required to provide services to families to prevent removal of an Indian child and in case removal was necessary they would have to try to keep the child with extended family or another Native American family without our relatives we cease to exist so with Native people part of our wealth is in our family it's in who we're connected to but the legacy of family separation in Native communities has been difficult to fully undo today Native American children are four times more likely to be placed in foster care than white children even when their families have similar presenting problems in these cases equi is often the best legal protection they have and it's been under attack repeatedly a young girl ripped from her foster family because of the Indian children welfare act white adoptive families intent on keeping Native American children have tried to do away with the act and they're often backed by conservative organizations the Indian Child Welfare Act was dealt a blow earlier this month the subject of a lawsuit issued on Tuesday by the Goldwater Institute arguing that preferences given to American Indian families to adopt Indian children is unconstitutional and discriminates based on race it's a way for these industries these very powerful industries to try to attack what Indian identity is wanting to overturn nikla is connected to everything about who we are as a nation so if we don't have any protections for our families and if we don't have protections for our treaties then we have no more Indians we've been under attack we're going to continue to be under attack and we have to keep just keep fighting it's in our DNA to survive we are nations that pre-exists European contact and we are still here [Music] you [Music] On October 24, 1929, the American stock market
crashed. The New York Stock exchange is in a panic! Frantic investors have scrambled to unload
their stocks Fortunes disappeared overnight, and the value
of American companies tanked. But the people in charge of those companies
had an idea. They started buying shares of their own company's stock from investors. Which meant there were fewer stocks out there
for other people to buy. And when there’s less of something, the
price goes up. Normally, to raise their stock prices, these companies would have had   to do something to get investors excited: invent a new product, or a different way of doing things. But with this, corporations had discovered a kind of magic trick. They could jack up their stock price without
really doing anything. This is a stock buyback. An attempt by the owners of America’s biggest
corporations to hang on to their wealth while the rest of the country suffered the
worst Depression ever. This practice helped fundamentally reshape the American economy, and it set the stage for a century long fight we’re still having. It was a choice. And it was about greed. Someone has forgotten about the human element. A fight about where American wealth comes from, and who should keep it. You could have saved these jobs, but you chose
not to. In 1932, the New York Times reported on the
“many abuses alleged” among companies doing this new stock buyback thing. Abuses like “using the corporations’ funds
to buy shares from “directors, officers, and other persons friendly to the management,”
— also known as insider trading. The President signed a new law to make them
stop: The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 It cracked down on manipulation and insider
trading. Corporations took that to mean that their
buyback days were over. And they pretty much stopped doing them. And without buybacks for an option, corporations
basically had three choices for what to do with their profits. Option one: reinvest back in the company. Build new factories. Create new products. Option two: raise wages for employees Option three: issue a dividend and hand profits
over to investors Most American companies did a mix of all three,
with the bulk of profits going towards reinvestment and wages. Over time, technology improved. Workers made more stuff. The productivity of American workers nearly doubled in
the thirty years after World War II. And so did hourly wages. This helped build the American middle class. But things didn’t stay that way. Productivity kept rising, but wages flat lined. A new political and economic philosophy had
taken hold. Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem. When Ronald Reagan was elected, the Securities and Exchange Act had successfully been scaring companies away from doing stock buybacks for fifty years. But that changed after Reagan appointed
a former investment banker named John Shad to the top enforcement job. Shad wanted companies to put less of their
profits into reinvestment and wages. He thought more should go to investors. So in 1982, he changed the rules. For the first time since the 1930s, companies
could buy back shares of their own stock from investors. They didn’t have to worry about the government
coming after them. Buybacks were back. It was a really good time to be an investor. Investors wanted to keep that money flowing. So they changed the way CEOs got paid. Instead of just earning a salary, CEOs could get a bonus if the company’s stock price went up. The quickest way to raise the stock price
was to do a buyback, so CEOs started doing them all the time. In 1982, the biggest American companies spent
less than 1 percent of their profits on stock buybacks. By 2008, just before the recession, that share
had jumped to 77 percent. Fast forward to today, and companies are spending
65% of their profits buying back shares of their own stock. The pay gap between American CEOs and workers
has grown from 15:1 to 220:1 in less than a single lifetime. You can what a uniquely American phenomenon this is when you compare the compensation for General Motors' CEO with her counterparts
at Volkswagen in Germany and Toyota in Japan. And you can see part of the reason for this
gap when you look at how much of their profits three companies spend on buybacks. Volkswagen hasn’t done any since 2012, and
Toyota’s biggest buyback years are roughly the size of GM’s smallest. The more of their profits GM gave to executives
and shareholders, the less was left over for reinvestment, and for workers. In 2000, GM had the largest market share of
any automaker in the world. By 2017, it had fallen to number 4. And as their market share shrank, GM shuttered
plants across the US, and tens of thousands of workers lost their
jobs. For decades, this General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio was the biggest employer in the county. It opened in the 1960s, and started
out making big sedans and muscle cars. When people's preferences changed or one model
was discontinued, GM would re-tool the plant to make a different kind of car. But in 2015, GM promised investors another
massive stock buyback. To cut costs,  they started eliminating shifts at the Lordstown plant. Another cutback— the second shift will be
dropped in two months Where am I going to go? Everybody's got to find a place now. It is the end of the line for the General
Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio The cuts come as the automaker is reporting
a near-record $12-billion profit last year. A few months after the GM plant closed down,
the local supplier that built the rear suspensions went out of business. Same with the local factory that built the
seats. Plans for a new hospital building in town
were put on hold. As paychecks dried up, a local restaurant
closed its doors. Economists call it the “multiplier effect.” One study predicted that every four jobs lost
at GM’s Lordstown plant would trigger three more job losses among suppliers and other
local businesses. That’s why laid off auto workers aren't the only ones in Lordstown who understand the effects of GM’s choices. So do teachers. There were some students who just changed
tremendously. This is all tremendous upheaval for them When you look around, you drive around our town, there's a lot of farming, but General Motors is pretty much the town. There was a time where the budget was made up mostly of General Motors. If we lose that revenue from General Motors, that’s going to be really tough for us. I hesitate to use the word traumatic but it
is. Because when something this sudden happens, it rocks
your world. A year before GM shut down the Lordstown plant,
President Trump and Republicans in Congress lowered the corporate tax rate from 37 percent
to 21 percent. Those who supported the cuts predicted that corporations would reinvest those tax savings, and that workers would benefit the most. The vast majority of businesses are going
to do just what we say— reinvest in their workers, reinvest in their factories. Pay people more money. When our businesses pay less in taxes, they
reinvest that money into their companies. But according to the non-partisan Congressional
Research Service, that's not what happened. The CRS studied the effects of the new tax law
a year and a half after it passed. And they found “very little growth in wage rates”
among ordinary workers What they did find was evidence for “a record
breaking amount of stock buybacks, with $1 trillion announced by the end of 2018” For decades, stock buybacks have been secretly
re-shaping the American economy. And now, politicians are taking notice. Republican Senator Marco Rubio has suggested
giving extra tax breaks to companies when they reinvest their profits instead of doing
buybacks. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders have called for getting rid of the Reagan-era rule that protects companies when
they do buybacks. They want to make it easier for the SEC to
investigate these companies, in the hopes that they’ll be too scared to do buybacks,
just like they were in the 1930s. Warren is also calling for a new rule that
would give workers mandatory seats on corporate boards. That way, they’d have a chance to vote on
those big bonuses that CEOs get when a company’s stock price goes up. That’s how German companies have done things
for decades, and buybacks there are way less common. But in America, they have a long history. Buybacks began in an era when less than 1 percent
of America’s population held nearly a quarter of its wealth. Today, buybacks are back. And the American economy looks a lot like
it did in the 1920s. The question now is whether we want it to
stay that way. So imagine you're wrapping up a night
out. You're ready to head home, but driving isn't an option, and you don't want to wait for public transit. So you use your phone and you fire up Uber, or Lyft, or whatever ride-hailing app floats your boat. 20 minutes later you're faced
with this screen. Do you tip your driver or not? No. Sometimes. ...Sometimes. I can't tell you the last time I tipped an Uber or Lyft. Sometimes I'll do it. Sometimes I won't. I should tip. I tip every single ride. Wow. Aren't we just like, much better than me. So riders are all over the place with how they're tipping. Turns out, only about 35% of riders tip consistently. When I talk to drivers,
tipping is definitely a big deal for them. It's something that's on their
minds, and it can make or break a ride for them. This is Shirin Ghaffary. I write about tech and labor. App-based drivers and cab drivers perform a very similar service. But riders in the US pretty consistently agree: cab drivers should be tipped. I would never walk out of a cab without tipping the driver. I instinctively tip the cab driver. So what's going on here? Why is there so much confusion around whether you should tip on apps like Uber or Lyft? This split, between how riders tip cab
drivers versus app-based drivers, can be traced back to the origins of Uber: the company that made smartphone ride-hailing a thing in the first place. Uber definitely wasn't the first ride-hailing app, but it was the one that scaled the most quickly, and became a household name the most quickly. By 2015, Uber accounted for over 90% of all app-based rides. Uber set the standard in terms of what's the right driver-rider courtesy. And for years, Uber set the standard that what's right is not tipping your driver. From the moment Uber entered the market in 2009, there wasn't even an option to tip in the app. Over the next few years, the company told
curious customers over Twitter that a 20% tip was already built in to the fare
and that there was no need for riders to tip. Uber also told riders that its
drivers take home the majority of the fare. I thought that Uber and Lyft were
just like showering their drivers with money so that you didn't have to tip.
I've always thought that the tip was built into the cost. Uber's messaging around tipping had a huge impact. Even as other ride-hailing
apps joined the market with tipping built right into the app,  riders still
saw these services as something that didn't require a tip. Still, for a time,
even though app-based drivers weren't making much in tips, their pay was pretty
good and more importantly, stable. This chart shows what app-based drivers made
between 2012 and 2014. Even though it goes up and down,
it basically hovers around $1500 a month. But that didn't last. As the ride-hailing
market got more crowded, Uber and its competitors started to lower their fares
to stay competitive. There's been many reports that Uber drivers' pay has been going down over the years. Uber's saying that its commission is 25% but there are
some reports showing that it actually may be as high as 40 percent. And in some
cases, they're actually lowering the rate that they give drivers per mile. After 2014, app-based driver's pay dropped dramatically. And by 2018, drivers were making nearly half what they were making just six years before. You started to hear drivers get more and more disgruntled. You saw this sort of
community form of drivers who felt like these companies may be ripping them off
or not giving them their fair share and the lack of tip became a real problem
because the amount of money that Uber drivers were getting was comparable to
how much to be getting in a cab where most people would tip. To make matters worse
for drivers, the reasons Uber had given for not including tipping in its app,
those turned out to be not entirely true. Uber had said that tipping is included
in our bill. That was sort of debunked and actually some people ended up suing
Uber over that claim in part and they ended up settling. Finally, drivers'
dissatisfaction reached a turning point. In 2017, Uber's then-CEO Travis Kalanick gets in an Uber and as he's leaving the driver brings up driver pay to Travis. And Travis sort of starts to blame the driver. Definitely it was an inflection point because it made the company look like it didn't care about its drivers. And I think when you have that hand-in-hand with this no tipping policy, it was not a good look for Uber. Several months after this video,
Uber finally added a tipping option to to its app. But that wasn't enough to change
the pervasive no-tip culture the company had already built. I always tip cab
drivers but I don't always tip Uber drivers. I didn't know people tipped. Really? I thought everyone tipped. So should you tip your Uber driver? Well, that's still up to you. But just keep in mind, just like cab drivers, app-based
drivers do not automatically get tipped. And if you tip in a cab, you should
probably be doing the same for app-based rides. Reconsidering how we tip isn't
going to fix the larger problems with the ride-hailing industry, but it's still
a good thing to do. I will say that the gig economy is tough.
It's a tough gig. So, anything you can do to reward
people for good work, I think, is nice. ( coin rattling ) ( game sound effects ) Alex: I've been playing
video games for about 25 years. One of my first memories
was begging my parents for a quarter at the arcade
just so I could get a little
bit further at "Galaga." Games used to be simple. You pay for the game,
you play the game. But eventually,
that all flipped. <i> Instead of paying to play...</i> - ( machine gun firing )
-<i> ...you could be playing
  to get paid.</i> <i> Whether that's from streaming
 or e-sports.</i> Emcee: ( shouting )
He just made history! Three million dollars
in prizing! Alex:<i> But there's another
 economy at work,</i> <i> where players can buy
 in-game items for real cash.</i> This flaming mace
is in "Echoing Fury." In 2012, it was sold for roughly
10,000 real American dollars, making it one of the most
expensive video game items
ever sold. <i>Which brings me to my question:</i> <i> "Why would you spend money
 in a video game?"</i> ( music playing ) ( light buzzes ) Games have taken up
years of my life. Literally. <i> I've spent more than a year on
 the games "Counter-Strike" and
 "World of Warcraft,"</i> <i> and as you can see,
 I was a pretty serious gamer.</i> No! Over the last 20 years,
developers have made it possible for you to spend
more money on games. <i> I sold my first-ever Quest
 account on eBay for about
 a hundred bucks.</i> <i>And years later, I paid my rent
 by playing "World of Warcraft"</i> <i> and selling the gold I made.</i> ( thunks ) What's up? - Oh, are we doing this?
- Yes! Welcome! So when we talk about
a virtual item, - in a video game...
- ( laughs ) ...these are a range of items
and collectibles that can be bought, sold,
traded, all depending on - the game that you're playing.
- These are things like... - skins and weapons
  and...yeah.
- Yeah. Totally. Sometimes they can make
you more powerful, but - sometimes it's just clout.
- Mm-hm. - Showin' off.
- Yeah, exactly. Take "World of Warcraft"... In that game today,
you can buy this. This is Hogrus,
a flying pig that you can
ride on. - A flying pig?
- Yeah. Is this also $10,000? This is only $25. You can get the snazzy
"Fortnite" dance. It's called "Tidy,"
for about 500 V-Bucks. That's "Fortnite's" currency. And those V-Bucks can
be purchased for 5 real
dollars in the game. I'm sorry. What--
what is the Tidy? Uh... it's like a window-wipe
dance move. - I haven't actually seen
  it yet.
- ( laughs ) This is a skin
in the game and basically it's
just like a-- it's a visual accessory
that changes the way
this gun looks. And this particular
skin sold for
$61,000. - $61,000?
- Nuts. It's just a commemorative,
special version of a skin that was very rare. <i> There are many ways
 to buy virtual items.</i> <i> Free-to-play games like
 "Fortnite" allow you to buy</i> <i> items directly from the game
 using an in-game store.</i> - ( coin rings )
-<i> But other games use
 online marketplaces,</i> <i> usually run by the
 gaming companies.</i> <i> In this case, players
 buy and sell items
 among themselves,</i> <i> and the game company
 takes a cut.</i> <i> But there's also
 another way.</i> <i> And it largely exists
 beyond the control</i> <i> of gaming companies.
 These transactions</i> <i> take place on
 third-party sites.</i> <i> They're unregulated and
 mostly against the rules.</i> <i> But players still use them
 to buy and sell items.</i> Back in 2012, only some
game makers allowed you to
buy, sell, and trade items in-game with real cash. And the total sum of virtual
items in the market was $15 billion. And some investors
estimate that today the total value of
these goods could be
as high as $50 billion. - Wow.
- To put that
  in perspective, that is more than the
global box office of
the same year. Why is this worth
so much? My guess-- I--I actually
have no idea. - ( laughs )
- I have no guesses. Essentially, things are worth
what anybody will pay for them. So, if I have a fictional castle
and you want it, and you think it's worth $5,
then it's worth $5. So an in-game economy is the
same as a real-world economy. You've got a lot of people,
you've got a lot of goods,
and you've got currency. What's the difference?
Nothing. Alex:<i> Games are designed
to give you a better experience
the more time you spend in 'em.</i> <i> In some games, like
 "World of Warcraft,"
 there are daily quests</i> where you have to log in
and do the same thing time after time after time.
But in most games you just have <i> to grind and spend a lot
 of time to be at the top
 of the game.</i> <i> On average, a player over 18
 will spend more than seven
 hours a week</i> <i> in these digital worlds.</i> I have a weapon in this game
that took me 14 years to get. 14 years! <i> But what if you could buy a
 better experience</i> <i> instead of just
 grinding out the game?</i> <i> Then a new thing started
 to happen when developers
 offered items</i> <i> that you couldn't even
 earn in the game.</i> I'm talking about
flying pigs. I'm gonna show you
how to get one. So, to get Hogrus, I'm going
to go to the main town, and I'm going to open
up the store. <i> It's really easy.
 You just hit "Buy Now,"</i> it connects you to the shop. Find my credit card. <i> And it says, "Thank you, you
 have just earned</i> Hogrus, Swine of Good Fortune." I earned it, guys! <i> Oh, he's in a little
 gift box.</i> So, let's see what happens
when I click him. - ( mouse clicking )
- Hello? Are you there? "Unwrap." And there he is,
he popped out. <i> ( music playing )</i> So, he runs--oh! Look at him. Look at those wings. So this is the joy that spending $25 in a
video game can bring you. <i> So this is pretty cool.</i> I'm going to go
to a "Counter-Strike"
tournament and see why other players are buying
virtual items. <i> I'm headed to Skokie
 to talk to some gamers</i> <i> at the national
 championship series</i> <i> for an online shooter called,
 "Counter-Strike: Global
 Offensive."</i> <i> Today, we're gonna see players
 compete for $10,000.</i> - ( explosion )
- Yeah! Whoo! So we practice almost
every night. Those guys look kinda
intimidating over there. Player:<i> Singularity is
 number fourth in the U.S.</i> Anything that you're, like,
prepared for, excited about,
afraid of? "MAC-1": We're not really
preparing for anything. It's kinda like,
the skill-gap between us and even the second
best team is so, like
high, that we really shouldn't
even draw up a map here. Alex:<i> "Counter-Strike" is a game
 that's been around for as long</i> <i> as most of these players
 have been alive.</i> <i> But the latest version of the
 game only recently adopted</i> <i> a new free-to-play model,
 where instead of paying
 for the game,</i> <i> players are encourage to buy
 and sell their skins in it,</i> <i> by using a marketplace
 inside the game.</i> ( "Ride of the Valkyries"
plays ) - ( character screams )
- Emcee:<i> Well, okay,</i> <i> Osee making his expense,
 knows where the remaining
 two players are.</i> <i> He's going to force the issue.
 He's going for this.</i> <i> If he pops one more head--
this is so deadly--there it is!</i> <i> Osee can win this.
 The one-v-one--oh, he gets it!
 Osee!</i> Whoo! So Osee just got a
four-kill clutch play. Basically he just killed the
entire other team that was still
alive, by himself. - Alex:<i> Oh. My. God. </i>
- Whoo! So this is an AK-47
in the game. And you've actually put
stickers on it as well, so that's like,
Rosie the Riveter. One player has an AK-47
that's got, like, gold
foil on it. Another player has a gun
that looks like a water gun. These are all different
skins that you can get
in the game. <i> Within the first two years
 of adding skins to the game,</i> <i> the "Counter-Strike" player
 base jumped by 1500%.</i> I actually spend a lot
of money on skins. I spent like, 2,000. - Like, dollars? Wow.
- Yep. And it just helps me
stay motivated, I guess? - Do those help you play
  better in the game?
- ( laughs ) No. - So, what's the point of it?
- Uh, just to look cool. - Okay.
- You can always resell 'em. It's not like an asset 
that you're not able to invest into
and then sell. And, uh, if you
do it correctly, the price market fluctuates
in a way, where like, you can buy it at a low point
and sell it at a high point. If you're smart about
it, at least. So what that "Counter-Strike"
player was talking about was buying and selling items
in "Counter-Strike" to make
a profit. <i> Players have always found
 a way to make money.</i> <i> And early versions of online
 trades date back to at
 least the late '90s.</i> Hello. Markee Dragon. Also
known as Marcus Eikenberry
in real life. I got into business, buying,
selling, and trading of intangible goods. <i> I saw somebody that had like a
sword for sale for $20 on eBay.</i> <i> And I'm like, "Holy ( bleep ),
 I can do that?"</i> <i> Then actually developed the
 website, Markee Dragon.</i> - Essentially operating
  as a broker.
- Correct. Most of the game companies
didn't want it legal. Four of the different game
companies started getting
involved, and then you know, things
went south. Alex:<i> After game developers
 worked to end third-party
 marketplaces</i> <i> like Markee Dragon's,
 they began creating their own.</i> <i> They formalized the exchange
 of real money</i> <i> with virtual goods
 in currency and games.</i> <i> But these developer-run
 marketplaces brought out
 a key concern</i> <i> with these virtual economies,
 and that's risk.</i> I'm not sure if you're
familiar with the
"Diablo III" auction house. Oh, my God, yes. <i> It was the wrong
 time to do it.</i> <i> And everybody and
 their mother said,</i> <i> "Oh, my God! I'm going to
 make some money playing a
 video game!"</i> <i> But it imploded
 on them.</i> So this auction house
represents the game
"Diablo III's" auction house. The only difference between
this game and other games
like it, Blizzard, the creator of
the game, decided that they
wanted to experiment with making the auction house
connected to real money. Now I'm going to give
you some coins. These are so cool!
( laughs ) - That's your face on a...
- ( laughs ) ...Glad You Asked penny.
This is the greatest prop
we've ever made! So, Cleo, you've got
20 gold. Buy whatever
you want. - Let's get this started.
- All right. - I probably want a shield--
- Ooh. for 10 gold. And I really like
curvy red one. Ah, the scimitar.
Great choice. Now you're out of money.
But you were only able to
buy two items, and that's really
not enough. But imagine for a second
if somebody found out a way
to create their own gold. - I'd want to know how
  they did that.
- Hey, Joss? - Yes?
- Alex: Yeah, come on in. What's up? - Money?
- Yes. And pretty soon - you're gonna have
  a ton of it.
- Awesome. - So in this case, Joss
  is a cheater...
- ( laughs ) ...who found a way to
duplicate this gold. And she's going to be able
to buy everything she wants. - How do I duplicate this?
- So there was a bug in
  the auction house that allowed their players
to duplicate their gold. And that's exactly what
happened on May 7th, 2013. You have all the gold you want,
so you can buy whatever you
want now. I'm just gonna take it all.
I mean, that's what you do,
right? And I'll leave two swords,
how about that? Okay. Since you just bought out
everything of value, even the middle quality items
were highly sought after. So, eventually,
what happened was
hyperinflation, and those prices changed
because people could spend
anything on it. The dollar values
are just dropping so rapidly. One area of it
spins out of control,
the whole thing collapses. Nobody knew what to do
because, remember, you could sell this gold
for real money. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
That-- you can sell that
for real money? - Yes.
- Can I sell this
  for real money? - Yes.
- Oh, good. Wait. I clearly want to sell
everything for real money. We want real money, Alex.
Let's do this. So Joss puts all of her items
on the auction house before the game maker 
can figure out what's going on. Joss gets a boatload
of money. Joss does get
a boatload of money. - So that's for you.
- Ha-ha. ( trilling ) Alex:<i> Within just a few hours,
 Blizzard shut down the game.</i> This whole thing only lasted
a few hours. But before Blizzard could go in
and correct the bug, a lot of damage
had been done. They couldn't go back and change
or reverse the real money trades
that had taken place because people like Joss
had already gotten their money. <i> So, they deleted
 player accounts.</i> - Oh, my God.
- Oh, no! I just got banned! Some people who weren't even
duplicating gold got caught up
in this. And I know that
because it happened to me. I had a lot of gold on one
account, and it got banned, and I lost an item
that was worth about 400 bucks. - 400 real dollars?
- 400 real dollars. - Alex!
- Yeah. <i> The "Diablo" crash shows us
 how virtual economies</i> <i> can be riskier than real ones.</i> <i> They just don't have the same
 guardrails and protections,</i> <i> and a simple design bug
 could cause a catastrophe.</i> So when people say that,
"Oh, you bought something
in a video game." It's like throwing your money
down a pit that you'll never see again
because you don't own it. So is the popcorn you bought
at the movie theater.
It's the experience. Alex:<i> And that's so true.
For most gamers, it's not about
 the money at all.</i> Jared:<i> In the first place,
 you shouldn't even be playing
 "Counter-Strike" for money.</i> - Whoo!
- You should be playing it
  to reach the top and succeed and win. There's probably
no better example of this than in the battle arena game
"Dota 2." <i> It's annual competitive
 tournament, The International,</i> <i> has the biggest prize pool
 in all of gaming.</i> <i> $34 million in 2019.</i> I decided to come to this
"Dota 2" tournament pub stop. This is in New York.
I couldn't fly out to China where the game is actually
taking place. <i> ( music playing )</i> ( cheering ) <i> In "Dota," players could buy
 a virtual item</i> <i> called a Compendium
 for the tournament.</i> <i> It's a bundle containing
 numerous quests,</i> <i> achievements,
 and earnable rewards.</i> <i> 25% of the sales went on
 to fund the prize pool</i> <i> for the tournament,
 and that's right.</i> <i> The biggest prize pool
 in all of gaming</i> <i> was almost completely
 crowd funded by the fans.</i> People who actually watch
"Dota" itself feels like by
buying the Compendium, they're actually supporting
the professional players
themselves. We all are, like, literally
financially invested
in this tournament. It's kind of more
about the social aspect
of getting together, sharing the passion
for the game that we love. all: Oh! So at the end of this,
why would you spend money
in a video game? There's so many reasons why,
but it just really comes down
to investing in what you love. Boop. We're gonna talk about other. Beneath the surface.
Okay. Ow.
( laughing ) Christophe Haubursin:
For as long as I've been
on the Internet, I've been obsessed
with memes. <i>I loved demotivational posters,
 Leroy Jenkins,</i> <i> Advice Animals,
 Cereal Guy, Rage Guy,</i> <i> LOL Guy, and,
 of course, this guy.</i> ♪ Chocolate rain ♪ <i> But at some point, memes left</i> <i> the weird corners
 of the Internet</i> <i> and became a part
 of how almost everyone</i> <i> participated
 in conversations online.</i> <i> Now memes define how
 we experience pop culture,</i> <i> they're being used
 in advertising,</i> <i> and they're defining
 our political moments.</i> <i> And all of that
 made me wonder this...</i> ( laughter ) <i> ( music playing )</i> So, I mean, memes are
at their core an inside joke. They are a reference
that an in group gets and an out group
doesn't get. Do you have a favorite meme? Right now,
I think my favorite meme is this screenshot
from "Grand Theft Auto:
San Andreas"... - Mm-hmm.
- ...of the main character
  walking down an alleyway and the caption
is just, "Oh, ( bleep ),
here we go again." And it-- that's--
it's not funny when you say it
out loud and explain it, <i> but it's, like,
 the funniest thing
 in the world.</i> Yeah, I am way
on the out of this. It does seem like
the life cycle of memes
has seriously sped up. 'Cause I just remember
being on Reddit and seeing
the "Futurama" guy, the "Not Sure If" meme... - Fry.
- ...for, like, years. And now they don't
repeat after, like, a day,
or maybe a week at most. - Mm-hmm.
- So it is more work
  to keep up. My face is most known
for the Blinking White Guy, <i> which is just me making
 an expression,</i> <i> sort of like
 an incredulous look,</i> and, for some reason,
that gained a lot of traction. I mean, I certainly
don't feel like I have any ownership over it
anymore because--
or that I really ever did. Which is a little
scary in a way, because it is my face and I have
no control over it. There's a new phrase
creeping into our language from the Internet,
and it goes like this... Man:<i> What they call a meme,
 M-E-M-E.</i> <i> I kind of like that--
 Internet word.</i> Woman:<i> It's become
 what's called a meme,</i> <i> an idea reproducing
 across the web.</i> Man:<i>
 The power of that viral idea,</i> <i> the meme, as it's called,</i> -<i> has grown exponentially. </i>
- Do you know what a meme is? - Uh, no.
- I've never heard
  of a meme. I've heard of a mime. - I thought it was "me-me."
- I thought it was "me-mes." - I thought it was "meh-mays"
- I call it "meh-mays," yeah. This is how politics
is waged this day. These are the meme wars
in action. Christophe:
We've clearly come a long way in how we talk about memes. But memes have also
come a long way in just how influential
they are to us. But to understand
why we use the word "meme," you have to go back to 1976 when Richard Dawkins wrote
this book, "The Selfish Gene." He spends the majority of it
talking about genetics, but in one
of the last chapters, he comes up with
this new word, "memes," and he's been asked
to explain it ever since. The meme is the unit
of cultural inheritance. It's anything that's copied,
anything that's imitated, anything that spreads
around like a virus. So he defines a meme as any unit
of cultural information that passes
from one person the next. Let me show you
how that works. Alex, finish this tune for me. ♪ Ah-ah-ah-ah ♪ ♪ Staying alive,
staying alive ♪ Okay, Cleo,
finish this sentence for me. - "Live"...
- "Long and prosper." Great. Okay, Rebecca,
finish this one for me. ♪ It's Friday, Friday ♪ ♪ Gotta get down on Friday ♪ Awesome. So, any of those things, like a tune or a catchphrase, any cultural product
that's repeated over time, for Dawkins,
that was considered a meme. But then in 1994,
this "Wired" article called "Meme, Counter-Meme"
by Mike Godwin becomes the first time
that people refer to memes within the context
of the Internet. It's funny,
there's this line that says, "Most people on the Net,
as elsewhere, had never heard
of memes or memetics." All of that
was about to change. ( groans ) Chances are that
if you spend much time on the Internet at all,
you know what memes are. There are "Shrek" memes, <i> stock image memes,
 there are Kermit memes.</i> They've kind of become
this very essential part
of how we communicate, and as a result of that,
there is a business to be made out of doing them really well. That's why we're visiting
this company <i> in midtown Manhattan right now
 called Brand Fire.</i> <i> They're essentially this team</i> <i> of meme-makers turned
 advertising consultants.</i> <i> We're talking specifically
 to a guy whose Instagram page
 is called sonny5ideup.</i> <i> He's got a million followers,
 and he's made a business</i> <i> out of making
 really great memes</i> <i> that resonate
 with a whole lot of people.</i> <i> And it turns out
 being able to do that today</i> <i> is extremely valuable.</i> So, my name is Adam.
I run Brand Fire, <i> which is a branding agency
 in Manhattan.</i> <i> Sonny comes here and works</i> and collaborates
on a lot of memes and a lot of content
that we create for our clients, and for ourselves,
and for our meme community. <i> It's sort of
 a creative safe space,
 I like to call it.</i> How do you
make money from memes?
How does that work? I'll make memes for,
like, a media company
and just sell it to them. And I'll do the same for,
like, dating apps. I would notice people
going viral all the time, and I just saw that,
like, that wasn't that hard. I had nothing else to do,
so it was that or have no job and do nothing. You know,
I like absurdism. I think repetition creates-- when you create
a pattern of absurdity and it becomes
kind of normalized,
it's interesting. - That's just memes, though.
- Yeah, exactly. And we do this every day,
so it's just like, "I have to post today."  Christophe:<i> Right now
 they're making memes</i> <i> for their own
 Instagram pages,</i> <i> but their resulting
 social media clout</i> <i> is how Brand Fire
 attracts new clients.</i> <i> And they're not alone.</i> <i> In the last decade,
 it's become standard</i> <i> for brands to capitalize
on meme culture to sell things.</i> You know what I was thinking?
We should make-- I was thinking about
even making a concept
for a whole account where it's, like,
a fake CBD account. But what's the real joke?
Like, you have CBD
and you mellow out. So, like, what would be
a good thing to-- what would CBD go in
that wouldn't make much sense? What about, like,
a energy drink with CBD? Yeah, like, you'd get
a guy relaxing in a chair that looks like
a Kyle kind of guy and with a Monster drink
in the foreground. That's not a bad idea.
This guy looks chill. "Now with CBD,
for when you want
to just chill." You could  maybe fade him in
like one of those-- - like an '80s yearbook photo.
- Yeah, totally. - Sonny: There you go.
- Adam: Chill, Kyle. Yeah. It doesn't get
more bold than that. I think this is probably
pretty good, right? That looks great,
honestly. That looks like an ad
in a skateboard magazine. The whole joke is just this kid,
he looks so thoughtful, yeah. He's just so thoughtful. You got to take a break
from punching walls sometimes, you know,
and think about it. Think about all the walls
you've punched. Most of memes are just things that a lot of people
are thinking that
they don't say out loud. So they can just post it
and feel like they're saying it without being, like,
personally attached to it. Adam: Now we're already
starting to come up with,
like, the caption. - Right?
- Because the caption
  activates it. The caption's
the hardest part because you can make a great image
and take hours and hours. The guy's gonna start adding
shadows and ( bleep ). You're not gonna
catch someone's eye with a news article,
like, "Oh, this, that." But you'll catch someone's eye
with a popular meme format. And then they'll read it
and then they'll-- whether they think
it's a joke or not,
they're still taking it in. - Yeah.
- So, I think it says
  that we're all alike in ways that
we don't realize. Like, if a lot of people
can relate to something
that you said, then it's like you hit
the sweet spot, you know? I mean, what do you
feel like it takes
to make something that does relate
and resonate with people? I noticed the stuff
that I work harder on
goes less viral than the stuff that
I'll make in two minutes. - When you stop and reflect?
- Maybe-- yeah, or maybe when you want to reflect. All right,
I'm gonna share it. I beat you, bro. ( indistinct chatter ) Thank you so much.
This was awesome. Great to meet you, too. Christophe:<i>
 So, let's talk
 about the format.</i> Seeing that entire
behind the scenes process of a meme being made made me wonder, you know, is there a reason that memes
look the way they do? Is there something behind
this whole Internet ugly aesthetic? <i> To figure that out,
 I talked to Whitney Phillips.</i> <i> She was really
 one of the first people</i> <i> to research
 trolling and memes.</i> 4chan and 4chan's site
architecture played an unknown
but really significant role in the rise of what
we now refer to as meme culture. And the reason that
that happened was because it was not
a very robust website. It didn't have a lot
of server space. I'm gonna need some help
to explain this, so I'm going to text Joss. Can you help me
make some art? Hello. <i> To show how 4chan works,</i> <i> Joss is gonna make
 something artsy</i> <i> and I'm gonna make
 something scrappy.</i> <i> In the early 2000s,
 when Internet memes</i> <i> were first becoming a thing,</i> all of these different formats
start on 4chan. - Ah, so, this is 4chan.
- This is 4chan. Now, 4chan was and still is
a very fringe website. But to start a conversation
on an image board, you have to post a picture. That's a rule that's designed
to prevent spamming. - For example,
  this picture you made.
- My picture. Yay. - Can I post it?
- You can. Here you go, 4chan.
What do you think of my art? Christophe:
But 4chan had really
limited server space, so it had to constantly
delete old pictures to make space for new ones. My picture looks 
kind of out of place
on this board. It does, and it would. If a thread had
a lot of engagement,
it would stay up, but if not, it was deleted. So, anyone who spent
a long time working on
a piece of content... - Like me.
- ...like you, on 4chan,
got really frustrated when their stuff
was deleted very quickly. - Such as this.
- No! A 2011 study found
that the threads on 4chan's random board /b/ had an average lifespan
of just about 9.1 minutes. If you were spending
a long time on photoshopping some clever response
to something that
someone said to you, by the time you get back
to the conversation,
that thread might be over. It might be permanently gone. I had no idea that
you had to be that fast - in order to engage
  in these conversations.
- Right. The memes that emerged
out of 4chan were often
deeply problematic, to undersell what
that site was like. The aesthetic often contained
profound dehumanizations because that was part
of the joke on 4chan is that trolls troll trolls
who troll trolls. You know, and one
of the classic examples
is Advice Animals. You know, most of them
were about sexual violence,
racist violence, all kinds of
violent dehumanization. But everyday people
who spread the fun and funny versions
of that content also have helped spread
that same pollution. The difference is
that they don't realize that they are holding
a weapon in their hands. - Interesting, right?
- Super interesting. - Yeah.
- It makes me wonder
  if I was sharing memes, you know, back in 2012,
when these really simplistic, very wholesome, actually,
memes were coming around-- I had no idea
when I saw them on Reddit, they actually had
a much longer history on 4chan. - Yeah. I definitely was.
- So, yeah. Like, is Business Cat racist? Is Bad Luck Brian a Nazi? I have no idea. I think he's not a Nazi. Yeah, definitely not. <i> I've been a part of</i> <i> a McDonald's commercial,</i> <i> a Volkswagen commercial,</i> have had t-shirts
with my face on it <i> in Wal-Mart and Hot Topic.</i> So, it's actually been
pretty awesome so far. Christophe:<i>
 Memes are by nature</i> <i> constantly repurposed
 and recontextualized.</i> The consequences of that
can be very personal, and I don't think
there's anyone who knows what that looks like better than the person
behind one of the oldest memetic videos
on the Internet. "Chocolate Rain." ♪ Chocolate rain ♪ ♪ Build a tent
and say the world is dry ♪ ♪ Chocolate rain ♪ ♪ Chocolate cake ♪ ♪ The teacher yells
when I get answers right ♪ ♪ I'm insane ♪ ♪ Wickstrom is the one
I'm going to train ♪ ♪ Chocolate rain ♪ It's really important
to know where memes come from, because the intention
behind how they were created might not always be
what you think, and that's especially true
with political memes. In this Senate
commissioned report, the authors write that memes are the propaganda
of the digital age. Here's what they mean by that. This is a meme comparing CNN to North Korean state media. It was made by a Russian
trolling propaganda page. And this is a very,
very similar meme posted by
a conservative website. It's basically a rip-off. And that rip-off
of a Russian meme was later shared on Facebook by Republican Congressman
Steve King. He has two Facebook pages, and one is really
just for posting memes. And the reason
that that's so impactful is that the meme page
is followed by a lot of people. In the last
three months alone, his meme page
had around 46 times
more page interactions than his normal Facebook page. That's 600,000 interactions
for the meme page versus about 14,000 for
the regular Facebook page. So, by translating
political messages into memes, you can actually help them
travel a lot further. But how they're
digested and perceived,
that's a different story. There's one organization that tries to make sense
of all of this. They are a website that
I have been reading forever--
Know Your Meme. They've been the encyclopedia
of memes since 2008. I really want to hear
what they have to say, and there is one night
when I have to be there. And welcome tonight to
the first Democratic debate in the 2020 race for president. The first Democratic debates
are about to begin. We are at the offices
of Know Your Meme
in Williamsburg. And they've kind of
created this war room <i> where they're
 watching the debate</i> <i> and they're watching
 all of the memes</i> <i> that are coming out
 of the debate</i> <i> at the very same time.</i> We'll hopefully, yeah, use these to mark tallies
of gaffes, any moments,
expressions, everything. - This guy.
- That guy. <i> This team has
 watch parties like this for
 a lot of big events.</i> <i> They're here to track
 everything that's being said</i> <i> so that they can document
 how the memeosphere responds.</i> <i> This is kind of
 the first chance for a lot
 of these candidates</i> to really show the world
who they are on this big stage. But it's also this chance
for everything they say to be kind of
infinitely remixed. Everything is fair game here,
so let's see what happens. Brad:
All of us are logged in
to our research account, and we're going to
basically start - bookmarking tweets.
- Oh, interesting. Brad:
So, Sophie will be tracking
Trump's tweets in reaction, and Brianna and Peter
are going to be making some memes live as we feed information,
basically. It's fascinating
to see this whole system
they've got right now. - ( echoing chatter )
- They've got an entire wall of basically every
buzzword big moment that could be turned into
something in the coming days. It's an organized operation,
I will say that. - ( chatter continues )
- Somewhat organized. Very interesting. If you had to say
what the biggest meme-ifiable moment of tonight was... - Uh, probably--
- ...what do you think it was? And that gets back
into not just the health--
the big pharma, not just-- So good! She's somehow,
like, attempting to be the craziest person in the room,
and you gotta respect it. Sophie:
I think it's just, like,
the placement of seeing, like, five men
right next to a woman-- - I mean,
  It's a strong visual.
- Yeah, for sure. That might be
the most enduring image meme. Christophe:<i> Marianne
 Williamson's performance
 on that debate stage</i> <i> made her Internet famous,
 and even got her a page</i> <i> on Know Your Meme
 the very next day.</i> And if you look
at her Instagram page, you can tell that she's
absolutely embracing that. <i> Before the debate,
 she really never posted memes,</i> and now she posts them
all the time, <i> which is probably why
 after the next debate,</i> <i> she said this...</i> Woman:
Did this night go the way
you had hoped it would? I don't know yet.
I mean, I'll tell you when, you know, later,
when I see the memes! Memes have become
a new language that lets people say things
and get attention that they wouldn't
be able to any other way. And the world
is just getting meme-ier, for better or for worse. I don't think there's
anything wrong with memes or being a meme
or anything like that. I'm doing all right,
and I know that many are, too. But I think as long as, like, the humanity
isn't lost in it, then... ...it should be okay. Our understanding of death
has changed dramatically in the last hundred years. I'm wondering what happens
when we die. Alex:<i>
 So, I have been on a journey</i> <i> to try to answer that one
 impossible question,</i> <i> and it's taken me to a lot
 of interesting places.</i> <i> Questions drive our show,</i> <i> and this one comes
 from a YouTube viewer
 from Norway.</i> - Woman: Do you hear me? 
- Yeah, you sound great. About your question-- What is that one question
that everyone wants to know but no one has the answer to? I've lost a lot of people. Someone I know really closely who's been like
a mother figure to me just got terminal cancer, and she has, like,
a couple weeks left now. I don't wanna sit here and think
that they just die sadly and fall into emptiness. I'm super terrified of dying. So, I'm not trying
to prove the afterlife.
That's unknowable. But what if modern science could
reveal what we'll experience in the final moments
of our lives? <i> ( music playing )</i> More people are searching
for what happens
at the end of our lives, so we're gonna figure that out. You're gonna figure out
what happens when we die? Uh, I already have. When Helle brought
this question to me,
I started digging, and one thing
that kept popping up
was this video on a dog that was brought
back to life. <i> In 1926, a scientist came up
 with an experiment</i> <i> that would redefine
 the way we would interpret
 the process of dying.</i> <i> Dr. Sergei Brukhonenko
 drained dogs of blood,</i> <i> and they died while connected</i> <i> to his new machine
 the autojektor.</i> <i> They stopped breathing
and then their heartbeat ended.</i> <i> They were believed
 to be completely dead.</i> <i> Then the doctors waited.</i> <i> After ten minutes without
 a heartbeat or breathing,</i> <i> the autojektor cycled
 their bodies</i> <i> with re-oxygenated
 arterial blood</i> <i> and then the dogs
 came back to life.</i> <i> And over time,
 they made a full recovery.</i> <i> The dog experiment shows us
 that death was not just
 a moment in time,</i> <i> but it was a long process.</i> So, that raised the question,
if death is a process, at what point
do we truly die? In the case of the dog, that dog was actually
never dead at all. He had never died. - What was he?
- Allow me to explain. That's a transition. So what I have here
are some custom "Glad You Asked"
tarot cards. - Okay.
- I picked these because we tend to search for
answers in the supernatural, but there's still so much
to be learned from science. For most of human existence,
life was thought to reside
in two organs. You had the heart
and you had the lungs. Do you have any idea why? Those seem to be
the ways that we can tell if someone is dead
from the outside-- - if they're breathing, if you
  can feel their heartbeat.
- Exactly.  Alex:<i> For thousands of years,
 we considered somebody dead</i> <i> if they had no pulse
 and they weren't breathing.</i> <i> But these signs can be
 misleading,</i> <i> as people can actually
 recover from both.</i> <i> This lead to fears
 of being buried alive.</i> <i> Jean Jacques Winslow,
 a medical expert of his time,</i> <i> stated that the safest way
 to define death</i> <i> was putrefaction of the body,
 or decomposition.</i> <i> But we still relied on
 that heart-lung definition.</i> <i>Without signs of either, you're
 considered clinically dead.</i> In the last hundred years,
that started to change. <i> In the '30s and '40s,
 two new machines</i> <i> were commonly used
 to extend life.</i> <i> We got the defibrillator
 that could restart the heart,</i> <i> and the iron lung,
 followed by the respirator,</i> <i> that could pump
 the lungs with air.</i> <i> At around the same time,</i> <i> we used another machine,
 the EEG,</i> <i> to study electrical signals
 in the brain.</i> <i> The brain will flatline within
 two to 20 seconds on an EEG</i> <i> once the heart stops beating.</i> Alex:
So, if each of these organs
was not required to be working all the time
for you to be alive, maybe we have
to start thinking about
death differently. <i> In 1978, President Carter
 mandated a commission</i> <i> to study and define death.</i> <i> He hoped to find
 a modern definition</i> <i> which took into account
 recent medical advances.</i> <i> In 1981, they published
their report, "Defining Death."</i> <i> This lead to the act
 that hospitals today use,</i> <i> making the old definition
 of death obsolete.</i> The focus shifted
over to this-- the brain. This became the final
indicator of whether
you were alive or dead. <i> Now, there are levels
 to this--</i> <i> the higher
 and the lower brain.</i> <i> Most medical experts today say</i> <i>that once you lose higher level
 brain functionality,</i> <i>which is where logical thinking
 and personality reside,</i> <i> you are considered dead.</i> <i> You are dead even if</i> <i> some of the lower level
 brain functions,</i> <i> those controlled by
 the brain stem like breathing,</i> <i> still persist.</i> So you can be brain dead,
but still be breathing, and have a heartbeat--
everything. Totally. And that gets
into kind of murky territory
with how we define dead. So, to answer
what happens when we die, we have to focus on one thing, getting as close as possible
to the final moments of life to see what we feel and
experience in those moments. - To here.
- The near-death experience. <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> So I started
 researching NDEs.</i> <i> They're in Medieval accounts</i> <i> and as far back
 as the writings of Plato.</i> <i>They're in the artwork of Bosch
 from 500 years ago.</i> They're seeing a bright light. <i>They're going through a tunnel.</i> <i> They're hearing voices and
 communicating with the dead.</i> To help go through the research, I'm getting Joss
to help me dive in. Hey, Joss. - I need your help.
- Okay. So I've been looking into
near-death experiences. Maybe there's a medical reason - why these things
  are happening.
- Mm-hmm. So, just kind of survey
whatever research is out there - on how legit these
  experiences are.
- Yeah. Alex:<i> While Joss is
 looking at NDE experiments,</i> <i> I'm getting some caffeine
 and researching the history,</i> <i> the controversies,
 and cultural impact of
 near-death experiences.</i> <i> First, history.</i> <i> 1975, Dr. Raymond Moody
 publishes a book,</i> <i> "Life After Life."</i> <i> He coins the phrase
 "near-death experience."</i> <i> Over the next two decades,</i> <i> he's established as
 the preeminent expert on NDEs.</i> <i>He proclaims the transformative
 effects of NDEs</i> <i> and becomes the subject
 of this 1992 documentary.</i> Once they come back, they tell us that they're
totally transformed and they have no more doubt
whatsoever. <i> It's engrained into
 the public consciousness.</i> <i> Even celebrities are saying
 they've had them.</i> It's just a lot
of white light, and you see people
that have passed on and-- When you're in a coma
for eight to ten days, you're basically knocking
on the door. I was talking to my dad. I sort of floated
into this tunnel. <i> YouTube data shared with us</i> <i> indicated that between
 2017 and 2018,</i> <i> views on videos related
 to death increased by 40%.</i> <i> So clearly a lot of people
 have questions about death,</i> <i> and one of the phenomena
 they're looking at
 is near-death experiences.</i> All right,
that's enough internet. I need to find an actual
experiencer and talk to them. <i> I'm on my way to meet
 with Tony Cicoria.</i> <i> He's an orthopedic surgeon</i> who in 1994 was struck
by lightning <i> and experienced an NDE.</i> <i> But something weird
 happened to Tony.</i> Tony became obsessed with music and started to play it
all the time, and today he is
a renowned composer. ( playing piano ) Tony: It's 1994,
I'm at a family gathering and I tried to call my mom. I took the phone away
from my face. I was gonna hang it back up, and I heard this huge,
loud crack. And I saw this big flash
of light come out of the phone and hit me right in the face. And it just threw me back
like a ragdoll. And I was confronted
with myself on the ground
about ten feet away. And, you know,
the first thought that popped into my head was,
"Oh, ( bleep ), I'm dead!" And I'm looking down
at the ground and I noticed that
my legs were dissolving. You're seeing your body
on the ground. - Yeah.
- You're feeling yourself
  outside of your body, but you still feel yourself
walking and present. Yeah.
Yeah, that was really weird. I was just a ball of energy. And right about the time
I realized this is the greatest thing that
could ever happen to anyone, it was like somebody
flipped a switch, and, bam,
I was back in that body. And I was pissed. Some circuits got fried,
and some that got opened, and I had access
to parts of my brain that I didn't know
existed for me. <i>But then within a couple weeks,
 all of a sudden</i> I started to have
this insatiable desire
to hear piano music. Being struck by lightning,
having an NDE, didn't give you
instant super powers. I wish it had given me
super powers. I was skeptical. I was a scientist
before I went into medicine. I-- you know, I thought
about things and, you know, there has to be
a structure to follow. But I'm absolutely certain that consciousness
survives death and that we keep going
through the cycle. It doesn't seem like
you're afraid of dying today. No. No. And that's a blessing
and a curse. <i> I think that there's
 a process that happens</i> <i> as we approach death.</i> <i> It's an incredible experience.</i> <i> It's certainly
 not something to do</i> <i> before it's time to do it,</i> but it also is something
to not be afraid of. Alex:
That was great! I'm about to speak
with Dr. Pim van Lommel, and he a scientist
from the Netherlands who's been tracking near-death
experiences for years. Alex:
Hello, Dr. van Lommel. Yes. How would you define
near-death experience? I think there's a lot
of studies out there that have tried to prove
that near-death experiences and out-of-body
experiences exist. Have you heard
of Dr. Parnia's AWARE study? - So I asked you to look
  into this AWARE case.
- Yes. Joss: This was the largest
scientific study of near-death experiences. I put a little model
of their experimental method. - You made this yourself?
- Yeah, I spent a lot
  of time making this. - Amazing.
- You better like it. So, this is a hospital room
where patients were likely
to experience cardiac arrest. Medical professionals
would be rushing in and trying to resuscitate
this person. And in those rooms
they installed a shelf - near the ceiling
- Oh. and placed a picture
on top of that shelf. And the idea was that
if someone was going through
an out-of-body experience, they often claim that
they're looking at themselves
from the top of the ceiling-- that they would be able
to see this picture and report back what they saw. <i> During this study period,
 around 2,000 patients</i> <i> had cardiac arrests,
 but only one of them</i> <i> was healthy enough to explain
 an out-of-body experience.</i> <i> But they didn't have
 a shelf in his room!</i> <i> So the study was inconclusive
 on out-of-body experiences,</i> <i> since nobody could describe
 the picture on the shelf.</i> I spoke to a NDE experiencer. His name is Tony Cicoria. What does that tell you
about how influential
these experiences are? This is definitely not
what all of us experience
at the end of life, and I've been looking
at this other case that does tell you
what might be happening at the end of life
for all of us. A researcher up in Buffalo has been looking at these cases
for the past five years. So you're going to Buffalo. I'm going to Buffalo. So after a long trip,
we finally arrived over
at Hospice Buffalo. We're good? Thank you. <i> The thing that makes
 this facility so special,</i> <i> is they've been cataloging
 the dreams</i> <i> and end of life visions
 of patients.</i> <i> So these patients will tell us
 what they're experiencing</i> <i> at the very final moments
 of their lives.</i> Man:<i> So can we just talk
 for a second?</i> We're just filming. Woman: Oh. - We can go this way
  to inpatient unit.
- Okay. ...there's little coves
where people can hang. There's an English garden
out here, so we actually push people
in their beds outside. - Hi.
- Hi, Helen. - Yes. Hi.
- I'm Alex. - Great to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. - How are you doing today?
- I'm doing very well. Christopher: You're a good
Polish girl, I see. Yes, I am.
Polish and Serbian. Christopher:
Have you been having
unusual dreams at all? - No. No, nothing.
- No, nothing. It tends to come
as people are closer to dying. But she's too--
you're too healthy. <i> You've got time.</i> I did the first study
that attempted to quantify what happens to people
at the end of life by asking patients directly,
you know, "What is it you're
experiencing?", every day until death. And, so attempted
to put definition around what people were
feeling or experiencing
as they were dying. It went like fire
around the world. A doctor at a hospice
in Buffalo has been studying this
for years. Man: He and his team have
documented 1,400 cases. He says the dreams are
comforting to the dying. Christopher:<i>
 "New York Times,"</i> <i> "Huffington Post"
 a couple of times.</i> Ireland, China, India,
you name it, been there. - And it just keeps growing.
- What did you start to discover - when you were looking
  at the research?
- Well, it was remarkable. People were having these
very intense experiences. We call them dreams because it's the only
reference point we have. But the thing we hear
most common from patients is, "No, no, you don't understand.
This is different than any other dream I had.
This happened." When I woke up I--
it was like they were there, you know, all three of them
together. And it was nice. The vast majority of people,
greater than 80% if you ask
them, you know, for weeks-- - 80%?
- Yeah, at least having
  one experience that was distinct
and different
from normal dreaming. Heightened acuity,
clear thinking. In fact,
half the people said
they weren't asleep. And in terms of themes,
far and away it was
seeing the deceased, some living a past
meaningful experience. I'm back in the service. I'm at Fort Devens up
in Massachusetts. You know, when you dream,
you kind of put things together
and it's all a fog? - Right.
- That's not what happens. This is recalled as though
it's a lived event. I was laying in bed and people were walking
very slowly by me. My mom and dad were there. My uncle. Everybody I knew
that was dead was there. There's this kind of paradox
where you're physically dying, but inside you're very much
alive and feeling. You know, we all have wounds
for having lived, and they just seem
to kind of get addressed. I can't say that my mother
and I got along all those years, but we made up for it
at the end. Woman:<i>
 Paul is my dad.</i> He was 82
when he passed away about six
and a half years ago. There was this study
going on and we were looking into dreams
and dying and so forth. He, of course, said yes. They were forming this company
that were gonna oversee. A new company. <i> And the guys are all young.</i> <i> They're like I remember them,
 and I'm old.</i> <i> And I'm trying to tell them,</i> <i> "Guys, I've been here,
 I've done this,</i> -<i> I'm not gonna do it again." </i>
- ( chuckles ) Do you think
that he was okay with death
when it finally came? I think he had
come to grips with death. He took comfort
in the dreams that he had. I think sometimes
in his dreams he was kind of
wrapping things up, like getting closure
with his buddies
in the service. He was not afraid. You know, it was--
this was good. Christopher:<i>
 Dying's a process.</i> <i> We tend to view death
 as that last gasp,</i> <i> that grabbing of the chest,
 what have you.</i> Most dying is less dramatic. It's quieter. It's gentler. It's more natural. Alex:<i>
 Dr. Kerr's studies suggest</i> <i> that the majority of the dying</i> <i> may eventually have ELDBs.</i> <i> In his 2014 study,</i> <i> he found that more
 than 80% of his patients</i> <i> had these vivid experiences.</i> This isn't just happening
in America. These stars represent
a few of the areas where ELDBs have been
recognized. A Swiss study found
nine out of ten patients
in palliative care experienced
these very real dreams
and visions before dying. Tony:<i>
 What happens when you die
 is you will experience</i> <i> absolute love and peace.</i> It's gonna be an earthshaking
feeling and freedom.  Christopher:<i>
 It tends to bring folks
 this comfort or closure.</i> They're made whole again. So, of course, there's more
research to be done. But maybe our brains,
faced with the specter
of no longer existing, are stepping in
to prepare us at the end by revealing
what life was all about. And if that's the case,
we don't need to be afraid, because if we're lucky,
we'll be ready. Helen:
Everybody dies. We just don't know where
or when or how. But I'm 92, so I think
it's time for me to go. This is a copper casket. - Truly copper.
- Wow, it's like memory foam. ( laughs )
Sorry to laugh. - Almost like
  a really soft mattress.
- It's a mattress. <i> ( music playing )</i> Joss:<i> David, can you
 just tell us your name
 so we have that in?</i> David:<i>
 David Phillips.</i> And, David,
how often do you cry? - Um...
- It depends on the week. Um, actually,
on my way here I cried. Sometimes when you're in your most vulnerable situations and Adele hits,
she really hits. So you know in
"Guardians of the Galaxy" when Groot makes a tree ball
around his friends and Rocket's like,
"Groot, no!" The episode where
Ben and Leslie get married. And I picked up the phone and I realized
she's not there anymore. I probably cry once
every six months,
if it's a bad six months. In 2016, when I received
a video message of a moment that I probably
shouldn't have missed. I remember these things because
for three years I kept a record of every time that I cried. This is your spreadsheet. <i> ( music playing )</i> ( sniffling ) So you guys all read
my spreadsheet. I've crunched the data
a little bit. So, the majority of these
were reactions to media, TV shows, movies,
podcasts, some articles, and about 37% were things
that were actually happening
in my personal life. So, as I've been looking
into this, one of the most interesting
facts I've come across is that a lot of people
consider tears to be
the only bodily fluid that doesn't gross us out. Snot, earwax, spit. - All the other ones...
- All the other ones. ...all gross. - All gross, but we--
- Yeah. We don't have that
reaction to tears. Why'd you make
the spreadsheet? Um, when I cry, it feels like
I've become a different person. Because in my normal life,
I'm very calm and collected. I feel like I'm in control. And I think most of us
take for granted that crying is something
that humans do. But I've never felt
like I had a good grasp
on why we do it. I would weirdly find that crying during swim practice
was really therapeutic. So, I just cry
a little bit in my goggles and then I rest on the wall
during the interval, and then I just literally
would empty out the tears, put on my cap
and just keep swimming.  Joss:<i> I have enlisted
 the help of Taili Wu,</i> <i> a master stop motion animator,</i> <i> to help us explain the anatomy
 of the lacrimal system,</i> <i> which is what makes us cry.</i> - It's alive!
- ( laughs ) We're gonna bring Alex in
and show him how it all works. All right. - Are you ready?
- Yeah. Jose:<i> Okay,
 so the main lacrimal gland
 is here on the upper</i> <i> outer part of the eye socket.</i> <i> That gland releases tears
 that travel across the eye</i> <i> washing any irritants away.</i> <i> And then when we blink,
 liquid gets pushed</i> <i> into two tiny holes
 near the corner of the eye.</i> <i> And if you look really close,
 you can see them.</i> Okay. Can you see it? - Yes, I can now.
- You do? - It's tiny. Right there.
- Yay! - Can you show me the other one?
- Yeah. - Can you see it?
- Yeah. - You can see the hole.
- I actually can see it. Oh, my God. <i> So our tears drain
 into our nose,</i> <i> and that's why the nose
 starts running when you cry.</i> <i> When the lacrimal gland
 is producing so many tears,</i> <i> that they can't drain
 fast enough,</i> <i> they spill over
 onto your cheeks.</i> - And that's crying?
- That's crying. Wow. So it's just, like,
this overflow of excess tears. - Exactly.
- Wow. And we share this anatomy with a lot
of other land animals. It evolved way
before humans did. And I found a clip on YouTube
that I really want to show you. -<i> ( cat meows ) </i>
- Woman:<i> Oh, Buddy.</i> Man:<i> Oh, Buddy.</i> Did those onions get to you? Aww, Buddy. So this is what happens
if you cut onions by a cat, which is not a particularly
nice thing to do. But what's unique about us is
that humans are the only animal that cries tears
of emotion. - Really?
- Yeah. So there's some point
in our evolution that our lacrimal glands
became connected
to our emotions, and I really wanted to know
how that happened. So I called up
a Dutch psychologist
named Ad Vingerhoets. - Great name.
- Who is-- yes. Who is considered the world's
leading expert in crying. ( crying ) And would that be
why we have tears
when we yawn as well? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the idea is that the babies would've been
screaming to get care, that vocal signal, and then it would've
come along with that, - these tears.
- Yes. ( baby crying ) I see. So, maybe there was
a survival advantage to a child
who produced more tears - as opposed to more
  vocal crying.
- Yeah. Hmm. So what I'm getting
from this is, like, over time, crying became a way
for us to reach out for help. Now you're saying
that tears are essentially a more subdued way of
expressing those same things. Exactly. Humans go through this
really long childhood where our brains
still have to develop, because we've
got these giant brains. They take 20, 25 years
to finish forming, and I think that's why
this crying persists
into adulthood for humans, because we're vulnerable
for longer than other species. - Hmm.
- I mean, kids are
  in their parents' house for 18 years at least. - Um, being--
- Or 25. Or 25.
Whatever, no judgment. Joss:<i> It was the sad,
 helpless screams of infants</i> <i> that likely linked emotions
 to tears in our ancestors.</i> <i> As adults, our emotions
 are more complex,</i> <i> but they still trigger
 the same signal.</i> Um, I was walking
to get groceries one day and, um, I got a call
from my grandfather. He's sort of like
another parent to me. I lived in his house
for a while growing up, and I started crying. I didn't really let on, but I was like,
"Oh, wow. I really miss-- I really miss you. I'm really touched that you're thinking of me
and calling me, even if there's not much
for us to say." One of the things
we hear a lot is that people feel better
after they cry and that crying is cathartic. I've looked at some
of the research on this, and it seems like
even though a lot of people report that crying
makes them feel better, they haven't been able
to find any sort of physiological mechanism
that would explain that. So, I am on my way
to meet with Dr. Meena Dasari. She is a clinical psychologist. And I sent her
my spreadsheet in advance, and I'm curious to see
what her analysis of it is. Thank you. All right. Do you think crying
is healthy? I think crying is healthy
when done in moderation-- when it's used as form
of emotional expression, but in conjunction
with other coping strategies. Crying as a release of emotion,
as a way of self-soothing, and then moving on
to different forms, I do think can be healthy. - He is so cute.
- He's the sweetest. And they're constantly
wearing tie-dye,
which is their thing. - All the time? Look at them.
- Yeah. <i> My nephew was born in 2014</i> and my niece was born in 2016. - And you can see those
  in my spreadsheet,
- Absolutely. feeling like I was
really missing some of
those key moments-- their births,
some of their birthdays. And then my sister would
send me videos of them. Woman:
Say "Happy birthday,
Auntie Jossy." Happy birthday, Auntie Jossy. All:
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ And those moments were
just like-- oof! <i> You know, like,
 I should be there.</i> - Dasari:<i> You longed
  for that connection. </i>
- I did. Well, I think that's
what I was struck by when reading your entries is the big theme to me
seemed human connectedness. And there was sort of
two experiences. One was the expression
of that human connectedness, either love or affection,
um, but also the loss. My mother died
when I was 13 years old and my father didn't
quite understand me, and-- and I didn't
understand him. And so,
I cried a lot of sad-- there was a lot of sadness
in my life. "Oh, Father" by Madonna. <i>♪ You didn't mean to be cruel ♪</i> I'm thinking of my mother basically through
the whole song. That last day
that I saw my mother alive
was Mother's Day. You know, my inner child's mind,
I just feel like... wounded,
and it's always that part that makes me feel... like she's wounded, too. Woman:
What happened? He's sad. He's sad? Yeah. Oh, no. That made me sad. He wants his mama. Oh. Girl:<i> Say "mama."</i> So I showed that clip to the Dutch psychologist
Ad Vingerhoets, and he said that
it's actually pretty rare for a child that young
to feel empathy
to the point of tears. But as we get older,
it becomes more common to cry not just for ourselves,
but because we see
others in pain. And especially for women. Across the board,
women and girls score higher on tests of empathy
than men and boys. And that might partly explain
why women cry more than men. In a survey of 37 countries
around the world, women consistently reported
crying more often than men. And for me, crying can feel
almost contagious. Each of these clips
is from my spreadsheet, and they show that there
was a consistent trigger that made me start to tear up. 70% of the time, it was when
I saw another person crying. And I just remember, like,
crossing the finish line and being so emotionally
vulnerable and so emotionally dead,
and then the plan was everyone's just gonna meet me
back in my apartment. And so as I was walking, one of my--
one of my best friends, he came and-- and found me. And again, I started crying
as soon as I saw him, because I was just-- I was just
so glad that he was there and I was so glad, like, somehow
he knew that I needed him. You got me. It's like if you cry,
I'm gonna cry. That's amazing. <i> I think the most mysterious
 tears are the ones</i> <i> that come when something
 positive is happening.</i> <i> So I wanted to see
 if the team had the same
 reaction that I did</i> <i> to wholesome videos
 from my spreadsheet.</i> Joss is having us watch some
videos that she sent to us. - Are you about to make me cry?
- That depends on you. So, here's the file.
It's a Dropbox link. I don't really know
what to expect. I think she wants me to cry. I'm not going to cry. I'm really scared. Okay. ( cheering) Oh, my God. That's only the second one?
That's crazy. I have goosebumps. Look. ( gasps ) What is it?
Singapore or Thailand? That is too much water
for that plant. Joss:<i>
 The Thai commercial</i> <i> where the guy is going around</i> <i> doing kind things for
 everyone in his community,</i> <i> it's funny that
 that was on my spreadsheet,</i> because when I started
researching this it turns out
that it's a clip <i>that psychologists use to study</i> <i> the emotion of being moved.</i> <i> There's a study that asked</i> people to track
when they started crying while they were watching
that video. And you can see that
around the two minute mark there's this big jump
when people started crying. - Oh, I know what that is.
- What do you think it was? It's the little girl
in her uniform. - It's gotta be the little girl.
- It's gotta be the little girl. - Yeah, that's the moment.
- That's the moment! <i> That's when
 the character realizes</i> <i> that the girl he's been
 donating money to...</i> <i> ...has begun to go to school.</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> <i> And this finding comes
 from a research group</i> that studies an emotion
that they call "kama muta," which is a Sanskrit word
for "moved by love." So, if you've ever
seen something that made you sort of
reflexively put your hand
on your chest or get chills or goosebumps or tears, they say
those are all symptoms of this distinct emotion
of being moved by love. So, their findings suggest that you're likely
to experience this emotion when there's
a sudden intensification of a communal relationship, when people feel themselves
suddenly closer to each other. And I think of it as kind
of like surprise intimacy. So we think that surprise is really important aspect
of that emotion, <i> because if you just have
 this relationship</i> <i> and there's
 this really tiny change,</i> <i> which is just happening
over several days, for example,</i> <i> maybe you would feel
 a bit happier,</i> <i> but it wouldn't be
 this intense feeling</i> <i> that you would have
 just in the moment.</i> What? Are you serious? Are you serious? - Woman:
  What does that say, babe?
- ( crying ) - What is that?
- ( crying ) Oh, God. When people say positive tears,
tears of joy, that always seemed a little bit
not right to me. It just seems like there's
something more going on there than just joy or happiness. <i> Yeah, we agree that it often</i> <i> is occurring together
 with sadness,</i> <i> and that's basically also
 the beauty of it, I guess,</i> <i> because you often
 have this contrast.</i> <i> So, imagine,
 the typical situation</i> <i> would be if you reunite
 unexpectedly with--</i> <i> with a loved one you haven't
 seen for many years.</i> <i> So there had to be
 this kind of loss,</i> <i> this background
 that it would occur against.</i> ( screaming )
Oh, my God! Would you consider yourself
someone who cries less often
than most people? I wouldn't know. Like, I'm not sure
how frequently people cry. - But I would say--
- I could tell you that. Okay, please do. So, studies suggest
that in Western countries women cry on average
two to four times a month. - Wow.
- And men cry about once
  every couple of months. Yeah, I would cry
about three times a year. - Oh, wow. Okay.
- Yeah. - But they're--
  they're good ones.
- They're good ones. Well, the good news
is that there is a study
about non-criers. And it found
that non-criers don't differ from criers
in their well-being. They don't seem to have
more depression or anxiety. So this notion
that crying is necessary
for mental health, that it's a necessary release,
that doesn't seem to be true. The director
of the debate team I was on in college
passed away. And all the alums came back
for a funeral, and everybody was crying
and I noticed that I was not. And it was the first funeral
I'd been to, and I realized that
that was different. And I felt like
I had to take measures to signal to others that
I was still affected by it because I wasn't showing
the most obvious marker. <i> ( music playing )</i> Joss:<i> There was this survey
 back in the late '90s</i> <i>that asked a bunch of countries
 around the world</i> <i>how often the people there cry.</i> And what they expected
to find was that the countries that had
lower standard of living, the countries where they rated
themselves with lower well-being and the countries
with higher depression rates would be the ones
that cried more. But that's not what they found. The dark blue countries
are the countries that reported
crying the most frequently. And the light green
are the ones that reported
crying the least. So you see here, we have
three countries in Africa. We have Nepal. These are countries where
the researchers would've assumed that the people there
would have objectively more reasons for crying. But what they found
was that it was the happier, wealthier countries
that cried more. And the variables
that correlated
with crying frequency were things like
the level of civil rights, the level of democracy,
extroversion, and individualism. And so what the studies suggest
is that crying, at least on
the international level, isn't about how much distress
a population feels. Rather it's about how much
that population feels they have the freedom
of emotional expression. I think there's a special
comfort in crying publicly. It's nice to be around
other people and know crying
is a part of your day just like your commute
or your lunch break. It's just, oh, it's cry time. It's cry o'clock. <i> ( music playing )</i> Crying evolved
as a signal to others <i> that we need their help
 in order to survive.</i> <i> But for adults, crying can be
 a message to ourselves,</i> if we pay attention. I think about him
a lot these days. He's getting older,
I'm getting older, and, you know, time is not
stopping for anybody. It's a matter of going through
life's atrocities for me and-- and yet I came out
on the bright side. Your tears are a signal
that you're seeing something
important to you, <i> and the memories and values</i> <i> that start pouring out
 of your eyes?</i> They can be surprising. There are a lot of things
that push my buttons. But what's actually coming out could've been
building up for years. Dr. Vingerhoets had
a neat way of putting it. He said, "Apparently..." <i> ( music playing )</i> Hello! Hi, guys! <i> ( music playing )</i> - Uh-oh.
- Ow, ow, ow, ow. The pain. Ready? Ah! We're in the middle of an ancient lake basin, that scientists think is one of the most
Martian places on Earth. And we're stuck. <i> We're stuck here
 because I had a question.</i> <i> NASA says the first humans</i> <i> will set foot on Mars
 in the mid-2030s.</i> <i> It will be the most
 dangerous mission</i> <i> any human has ever taken.</i> <i> My question is,
 what comes after that?</i> Mars! <i> Not how do we get there,</i> <i> but how do we survive,
 once we do?</i> <i> ( music playing )</i> Okay, here we go. We've been dreaming about Mars
for hundreds of years. In the 1870s, Italian astronomer
Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped channels
he saw on Mars. In Italian, channels
are<i> "canale."</i> The word was mistranslated
into English as "canals," implying deliberate
construction and flowing water. Other scientists published
their own maps, feeding this obsession
with the idea that Mars could be
a lot like Earth. People were skeptical, but they
sort of wanted it to be true. It became a public obsession. The L.A. Times ran
this piece in 1907. And I just love this headline
in the New York Times. They're just
reporting on this stuff as though there
are Martians. This article includes
a bit of reasoning. People just want to believe. <i> The movies they made
 in the early 1900s</i> <i> depict a Mars that's
 not just habitable,</i> <i> but inviting.</i> 1918--
this is a silent film. <i> A couple of guys get to Mars
 and, oh, surprise--</i> <i> they find a ton
 of beautiful women.</i> <i> They don't hate it.</i> -<i> 1930. </i>
- So this is Mars! We got a spot
like this three miles
from my hometown. <i> 1952.</i> Look at the canals. <i> This isn't so different
 than sci-fi today.</i> <i> But without any real
 pictures of Mars,</i> <i> there was still this
 sense of possibility.</i> Maybe, just maybe, Mars would be
something like home. And then this happens. In 1965,
and then again in 1969, NASA sent spacecraft
to fly by Mars and send back
scientific measurements and close-up photographs. But the pictures of Mars showed a world
of total desolation. There were no canals, no cities, no areas
of cultivation. No possibility of life. I can't imagine
how devastating that must have been. I've only ever
lived in a time when we had pictures of Mars. Those images
were concrete proof that Mars wasn't going to be
the second home that some kind of
still hoped for. But we never stopped obsessing
about life on Mars. ♪ Is there life on Mars? ♪ That YouTube clip,
David Bowie's music video
for "Life On Mars," had its highest view-day when Mars was visible
in the night sky in January 2019. We're still looking up
at the Red Planet and wondering
about life surviving there. So let me show you what we
actually now know about Mars. <i> ( music playing )</i> We're about to head out
into that desert, because we're accompanying
astrobiologist Kennda Lynch as she does research
into extremophiles, which are microbial life
that live in, well, extreme environments
like this one. And we're going to ride
those ATVs, and I've never
ridden one before. - Uh-oh.
- Yeah, we're going to
  have to stop. - Nah, he's stuck. Yep.
- We'll get out. Cleo:
Since we're stuck,
I'm going to tell you a little bit
about where we are. This place is one of the
closest analogs that we have to the type of environment
that Mars used to have. Mars was once a wet planet. It had liquid water
on its surface. When all that water
went away, Mars still had
an abundance of groundwater
that stayed liquid, and we still think
it might be there in the deep subsurface today--
very, very deep. So this is a good model
for us to understand how life would've
survived in this kind
of environment on Mars. - Cleo:
  It certainly looks Martian.
- Yeah. Hey, Camille,
you want to get
some gloves on? - We're going to do some
  science here.
- All right. So we're just going to go ahead
and take a nice surface core so we can actually
do some really heavy
DNA extraction and look at who's
living in these sediments
and what they're eating. And what is it about
the microbes that are
living in these sediments and what they're eating
that makes it useful for, potentially,
humans to survive
on a place like Mars? Well, if we can understand
how life survives on Mars, then we can understand
how better to survive ourself. We're trying to study
these microbes called
perchlorate reducers. On this perchlorate,
it's a chlorine molecule surrounded by
four oxygen molecules. It's toxic to humans,
and Mars has a lot
of perchlorate. The number one thing
we want to use on Mars
is water on Mars, and perchlorate likes to go
wherever there's water. So we're going to
have to figure out how
to get the perchlorate out of the water
if we want to use that water. It would help us
to learn how microbes
can kind of mitigate things like perchlorate,
and maybe we can use that
knowledge to help us detox the resources
that we want to pull out and use
from the Mars environment. We want to live within
the environment of Mars. We want to utilize resources
on Mars to help us live, because we can't take
everything we need with us. <i> Okay, so Kennda's
 research will help us</i> <i> use Martian materials
 to survive on Mars.</i> <i> But the soil
 isn't the first thing</i> <i> that would kill us
 when we get there.</i> Hey. Ooh. This is Mars today. It's about half
the size of Earth. But it has all of the basics that we think are necessary
to support life. It has an energy source
from sunlight, water, it has ice on the poles. And it has a few
key elements-- carbon, nitrogen,
hydrogen, oxygen. But for us, there's
a slightly crucial piece
that's missing. Mars' atmosphere
is about one percent
as dense as Earth's, meaning that if you stood
on the surface of Mars, the pressure exerted
on you by the atmosphere
would be very low. Now, that might
not sound so bad,
but it's a big problem. This is the boiling
point of water as a function of
atmospheric pressure. Okay, so the more pressure, - the higher the boiling point.
- Exactly. Earth is here. - Joss: Water boils at
  212 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Correct. - And that's at sea level.
- At sea level. That works out great for us because our resting
body temperature is about 98.6 degrees - Joss: I know that from
  a gum commercial.
- ( Cleo laughs ) This gap keeps us alive. - Mars is here.
- Whoa! What this is telling us
is that because
the temperature at which water boils on Mars is significantly lower than
our average body temperature, if you stood on Mars,
the water inside of your body would just start to
spontaneously boil
inside of you. - Oh, no!
- Which sounds like a really
  painful way to die. That's why you need
a suit, right? That's why you need a suit. The next thing
that's going to kill you
is the air itself, because there's not enough
oxygen for you to breathe. And if you didn't suffocate,
you'd freeze. Mars is really cold. The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, jeez. So you're freezing,
but your blood's boiling and you can't breathe. - Yes. Exactly.
- Cool. - Cool.
- Let's do it. Short-term survival
in these conditions is a tough
engineering problem, but NASA's pretty convinced
that we can do it. Basically, they say that
we can protect ourselves as long as we live
in enclosed environments and only go outside
in space suits, kind of like in
the movie "The Martian." You gotta science
the ( bleep ) out of it. There's a lot of
radiation on Mars, and one of the theories is
that we could protect ourselves - by living underground.
- Does radiation go
  through the domes? - Ideally, not.
- Okay. <i> I asked NASA scientist
 Chris McKay</i> <i> about our chances
 for short-term survival.</i> Really nice to meet you.
Thanks for taking the time. - I'll just dive right in.
- Yeah, please. How do we know that
we can do the short-term
survival on Mars? We've done experiments
on space station where we've put astronauts
in space for a year, which is roughly the time
it takes to get to Mars. So, we're not at
the hundred percent
confidence level, but we're pretty sure that
we could tough it out, send a crew to Mars. They could survive
the long trip. They'd be functional
on the surface for
some period of time. It wouldn't
necessarily be easy,
but it would be doable. We think all the pieces
as we understand are in place. It turns out
the thornier question
isn't what happens after we land
and plant the flag, but how we as humans
would consider long-term survival
on a planet like Mars. <i> And a few scientists
 have a pretty out-there idea</i> <i> about how to do that.</i> There's too little oxygen,
no liquid water, and too much
ultraviolet light. But all that could be solved if we could make more air. Transforming the Martian
environment itself, terraforming Mars. Eventually,
you could transform Mars. into an Earth-like planet. - Just warm it up.
- With a blanket or with what? There's the fast way
and the slow way. <i> Carl Sagan, Robert Zubrin,
 and Elon Musk</i> <i> are the three
 most prominent figures</i> <i> who think we can survive
 on a barren planet like Mars</i> <i> by changing it into
 something more like Earth--
 terraforming it.</i> Proponents of this idea
say it's a three-step process. Step one,
create the magnetosphere. Every day, we should all
thank the huge magnetic fields
that surround Earth. They make up
the Earth's magnetosphere, which is what stops deadly
particle blasts from the sun, innocuously called
solar winds, from ripping away
our atmosphere. Mars doesn't
have a magnetosphere, which is one reason why
its atmosphere is so thin. But scientists at NASA think there might be a way
to create one. You could put a satellite
that produces a very strong magnetic field
between Mars and the sun so it protects the Martian
atmosphere behind it. Step two,
build the atmosphere. By adding carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere, you could warm up the planet
by trapping infrared light, just like carbon dioxide
is doing in our atmosphere
here on Earth. The question is where
those extra greenhouse gases
would come from. Well, there's
some carbon dioxide trapped in the ground
and the polar ice caps on Mars. What Elon Musk means
by "the fast way" is to drop nuclear weapons
just above the pole on Mars. But other experts
don't believe there's enough carbon dioxide trapped there
for that to work. So, "the slow way," proposed by
people like Robert Zubrin, is to build factories
that release artificial
greenhouse gases to cause the same
warming effect. Step three,
release the bacteria. Once we have magnetic fields
and C02 in the atmosphere, we could release bacteria
that absorb some of the nutrients
that are on Mars and release oxygen
into the atmosphere. We already know
this step would work. This is how
large amounts of oxygen got into Earth's atmosphere
billions of years ago. Then we wait somewhere between a few hundred
and a few thousand years. I've been studying
terraforming for
quite some time. I think it's a very
interesting idea. We know how
to warm up planets. We're doing it on Earth. The physics
turns out to be easy. That's a surprise
to most people, and it was a surprise to me
when I first worked it out. "Wow, we actually
can warm up Mars." That's the good news. The bad news
is we're not sure that there's enough stuff
on Mars to make a plan. We have to go to Mars
and find out. Is there enough C02?
Is there enough water? Is there enough nitrogen
to create a biosphere? How do you feel about
the idea of terraforming? Um... ( chuckles ) It's an interesting
idea in theory, but in reality,
I think we're several, several, several
generations away from dynamically changing
an entire planet. <i> Just because life surviving
 on Mars is possible,</i> <i> doesn't mean
 it's going to be easy.</i> <i> Because especially
 with humans</i> <i> things can always go wrong.</i> ( all shouting ) <i> ( music playing )</i> - What's up, Cleo?
- Hello. - Where are you?
- Can you see it? Christophe: Oh, wow!
That's incredible! - That's the Biosphere?
- That's the Biosphere. - Now I gotta go inside.
- Okay, you gotta-- Bye, Christophe! <i> I've enlisted Christophe
 to explain why we're here.</i> From 1984 to 1991,
this billionaire, Ed Bass, <i> spent about $150 million
 on creating this facility</i> <i> that would kind of act
 as a proof of concept</i> <i> for a self-sustaining
 habitat on Mars.</i> Margaret Augustine:<i>
 If you're going to consider
 a colony on Mars,</i> you need to have
a total life-system, <i>and that's what the Biosphere 2
 project is all about.</i> ( wind blowing ) This is how they circulate and condition the air
in the facility. Christophe:<i>
 They called it Biosphere 2.</i> Biosphere 1 is Earth. Newscaster:<i>
 Four men and four women,</i> <i> so-called "biospherians,"</i> <i> to be sealed inside
 for the next two years.</i> Bon voyage!
Fly your spaceship well. Once they were inside,
it seems like a million
things went wrong. <i> They ran out of food.
 They ran out of oxygen.</i> <i> The press was calling
 this a disaster.</i> One of the women,
Jane Poynter, actually had to leave
and then come back <i> because she cut off
 the top of her finger.</i> <i> Cleo's about to go
 talk to her.</i> The thing that I think
is most important
about Biosphere, is not the technology
that they came up with. It's not, um, you know,
exactly what they ate. It's the things that
the biospherians needed that weren't food and air and the stuff that we already
assume that we need. So we're going
to go talk to them about what their experience
was like at Biosphere and why they've kept
this mission their whole lives. Let's air ourselves out. Every time
we record on camera, we have to turn
the air-conditioning off, and it's so hot. Jesus! "Please enter." - Hello! Nice to meet you.
- Hi, how are you? I'm Jane. - How are you? I'm Cleo.
- Hi. Cleo:<i> Jane Poynter
 and Taber MacCallum</i> <i> are two of the original
 eight biospherians.</i> <i> And after they left Biosphere,
 they kept this mission</i> <i> to help people get to
 and survive on Mars.</i> We made thousands
of thousands of small
Biospheres about this big. Taber: When we figured out
how to make these little
ecosystems stable, which was a lot of what
we learned from Biosphere 2, we sent little systems
to the Mir Space Station and we bred
the first animals, those little aquatic animals, through a complete
life-cycle in space. When I went into the Biosphere,
I was very naive. And I thought-- my experience
to that point had shown me that when you
put a small group
of people together, in a fairly difficult
environment, they pull together, and I thought that's what
we were going to do. No, not so much. Taber:
There we are... - There we are,
  except not quite.
- ...in our world. Jane: These aren't
the fancy suits, though. - Oh, they aren't
  the fancy suits?
- No, no, no. These are
the pre-fancy suits. Oh, these are the jumpsuits. Jane:<i> It turns out
 that there's a whole branch</i> <i> of psychology that NASA
 has done a lot of work in</i> <i> called isolated and confined
 environment psychology.</i> And we were a textbook case
of what not to do. <i> One of the worst things
 you can do</i> <i> is have a team of eight.</i> <i> The reason is because
 it breaks down</i> <i> into factions
 of four and four</i> <i> which are extremely stable.</i> -<i> And that's exactly
 what we did. </i>
-<i> You know, it's really--</i> it's really hard
to describe to somebody what is that experience of living in
an isolated environment. So, part of the training is simply to deal
with your personal baggage so it doesn't become
how you interact with your other
crew members, right? So that was what you
start to see happening, was you start projecting,
you know, that's my sister,
my brother, whatever,
onto all these-- and the interactions go crazy because you're carrying
this stuff in your head. Cleo:<i> Biosphere 2 wasn't
 the only experiment</i> <i> that locked people in and
taught us about human behavior.</i> <i> There was one in Hawaii
 called High Seas,</i> <i> one in Utah called The Mars
 Desert Research Station,</i> <i> one in Russia called Mars 500.</i> <i> But those experiments
 were much smaller</i> <i> and people stayed there for
 much shorter periods of time.</i> - I interviewed
  Chris McKay at NASA.
- Oh, yeah, for sure. And he told me Biosphere 2
is one of the most ambitious
projects of its kind. - Yeah.
- And he said there hasn't been anything done
like it since. - It's true.
- Why do you think that is? You have to think
really long-term <i> before you need a biosphere.</i> Taber:<i>
 Yeah, we didn't really</i> <i> have problems for six months.</i> <i> But after about six months
 you're like,</i> <i> "I'm only a quarter
 of the way through this?"</i> That's just going
to Mars and back fast
in two years, right? <i> So, I'm afraid
 we're lulling ourselves</i> <i> into thinking that
 this isn't such a big deal</i> when the human psychology of it
and getting that right and getting that team
to work right is really,
really important. Cleo:<i> Surviving on Mars is going
 to have to mean figuring out</i> <i> how to meet all
 of those human needs.</i> After all, it's the hardest,
longest, most ambitious trip our species has ever taken. And it turns out that NASA
is actually paying attention
to our psychological needs just like
they're paying attention
to our physical needs, and that's because
they have to. They've noticed the same
psychological problems in some astronauts
that the biospherians noticed when they were inside
their airtight facility. So I'm going to
play you this clip. This is astronaut
Henry Hartsfield describing
an experience in space in a 2001 interview. So, did you--
did you hear what he said? He was going to
open the hatch. Well, he was just
obsessed with the fact - that one could
  open the hatch, right?
- Yeah. It's kind of like the feeling if you're standing
on a subway platform and you're like,
"I could push this person." - Yeah.
- I never have that feeling. Oh, I think about that
all the time. Or being the person pushed.
I think about that. In 2001,
which is the same year
as that interview, NASA and Russian NASA,
which is called Roscosmos, came up with this enormous
medical checklist for what to do
in various crises in space. And it turns out--
actually, do you have
the highlighter? - Yes.
- It turns out that psychosis is the second one
on the list. Oh, wow. Behavioral acute
psychosis emergency. This is page one of three. "Restrain patient using
gray tape around wrists, - ankles, and using a bungee
  around the torso."
- Whoa! - Yeah. Yeah.
- That's intense. That's full, like,
kidnapping protocol. Full kidnapping. "Administer 10 mg
of Haldol orally." So, Haldol is
a potent tranquilizer. And the thing that I find
so interesting about this isn't exactly what you do, but the fact that they
find this so important in the first place. And that really surprised me. I went to Utah and I learned about how toxins
in the soil are something we're going to need
to figure out if we want
to survive on Mars. I talked to Joss
and we talked about how your blood
is going to boil if you stand
on the surface of Mars. And now I find out
that actually the thing that might be
most dangerous to us is just ourselves
on a mission like this. But at the same time,
even though I learned
all of that, I also learned that
there are possible solutions to every single one, and I think that's
a pretty good reason to try. Chris:<i>
 Humans will go to Mars.</i> Humans will explore Mars.
That much we already know. <i> Whether we will stay there
 on the long-term</i> <i> is a question that
 we have to answer by trying.</i> Cleo:<i> And by trying
 to go to Mars,</i> <i> we could have a role to play
 in a mission for survival</i> that's much, much bigger
than just us. Chris:<i>
 If you look at the universe,</i> <i> the thing that looks like</i> <i> it could be basis of value</i> <i> and goodness
 in the universe is life.</i> <i> It's the most amazing
 phenomenon we know.</i> <i> We're the only species
 within that domain of life</i> that can comprehend the concept
of planets in space, so maybe we have
a role to play. Kennda:<i>
 We all eventually do want
 humans to get to Mars.</i> I see everything that
we're doing now as preparing
for humans to get there. That's almost the essence
of life, is to spread
to new habitats. So, it seems like
we're just doing what
we're supposed to do. Cleo:
And when it comes to Mars,
at least as far as we know, we're the only
species that can. <i>( music playing )</i> Here we go. - Man: You getting hot?
- Yeah. - Oh, no!
- Oh, let's go! Go, go, go, go, go. - Okay.
- All right. - Let's get--
- Yeah! We're going to probably-- We were not meant
to survive out here, but we did. We did it. It started out like a typical phone call between
two world leaders: "Congratulations on a great victory.” Earlier in the year, Volodymyr Zelensky defeated
the incumbent to become President of Ukraine. And now, his political party had won a majority
in parliament. “We all watched from the United States and
you did a terrific job." "I would like to confess to you that I had
an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge…" But minutes later, this conversation took
a turn with a single line from Trump. "I would like you to do us a favor, though…" What Trump said next — according to a rough
transcript released by the White House — forms the core of the impeachment proceedings against
him. It could end his presidency. Let’s back up a month before the call. Congress had approved $391 million in military
aid to Ukraine to help defend against Russia. But Trump told his staff to withhold that
money… he wanted to talk with Zelensky first. After sharing pleasantries, Trump quickly
changed the subject. He alluded to the billions of dollars in military
aid the US has given Ukraine in the last few years "... the United States has been very very
good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily
because things are happening that are not good but, the United States has been very
very good to Ukraine." I wouldn’t say it’s reciprocal. In other words, Ukraine owed him something. "Yes you are absolutely right." Zelensky then told Trump… he's ready to
cooperate. "I would also like to thank you for your great
support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for
the next steps..." "I would like you to do us a favor though
...." Trump ran through a few requests — and then
he got to this one. "There's a lot of talk about Biden's son,
Let’s pause here. At the time of this call,
Joe Biden was the leading candidate to run against Trump in 2020. Polls from just before the call showed voters
preferred Biden to Trump by a wide margin. When he picked up the phone to call Zelensky,
Joe Biden was a huge threat to Trump’s re-election. That’s why what he said next is so important:
whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great ...
if you can look into it ... it sounds horrible to me. Trump has this theory about Joe Biden, and
it has to do with his son, Hunter. Back in 2014, Hunter took a cushy job at a
Ukrainian gas company, Burisma. As it turns out, the British were investigating
the owner of this same company for money laundering. And they asked Ukraine's top prosecutor, Victor
Shokin, to pursue this case. Because investigating corruption... was his
job. But Shokin ignored them. And Burisma’s owner was never prosecuted. It wasn’t the first time Shokin had failed
to investigate corruption. And people in Ukraine were fed up. "Activists, MPs, and ordinary citizens have
come together to demand the resignation of the Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin." We don’t even believe that this prosecution
can be reformed because it doesn’t exist!" They weren’t alone. Around the same time as the protests, eight
Senators, including three Republicans, signed a letter calling for “urgent reforms in
the Prosecutor General’s office.” Basically, a bunch of people were pushing
for Shokin to go. Including the Obama administration, who sent
Biden to deal with it: "I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time
to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there
was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in
six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not
getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired." "Ukraine’s embattled prosecutor general
is no longer in office." But in the call with the Ukrainian President,
Trump hinted that Shokin was fired for a different reason. “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very
good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. ”
Then Trump explained why he thought Joe Biden might’ve been behind Shokin’s dismissal. “There's a lot of talk about Biden's son,
that Biden stopped the prosecution...Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution
so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.” Alright, so what’s the favor Trump is asking
for here? It looks like he’s asking Zelensky for some
proof that Joe Biden pushed to get Shokin fired to protect Hunter. Which doesn’t even make sense, because Shokin
was fired in part for not investigating Burisma. But if Zeleksky could help Trump make it look
like Biden had done something shady, it could help Trump win re-election. Zelensky agreed. He promised his next prosecutor would look
into this situation. "Thank you Mr. President. Bye-bye." Several staffers listened in on this phone
call and wrote down what was said. That’s normal. What’s not normal is what happened next. Instead of putting the records of the call
in the normal archive, where more people within the U.S. government would have been able to
see it... Trump’s staffers hid the transcript in a
computer system reserved for classified material, even though this call had no reason to be
classified. Multiple White House officials were worried
the president had crossed a line — and they told a C.I.A. officer, who wrote to Congress: “I have received information from multiple
U.S. Government officials that the President of
the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign
country in the 2020 U.S. election.” Meanwhile, a few weeks later, Trump released
the $391 million in aid to Ukraine. There have been many Trump scandals What's different about this … is it's so
simple. President Trump directly asked a foreign leader
to investigate his political opponent. And influence the 2020 election. Then his staff tried to cover it up. It's a simple phone call. But it could show that Trump is abusing the
office of the president, in an effort to hold onto power. And it could end his Presidency if enough
members of Congress believe it should. This is Drake’s dad pictured on the cover
of his 2017 album More Life. This is French comedian Jacques Bodoin in
1969. This is country star Larry Gatlin in 1979
and soul artist Al Green in 1972. This is the British synthpop band, Heaven
17, in 1981. These artists work span decades, genres, and
continents, but their album art had one thing in common. They were all sitting in the same exact chair. And it wasn’t just them, this chair popped
up on album covers everywhere. Now, you could easily chalk this up to being
one of many weird album cover trends over the years. But in the 1970s, when these album covers
were pretty much unavoidable, they were actually following a photography
trope that was 100 years in the making. Let’s start with this photograph of Charles
Darwin, the famed naturalist, relaxing in his old age at his English home in 1880. On this wicker chair. At the turn of the 20th century, wicker furniture
was all the rage. Its success was driven by the fact that breezy
open air spaces, like verandas and porches, were in high demand. This was long before homes were air conditioned,
and when the summer came around, no one in their right mind - and with a decent amount
of money - wanted to overheat. This June 1914 guide on “How to have a cool
house” suggests replacing walls with curtains, building sleeping
porches, and filling the entire living space with wicker
furniture. In short, “bring summer into the house.” Outside of the home, wicker was used in resort
hotels. At the beach
and on ocean liners and passenger planes. And it wasn’t just furniture,
there were wicker baby carriages and wheelchairs
and this….thing. but perhaps its most lasting function
well, besides baskets was its use in portrait photography. Wicker was light and easy to move around,
and it was breathable, great for when hot lights warmed the studio. More importantly it could be woven into countless
eye-catching decorative forms. Many of these designs - particularly this
ornate asymmetrical one - were actually called photographer’s chairs,
or posing chairs. From the late 1800s well into the 20th century,
no portrait was complete without a trusty wicker chair. Now these were everyday people - a young woman
a mother and child A handy man and shoe polisher. But just as often you’d see portraits of
powerful, influential people photographed in wicker chairs - often in seemingly candid
positions. Mark Twain
William K. Vanderbilt Countless presidents... Hanging out on their porches
The wicker chair, it seemed, was the superficial equalizer. It dressed up your average citizen
and made powerful figures seem approachable. And the styles changed along with trends. While many were designed in the US and Europe,
a few incredibly popular models came from Asia. Those pieces were recognizable by their hour-glass
shaped bottom. And if you opened a magazine or newspaper
by 1920, one particular style captured people’s attention - the peacock chair. Its hour-glass shape morphed into a large
throne like back. It was often described as “picturesque”
“elegant” and “majestic” By the 1920s, the peacock chair took center
stage in ads for summer home furniture, And when the burgeoning film industry was
producing it’s first crop of movie stars, it was a natural fit for portrait photography. But let’s backtrack for a second
to one of the earliest photographs of the chair I could find - it’s not of a movie
star. It’s a portrait of a mother with her child,
published around 1914. It’s titled “Jailbird in a peacock chair.” This woman was a prisoner - serving life for
killing her husband. And it was likely taken at Bilibid Prison
in the Philippines. At the time the photo was taken, the Philippines
were under US rule, and American tourists were visiting the islands by the boatloads. Bilibid Prison was an unlikely attraction
- not only did it serve as a jail — it was also a manufacturing facility. Equipped with its own sales department for
shoppers to pursue. This 1913 write up from an American tourist
describes the place and mentions the infamous chair: “We are familiar with the queer shaped
chair made of rattan called by some “Peacock chair”... it is made at Bilibid Prison.” And a 1916 Vogue article about “Shopping
in the Far East” says a stop at the prison is a must. This nameless prisoner likely took part in
making those chairs. She wasn’t famous or a powerful figure — but
sitting in the chair transformed her into something regal. By the 1960s dozens of iconic figures had
posed with that same chair. Poets, writers, presidents,
Famed actresses. The chair appeared in television and film
Like in My Fair Lady, which was set during the turn of the 20th century. Cecil Beaton, the set designer for the film,
was obsessed with wicker furniture. This picture of Marilyn Monroe? He took it. In the 1960s, album cover designers picked
up on the trend. And over the next two decades, portraits of
artists in the peacock chair peristed. These covers can be broken up into a few categories. One I like to call the casual leg. There’s the close up. And the group shot. For this one, the person is just randomly
in an open field. And finally, there’s this one. Best represented by Funkadelic’s 1979 album
“Uncle Jam Wants You” which references two specific things. The “Uncle Sam Wants” you Army recruitment
poster And this photo of Black Panther Party co-founder
and leader, Huey Newton sitting in the peacock chair. In 1967 when that photo was taken - it immediately
became a visual representation of the Black Power movement. And the chair took on a whole new meaning. It showed up at Black Panther meetings and
rallies, even when Newton couldn’t. It took up residence, in all it’s glory
at the center of the stage. While most album covers with the peacock chair
drew their inspiration from the casual glamour of mid-century celebrity portraits
Some artists saw it as an assertion of their cultural power — even today that’s one
of this chair’s most lasting legacies. The peacock chair album cover petered out
in the 1980s and was replaced by more minimalist and intimate portraits of people. But it remains one of the most referenced
chairs in photography - perhaps because it makes everyone sitting in it look really cool. In 1788, three founding fathers made the case
for the US constitution in a series of essays called "The Federalist Papers". And if you want
to understand why impeachment is broken today, it’s worth starting there. With what they thought it would look like if it worked. In Federalist 65, Alexander
Hamilton makes the case for the way the Framers designed the impeachment power. The House brings impeachment, but it's the Senate that decides whether to convict and remove. Not the Supreme Court, or some other independent tribunal. A bunch of politicians.
Why? Why give them that power? Here’s the argument Hamilton makes: Impeachment, he says, poses a special problem.
It’s meant for offenses that are “POLITICAL” -- he writes "political" in all caps, for emphasis -- “as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” Stop for a moment on what Hamilton means there. Impeachment isn’t just for crimes. Perfectly legal acts can injure a society. James Madison said a president
could be impeached for “the wanton removal of meritorious officers” — that is to say,
the President can be impeached for firing good people for no reason. Not a crime, but it is impeachable. You can see this
in the first impeachment in American history. It was a Federal Judge, John Pickering, in
1803. Pickering was an alcoholic and a bully, and historians think he was probably suffering from early-stage dementia. Among the charges brought against him were “loose morals and intemperate habits.”
Is that really… a crime? No, it's not a crime. But he was impeached, convicted by the Senate, and removed from office, anyway. It was an injury to the society he was serving The way he acted on the bench to the House and the Senate was not acceptable. In some ways, it would be easier if impeachment were just for crimes. And that was considered. Crimes have definitions. 
At least in theory they have definitions. Political offenses are harder to define and the problem
with political offenses, as Hamilton said, is They get politicized. One man’s political offense is another man’s bold act to defend his party and country. That’s the problem, Hamilton said. Political offenses “agitate the
 passions of the whole community” they "divide it into parties." Once that happens,
the danger is that impeachment will be decided “more by the comparative strength
of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” And if that happened,
 it would lose credibility. Everything about impeachment rests on the independence and authority and legitimacy of the body charged with the role. You needed
a body in touch with the people, but above the petty considerations of parties, and factions,
and fad. You needed a body the public could trust. trust. Hamilton admitted there was no perfect
answer. But the Senate, with its six-year terms and staggered elections, the Senate
came closest. Hamilton argued that no “other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH
IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between 
an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE.” He was wrong. “This week the president has admitted to
asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically …” President Donald Trump faces possible impeachment
after repeatedly asking the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. He did all this a week after Trump froze military aid to Ukraine. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky brought up the aid, Trump responded in a call record
 his own White House released: “I would like you to do us a favor though” and then he turned the conversation back to investigating Joe Biden. All of this, again, confirmed in a call record released by
Trump’s own White House. “This is about abuse of power by an overreaching
executive. Something the founding fathers feared." Using the power of the Presidency to pressure
a foreign government to investigate your domestic political rivals.  I would say that’s somewhat worse
than the wanton of removal of meritorious officers. But even if that goes to full impeachment,
the President will be tried in the Senate. And he would not be tried in the Senate
 as Hamilton imagined it: the impartial Senate Hamilton hoped we'd have. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already said,
“If this is the ‘launching point’ for House Democrats’ impeachment process, they’ve
already overplayed their hand." “From my point of view, to impeach any president
over a phone call like this would be insane.” Alexander Hamilton wrote in defense of a political system he thought would resist organized political parties. The
modern Senate, like the House, is controlled by political parties. And it is a political party
Donald Trump leads. We've gone from having impeachment as a political remedy for political offenses
to a partisan remedy for political offenses. So let’s be honest. It is very, very unlikely,
no matter what Trump has done, that he will be removed from office by the Senate. He is
being tried not before the unawed, uninfluenced body Hamilton imagined, but by his co-partisans,
whose fortunes are tied together with his. They will protect him at all costs because 
protecting him is protecting them. So rather than just looking at what impeachment
can't do, I want to look at what it can do. Because even a broken impeachment process isn’t
useless. Impeachment can act as a sanction to Trump. It can unearth information voters will need when deciding whether to reelect the President, and it
will provide a warning to foreign countries that would seek influence over our politics. I'm Liliana Mason. I'm a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. Lilliana Mason studies partisan polarization and how it’s warping the American political system. The most of what I do is actually looking at the ways that the public understands and 
interprets what's happening. And in an interview she made this great point to me: Voters are so overwhelmed with
information all the time that it's hard to sort of have a focusing event for them where
they get to really pay attention to what's happening and learn some new things. And that's
one thing that these hearings would do. We have to think of it as more than just removal. Impeachment is a form of public disgrace.
To be one of only four Presidents in American history, even if you are not convicted
by the Senate, is to know an asterisk will be forever attached to your presidency. It
will make just about every single person now in the country seriously consider whether or
not you did something wrong. That’s not as strong a punishment as removal
from office, but it might lead to removal from office. In impeachment, yes, it is the House’s role is to bring the case and it is the Senate's role to judge the accused. In an era of of partisanship like we have now,
it's very very difficult for it to work properly. The problem facing the country right now is that 
Senate leadership would almost certainly not convict the accused, 
no matter what the accused did. But the Senate is not the only possible 
judge of President Donald Trump. Public opinion is ultimately, I think, the jury that Democrats in the House are playing to. Look, in the previous two modern impeachments, you could see the effects on public opinion. Well, for Nixon, as the public learned more about what had happened, approval of both the impeachment
 process and removal increased. For Clinton, his approval went up. As citizens
learned more about the details of Clinton's crime, I think the approval went up because they sort of found
that there wasn't a whole lot that he had done. It was gross, but it didn't, maybe, seem like the 
Constitution required that he be removed. But both of  those impeachments 
began in the president’s second term. They weren't going to face the voters again. The difference, this time, is the impeachment process
began before Trump has won reelection. And, make no mistake, Trump’s offense
here was all about the 2020 election. It is about what is proper for the President to do
when running for reelection. It is about whether he can use his office, the most powerful office we gift upon someone, that we entrust him with, to enlist foreign governments
as allies in shaping American elections This one- THIS one, was about us. 
What we would see, what we would know. What we would be made to believe. 
So maybe we, the voters, are actually the right jury here. Trump wanted to run for reelection atop a
booming economy: "Make America great again!" Now he is going to run as a candidate arguing that
when he said, "I need you to do me a favor, though" of the Ukrainian President, it didn't quite 
rise to the level of quid pro quo. I'm not a political consultant, but, 
“I’m not quite a crook” isn’t a great bumper sticker. In his farewell address, President George
Washington spoke against “the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party.”
In particular, he warned that partisan infighting, it “opens the door to foreign influence and
corruption.” In 2016, Russia reached deep into the US presidential election to help elect
Donald Trump and their investment paid off in spades. Trump has defended and praised Putin, 
he's undermined NATO, he's made American politics more fractious and polarized and chaotic than ever. But it paid off for Trump. 
He’s President, and the Mueller report, it carried no direct consequence for him.
That’s the context in which he asked Ukraine to help him in 2020. After all, it worked
the first time. Partisanship, opening the country to this kind of foreign influence, and then
protecting the foreigners who influenced it after they do, that is exactly what Washington and Hamilton
feared the system they designed couldn’t handle. The question for a foreign country, facing an opportunity or potentially a presidential request to intervene in America’s election, is what they may gain and what they may lose. For Ukraine, the possible gains were clear:
military aid they desperately needed and anything else that might flow
from nurturing Trump’s goodwill. But the spotlight of impeachment
makes the costs clearer, too. A foreign country asked to intervene in an
American election may see its activities exposed, much to the fury of the other political party. 
Much to the fury even of the public. Ukraine may have wanted Trump’s goodwill, but it doesn’t want the Democrats’ ill will. It doesn't want the distraction or infamy
of this investigation. Impeachment, in this case, acts 
as a message to other countries too: You don’t want to be part of our circus. Even so,
we do live now in the world Washington feared. Republicans are falling in line behind Trump,
they are placing their loyalty to him, to each other, above any sense of public accountability. And in doing, they have opened American politics to foreign influence To foreign corruption. Partisanship like this, it
creates eras in which corruption of all kinds flourishes. Because so long as that corruption is to the benefit
of the party in power, that American politics has no true answer for official wrongdoing in periods of unified party government, it's chilling. It's not that the impeachment process itself isn't working because I do think it has some benefits even without conviction. I think the frightening thing about it is that it's impossible for it to be used if
there isn't divided government. Look, Hamilton wasn’t, in the end, 
just the author of Federalist 65. He was also the author of much of Washington’s farewell address. Sadly, it’s his pessimism about what would happen to an America driven by party, rather than his optimism about the Senate, that rings true today. And yet, even a broken impeachment
process has its uses. The House can focus the public’s attention. It can send a message to the world. It can create a record for the future. Maybe that’s not sufficient. Maybe it's not as much as impeachment was initially designed to do. But it’s something. And it's going to have to be enough. orange juice what did you say orange juice it's for one your feelings don't you worry about Suzy eating enough vitamin C many people reach straight for the orange juice when they get a cold or mix up one of these cold bus teen immune boosting supplements packed full of vitamin C it's supposed to help cure the common cold there are growing 200 million dollar industry and unsurprisingly their sales peak when the cold and flu season does and with boxes that claim that vitamin C helps support your immune system why wouldn't you pop a fizzy tablet when you start to feel a bit stuffy but if you follow this little asterisk you'll see that the claim isn't supported by the FDA that's because vitamin C doesn't cure your cold you really crave orange juice and that craving is your body wisdom by what you just can't beat that great tape you can trace the vitamin C craze back to this guy Linus Pauling he was a pretty big deal he won a Nobel Prize for his work with quantum chemistry and a Nobel Peace Prize in the 60s for his anti nuclear weapon advocacy so when he came out with a book in 1970 claiming that vitamin C could help you avoid colds and improve your health it took off Americans clear drug store shelves newspapers wrote that the sales were not to be sneezed at and called it the great cold rush but the medical community was cold to Pauline's cold claims for one they weren't based on any actual science Pauline had personally started taking vitamin C at the suggestion of a friend and he got less colds the criticism of course was that just because it happened to him it didn't make it a real study which Pauline admitted to and asked that someone actually do one but doctors already knew that taking large amounts of vitamin C wasn't the best idea adults only need 75 to 90 milligrams of vitamin C a day it's found in a ton of different foods most people are eating enough vitamin C in their normal diet for a healthy immune system but Pauline's book suggested taking 2,000 milligrams or more a day 22 times the amount you really need just because vitamin C is good for you doesn't mean that taking more is better for you a review of 46 different scientific trials with more than 11,000 participants found that taking vitamin C supplements regularly doesn't prevent you from getting colds it can reduce the length of your cold by a meager eight percent less than half a day but taking a supplement at the beginning of a cold doesn't make it go away faster vitamin C was found to be most useful for people engaged in intense physical exercise like marathon runners but for most people routine supplementation is not justified and taking extra vitamin C can result in a classic too much of a good thing that 2,000 milligrams Pauline recommended is the amount in two emergencies it's also the threshold of how much you can take before you may start to feel cramping or have diarrhea or nausea it could get worse a Swedish study found that men who took just a thousand milligrams of vitamin C a day or twice as likely to develop kidney stones but that's about as bad as it gets the reason this hasn't been more highly regulated is you can't seriously hurt yourself at vitamin C no one has ever died from an overdose Pauline himself said he used to take up to 30,000 milligrams it probably gave him tummy troubles but he was otherwise fine so what will help your cold for one hydration sure you can still have that orange juice but just plain water or clear broth will do the trick to things like decongestants ibuprofen vapor rubs they help ease the symptoms of a cold but they don't necessarily shorten it the best way to cure a cold is rest let your immune system do its thing and don't worry too much about vitamin C you you David how often do
you cry? Umm... Questions drive our show What is that one question
that everyone wants to know but no one has 
the answer to? I'm gonna need some
help to explain this. Are you ready? Yeah. I have been on a
journey and it's taken me to a lot of
interesting places. To start a conversation
on an image board, you have to post
a picture. My picture looks kind of 
out of place on this board. It does,
and it would. I have enlisted the help
of a stop-motion animator. I'm on my way to meet
an orthopedic surgeon who was struck by
lightning. We are at
the offices of Know Your Meme. The Internet is supposed
to happen in the cloud but here that is
clearly not the case. I am on my way to meet
a clinical psychologist. We're about to head out
into that desert. And we're gonna
ride those ATVs. Go on get some gloves on we're gonna do some
science here. Is there a reason that memes
look the way they do? How do video game
economies work? Would you consider yourself someone who cries less
often than most people? The thornier question is how do we survive
on Mars? If death is
a process at what point do we truly die? Everything is fair
game here So let's see
what happens. [ Music ] ah the West mythical home of Roadrunner John Wayne and families and wagons heading for a fresh start on the rugged frontier wide open sky and these big red rock formations make up its stereotypical backdrop the one in movies and cartoons well there's got to be a phone or a gas station around here somewhere honey but when you look at a bunch of those movies back-to-back you start to notice something this image of the West kind of looks the same whenever we see it and that's because this specific group of formations is unique to one place Monument Valley so how did this one area become a symbol of the American West [Music] Monument Valley is on the Arizona Utah border inside the Navajo Nation reservation its towering red sandstone formations called buttes rise hundreds of feet above the desert floor for centuries only Native Americans specifically the Paiute and Navajo occupied this remote landscape fielding conflicts with the US government non-indigenous people began to visit in the early 20th century and in the early 1920s Colorado sheep trader Harry Golding and his wife Leona set up a trading post on the Utah side of Monument Valley which at the time was just outside of the Navajo reservation in the 1930s this area was hit hard by droughts the Great Depression and a forced reduction of livestock by the US government which slashed a vital source of income Goldin tried for years to draw attention to Monument Valley stunning landscape thinking tourism could help boost the local economy but according to Golding the area's big break didn't come until 1938 when he brought photos of Monument Valley to Hollywood stagecoach directed by John Ford and shot primarily on location in Monument Valley revolutionized the Western elevating the genre from the low-budget pulp reputation it had developed in the 1930s what's known as a b-movie into one of Hollywood's most popular genres for the next 20 years who's also the breakout role for American icon John Wayne who until this point had spent years starring in B westerns like 1933 riders of destiny stagecoach mainstream the Western and it's here that audiences began to associate Monument Valley with the mythic American West an epic isolated landscape full of potential the kind of place where outlaws and outcasts could find a fresh start following Ford's lead other filmmakers began using Monument Valley as their Western backdrops including Ford himself seven more times most notably in the searchers often regarded as the ultimate Western the movie takes place in Texas but that didn't matter by then Monument Valley was a cliche and cliches are useful for storytelling they signal to the audience what kind of story this is or set a familiar tone and advertising those buttes are so ingrained in pop culture that they can be used as shorthand for stories of western adventure which might be why the Coen brothers chose it as the backdrop for the opening scene of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs their 2018 homage and parody of the genre song never fails to ease my mind out here in the West where the distances are great and a scenery Menaka when the film company that made stagecoach wrapped production and left Monument Valley in late 1938 it had paid Navajo locals somewhere around $50,000 hundreds had worked as crew members and extras though they played the roles of Apache bad guys according to reports at the time that money was enough to get them to the winter and as Monument Valley's reputation grew Goulding's planned to bring in tourism started working the Monument Valley Navajo tribal park now sees around 350 thousand visitors each year tourists can visit the Trading Post and go on Navajo led tours of the famous buttes and they get there by taking this road US Highway 163 you've probably seen it before it's where Forrest Gump ended his famous run across America Alabama Alabama is in the other direction but that doesn't matter this backdrop could be anywhere in the West [Music] you Remember when Mufasa died? 
Or when Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle were killed? Or even when George Bailey decided he couldn’t bear to live anymore? These are some of the most grim, tragic moments in film history, but they have something else in common. Once you start paying attention, these four notes are everywhere And we’ve been associating them with death for almost 800 years. What you’re hearing in those movies is called the “dies irae,” A Gregorian chant created by Catholic monks around the 13th century. It was used for one specific mass: funerals. [Latin chant plays] “Dies irae” translates from Latin to “Day of Wrath.” That’s the day Catholics believe God will judge the living and the dead and decide whether they go to heaven or hell for eternity. It really is the sort of fire and brimstone passage that's talking about the day of reckoning where in essence the decision is being made whether you’re going to heaven or you’re going to hell. That’s Alex Ludwig, a musicologist and professor from the Berklee College of Music who keeps a big list of dies irae references in movies. The musical material and the text combine together to create this sort of ominous sort of sense of dread. Over the next few hundred years, the Church’s influence spread considerably, and the Day of Wrath started popping up in works of art outside the church, like Mozart’s 1791 symphony “Requiem,” influenced by the music of funerals. In 1830, French composer Louis-Hector Berlioz took the dies irae’s cultural capital to a new level. In his “Symphonie fantastique,” he lifted the melody but left out the words. Berlioz’s story isn’t set in a church or funeral — it’s about an obsessive love, in which the main character dreams that the lover he murdered has come back as a witch to torment him. The movement is called “The Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.” And so it's set at midnight in a graveyard and there are all these creepy spooky pieces of music, including the dies irae. What better piece of spooky music to play? Because this is a piece of music that already had these connotations behind it. Other great composers added versions of the dies irae to their works too, like Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s Totentanz, or Dance of the Dead, inspired by this medieval painting depicting suffering and death, or Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. And then we have the early silent films. Where the dies irae is then extracted even further and used as a sort of sample or sort of reference to dark, ominous actions taking place on screen. Silent films were often accompanied by full orchestras, playing songs that helped propel soundless stories along. Like 1927’s Metropolis, a silent German sci-fi about a dystopia full of robots and destruction — which uses the dies irae in a particularly dramatic moment. As films started incorporating sound, the dies irae kept being used as a shorthand for something grim. Like in It’s a Wonderful Life and Star Wars: A New Hope. But perhaps its most iconic use is in The Shining. Everyone knows The Shining is a horror film and it's like, that's the perfect signifier for the dies irae. The dies irae has come a long way from 13th-century funerals to scary movies. That’s because there’s something about those four notes that makes us feel uncomfortable. Let's talk about the music. The chant is in what's called Dorian mode — and we don’t have to dig into all the ancient modes like that — but today if you would play those first four notes you would say that that's in a minor mode. Minor music has always had this connotation of sadness, of darkness. If you look at the actual notes, you’ll see that F and E are half steps apart, right next to each other. Our ears are trained not to like those sounds together. Plus, the notes descend, getting deeper as the phrase progresses. Musical lines that descend are sad whereas music that ascends, that rises, is much happier. Combine these three things together and you’ve got an inherently spooky song — even without all the fire and brimstone. If you talk to a music professor like Alex, they’ll tell you the dies irae is everywhere. And it is — but maybe not in places untrained ears will catch. The phrase has become so culturally ingrained that even a modified version — like the theme to The Exorcist — or a shortened version,  like the Nightmare Before Christmas can suggest the same scary feeling. It's just that it it fascinates me that this piece of music still gets used. I'm still hearing them. I'm still adding films to my list. Some moments feel so important, we believe
there is a perfect recording of them etched in our minds. ARMSTRONG: “That’s one small step for
man…” REAGAN: “Tear down this wall” NEWSCASTER: “Diana Princess of Wales, is
dead.” For many, 9/11 was one of those moments. "I was getting ready to go to class to class
and I put on the TV" "And the newscaster stopped and said this
just in" "Two planes hit the twin towers" "Every single channel had a building that
was on fire" "This businessman was covered in dust" "Then I saw the big hole in the side of the
building" "Yeah it was sort of surreal" "very confusing and disorienting" "I felt a sense of dread" " I remember my mom was working in the city,
And I remember smoke billowing out over the water of the long island sound … behind
the building where I went to elementary school. " I was just talking with my parents about it
one day and my mom goes no you know in 2001 I was working in Connecticut. And there were other problems with Melanie’s
memory of that day. Her classroom windows didn’t look out over
the water The World Trade Center was over 40 miles away and the smoke was drifting in the opposite
direction How could I possibly have seen the smoke billowing
from over the water … Like how would I see that. Your memories for 9/11 are probably not as
accurate as you think. We know about 50 percent of the details of
that memory change in a year even though most people are convinced they're 100 percent right. They might correctly remember the gist of
the day, but not details like who they were with, what they were doing when they heard,
and what exactly they saw. Even our most significant memories - the ones
that form the foundation of our life story - aren’t perfect recordings - they can shift
and warp over time. It feels like the whole purpose of memory
should be to preserve the past. So why are memories so unreliable? How exactly does remembering work? Wait a second now, I do remember. You're.... uhhh. Memory, that everybody has, is a goldmine
of unexplored and untapped potential. Our memory just mediates our interractions
with the world. Memory is one of our most fundamental activities,
that it is only when it fails us that we think about it at all. Yanjaa Wintersoul is a grandmaster of memory All right here we go. 5 years ago, she discovered the world of memory
competitions when I first started it was mostly like a
bunch of white guys from Europe and very like sad looking competition rooms. They memorize decks of cards in seconds, thousands
of digits in an hour. It looks like we're all taking a very speedy
SATs. I have three world records: one for images,
one for names of faces, and one for words. And she's demonstrated her skills on TV shows
around the world Steve Harvey: Ok, Page 38. Yanjaa: It starts mid-sentence ... "information
effectively by using humor." We gave her ten minutes to memorize these
500 numbers ... and... 539-166-974-579-478-468-766-146 17 … 2 225-902-634-582-177-161-12. How does she do that? Yay It all comes down to the peculiar way our
brains store memories. And perhaps no brain has taught us more about
memory than this one. It belonged to a man named Henry Molaison When Henry was 27, he had brain surgery to
treat epilepsy - and the surgeon removed this little piece
of his brain. The surgeon noted that the procedure “resulted
in no marked behavioral changes” “with the one exception of a very grave, recent
memory loss” It was so severe, it prevented Henry from
navigating his own house and recognizing his doctors But Henry still had other types of memory: habits that don’t require conscious thought
- like how to ride a bike - so called “implicit memories” He also kept some conscious or “explicit”
memories - he discussed historical events with his doctor in this recording from the
early 90s: Milner: What happened in 1929? Molaison: The stock market crashed. Milner: It sure did." That’s an example of “semantic memory”
- facts, dates, numbers, words - the kinds of things memory athletes memorize. "The real damage was to Henry’s “episodic
memory” - his memory for personal experiences. When his doctor asked “Do you know what
you did yesterday,” he replied: Molaison: No, I don't. Milner: How about this morning? Molaison: I don't even remember that." Without this one small part of his brain,
Henry had trouble forming new memories. But that doesn’t mean memories are stored
in one specific place … When you have an experience (say - performing
at a recital) sensory information is processed in many different parts of your brain: The sound of the cello, the feeling of the strings under your fingers, the face of your friend in the audience the pang of stage fright And the part of the brain that pulls all these
elements together - the part that Henry’s surgery badly damaged - is the medial temporal
lobe, which includes an important structure called the hippocampus. When you relive that moment later, the medial
temporal lobe helps combine those elements once again. Your life story is all the moments like this
that you can relive. And this graph is the life story of a typical
70-year-old. There are lots of memories from the recent
past, but as you move backward in time they start to fall off There are only a few memories from childhood
- and nothing before around 3 But there’s this surprising bump in our
teens and twenties PHELPS: When you're getting through high school
you're having a lot of momentous occasions in that stage of your life. PHELPS: when we think about our life stories
those change moments are the ones that stand out as the ones that kind of define us … and
define our lives going forward. Some people have more memories than others. And you can improve your memory by just living
a healthier and more active life I try to like not drink as much sleep a lot
and eat well. the one thing that I've seen in every single
study that's like this is going to work is honestly meditation Undergraduates were able to increase their
score on the verbal GRE’s from 460 to 520 just by taking a mindfulness meditation class
-- probably because meditation improves focus, and focus improves memory. And when it comes to personal experiences
-- there are certain features that make us remember some better than others. First, emotion. If you show a person a string of faces, they’ll
remember the most emotional ones best When we have an emotional experience our amygdala
the emotional center of the brain which sits right next to the hippocampus actually up
regulates the hippocampus and allows it to form more detailed and stronger memory. one of the things we want to do after 9/11
was look into the brains of individuals who were in New York that day about half the people were on average around
midtown and the other half the people were … much closer to the World Trade Center
that day. Three years after the attacks, they asked
those people to remember their experiences. the individuals that were closer to the World
Trade Center that day the 9/11 memories were more vivid we saw more activity in the amygdala Memories are also connected to a sense of
place. one of the things we know from our study of
9/11 memories is that the thing that people were most consistent about was where they
were. I had just gotten home from gym class-
-I was living in London at the time- -in New Smyrna Beach, Florida-
-the Upper East Side- So we think you know place has a particularly
strong role in memory ... and if you actually look in the hippocampus there seem to be cells
that are specifically responsive to time and place Here’s a representation of these “place
cells” in the hippocampus of one particular rat "And here’s a video of that rat moving along a simple track -" his head is in this green circle, and here’s
his tail. Each place cell is associated with a particular
location along the track - and these cells have been color coded by scientists When the rat is at the start of the maze,
this green place cell fires but as it moves along, a different cell is
activated. And then another and another. When the rat pauses, the cells fire in rapid
succession as he recalls his route. London cabbies must navigate their own rat
maze To get their licenses, they have to pass a
century-old test called simply “The Knowledge.” They spend years memorizing London’s 25,000
streets. Scientists scanned the brains of would-be
cabbies before and after this process In the brains of people who didn’t end up
getting their licenses - the size of the hippocampus didn’t really change. But those who passed? Interestingly, their hippocampi actually grew. Finally, memories can be strengthened by story. Our brains pay much closer attention to information
when it’s in the form of a narrative. In one study, 24 people were asked to memorize
12 lists of 10 words. Half the people studied and rehearsed the
lists - and they remembered - on average - 13% of the words The other half wove the words into stories
of their own invention … and they remembered 93%. PHELPS: the more that you can associate things
you want to remember with structures you already have in your mind the easier is going to be
to remember. you know you're creating a narrative. ADDIS :When we go to retrieve that memory
we have almost many multiple ways of getting into that memory. Story, place and emotion are the foundation
of some of our strongest memories - and those same features can be hijacked
to help you, say ... memorize 500 random digits. YANJAA: Yes let's do it. Starting with the first three digits, she
converts numbers into sounds using her own personal code. YANJAA: So five is an S three is an A as we
have in swedish. And nine is a G because just because of the
shapes. Yeah. So then it's basically like you're reading
something instead of looking at all these numbers So 5 3 9 is SAG. And the next triplet, 166, becomes TBB YANJAA: and I think of the kind of Middle
Eastern dish of tabbouleh She pairs the two words to create a striking
scenario YANJAA: this saggy half naked person is covered
in like tabbouleh rice and because it's disgusting I remember it
more Anything that has like visceral really very
emotional things your brain is like “oh” She translates the rest of the digits in the
same way. YANJAA: Gimli from Lord of the Rings -- he
is running for office Rami Malek buying boots my spleen turns into the Louvre Next, Yanjaa harnesses the power of place
with an ancient technique called “the memory palace” She imagines herself walking through a neighborhood
she knows well - adding surreal imagery along the route. YANJAA: It helps in putting very random abstract
things in order when you attach it to something you already know YANJAA : So I come out of the High Street
Metro So a saggy skinned person is just covered
in tabbouleh and coming out of the High Street subway And a little further on: YANJAA: In that tunnel - 478 that's a reef,
and 468 that's ravioli. So it's a tunnel that's now a reef and full
of ravioli. YANJAA: on the carousel we’ll have like
a big like alpaca llama and it's like eating like this tube of like melted cheese That dull list of numbers became an epic travelogue
full of surprising images that she could revisit later Memory athletes aren’t necessarily smarter
than everyday people - and they don’t have bigger brains But they change the connections within their
brains by training with techniques like the memory palace YANJAA: we are more wired to remember that
than to remember random sets of digits in general we're like emotional and visual
learners. And storytellers Only a dozen people in the world have memorized
more than 20,000 digits of pi but lots and lots of people have played Hamlet,
and memorized all his lines OLIVIER: “Words words words” which contain nearly 50,000 letters OLIVIER: “Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
in this distracted globe” But that’s not the full story Some of the same things that strengthen our
memories can also warp them ADDIS typically with emotional memories we
tend to remember the central aspects are our attention kind of zooms in on the core of
that experience. So we might forget some of the peripheral
details like perhaps what a perpetrator was wearing but we'll remember the gun Emotional 9/11 memories are just as inaccurate
as everyday memories - they both deteriorate at the same rate. PHELPS:What was different is that people were
highly confident their memories for the 9/11 were correct. Memories aren’t high fidelity recordings
that we store away. They’re more like live performances created
with input from different parts of the brain -- in the present moment ADDIS We can't remember every single detail
of every experience. And so we use pre-existing knowledge such
as semantic memory or facts that we have or our pre-existing biases and beliefs to fill in those gaps That could explain the errors in Melanie’s
memory of 9/11 my mom worked in New York City growing up
all my life. So of course she was in the city And after 9/11 maybe Melanie saw billowing
smoke on TV - and that’s how it entered her memory. ADDIS So, the fact that we reconstruct our
episodic memory so we piece them back together means that our episodic memories are actually
very flexible Scientists have been able to exploit this
flexibility to plant false childhood memories of being left at a shopping mall, taking a
hot air balloon ride, even having tea with Prince Charles. In one study, young adults were asked to try
and remember a crime they had supposedly committed in their teens. Even though these crimes were completely fake
- made up by the researchers, after a couple of interviews full of leading questions, 70%
of the subjects accepted that they had committed those crimes and many came up with rich, detailed
memories that were completely false. PHELPS: one of the places where this plays
out you know that that is unfortunate is things like eyewitness identifications "THOMPSON:They said we’re going to take
you into a room, we’re going to have seven men,
… if I saw the suspect I was to write a number on his piece of paper and hand it over
to the detective" More than two decades after she was raped,
Jennifer Thompson appeared television with the man she had identified as her attacker. THOMPSON: After I picked out Ronald Cotton’s
photograph that’s when they said to me we thought that was him. PHELPS: we can boost the confidence in a false
memory by confirming it or by at least repeating it multiple times THOMPSON: By now Ronald’s image had completely
contaminated so to speak the original memory of that night - and so the face of my rapist
had become Ronald Cotton - so much so that seeing the actual perpetrator, right there,
I didn’t have one memory of it. Years after Ronald was imprisoned, DNA evidence
proved that Jennifer had been raped by another man. In the US, DNA has helped overturn hundreds
of convictions, and 70% of those involved eyewitness testimony. It’s not just our memories of crimes that
can become “contaminated” - it’s the memories that tell us who we are and where
we came from. Researchers interviewed a group of 14 year-olds
and then, decades later, asked them to recall their teenage years - what their relationship
with their parents was like; how they had felt about sex and religion; what activities
they had enjoyed. Their memories, it turned out, were “uniformly
poor” - for most memories, “no better than chance.” ADDIS: So this poses the question: Why would
we have a memory system that is so unreliable and error prone if it was designed to remember
the past? That’s the big question. And once again, those recordings of Henry
Molaison point to a possible answer Dr. CORKIN: What do you think you'll do tomorrow? H.M.: Whatever is beneficial. Henry often struggled to answer questions
like these - it seemed to scientists that he hadn’t just lost his past - he could
no longer imagine the future. "Three decades after H.M.’s surgery, another
patient’s medial temporal lobe was severely damaged in a motorcycle accident. In this interview from 1988, the patient was
asked by his doctor: TULVING: “Do you feel hopeful about the
future?” COCHRANE: …
… I guess so. I don’t really think much about the future. TULVING: You don’t think much about the
future Well, we may have to come back to that later
on. That same patient once described thinking
about the future as being asked to “find a chair” in an empty room. The future and the past seemed to be somehow
linked in the mind. ADDIS: we decided to put people into the scanner
and have them remember past experiences and imagined future experiences. And we really didn't know what to expect When people remembered, a particular network
lit up. And ... ADDIS: that same network was engaged pretty
much identically when people were having to imagine future events When we let our minds wander, we switch back
and forth all the time -- remembering and imagining. Our mind is a time machine. In Lewis Caroll’s “Through The Looking
Glass” the Queen of Hearts remarks “It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." It turns out, she’s right. The same machinery that brings all those pieces
together to relive the past - can bring some of those pieces together with
other pieces to simulate possible futures. Now, the flexibility that leads us to remember
things that never happened that undermines the justice system that corrupts our most vivid memories … It can start to look like a superpower
- the key to our success as a species ADDIS: it allows us to troubleshoot upcoming
experiences, to think through the ways in which events might unfold, potential obstacles
that might come up in the ways in which we might deal with those obstacles. And some scientists say this simulation engine
between your ears does something even more profound: it weaves together memories of the past and
dreams of the future to create your sense of self. Every time there’s another mass shooting
in America — politicians have the same idea. It’s time to require a background check
for anyone who wants to buy a gun. I’m one of the Republicans who does believe
there should be background checks. It is an open secret that the existing background
check system is broken. Oh I have an appetite for background checks.
We’re going to be doing background checks. Here’s what they want to change: Right now,
gun buyers in the US only have to go through a background check at a gun store. But they don’t have to go through one if
they buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer, like at a gun show or a private sale.
But with universal background checks, everyone who buys a gun would go through one. Pretty much every American is in favor of
this. There’s only one problem. Universal background
checks won’t solve America’s gun crisis. But there’s something else that might. To understand how background checks work,
it helps to imagine two very different people, who both want to buy a gun. This first person is dangerous. Maybe he has
a history of domestic violence or mental illness. And most importantly — he has a record. And the second one is not dangerous. He just
wants a gun for protection or to go hunting or cause shooting guns is kinda fun. Before either one can buy a gun, they first have to go through an FBI instant background check. And I mean instant — it only takes an average
of 108 seconds to get a response from the FBI’s database. That database is made up of records sent in
by state police and other agencies. And it’s checked to see if the buyer has things like
a criminal record, addiction, a restraining order or has been hospitalized for a mental
illness. Under a universal background check system,
anyone buying a gun — whether in a gun store, or through a private sale — would have to
be checked through that database. That means our second person walks out with a gun.
And our first person, with a criminal record, doesn’t. Or, at least he shouldn’t. I’ve done a lot of reporting on this, we
have just seen time and time again background checks just do not stop people we don’t
want having guns from actually getting the weapons. There are a couple problems with the background
check system. One is that the FBI database is about as outdated as its logo. It’s missing millions of records. That’s why the Charleston church shooter
was able to buy a gun, despite having a record. Or why the man who killed 26 Texan churchgoers
was also able to pass a background check, after the Air Force failed to send his domestic
abuse convictions to the FBI. So even with a background check for every
type of sale, there’s still a chance this guy gets a gun. That’s partly why study after study has
found that while background checks “prevent, or make substantially more difficult, the
criminal acquisition of firearms.” Making them universal doesn’t actually have
any effect on the actual gun crisis in America: gun deaths. A Johns Hopkins study of California, where
comprehensive background checks were implemented in 1991, found the law was “not associated
with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.” Thanks in part to those incomplete and missing
records. The other problem is that background checks
only look at “good” people and “already bad” people. But there is an in between. The background checks are supposed to catch
people who have a record already. It just misses all the people who haven’t done anything
bad yet but might do something bad in the future. German is not advocating for a Minority Report
situation. He’s talking about someone like this guy,
who is also dangerous, but who doesn’t have a record. Under a universal background check system
— he could get a gun. In 108 seconds. But there’s another system that could prevent
this. Twelve states and Washington, DC have gone
one step further and established a licensing system. How’s it different? Well, Here’s how it
works in Massachusetts: Before you ever go to a gun store, you first
have to take a firearm safety course. Then you go to the police department and submit
an application, give references and give your fingerprints for a background check. Then not only is the FBI database checked,
but all local law enforcement agencies wherever you’ve lived are directly contacted, along
with the Department of Mental Health. That entire process in Massachusetts usually
takes about 3 weeks. And most people‚ about 97% — pass. Nothing about a gun licensing system will
prevent a law-abiding citizen from going through the process and obtaining a firearm. That’s Dr. Cassandra Crifasi, she researches
health policy at Johns Hopkins, and she’s one of the authors of the studies earlier. And she says the reason licensing works is
that it’s designed to do both of the big things background checks fail at. A, to properly identify and screen out people
who shouldn’t have guns. And B, create a system to reduce impulsive
gun purchases. The licensing system is more comprehensive
than the one-database background check system, so our criminal will be reliably denied a
gun. But because it’s so meticulous it also stands
a chance of keeping our third guy, without a record, from getting a gun. There are people who, may want to impulsively
acquire a firearm, for example to harm themselves or others. And the process of obtaining a license can
at least delay that person during that time of crisis or maybe deter them from getting
that firearm at all. In 1995, Connecticut implemented a licensing
system. Over the next 10 years, they saw a drop in
gun homicides and gun suicides. Compare that to Missouri, which once had a
licensing system, but got rid of it in 2007. Over the next decade, they had a huge spike
in homicides and gun suicides. In both states there were lots of factors
involved. But researchers say this shows that licensing works. It’s also… pretty popular. Among voters
who live in a house with a gun, more than two-thirds think that it’s a good idea.
Ask all Americans and more than three-quarters support it. Background checks are supposed to stop bad
people from getting guns. But they often don’t. Licensing picks up that slack. By making sure that people are crossing these hurdles,
we just make sure, in a much better, stronger way, that people are not getting firearms
when they shouldn’t have them. A crisis of confidence. Automobile production dropped 37 and a half percent. Wall Street reacted very badly. If you were looking at a very    specific type of line. You see, normally, this line points slightly
upward — like here, in September 1977. But about a year later, it started pointing
the other way, just slightly! And then not long after that... Boom. The 1980 recession. It happened again a few months later. The line curved downward. Then, boom, another recession. And it happened again in 1988. Again in 2000. And again in the mid-2000s. This line is called the “yield curve.” And that’s why some experts freaked out
when this happened ... "A recession warning." "Inverted yield curve." "An inverted yield curve." "Inverted yield curve." So. What the hell is this line? It all starts with a US treasury bond. A bond is basically an agreement saying: If
you lend the federal government, say, a hundred dollars...
… they'll pay you interest while they hold onto your money...
… until the date they agreed to pay you back. And the longer you let the government keep
your money, the higher the interest rate. So you get more money. Next you need to understand that most people
don't buy bonds from the government. They buy and sell them from each other, in
the secondary market. And the prices change, based on how much demand
there is for a bond. This basically means that the amount of profit
you can make on each bond changes every day. Trace these bars on any given day, and you
get a curved line, showing the yields of different bonds — or what people call "the yield curve." And normally, it points upward. Now here’s where it gets even more complicated. Let's say you're an investor...
and you have a hunch that an economic downturn is coming, in the near future. If your hunch is correct, that means that
if you buy a two-year bond, you might get your money back in a bad economy,
and there might not be anything good to re-invest in. That makes a two-year bond a lot less attractive
to you. And if lots of other people think this way,
then the demand for two-year bonds plummets. So they start selling for cheaper. But because the two-year bond now costs less,
it yields a better return, relative to that low cost. And at the same time, investors who think
a downturn is coming might think, I'd rather invest in a 10-year bond that pays out way
later — when I think the economic downturn will be over. So that bond gets more popular. But it also gets more expensive. So investors start yielding less money. And if enough investors are acting on this
expectation, the yield on a long-term bond, which is almost always higher than on a short-term
bond, can actually dip lower. And if you draw that yield curve...
… you can see it goes in the other direction. It inverts. In other words, when this chart looks like
this, it means investors think an economic downturn is probably coming in the near future. And that's what's happening now. So, is a recession coming? Not necessarily. But when re-design the chart so we can see
all the years on a single screen… … it's pretty safe to say: When the yield
curve inverts… it's not a good sign. You may think the greatest, most perplexing
mysteries of the universe exist way way out there, at the edge of a black hole, or inside
an exploding star. But some of them surround us, all the time. I can show you. In this container, we’re going to catch
some super-fast subatomic particles that are raining down on us from space. They’re called cosmic rays. And exactly where some of them come from is
part of this 100-year-old mystery in physics. Cosmic rays are a form of radiation. “Rays” is a misnomer — they’re actually
little bits of atoms whizzing by us, even through us, all the time. Every square centimeter of Earth at sea level,
including the space at the top of your head, gets hit by one of these particles every minute. We can’t feel them, and they don’t cause
our bodies any harm, But they can, sometimes, do weird things:
Like make computers malfunction by messing with their memory. Scientists have been studying cosmic rays
since the early 1900s, when a physicist went up in a hot air balloon and discovered the
radiation increases the higher you go — meaning that it comes from somewhere in space. Since then, they’ve found out ways to make
these little bits of atoms visible — like we’re gonna do here. We’ve built something called a cloud chamber. Up here is felt that we’ve soaked with a
super-concentrated solution of rubbing alcohol. And at the bottom here is dry ice which is
super cold. So when the alcohol vapor goes down to the
bottom and gets really cold — it condenses and forms a cloud. And when the cosmic rays come shooting in
from space — the alcohol vapor forms into little droplets and you can actually trace
their path through the cloud. Hopefully. Okay, let’s look. Wait! I saw one! Yeah! The particles in our cloud chamber are traveling
from space at nearly the speed of light, as are the untold others passing by you and through
you right now. When they hit our atmosphere, the impact is
so powerful that the atoms of radiation burst open — tearing apart in violent, cascading
collisions. That’s what we see in the cloud chamber:
atomic shrapnel that has reached the ground. Scientists have determined that some of these
rays come from the sun’s atmosphere, in the form of solar wind, and others from exploding
stars. But the most powerful rays are the most puzzling
— they don’t even come from our own galaxy. They come from some unknown source out in
the universe. The energy from the very most powerful ray
recorded had enough power to turn on a light bulb for a second or more. That force is comparable to a top tennis pro
hitting a ball with all their strength. It doesn’t sound that impressive, but think
of this: all that energy is squeezed into an area smaller than an atom. To try to figure out what entity could be
shooting these incredibly powerful rays at us, scientists use massive cosmic ray observatories,
with detectors not too different from our cloud chamber. Well… you know, they’re on a higher budget
and they’re more advanced. One in the South Pole uses a block of ice,
a whole cubic kilometer, to track the rays instead of vapor. Another one in Argentina has 1,600 huge water
tanks, spread out over 1,000 square miles. But instead of just observing cosmic rays
as they shoot by, scientists use sophisticated technology to trace the atomic shrapnel backward. There, they can reconstruct the original cosmic
ray that hit at the top of the atmosphere. But confirming their source in the deep reaches
of space isn’t so easy, because these cosmic rays don’t always travel in a straight line. Instead, the various magnetic fields of the
universe and the galaxy, put them on bendy paths. Scientists have a few suggestions. The cosmic rays could be created in the violent
hearts of galaxies far away. Another leading hypothesis is that they’re
not produced by exploding stars, per se, but by bouncing around the shockwaves produced
by those explosions. There is also the possibility that some of
the rays are produced by forces and objects we don’t know about — or interact with
things like dark matter, in ways we don’t yet understand. Or they could come from strange objects left
over from the big bang. I mean aliens could be shooting these at us…
but I doubt it. What scientists need is more data, more observations
to be able to pinpoint the sources in the sky these particles are coming from. If scientists can figure out where the most powerful cosmic rays come from, it means they’re
discovering one of the most powerful things in the entire universe. Perhaps the most powerful thing in the entire universe. That might open up an entirely new branch
of physics, teaching us about how the universe was formed, and about how matter can be pushed
to the extreme. But until their origin is discovered, we can
think of cosmic rays as messengers from the broader universe. A reminder we’re a part of it, and that
there’s still a great deal of mystery out there. in the 1800's most paintings looked like this meet at colors complex scenes and lots of mythological stuff but in 1865 something came along that was so different it caused shock and horror and outrage the bodies putrifying color caused the horror of the malasana times the undefinable terror of a painted core faces stupid her skin cadaverous she does not have a human form the painting is called Olympia and it changed the art world forever Anwar MANET painted Olympia in 1863 when Paris was the cultural center of the world and at the centre of this cultural center was the Academy of Fine Arts the Academy was made up of upper-crust art critics that worshipped the Italian Renaissance painters of 300 years prior you know Michelangelo Raphael Botticelli Titian and at the Paris salon the Academy's legendary annual art show they only displayed arts that mimic the Renaissance style to determine who made the cut they had a bunch of rules first and foremost great art was supposed to convey a moral or intellectual message and all acceptable art fell into one of five categories ranked by their capacity to deliver those messages landscapes and still lifes were at the bottom and in the middle are portraits and genre paintings which are mostly quaint scenes of poor or foreign subjects painted for the rich and at the top of the list was history painting the Academy's darling these depicted major historical or mythical moments they were considered the best at providing an ethical or moral lesson like depictions of The Birth of Venus showing the goddess emerging fully formed in the ocean a symbol of womanly perfection and divine love which brings us to the second set of rules equally important to what was painted was how it was painted take that painting of The Birth of Venus it's the kind of painting the Academy loved its subjects are idealized prettified visions of the world smooth and beautiful with no body hair and flawless skin the painting follows the rules of depth and perspective meaning it looks like it could exist in the real world and the scene is complex and layered there's a lot going on its colors are ones you'd find in nature they aren't too saturated or harsh and the brushstrokes are smooth so smooth that they're nearly invisible on the canvas for a long time really the only way to become a successful artists was to follow the Academy's rules which makes Manet's Olympia all the more an outlier check out this painting from Renaissance master Titian from 1538 look familiar it should MANET painted Olympia as a direct riff on Titian Venus of Urbino but there's a recent mayonnaise painting ruffled so many feathers when it hung in a salon for starters the name Olympia was a popular pseudonym for sex workers many took a beloved instantly recognizable painting and corrupted it subbing in a common sex worker for the morally upright goddess of love and fertility there's not much room for a sex worker in the hierarchy of genres there's also how many paid Olympia that really changed things many use stark and unnatural colors they give Olympia cold and harsh look and look at how rough and textured mayonnaise brushstrokes are compared to Titian zim perceptible ones and unlike Titian 'z mayonnaise painting doesn't seem to exist in real space it's much flatter and less complex and beyond the rules the two paintings just feel different Venus lounges while Olympia sits at attention Venus's maids placed furs in a chest probably a wedding gift Olympia's maid brings her flowers likely from one of her regular customers and compared their hands people really didn't like Olympia Stan's fingers one critic claims she was mocking the pose of Venus with a hand shamelessly flexed where Venus is warm and inviting Olympia is tense and stiff it's as if Venus invites you to look at her wall would be a confronts you almost like she's shaming you for intruding it's not totally clear why the Academy chose to display many's rule-breaking painting but it probably had something to do with his growing popularity you can see his influence so clearly and what came next he led the charge towards modernism in the late 1800s starting with the Impressionists Monet Degas who adopted his penchant for modern themes and loosened brushstrokes but it's not just the impressionist suomen a more than anything Olympia's proof that no one entity gets to decide what art should look like and we look back on the history of art we don't remember the people were really good at followed the rules we remember the people who moved the needle forward [Music] you “Michael, welcome to the White House.” This is the 40th president of the United States,
Ronald Wilson Reagan, and Michael Joseph Jackson. 1984 Michael Jackson. “For Michael Jackson brings a thrill a minute
to his millions of fan.” “We have quite a few young folks in the
White House who all wanted me to give you the same message - they said to tell Michael,
please give some TLC to the PYTs.” So this is not just a footnote in history. It actually connects, in a weird way, to the
reason that you have to be 21 in every state in the United States to buy alcohol. I’ll show you. States determine their own minimum legal drinking
ages, and in 1975, they looked like this. All these blue states are at 18. All these green ones are 19. Delaware’s yellow, alone at 20. These orange ones are 21, but with allowances
for lower alcohol levels in stuff like beer and wine. And these red ones are the 21 and older states. It’s a complicated map. Now look at the map today. It’s all 21
How did that change happen? This story takes you to a political crossroads,
and the Supreme Court, and, in a weird way, to Michael Jackson shaking hands next to the
president, while dressed like this. But the drinking age change is ultimately
a story...about roads. Prohibition, the 18th amendment to the US
Constitution, banned alcohol in 1920. It was repealed by the 21st amendment — and
after that, a lot of states settled on a drinking age of 21 and older. See the red here, in the late 60s? Those are all 21 and older states. In the 70s, the 26th amendment changed the
dynamic again. “That amendment, as you know, provides for
the right to vote of all of our young people between 18 and 21, 11 million new voters as
a result of this amendment.” 18 year olds could be drafted to Vietnam and
vote, so a lot of states decided they could drink. That map was short lived for one reason. “And here comes 
the President.” “Nearly 50,000 people were killed on our
highways last year. Now out of that statistic comes an even more
chilling one. Drunk drivers were involved in 25,000 of those
fatalities, in addition to 750,000 injuries a year.” Drinking age reform advocates quickly attributed
drunk driving fatalities in the blue states, or 18 and older states, to earlier drinking
ages. People argued that teens driving across state
lines to drink or purchase alcohol increased drunk driving. This 1983 map was still a hodgepodge, but
see how more states turned green — for 19 — and yellow — for 20 years old? That was driven partly by an awareness campaign. “Thank you very much, Mr. President.” Michael Jackson? He was being honored for letting his music
be used in anti-drunk driving PSAs. “You’re as good as dead.” But tactics weren’t limited to PR. President Reagan is famous for saying: “The
nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government
and I’m here to help.’” That made his strategy kind of surprising. “For even though drunk driving is a problem
nation-wide, it can only be solved at the state and local level. Yet the Federal Government also has a role
to play.” His thinking was influenced by two main groups. “Much of the credit for focusing public
attention goes to the grassroots campaign of organizations like MADD, Mothers Against
Drunk Drivers, and RID, Remove Intoxicated Drivers.” Candace “Candy” Lightner founded MADD
in 1980 after her daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver. MADD’s goals at the time included making
it easier to obtain DUI convictions... and raising the drinking age. This direction was clear at River Dell High
School in Oradell, New Jersey, where President Reagan explained his unpredictable political
evolution. The problem:
“I appointed a Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving. They told us that alcohol related automobile
accidents are the leading cause of teenage deaths in this country.” The theory:
“In states in which the drinking age has been raised, teenage drinking fatalities have
gone down significantly. Here in New Jersey, you raised the drinking
age to 21 in 1983, and you know what happened: you had a 26% reduction in nighttime single
vehicle fatalities among 19 and 20 year olds in the first year alone.” The dilemma:
“I was delighted again because I hoped that the states would, as they should, take this
action themselves without federal orders or interference.” “It’s led to a kind of crazy quilt of
different state drinking laws, and that’s led to what’s been called blood borders,
with teenagers leaving their home to go the nearest state with a lower drinking age.” And here? This is where the roads come in. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 created
a network of roads largely funded by Federal dollars. Those roads quickly became crucial to state
economies. That money also became a way to bend the states
to Federal priorities, even if it meant Reagan had to change his typical political positions. “I’ve decided to support legislation to
withhold 5% of a state’s highway funds if it does not enact the 21-year-old drinking
age. Some may feel that my decision is at odds
with my philosophical viewpoint that state problems should involve state solutions, and
it isn’t up to a big and overwhelming government in Washington to tell the states what to do. And you’re partly right. Beyond that, there are some special cases
in which overwhelming need can be dealt with by prudent and limited federal action.” The law passed. That’s Candy Lightner, celebrating. “I’d like to make you an honorary mother
against drunk drivers.” It wasn’t technically a nationwide drinking
age law, but in effect — it was. “We have no misgiving about this judicious
use of Federal power.” States quickly adopted the 21-year-old drinking
age. Most couldn't afford to lose federal funding
for their highways. Louisiana was the only state that held out
at age 18 (due to a loophole, which it closed in the mid 90s). South Dakota challenged the law to preserve
sale of low alcohol beer for 19 year olds and up, and it reached the Supreme Court. “You may proceed whenever you’re ready.” “Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the
court, the issue in this case is whether or not Congress may condition the receipt of
highway funds upon a state having in effect 21-year-old drinking age.” The court ruled 7-2, stating it was within
Congress’s powers to control spending that promoted “general welfare,” argued as
the reduction of youth drinking and driving via the 21-year-old drinking age. Did it work? Most studies of studies declare “case closed”
— that the higher drinking age saves lives, and “reduces alcohol consumption.” Skeptics, like people from the libertarian
Cato Institute, claim a broader cultural change, not a law, should be credited with saving
lives. Reagan himself kind of argued both sides,
saying that, “the new minimum drinking age is working,” but that “my friends, there’s
so much more to do, and it’s not government that can do it.” Politically, Ronald Reagan using Federal purse
strings to strong arm states is…a strange pairing. But beyond the politics, there’s a bigger
message. The Federal government has used other levers
to push states, but to change the drinking age there was one big tool. The thing that changed the country wasn’t
just the lines on states’ edges. It was the ones that run through them. Alright, that’s it for this road trip edition
of Almanac. I’m about to reveal what the theme for the
next edition is gonna be, but first I want to read some comments from the last video
all about Route 66. “People born in the 20th century: the reasons
in this video. 2000s kids: Ka-Chow!” “Kachow!” So many Cars comments. “That warning at 1:00 is basically TLDR;
hey tourists, wild donkeys kick.” Alright, that’s it for this edition of Almanac. In the next one, I’m gonna be looking at
the big ideas that completely changed movies — and had nothing to do with Hollywood. this is the stena empiro a british oil tanker traveling through the persian gulf on july 19 2019 it was on its way to saudi arabia when it received a radio message from iranian naval forces [Music] zero degrees immediately later the stena impero was dramatically boarded and seized using speed boats and helicopters iran's revolutionary guard took control of the british tanker and took it to an iranian port the stenempiro isn't alone several oil tankers have run into trouble in recent months already troubled waters were further roiled with attacks on two oil tankers three iranian vessels tried to block a british tanker an unnamed u.s official is blaming iran for explosions on four ships iran declared it has seized an iraqi oil tanker plot these incidents on a map and you'll see them centered around this narrow ocean passage the strait of hormuz dozens of oil tankers pass through here daily each carrying up to 84 million gallons of oil this flow of oil represents 20 percent of the world's supply a former iranian prime minister even referred to this passage as the jugular of the global economy but these ships and this narrow strip of ocean are caught in the middle of a struggle a struggle between the us and iran one that has the potential to escalate and to choke the global economy in the process the strait of hormuz lies between iran and oman it links the persian gulf to the gulf of oman which eventually leads to the arabian sea at its narrowest the strait is less than 34 kilometers wide and oil tankers that pass through here travel on a pair of shipping lanes each three kilometers wide most of these ships carry petroleum products from the middle east to the rest of the world and in particular to asia but an attack on any tanker here regardless of destination can affect the price of oil everywhere that's because oil is a globally traded product a drop in supply from the gulf can drive up prices from other sources around the world after two recent oil tankers were attacked in the strait of hormuz the price of oil from the north sea jumped nearly two dollars per barrel it's because of this strategic importance that the strait of hormuz has become a place where long simmering tensions between the us and iran are playing out and it all began with the tanker war [Music] saddam hussein ordered his troops across the iranian frontier after a series of border skirmishes war broke out in the middle east in 1980 after iraq invaded iran the us helped iraq and its campaign against iran by providing military intelligence behind the scenes when iraq wasn't able to topple iranian forces over land it turned its attention elsewhere missiles against tankers are the weapons that both sides are using to try and break the stalemate in their war on land iraq moved to cut off iran's main export it began attacking tankers carrying oil from iranian ports in what became known as the tanker war iran eventually responded by attacking oil tankers moving to and from the gulf states some of which were supporting iraq but with iraq being aided by the west iran had to get creative it turned to sea mines and planted them around the strait of hormuz for the first time iran was using the disruption of oil moving through hormuz as a weapon but these disruptions finally drew the us directly into the conflict in 1987 the u.s stepped in to protect the flow of oil for itself and its allies by escorting tankers tensions between the two countries began to escalate in 1988 a u.s naval ship struck an iranian mine injuring u.s sailors on board a couple months later a u.s warship mistook an iranian passenger aircraft for a fighter jet and shot it down over the strait of hormuz killing all 290 passengers ronald reagan has issued a statement deeply regretting the loss of life in what he calls a terrible human tragedy the iran-iraq war ended in august 1988 but conflict between the u.s and iran continued for decades and tensions and distrust grew on both sides and a major source of that distrust was iran's nuclear program by 2002 suspicions were growing in the u.s around iran's intentions by now iran was fighting proxy wars around the middle east and the u.s feared an iranian nuclear weapon could fall into the wrong hands iran and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil by seeking weapons of mass destruction these regimes pose a grave and growing danger there were reports that iran had expansive and undisclosed nuclear facilities like this one in natanz and this facility in iraq finally in 2011 a un report revealed that iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device the mutual distress between the u.s and iran boiled over they have not found even one gram of uranium to be diverted to military purposes iran has refused to satisfy legitimate concerns about the nature of its nuclear program the u.s announced sweeping sanctions against iran president obama signed an executive order that for the first time specifically targets iran's petrochemical industry iran's oil exports dropped dramatically and with it iran's income the country's economy began to shrink for the first time in nearly a decade to fight back iran used the only leverage it had the strait of hormuz iran threatened to close the passage saying not a drop of oil will pass through the strait of hormuz if iranian oil is sanctioned and to back its threat iran's navy conducted a 10-day show of force in the strait u.s naval forces followed suit warning iran that closing the strait would not be tolerated the threats are being ramped up over a vital oil shipping route the chief of u.s naval operations has told al jazeera his navy is capable of securing the strait of hormuz should it need to the u.s navy and the coast guard ships two close encounters just last week the strait of hormuz was once again a tense conflict zone between iran and the us but this time the two countries reached a diplomatic solution today after two years of negotiations the united states together with our international partners has achieved something that decades of animosity has not a comprehensive long-term deal with iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon [Music] in 2015 iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program and to allow its nuclear facilities to be monitored in exchange for sanctions relief with sanctions lifted iran's oil exports picked back up and iran's economy showed signs of recovering until 2018 i am announcing today that the united states will withdraw from the iran nuclear deal the fact is this was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never ever been made claiming the original deal with iran didn't go far enough in addressing iran's terrorist proxy groups president trump abandoned the nuclear deal with iran and put sanctions back in place [Music] [Applause] the ongoing conflict between the two countries has turned hormuz into a flashpoint once again with tensions at levels not seen since the tinker war tensions with iran have reached a boiling point iran trouble nothing but trouble the united states is not interested in diplomacy period president trump says the military was quote cocked and loaded to carry out airstrikes against iran iran hopes that disrupting the passage of these international tankers will put pressure on countries to stick with the nuclear deal while also putting pressure on the u.s to lift sanctions but without the direct diplomatic contact between the u.s and iran each run-in has the risk of escalating into war one that could disrupt the jugular of the global economy in the process [Music] you Why does Route 66 matter? “Hi. My name is Jean and I’m from France. And last year I went on a trip in the West
Coast, and we passed by Route 66.” “Our trip was from LA to Chicago all the way, taking the mother road, haha.”
“We would stop at all the museums on the way, we stopped at the one in Elk City, Oklahoma
and we stood on top of the train.” “I’m Fabian from Germany. Last year, I
was visiting my family in California. While driving on Route 66, I had to stop to take photos of the beautiful sunset.” “The plan of the trip is to have no plan
at all.” “My husband and I went back and even visited
Route 66 and Williams for our honeymoon.” “Hey.” Why is Route 66 not only famous, but internationally famous?
“Starting off Route 66.” The road starts in Chicago, slides down
the country, and ends up all the way in Santa Monica. Convert that distance to time and you get a different story.
In 1926, the road was commissioned. By 1957, the Interstate Highway System began,
and it bypassed the route by 1970. In 1985, Route 66 was fully decommissioned.
Route 66 has been in the shadows twice as long as it was in the spotlight.
But there’s still this energy around it. I talked to Ron Warnick, he’s the editor
of Route 66 News, which is an obsessive Route 66 site, and his articles just came alive
with people reminiscing about Route 66. “It was about Oklahoma Joes. It was this
dive bar in Albuquerque near the University of New Mexico campus. I put it out there,
and pretty soon, all sorts of people were exchanging their memories about the bar.” This road has three distinct eras. It’s got secrets, and surprises, and even a future. The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo has a challenge: eat 72 ounces of steak and sides,
in under an hour, and you get it for free. I am going to switch to phone mode here. Alright.
Before you get to a cardiac arrest-threatening challenge like this, you actually have to go back more
than a hundred years. Before Federal highways, networks of largely
privately owned auto trails, like the ones on this 1920 Rand McNally map, were standard.
Look at the chaotic number of options in the legend.
As Federal highway funding laws were passed in the 1910s and 1920s, new maps planned a
linked highway system, like this one drafted by World War I General John Pershing.
This telegram from April 30, 1926, from Springfield, Missouri established Route 66 (they initially
wanted the nice round number of Route 60, but settled for 66).
Cyrus Avery is called the “father of Route 66” for helping create the highway to promote
his home of Tulsa and creating the U.S. Highway 66 Association the next year.
That connection from Chicago to Santa Monica was always a weird shape, and less intuitive
than a transcontinental road. But it had lobbying interest behind it and a good starting point
with existing roads. Texaco rated road conditions in maps like
this 1934 one. As the legend shows, Route 66 was just a graded road in parts, basically
flattened dirt. Look at the journey from Amarillo to Glenrio. There’s still parts of Route
66 that look like this today. But they finished paving the whole thing in 1937.
To get all that work started in the 1920s, the Route 66 association pushed stunts
and did publicity that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the 1950s and 60s.
When a transcontinental footrace called the “Bunion Derby” was run, the association
made sure a big part of it took place on Route 66. But it was struggle that initially made Route 66’s reputation. “We’re going to California, ain’t we? Alright then, let’s go to California.” The Great Depression and Dust Bowl — a rut of drought and erosion — sent families looking
West for a better life. Route 66 was perfectly designed to scoop them
up, leading John Steinbeck to write that these migrants “come into 66 from the tributary
side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road,
the road of flight.” Though records show that highways 60 and 70
actually admitted more traffic to California, Route 66 had become the iconic “mother road.”
And then things really got going. Okay, I have a slight wait before I dine alone,
so there’s time for activities. That thing’s terrifying. “Oh, it is.” This boot’s a metaphor for steak — and boots. It’s time. I feel like the only way
to go mega-vi is to get that 72 ounce steak. OK, see that big 66 on there?
Amarillo, Texas, is a good example of a big Route 66 town.
They were already a transportation center. This 1926 map — the year Route 66 started
— shows Amarillo was a railroad hub. After World War II ended, that existing commerce
and Route 66 made it easy to add roadside attractions.
And it’s still that way today. Over time, Route 66 did this for towns a lot
smaller than Amarillo, too. This is the middle of the video, by the way.
Right now. Yeah. It also did it for Vega, Texas. Carolyn was nice enough to be my tour guide. She showed me her house. “This is Ben’s dad. And grandpa and me.” “Oh wow.” She’s very into dinosaurs. “Armorage and spikes. And teeth.” “And so where did you find these?” “Out North of Town.”
And she also showed me the Magnolia Gas Station, which got started just before Route 66 became
official. She actually helped restore the space, including the second floor, where people
used to live. “OK.”
“It’s a filling station, but somebody said at one time they also sold ice. I’m
not too sure about that part.” “The kitchen was green. The bedroom was
blue. See, I hung pans up there so you’d know it was the kitchen.” “Those pictures are neat because they show the horses pulling the cars out of the water.” To support all that travel and all those attractions, Route 66 had a unique motel culture.
Of course, even as it succeeded, Route 66 was limited by the prevailing prejudices of
the time. The Green Book was a traveling guide for black
motorists to find safe lodging. In Tucumcari, New Mexico, in 1960, listed options
were scarce. Route 66 made a culture, but it didn’t change
the existing one. And in the 1960s, just as the Route 66 road
trip hit its peak, the road was already being eclipsed. Today, Glenrio, New Mexico is a ghost town. It’s not alone. After the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, new, better funded interstates were built
for defense and infrastructure. In Texas and New Mexico, you can see how I-40
followed Route 66 in some spots, but also split away.
This is what that can look like. But it doesn’t have to. “We had the privilege of designing and creating two murals, one here in Joplin, Missouri, and
another in Galena, Kansas.” “We wanted to help revitalize and show off
our local area on historic Route 66.” “Route 66.” “I’m the president of the Oklahoma Statewide Route 66 association and I’m the chair of
the Tulsa Route 66 commission. About ten years ago, I sold everything I owned and left the
country and I backpacked for ten months throughout Southeast Asia and Europe. When I got home
to Tulsa, which is where I was raised, I thought Okay, I’ve seen all these amazing places,
what does Tulsa have? Of course, Route 66 goes right through Tulsa. I thought, well,
it’s been here the whole time, I haven’t really paid attention, and started exploring
it.” “I’m Larry Smith and I’m owner/operator
of the Motel Safari in Tucumcari, New Mexico, on historic Route 66.”
“Yeah, this is the motel I’m staying at.” “I’d hit a wall with my job at the time
and I noticed while I was driving 66 that the road was using a lot of that older generation.
It really needed the right people to own the businesses along the Route.” But saving Route 66 doesn’t answer the big question: why it matters. So I did not eat a 72-ounce steak. But I found somebody who did.
“This is the most excited I’ve been for an interview since I talked to an astronaut.”
“The story behind it is that I compete in track and field professionally, I throw the
shot. I was kind of injured at the time and I performed really terribly and we were gonna
drive through Amarillo. I heard about the steak, so I’m like, ‘I have to have one
win.’ And honestly, it’s not the fullness, it’s the chewing. By the end I was like,
I can’t chew anything else and I was drinking as much water as possible to get it down.
I’m glad I did it but I don’t know if I’d ever do that again. I mean, I do a lot
of ridiculous things. Hey, didn’t do well at this track meet? I’m gonna eat a 72-ounce
steak to prove to myself I can overcome something.” The Big Texan Ranch isn’t on Route 66 anymore.
The owner moved it closer to I-40 in 1970. And yet it still is Route 66.
We think of places on a map as dots. But maybe a place can be a line. “There was desert as far as the eye can see.”
“I was getting to the point where I needed a break from seeing patients in and out. So
I called up my friend from med school and said, ‘hey we have this window, would you
be interested in a road trip?’” “Route 66 kinda became a character in our
journey. It was kinda like the Oregon Trail with all the challenges popping up, and the
prize at the end was our new home at the end of the highway.”
“I had a flat tire. So I took my camera out and took some long exposure shots of
my car and the night sky.” “So the graduation gift to my three boys
as they exit high school is a 14-day driving trip out West — St. George, Utah
— to meet my biological family.” “My great great grandfather, Ramon Negrette,
emigrated from Mexico to a tiny town in Arizona called Williams in the early 1900s, before Route
66 was there. He painted the house yellow and it is still there today, the yellow house
in Williams. We think my great grandma still haunts the house? What I love about Route 66 is that
it’s not just a road that’s going through tiny towns and big towns in America. It’s
a road that goes through people’s histories and carries legacies of perseverance and hope,
and I think that’s what makes it so fascinating and so beautiful.” Alright, that’s it for this road trip along
Route 66. I’m about to read a couple of comments from the last episode all about why
every suburb looks the same, but first I just want to give a little plug for the Vox Video
Lab. In there right now I’ve got a special video that shows exactly how I did one shot
in the Route 66 video that you just saw. It’s an obsessive, nerdy, technical breakdown and
that’s the kind of behind-the-scenes stuff that you always get in the Video Lab, in addition
to supporting big videos like this one. Now let’s look at a couple of comments.
“As a European, it’s so weird to see streets without a pavement/sidewalk. Where tf are
you supposed to walk?” Yeah.
City Beautiful and Vox both made a video on this in the same day.
Yes. This is the craziest coincidence I’ve experienced in almost 100 videos. We turned
out to be video soulmates and we made this video very very close apart even though both
of us had been working on it for months. But the take home point here, besides a crazy
coincidence or glitch in the Matrix? City Beautiful’s an awesome channel if you’re
interested in urban planning. Go ahead and add them to your subscription feed if you
want more videos like that. That’s it for this one, the next episode of this Road Trip
edition of Almanac is the last one, and it tackles how roads can shape public policy
in really unexpected ways. This is an American sweatshop. They flourished in the early 1900s, when people
were desperate for work. And since there were no regulations on what
they had to pay, they paid workers next to nothing. So the US adopted something that had already
worked in other countries: a minimum wage. This is a chart of the minimum wage in the
United States over the past 60 years. You can see how it’s gone up, and up, and
up: from a dollar an hour in 1960 to $7.25 today. Go America, right? But this chart is actually pretty misleading. If you take the same line, but adjust it for
inflation, you’ll see the problem. Every time the minimum wage has been raised,
inflation has dragged it right back down. Really, America’s minimum wage hasn’t
gone up. It’s essentially stayed the same since the
80s. What you’re seeing here — this constant
up and down — this is weird. It’s not how the rest of the world does
it and it leads to a bunch of problems for American workers and businesses. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The minimum wage sets the smallest amount
that a business anywhere in the country can pay its workers each hour. But when that first bill became law in 1938,
it had one big problem. That first law didn’t actually set any kind
of guidance on when and how you’re supposed to raise the minimum wage in the future. That meant that if the minimum wage was going
to go up, Congress would have to pass a new law. That’s what these steps are. But as we already know, they aren’t occurring
enough to keep up with inflation. And this system also makes the US minimum
wage sort of unpredictable. Look at this period. Starting in 1997, the minimum wage sat at
$5.15 an hour for 10 years. Then, it was raised in 2007 to $7.25 by 2009. Cool, but that’s a 40% increase in a pretty short time, after a decade of inaction. How do you plan for that if you own a business? Not having that consistency does raise a lot
of problems for business owners. Will they have to lay off employees, will
they have to reduce work hours, or will they just raise prices on their customers? Imagine how much smoother that could all go if the minimum wage just kind of went up over time? Well, we don’t have to imagine it. In France, they automatically raise their
minimum wage every single year. They tie it to inflation and the average salary
of a French worker. In Australia, a commission reviews the minimum
wage every year, considering economic factors like inflation. The UK also has a commission made up of union,
business and economic experts. The Czech Republic’s commission consults
with employer and union representatives. Their line is lower overall than America’s,
but it still trends upwards. Same with Costa Rica. And their committee reviews the minimum wage
twice a year. In most countries, the minimum wage is in
the hands of economic officials. In the US, it’s in the hands of politicians. And that goes about as well as you’d expect. Today the federal minimum wage is a poverty
wage. Last thing we need are more one-size-fits-all
Washington mandate. It could eliminate up to 3.7 million jobs. It would lift 1.3 million Americans out of
poverty. Raise the wage for 33 million people, a quarter
of the workforce. Those wages are only available if you get
hired. Working people are doing their jobs, let us
do ours. Republicans have generally resisted increasing
the minimum wage. They tend to support a lot of pro-business
policies and business leaders do not want minimum wage increases. Democrats on the other hand, they have a lot
of support from labor unions so they’re the ones who are usually pushing for an increase to the minimum wage. So that’s why Congress rarely agrees on
raising the minimum wage. And what makes America’s system different than other
countries. This chart shows how much a minimum wage worker
makes compared to the average worker, in every developed country with a minimum wage. All these countries have some kind of commission
or formula to determine what the minimum wage should be. And they review it every year or two. And then there’s the US. Who does neither and is dead last. If the US had done something similar, like
tie the minimum wage to the average wage each year, we’d be here. Not amazing, but not an outlier. What we're talking about is the federal minimum wage, which applies to everyone
who works in America. But states can set their own too, and about
half of them currently have a higher minimum wage than the federal one. Like Washington State, which in 1998 decided
to raise theirs every single year, base on inflation. Sound familiar? I mean it’s such a logical idea, it's done in other countries. It really doesn’t make sense that it’s not done at the federal level. Like really it’s just
about politics. Right now politicians are yet again debating
what the minimum wage should be. Should it be $15, $11, or should it not be
raised at all. But maybe the solution to this never-ending
debate, is to just take the decision out of politician’s hands. This is a chart that has never been seen before. This one hasn’t either nor has this one. None of these have. That because I made them, along with Matt
here. My name is Matt Daniels and I'm a journalist
at the Pudding, which is a publication for visually led storytelling. Well, mainly Matt made them, I just sent him
a bunch of emails. These charts are the result of a year long
obsession I’ve had over a very specific trend I’ve noticed in music. Men singing really high. When I listen to the radio, I’ve come to
expect one thing. Male pop stars exploiting their upper register. Bruno Mars, The Weekend, Shawn Mendes, Charlie
Puth, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Adam Lavine, the Jonas Brothers, Ed Sheeran, Khalid,
Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, all of One Direction, BTS, Chris Martin, One Republic,
and Sam Smith. I’m not the first person to pick up on this. In 2015 alone it seemed every guy was singing
high. There was Jason Derulo “Just the thought of you, gets me so high
(so high)” Maroon 5 “I’m right here, cause I need a little
love a little sympathy” And Justin Bieber “Yeah, I know that I let you down
Is it too late to say I'm sorry now?” But maybe this fact is best illustrated by
this 10 week period on the Billboard Charts. When The Weekend battled for the top spot
against Justin Bieber “And I know she'll be the death of me” “What do you mean?” And then Himself “I only call you when it's half past five” until finally his Michael Jackson inspired
voice was was dethroned by Adele’s “Hello.” “Hello, It’s Me” Really the only way to know if this hypothesis
holds up, though, is to crunch the numbers and quantify it. And that’s where Matt came in. It kind of fits a really good mold of the
questions that I really like, where we have a cultural question about vocal ranges and
usage of falsetto and music and there is no perfect data set for that. We wanted to make a chart that showed how
prevalent the male falsetto was in pop music, not just in the last 5 years, but as far back
as we could go. That meant looking at music streaming services. Every streaming platform tags the millions
of songs in their respective libraries with metadata, but each one does it a little differently. For example, Spotify has over 35 millions
songs in their library, but their metadata is algorithmically driven and pretty broad. Matt: some of it was around the tempo of music
and how danceable it was or its somber or positive tone. Pandora, on the other hand has a smaller library,
but they are committed to very specific data. In their case it wasn’t algorithmically
driven. They were actually having humans review songs
and say what its DNA, or what its genome was. The result is a library of 2 million songs
with up to 450 individual identifying markers. So that was interesting to me because falsetto
and vocal range, while could be determined by a computer, often lends itself to the human
ear because there is some subjectivity to it. So, we asked Pandora if they had vocal data. They did. And they shared it with us. So do you actually have available the original
dataset that we received? Oh yeah yeah I can. Should I just bring that up? It's forty two thousand rows. The first entry is by George P. Watson from
1911 He was a Yodeler. One hundred and eight years later and 42,948
rows down we have the iconic high voice of Thom Yorke. Sudden words We’ll get to exactly how these are scored
in a bit, but damn that’s a lot of songs. So what we said was “OK this is great to
see these forty three thousand songs but really we only care about songs that charted.” So we created a data set of the Billboard
Hot 100, a 28,000 song list of the 100 most popular songs in the US every week since 1958. and we went back to Pandora. And said we only really want the falsetto
data for these songs, and not only do we want the falsetto data, but we also
need data about the register. And a few other important things, like the
gender of the person singing. It’s not just a matter of like putting
into their system and it spits out the falsetto data. We need to match the names of the songs and
the artists names to whatever Pandora has. Wait. So you have to do that manually? We write fancy programs to guess that there's
a match and confirm that there's a match. So with Matt’s fancy program we matched
20,075 songs. So the biggest gap in the data is actually
the missing songs that aren't on streaming services, but were on the Billboard Hot 100
and did have very valid falsetto data behind them. So in 1958 we have data for 50% of the songs
that charted. In 2018 we have data for 95% of the songs
that charted. The good thing though is, you think of an
average number one hit from 1958 - that's more likely to appear on Pandora than a song
that hit number 100 for one week. When I first sat down with this giant spreadsheet,
I immediately wanted to see how songs that I thought had a lot of falsetto had actually
been scored. The first song that I looked for was Childish
Gambino’s “Redbone.” “If you want it, you can have it, ohhhhhh” His voice is super high and very memorable. Not only that, a lot of articles about this
song mentioned it had a lot of falsetto. To my astonishment, Pandora determined there
was no falsetto in the song, instead they said it was just sung in a high register This trend was most stark in the hard rock
and heavy metal genres. Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” had a falsetto
score of zero but register score of 9 out of 10. I don't care if it takes all night
I gonna set this town alight, come on Knowing this, let’s define what falsetto
and vocal register actually are. To do that I’ve brought in an actual opera
singer. Hi I'm Anthony Roth Costanzo and I'm a countertenor
and opera singer. Prove it. Perfect, let’s talk about vocal range first. The voices starting from the bottom in the
classical tradition are bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, countertenor, mezzo soprano, Soprano. Countertenor is kind of a catch all term and
it's a range that goes up and down. Most male pop stars today are tenors. That means their average range is somewhere
between here and here. Pandora’s data scores vocal register - which
measures a singers ability to go up and down their range consistently. A super high register Pandora rates songs from 0-10 from low to
high. “Rock of Ages” ranked super high with
a 9 - Pharrell’s voice in “Get Lucky” was
given an 8 “I’m up all night to get some, she’s
up all night for good fun, I’m up all night to get lucky” As was Elton John in “Crocodile Rock” “I never knew me a better time and I guess
I never will” So I think it's safe to say that between a
7 and 8 is pretty high on the vocal register range. But it's not crazy. So when these artists want to access even
higher notes they’ll likely switch to their falsetto register. Falsetto is an Italian word which means “false
little voice.” Falsetto is typically a technique ascribed
to a male singer that switches from their chest voice to their head voice. Whenever you're going from chest voice - meaning
the speaking register - to head voice, there's often a little break because there are two
different sets of muscles handing off to each other, and that's how you yodel right. [demonstrates yodeling] And that's what yodeling
is. George, you’re back! It’s not just Yodeling. It happens in pop all the time, though that
transition is often more invisible. Notice how Freddie Mercury goes from his chest
voice to falsetto when he says the word “decline” “A built-in remedy
For Kruschev and Kennedy At anytime an invitation
You can't decline” Okay so let me just pause for a second and
say that “falsetto,” as a term, has been around forever, but its definition has changed and
evolved. Many vocal coaches would say that falsetto
is that breathy, light sound you heard from Freddie Mercury. And they say the generic term “head voice”
should describe crisper, reinforced high notes. A perfect example of that is from this 90s
classic. “I knew I loved you before I met you. I knew I loved you.” That's amazing. I mean you know that's like a really well
integrated instrument. For your average music listener, aka me, the
technical distinction between head voice and falsetto is less important than the fact that
they both just sound impossibly high. That brings us again to the scoring system. A 10 on the Pandora scale is a song that’s
sung entirely in Falsetto “Staying alive” That’s pretty extreme, and according to our data set, it’s also pretty
rare. So here’s the tricky determination I’ve
got to make. What falsetto score is enough to really define
a song. I think a good place to start is a song literally
called “Falsetto” “Now I got her talking like this, in a falsetto. She’s like oooh oooh baby ahh ah ah” Pandora gave this song a 6 - in their ears,
The-Dream only used the technique moderately. This is where I could split hairs all day. Because while, yeah, The-Dream doesn’t use
a falsetto the whole time, the technique plays does play a central role in the track. The hook of the song, the most memorable part,
is sung in falsetto. Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River”
also got a 6. “Cry me a river (go on and just)
Cry me a river (go on and just) Cry me a river (baby, go on and just)” So, I’m going to look at songs with a falsetto
above a 5 If there’s one thing I can’t stress enough,
it’s that this data can be addressed in a 1,000 different ways. To keep things simple, though we’ve separated
falsetto and vocal register as two separate data points. I think this is probably the first chart I
made that just was super simple and just said all right “What is the average value of
all the songs that charted in a year.” First let's focus on vocal register. I was not expecting to see this just a very
clear like march to the top in the late 80s The average vocal register for male singer
in 1988 was a 7.1. But as you can see across any time period,
that average never really dropped below 5.4. Because there were so many songs in 1988 that
had a register of 7 or higher, we’re going to make this a little bit tougher. I’m going to boost the register to an 8
and only allow songs that made it in the top 10. We’ve got a strong hard rock and heavy metal
showing. “She's got a smile it seems to me” There’s my man Phil Collins “I'm always right there beside her
We're two hearts” I’ve literally never heard this song “I can rocket 2 u” Okay, wow. If we push the Falsetto score up to a 6, we’re
left with just two songs from 1988. “Smooth Criminal”
“He came into her apartment He left the bloodstains on the carpet” and “Nite and Day” by Al B Sure! “I can tell you how I feel about you night
and day” With Nite and Day just barely edging out to
win. The 1980s blew a high male vocal register
out of the water. So let’s see how this chart changes when
we just focus on falsetto. Things start to shift going back from the
1980s to the 1970s - the disco era. 1975 was the highest year for falsetto. Where 18% of songs had a value over 4. It also serves as a turning point for the
Bee Gees. This might be surprising to hear, but before
1975 the Bee Gees’s average falsetto was around 0.8. After 1975 it rose to a 5.5. And that makes sense. They had to compete with the likes of Earth,
Wind, and Fire, Ohio Players, Eddie Kendricks, Curtis Mayfield - all artists whose careers
were defined by their high voices. I can imagine a record executive in a room
listening to a song and they're like “Yeah that's great but you should put some falsetto
in there somewhere” It wasn’t until 1976 that their now trademark
falsetto hit number one. “You should be dancing, yeah” Looking back at both of these charts, it’s
obvious something shifted after the 1980s. The thing that changed after the 80s is you
have hip hop becoming massively popular. And today it's the most popular genre. If you look at the average song there just
isn't as many opportunities for for a falsetto because there's just less singing. So how do we account for that? So I created this toggle that basically said
is there singing in this song which is also from the Pandora data, they basically have
a spoken variable. So first let’s see what happens when we
toggle the singing function for songs in the top 10. 1996 and 2015 really shoot up. Let’s focus on 1996 first. This was the year Neo-Seoul went mainstream. Artists like D’Angelo and Maxwell led the
charge. Their voices were a modern twist on the soul
artists of the 1970s. I mean just listen to D’Angelo next to Curtis
Mayfield. “When I first saw you baby
I wanted to die Me and those dreamin' eyes of mine” “So In Love, every time we kiss” 2
1996 was a huge year for Falsetto, but so was 2015. And here are maybe your your your ears hearing
the right thing, relative to other years, 2015 was the year of high voices. Regardless of which toggle we select or which
combination of falsetto and register we choose, we did find this: if a song has falsetto,
whether it’s a 1 or a 10, it’s going to chart higher — and longer. This is true across nearly every year. Not only that, Top 10 Hits are more likely
to use falsetto. Take a look at that huge spike in 2015. 66% of songs that peaked in the top 10 had
falsetto. Regardless of the decade, high male voices
are iconic. From the Frankie Vallie belting Sherry “Sherry baby” To the 70s swagger of Bloodstone’s “Natural
High” “I'm trying to make something out of nothing
And I don't even know you” To the Weeknd’s hazy R&B “None of these toys on lease too, ah
Made your whole year in a week too, yah” It feels like today is very good for the commercial
viability of the high male voice. And I think that's true if the window of time is the millennials' lifetime. But if you were to talk to your parents or
your parents parents they'd be like Oh you think today is good. In nineteen seventy five it's not even comparable. The reason why it might feel like a trend
today is because this is all we've ever known. You ever feel like you’re just going in
circles? So this is Hallsley, a still-developing subdivision
in Midlothian Virginia. This place won the National Association of
Homebuilders award in 2017, for best master planned community. And there are a ton of cul de sacs. 1. 2. 3. 4. Let’s just go to the map, save some time. Cul de sacs are everywhere. They’re a symbol of suburban sprawl. But they aren’t an accident. They’re physical evidence of how one federal
agency shaped the suburbs — in ways that we’re still grappling with today. English suburban plans inspired early
suburbs in the United States like Radburn, New Jersey, which offered a
unique plan. Founded in 1929, it was designed to be car
friendly. But it introduced a street that served more
like an alleyway or service road. It was almost a prototype for the cul de sac. Cars traveled and parked in the back of houses,
not in front. People walked to and from the train via footpaths
that were car-free. Though Radburn wasn’t totally finished,
today you can see the footpaths that still provide a pedestrian network for residents. But out of those ideas, it was Radburn’s
cul de sac — not its footpaths — that spread, thanks to an agency with the power
to do it. In 1929, the Great Depression crushed the
housing market. The bust dragged on for years. “A decline of 92% from 1928.” “But due to the stimulation of the national
housing act, 1935 presents a different picture.” Before 1934, mortgages required anywhere from
30 to 50% down, paid off as quickly as 5 years. The new Federal Housing Administration, or
FHA, insured mortgages for lenders, shrinking down-payments to 20% and extending the mortgage
to the now standard 30 years. All that made homebuying affordable and kicked
off a housing boom for purchasing and construction. “This tidal wave of new construction is
an important contribution to the economic rebuilding of America. Home ownership is the basis of a happy contented
family life.” I know, you’re probably like, how does any
of this connect to cul de sacs or suburban design. The thing is, is that the FHA wanted to ensure
that all these investments they were making were relatively safe investments. So to do that, they ranked and rated neighborhoods and homes,
and then they created guidelines for those ratings. And that is where things get complicated. Some FHA guidelines we’d see today as roughly
positive, like minimum property requirements. Think minimum standards for plumbing and foundation
of new houses, to guarantee they weren’t just junk. Mostly good. Except for the asbestos. Lots of asbestos. On the other end of the spectrum, the FHA
explicitly endorsed segregation as a measure of housing quality. I.E. segregation equals good neighborhood. This underwriting manual
puts it really clearly: “If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that
properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” So, these guidelines ran the gamut from mundane
to appalling. But developers would be taking a huge risk
to ignore the FHA, since these loans sold houses. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, the
FHA’s recommendations also included city planning. They started with car-friendly minimum street
widths and then expanded. In bulletins like “Planning Profitable Neighborhoods,”
the FHA laid out “ideal” suburban plans which were clearly labeled bad or good. They drew from models like Radburn, but focused
on the car and left out the pedestrians. Grid plans were definitively “bad.” Other plans — with curvilinear, or winding,
roads — were good. That included cul de sacs. This FHA-labeled “bad” plan shows why
curved streets really did make sense sometimes. The dotted lines show topography — like
hills. A grid plan would have required a ton of construction
to work around the landscape. The good plan — a curvilinear one — reduces
construction costs and is just nicer to look at. But these plans also insisted on a car-centered
vision of the neighborhood, with cul de sacs designed to slow down vehicles and limit through
traffic — while also guaranteeing that cars were necessary to get around. This bad plan would have worked well for public
transportation and city services, or a walking commute. But developers couldn’t risk bad plans. The “good” plan was the only safe option
if they wanted their houses to sell. Plans drafted the “bad way” were revised
to fit the FHA’s vision of the good life. That was a combination of financial coercion
and a quickly evolving sense of what a suburb “should be.” Listen, I played kickball in cul de sacs. They have a lot of advantages. They really do slow down through traffic,
they create a sense of community, they just have a lot of things going for them. This subdivision here doesn’t have much
to do with those outmoded FHA guidelines, but it does exist in a culture that those guidelines
shaped. The cul de sac — it crowded out a million
other good ideas. Ideas that could have had a different vision
of the suburbs. Ideas that weren’t all about - this. Today, some suburbs are changing the plan. There’s even a way to make existing cul
de sacs more walkable. But it’s a little strange that so many places
are still beholden to the old FHA’s vision of the one good life. This is a proposed black subdivision near
Atlanta, from a 1948 FHA plan. The plan included a “planting strip” to
serve as a visible boundary between white and black neighborhoods. In the same plan, the FHA plotted very elegant
curvilinear streets and cul de sacs. That’s it for this episode about the suburbs. Let’s read some comments from the last episode,
which was about Manhattan’s grid. “These people were smart. They knew it would be difficult to build out
a model of the city in Minecraft if it was made out of circles.” This is actually the philosophy they had! They wanted easy development. Very Minecrafty of them. “But cities like Boston or London have greater
charm and uniqueness but are a pain to navigate.” And this is the big debate at the crux of
the video — which one do you prefer, that uniqueness or navigability. That’s it for this episode, we hope to see
you in the next one, which actually features a lot of contributions from Vox’s YouTube
subscribers. "Davy! Davy Crockett." Hey.
Hello hello, what's going on? Do you have
the package? All right, all right, have you opened it yet? No should I do that now?
Wait one second. Dang it, I've been waiting like a week. Before we open the package, let's
introduce who we are. I'm Phil Edwards. Coleman Lowndes.
This is History Club, where 50% of us know what we're talking about. Where we roll ideas over in their grave. You could tell the other guy ain't want no damn catchphrase, lmao. Yeah I'm a bad liar. OK so
thank you first of all to Jose Padrino Megan Long and Martin from Vegas for
these catchphrases, we'll never speak of this again. Can I open this? I really wanna open this. You can't open it yet. I just want to explain what we do here.
On this show each, time one of us tells the story and the other person has no
idea what's gonna happen. And this time that's you, you're the person who has no
idea. And I just want to clarify based on the comments from last time - got a lot of
people saying, "Ah what a fake conversation all this." No, this is real. The idea that we could even try to act is actually a compliment, so thank you. Go ahead, it is time, open up the package. Okay. Oh it's a wig? Oh it's a raccoon hat!
Are we talking about David Crockett? Ding Ding Ding.
Yes!
Wow I'm keeping this by the way, this is a gift. I love it. 
Yeah. Thank you. 
I feel like that's definitely
like just like rat hair and asbestos. In a lot of ways he was kind of the
first celebrity politician, and the way that he became this legend and
politician is really complicated. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Fun! That is from the Disney movie and television series about Davy Crockett,
and he was like a baby boomer phenomenon in the 1950s. I want to show you one
picture too, this is a woman who was just making all the coonskin caps well over a
hundred years after he died. These shows and movies, they actually changed the
price of raccoon pelts like the one that lady is working on from 25 cents a pound
to $6 a pound. 
Wow. 
You know, in 1960 John Wayne played him in the movie "The Alamo" and he was actually a really big celebrity when he was alive. This play
here is reprinted and it's The Lion of the West. The play was so famous while
Davy was alive and in Congress that he even went on Broadway and saw Nimrod
Wildfire playing, basically, Davy Crockett in this show. You don't really think of
people gaining celebrity in that time period at all. That kind of opens up this
question of like how did he get there, how did that happen, how did he become
this big celebrity? Is that map on screen now? Yep. 
So Tennessee is literally the
edge of the map, people did not think of him as much as a southerner as they
thought of him as a westerner. He's way out there. I'm gonna read a little from
his autobiography. I'll just read you like a little quote: "At so advanced an
age, the age of 15 I did not know the letter of the book." He didn't know how to
read by the time he was 15. He tells a story in the book of how he ran away
from home from 12 to 15 just because it was like ... super fun. 
Yeah. It's these political tall tales interspersed with how awesome he is at
hunting bears. David Crockett is not just a hunter and frontiersman, he's this
political guy too. In 1825, he runs for the House of Representatives, but he
loses the first time. And then in 1827 he runs again and he wins. So bear hunting,
raccoon-killing David Crockett is in Congress. 
Nice. David's big issue is land
rights for the people who he represents. So a lot of the people that he
represents are squatters. They find a patch of land that nobody cares about,
they develop it, they maybe cut down some trees or they build a house, and David
wants to fight for them to have the right to either get that land, or
purchase it at a reasonable price. That's his big issue he's in the House of
Representatives but we're not at this, like, legend status yet, and that is where
my second prop comes in. Should I put my hat back on or wait? 
Yeah, sure put your hat back on. 
Great. 
Ok, now that you have your hat back on I will reveal prop
number 2, which is this guy. 
See I was thinking about Andrew Jackson this whole time, also Tennessee, celebrity politician,
folksy man-of-the-people, big personality. 
Yeah you're dead-on man,
you're dead on. 
I mean Jackson is like the Mario to David Crockett's Luigi. 
David would hate to hear that. Can you just tell me a little more about like what
you know about Andrew Jackson? The night he got elected, he threw a huge party at the White House, and everyone like notoriously just got absolutely wasted
and people were like falling out of windows and just like totally trashing
the place Jackson is from Middle Tennessee which
is a little bit richer so he's on a plantation and then Crockett — they're
from this frontier — they are poorer. You know I should mention that throughout
his life there were periods when David Crockett owned slaves too. 
And so David does end up in the House of Representatives
while Jackson's in the presidency. So David's big issue is that land bill and
Jackson never helps him on it and then they fall out at some point. A lot of
historians point to the Indian Removal Act, which is the Trail of Tears. So
that's the forced removal of Indian populations. David Crockett actually
publicly opposed that. Where's my prop? Okay. So, right here: paper money that Andrew Jackson is on. He hated paper money. He wanted people to be carrying around
gold and silver. The Second Bank of the United States issued the paper money and so they were gearing up to renew their charter. Jackson did anything that he
could to take out the bank, including using the veto power more aggressively
than anybody else. I'll show you a classically awful political cartoon. 
I was gonna ask if it has a ton of very tiny illegible scribbling. 
All those people on the hydra, they are part of the coalition that forms a party in the
1830s, which is the Whigs. And so Jackson starts making this his signature issue,
and that's where we come back to Davy Crockett. 
At this point he hates Andrew
Jackson, he's like, "Andrew Jackson is a tyrant,
he's a bad guy." Suddenly Andrew Jackson has these
enemies in the Whigs. So they are not the most obvious allies to David Crockett. At
the same time they are the enemies of his enemy, and so he becomes their friend. The whigs had this like superstar brand
to work with. 
I don't know if you remember that play that I brought up in
the beginning. Who does this look like to you? 
Davy Crockett. 
This is actually James Hackett, who is the actor who played Nimrod Wildfire in the play "The
Lion of the West." As far as we know like patient zero for the coonskin cap is
this actor playing David Crockett in a play. Crockett ends up making this
alliance. He ends up turning into a pawn in this central banking war over the
Second Bank of the United States. They might have wanted him to run for
president, possibly they wanted David Crockett to
just be an attack dog. I think he totally just got suckered, he got sweet-talked by
some guys.
That's what it sounds like to me.
They were like, here have some whiskey Dave.
Yeah Dave. 
Let me tell you what man, you could be President. AJ sucks, Dave. We can take him down
together my guy. 
I mean we don't know that, that's 
what I believe, I mean. 
I think that sounds right, I think that's the simplest
explanation. David's biography comes out in 1834. He
starts leaning into the myth. This is a portrait in 1834 of David Crockett that
he was able to kind of art direct. He's wearing a buckskin outfit. His hat is
meant to be a more man-of-the-people type hat. He even chose the types of dogs
because they were more homely hunting dogs rather than the kind of stately
dogs that were typically in portraits at the time. 
Totally. 
By all reports like the Whigs are the ones who push him to write his own biography and then after that
they go even further. They actually sponsor a book tour all around the Northeast to give speeches against Andrew Jackson. There are other
books that come out and they actually ghost write some of those books.
Davey's rising up with the Whigs in tandem and then they lose. Andrew Jackson wins and when the bank
gets squashed, David Crockett gets squashed too. David Crockett loses his
congressional seat. After that, he runs away. He goes out to Texas and just a year
after he's out of Congress, in 1836 he's dead at the Alamo, executed after being
captured. Oh good, you're wearing the cap.
Oh yeah,  no 100 percent. 
It's really itchy. In 1956, those Coonskin caps were selling
at 5,000 a day. 
Actually yeah. Why do you think he became so famous like a
century after he died? A lot of the pictures I'm gonna show in this video
come from Davy Crockett Almanacs. In the 1870s there was a play by a guy named
Frank Mayo that was all about Davy Crockett. The myth trickled along a
little bit longer, and then Walt Disney is trying to figure out themes for this
new park that he's building that's called Disneyland. He has different
worlds that he wants to include in it — he's got Tomorrowland and he also has
Frontierland and reportedly he just sends people to the archives and they
come back with Davy Crockett. Growing up, I don't really know much about Davy
Crockett other than the coonskin cap and he's like an American frontiersman and a
cartoonishly American icon. 
I think it's so interesting that we'll never know
what really motivated him, you know, whether it was such purity that made him
cross over the Whigs because he really believed that Andrew Jackson was doing
the wrong thing, or if he was just playing this game to try to get ahead
and then why was he trying to get ahead maybe it was to help his constituents, but
maybe it was still like have the sweet life of being president, and we just
don't know what's true about his heroism. There is more to David Crockett's legacy
than just a hat. 
In 1841, David Crockett's son went to Congress, he got elected, and
he went to Congress on behalf of his late father and a version of the land
bill finally got passed. So he did accomplish something in the legislature
in addition to making this permanent imprint on our culture. I was trying to
think of how we can involve the commenters on the next episode and I
have, I've made the decision that on the next episode where I am the person
researching and writing it, I'm gonna ask the people in the comments to choose the
next continent that I will pick a story from. That is my challenge to you, pick
the continent that I'll draw the next story from for my end of History Club. And the US feared that they were falling behind. One of our greatest and most
glaring deficiencies is the... America newsreels like this one stoked anxieties that the country was wasting its intellectual talents. So in 1958,  President Eisenhower signed a bill that let college students borrow up to $1,000 a year from the federal government. And ever since student loans have helped more and more people go to college. But as demand for higher education increased... ...the cost did, too. So students took out bigger loans each year. In the early 1970s the average loan was about $1,000 a year in today's dollars. Now it's around $7,000 a
year. And when you factor in interest... ... the average person with debt owes about $30,000 when they get their bachelor's degree. If we combine all the student
debt Americans currently owe... ... it adds up to 1.6 trillion dollars. This is a student debt crisis. But what if the government cancelled all of this debt. Sanders: Under the proposal that we introduced today, But 1.6 trillion dollars is a lot of debt to
cancel. So it's worth asking: Who exactly would this help? The millennial generation was told that the only way they would get the good jobs available
is if they received a college education. ... tens of thousands hundreds of thousands
and millions billions of dollars to our students and it is now crushing them. First let's look at exactly who owes this money. Each of these bubbles represents about a thousand households. The bigger the bubble, the more they owe. So first let's organize the debts by age. Okay we can clearly see that most of the 
debt is owed by people in their 20s and
30s. That includes some of these really huge debts held by relatively few people. And since younger people haven't had time to build wealth... It means the net worth of people with 
 student loans are on the lower end. So it seems like canceling student debt could  overwhelmingly help younger people who don't have money. But let's dig a little deeper. Let's try organizing the debts by education level. This way we can see what their student loans paid for. The biggest group are those with bachelor's degrees. But the most debt is held by people who
either have a masters or beyond, like a 
PhD or an MD. And they owe a lot of money. But when we organize these debts by household income... ... we can see that many of these people also earn a lot of money. In fact, the majority of debt is held by
people here in the middle class... ... and these people earn more money because they have an education. So let's add our findings to the list: It looks like the
main beneficiaries are younger people... ... who don't have a lot of money yet. But
they have the degrees and jobs to give them a promising future. Bernie Sanders wants to cancel student debt for everyone, including people over here who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Elizabeth Warren wants to cancel
all debt for these bubbles... ... households earning less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Above a hundred thousand, dollars the loan forgiveness phases out. Until we reach $250,000. So these people
wouldn't get any help. Here's the hard thing about canceling student debt. All these people had the opportunity to go to college. And many of them do okay because of it. But here is everyone else — — the white dots who didn't go to college,
many of whom never got the chance. Canceling the country student debt won't
help them at all. But for Sanders and Warren this is part of a larger belief about what America should be Right now, we have an economy in the 21st century that basically says you're gonna need some post high school training. A century
ago... when that was true about high school, we made high school free for everybody. People should not be punished for getting a higher education at a
competitive global economy. Seventy years ago, America was worried great students were being fenced out of college. People who could save the country. People who could help America get ahead. "They got the flag up now and you can see the stars and stripes." Now this conversation is about who is allowed to build a stable future. And the great debts we pay for a desperate chance at that dream. At first, this looks like a perfectly normal
map of New York City. You zoom in and there’s
Broadway, and Bowery. But then you realize that the map is...wrong. Streets run diagonally and the map adds land
beyond the edge of the island. That’s because this wasn’t a map. It was a plan that was rejected. And this one — the one with the perfect
grid we know — was basically what we ended up with. Today Manhattan has a grid so perfect that
the way the sun shines through it is a hashtag on Instagram. But these grids were not all about beautiful
design, or even making it easier to find your way around when you come up out of the subway. The real reason one of these plans made it
and the other didn’t? It says something about how — and why — all
cities develop the way they do. This is a utopia called Philadelphia. When William Penn designed Philadelphia in
1681, he wanted to make an ideal city. His intentions reflected American ideas and
his Quakerism. The lines on his grid weren’t just right
angles, they were morally right angles. He wanted to preserve a sense of a country
town using common areas and gardens. In 1733 in Savannah, Georgia, the Oglethorpe
Plan was influenced by the Enlightenment, with an emphasis on balance and limits on
the grid’s growth. That resulted in a grid too, but with an elegant
design including common squares where all could congregate, and
commons limiting the grid plan’s reach. Pierre L’enfant’s 1791 plan for Washington,
DC, was even more ambitious, and though the city deviated from his design, some flourishes
survived, like diagonal avenues sliced across the city, circles to vary the grid’s monotony,
and grand squares for each of the then-15 states. New York was never so organized. This 1767 map shows the chaotic curved streets
and irregularities that marked the nearly 150 years of European settlement. What little order that had developed was largely
private and subject to frequent change. This 1776 map shows a planned grid with a
large square. That square belonged to the Delancey estate
(Delaney was a typo). Because the prominent New York family supported
the British during the Revolutionary War, the city confiscated their land after the
war. This 1789 map shows what happened to their
planned square. It disappeared. New York could have been stuck with this chaos. But as the 1800s rolled around, it couldn’t
afford to be much longer. It’s tough to know New York’s exact population
before 1800, but the trend was clear - massive growth, more than doubling between 1770 and
1790. Outbreaks of yellow fever that spread up and
down the East Coast heightened the urgency to build a cleaner, more orderly city. And that is where this failed plan comes in
— in 1797 the city hired architect Joseph Mangin and surveyor Casimir Goerck to map
New York. The plan showed the city as it “should be,”
not as it was. They widened janky streets and even added
to the waterfront — they proposed something graceful, but the city needed something fast
— so their plan was rejected. In 1807, the state established a new commission
to create a workable plan, and it was huge. In this map, this color shows the settled
land, and this color shows the projected areas for the grid. In their official report, they said they’d
planned for “a greater population than is collected at any spot on this side of China.” The grid made sense to hold it. They had debated “whether they should confine
themselves to rectilinear and rectangular streets, or whether they should adopt some
of those supposed improvements by circles, ovals, and stars, which certainly embellish
a plan, whatever may be their effect as to convenience and utility.” Basically, did they want L’enfant’s Washington
or a uniform grid? They decided that, “right-angled houses
are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in. The effect of these plain and simple reflections
was decisive.” The grid did that without screwing up existing
property-lines. It was predictable for developers. This was a different type of design. The grid seems orderly to us, but this order
was in service of cheapness and efficiency. The city needed to build to keep going. What could be more New York than that? This plan isn’t for a city, but a park. Central Park. Landscape architect Frederick Olmsted designed
that park and many other public spaces. In a laundry list of criticisms of the New
York City grid, he said that, “Still other, and perhaps even graver, misfortunes to the
city...could have been avoided by a different arrangement of its streets.” The dream plan would have been more refined,
but this? It just wasn’t practical. City plans reflect values. And then they shape culture. In 1811, New York’s values were build, build,
build. So they adopted a plan to do it. Without development, you just have the sun. The buildings make it worth looking at. Hey that’s it for this episode about grids. I’m about to read some comments from the
previous episode of this Almanac: Road trip edition. It was all about the Vagabonds. “Edison was walking around calling Harvey
Firestone dude.” Uh yeah, he was, and also one thing I wasn’t
able to mention was that Edison was really hard of hearing at this time of his life,
so basically every time you wanted to talk to him you had to yell directly in his ear. “A 2019 version would probably be in a Tesla
with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet and Leonardo diCaprio.” I will see you next week, and I’m actually
going to be driving in this episode. So get ready and buckle up. [Music] this is all the light in the universe that we can see it's just a fraction of what's out there most frequencies of light are actually invisible to us the light we can see appears red at its lowest frequencies and violet at its highest this is called the visible spectrum and we see it because cells in our eyes called cones interpret light reflecting off of objects we have three different types of cones that are sensitive to long medium and short wavelengths of light which roughly correspond to red green and blue on the visible spectrum these are the primary colors of light every other color is some combination of these three and that combination is the guiding principle and colorizing black and white images this portrait was taken in 1911 I know you came here for space photos we're getting there I promise it's one of the first examples of color photography and it's actually three black-and-white photos composited together Russian chemist Serge apricot and Gorski took three identical shots of this man Alencon using filters for specific colors of light one allowed red light to pass through one allowed green and one allowed blue you can really see how effective this filter system is when you compare the red and blue exposures look how bright Khan's blue robe is in the photo on the right meaning more of that color light passed through the filter dyeing and combining the three negatives gives you this all right you get the idea so let's take it into space the Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting Earth since 1990 expanding human vision into deep space and giving us images like this one the thing is every Hubble image you see started out black and white that's because Hubble's main function is to measure the brightness of light reflecting off objects in space which is clearest in black and white the color is added later just like the portrait of Alencon except today scientists use computer programs like Photoshop let's use this photo of Saturn as an example filters separate light into long medium and short wavelengths this is called broadband filtering since it targets general ranges of light each of the three black and white images are then assigned a color based on their position on the visible spectrum the combined result is a true color image or what the object would look like if your eyes were as powerful as a telescope like Hubble okay now one with Jupiter see how combining the red and green brings in yellow and then adding blue bring cyan and magenta to fully represent the visible spectrum watch this animation two more times and I think you'll see it great now let's add another level of complexity seeing an object as it would appear to our eyes isn't the only way to use color scientists also use it to map out how different gases interact in the universe to form galaxies and nebulae Hubble can record very narrow bands of light coming from individual elements like oxygen and carbon and use color to track their presence in an image this is called narrowband filtering the most common application of narrowband filtering isolates light from hydrogen sulfur and oxygen three key building blocks of stars Hubble's most famous example of this is called the pillars of creation which captured huge towers of gas and dust forming new star systems but this isn't a true color image like the one of Saturn from before it's more of a colorized map hydrogen and sulfur are both seen naturally in red light and oxygen is more blue coloring these gases as we'd actually see them would produce red red and cyan and the pillars of creation would look more like this not as useful for visual analysis in order to get a full-color image and visually separate the sulfur from the hydrogen scientists assign the elements to red green and blue according to their place in the chromatic order basically that means that since oxygen has the highest frequency of the three it's assigned to blue and since hydrogen is red but a higher frequency than sulfur it gets green the result is a full-color image mapping out the process by which our own solar system might have formed [Music] the Hubble Space Telescope can record light outside of the visible spectrum - in the ultraviolet and near-infrared bands an infrared image of the pillars of creation for example looks very different the longer wavelengths penetrate the clouds of dust and gas that block out visible light frequencies revealing clusters of stars within it and beyond these images showing in visible light are colored the same way multiple filtered exposures are assigned a color based on their place in the chromatic order lowest frequencies get red middle get green highest get blue which could beg the question are the colors real yes and no the color represents real data and it's used to visualize the chemical makeup of an object or an area in space helping scientists see how gases interact thousands of light-years away giving us critical information about how stars and galaxies form over time so even if it isn't technically how our eyes would perceive these objects it's not made up either the color creates beautiful images but more importantly it shows us the invisible parts of our universe you Hollywood loves a good tornado. Like most things Hollywood it's all a little dramatic, but flying cows aside there is
something accurate about the setting. "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." You're not. But the tornado started there,
which makes sense. Tornadoes are far more common in the US than anywhere else. For perspective all of Europe records around 300 tornadoes per year whereas the US
records well over a thousand. If we move in a bit closer, you'll see that most of
the world's tornadoes are happening here, in an area called Tornado Alley —
a place that's absolutely perfect for twisters. Tornado Alley doesn't have any
"official" boundaries but it's typically considered this area that extends from
northern Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and South Dakota.
Some people extend it even further east. While most states in the US have
recorded at least one tornado, this area is really a hotbed and the main reason
for that is geography. The central part of the US is unique in the fact that there's this really large warm area of water just to the South and the wide
high range of mountains that extend a long way from north to south. Harold Brooks is the senior research scientist at the National Severe Storms
Laboratory. He used to chase tornadoes now he studies them from Norman, Oklahoma in the heart of Tornado Alley. A tornado requires a couple of special ingredients — ingredients that tornado alley is full of. First, we need a thunderstorm, which
we're going to make right now. Sort of ... To make a thunderstorm the things we need are warm moist air at low levels, cold dry air above that, and some mechanism to lift that warm moist air up. In Tornado Alley, lots of warm moist air flows into the plains from the Gulf of Mexico and cool dry air flows from over the Rocky
Mountains here in the West. Eventually a change in temperature or pressure will
arrive and lift that warm air up into the cool air forming an updraft. Once
these two meet, the moisture from the warm air begins to condense, forming clouds,
and a thunderstorm begins. Under normal conditions, rain would fall
from these clouds and cool the warm air breaking the storm, but in tornado alley
there's a strong air current flowing from west to east known as the jet
stream. This, paired with the cool mountain air, blows the rain away keeping
the air in the updraft warm and wet, which allows the storm to intensify and
brings us the step two: getting the storm to rotate. To make that happen we need
winds moving at different speeds and directions. As you can see Tornado Alley
has that in abundance. The air coming from the Gulf moves slowly into the
plains, meanwhile the jet stream from the mountains provides a steady stream of
high fast-moving air flowing east. Because the jet stream is flowing faster
and in a different direction it causes the Gulf when below to rotate like a
spinning football. When the spinning air gets pulled into the updraft it's tilted,
but continues to spin – causing the entire updraft to rotate. Storms like this are
known as "supercells" and they create prime conditions for tornadoes. They're
rare but most commonly occur in ... You guessed it – Tornado Alley. As the supercell grows the
spiraling updraft begins to stretch towards the ground and forcefully pulls
air into the cyclone. Air rushes in from the sides and a spinning dust cloud
forms below, which brings us to the final stage – getting the vertically spinning
air to the ground. Stage three is the friction in the tea cup. It's like using a spoon to swirl tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. The tea leaves rush into the
center and are pulled up through the middle of the tea cyclone. In a real
tornado everything around the cyclone is sucked up – air, dirt, debris, cows ...
As more and more air is pulled in tightly, pressure builds and the faster and
longer that tornado gets. It stretches closer to the ground until it eventually
meets with that dust cloud. And then, it touches down. We see most tornadoes in the central
part of the US because of the ingredients that are necessary for a
tornado come together there more often than any other place. The United States isn't the only place that gets tornadoes. Southeastern Brazil in northeastern
Argentina have some of the same ingredients Tornado Alley does: cool
mountain air coming over the Andes, and warm moist air coming from the Amazon.
But even still, the frequency of tornadoes is scores behind the US. While
the right conditions come together sometimes the geography isn't exactly
right. In South America the Andes aren't as wide as the Rockies and the Amazon isn't as good of a moisture source as the Gulf of Mexico is because it's land. It's sort of a Goldilocks problem And a delicate recipe. Most people will go
their entire lives without ever seeing a tornado and some would consider that
lucky. Others actively seek them out – and those that do start in Tornado Alley, where the geography is just right. Just knowing what makes a tornado isn't enough to anticipate when and where it'll happen, so if you want to know how
meteorologists try to predict these dangerous storms check out the
documentary tornado season on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a
subscription streaming service that offers thousands of documentaries and
nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers. You can get
unlimited access starting at $2.99 a month and because you're a Vox fan the
first 31 days are free if you sign up at CuriosityStream.com/Vox
and use the promo code Vox. CuriosityStream doesn't affect our
editorial but their support does make videos like this one possible, so go
check them out. everything we know about Carmelita Torres is from a few newspaper accounts in 1917 they called her an Auburn haired Amazon just 17 years old she led angry women in anti-american rioting and shut down the us-mexico border but hidden within her story is something much bigger than a single riot it's a story about American paranoia at the border about a toxic campaign of disinfection and discrimination and a u.s. practice that would go on to inspire Nazi scientists at the border between El Paso Texas and Ciudad Juarez Mexico thousands of people cross back and forth for work and school every day they line up in Juarez and often wait for hours to get through the u.s. checkpoint but the border didn't always look like this crossing this border used to be free and unrestricted people would come and go without a passport but after 1917 Juarez and El Paso became two separate communities it was a turbulent year at the border the Mexican Revolution was ongoing and the u.s. was about to enter a world war one all of a sudden you have the war hysteria created by World War one people here in El Paso that are deadly afraid that the Germans are going to attack from cdot Juarez the fear of invasion brought tensions to the border while across the u.s. a different movement was gaining strength the eugenics movement based on junk science aimed to create a genetically and morally superior population that meant stricter controls on immigration only allowing those deemed fit to enter on Ellis Island one of the busiest ports of entry at the time u.s. health officials were tasked with weeding out immigrants they thought were unfit or disease carriers and across the country that process coincided with the stereotyping of Mexicans as inferior and unclean dozens of film titles included the word greaser a derogatory term used to describe Mexicans this racist sentiment was strong at the us-mexico border El Paso's mayor Tom Lee had developed an obsession with cleanliness and it defined his political platform this obsession with not only racial purity but physical purity he was going to literally clean up El Paso from all these bad elements and by bad elements he often meant racially bad elements one of Maryland's biggest fears was a disease called typhus spread by lice so under the pretense of sanitary betterment work he helped lead a campaign to inspect every house and a predominantly Mexican neighborhood if the inspectors found lice occupants were forced to take vinegar and kerosene bags have their heads shaved and clothing burned hundreds of homes were eventually destroyed Lee also expanded the supposed health measures to include inmates in the El Paso jail they had to strip naked take a bath inside a tub full of kerosene and on one occasion it seems somebody laid a match 27 prisoners majority Mexican or Mexican American burned to death in the fire that the newspaper is called the jail Holocaust but despite the tragic fire merrily pushed forward with even more aggressive plans he sent a telegram a Western Union telegram to Rupert blue who was the Surgeon General up in Washington DC and basically well let me just read in hundreds dirty lousy destitute Mexicans arriving at our Paso daily will undoubtedly and spread typhus unless a quarantine this place at once the government didn't agree to a full quarantine because evidence suggested that typhus wasn't a major threat in the area but instead they funded a new disinfection plant at the border in 1916 in this facility every immigrant considered a second-class citizen had to strip naked their clothes were sent to a large steam dryer and then fumigated with toxic pesticides inside the gas room an inspector would check each person's body including private parts for lice if they found lice immigrants would have to shave their head and body hair and bathe in a mix of kerosene and vinegar some even had their eyelids checked for things like pinkeye and many had to complete puzzles or simple IQ tests to prove that they were fit for entry after this process they'd receive a ticket as proof that they were disinfected but they would need to go through this every eight days in order to re-enter the u.s. so many people didn't speak about it they didn't talk about this humiliating process like they kind of internalized it is that psychology of shame the toxic baths and dehumanizing inspections at the border set the stage for a revolt led by the 17-year old maid from Juarez who defied the order to bathe Carmelita Torres was I've compared her to the grosser parts of the quarter in the morning of January 28th 1917 there's this electric trolley full of mostly women that are crossing every day she convinces the majority of not all the women in that trolley to say no and to refuse they start a spontaneous protest there are accounts that in addition to the humiliating delousing procedures for women there was also sexual humiliation there were rumors there you know when they entered the plant and then they were told to strip officers were taking their photos and then posting them in bars so I can't even imagine the kind of feeling like the feelings of violation and the feelings of you know outrage she was called an instigator a ringleader you know but she was just a young woman that was just sick of the injustice of the humiliation that other woman had gone through what started with just 200 protesters that morning slowly grew to a crowd of 2,000 reporter said the scene reminded one of bees swarming the hands of the feminine mob would claw at the tops of the passing cars when the American officers tried to disperse the crowd they were met with bottles rocks and insults protesters even laid down on the tracks in front of the trolley cars to create a blockade they were joined by men in what's called the bath riots and they shut down this border for two days and then all you hear is that the ringleaders are arrested and a few of the men are publicly executed as for Carmelita Torres it appears like she was thrown in prison and as historians we don't know what happened to her afterwards we've lost every trace the fumigations didn't stop after the riots in 1917 alone over a hundred thousand Mexicans were deloused at the border that same year an immigration law made border procedures even more rigid immigrants at all points of entry needed to have a passport take a literacy test and many would have to pay an $8 head tax and later that year the US Public Health Service laid down instructions for border agents about who should be kept out of the country imbeciles idiots feeble-minded person's physical defectives persons afflicted with Llosa more dangerous contagious diseases discriminatory policies at the border resembled horrific events elsewhere in the world in fact while researching this David stumbled upon a detail the fumigation of Mexican immigrants wasn't just reminiscent of Nazi Germany it was directly linked to it it's not so much that the United States was copying Nazi Germany it's the opposite Nazi Germany was copying the United States he found that in the 1920s the u.s. started using zyklon-b an extremely poisonous acid gas to fumigate clothing at the border and in 1937 in a German pest science journal a scientist called for the use of Zyklon B and not C disinfection chambers he included two photos of El Paso's delousing chambers as an example of how effective zyklon-b had been at the u.s. border to kill unwanted pests the same scientist pushed to use it to disinfect concentration camps and eventually it was used in concentrated doses to murder millions of people people rightly so say you can't compare what happened in Nazi Germany with other parts of the world and that's true in terms of cyclone B it was used on the border not to intentionally kill Mexican border crosses but the history of something like the Holocaust doesn't take place in a vacuum a few decades after the bath riots Mexico started sending men to work on u.s. farms and railroads as part of a new labor agreement called the bracero program and through the program the border dis infections continued [Music] here in this facility some migrants were sprayed with insecticides this time it was a substance called DDT a toxic pesticide which decades later would be banned for agricultural use by most developed countries repeated contact must be avoided they were sprayed in the face they were sprayed in their private parts and you know they were stripped naked and inspected and sometimes they're inspected like you would inspect livestock first-hand accounts from immigrants in the program reveal how little they knew about the fumigations so they talked about how humiliating it was about why do they think we're so dirty they'll call it the white powder I don't know if they necessarily were told were springing you with DDT but they'll call it at all of all the powder white powder that is helping to win the war against disease many of the employees who worked in the facilities weren't given many details either when I first started my role was a clerk I got the job mainly because I spoke Spanish there was there was a Hut in the area when they came in from the Mexican side that they were going going there and they had some sort of it was for lice they said it was you know to disinfect for lice and we never gave it much thought but we did think sort of look what the Nazis used to do you know to the Jews I had heard during lunch breaks that they would spray him and and sometimes there were comments from the men themselves that they would put a host to them I don't know if they knew what they were doing to them I certainly didn't know didn't it was far fetched from the world we lived in it wasn't until the 1960s when the bracero program ended that health authorities acknowledged the chemicals were dangerous and the baths and fumigations were finally discontinued you want you want history to be about progress about everybody realizes how powerful it is and then it stops unfortunately you know that that's how it works in movies but this was the border right and the border a lot of things never become resolved they just keep on repeating themselves decades after the disinfection campaign ended the language the strategy and the dehumanizing politics of fear and exclusion still linger it's a health issue too because we don't know what people have coming in here coming in with diseases such as smallpox and leprosy and TB that are going to affect our people in the United States just a fact you're gonna see disease outbreak apprehensions in the El Paso area specifically have spiked more than 600 percent they are essentially being warehoused as many as 300 children in a cell without adequate food water and sanitation the United States is running concentration camps on our southern border I don't like anything compared to the Holocaust but why can't you compare it his to his practices to what led up to the Holocaust do we have to wait for the actual Holocaust before we speak out at the border between Juarez and El Paso the same space where the Baths riots once happened hundreds of migrants have been huddled in makeshift detention centers they've been waiting to find out if the US government deems them fit for entry [Music] as always there's so much information that we couldn't fit in this video but I wanted to leave you guys with one last bit of information from David Bravo's book so in 1918 the southern border region was hit with its worst epidemic in history and it wasn't typhus it was the Spanish flu the best evidence we have suggests it was actually from Kansas brought to the border by American soldiers just wanted to leave you guys that tidbit thanks for watching and I can't wait to share more episodes of missing chapter soon It’s impossible to know, but this is probably
Henry Ford’s head. And this? This is definitely Henry Ford washing up by
a stream. Starting in 1915, these four men camped and
road tripped together, regularly: Lemme show you. You’ve got John Burroughs — imagine somebody
as famous as Bill Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but for nature. There’s tire magnate Harvey Firestone, Henry
Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, and Thomas Edison, America’s most famous inventor. This group’s adventures took two American
classics and brought them to a whole new level: The road trip and the publicity stunt, too. You could get lost in John Burroughs beard. Burroughs is the least likely of this road
trip group, but he’s kind of the linchpin. He was conservation elite. Here’s his beard and Teddy Roosevelt at
Yellowstone in 1903. He knew the environmental implications of
industry. When the Model T came out in 1908, he called
it a “demon on wheels.” So Henry Ford sent him one. They became friends. This is John Burroughs inside his demon on
wheels. Ford had long known Edison as his mentor,
and Firestone was a natural fourth from the tire connection. The group started roadtripping together and
they called themselves “The Vagabonds.” Hijinks ensued. Yep. Henry Ford just climbed a tree. After driving over primitive roads, they communed
with nature, following a typical routine: Burroughs went for long walks, Firestone read,
Edison napped, and Henry Ford, well, he chopped wood. He really hated wood. Along their routes, they met other inventors
and business titans who occasionally tagged along. According to one essay by a fellow road-tripper,
Thomas Edison also called Firestone and his son Harvey Jr. “dudes” for an entire trip. Now the meaning at the time is a little bit
different, because “dude” might have been a city person, or a well-dressed person. But let’s not lose site of the fact that
Thomas Edison was walking around calling Harvey Firestone “dude” when he wanted to get
his attention. They took a lot of trips. This 1918 route was typical of their regular
journeys, and the group of “great men” earned headlines everywhere they went. On this trip, they traveled throughout Virginia,
hit North Carolina, and zipped back up to Maryland. Their fun road trips were a phenomenon, like
here, when Asheville, North Carolina papers covered their arrival, visit, and departure. It was called a “trip with friends.” But it wasn’t just a normal road trip. Here’s a secret. When the most powerful men in the country
go on a road trip, they do it a little differently than everybody else. Honestly, this was glamping. They brought along a film crew with big bulky
cameras, they had chefs, and five-star service the entire time. This table? It spins. Besides delicious meals cooked in the open
air, these trips served a purpose. Newspapers reported on the Vagabonds as if
they actually were vagabonds. They said the trip showed “a fellowship
with the common man and a governing concern for the little man’s interests and welfare.” At the same time they were wrangling camera
crews to film how normal they were, they were also managing their business interests. That early 1916 trip included a meetup with
Edward N. Hurley, a businessman and the chair of the United States Shipping Board - an emergency
Naval Agency established as the United States came closer to entering World War I. In Pennsylvania, the power players conferred,
as one observer described it, to “divide up the work ahead in manufacturing.” World War One breaks out? Road trip!
Hurley came on future trips with the vagabonds as well. Ford also gobbled up land to explore steam
power and agricultural possibilities, and the group met with agriculturalists and botanists. In 1918, while on the road, Ford had been
drafted into a Senate campaign as well, which he narrowly lost. We’ll never know everything they talked
about. According to Burroughs, Ford shared his anti-semitic
conspiracy theories over late night chats. The vagabonds were camping, but they were
also making deals and running a PR campaign, highlighting each of the men's professional
interests and making them seem fun and accessible. This is Henry Ford’s toast. And that’s the thing they served up for
the public. John Burroughs died in 1921. He was 83. After his death, the trips continued. That new guy, chopping wood? It’s President Warren G. Harding. Still, even by the standards of the vagabonds,
the publicity and entourage grew too big. The road trips stopped in 1924. But the vagabonds had a lasting impact on
the American notion of the road trip and how powerful people network, even when they’re
taking naps. So was it a publicity stunt or a real road
trip with buddies? Maybe it was both. Or some third thing altogether. This is a nearly hundred year-old campfire. John Burroughs wrote an essay about the trip
and why he thought they took it. Maybe it was even true:
“We grow weary of our luxuries and conveniences. We react against our complex civilization,
and long to get back for a time to first principles. We cheerfully endure wet, cold, smoke, mosquitoes,
black flies, and sleepless nights, just to touch naked reality once more.” Hey what’s up? That was the first episode of Almanac: Road
Trip Edition, and now we’re gonna be reading some comments and we’re gonna reveal the
name of this guy, which you all helped choose in the comments to the trailer. Reading comments on the internet — it’s
not a new thing — but I’m particularly inspired by Potato Jet. He is a camera and tech vlogger and he’s
just generally hilarious and really smart. So please go check him out — he always does
this at the end of his videos and I love it, so we’re gonna try it here. I gave everybody the challenge of naming this
wavy, floaty guy: top comment by far, Chris Saunders says, “he has a name, it’s wacky
waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man.” If you don’t know, this is a Family Guy
reference. “Wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube
man.” Very funny, but I asked you all to name him,
not the writers for Family Guy, and you know I just would have called Seth McFarlane if
we needed that. Second most popular comment is actually about
Route 66. It’s from Sebastian Elytron and he says,
“That’s what the world-famous Route 66 looks like? I thought it was more glamorous.” In that trailer, I’m actually sitting on
Route 66 the whole time, so if you notice me, like, looking up a lot, it’s because
I’m worried I’m gonna be run over by a car. So there are really desolate sections like
that and then there are also unpaved sections which I also show in that trailer. You’ll learn the whole history and everything
about Route 66 in Episode four of this road trip edition. “The name of your friend: Lab Flute of Knowledge.” I have no idea what that means but thumbs
up to that. Hane Grace Yagel: “His name should be Al
Maniac, he seems like a wild one.” Alright, without further adieu let’s scroll
up to the winner. This is pretty much the second most popular
answer, it’s from ZmbrSys. “Mack! Rhymes with almanac. Lots of Mack trucks on the road.” It makes sense, it’s fun, and it’s easy
to fit it on screen, so gavel, Mack, that’s it. There’s a desk down here by the way, but
the gavel was my fist, and it hurts. Alright, so that’s it. In the next episode, I will be answering any
questions or concerns that you have about the vagabonds from this video, so drop those
below, let me know, and until then, happy glamping. Yep. I said the word glamping again. [Deep, sad sigh.] If you look closely at this pack of
riders in the Tour de France, you'll see some of the best cyclists in the world.
They're here in the back. They're keeping up but also resting while their teammates in the front do most of the work. It's a technique called drafting
and it's what helps them survive the three-week race around France. But
drafting only really makes a difference on these parts of the route: the long
flat and hilly stages. Eventually these riders reach stages where they won't be
able to rely on others. They have to rely on their own strength and endurance to
win the race. That happens here on the climbs. They're the most brutal and
exciting parts of the race and they're what makes the Tour de France the most
famous bike ride in the world... The Tour de France began as a desperate
ploy to sell more copies of the sports newspaper, L'Auto. The paper was
struggling, so 1903 its editor, Henri Desgranges organized a 19 day, 2,400
kilometer bike race around the country. It went on to become such a success that
L'Auto made it an annual event. Year after year they added new routes to make the
tour more challenging and also more interesting for people to follow. By 1908,
L'Auto's sales had more than doubled. Then in 1910, one of Desgranges' writers,
Alphonse Steines, suggested adding a new twist to the route: the Tourmalet. It was a
brutal 19 kilometer uphill climb ascending 1400 meters to the
summit. To see if this was even possible Steines jumped in his car to make the
climb. He drove up, but his car got stuck in the snow at the top,
he suffered from hypothermia and nearly died. But nonetheless he sent a telegram
saying: Tourmalet crossed. Very good road. perfectly passable. So the Tourmalet made its debut in the 1910 Tour. French cyclist Octave Lapize was the first to
make the climb successfully. But he had to walk up some parts and famously
called officials assassins when he reached the summit. But he went on to win the whole tour and his statue was placed at the top of the Tourmalet. Since then,
climbs became a staple of the Tour de France. This year the route is made up of
21 stages over 23 days. It features 30 major climbs; seven of them are in the
tour's most difficult category. Including the Tourmalet, which is part of
the event for the 86th time. More than any other climb in the Tour's history.
These climbs are where the tour is ultimately won or lost. These are the
long, flat, and hilly stages that are usually about 200 kilometers long.
Here cyclists ride together in a formation, called a peloton. It allows
cyclists to save energy by sitting behind another rider or drafting. At high
speeds, riders use most of their energy to pedal against wind resistance. But
when a rider stays close behind another, they're sheltered from much of that. So,
pedaling becomes much easier and they can keep up with the front riders. The
way to measure this is to look at how much power a cyclist generates. Here at
the front of the peloton, a Tour de France rider will generate at least 300
watts of power. I jumped on a bike to see what that feels like and just two
kilometers holding 300 watts was really really hard. By comparison when a rider
is behind the lead in the peloton, they only need to generate about 240 watts to
move at the same speed. Holding 240 watts for two kilometers felt remarkably
easier. So even though these two might finish a 200 kilometer flat stage at the
same time, one is going to be way less tired than the other. That's why you see
some of the tour's best riders here in the back. They're drafting up their
teammates whose job it is to do the hard work now so that the team's best cyclist
is rested for the most difficult part; the mountains. Where they'll have to be
on their own. When the peloton starts pedaling uphill,
it slows down. At this stage the race is less about fighting wind resistance and
more about gravity, which affects all riders the same way in the peloton. So,
now every rider in the front and the back needs to generate an extraordinary
amount of power to keep up pace. In 2010 for instance, Danish cyclist Chris Anker
Sorensen made it to the front of the pack on the Tourmalet climb. "Look at the
face on Chris Anker Sorenesen. Dishing out the pain at the front end. As the lead, he
dictated the pace of the whole group. This chart shows his power output on the
final climb. He averaged 415 watts for more than 11 minutes. "...face of Chris Anker Sorensen now, really dishing out the pain. And around here he peaked at an
incredible 590 watts. "magnificent riding by Chris Anker Sorenson, but how long can he keep this up? "Now look at American cyclist Chris Horner. Even though he was several
positions behind Sorenson, his power output was almost the same. The faster
Sorenson climbed, the harder it was for the rest of the peloton to keep up. And
so the formation started to break up as weaker riders fell behind. This is the
moment in the race when the tour's best riders switch from drafting to relying
on their own strength to get ahead. Andy Schleck has finally attacked and Alberto Contador has gone with him. The race is breaking up behind them like two of the best riders here: Luxembourgian Andy Schleck and Spaniard Alberto Contador, who were coasting in the back of the peloton during the long flat
stages. But here they are halfway up the Tourmalet, breaking away for the win. each likely generating well over 400 watts for the final eight kilometers. Contador
in the yellow jersey, was the overall Tour de France leader but only by eight
seconds. In second place was Schleck, who would try and lose him on this climb. "Andy Schleck is riding like a man possessed" It was neck-and-neck to the very top... It's Schleck on the right. Contador! Schleck wins! Contador takes second! Schleck edged Contador by a hair at the top of the Tourmalet to win the stage. But since he didn't lose him,
Contador kept his overall lead and went on to win the Tour de France. This kind
of drama is only possible in the mountains and this year's route makes
climbs particularly important. This year's Tour is being called the highest in history because of how many climbs there are over the course of three weeks.
Just one day features seven climbs. Even after more than two weeks in the race,
riders climb to 2,770 meters above sea level where the thin air makes climbing even harder. That's what makes the Tour
de France the most grueling and prestigious race in this sport. The
winner isn't simply the strongest rider but the one who endures the most pain
and ultimately has what it takes to conquer the mountains. The Ninth Circuit is a disaster. Nobody can believe these decisions we’re
getting from the Ninth Circuit, it’s a disgrace. The Ninth Circuit — everybody knows it — it's
totally out of control. When Trump took office, most of the Ninth
Circuit’s judges had been appointed by Democratic presidents. And they overruled some of Trump’s
most provocative executive orders: The travel ban, emergency funding for a border wall,
they all stopped here. It's very hard to win at the Ninth Circuit,
if not impossible. But that’s changing. Trump has already added seven new judges to
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and by the end of his first term there’s a good
chance the Ninth Circuit could look very different. We usually think of the three branches of
government as the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court. But it’s here, in the federal courts, where
President Trump is building his longest-lasting legacy. You know, when I got in, we had over 100 federal
judges that weren’t appointed. It was like a big, beautiful present to all of us. Federal courts hear lawsuits involving the
Constitution or laws made by Congress. Say a city pays a female employee less than
her male counterpart — that violates the Equal Pay Act, a federal law. So that case would start here, where all federal
lawsuits start, in a District Court. There’s at least one in every state. For example, California is home to 61 judges
who serve on the state’s four District Courts. If the case is appealed, it moves up to the
aptly named Court of Appeals. It’s made up of 13 Circuit Courts, and they each hear
cases from different parts of the country. So a case that started in California will
move up to the Ninth Circuit Court, because they hear cases from the western part of the
US. If it’s appealed again, it’ll go to the
Supreme Court. But they only hear less 100 cases a year.
The Circuit Courts? They hear 50,000. For most federal cases, these judges give
the final, precedent-setting ruling. They’re kind of a big deal. And every single judge here is nominated by
the president and serves for life. Now here’s a chart showing how many Circuit
Court judges a president confirmed, by what time in their presidency. There’s Ronald
Reagan’s. And this is George H. W. Bush’s. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. All pretty
consistent, right? Now here’s Barack Obama’s. Look how it totally flatlines in his last
two years. That’s because all federal judges are nominated
by the president but then have to be confirmed by a vote in the Senate. And after the 2014 election, Republicans gained
control in the Senate and Mitch McConnell stopped holding votes on nearly all of Obama’s
court picks. From the Supreme Court all the way down
to the District Courts. So when Trump took office, not only did he
have a ton of vacant seats to fill, he had a Republican-controlled Senate to help fill
them. Quickly. In fact, Trump has appointed more Circuit
Court judges in the first half of his first term than any other modern president. But his judges are different. This is where all the judges nominated by
each president fall on a scale between liberal and conservative, determined by their past
political donations. Here’s the median score for those judges. You can see that appointees on both sides
have moved further to the left and right of their party’s medians. But Trump’s median
pick is more conservative than Obama’s was liberal. And more conservative than his Republican
predecessors’. And if you look at the ideological distribution
of judges appointed by previous presidents, you can see tails at either end. Both Republican
and Democratic presidents appointed some judges that leaned the other way. But Trump? Not really. Traditionally, presidents need to work with
the Senate. If a judgeship opens up in, say, Texas, the
nominee would need the approval of the Texas senators. No approval, no vote. It makes presidents compromise with the opposite
party and prevents them from stacking the courts with super-partisan judges. That’s why these past presidents had to
have a spectrum of judges. But when Trump nominated two men for seats
on the Ninth Circuit — the court that keeps overturning Trump’s executive orders — the
two Democratic senators from California opposed them both, calling them “far outside the
judicial mainstream.” One because of some controversial writings
in college and the other because of his prior work as a defense lawyer, including for oil
companies where he argued climate change isn’t real. Normally this would mean they would never
get a vote, let alone a hearing. But Republicans aren’t honoring this century-old
informal rule, and judges are being confirmed without the support of either home-state senator.
Including those two on the Ninth. Trump has now appointed seven new judges to
the Ninth Circuit: one because Obama’s nominee wasn’t allowed a vote and four without the
approval of home-state senators. He’s expected to appoint at least two more judges before
his first term is over. This is what the Circuit Courts looked like
when Trump became president at the beginning of 2017. And here’s how the courts look halfway through
2019. It’s expected that every president gets
to have an impact on the federal courts. That’s normal. But Trump only got to fill these seats because
of McConnell’s refusal to hold a vote on Obama’s picks. None of these Trump picks had the support
of both senators from their home state. And as a group, Trump’s picks are more conservative
than his Republican predecessors’. In 2018, Mitch McConnell laid out his goals
for the federal judiciary in a radio interview. And his plan is working. We're going on a road trip. You may have seen
other Vox Almanac episodes about the Concorde — the snoot would droop — or bowling or medieval snails. We're trying something new. We're gonna be doing five
episodes on a theme. I've been spending a lot of time looking at how roads shape
our history and our culture and just about everything that we do. I found a
lot of stories. It's taken me to the suburbs, to New Mexico — Cow crossing the street. That cow just crossed Route 66 — To New York City in the 1800s and a lot of other
places. So I hope you'll join us for this season of Almanac. It's all about road
trips and I have one request of you: Can you help me name this friend that I
found on the road? I'll be looking for a good name in the
comments and you'll see it in a future episode of this series. Alright, thanks for watching and have a safe trip. Drive through India and you are sure to see this. These are India's trucks. Most goods in India are transported by truck. And as India's economy has grown trucks have
become central to how the country does business. But since they were introduced
to India in the 1940s, these trucks have become more than just commercial
transportation, they've become a canvas. This is truck art. We are all about these colors, about these
symbols, about these fun elements about our superstitions, about the evil eye, all
that stuff, and these things still matter to us. Truck art is an Indian art form. It's
a sort of mash up of visual motifs from Indian culture, language, beliefs, and
history. This assortment of color schemes typefaces and symbols is on display all
over India's highways making long drives through India a sort of artistic experience. They're also very
personal. An expression of individual tastes, values, and beliefs of those who
spend thousands of hours behind the wheel. I went to India and drove all over
the country looking for these trucks. I wanted to understand what's behind this
peculiar art form, what motivates these drivers and artists to turn something as
functional and mundane as freight trucks into a spectacle of culture and beauty. This truck. It first came to British
India during World War II. The original brand of the truck was Bedford and they
were originally designed to carry military cargo, but after the British
left they stuck around. This same basic design inspired many of the commercial trucks that are on the road today in India. There are now millions of these
trucks on Indian roads. For the millions of drivers who spend weeks away from
home, the truck is their workspace, their home, their place of worship as they
traverse India's vast distances. You know that a truck guy is actually
spending a phenomenal amount of time on the road, so for him this has to be his
comfort zone, his kind of space where he is comfortable and he can probably just feel at peace. There's a whole industry dedicated to
this art form. Painters, many from the northern state of
Punjab, have become experts at the style. Punjab is one of the main centers of truck art. They have a distinctive style that is hard for others to replicate. I think the calligraphy that they use, the way that they write, what they write, 
and the fact that it has come so beautifully to become a 3d expression.
I've had a bunch of students try to replicate it. It's not the easiest thing
to do. Over the years truck art has naturally
developed a set of unspoken style rules. First, you have color. Truck art almost always features bright, saturated colors. You rarely see darks or neutrals. They'll be a red on a blue, there will be a yellow, that is a constant and if you look at the color palette that you usually use,
you'll hardly find any black except for shadow and fall over, you know highlighting certain areas, so they seem like they're elevated. Next, you've got the typeface or the font, which for prominent words is always put in English and rendered in this blocky 3d style, always hand-painted. Most of the messages you see on the back of these trucks are messages of safety. The most common counsel on the back of trucks admonishes drivers to honk their horn. For truckers whose massive rigs have high blind spots, it's a good safety practice to honk your horn if you plan to pass a truck on the road but the car horn is also just how people communicate on the road here. On the roads and in the cities, the car horn is a part of the landscape. Yeah, they really take this horn mantra
really seriously here. Another important message you see is use dipper at night. The dipper is kind of the low beam headlights and because these trucks are
so up high the high beam headlights go straight into their eyes and make it
very dangerous. And finally you've got the iconography, the symbols that adorn these vehicles. Every truck is totally unique. A lot of the markings are
functional, so you'll have the number of the truck, you'll have different
identifiers for the business, but then the driver gets a say in the way it
looks and so because of that you get this medley of different styles. Some are
religious some are national, but a lot of these are symbols that the drivers just
think look cool. There's this eagle I keep seeing on all of the trucks and
have asked a dozen of these truck drivers whose trucks on this eagle and
they can't really tell me what it means or what it's for they just know that the
other guy had it and it looks really cool. And so it's good to remember that
while a lot of this has deep symbolism, some of it is just a cool trend and
people are expressing themselves with their truck in whatever way they want.
Some experts think that this eagle might represent speed and precision, but the
trucker's in India's northern state of Punjab think of this as a falcon
alluding to their religious history, A major theme here is religious symbolism. These
truck drivers will put religious symbols of different gods or gurus or important
figures and there's a reason behind this. Truck driving is not a safe profession.
The truck drivers here are telling me that sometimes they drive 24 hours straight
without stopping. This is dangerous stuff and these religious symbols can give
them a sense of peace and safety while they're away from their families and on
the road for days or weeks on end. They also have the cow and a calf,
which is about fertility, it's about prosperity. These are symbols that will be there on almost all of them. A well decorated
truck can mean a sense of pride for these drivers. You see, it's just like a
bride. They really put lots of flowers, balloons, the works, all of it.
Truck art can also represent a sense of community and common culture for these
workers, who are constantly moving around. Truck art is an amalgam of different
influences, old and new, religious and secular, meaningful and trendy. It's an
unlikely fusion of economics and art, business and aesthetic. Trucks are the
core of India's economy, but they're also where some of the most beautiful art
lives and moves. It’s July 12, 1979 and the Chicago White
Sox are set to play the Detroit Tigers in the second game of a double header. The baseball park had a capacity of 44,000
people. But that night, 55,000 spectators showed up. This event is remembered not because of the
game, but because of what happened right before it. It was Disco demolition night. The main attraction, the Disco Demolition, spearheaded by morning radio man Steve Dahl and his anti-disco army called the Insane Coho Lips. Ooh. That felt good. Steve Dahl, a disco-hating radio DJ thought it would be hilarious to blow up hundreds of disco records in center field. Much to the dismay of those that approved
this stunt, about 7,000 people bum rushed the field, inciting a riot. Many of the fans are scattering on the field now, where they fight the police. The baseball game never happened. This moment went down in history
as the night disco died. But it didn’t. Within just a few years Chicago’s youngest
music producers and DJs would completely reinvent dance music by playing those disco records
over hard hitting electronic drum machines. In the city that disco died, it was reborn
as House music, and within a decade it would travel the globe. Frankie Knuckles, one of the Godfathers of
House, called it “Disco’s revenge.” In 1989 James Wiltshire was working in a record
store in Manchester, England. One Saturday someone came in and just
want I want the record that goes “Wowwwwww.” The song they wanted to hear was “Ride on
TIme” by Black Box. Obviously in this clubber’s mind, it was
the most important record that they'd ever heard. This happened at the tail end of an underground drug-induced movement in the UK, dubbed the “Second Summer of Love.” Some very clever people suddenly realized
that they could haul a massive sound system out into a field and get 20,000 paying punters
to come and see it. In 1989 “Ride on Time” went from being
an underground house hit to spending six weeks at number one on the pop charts. By the end of the year it was the best selling
single in the UK. “Ride On Time” represents some of the
genre’s biggest influences. From the vocals and piano, to the drums, each
element of the song helps tell the story of how House music came to be. "Ride on Time," Black Box. Top of the Pop's 2, BBC 2. Starting first song, now. This is Black Box performing “Ride on Time”
on Top of the Pops, England’s iconic music show. Despite what this performance might have you
believe, this person isn’t actually singing. She’s lip syncing to one of the most widely sampled disco records in house, Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” Loleatta Holloway was a gospel singer turned
disco diva from Chicago. Her song “Love Sensation” was released
just a few months after Disco demolition. While the track itself fared pretty well,
it’s the acapella, released on the 12-inch single, that Chicago DJs remixed over and
over. They didn’t just do it in clubs - they did
it on the radio. WBMX is a Chicago radio station that was home
to a legendary group of DJs called the Hot Mix 5. "The Hot Mix 5 on WBMX. Chicago's number one dance party. Here's another hot mix on 102.7 FM. These DJs played a pivotal role in popularizing
house music. From Ralphi Rosario To Farley “Jackmaster” Funk. Through the 1980s the Hot Mix 5 went from remixing
disco records live on the air to playing original house music tracks that Chicago DJs produced. It’s estimated that a million people in Chicago
tuned into their show every Saturday night. Fans would record these programs on cassettes
and share them around the world. That process is literally how I’m able to
share this recording of Farley Keith remixing Love Sensation live in 1984. There's always been this association with
big diva vocals and house music. So it's of no surprise to me that
people went for some of the most powerful vocal samples that had
come from the disco era and started chopping them out and piecing them back together. By some estimates “Love sensation” was
sampled nearly 300 times - while DJs in Chicago likely started that trend, it was “Ride
on Time” that made Loleatta’s voice a house music staple. Even the most diehard instrumental techno
loving vocal hating snobs that I know within that scene still love that vocal. What you’re listening to is the kick drum
of the Roland TR-909, if there’s a defining instrument in house music it’s this drum
machine. It's a big chunky beige box with proper 80s
livery all over it. You've got 16 buttons at the bottom, a series
of controls for all of the actual different drum sounds. The 909 was invented in 1983 by Ikutaro Kakehashi,
the founder of Roland corporation. This man gave us, probably by accident, machines
that caused nothing but a revolution. The 909, or the 9 as lovers of it would like
to call it, is the successor to the 808. You probably know the 808 as the drum machine
that powers hip-hop. Kakehashi invented that too. Both used analog synthesis to generate sound,
but the 909 was unique in that its cymbals and hi-hats were samples of real drums. There's something and especially the open
hi hat that just whips a dance floor into a frenzy straight away. I mean the kick is one thing, but it's really
that certain “woooosh” and you're like “Yep that's that's a track.” As much as the 909 is really iconic today, back in
1984 it was deemed a commercial failure. Only 10,000 units were actually made. When the producers were wanting to create
this new type of electronic music in Chicago, most of them were broke so they just went to
the pawn shops to see what was available, and the one thing that was nearly always available
was the poor 909 because it just hadn’t sold very well. But it just so happened to have that particular
perfect storm of the massive kick drum. The belting clap, the snare drum that you
can do fantastic little rolls on. And those sloshy four or five cymbals and
hi hats. That punchy sound of the 909 quickly permeated
through Chicago and even Detroit, where bedroom producers were taking inspiration from house
music and developing a genre called techno. You can think of Larry Heard, "Can you feel it." You can think of Derrick May’s "Strings of Life." You can hear it in “Jack Your Body” - the first Chicago house music song to reach number one in the UK. All the way to early house hits made in the UK like
Adamski’s “Killer”. If you take away to 909 from that, a lot of
that thumping drive is gone. It’s no surprise then, that in the opening
few bars of Ride on Time - you can hear that 909 kick drum and those crunchy hi hats. And then the pianos started, and then it got
interesting. In the late 1980s different house subgenres
began to form. There was acid house, developed from the song
Acid Trax by Chicago producer Phuture. Its iconic sound came from the squelching
bassline of a TB-303 synthesizer. There was deep-house which leaned heavily
on soulful vocal samples and spacious synthesizers. And then there was Italo-house, which more
than any other offshoot, relied on the upbeat rhythm of a digital piano. “Ride on Time” is a classic Italo-house
track. So much so, there’s a solo piano version
of the song on the 12 -inch single. The Italians really knew how to do this mixture of great big pianos — and you add
that kind of oversung diva element into that and it became a staple. In 1986, three years before “Ride on Time”
- Chicago’s Marshall Jefferson released “Move Your Body” dubbed the house music
Anthem. It’s this song that helped establish how
future house tracks would incorporate piano riffs. The way pianos are used in house music is
very much almost as a powerful rhythmic guitar. Listen to the piano in “Ride on Time”
next to “Move Your Body” and you’ll immediately hear the similarities in rhythm. The musical exchange between Italy and Chicago
might seem like a one way street. Italo-house and “Ride on Time” in particular
would not have existed without the innovations of Chicago artists. And that was met with a lot of controversy
- Loleatta Holloway’s vocal in “Ride on Time” wasn’t properly cleared when the
song was released - nor was she initially credited for it. But if we rewind back to Chicago in the early
1980s right after Disco Demolition, an unlikely genre of music was taking off: Italo-disco. Italian disco had a massive effect on the
early house producers. Because they effectively had this going before house music had really come to the fore and was the new sound in clubs. Just like House, the sound of italo-disco
is driven by drum machines and synthesizers. And it’s this genre that forms the link
between Loleatta Holoway’s disco and house. Take a listen to this WBMX radio show again: That was that Loleatta Holloway acapella you
heard earlier, transitioning seamlessly into “Shame (you were the big sensation)” an
italo-disco record. Go through any Chicago House DJ set in the
1980s and you’ll see them littered with italo-disco records, and that influenced what
those DJs would go on to produce. Take the italo-disco song “Dirty Talk”
- released in 1982. That opening bassline and arpeggiated synth
is mirrored in a lot of early house tracks including the 1986 classic “Your Love”
by Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle. By 1990 House music was a global music genre,
artists from the UK to Australia were filling dance floors with a 909 kick drum. That was almost inevitable. From its inception in Chicago, House music
was always a cross cultural phenomenon. What happened when “Ride On Time” came
forward is that you had the kind of perfect storm of a great big monster club sound with
a vocal that, A, a load of people already knew, and B, sounded powerful. You could almost put it as an actual pivotal
point in house music and say from that point it all just blew wide open. These 50 cards represent every person who
took the SAT college entrance exam in 2017. In America, this score -- this ranking of
students -- is hugely important. Elite schools like Yale or Harvard select
the large majority of their students from this pile --
the top 1 percent of test takers. And it's not just super elite schools. A public flagship state school, like the University
of Georgia, admits most of its students from this pile. And even a less selective school, like Wichita
State University, admits most of its students from this pile. All three of these ranges are higher than
the average score. This why people pay lots of money to train
for the test with companies like Princeton Review, Kaplan, and PrepScholar. A slightly higher score can make a big difference. That’s also why some really rich people
got caught paying lots of money to help their kids cheat on the test. "Dozens of coaches, actors, and CEOs..." "Felicity Huffman accused of paying $15,000 to have someone either take the exam for their child, or to correct their child's answers afterward.." Your place in this ranking can have a huge
impact on what opportunities come your way. So it’s worth asking... what exactly does the SAT measure? What does this score actually say about you? To answer this question, we have to start
with this man: Carl Brigham. He was a young psychologist during World War
I who was obsessed with measuring human
intelligence. He would devise puzzles for soldiers that
supposedly measured their intelligence by testing whether they could decode symbols, draw missing parts of a picture, or even complete maze. He concluded that white people of English,
Scottish, and Dutch descent were smartest. At the very bottom were black people and recent
immigrants from Poland and Italy. He ignored the fact that some test takers
didn't speak English. So answering a question like "How many are
60 guns and 5 guns" could be difficult. He ignored how some people were barred from
receiving an adequate education. Which meant some puzzles, like this one, could
be quite challenging. He just assumed the scores reflected the innate
intelligence of different races. And because of this, he wrote that black people
were so much less intelligent that America should worry about "racial admixture" which
would "incorporate the negro into our racial stock" -- and "taint" the population. After World War I, Brigham wrote a new test
to measure the intelligence of prospective college students. He included word and number puzzles, like: Pick the three words below that are most related: Chops, liver, round, fore-quarter, rump, sirloin. Yeah, I don't know, either. Anyway, Brigham's exam was called the Scholastic
Aptitude Test. The SAT. The SAT wasn't very popular at first. In 1941, just 10,000 people took the exam. That was just 1 percent of high school seniors. Most colleges just didn't need it. They didn't have that many applicants, partially
because less than 10 percent of people Americans went to college. So they could spend more time with each application. And many elite schools administered their
own entrance exams. Then, World War II ended. Millions of troops returned to the US. And there was a new benefit white veterans
could take advantage of: the GI Bill — which helped them pay for college. And college enrollment skyrocketed. All of a sudden, colleges had way more applications
to sort through. And they needed a tool to help them figure
out who to accept. So they started requiring the SAT, which gave
them some numerical way to rank applicants. Meanwhile, the College Board recognized that
Americans didn't love the idea of an "intelligence test" determining their future. So they started saying their exam measured
college preparedness. And every few years, they proved it -- by
saying their exam, along with high school grades, were a good predictor of how well
students do in college. They still do this. For example, here's that analysis from this
year. It shows that high school GPA alone gets us
about halfway to predicting college GPA. But the College Board sold schools on this
next part: If we consider SAT scores along with high school GPA, this prediction can
get a bit better. And colleges bought into this rebranding,
and started asking for SAT scores. In 1941, just 10,000 students took the SAT. By 1950, 80,000 students took the exam. By 1960, 800,000 students took the SAT. By the next decade, it rose to a million.. Now, more than 2 million students take the
exam each year. And as the competition for college ramped
up, the applications got stronger. In 1982, the average high school graduate
completed Algebra or maybe Algebra 2. By 2004, the average student was closer to
Trigonometry. Also, more students had extracurriculars on
their applications. In 1992, just 19 percent of high school students
were leaders in an extracurricular activity. Just 12 years later, in 2004, that number
doubled. As the competition got stiffer, students started
applying to way more schools. In 1967, about 40 percent of students applied
to more than two schools. Now, it's more than 80 percent of students. And a decent chunk of them apply to more than
6 schools. All of this overwhelmed admissions offices. So they started to rely even more on the SATs. In 1993, 46 percent of schools gave "considerable
importance" to SAT scores. By 2005, it was 59 percent. But looming over the increasing weight of
this number, was this other thing the SAT seemed to measure. Wealth. It's apparent in the data. Here's a chart of the average SAT scores by
family income. Students whose families earn less than $20,000
score around 890 -- way below average. And as we move up the income brackets, students
score higher and higher. The wealthiest students -- whose parents earn
more than $200,000 -- score an average of 1150. Now, defenders of the SAT have often said
there's nothing wrong with the test itself. They say this score is just reflecting the
inequality in America. And that's not wrong. We can follow that logic up the chain. We can start with America's highly unequal
neighborhoods. Schools in poor neighborhoods are more likely
to be under-resourced. And students from more affluent neighborhoods
and schools tend to score higher on the SAT. In turn, students with better SAT scores go
to more selective colleges. And this system is a cycle. When Stanford researcher Raj Chetty and his
colleagues tracked people born in the early-1980s, he found that these people -- who went to
the most selective colleges -- -- had parents who earned, on average, $171,000
a year. The parents of these people, who went to selective
public colleges, earned $87,000. And those who attended community colleges
had parents who earned $67,000 a year. And through this system, that wealth was passed
on. Chetty and his colleagues found that students
who graduated from these elite colleges earned, on average, $82,500 a year by their early-30s. Those who went to a selective public college
earned half that -- $41,600. And those who went to a community college
were at about $30,000. But Chetty and his colleagues found that,
if low-income student gets the opportunity to attend a more selective school, they're able to graduate -- and earn just as much money as their classmates. In 2016, the College Board redesigned the
SAT. The old test tried to trip up test-takers
-- for example, asking about the meaning of obscure words like "acrimonious." The new one tries to test what you've learned
in school -- to try to make it less of an intelligence test. For example, it'll show you a sentence like:
The jungle has an intense clustering of bugs. And then ask: What does "intense" most nearly mean? Emotional
Concentrated Brilliant
Determined Still, your SAT score measures how well you'll
do in college, to a degree. It also measures where you grew up -- and
what opportunities you had. But it’s also a tool that keeps this inequality
machine going. College Board president David Coleman sees
this happening. He recently wrote:
"We need a far humbler view of the SAT. They should never be more than one factor
in an admissions decision. Low scores should never be a veto on a student’s
life." The SAT was created in the pursuit of precision. An effort to measure what we're capable of -- to predict what we can do. What we might do. What we've forgotten is that, often, that
can't be untangled from where we've been, what we've been through, and what we’ve been given. I'm here in one of the weirdest pieces
of land I've ever been flying my drone over the Indian Ocean. There's a battle
going on out here. It's not a battle for land or for people. This is a battle
about fish. One fishermen was killed and five others injured after Sri Lankan
Navy opened fire near an island off the Tamil Nadu coast. On one side you have
Sri Lankan fishermen in these coastal villages, where fishing is the economic
lifeblood. And on the other side you have their counterparts Indian fishermen in
these villages along the southeastern coast of India. On a clear day you can see across this strait, it's only 20 kilometers or so.
And out here on the water there's an invisible line that marks where India's
territorial waters end and where Sri Lanka's begin. Underneath this border
there's treasure — not gold, but seafood. The communities on either side of this
strait used to be friends, but now they're locked in conflict. One side has
bigger, faster boats. The other side has a well-armed Navy equipped with war boats
that they're using to patrol this border. This is the fish war between India and Sri Lanka. This is Rama's bridge. You look across, you
can see Sri Lanka. One legend goes that the Hindu god Rama hired an army of
monkey men to build a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, so that he could go in and
rescue his wife from a demon king. Geology suggests that there indeed may
have been a walkable land bridge here, until a few thousand years ago when it
was eroded back into the sea, erasing any land border between modern-day India and
Sri Lanka. The only border that exists now between India and Sri Lanka is in
the water. It was decided on in the '70s and it looks like this. This border made
it officially illegal for fishermen from either side to cross over into each
other's waters to fish and it was the start of what would eventually turn into
a violent conflict. "The injured fishermen have been admitted to a hospital in
Rameswaram." In the 1960s India, was facing a financial crisis and in
response, the government was looking for new ways to stimulate the economy. So
they turned to seafood exports like prawns. The Indian government gave
subsidies to fishermen to buy new boats so that they could harvest a huge number
of prawns, which would feed demand all over the world. So Indian fishermen in
this town of Rameswaram cashed in on the opportunity, dramatically ramping up
their fishing activities with these new boat is called trawlers which are able
to drop nets with heavy weights on them to rake the bottom of the seabed in
search for prawns and other seafood. It's an incredibly effective method for
harvesting fish and shrimp, but these heavy metal weights rip up the seabed,
damaging the sea floor's ecosystem and this method if uncontrolled depletes
fish supplies very quickly. The Indian fishermen quickly adopted these new
boats and soon there were thousands of these trawlers. Armed with their new boats and tied to
international demand, the Indian fishermen aggressively fished these
waters, tearing up the seafloor and depleting much of their fisheries. By the
late 1970s, the Indian fishermen needed new waters to fish. This water border had
recently been agreed upon by the two countries, but even still the Indian
fishermen began moving across it illegally fishing in Sri Lankan waters.
The massive amount of fishing contributed to an explosion in seafood
exports from India. While India was cashing in on seafood products from Sri
Lankan waters, Sri Lanka was descending into war. By the early 1980s, armed rebels
were taking over large swaths of land in the north of the country, trying to
create a new country for the oppressed Tamil people, the ethnic minority group
that the residents of these fishing villages identify with. "And every day
they take an oath pledging to sacrifice their mind body and soul for Tamil Eelam,
a separate state for a separate people." It descended into a violent, long-lasting
civil war that would result in over 150,000 deaths and
these fishing villages in Sri Lanka were caught right in the middle of it. As a security precaution during the war
the Sri Lankan Navy started setting up security zones in much of the water,
banning most fishing activities and prohibiting boats with motors. "Beaches once crammed with foreign tourists are now patrolled by the
watchful military." All of this was done in an attempt to weaken the Tamil rebels,
but the result was a severe gutting of the economies here, which are totally
reliant on fish. The catch in these districts declined immensely during the
war and not only did this affect the economies, but this fishing ban left Sri
Lankan waters open for Indian trawlers to fish freely. The violent civil war
and the fishing ban in Sri Lanka dragged on through the '90s and into the early
2000's, allowing the Indian fishermen to illegally fish these waters with little
repercussion. But then everything changed. "Tamil Tiger fighters retreat from their
last stand. For now the fighting seems to be over."
The war ended and the security zones in the water were lifted. Sri Lankans could
fish freely again, breathing new life into an economy that runs on fish. But as
these fishermen went out on their boats what they found were fleets of Indian
trawlers in their waters, tearing up the sea floor, illegally digging for seafood
treasure. And these Sri Lankan fishermen coming out of a fishing ban and a 25 year
civil war, had much smaller weaker boats. They could never compete. This is where things really start to heat up. Sri Lankan Navy, which had previously been
fighting a war, now turned its efforts towards cracking down on Indian
fishermen that were poaching in Sri Lankan waters. The fish wars had begun. "Naval Command arrested four Indian fishing poachers in Sri Lanka territorial waters." "There are mass protests against the killing of this fisherman." The Sri Lankan Navy came down hard, routinely arresting Indian fishermen and detaining
them, sometimes for years. Many of the fishermen that I talked to while I was
in India routinely go poaching across the border and many of them said that
they had been caught by the Navy. When the Navy detains the fishermen, they
also take their boats. They eventually released the fishermen, but the boats
remain impounded in navy bases around the country. Across the strait, this
poaching by Indian fishermen has had deep ramifications in these villages. Experts estimate that the direct
monetary loss to Sri Lankan fishermen due to Indian poaching is anywhere from
16 to 56 million US dollars per year. This conflict over seafood has turned two
Tamil communities, once allies, into enemies. The Indian government has done little to
resolve this conflict. They occasionally step in to free a group of detained
fishermen, but none of their actions have led to a concrete solution to the
conflict. The Indian government, both national and
local, seems to be turning a blind eye to these fishermen's practice of crossing
the border. That's because these communities are already neglected and
underserved by their faraway government. Stopping a practice that has bolstered
their economy for years would create more disdain and frustration among the
people. So not much is likely to change anytime
soon and as the Navy and the fishermen continue to spar in these waters, the
real losers in this situation continue to be these communities over here. The people here were barred from fishing during the
decades-long civil war and now they have no chance of competing with their Indian
neighbors, who have spent decades destroying their sea beds and stealing
their fish. This was one of the most interesting places I had ever been, going to Sri Lanka and the southern coast of India. Got to see these really interesting places, but also seeing how important fish are to these economies. But India and Sri Lanka aren't the only places that are affected by the increasing demand for fish. There are a lot of different places around the world who are dealing with similar issues. And if you want to learn more about this issue and how it plays out in other countries, you should check out a documentary series called "Super Fish" from CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service that allows you to browse a huge repository of documentaries and nonfiction films from some of the world's best filmmakers. You can get unlimited access to CuriosityStream starting at $2.99 a month, but because you're a Borders fan, you can go to curiositystream.com/borders and enter the promo code "borders" and you'll get the first 31 days for free. CuriosityStream does not influence our editorial process or the videos we make, but they do support us and they do make videos like this possible, so thank you CuriosityStream. And stay tuned for more Borders. “Sir Duke” is one of Stevie Wonder’s
most iconic songs. It’s an ode to the jazz great, Duke Ellington
and in 1977 it was a number one hit. Sir Duke is an R&B song through and through,
but if you dig into the music theory that defines it you’ll hear just how much jazz
actually inspired it. To understand the inner workings of this song,
I had to find someone who can break it down piece by piece.
Hi. My name is Job Collier. I'm Stevie Wonder's greatest fan and I’m here to explain the
magic of Stevie Wonder’s iconic tune, “Sir Duke." So let’s take a look at the song’s structure. There’s a verse, pre-chorus or bridge, chorus,
and a special instrumental section after the chorus which I’m very excited to get into. Before we do all that, let’s talk about
the drums in the intro. One of the intriguing things about this particular
song is Stevie's use of jazz inspired language and his melding of that with pop inspired
language The intro for example is based on this swing
feel and the drums go… Listen to Duke Ellington’s “Take the A
Train” and you’ll hear that same swung hi-hat pattern - a staple of big band jazz. The verse however is a more familiar back beat. This backbeat, with the snare on the 2 and
4 was a Motown staple, the record label that Stevie Wonder was signed to at just 11 years
old. And it’s this backbeat that leads us right into the first verse. Music is a world within itself.
With a language we all understand. Sir Duke, I suppose, is an extrapolation of
a very simple pop structure. So for example these might be four chords that
a pop song might be based around. Chord one, B major in this case. Chord six, A flat minor. Chord four, E major and chord five
F#Major. This specific progression is known as the
doo-wop chord progression because it was so ubiquitous in pop music during 1950s and early
1960s. In the movie Grease there’s actually a song
dedicated to it. What’s that playing on the radio? Why do I start swaying to and fro? Stevie Wonder, he's seeking to experiment
with jazz techniques and jazz harmonic movements within this structure and so what’s he’s
interested in primarily is this idea of chromaticism. Chromaticism, in simple terms, is when you
play notes that are right next to each other in a row. That's the chromatic scale rather than the major scale which sounds like
this. So what Stevie does in this song, which
is really cool, super interesting, and at the time quite unique, was, you've got chord one. You’ve got chord six - so far so good
sounds like a familiar pop song. And then you’ve got the surprising twist
a G7 chord. Which is sort of like a flat six dominant chord. And that's what leads you to chord five. And so he's replaced this chord four with this strange flat six dominant chord. And if you look at the bass movement - A flat,
G, F sharp - that is chromatic and that's what interested Stevie and that's what inspires
me and has inspired many other people about this particular song. Though it's traditional in structure, there are these weird moments when things feel jazzy. There’s just one little instance of chromaticism
in the verse, but in the bridge - where Stevie sings off a list of his Jazz heroes — including
Duke Ellington — his experiments with chromaticism really shine through. There's really only one chord in
this entire section. Now this chord just hops down 3 and hops up
3. This is a crystalline example of chromatic
movement, a chord moves up and down in half steps or semitones. If I were to play the same section diatonically,
which means that all the notes are taken from the major scale, it would sound a bit like
this. Now that is not quite as spicy, and certainly
not as chromatic as this version. This chromatic bridge leads us right into
the chorus of the song, and it’s here that we should probably talk about harmony. Something that has always thrilled me as a
lover of harmony is this idea that you can take a note that feels familiar in one key
or under one chord and that note can stay the same. But underneath it, the chord can change into
something quite bizarre and unfamiliar but it can feel coherent. For example, here’s the melody of the chorus
sung by Stevie Wonder. So all of those notes belong to B major and
Stevie could very easily just have B major under the whole chorus. Now that is very good but it's not quite Sir
Duke. Stevie made the harmony more interesting by calling
out two specific notes from the melody: A sharp and G sharp. Stevie does this very clever thing where
he takes these two notes, A sharp and G sharp. Now, these two notes do belong to B major. They also belong to F minor. And that's such a warm, surprising sound. Here's the melody of the chorus with that F minor added in. What he's done is take this very basic melody, and contextualize it harmonically in a way that keeps us interested, yet feels familiar to us. Wedged right between the chorus and verse
is Sir Duke’s most overt ode to jazz, the “shout chorus.” This is usually the moment towards the end
of a song where the horn section plays joyfully in unison. Now, to understand what that sounds like, here’s
the shout chorus in Duke Ellington’s “Cotton Tail." The cool thing about Sir Duke’s Shout Chorus
is that it’s not just an ode to jazz, it’s an ode to how universal music can be. Cultures around the world have developed their
own unique musical scales that all sound vastly different from each other. But there’s one scale that is found in nearly
every musical tradition across the globe - the Pentatonic scale. It’s just five notes, and it’s what “Sir
Duke” is built upon. So if we begin to make melodies using the
pentatonic scale, it’s extremely difficult to go wrong. Because any note in the scale sounds great. It's kind of like a miracle scale. Now Stevie Wonder approaches the pentatonic
scale in what has become one of the most iconic uses of the scale of all time in this beautiful
shout chorus to “Sir Duke” which goes something like this. So every note from that melody comes from
the B pentatonic scale. This is the B pentatonic scale. B. C sharp. D sharp. F sharp. And G sharp. Of course Stevie Wonder had to adjust it just
a little bit. There is one interesting juicy note that is
added to achieve a sense of jazzines, a sense of blues, and a sense of chromaticism, and
that is the very sneaky D natural here. So the D kind of bridges the gap between the D sharp and the C sharp. Now, those jazzers amongst you may recognize this scale as what's known as the Blues scale. And the blues scale occurs when you add this
kind of spicy note into a pentatonic scale. And what you end up with is something that
feels very reassuring in its simplicity and yet has the element of spice that introduces
the sort of chromaticism that makes jazz, jazz. Without it it would sound rather anodyne. But when we add this in, it's that jazziness has entered
the fray and that's what makes it very memorable to me and also very harmonically interesting. Sir Duke might be Stevie Wonder’s most overt
ode to jazz and the musicians that shaped his musical education, but listen closely
and you’ll hear those influences across his entire discography. Stevie Wonder is one of the greatest musicians
walking the face of the earth, nobody could possibly argue with that sentiment. I think the reason why is that he's capable
of disguising some extremely complex music information within structures that feel familiar
that feel likable, that feel danceable, and singable. But if you if you zoom into what's going on
harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically there's some pretty heavy stuff going on and
that is something that thrills me to no end. The world's biggest democracy just had
an election. The world’s biggest democratic election It’s a marathon election A mammoth undertaking It’s the world’s biggest exercise in democracy In India, voters picked its central government for the next five years. An eighth of the world's population was eligible to vote in this election. This year, 2019, there are
900 million eligible voters in India making this the largest Democratic exercise in the history of humanity. But this isn't a
video about Indian politics, because before India's people can even cast their vote, the election needs to come to them Polling stations need to be set up
wherever people live. And in one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, that isn't an easy task. India has to reach voters in coastal cities in
the south, in the rural regions of the west, and jungles to the east and
everywhere in between. And what's more, they want every Indian
citizen to be within 2 km of a voting station. That's only about 25 city blocks no matter where you are in the country. It's an incredibly ambitious
goal and yet, somehow they're able to do it. This is the biggest election in the
world and I wanted to know how does it work. Every election a team of government
officials and security forces, get on a boat in the east of India to take off
towards this island. They travel about 100 km to get here, all to
securely deliver these Electronic Voting Machines or EVMS, the instrument that
logs India's votes, the heart of this elaborate election process. India has 2.3 million voting machines
for its 900 million voters. So getting these machines close to every voter is a big logistical undertaking. That's why India doesn't have a single Election Day, instead, it's closer to an election month with multiple phases that last weeks. This process takes more than 
11 million election officials and security forces, who move from polling station to polling station to polling station from densely populated cities to the rural areas where the majority of Indians live. Once on the island with the EVMs, officials pile on to bike carts and head towards the polling station. Once they arrive, they begin setting
everything up for the vote . On Election Day, voters line up, cast their vote, and get
their fingers inked to prevent double voting. This is where the process ends
for the voters, but for the election officials this is just the beginning. Driving a boat out to a remote island is just one of many ways that officials reach every voter. India's vast and diverse terrain requires transportation methods of all kinds, like in the jungles
of this northern state where elephants transport voting machines to reach a
remote town or in the Himalayas where officials hike for hours to bring EVMS
for election day. Helicopters, trains, they even use camels. But what makes India's elections so impressive isn't just how they reach everyone in such a big country, that's just half the battle. It's also the ways they try to include voters of all backgrounds into the process, a challenge that has been a part of India's elections since the very beginning. India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects and when India became an independent nation, less than a quarter of the population could read and write. The newly formed Election Commission of India created a range of symbols to correspond to each political party, like an elephant, a lotus, a hand or even an alarm clock so that from the beginning all people regardless of literacy level and language could vote with confidence. Since 1947,  the literacy
rate has increased significantly, but it's still only 75 percent, so these
symbols are still useful to many when casting a vote. But this is a massive sprawling operation and over the years it's run
into some pretty serious problems like allegations of election rigging and
problems with a practice called booth capture, where gangs actually take over
polling stations and tamper with the elections. It's partly because of these problems that the Commission introduced these voting machines in the 1990s. It also increased security around the elections. These efforts to include all voters and protect elections seem to be working. In 2019, India saw the highest
voter turnout yet and for the first time women voted just as much as men. India's elections are only getting bigger and more complicated. India has one of the fastest growing populations in the world. and in 2020, young people will make up
more than a third of the country. This is the biggest election in the
world that takes millions of officials fanning out across a massive country to
help hundreds of millions vote. Every part of this, the symbols, the elephants, the
boats, the machines shows how hard it is to make sure that everyone in a country this large can participate and all without going more than two kilometers
from home. If you want to learn more about the evolution of democracy in South Asia, you should check out the Bhutan episode of Asia's Monarchies. It's a series of documentaries on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service that offers thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers for $2.99 a month. But because you are Borders fan, you can get the first 31 days for free if you go to curiositystream.com/borders. And enter the promo code "Borders." CuriosityStream is the exclusive sponsor of this season of Borders and while they don't influence our editorial process, or what the videos are about, they support us and help make videos like this possible. So thank you CuriosityStream. You should definitely go check them out and stay tuned for more Borders. This is the Shatt al-Arab. The river that winds through the city of Basra,
here, in Southern Iraq. It was once one of the most important waterways
in the Middle East: Here lies the great port of Basra, at the
cross-roads of the world’s trade. It fed dozens of canals throughout Basra and earned the city the nickname, The Venice of
the Middle East. It made Basra the symbol of Iraq’s growth
and prosperity. Today it's the second largest city with over
4 million people. And with these oil fields and the only deep-water
port in the country, it's also the economic center. About 80% of Iraq's revenue comes from here. But this is what Basra’s canals look like
today. In the summer of 2018, they were choked with
debris, raw sewage and rotting garbage that was poisoning the city’s residents. About 100,000 people were hospitalized because
of water-related illnesses. Basra now represents a crisis that's been
looming over Iraq for decades: The country is running
out of water. That's because it neither controls the flow of its rivers, nor has the infrastructure to clean them. It's standing in the way of Iraq's recovery. "The waters of the two great rivers, Tigris and the Euphrates, are indeed the waters of life." Almost all of Iraq's water comes from two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Which run down most of the country then converge here to form the Shatt al-Arab before emptying
into the Persian Gulf. Along the way these rivers provide drinking
water to these cities and irrigate farms and marshlands here. The rest of the country is mostly desert. A vast network of infrastructure is used to
generate power, distribute the water, and clean it. That includes Dams, canals, and water treatment
facilities. But this system is delicate. Anything that affects the amount of water
flowing down these rivers or the infrastructure around it can have massive consequences. Over the last few decades, both have taken a hit. Iraq relies heavily on these rivers, but it
doesn’t control them. Both rivers begin in Turkey. About 71% of Iraq’s water comes from there,
while Syria and Iran add another 10% as the rivers move south. Which means 81% of Iraq’s water is controlled
by its neighbors. And they’ve been keeping more and more of it for
themselves. Since the 1970s, Turkey has built at least
20 dams on the Euphrates and the tributaries that feed it, including the Ataturk dam - the
5th largest in the world - to provide electricity and water to its growing population. Syria has built several dams too. Both countries are holding the river hostage. Today, only a quarter of the Euphrates' normal
flow reaches Iraq. The same thing is happening on the Tigris. Turkey is building a number of dams here,
including the Ilisu dam. When it was close to completion in 2018, it
blocked so much water that residents all the way down in Baghdad could cross the Tigris
by foot. To make matters worse, many of the tributaries
that feed the Tigris begin in Iran. And there, they’ve built 600 hundred dams
in the last 30 years and dozens are under construction. All of this means that Iraq, the furthest
country downstream, isn't getting enough water. There’s less to drink, irrigate crops and
generate electricity. It also means the rivers are more contaminated. At a normal flow, water can dilute a lot of
the toxins and sewage that get dumped into the river. But when levels are low, these pollutants become
more potent. Plus, the weaker flow allows salt water to
move upstream from the Persian gulf - which kills fish and crops. All of this puts more pressure on Iraq’s
infrastructure to distribute and clean the water. The problem is - much of this infrastructure
has been destroyed - and Iraq hasn’t been able to rebuild it. There have been 3 devastating wars in Iraq
in the last three decades Just 2 hours ago, allied airforces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The Gulf war began when Iraq’s ruler,
Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait - a US ally. The US led a coalition to retaliate with airstrikes. "We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential, destroy his chemical weapons facilities. Much of Saddam’s
artillery and tanks will be destroyed. But they also bombed Iraq’s infrastructure. Including 4 hydro-electric dams. Which in turn, disabled the water treatment
facilities that relied on electricity. A sewage treatment plant in Baghdad was also
bombed - causing sewage to flow into the Tigris - poisoning the water supply for Southern
Iraq. This UN report said the war reduced [Iraq]
to the “pre-industrial age” and that the country would face a “imminent catastrophe”. Saddam survived the war, but the UN imposed strict sanctions, freezing Iraq’s bank
accounts and restricting what it could import. Including construction supplies and water
purification chemicals. Then Saddam made things even worse. In 1993, he was fighting rebels in these marshlands. Despite the post-war water crisis he weaponized
the water here by diverting the rivers away from the marshes. Over the years, this whole area was drained
- and turned into a desert. Thousands reportedly died and at least 100,000
people were forced to leave. By the early 2000s, Iraq’s water supply
continued to shrink while infrastructure failed. Thousands of Iraqi civilians had died from
water-related diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Then in 2003, the US returned with a full
invasion of Iraq. This time they quickly toppled Saddam’s
regime and installed a “temporary” Iraqi government. But the invasion further damaged the country’s
infrastructure. 40% of Iraq didn’t have access to clean
water. And 70% of the sewage systems needed repair
a few months after the invasion. So the US and Iraqi governments announced
a huge reconstruction plan to rebuild infrastructure. They planned to bring safe water to about
23 million people and triple Iraq’s water treatment capacity. But by 2006 - the program only delivered safe
drinking water to over a third of the people it intended to. And Iraq’s water treatment capacity was
still an eighth of the program’s goal. Millions of dollars were lost because of mismanagement
and corruption. Reconstruction was a failure. "Meanwhile in Iraq tonight, more deadly violence in what appears to be a concerted effort to spark a new civil war there. "Inching toward a new civil war, many fear." "Falling apart. The government is collapsing, the violence is starting. "We're seeing all the symptoms of the civil war in Iraq starting up again." By 2011, Iraq was still unstable when the
US pulled out its remaining troops - creating a dangerous power vacuum. Which was quickly filled by a violent extremist
group called the Islamic State. Their tactics deepened Iraq’s water crisis further. They advanced down the two rivers capturing
strategic points, taking control of Iraq’s water supply, and turning it into a weapon. Like this dam in Ramadi: "Controlling the dam, cutting the water, flow, cut supply to the pro-government towns downstream, making it easier for ISIS to attack. Water the ultimate weapon, in this blistering desert." ISIS also poisoned water-supplies with oil,
here in the city of Tikrit. And destroyed most of this barrage in Fallujah.
By 2018, ISIS lost most of the territory it controlled, but the damage to Iraq's water
was already done. If the country was going to recover - it had to rebuild this system, and fast. So the Iraqi government announced a massive
$100 billion dollar reconstruction effort in 2018. But by the summer, the water crisis came to
a head at the southern tip of the country, in Basra, where the river was dangerously
low and toxic. Deadly riots erupted in Basra. Government buildings were burned and many
called for the Prime Minister to resign. Despite being the economic center of Iraq,
Basra had been ignored and left to deteriorate. The Iraqi Commision of Integrity, which investigated
corruption found that: 13 water desalination plants that had been
donated to Basra in 2006 never opened. About $600 million was pledged for water projects
that were never completed. And Basra’s sewage network was supposed
to receive a multi- million dollar upgrade in 2014, but it was still leaking into the Shatt al-Arab in 2018. Despite the uproar against corruption and
lack of public infrastructure, Iraqis continue to suffer. Year after year, the water crisis has gotten
worse. And Basra, once a symbol of growth and prosperity,
has come to represent Iraq's biggest battle ahead. If the country wants to rebuild, it first
needs to stabilize Basra. And bring clean water to its people. With a few seconds to go in the women’s 800 meters,
the group of athletes was tightly packed. Then on the final straightaway Three years later, the South African runner was at a court appealing a ban that could keep her from defending her title at the next Olympics. She wasn’t being banned because she cheated, but because sports officials had decided that she no longer qualified as a female athlete. “So effectively you’re saying to her: you no longer belong in sport!’” “I cannot stop because of people say, ‘Nooo! She looks like a man!’ “Is the new world champion of the women’s 
800 meter race, really a woman at all?” “There is no scientific test or anything
that can define a human." "...there will be two X chromosomes..." “We have drawn the line between 
women’s and men’s sport.” "...being who we are so that we 
can be the best that we can be.” “Such allegations, if I may say,
they are not my business. You understand? So for me, they do their job. I do my job. I do me. They do them. From the start, Semenya’s career 
has been defined by two things... “Brilliant run for the South African!” ...winning races and defending 
her identity as a female athlete. “...and she’s breaking away!” Back in 2009, she won the 
800 meter world championship. “Semenya looks over her shoulder and she’s away!” But soon after her victory, 
sports authorities began questioning whether she was, in fact, a woman. “...well that smashes the world list!” “They are looking for proof that South Africa’s
golden girl is not a boy.” “There is doubt about the fact that this
person is a lady...is a woman.” In South Africa her win was celebrated. "She is a female. She won!" But the top governing body for athletics,
The IAAF, selected Semenya for testing to determine whether she is female. Most recently, their criteria for female competitors has been testosterone: a hormone
produced by both men and women. Semenya has naturally high levels of testosterone and the IAAF claims that there is a significant connection between 
high testosterone and athletic performance. But it's more complicated than that. “Testosterone is related to lean body mass
and building of muscle. But it's not the only thing that contributes to that.” This is Katrina Karkazis, is a bioethicist who 
advocates on behalf of athletes like Semenya. Testosterone is not the only factor that is
important for an individual's athletic performance. There are not only other physiological factors:
that could be V02 max, heart size, any number of things. But there are factors that don’t have 
to do with someone’s physiology. Factors like nutrition, coaching, and equipment
all play into an athlete’s performance. So it’s unclear how testosterone can be
singled out as the defining factor. But there’s another way to think about eliminating
female athletes based on testosterone... Like many Olympians, Semenya’s body has
natural advantages that can help her perform. "...Michael Phelps stands 6' 4"..." For swimmer Michael Phelps, it was a long torso, wide feet, and other features 
glorified in Olympic promos. “...his size 14 feet might as well be flippers!” But unlike Phelps, Semenya is being penalized
for a naturally occurring hormone. That’s because sports officials don’t
divide athletics by the size of your hand, or your foot, but they do draw a line between men and women. The problem is, the criteria that’s used
to draw that line and it’s always been problematic. Charlotte Cooper won gold in 1900, the first
year women were included at the Olympics. Since then, more and more women have competed
and stood on Olympic podiums. But by the 1960s, officials became skeptical
that successful female athletes might actually be men disguised as women. Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, for example,
had won bronze running the women’s 100 meters at the 1964 Olympics. A few years later, officials made sex testing
mandatory for female athletes at the 1966 European Track and Field Championships and Klobukowska was forced to undergo inspection. She was physically examined in what
was called a “nude parade”: where female athletes were examined 
by a panel of doctors who would inspect their genitals to confirm their sex. Klobukowska passed her test and
qualified as female in 1966, but the next year officials replaced physical
exams with chromosomal testing, meaning she would have to be tested all over again. Old sex ed films taught that a chromosome pairing of XX from a mother and father means a child will be female. “...and this always means a girl.” And an XY pairing will create a male. “...that’s right, a boy!” The chromosomes we’re born with are part of sex, which also takes into account genetic, 
physical, and hormonal information. It’s different from gender, which is the
way someone identifies in the world as a woman, a man, or nonbinary, or something else. Beyond the typical categories of 
XX females and XY males, "...that's right, a boy!" There are many other ways a body can develop. People who have differences of sexual development, or DSD, are also known as intersex and many people can reach sexual maturity
without ever knowing they have a DSD. When sports officials changed the sex testing
criteria, Klobukowska failed the new version and she was banned from competing as female despite
having passed the female exam a year before. By the 2000s, chromosome testing fell out
of favor and in 2011 officials introduced a testosterone limit. Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter who naturally
produces high levels of testosterone was put through the new test in 2014. The testosterone limit for female athletes
had been set at 10 nanomoles per liter, which the IAAF considered the lower end
of normal male levels. Chand failed her test and was banned 
from competing as female. She appealed the decision, arguing that 
the IAAF lacked scientific evidence linking high testosterone to performance. The Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed
with her and lifted the ban. In doing so, they said the IAAF
needed evidence showing a link between high testosterone and increased performance. The decision allowed Chand and other athletes, including Caster Semenya, to compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. But in 2018, authorities returned with a new
testosterone limit, and this time they had evidence that female athletes with high testosterone
outperformed in certain events. But here’s the catch: he IAAF commissioned the study the evidence came from and the data has been
questioned by members of the scientific community. Despite the scrutiny, the IAAF set the new testosterone limit even lower, 
at 5 nanomoles per liter, and only applied it to track distances between 400 meters and the mile, which includes all the events 
that Semenya typically runs. It’s the reason Semenya was banned. But before the ban could take affect, she
was at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to fight her right to compete. "...can we have a turnaround?
Turn around for a second?" She would lose her appeal. “The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed
the South African star’s appeal, meaning she’ll now have to take drugs to lower her
testosterone levels if she wants to compete.” “..a landmark ruling against Olympic 
gold medalist Caster Semenya...” “She will not be able to compete in the 400 and 
the 800 meters and in the 1500 meters.” The ban would require Semenya to undergo medical
treatment to lower her testosterone, which could potentially cause harmful side effects. This is something Semenya has 
spoken out against in the past. A few years ago she told the BBC: “I’d rather just be natural, you know, be who I am. I was born like this. So I don’t want any changes, so yeah.” The United Nations has supported Semenya and were joined by the World Medical Association
in criticizing the ban. “...and she said she doesn’t want to take this
 type of medication and I think she is right." “It’s entirely unethical to administer drugs to 
someone who doesn’t need them.” Semenya isn’t the only athlete affected. The other top two runners in Rio, silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba and
bronze medalist Margaret Wambui have also said they were affected by the ruling. Meaning all three podium finishers from Rio
might be banned from defending their title at the next Olympics unless they take steps
to regulate their natural levels of testosterone. For their part, IAAF officials described the
regulation as discriminatory, but necessary. “Such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable,
and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s objective of preserving the 
integrity of female athletics...” The ruling also upholds a policy that only
athletes identified as suspicious need to be tested. That means deciding who is tested can depend
on an athlete’s appearance and it might be that non-white athletes from
the global South, like Chand, Semenya, and the other top finishers in Rio are
being selected for testing because they don’t fit somebody’s stereotype of 
what a female looks like. Confusion about Caster Semenya’s case
 has led to misunderstanding and news outlets have wrongly 
portrayed her as transgender. She isn’t. And the problem of dividing athletes by sex has nothing to do with their gender. It’s rooted in sex and athletic officials
inability to find a criteria that will fairly divide athletes into the two categories of
men and women. History shows that whenever sports are divided by sex, the athletes who qualify as female change
 depending on the criteria used to draw that line. “It's now 10 years that the IAAF have scrutinized
Caster Semenya and tried to keep her out of sport or at least to slow her down.” But the scrutiny hasn’t stopped her. After losing her appeal this year, Semenya
brought the case to another court that agreed to suspend the ban for the time being. In the meantime, she continues to keep running. “If she was trying to make a statement she’ll
make it here in the last 100 meters.” She ran a race just before the ban was set to begin. “Impressive and dominant performance
by Caster Semenya.” After winning it, she was asked what comes next. “What happens for you now?” “I keep training, I keep running. So, doesn’t matter!” "I’m just gonna enjoy my life and then live it!" "You try to be in front of me? I jump you.
So, that's how life it is." Sadie Pfeifer was 9 years old when this photo
was taken. Operating heavy machinery that’s nearly
twice her height in a cotton mill in Lancaster, South Carolina, in 1908. She was just one of many children working
in mills, fields, factories, and mines. And although these kids were spread across
the United States, working in separate industries, they all had one thing in common: They all met Lewis Hine. At the turn of the 20th century, the United
States knew it had a child labor problem. The 1900 federal census revealed that 1.75
million children under the age of 16, more than one in five, were working at this time. The Industrial Revolution had mechanized American
and European manufacturing, and a cheap labor force was needed to complete repetitive tasks
for hours on end. Children from poor families were targeted
for these jobs because they would work for next to nothing and were less likely to strike
than adults. State legislatures and the American public
knew this was happening on a mass scale, but didn’t act. Until they saw what it actually looked like. Starting in 1908, the newly formed National
Child Labor Committee hired a photographer to investigate and report on the industries
employing children. That photographer was Lewis Wickes Hine: educator,
sociologist, and member of the Progressive Movement. A period in the United States that saw a wave
of political activism and social reform. Hine emphasized the potential power of photography
as a tool for social reform in a speech he gave in 1909 called “Social photography:
how the camera may help.” He said, “The dictum, then, of the social
worker is “Let there be light;” and in this campaign for light we have for our advance
agent the light writer — the photograph.” He traveled extensively, gathering information,
interviews, and images of working children across the country. He visited coal mines in Pennsylvania. Where adolescent “breaker boys” worked
underground for hours, separating impurities from coal. Sardine cutters in Maine. Oyster shuckers in Louisiana, some as young
as 4 years old. Tobacco pickers in Kentucky. Cranberry pickers in Massachusetts. Beet farms in Colorado. And young messengers and newsboys in cities
all over the country. Many of the photos captured adults nearby,
supervising the children while they worked. When Hine wasn’t allowed access to the mills
and factories, he waited outside and documented the comings and goings of its
workers, whose shifts often lasted late into the night. Laborers would pose for portraits and tell
Hine a bit about themselves, their wages, and their work conditions. Sometimes they showed their horrific injuries
and described what happened, like this boy from Bessemer City, North Carolina, whose
hand got crushed in the gears of a cotton spinner. We know that because each photo, numbering
over 5,000, includes a detailed caption written by Hine. Hine coined the term “photo stories” to
describe this marriage of images and text, and it’s a big part of how the photos humanized
the lives of child laborers to an indifferent public. But it’s also his photographic technique
that makes them feel so personal. Let’s use the photos of cotton mill workers
like Sadie as an example. First, many of these photos are framed the
exact same way, just substituting a different worker. Hine was trying to show that each child’s
experience was part of a widespread problem, and the repetition in the images signals that. You can really see how intentional the framing
is when you look at how the image of Sadie appeared when it was first published in a
Progressive magazine, in 1909. It’s opposite a nearly identical photo of
a different worker, set so that the symmetry of the two images makes the machinery seem
to go on and on. The left-hand caption says, “Spinner. A type of many in the mill.” Hine’s photographs are also shot with a
very shallow depth of field, which basically means a narrow part of the photo is in focus,
and the rest is blurred out. A photo with a deep depth of field would look
like this one by Jacob Riis, who was photographing New York City slums around the same time as
Hine. Notice how the playground in the background
is in focus, just like the kids in the foreground. Now look at Hine’s portraits. In this one, the factory this boy works at
looms behind him, but it’s almost totally blurred out. This was a recurring visual theme — to include
the machinery or the workplace in the frame, but obscure it, favoring the worker instead. This narrow point of focus, combined with
shooting from a lower angle — the eye level of these children — is why these images
are so effective at humanizing their subjects. Photos like the ones from the South Carolina
cotton mills changed the public perception of child labor in the United States, ultimately pressuring state legislatures to
introduce laws regulating work for those under the age of 18 — and sending kids back to
school. Lewis Hine went on to photograph the construction
of the Empire State Building in New York City, using the same dignifying techniques he photographed
child laborers with: Considering the perspective of his subjects with a narrow focus, emphasizing the worker,
not the machinery. Hine was one of the first to use a camera
as a tool for social documentary, to shine a light on the mostly unseen. He understood early on the power images have
to tell stories. As he said in that 1909 speech: “Take the photograph of a tiny spinner in
a Carolina cotton mill. With a picture thus sympathetically interpreted,
what a lever we have for the social uplift.” Hey everyone, that was Darkroom season 1! I'm going to take a break from it and work
on some other stuff, like History Club with Phil. If there are photos you think would make good
stories for the next season, make sure to leave a comment below. In the meantime, if you're looking for more
great videos on photography in history, check out the documentary "The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun",
available on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming
service that offers thousands of documentaries and nonfiction titles from some of the world's
best filmmakers. You can get unlimited access starting at $2.99
a month — and because you're a Vox fan, the first 31-days are free if you sign up
at curiositystream.com/Vox and use the promo code "vox." Curiosity Stream doesn't impact our editorial,
but their support makes videos like this one possible. So go check them out! This is the most humane way to kill a fish. Stabbing it in the brain, and cutting it open
to bleed out. I know, it looks gruesome, but trust me, it’s
better than the alternative for the fish, and for you. Most fish are killed the same way: Scooped
out of the water, thrown in a bucket of ice, and left to suffocate to death. Their brains are really different from ours
— which makes it hard to figure out if and how they feel pain. Studies are conclusive on one thing, though:
fish do feel stress — and try to fight or flee stressful situations. It can take anywhere from five minutes to
a few hours of struggling in the open air before a fish finally dies. And while they’re trying to escape, their
bloodstreams fill with stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline. Plus, all that movement causes lactic acid
to flood their muscles — the same chemical humans produce when we exercise. When a fish is struggling to death it's actually
exercising when it's suffocating. This is Andrew Tsui, an attorney and former
commercial fisherman whose real passion is teaching people how to properly kill fish. That lactic acid buildup in the muscle tissue
actually has real consequences for it at a cellular level. These chemicals speed up the breakdown of
muscle and fat, which causes the fish to lose its inherent rich flavor and adopt a bitter,
mushy taste. They make fish rot quickly,
And develop that unpleasant ‘fishy’ smell. Since most fish are killed this way, it’s
probably all you’ve ever tasted. But there’s a better way. Ike jime is a traditional Japanese method
for killing fish. It’s a four-step process, and according
to Andrew, it basically translates to “brain spike." He’ll show you why with this live Maryland
striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay: So the first step is to actually make sure
that this fish doesn't experience any stress. We're gonna kill this fish by placing a spike
into its brain. You know that you've actually hit its brain
when that fish seizes like this. Its dorsal and the rest of its fins flare
and its mouth will flare. Once it’s spiked the fish is brain dead,
meaning it can’t experience any more stress — but it’s heart is still beating from
cellular energy reserves. Because its heart is still bleeding we're
gonna use the residual blood pressure to, to pump out and bleed the fish This is also known as exsanguination. So the process of exsanguinating a fish is
three cuts. The first cut is at the gill arches on both
sides. And then the third cut is at the artery in
the tail. Removing the blood means the fish rots slower. At this point, even though the fish is braindead,
the nervous system can still cause involuntary muscle movement — which adds to that unsavory
lactic acid buildup. The next step shuts that down. One of the more gruesome parts of ike jime
is the spinal cord destruction and the necessity of it sort of varies by species. But essentially what the objective is, is
to cease any further signaling between the central nervous system and the muscle tissue. And that takes place in the spinal cord. One of the ways that that is achievable is
by sending a metal pith. Through the spinal cord of the fish. Last but not least, the fish goes into a bath
of ice water. We use a one to one ice to water ratio to
create a slurry and then submerge the fish fully and in the slurry. In there, the muscles cool down and the fish
finishes bleeding out. When you take a look inside a fish, you can
really see the difference using ike jime makes. Both of these fish were caught earlier this
day. One was killed using the standard method — suffocation
— and one was killed using the ike jime method. When Andrew opened them up, they looked relatively
the same — but you can see that the suffocated one is filled with a lot of blood, the stuff
that causes quick decomposition. We did a taste test, and... They honestly taste pretty similar. It tastes fresh. There's not like an overwhelming flavor to
it. It’s a few days later when things start
to change: FDA guidelines recommend cooking and eating
refrigerated fish within two days, but since ike jime slows rotting immensely,
the fish is good for much longer, which means its able to develop more complex flavors,
similar to the way red meat tastes better when it’s aged. This fish was purchased whole from the grocery
store, killed using the standard suffocation method. It’s a couple of days old. And this one was killed using the ike jime
method — it’s been sitting in the fridge at 33 degrees for two whole weeks. When we opened both of them up, the suffocated
one had a distinct fishy aroma. Wow, yeah, I can really smell it now. It smells so metally, and gross. Oh my god! Its insides had blood running through them,
and were starting to break apart, providing more space for bacteria to grow. The aged ike jime fish, on the other hand,
had barely any scent. It tasted different too:
This is the one I'm nervous about. This is the one from the store that's a couple
days old. Oh my God. It's not great. I'll be honest with you. It's a little sour. OK so this is supposed to be the primo fish. The one that was has been aging for two weeks
after being killed with the ike jime method. You can tell underneath it there's just like
this hint of complexity And once we added a bit of salt to bring that
flavor out: Oh my God, that is so good. I don't even know what it tastes like, but
it's delicious. So it tastes so much better and lasts much
longer, why aren’t fish killed using the ike jime method? The answer is simple: Cost. It’s almost impossible to scale ike jime
on commercial ship decks and fish farms, Where it’s just cheaper and easier to default
to asphyxiation. For now, there is one particular market for
fish killed using the ike jime method: high-end restaurants, especially ones serving sushi. Like La Marine in France,
Or Providence in LA. These restaurants pay a lot of money for ike jime fish from Japan, its primary exporter. But elsewhere in the world, fishers are sitting
on an untapped market. If they used the ike jime method, they could
sell their fish for a lot more money. Anyone if given the opportunity to look at
two filets side by side or two fish side by side will immediately immediately notice these
distinctions suddenly, it's just that that opportunity doesn't really come around very
often. I like to to think that Ike Jime is actually
about intellectual integrity. So the integrity of the fish, the integrity
of sort of what we're really doing here, which is ultimately creating something to eat. Making a smarter choice in the food system can help us feel good about our decisions. And making the smarter choice for mobile can, too. Ting is a cellular service provider that only charges you for the data you actually use, not a flat monthly bill. These days most people are using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and iMessage to send the majority of their texts. And yet still pay for expensive unlimited talk and text packages. On top of that, if you're the type of person who's almost connected to WiFi, which doesn't count toward data usage, Ting can give you serious savings. Like your phone bill could be as low as $23 a month serious. And if you use less data, you pay less. Ting offers nation-wide LTD coverage across two major networks. So the phone you already own probably already works with Ting. All you need is a SIM card. Make the smarter choice for mobile and get $25 off your monthly bill at vox.ting.com. Ting doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like these possible. So go check them out. This is the Golden Temple. People come here from all over the world to
bathe in its waters, to look at the Holy Book that
is inside of this middle Golden Temple and to just experience the holiness of
this place. This place is the epicenter of Sikhism. It sits right here in
northern India in a city called Amritsar. Close by there's another important Sikh site
called Kartarpur. It was established by the founder of Sikhism
more than 500 years ago. It's the place where he spent the last years
of his life and it is the second holiest place in Sikhism. For centuries, Sikhs have been able to make pilgrimage between these two sites to move freely throughout their heartland. But in 1947 a British lawyer drew a border here turning what had been British India into
two new countries, India and Pakistan. I could only call it one of the most bizarre
lines, which were ever drawn across a map It went right here with the Golden Temple
on one side and Katarpur on the other. Thanks to this border Sikhs in India are now
cut off from their holy site. So many come here to a platform that the Border
Patrol set up. The platform looks across the border
where with the help of telescopes, Sikhs can look at their holy place just three
or four kilometers away. In addition to cutting off communities from
their sacred sites, this border separated families, cut across
rivers, forests, farms, railroad tracks. Today this border is heavily fortified with
nearly all 3,000, plus kilometers fenced. It's lit so well that you can see it from space and barely anything or anyone crosses over it When we talk about the drawing of the line, what was the most painful was the division
of families which took place and that is a very big reality. This is the story of a violent
separation. One of the most traumatic events of the 20th century It's the story of how a hastily drawn line
on a map separated one people into two. This is a horror story. What we saw was a town soaked with the stench of death. In the train of murder and arson, come the
refugees. Their suffering is the new tragedy of India. Many will never reach their new land. These are the things that are setting the
heart burning on either side of the line. The sun is setting and I'm walking along one
of the oldest roads in Asia One that used to connect this region but today
a border runs through it and instead of connection and trade what you
see here is this: There's barbed wire, there's fences, there
are officers everywhere and yet, there's also ice-cream and popcorn
and paraphernalia. This feels like a sporting event. You can buy keychains of machine guns. Thousands of spectators file in, filling this stadium
that looks down on the border. On the other side Pakistanis are doing the
same. Then, both sides start their different show. Two hours of chanting and dancing Then the finale, a face-off between the
two sides. They strut back and forth in this coordinated
choreography and it all ends with the lowering of
each flag and the closing of this gate. This bizarre border show plays out every
evening. But this ceremony, this fence, this intense
nationalism If you rewind just a little in time, none
of this existed. The British controlled parts of
India for nearly 200 years but by 1947, a strong movement of independence
was swelling across the subcontinent while back in Britain, the country was in
massive debt after fighting World War II and didn't have the resources to
hold on to their colony so they started making plans to leave India. British officials thought that a proper transfer
of power would probably take around five years but when the British leader in charge arrived
in early 1947, he hastily decided to shrink their exit timeline and so what needed five years would now
need to be done in just four months. British India was to be split into two
independent nations, a mostly Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu majority,
but officially secular India. To do the actual drawing of the border, the
British brought in a lawyer from London. He arrived the month before the British
were supposed to leave India. He hadn't been to British India before and
didn't know much about the region. He had no idea about India, no idea about
Indian geography, no idea about Indian politics. And yet, he was the one drawing the lines
on the map that would affect millions of lives. During his visit, this British
lawyer looked at maps and census data, focusing on the maps that showed
religious identity of people in India. India has a wide variety of religions
and based on these census maps, you can see that people of all religions lived
amongst each other all over the region. So to draw the line the British lawyer
looked at individual districts putting any district that had a Muslim majority
population into the new country of Pakistan, while Hindu and Sikh majority
districts would be kept within India. Based on this method the lawyer began to
see what a border might look like. He only had five weeks to do this. He later wrote that it would have taken years
to settle on a proper boundary and that's because this method
of drawing the line conceals that within these districts there were
sizable communities of all religions that had been living side-by-side
for centuries all throughout India. August 15 1947, Independence Day for India
and Pakistan The British lawyer left that day. He would never return to India again. Two days after independence the borders were
made public, prompting more than 14 million people to leave
their homes, their lives for what was now their side of the border. We were told that you have to cross the border
to India. Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan moved into
India and many Muslims in India moved into the new
Pakistan. These were people who were indeed forced to lose their entire homes, their memories, their childhood and the things they saw. It was one of the largest
forced migrations of people ever and it was chaos, a chaos that led to widespread
unspeakable violence cities on fire, sexual violence against women,
trains, full of dead bodies. The survivors I talked to were just
children when all of this happened. The division of the sub-continent became
known as the partition of India. A phrase synonymous with trauma fueled by the reckless mismanagement of an imperial
power. I'm in a small village right near the border on the Indian side that used to be a Muslim community before
partition. And in the middle of town is this shrine where residents would conduct ornate Muslim
burial practices on these graves. Look at the original maps at the British drew
up when they were trying to draw this line. This town was actually in Pakistan in most
of the maps. But in the end the British lawyer
decided to draw the line here. The people here discovered that they
were now a part of the new country of India and so many of them fled just across the border
to the new state of Pakistan and they left this place empty. But just as Muslims were leaving this
village for the new Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan were coming
across into India and some ended up here. The Hindus and Sikhs that now live in
this community have taken it upon themselves to continue the Muslim traditions
that this community was based off of. They continue to maintain these graves and
these symbols even though they don't necessarily pertain
to their own religion. This is a sign of respect, of common
identity in spite of the border. But this is just one side of the story. The sub-continent echoes and shudders to
the sounds of a full-scale undeclared war. Within just a few months of drawing this border, India and Pakistan were fighting an all-out
war. One that centered on this region in the north,
which both sides claimed as their own. The new countries would fight several
more wars over the years, a border fence would eventually fortify
the majority of this boundary, and both countries would acquire nuclear weapons turning up the tensions and deepening
the division. But if you take away the geopolitical bluster,
the nukes, the barrier, the trauma of partition, you can still see how much these two countries
have in common. I'm at a school in Delhi. Students are skyping with a school in Pakistan. These kids are speaking a similar
language and it takes them just minutes to dive into the common roots of their
culture. This shared identity with these kids are
feeling isn't uncommon in India and Pakistan. Same language, same taste, same food Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs used to live
together, attend each other's social
functions, marriages, everything. We have this divide now. If you stand in the wall
city in Amritsar and you stand in the walled city in Lahore believe me, the smells, which is a kind
of giveaway are the same. I'm visiting a group of Sikhs coming off
the train. They were able to get a visa to go visit this
religious site that most have to see through a telescope. So with all these cultural similarities, all
these happy faces, shared interests? How do you explain this? You see, it is a politician, who poisons
people's minds. The divide is created, nurtured, fostered
because it suits a certain politics. Over the years, politicians on both sides have
exploited tension with the other side to stoke feelings of nationalism. Back here at this viewing platform, there
are construction vehicles everywhere. For years, the Sikhs have lobbied for
easier access to their holy site and after years the two governments
finally agreed to build a little notch into this border, a corridor that will allow Sikhs
to freely access their site without a visa. These four kilometers will restore a small
part of what was once the Sikh heartland. But for millions of Indians and Pakistanis
who continue to live with the repercussions
of the traumatic events of 1947, this fortified and volatile border remains
unchanged. If anything, it's getting thicker. Seventy years later, the shadow
of partition continues to divide families, halt trade, cut connection,
stop cooperation, instill fear, promote hatred and the people who live in its shadow on
both sides, old and young, continue to live with this division that's superimposed
upon their history of deep connection. The people of Hong Kong are out in the streets. Hundreds of thousands are demonstrating against
a deeply unpopular bill. But this is about a whole lot more than a bill. It’s about the status of Hong Kong
and the power China has over it. It’s a fight to preserve the freedoms people
have here. And it all started with a murder. On February 8, 2018, a young couple, Chan
Tong Kai and Poon Hiu-Wing, went from their home in Hong Kong to Taiwan for a vacation. They stayed at the Purple Garden Hotel in
Taipei for nine days. But on February 17th only one of them returned
to Hong Kong. There, one month later, Chan confessed to
murdering his girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time. But there was a problem. Hong Kong authorities couldn’t charge him
for murder, because he did it in Taiwan. And they couldn’t send him back to Taiwan
to be charged, because Hong Kong and Taiwan don’t have
an extradition agreement. So in 2019, Hong Kong’s government proposed
one: it would let them transfer suspects to Taiwan so they could be tried for their crimes. But the same bill would also allow extradition
to mainland China. Where there's no fair trial, there's no humane punishment, and there's completely no separation
of powers. And that's what sparked these protests. China and Hong Kong are two very different
places with a very complex political relationship. And the extradition bill threatens to give
China more power over Hong Kong. See, Hong Kong is technically a part of China. But it operates as a semi-autonomous region. It all began in the late 1800s, when China
lost a series of wars to Britain and ended up ceding Hong Kong for a period of 99 years. Hong Kong remained a British colony until
1997, when Britain gave it back to China, under a special agreement. It was called “One Country, Two Systems.” It made Hong Kong a part of China, but it
also said that Hong Kong would retain "a high degree of autonomy,” as well as democratic
freedoms like the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, of assembly. And that made Hong Kong very different from
mainland China, which is authoritarian: Citizens there don’t have the same freedoms. Its legal system is often used to arrest,
punish, and silence people who speak out against the state. But according to the agreement, One Country,
Two Systems wouldn’t last forever. In 2047, Hong Kong is expected to fully become
a part of China. The problem is, China isn’t waiting
for the deal to expire. Under the rule of Chinese leader Xi Jinping,
pro-democracy leaders have already been arrested in Hong Kong. And mysterious abductions of booksellers have
created a threat to free speech. But Hong Kong has been pushing back. In 2003, half a million Hongkongers successfully
fought legislation that would have punished speaking out against China. And in 2014, tens of thousands of protesters occupied the city for weeks to protest China’s influence over Hong Kong’s elections. Now, Hong Kongers are fighting the extradition
bill, because the bill is widely seen as the next
step in China’s encroachment on Hong Kong’s autonomy. The sheer size of these protests shows you
just how much opposition there is to this bill. But if Hong Kong’s legislature votes on
the bill, it’ll probably pass. And that’s because of the unique nature
of Hong Kong’s democracy. For starters, Hong Kong’s people don’t
vote for their leader. The Chief Executive is selected by
a small committee and approved by China. And even though they’re the head of the
government, they don’t make the laws. That happens here. Like many democracies, Hong Kong has a legislature,
with democratically elected representatives. It’s called the Legislative Council, or
LegCo, and it has 70 seats. Within this system, Hong Kong has many political
parties, but they are mostly either pro-democracy or pro-China. In every election, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy
and anti-establishment parties have won the popular vote. But they occupy less than half of the seats
in the LegCo. This is because when Hong Kongers vote, they’re
only voting for these 40 of the 70 seats. The other 30 are chosen by the various business communities of Hong Kong. For example, one seat belongs to the finance
industry. One seat belongs to the medical industry. One belongs to the insurance industry. And so on. Many of these 30 seats are voted on by
corporations. And because big business has an incentive
to be friendly with China, those seats are dominated by pro-China political parties. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in
1997, Hong Kong and China made an agreement that eventually, all members of the council
would be elected by the people. But that never happened. And ever since the handoff, pro-China parties
have controlled the LegCo, despite having never won more than 50 percent of the popular
vote. The way it's structured, they want to make
sure that the executive branch can have easy control over it. And that would serve Beijing very well indeed. Within this unique structure, the extradition
bill has created new tensions and fueled anger among pro-democracy politicians. And it’s driven hundreds of thousands of
Hong Kongers into the streets. While this isn’t Hong Kong’s first protest
against China’s influence, it is the biggest. And many say this time is different, because of the people involved. Professionals like lawyers and politicians are participating. Our legal sector staged their biggest ever protest parade. But it’s young people who are at the forefront,
since they have the most to lose. They are the first generation born under One
Country Two Systems. And in 28 years when that arrangement ends,
they’ll be Hong Kong’s professional class. I won't be around anymore. It's their future. It’s their Hong Kong. They have every
right to fight it. The protests have convinced Hong Kong’s
government to suspend the bill. But that’s not enough. Many want the bill withdrawn completely. That’s because these protests are also part
of a larger fight. To push back against China's encroachment
now, not just when time’s up. 2047 is on its way. But it’s not here yet. And until then, Hongkongers still have a voice. History will tell whether we succeed, but even if we failed, history would say they did put up a fight and they didn't just take things lying down. And that's what we're trying to do too. For a long time, if you went to the library
in Wilmington, North Carolina, there was one thing you weren’t allowed to research. “We were refused. We were rejected by the librarian.” “When I asked about or inquired about 1898
they wanted to know why.” “I was told that yes they had something
but they kept it under lock and key." The story of Wilmington in 1898 still isn't
widely known. “What happened here — on what’s now
just this empty patch of grass would radically change racial politics in North Carolina. This is the story of an American election, but
also of something we don't usually find in American history. The violent overthrow of a democratically
elected government. In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina
was the state’s largest city. It had a majority black population, and historians
today describe it as a rarity in the post-Civil War American South. “Wilmington prior to November, 1898, was
what the New South could be at the cusp of the 20th century.” “There was an unusual degree of black prosperity.” In Wilmington there were successful black
entrepreneurs, doctors, teachers -- but also black elected officials. And for a time, that was true throughout the
State. Take a look at the politicians on this poster
of the 1889 North Carolina House of Representatives. Here at the bottom — are black Republican
representatives — some from Wilmington. North Carolina also sent four black Republicans
to the US Congress between 1875 and 1899. The Democratic and Republican parties of 1898
in many ways occupied opposite parts of the political spectrum than they do today. “Most African-Americans were voting for
the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party was white voters
almost exclusively. White supremacy was the central focus of the
platform for the Democratic Party.” Republicans in North Carolina were successful
in part because of a 3rd party called the "Populist" party, made up of mostly white
farmers fed up with the tough economic times. North Carolina Populists joined up with Republicans
to form what they called the Fusion Party. And in the elections of 1894 and 1896, the
Fusion party defeated the Democrats in sweeping victories statewide. That meant North Carolina now had a government
that shared power between black and white politicians, including a newly elected Republican
governor. Together, they moved towards reforms that
would favor black Americans and working-class whites. “This was something that the Democratic
Party folks were simply not going to accept.” A multiracial government wasn’t just a disappointment
for Democrats. It was more like a humiliation. They needed a plan to take back control of
the state in the next election. So party leaders, like Furnifold Simmons,
future US Senator; Charles Aycock, future North Carolina Governor; and this man, Alfred
Moore Wadell, came up with one: To beat the Fusion Party by luring white Populist
voters away from their alliance with Black voters. Wilmington, with a large black population
and a local Fusion government in power — would be a focus of their campaign. The state Democratic state party handbook
for 1898 laid out their goal: consolidate the white vote by stoking white anger and
resentment. It said: “this is a white man’s country
and white men must control and govern it.” Their most effective tool was the media. One of North Carolina’s biggest newspapers
was a Democratic Party mouthpiece. It ran racist political cartoons throughout
1898. “Not everybody was literate in 1898. But to see a political cartoon of the type
that  ran you may not be able to read it but you know exactly what it means.” Many of the cartoons were centered on the
threat of “Negro domination”...even though the Fusion government was mostly white. They also played up another fear. “Black men threatening white women became
a theme. White men need to do all that they can to
protect white womanhood.” This was all part of North Carolina democratic
strategy, but it echoed the national racist rhetoric of the time. In one speech that Democrats printed in a
Wilmington paper — a prominent Georgia writer named Rebecca Felton said: “If it takes lynching a black man a day
to protect white womanhood ‘I say lynch". Her speech prompted a Wilmington black man
named Alex Manly, owner of the black-run, Daily Record newspaper, to respond with
a column. He made a simple observation, that at the
time, was shocking. “That white women who had liaisons with
black men did so voluntarily and enthusiastically.” Manly wrote “Every Negro lynched is called
a "big burly, black brute", when in fact many were sufficiently attractive for white
girls to fall in love with them.” “Manly pretty much said in a nutshell: sometimes
white women choose to be with black men.” Manly’s editorial became another tool for
Democrats. Newspapers reprinted it, called it “A Horrid
Slander”, and ran comments about it on a daily basis. It was just a few months before the election,
and white voters were angry. “By the time the election rolls around on
November 8th black voters, Republican voters had been thoroughly intimidated here.” By all accounts, the elections of 1898 were
a sham. The Democratic party had a paramilitary group
called the Red Shirts. They attacked and blocked black residents
from voting. At a rally just before the election, Alfred
Moore Waddell provoked the crowds. He said “negro office-holding ought at once,
and forever be brought to an end. Even if we have to choke the current of the
Cape Fear River with carcasses.” The votes were counted, and the Democrats
won. “Democratic candidates won every seat they
had a candidate up for election in.” But some local Fusionist politicians remained
in power, because their seats hadn’t been up for re-election like the white Republican
mayor and the board of aldermen. And and of course the election did nothing
to undo the economic power black folks held in the city. The Democrats had won the election, but their
goal of total white supremacist control remained out of reach. “And so they engineered what was essentially
a coup d'etat.” The day after the election, at a gathering
for white men in Wilmington, the Democrats unveiled a document they called the “White
Declaration of Independence.” It contained an ultimatum. Cynthia Brown, whose descendants were in Wilmington
back in 1898, is a historian at her church, where there’s a preserved copy of the declaration
from the next day’s newspaper. “We will no longer be ruled and will never
again be ruled by men of African origin.” They would strip black men of voting rights. They would give “white men a large part
of the employment heretofore given to” black men. And as for Alex Manly... “We demand that he leave this City forever
within twenty-four hours.” The next morning, hundreds of white men marched to the offices of the Daily Record. Manly was gone -- he had fled to save his
own life. They set the Daily Record building on fire. This is where it once stood. “Once the White leadership destroyed Alex
Manly's printing press they destroyed one way in which the African-American community
in Wilmington could organize itself and keep itself informed.” At City Hall — the mayor and board of aldermen
were forced out. “There's two hundred armed men in City Hall
at the time. They didn't do it of their own free will and
as they resigned a new member selected by the Democratic Party was voted into office.” Waddell — who once threatened to fill the
Cape Fear River with black bodies — was the new mayor of Wilmington. Meanwhile, the mob had grown to about 2,000
men, and the violence spilled into the streets. In these photos, exes mark where the first
black residents were killed. “The stories are that they were dumped into
the river. And there are varying stories about how many
people were killed.” “To me, I see 40 to 60 clearly as fatalities
as a result of the violence. But I think it was higher.” Many black residents hid for days in the swamps,
and the wooded cemeteries in the city — including Cynthia’s great grandmother. And thousands of other residents fled Wilmington,
never to return. Shortly afterward, democrats printed booklets
celebrating a glorious victory...and in the newspapers, depicted black residents as the
instigators. “This image is a gross misrepresentation
of what actually happened. You know what you see are black men with guns
not white men with machine guns.” The city never regained its black majority
population. Jim Crow laws, like literacy tests and poll
taxes that prevented black people from voting were immediately enacted and Wilmington’s
spirit of black opportunity was crushed. Black political representation in the state
was over. It would be 90 years until North Carolina
elected its next black Congress member. “Wilmington did a really great job of covering
up a very dark past for a very long time.” “Over the years, the textbooks on North
Carolina’s state history have struggled to accurately describe what happened in 1898. This book from 1933 calls what happened “unfortunate
for both races.” And this one from 1978 doesn’t have that
much more detail. But they both praise Charles Aycock, one of
the perpetrators of the riot, as a man with ‘a kind heart’ and that in fact he was
one of ‘the best friends that the colored people had in the state.' It’s a legacy that North Carolina has yet
to fully undo. The names of the perpetrators are on Wilmington's
school buildings and city parks. But the legacy is also bigger than those names. Turn on the news, and the state's long history
of political suppression echoes. “We turn to a strict new voter ID law in
North Carolina.” “Racially gerrymandering and a push for
new voting maps.” “The court says the Republican-led legislature
redrew Congressional districts along racial lines, violating the Constitution.” “There is a tremendous amount of intimidation
that is still felt by the black community.” “It doesn't have to be mass mayhem and violence
in the streets.” “The strategy shifts towards designing state
laws in such a way that you could exclude blacks from voter participation.” “The subliminal pursuit of continuing
the White declaration of independence.” “And if you don't see it for what it really
is, it can happen all over again.” Hello everyone, my name is Johnny and I'm
really excited to tell you that Borders is back. A couple of months ago I stood right here,
I pulled down this map and I told you that I was going to India. And then I went. It was an amazing and very enlightening experience. I actually started in Sri Lanka, moved over
into southern India, and then traversed the whole subcontinent up to the very north, to
the state of Punjab at the border of Pakistan. I've been sitting at this desk editing so
much of this footage, animating it, doing all of this work to make it beautiful and
exciting and fun to watch. Okay I'm at the airport now, gotta go catch
a flight. But I'm really excited about this season of
Borders and I hope you'll tune in. Starting next week on the YouTube channel
as well as at facebook.com/VoxBorders which is our Watch Page. And then finally, you should definitely check out
the Vox Video Lab, which is a membership program that we have at Vox that helps support our
videomaking. I'm gonna be making some behind-the-scenes
content of Borders India that I'm going to be giving to the members of the Video Lab. If you want to support our videomaking as
well as get some behind the scenes stuff, go join the Video Lab. I still have some editing to do, so I'm going
to do that on the airplane. And I hope you'll tune in next week for Vox
Borders: India. You know the moon, right — the big space
rock humans landed on for the first time 50 years ago? Well, astronauts left a lot of stuff behind
there. Stuff like used scientific equipment, clothing,
food wrappers and, well… their poop. Across all 6 moon landings, Apollo astronauts
left 96 bags of human waste on the moon. We’re talking poop. Pee. Vomit. It was left behind to save weight for the
return trip. Stuffed in big trash baggies, like this one,
dropped from Apollo 11 Inside those bags is a big, unanswered question
— a scientific mystery that I want answered: Is there anything alive in that moon poop? I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. But the answer might help us
understand how life started on Earth. And our potential to contaminate other worlds
— like Mars — with our literal shit. And the answer, it's not too far away. It’s lying in wait, nearly 240,000 miles away,
on the moon. Right here. Those — this really isn't to scale. What I’m saying is we gotta go back for
that shit. Human feces can be disgusting, sure. This is not — this is Play Doh. But it’s also teeming with life. Around half of its mass is made up of bacteria,
representing some of the 1,000-plus species of microbes that live in our guts. With the moon landings, we took microbial
life on Earth to the most extreme environment it has ever been in. And we don’t know if it can survive there. In all the ways Earth is so hospitable to
life, the moon is not. It does not have a protective magnetic field
to deflect the most powerful and damaging cosmic radiation. It doesn't have an ozone layer to absorb
the sun’s ultraviolet rays. It doesn't have an atmosphere. And the moon is subjected to wild temperature
swings over day and night: A lot would have to go right for the microbes
to still be alive — or at least revivable from a dormant state. But there are some scientists who want to go back and check, because there are two really fascinating things that
we can learn from this poop. The first has to do with a planet millions
of miles away from the moon: Mars. For decades, scientists have wondered if there’s
life on Mars — and they’re getting closer to figuring it out. Mars has a thin atmosphere, evidence of flowing
water, and a more hospitable environment than the moon. If microbes can survive on the moon, they’re
even more likely to survive on Mars. So what if humans go to Mars and leave their
poop there and the microbes in it start to spread? It will be hard to tell what life we find
there is Martian and what life we brought with us if we accidentally contaminate the
planet with our poop. But there’s also a bigger question. There’s a hypothesis about how life started
on Earth: that it didn’t start on Earth at all. That some asteroid or comet, carrying some
microbes, crashed-landed here and seeded life on the planet. Finding living things in the moon poop could
support that hypothesis, because if microbial life can survive on the moon, it could survive
on an asteroid, too. And if the hypothesis is true, it could mean
life travels across the universe, jumping from planet-to-planet, from asteroid collisions. Here’s a wilder thought: Let’s say an
asteroid comes hurtling by, slams into the moon, and projects the Apollo mission moon poop
into the deep reaches of space. Could that seed life in the broader universe? Maybe. So how do we figure out the answer to these
great mysteries? Easy. We go back. That's gonna take a lot of work and research and diving into internet clickholes. Bad security for anything you're doing, including a project to go back to the moon, can ruin everything. Enter: Dashlane. Dashlane is the one tool you need to stay safe online. It helps keep you safe online and protects your most sensitive information, and will even let you know that you've been the victim of a hack. Dashlane can autogenerate and autofill super strong passwords on all websites where you have accounts. It works on any browser and any device and it syncs your data instantly before all of them. And it even includes a multi-country VPN, so you can stay safe and browse privately on any device. So go to dashlane.com/vox to get a 30-day free trial of Dashlane Premium and use the promo code "VOX" to get 10% off Dashlane Premium. Dashlane doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like this possible. So click the link in the description to check them out. These 100 people are the US senate. They pass laws. They vote, and when a majority says yes, it
passes. But these days, the senate doesn't do that
very often. See, the senate has this rule. It says before they vote, 60 people have to
agree to have the vote. That means just 41 people, a minority, can
entirely block a bill. This is called a filibuster. Early on, filibusters were rare. This is a chart of the number of times the
senate has had to vote to break a filibuster in the last hundred years. But in the last 50 years, they started to
grow. And now, almost every big bill is filibustered. The US senate is broken. And the filibuster broke it. But the senate didn't always have this rule. In fact, it all kind of happened by accident. This is the senate in 1805. It's much smaller than it is now. And the filibuster, as we know it today, doesn't
exist yet. And before they vote on a bill, they debate. If they want to end debate and vote, they
just need a majority to agree. But Vice President Aaron Burr thinks a
high-minded place like the senate should have as much debate as needed. So the senate gets rid of the rule. Now, senators can debate for as long as they
want — and there is no way to stop them. This is the beginning of the senate filibuster. At first, it isn't really a problem. Because the senate is still pretty small,
there is only so long a group of senators can physically talk. Eventually, they tire out. Debate ends. And they get to a vote. But as the US grows, so does the senate. And they have more factions, and more people
to filibuster bills. They move to a bigger room. And now it's 1917. World War I is underway, but the US isn't involved. Then-President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress
to authorize a broad military action A group of senators don't want to give Wilson the power to enter the war. So they decide to debate until the session
ends. Filibuster. Woodrow Wilson is mad — and he demands that
they go back to the old senate rules — that debate can be ended with a simple majority. The senate doesn't want to do that. So instead, they compromise. They change the rules so they can end debate
with the approval of 2/3rd of the senate. So that if senators want to block a bill,
they need 1/3rd to do it. This is basically the system we have today
— a supermajority to agree to vote, then a simple majority to pass a law. And for a few decades the filibuster is used, but
pretty sparingly. Then in the 1950s, the senate starts to consider
civil rights legislation — and southern senators really hate this. But they don't have to votes to actually defeat
the bills. So they start using the filibuster to block
bills. Here's South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond. He looks tired, because he just filibustered
the 1957 Civil Rights Act — for more than 24 hours. These filibusters are painstaking — and
they block the senate from actually doing work. The majority leader at the time, Mike Mansfield,
doesn't like this. He’s okay with needing a supermajority to
pass things. What he doesn’t like are these long, pointless
speeches. So he makes a change. He skips the debate -- and goes directly to
a vote to see if there's a supermajority to end debate. This means, if senators wants to filibuster,
they don't have to stand up and talk. They can just threaten to — as long as they
have the numbers to block a supermajority vote. This makes it way easier to filibuster. And the number of filibusters grows. In the mid-70s, the Senate changes the threshold
needed to filibuster -- now instead of 34 senators, you need 41. But it doesn't make much of a difference. And then around the 2000s, senators in the
minority start to realize something: So they filibuster everything the other party
wants to do. That's what leads to this spike. Now almost every big bill is filibustered. Finally, in 2013, the Democratic majority
makes a change to the rules, that says the filibuster no longer applies to certain confirmation
votes. In 2017, the Republican majority makes another,
similar change. Both times, it feels like a huge deal. But now things are beginning to change. The 2020 elections are coming up. And Democrats have some big proposals. "Health care in America." "Federal investment in teacher's salaries." "Investments in clean energy." But Democrats know, even if they get
a majority in the Senate, they're not going to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. And that's why a new idea is now on the table. "Would you urge the senate democratic leader
to get rid of the filibuster?" "I think we have to have that on the table." "Get rid of the filibuster." "Get rid of the filibuster." Getting rid of an old tradition naturally
feels radical. But here’s one more story about the filibuster. The senate is only one half of Congress. The other half, the House of Representatives,
also used to have rules that allowed the minority party to filibuster bills. Then, in 1888, Republicans won control of
the House. But the filibuster rules kept them from actually
passing anything. It was like the election, and ultimately the
will of the people, didn't even matter. So they got rid of it. And the reasoning was pretty simple. If the party that loses an election can block
the winners from doing anything... What does it mean to be a democracy? Hey everyone, I’m Ranjani, here to announce a new
series we’re starting called Missing Chapter! The goal of this series is to tell stories
that often don’t make it into our history textbooks — that are overlooked or underreported. Our first season tackles stories of racial
injustice, political conflicts, even the hidden history of US medical experimentation. I’ll take you to the locations where these
historical events happened, dig up the evidence, and meet the historians and locals who are
personally connected to these stories. “Many people didn’t speak about it, they
kind of internalized it.” “Wilmington did a really great job of covering
up a very dark past for a very long time.” “Political power is truly seized by the
barrel of a gun.” Through their voices and these stories, we’ll
revisit the past to give context to the present day. A few months ago we put out a call for what stories you think we should tell with this series— and we got hundreds of responses! One of the suggestions we got the most was
the story of an 1898 American election and coup d’etat in North Carolina. And, that’s exactly what we’re covering
first. We’re also trying something out for how
we’re publishing this first Missing Chapter story. We're giving Vox Video Lab members early access, so they can watch this video right now. If you want to get early access, you can
sign up by going to vox.com/join. But don’t worry,  this is not a paywall.
In one week, we’re going to publish this video right here on the main channel
for all of our viewers. Hope you enjoy the first episode! Every few years, they gather to tell us what's
happening to our warming planet. In 2018, they had some news. "It’s very clear that half a degree matters." This is a chart of how much the global temperature
has gone up since we discovered fossil fuels. For a long time, scientists said that we should
try to stay under this line: 1.5 degrees celsius. But that really, we’d be okay if
we ended up below this line: 2 degrees. Now they were saying, that wasn't quite right. That we’re not safe in this zone. And that hitting this line will mean a spike
in mass migration, wildfires, deadly heat stress - and it’s going to cost us. "Trillions of dollars, millions of lives. Irreversible, forever. Changes that cannot
be undone in centuries." That’s what happens if we get warming to
stop here. And right now, we're on track to go way past
that. “If action is not taken, it will take the
planet into an unprecedented climate future, if we compare it to what has happened during all of human evolutionary history.” We don’t have a plan for this. So a group of American activists started
to make one. They recruited a Congresswoman and a senator
to turn it into a Congressional resolution. It’s the first step of a plan that has mostly
yet to be written. It’s called the Green New Deal. And inside, there’s something we might not
want to hear. This is the Green New Deal resolution. It’s only 14 pages. And to understand what's in it, it's important
to understand what's not. "It is not a bill. It's not legislation. It's not a policy proposal. It's not anything that you could pass and make law." This is my colleague David Roberts. Dave's written a lot about the Green New Deal. And he says the 14-page resolution is just
a first step. "The idea was, what's our shared understanding
of the problem, and what's necessary to solve it?" The Green New Deal contains basically two
big ideas. The first is this question of what we need
to do to solve the impending climate crisis. The Green New Deal says what climate scientists say: We need to completely stop burning fossil fuels — "as much as technologically feasible." "So that means things like rethinking vehicles, energy efficiency standards for buildings, changing the ways we make steel and concrete." That's Rhiana Gunn-Wright. She’s part of the think tank that came up
with the Green New Deal. "Policy director at New Consensus." Rhiana writes policy. And she likes to rattle off the things that moving
away from fossil fuels will entail. "Moving to electric vehicles. Make that home energy efficient. The food that you buy will be grown locally." The Green New Deal requires building a lot of new things, the things to power the world, without
fossil fuels. And that’ll create new jobs, new industries,
an entire new economy. But Rhiana also emphasizes that this is going
to inflict a cost. "It's going to be a massive undertaking, because
we're asking how do we rethink the ways we use energy in our society." A key principle of the Green New Deal is that
it’s too late to incrementally move away from fossil fuels. It has to happen quickly, and dramatically. Or as Dave puts it:
"People don't seem to get, zero emissions means zero oil business, zero natural gas
business. No coal business, no internal combustion
engine auto business. The number "zero" means it all has to go."" Here’s what decarbonizing will do. When we rip out fossil fuels from the economy,
people are going to lose their jobs. And that means they’ll lose their health
care and maybe their homes. But the Green New Deal also has a second part. And this part acknowledges that transitioning
Americans away from fossil fuels is a huge and difficult ask -- especially at a time when so many live in
economic uncertainty. "How can we go to the American people and
say  'I sure hope you aren't one of the people who loses a job, because then you might
die, sick on the street. Good luck. Now will you sign my bill?'" This is the contradiction that the Green New
Deal describes. It's the part we may not want to hear: That we need to take action, and also that
taking action will cause pain. Imagine you’re a coal worker. If the US decarbonizes, you are going to suffer. So this second part is a set of promises,
for how Americans will be protected during the transition away from fossil fuels. "Jobs guarantee, public employment, universal
healthcare, education and training." "The basic elements of economic freedom
that ought to be promised and due to every citizen of the richest country in the world." And these promises aren't just for protecting
coal workers. They're meant to keep all inequality from
getting even worse during the transition. Because think about what direction wealth,
and power, usually flow in — when new things get built. It's the communities with the most political
clout who decide where things can and can't be built. Wealthy corporations jump in to build those
projects. And the good jobs go to people who can afford
to get trained for them. "The folks who have the fewest barriers will
be the ones who benefit the most, and you're just going to see a replication of the issues
that we have now." In other words, anyone who’s historically
missed out on those benefits -- especially the poor, and people of color -- could end
up even worse off. So the Green New Deal says, we should rebuild
the American economy -- in a way that allows opportunity to flow more fairly. "The Green New Deal is about: While
we have this chance, why don't we think about that proactively to change it in the ways that
people have been calling for it to be changed for generations at this point." So the first part of the Green New Deal is
a set of goals to avoid a global disaster. The second part says we should do it in a
way that helps ordinary Americans come out better on the other side. And that's it. That’s all that's in these 14 pages. It’s just a first step. And now, Rhiana’s job is to figure out how
to go from this 14-page resolution to an actual Green New Deal - a road map for what government
needs to do next. And their goal is that, if Democrats win power
in 2020, there’s a plan ready to execute. For now, though, the Green New Deal is just
asking our leaders to acknowledge the scale of the problems we face. "This disastrous plan …" "... would be a massive government takeover…" "...  it would stifle innovation…" "... wasteful and reckless spending..." "... rather than setting realistic goals…
" "... we would go from about 94 million cows
to zero cows..." "... that resolution will not pass the Senate. Because there's no way to pay for it..." "Desctructive, socialist, daydream." The Green New Deal is a longshot. But right now it’s also the only plan that
acknowledges what we know is coming. "What is the world that we want? What is the country that we want? And how do we get there? And how do we get there in a way that is just, and how do we get there in a way that stabilizes the climate and heals our planet? Because if we don't do that, then there will be
no paradigm because there will be nothing to fight for." In 2012, Superstorm Sandy pummeled the east
coast of America. Winds blew in at 80 miles per hour and heavy
rain pushed the ocean over 9 feet above average levels. In New York, storm surges brought 30-foot
waves ashore, flooding streets, subways, and homes. 20 miles south of Manhattan – several neighborhoods
on the small borough of Staten Island sat in ruins. Homes were completely leveled and 24 people
were killed. As global temperatures rise, research has
shown that increasingly violent storms will likely continue assaulting our coasts. Paired with rising sea levels, that could
mean higher risk of flooding and worsening catastrophic damage to areas like this – unless we learn to
adapt. And for Staten Island, that means building
a wall. Adaptation is this idea that we are physically
remaking our cities to make sure that they are going to be resilient in the climate disasters
of the future. And that will also include retrofitting our cities for the everyday effects of climate change, which means things like extreme heat, heavy downpours, drought. A sea wall is one of these adaptations. It’s erected parallel to the coast to create
a “hard shoreline”. It deflects daily tides to keep the shore
from eroding away as it would under normal conditions. If a natural disaster strikes, it’s meant
to stop incoming storm surges or a tsunami. Now, if fortifying our cities with walls seems
too simple and medieval, that’s because it kind of is. Climate change isn’t a single assault on
a castle, it’s an ongoing, worsening crisis. And in order to evolve with that crisis, the
adaptations we make need to include resilient infrastructure. Resiliency is this idea that your city can
respond to any type of threat – it might not just be a climate threat, but that you
plan for disasters and emergencies in a way that will enrich everyday life for your residents
anyway. In other words, building resilient infrastructure
means we don’t have to choose between feeling safe and enjoying our cities.
For example, in 2008 New York Harbor School started the Billion Oyster Project, a resiliency
plan that restores oyster reefs in New York Harbor. The reefs help filter the water and slow down
powerful waves, preventing erosion and reducing flooding. The project is even doubling as an educational
program for students around the city. When natural solutions like that aren’t
enough, cities may look for more intense options. Like sea walls. In hopes to prevent another Sandy-level disaster,
Staten Island has recently received $615 million in funding for its own sea wall. The structure will span about 5 miles and
sit 20 feet above sea level. And it includes resilient design elements:
The wall will double as a boardwalk, making it far less imposing and allowing residents
to enjoy the coastal views. Plus, to keep Staten Island safe, the plan
includes adaptations to the land surrounding the seawall. Globally, rainfall during major storms is
expected to increase 20% by 2100. Since much of Staten Island was initially built on
wetlands, intense rainfall could easily flood neighborhoods — something a sea wall can’t
prevent. So the resiliency plan includes returning
several areas on the island to their natural marshy state. And that helps to mitigate that storm surge
when you have that coastal flooding, when you have heavy rain, and make sure that the
water is not going to be trapped in where the buildings are. Several man-made ponds will also be excavated
for drainage purposes. These alterations required careful planning
and analysis of the land they’re trying to defend. And altogether, they make a pretty well-rounded
protection plan. But even with a multifaceted and resilient
approach, these adaptations might not be enough. In 2018, New Orleans finished an upgrade on
seawalls and levees designed to protect the city. But 14 billion dollars later, engineers are
saying the walls will be inadequate in 4 years due to sea level rise and sinking land. And in Kerala, India, sea walls have actually
led to worsening coastal erosion. Climate change can be unpredictable, and we’re
being put in a position to predict it anyway. Resilient infrastructure is one way to tackle
that uncertainty, but it’s not foolproof. Any type of infrastructure we are building
to save ourselves from the adverse impacts of climate change is also going to introduce
changes to our city that we are going to have to learn to live with. It's moving beyond just building this one
piece of infrastructure that would stay there for a century or two and really figuring out
how you can innovate on the materials and the design over time, to address different
challenges that will surface. The reality is, that even with resiliency
in mind, walling off the ocean is a band-aid solution on a growing wound. Building a wall to protect our cities is one
thing – Building our cities to protect themselves
is another. Hey, you probably realized this piece was a collaboration between Vox and Curbed. And that's because while I love making videos on urbanism, I really needed their expertise on resilient infrastructure to make it happen. I actually link to some of their articles below that helped inspire this video, but they give you a more in-depth analysis on sea walls and how to build a resilient city in our changing world. Curbed covers everything from urbanism, to transportation, to housing, so definitely go check them out for more content. And for more information and updates on the Staten Island sea wall, head over to Curbed New York. Every week this mystery box shows up at my
doorstep. It's one of those subscription boxes, except
instead of dog toys or makeup, it's food from local farmers. And I never know exactly what I'm gonna get. Got some salad greens, asparagus, and red
corn..? But this wasn't always such an unusual sight. If you look through old seed catalogues like
these ones, you'll see hundreds of varieties of corn, with names like "Dibbles' Mammoth,"
"Kendel's Early Giant," and my personal favorite, "Potter's Excelsior". But none of these varieties exist anymore. American farmers used to grow hundreds of
varieties of sweet corn, tomatoes, and other edible plants. Today, just a tiny fraction of those varieties
are still around. So what happened to all these plants? For most of our time on this planet, humans
have been hunter gatherers. We ate what was nearby. This was still true when we invented farming
10,000 years ago, by cultivating wild plants like Teosinte in Central America and Thorn
Apple in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Over thousands of years, farmers bred these
wild ancestors into foods like corn and eggplant, that we would recognize today. As humans moved around the world, so did the
seeds and farmers continued to breed different varieties to adapt them to their new environments. Which led to a ton of genetic diversity. Farmers could raise different genetic varieties
of different crops. If disease or pests killed one type, there
were others to fall back on. But gradually industrialization and cheap
fossil fuels made us less dependent on what grew well nearby. "Food on the move, from distant parts of the
world comes the great variety of foods Americans demand." Most farmers switched from growing a variety
of edible plants to a single crop that was easy to process and ship. As this model spread beyond the United States,
older varieties of plants and animals disappeared from farms around the world. By 1970, 90% of the wheat varieties that had
once been grown in China were gone. As were 80% of the varieties of maize or corn
that were once grown in Mexico. By the summer of 1971, more than 85% of the
corn planted in the US was genetically identical. Crop scientists had bred this new corn so
that it grew without a tassel, making it easier to harvest. But because these plants were genetic copies
of one another, that also made them susceptible to the same deadly fungus, Southern Leaf Corn
Blight. It took over the US corn crop, costing farmers
and taxpayers millions of dollars. And the damage would have continued, if it
weren't for a humble little plant called Teosinte. The wild grass native to Oaxaca, Mexico, and
the common ancestor of the 22,000 known varieties of corn. Teosinte includes a gene for resistance to
the same fungus that was devastating the US corn crop. Scientists halted the damage by crossbreeding
Teosinte with American corn, but that didn't totally solve the problem of genetic diversity. Today, more than 40% of the corn grown in
the US is derived from just six inbred lines. And seed companies, driven by profit, can
repackage genetic copies of the same seeds for different prices. Farmers plant them, thinking that they're
genetically diversifying their fields when really they're not. Since the corn crisis in 1971 disease has
ravaged genetically uniform crops of beans, rice tomatoes, and bananas. And it's about to get worse. The plants we eat have spent thousands of
years evolving to grow in specific conditions, conditions we are changing rapidly by releasing
more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We depend on corn, wheat, and rice for more
than 60% of our global calories. And by 2050, we'll have 2 billion more people
to feed. But because of climate change, we'll actually
be producing less of all three of these crops. We're going to need plants that can grow in
radically different conditions and the more genetic varieties we save, the better protected
we'll be. There are seed banks all over the world where
scientists, indigenous communities, and farmers are all preserving older seed varieties. But thousands have already been lost, which
is why it's so critical to preserve the genetic diversity we still have. The weird stuff, like red popcorn. And the best way to save the seeds that might
save us one day, is to grow them and eat them. October 22, 1962. US President John F Kennedy deploys a fleet
of warships to Cuba. To intercept Soviet cargo ships, which are
already on the way… ...transporting nuclear missiles to the island. Kennedy strategically called the impending
showdown: KENNEDY: “a strict quarantine of all offensive
military equipment.” What it really was, was a blockade – which
is an act of aggression. One wrong move on either side would trigger
an all out nuclear war. And it all started here, a week earlier. With an aerial photograph that doesn’t seem
to show much… ...unless you’re looking for something specific. Pretty much immediately following the allied
victory in World War II, the United States and Soviet Union became bitter enemies… ...kicking off a decades-long struggle for
global influence known as the “Cold War”. Espionage and intelligence were at the center
of this conflict, most crucially surrounding the mutual buildup of nuclear arsenals capable
of unprecedented levels of destruction. But the US initially had a hard time keeping
track of their nemesis. The Soviet Union was notoriously secretive,
and hid itself – and its actions – from the world. CHURCHILL An iron curtain has descended across
the continent. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia intends to
do in the immediate future. Then-US President Dwight D Eisenhower saw
a solution that built on experimental intelligence gathering from World War II: Aerial photo analysis. In the late 1950s, the new high-altitude U-2
spy plane took photo reconnaissance to the next level. It was equipped with a powerful camera and
could fly at a staggering height of 70,000 feet… ...or, roughly 13 miles above Earth’s surface. “These cameras are described as capable
of spotting a golf ball on a putting-green from 40,000 feet.” In 1961, Eisenhower authorized the creation
of a new surveillance arm of the CIA: the National Photographic Interpretation Center,
or NPIC. This small team of photo interpreters was
trained in photogrammetry... ...the science of determining measurements
from photographs. Using this method, an expert photo interpreter
could identify specific equipment hidden in the tiny details of photographs… ...and recognize signs of nuclear missile site
construction. So what’s all this got to do with Cuba? After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961,
where the US attempted to overthrow Cuba's communist government, ties between the Soviet
Union and Cuba strengthened. The US worried that the Soviets might use
Cuba as a nuclear missile base. If so, they would suddenly have the Western
Hemisphere within range of nuclear weapons. The CIA began flying U-2 missions over Cuba
and bringing the imagery to the NPIC, whose photo interpreters pored over every detail,
searching for evidence of Soviet presence on the island. It was like looking for a needle in a mile-long
haystack – that’s how much film a single U-2 mission yields, covering huge amounts
of land. But on October 15th, 1962, Dino Brugioni,
a senior photo interpreter, found something. This photo proved, beyond doubt, that the
Soviets were building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. Brugioni identified military tents and trucks,
arranged in known-Soviet patterns. Launcher equipment. And, most critically, missile transport trailers
measuring 65 feet in length. Which, when compared to a photo taken in Moscow,
made it a perfect match for the Soviet SS-4… ...which had a range of 1,100 nautical miles,
meaning American cities as far as Washington, DC would be in reach. When the NPIC briefed Kennedy on what they’d
found, the president ordered a scaling up of U-2 missions to photograph and analyze
all of Cuba. Photo analysts updated Kennedy daily and in
secret on their progress, which gave him time to decide how to confront the Soviet Union. Given the evidence, Kennedy was strongly advised
to launch air strikes against the missile sites and invade Cuba. But he took a more measured approach with
his – KENNEDY: “strict quarantine of all offensive
military equipment.” Which kicked off 6 intense days between the
US and the Soviet Union, with Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev calling Kennedy’s move
“an act of aggression that pushes mankind to the abyss of world nuclear missile war.” ARCHIVE: Round the clock processing of their
film shows that work on the missile sites is being accelerated. The damning photos were revealed to allies
at the United Nations, as the US military rapidly mobilized and was placed on high alert,
and Cuba prepared for another invasion. But when Soviet freighters reached the quarantine
line…. ARCHIVE: A Soviet-chartered vessel Amaruchla
is stopped, boarded, and inspected, then cleared to proceed to Cuba. Apparently the Soviet vessels loaded with
offensive weapons have turned back. A few days later, Kennedy received a message
from Kruschev. The Soviet Union had agreed to withdraw from
Cuba in exchange for the US removing missiles it had placed in Turkey and Italy. So, the nuclear missile sites were dismantled
and the Soviets left. Transporting their nuclear missiles with them
back across the Iron Curtain. In a personal thank you letter to the NPIC,
Kennedy emphasized the importance of the “analysis and interpretation of the Cuban photography”
in advising the US’s response in what is now called the Cuban Missile Crisis. ARCHIVE: In summary: the Soviet Union did
embark upon a bold venture to establish clandestinely in the Western Hemisphere a major offensive
weapons base. ARCHIVE: That they were deterred in this effort
is in large part attributable to the type of reconnaissance photography that we have
just reviewed. I'm done. I'm finally done watching Fox News. It's rotting my brain. And only boomers watch that crap anyway. From now on, I'm watching real news. Stuff that actually matters. And I'll never have to worry about Fox News
ever ag- Two of the headlines on Fox News tonight. Gotten a lot of attention thanks to Fox News. Started on Fox News. Yesterday on Fox News. Last night on O'Reilly. Last night on Hannity. This morning on Fox & Friends. Fox was all over this story. Want to play this clip from Fox. Clip from Fox. Clip from Fox News earlier. It makes my head explode when I see these
clips from Fox News. Oh, god. It's everywhere. There's no escape. Thank god for Fox News. Thank god for Fox News. Thank god for Fox. You get the truth out. Thank god for Fox News, or otherwise, no one would be talking about these issues. In an ideal world, political journalism looks
like this. On either side, you've got the parties fighting for the attention of the press. And in the middle, you've got journalists sorting through what's important and what's just partisan bullshit. This is called gatekeeping, and it's one of the most important things
journalists do. Political operatives can spin whatever talking points they want, but ultimately it's the journalists who decide what's newsworthy enough to pay attention
to. But that is in an ideal world, and we don't live in an ideal world. We live in hell. And in hell, there's Fox News. Fox exists in this weird in-between space because it claims to be a news organization but it's essentially a Republican front group. The network was founded by GOP political operative
Roger Ailes. Not sure why he's posing like Shirley Temple
in this picture. Ailes spent his career advising Republican presidents like Reagan, Bush Sr., and surprise, surprise, Nixon. A memo from the Nixon Library detailed Ailes' dream of launching a Republican news
network. A plan for putting the GOP on TV news. Which was described as a way to get around the "prejudices of network news selectors." Wow, nightmares really do come true. Ailes eventually founded Fox News. And with it, he turned partisan hackery into
an art form. Obama salutes while holding coffee? Everyone's talking about the disrespectful
way the president saluted a Marine yesterday. Clinton coughs during a campaign event? We all have our coughing spells, but it doesn't look good when you have all these conspiracy theories about her health. Rashida Tlaib says a naughty word about Trump? We're going to go in there, we're going to
impeach the motherfucker. Is this what the Democratic Party has become? Buckle up, folks. This is the new Democratic Party. This is the Democratic Party in 2019. Fox knows this fucking bullshit doesn't actually
matter. But that's not the point. The point is pretending that it matters, so voters at home think it does too. Now, I know what you're thinking. Oh, my god. Who cares. It's Fox. None of us actually watch that crap. Except you do watch that crap, Mary. You just don't realize it. Mary? Because once Fox News goes all-in on a story, other networks pay attention. "What's in conservative media? What are conservatives talking about? Take Benghazi, for example. You're still mad about this? I'm still mad about this. In 2012, Fox began peddling wild conspiracy theories about a terror attack in Benghazi. Explosive new details about a possible White House cover-up on Benghazi. Unanswered questions about Benghazi. Questions still remain unanswered. Some have suggested this is bigger than Watergate. Fox's goal was to smear the Obama administration,
sure. But it was also to get other news outlets to take that smear seriously. I think most journalists would be inclined Why is the media not dealing with a clear
cover-up here? And you say to yourself, And eventually, Mary, it worked. Aren't there still legitimate questions to be answered on Benghazi? Very serious unanswered questions. Legitimate questions. Too many questions. It's not just for Fox News anymore, it's all
of cable news. So the result of that is that They all go talk about something, Thank god for Fox News for being tenacious
enough to cause the mainstream media not to ignore
this. There is no equivalent to this on the left. And that creates what Matt calls a "hack gap." Because conservatives can manufacture their own outrage cycles, mainstream outlets pay a lot more attention to their bullshit. Which means even minor slip-ups by Democrats
can become career-defining scandals. In March, Democrat Ilhan Omar gave a speech about how Muslim organizations had to fight
Islamophobia after 9/11. Pretty non-controversial, right? Wrong again, Mary. Because in April, Republican Dan Crenshaw accused Omar of trivializing 9/11 because she didn't say the word terrorist,
I guess? I don't know. Am I bleeding again? And the next morning, Fox News knew what it
had to do. Really? Few people did something? You have to wonder if she's an American first. Downplaying one of the darkest days in our nation's history. The Democratic Party has a problem. Ilhan Omar is embroiled in another controversy
today. After making controversial comments. Do you feel she should apologize? Do you think she should have rethought her
words? How do you think this controversy is playing
out among Democrats? The congresswoman needs to be careful about
her own words too. This is the kind of hacky nonsense that good
gatekeeping is supposed to protect us from. And it almost did. Nobody even cared about Omar’s speech for
weeks after she gave it. But once Fox made it a story, it was over. Look at how many mainstream news segments included clips from Fox. How do you think this controversy is playing out among Democrats? The hack gap is a nightmare in a normal year, but it's especially bad during election season. In 2016, a lot of journalists realized that the Clinton email server was not the national crisis Fox was making it out
to be. Could this new development put her behind
bars? You've got destruction of evidence. You've got obstruction of justice. There's three specific laws that we found. There's at least seven that I've found. Lock her up! Yes, lock her up. Ah, that pleases me. But because Fox viewers became fixated on Hillary's emails, Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! the story became newsworthy. I remember talking to somebody who was a high-ranking official in a major newspaper and I was asking him, And he said, "Well, you know, Benghazi, her private email server. It's all part of the same narrative and why many voters don't trust her. Okay, fair enough. They came from Fox News; they came from conservative . talk radio. The American public know they can't trust
her. Can't trust her. We can't trust her. So you put this stuff out. this email server. Years later, when it turns out that the Trump
White House is also using unsecured communication lines, it doesn't spark the same months-long crisis that Hillary's emails did, because there's no left-wing propaganda machine baiting journalists into overreacting. It's not that there's nothing to these stories. Clinton's email server was a mistake. Benghazi was a mess. Omar could have said the word terrorists more,
I guess? Oh, god, it's in my ear now. It's that they get blown way out of proportion by a propaganda machine that's trying to score
political points. And by mainstream journalists who are too afraid of looking biased against conservatives to call bullshit. And the weird genius of the hack gap is that if you're not watching Fox News, you won't
even notice it. Because it doesn't look like Fox & Friends
or Hannity. It looks like serious journalists covering
a serious controversy that they've decided is important. But they aren't deciding. They're reacting to a political operation that was created to get you to pay attention. You can try to ignore Fox News all you want. But as long as journalists are getting their
story assignments from conservative media, you can't escape
it. Thanks for watching. We keep videos like this free because we think
it's important for the public to understand big topics like
this. And unlike a lot of news organizations, we don't just upload clips from our broadcast. We're trying to create news videos that are smarter than the crap you see on CNN and Fox. But making videos like this is expensive, and you can help us keep doing this work by clicking this link and joining the Vox
Video Lab. Video Lab members get access to live-stream
Q&As, a look at our video-making process, and a
ton of other perks. These spiney spheres are plant pollen, as
seen under a microscope. They’re the culprit behind most seasonal
allergies. Pollen can cause your immune system to kick
into overdrive because your body sees the pollen as a harmful intruder. As a result, the body produces histamines. Normally, they promote healing by increasing
blood flow and inflammation. But they can lead to the nasty symptoms we
associate with allergies — like sneezing, runny noses, and watery eyes. Generally, people who suffer from allergies
have it bad for several weeks during certain plants’ growing seasons. But because of climate change, the level of
pollen in the air is getting much worse. And that’s bad news — whether you suffer
from allergies or not. In order to grow and produce pollen, plants
need to generate energy through photosynthesis. That requires water, sunlight, and a third necessary ingredient, carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide exists naturally in the atmosphere,
but as we burn fossil fuels like coal in power plants or gasoline in our cars, we’re putting
more and more CO2 into the air. The more carbon dioxide there is in the air,
the more plants grow and produce pollen. Take a look at this graph. These bars are the level of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere between 1996 and 2015. And this line is the amount of pollen produced
per ragweed plant, a common source of allergens. As carbon dioxide increased, the ragweed produced
more and more pollen. And pollen is an important part of a plant’s
reproductive cycle. So more pollen means more seeds, which means
more plants producing more pollen the following season. But CO2 is increasing the level of pollen
in another way as well. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. And it’s called that because it traps the
sun’s heat energy in the Earth’s atmosphere and is helping warm the planet — sort of
like a greenhouse. As the climate warms, there are more days
above freezing, which means more time that plants are active and producing pollen. This graph shows the number of days with above-freezing temperatures in the US over the past 120 years. In the past 50 years, the US growing season
has increased by over 10 days, on average. And this isn’t happening at the same rate everywhere. This map shows the increase in pollen season
for ragweed between 1995 and 2015. While some places, like Texas, didn’t see
much change in their ragweed pollen season, most places — especially those in the northern
US and southern Canada — saw pollen season increase by almost a month. And this isn’t just happening in North America. Overall, most places around the world are
seeing longer growing seasons — and, as a result, more days with pollen as well. Pollen levels and allergies are only going
to get worse from here if carbon emissions continue the way they are. This is the current production level of grass
pollen, another common allergen source. By 2060, that level is expected to double. And by 2085, that amount will have more than
tripled. While allergies can be annoying for the 1
in 5 Americans that suffers from them, they can usually be kept at bay with over-the-counter drugs. But in some, allergic reactions can lead to
severe reactions like anaphylaxis, where blood pressure drops and airways start swelling
shut. And pollen grains can wreak havoc on people’s
lungs, even if they don’t suffer from seasonal allergies. In the US, Asthma attacks induced by pollen
have lead to more than 20,000 emergency room visits per year. So if for no other reason than to protect
your sinuses, it’s important to reduce the amount of CO2 we’re adding to the atmosphere. It can help curb how much we’re warming
the planet and it can help slow the pollen-ocalypse. If your best strategy to avoid seasonal allergies is to stay indoors all spring, then you might want a way to stay connected and that couldn't be easier to do from the safety of your pollen-free bunker. Hover makes it simple to buy interesting domains with great extensions like .earth or .space. Even if you don't need your own domain, like "danush@histaminescanbiteme.net" And right now you can get 10% off of your first purchase by going to Hover.com/vox. Hover doesn't impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like these possible. This is an EpiPen. It’s a device that injects you with adrenaline
if you’re having a possibly deadly allergic reaction. If you have severe allergies, you basically
need it. And if you live in the UK, an EpiPen will
cost you the equivalent of 38 US dollars. But if you live in the US, it’ll cost you
$300. And it’s not just the EpiPen. Let’s look at five of the top selling prescription
drugs in the world. Advair, a brand-name asthma inhaler: more
expensive in the US. Lantus, a type of Insulin: more expensive
in the US. Sovaldi for hepatitis C? Yup. Costs more in the US. Humira for arthritis. Crestor for cholesterol: more expensive in
the US. So here’s an unsurprising chart: Americans spend more on prescription drugs
than anyone else in the world. Why? The first thing you have to understand is
that in the US, drugs get to patients differently than almost everywhere else. Let’s look at that popular hepatitis C drug,
Sovaldi. In 2014 Sovaldi became the first drug to completely
cure hepatitis C. Here’s how it got to market in, for example,
the UK. First a government agency had to decide that
Sovaldi was safe and that it actually worked. Then it was evaluated by a regulatory agency
to see if was worthwhile: Are there too many side effects? Is there already a similar drug? Is there a cheaper option? Sovaldi was deemed worthwhile. Next, they negotiated the price. In the UK, the government buys the stock of
medicine for the country. That means they’re usually able to get a
lower rate, kind of like a bulk discount. Which keeps prescription drugs cheaper for
UK citizens. In almost every developed country besides
the US, this is what the system looks like: Safety evaluation, assessment of whether the
country needs it, price negotiations, sold to patients. Now let’s look at the system in the US. First, the drug is evaluated for safety,
but that’s it. If it’s safe, they can sell it, end of story. Drugs are sold by the drug companies to patients,
usually through insurance. And since the US system lets them sell it
for any price, Gilead, the company that makes Sovaldi, charged Americans more for it. When it first came to market, the entire treatment
cost $84,000 in the US. In the UK? Just about $58,000 US dollars. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s
a full 30% less. So it seems like the UK has the better system
right? Well, it’s complicated. These photos are from protests in the US against
the high price of EpiPens. And these are photos from protests in the
UK, over the lack of access to a cystic fibrosis drug called Orkambi. That’s because when there’s a committee
that determines whether a new drug is worthwhile — sometimes they say no. And when they negotiate the prices, sometimes
they don’t come to an agreement and hit a standoff. That’s what’s happening with Orkambi. Both systems require trade offs. Regulated drug markets tend to make drugs
more affordable, but some drugs are completely unavailable. And while the US has more drugs technically
available, they’re often too expensive to actually afford. Americans without insurance are the most likely
to skip medication because of the cost. Even Americans with insurance, are second. But the commonality between these two systems
— is the drug companies. Developing new drug products isn’t cheap
and they’re for-profit businesses. If Gilead didn’t think that researching
and developing a hepatitis C cure, would make them money in the end, they might not have. And with these regulated markets keeping costs
down, the only place the drug companies can really make their money is, you guessed it, the US. Americans are essentially subsidizing the
cost of drugs for the rest of the world. In other words, a big part of why prescription
drugs are more expensive in the US is because they’re cheaper everywhere else. If you'd like to continue exploring the importance of easier access to medicine and vaccines, then I highly recommend a documentary called "Viruses: Destruction and Creation," available now on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a subscription service that offers more than 2,400 documentaries and non-fiction titles, from some of the world's best filmmakers. You can get unlimited access starting at $2.99 a month and because you're a Vox fan, the first 31 days are free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/vox and use the promo code "VOX". CuriosityStream doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like this one possible. So go check them out. Sansa Stark
And Cersei Lannister: Two of Game of Thrones quintessential enemies. Despite being on opposing sides of Westeros,
they have one thing in common: their clothing. In the final season of the show, days before
the Battle of Winterfell, both wear high braced necklines,
draped chains, — sculptural shoulders that evoke armor,
even stud work along a central ridge detail. Their costumes are as connected as their plotlines
for most of the show. And while some of the details can get lost
in the show’s dark motif, If you look closely, you’ll see how their
much their parallel outfits mirror their struggles for power and identity. CERSEI: And your dress. Did you make it? [SANSA nods]
CERSEI: Such talent. You must make something for me. Take a look at Cersei’s outfit here, at
King’s Landing in Season 1. Michelle Clapton — the show’s Emmy award-winning
costume designer — dressed Cersei in a lot of lightweight, pastel
dresses in the first two seasons - pinks, pale purple, turquoise. Within the story, these dresses suggested
a feminine queen in understated luxury. But to the audience, they often signaled moments
she seemed powerless. TYRION: Now the entire North has risen up
against us. CERSEI: I tried to stop it. TYRION: Did you? You failed. Cersei’s pastels play against her Lannister
red dresses to contrast her moments of power CERSEI: Seize him. Cut his throat. Wait. I've changed my mind, let him go. — with the colors she wore in her moments
of helplessness. Like this turquoise dress she wears while
watching her daughter Myrcella being sent away to Dorne. Around the same time, Sansa was a hostage
of the crown, at the mercy of the Lannisters — wearing dresses that mirrored her captor
Cersei. The oversized, pastel hand-me-downs do the
same thing for her that they did for Cersei — reflect her lack of power. “Your grace, whatever my traitor brother
has done I had no part, you know that. I beg you, please!” They’re both at sea, drowning
in light-colored fabric, and unable to change their circumstances. The Battle of Blackwater changed all of that. Before the battle, Cersei was dressed in the
most Lannister outfit she could find: a red dress with Lannister lions, and an ornamental
breastplate with, you guessed it, Lannister lions. It didn’t end up being very effective for
morale, “The battle is lost your grace.” But it was a show of house power, and Sansa’s
costuming followed suit. In the wake of the battle, Sansa donned her
own version of a house color: purple. It wasn’t Stark blue, but it gave her more
identity than her pastel hostage hand-me-downs — without rocking the boat too much around
the red Lannisters. It’s an early example of a character dressing
in “survival camouflage,” to blend in with those who pose a threat. But Sansa’s costuming also shows how she’s
begun to assert herself — this Stark scarf under her gowns is a subtle nod to home. Cersei’s season 3 clothes doubled down on
Lannisterism, as she assumed the role of Queen Mother: red everywhere, increasingly ornate
fabrics, and lion sigil armor and jewelry. “You’re a clever man, but not half as
clever as you think you are.” And later in the season, Sansa’s costuming
echoed this shift at her wedding to Tyrion Lannister. “You may now cloak the bride and bring her
under your protection.” Her gown was Sansa purple, but with armored
panniers — a distinctly Cersei touch. And the show’s embroiderer, Michelle Carragher,
included some tricky embellishments, Featuring lions overcoming Stark wolves. The embroidered scene mimicked the way Cersei’
Lannister lion signaled authority — — but made sure there was something Stark
on Sansa’s dress, too. Their dueling sigils show how much Sansa had
already learned from Cersei about using clothing to signal alliances. An especially important skill moving forward. In season 4, as the two characters diverge
— with Cersei vying for power behind the throne, and Sansa grappling with her identity
— those signature colors begin to disappear. Cersei goes dark as she mourns her son, Joffrey. How dark? Well, that house sigil is either studded with
skulls or half-rotted, so... Pretty damn dark. Sansa’s transformation happens after Petyr
Baelish rescues her from King’s Landing — and her new circumstances prompt a dress
so important we see her making it. Technically, the dress signaled Sansa going undercover as Petyr’s “daughter.” “I know what you want." "Do you?” But the details — straight sleeves like
Baelish’s coats, feathers evoking his nickname, “the Mockingbird,” and a gunmetal palette
— were pivotal, reflecting Sansa’s keen awareness of survival camouflage. A skill she learned under Cersei. Even their necklaces are echoes, a little piece of armor at the throat. As Cersei and Sansa begin to reassert their power around season 6, their gowns become increasingly stiff and severe and house loyalty returns to their costuming with a vengeance. During Sansa’s Northern tour in season 6 to rally support against Ramsay Bolton, she wears the Westerosi version of a graphic tee, Stark direwolf front and center. JON: New dress? SANSA: I made it myself, do you like it? JON: I like the wolf bit. The outfit is a clear indicator of how far she’s come into her own power — evidenced as she watches Ramsay being eaten by his own dogs. The same way Cersei’s sigil signified authority after her violent bid for the throne. With no further use for the survival camouflage of feminine queen or splendid Queen Mother, Cersei’s gowns echo Lannister armor, with high-necked silhouettes in forbidding fabrics, and defensive details like epaulets — reminders of the family’s military might. And by the time Sansa's back in Winterfell on her own terms in season 7, Her wardrobe is high-necked silhouettes in forbidding fabrics. The epaulets and signature necklace echo Stark armor, while feathers represent her time with Baelish, reflecting the Stark family’s prestige and the cunning she uses to govern the North. Since the women parted at the Purple Wedding, they’ve kept pace with each other — strategically — SANSA: Cersei told you her army was coming north to fight for you? TYRION: She did. SANSA: And you believed her? — and visually. And by the show’s final season, Sansa and Cersei have amassed different kinds of authority and have taken different lessons to heart about what wins a war. SANSA: While I ensured our stores would last through winter, I didn't account for Dothraki, Unsullied and two full-grown dragons. CERSEI: Twenty-thousand men, is it? HARRY: Yes, Your Grace. CERSEI: And elephants? HARRY: Uh, no elephants, Your Grace. CERSEI: That’s disappointing. Despite the diverging plotlines, as both of them enter the final battle, their costumes show their similarities rather than emphasize their differences. In the end, they stand on opposite sides, with their costumes clearly echoing each other. And as the show draws to a close — it’s safe to say those parallels are there for a reason. If this video has you thinking about fashion design, you should check out Skillshare. It's an online learning community with classes in drawing, video, animation, and more. And this class from streetwear legend Jeff Staple can give you tips on starting your own fashion label. Now you can get two months of Skillshare for free. To sign up, visit the link in the description The first 500 visitors get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. Skillshare doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like these possible. So you should go check them out. “This storm will be magnificent.” “It may shock you.” I guess we should tell everyone what we’re
doing here again, right? Yes, do you want to explain what the premise
of this is? Yeah, I’m Coleman Lowndes. I’m Phil Edwards. This is History Club, where either Phil tells
me a story or I tell Phil a story. So last time I told you this story, and now
I have no idea what’s going on. Right. Okay, I want to start with a question. Okay. Calvinism? Galvanism. With a G. No. I haven’t heard of that. You’ve definitely seen it. Is this Frankenstein? Mhm. You know this isn’t real, right? Well that’s what we’re going to talk about
today, actually. FRANKENSTEIN: It’s alive, it's moving. It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! It’s alive! That is an iconic scene from Frankenstein,
the 1931 movie. Okay. Basically the one that every screen adaptation
afterward is based on. Like you’ve seen that scene before, right? Yeah! Yeah. Or you’re familiar with it. Or I’ve seen the Young Frankenstein version
of it. Also. Classic, yup. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: It’s alive! This scene is meant to recreate the moment
that Victor Frankenstein’s creature comes to life in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. But it’s not exactly right. Because of like the Young Frankenstein stuff
and scenes like this, we remember Frankenstein as this a sort of unimaginable tale of science
fiction. But 1818 readers wouldn’t have seen it
that way. It was actually pretty reflective of contemporary
medical experiments, and it’s going to take us on a morbid journey through science! Woah! Wow! FRANKENSTEIN: It is one of the strangest tales
ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation:
life and death. The 18th century in Europe, as you probably
know, is known as the “Age of Enlightenment.” Up until this point, scientific study wasn’t
really thought of as a useful endeavor, and it was sort of likened to amusing magic tricks. But sort of all at once, there were these
unimaginable breakthroughs in chemistry, and physics, and philosophy. People began to see the universe as an organized
system rather than sort of this, like, mystery guided by the Heavens. And they wanted to understand more about how
it all worked – and what humans could take control of. I’m sorry can you just remind me again,
when was Frankenstein written? It came out in 1818, just on the heels of
the “long 18th century,” the long century of progress. Yeah, I mean, they’ve been swimming in this
for 150 years, or something like that. Yeah. Around the same time, dissection and studying
anatomy was huge, and the human body was starting to be thought of as a sentient machine made
up of complementary parts. The heart, for example, was equated to a pump,
because it circulated blood throughout the body and maintained our innate lifeforce. And that actually brings us to the subject
of drowning. Wait, to the topic of what? Um, drowning. Oh, the drowning! Okay. And diagnosing death, in general. Because diagnosing death, even to this day,
is pretty tricky. And even like, diagnosing life, like there’s
obviously a huge debate over when life begins. But also when life ends. This debate was really fired up in the late
18th century, because there were a bunch of recorded instances of people who seemed to
be dead suddenly waking up. Sometimes after human intervention. Are we going to get into bells on coffins? We are! I have a spot in here for this, yes. Most of these “resurrections” were victims
of drowning, and that motivated the founding of England’s Royal Humane Society in 1774. And I’m going to send you a picture of that. The Royal Humane Society was originally called,
a very catchy name, “The Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned.” And they offered lessons in, and rewards for,
reviving people who seemed to have died from drowning. Woah, really? They didn’t have the benefit of the tools
that we have now to detect faint vital signs, so the society was basically saying that it’s
hard to know for sure if someone is truly dead. And their motto, to this day actually, is,
and I’m going to butcher this, lateat scintillula forsan, which means “a small spark may perhaps
be hid.” Oh, wow. In turn, the idea that you could be misdiagnosed
as dead contributed to a growing fear of mistakenly being buried alive, which you’ve written
about. Yeah, I did a whole slideshow of different
coffins that have bells attached at the top. So the idea there was that if you were stuck
inside this coffin, you could pull on the bell, it would ring above ground, and then
people would know that you weren’t actually dead. It’s persuasive, I mean I would take a beeper
in there with me. There were people too who were so afraid of
being misdiagnosed as dead that they said like “when I die, cut my heart out.” Just to be sure. And actually I want to show you this pamphlet,
“The Danger of Premature Interment.” Wow. Oh, in 1816, so that’s… Right around the corner. Yeah. So previously-held notions of death at this
time were becoming a bit more fluid. And with the whirlwind of scientific progress,
people began to reevaluate how firm that border between life and death really was. And if drowning victims can come back, why
not that next step? One of the most talked about and promising
scientific phenomena of the Enlightenment was electricity. And this is where the work that would later
influence Mary Shelley really starts coming into play. Galvanism. There we go, yeah. So, in the 1780s, this Italian physicist,
Luigi Galvani, experimented with applying electric shocks to the legs of dead frogs,
and found that he could get their muscles to contract for a limited time after the frog
had died. And I’m going to send you something else. In 1791 he published “The motion of electricity
in muscular strength,” where he proposed his idea of “animal electricity,” which
is the innate life force that animates living things. So he thought that we all basically – like
if you chopped off my fingers there’d be like cool electric beams radiating out? Like SHHHHH you know, like that kind of thing? Not quite like a Robo Cop-type situation. It was more of like a very subtle amount of
electric fluid that is the spark of life. Like, is the innate lifeforce. Okay. Later, Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini,
brought the experiments to a whole new level. He named the practice “galvanism” after
his late uncle, and began experimenting with severed cow and sheep’s heads. He could get these heads to open their eyes
and move their mouths as if they were alive. Which begged the question: could the recently
dead be revived using electricity? The logic was: if the body is a machine, and
its innate animating energy is electric in nature, then it wasn’t really out of the
realm of possibility that a fully-assembled corpse could be revived. You know as long as all the pieces are correctly
assembled. And that’s exactly what Aldini set out to
do in his most high profile experiment. So this is a really gruesome picture you got
coming your way. Woah. An additional punishment for murderers, after
being hanged, was that their bodies were immediately dissected for science. And in 1803, George Foster, a man convicted
of murdering his wife and child, was hanged in London. His body was brought straight to Aldini, who,
before an audience, attempted to revive his corpse. Wow. Yeah. Foster’s face muscles twisted into a grimace
and his eyes actually opened. But Aldini couldn’t restart the heart, which
was attached to a battery, and the experiment ultimately failed. But it was pretty sensational. And Mary Shelley would have heard about this. It was just a jolt of power, it wasn’t any
actual biological process going on, right? No, nothing biological. Some people were kind of convinced, but most
of the people there were like, “the heart didn’t start and no blood was circulating.” So, he failed. Let’s bring this back to Frankenstein. Okay. FRANKENSTEIN: You’re crazy! FRANKENSTEIN: Crazy am I? We’ll see whether I’m crazy or not. Shelley never characterized her protagonist
as crazy, or even a scientist. In fact, the word “scientist” hadn’t
even been coined at the time her book was published. And the idea of this experiment being unthinkable
is just an interpretation of the story borne out of hindsight. In the introduction to the 1831 edition of
the book, Shelley made her real-life inspiration crystal clear, writing, “Perhaps a corpse
would be re-animated: galvanism had given token of such things.” I think when this came out it was much more
terrifying than we think of it today. Because we think of it as a silly monster
tale. But this is just the next step in what was
already happening in science. It’s the near-future. I had one other thing I wanted to do. Yeah. I was thinking it might be fun if the show
had a catchphrase. We can think of some catchphrases now, and
for the next one that we can do, we can pick a catchphrase from the comments. So it would be “History Club,” and then
we’ll say the catchphrase and credit whoever did it. I want to say I’m ripping this off from
the podcast Comedy Bang Bang. They do user-generated catchphrases every
single episode. I think it’s a good idea, I want to steal
it. So do you have any idea for a catchphrase? How is it used? How do we use it? We just say it together at the end? “Welcome to History Club –” “History Club, not your grandmother’s
history… club.” Oh I like that, that’s good. It’s fun you know, like, “we’re hip.” “History Club, where dusty books are sweeter
than sugar.” We’ll workshop it. So give us a catchphrase in the comments for
our next episode. And thanks for watching this one. Cool. Yeah. Should we… high five. High five. These are satellite images from the deserts
of western China. Look closely, and you'll see these huge complexes
being built. From the sky, they sort of look like factories
or even schools. But look even closer: this line is one facility’s
perimeter wall. And these shadows? They’re cast by the watchtowers along the
wall. This compound isn’t a school or a factory. It’s an internment camp. Inside these camps, the Chinese government
is detaining as many as 1 million Uighurs, China’s mostly Muslim minority. China doesn't want the world to know any of
this. But the story of these camps is also the story
of how we know about them - and China's efforts to cover them up. As soon as we began to document the re-education
centers, there was Chinese government officials deleting what
we were finding. Uighurs mainly live here, in the Xinjiang
province of northwestern China. That puts them closer to the capitals of Kyrgyzstan
and Uzbekistan than to Beijing. And Uighurs are also closer culturally to
those Turkic groups than they are to the Han Chinese, China’s ethnic majority. The Uighurs speak a Turkic language. Their
culture is different. They have particular styles of music, a whole a whole rich history that is unique to them. This is Sigal Samuel, a reporter at Vox. I've been reporting on the Uighur crisis in
China for about a year now. China has been concerned for decades
about the possibility of Uighur separatism. Uighurs have actually had their own independent
nation, two separate times in the last century. In 1933, they established the Islamic Republic
of East Turkistan here in Kashgar. But it crumbled less than a year later when
it was taken over by Chinese forces. Then, in 1944, the Soviet Union backed the
creation of the East Turkestan Republic, based here. But when China became Communist in 1949, the
Soviet Union turned on East Turkestan, and helped China take it over again. Part of why the Xinjiang region is so important
to China is that it’s rich with energy resources. And as China’s economy grew, so did its
need for energy. Today Xinjiang accounts for nearly 40% of
China’s coal reserves. And over 20% of the country’s oil and gas. It also accounts for 20% of China’s potential
for wind energy. China needs resources, it needs
energy. It needs the geographical location, the area
on which Xinjiang sits. That's where Uighurs are. That's where they're living. And so China really wants to have a solid
sense of control over that area. As far back as the 1950s, China saw an opportunity
to dilute the influence of the potentially rebellious Uighurs, and started encouraging
the migration of Han Chinese, into Xinjiang. And it worked. In 1945, Uighurs made up over 80% of the population, compared to just 6% Han Chinese. By 2008, Xinjiang was 46% Uighur compared
to 39% Han Chinese. But over the years, as Xinjiang developed
economically, Uighurs were left behind, working mostly low-wage jobs in agriculture
while the Han held higher-paying jobs. Finally, in 2009, a Uighur protest against
discrimination at the hands of the Han and the Chinese government erupted in violence. “Bloody riots broke out, pitting ethnic
Uighur Muslims against the dominant Han Chinese.” One of the worst riots took place in the provincial
capital of Urumqi. About 200 people were killed and hundreds
injured during the unrest. That was sort of an inflection point. After that, the Chinese really started to crack
down harder on the Uighurs. And by 2013, Xinjiang had become even more
important to China. The country launched the “Belt and Road”
initiative, a trillion-dollar investment in things like fiber optic cables, train lines,
and gas pipelines meant to boost the country’s economic and political influence around the
world by making it easier to trade with China. If you plot these projects on a map you’ll
see a lot of them pass through Xinjiang, making the province arguably the most important corridor
for the whole project. China would need to ensure that Xinjiang remained
securely in its hands. The Uighurs came to be perceived
and painted more as a threat, as a separatist threat, as an extremist threat. In 2016 and 2017, the country enacted a series
of “de-extremification” policies aimed at Muslims, like banning long beards. And Xinjiang was effectively turned into a
hi-tech police state. So this kind of thing is happening
all over the country, but in Xinjiang it's been just increased by orders of magnitude. We're talking about Uighurs
having to hand over their phones at checkpoints. We're even talking about QR codes being
installed on the outside of their homes. But the most brutal part of this crackdown
was hidden to the world at first. In this image you see the opening of this
facility. The signage, it says "De-extremification reeducation center." Around 2017, China started building
these internment camps, these large scale places to detain Uighurs.
China says that these camps are necessary because the Uighurs are a terrorist threat. A separatist threat. People who are infected with extremist thinking. But it wasn’t until Uighurs who had been
detained told their stories, that the picture from inside the camps came into clearer focus. They're forced to memorize and
recite Communist Party propaganda every day. They're often forced to criticize their own
Islamic beliefs and to criticize the beliefs of their fellow detainees. “We had to sing songs hailing the Communist
Party. We had to repeat in Chinese, ‘long live
[Chinese president] Xi Jinping! There have been reports of death,
of torture. “Three guards surrounded me and abused
me. "Each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake." So there's this atmosphere of
just trying to uproot what you believe in. At first, China denied the existence of 
these camps... But activists and academics fought back. A lot of people around the world are scouring the Internet for evidence of China's internment camps for Uighurs. In terms of the strategies and tools
that I've used and others have used to uncover evidence of these camps, it's quite simply
a computer and knowledge of Chinese and thinking about what ways whats words, especially government
websites, would use. People have unearthed government
documents... "And then we had growing visual evidence. We're looking at satellite images." We could actually trace the creation and expansion of the reeducation camp. It was a matter of, I think luck or chance I uncovered this image. And until then, we didn't have
that piece of visual evidence that said this is what it is. And this is what the Chinese government's
calling it. Tim isn’t alone. There’s a whole network of “web sleuths”
around the world using basic internet tools to document what China doesn’t want the world to see. And they’ve gotten China to change their
story, at least a little. China was denying that these re education centers exist, until journalists and academics and others started to really
amass a body of evidence that was so convincing that China couldn't just deny it anymore. China took a different approach and started
admitting that these facilities exist, but carefully painted them as training schools
for potential criminals or terrorists. In the meantime, the camps are still there
and growing. This camp, one of China’s largest, was as
big as the nearby city of Dabancheng in 2017. But by 2018, the camp had expanded to twice the
size. From China's perspective they think it's worth
it. They want to make sure Xinjiang is an area of the country that they have total control
over. And if that comes with a high human cost and
even a reputational blow on the international stage, China so far seems willing to do that
anyway. So, it's 5 o'clock in New York City and I’m
about to catch a cab about 5 miles uptown. Let's see how this goes. So it just took me 40 minutes to go about 4.5 miles which is pretty typical for New York City rush hour. Despite a speed limit of 25 miles per hour,
the average car moving through NYC is driving at just 7.1 MPH, down from 9.1 MPH in 2010. And if you’re in midtown it’s even
worse, with cars moving around 5 MPH. But it’s not just New York City – traffic
in cities like LA is so bad drivers could be locked in gridlock for hours. Of course this sucks for drivers, but it also makes
activities like biking or walking less safe because cyclists and pedestrians have to weave
through an obstacle course of cars. Not to mention the estimated 20 billion dollars
in lost revenue due to wasted time sitting in traffic. Now, there might be a solution, but if you
commute by car, you are probably not gonna like it. It’s called congestion pricing.
And it means charging drivers for using the roads. "Congestion pricing is an idea whose time has come. And I believe this is the year to actually get it done." New York’s plan is still in the works, and
it probably won’t be enacted until 2020. But the end game is to reduce congestion by
discouraging people from driving if they have other options like biking, or taking a train, or walking. And to fund public transit at the same time. It’s not a groundbreaking idea: congestion
pricing is already old news in cities around the world. London enacted a similar policy in 2003. This is a necessary step for us to reclaim
some of the space that is currently given to a motorized vehicles without ending up
with gridlock. Nicole Badstuber researches urban infrastructure and policy at the University of Cambridge
and according to her, the system's pretty simple. When drivers enter the Central London congestion
zone between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., they’re charged 11 pounds 50 pence – about 15 US dollars. New York City's plan will be similar. When drivers enter Midtown or Lower Manhattan,
they'll face a fee. There's cameras all around the roads at the
edges of the congestion charging area. They automatically recognize the name plate
of the car or the vehicle entering the zone. London has a few exemptions in place, like for people who live inside the congestion
zone or vehicles with 9 or more seats and New York City will likely do that, too.
And the system works. So since it was introduced, we've seen that private
vehicles entering the zone have gone down by 40 percent. Overall vehicle traffic has gone down by 25
percent. Cycling overall has increased 66% since the
charge was instituted and bus ridership reached a 50-year high in 2011. And wait times for buses decreased 25%,
due to increased service both on buses and on the London Underground. So we now, in comparison, still have much higher frequencies of London Underground services. We can get more people, more capacity, more people into our trains because we have newer trains. And like Nicole said, congestion pricing isn’t
just about removing cars from specific zones, it’s about reclaiming a space for the public. Picture Trafalgar Square, but designed for cars
– an idea that was very much a reality before congestion pricing. You would basically have a bus driving right
past your nose as you come out of the National Gallery Reclaiming that section of road made the square
safer and opened it to more public events. No one could imagine going back to what it
was before, and having these cars and buses zoom past you. London’s plan is widely embraced today, but
it was met with resistance at first, with opponents arguing that congestion pricing
could cut people off from health care, shopping, and schools. Plus, people had to trust that the government
would work efficiently and make significant improvements to their public transit system. But within a year, London's congestion charging
had majority support. As New York’s plan is being finalized, some
similar resistance is cropping up, which isn’t too surprising. After all, it’s the first US city to implement this
type of congestion pricing and no one wants to pay for something they’ve gotten
for free for so long. But the plan could generate up to a billion
dollars for public transit, a system that most agree desperately needs repair. And the city estimates it will reduce congestion
by 8 to 13 percent and increase speeds by up to 9 percent, making a ride through midtown a
lot easier. So, like other cities where congestion pricing
has been successful, it’s likely that people will end up accepting it. When we think of our roads, in particular in
cities, as a sort of public good, as a public space, then if you're taking up more of it
you should probably be paying for that privilege. If you start to think about how everyone gets
around the city, charging cars begins to make a lot more sense: You pay for parking, pay for the
subway, pay to take a train or a bus, so why wouldn’t we pay for 
a city road? Thanks for watching. If you haven't already heard, we've launched a paid membership program called the Vox Video Lab, right here on YouTube. For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to tons of exclusive content and becoming a member is the best way to support our journalism. So if you want to join, head over to vox.com/join and we'll see you there. Right now, the most-watched TV show in the US is... "The Big Bang Theory" The most expensive? "Game of Thrones" But what about the longest-running primetime show, apart from news? It isn’t “The Real World”, or “Law and Order”. Nope, not even “The Simpsons”. It’s a show that’s hardly changed since it started in 1989. Yep. It’s "Cops". The reality show where they follow police around with cameras. “He’s running, he’s running!” And, really, that’s kind of all there is to it. But it’s stayed on TV for over three decades. Why? The show has plenty of action, but a team of producers from the podcast 
"Running From Cops" found that the driving force behind the show’s popularity, isn’t visible on camera. It’s what’s happening behind it. “Picket team leaders, please join the line!” In 1988 television writers across the US went on strike. “Producers cannot deny the strike is having
a negative impact.” “It shows no sign of ending.” That meant TV channels started looking for
shows that wouldn’t require union writers “Welcome to Fox!” Fox had recently started a TV channel and Stephen Chao was an executive in charge of finding new material. Fox network didn’t really have much of a personality at that stage. And so, I was like, ‘Ok here’s your chance.' If you can make something good, we’ll promote it on the stations and, if it’s really good, it'll get drafted by the network. At Fox, he took a meeting with John Langley, who was selling an idea for unscripted TV. He showed me this tape of a live drug bust and it was fantastic! "Come here, take her!" After seeing the material, Fox signed on to make "Cops" and this footage comes from the first episode. “This is where they smoke their crack.” That emotion was so powerful and then you saw the emotional ‘Poomph!’ that it gave to you. You’d go, ‘Ok, I’m not going anywhere else.' “Go! Go! Go! Go!" "Get your hands up!" "Get down!" From the start, the show’s raw style
 made this a cheap production. "Clear! Clear! Clear! Clear!" It didn’t require actors or writers and the entire show was shot on handheld cameras. “We have a 99 on a white male” "Cops" wasn’t fancy. And when it premiered in 1989, it didn’t
look like anything else on TV. “You’re in love with me?” “New Phil Collins!” “Jello pudding snacks!” “Police you m**********r! Get on the ground!” Cops was a gritty look at crime during the
American War on Drugs. A few months after Cops premiered, President Bush went on live TV holding a bag of crack cocaine. “It’s as innocent looking as candy, but it’s turning our cities into battle zones and it’s murdering our children.” "Cops" was a full dose of reality, with cameras showing the real thing up close and personal. This felt like you were with the cops and they weren’t hiding any secrets from you “Stop resisting and lay on your stomach.” But that feeling... ...doesn’t match the reality behind the scenes. In fact, that was kind of part of the art of John, which is, he made you feel like you were inside, but in fact it was, on the other hand, approved by the police department. Since the first season of the show, which was shot in Florida, the police on Cops have used that control to build their public image. “We’re here just to look for some drugs and clean up the bad people off the street. You don’t mind that do you?” Nick Navarro, the sheriff of Broward County, was featured that first season. Sheriff Nick Novarro was ultimately anticipating that he would want to be re-elected and he thought that, 'If I use "Cops", what a good platform that would be to get me more votes”. "Cops" made Navarro the county’s “showbiz sheriff” and although he lost the next election, his popularity gave producers a model for convincing other agencies to go on the show. The next season, cops moved to Portland, Oregon, where they featured Sergeant John Bunnell. "How heavily involved are you in narcotic trafficking?" In the years COPS began filming in Portland, videotape of Rodney King being beaten by police sparked outrage in Los Angeles and rioting swept through the city the next year. Two years later, Cops hit the streets of L.A., where they had been trying to convince the L.A.P.D. to let them film for years and didn't get access until a newly appointed police chief invited them. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this gun before." "This is the gun.” At the time, a member of the Mayor’s police
commission defended his decision to let "Cops" film. Saying that, "The department, since the Rodney King incident in particular, has had a very negative reputation," So it made "sense for the department to receive some positive coverage." Over the next three decades, this pattern continued. "Cops" moved from city to city, helping shape
a positive image for law enforcement agencies throughout the country. In 2013, police in Omaha, Nebraska were fired for using excessive force. The next year, the police chief invited "Cops" to come film. While in town, a crew member was killed during a police shootout and the chief was asked why he brought "Cops" to Omaha in the first place. “We had some rough times." "And we had an issue that occurred about a
year and a half ago that we’ve overcome and we’ve become a very professional strong organization. I wanted to "Cops" to come in so that they can
see the Omaha Police Department." In 2014, killings by officers in Salinas, California led to protests. “To send a message to Salinas Police, after four officer-involved shootings this year.” The next year "Cops" was filming in Salinas. “You need to be smarter about your choices, ok?” After Cops wrapped filming in Salinas, the
police chief described the show as For decades, "Cops has allowed police
to control their appearance on TV, while they try to achieve their own goals in reality: whether that’s trying to gain votes, cleaning
up a reputation or recruiting new officers. But while police officers continued to use
this model, many of the viewers that watched "Cops" in the 1990s had stopped tuning in. After 25 years, Fox eventually cancelled "Cops" and it moved to a new channel, but that doesn’t mean viewers are losing interest in police-sanctioned reality TV. “This is Live PD!” "Live PD" is a TV show on A&E where camera crews embed with police units to broadcast live events as they’re happening. "Show me your hands!" When the show launched in 2016, “Watch cops, live!” the trailer responded directly to calls for
increased police accountability. “Being able to see exactly what the police are doing and how they are doing it is beneficial to everyone." The format of "Live PD" makes it possible for police officers to come off as less polished than on "Cops". “I’m gonna f*****g tase you! Get on your face! Get the f**k on your face!” Doing it live might be a way to increase transparency, but at its core "Live PD" is just another way for police to shape an identity on television. “…we have narcotics…” Like "Cops", law enforcement agencies invite "Live PD" to come film with them and it’s that connection that connection that will continue to be the
driving force behind these shows. In 2018, the most-viewed show on DVR was "Live PD". Hey, thanks for watching. In this video we worked with a podcast called
“Running From Cops” in order to make this happen and if you have any questions about what happens after the cameras stop rolling, the stories behind people who signed
 releases to be on the show, or anything else related to "Cops", then you have to check them out. They spent over a year researching the show, travelling the country to interview 
people who have been on it, and also compiled data about how 
the show portrays crime in the US. It’s called “Running From Cops” and it’s available on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thanks! In the summer of 2014, a giant
algae bloom took over Lake Erie. It was so big, you could see it from space. This algae contained a toxin that
could cause vomiting and liver damage. "Leaving over half a million
people with no safe drinking water." "Residents have been served notice:
stop drinking water. Don't shower.
And don't let pets come near tap water." A few days later... "Hundreds of thousands of people in Ohio are
breathing a sigh of relief today. The mayor of Toledo announced today the
city's water is now safe to drink." "It seemed like, oh don't worry,
we we got over that, the water is safe, we're gonna show video of people
drinking tap water just to put you at ease." "Here you go, right from the tap... And again: The blooms weren't toxic enough to affect the drinking water, but they kept
coming back. That made me really angry, that we've just been kind of allowing
this problem to go on, we've been watching this ecosystem suffer. Why
haven't we taken action until now? In February 2019, the citizens of Toledo
voted to try something unprecedented. "Breaking news tonight, the results are in." "The Lake Erie Bill of Rights has passed by a wide margin." "Lake Erie has earned some of the same legal rights as humans." "The same rights, as a human being.
It happened." If you fly over this area west of Lake Erie, you'll
see mostly corn and soybean fields, but that wasn't always the case. Up until the
late 1800s it was known as the Great Black Swamp, it was muddy and mosquito
infested. Indigenous communities had always just left it alone, but when European settlers arrived, they had other ideas. They thought "oh wow look at all this
great ground we have here." We need to conquer this land. They drained the swamp. First they dug trenches around the fields to siphon off the water, but the
soil beneath was still too wet to grow crops, so they added these underground
tubes with holes in the top. Water from the swampy soil traveled through the
tubes into the ditches, where it flowed into creeks and rivers and eventually
Lake Erie. The soil could support crops and livestock, which is why we need to
talk about cow shit. Each cow in a herd needs an acre of grass. That's nearly a
football field. So these early farms tended to have small herds on huge
swaths of land. The whole idea is to sort of emulate the bison in olden days. They didn't have to do anything with the waste. It slowly fertilized the soil and
grew more grass. In the mid 20th century that started to change. Economists came
up with a notion that if we got a lot of animals together, then they could grow
livestock in a very rapid manner. The equation had flipped — instead of a small
herd of cows spread out over a large area, today thousands of cows share a
very small space. The same is true for pigs and chickens. These operations are
known as centralized animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. It was efficient
and meat got cheap, but this new way of raising animals created a problem: What
to do with all that waste? It's normally stored in large, what are
called lagoons. The waste is mixed with water and eventually these lagoons fill
up, so the CAFOs will have it hauled and spread out over nearby corn and soybean
fields. Unlike solid manure, nutrients from this
liquid mixture can travel quickly through those same tubes that keep the
soil dry and into the waterways that eventually feed Lake Erie, where the
phosphorus from the manure combines with warm shallow water, to create an ideal
home for toxic algae. There are nearly 150 centralized animal feeding
operations in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Each year, they produce nearly 700
million gallons of manure. Nearly 20% of it originates here, in southern Michigan. This is the Hudson dairy CAFO right here. 3,500 cows puts out the manure equivalent
of 70,000 people every day. Pam Taylor is a retired math teacher. She showed me what happens when these giant manure lagoons get filled up. Watch watch watch! And so that's liquid manure coming out of there? Yes. Several times a year, Pam goes
out and tests the water near these fields. Today we're looking for orthophosphate, the main culprit in Lake Erie's recurring toxic algae blooms. This already does not look good to me. Anything above 0.005 parts per million
can trigger a toxic algae bloom. "And we're already at five."
"At least." The Maumee River is the main tributary to Lake Erie. It's where all these other
creeks eventually end up. The orthophosphate levels in the Maumee River
have been rising steadily since the mid-1990s and algae blooms have become the
new normal. "Residents in Toledo, Ohio are facing another day without tap water.
They were ordered to stay away from the water over the weekend after tests
showed it was toxic." It was definitely something that made you just kind of sit
back and think this isn't right. As a mom, I have to do something. I think there
were maybe five or six of us at the very very beginning putting pressure on those
agencies that are in charge. And trying to get a
response from them. There was nothing and that was the first time I had heard
about rights of nature. The rights of nature movement spans communities in
Pennsylvania, Ecuador, New Zealand, and elsewhere, that have passed statutes
recognizing the legal rights of rivers, forests, and ecosystems. Drawing on these
laws, the Toledo group wrote up a document. They called it the "Lake Erie
Bill of Rights." It recognized the lake's right to "exist, flourish and naturally
evolve." What the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is trying to do is to say hey, Farmer A,
even though you had a permit when you applied it all of that fertilizer and it
ran off into Lake Erie, that is essentially legally wrongful. The bill recognizes Lake Erie's right to file a lawsuit if it's been harmed. And if that
sounds ridiculous, consider how that right
has changed over time. Historically, there was a very small pool of actors that could come before
the court and say, something has happened to me, and that is wrong, and you have to
fix it. If someone harmed a woman or an enslaved person, the man they were
beholden to would have to bring a lawsuit on their behalf. And so over the
years, we've seen an expansion of who can come before the courts and say my rights
have been violated. It's not just humans.
Corporations can file lawsuits too. In the United States, the court has also recognized corporations' rights to make
unlimited political donations and to ignore laws that conflict with the
religious beliefs of their owners. The Lake Erie Bill of Rights argues that
nature should have at least some of these same rights. But that creates a
constitutional puzzle for the courts. Because, if the corporations who raised
this livestock and spread this manure have a right to do business, but the lake
also has a right to be healthy, then whose rights win out? If you're the kind of person who is
fascinated by the natural world, then I highly recommend you go stop by
CuriosityStream and check out The Secret Life Of Lakes. It's a fantastic
series that explores the natural life cycles of lakes and the mysteries hidden
beneath them. CuriosityStream is a subscription service, they offer over
2,400 documentaries and nonfiction titles by some of the best filmmakers out there.
You can get unlimited access starting at $2.99 a month and because
you're a Vox fan, the first 31 days are free, if you go to curiositystream.com/vox and use promo code Vox. CuriosityStream doesn't impact our editorial, but
their support does make videos like this possible, so go check them out. I Feel Love is Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s
1977 disco anthem. It’s THE song that signaled the beginning
of electronic dance music. Its production is almost entirely built on
synthesized sounds. There’s a propulsive bassline with a delay
effect, a four-on-the-floor kick drum, Snare hits and hi-hats, and Donna Summer’s soaring vocal. These elements make for a dance track that is hypnotic in its repetition. I Feel Love is a song that illustrates just how much disco
changed pop music. Not only through its sound and structure,
but in the newly invented vinyl format that gave it a natural home: A 12 inch single. This is a 7-inch single, it pretty much ruled
pop music since the beginning of rock and roll. It’s the format that powered jukeboxes,
teen record players, and most importantly the radio. It was a small, cheap, and durable record
that, when spun at 45rpm, was just large enough to fit three and a half minutes of good audio
on each side. You’ve probably heard it called a “45.” This chart shows just how much the 7-inch
single dominated pop music. From the 1950s through the 60s the average
length of number one hit songs averaged about 2.5 to 3.5 minutes. Paul: It was only in pop music that there
tended to be this sense that it needed to be three, three and a half minutes, and that
was radio and because of the seven inch format. That's Paul Morely. He's known for a lot of things. I'm an author, critic, broadcaster, and occasional musician and occasional remixer. Okay, back to the story. Those 3 minute singles had become a standard
on the radio, but dance clubs demanded a totally different musical experience. In the early 1970s in New York City a handful
of scrappy DJs made the dancefloor more important than ever. One of them was Nicky Siano. Nicky: I owned a club called the Gallery,
which was the template for every club in the later '70s. At his club, Siano figured out the best
songs and techniques to keep people dancing. Nicky: There’s this song called
Cymande called by Bra. “Dun dun dun dun dun.” And we would take that record and play it
over and over and just go back and forth and back and forth with that break. By using two turntables, sometimes 3, DJs
like Siano could make that break last forever. Nicky: Flipping those forty fives, that's
work. That is work. It was work because the naturally short length
of 45s left little time for DJs to plan their next move. So, they started searching for longer material
to work with. Eddie Kendrick’s “Girl You Need
a Change of Mind” is often cited as one of the first disco records. Nicky: When that record came on it filled
the dance floor. And it was peak record, anywhere you went in
New York City. It was a gospel-inspired track that had an
extended two minute break. The single version was over six minutes long. The only way it fit on a 45 was because it
was split it across two sides of the record. It bastardized the song. I had to play it on the LP. I just felt the fidelity, everything, was so much better. The longer the song on a 45 the more narrow
and compressed the grooves have to be so it can physically fit on the tiny amount of space. But that compromises the quality of the audio
because its those grooves that determine how the record sounds. You’ll hear less bass and dynamic range
on more compressed grooves. Paul: You put four minutes, 4.5, five minutes, it tended to get smaller and be squashed. The grooves were too squashed, the sound would be too squashed. By 1973 a number of unconventional tracks that blew up in New York City's discos crossed over to
the billboard charts. The success of Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango
was single handedly propelled by its heavy play at New York City clubs. Atlantic records re-released the single in
the US due to its popularity in New York City and it made it on the Billboard charts. Same thing happened with “Love
Theme” arranged by Barry White. It was a number one hit, a very rare feat
for a fully instrumental track. Nicky: We started playing it really heavy. Siano: It made the charts before it ever was played on the radio. And that's how we became more influential. This 1974 Billboard article captures just how much
influence DJs had on the music industry. It says record labels were mixing records specifically
for New York City clubs. They were making those edits longer, and more
importantly, they were bringing DJs in the studio to pull it off. But the dilemma with distribution remained:
cut the song down for the radio, split it across two sides, or squeeze the 5 plus minute
remix on one side of the single, compromising the quality of audio. Almost by complete accident a disco producer
came up with the solution: 12-inch single. The man behind the discovery was Tom Moulton. He had a remix of a song on tape, which he
would typically then record onto a disposable 7-inch for reference. Paul: But he didn't have any acetate that
he could do that with, so he just put it on a 12-inch acetate, which usually you would
put 10 songs on. Immediately he discovered that stretching
one song across 12 inches dramatically changed the sound of the record. Paul: Because the grooves were
wider spaced there would be more power and force. He realized that this would create
a more energetic and more lively sound. In short, producers could dramatically stretch
out the length of a single. Which proved very handy for DJs. Nicky: It was revolutionary. You know, I was like "wow." We can go to the bathroom. We can go do drugs. We can go, you know, smoke a joint. Almost immediately 12-inch singles replaced
45s in clubs But a debate erupted on whether or not they
were worth the production cost to sell to everyday consumers. The success of “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, the first commercially available 12-inch single, proved its worth. Though based on these singles it was still
unclear what they were called. Paul: Very quickly in the disco
world, the 12 inches were turned into commercial formats because there was a demand for them. Those that like dancing to the 12 inch in
the clubs wanted to be able to buy it. And that’s exactly what happened with I
Feel Love. Paul: Very exciting, you know, because it sounded space age, it sounded other. You know, the idea of setting up rhythm and repetition, and almost drone, if you like, you could start to do that in a more exciting way using synthesizers and sequencers. The song was originally the B-side of a 7-inch single. By the end of 1977, it had been released in various forms, finally finding its most iconic home on 12 inches of vinyl. Paul: In many ways it gave a whole
new lease of life to the idea of pop music and it's that lease on life that really has
kept pop music going to this day. The 12-inch single ruled nearly every genre
in the 1980s. Not least because releasing a 7-inch version
and 12-inch version of a track at precisely the right time in a promotional cycle often
kept popular songs on the charts for longer. Paul: The record companies loved
it because it gave them the opportunity to sell more copies and keep the profile up. But more importantly, the 12-inch single allowed
for unfettered musical exploration. Paul: The one that I fell in love
with as soon as I heard it, and still love it to this day wasn't really a remix as such
at all it just existed in itself. Which was Blue Monday. Blue Monday by New Order is the most commercially
successful 12-inch single of all time. It was released in 1983 and was packaged in
sleeve that looked like a floppy disk. Paul: It's not a 7-inch turned into a 12. It begins life as a 12-inch. It's not a remix, that's the length that it
was. From 1970 through the 1980s the average length
of #1 Pop songs nearly doubled and the 12-inch single probably had a lot to do with it. Paul: Any music that's made electronically and is made with a kind of experimental purpose, whether that's in hip-hop or electronic music, its beginnings, in many ways, was the 12-inch remix. Making Earworm takes a lot of time and energy, and when I'm on hour 14 of animating, the last thing I want to do is stare at my screen and try to remember old passwords or worry about my data being hacked. That is why I'm excited to tell you about Dashlane. Dashlane is the perfect tool to help keep you safe online. You don't have to worry about getting locked out of accounts, resetting your passwords, or your internet history being monitored. All you have to do is download it and Dashlane will take care of the rest. It'll notify you if websites you have logins for get hacked, or if your data gets compromised. Dashlane also includes a secure multi-country VPN for all your devices, at a much lower cost than its competitors. So go to dashlane.com/vox to get a 30-day free trial of Dashlane Premium. And if you like it, you can use promo code "VOX" to get 10% off Dashlane Premium. Dashlane doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like this possible. So click the URL in the description and check them out. Alright, let’s roll. I wanna talk to you. Excuse me. I just have a few questions. This is a Canada goose. And these birds have taken over the United
States of America. “It’s Canada Goose, not Canadian Goose,
make sure I get that right.” All of these geese refuse to do an interview
with me. I’m wondering why they don’t want to talk. “Check it out, look at that lady staring
that goose down.” “It was coming at my face, haha.” Canada geese can be amazing, but they also
defecate on our pristine lawns, stain our youth soccer fields our and even endangered
our Sully. “Birds.” But it wasn’t always this way. The Canada Goose as it is today? It’s a problem that humans created. It’s a story of Teddy Roosevelt, and defensive
umbrellas, and homegrown honkers, and the surprising way that this bird from Canada
ended up all over America. Found it. This right here is a plan for a Canada Goose
nesting tub. So that is from this manual, published by
the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife in 1970. And it is a how-to--guide for how to raise
your own flock of Canada Geese. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Americans
stocked up on these birds. And they did it for a reason. We almost hunted them to extinction, or at
least expirta...expirta.... “Every discipline has to have its fancy
terms for simple concepts, right? So extirpated would just mean that you’ve
lost it from a given area that’s defined. But it’s not extinct globally.” These migratory birds traveled South from
Northern states and Canadian provinces when migrating, but overhunting made them increasingly
rare. The Passenger Pigeon had already gone extinct. It was a scary look at what could happen to
the Canada Goose. In fact, people thought that one subspecies
— the Giant Canada Goose — was already extinct. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was
a strong response and it was inspired by conservationists like Teddy Roosevelt. It protects a lot of birds from unregulated
hunting, including Canada Geese. And it some cases, it set the stage for big
population growth. “What this map is showing is population
trends that are based on the breeding birds survey" This is what it looks like for a mourning
dove from 1966 to 2015. “Any colors that are in blue indicate where
populations have increased, and the red and the orange show where population has decreased. And it’s showing percent change per year, when
you look at the legend, you’ll see +1.5 change per year, which is actually a very
sizable increase.” This is the map for the Canada Goose. That growth was protected by the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act. But it was driven by something else entirely. “Ones over on this side are, I think, common
eiders, and the ones on the other side are king eiders." "I am the migratory bird program coordinator
for the state of Kentucky.” He crafts hunting regulations that conserve
the bird population in the state and that includes dealing with birds that were purposefully
raised by people, like the Canada Goose. “The birds that we have right now in the
lower 48 are birds that we put here.” All that stuff happened long before John started
his job, but the decisions made rippled into the present and the kind of stuff he has to
think about today. In the '60s and '70s, home grown honkers kind
of became a fad. Let me read you something from the forward
to this book. “Homegrown honkers is a timely publication
because people are increasingly interested in do-it-yourself conscious. This was '60s style environmental activism. And that led them to make an instruction manual
for creating your own goose population. Here’s a chapter on goose husbandry. This is a breeding pen arrangement plan. Here’s a plan for a floating goose nesting
platform. Goose reproduction was the goal of this book
and multiple symposia that were held around the same time. This environmental impact statement from 2002
features some typical stories of goose boosting by state agencies:
Translocated geese - ones moved from one part of the state to another. Game farm geese, restored so that they could
breed. And stuff like this, when 1,500 geese were
brought from Toronto and plunked down in Ohio. And all this stuff was common, these are just
a few examples. There were PR efforts too, like Indiana’s
“Goose For You Too” program — that is what they called it. Suddenly there were two classes of geese,
thanks to the Home for Honkers philosophy: the migratory ones, also new temperate nesting
geese, resident geese, that stayed in a place year round. They might migrate short distances, but they
became known for staying in the same general region. Both types of birds were protected by the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act. And that led to there being too many geese. In rural areas, and for hunters, there are
really effective tools to manage this. People like John come together to manage hunting
of the goose population in a particular migratory path, or flyway. They can target the hunting of resident geese
by carving up a state, using analytics from careful tracking of geese, or by limiting
hunting dates and bag limits, or the amount of geese that you take home with you. For example, if they have a hunting season
with fewer restrictions in September, that’ll only hit resident geese, because the migratory
ones won’t have come down yet. “In a lot of cases it’s been tremendously
successful, there’s a lot of Canada geese harvested every year, but they have certainly
in some cases created problems especially in urban areas.” At the same time we were making home grown
honkers, we were also coincidentally creating ideal goose habitats - places where predators
— like hunters — were banned, and there was also lots of green open space. And then people gave them free food! And this was all part of the plan. If you read the chapter “honkers move to
the city” and you’ll find some reservations about an urban geese population, but mostly
bragging. So with a strict law and no hunting, what
options are left? “We’re located here in Lake Barcroft,
Virginia.” In Lake Barcroft, geese used to be a big problem. Because it’s a community, they couldn’t
hunt them. “One of our residents showed me a bucket. He would be collecting a bucket a day of goose
poop. That’s a lot.” Geese Peace — that’s the name of David’s
non-profit — was needed. They started work in 1991 as a way to curb
those resident geese, and they offer trainings to other communities. It stops new geese eggs from hatching, but
it requires a permit from Fish and Wildlife, and that requires yearly labor. “We have to get those birds off the nest
first.” “So member number one would approach the
nest with an umbrella that’s open. Leave the nest and stay over here. This person with the umbrella keeps the goose
away. You have one goose coming at you like
that, and you have the gander coming at you like that.” “It sounds like an adrenaline rush.” “It is. But no one gets hurt. The other member of the party... will approach the nest that is now open. You would take the egg and put it in a bucket
full of water like that. Now this doesn’t have enough water for it
to float, but if the egg sinks, that means the air sack is not yet developed in the egg. The air sac’s not developed, it’s likely
lungs are not developed, so you’re not suffocating something in the egg by coating it with the
corn oil. Because that seals the pores, oxygen doesn’t
go in C02 doesn’t go out, and the egg goes dormant." I was amazed by how concerned David was for
the wellbeing of these geese, but really you have to be. We have laws that strictly protect their safety
and, if you think about it, the honkers — they aren’t the ones to blame. “When they thought some of these subspecies
of geese might be extinct, that’s reasonable to be concerned. So it was an appropriate and good thing to
bring them back into captivity, to try to breed them, have a reintroduction program,
if we care about protecting biodiversity. You know, when we want to conserve species,
we can. And sometimes we’re so darn good at it,
it can get away pretty quickly.” Not every bird is as easy to spot as the Canada
Goose. Some people will travel miles over difficult
terrain just to get a peek at rarer breeds. Such is the subject of journalist Mark Obmasick’s “The
Big Year,” now available on Audible. Audible is where so many inspiring voices
and compelling stories open listeners up to new experiences and ways of thinking. With their convenient app, members can access
Audible at any time: at the gym, while commuting, during viciously competitive bird races — and
on any device. Your story will always pick up right where
you left off, and right now Vox watchers can access a special offer at Audble.com/vox. That’s Audible.com/V-O-X Start listening with a 30-day Audible trial
and your first audiobook, plus two Audible originals, are free. Visit Audible.com/V-O-X or text V-O-X to 500 500. Audible doesn’t directly impact our editorial,
but their support makes videos like this possible. This is the first staged photo. It depicts a suicide. But it also tells a story. Of an ambitious amateur inventor who found
a way to achieve the incredible. But was pushed aside by a powerful, meddling
politician with his own agenda. And doomed to obscurity. Hippolyte Bayard was an artist. A gardener. A collector. And an experimenter. And in 1839, he invented photography – sort
of. People knew for centuries how to create an
image with light, but they didn’t have a way to permanently fix it onto a surface. Until several people actually figured it out
all at once. They invented their own methods, building
on years of individual experimentation and failed attempts. Bayard, in France, was one of them. He was experimenting with photography in his
free time while working a day job in a government office. He found a way to fix images by dipping paper
into photosensitive chemicals and exposing it to light inside a camera obscura, which
is essentially a dark room with a tiny hole in it. You can actually see stains from excess chemicals
in his earliest successful attempts. His photographs prominently featured his home
and garden, where he would arrange tools, statues,
and vases into loaded still lifes. Also windmills. He loved windmills. Often he included himself in the scenes, eyes
closed because of the long exposure time his process required. But he’s not the photo pioneer you might
have heard of. That would be this guy: fellow Frenchman Louis
Daguerre. Daguerre had already made a name for himself
and captured the public’s attention in the 1820s with popular interactive art shows,
called “dioramas.” Fixing an image to a surface was his next
big ambition. And by the late 1830s, he’d had his own
breakthrough with photography, successfully creating a process to fix an image to a metal
plate. He called his invention the Daguerreotype. He kept his discovery mostly under wraps,
showing the Daguerreotypes to just a few influential members of society, who would then spread
rumors of his success to the press. Bayard, on the other hand, worked alone, but
he was eager to share his work. In June 1839 he held a photo exhibition, becoming
the first photographer to show his work in public. One attendee later wrote, “they were like
nothing I’d ever seen… they unite the impression of reality with the fantasy of
dreams.” Bayard was prepared to demonstrate his process
to the Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in France. And that’s where Francois Arago steps in. A prominent French politician and astronomer,
and Chair of the Academy of Sciences. He was also a supporter of Daguerre's, and
after being shown successful Daguerreotypes in late 1838, he set out to arrange a deal
with the French government to purchase the rights to the invention. He wanted photography to be France’s gift
to the world, and Daguerre was going to be the man to deliver it. So when Bayard showed Arago his successful
prints, the politician persuaded him to hold off on announcing the details of his method
until the Daguerre deal was finished. And on August 19th, 1839, standing before
the Academy of Sciences with Daguerre seated right next to him, Francois Arago revealed
the exact process for creating a Daguerreotype. That moment is considered the birth of photography. And once the French government made the details
of the process public, Daguerreotyping spread like wildfire, becoming the first practical,
widespread method of making pictures. Daguerre was awarded a lifetime government
pension, and the principle credit for inventing photography — sealing his place in the history
books. A couple months later, Bayard finally got
his chance with the Academy and demonstrated his own process. But it was too late. Daguerreotyping was already established, and
the Academy wasn’t interested in pursuing his alternative technique. And as a response, Bayard killed himself. Well, metaphorically. The tongue-in-cheek caption he wrote on the
back of this self-portrait reads: “The corpse which you see here is that of
Monsieur Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you.” “The government which has been only too
generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the
poor wretch has drowned himself.” The image itself is rich with symbols that
Bayard included to hint at his perceived injustice. First, he posed nude, partially covered in
a shroud, a symbol people would have recognized
from iconic paintings depicting martyrs. Another important detail that would have resonated
with 19th century Parisians is in the caption: “He has been at the morgue for several days,
and no-one has recognized or claimed him.” The Paris Morgue at this time was open every
day to the public, in hopes that people would claim unidentified bodies — many of them
anonymous suicides. Bayard’s protest is all about recognition
– or lack thereof – so the morgue is a fitting metaphor. Just like morgue victims, he’s on display
– propped up and surrounded by personal effects that might give a clue to the corpse’s
identity. In Bayard’s case, a broad-brimmed straw
hat and, as a second attempt at the photo shows
more clearly, a floral vase and a statue. Objects that, along with the inventor himself,
were recurring visual themes in his work and would have been strong indicators of
the identity of the drowned man, should anyone recognize them, or him, at
all. Bayard went on experimenting with photography
in the years following his “suicide” and even became a founding member of the
French Society of Photography. But of the many photographs taken over his
long career, it’s this one that is the most talked about and analyzed. And that’s because this isn’t just the
first staged photo – it’s an early example of photography showing something non-literal
and symbolic. Laying the groundwork for exploring the medium’s
potential for creative expression and establishing from the very beginning
that a photograph doesn’t always show the truth. If you want to check out more of Bayard's photographs, or see some of the research that informed this video, there's links to that in the description. I'll also be sharing some sources that I used for inspiration and story ideas in the Video Lab, our membership program. Head on over to vox.com/join or click the link in the description to find out more about that. Thanks for watching. This is a chart of reported measles cases
in the US. In the 1950s, measles was one of those diseases
that nearly every child got. It caused a high fever and a spotty rash all
over the body. And while most recovered easily, it still
killed around 500 children each year. Then in 1963, a vaccine became available. And measles became an easily preventable and
unnecessary disease. By 2000, measles was officially eliminated
in the US. And for a time, less than a hundred Americans
a year got it. But In the last decade, that number has started
to grow. Now, there have been more cases through the
first three months of 2019 than all of 2018. Measles is back. And to understand why, you have to understand
where it’s back. Measles can be quite serious, but now no one
needs to get them. Here are those recent measles cases again. If we look at the 2013 spike, we notice
something. A good chunk of those cases can be attributed
to an outbreak among Orthodox Jews in New York. That huge spike in 2014? Most of those cases are all from one outbreak
among the Amish in Ohio. 2017? One outbreak in the Somali-American community
in Minnesota,. 2018? Different communities of New York Orthodox
Jews. And again in 2019. What all of this shows is that the return
of measles isn’t as widespread as you might think. 75% of recent cases have happened in these
close-knit communities. People in these communities tend to read the
same news, watch the same TV programs, speak the same language. Julia Belluz, Vox health reporter. They go to school together, they worship together. When not enough of them are vaccinated - you
know, it tends to spread like wildfire. Like in early 2019 outside Vancouver, Washington
where a measles outbreak sickened 73 people. It originated at a local Slavic church, likely
from someone who picked up the disease in Eastern Europe. It quickly spread through the community, infecting
mostly small children who weren’t immunized. One reason this happened is that the Slavic
community in Washington has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in the state. Some of the people in this community don’t
trust doctors. Yuriy is a member of that community. He’s also a health data analyst. They have a view that big pharma is too ingrained
with the medical establishment. They are much more willing to listen to members
of the community. Anti-vaccination misinformation can reach
anyone - but it’s in these small communities where it does the most damage. Most people in these communities are vaccinated. The problem starts when not enough people
are vaccinated - it prevents them from reaching what’s called herd immunity. Here’s how it works. With every vaccine you need a certain perc
entage of the community to be immunized in order for the vaccine to work. If a group of people comes into contact with
one person contagious with measles - and none of them are vaccinated - virtually everyone
will get sick. If 50% of the group is vaccinated, that’s
not enough - the rest are likely to get sick and spread the disease. But at a certain point, if enough people are
vaccinated, - they can actually protect the few that aren’t vaccinated from getting
sick, stopping the spread of the disease — herd immunity. This is important because there are people
who can’t get vaccinated because of their immune system: people like cancer patients
and newborn babies. And with measles because it’s so contagious,
that number is just really really high - it's 95% So basically everyone who can get vaccinated
needs to be vaccinated. We’re protecting all those people who can’t
get vaccines. That 95% number doesn't leave much wiggle
room, and a lot of US states are now struggling to meet it. These are the states where the number of kindergarteners vaccinated for measles is below the herd immunity threshold. It's half of states. So how do we make sure everyone who can get
vaccinated does? It might help it look at it this way. These are the states that allow parents to
opt-out for religious reasons. And these are the states that allow parents
to opt out for any philosophical reason. And then, there are a few states that allow
neither. The two states that have had no exemptions
for a very long time - Mississippi and West Virginia - they haven’t seen outbreaks in
recent years. Part of why Washington’s Slavic community
has such low vaccination rates is simply because Washington allows them to easily opt-out. In parts of the state, including where the
outbreak occurred, the amount of vaccinated kindergarteners has fallen way below the amount
needed for herd immunity. But since the outbreak, Legislators in Washington
have introduced a bill to get rid of non-medical vaccine exemptions. Maybe the best way to make sure all communities
reach herd immunity, and protect those that can’t be vaccinated, is just to not let
them opt out in the first place. In this video you may have noticed we used Woccas. And it's designs like these that are constantly testing my Illustrator skills. And that's why we decided to tell you about Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 classes in film production, graphic design, animation, and more. With Skillshare's premium membership, you can access quality classes on must-know topics such as Mastering Illustrator: 10 Tips & Tricks to speed up your workflow. A course I found particularly useful, as I just recently learned Illustrator and found the many, many buttons very daunting. And now you can get two months of Skillshare for free. To sign up, follow the link in the description. The first 500 visitors get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. Skillshare doesn't impact our editorial, but it does make videos like these possible. So I recently took one of those at-home DNA
ancestry tests. All I had to do was fill up a vial with a
disgusting amount of spit and mail it off for analysis. We're gonna be here for a very long time. I just spit it back up in my nose. A couple weeks later, this is what I got:
It's a neat little pie chart with these specific percentages that were color-matched to different
regions on a world map. The report told me I was mostly Southwest
Asian — no surprises there, considering both my parents are from Iran. That percentage — 86.7% — I understood
that to be the portion of my DNA that’s West Asian. But it turns out, that’s not exactly what
ancestry tests are telling us at all. This is an ad for one DNA ancestry test, 23
and Me. An ethnically ambiguous woman travels the
world, and a circle animates around her, sort of like the pie chart in my test results, as
if to say, this woman's DNA is 29% East Asian. And here's an ad for
a different ancestry test. “52% of my DNA comes from Scotland and Ireland.” And somehow this information compels him to... wear
a kilt? Alright, so what are ancestry tests really telling
us? Can you help me understand what my results are telling me? Because I’m getting mixed messages from
ads and how other people talk about their results. This is Wendy Roth. I'm an associate
professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. OK. First of all, these test results are not
about your entire DNA. They're about a tiny, tiny fraction of your
DNA. To understand how genetic ancestry tests work,
let’s start with the DNA itself. There are about 3 billion base pairs in our
genetic code. Those are the As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that form
the instructions that make us… us. Of these 3 billion base pairs, 99.9% are exactly
the same in all humans. But for the remaining .1%, one person might
have an adenine where another person has a guanine. These single-letter differences are called
Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms or SNPs. Groups of SNPs can help explain why some people
are taller than others or why some people have green eyes while others have brown eyes. But most SNPs have no known effect at all. What many DNA tests are looking at are a relatively
small number of SNPs, specific positions in this .1% in our DNA, in order to give you
your results. When a testing company receives your sample,
they compare your pattern of SNPs to
different reference populations in their database. These reference populations contain SNPs known
to exist more frequently in different modern populations in the world. Then the testing company will give you a percentage that represents how strongly your pattern of SNPs resembles that group. But this process has a bunch of important
limitations and this is where things get complicated. Lots of markers are found in multiple
populations around the world. First, even trying to classify humans into groups in the first place is tricky. Human genetic diversity isn’t organized
neatly into groups like countries or continents. Take a look at the distribution of this SNP
that affects how a person absorbs folic acid. It’s commonly found in Mexico, but also
in Chile, or even China, just as often. So let's say that a particular marker is found
in the South Asian population 30 percent of the time. There's still a possibility
that when you inherited this marker you got it not from somebody who was South Asian, but
from somebody who was in some completely different group that also happened to have that marker. Second, testing companies put together their
reference populations based on academic research and other people that have taken genetic ancestry
tests. And most testing companies aren’t clear
about how many people are represented in their reference populations. So each company might have different reference
databases, which helps explain why you might get different results from different companies. So what does this all mean for my results? This is a probability with a margin
of error. So it's not that you overall are
eighty-five percent West Asian, but that the particular spot that they happened to look at,
eighty-five percent of those locations are associated with Western Asia in their reference
population. So what about these other results? Am I really 2 percent African? You've got a lot of, you know, sort
of small trace percentages here. Percentages that small are really not meaningful,
again because that could be affected by having one person in the database. And if that one person gets reclassified later
on because they get a larger sample, that percentage will disappear. Ultimately, DNA ancestry tests are really
just giving us a probability, the testing company’s best guess. And that uncertainty isn’t made very clear
in the results. Buried in my results I found this “confidence
slider.” It turns out, my results were presented at
about 50% confidence by default. When I increased it to 90%, my results got
much more vague. All of a sudden I was "broadly" West
Asian and a lot of my genetic markers were unassigned. So, DNA ancestry tests don’t actually tell
us where our ancestors lived - they're really just giving us probabilities of where we’re
likely to have relatives today. But so what if people misinterpret their results? Well that has consequences. They can make us believe that our ethnicities
have these bright-line distinctions between them, like in a pie chart. When people are presented with
test results and these percentage breakdowns and they are led to think that these tests
can tell you your race or they can tell you who you are, that that leads to a way of thinking — makes us feel that there are very stark and clear biological differences between races. One study found that DNA ancestry tests reinvigorate
age-old beliefs in essential racial differences, that our socially constructed racial categories
like “white” or “black” are essentially different from each other. Some groups have even turned to genetic ancestry
tests to try and prove their “racial purity." DNA ancestry tests can be useful. Search YouTube and you'll find hundreds of
stories of people using them to find lost relatives and fill in their family histories. And, to people who don’t know a lot about their ancestry, the tests offer the best available
estimate. But it’s important to remember that, despite
their marketing, these tests are just a company’s best guess at matching your genetic markers
to different parts of the world. What they’re not going to tell you is whether
you should wear a kilt or not. DNA ancestry tests might not be as informative
as you want them to be, but more and more people are still taking
them. And this giant database of genetic information is
becoming super valuable to an unexpected group: Law enforcement. We’ve teamed up with Verge
Science, to look into how your privacy is at risk because of genetic ancestry tests, even if you’ve never taken one. This is an airplane engine. It's sitting in a field in Bishoftu, Ethiopia—
part of the wreckage of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed on March 10, 2019. 157 people died. This was just a few months after another flight,
Lion Air 610, crashed in Indonesia and killed 189 people. These two flights were operating the same
plane: The Boeing 737 MAX 8. And its engine is the key to understanding
why this particular plane has caused so many problems. But there's nothing actually wrong with this
engine. In fact, airplane manufacturers raced to put
them on their new planes. That's where the problem started. The two biggest airplane manufacturers in
the world are Airbus and Boeing. And they have a fierce rivalry. If one of them can offer a better plane, the
other could lose a lot of money. That's exactly what was about to happen in
2010. Airbus announced that they would update their
most popular model,  the A320, a single-aisle airplane that services many domestic flights. You've probably been on one. For this new plane, Airbus had a big update. It would have a new kind of engine. It was much larger than the previous engine, but it would make the plane 15 percent
more fuel efficient. And just as importantly, this upgrade wouldn't
change the plane that much. A pilot could walk into the new model, with
little additional training, and be on their way. It was called the A320 NEO, and it would save
airlines a lot of money. This was a problem for Boeing. To compete with Airbus, Boeing's obvious move
was to upgrade the engine on their single-aisle plane, the 737. But there was one issue. Here's a sketch of the 737 next to the Airbus
A320. Notice how the 737 is lower to the ground
than the A320. This meant Airbus could slide a new engine
under the wing of their A320. But there wasn't enough room under the wing
of the Boeing 737. But a few months later, Boeing's product development
head had big news. He said: "We figured out a way to get a big
enough engine under the wing." Their solution was to move up the engine on
the wing, so that it would be slightly higher and it would fit on their 737s. Here's a promotional video of that updated
737 in the air. You can actually see that the top of the engine
is above the wing. Boeing called this model the 737 MAX. And just like Airbus with the A320, Boeing
said their new plane was so similar to its predecessor that pilots would only need minimal
additional training. The 737 MAX became the hottest selling plane
on the market. And it helped Boeing keep up with AirBus. Except, moving the engine up on the 737
had a side effect. When the 737 MAX was in full thrust, like
during takeoff, the nose tended to point too far upward, which could lead to a stall. This was a problem, because these planes were
supposed to behave exactly like the old ones. So Boeing came up with a workaround. Instead of re-engineering the plane, they
installed software that automatically pushed the nose downward if the pilot flew the plane
at too high of an angle. They called it the Maneuvering Characteristics
Augmentation System, or MCAS. But because Boeing was selling the 737 MAX
as pretty much the same plane as the 737, they didn't highlight the new MCAS system. Many pilots only got a two-hour iPad course
before entering the cockpit for the first time. And the "training material did not mention"
the MCAS software. In 2018, several American pilots complained
to the federal government that the 737 MAX was "suddenly nosing down." On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 took
off from Jakarta. In the flight report, which shows the plane's
altitude over time, you can see that the plane was in full thrust during takeoff. But at a certain point, the nose of the plane
kept lurching downward. The pilots couldn't figure out why this was
happening. The captain "asked the first officer to check
the quick reference handbook." They couldn't find the solution. The pilots continued to fight with the MCAS. The plane struggled to gain altitude. Reports show it was likely because the computer
was getting incorrect sensor data, pushing the plane toward the earth below. 12 minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed
into the Java Sea. In the Ethiopia crash, the report shows that
the pilots were actually able to disable the MCAS, but it was too late to overcome the
malfunctioning MCAS sensors. For now, nearly every 737 MAX 8 in service
has been grounded. And the Federal Aviation Administration is
facing scrutiny over how they rushed this plane through certification. Boeing's response has been to apply a software
update and make the MCAS "less aggressive," while also saying they'll increase pilot training
on how to turn it off. This problem started with a company's race
to compete with its rival. It pushed them to pretend like their new plane
behaved exactly like their old one. Even when it didn't. These photos look like they’re from a hotel,
or a fancy college dorm room. There’s a gym, common areas, and private
bedrooms. But this place, just outside Halden, Norway, is a prison. There’s no barbed wire, lots of greenery,
and striking contemporary art. Inmates even have pretty great views out of
their cell windows. It’s all part of a plan to make prisons
more humane — through design. The underlying philosophy behind humane prison design argues that the look and feel of a
prison shouldn’t be a punishment. And the first thing designers focus on is
the basic architecture of prison buildings. In most prison architecture, facilities are
consolidated into one contiguous building. A courtyard design uses a rectangular building
around a central outdoor space. In a telephone pole design, rows of buildings
are stacked like a ladder. And radial designs have corridors that branch
out from a central hub, like spokes on a wheel. While these layouts are good for moving lots
of inmates around efficiently, they restrict prisoners to identical indoor hallways day
after day, and tight quarters can unintentionally create tension and conflict. So humane prisons are often laid out in a
campus design, where facilities are split between separate buildings, with a surrounding
perimeter wall. At Norway’s Halden Prison, housing is located
here, while education and visitation spaces are here, in separate buildings. This means most inmates have to start their
day with a commute — mimicking life in the outside world and providing easy access to
outdoor physical activity. And unlike other layouts, which have windows
that look out onto the prison itself, campus design gives inmates a rich view of their
surrounding environment. This access to nature also helps inmates track
the passage of time. Spending time outside and seeing days and
seasons pass through windows helps reduce this problem. Plus, the grounds of humane prisons are usually
landscaped carefully. At Halden, tall birch and pine trees dwarf
the buildings and obscure the perimeter wall, lending what designers call an “anti-authoritarian”
feel to the campus: inmates are never made to feel intimidated by the architecture itself. Building materials influence humane design
too. In other prisons, interiors are made from
hard materials like concrete, linoleum, and steel. Materials like this block light, are visually
unappealing, and constantly reflect noise. In prisons like Halden, you’ll see glass
to let in natural light, and materials like cork and wood to muffle noise. But humane prison design isn’t just about
architecture and materials. It’s also about what happens inside the walls. Halden’s design affects the way correctional
officers and inmates interact. Because housing is broken up into small communities
with a shared kitchen and communal space, correctional officers can easily monitor inmates
through regular face-to-face contact, instead of observing large groups of people from a
distance. And the guards’ rooms are intentionally
designed too small, to incentivize them to move out into the inmates’ common area. Campus layouts help that relationship flourish:
A study of architecture in Dutch correctional facilities found that campus design ranked
highest in inmate-staff relationships. And US prison studies from the late ‘90s
found that this style of direct contact resulted in fewer violent or security-related incidents. Designing these humane prisons costs money. Which is why most of the groundbreaking work
is happening in Western Europe and Scandinavia, where smaller prison populations and more
robust social support systems allow for more flexible experimentation. And because US prisons often prize cost-saving
over design, it’s still uncommon to see them here. But places like Halden are setting a new precedent
for what the prison of the future could look like. It might feel counterintuitive to create pleasant,
well-designed spaces like this for people who have committed crimes. But under a design philosophy like this, being
imprisoned is the punishment — the architecture doesn’t have to be. This map from 2019 was compiled using satellite
and aerial imagery. Leonardo da Vinci made this one around 1502
— while stuck on the ground. How? When infamous Italian politician Cesare Borgia
brought Leonardo da Vinci — the guy who drew this portrait — to the city of Imola,
it was as a military engineer. He’d already established a good military
reputation — and painted several famous works. When Leonardo was installed at Borgia’s
newly acquired fort, one of his duties was to help Borgia learn the territory. At the time, a map like this one was the standard
— a birdseye or hillside view. Mythical creatures often popped up — not
great for military operations. The perspective also only showed some buildings,
blocking the view of other ones. These maps could be beautiful. But they lacked proper shape and scale
And highlighted landmarks’ beauty at the expense of clarity. Leonardo needed to show Imola as an “ichnographic”
map — an idea that Vitruvius — a Roman engineer and the guy
who inspired this — had described. In practice, it’s a map where everything
looks like you’re directly above whatever you show. It gives you a clearer picture. Look at the fort. In Google Maps, the shadow effects change
a bit, but the fort’s perspective fundamentally stays the same. That’s similar to a real view from far above, where distance reduces the effects of shifting perspective. But Leonardo didn’t have a satellite to
get up that far. His plan of Imola was a feat of symbolic imagination. And he had to make it accurate. Based on sketches, previous work, and the
design of his Imola map, we can guess at how Leonardo made it. He probably used a type of disk that could
measure degrees and had a little pointer to mark the angles of streets in relation to
a stable point, usually North. He probably used a compass to record the orientation
of the town’s surrounding walls. He did this at every turn, which helped him
accurately translate the walls onto paper. Note the circular shape here, overlaid on
the map. To establish scale, Leonardo also needed to
measure the distance between all of these angles. He probably paced this out by foot, or maybe
using an odometer, with wheels that turned gears that measured distance by dropping a
ball into a bucket at set intervals. With the angles and distance together, he
could create a plan — hundreds of years before anyone could check if he got it right. This stunning map from 1551, by another Leonardo,
shows the potential Leonardo da Vinci’s method had. All these early ichnographic maps have asterisks
- this one was spotted with its own inaccuracies and artistic flourishes, a reflection of the
scope of the project. In turn, Leonardo’s Imola had quibbles too
— he probably used parts of previous surveys and other artistic techniques. It also appears that he measured the town’s
walls precisely, but took more liberties with the angles in the town’s interior. But even with artistic license, this remains
a map of more than a fort and town. It’s a transition from a geography of myth
and perception to one about information, drawn plainly. It’s a map of Imola, but in the early 1500s,
it was a map of the future, too. Hey, if you’re curious about this video
or any of the videos in Almanac or Overrated, I’m going to be doing a live Q&A in the
Videolab where we answer a ton of questions about that and the Vox process. The nerdier your questions the better — I
hope to be asked about my favorite Adobe Premiere shortcut and also Leonardo’s odometer. So, if you have those questions drop them
in the comment below and head over to vox.com/join and you can ask me directly on the stream. This is a stream thing I’m doing with my
hand. Pretty cool. On April 4th, 2017, a privileged group of
telescopes on mountains across the planet switched on at the same time. For the next week they danced in unison, collecting radio waves dispatched from
the center of our Milky Way galaxy and from the galaxy m87. Together they make
up the event horizon telescope, a global project to capture the first ever
picture of a black hole. That's right. Ever since physicists first conceived of
black holes centuries ago, every image of one from our textbooks and our space
agencies, they're all illustrations. Until now. We are delighted to be able to
report to you today that we have seen what we thought was unseeable. For centuries, physicists have theorized that an object with enough mass and density
could trap even light in its gravitational field, just as you have to
travel faster to leave Earth than you do to leave the Moon, there could be a place
where you'd have to travel faster than the speed of light to escape. And nothing moves faster than light. The math from Einstein's theory of general relativity
describes an area completely invisible to us within a boundary called the "event
horizon," and at the center of that black hole is a singularity, a point of
infinite density which is where physics as we know it breaks down. They showed up in the math long ago and they kept reappearing and they sort of
persistently would not go away, but Einstein always thought that there must
be some physical mechanism that prevents stars from collapsing to an infinitely
small point, which is actually pretty reasonable. I mean, because it sounds
insane. Eventually scientists began to see things that only made sense if black
holes were real, like the orbits of these stars around the centre of the Milky Way
galaxy. You see these stars just slingshotting
around an invisible point and a black hole is the most likely explanation for
putting that amount of mass in that small space, for something that's
completely dark. We can also see the glowing material
that spirals around black holes: Friction heats this matter up tens of millions of
degrees and anything that hot emits X-rays that we can detect with
telescopes that orbit above Earth's atmosphere. This is a pair of galaxies
that pass through each other. There are at least nine suspected black holes here,
but you can only see them when you look at the X-ray layer. These dots are X-ray
sources linked to suspected supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies
three to ten billion light-years away. And that's just from this small patch of
sky. Some super massive black holes also feature gigantic jets of particles, seen
here in radio wave data from the galaxy m87, which has a much bigger black hole
than the one in the center of the Milky Way. No other known source of energy
could power these things and nothing we know of besides two black holes
colliding could have produced the gravitational waves we detected in 2015. Scientists think there are black holes large and small all over the universe. We
can see their fingerprints but we didn't have the mug shot. Directly imaging a
black hole has been impossible because they're either too small, too far away, or
both. Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy has the mass
of four million Suns, but it would fit inside the orbit of Mercury. Imaging it from Earth is like taking a picture of a DVD on the surface of the Moon, with huge
clouds of dust and gas in between. So many things had to go right for this
image to exist, so the first thing that has to happen is there has to be some
slice of light that travels all the way from the edge of the black hole without
getting knocked off course or absorbed by any of the gas or anything in between,
and then it also has to make it through the Earth's atmosphere which a lot of
frequencies of light don't. They landed on a wavelength of 1.3 millimeters at
the high frequency end of the radio spectrum. With that wavelength and with
eight observatories across the world, the event horizon telescope had a chance at
seeing a black hole, as long as the weather cooperated. You have to have
clear weather in all of those places at a time when the Earth is oriented in
such a way that all of those telescopes can see the black hole
simultaneously. They can really only observe once a year. There was so much
data involved that it had to be flown on airplanes. They waited six months for the
hard drives to arrive from the South Pole, which closes during winter time. This multi-telescope method is called "Very long baseline interferometry," it
correlates timestamped data from distant telescopes to boost the signal
and quiet the noise. Each pairing of telescopes contributes a piece of the
puzzle, but the image doesn't just pop out after that. They had four groups
working for months to generate the image that best represents the data. Each group was working individually and like in isolation from the other groups, working
with the same data, to see that each group came up with the same image or not. And the result of all that work is this. The bright parts are the matter and
lights swirling around the black hole and it's brighter on the side that's
moving toward us. And the dark part is the black hole's shadow, which includes
the event horizon plus a region where light could escape, but doesn't. The size and shape of the shadow appear to confirm the theory of general relativity. Today, general relativity has passed another crucial test, this one spanning
from horizons to the stars. Humanity's first image of a black hole isn't crisp
and beautiful like the illustrations or the movie Interstellar. It's better. The picture we see this week is made of scraps and bits of light that's been
traveling across the universe and collected by these, you know, aluminum
dishes on top of mountaintops and then combined in a supercomputer to make this
image. So that's why it's real. On September 19, 1985, a congressional hearing
about rock music lyrics captured the nation's attention. Over the course of 5 hours, a music expert,
a reverend, a group of parents, and quite a few deeply horrified politicians publicly
reprimanded the music industry for their lack of morals. This is Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings Hollings: But in all candor, I would tell
you it’s outrageous filth. If I could find some way, constitutionally,
to do away with it, I would. The leader of this charge was the Parents
Music Resource Center or PMRC, a group led by the wives of a few washington politicians. And what started out as a dialogue about explicit
lyrics — Susan Baker: Cole Porter’s "The Bird’s
Do It, The Bees Do It” can hardly be compared with WASP’s “I F-U-C-K Like a Beast” —
turned into an all out attack on how rock stars portrayed themselves to kids. From music videos and album covers to the
names of fan clubs. Al Gore: Mr. Snider, what is the name of your
fan club? Snider: The fan club is called the SMF Friends
of Twisted Sister Al Gore: And what does SMF stand for when
it’s spelled out?” Dee Snider: It stands for the Sick Mother
Fucking Friends of Twisted Sister. Al Gore: Is this also a Christian group? Snider: I don’t believe that profanity has
anything to do with Christianity. Three musicians, Frank Zappa, John Denver,
and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, defended their music citing the importance of free
speech. Denver: Discipline and self-restraint when
practiced by an individual, a family, or a company is an effective way to deal with this
issue. The same thing when forced on a people by
their government. Or worse by a self-appointed watchdog of public
morals, is supression, and will not be tolerated in democratic society. That five-hour-long hearing wasn’t an isolated
incident, it was just one moment in the war on rock music that had been infiltrating American
culture and politics for years. It was that war that gave us this sticker, one we pretty much take for granted today. Stuessy: Given the American philosophy, I think we’ve given the so-called creative artists a wide
berth. Somehow we must send a message to the recording
and radio industry: enough is enough you’ve you've gone too far. In the words of the heavy metal band Twisted
Sister, we’re not going to take it anymore. Tipper Gore: I bought the Purple Rain album
for our 11-year old. This is Tipper Gore, she was a very vocal
leader of the PMRC. I felt that it was inappropriate for her and her 8- and 6-year-old sister to hear
a song describing a girl masturbating in a hotel lobby with a magazine. Prince: I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess
you could say she was a sex fiend. I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with
a magazine. Eric: So to recap, she bought this
album Sight Unseen. The lyrics were printed on the album. It was a soundtrack to an R-rated film, and
she played this for her children without any previewing of it whatsoever. Tipper doesn't blame herself. She doesn't blame her daughter. She blames Prince. This situation was Prince's fault. Prince’s “Darling Nikki” ended up on
the PMRCs “Filthy Fifteen," a list of songs they felt represented the most explicit music
of 1985. Eric: Subject matter might contain one to
four different objections. One was things that were violent, or in some
cases may have even encouraged acts of violence. There was sexual references. There was drug and alcohol references in songs. Take a close look at this list and you’ll
see one genre disproportionately called out. Heavy Metal. And a fourth rating, an “O” For the Occult. Rockstars have always been accused of being
a cohort of the devil. The legendary story of blues guitarist Robert
Johnson’s career is that he sold his soul to the devil so he could play better. That was in 1937. When the Blues became Rock and Roll, that mythology
became a full on aesthetic. From the Beatles featuring Aleister Crowley,
a known occultist, on St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, to the Rolling Stones upping the ante with
an album called Their Satanic Majesties Request. But it wasn’t until Rock and Roll birthed
Heavy Metal that Satan and the occult became a central character in popular music. Black Sabbath, are widely considered the original
Heavy Metal band. They released their first album in 1970 and it
featured a figure in black on the front cover. That gloomy aesthetic extends to the very
first track which opens with a giant crash of thunder and ominous church bells. "Oh no, no, please God help me." After this album, bands all over started popping up, building on the sound and the style. Even hard rock acts like AC/DC referenced
Hell and Satan as signs of rebellion. "Hey Satan.
Payin' my dues." "Playing in a rocking band." By the 1980s heavy metal was mainstream and On one end there was highly melodic and commercial
bands like Motley Crue and Def Leppard, on the other end, darker, more intense groups like
Mercyful Fate and Slayer. Across this spectrum, though, remained a very
clear aesthetic: albums with gothic typefaces and visual and lyrical references to the occult,
Hell, evil, and violence. Jason: You should look up their version of
Suicidal Tendencies' “Institutionalized” you will love it, you’ll love it. They also have another song called... That’s Jason Kalfin, he was and still is
a heavy metal fan. Jason: Ah what is it? Talk Shit Get Shot? It’s a classic. He’s talking about Ice-T’s heavy metal
band Body Count, but I digress. In 1981, with the launch of MTV, music videos
became a part of the daily TV diet of kids across the US. But it wasn’t all kids, it was mostly white teenage
boys who were MTV’s core demographic, because most of the communities wired for cable were
in suburban, largely white, neighborhoods. Jason: One minute you had a Metallica video and then the next minute you had a Culture Club video, or Wham! Or Motley Crue. When heavy metal came on you could pretty
much count on it being incredibly outlandish. Eric: At the same time that this is happening,
there is this cultural movement happening in the United States. Gary Greenwald: If you’re into rock and roll today, let me warn you. Eric: Of people who would tour around Evangelical
churches and basically scare the shit out of the parishioners by telling them that Satan
was controlling the entertainment industry. Greenwald: Satan is using the rock groups
as his patsies to evangelize the youth of the world! That fringe group quickly morphed into a wave
of televangelists ripping rock music, even Christian rock, apart in front of a national
audience. Jimmy Swaggart: One young man with an earring
in his ear, and his hair down to his back, singing rock music, says his pastor told him to do that, it'll win the kids. To the growing religious right, all of pop
culture was just hell on earth. Everything from the game Dungeons and Dragons
to this Proctor and Gamble logo were under scrutiny. But it was rock music and heavy metal in particular
that seemed to get the most attention. It seemed to be the crazier
their claims were, the more bookings they got. So it became a financial incentive for them
to make these ludicrous claims about the music industry. Like the Truth About Rock Seminar by The Peters
Brothers. Are you ready for Truth about Rock? The Peters Brothers’ seminars and bonfires
have drawn press attention from coast to coast. Here they are outside a KISS concert. When I see the way these people are encouraging
kids to live, there is no doubt in my mind, we have got be more militant in our own sand, Steve.” There was literally a feature length movie
called "Rock It’s Your Decision" about a kid named Jeff struggling to choose between listening
to his favorite music and God. Kid: When I went through my own record
collection I was shocked! Isn’t sex a major theme? And the occult too? And what about the lifestyles of the popular groups and artists? Some are admitted homosexuals! Spoiler alert, he chooses God. There were rock record burnings across the
country. Jason: Gene Simmons from KISS said it best one time, he was like if you don’t like my record go out and buy 1,000 copies and burn it. Just keep buying them. Bands like AC/DC and KISS even had to prove
their names weren’t acronyms for satanic worship. Eric: Kiss, that's all it stands for. However they’d say “no, no, no, that stands
for Knights in Satan's Service” We need to talk about KISS, does their name
really stand for Knights in Service to Satan? Eric: KISS were clowns. They were ridiculous people who did ridiculous
bombastic big huge things. They were not in league with Satan. Not surprisingly, the craziest claims were
the ones that traveled the furthest. One of them was backmasking. Eric: The idea was that there were things
you could hear when you were playing the record backwards, that somehow when you listen to
it forward your brain could still hear the message flip it around, decode it. It wasn’t just the record covers or the
written lyrics, these evangelists believed rock music was a breeding ground for satanic
subliminal messages. "Backward Masking Unmasked" was a book written
about subliminal messages in rock music. It was sold in churches across the country. One of the most legendary and famous allegations was
that Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven" played backwards said “My Sweet Satan” I’m going to fast forward now, and you can kind of
get a feel for the song now. Very mellow, you know, almost pretty. Back to Stairway to Heaven, here’s that
same section, reversed. In every single instance, the only way the
audience could successfully hear the Satanic message was is if the guy said the phrase
before he played the song in reverse. Backwards it says “Here’s to my sweet
Satan” It says “Here’s to my sweet Satan” How many actually heard that? I heard it. Eric: As you can imagine, it became quite
a kind of fun thing for everybody to sit there and spin records backwards and listen ‘what
do you hear? what do you hear?' This was all pretty entertaining until this
happened. A lot of people hear, the phrase my sweet
Satan. Here let me play this backwards. You hear it? My sweet Satan. Backmasking became national news. Not only that, in 1982 labeling albums with
“backmasked” songs became a proposed piece of legislation in California. Styx: Last year state legislature
in California was so loosened up that they decided some records including ours had backwards
Satanic messages on them. But we can honestly and sincerely
say, as we stand before you this evening, that the devil had nothing to do with this next song from the Paradise Theater album. A song entitled "Snowblind." The rise of heavy metal coinciding with the
religious right gaining power seemed to create the perfect storm for an urgent national debate
around rock music. But it wasn’t the rock stars that were the
center of the conversation. It was their teenage fans. Eric: Rock music evolves in the '50s and then
as soon as that happens, almost immediately, you see people, adults, trying to censor or control
that music. Kids are expressing themselves and they are
letting out their frustrations and their happiness and their joy. They’d say, look at what that music is doing
to my child. Remember the Peters Brothers outside that
KISS Concert? They're part of the same generation that was
listening to Elvis. Decades later, they were judging teens for
doing the same thing with KISS. Peter Brothers: From the moment they stepped
on stage nobody ever sat down, they kept yelling, and shouting and jumping up and down. Clapping, you can hear them applauding now. The Satanic message is clear, both in the
album cover and in the lyrics which are reaching impressionable young minds. More likely than not, your kids have already
seen and heard what some of you will see and hear for the first time tonight. When a form of music that our children like
becomes linked with ghoulish images and violent theatrics and even suicide, it demands our
attention. Perhaps more to the point, the children need our attention. One of the biggest reasons for the backlash
against rock music, though, stems from this chart. In the 1980s the youth suicide rate was rising,
particularly among the same demographic that that was listening to Heavy Metal: Teenage
boys. The kids that listen to this music are killing
themselves and each other because of it. The music is called "Heavy Metal." Four young people died in a suicide pact,
a heavy metal cassette box was found at the the scene. For a lot of young people, the intensity of
heavy metal had a big draw — which also made the genre a scapegoat. Eric: Music has always been
a calling card for people, it expresses who we are, what we care about, our values. It is an expression of self. Well if your inner-self is kind of torn up
and tormented, you're going to look for music that expresses those feelings. If it’s too loud, you’re too old. Take Jay’s father for example he never shared
his son’s devotion to the music. Father: I’d yell turn it down, but seriously,
I have no objection to what music he likes to listen to. Would you? Jason: What? Turn it down? Jason: Would I turn it down? No I’d turn it up. Jason: Did you see I wasn’t paying attention
when the guy asked the question? I’m like what? Jason was one of the kids profiled in a 20/20
segment on the effects of heavy metal. Stone Phillips: Teaneck High has its own
group of so-called tough kids, hoods, or burnouts. Some into drinking or drugs, others into not
much of anything at all, except heavy metal music. Jason: Even then I couldn't understand that. I was like, it it can’t be the music, you know, it’s gotta be the
individual. You gotta have some serious serious serious issues. In this New York Times article about youth
suicide, there are a few possible factors. Family breakups, drug abuse, dwindling job
and educational opportunities, and of course, the growing availability of guns. Heavy metal never made the list. But the media persisted in looking for answers
in the music. Geraldo Rivera: Every single kid whose case
we know about, who committed a violent act in Satan’s name was also into heavy metal
music. What's your response to that, Ozzy? Ozzy: Well I don’t really know. All I do is make music. I don’t sit down and purposefully plan to
freak everybody out. It’s in this Satanic panic environment that
the Parents’ Music Resource Center was formed. Their main goal? Create a rating system that
would signify to parents how harmful music could be to their kids. They created a 33-minute PSA video that was
eerily similar to films made by various Christian groups. But more importantly, their ties to Washington
got them a meeting with the Senate. Susan Baker: Some rock artists actually seem to encourage teen suicide. Ozzy Osbourne sings “Suicide Solution" Blue
Oyster Cult sings “Don’t Fear the Reaper” AC/DC sings “Shoot To Thrill” — just last week in Center Point, a small Texas town, a young man took his life while listening to the music of AC/DC. He was not the first. What this all came down to though, was a request
for a tiny little label on a record. How bad could that really be? Why was this so threatening to artists? Eric: How much trouble could that cause? And the truth is it causes no problems on
its own. But then you look at how that sticker gets
used in the world. It becomes very troubling very quickly. Eric: Within literally weeks, you have more than a dozen States who want to include that label's
presence in their definition of obscenity, which is a felony. The circus atmosphere of the hearing was certainly
entertaining, but the fact that it even happened in the first place was terrifying for musicians. Eric: When you get into the 1990s
and the sticker starts coming out, a big problem immediately emerges, which is at that time
the largest retailer of music in the United States by not little bit, but a huge margin,
was Wal-Mart. Wal-mart, the family-friendly retail chain
immediately felt pressure to keep albums with the label off their shelves. Eric So the record labels figured
out, "Hey, well maybe we can create a version of this album that does not have the sticker
on it." And then Wal-mart will buy it. Album covers were changed. Song titles were changed. Entire songs were omitted from albums. Eric: The thing you have to remember about
censors is they don't think they're censoring. They think they're protecting people. Rock and roll always thrived on pushing against
the system. Songs blasting the PMRC became signifiers
of rebellion. Mother, tell your children not to walk my way. Tell your children not to hear my words.
What they mean, what they say. Mother. Frank Zappa even made his own warning label. “This album contains material which a truly
free society would neither fear nor suppress.” In an unfortunate twist of fate for this guy, the 1980s saw a huge uptick in albums with
intentional backmasked messages, poking fun at the whole controversy. If Tipper Gore had paid a bit more attention to “Darling Nikki” she would’ve probably
heard something she liked. “I’m fine. Fiiiine. Cause I know that the Lord is coming soon.” In 1990, the explicit lyrics sticker was finally
put into effect. And a new genre of music was taking over the
charts, one that would fuel the conversation around censoring lyrics over the next decade. [OPRAH: And this next group calls itself NWA which stands for N—s with attitude. Their album Straight Outta Compton went platinum. Critics say their lyrics promote violence
and urge black youngsters to kill policemen. The explicit lyrics sticker seems pretty innocuous
now. Some of the most critically acclaimed and
commercially successful albums of the last 25 years have carried it. Kendrick Lamar’s Damn is an album filled
with backmasked messages. There’s clear references to sex, addiction,
violence, and evil. It would have probably made it to the top
of the filthy fifteen list in 1985. In 2018 though, it won the Pulitzer Prize in music. The first non-classical or jazz album to do so. We’ve come a long way, but that doesn’t
mean we left censorship behind. Eric: The truth is, any parent has the right
to decide what their children are going to see. It's one of the toughest things about being
a parent And that's what this whole argument comes
down to. People who are willing to either A) be the
voice of deciding what's appropriate or not for your children or the people who say, which is more horrifying to me, people who are willing to let that other person make their choice for them. Thanks so much for watching episode 1 of season 2, all about the explicit lyric sticker. There are so many stories and angles into why we have the explicit lyric sticker in the first place that I just simply wasn't able to fit into this episode. But I really want to talk about them, so in the Video Lab I'll soon be sharing a behind-the-scenes peek at all of the research that went into this episode, and all of the angles into this story that I wasn't able to fit in, but might still pique your interest. So join the Video Lab, and I'll see you there. Grape Nuts was one of the first American cereal
brands. It claimed it could “steady a man’s nerves”
and “clear his brain.” It could keep you cool in the summer. It was food for muscles. For “the warding off of disease.” And for “men of brains.” It was the “most scientific brain and nerve
food in existence.” These ads might seem ancient, but in connecting
breakfast cereal with health, they aren't so different from how breakfast has been sold
to us ever since. “Cheerios breakfast gives you the power
protein.” “How do I stay so slim? I watch what I eat, like Post Grape Nuts for
breakfast.” “Data shows women who eat breakfast tend
to weigh less than those who don’t.” The problem with a lot of these claims is
— they’re not exactly true. But the idea of breakfast being good for health
— especially weight loss — has persisted for over a century. So where does this myth come from? And what does this guy have to do with it? “For children there’s pretty strong evidence
that breakfast is a good idea.” That’s Julia Belluz who reports on health
for Vox. “As an adult one of the most common claims
we hear about breakfast is that it really promotes weight loss”
And that idea didn’t come out of nowhere. There’s a whole body of research that connects
breakfast with weight loss. But the methods behind a lot of those studies
don't always hold up. Like this one, that found an association between
eating breakfast, and having a low body mass index. That might be true, but studies like this
aren’t actually testing what would happen if you were to change your breakfast behavior. “The problem with those studies is that
breakfast skippers and breakfast eaters are different people. So maybe the breakfast eaters earn more money
and exercise more and that explains why they weigh less than the breakfast skippers.” Most of these studies also don’t take into
account a major factor: what we eat for breakfast. There’s likely a big difference between
eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, or a bowl of steel cut oats. There was even a study of studies...that tried
to answer the question: does our best research on breakfast prove that it helps with weight
loss? “Researchers looked at 13 randomized controlled
trials, the highest quality of evidence, on breakfast and its effect on weight loss.” When researchers looked at the studies...they
found there’s “no evidence to support the notion” that eating breakfast helps
you lose weight. “And they found that breakfast might even
had the opposite of the desired effect. In some studies people actually gained a little
bit of weight when they started to eat breakfast.” So if the available science doesn’t actually
support this idea, why do we still believe eating breakfast is a healthier way to live? Well, it has a lot to do with these guys. Before they got into cereal, Dr. John Harvey
Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg, ran a family business. The “Battle Creek Sanitarium.” It was a wellness center, a place where the
wealthy could go for what they called “biologic living". It included things like salt glow baths, light
treatments, and strange looking exercise machines. It was there in 1898 that John Harvey came up with corn flakes, as a way to curb
indigestion. But he was also an extremely religious doctor
who believed masturbation was a carnal sin. And he prescribed a bland diet, including
corn flakes, as part of the cure. In 1906, John Harvey’s brother, Will Keith,
took corn flakes, and mass-marketed them to the world. By 1917, Good Health, a magazine edited
by John Harvey Kellogg, wrote “In many ways, the breakfast is the most important
meal of the day.” With claims like this, cereal makers solidified
the idea of a healthy breakfast. “It repairs and it sustains all body tissue.” “It’s part of your good breakfast.” And today, a lot of the science cited in cereal
commercials has a similar source. “Part of a good breakfast.” Take a look at the small print on these studies. This one concludes breakfast skipping is not
good for managing weight. It’s funded by the Kellogg Company. And this one found breakfast skipping had
other health costs — like high cholesterol. It’s funded by another major breakfast maker, Quaker
Oats. So, knowing all this about the slippery science
of breakfast — should we still be eating it? There’s little evidence that it’s a great
weight loss strategy...but that doesn’t mean breakfast is bad. “For a lot of people breakfast isn't pointless. It can be a good time of day to stock up on
vitamins and nutrients. But for the rest of us, it's up to you.” That means, if you’re a breakfast eater,
like Julia, you can carry on. And if you’re a breakfast-skipper, like
me? Don’t worry, the best science we have suggests
we’re probably just fine either way. Thanks for watching. If you haven't already heard, we've launched a paid membership program called the Video Lab. For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to tons of special features. Becoming a member is the best way to support our work, so head on over to vox.com/join to sign up. See you there! I was 16 years old and working in what's
known as a chart return shop. One Saturday someone came in and just went "I
want the record that goes WAAAAAAAOWWWW" Obviously, in this clubber's mind, it was the most
important record that they'd ever heard. Things are expressing themselves and
they are letting out their frustrations and their happiness and
their joy. They'd say, look at what that music is doing to my child. In many ways it
gave a whole new lease of life to the idea of pop music. And it's the lease of
life that really has kept pop music going to this day. If it hit me like that? Boy, it was on my turntable. Tucker Carlson likes to brand himself as a
real man of the people. Politicians, big business, the media, they
are all on the same side. Taking on the liberal elite. Now Democrats have become the party of the
elite professional class. And standing up for everyday Americans It’s not a left right thing. It's a ruling class versus everybody else
thing. He wrote a whole book about how America's
selfish ruling class is bringing the country to the brink of revolution. Division helps them maintain their power even as it destroys our country. The Atlantic even called him the bow tied
bard of populism. The actual problem is the corrupt and decadent
leadership of our own elites. The he elites. Liberal elites. It is sickening and we've had enough of it. There's just one problem with Tucker's man-of-the-people shtick.       .     Yeah. Tucker's full name is Tucker Swanson McNear
Carlson. His stepmom is the heiress to the Swanson
frozen food empire. He went to an elite boarding school in Rhode
Island, got famous for wearing bow ties on national
television, and has spent his professional career bouncing
between cushy cable news jobs. By all measures, Tucker Carlson is a member of the American elite.                 So what is going on here? Why would a guy who bragged about being an
out-of-the-closet elitist host a show where he rails against the ruling
class? There's actually a pretty simple explanation for Tucker's new shtick. And it's called "false consciousness." But see I'm an out-of-the-closet elitist. I don't run around pretending to be a man
of the people. The elites to whom the rest of us mere plebes
look on in awe. I’m absolutely not a man of the people at
all. False consciousness is one of those phrases that grad students use to sound smart at parties. But essentially, it's a term in Marxist theory that describes when working class people are tricked into accepting their exploitation. So let's say you and your co-workers are feeling frustrated and start thinking
of forming a union. To stop you, your boss might say "you don't need a union. The real problem is all these women taking maternity leave. If they weren't taking so much time off we'd all be able to go home right now." Or they might say "it's these damn privileged millennials. They're so obsessed with work-life balance
that we all have to pick up the slack. Get mad at them." The boss convinces the workers to accept their
exploitation by pointing their anger in the wrong direction. Or as Tucker Carlson would say: One thing you will learn when you grow up
in a castle and look out across the moat every day hungry
peasants out in the village is you don't want to stoke envy among the
proletariat. Thanks Tucker. So how do you keep the hungry peasants in
the village from storming the castle? Enter Tucker Carlson Tonight. The show that is the sworn enemy of lying,
pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. Since it launched in 2016, Tucker's show has been a festival of false
consciousness, bombarding viewers with an endless supply
of culture war bullshit. Can transracial be the new transgender? What's so upsetting about lady-specific Doritos? If yoga is racist is hot yoga more racist? To be fair, this isn't unique to Tucker. Fox News' MO is using culture war stories to distract from right wing economics. But what makes Tucker unique is how often
he uses the language of anti-elitism while ignoring real exploitation. Take the 2017 Republican tax cuts for example. It's the largest tax cut in the history of
our country and reform. Republicans spent months promising their tax
cuts would help the middle class, including during several segments on Tucker's
show. This is really about a middle income tax cut. OK. That of course turned out to be a scam. The overwhelming majority of those tax cuts went to corporate shareholders and CEOs. It's a giveaway to the very rich, permanent tax cuts for corporations, and almost nothing for the average person. So what was Tucker Carlson, populist hero, talking about the week that happened? Racist trees. In Palm Springs, California, city officials
are planning to clearcut a grove of tamarisk trees because
they're racist. Ah yes. Racist trees. I'm willing to believe you that there was
racist intent in placing these trees. Why are we punishing the trees for that? Tucker spent twice as long talking about this random tree story as he did about the tax
cuts. Does that seem a little unfair? If you were a tree you might feel a little
differently. This is false consciousness in action. Convince workers to focus their rage at targets
that don't matter. Racist trees. And they'll be too distracted to notice the
ones that do. It's a giveaway to the very rich. Don't want to stoke envy. Tucker does this all the time. Last May, Congress rolled back regulations meant to stop Wall Street from creating another
financial crisis. The financial institutions spent two hundred million dollars in lobbying. This is the kind of thing real populists hate. Big money rules and the needs of ordinary
people gets ignored. But Tucker didn't mention the rollback once. Instead he was dedicating multiple segments to a random dude who refused to move out of
his parents house, which Carlson saw as proof that millennials
were too entitled. I think that probably does have something
to do with the safe space movement. So just to recap: instead of talking about bank deregulation, we got one multimillionaire complaining to another multimillionaire about how millennials are too entitled. False consciousness. Amazing the country this is becoming, we're dedicated to chronicling it for you
in all detail. Last February, Trump made it easier for lenders to give out predatory payday loans, which trap working class people in cycles
of debt they can't get out of. Many of these loans have interest rates of four hundred percent. The move was a huge win for predatory lenders, who Democrats have been trying to regulate
for years. This is a lobby that's extraordinarily powerful. They have members and the members want results. But Tucker didn't mention the move once. Instead, he spent the week blaming Democrats for focusing on identity politics. Elections in this country used to be based
on issues or that was the common agreement, anyway. The left is too distracted by global warming or the lack of transgender SEAL teams to pay
any attention. You spent three days on the racist tree story. False consciousness. Okay, last one. In May, House Republicans passed huge cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. This bill cuts taxes for massively high income
people by hundreds of billions and cuts the health
care of low and middle income Americans by hundreds
of billions. If there was ever a time they get mad at the
elites, this was it. I think this is one of the largest pure redistributions from poor to rich in one bill we've ever seen. But Tucker Swanson Carlson treated the whole
thing like a big joke. The left has had a full psychotic break. Then he turned to the stories that really
matter: atheists getting rid of a park bench in Pennsylvania, Michael Moore saying something mean about
Trump, and a random academic paper suggesting we
should eat bug meat. When Al Gore starts serving crickets for lunch
on his private jet, I'm in. The largest redistribution from poor to rich
we've ever seen. Don't want to stoke envy. The goal of Tucker's show isn't to challenge
the elite. It's to make sure you never realize who they
are. To get you so mad at atheists, feminists,
immigrants, millennials, trans people, college students, pot smokers, vegans, the NFL, Brooklyn witches, and Lena f*cking Dunham that you don't get mad at the people who are
actually in charge.         Tucker Carlson isn't a populist. He's a safety valve. A way to make sure that, if the hungry peasants
in the village get angry, they don't take it out on the party giving tax cuts to him or his multibillionaire
boss. You're his bitch. I'm 100 percent his bitch. Whatever Mr Murdoch says I do. I would be honored if he would cane me the way I cane my workers. My servants. He's a phony. And if that sounds harsh, don't take it from me. Take it from Tucker Carlson, in 2003, talking about Bill O'Reilly, the man who's fox news slot he would one day
take over. I think there's kind of a deep phoniness at
the center of his shtick because it's sort of built on this perception
that he is the character he plays. He is every man, he's not right wing, he's a populist fighting for you against the
powers that be. And that's great as a shtick. But I'm just saying the moment that it's revealed not to be true, it's over. Right? Because the whole thing is predicated on the
fact that he is who he says he is and nobody is that person, especially not someone who makes a million, or many millions a year. Is there a way to tell from the front? I’m recording. OK. Why don’t we start this off by watching
a movie trailer? T-minus: 12. 11. OK, actually first let’s introduce who we
are — OK.
— and what we’re doing. My name is Phil Edwards. I’m Coleman Lowndes. What we’re doing here is kind of a pilot
in which we take various topics from history and we talk about them. We’re thinking about calling it History
Club? It’s like a pilot. Mmmhmm. It's the same way like “Friends” has a pilot, this
is a pilot. Yeah. If it gets picked up, we’re gonna be like,
you know, pretty much like the Friends. Yeah. Or the American Pickers guys. Yeah! OK, so the other thing we should explain is
that you do not know what we’re talking about today. Right. Is that correct? That is correct. So this is not fake, you actually don’t
know. I don’t know. 3. 2. 1. Liftoff. I feel like Steve Martin should get this pulled
off the internet somehow. He should. He should be embarrassed. Has this guy never watched his kids by himself
before? Cheaper by the Dozen: a supersized comedy. I feel like you’re gonna tell me it’s
based on a real story. Yes, it is based on a true story. They should make a version of this movie that’s,
like, Oscar bait, because the real story is legitimately like...just... So the real family is Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. And they married in, like, 1904. There were actually 13 children — one of
them died stillborn and one of them died at 5. They were a very unique and interesting family
where their personal lives intertwined with the impact that they had on manufacturing. Frank Gilbreth — he got his start as a construction
manager. He would figure out ways to make bricklaying
more efficient. One of his breakthroughs, for example, was
he wanted to build a scaffold. When you were putting up these bricks, instead
of bending all the way to the ground, you could just reach to the scaffold and put up
a brick. Lillian Gilbreth was very much his equal partner. She had a psychology background. She brought this, like, very academic, psychological
training to this management system that they developed. This is like early 1900s they’re around. They were acolytes of this guy called Frederick
Taylor. Have you ever heard of, like, Taylorism? For some reason it’s been coming up a lot
in searches for Darkroom that I’ve been doing. Once the industrial revolution happens, there’s
basically a bunch of experts who try to tackle different ways to make workers more efficient. And Taylor was sort of the leading proponent
of one philosophy that was called time management. Basically, he got famous for kind of looking
at factory lines or at industrial processes with a stopwatch and being like, you can do
this ten seconds more efficiently if you hustle a little more, and dividing the workers into
tasks that he thought they were appropriate for. So he would say some stuff that would be viewed
as kind of offensive today, he would say, like, “You’re a dumb guy, you should be
doing dumb guy stuff.” It kind of felt like he didn’t care about
the workers at all. But they were sorta like: “The workers need
to be a partner in this.” So there were still critics of what they did
but they wanted to make it more efficient with the workers in mind. Like, reducing fatigue, stuff like that. They did this in really neat ways. They kind of did the high-tech version of
studying this stuff. Can you see on his finger here? What that is — that’s a little ring that
is connected — it’s a light — they exposed it so that you could see the path of the ring
while he was hammering. And then they would kind of look at that motion
and study it. This is exactly the story I’m working on
for Darkroom. What is yours about? Marey — this French physiologist who was
studying motion and diagramming motion. So what he would do is have a guy walk across
a white wall and then expose it multiple times and then on a single plate you have this guy
walking. When film came out, he swapped the plate for
a rolling piece of film so, same principle, guy’s walking, shutter’s going like this,
except instead of one single plate it’s each in an individual frame. See, that makes a lot of sense, cause like
my first video that I did on my own here was about Eadweard Muybridge. Same thing, you know. But Muybridge was different because he was
using multiple cameras strung with trip wire, and Marey figured out how to do it all with
a single camera. OK, OK. So, like, Muybridge was combining that stuff
later. But yeah they were doing the same thing, chronophotography, the same idea of studying movement, you know, answering questions like Muybridge did the
horse galloping. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s a sort of breakthrough that’s hard
for us to register because we’re like so used to seeing motion, but I think around
this time and even through the 1910s, people were kinda like, “Whoa, we suddenly have
the ability to see movement.” They would actually bend wire to make original
models of the path that they’d recorded in the photograph. So they’d make these little motion sculptures
out of it that showed the exact path that somebody’d made when they were doing a motion. They developed their own symbolic language
to record various movements called Therbligs — which is their name backwards with a couple
of the characters transposed. You know, it’d be like, somebody reaches
and then grasps for something and then searches for something. It would be like three symbols in a row. And that would be three Therbligs that you’d
use. They sound like a mix of Wes Anderson and
Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah. You could imagine, like, them trying to get
that guy, like how he’s handing off left hand to right, like, you could do that more
seamlessly just by reviewing the footage. And this is an important one. They actually went into surgery. Oh my God. And they filmed it and then they studied what
was going on for motion studies. At the time, where the surgeons would put
their operating tools and stuff like that was relatively disorganized. And so the Gilbreths came in and they said,
you should have these operating tools in the exact same place every time, so that a surgeon
can easily find it. And that happened. And that’s like a huge timesaver in a very
time-intensive field. And they also — I believe they also recommended
that people have an assistant around so basically, like, you know when the surgeon is like, “Scalpel.” And the nurse says, “scalpel.” “Nurse, retractor.” That is probably partly due to the Gilbreths. And so Lillian Gilbreth was kinda shy, she
actually says in the voiceover for some copies of these videos, she says: OK, so, Frank Gilbreth’s famous quote, he
said, “The home is a plant whose product is happiness minutes.” Isn’t that heartwarming? That sounds like a very Frank thing to say
though. So their business is going great, right? They’ve got all this success. Oh no. And they’ve got all these kids, and then
in 1924, Frank Gilbreth, he goes to make a phone call. And he dies. Needless to say, Steve Martin does not die
— Yeah —
In Cheaper by the Dozen. How did he die? His heart. Was he young, was this a pretty sudden thing? He was 55. OK. Lillian is meanwhile faced with the very stark
reality of raising 11 kids on her own and paying for that, and so she suddenly has to
pivot from being this partner who’s kind of marginalized with Frank to suddenly being
the sole breadwinner for the house. Wow! The easiest way for her to do that was to
go from being an efficiency expert who works with companies to being one who is an expert
on the home, which is an unusual thing for her, because she was actually quoted as saying
she did not really like housework. She just didn’t care about this stuff, but
that was the easiest way for her to pivot, and she brought these principles of motion
study and time management into the house. She ended up getting hired to write and then
she ended up appearing on the radio too, and the family is connected because that was one
of her hooks. That totally makes sense, I mean, if she could
handle 12 with these — tools — you’re gonna make, that’s makin’ having three
kids easy. And so she did it in a cool way too, like,
one of the things that she advised homemakers to do was to do their own efficiency studies. And I actually replicated one of these, I
simulated my oatmeal making routine. She actually advised that they have a little
kid follow them around with a ball of yarn as they did household tasks and then let it
unspool as they did the task to show the motion that they were wasting on these common tasks
in the house. Um, and this is actually helpful. I’m really inefficient in how I make my
oatmeal. Well, putting on the robe first definitely
slows you down. Yeah. Their big thing was they would measure steps. So they would be like, “I can stop you from
traveling 27 miles a year and make it so you only travel 9 miles a year.” She also designed a special kitchen that had,
like, a rolling counter in the center. That was a big innovation. And after a while, her plan worked. She became an expert and she became a celebrity. She stopped having to only do these homemaking
and domestic expertise stuff. She consulted presidents on Presidential plans
for work employment. She’s now called the mother of Industrial
Engineering. Wow. And I have one thing I want to show you. Uh. Can you do me a favor here? Can you close your eyes and close your ears,
because I want to say something to the audience first? OK. OK. Coleman made a video about Amelia Earhart
and he’s obsessed with her. She’s the only person who matters in his
life, and she hung out with Lillian Gilbreth. So I’m gonna show him this picture. Amelia?! Damn, I’m seething with envy right now. And then the people presenting her this award
are a bunch of people including Lillian Gilbreth. I think her story is so cool that you almost
forget that we live in the world that they created. We live in this world that thinks of our home
lives and our daily lives as efficiency projects. And in the past that would have been relegated
to just manufacturing or building stuff, but now we’re all trying to make our lives more
efficient in all these different ways. So I think we kind of live in their world
in a way? It’s stunning to me that they had such an
impact through their story and through the family, too. This family pushed that into the mainstream. Should they have a secret word or something
they can put in the comments, like, some sort of signal to know that they want more? The comment of this video? Just comment, Mona, who’s our boss, just
say, Mona let Coleman and Phil keep making these. Hashtag. #PleaseMona. Yeah. #PleaseMona. Alright. In 1908 in Montana, paleontologists uncovered
this: The remains of a sharp-toothed carnivorous
dinosaur. At the time, it was the largest one ever discovered. They called it Tyrannosaurus Rex. Today, it’s mounted here. Well, some of it is. Because they didn’t find a full dinosaur
in 1908. They found the skull, most of the tail, a
rib cage, pelvis, and most of the vertebrae. But the rest of what you’re seeing here? It’s man-made. And that’s true for most dinosaur exhibits. When paleontologists uncover the bones of
a dinosaur they usually only find part of it, leaving them with a prehistoric puzzle full of missing pieces. So... how do they fill in the blanks? When we first started mounting dinosaurs in
the 1900's, researchers had to make a lot of educated guesses.
The first step was to get the bones they did have in the right places. And one thing that helped is to look at animals
that exist now. We can just look at this Tyrannosaurus Rex
and we can see a lot of characteristics on it that are present in, like, chickens for instance: Dr. Mark Norell runs the paleontology division
at the American Museum of Natural History. If you look at the feet it has three primary
toes that all face forward. It has an S-shaped neck. It carries its backbone parallel to the ground. From there they had to start filling in the
missing pieces. For this T-Rex, both hind limbs and both front
limbs were missing. But judging by its skeleton, researchers determined
that it was closely related to an Allosaurus. So an artist was commissioned to hand carve
the missing pieces using the allosaurus skeleton as a reference. Years later, they'd be replaced by replicas
of real T-Rex bones, and it turned out that T-Rex feet do look like Allosaurus feet. But there were other times when this kind of guesswork didn't work out so well. This long-necked dinosaur is an Apatosaurus. But for a long time, we called it something
else. When researchers originally discovered it,
it was missing its skull, and so they made it one. But they made the skull based on some bad
assumptions. They made the skull look like a Camarosaurus,
which is a very different group of dinosaurs. So it has a very high domed skull. So they put the Camarosaurus skull, on the Apatosaurus
body, and gave the “new” dinosaur a name: “Brontosaurus.” The error was finally corrected In the 1970’s. The skull was replaced with a new, more accurate
version, and brontosaurus was renamed: Apatosaurus. But today, I can confidently walk you through
the fossil hall in a museum and say these skeletons are 99% - 100% accurate, because
designing exhibits now? It has very little to do with guessing. Today the field of paleontology has exploded
to the point where we’re uncovering almost one new dinosaur species a week Today there's more dinosaur paleontologists
than there ever have been there's more dinosaurs being discovered than there have been at a
quicker rate each year. And with more dinosaurs comes more accurate
exhibits. While we still haven’t found a fully intact
T-Rex, we now have the information to build one: When I first got my job here 30 years ago, there was about 10 T-Rex’s found and now
there's 46. So if we just put all those together we know
what the whole skeleton looked like. So this T-Rex is ultimately kind of a Frankenstein
monster - the pieces used to complete it were copied from various other T-Rexes And finally, in special cases like SUE, an exceptionally
large T-rex on display at the Field Museum, researchers use computers to scan and mirror
limbs. As in, if they have a left leg they essentially
flip it to create a right leg of the same size. It’s efficient and precise work. In other words, it’s highly unlikely you’ll
stumble across a dinosaur with the wrong head today. Because even though dinosaur skeletons don't
show up in one piece, there's no longer a lot of mystery around how they're supposed
to look. Look at Norell’s newest exhibit at the Museum
of Natural History and you can see that today, dinosaur researchers have moved on from the
skeleton to asking other questions about T-Rex. How did move? How did it grow? How did it live? Now we work with everything from neurobiologists
to material scientists, to engineers, just to do some of the work on these things and that's
pretty much a new thing. Thirty years ago that really wouldn't have have happened. In this case, Norell and his team have reconstructed
full models of the enormous predator that are more lifelike than ever before. So... Why are we even piecing together skeletons
anymore? Why not just display what’s actually found? Paleontologists say that it’s because exhibits
aren’t just about boasting discoveries. When you make an exhibit you know that you
have to tell a story. And that story isn’t about how humans found
some fossils in 1908, It’s the story of a living animal that walked
the Earth millions of years before us. In this video I briefly mentioned a time when scientists stuck the wrong head on a dinosaur and mislabeled it "Brontosaurus". And while I didn't have time to fully explore that topic in this video, I wanted a quick and easy way to compile some of the research around the debate on whether Brontosaur ever existed. So I created a website with Wix, where I could easily organize some of the theories. It's a super easy way to create a website, click on the link below to make your own. Wix doesn't directly impact our editorial, but their support does make videos like this one possible. So go check them out. Baby checklist. Binky. Bottle. Banana toothbrush. Bib. What is a baby cage? Why did these baby cages exist? And were they a good idea? Emma Read’s 1922 patent for her version
of a baby cage hints at its twin motives: crowded cities and fresh air. In both England and the United States, where
baby cages were a fad, urbanization had accelerated. In the United States, 20% of people lived
in an urban area in 1860. 100 years later, it was more than 70%. This was coupled with declining, but still
high rates of tuberculosis. TB, aka consumption, is best thought of as
a lung disease. On this 1901 map of Washington DC, every colored
dot represents a death from tuberculosis. By 1920, 100 of every 100,000 Americans
were still dying from it. Crowded cities and a disease of the lungs
shared a possible treatment: fresh air. These schoolchildren are huddled in blankets
because the windows are open. It was for the fresh air. A fresh air movement gained popularity in
schools in the early 20th century, Inspired by TB sanatoriums, where light and
outdoor air were the best available treatment for children and adults. Fresh air soon became a recommendation for
both TB and the cramped city quarters that exacerbated the contagious disease. It had become a panacea, with influential
books that had whole chapters about “airing” your child. In the early 1900s, adults could air out at
night with sleeping porches and indoor “bed tents" that hung out of the windows. It spread to babies - like the wealthy Bostonians
who put babies on the roof. And soon people used baby cages. “Put your baby in a bird cage,” papers
proclaimed, for the “open air and sunshine” - in a world where “lawns and meadows”
were scarce. They stuck around until the middle of the
century, when, fortunately, TB fatalities fell further thanks to vaccines, new treatment,
and better ventilation. But those baby cages, they’re an understandable
minor fad. Parents wanted the best for their children,
just like today. Look at these toes. Why should these beautiful toes only be allowed
to wiggle in a stroller or a high chair? Why not another place, in the fresh air, in
a hanging cage, without supervision, while cars rumble many stories below, supported
by some thin wires and love, love, a love every generation shares--
Yeah, just kidding, baby cages are — they’re bad. It’s a bad idea. If you like this video, consider joining the
Vox Videolab, where you can support videos like this and see a ton of cool extra features. Consider it. Thanks a lot for watching. There’s a saying in Hong Kong kung fu movies: “Wai faai bat po.” It means "only speed is unbreakable." “Wai faai bat po.” That’s in Cantonese, a language with tones, which English speakers have trouble distinguishing.
So when an American says that phrase with the wrong tones— “wifi bat po”—you
get a Cantonese meme. "It became kind of a joke that people will
send to each other. It's like oh, this bad-ass wifi is so good. “Wai faai bat po.” It's
quite funny. If English is your first language though,
you might be more familiar with a different joke: “Supplies!” That’s the notion that East Asians mix up
their Rs and Ls in English: “Oh herro prease.” It’s a running gag in Lost in Translation, an Oscar-winning film about two Americans
who are sad in Japan. “Lat pack. You know lat pack?” “Rat?
Rat pack.” The movie makes communication with the locals
seem hopeless. “Hey. Lip my stocking.” “Hey? Lip them?” And at one point Scarlett Johansson's character asks: "Why do they switch the Rs and the L’s here?" "Oh, for yucks." This movie may be a bit rrrrr— rude, but it’s not a terrible question to ask.
Because if you’re genuinely curious, a foreign accent gives us chance to learn something
about another language. So this trope has been applied to Japanese,
Korean, and Chinese speakers. "McFry!" "Herro." "Fa ra ra ra ra." But, all of these languages deal with Rs and Ls in different ways. First though, we need to talk about the R sound in English. It turns out that there isn’t
just one way to pronounce it. "Oh it’s incredibly varied." Eleanor Lawson uses ultrasound to study English phonetics.
"You have trilled r’s which are sort of a rrr sound. You can probably hear my tapped
r. So I do a ara sound. Varied. You can have a retroflex R where your tongue essentially
curls upside down under your palatal arch. "Run. Run."
She says the bunched-r, which is common in North American english, is particularly complex. "Nurse. Nurse." Say the word fur. Fur. How would you tell
someone where to put their tongue to make that R? The middle of the tongue rises up in the mouth, while the root of the tongue is pulling backwards. You might have some lip rounding as well. R sounds like this, where the air flow isn’t
blocked by the tongue or the lips, are called “approximates” in phonetics. "So forming all of these structures at the same time could be very difficult for someone
who is not used to producing that." The r-sound is one of the last consonants
that english-speaking kids learn to say. It takes up to 5 adorable years for them to figure
it out. “Purple. And red” And the L-sound in English can change depending on its position in a word. Say the words “ladle”
or “level.” That first L is a "clear L." You can probably
feel your tongue touching the top of the mouth, right behind your front teeth. As in “led.”
But the l at the end of the word is a “dark L," where the tip of the tongue might not
even touch top of your mouth at all. "A dark L is where the back of the tongue
is moving up toward the soft palate and it gives it an o-ish sound like an "Uhh O". “Level.”
“Level.” So the English R and L are complicated, but
still, "Lat Pack," rrr, llll-- they seem like pretty different sounds. It might help to look at Spanish - say the word salero. “Salero. Salt Shaker.” “Salero”
“Salero” This R is made with a flap of the tongue on
the ridge behind the front teeth -  that’s not too far away from where the L is pronounced. Japanese has that R-sound. It doesn’t have
the lll in “lake” or the rrr in “red.” "We have ra ri ru re ro, which sounds kind
of similar to both L and R." Those are the 5 syllables in Japanese that
contain the tongue-flap sound: “ra ri ru re ro" Try saying them: “ra ri ru re
ro.” When they’re converted into the Latin alphabet,
they’re spelled like this, with the letter “r”. But the Japanese R-sound is actually
closer to our L-sound “la” than it is to the english "ra."
"My name is Mariko and for all my english-speaking friends, their intuition to say is marie-ko.
And how I explain to them is just imagine my name spelled with M-a-l-i-k-o and you should
be fine. When words migrate from English to Japanese,
both Rs and Ls become Japanese Rs. “Garasu.” “Karendaa.” “Boringu.” “Raito.” There are thousands of these loan words that Japanese speakers have to relearn with rrrs
and llls, which are two sounds that Japanese ears weren’t tuned to distinguish in the first
place. Like Japanese, Korean doesn’t have the English
rrr sound. They have this letter. It's "rieul." "leer?" "lee-ul." "lee-er." "Ul." "Ul. Lee-ul." "Like my tongue is going straight up to the roof of my mouth. Ul. "Rieul."
It takes on a different sound depending on its position within the word.
So when it's followed by a vowel, it has the flap sound like a Japanese R. “Duriseo.
Duriseo." That also means it’s written with the letter “r” when converted into Latin
script. “Duriseo.” But when it’s at the end of a word or is followed by a consonant,
it sounds more like an L-sound and it’s transcribed in the Latin alphabet as “L”. So it’s pretty unlikely that Korean speakers would say “herro” since their L-sound
can map on to the english L. But the “dark L” doesn’t exist in Korean.
 So when they’re new to english, Koreans might to use their own L sound in spots
where we would use a dark L, near the end of words.  “As the story unfolds, someone
may change the world.” There are at least 8 major Chinese languages,
but we’ll look at Mandarin and Cantonese. They both have a clear L sound. And it’s
restricted to the beginning of syllables. "Leng. It’s like ‘pretty.’" "La. ‘drag.’" So the notion that they would switch “fa la la" into “fa ra ra” is just wrong and
the makers of a Christmas story should feel bad. Like Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese don't have the dark L sound as in “pull”. But
when they come across an L near the end of a word in english, they tend pronounce it
more like a vowel. "A hundred years old, 90 years old. I said
we should respect this kind of people." "He chose the coldest possible. Really." Mandarin does have an r sound. At the beginning of a syllable it sounds like this: "zrr. zrr.
So like actually, maybe the R sounds more like the S in "treasure." zrr Rènxìng.” And at the end of a syllable: "er." It means "son." Cantonese, on the other hand, doesn’t have an R sound at all. So when speaking English,
they sometimes use a w sound, or an L sound. "We just tried very hard to prove ourselves." Our ability to produce sounds in a new language
depends in part on whether those sounds are meaningfully distinct in our first language.
So a Japanese speaker hearing lll and rrr -- it’s a lot like an English speaker hearing
tones in Chinese. "Leng. Leng. Leng. Leng." "Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma. Yeah I know, people's minds
just blown away." We all carry the rules of our native language
with us when we learn new languages. "Accent is your identity. So I don’t want
to sound like an American person or British person." So if you hear a foreign accent, remember that it’s a unique hybrid, it's like a lion with
stripes — something you can only get if you’re brave enough to venture beyond the comfort
of your mother tongue. If you enjoyed this video you're probably
the kind of person who likes learning about complex topics thorough digestible, interactive
lessons, like the course of Logic from Brilliant. Brilliant is a problem-solving website that
teaches you to think like a scientist. They have courses on everything from calculus to
astronomy and daily problems in math and science. To learn more about Brilliant, go to Brilliant.org/vox
and sign up for free. The first 200 people to visit that link will get 20% off the premium
annual subscription, which gives you access to all the daily problems and unlocks all
of the courses. Brilliant wasn't involved in the making of this video but their support
makes videos like this one possible. So go check 'em out. On February 14th 2019, a suicide bomber attacked
a convoy of Indian security forces. "We're getting reports of multiple casualties
in a roadside..." He killed at least 40 Indian soldiers here
in Kashmir. "The deadliest attack the region has seen
this century." The bomber was part of an Islamic militant
group based in Pakistan. "Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for
that attack." 12 days later, India carried out airstrikes
in Northwestern Pakistan. Then Pakistan shot down at least one Indian
aircraft around here. Tensions rose between the two rival nations. ["Escalate" repeated in news broadcasts.] "The most serious escalation in years." Kashmir is one of the most disputed places
on Earth. Over the course of 70 years, it’s been at
the center of three wars fought between two massive armies. It's heavily occupied by more than half a
million Indian troops and a deadly collection of militias and terrorist groups. Kashmir is the stage for the relentless conflict
between India and Pakistan. But focusing on the two countries can obscure
what's really at stake: The voice of Kashmiris who are caught in a vicious cycle of violence. Kashmir is one of the most strategic places in the world,
where 3 powerful countries collide: India, Pakistan, and China. China invaded and took this slice of Kashmir from India. And was given this one by Pakistan. India and Pakistan control these parts, but lay claim to more. This region is at the center of a brutal conflict over these disputed borders. So it's important to start when they were being drawn. In the mid-1800s, India
was a patchwork of several hundred provinces and princely states under British rule. A century later, when British India won independence, the British left and hastily decided to split the region into two. These areas would be a new Muslim-majority
country, Pakistan. And this would be the mostly Hindu, but secular,
India. The partition was bloody. "Communal hatred flares up in the Punjab." "1 million people become refugees overnight." "They flee from savagery and butchery that has never
been exceeded, even in India's stormy history." Amid the chaos, some princely states were
given the choice to join either country. In most cases, the ruling monarchs followed
the will of their people. But this state, called "Jammu & Kashmir" was
different. It was right along this new border and had
a Muslim-majority population, but was ruled by a Hindu monarch. When asked to pick a side, the ruler chose to stay neutral Fearing that the monarch would join India,
the Kashmiri population rebelled here in 1947 Armed tribesmen from Pakistan soon joined
the fight. The monarch turned to India for military help
and in exchange agreed to join them, which sparked the first Indo-Pakistan war in Kashmir. "Continuing thus increased the
threat to world peace and brought the dispute to the attention of the United Nations. The UN Security Council brokered a ceasefire
in 1949, which established this line with Pakistan controlling this side and India this
one. It also asked Pakistani tribesmen to withdraw
and Indian troops to follow, so that Kashmir could hold a direct vote to decide its own
future. But neither held up their end of the deal. Pakistan argued that Kashmir’s Muslim-majority
population rightfully belonged with them. While India insisted that Kashmir was handed over to them by the Hindu monarch. So they doubled down and added Kashmir to their constution. Both countries continued to tighten their grip around it for decades. "Kashmir. Fighting is going on and heavy casualties in men and equipment have been inflicted on the aggressor." In 1965, the second India-Pakistan war
broke out in Kashmir. Thousands of people were killed between the
huge armies on both sides. A ceasefire ended the war, but didn’t change
this line. Kashmir was kept divided and occupied. And another war broke out in 1971. This time the focus wasn't in Kashmir — it was in East Pakistan. Here, India helped rebels fight for independence
and dealt Pakistan a devastating defeat. This region became a new country, Bangladesh, and Pakistan lost its eastern half. This made Kashmir more important than ever: It became one of the most militarized places
on Earth, as India and Pakistan deployed planes, tanks, artillery, and soldiers along the Line
of Control. On the political front, in '87, India reportedly rigged an election, declaring a pro-India party as the
winner. Now this was a big turning point for many Kashmiris, who felt they were again denied the chance to vote. Thousands took to the streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir to protest the occupation. But India met the movement for independence with harsh resistance. Which quickly escalated to more violence. "In January security forces opened fire on demonstrating separatists, turning a two-year old struggling movement into a full-blown popular uprising." "More than 600 people have been killed in clashes between troops and separatists." Kashmiri militias, like the Jammu and Kashmir
Liberation Front, started recruiting Muslim youth to fight for independence. And increasingly attacked the Indian military. Pakistan saw an opportunity in this insurgency. They helped introduce a new kind of militant
group: Radical Islamic fighters who fought for a more pro-Pakistan Kashmir. By the mid '90s, these groups dominated the
insurgency. India responded with incredible military
force, deploying 500,000 troops to Kashmir. And they cracked down on militants and protestors. Unarmed civilians were killed and many
more were forced to flee the violence. And in '98 the stakes were raised yet again. "Today India conducted three underground nuclear tests." "Pakistan today successfully conducted five nuclear tests." Kashmir became a battleground between two
nuclear-armed nations and another war broke out in 1999. "More evidence of the attacks being launched on the Indian-controlled area of Kargil." "The past two days have seen some of the fiercest
fighting so far." "Militant Muslim fighters have also crossed over into some parts of Indian-ruled Kashmir." The 1999 war ended with another ceasefire, but that didn't stop either country. Over the years, Pakistan’s militant groups
got bolder and launched terror attacks in Kashmir and outside of Kashmir. In 2001, members of Lashkar-e-Taiba bombed
India’s parliament building in New Delhi killing 14 people. And in 2008, 10 militants from  the same group killed 174 people and wounded 300 in Mumbai. Meanwhile, Indian military cracked down in Kashmir, firing bullets and pellets on unarmed protesters. Leaving hundreds wounded and blind. This is the vicious cycle of violence. The Indian Army’s crackdown drives some Kashmiris to join Pakistani-backed militant groups, who carry out violence against the
Indian forces. It’s a cycle that Kashmiri civilians are stuck in the middle of. Which brings us back to 2019. The suicide bomber was 19-year old Adil Ahmed
Dar from Pulwama, Kashmir. According to his parents, in 2016, Indian
police officers stopped him and humiliated him by forcing his face into the ground. The same year he was shot in the leg at a
protest. The next year, Dar left home with his brothers,
to join Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani-supported militia that radicalized him and trained him
to be a suicide bomber. A year later, he drove explosives into an
Indian military convoy. For more than 70 years India and Pakistan
have driven a cycle of violence, retaliation, and exploitation in Kashmir. But beneath it all is the Kashmiri's wish to
make a choice. A wish that continues to be suppressed, again and again, by violence. This is the first live cat recorded on film,
and it’s being dropped to solve a physics problem: Why do cats always land on their
feet? It’s a question that was driving 19th-century
scientists nuts. Until one of them used an unexpected tool
to solve the mystery: a camera. Étienne-Jules Marey was an obsessive scientist
and inventor who analyzed how things moved. And he started experimenting with photography
at a time when the medium was mostly used to document static subjects. But his goal was to capture motion. And he did that by building on a basic principle
of photography: exposing a photosensitive material to light and then covering it in
darkness. So his way of creating this darkness and light
was to have a disc with slots in it. By controlling the light as the subject moved
across the frame, Marey was able to record movement onto a single glass plate. Essentially, all he does is block that light
intermittently. A slot from the disc opens, and then there’s
darkness as the man moves, opens, darkness. This technique is called chronophotography,
and the results show something human eyes will never see on their own: individual stages
of motion. A couple of years later, Kodak introduced
celluloid film and Marey updated his slot camera in a crucial way. He swapped the single glass plate with a roll
of film that moved in between exposures. So, light: an image is made. Darkness, the film moves on. Light, an image — so it’s a movie camera,
is what it is. Marey made a lot of films for research purposes,
and even tried dropping other animals to see if they’d land on their feet, specifically
this rabbit and this chicken. Which brings us back to the cat. It seems to be able to right itself by flipping
in the air without pushing off anything first, which would contradict the law of conservation
of angular momentum. Sounds scary, but stick with me here. One of Newton’s laws of motion says that
something in motion can’t just stop itself unless an opposing force acts upon it. Basically, you can’t just change direction
midair, Wile E. Coyote style. But to the naked eye, it looks like a cat
can. Most people assumed the cat was “cheating”
by kicking off the hands of the person dropping it, but Marey’s film showed what’s actually
happening. The first few frames prove right away that
the cat doesn’t start its rotation from a kick. But what it does do is arch its back. And by arching its back, it’s divided its
body into a front part and a back part, and the two parts can work independently. You know how a figure skater pulls their arms
in to rotate faster? That’s what’s happening here too. Early in the rotation, the cat pulls its front
legs in and leaves the back splayed out so the front half can rotate quickly while the
back half stays relatively still. Then halfway through, it does the opposite. Front legs stretched out, back ones tucked
in to flip the other half of its body around. And you notice by the time the cat is landing,
all four legs are stretched out as far as they can be, which means slow rotation. So the cat has rotated itself, but not overall;
the two halves are working in opposite ways. It uses the inertia of its own bodyweight
to spin each side. And because the two spins operate separately
in opposing directions, they cancel each other out. So Newton’s law isn’t broken. Marey published his findings in Nature in
1894, breaking down the falling cat problem for the first time. His work remains an early example of using
photography for scientific discovery. What does photography do for science? It records something and it makes it permanent
so you can analyze it later, or so you can share it. But what Marey did was show something that
the eye could not possibly see — ever. You might have seen another famous early example
of motion photography: In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge used 12 cameras connected to tripwires to
prove that a horse lifts all four feet off the ground at some point in a gallop. When it comes to Trump and Russia... "Possible ties between the Trump campaign
and Russia." ...it's easy to feel numb to the details. "George Papadopoulos." "Roger Stone." "Cohen has been..." "Paul Manafort." "Don Jr." And every time we hear Trump respond: But no matter how many times Trump says this,
here's what we can't lose track of: We now have evidence of three major connections
between the Trump campaign and Russia. We know that people working for Trump were
willing to work with Russia to help him. And it's possible they broke the law to do
so. Here's how we know. FBI special counsel Robert Mueller has tied
several top Trump officials to Russia. So let's try to organize them. We can do so with three specific categories. The first is a category we'll call "shady
connections." Years before Trump's 2016 run, his campaign
manager, Paul Manafort, had several problematic connections with Russia. He had worked for Ukraine's pro-Russian political
faction, making tens of millions of dollars. He owed $10 million to a Russian oligarch
named Oleg Deripaska. And then during the 2016 campaign, he allegedly
gave polling data to a man named Konstantin Kilimnik, who has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort left the campaign in August 2016. And he is now in prison for laundering 30
million dollars and hiding it from the US government. We can call the second category the "Russian
intel." During the campaign, several Trump staffers,
including his son, worked with Russians to get dirt on top Democrats. Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's
son-in-law and senior advisor, attended a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer
named Natalia Veselnitskaya, who promised "documents and information" from the Russian
government that would reveal dirt on Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, hackers working for the Russian
government stole emails from the Clinton campaign and other top Democrats. Trump's foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos
heard about these emails and tried to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Eventually, the hackers gave the emails to
Wikileaks. And Trump's campaign advisor, Roger Stone,
reached out to Wikileaks to find out more about the hacked emails. Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about the emails
and was sentenced to 14 days in prison. Stone lied to Congress about the emails, and
was arrested. The third and final category is the "Moscow
deal." While Trump was complimenting Putin on the
campaign trail... "If our country got along with Russia, that
would be a great thing." "Well he called me a genius. I'm going to disavow it. Are you crazy?" "And I hope he likes me." … Trump was also negotiating a real estate
deal in Moscow. And the person who negotiated the deal for
Trump was his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. But here's the important detail: Cohen needed
someone to help grease the wheels. So he emailed Putin's press secretary: Dmitry
Peskov. The deal didn't end up going through. But if it had, it would've made Trump a lot
of money, which is why Cohen kept Trump updated on these negotiations. But now, Cohen is also going to prison for,
among things, lying to Congress about Russia. So when we zoom out, we can see the three
major connections the Trump campaign had to Russia — while Trump was
running for president. His top campaign official had close ties to
people who worked for or with the Russian government. Several members of his campaign, including
his son, were open to receiving dirt from people — who worked for the Russian government
— to improve Trump's chances at winning the election. All the while, Trump's personal lawyer was
trying to close a lucrative deal for Trump in Russia, with the help of a top Putin official. We don't know how much President Trump knew
about each of these conversations — or whether any of them crossed the line into outright
criminality. But even from what we see here, we can see
that Russia, and ultimately Putin, was willing to help Trump make more money — and win
the White House. And the people working for Trump were open
to Russia's help. We've started this paid membership program called Vox Video Lab. When you sign up you support our journalism. But you also get access to some really cool exclusive content. Kind of behind the scenes of what we work on. So you can join at Vox.com/join. Aaaand thank you. This is the 13th hole at Augusta National Golf Club. And to reach it, you have to hit a series of shots around the corner from the tee. One to get down the fairway, and a few more to get around the corner and onto the green. But not if you're Bubba Watson. "Bubba Watson with a driver." At the 2014 Masters Tournament, he did something remarkable. His drive sliced left, and into the woods, looking like a huge mistake. Until the announcers realized what Bubba was up to. That ball flew far enough to go over the trees and land right in front of the green. Bubba cut the corner. And that shot helped him win the tournament. But it also showed that golf might have a problem. Players like Bubba might be hitting the ball too far. Bernhard Langer is a pro golfer who had an average drive of 280 yards in 2018. That's 20 yards farther than what he was hitting when he was 30. And that jump is part of a much bigger trend. Since 1980, the average driving distance on the PGA Pro Tour has climbed over 30 yards. So the question is, what's causing this rise? The truth is, there are a lot of reasons why golfers are hitting the ball farther. They're stronger, their clubs are high-tech, and the courses are in better condition. But while all of these factors have had an effect, one particular thing has become a focus of conversation: The earliest golf balls were, likely, wooden, or "Hairies," made with stitched fabric filled with...hair. Then came "Featheries," made from leather filled with...feathers. And later, "Gutties," made with ...  Maybe you've never heard of the gutta percha, a tropical tree species that provided the sap used to make gutty balls. Playing Gutties, golfers noticed that their older balls,  the ones beaten up with nicks and scratches, were flying farther than the new ones. So they started carving designs into Gutties to get more distance. And, experimenting with different patterns, golfers realized that dimples work best. Dimpled balls fly farther because air, coming into contact with an uneven surface, creates a protective layer of turbulence around the golf ball. And that creates a smaller wake, that has less drag on the ball. But remember this chart? Dimples were around way before this line started rising, so they don't really explain what's going on here. And I mean right here. See this jump? It's the steepest part of this trendline. Something caused this, and it wasn't dimples. It was this: The golf ball that revolutionized the sport. I know what you're thinking — this looks like any other golf ball. But not when you look on the inside. So, for about 100 years before the Pro V1, the standard golf ball had been a "wound ball." The inside is a rubber band, wound around a core, and sometimes filled with liquid, which you can see if you cut one open, like golfer Rick Shiels. But cutting open a Pro V1, you can see what makes this ball different. It's the solid, multi-layered core.  Before the Pro V1 and balls like it, players had to choose: between a solid-core ball that's good for distance, or a wound ball that's better for accuracy. But a multi-layered ball can do both. Its rigid core helps it fly far for distance, and the flexible outer layers allow a golfer to control spin when hitting closer to the hole. Before 2000, nearly all players hit wound balls. But afterwards, nearly all pro players in the US Open had switched to hitting solid multi-layer balls like the Pro V1. And that year was the year that the average driving distance shot up six yards. "Unusual and concerning" is how a 2017 report described the rise in driving distance for professional players. Hitting the ball too far means golfers can fly the ball over obstacles designed to make the game difficult. And that's making some courses obsolete. Especially older ones, like Oakmont Country Club, where holes designed in another era are being overpowered by modern players. Now, officials are considering what they can do to limit distance. Making golf balls bigger would increase drag, and a heavier ball would fall out of the air more quickly. But adjusting dimpling, or rolling back innovations that made the Pro V1 successful, like layering and materials, could also reduce the flight of golf balls, and solve the problem. However, not everyone's happy about this idea. "We own our manufacturing process, we own our technology, and we own our responsibility to the end-user." As this epic marketing video shows, Titleist invests a lot in making golf balls. And for ball manufacturers, any little change to production would cost them a lot of money. But they probably shouldn't be too worried. The truth is, golf has been having a version of this debate for nearly a hundred years, and nothing's been settled yet. Debating the flight of the ball started a long time ago, with people asking "does it go too far?" as far back as 1936. And in the end, maybe it just doesn't even matter. Remember the 13th hole at Augusta? That got fixed. The club just bought the land behind the tee box, in order to pull it back, and make it farther to hit a drive over the corner. No matter what kind of ball you use. There is nothing like a hot cup of tea in
the morning. That is, until I’m done, and I have to
decide what to do with my cup. Can I recycle it? Is that a trick question? Yeah this is a great question. I just figure you can recycle anything that’s
cardboard-esque. I can’t recycle this? Knowing what you can and can’t recycle isn’t
easy. The rules depend on where you live, and there
are hundreds of products and materials where the rules aren’t always clear. I hear that that's not recyclable. I don’t know if that's like a legend,
an urban legend or something. My roommate and I actually have this discussion
where I’m like I’ll throw paper towels in there and she’s like ‘I don’t think
you can recycle them’ and pick them out. Like, I don't know, it's paper. I don’t know, this is so hard! The confusion means things that are actually
garbage still end up in the recycling stream. About 25% of what Americans try to recycle,
can’t actually be recycled. Waste management experts say what's going
on here is something called "aspirational recycling": When people are unsure if an item
can be recycled, they recycle it, because it feels like the right thing to do.
And while our intentions are good, this behavior isn't harmless. Even small amounts of contamination can turn
entire hauls of otherwise recyclable materials into trash -- and the problem has been growing. The rate of recycling contamination more than doubled in the last decade. So why is this happening? Well, it is at least in part due to a major
shift in how Americans recycle. Beginning in the 1990s and 2000s, municipalities
implemented “single stream” recycling programs. Paper, metal, plastic and glass no longer
needed to be sorted. They could all live in one bin. Communities quickly adopted the practice and
by 2014, 80% of all curbside recycling programs in the US were single stream. The problem is, there's evidence that when
we put all our recycling into one bin, we're more likely to throw trash in there along
with it. Take two neighboring counties in Florida,
for example: Palm Beach County, where residents must pre-sort their recyclables, had a contamination
rate of only 9 percent, while Broward County’s single-stream program had a contamination
rate of 30 percent. Single-stream recycling takes the responsibility
to sort off of the individual, and shifts it to Materials Recovery Facilities, or MRFs,
where trash gets sorted out from recycling by machines, but also by workers, who often
have to remove waste by hand: pizza boxes contaminated with grease, electronics that
aren’t processed at standard recycling facilities, even the likes of Christmas lights, animal
carcasses, and bowling balls. In Portland, workers remove thousands of dirty
diapers every month. In a perfect world, everyone would know how
to recycle correctly, but short of that, there's something we can all start doing differently
right now: Unless you are absolutely sure, don’t recycle it. In fact, recycling education campaigns encourage
the opposite: when in doubt, the best option may be to throw it out. Most people want to do the right thing, and
sometimes the way to be a good recycler is to throw stuff in the trash. If you like this video and want more like it, we've launched a paid membership program on YouTube called the Vox Video Lab. For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to DVD extras, live Q&As with creators, and video recommendations. You can go to vox.com/join and be part of the Video Lab community. See you there! Democrats in Congress have introduced a proposal
called the Green New Deal: a plan to tackle climate change by overhauling our transportation system, upgrading our power grids, and shifting to clean energy like wind and
solar. There's a lot of cool stuff in here, but I am not an energy policy expert, so I have questions. How would these ideas work in practice? How quickly could we get them done? Are they enough to avoid the impending heat death of the planet? So to find the answers, I did what every American does when they want to know more about public policy. I tried to watch the news. The so-called Green New Deal. Why do those three words create such anger for Republicans and even some anxiety among Democrats? Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had concerns. Republicans aim to make the Green New Deal a key 2020 campaign issue. You say Democrats are in a way helping Donald Trump. The Green New Deal is going to be a flash
point. Did Democrats give Republicans a huge 2020
gift? The Republicans see it as a key to victory
for them. Is it? Goddamnit. I have watched hours of segments about the Green New Deal, and none of them actually explained how it might work. Instead, they focused on the politics. Is it going to pass? Does Pelosi like it? What did Trump tweet about it? Everything except "is it a good idea?" Are you concerned the perception of the Democratic Party is going to move too
far to the left? Turns out there's a name for this type of
news coverage. It's called “tactical framing.” And it's making us all too cynical to solve big problems before it's too late. This Sunday, the Democratic divide. Some progressives are pushing hard for a Green New Deal, but other Democrats worry they're being impractical. Is there a risk that Democrats maybe overplay their hand or rile up the Republican base and you say “Look socialism” and, you know, some of these unrealistic ideas? Tactical framing sounds like when you crop your problem areas out of a Tinder
photo. But it's actually an approach to news coverage that focuses on strategy over substance. So instead of asking: “Is this new policy proposal a good idea?" Tactical framing asks: "Is it popular?" "Can it pass?" "How will that play in the next election?" The discussion is focused on the players and the implications for them and their political
careers, not the policy or its capacity to solve a
problem. Kathleen Hall Jamieson coined the phrase "tactical
framing," and she argues that this obsession with strategy is making it hard for us to understand big
policy ideas. Ask yourself how much of the coverage of the Green New Deal has told you what specifically is in it. Other Republicans said the plan sounded more like communist economic doctrine. You probably have no idea what the Green New
Deal is. You probably have some sense that it has to
do with climate and climate change, but you probably don't know much beyond that. It is hard to argue with her. Look at some of the headlines from the Green New Deal debate: Is Green New Deal smart politics for Democrats? Green New Deal divides Democrats on climate
change. Seven reasons Democrats won't pass a Green
New Deal. We're talking about the fate of the human
race here, but the focus is still on the politics. Could the fight over this plan divide the
Democratic Party? Will Republicans succeeded in painting it
as an unrealistic boondoggle? Notice when you're saying that you're not
asking: "Well, what is the problem they're trying
to address?" "Is this a viable solution?" This framing makes us less informed, but it also makes us more cynical. Jamieson and her research partner ran an experiment where they gave people three different types of news stories about a Philadelphia mayoral
race. Don't tune out. I will make this quick. The first group got stories that focused on
the issues: What problems were the candidates trying to
solve, and how did they propose to fix those problems? The second group got stories that focused
on tactics: how the candidates were trying to win over
voters. And the third got a mix: stories that started with a tactical frame and then discussed substance. Their findings were ... woof. In the second and third groups, the ones who got tactical framing, the news had activated their cynicism. They were more likely than the first group
to say that the candidates were promising things
they couldn't deliver or that the situation was hopeless anyway. There were also less likely to remember basic information about the policy proposals, even if what they saw included real policy
analysis. We find that even with that good information
there, the public is less likely to learn it because the tactic frame creates a lens on
it that says “they're” not actually going to do it
anyway. This is really all about politics. Now trust your political instincts based on
your ideology. Jamieson and her research partner published a book about their findings called the Spiral
of Cynicism. Which is surprisingly not a book about my
dating life. In it, they argued that this cynicism lingers even after the tactical framing is gone. A few days after the experiment, the participants were asked to react to an excerpt from a debate between the candidates. But the ones who had been exposed to tactical
framing still reacted cynically. And what that said to us was that the stimulus
in news was so strong that when you got no more cues
to be cynical, to be tactical, nonetheless you were seeing the race through
that lens. Now maybe your reaction is "so what?" Of course watching the news makes you cynical. Congress is too gridlocked to get anything
done. Hopelessness is the correct response. But tactical framing makes it harder to break that gridlock by causing us to look at policy through a
partisan lens. Most of the time we're not partisans. I know that sounds surprising, but most of the time we're not. But I can activate my sense of my partisanship and the partisanship of an audience by focusing on a frame that makes that more
important. A huge amount of the coverage of the Green
New Deal has focused on how Republicans might gain an advantage with voters by attacking
it in 2020. This may not play well among some of the voters. The Republicans can use this as a weapon. If you look at the political implications it is easy to see why Republicans see advantage
in this. And all that might be true. But it also begs the question: If the only thing voters know about a bill is that Republicans hate it and Democrats
love it — The Republicans painting this as unworkable
socialism. Loony socialist fever dream — they're more likely to react to that bill
along party lines. In an environment in which news covers things through a political lens, Republicans versus
Democrats, left versus right, it makes it harder for people who might be
trying to find common ground in the middle. That tactical frame ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's covered through a partisan lens, so we react through a partisan lens, which makes partisanship the only thing that
matters. It makes us political analysts. It makes us pundits, but it doesn't make us
very good voters. This exact thing happened on Meet the Press
a few weekends ago. Trump had tweeted a bullshit claim that the
Green New Deal would somehow ban cars, cows, and the military. How would you ban a cow? This would have been a great chance to explain what the Green New Deal actually does. To let voters decide for themselves if upgrading our power grid or modernizing our transportation systems is a good idea. But Chuck Todd wanted to talk about 2020. David, obviously, the president's team sees a reelection opening. Oh yeah. I mean, it's huge and it's a real big pothole I think for the Democrats. And then ... You've got Donald Trump and the “Make America Great Again" slogan against, the way he brands it, “Make America
Socialist For The First Time.” That is powerful, especially with those white, middle-class, blue-collar Democrats. A lot of Republicans and moderate Democrats might actually like what's in this thing. But we'll never know because the batshit segment
on TV is telling them this is a debate about socialism. It was 'yes we can.' But I'm wondering if now it's 'yes we can become a socialist country.' And I know that sounds alarmist. I have met the press, and I was deeply disappointed. You can't smoke in here. Look, maybe things are hopeless. Maybe we're too angry and divided to stop the planet from overheating. But we won't actually know that until people understand what our options are. Until we're given a chance to judge solutions on their merit rather than their political
popularity. If we set up a coverage structure that minimizes the likelihood that the public will actually
understand enough about the substance to register informed
opinion, we minimize the likelihood that it will pass
at all. The point of political journalism should be to snap us out of our cynicism. To remind us of the magnitude of the problems
we face. Most people who are thinking about their children
right now, I'm sorry I'm getting emotional, but this is an emergency in this country. It's an emergency on this planet. And to teach us what our options might be. Is the New Green Deal going to solve the problem? We can't say it's too aspirational. It's the planet. That's a really important conversation. Our planet depends on it. But it's one that gets shut down every time a newsroom decides to focus on
tactics. What you're seeing, though, I mean, this is the pull of the 2020 Democratic primary
process. This is where it's headed. Hey guys! Thanks for watching. If you want to know more about the substance of the Green New Deal, I put a link to an in-depth explainer in the description. And if you ever wanted to ask me a question about Strikethrough, now is your chance. I’m going to be doing a live Q&A for Video
Lab, our membership program. It’ll be Tuesday, March 19, and it will
be moderated by this sentient bag of wet hair. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments
below. And if you can’t make the live stream, don’t
worry. All members will have access to a recording
of it once it’s over. Did I deliver this whole thing weird? What do you think about that, Kevin? Are you still there or is it going to be a
paper and a half? Oh, wow. President Trump is really excited about the
new tax return form. But the idea of Americans doing taxes on a
postcard, it’s a fantasy. The US tax code, it's complicated. It’s thousands of pages long, including
long definitions for deductions and various loopholes for special interests. Like there's tax credits for chicken farmers to turn
poop into energy. And for Republicans, the postcard-sized tax
return represents what would be a simpler overall tax code. One without deductions, tax credits or multiple
tax brackets. Which is why they have been calling for it
for years. A postcard-type tax return, two rates - none
of the loopholes and deductions. Or you can file your taxes on this postcard. Imagine a simple flat tax. That lets every American fill out his or her
taxes on a postcard. This postcard form will simplify the number
of tax brackets by more than half. So when Republicans finally got their opportunity
to reform taxes in 2017, they made sure to keep that postcard promise. Notice I’ve got the smaller version that
fits in my pocket. You can barely read it, but ya know. But if you compare it to the old tax form,
you’ll see that the new form is more condensation than a simplified form. The line that allows you to deduct your student
loan interest - it’s not on the postcard sized version. But the deduction still exists - along with
11 others that used to be on the main form. They’ve just been moved onto a different
sheet of paper, Which means now you could have to fill out
as many as 6 other forms in order to file your tax postcard. In trying to condense the tax form onto a
postcard, the IRS had to move helpful directions to an instruction book, which is 117 pages
long. It’s 10 pages longer than the year before. So the Republicans’ biggest change to taxes
was doubling the standard deduction. 90% of Americans will be able to use the standard
deduction. You can fit your taxes literally on a postcard. But if any of those Americans want to take
advantage of extra deductions and tax credits they're gonna have to fill out extra forms. The complicated tax code is filled with invisible
social programs and economic incentives that benefit most Americans who file taxes. That’s things like the Earned Income Tax
Credit, which lifted nearly 9 million Americans out of poverty in 2017. Or tax credits for people to install solar
panels or to buy electric cars. If taxes really could fit on a postcard it
would mean things like these probably couldn’t exist. Republicans didn’t get rid of many deductions
and they didn’t reduce the number of tax brackets. The simpler postcard form was supposed to
represent simpler taxes. But taxes didn’t get any simpler and so
neither did the form. This is a hole on top of the Shanghai World
Financial Center. This is a 660-ton steel ball hanging inside
of Taipei 101. And these are massive clockwise balconies
on the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building ever made. These design choices might seem like gimmicks
to give these skyscrapers their iconic looks. But behind each feature is a brilliant engineering
trick designed to one thing: Confuse the wind. Wind can cause a bunch of issues for buildings:
broken windows, structural damage, and discomfort for the people inside. And today’s super-skinny skyscrapers have
to deal with a particular wind-induced phenomenon called vortex shedding. This happens when wind flowing past a building
creates vortices, strong swirls of air that magnify the damaging effects of wind. In low winds, these vortices cancel each other
out. But in higher winds, they create alternating
low pressure zones that make the building rock back and forth. As the wind speed increases, so does the intensity
of the back and forth movement. Every object also has its own natural sway
frequency and when that matches with the frequency
of vortex shedding, it creates a dramatic spike in the intensity of swaying. On the top floors of a high rise, that kind
of swaying can be nauseating, plus it can damage the integrity of the building. But architects have an arsenal of tricks to
reduce movement. The first one? Tapering. The higher up you build, the stronger the
wind force gets. So to reduce surface area where the wind is
stronger, designers can simply make a building skinnier as it gets taller. They can do that with tapering — like The
Shard in London or with periodic setbacks, like the
Willis Tower in Chicago. Then, designers can soften edges. Hard edges aren’t good on wind, so you’ll
often see skyscrapers with round corners. But architects can achieve a similar effect
with small cutouts from the edges. Take Taipei 101, for example. The building was originally designed with
square corners, but when a scale model was tested in a wind
tunnel, the designers saw a lot of swaying. Here are the results after designers added
sawtooth corners. They reduced movement by 25 percent. The next option is pretty simple. You can
just open it up with holes. Skyscrapers like Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom
Centre and Shanghai’s World Financial Center do this with a single gap up top, allowing
wind to pass right through where it’s blowing the strongest. But 432 Park Avenue in New York achieves this
effect with several double-floor cutouts that allow wind to pass through along the length
of the entire tower. There’s also twisting. This wind resistance technique makes for some
of the most stunning skylines today. Dramatic spirals redirect the wind, guiding
it upward and off of the building. That’s the same wind resistance trick used
by some industrial chimneys and car antennas. Corkscrew shapes like this were impossible
to build until fairly recently, thanks to advancements in software and material science. And they’re also promising from a sustainability
perspective. During the design process on the Shanghai
Tower, for example, adding the iconic twist reduced the wind load by 24 percent, saving
developers $58 million in structural material. Finally, there’s the technique so good it’s
invisible: damping. Dampers are mechanisms designed to absorb
the energy from a building’s movement, counteracting the effect of the wind. Skyscrapers do this in two major ways. First are slosh tanks: these are containers
filled with several tons of water. The water sloshes back and forth, and its
weight displacement helps keep the building from swaying. Second are tuned mass dampers: massive weights
suspended in the middle of a building. These were traditionally hidden away in building
design, placed on empty floors along with other technical equipment. But they don't have to be. Taipei 101's
tuned mass damper has been a popular tourist attraction since it opened in 2004. They even have a mascot for it: Damper Baby. It’s a little weird. These shapes, holes, and counterweights form
a secret design language hidden inside of our skylines. And as more people move out of rural areas
and into urban ones, skyscrapers will keep getting taller and
skinnier. These technologies are what’s making that
future possible and letting us keep building into the sky. Thank you so much for watching, if you haven't already heard we've launched a membership program with YouTube called the Vox Video Lab. It's the best way to support our work and interact with us more, and get access to exclusive content. To become a member, head over to vox.com/join. That includes cars, houses, yachts, jewelry
— and even cold, hard cash. It also includes things we owe other people,
like student loans. So let's take a quick tour of American household
wealth. We can start over here, where we see people
who owe way more than they have. As we move further right, we can see — oh, that's me. And there's my doctor, who owns an expensive
home. And there's former heavyweight boxer Mike
Tyson! But when we get to the very richest people in the
world — oh hey, it's Beyoncé — we can zoom out so far that this chart looks like a stick and we still can't see the top of their wealth. Because these people are so much wealthier
than the rest of us. In other words, this chart doesn't just show
wealth. It shows the staggering wealth inequality
we have in America. But recently, politicians have been talking
about an idea that's never been done before in America: In January, Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed
something called a "wealth tax." This was a big deal. Because this doesn’t typically get taxed. Most of the taxes we pay only happen when
money changes hands — like when we earn money or spend money. But according to Warren, here's the problem
with that. This bar represents my wealth. And this is my friend's wealth. I think he owns a yacht. But because both of us have the same job and earn
the same amount of money, our income gets taxed about the same. "Two people who may have the same income, but
are in wildly different economic circumstances." So to fix it, Warren wants to tax the actual
wealth people have, but only for the very, very rich. Here's her proposal: All the wealth above
this line — 50 million dollars — would be taxed at 2 percent each year. All the wealth above this line — 1 billion
dollars — would be taxed at 3 percent. So if you have 40 million dollars, you'd pay
nothing. If you have 60 million dollars, you'd pay
nothing on your first 50 million, but 2% on the 10 million after that, or $200 thousand. And if you have 2 billion dollars, you'd pay
about $49 million. So what would happen if we imposed Senator
Warren's tax? Only the richest 0.05 percent of Americans
would pay this tax. But in 2016, the government could have raised
about 200 billion dollars from it. That could pay for a plan that makes public
college tuition free — three times over. It could pay for all federal food assistance
programs, like food stamps, two times over. It could get close to cutting child poverty
by 60 percent. These are massive programs that would help
millions of people. And what makes that possible is the huge amount
of wealth stuck here, at the very, very top with the ultra rich. A wealth tax hones in on that. We've started this paid membership program called Vox Video Lab. When you sign up, you support our journalism but you also get access to some really cool exclusive content, kind of behind the scenes of what we work on. So you can join at vox.com/join. And thank you! This is what a macaque monkey would sound
like if it suddenly proposed. Yeah, I hate it too. Let’s play it again: Now of course, that’s not a real monkey, it’s
a computer simulation that was part of a study on monkey vocal tracts.
And what it shows is that monkeys have a strikingly similar vocal structure to humans. But despite all these similarities, they can’t
speak So here’s a question.
Compared to monkeys, birds are nothing like us. Yet this bird’s talking to me right now. How? Birds don’t have lips. They don’t have
teeth, their “nose” is totally different from
ours, but they do have something we don’t. They actually have a different
kind of voice box than we do. It's called a syrinx. This is Mya Thompson – She studies birds
at Cornell University. They actually have two independent voice boxes. In birds, and in humans, the lower respiratory system is shaped sort of like an upside down
slingshot. The top part is the trachea, or windpipe, the bottom part is the lungs, and
these two pieces move air in and out. In humans, the voice box is called the larynx,
and it’s located above the trachea. It contains vocal “folds” that vibrate when air flows
through to produce sound. And humans primarily shape that sound with
their mouths. But in birds, the voice box is called the
"syrinx". And it’s at the bottom of the trachea. Instead of just sending air through vocal
folds like we do, birds actually control the muscles on the walls of the syrinx to shape
and produce sound. Take a look at this cardinal as it sings. You can actually see that the noise comes
directly from the chest. The bird extends and shortens its neck and opens or closes its
beak to refine the noise, but most of the control is actually happening in the syrinx. It’s a powerful sound for such a small animal,
but that’s not even the most impressive part: Cardinals tend to make these "whoop" notes and they go by very very quickly. They're
able to produce more pitches than a piano in less than a tenth of a second. They're actually switching from
one side of the syrinx to another seamlessly to make this very very incredible span of
pitches. The syrinx also lets some birds replicate
sounds with astonishing accuracy. For example, BBC Wildlife caught a lyrebird
perfectly imitating a camera in the wild And of course, some of them imitate us. Parrots are born communicators. From the start
their brains are wired for speech. So when they're first hatched they're learning right away and they're learning from
everything around them. But speaking human is no easy feat. We’ve got our vowels
A - E - I - O - U. Our plosives
“Pocket”. And a variety of consonants – that we
even sometimes struggle to enunciate clearly So to pull off such clarity in human speech, parrots
really show off their ability to manipulate their vocal tract.
Plosives, for example, require using our lips. To make up for the lack of lips, parrots use something called esophageal speech – it's almost
like burping that comes from within the trachea. The force of air replicates the plosive. As for vowels, where we use our lips, tongue and jaw,
researchers have found that parrots move their tongues forward and backward and adjust their
beak opening to alter the sound. It seems like they are the only
birds that are actually using their tongue like humans do to shape the sound that's coming
out. Parrots have a natural desire to communicate.
In the wild they form strong bonds with their flocks, but in captivity, the parrot forms a social bond with you and they want to communicate with you and
they have the vocal anatomy to start mimicking you. When parrots live with us, we’re their flock and they’re determined to sing our song. So in this video I showed you some of the physiology that lets birds produce sounds. But I wanted a quick and easy way to show you some of the interesting background research on the neurology that allows some of them to speak. So I created a website with Wix, where I've compiled a bunch of extras, including research and related content that gets you inside the brains of these animals. It's a super easy way to make a website, so click on the link below to make your own. Wix doesn't directly impact editorial, but their support does make videos like this one possible, so go check them out. This is the airship Hindenburg, burning up
while trying to land in New Jersey in 1937. 97 people were trapped inside. It was a big deal at the time. The Hindenburg was the greatest passenger
airship ever built. Imagine something the size of an ocean liner,
but in the air. And it could make the journey from Europe
to the US in half the time. It was a shining example of the future of
commercial air travel. And all it took was a spark to bring the
whole thing down. Air travel was on everyone’s minds in the
early 20th century. Aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia
Earhart became huge celebrities after they conquered the Atlantic in airplanes. But airships were something else entirely. Just two years after Lindbergh famously crossed
the Atlantic in a cramped monoplane, a giant German zeppelin flew around the
world, carrying paid passengers, who ate comfortably
in a full-service dining room and slept in private berths. And in 1936, the biggest and grandest airship
yet was built — the German LZ129, named the Hindenburg. There she is, a fine example of simplicity
and economy of design. A triumph of lighter-than-aircraft, the likes
of which the world has never seen before. It was a monstrous feat of engineering, and
a symbol of Germany’s rising prominence in the early years of the Nazi party. The world’s greatest lighter-than-air ship,
the Hindenburg! That superliner of the sky made her first
trip to America from Germany in March, 1936. That year, the Hindenburg made 17 intercontinental
round trips carrying passengers. It had a dining room, too. And a reading room. And a separate lounge. It even had a smoking room. A separately-ventilated space where passengers
could smoke under the supervision of the maitre’d, who held the only lighter. Which brings us to a very important element
in this story – hydrogen. Hydrogen gas is lighter than air — and people
had used it for centuries to lift aircraft like hot air balloons. It’s highly flammable but cheap and easy
to make – as opposed to its safer, non-flammable cousin, helium. But the United States, who at this time produced
the rare gas almost exclusively, embargoed its sale in 1925. Countries around the world developing lighter-than-air
programs had to rely on hydrogen — and their airships were blowing up. In the US, the hydrogen-powered Roma exploded
and killed 34 in 1922. In 1923, the French Navy airship Dixmude did
too – 52 dead. And in 1930, the UK ship R101 went down — 48
dead. But the Germans weren’t worried. By the time the Hindenburg embarked on its
first North American flight of 1937, not a single German passenger airship had crashed. On May 6, 1937, that’s not what they
did. The ship was 12 hours late. And what’s worse – the crew had good reason
to believe it was leaking hydrogen – the back end was dipping toward the ground and
they couldn’t properly balance the ship. For three hours, the dirigible circled the
landing field at Lakehurst New Jersey, dumping more water ballasts than ever before in vain efforts to level off. Plus, the air was charged with electrostatic
activity due to a recent thunderstorm – and another one was on the way. That means they were trying to quickly land
an enormous hydrogen-filled airship, in electrically charged conditions, that was likely leaking
flammable gas. And… well... “It’s burst into flames! Get this Charlie, get this Charlie! And it’s crashing! It’s crashing, terrible! Oh this is the worst of the worst catastrophes
in the world. Oh the humanity!” When the Hindenburg caught fire, a crew of
reporters gathered for a routine photo opp sprung into action. Photojournalist Sam Shere only had time for
a single exposure, but of all the press photos taken that day, it’s this one that’s most
remembered. It somehow manages to perfectly frame the
entire disaster. The panicked crowd running in view of newsreel
cameras, with the hastily-dumped water ballasts still visible in the background. The name “Hindenburg” - barely illuminated
by the bright flames lighting up the entire top of the ship. And the faulty tail, now completely engulfed
— just moments before the flames burst out of the nose and brought the ship crashing
to the ground. The image of the Hindenburg burning was unlike
anything people had seen before – a disaster photographed as it was taking place. In the end, out of 97 people on board, only
35 — plus one crewman on the ground — died. That means that about two-thirds of the people
inside of that actually escaped. But the numbers didn’t matter. Hydrogen airships never flew paid passengers
again after that day. The Hindenburg wasn’t the first
or even the deadliest passenger airship disaster. It was just the one that was caught on film
— and that’s why it was the last. The last episode of Darkroom was about Scott's
doomed expedition to the South Pole. But there's some photos that we didn't include
- and one in particular - that I really want to show you, and they're in this book. That's going to appear next week in Video
Lab, our YouTube membership program. Just go to vox.com/join to learn more. And as always, thanks for watching. I’m looking at you insane the entire time. And those bright green specks inside their
bodies are showing us what they’re eating. It’s not food. Those are tiny pieces of... We hear a lot about pollution from single
use plastic items, like plastic straws and shopping bags that are clogging marine habitats. Although these large pieces of plastic contribute the most to the overall mass of plastic polluting oceans, they count for a small share of the total number of plastic particles. That’s because most of the plastic pieces
in the oceans don’t look like this. They’re tiny particles that look like this,
and where they’re coming from might surprise you. “Modern fibers, alone or in blends with
natural fibers, brought new innovations in cool, crisp comfortable clothes.” Back in the 1940s, fabrics like nylon, acrylic and rayon -- all made from plastic -- became really popular. These synthetic clothes were cheap to produce,
comfortable to wear, and as more people have bought clothes for
athletics and leisure, companies have been making more clothes out of plastic. By 2010, over half of all the fabric in our
clothing was made from synthetic fibers. In the meantime, marine scientists noticed
that habitats were being polluted with tiny pieces of plastic called “microplastics”. These are objects are smaller than 5 millimeters, and
can be anything from tiny shards broken off larger items to microbeads developed for use in cosmetic products. Microplastics are found in marine habitats
everywhere on Earth. Concentrations of microplastics have been
found on coastal beaches in South Africa, The Great Lakes of North America, rivers in Britain, and at the bottom of an oceanic trench near Russia. Turns out, a large share of those microplastics
are microfibers: tiny strands of plastic, and they’re coming from our laundry. Looking at this fleece jacket up close, you
can see that its fuzzy material is actually a fabric made from tiny strands of plastic woven together. When we wash a synthetic piece of clothing, like this fleece, the fabric is pulled loose
and tiny microfibers fall out. Scientists actually tested three types of
synthetic clothing to see which types shed the most using a washing machine fitted with
a special filter. They determined that acrylic shed the most microfibers. Over 700,000 on the first wash alone. And even though fiber loss goes down after
the first wash, the sheer number of people doing laundry adds up, making microfibers
a huge contributor to the nearly five trillion pieces of microplastics
that are floating around the world’s oceans. In most dryers there’s a mesh screen to catch lint, 
but washing machines typically don't have a filter. So everything that falls off our clothes is
flushed down the drain. From there, microfibers might move through
a sewage treatment plant, but the filters are often too large to stop them from passing
through and flowing to a discharge point at a nearby marine habitat. Once they reach the ocean, microfibers are
consumed by plankton and other filter feeders that eat debris falling to the seafloor. And then the plastic starts making its way
up the food chain, passed on by predators feeding on
 organisms that have ingested microfibers. Eventually, it reaches us. Plastic enters human bodies when
we eat seafood containing microfibers. Like these, which scientists found in a piece
of fish they bought at a seafood market. So, what can be done? Switching to other materials isn’t feasible because synthetic clothes -- they’re cheap. A lot cheaper than making apparel with other fabrics. But what you can do is add a filter to your
washing machine that would catch microfibers falling off when you do your laundry. Problem is, those are pretty expensive, So another solution is using filter bags that
trap microfibers before they fall off into the wash when you do your laundry. But the most effective change of all would
just be buying fewer synthetic clothes, or at least, washing them less often. And what less often means... that's up to you. If you've gotten to this point in the video, you're
probably the kind of person who would be curious in learning about something like astronomy. You know, what's out there in case we need to abandon this plastic-filled ship of our own making. Brilliant is a problem solving website that
teaches you how to think like a scientist. They have courses on everything from calculus to astronomy and daily problems in math and science. To learn more about Brilliant, go to Brilliant.org/Vox
and sign up for free. The first 200 people that go to that link will get
20% off the annual premium subscription. So you can view all the daily problems
and unlock all the courses. Brilliant doesn't directly impact our editorial,
but their support makes videos like this one possible. So go check them out and thanks for watching! It’s March 21, 1955, and the Sarge is really
@(#$* mad. But how do we we know that this means )#@$%(?
Using a line of symbols to show obscenity is an established idea today, but it’s as
old as the early 1900s, when an entirely new visual language was being invented. This is Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker, and in addition to making soldiers say stuff
like !(@!@#(*, he coined the term “grawlixes” for the obscenity symbols, in an essay published
for comic artists and later anthologized. Other comic conventions include plewds — little
sweat drops; Briffits - dust clouds when a character disappears; and emanata — lines
showing shock. But Walker made a list of tropes — not an
origin story. For that, you’ve got to go back to the turn
of the !)@@!)$ century. This is the madhouse of comics in 1896. What we think of as comics basically started
with Hogan’s Alley, and later The Yellow Kid a spin-off centered on the !@#$@# freakshow
@#$*( (@!*#$ 8@@@! Irish-American urchin Mickey Dugan (this is
him watching a cockfight). Comics were experimental. Panels sometimes had to be numbered so you
knew the order to read them in, and dialogue rarely appeared in speech bubbles. Sometimes words showed up on the Yellow Kid. Two comics pushed that innovation to the next
level and invented a lot of what we know today - probably including grawlixes. The Katzenjammer Kids made a paneled story
mainstream, showing some naughty little @()#*$s who always got spanked. Katzenjammer’s innovations included consistent
speech bubbles and in the next couple of years, emanata indicating motion and maybe even swears. Lady Bountiful, a comic about a rich lady
who tried to help some urchins — notice an urchin theme here? — joined in this idiomatic arms race. She also had speech bubbles while other comics
still used captions. Those speech bubbles were more visceral than
captions. They could show music and
weird stuff like ideas, and this - the first known grawlix. Now it’s hard to be certain that this really
was the first grawlix. But suddenly in 1902 and 1903, there were
a @!@$$$ ton of them, and only a few comics were innovative enough to employ the new device. In December 1902, the Katzenjammer kids joined
in with Lady B. These trailblazing comics established how
you talk in comics with speech bubbles, and with the grawlix, they established how
you showed you just don’t give a !@#()!!. This is a 1 kiloherz sine wave. You might not recognize it. But it sounds like this. It solves a problem and creates a feeling. Just like the grawlix. It’s the fun of transgression and the punishment,
all in one smush of symbols. Sure, Sarge gets mad at Beetle for breaking
the rules. But Beetle, that little !@(#* !*@#( little
@#($*@#($* skinny *@#$(*!)@ son of a ()@#()$*@ kind of *@(#$*(@#*$.
Sarge loves him, too. Hey, what’s up @#)$*(@(#? Two things. First, if you’re interested in language
nerdery like this, check out Language Log and the writing of Ben Zimmer. Both of those were instrumental in early research
on the grawlix and it helped us get our start. However, I do not wanna brag here, but we
did find some early grawlixes that are even earlier than the previously known ones. If you want to learn about the research process
for something as weird as a grawlix, Vox has a membership program called the Vox Video Lab
where there are a ton of extra videos and information. In the Videolab, I have made a video about
my research process and exactly how I nerded out over these 1900s comics and found a ton
of ()@#*$* grawlixes. So, check it out if you want to see how it happened. Hey my name is Johnny Harris. I'm the
host of Vox Borders and I have some very exciting news today. For the past couple
of years I've been roaming around telling stories about the human outcomes
of borders, these lines on the map. It's been a wild adventure and I'm not
stopping anytime soon. So I'm excited to announce the next
location of Borders: This next location is one that I've wanted to do for years
and I feel like I'm finally ready, so I'm excited to announce that the next
location for Borders is: India India is huge, endlessly complex the
world's biggest democracy. This place is going through rapid
evolution and change and I want to go see what's going on in India. India shares a border with Pakistan which is another nuclear nation, which has created
major tension between the two countries. I'm interested in looking at this border
and lots of other stories in India. More than ever I'm going to need your help.
This is a big complex place and I won't be able to do it without a lot of local
help. If you want to help me out on this, to give me advice perspective, ideas, for
stories go to vox.com/borders-india. Here you'll be able to give me your
email and also your ideas on what you think I should cover while I'm there.
After you submit this form, if you're interested I'll follow up with
additional questions, more specific questions that I have about the stories
that I plan to do. I'm really looking forward to your ideas and I'm very
excited for this season of Borders. When you imagine a playground, chances are
it looks something like this. There’s usually a slide, a bridge, and a
high point with a domed roof. That’s what makes this a playground, and
this, and this. But what about this? This isn’t a junkyard. It’s called an adventure playground. Here, there are no plastic play structures
– just things like old tires, wood planks, hammers and nails. Places like this represent one of the most
debated ideas in play architecture: that playgrounds should be designed to let kids take more risks. Now, this nightmare for helicopter parents
is the hottest new thing in American playgrounds, because there’s growing evidence that play
like this is a whole lot healthier — and safer — for kids. They can play with very dangerous
tools, they can take really dangerous risks and overcome
them. And this fills up a tremendous sense of self
confidence in themselves, which is really quite fascinating to watch. That’s Marjory Allen. She was a British landscape architect and
children’s welfare advocate around the middle of the century. In 1945, she visited Copenhagen, where she
met an architect named Carl Theodor Sorensen. Two years earlier, during the German occupation
of Denmark, Sorensen noticed a problem: kids in his neighborhood weren’t using playgrounds. In fact, they were playing just about everywhere
else — even in construction sites and bombed out buildings. So in a housing development in the suburbs
of Copenhagen, Sorensen closed off an empty lot and filled it with building materials,
discarded objects, and tools. Here, kids could dig, build, and invent on
their own. The play structures were ultimately designed
by the kids themselves. Sorensen called it a junk playground — and
kids and parents loved it. When she returned to England, Marjory Allen
started opening similar playgrounds across London. And she renamed them: from junk to adventure. From there, they became a global phenomenon. They spread to Minneapolis, Boston, Toronto,
Tokyo, Houston, Berkeley, Berlin. And to create these playgrounds, designers
had to introduce a critical element: Controlled risk. In this context, a risk isn’t the same thing
as a hazard. When you’re climbing a tall tree, a rotten
branch is a hazard: the threat is unexpected. But how high you climb is a risk: it’s manageable,
and requires you to actively make a decision. You can break the elements of controlled risk
down into six categories: heights, speed, tools, dangerous elements, rough and tumble
play, and the ability to disappear, or become lost. And a good adventure playground includes a
mix of these. Designers also focus on separation of space. To give kids the feeling of discovering things
on their own, parents have to stay out. That can mean installing a physical barrier
— or providing things like restrooms, cafés, and seating, so that parental experience isn’t
an afterthought. Finally, designers fill it with loose parts. These are the manipulatable objects — the
planks, barrels, bricks, and tools — that fuel risky play. The idea behind all these design elements
is that kids respond well to being treated seriously: if they’re presented with risky
items with a serious functional purpose, they’ll respond cautiously and conduct more experimentation. But if presented with an overly safe, static
space, they often wind up seeking dangerous thrills that the built environment fails to
provide, which can result in higher injury rates than risky play at adventure playgrounds. In the US, a culture of lawsuit-proof playscape
design means that overly safe playgrounds are the norm. And design philosophy has focused on how to
reduce height, movement, and hard materials. That hasn’t made playgrounds better. When Marjory Allen visited American playgrounds
in 1965, she called them “an administrator’s heaven and a child’s hell.” But adventure playgrounds have recently begun
to catch on in the US — perhaps due to an effort to introduce more unstructured play. And their construction comes with a fair share
of criticism. “They’re making kids play with hammers
and nails — that’s not adventure, it's just work. They’re tricking kids into building their
own playground. Adventure playgrounds do have downsides: They’re
pretty ugly, they require a lot of space, and they need resources to staff and maintain. And as with any playground, there is opportunity
for injury. But the underlying philosophy of risky play
can help kids live better lives. For one thing, riskier playgrounds encourage
more activity. A study comparing playgrounds in London, where
risky play spaces are popular, to those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York found
that children using London’s playgrounds were up to 18 percent more physically active. The London playgrounds were cheaper and boasted
fewer injuries, too. And multiple studies have shown that children
who engage in risky play have better risk detection, creativity, and self esteem. The playground is one of the only kinds of
architecture designed specifically for children. And if the standard model we’ve decided
on is seen as boring by its users — that’s a problem. Better design can fix that — even if it’s
a little risky. I had to look through so many pictures of playgrounds for this story that I decided to use Wix to create a website collecting all of the ugliest and saddest pictures of playgrounds that I could find. And now I have a perfectly curated arrangement of pictures of playgrounds next to graveyards and slides leading into dumpsters and whatever these kid-friendly statues are. If you're looking for a simple way to share your passion about broken infrastructure or whatever it is that you're into these days, you should absolutely head to Wix. To create your own website just like this, click the link below. Wix does not directly impact our editorial, but their support makes videos like this possible. So check them out. This was Levittown, Pennsylvania, shortly
after World War II. In a suburb that explicitly promised a
white-only neighborhood. And it wasn't some outlier. It was the prototypical suburb, built by the father of suburbia — Bill
Levitt — who created several suburbs around the US, all named Levittown. But one reason Levitt wanted a white-only
community was because the US government was subsidizing it — and that's what they wanted. They said they didn't want "racially inharmonious
groups" lowering property values. That's why Levitt didn't just sell cookie-cutter
houses. He sold a meticulously crafted, affordable,
utopian lifestyle. So as the courts integrated public spaces,
like schools, more and more white people fled to these suburbs. And these patterns are still the defining
characteristic of America's racial geography. But we now spend most of our time at work. It gets a lot more complicated. "More than a million persons each year have
pulled up stakes in the city and turned commuter…" Shortly after the first Levittown broke ground
in 1947 in Long Island, New York, about 80 percent of men still commuted the hour to
Manhattan. And while neighborhoods were getting deeply
segregated, these workplaces were getting more diverse. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned employment
discrimination. More companies explicitly said they were "equal
opportunity employers." And segregation within our workplaces declined. This meant the workplace was a crucial environment
for us to interact with people of other races. Except that's not exactly how it turned out. A few months ago, researchers at Cornell and
Penn State shared a dataset with me — and when I mapped it, it kind of blew my mind. This is a map of where people work in modern-day
Chicago. The taller an area,
the more people there are. But now, let's color in each neighborhood
by the percentage of white people. You can see the city centers are pretty diverse. But, now, here's what happens when they go
home. What's even more astounding is what happens
when we map people of color. Here's where black people work in Chicago. Again, they're concentrated in diverse city
centers. But when black workers go home, they go to
very segregated neighborhoods, clustered in the poorer areas. And we can see the same patterns in DC. Detroit. Philadelphia. Pretty much everywhere in the US. These maps shows just how stubborn residential
segregation is. But they also show what looks like a glimmer of
hope for integration: cities are remarkably diverse during the work day. This got researchers interested in looking
closer at what's at work. Let's look at how segregation has changed
in recent year. From 2000 to 2010, residential segregation
between black and white people got slightly better. For the most part, segregation just mostly plateaued for all racial groups. But when researchers looked at how segregation
changed during the day, when we're at work, they found that segregation increased slightly
across all racial groups. When we zoom in some more to the company level, we can see a bit more of what's actually happening. Researchers at Stanford and Harvard found,
within a company, segregation levels have gone down very little. In other words, we're exposed to about as
much diversity now... as we were a generation ago. But there are a lot more people of color now
than there were in 1980. So what's going on? Well, they aren't being more represented at
these white-majority companies, which would look like this. Rather, they are getting
opportunities at companies that are mostly non-white, over here. So this means that, when we look at this from
a company level, segregation has actually gotten worse than a generation ago. Of course, some places are pretty diverse. So researchers looked at what kinds of places
actually have less segregation during the day. But they found that, if a place is diverse
during the daytime, it's likely not because people of all races are working alongside
each other. Rather, it's likely because most of the higher
status workers, like managers, are white. and the lower-status workers, like janitors,
are people of color. American policies engineered our segregated
homes. But work — where we spend most of our time? Many thought that could be a space where we
form meaningful relationships with people of other racial backgrounds. That hasn't quite happened. And we can see it in the most personal parts
of our lives. In 2014, the Public Religion Research Institute
asked Americans to list the people with whom they "discussed important matters" in
the past six months. In other words, our friends. Most Hispanic people had friends of other
races. About one in three black people did, too. But 75 percent of white people only had
white friends. In short, we may be exposed to diverse spaces, but we still live very segregated lives. "The whole trouble with this integration business is that in the end it probably will end up with mixing, socially." This is Brian Kelly. You’ll often find him traveling... I’ve been to Ghana now ten times. I got to visit Liberia. Took my parents to South Africa. I love flying Emirates first class — it’s
gaudy, it’s gold. You get caviar. So Brian traveled to all these places basically
for free. And he did it using credit card rewards. Banks promise offers like cashback, bonus
miles, and cash bonuses to get you to sign up and spend. And it’s rewards like these that people
like Brian have become masters at maximizing. Ultimately though, someone is paying for these
credit card rewards. And there's a hidden battle going on over their future. During the Great Recession, some of the biggest
US banks — Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Bank of America — had a problem. They weren’t making as much money from mortgages. So they shifted their business to credit
cards. And in order to get customers to sign up and
spend on their cards they offered bigger and better rewards. “In 2011 we saw our first ever 100,000 point offer,
Chase offered on a British Airways Visa. 100,000 points for a credit card. It was wild! And really I think what JP Morgan/Chase was
doing was thinking we gotta focus more on consumer lending and not just on that corporate
lending or even mortgages. As banks expanded rewards, more people starting
using rewards cards. By 2018, 92% of all credit card purchases
were made on rewards credit cards. That’s up from just 67% in 2008. But it’s not the banks that ultimately pay
for these rewards. When a customer uses a credit card to buy
something, the store is charged what’s called an interchange fee. That fee is a percentage of the total sale. It's the bank that issued the card collects the
interchange fee. And it’s this money that they heavily rely
on to pay for cardholder rewards. They’re making money on your
annual fee and on interest. But the big way with these premium credit cards is
the interchange fee. That’s the bread and butter. Interchange fees aren’t the same across all
credit cards. Cards with no low rewards typically have an
interchange of about 1.5% of the purchase price, while cards with bigger rewards can have
an interchange fee of nearly 3%. And the divide between these two types of
cards has increased. Banks can make about $0.25 more per average
purchase if the customer uses a premium rewards card over a basic one. In 2017, retailers paid card issuers $43.4
billion dollars in interchange fees. So it’s no surprise that stores
aren’t a huge fan of these credit card rewards. They don’t really want to pay for your free
trip to South Africa. Most stores don’t have have negotiating
power over these interchange fees. Payment networks like Visa and Mastercard
require them to “honor all cards” which means they have to accept both low fee and
high fee credit cards. And as a result some stores reported that
they’ve increased retail prices in order to make up for the cost of accepting credit
cards. Which means even if you don’t have a rewards
credit card, you may still be paying for those rewards. So if you’re paying cash, you’re basically
paying for my points. So it can be argued that people who can’t
obtain credit, those with lower incomes are basically funding the system for others. Others will basically say, well the merchants
get paid more, they get paid on time, there’s less theft when people use credit cards. It’s an interesting ecosystem. I won’t get into the ethics but I will maximize
my part of it. Some major retailers have indicated that they’ll challenge the “honor all cards” rule so
that they can reject cards with higher fees. And if stores succeed at driving down interchange
fees, banks are likely to respond by chopping rewards. This isn’t a hypothetical outcome. When credit card interchange fees were capped
at .3% in Europe, banks responded by cutting rewards. For now, with so many credit card rewards
out there, it’s hard to know which deals are better than others. But with the cost of these rewards built into
the things that we buy everyday, just using a rewards card at all can be beneficial. If you’re using a debit card or god forbid, cash, for purchases, you’re literally leaving points
and money on the table. It’s like throwing money away every time
you use cash. So get debt free, get disciplined with your finances, put your expenses on each month, pay them off, earn the points, and avoid interest. That's how you win at the points game. So Brian Kelly, the card rewards expert in this video had a lot of great tips about how to get the most out of your credit card rewards. We didn't have time to include them all in this video, but I wanted to share them with you in a video extra. You can check out those extra tips at the Vox Video Lab. If you haven't already heard, we've launched a paid membership program right here on YouTube, called the Video Lab. For a monthly fee, subscribers get access to tons of special features, including these tips on credit card rewards. So if you're not already a member, and you're interested, head on over to vox.com/join to sign up. Yes. If we don't get what we want, I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government for
border security. The dumbest thing about the longest government shutdown in American history is how it started. For weeks, Trump asked for a budget that included $5 billion for a border wall. If we got $5 billion, we could do a tremendous chunk of wall. But Senate Republicans realized they weren't going to get Democrats to agree
to that. So on December 19, they passed a bill to keep the government funded until February
without a wall. Republicans will continue to fulfill our duty
to govern. It looked like everyone was going to enjoy
a nice holiday break in a functioning democratic
system. And then Trump turned on the TV. I'm troubled by what's going on. I feel like the Republicans have caved in
again. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this was a
cave. Not funding the wall is going to go down as
one of the worst things to have happened to this
administration. Trump will just have been a joke presidency
that scammed the American people. To end this Congress without a shutdown? Trump gets nothing, and the Democrats get
everything. After two days of being attacked by Fox News, Trump told Republicans he would not sign the
bill to keep the government funded. The president informed us that he will not
sign the bill that came over from the Senate last evening. The president has gotten word to me that he is either getting funding for the
border or he's shutting the whole thing down. And so began the longest government shutdown in American history. 800,000 federal workers no longer getting
a paycheck. Shutdown could be making your food less safe. Consequences will soon be felt in all sectors
of the economy. The whole thing was a disaster for Trump. His approval ratings took a major hit. A plurality of Americans blamed him for the
crisis. And he didn't get the wall he wanted. Well, after 35 days, Trump changed his tune, agreeing to reopen the government for three
weeks. And while this might seem like another product of Trump's Fox News obsession, the truth is it's part of a bigger pattern of right-wing media pressuring Republicans into government shutdowns that blow up in
their faces. President Trump was attacked by the hard right and, fearful, he backed off his commitment
to sign this bill. It's a dangerous cycle that helps explain how government shutdowns are transforming from a rare crisis into just the new normal. Shutdown's over, but don't worry. In all likelihood, we will have another one. Could there be a round two? President Trump not ruling out another government shutdown. Before there was President Trump, before there was even Fox News, there was Newt Gingrich. In 1995, he became the Republican speaker
of the House, riding a wave of anti-Clinton sentiment and promising to get government spending under
control. The American people voted for a smaller government, for less bureaucracy. Gingrich had become speaker thanks to a group
of popular right-wing radio hosts, people like Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North, who had mobilized Republican voters by fearmongering about the size of the government. It's nice to be with all of you extremists
tonight. That became an issue when it was time to fund
the government. Republicans wanted a budget that made dramatic cuts to things like Medicare, but Clinton promised to veto it. So Gingrich had a choice to make. Come up with a compromise and risk betraying the talk radio hosts who helped you get in power, or refuse to budge, shut down the government, and hope Clinton caves. The pressure from the right was intense. One radio host told the New York Times, "This is the chance that we've been waiting
for for years. I'll be disappointed if Republicans in Congress
cave, and I think our listeners will be too." North agreed, saying, “If Republican leaders
back down now, they'll be swept out in ’96 right along
with Bill Clinton." Do you think Newt will moderate his stance now that he's the speaker of the House? And I said, better not. So Gingrich chose to gamble, shutting down the government for the longest it had ever been shut down
in American history. Gingrich believed that with the help of right-wing
radio, public pressure would turn against Clinton
and he'd have to cave. One of the reasons I believe in the end we'll
win: We now have a media giant who stands astride
the entire society. But Gingrich miscalculated. Rush Limbaugh was powerful but not that powerful. Gingrich was hammered as a crybaby throwing
a tantrum. Stories of the impact of the shutdown dominated
the news cycle. And Clinton became more popular, while people turned against the GOP. We'll remember in November! We will remember in November! Eventually, Gingrich was forced to back down. Republicans agreed to a compromise budget, and Clinton sailed to reelection the next
year. That shutdown was a disaster for the party. But that pattern, it was just getting started. In 2013, there's another budget fight. If standing for liberty makes you a wacko
bird, then count me a proud wacko bird. Republicans, led by Ted Cruz, want to defund
Obamacare, something they just don't have the votes to
do. But now they're not just being egged on by Limbaugh and some radio hosts. There's a whole army of right-wing talking
heads. And their demand is clear: Republicans right now, if they want to repeal
health care, they've got to shut the government down. There are talks about a government shutdown. If the Republican Party does want to get in
the game and push back, that would be where. We might get blamed for a shutdown. So what? It's the right thing to do. Some of these radio talk show hosts have real
influence. Many members of Congress are worried about
a primary challenge that could deny them the nomination. So Republicans shut down the government again. The government of the United States of America
has shut down. This time, they're trying to avoid another
Gingrich backlash. There's round-the-clock messaging about how
the shutdown is no big deal. We've gone through now 15 hours of a government
shutdown. I don't think anybody's feeling any great
pain here. Not just no big deal. It's actually good the government is shut
down. That's a dream for a conservative, when nonessential federal employees are not being paid with my tax dollars. Maybe we need to shut it down every couple
of years under this administration. Think where the economy would be! These people are f*cking nuts. Gingrich is now in on it too. He's gone from being a politician to just another right-wing pundit. This is not a crisis. A government shutdown isn't a crisis, Mr.
Speaker? No! Can't believe I'm rooting for Piers Morgan
in that exchange. My advice to the Republicans: hold the line. This will boomerang if you hold tight. It's still not enough. The 2013 shutdown ends much in the same way
as Gingrich's did. Republicans are forced to cave, Obamacare
survives, and most people blame the GOP for the crisis. We fought the good fight; we just didn't win. But now, on Fox, they're lauded for standing
up for their principles. The shutdown was so magnificent, run beautifully. I'm so proud of these Republicans. Ted Cruz was doing exactly what he was elected
to do. And a few years later, when it's time to fight
about the border wall, the cycle starts again. He has to hold firm on this. A shutdown is exactly what we need. I think the president should dig in his heels. Let's fight and get all we can. He can't reward Schumer and Pelosi by signing
this bill. What you're seeing is a party that's been
backed into a corner. Ever since the ’90s, Republicans have become
dependent on outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to rally their core supporters. If they betray their echo chambers, they could
lose their seats. I'm done with the Republicans if they don't
fight here. I will not support, I will not endorse anybody that doesn't have the courage to stand up
on this issue. But these two groups have radically different
goals. Governing requires compromise to get things
done and keep the government functioning. Punditry requires conflict: big, simple ideological fights to get audiences
fired up so they keep tuning in. Shutdowns are the clearest example of that
kind of conflict. Our side good, their side bad, build that
wall. Shut the government down. Everybody says, "Aw, that'll be terrible.” Terrible thing is to let the Democrats bully
this president, who was elected by the people of this nation. So the Republican Party keeps getting steered into crises it knows it can't win. This was the longest shutdown we've ever had. But on the right, the reaction was, “It
didn't go far enough.” He just reversed himself. That's a victory for Nancy Pelosi. He promised something for 18 months and he lied about it. One of the few voices trying to dial it back
was, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, Newt freaking Gingrich. He should not pay any attention to Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter's never run for office. She's off here in some fantasy land. She gets to be noisy, which helps her sell
books. Oh, my god. I mean, he's right, but it's not just Coulter. They're all trying to sell books. Newt Gingrich was on Fox News a week before cheering on the shutdown while trying to sell his book! Now author of the best-selling book Trump's America: The Truth About Our Nation's
Great Comeback. The president's position ought to be that we're not going to kick the can any further
down the road. Right-wing commentators have no incentive
to compromise. The more Republicans embrace shutdowns as
a political tactic, the more right-wing media will come to expect
and demand it from them. Donald Trump can win this. If he hangs on and continues down this road, at some point, there's going to be a shift. And you can hear it in the way Trump supporters defended his decision to reopen the government. For all the pundits who said over the weekend
Trump caved, that's a little early, isn't it? Because this is not done. This game isn't over. This is halftime at the Super Bowl. The pattern is already restarting. This war is not over. The battle may be over, but the war never
really ends. This president lives to fight another day. At 6:45 in the morning of November 3, 1984,
a man walked into a police station on the north side of Milwaukee to report that he’d
found what appeared to be a body, lying in a lot near his home. That’s where police discovered 63-year-old
Ione Cychosz, wearing only “a pair of white socks and a left shoe.” Her blue shirt and bra were pulled up behind
her head, which was bloody and swollen. She’d been beaten to death and possibly
raped. Neighbors described the victim as “a nice
woman.” She was known for collecting aluminum cans
and playing bingo at a Ukrainian church on Friday nights. That’s what she’d been doing the night
she was killed. "And she was let off after midnight by friends
who normally dropped her off after the  bingo games. They observed her walk in front of her home
and those are the last people who saw her alive." One of the real challenging things about this
case was you had no eyewitnesses. You of course had no confession. You had no motive. This was before DNA profiling, before home
security cameras were common, there were no fingerprints on the knife they found nearby. But the killer did leave one clue: He bit her. “Investigators took 60 photographs of numerous
bite marks.” "The bite marks are being analyzed by a forensic
dental specialist.” Dr. L. Thomas Johnson, a dentist and professor
at Marquette University, examined the bite marks on the victim the day she was found. And he gave the cops a lead. He told the detectives you are looking
for a guy with an abnormality in one of his upper teeth. So the cops began knocking on doors. Three days after the murder, the detectives
knocked on the door of Robert Lee Stinson, a quiet 20-year-old whose only criminal record
was a fine for shoplifting from when he was younger. He lived with his mother and siblings in a
house right by the crime scene. Stinson told the police that on the night
of the murder, he came home from a party around 11:30, went to bed, and slept until morning. But what caught the attention of the police
was that Stinson had “an upper right front tooth missing.” That missing tooth made one of the detectives
believe they "got the guy". His partner later told the Milwaukee Sentinel
that they went back inside and told Stinson some jokes to get him laughing, to confirm
that there were those teeth. So the state had Stinson appear at a secret
hearing before a judge — called a “John Doe" investigation in Wisconsin — where
they could have Johnson, the dentist, check his teeth. The John Doe was the first time that I met
Mr. Stinson, but I'm looking at this kid who is very warm, very affable, very
cooperative. Everything in my gut, my experience, six years
in the DA's office, the Sensitive Crimes Unit. No way. No way did this guy do this. He thought they would eliminate Stinson as
a suspect. But that's not what happened. Johnson looked into Stinson’s mouth for
20 seconds, the same amount of time it takes to read this: And then Johnson said Stinson’s teeth matched
a sketch that he and a police artist had made — a sketch of what the suspect’s teeth
would look like based on the bite marks. Nobody brought the drawing to the hearing, but Johnson said “it resembles what I see
here.” Stinson’s mouth, he said, “certainly is
consistent with what I drew. It is remarkable.” And that was enough for the court to order
a full dental examination. But if they’d had the sketch in the room,
they would have seen that it said the suspect would be missing a lateral incisor. Stinson was missing a central incisor, his
right front tooth. But now the dentist was on the record saying
that they matched. The field of bite-mark analysis is one of
the so-called “pattern matching” disciplines in forensic science. Fingerprints are the best known example, but
the group also includes shoe prints, tire treads, handwriting, and bullet casings. We call them “forensic sciences” but they
developed independently of what we typically think of as the “science world”: The universities
and research hospitals, peer-reviewed journals, grant-funding organizations. Those institutions of basic research have
fed some forensic fields, but many others lack that foundation. You go up the street to the University of
Wisconsin and you look for the Department of Fingerprints, or the Department of Shoe
Impressions. It's not there. That’s because these fields developed mostly
in response to crime scenes and the obligation to study whatever bits of information they
contained. The examiners look at samples closely,
and make a subjective assessment of how similar they are. You know, it's funny. When people watch CSI or think about
forensic science, they often think that it's very high-tech and glossy and perfect and
often automated. And in the real world the pattern identification
sciences do not work like that. It's not that subjectivity makes it illegitimate
or necessarily incorrect. But we ought to know something about how accurate
it is. For the criminal justice system, this is still
a new idea. So at the time of Stinson’s case, nobody
knew how accurate, or inaccurate, bitemark analysis was. The man who examined Stinson’s teeth, L.T.
Johnson, is a forensic odontologist. And bite mark evidence is just a part of what
they do. When we have tragedies, plane crashes or other
kinds of terrible events sometimes we use teeth that are found to help identify human
remains. And that's an important tool. And, I believe, quite an accurate one. “Rescue workers were there quickly, but they
quickly learned there was no one to rescue.” The same year he worked on Stinson’s case,
Johnson led a team identifying victims of a plane crash that killed 31 people. He would go on to help identify 11 decomposing
victims found in serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment. Forensic odontology had been an established
field for decades. But it was only in the 1970s that they decided
to go beyond identifying victims by their teeth and started identifying suspects by
bite marks. It began with a 1975 case, People versus Marx,
in California. Edgar Marx was accused of murdering his landlady
and leaving a bite mark in the cartilage of her nose. The bitemark evidence was deemed admissible
even though the appeals court conceded that there was “no established science” behind
it. And it became the germinal case. Because all of the precedent-establishing
cases in high courts across the country cited back to Marx. Fast forward a few more years. Ted Bundy goes on trial and there's bite mark
evidence in the Ted Bundy case and it made movie stars out of a couple of forensic
dentists. And bite mark evidence took off. This norm of precedent, of conforming to
past decisions, it exists for a reason. But it happens to be the opposite of how science
works. Precedent is really important in the judicial
system. We want constancy, predictability, and we
have a rule that like cases should be decided the same way. Science, by contrast, is inevitably and unavoidably
and always contingent, progressing, growing changing, shifting as new research tells us
new things and corrects past misunderstandings. The legal system is not really designed to
adapt to that. So a game of judicial telephone convinced
the courts that bite mark identification was an accepted area of science, when in fact,
it had never been tested. There is no science that we have seen to support
that. It's really quite astonishing. It's the one thing that gets me truly agitated,
because there's just no science to support it. A month after Johnson collected models and
photographs of Stinson’s teeth, he came back with his final conclusion. “The teeth of Robert Lee Stinson would be
expected to produce bite patterns identical to those which I examined in this extensive
and exhaustive analysis.” He said the evidence was “overwhelming.” The sketch Johnson referenced at the prior
hearing? It was never mentioned again. He was showing me, you take this overlay
of the pictures of his teeth and you put it on the pictures of the bite wounds on Mrs.
Cychosz’s body and you kind of see how they align. And it did the same thing with the models. But I wasn’t completely convinced that I
could convince a jury based on what Dr. Johnson did, that Mr. Stinson was guilty of an offense
like this. I said we need a second opinion on this case. Johnson recommend Raymond Rawson, who was
known as one of the leaders in the field. So the detectives flew to Las Vegas to deliver
the evidence. And they reported that Rawson “gave a verbal
confirmation of Johnson’s finding.” But he didn’t spend much time on it. According to a memo book that one of the detectives
kept and later published, Rawson met them at their hotel room at the Four Queens, “took
a look at the x-rays and the molds, and said that was good enough for him.” Five days later, Robert Lee Stinson was arrested
at his home. And we decided that, given a brutal horrific
crime like this, we now have two witnesses who are saying it's him. And matched against that is what, my gut level
feeling? And so we issued the charge. The US has an adversarial judicial system where the judge presides over a trial, but
isn't responsible for uncovering the truth. Instead, it's up to the opposing lawyers to present
evidence and witnesses that support their version of events. “And ultimately the theory is of course that through this
conflict of ideas and interpretations the truth will emerge.” But from the start, Stinson could tell he
wasn’t entering a fair fight. He prepared a letter asking for a replacement
for his lawyer, who “only took his case two weeks” before trial. “Your Honor, I’m facing life for something
I did not commit,” he wrote. The judge denied his request, which came in
the middle of the trial and she also denied his lawyer’s motion
to exclude the bitemark evidence. She said “there are adequate standards and
controls in the area of forensic odontology.” “It is a recognized area of science.” “Frankly at the time it was not a close
decision for me. Even though it was unique testimony, I didn't
have anything in front of me that indicated that it was not reliable and it certainly
was helpful to the jury, I think. And relevant to the issues and so I admitted the evidence.” At the time, Wisconsin only required that
forensic testimony be relevant and helpful to the jury. Judges weren’t required to assess its reliability. “You have an older woman who's been raped
and murdered. We've got an expert who's saying we know who did it. If the judge had excluded that evidence, he
would have gone free." And it would have been a legal stretch for
her to do that given the state of the law and the precedent at the time. As the appeals court would point out in a
footnote, by the time of Stinson’s trial, bitemark evidence had been accepted in 19
jurisdictions and rejected by none. The court in Stinson’s case was no different,
and the bitemark evidence went before the jury. The first thing that happens when forensic
experts take the stand is that they’re prompted to list their credentials, to show that they’re
qualified. “That makes sense from a certain perspective. But there's also a danger that the jury misunderstands
the power of that experience.” “Dr. Johnson seemed to make sense to me
when he testified. He certainly was qualified, being a professor at the university
in the dental school." "Here you have this very learned dentist who has no reason to lie, who comes
in and tells you this is rock solid science. How is the jury to decide he must be wrong? That's extremely compelling.” Dr. L.T. Johnson walked the jury through the
evidence. He even brought models of Stinson’s lower
teeth and one of the bite marks, so he could show how they matched. He concluded his testimony by saying that the bite
marks “would have to have been made by Robert Lee Stinson." The second dentist, Raymond Rawson, testified
that “there was no question that
there was a match to a reasonable scientific certainty." Stinson’s lawyer did try to get a defense
expert of his own, but that expert was never called to counter the prosecution’s dentists
in court, because after he examined the evidence he agreed with them. Instead of two sides battling it out before
the jury, there was one side with two experts making false statements about the science,
and one side with no experts at all. During Stinson’s trial, the prosecution
and defense would ask the two bitemark experts a combined 240 questions. But they didn’t ask the most important one. “The real question that we should be asking
is what is the evidence that shows us that people in this field reach accurate results?" “It's not rocket science.” Forensic scientists can have protocols and guidelines,
use well-accepted tools and technology, but we won’t know if their methods are actually
reliable until we have what’s called an “error rate study.” You take a bunch of bite mark examiners,
give them samples of bite marks and measure how often they make a correct identification. To this day, nobody has ever conducted a proper
error rate study for bite mark analysis. “And there's really no incentive to do any
research, because courts admit it. If courts stopped admitting it they would
do the research, right, because they want it to be introduced at trial.” Studies that have been done with human cadavers
show that there’s a lot of distortion when bite marks are made in skin, even in a laboratory
setting. The same set of teeth will make marks of different
sizes and shapes depending on the skin type, the amount of force, and the orientation of
the bite. Missing teeth can look like they’re there. Teeth that are there can look like they’re
missing. One study conducted by forensic dentists found
an unsatisfactory level of agreement among examiners on whether a given injury was even
a human bitemark. But during Stinson’s trial, Dr. Johnson
told the jury that there was “no margin for error” in this case. And then Stinson took the stand. He said he was at a party until about 12:30. Went home, and then later went back out, to
go to the store with a friend. He said as they walked behind his house, he
heard footsteps and shushing coming from the back of the alley. But when Stinson first spoke to the police
three days after the murder, he had only told them that he went home after the party and went
to bed. As the prosecutor pointed out at the trial,
he had changed his story. “It's my experience that the jury looks a
lot at those alibis and if somebody's lying for no other reason than perhaps trying to
get out of something, that is pretty heavy evidence." After a three-day trial, and less than two
hours of deliberation, the jury found Stinson guilty of first degree murder. And he was sentenced to life in prison. On appeal, Stinson challenged the admissibility
of the expert testimony in his trial. But the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed
his conviction. They were impressed by the dentist's elaborate
methods. Dr. Johnson used an "Acrylic ring” “Special camera” “Three dimensional indentations" “Overlay technique” “75 individual tooth marks”
They actually claimed “the reliability of the bite mark evidence in this case was
sufficient to exclude to a moral certainty every reasonable hypothesis of innocence." “It's so absurd. Tarot card readers have a very complex, ancient
methodology. It doesn't mean that they can tell your fortune.” And with that ruling, Stinson became the precedent-setting case for bite mark evidence in Wisconsin. Seven years later, the US Supreme Court issued
a decision -- the Daubert ruling -- which should have changed the entire landscape for
forensic science. It said that trial judges must assess whether
expert testimony is based on reasoning or methodology that is “scientifically valid.” Daubert talks about reliability, validity,
empirical data, error rates, peer review. It has all the good stuff and scientists would
look at it and feel their hearts would patter, they'd be cheered, because it says all the
right words. But the problem with that is it also says
it's a flexible standard. The Daubert ruling gave judges a new “gatekeeping
role,” but at the same time, it said that “vigorous cross-examination and presentation
of contrary evidence” are still an "appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible evidence." So even though judges are supposed to evaluate
expert testimony, they can still choose to offload that responsibility. “They don't want to be responsible for letting
the killer go free because they excluded the evidence." After all, the system has always relied on
the attorneys to cross-examine witnesses they disagree with and present contrary evidence. “Public defenders are by and large overwhelmed
and often don't have the funding to hire their own independent experts. But they shouldn't have to. We shouldn't have to be defending against
unreliable scientific evidence.” And ultimately, it’s up to the jury to decide
what they believe. “I mean the instructions are very clear
that the jury does not have to give any further weight to an expert than any other witness. What kind of weight they want to give to them
is totally up to them.” But the jury doesn’t have basic information
about the error rates of forensic methods like bite mark analysis. Those studies don’t exist, in part because
judges have never required them. “I don't think there is evil intent anywhere
in this circle. It's a collection of institutional
participants sometimes taking the easy way out." “Nothing is suitable in our existing
system for making the scientific determination that this evidence is questionable and here's what juries
and judges ought to know about it. It's not happening.” As Robert Lee Stinson began his life sentence,
the evidence in the case was boxed up and locked away. That included the blue pullover shirt the
victim was wearing when she was killed. It was a crucial piece of evidence, but nobody
knew that yet. And it would be 24 years before the true killer
was found. “Think about what you were doing between
the years 1985 and 2009. All those years you spent getting your education,
building a resume." "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." "Getting married. Buying a home." "The Hubble Space Telescope is released." "Having children." "Can you explain what internet is?" "Building up retirement." "O.J. Simpson not guilty of the crime." "Watching your children grow up. Funerals of your family members and your loved
ones. "iPhone." "It's just an enormous amount of time. You come out and how are you supposed to explain, 'Well I was convicted of murder but I didn't do it.' That baggage stays with you forever.” Robert Lee Stinson refused to admit guilt,
so he was never granted parole. By 2003, he’d been in prison for 18 years. That’s when when he wrote to the Innocence
Project at the University of Wisconsin. “It was a request for assistance saying
that he was innocent and that he was convicted on bite mark evidence.” They took the bite mark evidence out of storage
and sent it to four forensic odontologists to review. And they found that the dentists who testified
against Stinson, L.T. Johnson and Raymond Rawson, had made a “series of errors that resulted in an incorrect determination.” They said Johnson’s technique of placing
a semi-opaque overlay on top of the bitemarks obscured the fact that they didn’t match. And they showed how misleading it could be
to hold a dental model up to a bite mark impression, which Johnson had done in front of the jury. It makes it look like Stinson’s teeth fit,
but it also looks like these three random sets of teeth fit too. Overall, they concluded that “Stinson can
be excluded from” having made the bite marks. “We said look, it's not him. And the prosecutors looked at it and they
said we gotta talk to Dr. Johnson and they came back and they said, no we stand by it. It's him. Where? How can you see that? But they did.” Fortunately, the bite marks weren’t the
only physical evidence in the case anymore. The same day Stinson was convicted, December
12, 1985, a paper was published in the journal Nature reporting that DNA could be used in
forensics. “It is evidence that promises a breakthrough
future for law enforcement officials.” “These genetic fingerprints are a powerful
tool for solving mysterious crimes.” We know today that DNA is a powerful form
of evidence, but it’s worth digging into why that is. In our cells, there’s a small section where
a short DNA phrase gets repeated several times. We all have it in the same location, but the
number of repeats varies between people. I might have 9. You might have 15. We have instruments that can essentially count
the repeats by their size. And because we can count them, we can survey
a bunch of people to see how common each number is. So let’s say police find a DNA sample with
9 repeats. Well, if 30% of people have 9 repeats, that’s
not very strong evidence. But scientists have identified more than 13
different locations on our DNA where we vary in these kinds of repeats. And we have two numbers for each location,
because we inherit one from each parent. So maybe I have 9,9 at one location; 14,16
at another; 12,10 at a third, and so on. The more locations you add, the smaller the
number of people who could match. That’s what makes DNA so powerful: Our samples
are unique, they distinguish us from each other, but it’s also quantifiable, so we can calculate
how much it distinguishes us. It comes with statistics. Compare that to fingerprints. We suspect that they’re quite unique, but we
can’t calculate how unique because fingerprints lack the kind of universal structure that
the DNA molecule has. Instead of looking at a predetermined location
and counting up repeats, fingerprint examiners have to decide what’s notable about each
print. “And there are so many different permutations,
so that makes it very difficult to say this particular configuration is one in a
million or one in a quadrillion or whatever the way you could do with DNA.” Researchers have started figuring out what
to measure in a fingerprint to get useful statistics. But the other pattern-matching disciplines
are further behind. And with bite marks, it might not even be
worth trying. In 2010 the federal government gave L.T. Johnson
a $700,000 research grant to make bitemark analysis more scientific, using statistics. His team borrowed live pigs and made bite
marks in their skin with dental models. They used software to measure the bite marks
for tooth width, angle, and spacing. And when those measurements were used to guess
the source teeth, they identified the correct dental model only
2% of the time. Even in these controlled conditions, skin
did not reliably record the dimensions of teeth. But that was already becoming painfully clear. "Wrongfully convicted." "Wrongfully convicted." "Wrongfully convicted
of rape." "He spent more than 10 years in prison before DNA identified the real killer." "The science in this case was just plain wrong." "Bite mark analysis is now being questioned
nationwide." As DNA testing began overturning bite mark
convictions around the country, the Wisconsin Crime Lab was analyzing the
bra and shirt that the victim in Stinson’s case was wearing when she was killed. The male DNA they found on several areas of
her clothing didn’t match Stinson’s DNA. He was excluded as the source again, and again,
and again. By 2008, a full DNA profile was developed
from the blue v-neck pullover and entered into a DNA databank. Two more years would pass before it yielded
a match. But in the meantime, the District Attorney’s
office finally agreed that Stinson’s conviction should be vacated. And he was released from prison on January
30, 2009. “I remember the scene of when we walked
him out. There was media there.” "It was an emotional day for Robert Stinson
and his entire family.” “Well it was very powerful when we saw Robert
Lee Stinson walk out of this prison this morning.” “And we stood outside the prison gates and
they opened up a sliding chain link gate and it was actually a rather subdued,
almost melancholy moment where his sister greeted him with a deep hug.” "Finally justice is done." "But at what cost?" "I can't explain it. I can't explain this. Been a long ride for me. I'm finally out and going to enjoy my
life now." “I think the lesson we have and this is,
I think, regrettable, is that no matter how careful you are, how cautious you are, how
objective you think you are in these cases, you can still be wrong.” “I felt bad. I felt bad. You know, all I can say is, you know, to this
case and I think it's the only wrongful conviction that I know of, that I presided over, I'm just
grateful we don't have a death penalty.” The year Stinson was exonerated, the National
Academy of Sciences released a report that rocked the field of forensic science. “That report was big. It had huge ripple effects throughout the
community.” “What it did was really to explode the problem
and to say to the world we have a serious issue here.” It found that “no scientific studies”
supported bite mark identification. And the problem was bigger than that: It said
“a number of forensic science disciplines” were lacking basic research. “It mostly said you need more science in
forensic science. Unfortunately it was received somewhat defensively
by the forensic science community and I think that slowed down our ability to respond to
it, to learn from it, to grow from it.” The report recommended the creation of a new
federal agency to direct and fund forensic science research, and serve as a scientific
authority for the criminal justice system. “And so when you come into court there would
be a bible of this information and the prosecutors would have to work with that, and defense
attorneys would have it available to them, and juries would be instructed accordingly.” But Congress never created the new agency. And by 2016, an Obama administration report
found few studies that were still few studies that were appropriately designed to assess validity. Only the fingerprints and firearms fields
had begun to properly measure how accurate their examiners are. Academic researchers haven’t really taken
an interest in running these studies. And even if they did, they’d need access
to forensic examiners and lots of test samples. And in the crime labs, they don’t necessarily
have the resources or incentives to participate. “You don't have to talk to very many lab
directors to find out that they are overburdened and they're undermanned. You don't really have the freedom to say hey
I think I'll take a third of my people and conduct some error rate studies.” “Our problem now is just trying to get the
studies done.” Without some permanent infrastructure to continually
examine the accuracy of the forensic sciences, we can’t be sure that a case like Robert
Lee Stinson’s won’t happen again. “The detectives that picked you up yesterday. Did they tell you what this was about? A year after Stinson’s release, the DNA
from the victim’s blue v-neck pullover finally solved the crime. “They got a cold hit, that is they weren't
looking for anybody in particular they just ran the profile through the database and it
hit.” His name was Moses Price Jr., and he wasn’t
a suspect in the original police investigation. Around the time that Stinson was arrested,
Price pled guilty to two armed robbery charges. He’d also been accused of rape. And in 1991, as Stinson sat in prison, Price
beat a man to death and set his house on fire. When the DNA match prompted police to question
him, Price confessed. He said he remembered following a woman one
night in November 1984. He was drinking and said he blacked out. Price said if he’d known Stinson had been
convicted for the murder, he would have stepped up a long time ago. It all started with something Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
said on 60 Minutes. "But once you get to the tippy-tops — on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent…" She suggested the top income tax rate for
the super rich should be 70 percent. The current rate is 37 percent. So, many pundits treated it like a radical
idea. "... moving her party further and further
to the left with calls for a 70% tax rate." "Doesn't this take away and sap the incentive
to join that billionaire class — to strive for that?" But that 70 percent number wasn't pulled out
of thin air. There's actually an economic theory behind it. The 70 percent number comes from two economists
who were interested in a concept called "optimal tax theory." And it starts with a simple question: How can
we tax people so all citizens are as well-off as possible? And we can understand this concept by looking
at two potato farmers — a very rich one and a poor one. The government comes to collect taxes. One potato from each farmer. And that doesn't really hurt the rich farmer. If he loses that potato, his life doesn't
get much worse. In other words, that one potato is worth almost
nothing to him. But for the poor farmer, one potato is worth
a lot more. His family might eat less that day. This is not a scenario where everyone is as
well-off as possible. So the government decides to shift the tax
burden. It will increase taxes on rich farmers to pay for programs that benefit the poor. Because as long as the rich farmer has more,
one potato is still worth less to him than it is for the poor farmer. So the rich farmer's taxes go up. And then they go up some more. And more and more people are better off. But then something happens: When the government takes more, the rich farmer
no longer thinks it's worth it to grow so many potatoes. So he grows fewer potatoes. That's okay for a while. But then, one year, the government asks for
even more. And when the rich farmer hands it over, the
government realizes that it's collecting fewer potatoes than the previous year. That's because the the high taxes have made
the rich farmer shrink his farm so much that taxing a larger portion no longer
yields more potatoes. Ultimately, this means the government can't
help poor farmers as much. And when the government charts it out, it
realizes that it's not just low taxes that result in low revenue. High taxes do, too! So it uses a time machine to rewind to when
the tax rates were in a sweet spot where government could make sure people
were as well-off as possible, without discouraging work too much that it's counterproductive. And what is that sweet spot? Economists disagree on exactly where it is. But in a 2012 paper, the two economists found
the optimal rate — counting all taxes, including state and local — is around 73 percent. Now, there's disagreement on where this threshold
might be. It might be much lower, and the economists
concede this. But what almost everyone agrees on is that
the way we tax the very rich right now doesn't actually optimize welfare. It takes money away from people who would
get a lot more value out of it while letting the rich keep money that
doesn't actually improve their lives very much. This is the US Coast Guard
intercepting a shipment of cocaine. Here's the same crew intercepting
another one... and another one. This was all in the summer of 2018. They seized more
than 9,000 kilos of cocaine that was headed to the US. That may sound like a lot but it's just the tip of the iceberg. In 2017 the Coast Guard
intercepted almost 227,000 kilos of cocaine, here. Along the eastern Pacific. That's because the US is the largest cocaine
consumer in the world. And to get to the US, most of that cocaine has to travel
this way, through Central America and Mexico. With that comes violence and today Guatemala and Honduras are some of
the most violent places in the world. It's a big reason why so many people are
traveling north to seek asylum at the US-Mexico border. But the story of Central America's crisis isn't just
about America's demand for drugs. Another big part of it...is America's war on drugs. Cocaine is produced in South America along the Andes mountain range that
stretches from Bolivia to Colombia. Starting in the mid 1970s most of the
world's cocaine came from here; distributed by groups like the Medellin
Cartel led by Pablo Escobar. But they needed to get their product, here, to the US.
Where by the late 80s Americans were spending tens of billions of dollars on
cocaine annually. And they did it this way:
Cartels sent boats and planes loaded with cocaine through the Caribbean to
South Florida. For example Escobar's cartel primarily flew cocaine from
Medellin to the Bahamas and then over to Miami. "Miami is one of the principal branch offices for what can be called
cocaine Inc. It's got to be four or five times as much cocaine as we've ever seen
before... The drug has killed at least 34 people just in South Florida so far this year."
So the US cracked down on the Caribbean route. "To stop those drugs on the way to America I propose that we Spend more than a billion and a half dollars on interdiction. They started catching shipments along the coast line.
Like this speedboat called a go-fast boat that was intercepted by the Coast
Guard. And they worked with the Colombian government to destroy coca and fight the
cartels in Colombia. The Caribbean route was dismantled but
the cocaine industry kept going. Cartels just needed a new route to the
US, and they found it in Mexico. Mexican cartels already had ways to get drugs over their border and into the u.s. So, Colombian cartels shipped their cocaine to Mexico but their boats and planes had to stop somewhere along the way to avoid detection and to refuel. And the ideal place to stop was Central America,
especially Honduras and Guatemala. Not only were these countries directly south of Mexico,  but they had just been through decades of civil wars and foreign
interventions. Their governments were weak and easily bought off and criminal
organizations had power. It was an easy place for the cartels to turn to. Back in Mexico, the new cocaine routes turned lucrative, fast. The Mexican cartels got bigger and more powerful and started controlling
more territory. And the government responded... "It's a war! 10,000 federal
troops and police to Juarez. Mexico cracked down with the help of the US. "He will not allow his country to be taken over by narco traffickers" This crackdown
was largely a failure. It caused chaos and violence spiked. But it did make it more difficult to send cocaine directly to Mexico. So cartels started shipping
cocaine to Central America, to landing points along the coasts, and would move
it into Mexico overland. Central America wasn't just a stop along
the way anymore. Suddenly it found itself at the center
of cocaine trafficking. And all the things that made Central American countries ideal as refueling stops made them vulnerable to the violence that
comes with drug routes. Criminal organizations, already powerful in their countries, started forming alliances with Mexican cartels. In Guatemala, this group
aligned with the Zetas while these went with the rival Sinaloa cartel.
Violence surged here: along the northern Honduran coast where cocaine shipments arrived and at the border where the cocaine is transported north by land.
With violence on the rise it was now Central America's turn to
crackdown throughout the region... Governments embraced harsh policies to
combat not just drug traffickers but all organized crime. A policy, backed again,
by the US: "To find ways in which we can come up with more aggressive action
plans to improve security. We have a shared responsibility when it comes to
dealing with drug trafficking." Newly militarized police forces arrested
thousands, prisons filled up, but the violence didn't stop. And that's where we
are today. Honduras and Guatemala have violent death rates on par with active
war zones. And thousands of migrants are taking dangerous routes through Mexico to the US to escape the instability and violence. For decades the US has tried to
stop drugs from coming in but it's only really succeeded in changing how those
drugs come in. And Central America might be the place that's feeling those
changes the hardest. Hey if you've made it this far in the video you're probably the kind of curious person that appreciates learning. Brilliant is a
problem-solving website that teaches you to think like a scientist and be a
better problem solver. They have courses on everything from calculus to astronomy
to logic and daily problems in math, science, engineering, and computer science. To learn more about Brilliant, go to Brilliant.org/vox and sign up for
free. The first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription.
Brilliant doesn't influence our editorial at all but it makes videos like this one
possible, so go check them out! “Think about what you were doing between
the years 1985 and 2009. All those years you spent getting your education,
building a resume." "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall." "Getting married. Buying a home." "The Hubble Space Telescope is released." "Having children." "Can you explain what internet is?" "Building up retirement." "O.J. Simpson not guilty of the crime." "Watching your children grow up. Funerals of your family members and your loved
ones. "iPhone." "I mean it's just an enormous amount of time. You come out and how are you supposed to explain,
'Well I was convicted of murder but I didn't do it.' That baggage stays with you, forever.” Robert Lee Stinson was convicted of murder
on the basis of forensic bite mark evidence. He refused to admit guilt, so he was never
granted parole. By 2003, he’d been in prison for 18 years. That’s when when he wrote to the Innocence
Project at the University of Wisconsin. “It was a request for assistance saying
that he was innocent and that he was convicted on bite mark evidence.” They took the bite mark evidence out of storage
and sent it to four forensic odontologists to review. And they found that the dentists who testified
against Stinson, L.T. Johnson and Raymond Rawson, had made a “series of errors that resulted in an incorrect determination.” They said Johnson’s technique of placing
a semi-opaque overlay on top of the bitemarks obscured the fact that they didn’t match. And they showed how misleading it could be
to hold a dental model up to a bite mark impression, which Johnson had done in front of the jury. It makes it look like Stinson’s teeth fit,
but it also looks like these three random sets of teeth fit too. Overall, they concluded that “Stinson can
be excluded from” having made the bite marks. “We said look, it's not him. And the prosecutors looked at it and they
said we gotta talk to Dr. Johnson and they came back and they said, no we stand by it. It's him. Where? how can you see that? But they did.” Fortunately, the bite marks weren’t the
only physical evidence in the case anymore. The same day Stinson was convicted, December
12th, 1985, a paper was published in the journal Nature reporting that DNA could be used in
forensics. “It is evidence that promises a breakthrough
future for law enforcement officials.” “These genetic fingerprints are a powerful
tool for solving mysterious crimes.” We know today that DNA is a powerful form
of evidence, but it’s worth digging into why that is. In our cells, there’s a small section where
a short DNA phrase gets repeated several times. We all have it in the same location, but the
number of repeats varies between people. I might have 9. You might have 15. We have instruments that can essentially count
the repeats by their size. And because we can count them, we can survey
a bunch of people to see how common each number is. So let’s say police find a DNA sample with
9 repeats. Well if 30% of people have 9 repeats, that’s
not very strong evidence. But scientists have identified more than 13
different locations on our DNA where we vary in these kinds of repeats. And we have two numbers for each location
because we inherit one from each parent. So maybe I have 9,9 at one location; 14,16
at another; 12,10 at a third, and so on. The more locations you add, the smaller the
number of people who could match. That’s what makes DNA so powerful: our samples
are unique, they distinguish us from each other. But it’s also quantifiable, so we can calculate
how much it distinguishes us. It comes with statistics. Compare that to fingerprints. We suspect they’re quite unique, but we
can’t calculate how unique because fingerprints lack the kind of universal structure that
the DNA molecule has. Instead of looking at a predetermined location
and counting up repeats, fingerprint examiners have to decide what’s notable about each
print. “And there are so many different permutations
so that makes it very difficult to say well this particular configuration is one in a
million or one in a quadrillion or whatever the way you could do with DNA.” Rsearchers have started figuring out what
to measure in a fingerprint to get useful statistics. But the other pattern-matching disciplines
are further behind. And with bite marks, it might not even be
worth trying. In 2010 the federal government gave L.T. Johnson
a $700,000 research grant to make bitemark analysis more scientific, using statistics. His team borrowed live pigs and made bite
marks in their skin with dental models. They used software to measure the bite marks
for tooth width, angle, and spacing. And when those measurements were used to guess
the source teeth, they identified the correct dental model only
2% of the time. Even in these controlled conditions, skin
did not reliably record the dimensions of teeth. But that was already becoming painfully clear. "Wrongly convicted." "Wrongfully convicted." "Wrongfully convicted
of rape."" He spent more than 10 years in prison before DNA evidence identified the real killer." "The science in this case was just plain wrong." "Bite mark analysis is now being questioned
nationwide." As DNA testing began overturning bite mark
convictions around the country, the Wisconsin Crime Lab was analyzing the
bra and shirt that the victim in Stinson’s case was wearing when she was killed. The male DNA they found on several areas on
her clothing didn’t match Stinson’s DNA. He was excluded as the source again, and again,
and again. By 2008, a full DNA profile was developed
from the blue v-neck pullover and entered into a DNA databank. Two more years would pass before it yielded
a match. But in the meantime, the District Attorney’s
office finally agreed that Stinson’s conviction should be vacated. And he was released from prison on January
30, 2009. “I remember the scene of when we walked
him out. There was media there.” "It was an emotional day for Robert Stinson
and his entire family.” “Well it was very powerful when we saw Robert
Lee Stinson walk out of this prison this morning.” “And we stood outside the prison gates and
they opened up a sliding chain link gate and it was a it was actually a rather subdued,
almost melancholy moment where his sister greeted him with a deep hug.” “Finally justice is done. But at what cost?” "I can't explain it. I can't explain this. It's been a long ride for me. And I'm finally out and I'm going to enjoy my
life now." “I think the lesson we have and this is
I think regrettable, is that no matter how careful you are, how cautious you are, how
objective you think you are in these cases, you can still be wrong.” “I felt bad. I felt bad. You know, all I can say is you know to this
case and I think it's the only wrongful conviction that I know of that I presided over, I'm just
grateful we don't have a death penalty.” The year Stinson was exonerated, the National
Academy of Sciences released a report that rocked the field of forensic science. “That report was big. It had huge ripple effects throughout the
community.” “What it did was really to explode the problem
and to say to the world we have a serious issue here.” It found that “no scientific studies”
supported bite mark identification. And the problem was bigger than that: it said
“a number of forensic science disciplines” were lacking basic research. “It mostly said you need more science in
forensic science. Unfortunately it was received somewhat defensively
by the forensic science community and I think that slowed down our ability to respond to
it, to learn from it, to grow from it.” The report recommended the creation of a new
federal agency to direct and fund forensic science research, and serve as a scientific
authority for the criminal justice system. “And so when you come into court there would
be a bible of this information and the prosecutors would have to work with that, and defense
attorneys would have it available to them, and juries would be instructed accordingly.” But Congress never created the new agency. And by 2016, an Obama administration report
still found few studies that were appropriately designed to assess validity. Only the fingerprints and firearms fields
had begun to properly measure how accurate their examiners are. Academic researchers haven’t really taken
an interest in running these studies. And even if they did, they’d need access
to forensic examiners and lots of test samples. And in the crime labs, they don’t necessarily
have the resources or incentives to participate. “You don't have to talk to very many lab
directors to find out that they are overburdened and they're undermanned. You don't really have the freedom to say hey
I think I'll take a third of my people and conduct some error rate studies.” “Our problem now is just trying to get the
studies done.” Without some permanent infrastructure to continually
examine the accuracy of the forensic sciences, we can’t be sure that a case like Robert
Lee Stinson’s won’t happen again. “The detectives that picked you up yesterday. Did they tell you what this was about? Why you’re here? About a homicide. Do you what DNA is?” A year after Stinson’s release, the DNA
from the victim’s blue v-neck pullover finally solved the crime. “They got a cold hit, that is they weren't
looking for anybody in particular they just ran the profile through the database and it
hit.” His name was Moses Price Jr., and he wasn’t
a suspect in the original police investigation. Around the same time that Stinson was arrested,
Price pled guilty to two armed robbery charges. He’d also been accused of rape. And in 1991, as Stinson sat in prison, Price
beat a man to death and set his house on fire. “Your DNA wasn’t taken until just recently. It matched to DNA on her body, and I’m hoping
that you’ll explain what happened here.” When the DNA match prompted police to question
him, Price confessed. He said he remembered following a woman one
night in November 1984. He was drinking and said he blacked out. “All I know is when I came to, I was on
top of her.” Price said if he’d known Stinson had been
convicted for the murder, he would have stepped up a long time ago. “You never heard that anyone had been arrested
on it? “No.” “He spent, you know, since 1985 in prison.” “What would you want to say to him, Moses? “I’m sorry.” Thank you for watching False Positive. If you have any questions about this story
or how we made this series, I'll be doing a live Q&A for our Video Lab members— that's
our paid membership program. It'll be Thursday, February 7th at 5PM Eastern
and it'll be moderated by my colleague Johnny Harris, who you may know from our Borders series. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments
below and if you can't make it to the live stream, don't worry, all members will still
be able to access the Q&A after the fact. Thanks. Everyone in this photo died soon after it
was taken. These are British explorers standing at the
South Pole in January 1912. The photo marks the finish line of a race
into the unknown. Two teams, one British, one Norwegian, trekked
900 miles into brutal territory and had to get back to safety before winter hit. And at first glance, this looks like a victory
photo for the British. Except that is the Norwegian flag. And it only gets worse from here. Robert Falcon Scott was a meticulous planner. And his dream was to be the first person to
reach the South Pole. He and his English team of explorers and scientists
had been conducting research in Antarctica and collected years of data on seasonal cycles
on the continent. These lines show what they estimated average
temperatures would be throughout the year, with summer ranging from around 30 to negative
10 degrees Fahrenheit, and huge drops beginning around April. Remember this chart because later, it will
help us understand Scott’s decision-making. Scott planned to use pony transport for the
first 425 miles across the Ross Ice Shelf, shoot them at the base of the Beardmore Glacier,
and finish the rest of the journey on foot. Which included a 125-mile hike across the
top of the glacier, 350 more miles to the pole, and all the way back again, all while
hauling hundreds of pounds of equipment. Using ponies and brute strength made sense
to Scott at the time: British explorers had used this method to
haul equipment during an earlier attempt on the South Pole. Plus, the English didn’t have experience
with the other good option: dog teams. And they believed man-hauling was the surest
way to make the tricky climb up the glacier and on to the Polar Plateau, where the South
Pole sits. It was hard, slow work, but the route they
were on had reached the plateau before, and it seemed to be worth the effort. But Scott’s team wasn’t alone. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was camped
nearby. And he wanted to get to the pole first. The Norwegian team, all of them expert skiers,
knew how to travel in cold conditions. And to make matters worse for the English,
Amundsen had dogs — and he knew how to use them. News of the Norwegians’ last-minute bid
worried Scott, but he was still optimistic. Amundsen had started about 60 miles closer
to the pole but was taking a route not yet proven to be passable. Coming against an unknown obstacle or falling into an unmarked crevasse could end his attempt prematurely. But that’s not how it happened. By the time Scott reached his goal, Amundsen’s
flag was there waiting for him. The Norwegians and their dogs had comfortably
reached the pole five weeks earlier and were almost back to their starting point
by the time the English arrived. Scott and his team were heartbroken. They took this photo outside of Amundsen’s
tent the day they started their long journey back. Scott wrote: Left a note to say I had visited the tent
with companions. Bowers photographing and Wilson sketching. We have turned our back now on the goal of
our ambition and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging — and good-bye to most of
the daydreams! This is where the trouble really begins. It’s mid-January in this photo — still the height of the Antarctic summer. Told you this chart was coming back. According to their research, the team had
about 3 months left before temperatures on the Ross Ice Shelf, the last leg of the journey
back, would drop to deadly levels. That left plenty of time to make the long
trek on foot. But this isn’t what happened in 1912. This is that average line again, and these
are the temperatures Scott’s party endured that summer: consecutive days of temperatures
around minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Those conditions, at prolonged exposure, are
not survivable. The first man died here — he collapsed and
soon went comatose following several falls on the glacier. The next man died about a month later, after
crippling frostbite in his hands and feet began hurting the team’s progress and their
chances of survival. Nearly unable to walk, he left the tent and
sacrificed himself to a snowstorm. The last three, including Scott, made it here
before getting trapped in their tent by a blizzard, just 11 miles from the supply depot that would
have saved their lives. The tent, along with the bodies, journals,
and photographs, was found 8 months later by a search team. As time went on, Scott’s legacy vacillated
between fearless explorer and bumbling fool who tried to take ponies into the Antarctic. But the thing is his plan should have worked. Measurements from modern weather stations
along his route show the predictions he was relying on were impressively accurate. What Scott couldn’t have known is that 1912
was an anomaly — the temperatures his party suffered through occur roughly once every
15 years, turning an already risky venture into a hopeless one. The photo they took outside of Amundsen’s
tent was meant to be a gentlemanly admission of defeat at the end of a long race. But instead, it was the starting line of a
race they didn't see coming — a desperate attempt to escape from the coldest place on
Earth. Darkroom is a new series I’m working on
where each episode tells a story based around a single photograph. Here’s a quick look at some upcoming episodes. And you should also check out our new YouTube
membership program, the Video Lab. For a monthly fee, subscribers get access
to tons of special features. I’ll be sharing stuff there that I come
across while making Darkroom, so if you’re interested, head on over to Vox.com/join and
sign up. See you there. Let’s go back in time. ‘We’ve gone from main engine start, we
have main engine start.” This was the future of cars in 1981, and when
the DeLorean DMC-12 began production with gull-wing doors, gullwing as in gulls. Gullwing doors,
doors in unpainted stainless steel panels, because paint is for cars that could never
convincingly play a time machine, the future looked pretty great from every angle. And then on October 19, 1982, that timeline
ended. I’ve got a spoiler: this is not a DeLorean. So, like a lot of people, I first heard about
the DeLorean from Back to the Future. And this fictional version of the car was wildly
popular. But then you find out that the real DeLorean
failed less than two years after production began. How does that happen? Somehow it is still such a popular car that
DeLorean clubs meet around the world just to talk about how great it is. I have a green light. The DeLorean story goes from Hill Valley in
1955, to Margaret Thatcher’s parliament, to war-torn Belfast, Ireland, to a very rainy
parking lot near Washington, DC. That story goes a ton of places, even where
I’m driving right now in this resoundingly mediocre vehicle. When you get into this story, it turns out
that the DeLorean really is a time machine. “Are you, are you in it right now?” “I am in it right now, lemme see if I can
flip the camera around. Right? I can do that, right? This entire car is 100% original. I like the DMC logo up there, that’s one
thing that’s unique. The door ajar light has the gull wing on it.” “You have to brag about the gullwing door
in the door ajar light.” The DeLorean’s many quirks are a collection
of design choices and manufacturing irregularities. Legendary Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro
created the design in 1974 and refined it through 1978. Early brainstorms for a mid-engine became
a rear engine, and the stainless panels were smoothed out a bit. Lotus, via legendary racer and engineer Colin
Chapman, provided the car’s engineering. The engine was a Renault V6. The gullwing doors were in the legacy of cars
like the Bricklin, a failed gullwing indie car, as well as gullwings by Mercedes. Those gullwing doors required unusual adaptations,
like a cryogenically twisted torsion bar and tiny windows - called tollbooth windows,
because they were just large enough to pay a toll. But it actually wasn’t hard to get in and
out of those gullwing doors. “Anybody watching this can see it on my
YouTube channel, it’s just Geek Therapy Radio. And the myth is that gullwing doors, you can’t
park in any parking lot because if someone parks too close to you, you’re trapped. Doors, as you see, hinge in the roof. So the doors go up more than they go out.” “Rejoice! Rejoice!” DeLorean fans are always debating about the
car’s quality. If you say the engine is underpowered, they’ll
say, well it wasn’t that underpowered for cars of the time. If you say it was heavy, they’ll say, ah
well, look at these Porsches, they were actually heavier or the same weight. So the arguing? It’s a rite of passage if you are a DeLorean
owner. “These guys are all awesome.” “Rejoice!” “Everytime I see someone post a picture
of a DeLorean on Reddit, you go into the comments, and it’s usually people posting misinformation,
other people ragging on the car for whatever reason, and then of course you get like one
or two people, usually - sometimes me - who then start attacking, going no, here’s the
real history, and it’s like, we’re arguing on the internet, who cares?” “And it’s Reddit!” “Right, and it’s Reddit. You like the car, you don’t like the car
you don’t like the car, BFD.” So, whatever you think of the car, the DeLorean’s
design was improbable. But its creation? That, that was almost impossible. “I remember having a conversation with John
once when we were walking around the plant. I said to him, you know, what is it about
the car, John, that is sacrosanct to you? He said, well, there are three things: stainless
steel, gullwing doors, rear engine. You can do what you like with anything else. My name’s Barrie Wills. I was actually the first employee hired out
of the UK car industry into DeLorean. I’d read about John, of course. He oozed charisma, he was charming, he was
smart, and above all, he demonstrated a thorough
knowledge of the auto industry.” We are here. It’s a liquor store. Cutty Sark Whiskey — the whiskey with a
boat. I have this whiskey because John Z. DeLorean
and his car were used in this ad to help sell it. He was that glamorous already. John DeLorean was a superstar. He started as an engineer. This 1958 patent - one of many - was for a
slip drive transmission that he designed. But he found bigger roles. In 1964, he was considered instrumental in
creating the Pontiac GTO. The car was young, and cool. It remade Pontiac’s reputation and made
a reputation for John DeLorean. And by the 70s, he was in line to be President
of General Motors. Being President of GM at that time was like
being next in line to be king. Here’s a bump. But DeLorean was chafing at it. He thought it was too corrupt and he thought
they were too square. He was a celebrity and he was a rebel. So he quit. But he had stayed long enough to make a reputation
for himself. This is him in 1974, a year after he quit
GM (critics, of course, said that he was fired). Long hair, cool shirt, a new look. He said he had surgery due to either an injury
or a jawbone impact correction. Critics said was a makeover, the same way
he madeover Pontiac. He also married his third wife, the internationally
famous Cristina Ferrare, who he said he’d literally first seen in the pages of Vogue. He was the celebrity maverick who fired GM. And that gave him the mystique to take them
on. Hope you’re enjoying that authentic turn
signal sound. I’ve actually composed a song for later
in this video. For when we hit our deepest emotional depth. It’s a sad song. I’m going to play it later. The new DeLorean Motor Company had glamorous
investors like The Tonight Show’s Johnny Carson as well as a unique plan to get investments
from car dealers. “This is a presentation of the DeLorean
Motor Company. Our requirements are one: the dealer or his
dealer associates must own $25,000 in DeLorean motor company common stock.” But a brand new factory and car required north
of $100 million in investment. That meant government cash. There were a few potential timelines. Early flirtations with a Saudi Arabian investor
and the state of Pennsylvania fizzled. A plan with Puerto Rico got further, offering
a package close to $60 million if DeLorean raised $25 million first (and spent it first). But Northern Ireland, and therefore the UK,
eventually paid up around $120 million, depending how you split loans, grants, and guarantees. The location of the factory? It was difficult. “It was 72 acres of...there were cattle
on it. Half a mountain had to be relocated from outside
Belfast to put enough footings onto the site to construct the buildings. Put the steel framework up, apart from the
fact that two streams had to be diverted.” This was with an insanely fast 18 month time
frame and an even more unstable political environment. All this was during “The Troubles,” the
violent sectarian conflict in which Northern Ireland was fighting over whether they should be part of the Republic of
Ireland or the UK. And this is why DeLorean got the money. The British government wanted to add stability
and jobs to a violent, unemployment-plagued region. Barrie Wills says that it actually didn’t
impact production that much, but riots did spill into the factory, and they
had to consider stuff like hunger strikes in their production timeline. “As each hunger striker died, the Catholic,
Republican workforce, would be called out for a day of mourning. The director of personnel was given a program
by the Northern Ireland office of the likely death days of the hunger strikers so that
we could plan ahead. Like, terrible.” Any other company would have let off the gas
in this situation, but DeLorean did not have a choice. They were shipping 1,800 cars in October of
1981. They had to keep up with their funding obligations. Hire a large workforce, pay bonuses, make royalty
payments. It was a lot. They pulled it all off really quickly. This DeLorean Motor Company infomercial shows
the factory at work. But they needed constant cash to keep this
going - from car sales or the British government. They needed perfection, but they got reality
instead. Though the company had turned a slight profit
by some measures, there were also almost 5,000 unsold cars by January of 1982. They were very pricey at $25,000, and they’d
gotten a bad reputation. A 2,000 car recall and performance issues
in the first batch didn’t help. “The first cars that were shipped out to
the states were not good cars. We were under immense pressure. The government had made it clear that we weren’t
going to get anymore money.” By February, 1982, DMC was in receivership
- basically a forced bankruptcy. By May, production stopped. DeLorean had dipped back for money before,
and the UK, led by conservative Margaret Thatcher, didn’t want to give more money to an American
company. Rumors of fishy corporate structures, credible
accusations of fraud, and possible millions in diverted money didn’t help make the sale. So all that had to have made it harder to
raise cash in those last ditch efforts. Now DeLorean fans, they will tell you that
the company failed because of the recession, and bad weather, and exchange rates, and they
have a really good point — all that stuff hurt the company. But it might not have doomed the company had
it not taken on so much risk, again and again. All those bets? Eventually DeLorean was going to lose one
of them. And that was all before the flashiest scandal
of all happened. In autumn, DeLorean was arrested for trying
to raise money in an unusual way - agreeing to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine. “It was horrific. I was told the night before that we all believed
that John was raising the money. We didn’t know where it was coming from. I got a call hours before John’s arrest,
to say, bring the workforce together tomorrow, I’m sorry Barrie, it’s all over, it’s liquidation.” DeLorean was eventually acquitted because
of entrapment. He was never convicted of smuggling or fraud. So you have to make a judgment call. When you see this man, do you see a genius? Or an actor, playing a part? Maybe he was both. John Z. DeLorean, why did
your car have to die? But your dream lives on. Let me show you why. Alright, so if you don’t know what Big Lots
is, it got its store as an overstock store. Bargain bin place. And when DeLorean went bankrupt, the parent
company of Big Lots actually bought all the DeLorean parts. We’re talking like, the literal stainless
steel panels. And all those parts went into a warehouse. It looked like the end of the DeLorean story. And then a movie came out. What is the comment you get over and over
again? “This is what makes time travel possible.” “After the movie, it was all about the flux
capacitor.” “Flux capacitor.” “Flux capacitor.” “Where’s the flux capacitor? You know after a while you just get worn down
and have to make a flux capacitor.” “Flux capacitor.” “Flux capacitor.” “Flux capacitor.” “Flux cap-”
“McFly! McFly or Back to the Future. But usually it’s the McFly.” The car in the movie? It was a fantasy. It had to go 88 miles to travel in time, and
the original DeLorean speedometer doesn’t go that high. They had to modify it for the movie. But little differences like that didn’t
stop the DeLorean from becoming a time machine. After the movie, two communities developed
in the vacuum left by DeLorean Motor Company’s failure. Today, there’s a strong international roster
of companies able to service DeLoreans and supply factory original parts, even though
they weren’t a part of the original company. And there are also clubs around the world
where owners can support each other. “Right now I’m the president of the DeLorean
Midatlantic club. We have about 80 members in the club right now. We do events 4 times a year.” One of Tiffany’s first events was a DeLorean
MidAtlantic pigrimage to John Z. DeLorean’s mansion. But club events aren’t just about the past. They’ve made the car a platform for creativity. It’s a stainless steel Lego set. “Everybody has their level of modifications
they like. For my own car I’ve actually done custom
reupholstered seats. I’ve upgraded the exhaust to stainless steel
exhaust that’s been from DeLorean Go in Europe. It sounds great.” “So at this point I’ve done fuel lines,
the alternator, fuses and relays, radiator fans, the entire suspension at this point’s
been upgraded. The car’s been lowered, new tires.” “We will share parts with each other. Like if someone’s working on something and
we need something, I have extra DeLorean parts. So it’s kinda neat knowing that you have
part of your car in someone else’s, living on.” “I made it and did all the programming and
developed all the software and put it in my car." This runs everything on the car. It gets data to the digital dash. “I mean, as most owners will tell you it’s
never over. Well I of course had to upgrade that. That’s Lightning McQueen. He’s in for an overhaul. I doubled the voltage on and that’ll be
ready for the spring.” There’s one clip in particular I really
like. It’s of the Tri-State DeLorean club and
they’re taking a picture with all their cars. Now look at them, look at how they rush to
get out of the way. They are happy to give up the spotlight in
a way that John Z. DeLorean never could. This car succeeded because it inspired people. Let’s end this video in the right car. “Perfect.” “All those people there, the thing that
brings us together is this car, but they’re all really great people and I consider them
all friends. It’s a good thing. I’ve reached the point in my life now where
I really have to choose where I’m going to spend my time and the type of people I’m
gonna be around. You’ve got to be really careful where you
spend your time. You don’t want to waste it.” So thank you for riding with me today. If you want to check out a Cars and Coffee
like the one I went to in the video, there might be one in your area, and there’s a
lot of cool cars that people share there. Thank you also to the Tri-State DeLorean Club
for letting me tag along. They were all awesome and incredibly nice. Thank you to Barrie Wills for sharing with
me his stories. They’re detailed further in his book about
his career with DeLorean. Finally, in our membership program the Video
Lab, I am reviewing five or six of the top DeLorean books which I read for this piece
and letting you know which you should check out and which ones you can go ahead and skip. It was 1985 and Robert Lee Stinson was on
trial for the murder of his neighbor. “She was the 63-year old widow found dead
near the corner of 7th and Center streets. The crucial evidence in this case is bite
marks found on the body of the victim.” Two forensic dentists said the bite marks
matched Stinson’s teeth, but there were some puzzling discrepancies. They claimed Stinson’s broken tooth made
this mark even though there was no mark for the adjacent, full-size tooth. And when they were called to testify in court,
nobody asked them about that. “The bites had to have been inflicted by
dentition identical to Mr. Stinson's.” Stinson’s trial was a test of whether
our criminal justice system was capable of detecting unreliable forensic
science. And with the future and freedom of a young
man on the line, the result was an absolute, system-wide failure. The US has an adversarial judicial system where
the judge presides over a trial but isn't responsible for uncovering the truth. Instead, it's up to the opposing lawyers to present
evidence and witnesses that support their version of events. “Ultimately the theory is of course that through this
conflict of ideas and interpretations the truth will emerge.” But from the start, Stinson could tell he
wasn’t entering a fair fight. He prepared a letter asking for a replacement
for his lawyer, who “only took his case two weeks” before trial. “Your Honor, I’m facing life for something
I did not commit,” he wrote. The judge denied his request, which came in
the middle of the trial, and she also denied his lawyer’s motion
to exclude the bitemark evidence. She said “there are adequate standards and
controls in the area of forensic odontology.” “It is a recognized area of science.” "Frankly at the time it was not a close
decision for me. Even though it was unique testimony, I didn't
have anything in front of me that indicated that it was not reliable and it certainly
was helpful to the jury, I think, and relevant to the issues and so I admitted the evidence." At the time, Wisconsin only required that
forensic testimony be relevant and helpful to the jury. Judges weren’t required to assess its reliability. “You have an older woman who's been raped
and murdered and we've got an expert who's saying we know who did it. If the judge excluded that evidence he
would gone free. And it would have been a legal stretch for
her to do that given the state of the law and the precedent at the time." As the appeals court would point out in a
footnote, by the time of Stinson’s trial, bitemark evidence had been accepted in 19
jurisdictions and rejected by none. The court in Stinson’s case was no different,
and the bitemark evidence went before the jury. The first thing that happens when forensic
experts take the stand is that they’re prompted to list their credentials, to show that they’re
qualified. “That makes sense from a certain perspective. But there's also a danger that the jury misunderstands
the power of that experience.” “Dr. Johnson seemed to make sense to me
when he testified. He certainly was qualified, being a professor at the university
in the dental school." “Here you have this very learned dentist who has no reason to lie who comes
in and tells you this is rock solid science. How is the jury to decide he must be wrong? That's extremely compelling.” Dr. L.T. Johnson walked the jury through the
evidence. He even brought models of Stinson’s lower
teeth and one of the bite marks so he could show how they matched. He concluded his testimony by saying the bite
marks “would have to have been made by Robert Lee Stinson. The second dentist, Raymond Rawson, testified
that “there was no question that
there was a match to a reasonable scientific certainty." Stinson’s lawyer did try to get a defense
expert of his own, but that expert was never called to counter the prosecution’s dentists
in court, because after he examined the evidence, he agreed with them. Instead of two sides battling it out before
the jury, there was one side with two experts making false statements about the science,
and one side with no experts at all. During Stinson’s trial, the prosecution
and defense would ask the two bitemark experts a combined 240 questions. But they didn’t ask the most important one. “The real question that we should be asking
is what is the evidence that shows us that people in this field reach accurate results? It's not rocket science.” Forensic scientists can have protocols and guidelines,
use well-accepted tools and technology, but we won’t know if their methods are actually
reliable until we have what’s called an “error rate study.” You take a bunch of bite mark examiners,
give them samples of bite marks and then measure how often they make a correct identification. To this day, nobody has ever conducted a proper
error rate study for bite mark analysis. “And there's really no incentive to do any
research, because courts admit it. If courts stopped admitting it they would
do the research, right, because they want it to be introduced at trial.” Studies that have been done with human cadavers
show that there’s a lot of distortion when bite marks are made in skin, even in a laboratory
setting. The same set of teeth will make marks of different
sizes and shapes depending on the skin type, the amount of force, and the orientation of
the bite. Missing teeth can look like they’re there. Teeth that are there can look like they’re
missing. One study conducted by forensic dentists found
an unsatisfactory level of agreement among examiners on whether a given injury was even
a human bitemark. But during Stinson’s trial, Dr. Johnson
told the jury that there was “no margin for error" in this case. And then Stinson took the stand. He said he was at a party until about 12:30. Went home, and then later went back out, to
go to the store with a friend. He said as they walked behind his house, he
heard footsteps and shushing coming from the back of the alley. But when Stinson first spoke to the police
three days after the murder, he had only told them he went home after the party and went
to bed. As the prosecutor pointed out at the trial,
he had changed his story. “It's my experience that the jury looks a
lot at those alibis and if somebody is lying for no other reason then perhaps trying to
get out of something, that is pretty heavy evidence." After a three-day trial, and less than two
hours of deliberation, the jury found Stinson guilty of first degree murder. And he was sentenced to life in prison. On appeal, Stinson challenged the admissibility
of the expert testimony in his trial. But the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed
his conviction. They were impressed by the dentist's elaborate methods. "Doctor Johnson used an ' Acrylic ring.' 'Special camera.' 'Three dimensional indentations.' 'Overlay technique.' '75 individual tooth marks.' They actually claimed "the reliability of the bite mark evidence in this case was
sufficient to exclude to a moral certainty every reasonable hypothesis of innocence." “It's so absurd. Tarot card readers have a very complex ancient
methodology. It doesn't mean that they can tell your fortune.” And with that ruling, Stinson became the precedent-setting for bite mark evidence in Wisconsin. Seven years later, the US Supreme Court issued
a decision -- the Daubert ruling -- which should have changed the entire landscape for
forensic science. It said that trial judges must assess whether
expert testimony is based on reasoning or methodology that is “scientifically valid.” Daubert talks about reliability, validity,
empirical data, error rates, peer review. It has all the good stuff and scientists would
look at it and feel their hearts would patter, they'd be cheered, because it says all the
right words. But the problem with that is it also says
it's a flexible standard. The Daubert ruling gave judges a new “gatekeeping
role,” but at the same time, it said that “vigorous cross-examination and presentation
of contrary evidence” is still an “appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible
evidence." So even though judges are supposed to evaluate
expert testimony, they can still choose to offload that responsibility. “They don't want to be responsible for letting
the killer go free because they excluded the evidence." After all, the system has always relied on
the attorneys to cross-examine witnesses they disagree with and present contrary evidence. “Public defenders are by and large overwhelmed
and often don't have the funding to hire their own independent experts. I mean but they shouldn't have to. We shouldn't have to be defending against
unreliable scientific evidence.” And ultimately, it’s up to the jury to decide
what they believe. “I mean the instructions are very clear
that the jury does not have to give any further weight to an expert than any other witness. What kind of weight they want to give to them
is totally up to them.” But the jury doesn’t have basic information
about the error rates of forensic methods like bite mark analysis. Those studies don’t exist — in part because
judges have never required them. “I don't think there is evil intent anywhere
in this circle. It's a collection of institutional
participants sometimes taking the easy way out." “Nothing is suitable in our existing
system for making the scientific determination that this evidence is questionable. And here's what juries
and judges ought to know about it. It's not happening.” As Robert Lee Stinson began his life sentence,
the evidence in the case was boxed up and locked away. That included the blue pullover shirt the
victim was wearing when she was killed. It was a crucial piece of evidence, but nobody
knew that yet. And it would be 24 years before the true killer
was found. It's 2015 and the world's most powerful drug
trafficker, El Chapo, is about to escape from prison. Did you see it? Right now. He's gone. "One of the world's richest, most notorious
drug kingpins broke out of prison." "Former cartel leader is considered one of
the most dangerous drug traffickers in the world." Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as "El
Chapo", broke out of his cell by crawling out of a hole in the shower. The escape of Chapo Guzman translates into
two things: More violence for Mexico and more drugs coming into the United States. El Chapo was the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a murderous criminal organization
that has killed thousands during Mexico's violent drug wars. Their methods are brutal. But violence isn't what makes El Chapo different
from other traffickers. Instead, his legacy has been shaped by two
abilities: transporting more drugs across the border than anyone else and always finding
a way to escape authorities. That was, until now. After being captured again in Mexico, El Chapo
is standing trial in the United States. It's the latest chapter for the world's most
powerful drug trafficker and to understand how El Chapo got here, it helps to look at
a single innovation, the one tool that El Chapo used to transform the drug trade is
the same tool that made him its most elusive target: tunnels. "Tunnels." "Tunnels." "Tunnels." "Through a tunnel." "Used by El Chapo." "Tunnel King." "Master of tunnels." [Spanish]: "The king of tunnels." "Prince of tunnels." "It's a magnificent feat of architecture and
engineering." "Being used to smuggle drugs." "And it's like looking for a needle in a haystack." "There's not really any form of technology
right now that can discover these tunnels being built." "The tunnel. Look at this." In 1990, federal agents in Douglas, Arizona,
found something new: a sophisticated drug tunnel from the US to Mexico. And when investigators got inside it, they
were amazed by what they saw. The tunnel was 300 feet long and lit by an
electrical system running along the wall. At one end, a lever raised a hydraulic lift
that opened an entrance in the safehouse floor. One agent said it was "like something out
of a James Bond movie." In fact, it had been built by an architect
working for El Chapo. And agents didn't know it yet, but this was
their first sign of a major shift in the US drug trade. In the 1980s, US drug traffic had been dominated
by cocaine coming through the Caribbean, but during the next two decades US forces led
a crackdown which changed the drug trade in two ways that put El Chapo in the right place
at the right time. First, drug traffic shifted to routes through
Mexico. Second, as national militaries worked with
the US to destroy crops in South America, traffickers focused on drugs they could grow
elsewhere. The coca plant is only grown in the Andes
mountains, but marijuana can be grown in Mexico, especially in mountain ranges along the western
coast. And the same is true for the opium poppy,
the raw ingredient processed to make heroin. For both crops, the densest region of cultivation
includes the state of Sinaloa, the home of El Chapo. El Chapo also had the ideal way to move those
drugs: unlike cocaine, which is odorless and can be tightly packed into a vehicle, marijuana
is bulky and has a strong smell. But by using his tunnels, El Chapo could get
massive amounts across the border quickly. By 2010, El Chapo had become the most powerful
trafficker in the country. And as the Sinaloa Cartel increased their
power, their territory expanded to include the entire Western half of the US border. As their control spread west, one particular
area became crucial to their operation: a suburb of San Diego called Otay Mesa. There are three reasons why they chose Otay
Mesa, and understanding them gives you a sense of how sophisticated El Chapo's operation
really was. First, it is near two major transportation
hubs, Tijuana and San Diego, so drugs can quickly get to the border and out to dealers
on the other side. Second, it’s an industrial area across the
border from Tijuana’s airport, meaning there’s a steady stream of noise and traffic that
make it easy to go undetected. The third reason, is the soil. To the west is ocean, where the ground is
too damp, And to the East the earth rises to become
hard mountainous rock. Otay Mesa is located in between, and soil
maps show a geological sweet spot where the soil is soft enough to dig by hand, but strong
enough to support a tunnel. “Yeah, this is the stair system. it's about a 70 foot drop." In November 2010, agents found a tunnel in Otay Mesa built by the Sinaloa Cartel. Inside, electricity powered lighting and a
ventilation system. Along the floor, a rail system allowed workers
to remove rubble during construction and then transport drugs once they started using it. Over the next few years, agents found more
massive tunnels. Tunnels like these can take several months
and millions of dollars to build, but they’re worth it. The tunnels are so big that traffickers can
move multiple tons of drugs at once, As the Sinaloa Cartel continued building in
Otay Mesa, their tunnels got more impressive, like building an entrance for one beneath
a bathroom floor. El Chapo’s tunnels are dug so deep that
ground penetrating radar can’t detect them And at ground level, the entrances are hidden
in clever ways. But El Chapo wasn’t only building tunnels
to smuggle drugs across the border. In 2014, authorities raided his safehouse
in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan, but El Chapo escaped by fleeing through a tunnel
hidden beneath his bathtub. A few days later, authorities tracked him
down in Mazatlan, where El Chapo was captured
and sent to Altiplano maximum security prison. A year later, he was gone. This was the largest tunnel ever built by
the Sinaloa Cartel. It stretched nearly a mile, to a farmhouse
in a nearby field.. A year before, that field had been empty. Beneath a hole in the floor,
authorities found a motorcycle that El Chapo had used to cruise through the tunnel in less
than ten minutes. In Sinaloa, El Chapo’s supporters celebrated
the spectacular escape. But his freedom was short lived. A few months later, authorities broke into
his hideout in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was arrested after a bloody gun battle. He escaped through a tunnel hidden behind
his mirror that led into the sewer, but authorities caught him a few hours later
when he crawled out of a manhole and tried to flee town. This time he was extradited to the US,
where he is on trial in New York City. Authorities are so serious about security
that they shut down the Brooklyn Bridge when El Chapo is moved from his Manhattan jail
cell to the court house. But even as he sits in jail, El Chapo’s legacy lives on. In 2018, two major tunnels were discovered along the US border. In Arizona, one stretched across from Mexico
to the back of an abandoned KFC. And in California, authorities found an unfinished
tunnel that had been equipped with electricity and ventilation systems that run on solar
power. Another piece of his legacy also continues. In 2018, drug violence contributed to more
people being murdered in Mexico than ever before. But as aspiring kingpins add to the violence
in Mexico, El Chapo is back in his cell. At least, for now. Thanks for watching. If you haven't already heard, we've launched a paid membership program called the Video Lab. It's a great way to support our journalism and if you want to join, you can head over to vox.com/join. Take a look at these meetings of world leaders
from the past ten years and you’ll likely notice one figure. This is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one
of the most influential leaders of Europe. Her leadership spans 13 years and four terms. In that span, she became one of the most powerful
women in the world. But she recently stepped down as leader of
her party and she won’t be running for re-election. By 2021, not only will Germany lose one of
its longest-serving leaders — so will Europe. Merkel has dominated European politics for decades. So how did Angela Merkel become so powerful
and what does her exit mean for Europe? The Berlin Wall divided Germany’s capital
in half for almost 3 decades. This side was part of the prosperous and democratic
West Germany. And the other side was the impoverished communist
East Germany - a satellite state of the Soviet Union. But when the Wall fell in 1989, the East unified
with the West. And Germany quickly became one of the largest
and most populous countries in Europe. This is when Angela Merkel entered politics. She was elected to be a member of the new
parliament in 1990, but rapidly rose through the ranks. By ‘94 she was Minister of the Environment. And by 2000 she was head of her political
party, the CDU. While Merkel became more important in Germany,
reunited Germany became more important in Europe. It became a leader in the European Union. There were open borders between EU member
countries, to let people and trade pass through freely. And Germany led the effort to create the “Eurozone”
where 11 EU countries adopted the Euro as a common currency in 1999. These policies made EU countries more dependent
on each other. And in the early 2000s, the EU increasingly
looked to Germany, one of its most powerful economies, to be its leader. Starting in 2005, that leadership came
from Angela Merkel. Merkel was elected Germany’s Chancellor
and demonstrated a talent for building consensus. She engineered a “grand coalition” between
Germany’s biggest political parties from the right and the left. With this alliance behind her, Merkel solved
two of Germany’s biggest economic problems. She cut huge government spending and reduced
unemployment. Her ability to stabilize Germany's economy
became particularly important when the EU faced a crisis.: "This Eurozone crisis has gone from bad
to worse." “It is a high stakes game where the players
are world leaders and the wager is the world’s economy." The global economic recession in 2008 hit
Greece especially hard. The country inched towards bankruptcy and
its economic decline brought down the value of the Euro, which hurt everyone in the Eurozone. But Merkel’s Germany was weathering the
recession better than anyone in Europe. So it fell on Merkel to rescue Greece with
her economic strategy: She demanded Greece pass huge spending cuts in exchange for loans from the EU and the International Monetary Fund. These were deeply unpopular across Europe. Cutting Greece’s pensions and services were
harsh tactics. But Merkel’s priority was to retain the
integrity of the Eurozone and Greece’s debt threatened that union: Merkel eventually got the 16 Eurozone countries
to support her plan and kept the Eurozone together, cementing her role as the unparalleled
but controversial leader of Europe. Within Germany, Merkel’s popularity continued
to grow. Germans called her "Mutti," meaning
"mother," for taking care of their economy. She even earned her own emoji, -<>- representing
her trademark hand-gesture. And in 2013, she won her third term as Chancellor, but this term would turn out to be very different than the others. "The number of migrants coming in to Europe this year alone is now at more than 500,000." "Almost 900 people drowned as they attempted the crossing from Libya to the EU. "Some countries are greeting them with open arms. Others are setting up fences with barbed wire on top." In 2015, more than 1 million refugees fled
conflicts in Northern Africa and the Middle East and migrated to Europe. Merkel called on EU leaders to help take in
refugees. But several European nations pushed back,
as nationalist politicians in these countries
stoked anti-immigrant fears. This time, Merkel could not build a consensus. Migrants piled up in Europe’s southern countries,
causing a humanitarian crisis while undermining the solidarity of the EU. So Merkel acted alone. In 2015, Germany granted asylum to over 140
thousand migrants — more than any other European country. At first things went well. 33% of Germans said the country could take
on additional asylum-seekers. Many even met incoming trains carrying migrants
with support and supplies. But on New Year’s eve in 2015 the situation
changed. “A day after the allegations of mass sexual
assault were made public, Cologne continues to search for the perpetrators and for answers.” “The attackers are described as young men of Arab or
North African appearance.” A rash of sexual assaults and thefts changed
public opinion. After the attacks in Cologne, only 18% of
Germans felt the country could take in more asylees. And German public opinion reversed on Merkel too. A far-right party called the Alternative for
Germany or AfD, seized on the anti-immigrant sentiment among voters. 1.5 million voters who had previously backed Merkel’s
Grand Coalition in 2013, switched their support and voted for the AfD in 2017. Having lost support for her coalition government
in 2018, Merkel decided to step down as leader of her party, though she’ll remain Germany’s
Chancellor until her term ends in 2021. Merkel’s party recently elected Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, as its next leader. She’s a moderate Merkel ally who could
very well become Germany’s next Chancellor. But for the rest of Europe, Merkel's absence
could be more unsettling. Since the Eurozone and migrant crises, Europe
has seen nationalist political parties gain popularity in recent elections, threatening
the unity of the EU. And Merkel has gone from being a champion
of a united Europe to its last remaining strong defender. With Merkel stepping away, these nationalist
leaders could gain influence over the future of the European Union. And that’s something Merkel is very aware
of. So in this video, we touched briefly on the idea of a European identity. And if that's something you're interested in learning more about, you should check out this really great doc. called the "Story of Europe" on CuriosityStream. It walks you through the different chapters of European history. CuriosityStream is a subscription service that offers over 2,000 documentary and nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers. You can get unlimited access to CuriosityStream starting at $2.99 a month and because you're a Vox fan, the first 30 days are free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/vox and use promo code "Vox". At 6:45 in the morning of November 3, 1984,
a man walked into a police station on the North side of Milwaukee to report that he’d
found what appeared to be a body, lying in a lot near his home. That’s where police discovered 63-year-old
Ione Cychosz, wearing only “a pair of white socks and a left shoe.” Her blue shirt and bra were pulled up behind
her head, which was bloody and swollen. She’d been beaten to death and possibly raped. Neighbors described the victim as “a nice
woman.” She was known for collecting aluminum cans
and playing bingo at a Ukrainian church on Friday nights. That’s what she’d been doing the night
she was killed. "And she was let off after midnight by friends
who normally dropped her off after the bingo games. They observed her walk in front of her home
and those are the last people who saw her alive." One of the real challenging things about this
case among many was you had no eyewitnesses. You of course had no confession. You had no motive. This was before DNA profiling, before home
security cameras were common, there were no fingerprints on the knife they found nearby. But the killer did leave one clue: He bit her. “Investigators took 60 photographs of numerous
bite marks.” "The bite marks are being analyzed by a forensic
dental specialist.” Dr. L. Thomas Johnson, a dentist and professor
at Marquette University, examined the bite marks on the victim the day she was found. And he gave the cops a lead. He told the detectives look you are looking
for a guy with an abnormality in one of his upper teeth. So the cops began knocking on doors. Three days after the murder, the detectives
knocked on the door of Robert Lee Stinson, a quiet 20-year-old whose only criminal record
was a fine for shoplifting when he was younger. He lived with his mother and siblings in a
house right by the crime scene. Stinson told the police that on the night
of the murder, he came home from a party around 11:30, went to bed, and slept until morning. But what caught the attention of the police
was that Stinson had “an upper right front tooth missing.” That missing tooth made one of the detectives
believe they "got the guy". His partner later told the Milwaukee Sentinel
that they went back inside and told Stinson some jokes to get him laughing, to confirm
that there were those teeth. So the state had Stinson appear at a secret
hearing before a judge — called a “John Doe investigation” in Wisconsin — where
they could have Johnson, the dentist, check his teeth. The John Doe was the first time that I met
Mr. Stinson, but I'm looking at this kid who is very warm, very affable, very
cooperative. Everything in my gut, my experience, six years
in the DAs office in the sensitive Crimes Unit. No way. No way did this guy do this. He thought they would eliminate Stinson as
a suspect. But that's not what happened. Johnson looked into Stinson’s mouth for
20 seconds, the same amount of time it takes to read this: And then Johnson said Stinson’s teeth matched
a sketch that he and a police artist had made — a sketch of what the suspect’s teeth
would look like based on the bite marks. Nobody brought the drawing to the hearing but Johnson said “it resembles what I see
here.” Stinson’s mouth, he said, “certainly is
consistent with what I drew. It is remarkable.” And that was enough for the court to order
a full dental examination. But if they’d had the sketch in the room,
they would have seen that it said the suspect would be missing a lateral incisor. Stinson was missing a central incisor, his
right front tooth. But now the dentist was on the record saying
that they matched. The field of bite-mark analysis is one of
the so-called “pattern matching” disciplines in forensic science. Fingerprints are the best known example, but
the group also includes shoe prints, tire treads, handwriting, and bullet casings. We call them “forensic sciences” but they
developed independently of what we typically think of as the “science world”: the universities
and research hospitals, peer-reviewed journals, grant-funding organizations. Those institutions of basic research have
fed some forensic fields, but many others lack that foundation. You go up the street to the University of
Wisconsin and you look for the Department of fingerprints or the Department of shoe
impressions. It's not there. That’s because these fields mostly developed
in response to crime scenes and the obligation to study whatever bits of information they
contained. The examiners look at the samples closely,
and make a subjective assessment of how similar they are. You know, it's funny. when when people watch CSI or think about
forensic science they often think that it's very high tech and glossy and perfect and
often automated. And in the real world the pattern identification
sciences do not work like that. It's not that subjectivity makes it illegitimate
or necessarily incorrect. But we ought to know something about how accurate
it is. We ought to know something about how accurate
it is. For the criminal justice system, this is still
a new idea. So at the time of Stinson’s case, nobody
knew how accurate, or inaccurate, bitemark analysis was. The man who examined Stinson’s teeth, L.T.
Johnson, is a forensic odontologist. And bite mark evidence is just a part of what
they do. When we have tragedies, plane crashes or other
kinds of terrible events sometimes we use teeth that are found to help identify human
remains. And that's an important tool. And I believe quite an accurate one. “Rescue workers were there quickly but they
quickly learned there was no-one to rescue.” The same year he worked on Stinson’s case,
Johnson led a team identifying victims of a plane crash that killed 31 people. He would go on to help identify 11 decomposing
victims found in serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment. Forensic odontology had been an established
field for decades. But it was only in the 1970s that they decided
to go beyond identifying victims by their teeth and started identifying suspects by
bite marks. It began with a 1975 case, People versus Marx,
in California. Edgar Marx was accused of murdering his landlady
and leaving a bite mark in the cartilage of her nose. The bitemark evidence was deemed admissible
even though the appeals court conceded that there was “no established science” behind
it. And it became the germinal case. Because all of the precedent establishing
cases in high courts across the country cited back to Marx. Fast forward a few more years. Ted Bundy goes on trial and there's bite mark
evidence in the Ted Bundy case and it made a movie stars out of a couple of forensic
dentists. And bite mark evidence took off. This norm of precedent -- of conforming to
past decisions -- it exists for a reason. But it happens to be the opposite of how science
works. Precedent is really important in the judicial
system. we want constancy, predictability, and we
have a rule that like cases should be decided the same way. Science by contrast is inevitably and unavoidably
and always contingent, progressing, growing changing, shifting as new research tells us
new things and corrects past misunderstandings. The legal system is not really designed to
adapt to that. So a game of judicial telephone convinced
the courts that bite mark identification was an accepted area of science, when in fact,
it had never been tested. There is no science that we have seen to support
that. It's really quite astonishing. it's the one thing that gets truly agitated
because there's just no science to support it. A month after Johnson collected models and
photographs of Stinson’s teeth, he came back with  his final conclusion. “The teeth of Robert Lee Stinson would be
expected to produce bite patterns identical to those which I examined in this extensive
and exhaustive analysis.” He said the evidence was “overwhelming.” The sketch Johnson referenced at the prior
hearing? It was never mentioned again. He was showing me how you take this overlay
of the pictures of his teeth and you put it on the pictures of the bite wounds on Mrs.
Cychosz’s body and you kind of see how they align. And he did the same thing with the models. But I wasn’t completely convinced that I
could convince a jury based on what Dr. Johnson did that Mr. Stinson was guilty of an offense
like this. I said we need a second opinion on this case. Johnson recommend Raymond Rawson, who was
known as one of the leaders in the field. So the detectives flew to Las Vegas to deliver
the evidence. And they reported that Rawson “gave a verbal
confirmation of Johnson’s finding.” But he didn’t spend much time on it. According to a memo book that one of the detectives
kept and later published, Rawson met them at their hotel room at the Four Queens, “took
a look at the x-rays and the molds, and said that was good enough for him.” Five days later, Robert Lee Stinson was arrested
at his home. And we decided that been given a brutal horrific
crime like this, we now have two witnesses who are saying it's him. And matched against that is what, my gut level
feeling? And so we issued the charge. Yeah. "Here we go." "Let's go, let's go, come on." "If you don't mind, Mr. President, that this caravan wasn't an invasion." Get him, Jim.
Hit him with the truth. "Caravan was not an invasion, it's a group of migrants." "I consider it an invasion you and I have a difference of opinion." Oh snap, you gonna let that slide Jim? "Think you should let me run the country, you run CNN. If you did it well, your ratings would be much better." Ohhhh hell yeah — Okay, look. I know I should . be rooting for Jim Acosta here, the brave
journalists sticking it to the man asking tough questions day after day — "The president of the United States should not refer to us as 'the enemy of the people.' " — but to be honest these press conferences feel kind of performative, like I'm
watching professional wrestling or something. You've got your villains — "Our very great President Donald J. Trump ." "Hello, everybody." — you've got your trash-talking: "He made a joke, maybe
you guys should get a sense of humor and try it sometime." And you got your fighting — "I'm not finished. I'm not finished, fake news." So much fighting. [Numerous agitated exchanges] News networks have become obsessed with
these press conferences, airing them live like title fights in the middle of the
day. "Now all eyes are on the press briefing. We have Sarah Sanders starting
to speak now. Oh, do we? Okay, perfect." And recapping them once the chaos is over. "Okay so that
wraps up what is fair to say an epic briefing. We've got a whole team of
reporters and panelists that are ready to get to it with you." Don't get me wrong,
it's a lot of fun to watch. I have Jim Acosta's face tattooed on my butt just
like everyone else, but I can't remember the last time I learned something from
one of these. "Can you give us a question?" "I am not going to give you a question." "You are fake news." And it's got me wondering: do we care
about these things because they're important or because they put on a
really good? "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome: Donald Trump!" I could do this video in a typical
boring Strikethrough format, but this episode is about spectacles goddamnit so
we're gonna put on a freaking show and by that I mean a no-holds-barred cage
match between two experts who've done a lot of thinking about this issue. In one corner, the academic: NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen AKA Jackhammer Jay. Nobody calls me that. In the other corner, the veteran former White House
reporter for The Associated Press, Jennifer Loven AKA The Heartbreaker. I don't think I can do it. The debate: has the White House press briefings become a spectacle? Jay, you're up
first. Well the briefing has always been problematic since television came to it.
The presence of the cameras means that there's a temptation towards
self-dramatization and theatrical confrontation sort of for its own sake. A brutal opening statements, let's see how Loven deals with that: I would disagree
with the notion that it's that much more of a spectacle now than it used to be. Wait what? It is a show and it's a show for the White House and it's a show for
the reporters who are sitting in the room. No, it's not a double-kill they're
basically agreeing with each other. Goddamn it you guys. Okay, forget the cage
match thing. DOMINA — I said forget it. So it turns out, nobody really loves the White House
press conferences. The White House hates them because they have to answer tough
questions from reporters "Are you worried at all that you've lost control of the process on how this bill's received?" And reporters hate them because the White House does
everything in its power to avoid answering those questions. "I don't have an update for you." "I don't have any information with which to answer that
question." "I appreciate the invitation to get involved in here, but I'm not gonna RSVP." They bring out random guests to stall for time, "I have two special guests
talk to you about a new ruling on labels for cigarettes." They punt questions to
other agencies. "I'd refer you to the State Department on that." "I'd refer you to HHS." "I will refer you to the Postal Service." You never really get the big gotcha
moments you're hoping for. The whole thing is like pulling teeth. Every administration uses not only the briefing, but every tool at their disposal to go
around the media. So the briefing is really no different. Trying to get
information from a White House that doesn't want to give it to you unless
they want to give it to you. These press events became even more of a
spectacle after Eisenhower introduced
cameras in 1955. "Motion picture cameras join newspaper reporters for an historic
presidential press conference." Once everyone could watch these things on TV, it became much more about putting on a good show. "I see we're trying a new experiment
this morning. I hope it doesn't prove to be a disturbing influence." It did. So if nobody's really getting what they want out of these press conferences, why
do we pay so much attention to them? Why air them on TV at all? Rosen has a theory. One way we could look at the White House briefing is that it's much more of a
ritual act of communication, than it is transmitting information. Rituals like
the White House press conference are intended to show that there is some
accountability there, that the president has to answer questions, respond to doubts. And this is one way in which American power legitimates itself and in
democratic system. You can't really see it here, but my brain lit up when he said
that because that ritual theory, it kind of makes everything click. And in ritual, you're not trying to move information. Instead, you reaffirm values, you
advertise the community what it believes in. We don't care about the press
conference because it's important, it's important because we care about it. Because
they affirm this idea that the government has to answer to the public. The ideal of the briefing is that you have this operation in which you get a
chance to ask questions of people who run the most powerful office in the
world. That is accountability and that is important, even if the execution isn't
perfect. Which is why we pay so much attention when the White House clashes
with reporters. "What was it like inside that very tense briefing room today?" To those of us at home it looks like accountability. "Why were you holding back
this information? This is directly relevant. Why did you hold it back?" The term that journalists had for this is "sparring," they loved the idea of sparring
with the officeholder. They're showing how they are the Accountability Police, which is a fascinating image because it suggests boxing, but it's
really boxing when you're practicing, it's like play-acting in a way. Kind of like wrestling? Which brings us back to this: "That's enough. That's enough. That's. Enough." The thing about symbolic rituals like this is they only work if everyone agrees
they're important. If both sides can respect each other enough to keep the
ritual going. If a professional wrestler starts trying to actually murder their
opponent in the ring, the whole ritual falls apart. The same is true for these
press conferences. Journalists don't like to talk about this, but there's always
been a necessary level of cooperation. Person in power has to agree that is
important to hold me to account. Trump doesn't agree with that. "I called the fake
news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people." His political strategy is built on attacking the press as illegitimate and dangerous,
but instead of abandoning the press conference altogether,
Trump has transformed it into a platform for staging high profile fights with the
press. "You're very rude person. The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible." Now the ritual has turned into a ritual of hate. The press has become a hate object and the
briefing actually assists in that. For Trump, the point of the ritual isn't
accountability, it's to create an enemy. To give viewers at home a visual of a
bad guy to root against. "See when you talk about division, it's people like
this that cause division. Great division." From a PR standpoint it's a great
strategy. Trump can attack the media on Twitter all day, but these press
conferences turn that anger into a real visceral image, one that gets looped on
TV screens across the country. "We also have highlights from the president's
smackdown of CNN's Jim Acosta." "The president smacking down mainstream media
for fake news." "They're very fake news. That's right." I'm a hundred percent sure he relishes the
back-and-forth and understands that with a certain segment of his base, it helps
him. Trump has taken other steps to make these press conferences as dramatic as
possible. The White House is having fewer press briefings now than it used to.
These lines represent the number of press briefings Obama and Bush held
while in office and this little guy down here is Trump. Which means when the White
House does have a press conference, Trump knows everyone is watching. "It's very good to have you here, because a free press —" "I do too. Actually I do too." "It's called 'earned media.' It's worth billions, go ahead." These briefings are getting shorter too. The average White House Q&A is
now well under 20 minutes, which forces reporters to fight dramatically for
questions before time runs out. [Various reporters struggling to ask questions] is a staple of Hollywood movies and television shows. When you have these confrontations, it
helps him cement his support with his core supporters. "Did you see the insane
grandstanding and the White House press briefing today? He was badgered by some
members of the national left-wing media. I don't know how you do your job." Important understand that in symbolic politics, people not only identify with
the leader, but they identify against the opponent. [Crowd chanting "CNN sucks."] Which explains why, despite
hating CNN, Trump and Sanders keep calling on Acosta press conference after
press conference. They know he'll put on a good show. "Should I let him have a little bit more? What do you think, Peter?" And the
genius of Trump strategy is it's really tempting to play along. For one, news
network's benefit from the spectacle too. If you're not a trump supporter, these
press conferences still look like a fight between a good guy and a bad guy,
just with the roles reversed. From the journalist's side, theater works by
portraying a heroic battler for truth who says "answer my question, you didn't
answer the question" "President, will you stop calling us the enemy of the people, sir?" "Will you stop calling the press the 'enemy of the people,' sir?" And that image is also
deeply ingrained in American culture. Which is why CNN keeps sending Acosta
of these things and fixating on the White House's reaction. It's good PR. "Well, Jake when they go low we keep doing our jobs." "That is our job, to ask these
questions. We here at CNN keep doing our job the president should start doing his." But more than that, it feels good watching people yell at Trump and
Sanders when they lie. It's cathartic because we want to believe the ritual
still works, that the president can still be publicly shamed into telling the
truth. But can he? I think the most important yardstick we can use to
discover whether these events are still worth it or not is, is the
president actually held accountable for anything? Is he being more disciplined by the confrontation with the facts that
journalists are trying to state? If there's one thing we can say about the
Trump administration, is that this sort of accountability to fact has completely
failed. That doesn't mean we should abandon the press conference altogether.
There's a ton of useful information reporters get out of these things when
they're not in WWE mode. I mean, I get that it feels like a spectacle when you
see the tense parts of it, but there's a lot of really prosaic day-to-day
information gathering that has to happen on that beat. "What is the US stance on Venezuela at this point?" "What will be executive order
that's coming out this afternoon?" "Is the president planning on pardoning Paul Manafort?" Trying to gather a lot of, really, just logistical information about what is going to happen here in this building so we can be prepared to cover it properly. But we should ask if watching reporters and Trump scream at each other is
actually that valuable anymore. "We are awaiting the start of the White House
press briefing and it should be quite a show." If it's worth giving Trump the
title fight he's looking for. "I love this, I'm having a good time doing it. The public gets it, you know. When I go to rallies, they turn around they start
screaming at CNN." We can't make Trump care about the symbolic value of press conferences, but what we can do is avoid treating these things like a high-stakes
struggle between a hero and a villain. After all, nothing deflates a wrestling
match more than one side refusing to take the bait. It's boring, it ruins the spectacle. And right
now, that might be our best option. Thanks for watching we launched a paid
membership program on YouTube called the Vox Video Lab. Video Lab members get
awesome stuff, like access to livestream Q&As with us, our recommendations for
the best videos on the internet, and extra videos like me roasting the first
Strikethrough I ever made. We made a launch video you can check out if you
want to learn more, or just head straight to sign up at vox.com/join. These are tax brackets for 2019. Simple, right? But many of us make a common mistake when
looking at this. Let's say my income is $84,000. You might think that puts me in the third
bracket. So I would owe the federal government 22%
of my income. This is wrong. And it's causing us to have uninformed debates
about tax policy. Here's how it actually works. Let's go back to my $84,000 income. Now, instead of thinking of tax rates
as brackets, we should think of them as pockets. But first there's one special pocket we need
to talk about. The money we put in this pocket is not taxed. The government automatically lets single people
put $12,000 in this special pocket — and more for couples. But if you spend a lot of money on things
like medical expenses or charitable donations, you can sometimes put in more. These are called "deductions." With the $70,000 that’s left over we can
start filling up the pockets. This first pocket has room for $9,700, so
I only pay 10% on this money. Then I pay 12% on the money in the next pocket. And then 22% on the money in this pocket. These are called marginal tax rates. And that's how these brackets actually work. So if I get a raise, that new money goes into the first pocket with empty space. When space runs out, we put it in the next
pocket. So the raise, and only the raise, would be
partially taxed at 22%. And partially at 24%. So, when politicians say they want to raise
the top tax rate, it doesn't necessarily mean these pockets — and your money — are affected. They're talking about the tax rates on the
pockets way over there, which are only used once people have filled
in these smaller one. Marginal tax rates are a pretty simple concept,
once you get the hang of it. So the next time a politician says the government
wants to "take away 70% of your income" just send them this video This is a video gambling machine. Across the U.S., you’ll find more than a
100,000 of them offering up electronic versions of games like poker or slots. The machines — designed to be highly entertaining
and addictive — have taken the gambling industry by storm. 23 states have them in state-sponsored casinos
or other gambling establishments, and now, more states are considering legalizing them
outside casinos — in places like bars and restaurants. But, why? We looked at the state with the most locations
to legally place a bet in America. No, not Nevada. Illinois. People love gambling. This has been true for centuries...across
cultures. And in the US — it’s also been a source
of government revenue. When the colonies needed to build hundreds
of schools in the 18th century — they got funding from some of America’s first lotteries. The Washington Monument? Also funded in part by lotteries. And when the Great Depression hit, Nevada
legalized gambling. States across the country continue to count
on it to bail them out of tough financial situations. Take Illinois. In 2009, the state passed the Video Gaming
Act, its largest gambling expansion since the creation of the state lottery in the '70s. The law paved the way for video gambling machines
to go into truck stops, restaurants — even hair salons. Today, more than 30,000 of these machines
operate outside of casinos in Illinois — more than any other state in the country. The problem is — the machines can be highly
addictive. The algorithm-driven machines are essentially
made to do three things: accelerate play, extend the time people play them, and increase
the amount of money they wager. For example — on old-fashioned slots, you
pulled a lever that spun physical reels. Each reel had a certain number of symbols
and blank spaces on them, and depending on where they landed, if the symbols lined up across this payline, you’d win a jackpot. But with electronic machines — while you may see virtual reels spinning, the symbol that the
reels land on is no longer determined by the pull of a lever. It’s decided by an algorithm
the moment you click play. The reels can be programmed to have more losing
symbols and fewer winning ones, so game designers can reduce the odds of hitting a jackpot. They could make a machine with over 500 stops
on the reels, meaning the odds of winning would be less than 1 in 100 million. The virtual display also creates deceptive
tricks like the “near miss”, when jackpot symbols appear right above or below the winning
line — it’s an image that can make players think they were so close to winning
the jackpot and it's designed to keep them going. These characteristics have earned the machines
nicknames like “electronic morphine” and “the crack cocaine of gambling.” About a decade ago, Illinois made these machines widely accessible across the state. “The economy still reeling from a recession.” “This is a financial crisis-led recession.” “The worst recession since the 1930s.” During the financial crisis in 2009, Illinois
wanted money to help fund a big infrastructure program that would create jobs. “We know our economy needs a boost, our
economy in our country, our economy in our state." So, tucked inside a larger bill, the state
passed the Video Gaming Act. They agreed to expand gambling in the hope that
the revenue from video gaming taxes would help pay off their debts. The state started borrowing money, assuming
it could pay much of it back through taxes from video gambling. But here’s the thing: It took more than
three years to get video gambling up and running. By the time video gambling went live, in September
2012, the state had already borrowed more than $5 billion. Debt payments had reached about $340 million a year. While the machines were supposed to raise
$300 million a year to cover those debt payments, in 2012, video gambling brought in just $31
million. A decade later, the industry has finally started
hitting revenue projections. But the Illinois Gaming Board,  the agency
tasked with keeping gambling in check, is largely underfunded and has struggled to regulate
the growing industry. A small group of gambling companies has made
nearly 2 billion dollars. And politicians have received hundreds of
thousands of dollars in contributions from an industry group. Meanwhile, in rural areas and small towns
hit hardest by the state’s economic slump, gambling addiction has become a serious problem. But the state now spends less on addiction
services than it did before legalizing video poker and slots. What’s happened in Illinois could be a sign
of what’s to come in the rest of the country. A 2018 Supreme Court decision legalized sports
betting, paving the way for a new frontier for gambling in the US. As more states look to gambling as a possible way to stabilize their finances, Illinois’
experience with video gambling stands as a cautionary tale. That maybe, it’s a risky bet. Thanks for watching. This video was produced in collaboration with ProPublica Illinois, a nonprofit newsroom headquartered in Chicago that's dedicated to investigative journalism 
with moral force. If you want more of their reporting, check out the link below to sign up for their newsletter. And if you want to know more about video gambling, check out their feature piece. Thanks. "Police investigation hasn't turned up anyone
who saw Ione Cychosz murdered, no one who even heard her being attacked. She was killed early Saturday morning in the
backyard of a neighbor's house." "One of the real challenging things about
this case, you had a horrific crime, you had no eyewitnesses, and you had no motive." "The crucial evidence is numerous bite marks
found on the body of the victim." "Robert Lee Stinson was soft-spoken and lived
in the neighborhood." "The forensic odontologist told the detectives,
'You are looking for a guy with an abnormality in one of his upper teeth.' " "Police spoke with him, he was very noticeably
missing a front tooth." "Therefore, the bite had to be inflicted by
a dentition identical to that of Mr. Stinson." "You have this dentist who has no reason to
lie, who comes in and tells you this is rock solid science." "It's really quite astonishing, it's the one
thing that gets me truly agitated. It's because there's just no science to support
it." "I mean, all I could rule on was what I had
in front of me." "The expert testimony made a lot of sense
at the time." "We know how prejudicial scientific evidence
is. It's extremely persuasive, that's why there's
so many wrongful convictions associated with it. Because it's persuasive enough to convict
the innocent." The earth has an elegant cycle of life. It’s the story of carbon. And over billions of years, it has evolved
to look something like this. And it starts with a plant. Plants and microorganisms absorb carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. Then they use energy from the sun to convert
that carbon into oxygen… And sugar, which they use to grow. And as they grow, they emit some carbon back
into the atmosphere. But all plants eventually die. And some are consumed by bacteria — others
by larger beasts. These animals eat plants for energy. And they breathe out carbon. But eventually, those animals die, too. And they end up in the ground. Meanwhile, a similar thing happens in the
ocean. Coral and plankton need carbon from the water
to survive. Luckily, the ocean has carbon because it absorbs
some from the atmosphere. And, when rain falls to the earth, it grabs
some carbon from the atmosphere... ... and from rocks... … and flows into the ocean, where the coral
and plankton use carbon to grow. Or other animals use it to grow. But just like animals, the coral and plankton die, too. In short, all living things are made of carbon
— and they eventually end up in the ground. Some of that carbon will eventually get back
to the atmosphere. But some of it normally stays in the ground. Usually, dead things decay and turn into rocks. Eventually, they’re crushed — and extreme
heat and pressure causes them to melt… and emit the carbon, which is trapped
underground. Over time, that trapped carbon eventually
escapes into the atmosphere — when volcanoes erupt. And the cycle starts again. But occasionally, dead plants and animals
don't turn into rock. They don't decay fast enough, so they turn into
oil, coal, or natural gas… This carbon gets stuck in the ground. This is the elegant system that keeps carbon
cycling through Earth at a steady pace. Carbon in the atmosphere keeps some heat from
leaving Earth. It keeps Earth at a stable temperature. But very recently, one of these animals started
to dig up the carbon in the ground. They took the carbon that was stuck in the
ground and put it back into the atmosphere. And they did this so much — in such a short
time span — that this cycle was disrupted. Too much carbon was being put into the atmosphere. Heat that would normally be able to escape
bounced back and stayed on Earth. And Earth started to get warmer and warmer. Really recently, just a few months ago,
more than 100 bipedal scientists said they might only have 12 years to stop a disastrous
amount of warming. So these animals need to not only stop putting
carbon in the atmosphere, but also get carbon out of the atmosphere. They found that one way to remove carbon is
to grow more plants. They could stop cutting down trees. Or raise livestock in ways that help restore
grass. Another way is to let plants suck up carbon
from the atmosphere — — but then burn them for energy. And then trapping the carbon they emit underground. They could also build machines to suck air
from the atmosphere and filter out the carbon. But they haven't figured out how to do this
fast enough. There are many ways these animals can tweak
this cycle to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. A combination of them is probably the best
way forward. But, first, these animals need to figure out
how to stop putting it there in the first place. If you haven't heard already, we've launched a paid membership program on YouTube called the Vox Video Lab. For a small payment, you have access to some amazing perks, like access to livestreams with our creators and a little badge that appears next to your name and it'll upgrade over time. This is the best way to support our channel. It'll help us do more ambitious journalism, so we can bring better content to you guys. If you want to learn more, just head to vox.com/join. This is me in Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s an action-adventure game with over
60 hours of stunning gameplay. I’m about to brush this horse, and you’re
going to see the dust fly off. Games today are meticulously detailed. They’re mysterious and heartwarming, and
colorful and stylized. And inside every one of these games — Fortnite,
PUBG, Rocket League — you’ll find... these. Put thousands, sometimes millions, of these tiny
triangles together and you can make a person...
or a car... or an entire world. But you never see them. So… why triangles? Take another look at this game. Technically, what you’re seeing is all squares. Your screen is divided into pixels, and each
pixel can display exactly one color. That’s been true since the earliest video
games. Like Pong. “It was just squares, right, so it was just like a pile
of squares to make two paddles and one square that was the ball. And the fact that I could move something and it moved, was like super beautiful.” That's Brett Bibby. He grew up playing Pong — and now he leads
the engineering team at Unity, one of the top game engines in the world. A game engine basically gives you the tools
you need to build elaborate environments. “Let’s imagine you wanted to make a wild
west game and you wanted to ride into town and have a shoot-out. So you might start off just creating some boxes,
to represent the saloon, the bank and other things. The main road. And it would just be all white. You would just try to get a sense of size
and scale.” "Kind of like Legos, right. Just trying to get a sense of the space. And so I'm iterating and developing it slowly." And when you’re done, the detailed game that you
made needs to show up as pixels on a players’ screen. That process is rendering. And the player’s computer is going to have
to do a ton of math to follow through. In the last 20 years, the amount we can show
on screen per second has gone up — way, way up. This is a standard measure of computing power. It tells you the number of calculations the
machine can perform per second. … in billions. You’d think that a more powerful computer
would make it easier to render games. And it does. Except that gamemakers keep competing to add
more and more detail, pushing the limits of what even the newest technology can do. So the game engine’s job is partly to keep
the number of computations needed for each detail as low as possible, so that gamemakers can
fit more in. Which brings us back to these guys. Triangles are used almost exclusively in rendering
for video games. They're a way for a game engine to batch
pixels, allowing the player's computer to process more detail. From the computer’s point of view, everything
in your game really looks like… This. The game engine creates sets of instructions
that the computer translates into pixels on your screen. This “V” means these are coordinates for
vertices — the corners of some kind of shape. Imagine playing connect the dots. You’d use straight lines, right? Especially if you didn't know what shape
you’re making yet. The player’s computer is playing three dimensional
connect the dots, sometimes thousands of times every second. For them, the equivalent of straight lines
is flat surfaces. Flat surfaces are the easiest to render because
they don’t require a computer to do any additional math to figure out curves or dents. So the game engine needs to convert curved
surfaces into flat ones for the player's computer to process. And it turns out, the best way to do that
is through triangles. Try picking out three dots in the air in front
of you. No matter where you choose to put them, they’ll
always be on the same plane. York: “The surface of the triangle is always
flat.” And no other shape with vertices is like that. York: “If you have four points, then those
four points could actually describe a very complex object —” “Four points can describe a pyramid for
example.” “That results in a more mathematically complex,
higher processing power ask just to figure out the pixels on the surface.” So triangles it is. Triangles and the ongoing improvements in
game technology make it easier for creators to develop the beautiful games that exist today. “So in the old days it was like, well this
is what I can do: I can have a fixed screen with 8 things moving on it." "I think nowadays, pretty much whatever you want to create, you could find a way to create." If you'd like to learn more about how to make videogames, you should click the link and head on over to Skillshare. Their massive library of over 20,000 classes on design, business, and technology, also includes a bunch on how to make videogames. Including my favorite, which is all about how to make that classic snake game. They have a premium membership too, which can offer unlimited classes on how to improve your gamemaking skills. Or whatever else you're excited about. And because you're a Vox fan, they'll give you two months of Skillshare for free. To sign up, just click the link in the description and the first 500 of you will get two months of unlimited classes, no charge. Skillshare doesn't directly impact our editorial at all. But their support helps make videos like this one possible. So go check them out. It could be on that raw meat, hiding in those
eggs. Or maybe it’s made its way onto your produce. Contaminated food looks and smells totally
normal, so you won’t know it’s there until you get sick. It’s called salmonella. “A deadly salmonella outbreak.” “Two people have died now.” “Salmonella in raw turkey.” “Salmonella concerns are expanding an already
massive beef recall.” You’d expect that if food companies and
safety regulators found salmonella during processing, they’d keep that food from reaching
your fridge, right? Nope, they know about it. And the fact that they don’t prevent it
from getting there is one of the main reasons why salmonella outbreaks are still a regular,
dangerous occurrence. Salmonella is the most common food-borne bacteria. It’s found in the gut of most animals and
usually gets into food through the slaughtering and processing of raw meat. It finds its way into your system when you
eat contaminated meat that hasn’t been fully cooked or food that was mishandled. It can cause diarrhea, cramps and fever and
generally goes away on its own in a few days. Severe salmonella infections typically need
to be treated with antibiotics. But half of all strains now are antibiotic
resistant. More than a million Americans get sick every
year from salmonella and nearly 400 die from their infections. Compare that to the more well-known E. coli
bacteria, which only kills about 20 Americans. That big difference has a lot to do with how
the US regulates the two. In the early 90s, there was a massive E. coli
outbreak traced back to Jack in the Box restaurants. Contaminated burgers sickened 700 people and
killed four children. This prompted the US Department of Agriculture
to establish robust inspections and testing for E. coli during meat processing. And to classify E. coli as an “adulterant.” Typically adulterants are prohibited substances
like sawdust or toxic chemicals. And food found with adulterants can’t be
legally distributed. When an adulterant like E. coli is found,
the contaminated meat must either be destroyed or fully cooked into ready-to-eat foods. This classification allows the USDA to stop
tainted food from going to market before consumers get sick. After E. coli was labeled as an adulterant, the
number of reported cases dramatically dropped. But here’s the thing: the USDA doesn’t
consider salmonella an adulterant. So if regulators find it during inspection,
that salmonella-tainted food still goes to your grocery store. The USDA will only recall the meat after people
get sick. The USDA has found that about 18% of ground
chicken sold in the US is contaminated with salmonella. 15% of ground turkey and 4% of whole chickens
also have it. For the last 15 years, salmonella has stayed
the most common food borne illness while E. coli infections are drastically lower. Food safety watchdogs believe that if the
USDA made salmonella an adulterant, the number of salmonella incidents - and deaths - would
drop just like E. coli did. Some, like the Center for Science in the Public
Interest, petitioned the USDA to classify antibiotic-resistant salmonella strains as
adulterants. But the USDA denied the petition saying that
“ordinary methods of cooking and preparing food kill Salmonella.” Because fully cooking meat does kill off any salmonella. The same argument could be made for E. coli,
which is also killed by cooking. But since most Americans like their burgers
undercooked, and E. coli is most often found in beef, the USDA argues E. coli deserves
stricter regulations than salmonella. No one is purposefully eating a medium-rare
turkey burger. Yet people are still undercooking poultry,
even if just by accident. In a study conducted by the USDA, 45% of people
failed to fully cook their turkey burgers, putting them at risk of salmonella poisoning. And even if you’re cooking your meat right,
salmonella can still find it’s way to lurk in your kitchen. 48% of people contaminated spice containers. 97% of people failed to wash their hands every
time they were supposed to. So, how can you protect yourself from the
salmonella that could be in your fridge? First, keep raw meat away from everything
else. Never, ever, wash poultry. And wash your hands after you touch raw meat
- every single time. Because until the USDA updates the list of
adulterants, salmonella prevention is on you. If you haven’t heard already, we launched
a paid membership program on YouTube called the Vox Video Lab. You can check it out at vox.com/join. If you join the Video Lab, you get access to livestream discussions with our creators, behind-the-scenes peeks of our work, our picks for the best videos on the internet, director's commentaries on our videos, an awesome badge that levels up over time, and a lot more for a small monthly payment. Becoming a member's also the best way to support our journalism and storytelling, to help us make our channel and videos even more ambitious. We made a launch video announcing the Video Lab that you can check out if you want to learn more, or just head straight to vox.com/join. And as always, thanks for watching Vox Videos. This graph shows local jail inmates in the
United States. In the past twenty years, that population
has shot way up. And there’s something surprising about that
rise. You can see it if you only look at inmates
with convictions. Around 1999 that population leveled off, meaning
most of the rise came from this group: non-convicted prisoners. Every day in the US, nearly half a million
people sitting in local jails haven’t been convicted of anything. Why are most of them there? Because they can’t afford cash bail. In 2009, the last year relevant federal data
was released, the median bail was $10,000 for felony defendants, much higher than many
Americans can afford. And in a 2014 analysis of New York City jails,
researchers found that only 14 percent of people given bail were able to pay at their
initial hearing. Now, lawmakers and activists are trying to
get rid of cash bail. When bail is set unreasonably high, people
are behind bars only because they are poor. And I congratulate California to help lead
the effort to do away with cash bail. A bill to reform New Hampshire’s bail system
now headed to the Governor’s desk. Courts are starting to eliminate cash bail,
but that’s creating another problem: What comes next? Let’s look at someone committing a minor
offense, like breaking an open container law. They are arrested and brought before a judge,
who typically has three options. Deny bail and keep the defendant in jail until
trial, release them without bail, which might include
monitored supervision, or set bail. Cash bail is intended as collateral. It’s supposed to be used to make sure people
show up for their trials — not as a punishment or a way to imprison. If the defendant pays bail, they can go free
until trial. And when they return to court and their trial
ends, they get their money back. But if they don’t have enough money for
bail, they go to jail. In 2013, the average number of days detained
pretrial was 28 for Philadelphia defendants with bail of 2000 dollars or less. During that time a person’s life can fall
apart. If they don’t show up for work, they can
lose their job. If they are a parent, a child loses their
caregiver. And if they live in a shelter, their housing
is gone. While in jail, it’s likely they will be
given the option of pleading guilty. With so much on the line, many people choose
to plead guilty instead of waiting for a trial. That deal gives them their freedom, but a
criminal conviction has long-term consequences. Particularly for someone’s ability to find
work or housing. Cash bail isn’t fair. For those who can’t afford it, the system
presents a series of problems that wealthier defendants are often able to avoid. The only difference between the two paths
is how much money you have, not how guilty you are. So what’s a better alternative? D.C. courts effectively eliminated cash bail
in 1992. Instead, judges use risk assessments to inform
pretrial release decisions. If the person breaking an open container law
had been arrested in DC, a court official would enter data about them into a risk assessment. Algorithms analyze the data, and the defendant
is scored for their likelihood to commit new crimes and return for trial. In most assessments, those results are delivered
to the judge with a pretrial release recommendation that they can choose to follow at their own
discretion. Risk assessments are supposed to help ensure
that a judge’s decisions are accountable to an objective standard, instead of just
a hunch. The data is encouraging. In 2017, 94% of defendants were released pretrial,
88% of those returned for every single court date, 86% weren’t arrested during that time. And overall the decision to remove cash bail
saves D.C. courts close to $400 million a year. As more courts consider eliminating cash bail,
it’s likely that risk assessments will be used instead. But that’s raising a concern that one biased
system is being traded for another. Risk assessments use data about defendants’
criminal histories without always considering other factors. And social prejudices and over-policing make
it more likely that low-income and minority Americans will have prior convictions. Reformers worry that relying on a score that
doesn’t acknowledge that bias risks perpetuating it. The ACLU even decided to oppose California’s
decision to eliminate cash bail, in part because of the debate over risk assessments. Let’s say our defendant accepted the plea
deal after being arrested for an open container. Then they get arrested again, for another
low-level offense, like shoplifting. The conviction from their earlier guilty plea
would increase their risk assessment score — making it more likely that a judge sends
them to jail this time. But the assessment wouldn’t show that they
pleaded guilty because they couldn't afford to stay in jail awaiting trial after being
unable to afford bail. On the plus side, judges also have other tools
to inform their decisions. Conditional release programs give judges more
pretrial release options, including drug testing, in-person check ins, and electronic monitoring. Still, those programs cost courts money and
can be invasive for defendants. Less intensive support services like sending
court reminders and providing transportation can also increase the chance that people return
for trial. Providing additional pre-trial options and
services can help reduce the likelihood that judges become over-reliant on risk assessments
— or resort to their first option: keeping defendants in jail. Because US judges are elected by voters, they’re
incentivized to keep people locked up. When you’re running to keep your job, you
don’t want to be the judge who let the violent criminal go free before trial. Using money to decide who goes to jail creates
two very different paths: one for those who have money and one for those who don’t. And while alternatives present their own problems, having more steps in the process can mean that fewer defendants overall are funneled to jail
while waiting for their trial. The stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve usually
sounds like this: This is Auld Lang Syne, a song that represents the emotional conclusion
to another year. But it might surprise you to know, it's also
a soccer anthem in the Netherlands. Or in Japan, it's a traditional song about
fireflies. And the original was written centuries ago,
as a Scottish celebration song. So how did this song, that's managed to spread
across the world, become the song we sing when the ball drops? What does this song mean? My whole life, I don't know what this song
means. A lot of people share this confusion about
Auld Lang Syne, because the lyrics are sort of hard to figure out. Let's start with the title. Auld Lang Syne. Individually these words mean "Old Long Since", which taken together, translate to something like "For old time's sake." It's written in Scots, a language spoken by
about a million people in Scotland today. The rest of the lyrics are a mix of English
and Scots words, like "And there's a hand, my trusty feire, And we'll tak' a right gude-willie
waught,". What is that? So "feire" means friend. "Tak' a right gude-willie waught," so, a waught
related to the word "draft," in English, would be a good pint of beer I imagine. This song asks you to remember people from
your past and raise a toast to them, which made it a popular song to sing at New Year's
and other celebrations. And that line about taking your friend's hand? That's related to a traditional dance British people still do today. The guy who popularized this song was one
of Scotland's most famous exports: Robert Burns. Burns was a poet writing in the 1700's, just
after Scotland and England unified to create the kingdom of Great Britain. He witnessed the decline of traditional Scottish
culture in favor of English norms. So he devoted the end of his life to preserving
this dying culture, by traveling the country to collect traditional poetry and songs to
get them published. Auld Lang Syne was one of those songs. In a 1793 letter to his music publisher George
Thomson, Burns claimed he wrote down the lyrics after hearing an old man singing it. He called Auld Lang Syne "an old song about
the olden times." And he made sure Thomson kept the Scots words
in the song, arguing "There is a naievete, a pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture
of Scots words and phraseology." And this song, Auld Lang Syne, is doing a
great job of tying in with the original idea of collecting folk songs, preserving heritage,
celebrating heritage. Auld Lang Syne was republished in countless
song books worldwide over the centuries and because of Burns, the Scots words are still
in there. And even if you don't know the history behind
them, you can still sort of figure out what the song is saying. Anyway, it's about old friends. Why has a song that people don't really understand
become so widespread? For starters, the melody of Auld Lang Syne
is simple, making it easy to sing along to and easy to adapt into other musical styles. Which is why it can become a soul song, or a bluegrass song, or rock 'n roll. And because it's uncomplicated and melodic,
the song was easy to put with different lyrics. Like in the US in the Civil War era, it became
a song about a wish for the war to end. And it was also a popular anti-slavery ballad. It took on new meanings in languages in other
parts of the world, which is why it's in places you might not expect, like that soccer anthem
in the Netherlands. Or a graduation song in parts of Asia. And it was South Korea's national anthem until
1948. No matter what the language or lyrics are,
Auld Lang Syne's popularity also has something to do with its nostalgic feeling. The song itself is often used in the popular
context in an even more overtly sad way. If you look at the words, it's quite nostalgic
as a song and that's its attraction. Which is why it started showing up in countless
classic movies, usually to mark an emotional scene. Like in this 1937 Shirley Temple movie, when
her character consoles a dying soldier by singing Auld Lang Syne. And the director Frank Capra used it for sentimental
moments in at least 3 of his films. But in the US, the song is best known for
one thing: "Happy New Year." And for that, we can thank Mr. New Year's
Eve himself, Guy Lombardo. In 1928, Lombardo and his orchestra, The Royal
Canadians, started a popular New Year's Eve radio show, broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel
in Manhattan. This meant that Americans all over the country
tuned in from their home radios to listen to the same music on New Year's Eve. And at the stroke of midnight, Lombardo played
their version of Auld Lang Syne. Lombardo continued that tradition for nearly 50 years
and when Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve started on TV in 1973, he would play Auld
Lang Syne at midnight too. And after Clark, Ryan Seacrest did the same. So now at midnight, right after the ball drops,
this is what you hear. It's still Lombardo's version. And this is why, for many, the song is so
singularly associated with the nostalgia of another year past. So when this new year rolls around, even if
you don't know all the words, sing along anyway. You won't be alone. It is a historic meeting, Kim Jong-un has
become the first North Korean leader to visit the south since the Korean war. Families split either side of the Ethiopian-Eritrean
border finally able to speak to each other for the first time in decades. Far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro has won
Brazil’s presidential race. Jacob Zuma will step down as South Africa’s president. The Irish people have voted in favor of scrapping
a constitutional ban on abortion. This is about women taking their rightful
place in Irish society finally. A Chinese researcher claims to have helped make the world’s first births of genetically altered humans. A data analysis firm linked to the Trump campaign
retained the personal information of more than 50 million users. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our
responsibility, and that was a big mistake. 17 people killed in connection with a mass shooting ... A mass shooting at a Florida highschool... a synagogue in Pittsburgh... The gunman opened fire... I don't want prayers. I don't want thoughts. I want gun control and Thousands of students are expected to walk
out of their schools — a mass protest across the nation against gun violence. A new report by the UN carries a stark warning. Millions more people will die from extreme heat by the year 2040. India’s Kerala state was hit by
the worst flooding it’s seen in a century. A powerful, 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck  the
island of Sulawesi Friday. Several separate enormous wildfires are taking
a terrible toll. The stuff we lost isn’t as important as
the fact that our family’s all torn apart. Yemen's humanitarian crisis is escalating
to devastating levels. The United Nations warns up to 13 million
civilians are at risk of starvation. The administration's new crackdown on illegal
immigration at the border, over a six week period nearly 2,000 kids were separated from
nearly as many adults. You know, they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a "nationalist." You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, okay. In Paris, violent clashes erupted between
police and protesters for the third straight weekend. We pay so many taxes, it’s impossible now
to have a good life for us. This is Jamal Khashoggi captured on closed
circuit cameras, stepping into what Turkish authorities believe was a death trap. I am here today not because I want to be. Look at me when I’m talking to you. You’re
telling me that my assault doesn’t matter. That what happened to me doesn’t matter. Bill Cosby becomes the first celebrity to be convicted in the Me Too era. I've dreamt of this day for 32 years. Abusers: your time is up. The survivors are here. Standing tall. Falling on your knees, praying. What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. So I want all the girls watching here and
now to know that a new day is on the horizon. The midterm elections were full of historic
firsts. The first muslim women… first Native American
women… first openly gay man elected governor… It means something, to kids and people, to see images that reflect themselves. It's historical. It moves me, like it moves me to tears. That is going to have an impact, because imagery
does, you know, representation does. France are the champions of the world! All 12 boys and their soccer coach have now been rescued from that flooded cave in Thailand. An immigrant from Mali is being called a real
life Spider-Man after he rescued a child dangling from a balcony. Look at this. You know, I guess one person can make a difference. There are no limits to the human spirit. Touchdown confirmed. I believe what makes us unique is transcending
our limits. I would much rather fail gloriously than not venture, not try. Look at this painting. It's Saint Francis and Pope Honorius III. You can probably find the monks. It's the hair. This is not just a haircut. The more you look, the more this haircut shows
deep religious divides. One style was even lost to time, after being
banned by the Roman Catholic Church. The scalp is a statement of faith, but it's
also a battleground. Hair's religious rite extends far beyond
Christianity. Some Buddhist monks shave their heads and
some Orthodox Jews don't shave the corners of their heads. The Catholic monks were known for centuries
for their particularly distinctive hairstyle. This haircut, with the center shave, is called
a tonsure. It started in the 4th or 5th century. And the most recognizable is the Coronal tonsure, possibly modeled on Jesus' crown of thorns on the cross. It's actually one of three types. The Coronal is the Roman, or Petrine tonsure,
after Saint Peter. There's also the Pauline tonsure, named after
Saint Paul, and used more commonly in Eastern Orthodoxy. It is a fully shaved head. But in the Dark Ages, there was a third tonsure
too. And that's the shape that largely disappeared
from the Church. That hairstyle was a visible symbol of diverging
faiths and that's the reason that it was banned. When Pope Gregory sent missionaries from Rome
to the British Isles in the late 6th century, he found differences between the Roman Catholic
Church and Celtic Church. Ones that revealed serious disagreements about religious practice. Celtic Catholicism was out of sync with the
Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholics would later use the differences
between them to portray Celtic Catholicism as Pagan or even as an offshoot celebrating
the power-hungry magician, Simon Magus. There were concrete disputes. Most importantly, they disagreed on when to
celebrate Easter and another significant disagreement was the shape of the tonsure. McCarthy wanted to learn the shape of this
tonsure, because it represented the split in the Roman Celtic Churches. He thought the old guesses about its design
were wrong. You can't just scroll through photos of 7th
century monk haircuts. Figuring out the shape of the tonsure these
monks use, is a detective story. It required McCarthy to parse texts like the
Book of Kells and records of old letters. From that, he could figure out 
the shape. These old texts and illustrations only gave McCarthy a view of the front and back of the head. To picture an aerial view, he had to build
one. These differences over tonsure were outward
signs of a split in the Church. When the Roman Catholic Church took Ireland,
they slowly changed its tonsure too. In 664, the king of Northumbria agreed on
the Roman Catholic date for Easter and the Roman Catholic tonsure. The change wasn't instant, but over time the
triangular tonsure disappeared. Today some monks practice tonsure while others
don't. It varies across religion and monastery. In the Roman Catholic Church, clerical tonsure
ended in 1972. When it was common, this unusual haircut was
a powerful symbol of monastic separation and the Church's power. But it's actually 
not so strange. This is Casablanca, in Morocco, as the US
War department mapped it in 1942. They noted everything from the cement works
to the hippodrome. This was Casablanca’s Casablanca. “Across the Mediterranean to Oran, then
by train or auto to Casablanca in French Morocco.” But there was an area missing from the movie
screen, just beneath the Southern border of this map. This is Bousbir, a walled off sex district
in Morocco. It was famous. People sent postcards. It had an official medical dispensary and
a police station. Practically speaking, prostitutes were prisoners
within these walls. On December 10, 1942, American troops opened
Bousbir’s gates. As customers. What happened in the next three days in Bousbir
is an encapsulation of the surprising ways the American military, and many militaries
around the world, fought venereal disease in World War II. “You’ve got gonorrhea, Baker.” “Gonorrhea, why I don’t know how…” “I do. You had a dirty woman.” Sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea
and syphilis, also known as venereal diseases, or VD, were a significant problem in America
at the time. World War II raised the rates and the stakes. Rates varied widely by geographic region,
rank, and service branch. But for example, this chart shows a distribution
in the US Air Force in Continental Europe. In October 1944, 120 out of 1000 servicemen
had VD. That meant lost days on the battlefield. In August 1944, when the US Seventh Army was
liberating France in “Operation Dragoon,” about 1 in 10 of the men had VD. “The Army recognizes the risks present with
a large number of men and the satisfaction of their sexual impulse.” How did the United States fight STDs in the
military, while dealing with the stakes and scale of a World War? How did their tactics complement — and clash
with — today’s values? And where do the bunny rabbits come in? “The greatest risk...is that...of venereal...diseases.” “If you’re smart, you’ll keep away from
prostitutes and pickups. Most of them have syphilis or gonorrhea. They’re not safe — and they can’t be
made safe.” Long before this advice during World War II,
VD was a problem in the military. This War Department chart estimated VD rates
in the US Army - that peak is actually during the Civil War. But the Great War — World War I — started
a new era of global war and mass compulsory service. A military draft greatly expanded the pool
of soldiers, making education and propaganda techniques necessary. This poster was typical. Pamphlets complemented the message. The United States Public Health Service wanted
men, the primary audience, to avoid “prostitutes or chippies.” But if they did have sex, it provided instructions
for combating disease. Women were given similar instructions — abstain
if possible, but if they did “have intercourse with any man except your husband, make him
wear a rubber.” Starting in 1914, the American Social Hygiene
association formed to boost VD awareness, producing pamphlets and even creating exhibits
like this. The army also made it clear that managing
VD was part of the war effort. The most famous example was General John Pershing’s
General Order No. 77, which ordered commanders to attend to venereal infections by running
small clinics, or prophylaxis stations, dedicated to VD, making “no half-hearted efforts.” Congress joined the VD fray as well with serious
laws focused on areas near training camps. The government shut down red light districts,
often clustered near training camps, and quarantined tens of thousands of women. “Birds-eye view of a typical rapid treatment
center in a Southern state, located in a former CCC camp, as are many of these hospitals. Here, infected women are treated with new
intensive therapies for syphilis and gonorrhea.” This created clinics that would last through
the 1930s, like this mobile one. Just before World War II, America was having
a national conversation about the VD problem outside of the military as well, with the
Surgeon General writing a book about it. The book encouraged regular tests for syphilis. So once World War II began, all of these strategies
would be in play again, and they’d need to be used in a global war. “It is extremely important that you do not
go on a drinking party and allow yourself to become so drunk that you get careless. Drunkenness is responsible for much venereal
disease.” Movies like Sex Hygiene were compulsory viewing. But focusing on propaganda overlooks that
there were multiple strategies which the military employed. The war on VD focused on prevention, treatment,
and control, and these efforts interacted in occasionally contradictory ways. As early as 1926, the government began cutting
soldiers’ pay if they missed work due to VD. That was paired with Sex Hygiene, the film
and pamphlet, which included info on “wet dreams,” “masturbation (self-abuse),”
and “sex relations.” That was matched with advice that sex “should
be kept for marriage” with eventual entreaties to use prophylaxis. Often, this was a condom: “Test it carefully. Inflate it with air as you would a toy balloon
until the rubber is fully extended.” The army also distributed medicine to soldiers. “Another good way not to get VD is to use
the army’s new pro kit. It consists of a tube of ointment, a silk cloth, a piece of tissue, and some instructions.” This was the paradox in military propaganda
- prostitutes were clearly labeled as disease carriers, but recommendations to get a prophylactic,
or “pro kit“ held equal emphasis. The government also acted aggressively to
curb prostitution. The May Act gave the Federal government the
right to bust brothels if local areas couldn’t. It was used near American military bases,
like at Fort Bragg. The Surgeon General also established Venereal
Control Officers that year, with duties largely falling to medical officers. Policing extended to soldiers, too. Influenced by charts like these, which appeared
in surgeon general Thomas Parran’s book, syphilis tracking operations formed in more
stable locations. This 1945 Army medical history includes a
typical questionnaire administered to soldiers in the Carolinas who had contracted VD. The goal of questions about the time of sex
contact and location of the “pickup” was to track houses of prostitution. This post-war Navy interviewer’s aid, showing
techniques used during the war, provided similar guidance: a private interview room; education
about the VD chain; and forms with checkboxes for place of encounter — bus; dance hall;
park —and procurement — bellhop; waiter; pimp. This resulted in VD detective cases — if
a prostitute were tracked to a pick-up spot like the “Green Lantern Cafe” after an
interview, the case was sent to a public health worker who sent out a field worker to pull
in the prostitute or disease carrier for a medical inspection. This procedure was easier in American controlled
areas or during relative peacetime. It happened in England during World War II,
with the installation of prophylaxis stations around the country. In further flung locations, this was more
difficult, and warnings had to suffice, like this one in Iran, which cautioned soldiers
to think of their mother, wife, or sweetheart before going out. So did all of these videos and pamphlets and
posters and laws actually work? It’s complicated. In Oran, Algeria, the United States military
selected the top European brothels. Brothels were set aside by the military- and
then segregated. -- 9 for white troops and 2 brothels for black
troops, both with their own prophylaxis stations. Military police were stationed inside the
brothels between 5 and 9 pm. As early as 1940, the War Department had to
send letters to commanding officers to clarify that they did not condone prostitution. But in far flung war-torn countries, that
line blurred. This brothel in Manila had a sign for the
nearest Prophylaxis station posted on the door. Italy was typical of more destitute countries
with rampant solicitation and prostitution. In Naples, prostitution led to large VD treatment
centers like this one, well-maintained prophylaxis stations and US army supervised civilian examinations. Towns were officially placed off limits when
possible. The military did not ignore wartime realities
— and in 1944 Congress agreed to stop penalizing soldiers’ pay if they had VD, with the hope
of encouraging reporting. But for all that work, the biggest weapon
might have come from these. “Industrial monument to the miracle drug. Mass production penicillin plant in Terre
Haute, Indiana. Each batch is tested for purity, New Zealand
white rabbits serving as subject. Upon how they react depends whether the drug
can safely be used for battle casualties with pneumonia, meningitis, gas gangrene, and other
wound infections. They seem to enjoy their job of serving mankind.” This chart shows the effects of the drug - even
as total VD rose, the introduction of penicillin as a primary treatment reduced days lost. Due to military experiments, penicillin treatment
gained its own complicated legacy. But in the context of the military, the drug
became a weapon against venereal disease, and it went from military use to the public
at large. Here’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
in Casablanca in 1943. This is the footage we expect from World War
II. Leaders and marching. But just as war is filled with reversals and
contradictions, so are the social projects that surround it. There are other forgotten victims and private
injuries. Extras that are missing from the credits. FDR didn’t risk running into troops leaving
Bousbir. By the time he visited, it was closed to Americans. The official report reads: “Disturbances
arising among the troops in the walled city were responsible for this action. The walled city and all other brothels in
Casablanca remained off limits from 13 December 1942 throughout the occupation.” What happened between Dec 10 when the troops
went inside those walls and Dec 13th when the brothels closed to Americans in Bousbir,
in Casablanca? There’s a gap in the record. Even today. Thank you so much for watching that video. If you’re interested in the research that
went into it, Vox actually has a new membership program with lots of extra features. For that program, I have recorded an additional
video in which I go into some of the research and all the crazy stories I couldn’t fit
into the video that you just saw. I’m gonna share one piece of trivia with
everybody though, which is that that movie — Sex Hygiene — that you saw? It was actually directed by the legendary
director John Ford, the same person who directed “The Searchers.” This is a coupon for Burger King's Croissan'wich,
and it's promoting a buy one get one deal. Buy one breakfast sandwich at full price get
a second. But one customer found that something was off about the deal:
when she was charged two different prices for the sandwich. When she ordered a single
sandwich, the price was $2.16. But when she ordered two sandwiches and used
the BOGO coupon the price of each sandwich was $3.19, more than a
dollar more. This went on for years before Burger King
was sued for overcharging customers. BOGO is so appealing that it's hard for consumers
to see it for what it is. Buy one, get one. It's a thinly veiled attempt to convince a
customer to buy more than one item at a time. For a thrifty shopper, BOGO can sound like the best way to get more
bang for their buck, but often it's simply not as good a deal as it appears. Consumers perceive the quality of a bargain
based on the price they pay compared to the original list price. Take this food processor on Amazon for example. The price on sale is $35, an amazing 52%
off the $75 dollar list price. The problem is that Cuisinart doesn't list
the item for Amazon's regular price and based on an analysis of tracked prices over time,
Amazon has never sold it for more than $40 in the past 10 years. The cheating that goes on is rampant. Retailers are guilty, often, of distorting the
regular price, raising the regular price. And several companies have been caught distorting
prices in conjunction with BOGO offers. The suit accuses Visionworks of inflating
the price of the first pair of glasses to partly cover the costs of the second, supposedly
free pair, making it not actually free. It can be hard for consumers to tell whether
BOGO is fair or deceptive and often their judgment is clouded by one four letter word: Free. I mean, free is a tremendous motivational trigger
and they like the opportunity to expand the deal by buying more than one of an item. Very often consumers don't do the math. Buying more than one item means consumers spend more money than they intended. Not less. For example, say you want to buy a sweater
that's normally $80. Sweater A is listed at a 20% discount. Sweater B is listed
at full price, but has a buy one, get one free deal. While the second option may get you two
sweaters, you've just spent more in total than if you
just focused on the 20% discount. Let's say those sweaters are on a buy one
get one 50% off deal. Option one you buy one sweater for $80 dollars. Option
two, the first sweater would be $80 dollars and the second would be half off. Translated
into a straight discount, the total saved from the BOGO deal would be
the same as a 25% off deal, but the amount of money you spend in store has grown,
because you bought two items. Some BOGO deals only apply to items with lesser value. For example if you buy that same sweater and
a $10 dollar pair of socks you still pay $80 for your total purchase. If you decide to get a sweater and $150
coat, the sweater would be counted as the free item and you'd still be shelling out $150. For most deals, you're better off waiting for the one item
you wanted to go on sale rather than purchasing it through a BOGO deal. Customers... I won't say "fall for it," but they go
for it nonetheless. BOGO disguises the fact that, unless you already
intended to buy two items, it really isn't all that big of a discount. So BOGO deals can be fantastic if you're a
shopper looking to buy in bulk and stretch your dollar. But for most of us, free isn't always the best
option. Well, just do the math. If it looks too good to be true it's too good
to be true. This plant, it’s incredibly important. It’s called coca and it mainly grows here. I’m right in the middle of it right now. Right down here, in southern Colombia, spending the day with the anti-narcotic police, who are
looking for coca plants to destroy. Coca is harvested by local farmers, shredded, soaked in chemicals, and then cooked down into a paste. This paste is sold to cartels that use a series
of chemical processes to turn it into the white powder we call cocaine, which is then shipped around the globe, the biggest portion ending up in the United States. But this isn’t a story about cartels or
drug trafficking. It’s not even a story about cocaine, really. This is a story about this leaf and the families
who grow it, out here deep in the jungle. It’s these families who are most affected
by the cocaine economy and it's these families who are caught in the middle of Colombia's war on drugs. It’s a Friday evening and I’m at a police base that’s right at the cusp of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest. This is Colombia at some of its most rural. And this region has historically been a top
coca producer in the country. The intelligence unit just got done briefing
us on a possible location of some fields where coca
is being harvested and processed. We touch down in a couple of spots, but only
find abandoned farms, no coca. But then after a few hours, we spot it, a
clearing deep in the jungle and rows and rows of this light green coca leaf. We land at this coca farm and find that it’s
run by a family. There are kids here, no guns, no resistance. Just beside their house is a shed where they’ve
been shredding the leaves, which are now soaking in chemicals, the step
before they get sold off the the cartels. And the police aren’t here to arrest them,
but rather destroy their operation. Around 6 months of work and very likely, this
family’s only income prospects right now. The troops are clearly aware that they’ve derailed
this family’s year. Coca farms like these fuel an incredibly dangerous
cocaine industry, which hurts tens of thousands of people every
year. So are these coca farmers the bad guys? If not, why are we burning their shed? And if they’re farmers, why don’t they just
grow another crop that isn’t illegal, like pineapple or potato? To find this out, I needed to go back into
the jungle, but not in helicopters surrounded by police but on my own. Look at this chart. This line shows coca production over time. And look what's happened since 2013. Coca production has hit an all-time high. And the largest portion of the resulting cocaine is ending up in the United States, which is the biggest cocaine market in the
world. Far away in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, the government has been trying for decades to curb this problem. Over the years, they’ve tried two main tactics
for eradicating coca cultivation: The first entails flying over these fields and blanketing the whole area with this plant killing chemical, which is the same as the roundup chemical
that you use to kill weeds in your yard. The other strategy is the one that I was a
part of: Sending out troops to manual destroy the crops
by uprooting it or burning the sheds where the harvest is
being processed. But there are some major problems with these tactics. First, spraying entire areas with this plant
killing chemical doesn’t just affect the coca fields, it affects anything else it touches. Killing food crops and the whole rainforest
that surrounds these fields, which is some of the most biodiverse forest
on Earth. The UN and the WHO also found that these chemicals are potentially a cause of cancer for the residents
in these areas. So in 2015, the Colombian government suspended
the chemical dumping strategy. So now they’re looking for new solutions. And last year they implemented something called
the crop substitution program, where the government is going to pay one million
pesos per month, which is like $327, to any farmer who eradicates their coca crop
on their own and starts growing a legal crop, like oranges or pineapple or yuca. After a very bumpy ride, I made it to a community
that used to be an epicenter for coca production. But last year, they signed up for this crop
substitution program. All the farmers in the community signed a
pact that they would willingly transition to a legal crop. During my conversations, the farmers kept
throwing math problems my way. These farmers live and die by prices. Prices of farm supplies, prices of seeds,
prices of transportation and of course, the price that they can sell
their crop for. Keep in mind that where I am is a place that is almost completely absent of any central government presence. There aren’t good roads, security, reliable
markets. And so when you start to do the math of all the
costs associated with growing something else, it just doesn’t add up, which is why coca
thrives out here. As this farming community tries to survive outside the cocaine economy, they’re experiencing what it feels like
to be just another rural community, cut off from Colombia’s mainstream economies. The government might may be able to pay these farmers to get rid of their coca, but without roads, markets, banks, and connections
to the rest of the country these new economies will not take root. So now think back to that family whose shed
the police burned down earlier. They live an hour’s helicopter ride from
any town. So they don’t really have any other economic
options beyond coca, which is really the only commodity they can transport
to a market. Though I did find one family that represents
a success story for the crop substitution program. They mainly grow passion fruit. But they also grow corn, yuca, tomatoes, peppers, and
raise animals. Passion fruit juice, incredible. They switched from coca last year after an
entire lifetime of growing it. And it’s gone really well for them. But you’ll notice that this family has a huge
plot of land. Most of the farmers out here don’t have
that big plot of land. And they don’t have the ability to cultivate
so many crops to replace their coca. So as of now, all of these solutions continue
to be bandaids. Dumping roundup on these fields, manually
eradicating, even the crop substitution. The only lasting solution will come when the
government invests in connecting these communities to
the rest of the country, so that legal economies can actually take
root here. That’s going to take time and money, but
until the government does this long, slow work, farmers will continue to find a way to participate in the only economy that pays. Alright, that's it. Borders: Colombia is over. Thank you for watching, I learned so much about this country reporting these videos and I hope you did too. Everything from the border, up to the hippos, and then learning about this new style of music. And I even got to go eat some fruit in Bogota, which was really fun. Next step for me is I'm going to start looking into the next location for Borders, so stay tuned for that. And also I should tell you that Vox just started a membership program. For $5 a month you can get access to a bunch of behind the scenes stuff. I did this extended interview with this drummer that I met reporting episode 3 of Borders. And you can see that whole thing if you become a member. So you can go check that out on the YouTube channel and thanks for watching Borders. When you watch a Vox video, you're getting
a polished, edited, pretty little piece of internet content. You click play, learn something new about
the world, and it's over in 5 minutes. But if you went behind the scenes, you'd see
just how much goes into making them. Weeks of research and interviews... "Is this Mark?" "Yes indeed, you're right on time." Hours of animating and editing, studio shoots. "But his aggrussive — " "Aggrussive??" "Banana hammocks actually are a way to describe
a man's thong." "He looks like he's being interrogated." And field reporting... "But there's something weird about this border." "But there's something different about this
border that I can feel." "That was a ****** line." And six rounds of reviews where all our weird
and, sometimes, very bad ideas get put through the wringer. "Actually let's cut the montage here, 'cause
I spent the night in the airport." That process of ours, it's not cheap. But we think it's why you're here. So to keep making more and better work, we
could really use your support. This isn't a unique issue, none of the best
channels here on YouTube support their work with advertising alone. So we're launching a new membership program
called the Vox Video Lab. It's $4.99 / month and it's gonna be ******* awesome
guys! Your membership helps us keep getting better
and in exchange, we'll give you a bunch of perks. We'll be sharing all sorts of behind the scenes
looks, sort of like DVD extras, if you remember what those are. Like that time Coleman hit me in the face
with a football for no reason at all. "Oh, I am sorry! Sorry. Damnit!" And I'm going to be doing a bunch of behind
the scenes stuff for Borders, as well as teaching you how I make those drone boomerangs. We'll also do regular Q&As, livestreams, and
we'll be doing some new experiments, too. So I've got this new series coming out about
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and get ready for more of this. On August 9, 2018 a fighter jet dropped a
bomb on this street in Dahyan, Yemen. It exploded here, near a busy marketplace. Killing 40 children on a school bus. The plane was from a coalition led by Saudi
Arabia. They have conducted thousands of airstrikes
in Yemen since 2015 - many aimed at civilian targets. This is the bomb. And this photo, reportedly taken after the
attack, shows that the serial number - 94271 - corresponds to a 500-pound laser-guided
bomb built by the Lockheed Martin corporation. It was made in the United States. In fact, most of Saudi Arabia’s weapons
are. The US is the biggest arms dealer in the world
- and Saudi Arabia is its number one customer. For nearly 75 years, the two countries
have been strategic allies — trying to keep the Middle East stable for their own benefit. But today, the Middle East has fallen apart. And Saudi Arabia has been using US weapons
to make it worse. So why does the US sell Saudi Arabia so many
weapons… and will it ever stop? In 1938, a lot of it was discovered in the
new country of Saudi Arabia. "For here are more proved and readily accessible reserves than in all of North and South America together." In 1945, US President Franklin Roosevelt made
a deal with the Saudi King AbdulAziz al-Saud: The Saudis would provide the US with a safe,
reliable source of oil and in exchange, the US would support and protect the Saudis. This was at a time when the US was making
other alliances in the Middle East. "Oil, however. Together with its strategic location, it has made this area important in world affairs." But at first, US arms sales to their allies in the Middle
East were limited. The US hoped fewer weapons would mean less conflict and therefore a steady
supply of oil. But that didn't last for long. War broke out between Israel and these Arab
States. in 1967. This put the US in an awkward situation - it
had allies on both sides. The US ultimately decided to sell fighter
jets to Israel to give them an advantage over the Arab states. But war broke out again six years later. This time, the US sent thousands of tons of
arms to Israel . This outraged the Arab allies, including Saudi
Arabia. So they struck back. "The oil producing countries of the Arab world decided to use their oil as a political weapon." These Arab states cut-off oil supplies to
the US to protest their support of Israel... And it caused a crisis. The price of oil nearly quadrupled in the
US. The cut-off ended several months later when
the US brokered a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. But to help rebuild its relationship with
its Arab allies, the US decided to sell them weapons. And the Saudis were particularly eager to buy. By the 1970s, oil profits had made Saudi Arabia’s
monarchy extraordinarily rich - and they could afford to buy a range of advanced weapons. Between 1970 and '76, US sales to Saudi Arabia
skyrocketed. In the meantime just
across the Gulf, Iran had emerged as another extremely strategic ally to the US. Like Saudi Arabia, it was a large, oil-rich
country. But more importantly, it shared this long
border with the Soviet Union - America’s primary enemy during the Cold War. So, President Nixon said the US would ““sell
Iran virtually any conventional weapons it wanted.” Together, Saudi Arabia and Iran became America’s
Twin Pillars in the Middle East. For the US, selling them guns, bombs, planes,
and tanks was a way to prevent the Soviets from entering the Middle East, and protect the oil supply. And having these countries rely on American
weapons gave the US important leverage to dictate how and when they were used. It was also an important sign of trust and
support between allies. US arms came with years of training and maintenance,
so each weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, for example, was a long-term commitment to work
together. This would prove to be important because Saudi
Arabia and the US would soon have to rely even more on each other… In 1979, the Islamic revolution overthrew
the pro-US Shah of Iran who was replaced by a religious leader; Ayatollah Khomeini. Suddenly, one of the America’s twin pillars
turned on it. The new Iran was ambitious and extremely anti-American. While armed with $9B worth of American-made weapons. And it was also the enemy of Saudi Arabia. Each saw itself as the leader of the muslim
world; and started competing for influence in the Middle East. So Saudi Arabia continued to want more weapons and the US continued to sell them. In the meantime, the Soviet Union, which had
been developing its own alliances in the Middle East for decades, started selling advanced weapons to countries like Iraq and Syria. At this point a full-scale arms race was taking
place in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia was the biggest buyer thanks to the US. "I do not think it contributes towards achieving peace in the Middle East. And therefore I think this arms sale should be disapproved." These sales sparked fierce debates in the
US. Like on June 5, 1986 when President Ronald
Reagan supported the sale of 2,500 missiles to Saudi Arabia: "Our proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia will increase the Saudi's ability to withstand the threat from radical Arab states." Many in Congress were skeptical about
selling more weapons in the name of defense... "Over the past 30 years , the US has sold over 50 billion dollars worth of military weapons and services  to the Saudis. More than we've sold to any nation on Earth. Where are the reciprocal acts of friendship?" Reagan argued that the arms sales were an
important part of the alliance. "We have had for more than 40 years now, a relationship and an agreement, mutual security agreement, with the Saudi Arabians. And it has been beneficial to both
of us." He insisted that it was important that the US be the ones to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia… "First of all, look, they’re gonna have arms,
whether we do it or not. But when they have them from us, there are
restrictions on their use of them; and that they are restricted to using them defensively. Or then there are things that we will do." "It is not a very valid argument, but I can use the same argument on drugs out in the street. If I don’t sell drugs to someone, someone
else will. The question is not whether someone else
will, the question is whether it’s right." Congress pushed for some changes to the deal before ultimately approving the sale. In fact, Congress would never fully block a foreign arms sale. Over the next 20 years, the strength of the
US-Saudi alliance would waiver, but their reliance on each other never quite
stopped. The Soviet threat vanished when the country
collapsed in 1991. But Iraq under Saddam Hussein emerged as a
new threat to both Saudi Arabia and the US. So the Saudis went all out. In 1993, the US and Saudi Arabia agreed on
a record number of arms sales. But arms sales decreased during the late 1990s
and hit rock-bottom after the 9/11 attacks - 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Two years later, the US launched a war in
Iraq and threw the Middle East into chaos. It turned to Saudi Arabia as a partner and arms sales started increasing again. Over the next decade, the Middle East continued
to fall apart... And Iran took advantage of the chaos by supporting
militant groups in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq - turning these conflicts into proxy wars. To the US, this is Iran destabilizing the
Middle East, but to the Saudis, this is Iran closing in on them. So Saudi Arabia started using its weapons - aggressively. Along with a coalition of allies, Saudi Arabia
intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015. The Saudis claimed they wanted to restore
the government, but only made the conflict worse. Iran stepped in to support the rebels, turning Yemen into a proxy war. The Saudi's aggressive tactics have  created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Out of nearly 16,000 airstrikes since 2015,
the Saudi-coalition has hit civilian targets a third of the time. Most estimates put the civilian death toll well
over 10,000. The UN has found that many of the civilian
attacks were intentional and could be considered war crimes. The problem is the US has continued to sell
arms to Saudi Arabia this whole time. In fact, the Obama Administration approved
the most arms sales to the Saudis in US history. These included not just new weapons, but also
replacements for weapons used or damaged in Yemen. Including this bomb: likely sold to Saudi
Arabia in 2015 and dropped on a school bus in 2018. "$3 billion dollars, $533 million dollars,
$525 million dollars. That’s peanuts for you." While the Trump administration focuses on
the supposed economic benefits of selling weapons, it misses the real point:
Decades of arming Saudi Arabia was supposed to give the US some leverage over it. But that's clearly not working. Saudi Arabia’s leader - Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman is accused of ordering the brutal murder of a US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And it’s sparked historic resistance to
the US-Saudi relationship… "I will not support arms sales until all responsible for the death of Mr. Khashoggi have been brought to justice." And I will no longer support the war in Yemen as constructed." "The bombing of a school bus full of children and other civilian targets is not something I want America's fingerprints on." So will the US actually stop selling weapons
to Saudi Arabia? It’s a difficult question.
The Middle East is more unstable than ever. After 75 years, Saudi Arabia and the US still
need each other. But it’s clearly not a trustworthy alliance
anymore. This is an ad for the 2018 Camry that Toyota
published on Twitter. They also published this one. And this one. For this one campaign, Toyota released 83
different versions of the same ad, and every version targeted different users -- not based
on their gender or their age, their political affiliation or their location. The ads targeted users' emotional states through
their emojis. A targeted ad is where a company shows their
ads to only certain kinds of people, certain people who are more likely to buy their products
or like their message. That’s why as someone who creates videos
just like this one, I see ads for Adobe’s video-making products in my Facebook feed. But in 2016, Twitter began giving advertisers
access to emoji data like who is posting what and when and which emojis are the most popular. That is totally unique compared to advertising
before this. Emojis have an emotional context paired with
them and that lets advertisers better gauge the feelings expressed in people's tweets. With emoji targeting, every highly tailored
ad would be triggered by the emojis a user would post, in real time. Tweet a pizza emoji and Domino's would reply
with a coupon. Tweet any emoji at Google and get a handy
link for the top search results on their platform. Tweeted a heart eye emoji today? Well, Toyota might determine that you're feeling
positive and serve you this ad while you're in that feel good mood. Some emojis are pretty obvious right. Smiley face, I’m happy. Frowny face, I'm sad. But you know there's a bunch of emoji which
are much more -- the line's much more fine between what that person is actually feeling
or thinking at the time. For those emojis that express more ambiguous
emotions, advertisers can use artificial intelligence to predict if an emotion is used in a positive
negative or neutral context. Let's look at Toyota again. In January of 2017, Donald Trump tweeted a
major criticism of the company for planning to build a plant in Mexico. After that tweet was posted, the number of
social media posts about the automaker spiked. But if you look at this chart, you can see
how people felt about Toyota not just how much they talked about it. Right after Trump's comments, the percent
of negative posts spiked when compared to positive posts about the company. For an advertiser, knowing how people are
feeling is immensely valuable, and they can target consumers with positive feelings and
avoid those with more negative ones. Emojis are just one more tool for advertisers
to assess people's emotions. The idea is that if the advertisers are using
it effectively going to see more relevant ads. But regardless of how relevant those ads are,
the process is never going to be fully transparent. As a consumer it's difficult if not almost
impossible to tell what information a marketer is using to target you. Most advertisers argue that tracking the emojis
you use is no different than tracking the keywords you use on Google, because you volunteered
that information publicly. You shared that data freely with a free website
that is ad supported, you should be able to understand that the same type of thing is
going to happen on a social media platform. But consumer advocacy groups disagree. They argue that advertising to people
based on a psychological profile of their emotions is intrusive. About half of Americans
share a similar skepticism, many of whom aren't confident that social media sites actually
protect their data. And emojis are part of that data. For all the privacy concerns, emoji advertising
is still in its infancy and though it only exists right now on Twitter, it wouldn't be
a far leap to see multiple platforms offer a similar service in the future. And in the best case, we may get ads that give
you immediate and valuable information. Maybe you'll post an eggplant emoji and Durex
will send you a condom emoji with 10 percent off your next purchase. Or if you don't like your emoji data being
used, maybe you just don't use emojis. Yeah, right. If you go to a Shakira concert, you may see
her do this. It's this part of her show where the drummer
starts soloing and she's kind of freestyle dancing. And during this section, she's dancing to
a variation of the exact same beat. In its most basic form, it sounds like this. "Cumbia de Colombia!" Did you catch that? "Cumbia de Colombia". The music is called cumbia. You can even hear it in electronic dance tracks. And it has its own category in the Latin Grammys. And it all started here, up near the Caribbean
coast of Colombia. I traveled to the villages where cumbia comes
from. And I learned that this specific place, here
along the Magdalena River, was fertile soil from which this music could grow. But cumbia is in fact a blend of several strong
musical traditions. Mainly African and indigenous, but also European,
mixing together to make something new. Something totally unique to the time and place
from which it came. Okay now just watch what these two drummers
are playing. We can also look at this another way. This beat is the backbone of cumbia. And I wanted to find out where it came from,
so I flew to the beautiful Caribbean city of Cartagena and drove south to a village
that was founded hundreds of years ago. In the early 1500s, the Spanish came to Colombia
as part of their Latin American conquest. And with them they brought more than 100,00
captive Africans. But some of these slaves managed to escape
and build their own communities. And that's how this village was formed. This place is the first known settlement of
slaves who rebelled and started their own community back in the 17th century. And so because of that, they were able to
maintain a great deal of their African culture. The residents of this village preserve their
history with music, which is based on the rhythms their ancestors brought over from
the homeland. These songs are a living, breathing part of
the town's culture and history. And with time, these beats started to spread
in the region, influencing different styles of music. Does this sound familiar? This is the beating heart of cumbia and no
matter how many instruments are incorporated, or in what country it's played, the beat always
stays the same. The drumbeat brought over from Africa is the
main ingredient of cumbia, but eventually the rhythm started blending with instruments
from a totally different musical culture: that of the indigenous people of Colombia. I came to visit the Gaiteros de San Jacinto,
a musical group that has been playing cumbia since the 1950's. In 2007 they won a Latin Grammy for their
folk album and they're able to continue by training up new generations, who keep these
old traditions alive. We're in the backyard of one of the drummers, who's showing me how they make their own instruments using the same methods their ancestors did,
like these maracas. And this flute, called the Gaita, which is
a quintessential indigenous instrument. So this is what the cultural fusion of the
root of cumbia looks like: you have the Gaita, a key element in indigenous music, and then
you have the drum section playing rhythms directly influenced by the African village
just an hour from here. Together they create this unique cumbia sound. In addition to the African rhythm and the
indigenous wind instruments, there's one more ingredient to this fusion: the European influence. The cumbia is always evolving and there's one more European influence that is more recent. It's this instrument that Yeison is holding:
the accordion. And in fact, it was his grandfather, dubbed
the "King of cumbia," who traded his Gaita flute for an accordion, thus changing cumbia
forever. But once formed in this region, it didn't
stay put. In the past century, cumbia has spread throughout
all of Latin America, further evolving in the process. While I was in Colombia, I shot an extra bonus episode for our friends over at Eater. It's about this amazing fruit market in Bogota
that I visited and it was really fun. I think you'll love it. It's gonna be published on Eater's YouTube
channel, so head over there to subscribe and I hope you like the episode. When we imagine getting into college in the
US, it often looks like a race to fill a limited number of seats. A good SAT score? +10. Class president? +8. You play the bassoon? +15. We mostly agree that these factors are a good
way to decide who should get a seat. But there's one factor where Americans disagree... Race. “Should race continue to play a role in
how colleges pick their students?” “Why should I be discriminated against because
I’m white?” “As a tool to increase diversity, affirmative
action has been successful.” “Why are you supporting - explicitly supporting
- a system that penalizes people for the color of their skin?” “High achieving kids, having under-resourced
neighborhoods and under-resourced schools need and deserve a leg up in admissions.” There's a reason this debate makes you want
to cry, and it's not just because it's about race. It's because we suck at talking about race-based
affirmative action. And there are two simple reasons why. One reason we suck at talking about affirmative
action is because many of us don't actually know what it is. It was originally a way for colleges and universities
to give special consideration to racial minorities to help undo the effects of past discrimination. And for many schools, it meant setting aside
a certain percentage of their seats for minority applicants, including the University of California
Davis Medical School. But that changed in 1978 because of this
man, Allan Bakke. Bakke was rejected twice by the UC-Davis medical
school. So he filed a lawsuit. Back then, the school reserved 16 of the 100
seats for minority students, in an effort to remedy past discrimination. It was a quota. Bakke argued he had higher academic scores
than several minority students who were accepted. And in 1978, the Supreme Court sided with
Bakke. The court said the school couldn't use quotas
to racially balance the student body. And that they couldn't consider race to remedy
past racial discrimination. The reasoning? Justice Lewis Powell wrote that societal discrimination
is not a valid reason for considering race. So, Bakke was admitted to UC-Davis and became
a doctor. “Ninety-seven medical students graduated there today,
among them, Allan Bakke.” But his case didn’t end affirmative action. It just redefined it. Here's the rest of Justice Powell’s decision:
"the only state interest that fairly may be viewed as compelling on this record is the
interest of a university in a diverse student body." So university administrators could no longer
use affirmative action to address past discrimination, but they could use it to create a diverse
student body. And, to be fair, diversity is beneficial to
everyone. For example, research shows that it exposes
students to different ways of thinking, which helps them better solve problems. But here's what's so confusing. The Court said colleges couldn't use quotas
to create diversity. But later, the court said colleges needed
concrete diversity goals. So how do you have a goal without naming an
actual number? Well, one way would be to give bonuses to
all students of a certain race. But in 2003, the Court said that was not allowed. Instead, schools could consider an individual
student’s race — if it was a factor of another factor. All of this means that our debates tend to
paint a picture of affirmative action that just isn't correct. It's not a racial bonus or quota. And it's not about historical discrimination. It's a very narrow, and frankly confusing,
tool for colleges to create more racial diversity. And it's that tiny sliver of affirmative action
that many conservatives want to kill. And the latest effort comes in the form of
a highly charged allegation: Harvard is discriminating against Asian Americans. “A group of about 60 Asian organizations
is suing Harvard University.” “At issue is whether the university imposes
a cap on the number of qualified Asian-American students that it admits.” “But Harvard’s argument is essentially
that the Supreme Court says that we can use race in admissions to diversify our campus.” Harvard assigns each applicant something called
a "personal" score to measure subjective things like kindness, courage, and leadership. And Asian applicants are scored lower on that
metric than white applicants. Meanwhile, on the academic metric, Asian applicants
tend to score higher than white applicants. So the plaintiffs argue that, since Asians
have better academic profiles, Harvard is using this "personal" scores to balance out
the number of Asians they get. Which is, ultimately, a fancy racial quota. But in this chart, you can see that the share
of Asian students varies a lot from year to year. If Harvard had a quota, you’d expect that
share to stay the same. But even if Harvard wins its case, affirmative
action opponents hope that this case will eventually go to the Supreme Court,
a body that’s recently become more conservative. And their ultimate hope is that this Court
will rule broadly — and just kill affirmative action entirely. But there's another part of story that we
glossed over — and it makes this debate very confusing. Harvard really is giving Asians lower personal
scores. And many Asians are pretty angry. “Asian-American students are marked down,
subjectively.” “I mean, courage, bravery, saying that Asian-American
students lack that? It’s insulting.” It brings up the inevitable question: Where
do Asians fit into the affirmative action debate? It's a confusing question because Asians certainly
face discrimination, but we've also had a lot of success in higher education. At very selective private colleges, Asians
make up the second biggest group, even though we're a much smaller portion of the US population. But this isn't because Asians work harder
or care more about education. Here's a chart of immigration to the US since
1820. That tiny red sliver is Asians. You can see that, for much of American history,
the US severely limited Asian immigration and enacted racist policies like the Chinese
Exclusion Act. This means most of our families weren't subject
to policies like Jim Crow and redlining that engineered separate schools and neighborhoods
for white people. The US eventually allowed Asians into the
country, and we arrived in large numbers. But US immigration policy selected for certain
types of people. Here, we can see the percentage of newly arrived
US immigrants with college degrees. And Asians are among the most educated. This doesn't mean that all Asian Americans share
the same history. Asia is a big continent, and our histories
vary pretty widely. Here, we can see poverty rates are very different
across these groups. But by looking at our histories — which
were largely determined by our skin color and ethnicity — we can understand how Asians
might face racist admissions practices. But how that doesn't mean Asians suffer systemic
disadvantages in education. And that's the other reason we suck at talking
about affirmative action: we often ignore the history. Opponents of affirmative action say that any policy
that considers a person's race violates the 14th Amendment, which says everyone is guaranteed
"equal protection of the laws." But looking at our history helps us understand
why that's misleading. The equal protection clause was created to
protect the rights of black people after the Civil War. And the Supreme Court has cited it in decisions
like Brown v. Board and Loving v. Virginia, cases that made American society more inclusive. And the Supreme Court has ruled, time and
again, that being inclusive doesn't mean we have to be colorblind. For example, today's schools are still highly
segregated and children of color still face major disadvantages. So creating a more inclusive system requires
us to recognize the role of race in America. And this is arguably the best defense of affirmative
action. But the Supreme Court says that schools can't use
the history racial discrimination as a defense for considering race. The only thing schools can say is: diversity
is good for everyone. And soon, if this Harvard case makes it in
front of the Court, colleges might not even be able to make that argument. Which means a place like Harvard — the training
ground for America's elite, where about one in four students are currently black or Hispanic
— would go back to looking the way it did two generations ago. And conservatives will finally get the colorblind
process they've long dreamed of. Imagine you're on a beach. It's flat, it's wide. With pristine sand. Looks nice, right? Unfortunately, many beaches don't look this
way. They’re narrow, with steep cliffs, and waves
breaking close to the property line. This is a beach that’s experiencing erosion. In America, about 80 to 90 percent of sandy coastlines have this problem. So the government spends billions to expand
some of the most rapidly eroding beaches in an effort to defend the coast. But this effort, while effective in the short
term, can actually hurt beaches in the long run. It's because every shoreline on the planet is subject to erosion. Beach erosion occurs when waves and
currents remove sand from the shoreline. The loss of sand makes the beach narrower and
lowers its elevation. This erosion becomes a problem when it reaches
structures built by humans along the coast. Especially for beaches that generate tourism. The visitors enjoy the sandy coasts while
the cities and towns nearby enjoy the revenue gained. But the driving factor there is the beach
— a place like Miami Beach wouldn’t have the same draw if there weren't lots of sand. In fact there was a time when it didn’t
look this way at all. In the 1970s, a seawall turned the beach in Miami into a narrow strip. But by the '80s, the beach in Miami re-emerged nice and wide. How? Well, coastal engineers
rebuilt it through a process called "beach nourishment." Beach nourishment is a shore protection strategy
to try to counter the loss, the natural loss of sand. The typical way to do this is with dredging. Boats will dig up sand from a borrow site and move it onto the beach. You'll have a big pipe pump and you'll suck
up the sand. Then it's transferred to the coastline. Where it's dumped or pumped out onto the beach and then bulldozers move it around to try to mimic what the natural beach was like before
the project took place. The result is a nice wide beach. The new profile will better defend the property
line from damage during more intense weather like storm surge flooding. In the United States, beach nourishment is the main strategy used to protect coastal properties from risky erosion. But there’s a problem. The protection doesn’t last. As the constant
beating of waves and wind takes the sand away from the shore. And it soon it looks like it did before the nourishment
occurred. Every 2 to 8 years, on average, the nourishments
need to be repeated. Like this beach in Florida. Well this morning, Lido Beach is under a local state
of emergency — Just look at how powerful the wind was earlier
today — — problem getting worse by the hour. Lido Beach, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, got an emergency nourishment in 2018 after damage from storms reduced the beach to a narrow strip. But the beach had already gotten new sand
15 times since 1964. And Lido Key isn’t an outlier. More than 200 of the 400 miles of critically
eroding coastlines in Florida have received one or more nourishments. And across the United States, there have been nearly
3000 known-nourishment events since 1923. The funding for these projects gets a little
wonky, but here's what's important: The federal government pays for a lot of these nourishments. Up to 65% of the cost. State and local funds will make up the rest. But not all beaches that want or need nourishment
will get it. The Army Corps of Engineers — the group that
approves and designs nourishments —prioritizes defending some beaches over others, based on
the potential loss of value. According to ProPublica, the Corps only funds
nourishments where the expected benefit is 2 and a half times as high as the cost. Poorer communities won’t often meet that
criteria. So places like Miami Beach, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland, are more likely to get a lot of nourishment. They have the expensive shorefront developments
that make the investment worthwhile. And for beaches that don’t make the cut
for nourishment, continued erosion can lead to damaged or destroyed property. Nourishments aren't just about protecting
buildings, but also protecting the economies tied to them and the beach. Consider the 200 million dollars spent on
nourishments in Florida from 1995-2001. That might seem like a lot of money, until you see the
revenue from coastal tourism — it was $21.6 billion in just one year — 2001. On average, the State of Florida generates
more than 5 dollars of revenue for every dollar invested in beach nourishment. Which is why nourishment is so appealing. It make economic sense. But they do present one major problem. According to research published by the American
Geophysical Union, there is a feedback loop. Nourishment tends to happen along beaches
that generally have expansive properties and they also seem to drive development along
the same shores, despite the risk of future erosion. If you were in a place that had nourished
its beach, the houses behind that nourishment project were significantly larger, in every
case, than in a place that had never nourished its shoreline at all. Research found that areas with nourished beaches
had homes that were about three times bigger than non-nourished ones. And this excessive development is a real problem,
because it's based on false security. According to the researchers, "beach nourishment
may actually mask or reduce the apparent impact of coastal hazards without changing the natural
processes that drive them." In fact, building more property in these areas only increases the potential damage from future erosion. So, while beach nourishments protect property
and local economies in the short run, they also trick us into thinking it’s safe to
build in places that aren't. Which sets up coastal communities for an ugly
reckoning at the shore... sooner or later. They’re either too small for any practical
use or entirely nonexistent. And it’s not for lack of wanting. A data viz website called The Pudding measured
pocket sizes on 80 different pairs of jeans, comparing men’s and women’s versions with
the same waist size. The results varied per brand – Abercrombie,
for example, showed very little difference in pocket size, while brands like J. Crew showed as much as a 5 inch difference in depth between men’s
and women’s jeans. On average women’s front pockets are 48%
shorter and 6.5% narrower than a man’s – Meaning the majority of women’s jeans are
completely impractical for most things we carry around. But it wasn’t always this way – in fact
women used to have really large pockets. And just how large are we talking? It's kind of like this. Really large. From the 17th century through the 19th century
women’s pockets were these large detachable things that tied onto a
 woman’s waist underneath her skirts. There were unfashionable, they were not very
sightly, but they made perfect practical sense. Because it didn't pull on the dress, you could
take them off during the day if they were too heavy – You could change your pockets. In the 18th and the 19th century when these
were really the norm, there were no complaints about women having no pockets.
But over time the silhouettes of dresses began to change and so did attitudes towards pockets. Fashion journalists began rallying against
the tie-in pocket, in favor of the reticule -- a small purse. And you have two sides, you have those who call themselves
the "pocketists" and those who are the "anti-pocketists." And the pocketists say, “no we like our
old-fashioned pocket. They're practical, you know, they allow women
to be independent.” And you have the anti-pocketists,
who say "oh no, these are for grannies, modern women want
the fashionable reticule." Despite these new trends, tie-in pockets were still very convenient and many women weren’t
ready to give them up. Especially because dressmakers struggled to
include integral pockets in women’s clothing. They often placed them in inconvenient places
like the bustle or the hem, making them difficult to find and frustratingly small. Meanwhile tailors had been perfecting pockets
since the 16th century in menswear and at this point they were including various specialized
pockets for all different types of objects. So there's increasing discourse at the end
of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, it was like why can't we have pockets? We want pockets. We want pocket equality.
You know, why are women forced to wear a handbag – it’s so impractical – whereas men
have everything in their pockets. As more women entered the workforce, wearing
pants became more mainstream. In the 1930’s Levi Strauss introduced the
first pair of women’s blue-jeans with pockets that measured within a quarter inch of mens
pockets, but these were primarily used by women who worked on ranches. It wasn’t until nearly 30 years later that
blue jeans became the norm in fashion and from there, women’s pockets fell victim to
fashion over function: As styles began to slim and favor thinner
waistlines, our pockets began to disappear because they ruined the silhouette –
Adding a front pocket to a pair of skinny jeans, for example, would stretch out the
fabric in unflattering places for many women – especially because women's jeans tend to
have a little extra stretch. And even when there’s nothing in them, the
lines of the pocket sac still show through, which is why many designers have removed the
front pocket altogether. While designers are now incorporating
pockets into dresses again, and adding them to workout leggings, we’re still kind of
waiting on jeans. It’s been over a century since tie-in pockets
have been phased out in women’s clothing and we've been asking for replacements ever since. But for now, most women’s pockets are still about fashion – not function. And while the fashion industry is slowly responding
– hopefully we won’t have to wait another 100 years for them to really figure it out. Hey there, thanks for The Goods and thanks to our sponsor American Express. AmEx has a credit card feature that gives you choices for how to make payments, big or small, called "Pay it, Plan it." "Pay it" helps you reduce your balance by making small payments through the month, and "Plan it" can help you split purchases over $100, up over time. You can check it out at americanexpress.com/payitplanit. And thanks again to American Express. Their support made this series possible. Hey, you know Pablo Escobar, the drug lord. Yeah, I’m at his old house right now here in rural Colombia. And I’m looking for some hippos. But wait, no no no, hippos aren’t supposed to be here. They’re not supposed to be here.
Hippos exist here, not in Colombia. Pablo Escobar was one of the most infamous
and most successful drug lords in history. The guy had an entire empire of cocaine production
and trafficking throughout the world. “One of the world’s most wanted men, drug
trafficker Pablo Escobar is also accused of murder and terrorism.”
And with all of his drug money, he wanted to build a private zoo. He imported giraffes and exotic animals from all over the world,
including four hippos. When Pablo Escobar was shot and killed in
the early '90’s, the government came in and reclaimed
this estate. And they took all the animals and distributed
them out to other zoos, except for the hippopotamuses. They didn’t touch the hippos.
They kind of just let them go free into the swamp. These hippos are now a ticking time bomb. Today there are 50 of these hippos. They proliferated very quickly
and they are now a big problem for the Colombian government
and a threat to these locals. To understand why this is such a big deal,
you have to understand hippos. Hippos are huge mammals native to the continent
of Africa and they’re pretty aggressive. Some call hippos the most ferocious mammals
on the planet. But wait, aren’t hippos cute, cuddly animals? There’s that one scene in “Fantasia”
where the hippos are dancing ballet with the crocodiles
and it’s the crocodiles that seem scary, not the hippos. Well, the reality is actually the exact opposite. Hippos routinely kill crocodiles. More people are killed by hippos in Africa every year than any other wild animal. Escobar’s estate has since been turned into a theme park
where you can kind of wander around and look at different animals. And the hippopotamuses then became a part of the spectacle.
It’s actually a pretty cool park, if I were staying here a few days, I would
totally hang out here. The audio track that’s playing that’s explaining
these hippopotamuses, frames them as this positive experiment in conservation. That they’re able to live in a natural environment and thrive. But I’m going to go talk to a biologist who actually has a very different take. So the problem here is that the park can’t
actually contain the hippos. They’ve actually started wandering and settling
down in rivers and ponds hundreds of miles away. Coming up to another group here, it’s just three of them that hang out in
this other pond. So David and his team are tasked with figuring
out a solution to this problem of how to stop these hippos from moving around
and what to do with the population as it grows. But this is really hard stuff, mainly because
no one’s ever had to do this before. Here’s why this is a big problem. What you’re looking at here is what David calls: Yes, this is hippo heaven. In Africa, there’s usually droughts that
stave off the proliferation of the hippos. Here there aren’t droughts. Without a natural predator or any sort of competition, they’re sexually active earlier on in their lives, they eat more, they are just living their best lives. Colombia is one of the most biodiverse places
on Earth and a growing invasive species population
means a disruption to that diversity. Invasive species are a top cause for a loss
in biodiversity and biologists have already started to notice
that the hippos’ presence is reshaping these ecosystems. But it’s not just a threat to the ecosystems. Sometimes the hippos will come into town. As the hippo population spreads, they’re coming in contact with humans more and more often. And David worries the locals here aren’t
aware just how dangerous these animals can be. So far no one has gotten hurt in one of these encounters, but with the hippo population growing so quickly, it won’t be long before an accident happens. So David and his team have come up with a
few strategies to tackle this problem. First, they tried to physically contain them
with fences and rock walls. Okay, so fences don’t work. Next, they tried to castrate the males, stop them from reproducing. But tranquilizing and castrating a hippo is dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive. One solution is what you do to any big, dangerous
invasive species when they start to take over an ecosystem that
they’re not native to. You exterminate them. This didn’t go well. The hunting team went out, killed one of the
hippos and then they posted this photo, which sparked a national outcry. People did not like the idea of these hippos being hunted and killed. The best solution, and the
one David is really pushing for, is to just move these hippos away. But until that happens, Pablo Escobar’s old estate will keep selling tickets to people
who want to see the hippos. David and his team will continue to struggle
to contain the situation and the hippos, the real winners in all of
this, will continue to bask in the reality that they truly do live in hippo heaven. Just hear me out. It's 1986. Oprah is interviewing sax player Kenneth Gorelick
-- known around the world as Kenny G. "It's like you are talking to, and doing a few other things with this instrument." "Well I've never taken any music lessons so — " "Amazing!" " — I don't really know exactly what I'm doing." In 1993 he played at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. By 1996 he was starring in golf commercials. "My driver use to be my least-favorite club
in the bag, until I got the Great Big Bertha driver." "Now it's my favorite!" And his music was the calming soundtrack of the weather channel. Kenny G had hit his peak. “Tell me that part about Kenny G again” But it wasn’t just Kenny G; smooth jazz,
the style of music he’d come to be the face of, was everywhere. "Smooth jazz, 94.7" "Smooth jazz, 106.5" "Smooth jazz, 98.7" "This is smooth jazz, 106.9" How did that happen? Like, where the hell did smooth jazz come from? Let’s go back to Clinton’s inauguration. Kenny G actually wasn’t the only saxophonist performing. In fact, Will Smith, "This feels great." The emcee of one of many
inaugural events that day, brought out 10 sax players to serenade the jazz-loving president. "Check this out." This was like the who’s who of saxophonists, but it’s this guy, standing right next to Kenny G, where this story begins. There's no question: Kenny G has one idol and
he admits to it. Grover Washington Jr. In the late '60s and early '70s, straight jazz
was all but gone from pop radio. The music was becoming more experimental,
and albums like Miles Davis’ “B*tches Brew" established jazz fusion - an eclectic
hybrid of jazz and rock - as the next iteration of the art form. But some jazz artists saw promise in pop music,
and began crossing over by recording instrumental covers of huge pop hits. A shining example of that is jazz guitar virtuoso,
Wes Montgomery’s, 1966 cover of “Goin' Out of My Head." That record was produced by Creed Taylor,
who filled out Montgomery’s mellow guitar with strings and woodwinds - instruments that
were more familiar to pop radio listeners. This song sounded more like The Beach Boys’
"Pet Sounds" than it did most jazz records that came out in 1966. And it was a smash hit, because it established a formula
for jazz that the everyday listener could understand. As this Billboard article put it, "The chasm
between jazz and popular music was narrowing." It was through Creed Taylor’s label, CTI,
that Grover Washington Jr. became a household name. Grover Washington defined crossover jazz in
the '70s. His fourth album with Taylor was "Mister Magic." Just looking at the cover, you know you’re
going to listen to songs that are smooth as ****. It really is, in the most simple sense an R&B background, of a fairly slow tempo with fairly slow harmonic change that's kind of grooving. On top of that is Grover’s saxophone playing
a simple, yet infectious melody. The second he made radio-friendly songs, he
lost a lot of respect from the jazz world, and it was difficult gaining it back. Here’s a quote on the back cover of his
own record that reveals this tension: Apparently a jazz critic went to one of his shows and sat scowling at the bar. By the end of the show, he said, "Cat can play." Just having that jazz critic admit that he could play the saxophone, was equivalent to a bushel of five-star reviews. Any jazz player will give you a list of things that
they don't like about it. They don't like the lack of technical virtuosity. They don't like the lack of harmonic interest,
but in my opinion what trumps it all is popularity. When you're dealing with art cliques, popularity
is like poison. If jazz purists were quick to dismiss Grover's
"Mister Magic," then they sure as hell were going to roll their eyes at jazz guitarist,
George Benson's, "Breezin' " in 1976. It was the first jazz album to ever go platinum. The title track was originally composed by
soul record producer Bobby Womack and bears a strikingly close resemblance to “Goin'
Out of My Head.” George Benson is one artist that no one could
refute, because he had the chops in straight-ahead jazz. And people were mad in the straight-ahead
jazz industry. To them, he chose success over art. This Downbeat magazine review of George Benson
says it all. “Hearing George Benson on this album is
like watching Marlon Brando in a Three Stooges movie - such is the relationship between the
art and artist.” But, that didn't really matter to the public. "This Masquerade," the single off the record,
peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and won the Grammy in 1977 for Record of the Year. He does this scat-type singing, where he’s
scatting and he's playing and the fingers are following his voice. And you couldn't say that wasn't jazz in 1976. By the end of the '70s, dozens of musicians followed Benson and Grover’s breezy sound. Even Taxi, one of the most popular shows to
ever to be on television, used a Bob James pop-jazz recording as their theme song. The problem? Well, radio didn't know what to call it. This reporter just said “Not Quite Jazz,
But Pretty Stuff.” Enter Broadcast Architecture, a market research
firm tasked with giving this promising radio format a name. "All these radio stations were coming on, doing this format." "It was like, what do we call it?" "The way we did focus groups is a little different;
we would interview people one person at a time for 30 minutes." A female radio listener entered the room. "She was saying 'it’s jazz, but it’s not really jazz and it’s smooth.' Then she goes, 'It’s smooth jazz.' " "Yeah, that’s what it is." "It really struck a lightbulb with
everybody that was behind the glass watching." Turn it on 94.7 - okay. 94.7. "Ninety - four - seven." That’s it that’s it, sh sh sh sh shhh! "On behalf of all of us at Metropolitan Broadcasting,
welcome to 94.7, The Wave." What you just heard was the moment one of the first
official smooth jazz stations went on the air. "Within a few months KKSF in San Francisco
launched. WNUA launched. CD101.9 in New York launched." "It was a tipping point in the format
for sure." But take a look at how The Wave marketed itself
- only occasionally did they actually play what some would consider jazz music. "We started testing everything from Phil Collins... Even some Hall and Oates tunes." "You know, vocal tracks that would help glue
it all together." "Smooth sounds for a rough world." And make no mistake, Kenny G was at the center
of all of it. "CD101.9, it's called "Silhouette" and
the artist, of course, Kenny G." "Kenny G?" "Who likes jazz?" I love jazz. "Kenny G can blow the storm up." "Ladies and gentleman, Kenny G!" Kenny G was known just as much for his hair
as he was for his saxophone playing. "He was the cool white boy.
He was just a cool guy who played the saxophone." "And I'm going to go ahead and say it, it's the money." "He made so much money doing it." "And this year's adult contemporary artist
is… Kenny G!" "I don't know what to say, I would have never
expected I’d win this thing." Yes you did, Kenny. This chart shows the rise of smooth jazz radio
starting in 1987 when KTWV went on the air and peaked around 1997, the same year Kenny
G entered the Guinness world records books for holding a note for over 45 minutes…..
wait what?! Some of smooth jazz’s most attentive fans
were the at-work radio listeners of corporate America. "If you take The Wave to work with you and there's a fax machine in your office, jot down a few songs that you'd like to hear on The Wave and fax them to us." "We would get hundreds and hundreds of faxes, like within an hour the fax machine starts rolling." Smooth jazz seemed like it would dominate forever. But then, everything changed. In the early 2000's Arbitron, the firm that
measures audiences, introduced a new technology, The Purple People Eater — I’m sorry I meant to say the "Portable People Meter." It's this little beeper -- people believe
it killed smooth jazz. PPM, which is still in use today - is an electronic
beeper that captures audio tones masked in the signal of radio broadcasts. Basically, it picks up
audience listenership automatically. It replaced a decades-long practice of using paper diary entries to measure audiences. "People would write down for a week what they listened to and they would turn it in. Very easy for people to do." "It went from that to, what we want to ask you to do is wear this on your belt all day and we want you to do this for a year." But it often didn't work with smooth jazz. The format’s soft, ambient sound didn’t
allow for the signal to be consistently masked in the music without being discernable to
listeners - if the signal wasn’t embedded, the beeper just couldn’t register it. Polling site Fivethirtyeight tracked the
number of six large-market smooth jazz stations before and after PPM - in each instance they
either changed formats or shutdown entirely. But it might not have been all PPM’s fault "I think it’s a reflection of what our economy did. Our station went off the air when everything crashed." Smooth jazz radio was music for ordinary,
everyday people trying to get through their day stress-free. It certainly never cared about critics
during its solid 20 year run, and unlike straight-ahead jazz, it didn’t care so
much about challenging the listener either. And it’s why from the 1960s to the '90s anything written about the music looked like this: But dig deep into smooth jazz’s history
and you’ll find some really exciting music. "There was an album Herbie Hancock did call
the "New Standard." "Oh man that was good. I'd come off there talking about that." "I was like, Oh this is what this is why I'm
doing what I'm doing." Or go even further back to Grover Washington
Jr.’s "Winelight." "And just listen to it as you're cooking dinner or something." "It's just chill, man. And it'll give you a feeling for why people fell in love with this music. For such a long time." Thanks so much for watching my little miniseries on jazz, I hope to tackle so many more stories on this genre of music in future Earworm episodes. Until then, I've got a great gift for you, which is a Spotify playlist full of amazing smooth jazz songs that will definitely make you a convert. There is a crisis here. Millions of people have fled Venezuela as
the country crumbles. Many of them are coming over this border into
Colombia. Here is this border town of Cucuta, you see
people with suitcases full of all their belongings. They don’t know where they’re going. They just know they need to get out of their
country. If you need proof of how bad it is in Venezuela
right now, look at this purse. This purse is made entirely of the bills of
the Venezuelan currency, the Bolivares. Inflation is so high that this money is now
completely worthless. So my friend Jorge over here has gathered a
ton of this stuff and turned it into commodities, into purses,
into sculptures. It is worse than it sounds and it sounds pretty
bad. The country’s inflation rate will rise to
one million percent. More than a million Venezuelans moved to Colombia in recent years. And in an era of record setting migration, when borders seem to be getting thicker, harder to cross. Colombia is doing something that you don’t
see very often. It’s opening its doors and it’s letting
people in. The border crisis is shocking. It’s a real humanitarian crisis. The economic crisis there is about to get
even worse. Is there a point where Colombia and other
countries in Latin America step in and say enough is enough now? This border town of Cucuta is now totally
bustling. This is the very end of the border. Where these people are entering. And the one thing that you’ll hear that
is a little interesting is... “Compra cabello,” we buy hair. To continue on their way to make some money,
the women will sell their hair. You basically get 100,000 pesos, which is
like 30 dollars. I’m eating a Venezuelan styled hot dog and the guys are reflecting on how much this
hot dog would cost if they were trying to buy it in Venezuela
with the current economic situation 87% of the country’s households into poverty. Images that we’ve never seen in Latin America before is unfortunately something we’re seeing now. The collapse of Venezuela didn’t happen
because of a civil war or a natural disaster, but rather the colossal economic mismanagement
by the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro. In just a few years, Maduro grabbed control
of most of the government and then drove the country into an economic
disaster worse than the Great Depression and the fall of the Soviet Union. Of the two million people who have left Venezuela
in the midst of this crisis about one million have come to Colombia, easily
more than any other country. The response by most countries in the region has been to put up new measures to stop migrants from flooding into their country. But not Colombia, here the borders stays relatively
easy to cross. And even though Colombia already has millions of its own people in need of humanitarian assistance, the Colombian people and politicians continue
to let these migrants in. So I have decided that we’re not going to
close the border. We have to give them support. Now we’re in the refugee camp, is what they’re
calling it. Here the government provides all sorts of
services to these people. Haircuts and manicures. Today in the camp, they’re playing music. Some Colombian, some Venezuelan and everyone, locals, migrants start singing and clapping along. The Colombian government has given most of these migrants status, allowing them to live in the country, get
healthcare, work and study for two years. But it’s not just the Colombia government
opening its doors. In a neighborhood by the border, people starting
taking migrants into their homes, indefinitely and for free. And to understand why these people are opening up their doors to Venezuelans, you have to understand their past. If you go back to the 1800’s, Colombia and
Venezuela were actually a part of the same country called Gran Colombia. This country actually broke up into the modern
states we know today. Decades later, in the 80’s and 90’s, Colombia
was experiencing some of its worst violence in its decades
long war with a rebel group called the FARC. This war displaced more than seven million
people, more than any other modern war. Hundreds of thousands of those people fled
to Venezuela, where the economy was thriving And the Venezuelans took them in. So in a sense, this the Colombians way of
paying back Venezuelans for the hospitality they were given. Here at the border, you go down the street
a little bit, and you see this sign that says welcome to Colombia. Above it, it says, “ Colombia and Venezuela,
united forever." It’s part of these two countries being different,
having very different governments. There is this common identity among the people. But there are reasons to believe this sense
of solidarity might not last forever. A slew of crimes, allegedly committed by Venezuelans,
have led to a new wave of skepticism in the country. Earlier this year, the police chief in this
border town told people that they shouldn’t rent their properties to Venezuelans after a migrant was arrested for a homicide. But despite the growing skepticism, many Venezuelans
continue to see tremendous support in Colombia, a country that has chosen to keep its doors open to the thousands of migrants who come in everyday. So I was watching Hannity's show a few weeks
ago and something really weird happened. It was November 5th and the show was airing from a Trump rally
in Missouri. It's election eve. We're in the great Show-Me State. How are we all doing? And while Hannity's show is always rah rah
Trump, this one felt especially campaign-y. So much is at stake. In a few short hours... you ready? Hannity opened the show by running through a literal list of Trump's accomplishments, including gems like "successful trip to Asia" and "drafted plan to defeat ISIS." Well, you gotta to start somewhere. He listed the Democrats agenda if they won
the midterms, including -- of course -- open borders. He constantly repeated the phrase "promises made, promises kept." Promises made, promises kept. Promises made, promises kept." Which, surprise surprise, was one of the GOP's
midterm slogans. Promises made, promises kept. And he tried to put on a brave face before the impending Blue Wave. So what are we going to see tomorrow? I mean, as far as I'm concerned the polls
are meaningless. They are meaningless. The show ended with Hannity privately interviewing
Trump, in a coffin I think, and asking hardball questions like: "you spent three and a half billion on the
border wall. And I know you're disappointed, you want the
rest." And that was the end of the show. But the weirdness was only beginning. See, a few days earlier, the Trump campaign announced that Hannity would be appearing as a special guest during
the rally. Hannity denied that he'd appear on stage, claiming he was only going there to interview
Trump. But a few minutes after Hannity's show finished
airing... Let's get it over with, right? Sean Hannity, come on up. Sean Hannity. Promises made, promises kept. By the way, all those people in the back are
fake news. That freaked a lot of people out, and not just because Hannity was literally
calling other Fox News reporters in the room fake
news. Fox News issued a statement saying they didn't condone talent participating in
campaign events and Hannity claimed the whole thing with a
total surprise. The president, I had no idea. It was not planned. And then... nothing. The midterms came and went. Hannity went back to his show and that was
it. Welcome to Hannity. Jam packed hour. What would have been an immediate firing on any other network was barely a PR blip
for Fox. Because as shocking as that whole fiasco might
look, it's just the latest example in how Fox News
is transforming from a right-wing news network into a full blown campaign operation. You have the power to shock the world again. Just think of what it's going to be like to watch the corrupt media. They will lose their minds. I want to start off by saying this is not
a video about Fox News being too conservative. It is normal for journalists to have political
beliefs. Hannity is obviously a right-winger and I
am obviously an antifa supersoldier. What's not normal is for news organizations to be directly involved in campaigns they're
covering. It's why you've never seen Rachel Maddow give a stump speech for Democrats. It's unethical. Also that speech would be 45 minutes long and never get to the point. Not again. As an experiment, I asked my bosses if I could
speak at a Democratic campaign rally -- that I made up because they have too much
free time on my hands -- and here's what they said. No. Come on. Of course not. Why not? Because you're journalists. You're not working for a campaign. This is a pretty widely accepted rule in journalism and it's actually one that Fox News used to
follow. In 2010, Hannity spent a week promoting his
appearance at a Tax Day Tea Party rally in Cincinnati. Tax Day, we will be in Cincinnati. And hopefully you can be a part of the studio
audience. But after Fox News found out the rally organizers were using Hannity's appearance to sell tickets, they pulled the plug. NewsCorp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said "I don't think we should be supporting the
Tea Party or any other party." And that was the last time Fox News pretended
to give a shit. In 2016, Hannity appeared in a bananas pro-Trump
campaign ad. And of course he's going to build that wall, he says he's going to have Mexico pay for
it. Sean! You shot it on an iPhone? With a tucked in polo? If any other journalist did that they'd be
so ridiculously fired. But Fox News did not fire Hannity. Instead, they said they didn't know he was
appearing in the ad and promised that he wouldn't do it again. And since then, the problem has exploded. Hannity now regularly appears at Republican
fundraising and campaign events. Here he is campaigning for Ted Cruz in Texas. We need Ted Cruz now than ever. And for Ron Desantis in Florida. The media hates that I'm here and I'm like
"too bad." But it's not even just Hannity anymore. Pete Hegseth, who co-hosts Fox and Friends
on the weekend, has repeatedly spoken at GOP fundraisers. Here he is in Washington in 2017. Keep giving. Keep fighting. Don't apologize for President Trump. Here he is in Tennessee in April. Please write a bigger check than you thought you were going to write tonight. He does a ton of these. We are correct. That's why you're a Republican. Here's Fox host Laura Ingraham campaigning for Republican Kelli Ward in Arizona. Let's push her over the finish line. Let's get it done for Kelli. Right after Hannity got pulled on stage at
that Trump rally, another Fox host, Jeanine Pirro, also went
on stage. Get em' out to vote for Donald Trump and all the people who are running for the
Republican Party. Pirro has bragged about speaking at GOP fundraisers
on TV. Last night, I was in Morgantown, West Virginia where I gave a speech at the annual Republican
Reagan Dinner. She's a constant fixture at GOP fundraisers
across the country. God, you gotta love that sorority pose, though. I'm getting away with it! The problem goes deeper than Fox hosts appearing at these events. These campaigns are now slowly infecting Fox News programming. Before Hannity went onstage at that Trump
rally, he went district by district attacking individual
Democrats. Liberal radical leftist incumbent Claire McCaskill. Radical leftist Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. Democratic do-nothing Schumer Democrat Bill
Nelson. While endorsing Republican candidates. American hero Martha McSally. Bob Hugin. Marine. Semper Fi, Bob. Ted Cruz needs to be back in the U.S. Senate. It wasn't the first time he'd done that. Hannity had been running that segment for
days before the midterms. We will point out 10 key races a night. So you know if it's your district that matters. Republican Mark Harris, he needs your help. We need that seat to stay Republican. And again, it's not just Hannity. If you call yourself a conservative and a
Republican, it's actually immoral not to vote for Donald
Trump. Vote for the America that is great again. And the more comfortable Fox has gotten with
campaigning, the more GOP candidates are relying on Fox as part of their campaign strategies. Look at this softball interview Hannity did with GOP candidate Karin Housley in October. Karin Housley is with us. Karin, let's talk about Keith Ellison and
the double standard. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Sean. What the- That is not a question. That is a campaign stop. And Housley knew it. She immediately repackaged that interview
into a campaign ad. You can win this race. I believe tha- Lots of Republicans do this now. Clip Hannity's softball coverage and repackage it for their campaign. A former police chief, Eddie Edwards. I'm with the police chief tonight. Republican challenger Wendy Rogers, in a district that President Trump only carried
by one point. By the way good luck in your run for governor
down in South Carolina. I have a lot of friends down there. It's become cliche to mock Fox News as Trump
TV or state propaganda. But what's happened over the past few years goes way beyond ideology. Congressman Desantis joins us now. Full disclosure, I did do town halls with
him. And I endorsed you and I don't regret it. Fox News is quietly allowing itself to evolve
into a massive, highly influential get-out-the-vote operation. Congressman Desantis, congratulations. I remember you and I talking after we did
that debate on Fox News and you were like "you're not going to be behind much longer
after this." And sure enough, I mean, we really pulled
ahead. The problem isn’t that Hannity got on stage
at a campaign event. It's that Fox News is the campaign event. One that's becoming deeply embedded in the
GOP's strategy for winning elections from here on out. So let me get this straight. You got an e-mail from Celine Dion's presidential
campaign and they want you to speak at a rally. At Panera Bread, yes. Carlos! Borders is back and this time I went to Colombia. This country of about 50 million people actually feels like a lot of different countries, because the landscapes and the cultures are so different depending on where you go. You can never cover all the stories in one
country, but I was able to assemble upon some of the most interesting things that I think are happening in Colombia. There is a crisis at this border and I went to go
see what's happening with the many refugees that are coming from Venezuela
into Colombia and how Colombia is handling it. And then I went out into some of the
deepest jungle I'd ever been in to explore Colombia's cocaine economy, which
is based entirely on this one leaf: the coca plant. Oh and I got to see some
hippos during my trip, which was kind of weird. I also got to go up to the
beautiful city of Cartagena, up in the northern part of Colombia, to look into a
subject that I've never looked into before: music and dance. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to start releasing these episodes, as always on Vox's YouTube
channel and on our Facebook Watch page I hope you like them, I hope you learn something new and I hope you get to know Colombia on a whole new level. When you’re surfing through Netflix on the bus, the train, work, or in the comfort of your couch at home — how do you pick what to watch? Is it a catchy title? Maybe an interesting synopsis? Perhaps it’s the unwillingness to watch another episode of The Office... “Save Bandit!” [mewling cry of a cat ] Or just maybe, a particular piece of cover art speaks to your spirit? But go on your friend’s Netflix account — if they aren’t still using your subscription — and you may find the cover art there doesn’t interest you. In fact, what you see might be completely
different. It's no accident — Netflix's thumbnails
are all tailor made... for you. At its heart, Netflix is all about creating
personalized experiences — or, rather, calculating them. They’ll draw you in with curated trailers
of upcoming releases, point out new episodes from previously watched videos, and even gauge your interest in content via match scores. And while streaming services are notoriously tight-lipped about sharing their viewership data... Over the years, Netflix has shared glimpses into how their technology works. According to internal studies, a typical viewer spends 1.8 seconds considering each title, and Netflix believes it only has 90 seconds to get your attention before you move onto another activity. And among all the things that could catch
your attention and make you watch a show– or several— Netflix found that the biggest influence
were the thumbnails. Humans are intensely visual creatures. Our eyes move three to four times a second to process new information. And because Netflix’s goal is to get your
attention and hold it, the company puts a lot of work into choosing every thumbnail
you’ll see. But before they can decide what image will show up on your account, they have to sift through a ton of data. An hour-long Stranger Things episode has almost 86,000 video frames. To figure out which ones will make the best thumbnails, Netflix uses a pretty scientific selection process called Aesthetic Visual Analysis, or AVA. AVA is a set of tools and algorithms that
search Netflix videos for the best images and pull them out to create thumbnails. The process can be broken down into two basic steps. First is frame annotation. A program analyzes every static video frame of a video, and image recognition algorithms use information gleaned from each shot to create metadata. The metadata is like an electronic fingerprint — identifying characteristics unique to each video frame. All of this info helps build a database of
information that makes it easier to pick out the best images for thumbnails later. And to sort all this data, the company groups it into roughly three categories that are key to identifying good images: Visual — focusing on brightness, color,
contrast, and motion blur. Contextual, which documents face and object detection, motion, and shot angles. And compositional — which focuses on visual principles in cinematography, photography, and design. The second step is a process called image ranking. An algorithm uses the metadata to pick out specific shots that Netflix has determined are the most attractive and clickable: ones that aren’t blurry, have varied imagery, feature major characters, and don’t contain sensitive or unauthorized branded content. Then, finally, a creative team steps in to
use the best images to design the thumbnail artwork. But the process doesn’t stop there — Netflix still has to figure out which ones work best for each user. A/B testing is executed — again, again, and again. You’ll regularly see changes in your thumbnails — based on your engagement with previous titles. On the most basic level, let’s say you’re
a fan of comedy, and you’ve watched a bunch of stand-up specials. When you search for Good Will Hunting, you may get a thumbnail with Robin Williams, a famous comedian, and one of the movie’s main characters. But people more into romance titles could be shown the cover art with the two leads kissing. There are also regional differences. From glancing at a show’s thumbnails across different countries, you could infer Germany is more into abstract images, and US viewers may prefer clearly defined characters and story plots. Though there are a considerable number of thumbnails to choose from, and lots of science that goes into each decision, it doesn’t
mean Netflix gets it right all the time. One Twitter user found the cover art for,
“Like Father” a movie starring Kristen Bell, Kelsey Grammer, and Seth Rogen, had cover art that didn’t exactly match who the lead actors in the film were. It was also kinda odd to see on my own account, that the Catwoman thumb has an image of a barely recognizable supporting actress Sharon Stone, and Blade II had someone other than its star, Wesley Snipes, in the thumbnail. Netflix is obsessed with A/B testing new features like video promos, intro skipping, and auto-playing trailers — just as obsessively as they are with testing thumbnails. Netflix wants everyone to watch more, so it’s unlikely they’ll stop doing these tests. And if you don’t like being a guinea pig,
there is the option to opt out. But with binge-watching quickly becoming a national pastime, it’s likely that, when Netflix asks you, "Are you still watching?" You will be. Hey! Thanks for watching The Goods, and thanks to our sponsor American Express. AmEx has a credit card feature that gives you choices for how to make payments big or small called, "Pay It Plan It." "Pay It" helps you reduce your balance by making small payments throughout the month. And "Plan It" can help you split purchases over $100 up over time. You can check it out at americanexpress.com/payitplanit And thanks again to American Express, their support made this series possible. America has a democracy problem. Take a look at this chart. Over there on the left, that's how many people each member of the US House represented in 1790. There's now one representative for every
747 thousand Americans. That makes the US a crazy undemocratic outlier internationally. But it also makes us different than what we were supposed to be. The founding fathers, they wanted that number to stay small. James Madison wanted to make sure that it would never be more than one House member for 50,000 people. I bring this up because it's one of a lot of ways in which our system has become different than what the founders intended. Which maybe is ok - I think it's ok - but it's also different than what we may have intended or what we may want. People ask me sometimes what I actually worry about in American politics - what makes me afraid - and it's this: A political system needs to be legitimate to be stable. People need to feel that it's fair. But is that true right now? Two out of the past three presidents lost the popular vote for the first term in office - two out of three. House elections are utterly warped by  gerrymandering and geography. The Senate gives six hundred and twenty-three thousand people in Vermont as much power as more than 19 million people in New York. And meanwhile, five dudes in robes,
who are politically appointed, by parties looking for ideologues - they made it legal for billionaires to spend as much money buying elections as they want. And here's where undemocratic becomes actually dangerous: The American political system was built around the fear of disunity. The fear was that the states would pull apart. We weren't supposed to have political parties. The founding fathers thought they were bad - or at least they did before they started some. But now we do have political parties, and the competition, the core competition, the disunity in this country, is between them. We don't worry about the political divisions between big states and small states, we worry about the ones between red states and blue states. And the particular ways in which America is undemocratic is making that core competition less fair, is making that political disunity more serious. The reason for that is not one anybody saw coming. Democrats cluster in big cities.
Republicans are more concentrated in rural areas. The average state is six points more Republican in the country as a whole. Which gives that party a huge advantage in the Senate. and in the House, well Democrats are feeling pretty good about the House right now. But to win the House, they couldn't win by one or two or three percent. They had to win a landslide - six or seven or eight percent. Or else they'd still be in the minority because of gerrymandering and geography. And Republicans, they're using that advantage in elections to write the rules to give themselves more advantages in elections. They're using it to win the Supreme Court for a generation, and that Supreme Court in turn is giving them rulings on gerrymandering, on money in politics, on
unions, on voter rights that are helping them with more power. As the left realizes it's playing a rigged game they're already becoming determined to rewrite the rules. If you want to see where this is going, look at this book by David Faris called 'It's Time for Democrats to Fight Dirty.'
It's a playbook the left can use to get more power without having to change the Constitution - and they can do a lot. He recommends statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, he recommends breaking up California into seven states in order to add at least a dozen new Democratic Senators. He tells Democrats to pack the
Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices in order to crack the
conservative majority. He wants winner-take-all elections to be replaced with ranked-choice voting in the House and to increase the number of Representatives to 870. And look - some of these ideas they're actually just good ideas. It would make politics more representative - I mean DC and Puerto Rico should clearly be states that's just fair. And then some, like the California thing, they're just power grabs. But that's the thing, as Democrats feel the right has been engaged in one long power grab, they're starting to feel like suckers for not
grabbing more power themselves. And it's why you see the rise of street fighter, do-anything Democrats like lawyer Michael Avenatti. When they go low I say we hit harder. Even Eric Holder, President Obama's
former attorney general, has taken up the battle cry. When they go low we kick them. That's what this new Democratic Party's about. But imagine just imagine Democrats take power and run some version of the Faris playbook in 2020 or 2024. There will be an equal and opposite reaction among Republicans. Now the system will feel unfair to them. And you could just see a cycle of escalation here that destroys the basic legitimacy on which American politics rests. We need something better than that. We need more than power grabs on both sides. We need actual principles we can use to build a political system that works better. We treat our political system as if it were etched on stone tablets and carried by George Washington down from Mount Sinai. But it wasn't. We've changed it a lot, but we haven't changed it recently. It's weird - the further we get from the founding, the more afraid we are to touch the system. There are 27 amendments to the Constitution before '92. There have been zero since
then and there's not like this one on the horizon. That's not how we do things
anywhere else. States routinely amend and even rewrite their constitutions. On average each state has had three constitutions and Louisiana, they've had 11. It's only at the national level that we've come to believe our political system should be frozen in amber. That however we're doing things is how we should keep doing them. And puzzlingly, we've decided that not when we think our political system is great, but at the exact time that Americans are losing faith in our political institutions. I suspect our true belief is not that our
system of government is performing so well that it should be immune to change, but that we that we are performing so poorly that we don't trust ourselves to change it. Which is sad, but this is our political system. We can't run away in self loathing. It needs to work for the country we actually have. We can't have an old compromise between states leading to a civil war between parties, but to change it we need a theory of what makes a political system legitimate in the first place and that means we need some criteria by which to judge it. Robert Dahl, one of the most respected political scientists of the 20th century, he believed the ideal US Constitution would one, maintain democracy. Two, protect fundamental rights. Three, ensure fairness among citizens Four, encourage forming consensus and five, provide a government that is effective in solving problems. I like that as criteria. I think that would make sense. If you don't like it, that's fine. What you need then is to come up with something better. The one thing we can't do is just stay still. America is in an unstable equilibrium. Its current political system is producing outcomes they feel illegitimate to the left. Any effort to reform that system, feels like it would produce outcomes that feel illegitimate to the right. We need something deeper than that. We need something that would feel legitimate it to both sides and would actually work. We can't stay right where we are, so that means the answer is simple. We must move. This is a little piece of jazz history and
it's one of the coolest things I've ever held. It's three cropped photos held together with
scotch tape and a note dictating how to print the negatives for the final photos. The remarkable thing about this post-it note-sized
image, is how little it changed when it became the full album cover for jazz saxophonist
Joe Henderson's 1966 classic "Mode for Joe." The story of how this became this didn't start
in 1966. It started in 1939, when two Jewish-German
immigrants, Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion, started the Blue Note jazz label in New York
City that would come to be revered not only for its sound, but for its iconic album covers. What they were going for is, they wanted to
make tunes that were memorable, that people could walk out of a club humming, and that
had a certain amount of soul to them. That's Michael Cuscuna, a record producer
and Blue Note aficionado. That soul sound Michael's describing was called
Hard Bop, a genre of jazz steeped in Gospel and Rhythm & Blues that became synonymous
with Blue Note by the mid-1950s. The  mastermind behind the sound was recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder. "I'm not standing too close when we play the
ensemble am I? You want me to articulate my solo? Yeah, you're a little too close. Yeah well I'll step back a little bit. Is that it? Uh, this is take four. When you heard a Blue Note record, you heard
a lot of air coming through the saxophones and the trumpets. And you heard all the power and crystal details
of the drums. That description is fully evident in Art Blakey
and the Jazz Messengers' "The Drum Thunder Suite." That was kind of the classic time for modern
jazz and New York was heaven on Earth. There was a record store on every other block,
throughout all of, not midtown, but also the Village and Harlem. And, if you went to those record stores, it
probably wasn't the sound of Blue Note that immediately caught your attention — it was
their album covers. Their bold use of color, intimate photography,
and meticulous placed typography came to define the look of jazz during the 1950s and '60s. These covers are energetic, moody, and they're
sophisticated. These album covers are jazz. Now, if you flip a Blue Note record over,
it's likely you'll see two names credited for its look. Cover Photo, Francis Wolff, Cover Design,
Reid Miles. Francis Wolff started shooting every Blue
Note session the minute he arrived. One of the most impressive and kind of shocking
things was that the average success rate of those photos was really extraordinary. He's like the jazz artist of photography in
the sense that he could nail it immediately. But the person who decided that this photo
would be this cover, was graphic designer Reid Miles. He could look at a contact sheet and zero
in on one image that you or I might not even think twice about, and find a little crop
of a square that would be like, wow, that's a dynamite image. Yeah, that is dynamite. One of the things that amazed me was what
I call the "pullback effect." Take Hank Mobley's "No Room for Squares." There was a new subway station that was built,
it was unlike any other subway stop. It had these metal concentric circles. Now, try to find the final album cover. There it is. The pullback shows you the whole image and
it shows you an insight into the eye of the designer, that I think is absolutely amazing. This is Lee Morgan's "Search for the New Land." What was really going on was, Lee was listening
to the music and sitting next to him is Alfred Lion with his eyes closed in a reverie. Listening to the same music. By the 1960s, Reid became more and more adventurous
in how he'd use typography, sometimes omitting photos altogether. This is Joe Henderson's 1964 album, "In'n
Out." A tiny crop of a photo of Henderson plays
a supporting role to a bold and energetic design, with those arrows driving the feeling
of the album title home. There's a Jackie McClean album called "It's Time." There's that tiny crop of a photo again. And then, just exclamation points for the
rest of this cover. Black type on white. And it's just startlingly beautiful and startlingly
getting your attention. But some of my favorite covers are the ones
where Reid uses Wolff's photography as a playground for typography. If you look at the contact sheet of "Uno
Mas," the upper-right hand shot is the one that Reid Miles focused on. That would probably be one of the least memorable
images on a contact sheet. There's photos of Herbie Hancock and Joe Henderson. And also there's two shots of Tony Williams
who, in this photo, looks 17 years old. And who is 17 years old. But Reid chose this image and perfectly placed
the title of the album right in Kenny Dorham's hand. He did this with Freddie Roach's "Good Move!" And fit "Our Man in Paris" around Dexter Gordon's
cigarette. What always amazed me about art directors
was the ones that could create a look for a record that was highly individual, but also
that fit into a stream that gave the label a look. Reid Miles was a master of that. This is the Kamasutra. It’s widely known as the Indian book of
acrobatic sex positions. “When both the legs of the woman are contracted,
and placed on her stomach, it is called the “crab’s position.” And since its original composition around
2,000 years ago... it’s been translated, pirated, and illustrated. It’s inspired chocolates, branded condoms,
films, and yes -- even furniture -- designed for Kamasutra moves. But the part about sex positions
is only a fraction of the book. It doesn’t even have any pictures. And the rest? “A girl who is called by the name...of a
tree, or of a river, is considered worthless, as also a girl whose name ends in “R”
or “L”. Turns out the Kamasutra is very misunderstood. It is telling that of all the Sanskrit texts that this country has produced, and we have produced God knows how many thousands, the Kamasutra is the one text that has been heard of across the world. The Kamasutra — which roughly translates
to “treatise on desire” — was originally compiled in ancient Indian language, Sanskrit,
by philosopher Vatsyayana sometime around the third century. It found popularity in the West centuries
later. British explorer Richard Francis Burton, an
“Orientalist” famous for his travels East in the 1800s and for translating The Arabian
Nights into English, commissioned the first English edition of Kamasutra. Burton’s goal was to introduce it to a sexually
repressed Victorian society at the time, and in order to avoid Britain's obscenity laws,
he created a club to privately publish erotica from the East that would be otherwise illegal
to print -- including the Kamasutra. It wasn’t until nearly a hundred years later,
during the era of the “sexual revolution”, that the US legally allowed the publication
of the book. And once it hit the internet in the 1990s,
often, only the “sexy” chapters were copied and circulated — which helped create the
image of the Kamasutra most people know today. People were actually looking
to this text, for a kind of perhaps an oriental version, an exotic version of sex that India
could provide, without understanding the larger cultural context to this text. So -- if the book isn’t a sex manual, what
is it? It's more of a manual for living a life of
leisure and luxury in India during this time period. The parts about sexual activity make up one
section - out of seven. Outside of the chapters like…“kissing”,
“biting”, and “different ways of lying down”... The book details how a man should set up his
home: “Not far from the couch, and on the ground,
there should be a round seat, a toy cart, and a board for playing with dice; outside
the outer room there should be cages of birds” It also covers the “64 arts” every “public
woman of high quality” should master, including: “Tattooing”, “Playing on musical glasses
filled with water”, “cooking”, the “Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak”,
and “Knowledge of the art of war” And explains how a man can “acquire a wife”,
how best to commit adultery, and also some magic recipes: If a man throws this mixture on a woman, she will not love anybody else afterwards. At times - the book shifts to speak directly to women. There’s a section on how one wife can maintain
control in a household with multiple wives. And another section on how to be a profitable
courtesan - or sex worker. It also gives a woman ideas
about ways to manage men. And in that sense it's about power as much
as it is about pleasure. How to get what you want, how to make a man
do what you want. Historian Wendy Doniger argues that for its
time -- the book makes some pretty progressive statements about the role of women and their
access to pleasure. It explicitly mentions that
one of the reasons for the Kamasutra is because the purpose of sex is not to have children
but to have fun. That's a revolutionary thing to say. But at the same time, the book is loaded with
contradictions. It’s less about the practice of sexuality,
and more about the control of sexuality. For example, it features a list of classes
of women who are “not to be enjoyed”... And rape is listed as an acceptable - last
resort - form of acquiring a wife. "Give the girl some intoxicating
substance”...and “enjoy her before she recovers.” 2,000 years later, it’s not surprising that the text doesn’t hold up. It’s a book of its time. A historical account of what elite life and
pleasure may have looked like in ancient India. I don't think early Indian
texts can be fit into these categories of feminist or patriarchal as easily as we perhaps
make them sound today. The task which is undertakes is a very fundamental
one for all of human society, which is how do you reconcile basic instincts and the desire
for pleasure with a social order and social obligations too? Over the years, the Kamasutra has made its
way from Indian philosophers to Victorian explorers to today’s magazine columnists. And it’s taken on a life of its own. The sexy bits have endured, while the more
complex parts - about gender and power and class - have been lost in translation. Instant ramen: it’s warm, flavorful, quick,
cheap and filling. It's the chosen favorite among college kids
and inmates across America. Check usage reports from the Massachusetts Department of Corrections for example, and you’ll see that ramen was the number one sold item at prison commissaries. Ramen has become like cash among American
prisoners. Because behind bars, it can buy you anything. Anything that's got any value. From clothes, drugs, a favor. Hey, I like the way your penmanship is, can
you write this letter for me, can you draw this for me, anything. It's literally gold. After 13 years in and out of prison, he literally
wrote the book on Prison Ramen. Ramen is the best and easiest currency because everybody uses it. That's everybody's staple to cook. Because prisoners can’t possess cash, they
use objects to trade for other goods and services… And anything that replaces cash has to be durable, portable, divisible into standardized units and highly valued. Ramen fits the bill, because unlike other
traded objects like stamps- which are expensive, and tobacco- which is banned in most prisons,
ramen is cheap and easy to get a hold of. In the commissary, a single pack of ramen
runs about $.59 on average. But, once it’s out of the official commissary,
ramen’s value is determined by an informal prison economy. They barter with it, they become jailhouse
stores so to speak, like guys would purchase all the ramen, kind of like that scene in
Orange Is The New Black. She took over the market Jesus, who bought all the ramens? Guys fill up their shelves with this and they
have their own store. And they put their price on it. Your ramen could sell for two to three dollars believe it or not. A 2016 study found that while a sweatshirt
cost $10.81 at the commissary at Sunbelt State Penitentiary, an inmate could sell that sweatshirt
for 2 packs of ramen, increasing the value of ramen by 916 percent. In fact, food items are the overwhelming majority
of what people buy. An analysis of annual commissary sales in
three states shows that 75% of spending was entirely on food and beverages. Inmates aren’t just using ramen as cash;
they are also eating it. Creative cooking in prison is a necessity. When asked if prison meals were enough to
live off of, Alvarez said. I lost like ten pounds you know because they
give you a meal that's maybe for a five-year-old, a 10 year old. But it wasn't up to par. It wasn't your four food groups, it was none
of that. So ramen can supplement when the food provided
isn’t enough. With 2.3 million people in US prisons, and
pressure to cut costs, food is one area where federal and state governments are trying to
save money. Some inmates are now being fed for as little
as $1.77 a meal. In one instance, the Marshall Project reported
one prison that had whittled down costs to as low as $.56 a meal. But keeping food costs low doesn't come without
consequences. Aramark, a private food vendor to over 600
correctional facilities, has been cited for giving inmates tainted food and serving fewer
and smaller meals. New information tonight about ongoing problems
with maggots found in Ohio prison kitchens. Issues like this with Aramark and other private
food vendors have prompted civil lawsuits and protests in response to the state of food. Turns out food isn't just about nutrition;
it's also about security. Despite everything ramen has become away
inmates keep a sense of control while in the system. We would actually make a humongous spread. These soups would be the equalizer for all
of us to sit down and have a meal and not stress what's happening in the prison yard. Trade and bartering in prison isn’t new,
but until there are systemic changes in its food system, ramen will likely stay at the
top of the prison trade economy. Simply because food is a basic need. And ramen is a basic solution. Imagine a haunted house. Does it look like … this? A decaying structure with severe angles and
intricate woodwork? Maybe some bats flying out of a tower. This is the Victorian mansion. It’s ghostly presence traces back to paintings
like this one from the 1920s: artist Edward Hopper’s “House by the Railroad,”
which shows an old Victorian house, abandoned and isolated. Remember this one because it comes back in
later. Throughout 20th-century pop culture, similar-looking
mansions appeared again and again as signifiers of dread in horror movies, television, and
Gothic pulp novels. It was featured famously as the menacing Bates
mansion in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the kooky home of the Addams Family. But it wasn’t always like that – so why
do we associate this house with death? The later part of the Victorian era, named
after England’s Queen Victoria, was known as the Gilded Age in America. It followed the bloody American Civil War
and was simultaneously an era of rampant income inequality, political corruption, and industrialization
that helped create a new wealthy class. And the choice home for the “nouveau riche,”
or “new rich,” was the Victorian. It was the McMansion of its time: a gaudy
and unbalanced monstrosity that showed off the wealth of certain American families. Borrowed from medieval Europe’s Gothic architecture,
these houses were designed to be imposing and make a statement. They were a mismatched combination of towers
and turrets, ornate gingerbread trim, and sloped, bloated roofs, called the Mansard
roof, which drew from the French imperial style. Inside was a maze of rooms like parlors, drawing
rooms, libraries, and observatories, places that were often unoccupied, with the
curtains drawn to keep out sunlight, which could damage the clutter of heavy, expensive
furnishings. Spooky, right? Late 19th-century wealthy Americans wanted
to emulate Europe but after World War I, that changed, as the
American vision turned toward progress and innovation. Modern architects ushered in an era of clean
lines and simplicity as the new hallmark of taste. The Victorian, in comparison, became an antiquated
symbol of excess, whose architectural style was described as “grotesque,” and the
mansions were called “mongrel types desecrating the landscape.” Critics of the time began to associate the
houses with death, offensive reminders of the troubling Gilded Age. These houses slowly became an unwelcome presence,
and eventually the wealthy owners moved on. And when the Great Depression swept across
the country in the 1930s, a lot of the houses were abandoned or became boarding houses for
the working poor. Without their affluent tenants to maintain
them, the ornate structures quickly eroded, deepening their association with decay. Enter Charles Addams. A cartoonist working for the New Yorker who
introduced the world to the Addams Family. A reclusive collection of ghouls who are morbidly
anti-social and mysteriously wealthy. “A toast! To the glorious mysteries of life, to all
that binds a family as one. To mirth, to merriment, to manslaughter!” These popular cartoons began appearing in
the late ’30s, but it wasn’t until November 1945 that Addams finally showed us the exterior
of the strange home the family occupies. It was the Victorian. The Addams Family was a dark perversion of
the ideal American family, and their mansion represented that. Charles Addams later said in an interview
that he chose it because Victorians are just “better for haunts.” It was here that the Victorian became permanently
associated with horror, and by the time Alfred Hitchcock made his iconic film, Psycho, in
1960, audiences immediately recognized the Bates mansion as a place of unspoken dread,
of something not quite right. In the promotional trailer for the film, Hitchcock
describes the house’s appearance as: “A little more sinister-looking, less innocent
than the motel itself.” And when he takes you inside ... “You see even in daylight this place still
looks a bit sinister.” And his inspiration? It was Hopper, from 1925. It’s not hard to see the similarity. Both are towering, empty, and isolated – decaying
relics that loomed over a world that had long moved on. The Victorian mansion died over 100 years
ago, but its persistent presence in Gothic-inspired art and pop culture has made it an iconic
symbol of dread, and now serves as an immediate signal to audiences: There’s something not quite right about
this house. So you probably caught that ghost in the window
around the two-minute mark, but there’s actually four others hidden throughout this
video – did you see those? This is John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.
It’s considered one of the most important jazz albums of all time,
it cemented John Coltrane as a legend among jazz saxophonists and composers,
and it’s home to one of the most one of the most revered and feared compositions in
jazz history. The reason why the album's title track is
so iconic can be heard in its first few seconds. Coltrane wrote these unique chord changes
for Giant Steps, and later went on to use them over traditional jazz standards. These chords came to be known as the Coltrane Changes -- and
improvising over them is considered a rite of passage for jazz musicians. But, if you don’t understand a lick of music
theory like me, it’s really hard to see how this is so legendary. Lucky for me, I know two people that can explain
why… Braxton Cook Braxton: Okay you caught me off guard
there! And Adam Neely Adam: Should I get into the, like, technical jargony
stuff? Let’s cut to the logo first. So there’s a moment in the Giant Steps recording
that really illustrates just how demanding this song is. It happens when Tommy Flanagan, the pianist
on the record, starts his solo. Braxton: The story goes that John Coltrane
brought in the music, he shows up ready to go and then calls he this really fast tempo. Adam: If you hear on the recording, Tommy Flanagan just cannot handle the chord progressions as they're going by. His improvisation is very halted. Braxton: And Tommy Flannagan's just holding on for dear life. It really becomes apparent how much he struggled,
when you hear Coltrane take off at lightning speed the second Flanagan stops. Braxton: And then it goes down as like one of the most
legendary recordings of all time. That’s messed up. I’d want another shot. I’d
be like bro, don’t put that recording out. To understand why this was so difficult for
even a highly trained pianist, we need to know three basic concepts and it all starts with this:
the circle of fifths - it’s kind of like a color wheel for music. Braxton: Okay, awesome, you glued this stuff
and everything. This is fire. All twelve notes of the western musical scale
are on it, but you might notice they’re a little mixed
up That’s because they’re organized by a
very special number in music... a fifth. What’s a fifth? Braxton: It's like if you're in the C-major scale, you go  C, D, E, F, G - right? 1,2,3,4,5. From C to G is five notes, from G to D is
five notes and… well you get the idea. If you play through the circle you’ll traverse
the entire keyboard starting on the lowest C and ending up on the highest C. It sounds much more harmonious than just playing
all the notes in order. That’s because... Adam: The fifth is a sound that our ears just
like. Uh... please explain. Adam: Whenever we're hearing anything, whenever we're hearing people sing... Adam: Whenever we're hearing people play music, we're
hearing these other notes, these overtones alongside the pitches that they're playing. When I play this C, the first two loudest tones
that are pushed through the air are both C, one is just an octave higher. But other tones travel to our ears as well. The third loudest is a G, which happens to
be a fifth above C. In 1973, Leonard Bernstein demonstrated this
phenomenon live on a grand piano at Harvard. Listen closely after he hits that note. Bernstein: What do we hear now? That G, right? A new tone. Again, clear as a bell. You want to hear it again? Adam: These overtones are kind of like subliminal tones that you're hearing alongside a regular note. Adam: And you're hearing these overtones everywhere. A lot of western music is based on the power of the fifth, especially how it relates so
strongly back to its home chord. Adam: In the case of the key of C major we
have the G chord resolving to C. Adam: And if you’re thinking about what
the G chord represents, it represents kind of tension. You want this to resolve. When it finally does resolve, Adam: it creates this feeling of finality,
it creates a feeling of home. That five to one relationship is present in
a lot of chord progressions, including the most common one found in jazz. The 2-5-1 Braxton:] The 2-5-1 essentially  is like the backbone of most jazz music. Even in its most basic form it sounds super
jazzy. So it comes as no surprise the Coltrane Changes
are just chock full of them. Which might raise the question: Why was
Tommy Flanagan caught off guard when he had to improvise over them? Well, the Coltrane Changes aren’t in one
key, they’re in three keys. They’re basically a musical MC Escher painting. So each one of these rungs on the circle of fifths
represents every possible key center. The closer a key is to another, the more notes
they have in common. Like the C major and G major scale - they’re
only different by one note, an F#. Okay, we need an analogy to describe this. Adam: So the way that I like to think about keys is kind of like languages that you have to learn as a jazz improviser. You have to be able to be fluent in a key. Like maybe C is Spanish and G is Portuguese. Those are very similar languages. Adam: If that's the case, like
okay maybe C is Spanish and you have a distantly related language like maybe Japanese. Let’s say Japanese is B. There’s not much
in common with those two languages. And it’s the same with keys. If you play those scales over each other... It sounds a lot more discordant. Adam: For the most part, most pop music is based around one of these key centers. For instance, Carly Rae Jepsen's “Cut to the
Feeling” is in A major. But some songs modulate to another key for
dramatic effect. Like Beyonce’s “Love on Top.” Adam: Part of the reason why it's really exciting is because you're going to a place that's really distant on the circle of fifths. And you’re creating a new sense of home.
Which is exactly what “Love on Top” does. But, it doesn’t just happen once, it happens
every time she repeats the chorus towards the end of the song. Adam: And when you chart that sort of thing
along the circle of fifths, patterns emerge. These types of patterns are what fascinated
John Coltrane in the late 1950s and '60s as he was trying to push jazz harmony to its
limits. This is his study of the circle of fifths. Braxton: I think what makes Giant Steps really special is that it really just, it just documented
an artist doing something super unique, super stylistic, and virtuosic at the same
time. Here’s the first 16 bars of Giant Steps
again, with just the key changes highlighted. If you chart those changes on the circle of
fifths it comes out as a pretty dramatic pattern. That’s because these keys are separated
by major thirds, which divide an octave into 3 equal parts. On the circle of fifths these three keys are
as far apart as possible from each other. Adam: Giant Steps is kind of like you're
shifting from Spanish to Arabic to Japanese very quickly. By quickly, he means like every two beats
in a song that’s nearly 300 bpm. Adam: It's not only just like you're saying
one word per language, you're having to construct a sentence out of the language. And how does Coltrane make those disparate
languages connect? With one of the most ubiquitous phrases in jazz, the five one. Adam: What he's doing is taking some of the conventional ideas of tonal harmony, the conventional relationships
between the five chord and the one chord and applying it to this very chaotic circling, sort of chord progression that is the Coltrane Changes. Adam: So if we were all in the same key, it would sound like this. Adam: But because we're going from key center to key center, it sounds very different. This is why the Coltrane Changes are like
this picture here. Even though you’re seeing things from a
completely new perspective you still feel like you’ve made it home somehow. When Tommy Flanagan saw the charts for Giant
Steps he knew he wasn’t going to just have to play this chord progression - he was going
to have to improvise over it. very quickly. Braxton: That was probably so funny, he was probably like, "What?!" Adam: It is a bit of a rite of passage to
say that you not only can improvise on Giant Steps, but you can also improvise in all 12
keys. Adam: Now, generations of jazz musicians are approaching Giant Steps as the sort of pinnacle of improvisation. Wait. I think I’ve got an analogy for this.
It’s like you’re a cab driver and instead of only knowing one way to get somewhere,
you have to know every back alley and side street just in case. Braxton: It's essentially like that. You still get to the same location, but it’s really interesting and you might see some really cool stuff in the neighborhood. Braxton: But ultimately I still think the
music boils down to 5 1. People want to come back home. Thanks so much for watching the first of three videos I'm going to release in the next couple of weeks on Jazz. I want to give a special thanks to Braxton Cook and Adam Neely. Between the time that I interviewed Braxton and now, he's released a full album. Please check it out below and of course special, special thanks to Adam Neely. You can check out his YouTube channel below. Until next time! come on Milly honest what does that mean five million there are five million of you five billion subscribed by million okay we've reached five million subscribers thank me you'll come set to million times million being call me your name we're young thank you so much for helping us him five million subscribers there are 58% of you outside of the US who are watching us and we want to celebrate you all including those of you who leave comments on our videos we sometimes get good comments sometimes sometimes yeah there's a lot of good comments yeah there are some good comments down there sometimes so we're gonna read some comments and respond to those comments let's do it there's a warehouse in Brooklyn that feels like stepping into a dream okay let me wear my oversized final shirt and grab my artisanal bagel and soy latte first in February Mount Sinabung erupted in Indonesia I thought she said Mount Sinabung I'm disappointed I want to go to there I want to go to there too the hardest part about brexit is the borders a couple of points number one a lot of people have the idea that the border was to separate Catholics from Protestants when in fact the lowest note in the highest note are an octave and a half apart that's 12 full notes with the argument of the range being too big which I agree with thank you then happy birthday could be put under the same scrutiny because the range and that song is awful as well that's a great point and it is a sacrifice that I'm willing to make number three as a consequence of point number two if the border is closed or militarized it overwhelmingly hurts the Catholic population who live along it tube punk sheep commented on my video was that a sincere laugh from a pun Katra beauts hopefully you're being bullied puns are hilarious how else am I supposed to have fun ah I'm a father roses are red violets are blue I like my own comment cuz no one else do point number four it's not just about the border it's because technically yes Hong Kong belongs to China and then of course the opposite is true and that trend is only speeding up in January of this year I hope some day he gets wherever he's going in these videos jesse commented does anyone else love it when they do those videos with these animated square people so a sixteen year old getting their drivers license will be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 Jesse they're called Waka's and we love them too why are VAX videos always so depressing that's a good question they're designed to allow you to sit but not get too cozy and that's intentional no place is safe from my naps I this one's good because it's about uncomfortable benches and frankly I just died laughing when you said it so thank you that was hilarious this was just swearing on my christian minecraft servers what is happening here it's a great comment so let's start with the components of the ship that were discarded one by one until this became this oh man this video would have been awesome a week ago when I had to give a presentation on Apollo 11 in my English course sorry man even fortnight defaults movement controls to the same four keys not the arrow keys but WASD poof says let's give WASD a meaning maybe widely applied system of Direction I'm so with you on this we are gonna start doing that right now alright say you've written the list and gone to the store but you quickly start buying things that you didn't plan on I went to Ikea for some meatballs and that's exactly what I left with and a couch secondly part of 0.5 historically our produce has gone unbranded so how did we end up with all these apples Jaden animations did an video - sweaty you ain't special they've been brought up to believe that the Republic is a backward papist cesspit wait hold on Mack yep this is obviously fake I mean look at this guy's face that's not really the point man don't let box distract you from the fact that in 1998 the undertaker through mankind off a Hell in a Cell and plummeted 16 feet through an announcers table that's true and brexit is more important to it than maintaining the Union Thank You Hugh that's thank you for your insights maraming salamat ah nah nah nah nah nah no odds ah I mean that means thank you so much to all of you who are watching us thanks for watching Hayley my new nesting merci d'avoir forget the chakra you Lucia Heather thank you comes on NIDA comes omnibot comes from me down there you go muchisimas gracias para ver nest Rose videos suscribe a dishonest O'Connell thanks for watching thank you to all of you for watching thank you welcome back in ten million not six because that might be annoying we'll see you at six see you at six million thank you for subscribing and keep watching see it's six million we really do love your feedback and so we're gonna do another survey we've put a link down in the comments in the description we want to hear from you about what you want to see more of thank you one two three thanks for watching what you're supposed to harmonize with me thanks for watching [Music] At first, these World War I era photos look
unextraordinary. Medals. Jackets with large buttons. Some bandages. But look at the glasses. None of them are for vision. They were for support. Through this passageway and inside a studio,
sculptors created the best possible way to conceal some of the war’s most significant
facial injuries. World War I is known for machine guns, tanks,
and lethal gas attacks, but artillery dominated attacks on trenches. When you think of artillery, imagine cannons
- guns that fired large destructive shells. This chart shows estimates of artillery rounds
in battles from the American Civil War to World War I. At Gettysburg, 32,000 rounds were fired. At Somme, in 1916: 4,000,000. A staggering volume of shells dropped, creating
deadly flying debris. That barrage resulted in an estimated 20,000
facial injuries, a statistic that medicine had to confront. This book about plastic surgery was published
after the war, but it shows groundbreaking techniques for suturing and transplanting
skin. Techniques like cartilage insertion in the
nose or grafts to the ear were pioneering at the time. But some cases went beyond the abilities of
these plastic surgeons. That’s where the sculptors came in. Before she was in this American Red Cross
studio in Paris, Anna Coleman Ladd was a sculptor and writer in America. Having heard of the sculptor Francis Derwent
Wood’s pioneering work in London, in 1917 she took his techniques to the Red Cross in
France, starting her own studio there. They made casts of the injured faces, then
sculpted attachments that restored the face. These were then used to make a paper thin
copper-plated attachment, which Ladd and others then painted. Eyebrows and mustaches were made from real
hair or tiny pieces of tinfoil, with astonishing results. They were supported by tiny ties around the
ears or, more often, glasses. They made more than 150 of these masks. After the war, Anna Coleman Ladd returned
to America. She sculpted many pieces similar to her pre-war
work. Perfect figures, oblivious to charts about
artillery. Figures who didn’t need glasses. In 1923, she created a controversial World
War I memorial for the American legion in Manchester, Massachusetts. It showed a skeleton trapped in barbed wire. She once wrote about memorials, “when the
masters of yesterday have passed, the masters of tomorrow will express this new sense of
the futility of war and the greater power of the spirit.” Her Memorial in Manchester actually had two
images. The skeleton was called night. On the other side, she put dawn. The 2018 midterms were huge for women candidates. In Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn became the
state's first woman senator. Over in Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley is
the first African-American woman elected to the House from any state in New England. In Maine, voters chose Janet Mills to be the
state’s first woman governor. Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland became the
first Native American women elected to Congress. A total of 273 women were on the ballot in
the 2018 midterms, representing both parties. Now compare that to the past five elections
— that’s a big jump in women candidates vying for office. So, women must be pretty well represented
in the US government now, right? Not exactly. The share of women in the House and Senate
has increased over time....but it’s still well below the share of women in the US population. If you dig deeper, Congress looks even less
representative. Women of color make up 18% of the US population. But, before the 2018 midterms they accounted
for just 7% of Congress. And LGBT women make up 2.5% of the US population,
but there are only two openly LGBT women in Congress -- that's less than 1% Even with the recent wins by women candidates
in the 2018 midterms, there’s still a long way to go before they’re fully represented. This underrepresentation can have very real
policy consequences. Take a look at this chart showing what 2018
congressional candidates spent time talking about. Women were much more likely than men to discuss
issues — like education, climate change, and minimum wage. There’s even evidence that women make better
lawmakers. One study found that female lawmakers bring
in 9% more federal spending for their constituents than their male counterparts. And that’s on top of the fact that women
lawmakers sponsor more bills than male legislators. This success might actually help explain why
women are less likely to run for office than men in the first place. Many women underestimate their qualifications
and perceive gender bias among voters, which discourages them from running. Because of these extra hurdles, only the most
talented and ambitious women seek office. While there’s still more room for growth
for women to be accurately represented in government, there’s evidence to show that
the more women are elected, the more they inspire other women to run. One study found that if a state elected a
woman senator or governor, an average of seven additional women would run for the state government
in the following election cycle. The women that were elected during the 2018
midterms will help inspire other women to run for office in the future. And as more women join government, their representation
will become more and more normalized. And eventually — a video like this won’t
even be necessary. In Republican ads for the House and Senate,
there’s been a common theme: “I support forcing insurance companies to
protect pre-existing conditions” “Kevin Cramer voted for guaranteed coverage
for pre-existing coverage” “Force insurance companies to cover preexisting
conditions” “I’m fighting to protect pre-existing
conditions” The problem is, that’s not true. Most Americans are covered by private health
insurance. And historically, Republicans have wanted
to reduce government regulation, which means allowing insurance companies to choose who
they protect, what to charge them and what services to cover. For most of their history, American insurance
companies could refuse to cover people with preexisting conditions like asthma, depression,
and even pregnancy. So those people had to pay for their care
out of pocket, or just go without. But then Congress passed the Affordable Care
Act “The bill is passed”
Or “Obamacare” in 2010. President Obama signed it, And now, insurance companies have to cover
people with preexisting conditions without charging them more than healthy people. Republicans have been trying to get rid of
the Affordable Care Act ever since. “I rise today to support the repeal of the
President’s take over of health care” “There’s only one way to truly fix Obamacare. Only one way, and that’s a full repeal.” “Every republican up to this point has voted
to repeal Obamacare!” “And repeal every last bit of it!” “Once and for all repeal Obamacare entirely." “We will repeal every word of Obamacare!” They came close in 2017 and were within one
vote before they got the thumbs down, literally, from John McCain. But between 2010 and now, something changed. Starting in 2017, more Americans supported
the health care law than opposed it and that’s put Republican candidates in an awkward position. This Midterms, the top issue for voters is
health care and, in particular, preexisting conditions. 72% of Americans say it’s very important
to prohibit companies from charging sick people more for health insurance. That’s causing Republicans like senator
Ted Cruz to adjust their message. “We can protect preexisting conditions and
you need to understand, everyone agrees we are going to protect pre-existing conditions!” But unlike Republicans, who are most concerned
with immigration, independents care most about health care. So in order to win their votes, Republicans
are misleading them. Take New Jersey’s third district. Incumbent Tom MacArthur is in a tight race
against Andy Kim, a first time candidate trying to win a seat that’s been Republican since
2011. Tom MacArthur has a problem. In 2017, he wrote the “MacArthur amendment”:
a proposal that would have let insurers charge sick people more, cover less. That move didn’t make his constituents happy. “Speaking of which, my children both have
pre-existing conditions from birth: one cardiac, one thyroid. You have been the single greatest threat to
my family in the entire world! You are the reason I stay up at night!” Now those voters are going to the polls and
MacArthur is having to defend himself. “So my commitment has always been: protect
people with pre-existing conditions, maybe do it differently than the Affordable Care
Act, which has driven costs up.” For MacArthur, “doing it differently”
means requiring insurance companies to offer coverage for sick people but letting them
charge more for it. Elsewhere, other Republican candidates are
being even more bold. In Missouri, Democrat Claire McCaskill is
running for Senate in a tight race against Josh Hawley, the State Attorney General. Here’s a most recent ad:
I’m Josh Hawley. I support forcing insurance companies to cover
all pre-existing conditions. That’s not true. On behalf of Missouri, Josh Hawley has joined
other conservative attorneys general in a lawsuit arguing that the Affordable Care Act
is unconstitutional. If they win, insurance companies will be allowed
to deny sick people coverage and charge them more. In 2014, turnout for the Midterm elections
was the lowest it has been since 1942. But this year, things look very different. For Republicans, that’s a threat. Health care is a top issue this year and a
majority of voters disagree with their policies on it. “Justice is health care”
But instead of trying to defend their actions they’re doing something easier: just saying
what people want to hear. Yeah I love Megan Trainor. That music will never get old. Man I can't wait to vote in the upcoming election. Let's see what's happening in the news. Washington now ground zero for the Ebola fear. The Ebola
crisis becoming a major election issue. Candidates are scrambling to stake out positions. But will the fallout tip the battle for congressional
control? Someone could get off a flight and seek treatment
from a witch doctor. What the fuuuuu— I love Fight Song that'll never get old. Man I can't wait for the upcoming election. Let's see what's happening in the news. New developments on a bombshell that could
reshape the 2016 race. New emails related to the Clinton email investigation. Bombshell announcement has rocked the presidential campaign. Could not only make a difference in this presidential
race but also the control of the Senate. What the fuuuuuuuuuu— There's no time for pop music, the republic's on fire, Brenda. Man I can't wait to vote in the upcoming
election. Let's see what's in the — Migrant caravan has captured
the world's attention. President has put the caravan on center stage. It'll be a big part of the midterm election. It's going to be an election of the caravan. What the fu — Wait a minute aren't they like a thousand
miles away? Why are we freaking out about this now? Why does it always feel like some big sensational
news story breaks right before it's time to vo — oh my god. I get it now. Yes we are barely two weeks away from the
midterms and Republicans are hitting hard against the growing migrant caravan. Now the question becomes will this sway voters
in the midterms? There is this concept in American politics
called the October surprise. And no it is not what drag queens do on Halloween. October surprise refers to a big unexpected event that gets tons of media coverage and
sways people's votes right before an election. In 2004 it was Osama bin Laden releasing a
video threatening the US. It was inevitable that just before the election there would
be some kind of a message from Osama bin Laden. The video focused the media's attention on terrorism,
which ended up benefiting Bush during the election. In 2012, it was Hurricane Sandy, which gave Obama a
chance to look like a leader and problem solver right before his election against Mitt Romney. We've got our October surprise now, looks like it's Hurricane Sandy. Typically October surprise describes something unexpected, but it can
also be something more calculated. When political operatives intentionally exploit and use stories
to distract voters and do maximum damage to their opponent. During the 2014 midterm election, it was Ebola. We begin with the breaking news the deadly
Ebola outbreak in Africa. And tonight the first confirmed case here
in America. The story quickly became a Republican rallying
cry. Ladies and gentlemen we've got an Ebola outbreak,
we need to seal the border and secure it. We have Ebola. We have to secure the border. And news outlets follow their lead, running
weeks of sensational wall-to-wall Ebola coverage. Are there concerns of an outbreak in the US? Should they be concerned? Is the threat only going to grow? The ISIS of biological agents. Are we going overboard here? This chart shows
how much airtime cable news networks devoted to Ebola. Look at the spike right in the middle of October. It's emerged already as the most watched news
events as the entire Obama presidency began. That coverage created a vicious cycle. The
more news network talked about Ebola the more politicians had to talk about it to seem relevant. As one Republican strategist told NPR, it's almost
impossible for candidates to break into this news cycle unless they're talking about ISIS or Ebola. It's a terrible thing to say, but fear
is a heck of a motivator for voters. Research conducted after the midterms found
that, in the 34 states with Senate elections, higher internet search volume for Ebola was associated
with greater intention to vote for Republican candidates. In 2016, the October surprise was Hillary Clinton's
e-mail. Take a shot. Weeks before the election, FBI Director James
Comey sent a letter to Congress saying the FBI had found new e-mails. God damn it. Pertinent to the investigation
into Clinton's private server. Trump is relishing Clinton's October surprise. This is bigger than Watergate. The party welcoming this new line of attack, as
Republican candidates make their closing arguments to voters. And once again, every news network took the bait. An October surprise unlike anything we have
ever seen. Trump has been lagging behind, could this change anything? The story dominated the 
New York Times' front page for days. The October surprise no one saw coming. This chart shows how much Clinton coverage
was scandal-related in the weeks leading up to the election. There's a huge spike right after Comey's letter
is released. We will find out soon whether any of those
new emails contain classified information. A few days later, Comey announced it had all
been a big nothing burger. The director clearing Hillary Clinton on those
new emails. But it was too late. Look at Hillary's approval ratings in the
weeks after that story broke. Now, it's the migrant caravan. After Trump began tweeting about a group of
migrants traveling to the US in hopes of seeking asylum, Republicans turned the story into their closing
campaign message. The caravan is coming. Marching on our border. Some say criminals among them. You already know what happens next. Immigration is taking center stage ahead of
the midterm elections. Trump's using the caravan as a critical midterm
closing argument. Front page after front page in The New York Times, wall-to-wall coverage
on every network. Let's talk about the caravan. Let's talk about the caravan. Let's talk about this caravan. Look at how many hours have been dedicated to the
story on cable news in the past few weeks alone. Is this going to be a winning issue for your
party? I do think it's a winning issue and I think
the president's handling it perfectly. As one Trump official told The Daily Beast, It doesn't matter if it's 100 percent accurate. This is the play. It seems to me that it's playing
out remarkably well for the Republicans. You didn't say e-mails. This one's for me. These October surprises
all follow the same formula. The Ebola crisis, the email server issue, the caravan. That is a sexy ass formula. It's drama it's
narrative tension. It's CNN's wet dream. It's also complete bullshit. These stories seem really important when they're
happening but they're almost always PR stunts. Look again at the coverage of Ebola in 2014. Look at the drop off once the election's over. It's not like the problem suddenly got fixed after
the election. The number of Ebola cases in Liberia actually
increased after November. But nobody cared anymore. The story had served its purpose. The same is true for
the Clinton... Bremail... story. Close enough. Months after Trump won the White
House it's reported that he repeatedly uses an unsecured phone line for personal communication. Intelligence experts say he's definitely being
listened to by Russia and China but the story barely makes a blip on the radar, because it
was never about national security. It was about winning an election. And the same thing will
happen with this migrant caravan story. We know that because we've already been through
this before. Earlier this year Trump fearmongered about another
migrant caravan traveling to the US. The group was largely ignored until President
Trump used them to highlight the immigration debate. The story sparked a major media firestorm
for a few days. Are you watching that mess with the caravan? But then it faded from public debate. Eventually the migrants arrived and quietly
began going through the normal process to apply for asylum. All 228 people are being processed. The legal process could take months even years. We didn't hear about it because it wasn't
election season yet. This is a caravan that has been organized
for years, they've been doing this for more than five years. And the evil genius of the
October surprise is that it works even if journalists realize it's a gimmick. A lot of news networks
have correctly noted that the migrant caravan story is bullshit. President has called it an assault on theU.S.
border. It is absolutely not. It's nowhere near the US border. But because
Republicans can't stop talking about it, neither can they. This has become a key Republican
rallying cry. There are, quote, " criminals and unknown Middle Easterners." Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners. Criminals, and unknown Middle Easterners. Criminals and unknown Middle
Easterners mixed in with this caravan. Strategy seems designed to scare voters by constantly
repeating a false threat. Yeah well it appears to be working Brenda. The point of the October Surprise isn't to
warn voters about a real threat, it's to distract them for long enough to get them to vote against
their own interests. One Trump official told CNN that the immigration
push is clearly working because we're talking about it and not health care. Days before the caravan story blew up Mitch
McConnell pledged that Republicans would try to repeal Obamacare again if they survived
the midterms. Another report revealed that the Republican
tax cuts have exploded the deficit which is now the worst it's been in six years and Republicans
plan to deal with that deficit by you guessed it: cutting social programs. There's been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle
entitlement changes, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Hopefully we'll get serious about this. Those stories aren't sexy. They don't have the drama of an October surprise,
but they are stories that affect millions of people's ability to survive in this country. Stories about policy differences that actually
matter on Election Day. Trump is talking about this because he wants
to distract from the fact that they want to cut Medicare. But this caravan is coming. What's the Democratic Party's message about
the caravan? The truth is there's no great defense against
the October Surprise strategy. Our breaking news culture is super vulnerable
to last minute bad faith publicity stunts. But what you can do is ask who benefits If I freak out about this? And what are they
trying to hide? “This is your emergency broadcast system
announcing the commencement of the annual purge.” “Your government thanks you for your participation.” The purge...it’s coming. No, not that purge... This one. “What’s known as the purging of the voter
rolls.” “Election purging”
“Election purging” “Purging”
“The Purge” “Voter purge”
“Purges people from its voter rolls” “125,000 voters” “Purged from the voter lists” But... what exactly is a voter purge, and
how scared should we be? Voter purges happen when state election officials
attempt to clean up the list of eligible voters, to filter out anyone who is ineligible: The deceased or people with disqualifying criminal convictions or anyone who might have a duplicate registration because of a change of address. The problem is, when purges are done wrong,
they can get rid of legitimate voters from the roll without them knowing... Or when it’s too close to an election to allow them to vote. Some states, like Georgia, purge voters by
applying “exact match” standards, where each number and letter in voter registration
paperwork, down to hyphens and middle initials, must exactly match the information on your
government documents. Take, John-Paul Doe for example. He’s got a name with a hyphen in it. And this is how it’s written on official
documents like his driver's license. If his voter registration form is missing
that hyphen... That can get John-Paul  kicked off the list
of registered voters, and unable to cast a ballot. Purged. Other states have found a loophole with “use
it or lose it” laws. If a registered voter skips an election, they
get a mailer from local election officials to confirm their information. If they don’t mail it back, and then miss
two more elections, the state can take them off the list of registered voters. Purged. Ohio has one of the strictest laws which allows
them to initiate this removal process if you skip even just a single federal election. Earlier this year the Supreme Court upheld
that law, paving the way for other states to do the same. According to the Brennan Center for Justice,
widespread voter purges between 2014 and 2016 have led to the removal of almost 16 million
US voters from the rolls. That’s almost 4 million more names purged
from the rolls than were purged between 2006 and 2008. So, what accounts for the increase? For the first explanation, we have to go back
to 2009. Back then, Democrats fully controlled 27 state
legislatures. But if you look at the map of party control right before the 2018 midterms, you can see
it’s a lot more red. When Republicans took control of these states,
they passed new laws making it harder to vote. All in the name of... “Voter fraud” “Voter fraud” “Allegations of voter fraud”
“Claims of widespread voter fraud” But here’s the thing: research shows the
paranoia far outweighs the amount of voter fraud that actually happens. Multiple investigations have found no evidence
of widespread voter fraud. One study that looked at voter impersonation
nationwide between 2000 and 2014, found just 35 total credible accusations of fraud. That’s out of more than 800 million ballots
cast in general elections alone. So if that’s the case, why does the myth of widespread voter fraud live on? In part -- because the myth fuels policies
like purges. The purges disenfranchise minority voters,
who tend to move more often and are more likely to have common last names that can trigger
false duplicates. These voters tend to lean Democratic. So by suppressing their votes, it can become
an electoral strategy. Part of the game plan for keeping this map
red. Republican politicians have said as much. “We want to do everything we can to help
our side. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes
we think that’s longer lines. Whatever it may be.” There’s another reason for the increase
in voter purges. A monumental Supreme Court decision in 2013. “The Court effectively gutted the Voting
Rights Act.” “Voting Rights Act was gutted”
“Gutted” “Gutted”
“Guts the entire Voting Rights Act.” The law had a key requirement for states and
districts that historically discriminated against minorities: to alter their election
laws, they’d have to get federal approval to make sure the laws weren’t discriminatory. But in 2013, when the Supreme Court struck
down the Voting Rights Act, Republican-controlled southern states passed an unprecedented wave
of voter suppression laws. Few GOP politicians embody this trend more
than Georgia’s Brian Kemp. While he was running for Governor against
Democrat Stacey Abrams, Kemp, as secretary of state, was in the unique position of
regulating his own election. Kemp oversaw the purging of 1.5 million voters. One report found he purged over 100,000 people,
largely for not voting. And another report found that of the 53,000
voter registrations on hold for violating the state’s “exact match” standard…70
percent were filed by black residents. So, how can you prevent the purge from happening
to you, the voter? For starters -- prior to elections, make sure
your registration matches your government documents, and if you get mail from the board
of elections trying to confirm your details, respond to it. But if you show up to the polls and see that
your name isn’t on the rolls...you can ask to fill out what’s called a provisional
ballot. These can still be counted after local election
officials confirm your registration. And then report your registration issue to
your local board of elections and to your state’s attorney general’s office—some
have hotlines for these types of election day issues. Because no matter where you live, your vote should count. This is Horseshoe Bend. It’s a stunning view of a U-turn in the
Colorado River near the border of Arizona and Utah. In the early 90s, this spot was a hidden gem
— accessible by an unmarked dirt trail off the side of the highway. Locals described it as “nearly empty”
— and that “hardly anybody knew about it.” But over the years, its popularity grew: first
slowly... … and then suddenly. Until it became this. In this past this used to be that this place would get maybe a few thousand visitors every single year. Now, that number is more like 1.5 million. And it keeps growing. That change didn’t happen because of any
big marketing push. It happened because of geotagged pictures
like these. Digital popularity is physically changing
the landscape. This place — and other public lands like
it — are trying to adjust. Social media — I believe — was the
main trigger. That explosion — just — has been overwhelming. You can see that social media explosion when
you look at the rate of Google searches for Horseshoe Bend. But it isn't the only previously-hidden spot
that's become internet famous. Similar increases have happened at Devil’s
Bathtub, a swimming hole in Virginia... … Kanarraville Falls, a waterfall trail
in Utah... … and Vance Creek Bridge, an old railroad
overpass in Washington. So why are these places getting so much attention? For outdoor photographers searching for the
perfect shot, Instagram made things easy: The app’s interface put geotagging — the
practice of attaching location data to a picture — front and center. And if a hidden spot didn’t already have
a location tag available, anyone could create one. These Instagram hotspots were often located
either just outside protected lands, or far off the beaten path. So as America’s National Parks became more
popular than ever, these places started getting National
Park-level crowds without having National Park-level infrastructure. Federally protected areas require a ton of
planning and work to keep people and the environment safe. There wasn't a developed trail here. There weren't any restroom facilities. There was no railing. It was an undeveloped site. Without that infrastructure, the natural landscape
can be damaged — and people following geotagging trends are at risk of injury or death. At Conundrum Hot Springs in Colorado, visitors
disturbed wildlife, cut down trees for firewood, and left behind an overwhelming amount of
human waste. And at Kaaterskill Falls in New York, at least
four people have died while taking or posing for pictures. So at Horseshoe Bend, trail designers are
getting to work. The park service and the city of Page are
creating over 400 parking spaces, a welcome center, bathrooms, a viewing deck with safety
railings, and laser-equipped signs to count attendance. And they’re building a new ADA-compliant
trail, lined with limestone to protect the surrounding environment and reinforced with
magnesium chloride to keep gravel in place. Throughout the trail, all the improvements
that we're doing are aimed at creating as natural an environment as possible. It's a difficult balance. You're not going to stop people from going
to the rim's edge and trying to capture that iconic photo. We don't want to wall it off. So all we can do is implore that people be safe. For places like Kanarraville Falls in Utah,
that concern for safety extends to their residents, too. The town’s water comes from a spring near
the falls, where’s it’s piped to tanks near the canyon entrance. It used to be a local secret — but in 2016,
40,000 people hiked that trail, disturbing the water source and leaving debris behind. It shares so quick, and it gets out
there so fast, that people can look at it and say “Oh wow, look at that!” Then they tap on the photo, and it’ll tell
where it was from or where it was taken. Things like that, and people go wild over it. You can imagine what that does to
the canyon floor, the trail, the water — people in and out. We've just tried to take adequate measures
to try to work with the ecosystem, and not have it ruin our water source. Others are taking a different approach: there’s
now a growing movement in the nature photography scene against geotagging. So, in 1999 this organization called Leave
No Trace came up with a set of guidelines for people to use while they’re in the outdoors. These are things like don’t leave trash
behind, don’t interfere with wildlife, leave everything as it was when you saw it. And now in 2018 they’ve announced that they’re
encouraging people not to geotag photos while they’re in nature. We’ve always had the tendency to explore
— and sometimes be irresponsible in nature. Modern technology just amplifies those
urges. With so many natural wonders at our fingertips
today, it’s even more urgent that we treat them with respect and care — before it’s
too late. Hi there – thanks for watching The Goods,
and thanks to our sponsor, American Express. AmEx has a credit card feature that gives
you choices for how to make payments big or small called Pay It Plan It. Pay It helps you reduce your balance by
making small payments throughout the month. and Plan It can help you split purchases over
$100 up over time. You can check it out at americanexpress.com/payitplanit And thanks again to American Express. Their support made this series possible. This is a 1993 Chevy Suburban. And this is a 2018 Chevy Suburban. The 1993 one cost $21,000 brand new and 2018
one costs $47,000. But if we adjust the price for inflation,
the 1993 Suburban would cost $42,000 today. Even though the 2018 model comes with modern
features like a back up camera, remote engine start, and ya know - airbags - the cost hasn’t
changed much in 25 years. It’s not just the Suburban — the average
price of new cars has risen only 7% since the early '90s. While the price for almost all other goods
has increased by 86%. And that, is thanks to NAFTA. “The nations of North America are ready.” “Strengthened by the explosion of growth
and trade” “To recognize that there is no turning back
from the world of today and tomorrow.” When the North American Free Trade Agreement
took effect in 1994, it was the first major trade deal of its kind. The US, Canada and Mexico agreed to eliminate
tariffs, which are taxes on most imported and exported goods. The countries hoped it would increase investments
and that by strengthening Mexico’s economy, it would slow illegal immigration. The trade agreement benefited the
auto industry in particular. It allowed automakers to keep costs down, because cars and auto parts could be traded for free. Well, for the most part. If at least 62.5% of a car’s parts were
sourced from North America, it would be tariff-free. Cars that didn’t meet the requirement, or
were made overseas, would be slapped with a 2.5% tariff. NAFTA also gave automakers the ability to
source cars where costs were lowest. By comparison, a car made in Mexico costs
$1,200 less than one built in the US because labor and the parts are cheaper. “As an industry, we’ve kind of performed some economic
miracles when it comes to keeping cars affordable by being able to source some of those 30,000 parts
from, you know, the least expensive places.” Let’s take this model of a 2014 Ford Mustang
for example. It’s engine was built in the U.S., but it’s
manual transmission came from Mexico. It's impossible for a consumer to easily
find out where each individual part came from, but it’s likely the doors were molded
in Canada. The speedometer came from Germany or China, which was assembled in the US, but then sent to Canada to be installed into the dashboard. The seatbelts did come from a company in Japan. But the seats were probably made in Mexico. The tires most likely came from South
Korea. In the end, the 2014 Mustang was built in
Detroit, but with only 65% of its total parts sourced from North America. It made the tariff cut. And Ford is in no way the only company who
does this. About three-quarters of the cars sold in the
US meet the standards to avoid tariffs, including most cars produced by the top four auto brands. The US is actually producing more cars now
than before NAFTA. Same for Mexico and Canada. But you wouldn’t know that if you listened
to politicians. “NAFTA was a mistake.” “The single worst trade deal ever made,
by any country, anywhere in the world.” “Instead of creating jobs, NAFTA cost us
jobs.” In the auto industry alone, a third of US
auto manufacturing jobs have disappeared since NAFTA was signed. As the same types of jobs have grown in Mexico. But in reality, that may have less to do with
NAFTA, and more to do with automation. Researchers have found that fewer than 5%
of US jobs lost from sizable layoffs can be blamed on trade with Mexico. But the timing of these manufacturing layoffs,
in lots of different industries, made it easy to point the finger at NAFTA. So while most Americans think the trade deal
was good for the US, those that feel they were directly affected are passionately against
it. And this opposition is why President Trump
is following through on a campaign promise. “A brand new deal to terminate and replace
NAFTA called USMCA. It sort of, just works. MCA.” But this isn’t a much of a new deal. While it’s essentially a re-branding of
NAFTA, it does make one major change to the auto industry. Because it would require cars be made with
75% North American sourced parts. And that 40-45% of those parts must be made
by workers who earn at least $16 an hour. At least 46 and as many as 125 cars sold today, that aren't taxed under NAFTA, wouldn’t qualify under the proposed USMCA regulations. Our 2014 Mustang likely wouldn’t meet the
new requirements. So if it is implemented, auto manufacturers
will have to decide to just pay the 2.5% tariff or change how they manufacture their cars
sold in North America, even if it increases production costs. "What looks small on paper, when you  think about the complexity and how many parts are on every car, it starts
getting out of hand fast.” Prices of those cars could go up anywhere
from $470 to $2,200 dollars in the US. And at these higher prices, roughly 60,000
to 150,000 fewers cars would be sold in the US each year. That would mean job losses. “I don’t want to see our companies leave
and fire our workers. Those days are over.” But the USMCA could actually incentivize car
companies to leave North America. NAFTA made US car companies more competitive
with the global market, and even attracted foreign car companies to build in North America. And if those cars are going to face higher
costs of manufacturing and tariffs - their production might get moved to China or other
countries. Building a car with thousands of parts is
an incredibly complicated process. So while NAFTA has kept cars pretty cheap
to produce, the USMCA could change that. And consumers will likely be the ones to pay
the price. This might be the most important chart for understanding American politics. It shows the ideology of both parties in Congress over the past few decades. Researchers looked at every politician's voting
record and then gave them a score based on how extreme or moderate they were. And if you look at the past 40 years, something dramatic has happened. Both parties have moved away from the center, but Republicans in Congress have moved much further than Democrats have. That difference is even more jarring if you look at the past few presidents. Republican presidents have become more and more conservative over the past few
decades while Democrats have stayed fairly consistent. Political scientists have a name for this. They call it asymmetrical polarization. It's one of the most important trends in recent
American politics. But it's also one of the hardest to talk about. And that's posing a big challenge for journalists who want to stay neutral while covering a
party that's increasingly going off the rails. This is not the Republican Party that any
of us recognize. This is not the Republican Party I joined
40 years ago. What happened to the Republican Party? I've been asking myself that question. It's soul crushing for me. Let's just address the soy boy in the room. I am not a great person to be making this
argument. I'm a queer, tree-hugging atheist with immigrant
parents. Me criticizing Republicans is about as shocking as Vox having marimbas in the background of
a video. So I brought some backup. I'm Norm Ornstein. I'm a political scientist. I've been think-tanking it for longer than most of the people watching this have been
alive. Norm Ornstein is kind of a legend. He's spent the past four decades writing about Congress and American politics. He's been named one of the Top 100 Global
Thinkers. I used to win debate competitions in high
school using articles that Ornstein wrote. A fun fact that he did not find to be that
fun. Most of Ornstein's work has focused on how to make sure that Congress stays functional. I worked very closely with a lot of Democrats and with a lot of Republicans. In all the years that I wrote about Congress, I was very, very careful to be not a partisan. But if you look at the titles of Ornstein's
books, you can see a quiet transformation happening. It starts off normal enough. Congress and Change: Evolution and Reform Campaign Finance: An Illustrated Guide Then it gets a little darker. The Permanent Campaign and Its Future The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing
America And then, in 2012, Ornstein and his writing
partner Thomas Mann write this book: It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How The American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism. In it, they write: "The Republican Party is
an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and dismissive of
the legitimacy of its political opposition. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of
virtue, is more open to incremental changes fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans. This asymmetry constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance." Holy sh-. Tom Mann and I came to the conclusion that we couldn't sugarcoat this anymore. The fact is that Congress changed. Ornstein's critique of the modern GOP falls into two major categories: their goals and their methods. There's no question that the Republican Party's
goals have become more extreme over the past few
years. In 2006, George Bush was talking about immigration
like this: There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship and a program of mass deportation. Compare that to Donald Trump: You're going to have a deportation force. In 1970, a Republican president created the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate
pollution. These problems will not stand still for politics or for partisanship. Now, Republicans campaign on abolishing that
same agency. We are going to end the EPA intrusion into
your lives. Even the Republican obsession with tax cuts is a relatively new phenomenon. Reagan is worshipped as a tax hawk now, but he actually raised taxes 11 times during
his presidency. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay
more in taxes than the bus driver or less? More! Ronald Reagan, welcome to the resistance? On its own, that ideological shift isn't a
huge problem as long as the two parties still work together. Our political parties are supposed to view
the other side as adversaries who may view the world differently, but we can work with them. And that's where Ornstein's second critique
comes in. About Republicans methods. The way they pursue their policy goals. Over the past few decades, Republicans have
gotten less and less willing to work with Democrats
on anything. This chart shows how often the filibuster
was used to block a vote in the Senate. When Republicans aren't in power, they're more willing to stop Democrats from getting anything done. And you can really see it escalate after Obama wins the presidency in ’08. That year, Democrats won both houses of Congress. And in a normal world, Republicans would have taken the L, reworked their campaign strategy, and focused on the next election. Instead, Mitch McConnell came out and said
this: Our top political priority over the next two
years should be to deny President Obama a second
term. Cool beans. And it wasn't just McConnell. In a private meeting before Obama's inauguration, leading Republicans reportedly agreed, "If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority. We've got to challenge them on every single
bill and challenge them on every single campaign." And they did. In 2011, Republicans held the debt ceiling
hostage, threatening to let the country default if the Democratic majority didn't agree to major cuts in Medicare and Social Security. As long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable. In 2013, they actually shut the government
down trying to force Obama to defund Obamacare. That was a remarkable victory to see the House engage in a profile in courage. A lot of this obstruction wasn't even ideological. Some of it was "no" for the sake of "no." In 2016, Republicans rejected Obama's budget before they even saw what was in it. And then, of course, there's Merrick Garland. Republicans flat out refused to meet with Obama's Supreme Court nominee for months. Not because he was too liberal. Garland was objectively a centrist. But because they wanted a Republican to fill
the seat. We don't intend to take up a nominee. You ever watch someone's soul wither away
mid-sentence? The thing is, if Hillary had won the election, many Republicans said they would have kept the seat open permanently, preferring to have an incomplete Supreme Court than let a Democrat appoint a justice. That is not normal behavior by party leaders. And it is a reflection of a strategy designed to divide Americans and use your leverage to hold power even if you are not a majority
in the country. Regardless of how you feel about tax cuts
or Obamacare, this my-way-or-the-highway approach is bad
for democracy. And Ornstein's book was his attempt to get
neutral observers, including journalists, to admit that. And it really is a party that I would say
has gone rogue. And I don't say that as a partisan. It is a fact of life. An unfortunate one for the country. The problem is admitting that fact makes you sound like a liberal hack. And if you look at the comments on this video, you know exactly what I mean. Talking about asymmetric polarization, by definition, means you treat the two parties differently. And that means being accused of liberal bias. This is tough for media to do. Tough because you get caught in the crosshairs. It's tough because you can lose viewers or
listeners. So instead, many networks have framed political
fights as just bitter disputes between two parties
that can't get along. A stalemate now exists as both sides dig in
their heels. Both sides blaming one another for this impasse. Both sides playing politics. You saw it during the 2013 government shutdown. Republicans literally held the government
hostage to undermine Obamacare. But instead of pointing that out, a lot of coverage blamed both sides for not
compromising. With both sides digging in, we are now in
uncharted territory. Both sides refuse to budge. Washington is a dysfunctional town and there's plenty of blame to go around on
both sides. Obama went out of his way to avoid that framing. I want every American to understand why it
did happen. They demanded ransom just for doing their
job. But the media's affinity for that "both sides"
frame meant that even those comments got criticized. President Obama playing the blame game. Playing the blame game. The blame game continues. This kind of knee-jerk neutrality makes it really hard to understand who's responsible for breaking our politics. If you are monomaniacal in pursuit of both
sides, you ignore a reality where there may be one
side. And the scary thing about asymmetrical polarization is that it forces the other party to play
hardball too. When Republicans refused to vote on a huge number of Obama's judicial appointees, Democrats changed the rules. Democrats voted to lower the threshold to
break a filibuster from 60 votes to 51 votes. It's time to change the Senate before this
institution becomes obsolete. It was a bad but necessary response to an
unusual situation. One created by Republicans. But that decision to change the rules has haunted Democrats for years. As tensions flared over Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt blamed Democrats for
starting the problem. You know there's a lot of people you can blame
for that. Started with the Democrats and Harry Reid when he took away the filibuster for those
circuit court judges and it got lower when Mitch McConnell did
it for the Supreme Court. Ornstein actually got into a Twitter fight
with Hunt over that comment, writing, I know the desire to show you are balanced. But the truth is not always balance. And equating Reid — who is no angel — with McConnell, who blew up more norms and
practices in the Senate than all other leaders before
him combined, is just wrong. Damn Norm. This problem is likely to get worse as time
goes on. The more Republicans move to the extreme, the more Democrats are going to seem obstructionist
in response. Look at this filibuster graph again. Every time Republicans raise the stakes, Democrats react by matching them. That's going to make it really tempting to
say, “Both sides are equally bad.” Guess what the Democrats are doing. Punching back, tit for tat. Neither side here has clean hands. There seem to be no grownups in charge. And what that does is it means that people who behave badly get off the hook. Nobody blames them for it. And it's easy for them to say, "Hey, the other side is worse." The only way to discourage this kind of norm-breaking
behavior is to be really clear about who's causing
it. And that's going to require journalists to
be brutally honest about what's happening to the Republican Party. It doesn't mean that you all become tribal
advocates. It means that you call out people who are
violating norms or who are behaving in a corrupt fashion. But if you don't do that, then you're not
doing what you're supposed to do as a vital part
of a free society. Some of the worst things have been said about me over the years have been said by
Norm Ornstein. One thing we agree on. Some of the worst things that have been said
about me have been said by you. This is Comperj. The biggest petrochemical complex in Brazil. It’s located in Itaboraí, a small city
in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The multibillion dollar project launched in
2008 and the plan was to open in 2011. Thousands of Brazilians moved there to work. But it’s 2018, and Comperj never opened. Construction of the complex stopped in 2015,
after it became a symbol of the largest corruption scandal in Brazil’s history -- Operation
Car Wash. Hundreds of prominent Brazilians including
CEOs, members of Congress and even a former President have been implicated. Some of Brazil’s largest companies lost
billions of dollars and the country slid further into recession. Four years since it broke, the scandal is
still rippling through Brazil, leaving places like Itaboraí devastated in its wake. Itaboraí was the perfect place for one of
Brazil’s most ambitious energy projects. It had the space for 2 refineries and a petrochemical
plant - spanning 45 square kilometers. It’s also close to Brazil’s newly discovered
natural gas fields off the coast of Rio and Sao Paulo. When the project launched, it was estimated
that Comperj would generate 200,000 direct and indirect jobs in the area. Itaboraí became a boomtown. In 2010, 50,000 people moved there, 160 new
businesses opened, and Itaboraí’s population grew by over 16%. But 1,200 kilometers away, police broke a
case that would doom Comperj. In 2012, they had this gas station, in Brasilia,
under surveillance. They suspected it was being used to launder
money. Criminals would bring in illegal cash, report
it as gas station earnings, and then funnel the cash to someone else - making the money
hard to trace back. The police arrested a known money-launderer,
Alberto Youssef, and offered him a plea deal in exchange for the source of the money. But he warned his lawyers:
“If I speak, the Republic is going to fall”. Youssef testified that he was laundering money,
not for criminals, but for top executives at Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company. Petrobras was the largest oil company in Latin
America. It also owned Comperj. The police launched a massive investigation
-- Operation Car Wash -- and soon discovered Petrobras was at the center of an intricate
corruption scheme. The company used its projects to enrich criminals,
engineering companies, and Brazilian government officials. Here’s how it worked in the Comperj project: When Petrobras needed to build the complex,
it started a bidding process for the job. Typically, engineering firms would compete
for the contract, driving down the price for Petrobras. But a group of these companies got together
and formed an agreement. Instead of competing against each other, they
cooperated to fix prices and take turns accepting projects. Odebrecht, the biggest firm and ring leader
of this cartel, won some of the major contracts to build Comperj. This allowed Odebrecht to overcharge Petrobras,
and profit immensely. The original cost for Comperj was about $6
billion. By 2015 Petrobras has paid at least $14 billion. Odebrecht then money laundered some of its
profits through outside businesses, like the gas station before paying bribes to Petrobras
executives and politicians. Petrobras executives would take the bribes
as incentive to keep giving contracts exclusively to the cartel. Politicians took the bribes in exchange for
their influence over Petrobras. Like Rio de Janeiro’s state governor, Sergio
Cabral, who received more than $800,000 to give Comperj contracts to a firm in the cartel. This also became an important funding source
for their reelection campaigns. "Brazil's Petrobras, one of the world's biggest oil companies in a heap of trouble." "The company's in the midst of an escalating corruption scandal." After the scandal broke, Petrobras and the
engineering companies were in trouble. Over two dozen executives were initially
arrested. Compounded by falling oil prices, Petrobras
lost half its stock value between September 2014 and January 2015 Construction on Comperj was incomplete when
13,000 workers were laid off. Today, in Itaborai, 40,000 people are signed
up for the city's employment program. An average of 250 people line up here
in search of odd jobs. Many of these unemployed residents used to
work at Comperj. The massive layoffs at Comperj, affected the
rest of the city as well. With Brazil's economy still trying to recover
from a recession, Itaborai has found it hard to bounce back on its own. Today, some limited construction is planned
to resume at Comperj after Chinese and Brazilian firms partnered with Petrobras. The natural gas unit is expected to open there
in 2020. But this would only create about 5,000 jobs
And the problem is, the closing of Comperj and devastation of Itaboraí is not an isolated
incident… it happened all over Brazil. And all over Latin America. Operation Car Wash successfully revealed systemic
corruption in Brazil. Car Wash put ex-President Luiz Inácio “Lula”
da Silva in jail, contributed to the downfall of his successor Dilma Rousseff, and a related
investigation has led to her successor Michel Temer, being charged for corruption. The ex-CEO of Odebrecht was sentenced to 19
years in prison. Eike Batista, once Brazil’s richest man
was sentenced to 30 years. But the same companies were funding major
infrastructure projects all over Brazil. So the scandal brought many to an abrupt stop. This nuclear power plant in Angra dos Reis, for instance. Like Comperj, it was halted in 2015 because
of direct involvement in the Car Wash scheme. $60 million in bribes were paid out of the
project’s funding. By 2016 , 11 projects were reportedly stalled
in Brazil alone. It didn’t stop there. The engineering companies involved worked
all over Latin America and in 2016, 17 projects were reportedly stalled in at least 7 countries. Like this irrigation project in Peru. Where 3 former presidents have been accused
of taking bribes from Odebrecht. In Colombia, this river dredging project was
stopped after Odebrecht admitted to paying $11 million in bribes. And in Venezuela, at least 23 infrastructure projects
have been suspended. These stalled projects mean lots of layoffs. A report estimates the Car Wash scandal wiped
out 500,000 jobs in Brazil alone. Over four years after the scandal broke, Brazil’s
unemployment is still high. Operation Car Wash is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it's uncovering systemic corruption
that has plagued Brazil for decades. But on the other, it's threatening Brazil's
democracy. For many, the prosecution of prominent leaders,
especially Lula, who was imprisoned at a time when he was leading in the elections polls,
has revealed a bias in Brazil's judicial system. The elections are now the most divisive in
the country’s history, with many losing faith in their political leaders. The country just held the most important presidential
election in its history. A field of 13 candidates was narrowed down
to two for the final vote. Fernando Haddad represented the leftist Workers’
Party, which has been in power for much of the past two decades. He garnered just under 45% of the vote. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who won
55% of the vote, has been elected Brazil’s next President, marking a
dramatic shift in the country’s politics. That’s because Bolsonaro is a longtime congressman
who is known for his ultra conservative and deeply offensive rhetoric. His rhetoric has sparked widespread protests
and outrage. It became so bad that at a campaign
rally, the candidate was stabbed by a man claiming he was “on a mission from God.” But, despite the backlash, Bolsonaro drew huge crowds to his rallies and skyrocketed to the top of the polls. So how did this relatively unknown congressman
garner so much support? And what does that mean for Brazil’s democracy? Brazil hasn’t been a democracy for long. The country was ruled by a military regime
from 1964 to 1985. It was an era marked by violence, torture, exile, and censorship. It was during this military regime that Jair
Bolsonaro began his career as an army captain. When the regime fell in 1985 and Brazil became
a democracy, Bolsonaro entered politics as a staunch far-right conservative; eventually
becoming a congressmen for Rio de Janeiro. He served seven terms in congress but remained
controversial because of his extremist remarks. And he continued to show an affinity for the
military dictatorship. Just look at the photos in his congressional
office. The portraits on the wall are presidents from
Brazil’s military regime. As a presidential candidate, Bolsonaro didn’t change. He openly calls called for bringing back some
of the military regime’s tactics. In fact, Bolsonaro has picked a retired army general
as his running mate who has openly suggested that a military coup could be a possibility. This time though, the pro-military message struck a chord. For many Brazilians, particularly the young
voters in Bolsonaro's base, the military regime’s brutality has faded into history. Instead, Bolsonaro’s praise of the armed
forces has resonated with his supporters at a time when crime has been soaring in the
country. In 2016, Brazil’s homicide rate was nearly
six times that of the US. In a country that shares borders with some
of the biggest cocaine producing countries in the world, much of Brazil’s violence
stems from drug gang rivalries. Mismanagement of public security funds by
government officials has left police in the country underpaid and underprepared to deal
with the mounting violence. Bolsonaro’s pro-military stance has made
him “a champion of law and order”. For many, even though his rhetoric calls back
to a brutal dictatorship; Bolsonaro is seen as a solution for a country in crisis. But Brazil’s crisis isn’t just about homicides. The country is still reeling from the biggest
corruption scandal in its history. And Bolsonaro has capitalized on that too. “For weeks, Brazil has been consumed by allegations of corruption and bribery at the highest level
involving politicians and business leaders.” A massive corruption investigation, known
as Operation Car Wash uncovered a money laundering scheme that funneled billions into the pockets
of politicians -- including members of major political parties. Bolsonaro seized the opportunity to position
himself as a political outsider and promised to end corruption. Here he is leading protests against Dilma
Rousseff, Brazil's president during the scandal. He lashed out at the Worker’s Party, that
Rousseff belonged to, and whose members had been prosecuted for corruption. Bolsonaro was actually one of the pivotal
votes for Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, when he openly dedicated his vote to an army
colonel accused of widespread torture and murders during Brazil’s dictatorship: The corruption scandal also helped Bolsonaro
by removing his strongest opponent. “Convicted for corruption, the man better
known as “Lula” was forced to bow out of October’s presidential race.” In September [2018], ex-President Lula
da Silva who was in jail for corruption, was banned from running in the presidential race Even from jail, Lula was polling far above
any other presidential candidate. But when Lula was officially barred from the
race, Bolsonaro soared in the polls. His final opponent in the presidential race,
Fernando Haddad, belongs to the same party as Lula, but he didn't drawn didn’t draw
the same level of support. In part because of the increase in crime and rampant corruption, the public’s faith in
the government has eroded over the years. Their trust in congress, the presidency, the supreme court are all at an all time low. Meanwhile, the public’s view of the armed
forces is relatively favorable — with nearly 8 out of 10 Brazilians supporting the institution. For Brazilians fed up with the political ruling
class, Jair Bolsonaro is offering an alternative. But for many others, Bolsonaro's offensive comments and anti-democratic solutions are a reminder
of Brazil's authoritarian past. This ad isn’t what you think. It’s not promoting a sports team or a grill
company. It’s for an apple. And unlike those that have dominated the produce
section when you were a kid, new breeds like this one have catchy names, logos, and slogans. And are trying to generate buzz before you
can buy them. Historically, our produce has gone unbranded. So how did we end up with all these apples? For most of the past century, America’s
iconic apple was that of Snow White. Lipstick red, with shiny skin and a crisp
white interior, a.k.a. “the Red Delicious.” First grown on an orchard in Iowa and originally
named after its founder, when it came out in the late 1800s, it was dubbed “the best
apple of any time” Growers and retail stores loved the Red delicious
because it looked good. It was uniform in size and color, turned red
before it was ripe, and wouldn’t bruise easily. And Americans loved the taste. By the 1980s, close to half of all apples
grown in the US were Red Delicious. The trouble is, when you bite into one now,
it often doesn’t taste great. People complain of mushy flesh and tough skin.
Its defining characteristic can sometimes be that it has no flavor at all. It takes years and a lot of money to develop
a good tasting apple, but growers were incentivized to cut costs -- at the expense of taste. That is, until one apple proved them all wrong. The Honeycrisp. The honeycrisp is everything that the Red
Delicious was not. When it came out in market in 1991, after
30 years of development, it had a refreshing taste, a delicate skin, and a soft, juicy
crunch. And even though it can cost more than two
times the average price of apples, consumers then and now are willing to pay a premium
price, so much so that it’s now the fifth most produced apple in the US. So the honeycrisp started a sort of revolution
in the apple industry: Now that people knew expensive, flavor-focused apples would sell,
breeders experimented to create tastier, more inventive varieties. And they sought to protect their apples’
good names, by patenting their trees and trademarking
their brand names. This process picked up speed after a 1980
federal law allowed universities to own and patent their inventions, including apple trees. And research programs for apple breeding took
advantage of the new rules. In order to plant these new patented varieties,
growers had to pay up: usually about $1 per patented tree and a portion of sales for use
of a trademarked name. Plus, each trademarked apple had to pass muster
on firmness, sugar content, blemishes and color. These quality checks mean that even though
the trademarked Pink Lady and the generic Cripps Pink originate from the same type of
tree, they look and taste different — the Pink Lady is held to rigorous trademark standards
and that is what, the company says, justifies their higher price. Now, not all new apples get trademarked. It is only those that experts believe can
garner a premium price. And it can take up to 10 years after securing
a patent and trademark to plant and grow enough trees for commercial production. So while they waited on the fruits of their
labor, growers worked on marketing their apple in the hopes finding loyal consumers in a
competitive market. And they’re not alone. Visit your grocery store and you will see
a lot more name brands in the produce section. Branded fruits and vegetables are a growing
trend. While not all branded apples will see success
on par with the honeycrisp, there is one that has high hopes. Washington State growers are ramping up production
of their Cosmic Crisp, an apple that’s both sweet and tart, firm and crisp, and much easier
to grow than the honeycrisp. They’re trying to get people excited about
tasting something new and that’s not a bad thing. While we could see higher prices in the future,
the fruits and veggies themselves will be objectively better. And consumers will have more options, just
like we do with our phones, or our computers, or our cereal. And now, our apples. You’re looking at one of the most incredible
moments in human history. That’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walking
on the moon. Okay, maybe you’ve seen this clip before,
but think about that for a second: They’re on the moon. A celestial object nearly 240,000 miles into
outer space. That distance is like flying all the way around
the Earth 9 1/2 times. Millions of people around the world watched
on July 16, 1969, as Apollo 11, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins
launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, and disappeared into the sky. It was the climax of years of preparation
and research, and the pinnacle moment of the so-called “Space Race” between the United
States and Soviet Union, a years-long rivalry to compete for dominance in space exploration. For the eight days following the launch, the
world awaited the return of the would-be heroes. So what actually happened between here and here? So let’s start with the components of the
ship that were discarded one by one until this became this. Here’s the rocket that sent the astronauts
into space: the Saturn V. The three stages of the Saturn V each played
a different role in launching Apollo on a path to the moon — we’ll get to that later. On top of the rocket is the actual Apollo
spacecraft. It’s made up of three parts too. There’s the lunar module, the component
that would eventually land on the lunar surface, the service module, which had propulsion systems
for course corrections and entering and escaping orbit, and the command module, where our three
heroes were for most of the mission. And last but not least, this is the launch
escape system, which was designed to pull the command module away from the rocket if
something went wrong during launch. Together, all these pieces made up the Saturn
V rocket and Apollo 11 spacecraft. But it’s the way they came apart that made
the moon landing happen. The Saturn V’s first stage launched Apollo,
carrying the spacecraft 42 miles above the Earth and reaching a speed of about 6,000
miles per hour. The first stage then detached, and once the
Saturn V’s second stage kicked in, the now needless launch escape system jettisoned too. The second stage propelled the spacecraft
even farther and faster into space, and after it detached, the third stage of the rocket
fired briefly to knock Apollo into a parking orbit, 103 miles above the Earth’s surface. Here, final checks were made, and the Saturn
V fired again to set Apollo on course to the moon, in a move called the “translunar injection.” Once the spacecraft propelled away from Earth,
the Saturn V’s job was done. Now the astronauts needed to pull off a mid-flight
maneuver to reconfigure the ship so the crew could access the lunar module, which had been
stored in a protective compartment during launch. To do this, the command and service modules
detached together and flipped 180 degrees, docking with the lunar module and extracting
it. In the process, they ditched the third, now-useless,
stage of the Saturn rocket. This whole high-stakes launch process only
took about 3 1/2 hours and this — the completed Apollo spacecraft — was the end result. For the next three days, Apollo coasted through
space. Until it finally reached its target and was
pulled into orbit by the moon’s gravity. This is where the crew split up. Armstrong and Aldrin transferred to the lunar
module, named Eagle, and slowly descended toward the surface. While Collins continued to circle the moon
in the command module, called Columbia. Now here comes another tricky part: landing
on the moon. To make this historic moment happen, Eagle
turned and used its engine to slow its momentum and ultimately touch down on the lunar surface. “The Eagle has landed.” The moonwalk was broadcast live on television,
immortalizing Neil Armstrong’s words here: “That’s one small step for man, one giant
leap for mankind.” “I think that was Neil’s quote I didn’t
understand.” “‘One small step for man,’ but I didn’t
get the second phrase …” After about 21 1/2 hours on the moon, Eagle
performed the first launch from a celestial body that wasn’t Earth, leaving its landing
gear behind and timing its ascent with Columbia’s path in lunar orbit to rejoin the spacecraft. Once Armstrong and Aldrin transferred back
into the command module, the lunar module was no longer needed. Just like before, Apollo needed to break out
of orbit. This maneuver is called the transearth injection,
and began the 2 1/2 day journey home. Upon approaching its entry point into Earth’s
atmosphere and no longer needing its propulsion engines, Apollo jettisoned the service module
and prepared for reentry, protected by the now-exposed heat shield on the bottom of the
command module. “Apollo blazes across the heavens, coming
back to Earth at 25,000 miles per hour.” Parachutes deployed, and Columbia splashed
down safely into the Pacific Ocean. And what was once a 3,000-ton behemoth of
rocket, fuel, and freight was reduced to this. A small command module floating in the ocean,
carrying three astronauts and rock samples collected from the surface of the moon. Hi, hello what's up! Hey It's so cold :( We've got a big
announcement for you today. If you're a subscriber you've probably noticed that
we've been asking for your help a lot more in the past year in the community
tab. Now we're going to make that experiment bigger. Way bigger. Wo we're
starting this huge new show with YouTube Originals where we'll look at some of
today's most important issues and we want to start with your questions. What is the most important question in your world that desperately needs to be
examined, answered, or explained in 2019? It can be anything, from health and
science and money to tech, relationships the government and beyond. Could we engineer a technological solution for climate change? Why are more
women all over the world giving birth by c-section? Why is it so important? Why
does it affect your daily life? We're gonna choose 12 questions and if your
question is selected, you'll be invited to be part of the show. All you need to
do is send us a cell phone video like this. The resulting show is gonna debut
in 2019 right here on Vox's YouTube channel. Yeah. So click on the link in the
comments below and tell us a bit about you and why this question matters in your life. Thank you! Content. Do you see the difference between these two
games? It’s not just the quality of the graphics. Look at the ways you can look around. Side to side. Side to side and up and down. The advent of 3D games that utilize all the
dimensions didn’t just require better graphics cards. It required a way to control movement and vision quickly and easily. When you look at the manual for Quake, one of the first games to really utilize what’s
called “freelook,” you see that the developers didn’t really know how to do it either. Some people still used the keyboard to look up and down.
And to move forward and backward? Arrow keys. But on computers today, a game as popular
as Fortnite— a game so mainstream that journalists trying to seem hip add Fortnite to their videos— even Fortnite defaults movement controls to the same four keys.
Not the arrow keys, but WASD. Why?
The answer involves gaming’s first superstar -
and it shows how a legend can actually change the mechanics of play. On Monday August 26th, 1996, the Wall Street Journal featured an article about a presidential
campaign and the first professional gamer, Dennis “Thresh” Fong.
“They ended up doing that little stencil drawing of me. I think it was me and I think
it was Bill Clinton. What got me into gaming initially were called
MUDS — Multi-user dungeons — think of it like World of Warcraft, but text-based
World of Warcraft. So like, if you wanted to walk in this game
you would have to literally write like "Walk north. Walk south.” But Thresh didn't build his reputation on text-based games. It was playing the 3D game
Quake -- released in 1996. He never lost a tournament. But the game did
present some new control challenges for all players. “When most people started playing games back in those days, you just used a keyboard.
And then over time, people realized the keyboard had a fixed rate of turn. So if you wanted
to turn left, it would kinda go like that - so you wouldn’t be able to flick. I eventually
switched to a mouse.” A keyboard and mouse combo were necessary
by the late 90s, so it was crucial to find a way to use the mouse to look and the keyboard
to move the player. But the programmers didn’t figure out the
best way to do it. The players did. “Some people used arrow keys, which were
on the right hand side of the keyboard, and the mouse, some people would only use a keyboard,
some people would use a horizontal row, like ASDF.
There were literally probably hundreds of different combinations that people used. I found WASD on my left hand, and then using the mouse on my right hand to be the most comfortable. By default, the weapons, you have to hit the numbers to switch weapons.” The arrow keys were far from weapons switching numbers and other important keys like control
and shift. To strafe- or step sideways - you often needed
to hit a side directional key and shift at the same time.
That was easier with WASD than arrows. But ESDF, or RDFG might have accomplished
the same thing. It was Thresh’s influence that made WASD a standard.
“People started copying and using WASD and the mouse as their standard key configuration. I think enough people started using it, it became really popular, where the games just started making
that the default key combination and configuration for a lot of games like Quake.” Programmer John Carmack built Thresh’s configuration into a special command in the
sequel, Quake II. Anybody could use the same controls as Thresh.
That included sensitivity and speed, but also W, A, S, and D.
That layout spread from the leading game and player in just a couple of years.
It quickly showed up in the manuals as defaults for an early multiplayer shooter, Starsiege
Tribes, and the once-in-a-generation hit, Half-Life, which assumed players would use
a keyboard, mouse, and WASD. “I can’t say that I, like, invented it
— it was just what was comfortable for me, and as the top player in my generation, people
just wanted to use what I used. It’s kinda cool that it’s the standard today. If you wanna see more of Thresh, check out
the eSports episode of Explained on Netflix. There’s a lot of League of Legends in the
episode — if you play, you might recognize the champion Thresh. That champion was actually
named for the Thresh that you just saw. Say you've written a list and gone to the
store.. But you quickly start buying things that you didn't plan on. After all, fresh produce would be nice. And these look good. Half off? Why not! Wait. Why is it so hard to stick to a shopping list? Researchers estimate that half of consumer
spending is unplanned. Sometimes it's stuff you just forgot to put
on your list. But there's another kind of purchase that
consumer psychologists measure That would be your impulse purchase
where you see something.   You think it's kind of a cool item. I think I'll buy that. The architecture of a store can impact consumer
satisfaction, which in turn might spur impulse buys. In the 20th century, the architect Victor
Gruen used light and space to dramatically stage goods in storefront windows. His designs tried to capture the attention
of passersby… and convert them into customers. Today, people call this technique 'The Gruen
Effect.' It happens when a store environment takes
you from shopping for a specific item to shopping for shopping's sake.
 
It's about the mindset and the environment that they try to create. Does this sound familiar? Think about your last trip to IKEA. They have the restaurant with the Swedish meatballs and all of this stuff. And that's not a coincidence. You're trying to build excitement because when
people are excited and aroused they're more likely to buy. Almost 20 percent of our buying decisions are based on logic and needs. 80 percent of our buying decisions are actually
based on emotions. And we try to make that connection or bridge
that connection Yeah of course we are retailers so we try
to make sure that you know, grab a thing or two. My name is Richard La Graauw and I'm creative director
for Ikea here in the US. Which is an important job. He's in charge of how the products are presented in the store. That includes layout. Retailers pay close attention to how their
floor plan can change in-store behavior. Grid layouts emphasize speed and convenience. Where freeform layouts allow exploration,
which can make customers visit more parts of the shop. And racetrack designs create a loop that exposes customers to a certain path of product. IKEA uses a fixed path through a maze of product displays. That can extend the distance travelled in store. So the more you travel, the more items by definition as a shopper you'll be exposed to. At the entrance, most customers will be drawn
to a bright yellow bin of bags, placed next to the escalator. Spots of light guide your eye to the entrance
of the showroom And before you know it, you're taking the
scenic route. So with light, you can actually steer consumers towards different
areas and toward different product selections. On average, customers only visit about a third of any retailer's floor area. IKEA's layout forces customers to cover more ground. IKEA was always designed as a place where
you can see, touch, and try, no? So they can spend hours if they want to. But there's also consumers that know exactly
what they want and just want to have it quick. So it's tailored to both. One researcher in London surveyed an Ikea to hand-draw these pedestrians pathways. This heat map of the showroom was generated
using her data. It looks like the path guides are working. Where Victor Gruen simply used a hunch to invent window shopping, virtually any store from IKEA to your local
grocery has a trove of big data at their fingertips. We used technology to measure actually the
flow of consumers and where they're interested and in which areas they intend to go. And that works all based on Beacon technologies. Which means retailers like Ikea will only
get better at nudging you to spend time in more parts of the store. So, compulsive shoppers, the next time
you go to the store… consider taking the shortcut. Or, at least, don't forget what you came here for. Because it probably wasn't 
plants and a plate of meatballs. You do you, though. That’s right, this is happening. OK, so why is this not just a steaming
pile of clickbait? Hear me out. So far, there have been twenty of these movies. And uber-producer Kevin Feige says there’ll
be at least 20 more in the MCU — Marvel Cinematic Universe — within the next 10
years. Seriously, half of these people could disappear
and it would still be 148 too many characters. When we asked Vox’s audience for things
they think are overrated, Marvel and DC’s movies came up again and again. We love these movies - in the United States
alone, they’ve grossed more than 6.5 billion dollars. And yet there’s something missing. When you look at the history of fictional
universes — and at the MCU in particular — it’s possible to understand how it could
be fixed. Go back to 1939 and you’ll find the likely
birth of the Marvel Universe. It’s in Marvel Mystery Comics #7. These characters aren’t that well-known
today. But here, Betty tells Namor that The Human
Torch exists — establishing continuity and crossover potential. This was the start of a new era — one in
which corporations produced fiction. The idea was simple — you could use the fame
of one property to enhance the audience for another. And Marvel wasn’t alone in recognizing the
financial opportunity of crossovers in the 1930s and 40s. “The Green Hornet! Look at that picture on the wall. The man on that horse is one of your ancestors.” In the 1940s, The Green Hornet revealed that
the series’ central character, Britt Reid, was the grandnephew of The Lone Ranger, another
popular radio star at the time. “I hope you do something about those crooks
— just as your pioneer ancestor did.” Movie studios were thinking about this too
—when Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein, it joined the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolfman
movie franchises with a goofy comedy. It was basically Universal Studios’ Avengers
Infinity War, but with more running into walls. By the 60s, even DC comics was catching up,
like when Superman entered his fortress of solitude and finally met Batman. “I love you!” They enjoyed some cake. “You love me.” By the time Spiderman got his comic in 1963,
he was spending time with the Fantastic Four and promoting guest appearances from the Hulk. And this was also when the Marvel Universe’s
problems started. This snowglobe contains a half-century of
television. It’s the basis for the Tommy Westphall Universe
theory, which some argue might be the biggest fictional universe of all. The snowglobe appeared on the ‘80s television
show St. Elsewhere. That scene possibly showed that the whole
series had taken place inside a snowglobe world imagined by
a minor character named Tommy Westphall. The theory is that if a show had a crossover
with St. Elsewhere, that show must have taken place in Tommy’s snow globe too. And every crossover that show had, no matter
how tangential, would be in the snowglobe, and so on and so on, until you get almost
450 television shows in the same universe, in the same snowglobe. It spans from 1952 to... today. It’s a dumb theory. But, it’s meant to be. That said, the Tommy Westphall universe actually
illustrates some of the problems with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Crossovers require a bunch of artistic compromises. No one wants Cheers and I Love Lucy to be
a connected “universe.” It’s because of a bunch of business decisions
connected them. Sometimes, the network forced crossovers on
producers, other times, the producers came up with it — Garry Marshall said the reason
that Mork from Ork knew Fonzie from Happy Days and Laverne from Laverne and Shirley was because
his son said that Fonzie should dream about an alien. These crossovers are always about juicing
ratings, not telling a good story. The Tommy Westphall universe is a thought
experiment. Frasier and The X-Files don’t mix, even
though they do in Tommy Westphall’s globe. But even at Marvel, where continuity was planned,
it became a hassle to maintain. Marvel editor and writer Len Wein said:
“The problem at Marvel was that we suddenly became a business with a bunch of books that
Stan, [Lee] don’t think, ever in his heart expected to last more than a couple of years.” In 1965, Lee replaced most of the Avengers
just because the continuity for the original group had become too confusing to deal with. This continuity clutter happened in the movies,
too. Iron Man kicked off the MCU in 2008. The universe exposition dump didn’t happen
until after the credits. “Mr. Stark, you’ve become part of a bigger
universe.” Ant Man required a weak excuse right in the
middle of the movie. “I think our first move should be calling the Avengers." “I spent half my life trying to keep this
technology out of the hands of Stark. I sure as hell am not gonna hand it to one
now.” These heavy-handed additions are about getting
crossover hype, not about telling a good story. But there’s a bigger problem than continuity
in the MCU — and there is a way to do it better. “Whoa you’re the Avengers.” The rest of this scene is a standard movie
fight. Their universe is only as deep as merchandise
and a few Easter Eggs. It’s cool when Peter Parker’s classroom
has a picture of Bruce Banner in the corner. But it’s not a transformed universe,
It’s like Quentin Tarantino including the imaginary brand of Red Apple cigarettes in
multiple movies. It’s cool. It’s not a coherent, intertwined world. The MCU is like our own, except for the crossovers. You can test it with the characters. Add Aquaman to that poster. If you didn’t know DC owned him, would anyone
notice? The MCU has no rules beyond corporate ownership. It's a superhero hodgepodge. The same goes for DC. If you added Hawkeye here, nobody would care. And not just because it’s...Hawkeye. Marvel’s own property — X-Men, with a
movie universe owned by Fox and likely going to Disney — shows a better way. This universe is not just crossovers. Every character — human and mutant — has
taken sides in a generations-long battle, with real stakes, unlike Marvel’s Civil
War. That leads to creative possibilities, like
decade-jumping and even tonal experimentation with deep integration to the X-Men mythology,
if not the continuity. When Marvel experiments, like with Jessica
Jones, the big tie in to the MCU is...merch. “Do you have any cool toys in your room
you want to show me?” “Do you know Captain America?” X-Men movies are not all good, but they do
have a universal logic that’s stronger than Tommy Westphall’s snowglobe. Here’s another test. If you — little old you — were in a movie,
which universe would change you? In X-Men, you’d have to decide where you
fell in a decades-long battle. Do you side with mutants? Or humans? In the MCU, you’d be like this kid in Agents
of Shield — your big decision would be to buy some merch. “I’m OK.” Marvel has flirted with a richer universe,
one in which the lives of all people are transformed by a shared history. But right now, would anybody be surprised
if Disney forced a Marvel/Star Wars crossover? Marvel and Disney can make the right choice. In the late 80s, the Marvel comic Damage Control
toyed with the consequences of superhero life on the world at large. That made its cameo in Spiderman: Homecoming
a thrilling indicator of where the MCU could go. It was a world that anybody could imagine
themselves in. But until that experimentation transforms
the movies, the MCU is just a business strategy. The universe is still in development. If you want just the facts about Marvel, please
check out Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. It gives you a peek behind the scenes of Marvel
and how they shaped a half-century of our culture. In October of 2014, Jason Van Dyke - a white
Chicago police officer - shot and killed Laquan McDonald - a black teenager. A year after the shooting, the city released
the graphic video that captured the incident. It shows McDonald walking down a busy roadway,
holding a knife. As he walks away from the officers, Van Dyke
shoots him. 16 times. “16 shots. 16 shots.” The response to the release of the footage
was swift and widespread. Chicago residents protested. The police chief was fired. The state’s attorney was voted out. A Justice Department investigation unearthed
a pattern of excessive deadly force and racial bias among Chicago Police officers. And for the first time in more than 30 years,
a Chicago police officer faced murder charges. While police officers who end up in court
often prefer a judge to hear their case, Van Dyke opted for a jury. But here’s the thing about that jury. It didn’t look like the population of Cook
County, where the shooting took place. In a county where almost a quarter of people
are black, there was only one black juror. When it comes to justice in America, race
has always been a part of the equation...So what happens when a “jury of peers,” doesn’t
actually look like our peers? “A good citizen will perform basic civic
duties. Your duty to serve on the jury goes with your
right to trial by jury” Here’s how jury selection works. First, prospective jurors are picked for duty
out of a large pool. Usually, a list of registered voters or licensed
drivers. Then comes a process called “voir dire”
or “to speak the truth.” Prospective jurors are questioned by lawyers
on both sides. They’re looking for bias. Like in this scene in “The Devil’s Advocate”
where a lawyer is trying to gauge the jury for bias against bankers. “Do you think as a juror you might be able
to set aside any prior opinions you might hold of the savings and loan industry?” If a lawyer has reason to believe a juror
will be biased, they can ask the judge to dismiss the juror with cause. Each side can also strike a certain number
of  jurors without giving a reason. These are called “peremptory challenges,”
and this is where things get tricky. While lawyers aren’t technically allowed
to use these challenges to discriminate on the basis of race or sex,
that doesn’t mean they don’t try. Like in this scene from the TV show How to
Get Away with Murder. “We have to look for jurors who are prone
to distrust authority. What are some of the signifiers of this? Number one is race. There’s a larger distrust of police among
black Americans. You don’t call the police in my neighborhood.” The racial balance of a jury can impact the
verdict. Studies have shown that all-white juries are
harsher on black defendants, make more errors, and discuss less of the case facts. And in another study, in cases with a black
defendant and white victim, having one or more black male jurors lowered the likelihood
of a death sentence - by a lot. “A difficult day for jurors in the OJ Simpson
murder trial.” It’s why - in high-profile, racially charged,
trials like that of OJ Simpson - so much attention was given to the fact that the jury had nine
black members on it... "The jury has spoken." and Simpson was acquitted. There’s also the disturbing case of Emmett
Till. In 1955, two Mississippi men - Roy Bryant
and J.W. Milam - were accused of kidnapping and brutally
murdering a 14-year-old black boy named Emmett Till. Bryant’s wife alleged that the boy had touched
her hand and waist, and whistled at her in a grocery store. Emmett Till’s body was found days later
in the Tallahatchie River, beaten, shot, and tied to a cotton gin with barbed wire. Bryant and Milam were arrested and charged
with murder. But the trial of Bryant and Milam would be
decided by a jury...a jury that consisted of 12 white men. Despite multiple witnesses seeing the two
men take the boy, and one that saw the back of Milam’s truck dripping with blood - “a
jury of twelve white neighbors of the defendants reached the verdict after one hour and five
minutes of deliberations” The men would walk free. Decades later, Bryant’s wife - who made
that first accusation against Emmett Till - recanted her story. Fast forward thirty years later, and all-white
juries still weren’t a thing of the past. In the 1986 case Batson vs. Kentucky, a prosecutor
used his peremptory challenges to remove all four black jurors from the pool. The defendant’s appeal made it all the way
to the Supreme Court. And won. Today, if one side suspects the other of using
peremptory strikes to racially discriminate, they can file what’s called a Batson challenge. But...the problem is…. "Yeah so Batson is pretty much
widely regarded as a failure." If a lawyer accuses the other side of excluding
a juror because of race, the judge then has to decide whether it’s discriminatory. The accused would have to come up with a reason
- any reason - that’s race neutral, for why they don’t want that juror. "Courts have really allowed
kind of any reason." "For example like an attorney might say ‘well
I struck all the people who seem suspicious of the police.’ And so that would on its face be racially
neutral but it's still kind of allows for that disproportionate impact." You can see that in this leaked 1987 training
video in which attorney Jack McMahon explains how to exclude black people and get away with
it. “There's the blacks from low-income areas
are less likely to convict… and as a result you don’t want those people on your jury. Batson vs. Kentucky, I'm sure you've all become aware of that... The best way to avoid
problems is to protect yourself. When you do have a black jury, you question
them at length, on this little sheet that you have mark something down that you can
articulate. Say well the woman had a kid the same age as defendant and I thought sh’ed
be sympathetic to him. Or she’s unemployed and I just don’t like
unemployed people because I find they’re not too stable.” This kind of strategy has led to a pattern
of excluding black jurors across the country. And in North Carolina, between 1990 and 2010
-- prosecutors struck black jurors 2.5 times as often as non black jurors. Another report found half of all juries that
delivered death sentences in Houston County, Alabama, between 2005 and 2009 were all white. The other half had a single black juror...even
though the county is 27 percent black. And Ann Eisenberg did a study that showed
the prosecution struck 35 percent of black jurors in South Carolina who made it through
the voir dire process compared to 12 percent of white jurors. "I asked a colleague of mine
when I finished this study I said you know okay I've shown this you know what of it now? There's so much evidence." "And he said 'yeah, proving that racial discrimination
effects jury selection is like proving that the sun rises.' " But there might be signs of progress. In the case of Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago
police officer who shot Laquan McDonald, a majority white jury convicted him of murder. It was Chicago’s first murder conviction
of a police officer in 50 years. They found him guilty of second degree murder,
a lesser charge. And guilty of all 16 counts of aggravated
battery. One for each shot at Laquan McDonald. “We the jury find the defendant Jason Van Dyke guilty of aggravated battery with a firearm, 16th shot.” Thanks for watching. There’s a lot I couldn’t fit into the
video, like how do we fix the problem of racial discrimination in jury selection? Over the years lawyers have suggested solutions
like choosing from a bigger jury pool of underrepresented people that aren’t on voter registration
lists or driver license lists. Or getting rid of peremptory challenges altogether. It’s a complicated problem to solve but
there are procedural tweaks that could make the system a lot more fair. Gene Lu uses GPS to map his runs on a phone. These days, that’s pretty normal. But the way he does it, isn’t like most
people. Gene is drawing something here. Before he runs, Gene spends hours mapping
a route to create an elaborate drawing. He then traces it on the ground using GPS
during the run. Sometimes I try to remember not the next turn,
but maybe two or three turns ahead. Sort of, like, a way to distract myself on the run. Turning your run into a doodle isn’t an
easy way to train. But something else he’s doing is. Using GPS can make you into a better runner, no
matter what route follow. In the 1970s, the US military created the
Global Positioning System, or GPS, by launching a network of satellites into orbit. Transmitting precise, jam-resistant radio navigational
signals. A GPS receiver measures its distance from
multiple satellites in order to pinpoint where you are on Earth. By the year 2000, the government made the
system fully available for public use and around that time the first GPS watches were
released for consumers. Clunky design and high prices meant only hardcore
data nerds were using them for exercise. But over time, devices became cheaper and
sleeker and eventually, mobile apps made GPS tracking widely accessible. These days, it’s commonly used by casual
runners. I’ve become very accustomed to running with
technology on me... When I go running without my stuff, I sort
of feel like... Almost like drowning a little bit. Performance in running is measured by just
a few variables: distance, time, and speed. GPS makes it easy to monitor those elements. In 2016, Runner’s World conducted a survey
of their global audience and found that 80% of runners used GPS to track their runs. I go for a run, I track my run, and I am given
that data about that run. So based on that, I can now do it again and
either up my distance, lower it, so on so forth. Using GPS to collect data about your runs
makes it easy to track your accomplishments. But there's another reason GPS tracking is
gaining popularity. Putting your run on a map with a time and
pace, gives runners a better story -- to tell on social media. What’s missing from it is, I think, the narrative to that
run. Like, what was that run about? Where did you run? Was it hard? Was it easy? I think social media has sort of changed how
people approach running. For me one of the big factors or one of the big motivations for running these shapes is to be able to share it. To a lot of people, this looks like bragging. I’m going to share it to social media, I’m
going to get all these likes and then I’m going to do more. But, it turns out, sharing your runs on social
media actually makes you a better runner. This visualization comes from researchers
at MIT that analyzed GPS data from millions of runners and correlated it to social network
sharing. They found that when runners share their accomplishments, they run farther, faster and longer. And so do their friends. According to their research, “an additional
kilometer run by friends can inspire someone to run an additional three-tenths of a kilometer
and an additional ten minutes.” Gene isn’t your average example, but sharing
his runs has made him a better runner. With social media being at the forefront of
everything, there’s this social media feedback loop that sort of merges with the sport of
running. Everytime I did the run I would post it onto
social media and my friends would just sort of freak out and say, “Whoa! I didn’t know that there was the Dire Wolf
in Queens!” And so because of that, I started to do more
and more. Did the lion in Minneapolis. The octopus. The bear in Jackson Heights. C3PO. Darth Vader. Storm Trooper. TIE Fighter. AT-AT Walker. AT-ST Walker. At some point, it started to go into ten-plus
miles. And for me that was sort of an achievement
because at the time I was only doing five miles. There is, however, a downside. Using GPS to track our runs has raised privacy
concerns. When the popular fitness tracking app Strava
released their global heatmap showing data collected from runners around the world, they unknowingly
revealed detailed military information from locations where users had been tracking
their jogging routes. While you might not be stationed on a secret
military base, sharing information about your run can make your daily routine and home address
publicly available. But it’s a tradeoff. The same technology that's driving people
to share their progress and location, at the cost of their privacy, it's also helping them
stay active. At least we are getting more people to run. We’re getting more people to run because
of GPS and, on top of that, social media. I think with all this tracking, I think you just need to be able to turn it on and off. [Music] i've been trying to tell this story for 30 years and the dominant experience i've had is seeing the new evidence come in at first month by month and week by week now they're studies every day practically and it just keeps getting clearer and stronger america's on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil and these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change [Applause] now to a new report on global warming from a prestigious panel of scientists convened by the u.n the findings are blunt climate change is happening it will lead to tremendous changes around the world that could have a very negative impact on the well-being of people animals and entire ecosystems the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere i i think we have to accept the view that scientists have that there is global warming and that human operation human condition contributes to that i think the uh the risks of climate change are real and that you're seeing climate change i think human activity is contributing to it why has it taken so long senator special interest it's a special interest it's the utility companies and the petroleum companies and the other special interests they're the ones that that have blocked progress in the in the congress the united states and in the administration that's a little straight talk we don't always see eye to eye do we know no but we do agree our country must take action to address climate change i believe that climate change is real it's not just a greenhouse gas issue it's a national security issue we have an obligation to future generations to take action and fix it the senate is doing going to do something today beginning a debate on global warming a comprehensive bill to deal with climate change that is favorably reported out of a senate committee the yeas are 48 the nays are 36. three-fifths of the senators julie chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative the motion is not agreed to i believe that man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming climate change here in alaska the only arctic state in our union of course we see the effects of climate change more so than any other area i think most members think that the climate change is a serious issue that needs to be addressed the question is how do you address it and and we've never gotten into the the debate and the discussion about the consequences of trying to deal with it we need to ultimately make clean renewable energy the profitable kind of energy so i ask this congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in america a sweeping climate change bill that's a top item on president obama's agenda passed maryland the house of representatives last night only eight republicans crossed the aisle to vote with most democrats for the bill 44 democrats joined most republicans in voting against it stolen emails from top researchers were posted online global warming skeptics saying those emails suggest that scientists may have worked together to manipulate global warming data defenders say those emails are being used out of context president obama has said that people are justified in being disappointed by the outcome of the copenhagen climate change conference last week in an interview on u.s television mr obama acknowledged that nothing had been done to achieve a significant cut in greenhouse gases but he said that the non-binding agreement reached in denmark was better than nothing top u.s scientists urged drastic action today to slow global warming for the first time the national academy of sciences called for a specific change in climate policy it recommended a carbon tax on fossil fuels or a cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions senate democrats pushed the climate bill off the table and into a very uncertain future ahead of november's midterm elections and i'll take dad aim at the cap and trade bill the republican takeover of the house is likely to change the political climate on the issue of global warming and it is safe to say that the president's cap and trade legislation that whole idea is virtually dead most republicans say they will scrap the select committee on global warming speaker designate john boehner called the panel quote a forum to promote democrats job-killing national energy tax also known as cap and trade but when you have over 90 percent of the world scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it's time to defer to the experts listen when you when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said when you call into question the science of evolution all i am saying is that in order for the republican party to win we can't run from science the science is is not settled on this and i tell somebody i said just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact galileo got uh out voted for a spell my view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet and the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try and reduce co2 emissions is not the right course for us the white house today finalized new gas mileage standards that would eventually double the fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks to an average 54 and a half miles per gallon by 2025. obama can't get through climate change legislation so the epa is going to use its authority to do what it can in that regard president obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans [Applause] and to heal the planet [Music] my promise is to help you and your family [Music] 74 of us senate republicans publicly question the science of global warming but this is a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock it demands our attention now the age of the dinosaurs was dramatically warmer than this is right now and it didn't cook the planet and in fact life was fine are you convinced that climate change is man-made well i i look i i don't know that that is a resolved issue in science today you do not think that human activity the production of co2 has caused warming tomorrow i do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it do you believe in man-made climate change democrats 83 say yes republicans 36 say yes it is now as more divisive than abortion it has in recent years become ideology it's become partisan the obama administration has just rolled out a new rule to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants the proposal from the environmental protection agency cuts co2 emissions by 30 percent by 2030. some democrats in coal mining states want him to hold off until after the midterm elections in november the world's top climate panel has issued its direst appeal to date on the need to stop global warming in a new report the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change says continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system increasing the likelihood of severe pervasive and irreversible impacts scientists report that 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history for the planet and that dates back to 1880. satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there's been zero warming none whatsoever we are seeing these horrible uh the reports are now in palmyra they're executing people and leaving their bodies uh in the streets meanwhile the president of the united states is saying that the biggest enemy we have is climate change we've had one record-setting year after another as far as as as far as the the heat on on this planet so i don't buy that joe what do you mean you don't buy it i just don't buy that i don't buy the fact that it's a crisis i don't buy the fact that it's a crisis i just don't i think that there'll be little change here it'll go up it'll get a little cooler or get a little warmer like it always has for millions of years it'll get cooler it'll get warmer it's called weather i think it's a big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money in my first inaugural address i committed this country to the tireless task of combating climate change and protecting this planet for future generations two weeks ago in paris i said before the world that we needed a strong global agreement to accomplish this goal an enduring agreement that reduces global carbon pollution and sets the world on a course to a low-carbon future a few hours ago we succeeded the question now is this agreement just paper or will it lead to crucial steps needed to make it something truly historic feeling the heat so is planet earth federal scientists announced today that 2015 was the warmest year on record with land and ocean temperatures nearly two degrees above average a major setback tonight for president obama's climate change initiative the u.s supreme court stepped in to put the centerpiece of president obama's climate change agenda on hold pending the outcome of judicial appeals in the lower courts trump's statement comes just a couple days after he released his first energy plan he says he would quote cancel the paris climate deal and promote more fossil fuels in the united states donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the chinese i think it's real please we cannot keep sending climate deniers and defeat us to congress or state houses and certainly not to the white house nasa and noaa scientists today declared 2016 the hottest year on record out of the 17 hottest years on record 16 have occurred since 2000. the united states will withdraw from the paris climate accord [Music] thank you german chancellor angela merkel called it extremely regrettable canadian prime minister justin trudeau called it disheartening and the vatican went further saying mr trump's decision was a disaster for everyone meanwhile president trump is ending obama's signature environmental policy that limits carbon emissions from power plants that burn coal speaking to an audience in kentucky yesterday epa administrator scott pruitt said that the regulation violated federal law and declared that the war on coal is over 2017 was the third warmest year on record the six hottest years have all been since 2010. the window of opportunity to prevent global climate chaos is not yet closed but according to a landmark report it will require action on an unprecedented scale the message is over to governments at this stage we've told you the scientific facts the evidence the costs it is up to the governments now to decide what to do with it you Why are ninjas such a big deal? I’m gonna be honest here. Ninjas — they just aren’t cool. Maybe if they could jump over a waterfall,
but I don’t— Whoa. Ok. I love Ninjas. But why do we know about them? Why is this a “Ninja” Warrior? Why do 60,000 people on LinkedIn have something
“Ninja” in their profile? How did Westerners - and especially Americans-
obsessed with this Japanese group of super secret spy soldier cool people? Ninjas have a huge space in our culture — one
that other groups just don’t. A medieval order in Persia literally gave
us the word for ASSASSIN. But we don’t constantly hear about them. Those teenage mutant turtles? They’re ninjas. Ninjas have a surprising history that spans
centuries - and it’s one that shows the unpredictable ways a culture can spread throughout
the entire world. Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is not
an accurate portrayal of Japanese history. Real ninjas practiced ninjitsu, the modern
term for the mix of espionage and assassination that occurred from the 1400s to the 1800s. Speaking pretty roughly here. But ninjas did actually sneak into castles,
conduct assassinations, and even have sweet ninja gear like this water spider. They put each foot in the middle of one of
these and used them to paddle across the water. But these ninjas didn’t have to wear the
black jumpsuit as part of the job. As spies from the lower class, they were more
likely to have hid in a crowd. The jumpsuit imagery we associate with ninjas
may have even come from the theatre. This was a kabuki performance, the traditional
Japanese style of theatre and dance. And look down here. Do you see him? This was a kabuki stagehand, dressed in black
so he wouldn’t be visible. In kabuki, an actor playing a ninja would
often dress the same way, so the audience would be surprised by a stagehand becoming
part of the action. This contributed to the Japanese mythology
of the ninja, as in this legendary manga from 1814. This Japanese mythmaking continued in early
20th century Japanese novels that portrayed Japanese culture, and ninjas, as mercenary,
magical, and everything in between. Ninjas became a pretty fluid myth. Often they had special powers, and occasionally
they were incognito, sometimes in jumpsuits. Then all started to change when Japan started
making movies. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a famous
export of Japanese cinema - artistic yet gripping. It’s come to symbolize the flourishing Japanese
cinematic golden age of the 50s and 60s. It famously inspired the Western movie remake,
The Magnificent Seven. But high art movies weren’t wasn’t the
only kind of influential Japanese cinema. 1962’s Shinobi No Mono didn’t get love
from American critics — but it did start a series that set boundaries for the ninja
myth. This popular 8-film series featured non-magical,
covert ninjas that were similar to what we imagine today. The series reportedly inspired Hollywood too. Screenwriter Roald Dahl —
Yes, Willy Wonka’s Roald Dahl — decided to include ninjas in a James Bond
movie after seeing one of the movies. “This is my ninja training school.” But unlike the ninjas in Japanese movies at
the time, James Bond’s ninjas were illogically dressed cannon fodder. And they were a preview of the Ninja-sploitation
to come. Yeah. Enter the Ninja is generally credited with
kicking off the 80s ninja wave in theatres. Starring perennial ninja star Sho Kosugi,
it typifies the genre by being extremely violent - except when the kicks
completely miss. And by including irrationally kitted out ninjas…and
this: “Morning.” "Morning." Now neither of us can unsee that clip. In general this trend was kicked off by books
like The Ninja - it sold millions of copies and spent more than 20 weeks on the New York
Times bestseller list. Semi-prestige miniseries like Shogun joined
the craze, And there was 1985’s American Ninja, in
which a ninja was this guy. But calling out a few examples actually sells
short the sheer volume of crap that had “Ninja” slapped on the cover in the 80s and 90s. By the time Ninja Turtles and Three Ninjas
—the ninja series with kids — rolled around, American culture was happy to start remixing
ninjas. The final step? A word so bland that you can get a job as
a writing ninja. It is true that American ninjas don’t have
a lot to do with the fighting ninjas of feudal Japan. But the on-screen Japanese ninjas never had
much to do with it either. The strength of Japanese culture, through
books, and cartoons, and movies, made them ubiquitous. It takes a lot of work to hide so well that
the whole world finds you. There are a lot of great resources when it
comes to ninjas. One that I recommend is “Vintage Ninja,”
which will let you see all the gloriously tacky, kitschy, crappy, scary, freaky ninjas
that have appeared on screen over the years. Christopher Columbus is all over America. There are statues in his honor. Streets and cities are named after him. He’s got his own national holiday-- complete
with parades. For centuries, Columbus has been celebrated
as the “brave explorer” who “discovered” the “New World.” "We celebrate Columbus Day." "The anniversary of that day in 1492, when Columbus first sighted the land of the New World, America." But Columbus never even set foot on North American soil. His four voyages brought him to the modern-day
Caribbean islands, Central, and South America... but never to the country where more than 50
cities, towns, and counties bear his name. We rarely hear about the other explorers, who actually landed in the US just a couple decades after Columbus. So how did a man who never even set foot in
North America end up with a national holiday and a permanent place in American mythology? Columbus and his arrival in the Americas is
mostly introduced to kids through books, songs or cartoons like this one: “I will discover a shortcut to India and
bring back some of the great wealth I find there. And I can do it, for I know the world is round.” One of the many problems with cartoons like
this one is that it taught a lot of wrong information. Children were told that Columbus defied conventional
wisdom and proved the world was round. But at the time people already knew the earth
was round. Columbus actually claimed the world was smaller
than predicted, and he was wrong. Children were also told that Columbus’ voyages
to the inhabited islands in the Americas were peaceful... “The people Columbus called Indians were
very friendly, and they gave Columbus and his men many gifts.” But they don’t mention that Columbus and
his men were responsible for mass deaths of native people. A friar who lived on the islands Columbus
reached and experienced the brutality of the conquest, wrote about it:
He wrote: “They forced their way into settlements,
slaughtering small children, old men and pregnant women.” These details have been kept out of most textbooks
from the beginning, allowing Columbus to become an American icon. The idealized version of Columbus is as old
as the United States. It all began during the War of Independence,
when the US fought the British. The new nation needed a rebellious, non-British symbol. And they found one in Columbus. Once the US won independence, streets and
cities were named after him. Columbus’ iconic status was further cemented
in 1828, when Washington Irving published a biography glorifying him. He described him as Brave, heroic and a genius. But he neglected to mention his brutal treatment of indigenous people. But Columbus’ real big break came in the
late 1800s-- when the country he’d never visited started experiencing some massive
changes. Italian immigrants were arriving in the United
States in big numbers. And they faced harsh discrimination. They were treated as perpetual foreigners
and restricted to manual labor. Their Catholic beliefs opened the door for
even more discrimination. So they embraced Columbus. Afterall, he was Italian and Catholic and
already admired. So he quickly became an icon for Italian
immigrants who argued that they, too belonged in America. On the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival,
in 1892, “Columbus Day” was first brought into the school system. Schools held celebrations and students pledged
allegiance to the flag for the first time, associating Columbus with patriotism in classrooms
across America. A year later, Columbus became the theme of
the World Expo in Chicago, branding him America’s hero around the world. As Columbus and his legend became further
embedded in American culture, so did the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic social club 
founded by Italian immigrants. By 1937, the Knights of Columbus had gained
enough influence to convince president Roosevelt to proclaim Columbus Day
a federal holiday. But not everyone wanted to celebrate Columbus. While the myth of Columbus had been developing
throughout history, Native Americans in the US had been dealing
with destruction and discrimination for centuries at the hands of all the European settlers
that followed Columbus. But in the 60s things started changing in
America. As the civil rights movement demanded change,
Native rights became a part of the conversation. "We've asked the federal government for hundreds of years to do things for our people or with our people." "The government has only compromised, only given us token issues to deal with." "We are here today as living factors of the problems that are still existing." Historians started reexamining Columbus and
his story, correcting the myth and including the missing historical facts. As revelations about Columbus have become
mainstream, some people have rejected the holiday. As well as the man and the legacy behind it. Today cities around the US are opting out
of celebrating Columbus Day. In some cities they are choosing to celebrate
Indigenous Peoples Day instead. At the same time more than half of Americans
think celebrating Columbus Day is a good idea, according to a poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus. Most countries are formed with the help of
myths and heroes to forge a sense of unity and belonging. It's human nature. But as the myth of Columbus is confronted
with brutal historical facts, the US will have to decide which myths are worth keeping
and which ones to discard. These are Doctor Who fans — arguably some
of the most passionate fans of any show. And this year, they’re especially excited
because, for the first time in the show’s 55-year history, the Doctor won’t be played
by a white British man — it’ll be a woman. “Oh brilliant!” This move adds Doctor Who to an influx of
sci-fi fantasy franchises who have already put women at the helm. But this new woman Doctor is expected to have
a trait that those other heroines don’t have — a sense of humor. “This is gonna be fun.” For those of us not as invested in the show
as this guy — Doctor Who is the story of a mysterious alien being (known as the Doctor)
who travels through time and space having adventures and fighting evil. But the Doctor has one particularly special
ability — when the character is mortally wounded, the doctor can regenerate into a
new body. The Doctor has had 13 different faces over
the years — all white, British men. This is one of the first episodes of Doctor
Who, from 1965... The Doctor was an eccentric old man who often
relied on his more courageous companions to get him out of some sticky situations. Support me, dear boy. In fact, in early concept notes from one of
the show’s co-creators, the character of the Doctor was described as “a frail old
man lost in time and space.” But as time went on, and different actors
rotated through the role, the Doctor went from being a frail trickster to a male hero
archetype. The Third Doctor in particular played the
role as an “action hero” “Violent exercise makes me hungry. Don’t you agree?” Fast forward to the Tenth Doctor, and the
action hero traits had become baked into the character... “Leave this planet and never return — what
do you say? Yes. All well then. Thanks for that!” But there’s one particular personality trait
that stayed from the beginning... The Doctor has a gleeful, almost childlike personality. He’s a hero with a sense of humor - which
makes the character fun and compelling to watch. But that kind of character complexity has been typically reserved for male heroes. Female superheroes are very much
pressured to be taken seriously because there are so few of them, they have to do well. In 2014, the last time good data was available,
only 14% of mainstream sci-fi films had a woman protagonist. Women are not only vastly underrepresented in sci-fi fantasy films, they’re often
restricted to generic superhero personalities. If I think about the leading female
superhero... think about the Wonder Woman film...She's powerful she's strong … But
she's not a funny funny character. She laughs, but doesn't crack jokes, she doesn't have banter in the same way that male superheroes can do. That seriousness is consistent across most
woman characters on-screen. Take a look at this scene between Guardian
of the Galaxy’s heroine, Gamora, and one of the film’s villains, Nebula. Gamora puts up a pretty awesome fight. But compare that to Peter, the film’s male
hero... notice the difference? There’s also Black Widow from The Avengers
whose whole personality is built around being stoic. And Katniss Everdeen, who can do some serious
damage with a bow and arrow but barely ever drops her steely persona. Of course, there are some examples of funny heroines in film and television. One of the earliest is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These examples are still rare on-screen, but
there is one medium where heroines have more complex personalities... Female characters who do humor, do very well
in comics... Squirrel Girl, Kamala Khan, Gwen Pool. From a financial point of view, it is less
of a risk. Because there's less of a pressure on a female-led title to do well, there's more
room for comedy, there's more room for humor. It’s this scarcity of women superheroes
in film and television that makes the new female Doctor’s role even more impactful. This woman doctor is not only expected to
be a great witty hero traveling through space like her male predecessors, she could also
push the boundaries of what a woman hero can be... To have a female Doctor, that's a win for
a lot of us. Women, young girls will get to see someone that looks like them be smart and interesting and funny and that
is incredibly important. So even if you’re not one of the millions
of people worldwide who watches Doctor Who, next time you see an awesome new woman superhero,
you might have the Doctor to thank. Every couple of years, there's a magical cure-all beauty ingredient to
give you amazing clear glowing skin. Right now those ingredients are acids. Acids to erase wrinkles, to smooth your skin, to tighten your skin, to rid your
skin of pimples, to make your skin look like glass. But with a bunch of acids to
choose from, how are you supposed to know which ones won't leave your face looking
like beef carpaccio? This one says it's for exfoliation, we've got something for
hydration, something for brightening, this one refines the appearance of pore size,
skin texture, and fine lines. Overwhelmed yet? I know I am. I
went to a dermatologist's office to get some answers. So chemical peels and skin
care acids are pretty much synonymous. A peel is a procedure, so it's the notion
of taking off or peeling a layer of the skin, but the acid is the actual tool
that we use. Acids that you use in the over-the-counter market are different
and weaker than the ones that we use in the office for medical procedures. The popular at-home acids are alphahydroxy, betahydroxy, and for the sensitive skin
folks, polyhydroxy. AHAs like glycolic and lactic acid exfoliate the skin on
its surface removing layers of dead cells and reducing the appearance
of acne scars, fine lines, and dark spots. BHAs or salicylic acid can go
beneath the skin surface to clean out excess oil and has anti-inflammatory
properties. Basically good for those who are more acne prone. PHAs are the gentler
acids used for exfoliation. They also attract water molecules which then moisturize
 your skin. There are other stronger acids like trichloroacetic acid,
but they're considered too dangerous for at-home products and are only supposed
to be used by licensed professionals. I am here today to get an acid peel of
some kind. I guess I'm a little bit nervous, because every time I've
mentioned to people that I'm going to get an acid peel they remind me of
the infamous Sex in the City scene where Samantha gets a peel and it's just like, her
skin is falling off of her face. Hi, I've had a chemical peel. I'm Carrie's publicist. The first step is the pre-peel cleanser to remove
any remaining dirt, oils, or makeup. Next a low strength glycolic acid is applied.
Now, this part is a mix of citric and mandelic acid along with other
ingredients. The last layer is trichloroacetic acid.
Using cotton swabs the doctor goes over Ashley's problem areas. Face rinse
included, the procedure took less than 15 minutes. I looked in the mirror and I was like,
whaaaaat. Just feels so much brighter and things that I just kind of thought
were freckles I guess are not freckles, they're skin damage and they're gone! So . I'm excited to see what happens to my acne scarring, because I already feel
it's a little lighter so I'm pretty excited to wake up tomorrow morning. But depending on your skin, how much acid you use, and the time it's left on, the side
effects can be less appealing. If you use peels too much, whether it's at home or
in the office, it is not safe. Excessive use of peels will weaken your skin. It's
gonna slowly peel off the top layer and make the skin thinner. When you use
stronger acids without medical supervision,
there's a higher risk of accidentally giving yourself a chemical burn. The FDA
in the cosmetic realm likes to put a limit at about 10%. Having said that, you
go on any website and you're gonna be able to find percentages that are higher.
Again, if you're just starting out at this, stick to a product that's around 10%. Whether you use acids or not, good skincare routines start with
prevention and protection. The number one rule is to wear sunscreen. Like, every day. Although some people will see the benefits in using acids — — others won't. We'll probably always be fixated on how we present our faces to
the world, but if we aren't careful with the products we use, we risk our choices
coming back to burn us in the end. There are two kinds of people in this world. Ones who see this painting and think: genius. And ones who think: how did Jackson Pollock
get so overrated? Wait, a second Jackson. I am actually the first type. The type that really likes you. Don’t put that cigarette out in my eye. I love abstract expressionism and I love Pollock. When I see Pollock in person, I am full on
Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What time is it? But even fans like me have to admit that Pollock
brings up questions. Questions beyond snark about why Jackson Pollock’s
studio floor looks identical to his paintings. Why is Pollock the one who gets his paintings
put under a microscope? Why does Pollock get to be Ed Harris’s passion
project? There’s one answer that’s beyond the paint. This is artist Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock’s
wife, and Jackson, enjoying time in Springs, New York. But it’s the man in between them who might
be the key to understanding how Jackson Pollock became a legend. Here’s a young Jackson Pollock at his mentor,
Thomas Hart Benton’s, house. Yep, he has a drink in his hand. Most people agree Pollock’s big break came
in 1943, with “Mural,” which he painted for heiress Peggy Guggenheim. It’s got bold colors and motion. Pollock later said it was like “a stampede
of every animal in the American West.” Pollock’s birthplace of Cody, Wyoming helped
sell that. Later he pioneered placing the canvas on the
ground and throwing paint down at it. That helped him become a mainstream success,
with Life Magazine articles and Vogue fashion shoots with his paintings in the background,
as well as the classic, icon-building Hans Namuth film and photos that showed the brooding
cowboy artist at work. “I usually paint on the floor. I enjoy working on a large canvas.” But here’s the problem. If you don’t get Jackson Pollock, it's not that
straightforward. Why was he the one who made it big in a crowded
field? In 1951, Life Magazine published an article
about all the big art stars in America. There are a lot of future museum staples in
there, like Mark Rothko, de Kooning, and Clyfford Still. But Pollock? He’s in the middle. To understand why, you’ve got to return
to the center of that other picture. In 1933, Clement Greenberg — friends called
him Clem — was a necktie salesman. He became the most influential art critic
of the 20th century. In a small New York art scene where artists
and critics partied together, that made him an eye on a hidden world. It’s important to put into context how influential
Greenberg was thanks to articles in the Partisan Review and the Nation. Let’s use Ferris Bueller as example. Millions of people know every scene of this
movie, but not as many know that it’s a John Hughes movie. Now any movie fan knows John Hughes was the
teen movie God. But many movie watchers just don’t. That’s a little like Clement Greenberg. He was enormously influential in the art world,
but remains obscure to a wider audience. He broke through with the 1939 essay “Avant
Garde and Kitsch,” in which he proposed that art was a bulwark against mass culture. He was a newbie to art - that Avant Garde
and Kitsch essay referenced a painting that didn’t exist. Later, in a famous mistake, he said this painting
had orange and purple in it. It doesn't. If you know that artist Piet Mondrian narrowed
himself to primary colors, the blooper is even worse. Still, some painters respected him. Robert Motherwell said, “I disagreed with
him about many things but he had a painter's eye. And none of the other critics did; not one. So as a direct intuition he got it right off
the bat." That eye advanced an aggressive vision of
modern painting that said the buzz wasn’t in Paris, but New York. And the perfect American? The cowboy who happened to look a lot like
Clement Greenberg. OK, that’s a little unfair. But seriously? This is like that meme: “You Vs. The Guy She Told You Not To Worry About.” And it’s true that Greenberg’s abrasive,
American-centric, hypermasculine view of art worked better with Pollock than with a Dutch
immigrant like de Kooning, who noodled over his paintings obsessively. In his essay “American Type Painting,”
Greenberg wrote that Pollock was “alone in his power to assert a paint-strewn or paint-laden
surface as a single synoptic image.” Pollock “pulverized” the canvas - when
he changed his mind, he made “violent repentance.” Throughout the 1940s, Greenberg and Pollock
rose together, while slightly less renowned critics popped up around them. Greenberg was the brain, Pollock was the soul. This cheerleading from 1947 was typical, in
which Greenberg called Pollock “radically American,” and the most “Powerful painter
in contemporary America.” That praise bubbled to the mainstream. That Life magazine article from 1948, the
one that made Pollock as mainstream as the cheese platter ad on the next page? The entire basis for that article was a “formidably
high-brow New York critic.” The New York art scene knew that Clement Greenberg. But the rest of the country saw the new star
at the top of the page. Helen Frankenthaler didn’t drip paint like
Jackson Pollock. She soaked and stained her canvases, resulting
in haunting images like Mountains and Sea. This is her in the middle, with Jackson Pollock,
Clement Greenberg, and Lee Krasner. Greenberg and Frankenthaler saw each other
for about five years. Frankenthaler later said that her dating Greenberg
was one of the reasons that he rarely wrote about her work. Greenberg helped make museum names out of
Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, but he missed many movements and artists. That had consequences. Frankenthaler is a legend, a mainstream name. But she’s famous the way Clement Greenberg
is famous, not the way Jackson Pollock is. And she is kind of a symbol for all the artists
whose careers Greenberg made — or overlooked. One critic shaped how we look at a half-century
of painting. If Pollock was overrated, Clement Greenberg
was the one doing it. We just followed his lead. So what is the correction here? It’s not to discount Jackson Pollock, it’s
to give more attention to those other abstract expressionists as well. And to know the critic who decided which names
we’d learn. With that in mind, maybe it’s possible to
come up with more than just Jackson Pollock’s name. “Anyone? “Anyone? Anyone?” So, if you want to learn more about Clem,
I really recommend Florence Rubenfeld’s book about him. It gives you an entire new angle on a half
century of American art, and it features a surprising number of fist fights. This is a clip from the 1991 hearing of Anita
Hill, a law professor who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually
harassing her while working as her supervisor. Over the course of three days, Hill was bombarded
with questions meant to highlight inconsistencies in her story. The goal of these questions wasn't to prove
Thomas was innocent. It was to prove that Hill's memory was faulty. Soon enough, senators were suggesting that
Hill might be imagining things. Orrin Hatch even suggested she had confused
her real life with a scene from The Exorcist. And it worked. By the end of the hearing, more Americans
supported Thomas than had before Hill had testified, and he was confirmed to the Supreme
Court. Twenty years later, history is repeating itself. Another woman is being grilled over her allegations
against a Supreme Court nominee. She could not recall key details. She's already told the Washington Post she
can't remember various details. We're supposed to believe that she precisely
remembers that Kavanaugh is the assailant when she can't even say where the assault
took place. But this fixation on how well a victim can
remember exactly what happened to them: It's bullshit. And experts say it's getting in the way of
us taking credible sexual assault allegations seriously. In the weeks since Christine Blasey Ford accused
Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school party, a lot of attention
has been paid to Ford's memory of the event. Ford admits that she can't remember some important
details, like the exact date of the party, whose house it was at, or how she got there. Notes taken by Ford's therapist in 2012 also
state four boys were in the room during the time of the assault. But Ford says there were two and says the
discrepancy was due to an error on the therapist's part. Those gaps and inconsistencies have triggered
a barrage of speculation about whether Ford's memory can actually be trusted. How reliable is a memory from 1982? She can't tell you where it was, how she got
there. A Washington Post columnist even suggested
that Ford might have Kavanaugh confused with a lookalike, asking, “Is there a Kavanaugh
doppelganger?” You can see this focus on memory especially
on Fox News. This is nothing. She's not sure when it happened, where it
happened. Alleged victim does not know the address,
the date, the owner of the house. Why? This chart shows that Fox talked about Ford's
allegations in the context of memory more often than the other cable news networks. And it's easy to guess why. Why? We have this expectation that for an allegation
to be credible, the victim has to be able to recall exactly what happened to them, in
detail. Most of us think memory works like a video
camera, accurately recording events we see and hear so that we can review them later. So if a victim can't remember certain details,
we view them as suspicious. After all, if they can't remember everything,
how can they even be sure they got raped? But if you talk to experts who study memory,
they all say the same thing: That's not how it works. Human memory is faulty. We're prone to forget or misremember information,
even if we experienced it clearly. And I could show you a study on this, or we
could just do an experiment. I started this video by showing you a clip
of the Anita Hill hearing. Do you remember what Hill was wearing? Who was the first senator you saw speaking? What year was the hearing? Are you sure you saw the clip? Now you might be thinking, “Yeah, but if
I was getting harassed or assaulted, I would remember more.” But actually, the opposite is true. You tend to narrow your focus when you're
in a traumatic situation. There are certain parts of it you remember
better and other parts that your brain said, “That's peripheral, I gotta focus on staying
alive.” It's worth remembering what Ford is accusing
Kavanaugh of. She says he pinned her down, groped her, and
covered her mouth. She worried that he might inadvertently kill
her. Imagine trying to remember that Anita Hill
clip if you watched it while fearing for your life. In a piece for Time magazine, researchers
James Hopper and David Lisak explain that intense fear affects the hippocampus, impairing
our ability to store contextual information like the layout of a room or the passage of
time. This doesn't mean memories are useless. Victims remember big, core details about what
happened to them. But they often recall those memories in ways
that look suspicious to the rest of us. Many survivors try not to think about what
happened to them. And so when people start to ask them very
detailed questions, it is not unusual for there to be some inconsistencies. Details of that day before or after may not
be clear in their mind. But the part that they are clear occurred
would be the violation. In one survey, researchers asked people who
had experienced attempted or completed rape to recall their experiences and then compared
their stories to people describing other intense experiences. The study found that memories of rape were
rated as less clear and vivid, less likely to occur in a meaningful order, and less well-remembered than other intense memories. If people are expecting that a victim should
be able to just replay a video and describe it the same every time, that's not how the
brain works, and that's not how the brain works for any kind of trauma, not just sexual
assault. In other words, we're holding trauma survivors
to a standard that most of them won't be able to meet. And when they fail that standard — when
they forget something or contradict themselves — the punishment is brutal. Anita Hill was famously described as “a
little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” after her hearing. Ford has been accused of being a political
operative… Political smear masquerading as a sexual assault
allegation. Of being hypnotised… Was there hypnosis? Are they using confabulation? And of being mentally deranged. She's going to look like the loon that she
is. If you're wondering why so many women are
hesitant to come forward, this is why. Days after Ford's story went public, a second
accuser, Deborah Ramirez, came forward with allegations that Kavanaugh had thrust his
penis in her face during a party in college. Ramirez told the New Yorker that watching
the smear campaign against Ford had made her frightened to share her own story, which she
knew would be attacked due to gaps in her memory. In the case of Deborah Ramirez, that's a very
sketchy allegation. She didn't remember very well. She's had a lot to drink, she said. She had a lot to drink. None of this is to say that we shouldn't question
or investigate allegations of sexual assault. An investigation is exactly what Kavanaugh's
accusers are asking for. But as long as we expect trauma victims to
have crystal-clear memories of what happened, we're going to keep finding reasons to doubt
them, regardless of how credible their allegations are. Marketing is everywhere, screaming for your
attention in lights and in your headphones. But while traditional marketing assaults your eyes and ears, there’s another industry
quietly fighting for your attention — and they’re doing it through
your nose. Scent marketing is the idea of using
scent and incorporating to all the touch points of the customer experience. it's very subconscious –
so it's not like a logo or something where you can see and everybody sees it the same
way. depending on people's experiences and their
upbringings, and their history, they might perceive the scent to be a little bit different. It's more emotional
Chances are, you’ve already experienced scent marketing -- and know it can have a
profound impact on your mind. Research has found that combining scent with
visual marketing strengthens our memory of it in the long term, which can affect how
we feel in a very physical way: For example, an ambient coffee scent can emulate
a feeling of alertness even if you haven’t had any coffee, and scents that we commonly
attribute to cleanliness – like lemon or tangerine – could make a messy store seem
cleaner. Various research over the years also found
that shoppers in scented environments may linger longer, perceive the merchandise as
better and are more willing to pay higher prices. And when casinos started pumping smells into
the air to negate the stench of cigarettes they saw slot machine usage double. People are actually more comfortable, they
feel warm they feel invited, they feel welcomed. It's really about creating an amazing experience
for customers when they walk in Using scent to enhance an experience is actually
pretty common For example, Museums have used "scentscaping"
to intensify their exhibits – like adding the smell of gunpowder to a civil war exhibit
and hospitals use scentscaping to create a more soothing environment for patients – but
scent marketing is a bit more complicated Scent marketing and branding is about using
one scent for the whole experience If you're a millennial the first thing coming
to mind might be... Abercrombie and Fitch – or Hollister. These stores are the most extreme form of
scent marketing called billboard scenting. Every store smells the same regardless of
where you are, and chances are It’s really overpowering – like an oversized
billboard. But when you separate that scent from the
store you can start to understand exactly what they want you to feel It smells very masculine.
Male clothing store. Sexy. Manly. Smelling this, kind of, weirdly, makes me
feel intimate. Believe it or not – to an ex-boyfriend I
had. It smells like an Abercrombie model
The scent matches the visual branding – and there’s a careful process behind that
We have to learn a lot about the brand, the history, what sets them apart. It's a Men’s spa? Woman's spa? Is it in a country club? Is it in a luxury hotel? Who their target demographic is – the people
that are coming in. And then it's really about understanding their
aspirational attributes. and then capturing those qualities and turning them into a scent. In most cases, the scent is carefully diffused
through the store – sometimes through stand alone systems and sometimes directly through
the HVAC systems. It’s a delicate process designed to release
just a hint of aroma into the air Because in general, overpowering people with
an aroma isn’t a good thing. This is why with most places you won’t even
realize there’s a particular smell, unless, of course, it’s completely out of place. In the same way that scent marketing can generate
a positive experience, when the aroma doesn’t match the demographic, location or brand identity
the public reaction is often negative: In 2006, Got Milk? Ads dispersed at bus stops in San Francisco
were equipped with cookie scented strips. While chocolate chip cookies smell delicious,
placing that scent at a bus stop completely backfired – and the company pulled the scent
marketing one day after releasing it. Then, in 2008, Starbucks had to put the sale
of breakfast sandwiches on hold. The sandwich smell was competing with the
coffee aroma, ruining the ambience. Think about that: If a coffee shop doesn’t
smell like coffee, would you still start your morning there? Once you start to be conscious of it you'll
notice that it's everywhere. when you walk into certain banks, when you
walk into certain malls, when you walk walk into stores all types of businesses are using
it. And if it’s working properly, scent marketing
is helping create a positive experience for both the business and the customer. The reason why people stay longer in a store
is because it's a better experience. So they're happier. Maybe their mood is lifted and who doesn't
want to have their mood lifted and be happier? Hey, thanks for watching The Goods and thanks to our sponsor American Express. AmEx has a credit card feature that gives you choices for how to make payments, big or small, called 
"Pay it Plan It." "Pay It" helps reduce your balance by making small payments throughout the month. And "Plan It" can help you split purchases over 
$100 up over time. You can check it out at americanexpress.com/payitplanit. And thanks again to American Express, their support made this series possible. In Sweden, more than 82.6% of people over
18 turn out to vote in elections. 82.6%! In the U.S., just over half the voting age
population shows up to the polls. We’re getting our asses kicked by Denmark,
South Korea, the Netherlands and a whole host of other developed democracies. If we re-sort this chart to show what percent
of registered voters actually voted - we’re near the top of the list! The U.S. has a huge gap between the share
of people who can vote, and the share of people who actually do. But it turns out, a lot of these countries
are doing something really simple, that could make that gap disappear. If you take all 50 states, and rank them by
the share of eligible voters — that’s citizens over 18 who aren’t felons — that
actually voted in 2016, you can see a huge variation. Now let’s look at the states that let you
register when you show up to vote on election day. Notice something? The states with the highest turnout rates
all have it. All the states below the national
average— well, they don’t. Most of them make you register nearly a month
in advance. And there’s a whole host of reasons people
might not be registered - nearly a third of unregistered Americans say they intend
to and just haven’t gotten around to it, others say it’s inconvenient or they just
don’t know how. In Minnesota, 12% of the people who voted
in 2016 registered on election day. That’s 350,000 people. Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Idaho
all had lots of people registering last-minute, too. Oregon has figured that out. Turnout increased nearly 4% from 2012 to 2016
— that's more than double than what we saw nationally. It’s no coincidence that in 2015 Oregon
became the first state to enact automatic voter registration - or AVR. Here’s how it works. Anyone who has an interaction with Oregon’s
Department of Motor Vehicles is automatically added to the list of registered voters, called
a voter roll. The state sends them postcards giving them
a chance to register with a party or decline to be registered. It changes the system from opt-in to opt-out. So a sixteen year old getting their
driver license will be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18. A new resident who changes their ID or
car registration will also be automatically registered In total, 272,000 people were registered this
way. And more than a third of them actually voted
in 2016. Of those voters, 37% of them were under 30. Compare that to the voters who were registered
through the traditional fill-out-the-vote--for method, and only 13% were under 30. AVR got more young people to come out on election
day. 13 states and Washington, DC have already
passed AVR legislation and will have it running by the 2020 election. It’ll have massive effects in California
alone, where there are nearly 7 million eligible people not registered to vote yet. Let’s go back to that chart with all the other
countries. These are the ones who have some form of automatic
voter registration. If the US implemented it nationally, we could
literally move up in the world. Plus, it’ll make our voting system more
secure and more accurate. Now when you move, you have to
re-register to vote. That creates duplicate registrations and makes
it harder for voter rolls to be kept updated. With AVR, your registration moves with you
- no duplicates. It’ll also be cheaper. Everything will be electronic and there will be millions
less registrations to process. But most importantly, it could automatically
register nearly 50 million Americans, who would then gets a chance to help decide how
the country should be run. “Toga Toga Toga!” Let’s be honest. Aren’t fraternities overrated? “TOGA! TOGA!” "Toga! Toga! Toga!" So, let’s take a look at the fraternities
that really fit the word “frats.” We’ll leave out the explicitly ethnic, religious,
and academic fraternities, and we’ll try to remember that every fraternity at every
college is different. Still, you know the stereotype. It’s the type of place that chants “Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!”...like, a lot cooler than that. “Nerds! Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!” “Where are they?” “I think they’re talking about us.” Even when we just look at the goofy, party
side of frats, there are real negatives. Studies have shown that frats correlate with
increased binge drinking and an average .25 drop in GPA. It’s only once you look into the long history
of fraternities that you understand why Greek life became a part of college life. And why it’s unlikely to go away anytime
soon. Here’s Benjamin Franklin opening a Masonic
lodge. Fraternal organizations in the United States,
like the Freemasons, are actually key to understanding college fraternities. You know that eye on his apron kinda looks
like a mystical belly button? Early fraternity histories point to Phi Beta
Kappa as the first fraternity, founded at William & Mary in Virginia. It was an honor society, and early fraternities
were similarly academic. By 1825, three purely social fraternities
at Union College in Schenectady formed. The college system had begun. The next year, a man named William Morgan
was murdered. Morgan died mysteriously after threatening
to expose Masonic secrets. This led to an entire political party — the
anti-Masonic party — revolting against the Masons in America. It’s less about the mysterious murder than
the climate. Secret societies were a big deal, and people
were kind of afraid of them. That included adult fraternities like the
Masons, but also secret societies in colleges. Colleges preferred open celebrations of school,
like this bucolic, only slightly violent, class day from the 1850s. This 1900s issue of a Sigma Nu journal shows
consequences of anti-fraternity sentiment: Laws that banned fraternities or forced them
to operate in secret. Even successful fraternities had to find strategies
to fight this. Delta Upsilon started as an anti-secret fraternity
– a frat without secret rituals, for this reason. It seemed like frats were on the way out. So what changed? This chart and this flagpole are equally important
to understand how frats took over schools. Look at that jump from 63,000 students in
1870 to 600,000 in 1920. It’s massive. This jump in enrollment created a lot of problems
— and fraternities helped colleges solve them. Like that kid on the flagpole. College “flag rush” - where freshmen and
sophomores battled over a flag - was popular for everybody, not just frat kids. Look at those ripped clothes. Students were injured and even killed during
the scramble. The point is, college students are idiotic. Full stop. And colleges started to see Greek life as
a tool to maintain order. First, fraternities provided housing for that
rapidly swelling student population. Fraternities also provided infrastructure
for disciplining a horde of students. “Well well well.” You see scenes like these and wonder why Deans
keep fraternities around. But the administration actually brought them
back. As former frat members aged into leadership
roles, they realized that fraternities gave them somebody to yell at. “Greg, what is the worst fraternity on this
campus?” Fraternities are distributed discipline. Deans could yell at Greek leaders, who could
yell at upperclassmen, who could yell at underclassmen, instead of having to discipline that giant
section of the bar chart all by themselves. And the big reason for keeping frats around? Administrators realized that frats led to
money after college. Alumni donations from fraternity and sorority
members are higher than from other students. Students loved the university through their
fraternities — and the university had a lot of reasons to stay chained to them. That same paper that showed that fraternities increase
binge drinking? It also showed that they increase alumni income
because of the networking opportunities. That’s without even mentioning the lifelong
friendships that Greek members form. But the downsides of fraternities can be a
lot worse than what we see in the movies. It’s easy to marvel at 100 year old hazing,
but as Caitlin Flanagan wrote in The Atlantic, all that binge drinking and hazing can have
life-threatening consequences. She notes disproportionate injuries in fraternity
housing, high alcohol use, and alleged sexual assault, along with a lasting legacy of racial
discrimination. Whether fraternities are overrated depends
how you view them and how you view college students. We’re all asking the same questions as those
administrators in the 1800s. And we have to figure out if their solutions
are still the right ones today. How you view students, and maybe even all
people, changes your answer. Do frats help control the problems in college
life? Or do they create them? You might have noticed that we used the word
fraternities a lot more than sororities, and part of that is historical — for much of
their duration, sororities were actually called women’s fraternities. Time to unwind with a little Facebook. Facebook continues to be under fire for failing to crack down on fake news. It's been called a haven for fake news. Russian trolls used Facebook to exploit racial
tension. Did you fall for propaganda from a Russian
troll? Jesus. Facebook is dead. YouTube! YouTube is the latest social media company under the microscope. Ads running on YouTube channels that promote white nationalism. Trending tab featured a conspiracy video that attacked survivors of the Parkland shooting. God. Never mind. Time for thirst traps on Instagram. Russian bot ads appeared on Instagram. Thousands of ads posted on Instagram meant to divide Americans. Okay, that's it. I'm going back to my true safe space. The one place where nobody can hurt me. Pinterest. OH. MY. GOD. WHAT HAPPENED TO PINTEREST? There's nowhere to go anymore. Every social media site has become a dumpster
fire. Why is this happening? What's turning all these sites into fever
swamps? Aw crap. It's me, isn't it? Tech’s biggest companies are once again the platform for conspiracy theories. Hate speech Fake news Forcing YouTube and Facebook to apologize. That was a big mistake, and I'm sorry. Executives admitted their limitations but promised they will do a better job. Let's start at the OG misinformation platform. No. No. What? No. The human brain. Humans are social animals at their root, and they're constantly looking for reinforcement
signals or signals that we belong. Jay Van Bavel researches what kinds of information humans respond to on social media. Van Bavel did a study last year tracking what kinds of tweets were more likely to go
viral when it came to divisive issues like gun control. And he found that tweets that used moral/emotional
words, words like "blame," "hate," and "shame" were way more likely to be retweeted than tweets with neutral language. One of the reasons we think this is happening
is because when you're using that type of tribal language it sends a signal about who you are, what you care about, and what group you belong to. This makes sense if you think about it. If you're trying to signal to others that
you're a real Ariana Grande fan, you don't say, "I personally enjoy Ariana's
music." You say, "Ariana Grande is the best singer
of all time. Anyone who disagrees is an idiot." You know, like, hypothetically. Are you playing with imaginary hair? That tribal desire to organize into "us" versus
"them" is a basic part of human nature. It's why we have hardcore nerd fandoms — Cuz I am a Gryffindor! — and lose our minds at sports games. Yankees suck! Yankees suck! But when it comes to politics that desire can push us toward some extreme
views. One hypothesis is that when people are sharing the most extreme forms of political content, that sends the strongest, clearest signal about what their identity is, and it signals
very clearly who the outgroup is. You can see that tendency when you look at which US senators have the most Facebook followers. The further left or right, the more followers. When we rally around these politicians, it leaves no doubt about which tribe we belong
to. If they're sending information that's moderate, it doesn't clearly signify who their ingroup
and outgroup is. And so there is this incentive structure potentially to share more and more extreme information to signal more and more clearly who you are and who you affiliate with. But these loud signals of our group status are way easier to do online than in person. And that's because in the real world there are social costs to being a jerk. So normally when we're talking about things
like politics with our friends at the bar or with our family
at Thanksgiving we have social checks in place that send us
signals that maybe this isn't landing well with everybody. Maybe it's resonating with your sister or
your brother, but your mom and dad are giving you the stink
eye. We get these signals all the time from people that we're excluding them or that we're rubbing
them the wrong way, and if we value those relationships we tend to tone down our language. And this is where the problem with social
media starts. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, they're designed to do one thing: keep you on the site for as long as possible. The more time you spend on the site, the more commercials, sidebar ads, and promoted tweets they can show you, the more money they make. If your goal is to get the greatest amount of engagement with an audience, you need content that's going to be addictive. In terms of politics and news, stories are laden with emotion, that connect to our identities, and is morally arousing are the types of stories that are going to get people engaged the most. The problem is getting the stink eye is a really unpleasant experience. We don't like being told that we've crossed a line or gone too far. And we are less likely to stay on a website that makes us feel that way. So social media sites have been designed to protect us from stink eye. To cater to our tribal nature by figuring out what we like and showing us more
of it. By identifying what products and people and
politicians you like, they can identify with some degree of certainty what your politics are and then feed you back more and more information that confirms those beliefs. It's not just algorithms doing this. These websites invite us to sort ourselves
into tribes. We get to follow and subscribe to people we
agree with, block sources of information we don't like, and literally join groups of people who think the same way we do. You get content that confirms your beliefs and doesn't challenge you, and then it's a dissonance-free environment. You don't have to face up to individuals and people who disagree with you. "Dissonance-free environment" is a fancy way
of saying a place where you don't get stink eye. That study about how polarizing tweets got more engagement, it also found that those tweets rarely left our echo chambers. We're getting tons of positive feedback from people who already agree with us. And all that positive feedback can push us further to the extreme. If I share some extreme political content and it gets a lot of likes, I realize because
I've been reinforced that that's what people in my social network
like or that's what's more likely to go viral. And then I might try to match it or make my next post even more extreme to get more reinforcement. And if you're looking for something more extreme
to share, these platforms will help you find it. Watch a few anti-immigrant videos — This is totally out of control — and YouTube's algorithm will start recommending videos about white genocide. Join a few pro-Trump groups, and your Facebook feed will fill up with smear
campaigns and conspiracy theories. The 9/11 attacks themselves were orchestrated by the Bush administration. Even search for information about vaccines
on Pinterest, and your homepage will be full of anti-vaxxer
bullshit. And so you can see people potentially being led down this pathway of more and more
extreme posts. There is a social reinforcement system that would otherwise take a long time through lots of interactions with people in
our community that can now be done very rapidly and at an enormous scale. All of this makes social media sites goldmines for con artists, conspiracy theorists, and trolls who exploit our tribal mentality to get clicks
and views. Anybody can write a blog, however incendiary,
and if it has a catchy title or catchy content, people are going to share it. Kaepernick is an attention-seeking crybaby who takes out his perceived oppression on the flag and national anthem. I stand for our service members, our veterans,
our LEOs and our first responders. Not for the indulgent a-hole who disrespects
them. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram. It's a terrifyingly effective strategy. A 2016 Democratic strategist said that when it came to which kinds of ads performed
best on Facebook, "ugly and incendiary won every time." It's a real tough life if you say you are
a liberal. Trump train moving ahead full steam. It ain't too late if- The same is true for conspiracy theories and
fake news stories. One study looked at 10 years of true and false
stories on Twitter. The authors measured what they called "retweet
cascades": chain reactions where the original story is shared and retweeted to a much larger audience. And when they compared the cascades of real
stories and fake stories, the fake ones reached thousands more people. And it didn't matter that these stories were coming from small accounts. Anybody could go viral if the story triggered enough of a tribal response. In 2016, it was teenagers in Macedonia making thousands of dollars publishing fake election news on Facebook. After the Parkland shooting, it was random
YouTubers going viral by accusing students of being
crisis actors. The Russian trolls messing with our elections? They're not superhackers. They’re people posting low-quality, highly emotional content that they know will
go viral. The Russian playbook exposed the architectural
flaws in products like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Anybody can run that playbook. So far social media companies have responded
to this by trying to punish bad actors. Facebook has suspended hundreds of pages tied to a Russian group. Social media companies are banning Alex Jones. Twitter has banned Milo Yiannopoulos. But punishing individual bad actors doesn't
change the incentives that brought them to the platform
in the first place. One fake news writer told the Washington Post
that if Facebook cracked down on his content, "I would try different things. I have at least 10 sites right now. If they cracked down on a couple, I'll just
use others." And this is why getting rid of Alex Jones if you ban him, someone else will realize
they can get rich pushing the same type of agenda for
a period of time: followers, clicks, advertisers, speaking fees, and other opportunities that are incredibly
lucrative. The problem with social media isn't that a few bad apples are ruining the fun. It's that these sites are designed to reward
bad apples. And until these companies decide that there's something more important than getting
people to watch ads, we're going to keep seeing the worst of human
nature reflected back at us. [Music] allegation of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh what claims that a drunken Kavanagh groped her and tried to pull off her clothing at a house party in the 1980s explosive allegations against Donald Trump in one night at least four women come forward claiming they were sexually assaulted by Trump all of a sudden his hands were all over me know several women have come forward accusing Alabama Senate candidate one more of sexual misconduct mr. Moore reached over and began groping me him putting his hands on my breasts Jane Doe number five went public with her extraordinary allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton 21 years ago and then all of a sudden he turned me around and started kissing me new questions tonight about the character and judgment of Clarence Thomas one night before the Senate votes on his nomination to the Supreme Court he spoke about acts that you've seen in pornographic films on several occasions Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess [Music] insisting in a statement this is a completely false allegation these attacks involve a minor and they are completely false and untrue these flames are all fabricated they're pure fiction and they're outright lies I deny each and every single allegation against me today President Clinton's attorney David Kendall released a statement saying any allegation that the president assaulted mrs. Broderick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false he has just been such a stand-up guy full of integrity this is not anything that he would ever do he helped me with my homework and he has always been an officer and a gentleman nobody has more respect for women than I do nobody he's very warm and friendly sort of like a friend or a father I had two women Chiefs of Staff when I was governor I've had nothing but women leaders in my office since I left [Music] [Applause] for two claims that she decided to come forward at this moment out of quote civic responsibility but the timing suffice it to say is curious isn't it strange that after 40 years of constant investigation people have waited to four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints they ever checked the background of this women I think they want either fame or her campaign did it and I think it's her campaign you think it is conceivable that Professor Hill might really think this happened when it didn't I think that's the only conceivable answer senator I think you can expect more and more of these stories as long as they're down there handing out money it's about abortion does anyone really believe the story would have surfaced if Brett Kavanaugh had pledged allegiance to roe v wade of course it wouldn't have a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for the United States Senate if you look at Bill Clinton far worse as a black American as far as I'm concerned it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president [Music] Donald J Trump will become the 45th President of the United States 15 years after leaving office Bill Clinton's popularity numbers are sky-high the Alabama GOP announced it is standing by Roy Morden so help you go so help me God that accusation of 36 year old misconduct dating back to high school has been brought forward at the last minute in an irregular manner to what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep that's been a good thing for all of us [Music] There's a warehouse in Brooklyn that feels like stepping into a dream. It's an art exhibit but the only picture frames you'll see are right here, on smartphones. This exhibit is part of a new generation of pop-up art experiences designed to look good in person and here on Instagram. There's the Museum of ice cream, the Museum of selfies, the Museum of feelings. Others have themes around colors, dreams, pizza, eggs, candy, and Rosé wine. Basic admission can run around $40 and they often sell out months in advance. These places might not feel like real museums and instead more like a trendy fad with ball pits, but right now they're shaping how we consume art. In these pop-up museums the room and you are the centerpiece. So that's what makes it Instagramable, is that you are you are immersed in the actual art. This format, interactive art pieces separated into themed rooms, is hot right now, but it isn't new. It comes from traditional museums. In the 1960s artists started using museum rooms to create immersive three-dimensional artwork designed specifically for a certain space. It was called installation art. Suddenly, art wasn't just confined to the walls of a museum; it was immersive and interactive. Viewers were part of it. You can see installation art's influence on today's pop-up museums pretty clearly. Just look at the obliteration room, first developed by Yayoi Kusama for the Queensland Art Gallery. It's a white room where visitors can place colored stickers wherever they want. The Rosé mansion, an Instagram-friendly pop-up has its own version of that. Or infinity room, a series of mirrored rooms that Kusama has been producing since 1965 that has a pretty identical version at the dream machine pop-up museum. Installation art invites the viewer to participate in creating a piece of art or to physically see themselves in it, often alongside brightly colored lighting and simple, elegant shapes. And that made for museum experiences that were inherently photographable. Pop-ups figured out that there was a business to be made out of that photographability. even if it wasn't attached to a well-known artist. Now the explosive success of those pop-ups is making traditional museums rethink how they do things. People who work at museums are very concerned. It changes the nature of what artwork is most attractive to consumers and so in order to compete with the trendy, colorful exhibits that are popping up, you have to add some of those components to the more traditional exhibits. That conversation often starts here, with museum photography policies. Many museums have traditionally banned photography to protect copyright and light-sensitive paintings, but now that museums are becoming more social media friendly, their policies are changing. Like the Renwick gallery, which started posting "photography encouraged" signs in 2015. It was our way of saying, boldly, it's okay. You can be who you are, mediate your experience in museum however feels right to you. It's very rare that museums are no photos anymore. I mean that change has just been in the last five years. And when museums host selfie-friendly shows, they become blockbusters. The exhibit Wonder helped break the Renwick Gallery's yearly attendance record in its first six weeks. 2015's summer show "The Beach," at the National Building Museum brought in 30% of annual attendance in just two months and when the Hirschorn held a three month show of Kusama's Infinity Mirrors, the museum increased its membership by a whopping 6,566%. Instagramability drew in a crowd that might not have come to museums otherwise. Honestly I'm here just to take pictures, you know. I saw lots of pictures on Instagram and that prompted me and my friends to come here. Ow! But for museums who still have rules about taking photos, it's hard to keep visitors from snapping pictures. Like this 2013 installation in the skylight of the Guggenheim Museum by James Turrell. The colors and simplicity made it serious Instagram bait. Thousands of people posted photos of it, even though the artist asked that no photos be taken since they would detract from everyone's experience. That concern is real and research is starting to prove it. Just the act of photo taking itself and choosing what to capture, changes the nature of your experience and that alone is changing how people go through museums. Research Barash conducted found that when museum goers were instructed to take photos for social media, they enjoyed the experience less. Having the intention to post or share photos in mind while you're taking the photos, can actually remove you from the experience. Now both Instagram pop-ups and traditional museums are facing a tricky question: limit photography and potentially limit who shows up, or allow it and possibly change the experience. At Refinery29's pop-up experience, that means having some rooms where phones are supposed to be put away. I think it's time you put those cellphones to bed, what do you say? How about we Insta-connect with one another? At the end of the day, even if social media is a big part of why so many people show up, people are showing up. And if this means more people engage with art they wouldn't have paid attention to otherwise, that feels pretty promising for the future of art. Thanks for watching The Goods and thank you to our sponsor American Express. Amex has a credit card feature that gives you choices for how to make payments big or small called "Pay it, plan it." Play it helps you reduce your balance by making small payments throughout the month and plan it can help you make payments that cost $100 or more over time. You can check it out at americanexpress.com/payitplanit. And thanks again to American Express. Their support made this series possible. Zipping through the streets. Blocking the sidewalks. Dockless electric scooters have appeared virtually
overnight in dozens of cities. So far this year, millions of rides were taken
on little machines just like this. And their operators have raised billions in
investments. So if you haven’t yet, chances are you're going to
see stuff like this pretty soon. We see the scooters navigating through pedestrians. We see them being left anywhere. And this creates problems for a number of
people. Problems indeed. If people on dockless scooters or bikes keep
using the sidewalks … it’s going to get crowded. the purpose of the sidewalk has changed considerably
over the last 100 years. when cities first started building sidewalks,
the reason for them was to accommodate pedestrians on the street. But this was not the only use of sidewalks. A lot of that happens before the automobile. Here’s a street scene from San Francisco
in 1906. Notice the man, holding a baby, just, walking
straight through traffic. Nobody seems too concerned. they are quite
relaxed about it and they also know how to navigate the street. But, eventually cars got bigger and faster. Traffic had to separate. We start seeing with the proliferation
of the cars, many many cities start widening their streets. and of course this happens at the expense
of the sidewalk because a lot of times the buildings were pretty much set. So a sidewalk that was 10 — 12 feet becomes 6 — 8 feet. Which is pretty unfair for pedestrians. Because there is a lot more happening on sidewalks
than walking. There’s the frontage zone — in cities, a business might put a cafe
or signs here. Then there’s the furniture zone, full of 
streetlights, newspaper racks, and benches. Because sidewalks have frontage and furniture zones, there's less space to travel than it might seem. Some vigilantes have taken the space issue into their own hands And many cities have used pilot programs to really get the scooters under control.These pilots are likely to extend. After all, cities need alternative modes of
transportation. First it takes vehicles off the street
Because people who might be using ride hail, or taxis, or another personal vehicle, might
instead opt for  this other solution if a person takes a subway or a bus to a certain
station or stop, and they still live a mile away from that station, they have to figure
out how to get there Even in cities with exceptional levels of
public transportation, many residents have to travel a ‘last mile’ If dockless vehicles are deployed in areas
like this, residents could have more options for transportation. And not just rely on cars. Because what many people will do is say
‘I don’t have a last mile option that works for me. I’m just going to drive the whole way. The cash influx for scooter-share is a really
a bet. Investors hope that e-scooters can capture
demand in underserved transportation deserts, without adding congestion And the scooters might pull that off. One survey found robust support for e-scooters
as a substitute for short driving trips, or as a complement to public transit. But the scooters won’t work if their riders
have to compete for space with pedestrians and cars. we’re reaching a point in cities across
america, where it’s time to get people out of their cars and allow people more modes. Smaller transportation — bikes, segways,
scooters — they only work when cities make space for them. Planners can do this by designing ‘complete
streets’. So complete streets is a new term that entered
the lexicon of planning and transportation planning relatively recently. but basically it is inspired by earlier streets
where you used to have all these different uses social uses of the streets and sidewalks
not only vehicular users Complete streets start by reducing the amount
of space given to cars. Making space for protected bus bulbs, wider
sidewalks, street level plazas, and buffered bike lanes. Scooters will be a more realistic last mile
option when cities build networks of complete streets. So, worry not, dear pedestrians — even if
the scooters are here to stay… Cities are drafting standards for this brave
new world of alternative transportation. With any luck, the love for scooters just
might push cities to invest in safer, more accomodating streets. Hi, thanks for watching and a special thanks
to the University of California for hitting the streets to help us make this episode. They also partnered with us on our Climate
Lab series, check out this video about the environmental effects of online shopping. How did Ouija become so...
overrated? It was gonna spell "Overrated." Ouija is not overrated just because the board’s
powers aren’t real. We know it’s powered by the psychological
ideomotor effect — a type of subconscious movement that guides the responses. But that doesn’t explain why this kinda
crappy board is such a big part of our lives and why Ouija and Ouija ripoffs are what you
see over and over again in TV and movies. Really. Bad. Movies. “I found a Ouija board here. We’re gonna play it tonight.” OK, but the real shock is that this piece
of cardboard has a story that spans two centuries and actually says something about our history
and our culture. “There is no Death!
What seems so is transition; this life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the Life Elysian Whose portal we call Death.” That’s from Longfellow. The same legendary poet who wrote about the
midnight ride of Paul Revere. In the 1800s, spiritualism and Americanism
were intertwined in weird ways. Though what we call spiritualism started in
the early to mid 1800s in Europe — seances, ghost stuff, etc — it really picked up in
the US in the 1850s and 1860s. The Civil War caused around a million casualties. But more broadly, death was a constant. This chart shows life expectancy from 1850
to 1910. That jump in the chart? That’s from 40 to just 50 years old. One response to that presence of death? Hundreds of spiritualism newspapers like Banner
of Light. It even had a column filled with messages
that claimed to be from the spirit world beyond. Ooh, this guy says he was a rumseller. That sounds fun. This spiritual fixation endured. That Longfellow poem was the epigraph to a
hit book in 1891 - the bestselling “There Is No Death.” So where does Ouija fit in? For that, you have to go to the patent office. These are all talking board patents from the
1890s and 1900s. Oh, this one was French. This patent from 1891 is the direct ancestor
to Ouija. Fittingly, the game has a murky origin, but
Americans Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard were behind this version. It has all of the ingredients:
the board with Yes and No, and a planchette - that’s the name for the
pointy thing that picks your letters. There are theories about the name — some
say it was for the novelist Ouida — that’s O-U-I-D-A. Others claimed the board itself spelled its
own name. But the most likely explanation is that it
was Egyptian-sounding, since that’s how it was marketed and explained on that first
patent. The next year, entrepreneur William Fuld patented
his own talking board. But Ouija was the brand that took off - so
Fuld and company bought it. The spirits pointed to profit. He fended off tons of competitors — including
his own family members — and built a name. He had legal backing, like this 1915 patent,
as Ouija took off. The spirit world finally had what had eluded
it in life: a solid brand identity. When the Washington Times did a puff article
on mental trouble in DC, they didn’t mention “talking boards” - they mentioned “Ouija.” When Pearl Curran claimed to have written
novels by channeling her Ouija board — Wait. What? Yeah, that’s what it says. Alright —
She wrote under the name of the spirit she allegedly contacted — Patience Worth. She used Ouija. This brand kept Ouija going through the 20th
century, along with Fuld’s legal maintenance. The spirit world went corporate, further merging
pop culture and the occult. AH! Today... Today, Ouija is a little horror, a little
kitsch, and a little fun. There have been corporate shifts, but the
board is a staple, which is a pretty impressive journey for a simple image and a piece of
plastic. That journey was powered by the beliefs of
people like Longfellow and the mysterious forces of the United States patent system. And we are being spoken to, in a way, by people
from the past. Not through messages from the spirit realm,
but through the history of a decorated piece of cardboard. Ouija might be overrated, and it’s not real. But it might be saying something, too. There are many great Ouija stories out there. One of my favorites is that in 1921, William
Fuld was forced to admit Ouija was a children’s toy. The reason? Tax purposes. Poland is changing. Every year the country celebrates its national
Independence Day in the capital, Warsaw. There are parades and speeches
But in 2017, Poland’s Independence Day made worldwide news because of these signs: 60,000 people showed up for a march led by
Nationalist and white-supremacist groups. That’s because they have reason to celebrate,
too. Poland’s right-wing political party, PiS,
is in power. After winning the Presidency and a majority
in Parliament, they've ignored the constitution, Taken over the courts, purged the military,
and cracked down on the media. PiS is bringing authoritarianism back to Poland
and openly rebelling against the European Union. It’s a shocking turn for a country that,
just a few years ago was hailed as one of Europe’s most promising young democracies. So, how did this happen? And can it be stopped? It was an old story to the Polish population
- conquest, subjugation, enslavement. it had happened before in Poland’s troubled
history but never with such inhumanity Poland had a traumatic 20th century. It was invaded twice during World War Two. First by the Germans and then by the Soviets...
...who re-established the country after the war, but as a communist state under their
control. In fact, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin directly
contributed to a draft of Poland's constitution, which was formalized in 1952. These are his handwritten notes. For the next several decades, Poland developed
very little while it was cut off from the rest of the world. It became one of several Soviet-backed, communist
countries in Central and Eastern Europe that made up the Soviet bloc. That started to change in the 1980s. Polish unions started organizing huge strikes
against the communist government. The movement came to be called Solidarity
and it grabbed the attention of the world. In 1989, the communist government caved to
the pressure and agreed to let non-communist parties run in the elections. Solidarity and democratic candidates went
on to win the majority of parliament and the presidency. They established the Republic of Poland and
became the first country in Europe to topple communism. The rest of the Soviet bloc soon followed. This posed a challenge for Western Europe. We cannot aim at anything less than the union
of Europe as a whole and we look with confidence for the day that union is achieved Since the end of World War Two, the continent’s
democracies had been growing closer; signing free trade deals that became the precursor
to today’s European Union. At first, the trade deals just covered coal
and steel, but as they grew to include agriculture, energy, and other markets, more countries
joined-- making Europe more economically and politically integrated than it had ever been
before. As the former Soviet bloc countries started
establishing democracies of their own; Western Europe needed to find a way to include them. So in 1993, the established EU countries came
up with a strict checklist for admitting new members. New member-states needed to have a free market
economy, respect human rights and the rule of law. Meaning courts had to be independent and impartial--
so everyone could get a fair trial. These EU rules helped bring former-communist
countries in while also keeping them from sliding back into authoritarianism. They were designed to keep the peace in Europe. Poland joined the EU in 2004 and because of
Solidarity's success it became one of the most promising new member. Poland was given more money than any other
EU country which it used to build highways, schools, hospitals, and modern infrastructure. The country’s economy grew more than any
other ex-communist country. Each year after it joined, Poland received
millions of Euros to help fund highways, schools, hospitals, and modern infrastructure. By 2014, Poland became one of the EU’s strongest
and most resilient members. It even avoided the recession in 2009 that
crippled economies worldwide. Polling showed 72% of Poles were satisfied
with EU membership. More than any other member state. Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski:
“Ladies & Gentleman, 10 years ago we joined the European Union. We did not become part of the EU on a whim. We became part of the union because we put
in tremendous efforts to build a democracy and a free market economy; two pillars of
a united Europe.” And Poland’s charismatic, pro-EU Prime minister,
Donald Tusk, was chosen to become president of the EU’s European Council. But in his absence, leaders with a very different
vision for Poland's future rose to power. In 2015 PiS, Poland’s right-wing party,
shocked the world and won an absolute majority in the parliament. Since 2001, PiS had been led by former-Solidarity
leaders Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who felt that Poland’s center-left parties had become
elitist and corrupt. It appealed to Poland’s conservative population
in rural areas. PiS only earned 38% of the vote in 2015, on
par with the previous election results, but after Tusk left for the EU, his coalition
of center-left parties fell apart, making room for the right-wing party to take over.h According to PiS, after decades of Soviet
control, Poland was now being controlled by the EU. So when it came into power, it pledged to
take back Poland’s independence … legally or illegally. The party already controlled BOTH HOUSE OF
Parliament and the Presidency, so it initiated a hostile takeover of the judicial branch. First it packed this Constitutional court
with loyal judges and then forced out more than a third of the judges in this other court. Both acts were illegal under the Polish constitution,
but the PiS-majority parliament and Presidency signed them into law anyway. The party also fired over 11,000 civil-service
workers and at least 280 military officers, calling them ex-communists. It cracked down on the media. It started leveling fines on news organizations
when it didn’t like their coverage. Meanwhile, it’s been using Polish nationalism
to justify these moves. Remember this 2017 controversial march? A PiS politician called it “a beautiful
site” While the party cracked down on protests against
their authoritarian moves. As PiS tightened its grip on Poland, the EU
issued several warnings to stop it from breaking its rules…. But PiS ignored them. “It is with a heavy heart that we have decided
to initiate Article 7.1”, “But the facts leave us with no choice.” In December 2017, the EU invoked Article 7--
its nuclear option-- for the first time in its history. It allows the EU to strip a member of its
voting rights if it feels it is breaking the criteria it established in 1993. // a significant number of laws have been
adopted… which put at serious risk the independence of the judiciary and separation of powers,
in Poland//. According to the EU, the PiS purging of the
courts violates the country’s commitment to respecting the rule of law. The problem for the EU is that Article 7 is
not going to work. The punishment requires a unanimous vote by
all EU countries -- and there is one country that has sworn to protect Poland... Hungary, another former Soviet bloc country,
has taken a turn towards authoritarianism under President Viktor Orban. And he vowed to veto any punishment against
Poland. So PiS continues to systematically strip…
on Poland while still receiving huge sums of money from the EU. It’s proving that a member country can stay
in the EU, reap its economic benefits, while ignoring its rules on rule of law. PiS is proving that it's possible to reap
the economic benefits of EU membership while flouting the rule of law. And that has sparked an existential crisis
for the EU... The rules that were written to prevent authoritarianism
from ever re-appearing in Europe, aren’t being followed, and there’s not much it
can do about it. The EU could try cutting off Poland’s funding
but it’s unclear how that would work. So for now, the EU remains in a crisis. For decades it’s tried to keep Europe democratic. But Poland, once the EU’s most promising
new addition, is Is now threatening to unravel the whole thing. There’s a two-letter word that we hear everywhere. OK. Okay. OK, are you OK Annie? OK OK OK, OK ladies… OK might be the most recognizable word on
the planet. OK! OK. It’s essential to how we communicate with
each other, and even with our technology. Alexa, turn off the living room light. OK. You probably use it every day – even if
you don’t notice it. But, what does OK actually mean? And where did it come from? Hm. OK. Okay then. OK, thank you. OK actually traces back to an 1830s fad of
intentionally misspelling abbreviations. Young “intellectual” types in Boston delighted
those “in the know” with butchered coded messages such as KC, or “knuff ced”, KY,
“know yuse,” and OW, “oll wright.” Haha. But thanks to a couple of lucky breaks, one
abbreviation rose above the rest: OK, or “oll korrect." In the early 1800s, “all correct” was
a common phrase used to confirm that everything was in order. Its abbreviated cousin started going mainstream
on March 23, 1839, when OK was first published in the Boston Morning Post. Soon other papers picked up on the joke and
spread it around the country, until OK was something everyone knew about, not just a
few Boston insiders. And OK’s newfound popularity even prompted
a flailing US president from Kinderhook, New York, to adopt it as a nickname during his
1840 reelection campaign. Van Buren’s supporters formed OK Clubs all
over the country, and their message was pretty clear: Old Kinderhook was “oll korrect.” The campaign was highly publicized and turned
pretty nasty in the press. His opponents ended up turning the abbreviation
around on him, saying it stood for “Orful Konspiracy” or “Orful Katastrophe” Hah. In the end, even a clever nickname didn’t
save Van Buren’s presidency. But it was a win for OK. That 1840 presidential campaign firmly established
OK in the American vernacular. And while similar abbreviations fell out of
fashion, OK made the crossover from slang into legitimate, functional use thanks to
one invention: the telegraph. If we lower the bridge, the current flows
to the sounder. At the other end, the current energizes an
electromagnet and this attracts the armature. The armature clicks down against a screw and
taps out a message. The telegraph debuted in 1844, just five years
after OK. It transmitted short messages in the form
of electric pulses, with combinations of dots and dashes representing letters of the alphabet. This was OK’s moment to shine. The two letters were easy to tap out and very
unlikely to be confused with anything else. It was quickly adopted as a standard acknowledgement
of a transmission received, especially by operators on the expanding US railroad. This telegraphic manual from 1865 even goes
as far as to say that “no message is ever regarded as transmitted until the office receiving
it gives O K.” OK had become serious business. But there’s another big reason the two letters
stuck around, and it’s not just because they’re easy to communicate. It has to do with how OK looks. Or more specifically, how the letter K looks
and sounds. It’s really uncommon to start a word with
the letter K in English — it’s ranked around 22nd in the alphabet. That rarity spurred a “Kraze for K” at
the turn of the century in advertising and print, where companies replaced hard Cs with
Ks in order to Katch your eye. The idea was that modifying a word — like
Klearflax Linen Rugs or this Kook-Rite Stove, for example — would draw more attention
to it. And that’s still a visual strategy: We see
K represented in modern corporate logos, like Krispy-Kreme and Kool-Aid. It’s the K that makes it so memorable. By the 1890s, OK’s Bostonian origins were
already mostly forgotten, and newspapers began to debate its history — often perpetuating
myths in the process that some people still believe. Like the claim that it comes from the Choctaw
word ‘okeh,’ which means ‘so it is.’ Choctaw gave us the word OK… OK’s beginnings had become obscure but it
didn’t really matter anymore — the word was embedded in our language. Today, we use it as the ultimate “neutral
affirmative.” OK then. Okay then. Learn to truly love yourself. OK. OK. Get yourself up here! OK! I don’t know what to say. Say OK. OK. It’s settled then! Allan Metcalf wrote the definitive history
of OK, and he explains that the word “affirms without evaluating,” meaning it doesn’t
convey any feelings — it just acknowledges and accepts information. If you “got home OK,” it just means you
were unharmed. If your “food was OK,” then it was acceptable. And “OK” confirms a change of plans. It’s is sort of a reflex at this point — we
don’t even keep track of how much we use it. Which might be why OK was arguably the first
word spoken when humans landed on the moon. Not bad for a corny joke from the 1830s. Alright guys, cut it out. In February 2015 Gucci unveiled this very
furry shoe. I love this ridiculous thing. I can’t afford to spend $1000, but no problem! I can buy this knockoff. Or this one. So, which of these are legal? Trick question. And it’s a constant fight in the fashion
industry. In the US, you can protect songs. “I like those Balenciaga's, the ones that
look...” Movies. “That blue represents millions of dollars
and countless jobs…” Or paintings. Why not fashion designs? “Knockoffs” mostly are not counterfeits. People tend to conflate them but they’re
not the same. This is a counterfeit. It copies the symbols of the brand that made
the original. So counterfeits are typically illegal. Knockoffs, on the other hand, just resemble
the design of the original. And that’s usually fine. That’s because intellectual property laws
only protect some kinds of designs. A trademark is any symbol that indicates to
consumers the source of products or services. This medallion on the front, which is the
Tory Burch logo, tells you where the flat comes from. It comes from Tory Burch. A patent is different. A useful and novel invention. They don’t work for most fashion designers
because you can’t get damages until it’s granted and by the time it's granted most
fashions are out of fashion. In fashion, the main battleground is Copyright. That is the right exclusively to copy or to
distribute an artistic or literary work that is original. Like… “You’re wearing a sweater that was selected
for you by the people in this room.” But not... The shape of this shoe is not copyrightable. Fashion designs are typically thought of as
useful articles. Copyright doesn't protect useful things. It only protects artistic or literary things. Unlike a song or a movie, a shoe or a T-shirt has utility
as much as design. But… what about this? Not my thing? This might seem at a certain level to be kind
of bizarre. But there is nonetheless a useful aspect to
the garment. It does possibly keep you warm. Wait! It’s art! Sort of. And now… It’s a gown. You have copyright on the painting. I can certainly have a copyright on the fabric
design. I can't have a copyright on the shape of the
dress. The Subcommittee on Intellectual Property,
Competition, and the Internet will come to order. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth so help you God. Fashion design is intellectual property that
deserves protection. We create something from nothing at all. And in’t that the American dream? I don’t agree with you. But you’re very impressive in your testimony. They say, well, we're artists and we deserve
protection. The answer to that argument is at least in
the States we don't tend to make decisions about intellectual property based on what
people deserve. We tend to make decisions based on what we
think is healthy for creativity. The Constitution does give Congress the right
to stop copying, but only to “promote the progress” of creative industries. When you look at countries across the world,
you’ll see that there’s a correlation between the strength of intellectual property
laws and higher GDP. But in fashion, Sprigman believes that it’s
actually the ability to copy that promotes progress. Fashion designers take "inspiration," as they
put it, from existing designs and they do this with abandon. But this is what creates trends, and trends
sell fashion. When the copying proceeds to a certain point,
fashion forward people have had enough. They jump off. They jump on to the new trend that copying
has helped to set. This rapid cycle, created by the freedom to
copy, actually forces the fashion industry to innovate. If you look at the prices of fashion goods
over time, what you see is that that top ten percent of fashion goods in terms of price, the price
of these is going up and up and up over time. Whereas everything else, those prices are
staying stable or maybe falling a little bit over time. It doesn't seem like competition from knockoffs
is disciplining the price of the luxury stuff. What seems to be happening in the fashion
industry is what's happening in America and indeed in the world. The rich are getting richer disproportionately,
and the clothes they wear as a result are getting much more expensive. The people who make those clothes, the companies
that make those clothes, are profiting. New technology and the speed of production has
amplified the two views on knockoffs. Today, digital images from runway shows in
New York can be uploaded to the Internet within minutes, and be copied, and offered for sale
online within days, which is months before the designer is able to deliver the original
garments to stores. That practice was not handed to us by God
or by law. If the industry at the high end was very concerned
about the speed of imitation, that practice would change. It isn’t. So it’s hard to protect fashion designs
because it’s not obvious that protecting them promotes progress. And from a legal perspective, that’s all that
matters. Even though to the artists, that’s not the
only thing at stake. Let’s be honest: You could get doored. Or hit by a bus. If you were a cyclist in new york city, in
the 2000s, it was almost like you were a cast member
from Escape From New York Maybe if you were an extreme sports person,
it was fantastic for you Because you were dodging cars, It was not a place to have any kind of safe
commuting regular transport experience Today, New York City is seeing explosive growth
in cycle commutes. So, how did a city with traffic like this
get so many people biking downtown? [Vox] From 2007 to 2013, Janette Sadik-Khan led
New York City’s Department of Transportation. I was responsible for 6000 miles of street, 789 bridges, 12000 signalized intersections, 1.3 million street signs, We put down 400 miles of on street bike lanes, including one of the first parking protected bike lanes in the united states,  and we did it on 9th Avenue Between 23rd street and 16th street. This lane was significant, because it was
an early parking protected design. It's much less stressful than conventional lanes. But installing it was quite controversial. Because making the space for protected lanes meant the elimination of parking. Taking away parking spaces is not for the
faint of heart. And there is no super secret magic recipe
that’s going to make it easier to do. But you need to make a case about what you are trying to do, right? The 9th Avenue pilot ran for 6 blocks And if you look at the blueprint for the street, You’ll notice an alternating pattern On blocks with right-hand turns, there’s
an entire lane of parking. But at left-turn turns, those parking spots are sacrificed for a barrier The vehicles will wait next to the bike lane
here, And separate signals for cars and bikes stagger, to reduce stress at the intersection. Data show that the 9th Avenue bike lane
produced economic, mobility, and safety benefits. we saw crashes go down, some 47%. retail sales went up almost 49% Cars had dedicated turn lanes, so the traffic processed much better. And bikers got a dedicated lane. So it was a win for business, it was a win
for drivers, it was a win for people on foot. And it was a win for people on two wheels. And that really set the stage for all that
followed. Once the city analyzed data from the 9th Avenue pilot, the miles of protected lane in New York skyrocketed. By 2018, the city had nearly 1200 miles of bike lane. And 100 of those were protected. Because we weren’t going to accommodate a million more people by double decking our streets and highways. And so designing streets for people, that
make it easier to bike, easier to walk, and easier to take the bus — that’s the kind of recipe for future success of cities. the cities that make these kinds of investments and changes are the cities that are growing and thriving in this century. But to really draw a crowd of cyclists, a
city needs a network of low-stress bike lanes. you can’t just paint sharrows on a street
and expect that people are going to voila, start biking. It needs to be a reliable system, and it needs to be safe. The way that we look at the health of bike
lanes, and our bike lane network, is how many women and children are using the lanes. When you see women and children in the lanes, and families in the lane, you know that it’s safe. Families, among other individuals, would fall into the ‘interested, but
concerned’ group on this chart. It’s from one survey taken in Oregon. But consensus in the transportation field
suggests that this group is the untapped potential for cities who want to promote cycling. Which is the big factor behind New York’s
boom in urban cycling. And it was pretty cost effective, too. You know, the bike lanes were like 99%
of our headlines, but they were only 1% of the budget. I don’t think there’s a better investment. If you want to build a better city, you can
start by building better bike lanes. Ok. Daniel Bryan getting up, top rope. He’s about to bodyslam Kane. Top rope, looking to put Kane away! But wait, Kane gets his hand on Bryan’s
throat!!! Wait, hold on Mac. This is obviously fake. I mean look at this guy’s face. Um, that's not really the point man. Daniel Bryan might be exaggerating here, but
there's no way those moves don't require serious skill. And anyways, that's not really even the point. The world's largest professional wrestling
organization, World Wrestling Entertainment, or the WWE, they have the second most viewed
Channel on YouTube. And a lot of those fans, they're not watching
for the pile drivers and the bodyslams. If you look at the top WWE video on YouTube,
it has 90 million views, and the wrestling, it doesn't even start until more than halfway
through. Pro wrestling isn't fun to watch for the fighting,
it's fun to because of the storytelling that happens outside of the ring. Let's take it back for a second. This is what wrestling used to be. A legit sport where two guys fought in a ring
to pin each other down. The problem was, this wasn't that exciting
to watch. So over time wrestling turned into a sort
of staged athletic performance where competitors would help each other pull off more impressive
moves. And it wasn't just for men. Still, regardless of who was wrestling, crowds
came to see people fight. Or do whatever this is. Where's the drama? That started in the 1950's with a wrestler
whose name was Gorgeous George. He was a wrestler known for his larger than
life performances that were built around his carefully crafted character. His thing was being fancy with bleach blond
hair, fancy costumes, he even had a butler who would come into the ring and spray perfume
before he came in. Sounds pretty offensive. It was a hit. And Gorgeous George he drew huge crows, turning
wrestling from a sport into a performance of spectacle. Wait, so, can I come up with a character? Uh, sure. What you need to understand about wrestling
characters is that they fit into pre-set archetypes. There are heroes, who are called faces. Short for babyface. And there are villains, who are called heels. I wanna be a bad boy. That means you want to be a heel. And that means you cheat, use dirty tactics,
you're evil, you're full of yourself. Perfect, I just wanna sew the seeds of chaos. Right, yeah yeah. So– Just, total mayhem. A heel. I just wanna like f*** up everything in my
sight. You done? Yeah. So you've gotta have a gimmick. Like Gorgeous George and his fancy taste,
wrestlers usually have a gimmick that helps establish their backstory. You got anything? What do I have to choose from? There's a ton. As pro wrestling evolved, gimmicks got more
and more creative as storytelling became a major aspect of pro wrestling. The focus had shifted so much that by the
1990's the World Wrestling Federation, they invented a new phrase to promote what they
were doing. Even though we call ourselves sports entertainment,
because of the athleticism involved, the key word in that phrase is "entertainment". More entertainment meant more characters,
and there's so many to choose from. Some are masked and mysterious. Brute jocks. Supernatural characters. Self-absorbed jerks. Anti-authority rebels. Evil billionaire tyrants. Evil tyrant for sure. But also like– a skateboarder? If you want to figure out a wrestler's gimmick,
all you have to do is look at their entrance. Some have special effects. There are costumes, set pieces, and even vehicles. These entrances, they can become iconic. Like The Undertaker's, a wrestler known as
The Deadman because of his dark connection to the afterlife. He enters to the sound of a bell ringing before
they play his theme which is based on Chopin's "Funeral March". Like characters in a play, the entrance is
a big opportunity for storytelling. The wrestler can say who they are, "Wrestlemania will no longer define who I
am". what they want, "Now I'm here for two reasons." and how they'll get it. Then the fighting starts. Wrestling is like one big play, and the ring
is like the stage? Except the performance, it never stops. You mean they stay in character all the time? They even have a word for it, it's called
"kayfabe," which is code for maintaining the illusion that the character is real. So it isn't just about making the wrestling
look authentic, it's about sticking to the storyline at all times. Most wrestlers, they try to never break kayfabe. You can't always tell what's real and what's
not. HHH and Stephanie McMahon who shared a storyline,
they had a fake wedding in 2000 that ended with a divorce when they met in the ring to
renew their vows. Our marriage, it's over! Off camera though the relationship continued
and in real life the performers actually got married in 2003. And since then, their real life marriage has
been reflected in the storytelling. You ready to unveil that character yet? I think so. Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here to defend the Vox title, the evil billionaire
slash tyrant slash skateboarder. Thrill Peterson! What is that? Is that a check for a million dollars? Oh my god! He just ripped it up. "Peterson Check Rip!" What are y'all doing? Dude, kayfabe! At the height of the 2016 election researchers
released a report warning about a strange propaganda technique. Another day, another lie, another conspiracy
theory, another falsehood. They called it the "firehose of falsehood." When a propagandist bombards people with more
lies than they can possibly keep up. Why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie? According to the report, these lies don't
have to be believable. It wasn't just a lie. It was such a bad obvious lie. Researchers found that even obvious lies had
the potential to be highly effective at shaping public opinion. I mean he just says things and then they are
the truth in the world of the Donald. The thing is, that report wasn't about Trump. It didn't even mention him. It was about Russian propaganda. And it raised an interesting question: How
could a powerful leader benefit from telling obvious lies? We've signed more bills than any president
ever. The president just simply lies for no reason. I was against the war in Iraq. Why lie about something that you don't have
to lie about? You have people registered in two states. They vote twice. Why does he keep repeating it if it's obviously
not true? We're going to get to Trump in a minute. Hell yeah! But before that, we have to talk to Christopher
Paul. I'm a senior social scientist at the RAND
Corporation. He co-wrote the report on Russian firehosing
and he described it as having four key characteristics. Russian propaganda is high volume and multichannel. It's rapid, continuous, and repetitive. It makes no commitment to objective reality. And it makes no commitment to consistency. Oooh, sounds like Trump. Can you give me a second? I'm building a narrative here. The first two characteristics are pretty standard
for propaganda. Research shows that if we hear a lie from
multiple sources, we think of it as more credible. The same is true for lies we hear repeatedly. The more familiar we are with a lie, the more
likely we are to think of it as true. But the last two characteristics — no commitment
to objective reality or consistency — that's surprising. They don't care that much about the truth. Much of their propaganda is either completely
false or has a kernel of truth. Maybe the most jarring example this was in
2014, when the world watched as Russian troops entered Ukraine. There were a bunch of Russian soldiers wearing
uniforms without insignia and those were dubbed “little green men.” This was a huge deal. Russia was essentially invading a country
they had said they were not going to invade. But when Putin was asked about it: Were these Russian soldiers? No. These were local self-defense forces. Putin vehemently denied. “No no, the little green men are not Russian
soldiers.” It wasn't just that Putin was lying. He was lying about something so obvious. There was footage of the soldiers airing on
TV. Russian troops spreading out throughout the
strategic Crimean Peninsula. And then, a few weeks later, he just said
the opposite. Of course, we had our servicemen. They were acting very correctly. No “I'm sorry.” No “I misspoke.” Just, “Of course we have troops there.” This is counterintuitive. This is not what I expected. I come from an influence background that says
credibility is king and the truth will always win. Part of being a good liar is not getting caught. Making sure your lies are at least somewhat
believable. When Dick Cheney said, "There is no doubt
Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," he was lying, but to most people who aren't
intelligence experts, it sounded credible. If someone asks, "Hey did you eat my sandwich?" You'd say, "Nope. I brought my lunch from home." You wouldn't say, "You never had a sandwich." But when it comes the firehosing, believability
doesn't really matter. I think being willing to not be seen as credible
is okay with the Russians. We'll come back to this. But right now it's TRUMP TIME! Trump time. Since the election, people have pointed out
that Trump uses firehosing too. I really had no view that this would be anything
that anyone would think about applying to American politics. That's not what I'm about. I am concerned with foreign intervention in
our political processes. Okay, fine. Donovan, bring in the second interview please. Thank you. I think it can be deceptive just how different
they look. But despite the different styles, I think
they do the exact same thing. This is Masha Gessen. She's a Russian-American journalist, activist,
and all around badass. And she's been warning about the similarities
between Trump and Putin for years. They just create sort of this unmanageable
volume of falsehood. Gessen argues that firehosing — telling
and retelling obvious lies — isn't about persuasion. It's about power. When Putin says there are no troops in Crimea
or when Trump says he never mocked a disabled reporter, they're not just lying. They're asserting that they are not constrained
by reality. That everything, even things that are totally
obvious to us, can be challenged. That's a very clear demonstration of power. You have to engage with what he said even
though it's false. Those last two features a firehosing — the
shamelessness, the inconsistency — they're kind of the point. The way that they lie that makes the obviousness
of the lie part of the powerplay. Yes, I know that you know what I'm saying
is absurd, and I assert my right to say whatever I want whenever I want to. He keeps urinating on the sidewalk and we
have to keep wiping it up. Not the sidewalk, the living room rug. Yeah. On the rug! What are you cheering for right now? Our knee-jerk reaction to lies like this is
to fact-check them. Fact checkers are having a field day with
this one. President Obama did not found ISIS. He was not wiretapped, there was no warrant
out. It is not the biggest tax cut in US history
as the fact-checkers have noted. But if the goal of firehosing is to assert
power, fact-checking misses the point. There is nothing quite so humiliating and
disempowering as trying to prove the truth. Think of a schoolyard bully who says, "Why
are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" Degrading you by forcing you to argue with
the obvious. "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" Yeah, you'd know about being bullied. I sure would. Thank you. And I think that's kind of what it feels like
when we fact-check Trump. It's sullying. You feel like you've engaged with something
that actually shouldn't be a part of the public sphere. Firehosing turns even the most obvious of
facts into a messy, mind-numbing political fight. Every time he gets fact-checked Trump lashes
out. They just don't want to report the truth. Sarah Sanders blames the media. If anything has been inflamed it's the dishonesty
that often takes place by the news media. And something that should not have even been
up for debate starts to look like just another screaming match where no one really seems
credible. Donald Trump lies and he lies compulsively. So this very simple human assumption that
you can know what's true, that assumption is taken away from you. You have to work for the truth and the hope
is that, yeah, you'll get exhausted and you'll eventually give up. I'm getting depressed. I know, buddy. I'm almost done. We're all almost done. The ultimate goal of firehosing isn't to pass
lies off as truth. It's to rob concepts like facts and reality
of their power. You stand by that claim about him? I don't stand by anything. I have my own opinions, you can have your
own opinions. To reduce truth to just a position. Isn't it important just to, like, have factual
debates when discussing these things? Well, as you just commented, there's lots
of different ways of looking at it. You're saying it's a falsehood and they're
giving alternative facts. It's somebody's version of the truth, not
the truth. Truth is truth. I don't mean to go like... No it isn't truth. Truth isn't truth. And if that sounds a little abstract, just
listen to what Putin said during his press conference with Trump in July. As to who is to be believed, you can trust
no one. He defends the interests of the United States
of America. And I do defend the interests of the Russian Federation. So Putin just basically wanted to establish
as a baseline that no one can be trusted. Everybody's pursuing their own strategic interests
and there's no such thing as the truth. And a few days later Trump took that argument
a step further. And just remember, what you're seeing and
what you're reading is not what's happening. Just stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these
people, the fake news. Just stick with us. Essentially, reality is about picking sides. They're basically saying there's no war between
people who know the truth and people who are lying. There's only positional warfare. Whoever has a better position. Whoever has objectively more power owns reality. And it's remarkable how effective that is. Maybe you can just start acting like you have
total power and it will not exactly give you total power but it will give you a hell of
a lot more power than an American president should have. You never had a sandwich. You never had a... Come on man, you're killing me. Don't look at him if you don't have to. You never had... we have to unmic him. All right. You're off the set. March 25th 1992 was a big day for
Pakistan the national cricket team beat England to win the world Imran Khan was the face of victory the
Pakistani captain was already a global celebrity and he had a reputation for
being a handsome bachelor but almost 30 years later Khan's public identity has
completely changed he is now Pakistan's new prime minister So how did
Pakistan's cricket superstar become its new leader and will he be the one to
bring change in a country that has long been controlled by its powerful military Oh
from a young age imran khan was exposed to foreign influences he grew up in
lahore where he attended british prep schools and eventually went on to Oxford
University where he sharpened his cricket skills living in England Khan
started gaining popularity as a cricketer he embraced his life in the
West and became a staple of celebrity culture his athletic career lasted more
than two decades after winning the World Cup in 1992 he retired from the game
initially he stayed away from politics I am NOT meant to be a politician there
not everyone becomes the prime minister to help his country in 1994 he opened
the first specialized Cancer Hospital in Pakistan around the same time he started
shedding his ladies-man image and re-engaged with religion he married his
first wife of three British heiress Jemima Goldsmith's
who converted to Islam after they settled in Pakistan where he further
distanced himself from his life in the West in 1996 Khan created his own
political party the PTI he promised to build an Islamic welfare state that
would take care of the poor and hold the people in power accountable only few
people are held accountable the rest who unknown crooks get away with it come
back to fight another nation he had a strong anti-corruption message and
positioned himself as the alternative to Pakistan's two political dynasties the
sherrif's and the Bhutto's who had been trading off power and corruption charges
for decades at first Khan's party had little success failing to win a single
parliamentary seat in the 1997 elections but several years later in 2013 Khan's
party won control of a northwestern province bordering Afghanistan his
anti-corruption agenda has started gaining ground especially among young
Pakistanis and it was working on a national level he went from being the
longshot to a strong political contender in the election for prime minister he
lost in a wash to wreath of the Sharif dynasty but was now a key political
player in Pakistan as a cricketer Imran Khan was a reliable
performer but as a politician he has taken some unexpected turns in 2013
Khan's party called for a review of Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law
which carries a death penalty for insulting Islam they said religion was
being misused to attain power in the majority Muslim country now five years
later Khan has been criticized for defending the same law earlier as part
of his anti-corruption stance Khan denounced opponents Sharif's party but
later he recruited candidates from the same party to boost his own Khan has
also been criticized for his leniency with the Taliban in 2012 after 14 year
old Malala yousufzai was shot in Pakistan by the Taliban for championing
education for girls Khan showed support for the militant group at large calling
their fight a justified holy war. Khan blames the US for the rise of extremism in the region. He has long been a critic of US military intervention in Afghanistan
particularly the drone strikes along the Pakistan border this anti-american
sentiment resonated with large parts of the Pakistani population that see the
US as an enemy his own solution for the Taliban is
centered on peace talks a push that has earned him the nickname Taliban common
so you're basically recommending a strategy of negotiation with the Taliban
and a complete elimination of the drones if I hear you properly it is the only
way believe me it is the only way what makes khan's tolerance of the
Taliban interesting is that it seems to align with the interest of the Pakistani
military the military's power can be traced back to 1947 when British India
was divided into two countries a Muslim majority Pakistan and Hindu majority
India as people migrated to the country of their religion intense violence broke
out the Pakistani military stepped in to settle conflict at the border becoming a
symbol of national identity and the establishment that held a new country
together since then the military has controlled all national security and
foreign policy matters one of their main concerns is the war in Afghanistan which
benefits them in two ways on one hand the US has paid the Pakistani military
billions in exchange for routes to the country to continue their fight with the
Taliban at the same time the military supports the Taliban because the
instability in Afghanistan keeps the country isolated from Pakistan's rivals
especially India the military has also interfered with
the democratic process within Pakistan since independence it has either ruled
the country directly or controlled it indirectly Pakistan has had 22 prime
ministers and none of them has ever completed a full term
they either resigned they were terminated they finished a term they
didn't start or they were assassinated there were also three successful
military coups because of Pakistan's tense political past the election was
high stakes in the months leading up to the vote religious extremist groups try
to destabilize the electoral process by killing at least 200 people in a
string of attacks including a polling station bombing on Election Day that
killed 31 people just weeks before the 2018 election Khan's opponent former
Prime Minister Sharif was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 10 years in
jail the military was accused of engineering Sharif's downfall and
clearing the wafer Khan Khan went on to win against bilawal Bhutto and Shahbaz
Sharif the new candidates from Pakistan's political dynasties his win
was followed by protests and accusations of election fraud which he said he would
investigate and on August 18th Imran Khan was sworn in as the Prime
Minister of Pakistan since the victory his corruption message has remained
front and center:   But his anti-american stance seems to be
shifting:   Whether leader will bring about the change he promised is still uncertain the only certainty is that his leadership will be
shaped by his relationship with Pakistan's most powerful authority: the
military. If you've ever gone to a swimming pool
you may be familiar with the pool smell. You know, the one. It's tingy and kind of
tingles your nose when you catch a whiff of it. The sweet smell of chlorine. I'm smiling because that's not a good sign. It's a sign people have been doing a bit
more than just swimming. Scientists from the University of Alberta calculated
that one commercial-sized swimming pool contained almost twenty gallons of urine,
even though Michael Phelps told the Wall Street Journal, "I think everybody pees in
the pool. Chlorine kills it so it's not bad." Chlorine doesn't exactly work like that. Peeing in pools is gross and it can make
people sick too. A healthy pool has little or no chemical
smell; if you if you have a chemical smell in the pool, you probably have what
we call "chloramines." Chloramines are formed when cleaning agents like
chlorine mix with organic compounds. We're talking sweat, dirt, body oils, and
yes, urine. It can irritate the skin, lungs, and eyes. The more urine, sweat, and other
organic materials in a pool, the less efficient chlorine is at killing the
real nasty stuff. Pool disinfectants work by destroying a
pathogen's membrane and proteins. Chlorine is effective against many germs, but not
everything is killed instantly. While it can kill E. coli within a minute,
it can take over seven days for chlorine to penetrate the cell wall of
Cryptosporidium. Our biggest cause of outbreaks is Cryptosporidium.
Cryptosporidium is a parasite that causes prolonged watery diarrhea, we're
talking about diarrhea for two to three weeks in otherwise healthy people. Left to their own devices, bacteria can start to colonize and grow into something more. Biofilm can potentially be found on any surface that's been wet. It's bacteria
that's accumulated so much it creates his own protective layer against
chlorine and other disinfectants. Between 2000 and 2014 there were 493 outbreaks
reported from treated recreational waters. Besides not swallowing the water,
there are a couple of ways to be safer and make pools less gross. Knowing if
there's enough chlorine in the water is a good first step. There's free test
strips available at healthypools.org. for pools and other swimming areas and
interactive fountains or water playgrounds where you see that water
shooting out of the concrete, we recommend at least one part per million
or milligram per liter. If you're sick or have been sick two weeks prior, stay away
from the pool. Take a quick shower before swimming and just don't pee in the pool. Borders Hong Kong is over. All five episodes are published. If you haven't seen them yet you can just search
YouTube for Vox Borders Hong Kong or you can go to facebook.com/voxborders.
You may have noticed that I'm doing things a little bit differently this
year than I did last year. I'm now just focusing on one location at a time: going,
making more videos, publishing them and then moving on to the next location. So Borders Hong Kong is now over, but I'm excited to say that I have the next
location to announce: How a more diverse America makes you feel
is the core division in our political and cultural fights right now. But to see why, you need to know how we’re
changing, and how a changing country changes us. Here’s the big picture. The U.S. is at a demographic tipping point
- a genuinely historic moment. 2013 was the first year that a majority of
US infants under the age of 1 were nonwhite. By 2016, white deaths had outnumbered white
births, but America’s overall population, it’s not expected to decrease. And that’s because the Black, Asian and
especially Latino and mixed-race populations they’re also growing. They’re growing fast. By 2045, the Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic
whites will be no longer be a majority. And also that foreign-born residents are going
to make up a record share of the population. So when you show people these numbers about
how America is changing, what goes through their heads, what is their response? I think people are hearing these
changes as somehow a fundamental remaking of what America is, at least a lot of people
are hearing it, and some of them are excited about it and some of them are not so excited. We see on average white Americans when they
read about this majority-minority shift becoming more politically conservative. Jennifer Richeson is a psychologist
who studies how people react to demographic change. She won a MacArthurGenius Grant for this work. And what she’s found helps explain a lot
of what we’re seeing. For instance, when white political independents
who live in the West were told that whites were no longer a majority in California, they
became 11 percentage points more likely to support the Republican Party. That is a huge change. It’s important to say, this is a human reaction
to demographic change, not just a white one. When presented with similar data on the growing
numbers of Hispanics, Asian-Americans shifted towards more conservative views, Black Americans
shifted towards more conservative views. Being told your group is shrinking or that it's losing power, it's scary
for anyone. Losing numbers are associated with
losing status, losing power, losing currency in the culture. There are lots of studies like these,
but the one I find myself thinking about the most was done by Harvard’s Ryan Enos. What we did is we sent these two Spanish
speakers out to catch a train at a certain time every day over a period of days. We sent out research assistants and they surveyed
these people waiting on the train. And that little exposure was enough to move
these attitudes in this survey. They're more likely to say we should send
those children of immigrants back to Mexico. They're more likely to say we should decrease
immigration from Mexico and they're even more likely to endorse that English should be the
official language of the United States. We saw a version of this in the election
then too, right? So in States and even in small areas
of States in these counties, where the Spanish population changed very rapidly - we saw that
these voters had moved towards supporting Donald Trump. And a lot of them actually looked like they
were these people who had previously been Democrats. So here, then, is what we know: Even
gentle, unconscious exposure to reminders that America is diversifying — and particularly
to the idea that America is becoming a majority-minority nation — it pushes folks toward more conservative
policy opinions, towards more support of the Republican Party. So what happens when those reminders aren’t
gentle? Massive demographic changes
have been foisted upon the American people. And they’re changes that, none of us ever
voted for and most of us don’t like. Our Christian heritage will be cherished,
protected, defended like you've never seen before. When Obama was elected in 2008, there
was all this talk of America moving into a post-racial moment. But the mere existence of Obama’s presidency
made a lot more of politics about how you felt about race. It had this effect on health care, the stimulus
package, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party. Hell, it even affected how people felt about
Obama’s dog. So the dog is is kind of a fun experiment
on a serious topic. Both Teddy Kennedy, a well-known liberal Democrat,
and Barack Obama have the same dog. Their two dogs are actually related Portuguese
water dogs. So let's see how people respond to these dogs
when you tell one that it's Ted Kennedy and one that it is Barack Obama's. What happens is that when you tell people it's Barack
Obama's racial liberals like the dog more racial conservatives like the dog less. Obama polarizes more because of who he is
rather than what he says and does. And so Obama goes through great lengths in both
campaigns to try to tamp down racial divisions to not talk about race. When he does talk about
race, he does so in a message of personal responsibility. And there was something real here. A few decades ago a multiracial voter base, it
couldn’t drive American politics like it can now. Obama won in 2012 with only 39 percent of
the white vote -- previous Democratic candidates, they lost elections in big ways with a lot
more support by whites. But by 2016, Trump also proved that a candidate
who is explicitly talking to white fears about race could win. The Republicans now have a temptation
to explicitly appeal to race. And you're seeing this throughout Republican
primaries in the 2018 cycle and you're seeing the reverse on the Democratic side. Abolish ICE as a good example. That is a policy that Democrats would not
have been on board with in the 1990s but their bases have moved and so the incentives have
moved as well. Now to say American politics is in
for turbulence is not to say we are in for dissolution or civil war. California went through these changes, it
experienced this demographic shift and it didn’t fall to pieces. But leading up to that, there was a lot of
friction. Voters passed racially-charged propositions
targeting undocumented immigrants, they banned affirmative action, they restricted bilingual
education. But we also know, right, there are
States that have large populations of racial minorities — largely Black Americans but they're growing in Latinos — that are incredibly unequal in every way. Right, so the question is you know we want
to think ‘Oh it'll work out, look at California.’ But it could work out and be Mississippi. As the browning of America continues,
this cycle of hope about the future activating fears about the present, it’s just going
to keep going. In that, politicians who can articulate a
vision of this future that is inclusive and inspiring and nonthreatening — that very mixture Obama
sought in '08 — they could reap massive rewards. But as long as much of the country feels threatened
by the changes they see, there's also going to be a continuing, and maybe even a growing, market for politicians
like Donald Trump. Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal
lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to to eight federal charges involving $1.4 Million dollars
of tax evasion. But that wasn’t all: Mr. Cohen pled guilty to two campaign finance
charges. What he did was he worked to pay money to
silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016
campaign and to the candidate and the campaign. It was a stunningly direct admission, given
that Cohen and the president previously told several conflicting stories about these payments First, Trump said he didn’t know anything
about his lawyer, Michael Cohen, paying of Stormy Daniels, but then the story changed. Michael would represent me and represent me
on some things. He represents me — like with this crazy
Stormy Daniels deal he represented me. And Rudy Giuliani, changed that story again: Having something to do with paying some Stormy
Daniels woman $130,000? I mean, which is going to turn out to be
perfectly legal. See, the crux of the Stormy Daniels scandal isn’t
was never the alleged extramarital sex between a porn star and the president. It was the money. Congress passed a series of campaign finance
and ethics laws in the 1970s, prompted by Watergate, and Nixon’s resignation. The intent was threefold: to prevent corruption,
to make government open and transparent, and to limit influence from special interests. And it was these laws that were violated when,
in late October 2016, Cohen delivered $130,000 dollars of hush money to Stephanie Clifford
— better known as Stormy Daniels. Campaign finance laws limit contributions
and require candidates to report them to the Federal Election Commission. But this money was never properly reported. Cohen originally argued that he didn’t
need to report it, because “it was not a campaign contribution.”
But from the beginning it was hard to argue that the money wasn’t, on some level, being used
to influence the outcome of the election. For one, the timing of the payment is extremely
relevant, it came just weeks before the general election, and on the heels of perhaps the
Trump campaign’s biggest scandal: “And when you’re a star they let you do
it.” “You can do anything” “Whatever you want” “Grab ‘em by the pussy” [laughter] At the time, campaign finance experts say that the timing
raised questions, and it “strongly suggests it was related to the
election.” Cohen also negotiated the payment using his
Trump business email, another campaign finance violation. Cohen already pleaded guilty, but what does
this actually mean for Trump? Well first, it’s worth noting that sadly, the
Trump campaign’s failure to disclose isn’t unique. More than one third of candidates running
in primaries on June 5 didn't file on time or make public their financial disclosures. So, while a formal complaint was filed in January
2018, the FEC is both notoriously slow, and historically gridlocked when it comes to acting on such
cases. According to one analysis by the Center for
Public Integrity, it is very likely that the FEC won’t rule on the complaint until after
the 2020 presidential election, so it’s possible Trump wouldn't even be president by
the time they make their call. The most likely end result, if one is ever
reached that finds Trump’s campaign at fault, is a fine. And fine amounts are only small fractions
of what campaigns spend in elections. In 2016 --- when Trump ran --- the average
fine was close to $20,000. By comparison, Trump spent $322 million on
his campaign. And politicians regularly just ignore these
fines. They face very few consequences. The FEC has failed to collect $1.3 million
dollars in fines from more than 160 candidates or committees. In fact, campaign finance violations are far
more likely to be enforced through criminal investigations, like the one that centered
on, and ultimately felled, Cohen That may be the reason that Trump and his
lawyers have been so cavalier about the scandal. But now that Cohen, who once said he’d take
a bullet for Trump, has pleaded guilty, that attitude may change. Cohen is likely going to jail for these crimes. But the biggest unanswered question is whether
the President, is also accountable for them. Just after the guilty plea, Cohen’s lawyer
wrote he “testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime. If those payments were a crime for Michael
Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump? What do you see when you look at a pinball
machine? I kind of see, like, a giant slot machine. There’s shiny things and bright lights. Letters that don’t mean anything that aren’t
linked up to anything. It’s just designed for beeps and boops. But what happens if you do this? And what if you do it again? And again? This is how you’re meant to play pinball. And while a casual player might see a bunch
of blinking lights, a skilled pinball player sees a map. People tend to get overwhelmed by pinball
because they think the game is random. I never know what to look at. Every time I play, I feel like the ball just
goes wherever the hell it wants to go. I’m just, like, hitting things aggressively
and hoping it works out. But just like any arcade game, you can learn
how to get better. Don’t take it from me, though. My name is Roger Sharpe, and I have been playing
pinball for far too long. There’s so much luck here, not skill. I’m breaking the bank and I don’t even
know what I’m doing! Well, what you’re doing kinetically is manipulating
flippers to hit a ball, and you’re going in a certain line of action when the ball’s
down on the flipper. That is skill. I think the biggest hurdle for most people
is that they think that the ball is not controllable. And if the game is working against you, it
makes sense to just jump from game to game and try your luck. Right? Well, no, each game was different. Each game had different geometry; each game
had different rules. Even though each game is unique, there are
common elements to look for on any pinball machine. At the bottom, you’ve got a plunger to get
the ball going and flippers that keep it from draining and hit it toward targets. Knowing how to use these is the key to the
game. But If you’re like me, you probably use
flippers like this: When you’re supposed to play like this: If you can slow things down, it’s to your
advantage. Just above the flippers are slingshots. They add a little chaos to the ball’s path. The middle of the board is where you’ll
usually find target banks, like this one, that spell out a word, and chutes, which will
take your ball and kick it out somewhere else on the play field. And there’s always these guys: jet bumpers. And while it might seem like they’re meant
to derail your game, they’re actually pretty harmless. Most of those are done in clusters – done
in clusters for a reason. It’ll bounce a little bit, maybe go back
up a lane. It’s not necessarily going to come back in your face. Up top, you’ve the source of a lot of big
points: ramps. They’re usually designed to drop the ball
straight back onto the flipper, so you’re incentivized to crack shots at them again
and again. Those are your basic targets, and deciding
which one to go for is actually pretty simple. At least initially, go for whatever targets
are lit – that means they’re activated and worth points. And when you hit them, the game will light
something else, telling you where to go next. One way to get the high score is by completing
simple objectives called modes. Modes feature specific targets on the play
field and usually increase their value temporarily – you just need to figure out how to unlock
them. So if it is completing a target bank to light
a particular mode, let me complete those targets, and now suddenly, that center ramp is lit. But if you want to get really good at pinball,
there’s one thing you’ll find in almost every game: multiball. Multiball is a hectic, beautiful, and terrifying
mode where you juggle multiple balls simultaneously and try to hit specific shots called jackpots. Jackpot! Jackpots only light up during multiball, and
they’re worth a lot of points. Here’s how you do it: Check the game’s
rule card and figure out what you need to complete to light the locks. Once lit, these will hold on to your ball
and give you a new one. Lock three balls and the game spits them all
back out at once. It sounds simple, but hitting all the right
targets is not an easy task. I am building from ball to ball to get to
some objective. And I have to build and go through cycles
of finishing target banks or whatever else to get to multiball, in order to maybe get
a jackpot, where my higher scoring thresholds are. People tend to give up easily on pinball because
it sometimes seems like the game has a mind of its own. I mean, I give up because I literally end
the game in five seconds, so. Sometimes I, like, will get the multiball
– I have no idea what makes multiball happen. It all feels random. The idea of it being totally random takes
away the fact that you can actually accomplish something that you’ve never accomplished
before. “I’ve never gotten multiball before – oh,
my god, I just got multiball. I’m blinded by it; it happened so quickly. But I got it. Next time, I’ll be ready. Maybe I’ll get a jackpot.” Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul - she
not only embodied the spirit of Soul in her music but she lived it. Because, very simply, she doesn't sing soul — she is soul. Soul is rooted in gospel, a genre of music
that combines rhythm and blues with church hymns. Aretha was exposed to those sounds her entire
childhood. She was raised in the church where her father,
CL Franklin, was the most well known preacher in the US during the golden age of gospel
in the 1940s and 50s. You could hear any one of Aretha’s hits
and witness a master class in the power of gospel music, but it’s her covers and her
live performances that really reveal all the gospel techniques she had at her disposal. Aretha could turn any song into a gospel song. Just take a look at these two tracks. The top is British soul singer, Dusty Springfield’s,
most iconic song “Son of a Preacher Man” Dusty and Aretha shared the same producer,
Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. The song first went to Aretha, who ended up
passing on it. Dusty took it, and in early 1969 her version
rose to the top of the charts. A year later, Aretha released a cover of it
and it sounded completely different. Where Dusty started with a smooth electric
guitar riff, Aretha started on the piano. An instrument
that, along with the hammond organ, played a central role 
in the sound of gospel music and her career. The fingers and the voice are all part of that same tradition. And she was trained by the best. Aretha comes up during the golden era of gospel music and actually her piano teacher is the late Reverand James Cleveland, who became king of gospel. Here he is, backing her on the piano. Aretha sat behind a piano her whole career
-- at any point she could speed up or slow down, creating a spectrum of emotional moments. Like this moment here: There's an old saying in the black church: This valley is there to build to that final
climactic moment of the song. In gospel music it’s often called the “special
chorus” or vamp. The vamp is almost like
you take the essence of the song. the most memorable rhythmic piece is repeated
over and over. Clara Ward and the Ward Singers, Aretha Franklin’s
biggest mentors, perfected this in their gospel recording of “Packing Up” This key component of gospel was everywhere
in the music of the 1960s. Listen to the Rolling Stones imitate those high notes of
Marion Williams in “Sympathy for the Devil.” Aretha carried that gospel tradition of repetition
and vocal improvisation over into her music too. In this recording she improvises over her backup vocal group, the Sweet Inspirations. I think in the case of the preacher man they were even
saying literally Hallelujah. You know, right on the top of the groove. The same singers were on Dusty's version too. But their voicing on Aretha's recording is completely different. One of the most exciting differences is when they echo “Sock it to me” a phrase they also sing
in “Respect”. They added "sock it to me" into that, it became like a thing. [Repeating "Sock it to me"] Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to yourself. Sock it to me? Sock it to me. Lay it on me. Give me a high five. Know what I'm sayin'? Was that innocent, or.. coincidental? Now what did you think it meant? Well, you'd come home and give me my propers. Son of a Preacher Man lives on vinyl as a
studio recording, but Aretha’s gospel roots really shine when she’s playing live. Take her performance of “Dr. Feelgood,"
live at Fillmore West in San Francisco. In a 1971 review, Ebony magazine
said “The album captures the spirit of her in-person performances that are never merely
shows but more rituals of an almost religious nature." This music has to be inspired of the moment. There’s always a single moment in every
single one of her live performances where the crowd erupts. In Dr. Feelgood it happens about 2 minutes
in - almost the ending of the song. [ Aretha Frankling performing live at the Fillmore West in San Francisco] [Cheers and shouting erupting from the audience.] [Aretha Franklin continues singing." She can literally control the crowd when she's
at that moment in the song. This is a blues song, but at this moment she’s
priming people for a spiritual awakening. At the very end, where she just starts to kind of talk to the crowd, and she said you want to sit
down and cross your arms and crossed her legs and look up to heaven. So she's now talking about ecstasy but she's
singing about it in a way that's very spiritual and sacred. You know, she’s using gospel to
get us there. [Aretha Franklin interacting with the crowd at the Fillmore West.] She inhabits these songs to a degree that we're not used to seeing much anymore, that naked vulnerability. It's coming from a church tradition. You may only have an audience of 10, but you may have been put
there to reach one person. It was very rare that a gospel singer could
go back and forth between gospel and pop so freely, but Aretha’s voice and authenticity
transcended genres. So this is 1971 and if anyone in gospel as a performer
would have done that, it would have been controversial. Somehow Aretha was able to bounce back and forth and stay, to the end, true to both worlds. As part of the European Union, the United
Kingdom's borders have been relatively open for years. Trade's carried out freely with other member
countries and people coming through only need to show their EU passport. But in June 2016, the UK voted to leave the
EU so that it could reassert control on its own borders - and decide who and what it wanted
to let through. Imagine these boundaries turning into hard
borders. The impact of that on these maritime borders
is complicated in terms of trade, but it could have serious implications for
the people living along the UK’s only overland border — here. This border, between Northern Ireland and
the Republic of Ireland, is one of the reasons why Brexit negotiations continue to reach
a deadlock. That’s because this isn’t just a boundary
between two countries... It’s also a compromise. A symbol of identity. A solution to a troubled history. And it’s been keeping the peace in Northern
Ireland for 20 years. Hardening this border could put one of Europe’s
greatest success stories in jeopardy. This border was first drawn in 1920 by the British, who had ruled over the island for
centuries. The Irish had rebelled several times, but not everyone wanted the British to leave. So, eventually the UK divided the island into
two states based on its population. Most people in this part were historically
Catholic, and identified as Irish, and wanted independence. They were known as Nationalists. But in the North, many people were 
Protestant, identified more closely as British and wanted to stay in the UK. They were called Unionists. After the partition, this part remained in
the UK as Northern Ireland. We made that decision as a people quite freely, and for very definite reasons. Reasons that are historical, reasons that are cultural, and reasons that are economic. The south continued to move away from
the UK until it gained complete independence and became a new country -- the Republic of
Ireland. At first, this 499 kilometer border was pretty
porous. But the UK and Ireland continued to be hostile. Over time, customs checks were set up at the border
crossings and the two countries descended into a trade war - tariffs were placed on agricultural
produce and goods like steel and coal. By the late 1960s, things turned violent. Violence like this hit Northern Ireland after years of simmering bitterness between the Catholic minority and the ruling Protestant regime. In Northern Ireland, fierce conflict broke
out between extremist groups. Nationalist paramilitaries, like the Irish
Republican Army, believed that Northern Ireland was rightfully part of Ireland and that the
British were oppressors of Northern Ireland's Nationalist population. Unionist paramilitaries fought back; defending
their place in the UK. Both groups blew up buildings, set off car
bombs, and engaged in bloody street fighting. The UK deployed thousands of troops to Northern
Ireland during this time; and became a common target of Nationalist paramilitary attacks. Especially at the border, which for Nationalists
was the ultimate symbol of British occupation. "Welsh fuseliers who patrol this stretch of the border described in court as the main battle line between the IRA and the army, have suffered repeated attacks." As violence surged, the UK military tried
to secure the border with walls, towers, heavy guns, and patrols. They tightly controlled the 20 official crossings and screened people and vehicles passing through. The conflict over Northern Ireland turned
this into a hard border. The violence lasted for more than 30 years,
killed over 3,600 people and came to be known as The Troubles. It came to end in 1998, when Nationalist
and Unionist Party leaders came together for a historic peace deal. They reached a compromise: Northern Ireland
would remain in the UK but people would be eligible for both Irish and UK citizenships. And in the future, Northern Ireland could
vote to join Ireland. This deal came to be known as the Good Friday
Agreement. It allowed Nationalists in Northern Ireland
to be part of the Republic of Ireland while the Unionists remained part of the UK. Which meant this hard border wasn’t needed
anymore. So, the British military left. The watchtowers came down. And more roads opened. There are now around 270 official crossings
- most of which are completely invisible. And they're all part of a border that stands
as a symbol of the compromise that ended decades of conflict. "The British people have voted to leave the European Union." "Reignited a fierce debate over Northern Ireland's future." "Because both are members of the European Union. But when Britain pulls out of the EU," "it's now an outer-EU border and the question is, do we put up barbed wire again? Soldiers? There'll be a custom borders at the very least." In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU, even
though Northern Ireland was overwhelmingly in favor of remaining. The UK’s argument in favor of Brexit was
to control its own national borders — but there was little mention of its Irish border
at the time. That changed when the UK and EU started negotiations
-- the status of the Irish border became one of the first three things to figure out. Now, more than a year later, it’s still
unresolved. But there are a few options:
The UK could reimpose a hard border by bringing back the police and the walls. But that would isolate the population of Nationalists
in Northern Ireland. Alternatively, they could put the border here,
leaving Northern Ireland in the EU Customs Union, but separating it from the UK mainland. But this would betray the Unionists. See, either way, both these options risk
violating the Good Friday Agreement. A third option is for the UK to stay in the
EU Customs Union meaning it wouldn't need a customs border, but that’s unacceptable
for Brexiters in the UK government, who specifically want control over their own borders. The UK needs to put a border somewhere but
just can't decide where. “On relation to the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, we will not return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland”. “But the suggestion that there should be a border down the Irish Sea, separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom is completely unacceptable." "We are not going to
be in a customs union, we’re not going to be in the Customs Union, because if we were, that would prevent us from being able to follow an independent trade policy.” Now, there's a fourth option that would be in
line with the Good Friday Agreement  — it’s the idea of reunification. In the past when both Ireland and the UK were
in the EU and the borders were open; there was little incentive for Northern Ireland
to vote to reunite with the Republic of Ireland. But if the UK went with the option of hard
borders, Northern Ireland would be isolated and the only way to rejoin the EU would be
through reunification. Typically, this would be an overwhelming victory
for the Nationalists and a loss for the Unionists. But Brexit seems to have changed some opinions. A recent poll found that 28% of the respondents
who supported Northern Ireland’s place in the UK would now vote to join the Republic
of Ireland. While not a perfect solution, it would give
Northern Ireland a voice about its own place in Europe; a voice that’s barely been heard
so far. [radio: “You’re listening to 89.9. WJCT Jacksonville. Your community, your world. Storms will develop during the mid afternoon
hours and will move from west to east. Highs will reach the low to mid 90s.] Savannah Bowens: It puts me on edge. You know what I’m saying? Because I could be walking to the store. Walking down the street. Getting in my car. And it seems as just because I'm trans that
I'm murdered. Savannah Bowens is a black trans woman living
in a city where three black trans women have been murdered this year. Savannah: How many are even unaccounted for? I believe that number is so much bigger. [news clips: “Tragedy for the transgender
community.” “ A transgender woman was found dead.” “The second killing of a transgender woman
in Jacksonville.” “Celine Walker was killed inside this Extended
Stay America.” “Another transgender woman found dead.” “This victim is the third trans woman who’s
died by gun violence in Jacksonville this year.”] None of the murders in Jacksonville have been
solved yet. And they’re actually a part of an alarming
crisis. Since 2015, at least 85 trans women have been
murdered across the country -- most of them black trans women and gender non-conforming
people. Savannah: It’s like, if I was searching
for a place to move to like where do I go? Where would I be safe? Turns out a lot of these cases have something
in common... [news clips: “She was a transgender woman
police identified as a male when she was killed.” “In just the past 90 minutes, Jacksonville
police have released that victim’s birth name.” “Who was identified initially as a man by
the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.” “JSO is referring to the victim as a black
male in his 20s who appears to identify as a female.” The way cops are investigating these crimes...could
be delaying justice. Transgender people are more likely to face
violence and discrimination than the average U.S. resident. One of the reasons they’re often at risk
is their IDs - a simple document that many might take for granted. When the gender marker on state-issued ID
doesn’t match the outward appearance of a transgender person, it opens up a world
of harassment, and sometimes violence. Savannah: When it comes to getting a job. You know this could be the best job ever. And then now all of a sudden they see my gender
marker and now they're treating me differently. They can be afraid to show their IDs while
driving, at a bar, or to vote, for fear of someone finding out that they’re transgender. Savannah: The scary part is for me, being
stopped by the police. You just never know who's stopping you. You don't know if these people are homophobic. You just don’t know. [Savannah at church: “Even in my unworthiness
he calls me friend. Aren’t you glad this morning that God doesn’t
look at your circumstance or look at your issues." Singing: “You are everything to me.” According to a 2015 survey of transgender
people, nearly a third of people with mismatched IDs reported being harassed, denied services
or attacked. They can also lose access to medical care,
become homeless, or be forced into sex work. Savannah: A lot of times our trans women they're
resorting to things such as prostitution because society has made it so hard. Every girl may not be as feminine or look
passable as we love to say in our community. What do you do when you're hungry? What do you do when your rent is due and your
lights are about to be cut off, but you can't get work because you don't fit into the norm. Because your friends? They're in the same situation as you and your
family wants nothing to do with you. So you walk the streets in unsafe environments
just so that you can feed yourself. The discrimination trans people face in life
can continue after they die. In Jacksonville, during murder investigations,
the police often identified victims by names they no longer used, instead of their preferred
names. In the trans community -- whether this happens
in life or death -- it’s called deadnaming. The police have also systematically denied
the victim’s identities by incorrectly describing their gender. Savannah: If they were known as a woman and
that's who they lived their life as, they're refusing to do that. In addition to the disrespect - deadnaming
can slow down a murder investigation in its most critical hours. Savannah: You don't get to choose what gender
I am. Those people that knew me in the streets or
wherever, they knew me as a woman. So you're saying, oh a man. You're misnaming me and giving my biological
name, how do you expect to solve a case, if nobody knows that. What if I was murdered in a hotel and people
saw a woman go in and then you're saying a man, that's not what they saw. That's not that's not who they are. This is part of a national pattern. ProPublica contacted all law enforcement agencies
in locations where trans people have been killed since 2015, and found that 87 percent
of victims were deadnamed or misgendered by authorities. Many police departments cite an internal policy
to go with the name and sex listed on a victim’s state ID. Savannah: I need my gender marker to reflect
what it is. So that I can be respected. I feel like it's a prison. It’s a prison and I have a release date. But I have no keys to get out of my cell. Savannah has recently started the process
of legally changing the gender marker on her ID. But turns out, switching that tiny “M”
or “F” can be incredibly hard. There are no federal policies to address gender
marker changes on documents like driver’s licenses. So it’s left up to the states. Some are generally more trans-friendly than
others. While others require a court order, an amended
birth certificate, or proof of surgery. Trystlynn Barber: The laws are so convoluted
across the United States, state to state. And it does not make any sense. Supposed to be united right? Trystlynn Barber lives in Georgia and has
been in the process of changing her ID. But it’s not been easy. Georgia law requires proof of gender reassignment
surgery, which is a high barrier for most people. Trystlynn: The cost of gender reassignment
surgery at the low end that I've seen in research in the United States is 15,000 dollars. The problem is getting health coverage to
cover something like that. To be hit with a solid wall of not being able
to move forward is heartbreaking. It can destroy people. But she later remembered a crucial detail. Trystlynn: I wasn't born here. I was born in New York. The State of New York, with a less restrictive
policy, required only a doctor's note stating she was transitioning. They sent her a corrected birth certificate
within a month - which she’s used to update most of her documents. Trystlynn: There it is. That's a certified copy grey seal. With my name. My changed name and my correct sex. And I was half way back from the mailbox. When I open this up. I had other mail in my hands, everything else
fell from my hands I fell to my knees. I started crying, in the middle of the grass
right out here. I’m sorry. After thinking that I was not going to be
able to ever get it done. Was the most amazing feeling. I'm sorry. As for Savannah...she’s working with a lawyer
in Jacksonville to get her ID changed. Savannah: When that day comes for me when my gender marker is changed, it will be like
the missing piece to my puzzle. It's that important. She hopes it will keep her a little bit safer...but
knows this problem is bigger than a letter on her ID. After we saw her, another trans woman was
murdered in Florida, this time a few hours south of Jacksonville. The Sheriff's Office described the victim
as a man “wearing a wig” and “dressed as a female.” Another case of deadnaming… and a murder
that’s yet to be solved. It's more expensive to live in Hong Kong
than anywhere in the world. Hong Kong has been ranked the least affordable housing
market in the world eight years in a row and by a long shot. Housing prices are now almost 20 times more than annual income. That means that
a household making $50,000 USD would on average be looking for
a house that cost $980,000 USD. And it's getting really bad. Hundreds of thousands of residents now squeeze into incredibly
small apartments, most of them no bigger than a parking space. So these are cage
homes, which basically fit one person and their belongings. And they basically
stack these in a room in order to fit as many people as they can in the room.
And yet the price per square foot for these smaller houses just keeps shooting
up. I visited these homes to try to piece together an explanation for this trend
and to meet the people who are being squeezed by the world's least affordable
real estate market. There are now tens of thousands of
people in this city who live in spaces that are between 75 and 140 square feet.
For some perspective a typical parking space in the US is 120 square feet. One of the most common strategies for small space living is this subdivided house model. This big space that's been divided up into a bunch of tiny little
living spaces. These people basically have room for a bed and a table and a
few belongings. What makes this model work is that they have a bigger
communal space where they're able to have their cooking and their washing and
the bathroom open to everyone, so that they can save space and save money in
their actual living quarters. So this is the kitchen for this space which is
shared by four families. The tempting
explanation here for why the prices are so high is land scarcity. You know, seven and a half million people crammed into this series of islands, it's gonna drive up
the prices. The same story in a lot of places that have run out of land that
are in high demand — in San Francisco or New York City. Okay this might be the
story in New York City and San Francisco, but is Hong Kong actually running out of
land? Let's see what the drone says about this. Flying over Hong Kong you start to
see that, while yes, there's a very dense urban landscape, there's also a whole lot
of green space. Government land-use data says that 75 percent of the land in Hong
Kong is not developed. Now some of that is mountainous and rocky and not easy to
build on, but certainly not all of it. So I posed this question about density
to two experts, one is a Hong Kong citizen and the other is a 30-plus year
resident. Both are advocates for better urban design. Are high prices primarily
the result of land scarcity? No. No. There's a land-use issue, because also
land is being inefficiently used or conserved. The problem isn't the shortage
of land the problem is bad land management. Land use, land management, what
these experts are referring to is that of all the land in Hong Kong only 3.7% is zoned for urban housing. But it's not because of
mountains, it's because of policy and this gets to the heart of the
explanation of why more and more people are living in homes the size of parking
spaces. The first thing to note if you want to understand the real explanation,
is that the government owns all of the land in Hong Kong. Well, all except for
this one church that the British built here when they ruled it back in the 1800s
and it kind of just escaped the whole government-owns-all-the-land thing. So the government owns all the land and it leases it out to developers, usually for
50 years in an auction process where the highest bidder gets the contract. With
such scarce and valuable land zoned for housing, real estate companies more and
more of them coming from mainland China with lots of money, will duke it out in
these auctions. And will end up at an astronomically high price. Like this plot of land that was just leased out for 2.2 billion dollars, which
set an all-time record for the most expensive land of ever leased by the Hong
Kong government to a developer. So the way the government zones and leases
land is the first part of this. The other part of this explanation has a lot to do
with taxes. If you're the type of person who navigates away from this video when
you hear the word tax policy, stay with me here. This place loves low
taxes. It's a great place to do business, because the corporate tax is low
no value-added tax, no sales tax, free market economics, low taxes. That's
embedded into the fabric of this place. Look at all those low taxes doing their
work, building up those skyscrapers, slapping on those bank logos all over
town. So if the government isn't getting revenue from taxes, it really needs it from
another source and in the case of Hong Kong that source is land sales. A lot of the government revenues here driven by land revenues and it's about 30% of government public financing income. The government of Hong Kong can
lease out this land to developers at astronomical prices, make a ton of
revenue from that and not have to raise taxes on the people or the corporations
that reside here and they still proudly retain their ranking
as the freest economy on earth. What this means is that the Hong Kong government
doesn't have a huge incentive to free up more land and lower prices, but while
this current arrangement of bidding and auctions is really good for revenue for
the government and good for the market generally, it's not super good for the
people of Hong Kong. Of all the small spaces, this is easily the most cramped. These are
coffin homes. Could I ask you just a quick question about your living space? The government is slowly working on this
problem. Year after year new policies come in
that are meant to fix this, but they're slow to change, mainly because they have
an incentive to keep the status quo as it is. Out here at this industrial
complex in Hong Kong, I met with a guy named Eric Wong, a local inventor and
businessman who has seen a business opportunity in the midst of this space
crisis. Eric grew up in Hong Kong and has been
thinking about small-space living for a long time. Oh it has WiFi. These capsules come in one or two-person sizes and are meant to provide a more
efficient and hygienic version of the cage and coffin homes, all at a
relatively low price. Down here there's a little box where you can put all your
valuables and so there's mirror lights, there's reading lights. But these capsules,
innovative as they are, really just put a band-aid on this housing problem.
They don't serve as a real solution. A real solution would need to come from
something that's much less profitable and fun to look at: Government policy and
zoning reform that will free up more land and put the interests of the people
above the interests of the market, but until the government can make that
happen people in Hong Kong will continue to squeeze into smaller and smaller
spaces. There have been nearly 5000 fires in California
since the start of 2018. The fire season has been dominating the news. “This has turned into another record-setting
fire season.” “Now the largest in state history.” “Really there’s no end in sight." It’s hot. It’s dry. It’s windy. Just about everything on the ground is flammable. But there’s one thing that’s consistently
making wildfires in California worse and worse and worse: Us. At this point, even calling them “wild” fires
might be a misnomer, because most of them are not natural. Humans are responsible
for starting a whopping 84% of them. The northern California Carr fire for example,
was started by sparks from a car tire' rim. And in southern California, the Holy Fire just outside of
LA started after a suspected arson. These are just two of the fires currently
active in the state. So far in 2018 629,000 acres have burned. That’s nearly 3 times as much compared to
the same time period in 2017. What makes these fires so dangerous, damaging,
and therefore costly is that more human-made infrastructure is getting caught in the flames. This map highlights the parts of California
most prone to fires, and it’s no surprise that — yeah — that’s where these fires
are. But compare it to this map, which shows population density growth
projections. Put them together, and it’s clear: California’s population is growing out from urban centers directly into the areas at the highest risk for fire. Meanwhile, the state is spending more and more
to fight fires each year, as more people move into areas that put them
in harm’s way. “It’s up to all of us to protect and preserve
the forests we have.” So, since we made this mess worse, what can
we do? “‘That’s a good job!’ said Smokey the Bear.” Being mindful of how we spark these fires
is a good start, but the bigger problems contributing to this
— like man-made climate change — are unlikely to reverse. And despite the risks, humans keep moving
into these areas. “Fires creeping real real close to
some residences up here.” "By 2050 another 645,000 houses will be built at areas at very high risk for wildfires." We have the opportunity to get out of the
way of wildfires, and let nature run its course. But will we? “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” If you don't look carefully though, you might miss what it's
advertising. It's this little thing and it's called: Juul, Juul, Juul looks more like a
flash drive or computer device but it is really another kind of e-cigarette. Since it launched in 2015 Juul has taken over about 70% of the
e-cigarette retail market share. It's now worth about 16 billion dollars. And that
success is often attributed to its sleek design, but the same features that make
Juul a well-engineered product also make it attractive to young people, many
of whom have never smoked before and that has people worried because devices
like Juul might be designed to help smokers get off cigarettes, but they're
also addicting a new generation to nicotine. So what makes this one 
e-cigarette so different from the rest? Answering that question starts with what
you see on the outside. Juul is an e-cigarette, but it really doesn't look
like one. It looks like a tech product and it's tiny. That allows smokers to get
a nicotine fix without having to worry about social stigma, but also allows
young users to consume nicotine inconspicuously without having to worry
about who sees them. Going to school having this in your pocket is a lot
better than having like something this big, that looks kind of like a lightsaber,
you know? You could kind of Juul anywhere in discreteness. That discreteness is a big shift for e-cigarettes. Since the first patent in
1930 designs haven't been very subtle. The first generation of e-cigarettes
mimicked the shape size and colors of traditional cigarettes, sometimes even
with a fake light-up tip. The second and third generations focused on larger and
more customizable devices, with longer battery life and big plumes of vapor. Then came the Juul, a stripped-down version with no buttons, no big plumes of
vapor, and no complex refilling or recharging and it comes in a variety of
bright colors that set it apart from other e-cigarettes. Which made it look
like a tech product that young people were already familiar with. That is why
people called Juul the "iPhone of e-cigs." And that similarity makes sense.
Juul's founders met at Stanford design school and one worked as a design
engineer at Apple. They created the first 
e-cigarette that looked more like a cool gadget and less like a drug delivery
device. This wasn't smoking or vaping, it was Juuling. Yeah like how grandma's have
iPhones now, it's kind of like normal. Kids have Juuls now, because it looks
so modern. We kind of trust modern stuff a little bit more, so we're like we
can use it we're not gonna have any trouble with it, because you can trust it. The tech aspect definitely helps people get introduced to it and then
once they're introduced to it they're staying, because they're
conditioned to like all these different products and then this is another
product and it's just another product until you're addicted to nicotine. And that is where it gets tricky. A 2017 study found that 25% of 15-24
year-olds recognize the Juul in a photo, but the majority of them didn't know
that it always contains nicotine. It's easy to trace that information gap. You
just have to look at the ads. When you look at Juul's marketing today you find
video testimonials from adult ex-smokers. My name is Lauren. My name is Brandy. My name is Carolyn. My name is Iman, I'm 38. But when Juul
first launched, their marketing looked a lot different. When you put those ads
alongside old cigarette ads, the similarities are pretty striking. Both marketed relaxation, sharing, travel, freedom, and sex appeal. It's now illegal
for cigarette brands to use these kinds of suggestive advertising themes, but for e-cigarette manufacturers who had products on the market before 2016, those strategies are still
unregulated. That's why a brand like Kandypens can be promoted in DJ Khaled
music videos, just like tobacco corporations used to pay stars to smoke
their cigarettes on screen. But compared to cigarettes, Juuls are a lot easier to
start using. Typical e-cigarettes have between six and thirty milligrams of
nicotine per milliliter of vape liquid. One Juul pod packs in 59 milligrams.
That's three times the nicotine levels permitted in the European Union, which is
why Juul isn't sold there. But here in the US, e-cigarettes don't have the
same restrictions even though we know that nicotine dependency can prime
developing brains for future substance abuse disorders. The company says that
Juul's nicotine content is about as much as a pack of cigarettes, though tobacco
experts say it's likely more than that. And Juuls have a patented system for
delivering that nicotine. Most e-cigarettes use a potent version of nicotine called
freebase that gives users a strong hit, but Juuls vaporize a liquid made from
nicotine salts. Those salts allow nicotine to be absorbed into the body at
about the same speed as regular cigarettes, much faster than most e-cigarettes. But unlike freebase nicotine which can be irritating, nicotine salt
goes down smoothly. So Juul packs a bigger nicotine dose into a much more
pleasant hit than most devices on the market and that has public health
officials worried because the US almost beat nicotine addiction among
kids. As cigarette smoking among those under 18 has fallen, the use of other
nicotine products and especially e-cigarettes has taken a drastic leap. In April, the FDA demanded that Juul submit documents on its marketing and research. A group of senators sent a letter asking Juul to stop using flavors and designs
that appeal to children and there are now three lawsuits alleging that Juul
contains too much nicotine. In response, to the concerns the makers of Juul
have pledged thirty million dollars to combat underage use. Merchandise and
marketing materials now have big warning labels on them and the company is
developing lower nicotine pods. The trouble is there's still a lot we don't
know about the long-term health impacts of e-cigarettes. Juul, like other
e-cigarettes might have set out to design a solution to a public health
problem, but in a lot of ways their product has created a new one. Night has fallen here in Hong Kong and
the city is coming alive, showing one of its most iconic aspects: the neon lights. Here in Hong Kong, neon lights makeup a
quintessential part of the visual culture and the aesthetic of the streets
here. During the Golden Age of neon the diffused glow of this cityscape was
enshrined in film, helping to form the unique Hong Kong cinematic style: dark,
dense, chaotic, futuristic, and illuminated by this soft glow of neon. This style
spread beyond Hong Kong, informing the aesthetics of Japanese comics and anime
like Ghost in the Shell, and popular American blockbusters like Blade Runner. But even though neon is woven into the
cultural fabric of this place these lights are quickly fading. So what are neon lights? And what place
do they have in Hong Kong's urban culture today? Let's go visit probably
the perfect person answer that question, the legendary Master Wu who is a neon
craftsman here in Hong Kong. Johnny. Nice to meet you. Thank you for letting us come by. Once a client sends him a design to work off of, Master Wu starts
by heating up a glass tube so that it's malleable and then he starts bending it
to form his design. Once he has the shape that he wants, he needs to put gas, neon
gas, into this glass tube. So he vacuums out all the air and uses a series of knobs and machines to
pump in a mixture of gas, mostly neon or argon. He seals on an electric unit that
will feed electrical current into this tube. Once he plugs this into an
electricity source, the gas in the tube responds and begins to glow different
colors depending on what gases he's used. The Golden Age for neon started around
the 1970s. This meant that neon lights were
everywhere. People were competing for the best neon lights, the best signs, and the
designs got really big and really sophisticated really fast. And then things started to change for the worse for neon. These signs look like they're neon, they're built in the aesthetic of neon, but they're
actually LEDs. See the difference? That's a neon. That is an LED. Way cheaper, way
more efficient, way easier to install. And while LED is easy to mass-produce, making
neon signs it's more of a craft. It takes significant time to master. But this is also a matter of city policy. The Hong Kong
government started raising safety concerns with these big neon signs,
especially the ones that hung over the street. They created safety codes and
started taking down signs that were in violation, which were quite a few. In
recent years thousands of signs have been taken down, slowly changing the
visual landscape of this city. Neon lights are slowly moving into the realm of cultural preservation. The West Kowloon cultural district has started
curating neon signs and documenting the stories behind them. And as for Master Wu,
even though neon lights are disappearing he still feels optimistic. A heinous crime has been committed at Vox. Somebody keeps drinking the single source
Ethiopian yirgacheffe coffee I bring to the office for myself. I rounded up five suspects from around the
office and fingerprinted them to see if I could find a match from a print
I found on my mug. Is fingerprint analysis reliable enough to
pin somebody to this unspeakable crime, and more importantly ... uhhhh ... how do you actually do
this? To help me figure out what the hell I’m
supposed to do I brought in an expert. My name is Peter Valentin. I'm an expert in crime scene reconstruction
and forensic science. A fingerprint is probably the most important
piece of information when we don't have a known connection between the victim and the
offender. We have to find something that people leave
at scenes relatively easily and something that is unique enough that finding it and
identifying what it is will lead us back to the person. In order to find a fingerprint investigators
will either use a physical component like a powder– So not cocoa powder? Cool cool cool. Or a series of chemicals that make a print
visible on a surface. Our fingerprints have ridges and furrows that
align to create unique, recognizable patterns. There is a what's called a loop right here,
you have ridges that are coming into the pattern and then coming back out. Here's another loop right here. There's arches, and there's whorls and those those three categories
alone comprise at least 95 percent of the fingerprints that are in the database. Everyone’s fingerprints have unique features
that differentiate them from everyone else’s. For instance this ridge splits into two here
and this ridge has a break in it. These patterns remain the same throughout
a person's lifetime, which makes them a powerful identification tool. My fingerprint is pretty easy to spot. The pattern looks like a 1998 Chrysler Sebring. Investigators rely on the characteristics
of a print to find a match using a method called ACE-V. First they analyze the print and the surface
it's on to see if it's viable for examination. This one’s great. This one, not so much. Then, they take the suitable print and compare
it against known fingerprints looking for points of similarities and differences. For example both these patterns are whorls
and bifurcate right here. Investigators look at these traits and try
to gauge if there’s enough points of comparison to declare it a match. Finally, a qualified peer reviews their conclusion
to verify the match. After using high tech software to analyze
the prints from my mug – I’m kidding this is just some stock footage I downloaded. I think I finally found a match. But, ok, even when it’s done by professionals...
how reliable is fingerprint analysis? It's a useful tool that obviously has
value, but I think it's problematic to overstate its value especially in a criminal justice
context. One accuracy study found that examiners made
false positive identifications in .1% of cases. Which means identifying a print as a match
when it’s not. That doesn’t sound too bad... unless you
happen to be one of those false positives. Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer from Oregon, was
one of those unlucky few. He was falsely accused of the 2004 Madrid
train bombing because the FBI made a false positive match with a partial print found
at the scene. Mayfield seemed like a good suspect to investigators
because he had recently converted to Islam and was the lawyer for a man who attempted
to join the Taliban, which in the wake of 9/11 were all red flags for the FBI. There was a bias that existed because once
they tentatively identified the unknown fingerprint as belonging to this individual who he was
and what his background was made the identification seem stronger than it actually was. He didn't have a valid passport. So it's a little implausible on the face of
it that he was handling a bag of detonators in Spain. Fingerprinting was so powerful that it just
sort of it trumped everything else. Mayfield was even given his own analyst who
examined the prints, and even they agreed that it was a match. That's an interesting thing about bias
because, you know, everybody's assumption is that the experts are biased toward the
side that they're working for. Here was a guy who was working for Mayfield
and yet he corroborated the evidence against him which turned out to be incorrect. The FBI released a 330-page report about where
their analysts went wrong, and it’s pretty much a case study in a lot of the potential
downfalls of fingerprinting. They cited things such as, ignoring differences between the prints, lack
of independent verification, the pressure of working on a high profile terrorism investigation,
and letting bias about the suspect affect their analysis. Their report summed it up by saying “in
any human endeavor, there is a potential for error.” You know I would suggest learning from history
and realizing that none of these things are going to be error free. So there's going to be mistakes and errors and
screw ups. But also evidence is inherently probabilistic. So even though it’s not a perfect tool,
until a more reliable technology emerges, law enforcement will continue to utilize fingerprint
analysis. And I won’t ever be fully certain of who
stole my coffee. Until I catch him on this new surveillance
camera that I installed. This is Eureka, Missouri, a city that floods
repeatedly. We’re talking catastrophic floods, twice
in less than two years. “Yet more rain and dangerous flooding are
affecting parts of the Midwest and South tonight.” “Take you across the Meramec River, notorious
for flooding very quickly.” “Towns like Eureka, and others, well they’re
in for a rough few days.” But, just 12 miles downstream is a town called
Valley Park. It stayed pretty dry thanks to a levee. A giant artificial embankment that surrounds
the city, designed to keep water out. Valley Park got their levee  largely because
the city was willing and able to pay for it. It kept their own town dry but here’s what
flooding looked like in neighboring towns, including Eureka, that didn’t have levees. “The valley Park levee withstood the water.” “That levee holding could be part of the
problem.” “They suspected the same levee that protected
Valley Park may have been to blame for devastating flooding in Fenton, Eureka, and Arnold.” Can a levee protect one town while making
flooding worse for others -- especially towns that can't afford a levee? A fluid mechanics lab, a 13-foot long model
of a river, and some adorable tiny houses will help us find out. People love levees. There’s about 100,000 miles of these embankments
across the US. Sometimes concrete, sometimes earthen for
centuries, we’ve built them between humans and rivers. We even write songs about them. But it turns out, even when levees are effective,
they can still be devastating. As far back as 1852, levees came with a very
important warning. Charles Ellet Jr. - a famed US civil engineer
- cautioned that levees confine rivers and cause them to "rise higher and flow faster." And relying on levees “encourages a false
security.” But he was largely ignored. Levees became the default for flood control
- mostly funded and constructed by local entities. Some riverside communities that could afford
it, built taller levees for more protection, while less fortunate neighbors dealt with
the devastating effects. To show you what we mean we went to the banks
of the Mississippi River. To a fluid mechanics lab, where a team of
engineers from the University of Minnesota built us this landscape model to test flood
scenarios. Overhead, a scanner collects 3D data to measure
exactly what’s happening. It’s a generic model of a river with no
levees. That means, when the water level increases,
it overflows. And spreads across the floodplain, often creating
important wetland habitat that’s home to a variety of species. Putting in levees cuts rivers off from this
land, destroying floodplains and wetlands. It allows people to convert these areas into
farmland or build houses on them. And while levees protect these communities
from flooding, they constrict the river into a narrow channel, making the water flow faster
and higher. That creates a bottleneck leading to additional
flooding upstream. If all the levees are the same height, both
sides should be about equally protected from the average flood. And if the river rises so much that the water
overtops the levee, then both sides should flood pretty equally. But let’s say, people on one side of the
river lobby for higher levees. Now, instead of both sides flooding, only
one floods. The side with the lower levees is at a clear
disadvantage. So what can people in flood zones do? We can't just pick up and move major cities. We need levees to protect places like these. There is an alternative. We could build levees farther back, so rivers
could still expand and create wetlands. These “setback levees” ease flooding on
both sides, rather than protecting one city at the expense of another. This approach is common in other parts of
the world - like Holland for example - but not in the U.S. Here, we tend to build levees right next to
rivers. Some communities that can afford to build
higher levees do so at the risk of others with little oversight. We do have the Army Corps of Engineers -- a
federal agency tasked with regulating a fraction of all levees. They have to ensure -- at least on paper -- that
federal levees won't dramatically raise local flood levels. But those engineering predictions don’t
always match reality. For instance, the Army Corps designed Valley
Park’s levee in the early 90s with data and software from that era. Engineers estimated the levee’s impact on
neighboring areas would be minimal. But by the time it was completed in 2005,
the region had grown significantly. More people had built alongside the river,
increasing the risk of flooding - which wasn’t considered in the original plan. While we don’t know the precise impact of
Valley Park’s levee on neighboring towns just yet, since the levee was built, the region
outside Valley Park has suffered two of the worst floods in its history. The Army Corps says they’ve done nothing
wrong, and that the levee meets all state and federal laws. But there’s a growing body of research that
shows levees push flooding onto surrounding communities that have lower levees or no
levees at all. Researchers measured water levels around 13
levees in the Midwest and found they all increased flooding -- some by over five feet. As the climate changes and cities push for
higher levees, flooding is only expected to get worse. Especially along the Mississippi River, which
is almost entirely lined with levees. Some of these embankments have been substantially
raised since their completion, against federal rules, making flooding worse across the river
and upstream. So, yes, we need some levees. But the system for regulating them is broken. Even though the science overwhelmingly  shows
that constructing higher levees makes flooding worse in the long-term. We keep building them taller, passing our
problems upstream. “A titanic fight over the future of the
Supreme Court...” “...Justice Anthony M Kennedy, announcing
he will retire...” “...The first issue that comes to mind is
Roe v. Wade...” “...Roe v. Wade is doomed.” Abortion has been a hot button issue for decades,
but President Trump is ready to tip the balance of the Supreme Court into one that could
reverse the historic decision that established a woman’s right to choose. Do you want the court, including
the justices that you will name, to overturn Roe v. Wade which includes, in fact states, a woman's right to abortion? "Well, if that would happen, because I am pro-life and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will
go back to the individual states.” Trump is right. And even though Roe v. Wade guarantees access
to abortion, states are already heavily involved in how easy, or difficult, it is to get one. States have always had a stake in abortion
rights. In their Roe v. Wade decision, the justices
ruled that a woman had the right to an abortion in the first and second trimester of pregnancy
and that the states had the right to ban abortions in the third and final trimester. But states also had limited powers to regulate
abortions. From 1989 to 2007 a series of Supreme Court
decisions granted states more and more regulatory power. Most importantly, Planned Parenthood v. Casey
replaced Roe v. Wade's "trimester framework" – moving to a new standard, that said that the state
couldn’t impose an "undue burden" on a woman seeking abortion.
But it didn’t clearly define what substantial obstacles to a women’s right to choose would
look like, or when a state was allowed to ban the procedure. So states that wanted to limit abortions
took advantage of the ambiguity. Since 1973 there are have been 1,193 state
level restrictions on abortion. And one-third of these have been enacted in the past 7 years.
Not all of these restrictions are based on medical science or evidence. Some states prohibit abortion based on gender
selection, and some mandate that a woman undergo an ultrasound and require
she be asked if she wants to see the fetus. In some parts of America, restrictions have
made abortion essentially inaccessible. Women in Rapid City, South Dakota, for example,
have to travel 318 miles to the closest abortion facility. And more than half of all american women live
in a state with four or more types of restrictions on abortion. If Roe v. Wade was overturned, each individual
state would decide the legality of abortion. A few states already have laws on the books that explicitly
protect abortion rights. And thirteen states have laws that would automatically
ban some or all abortions the minute that Roe v. Wade were overturned. And while abortion is largely considered
a partisan issue, most Americans, including a majority of Republicans,
don’t want to see the case completely overturned. If the Supreme Court reversed its decision
tomorrow, things could drastically change for some women.
But for women whose rights are already being whittled away, one restriction at a time,
the future may not look so different from the present. “What is at stake, is womens' freedom!” When you think of the street gang MS-13, what
do you see? Maybe, something like this. Or this. But what if I told you the typical MS-13 gang
member in the US actually looks like one of these young men on Facebook? They’re around 18 years old, they like selfies,
and memes about the Joker. And the young men in these photos have all
been charged with or convicted of horrific crimes. “The gang has committed 27 murders.” “Taking advantage of illegal immigrants.” MS-13 has become notorious for committing some brutal crimes. But, that’s not all we hear about them. “MS-13 takes advantage of glaring loopholes
in our immigration laws." “Violated our borders." “Let MS-13 all over our country.”
“Not with me, we’re taking them out by the thousands.” The Trump Administration has made MS-13 the most visible symbol of why the United States
needs tougher immigration policies -- especially as a reason to point a finger at Central American
immigrants. But, here’s the thing -- MS-13 was born
right here in the United States. In the 1980s, a US-backed war against the
Salvadoran rebels raged in El Salvador. Nearly a million Salvadorans escaped the violence
and fled to the US as undocumented immigrants. “There to protect themselves from American
gang violence, young Salvadorans formed MS-13.” This is 100 percent an American born gang. It comes out of the Salvadoran immigrant community
in Los Angeles. You know, a group of teenagers hanging out
smoking pot listening to rock music. They called themselves the “Stoners,”
later “Mara Salvatrucha,” and eventually, MS-13. At the time, they were mostly juvenile delinquents
involved in street crimes, who were stuffed into American jails. Eventually, in the 90s and early 2000s, the
US sent large numbers of convicted immigrants back to El Salvador. “Today 103 dangerous individuals are off
the streets and will no longer be a threat to those communities or the United States.” But the strategy of deporting the MS-13 problem
- didn’t quite succeed. “One of the most violent street gangs in the country, the gang is known as Mara Salvatrucha.” “What the FBI is now calling the most dangerous
gang in America.” “Violent criminals who represent a more
immediate threat to Americans here at home than terrorists.” MS-13 members eventually set up cliques on
the East Coast of the US, concentrated in the suburbs of Boston, DC, and Long Island. I've been reporting on Long Island for a year
and the MS-13 that I'm seeing on the ground there has almost nothing in common with the
MS-13 as portrayed by the government. For one, the Trump administration presents
MS-13 as a drug cartel. "They're drug smugglers." But that’s not really the case. MS-13 is not really involved with the international
drug trade. The MS-13 members that I've been following
are working after school jobs. They're living with their parents. They get around Long Island on bicycles because
they can't afford cars. It's not the kind of gang that you really
get any money from. MS-13 isn’t a highly organized criminal
group -- it doesn’t have a central leader or global ambitions. But it’s been classified as a  “transnational
criminal organization.” The Obama-era Treasury Department put the
group on a list of sanctioned organizations with groups like the Mexican Zetas and the
Japanese Yakuza. But... The organization doesn’t have that kind
of sophistication to really play with the major players. Yet MS-13 alarmism has persisted -- for decades. “MS-13 has the potential to be far more
dangerous than gangs like the Bloods and Crips.” “One of the fastest growing gangs in our
nation.” “It’s a fact MS-13 is the fastest growing
gang in the United States.” Even though MS-13 has stuck around, it’s
not actually growing. The estimates of MS-13 size in the U.S. have
kind of ping ponged between 5,000 and 10,000 for the last 10 to 15 years. There's no indication that we're seeing a
bigger surge of MS-13 than we'd seen in the past. But even based on the government’s rough
estimates, MS-13 accounts for a tiny fraction of street gang members in the US, which are
said to be about 1.4 million. Of that, the Crips, based primarily in Southern
California, have an estimated 35,000 members. Lesser known groups, like Chicago’s Gangster
Disciples, have about 50,000 members. But MS-13 is likely the gang we hear about
the most. Now, with Central American immigrants seeking
asylum at the US Border, the Trump administration has raised a new concern about MS-13 posing
as fake families. “The kids are being used by pawns. Those
are traffickers, those are smugglers, that is MS-13. Those are criminals, those are abusers.” In reality, out of over 30,000 families apprehended
at the border this fiscal year, only 200 were fake families and there’s no evidence to
tie any of them to MS-13. The administration has said that it is carrying
out aggressive immigration raids to pick up MS-13 members... “We are sending MS-13 out by the thousands." But they may actually be picking up the gang’s victims. The targets of MS-13 violence are the exact
same Salvadoran-American immigrants who are the targets of MS-13's recruitment. It can be hard to tell who’s really in the
gang and who’s just adopting gang style. Kids in high school will wear Chicago Bulls
t-shirts or will wear Nike Cortez sneakers. And that is a sign of the gang but it’s
also just a sign of a high school kid trying to look tough. It's the same thing you saw in the 90s, you
saw kids who would have like a blue bandana to try to act like Snoop Dogg, but that didn't
mean that they were Crips. If we're trying to send a message that we
don't want MS-13 in the U.S, but that message comes at the cost of hurting the exact same
people who MS-13 is victimizing, is that really the right way to go forward? For any policy to work, it’s worth keeping
the facts front and center. MS-13 is not invading the country. They’re neither a new phenomenon nor growing
in numbers. But they have committed acts of horrific violence,
mostly against other immigrants, in specific communities. And that -- is still an American problem. Check out that building with a hole in
it. Here in Hong Kong there are dragons
floating everywhere. You can't really see them, because you know they're dragons.
They actually live up in the mountains and they come down into the water and
when you block them from entering the water you end up really messing up your
luck. So they have accommodated this situation by putting holes in the
buildings so that the dragons can fly through. These are called dragon gates
and they are one of many examples of how Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese practice,
is affecting the skyline of Hong Kong. So Feng Shui is this ancient Chinese
belief, superstition. The basic idea is that there is good energy out there
floating around, good luck, good fortune called Qi and if you arrange your
physical environment in an optimal way, you can channel that good luck in the
best way and things will go good for you. This usually takes the form of like
furniture, interior design but here in Hong Kong, it has affected the skyline. Alright, first let's look at this HSBC
building. The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank was founded back in the days of pirates and
opium barons. First thing you'll notice is that it's nicely squared off, with the
mountains in the back and harbor in the front. This is really good composition for the Qi to flow. Not only is the lobby
elevated but it's also the escalators are at this angle. It's kind of a weird
looking angle. That's intentional as well, because it's actually meant to fend off
the bad luck as it's coming through this hole in the bottom of the building. And then of course the opposite is true; if you don't arrange your physical
environment in an optimal way, then bad luck will befall you. Right next door is
the Communist Bank of Red China. The developers of this building explicitly
ignored the Feng Shui masters who were concerned that the sharp angles of this
design would cut the good Qi and create bad luck for all of the surrounding
buildings. The people who thought this had their suspicions reinforced when
shortly after the building was complete, bad stuff started happening around it. Like to this neighboring building, which has been riddled with financial insecurity, corporate collapse, bankruptcies, since it's very beginning. And Feng Shui
masters have come out and cited the bad Feng Shui of the area as a major cause
for these events. Governor of Hong Kong at the time, whose house sits in the
shadow of this building, died of a fatal heart attack just one year after this
building was complete. So the HSBC building, in response, put up these
maintenance cranes that actually look like cannons and they're pointed right
at the Bank of China, in order to combat all of this bad luck that's coming from
this sharp building. When developers are designing and
putting up these buildings, they hire these Feng Shui consultants. They spend
millions of dollars on consultants who will give them advice and approve their
design decisions, to make sure that they're in keeping with good Feng Shui. Out here in Disneyland Hong Kong, the Feng Shui masters said that the entrance
was in a bad position for keeping good luck in the park. So they shifted the entrance by 12 degrees in order to create a blockade
from the good luck escaping the park and ruining the prosperity of this place. Feng Shui comes from China, mainland China, but during the Cultural Revolution
China kind of stamped out some of these old practices that they believed were
holding the society back. And Feng Shui fell victim to that, but Hong Kong at
that time was ruled by the British. It was a British colony, so it didn't fall
subject to that Cultural Revolution and Feng Shui was preserved in a very
mainstream way. Check out this building, it's the Hopewell Center. When this thing went up, people freaked out because it kind of looked like a candle or like a
smoking cigarette. They put a swimming pool on the top, in order to extinguish
the fire and make sure that it didn't mess with the good luck of the city. The government takes this stuff really seriously too. Between 2011 and 2016 they
paid out $1.1 million dollars in Feng Shui disturbance subsidies. This is paid
out to people who complain that new constructions disrupt their Fung Shui
and they get compensated by the government. So next time you are crossing
this harbor to look at these beautiful buildings, just remember that Feng Shui is at
is at play in Hong Kong's skyline. Imagine you get an email from Netflix saying
your account is suspended. It looks official, it even uses your name. But this email is not real. It’s a personalized, targeted hacking attempt,
called “spear phishing,” and it’s getting harder and harder to tell a real email from
a dangerous one. Cyber criminals aren’t just targeting random
individuals for credit card info. CEOs and big companies like Sony, Facebook
and Google have all been duped. And of course... The Russian government hackers penetrated
the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. Wikileaks just recently published a bunch
of these emails. And all it took was one phishing email. It was a pretty standard spear phishing attack. An employee at the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, known as the D-triple-C, got an email that looked like a Google Security
alert asking her to log-in and change her password. It looked legitimate, and that was the point. It was actually sent by Russian hackers. They installed malware that took screenshots
of what she was doing. And they tracked every key she typed. Once she went logged in to the DCCC’s network,
the Russians could, too. From there, they had access to all sorts of
documents: opposition research, field operation plans, bank accounts. They even installed malware into at least
nine other computers. One of those computers belonged to an employee
who also had access to the Democratic National Committee. Using the same methods as before, the Russians
were able to log in to the DNC network. Once inside, they stole thousands of emails
later released during the convention. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has announced she
will resign as head of the Democratic National Committee. It comes after those leaked DNC emails. All because of that one phishing email. The Russians also sent phishing emails to
76 people within the Clinton campaign, including campaign chairman John Podesta. This was the actual email he received — a
Google security notice telling him to click the link to change his password. His chief of staff thought the email seemed
fishy so she flagged it to the campaign’s IT staff. An IT staffer agreed it was suspect, and instructed
Podesta to change his password immediately. But in his haste, he wrote “legitimate”
when he meant to say “illegitimate” The rest is history. The ongoing dump of hacked emails from the
account of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. Every day a new batch, and the Clinton campaign
knows this could be a problem for them every day until election day. So how do you prevent this from happening
to you? Well first, take Clinton’s IT guy’s advice. Set-up two-factor authentication on everything
you can. But even that’s not a guaranteed safeguard. If you get an unexpected email, examine the
url closely. And just in case, don’t click the link in
the email and go to directly to the website instead. But you’re actually more likely to see that
phishing link on your phone. Not just in an email but in a text or messaging
app, too. 56% of people click on mobile phishing links. Ultimately, if you think something looks fishy,
don’t take the bait. "Offer a magnificent view 
of nature's greatest power display." Mount Mayon in the Philippines erupted in
January. It continued for over a month. In February, Mount Sinabung erupted in Indonesia. Here’s the ash cloud as seen from space. And in June an eruption in Guatemala killed
more than 100 people. Turns out this is pretty normal. On average, there are 10 to 20 volcanoes
erupting around the world at any given time. When you look at these on a map and add volcanoes that are not currently erupting, you'll start to see a pattern. Most are concentrated here, along the edges
of the Pacific Ocean. This region is known as the Ring of Fire,
a stretch of hundreds of volcanoes spanning 40,000 kilometers. It’s also where most of the earthquakes
and tsunamis in the world take place. This year alone, the region saw 4 eruptions
and 5 of the world's biggest earthquakes . The Ring of Fire is where some of history’s
most devastating natural disasters have happened and will continue to happen. "There are still some volcanoes around the world in various places. Do you know where they are? Here's a map, see if you can find some." Volcanoes have terrorized people for centuries. In the 1800s, explorers and scientists started
grouping them together. Take a look at this map from 1852. It has “the volcanic series of Australia”. And "the volcanic series of Japan and Kamchatka,
in Russia." In fact, the whole Ring of Fire is marked
here. Scientists recognized the belt of activity,
but it would take another 100 years until they agreed on what caused it. "That's right, it's a volcano. Well, you see what you and I are going to talk about today is the world under our feet." By the 1960s, most scientists concluded the
earth’s surface is made up of a series of tectonic plates that slowly move into and apart from each other. Take a look at the plates that make up the Pacific. Now look at where the eruptions and earthquakes
occur. The Ring of Fire is the result of these plates
crashing into each other. "One in Japan, that's right. Fujiyama. There's some others in the south Pacific. How about in our part of the world?" "Mexico." "That's right, there's several in Mexico." The plates in the Pacific
are moving faster than other plates around the world, adding stress where the plates interact. This plate is moving northwest, crashing into
the North American plate, which explains all the volcanoes here. Over in California, the Pacific plate is grinding
past the North American Plate -- where they meet is called the San Andreas Fault. The movement causes thousands of earthquakes
a year. A few of them are even large enough to cause
serious damage. Like the San Francisco-Oakland earthquake
in 1989, which killed 63 people and injured nearly 4,000. All these plate interactions are independent from each other. But when grouped together, they make up the
most seismically active region in the world. "Remember a little while ago an island blew up and disappeared?" "Oh yeah." "That was because of a volcano." The problem with the Ring of Fire is that
geologists can’t accurately predict when a volcano is going to erupt or an earthquake
will shake the ground. They can monitor tremors, gas emissions and
temperature changes around a volcano to estimate when it might erupt, but they can't be sure
of the exact timing or the severity. And those predictions get even weaker with earthquakes
which aren't preceded by any warning signs, so we can't even see them coming. One way scientists forecast the future
of these phenomena is by looking at the past -- take New Zealand for example: Earthquakes have occured on this fault line
every 500 to 1,000 years. There was a massive quake over 800 years ago
and another one around the 500 mark. So scientists now believe New Zealand is due
for mega quake. Over here in California, there is a 72% chance
of a major earthquake along northern section of the San Andreas faultline in the next 30 years. Parts of Japan have a 25% chance of a big
quake and Seattle could see one in the next 50 years that could impact 7 million people. In fact many countries along the Ring of Fire
will continue to be at risk for the foreseeable future. They can't get out of harm's way, but there
is something they can do about it. In 2011, an earthquake and a following tsunami,
killed 15,000 people and caused $300 billion in damages in Japan. But those numbers could’ve been a lot higher. See, Japan requires buildings be constructed
with anti-earthquake designs, like the one in this video. And it has an early warning system that stopped
high-speed trains, factory lines, and sent countrywide text alerts a full minute before
the tremor hit. While Japan’s precautions didn’t prevent
the disaster, they did save countless lives. The problem is, not every country in the Ring
of Fire is like Japan. Most of these countries have some form of
anti-earthquake building code, but the quality and implementation of these codes varies. And none of these countries have early warning
systems for earthquakes. In developing countries, funding these projects
can be a problem. But even richer countries aren’t taking
the risk seriously enough. California, Oregon, Washington. Some of
the most vulnerable states in the US, still don’t have a public early-warning system
in place. Because volcanoes and earthquakes continue
to be unpredictable threats, governments tend to treat them as a low priority. And that's what makes the Ring of Fire even
more dangerous. We know for certain that there will be more
natural disasters along this belt. What we don't know is if we'll be prepared
for them. "Future studies will surely improve the clarity with which scientists view the interior of the Earth and will help people accomodate their activities to these powerful, sometimes destructive, often beneficial, always fascinating neighbors. This is me in the middle of crossing one
of the weirdest borders I've ever crossed. It's this one. It divides China
from China. And it took me two hours to get through. This border is weird not
only because it separates the same country into two, but also because it has
an expiration date: July 1st 2047. Until then China has promised to stay out, to let Hong Kong be highly autonomous. Hence, the border. But the government of China doesn't really want to wait until 2047.
They're ready to start erasing this border now, making Hong Kong a proper
part of China and one of the ways they're doing that is this huge bridge. Yeah, I know this isn't really the best shot so here's a solution. The drone
doesn't even have a microphone, but even still I couldn't help but say, "take a
look at this bridge" as it was flying away. But seriously, take a look at this
bridge. China has unveiled the world's largest sea crossing bridge. It's 55 kilometers, that's 34 miles, it's the longest sea crossing in the world. The bridge connects Hong Kong with Macau and mainland China. I always call this
some sort of an umbilical cord between Hong Kong and China. That we want
something physical for you to register in your head that Hong Kong is part of
China. So this bridge and a bunch of other
recent developments in Hong Kong are bringing up a lot of questions of what
is Hong Kong? Who does it really belong to? And what happens when you erase a
border? it's June 4th which is the anniversary
of the Tiananmen Square massacre. There are hundreds of thousands of people here
in Tiananmen Square. In the history of communist China there has never been
anything like this. On June 4th, 1989, pro-democracy protesters were marching
on Beijing's Tiananmen Square calling for the end of a single-party rule in
China. They were then brutally massacred, hundreds were killed. "The troops have been firing indiscriminately." Marking the end of
any sort of widespread democracy movement in China. They've just turned
off all the lights in this park. Every year the residents of Hong Kong hold a
vigil to commemorate the people killed in that massacre. This is something
that's not allowed to mainland China, but in recent years this vigil has become
more personal to these people and that's because they are feeling a new level of
influence from China. But wait. Isn't hong Kong already a part of China? Technically yes, Hong Kong belongs to China but you sure wouldn't think so by looking at
this border that I'm at right now. Okay, I made it into China. I mean technically I was already in China, but now I'm like, really, in China. So how did it get like this? Britain and China fought a couple of wars over trade in the 1800s and Britain eventually took
over Hong Kong as a colony. At the time this was a mainly empty rocky, group of
islands in southern China. Under British rule, Hong Kong's population and economy
exploded and even though Hong Kong's population was mainly made up of
immigrants from China, it became a very different society than mainland China
which was undergoing a communist revolution. One of the treaties that
China and Britain signed said that Hong Kong would be a British colony for 99
years, which meant that the agreement would officially expire in 1997. As that expiration date drew nearer, China and Great Britain started to talk about what
this is gonna look like. Britain acknowledges that when the lease runs
out in 1997 on most of the territory, the whole of Hong Kong will revert to China. Let's finish talking about this stuff up there. If you go up to the 69th floor in
this building in the Chinese border city of Shenzhen, you'll find a life-size wax
sculpture of this moment in the mid '80s when the leaders from China and Great
Britain sat around and negotiated the terms of handing over Hong Kong to China. And they came to this agreement that Britain would give over Hong Kong
peacefully to China, under the condition that Hong Kong would be able to retain
its way of life, legal system, their economic system, freedom of speech
freedom of press, freedom of association, these are fundamental freedoms. Freedom of religious worship, these are fundamental freedoms. And they must continue. China agreed. They said they would let them be independent and govern themselves for 50
years while they kind of adjusted to Chinese rule. 50 years beyond 1997. And so
this was the agreement that they came to. It was called the "One country, two
systems" model and it was kind of unprecedented. Okay, let's head back to Hong Kong see ya
Margaret, see ya Deng. So even after Hong Kong was handed back to China in
1997, this border that I'm now biking to stuck around. It remained exactly how it
was and this border became highly symbolic of the fact that yes, this is
China, but it was kind of its own country at the same time. Governed with its own
values and its own system that is different than China, that is in
opposition to China in some ways. Perhaps the most overt symbol of Chinese
sovereignty is this army barracks behind me. It's the Chinese army. And so even
though these soldiers can't leave the barracks or do any sort of enforcement
activities within Hong Kong, they're still here in the central area of the
city and they serve as a very powerful symbol of the fact that this is Chinese
territory, this is Chinese sovereignty. But these soldiers won't be confined for
much longer. The borders around their barracks, as
well as this border of north, are quickly dissolving. China has committed to
respect Hong Kong's autonomy until 2047 and for the first decade after the
handover, they respected that promise. What you have to understand is that Hong
Kong was easily China's most economically productive city. In the early '90s right before the handover, this one city's economy was more than a
quarter of the size of China's entire economy and so it makes sense why China
would agree to these terms, to keep Hong Kong happy and economically free. But then things changed. Look at the explosive development of these Chinese
cities in recent years. These are China's mega cities. These cities eventually
eclipsed Hong Kong as the economic powerhouse of China. Shenzhen, this town
that shares the border with Hong Kong, is a perfect example of this. The place went
from a small fishing village of around 30,000 people to a super productive
economic powerhouse of over 10 million people in just a few decades. Hong Kong went from making up 27% of
Chinese GDP in the early '90s down to just 3% today. And suddenly Hong Kong, once the economic powerhouse of China and the
gateway to the West, became much less economically relevant. And soon the
Chinese government didn't have the same incentives to respect Hong Kong's
autonomy. So now you begin to see a flood of Chinese influence in this city. Let's go see if we can catch the 5 o'clock news. In recent years the evening news
broadcast has started with the national anthem of China, playing under a promo
video that shows Hong Kongers enthusiastically participating in
traditional Chinese customs. The message is very clear: that Hong Kong is a part
of China whether they like it or not. On top of that, the language of the evening
news is Mandarin, the official language of China. But in Hong Kong they don't
speak Mandarin, they speak Cantonese. Don't they say if you want to kill a city you kill
its language first. And we speak Cantonese here. They're actually some
professors in Hong Kong and China telling us that "Oh, Cantonese is
actually not our mother tongue, not Hong Kong's mother tongue." Cantonese is actually just a dialect of Chinese. The Chinese government
tried to get teachers to use this text book to teach Hong Kong children the
basics about China, but looking into the book you see that it's more of an
advertisement for China's style of government, than an introduction to it. The Chinese system is the ideal type. So multi-party rivalry will makes the
people suffer, because about... all these four points are about how bad the United
States is. Multi-party systems create government shutdowns. They're basically
pointing to that as the reason why a multi-party system like that of the
United States is deeply flawed and really bad for the people. In 2014 China
took it one step too far. The Chinese government was trying to control
who could run for Hong Kong's election, in an effort to secure a pro-China
candidate. This really touched a nerve for the locals because this was their
democratic process, something that China promised they would stay out of. So people immediately took to the streets in protest starting here in this park. I took the taxi from my home to here on
the night. What was it like down here that night? We were in a standoffish situation. And suddenly they used tear gas. The first drop of tear gas just dropped right in front of my eyes. We were holding umbrellas, trying to prevent pepper sprays. I remember that, like, itchy painful feeling. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I saw Hong Kong people
joining, uniting together against the central governments and fighting for
their rights. This protest and the subsequent movement that came up around
it is known as the "Umbrella Movement." You would say, "Oh, what's the point of
fighting when you're bound to lose? They're so big, you're so small." For the record, we need to fight. We're not taking things lying down. The protest didn't change the
Chinese government's mind and it didn't immediately change anything in Hong Kong, but this spectacle of young people rising up to defend their rights from
the central government of China did spark a political awakening among the
many in the city who had never before paid attention. I think post-Umbrella Movement was the first time that the middle class came out and voted in droves. And voted for the opposition force. But for the first time like, you know, people sort of like us all started caring. Look at
this graph that shows how Hong Kongers identify themselves, either as Chinese or
Hong Konger. In the early days after the hand-off, as China respected the
One party two systems arrangement, you can see how Hong Kongers slowly became more
and more comfortable identifying themselves as Chinese. But since then,
with the growing influence from the Chinese government, you can see this line
reverse course. Residents of Hong Kong who identify themselves as Chinese has
almost hit a new all-time low. The Umbrella Movement
is a manifestation of this growing Hong Kong identity and the resistance to
Chinese government influence. China responded to the Umbrella Movement with
a new wave of efforts to exert influence in this city. I'm standing outside the
bookstore where in 2015 five staff members disappeared
throughout the year. This bookstore was selling books that were banned in China,
that basically cover the sex lives and the corruption scandals of high-ranking
Chinese officials and so one by one throughout 2015, people who worked in this bookstore disappeared. No one really knows where they went. One of
them showed up a bit later on Chinese television apologizing for what he did. And confessing to his crimes. The book store has since closed down. Back here in Victoria Park these
candleholders stand as a symbol of the fight for democracy against China's
single party rule. That was once a fight that happened far away in Beijing, but as
this border has slowly been erased these people now find themselves engaged in
that same fight. Resisting a much more powerful China in the struggle for their
own democracy and identity. When Gustav Mahler was still alive in
the early 1900s, you see these caricatures of him and
it's crazy gestures his arms are up he's jumping up and down on the podium,
extremely large gestures. At the same time Richard Strauss another composer
living in the same city basically was conducting his own music like this. You know, barely moving and if you think this is a quiet part in his music you're
wrong. He thought the role of a conductor was to organize the music and keep
everything calm. Our biggest job as a conductor, it's to do justice to the
composer. My name is James Gaffigan I am a conductor. What the public needs to
understand about conducting is it's an anticipatory art, so what we do takes
place before the music happens. Rhythmic hand goes up before the music starts and
this hand will give a gesture before that sound. I've always found it strange to hold a baton and it's a very strange thing,
because why why is it there in the first place? But the fact of the matter is is
it is an extension of your arm. If you just make a gesture like this, you just
need to move your wrist and you don't have to be doing this all the time. Your right hand is mainly for keeping rhythm or keeping the beat patterns, so if you
give an upbeat this is 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. If you have 2 4, it's very simple so 1 2
1 2 and you could be as small as this they'll realize that this is 2 4. From the left hand has a much more complex, strange role in our physical world and
it's freer to do things that are out of the
ordinary. It could be anything from showing where a phrase goes, it could show speed of a bow. String players are very physical in the sense
that they they react to what they see. If you have your left hand open and if you
have your right hand slightly open and you're holding this sound like as if
you'd hold a baby they'll play that way. If you conduct like this they're gonna play like this. Percussion needs clarity
from a conductor. They need to know where to hit something and the bass drum could
play only one note in an hour-long symphony, but that note is very important. The worst thing you could do to a brass
player before he or she plays is this. Because if they see the hand before they
have to make the beautiful sound that they need to make it's gonna destroy
their confidence and it's gonna make their lives very difficult. Playing the French Horn, there's so much that person needs to think about and it's such a
delicate instrument, such a delicate moment. Leonard Bernstein was one of the
greatest musicians who who had ever lived, not just as a conductor but as a
pianist and as a composer. He was able to educate not just adults but children. Of
course when you watch him, he's always dancing and he can't he can't help
moving around the podium and his rhythm is contagious. Karajan believed in beautiful sound, upholstered sound, luxurious sound. So if
you hear some of the great recordings of Karajan, it's not always together at
these crucial moments but there's a beauty of sound always from beginning to
end. I mean he had his eyes closed half the
time and everything was he was just holding this precious thing all the time
and crouched over. Carlos Kleiber was all you know, he was holding a magic wand. He was fantasy, pure fantasy. He would make beautiful story lines to pieces
that didn't have story lines. He was all about this gesture and these beautiful
sweeping gestures. I don't believe in jumping around during a Bruckner
symphony, I think there's something sacred and it's unnecessary. I do believe
in having a great time with jazz music and music that swings. You should make
the audience want to dance although you shouldn't be a circus act. I think people
should focus on the music and not the conductor you This road might not look like anything special. But what if I showed you the same road, a
few years earlier —notice anything different? Here’s a better angle of that:
The old road has 4 lanes for traffic. The new one has two. And now there’s this middle lane for left
hand turns. There’s also a new bike lane. This is what transportation planners call
a road diet. And it’s a very popular to make the roads
safer. Over the course of the 20th century, four
lane roads became an American institution. It started with the release of Ford’s model-T
in 1908. A few decades later, there was one car for
every two households in the states. By the 1960s, many roads became so busy, that
traffic engineers had to figure out how to add capacity. So, they added lanes. A lot of pavement was getting put on the ground. Even where maybe when the population and traffic
volumes weren’t so high that we needed that pavement. But we wanted that pavement. Sometimes your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Fast forward to the present day and we’re
left some overbuilt roads that are pretty unsafe. And crash reduction is a major benefit that
planners can achieve with just a bit a paint. Four lane roads have quite a few conflict
points -- these are places where accidents could happen. These ones represent merging accidents. These are rear ends, and there are multiple
left turn crash scenarios. Now look at what a 3 lane reconfiguration
does — There are far fewer crash points. A road diet can also make left turns suck
way less. The shared middle lane takes left turners
out of the traffic flow, so they won’t hold up drivers who want to continue through. And now, left turners will only have to cross
1 lane of traffic instead of 2, which will eliminate broadside accidents. And the benefits don't end there. By slimming each lane in the road, the road
diet reduced the travel speed by almost 7 miles per hour. Narrower lanes can cause that psychological
impact on the driver to slow down a bit. And while a 6 mile an hour difference in speed
may seem modest, it can make an auto accident much less deadly ...
Narrower lanes also leave more space for expanded sidewalks or bike lanes. your pedestrians will feel safer. It might’ve given you more green space to
separate from your vehicles. And your bicyclists might have a dedicated
space to ride. In the midst of these changes, the number
of traffic lanes has gone from 2 to 1. So if you drive a car, you might assume that
the tradeoff of a road diet would be congestion... How could traffic *not* increase? That’s usually their concern before a road
diet is implemented. That’s not what happens. The volume of the roadway is still sustained. We wouldn’t want to put a 4 to 3 conversion
on a piece of roadway that would then push half your traffic somewhere else. And what we found in a couple of places, it
actually makes moving through town easier. But traffic flow is only one part of the equation
— you’ve got to also balance commercial and safety benefits too. especially if this is through an urban corridor
where you’ve got businesses, coffeeshops, it works. it keeps people moving, it doesn’t take
traffic away from that corridor, and it reduces those rear-ends that thendo stop the road. Iowa is conducting this road survey because
so far, the plan has worked *really* well for them. A study of 15 streets in the state saw a crash
reduction rate of nearly 50%. At the same time, the diet didn’t substantially
disrupt other activities along their corridors. A key factor was the traffic volume, measured
by engineers as ‘Annual Average Daily Traffic’. Most road diets will run into problems as
you approach that 15,000 vehicles number. In Iowa, many roads don’t get that much
traffic. The same could not be said for the suburban
contexts in California. A study comparing road diets in Iowa to corridors
in California showed that California’s streets average about double the amount of daily traffic. The same kinds of road diets resulted in a
17% crash rate reduction -- significantly lower than the reductions in Iowa. This is not to say that the road diets in
California are an outright failure. It’s just a difference *context* for the
road diet. And the success of a road diet is driven by
so many other factors -- economic impact, land use, or level of service to name a few. What works in Iowa may not be the right fit
for California, and vice versa. So the case for road diets is pretty clear:
they do slow streets down and they do reduce crashes. But whether or not that’s worth the trouble
depends very much on the context of the world that surrounds the road. I'm in China, but
it certainly feels like I'm in Great Britain. Hong Kong, under British rule, has grown a
modern western city in an eastern setting. And right in the center of downtown Hong
Kong are the British Cricket Club grounds. Cricket has been played on these grounds
since 1880. Hong Kong is a peculiar place. It's a British colony until just 1997 and because of that the British culture here
is so visible. This ferry was set up by the British in  1888. Day and night the 5 star ferry comes and
goes, providing core harbor transportation. These trams, brought over by the British in the early 1900s. If you go to London you'll see double-decker buses
that actually look exactly like the buses here. Do you notice what side of the road they're driving on? So many of the street names,
road names, are British. The famous Happy Valley racetrack, reputedly the
most beautiful in the east. Rolling through this park and I stumbled
upon a legit bowling green, a place where they play bowls. Old, old, old, British sport. That is just right here in the middle of Hong Kong. The British brought good administration and a gracious way of living. Typified by these homes and apartments on Victoria Peak. Around the late 1600s, early 1700s,
Britain started trading with China. China had all sorts of stuff that
the West wanted; porcelain, silk. But there was one thing that Britain loved more
than anything else: the herb called tea. China was really the only place on earth
that was producing tea on a massive scale and the people back in Britain
became totally hooked on it. But there was one snag for the British government when
it came to the tea trade, which is that the Chinese emperor would only take pure
silver bullion, basically coins and like bars of silver, in exchange for tea. That
was the deal and the British were fine with that, they were like whatever man,
we'll pay for this, it's such a valuable thing. Eventually britain's treasury ran really
low on silver and it became a national crisis so Britain came up with a
horribly unethical solution to their tea silver problem. They started smuggling in opium, the highly addictive narcotic that was
illegal in China. Britain would sell this opium in exchange for Chinese
silver, which they then used to buy tea and this was the solution to their
problem: an illegal drug trade, which is just mind-blowing to me. Eventually, the Chinese government
caught on to this illegal drug trade and they cracked down. They seized all the
opium and threw twenty thousand chests of opium into the sea. Britain wasn't happy about China seizing all of its opium, so it showed up
with its big gunboats and started a war, the Opium Wars. They eventually negotiated a series of peace deals and a part of those deals was that
China was going to give this rocky island that didn't really have many
people living on it, to Britain. In the text of the treaty they put that the
British will have Hong Kong for 99 years, but the diplomat who negotiated the
treaty said later that in his mind ninety-nine years was quote "as good as
forever." Meaning no intention of ever giving
it back. So Britain's thirst for tea brought them into a war with China that
eventually gave them a new colony: Hong Kong, here in Asia. Hong Kong a British
colony, a tourist paradise for duty-free shoppers. China, communist China, lies only
a few miles away just across the border. Just walked into the grocery store to
meet Billy, who's a historian here and we're just looking at a bunch of maps, which is
like my kind of activity. So one of the things the British did as
soon as they got here, is they started drawing their own borders in the city to
divide them from the local Chinese. Now let's talk about tea again. It remains a symbol as to the different cultures that exist here in Hong Kong.
British influence versus the Chinese influence. The British prefer milk in their tea
with crumpets and scones and little cakes. Whereas the Chinese will tell you
they do not pervert their tea with milk and they drink tea with dim sum, little
buns and cakes. A British tea situation looks very
different. These two traditions played out side-by-side in the city for many
years. in a divided way with the Chinese down in their crowded slums drinking
their tea in their tea houses and the British up on the hills in their
aristocratic homes sipping their milk tea, but eventually
over time those boundaries dissolved and the two cultures started to blend and
fuse together. To where today, the tea culture has cropped up that is a perfect
fusion of the two. But I hate to break it to you Britain, 99
years is not forever like the British diplomat thought it was going to be. The actual handover ceremony is about to start. British role officially comes to an end with a handover ceremony just before
midnight. A five star flag of China, soon to be sovereign over Hong Kong again. I should like on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen and of the entire British
people to express our thanks, admiration, affection, and good wishes to all the
people of Hong Kong. The stroke of midnight, the red star flag of China will
go up. For me, it was pure betrayal. We're, like, being abandoned by the Brits. There was pride in this mix of like the Chinese values and I guess are the western values. An identity of a citizen is not, like, determined by your passport
something. It's something that you treasure, the culture we are living in. We feel lost in our identity. Our generation has very complicated identities. Britain giving Hong Kong back to China
is the beginning of a new chapter for the city and so next week I'm going to
explain what happens when China tries to erase this border between Hong Kong and
Mainland China and how the people here are resisting. This was one of the most surreal days I have
ever seen in American politics. Donald Trump meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir
Putin the President of Russia, just days after indictments were announced
against Russian hackers operating under the orders of the Russian government to interfere
in the 2016 election. The defendants worked for two units of the main intelligence directorate of the Russian General Staff, known as the GRU. And so how did Donald Trump play it? At this moment of intense national concern
and anger. What did he say to Vladimir Putin? “I will tell you that President Putin was
extremely strong and powerful in his denial today." It isn't just that Donald Trump's critics
were angry. Perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president. But if you look at Donald Trump's supporters, they were angry too. This was the time and the place for the president to look Putin squarely in the eye and say "You will be punished for what you did in 2016 and don't ever think about doing that again." "But he didn't." "He didn't, and that's what made it disgusting. That's what made his performance disgusting." "He basically said he didn't buy what his own intelligence community was telling him." "This was clearly not his best performance." We are in an odd place as a country. We are seeing something happen slowly, unfold
slowly, be revealed slowly, and none of us know the full story. People keep waiting for the magic piece
of information. And in fact I think that the constant obsessive
focus on what we don't know – "Nobody knows what was said privately between them." "You gotta wonder, is he hoping that Putin is going to help him out again, as he did in 2016?" has done too much to distract from how much
at this point we really do know. The connections between the Trump Organization
and Donald Trump himself and Russia and Vladimir Putin, they go back and they go forwards. Donald Trump Jr. said said,
"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of
our assets." And then in 2014 Eric Trump added, "We don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia." We know there are huge numbers of all-cash purchases for Trump properties. More than $100,000,000 worth. Again, all cash from Russians between 2003 and 2017. So there were deep financial ties between
the Trump Organization and Russia even before Donald Trump ran for president but then Donald
Trump ran for president. I am officially running for President of the United States and we are going to make our country great again. We know that Donald Trump repeatedly praised
Vladimir Putin throughout the election. Putin said some very good things about me People say, "Oh, Trump is going to be weak with Putin" because he said some nice things about me. Okay. I think when he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment, okay? We know that during all this Donald Trump
got up on a stage and asked for Russia's help getting Hillary Clinton's deleted e-mails “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re
able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” And we know from Bob Mueller's investigation
that the very same day Donald Trump did that, Russia actually did try to hack into Hillary
Clinton's e-mails. Units engaged in active cyber-operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. We know the Russians directly reached out
to Trump's inner circle saying hey we've got dirt on Hillary Clinton, do you want it? And the inner circle said yes. We know a lot. And we know it didn't end when Donald Trump
became president, because he said it, that he fired James
Comey the head of the FBI, to stop his investigation into Russia. "When I decided to just do it," I said to myself I said, "You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse." We know that he has again and again and again
said that he wishes he'd never made Jeff Sessions Attorney General "Well, Sessions should have never recused himself. And if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would pick somebody else." Here's a crazy thing about all this. As much wrongdoing as has clearly been committed, it isn't clear anything illegal has been done, by Trump himself anyway, obviously people around Trump have already gone to jail. What we're doing now is we're sitting amidst
all of this knowledge about whether or not our elections are actually secure, about whether our president
is acting in our best interests or his own. Despite all this coming out, who is going
to act and what are they going to do? "How many times have I stood up here and told you what I think about Vladimir Putin? Vladimir Putin does not share our interests, Vladimir Putin does not share our values." Republicans in Congress, their entire political
future depends on Donald Trump's strength. We know that Russia and the Trump campaign, whether publicly or privately explicitly or implicitly, coordinated together. We keep pretending here that the problem is
that we don't have enough information. We have plenty of information. The problems that we
don't know what to do with it. "Thank you very much." It ranges from elaborate murals ... to crude scribbles on bathroom walls. Leaving your name, or “tag,” on things
that aren’t yours is an age-old practice in bragging rights – just to say, “I was
here.” And the more intricate the tag or more challenging
the spot, the better. But, this story isn’t about the type of
tag you’ve probably seen. It’s about this one. The tag of the hobo. “Hobos,” or “tramps,” were workers
and wanderers that once roamed the countryside by illegally hopping freight trains. Peak Hobodom in America began in the 1890s,
continued through the 1930s, and usually coincided with periods of financial crisis and mass
unemployment. Around the same time, the expansion of the
railroad opened up new work opportunities in the West. This kind of classic late 19th century hobo
was someone who kind of navigated between jobs and not having jobs. You know, a lot of these jobs are temporary,
like seasonal agricultural work, or you know, “Thanks for building the bridge, now get
out of here.” I’m Bill Daniel, I’m a photographer – I
work in film, photo, and tall tales. By 1911, the number of hobos in America was
estimated at 700,000. Being on the road wasn’t easy. Hobos were unwelcome in many towns and were
constantly chased by both local police and private railroad police. And despite their reputation for being bums,
100 years ago, a skilled hobo was called a “professional,” or, “profesh.” So a profesh is someone who’s, like, good
at what they do, they’re able to not get caught by the law, and you know, leave the
camp clean for the next guy. And maybe most importantly, they didn’t
draw attention to wherever hobos were. A profesh, you know, does not blow up the
spot. Hobos were constantly on the move, but they
found a way to communicate with each other — through graffiti. Search “hobo graffiti” online, and you’ll
find these mysterious icons that hobos supposedly used as a sort of coded graphic language. Symbols that they would scratch or draw onto
houses and fence posts to let fellow wanderers know things like “kind lady lives here,”
“there are thieves about,” or “good place for a handout.” Stories surrounding these signs have been
circulating for a long time. Tramps have a sort of touch-and-go code. This sign, for instance, means “no good.” They show up in the original hobo literature,
too. Like in the books of Leon Ray Livingston,
also known as A-No. 1, once the world’s most famous hobo. In the early 20th century, A-No. 1 published
several books about hobo life and lore, and included symbols like these. And news articles at the time even claim to
decode the “secret hobo language.” This St. Louis Star article from 1921 even
includes illustrations of how the signs were supposedly being used. The problem is, all this information came
from hobos, a group that took pride in their elusiveness and embellished storytelling. The truth is, there really isn’t any evidence
that these signs were as widely used as the literature suggests. It’s hard for us to know what the facts
were because I think hobos used their mythology as kind of a cover. And so the tall tales, and the drawings, and
even the books by A-No. 1 were ways to project an image of themselves that both kind of,
like, blew them up, but also kind of kept them hidden. Hobo graffiti was actually rooted in a graphic
representation of their road persona, called a “moniker.” Any hobo has a moniker that rides the rails. And different monikers fit different ’bos. Monikers usually said something about the
person. Where they were from. A physical trait. If they were young or old. How hobos used their monikers sort of falls
into two camps: leaving their tag on boxcars moving across the country, and something Bill
calls “tramp writing.” Early original tramp writing has to do with
addressing the issues of mobility and travel – announcing your place and direction and
where you are. The original graffiti included arrows and
letters indicating which direction that hobo was heading next. Sort of like a hobo tracker. Tramps are generally making these marks on
water tanks or stationary things, you know, where they were camped out. So it worked as kind of a personal telegraph. You know, like, “I’m here, is anybody
around?” Tinder for tramps. And it wasn’t long before the drawings moved
from stationary objects like water tanks to railcars. I think there was just an evolution, kind
of like what happened in New York, with, like, “Oh I can write on my street corner, but
if I write on this train, boom it’s going everywhere.” And hobos weren’t the only ones doing this
kind of graffiti. Rail workers, stuck in the same trainyard
for years, marked passing boxcars with monikers of their own. I started doing it October of ‘68. A lot of them guys would go on vacation, and
they’d say, “Well I seen one of your damn drawings in Canada, or Mexico, or California,
you know? I thought well, I’ll never get there, might
as well send something. Monikers aren’t used for communication anymore,
but they do still exist in freight graffiti. And it’s kind of come to mean specifically
this type of drawing. You know, usually oil stick or chalk-based
drawing that’s usually an identity proclamation, usually a sketch, a lot of times a self portrait. “Moniker” just kind of is the perfect
word to describe this type of art writing. At its core, all graffiti is a messaging system,
even if the message is as simple as “I was here.” Tramp writing, you know, tramp marking, has
that in common with graffiti that it has a little bit to do with making a connection
with somebody in a really remote place, even when they’re not there. Just this ability to say, like, “Whoa, you
got here too.” This is a landfill. The world generates over a billion tons of garbage each year. That's over 3 million tons of garbage in a single day. But a large majority of it doesn't even make it to a landfill because it's chemically unstable. 400 million tons of our yearly waste is considered hazardous and is frequently burned up. The U.S. released eight hundred and eighty thousand tons of CO2 emissions in 2016 alone. In fact, a lot of the hazardous products that get sent to the incinerator like aerosol cans, paint, and bleach have barely been used. If a product is dented or sticky often a retailer can't --or won't-- sell them. They just get thrown away. And the disposal of these products can have a pretty disastrous effect on the environment So, what are we doing to prevent this needless pollution? Among household items, substances are considered hazardous if they're toxic, corrosive, reactive, or flammable. So pretty much anything you keep under the kitchen sink. When a retailer or municipality needs to dispose of these materials, strict guidelines, imposed by the EPA, state that they can't just be thrown away in a landfill. One reason for this is because landfills are outside and susceptible to weather Rain, snow, or other precipitation can seep in, mix with, or dissolve hazardous waste and become contaminated. This contaminated water, called leachate, continues to seep into the earth, eventually making it into the water cycle. In an effort to prevent this, we send hazardous waste to an incinerator--but, that really isn't a great option either. Though incinerators are equipped with pollution control devices, pollutants from hazardous wastes can be difficult to remove. Molecules can still enter the air and form new, more harmful substances and, like leachate from landfills, find their way into the water cycle. But what if we could prevent these materials from becoming waste in the first place? That's where the folks at smarter sorting come in. "Smarter Sorting's machine learning technology is creating the first smart chemical database that will empower chemical conservation around the world." That's Chris Wrigley, CEO and founder of Smarter Sorting. But, what is it and how does it work? "What Smart Sorting does is it takes two high-resolution pictures of an item. It weighs it, takes its barcode, and it assembles a complete data record of everything that's in the chemical." Which is pretty cool when you consider how broad the spectrum of hazardous materials really is. Remember those barely used, dented, or sticky containers? With this new information, disposal facilities and retailers can identify reusable products and divert them away from the incinerator. Perfectly good items that are still usable are sent to restore centers for secondhand purchase. "Our vision is to do better things with orphan items. We're gonna help retailers and municipalities put these items to use for the purpose in which they were intended." And we're already seeing the results. Tens of thousands of pounds of materials have been saved from incinerators thanks to Smarter Sorting. That's great news. But, as of now, the world is still on pace to almost double its waste production by the year 2025. That means we'll need to sort a lot more waste. And it starts with the products we bring home. So on your next grocery run pick out the dented or sticky containers to put under your sink So they don't just get thrown away. After all, the best way to prevent needless waste is to never let it become waste in the first place. This is the Guimaras oil spill of 2006 and
it's the worst of its kind in the Philippine's history. More than 130
thousand gallons of bunker oil gushed into the Panay Gulf. In an attempt to contain the spill locals turn to an unconventional method: these
freaky-looking sausage things are all filled with synthetic materials
fabricated in a lab. It's also organic stuff you can find on most continents
and probably in your shower drain. It's human hair. After the Exxon Valdez oil
spill in Alaska Phil McCroy, a hair stylist in Alabama, had a novel idea for
the cleanup effort. On TV he noticed how a sea otter's fur had become saturated with
oil and thought if that's what oil would do to an otter's fur, then the same must
be true for human hair. He took scraps of hair trimmings from
work, stuffed them into his wife's pantyhose and tested his new invention
in a small spill he created at his house. NASA's studied and confirmed Phil's
invention worked. I called every hair stylist in Alabama 'til I found him. He said that his garage was full of hair being donated from salons all over the
place, but he'd never been able to make a business out of it and so from like
about 2000, 2001 we were partners. They teamed up on the Clean Wave program. It
collects donated hair, fur, feathers, and other fibers to make recycled felted
mats and hair booms that can mop up oil spills. Turns out hair is pretty good at cleaning up oil. It repels water and can
collect contaminants. Water goes into a sponge and it blows up and that's called
absorbent but oil coats hair on the outside so like it's called adsorbent. Hair is also natural, cheap, and renewable which makes it an ideal material for
cleaning up oil spills. Making a hair boom is pretty straightforward. All you need is human hair and pantyhose. Take the hair, stuff it into the hose, and
voilà. After getting over the freaky feeling of
handling someone else's clumped up hair, place it into contaminated water and
watch the hair boom do its thing. There's little diesel spills all the
time, so like every little harbor can use that stuff. You know, it was a great way
to just kind of string from dock to dock and kind of protect your private beaches. But hair booms and hair mats haven't been the principal method to clean major
oil spills. They weren't used extensively in the aftermath of the Deepwater
Horizon spill, where over the course of 87 days 134 million gallons of oil
gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, crews used 1.8 million gallons of
chemical dispersants, oil skimmers, fire, and booms and barriers made of synthetic
material to clean up the mess. With oil spills, time is of the essence. The longer oil is in the ocean the harder it is to retrieve. The immediate
ecological impact of oil spills is obvious. It kills marine wildlife and
destroys habitats and breeding grounds. The chemicals used to clean up oil
spills also pose a danger to human health. As of now, hair booms and hair
mats are not the primary tools used to contain oil spills, but possibly one day
they could be. It was very interesting for us to see the public desire to help. There's so many hair salons in every city and billions more people
with hair to spare. So it's not out of the realm of possibilities that help for
the next oil spill maybe just one snip away. “Outrage outside a detention
center in New Jersey today.” “The disturbing images of
children being torn from their parents were troubling enough.” “The Trump administration is
reportedly weighing their options of housing immigrant children at military bases” How did the United States get here? In the last 15 years, America has taken in
more refugees than anywhere else in the world. A fraction of those refugees, asylum seekers,
have grown in recent years to the point of overwhelming the current system, and now the
country is at a tipping point. The legal definition of a refugee is someone
who isn’t able to live safely in their home country, or has a really strong reason to
fear that they won’t be safe if they stay. Persecution that is racial, religious, political
or national — or targeting what's called "a particular social group.” Someone who's been persecuted can apply
for refugee status in their home country or in the first country that they flee to. Where they might apply in a refugee camp
for example. An asylee is a refugee. It’s just that, they’ve already arrived
at another country, like the United States, and fear going home. Here’s how it works: Asylum seekers must fill out the i-589 application,
a 12 page form If that sounds complicated for someone fleeing
an oppressive homeland, don’t worry — there’s a 14 page instruction booklet to help. Both the form and the instructions are only
available in english. And the i-589 has to be filled out in english,
or it’ll get sent back. Not every asylum seeker necessarily
understands the process, or has the resources to kind of go about it exactly the right ways. Customs & Border Protection itself has been accepting very few people in recent weeks who are presenting themselves for asylum. So people are waiting to be allowed to set foot
in the U.S. and claim asylum for you know two weeks on bridges in Ciudad Juarez in the
heat of summer. At a certain point it starts to seem like
a safer option to go in between ports of entry and risk breaking the law. If someone enters the United States without
papers, they can’t even file an asylum application until they convince the government — in
person — that they’re in danger at home. This is called “credible fear.” They’re detained and given at least 48 hours
before their credible fear interview, but asylees often must wait much longer. If the fear isn’t deemed “credible,”
an asylum seeker can be deported pretty much immediately, unless they file an appeal. If that fear is deemed credible, or the appeal
is successful, they wait for a judge to review their application. Yeah, this is where the process gets
very complicated depending on the circumstances of the case. An asylee might have a judge sympathetic to
their case, or one with a stricter view. They might end up waiting comfortably with
family, or they may be held in a detention center. And in spring 2018, they could even have been
separated from their children, under Trump administration policies. China has historically had the most applicants
for asylum to the United States, and that hasn’t changed. But applications from El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Honduras have increased 234% in the past 3 years, with more applicants in that time
period than the previous 17 years combined. This area is called the northern triangle. Civil wars and political unrest from the 1950s
through the 1980s left institutions unstable. Violence, extreme poverty, and crime stemming
from drug and gang activity is widespread. Asylees fleeing this area aren’t responsible
for the danger they live in — they’re trying to escape it. In the Northern Triangle, it's a little
more complicated, because instead of talking about persecution by the government we're
talking about often persecution by gangs. So, whether they qualify for asylum is up
for interpretation by immigration judges. And, all of this is being debated while the
current system is straining just to keep up. The backlog of asylum caseloads has surged
since 2012. And immigration attorneys have cited waits
as long as 5 years. The Trump administration thinks that
the solution here is to make it harder to even pass the initial screening interview. If you think of the asylum system as
a multi-stage process — which it is — that starts with you know asking for and getting
a credible fear interview, and ends with finally getting asylum — people are falling off
at every stage of that process. Very few people who start by asking for credible
fear screenings in the U.S. are ultimately getting their asylum claims approved at the
end. They essentially may be deprived of
due process in trying to get asylum and so people who do have legitimate persecution
claims are going to get sent back which theoretically is exactly the outcome that this entire system
is set up to prevent. This is Hong Kong. It's a city in southern China that has 7.5
million people. When you look at a map, Hong Kong looks like
it belongs to China. And it does. Kind of. It has its own government, its own economic
system, its own currency, its own Olympics team. Oh, and not to be ignored: the big border
up north that feels an awful lot like an international border between two countries. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to
be releasing videos on the stuff that I've found here. Everything from why hundreds of thousands
of Hong Kongers are living in houses the size of coffins, to how neon lights are made. And, perhaps most urgently, how this border
with China is set to expire in just 29 years. Hong Kong will be gobbled up. So, over the next few weeks I'm going to be
releasing these videos. I hope you enjoy them. Get ready to know Hong Kong on a whole new
level. Zip, zilch, nil, nada, nothing. We have a lot of words to describe zero. A number without which we wouldn’t have
the likes of James Bond or the code that makes this video play on
YouTube... It’s a number that came into existence only
1,500 years ago, a blip in the evolution of humans. Yet, it’s considered one of the most important
discoveries in our history … But if you ask a kid under the age of 6 ... “Arthur, do you know what zero means?” “Uh…” “A number?” “It’s none.” They might be able to tell you that zero is
nothing, but they don’t understand that it is a quantity
like other number, a concept that even a tiny bumblebee can learn. “There’s nothing there.” Children understand the natural counting numbers
long before they understand the number zero. Mom: "Can you show me how to get to zero if you have one cookie?" “Now how many cookies do you have?” Andreas Nieder believes that humans must comprehend
four distinct stages of zero to fully understand the number ... The first stage is simple: the ability to
notice a stimulus or the lack of one. When you turn on a light bulb, for example,
your eyes recognize the presence of that light and send visual information to the brain. Without light, the neurons don’t do anything. So in the second stage, our brain has to learn
how to react to nothing. The third stage is tougher: understanding
that zero is less than one. And it’s this stage that kids struggle with. Because even when a toddler can understand
that zero represents something, like the absence of a cookie, they still don’t understand
that it represents an actual quantity. In an experiment with four year olds ... researchers
asked the toddlers to pick cards with the fewest dots, and when they compared a blank
card and a card with one dot, less than half of the kids got the answer right. Without understanding this concept, Nieder
says humans can’t use zero as a number, the fourth and final stage. Mom: If you had one cookie and you took it
away how many do you have? Miriam: Two! Mom: Two?! But how the brain gets to that point is still
unknown. So while our own brains may still be a mystery,
researchers are finding answers in some seriously less complex ones. The brain of a bee has 100,000 times fewer
neurons than the brain of a human, yet scientists in Australia were able to teach them that
zero is a quantity less than one. Scarlett Howard: “One of the things we wanted
to test for was this concept of zero that we see in these seemingly more advanced animals
like primates and parrots. And so we did and we got a really interesting
answer.” In a study similar to the one done with the
young kids, researchers presented bees with cards showing different numbers of dots. And the bees were rewarded with sugar water
when they selected the card with the smallest amount. After the bee correctly chose the smaller
number 80 percent of the time, the researchers upped the challenge. They added blank cards to the test. Howard: “So the important thing from this
first experiment show us that bees that were trained to always choose the lower number
in training, regardless of not having seen an empty set before and never having been
rewarded for it, chose the empty set.” Bees also showed that they understood zero as a quantity on the number line, because they more accurately chose the empty set when comparing it to a
larger number like five or six than when they compared it to just one. Howard: “They're more accurate with numbers
that are further apart, which is called “numerical distance effects.” And it's something that's defined as being
very important to show that an animal or even a human has an understanding of number quantity. The findings of this study suggest the ability
to understand zero may be more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously thought. And, it’s possible that in deconstructing
how the bees compute numbers, we could make better, more efficient computers one day. Plus, studying the brains of bees and other
animals can help scientists better learn how humans understand zero, enough to do our algebra
homework — or just look for more cookies. Mom: “What is nothing?” Who knew that nothing could this complicated? Hi, if you want to learn more about how bees
are impacting the food that you eat, make sure to check out this video from our sister
channel Verge Science. And thanks for watching. This is Portugal playing Morocco at the 2018
World Cup. Portugal was the heavy favorite and won the
game 1-0. The result wasn’t all that interesting,
but this photo is. This Portugal player wasn’t born in Portugal
and these two Morocco players weren’t born in Morocco. See, soccer’s regulating body, FIFA, allows
athletes to play for any nation they have a clear connection to, including the country a player’s parents
or grandparents are from. In this year’s World Cup, 82 players are
playing for countries that they weren’t born in. So… where are they coming from? If we plot it on a map,
one country stands out. France is where the largest number
of all World Cup players were born. Brazil has the next highest total but it’s
not even close. France has had the most native players and
coaches in the last 4 World Cups and their dominance has been on the rise. So, what’s so special about France? At the end of World War II, much of France was destroyed. The government began recruiting laborers,
from southern and eastern Europe as well as colonies in northern Africa, to rebuild the country during
the late 1940s and 1950s. During that time France brought in more immigrants than any other European country. And in the 1960s and early 70s France’s economy
grew rapidly and a labor shortage led to another wave of immigrants - with even more arrivals
from French colonies throughout Africa and the Caribbean. Many of them settled in major housing developments
just outside of the major cities. At the same time, France was also in a sports
crisis. Especially the national football team. Between 1960 and 1974, France failed to qualify
for three world cups and three European championships. The French Football Federation decided the
way to get better was to create a national structure for developing talent, so it established
one of Europe's first football academy systems. In 1972, a national training center was opened
in Vichy, and four years later, the Federation worked with top French football clubs to set
up a wider network of academies to recruit and train local youth. In 1988, the national training center moved
to a forested suburb south of Paris called Clairefontaine and by the early 1990s, this French soccer
system was one of the best in the world - developing talented players from all over France. And the system delivered results. In 1998, the 
French national team, called Les Bleues, won the World Cup. A moment that was celebrated throughout the
country. And it seemed to be a breakthrough for French
multiculturalism as well, since several players were either immigrants
themselves or children of immigrants who came to France
in the 20th century. The team was called the “Black, Blanc, Beur”,
meaning “black, white, arab” - a spin on the three colors of the French flag But not everyone supported diversity, particularly
nationalist politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen. Despite racist criticism, players from immigrant
families have continued to make up more and more of France’s best talent. Many come from one place in particular. 38% of immigrants to France settle in Greater Paris. Most end up in these areas called banlieues. The French word literally means “suburb”;
but it can also imply immigrant-dominated ghettos. Over the years, these areas have frequently
seen riots. They have high levels of unemployment, crime,
and poverty and are in a crisis. Yet the banlieues continue to produce some
of the most talented soccer players. That’s because this is where France’s
immigration history meets its soccer system, and it’s the reason why the city is the
world’s number one talent pool for soccer. Since 2002, the number of Parisian-born players
at the World Cup has continued to rise. Out of all French players at the 2018 World
Cup (50), 16 were born or raised in Greater Paris. The French national team has eight from banlieues, all children of immigrants. That includes Kylian Mbappe, France’s 19 year-old
super star who was born to an Algerian mother and Cameroonian
father in the Parisian suburb of Bondy and was trained through the French system at Clairefontaine. But Parisian players don’t just play for
France. Over the years, FIFA’s eligibility rules
have allowed them to play for countries like the Ivory Coast, Morocco, Algeria, Portugal,
Cameroon, and Togo. 4 players on this year’s Senegal team are
from the Greater Paris area as well as this player on Tunisia. And remember this photo? Both of these players were born in Paris. That’s what’s special about French soccer
- the combination of an established academy system and its unique immigration history
is producing incredible talent - for France and the rest of the world. If you’ve ever tried to sing the star spangled
banner, “You see”
You know it’s not easy. “And the rockets’ red glare. Can’t go that high.” The lowest note and the highest note are an octave and a half apart. That’s 12 full notes. For comparison, God Save The Queen spans seven
notes. Oh Canada? It’s nine. Yes exactly Estelle, this is why we need a
new national anthem. What? No. Joss, This is why the national anthem is so
great. Nonono theFfrench anthem is great. And it’s got a range of nine notes. Nine notes is enough to make Yvonne cry
in Casablanca. “Viva La France!!” But 12 notes? That just feels like failure. I know the words to it but I’m so aware
of how bad I sound that I have to stop right now. Ok so it’s not just the overall range,
The whole song feels like it’s trying to lose us, starting with the first line. So you go "Oh say can you see." I've already traversed an octave from "say"
to "see" That’s music theory expert Paula Telesco. But from "see" I have to go up to "by the." So now I've traversed a 10th, and we're only
in the second measure. And then right here, you’re also hit with
a chromatic note, which means it’s not in the same key that the rest of the notes are
in. And that comes right after this dive. An “Interval” is the distance between
two notes. If they’re right next to each other, they’re
called “steps.” Most music moves by step, meaning a smaller
percentage of skips. But the star spangled banner is full of skips,
including fourths, fifths,
sixths, a tenth! So you know it's kind of treacherous. That’s why music teachers in the 30s opposed
the law that officially made the star spangled banner our national anthem. And a writer in the 1920s said that “No one with
a normal esophagus can sing it without screaming.” And in 1906 the Washington Post called it
“perhaps the most ...unlovely tune that was ever wrung from the quivering bowels of
a horn.” Are you done? Yes. I’m just saying.. Shouldn’t the national anthem be something
we can all sing? Exactly. Ok but how often do you really need to do
that? I mean consider the context where most Americans
even hear the song. The super bowl, NBA finals, the World Series. Why shouldn’t the national anthem performance
be just as challenging and anxiety ridden as whatever sporting event it’s commencing? What happens when you start too high? You’re screwed. You’re totally screwed. That’s Matt Farnsworth. He’s a vocal coach and teacher in New York
City. People think I should just start in a comfortable
range, like “oh say.” That would be my comfortable range. But really I need to start down here. “Oh say” Otherwise, I’m going to be
very very high by the time I get to the end of the song. “Land of the free” And the vowels in these lyrics make it even harder. “O’er the land” — open vowel. “Of the” and then all of a sudden you
have to go to a closed vowel, which is i: — i: and u: are closed vowels. “Free.” So you got to figure out how to sing the e
vowel with an open throat, but close it on top. Talented singers pull this off by mixing their
chest and head voice. So chest voice is like your Ethel Merman. “Give my regards to Broadway.” Head voice is when we think of like opera
singers. If you’re just using your chest voice at
“the land of the free” It’ll sound like this. “Land of the” and then you feel the “free”
and it just feels like it’s not going to go. But if you incorporate your head voice just
a little, it’s like hitting a game winning fadeaway
jump shot. And notice how Jennifer Hudson went up even
more on “Free” That’s not just an octave and half, that
two octaves. There’s one person who did it so well that
a recording of the song peaked at 20 on Billboard Hot 100. “Land of the free. And the home of the brave.” If our anthem was easy to sing, Joss, we would
not get these moments. Ok I’m not saying I don’t have goosebumps,
but let the record show that that microphone was not on. Wait wait wait wait wait. That was pre-recorded? You’re killing my heart right now. Are you positive? But let’s talk about the lyrics, which were
written by a slaveholder and, in the 3rd stanza they celebrate the death of slaves who sided
with the British in the war of 1812. But the song is about Fort McHenry in Baltimore,
which withstood a 24 hour attack from the British navy. So the big inspiring idea here is that the
country …. still exists. Is it the ramparts yet? I keep going to the ramparts. Oh. Whose bright stripes. Perilous...night? Um. Brave. These words are more descriptive than motivating. They’re also phrased really awkwardly,
so it’s no wonder that they just don’t stick in our brains. “Whose bright stripes and bright stars … and
the heavenly light.” [checks hand] “Were so gallantly”
“You know I had a really good laugh about it and you know you get over things and you
know you get back up again.” Christina you deserve better. No no no. Hold up. America loves watching people publicly fail. “And the rocket’s red glare.” “Written by Francis Scott off-Key.” We should be grateful that the Star Spangled
Banner gives us those moments. “Banner yet wave” Yeah I don’t know quite what it was I was watching, but I think that’s another example
of I think she really tried to do something new with it and it just wasn’t as successful
as she hoped it would be. Yes, it’s risky to for performers to try
something new. But when they do it well, it’s amazing. Let’s rewind back to 1968. It’s game 5 of the World Series and José
Feliciano, a 23-year-old blind Puerto Rican folk singer is there to do the anthem. “Oh say can you see” Now it’s immediately apparent this doesn’t sound like the star spangled banner. It’s the height of the Vietnam War, and
our national anthem sounds like a peaceful folk tune. “And the home of the brave”
He finishes it and then listen closely. There are boos. One woman was so angry she said she was going
to write a letter to her senator to complain. But RCA released the the live recording as
a single. And it was the first time the national anthem
made it on the Billboard charts. Fifteen years later Marvin Gaye walked up
to center court at the 1983 NBA Allstar game with a shocking amount of swagger, and took a cue
from Feliciano. “By the dawn’s early light”
By the end the crowd was clapping with him. “O’er the land of the free”
We don’t need a different National Anthem to feel something. We just need the right singer. Like maybe these singers? “Of the coming of the lord” “Oh beautiful for spacious skies” “May we forever stand, true to our god and
true to our native land.” Oh so you want one of those to be our national
anthem? To be honest they’re a little religious
for my taste. See! People have tried, in vain, to replace the
star spangled banner for a really long time. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So just enjoy it when it’s good. And enjoy it when it's bad too. If you’re in a theater during previews,
and you see this …. … you know to expect a comedy movie. If you see this — you know it’s going
to be action. Make the letters a little skinny — and boom. It’s sci-fi. You know this one's going to have fast
cars... This one’s going to have Michael Cera….
… and this one’s gonna be a rom-com. You don’t even need the music to know it. But what about this? This typeface — Trajan – is probably one
of the most popular movie poster fonts ever. You can see it in Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, Double Jeopardy, Letters from Iwo Jima, It’s everywhere. So how did it get there? I'm Yves Peters, I am a graphic designer who
has been writing professionally about type and typography since about 10 years. Yves has looked at a lot of posters. And a few years ago, he started to notice
a trend. I started clicking, clicking, clicking, and
didn't know where I started because I ended up looking at about 16,000 posters. Yeah. Well I look at about 100 posters per month and
I've been doing this series since 2006… It’s a lot of posters every year. He noticed that the use of Trajan rose significantly
in the last couple of decades. But why? In 1989, designer Carol Twombly adapted inscriptions
from Roman emperor Trajan’s column into a digital typeface. It was made for Adobe, so it was a part of
the software that a lot of people were starting to use to make posters. A couple years later, it made its movie poster
debut here — for Héctor Babenco’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. After that, it was on The Bodyguard, and Scent
of a Woman. Then it was on three 1993 box office hits. By 1994, it was everywhere. It's originally used for epic movies, movies
about people that overcome difficulties, like the big war epics and so on. But then you see gradually that it becomes
the standard movie font. It's like the Arial of movie posters. So people need to churn out a poster really
quickly, and they just pick Trajan. Eventually, that overuse changed the kinds
of movies that used the typeface. You don’t see it as much on the big productions
anymore. It's become the typeface of horror movies,
B-movies, and also the straight-to-video ones. So you'll see that a lot of posters are for
the lesser movies that want to pretend they are better than they actually are. The rise and fall of Trajan illustrates the
downside of digital typeface. The convenience of swapping fonts is a huge
shift from old movie poster days when hand-painted typefaces or "lettering" was an art that was
specific to each movie. So what you see behind me — this is more
like the pre-blockbuster thing... pre-genres, pre-standard styles — and
that's why you will be hard pressed to find two that are similar. That doesn’t make today’s genre-specific
typography bad design. These visual clichés make it possible to
communicate tone and plot details to an audience incredibly efficiently. And there’s a certain art to that. People get nostalgic about the old era of
movie posters, when everything was still done by hand and still very unique. But you could compare it to music, where some
people say, “nothing good was produced since the Beatles.” But then there are people who say there’s
nothing good since Mozart. Fair enough, but there's many other interesting
things that are being produced now. There’s just much more. But there's still a lot of very good poster
design happening. It’s just, you need to know where to look.” So recently, President Trump made an odd comment
about the presidential pardon. “The pardons are a very positive thing for
a president. I think you see the way I’m using them. And yes, I do have an absolute right to pardon
myself. But I'll never have to do it because I didn't do anything wrong." As bizarre as that may sound, Trump isn’t
entirely wrong. Since taking office, Donald Trump has pardoned
five people. The act of pardoning criminals doesn’t create
many political allies. So presidents usually wait until later in
their term to issue pardons. The past two presidents only began granting
pardons late in their second year. Trump, on the other hand, has already begun
to exercise his pardon power. And with several people close to the president
being investigated by the special council, Trump’s pardon power might come in handy. Some argue that by issuing pardons this early
in his presidency, Trump is sending signal that he is willing to bail out any of his political
allies that might be targeted in the future by the Russian investigation. So what does the US Constitution have to say
about the president’s power to pardon? The Constitution provides specifically for
the president's pardon power. It says that the president may pardon individual
offenses — federal offenses, not necessarily state offenses and he cannot use the pardon power to avoid
impeachment. But as with most powers bestowed by the US
Constitution, the presidential pardon comes with checks and balances. One of the principles underlying a separation
of powers is that no one should be a judge in his own cause. So we have a system with a separation of powers
and that separation of powers is one of checks and balances. The first possible check to Trump’s pardoning
power could come through the judicial branch. When presidents take office, they’re bound
by the Constitution to take the “oath of office." And in that oath, they make a promise to: “Faithfully execute the office of President of the United States." That language of faithful execution — the
idea is that this language migrated from private law documents that limited trustees, limited corporate executives, that they couldn't embezzle they couldn't self deal, they couldn't use
their powers to benefit themselves to the detriment of others. A future prosecutor could go into court, Trump would walk in and say look I signed the pardon, with the papers then say look, look at my signature, the way he always does. And the judge
says sorry that piece of paper is not legally valid, because it violated the part of the
Constitution that requires faithful execution. The next check to Trump’s pardoning power
could come from the legislative branch — from Congress. There’s a clause in the Constitution
that basically says Congress has the power to make laws to ensure that the Constitution
is followed by all branches of the government. So the argument is that if Congress has the
ability to regulate the means they cannot take away the pardon power, but they may be
able if it's necessary and proper to limit for example, corrupt pardons or illegal pardons
that would otherwise be unconstitutional, for example. It's possible, let's say the president pardoned everyone, who was white because for racist reasons. For
example, that would clearly violate the Constitution. There's almost no way to get that into court. The only response here can actually come from
Congress. The most obvious check to Trump’s pardoning
power, though, is one that Trump’s own legal team has publicly recognized: "The president of the United States pardoning himself would just be unthinkable and it would lead to probably, an immediate impeachment. Trump can pardon whoever he wants — even
if that means shielding his political allies from the Mueller investigation and even, plausibly,
himself. But he would almost certainly face impeachment
hearings in Congress for doing so. And as the Constitution makes clear — that
pardoning power cannot be used to shield from impeachment. So in some ways voters themselves serve as a powerful check against the president's pardoning power. But of course this all depends on Congress’s
willingness to move forward with impeachment, should the need arise. Elections are a crucial check because all
of the departments are the people's servants, ultimately. I think it's a tremendous political mistake
myself for him to have urged that he has the absolute power because no one in America thinks
we have a monarch whether you love Donald Trump or not. There are so many different kinds of date
labels. Creme fraiche. I don’t even know what creme fraiche is. Oh that’s something else. It can be REALLY confusing to know what all
these labels indicate. A lot of times you just throw away food that’s
past whatever date you see. But you’re actually throwing away tons of
perfectly good food because many times, these dates don't mean what you think they mean. Say you have a carton of eggs with a label
that says “sell by January 1st.” If they’re in your fridge past that date,
you might throw them away thinking they’re probably bad. But “sell by” is just a label for retailers
to know when it’s time to take food off their shelves, so they can manage their inventory. It actually doesn’t tell you anything about
the safety of those eggs. And that’s not the only misleading label
on your food. Part of the problem is that there are way
too many labels to begin with. Walmart, one of the biggest food retailers
in the country, surveyed its label suppliers and found a total of 47 different kinds of
date labels on their products. Almost all of these labels indicate the quality
of food. Manufacturers put down dates to suggest when
food will be at its best. Or when its taste and freshness will start
to deteriorate. These labels are useful indicators of food
quality, but they’re widely misinterpreted as a sign of food safety. This national survey about perceptions of
labels found that about 84% of people would at least occasionally throw away food that’s
past the date on labels. This confusion around date labels has created
a massive food waste problem in the United States. All the uneaten food waste costs us over $200
billion each year, and two thirds of that comes from households. It costs the average family of four somewhere
between $1,500 and $1,800 a year to purchase food that then ends up in the trash. And I think it's probably not a family in
America that wouldn't like to have $1,500 dollars back in their pockets. This is JoAnne Berkenkamp, a senior advocate
at an environmental group that has studied the impact of food labels. People often assume that they're federally
regulated. And in fact that's not the case with the exception
of infant formula. So it really is up to food manufacturers to
figure out what they're going to do with those dates on their particular products. Yeah, the label makes sense if you’re a
little baby, but for everything else, it’s often up to the
state governments to decide if they want date labels and what those labels should say. That’s where it gets really confusing. In Georgia for example the law says that “Expiration
Date” is interchangeable with "Best by," "Best before," "Use by," and "Sell by" dates. But in Minnesota a product needs to have
a “quality assurance date” which can be a date of manufacture or packaging, a freshness
date, an expiration date, or a shelf display date. And a state like New York says “Date labels? Fughetaboutit!” I don’t deserve love. In total 41 states plus Washington DC require
some kind of food date label. So there's this real amalgam of different
rules from one state to another and that contributes to confusion for consumers. And it also makes it harder for food processors
and manufacturers to comply with those rules. You know, most larger food companies are shipping
food across state lines and so trying to comply with that patchwork of regulations is just
tough for the food businesses as well. So what can be done to fix this labeling problem? Many experts think that the best solution would
be a federal regulation that standardizes all date labels. And what would this new label say? One way to avoid confusion would be to remove
visible “sell by” dates. Instead, packages could have a scannable barcode
that would still allow stores to track their inventory without confusing customers. Another way would be to standardize labels
for safety and for quality. Foods where there is a safety risk could say
“safe if used by”, which wouldn’t be applied to most foods that don’t really
expire. For quality they could say “peak quality
guaranteed before” instead of just “best by." Having a standardized label would remove a lot of confusion, but even then, we shouldn't treat these dates like gospel — when
you're trying to decide if your food is safe to eat, your best bet is still just trusting your
senses. And if we all band together and do our part,
maybe, just maybe, I can some day figure out what creme fraiche is. Andrew Helms and Matt Pentz wrote “Own Goal:
The Inside Story of how the US Men’s National Team Missed The World Cup.” The actual own goal that doomed the US in
2018 becomes a metaphor for bad mismanagement, poor development, and infighting that doomed
the US Men’s bid to qualify in the World Cup. That analysis and reporting is great and it hits at the big problems with American soccer today. But the US soccer problem goes back a lot
further than that. This chart shows US Men’s National Team’s
World Cup record. At the top are the best finishes. The highest dot? It’s third place. At the bottom, 16th place. And all these dots? These are times the third most populous country,
with the largest global wealth, failed to even qualify. This is bigger than an own goal. And it’s not because soccer isn’t as American
as apple pie. We have proof. Americans suck at the game they call soccer. But they’re also the best in the world. These are the US women’s World Cup performances
since play started in 1991. Champs, champs, champs. It’s not about American culture. It’s about the American men’s game. When you stop looking at the present and start
looking to the past, You find a lost golden age of American soccer. You also find the reason it’s been doomed
for almost a hundred years. In 1926, 46,000 Americans crowded into a Manhattan
stadium to see Hakoah, an All-Star European soccer team, lose to Americans. In the paper that same day? A season high Yankees baseball game - that
4,000 fewer people went to see. The 1920s was American soccer’s golden age. But to understand it, you have to go even
further back. In the 1860s, soccer and rugby existed on
a bit of a continuum — people played a little bit of everything. In 1863, rules were finally established in
England to build a game that played more like the soccer we know. The US diverged from the English soccer game
with the first Harvard-Yale football game -- which would quickly turn into American
football. Until then, Ivy league colleges had played
a more soccer-like game, but Harvard challenged Yale to a rugby-style game they’d learned
from McGill in Canada. That game was a hit, and Ivies like Princeton
quickly picked it up. That was the first split between European
and American football culture. By 1905, soccer was still being “tested”
in America as “college football” took off. But the tragedy of World War I slowed down
European sports culture. In the 20s, America started catching up in
soccer. In 1925, for example, when Cincinnati built
a new stadium, they assumed baseball and soccer would both be part of the mix. Americans even stole British and Scottish
talent — “enticing players” for The Coming International Sport. English stadiums had the biggest crowds, but
the US was part of the growing international audience for the sport. The 20s saw a formidable soccer presence in
the US, with big attendance numbers. That development helped America score a third
place finish in the World Cup in 1930. But that was the beginning of the end. American soccer always had a weird structure,
with a league - the ASL or American Soccer League, and a governing association: the
USFA, or United States Football Association. The USFA was American soccer’s liason to
FIFA and the international community. The USFA and ASL had a long feud that was
resolved one day only to pick up again the next. The ASL wanted to change soccer rules and
add ideas that were uniquely American at the time, like substitutions and a penalty box. The USFA didn’t. Not clear enough? Just look at the names. These two organizations couldn’t even agree
on what to call the game. And this? This is what happens when acronyms take over
your sport. FIFA’s at the top. They threatened to kick out the USFA because
the ASL was recruiting those European players. FIFA didn’t like that at all. USFA agreed to sanctions. ASL got mad and pulled out of a big USFA tournament. Three ASL teams went over and played anyway,
which got them kicked out by the ASL. They whined to the USFA, which kicked out
the ASL. So then the ASL played without USFA approval,
so the USFA made a new league with their own teams. Yeah. All this acronym infighting split soccer teams,
players, and fans in half. Civil Wars: they are not fun. They patched things up again in 1929, but
it was too late. The Great Depression hit the financial system. Teams were already weakened. The Depression forced many of them to fold. The United States entered a soccer dark ages
while Europe and South America steadily built the sophisticated leagues that people wish
America had today. Short-lived American leagues have had cash
- but the mass enthusiasm was stuck in the 1920. For women, a small fan base and lack of private
development wasn’t a problem — development of the women’s game was behind the men’s
game across the world. In the absence of a significant league business,
federal programs like Title 9 in America effectively mandated a women’s team in schools wherever
there was a men’s team. But for men? You can rightly talk about development leagues,
and bad coaching, and own goals. But when you see a pie like this, you don’t
blame the crust, or the apple orchard, or the textured aluminum wrap. You blame the thing that smashed it. The soccer wars put the United States on the sidelines,
during a crucial half century in which global sports acquired fans, talent, and cash. Can American men catch up today? Maybe. But it’s a long shot. So, if you want a slightly less depressing
look at American soccer, check out this video from our friends at SB Nation. They chronicled the historic 1999 US Women’s
National Team Victory. It's pretty amazing. I’m gonna take a shower now. These are violent attacks recorded in Africa
in the first 5 months of 2018. Many are by groups fighting in the ongoing
civil wars in South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Others are riots against governments in southeastern
Africa. But these are different. They’re attacks
Islamist militant groups. Some claim to be branches of the Islamic State. While others claim to be al-Qaeda; Both groups are usually associated with the
Middle East. But for the past decade, Islamist militant
groups have been spreading across Africa, where they've continued to find places to organize
and launch attacks. Their success has pushed these fragile states
into deeper turmoil and it's made the region one of the most dangerous in the world. To understand how these terrorist groups got to
Africa and why they’re so successful there, it helps to start in Nigeria. Nigeria has the biggest population and economy in Africa. Wealth, industry, and major cities are mostly
in the south. While the north is poor, marginalized, isolated,
and home to most of Nigeria’s Muslim population. It was here that a radical Islamist group
called Boko Haram took shape and turned violent in 2009. They started razing villages, slaughtered
men and women, and kidnapped children who were forced to carry out suicide attacks. The Nigerian government cracked down, but
the group continued to grow. In 2014, they got international attention when they kidnapped close to 300 school girls in Chibok. Bring our girls back! 276 are out. By then, they controlled a huge swath of territory
in northern Nigeria where they imposed strict Sharia law and declared it an Islamic caliphate. In 2015 they became affiliated with the Islamic
State, which had a caliphate of its own in Iraq and Syria. Within a few years, the group killed
nearly 25,000 people, and was on track to become the deadliest terror group in the world,
eventually surpassing ISIS. 5 African countries backed by the US, UK,
and France formed a task force to battle Boko Haram. By April 2015 they'd liberated major towns and
seemed to push Boko Haram out. But three years later, Boko Haram is still
active. The group had shifted its focus to the Lake Chad region, one of the poorest places in
the world. The lake touches the borders of Nigeria, Niger,
Chad and Cameroon , but none of the state governments have any real presence here. This is where Boko Haram is operating. They’ve been raiding local villages for
food and capturing men to serve as fighters. In 2016, the group split into two. As Boko Haram’s attacks grew more and more
violent, this group, the Islamic State West Africa (ISWA), started offering protection
to villages in danger. They also provided stability and even water
supplies to a region collapsing under a food crisis, in exchange for a tax and recruits. In the absence of a strong central government
-- they’ve moved further into Nigeria and Niger where they've launched attacks of their
own and are officially affiliated with the Islamic
State. Exploiting and terrorizing locals in ungoverned areas has become a successful strategy, keeping these militant groups active. But it doesn't stop here. The strategy is being used by terrorists all across the continent. Lake Chad is part of the Sahel; a narrow band of territory that stretches across north-central
Africa. The conditions that make Lake Chad ideal for
Boko Haram and ISWA extend across this whole region. The population is mostly Muslim and vulnerable. Ethnic conflicts are rampant. Food is scarce. Poverty is rife. And most importantly, there’s almost no
presence of a government . Islamist militant groups have been filling
these spaces at a staggering pace. 7 years ago Islamist militant groups took over
northern Mali and declared it a caliphate for 10 months before a French military intervention
drove them back into the desert. Today, they’ve banded together and are affiliated
with al-Qaeda. A group called ISGS broke away and is now
affiliated with the Islamic State. This part of Mali remains ungoverned and violent
7 years after the intervention. Both of these groups are fighting for various
militias in the conflict. Meanwhile, both are also attacking foreigners,
including the French Embassy in 2018 and the 2017 ambush of US Special
Forces in Niger. Fox News is learning that 12 US soldiers, mostly Green Berets, were ambushed by a larger force of ISIS-linked militants. Islamist militant groups are finding success
in other ungoverned spaces as well. ISIS claims to have launched 10 attacks in
2018 in Libya, where a civil war has raged since 2011. In Somalia, an ISIS-affiliated group split
from al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda group. It’s made this whole part of Africa one of the
most dangerous places in the world. The US and France have both stepped up their
presence with several military bases across the Sahel. But drone strikes and Special forces alone
are not the solution to the Islamist terrorism in Africa. As long as there are places with poverty,
conflicts, and no government terrorists groups will be here. will be here. What you’re listening to, are the sounds
that have been missing from the policy debate around immigration. From the ones with the most at stake: children
who’ve been forcibly separated from their parents. It's a recording that was made from inside
of a Border Patrol facility, of children who have been separated recently from their parents after having crossed the border without documents into the United States. That’s Ginger Thompson, the ProPublica reporter
who obtained this secretly recorded clip from a Texas civil rights attorney. They were between the ages of four and ten. All of the children on this recording are from Central American countries. There's a 6 year old Salvadoran girl on the
clip. Her name is Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid. She was just finishing kindergarten back in
El Salvador. Her mother decided to flee gang violence. She has family in the United States. In this tape she is distraught and asks authorities
to let her make a phone call. She wants to call her aunt. There are around 2,300 kids who have been separated
from their parents, since what’s known as the "zero tolerance" policy was started by the
administration in April. The zero tolerance policy calls for all people
who illegally cross the border, even if they're crossing for the first time, to be criminally
prosecuted and that their children or any children that they brought with them will
be separated during that time. They're being held initially in these border
patrol facilities, but then they move into facilities that are
controlled by Health and Human Services. The United States will not be a migrant camp. We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit, are in fact a family. This administration has a simple message: if you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you. The backlash to this policy has been swift
and sharp. People with very diverse political views on
every other thing seem to have come together to condemn this policy. I don't think we should obey a law that goes against what God intends, that you would take a baby, a child. It's terrible to see families ripped apart and I don't support that one bit. We do have to find the middle ground of somehow, you know, honoring the law of the land, but showing mercy to the immigrant. The administration has sort of been struggling to respond. I would cite you to the apostle Paul, in his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government. It is very biblical to enforce the law, that is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible. Have you heard the audio clip of these children wailing that just came out today? I have not seen something that came out today, but I have been to detention centers and again, I would reference you to our standards. The image of this country that you want out there, children – the image that I want of this country is an immigration system that secures our borders and upholds our humanitarian ideals. Congress needs to fix it. We're not the ones responsible for creating this problem, we've inherited it, but we're actually the first administration stepping up and trying to fix it. The Trump administration blames the previous
administration for this policy. But the Obama administration did conduct a record
number of deportations, but that administration did not prosecute people criminally for crossing
the border for the first time nor did it separate children from their parents at the time of
the crossing. Facing the backlash, the administration opened
up tightly controlled tours of the facilities. This is handout footage from the government. Cameras are tightly restricted for journalists. And the children being detained are not allowed
to speak to them. They can be sort of sanitized, very sterile
experiences that show you what the shelter looks like, but when it comes to children, gives you very little sense of what impact being there has on them. For now, this clip is the closest we've gotten to hearing from the children. The Salvadoran girl who asked for the phone
call with her aunt actually got that phone call. I dialed that number as well and
was able to speak to the aunt. You know, the aunt was was devastated by
this phone call and said to me, you know, can you imagine getting a phone call from your
6 year old niece who is screaming into the phone and saying you know Please Auntie, please.
I'll behave myself, just come get me out of here, because I'm alone. Thanks for watching. We want to keep reporting this story and talking to families who have been affected. So, has your family been separated at the US-Mexico border? Or do you work in a border detention facility or aid families who've been affected by this policy? If so, contact us at the link in the description below. If I asked you to imagine a soccer ball, what
would it look like? This is starting to look a little bit like Mr. Potato Head. This is like asking a bro to draw his favorite drag queens. I'm kinda guessing at this point. The most iconic ball, the one with black and
white panels stitched together? It’s known as the Telstar. And it got its start because of broadcast television. The 1966 World Cup was a turning point in
soccer history. The games that year were held in England,
home to the BBC which, aside from the US, had the biggest television operation at the
time. The television broadcast became a huge part
of the World Cup. And, as The Times reported, four hundred million
fans were watching across five continents. But notice the ball. If you’re having a hard time following it,
it’s not just you. The ball used in the 1966 World Cup was reddish-brown. And its solid color made it hard to spot on
TV. Like the soccer balls that came before it,
this one was made of rectangular strips. It actually looked more like a modern volleyball. But by the 1970 World Cup, the soccer ball
had changed. Compared to the ball used four years prior,
the black and white checkered design made the ball stand out and made it easier to follow
for viewers at home. And that was especially true on black and
white TV sets, which most people had at the time. Players on the field had reason to celebrate
too. The 32 panels of the Telstar brought it closer
to an actual sphere, giving the ball a more predictable path through the air and on the
ground. A version of the black and white Telstar design
stuck around for over two decades before being replaced with other models. But by then the Telstar had become the archetype
of soccer balls, synonymous with the sport. And if you catch the World Cup this year,
you might recognize a familiar pattern. The ball being used in Russia is called the
Telstar 18, a nod back to the iconic Telstar. It uses just six propellor-shaped pieces,
making the ball even more spherical. But that black and white design is back — and,
almost five decades later it’s still what people think of when they think of soccer. This is me. And these are some of my co-workers. Tonight, we're on an epic adventure, defending a village from an army of dog monsters and trying not to get ourselves killed. Welcome to the magical world of Dungeons & Dragons, the best game I've ever played. Chapter 1: What the f*ck is D&D? D&D is a tabletop role-playing fantasy game. You and your friends sit around a table and pretend to be heroes going on an epic
adventure together. This is a role-playing game. It takes place entirely in our collective
imagination. Every D&D game is run by a DM -- Dungeon Master. You arrive at a small village on the outskirts
of the forest. The villagers watch you nervously as you enter. They seem tired, worried. The DM is the main storyteller in D&D. They create and describe the adventure the
heroes go on, giving them goals to accomplish and rewards to motivate them. The mayor of this town wants someone to investigate strange sounds coming from
a nearby abandoned mine. He's offering a thousand gold pieces to anyone brave enough to take the job. And while it might look like the heroes and
DM are playing against each other, they're actually playing with each other. The goal of D&D isn't to kill the other players. There's actually no winning in D&D. The goal is to hang out with your friends
and act like weirdos together. So the DM's job is to create an adventure
that's exciting, fun, and challenging, and the heroes' job is to work together to
survive those challenges and explore the world the
DM has created. Which brings me to my favorite part of D&D. Chapter 2: Creating A Hero. Before you can start adventuring in D&D, you need to create your very own hero. Using the D&D handbook, you pick a race: human, elf, dwarf, etc. And you pick a class, basically your job: fighter, wizard, rogue. I play Amelia human warlock. Oneshoe, rock gnome sorcerer. I play Isla, druid elf. Harriet, tiefling rogue. Blaze, dragonborn paladin. Once you've decided what you want to be, you fill out one of these bad boys, a character
sheet, which is just a piece of paper that keeps
track of your strengths and weaknesses. Stuff like that. That character sheet is important, but way more important is what makes your
hero unique. Deciding what your hero looks like: she has a septum piercing, violet eyes. She looks like a devil, like a fun devil. Think about Predator. Think Predator in your mind. How they dress: big sorcerer floppy hat on. A rotting werewolf pelt. She doesn't wear a lot of clothing. And whatever little quirks make them stand
out: I hand out pamphlets like a Jehovah's Witness. I carry a warhammer that's as big as my body. I have a demonic imp who follows me around. And what's her name? Mother Teresa. You also create a motivation for your hero, something that calls them to adventure. It can be as lofty as rooting out evil doers or as simple as getting treasure. Once you've decided who you'll be, the DM weaves your stories together and you
start playing. You pass through the dark entryway of the
abandoned mine. The passageway is narrow. Suddenly you see a dark figure in the corner. And you keep playing for a long, long time. Playing D&D. I know it seems really complicated, and this thickass rulebook doesn't help. But, at its core, all of D&D is just three
steps: describe, decide, roll. The DM describes what's happening: in the corner of the mineshaft you find a
sleeping goblin. He's lying down on a pile of coins. He doesn't seem to have noticed you. What do you do? The heroes decide what they want to do: I want to steal the coins. Excellent. And then the player rolls one of these: a 20-sided dice. Is it dice or die? I don't know. Singular of dice. Historically, dice is the plural of die. Die is singular, you're right. I'm going to try it again from earlier on. And then, the player rolls one of these, a 20-sided die, to find out if they succeeded or failed. The higher you roll, the better. I rolled a 2. Not good. While sneaking, you knock over a pile of rocks and the goblin shoots up wide awake. Then, the cycle starts over. The goblin grabs his club, looks at you and yells "INTRUDER!" What do you do? That's D&D in a nutshell. And it's that second step, "decide," that makes the game so special. In most games, how you play is limited by the options the game designers give you. Run this direction. Fight this thing. Save this princess. Essentially being railroaded down a story that someone else wrote for you. In D&D, what you do is totally up to you. Maybe you panic and try to run away. Maybe you draw your weapon and prepare to
fight. Or maybe you try to trick the goblin. Okay, I look at the goblin and I say "we come
in peace, as friends!" 17? The goblin lowers his club, raises his eyebrow, and says "friends?" The DM sets the stage, but once the game starts, no one person controls where the story goes. Session after session, the DM builds an adventure that reflects the heroes choices. That goblin you tricked last week might tell
you about a dragon's lair nearby. That dragon's lair may contain a valuable
treasure you can steal. And stealing that treasure might attract the
attention of an evil wizard who wants to use it for
his own schemes. As the game goes on, the decisions you make will shape the world
you play in. We won a karaoke competition. Closed a rift to the Nine Hells. We were slaughtering this band of peasants. It was a total, like, misunderstanding. D&D doesn't just give you the freedom to choose, it asks you to own those choices. Before long you might find yourself thinking
less like you and more like the hero you're trying to be. Roleplaying. All of us are roleplayers. We go through our lives playing different
parts for the people around us. Some we get to choose. Video producer. Podcaster. Co-worker. Some, we have no control over. Black. Female. Queer. Even with our friends, we can fall into patterns
of behavior that eventually become expectations. The wisecracker. The cool girl. The shy one. Roles we're so used to playing we don't even think of them as roles anymore. They're just us. D&D gives you permission to be something different. To surprise yourself. And that can be really scary. When you do something in D&D, We come in peace! you're trusting everyone at the table to take
you seriously. And you're trusting the other players to have
your back. I pull a flower out of my hair, hand it to him and give him a wink. I produce tiny rainbow over Harriet's head? Mother Teresa does her best goblin impression
and says "it's cool, they're with me." 16. 18. Natural 20. The goblin looks at you more relaxed and says "FRIENDS!" That shared vulnerability is what makes D&D
different from any other game you play with your friends. We can spend our whole lives wandering alone through the corridors of our minds. D&D asks you to wander together. To believe, for just a few hours, that there is more to us than what meets the
eye. More silliness. More warmth. More bravery. And yeah, just a little more magic. Should you play D&D? D&D is ridiculous. But when I ask my friends why they play D&D, they don't talk about the monsters or the
dungeons. They talk about how the game makes them feel. It just feels so freeing. I'm not thinking about, you know, I have to do this tomorrow or I need to take
care of this at home. It just kind of, like, brings your inner child
back out. Nobody makes fun of anybody. Nobody feels self-conscious about it. The older that you get, the more expectations people have of you. D&D, there aren't any expectations. I can just be free. I feel like the rest of the world doesn't
matter, like, I'm always super stoked to play. It's like a fun, really creative way to connect
with each other. It's made us really grow closer. The way that you look at the people you were just playing with is really different than
other people in the real world because you've engaged in
something so collaborative and imagined together. The point of D&D is obviously, like, adventures
and "oh we're world-building together!" But the real point of D&D is, like, you're in this bubble with these people and you're entirely focused on each other and remembering all the reasons that you like spending time with their characters but also spending time with them as human beings. If you look past the wizards, past the dungeons and magical creatures, D&D is a game about the people you play with. A game where everyone agrees to bring their
weirdness and creativity to the table. Byrd, not now. To help build a world that belongs to all
of you. A world shaped by your triumphs, your defeats, your personality quirks, and your stupid inside
jokes. A world that could not have existed if you and your friends hadn't sat down at a table one day and said "let's play." Believe it or not, this video is not sponsored
by D&D. We're just huge nerds. But if you're interested in playing, you should check out the D&D starter set. It comes with a premade campaign, character
sheets, a mini rulebook, and dice. And if you're interested in seeing more videos
about games, check out our sister site Polygon. They have this cool new series called Fiend
Zone which talks about how games shape and reflect
our culture. Killed it that time. That's a wrap baby. [Honking car horn, clock ticking, radio signal] You hear that? That's the sound of
silence. Well, not really. Absolute silence doesn't really exist in
our world, but there's an entire field of study devoted to the science of silence. Why? Well, it plays a huge part in our daily well-being. Our brains are
hard-wired to perceive sounds even when they're not there. Moviegoers have felt
this for generations but, thanks to modern technologies, scientists know this
to be fact. A recent study by the University of Southern California
demonstrated how silent films could elicit content-specific reactions in
your brain's auditory cortices. In other words, as you watch these images your
brain is pulling from memories and past experiences to fill in the blanks. This effect is sometimes referred to as "hearing in your mind's ear" and it's the
reason why, when your favorite song cuts short on the radio, You can still hear it. So if we can never really experience silence in nature, can we create it
artificially? At facilities like 3M's campus in St. Paul,
Minnesota, silence becomes science. We're in the anechoic chamber here in
the 3M Center. And this is a room that was built back in '64 and eats echoes. Sound just hits the wall and dies. Anechoic or non-echoing chambers such as these
are used by scientists to study how sound operates in a truly quiet
environment. When you're doing science you can control temperature, you can
control pressure, flow, and you never thought you could control sound. But in this room we can do that. Why do scientists care about capturing quiet? When something's quiet you think it's high quality, you go into a hotel room and the
air conditioner, that makes a lot of noise. What does that tell you? It's cheap. Quietness is a sign of quality. So, how does it all work? The secret of silence is the chamber's design. It's a building within a building. Every surface is covered in an intricately arranged series of
fiberglass wedges. As sound waves propagate out from a source, they get
trapped between these wedges, bouncing back and forth until they dissipate. Even the floor and ceiling are covered, creating a completely spherical surround-sound setup of silent seclusion. What does it sound like? Well, while a balloon
popped in a reverberant room might sound like this: Inside 3M's anechoic
chamber, it sounds like this: It's gone. So, how do the physics of this chamber
relate to our daily lives? By understanding how sound waves work 3M
researchers have been able to develop technologies that absorb and reduce
noise in virtually every environment that surrounds us. Airplanes for instance,
use a specially designed foil tape to dissipate vibration and noise in the
cabin. Even if it can't stop that crying baby. Modern cars meanwhile, keep noise to
a low hum by using microfiber technology. Without it, conversation in cars would be
a screaming match. And once driverless cars are widespread, there will be a lot
more time for talking and work on the road. These quality of life improvements
can also have a direct impact on your mental health. A growing body of research
has shown how chronic levels of noise can lead to sleep loss, heart disease, and
high blood pressure. On the flip side, quiet environment seem to have
directly positive benefits. Noise pollution is harmful to the human. It wears you down, it makes you anxious, it makes you tired. There's only so much
noise you can take and then your brain needs to relax. These things always work,
even when you're asleep. Removing excess noise not only lowers our stress levels,
but even promotes the development of new brain cells. Among mice, at least. You can
reduce noise and have a much more pleasant life. You know, you can have nice
conversations over the dinner table when a jet's flying over, if you can control the
unwanted noise. Wherever you are, there's going to be noise. We live in a noisy world. If the US or North Korea had a Facebook page,
each country would change their status to “it's complicated” now. It's not what we had as recently as 2017 when
Trump was threatening to go to war over and over again with North Korea. They will be met with fire and fury like the
world has never seen. Now they are not only on speaking terms but
literally sitting in a room with each other. We will have a terrific relationship. I have no doubt. Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement
in which he reaffirmed his unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization. The problem with this is that Trump and North
Korea have very different views about what should be accomplished when you denuclearize
the Korean Peninsula. The US wants North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons. North Korea wants the United States to stop
isolating it diplomatically and stop cutting it off from international markets. In theory, there is the makings of a deal
there. For Trump, denuclearization means something
called CVID: complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. They give up their nuclear weapons and the
US will always be able to make sure that they have gone away. However, for North Korea, denuclearization
of the Korean peninsula mean something completely different. It means, sure, North Korea gets rid of its
nukes, but the US also withdrawals all its troops from the Korean Peninsula and ends its
alliance with South Korea. This has been unacceptable to every American
president in the past. We will be stopping the war games, which will
save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see that the future negotiation
is not going along like it should. What seems really good for North Korea is
really bad by American standards. There's just not a great middle ground that
could actually roll back North Korea's nuclear program. No country with a nuclear program as advanced
as North Korea's has ever denuclearized. A 2017 estimate from the Defense Intelligence
Agency concluded that North Korea probably has up to 60 nuclear weapons. It also has ballistic missiles that could potentially
hit the American homeland and potentially a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on one
of those rockets. National security adviser John Bolton floated
an idea for dealing with North Korea that he called, the Libya model. So this is to reference an agreement struck
with the Bush administration by then Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear
program. However, Qaddafi's program was way more limited. He wasn't really even close to a bomb. And, perhaps more to the point, about eight
years after this agreement was struck in 2011 the US backed an uprising against Qaddafi
which killed him. To Kim, Libya is an example of what happens
if you trust the United States too much. It's an example of what happens if you give
up your nuclear weapons. The main reason they want them is to deter an
attack. Ideally, they want to deter any war from starting
by making the war seem really scary and really dangerous and really bloody. Normalizing relations is something that I
would expect to do, I would hope to do, when everything is complete. Normalization is a prize from North Korea's
point of view. It would mean a US embassy in Pyongyang, a
North Korean embassy in Washington, ambassadors, formal diplomatic receptions. And like I'm saying this and you're probably
imagining that sounds ridiculous and you're right. Because it's North Korea. Unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. This is the document that we just signed. It's hard to imagine the endgame being some
kind of big big deal. What's more likely is nothing changes or things
get worse again. I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean I may stand before you in 6 months
and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but
I’ll find some kind of an excuse. President Trump is trying to make spygate
a thing. “But a lot of bad things have happened. We now call it 'Spygate'.” "They had spies in my campaign, during
my campaign, for political purposes. That would be unprecedented in the history of our country.” It would be unprecedented... if it were true. The FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller
are currently investigating Trump’s campaign ties with Russia. Trump created the Spygate
scandal to discredit them in the public eye. He’s used this tactic before. And it works. Trump charges that an FBI representative was
implanted into his campaign, early on, for political purposes by Democrats. Here’s what actually happened. The FBI began their investigation into Russian
interference in the election in July of 2016. They asked Stefan Halper — a Cambridge University
professor and longtime Republican insider with ties to the intelligence community — to
speak with two of Trump’s campaign foreign policy advisors — Carter Page and George
Papadopoulos. The FBI opened the investigation after Papadopoulos
drunkenly bragged about Russia offering him dirt on Clinton. Page was also on the FBI’s radar because
they knew he had taken a trip to Moscow earlier in July. Papadopoulos, you’ll remember, has already
plead guilty to lying to federal agents in Mueller’s probe. The FBI was investigating Russia’s efforts
to infiltrate the Trump campaign, not doing any work on behalf of the democratic party,
or President Obama. There’s no evidence it was for political
purposes. Spygate - as Trump coined it it - is a complete
fabrication — a conspiracy theory. Halper was not implanted into the Trump campaign. He didn’t start working with the FBI very
early on or long before the Russian interference stories. This started in July, after Trump was already
the Republican nominee and Russia was already in the news. The investigation actually started after this. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re
able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” So, if true, it’s a big political scandal…
but it’s not. Even top Republicans dispute the president’s
version of events. “The F.B.I. did exactly what my fellow citizens
would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with
Donald Trump.” “I have seen no evidence to the contrary of the initial assessment that Chairman Gowdy's has made." Trump’s twitter obsession with Spygate has
gone from demanding the Department of Justice investigate Obama, to claiming the FBI paid
Halper a lot of money to spy - there’s zero evidence of that. Trump also completely misquoted the former
director of national intelligence. Clapper actually said the opposite. "Was the FBI spying on Trump’s
campaign?” “No, they were not. They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly
like — but on what the Russians were doing.” Trump, coincidentally, does like the term
“spy.” The Associated Press reported that he told
an ally that branding Halper as such would stick. True or not, Trump’s accusations might be
believed by his base. We know because he’s done this before. Like when he tweeted that Obama wiretapped
his phones at Trump Tower. He even had the White House officially back
him up. "When he talked about 'wiretapping,' he meant surveillance." Despite it not being true... But a majority of Republicans still believe
it. Or when Trump tweeted that he won the popular
vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Again, the White House backed him up. “I think there's been studies. There's one that came out of Pew in 2008 that
showed 14 percent of people who voted were noncitizens.” Pew did no such study, because the claim isn’t true. But again, most Republicans still believe
millions of illegal immigrants voted. Almost half think he won the popular vote. So even though Spygate isn’t true, it doesn’t
matter. The thinking goes: If Trump can delegitimize
the FBI, then he might be able to survive whatever Mueller’s investigation finds. And the American people’s trust of the FBI
has already been eroded by Trump’s previous attacks. “FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows
that.” This chart shows exactly how much that trust
has eroded. It’s not insignificant. And these  attacks resonate with Trump’s
base. The vast majority of Trump voters believe
the FBI is biased against him. Only 32% of all Americans believe that. Which brings us back to Spygate. If history is any evidence, Trump’s base
is likely to side with him again on this fabrication. "They had people infiltrating our campaign. Can you imagine?” Booooooo. Whatever Mueller’s team finds at the end
of their investigation, Trump may have already have won the public opinion. "It is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to
be impeach, not impeach. So, our jury is the American -- as it should
be -- is the American people. “ You ever notice this instruction that’s
in nearly every baking recipe? Preheating your oven to 350 degrees is sort
of a basic requirement for baking in America. Our ovens even do it automatically as we turn
them on, but have you ever stopped and asked yourself ... What’s so special about this number? I love to bake, but I’m certainly not a
pastry chef, so let’s meet someone with a bit more experience. This is Michael Laiskonis, the creative director
at the Institute of Culinary Education. He's a pastry chef. So temperature is really important in baking
not only to develop color and flavor, but also to control the moisture in our products. As the temperature rises and moisture is lost
at the surface, we get browning and also the creation of flavor compounds that didn't exist
in that product previously. This happens because of a chemical process
known as the maillard reaction, which occurs when proteins and sugars are
transformed by heat and moisture. When sugar molecules are exposed to the heat
in your oven they start to reduce – or break down – and interact with the proteins. That’s when you can see 
your pastry turning golden brown. But it’s not just about that physical transformation. You can taste the effects of the maillard
reaction too – that's what gives us the flavors
of the golden crust on a piece of bread or a nice sear on a steak or that mellow richness
of, say, caramelized onions. The trick behind that reaction is to find the perfect temperature that sets
it into action without over or under-doing it. These recipes might make you think that Maillard reaction occurs at 350 degrees, but actually ... So these Maillard reactions tend to occur at
a fairly low temperature – around 230 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit. You want to manipulate the rate at which
this reaction occurs both at the surface and internally to get the results you want. If we bake too cool, the entire cookie, for example, will dry out before
we get that surface drying that will lead to browning. If we bake things in too hot an oven, the opposite
occurs and we get burning. To get it just right we preheat the oven to 350 degrees
so the Maillard reaction has time to occur throughout the entire cookie. For most home cooks and to also account for
the fact that everyone's oven is slightly different, I think 350 is a great benchmark to work from. It’s a safe standard for most
people, but the number can also be altered to yield slightly different
results. Some pastry chefs might bake at 325 if they want a lighter colored cookie,
and some push it to 375 for a crispier outside. A lot of things that contemporary bakers tend
to forget is not too long ago, in history, we didn't have as much control over our ovens
or being a pastry chef meant being able to build a fire and maintain an oven temperature. Before the 1900’s, when ovens didn’t have
temperature regulators, recipe writers instructed bakers to “cook in a moderate” “hot”
or “slow” oven depending on the food. After the second world war, the temperature gauge was developed and it became widely popular across households. Modern ovens typically ranged from 200 to
550 degrees, so over time, recipe writers converted these temperature guidelines to actual numbers -- they settled on the 350 mark for “moderate”
which was the sweet spot for baking. Using these more specific numbers is really
a result of better oven design and better oven control. And the more you understand about what goes on inside your oven, the better results you'll get. And who doesn't want a better cookie? Hey everyone, thanks for watching. If you're interested in more food content, head on over our sister channel Eater. They've got this cool series where they test out different kitchen gadgets and they recently put up a video on pressure cookers. What do you think of when you hear the word
“war?” Is it this? Or maybe this? Well, there’s a different type of war you
may have heard a lot about recently. Trade war worries igniting. Is the trade war back on? Trade war. Trade war. Full-blown trade war. The “weapons” in a trade war are everywhere. It's the food you eat. The train you ride to work. And the laptop you’re probably watching
this video on. As a consumer you're probably consuming imports. If we have a trade war and we start slapping
tariffs on all of those imports, the bill is going to be higher. If the world relies so much on trade, what
is a trade war and why do countries get caught up in them in the first place? Alright, global trade can be a dry topic so
let’s jazz this up a little bit. To avoid any spoilers, let’s say it’s
season one of Game of Thrones and both the Tyrell and the Lannister kingdoms manufacture…
googly eyes. The Tyrells then start to subsidize googly
eye manufacturing in their kingdom. That basically means that the Tyrells are paying
at least part of the cost of manufacturing, reducing the cost for buyers. The Lannisters are understandably upset — why
would anyone want to buy their more expensive product? They could try and negotiate with the Tyrells
or they could choose to impose tariffs: taxes on imports that raise the cost of those goods. Which in this case, would punish the Tyrells. With the tariffs in place, if the Tyrells
tried to export goods to the Lannisters, they’d have to pay an extra tax. The Tyrells could then impose tariffs of their
own. Now if this disagreement goes back and forth
and escalates with even more tariffs, that would be considered a trade war. But trade wars aren’t fiction and there’s
more than one way they can start. One possibility is you want to keep out
countries import so that your domestic competitors have an edge. The second possibility is if there's a country
that is doing something that you don't want them to, you can use a tariff as a way of inflicting
a degree of pain, of economic pain on that country. And you say until you change your evil ways
I'm going to make it hurt. Okay, so who “wins” a trade war? One way to think about who “wins” a trade
war is looking at which country has more targets to choose from. The more goods you ship to another country,
the more vulnerable your goods are to punishing tariffs. So some economists would say that the country
which ships fewer goods to the other has an advantage — and can outlast the other in
a big clash. Trade wars can also boost the fortunes of
countries that stand outside the fray. In the 1930s, the US enacted the Smoot-Hawley
Tariff Act which put into place steep, sweeping tariffs on imports as a way to protect American
workers and industries. Canada and some European countries put up
tariffs of their own, launching a trade war. Some of these countries then abandoned the
US as a trading ally and took their trading elsewhere. Soviet Russia, a country not involved in the trade
war, ended up gaining trading partners as a result of Smoot-Hawley. So sometimes countries not involved in a trade war can benefit from one. But, as is the case with most wars, trade wars are harmful for almost everyone involved — particularly for poorer consumers. Rising prices in a trade war can have ripple effects. When people have to spend more money on basics like clothing, it means they have less money to spend on other goods and services. And that can dampen the pace of the economy. Traditionally when you've looked at trade protection,
you often put higher protection on goods that are consumed by poor people. There are economists who have documented that
systematically you tend to find higher tariffs on things like low-end clothing, shoes, sugar,
which play a disproportionate role in the spending of people who are less
was well off. In April, President Trump unveiled a list
of over 1000 Chinese exports — things like aircraft parts, TVs, and medical devices — that
he planned to place tariffs on, as a way to to punish Beijing for restricting US investment
in China and for stealing American intellectual property. The very next day, China struck back, unveiling
its own list of US exports that it planned to place tariffs on. Since then, Trump has threatened another round
of tariffs, with China ready to respond with its own additional tariffs. The whole situation is starting to look a
lot like a trade war. Countries disagree on fair and unfair trade
practices all the time. But there’s something unique about Trump’s
approach to it: the unpredictability, the wild threats, the disinterest in even pretending
to play by the rules. Trump isn’t just destabilizing trade relations
with China or any other country he threatens — he’s destabilizing the entire global system
of trade. Frasier and Friends and Caroline in the City
and Murphy Brown and I Love Lucy all have one thing in common. No, it’s not all the audience laughter. They all kind of look…the same. And the shots and lighting all are kinda the
same. These are three camera sitcoms, with very
familiar camera angles and lighting. And the guy who perfected the style of light
that would one day shine upon Urkel’s face? “Did I do that?” It’s Karl Freund. The same guy who made...this. He was the German cinematographer behind the
look of “Metropolis,” the 1927 classic. And there was actually a good reason that
a genius decided that going from this to this was a challenge worth betting his
career on. This right here is cinematic history. It’s from 1924’s “The Last Laugh.” For this movie, Karl Freund invented what
was probably the first dolly shot in history - that’s when a camera moves on a cart or
a track. When Freund moved from Germany to Hollywood,
he continued to make visual masterpieces from directing the original “The Mummy,” to
being the cinematographer on “Dracula.” This scene from Dracula is emblematic of his
work, with shadows and light serving as powerful tools in the scene. With 1937’s “The Good Earth,” he won
an Academy Award for Cinematography. Freund’s art came from powerful imagery
and stark contrasts, like in this scene from Metropolis. I Love Lucy looked good - but pretty flat. That’s why it’s so surprising that he
thought it could be a breakthrough. We know Freund was nervous about making a
transition from movies like this to television filmed in front of a live audience. Traditional movie lighting wouldn't work in
that environment and on a tight TV schedule. Here's why. Dramatic lighting is cool. But if I move, the way people move in sitcoms,
I lose the light and the shot. You also can't reset and move that light in front
of a live audience. The shot also has to be lit so that it can be shown
by three different cameras at the same time. That challenge appealed to Freund, and, laugh
track jokes aside, he wrote that a live studio audience had “an astonishing effect in stimulating
performers.” There were earlier experiments with live taping,
but Freund perfected it. You can see how he did it in I Love Lucy’s
very first episodes and in this on set picture. First, he put three cameras on his trademark
dollies - which is why these are called three camera sitcoms. Usually it has one camera in the middle, for
wide shots, and two on the sides for closeups. You can see it here, as well as in the tape
he used to mark the cameras’ positions. This is how it worked — letting cameras
move on the fly, without relighting. Cameramen coordinated at all times using headsets
and they were connected to the control room. To light this set up, Freund used an overhead
grid of lights like these and even put floor lights on the bottom of each camera to flatter
actors’ faces. This? This is not like I Love Lucy. He also placed microphones around the set
so they wouldn’t get in the way. Lucy and Ethel could bounce around the living
room without needing to stop taping — or stop the laughter. All of this let them keep a strict shooting
schedule with minimum reshoots after the show. For Freund, all this visual work was in service
of making one sound possible. This is still kind of how it’s done today. Freund’s tricks established a template for
the three camera sitcom that’s still in use today. As you can see it in “Vox”
- the first workplace sitcom where people actually work. Anyway, as you can see, there’s no need
to relight Dean as he crosses the room in this scene, only to be ignored by Ashley, because she's too busy working. Freund’s techniques did have drawbacks,
some of those drawbacks are visible in today’s sitcoms, and some are specific to the time
in which he worked. He had to put darker makeup on his actors
so they wouldn’t be blown out by the lights - and you can see it on Lucy and Ethel here. In this scene, they were probably wearing
pastel clothing as well, because nothing could be too bright — film processing gave everything
higher contrast than normal. Even today the three camera sitcom has
a less adventurous look — as you can see as AJ and Ashley go through all their unread emails. It affects focus, too - look at the Big Bang
Theory next to its prequel, Young Sheldon. Big Bang Theory, the 3 camera sitcom, looks
pretty much like I Love Lucy. There are very few, or faint shadows, everything’s
in focus, and the camera angles are familiar. Young Sheldon is single camera, like a movie,
and that allows it to have light and shadow and a gorgeous blurred background. But Freund’s innovation did help a live
audience — and us — see Friends, and Seinfeld, and Frasier. As he wrote in 1953: “To have had the opportunity
to play a part in the success of the I Love Lucy show, which is now the No. 1 rated Television
show in the nation assures me the efforts to overcome the handicaps have not been in
vain.” Karl Freund was a genius. And sometimes even genius has a sense of humor. This is just some of the noise that i’m
exposed to. And that doesn’t include the progressive
rock my neighbors listen to every single morning. All this noise is really annoying, but ... Hearing loss is the fourth highest cause of
disability across the world and it's expected to get much worse. In the US alone, one in four adults show signs
of noise-induced hearing loss. One of the main reasons behind that is all
the noise that’s around us every single day. According to the Environmental Protection
Agency, the best way to protect your hearing is to limit noise levels to 70 decibels. And experts agree that continued exposure
to noise above 85 dBA will eventually harm your hearing. If you're curious about the noise levels around
you, decibel readers like this one tell you exactly how much noise you're being exposed
to. This one’s actually fine. I ride the subway for hours everyday and it’s
really, really loud. But putting in my headphones doesn't really help. Smartphones cranked up to maximum sound are
about 100 decibels. This bar is 105 decibels and according to
the World Health Organization that could damage your hearing in less than an hour. This chart shows that the louder the noise,
the less exposure it takes to potentially damage your hearing. For example, a boiler room is about 95 decibels,
so if you hung out in one for 4 hours you would not only be a f***ing psycho, but you
would expose yourself to hearing damage as well. One of the worst things about hearing loss
is that ear damage is irreversible. Most of us are born with something like 16,000
little hair cells in our ears, and these hair cells act as sound detectors. So when sound waves pass into our ears, they
send a signal up to our brain, and then our brain decodes the sound. But the brain’s interpretation is only as
good as the signal it receives from the ear. And when the hair cells in the ear have been
damaged, the brain can’t detect the sound or the sound is distorted. You can think about the hair cells like grass,
when you’re walking through a field and you walk over blades of grass they bounce
back after a few minutes. But when you walk through that field enough
times you eventually create a path and the same thing happens with the hair cells in
your ears. When loud sounds pass into the ears and at
high enough intensity they bend those hair cells, and they can bounce back during a recovery
period. But with enough noise over enough time those
hair cells get permanently damaged or destroyed. When it comes to help from the government,
I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that in the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon
passed the Noise Control Act, which recognized Americans’ right to a quiet environment. The bad news is that in 1981 President Ronald
Reagan came along and essentially shut down the effort and left local governments to fend
for themselves. The problem with that is that local governments
relied on federal funding to tackle noise problems. So, yeah, you might be on your own on this
one, but there are ways you can prevent noise induced hearing loss. You can wear noise canceling headphones or
foam earplugs in loud environments like the subway or on airplanes. You can limit the amount of time you’re
exposed to loud sounds and move further away from the source of the noise. You can go into the settings and set a maximum volume on your phone
to prevent playing your music too loud. So, yeah the problem is bad, but you don’t
have to take it lying down. One of my favorite discoveries had been this app called SoundPrint, which allows users to submit their decibel readings in bars, restaurants, and cafes. And I've been using it to avoid really loud places. When you look at the world's population
density map, you might notice a trend. 40% of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of a coast. Most of those people are living in and around large
cities and these dense urban areas are growing. That growth calls for more
manufacturing, transportation, power plants, and electrical grids. Resources like this are often placed in cheaper, low elevation land. Which means that for
many coastal communities, sea level rise caused by climate change isn't just a
problem for the future. It's a problem right now. One of these places is the New
Jersey Meadowlands. It's a 30 mile stretch of small towns built on
marshlands. As the land here sinks and sea levels rise, some communities will begin
to flood. Once impacts become noticeable such as water on low-lying streets, water
coming in below seawalls. Once that becomes noticeable and
problematic it's going to become chronic rather quickly. So how do we know that
sea level is rising? Oxon isotopes. The Gulf Stream. Bathemetry. We have several sources of evidence. Scientists like these guys use a variety
of records to study sea-level change. The longest record where people have been
observing sea-level rise directly is with instruments called "tide gauges." These instruments measure the level of water as it goes up and down with the tide. Using these gauges alongside geological records and satellites, scientists have
recorded an acceleration in sea level which they expect to continue through
this century. Between 2000 and 2050 we're probably looking at a range here in New
Jersey of about 1 to 2 feet of sea level rise. It's going to impact low-lying
infrastructure in particular. Imagine if you're on a train and you had to wait for
high tide to go out before the train could go through and what a disruption
to the system that would be. And then multiply that
by every other train line or roadway that goes at sea level. The Meadowlands is six miles away from New York City's Times Square. It's one of the
busiest transit corridors in the United States. If you draw a line from
Philadelphia to New York City and/or Philadelphia to Boston, you basically
have to go through the Meadowlands. So as a result, all of the infrastructure that
connects this region together bottlenecks down, comes together in the
Meadowlands. By year 2050 researchers estimate that 115 rail stations here
would flood on a chronic basis. And by that time nearly 60% of the region's
current power generating capacity would be in a floodplain. If you think back to
Superstorm Sandy and one of the iconic images of that storm was all of
lower Manhattan in darkness. It's not just an inconvenience in a home losing
power, we could shut down the entire Northeast if we lost power. Hurricane Sandy was and is a historic storm. Scientists recorded tides up to 20 feet
higher than usual along the New Jersey and New York coastlines. It was the second costliest storm on record in the United States and the
tunnels that carry hundreds of thousands of commuters every day still need repair. But with a rising sea level flooding will get worse during weather events
that aren't nearly as extreme as Hurricane Sandy. The simple thing to
understand is that with a higher sea level it requires less of a storm to
produce the same amount of flooding and the same storm will produce more
flooding. And in other parts of New Jersey there have been documented
nuisance flooding events. Those can happen even when it doesn't rain.
Oftentimes the water will come from the ocean or river spilling its banks. Not so much rainfall flooding. On America's eastern coast tides cycle four times a
day from high to low to high to low, but at certain points of the year they can
rise much higher than usual. We're at a point now with continued sea level rise,
that the high tides of the year often times called king tides with maybe a
little extra wind behind them, they become a problem and actually start to flood communities. According to NOAA, the annual number of high tide flood days is
projected to increase fastest in New York City. And in a few decades, coastal
cities on the Atlantic could experience high tide flooding as often as three
times a week. Storm flooding like what Hurricane Sandy brought, could become
more persistent very soon. By the end of the century, many towns in New Jersey
would find themselves underwater frequently. Including this town in the
heart of the Meadowlands. One report suggested it would lose all of its
housing to chronic flooding. The response to sea level rise
boils down to three options: prevention is basically building higher sea walls. Things like berms. Adaptation is elevation. Some critical infrastructure
can't relocate for economic reasons, so it would just end up being cheaper to
raise them. Retreat is basically returning the land to nature, but the
state of New Jersey doesn't seem keen on that. In the last decade, a new NFL
stadium was built alongside large swaths of new housing and there's an airport
expansion plan. But all of that new concrete could increase flooding from
storm water runoff. The Meadowlands is one of the biggest sponges in our region.
If we get rid of those wetlands or if we you know pave them over, we're going to
be pushing water into other places. It's very hard to find any community
that's looking at sea-level rise as a threat that they're planning for today. Even if this is something that's 20 years away or so, the decisions we make
today last into those 20 years and beyond and we need to be doing more to prepare
for those. Sea level rise impacts are happening now. We're seeing them in the
East Coast in terms of increased number of these sunny day flooding events. As sea levels continue to rise impacts and become deeper, more severe, more
widespread and we're going to have to come to grips with the fact that the way
that we live our lives today is not going to be the way that we live our
lives in the future. Yo! Thank you for watching. If you liked that video
you're going to love what the Verge Science team is making on their Youtube
Channel. You can check out one of their new videos right here. Again, thanks for watching and I'll see you soon. These mosquito larvae in a lab at Imperial
College in London have been genetically engineered to glow red under a laser. But that red fluorescence is just a marker
-- It’s there to tell the researchers that something profound has happened. I ran out and I grabbed my supervisor
... I was like Tony but you know you've got to look at this. So we started going through and I read them
off one by one and I was like red, red, red, red and we just... It was a very crazy time. We just started screaming and getting
super excited. Since only one of their parents had a copy
of the red gene, you’d expect around 50% of the larvae to be red. But nearly 100% of them were glowing. The researchers had hacked the rules of inheritance
with what’s called a gene drive. But the red gene isn’t the point - it’s
been linked to a genetic tool that renders female mosquitoes infertile. And that’s a huge deal because this isn’t
just any old mosquito species. This is anopheles gambiae,
one of the mosquitos that carries the parasite that causes malaria. So malaria is mostly a sub-saharan African
disease. It affects people in the Indian subcontinent,
Southeast Asia, but it’s primarily a disease of Sub-Saharan Africa. And the majority of malaria deaths in any
given year in the world, hundreds of thousands of deaths, are kids under 5 in Africa. Over the past 15 years, there’s been a big
investment in bed nets, insecticides, and better treatment. And I think the result has been a lot of steady
progress on malaria. That being said, it’s progress against a
really, really high death rate. Most African countries really want to try
to eliminate it and WHO is really in support of this, they’ve set some targets to achieve
in 2030. And where we stand now, we don’t seem to
be on course for achieving those. While researchers continue to work on a vaccine,
genetic approaches to malaria look increasingly promising. Genetically modified mosquitoes aren’t new
- a company called Oxitec has released mosquitoes in Brazil that are designed to have nonviable
offspring. But those don’t contain a gene drive, which
biases inheritance so that the modification continues to be passed through a population,
though they can also be designed to have a more local reach. The idea of driving desirable genes into insect
populations dates back decades, but progress toward that goal jumped ahead
after the invention of the CRISPR gene editing tool in 2012. CRISPR allows scientists make precise changes
to DNA in the lab. A CRISPR gene drive could let them push those
changes through a wild population of insects. It works by inserting the gene editing tool
itself into a chosen segment of the mosquito’s DNA. From there, CRISPR induces the cell to copy
the package onto the matching chromosome. Like us, mosquitoes have 2 copies of each
gene, one from each parent. And now that the gene drive is on both chromosomes,
it will get passed on to all the offspring, where it will copy onto their other chromosome,
and so on. So depending on what biologists attach to
that package, like the red fluorescent gene, they can make some drastic changes to wild
populations. There are two broad approaches to malaria
mosquitoes. The team at Imperial College is part of an
international group called Target Malaria, funded mostly by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. And they’re aiming to use gene drives to
suppress mosquito populations. Their drives are designed to spread female
infertility or to prevent females from being born, with the effect of shrinking a population
of mosquitoes. Then there’s a team of researchers at the
University of California institutions who have been developing a gene drive that
alters, rather than shrinks, the mosquito population. It spreads genes that make mosquitoes resistant
to the malaria parasite, so they don’t transmit it between humans. The World Health Organization has outlined
the steps that G.M. mosquitoes should go through before being deployed. Gene drive research
is in phase 1 now, but to find out if it could really work, they
need to test it outside of a lab. And the researchers say their mosquitoes should
be ready for phase 2 soon. I'm hoping the science is well within five
years. Maybe even half that. Maybe in one or two years. A couple of years. But then that's in the lab in London. After something’s ready in the lab in London
you'd really want to go through very rigorous testing. So with every health intervention or technology
there’s kind of a spectrum of how much testing and how much certainty people require before
they just try it. This is always a trade-off in any medical
trial, if you develop a drug and it’s a miracle and it helps everyone, when do you
stop the trial and just start giving that to everyone? Once we have a gene drive that we can release
in the wild that could wipe out malaria, every year we don’t do that is 500,000 to 700,000,
mostly kids, dying. Kevin Esvelt the MIT scientist who’s working
on gene drives, was talking to me and he said
Malaria is a case where there are really strong ethical argument of doing something now today
because so many children have died just in the time that we've been speaking. I would say at least 20. And his takeaway from that wasn’t let’s
do this as fast as possible. It’s let’s do this right, because if we
don’t do this right, then there’s going to be a massive backlash and we’re never
going to be able to do anything like this ever again. Yeah if you move forwards with a unilateral
“we are going to save the kids whether you like it or not,” really does imperil
the broader malaria eradication effort. Target Malaria has begun a lengthy process
of building facilities and staff in 4 African countries, where they’ll be working with
non-gene-drive mosquitoes before importing the gene drive mosquitoes. And even then, there’s more lab work to
do before an actual release. So the modified one is modified using a laboratory
strain. So you have to do experiments to make
sure you incorporate the natural genetic background of the mosquitoes in the area where you want
to work. At each stage, they’re consulting with local
communities and with governments about this genetic technology that’s designed to spread
across borders. There are no regulators that have handled
this before. Not only just in Africa, but anywhere. I think i’m curious about you know this
notion that we have a public conversation, we need to get people on board, this notion
that that would somehow lead to some clear consensus or some clear green light. At some point someone has to decide. And I’m curious if you have a sense of who
that is. Yeah, that’s the million dollar question
and no one I talked to even pretended to have the answer. The end game that got alluded to by a lot
of people was some kind of agreement by the African Union about releasing a self-propagating
drive. One tricky thing is malaria does not solely infect people in democratic countries like
Ghana or Senegal. It also affects people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which despite
the name is a dictatorship. Countries with really unstable and in many cases really awful
governance. So one tricky question is, if the African Union
comes together and says yeah we’re ok with this, is that legitimate? Are they speaking for people in Africa? And I think a lot the work that scientists
are doing is trying to reach out before that and trying to start a conversation before that to make
sure it’s legitimate. As the public debate begins, there’s a risk
that the politics of genetically modified crops could spill over to the mosquito issue. Anti-GMO groups like Friends of the Earth
have already called for a moratorium on gene drive research. They fear it will be misused
by agribusiness and militaries and cause unintended damage to ecosystems. No one in this is as big of a son of a bitch
as nature. Like, nature is so awful in every conceivable way. It is completely indifferent to suffering. But I think many of the things we look back
on as humans as our greatest achievements: getting rid of small pox, penicillin, insulin
for diabetics, mass vaccinations. Those are all things that involved messing
with nature and either repurposing or tweaking things that nature created, for our own uses. Some of the worst things we’ve made have
also done that. But I look at the earth as something
we've  got to keep going for us and other animals but I don’t look at it as this morally
benevolent place. It’s a horror show that we’re trying to
manage as best we can and this is an ambitious but really interesting way to manage it. For a bunch more information about this fascinating topic, go read Dylan's feature article on Vox.com. I'll put a link in the comments. And if you're interested in genetic engineering more broadly, we have an episode on our Netflix show called "Designer DNA," and it's about genetic engineering in human beings. That's on Netflix, go check it out. Check out all the other episodes too, we're publishing them weekly on Wednesdays. It's one thing to lose our patients to doctors
but to those charlatans? It makes me sick. That’s an episode of the Mindy Project,
in which a fight brews between Mindy Lahiri - a doctor - and a midwifery practice. Midwives! Who the hell do you think you are? Let's say I have a heart attack. How would you handle that? Would you, uh, rub eucalyptus leaves all around
my chest, huh? This is an exaggerated sitcom plot, but the
idea points to a long-standing culture war between doctors and midwives - that's rooted
in race and class in America. Alright, ladies. Let's go downstairs, let's set up appointments with some real doctors. Midwifery is an incredibly common practice
in a lot of countries. In the UK, midwives deliver about half of
all babies, including Kate Middleton's. In Sweden, Denmark and France, midwives oversee
around three quarters of births. But here in the US, they participate in
less than 10 percent of births. In these countries - the ones that tend to
rely on midwives more frequently - maternal mortality rates are a fraction of America’s. In fact, maternal mortality has risen in the
U.S. as it has declined elsewhere. So if midwives are popular and effective in
many other industrialized countries, why is the U.S. medical system still wary of them? The answer is complicated. For most of human history, babies were delivered
by midwives. Midwifery can be found in the Old Testament. They were respected for bringing their knowledge
and training to childbirth. In America, midwives were integral to both
indigenous and immigrant groups. And in the South, they known as “granny
midwives.” Midwives have always existed. It's just that we have changed over time. That’s Patricia Loftman, a midwife of 37
years and a member of the board of directors for the American College of Nurse-Midwives. When you look at midwifery, say in the time
of enslavement, the midwife was actually the person who made certain that women were able
to produce healthy babies. Now, after slavery ended she was no longer valuable because she
was not making certain that there was a continued slave labor. I want you to
meet Mrs. Mary Coley. A midwife who lives in Albany, Georgia. Generally in the South, most of these women
were black women taking care of women, both black and poor white, because during the days
of segregation you could not access hospitals. In the mid-to-late 1800s, the professionalization
of medicine became a major trend, and male doctors began taking control of childbirth
away from female midwives. It was determined that in order to get women
into the hospital, you had to get rid of these midwives who were taking care of all of these
women in the home. All of these women who had been attending
births all of these years, they were blamed for maternal deaths, infant deaths. Two days ago a
baby, delivered by a midwife, died, when it ought to have lived. My examination showed that its cord got infected. And you all know what that means. Something wasn’t clean. Joseph DeLee of Chicago, the most influential
OB-GYN of his day, called midwives, "relics of barbarism" and "a drag upon the science and
the art of obstetrics." In the South especially, much of the attack
on midwifery was rooted in race. One Alabama doctor dismissed black midwives
as having "fingers full of dirt and brains full of arrogance and superstition." Some states outlawed home-birth midwives,
while most others created new regulations that made it harder to enter the profession. By the 1950s, a vast majority of women gave
birth in hospitals, attended by doctors. But something changed in the 70s: Middle-class
white women wanted more of a voice in their maternity care and that led to a rise in midwifery. Except this time, most midwives were white women. The US currently has around 15,000 certified
midwives. It’s a growing profession, but still overwhelmingly
white. Just about 5 percent of the nation’s midwives
are women of color. In addition to being from the community and
understanding not only linguistically and culturally what women need, midwives of color
protect women in a system that is hostile to them. With black mothers three to four times more
likely to die from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth, there’s evidence that empowering
midwives might change outcomes for moms and babies. Researchers found that some states have clearly
done more to integrate midwives than others. And while there are many factors that can influence maternal and infant health, many states with the least integration also had some of the highest rates on key indicators including premature births, neonatal mortality, and C-sections. In recent years, groups like the American
Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have become much more welcoming to licensed
midwives. We're all in this together. But that hasn’t resolved the culture war
between doctors and midwives just yet. There is a role for a midwifery and physician
collaborative relationship. We're not enemies. We are colleagues who need each other. Thanks for watching! ProPublica has been reporting on the disparities
in maternal mortality in the US, and how it’s the most dangerous industrialized country
in which to give birth. There’s a lot more to the story of midwives
in America that we couldn’t fit, including the current barriers to entry that a lot of
midwives - especially midwives of color - face in certain states. For more on that and ProPublica's latest reporting
on maternal health, click on the link below. When I show you what I’m holding, some of
you might see a simple cartoon. Some of you might see a complex piece of engineering. You’d both be right. Meet Genesis, the first Cryptokitty. She’s not alone. All of a sudden, cryptokitties are everywhere. “Cryptokitties” "Cryptokitties" “The viral blockchain-based game that sparked
a global craze for virtual cats.” “It’s a picture of a cat. And apparently someone bought one for $100,000!” You’ve probably heard of cryptocurrencies—
but these are cryptocollectibles. They’re like digital beanie babies or baseball
cards. It sounds silly, but Cryptokitties istesting
a profound idea: Can a digital good be… rare? Every 15 minutes, the company Axiom Zen releases
a new cryptokitty that only one person can buy. And they’ll do that until November 2018,
when they’re capping these “Generation Zero" kitties at 50,000. But there are already more cryptokitties than
that, because unlike baseball cards, you can breed them. The game is that there are billions of different
possible combinations of traits. And so you can decide which combination of traits is interesting to you and you can go out and try to find a cat that has that combination and buy it. Or you can try and find a combination that no one's created before. And through our breeding mechanics you can come up with new combinations of traits or, if you're lucky, even new traits entirely. That’s Layne Lafrance and Dieter Shirley. They both helped found Cryptokitties in November
2017. And they’ve convinced a loyal group of users
to spend more than $23 million buying and breeding these digital cats. In just a few months, a whole community of third party sites and services formed around
cryptokitties. You can do youngest first, cheapest first. See, like $10 bucks. And as I mouse over, this is a plug-in I found. We are trying to find new ways to play with these Kitties
outside of the main game. So we’re starting with contests! Derpface is possibly one of my favorite kitties
because he is just so unbelievably ugly. The traits that made Derpface the ugliest
 Cryptokitty —even though, I mean, I think he’s adorable— are baked into his code. See, this is what Derpface and Genesis both
really look like. The “genes” in their code define their
physical appearance on 12 features, based on a template by a human designer. They call those features…. Cattributes are the visual attributes of
the cat. Like us, these cats can also carry traits in their code that only show up in their offspring. But the genetic algorithm that drives cryptokitty
reproduction — that’s kept secret. When the cats are breeding together the secret
sauce combines those elements to make with a certain amount of... well we can't really
tell you much about that. But! They are combined. And people spend a lot of money on the chance
to get their dream cat. Price depends on the generation number and
on what traits are in high demand. In other words, popular Cryptokitties earn
high prices the way collectibles always have: Scarcity. And what’s so interesting about this is
that digital scarcity is brand new. Before the computers came along if you had a thing,
only you could have that thing and no one else have that thing unless you gave it to
the other person in which case you would no longer have it. But that completely changes when goods become
digital and accessible online. Every time you give somebody data on the internet
it's a copy. I think the sort of reckoning we had in the 90s and early 2000s was how
do we live in a world where everything can be copied infinitely and you know and what's
going to happen to the music industry? What's going to happen to the news and entertainment
industries? And we've seen it all play out. But Cryptokitties can be scarce because of
the technology they’re built on. They’re using a blockchain. Specifically, the Ethereum blockchain, so
you have to buy them with “ether”. But you might also be familiar with the original,
Bitcoin. A blockchain provides a decentralized system
for recording transactions, making fraud and piracy a lot harder. And so the essence of blockchain is that we have
-- whether you want to say a book or people refer to it as a ledger. And they would say, “Hey, you know you know
Bob has this, Alice has that.” And then everybody gets a copy of that book. And if someone comes along and says, "No Alice
doesn't have that." People can point to their own copy of the
book and they can say, "No no no you're wrong. I see right here in this in my copy that Alice
has this." When a Kitty is born and it's beautiful and I love it, there’s
something very special about knowing that it belongs to me and no one else and no one
can take it. But the truth is, it's not all yours. You own the code for that cat, but not the
actual image. In the case of cryptokitties, they have sections
in their terms of service that say that they own all of the images, all of the graphic elements
and that they have the right to use them however they want. That you actually have no right to use them
in any way. That’s not so different from a baseball card. If you have, say, a Topps baseball
card and it has the player's name on it -- say Barry Bonds, and a picture of Barry Bonds
on it -- you own the physical object but you don't own the copyright. Owning the physical object doesn't give you
the right to print up other cards but it does give you the right to trade your card to someone
else or to sell it to a collector. But for Cryptokitties... If they decide they want to, say, change the
artwork or if they sell the company to someone who wants to pull the artwork offline and
use it only in their new Cryptokitties movie series, they could do that. And you'd be left just with this string of
letters and numbers on the blockchain with no art attached to it at all. So I think that's a fundamental difference between real-world collectibles where you have the object and they can't take it away from you and a digital
collectible. We really really really wanted to put the
art in the blockchain, because our users, I think most of them conceptually know that what they own is sort of some numbers, in a blockchain. But what you think you own, what you think of as your, cat is that picture of the cute little guy with the funny eyes. And unfortunately, the decentralized systems are
just not mature enough to support art in a robust way. Cryptokitties are cute and complicated and
they show that we still have a ways to go until we can really keep a digital collectible
like we can a baseball card. When I was doing research for this video, I became super interested in what makes Cryptokitties a "game." If that's the sort of thing you're interested in, you should really check out The Verge's YouTube channel. One of my favorites is on the way medicine is using games to improve cognition. So, go check them out. Hey! We have something special for you today. We've been hard at work on a new series with Netflix called "Explained." If you like our YouTube, you're gonna love this. The reason we're making this show is because of you. You, our subscribers. So they let us share the entire first episode right here. There's two more episodes on Netflix at netflix.com/explained. You can go right now, they are there for you to watch. Every Wednesday there is going to be a new story. Add it to your list and enjoy. [SINGING] 'Cause I'm in love... From virtually the moment we’re born, there’s
a story that’s preached across cultures and continents. It’s a familiar fairy tale... She was even more beautiful than he had thought. That finding one, true, love is the key to
a fulfilled and happy life. I've been doing a lot of thinking. And the thing is, I love you. I love you. I love you. Ditto. As an adult, we’re forced to reconcile
the messaging on monogamy with one simple fact... Humans are terrible at it. It’s kept Jerry Springer on the air for
25 years. Ohhhhh! I've been...
...sleeping with Eddie. He cheated on me with her? I have your name tattoed on me! How many girls you take from me, Aaron? In 2016, 2.2 million U.S. couples got married. But over 800,000 called it quits. Our quest for – and failure at – monogamy
has caused so much pain and heartbreak. If it’s so hard for humans to be monogamous,
why do most of us, all around the world, make it one of the most central goals of our lives? I start asking myself, "Is he right for me?" If you ask couples why they chose monogamy,
you’ll hear one answer again and again. They fell in love. We met in a candy store. 1946. We went to college together. We were both in a relationship then... We didn't cheat. You look so guilty every time we talk about
this. I'm bad at talking about this. It's arranged marriage,
whatever they selected for me, it was good. And I am very happy with that. We had a study date one night, and that study
break turned into anatomy, I guess. I've never felt this way about anybody before. I feel God has blessed us. We found true love. Of course we did. We're still here, 70 years, what do you expect. 25 years I would've gotten out on good behavior. I would like to think that soul mates are real, but... She's my soul mate. Well, you're mine too. But monogamy and love aren’t the same thing. We are so psychotically welded to this idea that monogamy means love, and love means monogamy, and in the absence of monogamy, there is not
love. Love is a feeling. Monogamy is a rule. You’ll only have sex with this one person,
and most people live in a culture where they’re expected – at some point – to make that
rule a legal contract called marriage. In many countries, breaking that rule is a
crime. In the U.S., adultery is illegal in at least
20 states, and although they’re rarely enforced, punishments can range from a $10 fine to three
years in prison. If you are in a monogamous relationship for
50 years and you fell down once, you cheated once – the whole relationship was a lie
and a failure. Most human beings have ambivalent impulses
that it's nice to have someone you can rely on, but there's also the temptation of novelty. Why would humans all around the world invent
a rule that’s so difficult to follow, and treat breaking it as such an enormous betrayal? Should a male have on his clothing so much
as a strand of hair from a female not his wife, a serious crisis may result. For more than a century, there’s been a
culturally accepted explanation. Sound check. One, one, one, one, one, one, one. The standard narrative is the story that everybody
knows: that men want to be free sexually and spread their seed around the world, and women
want to be very exclusive and particular and choose a provider, because they're vulnerable
and the children need someone to take care of them, and all that. Women trade sexual fidelity to men in exchange
for goods and services essentially. In this narrative, there’s another reason
why men wouldn’t want women to sleep around. If a baby comes out of a woman's body, there
is no question but that she is genetically related to that baby. The male has to take the woman's word for
it. Biologists have known for a very long time
that men are far more inclined to seek multiple sexual partners. And the reason for that is is really quite
clear. Now in the first place, remember that the
male sperm cells are being produced all the time. While only one egg cell is produced each month. There's a very good – and I don't mean ethically
good – but very understandable evolutionary payoff for males as being randy bastards. But there’s one big issue with that explanation
– of promiscuous, possessive men and demure women. At lots of points in time, and places in the
world, people didn’t follow it. Anatomically modern human beings have existed
for at least 300,000 years. And for more than 90% of that time, we lived
as hunter-gatherers. Anthropologists refer to them as fiercely
egalitarian. There's no reason to think that our ancestors
shared everything except sexual partners. Of course we can't go back and interview our
foraging ancestors, but we have the accounts of explorers and Europeans who first developed
and saw these societies before they'd been much touched by outsiders, and their surprise
and shock at the difference in sexual mores. There's a wonderful story that a Jesuit who
lived with the Naskapi Indians for some time and he would ask, "If you let your wives have
this much freedom, how do you know that the child she bears will belong to you?" And he recorded the answer of the Indian: "Thou has no sense." The guy said, "You Frenchmen love only the
children of your body, but we love all the children of the tribe." If a child is crying, the adult nearest to
that child picks it up. Nobody says, "Hey, hey your kid's crying." No, it's – there's a commonality to parenthood
among hunter-gatherers. One of those groups are the Bari of Venezuela,
where every man who sleeps with a woman while she’s pregnant is considered a father of
the child, and helps provide for it. Now in our society, that would probably not
work very well, I'm not recommending it. But in that society, a child who had several
fathers named, because she'd slept with several fathers, actually had a much better chance
of surviving to adulthood because those men contributed. Did you ever think of going with somebody
else after you married me? What are you, crazy? We don't like to say that we're open, we like
to say we're slightly ajar. Exactly. That's not good, in my way. In our language also they say
Pati parmeshwar. That means husband is like God. This is our culture. We actually kind of met through the non-monogamy
community. I define this relationship as, this is my
cohabitating partner and we call each other otters. We are our primary partners and our other
partners are secondary partners. I find it really fascinating. I think about a lot like if I could ever do
that, and I don't know if I could. I had a threesome with, like, two friends
of mine that I initiated. I decided that it would be cool to experiment
with multiple people with, like, somebody that I really loved and cared about. The queer community has been berated with
the idea that our relationships are lesser, and that they're not actually up to par and
that standard of – you know, the heteronormative standard, and all that's bull. "We shouldn’t be surprised that some cultures
practice non-monogamy. Because in the animal world, true sexual monogamy
is virtually unheard of." The most romantic creature might be the diplozoon
paradoxum. A parasitic tapeworm that literally fuses
together with its partner for life. But humans aren’t tapeworms. We’re apes. And our closest relatives in the animal world
are chimps and bonobos. We're more closely related to chimps and bonobos
than the Indian elephant is to the African elephant. The close comparison exists in bone and muscle
structure, and in the capability of responding to stimuli and solving problems. Clearly chimps and bonobos are anything but
monogamous. Bonobos have sex at the drop of a hat. [SINGING] I know – I know – that I just
met you... They have sex to say hello, they have sex
to say goodbye, they have sex when they're stressed out. For both the male and female bonobos, that
free love philosophy makes evolutionary sense. The males get to spread their seed, and the
females get to take in the seed of multiple males – which then compete against each
other to fertilize her egg. It’s survival of the fittest – for sperm. There are aspects of bonobo anatomy that seem
adapted to promiscuity. And intriguingly, you can also find a lot
of them in humans. Suggesting we may have evolved to be non-monogamous, too. There’s body dimorphism... In species that are more promiscuous, the
males tend to be 15 to 25 percent larger than the females. And in theory, if there are males battling
to impregnate women, testicles would be bigger and stronger. You'll see that human testicles are intermediate
between very large testicles in bonobos and chimpanzees, and very small testicles in gorillas
for example. There’s the human penis – tied for the
biggest among all primates – which has a unique shape. We have this much thicker penis with the flared
head. This shape creates a vacuum in the female's
reproductive tract that tends to pull any sperm that's already there, it pulls it down
away from the ovum. Thereby giving an advantage to the sperm of
the man who's having sex at the moment. There’s also female copulatory vocalization
– a phenomenon so well- known and accepted, it’s a standard feature of movie sex scenes. Oh! Oh! Ahh! Oh. What we see is that female copulatory vocalization
is common among primates that engage in sperm competition. Then there’s the fact that humans and bonobos
have sex to bond, and not just to have children – which might explain the way we face each
other during intercourse. You see humans and bonobos are the only two
that face each other while they're having sex. And why we have a lot more of it than most
mammals. So clearly when people say so-and-so had sex
like an animal, they're getting it backwards. And there’s now a lot of evidence that monogamy
is a more recent invention than most of us would expect. Around 12,000 years ago – when most humans
stopped being hunter- gatherers, and figured out how to farm. You get a very overpowering concern with property
rights. As the Greeks put it, you don't want a foreign
seed introduced into your soil. For thousands of years, marriage was the main
way that you increased your family labor force, you made peace treaties, business alliances. The more I've studied the more I became convinced
that marriage was invented not to do with the individual relationship with the man and
the woman, but to get in-laws. You know, and it's amusing because today we
see in-laws as a big threat to the solidarity of the man and the woman. But that's what marriage was about. You look back at Anthony and Cleopatra, that
was not a love story at all. That was two people from the most powerful
empires in the world trying to figure out how they could get together and rule both
of those empires. The idea of marrying someone for love? Coontz says western societies only started
doing that a few hundred years ago. As we made a transition to the idea that marriage
should be on the basis of love, it scared people. Defenders of traditional marriage said, "Oh
my gosh, how will we get a woman to marry at all if she says, 'Ew I don't love him.' How will we stop people from getting divorced?" So a new idea took hold: men and women needed
to find love and marry, because they were two parts of a whole. Men were aggressive and protective. Women were nurturing and demure. They were opposites who completed each other. The field of evolutionary biology also developed
around this time; pioneered by male scientists, who used their theories on sexual selection
to explain Victorian gender roles. As Charles Darwin wrote in “The Descent
of Man”: “Woman seems to differ from man in mental
disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness...Man delights in competition,
and this leads to ambition..." "Thus man has ultimately become superior to
woman.” And it’s possible his ideas became so popular
and survived so long, because it made sense to us in the societies we were living in. But if monogamy is all a made-up construct,
a way to enforce gender roles and social order, how do we explain that visceral, deep-rooted
feeling we get when our loved ones stray? Tell me something: are you the jealous type? I feel like we don't really deal too much
with jealousy. I don't know why that is. I think it's just 'cause we're sluts, to be
honest. I don't get, like, jealous like that, you
know. It's important I think to understand why you're
feeling jealous, because jealousy is not just a – it's not a feeling, it's usually rooted
in some other sort of thing. It's not a descending guillotine. It's like, jealousy is an event. What's the best way to deal with that event? Who were you really with? That, that little blonde secretary from the
office? I don't think you'll ever find any society
where there was no sexual jealousy. But we also have these other kinds of impulses
of generosity and of a sense that maybe there are other parts of the person that are more
important than the sexual person. And these coexist and they battle, and I think
they will always battle. I coined the term monogamish to describe my
own relationship with my husband. We're together 24 years, not monogamous for
20 of those 24 years. And I've had people look at me and say, "I
could never do what you guys do because I value commitment too highly. All three of my marriages were monogamous." And what that says is this person was committed
to monogamy, not to any of the people that they married, they were committed to monogamy. Non-monogamy is getting more mainstream attention. Define polyamorous. Without monogamy. Polyamory... Polyamory... Polyamorous... It's called... Poly– –amory
Polyamorous people. Throuple. Not monogamous, ok. You couldn't be. A 2016 study found one in five Americans had
been in a non- monogamous relationship at some point. And in another survey, a third of Americans
said their ideal relationship would be non-monogamous. Monogamy as we know it has been through many
incarnations. It’s been forced, it’s been useful, it’s
been beautiful, it’s been subverted. As human society evolves, so will human sexuality. As we enter what I think of as uncharted territory,
for the first time in human history we are trying to develop relationships that are not
based on coercion: coercion of women by their economic and legal dependence, coercion of
women by their bodies, coercion of men by the social and economic structures. We're trying I think to find maybe a new balance. Monogamy isn't natural. It means we have to recognize that because
it's not natural, it's something that we're going to have to work for if we want it. One of the things that I think makes human
beings particularly interesting and maybe even unique in the animal world, is that we're
capable of doing things that are unnatural. Monogamy is like vegetarianism. You can choose to be a vegetarian. And that can be healthy, it can be ethical,
it can be a wonderful decision, but because you've chosen to be vegetarian, doesn't mean
that bacon stops smelling good. If we’re lucky, it’s no longer about what
kinds of relationships we should have in the modern world; it’s about designing the kinds
of relationships we want to have. Humans may not have evolved to be sexually
monogamous – but we have evolved to be adaptable. So, netflix.com/explained to watch the new show. K-pop's worldwide takeover. Designer babies. Designer babies. The racial wealth gap has grown so large, it would take something truly radical to close it. 1 in 5 Americans have been in a non-monogamous relationship at some point. What will happen 20, 30, 40 years from now? That's going to be really interesting to watch. At the wedding of Prince William and
Kate Middleton, two things stuck out. Literally. The fascinators of princesses
Beatrice and Eugenie. Sure, they were gigantic and pretty outlandish, but to be
fair the princesses were just following the dress code. And on the wedding
invitations to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding, you'll notice the same
thing. You got to wear a hat. Since the sixties, formal hats have sort of faded
out of fashion. Hats have always served multiple functions. They protect
us from the cold and the Sun, they're symbols of religion or trade or military
station. Or in the case of the top hat, they can show how stylish you are. There's a really popular story that the first time a guy wore a top hat in
London, it caused such a stir that a woman fainted, dogs yelped, and a kid broke
his arm in a mob. This probably didn't happen. But it is true that top hats
weren't really a thing in the UK until the early 19th century. Beau Brummell, a
fashion-forward dandy introduced them to his friend and future king, George IV, and top hats officially received royal approval. Brummell was a big hat
guy and he's also responsible for the decadent fashions you see at places like
this. That's the Royal Ascot, the biggest race of the London social season. In 1807, it introduced the Gold Cup, a shorter race that brought larger crowds. It was around this time that Brummell introduced a strict dress code for the
race, so that even those from lower social classes looked the part. Including Eliza Doolittle. Come on. Come on Dover. Come on Dover! Move your bloomin' arse! I suppose historically people have worn
hats to the to the races again, because of that formality. Nowadays, you
know, women like to dress up. So if they're going to the races it's a
fantastic excuse to to wear a hat. That's Rachel Trevor Morgan who's made
more than 80 hats for Queen Elizabeth II, including those she's worn to Royal
Ascot. Brummell's dress code, now known as "Morning Dress," was the direct inspiration
for races like this one. And it also became the de facto style of dress for all
high society events held in the daytime. Meanwhile women's hats ebbed and flowed
according to fashion trends at court. Bonnets in the early Victorian period,
followed by tall ornamental hats, and then elaborate Edwardian creations with
enormous brims. At the end of the 19th century, we had women wearing hats all
the time. They'd always go out wearing a hat. After World War II the traditional
social season began to decline, as aristocrats abandoned their London homes. But morning dress still remained ,most notably at horse races and weddings. I think there was a definite shift in hat wearing in the 1960s and I suppose it's
because fashions became a bit more casual. I think the young were
experimenting with more exciting hairdos you know, you had beehive haircuts and
people piling their hair up and then really short sharp cuts and somehow it
was left to the older generation to carry on that hat wearing, I think. Hats were still, of course, required at the fanciest events for the fanciest people. Which is why hats tend to peak in popularity around the same time as
royals do. When Kate and William got married there was definitely an upsurge
in hat wearing. People looked at everybody attending the service and all
the wonderful creations they had and they wanted a part of that. And when you
think in the 1980s and we had Princess Diana, who always looked so beautiful and
always wore hats and think of the Queen. She's a great hat wearer so I, you
know, I think it really does affect people. And that's maybe the real reason
why we associate British Royals with hats. Whenever we see them, it's likely
because there's a big event going on and for Royals, big events mean hats. People might want to wear a hat to stand out and because they're quite an extrovert, or they might want to wear a hat in order to sort of slightly hide behind. And there are those people who've never worn hats and feel very awkward
about the whole thing, but it's really satisfying when people come back saying, "that was fantastic I really enjoyed it and had a great, positive experience." So you can read quite a lot into people and it's getting to know where their comfort
zone is. But they're a great sort of extension of people's characters I think. The last British royal wedding -- between
Prince William and Kate Middleton, brought together 1,900 guests, many of whom were pretty
high profile people. Footballer David Beckham was there with
his wife and fashion designer Victoria Beckham. Elton John was there too. But this photo might be the most impressive
of all, because This is the Queen of Spain
And the Prince of Spain Next to the Princess of Sweden, the former King of Greece is behind them, And way back there is the former King of Romania. They were invited because they’re all related
to Prince William’s great-great-great Grandmother, Queen Victoria. Over the course of her 63-year reign, she
strategically planned marriages to place her descendants in royal families all over Europe. And in doing so, created one of the most remarkable
royal families in history. By the early 19th century, Europe had been
at war for decades. After the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
wars killed millions, European leaders came together to restore peace by reshaping major
states for a new balance of power. Great Britain went on to become one of the
strongest states. And years later, Queen Victoria and her husband
Albert came up with a plan to maintain that political power: They married their children
to monarchs across Europe. And at that time, you know, all royal marriages
were fundamentally about dynastic unions, about cementing political allegiances, about building
new political alliances. It started with their daughter Vicky, the
eldest of nine children. She married the heir to the Prussian throne,
the largest and most powerful of the German states. Albert’s vision had always been, and Victoria shared it, that Prussia of all the German states was the one that would end up leading
the way towards a great unified Germany. They wanted to build strong connections with
Germany and see them as being a force for good and constitutional benign 
monarchy across Europe. Their children Alice, Beatrice, Helena, Leopold,
and Arthur also married German royalty. Their eldest son, Prince Albert Edward married
a Danish princess whose brother was King of Greece; two more important European states. But when their son Alfred wanted to marry
the daughter of the Russian Tsar, things became a bit more complicated: There was a long history about
Queen Victoria's deep, deep apprehensions about Russia, for any of her children marrying into
Russia. Well, the Russian monarchy was an autocracy, whereas the British monarchy as such was
a constitutional monarchy. There was a whole long period of Russophobia
in Britain. The two states were also extremely competitive
over territory in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, where they fought a bloody war in the
1850s. But the marriage was allowed and by the 1880s
Queen Victoria’s children were in several important branches of Europe’s monarchies. But did that bring peace to Europe? Not quite. See, Germany did unify in 1871, but it wasn't peaceful. Prussia fought a series of bloody wars and
consolidated the other German states. In Russia, the royal Romanov family was losing
its grip on power. Members of the monarchy were being hunted
and the Tsar was assassinated in 1881. The royal unions didn't play out as Queen
Victoria planned, but she continued to make more matches anyway. She had 42 grandchildren in total, and these 7 ended
up on royal thrones. The eldest, Wilhelm II, who was already in
line to be the next Emperor of Germany, married a German princess in 1881. The hope was that he would steer a unified
and powerful Germany into an alliance with Great Britain. George was in line to be the King of Great
Britain and married a minor British royal family member. Alexandra married Nicholas, who was related
to George and Wilhelm, and both became the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. And four more granddaughters married European
royalty, fulfilling Victoria’s vision. I mean, when you look at Queen Victoria by
the end of her life she really was the grandmother of Europe. Take for example this family photo, where
Queen Victoria is with her daughter and grandson, the rulers of Germany. Her son, Britain’s next king, and her granddaughters, the future Tsarina of Russia and future Queen of Romania. Here’s the soon-to-be King of England and
his look-alike cousin the soon-to-be Tsar of Russia. And here's some of the children and grandchildren
together. Finally, this is King Edward of Great
Britain and his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany at Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901. After her death, the family ties that Queen
Victoria had strung around Europe, would not bring peace, but the most destructive war
Europe had ever seen. The Kaiser, the king of Gothenberg, make ready to sweep the field. The Tsar of Russia mobilizes. England joins the battle royale. World War One broke out in 1914 and split
this family apart. Wilhelm’s Germany along with Austria-Hungary
and the Ottoman Empire, fought an alliance led by Britain, Russia and France. These countries were neutral. Say Victoria had lived 'til we were on the
brink of war. I think it would have broken her, totally broken
her heart, to know that her grandchildren ended up at war with each other. The war killed over 10 million people and
ended the era of monarchy in Europe. Wilhelm, Sophia, and Marie were all forced
to abandon their thrones. Revolution swept through Russia and Alexandria
and Nicholas were executed by Communists. The British monarchy survived, but the war
forced them to rethink their political strategy. George, King George V, and his wife
Queen Mary were very very astute. They saw that the monarchy had to be more
people friendly, had to be more accessible, not just sitting there in great robes in glory. You know, with their crowns on. Had to be much more out on the street, hands-on, meet the people,
win their confidence. The kind of monarchy we now have with Queen Elizabeth. That approach not only helped modernize British
monarchy over the last century, but it also changed the face of royal weddings, forever. “It is time to officially recognize Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel.” The US has officially moved its embassy in
Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and in doing so, President Trump has reversed decades of consensus about
the city’s status. While Israeli leaders celebrated, Palestinians denounced the move, deepening divides between two sides of a conflict
that is 70 years old. “We’re hearing live fire…” “Rising death toll…” “Quite a juxtaposition…” Here are 5 things to know about Jerusalem
and why it’s so contentious. Israel has controlled West Jerusalem since
1949. During the Six Day War, Israel captured East
Jerusalem and annexed that half of the city. But the international community considers
East Jerusalem occupied territory, whose fate needs to be part of a negotiated deal between
Israel and the Palestinians. In 1980, after Israel passed a law declaring
a united Jerusalem the capital, the United Nations
condemned the annexation. Palestinians want to divide the city and make
East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state, while Israelis want a unified Jerusalem to
be their capital. During peace process negotiations for the
Oslo Accords, the issue of Jerusalem was initially set aside to avoid derailing the talks. Any successful peace initiative in the future
would likely need to resolve the conflicting claims to the land. Control of Jerusalem has been a trigger for
violence many times in the past. The contested area of East Jerusalem is home
to some of the holiest sites in the world for Jews and Muslims. It is the site where Judaism’s two sacred
temples once stood. And the site where the prophet Mohammed ascended
to heaven. The trouble is that the sites for Muslims
and Jews exist on the same land. There’s a precarious power share in place. Israeli officials control who has access to
the complex. But Muslims have religious control inside. Jews can enter but aren’t allowed to pray. Instead, they use the Western Wall. The second intifada began in 2000, when then-opposition
leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount to assert Israel’s right to the complex. Palestinians protested and were met with tear
gas and rubber bullets. The violence lasted five years and killed
more than 3,000 Palestinians and nearly 1,000 Israelis, with thousands more wounded. In the early 70's, 16 countries had embassies
in Jerusalem, including the Netherlands and Colombia. But after the UN Security Council condemned
the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980. member states left. Then, Trump signaled a change in policy, and Guatemala and Paraguay also announced they are moving their embassies to Jerusalem And it's possible that more countries will
follow America’s lead. Though Congress passed a law to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem more than 20 years ago, the law includes a loophole that allows the
president to delay the relocation for the sake of national security. Every sitting president -- Clinton, Bush,
Obama -- has used this power and signed the waiver every 6 months. President Trump signed the waiver in June
2017, and again in December 2017, but also signaled he would begin the process of moving
the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And in May of 2018, he carried out his pledge. The embassy move came at an already a tense
time. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have spent
the past few weeks holding protests on the border between Gaza and Israel, that weren’t
tied to the embassy move. Dozens of Palestinians had been killed even
before the embassy opened. While President Trump was careful not to call
Jerusalem an “undivided” capital. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said just that at the US embassy opening. “God Bless Jerusalem, the eternal undivided
capital of Israel.” But opposition to Trump’s declarations and
the embassy move has been growing. And as lines are drawn and the fight for Jerusalem
intensifies, the future of Israeli-Palestinian stability is once again at risk. Like most other wedding in history, all British
royal weddings begin with: the engagement. But unlike regular weddings, these ones involve
an elaborately choreographed event that will be watched by an audience of millions. One of the first decisions a couple makes
is deciding where to actually do the thing. If they’re really into history and tradition, there’s
really only one choice: “From the solemnity of the abbey” But not this time. The big change is this wedding between Prince
Harry and Meghan Markle, You don't have all the ambassadors from all
the different countries, you don't have heads of state coming to this wedding. One reason is because the Chapel Windsor can
only take 600 people and therefore there simply isn't space. But it's also clearly the desire of Prince
Harry and Meghan Markle to have a more informal wedding. At around two months before the big day, the
Lord Chamberlain’s office sends out individually handcrafted invitations. There’s flowers and fittings and the entirety of the city to prepare. While the bride and groom head to sleep in
different homes — spectators who want a decent view of the public
processions will be sleeping outside. And just a few hours later, Some have traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles and they camped out overnight to get a prime position along that procession route. The general rule of royal weddings is the
the less important you are, the earlier you arrive, and the farther back you sit. If you’re there representing a charity, if
a member of the armed forces, or a celebrity, you’re relegated to the nave of the church,
which means you might not even get to see the actual ceremony. Close friends of the bride and groom and other
guests will head in at least an hour and a half before. Most of the time it is: groom up at the front. The royal procession comes in order In order
of precedence, which means the more junior royals come first and
last comes the Queen and her husband Prince Philip. Lots of fanfare as they come
and then the bride turns up. When the bride arrives, the details of the
dress are finally revealed after months of top secrecy. I am beside myself. This is such a fashion moment, I can't tell you. And regardless of who the designer is, she’ll
be wearing white and will carry a sprig of myrtle in her bouquet, which symbolizes love
and marriage — both of which are trends started by Queen Victoria. The bride’s tiara is almost always the “something
borrowed,” likely from one of the family’s collections of jewels. Since 1923, the ring placed on the bride’s
finger is always made from Welsh gold — Elizabeth and Diana’s rings even came from the same
nugget. The ceremony's performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and only takes about an hour. Towards the end, the bride, groom, and their
two witnesses go into a private room to sign the registrar. At that point the wedding is sanctified in
law, as it was sanctified by religious service a few minutes previously. Officially married, the bride and groom exit,
closely followed by the Procession of the Queen. If there's any heart that hasn't been run over by her today, it can kindly surrender now. There’s a good chance you’ll hear “Pomp
and Circumstance” around this time — although Americans associate it with high school graduations,
it was originally written for the coronation of King Edward VII. The bride and groom will likely make their
way into the open 1902 State Landau for the official carriage procession around the city
— that’s when the crowds who have been waiting for hours, or possibly days, will get
their first look at the royal couple. This usually concludes with the iconic appearance
on the Buckingham Palace balcony — on which Diana and Charles were the first
to kiss. The kiss is a critical moment in the entire
royal wedding ceremony. You don't just throw it away in the middle
of church. It has to be seen live by hundreds of thousands
of peoples. And just in case anyone had missed it, Prince William suggests one more kiss. Because Meghan and Harry’s wedding is 20
miles outside of London, their first public kiss as a married couple will have to happen someplace else. Afterwards, the wedding party takes official photos, and ceremony guests gather for the “wedding breakfast," complete with a traditional fruit
cake. Though in the past the bride and groom would
change clothes and depart for their honeymoon directly afterwards,
current royals have gone for a more modern approach with a real party. And they won’t be the only ones celebrating. It is generally seen as an excuse to have
a good time and somewhat buttoned up Brits who don't really have a good time in public
that much, let their hair down and enjoy themselves in the middle of their street. At that point it’s a pretty normal wedding reception — although normal ones don’t
generally include (rumoured) performances by Elton John and the Spice Girls. The royal couple will head off for the honeymoon — which is almost certainly within the British Commonwealth, while the rest of the country nurses a hangover. As they leave far behind them, an exhilarated, exhausted London, for them, as for any newlyweds, the adventure is just about to begin. I'll play it again. It's a sound effect called an orchestra hit. Bruno Mars, he's the king
of nostalgia and he used that effect in "Finesse" to take you back to the 80's. Take a listen to any pop, dance, or hip hop song in the 80's or 90's and you're gonna
hear a version of it. There are all types of orchestral hits. But the original one, this one here. Isn't from a few decades ago. In fact it was first played in 1910 at the Paris Opera. We can thankfully hear the greatest composer of our time, Stravinsky, performing
his own works. Telling us all those subtleties of his musical wishes and
intentions, which could never be fully documented in the cold black print of a
score. This is the famed 20th century Russian
composer Igor Stravinsky. He's about 80 years old here, but when he first
composed the Firebird Suite he was... 28 years old. Holy sh*t. And during his adult life the world changed dramatically, two or three
times. That's Robert Fink, he wrote a history of that sound you just heard. Firebird is his first major successful piece it made his reputation. Everybody
loved the Firebird. Stravinsky is like one of those rock stars who has one huge
hit early on in their career and then they have to play that song every
concert for the rest of their lives. He adjusted the score a bit over the
years but the jarring opener of one of the last scenes in the ballet remained
one of Firebird's most dramatic moments. Right, because what it is is it's
basically a gesture for the orchestra. It shocks the hell out of you, in
the context of the original piece. So how did that -- become so ubiquitous that in
1992, NWA said this about it on Straight Out of Compton? To figure that
out you have to go to Australia. I'm Peter Vogel, I developed the first
commercial sampling synthesizer which was the Fairlight CMI back in about 1975. The other person who was involved was Kim Ryrie. This is the Fairlight CMI. To put it simply it's one of the most influential
musical innovations of the past 100 years. It was one of the very first
digital synthesizers, a digital audio workstation, and the first digital sampler
all in one. With the aid of computers, you could create the music that you had in
your head a lot more easily than if you had to sit down and learn to play
instruments from scratch. It was really a lazy shortcut. You got to see this
unbelievable machine, I don't even know if we can get a camera back here? Or do we have a camera? Oh he's back here already. Forgive me. This is showing one of the sounds, what the pattern looks like. Do me a favor: punch up let's see how the sales are in Omaha. The two major things
that it introduced to music production were visual sequencing and digital
sampling. It was the first instrument that had a screen based sequencer, that
allowed you to actually compose complex pieces of music, have the machine play it
for you. It was called Page R. Here's Herbie Hancock demonstrating it
for Quincy Jones. And there's two ways to do it: you can either write it on the screen
or you can play it on a keyboard. Oh okay. See, now if you write it on a screen... This is a tool that anyone today can take advantage of. Hell, I can
sequence a drum pattern on my iPhone. In the early 80's sequencing like this was a
revelation. There is a way in which the Fairlight's interface is incredibly far
ahead of its time. I mean it's like a Star Trek thing, right? You're using a
light pen to write on a cathode ray tube. Do something with a light pen. Well the world is going crazy ladies and gentlemen. Many of the musicians who used
it sort of became the Fairlight's ambassador. Stevie Wonder was the first
person I delivered one to in the United States and then people in the studio
would gather around and they said hey I know someone would be really interested
to see this. Next thing you know he's in London setting one up
for Peter Gabriel. He introduced me to Kate Bush, there were some guys from Led
Zeppelin there. What really made the Fairlight a game-changer, though, was the
digital sampler. You could hook up a microphone to the Fairlight, record any
second of sound, and then play it at any pitch on the keyboard. The Fairlight also
came with a stock library of sounds too, on giant 8-inch floppy disks. So we started off with maybe one floppy disk with 50 different sounds on it. People who were using it would send us back floppies and say hey look at these
samples I've created. While working on the basic song ideas, Gabriel was also
compiling a library of sounds which he might use on the album. For this he used
a computerized instrument called a Fairlight. Peter Gabriel actually broke the glass
and Kate Bush used it in her music. There were baby screeches, smashes, drips,
and rotary dials. And then there was the orchestra hit. Ironically the the orchestra hit was a complete accident which was sampled by
me. I just happened to have a vinyl
recording of the Stravinsky Firebird Suite nearby when I was messing around. That Orchestra hit, which I think was right at the beginning of one of the
tracks. And I thought alright it's a good sound. Peter called the sound orch2 and put it on an
eight inch floppy disk full of those other stock sounds. Planet Rock was the first smash hit record to use orch2. In the first two seconds of the song it's used five times. So the thing that
you can know immediately about Planet Rock is that 50,000 people copied it. That 8-bit Orchestra hit started popping up in all sorts of songs. Within a few years of the Fairlight
being around, all sorts of synths and samplers came with a stock variation of
the orch2 hit. And they got crisper and cleaner with new technology. You can hear that transformation in the hit Swedish producer Max Martin made
with Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. But that original orch2 sample, it
remains the most iconic. And it's probably why Bruno Mars used it, or at least a very close simulation of it, in Finesse. When you hear that orchestra hit,
you're hearing something which is very much about the middle 1980's. It's
actually something that was first thought of by a guy in 1909. It's like a moment where a whole bunch of times are sewn together. It is kind of timeless. That is the actual piece of vinyl that orch2 was sampled off. So you can tell it was a long time ago when you paid, $6.99 for a record. So there are three links
that are in the description below, one to Robert Fink's paper, another to a Fairlight CMI iPhone app which Peter Vogel
helped create, Last but not least I made an orchestra hit playlist on Spotify. Enjoy it. In 2008 violinist Philippe Quint was
flying back to New York from a concert in Dallas.
He took a taxi from the Newark Airport to Manhattan and before he could take
his violin out, the car pulled away. It probably the scariest and most
devastating experience of my life. The cab driver returned the instrument a
few hours later, but the incident scarred Philippe for good reason. This wasn't
just any violin he left in the cab. This was a Stradivarius violin worth over
four million dollars that's on loan to him. It's like losing part of yourself,
you know. It's like somebody cut off your hand and especially given the fact it's
not your hand. This hand already was belonging to someone else. Even if you're
not a musician like me, you've probably still heard of a Stradivarius violin. Stradivarius. Stradivarius. Stradivarius. There's some of the most famous string instruments in the world. And some of the
most renowned musicians have declared their love for them. This instrument has
a soul and it has an imagination. It's not a tool. It is a part -- it's a total
extension of me. Strads, as they're sometimes called, are incredibly valuable
and can be worth up to 16 million dollars. But are they actually worth it? I headed up to Lincoln Center to meet Michelle Kim to find out. I am the assistant concert master of the New York Philharmonic. The characteristic of a Strad in general
is that it has a silvery tone. And it creates this incredibly sweet tone, so if
you were... For me the Strad has a sweet quality to
it, but also able to take some blows. So if I were to play something really hard... and versus you know something... By playing
on my daughter's instrument I would have had to... press kind of hard to to make that sound
come out, but you would lose the quality that you're actually looking for. The source of the Strad's brilliant sound can be traced back to its maker artisan
Antonio Stradivari was a luthier or violin maker who lived in Cremona, Italy
in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He crafted these string
instruments for most of his life and produced an estimated 1,100 instruments
in his lifetime. But only about 650 survived today. These instruments are
rare and there's a long tradition of nicknaming them. The 310 year-old violin that Philippe plays is called Ruby. I have to admit, I'm a little nervous to be around that. My god, please don't do that. I googled the gemstone
the ruby and the description, I think was that it's a stone of passion and mystery. And immediately I attributed these qualities to this violin and to this day
I really feel that it's true. For generations, musicians have claimed that
Strads have a superior sound to modern violins, but can most people actually
tell the difference? Researchers in Paris performed a double-blind study with
professional violinists, to see if they could tell the difference between old
Italian violins like Strads and new violins. They had musicians wear
very cool sunglasses while they played multiple instruments from each era. The study found that even elite
musicians couldn't reliably tell which violins were old and which were new. And maybe more surprisingly, most of them actually preferred the sound of the new
violins over the Strads. One measure of This is Joseph Curtin,
one of the researchers behind the study and a violin maker himself. But maybe the worth of a Strad
isn't wrapped up in its sound alone. Michelle's violin has been passed down
through generations of violinists for almost 300 years, from the Duke of
Cambridge, to the German composer Louis Spohr, to Ureli Corelli, the founder of
the New York Philharmonic. It is literally a link to the past. It is a piece of history that you are holding. I feel like this violin is the New York
Philharmonic, because it has existed as long as the New York Philharmonic has. It's been amazing to be a part of this Strad's life. Nixon and Trump. Both presidents faced major FBI investigations, were accused of obstructing justice. called their investigations "witch hunts," and oozed raw sexual charisma. It's not a perfect analogy, but the similarities have led some to argue
that, like Nixon, Trump's time is running out. What's going on here is very Nixonian. Having prosecuted the Watergate case, we’re well on our way to impeachment. I was in the Nixon administration, as you
know. I think we're in impeachment territory now. But the truth is these two are living in totally different
worlds. And that has less to do with what's happening at the FBI and more to do with what's happening on Fox News. The media and the Democrats have lied to you. Trying to create a Watergate out of this. Desperate to get back to the days of Watergate. The elite media is part of the “deep state.” You, the American people, should never trust this “destroy Trump” corrupt media. I know we're all trapped in a flaming media hellscape right now. But during Watergate, things were way different. At the time, there were three national nightly broadcast
news shows, 30 minutes each. Big cities typically had one or two major
papers. There were a couple of radio stations. And that was about it. No 24-hour cable news, no push notifications, no Twitter, no blogs, no internet. God, that sounds peaceful. And that meant that, Democrat or Republican, Americans were basically getting the same
news. This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. People are basically reading and hearing and watching the same things. And they by and large believe the news that
they hear. This is Nicole Hemmer, political historian and author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. We'll get to that "transformation" in a second. Hemmer says there is conservative media in
1970; it just looks really different. There is conservative talk radio. There are conservative publications like National Review and Human Events, but they're so much smaller than they are
today. Like, when I talk about Human Events and National
Review, that's just about it when it comes to weekly conservative publications. And while that might seem like a supply problem, it's actually a demand problem. In the 1970s, Americans had incredible trust in the news they were getting. 69 percent— Nice. Are you serious? 69 percent of Americans expressed a great or fair amount of trust in the media. And that trust meant there wasn't really an
appetite for right-wing news. Most Americans have faith in the objectivity of mainstream media. They trust it. If Walter Cronkite says something, it's not seen as liberal propaganda. It's seen as, here's this guy who knows something, who's telling us something objective and true about the world. And that's the way it is. That's the way it is. That's the way it is. That became a big deal during Watergate. As the investigation turned into a national
story, Nixon lashed out, calling it a witch hunt and attacking the media for covering it. I have never heard or seen such outrageous
reporting in 27 years of public life. And conservative outlets came to Nixon's defense. One conservative radio personality said the
press had turned a prosecution into a persecution. An article in National Review even suggested that Watergate was a trap set up by the CIA. They definitely didn't use the language of
the “deep state,” but that was kind of lurking there. But despite their efforts, conservative media just couldn't change people's
minds about what was going on. They don't have the power to drive or to shape the conversation about Watergate. There's not really an alternative story Republicans can credibly spin, because they're not just going up against
Democrats; they're going up against all the networks, all the newspapers. And so having that uniting narrative, that really matters. To be under a constant barrage on each of the three major networks tends to raise some questions in the people's
mind. That's really too much for Republicans to
resist. My phone calls were 100 to 1 in favor of pursuing the path of impeachment, which was rather
shocking to me. By 1974, Republicans in Congress begin moving to impeach Nixon. And by August, Nixon resigns. Events have been rushing toward one seemingly inevitable conclusion: removal from office. There was kind of a cohesive message about what Watergate was, what it meant. It would have been nearly impossible for the Nixon administration to muddy the waters. That's not the case today. Right. Today. The flaming hellscape. Or as Hemmer might call it: the transformation. In the past 50 years, trust in traditional media has plummeted, with all Americans but especially with Republicans. And the demand for conservative media has
exploded. What started off as a few rinky-dink conservative
magazines has become an entire ecosystem of right-wing TV, talk radio, and websites. You can now exist within a comprehensive, closed conservative media ecosystem. Whether it's having Fox News on all the day
or talk radio on all day, you don't need to really ever step out of
that bubble, which is something you couldn't have done
before. Republicans aren't getting their news from
Cronkite anymore. They're getting it from Fox. And that's a huge deal when it comes to the Mueller investigation. Republicans during Watergate were turning on their TV and seeing this: The country tonight is in the midst of what
may be the most serious constitutional crisis in
its history. Now they're seeing this: Biggest non-story ever being hyped by the
liberal media. Greatest political hoax. Farce and a witch hunt. It's a sham. It is a house of cards. The American people will put up with a great
deal, but they will not put up with anyone who claims to be above the law. The president says it's fake news. Do you even care? How can anyone trust the Mueller office? Bunch of Trump-hating, Hillary-loving partisan
hacks. A grave and profound crisis in which the president has set himself against his own attorney general and the Department
of Justice. It's one giant, huge web of corruption. The FBI has become America's secret police. The FBI needs a complete cleansing. Mueller is, frankly, a disgrace to the American
justice system. These people need to be taken out in cuffs. That uniting narrative we had during Watergate
— it's gone. And without it, Republicans in Congress have a strong incentive to turn their backs on the Mueller investigation. They know that the Republican base is tuned
in to conservative media and hearing these messages that the Mueller investigation is a sham, that this is a project of the “deep state”
to bring down the president. Mueller is out to get the president, it appears,
at any cost. And so if a Republican politician breaks with
that, then all of a sudden, it looks like he's siding
with the enemy. And siding with the enemy could be a political
death sentence. A 2017 study found that watching Fox News had a significant effect on elections, shifting 6 percent of voters toward the Republican presidential candidate
in 2008. In that environment, politicians have to choose
sides. And if you're a Republican, do you choose to side with the media that all your base listens to, or do you choose to side with the ones they
all oppose? House Republicans have already released a
report attempting to undermine the Mueller investigation. There's no reason to continue this. We've turned up nothing. And some have begun echoing Fox News's talking
points. Mueller is desperate. He doesn’t have a case he can make. This Mueller investigation is built on a false
premise and rotten to the core, Tucker. Is the integrity of the agency in question
then, now? Of course it is. We know there's bias; we know there's a conflict. I agree with you, Sean. They're trying to manufacture a process crime. This is increasingly becoming scary stuff. Do you agree? Yes, I do agree with that. Of course, we don't know if Trump will fire
Mueller or if Mueller will actually dig up any dirt
on Trump. But if either of those things do happen, it'll be up to Republicans in Congress to
do something about it. And right now, Hemmer isn't confident they
will. It's very hard to imagine a future in which
all of a sudden they're going to say, "Oh, wait, we now need
to listen to this independent counsel who most of the conservative media have been undermining and delegitimizing for months
now." And before you call me dramatic, listen to how actual Fox News hosts are talking about this stuff. Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed back in 1972, ’73, ’74. I was literally 11 years old. It's too bad for Nixon because nobody like
you existed then. Our prime responsibility now is to unshackle the 45th president of the
United States. These investigations might be really similar, but on TV, they could not look more different. And for Republicans in Congress, that might be all that matters. That's the way it is. When you flip a light switch, you expect it
to work right? All of your appliances work, because your
power company has electricity ready to transmit. For a lot of customers. And utility companies have gotten really good
at anticipating that demand. But a rise in solar energy production is making
their jobs a bit more complex. Here's a chart that explains why. It's showing demand for electricity at any
given time of day. The power companies supply the least amount
of power overnight. Then, it ramps up in the morning. Everyone's woken up and business gets going. Then at sunset, energy demand peaks. Utility companies will update models like
this to operate as efficiently as possible. But the introduction of renewable energy,
particularly the solar energy, has started causing problems in these demand curves. In 2010, solar panel deployment really started
taking off. Most of those installations took place in
California, so researchers there started looking into it. They found that the sun produces the most
energy at mid-day. And when you factor in that new mid-day production,
your demand curve changes like this. Every year means new solar capacity, which
makes mid-day demand dip lower and lower. Researchers call this drop in demand the "duck
curve." From the grid managers' perspective, the people
whose job it is to constantly balance generation and demand, it looks like a drop in demand. That drop in demand creates two problems. The first has to do with the intense ramps
in the new chart. As the sun sets, solar energy production ends
just as the demand for energy typically peaks. Power plants then have to rapidly ramp up
production to compensate for that. Which is kind of hard to do with the current
fleet of power infrastructure. The second problem is economic. Say you have a couple of nuclear and coal
plants. Those plants are only economic when they are
running all the time, basically. They run around the clock. And if you have to turn them off at mid-day,
it completely screws up their economics and plus lots of utilities just have contracts
with those power plants to keep them running all the time. So that creates sort of an artificial floor. If solar generates too much power and there's
no use for it, there's no one to consume it, then grid managers just have to turn some
solar panels off. If they didn't, we could risk overloading
or even damaging the power grid. So we throw away some of that extra solar
energy. Effectively, what's happening is that solar
power is being wasted. That waste, curtailment, is the big challenge
moving forward for solar energy. If you want solar, eventually to power everything
or close to everything, you've gotta figure out some way of shifting it to the night time. Cause the sun's down during the night time. The more power that can be stored, the more
you can sort of let solar rip. While the grid managers figure out how to
serve this new supply and demand, this duck is the greatest challenge facing renewable
energy. Thank you for watching and thanks for Principal
Financial for sponsoring Vox Video. Whether it's securing investment, retirement,
or protecting your insurance assets, they can help you prepare for the unexpected. The Iran deal is defective at its core.
The United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has been saying
he wants to exit the Iran nuclear deal for a long time. A deal that has so far
prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The United States no longer
makes empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them. This is a massive reversal
of US foreign policy with far-reaching consequences. So why does Trump hate the
deal? What exactly does he want and how did we get here? This was something that
President Obama, when he took office, said was his priority and when it was signed
in 2015 this was the high mark of his presidency. It's also interestingly
something that the US had been involved in for decades. When the Shah was in
power in Iran the US had helped him develop a civilian nuclear program. There was concern decades later that the new government of Iran was gonna try to
take that program and develop a nuclear weapon. This deal, the deal that President
Trump just pulled out of, was the world's attempt to prevent war and to get Iran
to stop that pursuit of a weapon without forcing it to. So that's ultimately how we got to the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, the formal name for the Iran
deal, signed not just by Iran and the United States, but also the UK, France,
Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union. At its broadest, the deal imposed a
set of restrictions on how Iran developed nuclear capabilities in
exchange for the U.S.. reducing economic sanctions. Now the way the JCPOA was
structured the president recertified it every 90 days or those sanctions would
kick back in. Trump had threatened this outcome for months but is just now
enacting it. He thinks the Iranians can't be trusted,
he thinks the deal is not strict enough, and he thinks that Iran isn't abiding by
the spirit of the deal because they're doing things like develop long-range
missiles. The thing is three of Trump's own top officials were very much in
favor of the deal but only one still holds their office. If we can determine that this is in our best interest then clearly we should stay with it. Americans agree with the Secretary of Defense -- a recent poll shows a majority
of respondents back the agreement including 68 percent of Democrats, 51
percent of Independents, and even a slim plurality of Republicans, 46 percent,
supported the deal while 42 percent opposed it. And America's allies strongly
urged the US and Trump to stay committed to the deal as well. What do you have as
a better option? I don't see it. What is the what-if scenario or your
plan B? I don't have any plan before nuclear are against against Iran. We are of the opinion that the JCPOA is a first step but Trump believes he can negotiate
better terms. They are going to want to make a new and lasting deal, one that
benefits all of Iran and the Iranian people. The original deal imposed strict
limits and monitoring of Iran's nuclear program. Iran was forced to get rid of
the vast majority of the uranium it had already enriched, as well as get rid of
most of the centrifuges that it used to enrich that uranium. Under the deal Iran
also couldn't enriched uranium past the threshold for producing nuclear energy,
which is significantly lower than the threshold from medical uranium and
weapons-grade uranium. The UN's nuclear agency has verified that Iran complied
with the deal which is also what makes the U.S. leaving so significant,
especially right now on the cusp of negotiations with North Korea over its
own nuclear program. In fact at this very moment secretary Pompeo is on his way to
North Korea in preparation for my upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-Un. But here's the thing: if you're the North Korean government and especially
if you're Kim Jong-Un and you're watching what just happened with the
Iran deal, why would you believe that if you struck a deal with President Trump
that the next president would stick to it? If you've just seen literally the
United States tear up the previous deal they'd signed with the country to get
that country to give up its nuclear program and that's why President Trump's
decision to plow Iran deal is so dangerous. Europe believes the deal works. European companies are doing business with Iran. So this isn't just a blow
diplomatically it's also a blow financially to many of our closest
allies around the world. Mr. President, how does this make America safer? How does this make America safer? Thank you very much. This will make America much safer. Robots fighting wars. Science fiction? Not anymore. If machines, not humans, are making life and
death decisions How can wars be fought humanely and responsibly? Humanity is confronted with a grave future
— the rise of autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons are those that select an
attack target without human intervention. After the initial launch or activation, it's the
weapon system itself that self-initiates the attack. It's not science fiction at all, in fact
it's already in use. The world is in a new arms race. In just 12 countries, there are over 130 military
systems that can autonomously track targets. Systems that are armed. They include air defense systems that fire
when an incoming projectile is detected, “Loitering munitions” which hover in the
sky, searching a specific area for pre-selected categories of targets. And sentry weapons at military borders which
use cameras and thermal imaging to ID human targets. It’s a pretty far cry from a soldier manning
a checkpoint. Militaries are not turning to robotics and
increasing autonomous robotics because they think they're cool. They're doing it for very good military reasons. They can take in 
greater amounts of information than a human could, make sense of it quicker than a human
could, be deployed into areas that might not be possible for a human system, or might be
too risky, too costly. In theory, any remote-controlled robotic weapon
— in the air, on land, or at sea — could be adapted to strike autonomously. And even though humans do oversee the pull
of the trigger now, that could change overnight. Because autonomous killing is not a technical
issue — it’s a legal and ethical one. We’ve been here before. At the beginning of the last century, tanks,
air warfare, and long-range missiles felt like science fiction. But they became all too real. With their use came new challenges to applying
the rules of war, which require warring parties to balance military necessity with the interests
of humanity. These ideas are enshrined in international
humanitarian law. In fact, it was the International Committee
of the Red Cross that pushed for the creation and universal adoption of these rules, starting with the very first Geneva Convention in 1864. These rules have remained flexible enough
to encompass new developments in weaponry, staying as relevant today as ever. But these laws were created by humans, for
humans, to protect other humans. So can a machine follow the rules of war? Well that's really the wrong question, because
humans apply the law and machines just carry out functions. The key issue is really that humans must keep
enough control to make the legal judgements. Machines lack human cognition, judgment, and
the ability to understand context. You can think of the parallels with how we deal with pets. The dog is an autonomous system, but if the dog bites someone, we ask "who owns that dog?" Who takes responsibility for that dog? Did they train that dog to operate that way? That’s why the International Committee of
the Red Cross advocates that governments come together and set limits on autonomy in weapons
and ensure compliance with international humanitarian law. The good news is that the ICRC has done this
work for over a century. They’ve navigated landmines and cluster
munitions, chemical weapons and nuclear bombs. And they know that without human control over
life and death decisions, there will be grave consequences for civilians and combatants. That’s a future no one wants to see. Four million! We can't believe it. Really cool, four million. Started from the bottom now we here. Woooooo Is thank you one word or
two? It's one word. So we have a treat for you, our loyal subscribers. So we're making a
video about all the questions you had about the team. Anything that you wanted
so let's get right to it. so a lot of you want to know where a lot
of the producers have been. Since the beginning of this year we've been at
work on the biggest project we've ever undertaken. We've been working on a
new show for Netflix! It's called "Explained" and it's gonna start on May 23rd. That's all you get for now. May 23rd, see you there. Peter from the US wants to know will you answer this question? Will you answer
this question? Will you answer this -- YES! So Brian from Argentina wants to know: how you choose
your stories? Based on personal experience, so if there's something that
really annoys me or frustrates me. Stories that can only be explained on a
map. What can we show, what can we point a camera at, what can we animate, what makes
a good video is what makes something visual. Tell the story to a friend, if
then it still feels interesting then I know it's interesting. Do your friends
like dread you coming to dinner, they're like here comes Christophe... Christopher from the United
States wants to know: what's the oddest thing you've you've ever done for a
video? I feel like you do an odd thing in every video. I interviewed a professional
regurgitator. Climbed into a bear cave. Throwing glitter at you, throwing a football at you, throwing balloons at you. You throw a lot of stuff at me. I know. I don't know the oddest thing, but I think the most extraordinary
thing was visiting a migrant camp for Borders. Look up the sizes of all of the ape and human testicles that exist. Alec from the
United States asks: what led you to working at Vox as opposed to any other site? To me Vox is pretty even-keeled and balanced and considers both sides of the
argument. Johnny Harris hired me. I think Vox is doing the coolest video
on the internet right now. When Vox was first announced, they had this concept:
the thing that's new isn't necessarily the thing that's important. I was really drawn to that. Robert from Poland wants to know if you know what Vox means? It literally means voice. Vox is Latin for George Soros. It actually means "free
La Croix in the break room." I think that it means that Vox media was kind of
built around the idea of highlighting lots and lots of people's voices. Alec Bowman from the United States asked if we're owned by a bigger company. Yeah, Vox.com is a part of Vox media. It's a bunch of sister sites like The Verge, SB
Nation, Eater, Racked, Curbed. Polygon. Oh yeah, Polygon. Polygon's dope. There are a lot of video makers at Vox Media Vox.com is just one channel so go
check them out. Colin wants to know if you'll go on a date with him? No. Not again. Not after what happened last time. Madeline wants to know what your favorite emoji
is Dean. The shrimp one. How do you use that? With the tophat emoji a lot. I'm almost more curious which ones you wouldn't use it with because I can't think of one. Jamin from India wants to know where all of us are from. So let's pull up a map. We're starting
in New York. New Jersey, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,
Minnesota, Seattle, Oregon. Isn't that the same thing? Seattle and Oregon? California, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Maryland,
Madrid, Vancouver, and Korea and Delhi, India. A lot of you have asked what are
some of the challenges of making Borders. Just the fact that you come up with this
story and this idea and then when you show up, the lines are always so much
more blurrier than the neat structure that you had in mind before you went. I think this is a good thing from a reporting perspective, to have much more
rigor and kind of local information, so while they're challenging they make
Borders much better. Why don't you all tell us like what you use for animation? After effects. After Effects. My imagination. That's what you use for animation? Yes. Are people above 30 allowed to work at Vox? Yeah definitely, I mean you've got
a whole range of people. You've got people who are 23 like me and then you've got
people who are a lot of older, too, so. Pretty much anybody. Jacob from the United States wants to know: should I get a job in media? Students: the advice I
would give is like a lot of the skills that you need to work in media are actually skills that you can build up without working in media. You should get
a job in media if you are passionate about the news and you're passionate
about sharing information with people. Do you have any music recommendations?
That's a good one. No. I don't listen to music. A bunch of people asked how we make
money. It's pretty simple, on YouTube we make money by selling ads. There are
actually ads besides pre-roll that we should tell you about. So first one is
editorial sponsorships, like in Earworm you saw a "Presented by Toyota Camry" bug at
the top corner of the video. That means that they paid to be in the video and
they have no editorial say. We didn't owe anything to Toyota Camry
except the final version of the video. We all got a Camry. Yeah I drive a Camry now. Thank you Toyota. Really good sound quality in the
speakers. Who would be both of your dream sponsors? Panera, probably. We've been angling for a Panera sponsorship for my videos for a while. I don't want them to sponsor me because  it's a conflict of interest. Because I just
got there too often. The other way we make money is through branded content
and we actually have a whole separate team who works on branded content. Our team, all the people you see in this video don't make those videos, but there
are other people in our company who do. They're called the explainer studio and
they've taken a lot of the cool things that we've invented through our
experimentations Vox video and apply it to brands. If there is a piece of branded
content on our channel, it will always say "advertiser content" in the title. That is worth paying for our videos right now. So thank you for supporting us and I
hope we do get to make you more videos. Three, two one. Thank you all so much for watching Vox. It's so awesome that
there's four million of you. Five million, see you at five million. Alright, bye. Thanks for watching Vox. Thanks for watching us at Vox. Thanks for watching this video
that's eight minutes long. Presidents give hundreds of speeches. But, for better or worse, we tend to remember a few one-liners. There you go again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. You know if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. For President George H.W. Bush it's: Read my lips. No new taxes. And the thing about that line is 
it's about so much more than taxes. It's about the battle for the soul of the Republican Party. A battle that Bush lost. And a battle whose repercussions we're still living with. Tonight accepting the nomination for president of the United
States - portraying himself during the course of his speech as the guy next door. With your values of hard work, family, sensitive about greed, sensitive about the homeless, sensitive about the need to do better
for women economically, but tough-on-crime, for guns, against taxes, for the environment. He was presiding over a split party. George Bush represented one wing of the party, which was this sort of northeast, patrician, some call it country club
Republican party. These Republicans were wealthy, educated at prestigious universities, and often fairly moderate when it came to economic issues like budgets and taxes - and on social issues like abortion and gay rights. That had certain characteristics that were very different from the Reagan wing. Spurred by the anti-war movement, the legalization of abortion, and the civil rights movement, groups with more conservative beliefs 
on race, gender, and culture rallied behind Reagan. All of these come together in a new coalition called the Reagan coalition. George Bush isn't the one who pulled them together. George Bush was considered a counterfeit conservative by many Reaganites. They didn't trust him quite frankly. Bush tried to seem less elite, less country
club. He used to talk about how much he liked eating pork rinds. He needed to push a little bit to be culturally acceptable. It wasn't just the cultural stuff. Bush's type of economic conservatism differed from his predecessor as well. While Bush focused on pragmatism - balancing budgets without increases to spending. Reagan had a different plan. It was called supply-side economics. That you could slash the amount of money that the federal government got in tax revenue, while at the same time spending more money on the military. This appealed to a larger base of middle-class voters and small and big business owners, and it was a great idea in theory. Well it didn't - it just didn't work out that way. Indeed the United States started getting these huge budget deficits. What was George was supposed to do? He never believed in Ronald Reagan's approach to economics. Voodoo economic policy! It just isn't going to work. Reagan's trickle-down economics meant Bush inherited a massive budget deficit from Reagan. Which is why, even though he said, "Read my lips no new taxes." He had no other alternatives. The handwriting is on the wall for George H.W. Bush as president the United States. He realizes that he is not going to be able to keep that 'No new taxes' pledge. I did it because I thought it was right. 
And I made a mistake. He recognized he had to put country over
party. Democrats controlled the House and Senate, so Bush teamed up with them to pass a bill to fix the deficit by raising the top tax rate on the wealthy. He had very little support on his own side of the political aisle. His willingness to create a "gentler, kinder nation" did not sit well with right-wing Republicans. Bush's presidency was characterized by his ability to build bridges and make bipartisan deals. Passing the landmark 
1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Let the shameful wall of exclusion 
finally come tumbling down. Which the New York Times called the most sweeping anti-discrimination bill since
the Civil Rights Act. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, He built another bipartisan coalition to strengthen the Clean Air Act and he signed into law an immigration bill that kept families together, and let more
people into the country. Immigration is not just a link to America's past, It's also a bridge to America's future. Abroad he earned the trust of Soviet
premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and got him to accept a unified Germany. Over a million people here, celebrating a day that they never thought would come. The day in
which Germany became one country again. He was a man who understood diplomacy. He understood that in order to connect with people, who represent other countries, you have to put yourself in their shoes. But his successes abroad didn't quell cultural and economic discontent stateside. From NBC News: Decision '92 Election Night These politicians who put themselves out work so hard and then are crushed effectively. The people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the democratic system. The new president of the United States, his wife Hillary and their daughter Chelsea. Bush's loss led Reaganites to
abandon a moderate bipartisan approach to politics, and the Republican Party has
moved further to the right ever since. They see '92, they see the collapse of the
Bush presidency, and they know that this is the time for them to make their move. You see that the House going more and more to the right. Political scientists actually measure this. They take individual members of Congress, look at all of the bills that they vote yes and no for, and assign them a score based on
those votes. They get one score for their votes on economic stuff and another for their votes on social issues. Do this for every member, and you get a kind of ideological map of Congress. And that map has been changing since before Bush lost the presidency. If you look at the average ideology scores for both parties over time, Republicans in the House have been getting more conservative more quickly than their Democratic peers have shifted left. It's true for presidents too. From Eisenhower to George W. Bush, the ideology scores for Republicans get
increasingly conservative while Democrats scores stay roughly consistent over time. I think George H.W. Bush becomes an inflection point for not only the presidency, the generational movements, the last World War II, Greatest Generation president but also they may be the last Republicans of that country-club, Northeast republicanism. In an interview with journalist Mark Updegrove, Bush confirmed that he voted for Hillary
Clinton in 2016. His party had become so unrecognizable in his lifetime, the former president voted for the wife of the man who had beat him 24 years earlier. If we work together we can get the criminal
traffickers off our streets and off of the internet. On April 11th President
Trump signed a piece of legislation based off of a pair of bills. One started in the Senate known as SESTA or the "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act." The other started in the House called FOSTA or the "Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act." Who's gonna oppose something called the stop enabling sex traffickers act, right? I
mean there's you're not gonna make friends with that. Both bills sailed through Congress, but critics of the law claim it will end up hurting the people
it's supposed to protect. FOSTA and SESTA are like an enormous bully coming into our living room. And not only that, it could end up changing the Internet as we know it. Since 1996, websites have enjoyed a protection built into a communications law known as
section 230. It basically says that websites can't be held liable for the
content posted by users on the site. FOSTA, which ended up being the final
name of the law, creates an exception to section 230 which would make websites
responsible for knowingly facilitating prostitution or sex trafficking on their
site. To understand why critics see this as a problem think of it like a phone
call. If you plan something illegal during a phone call, your phone carrier
isn't held responsible for what you said during that call. They're just the
service you used. This is sort of how the internet worked up until now, but under
FOSTA phone carriers might start to monitor your phone calls to ensure
nothing illegal was going through, to protect themselves from liability. Of course, monitoring all of these phone calls is expensive and illegal messages
might slip through anyway. So, phone carriers might block certain numbers or
do away with the phones altogether. Monitoring and censoring would satisfy
part of FOSTA. It would ensure that the site isn't facilitating prostitution or
sex trafficking. Another option though is to stop monitoring altogether. That way a website could claim that they didn't know about the illegal content on their
site. These outcomes aren't theoretical. Websites are already reacting this way
to FOSTA. Ever since it passed the Senate that's when website started freaking out
about their terms of services and that's when we saw Craigslist personals get
shut down and Backpage get shut down. Which I think on its own makes the
point that this is really chilling. Quite a bit of material that's well outside
the range of what theoretically this law addresses FOSTA was particularly aimed
at Backpage.com, a website that has long been known for its sex worker
advertisements. The thing is though FOSTA's stated
purpose is to crack down on sex trafficking - it's right there in the
title, but it's sex workers that are feeling the burden. The main difference
between sex trafficking and sex work is that sex trafficking is the
non-consensual, often underage, trafficking of human beings and sex work
is the consensual arrangement between two adult-aged people to exchange money
for sexual services, whether those are fantasy services or overtly sexual
services. This covers a wide range of work, it's not just prostitutes and
escorts who are sex workers. Strippers are sex workers, full-body sensual masseuses
are sex workers, cam models, live webcam models are sex workers, porn performers are
sex workers, etc. etc. In fact one of the things that FOSTA does, is make sex workers more vulnerable to traffickers
and we're seeing this, where you're a sex worker you used to have an ad up on
Backpage now you don't have a Backpage ad, you're trying to figure out how to
find your clients and you start getting calls from people that are like "hey I
know you can't advertise anymore I can help you get clients, give me a call." Which is pimping, right? Critics of FOSTA say that the law will
push sex trafficking and sex work back underground, offline where authorities
will have a much harder time tracking sex trafficking and getting victims to
help they need. We can't screen our clients as easily, we
can't engage in the kinds of activities that help keep us safe, we can't find
each other online as easily, we can't share safety information online as
easily. Senator Portman, the congressman who co-sponsored the legislation that
became FOSTA claims that, with this law authorities and victims of sex
trafficking can go after websites like Backpage.com. Ironically though, Backpage.com was seized by law enforcement before FOSTA
was signed into law, which calls into question how necessary FOSTA was in the
first place. Critics also worry that the law is so
vague that its consequences could be even more far-reaching. We're gonna see a
lot of self-censorship on the Internet, we're gonna see not just sexual content
necessarily getting censored, but definitely adult content. How does Google
know who's a sex worker and who's just like someone in love with someone very
far away? You know what I mean? It's just that sex workers are the
frontline of that. Several years back when the Rays made it to
the World Series….they handed out cowbells. That's when that's when you kind of second
guess your career. There's only so much you can do when 30,000
people are all hitting cowbells. The sounds inside a stadium can be unpredictable. But parked outside every major sports event,
in a semi truck full of broadcast tv workers, There’s an audio engineer tasked with bringing
those sounds into your living room. They’re called “A1” mixers. And they’re hired by the network that’s
broadcasting the game. Basically the easiest way to describe what
it is I do is everything you hear at home in the broadcast
I'm responsible for, other than commercials. That means they mix the music, the announcers,
sound effects, interviews... But it also means this, and this, and this. If you just went and looked at a World Series
game from you know, 1980 and then you looked at like last year's World
Series it would be painfully obvious. That takes a lot of work. To capture the ambience of the space, they
point stereo microphones into the crowd. But we don’t want to just be placed among
the crowd, we want to hear the sounds of the game itself. And that requires microphones near the action
to capture what they call “field effects.” So I currently run 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. I run 10 on-court effects mics. If you’re sitting in the stands, you might
not hear the sound of the net. But for viewers at home, there’s a little
microphone taped right under the basket. In baseball, the key sounds are clustered
around home plate. You see all the advertising boards. But there's also two little Blue Jays logos
and in those logos are parabolic dishes and that's what I use to capture all the sounds
around home plate. Parabolic microphones use a dish to focus
sound waves from far away. For big budget games, like the World Series,
you can see those mics around home plate too, but the setup becomes much more elaborate. They put wireless mics in the bases; they
have handheld parabolics out in the foul ball territory, and they wire up the outfield wall. We actually started a couple of years ago,
burying mics in the grass and in the infield so you can hear like some guys like Max Scherzer,  they really kind of like grunt
when they release the pitch. And we also put mikes on the foul poles. Some of them are like a real thunderous
kind of cannon sound like at Fenway Park. It’s harder to capture field effects when
the players roam around a big field. you just hope that they're close to your mics. You've got a huge field with 15 guys running
... on grass. A handheld parabolic mic can do a better job
following the action. And that’s long been the standard for NFL
games. When Fox came along they they put a mike on
the umpire . and we were using that to pick up the cadence
of the quarterback and the line coming together. And that was huge. The umpire was getting run over a lot, and
to keep him from getting hurt, they moved his physical position
from being in a defensive line to being on the offensive line. Well that doesn't help me at all. Because now he's behind the quarterback. The next year, the NFL players union agreed
to let the league put microphones on certain offensive linemen. Depending on who's mixing it could be way
up in the mix. I've been called on that because it's like
candy and I love it. Those quarterback audibles are the only times
they’ll take a mic’d up player live during a game. I'm sure you've seen the games, basketball
games where we mic up players, we mic up the head coach. Those mics will never be tracked live. It goes to tape, somebody reviews it and then it gets played back later. But the effects mics can pick up angry
players too. If something's getting heated on screen I
will you know, I'll kill those mics. I want people to be able to hear but, you
know I gotta be careful. The A1 is constantly adjusting the levels
throughout the game, and not just to keep the show family friendly. A lot of people would have the thought process
that you just set up these mics and you leave them be. You don’t. I mean, you can’t. I mean you're talking 18-20,000 people screaming, you got the PA sounds. So if you just leave all these microphones up you're not going to get anything. So you're chasing the action with them with
the faders on the mixing board. The game effects in hockey come from 10
microphones taped inside the glass and the mixer will fade them up and down to follow the
play. They can get those effects to pop even more
by tweaking the EQ, or “equalization.” Most people would know it as like a car stereo. You turn up your highs, your treble, and your bass. Well in our world it's a little bit more specific
than that, we can dial into actual specific frequencies. So they'll tend to increase the high frequency
EQs and turn down the low frequency. You don't want that rumble so
you want to hear the skate blades, you want to hear the sticks, you want to hear the pucks
off glass, you want to hear them off the post. But all those efforts can be drowned out by
the A1’s arch-nemesis: the PA system in the arena. If I could find PA people and beat
them with a wooden stick sometimes I would. NBA is just it's horrific because
you know they run the PA during play.you The PA will bleed into all the mics in the
building. But the audio team is always there, battling
the noise on our behalf. You should be able to hear the announcers,
follow what they're saying. The game should be below that and you should
be able to hear everything that's going on in the game without struggling. It takes a lot of work to do that. If we do it right. If you're into sports, then you're probably already subscribed to SB Nation's channel. But if not, go check it out. They've got tons of fascinating series, including one called "Beef History", which is about why all your favorite athletes hate each other. Go check it out and subscribe at SB Nation. We need to get the hell out of here. The premise of the movie Gravity is that
space debris hits the International Space Station, it causes utter
destruction which is a little unrealistic, but that scenario is
actually what people are scared of. My name is Amber Yang I am 19 years old. And I am a physics major college student at Stanford University, I'm also the
founder of Seer Tracking. So we take the data of current satellites and
spacecraft and try to predict if there will be any collisions with space debris. So space debris is any defunct man-made space part or spacecraft, that is
orbiting in low-earth orbit right now. They can be as small as a paint fleck to
as big as a completely dead satellite. And they often travel as fast as 17,500
miles per hour and you can only imagine with something traveling that quickly
that its impact on another orbiting object will be extremely large and will cause lots of damage. This space debris could have such a big impact on
essentially the success of the American space program and mankind's advancement
into space technologies. I watched this series of videos that astronaut Scott
Kelly published, he would have to duck into the Soyuz capsule which is an adjacent
capsule to the International Space Station, because there was fear that the
spacecraft that he was in might be hit by space debris. We're just inside one minute from the time of closest approach. It first became like an issue around the 1950's and really in the past few decades,
that number has only skyrocketed. There is a concept that, as the space debris
collide with other space debris and other objects, that fragmentation will
cause even more space debris to occur. Currently the method for tracking space
debris is extremely inaccurate at times, because the orbit of space debris
changes so quickly. The method that I have introduced is using artificial
neural networks and artificial intelligence to track space debris. It will provide a prediction, it will say I think this is where the space debris
will be in this future point in time. And if we find the actual point in time in
the future where the space debris is and there is an error metric between the
artificial neural network and where the space debris actually is, we can tell the
neural network that oh you're wrong by this amount. I am basically allowing the
artificial intelligence to learn the patterns of how the space debris
positions are changing over time and it will keep training itself until its
predictions are actually very very accurate. The primary concern would be
for things already orbiting in space and trying to allow these things orbiting in
space to have enough time to move out of a collision's way, If my software predicts
that there would be a future collision. Another thing that it could be readily
used for is predicting when is the best optimal launch time for things like NASA
and SpaceX, when they're trying to find a time window where to launch their
rockets and other space cargo. They want to look at a window where there isn't a
lot of space debris. Right now a lot of people are putting space debris on
the back burner, they're saying it could be potentially very dangerous someday,
but right now it's not that big of a concern because we haven't really had
any casualties yet. But the very terrifying version of the Kessler
syndrome would be a space atmosphere so trashed, that you couldn't launch
anything up without it being hit by space debris. The whole goal is that
we're trying to preserve our Earth, our atmosphere for future generations in
front of us and in order to keep developing technologies that will
succeed and go to space, Thanks for watching. Now if you're
interested in what it takes to get into outer space, head over to our sister site
The Verge and watch Spacecraft with Loren Grush. Check it out and subscribe
for more videos. Russian hackers attempted to influence the
US presidential election. A meddling campaign carried out by the Russians,
authorized at the highest levels. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential
election is now pretty well-documented. From hacking voter registration rolls... Russia is behind a cyber attack on a contractor
for Florida's election system... To leaking stolen DNC emails... The Russians were responsible for hacking
the DNC. But perhaps their most ingenious tool is this: it's a video of a guy watching news coverage of ISIS taking credit for an explosion at
a chemical plant in Louisiana. If you're having trouble remembering this
horrifying chemical plant explosion, well that's because it never happened. Oh man, this is f***ed up. So if this totally legit American accent didn't
already tip you off, this video is a fake. It's the handiwork (and I'm using that term
loosely here), of a shadowy Russian organization with ties to the Kremlin called the Internet
Research Agency. The agency does a lot more than video. Fake Russian accounts posing as Americans
have released a barrage of social media posts. The topics of these posts vary, but the goal
is always the same: to spread fear and drive Americans opinions to the extremes. Russia wants to destabilize Western democracies. The Russian effort stands out just in terms
of the financing behind it and the level of organization that we saw in this campaign. Thanks to a recent federal inditement, we
now know more than ever about how exactly Russia has been shaping the opinions of the
American public. Russians employed by people with ties to the
Kremlin are asked to create convincing social media accounts that can pass as real Americans. Every so often, they're instructed to incorporate
a Kremlin-approved message into their posts. Then, other professional internet trolls at
the agency, sometimes with the aid of bots, comment on and share that original post. If the trolls are successful, the messages
promoted in these fake posts will leave the circle of fake accounts and be shared by actual
Americans. These operations employ VPNs, that's Virtual
Private Networks, that can mask their computer's IP address to create the appearance that their
posts originate in the US. And they even make sure to post during US
daytime hours to make their posts appear more plausible. There's ample proof that this scheme occurred
during the election and even as recently as the Parkland shooting in Florida. It's not that the Russian government cares
specifically about American gun rights or ISIS activity in the US. The point is to create division and fear. They figure, anything that destabilizes Europe
or the United States redounds to their benefit, so they understand that our society is very
divided now. There are divisions based on race, economic
interest as well as political persuasion. It's actually very easy to pit groups against
one another. The Russian government originally deployed
internet trolls within Russia. In 2011, the country was roiled by protests
in response to the election that year, which was criticized for being fraudulent. The government reacted by cracking down on
the internet, but also employed internet trolls to counter the protestors by spreading pro-Kremlin
propaganda. While Russian trolls were proven to have spread
misinformation during the 2016 election, the actual effect they had on the election is
very difficult, if not impossible, to prove. But the idea of a foreign government trying
to drive a wedge between the American public is extremely worrying. Twitter has removed nearly 4,000 accounts
found to be operated by Russian trolls. And Facebook has promised changes to its algorithm
for how it serves up content in your newsfeed, to help combat the problem. But these social media companies don't acknowledge
the divisiveness that's homegrown. It's easy to suspend inauthentic and foreign
social media accounts, but what about when real Americans are posting about virtually
the same thing? Too many Americans are getting all their information
from one source, whether it's a liberal, moderate, or conservative site. That's dangerous just in and of itself, but
especially dangerous during an era of false or misleading information. The most important thing the average news
consumer can do is to rely on a diversity of sources of information. So if you're looking for content that shows
off the lighter side of social media, our sister site Eater has this amazing series
about what it takes to make food go viral. In general, if you're looking for really cool
food content, Eater has you covered so go check them out. As many as half of Earth's species may be already migrating to escape warming temperatures. Plants are inching northward and so are many animals. The Arctic ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to invasion. Scientists aboard this research ship are hunting the most important fish in the Arctic: polar cod. Mixed in with the Arctic fish are invaders including Atlantic cod and capelin. The southern species compete for polar cod's food. So here is a very typical Arctic food web or food chain. This food web is changing now. These fish are among many species migrating into the warming Arctic. Relatively few species have evolved to survive its frigid darkness. Polar cod have some of the most impressive adaptations to survive. They use a trick that's common among arctic animals, they store lots of fat in their bodies. Polar cod eat tiny copepods, which also store fat to survive the long winter. And a high energy meal is crucial for surviving the harsh Arctic. One trawl after another reveals  southern interlopers. Out of a thousand fish caught in this trawl, roughly 70% by weight are southern species. It's hard for the scientists to pinpoint precisely when we cross the boundary between Atlantic and Arctic waters, but that boundary has been slowly creeping northward. Scientists call this process the 'Atlantification' of the Arctic. Atlantic waters are saltier and they mostly lack ice. The biggest difference? Atlantic water is as much as seven degrees warmer. The polar Cod likes the colder water, but it's losing territory. Polar Cod flourish in the shallow waters of the Barents Sea, but further north 
it's too deep for them. Meanwhile, the warmer waters bring with them new species that are shaking up the food web. Along with new fish, there are Atlantic varieties of copepods. They store much less fat than copepods native to the Arctic, making them a less nutritious food source. That means polar cod may have to spend more energy hunting. For the same amount of animals that are gonna be eaten, you don't transfer the same amount of energy. Capelin, as well as Atlantic Cod, were among the invaders we just caught in the trawl. Capelin will also feed on the same prey as the polar cod, so we start adding competition between these two species. The Atlantic Cod goes one step further: it eats the polar cod itself. Capelin's not as rich as polar cods, so that goes or diminishes, then these levels will also be impacted. It's easy to vilify the southern species threatening the ecological balance here. But take the Atlantic cod, in their natural habitat, overfishing and now rising temperatures have decimated its population. So here in the Arctic, Atlantic Cod seems like an invader, but it's also a climate refugee from the south and its main predator is another key species advancing northward. Historically, most humans who have come to the Arctic have taken a lot more than data and a few samples. For at least 45,000 years, people have been coming to this paradoxical region. Punishing, desolate but rich with resources. Humans are the Arctic's ultimate apex predator and yet we're only getting started. With countries like Norway extracting
fossil fuels offshore, other sectors are also expanding northward. From tourism, to shipping, to military operations. So the stressers in the Arctic are probably going to intensify. As the climate here changes so will the meaning of the word Arctic. For the animals who, for now, call it home. Imagine it's 1980. Mullets are cool. The Empire Strikes Back is playing in theaters. And International Business
Machines or IBM is the world's dominant technology firm. It embodies the American
Dream with a progressive agenda of equal opportunity and prides itself on a
stable workforce. It's so thrilling to see the new IBM personal system - in the
hands of an old master. According to this handbook in over 40 years, full-time
employees haven't been touched by layoffs. People are a treasured resource
and are treated like one. Fast forward to the present. ProPublica estimates IBM has eliminated 20,000 American employees age 40 and
over in just the past five years. That's about 60 percent of its estimated US job
cuts during that time. How did IBM go from valuing its older workforce to
systematically getting rid of them? Through the '80s, technology started shifting rapidly. Among other things, Apple
introduced the first Macintosh and took a direct shot at IBM. It appears IBM
wants it all. By the early 2000's IBM fell further as new rivals like Google,
Facebook, and Amazon took the lead. In our world the speed and tempo of modern
living are increasing at an ever-accelerating rate. And as it slipped,
IBM had to deal with something most of these competitors didn't have: a large
number of experienced and aging employees. They reacted to new setbacks
with layoffs and many of them were older workers. ProPublica heard from over 1,400 former IBM employees. Here's what we know. In making staff cuts, IBM has side-stepped US laws and regulations intended to
protect workers from age discrimination. In the past, they would get two lists
from IBM. One that had ages of people staying and another with ages of those
being let go. In 2014 IBM stopped giving that information. On top of that, the company required people to sign away their rights to sue for age
discrimination in court, in exchange for their severance packages. By signing the
documents, laid-off employees waived the right to go to court. They could only
pursue their age cases through confidential arbitration. They also have
to do it solo, so they couldn't combine forces with other workers who may be
claiming similar age discrimination. Studies show arbitration overwhelmingly
favors employers. Workers win only 19% of the time, when their
cases are arbitrated versus 36% of the time when they go to
federal court and 57% in state courts. IBM has also laid off and fired
some older workers with review techniques that effectively made their
age a disadvantage. Take the case of one business unit that was using a point
system to evaluate workers. The more points a person got, the more protected
they were from negative changes to employment. But the system itself
appeared biased. Employees were given points for being relatively new at a job
level, so those who worked there fewer years earned more points than long time
IBMers. The bias against older workers is
evident when you compare the number of points to years of service. Those with no
points worked there an average of more than thirty years. Those with higher
points average fifteen years. But the numbers don't
reflect worker skills. 80% of older, more long-term employees, the ones with lower
points, were rated by the company itself as "good enough to stay at current job
levels or be promoted", while only a small percentage of younger employees with
high numbers had similar ratings. They've also converted many layoffs into
retirements, forcing ex-employees to accept a retirement package or leave
with no benefits. They've told remote workers, including older ones who had
worked from home for years, to relocate to offices potentially thousands of
miles away from their homes. Their options were relocate or resign. In response to all of these findings IBM has said "we are proud of our company and
our employees ability to reinvent themselves era after era while always
complying with the law." The problem is protection for workers under the law is
eroding. In the past few decades, rulings in age discrimination cases have said
former employees must prove that there were no factors other than age involved
in their job changes, but companies like IBM have made it near impossible to
prove that. With nearly 400,000 employees worldwide, IBM is still a tech giant. And how it handles its older workforce could encourage other companies to follow suit,
even though a lot of these companies have a younger workforce now. Here's the thing about aging: it happens to everyone This is David Hogg. Press secretary for March for Our Lives. He's a survivor of the Parkland massacre, and he's become one of the most recognizable
faces in the movement for gun control. He's also probably one of the most vilified
people in right-wing media right now. It's literally been about six weeks, and I'm already being compared to Hitler. Google Hogg's name and you'll find sites accusing
him of being a crisis actor, an FBI plant, a brainwashed hate-monger, a fascist. I can't really even think of the top five because there's about 50 million. If I experienced even a fraction of that, I would collapse into a puddle of soy milk. But rather than crumbling under the pressure, Hogg and his friends have flourished, keeping their cause in the national spotlight while repeatedly dunking on their critics. So, David, The guy, is it David Hogg? He started off as this balanced, nice kid. He's just now become a real bomb thrower. Someone like this I think isn't helping the
conversation. To David six weeks ago, I would say get some more coffee and get an external charger. You're going to need it. It's kind of hard to believe, but just a few months ago, David Hogg was a typical nerdy high school
kid. A debater, his school's news director, an amateur video producer. And like any good nerd journalist, Hogg knew a bit about the right-wing fever
swamp. Before all of this, I did know who Alex Jones
was. I did know who Laura Ingraham was. Well, actually, I didn't know who Laura was. But I did know who Alex Jones was because of all the insane things that he said to the Sandy Hook survivors. That background ended up coming in handy. After the Parkland shooting, Hogg and his
friends became central figures in the debate over
gun control. And that made them prime targets for the right-wing smear machine. Forgive me if I don't want a lesson on the Second Amendment from a 16-year-old. You're too immature to carry a firearm, you're too immature to make policy. What a conceited, arrogant know-it-all. It's hard not to just go after this kid. Authoritarianism is always about youth marches. These poor children, they have no soul. Hogg is funded by George Soros, a literal Nazi collaborator. Honestly, I figured a lot more of our attacks would be against our policies, not really
against me. The most notable of these have been the conspiracy theories. On social media, right-wing conspiracy theories going viral about David Hogg. Falsely accused survivor David Hogg of being
a crisis actor. That video was viewed more than 200,000 times before it was taken down. And when I ask Hogg about those, he's visibly frustrated. I literally interviewed people in the school during the shooting thinking I was going to
fucking die. I don't know how else to prove to these people that I was there, because I was. This is how the right-wing smear machine works: by bombarding the target with a flood of ridiculous but inflammatory personal attacks. Victims can either ignore the smears and risk becoming defined by them, or they can try to respond, burning a ton of time and energy trying to keep up with each new attack. Either way, the target’s original message
gets lost. It's like a never-ending game of bullshit
whack-a-mole. No matter what I show, it's always going to
be, "Oh, that's false." Or, "Oh, that..." It's insane. You can see the toll that trying to keep up with all this stuff has taken on Hogg. But then something happens. Hogg catches himself. And for the rest of the interview, he’s
way more relaxed. They've gone from saying that I wasn't at
the school at the time to saying that I'm a crisis actor to saying that I'm a 27-year-old that has
a facelift to saying that I'm actually 135 years old
and that I'm a, like, shape-shifting lizard, essentially. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but last time I checked, getting a facelift doesn't make your acting career any better. So. That moment, that "breathe," is really important. Hogg realizes he's getting caught up in the
bullshit and decides not to take the bait. I'm a debate kid, and I've always been made
fun of throughout my life. I'm used to it, and a lot of us are too, sadly. Yeah, I feel that. If you continue to pursue whatever path they're leading you down, which is a dead
end, it's going to end up distracting you and draining your resources, and you don't need that. Instead of playing whack-a-mole, the Parkland students have chosen to pick
their battles, engaging their trolls strategically. One of the most notable ways they do this
is through humor. Some of them called you actors. Well, I am an actor, actually. I’m in Spring Awakening right now. We just joke around a lot, and that's how we're dealing with a lot of this and kind
of coping in some weird way. Look at the Twitter feeds of many of the Parkland
survivors and you'll find them using humor to respond
to their critics, turning smears and conspiracy theories into
jokes that get them thousands of retweets. At this point, it's just, it's so stupid. It is funny for all of us to witness the ridiculousness
of the situation. Laughing it off is a coping mechanism, for
sure. But Hogg says it's also a good PR move. Laughing it off is great because it keeps
you in the news more. Not only do you get a laugh but your followers
get a laugh, and you get a follow too. Laughing it off also works because it lets students respond to their critics without giving them too much credit. When you're laughing, you're showing that
you don't care, and it makes people realize how ridiculous
these individuals are, because they're only going to be taken seriously if you take them seriously. That approach works well when you're dealing with fringe commentators like Alex Jones, people who are already ripe for mockery. I don't want to see him kissing goblins. Having political succubus with goblins. Ingratiating goblins. But sometimes the troll isn't some fringe
person you can laugh at. Sometimes it's the host of a major television
talk show, like Fox News's Laura Ingraham, who in March decided to mock Hogg on Twitter for getting turned down by a few colleges. In cases like that, Hogg responds a little
differently. I was actually sitting at dinner with my sister, and I was thinking about it for a minute. My friends have responded plenty; maybe I
just should lay off. And then I'm like, "Mmm, I'm too petty for that." Hogg responded by tweeting a list of Laura
Ingraham's advertisers, and before long, he had tens of thousands
of retweets. What's the one thing that's common in all
conflict? Economics. What does Laura care about more than anything? Her $4 million salary. Within 24 hours, major advertisers had yanked their ads from Ingraham's show. Ingraham publicly apologized "in the spirit
of Holy Week." And Hogg got another round of earned national media coverage for his cause. What I want to get on from is the negativity
in this situation, and I want to focus on what's ahead for our
movement. You don't need to go after these people personally because that's just immature, and that's what they're trying to do to you. Go after their advertisers and them making
money. This is a David-and-Goliath story. It appears David has won. Before we ended our interview, I asked Hogg what advice he'd give to other
activists, especially students, who might find themselves in the crosshairs of the right-wing smear machine. Whenever somebody calls you a dick or whatever, just say, “I love you,” honestly. That's what this world needs. We don't need anybody else being super mean
to each other like Laura was to me or anybody else. Point out the few that are just absolutely
ridiculous, and after that, people will start fighting
for you because you shouldn't have to, obviously. Yeah, they shouldn't. It is deeply disturbing that teenagers who survived a mass shooting have to worry about how to deal with this stuff. But under the weight of intense media attention
and pressure, these students are putting on a master class in how to deal with bullies. My name is Johnny Harris and I make
videos here at Vox. I spent my entire last year traveling around to different
places making documentaries on the topic of Borders. I'm excited to announce that Borders is
back. I'm hitting the road again to go tell the story of some of the most
interesting places in the world. We're stuck again. The first location for this
next round of Borders is going to be: Hong Kong. I'm doing things a little bit
differently this time. Instead of going to these places to focus on one major
topic and to make like a 15 minute documentary about that topic, I'm actually gonna be making a lot more videos from these places. I'm gonna stay there a little bit longer and make more videos that are more narrow and a little
bit shorter. Wait, so no more sweet documentaries with all the fancy
graphics? No, no no no no. That's not what I'm saying. These are still gonna be beautiful, really well
produced pieces, they're just gonna be a little bit more narrow in their scope
and they're gonna be shorter, but there's gonna be a bunch more of them. Okay, cool. As always I'm looking for your help in
finding and reporting these stories. If you live in Hong Kong or Macau or have
traveled there or read something interesting about it, I want to hear
about it. It doesn't necessarily have to be about conflict or the political
situation, it can be about an interesting community or an interesting restaurant
or figure or person. I just want to know what's worth explaining about this
peculiar part of the world. If you do have some ideas, I want to hear about it. You can go to Facebook or Instagram and DM me. Now if you do live in Hong Kong
Macau and you want to meet up with me when I travel there next month or you
want to contribute to Borders in some other way, go to:
vox.com/borders-local where you can fill out a form telling me a little bit more about
yourself and how you'd be willing to contribute to Borders. This could be
anything from me asking you to film something on your cell phone that you
see every day or filming a part of your life that would be really interesting
for these stories. So the last thing I'll say is that we
just created this Facebook Watch page, which is a Facebook page basically
optimized for viewing videos. That's where I'm going to be posting all the
Border's content first, so if you want to kind of subscribe or follow Borders
content only, that's the place to go. It's gonna be a lot cleaner than following my
personal pages which are usually like, photos of my family. If you want just the
Border's content go follow this page and you'll get a notification every time
there's some new update or new video that's published. Okay, housekeeping items
out of the way. Borders Hongkong is officially in motion. I'm excited to hear what stories you come up with. And yes I plan to wear this orange coat
until the day it comes unstitched. For people who don't like the cold,
winter is really miserable. and here in the Arctic, it can be even more brutal. But the Arctic and where you live, worlds apart, may be more connected than you might think. Scientists are finding that as
 temperatures in the Arctic rise, changes here may be contributing to extreme weather thousands of miles away. Temperatures are rising across the world but the warming is strongest in the Arctic. Here the warming is twice as fast
as the global average. And that's causing the ice to vanish. In less than four decades, the Arctic 
has lost three-quarters of its sea ice. It covers a third less of the ocean than it did just 20 years ago. That's drawn interest from an international group of researchers who have come north to understand how the Arctic is rapidly changing. These changes create a nasty feedback loop. First the ice melts, turning a reflective surface into a dark one that absorbs solar energy; warming up. Without the ice, more water evaporates, contributing to larger amounts of greenhouse gases. And all that extra heat has had
surprising effects. The process begins high in the atmosphere. Earth's air tends to move from the warm middle of the planet to the poles. Because warm air takes up more space - it's taller so gravity pulls it towards the Arctic where the atmosphere is thinner and shorter and this creates wind. The earth is spinning so instead a river of air known as the jet stream is formed moving west to east. This is what the polar jet stream looks like. You can see the patterns of its winds. The jet stream serves as a boundary between cold air from the Arctic and warm air from the tropics. And its shape influences weather patterns. The Arctic atmosphere is changing as the temperatures rise there faster than further south. There is less gravitational pull on the air towards the North Pole, so the jet stream slows down. Less of a flow, and the jet stream is losing steam. When it's curvy, weather sticks around longer causing bigger storms, droughts, and cold spells. Some scientists think that's supercharging extreme weather across the world. From the Helmer Hanssen, I call atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis who explains how the polar jet stream affected the U.S. this past winter. FRANCIS: There was a huge northward
swing in the jet stream over the west coast, bringing lots of warm air to Alaska. NEWS ANCHOR: It's been the hottest December on record with most temperatures 20 to 30 degrees above average. FRANCIS: and then the jet stream took a big southward dive over the Rockies and dipped way down into Florida. NEWS ANCHOR: We haven't seen measurable snow in Tallahassee in over 30 years. KINTISCH: It was so cold that alligators got frozen into a North Carolina swamp. That stubborn pattern persisted for weeks and the extreme cold and heat got worse and worse. NEWS ANCHOR: You can see why meteorologists are
calling it a bomb cyclone. Bomb- It's called Bombogenesis. This is the current jet stream pattern. 
Does it look familiar? It's the Arctic air driving so far south that it meets up with ocean air. The Gulf Stream is warm humid air! While on the research cruise, the jet stream sent the bomb cyclone up to the Arctic, and we got a wallop. But then we enjoyed temperatures that
were almost ... pleasant. At times 20 degrees above average and warmer than those in New York City. A week later, the jet stream brought extreme cold to Asia. Russia and eastern China were pounded with frigid cold. Tokyo had its coldest day in 48 years. While scientists scramble to understand how the Arctic may be intensifying the weather, some prominent climate researchers are skeptical. Scientists can't definitively say whether any one weather event was caused by the warming Arctic, conditions elsewhere, or by random chance. But Francis and others think the warming Arctic is loading the dice for extreme weather. FRANCIS: We can confidently say that some amount of the increase in extreme weather that we're seeing, is because of climate change. This is not a question anymore. KINTISCH: One thing is for sure, extreme weather in North America is occurring more often. When the Arctic is very warm, very cold temperatures in the eastern side of the United States are likely. Climate scientists have given this phenomenon a new name: warm arctic cold continents. We tend to think of the Arctic as a victim of climate change, a canary in a coal mine, but the vanishing ice may play a bigger role on the global stage, intensifying extreme weather a world away. Alright.
Did you find the polar bear? That is awesome! There is just a line of polar bear tracks extending ominously close to the ship. Whoa. you "My fellow Americans" "At 7 o'clock this evening, eastern time," "I ordered our forces to launch a cruise missile attack" "We targeted tanks, military assets that had been choking off towns and cities" "It is a part of a strategy." This is the first time President Trump authorized
a “limited strike” on Syria. "Tonight I ordered a targeted, military strike on the airfield in Syria, from where the chemical attack was launched." And this, almost exactly a year later, is
the second time. Both in Syria, both in response to chemical
attacks. "Precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad." A limited strike can really be whatever the
President wants it to be, could be an airstrike, a plane flies over, hits a building, they
could use ships and shoot missiles, again at buildings or other kinds of targets. It could be simply just dropping a bomb, one big
bomb, on one target like we did in Afghanistan last year. If big option is go to war, the small option
is do nothing, there's a lot of space in between. A limited strike is a fairly good in-between option, if a President wants
to send a message but not commit vast resources. It’s low-cost, and relatively low-risk to
american troops and limited strikes are also relatively low risk
politically: a President can get credit for taking action, even if that action fails. Which is likely why the past six U.S. Presidents have all taken actions that could be defined as limited strikes. In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a one night
bombing raid in Libya “Launched a series of strikes against the headquarters, terrorist facilities and military assets that support Moammar Gaddafi's subversive activities." To punish Moammar Gaddafi for an attack in
Germany. In 1993, George H.W. Bush destroyed an Iraqi
industrial complex to compel Saddam Hussein to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors. "It was quick, it was decisive, and in the words of White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, it was a “mission
accomplished.” In 1995, Clinton used the limited strike option,
in the hopes that airstrikes in Bosnia would compel the Serbians to negotiate the end of
the war. "American pilots will continue to take to the
skies over Bosnia." And it ended later that year. The presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia,
have reached a peace agreement. And In 2001, George W. Bush destroyed Iraqi
air defenses to deter them from targeting US planes. Trump’s first limited strike in April 2017
was intended "to prevent and deter the spread and use of
deadly chemical weapons." And his second use of a limited strike, in
April 2018 was to “establish a strong deterrent against the
production, spread, and use of chemical weapons.” So, the first strike… didn’t really work. And the data confirms this. After the 2017 strike, Assad continued to
use chemical weapons. Trump’s limited strike failed to achieve
its publicly stated goal. So, how often do limited strikes even work? A study by expert Micah Zenko looked at 36
instances of limited strikes, between 1991 and 2009. He found that only 16 achieved their military
goals; meaning the intended targets were destroyed. And furthermore, he judged that 25 achieved
“mixed-success” for their political goals while only 2 were out-right successful on
all counts. That’s only 6%. In these instances; the strike had a clear,
defined and measurable goal. My fellow Americans Take Clinton’s strike in 1993 for example: Where the goal was to punish the Iraqi government
for attempting to kill George H.W. Bush. There is compelling evidence that there was,
in fact, a plot to assassinate former President Bush. It was deemed a success because, well, they never
tried it again. Trump’s first limited strike, on the other
hand, damaged an airfield, but not Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. And that airfield was back up and running
the following day. Zenko found that in the cases that did not
achieve full political success; the level of force used was often incorrectly drawn
up or insufficient to achieve the political intent. It’s not that damaging an airfield had no
effect at all on Assad’s regime, it’s that it didn’t produce the intended effect. If you’re interested in the bigger goal,
that the Assad regime should stop using chemical weapons, then the strikes last year did not
work. The April 2018 strike doubled the force and
did focus on chemical weapons facilities, But it’s unclear what the long term results
will be. Politically, for Trump to use these strikes, because he looks tough. He has done something, right? There is an impulse in the United States to "do something", anytime something bad happens around the world. That’s what limited strikes ultimately are: a way for the President to do... something. Even if that something is only successful 6% of the time. These are eight prototypes for the proposed
border wall between the US and Mexico. Customs and Border Patrol commissioned these
designs and they’re on display just outside of San Diego. Some have rounded tops so that ropes can’t
be hooked on. Others have gaps so guards can see the other
side. Some are concrete, others incorporate steel
and other materials. They’re designed to keep people out. But the border doesn't all look like it does
in San Diego. You can find pockets of rich biodiversity,
including endangered species that move back and forth across the border. And that raises the question — when we design
borders to divide people, what happens to the natural world around them? The US-Mexico border currently has about 650
miles of physical barrier that looks something like this, while about 1,300 miles are unfenced. Overall, this border region is home to an
incredible array of species: you can see that there’s a high concentration of diversity
of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals right along the political boundary. Building a wall along these areas threatens
that diversity. Parts of the existing 650 miles of border
wall have already impacted rare and endangered species. And in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where
33 miles of new barriers are scheduled to go, the wall can't be built on the boundary
itself. The river forms a natural border, so construction
has to happen on US territory. That means a wall here would cut through several
protected parcels of land like this, creating almost 6,500 acres of inaccessible “No Man’s
Lands”. And that poses a unique problem for animal
movement. The immediate problem is with flooding. Along the Rio Grande are floodplains that
fill up when water levels rise from torrential rains. When that happens, reptiles and mammals have
to move to safety. But installing an impermeable wall essentially
creates a dam: so when water rises, these animals would be trapped. In the long term, structures that limit animal
migration can have serious consequences for their survival. When a population is separated by a barrier,
its gene pool can be split up. That means reduced genetic diversity in each
population, which leads to higher levels of inbreeding and an increased risk of extinction. For the endangered ocelot, that process is
happening right now. The species is down to two small populations
in the US and Mexico. Border walls have been linked to a decrease
in their populations and diversity. Any additional barriers would put their survival
even more at risk, and make the possibility of re-connecting those two populations pretty
much impossible. Some argue that small crossings or barriers
with occasional gaps would help animals like the ocelot to pass through. But those design features don’t take animal
behavior into account. Typically, building a barrier requires surrounding
areas to be totally cleared of vegetation for roads that border patrol can drive on. The area is often lit with bright stadium
lights too. For animals accustomed to traveling at night
under the cover of vegetation, that’s not a welcoming environment to use a small opening. In 2014, researchers placed cameras along
the Arizona border, and found that the presence of humans and most animals dropped after fence
installations. But where the fence ended, human presence
increased dramatically, while animal presence dropped. So humans can figure out ways around, over,
or under a barrier. Animals often can’t. There’s one big reason why habitats like
those in the Rio Grande Valley are vulnerable right now. Along these areas, the Department of Homeland
Security has the authority to waive environmental laws for border wall projects. So they can build a wall anytime with no restrictions. Nature isn’t supposed to be the target of
political barriers — but with a wall like this, it might stand to suffer a lot of the
consequences. Thank you so much for watching episode 2 of By Design. To film this story I went down with our science editor Eliza Barclay, to the border of Texas and Mexico. I highly recommend that you check out more of the reporting that she has done on this issue. Those links are down below. [Joss Fong] Your body is a temple… but mine is also an underfunded museum of
natural history. It shuts down at noon, because I didn’t
get enough sleep from the night before. It turns out I’m not alone in this. “This is hard to hear, but no shocker really...” “The Center for Disease Control says insufficient
sleep is public health epidemic…” “More than a third of Americans aren’t
getting enough sleep...” The recommended amount of sleep varies by
age, with newborns needing the most, and adults needing at least seven hours. But, while over 60% of Americans are getting
enough restful sleep, there is a striking disparity when you look at race. Only a little over half of black Americans
reported getting 7 hours or more of sleep. Sleep is essential to health. Everyone has to do it. What does a good night’s sleep look like? A good night’s sleep is spending at least
85% of the time sleeping in the bed — like on an actual bed, not on the floor, not on the couch,
not underneath someone’s desk, sorry Sam — falling asleep in 30 minutes or under,
waking up only once per night, and if you do wake up it’s for less than 20 minutes. And don’t forget the recommended 7 hours
or more of sleep. Bad sleep is spending less than 74% of sleeping
time in bed, taking more than an hour to fall asleep, waking up numerous times throughout
the night, and if you do wake up it’s for 41 minutes or more during the night. Getting too little or bad sleep can have negative
effects. There is a suspicion that disparities in sleep
are also contributing to disparities in other areas in health, like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and maybe
even early death. All these health risks and conditions disproportionately
affect black Americans, who are five times more likely to get short sleep. Researchers point to stress caused by discrimination
as one strong possibility. Since 2000, over 700 published studies have
established a connection between discrimination and physical and mental wellness. In one study, scientists found that the more
discrimination a person felt, the less deep sleep they experienced. The black participants of this study perceived
more discrimination and slept more in light sleep and less in deep sleep. Poor sleep quality is also strongly associated
with how much money you make. Black americans are more likely to live in
poverty compared to white americans. It's a function of economics. It shows people who are working shifts probably
won’t get the best sleep compared to folks who have a consistent schedule. [Lauren Hale} Generally, people who have more
opportunities, more control over their lives, are also better sleepers. There’s a connection between neighborhood
quality and sleep quality too. Poor communities are faced with higher pollution,
elevated noise levels, crime, greater population density, and sometimes limited access to air-conditioning. Even if black families are middle-income,
they’re more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods, which means these environmental factors could
still influence their sleep. All of these things — the environment, the economy,
stress — can compound on existing health conditions. A consistent finding is that when we see
sleep disruptions, we also start seeing signs of insulin resistance— which is a precursor
to diabetes. You start to see signs of increased appetite. You
start to see signs that people aren't regulating their metabolism so well. Long-term stress can lead to chronic elevated
cortisol levels — which suppress the immune system, increase blood pressure, contribute
to obesity, and more. Obesity — which affects almost half of all
black adults in the US — contributes to other serious sleep conditions like sleep
apnea. A disorder where breathing is interrupted
during sleep. And sleep apnea increase the risk for stroke
and heart attack. Bad sleep can even change your DNA. Every single cell of your body has a clock
that cycles that turns on and off throughout the day. All these clocks are producing feedback loops, so when you disrupt the big clock in your brain,
you're probably going to disrupt these little clocks throughout your body. Even modest sleep loss can trigger the immune
system's inflammatory response to disease and injury. It all becomes a vicious cycle leading to
worsening health conditions. Having enough good sleep is a big deal. But just telling people to "get more sleep"
probably isn’t that effective. Fixing the sleep gap means handling it at
both the individual level and policy level. Having accessible and affordable public transportation,
and housing near jobs would help workers spend less time commuting and more time sleeping. Employers could use sleep wellness programs
to incentivize workers to catch up on their Z’s though a government mandate would make
this more widespread. Even some researchers are using community
outreach to guide neighborhoods to better sleep. Then there are steps people can take for more
restful sleep. It seems pretty clear that there's a correlation
between bad sleep and poor health outcomes. It still not know if you give people better
sleep, if those health outcomes will then improve. And this research is still ongoing, so this
is going to be a really key thing to know, that if we can improve people’s sleep, we
may be able to make them healthier. And maybe tackling other inequalities in the
US would be more of a reality and less of a dream. These are some of the most beloved films in
the history of American cinema. But they all share something else in common: They were all censored by the Catholic Church. In fact, for decades, there’s a good chance
you didn’t see anything in a Hollywood movie unless the Catholic Church wanted you to. Hollywood in the late ’20s was chock-full
of films about pirates, lovers, and monsters. But not everybody was happy about that, most notably Catholics, some of whom were
alarmed by what they viewed as the crumbling morality in motion pictures. Two devout Catholics, a publisher named Martin
Quigley and a Jesuit priest named Father Daniel Lord (that’s his real name), decided to
do something about it. In 1929, they wrote the Motion Picture Production
Code, a set of proposed moral guidelines for movies. It prohibited such things as nudity, indecent
dancing, and ridiculing religion while requiring the promotion of Roman Catholic values where
good triumphs over evil and immoral behavior is punished. There were also slightly less folksy provisions
like barring romance between different races as well as “white slavery.” Yikes. When the big five studios — Warner Brothers,
Paramount, MGM, Fox, and RKO — received the guidelines, they agreed to them. Why would Hollywood ever willingly sign on
to censorship like this? We always have to remember that movies had
no 1st Amendment rights during this time. And that meant that any state or municipality,
or, by extension, the federal government, could censor motion pictures. This is Thomas Doherty. And these are his slippers. And there are real fears in Hollywood that
Roosevelt’s New Deal government, which is proliferating government agencies with great
abandon, is going to create a federal censorship agency to censor American movies. Studios chose to adopt it voluntarily hoping
that it would deter government interference. But then in 1930, the Great Depression hit. Following the economic downturn, movie attendance
tanked and studios scrambled to do whatever it took to sell more tickets. And what sells tickets? Sex. Violence. And big-ass goblets of booze. So for a period of four years from 1930 to
1934, Hollywood studio films were pretty f***ing crazy. The Roman Catholics especially get very upset
by this, and in late 1933 and early 1934, they begin organizing something called the
Legion of Decency. What sounds like the lamest superhero franchise
ever actually released publications of all studio movies with their accompanying rating
— A being morally unobjectionable, B being morally
objectionable in part, and C being the dreaded condemned. The legion had something called the Legion
Pledge, and you have 20 million Catholics at Mass and at Knights of Columbus meetings
would stand up, raise their hand, and pledge on their immortal soul that they would not
attend motion pictures that the church deemed unworthy and unholy. To avoid a devastating boycott, Hollywood
created the Production Code Administration to enforce the guidelines and appointed devout
Catholic Joseph Breen as its head. Here’s Edward Herrmann playing him in The
Aviator. I can state categorically that I have never
seen anything quite so unacceptable. The Breen office would get a script from a
studio, and he would go through them line by line to make sure that nothing was said
or implied or visualized that defied the Production Code. For instance, here’s a couple of their notes
on the Jimmy Stewart film It’s a Wonderful Life: Page 21: While it will be acceptable to indicate
Gower as having recourse to drink because of his disturbing emotional problem, we must
ask that he not be shown at any time offensively drunk here or throughout the scenes. This is important. Page 37: The action of Harry slapping Annie
on the fanny is unacceptable. Page 38: This reference to impotency is unacceptable. The Breen office approved every aspect of
a film, every image, every line of dialogue, ad mattes, marketing, costumes, and it really
makes him one of the most powerful men in Hollywood history. And by extension made his office one of the
most influential in Hollywood. If you look in the credits of every Hollywood
film from 1934 to 1954, you can see the PCA logo. Without it, your movie didn’t stand a chance. The PCA got to say which movies the studios
could make. And since the studios owned many of the theaters
in the country, most audiences only had access to Production Code films. You could almost call this arrangement a monopoly. And some people did. Nine people, to be exact. US v. Paramount Pictures was a landmark antitrust
court case in 1948 in which the Supreme Court said this kind of monopoly was illegal and
forced the studios to sell their theaters. Since the studios could no longer control
what was shown, it opened up the floodgates for independent and European films, neither
of which needed to abide by the code. The PCA quietly existed until 1967, when the
Motion Picture Association of America took over and American film switched over to a
ratings system. So I always see the code as something that’s
not good or bad but something that is inevitable, and it allowed them to create a lot of great
art. I mean, if you look at the movies made under
the Production Code, we're talking about, what, hundreds of marvelous creative works
of art that people still look at today. Facebook has made itself so necessary to the
online experience that for many people it is the internet. And that is causing some major problems when
it comes to user data, and security. You can trace a lot of these problems
to a phenomenon called “the network effect”. I think the first time I ever read about this, they
were talking about fax machines, right. The first fax machine is invented, it's totally
useless. But the more people who have it, the more useful it becomes, because you can
communicate with other people. Facebook is network effects on steroids,
right? It’s an event calendar, a contact book,
a photo album, it’s texting, video calling, money transferring SOCIAL NETWORK that makes
millions of dollars a day. “A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool?” Two billion people! And at that size the network effects push
Facebook beyond useful, to pretty much being integral to daily life. It's not just that you personally would miss
stuff if you went off Facebook, but it would almost be rude, right? It could be an inconvenience to your peers,
for you to not be on Facebook, because then they couldn't invite you to things that way. So you create a problem for yourself, and
you create a problem for other people by opting out of it. This FOMO is how Facebook turns the network
effect into profit. Even though no one pays to use the core service. But advertisers, marketers, and other folks
WILL pay. For user data. And because users feel that the free core
service is so beneficial, they agree to pay, in a sense, by providing that data. Yeah. Read those Terms of Service. What happened with Cambridge Analytica illustrates
how our personal boundaries for using that data in the real world are being tested. The consulting firm, hired by the Trump campaign
for the 2016 election, exploited access to the data of millions Facebook users. Now, Facebook allows academic researchers more
access to user data than commercial companies and app developers. So a researcher built this personality quiz app
under those guidelines. People used it and in doing so, allowed it to harvest
data from their Facebook profiles. But no one really read the Terms of Service, because it also
gave the app access to some data on the friends of the people who took the quiz. These are friends, who did not directly consent
to the terms of the app. Only 270 thousand people took the quiz, but by Facebook’s latest estimate, the app was able to harvest the data of at least 87 million users. Here’s the kicker: this was all above board…
the data collection didn’t violate any rules. But what wasn’t allowed was handing over
that data, collected for “research purposes”, to Cambridge Analytica. And when it came out that Cambridge used all
this data to develop techniques to target voters during the 2016 election, people were
not happy. And users wanted to know why Facebook was allowed to do this. When you have executives saying, "It's our responsibility to do x." A good question to ask is, in what sense is
it your responsibility? Is it your legal responsibility? Or are you just saying you'll feel bad? The situation with Facebook is unique, in that there are no legal responsibilities. At all. Which is different from financial institutions, medical records, other kinds of things like that. Even though angering its users might seem
bad for business, Facebook isn’t doing anything unexpected here in regards to your data. Because the aunts and high school friends
and work acquaintances on Facebook aren’t just the users of the platform. They’re also the product. And Facebook sells that product — all of
that data — to advertisers who want information about potential customers. Which is how Facebook makes millions daily
without charging you to use it. When you look at it this way, Facebook is
very, very good at what it does… even if the people spending the most time on it don’t
actually like it that much. And that's why I think it's important to see that as far
as we can tell from the research that's available, Facebook is not really good for its customers,
it makes people feel lonely and depressed. Matt’s referring to this study, by the University
of Copenhagen. It compared how participants self reported various emotions before and
after quitting facebook for a week. It's a good reminder that, while Facebook does exist to connect you with
friends, and help you find events, that's secondary to the platform’s
business goal of mining your data. Put another way: Facebook only cares that
you’re using Facebook, not whether you like to use Facebook. Which is why the main selling point is that
everyone is on Facebook. Because at roughly two billion users… those
network effects likely aren't going anywhere. And whether you like them or not, you probably aren't going anywhere either. A funny thing happens if you travel
north in January. Go far enough and it gets dark in the
middle of the day. This is what the brief winter daylight looks like in northern Norway. That's where I meet up with a team of researchers bound for the Arctic Ocean. I'm Eli Kintisch and I'm spending two
weeks with scientists exploring the Arctic during the polar night. The time of year that brings 24-hour darkness. We're here in the dark to study 
the Arctic ecosystem before the ice that defines it disappears. Seasons are supercharged in the Arctic. As the Earth orbits the Sun, the amount of light reaching the northern
hemisphere changes. You may have noticed your days shrinking in the winter, but it's way more drastic near the North Pole. Where for four months the Sun never
rises above the horizon, and then in the summer,
 the Sun never sets. The sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean follows a similar pattern. Growing in the fall and
winter and melting in the spring when the massive spring blooms of algae 
feed the ecosystem. But alongside those drastic seasons, scientists have also detected 
a long-term trend that's underway. Back here on earth, new word
that the Arctic sea ice has melted to near record levels. Global warming will leave the Arctic ice free during the summer within two decades. Look at where the sea ice was in the 1980s compared to the first decade of the 2000s. And this line shows the data from 2018 so far. Twenty years ago, the part of the sea we
explored on the Helmer Hanssen would have been coated with ice three to six feet thick. We visit 22 stations on our journey collecting measurements and samples to gauge the health of the ecosystem before the light returns in the spring. Scientists have mostly ignored the Arctic winter assuming that life here is dormant 
during the dark months. But when they looked closer, they found
 an ecosystem teeming with life. The mission of this journey is to track 
the physical and biological aspects of the ocean as the ice vanishes above it. Water samples from the deep
helped scientists identify currents that may be changing. Robotic gliders roam the sea for months measuring the properties of water and probing for signs of life. You've probably heard that big arctic species like polar bears are endangered by the melting ice, but tiny creatures also rely on it. Some types of algae cling to its surface and when they die, they fall to the muddy sea floor becoming food for mollusks, worms, and crustaceans and those creatures are food
for fish, seals, and ... walruses. Stir crazy scientists really like walruses. Other scientists zap the water with light to detect algae cells and measure their response. Animals called zooplankton just a few millimeters long come up in the nets. And the scientists test how they behave under different light and water conditions. They also document which species are present and how many. As do the team's studying fish. Without this data we won't be able to measure how less ice and more light will change the ecosystem. Shrinking sea ice means more light reaches the Arctic Ocean in the spring and fall. And that light is fueling massive new blooms of algae called phytoplankton. That's already helping several species of whales thrive in the Arctic. But will the extra light benefit the
entire ecosystem in the future? It depends. These nutrients like nitrogen and phosphate are found naturally in the ocean. They nourish the algae like fertilizer for a garden. But we don't know whether their levels will rise along with all the new sunlight. As the light floods in a separate problem 
is disruptions in timing. The blooms are coming earlier in
the spring on average. But if they appear too early baby zooplankton that hatch later could go hungry. And fish populations in turn would diminish as well. The Arctic has undergone massive changes before. But carbon pollution is causing Arctic summer temperatures to rise
faster than they have in 1,500 years. It is too soon to know how severe these
disruptions will be on the ecosystem. So scientists will return to the same
stations in the spring and early summer to monitor a rapidly changing landscape. Thanks for watching Thaw. The next episode in this three-part series we'll look at how the Arctic could be affecting weather across the world. Where are you going? This outfit with this hair? Hello, bye bye, I am so at the mall. Between 1970 and 2017, the number of American
malls quadrupled. Population didn’t even double in the same
time frame. Malls were opening really, really fast. That growth slowed down. About a quarter of the malls could close in
the next 5 years. Some people call this the death of the mall
— and that’s kind of true. Here’s why that matters. Our lives are lived in 1 of 3 places: The first is the home. The second is where you work. And the ‘third place’... well that’s
anywhere outside of those two. There are 8 qualities that make for great
third places: It sounds kind of academic, but trust me you
know it when you see them: The best “third places” invite conversation They’re close to home. And lots of time can be spent without spending
much money These are places where people can exchange
ideas, have a good time, and build relationships. In the 1950s, America had a problem: Their brand new suburbs lacked quality third
places. This guy wanted to solve that problem. So he designed the first enclosed shopping
mall. This is Southdale Center. The world's most fabulous shopping center... The format caught on like wildfire, fueled
by tax incentives for new developments — that included malls. Soon, they were being built by the dozen. Over the next 50 years there were over 1000
enclosed shopping malls scattered across America. Along the way, they became the hangout for
American youth. The thing about that is, even Victor Gruen
admitted his design was a monumental failure. Because when you look at the qualities of
great third places… malls deliver on some, but not all. They’re safe, and well lit No one has to play host at the mall And they’re accessible no matter the weather. But on the flip side, you can’t really walk
to the mall — you need a car. And once you’re there, conversation should
be the main activity. In a mall, that’s shopping. Third places should make everyone feel equal. The mall, by contrast, is more fun for the
rich. Now contrast that with a different take on
the third place — the National Mall in Washington DC. It’s open for long hours The mood is playful It’s free. You can visit with a short walk, or by public
transportation. With indoor and outdoor public spaces This adds up to an environment that fosters...
community. When you look at these two side by side, which
would you choose? while some malls are being repurposed, others
are just getting torn down... This is in part because of the recession in
2008; people had less money to spend. While more than 90% of purchases in the US
are still made in physicals store… more people are getting their goods online. And we aren’t just shopping online. Our relationships and connections are going
digital as well. More than 3 in 4 people in the US has a smartphone. When social media is used to actively connect
with others, it can be like a digital “third place.” But studies like this one show that some digital
communication can affect your mental or even physical health. The mall occupies a unique space in America’s
conscience. And that’s largely because we have an innate
need for face-to-face contact. And in some areas, the mall was that place. But as more malls shut down so too are other
third places, and the replacements often have little stake in the local community. But there is a better way — consider the
public beaches of downtown Detroit, or the redevelopment of Bryant Park in New York City. Or, you could just support a locally-owned
coffee shop. So the decline of the mall doesn’t need
to be the death of the third place –it’s up to us to decide where those spaces will
be. There’s a new highway in Pakistan. And a new rail terminal in Kazakhstan. A sea port in Sri Lanka recently opened. As well as this bridge in rural Laos. What’s interesting is that they’re all
part of one country’s project that spans 3 continents and touches over 60% of the world’s
population. If you connect the dots, it’s not hard to
see which country that is. This is China's Belt and Road Initiative -- the
most ambitious infrastructure project in modern history that's designed to reroute global
trade. It's how China plans to become the world’s
next superpower. It’s 2013 and Chinese president, Xi Jinping is giving a speech in Kazakhstan where he
mentions the Ancient Silk Road: A network of trade routes that spread goods,
ideas, and culture across Europe, the Middle East, and China as far back as 200 BC. He then says: "we should take an innovative approach and
jointly build an economic belt along the Silk Road"
A month later, Xi is in Indonesia: "The two sides should work together to build a maritime silk road for the 21st century" These two phrases were the first mentions
of Xi’s legacy project, the multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. They’re also the two components of the plan. There’s an overland Economic Belt of 6 corridors
that serves as new routes to get goods in and out of China. Like this railroad connecting China to London. And these gas pipelines from the Caspian sea to
China And a high-speed train network in South East
Asia. Then there’s the maritime silk road -- a
chain of seaports stretching from the South China Sea to Africa that also directs trade
to and from China. The BRI also includes oil refineries, industrial
parks, power plants, mines, and fiber-optic networks - all designed to make it easier
for the world to trade with China. So far, over 60 countries have reportedly
signed agreements for these projects. And the list is growing, because China promotes
it as a win-win for everyone. Take, for example, the BRI’s flagship project:
Pakistan. Pause for Pakistan
Like many countries in Central and South Asia, Pakistan has a stagnant economy, and a corruption
problem. It wasn’t a popular place for foreign investment,
that is until China came along. In 2001, China offered to build a brand new
port in the small fishing town of Gwadar. By 2018, the port as well as highway and railway
networks became a $62 billion dollar Corridor within the BRI. It’s where the Economic Belt meets the Maritime
Silk Road. And it seemed to benefit both countries. Pakistan saw its highest GDP growth in 8 years
and forged a tight relationship with a major world power. China, on the other hand, secured a new alternative
route for goods, especially, oil and gas from the Middle East. Through projects like these, it also found
a way to boost its economy. Chinese construction companies that had fewer
opportunities within their own country saw a huge boost from BRI contracts — 7 out
of the 10 biggest construction firms in the world are now Chinese. What tips the balance in China’s favor even
more is a requirement that it be involved in building these projects. In Pakistan for example, Chinese workers have
directly built projects, like this highway here, and a Chinese firm has worked with locals
on a railway here in Serbia. China’s involvement is one of its very few
demands and that’s set these deals apart so far. See, typically, to get investment from the
West, countries have to meet strict ethical standards. But China’s offered billions of dollars
— mostly in loans — with far fewer conditions. So, it’s no surprise the BRI has been a
big hit with the less-democratic countries in the region. China has signed agreements with Authoritarian
governments Military regimes. And some of the most corrupt countries in
the world. It’s even affiliated with, Afghanistan,
Ukraine, Yemen, and Iraq; all currently splintered by conflict. Because of China's willingness to loan money
to unreliable countries, many experts have called the BRI a risky plan. Eventually, these countries will have to pay
China back -- but corruption and conflict make that payback unlikely. A recent report found that many countries
indebted to China are vulnerable, including 8 that are at high risk of being unable to
pay. So why does China keep lending? Because there’s more to the BRI than just
economics: In Sri Lanka, China loaned about 1.5 billion dollars for a new deep-water port. It was a key stop on the Maritime Silk Road. But by 2017 it was clear Sri Lanka couldn’t
pay back the loan, so instead, they gave China control of the port as part of a 99-year lease. China also controls the strategic port in
Pakistan - where it has a 40-year lease, It’s pushing for a similar agreement in Myanmar,
and it just opened an actual Chinese naval base in Djibouti. These are all signs of what’s called the
String of Pearls theory. It predicts that China is trying to establish
a string of naval bases in the Indian Ocean that will allow it to station ships and guard
shipping routes that move through the region. So while China’s not getting its money back,
its still achieving some very important strategic goals. China’s growing influence challenges the
status of the US, which has been the world’s lone super-power for the last several decades. Isolation is trending in the US meaning it’s
investing less and therefore losing influence around the world. The BRI is China's way of leveraging power
to become a global leader. By building relationships and taking control
of global trade, China is well on its way. "The President of the United States
stands accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women over a period of
decades." "His hands were all over me." Donald Trump is no stranger to scandal
and allegations of sexual misconduct. "Grab 'em by the pussy."
And each time Trump seemingly escapes consequences unscathed. "Donald Trump
approached me then his hand touched the right inside of my breast." But recent
lawsuits brought against Trump may put his whole presidency at risk. And
it may not even matter if the women behind them are successful in court. The woman suing Trump are porn actress and director Stephanie Clifford
who's better known by her stage name Stormy Daniels and former contestant on
The Apprentice Summer Zervos. Daniels claims she had consensual extramarital
sex with Trump at a golf tournament in 2006 "A guy walked up on me and said to
me leave Trump alone forget the story" She also claims that she and her child
were later threatened to keep silent and that she was essentially paid hush money
to sign a nondisclosure agreement. To put it simply she's suing Trump and his
lawyer Michael Cohen to void that agreement. Summer Zervos on the other
hand claims she was sexually assaulted by Trump at a hotel in Beverly Hills.
Zervos isn't suing Trump for sexual assault though — the statue of limitations
on that is passed. Instead she's suing for defamation which means she's
accusing Trump for ruining her reputation through comments he made that
she was a liar and that she invented these accusations for attention. The
thing is the lawsuits brought by either Daniels or Zervos could be incredibly
damning for Trump's presidency even if they ultimately lose their cases.
The first risk to Trump is if either case moves into the discovery phase the
process were lawyers seek information from opposing parties to build their
case. Trump may not be able to fend off these requests. If the lawyers did find
evidence of misconduct related to their clients' cases or even evidence involving
other individuals they would be able to release those documents to the press or
to the public. The next big risk for Trump is the prospect of a deposition
if deposed Trump would have to answer questions under oath and Trump who has a
strained relationship with the truth would likely be at a particularly high
risk of perjuring himself. We've actually been here before. Paula Jones sued former President Bill Clinton in 1994. Now Jones ultimately lost her case but that didn't matter. Clinton perjured himself in deposition
and ended up impeached though he was later acquitted by the Senate. Zervos and
Daniels are far from alone in accusing Trump of sexual misconduct. "I didn't know
any of these women I didn't see these women these women the woman on the plane
the woman - I think they want either fame or her campaign did it." These lawsuits
could be a chance for these women to be vindicated. you This voting machine is called a WINvote. It was used in American elections between 2004 and 2014. In 2017, it took hackers just a few hours to play Rick Astley on one of these at a
cybersecurity conference. Although the WINvote was out of use by
then, the stunt pointed to a real problem: In most of the US, voting machines are over
a decade old. In 2016 voters in these counties were using machines bought in 2008
or even earlier. At that time this was America's most popular cell phone. Fast-forward to 2018 and the greatest threat to these machines probably isn't
hacking. They're not even connected to the internet, so remote large-scale
meddling would be almost impossible. The biggest problem is that they're so old,
some of them may not be working right. For over a decade there have been
reports of apparent vote-flipping, machine errors, and hardware breaking
down across the country, but even though this happens every election very few
machines have been replaced. And to understand why so many machines are
failing now, you have to look back at the 2000 election between George Bush and Al
Gore. And the lead story at this hour is the State
of Florida is too close to call. A nation waits. Election officials decided to count all of the
ballots by hand. Punch hole is called a "chad", pierced but still attached. Hanging chad and whether it's an allowable vote. What ballots count and what ballots
don't count? A hanging chad is the partially torn piece of paper left on
a ballot that isn't fully punched out. When the 2000 election went to a recount
Florida officials had to figure out whether hanging chads represented a vote
or not. Clearly punched their ballot correctly and there's a hanging Chad in
the back it may read one time as no vote and then the second time as a vote. After the recount, frustrated officials started replacing their old machines with new
electronic ones. Typically, state and local officials would pay for this on
their own, but after the 2000 election fiasco the federal government passed the
help America Vote Act, which provided several billion dollars
to pay for new equipment. Congress has made a vital contribution to the
democratic process. Now it's my honor to sign into law the Help America Vote Act
of 2002. The electronic machines got rid of hanging chads, but they also
introduced new problems. Officials without security training sometimes
chose weak passwords. The software requires regular security updates and
some machines don't have paper backups that can be used to audit voting. A recent report on election security says that conducting elections with
paper-based voting systems is one of the most important steps states can take to
improve election security. The Help America Vote Act was the first time the
federal government provided funding for voting equipment. Now that money is
running out and many machines are failing. Without federal funding some
states like New Mexico and Rhode Island have provided money for new machines, but
in other states like New Jersey, officials continue to work with aging
equipment. And there's a problem with relying on local funding. It can give an
unfair advantage to larger counties. In Texas for example, two neighboring
counties have different budgets for their voting systems. Travis County is
home to about a million people. In 2017 their election administration budget was
close to two million dollars. Next door, rural Blanco County budgeted only 46
thousand. The problem with this is that state and
local officials are expected to pay for new equipment on their own, but that's
rarely a priority in the budgets they're given. On the other hand, the federal
government has a much larger budget. For now, Congress has approved $380 million dollars to improve the country's election infrastructure. Whether that money will be used to replace all of America's aging voting
machines remains to be seen. These 22 columns used to sit on the East Portico
of the United States Capitol building, before they were moved … here. And as strange as they are, they’ve got
something in common with every other Corinthian column. Something you have to look closer to see. These are acanthus leaves. Once you start looking for them, you'll notice
them everywhere. And  these leaves? They say something about why we have decorated
columns in the first place. Okay. So there are different types, or orders, of
columns you run into in classical architecture. The most important stuff is at the top part,
on what’s called the “capital.” The three big orders are Doric — think super
basic. Ionic: look for the swirly things, called
volutes. And Corinthian — that’s where you want
to look for the leaves. Composite is similar, but with the volutes
added in. It’s a little much. Corinthian columns probably entered the mix
around 550 BC, but through all these centuries of change, the ornamentation at the top stayed
the same. And those leaves? They tell the columns’ story. There's a myth behind the acanthus’s appearance
on columns. It comes from the Roman writer Vitruvius. His legend was that a young girl died. In mourning, her nurse put the girl’s favorite
stuff in a basket and set a tile on top of it. But the basket was placed on top of an acanthus
plant, which grew leaves that covered the entire weave. A sculptor named Callimachus saw it, got inspired,
and invented the Corinthian column. Yeah, no … sure, Vitruvius. That’s what happened. But the myth does speak to what made the acanthus
enduring. It could grow from root cuttings. These leaves showed up on Greek columns, though
many are now lost. They popped up in Roman architecture as the
empire grew. Some say the Greek and Roman columns had different
acanthus species, but stylization has erased most of that distinction. All the Corinthian columns’ versions reflected
the strength of the acanthus. Eventually, the design of Corinthian column
became strong enough to support itself through history. The acanthus wasn’t a given. This is the plan for the United States Capitol’s
hall of columns. Along with acanthus, it includes tobacco leaves. Around the world, columns draw on different
ancient references, but in the West, referencing classical ornamentation largely means following
the same template. Often there’s creativity, as in this column
capital at Chartres, but almost always, acanthus is in the mix. These leaves don’t just symbolize the strength
of a plant. They’ve come to represent the endurance
of a culture’s design. The Capitol building’s current columns still feature ornate acanthus leaves. These columns were removed from the Capitol. But acanthus leaves? They may never be replaced. So Vitruvius’s real interest in these columns
was probably more in the proportions than in the leaves. That makes sense when you know that he is
the person who was behind the Vitruvian man. This guy. It feels like I’m dancing now. There are a lot of ways to take a picture
of yourself. But if you look carefully, something's not
quite right about your close-ups. Selfies can make our faces look weird and
it's changing the way we see ourselves, and the decisions we make about our facial features. A lot of people think their nose looks big
in selfies and it's driving them to get nosejobs. A 2017 poll found that 55% of facial plastic
surgeons saw patients who wanted surgeries to make them look better in selfies. That was an increase of 13% from 2016. But those complaints are often due to a distortion
created by the distance between a camera and a subject. This is what a portrait looks like from five
feet away. And this is what it looks like from one foot
away, about the distance that most people are taking selfies. That's a huge difference in facial structures,
especially the nose. A team of researchers found that taking a
photo from one foot away, makes the base of the nose look about 30% larger and the tip look 7% larger, than they would from a further distance. From five feet away, your features are flattened. From a foot, your nose is exaggerated. So the parts of your face that are close to
the camera, look bigger than they actually are. It's as if the nose is in the foreground and
the ears are in the background, instead of being on the same plane. For now, long arms and selfie sticks are your
best bet. But phone camera software might one day be
able to alter images with a treatment that simulates the effect of a distant camera. Researchers at Princeton created a tool that
can manipulate the position and distance between a camera and the subject, after the photo
was taken. So a close-up selfie like this, can be made
to look like it's taken at a more flattering, natural distance. It's not perfect, but a version of this technology could help design the right tool for a forward-facing camera, one that will make our selfies feel more like us. It's from a CNN town hall on gun violence held just days after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. On one side, you've got the parents, teachers, and students who survived the shooting, and on the other, you’ve got Dana Loesch, a spokeswoman for the NRA who's famous for saying things like: They will perish in the political flames of
their own fires. This is what the modern gun debate looks like
in America. We're so used to hearing from the NRA that we don't really question it when we see them on TV anymore. But talking to the NRA has turned the gun control debate into a confusing, frustrating
mess. We don't say that no one has a right to free
speech... I mean, are we talking about prevention or
not? Wait a second, wait a second! And that's exactly what gun companies were
hoping for. Anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you go to the NRA’s website right now, you'll see the group describing itself as “America's longest-standing civil rights
organization.” We're the largest and oldest civil rights
organization in America. The NRA really wants you to think of it that
way because it frames the organization as essentially a public interest group, alongside groups like the ACLU and NAACP. That framing is the reason the NRA pops up in every debate about gun control. If you think of the NRA as a group that represents gun owners, you can't really debate gun policy without them. The problem is... The way they go about this is a charade. It's a fraud. This is Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch. He represents Florida's 22nd Congressional
District, which is where the Parkland shooting took
place. And he is tired of arguing with the NRA. This is an organization that receives millions
of dollars every year from gun companies directly, millions more through advertisements. Yeah, you’ve probably heard about the NRA giving money to politicians, but we should talk about how much money the NRA gets from gun companies. Every year, gun manufacturers donate millions
of dollars to the NRA through its corporate partners
program. Some of them sponsor specific NRA projects like “Empower the People,” sponsored by
Sig Sauer. Or “Love at First Shot,” sponsored by
Smith & Wesson. What is “Love at First Shot”? I don't want to know. Other gun companies give money directly to
the NRA, and ones that donate over a million dollars get to be part of something called the NRA’s “Golden Ring of Freedom.” An honor given to those who make significant
contributions to the NRA’s defense of the Second Amendment. That “Golden Ring of Freedom” includes
companies like Beretta, Remington, Bushmaster, and Smith & Wesson, the manufacturer that
produced the gun that was used in the Parkland massacre. In exchange for their donations, the NRA gives gun companies these tacky golden
jackets. That’s more of a dirty yellow. Yeah, that is not gold. The NRA doesn't disclose how much money it
gets from these donations. But a report by the Violence Policy Center
estimates the number was anywhere between $20 and $60
million from 2005 to 2013. The NRA makes millions more by selling ad
space to gun companies in publications like American
Rifleman. But maybe weirdest of all, some companies donate a portion of every gun
sale directly to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for every customer who buys one of their guns. In 2015, Sturm Ruger launched a campaign donating $2 to the NRA for every gun they sold, which explains why so much NRA programming looks like a gun ad. The AR-15 is one of the most effective tools
available to protect yourself and your family. What the… All of this makes the NRA less of a public
interest group and more of an industry lobbying group. And that's a big distinction. We're arguing about gun control with a group that makes money when people buy guns. They're a lobbying group. I don't know, frankly, that there's another lobbying organization that drives
the debate on an issue the way that they do, So any time the NRA debates gun control, their priority is protecting the product. To deflect attention away from gun sales, they blame violence on things like video games ...vicious, violent video games with names
like Bulletstorm… while blocking the CDC from actually studying
gun violence. Or they say we need to enforce existing gun
laws - We have all kinds of gun laws on the books
right now, John. We don't enforce any of ’em. while lobbying to gut the agencies that would actually enforce those laws. They blame states for not using the background check system. Do you know that it is not federally required for states to actually report people who are prohibited possessors? And then aggressively oppose background checks because background checks “don't stop criminals from getting firearms.” You know perfectly well the reason states aren't mandated to go through that system is because of a lawsuit the NRA filed. Or, most obvious of all, they argue the solution to gun violence is buying more guns. To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun. Yeah, that's a twofer. They get to talk about something other than all of the things that have broad bipartisan
support, and they get to talk about something that is ultimately going to benefit the gun companies that fund their entire operation. The annoying thing is these distractions work. A Vox study of cable news coverage after the Parkland shooting found that CNN
and MSNBC both devoted serious airtime to debating arming
teachers. How do you feel when you hear these proposals to arm the teachers, given what was going
on? That allegiance to gun companies creates a
warped view of the gun control debate. The truth is huge majorities of Americans agree on things like background checks and
restrictions on assault weapons. And most gun owners, including NRA members, support things like universal background checks. The NRA knows this too. Which is why they work so hard to convince
their members that the government is coming to take away
their guns. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment so they can eradicate all individual freedoms. It is always this attempt to whip people into
a frenzy. This is just the first step. We're the only thing that stands between you
and tyranny. It’s nonsense. It's a distraction. It's also a smart marketing strategy. If you convince people the government is coming for your guns, they'll buy more. Gun sales usually spike after mass shootings. Thankfully, not everyone is falling for it. This is Ryan Deitsch, a survivor of the Parkland
shooting. He was visibly frustrated at the CNN town
hall. And he says he’s started turning down invitations to debate NRA spokespeople like Dana Loesch. We know what happened at the town hall, and we just did not want to give her that
platform. Deistch isn't afraid of debating gun control. I love to face the opposition. I've been told I'm too nice. But he says talking to the NRA is different. They're never going to agree because the money flows one way. Please, God, no, not a new Dana. We've seen this exact thing happen before: with tobacco. In the ’50s, tobacco companies formed the
Tobacco Institute, a group that spent 40 years fighting against
tobacco regulation. Most of the Tobacco Institute's work is with people who represent the public's
interest. The group became one of Washington's most
powerful, well-heeled, and effective political lobbies. And like the NRA, they did everything they
could to protect the product. They blamed lung cancer on air pollution and
food additives, tried to block government research on smoking, It’s inappropriate for any agency of government to take steps to try to eliminate a legal
product. and peddled junk science. Most smokers don't develop lung cancer. We think it's an open question. And believe it or not, lots of news outlets
took the bait. The Tobacco Institute charged that its findings were based on evidence that is not scientifically
conclusive. Looking back, it's bananas that anyone included the Tobacco Institute in public health
debates. But that's exactly what's happening now with
the NRA. There's no question that having the representative for the biggest gun companies raises all of those same concerns. That doesn't mean we should ignore the NRA. It's still an incredibly powerful industry
lobbying group. And we should take that political influence
seriously. But that doesn't mean we need to take their
arguments seriously. Debates about gun control only work if both
sides are genuinely interested in finding a solution
to gun violence. But in this case, they're not. If the way that you’re approaching this
is about either having guns or not having guns, then having the gun manufacturers there probably makes sense. But that's not what the debate should be. That's not what the debate is. It's about taking action to keep our communities
safe. That's a conversation most Americans agree
on. But it's a conversation that falls apart every time the NRA gets a seat at the table. I want to thank Dana Loesch of the NRA for
being here to listen to your questions. I was born only a year after Columbine, Called one of the worst school shootings in our nation. Every couple of months, every
couple of weeks, throughout my entire life - Virginia Tech. Newtown. 29 dead. 26 who were killed, children. We had seen it disappear, we had seen people forget. It's not the time to talk about gun
control. Gun control is not the answer here. If all our government and president can do is send "thoughts and prayers," then it's time
for victims to be the change that we need to see. The students of Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School are changing the narrative around school
shootings. Why should they listen to me? Because I had to sit in a classroom, in
the dark, next to 20 of my friends watching us all
text our parents that we love them, because we didn't know if the shooter
was going to come up to our door. That's why I'm credible. We wanted to know what
other students might be thinking, so we asked. And got over 1,600 responses. Generally I think I could say I feel
pretty safe in my school. I should feel safe. I definitely don't feel safe at
schools right now. *Scoffs* Well, no. No. It's a clear "no". School shootings have kind of just been a lot this year. What if we're next? I feel very safe. Our school just spent a bunch of money on like,
security upgrades, which you know. Perhaps I'm just telling myself I'm safe, because
I want to be. We do have campus carry here. I do
sometimes feel safer when I'm with my friends that I do know like, have
concealed carry weapons with them. I sit in school in fear, because of the status
quo. Ever since I was a kid really that I can remember, I remember school shootings
being a thing. I haven't felt safe since Sandy Hook happened and I was only in
like sixth grade back then and I just haven't really felt safe, I've always had
some kind of anxiety going into school. Maybe this is a real possibility, like
this is something that could happen to me. Yeah I feel safe, but there's this
part of me that wonders if I should be feeling safe. The lights went out in the
library a few days ago and everyone was just kind of prickled up like, what's
going on? Do we need to run? Do we need to hide? We do routine lockdown drills. This is pretty terrifying, the fact that we have
to sit here and pretend that a shooter is coming into our school. We have a
policy that's called "Run Hide Fight" for an active shooter. I am lucky enough that
I have a school with outdoor hallways which means, in an event of an evacuation
I have much more exit points than a normal school would. I know a couple spots
that I could potentially hide in if they were unlocked. They say, "oh if they come
into your classroom start throwing textbooks, start throwing desks, go and
punch them and that's gonna do nothing." What do I think of teachers having
access to guns? I don't like the idea at all. It's a terrible idea. Quite possibly
the stupidest situation I could ever think of. Arming teachers is
normalizing school shootings. It could be beneficial, but it has to, I mean it'd have to
be done right. Teachers with guns is like not a good teaching environment for
young kids who need like sunshine and rainbows. I would feel much safer
actually, with them being armed. The day I recorded this, March 14th, 2018 a student
in California was injured because of a teacher having a firearm and
accidentally discharging it in the classroom. This plan reminds me a lot of what
students call "bullsh*t." We need to start thinking about what we can do before the
gun enters the school. One solution could just be having metal detectors. Universal background checks, raising the age by a firearm to 21. I'm not one for banning guns, because I feel like there are good law-abiding citizens that
deserve to have the right to have a gun. If your right is apparently harming the
lives of other students, it shouldn't be considered a right anymore. I think really the only guns that should be allowed at the most are hunting rifles. The average citizen does not need to be able to purchase any of the AKs, the 47
the 10. Any of those. Regulate ammo a lot more. Nothing in the Second Amendment
states anything about ammo. Would it be so bad to consider similar laws to what
exists in the UK and Australia and Canada and all of these places where
they don't have a mass shooting every week? Our government needs to really step
up and do what they're supposed to do, because it seems like students now are
being the leaders that our leaders are supposed to be. I feel like there isn't really
much I can do because you know I'm like one person, but I feel like we can all do
something together. I just wrote a letter to my senator. If I can talk to Congress,
I would just you know flat out say "put more security in schools." Stop taking money from the NRA. I don't understand how anyone can feel okay with themselves
knowing that students are dying and you have an opportunity to fix it and you're
not. It's not the liberal lobbyists that the NRA has to fear, it's not our
representatives, or even our senators. It's not our parents. It's us. And you should be scared. I'm 18, I voted in my primaries. I'll be able to vote in the
next elections, so. I'll be 18 next month, so I will be able
to vote in midterms. We need to vote people out who take money from the NRA. Let our legislators to know that we are not gonna remain silent, that we demand
change. And they should really be the ones dedicating time to thinking and
solving these issues, not a 15 year old like in a classroom. I just want to say
thank you to the 1,635 students that wrote in to us from around the world. I'm sorry we couldn't put every single one of you into this video, but trust me we read every word you sent in and it was
integral to us making this video. Thank you. With ten dollars, you can buy this many donuts. And this many apples. If you opt for the donuts, you get a lot more
calories. But not all calories are created equal. Apples contain fiber and vitamins while donuts
are full of saturated fats and chemically processed ingredients. Even though apples are healthier for you,
you have to eat more of them to get the same number of calories as one donut. And it would cost you about five more dollars,
which means... the cost-effective choice is usually not the nutritionally-sound one. There’s a strong relationship between diets that are
low in fruits and vegetables and obesity and diabetes. These two chronic diseases now
rank among the nation’s gravest health concerns. Produce is essential for a healthy diet, but
Americans aren’t eating enough of it. And part of the problem is cost. So what can be done to add more produce to
the American plate? Fresh vegetables and fruits are often more expensive
to farm than other types of crops that end up in processed foods. For example, fresh strawberries have to be
picked by hand. But strawberries destined for preserves can
be harvested by a machine. Bumps and bruises don’t matter in the process,
and machines are more efficient and cheaper in the long-run than human labor. This extra work is reflected in the price
difference between fresh strawberries and other crops, and it also makes fresh strawberries
more expensive to buy than processed strawberries Government subsidies also play a role in the
cost difference. For example, the USDA doesn’t subsidize
leafy vegetable crops in the same way it subsidizes wheat, soy, and corn. These three crops make up a lot of processed
food, so products full of high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil have an unfair advantage. When it comes to cost, the less nutritious
food will win out. Other incentives are needed to keep people
away from cheap, processed foods. Taxes on products on tobacco and alcohol have
been effective at curbing consumption. This line shows the average price per pack
of cigarettes over the past forty years The rising prices are partly fueled by federal
and state cigarette tax increases in 1983, throughout the early 2000’s, and 2009. Meanwhile, per capita cigarette consumption
(shown by this line) has steadily decreased as prices have gone up. And researchers are arguing that what need
to start thinking about a junk food tax.The tax would focus on non-essential food items
like candy, soda and potato chips. These unhealthy foods would be taxed at the
manufacturing level, and higher costs at checkout could steer customers toward healthier options. But a junk food tax alone won’t fix obesity. Or the already high costs of a healthy diet… So what can be done? We could make healthy produce sexy. Okay, well there are other things too. To address the cost issue, some programs are
springing up that make produce more affordable for lower-income people, through subsidies. And since 2014, the USDA has granted over
$65 million to expand these programs throughout the US. There’s also the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription
Program or FvRX. Doctors can give vouchers for produce to low-income
patients who are at high-risk of diet-related disease. Growing produce in home or community gardens
can encourage healthy eating with little investment, but finding time to cook, let alone garden,
can be a burden for families. We don’t yet know which strategies and programs
are work best, but they’re worth testing for one simple reason: if Americans ate a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, and more fruits and vegetables,
we know they’d be a whole lot healthier. Male condoms come in all types of fun
shapes and sizes and flavors. Some even glow-in-the-dark. There are hundreds of male condoms that have been approved by the FDA. Amazon alone has 76
pages full of different options, but how many types of female condoms are
available in the US? Turns out, just one. A female condom is the only woman-initiated method of preventing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted
infections. It's a sheath with two rings, one open
one closed, that can be used for vaginal or anal sex. Typically it's almost as effective as a male condom and it can be inserted up to
eight hours before having sex. So, you don't have to stop in the heat of the
moment to fumble with a clumsy condom wrapper. Despite being effective and
convenient, only a small percent of women in the US have reportedly ever even used
a female condom. Why aren't more women using this thing? We decided to find out. So I enlisted Dion to help me scour the neighborhood to find one. Can you just put a wig on and you can do it? Do you guys have female condoms? Do you guys have female condoms? They don't have it. Even though we ended up getting brownie
snacks out of the whole thing, not a single store that we went to sold female
condoms. I don't even have to leave my office lobby to buy male condoms. After doing a little research I found out why it was impossible to find a female condom. It turns out you can't buy them in a store. Well, that sucks. Yep. Veru Inc., formerly known as the Female Health Company, is the only
company with a female condom on the market in the US. And they switched to a
prescription based system in 2017, so if you want to get one you either have to
go see your doctor or buy it directly from their website. Imagine if a man
needed prescriptions to buy condoms. Female condoms aren't new. A Danish
inventor created a prototype in the early 1980s, in response to the AIDS
crisis at the time. In 1993 the Female Health Company brought the design to the US, and their first FDA-approved version was
unimaginatively called the FC1. It was made of polyurethane plastic, which was
less flexible than latex. Some women reported that it was uncomfortable, made
squeaky noises and, because there was little awareness around proper use, it
sometimes fell out during sex. The media also ridiculed it, comparing its
appearance to a jellyfish, a windsock, and a plastic bag. In 2009 the company came
up with a second version, the FC2, made with a softer rubber. It was more
comfortable and quieter, but it still didn't take off. Male condoms certainly
have been around for a lot longer and are more accessible and people, frankly,
are much more comfortable with the things that they know. This is Dawn
Bingham, an ob-gyn and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. And I think that the female condom has not grown in popularity as the male condom
has, because it's very easy to educate people about male condoms. You can let
the people know how to use a prop, using a banana to show how simple it
is to put on a male condom and we don't have the same accessible models for
female condom to make people that comfortable. According to a report in the
Journal of Urban Health, the tampon had similar challenges when it was first
introduced in the 1930s. In the first decade on the market, the tampon was only
used by 4 to 6% of women and doctors questioned its safety and usefulness. It took decades and carefully planned marketing campaigns to reach even modest
popularity among women. Female condoms had a similar trajectory in Zimbabwe. After health organizations campaigned for the condom as a successful barrier
against HIV, the government introduced it in 1997. To boost popularity they were
marketed across universities, pharmacies, and even hair salons. Which eventually led to high usage rates and a decline in HIV cases. These kind of
contraceptive and STI prevention methods are useful, because they empower the
woman or whoever the receptive partner is to protect themselves. And they're
simple to use. But there still isn't enough awareness around female condoms
in the US yet. The FDA put the female condom in the
most strictly regulated category of medical devices, which requires hundreds
of thousands of dollars of extra research and takes a ton of time for
market approval. But the FDA is now considering reclassifying the female
condom and renaming it the "single-use internal condom". This would ease
restrictions on companies and let people know they're actually not just for women. Sure, male condoms work but that doesn't mean they should be the only accessible
choice for everyone. The Me Too movement. Me Too Movement The Me Too Movement What is a non-verbal cue? They are just so fucking fragile. Where is the line now? No. Not really, no Not really. Never in the workplace. Weeellll... yes... I've never been harassed at work. Not directly. Of course, yeah. No, because I had my stand. I did my internship and one man
approached me and I said "only time I'm gonna touch your penis is to put it in the syringe." Yes he approached me. He approached me, he
took his penis out and asked me to hold it. Between 60 and 70% of women don't report sexual harassment, because they weren't sure that it was serious enough. Oh my god. That's really sad. Yeah, I believe that. I'm surprised it's not more. I, in my work as an RA, I come up with that a lot
because I'm always you know offering resources, telling women what our options are. And so many of them just say "I don't want to go through that ordeal, I
know it's gonna end poorly". And I -- how can I disagree with that? I struggled when everyone was posting the Me Too stuff online. Like, it... does my
story count? Or am I detracting from this movement, you know, I want to say Me Too
to like acknowledge how prevalent all of this is, but if no one grabbed me, if it was a compliment that really was inappropriate for the workplace you know? It's like that... it was always on that line. I don't know any woman, my age, I can't speak for younger who hasn't been the object of sexual harassment. They would always take the male side, because the male was in power. Like, I went for a job interview one time as a waitress and I had waitressing
experience and the man said "turn around and walk away from me so I can see your legs." And... it's... you know, so I did. I mean, we did. We just expected it. Those were the days, you know, every man was entitled and every woman was not entitled. Do you think that the way this movement is happening, do you think it will have a positive impact? Are you optimistic about the movement? Oh, yes. It's going to have an impact. It already has, I feel. I don't think it's gonna go away, because women are free and they feel -- they now know that other women
are experiencing the same. We just have to find our place. I hope it continues, I think there is a lot of potential there. But it feels like everything is so up in the air these days that I have no idea how long it'll
last before people say "this has gone too far" and like, "these accusations aren't
big enough" and that's my fear. It's catching on, I mean women everywhere are
hearing it. There has to be momentum. I think it's there and, you know, women's
lives will be better. I think it's not about women, it's about men. That's the change that needs to take place and right now I really only see women
claiming Me Too. So, question mark. For now. Imagine you're on a road trip with your
family. The year's 1954 and you're black. Segregation is law in the South and
basically practiced everywhere else in America. You're traveling down the famed
Route 66 and you've just reached Albuquerque, New Mexico for the first
time. There's not another town for miles and
you want to pull over and sleep for the night. There are over a hundred motels to
choose from, but less than eight will take you in. Picking the wrong one could
lead to a humiliating encounter or worse, a violent one, but there was actually a
way to know where you'd be welcome. It was in the Green Book. Americans fell in love with the idea of
the road trip in the mid-20th century. A growing middle class meant more people
had cars and jobs with paid vacation time. And a newly built interstate
highway system meant the country was accessible to a big part of the
population for the first time. The open road indicated freedom and traveling by
car reflected Americans' image of themselves: self-sufficient, curious, and
spontaneous. It was a way for families to spend time together and see the
expansive country they called home, to experience America's cultural and
natural diversity. Through the 1950s and '60s, the highway became the most common
way for American families to travel. Motels and roadside attractions sprang
up along the highway to accommodate travelers needing a place to sleep or
eat at any point on their journey. But that freedom didn't extend to all
Americans. Black motorists were turned away from the roadside hotels, gas
stations, and restaurants that had taken over the American landscape. Some places were so hostile that it was unsafe to even get out of a car. Sundown towns forcibly expelled African Americans at night, sometimes violently. Black families had to take prepared food, in case they wouldn't find a restaurant that would
serve them, extra gallons of gasoline in case filling stations wouldn't sell to
them, and even empty coffee tins in case they couldn't access a bathroom. They carried blankets and pillows knowing that finding a safe place to sleep could
mean camping by the roadside or driving long hours into the night, even though
they had money to pay for a hotel. Sometimes, that distance was fatal. It was the exact opposite of the spontaneous American road trip. But thanks to a Harlem 
postal-worker-turned-travel agent, knowing where to go wasn't a total shot
in the dark. In 1936 Victor Hugo Greene collected information
on hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, and mechanic shops that would reliably serve
African Americans in New York City. He called his Travel Guide "The Negro
Motorist Green-Book" and began publishing an updated version each year, using his network at the United States Postal Service, which was one of the largest
single employers of African Americans at the time. Green put together detailed
information on businesses and private homes that would welcome black travelers. The Green Book eventually grew to cover locations in all 50 States and sold ad
space to businesses all over the country. With the help of Esso, now ExxonMobil, as
a progressive corporate partner and distributor of the guides, around 15,000
copies of the Green Book started selling each year. Victor Greene's once-16-page booklet ballooned to over a hundred pages and became a
stable item for black families who wanted to participate in the joy of
cross-country travel. And it turns out that iconic image of the open road, of
freedom and family values, would become an anchor in the Civil Rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King even mentions it in his "I have a dream" speech. The Civil Rights Act ended legal segregation in 1964 and just two years later the
Green Book went out of print. It had become obsolete. And as the road cut
through the broad plains, you felt the tremendous space all around you. A
country rolling out to the horizon, and you rolling with it. It was beautiful and you
sort of sensed the real meaning behind the word "freedom". Alright Dean. They're sad because they think that we don't like them. It really depends on
how long they've been evolving. That's an alien. Aliens have noses? There's no right answer, since no
one really knows. But we often imagine extraterrestrials to look a certain way,
because we've encountered them in books, films, or on TV shows. Oh my god, it's one of those facehuggers from the Alien movie. Which means that
when we think about aliens, we're usually thinking about the product of someone
else's imagination. This is the first film featuring life out in space: A Trip
to the Moon by Georges Méliès. It came out in 1902 and the strange moon aliens
in it are not at all that strange. They actually look a lot like us. These creatures were incredibly ambitious at the time, but they were also convenient. This is Charlie Henley, an Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor who worked on
Ridley Scott's Alien series. So yeah, he spends a lot of time thinking about
aliens. Obviously sometimes it's just like, well, we'll dress somebody up. So they're gonna end up with a head and arms and legs, you know? The idea's that they would relate to us if they're intelligent, so we'd be kinda
similar. We don't have any reason to believe that they
would look anything like us. The form of a human being is the result of several
billion years of evolution. There's no reason to believe that the development
of life would be so similar as it was on Earth, that the sort of the form of life
would look anything like we have on Earth. That's Andrew Siemion, the
director of SETI Institute where they conduct experiments to detect
extraterrestrial technology. We're lucky in that we don't have to think too much
about the biological organism, the specifics of the life that created the
technology, because we just search directly for the technology and then we
use that a proxy for the existence of life. But imagining alien organisms, especially ones with relatable features, is what
feeds a popular theme in science fiction: the relationship between us and them. There's always a point of contact, an interaction that's sometimes hostile and
other times it leads to a warm and fuzzy relationship. And that's made for some
powerful storytelling. Are they good or are they bad? What would we do if they
try to communicate with us? I think those are their names. So what are we gonna call them? Science fiction has stuck around as a major
Hollywood genre for decades, with more advanced visual effects technology in
recent years, filmmakers had more room to experiment with the alien form. But even with the right tools it can be hard to break out of what we already know. Normally there's a bit of a history for the film, there's some DNA that you want to follow. For
example the Neomorph in the new Alien is effectively like a new creature that Ridley wanted to create, but it had the DNA of the original alien,
so obviously features relate to that. That connection creates a strong
sense of nostalgia for franchises like Alien, but sometimes when creators break
away from that DNA, that leads to new forms. In The Edge of Tomorrow, there's a
creature called a "Mimic" and we did some design work for that originally. But the brief for that was it shouldn't be humanistic obviously and it should follow the normal
laws. And that's a difficult task for filmmakers. But the challenge with anything like that is that if
it doesn't follow the laws that we know, They need to come up with something totally new, but also have
it makes sense to us. Often, the trick is to find inspiration
in nature. For example, the Neomorph, we referenced these Goblin sharks which
are quite rare, found in the deep sea and they have a particular quality
to the skin, but also just the mechanism of how their mouths open. Or the ink-squirting Heptapods in Arrival: they're otherworldly but still familiar. And even Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Who effectively is an alien, but you know not in any classical sense. Like he was kind of made... like he's made out of a tree. The design brief there is to make him friendly, but also figure out the
technicalities of how it's gonna work. These aliens come from someone else's
imagination and they might not be entirely rooted in science, but the
depictions make us think about life beyond our planet. We're all sort
of wondering about the same thing. And I think some people draw pictures of
it and some people make movies about it and some people make music about it and some people talk to their friends and family and some scientists try to
determine the answer using the principles of basic science and
observational astronomy, but it's all part of I think the same human question. Which is of course: It's official. The low carb diet craze is over. Hello New Year. Okay omniscient voice on TV, calm down. It seems every couple of years or so, there's
a new diet to try. South Beach was popular during the early 2000s,
then paleo took over towards the late 2000s. But around April 2017 you can see in this
Google Trend graph, a new diet surpassing it. Celebrities like Halle Berry and Kourtney
Kardashian are going nuts for this diet. Keto devotees claim that if you banish carbs
and eat lots of fat, your body will start to actually burn fat and you'll lose weight
and even reduce your hunger in the process. But what's lost in this keto chaos: there's
no evidence that keto diets work better than any other diets for most people hoping to
slim down. Although keto may be the latest in fad diets,
it's had promising results elsewhere. It was used since the 1920s to treat epilepsy. Outcomes from this 2018 study showed its potential
in treating subjects with type-2 diabetes. As a diet for weight loss, it's been around
for a while. Keto's most recognizable form is from the
'60s: the Atkins Nutritional Approach, pushed by the late doctor Robert Atkins. RIP homie. The theory behind this diet, the insulin carbohydrate
hypothesis, suggests that people start to burn more calories more quickly and burn off
more fat. And several high quality studies have debunked
these extra fat and calorie burning claims. So exactly what foods can people eat on keto? People are supposed to get 5% of their calories
from carbs, about 15% from protein, and 80% from fat. That means staying away from things like bread,
grains, rice, you know, cereals, chips. You're definitely not going to be eating chips. And eating lots of fish, meat, eggs, don't
throw the bacon at me! Bacon, things like this. The goal is to get your body into a state
of ketosis. So basically our bodies are fueled primarily
by glucose, which we get from carbohydrates. But when you eliminate carbs and you start
to eat lots of fat, instead of burning glucose for fuel, your body starts to burn fat. To get into ketosis you need to eat less than
50 grams of carbs, or two slices of bread, per day. And of course eat a lot of fat. Sounds simple, right? Basically eat no carbs and the weight
will come right off. And low carb diets like keto can sometimes
give people the impression in the short term, they've lost fat. When in reality it's rapid water weight-loss. Plus the more extreme a diet, the less likely
a person is to stay on track. The average person can't stick with the keto
diet for even six months. It's especially challenging in a world with
temptations of easy, over-processed, and high calorie foods at every corner. When you stack very low carb diets like Atkins
or keto against other types of diets, in the long run people lose about the same amount
of weight as they would on any diet. There are always outliers, there are always
people who do really really well and it's possible you may be one of those people, who
really benefits from a ketogenic diet. But on average, they don't work for most people. There's some hard truths about losing weight
and keeping it off. It's really difficult. It takes a long time. And while keto may work wonders for some,
like people with diabetes, the best diet overall is probably one you can stick with. Kurds are carving out their own state called Rojava. This is Rojava, a region in
northern Syria that runs along the border of Turkey. It's home to over a million Kurds, one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle
East. Until a few years ago this was a rural and forgotten corner of Syria,
where the Kurds were denied legal status by the Syrian government. But today, Rojava's a self governed region with a powerful militia that led the fight
against ISIS. And it's where the Middle East's youngest democracy is taking shape.
Surrounded by Assad's totalitarian regime, the militant Islamic State, and a
hostile neighbor, Turkey, this is an unlikely place for a democratic
revolution. But it was actually the Syrian war that made Rojava
a possibility in the first place. In 2011, protests against dictator Bashar
Al-Assad erupted in Syria, The uprising turned into open rebellions, after he sent
his army to crack down on the opposition. With battles on multiple fronts and
forces stretched thin, he had to make a choice. By July 2012 Assad pulled most of
his army out of the traditional Kurdish territories in northern Syria to defend
these major cities in the West. The move created a void, but not for long. An existing Kurdish political party called the Democratic Union Party stepped up to
defend and govern the region they called Rojava. They organized it into these three small self-governed states. They set up a democratic system of local governments and claimed they would to protect the
rights of all citizens, including the multiple ethnic groups within the region. They also promoted gender equality across all public institutions, including
their military. An all-woman military group called the YPJ took shape and
fought alongside the Kurdish militia, called the YPG. But just as Rojava started taking shape, it came under attack. The jihadist militia known as ISIS... Terrorist group ISIS gaining ground... In Syria and Iraq
right now... In 2014, the Islamic State swept through Syria. In Rojava they drove all the way to Kobanî on the Kurdish border and laid siege to the
city. Trapped inside were thousands of civilians and Kurdish militia fighters. As ISIS threatened to take the city, small pockets of Kurdish fighters held
their ground until reinforcements arrived. The US provided air support
for the Kurds and together they retook Kobanî, marking a major moment for Rojava. The Kurdish fighters proved to be one of the most effective forces in Syria,
leading to continued US air support and eventually weapons. The victory also gave
Syrian Kurds, who were denied statehood for decades, an opportunity to strengthen
and expand their territory. With Assad still fighting in the West, the Kurds
decided to take on ISIS. The Kurds are the most effective fighting force
against the Islamic State... Kurdish fighters in Syria have made significant
gains... Killing thousands of fighters and clawing back territory... Kurdish-led force launched an offensive today in Syria... Pushing ISIS further and further
back... Out of their territory in the northeastern city of Hasaka... We are now within sight of the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. As Kurdish fighters started liberating
these cities, they incorporated their populations into Rojava. With the addition of multiethnic populations, Rojava was renamed the Democratic
Federation of Northern Syria, to reflect the makeup of the region. And Kurdish fighters merged with non-Kurdish militias to form the Syrian Democratic
Forces, also known as the SDF. Western media hailed the moment as the birth of a
young democracy in the Middle East. And the Kurds promoted their democratic
model as a solution for a post-war Syria. But reports also claim that the Kurds
displaced non-Kurdish populations and committed human rights abuses. In the broader region not everyone supported the Kurdish project. On one hand the Syrian government denied its existence and on the other Turkey grew
worried as Rojava expanded. See, Turkey claims the Kurds in Rojava are a front
for the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that's been at war with them since the
1980s and is labeled a terrorist group by the US and the EU. So to keep Rojava from becoming a safe haven for the Kurds, Turkey sent ground troops into Syria
here in August 2016, to fight both ISIS and the SDF, eventually cutting off Afrin from the rest of the Federation. But the Kurdish offensive continued and in
late 2017 it led to the fall of ISIS in its capital of Raqqa. The victory marked a
big win for the Kurds, but it also opened up a major threat. In early 2018 Turkey
went back into Afrin and launched Operation Olive Branch, a full ground
offensive against the Syrian Kurds, here. With ISIS gone, Rojava's partnerships
had weakened. In the absence of a common enemy, the American motivation for
backing the Kurdish fighters has declined, especially when they're up
against Turkey - a NATO ally that the US relies on. Now, it's unclear how far
turkey will go to keep Syrian Kurds in check, but without US support their
forces are under-equipped and undermanned, against Turkey's massive
military. In this new phase of the Syrian War, Rojava has become a vulnerable
target. And the Kurdish dream that was created by the start of the war is
threatened by its end. I'm sorry, please stop shaking your head again. Remember this guy? That’s Sean Spicer, who served as the White
House press secretary...until he resigned after some testy encounters with the press. Well, how about Hope Hicks, White House Communications Director? She resigned amid rising tensions in the administration. Then there’s “The Mooch”— otherwise
known as Anthony Scaramucci. White House Communications Director for only
11 days before getting fired. Staff Secretary Rob Porter? Quit after allegations of domestic abuse. NSC Staffer Rich Higgins? Booted. Omarosa? Resigned to take...a different position. If it seems like there’s been a ton of turnover
at the White House, well, there has been. In fact, Trump’s White House has seen more
turnover in its first year than the past five administrations. So, is this normal? High staff turnover at the White House isn’t
necessarily unusual. Newly-inaugurated presidents often fill some
spots in their administration with campaign staff, and later replace them with more seasoned
picks. but, the SHEER NUMBER of people leaving the
Trump administration is unusual. I think the turnover is high and it's not just high
it's off the charts. That’s Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. She researched turnover among the president’s
most influential staff going back five administrations. Since Reagan those five presidents the highest
turnover rate during that first year was Ronald Reagan at 17 percent. I calculated the same data for President
Trump and his turnover rate during that first year was 34 percent. So he doubled the previous highest rate of
turnover and just for the sake of comparison the low turnover for a year one turnover is President George W. Bush who had a low turnover
of 6 percent. So you can see that the 34 is clearly an outlier. So there’s two potential factors contributing to this high turnover rate. Drain the swamp. First, on the campaign trail, Trump promised
to “drain the swamp”. You're right about the swamp, say it again. And put a premium on loyalty. So, much of his initial staff were campaign
holdovers without government experience. Another factor was Trump’s rocky first year
in office. Warmongering against the dictator of North
Korea - Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself. - a bitter rivalry with the press - Quiet, quiet quiet. - and of course the massive ongoing investigation
into Russian meddling in American affairs created a, well, let’s say hostile work environment. Get that son of a b***h off the field right now. Out. He's fired. But putting aside the question of “normal,”
at the end of the day, does any of this matter? When a very senior level person leaves there's
often a domino effect in which some of his junior staffers will
leave as well, because the incoming person wants to build their own staff. Then, of course, all these new hires need
to be trained and brought up to speed, which puts pressure on other staffers who need to
step in order to pick up the slack. And there's aspects of the job that
can’t be learned. The most senior people are
leaving. They tend to have a little bit more expertise. Oftentimes they have close relations with
the president and a good rapport with the president and those kinds of qualities and
skills are not easily replaceable. All this results in a White House that is
increasingly isolated and unable to pursue its goals. It is true that most of Trump’s departures
happened early in his first year. And these staff changes can be a way for Trump
to change course in the face of low approval ratings and a stagnant legislative agenda. But with senior aides losing their security
clearances, and rumors swirling about even more resignations, there’s no indication
that the Trump Administration is stabilizing. I think when you get to this high level of
turnover then that raises questions as to how well his staff can perform and how
well they can advance his agenda. If the door keeps you know revolving and
people are in and out in and out you don't have any institutional memory you're losing
expertise that you had and it just makes your job more difficult. Hey guys, thanks for watching this video. I just wanted to share a quick story with you. While I was making this, staffers were leaving the White House so frequently, that I had a hard time keeping the prop and the script updated, which is pretty wild. So if you want to keep up to date with the comings and goings of the White House, make sure to check out vox.com, we'll be tracking that there. So, stay tuned. You probably imagine anonymous internet commenter, or a shock jockey, or a partisan hack. You probably don't imagine the Senate Majority Leader,
or the Speaker of the House of Representatives or the Chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee. But maybe you should, because if the past few
months of batshit political coverage have shown us anything... "Bombshell accusations", "missing text messages", "secret societies", "secret memos", "one hell of a conspiracy", "that does go deeper than Watergate". "Deeper than Watergate?" It's that trolling is now the work of serious politicians. We begin tonight
with the unraveling of a conspiracy theory - this one was created and promoted
by elected officials on Capitol Hill. Trolling has been used to refer to a lot of
different bad behaviors, but at its heart it means deliberately provoking someone
in order to bait them into overreacting. Milo Yiannopoulos does this all the
time. He says something he knows is ridiculous. and then smiles as the audience freaks out. Because I don't want to spend a whole
video talking about Milo, let's use a different example. Let's use Charlie Brown. What?! Let's just go with me. You've watched this scene a million times, right? Lucy promises to let Charlie Brown kick the ball, Charlie tries to kick it, she
pulls it away and he falls flat on his ass. This scene is basically trolling 101. The troll baits their target "I'll hold the ball and you kick it". The target gives
the desired reaction, "this time I'm gonna kick that football clear to the moon." And then the truth is revealed the troll was just leading
them on. "what does this have to do -" "I'm getting there!" So how would this formula work if you're
trying to troll a major news network? First you'd need the bait. Promise reporters you have some big bombshell they have to pay attention to. "Republican lawmakers claiming they have documents, classified memos, secret memos,
to prove widespread abuse by the FBI". "What I read it is as bad as I thought it
was. The entire Mueller investigation is a lie." Then you get a reaction: days of
wall-to-wall news coverage about what might be in your super secret memo. "The secret memo at the center of an extraordinary plan. We don't know what's
in the memo. As a journalist I want to see what's in the memo. Should that be
released to the public? Have you decided if you'll release the memo? Why not allow people to look at it? You've read the memo? I read the memo. And? Well obviously I can't tell you what's
in the memo. So I can't discuss what was in the memo, but I can tell you the
American people need to see it." And then the reveal: your big bombshell turns out
to be a dud. "The memo has now been released, this memo is a dud, a complete
dud. It doesn't say anything it calls into question the wider Mueller probe. It
over-promised and under-delivered, the revelation is precisely the opposite of
what they wanted to reveal." And news networks have to explain to their
viewers that the scandal they've been following for days, was actually nothing. "They build it up, they build it up, and then it's about nothing." "This is what all the hype was about?" Now at first glance this story has a happy
ending, right? The truth eventually came out. But if you view this story as a
giant troll, it looks very different. News networks spent days telling audiences
that a huge scandal could be brewing. Millions of people read headlines about
the FBI potentially being corrupt and Republicans got to go on TV and tell their
supporters that they're right to be suspicious of the Mueller investigation. "I'm good with a memo coming out because it exposes the FBI coming after a
political opponent. Uh, okay it's not an answer to my question." The beauty of trolling is that the truth doesn't actually matter. When Lucy says "This time you can trust me. See? Here's a signed document." She knows she's lying. And she knows she's going to get caught lying. When Charlie tries to kick the ball she is
literally fact-checking her, but the point isn't to be honest. It's to provoke
a response, to get Charlie to try and kick or in the case of the Nunes memo, to
get the media to overreact. "The juice better be worth the squeeze on this one,
this is like six news cycles now. "Well I'm excited to find out what's in the
memo" And though we typically think of trolling as something people do for fun,
in politics it has way scarier consequences. For one it's a great way to
distract the news cycle away from serious stories. The same week that Nunes started talking about the memo, the New York Times reported that Trump
had seriously considered firing Mueller. Look at which story dominated cable news
chyrons. But it's not just a focus problem, this kind of trolling works
because audiences remember negative information even when it's been debunked. Political scientist Emily Thorson ran an experiment where people were exposed
to a piece of negative political information and then saw a correction.
And she found that people's attitudes towards the target of the lie got worse
even after the lie was debunked. She calls this "belief echoes" and that's when
people are given a full clear correction. Most casual news consumers won't get
that or if they do, they'll see headlines like this. "Republicans released secret
memo accusing investigators of bias." "Memo released alleging FBI cover-up." Or chyrons like this. "Memo says FBI abused surveillance power." Even after the lie is
revealed, it's repeated in news coverage. The result is a news environment that
incentivizes bad faith, that rewards politicians who are willing to commit to
a lie. And so you've seen more and more pseudo scandals following the same
formula. There's the bait, missing text messages, a secret society in the FBI, "it's one hell of a conspiracy and people at the top levels of our government were
involved in it. A secret society, there's anything more about that? No, we have to
dig into it. That's that's this is not a distraction." There's the reaction. "The startling allegations of a secret society, is there any basis to that claim?
Is there a secret society? Those things are troubling." And eventually there's the reveal. "Republican lawmakers are left
empty-handed, when the texts are found and the secret society is revealed to be
a joke." On their own, none of these stories hold water but together, they
help sow doubt in the minds of voters. Help build a vague but persistent belief
echo. are we seriously still talking about the secret society Ben? Which helps explain why so many Republican voters are now suspicious of the FBI. A trend that's gotten worse over the past year. Unsurprisingly, Nunes is already
promising to release more memos in the future. "He told Brett Baier tonight that
more memos are coming, stay tuned. Tick-tock." And the sad thing is he'll
probably generate the same media circus when he does. What politicians say is
newsworthy. "I'm shocked to read exactly what has taken place." Networks can't just ignore
them, the way that we might block an internet troll. And what makes trolling
in politics so effective is that it's almost impossible to prove while it's
happening. Charlie could never be sure if Lucy is gonna yank the ball away. The audience can never really know if Milo means what he's saying, and journalists can't know if the next Nunes memo is actually a bombshell until he releases
it. But what they can do is practice more restraint, to treat these stories not as
potential bombshells, but as potential bait and to be aware of the way that
their coverage might be playing into the hands of a troll. Charlie may never be
able to resist trying to kick the ball, but if he holds back a little bit, if he
avoids kicking quite, so hard he can at least avoid falling flat on his ass. What does Heath Ledger terrorizing Gotham, Daniel Day-Lewis ill-advisedly bragging, "I've abandoned my child." and Leonardo DiCaprio getting mauled by
bear, all have in common? They each used method acting to prepare for their role. Heath Ledger isolated himself for weeks to portray the Joker's chilling
psychosis. Daniel Day-Lewis spent months in character before filming even began. If I say I'm an oil man, you will agree. And Leonardo DiCaprio really went into the
woods and got mauled by a bear. He ate raw bison liver instead. Each of these performances received an Oscar but unless we're actually told about the
extreme lengths these actors went to, there's no way for us to know. Which begs the question: if Leonardo DiCaprio really eats raw bison liver and nobody
is around to see it, does he still get the Oscar? Needed to be done because
we were striving for authenticity. Modern method acting is based on a
system developed in the Soviet Union as a way to structure training for actors. The system provides a framework for actors to understand their characters, by
drawing on their own experiences and imagination. Many method actors take this
to an extreme, pushing themselves to live as if they really were their character. But are intense method acting performances really better? If you just look at the numbers, the Academy seems to think they are. Since 1951 there have been 132 Oscars awarded for Best Actor and Best Actress and 59 have
gone to actors with some training in method acting. And 33 of these Oscars
specifically went to actors who used method acting techniques to prepare for
the role. But there's more to method acting than just winning Oscars. There's been this kind of evolutionary dynamic between watching an actor just for who
they are, their screen presence, their persona, versus how they inhabit or
interpret a character. Take Tom Cruise, for example. Whether he's fighting a
mummy, fighting Morgan Freeman, or fighting the shogunate, it's impossible to see Tom Cruise as anyone but himself. Does Tom Cruise even know the names of
the characters he's playing anymore? What is your name? This creates a problem for
actors. They become captives to their star personas. Look at Leonardo DiCaprio
for another example. Despite being nominated five times as an
actor, Jamie Foxx in Ray. He didn't actually win an Oscar until 2016. And he won for what
happened to be his most intensive method acting role. I don't know who goes
through the stronger emotional roller coaster really, and physically: your
character or the audience. Me. So taking on ambitious method acting
performances can help actors be taken more seriously. But there might be a more
cynical reason behind method acting's popularity. Really have seen method
acting become a marketing tool. It doesn't matter how good your performance is
unless you have a really good behind-the-scenes story to accompany it. Hollywood is a business and businesses need marketing. When Daniel Day-Lewis
goes on Oprah, he gets to promote his movie while also highlighting his own
work as an actor. I've begin to hear a voice. Kind of a fingerprint of the soul. "Fingerprint of the soul", very good. There's no way for actors to show us all the work that goes into a role, so they
have to tell us instead. My reaction to eating that piece of meat is right up on
screen. But that doesn't mean method acting is all about marketing, either. After all, it helped Leonardo DiCaprio go from this "Open your eyes." to this. It really caught on in terms of transforming the appreciation of an
actor, from being someone we just enjoy watching on screen, to being someone who
really is consummate in their craft, who works tirelessly to do justice to their
character and serve the role as best as they can. Actors that have pursued intense method acting routines have created some of the
most memorable performances ever. And to be fair to Leo, if I ate raw bison liver, I would tell people too. This is biathlon. A timed ski race where you shoot at rifle
ranges along the course. It’s awesome, but also kind of odd. There’s no other sport that combines athleticism
and weaponry the same way. Although it’s popular in Europe, most Americans only know it from whatever
James Bond movie that was. It’s For Your Eyes Only, by the way. But that’s not the point. Biathlon isn’t just a trivia answer,
it’s a competitive professional sport with military roots that stretch back centuries. And it all started in Norway
with a guy named Oscar. Oscar Wergeland was a Norwegian military officer
who loved skiing. In 1865 he wrote a book of ski drills for
his troops. Before then, members of the Swedish and Norwegian border patrol had been meeting for contests that
combined skiing with rifle shooting. But Wergeland’s book turned the mixture
into an official exercise and the idea took off. Throughout Europe, militaries began building
up their ski troops and by World War I, soldiers on both sides
were fighting on skis. After the war, the creation of the Winter
Olympics gave ski troops a new purpose. In 1924, a demonstration of skiing and shooting
was added to the first ever winter Olympics. It was called “Military Patrol”
and the participants were soldiers from nations attending the games. The Olympic demonstration continued for a couple of
decades, But outside of the Olympics, ski warfare continued. In 1939, Finnish ski troops, fought the Russians in in a World War II invasion called “The Winter War”. Finland fights on. Although they lost the battle, the Finns used
alpine skills, particularly skiing, to inflict major losses against the Russians. As World War II evolved, countries on both
sides saw the success of Finland and started creating propaganda for their
own winter warfare battalions. The US had its own winter unit,
the 10th Mountain division, which prepared for conflict in Europe by training on mountains in Colorado and Washington State. He learns how to wax his skis. Three years after the war ended, military
patrol was demonstrated for the last time at the
1948 Olympics in St. Moritz. But that didn’t stop amateurs from competing
on their own. Civilians began hosting competitions that
combined skiing with shooting and that led to a petition for official Olympic recognition. In 1960 at Squaw Valley, the sport returned to the Winter Games as an official event called “biathlon”. That was the moment biathlon went from being a Norwegian
military drill to a competitive professional sport. Although rules and headwear have
changed through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, modern biathlon is a clear product of its
military origins. The sport mimics the sharp transition between
physical effort and mental focus experienced by soldiers in battle. Biathletes shoot when their heart rate is
extremely high, and their breathing can make it really difficult to hit five targets in
a row. But unlike soldiers, the penalty for modern athletes is only more time or just more skiing. Every ten years, states have to redraw their
voting districts. In most cases, politicians get to control
that process. And if they're clever about how the districts
are drawn, they can make it easier for their own party to win more of them. It's called "Partisan Gerrymandering". And Pennsylvania is the latest state to get
busted for it. So when you redistrict, there's a phenomenal
degree of possible manipulation. Almost any shape you want to make is possible. Professor Cho is a political scientist who
developed an algorithm that can spot unfair maps. The Court wants to be able to determine the
intent behind the district maps. Basically they want to read the mind of the
map drawer. It doesn't have any way to do this. Politicians have to follow a certain criteria
when they're making a new map. Some criteria are required by law, for instance
we have to have about the same number of people in every district and all districts have to
be contiguous. In Pennsylvania, these districts also have
to be compact. Then, there's other criteria that the Supreme
Court has emphasized when they make decisions about redistricting. The Court wants districts that preserve political
subdivisions like cities, counties, municipal boundaries. So whenever you find an identifiable community
of likeminded individuals, Court likes it when those people are kept together in the
same district. Pennsylvania's districts were deemed partisan
because of that last guideline. If you look at the 2011 map, the lines are
all contiguous and each district has a roughly equal population. But the map also divides up several counties,
which violates traditional districting principles. And that made it easier for Republicans to
win congressional seats in the state. The popular vote in the House race was basically
equal in both elections that used this map, but the Republicans won more than twice the
number of seats in Congress. Then a group of voters sued. And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that
the map had to change. This is the new map. The lines are still contiguous and the population
is still proportionate. But now, only 13 counties are split up instead
of 28. That protects the traditional districting
principles. The Republican party plans to countersue,
arguing that the new map will favor Democrats. They hope to win as many as five more congressional
seats in Pennsylvania because of it. And those seats could be a part of a larger
shift in power in the House of Representatives. Which is why the fight over these two maps
is so heated. And it's also why Pennsylvania probably won't
be the last state to get called out for gerrymandering. It  was called "dazzle camouflage", and the irregular shapes were paired with bright colors, like
this blue. So when artists painted scenes like this or
this, they weren’t just playing with paint. They were showing the final defense that hundreds
upon hundreds of ships used...against torpedoes. British artist Norman Wilkinson painted scenes
like these and specialized in nautical pictures. He ran the Royal Navy’s camoufleur program. Yes - “camoufleur.” One who...camouflages. Previous camoufleurs had tried shades of grey
or blue, but Wilkinson suggested dazzle: unpredictable patterns, with a range of colors. There were some really bright ones. Hiding a ship was hard. The ocean and sky were constantly changing
colors, and that made it hard to pick a single shade of paint that could help a ship slip
by unnoticed. But it was possible to hide what the ship
was doing. The U-Boat submarine and torpedoes were the
big new threat in World War I. But the u-boat had limitations. To shoot a torpedo, you needed to know the
angle, distance, and speed of the ship you were shooting at. The ship was moving and so was the submarine. Now imagine a ship through a periscope from
a thousand meters away. When you...dazzled...a ship, you made it hard
for u-boats to know where to aim. Here is a normal boat and a dazzled boat. On the normal boat, you can see the bow and
stern, and you can gauge key attributes to guess at the speed. It’s a lot harder on the dazzled boat. Lines like these were false waves, so it was
hard to guess which direction was the bow, or front of the boat, and where it was going. The colors made it hard to tell how quickly
the boat was moving from one point in the view to another, or to use a rangefinder to
guesstimate its distance. Everything looked...sort of wrong under dazzle
patterns, which made a ship’s course tough to assess. Is it going this way? Or is it going this way? A few degrees could be the difference between
life or death. You could see it, but you couldn’t guess
direction or speed to guide your torpedo. Dazzle patterns were always different and
kept top secret. The starboard and port sides were designed
to be unpredictable. Modelers even tested visibility using tiny
boats and simulated periscopes, just to see what was most confusing. This is warfare at its cutest. Even experts were fooled by the direction
of the ship. Out in the ocean, tricking a torpedo saved
lives. Dazzle camo inspired people from all disciplines
as it traveled worldwide. One zoologist claimed to have invented it,
inspired by zebras, British artists with cubist-inspired backgrounds
became camoufleurs, and photo-scientists in America made their
own models too, like in this 1919 MIT thesis. Even the sister ship to the Titanic became...dazzling, when it was turned into a troopship. At the end of World War I, periscopes and
weaponry improved, as well as strategies to deter u-boats. On the other end, dazzle paint was hard to
maintain. Radar furthered the decline of dazzle’s
utility, though the camo was used in World War II on ships and even on planes. Dazzle inspired fashion trends at the time
and the artists who painted it on ships. Norman Wilkinson made this painting of the
dazzled ships he helped make mainstream. The u-boat’s rise and particular weaknesses
opened a unique window in history, like a camouflage loophole. For a brief period, it made sense to stand
out. Paint fades. But even today, dazzle lives up to its name. So if you look at these dazzle ships and think
about cubism, you aren’t wrong to make the connection, and you aren’t the only one. Pablo Picasso tried to take credit — eh,
he might have had a point. but I'm not alone. Over 2.5 billion people have smartphones now,
and a lot of them are having a hard time putting them down. There's a new app that aims to curb phone
addiction. Addiction is money. Are we a nation of smartphone addicts?The
problem is, our devices are designed to keep us engaged. They're intentionally addicting. But if you understand the tricks that grab
your attention, you can learn to have a healthier relationship with your phone. I think we're living inside of two billion
Truman Shows. Where, you know, Truman Show, you wake up
and everything is sort of coordinated just for you. And you really don't even realize it, but
it's coordinating just to entertain you, or just to engage you. That's Tristan Harris, he worked as Google's
design ethicist, and now he runs a nonprofit initiative called Time Well Spent, advocating
for awareness of how tech companies profit off of users' attention. It's not designed to help us, it's just designed
to keep us hooked. So I handed him my phone and asked him how
he'd fix it. It starts with turning off all notifications,
except for when a real human is trying to reach you. When you get a call, a text, or a message,
it's usually because another person wants to communicate with you, but a lot of today's
apps simulate the feeling of that kind of social interaction, to get you to spend more
time on their platform. If Facebook sends you a push notification
that a friend is interested in an event near you, they're essentially acting like a puppet
master, leveraging your desire for social connections so that you use the app more. But notifications didn't always work like
this. When push notifications were first introduced
for email on Blackberries in 2003, they were actually seen as a way for you to check your
phone less. You could easily see emails as they came in,
so you didn't have to repeatedly open your phone to refresh an inbox. But today you can get notifications from any
app on your phone. So, every time you check it, you get this
grab bag of notifications that can make you feel a broad variety of emotions. If it wasn't for random, if it was predictably
bad or predictably good, then you would not get addicted. The predictability would take out the addictiveness. And, it's effective. Slot machines make more money in the US than
baseball, movies, and theme parks combined and they become addicting about 3-4 times
faster than other kinds of gambling. Some apps even replicate the process of pulling
a slot machine lever with the "pull to refresh" feature. That's a conscious design choice. Those apps are usually capable of continuously
updating content, but the pull action provides an addicting illusion of control over that
process. In the future, we might see healthier ways
of delivering notifications. Research shows that bundling notifications,
where phones deliver a batch of updates at set times, reduces user stress. Then, you have to grayscale your screen. The easiest way to attract your eye's attention
on a screen is through color. Human eyes are sensitive to warm colors. In eye-tracking tests like this one, they
gravitate particularly to bright red. That's why so many apps have redesigned their
icons to be brighter, bolder, and warmer over the years. It's also why notification bubbles are red. A little icon like this, or this, doesn't
have the same impact on your attention as this. But you can neutralize that distracting effect
by selecting a greyscale color filter in your phone's accessibility settings. When you make everything black and white,
your brain isn't tricked into thinking that this is any more important to you than this. I mean, there's a reason why slot machines
are bright and color and flashing lights and ding ding ding ding ding. They have the sensory input too, right. And so, just noticing that if I take out the
color, it changes some of the addictiveness. Finally, restrict your home screen to everyday
tools. Make sure that your home screen, when you
unlock it, doesn't have anything except for the in-the-moment tools that help you live
your life. I have Lyft, to get somewhere when I need
to get somewhere, Maps, Calendar. None of these are apps that I can fall into
and then get sucked down some bottomless vortex of stuff. If you're not sure what counts as a bottomless
vortex of stuff, it helps to filter out apps that use infinite scrolling. Unlike pagination, where users have to click
to load new content on another page, infinite scrolling continuously loads new material
so there's no built-in endpoint. Video autoplay works in a similar way. These interfaces create a frictionless experience,
but they also create a user's sense of control and make it harder to stop. Research shows that people rely on visual
cues more than internal cues to stop consuming something. In a 2005 study, individuals who ate soup
out of a self-refilling bowl, ate 73% more than those who ate out of a normal bowl filled
up by servers. But those who ate from the self-refilling
bowl, didn't feel any more satisfied. So, a visual cue, like an endpoint, is better
at telling you the right time to stop than your own sense of satisfaction. And because so many apps don't have an endpoint,
you have to build your home screen around the eventuality of distraction. We check our phones a lot. Most of us drastically underestimate how often
we do so. But technology might not always look this
way. There are ideas for alternative interfaces
that give you functional choices and are more transparent about how much time you'll lose
with one action, versus another. But it's a really deep philosophical question:
what is genuinely worth your attention? On an interruptive basis? Do people even know how to answer that question? It's a really hard question, it's not something
we think about. But, for now, it's a question that everybody
needs to start asking. Thank you so much for watching, this has been
episode 1 of By Design, this is gonna be a new series looking at different topics in
design, in technology, looking at how human decisions on one end of creating something
affect people on the other end. I have had zero positive experiences. I go to the bathroom and I pull out my phone, and he has texted me, “I hope you’re enjoying your peecess.” It may seem like there couldn’t be a worse
time to be alive and single. And then texted me asking me if he could come
home with me. Just a slew of, like, poor dates, and, like,
mediocre dates, and s***ty dates. But the truth is that for as long as it’s
been around, dating has always sucked. It’s the late 1800s. These are the presidents. This is how people dress. This is the music they listen to. And this is how single people get together. I see you’ve already chosen your corner. Better known as “calling,” it’s the
predominant mode of courtship among the middle class. The basic setup of calling was that a woman
would have hours when she was receiving callers at home. This is Moira Weigel. I’m a junior fellow at Harvard University
and the author of a book called Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating. The basic script is that a man shows up at
your house, asks whether you will see him, and then you sit together in a parlor and
sort of spend time together, with either direct or sort of from-the-next-room
family supervision. Sounds super hot. At the time, 75% of Americans lived in small
towns or on farms. If you think meeting someone at a bar is tough, try finding a spouse in a town where you'd
only encounter a handful of potential partners in your lifetime. And while it may seem like the way we date
is dictated by things like love and affection, it was actually driven by something far less
romantic: In America in the 1880s, 1890s, you have these
floods of migration both from the countryside to the city and from other countries to the United States. As the country industrializes, urban populations
explode. The population of New York increases seven
times between 1850 and 1900, and Philadelphia’s goes up 12 times. You only have people going out into public
spaces and meeting and mixing in this way that we call dating once you have lots of young people moving
to cities and especially women entering the paid workforce. Many women step outside their homes to work
for the first time, and that gives them exposure to potential
suitors in a way they never had before. Courtship shifted from something that happened
in private, tea and supervised small talk in your home, to activities that happened in public: going to restaurants, movies, and amusement parks. From that point on, in order to meet somebody,
you had to spend money, and dating became entangled with the economy. After World War II, the American economy flourished. Between 1940 and 1960, the GDP soared from
$200 billion to $500 billion. The economic boom after World War II in the
United States means that young people have much more disposable income than they’ve
ever had. By 1956, there were 13 million teens with
an average income of $10.55 per week. That’s the same amount of disposable income
an entire family had 15 years prior. And they wanted to spend it. Unlike previous generations that were expected
to help support their families, this new generation had time for leisure and
recreation. This consumer-driven period was about affluence, and the dating scene closely reflected that
economic prosperity: shiny new cars, rock ’n’ roll, drive-in
movie theaters — and don’t forget about going steady. There was no looking back after that ... a disposable income and access to technology
democratized dating for decades to come. We’re riding on the internet, cyberspace
set free, hello, virtual reality. Access to the internet meant access to more
people. From 1995 to 2005, the number of internet
users worldwide increased from 16 million to almost 1 billion. As with every previous era of dating history, there's sort of this new economic sphere,
and romance and flirtation becomes part of how it gets commercialized. So chat rooms about sex or the opportunity
to flirt with people online is a big part of what's appealing about AOL. By 1999, there were already 2,500 dating websites. But the big moment came around 2010, when
mobile phones started changing the way people connect. Because in the ’90s, I think there's still
this sense that the internet is sort of, you know, it’s cyberspace. It's this other universe that lives in your
desktop and that you go to sometimes and chat with a stranger. Once everyone is carrying a computer on their
person at almost all times and our physical and digital lives are interwoven, that really
changes the dynamics. It’s no surprise that dating piggybacked
on this explosive growth. Dating apps, dating apps, dating apps. According to a recent survey, 77% of Americans
own a smartphone and 15% of American adults use dating apps. Grindr launched in 2009, Tinder in 2012, and
now there are hundreds of dating apps to choose from. So meeting new people has never been easier. But does that make us any happier? Dating is kind of a necessary evil. The thing about online dating is that you
don’t trust anyone. You get to pin your top hate or like, and
this guy “hates abstinence.” Every new technology, every new kind of social
practice, inspires anxiety about how folks are meeting and pairing up. So dating still kind of sucks. But that’s nothing new. My name's Tian, I'm gonna be 25. I'm looking for someone who... comes from a long line of European nobility. Absolutely, that is critical for me. Someone whose family has land holdings across, ideally, the south of France. And will take me vacationing in their summer castle. I'm interested in going to bed early, to wake up even earlier. This is James Thompson. And this is James Owens. They were both convicted in connection
with the same burglary, rape, and murder case. As you might expect the people on
Malvern Street are shocked and horrified by the crime.
Colleen's brother and a friend discovered the body last night. But nearly 20 years later DNA evidence from the scene was tested and the results
showed neither of the men could have committed the rape. James Owens walked out of prison a fully exonerated man, but James Thompson he's still labeled a convicted felon. Same crime, same DNA results, very different
endings. To figure out why, we have to start at the beginning with a knife, a
lie, and a plea bargain that altered their lives. It began with the murder of Colleen
Wilier in 1987. Thompson, a gas station attendant lived down the street with his
wife and their two young boys. There were helicopters and things flying around the
neighborhood, searching the top of the building and things looking for murder
weapons, bloody clothes, anything of that nature that could be linked to the crime. He'd heard detectives were looking for a knife and were offering a one thousand
dollar reward. And I jumped on the first chance I could get to take that. So I
goes back in the house and you know I was stupid I guess you'd say, but I went into the
bedroom and I got a switchblade knife. And I took the knife out and this was the beginning of my whole situation. Thompson told the police he found the
knife in the grass about half a block from the crime scene. They said to me,
they said well do you have any idea who this knife belong to? I said the knife was
stolen out of my house they said uh you have any idea who took this knife at
your home? And I told a lie and I said yes, I do. And I give them the name of a man, his name was James Owens. He and Owens were casual friends, until they had a falling out over accusations of
theft. In a burst of vengeance, Thompson implicated Owens. His bogus testimony and that knife became the crux of the entire case. They described it as
a mint green dagger an instrument repeatedly used by the person who
murdered the 24-year old woman. So at this point and that's all city police
have to go on, an unusual murder weapon which they hope leads them to the
murderer. James Owens was arrested for the crime. They never did look for any other suspects. But they wasn't happy with the
things I was telling them. Thompson's version of the events changed multiple
times throughout Owens' trial. He started to look like an unreliable witness. Even the prosecutor admitted his story was "implausible". Worried that they might lose their case against Owens, the detectives found a new
focus. A couple months after the crime actually was committed, one of the
detectives said wait a minute, Mr. Thompson seemed to know too much to not
have been involved in the crime himself. They took a sample of Thompson's hair
and tested it against a hair found on the victim. It came back a match. The hair analysis method used would later become known as junk science, but at the time it
was enough for the detectives to pin down a theory that both Owens and
Thompson were involved in the crime. In what was his eighth version of events,
Thompson eventually gave a false confession. I testified to exactly what
they wanted me to testify to, I said exactly what I was instructed to say. The state convicted Owens for the
burglary and murder and Thompson for the burglary, rape, and murder. They were both
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The only thing that could feasibly save
them was the emergence of DNA science. Owens first heard about DNA in prison. He
saw his friend and fellow inmate Kirk Bloodsworth, become the first American
man on death row to be exonerated by DNA testing. And then, the OJ Simpson case
popularized the science. The answer will be clear to you as well. I said to myself, wow I wonder if I had any in mine. So a couple my friends in prison that was jailhouse lawyers, helped me. We wrote
letters to the coroner's office and it came back there was DNA. Owens was asking
for it to be tested ever since he had been wrongfully convicted and had become
aware that there was such a thing as DNA testing. But no one would test it. Lawyer Stephen Mercer, who represented both Owens and Thompson in their individual
cases, pushed for the DNA testing of two samples. One slide contained sperm taken
from the victim. Also tested was the blood that was on James Thompson's
shorts, that police collected the day after Colleen Wilier's body was found. I couldn't sleep like two days, three days, I said man, I said I might be
going home. And there it was. The DNA came back, said it wasn't mine. The results showed the sperm sample didn't match either of the men. And the blood on
Thompson's shorts was his own. Owens was granted a new trial. It would likely be
months or even years away. The state offered him a chance to go free
immediately, if he did one thing: take an obscure deal called an Alford plea. Plea bargains aren't surprising. They're
the lifeblood of an overburdened criminal justice system, where 95% of
cases are resolved through plea agreements. But the Alford Plea is unique. It began with North Carolina versus Alford in 1970, when a man named Henry
Alford was charged first degree murder. The state offered Alford a deal. If he
pled guilty to second-degree murder, he wouldn't be sentenced to die. Alford took it, but in court he insisted that he was innocent and he was only
pleading guilty to avoid death. The Supreme Court held that someone who
insists that they are innocent on the record, can still plead guilty to a crime
and accept the status of a convicted felon. The deal also allows prosecutors to keep a win on the books and admit no
wrongdoing. To this day, 47 states and the District of Columbia allow the plead.
For Owens, who was imprisoned for over 20 years, the Alford plea offered immediate
freedom, but at the cost of living with a label of a murderer. I look at it like this:
why would I go into court and plead guilty to something I didn't have
nothing to do with? I was in prison for 21 years. I'm not taking no Alford plea. He took a chance with the trial, when his day in court came 16 months later, the
state dismissed his case. It was the best feeling in my whole entire life.
Just to get out of jail. And he walked out of that prison with a garbage bag
over his shoulder, with all of his worldly possessions, but more important
than what was in that bag, was that his principles were intact, because he
insisted on his day in court. When confronted with that, the state folded. But for Thompson, things moved much
slower. He was still waiting to secure a new trial. In that uncertainty, the state
came forward and offered him an Alford plea. It was his ticket out. I was tired being in prison I wanted to go home. And the deal sounded real good at that point, I mean it was like the man was offering me a
chance at life again, so I took it. I was released that day, February the 28th 2010,
but I didn't know that by taking the Alford plea, that it would still mean that I was guilty. I would still have that on my record for the
rest of my life and then there would be nothing I could ever do in regard to my
false imprisonment. The lives of Thompson and Owens are case studies in what
happens when you take a plea or wait for exoneration. Owens has a
steady job with his cousin's company installing gutters. In his spare time he
takes care of his cousin's kids. I'm 52 years old. Is it right for me to have
kids now? No, because I shouldn't be 70 years old when my daughter graduated from high school. You know? I did 21 years. There was nobody can ever give me that
back. Nobody. Not a judge or a jury can give me back the time that I lost. And I feel
that I should be compensated for what I went through. He's now suing three detectives for the mishandling of his case and the time
he's lost. If I could get a settlement I would probably take $100,000, $200,000. Put it into an account where I can help inmates, other
inmates that were in the prison system and they were saying I'm innocent. You know I would pay for the DNA. Just to get this person out of jail, just to prove to
the state of Maryland look you're wrong. Then, there's Thompson who lives with the
stigma of being a convicted felon and is unable to sue the state for false
imprisonment. Need one worker unload box. Box fielders in Salisbury at 6:00
a.m. What I do, I text them back I say this is James I will do it. Right now the
only jobs I can get are through a temp agency, because every time I fill out a
job application, the first question on have you ever been convicted of a felony? Yes I have been convicted of a felony. I mean it's it's hard. I'd like to
have a good permanent job you know, where I could get 40 hours a week. No one will
hire me because of my record. Society does not believe that innocent people go to prison. When I went to prison I had two boys, I have not seen either one of them since
they were small children and I missed out on having the opportunity to be a
father to them and raise them and things. And I've really missed that because now
you know I won't ever have the opportunity to be a dad again. Thompson
and Owens' lives diverged but are still connected through the same case, a crime that won't be reinvestigated. To this day they have an unsolved murder. They don't feel that way because, they convicted me. The whole case was
revolved around me and Mr. Owens and was closed at that point. I'd like to have the opportunity to be able to sit down and apologize to him for
what I did and for you know the amount of time of his life that I actually feel
that I took from him. I can never give that back, no more than I can
give back the 20-some years on my own life, but I think I would feel a little
bit better in the heart, just to be able to to say I'm sorry . I mean, for whatever
it's worth. Hey guys thanks for watching!
Since these cases, one of the prosecutors has died and another prosecutor involved
in Thompson's case wouldn't talk to ProPublica about why she thought the
Alford plea was a fair bargain. ProPublica has been reporting on cases
like these for over a year, but it's especially difficult since no one tracks
how often the wrongfully convicted are pressured into accepting an Alford plea
instead of being exonerated. For more reporting on cases like these, check out
the link below and stay tuned for more in this collaboration. Thanks. When you picture a superhero, who do you see? Batman? Superman? Spiderman? The Hulk? Thanks to a growing collection of data, we
know that our cultural icons are not consistent with what we look like as a country. This fact extends to virtually every form
of mass media in the States. Our best data suggests that the American population
is roughly equal in gender, and about 38% are a minority of some sort. Which reveals a simple truth about the
latest Marvel superhero film: People are excited about Black Panther because
the demand for media that centers minorities is far greater than the available supply. This becomes obvious when you look at a series
of studies by UCLA’s school of sociology. Much of what we knew about diversity in Hollywood
was anecdotal. So we decided to design a report that would
be the gold standard in terms of looking at the birds eye view of what’s happening and
tracking that over time. Roughly 1 out of every 10 major films are
directed by minorities. A similar percentage cast minorities in
their lead roles. And even fewer of these films are written
by minorities. This principle applies to nearly every facet
of media, including executives and talent agents. You can’t underestimate the role of the
gatekeepers. If you’re not on the roster, you’re going to have a hard time breaking in. Which of course has created obstacles for
people of color and women, in particular. Which means that the culture represented on
screen is determined by a sample that doesn’t accurately represent the population. If you look at pop culture depictions of Africa,
you don’t ever get to see this place that’s supposed to be the future. Wakanda is almost like this rewriting of history
of what life would’ve been like. It’s this amazing fantasy that you never
get to see on screen. Black Panther is all about representation. It centers the story on women and people of
color. And that representation matters to young people. They're the future target audience. The minority share of the population was relatively
low in 1970. But today, nearly 40% of the US population
is in a minority group. And that percentage is only expected to increase. The genre doesn’t matter. Audiences want to see people like themselves
on the screen. If you have a good story, and the narrative
is compelling, and you have people of color in it, then diverse audiences are probably
going to go see it. The 1932 Olympics was the first time
figure skating was set to music. It was live music. The skaters didn't get to
choose the songs, the orchestra just played the same one over and over. Fast
forward to today, music is very much the heart of figure skating and custom-made
for each performance. Oh, but It wouldn't be a
figure skating competition if there was no Swan Lake, if there was no Don Quixote,
if there was no Carmen. This is Adam Rippon. He's the 2016 national champion and
2018 Olympian. he has ever competed in,
he says there was at least one skate set to Carmen. I mean we love our Carmen what
can I say? And he's right. There was the infamous battle of the Carmens in the
1988 Olympics. German skater Katarina Witt and an
American skater Debi Thomas both performed their long program to Carmen. It's time to compare Carmens. I've skated to Carmen so I mean like I'm guilty of
my own charge. So, what makes Carmen Carmen is an
opera written by a french composer Georges Bizet about a gypsy girl named
Carmen. So it's not just one song called Carmen, it's actually dozens of songs and
the most recognizable is probably... But you probably have heard of this one... this one... and this one. You get the point. This is... Carmen is often sassy and flirty and as
you can see, lots of skaters take advantage of that. But her story ends
tragically when she's stabbed to death by her rejected lover. With Carmen, Hugo and other music designers
can explore a full range of emotions. This structure allows skaters to start strong
with jumps, grabbing people's attention. In the slower section, skaters can
show more of a vulnerable side and also save energy for the big finale For my short program I wanted to do
something that was a really upbeat that would get the crowd like on their feet,
everybody clapping. And then in the free skate I wanted to
show like a softer side, I wanted to show off my lyrical skating style. That's why operas are so popular
in figure skating. It's divided into acts with a clear story line. We're
gluttons for punishment, because you know we'll roll our eyes at
somebody skating to Carmen and then on the complete flipside of that, every year
we'll go to our choreographer and we'll be like what do you think of this? It's Carmen. But this long era of Carmen might be coming to an end. In 2014 the International Skating Union changed the music rules to allow skaters
to skate to music with lyrics. It was an attempt to appeal to a younger audience,
so skaters like Jimmy Ma have traded in Bizet for... Lil' John. When we were given
the option to skate to music with lyrics, it opened it up to any piece of music
you could ever want to skate to. Now with more freedom and access to all kinds of
music, they're looking for their new Carmen. Will it be Lil' Jon? You never
know. I found throughout my whole entire
career that if you see somebody doing something that they really love to do, that really translates so much, that even if you're not a big fan of the music you
just enjoy that person enjoying what they're doing. And maybe this rule change
will spur a new era in skating, like 1932 Olympics when the sport was still new. And the official report quotes, “ooh, my goodness.” But in college, In a 2015 NCAA survey, female hockey players
reported concussions more often than male football players. And that’s consistent with previous surveys
showing women’s ice hockey on par with men’s wrestling, football, and hockey. “ohhh!” So, compared to other athletes, why do women
playing hockey have such a high rate of concussion? “So I was a full-time student at Harvard
playing Division 1 hockey for my school team and leaving school for different stints." “Pucci flipshot and a score!!" "Josephine Pucci...” “...third goal of the year for Josephine
Pucci…” “The morning of a couple gold medal
games for the world championships, I was submitting papers that had to be submitted for school
and then would suit up in the USA jersey that evening." “Number 24, Josephine Pucci” In 2014, Josephine Pucci won a silver medal
at the Sochi winter Olympics, but she almost didn’t make it. “ I got my concussion ten months before
Olympic tryouts and I remember just, kind of, being on my
elbows looking at the bench and... “...I was so close to, you know, hoping
to reach my lifelong goal of hopefully competing in the Olympics and then suddenly I was in
a position where I wasn’t sure if I would be able to attend tryouts because of symptoms.” After overcoming her injury to play Sochi,
Pucci returned to school and decided to end her hockey career. “...making that phone call...that I’d
be stepping away...was one of the hardest things I’d ever done...but after I called
and spoke with them at USA Hockey it just felt so right.” Compared to college sports like basketball
or tennis, Ice hockey is faster,
played on harder surfaces, And involves more collisions. Which explains part of why players are getting
concussions, But answering the other part, “why women?”,
is less intuitive because it isn’t only hockey. In soccer,
basketball, and other comparable men’s sports,
women have a higher rate of concussion. In fact, all the experts I talked to agreed
that What experts can’t agree on, is why... “Females athletes are more knowledgeable about signs and symptoms..” for me, neck strength is a big component…” "where a woman is in her period," "of course the style, level of play" "X differences between the structures of these nerve fibers" But there are some common factors researchers point to: “a lot of people forget that this" is also based upon reporting. Zachary Kerr authored the 2015 NCAA survey
and now researches concussions at the University of North Carolina. So, it may not be the fact that men are sustaining
less concussions than women. Maybe women may have a better knowledge
of concussions. Perhaps we as men are more stubborn with our healthcare. Women are more
likely to disclose issues in general and we are just seeing that transferred over to the
topic of concussions. Besides a willingness to report, social bias
can still be a factor. “It’s not just about the individual. It’s also about his or her interpersonal
relationships with teammates, with their parents, with the coaches. So, for men, the cultural, social gender roles
are that we can be aggressive, But, for women, there’s always that stereotype
of them having to follow that rule of being sugar, spice and everything nice. “A lot of times that's said in a sort of
negative connotation type of way, as if women are weaker for reporting symptoms and that’s
something that I just really disagree with and I feel like, if women are in fact reporting
symptoms at a higher rate than men then they should be applauded for that. You don’t show how tough you are by playing
through concussion symptoms.” Another factor is style of play. Because unlike
the men’s game, which allows checking, it isn’t legal in women’s hockey. When they’re children, girls and boys play
by the same rules, but when they turn into teenagers, boys are
allowed to start checking. There’s even a manual for it. “That’s the biggest difference between
men and women, is the checking, But, when I played boys hockey, I played checking
and I don’t think I ever had a concussion playing boys hockey. By college, men learn to be on the lookout,
which doesn’t mean female players avoid contact, but they might focus on speed and skill instead of anticipating being hit on the ice. "Every time I had the puck, I was ready to brace myself for a hit. You were forced to keep your head on a swivel. Whereas with the women, you're not supposed to be getting hit." "I don't know if it necessarily falls on not being ‘taught’ the right way, but I think part of it is definitely
not being instilled with this idea of constantly being prepared for body contact.” "Beyond sociocultural factors, researchers are
asking whether the explanation could be biological. There’s also the physiological aspects that
need to be explored." Things such as: neck strength,
hormones, the neurostructural aspects as well. So far, scientific answers aren’t conclusive,
but that shouldn’t prevent change in the meantime. "We can make changes now, until the science
catches up in regards to what factors are really contributing to the vulnerabilities of, you know, getting
head injuries.” In the NFL, advanced research, Rule changes, “Hitting a runner in the helmet area” And injury protocols “...undoubtedly going through concussion
protocol…” Only became possible once the league acknowledged
data linking football to brain injuries. For female hockey players in college,
there’s a similar need for change. “A lot of times I get the question, ‘would
you let your kids play ice hockey’ and my answer may beat around the bush to a certain
extent but it’s usually: Well, I hope by the time I have kids that we’ll know more.” That's the end of this video, but there's a lot more I wish I could have covered here, so I'm gonna leave some links below, where you can find more information about the research that's being done, as well as resources for anyone that's interested in the topic. Thanks for watching. That's Mirai Nagasu, who's competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics in
Pyeongchang. Got the triple axel, triple triple, another triple toe combo. There's
a checklist, I'm checking them all. which is why so few women ever attempt it. But for how many points it's
worth, At the 2018 US Figure Skating Championship in San
Jose, California, Mirai failed to cleanly land a triple axel. right here While her Olympic teammate Bradie Tennell
perfectly completed the easier double axel, despite the stumble Mirai's jump was worth almost two points more than
Bradie's. Figure skating scoring is complicated. When the score comes up and
it says 127.48 I have no idea if I should be excited or
not. I don't know what that means. And the new scoring system has changed how
competitors skate and how they win. Here's how the current scoring system
works. Skaters perform two routines, the short
program and the free skate and they receive two sets of scores for each. The technical element score evaluates the difficulty and execution of a skaters
jumps, spins, and footwork. Each element has a base value and a panel of nine
judges provides grade of execution scores which range from +3 to
-3. The highest and the lowest scores of the judges are ignored
and average of the remaining seven scores is added to the base value. The program component score judges a skaters presentation or artistry. Judges award
points from 0.25 to 10 on the main program components, including skating
skills, transitions, performance, composition, and interpretation of the
music. Altogether, the combined total score of the short and free skate
determine the final standings. The goal of this new system is to make every
element accountable for. And while it has, the system has also had a huge effect on
the sport and the skaters themselves. You're seeing a lot more skaters now try
all these quads and the program becomes messy because maybe they're not so
consistent on it, but they're hoping that because it's a good base value that they
can up their technical score and then their artistic score starts to to lag
behind. That's Tara Lipinski. In 1998 she became
the youngest person to win an Olympic gold for the ladies single event. Some of the skaters are losing the artistry, because they're trying to cram in
everything when they're not prepared for it yet. Merely attempting a difficult jump can
earn a higher score than perfecting a slightly simpler jump. Skaters can
increase their grade of execution scores and earn bonus points for things like
placing jumps into the second half of the program. Now this is an amazingly challenging program. Every single jump pass is in the second half. Or completing a jump with
your hands in the air, but arguably it seemingly gives less incentive for
skaters to simplify the routines and perform elements cleanly. If they do, they
won't be able to win. At the 2017 Four Continents Championship in Gangnam, South Korea Mirai's fellow Olympic teammate Nathan
Chen won gold and became the first and only skater to complete five different
types of quadruple jumps in competition. That's five, the first time ever. Based on the difficulty of his elements
Nathan's technical score was 32.97 points higher than
Jason Brown, who had no quads in his routine. Unlike the program component 
score, there is but artistry is
still important, as it can be the difference between two skaters competing
with similar technical elements. Pushing the difficulty envelope is not an
inherently bad thing, as it helps the sport to evolve, but I also think at the
same time we have to figure out a way to make these skaters have a
clean skate. Because at the end of the day when you strip the drama and the politics of
the sport, skaters, like all athletes, dedicate their lives training and
working towards this one specific goal. And they just want to be able to skate
knowing they've been judged fairly. It's why we have the new system in the first
place. When it was revealed that a French judge fix the results of the 2002
Olympic pairs event so that the Russians would win, the new system was created as
a step towards accountability and decreasing subjectivity. Figure skating has always been a subjective sport and it's not like racing or
basketball or hockey where it's easy to see, but you know performing is something
I really love and I love skating and so I try to follow the rules to the best of
my ability and to garner as many points as I can. The International Skating Union
which governs the sport, says it wants to close the gap between the artistic and
technical aspects of the sport. There are proposals to reduce the base value of
quad jumps or have three different medals, one for technical, one for
artistic, and one for all-around. And scoring changes have already been
approved, like increasing grade of execution scores to range from negative
5 to +5 and standardizing those intervals. These changes won't be
implemented until after the 2018 Olympics and whether they will produce
more artistry, remains to be seen. We have evolved so much and it is
harder and it is going to continue to get harder, but that is the beauty of
sport and I can't wait to see what what'll happen
no guts no glory right? you Why is the triple axel such a big deal? This is 1991, the last year of the 
Cold War, the year Street Fighter II hit arcades “Mr. Gorbachev Hadouken this wall. and the year Tonya Harding became the first
American woman to perform a triple axel in competition. The famous rivalry that bloomed is the one
between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. And in 1991 at the Target Center in Minneapolis,
MN, that meant: “Nancy Kerrigan.” “Very elegant.” “Here comes Tonya Harding.” “Very powerful skater.” Kerrigan had this music. (elegant music) Tonya Harding had Batman. “I’m Batman.” And the triple axel is the 58 frames at the
heart of that elegant/powerful split. Mirai Nagasu’s the only other America woman
to land a triple axel in competition, and when you ask her to define it in one word: “Triple axel?” She has to think about it. And the thing is, the more you know about
the triple axel, the more impressive it gets. "Jump. Jump to it, to it, you know you want to do it do it.” "Jump to it, to it, you know you want to- The triple axel really starts with the approach. The triple axel has a forward takeoff where
the skater pushes off the outside edge of the skate, unlike say, a toe loop, where the
jumper relies on the toe of their skate to thrust up and turn. The approach is also forward instead of backwards. Axels are forward-edge jumps, landing backwards
on the opposite foot. Because they turn from facing front to facing
backwards, it’s an extra half rotation, without the help of a toe pick. All that makes the approach... Deborah King’s studied figure skating and
the biomechanics of single, double, and triple axels. “They need to generate the vertical velocity,
but they also need to generate their angular momentum, or their rotational momentum for
the jump, and that’s all gotta happen during the approach up to the takeoff.” You’ll see skaters with a slight skid on
the ice that helps, but most of the twist comes from their bodies, not the ice. Once you’re in the air, you have to deal
with what you generated on the ice. So great skaters have big jumps. But rotation speed makes or breaks a triple
axel. This chart shows a small sample of single,
double, and triple axel jumps. You can see the triple axel jump length is
often shorter than the double axel length. That’s because that extra energy is going
into extra rotation. Harding needed to snap into a tight rotation
as quickly as possible. The triple axel is a physics problem. “But in terms of body position, you don’t
want your elbows sticking out, you don’t want your arms right out in front of you,
you don’t want your knees sticking out, you should look sort of as close as you can
to a pencil.” Skaters have to use a lot of upper body strength
to keep their arms tucked in so it won’t slow down their spin. It’s only once they’ve spun three and
a half times in the air that they can start figuring out how to land. And then, their big obstacle is slowing down. Skaters try to land on the ball of their opposite
foot to absorb the speed of the rotation and the big weight of their descent. Midori Ito was the first woman to do a triple
axel in world competition in the late ‘80s. When she wobbles like this
or Tonya Harding nearly falls over, they’re compensating for a huge rotational
velocity, all the while trying to look good. A triple axel turns physics into poetry, and
that’s probably the reason it’s hard to describe, for anybody, in just one word. “Triple axel?” In the triple axel, power and elegance are
complements, not contradictions. Bruce Wayne and Batman? They’re the same person. A lot happened after 1991. But in the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota? Tonya Harding landed. “Oh the zamboni’s coming out, it’s gonna
be loud.” “Oh the zamboni’s coming, it’s gonna
be loud.” sit on this curvy couch and deliver a bizarre mix of internet conspiracy theories, Sharia law is now changing everything. general absurdity, Nickelodeon is pushing a global warming agenda. And whatever the hell is going on here. It's the Fox show that's so bad
you can't help but laugh at it. Can we get a stick? Anybody got a stick? What a bunch of dopes. It's all a lot of fun. Or at least it used to be. Because now, these three geniuses
are some of President Trump's most trusted advisers. Fox & Friends in the morning,
they're very honorable people. That's not coming from me,
that's coming from Trump, who recently called Fox & Friends
one of the most influential shows in news. And the scary thing is
he's not wrong. Right now I'm getting my daily intelligence
briefing. Oh, from who? From you guys. To truly understand the magic of Fox & Friends,
you need to watch it every single day. But my therapist says I'm not allowed to do
that anymore, so I got someone who is. Did you know there's seven days of Fox & Friends. A lot of people think it's only five days. No, there's a weekend edition too. It's a lot. It's a lot of Fox & Friends. This is Matt Gertz. He's a research fellow
at a progressive media watchdog group called Media Matters. Full disclosure:
He also used to be my boss, so. Well, this is awkward. On the morning of October 10, 2017,
Gertz noticed something weird happening. Trump tweeted this, at 8 o'clock in the morning,
praising a book by a little-known conservative author, seemingly out of nowhere. So I thought that was weird. One of my colleagues pointed out to me
that the author had actually been on Fox & Friends earlier that morning. His colleague was right. Trump seemed to be responding
to a Fox & Friends segment about the book that had aired that morning. So I looked at all the tweets from that morning. I had pretty good matches. Fox & Friends talked about the NFL protests. Three minutes later, Trump tweeted about the
NFL protests. Fox & Friends criticized Democrats over immigration. Trump tweeted about Democrats and immigration. I said, "Well, damn. He's watching the show and tweeting about
what he sees." Gertz started tracking every time
a Fox & Friends segment lined up with a Trump tweet. And he found a ton of examples. Fox & Friends goes after Andrew McCabe. So does Trump. Fox & Friends talks about protests in Iran. So does Trump. Fox & Friends talks about Trump's mental fitness. And, yeah. The list goes on and on. Sometimes Trump copies language directly
from what he sees on screen, quoting Fox & Friends chyrons verbatim. Other times, he tags Fox & Friends in his
tweet. I counted over 50 examples of him doing this
since his inauguration because I need a hobby. If you look at the frequency of Trump's tweets
in 2017, there's a spike between 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock
AM, which is Fox & Friends' time slot. And Fox & Friends has noticed, too. They now casually joke
about the president watching them live. When I asked the president to
blink the lights on and off if he's watching... And because they know he's watching,
Fox & Friends has evolved from a show that to a show that actively trying to influence his behavior. A Vox study of 17 months of Fox & Friends
transcripts found that, after the election,
sentences aimed at instructing or advising Trump spiked by more than 50 percent. I think the next thing the president should
do is start doing some infrastructure. That same study found that the show was using
more language aimed at changing the president's behavior; phrases like "we need to," "we are going," and "we have got." What does the president need to do,
if he's listening this morning, to change the narrative? Jesus, how is this even real? Okay, power through. You saw this feedback loop in full effect
during the debate over the recent FISA bill. In early January, Republicans were widely
in support of reauthorizing a sweeping
government surveillance measure, and the White House had publicly
come out in support of it. But on January 11, Fox & Friends ran this
segment, warning that the bill could be used to spy
on Trump officials. At one point during the segment,
Andrew Napolitano turns to the camera and says: Mr. President, this is not the way to go. You can probably guess what happens next. Trump sends a tweet criticizing the bill,
literally quoting the caption of the Fox & Friends segment, Republicans on the Hill spend several hours panicking. It is a bit of a confusing morning, to say the least. and two hours later
Trump backtracks, saying he still supports the bill. When asked if Fox & Friends got to Trump,
press secretary Sarah Sanders decides to make fun of CNN instead. I'm sure you're disappointed he's not watching
CNN. Ooooh! All of this has given Fox & Friends
incredible power to to talk about sideshows that would otherwise
never escape the Fox News bubble. What you have is Fox & Friends doing stories,
the president tweeting about what he's seeing, and the rest of the media going,
"The president just tweeted this bizarre thing, now we need to talk about this." Trump watches a dumb segment
about missing FBI texts, tweets about it,
and it becomes the top story of the day. Trump watches a dumb segment about
the British spying on him, repeats the claim in public,
and sparks an international crisis. That was a statement made by a very talented
lawyer on Fox. That's a lot of power in the hands of a show
that's known for getting things wrong. A show that peddles wild internet conspiracy
theories, Secret society, the missing texts,
it all adds up. embraces paranoid fear-mongering, What, we'll annihilate North Korea after we're dead? I mean, we have to do something now. and launches smear campaigns against Trump's political opponents. Bob Mueller, we now know, is totally conflicted. Jim Comey is totally conflicted. It is a carnival of chaos. These are not the people that you want doing
the show that the president of the United States is watching every morning. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a choice. Fox & Friends has spent years being treated
like a big joke. But thanks to Trump,
these three might be the ones who get the last laugh. While we were shooting this episode,
Fox & Friends posted a job opening for a head writer. They’re looking for somebody with a passion
for current events and accuracy. So, it’s been fun, Vox,
but it’s time for me to follow my dreams. There’s no limited warfare option when it
comes to open conflict with North Korea. We're talking months of fighting. You're going to see large amounts of artillery,
large amounts of munitions, dropped from aircraft, from B-52s, B-1s, B-2s. You're going to see a shelling of the terrain
on the Korean Peninsula that you only see in the movies, from World War II and the Korean
War. This is a very brutal, very deadly regime. In the event of a military conflict on the
Korean Peninsula, we have a situation where we could potentially be talking about the
second, third, and 11th largest economies in the world, engaged in a military conflict. The scale of fighting will be greater than
anything we've seen around the world since the Korean War, not just on the Korean Peninsula. I think that there is a general misperception
among the American public as well as among many of my colleagues here on the Hill, as
well as, I believe, with the president of the United States, that there's some sort
of limited warfare that can occur with regards to North Korea, that would be a surgical strike
or a “bloody nose” attack that would not result in mass casualties, and that's simply
not true. Given the fact that there is a 1.2 million-man
army, some 6,500 armored vehicles, tanks, some 12,000 artillery pieces, chemical weapons,
some 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, the amount of blood and treasure that will be expended
if war resumes on the Korean Peninsula will be on a scale that we have not seen since
the Korean War, since the cessation of hostilities in 1953. From the very beginning, North Korea would
likely fire chemical weapons, potentially thousands, if not tens of thousands, of rounds. We're talking about 25 million people in Seoul
from all around the world, not just Korean citizens. A possible 100,000 dead within the first few
days and 10,000 the day after that from just a conventional attack. I don't think there needs to be any other
reason to be concerned about this than just that alone. And then the US president, President Trump,
would have to decide how does he respond to that kind of thing? It has been waiting for the right conditions
in the past 65 years. And at some point, when it deems it has the
advantageous position, or when it has no other option, it may very well attack South Korea,
seeking to unify the peninsula under the Northern regime's control, for one single purpose. And that is to ensure the survival of the
Kim family regime. According to our commanders in Korea, they
could fire something in the neighborhood of 500,000 artillery rounds, shells, and rockets
within the first hour, and continue that pace for probably several hours. South Korea would, of course, retaliate, using
their artillery to try to suppress the North Korean artillery fire. And so they would be firing into Pyongyang
just as North Korea would be firing into Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Unfortunately, I believe that North Korea
would be more likely to actually use biological weapons than nuclear weapons. One individual or a couple of individuals
could deliver a strategic-level attack on a city, a densely populated area, and expose
tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, or over a million people to lethal doses of
biological weapons. They are so potent that one or two people
with less than a kilogram, for example, of anthrax, and a sprayer, a backpack sprayer,
could deliver over a million doses, lethal doses, of anthrax and kill tens of thousands
or even over 100,000 people in just one attack. In fact, I think that a military strike will
only reinforce the belief among North Koreans that they need nuclear weapons to make sure
that they maintain their sovereignty and their independence of action. In the historical literature, we talked about
a concept called “use it or lose it.” As soon as we start attacking North Korea
in a way where they could lose their weapons, they will be tempted to use them. So if we want to destroy his nuclear weapons,
he may well start using them so that he can get some utility from them, and that's an
outcome we really don't want. I think most people would say that peaceful
unification of the Korean Peninsula is the preferred way of going about this, but I think
that North Korea’s ambitions are fundamentally at odds with US policy and South Korea’s
policy. What I learned on the ground talking to both
military and civilian leaders is that Kim Jong Un is not someone who is simply going
to disappear. You can't buy him off. He is there to stay, and he is determined
to retaliate in an overwhelming way, with whatever weapons he has at his disposal. We have to understand that trying to take
the humanitarian tack with them isn't going to get us very far. We've got to be prepared to show them strength
for them to respect us. I would argue that we still have quite a bit
of runway to try to shape the way he approaches the nuclear weapons program. I think that sanctions have never been tougher. There are internal stresses in the regime
as the sanctions take hold, and the diplomatic isolation will continue to damage the regime’s
ability to gain hard currency for its weapons programs. Now, I think we owe it to ourselves and to
our allies, and for global peace, to let the maximum pressure work its way on North Korea. This is eastern Ukraine. Conflict broke out here in 2014 and it hasn't ended. There about 100,000 fighters
stationed here, which makes it one of the most heavily militarized areas on Earth.
There are Ukrainian forces to the west and Russia-backed separatist militias to the
east. Fighting between the two groups occurs here along the contact line. In 2015 after nearly a year of deadly fighting, a peace agreement called for a
ceasefire creating this security zone. The agreement was supposed to stop the
fighting and resolve the conflict between Ukraine and the separatists, but
three years later the security zone remains the most violent place in
Ukraine. The ceasefire is violated almost every single
day in East Ukraine, which reportedly puts about 100,000 civilians
in the constant danger. Over 10,000 people have died since the conflict in
Ukraine began and about 1.5 million have been displaced, while both sides continue
to build up their forces. The conflict began at the end of 2013,
when the Ukrainian government rejected an association with the European Union
in order to build stronger ties with Russia. The pro-Moscow move led to
massive protests in the capital Kiev, which turned deadly by 2014. Russia took advantage of the chaos and sent its military in to annex Crimea in March.
A month later pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass seized the cities of
Luhansk and Donetsk and declared them independent from Ukraine. The Ukrainian army moved to take the region back, but Russia covertly joined the separatist
rebels, which led to fierce fighting for several months. In February 2015
both sides settled on a peace agreement called Minsk II. The deal laid down
conditions for a ceasefire in the security zone, where heavy artillery
tanks and mortars were banned. Foreign militaries, meaning Russia, had to leave
Ukraine. It also recognized the two separatists areas the Donetsk People's
Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic and outlined how they could be
reincorporated back into Ukraine, but despite the agreement none of that has
happened. In order to understand why, you have to know what Ukraine means to
Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Last one out of the Soviet Union please turn
out the light. The vitally important Ukraine announced independence for the
Republic, the people there are more Russian than Ukrainian. Much to fear, a separate
Ukraine would be a catastrophe. Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire in the
19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th, when the Soviet Union dissolved in
1991 its western territory broke into independent states including Ukraine.
They formed a buffer between Russia and Western Europe, but in the 90s and 2000's
these countries started drifting westward and many joined the EU. By invading Ukraine, Putin was able to destabilize and stop it from developing
a stronger relationship with Western Europe. Russia continues to fuel the
fighting by supporting the separatists and keeps its own military at the ready. Meanwhile Ukraine's government is forced to devote resources to its defense. Both sides have ignored the ceasefire so far and a closer look at the frontlines
reveals just how unstable the region is. The separatist rebels in the LPR and DPR
have funding, weapons, and the assurance of thee massive Russian military behind
them. They are responsible for the majority of the ceasefire violations. On the Ukrainian side, the forces are a mix of Ukrainian army soldiers and volunteer
militias. These militias are funded by Ukrainian oligarchs and members of
parliament. Some have far-right views and even have
attacked the Kiev government, but Kiev continues to fund and arm these groups
anyway. It's their only defense against the Russia-backed rebels in the east. So despite a cease-fire that could have ended the conflict, there's an active war
on the ground. Both sides continue to fire a heavy artillery on a daily basis
as a show of strength. Power, water, and supplies are common targets and the
heaviest price is paid by the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the
crossfire. The census is the catalyst of American
public policy. It shapes voting districts and it determines how your public
schools will get funded. Because this data is used in myriad democratic and
economic functions it's critical that we get it right. Unfortunately the 2020 edition might be in trouble, which has caused concern
among experts for the integrity of the country's most authoritative dataset. The census is centuries old, but this
story starts at the conclusion of the 2010 census. The Bureau had shot past
cost estimates on its way to the most expensive census per capita of all time.
So in 1970 it cost $16 to count each housing unit and in 2010 it cost around
92 dollars to count each housing unit. This is all in 2020 dollars. That's
Robert Goldenkoff. His office redid the 2020 census on its list of government
initiatives at a high risk of failure. A key reason? The funding just isn't there. Congress limited the budget for the 2020 census to the amount spent on the 2010
census. The nation is getting more complex and less willing to participate
in the census and because the Constitution requires a complete count,
the Census Bureau has to do more work in order to obtain that complete count. So why might it cost more to count certain groups? This scene from an episode of
Master Of None gives some clues. It follows a cab driver back to his
apartment, where he's living with at least three other adult men. So this one
apartment contains four distinct households in New York City, a region of
notoriously hard to count tracts. Census tracts are designated "hard to
count" for many reasons. They could be full of renters or they could have an
abundant homeless population. Topographically complex regions are hard
to count, as are tracts with limited access to broadband internet. It's the people at the margins of society. More impoverished don't speak the language.
Then we have procedures to try to compensate for that. Mr. Prewitt would know
about the challenges in taking a census. He was director during the year 2000
count. The last 2 to 3 percent of the census is very expensive. Further complicating matters, a new proposal to change the census could further increase
costs and effect response rates. The Department of Justice requested that the
bureau add a question about citizenship to the short-form decennial census. The argument in the letter is that the Justice Department wants better data on
where citizens are in the country, in order to enforce the voting rights laws. The citizenship question already appears in the American Community Survey which
collects data annually. It just goes to a much smaller portion
of the country. I can only do consequences and I can say the
consequences of acting as if you need this for the Voting Rights Act is
inconsistent with the fact that it already exists. A more complete dataset
on citizenship could give the Department of Justice more granular data to work
with, but that would depend on an adequate response rate and the national
political climate might make that more difficult. Some people have expressed
fear that the government might use census data to aid deportations or
otherwise harm the communities. We have experienced in American history where
being counted in the census did result in painful consequences for the
Japanese, who were interned. Americans today have a historically low level of
trust with their government. That fact paints an unsettling portrait. Certainly today's environment, if you told the authorities where
a lot of undocumented people live, the authorities would I think take advantage
of that piece of information. That's their job. I think the chances of having anything like a complete census, if we have the citizenship question is simply
not the case. There are proponents who favor a
mainstream citizenship question. The general argument is that census data are
used to apportion seats in Congress and distribute funds, but the Constitution
requires the census to count for all persons. That's because the census is a
survey of an economy that includes the contributions of residents who aren't
citizens. The stakes are whether we care about about a representative democracy.
The inequality's, already economic inequalities are severe if you duplicate
economic inequalities with political inequalities, then you simply have a
different kind of society and it's not a democracy. you gather around their televisions surrounded by loved ones, 
to watch the Big Game. And the pinnacle event of the most profitable sports league in the world is more often than not played in a 
new state-of-the-art stadium with super-sized digital displays retractable roofs luxurious box seats and suites. Teams generally earn the lion's share of the revenue from the stadium. But for 28 of the 32 teams it's the taxpayers in the team's host city
 who paid to build it. If the privately owned teams earn the stadium's revenue why are they built with public money? A new NFL stadium is being built nearly every year and their price tags are reaching into the billions. This chart shows all the different home fields NFL teams have played in since 1960. Stadiums built in the '70s and '80s have lasted, on average, over 30 years. But now a stadium's lifespan 
may be less than two decades Washington's owner started asking for a new stadium back when FedEx Field was only 17 years old. Though some stadiums, like the Giants/Jets MetLife Stadium are built with 100% private financing public tax dollars have financed the vast majority of NFL stadiums built in the last 20 years. That's over 7 billion in public money going towards building and renovating NFL stadiums. NFL owners argue that a new stadium will generate new construction
jobs while the venue is being built all the new spending from ticket sales,
hotels, parking, tourism would cascade into the community, the wider area and would create a boom in the local economy I asked an urban planning economist if
stadiums really are a good public investment. Most of the stadiums we have
built in United States, they do not provide any positive impact - most of them. What else you could have done with this money? Let's say they are raising 200 million dollar 
and there is investing in a stadium. Instead of doing that, if they spend that money on roads, infrastructure, shopping malls, or public parks. Things that benefit the whole public,
not just football fans. For team owners, new stadiums mean
 millions more in profits. They sell the name of the stadium to other corporations, host the Super Bowl, and owners maximize revenue
by building more and more luxury suites and club seating in the place of general
admission seats. Over a third of the seats are premium in the 
Cowboys' 82,000 seat stadium and a luxury suite can cost as much 
as $30,000 per game. The push for new stadiums comes down to increasing profits for the owners, but cities try to
meet these demands because there's more to a football franchise than the bottom line. Residents want teams and the hometown pride that comes with it. Even for people who never attended a game there's a shared experience, 
a collective enthusiasm for the home team. In one poll three-quarters of Indiananpolis citizens said losing the city's NFL team would hurt the city compared to 68% who said it would hurt to lose all the city's museums. This is coming from a city and state that 
funded 86% of their new stadium even though the previous 
stadium still owes millions in debt. Team owners, they have successfully tied this stadium to a civic pride. And that's why When cities refuse to build new stadiums owners threaten to move their teams to
somewhere that will. That's what happened in 2016 to St. Louis and 2017 to San Diego and Oakland. New stadiums aren't the economic
powerhouses owners promise they'll be. But as long as there are more cities
that want a home team than there are franchises, it looks like the taxpayers
are gonna keep footing the bill. These are my assistants, Coleman and Phil. They're both around the same height, weight,
and consequently, they have the same Body Mass Index — or BMI. But if you split them open Damien Hirst style
or just compare the results of their body scans you can see a slight difference. Phil has more body fat than Coleman, and Coleman
has more muscle than Phil. Although BMI is a popular measure to assess
if a person’s weight might be putting them at risk for obesity-related diseases,
its results can be pretty misleading and less nuanced than we’d like. So the BMI is an index that looks at somebody's body weight divided by their height. So the formula is the body weight in kilograms divided by the height in square meters. 18.5 and below is underweight, 18.5 to 24.9
is your healthy range, 25 to 29.9 is overweight, and a BMI over 30 is classified as obese. With the idea being that the taller somebody is,
the more they should weigh. Kinda weird how a single decimal point can
separate being overweight from being obese. The major problem with using BMI as a marker of health when it comes to body weight, because
it penalizes you if you have a lot of muscle and you're healthier. Let’s use professional athlete Marshawn
Lynch as an example. He’s 5’11, 215 lbs, and his BMI is 30. He’d be categorized as obese. That is because BMI doesn't distinguish muscle
from fat. We are really concentrating on how much
muscle does somebody have, because muscle it's the metabolic engine it's the thing that burns
calories and the more muscle you have the easier it is for you to stay at a lower and
more healthy body fat percentage not necessarily a BMI. In this way, BMI’s reliability as an indicator
of health breaks down for athletes like Lynch. There are several more variables that can
influence the interpretation of BMI. Things like age, gender, and ethnicity. While BMI is a useful health measure for a
large population study, for example, to compare relative obesity rates from state to state;
it becomes more problematic when you use it to determine an individual’s health. The body mass index was introduced in the
early 19th century. The guy who created the formula — I’m
so sorry, I’m gonna butcher his name, Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet — wasn’t
even a physician. Quetelet was a Belgian mathematician. And his reason for creating the formula was
to study the “normal man”, not obesity. Its use shifted to study obesity because of
Ancel Keys. In 1972, Keys used the formula in his "Indices
of Relative Weight and Obesity” study, renamed the formula to body mass index, and
from there the “new” measure caught on among researchers. Over the years, its use in the health professional
field grew and it’s pretty much stuck around since. It's easy to use, cheap, fast, and its right about 80% of the time. So even though BMI has stuck around for more than 200 years, it's not the be-all and end-all indicator. There are others ways to assess to body
composition, and overall health. Hydrostatic weighing, or underwater weighing, is an option. Along with MRI scans, and waist-to-hip ratio. Medical tests like checking blood pressure, your glucose levels, resting metabolic rate, can further give a picture of overall health. I went to George Washington University, and lab director Todd Miller showed me another way, using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry
or DEXA image. It measures total body composition, including fat mass, lean body mass, and bone density. So the green is the areas where the
body is very lean. The yellow areas of moderate fat. And the red areas of high fat. So this person was here July 3rd she
had 72 pounds of fat and 109 pounds of muscle. And in December 27th of this year she had
at thirty seven pounds of fat in 115 pounds of muscle. Using this chart you can see if this person stepped on a scale, they'd only see they lost 29 pounds. What the scale wouldn't say is that they gained six pounds of muscles, and BMI wouldn't say that either. So even if two people have similar BMIs, that one number will never truly give either of them the full picture of their overall wellbeing. BMI is an indirect measurement of one aspect of an individual's health. So while it can be helpful, it shouldn't be the only way to understand the human body. Less than one year has passed since I first stood at this podium. I call upon all of us to set aside our differences,
to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the
people. African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded. The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining eight trillion
dollars and more in value in just this short period of time. This in fact, is our
new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the
American dream. We have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any
Administration in the history of our country. We have ended the war on
American energy and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal. We are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world. America has also finally
turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals, that sacrificed our
prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our wealth. The era of economic surrender is totally over. We built the Empire State Building
in just one year. Isn't it a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to
get a miner permit approved for the building of a simple road? The sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber is to defend Americans, to
protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the
American dream, because Americans are dreamers too. We must modernize and rebuild
our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and so powerful, that it will deter any acts of
aggression by any other nation or anyone else. In the past, we have foolishly
released hundreds and hundreds of dangerous terrorists only to meet them
again on the battlefield. So today I'm keeping another promise. I just signed,
prior to walking in, an order directing secretary Mattis, who is doing a great
job thank you, to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the
detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay. I am asking Congress to pass legislation
to help ensure American foreign assistance dollars always serve American
interests and only go to friends of America. And freedom stands tall over one
more monument. This one. This Capitol, this living monument. This is the monument to
the American people. [Music] the joint session will come to order the chair points is members of the committee on the part of the house to escort the president of United States into the chamber the gentleman from California mr. McCarthy the gentleman from Louisiana mr. Scalise the gentlewoman from Washington Ms McMorris Rogers the gentleman from Ohio mr. Stivers the gentleman from indiana mr. Messer the gentleman from Missouri mr. Smith the gentlewoman from California miss Pelosi the gentleman from Maryland mr. Hoyer the gentleman from South Carolina mr. Clyburn the gentleman from New York mr. Crowley the gentlewoman from California mrs. Sanchez the gentlewoman from Illinois mrs. Stowe's and the gentleman from Kentucky mr. Yarmuth the president of the Senate at the direction of that body appoints the following senators as members of the committee of the part of the Senate to escort the President of the United States into the house chamber the senator from Kentucky mr. McConnell senator from Texas mr. Cornyn the senator from Utah mr. hatch the senator from South Dakota mr. Thoon senator from Wyoming mr. Barasa the senator from Missouri mr. Blunt the senator from Colorado mr. Gardner the senator from New York mr. Schumer the senator from Washington mrs. Murray the senator from Michigan miss Stabenow the senator from Minnesota miss Klobuchar the senator from West Virginia mr. Manchin and the senator from Wisconsin miss Baldwin the members of the escort committee will exit the chamber to the lobby doors the state of the union's phone would you consider firing Bob lower [Music] I got [Music] [Music] [Music] mr. speaker the Dean of the diplomatic corps [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] mr. speaker the Chief Justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] mr. speaker the president's cabinet [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] there's critical the president of United States [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] members of Congress I have the high privilege and the distinct honor a prevent of presenting to you the President of the United States [Applause] mr. speaker mr. vice president members of Congress the first lady of the United States and my fellow Americans less than one year has passed since I first stood at this podium in this majestic chamber to speak on behalf of the American people and to address their concerns their hopes and their dreams that night our new administration had already taken very swift action a new tide of optimism was already sweeping across our land each day since we have gone forward with a clear vision and a righteous mission to make America great again for all Americans over the last year we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success we are faced challenges we expected and others we could never have imagined we have shared in the heights of victory and the pains of hardship we have endured floods and fires and storms but through it all we have seen the beauty of America soul and the steel in America's spine each test has forged new American heroes to remind us who we are and show us what we can be we saw the volunteers of the Cajun Navy racing to the rescue with their fishing boats to save people in the aftermath of a totally devastating hurricane we saw strangers shielding strangers from a hail of gunfire on the Las Vegas Strip we heard tales of Americans like Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Leppard who is here tonight in the gallery with melania [Applause] Ashley was aboard one of the first helicopters on the scene in Houston during the hurricane Harvey through 18 hours of wind and rain Ashley braved live power lines and deep water to help save more than 40 lives Ashley we all thank you thank you very much we heard about Americans like firefighter David Dahlberg he's here with us also David faced down walls of flame to rescue almost 60 children trapped in a California summer camp threatened by those devastating wildfires to everyone still recovering in Texas Florida Louisiana Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands everywhere we are with you we love you and we always will pull through together always [Applause] [Music] thank you to David and the brave people of California thank you very much David great job some trials over the past year touched this chamber very personally with us tonight is one of the toughest people ever to serve in this house a guy who took a bullet almost died and was back to work three and a half months later the legend from Louisiana congressman Steve I think they like you Steve we're incredibly grateful for the heroic efforts of the Capitol Police Officers the Alexandria Police and the doctors nurses and paramedics who saved his life and the lives of many others some in this room in the aftermath yes [Music] in the aftermath of that terrible shooting we came together not as Republicans or Democrats but as representatives of the people but it is not enough to come together only in times of tragedy tonight I call upon all of us to set aside our differences to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people this is really the key these are the people we were elected to serve [Applause] over the last year the world has seen what we always know that no people on earth are so fearless or daring or determine as Americans if there is a mountain we climb it if there's a frontier we cross it if there's a challenge we tame it if there's an opportunity we seize it so let's begin tonight by recognizing that the state of our union is strong because our people are strong and together we are building a safe strong and proud America since the election we have created 2.4 million new jobs including including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone tremendous after years and years of wage stagnation we are finally seeing rising wages unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low and something I'm very proud of african-american unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history small business confidence is at an all-time high the stock market has smashed one record after another gaining 8 trillion dollars and more in value in just this short period of time the great news the great news for Americans 401k retirement pension and college savings accounts have gone through the roof and just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small business to lower tax rates for hardworking Americans we nearly doubled the standard deduction for everyone now the first $24,000 earned by a married couple is completely tax-free we also doubled the child tax credit the typical family of four making $75,000 will see their tax bill reduced by $2,000 slashing their tax bill in half in April this will be the last time you will ever file under the old and very broken system and millions of Americans will have more take-home pay starting next month a lot more we eliminated an especially cruel tax that fell mostly on Americans making less than $50,000 a year forcing them to pay tremendous penalties simply because they couldn't afford government ordered health plans we repealed the core of the disastrous Obamacare the individual mandate is now gone [Applause] we slashed the business tax rate from 35% all the way down to 21% so American companies can compete and win against anyone else anywhere in the world these changes alone are estimated to increase average family income by more than four thousand dollars a lot of money small businesses have also received a massive tax cut and can now deduct 20 percent of their business income here tonight our Steve Stoute and Sandy Keplinger of stout manufacturing a small beautiful business in Ohio they've just finished the best year in their 20 year history [Applause] because of tax reform they are handing out raises hiring an additional 14 people and expanding into the building next door good feeling one of stabs employees Corey Adams is also with us tonight Corey is an all-american worker he supported himself through high school lost his job during the 2008 recession and was later hired by stab where he trained to become a welder like many hardworking Americans Corey plans to invest his tax cut rays into his new home and his two daughters education Corey please stand and he's a great welder I was told that by a man that owns that company that's doing so well so congratulations Cory since we passed tax cuts roughly three million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses many of them thousands and thousands of dollars per worker and it's getting more every month every week Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of 350 billion dollars in America and hire another 20,000 workers and just a little while ago ExxonMobil announced a fifty billion dollar investment in the United States just a little while this in fact is our new American moment there has never been a better time to start living the American dream so to every citizen watching at home tonight no matter where you've been or where you've come from this is your time if you work hard if you believe in yourself if you believe in America then you can dream anything you can be anything and together we can achieve absolutely anything tonight I want to talk about what kind of future we're going to have and what kind of a nation we're going to be all of us together as one team one people and one American family can do anything we all share the same home the same heart the same destiny and the same great American flag together we are rediscovering the American Way in America we know that faith and family not government and bureaucracy or the center of American life the motto is In God We Trust and we celebrate our police our military and our amazing veterans as heroes who deserve our total and unwavering support [Applause] here tonight is Preston sharp a 12 year old boy from Redding California who noticed that Veterans graves were not marked with flags on Veterans Day he decided all by himself to change that and started a movement that has now placed 40,000 flags at the graves of our great heroes testing a job well done young Patriots like Preston teach all of us about our civic duty as Americans and I met past in a little while ago and he is something very special that I can tell you great future thank you very much for all you've done Preston thank you very much Preston's reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us of why we salute our flag why we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance and why we proudly stand for the national anthem Americans love their country and they deserve a government that shows them the same love and loyalty in return for the last year we have sought to restore the bonds of trust between our citizens and their government working with the Senate we are appointing judges who will interpret the Constitution as written including a great new Supreme Court justice and more Circuit Court judges than any new administration in the history of our country [Applause] we are totally defending our Second Amendment and have taken historic actions to protect religious liberty and we are serving our brave veterans including giving our veterans choice in their health care decisions [Applause] last year Congress also passed and I signed the landmark va Accountability Act since its passage my administration has already removed more than 1500 VA employees who fail to give our veterans the care they deserve and we are hiring talented people who love our vets as much as we do and I will not stop until our veterans are properly taken care of which has been my promise to them from the very beginning of this great journey all Americans deserve accountability and respect and that's what we are giving to our wonderful heroes our veterans thank you so tonight I call on Congress to empower every cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people in our drive to make Washington accountable we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any Administration in the history of our country we have ended the war on American energy and we have ended the war on beautiful clean call we are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world in Detroit I halted government mandates that crippled America's great beautiful Auto Workers so that we can get Motor City revving its engines again and that's what's happening many car companies are now building and expanding plants in the United States something we haven't seen for decades Chrysler is moving a major plant from Mexico to Michigan Toyota and Mazda are opening up a plant in Alabama a big one and we haven't seen this in a long time it's all coming back very soon auto plants and other plants will be opening up all over our country this is all news Americans are totally unaccustomed to here for many years companies and jobs were only leaving us but now they are roaring back they're coming back they want to be where the action is they want to be in the United States of America that's what exciting progress is happening every single day to speed access to breakthrough cures and affordable generic drugs last year the FDA approved more new and generic drugs and medical devices than ever before in our country's history we also believe that patients with terminal conditions terminal illness should have access to experimental treatment immediately that could potentially save their lives people who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure I want to give them a chance right here at home it's time for Congress to give these wonderful incredible Americans the right to try [Applause] one of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs [Applause] in many other countries these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States and it's very very unfair that is why I've directed my administration to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of my top priorities for the year and prices will come down substantially watch America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies our jobs and our wealth our nation has lost its wealth but we're getting it back so fast the era of economic surrender is totally over from now on we expect trading relationships to be fair and very importantly reciprocal we will work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones and they'll be good ones but they'll be fair and we will protect American workers and American intellectual property through strong enforcement of our trade rules as we rebuild our industries it is also time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure America is a nation of builders we built the Empire State Building in just one year isn't it a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a minor permit approved for the building of a simple road I am asking both parties to come together to give us safe fast reliable and modern infrastructure that our economy needs and our people deserve tonight I'm calling on Congress to produce a bill that generates at least 1.5 trillion dollars for the new infrastructure investment that our country so desperately needs every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and where appropriate tapping into private sector investment to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit and we can do it any bill must also streamline the permitting and approval process getting it down to no more than two years and perhaps even one together we can reclaim our great building heritage we will build bloomin new roads bridges highways railways and waterways all across our land and we will do it with American Heart in American hands and American grit we want every American to know the dignity of a hard day's work we want every child to be safe in their home at night and we want every citizen to be proud of this land that we all love so much we can lift our citizens from welfare to work from dependence to independence and from poverty to prosperity as tax cuts create new jobs let's invest in Workforce Development and let's invest in job training which we need so badly let's open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realise their full potential and let's support working families by supporting paid family leave as America regains its strength opportunity must be extended to all citizens that is why this year we will embark on reforming our prisons to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance at life struggling communities especially immigrant communities will also be helped by immigration policies that focus on the best interests of American workers and American families for decades open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities they've allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans most tragically they have caused the loss of many innocent lives here tonight our two fathers and two mothers Evelyn Rodriguez Freddie Cuevas Elisabeth Alvarado and Robert nickens their two teenage daughters Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens were close friends on Long Island but in September 2016 on the eve of niece's 16th birthday such a happy time it should have been neither of them came home these two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown six members of the savage ms-13 gang have been charged with Kayla and nieces murders many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and niece's high school Evelyn Elizabeth Freddie and Robert tonight everyone in this chamber is praying for you everyone in America is grieving for you please stand thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I want you to know that 320 million hearts are right now breaking for you we love you thank you well we cannot imagine the depths of that kind of sorrow we can make sure that other families never have to endure this kind of pain tonight I am calling on Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed ms-13 and other criminal gangs to break into our country we have proposed new legislation that will fix our immigration laws and support our ice and Border Patrol agents these are great people these are great great people that work so hard in the midst of such danger so that this can never happen again [Applause] the United States is a compassionate nation we are proud that we do more than any other country anywhere in the world to help the needy the struggling and the underprivileged all over the world but as president of the United States my highest loyalty my greatest compassion my constant concern is for America's children America's struggling workers and America's forgotten communities I want our youth to grow up to achieve great things I want our poor to have their chance to rise so tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties Democrats and Republicans to protect our citizens of every background color religion and Creed my duty and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber is to defend Americans to protect their safety their families their communities and their right to the American Dream because Americans are dreamers too here tonight is one leader in the effort to defend our country Homeland Security Investigations special agent Celestino Martinez he goes by DJ and CJ he said call me either one so we'll call you CJ sir 15 years in the Air Force before becoming an ice agent and spending the last 15 years fighting gang violence and getting dangerous criminals off of our streets tough job at one point ms-13 leaders ordered CJ's murder and they wanted it to happen quickly but he did not cave to threats or to fear last May he commanded an operation to track down gang members on Long Island his team has arrested nearly 400 including more than 220 ms-13 gang members and I have to tell you what the Border Patrol and ice have done we have sent thousands and thousands and thousands of ms-13 horrible people out of this country or into our prisons so I just want to congratulate you CJ you're a brave guy thank you very much and is CJ what's the secret he said we're just tougher than they are and I like that is now let's get Congress to send you and all of the people in this great chamber have to do it we have no choice CJ we're going to send you reinforcements and we're going to send them to you quickly that's what you do over the next few weeks the House and Senate will be voting on an immigration reform package in recent months my administration has met extensively with both Democrats and Republicans to craft a bipartisan approach to immigration reform based on these discussions we presented Congress with a detailed proposal that should be supported by both parties as a fair compromise one where nobody gets everything they want but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs and must have here are the four pillars of our plan the first pillar of our framework generously offers a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents at a young age that covers almost three times more people than the previous administration covered under our plan those who meet education and work requirements and show good moral character will be able to become full citizens of the United States over a 12-year period the second pillar fully secures the border [Applause] that means building a great wall on the southern border and it means hiring more heroes like CJ to keep our communities safe crucially our plan closes the terrible loopholes exploited by criminals and terrorists to enter our country and it finally ends the horrible and dangerous practice of catch and release the third pillar ends the visa lottery a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill merit or the safety of American people it's time to begin moving toward a merit-based immigration system one that admits people who are skilled who want to work who will contribute to our society and who will love and respect our country the fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration under the current broken system a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives under our plan we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children this vital reform is necessary not just for our economy but for our security and for the future of America in recent weeks two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the Visa Lottery and chain migration in the age of terrorism these programs present risks we can just no longer afford it's time to reach these outdated immigration rules and finally bring our immigration system into the 21st century these four pillars represent a down the middle compromise and one that will create a safe modern and lawful immigration system for over 30 years Washington has tried and failed to solve this problem this Congress can be the one that finally makes it happen most importantly these four pillars will produce legislation that fulfills my ironclad pledge to sign a bill that puts America first [Applause] so let's come together set politics aside and finally get the job done these reforms will also support our response to the terrible crisis of opioid and drug addiction never before has it been like it is now it is terrible we have to do something about it in 2016 we lost 64 thousand Americans to drug overdoses 174 deaths per day seven per hour we must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers if we are going to succeed in stopping this scourge [Applause] my administration is committed to fighting the drug epidemic and helping get treatment for those in need for those who have been so terribly hurt the struggle will be long and it will be difficult but as Americans always do in the end we will succeed we will prevail as we have seen tonight the most difficult challenges bring out the best in America we see a vivid expression of this truth in the story of the whole let's family of New Mexico Ryan ha let's is 27 years old an officer with the Albuquerque Police Department he's here tonight with his wife Rebecca Thank You Ryan last year Ryan was on duty when he saw a pregnant homeless woman preparing to inject heroin when Ryan told her she was going to harm her unborn child she began to weep she told him she didn't know where to turn but badly wanted a safe home for her baby in that moment Ryan said he felt God speak to him you will do it because you can he heard those words he took out a picture of his wife and their four kids then he went home to tell his wife Rebecca in an instant she agreed to adopt the whole that's named their new daughter hope Ryan and Rebecca you embody the goodness of our nation thank you [Applause] Thank You Ryan and Rebecca as we rebuild America's strength and confidence at home we are also restoring our strength and standing abroad around the world we face rogue regimes terrorist groups and rivals like China and Russia that challenge our interests our economy and our values in confronting these horrible dangers we know that weakness is the surest path to conflict and unmatched power is the surest means to our true and great defense for this reason I am asking Congress to end the dangerous defense sequester and fully fund our great military [Applause] as part of our defense we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal hopefully never having to use it but making it so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons unfortunately we are not there yet sadly last year I also pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish Isis from the face of the earth one year later I am proud to report that the coalition to defeat Isis has liberated very close to 100% of the territory just recently held by these killers in Iraq and in Syria and in other locations as well [Applause] but there is much more work to be done we will continue our fight until Isis is defeated Army Staff Sergeant Justin Peck is here tonight near Raqqa last November Justin and his comrade chief petty officer Kenton Stasi we're on a mission to clear buildings that Isis had rigged with explosives so that civilians could return to that city hopefully soon and hopefully safely clearing the second floor of a vital hospital Kenton Stasi was severely wounded by an explosion immediately Justin bounded into the booby-trapped and unbelievably dangerous and unsafe building and found Kenton but in very very bad shape he applied pressure to the wound and inserted a tube to reopen an airway he then performed CPR for 20 straight minutes during the ground transport and maintained artificial respiration through two and a half hours and through emergency surgery Kenton Stacy would have died if it were not for Justin's selfless love for his fellow warrior tonight Kenton is recovering in Texas Raqqa is liberated and Justin is wearing his new Bronze Star with a V for valor Staff Sergeant Peck terrorists who do things like place bombs in civilian hospitals are evil when possible we have no choice but to annihilate them when necessary we must be able to detain and question them but we must be clear terrorists are not merely criminals they are unlawful enemy combatants and when captured overseas they should be treated like the terrorists they are in the past we have foolishly released hundreds and hundreds of dangerous terrorists only to meet them again on the battlefield including the Isis leader al-baghdadi who we captured who we had who we released so today I'm keeping another promise I just signed prior to walking in an order directing secretary mattis who is doing a great job thank you [Applause] to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against Isis and al-qaeda we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down wherever we find them and in many cases them it will now be Guantanamo Bay at the same time as of a few months ago our warriors in Afghanistan have new rules of engagement along with their heroic Afghan partners our military is no longer undermined by artificial timelines and we no longer tell our enemies our plans last month I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the US Senate just months before I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel shortly afterwards dozens of countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly against America's sovereign right to make this decision in 2016 American taxpayers generously sent those same countries more than twenty billion dollars in aid that is why tonight I am asking Congress to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign assistance dollars always serve American interests and only go to Friends of America not enemies as we strengthen friendships all around the world we are also restoring clarity about our adversaries when the people of Iran rose up against the crimes of their corrupt dictatorship I did not stay silent America stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom I am asking Congress to address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal my administration has also imposed tough sanctions on the communist and socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela but no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland we are waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from ever happening past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this very dangerous position we need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and to our allies otto warmbier was a hard-working student at the University of Virginia and a great student he was on his way to study abroad in Asia otto joined a tour to North Korea at its conclusion this wonderful young man was arrested and charged with crimes against the state after a shameful trial the dictatorship sentenced otto to 15 years of hard labor before returning him to America last June horribly injured and on the verge of death he passed away just days after his return Otto's wonderful parents Fred and Cindy warmbier are here with us tonight along with Otto's brother and sister Austin and Greta please [Applause] [Music] credible people you are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world and your strength truly inspires us all thank you very much thank you tonight we pledge to honor Otto's memory with total American resolve thank you finally we are joined by one more witness to the ominous nature of this regime his name is mr. ji sung ho in 1996 sung ho was a starving boy in North Korea one day he tried to steal coal from a railroad car to barter for a few scraps of food which were very hard to get in the process he passed out on the train tracks exhausted from hunger he woke up as a train ran over his limbs he then endured multiple amputations without anything to dull the pain or the hurt his brother and sister gave what little food they had to help him recover and ate dirt themselves permanently stunting their own growth later he was tortured by North Korean authorities after returning from a brief visit to China his tormentors wanted to know if he'd met any Christians he had and he resolved after that to be free Seung ho travel thousands of miles on crutches all across China and Southeast Asia to freedom most of his family followed his father was caught trying to escape and was tortured to death today he lives in Seoul where he rescues other defectors and broadcasts into North Korea what the regime fears most the truth today he has a new leg but somehow I understand you still keep those old crutches as a reminder of how far you've come your great sacrifice is an inspiration to us all please thank you [Applause] [Music] seung-ho story is a testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom it was that same yearning for freedom that nearly two hundred and fifty years ago gave birth to a special place called America it was a small cluster of colonies caught between a great ocean and a vast wilderness it was home to an incredible people with a revolutionary idea that they could rule themselves that they could chart their own destiny and that together they could light up the entire world that is what our country has always been about that is what Americans have always stood for always strive for and always done atop the dome of this Capitol stands the statue of freedom she stands tall and dignified among the monuments to our ancestors who fought and lived and died to protect her monuments to Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and King memorials to the heroes of Yorktown and Saratoga to young Americans who shed their blood on the shores of Normandy and the fields beyond and others who went down in the waters of the Pacific and the skies all over Asia and freedom stands tall over one more monument this one this Capitol this living monument this is the monument to the American people [Applause] we're a people whose heroes live not only in the past but all around us defending hope pride and defending the American Way they work in every trade they sacrifice to raise a family they care for our children at home they defend our flag abroad and they are strong moms and brave kids they are firefighters and police officers and border agents medics and Marines but above all else they are Americans and this capital this city this nation belongs entirely to them our task is to respect them to listen to them to serve them to protect them and to always be worthy of them Americans fill the world with art and music they push the bounds of science and discovery and they forever remind us of what we should never ever forget the people dreamed this country the people built this country and it's the people who are making America great again [Applause] as long as we are proud of who we are and what we are fighting for there is nothing we cannot achieve as long as we have confidence in our values faith in our citizens and trust in our God we will never fail our families will thrive our people will prosper and our nation will forever be safe and strong and proud and mighty and free thank you and God bless america good night [Applause] [Music] [Music] Okay. so think back to high school. I know this might be painful, but picture your typical daily schedule. 50-minute blocks,
one for each subject: Chemistry, Geometry, English, etc. This is what the school day
has looked like for most students in the United States for about the last hundred
years, but that's changing. For a small but growing number of students, the
school day looks more like this. Ten minutes working on a math worksheet
then 15 minutes on an English paper, then 20 minutes on Facebook and then a
three-hour shift bagging groceries. That's because in 32 states and D.C.,
students of all ages don't actually have to go to a physical school building.
Instead they can attend online charter schools, full time. In their advertisements, these schools promise students and parents autonomy,
flexibility, and peace of mind. If I didn't have Florida Virtual School I
probably would have been a dropout. I can start and end work when I want to. After
years of bullying and changing schools I could finally learn at my own pace. There's just one problem with these schools: for the vast majority of
students they don't work. The share of American students who attend online
charter schools is small. It's less than 1%, but enrollment has grown fairly
steadily since 2011 and their growth is part of a wider movement in public
education known as "school choice". It's the idea that parents should have
options beyond the neighborhood public school. It's a notion that education
secretary Betsy DeVos has championed for years. The more choices we have, the more
competition we have, but also the better product. Like traditional public schools,
charter schools are funded by a mix of federal, State, and local taxes. But while
taxpayers elect school board members to oversee traditional public schools,
charter schools are different. If a group of people want to start a school, they
sign a contract or a charter with the State. Some charter schools have longer
hours or use a different curriculum. Most have a physical building, but a growing
number don't. For both types, the state pays the group a set amount for each
student that they enroll. Most of the groups that run online
charter schools are for-profit companies. The largest are k12 Inc. and Connections
Academy. They run 122 online charter schools in 29 states, which enroll more
than half of all online charter students nationwide. They're both part of publicly
traded companies, which means that some of the tax dollars they get for running
schools go towards paying their shareholders, One of whom used to be Betsy DeVos. Gary Miron is a professor of education.
He studies online charter schools and he crunched the numbers and found that
these companies made: In their ads k12 and other online charter operators tout their
research-based curriculum, but the data show that kids in online charter schools
are falling way behind. One way that researchers measure a school's success is
to look at students test scores at the beginning and end of a school year and
see how much they've grown. In the most comprehensive study to date, researchers
at Stanford University looked at 17 states with online charter schools and
compared their yearly growth to regular public schools and charter schools in
those states, that serve similar populations of kids. They found that attending an online charter school had the equivalent effect of missing 180
days of instruction in math. In most places that's an entire school year. In
reading, students lost about 72 days compared to their peers in regular
school. There were a few exceptions. Online charters in Georgia and Wisconsin
had significantly better growth scores in reading than regular schools, but
those states only serve a fraction of the country's online charter students.
The vast majority live in states where attending an online charter school is
statistically equivalent to missing weeks of school. They're allowing these
companies to operate charter schools, sometimes with more than a hundred
students per teacher. That's more than six times the national average for
public schools. We reached out to k12 and Connections and both companies disputed the methodology of the Stanford
study. K12 said they changed their curriculum since the study came out in
2015, but a 2016 study of online charters in Ohio, found that students there are
still doing significantly worse than their peers in regular school. So, if these schools get such poor results, why don't states just shut them down? Online charter companies like k12 and Connections have spent millions on
lobbying and campaign contributions at the state level. Of the 64 online
charters they ran in 2011, all but one were still open in 2016. And 55 new ones
had opened for business. States have the power to hold these companies
accountable they're just choosing not to. And students are paying the price. You probably know how this symbol is supposed
to make you feel. And this one. This one too, even if you’re not sure exactly
what it means. But what about this? This symbol — The Jolly Roger — was once
one of the most feared symbols in the world. It represented death, pirates, and poison. But today, it’s associated more with treasure, blockbuster
movies, or Halloween than actual danger. We are surrounded by icons that warn us: what
to stay away from, what not to do, what to be afraid of. But how do you design a symbol in a way that
will last across generations and languages? It turns out that is an incredibly hard thing
to do. Back in the early 20th century, there was
an urgent need for a new kind of warning symbol. At the time, there was no universal standard
for communicating the presence of dangerous biological materials. Laboratories at the US Army used an inverted
blue triangle. Those at the Navy used a pink rectangle. The Universal Postal Convention used a white
staff-and-snake on a violet background. There was no consistency in the visual language
used to communicate risk. That was dangerous, and could lead to accidental
infections. So in 1966, a group of engineers and designers
at Dow Chemical set out to create the best possible icon for biohazardous materials. They laid out six design criteria. First, it needed to be visually striking,
so that it would draw immediate attention. That ruled out simple shapes like those from
the Navy and Army. It also had to be unique and unambiguous,
in order not to be confused with symbols used for other purposes. That ruled out the snake-and-staff, which
has multiple versions and has a pretty vague meaning as a general symbol for medicine. On top of that, it had to be quickly recognizable
and easily recalled. Had to be easy to stencil. And rotationally symmetrical, in order to
appear identical from all angles. And lastly, it had to be acceptable to groups
of all backgrounds. So the Dow Chemical team designed an experiment. Charles Baldwin, an environmental health engineer
behind the experiment, said that the team “wanted something that was memorable but
meaningless … so we could educate people as to what it means." They showed a set of 24 symbols to 300 people
from 25 American cities. There were 6 newly-designed biohazard markers,
and 18 common symbols — things like Mr. Peanut, the Texaco star, the Shell Oil symbol,
the Red Cross, and a swastika. Participants were asked to guess the meaning
of each one, which was used to assign each one a “meaningfulness score.” A week later, the same participants were shown
those original 24 symbols, plus 36 more. They were asked to identify which symbols
they remembered seeing in the previous round of the study. Among the six competing biohazard designs,
this one stood out. It scored the highest in memorability, but
the lowest in meaningfulness. So it was unforgettable, but also a totally
blank slate for designers who wanted to give it meaning. And with that, it became a national standard. It’s easy to overlook how much visual communication
work these symbols are doing. They’re simple — you only need a straightedge
and a compass to recreate them. And unlike most other hazard symbols, they
don’t reference an existing physical object or idea. But they’ve remained iconic for decades,
helping people recognize serious dangers that may remain a threat for thousands of years
to come. And that raises the question: could the meaning
of those symbols stand the test of time? Few people have pondered that question quite
like Gregory Benford. He’s a physicist and science fiction author. In the 1990s, he was invited to work on the
Waste Isolation Pilot Project, or WIPP. The WIPP is a massive storage site for radioactive
waste in the southeastern plains of New Mexico, organized by the US Department of Energy. Benford was brought in to help calculate the
probability that someone or something would intrude on the site for as long as it remains
dangerous — approximately the next 10,000 years. “Well, name anything that has persisted
for 10,000 years. Any institution. There isn't any. The record is probably something like the
Catholic Church or the core of the Jewish religion, which tells us something about what
really lasts.” The meaning of a symbol can change over time. Like the Jolly Roger, which wouldn't work
for the radioactive threat at the WIPP. "If you're approaching the WIPP facility and
you see a skull and crossbones you might think, ‘Hey this is where the pirates buried their
treasure.’” So how do you indicate a long lasting danger
across any language? Since the 1970s, engineers, anthropologists,
physicists, and behavioral scientists have proposed different solutions to that problem. One strategy was to add context to the symbol. By illustrating cause and effect in a three-part
cartoon like this, designers could communicate the idea even if the symbol lost its meaning. But this kind of visual communication still
made a lot of assumptions about the user: that they would read left to right, that they
would understand causality between frames — and, of course, that the drawing itself
would last millennia of wear and tear. So other designers started to focus on creating
a warning without inscribed communication, by altering the shape of the location itself. And that yielded designs like this. Spike fields, forbidding blocks, giant pyramids:
these designs capitalized on natural instincts of fear and discomfort to keep people away. But even then, they weren’t foolproof. Designers couldn’t be sure whether they
would be perceived as terrifying or fascinating. “Conflict between these two urges: you want
people to notice it but you don't want people to go there. Those are always going to fight each other.” So without symbols, without basic illustrations,
or physical structures, how can you effectively communicate a warning? That’s where the more philosophical design
solutions come in. In 1984, the German Journal of Semiotics published
a series of solutions from various scholars. Linguist Thomas Sebeok proposed creating an
atomic priesthood, where an exclusive political group would use its own rituals and myths
to preserve information about the radioactive areas. And philosophers François Bastide and Paolo
Fabbri proposed to genetically engineer bioluminescent cats that would glow in the presence of radioactivity. By creating songs and traditions about the
danger of glowing cats, the warning could last as long as the oldest relics of civilization
we have: culture. There’s no definitive solution for warning
people far into the future. But designing clear, inclusive symbols will
continue to be a fundamental part of how we keep people safe. We will change, and so will the ways we communicate
visually. Our warning symbols will have to change along
with us. I favor statehood for Puerto Rico. The people of Puerto Rico should have the right to determine their own
political future. When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision my
administration will stand by you. It may seem that US politicians support Puerto
Rico's right to decide its future and would even welcome Porto Rico as a US
state, but their words have yet to turn into action. This might not be surprising
considering that when Hurricane Maria hit the island, 46% of Americans didn't
know Puerto Ricans are American citizens. But they are. More Americans call Puerto
Rico home than 21 US states, but being a US citizen in Puerto Rico is not the
same as being a US citizen stateside. Puerto Rico is an American Commonwealth
and one of five inhabited US territories. The island became a US territory when
Spain conceded colonial control after it lost the Spanish-American war. The
federal government gave Puerto Ricans American citizenship, their own
Legislative Assembly, and governor. Like other American citizens Puerto Ricans
can serve in the US military and are subject to drafts. And like other
American citizens Puerto Ricans also pay most federal taxes. But unlike other citizens who face taxation, Puerto Ricans don't have federal representation. The island gets to send one politician to Congress to advocate on behalf of its
residents, but they don't have a vote. This means Puerto Ricans can't vote on
issues that affect the island such as limited funding for Medicaid or food
stamps, as well as a broader economic policy. And while Puerto Ricans on the
island can vote in the presidential primaries, they can't vote for the
president. Puerto Ricans have voted several times on their status and
referendums. Early on an ample majority of Puerto Ricans supported a
Commonwealth over statehood or independence. You don't want to be a state and you don't want to be independent, you just want to go on living in the
middle. In the middle, no. In the Commonwealth. Puerto Ricans today are divided on
the status of the island. The latest referendum shows large support for
statehood, but the turnout was historically low. But no matter what
polls and votes show, referendum results are non-binding, because Puerto Rico
can't become a state without approval from Congress and Congress has largely
ignored Puerto Rico's status, but as the island struggles to recover from
Hurricane Maria the issue is becoming harder to ignore. Puerto Rico's economy
started tanking when Congress phased out tax incentives designed to attract
investment to the island. Paired with fiscal mismanagement, the island's debt
started to grow. To reverse Puerto Rico's financial decline, a board appointed by
Congress imposed harsh austerity measures that reduced health and
education spending on the island. As opportunities lessen, Puerto Ricans are
relocating to mainland US. The population is shrinking on the island and their
political influence stateside is growing. Once permanently living in a US state
Puerto Ricans can actually impact federal politics. Puerto Rican statehood advocates
want five House Representatives and two Senators in Congress, while Commonwealth
supporters are fighting for increased parity without sacrificing their
national identity. But despite political efforts, it seems that Puerto Rico will continue to belong to the u.s. without really
having much of a say. That is an awkward question,
but it's one that's being asked on every major news network in America. President Trump's fitness for office
is now the top story in the country. Reports suggest that even
Trump's advisers are worried about it. Everyone around the president questions
his intelligence and fitness for office. 100 percent of the people around him. Concerns have gotten so bad that Trump
agreed to be screened for dementia as part of his last health exam. None of this has to do with Trump's
political positions. They have to do with his ability to
understand the world around him and make good decisions. Everybody wants to know: is this president of sound mind? And if talking about this kind of thing
makes you uncomfortable, wait 'til you see how much it's stressing
out actual mental health experts. In a series of tweets, the president insisted
that he is "like really smart" and a "very stable genius." Last October, a group of 27 mental health
experts published this book:
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. In it, they warn that Trump's behavior
shows him to be dangerously unstable, describing him as a pathological narcissist
who's delusional, suffers from paranoid ideation, lacks conscience and empathy, and exhibits
a host of destructive and dangerous psychiatric symptoms. Yeah, it's rough. Two months after its publishing,
the book's editor met with 12 US senators to talk about Trump's mental fitness. That editor's name? Dr. Bandy Lee. I am a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School
of Medicine and an internationally recognized expert on
violence. Since the book came out, Dr. Lee has become
kind of the face of mental health experts warning about Trump. We express our consensus view that Some of the psychological signs are: All of these are highly associated with violence. One thing I noticed is that she starts
almost every interview about Trump by saying this:
I'd like to make clear that I speak for myself She did it in our interview too. That's because what Dr. Lee and her colleagues
are doing, discussing the mental health of a politician
who isn't their patient, is pretty controversial. And to understand why, we have to go back
to 1964. Don't tune out. I'll make this quick. Back then, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater
was running for president. He was a far-right candidate who talked openly
about wanting to use nuclear weapons and was endorsed by the KKK. I know, time is a flat circle. In response to Goldwater's candidacy,
Fact Magazine published this piece, in which over 1,000 psychiatrists argued
that he was psychologically unfit to be president. Goldwater lost the election,
but he sued the magazine's publisher for libel and won, causing the magazine to shut down. In response, the American Psychiatric Association
created this guideline, which states that when it comes to public
figures, it is unethical for psychiatrists to offer
a professional opinion unless they've conducted an examination on
that person. They called it:
the Goldwater Rule. Well, I was going to say it. But yeah, the Goldwater Rule. Which brings us back to this book. Lee and her colleagues argue that they're
not violating the Goldwater Rule because We're not interested in making a diagnosis. They're assessing how dangerous he might be
based on his public behavior. Most of the information that you get about
dangerousness comes from observation of their behavior,
watching their interactions with people, assessing them in real situations,
reports of how they respond, objective signs that we can still evaluate
even if it's not enough to make a diagnosis. But in March, the APA expanded the Goldwater
Rule, clarifying that rendering any professional
opinion about a public figure's affect, behavior,
speech, or other presentation is unethical. In other words, unless Trump agrees
to a full mental health screening — never going to happen —
tons of psychiatrists are basically barred from commenting on his mental health. And that is very alarming to me. Many people call it a gag rule. Gag rule, I'm into it. You would be. That gag rule has a big impact on how the
media talks about Trump’s mental fitness. Lee worries that if they can't talk to mental
health experts, journalists are more likely to normalize
Trump's abnormal behavior. Most people are not used to seeing impaired
individuals day in and day out, so It's tough to grapple with the possibility
that the person in charge of our nuclear arsenal
might be deeply unstable. So instead, our brains look for other explanations
for Trump's behavior. I want to believe he's just dishonest, not delusional. Trump peddles conspiracy theories about
Obama's birth certificate, and he's just playing to his base. Is there some strategy in bringing up
the Obama birth certificate thing again? Trump is not delusional. He's being very politically savvy. What should be evidence of a serious emergency
gets downplayed as just Trump being Trump. Donald Trump's a different type of guy. I mean, he operates differently. That difference has made him very successful. One of Lee's colleagues has a great name
for this phenomenon. He calls it "malignant normality." Ooh. I know. It's a great drag name. The result is that journalists end up missing
big danger signs, signs that mental health experts could catch. Pundits will simply say, “That's just Trump
being Trump,” or, “It's tough talk.” One crucial contribution
that mental health professionals can make is to But the bigger problem with the APA's gag
order is that it surrenders debates about Trump's
mental fitness to non-experts. Isn't it remarkable that we're talking about
the president's mental state? To political commentators or partisan pundits
who actually aren't qualified to talk about this. I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you what
I see and hear. I'm not a doctor, but I can see that he is
not the sharp mind that he was. I'm not a doctor, but his behavior is erratic. To me, that's classic narcissism. I'm not a doctor but... Leaving mental health issues to pundits, non-professionals, can keep the public in the dark and keep them confused. These discussions can quickly become train
wrecks, where mental fitness is used as a weapon
to smear political opponents. So many of the traits of a sociopath this
man is displaying. I can't explain this crazy behavior, but I
can call it crazy. You saw it during the Obama years, when Fox
News regularly made wild accusations about Obama's
mental state. We all know that Obama is a narcissist,
but this is bordering on the pathological. He doesn't seem to have empathy or feelings
for Americans. He is certainly unfit to be president. And Lee worries that this kind of coverage
trivializes real concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, reducing them
to just another talking point for pundits to
argue about. As this conversation escalates,
both sides sort of retreating to their corners. The more that mental fitness sounds like
a left-wing talking point, the harder it is to take it seriously. To now say, “Oh, well, look, he seems unhinged,”
does seem like you're not willing to accept the political reality that you are living
with. To accept that it is simply a political issue
or a partisan issue is an attempt to normalize the discourse. No one's a doctor tonight that I've seen. And somehow say, because you don't like
what he said tonight in his speech, that he's somehow unfit to be commander in
chief, that is the most ridiculous... Whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody stop, stop. The original goal of the Goldwater Rule
was to help prevent mental health from being politicized. But if the last few months have shown anything,
it's that silencing mental health experts does the opposite. Politicization is almost inevitable without
expert input. Mental health expertise, just like medical
expertise, is neutral on all those grounds. Trump has made questions about his mental
fitness unavoidable. What remains to be seen is whether actual
experts will be allowed to answer them. Check out these two Saudi princes. This one's the 57 year old crown prince, And this one (the one doing all the hand kissing)
is his younger cousin. Listen to what the older cousin is saying: He’s being forced to
give up his power and to pass the crown prince title to his younger cousin, a guy who's almost half his age. This is Mohammed bin Salman. In the West we just call him MBS. And since this moment in June he’s
consolidated power so swiftly and so thoroughly that in Saudi Arabia they just know him as As crown prince, MBS will become king And with all of this new power,  MBS is seeking to assert
his dominance throughout the Middle East One of his big policies has been a vehement opposition to Saudi Arabia's neighbor, Iran. On that note he's found an ally in the White House. Inside the kingdom, MBS is also seeking to
cement his authority and his dominance over the Royal Family. Saudi Arabia's young crown prince arresting hundreds of his own cousins Crackdown on corruption 11 princes and nearly 40 current or former officials detained, reportedly being held at the lavish Ritz Carlton. (Yes, if you’re a Saudi Prince, "jail"
is the Ritz Carlton.) MBS called this a corruption crackdown and he branded
himself as the financially responsible anti corruption leader. But we’re talking about a guy who recently
purchased one of the most expensive homes in the world and who last year spent half a billion
dollars on a painting. He clearly had other motives for this crackdown beyond fiscal responsibility. One thing to realize is that the Saudi royal
family is made up of thousands of members who use public money generated from oil revenues
to fund their unthinkably excessive lifestyles. So it wouldn’t be hard for MBS to crack down on anyone he wants to. Coming into power, MBS' second big move was to loosen the
strict moral and social rules of the kingdom. He stripped the religious police of their
right to make arrests. He expanded women’s right in society including
giving them the right to drive. On the surface, these are progressive social
reforms meant to modernize Saudi society. But like the anti corruption crackdowns, the
move is another effort to seize power. Saudi society is built on a sort of pact between the royal family – just called the
house of Saud – and a vast religious establishment, run by conservative Islamic clerics. The clerics give the Saud family legitimacy, by giving them their blessing
as rulers of the kingdom. In exchange, the family allows the clerics to
strictly enforce their uncompromising, puritanical version of Islam within the kingdom. This Faustian bargain means that Saudi princes,
like MBS and others, can live these indulgent lifestyles and make deals with the West, but still retain religious legitimacy in the eyes
of the public. It’s a balance that has kept the
Kingdom stable in this very volatile region. But now, MBS has violated his family’s part
of the bargain, arresting hard line clerics who might speak out against his progressive
reforms. This could shake one of the foundational pillars of Saudi society. The third way MBS is shaking up the kingdom
is his plans for the economy. The kingdom’s revenue comes almost entirely
from oil. Demand for oil has remained solid for
decades and Saudi Arabia reaped the rewards of that. But in 2014, the price of oil started to drop. And it became clear that betting the entire kingdom’s
economy on this one resource, was a dangerous strategy for the future. So MBS wants to end what he calls this
“Oil Addiction,” in order to prepare for a world after oil. He’s laid out a vision of privatizing a lot of sectors within the Saudi economy. And breaking up this giant, government-owned oil business. But this reform could also create more instability. Thanks to the endless oil money, Saudi citizens
are entitled to a lifelong set of benefits, like free healthcare and subsidized housing. But as MBS tries to privatize the economy and move away from oil, this subsidized lifestyle that so many Saudis enjoy could be threatened and the public support that has kept this monarchy so solid for so many years could begin to dwindle. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on the brink
of one of the biggest transformations in its history. As this young leader consolidates power to upend the status quo, he may also upend the pillars that have kept the kingdom one
of the more stable countries in the Middle East. This is my morning commute. I get up, get ready, get in a car, drive to the train station, look for parking, get on a train for an hour and a half, arrive at Penn Station, get another train,
walk five minutes, and start my work day. Is this killing me? Before you go and post that comment
telling me to move closer, you need to see that I'm not the only person doing
this. This is the train station I commute from. This place is huge and yet it's
full almost every single day. Just this past fall they had to rip out an entire
section of trees to make more space for parking and it's still not always enough. According to US census data the average American commute is nearly 30 minutes
one way, a number that's been on the rise for the last few decades. In general,
people are choosing to commute further and farther than ever before. And those
long grueling hours in cars, on trains, or buses can take a toll on a person's
health. Especially when we all hate it so very, very, much. If you commute or you've been on the internet at all, you've seen the articles
and maybe you've read the studies. Commuting has been linked to higher
rates of obesity, stress, anxiety, depression, higher blood pressure, higher
rates of divorce, neck and back problems, shorter lifespans, and you get the point. Commuting long distances just isn't good for you. But a lot of it comes down to
how you do it. For example a Canadian study of commuters in Montreal found
that people who walk, bike, or hop on a train had a higher life satisfaction than
those with comparable commute times on other types of transit. In another study,
British researchers found that people who drive to work instead of using
public transportation are more likely to be obese. Sitting in a car all day really
adds the negative effects of an inactive lifestyle. You're sitting for hours on
end and when all is said and done it's really hard to find the time or the
motivation to exercise. And that's not all. Research has shown that driving alone in
particular can make you more miserable. You're alone with your thoughts for
hours, often in frustrating situations, so it's
not really surprising that this is the disaster for both your mental and
physical health. Yet according to a 2010 report, this is exactly how 80% of
Americans commute to work every single day. Now by comparison, those who take public transportation are slightly healthier
and slightly more satisfied with life. Yet we tend to be more negative about
our experience overall. Public transit commuters often resent the timetables. If
I don't leave work at 6 o'clock on the dot, I won't catch the 6:21. if I don't catch the 6:21 I have to get on the 6:53, and
that's the difference between me getting home at 8:00 p.m. and me getting home at
8:45. Throw in things like transfers, delays, cancellations, and you have a
really solid foundation for a very stressful, very annoying commute. Basically none of this is looking good
for my mortality. Then why do so many of us do it? Commuting has been viewed as a
source of stress, but in fact it gives people a break. It's sometimes the only
hour of the day that individuals have alone, to be by themselves to think, to
listen to music. Meaning my commute isn't technically dead space in my day. I catch
up on reading, I listen to podcasts, I take advantage of the alone time, but I can
also get work done when I need to. The change in communications has made
commuting an extension of the workday or an opportunity for the individual to do
things they couldn't otherwise do. It's not just a way to go from point A to
point B. In other cases ,where people live in the gig economy, having a
home that is accessible to transportation is far more important
than having a home which is next to your workplace. If you're not gonna have a
lifetime job let's have a lifetime home. So is my commute actually killing me? Well it's certainly not the best way to spend so much of my time and it is
exhausting, but you can make the most of it. And there's something to be said
about coming home at the end of it all Consider the squirrel. Squirrels are
everywhere and they're pretty cute, but are they valuable? Not really right?
Believe it or not, medieval Europeans used to use red squirrel pelts as
currency, just as you and I might exchange dollar bills today. It's one of
the many surprisingly different ways humans have transacted with one another
throughout history. It might seem crazy, but when you think about how we're now able
to pay each other digitally in minutes cash might be going away the red
squirrel sooner than you think. The history of money is a movement from
trading stuff you can use, to trading stuff that's symbolic and now even
virtual. Nowadays, you can send money safely and easily to pretty much anyone
you know in a matter of minutes, straight from your personal banking app. So how
did we get here? Somewhere in the middle of this history is the red squirrel or
Sciurus Vulgaris, which formed the basis for the medieval economy of Finland and
Russia. In fact the Finnish word for money, "raha" comes from squirrels. But they also became a symbol, a collective belief, a
currency. A tikkuri  was 10 squirrel pelts and a kiihetelys was four times that and
while values changed, at one point a hundred pelts could get you a whole cow.
But, big drawback: it took time to catch them and while squirrel currency
eventually went out of favour as metal coins appeared, there were still squirrel
pelt currency exchange charts even in 1926. Despite what the internet might
tell you though and we asked the Finnish Embassy about this and they laughed at
us. Squirrels are no longer accepted as
payment their, FYI. A squirrel economy is pretty weird, but humans everywhere
have a history of paying with strange things. Things that are really just
symbols we believed to be worth something.
These cowry shells spread across much of the ancient trading lands, from China
to India, to Eastern Africa. Salt or Salarium Argentum, was paid out to
soldiers in Rome and it's the reason you now get a salary by the way. In Central
America the cocoa bean understandably became prized. Even in modern Italy and
this is true, 17,000 tons of Parmesan Reggiano cheese are kept
bank vaults as collateral. Besides the squirrel, the strangest / most symbolic /
most unwieldy was the rai stone, of the Solomon Islands. It had to be gathered
from islands hundreds of miles away and they were so huge that they occasionally
capsized canoes. Of course it's tempting to laugh at our ancestors for paying
with such weird things, but we're not really all that different. For centuries
for us in the United States, gold was the standard currency and some still obsess
over it, but it's really just a symbol too - not that far removed from a pelt. And the
same is basically true with paper money. It's important, but ultimately works as a
representation of a country's stability, like melting gold or hauling huge
limestone tablets across oceans or catching 40 squirrels, cash takes time.
A study suggests that Americans waste 200 billion dollars worth of our time
per year just getting it out of ATMs, so where does that leave us? Today we continue to go even faster and more symbolic in an era where you can
just send money in minutes from your bank account to a friend's bank account
on your phone. Paper money may soon seem just as silly
as paying with a squirrel, so the more transfers, the more money available in
your bank account within minutes and less fur. The red squirrel would probably
be happy. If you store any personal information on a
computer, smartphone, or web service, your data is at risk from two massive computer
security exploits: Spectre and Meltdown. Two major flaws in computer chips, called "Meltdown" and "Spectre." Technology firms are rushing to fix a security flaw identified in computer chips. What makes Meltdown and 
Spectre especially sinister, aside from their James Bondian names, is that they affect your
computer at the hardware level: the processors inside your devices. And these flaws exist not because of a bug in
computer software design, but because of a feature in computer hardware that has been
around since 1995. Consumers expect computers to get faster and
faster each year. The new Apple TV isn't just slightly faster, it's remarkably faster. We built the fastest, most responsive stylus experience ever. To satisfy this insatiable need for increasingly
fast computers, chip developers added a function to processors called Speculative Execution. Processors are the chips inside a computer that allow it to perform hundreds of billions
of calculations per second. Think of it as the computer’s brain. Speculative execution allows the computer
to guess what you might do next and perform necessary calculations for those possible
outcomes, keeping one step ahead of you. Imagine if your favorite coffee shop began
preparing your favorite orders ahead of time. Your coffee is ready for you before you ask
for it and you’re in and out of the shop faster than if you were to order from scratch
every time. That’s speculative execution. But what about the orders that were made that
you didn’t purchase? Or what if you decide to order something else
entirely that day? Those unused, pre-made orders...well, they
get trashed. That’s the problem with speculative execution
— all those junked orders, They’re not really protected. Someone sorting through those trashed orders
might gain brief unauthorized access to your name or your daily order. But, of course, the information you keep on
your computer is probably a bit more sensitive than your preference for almond milk. Meltdown and Spectre exploit this feature
by using malicious code that tricks a computer into speculatively loading information it
wouldn’t normally have access to. And you — or an antivirus program — wouldn’t
necessarily know that someone is snooping on your data since Meltdown and Spectre are
exploiting a normal function of your computer’s processor. These exploits could allow a hacker to snoop
on data on a computer or a smartphone, or even in the cloud. Spectre allows a malicious program or code
to trick other applications, using a shared processor, into loading sensitive information
that it would normally keep secure and separate between the programs. Meltdown works slightly differently — instead
of tricking one application into revealing sensitive information to another, it exploits
the relationship between the application and the computer’s memory — but in the end,
the results are the same: compromised data While Software companies are rolling out patches
to help guard against Meltdown, that protection comes at a cost. And in some cases, those patches could make
a computer operate slower. Though software patches can prevent some Spectre
attacks, it really requires new hardware to be designed and implemented to completely
fix the problem. And that means many devices could be vulnerable
to Spectre attacks for decades, as devices are upgraded. But don’t let that stop you from installing
patches and protecting your data now. Seriously, that would not be smart. It was our need for speed that got us into this mess in the first place.. And good security nearly always comes with a compromise OK, you ready?” Yeah. I was raised to be Generic. Born that way. But on the third day in the second quarter,
I’m starting to think it’s not who I really am. The moods they don’t understand just yet. Usually it’s to help sell things. But sometimes you glimpse a person in that
reflective surface, who seems a little bit like you. My name is Suzy Jackson, and I am a narrator
of audiobooks. Is that what we call ourselves? I’m like, I don’t know — audio... voiceover artist? But we’re talking about audiobooks, so... As I’m reading, any time a character pops
up, I’ll underline their name. She feels like a grandmother — I don’t
have one, but One trick that I’ll do, I’m trying to
find if I have a place... Here. Let’s say there’s a sentence that says
“she whispered” at the end. So I need to know that before I start. So I’ll underline it while I’m preparing
the book. See, I’ll draw an arrow to it. And so then I’ll catch it before I’m saying
it. It’s this weird mental trick of staying
really present, but also kind of also reading a little bit ahead. After Dr. Snoot walks away, I fall into a
daze until Kenneth hits me on the shoulder, Rita and Adelaide bouncing next to him. [GURGLING NOISE] Did you hear... [laughs] so that’s what happens. You’re like, and now my esophagus made
some strange bubbling sound, so we stop and pick up. And he started hitting a vending machine and
I realized — I knew him when I was five! Before they made me an operator. I wrote down the characters in the book, and
I noted on my paper what I knew about them: that Dr. Snoot was like a grandma, that Kenneth
was nerdy, that Rita was always in control, that Adelaide was feisty. I felt like I knew the energy of it. It says “Kilroy Was Here” underneath. hours on end, like that stamina is more
difficult than coming up with slight variation of vocal quality to distinguish characters. Whether I’m reading aloud to kids or whether
I’m reading on my own, the experience has changed a bit since I’ve been narrating. You aren’t necessarily only going to be
narrating the style or genre of books that you yourself might choose to read on your own. So I think there is something to just respecting that story and respecting the audience for
that story. “Voice,” I tell the group again. “The one thing that can never be generic.” I don’t know if I’ve done alien voices,
but I’ve done in the sci-fi world a lot of creatures. “Can you do a pizza order as a dragon?” “I’ll take a large cheese with extra pepperoni.” It’s so weird, it’s so weird what I do. I'm frightened. Welcome to New York City. Home of Pizza Rat, Subway Rat, and Escalator Rat. This is a town of rats, and those rats have to be
studied by people with flashlights. One of those people is Rodentologist Bobby
Corrigan. I'm an urban rodentologist so I study just the rodents of cities. Nobody knows exactly how many rats there are in the city but it's estimated that
there could be millions and that's great news, because the more rats you have the
better. I'm totally kidding, obviously. It's hard to imagine a creature that's
more despised than a street rat, but is it really their fault? Rats carry some
pretty gnarly diseases like E. Coli, Salmonella, and West Nile virus, as well
as rat bite fever which, despite how it sounds, was not an obscure 50s dance
craze. In 2014 Columbia University studied rats inside residential
buildings in New York and found that they're even grosser than we thought. The research confirmed that urban rats carried 15 pathogens and 18 viruses that
had never been seen before in the city. I went to Chinatown in Manhattan with
Bobby, to see what's enabling these critters to live their best rat life. I look for what I call you know conducive conditions I mean just look at the
gutter it's especially by five, six o'clock this
gutter is a complete buffet. Here's a bag of food trash. Where'd it come from? Who knows. You can see this little basket is just, it's a simple ladder right up this in
and in and then out. And then... a nice rat cave. So Bobby, what else helps them?
Trains, planes, automobiles, sewer lines, electrical lines, you name it and this
animal is usually taking advantage of it. Any crack or crevice that is a half an
inch in height and width is easy opportunity for the rat to dark into. Let's not get run over. You'll notice here this big giant gap
below this door, a rat would not even have to duck there getting to whatever's
on the other side of that that warm door. It's as simple as putting in a rat strip
at the base of a door, which costs all of $85, so it'd be silly not to do
that. You know the word rodent means "to gnaw" so anything that's linear like a
wire, on an airplane, or a wire on a subway, or the wire that's in your own
home, then they're gnawing that and that's a problem. It's actually a really big
problem. Every year in the U.S. it's estimated that rats cause nineteen
billion dollars worth of damage. So how much of our behavior contributes to the
success of the city rat? It's a lot. The amount of solid waste humans generate
every year has been steadily rising for decades. Our behavior is one of the
biggest reasons rats prosper in cities. If something as simple as installing a
door strip can help keep rats in check, then why do we spend our time making
viral videos about how disgusting they are, instead of fixing the problem? We can be really lazy and we don't think through things. There's lots of things we
can do on a daily basis within a city that would deny the rat it's existence.
So, I'm just one person out of say eight to ten million New Yorkers. What can I do? It's actually pretty simple. Everybody generates somewhere between
four and six pounds of trash every 24 hours. Be a smart mammal. Whatever you do with your trash, ask yourself can the rats get
to it? The city's helping out too. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a 32
million dollar plan last year that would introduce new rat proof trash cans so
no more wire basket rat ladders. And there'd be better trash management and
pickup as well. We tend to take care of pests after they become a problem, in
other words we let them get established and then we hire exterminators or we go
out, we buy some traps. All of that is after the fact instead of doing it
proactively, I don't know maybe we should call ourselves homoreactus. So is this
a hopeless fight? Should we just all lay down in the trash-filled
gutter and give up? It is not true that you can never get rid of rats. That's not
true. You know, what what is true is they can
be managed through human behavior. This species is very industrious, hard-working if you will. Oh they have the ability to adapt to
environmental conditions that can be pretty extreme, but they're overpopulated
in many cases because human beings make it so good for them, quite frankly. So in
many ways, will the rat maybe outlive us? I'm gonna think it will. I'm gonna think
it will These are peanut m&ms. This is you eating a lot of peanut m&ms
after seeing stories about chocolate’s unbelievable health benefits. Carlos also just loves peanut m&ms. Almost every week you can open the newspaper,
or turn on your favorite news website — not Vox, but other news web sites — and notice
that there are stories about the purported health benefits of chocolate. Chocolate can help you live longer, it’ll
make your nails shinier, it’ll help you lose weight. There are so many stories about chocolate
and its health benefits and we just love to gobble them up. But chocolate hasn’t always been a media
darling. In the past, it was thought to cause acne. No, this is just regular adult acne… I don’t drink enough water. And this article from 1997 even called it
“addictive.” At Vox, we started to ask ourselves how did
chocolate become a health food? It turns out, there’s a reason behind the
chocolate madness. In 1982, Mars, which is one of the world’s
biggest chocolate makers, established something called the Mars Center for Cocoa Health Sciences. And its aim was to learn more about the cocoa
bean and understanding cocoa and chocolate’s effects on the body, and whether it might
have any health benefits. Vox examined the Mars sponsored research and
found that out of a hundred studies we identified
over the last 40 years, 98 of them had positive or favorable conclusions. That’s a pretty big number, and it made
us wonder - what’s so magical about chocolate that it’s getting these glowing reviews? Flae-vah-nols, Flah-vah-nols, Flae-vah-nols,
Flah-vah-nols, they’re micronutrients that are found in the cocoa bean and they’re
thought to have antioxidant properties. Mars’ initial focus was on the overall benefits
of chocolate, but it shifted to this specific compound. Some of these studies concluded that flavanols
could boost your mood and cognitive performance, and that both cocoa powder and dark chocolate
can have a “favorable effect” on cardiovascular disease risk. Which sounds awesome, but it doesn’t mean
all kinds of chocolate have the same health benefits — or any health benefits at all. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and cocoa
beans aren’t the same thing. To understand why, we have to check out a
cocoa tree near the equator. Just kidding, this isn’t Borders, folks. Cocoa or cacao beans come from these trees. The beans are roasted and ground into what
we know as cocoa powder or cocoa butter. Dark chocolate is made mostly from cocoa butter
and typically has a higher percentage of cocoa. Milk chocolate is created from cocoa and,
well, milk. The difference is that it goes through more
processing with added ingredients. It has more fats and sugar and less cocoa
— that’s what makes milk chocolate so sweet. But it’s also the reason milk chocolate
isn’t your best bet for these flavanols. One of the big problems with flavanols, is
that when you process chocolate you end up killing them off. In addition, different types of cocoa beans
have varying amounts of flavanols to begin with. So, different kinds of chocolate contain varying
amounts of the compound manufacturers have been basing their studies on. So, the reason companies are funding so much
science, they’re putting money into their own science and research institutions, and
they’re funding chairs at universities… And the reason they’re doing that is to
sell more chocolate. Chocolate is big business. Chocolate sales have gone up from $14.2 billion
in 2007 to $18.9 billion in 2017. And Mars isn’t the only company profiting
from this. Some of the world’s biggest chocolate makers
are also funding cocoa science, hyping it up to be the next big thing to help you lose
weight, or remember where you left your keys. When the media, and press offices interpret
some of these studies, we like to write “chocolate” in our stories even though the studies were
only looking at cocoa beans or cocoa supplements. Despite a growing obesity epidemic, this niche
of nutrition science is steering health-conscious consumers toward premium and gourmet dark
chocolate. These products are now seen as “healthy
indulgences.” In short term studies, researchers have found
that flavanols can lower blood pressure or improve cognition by certain measures. But none of these things have actually been
studied in long term research on endpoints that really matter for health. Well then, do these studies even matter? So I want to be clear, these studies aren’t
necessarily bad studies, many of them have passed peer-review and been published in prestigious
journals. But when you design and interpret a study
there are all kinds of ways that bias can be introduced. This study published in Nature Neuroscience
is a good example of that. In 2014, this Mars-sponsored study looked
at whether cocoa flavanols could prevent cognitive decline. The problems with this study? It ran for only 12 weeks, involved a small
number of participants, and focused on narrow outcomes that made the results unreliable. Okay… maybe there's more hype around the
benefits of chocolate than there should be. But like what’s the worse that can happen
if you eat a bunch of chocolate? A little bit of anything isn’t really bad
for health. But chocolate is also filled with a lot of
sugar, calories and fat. And consuming a lot of those things would
counteract any health benefits you might get from the flavanols or the antioxidants in
even the best cocoa. Right, so you probably want to eat chocolate
in moderation, and not be this guy eating a bunch of it in one sitting … dude… Are you still filming me? to say, lower your blood pressure because
there’s no excuse, er, science to back that behavior. Ever since they won control 
of the government in 2016. Republicans have been obsessed with getting
this one thing done. Tax reform. We're going to have a phenomenal tax reform. They've passed a bill, 
the President has signed it, so let's break down what's actually going to change. Imagine that instead of getting paid in dollars, you got paid in cereal. The government takes a certain amount of cereal in taxes. And it uses it to pay other people to do things build roads, fly fighter jets, do research. You get the picture. The more you earn, the bigger the share of your cereal the government takes. Sometimes the government wants to incentivize you to do certain things with your cereal. Like if you buy a house for a hundred pieces of cereal, and then sell it for 200 pieces of cereal, you'd normally have to pay 
capital gains taxes on that profit. But there's a special loophole 
that says you don't have to. The tax code is full of loopholes like this, which means if everyone puts their cereal together, there would be two bowls. One that the government dips into for taxes, and one it doesn't. Now, Republicans want the government to take a smaller portion. And they say they want people to keep more of the cereal. But if they do that, the government won't have enough cereal to pay for what it needs. So part of this new law is taking some of the cereal that's not taxed, and change the rules so that it is taxable. That way, the government can take 
a smaller share of the cereal but still pay for the stuff it needs. This is what politicians mean when they talk about 'broadening the tax base.' Here's the problem: Republicans aren't broadening the base enough. They're taking a lot less cereal from people and adding some new taxable cereal but not enough to pay for what the government needs. To pay for that stuff, the government is going to have to go into debt. This means they're going to have to take even more cereal, years in the future to pay back the debt they're taking out now. Republicans think this will help 
grow the total amount of cereal available to both tax payers and the government. So what happens to that 1.5 trillion dollar gap? It goes back into people's bowls but not everyone gets the same share. If you break the population into five equally sized groups based on how much they earned in 2017 and look at how much each group will earn in 2018 every group does get a tax cut. But fast forward ten years and you can see that lower and middle class Americans will actually pay more since 
their tax cuts aren't permanent. And if you break that top group into smaller groups you can see the very wealthiest benefit most of all. So while this new law does close some loopholes to bring in new tax revenue The bill's larger purpose is to realize the Republican vision of a fairer tax code. One in which the wealthiest pay a lot less. It runs from the capital, Kabul, to the second
biggest city, Kandahar. It was the cornerstone of the US strategy
to rebuild Afghanistan after the invasion in 2001. It cost over $200 million to build and hundreds
of lives were lost defending it. Despite all that the Kabul to Kandahar Highway,
today, is broken. A 2016 audit report found that the road was and if it becomes impassable... To understand how a road this significant
and this costly can be falling apart, you have to ask:
Where did the US go wrong in Afghanistan? Just weeks after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan,
where Al Qaeda planned the attacks. They were sheltered by the Taliban, who controlled
the Afghan government at the time. Both groups were driven out of Kabul in a
matter of months, so the US strategy soon shifted from combat, to stabilizing and rebuilding
the country. But Afghanistan is a difficult place to control
and rebuild. It’s mountainous, and mostly rural. The population is fractured among several
ethnic groups and local communities often operated autonomously. To make matters worse, there were only 50
kilometers of paved roads in 2002, which meant most of these communities were isolated. The US decided to change that by rebuilding
The Ring Road that was partially built by the Soviet Union in the 60s but had been destroyed
by decades of war. Starting with the Kabul to Kandahar section,
the US and several other countries pledged $1.5 Billion dollars to the Ring Road. It would run in a 3,200 kilometer loop, connecting
Afghanistan’s 4 biggest cities - essentially tying these communities together. And it was showing promise: Trade circulated
through more places, and medical services reached more people. It gave the new government in Kabul more legitimacy
around the country. The Ring Road also allowed the US and NATO
military to send troops and supplies around the country faster, so they could keep the
Taliban in check. “Where the roads end in Afghanistan, the
Taliban begin." "In other words, roads promote enterprise." "Enterprise provides hope." "Hope is what defeats this ideology of darkness." But the US didn’t finish the job. In 2003, the US invaded Iraq. And Afghanistan become second priority. Funding, reconstruction, resources, and experienced
leadership, including generals and diplomats were all diverted to the war in Iraq. The Ring Road was far from complete yet reconstruction
funding was cut by $1.2 billion a few years later. The US preoccupation with Iraq gave the Taliban
an opening to return, and they seized it. When you look at the Taliban activity in the
region from 2004 through 2009, you can see it escalate. Draw the Ring Road, and you can see where
those activities are concentrated. They set up ambushes, laid roadside bombs,
took hostages, killed US soldiers and road construction crews. By 2008, the Taliban had taken back significant
territory, especially in the south and east, along the Kabul to Kandahar highway. Afghanistan was in a full-blown insurgency. "Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years
it has moved backwards." "There is no imminent threat of the government
being overthrown, but the Taliban has gained momentum." "In short, the status quo is not sustainable." In 2009, President Barack Obama decided to
recommit to the war in Afghanistan. He sent thousands of troops in what was called
The Surge. The US and NATO made some progress in the
south. But it quickly became clear that the Taliban
would not be easily defeated. The more troops deployed to Afghanistan, the
more the Taliban launched attacks. With the military struggling to clear territory,
it became nearly impossible to rebuild roads, as the Taliban continued to attack road-crews. The degraded security environment has made this the most dangerous project our company
has attempted. 21 killed. 51 wounded. And 4 missing. This forced construction companies to hire
security, which caused budgets to skyrocket. Like this road from Khost to Pakitia, which
cost almost $5M per mile mostly because of security. But 18 months later, time was up. President Obama announced that he’d start bringing
troops back. "After this initial reduction, our troops will
continue coming home at a steady pace, as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. As US troops withdrew, they left behind oversight
of infrastructure projects, including roads. In 2012, USAID, cut funding for road construction. And even after the US and partnering countries
spent $3 Billion dollars on it, the Ring road was never completed. Road-building and maintenance became the responsibility
of the Afghan government, which was crippled by corruption. Experts estimate that billions of dollars
have been lost to corruption in Afghanistan. In 2015, with only about 11,000 US troops
in country, mostly in the major cities, the Taliban swept back through Afghanistan. In 2017, they controlled almost half the country
-- that’s more territory than they’ve had since 2001. And that includess large sections of the Ring Road. And that’s one of the main reasons why the
road is in dire shape. According to a 2016 inspection The US has no plans to give rebuilding Afghanistan
a third chance. In 2017, President Trump committed more troops
but made it very clear: “We are not nation-building again." "We are killing terrorists.“ As the Ring Road continues to deteriorate,
it's no longer a symbol of the US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, instead it serves
as a reminder of the job that was never finished. How about this one? Still no? Okay, okay. How about… now. Yup, that’s Amelia Earhart enjoying a ticker-tape
parade in her honor. She’s often thought of as the first or the Her accomplishments are widely known. Among them being the first woman — and second
person ever — to solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. She was a daring and ambitious pilot, but
so were her peers. Like Louise Thaden, still the only pilot ever
to hold the women’s speed, altitude, and solo-endurance records simultaneously. In 1929, she won the Women’s Air Derby,
the first women’s transcontinental air race. Her friend and rival Amelia Earhart placed
third, after wrecking early on in the race. Or consider Ruth Nichols, who held three simultaneous
flying records in 1931. That year, she flew higher, faster, and farther
than any woman in the world. Amelia’s contemporaries were some of the
best pilots at the time, but they faded into obscurity. While Amelia, a pretty average pilot in comparison, became a legend in her lifetime. So what set her apart from the other record-setting
female pilots, some of whom were measurably better at flying? It was all planned that way. The year was 1927. American aviator Charles Lindbergh became
the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, and people went wild. Aviation was becoming an American obsession,
and Lindbergh was an instant hero. He was even Time magazine’s first-ever Man
of the Year. And that was an opportunity for George Palmer
Putnam, an influential American publisher, to cash in on the aviation craze. He persuaded Lindbergh to write a book about
his historic flight. "We" was a massive success, and Lindbergh’s
three-month promotional tour made him one of the most recognizable celebrities in the
world. Soon after, wealthy socialite Amy Phipps Guest
acquired a powerful trimotor airplane so she could become the first woman flown over the
Atlantic Ocean. But her family refused to allow something
so dangerous, so she decided to sponsor a young aviatrix to go instead. She asked G.P. Putnam to find her the “right sort of girl”
to make the historic flight. Putnam settled on a 30-year-old social worker
and enthusiastic amateur pilot named, you guessed it, Amelia Earhart. With her short hair and boyish good looks,
she struck a strong resemblance to American icon Charles Lindbergh. Putnam saw an opportunity for another bestseller. For Amelia it was an opportunity to realize
her dream: a career in aviation. She didn’t actually touch any of the controls
during the flight. She rode as a passenger and became the first
woman to cross the Atlantic by air in 1928. Pilot is none other than America’s Miss
Amelia Earhart, world’s leading lady flier. It catapulted her from relative obscurity
into international headlines. And that was all orchestrated by George Putnam,
who was already working with a lot of male aviators on record setting flights and publicity. So he was a master of that. Putnam soon had Amelia working on a book about
her flight. He organized a publicity tour and fed her
new nickname to the press. Lady Lindy. Lady Lindy. Lady Lindy. She flew, she lectured, and also wrote an
aviation column in Cosmopolitan magazine, which she used as a platform to promote aviation
and to encourage other women to enter the field. She even endorsed products like Lucky Strike
cigarettes and a line of designer luggage to finance her flying career. In 1931 Amelia reluctantly married George
Putnam, and together they worked to further her career through publicized record-breaking. Record-setting, making headlines was the way
people were making a living in aviation. And that’s what Amelia did. She often said, “I set a record and then
I lecture on it.” She wanted to fly, and she did what she needed
to do to make it happen. See, at the time, there was no such thing
as commercial aviation or professional flying. After World War I, surplus planes could be
bought cheap, and they were mostly used for mail-carrying, smuggling, and something called
barnstorming, a shockingly reckless practice of public air stunts. Barnstormers traveled from town to town, taking
people up for rides and pulling off maneuvers that terrified and delighted crowds and newspapers. It was a dangerous practice, but it was the
only way to make money as a pilot and gain flying experience in the early ’20s, and
it actually helped launch the careers of some of America’s greatest aviators, including
Bessie Coleman and Charles Lindbergh. As barnstorming eventually fell by the wayside,
record-setting and exploration became the media’s fixation with flying. And that’s exactly what Amelia and her contemporaries
set out to do in order to support their careers. That era is known as the “Golden Age of
Flight,” so all this record-setting was exciting everyone, and getting people to be
familiar with aviation, consider it as a form of transportation, and invest in it. So these early pilots served a purpose to
make it familiar and get people excited about it. Amelia Earhart Putnam lands at Newark, after
her epochal 2,500-mile hop from Los Angeles, breaking Ruth Nichols’s distance record
and setting a new time mark for women. It took me about 19 hours and a few minutes
to make the trip. I wish I could have done it faster. Amelia was very comfortable with the press. She learned very early how to talk to them. When she was flying she looked very much like
a man, but when she was on camera, she came across as much more soft-spoken. So in that way she didn’t threaten her audiences,
even though she was doing this extraordinary thing, making a career in aviation. But Amelia wasn’t satisfied with being a
passenger in the historic flight that made her famous. She referred to her role in it as a “sack
of potatoes” and wanted to change that. So she decided to become the second person
ever to solo the Atlantic Ocean. Putnam began making the arrangements, and
on the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s daring flight, Amelia took off in her red
Lockheed Vega, eventually touching down in Northern Ireland. Here you see Lady Lindy, whose triumphant
solo flight across the Atlantic is the admiration of the whole world. What a wonderful woman — and isn’t she
like Lindbergh! She had made this really courageous flight
— people were still routinely getting killed flying across the Atlantic Ocean, so the fact
that she did that on her own really gave her credibility. The reaction was crazy, but it had been crazy
for Charles Lindbergh too. Amelia went from amateur pilot to national
treasure in just four years. Her publicity campaigns not only crafted her
image as the premier female pilot, they also allowed her to keep flying. And while she might not have been the most
skilled pilot of her time, 80 years since her disappearance she’s still the most enduring. Miss Earhart was acclaimed for her competitive
daring, but also admired for her grace and charm. She was to hold the headlines for almost 10
years. Here at the height of her fame she arrives
at New York City Hall, America’s top woman pilot. A woman who asked no quarter in competing
in the world of men. Only a few days into 2018 and President
Trump tweeted that he has a nuclear button on his desk, that is "much bigger"
and "more powerful" than North Korea's. Except, that nuclear button? It doesn't
really exist. Instead of a button, there are two
physical objects key to initiating a nuclear attack.
They're called the "football" and the "biscuit". You may already be familiar with
the football - nope, not that kind of football. It's more of a secure briefcase.
A military officer at the President's side at all times is tasked with
carrying it. Inside is a menu of nuclear options available to the President,
including possible targets and instructions for contacting US military
commanders around the world. Next, the President would be required to consult
with military and civilian advisors. In this case Trump would include Lieutenant
General John L. Dolan and Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General John
Hyten, but beyond a few required advisors the President can actually
include whoever else he wants. The length of this conversation and the ultimate
decision to launch is completely up to the Commander-In-Chief. If the president
decides to proceed, the biscuit comes into play. A senior officer in the war
room has to verify that this command is actually coming from the President. Safety first, right? So the officer recites a code and in turn the President
responds with a code printed on the biscuit, which is actually a card that the
President carries at all times. Once the command is confirmed, it is communicated
to the military personnel who will actually launch the attack. Finally, launch crews execute the plan. This basically involves unlocking
various safes, entering a series of codes, and turning keys to launch the missiles.
The whole process is designed to be fast, because if missiles are heading towards
the United States ,they could land within 30 minutes. In other words if the
President chose to he could order a nuclear strike in about the time it
takes to write a tweet. In Iran tens of thousands have taken to
the streets in a massive countrywide uprising. Dozens have been killed and
hundreds arrested. Most demonstrations in Iran historically have started in the
capital, organized by educated upper middle class and politically active
citizens. The protests then spread outward from there, but the most recent
demonstrations started in the east of the country, far from Tehran. They then
spread to the rest of the country within days. And they were started by working
middle-class Iranians, without a leader or a set agenda. And the match that lit
this fire was something that may surprise you: the price of eggs. Iran was recently hit with an outbreak of the bird flu, which
required them to kill off some 17 million chickens. This shortage caused
egg prices to nearly double. Egg prices helped spark the uprising, but what Iranians are really protesting here is a series of broken promises by their
President, Hassan Rouhani. When Rouhani came into the presidency in 2013, he pledged to revitalize the economy. He took the first steps towards doing this in July 2015,
when Iran reached a deal to significantly curb its nuclear program.
In exchange, the West lifted international economic sanctions that
had hampered Iran's economy for decades. For a lot of Iranians, this symbolized
that Iran was opening up to the world and it was a reason to celebrate. So by
the end of Rouhani's first term, he had achieved some economic success. His
policies had brought down the inflation rate and boosted economic growth, but
unemployment and inequality remained high and foreign investments still
remained low. For the working poor Rouhani's policies made little difference.
So when Rouhani was back up for election in May 2017, he vowed to voters that he would make tangible changes to the economy within
the first hundred days of his new term. He won the election, but the first hundred days came and went with no real tangible economic
results. I as an Iranian, am frustrated that government has so many unkept
promises, to tackle so many problems like unemployment, recession, inflation, and
social freedom. Then in December, Rouhani published his proposal for his 2018
budget. The proposal included plans to give billions of dollars to
organizations that make up the hardline religious establishment in Iran. The
budget also proposed cutting cash subsidies to millions of citizens,
raising the fuel prices, and privatizing public schools. Paired with the rising
prices of eggs and other food staples, people around the country, especially the
poor and working-class, felt betrayed. Protests erupted, quickly turning violent. These protesters have no leader, no set
agenda. They're not driven by political organizers in the capital, but by poor
citizens and villages in rural towns. Iran has a history of massive street
protests transforming its society. In fact, the current Islamic Republic of
Iran was born by street protests just like this. These demonstrations began
because of the slow economy and the price of eggs, but they quickly have
morphed into calls for reform and revolution. It's a care package for my mom back home in Los Angeles. It's always filled with everyday
items and a bunch of Filipino goodies. Instant noodles in here, sinigang soup packet, fruit from my mom's backyard, toothpaste But then there's this skin whitening products Skin whiteners are a big business. More than four hundred million dollars worth of skin whitening products is sold each
year in India alone Eight out of ten women in Nigeria use skin lightening products, the world's highest percentage Skin lightening market in Asia-Pacific
alone is valued at over 13 billion US dollars In 2015, the skin whitening industry was worth about $10 billion worldwide And by 2024 it is expected to more than triple to $31.2 billion These products have been around for a long time and have proven to be damaging physically and emotionally So what accounts for the growing popularity? For starters skin whitening products
rely on advertisements like these "Wow, you have the most beautiful, glowing skin" "Now, I have visibly fairer skin" Skin color forms part of what gives us access and prestige in society All these negative
associations that society has already imposed on dark skin You can't be happy.
You can't find a man. You don't fit into society beauty ideals So the advertising is only reinforcing and exacerbating a sustained message Thanks to globalization, it's a message that's reaching more people every year The worldwide cosmetics market was worth about $293.5 billion last year and it is expected to grow That growth is fueled by a rising middle class especially in the Asia-Pacific region which has the biggest share of the cosmetics market But these products and the messages of
these ads are destructive because they rely on a concept called "colorism" which sociologist Margaret Hunter defines as the process of discrimination that
privileges light-skinned people of color over their dark-skinned counterparts. One study showed that lighter skinned black women in North Carolina received shorter prison sentences than their darker peers Another study found that white
interviewers deemed light-skinned blacks and Hispanics more intelligent than
dark-skinned people who had identical educational achievements. They also reinforce centuries-old ideas about race and hygiene. Check out these old soap ads. This was part of a larger project of presenting white civilization, European civilization as superior and here, the association is that blackness is a form of uncleanliness that can be wiped away But it's also, in many ways, simply a very blatantly racist ad. During the civil rights era, the Black Power movement sought to counter this idea with
messages like "Black is beautiful" but that message hasn't undone the damage
wrought by centuries of colorism Cause this looks a lot like that one Cause the way brown looks These products are also dangerous because they can physically
damage the skin I've seen very intense cystic acne I've seen irreversible skin thinning From using high-strength hydroquinone I've seen ochronosis, which is a paradoxical darkening of the skin. Aside from creams and soaps, there's a wide variety of ways people are lightening their skin like getting chemical peels using glutathione injections or pills or even applying cleaning bleach to their face and body Hydroquinone is a highly toxic chemical
used in photo processing, rubber manufacturing and hair dyes but it is also one of the most commonly used ingredients for skin whitening It's regulated in the U.S. and banned in certain countries abroad but consumers get their hands on high concentrations of it through under-the-table sources In the U.S. light-skinned beauty standards still exists in more subtle messages like who is considered the most beautiful and some celebrities of color appearing to have lighter skin over time You are looking to be white. What do you
say to that? I would say that as an adult you decide to do things It's like, do you guys condemn people who tan their skin? Do they do it because they hate themselves? No, it's a choice as an adult While wanting lighter skin is
not a crime nor is it necessarily bad it's important to be conscious of this
choice and why it's different from skin tanning or putting on lipstick Because ultimately, from applying creams and getting regular treatments to avoiding skin tanning all together skin whitening is a way of life Attitudes are starting to change with inclusive makeup lines and emojis, media campaigns celebrating dark skin beauty and more celebrities talking about the issue "I still feel like that's what we're fighting, healing from the past" But many people are still unaware of their preferences for light skin because it's so deeply ingrained in
society and despite the criticism and safety issues of these products the projected growth in sales means the world still has a long way to go until the practice of skin whitening becomes obsolete Who doesn’t love takeout food? It’s convenient. Easy. Most of the time, it’s delicious. But with every order, there’s just a lot
of stuff that comes with the meal. Look, here’s what I got when I ordered Thai. This is from my breakfast this morning. And this is all the stuff you get with one
of those meal delivery kits. Some of it, you can recycle. Some of it, it’s compostable. But a lot of it…well, I really don’t know. And all this waste — it isn’t just a problem
that we can solve with recycling alone. These little containers and wrappers may not
seem like a big deal, but in the U.S., packaging makes up the largest category of municipal
waste. On top of that, single-use items make up another
10 percent of all our discards. And this kind of mindless consumption has a really
big impact on climate change. Roughly 29 percent of our nation’s greenhouse
gas emissions come from the way we make, consume, and dispose of stuff. That’s more than the emissions that come
from heating our homes or driving around in our cars. It takes a lot of energy and resources to
produce single use items — these things we use only for a few minutes or even a few
seconds before they become trash. And when single-use items go into a landfill,
all that paper and plastic is destroyed — and so we have to go out there and extract new raw materials to replace it. We really need to prioritize reduce and reuse
over recycling. Recycling is great to deal with the product
once it’s already in your hand. You’ve got to make a good decision on where
it goes, but waste minimization is more important. This is Anne Krieghoff — she’s the recycling
manager at the University of California, Irvine. Her goal is to get the campus to zero waste. And there’s some super simple ways that
we can reduce a lot of this single-use trash. Look, have you ever ordered a burger and fries
and inside the bag there are like, a thousand packets of ketchup that you really aren’t
going to use? They may look innocent, but there’s really
no way to recycle them. So, one of the easiest ways to eliminate this
trash is to serve condiments in bulk. Remember the way you used to get a hot dog
at the baseball game, you’d go up to the pump and get your ketchup and your mustard. That is the best way. Think how much you could save with one bulk
ketchup dispenser. Or bulk sugar at the coffee shop. Another way to reduce trash is to just stop
overpackaging things. Here’s a classic example. This is how I got my lunch today. So it’s a plastic bag and inside it is a
paper bag. I mean, what’s the purpose of this? You know, maybe I could have actually just
carried this out without a bag. Or simply put it in my backpack. It would be great if companies started saying,
“We’re not serving the plastic bag unless you ask for it.” Don’t offer it — just wait if somebody
needs that. And that’s really the key. See, a lot of useless trash is created because
companies just kind of hand it to us, assuming that we want it. But a lot of times we don’t. This is something that Seamless and Grubhub,
the food delivery apps, are trying to take on. When you place an order on their website,
they give you the option to skip the utensils and napkins, which you probably don’t need
if they’re actually coming to your home or to your office. In 2013 alone, Seamless reported that they
saved more than a million sets of plastic utensils and napkins — all with a simple
check box. Just having the option to say no makes it
way easier for customers to reduce their trash. And saving those forks and napkins helps restaurants
as well, since ultimately they’re the ones who are paying for them So if step one is reduce, or stop giving people
stuff they don’t need, then step two is reuse. Let’s make it easier for people to switch
to reusable stuff. UC Merced have made the switch to reusable
takeout containers in their dining hall. Reusable is always the way to go, if you think
about it, if you're reusing this container and you're getting more uses out of it, although
the cost upfront is larger, in the long run you’re saving a lot of money. Julie Sagusay is the Food Services Manager
and each year, about a third of the meals served at the dining hall are to-go meals. That adds up to about 350,000 single-use containers
that they avoid using every year. When you want a meal to-go, you check out
the container with your student card, like you would a library book — and then when
you’re done, you return it to one of these eight machines around campus. A lot of universities and a few hospitals
have introduced reusable container systems like this. There’s even a company in Portland called
GO Box that works with local restaurants to offer a reusable option for takeout food. And it isn’t just food containers. Reusable water bottles are one of the easiest
ways to cut down on to-go trash. Around the world, people buy a million plastic
bottles each minute and most of them will end up in a landfill or the ocean. It’s so much smarter to just have one bottle. It’s really important that we get away from thinking
of anything as a single-use. From 1987 to 2014, the amount of bottled water
that Americans drink has quadrupled. So we drink more bottled water than milk or
even beer. And during this time, the classic water fountain
we all know and love has pretty much fallen out of favor. That’s partly because people are concerned
about water safety not to mention hygiene, right? Concerns that Anne Perkins here has. Kiss one water fountain drinker and you’re
kissing everyone in Pawnee. Including him. But recently, that drinking fountain — well
it’s got a bit of a facelift. Water bottle filling stations have been popping
up, making it easier to get free, filtered water when you’re on the go. UC Irvine installed 160 of these on campus
and it’s made a big difference. Each year, the campus avoids using roughly
3 million plastic bottles. Our disposable water bottle sales have dropped
over 30% in the last couple of years just by people bring their own water bottle. How can we change our processes little by
little by little each year until they become the way we do things? It isn’t done by just dealing with the trash
at the end. It really is about changing culture. Today, UC Irvine is diverting 80 percent of
their waste from landfills by focusing on reuse, composting, and recycling. Zero waste is a possibility. It’s just never quitting. And cities across the country are trying to
reach that goal too. Achieving zero waste means building more robust
recycling and composting programs. But it also means rethinking all the stuff
in our lives. How do companies package the things they sell us? Can they use a materials that are easier
to recycle? How do we make it easier for people to switch
to reusables? So really take a look at what you’re throwing
away at the end of a meal and pick one thing. Maybe it’s saying no to bags or maybe it’s
carrying around a reusable bottle. It may seem like a trivially small thing,
but it is part of a larger cultural shift. Every plastic cup or plastic straw that doesn’t
need to be made, every tree that doesn’t need to be cut down — all of it helps us
reduce global warming. There’s a lot simple ways to reduce your
trash. Watch my interview with Lauren Singer who
can fit four years worth of trash, no kidding, into a single jar. And check out climate.universityofcalifornia.edu
for other global warming solutions. You know the song Lemon right? It's
amazing. I mean Rihanna raps on it like a badass. You can catch me, Ri, in the new La Ferrar' and the music video is incredible
Rihanna shaves dancer Metta Towley's head, right before she goes on to dance under
saturated neon lights for the rest of the video. And the more I listen to it
the more there was something about its sound that just felt super familiar and
the fact that I couldn't pinpoint why was driving me crazy. And then one day it
just clicked. Lemon sounds a lot like a New Orleans Bounce song. Bouncin' around, bouncin' around, bouncin'. Now if you don't know
what New Orleans bounces then you're in for a treat, because I have the perfect
person to help explain it. It's something that moves in your bones, moves in your
body, and it moves in your soul. That's Big Freedia, the unofficial but
let's just say official, ambassador of New Orleans bounce. In New Orleans we take any song, it can be from a Beyoncé song, to a Rihanna song, to a Drake song. It
can be Patti LaBelle. It could be a church song. They will take it and put
a bounce beat on it honey. To understand bounce music you have to go back to the
late 1980s and early 90s. It was the Golden Age of hip hop and rap's biggest
hits were coming from the east and west coast. In New Orleans though, a rap scene
was just starting to form and while artists were trying to find their voice
and identity, they were also competing with the likes of Snoop Dogg and Run DMC
on the local radio stations. So they had to come up with ways to get the city's
attention. You know the baseline in the background
baby. New Orleans. Rapper Gregory D and producer Mannie Fresh figured out that winning
strategy with Buck Jump Time. Listen to the rhymes back-to-back
that I wrote for the project rap. This rap is wild, a number one hit.
When you ever heard a rapper bust like this? Uptown, Third Ward, that Calliope
Melpomene, Magnolia, the home of dope. St. Thomas, Lafitte, the Iberville's hard
And that Seventh Ward St. Bernard. All those chants are shout outs to different housing projects in the city. And in 1989 and it made Buck Jump Time an instant local hit. You got to represent the people. That's the people who're going to talk about these songs,
that's the people who're going to play the songs, that's the people who're going to shake
their ass, that's the people who're going to feed the music where it needs to be fed. Buck Jump Time is a progenitor to bounce, but they quickly solidified emotional
appeals to the people of New Orleans as one of the earliest conventions of the
genre. It's not only the lyrics that were so catchy, but it's the beat. The beat
that got everybody on their feet. That's the "Trigger Man" beat. And you might have heard it before in songs like BALL by T.I., Or Trigger Man by Lil' Wayne. You know where I hear it?
Lemon. Trigger Man definitely has a strong point in the sound of Bounce music. You know, when you hear dun dun dun dun. You know, "the rhymes you're about to hear are true." It's just like, it's so magical to the culture of New Orleans. The funny thing is the
Trigger Man beat wasn't created in New Orleans, it was created by the rap duo
The Show Boys in Queens, New York and it was originally called Drag Rap, because
they sampled sounds from the detective show Dragnet. Ladies and Gentlemen, the
story you're about to see is true the names have been changed to protect the
innocent. The song was made around 1986. It barely got any radio airplay in New
York, and soon after The Show Boys disbanded. But somehow this record ended
up in New Orleans and the city loved it. In the words of Lil Wayne: "In 1990 you
play it,  people will go bananas. You play the song right now 2011, in New Orleans
people will go bananas. We took that song and we fell in love with it man. Lil Wayne, what type of food do you like? Okay - back to the story. People in New Orleans loved the Trigger Man beat on its own, but
when M.C.T. Tucker used it on his 1992 track "Where dey at", there was no going
back. Bounce was born. When M.C.T. Tucker chanted f***
David Duke over the Trigger Man beat, he knew he had the city behind him, but he
also introduced one more thin: hyper repetitive dance instructions. Shake that ass like a saltshaker. You know, it's all about stuff that's commanding
your audience on what to do. Either lyrically, or dance-wise you know, like dribble dribble dribble dribble like a basketball There's this billboard magazine feature
from 1994 about Bounce, that explains just how popular it was in New Orleans.
It says locally-produced Bounce cassettes routinely sell 200 to 300
units a week, roughly 10 times the sales of national rap albums. The problem? Well,
Bounce was difficult to sell outside of New Orleans, because they just didn't
match the sound or the lyrical style of mainstream hip hop. And yet, Bounce
persisted in the city and eventually the Trigger Man beat was mixed up with the
brown beat, an 808 heavy syncopated rhythm that, depending on who you ask was
either lifted from UK rapper Derek P's Rock The Beat, or from this Bay Area DJ. Hi I'm
Cameron Paul. You know, something about Bounce? It never gets old.
A lot of us have classics that they know when they hear that, the whole club just
gonna go damn crazy. You can put a DJ Jubilee song on and the party's just
gonna get started. Big Freedia's classic? Everybody know me
for Gin In My System for sure. It's definitely about participation with New
Orleans. The Mardi Gras Indians, the Second Line Sundays, the Bounce music
where if I would say I got that gin in my system, my audience will say somebody
gonna be my victim. And that's your hook. I got that gin in my system
somebody gonna be my victim. For the most part the Big Bounce classics stayed in
New Orleans, but a few trickled into the mainstream. Like in 1998 New Orleans' own Juvenile
released Back That Azz Up featuring Lil Wayne. It peaked at 19 on
the Billboard charts. Just like any of the music around the
world, it has to have his home base first. Once Katrina hit, the music spread all around the world, wherever we were displaced at. And people was like what
is that sound? What type of music is that? And we was like baby that's New Orleans
Bounce. Sometimes that exposure fosters positive collaborations with bigger
artists. Diplo worked with New Orleans Nicky DA B on Express Yourself and Big
Freedia on Drop. And other times is just blatant appropriation. It's just important for them to say whether they get the idea, and having the courage to
say I got this from the culture of Bounce music. A lot of times people come
to New Orleans and they see it and they love it so much, they just gotta take a
little piece back home with them baby. But there is a gray area in songs like
Lemon. When I listen to Lemon, I hear a very clear remix of the Trigger Man beat. I hear a heavily syncopated Brown . beat style rhythm. I hear dead giveaway lyrics, And some subtle nods to the genre. Based on this though, is it Bounce or is it just
Bounce-inspired? Well I definitely think that it's Bounce inspired. It's
definitely not a Bounce song. A lot of artists sometimes, can instruct producers
to a certain degree on how to create the sound. When its the official stamp of a Bounce song, you are a Bounce artist, you grew up in New Orleans, and you went into
one of our gritty little studios that was sweating hot and you made that song. My fellow Americans, it has been the honor
of my life to serve you. Together we will make America great again.
Thank you, God bless you and God bless America. How does it feel to feel happy?
Happy. Good. More than a million Americans I'm sending a message to
President Trump on the day after his inauguration, women leading marches
across this country, really around the world. Who treats a woman that way? And
he's setting that example for all the kids that are growing up in America that
it's okay to treat women the way he treats them which is wrong. There was chaos and confusion at
airports today as President Trump's immigration crackdown took effect. They
are being greeted by attorneys, volunteer attorneys who have come to help anyone
who has been detained. There's a mistake Moonlight, you guys won best picture. I really would like to take this moment to congratulate Venus. She's an amazing person. An absolute shame on humanity, that's how the international aid organization CARE is
describing the deepening humanitarian crisis in Yemen. As children have paid
the highest price in a war now in its third year. Protests on the streets of
Venezuela turning deadly. Sunday's vote gives Venezuelan president Nicolas
Maduro full control of the assembly if The event was billed as a protest
against plans to remove a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, but
at the end of a violent day one woman was killed and 19 other people were
injured. You had a group on one side that was bad
and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. I come today
with a very heavy heart, because President Trump, our president has
literally betrayed the conscience of our country. 22 dead 59 wounded, many struggling for their lives right now. Ariana Grande back on stage 13 days after the bombing
that injured and killed so many young fans. North Korea late today launching a new
missile. Flying higher and longer than any missile that country has launched
before. Rocket man should have been handled a long time ago. A royal decree has
been issued in Saudi Arabia, giving women the right to drive. A country once afraid
of change, now it seems changing all at once. Total solar eclipse, the first seen
coast-to-coast across America in nearly a century. This one's called Double Trouble. The United States will
withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord This will be the day that the United
States resigned as the leader of the free world. When you work your entire life to create something, Hurricane Irma is now the most powerful storm ever recorded in the open Atlantic Ocean. Two
days after Hurricane Maria, all of Puerto Rico is still without power and may have
no electricity for months to come. A powerful earthquake has just struck Mexico City. So many everyday citizens running in to help. As I'm sure you can imagine we are
devastated and we are still processing all of this. It all started with
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and since then the floodgates have opened. We
tried to find one place where women were safe so we Googled sexual harassment Antarctica, we found this article from five fucking days ago. I'm like, hold on. What
about the President? Listen, ok? If you got your thang thang out and she got all her
clothes on, you're wrong. You're in the wrong. Devastating 7.3 magnitude earthquake has
rocked the Middle East overnight. Hundreds dead along the board of Iran
and Iraq, an urgent search for survivors now. Wouldn't you love to see one of
these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag, to say get that
son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He's fired. Fired. This is a protest about whether or not the country has fulfilled its promise of equal
protection under the law, to all of its citizenry and that
conversation is one no one wants to have. More than 300 people were killed in what
seen as the worst attack in Egypt's modern history. It's the first time that
the militants target worshippers inside a mosque. More than half a million Rohingya
refugees have left Myanmar for Bangladesh, fleeing what the United
Nations has called a quote textbook example of ethnic cleansing. President Robert Mugabe has resigned. Today, it's victory. It's victory in our hearts, it's victory for our children. This has been an incredible mission, an incredible
spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team. I'm going to call this the end of
mission. Project manager off the net. You know, now that a professional wrestler's
our President, anything is possible. You know that
statement anything is possible used to have a positive connotation? Anything is
possible. Now we're all like anything is possible. Hey and one last thing. I just want to say: 
anything is possible Vox video fans. Anything. Happy New Year. Peace. It was a secret World War II project with an urgent mission. Develop a powerful new bomb to fend off the Germans, who were threatening the European continent. British scientists tried to perfect a chemical bond they referred to as “research department explosive” or RDX --  nearly twice as powerful as TNT. RDX, most powerful explosive in existence. It's so dangerous in the raw state, thatit must be stored underwater. But they needed thousands of tons to win the war, and they couldn’t make it fast enough. That is, until American chemists figured out a way to mass produce it. A team of scientists secretly assembled by the government invented a new process to manufacture these “super-explosives,” churning out hundreds of tons in a day. RDX transformed weapons overnight. It enabled the world’s first handheld rocket launcher to pierce armor. It was packed into a 10,000-pound underwater bomb. And it was disguised as pancake mix in an operation called the Aunt Jemima project. RDX spawned the greatest period of military manufacturing in history. But half a century later, the ingenious chemicals that boosted the US military, are inflicting aftershocks in our own backyards. RDX is a dangerous pollutant that's found
its way into our soils and drinking water supplies. And the Environmental Protection Agency has been tasked with figuring out exactly how much of a health risk it poses to us --
 and how much of the mess the government needs to clean up. Here’s what we know about the unique environmental that is RDX: The first series of long-term experiments was conducted by the Pentagon in the 1980s. They fed high doses of RDX to rats and mice, and watched them for two years. As the dosage increased, the RDX made them agitated. Their hearts became enlarged, their eyes grew discolored, then opaque. Of the hundreds of animals  they experimented on with the highest doses, about half died. Of these mice with moderate to heavy doses, one in six females grew rare tumors on their liver or lungs, roughly half of which were malignant. Liver cancer was also noted in the male rats. So it all added up to a statistically significant and alarming sign that RDX could cause cancer in people. But the studies were never peer reviewed or published. After the military shared its final reports with the EPA, the agency classified RDX as a “possible human carcinogen” in 1990...a warning that it was potentially dangerous and deserved more study. It came at a time when RDX contamination was cropping up at sites across the country. At bomb-making plants and testing ranges, it spread into the soil and water supplies. Take the case of Mapleton, Utah, with quaint homes and gardens where residents grew their own food. At least until 1997, when residents got a letter from the nearby Trojan plant, which was contracted by the military to manufacture and recycle bomb materials. The letter said, “Don’t be alarmed…” but if “you use the water from your well for culinary purposes, we ask that you contact us immediately.” For at least 20 years, the Trojan plant discarded waste, including pure RDX, into ponds and an unlined irrigation ditch. Six neighbors, all living within a quarter mile of that ditch, had developed cancer since living there. And they found out the Trojan plant was well aware of the groundwater RDX pollution years before they told the residents. But to hold the company accountable for their cancers -- the residents needed to prove the dangers of RDX itself. A professor they hired linked two of the compounds
found in RDX with the type of cancer that several of the Mapleton residents had. He calculated Mapleton had twice as many cases of Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and three times as many cases of Leukemia than would have been expected in the area. His team concluded that residents got their cancer by eating food grown with RDX-contaminated water. Vegetables seemed to concentrate the chemicals and amplify their exposure. Calculations suggested eating a carrot from one of their gardens was 286 times worse than simply drinking the RDX contaminated water. But the Mapleton case never made it to trial. In 2002, the plant settled with the families for an undisclosed amount of money, without admitting guilt. And several of the plaintiffs have died. Today the Pentagon continues to manufacture RDX, and uses it widely. And the number of communities that face environmental threats from it has continued to grow. RDX has been found everywhere from wells near Ft. Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, to the drinking water near Kingsport, Tennessee... and the groundwater across an old missile factory near Los Angeles. In fact, for the first time we know the extent of the US military’s role as a polluter. ProPublica got data pinpointing thousands of sites across the country where the government has identified pollution on defense properties. There are more than 150 cases with RDX contamination. For decades, as these cases were documented, the US military claimed immunity from EPA oversight and tried to evade environmental regulations which would force them to clean it up. But in 2012, the EPA decided it would re-assess the risk the chemical posed to people, and so they began a new review on everything we know about RDX. If the EPA decided to regulate RDX as a chemical contaminant, that would mean an enormous increase for the Pentagon’s environmental cleanup bill, which is already at around 70 billion dollars. The final results are still to come. But as the EPA conducts its review, there’s one thing that’s still missing: credible science. If the government wants evidence of whether RDX is connected to cancer, the best way is to replicate the earlier controlled experiments with live mice and rats. But that has never been done. Instead, the Department of Defense has conducted dozens of studies that cast doubt on RDX’ effects, and support the Pentagon’s position
that it poses little public threat. These studies were funded by the military, an agency with a stake in the outcome of the EPA’s decision. So there’s skepticism about the objectivity, but, that doesn’t automatically mean their research isn’t good science. Some were even validated through peer review. Even though the EPA appeared ready, in 2013, to label RDX a likely carcinogen, it is now poised to downplay its risk with a tag that says it’s merely “suggestive” of cancer. The agency is set to decide the fate of RDX next year. Now under the Trump administration, there are concerns that the sole agency responsible for informing the American public about environmental health risks is bowing under pressure from the Department of Defense and the chemical industry. How did this take over the internet? “This video is not safe for work.” This is Pink Guy. He’s part of the lore of the Filthy Frank
omniverse — more on that later. Even if you haven’t seen Filthy Frank on
YouTube, you’ve probably seen his impact. He’s reached the Billboard charts as “Pink
Guy” with stunningly profane raps and collaborated with mainstream YouTubers. If you don’t know those celebrities, you
probably remember this. In 2013, everyone in the world was doing the
Harlem Shake. It became a corporate trend for stuff like...Hot
Pockets. Filthy Frank and Co., they started that. He — and his fans — even touched this
video. By that, I mean his fans kinda made us do
it. “I just saw a Vox video saying you could
comment down below on what you wanted the video to be.” “We’re gonna commit to make a video on
the top comment from this video.” “I went on the Filthy Frank subreddit and
I directed people to comment, ask to do a filthy Frank Video.” “A lot of your content has a reputation
for being very politically correct, so I think people just wanted to see what your take on
Filthy Frank would be.” Frank is very politically incorrect. “Ladies and gentlemen, racists, pedophiles,
black people, I don’t even care.” He indulges in racial, ethnic, and cultural
stereotypes for just about every single country. And he is unflinchingly disgusting. But Filthy Frank is not just rants. His series has an elaborate mythology that’s
crucial to understanding his success. And his career says something about the future
of all shock comedy in an age when YouTubers don’t just flout
taboos. They ignore them completely. “Filthy Frank and the characters of it are
just that, they’re characters. Joji is absolutely nothing like that. He’s taking a lot of what teenage guys think
and their edgy humor and putting it into a character, putting it into an entire omniverse
of beings that exemplify that.” Filthy Frank fans like Abby dissect this YouTuber
in parts. At the top is George Miller, the guy who makes
all this stuff. “So, hello!” The persona closest to him is Joji, a music
project so generically hipster that it should be sold bundled with a flannel and knit cap. Music outlets have supported him in this new
identity, portraying him as a quirky totally chill bro, not somebody who profited off cruel
humor. But most fans know him as Pink Guy, Filthy
Frank, and related sub-characters. Pink Guy released those chart topping albums,
with songs like… “Anal Beads”
“I love hentai.” “Dora the explora, Dora the explora, bitch
look good for a four year old.” Pink Guy has also been in skits alongside
Frank, where he’s often mute or incomprehensible, or he appears in glorified prank videos where
he spasms around and gets oddly muted reactions. Filthy Frank is equally scattered. Occasionally he semi-ironically pranks people
in the real world, sometimes he’s in skits,
and other times he just has offensive rants about commenters and stuff like Pokemon Go. Just to be explicit about what Frank is willing
to do, he has: Dined on vomit
Cooked dead rats And even dressed like Guy Fieri. The only overriding rule? “Everybody gets shit.” “Frank shits on everything..” “First of all, is it OK if I swear?” “Yeah, sure.” “Because he swears, and I’m quoting him. He says, ‘we support prejudiced equality,
everyone gets shit.’” You can make critical gestures at describing
Frank’s work. David Lynch plus Weird Al plus head injuries. “I feel like every generation has that Ren
& Stimpy or 3 Stooges. You know it’s really kind of gross and bad
humor, but for some reason you can’t stop watching it.” “It’s like going back to the 2 Girls One
Cup days - you didn’t like it, but you liked seeing your friends watch it.” All these different sides to the profane nonsense
of George Miller can seem like unfiltered garbage. Yet some of his millions of YouTube fans are
happy to talk about it. Well, most fans. “Can you guys like, actually lower my voice
a bit so it doesn’t sound like I’m the person I am?” They argue it's more than just outrageous
comedy. It's art. It all started with Pink Guy. There was a competition with a lycra-covered
being named Red Dick and powerful Prometheus. On the verge of defeat, Pink Guy summons the
dark lord Chin-Chin. “Oh Chin-Chin!” Frank fans believe an elaborate mythology
— a lore — is key to understanding the comedy of Frank, and they’ll parse all things
Filthy Frank to get it right. You’ll find hours of compiled lore videos
on YouTube, a wikia, as well as a book. None of the lore is completely consistent
but, to fans, that’s either reconcilable or not an issue. “Is there a cosmology to what is known as
the Filthy Frank omniverse? The book basically just threw me off so I’m
kind of starting again.” “I do cosplays of both male and female characters,
primarily from anime or cartoons. Filthy Frank is pretty popular within a lot
of anime communities.” “I actually had to rewatch that specific
video, a couple scenes a couple of times to figure out what shoes he was wearing, how
his hair looked — it’s a little floofy — what kind of wig would I need.” “The lore kinda happened, it just developed
randomly and then the community got involved and Frank went, “Ok.” Lore layers artifice over the offense. It paints Frank as an artist, not a bomb thrower. It’s the same dynamic that lets ventriloquist
Jeff Dunham blame his puppets. “Do you know how racist that is?” “That’s why it’s so fucking funny.” And for Miller, it also serves as a way out. When Fox airs pedophile jokes on Family Guy,
or Danny DeVito gets oiled up on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
there’s an implicit promise: the disgust is OK, because a big company is in on the
joke. Or when Sacha Baron Cohen plays to stereotypes
as Borat and Bruno, he earns fawning articles about his inventive costumes. We don’t get outraged when Bono is in on
the joke. But independent YouTubers can't buy legitimacy. The lore lends Miller credibility. “The offensive humor of Filthy Frank has
a purpose. I think it’s like a showcase of the semi-negative
sides of humanity that actually are very intertwined with the positive sides of humanity.” That credit doesn't roll over to other YouTube
stars. “I’ve been in the PewDiePie scene since
he had 200,000 subscribers.” “I believe the things PewDiePie says are
actually PewDiePie saying it. PewDiePie is just a nickname for Felix. Filthy Frank is an alter-ego. I see Joji as an artist, he created a character,
he’s writing a character, he’s trying to show the human embodiment of what you should
not be.” But there’s a bit of a contradiction for
Miller himself. He benefits from the success and fan base
the character brought him, but he doesn’t want to be tinged by its toxic appeal. In one video, he asked the fanbase to see
beyond his characters to understand him. He revealed his own life. He shared details about his worries, his then
college life, and his medical problems. It was a plea to be seen as an artist, not
an asshole. “People not knowing that I existed and that
it was just these guys really gave me a lot of stress. Because I’m a normal person, just like the
rest of you guys.” That video? It was reuploaded by a fan. George Miller deleted it. “It’s just a Spiderman mask I found at
Toys ‘R Us. I don’t want people to find out I watch
this crazy, insane stuff and I’m talking about it for a Vox video.” I can't believe that's a real sentence. Okay. Focus. Oh my god, I'm trapped in a nightmare. All right. Last one. How do you feel watching this? Same reaction? No? You feel numb, don't you? If you've been watching the news for the past
12 months, your reaction to that last clip was probably,
"meh.” There's a term for what you're experiencing. It's called the Overton Window. It's a concept in political science that says
there is this window of ideas the public is willing to accept. Everything inside the window is normal and
expected. Everything outside the window is radical,
ridiculous, or unthinkable. And the theory goes that if you want to move
the window, if you want to change what people think of
as acceptable, you shouldn't start here. You should start here, at the extreme. Because forcing people to consider an unthinkable
idea, even if they reject it, makes all less-radical
ideas seem more acceptable by comparison. It shifts the window in that direction. So if you want to make people more accepting
of gay relationships, you should start by arguing for gay marriage. You'll lose at first, but you'll start to
make things like domestic partnerships seem more plausible. Then civil unions start to seem normal too. Pretty soon, what started off as an unthinkable
idea seems very thinkable. Even boring. The point of the Overton Window is that people don't have to accept a ridiculous idea, they
just have to get used to it, have to hear enough to start comparing other
ideas to it. And that might be the scariest part of Trump's
first year in office. Not how abnormal he is, but how normal he makes everything else look
by comparison. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not normal. But it keeps happening. In just the past six months, we've had to
talk about the president sympathizing with white supremacists, retweeting anti-Muslim propaganda from a hate
group, calling a world leader short and fat while threatening nuclear war on Twitter. I'm not! Any of these stories would have been unthinkable under Obama or even Bush. But now they're things we have to seriously
talk about. That means getting used to a lot of new realities
over here, in Trumpland. And that's shifted the Overton Window in some really terrifying ways. Sounds so ominous. The Overton Window. The Overton Window. The most obvious is that we now just expect to be bullshitted. At the start of Trump's term, we were shocked at the White House lying about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd. It undermines the credibility of the entire White House Press Office on day one. Don't be so overly dramatic. But now? The president in no way has ever encouraged
violence. I don't think it's appropriate to lie from
the podium or any other place. I wouldn't say it was a lie. That's a pretty bold accusation. Yeah, she's a liar. What else is new? That's especially true for news coverage. There's Kellyanne Conway, Will the president do anything? What do you mean, “Will he do anything?” CNN's army of Trump parrots, Breitbart trolls, Alex Jones getting a major interview on national
television. Do you think of yourself as a journalist? I have some journalists that work for me. Normally these people would be relegated to the dark corners of the internet. But thanks to Trump, news networks feel compelled to put them on TV, to put them in the mainstream. Alex Jones isn't going away. He has millions of listeners and the ear of
our current president. God damn it, Megyn Kelly. But what's scarier is what's happening over
here — the stuff that feels kind of boring under
Trump. One of the weird side effects of this presidency is that big Trump debates are rarely just between Democrats and Republicans. They're often between Trump supporters and anti-Trump conservatives — conservatives who think Trump has gone too
far. I will note this is a two-Republican panel. These debates are really attractive to news
outlets. It's interesting when somebody bucks their
party. And so you've seen anti-Trump conservatives
take up more and more space in political debates. You can see that trend really clearly in the
makeup of CNN's panels, which now almost always feature anti-Trump conservatives. People like Iraq War architect Bill Kristol, who represented the far right in the Obama
years, You supported Sarah Palin. She's not a big business, big corporation
type. But now plays the part of the middle ground. He's a jackass. I'm just going to say it. The middle ground! No, no. You can find examples of middle-grounding
everywhere. After years of race baiting and toeing the
conservative line on Fox, Megan Kelly now has her own show on NBC. Bear with me, please. MSNBC, which normally leans left, has added two conservative hosts in Trump's
first year, both who made names for themselves by being critical of Trump during the campaign. The New York Times hired conservative columnist
Bret Stephens, a guy who's called anti-Semitism a "disease of the Arab mind" and who doubts the reality of climate change. When announcing their decision to hire Stephens, The New York Times explicitly cited his opposition to Trump during the campaign. The problem isn't that these are conservative
voices. Because we're comparing them to Trump trolls, they end up representing the middle or even the left of public debates. Your side, the left wing of America, lost
this election. The Overton Window has moved. The Overton Window. I regret making this joke already. The result is news coverage with dramatically lowered expectations, where success for Republicans doesn't mean
governing well, it just means not being Trump. Trump delivers a normal-sounding speech and suddenly he's presidential. I thought the tone was spot on. He owned that room. Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme
Court and Washington breathes a sigh of relief. The nomination and confirmation of Neil Gorsuch remains an enormously significant win. The bar is so low that there's no real room to have a serious policy debate about anything. It was nice to be sitting in that chamber
again. And going, “Oh, okay. Republicans like this. Democrats hate this.” It was almost normal last night. And you can see it especially in the coverage of the Republican tax reform bill. By any measure, the bill in the Senate was a disaster for
democracy. Republicans agreed to pass the bill before
it was even written. It was covered in sloppy handwritten amendments. They're sending around their edits as we speak. Can you tell me what that word is? And it passed in the dead of night on a party-line
vote, including a $250 billion error. That should be a nightmare that haunts Republicans into the midterms. But the next morning, Trump was tweeting about
Michael Flynn. And what should have been a stain on the GOP was reframed as a big accomplishment that Trump's tweeting was distracting from. Despite the big win, Russian election meddling shadows the Trump administration. What should be a celebratory weekend here
at the White House, instead all the attention is focused on Mike
Flynn. Stuff like the tax reform bill seems small
when Trump is making conspiracy theories and threatening
nuclear war. But at some point, Trump won't be president
anymore. And when that happens, we're going to have to reckon with a media
environment that's been trained to view traditional conservatives
as a huge relief. As the new middle ground. There’s a pretty awesome scene in The Fate
of the Furious where Jason Statham fights a bunch of armed
mercenaries on an airplane while holding an adorable baby in a carrier. I've always wondered how babies end up in
situations like this. What kind of hoops do you have to jump through
to cast babies in Hollywood? You were gonna shoot a baby? You sick bastard. Besides babysitting, delivering newspapers,
and, uh, wreath making, show business is the only industry that can
legally employ children under the age of 14 In fact, they’ve been in movies almost since
the birth of cinema. I hate myself so much. Casting a baby isn’t as simple as casting
a grown up actor though, For one: they don’t have to get their shift
at Starbucks covered to go to an audition, but mostly because there are some special
rules producers have to follow when casting an infant. For example, in California, babies can only
be on set for two consecutive hours per day, with actual work not exceeding 20 minutes
“under any circumstances.” The state’s child labor laws also require
that babies be at least 15 days old to be eligible for
a work permit. Which is good news for babies who can
just chill during their literal first days on earth, but not so good for productions that have
scenes with newborns because the thing is, if you’ve ever seen
a baby that’s two weeks old, you know that they don’t exactly look like
a newborn anymore. In order to get past this hurdle, productions
often try to cast preemies, who look newborn even when they’re the required
minimum of 15 days old, and in a lot of places outside of California
that’s perfectly legal. In 16 states there are actually zero regulations
regarding minimum age for baby employment in films and many other states have laws that are pretty
lax. In New Jersey for example a month-old baby
can work five hours a day, five days a week and in Louisiana they can be employed six
hours a day, six days a week. That’s more hours than I worked when I
bagged groceries after I graduated college and no I DO NOT want to talk about it. Most states also do nothing to protect the
money that babies make. Only a few places follow the Coogan Law, which requires that child actors be set up
with a blocked trust account to protect their earnings. The law is named after Jackie Coogan, an early 20th century child actor who was
in a number of Charlie Chaplin films including the American classic The Kid. As a child actor he reportedly earned as much
as $4 million, but his parents squandered all his money
by the time he became an adult. Because of his s***ty parents, moms and dads
in these states are required to set aside 15 persent of their
minor’s income in a Coogan account, which the child can access at the age of 18. Shooting with babies can be complicated,
but the film industry has a way of working around it. I would say 90 to 95 percent of jobs for babies
and toddlers are exclusive to twins and triplets because two babies can play one character. So there's two advantages there. Number one you can have them both come to
set at the same time. So if Twin A gets fussy they can call in Twin
B and they can use the babies back and forth. And the other thing is sometimes production
will split their call times so they'll have one baby come in let's say
at 9:00 in the morning have another baby come in at 2:00 in the afternoon. And so it extends their day. Also half of all twins and almost all triplets
are born premature, so productions get more working hours and
they look newborn. Sean Penn had a different solution. He directed a movie that nobody saw called
The Last Face where they put out a casting call for a one
day old baby. Since they were shooting in South Africa,
where you can cast minors with the permission of the Department of Labour, it was totally legal. Babies in show biz probably rake in big bucks
right? Unfortunately… not. Babies obviously can’t talk, so they are usually classified as an “under
5”, a term that refers to an actor with less than
five lines. It's interesting because you can have a baby
who is a recurring character on a TV show and has a name that the public can relate
to. But a lot of those babies are only getting
paid between 200 and 300 dollars a day. So babies don’t really make a ton of money. And casting them sounds like kind of a nightmare
-- are there any other options? Cut to American Sniper: Not all of them are as fake as this one, but plenty of productions resort to using
fake babies, at least for part of the shoot. Hey! Tend to my daughter please, right now! It is quite common that you know they’ll
use fake babies for the far away scenes and then you know they'll
hire a baby when they need a close up shot or a
face shot. And there are robot babies out there that
look pretty convincing. And by convincing I mean terrifying. I never thought I’d use a Mandy Moore clip
in one of my videos but here we go: They have this one robotic baby. It’s weird guys. I have two very emotional scenes where I’m
talking to a newborn in the hospital and I go to put my hand on the robotic baby and it’s like vibrating and like making
these weird movements. Babies on screen aren’t going away anytime
soon. So until producers find a cheap and easy CGI
fix for the baby dilemma, it looks like they’ll continue to have to
work within the regulations that are set up. Or they'll use demonic robot infants who will
take over humanity. “So once I added your RSS feed to our site,
every single article that is published on Vox.com is getting sent through a feed and
we’re just like automatically creating a video for it.” “Oh my god that is so crazy. Every single article through our feed.” “Every single article.” This is Wibbitz. It’s one of the companies automating news
video production. You might call this the robot coming for my
job. “So this article, our algorithm will just
intelligently summarize it into just a quick 30 second to 1 minute video. And then based on the keywords in the article,
it’s gonna match relevant media to it.” It’s pretty impressive when you think about
all the ways it could get confused. “In the beginning it was very rough. People with the same names would confuse it. Turkey the country and turkey the animal would
be another example.” Their product was built with machine learning
algorithms, and it became more accurate over time. The result is a video made in a few seconds
that’s not drastically different from what a human would make in several hours, given
the same constraints. Wibbitz is part of a rapidly growing industry
of so-called “AI-powered” products. The number of companies mentioning artificial
intelligence in their earnings calls has skyrocketed in the past 3 years. But the truth is that the term “artificial
intelligence” isn’t very well defined. “What happens with AI is that initially
lots of things are called artificial intelligence. It used to be the expert systems; the kind
of systems that fly airplanes were called artificial intelligence. Then once they were working and routine and
everyone takes them for granted, then they are not called AI anymore.” Right now when people talk about AI, they’re
mostly talking about “machine learning” - a subfield of computer science that dates
back at least to the 1950s. And the methods that are popular today aren’t
fundamentally different from algorithms invented decades ago,
So why all the interest and investment right now? I asked Manuela Veloso, the head of the machine
learning department at Carnegie Mellon. “You have to understand that there is something
very important about these past years. It's data. We humans became collectors of data. Fitbits, GPSes, pictures, I mean look how
much credit card purchases, how much data is around.” Certain machine learning algorithms really
thrive on big data, as long as computers have the processing power to handle it, which they
do now. If computers are the cannon and the internet
is gunpowder, these are the fireworks and they have only just begun. In his book, Pedro Domingos offers a nice
simple way of understanding supervised machine learning. He says:
“Every algorithm has an input and an output: the data goes into the computer, the algorithm
does what it will with it, and out comes the result. Machine learning turns this around: in goes
the data and the desired result and out comes the algorithm that turns one into the other.” The algorithms are
trained to find statistical relationships in the data that allow it to make good guesses
when presented with new examples. That means we no longer have an easy rule
for what kinds of tasks computers can and cannot do. “Ten years ago, I could have said with confidence,
we know how this works to computerize something you need to understand all the steps, then
you script the steps and get a dumb machine to do it and just follow mechanistically the
process that you would have followed. But now we have machines, I shouldn't say we,
I don't make them. People have developed machines that learn
from data. That makes it harder to say what set of jobs
are going to become substituted, readily substituted by automation, and which will be complemented.” A study by the McKinsey Global Institute gets
at this question by looking at the many tasks that make up 800 different occupations. And they grouped those tasks into 7 categories:
3 that are highly susceptible to automation with currently-demonstrated technologies,
and 4 that are not. “Things like managing people, they include
things like creativity, they include things like decision-making or judgment. And caring work that requires empathy or human
interaction, with an emotional content to associate with it. Those are much harder things to automate.” The report concluded that while most jobs
include some tasks that can be automated, less than 5% of occupations can be fully automated. “So this idea of occupations and jobs changing
may actually be a bigger effect than the question of jobs disappearing, although of course,
there are some jobs that will disappear or at least decline.” That’s because most jobs are made up of
a bunch of different tasks and most of today’s AI can only do one task. Don’t get me wrong. They can be really good at that task. A deep neural network watched 5000 hours of
BBC news with captions and now it can read lips  better than human professionals. And machine learning algorithms trained on
images of tumors can predict lung cancer survival better than human pathologists. The mistake is to assume that these focused
applications can add up to a more general intelligence. Or that they learn like we do, which is simply
not the case. When they get the right answer it’s tempting
to assume they understand what they see. Only when they make a mistake do we get a
glimpse at how different their process is from our own. It’s pattern recognition masquerading as
understanding. That’s why researchers can easily trick
a learning algorithm into mislabeling a picture. “A lot of machine learning, at this point,
is very superficial and very brittle. It's based on immediately observable features,
which may or may not be essential to what's going on.” Last year the director Oscar Sharp produced
a short film that was written by a neural network trained on sci-fi movie scripts. “The principle is completely constructed
of the same time.” “It was all about you to be true.” “You didn’t even see the movie with the
rest of the base.” “I don’t know.” “I don’t care.” It’s great. It makes no sense. Because it doesn’t have what a 5-year-old
child has, which is an abstract model of how the world works, why things happen, or what
a story is. And why should it? We evolved these things over millions of years. “So there's a lot it can do, much more than
before but I mean, we humans are amazing, I think. We are very broad, see.” AI applications will keep getting better. Robot voices used to sounds like this. Now they can sound like this. Which means Wibbitz will so be able to offer
natural-sounding narration. Algorithms are also starting to analyze video
frames. IBM trained a system to select the scenes
for a movie trailer. So instead of just pulling generic clips,
Wibbitz might pull specific ones. But there’s no clear path toward a more
human-like intelligence which includes common sense, curiosity, and abstract reasoning. “I think AI is as good as the content that goes through it. So you can’t really expect AI to do magic
which some people expect it to do.” Machine learning algorithms can translate
37 languages but they don’t know what a chair is for. They’re nothing like us, and that’s what
makes them such a powerful tool. Wibbitz will never make this video, but AI
could help me make a better one. April 19th, 2017 will always be a big date
in my mind. I get very sentimental with things like that. And I'm like this was the day it all started. This is the beginning of a whole new journey,
it really is. This is the beginning of a whole new life
I feel like. Ok. This is week one of the video diary. Last week I had an endoscopy done. So this week I got the letter saying all is
well, I'm all good for the surgery. I'm just going to go through a couple quick
questions for you. Did you still want Dr. Shope as your surgeon? Oh yeah sure. Ok we'll make sure he's doing your surgery. After I've lost a significant amount of weight
with the surgery I expect my life to get easier in certain areas. When it comes to school, like I said mobility,
climbing steps, or sitting in smaller desks. I'll have an easier time shopping for clothes. We're going too...! Cheesecake Factory! I didn't really consider bariatric surgery
for myself until my mom was considering it for herself and that was what kind of sealed
the deal for me. We are from Nigeria in West Africa. The notion that we have in Africa is the bigger
you are, the money you have to spend. So when we came here all our weight just grew
up. And it was something else. I got up to like 50 pounds, yeah, since we
came here. And then you want for your children what you
missed as a child, you don't want them to miss it, eat whatever you want to eat. OK so I decided that I wanted McDonalds for
breakfast. Hi can I get one bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddle
meal? Large hot caramel mocha. I think a lot about college will be different
from high school. I want to be a lot more social in college,
I actually want to join a lot more clubs. And now I have this kind of surgery thrown
in there, the after effects, the after math of that. Good morning it's April 19th its the day of
surgery. I'm really happy I'm really excited. Mom are you excited? Yay! I'm having vertical sleeve gastrectomy today
and I decided to do this because, well I'm like 230 pounds overweight. I've thought a lot about the positive life
changes that are going to come from this and I'm really really excited for them. I'm happy I'm chill at the same time I don't
know. I'm mellow but excited I don't know. But I'm not nervous. Well if I was gonna rate it from 1 to 10. 10 being like the worst pain I've ever felt,
it was probably, maybe around a 7. Nasea, pain in my abdomenal area, I threw
up at least twice. Well I get full very quickly, I also, you
know, I get hungry quicker than I expected. So a few weeks ago I notice that my weight
went up. There's no way that I could've eaten enough
food to maintain my weight. I was really sad I like didn't tell my mom
for like 4 days after I weighed myself. I went through some like chats and things. People who have had bariatric surgery, after
3 or 4 weeks their weight will stall, or go up even. And it's not necessarily uncommon. Initially, my intentions were to go to college. But due to financial issues I decided that
the best thing to do was for me to defer for a year. So, I'm working 40 hours a week. So, I'm going to be saving at least half of
my income, for school. So, I just finished with my first day of my
first job ever, which was at Checkers. Really they just had me on the grill, flipping
patties. I was on my feet the whole time as I expects. I did, definitely, get hot at times. My feet kinda hurt, but it was my first day. So, me and my sister decided that we were
going to start walking to Safeway. The first time we did this, it was such a
mess. We were so weak! But we stuck through it because we're champions. What are we?! Champions! What are we?! Champions! I'm so serious they're gonna kick us out of
this goddamn community. Overall, I just felt like Checkers wasn't
the job for me. It was just so uncomfortable. I was also slow because of my lethargy from
being so hot all the time. I interviewed at Safeway, and I was hired
same day. It's cold in there, because it's a grocery
store. It's much more comfortable for me. I had my surgery about 4 and a half months
ago and by bariatric standards, my progress isn't that good. But, I mean by my own personal standards,
50 pounds in 4 and a half months, is great. What I decided to do, is meal-prepping. I made sure that, like, every bowl I made
had at least, 30 grams of protein in it. So, I went shopping recently and I was trying
on the same sizes that I was wearing pre-op. I was noticing that they too big on me. And then I tried on things that were, 14-16,
and they fit. And I was like, what you talking about? I was just so excited. And in the dressing room, they were playing
music, I was dancing along, I was so happy. As I was looking through the videos, I actually
don't think I saw a single video of a teenager. I feel like when you're younger you have a
bit less control in your life. So, you have to be able to adapt to all the
changes that are coming your way regardless of whether you asked for them. So, the first few months I was really in this
mindset of like, I don't have to do as much, because the, like, restrictive space in my
stomach is enough to just, to just on it's own help me lose a lot of weight, without
me having to put in much effort. And think that is true for a lot of bariatric
patients, but it wasn't really for me. I think it helped me grow as a person. For me it wan't perfect, it wasn't super super
ideal. But I wasn't just gonna sit back and be upset
about it and just let it happen. I'm not that type of person. So, quick update for you guys. I've been super super dedicated to me and my mom's business, I've been putting in a ton of time and effort. I've also been applying to colleges and applying to scholarships. Right now, I weigh around 310. Bring my total weight loss to 76 pounds in 8 months! It's beautiful how life can change like that so unexpectedly. It's just been absolutely amazing. It's hard to overestimate just how much
broadband changed the internet. Back when you had to connect to the internet using
dial-up, information traveled slowly. Pages took forever to load and watching
this video would have been impossible. Today's internet is a completely
different creature, which is why it's so puzzling that the last time Congress
passed a major legislation for regulating the internet, it was 1996. And
so the task of regulating the Internet has fallen to five unelected bureaucrats:
the Federal Communications Commission. As the tools we use to access the Internet
have changed, they've had to decide what kinds of rules the companies that
provide those tools should have to follow. And now under a new commissioner
appointed by President Trump the FCC has altered those rules in a way that could
fundamentally change how we use the Internet. Take a deep breath. This decision will not break the Internet. This decision
puts the Federal Communications Commission on the wrong side of history.
It creates a free-for-all, that we have not had on the Internet in the past and
that's very very dangerous. It's gonna be f****d. What we're seeing here is the cable-ization of the Internet. This is a dark day for innovation, this is a dark day
for small business, it is a dark day for consumers. First, let's define what most
people mean when they talk about Net Neutrality. A good working consensus
model that most would agree with is the idea that Internet Service Providers
should treat all traffic more or less the same on their network. This means the
companies whose wires and towers we use to access the Internet,
can't block or slow down data from certain sites or apps. They can't make
special deals to move certain data along faster than everybody else's. Internet
content providers like Facebook, Google, and Netflix - they love Net Neutrality
because it means that even if some of their products, like streaming this video
for example, take up a lot more bandwidth than others like email, Internet Service
Providers can't charge them extra for getting all that data to our phones and
computers. Which is exactly why ISPs like Comcast Verizon and AT&T hate it.
If they could charge Netflix and YouTube extra for those big packets of data, they
could make a lot of money and now that the FCC has scrapped the net neutrality
rules they almost certainly will. ISPs will also be able to charge customers
more to access sites or apps that take up more bandwidth. And some argue this
will mean more choices for consumers. My sense is this will be fantastic,
right because my daughter chews through my Verizon data cap every month and all
she ever does is Instagram. So if I could pay like 20 bucks and get her a phone
that I can text with her and talk with her, but would allow her to use Instagram
and get her off my standard data plan that would be great. But by privileging
established tools like Instagram, these plans could make it a lot harder for new
ones to break through. It's a time when more than ever we want to encourage and
keep open a playing field for new services, new platforms, to be able to get
in the game and provide a real alternative.
I mean imagine a world in which we were all still stuck with MySpace. I don't
think, you know, that's what we want, but Net Neutrality is part of why that's not
what we have. Until 2005 Internet Service Providers were classified as common
carriers which meant the FCC could regulate them like phone companies. In
the Internet's early days these regulations kept phone companies from
charging customers extra for using dial-up services like AOL and when phone
companies started offering DSL broadband service over their lines, common carrier
rules force them to let their competitors use those lines too. Which
meant consumers had tons of choices when it came to picking an Internet Service
Provider. A 2003 page from the Washington Post
lists 18 different DSL options for the Washington, D.C. region. Today,
residents have less than half as many choices. So what happened? In 2005 the FCC
did the same thing it did in 2017. It said ISPs weren't common carriers and it
stopped regulating them like phone companies and without that regulation
ISPs became virtual monopolies. Today, two-thirds of Americans live in areas
with just one choice for high-speed Internet.
And if their ISPs start blocking, slowing down, or charging more as a
result of this rule change, their options are to put up with it or go without the
Internet. Despite the fact that majorities of both Republican and
Democratic voters support Net Neutrality, it doesn't look like Congress or the FCC
will be bringing it back anytime soon. Everything in Star Wars has a story. Every character, every weapon, every planet,
every ship. It has one of the most involved taxonomies
of any movie universe ever: There are visual dictionaries, museums, a wiki site — all
dedicated to the origins of the characters. There are rules for what belongs in this universe. It has a certain sound, a certain look, a
certain feel. And it’s easy to feel like this galaxy has
always had this distinct, clear identity. But if you go back —
“I have a bad feeling about this” — all the way back, to one of the very first
Star Wars spin-offs? That really wasn’t the case. "Come on Mala, let's see a little smile." There, that's better. This is the Star Wars Holiday Special, a TV
variety show that aired on CBS on November 17, 1978. It tells the story of Chewbacca’s journey
home to his family to celebrate a holiday called Life Day. The entire cast of the first Star Wars film,
which debuted in 1977, made an appearance. There is a lot going on here. Chewbacca’s dad watches virtual reality
softcore porn starring singer Diahann Carroll. “Oh, oh … We are excited, aren’t we?” The Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur plays
a cantina bartender. The American rock band Jefferson Starship
performs in a hologram music video. And The Carol Burnett Show’s Harvey Korman
plays a crossdressing cooking show host. It’s bad. Incomprehensibly bad. Can we cut tape? Cut tape now, this is not allowed. You promised. Nobody is allowed to mention this. No, you can't, it's not funny — it's so bad— And I mean this kindly if
George sees i: it's so bad it's not funny Do you remember making this Christmas
Special? I think it was 1978. No you don't remember it? So it doesn’t exist in your... No it doesn’t exist. It doesn't exist. What if I were to tell you that I had a little piece of tape right now? But to a large extent, the Star Wars universe has been shaped and explored through spin-offs
just like this — through novels, comics, and games outside of the movies. And the Holiday Special is a fascinating glimpse
into that universe before it became codified, when we were all still figuring out what Star
Wars was. When Star Wars first came out, a lot of people expected
it to flop. At the time, Hollywood was dominated by gritty
dramas with morally ambiguous heroes. Even the most successful science fiction films
were slow to turn a profit. Then came Star Wars: a good vs. evil space
opera fantasy film inspired by Flash Gordon serials and Japanese samurai epics. It was a hard sell. Even getting theaters to screen it was a challenge
— Fox Studios had to force theaters that wanted the highly-anticipated movie The Other
Side of Midnight to screen Star Wars as well. Then, things went a little differently than
expected. The movie had an 18-month run in theaters,
ultimately grossing over $460 million. It became one of the highest-grossing films
in history. During the 1977 holiday season, the Star Wars
craze caught everyone by surprise -- so much that toy companies had to sell action figure
IOUs. So for about 9 dollars, you buy a cardboard
envelope, the recipient mails a certificate to the manufacturer, who will send the dolls
later.” As production on the second film, progressed through 1978, director George Lucas wanted to keep Star Wars on everybody’s
minds through the next holiday season. So he approved CBS to produce the Holiday
Special with a dream team of variety show creators and a budget of about $1 million. But making a song-and-dance version of a visually
stunning space opera was a tricky combination from the start. “It is inexplicable to put those two genres
together.” That’s Lenny Ripps. He was brought in as a co-writer to work on
the wookiee scenes. “I suspect that there are a lot of Star Wars fans who hate me. But you but you see, at the time, I didn't
feel the pressure. Because it was not where it is now.” And that led to lines like this: There simply wasn’t a precedent for what
the expanded world of Star Wars should look like. “I think it was early on enough that you
could play with it. And you can't play with it now. You were still able to have fun with Star
Wars, to look at it as something that's not so culturally important, that not
to adhere to every rule makes you a heretic.” After the special aired — with Lucas’
name nowhere to be seen in the credits — it was never released again. Lucas allegedly said that he’d smash every
copy with a sledgehammer if he could. “He has disavowed and disowned Star Wars
holiday special. I mean actively. ACTIVELY. “It was very very important to him to you
have control of the universe and he lost control of the universe here.” This bizarre TV special was a rocky first
foray into what the world of Star Wars looked like outside of the movies. But it certainly wasn’t the last. There have since been hundreds of Star Wars
books, video games, comic books, and TV episodes. Some of them were critical and commercial
successes, like Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn novels, or the Shadows of the Empire multimedia project. And their vision fell in line with the universe
Lucas had created. Others — like comics with Jaxxon, a green
anthropomorphized rabbit, or straight-to-TV movies featuring Charal, a shape-shifting
witch — didn’t exactly feel like they belonged in Star Wars. All of this material became known as the Expanded
Universe. It contributed to building out this massive
fictional world in its own way. But it was messy. There was a lot of material of varying quality,
and contradicting plot points — like clashing backstories about Boba Fett’s real name. So in the early 2000s, Lucasfilm developed
a continuity database called the Holocron. It divided the canon into a hierarchy, with
the movies at the top, and things like the Holiday Special on a lower priority level. Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm
in 2012 changed all that. The production company put together a team
responsible for giving the cinematic universe a simpler, more cohesive continuity. Only the original films and prequels, plus
the Clone Wars movie and TV show were considered official storylines. Everything else in the Expanded Universe was
branded as “Legends” — and deemed non-canon to the franchise. For many fans, that felt like losing a richly
detailed world. Today, the vast majority of the Star Wars
wiki articles are about things that aren’t considered part of the official Star Wars
world anymore. But even though these stories aren’t recognized
like they used to be, the impact of the ideas behind them can be seen today. The current trilogy is telling new stories,
but many themes — like Han and Leia’s son turning to the Dark Side, Luke’s Jedi
academy, and a new version of the Empire – all have their roots in the Expanded Universe. More than 40 years after the first release, Star Wars hasn't stopped evolving. And the massive, messy body of work that lives outside the movies continues to shape the way we perceive that world. I’m so loyal to George, and I owe him so much, he at one time said, would you consider playing an Obi-Wan type character handing Excalibur down to the
next generation? And I said when would that be? And at the time he said around, aw around 2011. TIME magazine named "The Silence Breakers"
Person of the Year for 2017. These are the women and men who shared their
stories of assault, harassment and hostility and publicly named their alleged abusers in
Hollywood, the media, and politics. But if you look closer, there's something
else on the cover. A hint that there are many more who don’t
— or can’t — break that silence. So while 2017 was a landmark year for talking
about sexual assault, harassment, and rape, a majority of the women and men who’ve felt
violated don’t speak out at all. For every 1,000 rapes, it's estimated that
only 310 are reported — that's just under one third. In fact, it's believed that rape is the most
underreported crime. Of those reported, only a fraction lead to
arrest. And only a fraction of those arrests lead
to prosecution. And only a fraction of those prosecuted are
incarcerated. And, when it comes to harassment, Well, a U.S. government report found that
when men and women were sexually harassed at work, the least common response was to
formally report it. Only 30% of people did. That means that for every three that reported, another
7 remained silent. Another study cited in that EEOC report found
that of the people who reported harassment at work, 75% faced some sort of retaliation
for doing so. Which explains why so few people report their
harassment: Fear. In fact, fear is the number one reason people
don’t report. Fear of retaliation for speaking out. And this is why the Silence Breakers are a
big deal. 2017 certainly feels like a year in which
many, many, more people are speaking up in spite of that fear. But there’s just so much more we don’t
know. Even the statistics cited in this video — by
their own admission — overrepresent the experiences of straight white women, and probably
don’t accurately reflect the experiences of women of color, men, lesbians, gays, or
transgender people. Which is to say that the stories of the few
silence breakers that have come forward are really just the tip of the elbow for all the
people remaining silent. I have to admit that when it comes to food,
I’m a total sucker. Whether it’s sugar or grease or carbs, pretty
much bring it on! And I spend a lot of time in Montana, so for
me, that medium rare, grass fed ribeye steak? Pretty much as good as it gets. I know. I don’t do it often and when I do, I gotta
admit I feel a little conflicted. And that’s for a lot of reasons, including
the planet. But how big of a problem is what I eat? I mean, does it really make much of a dent
in something as huge as global warming? It turns out, what we put on our plates matters
a lot. About 25 percent of all the global climate
change problems we’re seeing can be attributed back to the food and the choices that we’re
actually making about what we eat on a daily basis. This is greater than all of the cars on the
planet. In fact, it’s about twice as much global
warming pollution as the cars. Ben Houlton and Maya Almaraz study the connection
between climate and diet at the University of California, Davis. They track how the way we produce food creates
greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. With their data, the team has crunched the
numbers to figure out how much carbon pollution is produced by different foods and different
diets. A lot of people feel really helpless when
it comes to climate change, like they can’t make a difference. And what our research is showing is that your
personal decisions really can have a big impact. So, take that grass fed ribeye steak I love. If you really look at everything that went
into making a single serving of beef, you end up emitting about 330 grams of carbon. That’s like driving a car three miles. Now, if I choose to have chicken instead,
there’s more than a five-fold drop in emissions. Switch to fish and you see the number go down
even more. Now, look at veggies. If I swapped beef out entirely for lentils,
well, I’m down to practically nothing! So, why does beef and lamb, too, for that
matter - pack such a powerful punch to the planet? Livestock accounts for a little over 14 percent
of global greenhouse gas emissions. If that sort of seems low to you, consider
it’s about equal to transportation. We’re talking all the cars, trucks, planes,
trains and ships on the planet combined! This is partly because ruminant animals like
cows and sheep - they’re just gassy! And the methane they produce is at least 25
times more potent than carbon dioxide. Plus it takes lot of land, fertilizer and
about a billion tons of grain to feed all that livestock. And you could feed 3.5 billion people with
that grain; if we were just directly eating these grains ourselves, it would eliminate
a lot of the CO2 that is emitted from cattle production. So it’s clear that meat has a pretty big
carbon load, but it’s also worth remembering that not all livestock is raised equally. In parts of the American West, for instance,
ranchers are working to raise livestock in ways that actually help restore the land. And they’re experimenting with ways that
soil and grasslands can be used to keep carbon pollution out of the air. But even these sustainable ranchers will really
tell you, we’re probably eating too much meat. I know a lot of people who if you don’t
serve them meat for lunch or dinner, they’re kind of like "well, when is the meat coming out?" It's to the point now where the U.S. actually
has one of the highest meat footprints per capita. So, what about not eating meat at all? Vegan is the way to go for the least impact
on the planet, but it’s not that much different, in terms of emissions, than say, a vegetarian
diet. And the team found that the environmental
impact of the Mediterranean diet is pretty similar to vegan and vegetarian diets. It’s a lot less meat-heavy than what Americans
are used to - so, fish and poultry a few times a week; beef maybe once a month, plenty of
plant-based foods, and of course, loads of olive oil. Eliminating like 90 percent of your meat intake
is more important than eliminating all of your meat. We don’t all have to be vegan. We don’t all even have to be vegetarian. If we can just reduce our meat intake, every
little bit helps. And if you can bring it down a lot, you can
help the climate a lot. If we all just switched to a Mediterranean
diet, it could actually solve 15 percent of global warming pollution by 2050. If everyone were to move towards it, that
is equivalent to taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets, in terms
of vehicle emissions each year. So, that kind of a footprint is big-time. But say you still want more meat than the
Mediterranean diet recommends? Just cutting down your portion size to the
doctor-recommended 4 ounces can reduce your emissions by half. That’s huge! In fact, the doctors are telling us we’re
eating about twice as much meat as we really need for a healthy diet. The good news is, we are listening to our
doctors. In the last decade, there’s been a 19 percent
drop in the amount of beef we eat. All these things that you're already being
told are good for you also happen to be good for the planet. So what we eat really is a big part of the
climate puzzle. I mean, we may not all be able to afford an
electric car or putting solar panels on our house, but we all have to eat every day. And these choices we make can add up to really
big numbers. And since meat has a pretty big carbon load,
we need to be thoughtful about how much we eat. As for that ribeye steak that I really love,
I am honestly trying to cut back! Maybe it’s just a smaller piece of steak;
or simply swapping out a meat dish for a veggie burger. It may seem like a small thing, but it really
does add up to big impacts. Hey, so what did you have for dinner last
night? Find out how your choices are affecting global
warming by taking a quiz at climate.universityofcalifornia.edu or watch one of our other episodes to discover
what happened when I brought a box of donuts to MIT. When you think of factory labor this might come to mind: Dangerous conditions with overcrowded assembly lines of people completing repetitive tasks for long hours. But the workforce in manufacturing is facing a major overhaul. Although automation and offshoring have shrunk
manufacturing jobs drastically over the past few decades, the industry is actually adding
jobs now. But they look really different. Manufacturers are quick to adapt automation
and change the way we make our products – now we need to change how we “make” our workers,
and there's one solution with bipartisan support. More apprenticeships; youth apprenticeships;
apprenticeships; apprenticeship; two-year apprenticeship. I'll be signing an executive order to expand
apprenticeships and vocational training to help all Americans find a rewarding career,
earn a great living, and support themselves and their families and love going to work
in the morning. Apprenticeships differ from other training
programs in a few ways: They have to offer combined classroom or conceptual learning
with on-the-job mentored training. Apprentices must be employed and paid by the
firm and they have to last at least a year ending with a degree, certification or both. This means that apprentices earn on-the-job
experience while building an educational foundation simultaneously – and make money while they’re
doing it. But there’s a marketing problem in the United
States. When Americans think of apprenticeships they
often see think of this “old-timey” training for blue-collar work – and that’s not
our fault. The vast majority of apprenticeships in America
are concentrated in the construction field and they rely heavily on contributions from
Union laborers. Even then, we don't have that many apprenticeships
to begin with. Here in the US a four year degree has been
seen as a golden ticket to economic mobility and higher paying jobs and this blue-collar-bias
with apprenticeships has Americans viewing it as a lesser alternative to higher education. In countries like Germany and Australia, students
can get an apprenticeship in nearly any profession from IT to banking to hospitality and advanced
manufacturing. Many of these students go on to complete a
four year degree on top of the certifications. Americans are already struggling with the
rising costs of higher education and the job market isn’t making it easy to see a return. So while thousands of people came out of colleges
with degrees in highly desired STEM fields, 74 percent of them are currently working in
unrelated professions. And yet, manufacturers are citing a problem. The manufacturing industry is projecting three
and a half million new jobs over the next decade – two million of which, they claim,
won’t be filled due to a “skills gap.” The skills needed? Higher proficiency in Math, computers and
tech. So despite there being plenty of people with
the degrees they’re not often looking to manufacturing for work and there could be
a few reasons for that. We have employers that want workers that know
high school math and read at a college level and want to pay them ten dollars an hour and
then they feel that there's a skill shortage. For me, what there is is a wage shortage. And maybe it's a bit of both – the manufacturing
industry has been working to change years of public perception. They think of the old manufacturing – The
mills, dark, dirty environment – we have to change that perception. This stigma has followed the manufacturing
industry since the Industrial Revolution, when people worked for hours on end for little
pay. In England, so called “apprentices” were
often orphaned children recruited to work in dangerous conditions in exchange for pennies
or room and board. With the development of labor unions and the
implementation of child labor laws conditions in factories drastically changed. Wages went up, hours went down, and then companies
began to automate and offshore jobs. Foreign labor and industrial robots allowed
manufacturers to lower costs and increase production. It also cost the US nearly 6 million jobs
in a single decade. But now, as automation progresses, some of
the factories are coming back. The new jobs offered, though, are far from
low-skilled assembly line work. Ten years ago, 15 years ago we could have
a mechanic and then we would have an electrician. And then you had maybe a robotics person. Well, now we need all those skills in one
individual. t's like a Swiss army knife. You want somebody with different skill sets
and the new industry and the new economy. That's what it demands. That “swiss army knife” of a worker needs
a combination of skills but not technically the full proficiency of an electrical or mechanical
engineer. What’s needed is something in-between. Companies like BMW in the Carolinas use apprenticeships
to build the skilled workforce that they need by raising the technical proficiency of an
existing workforce, which is what apprenticeships do best. It doesn't really feel like work. It feels like I'm just training all the time. I'm always trying to learn, and our supervisors
put us into positions where we need to learn. In countries like Germany, apprenticeships
are built into their educational system. Nearly 60% of German high school students
enter an apprenticeship. And as a result their youth unemployment rate
is one of the lowest in the world. It also helps in the long-run: Apprenticeship
programs have been considered a staple in Germany’s economic strength. Apprenticeships offer a direct connection
between education and employment making it a natural fit for the ebbs and flows of the
economy. About half of apprentices land full time jobs
after their training is finished. In Germany the view is that a worker is an
investment rather than of a cost. You assume that the worker is going to be
there a long time. So of course you want to invest in making
that worker as productive as possible. Yet, in the United States, employers are wary
to spend time and money on training without concrete numbers that show a return on investment. When you talk about apprentice program and
training it's really hard to come up with your hard core number. If you do it just numbers as a budgeting does
a little bit intangible but when you see the benefits of the workforce – How's that working
towards quality here – it's very tangible, in my opinion, the quality of that investment. BMW has set up shop in South Carolina and
is utilizing a German-inspired, American-made apprenticeship program. The Carolina’s are unique in that they have
a state-funded workforce development program that pairs companies with technical schools
in the area. This allows companies to craft employees to
the needs of the industry with custom-built training programs while directly communicating
with apprentices and their needs. I really thought like OK they're going to
like work like crazy and then I'm not going to be able to get caught up on my school and
things are going to suffer. No they told us that education is first. Doing that and having the flexibility in our
work schedules really helps out. So when I'm learning something at school I
come here and I'm actually doing it more hands-on I'm using it in a practical field. The companies invest in their apprentices
for 2 years, covering their tuition at the technical college and offering on-the-job
training in between. Apprentices finish the program with an associate's
degree, one or more certifications and, often times, a full-time job with the company. Even if the apprentices don’t take the job
offer, it’s not a technically a huge loss to the company since they actually work. Employers can pay apprentices less than they
pay full-time employees, but they’re still contributing to the company as they learn. The more we can bring up the technical skill
within the workforce. I think we're all going to ultimately benefit
in better products. Higher wages and things of that nature. So yeah, I look at it as a long term investment,
maybe, you know, in the U.S. workforce. Automation is a present reality in manufacturing
and it's continuously raising the bar for factory labor. It's true that companies need to invest in
robotics to improve their production lines but workers can't be left behind as a result. While the days of interchangeable employees
are coming to a close, there's a long way to go before humans become obsolete. Successfully investing in this automated future
starts with developing the human workforce. In 1954, Ann Hodges was hit by a meteorite. "What time of the day was it?" "It was 12:45." "12:45." "And this comes through the roof and hits you." She was napping, when the rock crashed through her ceiling and bounced off the radio into her stomach. Because it was small, her injuries were minor. "The first person ever to be hit by a meteorite. Imagine that." But much bigger objects have collided with Earth. 65 million years ago, a rock ten kilometers wide slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. An event that likely caused dinosaurs to go extinct. Elsewhere, mammoth meteorites have been discovered everywhere from The US to Russia, and blasted craters in North America, Australia, and Africa. Falling objects from the sky have always fascinated humans, but they have also made us fearful, making us wonder whether someday a giant asteroid could come for us. "Run!" In movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon those fears are played out. [clock ticking] "One minute!" And heroes save the day. "We all gotta die right? I'm the guy who gets to do it saving the world." "YEAHHHH!" You might think this only happens in Hollywood, but that’s not exactly true. There is a small chance, a of a large asteroid hitting Earth. So scientists are getting ready, just in case. "Asteroids" are hunks of rock that weren't big enough to become planets when the solar system formed. Smaller asteroids are called "meteoroids" and when they fall through Earth’s atmosphere they become "meteors". If they make it to the surface, they are called "meteorites". Between 1988 and 2017, NASA counted over 700 fireballs created by objects entering our atmosphere. In order to detect asteroids, NASA takes multiple pictures of the night sky and uses computers to scan for moving objects. As Earth orbits, scientists make several observations from different locations to detect how close the asteroids are to Earth. Here, the nearest objects are labelled in green. At least 16,000 of them have been classified as “near-Earth”, meaning they orbit within roughly a third of the distance from the Sun. And based on the object’s speed and brightness, scientists can map a trajectory to predict whether it will collide with Earth. The impact energy of a 10-meter object, just a little smaller than a school bus, would be 100 kilotons. But the larger the object, the nastier the impact. A meteorite just a little larger than The Great Pyramid at Giza, at about 150 meters, would generate 288 megatons of energy. For reference, the number of megatons in the payload of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb was only 15. But asteroids don’t need to hit Earth to cause damage. In 2013, a 17-meter-wide meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia before it ever reached the ground and the resulting shockwave released about 440 kilotons of energy that damaged structures and injured over 1,500 people. Following that event in Russia, US politicians called on NASA to ask about the threat of future collisions. "I said, 'If we saw one coming toward Omaha, what could we they about it?' [Scientists] said they could use a laser." "First of all, it would not be practical to have a laser powerful enough to split it in half." Their questions sounded like plot lines for a new blockbuster, but their ideas weren’t actually that far off. "How far inland could a reasonably sized asteroid make water come in?" Scientists have analyzed how asteroid impacts would kill people and getting hit by the "ejecta", meaning space rock and other debris it kicks up, is one of the least likely ways to die. The most lethal cause is violent wind generated by the impact blast, followed by scorching heat, and massive tsunamis. "The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive casualties and destruction of infrastructure are very small, but the potential consequences are so large that it makes sense to take the risk seriously." "All agents are go." In Armageddon, annihilation is avoided by nuking the killer asteroid. But in real life, our ability to prevent impact depends on how big it is and when we detect it. A 140-meter-wide space rock is large enough to destroy a city and if it were on a path to collide with Earth in less than a year, the only thing to do would be evacuate the impact zone. But if we are lucky enough to spot an asteroid seven to ten years out, NASA would have enough time to try deflecting the object, which they could do a number of ways. First, NASA could launch a spacecraft to act as a battering ram and if the asteroid is far enough out, it would only need to be pushed a few centimeters off course to avoid hitting Earth. Right now, NASA is in the early stages of "DART": The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which will try out this approach by trying it on a non-threatening asteroid, called “Didymoon”, which will pass near Earth in 2022. Another method would be using something called a "gravity tractor", which pulls the asteroid in a new direction and points it away from Earth. Theoretically, a spacecraft could do this by hovering near an object to create a slight gravitational attraction that could be used to redirect the asteroid. The third option would be to go full Hollywood and use a nuclear device to vaporize part of the surface. "What you can do, in principle, if you have a very powerful laser, is to cause jets of material heated by the laser to fly off of the asteroid and that is essentially the equivalent of a jet engine pushing the asteroid off course." So far, NASA hasn’t found any asteroids big enough to threaten Earth, but we haven’t been searching that long. There is still lots of space to survey and the big one might be on its way, we just haven't found it yet. At the edge of Central Park in Manhattan, there's  a bronze statue of a doctor named James Marion Sims. Whose “brilliant achievement carried the fame of American surgery throughout the entire world.” He’s the guy who created the vaginal speculum, an instrument gynecologists use for examination. He pioneered the surgical repair for fistula,
a complication from childbirth, And became known as the “father of modern gynecology.” But that brilliant achievement, was
the result of a series of excruciating experimental surgeries that he conducted on enslaved women. In a lot of ways, Sims epitomizes the story of American medicine for black women. It’s a system that’s failing them to this day. From infant mortality to life expectancy, the racial disparities in health care are staggering. The gulf between black and white might be
widest when we look at maternal mortality. With black women 3 to 4 times more likely to die in connection with pregnancy or birth than white women. And that divide can be traced back to doctors like Sims who contributed to a long, largely overlooked, history of institutional racism in medicine. Trying to understand a historical problem without knowing its history, is like trying to treat a patient without eliciting a thorough medical history. You're doomed to failure. That’s Harriet Washington, a medical ethicist
and author who chronicled the intersection of race and medicine in her book, Medical Apartheid. While many of the stark racial disparities in health care can be attributed to environmental and economic factors like access to good health care, studies show that minority patients studies show that minority patients tend to receive a lower quality of care than non-minorities, even when they have the same types of health insurance or the same ability to pay for care. As African-Americans we've been abused for so long consistently by the system. Why should we trust it? Why should we go to when ill? And that's iatrophobia. That's a fear of the healer, you know, inculcated by the behavior of those healers unfortunately. It starts with slavery. Doctors relied on slave owners for financial stability. They accompanied plantation masters to auctions to verify the fitness of slaves, and were called in to treat sick slaves to protect their owners’ investments. In 1807, Congress abolished the importation of slaves, and in turn pushed black women to have more children, to essentially “breed” slaves. Founding father Thomas Jefferson later wrote, Around the 1830s the abolitionist movement led to the rise of what was called “Negro medicine,” or efforts to identify black “inferiority” to justify slavery. And there were polygenists, who tried to use
both “science” and the Bible to find proof that races evolved from different origins. The 1830s also marked the beginning of recorded experimentation on black women’s bodies. One doctor performed experimental c-sections on slaves. Another one perfected the dangerous ovariotomy - or removal of an ovary - by testing the procedure on slave women. In fact, half the original articles in the 1836 Southern Medical and Surgical Journal dealt with experiments on black people. And then, of course, there was James Marion Sims, whose reputation is etched in history... and on that statue in Central Park. Between 1845 and 1849, Sims began performing experimental surgeries on a 17-year-old slave named Anarcha. He eventually performed 30 operations on Anarcha, and more surgeries on about 11 other female slaves. When his male colleagues could no longer bear to assist him in inflicting pain on the women, the slaves took turns restraining one another. Yet, paintings depicting Sims, Anarcha, and other slave women, presented a subdued version of his experiments. Even though anesthesia was introduced in 1846, Sims chose not to use it for his experimentation with slaves. His practices echoed one of the most prevalent, and dangerous beliefs in medicine at the time: that black people did not feel pain or anxiety. This book from 1851 titled "The Natural History of Human Species," claimed Studies released as recently as last year demonstrate that black people are less likely to be treated for pain - particularly in the ER. There’s even one from a children’s hospital that found the same to be true for kids. And just this year, Pearson Education, a leading educational publisher, issued an apology and recalled nursing textbooks that included racist stereotypes, like this section that said Well what does it mean when you say that someone doesn't feel pain? Among other things you're speaking about their humanity. These are all part of that suite of beliefs emanating from the 19th century, that we still have not shaken off, despite all our knowledge and sophistication. They're deeply ingrained. Doctors like Sims might fit the “Dr. Frankenstein” stereotype, but they weren’t outliers. Historically, Southern doctors who used black bodies for troubling experiments were the norm. It’s a very common question, how can we judge our forebears? You know those guys in the 18th century who practice medicine in a way that appalls us today and we think, how could you do that? I did not judge the practicioners based on our own ethics. I judge them based on the ethics of their time. It was not acceptable back then, we just did not hear from the people who protested against it. After the Civil War ended, the 1900s brought a wave of immigrants to the US. It sparked a race “panic,” and coincided with the birth of the American eugenics movement. One of the movement’s key objectives was to reduce the childbearing potential of the poor and disabled. Leaders included birth control pioneer and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who eventually devised the controversial “Negro Project,” or family planning centers that pushed birth control in the black South. It was a project that even garnered support from W.E.B DuBois, a founder of the NAACP, who wrote that black people bred “carelessly and disastrously.” By the mid-1930s, more than half the states passed pro-sterilization laws. And often, sterilization was forced. In 1961, future civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer went to the hospital to have a tumor removed, but was subjected to a hysterectomy without consent. The procedure - which rendered women infertile without their knowledge - was so common in the South that Hamer is said to have dubbed it the “Mississippi appendectomy.” African-American babies were no longer economically valuable, And African-Americans themselves had gone from being a resource to a nuisance. In June of 1973, the SPLC uncovered 100,000 to 150,000 cases of women who had been sterilized with federal funds in Alabama. Half the women were black. In recent decades, women of color continue to be exposed to dubious reproductive health programs. In December 1990, the FDA approved a contraceptive called Norplant. And it was selectively marketed to black teenagers in Baltimore schools. Norplant fans like David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard, even introduced legislation to give women on welfare an annual reward of 100 dollars if they agreed to get Norplant. That bill never passed. But the implant ignited a debate on whether long term contraception - like Norplant that lasted five years - could be used as a form of social engineering when pushed on to specific communities. Today, as we continue to lose black mothers at alarming rates, a deeper look at the past may be a good step
toward creating a more equitable health care system. Hi guys, thanks for watching. Of course, there's a lot more to the history of how the US medical system has mistreated people of color than we could fit in the video. Everything from the Tuskegee experiments to Jim Crow laws segregating hospitals. But we hope it starts to give some context to the racial disparities we see in medicine today. ProPublica has been reporting on the disparities in maternal mortality in the US, and how it's the most dangerous industrialized country in which to give birth. Check out that feature piece in the link below. And we're seeking your help in understanding the problem. So if you nearly died during pregnancy or you know someone who died due to childbirth related complications, then check out that link in the description. Thanks again! What you're looking at is an MPC 3000. It
sits in a room amongst the most iconic relics of our country's musical history,
and that room is on the fourth floor of the National Museum of African-American
History in our nation's capitol. that MPC was owned by J Dilla, who composed some
of the most revered beats in hip-hop history. Technology has just taken a
giant leap forward. Hello I'm Roger Linn, and this is the MPC 60 MIDI production
Center created by myself and Akai professional. The MPC is this compact
machine that's a holding station for all types of samples which you can play with
16 touch sensitive pads. The very first model shipped in 1988 for just a few
thousand dollars and it was Akai and Roger Linn's elaboration on the Linn drum
machine. The concept though of taking samples of prerecorded sound and
composing with them existed long before the late 1980s, but those machines were
limited by their price and portability. The MPC was a different beast because it
really put you in the driver's seat in terms of a sonic texture that you
wanted to have. That's Brian "Raydar" Ellis, and that's his MPC Renaissance. You know
really just make a mess of it. It's a fully customizable machine where
as you look at maybe like the Linn drum or the Roland tr-808 which were
specifically drum machines, the sounds came pre-loaded and you couldn't change
them. In short, the MPC 60 was the musical brain of the studio. By 1994 when
Akai introduced the MPC 3000 it was the tool of choice for many of the top
hip-hop producers in the game including, J Dilla.
I think the thing with Dilla that inspired so many producers is that he
was able to use such a wide vocabulary of technique. J Dilla was a producer out
of Detroit in the mid-90s through his early death in 2006 from a rare blood
disease. He passed away just three days after releasing one of his most
fascinating and beloved albums, Donuts. He worked with an astounding list of iconic
artists and pulled off the majority of his sound with just a few simple
instruments, machines, and digital samplers, one of them being the MPC. He knew how to get
into every piece of the MPC and use it to a musical advantage. So let's talk
about J Dilla's drum style first. He figured out how to humanize the drum
machine by avoiding certain things that he could have done to make it more
robotic, make it more stiff. For instance the MPC has this incredibly useful tool
called quantization. What quantizing does is it takes your performance, let's say
I'm playing my drum pattern, and when I'm playing it, sometimes it's a little ahead
it's a little bit time. If your kick drums are off by a little bit,
quantization snaps them in place. And so a lot of producers they use quantize, not
as a crutch, but just they just weren't thinking about not using it and so Dilla was like yeah I'm just gonna turn this off. The result is a discography full of
incredibly off-kilter drums. This loose strumming style was
incredibly influential. When Red Bull Music Academy interviewed Questlove he
said J Dilla's drumming technique single-handedly changed how he played.
Whereas this part is normal sounding. It sounded like the kick drum was played by like a drunk
three-year-old. I was like "are you allowed to do that?" So like that to
me was the most liberating moment. Dilla was known for his signature low-end
texture and his drums accounted for a lot of that sound. Here's just a regular
sampled kick, here's what that same kick with the high-end cutout sounds like.
You'll hear that kick in a lot of Dilla beats, like on The Pharcyde's "Runnin". The other half of Dilla's Low end came
from his bass lines. He had a way of kind of getting the fuzz in the pump out of a
bass line. The MPC gave Dilla the flexibility to
create and manipulate his bass in a lot of different ways. J Dilla didn't just
you know drop out of nowhere and just know how to do everything all at once, he
was listening to a lot of the the legends. In fact, producers like Large
Professor, they used this technique a lot to get extra mileage out of the sample.
So right now I got this loop this is Gap Mangione "Diana in the Autumn Wind." In order to get a verse section what
producers would do is they would filter out the high-end and they just leave
this base space in here for the rapper to rap and then when the chorus came
back around they bring all the frequencies back, so you have a verse
section and of course section two-for-one sale. One of my favorite Dilla baselines
though actually came from his moog synthesizer which was custom made by
Robert Moog himself. Just focus on how much his bass line rattles the low end
of the song and meanders in and around the beat. He's very meticulous about you
know what was going to kind of ooze and lay back a little bit. You listen to his Moog bass and it couldn't care less if it got there on time, but somehow it does. He
internalized every possible technique used in hip hop and expanded upon it, and
he did so with just an intense love and curiosity of sounds, and a lot of
patience. If we look back at E=MC2 we've got an incredible sub
bass-y low end and example from an incredibly off-the-wall song by Giorgio
Moroder. Something that that makes this record stand out is the "equals" how he
extended it, because if you just listen it kind of only goes for a few beats,
and he was able to extend it as far as he wanted. There are so many songs that showed J
Dilla's ability to flip a sample, but there's one that gives me goosebumps
every time I hear it. A lot of people think sampling is easy
because they're like oh they're just listening to the melody on top and
they're not thinking about what the instruments below that lead melody are
doing and how they're playing a role in the beat. The first 40 seconds of "Don't
Cry" is just a few long loops of The Escorts "I can't stand (to see you cry)" -
he barely did anything with them. He's basically saying "this is all I have to
work with" at 40 seconds though he says "now look
what I can do with this MPC." Instead of chopping to the melody, he
chopped up a handful of kicks and snares throughout the entire song regardless of
the melody on top of it, and like little puzzle pieces,
he resequenced those kicks and snares to create this entirely new dreamlike song. I think Dilla was just like super funky
a lot of that had to do with you know him being willing to not care if the
record speeds up or slows down as long as it feels good you know and just
throwing that care out the window and just being like "forget quantize man, it
does what I say it does" and just rocking like that. Akai has
released a steady stream of MPC since the MPC 60 and 3000, they've gotten
glassier, more high-tech, more portable, and more integrated into digital audio
workstations than ever before. But those 16 pads and scroll knob have persisted,
and that tactile design has even influenced the design of countless other
pieces of audio software. In the instruction manual for the MPC 3000,
Roger Linn gives an introduction, and in that introduction he asks the people
that use the MPC to treat it like an instrument - it's like the modern-day
piano or violin. And even though a lot of people say J Dilla never read the manual
for the MPC 3000, he still internalized that same idea. He used his MPC like Jimi
Hendrix played his guitar, or John Coltrane played the saxophone - it was an
extension of himself. That's probably why out of all the MPC's
used by countless hip-hop producers and beat makers
over the years, J Dilla's is in a museum. Hey thanks so much for watching the
video, I want to give a special thanks to Brian "Raydar" Ellis. In addition to being a
professor at Berkeley, he is also an emcee and producer and I've linked his work below
in the description. You will also find all of my sources and a lot of amazing
links to further reading about J Dilla if you want to learn more about him. I
didn't make a Spotify playlist and that's because one of the greatest ones
about J Dilla already exists. I've linked to that one in the description below
it's like 16 hours long it's amazing. If you zoom in to Morocco, you'll see a
tiny wedge of land that stands out from its surroundings. This little bit of land
is surrounded by one of the most fortified borders on the planet. Right outside the border you'll find makeshift forest camps, where people spend their
days and nights evading the police and preparing to rush the border, usually in
large groups, with hopes of jumping over and stepping foot on this land. This peculiar scene plays out because
this piece of land, while in the continent of Africa, is actually a piece
of Europe. This small piece of land is called Melilla.
It's one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, marking the only borders that
Europe shares with the continent of Africa. Spain conquered Melilla in the late
1400s as part of its rapid global expansion. This region of northern Africa
changed hands many times over the following decades, but Spain kept hold of
Melilla. Even in 1956, when the colonial period was winding down and great powers
were ceding their colonies, Morocco had just declared independence, but even then
Spain held onto its enclave. Today, around 86,000 people live in Melilla
and when you're there you might as well be in mainland Spain. The city is
designed with the distinctive Spanish architectural style and residents speak
Spanish. They pay in Euros. You're only reminded that you're not in mainland
Europe when you walk to the peripheries of this city, to find one of the most
fortified border walls on the planet. A seven mile barrier with layers of
protection The first layer is a 20-foot metal fence,
followed by a second fence with a flexible top, which makes it harder to
climb. Below this second fence you have barbed wire netting, strong and dense
webs, then comes another taller fence with a flexible top section and more
barbed wire. Then you're on the Moroccan side where, you have a 6.5
foot ditch and then a double fence with you guessed it, more barbed wire. There
are lookout posts and every inch of the border is monitored by video
surveillance. To understand why this barrier exists, you have to cross over
into the Moroccan town of Nador and then into the forest in the hills
surrounding the enclave. These migrants are mostly from
sub-Saharan Africa and they all have different motives for leaving their
homelands. They gather in these camps and plan for the day when they'll try to
cross into Melilla. In response to this intense security, the migrants have developed a technique that relies on
overpowering the border guards with strength of numbers. The groups range in
size, but are nearly always in the hundreds. Most get caught right away on
the Moroccan side where they face border agents who are not shy about using force.
Those who make it past the first few layers, onto the Spanish section of the
barrier are also thrown back immediately or detained, but because of their large
numbers a few will inevitably slip past the guards. As soon as they put their
feet on the ground in Melilla, they are technically in Europe and are guaranteed
certain protections under European Union law. But they still have to run a hundred
meters to an immigration center, where they can be taken in and given
protection from immediate deportation. Arrivals to these enclaves came to a
head in 2014, when Spain decided it was finally time to double down on its
effort to fortify this border. This was mainly in response to the influx of
migrants attempting to get into Europe, fleeing from conflicts in Africa and the
Middle East. "Biggest wave refugees in modern history" "hundreds of thousands of refugees" "fleeing brutal violence in the Middle
East" "cross over European borders by the
hundreds of thousands" "in overcrowded boats, many drowning along the way" Spain's response to this migration crisis was to focus on the borders of
its enclaves in Africa, redoubling the efforts to keep migrants out of this
little slice of Europe. The year after the 2014 migration crisis, attempts to
jump the fence dropped by 67%. Spain didn't make these numbers drop on their
own. One of the things you'll notice when you look at this wall, is that Moroccan
military and police are also guarding this border. The year of the migration
crisis, Morocco built these two extra layers of barbed wire fencing. "But authorities say dense new anticlimb mesh stopped the latest to make the attempt
in their tracks" So why would Morocco take the responsibility of building a
barrier and standing guard at Spain's border? Turns out they have real
incentives to do so. Morocco has what's called advanced status partnership with
Europe, which gives them economic and political advantages in trade and
political affairs. The European Union accounts for more than half of Morocco's
international trade and the EU also provides Morocco with billions of Euros
in aid for security and development, so the Moroccans in an effort to stay on
good terms with their northern neighbor, take on the job of protecting Spain's
border. And they take their job very seriously. Migrants had always had their forest camps right here,
right outside the city on this hill. This was their camp for years and this
is the place where they used to regroup and prepare a jump, until just a few
months ago when the Moroccan military set up an outpost up here. Now the migrants can't return and they have gone to find another refuge, which is on a
hill 12 kilometers from here. Moroccan authorities have started routinely raiding the camps. But they don't deport them from
Morocco, they have other less resource-intensive ways of keeping these
migrants from coordinating a large enough group for a jump. The police were
here for three hours this morning, they basically came in and stole a bunch of
stuff, they kind of disrupted these tents and messed with these people's houses.
They harassed the women in violent ways. They basically came here just to flex
their muscles and say you know we're in charge, make sure you remember that. About once a month the Moroccan authorities round up the migrants and send them to
other parts of Morocco that are far away from Melillah, preventing them from
gathering in a sufficient group to blitz the fence. The Moroccan authorities are not concerned with keeping these migrants out of Morocco, they're trying
to keep them from getting to Europe. They do in many respects, a lot of Spain's and
Europe's dirty work, with respect to blocking people whose interest is to
cross. Another thing you'll notice is that everyone in these camps is from
sub-Saharan Africa, basically countries below this line. All migrants face extreme difficulties in their journey to Europe, but migrants from places like
Syria have a much easier time just walking up to the border and asking for
asylum the proper way. It's not an exaggeration to say that hardly any
sub-Saharan African is able to do that. They do have to resort to very
dangerous methods, like scaling the fences or hiding in vehicles or taking
to the sea. Spain did build a new office to handle the influx of migrants,
but not migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. You might say well that's reasonable right? Everybody knows there's a war in Syria, so of
course it makes sense to presume that Syrians are fleeing the war and
they're refugees, they need protection. But the flip side of that, the
presumption that people from countries where there isn't like a live war, that
you are reading about in the newspapers, the presumption that people from those
countries are not in need of international protection, is a very
dangerous presumption. The world is experiencing a record number of refugees
and displaced people. While some countries have opened their doors to let
these people in, many are responding by building walls, but this won't stop them
from coming. No matter how dangerous the journey, the people in these camps will
keep trying. That's the six episode of Borders, I hope
you've enjoyed this series. Today we also launched the on-site experience for all
six of the Borders stories, with graphs and charts and visualizations to kind of
go a little bit further into some of these stories. I'm gonna leave a link
here where you can go see that and thank you for being a part of this journey. When politicians talk about workers, they
tend to focus on certain types of jobs. “Bernie Sanders stood American workers.” “It’s American workers that remake this
country” But in the US, retail workers have outnumbered
manufacturing workers since 2002. And food service workers aren’t far behind. These jobs are in every community - they’re
the base of the service economy. So with the recession in the rear-view mirror,
it’s worth asking: can these jobs be good What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now! These Kroger workers are rallying outside
a grocery store in West Virginia because their employer wouldn’t meet their demands, stalling
negotiations for a new union contract. “It’s not like we’re asking for the
sun, the moon and the stars. We want a modest living wage and we want the
maintenance of our medical benefits.” Kroger eventually agreed to a new 3-year contract
for over 4,000 workers. It includes pay raises and zero cuts to their
benefits. By negotiating collectively, service workers
can secure an hourly wage that is six dollars higher on average than nonunion wages. But they are a small minority. Private sector union membership in the US
has fallen to 6.4% of all workers. It’s even lower in the retail and food service
industries. The decline of unions in the US was caused
in part by larger trends that have shifted the types of jobs available, especially for
those without a college degree. During the 80s, 90s and 2000s, several occupations
that used to provide a stable middle-class income grew more slowly than both higher-wage
and lower-wage jobs. That’s partly due to new technologies: robots
in factories, computer software in offices. “The decline in the middle has been steep. A lot of that has been growth at the top,
which is good. People have moved out of the middle and into
professional, technical and managerial jobs. But, the bottom section of the labor market,
which comprises maybe 17-18 percentage of jobs, is about a third larger than it was
in 1980. And if you look just among people without
a college degree it's much larger still. And that's the group we should be concerned
about.” The great recession intensified those longer-term
trends. Since 2010, the economy has added millions
of jobs, but not evenly. The biggest area of growth was in high-skill
occupations, mostly for people with 4-year college degrees. Meanwhile workers with a high school diploma
were pushed out of middle-skill occupations. And in low-skill jobs, they’re increasingly
competing with those who have some college. “We're adding lots of jobs. The concern is that, many of the jobs that
are being added are not good jobs, in terms of offering a reasonable standard of living
and job security. And many of the good jobs that are being added
are not accessible to typical workers.” “Thank you for joining us today to discuss
the importance of predictable schedules and incomes for workers.” “Hello my name is Kingia Phillips. I am a former worker at South Philadelphia
Walmart.” “The juice pallets were the most hard to
do. And when you’re pregnant, you’re not supposed
to lift above your head, but I had to.” Kingia came to DC to speak in favor of a federal
bill that would regulate work schedules for retail, with the aim of increasing stability
in hours and income. “After I had the baby I asked them could
I have my schedule adjusted, a tiny bit. And they told me that we all have kids and
they have a job to do, a company to run. And it turned out that they cut my schedule
down to 8 hours a week.” “I was doing 32 hours.” It’s a common complaint among part time
retail workers: that to get enough hours you have to be available to work at any time the
store is open, which is especially hard for parents, students, and people with a second
job. So after a month, Kingia quit. “I knew they were just going to tell me
to re-open my availability, and that would be the only way for me to make more money
and be able to sustain myself and my child.” The federal proposal faces an uphill battle
in a Republican congress, but since 2014, six cities and the state of Oregon have passed
scheduling policies. The details vary from place to place but most
of them apply to fast food and retail workers, they require two weeks advance notice of work
schedules, with extra pay for subsequent changes that are initiated by the company. Most of the measures also require employers
to offer hours to existing employees before hiring more people. “So what it does is, a lot of these policies
start to balance out the burden of doing business, so that the people who are getting who are
getting paid the lowest aren't the only ones bearing the cost.” Policymakers have also moved to increase the
minimum wage and require paid sick leave in certain cities and states. It’s a response to the fact that not only
are middle-class jobs moving out of reach for non-college workers, but a lot the remaining
jobs have also gotten worse since the recession hit. “In 2005, you could walk into a JC Penney,
and it was a stable workforce. People had full-time hours, and health insurance,
and even commission. It was a workforce that knew each other, and
felt like they could make their job better. By 2008, that workforce was completely contingent. People's hours were changing from one week
to the next. Nobody knew each other.” The number of involuntary part time workers
-- those are people working part time who would prefer full-time work -- that jumped
up during the recession. And the increase was greater for both the
retail sector and for leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants and hotels. This is part of a much broader trend. A 2016 study found a significant rise in “alternative
work arrangements” across the economy. That includes temp workers, contract firm
workers and freelancers. And it makes sense: Salaried and full-time
workers are fixed costs for employers. Whether revenue is up or down, you have to
pay them and fund their benefits. But if you have a pool of more flexible workers
whose hours you can dial up and down to match your sales, you can save money, at least in
the short term. Those cost-cutting strategies have been enabled
by new technologies. “Today, a lot of big employers are using
workforce scheduling technologies, and so it's an algorithm that's setting the schedule. And when you do an analysis of when the peak
hours are, it's easier to slot people in for four hour shifts and then rotate it out. But there's very few companies have systems
that basically say, ‘My goal is to try to give people some stability in their hours
from one week to the next, and I'm gonna try to match people's schedules from one week
to the next.’" What this has meant for some workers is schedules
and paychecks that change from week to week. A gallup poll of hourly workers with varying
hours found that one out of three said their schedules cause them financial hardship. “Instead of giving me two 8 hour shifts
and a 4 hour shift, they would give me 5 4-hour shifts. So I would have to go to school and go to
work 5 times a week, instead of working 3 days a week.” “The amount of hours they give out is based
on sales, which I believe is horrible. One week I’ll have 13 hours, the next i’ll
have 25, the next I’ll have 30, then back down to 15. And that — that shows on my paycheck.” Target and Walmart already post schedules
at least a week and a half in advance. Both companies have also raised their minimum
wages in recent years. And several retailers have announced an end
to the  controversial practice of on-call scheduling. “On-call shifts require employees to call
employers the day before or the day of the potential shift to find out if they’ll be
needed to work. If employees aren’t needed, they don’t
get paid.” But they’re a long way from a model like
Costco’s which guarantees a minimum amount of weekly hours for both full and part- time
workers. The union model for including workers’ input
in business decisions has not really moved with the economy into these low-wage service
jobs. And it hasn’t been replaced with something
else. So if workers feel like they can’t find
a voice at their jobs, they’ll likely keep looking for one in the law. You know this scene from The Wizard of Oz. It happens just after Dorothy croons in sepia-toned
Kansas, Toto wags his tail,
and the house gets caught in a tornado. She travels from a faded film strip to a Technicolor
world. But there are three things about this scene
you might get wrong. And each one helps show the real history of
Technicolor. These misconceptions explain what the
“Technicolor triumph” really was, from the technical aspects that made it work, to
exactly why it took over the movies, to the way in which the technology shaped the look
of the 20th century. Lie #1 - Wizard of Oz is not the first Technicolor
movie. Not even close. You might know that, but a lot of people don’t. Come on Maryland Science Center, you’re
better than this. Historian Barbara Flueckiger has an exhaustive
timeline of color in film, from hand-painted film
to the first movie filmed in “kinemacolor,” A Visit to the Seaside. But Technicolor stood out, and even it has
a history that long predates The Wizard of Oz. Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, and
W. Burton Wescott founded the company in 1914, with the “Tech” referring to MIT, where
Kalmus and Comstock met. It started by merging red and green - into
a new image that roughly looked like this. You can see the look in this range of movies
from the late 1920s and early 30s. It could do passably well with skin tones,
but there’s no blue in these dresses for a reason. Blue came into the mix in 1932, when Technicolor
added the key third strip. They showed off the process in Walt Disney’s
Flowers and Trees, a gorgeous animated feature that was a botanist’s nightmare. You know, there are evil trees in Wizard of
Oz, too. “What do you think you’re doing?” Anyway, in order to get Technicolor to work,
it was an insanely difficult process. Technicolor distributed
guides like these and we can make a reasonable simulation digitally,
with a scene like this. So here’s a scene of some Lego people who
are apparently worshipping Lawrence of Arabia? Not sure what’s going on here, but it’s
our starting image. A technicolor camera would typically take
that picture and shoot it through a prism that split the light into red, blue, and green
negatives for the picture. Those negatives were then flipped into positive
“matrices,” which eventually got soaked with dyes of the
complementary colors. So the red matrix turned cyan, the green one
magenta, and the blue one yellow. Then the dye was transferred — this was
called a “dye transfer process” to create a final gorgeous Technicolor image. So if you’re anything like me, that explanation
might make you feel like the scarecrow. “Oh I’m a failure because I haven’t
got a brain.” So let’s try it again, but only look at
that red channel. So keep your eye on the View-Master, the red
in the Rubik’s cube, or maybe the Lego guy’s hat. It is all kind of dark now, because that’s
just the red color in the negative. Now flipped in the matrix, that red is really
bright, which means that when it’s dyed, it won’t get a lot of
cyan. And that makes sense. Cyan is the complementary color — it’s
the anti-red. So where you want a lot of red, you do not
want a lot of cyan. That way, when it comes together, you get
a ton of magenta and some yellow. You don’t have a lot of cyan, because the
cyan cancels out the red. In the earlier days of Technicolor, they also
had to amp up the contrast. The company would add a black and white layer
underneath the matrices to serve as something called "the key." You can see the results early, in films like
1934’s La Cucaracha, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,
and Robin Hood, all of which came out well before the Wizard of Oz. It’s easy enough to roughly copy the technology
that “Technicolored” the Wizard of Oz. RGB split, color bath, mesh, repeat. But the film strip processes are just part
of the story. Lie #2: this scene? It’s not going from a black and white world
to a color one. The set was actually painted sepia-tone so
the same Technicolor process could be used for the bright Oz reveal. Today, it’s much easier. I can draw a box with my hand and with a click,
black and white and color play together. They even had techniques to do stuff like
this in the Oz days. But the fact that they built a sepia house
shows how Technicolor’s technical limitations shaped all color movies. “This is one of the cameras that was used
to film The Wizard of Oz.” “It weighs 4 to 500 pounds, and these cameras
were bigger than ordinary motion picture cameras because they had to run three strips of film
through them at any given time.” So remember — this scene? That had to be done with this beast of a camera. Those three strips didn’t just require more
space, they needed tons of light. That set had to be blazingly overlit to get
enough light through to these three strips of film. The set was reportedly 100 degrees Fahrenheit
at times. Sound was an issue, too. “It’s so loud when you’re running three
strips of film through a camera, so they had to build this blimp around it. It’s filled with soundproofing material
so when you’re making a sound film you don’t get all the sound from the camera throughout
the studio there.” Technicolor’s advantages outweighed its
limitations. It’s main advantage was the way in which
it could capture the tone of a scene. Two movies made in the same year could have
a different look, not just because of the choices made in front of the camera. Technicolor consultants and directors tweaked
the palette of the film by adjusting the cyan, magenta and yellow dyes. The complicated dye transfer process gave
Singin’ in the Rain some of its magenta-hued skin and deep saturated colors. The film and technology weren’t the only
things that gave Technicolor movies their distinctive look. It also shaped the world that they chose to
film. Lie #3: This isn’t the real Dorothy. It’s Judy Garland’s body double. She wore specially designed clothes and makeup
to match the sepia world, so Judy Garland could swoop in, in the same shot and
a blue dress, to join Technicolor Oz. These movies, and Oz, were shaped around Technicolor’s
abilities, from head to toe. “The second page that you see here is the
part of the script that shows the ruby slippers being unveiled, but what it shows is that
they were still silver shoes at this point, but the producers of the film really wanted
to show off that Technicolor that they were paying for, so they wanted them to be sparkly
ruby slippers that would look good against the yellow brick road. So they changed it at the middle of production
to ruby slippers.” Today, the shoes are kept under low light
to preserve them, but during the shoot they were blasted with light to accommodate the
camera and make those sequins sparkle. These weren’t just on-set decisions — Technicolor
was always pulling strings behind the curtains. Look at the credits for Wizard of Oz, and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, and A
Star is Born, and so on and so on. You’ll see one name over and over. Natalie Kalmus. Once married to Technicolor cofounder Herb
Kalmus, she ruled with an iron fist over Technicolor productions for many of the early
years. Kalmus had over 300 film credits where she
gave Technicolor advice — and sometimes told directors what to do. This is the IMDB page for a woman born in
1882. In 
documents like “Color Consciousness,” she extended her reach into art — the essay
includes aesthetic color theory. “Red: danger, blood, life, heat. Green: Nature, outdoors, freedom, freshness.” Kalmus’s influence was significant, but
it’s as important as a reflection of Technicolor’s power. Technicolor had its own processing facilities,
and its own camera crew that continued Natalie Kalmus’ work after she left the company. The technology and the production process
gave Technicolor a significant competitive advantage to alternatives being used. Despite all those alternatives shown on Barbara
Flueckiger’s website, studios stuck with Technicolor for a long time. It had a reliable system and
could be shown in any theatre in splendid color, without requiring special equipment. Technicolor eventually fell to cheaper processes
through the 1950s, like Eastman Color, that used a single strip. The Godfather, Part II was one of the final
major releases to use the Technicolor we recognize. But old prints remain surprisingly vibrant
today due to the dye transfer process used. Today, I can snap my fingers and be in
The Matrix or in Stranger Things’ Upside Down. Ok. What are all these dust particles? Is this asbestos? Am I covered in asbestos right now? Technicolor was never just a click —
the look was formed by the camera’s strengths and weaknesses, the artistic choices made
for color, and the Technicolor company’s infrastructure and supervision. In that key scene from the Wizard of Oz, you
might not have known the trivia about Dorothy’s double, or the sepia doorway, or even that
it wasn’t Technicolor’s debut. But one thing is easy to understand, intuitively. The movie is all about it. Technicolor wasn’t a switch or a doorway. It was a whole world, just waiting on the
other side. You can nerd out a lot more on Technicolor
by checking out Barbara Flueckiger’s website, or Eastman House, which was really generous
with their time and a lot of the images that you saw in this video. I’ve linked both of those below. You can see the director’s commentary for
this video in an additional video that we’ve made where I share some behind-the-scenes
info and a few of the details that couldn’t quite fit in. I cannot tell you how obsessed I am with this chart. It shows exactly what is wrong with America's conversation about health care. On one level, you've seen this chart before. It shows health care spending as a share of the economy of a bunch of countries. There's Germany and France and Japan and Canada and oh! There's America. But now I want to add something you haven't seen to this chart. This is how much of that spending in each country is private and how much is public. Here's what's amazing: America's government spending on health care on programs like Medicaid and Medicare and the VA - our versions of socialized medicine. It's about the same size as these other countries. These countries where the government runs the whole health care system! And then there's our private spending. It's the private insurance system that makes health care in America so expensive. Conventional wisdom says that the government is more expensive than the private sector. "It can't say no. It's corrupt, it's inefficient, it's slow." "If you want something done right you give it to the private sector." That is what we hear in America all the time. And yet here we are with the biggest
 private sector spending the most. If you look at the data on physician visits and hospital discharges, you can get rid of one theory. Americans don't consume more health care than people in these other countries. We don't go to the doctor more than the Germans or the Japanese. In fact we go to the doctor less. The difference between us and them is that we pay more. Every time we go to the doctor for everything from an angioplasty to a hip replacement from a c-section to a pain reliever. In America, the price for the same procedure at the same hospital, it varies enormously depending on who is footing the bill. The price for someone with public insurance like Medicare or Medicaid is often the lowest price. These groups he covers so many people that the government can demand lower
 prices from hospitals and doctors and they get those lower prices. If the doctors and hospitals say 'No' they lose a ton of business. They lose all those people on Medicare all those people on Medicaid. But there are hundreds of private insurance companies And they each cover far fewer people than a Medicare or a Medicaid. And each one has to negotiate prices and hospitals and doctors are on their own. And if you're uninsured, you have even less leverage. Nobody is negotiating on your behalf. So you end up paying the highest price. One study found that most hospitals charge uninsured patients four times as much as Medicare patients for an ER visit. Other countries, they don't have this problem. Instead of every private insurance company negotiating with every healthcare provider. There's just this big list. The country, the central government, they go and they say, "If you want to sell to us, to all of our people, then here's what you can charge for a checkup. Here is what you can charge for an MRI or a prescription for Lipitor. And so then whether that bill goes to the heavily regulated private insurance companies in Germany or directly to the government like in the UK. Each country is telling the doctor or hospital or drug company how much that bill will be. And because the government controls access to all of the customers. It's an offer that hospitals and doctors and pharmaceutical companies typically can't refuse. "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse." In America the idea is that you'll be a consumer. That you'll do what you do when you go to 
Best Buy and buy a television. But that just doesn't work in healthcare. It doesn't work in healthcare because you often come and get health care when you're unconscious, in an ambulance, when you're scared, when it's for your spouse or your child It is a time when you have the least bargaining power. You are not usually capable of saying, 'No.' You're not knowledgeable enough to do it, you're not comfortable doing it, or you're not conscious enough to do it. That's why in other countries the government is a person who can say 'No' for you. You can say, 'No, that's too expensive you're going to have to lower your price' because they do have that power. Anchor: A new push for single-payer health care right here in the US. Demonstrator: What do we want? Crowd: Single-payer! Demonstrator: When do we want it? Crowd: Now! Anchor: California and others are saying maybe we should adopt the European model. Klein: If we decided to create a single-payer system with one of these huge price lists in the US There would be nothing to stop lobbying from hospitals from doctors from drug companies. And those prices would get influenced. So we could end up with a single-payer system that is expensive. Even as expensive as our current system. It all depends on how much you negotiate down the prices and now in America these groups have so much power
because they are so rich. That it's really hard to get them to bring down the prices. This is the irony of American healthcare: It's so expensive that it's become 
hard to make it cheaper. All that money they make, that becomes political power. And years and years and years of overpaying - those are huge industries now. And they have a lot of influence in Congress. Under a single-payer system if we did drive prices down, doctors and hospitals they would be paid less than they are right now. That might mean some of them close or some go out of business or some move. It would be really painful. One person's waste is another person's essential service or local hospital or their income. But then single-payer it's not an all-or-nothing choice. For instance, there's a really interesting section of Bernie Sanders Medicare-for-all bill. Where he lays out this interim plan. It's a plan he wants while he's setting up his new single-payer system. And in that plan, he expands Medicare to cover vision and dental. And he opens it to nearly everyone. Not just people 65 and older. All kids go on Medicare automatically and most adults can buy in. That plan, on its own, it wouldn't get American health care spending far down overnight. But it would at least begin to recognize what we already know and what most other countries already do: That health care is one of those things the government can do cheaper and better than the private sector. Why are cities full of uncomfortable benches? This one has armrests to prevent you from
dozing off. to prevent you from taking a nap. Here’s another — again with the arms,
the stiff metal. And this one — it’s brand new. The MTA in New York began installing them
as part of a subway enhancement plan. And they don’t call it a bench. They prefer the term "leaning bars." So what if i told you it was designed with
discomfort in mind? New York City is filled with some of the most
innovative architecture and urban planning in the world. Today, nearly every kind of public space here
is has been developed with close attention to detail. So these benches are no mistake. They are designed to allow you to sit but
not get too cozy. And that is intentional. The concept stems from a school of thought
that goes by many names, but today we'll use "defensive design." Defensive design is about moderating behavior. The goal is to limit the ways an object can
be misused. These benches have armrests because that will
prevent anyone from laying down. Their short back is another nod to say, "This
bench isn’t yours forever." This trend is worldwide. And it’s not just in the benches. When you start looking for defensive designs
in New York City, you’ll find examples everywhere. It’s the presence of security cameras in
subway turnstiles or Times Square. It’s these spikes on this column, meant
to deter birds. It’s the knobs on these ledges, to discourage
skateboarders. And there were once sprinklers underneath
the awning of this bookstore, to prevent people from sleeping there. It's sidewalk barriers. It’s even these regular streetlights. Streetlights are probably some of the most
recognizable defensive designs. When they surfaced in the 19th-century Western
cities, the dynamic of urban life changed. More people spent time outside at night, which
drove economic development and a reduction in crime. Most hostile architecture tries to influence
behavior in a similar way. The designs attempt to make public space a
bit more hospitable, more ideal. Defensive designs can deter crime. It can prevent the destruction of public property. And it can prevent loitering. But there is a reason why defensive design
is characterized as “hostile.” Take the example of the bench again. Disability advocates have a problem with that
appearing in the MTA. One advocate pointed out that "People who
travel who have disabilities or just get tired sometimes need a bench to sit on, not a wall
to lean against." And while no one likes an uncomfortable bench, these additions mean something more for people who are
experiencing homelessness. The United States is currently experiencing
a decline in the overall homeless population. But in New York, the homeless population is
growing. About 1800 people were found to have been
sleeping in the subway. That’s because emergency shelter isn’t
always a viable option. There are several examples of hostile architecture
that target people who are homeless. These designs imply that public space is not
where homeless people should be. As it goes, city planners have a dilemma — how
do they design inclusive cities? As for the enhanced subway initiative, the
MTA’s mock designs highlight new USB ports and electronic signage in stations. But you won’t find any press materials highlighting
this uncomfortable bench. Excuse me, the "leaning bar." That’s because it makes for an uncomfortable
discussion about who we design public space for — and who gets left out. We're driving through a river right now
in the Jeep. For thousands of years, humans have drawn lines on the Earth,
dividing the planet into nations, but there are some parts of the world that
no empire, nation, or state has been able to tame. Just the geography here is
completely unruly. Land that is so high, so rugged, that states have found it
impossible to exert control. We're about to hit 4,000 meters, feeling the effects. These are called non-state spaces. Definitely feels like humans were never
meant to be here And the people who settle in these places sought refuge
from borders. But even here, among the highest
mountains in the world, this stateless lifestyle is coming to an
end. Non-state spaces have always existed,
all over the globe. They're usually high up in mountains, far from the reach of
any government and the people who live here didn't come here by chance. Most of
them are communities who fled into the mountains to evade expanding government
forces, some communities were escaping capture like those in Africa fleeing
from the Arab and Atlantic slave trades. Other groups retreated to remote
regions to escape ruling powers who they opposed, from the Inuit and the Arctic,
to the Berbers in North Africa, to the Jivaroan in the Amazon rainforest.
Examples exist all over the globe of people who chose rugged terrain over
taxes, war, famine, and subjugation from state powers. Today, there are some 5,000
indigenous groups living in 90 countries, numbering in total around 370 million
people worldwide. 70% of those are in Asia. Most of these groups have
integrated into countries, but for those who reside deep in the mountains,
geography has largely held off the influence of any kind of centralized
government. So I came up here to visit one community that fled to the mountains
1,200 years ago. Back then the Tibetan Empire, which was just north of here was
pursuing its own state-making project, its own empire, and it was growing. As the
Tibetan Empire grew, its borders eventually encompassed the Bon religion.
This was a religious group that predates Buddhism. The Bon fought to preserve its
culture within the Tibetan Empire. They resisted the Empire, but eventually
failed and instead of assimilated to this new Empire, they fled and they came
here to these mountains, where they created a life away from the militaries,
the taxes, the religion, and the control of the Tibetan Empire and that life
continues today. Eventually this whole area would be
drawn into a modern state, the state of Nepal. And Tibet, where these people came
from, would become China. But these people don't identify as Chinese, or necessarily
Nepali. People here, they wanted the kids to learn to Tibetan, like as their
language, because we are more related with the Tibetan culture. The 25 families that live here 
have their own distinct identity. They speak their own dialect of
Tibetan. They mainly live off the land, farming and raising animals to survive. The Himalayan mountain range is
particularly rich with these examples of non-state spaces. So many examples in
fact, that a group of anthropologists argue that this place should actually be
its own region. They use the term  Zomia to describe this long range of mountains
where people have set up for thousands of years without the help of governments
of states. The borders of this Zomia concept encompass a hundred million
people. It runs through eight countries, but is on the periphery of each. The
diverse set of peoples living here have a varying degree of interaction with
their country governments. I came to this region, one of the most remote zones
within Zomia, but even here you can feel that Zomia's stateless days are
numbered. Everywhere you go up here, you see herds
of animals, shepherds guiding them through the mountains. After leaving this
Bon village I moved north and came across a different community, where this
family's lifestyle is based almost entirely on the movement of their
animals. We're at 4,200 meters, Tibet is just right over this hill. And I'm hanging out with some yak today. This family's actually nomadic, they're constantly moving around throughout the year, so
they'll be in this pasture for a little bit while the yak will graze here and
eat this grass, and then they'll move on to another place. Meanwhile the grasses
here will have time to regenerate, the dung from these yak right now will help
fertilize the land, and they'll eventually come back here, maybe next
year, and they will find a pasture full of really wonderful grass that's full of
nutrients that their yak can graze again. And there's no external inputs to this,
there's no fertilizer or irrigation infrastructure. And this whole process and
technique hinges on their ability to be able to move freely throughout this
region, which hasn't been a problem for hundreds of years as this place has been
basically rid of any sort of borders or control. But that's changing very quickly. This is where the Tibetan language is
spoken. The many communities in these mountains have always considered
themselves Tibetan, moving freely into Tibet for trade and religious practices,
but in 1950 China controversially annexed Tibet. They eventually negotiated
this border line with Nepal. Notice that it goes right through what these people
think of as Tibet. The yak grazers I met are mostly based down here on the Nepal
side, and luckily for them this border only existed in theory. The yak grazers
continue to graze their animals deep into Tibet, as they had for hundreds of years, but over the years China started getting rich, which
came with a renewed desire to project its influence and protect its borders,
especially in Tibet where people were fleeing to get away from Chinese rule.
China now had the money, technology, geopolitical motive to start taming this
region. They started crushing protests from Tibetans and setting up military
infrastructure on the Tibetan Plateau and in 1999 they built this fence on the
border, marking the end of the unfettered mobility that these people had depended
on for centuries in this non-state space. This place that had been too high for
borders, suddenly had to adapt to the first concept of boundaries and control
coming from far away governments. I wanted to go see this fence. At over 15,000 feet above sea level, it has to be one of the highest
borders on Earth. So I'm on the windy Tibetan Plateau, looking at the border
but we're half a kilometer away and something really weird has happened. My
driver who's Nepali stopped and said we can't go any further. I was like well
we're on Nepali sovereign territory, why would why couldn't we just go up to the
fence? You'd be able to do this at every other country I've ever been to. He said
no, the Chinese will come over and they'll snatch us. Now we're still very much on
the Nepali, side but the Chinese come in here routinely to ask questions, to even
detain people randomly. They have surveillance, they have watch towers
even on the Nepali side. China now has the technology and political motive to
exert control in this remote and rugged region, to militarize its border here. This isn't the only effort by a faraway
government to tame this region. The governments of Nepal, India, and China are
also building the first roads here. It's a lofty goal. So we've got a landslide 
on the road, which means we can go no further in the Jeep. And we're
gonna have to hike. The thinking here is that a road system could serve as a
trade artery through the Himalaya Mountains, eventually. We're stuck again,
this time on a waterfall with a 200-foot cliff by the side of it. And so yes, while
these state forces are slowly encroaching on this terrain, it's going
to be long work and it's not going to be easy. They're slowly chipping away, but
man this place just was never meant to be tamed. Nepal is sandwiched between the two largest countries on Earth,
divided by these massive Himalaya Mountains. A road would create an
enormous trade opportunity between these countries. So there's been a blitz of construction projects aimed at creating a viable road
through this mountain pass. The Indian government is funding projects like this
bridge, and locals told me that the Chinese government routinely sends
building materials to help construction. The road still has a long way to go
before it can sustain large flows of goods, but even now the road is reshaping
the relationship that these communities have with the outside world, shifting
their economy from bartering to cash-based markets where residents can create
businesses around cheap goods from China. And as always with change, there are
winners and losers. Everything here is made of yak. This tent, which is made entirely
of yak wool. Yak cheese, Tea with yak butter in it. Drinking yak milk, which is extremely delicious. These people who are used to bartering
and are used to living off of the products of their animals, are having a
hard time integrating, having a hard time finding a space in this new economy that
is based on cash, is based on big international flows of goods. That Bon community whose customs had
been so well preserved in these mountains, have also felt the effects of
this road. People are leaving. Children
especially. Parents want to educate their kids and they are sending them to India
or to Kathmandu to get educated. A lot of these kids will go their entire
childhood without actually being in this community. You have to remember these people set up in the mountains specifically to preserve their tradition and culture, and so to see it disappear
overnight due to these modernizing forces, is
giving people a lot of anxiety. The way they've solved this is that they're
building this school, that is based on educating children in the Bon tradition
and the language of this community. But despite the disruptive effects of the
road, most people I talk to are still happy it's here. For centuries people have escaped modern civilization by fleeing to the
mountains, but now generations later, for some these mountains can feel more like
a trap than a refuge. When you imagine the “job of the future?” what comes to mind? Probably something like this. Or maybe this. These are the jobs expected to grow the most over the next decade. And if you look at expected growth and the annual salary there’s a clear winner ... nursing. Other jobs might pay more but future demand is a fraction 
of what it is for nurses. Thanks to an aging population, in the US 
and around the world. Despite the good pay and the high demand, there's one group that has stayed away from nursing: Men. Nursing is still one of the most gender-segregated jobs in the country with one man for every nine women in the field. So, what’s going on here? Why aren’t more men taking these well-paying,
in-demand jobs? With staff shortages plaguing many ... ... on our way to a nursing crisis ... ... in hospitals all over ... ... international shortage. In response to the worldwide nursing shortage scientists have enlisted the help of robots. These machines can lift and move patients take vital signs deliver medication and even make scheduling and assignment decisions. Nao robot: I recommend placing a new patient
in triage bed T5 but contrary to the doomsday headlines there's little chance these machines will replace human nurses anytime soon. In 2013, researchers at Oxford University developed this scale. It measures how vulnerable certain jobs are to automation. The jobs where humans are least likely to be replaced by robots require either creativity,
expert perception and manipulation, or high degrees of social intelligence. Predictions are much worse for jobs where these skills are less important. Of the 700+ jobs in the Oxford study, nursing was one of the least vulnerable. With a less than 1% chance of becoming automated in the
next decade or two. And when you watch nurses in action, it's easy to see why. The ability to build trust ... to connect ... it's what makes nursing immune from automation. And for decades, it’s also what’s kept
men out of the profession. Bill Lecher: Every time that there's a joke about a man that's a nurse ... "Remember, we talked about him?" (laughter) "So, nurse not a doctor huh?" "Kinda girly, isn’t it?”
(laughter) It still cuts a small little cut. It still hurts a little bit. You always feel it. Scheltens: This idea, that nursing is a “woman's job” it can be traced back to the 1850s. To an English nurse named Florence Nightingale. She cared for sick and injured soldiers during
the Crimean War. When she arrived at the hospital Nightingale was disgusted by the squalid conditions. Though she faced resistance from the male physicians, she imposed strict sanitation and dietary guidelines. And under her watch, fewer patients died of
preventable diseases. After the war, her methods were taught in new nursing schools that opened up 
all over the world. At the same time that women were being told
their place was in the home nursing gave them the chance to develop an
identity outside of it. But Nightingale was no feminist. She saw nursing as a natural extension of
what it meant to be a woman. According to Nightingale, women had a 
natural capacity for caring. Men did not. They couldn’t attend Nightingale’s nursing
schools, which blocked them from the profession. But the thing is, before Nightingale’s reforms men had a long history as nurses. Monks cared for the poor and sick across Europe for centuries starting in the Middle Ages. Men served as nurses during the American Civil War. This includes the poet Walt Whitman who described the experience in his poem
 "The Wound Dresser." (male voice reading) Fifty years after Whitman wrote this poem the Army Nurse Corps was made up entirely of women. By the time men were legally allowed to rejoin the profession in the 1950s nursing had become synonymous with femininity. A link that was reinforced through advertising, mass media, and popular culture. And which in turn affected how we raised our children. They absorbed the idea that men and women were born with certain personality traits which made them better-suited to certain jobs. And while these traits were thought to be innate we now know that they’re largely a 
product of our environment. Marci Cottingham: Boys and girls are socialized
differently, especially when it comes to emotions. And the emotions that they're allowed to express. Boys who are even in the infant age who cry are more likely to be shushed or told not to cry. Scheltens: Mothers are more likely to smile at their
infant daughters than their sons ... and they use fewer emotion words around preschool
aged boys than girls. Cottingham: Boys are socialized to
stoically manage those emotions so as not to appear effeminate or de-masculinized. The biggest threat you can pose
to a boy in terms of masculinity is to call him a girl, or call him a pussy or a wuss, right? Scheltens: So a job that requires making an emotional connection, that requires expressing empathy - a job like nursing - there’s this assumption that men can’t do it because they lack these inborn “feminine” traits. Lecher: As a parent I was always pretty
involved with my children so when her teacher introduced me as, “This is Mr. Lecher, this
is Katie’s dad, and he’s a nurse and works at Children’s Hospital here in Cincinnati. And I was surprised by the response. Young children, five years old, said, 
“Well you can’t be a nurse. because you're not Katie’s mom.” What kind of messages do you remember getting as a kid about nursing? And who becomes a nurse? Chunn: Like the little white hats? And the skirt I think that as a child you'd always have this kind of like feeling that nurses were nurturing and people don't think men can be that way. You just have to tackle some of those preconceptions like "He's a man so he can't be gentle." or "he can't be nurturing." Josiah Shoon: I feel like it’s the 
twenty-first effing century, How is this conversation still happening? Tim Malinowski: “Oh you must be my doctor." 
And they start asking me questions. Sammy Davis LPN: "Why didn't you become a doctor or anything?" Jason Rozinka: "Did you fail med school, is that why you're a nurse?" Scheltens: It's not just nursing. Genetic counselors, physical therapists, 
and physician assistants also have large gender imbalances despite their higher than average salaries and major projected demand. Meanwhile, the economy is shedding the kinds of jobs that have stereotypically been associated with men, like manufacturing. And that's reflected in this statistic: The labor force participation rate: that's the share of men in the US who are either working or looking for work. And it's been falling pretty steadily since 1954. Our long-held beliefs about gender are clashing with a new economic reality, one in which emotional intelligence is vital. In recent years, there's been a bunch of ad campaigns aimed at bringing more men into nursing. When sociologist Marci Cottingham 
looked at these ads, she noticed that a lot of them relied on the same gender stereotypes that kept men out of nursing. Cottingham: Extreme stoicism, masking emotion, emphasis on athleticism. Looking rather stern. Looking past the camera so they're not 
making direct eye contact Tattoos, motorcycles, don't really
have a lot to do with what's required of you as a nurse. If we use these stereotypical
images we might attract the wrong type of men into nursing. This idea that, "I can still be a macho tough guy, I don't need to deal with all that nurturing
empathy stuff." And so I think there's really a question here of who's going to change? Is it going to be the nursing profession,
to try to attract more men, or should we expect men to change? Guy Beck: I think it takes a while to solve that identity crisis. How can I be a man, a nurse, and still maintain my manliness? But now I sort of have this view that caring is probably the most masculine thing a guy can do. Scheltens: Caring, empathy,
and trust are humans' strategic advantages over robots. And those skills don't belong to one gender. They're like a muscle. The more we build that muscle, The better prepared we’ll be for 
whatever the future holds. If I showed you two big intersections — one
with a bunch of signs, traffic lights, and boundaries, and one with no markings or apparent
rules at all — which one would look safer to you? Towns all over Europe are starting to experiment
with streets like this: where cars, bikes, buses, and people can travel freely in the
same space. I think this looks like an accident waiting
to happen. But I know someone who would know a lot more
about this than I do. I’m Roman Mars from 99 Percent Invisible. And that’s what urban planners often refer
to as a “shared space” design strategy. It seems counterintuitive, but there’s evidence
that getting rid of all signs and barriers might make our streets a lot safer. So — how does it work? There’s a spot in Google street view where
you can witness a town undergoing this exact transformation. This is Poynton, England — about 20 minutes
away from Manchester. Here’s the city center in May 2011: there’s
a mess of signs and lights, a few small sidewalks, and some haphazard guardrails to keep pedestrians
safe. And here it is in July 2015. Traffic lights, road signs, curbs — all
gone. “Something very strange is happening on
the streets of Britain — I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in some places, pavements
and roads have been blurring into one with cars, buses, and pedestrians all sharing the
same space.” The town spent 4 million pounds to expand
sidewalk space and strip the city center of traditional demarcations. Now, the only marker left is this little sign:
Poynton shared space village. The concept is that the absence of separation
will make everyone more cautious — so commuters slow down, make eye contact, and negotiate. Watch what happens when a boy in Poynton is
encouraged to cross the street without waiting for the cars to clear the intersection. Because cars don’t spend time waiting at
traffic lights, it takes less time on average for them to get through the crossing. Even when bikers and pedestrians are absent,
cars drive slow due to a concept called “edge friction.” It’s the idea that nearby vertical elements
in a driver’s peripheral vision — like trees or lamps, create a visual cue for how
fast they’re going. On a highway, those are often totally absent,
so the sidelines blur. In a shared space, those lines play an important
mental trick to slow down drivers. In theory, shared space works well for pedestrians,
allowing them to follow their desired path while walking. Instead of being limited to a strict path,
they can walk exactly in the direction they want to go. n
In practice, that doesn’t always seem to be the case. Video footage of a shared space at Elwick
Square in Ashford, England shows that pedestrians’ mostly still stick to crosswalks, or where a crosswalk would be. That’s largely because these layouts are
stressful: The majority of a survey group asked about crossing Elwick Square reported
feeling anxious about it. And those pedestrians frequently report that
they prefer things the way they used to be. But the “way things used to be” is relative. If you look at old footage of city streets
in the early 1900s, cars mixed freely with pedestrians, bicyclists, and streetcars. Vehicles couldn’t go very fast back then,
so there wasn’t a huge concern about separating them from walkers and bikers. With plenty of city streets, that’s still
the case without any intentional urban planning. But the big question is whether these deliberately
stripped-down designs actually make people safer. It seems that in many cases, they do. For one thing, we know that the number of
accidents drops after shared spaces are installed. In Ipswich, rates of accidents involving injuries
fell from 23 over three years to just one per year. In London’s Kensington High Street, the
number of pedestrians injured dropped by nearly 60 percent. And in Drachten in the Netherlands, accidents
at one intersection fell from 36 in four years to two in two years. We also know that shared spaces are quantifiably
more free-flowing based on analysis of traffic conflicts. With video footage like this from Exhibition
Road in London, analysts can rate the severity of a traffic conflict based on participants’
speed and change of course. Before the shared space renovation, one pedestrian
had to step back onto the sidewalk to avoid a departing car. Another broke out into a sprint to avoid getting
hit by an oncoming van. After the shared space installation, traffic
conflicts were less frequent and less severe on average — like this, where pedestrians wait
for a cab to cross before continuing. Or this one, where a cyclist changes course
to avoid pedestrians. But that doesn’t mean these designs work
for everyone. “I think it’s the most ludicrous idea
I’ve ever heard. What about blind people? Children?” From the beginning, shared space designs have
been under fire for providing insufficient protections for disabled pedestrians, especially
the visually impaired. “The family of a pensioner who died a month
after being hit by a bus have called for traffic lights to be reinstalled at the junction.” “Traffic lights here were recently removed to make
way for a so-called shared space, but it’s a move that has angered David’s family” “I’m sure if the traffic lights were there, this wouldn’t have happened” A 2015 House of Lords report called for a
temporary ban on shared space designs. And in August 2016 a select committee of the
House of Commons launched an inquiry into the accessibility of such environments. Their final report in April 2017 asked the
government to put all shared space schemes on hold until they improved the process of
consulting disabled communities. Preliminary designs like these by the Danish
Building Research Institute give us an idea of what that balance might look like. They include both the mixed traffic of shared
space and the raised street textures and button-activated crosswalks that disabled users are used to. Shared spaces can be effective, but for this
kind of plan to work across communities, it will require a lot more research to determine
what will work in different places and what will serve the needs of all the people sharing the streets. There's a lot going wrong in the world "yeah I'm not a good guy" "and when you're a start they let you do it." "rained down bullets" "brutal civil war" Trump: "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States." But when you zoom out in a lot of big ways
the world is getting better. People living longer than ever. Global poverty
is plummeting. So many fewer people are going hungry.
And deaths from the scourge of malaria are dropping. Children are doing better
too – child mortality is dropping around the world. And so is child labor. Deaths from war are over all headed downward and recent decades have been
historically less violent. And though humanity faces a crisis with climate
change – there is some good news. More and more countries are signing on to global
agreements to fight climate change and coal production peaked in 2013 – it's now
falling. So today let's hope the world keeps getting better and be grateful
that it has been. Couple more things to give thanks for –  my parents, to our world
and data where so much of this data comes from and to all of you for
watching. Thank you. Why is Sean Hannity, the most recognizable face on Fox News, begging his viewers to stop smashing their
Keurigs? It's a weird story, and it's what happens when the loudest pro-Trump
voice on Fox News decides to go This is news, information, and truth I promise you can't get anywhere else in the
media. If you are lucky enough to not know who Sean Hannity is, think of him as on Fox News. President Trump, he's moving very fast to fix the country and keep his promises to
you, the American people. It's kind of a running joke at this point. Trump could nuke the rainforest and Hannity would be like: President Trump once again doubling down on draining the swamp. That diehard loyalty has made Hannity one of Trump's favorite media personalities. You have been so great, and I'm very proud of you. But it's also turned Hannity into cable news's biggest conspiracy theorist. Because as Trump's White House has been hit with bigger and bigger scandals, Hannity's had to turn to wackier and wackier stories to distract his viewers. Come on, man. I'm doing my job. Hannity's favorite conspiracy theory is his deep state shtick. The deep state Deep state leaks Deep state that has been leaking on you The belief that government agents are secretly conspiring to sabotage Trump and remove him from office. An unelected part of your government looking to overturn the results of a duly elected president That's long been a talking point for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. We're in a war with the deep state. But Hannity has brought it mainstream. A soft coup is underway. They're planning a hot coup. The soft coup's the buildup. A soft coup is underway. They're a clear and present danger running around inside our country. In what is becoming now a clear and present
danger. Now Sean Hannity has said what I've been warning you of, word for word. Hannity's also been a major promoter of the Uranium One story. The corrupt Uranium One deal It's a conspiracy theory that claims Hillary
Clinton helped sell uranium to the Russians in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. It's a batshit theory that's been debunked
repeatedly, including by Fox News. The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not. But that hasn't stopped Hannity from peddling
it. According to one study, Hannity spent three and a half hours on the
story over the course of three weeks. If you're ever standing in front of a graphic
like this, it's probably time to reevaluate your life
choices. There's a ton of other Hannity conspiracy
theories. The Clinton email stuff. These are very serious crimes. Saying James Comey should be arrested. Comey's possible criminal conduct Accusing Robert Mueller of trying to protect
Hillary Clinton. There's no way the American people can trust Robert Mueller to investigate anything
Russian-related. Grow up, man. Hannity is now the leading conspiracy theorist on cable news, and there's data to prove it. My name is Alvin Chang; I'm a senior reporter at Vox. I was interested in on his Fox News show. I went to Reddit's conspiracy forum, and I wrote a computer program to get the top 1,000 posts. I categorized what the conspiracies were about, and I came up with about 100 different conspiracies that I could search transcripts with. I went through two years of TV news transcripts. When we looked at the data, it turns out Hannity far and away mentioned conspiracy
theories more than every other news program by a wide
margin. Don't think this is a coincidence. Hannity's not just your typical right-wing
pundit anymore. He's moving into Alex Jones territory. And unsurprisingly, Jones has noticed too. I love it. But unlike Alex Jones, who uses conspiracy theories to sell survival
gear and bogus male supplements — We have developed the ultimate male vitality
supplement. Hannity uses conspiracy theories to protect
Trump, to distract away from stories that damage
the White House. I charted out when he brings these up over
time, and it seemed like None of that is related to President Trump. None of it. Zero is related to his campaign. You look at how much Hannity mentioned conspiracy theories in those times, they're
spiked, and they're related to the news of the day. They're related to the scandals that the Trump administration is going through. Fox's best defense of this stuff is that Hannity isn't a real journalist. He's an opinion host, so what he says doesn't really matter. But that distinction between news and opinion is rarely clear on Fox. Look at the way Hannity introduces these segments about Uranium One and the deep state. Explosive new evidence in what is becoming the biggest scandal, or at least one of them, in American history. It's hard to tell that this is opinion, right? It looks just like a news segment. And though Hannity sometimes denies being a journalist, I'm not a journalist. I'm a talk show host. he's recently taken to calling himself a serious reporter. I'm a journalist, but I'm an advocacy journalist. I also do journalist work. I have soft hands. More importantly, advertisers don't care about that distinction. Two conspiracy theories in particular have spooked Hannity's advertisers. in May, Hannity started peddling the story that former DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered after leaking emails from the DNC to WikiLeaks. Now, if true, this could become one of the
biggest scandals in American history and could mean that Rich
could have been murdered under very suspicious circumstances. It was bullshit from the start. PolitiFact rated it “Pants on Fire,” Snopes
debunked it, even Fox News retracted its article about
it. But Hannity continued, spending segment after
segment suggesting that Clinton operatives were somehow involved in Rich's murder. If this is true, this blows the whole Russia
collusion narrative completely out of the water. It got so bad that Rich's brother begged Hannity's executive producer to stop him, writing, "We appeal to your decency to not
cause a grieving family more pain and suffering." And I am not backing off asking questions
even though there is an effort that nobody talk about
Seth Rich. Major advertisers like Cars.com pulled their
ads from Hannity's show. And eventually Hannity backed down. Out of respect for the family's wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at
this time. But on Twitter, he promised he'd keep looking
into it, saying, "I am closer to the truth than ever. Not only am I not stopping, I am working harder." A few months later, Hannity spooked advertisers
again. When Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who Trump endorsed, was accused of multiple
cases of sexual misconduct, including child molestation, Hannity came to his defense. How do we ascertain what happened 38 years
ago? None of us know the truth of what happened
38 years ago. Is that more common than people would think? Oh, definitely. That prompted another wave of advertiser panic, including from Keurig, which pulled its ads from Hannity's show. And this time, Hannity lashed out. He retweeted a video of one of his supporters smashing their Keurig machines, tweeted a 2015 article about Keurigs being
covered in mold, and suggested he'd give free coffeemakers to the best videos of people smashing their
Keurigs. Eventually, Hannity backed down again. Please stop destroying your coffee machines. But not before advertisers like Volvo and
Realtor.com suggested they might pull their ads too. Everything about this story is so embarrassing. Masculinity is a cage. Fox knows Hannity is a problem too. They care about their right-wing audience, but they care more about ad revenue. Conspiracy theorists scare big companies. It's why Alex Jones has to sell male vitality pills. It's why Glenn Beck's show ended despite him having a pretty good ratings. Now Hannity is testing the network's limits. And once again, Fox has to figure out if the conspiracy monster they created is worth the damage they're doing to their
bottom line. Thanks for watching! Remember to follow Strikethrough on Facebo- come on, man. Standing at the border between Guatemala
and Mexico. Up there on the bridge, there's a normal border crossing with
migration; people stamping passports, but you go down these wobbly stairs, you
notice that right under the bridge these guys are trafficking people across the
border, technically illegally. You can't tell that there's been an immigration
crackdown here, but there has. And it was the U.S. that paid for it. These guys are doing it under the noses of immigration officials who clearly don't care that
much. You only start to feel this crackdown when you start moving north,
where you run into a new network of military infrastructure and checkpoints
meant to stop migrants. But this crackdown was never meant to keep
Central Americans out of Mexico, it was meant to keep them out of Texas. In 2014 the United States sent an influx of money to Mexico, helping them militarize
and fortify their southern border region. To understand why, you have to look at
this chart: the red line represents the number of Mexican migrants apprehended
while they're crossing into the United States and the green line is for non-Mexican
migrants. Look at 2014: that's when the number of non-Mexican migrants
outnumbered Mexican migrants for the very first time. What pushed this number up
were the migrants coming from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. And these people
fleeing from Central America aren't just looking for jobs, they're running away. So, there's a war going on in Central America right now, it's actually not just
one war it's a ton of micro wars, "Unbelievable violence." "Nearly one homicide an hour". "Three of the five highest homicide countries in the world: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador." "Carved up the city into warring factions". Residents of these towns are at major risk of dying and so people are
fleeing. While riding with U.S. Border Patrol on the Texas border, I watched them apprehend a 22 year old and his son as they just made the three-week
journey up through Mexico from Honduras. These refugees walk into Mexico mostly
hoping to make it to the U.S. Many come here, to this town called Tapachula, just
north of the border where they can look for a migrant shelter to lie low and get
support and at this vulnerable point in their journey, many don't want to show
their face on camera. And there were these threats just constantly came and
came and came to me and then one day I just said the hell with this I'm gone.
Mm-hmm. I burned my little Rancho and and I took off at two o'clock in the morning. The exodus out of Central America came to a head in 2014, when the U.S. saw a huge spike in the number of Central American kids and
teens arriving to the border without a parent. "It is a huge humanitarian crisis
on the border right now". "52,000 unaccompanied children have been caught
at the US border with Mexico: double the number recorded last year". "Children from
Honduras traveling into Guatemala, then Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande, and just
now arriving in Texas." As soon as it became clear that this year's migration
to the border was different than in past years, I directed FEMA to coordinate our
response at the border. Obama declared an urgent humanitarian situation at the
border. He discussed it with Mexican
president Peña Nieto. Peña Nieto walked away from that meeting and
immediately implemented a policy called "El Programa Frontera Sur", the southern
border program. "And earlier this week Mexico announced a series of steps that
they're gonna take on their southern border to help stem the tide". For Peña Nieto, the plan had two main objectives: In short, the plan was supposed to make life better and safer for both migrants
and those living in the border region, which includes Mexico's most
impoverished state, Chiapas. This migrant protection plan for the southern border
had been in the works for years, but it was rushed into implementation
apparently in response to American pressure. Many of the long-term plans
that were meant to give migrants legal support and protection fell away. Instead,
the implementation focused almost entirely on enforcement and security. "What's easiest to do, I think, is enforcement because you already have the infrastructure set up.
Like it's harder to create jobs, right, than it is to hire more immigration
agents to detain people." Mexico's quick solution to this was to
militarize, to start raiding buses to start putting up checkpoints, to start
cracking down on Central Americans who are coming into their country. A perfect
symbolic representation of this are these huge multi-agency complexes that
they built in order to house the immigration officials alongside the Army,
and the Marines, and the Federal Police. Mexico fortified its southern border
region and to help in the effort, the U.S. sent an influx of money and
equipment, using resources from an existing security partnership it had
with Mexico, dating back to 2007. This partnership was originally created to
combat drug trafficking and organized crime. The money was used here for things
like inspection equipment, k9 teams, observation towers, training for
immigration enforcement officials, communication networks to support
enforcement activities, and gear to collect biometric data like fingerprints
and photos of detained migrants. In short, the U.S. helped militarize the southern
border region of Mexico. The U.S. got what it was looking for. "In part because of strong efforts by Mexico including at its southern border, we've
seen those numbers reduced back to much more manageable levels." Apprehensions on the Mexican side went up and people arriving to Texas or other parts of the
U.S. border went down, but this was all temporary. The number jumped back up in
2016, so the crackdown isn't actually stopping people from getting to the
United States, but it is making their journey much more dangerous. Behind me is the train that Central
Americans take to get from here in southern Mexico, up to the border of the
United States. If it were 2014 this area would be completely packed with migrants. Migration officials targeted this train. They started conducting extensive raids
and the train companies hired guards, increasing the speeds of the trains and
installing concrete posts and walls to make it harder for people to jump aboard
and now gangs are a constant threat to the few travelers that remain. Here are the main routes that migrants took to get to the United States: they mainly follow
the train routes. These paths were well supported with migrant shelters and
clinics and most importantly large groups of other migrants, making it less
likely that people will be robbed or assaulted. Migrants often don't know
where their next meal will come from or where they're gonna sleep each night.
They depend on this network of usually church-sponsored shelters as they move
north. The 2014 crackdown targeted these routes, looking for migrants in popular
places like shelters and train stops. So migrants moving north have shifted into
unfamiliar, unsupported routes that multiply the dangers that they are
already subject to on this journey. Pushing these refugees away from well
trodden routes and into the shadows has made them more vulnerable to assaults by
criminals and gangs in this region. During this time the U.S. Border Patrol
started putting out public service announcements, about how dangerous the
journey through Mexico had become. This, in spite of the fact that U.S. policy
contributed to those risks. All of the shelter directors I talked to have
noticed an uptick in crimes against migrants since this crackdown. A study by
dozens of migration organizations in Mexico found that, of the 5,824
investigations into crimes against migrants, less than 1% had led to any
sort of sentence. And many crimes go unreported altogether. There's not a lot
of trust in the Mexican justice system for migrants. Most migrants are now left on their own, navigating this remote
region where both gangs and corruption-prone police are looking for ways to
profit off vulnerable migrants. But perhaps the most egregious offence of the Mexican
state in this crackdown, comes down to what they didn't do for these people
entering their country. When a Mexican immigration official detains a migrant,
that officer is required to inform them that they have the right to ask for
refugee status or asylum if they're fleeing for their lives. Everyone I
talked to said that isn't happening. There were 40,000 children who entered
into Mexico in 2016, and these children aren't looking for jobs, they're not
smuggling drugs, they're looking for protection. Of the 40,000 that came here,
only 1% applied for asylum. That's a dangerously low number for a
country that has said that it protects asylum seekers. Migrants who feel a threat to their lives in their own country have to fill out an application
and submit it to an agency that has the power to grant asylum or refugee status
in Mexico. This allows them to avoid being deported, to stay in the country,
but this agency that's in charge of processing these applications only had
15 caseworkers dedicated to interviewing these applicants and while applications
are on pace to be 12 times what they were in 2013, this group's budget only
grew 5% during the crackdown. The year the southern border program was
implemented, Mexico detained around a 119,000 Central Americans. It granted refugee status to only 460 of them, not
even a half a percent. That same year Mexico started deporting a lot more
Central Americans, so the southern border program made Mexico a lot better at
detaining and deporting people,  but it definitely didn't make Mexico a safer
place for refugees like it said it would. Now let's get one thing straight, Mexico
has the right and the sovereignty to fortify its borders and to control who's
coming in and out. That is their right as a sovereign nation. And some will wonder why is it Mexico's problem to deal with
you know the problems and challenges of citizens of another country?
The problem is Mexico has signed all of the international conventions that
promise that they will take care of asylum seekers or refugees and give them
the legal protection so that they can feel safe. A report by the Migration Policy institute found that in 2014, The U.S. deported just 3 of every 100 unaccompanied children that it
apprehended on the border. Mexico on the other hand deported 77 for every 100
kids it apprehended. And yet when thousands of unaccompanied children
arrived at Texas' border in 2014 the U.S. turned to Mexico to handle the delicate
and difficult work of screening and protecting these refugees fleeing for
their lives. The U.S. is paying Mexico to do its dirty work, knowing full well that
doing this will result in a much more dangerous situation for refugees. It drove them into the shadows, worsening their vulnerabilities. And in most cases, deporting them back to the violent places from which they came. One of the questions I know I'm gonna get a ton is: What is the name of this waterfall? Southern Mexico's full of a lot of very beautiful scenery, and I got to see a lot of it as I was traipsing around the region, reporting this story. But this waterfall, it's called El Chiflón and it's in the state of Chiapas in Southern Mexico. It ended up being one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen, in all of my Borders reporting this summer. Especially once I got the drone up in the air and saw it from above. El Chiflón, in Chiapas. It's a beautiful place. We work in a world filled with devices that can monitor us, locate us, and tell us what to do. That raises the question — who watches you
work? And how does work change when you know someone’s
watching you do it? There’s one industry that’s asking that
question more than ever: trucking. Self driving semi trucks. Programmed to follow routes from GPS systems
while the driver rests. Over time, automation will dramatically change
work for the 3.5 million truck drivers in America. But until then, truckers are going to be monitored
and managed by computers like never before. And if you want to know what happens when
people start to reject that kind of monitoring — here’s what that looks like. It’s like wearing an ankle bracelet where
you’re being tracked, every move you make. We are against this law because this is ruining
our truckers’ lives. I want the government to get out of the way,
and give you the opportunity to be a success. This is the Department of Transportation during
a week of trucker-organized demonstrations in October 2017. They’re here protesting these things called Electronic Logging Devices, or ELDs. What these are — They're protesting these things called — These are computers that go inside
a car, hook up to the car’s engine, and monitor location, driving status, how fast
a car is going, and basically report that information back to an employer. They also manage a driver’s workday based
on a strict schedule designed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to limit
driver fatigue. Truckers can drive for a maximum of 11 hours
per day — but they have to take a 30 minute break somewhere in between. They can work an additional 3 non-driving
hours, but have to take a 10 hour break before they can start driving again. As of December 2017, these devices are mandatory
in all trucks across the country. Oftentimes when we talk about automation in trucking
and other workplace contexts, there's a big concern about a massive spike in unemployment. But oftentimes, the way this gets discussed
is that it's like human-human-human-robot. And you see a big spike in unemployment. And what I think is more realistic is the
curve is more gradual, right? So you do see robots starting to get integrated
into the work, but not in a sudden way. That invites is kind of interesting question:
what happens along the curve? And the answer is that you’re going to see
more integration between machines carrying out some part of the job and humans carrying
out some part of the job. Truckers across the US have been preparing for the first big step on that curve: working
alongside ELDs. This is the ELD, right here. Talking about the ELD mandate. Transitioning everyone into the ELDs now. But the one-size-fits-all schedule that this
device imposes is not new. The strict breakdown of driving, non-driving,
and sleeping time has been used in one form or another since 1938. The longer drivers go without a break, the
higher the rate of fatigue-related accidents. So the system was designed to limit a trucker’s
driving time to fit natural sleep patterns. So this is kind of the analog technology that
the digital one is supposed to replace. But circumventing those rules was quite common
with paper logbooks, since they could be changed by hand. Like if you sat down and looked at this for
five minutes you would figure out how to falsify it if you needed to right? It’s pretty imprecise. So ELDs aren’t necessarily creating any
new rules, but they’re making the existing ones a lot harder to break. For truckers paid by the mile, that translates
into an intense pressure to drive as much as they possibly can within the 11-hour time
limit. They can’t pause without actively losing
money. Soon as you turn that key on in the truck,
they're watching you. If you’re tired, you can’t stop and take
a nap. If you hit a road construction, a snow storm,
your hours are ticking. Many of the truckers who protested in DC have
near-perfect safety records after driving millions of miles over their careers — and
they’re doubtful that a device that tells them how to structure their days will make
them any safer. A 2014 report by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration found that drivers who used ELDs had an 11.7 percent reduction in
total crash rate and a 5.1 percent reduction in preventable crash rate. But since only a limited group of drivers
were using ELDs when the study was conducted, it’s hard to know how representative those
safety numbers are. A 2016 report by a committee of the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated that there simply isn’t enough data
on fatigue-related crash rates more broadly— and argued that further research is needed
before changing the law that sets drive time limits.. We’re not computers — we don’t have
an off button. The thing this does do, is it forces you to
get up and go if you’re tired, it forces you to get up and go if you don’t feel good. You do not have the choice with this machine
to drive like we used to, and it’s not about running 24 hours a day, it’s about making
a common sense decision about how you feel, how the road conditions are, whether or not
you want to run through rush hour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One of the core complaints about ELDs is that
they don’t understand a trucker’s body or the context — a trucker could be totally
alert and just 20 minutes away from home, but legally required to stop for 10 hours
if they ran out of driving time. But ironically, there’s now a growing market
of technologies designed to more accurately diagnose fatigue — and they are much more
intrusive than ELDs. A company called SmartCap makes hats that
measure brain waves and gives you a fatigue rating. Another called Seeing Machines uses computer
vision to watch a driver’s eyelids. And in 2020 Mercedes plans to release a vest
that can detect a driver heart attack and stop the truck. Plenty of industries watch their employees
quite closely — but trucking is unique because a truck is both a workplace and a home. Trucks are such personal spaces — because
of the length of time drivers are in them, like some drivers drive with their families,
they drive with their dogs, they have a bed there, they eat their meals there. It is a different sort of workplace than a
convenience store that you go to and then you go home. Like it is your home for for a period of time. And so privacy invasions in that context I
think are felt in a more acute way than they might be in some other industries. It’s hard to see intrusive technologies
slowing down in trucking. Services like Amazon Prime have made us accustomed
to getting deliveries incredibly fast, and there’s increasing consumer demand for package
location tracking. All of that requires truckers to work incredibly
fast while being monitored very closely. Ain’t that funny? I can drive around all I want in this pickup. Soon as I get up in that rig, now I’m somebody’s
doggone prisoner in a box, I’m not a responsible individual. Didn’t matter that I served this country,
who gives a s**t. I ain’t nothin’. I’m just a trucker, that’s all I am. Just a trucker, just a d****ss trucker. It’s interesting because, of course, surveillance has been part of the workplace since the inception
of work. But at the same time it’s a change that’s
occurred in a very large scale form, because of the capabilities of the new technologies. There’s a scene from the 1936 movie “Modern
Times” where Charlie Chaplin’s character takes a bathroom break from his assembly line
job. But it doesn’t take long for a video monitor
to appear onscreen. Hey! Quit stalling, get back to work! Within the transportation industry, improvements
in technology have turned parodies like this into reality. Oftentimes it is a source of tremendous stress,
and it's one of those stressors that doesn't just go away. People don't just get used to the fact that
they are being observed 24/7. We get really excited about technology holding
the promise for solving social and economic problems, and, it’s like, it almost universally
doesn't. Or it just moves the problem a little bit. And the reason for that is when you have a
problem with deeper roots than than technology, a technology ends up being like a bandaid. When you get out and meet actual truckers,
they don’t want to have to drive excessive hours or put anyone in danger on the road. But they do want people to understand that
they get their jobs done in different ways — and surveillance technology doesn’t
always account for that. We are actually fighting for the safety of
everyone that’s on the highways, everybody that’s on the roads. We’re not fighting just to run outlaw style. Outlaw’s gone. We’re the American truckers, and we’re
here to provide everybody and keep everybody safe. I think the issue here is that there's a technical
solution being brought to bear on a problem that is not technical. The problem here is that drivers are overworked,
and they're not paid for all their work. They’re severely underpaid. Trying to solve that with a technical solution
feels, to me, incomplete. So, it's like putting the onus for that problem
on the people who are most affected by it, who have the least power to change anything. On November 14th 2017, Zimbabwe military troops drove tanks into the capital city, Harare. "Military police on tank, this is happening in Harare. " "Wow! It's real guys, it is real." They patrolled the streets, blocked access
to government buildings, and took over the state television station to insist…. This is not a military takeover of government. But it clearly was. Troops invaded the presidential palace and put the president, Robert Mugabe in custody. “...Comrade Robert Mugabe, and his family are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed." When you hear that a military coup has happened,
it’s common to assume that the result is a transfer of power… But in this case... it’s clear there is
no revolution. It’s merely an internal fight among the
country’s elites. Zimbabwe is one of the most corrupt countries
in the world; and what we’re seeing is a fight to keep it that way... As soon as we have accomplished our mission,
we expect that the situation will return to normalcy." Once praised as a war hero, Robert Mugabe
helped Zimbabwe win independence from Great Britain in 1980. He became president under Zimbabwe’s new
constitution with the wide support of the people. But soon, he digressed into a repressive dictator He secured his power through aggression and
threats, there have been reports of state-sponsored torture and killings. Now that Mugabe is 93 years old, and reportedly
in poor health, the fight for political influence is more intense than ever. And it’s caused a split in Mugabe’s own
party, the ZANU-PF. On one side we have the old guard lead by
Mugabe’s sacked vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Like Mugabe, he fought for Zimbabwe’s independence
and has a checkered past that includes human rights abuses against political opponents
and ethnic minorities. As an old friend of Mugabe’s and vice president
since 2014, Mnangagwa was the heir-apparent for many years. But that all changed on November 6th when
Mugabe’s government said Mnangagwa had exhibited “traits of disloyalty” and fired him. This seemed to indicate Mugabe’s support
for another successor; Grace Mugabe his own wife. She has recently risen within the party, but
is extremely unpopular nationwide, mostly due to her expensive shopping habits, which
earned her the nickname, Gucci Grace. The military has sided with Mnangagwa. "that when it comes to matters
of protecting our revolution, the military will not hesitate to step in." On November 15th they did just that, taking
control of the capital in what they deemed “a guardian coup”; to protecting the Zimbabwe
people and “democracy”. But their interests are more self-motivated;
they want to secure their own power. They have control over lucrative farm and
mining operations and access to foreign currency. To keep this power, they need a united ZANU-PF,
who face elections scheduled for 2018. What’s missing in all this? The people of Zimbabwe. Whoever ends up in charge… Mnangagwa, the military, or Grace Mugabe …. corruption will continue. All these actors are want to keep the status
quo. But for the general population; the status quo is a destroyed economy. the status quo is a society of unequal opportunity. During Mugabe’s 37 years of leadership,
massive corruption was commonplace. There have been repeated allegations of Mugabe and his cabinet embezzling money from mining and diamond industries. Mugabe even won the “state owned” lottery
in 2000. Transparency International estimates that
Zimbabwe loses $1billion per year to corruption. All the while Zimbabwe’s economy suffered. The poverty rate is at 72%. Inflation has reached peaks of 231,000,000%
!!!!! …. With GDP growth, stagnant. This has made Zimbabwe one of the most economically
unequal countries in the world. A problem it shares with much of the region. Studies show that “low levels of economic
growth and high levels of poverty are common conditions in African countries that experience military coups. In fact, 36% of all coup attempts since 1950
have occurred in Africa. The problem is coups rarely address these
problems. Military coups in Niger (2010), Burkina Faso
(2014) and Burundi (2015) were attempts by leaders to extend their term limits. While coups in Guinea (2008) and Togo (2005)
were sparked by competition over succession. The same appears to be happening in Zimbabwe, What's uncertain in the near future is Zimbabwe's political leadership. What's certain is that politicians fight over their own self-interests and those of the people are forgotten. When it comes to buying stuff, I’ve often
wondered how did I live without online shopping? I mean literally today anything I want is
available to me 24/7. I can buy anything anytime. In fact 79% of Americans shop online. This happens when they’re laying in bed,
while they’re out with friends having a drink. It turns out actually one in five us shop
online while we’re using the bathroom. All this stuff we’re buying magically appears
on our doorstep. But what effect does all this shopping have
on the planet? Delivery services ship a lot more packages
now because of online shopping. Since 2009 US Postal Service deliveries increased
by 65%. And during the holidays, UPS deliveries have
increased by 260 million packages since 2010. Now for the most part, if you compare online
shopping with driving to the store, online shopping has a smaller carbon footprint. But there’s a catch. It's only better for the environment if you
don't get rushed delivery. Most of us, including me, are choosing faster
delivery like two day shipping because most of the time it's free. Why wouldn’t we want it right away? But it isn’t just a time difference, it’s
an environmental difference. All these faster deliveries mean more trucks
on the road and that’s causing more greenhouse gases. And that means more global warming. When we choose two-day shipping, deliveries
often come in multiple packages. Let’s say I buy some dish soap and a pair
of socks. The shipping warehouse near me might be out
of dish soap, so they fly some in from another state. Meanwhile, those socks, they’re getting
sent to me on a separate truck. Also, the company is trying to get it to me
quickly, so trucks are often sent out only half full -- If there was more flexibility
in timing, they could fill them up all the way. If you know you have five-day delivery window,
you can wait from all the products to come in from different sources, consolidate the
shipment, and send it. And now you can wait for many customers’
orders to come in and consolidate that into, let’s say, a full truckload. This is Miguel Jaller. He studies sustainable transportation at the
University of California, Davis. By picking the longer delivery window, I’m
giving the company more time to find the most efficient way to get a product to me. Another problem is with returns. So one of the things that companies made is
offering this reliable and fast and almost free return option. So now as a customer, I can actually try the
product, even if I don’t have any store to go to, because if I don’t like it or
it doesn’t fit, I can actually return it at no cost. So like with buying clothes, if I shop online
and pick the ‘try before you buy’ option, it would be like saying a delivery truck is
driving back and forth just to find me the right stuff. So what are companies trying to do? When you think of the future of online shipping,
you might imagine drones and driverless cars. But today’s solutions are more about keeping
traffic moving along, like with wifi traffic lights that let truckers know ahead of time
when the light will turn red. This cuts down on idling at the light and
wasting fuel. We’re now starting to transmit the timing
of those traffic lights, in anticipation for that, they might want to speed up a little
bit or slow down or do these certain little velocity changes so that they increase their
chances of getting through that light. This is Matt Barth at the University of California,
Riverside. He’s looking at ways trucks can reduce their
transit footprint. You can essentially smooth out your patterns
of travel. And when you smooth out your travel patterns,
you get those fuel-economy benefits. Cities like San Jose and Las Vegas are already
testing out this traffic light technology. You can save 15 to 20 percent fuel just by
doing those type of activities. And on the highway, trucks are now starting
to talk to each other -- it’s called truck platooning. You can think of it like cruise control except
its transmitting the truck’s speed to the other vehicles following behind. This lets all the trucks drive in unison at
the same speed close behind each other. What they’re doing is trying to reduce the
drag. The narrow gaps they create between each other
shields the trucks that are following from wind resistance. And so there’s been a number of experiments
worldwide that have shown, you know, you can get 10 to 15, 20 percent energy savings, fuel
savings by doing that type of platooning. Now delivery companies have been tackling
fuel use and emissions for decades. Take UPS. Since the 1970s they’ve encouraged drivers
to eliminate left hand turns, reducing their emissions by 100,000 metric tons. That’s like taking 21,000 cars off the road. So there are ways companies can shrink their
carbon footprint, but what if they were better about changing customer behavior – like
getting us to be conscious about how we shop online? I’ve always picked that 2 day option because
to be honest never really thought about it, but what if companies offered a green option? So if you just check a box they would just
ship stuff to you in the most energy efficient way possible. Sure, maybe it takes a little bit longer,
but that’s something I’d actually be willing to do. I mean every now and again, I might need something
right away. But I probably don’t need to overnight a
delivery of socks to my front door. You probably do a lot of your online shopping
with your smartphone. Well watch our other episode to see what kind
of impact these devices have on our planet. You crossed. Take your camera and point it across there at the red hand. That is a crosswalk. That's a 65 dollar ticket a piece. Get into my car. We just crossed the street, we just crossed the street without following the sign. That was it. And we got stopped. The young man in this
video's name is Devonte Shipman. And he was stopped right here in Jacksonville, Florida. And threatened with jail time for essentially, jaywalking. You did do something illegal. You crossed the crosswalk. Yeah, I crossed the crosswalk. Against a red hand. I was sitting right
there when you did it. I wasn't paying no attention that's - you act like I really just committed a serious crime that's worth this time right now. It is worth the time. Walk to my car. It's not often we report on
jaywalking. It's a minor infraction. We've even seen cops do it. Shipman would later say one of the officers told him he was just stopping him to make sure he didn't have any guns, knives, or drugs on him. They even questioned why his friend
was wearing a hoodie. Then I'm gonna look
more suspicious. That's up to you. No. Apparently you don't even have free will anymore. Damn this crazy. N***a can't even walk across the street. I guess cuz a n***a black, can't do nothing. I guess like I look like I'm doing something wrong. Shipman's story isn't unique. And it led us
to question, exactly how many people here in Jacksonville have experienced walking
while black. Listen to me. I am doing you a favor. I'm not telling you again. What's your name? Devonte Shipman. Alright so there's another infraction. Not only was Shipman given a 62 dollar
ticket for failing to obey a pedestrian signal, he was also cited for walking
without an ID. Which harkens back to troubling racist laws. And to be clear
it's actually a citation that's meant for motorists. but the cop tried to give
that ticket the Shipman anyway. That charge was eventually dropped. The video struck a chord with thousands of people who shared it, and here in Jacksonville
many people can relate to Shipman's story. Why would you stop two black men
crossing that intersection? I was shocked because it's like I didn't really think
people actually get ticketed for things like this. You know what I mean like
especially not in that area you got people that cross that intersection day
and night, like continuously, so I'm trying to figure out like why was at this
cop at this moment stopping us. In Florida there are 28 laws pedestrians
must observe while walking. They include everything from jaywalking to walking on the wrong side of the road to failing to cross the road at a right angle or the
shortest route. Yes, that's a thing. We wanted to see how poverty and race
factored into who's getting these tickets so we requested data from the
state. Here's what we found. In the last five years, Duval County police officers
handed out 2,208 pedestrian citations. The most given citation in Duval County was for failing to cross in a crosswalk between adjacent intersections with
traffic lights. But here's the thing, We examined those 658 citations and found that 54% of them were not given in locations with adjacent
traffic lights. They were legally permitted to cross, yet they still received a ticket. If you're living in the county's three poorest ZIP codes, you're 5.9 times more likely to receive a pedestrian ticket than anyone else in
Jacksonville. That's the highest percentage in Florida among large counties. With high-profile incidents of black men encountering police all across the country, Shipman decided to film his. You got people getting shot by police, you got people getting abused, it's just brutality that's just non-stop. So I just felt like I just needed to record
it to prevent a situation. Getting stopped for jaywalking can feel so
absurd that on more than one occasion, a person has called the cops on the cops. Jacksonville 9-1-1. What's going on there? Um, something is going on like a mile down the street. And I parked my 18-wheeler, in the parking lot like a
half a mile and I'm trying to tell the officer that I park right there. He
don't want to hear nothing I gotta say. That's John Kendrick, a Jacksonville
truck driver. He was trying to park his 18-wheeler in his leased parking spot
when a police officer wouldn't let him pass through. Stunned, he moved his
vehicle to the median and called 911. The dispatcher told him to get the officer's car number, but when he stepped off the sidewalk, the officer ordered him to the ground, handcuffed him, and ticketed him for a pedestrian violation. But I was in the crosswalk at the time and he still locked me up, kept me in the squad car
for about four hours, five hours, on the spot. The guy kept saying that you're not
gonna have no job tomorrow, you're not gonna have no job tomorrow. Kendrick received one of 387 tickets issued to people for walking in the roadway where sidewalks are provided. 78 percent of those tickets went to black people. They just cruel. And they be cruel to black people. I just hate to say it like that but they be cruel, real cruel. They think that we won't fight, and
that's what the problem is. They know that that we're scared, that some people are scared to go to court. You know me,  I I turned out, I hired a
lawyer, we fought and got the charges dropped. We spoke to the Jacksonville
Sheriff's Office and they aren't concerned about disparities. They believe
the numbers simply reflect who's breaking the law. They also said they're
enforcing the law to keep people safe. If their citation efforts result in just
one less pedestrian death, they say it's a win.. One report ranked Jacksonville the
fourth worst city in the country for pedestrian safety. But does giving pedestrian tickets actually help make walking safer? It's probably not a good
use of resources to be ticketing people and having education and enforcement programs in place to regulate behavior that just isn't
feasible, and isn't possible because of the physical environment. That's Andy Clark, who was hired by the city ofJacksonville to consult on pedestrian safety. After a year, Clark issued a master plan and wrote that no amount of enforcement will change behavior in this area. He
concluded that the city should invest in better infrastructure before it writes
tickets. The reality is, the physical environment, the infrastructure for walking and cycling, is quite poor. And there aren't sidewalks, there's a
disconnected bikeway network, There are very few crosswalks, there's
high-speed roads that have very few opportunities to cross. I mean it seems
unfortunate to say the least and capricious at worst to be ticketing
people for behavior that just is impossible to do the right thing or be
in the right place. The master plan found that Jacksonville was simply behind the curve on pedestrian safety. The city hadn't map which roads had sidewalks and put bus stops on streets that didn't have them. Experts agree that writing more pedestrian citations won't reduce the number of accidents. And the data shows, the people getting the tickets are mostly black, more likely to be poor, and they're walking in a city that just
wasn't built for pedestrians. Florida oranges, Georgia peaches, and motherf******
dancing California raisins. Even though all these fruits are really popular,
none of them are actually native to the United States. There’s actually one fruit that’s far
more American than any of those, but there’s a good chance that you’ve never even heard
of it before. It’s called the pawpaw. This is Maeve Turner. She’s the herb garden curator at the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden, and we talked pawpaws. They are native to a large portion of the
United States, but they have this really tropical look. And they’re part of a plant family, Annonaceae,
that is mostly tropical, so they’re one of the only — they are in fact the only
genus in the family that grows this far north. They naturally grow along what’s called
the “pawpaw belt” that includes 26 states, mostly in the eastern half of the US. You can find them growing along the banks
of rivers and in forests. And if you look up there, those are pawpaw
trees. And the twigs and bark on the trees contain
a natural insecticide, so they’re also really easy to grow organically. They’re also the largest edible fruit native
to North America, which makes you wonder: What do these bad boys taste like? It’s sort of like a nutty fruit. It tastes tropical. Oh, it’s not bad. It’s very mushy. Oh, I don’t like this. It’s bitter. It’s not that good. I wish I hadn’t eaten it. They’re kind of a mess to eat, and the flesh
sticks to the seeds a lot. Maybe you’ve heard them called by of one
of the many nicknames they’ve had over the years: Indiana banana, fetid-bush, or bandango. No? All right, whatever, dude. There’s fossil records of pawpaws being
in North America as long as 56 million years ago. And there’s evidence from Native American
tribes showing that they were really prized in their ... using them for fruit and also
using the seeds medicinally, and even the bark from the trees they would use for rope
or string. In May of 1541, the Spanish conquistador Hernando
de Soto and his North American expedition reached the Mississippi River and documented
Native Americans growing what some believe to be the first written record of the pawpaw. He wrote: “There is everywhere in the country
a fruit, the produce of a plant like ligoacam, that is propagated by the Indians, having
the appearance of the royal pear, with an agreeable smell and taste.” They’re often confused with the papaya,
which, while sort of similar-looking, are actually totally different species. A papaya is a truly tropical fruit; it doesn’t
grow this far north. They’re also a lot bigger, and they have
a much brighter orange inner flesh. And you know that Australian pawpaw ointment
you’ve been using? It’s actually made using the papaya species. Sorry, mate. The pawpaw has a unique place in American
history. The Jamestown settlement was carved out of
what was likely a pawpaw patch. This is Andrew Moore. He wrote an entire book about the pawpaw fruit. The Founding Fathers of the US would’ve
been familiar with the fruit. George Washington had them planted at his
estate in Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson knew the fruit and had them
planted at Monticello. Jefferson loved them so much that he even
sent pawpaw seeds to his friends in France, which I do every Christmas and have yet to
receive a single thank-you card. John James Audubon even included pawpaws in
his painting of a yellow-billed cuckoo in his book Birds of America. You’ll find towns named after the pawpaw
in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana. And there’s even a pawpaw festival every
year in Ohio, which can get pretty f****** crazy. There are entire towns named after the pawpaw,
so why are you probably not going to be seeing them sold in your grocery store anytime soon? Sheri Crabtree works at the Kentucky State
University pawpaw program. A lot of the wild pawpaws are gone due to
development. They’re native to kind of understory of
forests, and so a lot of them don’t exist anymore because land has been cleared for
development, to build houses and cities and commercial developments. The United States lost almost 950,000 acres
of forested land each year between 1990 and 2010, with the eastern portion of the US where
the pawpaws grow being disproportionately affected. I think people used to just be much more in
tune with nature. People would go out and grow their own foods
and look for foods in the woods, versus now people want to mostly just go to the grocery
store and buy their food. Which is another part of the problem, because
pawpaws don’t fit well within large-scale industrial agriculture. The fruit ripens really fast, so once it is
ripe enough to either be picked or fall off the tree, it’s almost too ripe within, like,
three to five days. Which makes it incredibly difficult to sell
on a mass scale. Contrast that with something like apples,
which through a process called controlled atmosphere storage can be kept fresh for months
at a time, making them easy to store and ship anywhere. In fact, most apples that you buy at the store
were probably picked over a year ago. Pawpaws, on the other hand, are inherently
finicky. They bruise easily, have a short shelf life,
and don’t ripen at a predictable or uniform rate. So even though they’re delicious, nutritious,
and native to the US, you’ll pretty much only be able to find them at farmers markets. Pawpaws thrived in a simpler time, when people
would go out into the forest and pick their own fruit. But as things changed and industrial agriculture
took over, the pawpaw didn’t really have a place in this new mass-produced modern world. But there’s almost something kind of nice
about it in a way. They very well maybe destined to be a niche
or a specialty fruit. And, again, that doesn’t have to be a bad
thing. You know, the pawpaw doesn’t have to rule
the market to be something that people enjoy. There’s a certain satisfaction in the journey
that it takes to acquire a pawpaw. It’s not an easy fix like an apple or a
banana, where you can just go on Amazon Fresh and have them delivered to you in an hour. You have to almost earn the pawpaw, in a way. So maybe they’ll never be as popular as
other mass-produced fruit. And maybe that’s okay. Not everything needs to be an apple, and that
can be fine. The pawpaw doesn’t have to be something
it’s not. It can just be the pawpaw, something that
people have enjoyed for centuries and, you know, hopefully may continue to enjoy. Anyone into makeup — following Instagram beauty influencers, or just watching a bunch of YouTube tutorials knows that Rihanna’s
makeup line, Fenty Beauty, is blowing up. It dropped during New York Fashion Week in September of this year and since then the color-poppin' highlighters, matchstixs, and lip gloss have created a buzz on social media. But the most notable thing about the line
is the range of foundation shades — there are 40 to be exact. And many of the deeper shades were sold out in stores and online within days of the launch. Which is bananas because how often do you hear about darker shades being sold out? For a long time, the beauty industry has neglected women of color as consumers. But our bad gal RiRi's incredibly successful
makeup line has challenged the notion that the market for deeper shades isn't profitable for cosmetic companies. It also raised an important question: Why haven't most companies had the same kind of inclusivity or the success to go with it? Tiffany Gill: Well, the interesting thing about Fenty is that it’s not the very first time that
a beauty line has had expansive shades. That’s Tiffany Gill, Associate Professor
of History and Black American studies at the University of Delaware. Tiffany Gill: Before the Fenty Beauty line launched, Make Up For Ever, another cosmetic company that caters a lot to professional makeup artists, launched a campaign that also had a lot of skin tone inclusivity. Other mainstream brands like Covergirl, Revlon, Maybelline, and L’Oreal also attempted to cater to the broader market of complexions. But it’s quite easy to see where mainstream brands have fallen short. I went to several drugstores and a major department store and I saw a clear trend — there were 50 shades of beige to choose from. This is looks really pale. I'm not, I'm not that pale...I'm... But, the darker shades were limited to a handful of options. When I tried to match my own skin with the available shades of foundation, you can see how these few products weren’t going to
work for me. Is it really that hard to get it right? Tasha Brown, a makeup artist based in LA, who's worked with a number of Hollywood stars, doesn’t seem to think so. Tasha Brown: As a makeup artist, it’s the same technique I would use that for anyone from Karen Elson to Alek Wek. I first look at the undertone of the skin, then I look at the actual shade range, and then I pick the correct texture for their skin
tone. So, there is no extra difficulty in understanding deeper skin tones. So it's easy to find a foundation match if
you know your undertone -- which is your underlying skin tone on a spectrum of cool to warm. But finding deeper shades that actually offer the right undertones for women of color has been incredibly hard. Maybe product development is where it gets really tricky? Al-Nisa Ward: Yeah...actually, It’s not very difficultto make deeper shades. What?? Depending on the base, all foundations have the same basic base. So for example, if we’re talking about a
standard foundation, which would be a water and silicone base, it’s an emulsion where
the water phase is surrounded by silicone. That basic emulsion would be the same. The only difference between a lighter
shade and a darker shade is the ratio of pigments. And all foundations contain the same four
pigments. It's titanium dioxide, iron oxide red, iron oxide yellow, and iron oxide black. So you just play with the ratios of those
pigments to get to a lighter color or darker color. The trouble with finding the right shade isn’t limited to foundation. Tasha Brown: Yes, it's not just foundation, you know!?  It is blush. It is lipstick. Where it’s a beautiful color, but it’s
a light wash. And deeper skin tones tend to demand a little more pigment. It's a problem that can be solved with an
understanding of darker skin tones. But overall, in 2014, only 18% of American
Chemical Society members were people of color. In 2015, Black, Hispanic and Asian, women made up 16.3% of workers in the personal care products industry. Tasha Brown: As a consumer, you want to have options in comparison. You want things to be easy. I want to be able to walk into a store and
see myself represented. Over the past few years mainstream beauty companies have been making an effort to be more inclusive. But why is it taking them so long to get it
right? Tiffany Gill: When it comes to beauty, they’re usually based on very narrow ideas of what constitutes beautiful. And even if there are a wider range of women who are demanding products, a wider range of consumers who want to see themselves reflected and are
willing to pay money to get these products. Many brands are unwilling to cater to them
in fears that it will damage their brand. In fears that it will make their brand less
glamorous, less beautiful if it’s attached to black women, if it's attached to darker skin women. The beauty industry has a long history of
only catering to a very specific type of person. In the late 1940s, makeup for black women was available, but beauty companies still focused on skin lightening products for black women. Tiffany Gill: We begin to see, really in the 1970s, an attempt to begin to show a wider range of beauty when it comes to makeup products. It’s when the cultural movement “Black
is Beautiful” began to rise as a celebration of blackness in the African American community. Robert Williams, a leading figure in American psychology, wrote, “The Black-is-Beautiful movement and the all-out effort to instill
racial pride in black people have done much to neutralize and offset much of the damaging
effects of oppression from being black.” The movement, was not only a response to colorism in the Black community, but also the prevalent racism in wider American culture. That movement brought a change in the beauty
industry too — more products were being created for the black community. Tiffany Gill: And the wider range of products for black women came from a lot of black-owned companies themselves. Companies like Fashion Fair cosmetics, which was developed by the Johnson publishing company, which was the publishing company behind Ebony [magazine], for example. Drugstore brands like Maybelline had Shades of You in the 90s, Black Opal had products that catered to women of color starting in 1994, Iman began selling in discount retailers in 2004, and Covergirl had the Queen Collection in 2006. Then you had luxury brands like NARS, MAC, Bobbi Brown, Black-Up and Make Up For Ever offering even more shades of brown at higher prices. But it hasn’t always been a smooth ride
for all of these brands. L’Oréal faced controversy when it was accused of whitewashing Beyonce in its 2008 campaign. In 2016, MAC launched their “Vibe Tribe”
collection which at worst is cultural appropriation and at best is pretty culturally insensitive... ...yep. While mainstream brands have missed the mark,
independent beauty brands have successfully filled the gaps. Brands like koyVoca, Cocotique and The Lip Bar all offer extensive products for women of color. The gap between mainstream and independent brands is also evident in the way they reach their audience. While major brands still turn to traditional
advertising on TV and in magazines, a lot of independent creators rely heavily on social media. Tiffany GIll: Social media has changed the beauty industry in tremendous ways. What is really interesting is that
if you go on social media there are lots of women some of whom are professionally trained makeup artists, some women who like make up who have huge followings. And they have followings of people
who will listen to what they say. And so it’s much more intimate than
having, for example, just a celebrity at the front of your campaigns, which is often what Covergirl, and L'Oréal and many of the big companies have done. Brands can try to copy Rihanna’s marketing but there’s more to it than that. Rihanna: “If I love it, I’m going to go
all the way to the end about it. And I dabbled in makeup before, but this is like my vision from the ground up. From the textures to the foundation shades, to the names... "Rihanna: I have a hundred percent involvement in this process." Even if Rihanna’s makeup line doesn’t
live up to the hype over time, there’s no denying that Fenty is causing a much-needed stir in the beauty industry. A decade ago, robots still seemed pretty limited. Now, not so much. And computers don’t just win chess any more,
they can win Jeopardy. “Watson.” “What is the of the Elegance of the Hedgehog?” They can win Go. “There are about 200 possible moves for
the average position in Go.” This is all happening really fast. And it’s causing some to forecast a future
where humans can’t find work. “There will be fewer and fewer jobs that
a robot cannot do better.” “And what are the people gonna do?” “That’s the $64,000 question.” I believe this is going to be one of the biggest
challenges we face in the coming decades. “People who are not just unemployed. They are unemployable.” But if you ask economists, they tend to have
a pretty different view from the futurists and Silicon Valley types. Do you worry that new technologies could cause
mass unemployment? Yes. No. I have devoted my career to worrying about
the labor market, particularly worrying about the living standards of low and moderate income
workers. So I worry a lot about things. I am not worried about this. One of the reasons a lot of economists are
skeptical about robots taking all the jobs is that we’ve heard that before. There was a spike of automation anxiety in
the late 20s, early 1930s when machines were starting to take over jobs on farms and
also in factories. This article from 1928 points out that there
used to be guards who opened and closed the doors on new york subway trains, and people
who took tickets before there were turnstiles. And I just love this quote: It says “building
materials are mixed like dough in a machine and literally poured into place without the
touch of a human hand.” Automation anxiety surged again in the late
1950s, early 1960s. President Kennedy ranks automation first as
job challenge. “Computers and automation threaten to create
vast unemployment and social unrest” “What should I do Mr. Whipple?” “Stop him!” This article from 1958 is about 17,000 longshoremen
who were protesting automation on the piers. And if you don't know what longshoremen are,
that’s because there aren’t many of them left. Technology destroyed a lot of those jobs. And yet, we didn’t run out of work. This chart shows the percentage of prime-age
people with jobs in the US. Ever since women joined the workforce in big
numbers, it’s stayed around 80%, outside of recessions. During this period, technology displaced some
8 million farmers in the US, 7 million factory workers, over a million railroad workers,
hundreds of thousands of telephone  operators, we’ve lost gas-pumpers, elevator attendants,
travel agents. Tons of jobs have died but work persists. What you realize when you look through those
old reports is that it’s really easy for us to see the jobs being replaced by machines. It’s a bit harder to visualize the jobs
that come from what happens next. New technology creates jobs in a few ways. There are the direct jobs for people who design
and maintain the technology, and sometimes whole new industries built on the technology. But the part we tend to forget is the indirect
effect of labor-saving inventions. When companies can do more with less, they
can expand, maybe add new products or open new locations, and they can lower prices to
compete. And that means consumers can buy more of their
product, or if we don’t want any more of it, we can use the savings to buy other things. Maybe we go to more sports events or out to
dinner more often. Maybe we get more haircuts or add more day-care
for the kids. This process is how our standard of living
has improved over time and it’s always required workers. The key economic logic here is automation
does indeed displace workers who are doing work that got automated, but it doesn't actually
affect the total number of jobs in the economy because of these offsetting effects. Warnings about the “end of work” tend
to focus on this part and not all of this -- like a widely cited study from 2013,
“According to research conducted by Oxford University, nearly half of all current jobs
in America --” “47 percent of all our jobs--” “47 percent of US jobs in the
next decade or two, according to researchers at Oxford, will be replaced by robots.” That study assessed the capabilities of automation
technology. It didn’t attempt to estimate the actual
“extent or pace” of automation or the overall effect on employment. Now, all this doesn’t mean that the new
jobs will show up right away or that they’ll be located in the same place or pay the same
wage as the ones that were lost. All it means is that the overall need for
human work hasn’t gone away. Technologists and futurists don’t deny that’s
been true historically, but they question whether history is a good guide of what’s
to come. Fundamentally the argument is that this time
it’s different. That’s what I think. Imagine a form of electricity that could automate
all the routine work. I mean, that’s basically what we are talking
about here. And so It’s going to be across the board. And it is easy to underestimate technology
these days. In a 2004 book, two economists  assessed
the future of automation and concluded that tasks like driving in traffic would be “enormously
difficult” to teach to a computer. That same year, a review of 50 years of research
concluded that “human level speech recognition has proved to be an elusive goal.” And now? “Ok Google. How many miles has google’s autonomous vehicle
driven?” “According to Recode, that’s because the
company announced its self-driving car project, which was created in 2009, has racked up over
two million miles of driving experience.” This is the textbook chart of advancement
in computer hardware — it’s the number of transistors that engineers have squeezed
onto a computer chip over time. Already pretty impressive, but notice that
this isn’t a typical scale: these numbers are increasing exponentially. On a typical linear scale it would look more
like this. It really is hard to imagine this not being
massively disruptive. And as the authors of The Second Machine Age
point out, processors aren’t the only dimension of computing that has seen exponential improvement. The idea of acceleration in your daily life when do you encounter that? Maybe in a car for a few seconds? In an airplane for seconds again? The idea that something can accelerate for
decades literally just continuously is just not something that we deal with. I mean, we think in straight lines. But even though there’s been all this innovation,
it’s not showing up in the data. If we were seeing this big increase in automation
we would see productivity growing much more rapidly now than it usually does, and we are
instead seeing the opposite. Labor productivity is a measure of the goods
and services we produce divided by the hours that we work. Over time it goes up - we do more with less
labor. We’re more efficient. If we were starting to see a ton of labor-saving
innovation you’d expect this line to get steeper, but when you look at productivity
growth, you can see that it has been slowing down since the early 2000s, and not just for
the US. It’s possible that new technologies are
changing our lives without fundamentally changing the economy. So will this all change? Will today’s robots and AI cause mass unemployment? There’s reason to be skeptical, but nobody
really knows. But one thing we do know is that the wealth
that technology creates, it isn’t necessarily shared with workers. When you account for inflation, the income
of most families has stayed pretty flat as the economy has grown. One of the problems we've seen over the last
40 years is that we have seen all of this rising productivity growth but actually hasn't
been broadly shared, it's been captured by a thin slice of people at the top of the income
distribution. Even if unemployment stays low, automation
might worsen economic inequality, which is already more extreme in the US than it is
in most other advanced countries. But technology isn’t destiny. Governments decide how a society weathers
disruptions, and that worries people on both sides of the debate about the future of work. We’ve adopted policies that instead of really
trying to counteract the trend caused by technology and globalization and other things, we’ve
in many cases exacerbated them. We’ve put a wind in the back of them and
made them more extreme. And that’s a big problem. We will probably always be fascinated by the
prospect of robots taking our jobs. But if we  focus on things we can’t really
control, we risk neglecting the things we can. In 1989, Japan’s Shinkansen Bullet Train
had a problem. It was fast — really fast — like, pushing
170 miles per hour fast. But every time it exited a tunnel — it was
loud. The noise was coming from
a variety of sources, but whenever a train sped into a tunnel, it pushed waves of atmospheric
pressure through the other end. The air exited tunnels with a sonic boom that
could be heard 400 meters away. In dense residential areas, that was a huge
problem. So, an engineering team was brought in to
design a quieter, faster, and more efficient train. And they had one secret weapon: Eiji Nakatsu — the
general manager of the technical development department — was a birdwatcher. Different components of the redesigned bullet
train were based on different birds. Owls inspired the pantograph — that’s
the rig that connects the train to the electric wires above. Nakatsu modeled the redesign after their feathers,
reducing noise by using the same serrations and curvature that allow them to silently
swoop down to catch prey. The Adelie Penguin — whose smooth body allows
it to swim and slide effortlessly — inspired the pantograph’s supporting shaft, redesigned
for lower wind resistance. And perhaps most notable of all was the Kingfisher. The Kingfisher is a bird that dives into water
to catch its prey. The unique shape of its beak allows it to
do that while barely making a splash. Nakatsu took that shape to the design table. The team shot bullets shaped like different
train nose models down a pipe to measure pressure waves, and dropped them in water to measure
the splash size. The quietest nose design was the one modeled
most closely after the Kingfisher’s beak. When the redesign debuted in 1997, it was 10% faster, used 15% less electricity, and stayed under the 70 dB noise limit in residential areas. And it did all that with the wings of an owl,
the belly of a penguin, and the nose of a Kingfisher. There’s a name for design like this. It’s called biomimicry. The people who design our world usually never
take a biology class, believe it or not. So they're novices in how the world works. That’s Janine Benyus. Back in 1997, she wrote the book that coined
the term “Biomimicry”. It told the story of the innovations in computing,
energy, and health that were inspired by structures in the natural world. Stick like a gecko. Compute like a cell. Even  run a business like a redwood forest. Benyus has since worked as a consultant for
various companies, trying to get them to understand how to take design ideas from nature. That might mean studying prairie dog burrows
to build better air ventilation systems, mimicking shark skin to create bacteria-resistant plastic
surfaces for hospitals, or arranging wind turbines in the same drag-reducing pattern
that schools of fish swim in. Designers get inspiration from a lot of different
places, but Benyus thinks many of them could benefit from looking more at the natural world. So there's a lot of looking at what other people
have done. And what they do is, they look at all the others, and they get ideas. They literally do, I mean, a lot of designers have lots of magazines that they look through, they tear those out and they put them up on inspiration boards. But they're looking at other human technologies. Her idea was simple: designers should get
in the habit of bringing a biologist to the table, and let them help solve problems by
mimicking nature. And there are three main ways they can do
that. You can mimic its form, or its shape. You might create a paint for a building that,
when it dries, it's got the same structure as self-cleaning leaves, lotus leaves are
notoriously great, they let rainwater clean the leaf because because they have
these bumps and the rain water balls up on the bumps, and then it pearls away the dirt. So that lotus effect is physical, and you
can create a physical structure on the outside of any product. Imagine that on the outside your car, rainwater
would clean your car. So that's mimicking form. But there's also mimicking process, the processes of the natural world. It might even be how you mimic how ants communicate in order to efficiently find sources of food or new places to live.
And those processes, that self-organization, has been mimicked in software, in things like
autonomous cars and how they're gonna move in flocks through the city by talking to one
another. That's mimicking nature's process. And then you jump up to the level of mimicking
whole ecosystems. There's a thing that's a buzzword right now,
that's really hot, called the circular economy, which is essentially industries saying
there should be no such thing as a byproduct in a manufacturing facility that goes to landfill. It should be used by something else, and at
the end of a product's life, that product should be upcycled into something else. It's being called the circular economy. Ecosystems do that really, really, really
well. You've got a log on the forest floor, and
those materials move up into the body of the fungus that eats it. Those materials move up into a mouse. And that mouse material moves up into a hawk... And if you think about that as what we'd like to do with local materials being upcycled constantly. In our cities, for instance. Those ecosystem lessons are really big for us. And that’s the end goal for biomimetic design
— making products, systems, and cities functionally indistinguishable from the natural world. Life has been around on Earth for 3.8 billion
years — and what designers are starting to realize is that’s a lot of research and
development time. The people who design our world have a lot
to learn from the natural world. All they have to do is take a look. Thank you so much for watching, this is one
of a series of videos that we're doing in collaboration with 99% Invisible. They are a podcast that does stories all about
design. We loved working with them, you should definitely check them out at 99pi.org or on any podcast app. You guys are not going to believe what Trump just tweeted. He– Uh oh. Sorry. Try it again. You guys are not going to believe what Trump— Jesus. What's wrong? Um. Nothing. One more time. You guys are not going to— You know what? Never mind. Twitter's harassment problem is out of control and it's changing the way we talk about free speech on the internet. Before we talk about what Twitter is, we should talk about what Twitter was supposed
to be. In the preamble to its original rules, Twitter
stated: except in limited circumstances.” In other words, Twitter was supposed to be a neutral platform where you could say anything to anyone with very few rules. Twitter, and Blogger before it, were very
interested in kind of committing to that principle of free
speech. If you get the barriers out of the way, speech
will happen, rich discussion will happen, the best ideas
will bubble forth. That's Tarleton Gillespie, who's been studying
speech on the internet since Napster was around. What's Napster? Am I old? Twitter prided itself on being an anti-censorship
platform, especially after it played a role in the Arab
Spring uprisings in 2011. That was a very compelling idea for what Twitter
could be, what citizen journalism could be. For a while, Twitter talked about themselves
as the free speech wing of the free speech party. Twitter's commitment to free speech was baked into its design and structure. You can tweet anonymously, meaning you won't be punished for your opinions. You can tweet at whoever you want, meaning you don't need permission to talk
to politicians and celebrities. And maybe most importantly, beyond copyright infringement and impersonation, Twitter was not interested in monitoring what
you tweeted. That was a very powerful commitment
for them and made them design their tool in really
compelling ways. Sorry, one second. Jesus, someone tweeted that? No, it's a text from my mom. Twitter began as a radical experiment in free
speech. But over time that experiment started to fall
apart because the same features that made Twitter so attractive to citizen journalists and political
dissidents also made it a perfect environment for trolls: neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and misogynists. These users realized they could use Twitter's
anonymity and structure to target and harass people
they didn't agree with. And before long, Twitter had a massive PR problem on their
hands. Every few weeks, another story about Twitter being overrun by abuse — high-profile users like journalists, celebrities,
and authors leaving the platform because of Twitter's
inability to deal with harassment. One of those users was Lindy West. I am a contributing opinion writer for the
New York Times. I wrote a book called Shrill that came out
in 2016. I'm just a general sort of internet feminist. West loved Twitter at first. But over time, her work made her the target of brutal harassment
campaigns. Very quickly, my experience on Twitter became one of endless constant harassment. I'll just read them. "No need for you to worry about rape, uggo." "That big bitch is bitter that no one wants
to rape her." "What a fucking cunt." "Kill yourself you dumb bitch." Is that enough? Oh, there's so many more. West recognized early on that that harassment wasn't just mean. It had a purpose. They want you removed from the national conversation and removed from whatever little shred of
power you've managed to achieve. And Twitter realized it too. In 2015, former CEO Dick Costolo told employees, Twitter's radical free speech experiment had
failed. If you have a commitment to free speech and some of your users are being shouted down, threatened, and driven off the platform, something's happening to their speech. The idea that you can be neutral without any
moderation is an illusion, and it's a very lazy, self-serving
illusion. Sorry, sorry. Twitter again? So this is where things start to get really
dicey, because Twitter has to answer this basic but messy question: Is Twitter really a neutral service provider, like Verizon or Comcast, offering a semi-public
platform without caring about what happens on it? Or had Twitter become something else, a community moderator that cares about the content and behavior of its users? So far Twitter's answer has been: Eeeeeh. On one hand, the company is clearly moving
away from its radical free speech roots. Twitter has slowly introduced tougher and tougher rules for dealing with harassment, prohibiting things like violent threats and incitements to harass. And in October, Twitter announced new rules to deal with violent groups and hateful images. Those are positive developments for victims
of abuse, but enforcing those rules is making Twitter
answer tougher and tougher questions about users’
content. Is this harassment? What about this? What about now? Is this harassment? What about now? Is this an example of hate speech? What about this? Is this a violent threat? How about now? What about now? Is this a hate image? What about this? How about now? Is this a dangerous group? What about this? There's no neutral way to answer these questions. The amount of accounts they're looking at, the kind of range they're looking at, how they judge what someone's doing, what their intent is, whether they're reading the situation correctly, those are immensely
difficult things to do. Twitter won't say how it's going to make these
calls. It's just asking us to trust them. And West worries those decisions might end up making the problem worse. The waters really get muddied. I know black activists whose accounts have been shut down for criticizing white
people because it's "racist." At the same time, Twitter still wants to be
treated like a neutral speech platform. In July, a month before the white supremacist
rally in Charlottesville, Twitter rolled out a "see every side" ad campaign, celebrating its "everything's cool" approach
to politics. Yep, that's a frat bro, Chadwick I'm assuming, tweeting about climate change being fake. Sweet Chadwick. When current Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked what kind of tool Twitter is, Dorsey responded To what? What does that mean? Closer to neo-Nazis? Closer to the targets of our harassment? Twitter is stuck between these competing visions of its responsibility to its users. Which is how we end up with a website that
bans white supremacist content but verifies actual white supremacists. I don't envy Twitter. You know, it's a huge problem. It's very, very complicated. I don't know how to fix it. Did you tweet this at me? Wrap it up! Fine, look. Any platform with rules has to have a reason for those rules, a goal those rules are trying to advance. Twitter doesn't right now. But by starting to crack down on abuse, Twitter is kind of opening Pandora's box, opening itself up to more and more responsibility for what happens on its platform. If you take the other view of free speech
that says, "You have to make a venue where speech works," that requires having an aspiration. It's not just, "Be more open and connected." It's not just, "Talk to anyone you want to." It's actually, "We're trying to build a conversation
here, and if you don't look like you're building
a conversation then you don't belong here." That's a very hard kind of mental shift. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if we're giving that much power to a private
company, we better hope it knows what it's doing. The American system, really in a lot of ways, discourages participation. Elections for Congress in the United States are based on a plurality winner system where you live in one district. Candidates from two or more parties go run in that district, and then whoever gets the most votes wins. Right now many of our maps are incredibly disproportional and in a state like North Carolina Democrats got 47% of the vote but Republicans have over two-thirds of the seats. Meanwhile most of us end up living in congressional districts that aren't competitive. where often the opposition party doesn't run a candidate at all. We end up focusing on a handful of swing seats that happen to be narrowly balanced. There's a very strong incentive to vote for one of the two major parties because people don't want to waste their vote by supporting a third party with no chance of winning. When you have 330 million people and two parties trying to represent them lots of people inevitably are gonna feel left out. You have incredible levels now in the United States of dissatisfaction with the political parties. Americans should think more seriously about switching from our current electoral system to one of any number of more proportional alternatives that could solve a lot of problems that exist in American voting today. In a party list system, it's very simple. Everybody in the state they would go to the voting booth and they would vote for a party that they like best. And then at the end we would see how many votes did each party get and if you got 25 or 30 or 40 percent of the vote that's how many seats you would get. And then the seats would be filled by just sort of running down a list that party leaders had made for themselves. Israel, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany and New Zealand all used variations on this system and as a result voters have lots of choices when it comes to finding a party that represents their interests. And voter turnout in these countries is much higher than in the United States. Another popular system is called an alternative vote system. You show up and you have to rank a whole bunch of candidates in order of preference. A constituency will elect a whole bunch of different members as individuals. But it's still gonna work out that if 40% of people were for Democrats, they'll end up with 40% of the seats. This is how legislators get elected in Australia and Ireland and there too you see lots of political parties. In the American system, a loss is a loss. So Republicans don't really put resources into House races in Massachusetts and Democrats pretty much ignore a place like Alabama. But in a proportional system, both parties would need to fight everywhere. Then they would need to try to engage citizens everywhere. There's no constitutional requirement in the United States that everybody use this district based system. Most states could adopt elements of a proportional system if they wanted to. Sure, the connection between a specific place and a specific legislator would weaken a bit. But it would also solve the problems of gerrymandered districts and break the two-party hold on our political system. You would get a wider range of views represented. You would get a wider range of talents involved in the system. And you have more people feeling that they're represented. Spain is in the middle of a political battle
that threatens to split the country. The region of Catalonia held a referendum
to decide if they wanted to become an independent state. And therefore separate from Spain. The Spanish constitutional courts ruled the
referendum illegal and the central government tried to stop it from happening. They arrested government officials who were
planning on holding the vote, confiscated ballots, and closed polling stations. Undeterred the regional Catalan government
announced that voters could print their ballots at home and vote at any open polling station. It didn’t take long for the situation to
escalate. Nearly 1000 people were injured in the violence. As for the results, 90 percent of participants
voted to secede. This would seem like almost unanimous approval,
but less than half of all eligible voters in Catalonia turned out to vote. Based on the results, the Catalan government
has declared independence from Spain unilaterally. In response the Spanish government is preparing
an unprecedented take over OF Catalonia’s regional powers which will remove its leaders
from office. So how did they get here? Spain is made up of 17 semi-autonomous regions,
each with their own identity. Some, like Catalonia, are distinct enough
that they have their own language, as well as culture, cuisine and literature. Spain is a decentralized unified state. That means that autonomous regions like Catalonia,
are governed according to the national constitution as well as laws enacted independently by each
regional government. But it wasn’t always this way. From 1939 to 1975 Spain lived under a fascist
dictatorship. Francisco Franco eliminated democratic liberties,
freedom of the press and political opposition. He also crushed regional diversity around
the country to impose a single national identity. For Catalonia that meant suppressing the Catalan
language as well as local traditions. It was a big blow to the Catalan culture. When Franco died in 1975, Spain transitioned
into a democracy and the newly created constitution expanded autonomy in the regions. they still use today. The constitution allowed Catalonia’s self
governance. It recognized Catalan as an official language
of Catalonia. And while specifically recognizing autonomy
in the regions that comprise Spain, it also cemented that Spain was indivisible. As Spain’s democracy strengthened, so did
Catalonia’s pride. We are Catalan, we feel Catalan we speak Catalan
and it’s another culture. Then, for the first time since the constitution
was created, Catalans tried to expand their autonomy, The 2006 referendum called for many
things, including: To create a new economic model for Catalonia
To define Catalonia as a nation And to privilege the Catalan language over
Spanish After four years of legal battles the constitutional
court struck down some of the amendments. When the constitutional ruling was announced,
one million Catalans went to the streets of Barcelona, where they carried signs that read
“We are a nation. We decide." There are economic motivations for independence
too. Catalonia is one of the most prosperous regions
in Spain. It takes up only 6 percent of the country,
but it accounts for one fifth of Spain’s economic output. In 2016 nearly 21 percent of Spain’s tax
revenue came from Catalonia. We pay a lot of taxes, they take them away
and they don’t return it in better infrastructure or better living conditions. Pro-independence Catalans believe Catalonia
pays too much money into the central government compared to what it gets in return. Catalonia, like Madrid and other richer regions,
support the poorer parts of Spain. This sentiment grew during the European economic
crisis. when a wave of unemployment hit Spain. But despite growing support, the majority
of Catalans don’t want independence. And while support for independence has been
close to 50 percent, the majority of Catalans do not want to leave Spain. Low income families are less likely to support
independence than those who are well off. As are Catalans who live in cities compared
to those who live in rural areas. Which brings us back to today. Banks and multinationals have started to move
their headquarters out of Barcelona to other Spanish regions. Catalan separatists have turned to Europe
for support, but most European Union leaders have sided with the central government. They have made it clear that an independent
Catalonia would have to apply for EU membership, a process that would take years. And while the fight on Catalan independence
will eventually be settled, it may take a long time for Catalonia and Spain to return
to peaceful coexistence. Well, I respect the move but the entire
thing has been a witch hunt. And there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign Two things are true about the Trump Russian investigation which heated up this week with the first public indictments. Thing number one there is still no smoking gun that proves Donald Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Thing number two: it is almost impossible now to look at the full weight of evidence and believe that there was no collusion. If there was no collusion, it would be astonishing. Of course, that is what Trump wants you to believe. We've been saying from day one there's been no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all. Let's run through the new information we've got and how it fits into what we already knew here. So most of the focus has been on the indictment of Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort. Two senior members of the Trump campaign team including former campaign chair Paul Manafort surrendered themselves to federal authorities. Who turned out to be hiding payments and hiding work he did on behalf of a Russian affiliated political party in Ukraine. But to me the most interesting part of all this by far is George Papadopolis. Because what he says upends our timeline of what the Trump campaign knew about the Russian hacks and when they knew it. So Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as a foreign policy adviser and almost immediately he begins emailing with two Russian sources with ties to Vladimir Putin's government. A couple months later, in London, he meets with one of these sources. A guy known as quote "The professor." And the professor tells him, they [the Russians] have dirt on her. The Russians had emails of Clinton. 
They have thousands of emails. So this means that three months before the DNC's hacked emails were released and more than six months before WikiLeaks released Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's hacked emails. Before all of that, one of Trump's 
foreign policy advisers knew the Russians had thousands of Clinton related emails. Now we know all of this because because in July the FBI arrested George Papadopolis as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible collusion with the Russian government.
And they arrested him because he had lied about all of this 
in a previous interview with the FBI. This fits into a broader story. The Russians really did hack into John Podesta's and the DNC's email accounts and they really did find and release
emails that damaged Clinton. Both their targets and their timing were incredibly sophisticated for a foreign government that has traditionally shown itself to have a poor understanding of American politics and all this joins a few other things we know. Like we know that Donald Trump Jr. got an email saying a Russian government lawyer had incriminating information on Hillary Clinton and he said in reply: "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer." And Don Trump Jr. got Jared Kushner and yes, Paul Manafort to attend the meeting with him. Oh and by the way, the emails, they
did come out that summer. And we know that Trump after all this, he publicly asked Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's computers and find other emails that 
she had not released to the public. Russia if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. It's almost like he thought they had that capability. And of course after all that Trump won the election. And he was so afraid of the Russia investigation that he fired James Comey in order to stop it. I was going to fire Comey. My decision. It was not . . You had made the decision before they came in the room. I was going to fire Comey. There's no good time to do it by the way. This Russia thing with Trump and Russia
 is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. So we know Trump and Russia were trying to achieve the same thing: Hillary Clinton's defeat. We know that both sides knew about 
the hacked emails in advance. We know they were interested on both sides and working together and we know that the actual crime, the release of these emails it really happened. And it happened on a
timetable meant to help Trump. We know they had tons of connections that would have made it possible for them to work together. So as I said there's no smoking gun here we don't have final evidence of collusion. But damn, sure is a lot of smoke. It's graduation day at a children's
school in Tokyo. From the metro station it's just ten
blocks to their school, but these children aren't totally safe. Old men
from their community have to stand at every corner to make sure that these
kids aren't harassed or bullied. It's happened before. In fact, there's been a
lot of rallies in Tokyo lately: protesting these kids and their school. This is because, even though these kids and their parents were born in Japan,
they're not Japanese. This is North Korea's bubble in Japan. It's a community of about 150,000 Koreans, holdovers from the 1940's when
Japan's military forcibly brought over their relatives. They run a network of
schools, where they teach their kids about Korean history, teach them Korean
language. They teach them the ideology of the great leader Kim Il-Sung. The guards are here this morning because three days ago, North Korea tested a bunch of
missiles that landed right off Japan's shores. Before the students can leave, they have
to change out of the traditional Korean clothing. But this community isn't giving in to the pressure. Their schools are the place
where they can protect their identity and quietly revere their great leader
and the homeland that he founded. A place none of them have ever lived. This North Korean bubble is a nation within a nation, whose borders are made out of
culture, language, history, and ideology. And it shows how borders exist as much
in our minds as they do on maps. In 1910 the Korean Peninsula was annexed by
Japan's expanding empire. During its rule the empire brought tens of thousands of
Koreans to Japan, mainly to work and to serve in their army. Or in the case of
Korean women, to serve as sex slaves in brothels for Japanese soldiers. Japan's empire grew until 1945 when World War II, brought its sudden defeat and the loss of
much of its empire, including Korea. The Koreans who were in Japan were free, but
they found themselves in a country that didn't recognize them as citizens. The
United States and the Soviet Union quickly filled the power vacuum of this
newly liberated Korean Peninsula and two new countries were formed: the U.S.
backing the new South Korea, and the Soviet Union backing the North,
installing a rising leader, Kim Il-Sung who a few years later invaded the
U.S.-backed South, starting the Korean War. Most of the Koreans in Japan went back
to Korea, but about 600,000 decided to stay in Japan. The Korean War changed everything, creating a bitter division between these
two new Koreas. So the Koreans in Japan could no longer just be Korean. They
suddenly had to choose which Korea they affiliated with. Almost all of them had
originally been from what was now South Korea, but this new North Korea began
paying special attention to the Koreans in Japan, sending the money and helping them
build schools and businesses. Effectively, helping them build a cultural border, to
help protect their identity and language against the Japanese society that sought
to change or destroy it. This school where the graduation is
taking place, was built with funding from Kim Il-Sung in those early days, after
the war. For these stateless Koreans in Japan, this support from a faraway
government built trust and loyalty to a regime that they had never actually
lived under. The North Korean backed organization in Japan
called themselves the Chongryon and over the following decades they built a
network of schools, banks, and gambling parlors. They became rich, and started
sending millions of dollars back to North Korea to support the regime. In
their heyday the Chongryon was worth around $25 billion dollars. But something happened that would mark the beginning of the end for this North
Korean business empire in Japan. In the late 70's North Korea started sending
spies disguised as fishermen to Japanese beaches, to start kidnapping Japanese
citizens. They brought them back to North Korea so that they could use them for
their language and cultural understanding of Japan, so they could help
train their spies. The victims, including a 13 year old girl who allegedly died in
captivity, gripped the nation's attention for years, their stories making their way into pop culture, their faces known to every
citizen. Around the same time, North Korea began developing its long-range missile
program, a program that would eventually lead North Korea to having nuclear
weapon delivery capabilities. Both the nuclear and abduction issues came to a
head in the early 2000's, when North Korea withdrew from the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty, a treaty that prevents countries from building more
nuclear weapons. The regime also officially admitted that they were
behind some of the kidnappings of Japanese citizens. This set off a wave of
violent attacks and hate speech against North Koreans living in Japan. The Japanese government demanded that
the Chongryon repay its outstanding debts. When the organization couldn't do this,
they were forced to declare bankruptcy. Many of their buildings, including their
headquarters, were seized. The organization was left in financial ruin,
with only its network of a few dozen schools standing. These schools became
the next target for Japanese animosity towards North Korea. Korean students suddenly found
themselves in the middle of this heated international conflict. This graph shows the amount of state funding for Korean schools by Japanese prefectures over time. 2006 was the year that North Korea tested a
nuclear weapon. And you can see the immediate drop-off of funding every year
thereafter. Prefectures providing tuition subsidies for Korean schools
went from 28 in 2006, down to 12 today. Education officials specifically cite
the abduction issue as well as the general "situation" in North Korea, as
their motive for defunding the schools. Japan's Ministry of Education declined my request for an interview on this, but I did talk to an
anti-Korean activist who defended these actions by putting the issue into terms
that I, as an American, could understand. As I visited these schools and talked
with these people who live in a country that is openly hostile towards them,
I found myself torn. This organization pledges allegiance to a regime that has
committed some of the most horrific atrocities that our modern world knows. Each and every conceivable
human right is violated. There are 80,000 to 100,000 people who are languishing in political prison camps. Yet at the same time, they are also victims of severe
structural discrimination. The U.N. and other international bodies have
repeatedly condemned the Japanese structural discrimination against
Koreans. The North Korean community often cites this as validation for their
plight, but the U.N. has also called North Korea's human rights violations so grave
that they have "no parallel in the contemporary world". When you ask them how
they reconcile this contradiction, the response is always some version of: "any
country has human rights issues." At first I found this astounding, that there could be such a willful ignorance
to the atrocities of the North Korean regime, but the more embedded I got into
this North Korean community in Japan, the more I realized that, to this
marginalized community, North Korea represents more of a refuge of safety
for their identity - something they crave while they're living in a country that
is actively working to diminish their heritage and culture. While younger generations are more likely to assimilate into Japanese society, the Chongryon have done an exceptional job at cultivating the strong Korean
identity despite all the pressure and hardship. In their last year of high
school the students have an opportunity to go visit North Korea. Seeing and hearing the accounts of this highly choreographed visit to Pyongyang, is
all you need to understand the relationship that this disenfranchised
community has towards its adopted homeland. I visited the North Korean university where
they've curated a museum dedicated to everything Korean. Every rock, tree,
species of fish, plant, animal, root, that has ever existed on the Korean Peninsula
is found in this museum, which was built with support from the North Korean
government. I had never seen such a meticulously comprehensive collection to
enshrine a place in a history. This place does not exist for visitors. It's much
more of a statement that, in spite of intense pressure and hostility, Korean
culture endures in Japan. North Korea isn't their home country in the way that you
would think. They weren't born there, they've never lived there, but they see
it as their home country because the country that they were born in actively
works to make their lives harder. Like in many parts of the world,
right-wing nationalism is surging in Japan. Anti-Korean rallies are on the
rise, according to an investigation by Japanese law enforcement. Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe is a fierce nationalist and he's caught up in a scandal right now
for having given secret donations to an ultra-nationalist kindergarten with anti-Korean views. Japanese nationalism leads to discrimination against Koreans.
This causes the Koreans to resist Japan as their home country, looking to a
country they've never lived in for support and protection of their identity. Affiliating with this universally reviled regime, that routinely vows to
destroy Japan creates more resentment from the Japanese population and
politicians, leading to more discrimination which leads to again
deeper commitment to North Korea as a protector. And in my mind there's no
doubt that the cycle will continue. While I was in Japan making this video, I
also spent a lot of time with these ultra right-wing groups who are anti-Korean and I didn't go into that much in this video, but I made an entire separate
video about the rise of right-wing politics in Japan and kind of the anti-Korean sentiment and where that comes from, from like a historical perspective. And of course: big THANK YOU to lululemon who is a sponsor of Borders, they sent me
these ABC pants a while back that I've been wearing. They are sturdy, and
flexible and you can wear them when you're hiking or when you're at home. So
thank you lululemon, but more importantly thank you for supporting Borders and
making this project possible. I'm gonna leave a link here for the lululemon shop
for men online, and you can check out your own pair of ABC pants. Alright, we're three episodes into Borders, we have three to go. Get ready
for next Tuesday when I publish the fourth. And wish me luck in the meantime
I've got a lot of editing to do. Something terrible happened in these dollhouses. Maybe a suicide. A murder. A stabbing with an adorable knife. These dollhouses are part of Frances Glessner
Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, which she made in the 1940s and early 50s. They’re in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian
American Art Museum for a reason. They’re incredibly detailed — these cans are all labeled. Accurately. And 
these dollhouses are used by law enforcement to train and to develop analytical capabilities. But these artful dioramas actually contain
two mysteries: What happened in these houses? And why did Frances Glessner Lee spend her
time, and part of her fortune, making them perfect? This is “three-room dwelling,” and it’s
a dollhouse murder showstopper. There are 19 of these dioramas and each one
comes with a backstory, drawn from composite real crimes. In this one, Robert, Kate, and baby Linda
Mae Judson had a nice porch where the milkman stopped by. They were living the American dream until
the murders happened. “As you start to sort of investigate the
evidence... the first time I approached this case, I looked
at it for a couple of hours, I took tons of pictures home and I analyzed them for hours,
trying to figure this out, because it doesn’t seem like things add up. There’s a bloodstain that’s in the baby’s
room but it’s just a blood pool, and there doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of
trail from it, it’s just sitting there. We don’t know what had happened there. There’s bloody footprints that are leading
into the bedroom, the husband is lying on the ground on some of the bed coverings, we
have no idea how he died, he’s covered in blood all over his pajamas, so it’s very
hard to tell.” Three-room Dwelling’s morbid details come
from the same mind that crafted incredibly delicate ones. “There’s this little eggbeater down under
the cubbard here that I like to point out, and this was apparently originally a solid
gold charm from a charm bracelet. The Nutshells themselves are lit as the rooms
would be, the flashlight helps you find the evidence. There’s quite a lot of evidence in these
pieces that you would probably never discover without it, so it’s a fun thing to have
in the exhibition, but it’s also a real training tool for really systematically looking
through these pieces.” And you notice the fabric on a chair, the
blocks scattered on the porch, and the blood spattered on the baby’s wall. Because law enforcement still use these to
train, it’s tempting to play CSI with these murders. But notice that Atkinson only broke down the
nutshells, she didn't didn’t give away any solutions. That's partly because the solutions are still
kept secret for those in training. But mostly, it’s because the mystery serves
a purpose. “The point of the nutshells is not to solve
them. The point is to collect detail.” Erin Bush saw the nutshells in their home
before the Renwick gallery — the Maryland Medical Examiner's office, where they're used
for training investigators. “The goal of the nutshells is to train your
eye to see small, minute, seemingly insignificant details that stand out. So the kitchen:
It’s Spring, 1944 — Robin Barnes is a housewife. Fred Barnes, her husband finds her. And the story is, he’s out of the house
to run an errand. He comes home, he looks through the kitchen
window and he sees her laying on the kitchen floor. He can’t open the door, the door is locked
from the inside, the window is locked from the inside. So he calls the police, the police break the
door down. So this is what we know when we arrive. She was clearly in the middle of something. She’s clearly preparing a meal. There’s a pie in the stove, there are potatoes
in the sink. You don’t commit suicide if you’re in
the middle of dinner. And I think, if you look very closely at the
stove, and if you can recognize a 1940s stove, you will see that all the gas jets are on. There are a lot of weapons in the room. There’s a rolling pin, there’s an iron,
there is a knife, on the chair. It’s very possible someone hit her over
the head. If you look very closely at the door, it’s
stuffed with newspaper. So now we’re back to suicide. The point, of course, was to recognize these
details and to teach investigators how to recognize these details. It was a very different way to investigate
crime than they were used to.” Frances Glessner Lee was an heir to International
Harvester, a company that produced farm equipment and other machinery. Her family made a fortune, a part of which
she eventually used to fund miniature crime scenes. She endowed Harvard’s Department of Legal
Medicine, the first of its kind, and became an honorary police captain. Her artistic obsession helped detectives become
more attentive to crime scenes, relying on evidence instead of hunches. “For me, as a historian, when I look at
them, I don’t think who did it, I think my God why is she inventing this scene the
way she’s inventing it, you know, what’s in her head, and to me that’s fascinating.” Lee's nutshells are as complex as the scenes
they depict. They overflow detail: the magazines crumpled
on the floor; the apples that will never be eaten; the body that will never move but is
so vividly rendered that you can imagine it once did. “On the one hand, she was the young Frances
Glessner who was this philanthropic lady who was brought up in a fine household,
and the other half of her personality was Captain Lee, and those two things did come
together sometimes.” Lee wrote a 1952 article in the Journal of
Law and Criminology. “Some years ago, the writer was greatly
surprised to learn that nowhere in America was Legal Medicine, as thus described, being
taught. The writer has for many years worked sporadically
at miniatures, hence these presented themselves as the solution.” Frances Glessner Lee died in 1962 of natural
causes. “It must be understood, these models are
not ‘whodunits’ - they cannot be solved merely by looking at them. They are intended to be an exercise in observing,
interpreting, evaluating and reporting-- there is no ‘solution’ to be determined.” This toy’s only approved for ages...dead
and older. “YEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” This is Trout Mask Replica. On the album
cover is Captain Beefheart, a fish on his face and a top hat on his head. The image
is surreal, it's grotesque, and it's the perfect visual depiction of the music
you're about to hear. My smile stuck. I cannot go back to your
frownland. the 80 minutes of music on Trout Masks
Replica by Captain Beefheart and his magic band have been compared to rusty
barbed wire, and the New York Times once said that Captain Beefheart's voice
makes Tom Waits sound like Julie Andrews. But, here's the thing, 41 years after its
release in 1969 this cacophonous double album was inducted into the Library of
Congress's National Recording registry right alongside Al Green's classic "Let's
Stay Together" and the American standard "Take Me out to the Ball Game". Not only
that, a number of iconic musicians, visual artists, and creative thinkers have named
Trout Mask Replica a shining point of inspiration for their work. How can an
album that sounds like the musical equivalent of barbed wire be recognized
as such a significant piece of American culture? Let's start with Don Van Vliet known as
Captain Beefheart. He grew up in California on the edge of the Mojave
Desert and by the age of 10 was an incredible sculptor. Growing up he became
captivated by the blues perfected by musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin
wolf some 2,000 miles away in the Mississippi Delta just as much he was
entranced by the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane by the late
1960s he had an album and a small-time hit a cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah
Diddy." For his next project he signed to his former high school classmate, Frank
Zappa's, label with the clear request for unbridled creative freedom to do
whatever the hell he wanted for his next project. By 1969 Trout Mask Replica was
created and those years were a glorious mess for everyone involved in its making. This is Samuel Andreyev. He's a composer
who studied composition and music analysis at the Paris Conservatory. A
number of things, first of all it's an album that I'm personally obsessed with.
I think it's a phenomenal work of art. it is mind-bendingly creative and
honestly pretty difficult to listen to, but its uniqueness can be discovered
within its songs, especially Frownland. Well the purpose of Frownland as an
album opener is to just plunge you headfirst into a maelstrom of just
absolute strangeness. Here's something interesting you can do
as an experiment: compare it to a piece like "You really got me" by the Kinks. Okay
so the main guitar riff in that song da da da dum da da da da that's two notes
okay and that's what the song is built out of. The most important thing is at
the rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals are all locked into one
rhythm - they are playing in sync. So contrast that with "Frownland" where in
minute 40 seconds you have no fewer than I think like 23 individual motifs - it's
actually 21 but that's still a whole lot - and these 23 motifs are all individually
rather complex. Added to that is the fact that they're all heard stacked on top of
each other all the time. Not only that the traditional roles of rock
instrumentation found in songs like you really got me we'e just completely
thrown out the window. Just listen closely to the first five seconds of the
track. You'll immediately notice that the
rhythm is off-kilter. That's because the rhythm guitar and the lead guitar are
playing a five over seven polyrhythm. That means one guitar is playing five
beats per measure at the same time the other is playing seven. Okay so try
clapping five beats in one hand and the same time you clap seven. Not
only is a piece polyrhythmic, it's also polytonal. Both guitars are playing in
different keys throughout the piece against each other and often they're
changing keys. Typically the bass would ground the harmony and the rhythm but
here it's treated like a third guitar so it lives in its own world as well. And,
it's playing chords which just rarely happens in rock music. And on top of that
you have these insanely virtuosic drums that have another function altogether.
The drummer is trying to take elements of what the guitar is doing and what the
bass is doing and basically glue them together so that the piece coheres. In
the end you have a really condensed song with multiple instruments constantly
changing keys tempos and time signatures and across the entire album this happens.
Trout Mask Replica is a masterpiece because it does something that is almost
impossible hard to do, it comes from a very rare place of art making. So art
scholars talk about the sentimental versus the naive. On one end of the
spectrum you have sentimental art - art that comes from a place of a lot of
formal training. At the other end you have naive art - art that is almost
childlike. It exists purely because the compulsion to make it was so strong. The
great thing about Trout Mask Replica is that they literally splice together
naive impulses into a structure. So it sounds totally improvised it sounds like
they're making it up on the spot but they rehearsed these pieces, that's
really hard. So how do you teach these musicians
to play your music? A kind whip. A kinda quip. A kind well hell you know tape with the piano. A
tape. Captain Beefheart was the singular creative force behind Trout Mask Replica
and he composed every song on the piano without knowing how to play it.
He pretty much didn't play any instrument, but he had his magic band
which consisted of remarkable young musicians like Zoot Horn Rollo, Drumbo,
Antennae Jimmy Semmens, and Rockette Mornton. Their job? translate Captain
Beefheart's avant-garde approach into a blues and free jazz inspired rock album
based on the music he created on an instrument he really didn't know how to
play. Let that sink in for a second. A piano has 88 keys and with two hands you
can easily play the lowest and the highest keys at the same time if you
wanted to. Don Van Vliet expected those same sounds
from his two guitarist and a bassist who's instrument ranges were just vastly
different. Here's Bill Harkleroad, you might remember him as Zoot Horn Rollo. Oh
I think it was just that there were parts and then well why can't you play
those notes what's wrong with you? Why can't you play that note that's not
on the guitar or seven notes at a time? So there was no choice but to do it. He used
to say you think you got a hard job man I got a sing to that shit. And that is
John French, the drummer. He had the arduous task of helping other members of
the band learn everything that came out Don's piano. Sometimes I wondered I
wondered if he knew that it was in a different time signature you know, but he
didn't know what time signature was. They painstakingly rehearsed over the
course of a year until they were able to record the entire double album all the
way through in just a few hours. When I first came across Trout Mask Replica, I was instantly captivated by the sound of those three words strung
together. Every song title made me laugh and so I listened to it and it instantly
expanded my understanding of what music could be. For some people it can be
offensive it sounds like they're deliberately flaunting the rules I don't
think I don't view it that way I don't think anyone's deliberately flaunting
the rules I think I don't think it's contrarian for the sake of being
contrarian I think rather what it is is its artistic for the sake of being
original. Hey all thanks for watching first I want to give a huge shout out to
Samuel andreyev he was sort of the inspiration for this video
he made a 30-minute video about the music theory of frownland that's
linked below you should really really check it out if you want to know more
about that specific song in addition he's the one that conducted the two
interviews with John French and Bill Harkleroad they're also on his YouTube
channel thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in a couple of weeks Opioid abuse has made thousands of Americans incapable of caring for their children, and that has drawn attention to grandparents, many of whom are receiving the same phone call from child protective services or law enforcement... “When you get the call and there’s never been a formal removal, the options are going to be: come get the kids or they are going into foster care”. “My ex-husband that received the call because they knew I was at work and they did call me to inform me: ‘What should we do?’ " When they get that call and decide to raise their grandchild, they become a new kind of caregiver, “I mean at that stage, I was already raised my own children and now you have to start all over.” No longer a typical grandparent, but not a parent either. “We are the ones who hear the crying at night. We're the ones that go to the schools when they have Mother’s Day events, but yet we're grandma. How about Father’s Day? Well, I could make a mustache and put on a hat and go. Well, I did whatever I had to do. Whatever I had to do!” There’s actually a name for this: it's called "Kinship Care" It’s a type of child-raising that has always existed, but it is becoming more common. For over twenty years, Jerry Wallace has been advocating for kinship caregivers in New York State. Sometimes even bringing his pet dog Cookie with him. "Yeah?" "No! Cookie you gotta go!" "I'll put her right out." He was recently in Rockland County, visiting caregivers at a monthly support group. “When parents aren’t there anymore death, you know, tragedies or what not relatives have stepped in and raised children. In non-relative foster care, the government places places a child with a family and provides services that include legal assistance, financial benefits, and case management. But in kinship care, the situation can be different. If they receive a call, the relative has to make a choice: Become a licensed foster parent, which is called “formal kinship”, or volunteer to raise the child on their own without official custody in what's known as "informal kinship". In the US, around 130,000 children live in
formal kinship, and nearly 2.5 million live in informal kinship care. Those who choose to participate in the foster care system have access to government services. But that can include regular visits from child protective services, court appearances, or mandated caregiver training, all of which can be disruptive for the child and the grandparents. So, many people opt for an informal kinship, which has less official involvement but also limits access to resources that can help raise the child. Unlike most foster parents, informal kinship caregivers can have trouble enrolling kids in schools and accessing medical services and other benefits because they may lack legal custody of the children. Kinship families might not have access to typical foster care services, but there are a few programs that offer help. Like the child-only grant: a temporary assistance benefit that provides a small amount of money to help care for the child. "You’re taking children into your home that you didn't anticipate having, and all of a sudden, you have a kid who needs school supplies, he needs sneakers -- I constantly hear about sneakers and the cost of sneakers." The problem is, there’s no easy way to find out about that help. “If you don’t go the foster care route and you’re on your own, it's the luck of the draw whether you're even going to find out that there are services. Maybe you’re one grandma who said to me: 'Child protective services gave me my grandchild eight years ago, this is the first time I’ve found out there’s help.' So that’s just because there hasn’t been the procedural mechanisms to make sure that it didn’t happen.” The Rockland County support group helps bridge that gap. Once a month, they meet at Volunteer Counseling Service, where Rosa Serrano-Delgado is the program director. “When I was hired in this position about I think it was, maybe, 12 years now, I had never heard of the term ‘kinship’. I really had never heard of the term ‘kinship’.” “What you would you have needed? What would have been helpful to you you know, as you are entering this journey of raising these children.?” "It is due to the pandemic, the opioid pandemic that we have here and many people are... Knows somebody that has lost a loved one." “This population, of families raising a relative’s child, were lacking support. Everyone else seemed to have something in place, but not these kinship families.” But even if caregivers are made fully aware of their options, they still might avoid formal kinship because of the approval process. “Sometimes the concern is, I am older, I’m not making a lot of money, So how is this going to affect the way they view me? Are they going to see me as capable? Am I physically capable of raising this child or these children. Do I have enough resources? The other stigma that I’ve heard, which is really interesting, is that they are afraid that people might judge them because obviously something has happened with your child, that they're not able to care for their own child, So what kind of parent were you?” Kinship caregivers can feel isolated and that’s where these support groups come in “They really feel that they are amongst a group of people that really get them, that really understand them, that they can really be honest with." “You know, 'Why is grandma raising the child?’ and, ‘Where are the parents?’ And, well, don’t question it so much, we all have different situations at hand.” “I tried counseling, the emotional stuff, which still is visible at times.” “Absolutely. That’s a big one: emotional, right? Sometimes they believe that you’re keeping my dad or my mom away from me. You know? 'You did something to keep mom or dad away
from me!' ” “And sometimes the parent is angry at you because you’re caring for the child, is that correct Right! Groups like these are providing crucial support to kinship families in communities across America. In New York, Jerry runs a website and hotline that points kinship caregivers towards local, state, and federal services. Like Rosa’s support group in Rockland County. “We’re keeping kids out of foster care because they can go live with their families. That doesn’t mean we should abandon those families. We should provide them the minimal supports they need to really help these kids have good outcomes.” There is also a financial benefit to kinship care. In a recent report, a grandparents advocacy group estimated that kinship care saves taxpayers $4 billion every year by keeping children out of foster care. In spite of the benefits, kinship caregivers
continue to struggle in a fragmented system. “What really needs to be done, is every state needs a specialized kinship program with the outreach dollars to reach down in the community and the coordination with the other service systems so that they are aware of them, so that these families are contacted. Whether it’s the education system, mental health services, or the courts, they should all be pointing these families to someone who knows what to tell them about resources and about their rights.” One in five American women are raped in their lifetime. 51.9% of American women experience physical violence in their lifetime. Nearly 1/4 experience physical or sexual assault by an intimate partner. 45% of rapes are committed by an acquaintance. 23.1% of undergrad females and 5.4% of males experience rape of sexual assault. Most assault victims don't receive medical care. One in thirteen murder victims are killed by their husband or boyfriend. Rape is the most underreported crime. 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police. The violence Against Women Act became law over 20 years ago we've made some progress But not enough. Listen to how this textbook describes slavery. “The master often had a barbecue or a picnic
for his slaves. Then they had a great frolic. Even while working in the cotton fields they
sang songs. The beat of the music and the richness of
their voices made work seem light.” Yikes. That’s from History of Georgia, a textbook
published in 1954 that was taught across junior high schools in Georgia for decades. That sort of language is part of an intellectual
movement called the “Lost Cause” — a distorted version of American Civil War history
that’s been prevalent in the South for a long time. It took shape soon after the defeat of the
Confederate States in the war, when Southern historians like Edward Pollard and former
Confederate Gen. Jubal Early started preserving the South’s perspective through their writings. They framed the Confederate cause as a heroic
defense of the Southern way of life against the overwhelming forces in the North. That narrative has a few basic tenets: the
glorification of Confederate soldiers who died for a cause they believed in, the belief
that slavery was a benevolent institution, and, maybe most importantly, that slavery
was not the root cause of the war. The Lost Cause is one of the most notoriously
effective efforts to rewrite history, and it was done by the losing side. So how did it become so deeply rooted in Southern
memory? Blame the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC was founded in Nashville in 1894 to
preserve Confederate culture for generations to come. The women who made up the group descended
from elite antebellum families and they used their social and political clout to spread
the pro-Southern version of the war as “real history.” You’ve probably seen their efforts to honor
the Confederacy, but maybe you didn’t know it was the UDC. They’re the ones who covered the Southern
landscape with memorials for Confederate leaders and soldiers. They used their fundraising and lobbying skills
to pressure local governments into erecting monuments in prominent public spaces like
courthouses and state capitols. Installed here next to the state Capitol by
the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The United Daughters of the Confederacy donated
this memorial to the city back in the ’30s. They put them along roadsides and in parks. Any place that was remotely relevant to the
Confederacy was memorialized. By the early 20th century, the UDC had 100,000
members in chapters spread all over the country, but mostly in former Confederate states. And there’s a reason they grew so quickly
during that time. So we’re talking about roughly three decades
after the end of the war, and the Confederate veterans themselves are beginning to die off. So there is this push to find ways to commemorate
it. Because the big challenge by 1900 was there’s
a new generation of white Southerners being born and they never experienced the war years. That push is visible. Most of the Confederate monuments were erected
during the UDC’s height of influence. There’s a rhetoric around monuments — that
we want to get this thing built before all of that generation has died off. And Dr. Karen Cox wrote the book on the UDC, and
I asked her if it was fair to say the group established the Lost Cause as historical fact
in the South. Oh, my God, yeah! They were the leaders of the Lost Cause into
the 20th century, and they made it a movement about vindication. Just to give you an idea of how effective
they were: They successfully lobbied for a Confederate Memorial in Arlington National
Cemetery, which US President Woodrow Wilson proudly unveiled to a cheering crowd. Now that’s influence, right? Monuments are the least of what they did. I mean they are the most visible and tangible,
but the work with children was far more influential. It turns out, a central UDC objective is shaping
how children think about the war and their Southern heritage. One of their most powerful tools? Textbooks. Take a look at this pamphlet, called “A
Measuring Rod for Text-Books.” It was written by “the illustrious Southern
Historian Miss Mildred Rutherford” an educator, orator, and an author of Southern history
textbooks. She was also very pro-slavery. The pamphlet announced the formation of a
textbook review committee featuring prominent Southerners, like five former Confederate
generals. This group was committed to spreading the
“truths of Confederate history” so they instructed school boards to reject any textbooks
that did not “accord full justice to the South.” And they urged libraries to deface every book
in their collection that didn’t measure up by writing the words “Unjust to the South”
clearly on its cover. This pamphlet was shared widely with school
boards throughout the South, and UDC-backed committees closely monitored history books
to make sure “Northern influence” never reached classrooms. So the core language of an approved textbook
aligned precisely with that of the Lost Cause. You know, stuff like “The Confederacy lost
in the War between the States. But Georgia never forgot to honor her Confederate
soldiers…” History of Georgia was on the UDC’s approved
list. It was also written by E. Merton Coulter,
a self-described “Southern historian” and historian-described white supremacist. They understand that how you educate — who
wins the writing game, who wins the battle over history — ultimately wins the war. That’s the big fight for the UDC. But their work with children went further
than the classrooms. The UDC formed an auxiliary group called the
Children of the Confederacy, which was designed to get kids born in former Confederate states
to actively participate in their version of history. Group leaders had kids recite call-and-response
“truths” from something called the “Confederate Catechism.” Children, up to the age of 18, would compete
and be rewarded for memorizing long passages of Lost Cause rhetoric. So it would be like an after-school thing,
you know, like that was your club. You would go after school to the meeting of
the Children of the Confederacy and your leader might teach you songs of the South like “Dixie”
or other songs that were considered Southern patriotic songs. They would have them write essays, go visit
the veterans, and learn this catechism. Children were also the centerpiece of their
community’s monument unveilings, like this “living flag” at the dedication of the
Stonewall Jackson monument in Richmond. Yes, those are schoolchildren. The UDC's efforts shaped the identities of
children who grew up with the Lost Cause. They made history personal, and that made
their story last longer. Generations of generations of children learning
that narrative in a variety of ways grow up to be, you know, segregationists in the ’50s
and ’60s. Because that’s been drilled into them since
they were children. After World War I, the UDC started losing
steam. But the damage was done. The monuments were in place and the textbooks
they wrote remained in Southern classrooms until the late ’70s. And the women’s group did it all without
the right to vote or participate in politics. You can still get glimmers of this Lost Cause
memory of the war And I think the UDC, to a great extent was
— that was their goal. So the next time someone says the Confederate
monuments are about just know that that’s exactly what the United
Daughters of the Confederacy wants you to think. I'm on an island near the North Pole and
I'm here to find out who owns the Arctic. As the ice melts more and more in this region, you can see just how dramatic the ice has been shrinking. One of these countries has shown that they're willing to fight for it. Russia's making a new push into the Arctic. This is the Wild West. Investment opportunities opening up
in sort of an unusual area: the Russian Arctic. The Arctic region has strategic
and economic importance. The pace of melting is only getting faster. Russia projecting its power. Use diplomacy to avoid further conflict
in the High North. So, I'm not allowed to take my camera down into the mine. So
I've been given this explosion-proof super fortified camera. In case it
explodes, it won't cause a death fire for the entire community. This coal mine is owned by the Russian government, it's in a town with Russian flags, and the bust of a Russian Communist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin. But, this isn't Russia. It's Barentsburg, on the island of
Svalbard near the North Pole. It's a place that exists for strategic reasons, not for making money. In fact it loses money. Has for decades. Russia funds this place because for them, it means influence in this region. A frozen ocean, that is melting more and more every year due to the changing climate. This is what the Arctic Ocean looked like in September 1984. Fast-forward thirty two
years and this is what it looks like: September 2016. Most of the world sees
this as a looming disaster, but for the Arctic nations this change means an
opportunity: Access to a brand new ocean. Here's what geologists think oil and gas
resources might look like in the Arctic. The US Geological Survey estimates that
the region holds 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13%
of its oil. These resources are still remote and
costly to access but they're more accessible every year and suddenly this
desolate region is very interesting to the world. New shipping routes are also
opening up and this ocean, that was once frozen, is now navigable for longer
periods every summer, cutting weeks off the trips between Asian and Western
markets. The topic of borders in the Arctic region is a little bit complex
and it's an issue that's still open for discussion and negotiation. Currently
the border lines in the Arctic Ocean look like this. Every country gets their
default maritime borders that are 200 nautical miles off their coast. The rest
of the water that doesn't fall within these exclusive economic zones, is up for
grabs to anyone who can prove that it belongs to them. And that has a lot to do
with a continental shelf. A continental shelf is a part of a country's landmass.
It's just covered with ocean. The continental shelf continues until it
drops off into the deeper parts of the ocean. Since the ice has been melting,
countries have been sending out submarines to gather data on the
continental shelf. They put together a scientific case and submit it to a UN
committee. This committee reviews it and decides whether or not the country's
claim is scientifically valid. Extending from our coastlines, lying beneath the
sea, is an extension of our country called the continental shelf. It
determines the new borders of our country. Knowing where the edge of the
continental shelf lies, adds millions of square kilometers to our country and
makes the resources on the seafloor and beneath the seabed, Canada's. So far Norway
and Iceland are the only two nations whose continental shelf claims have been
submitted and approved by the UN, but others have submitted claims that are
waiting for approval. Look at Russia's claims versus that of Greenland, the large Arctic island that actually belongs to Denmark. The claims overlap significantly. Canada is in the process of gathering data and is expected to
submit a claim that will also have some overlap here. The UN committee that evaluates these claims is made up of scientists, not
diplomats. Their sole job is to say whether or not the claim is
scientifically valid. It's then up to the countries to negotiate how to work out
who gets what. Russia has shown its interest in having
a claim that extends all the way to the North Pole. In 2007 Russia went so far as to plant its flag on the seafloor under the North
Pole. And if push comes to shove, Russia likely won't concede its North Pole
claim to the tiny nation of Denmark, whose claims overlap with theirs. Russia
is easily the biggest player in the Arctic neighborhood. Half of the Arctic
is flanked by Russian coast and they easily wield the most influence and they
have the most to gain from global warming and the ice melting. And so they're refortifying and renovating a lot of their strategic outposts here in the
Arctic. 50 airfields by 2020, putting special forces. They're training, holding
military exercises in the Arctic. In recent years Russia has been reopening,
fortifying, and building new military bases in the Arctic region. They've been
publicizing their military exercises, which include reindeer, huskies, and
soldiers in uniforms that look like they belong in a Star Wars film. Russia is sending us important signals, that in the Arctic, they will project their own
power and capabilities and I don't see a sufficient response from the US and NATO,
to recognize that increased military position. One of those outposts is the
town of Barentsburg, which is right behind me, here on the island of Svalbard. Barentsburg isn't a military facility,
like all those other dots on the map, but it serves a similar purpose. And to
understand why Russia wants a town on this island, you have to understand
Svalbard. It's unlike any other piece of land on earth and not only because it's
the northernmost inhabited part of the planet. The Svalbard treaty, signed in
1920, says that any country who has signed the treaty can have its people on
Svalbard and exploit the land for commercial or economic purposes. The land
technically belongs to Norway, but 45 countries have signed the treaty and so
45 countries have economic claim to this land. The one rule is that no nation,
including Norway, is allowed to have military assets on Svalbard.
So Russia set up a coal mine up here, not to make money. Russia pays for these coal miners to be here to sink economic
roots into this land. If there's ever dispute about boundaries or if oil is
someday found off the shores of Svalbard, Russia will be at the table where those
discussions are happening and Barentsburg will be their bargaining
chip. It's their claim to this land. What's most fascinating to me, is that
this strategy plays out with people. The people living here in Barentsburg are
effectively placeholders for a Russian strategy for the Arctic. And yet when
you talk to them that's not really on their mind. They're not thinking about geopolitics, they're not thinking about
the changing landscape of the Arctic, and what that means for Russian policy. For Russia, coal has been their main economic activity, it's what they've been doing
here for years, but coal is in decline and their operation is slowly losing
people and interest and so they're realizing they have to pivot to a
different economic activity, that is more sustainable for the future. And for them
the answer is tourism. On Svalbard, it's kind of clear: the coal mining era, is something which is, you know, disappearing. It's a bust. Tourism, science, nature protection is its future. You can see Russia's renewed
interest in this island taking place when you walk around the town of
Barentsburg. The consulate is undergoing some renovation right now. They're like
gutting the whole thing and renovating after years of neglect. It's a small
village of a few hundred people and it has an entire consulate. This consulate
serves more as a statement than a functional asset for the Russian
government. All these renovations suggest that they expect this ghost town to
become a major tourist destination, but making money isn't the motivation here. Of course it's impossible that Barentsburg one day will support itself
without any funding from the government. It's impossible. The pivot to tourism isn't just about keeping deep economic roots in Barentsburg. It also
serves a purpose of turning Barentsburg into a spectacle, for people to see just
how much Russian identity is tied to the Arctic. Newly refurbished buildings, new
Arctic theme bars, museums that tell the story of Russian presence in the Arctic. These aren't military bases or airfields, but this sort of projection of culture
and identity goes a long way in creating association with a place, in exerting
influence. It's called soft power. Funding all of this on a faraway island that
belongs to Norway, is the epitome of soft power. And it's a perfect complement to
Russia's surge in hard power in the Arctic. Remember all those dots? The most long-range air patrols with bear bombers since the Cold War, forty five thousand troops, 
three thousand four hundred military vehicles, forty one ships,
fifteen submarines, and a hundred and ten aircraft. What do you think Russia's trying to achieve in the Arctic with that massive military buildup? I don't know. I believe, however, that we are going 
to have to figure it out. But up until now Russia has been playing by the rules on the maritime borders front.
Following all the UN protocol and making claims in a very orderly fashion, but
they've also shown some provocative behavior in protecting their influence
in the region. On the one hand for Russia to benefit economically from the Arctic,
it has to be a stable cooperative environment. The best thing you can do to
spook off companies and economic investment, is to think that the region could be prone to conflict. But we have to remember that this is the government
that annexed Crimea a few years ago. It's a government that's not afraid to
project power in its neighborhood. They're showing us both tracks, sort of
this dual policy of wanting to be open for business, but be able to growl a
little bit and show its muscular teeth for its military and those two,
eventually they're a little incompatible. This region is changing fast. The treaties and norms that have kept it in order for years are becoming
incompatible with the physical realities. As the ice melts, the region will become
more valuable. New borders will be drawn, and new opportunities to project power will emerge. We can only hope that Russia continues to 
play by the rules. My favorite part about being in the Arctic while I was making this story, was going on these late night hikes. A lot of the footage in this video was shot after midnight, when the sun would kind of just hover around the horizon. The light would be beautiful for hours at a time. And it was just such a crazy experience to watch the sun never set. Anyway, thanks for watching the second episode of Borders, I published the first episode last week. And I'm going to continue to publish these every week, on Tuesdays. I also want to say a big thank you to lululemon, who is a sponsor of Borders. They sent me these ABC pants, which are these sturdy pants are used for both active hiking, as well as just kind of lounging around. They're super comfortable. Thank you lululemon for sending me these ABC pants, but more importantly thanks for supporting Borders, and for making this whole thing happen. If you want to check out these ABC pants, I'm going to leave a link here, where you can go over to the lulu shop online, and check them out for yourself. That's it, stay tuned: one week from now, I'm releasing the next episode of Borders. There's a lot of water on our planet. And it goes by a lot of different names. Gulfs and arroyos and fjords are all bodies
of water. But each one represents something unique. So let’s try to understand them. Let’s start big. The ocean is the large saltwater body that
covers most of the Earth. Technically, it’s the whole thing, but we
often split it into five parts with five different names. Sea can mean the same thing as ocean, though
it’s more specifically used for a large inland body of saltwater, like the Caspian
Sea. A bay is a part of an ocean bounded by land
on three sides. A cove is one too, but it usually has a smaller
entrance, often in a mountain. Make a bay bigger, and it’s a gulf. While a bight is a slighter and smaller indentation. A fjord is like a bay with a steep entrance,
often consisting of mountains. In Scotland and England, you might hear about
a firth. It’s like a fjord, but can be a broader
term for bays as well. A sound is like a large bay, but often longer
and between two sections of land. Sometimes, people call it a channel or strait
if it connects 2 larger bodies of water. Sometimes, a channel is a bit wider. Heard of a lagoon? It’s a shallow body of water separated from
a larger body of water. A barachois is a coastal lagoon and it's split
from the ocean by a sand bar. You’ll hear that word a lot in Eastern Canada. It fills up at high tide. A tidal pool shows up at low tide. A delta is where a river flows into an ocean
or lake, or into an estuary, which is separate from the ocean. It may be where saltwater and freshwater mix. But water isn’t all about the ocean. Let’s go inland. A lake is usually freshwater contained in
land. But there are a few types. Loch is a Scottish word for lake, but it’s
also an inlet that can connect to the ocean— that’s what Loch Ness is (no comment on
the monster). A 
pond is a particularly small lake. While a mere is a notably shallow one. Think of a big puddle. A tarn is determined by its location — you’ll
find it on a mountain, usually in a spot that has been carved out by a glacier. A kettle lake is similar, but it forms when
a melting glacier’s water shapes a mountain. An Oxbow lakes is special too. It comes from a river that changed course
and left a lake behind. In Australia, it’s called a billabong. Can we get a kangaroo? OK, fine. A lake is fed by a tributary, which is a kind
of river - water that flows from high ground to low. A creek is a small stream. There are lots of other names for it, like
kill, rivulet, beck, or ghyll. A branch of a river used to even be called
a sprain. An arroyo is a Spanish word for a creek that
fills in after a heavy rain, and it’s commonly used in the American Southwest. It’s called a wadi in Arabic. Elsewhere it might be called a wash. A freshet has a few definitions, but usually
it fills with water after a heavy snow. A spring shows up when groundwater flows to
the surface. Sometimes, a lee is a natural spring flowing
under the earth. A geyser is a spring that boils and occasionally
bursts up. The word’s name can be traced back to “geysa,”
meaning “to gush.” And in the desert, coming from groundwater
as well, you'll find an oasis — a green and fertile patch that comes from an isolated
lake. And no, there are no monsters there. These are just some of the many amazing bodies
of water in our world. Now that you know the names, the next step
is easy. Start exploring them. So just in case you doubted the true epicness
of my journey in a rented kayak down the Potomac River, these bodies of water are connected. In the Potomac they have found bull sharks
that have actually swum in from other bodies of water. Search YouTube for videos about immigration and eventually you’ll find this: Mass immigration is not the rainbows and unicorns that our politicians portray it as. It is, in fact, a tragedy. Search for videos about Islam, and you’ll find stuff like this: By its very nature, Islam is an intolerant, radical, extremist belief system. Search for feminism, and … yeah. News flash: Everybody hates feminism. These videos are all products of what New York Times magazine calls the YouTube
right, a growing collection of right-wing vloggers,
media operations, conspiracy theorists, and activists who built
sizable followings on YouTube. They warn about mass immigration, decry political
correctness, and mock out-of-control social justice warriors. Why am I on camera for this? They also represent a fascinating challenge
for YouTube, a company that wants to make money off of
ads on cat videos The prophecy is true... and now finds itself at the center of a huge
debate about censorship and hate speech on the internet. …absolutely vital that we red pill the next
generation. One of the YouTube right’s biggest success
stories so far is Lauren Southern. She’s an activist that went solo after making
a name for herself on a conservative site called the Rebel. And her YouTube videos regularly get hundreds
of thousands of views. I got involved in YouTube kind of during the
Gamergate anti-feminism phase of the internet. Since then, I’ve just been commenting on
all the world’s craziness. Southern’s videos reflect a lot of the core
ideas of the YouTube right. She criticizes political correctness, warns
about the threat of refugees and immigration, and even made
a whole video criticizing gay pride parades. If you ever want to spur some homophobia in
reasonable people, just take them to a pride parade. So obviously, I wore my gayest possible outfit for the interview. So, Lauren, why YouTube? For left-wing content, you can get that in
real life. You can get that in person. Your professors, your teachers, your newspapers. Left-wingers don’t need to go to the dark
places of the internet to find their opinions, whereas right-wingers
do. YouTube has kind of become this outlet and
this way to communicate with people you agree with. In Southern’s view, YouTube is a great equalizer. A place where people can go to express far-right
views without having to worry about being politically
correct. It is time to talk about some inconvenient
truths. And she’s right. The beauty of YouTube is that there’s basically no barrier to entry. All it takes today is having a regular cell
phone and you can just film with that. Anyone can pick up a camera and make a video. Yeah, I guess anyone could do that, huh? Yep. Any idiot. Yeah. That low barrier to entry means that YouTubers
are free to say things that would be too taboo for
even Fox News or talk radio. Talk radio was supposed to be super edgy,
was supposed to be the craziest opinions on earth. But now it’s YouTube. That might sound like an exciting free speech
paradise for Southern, but it’s created kind of a
nightmare for YouTube. Because it turns out YouTube is a really good
breeding ground for things like extremism, No offense, but f**k the Pope. hate speech, They have less crime than other towns. Yeah, because there’s less blacks. and conspiracy theories. Well, the left’s been saying they’re going
to start killing all the conservatives. For one, it’s a click-based market. So creators are incentivized to be as sensational
and inflammatory as possible to get the attention of viewers. With normal vloggers, it’s clickbaity thumbnails
and headlines like, “MY UBER DRIVER IS IN LOVE WITH ME?” With right-wing YouTubers, it’s videos like, “The Left & Islam: Unholy Alliance” or “Hillary tied to bizarre occult ‘spirit
cooking’ ritual.” Yeah, I’ll click that. Independent vloggers also have zero obligation to fact-check themselves, provide evidence,
or face debate. Unlike Fox News or talk radio, YouTubers don’t
require broadcast licenses, so they’re immune to FCC rules prohibiting
them from distributing obscene or false information. Which is why five of the 10 most-viewed videos about the Las Vegas shooting are conspiracy
theories. This is from high-level CIA, right here. You know I don’t make sources up. YouTube also pushes people down ideological
rabbit holes. The site is designed to show you more of what
you just watched, so if you click on a Lauren Southern video
about immigration, the next video that autoplays is about white
genocide. And from there, it gets a lot worse. Normally, the check on this kind of garbage
would be advertisers. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh can be jerks
all they want, but at the end of the day, their bosses have
to worry about corporations freaking out and pulling
their ads. But YouTube is different. Advertisers rarely know what videos their
ads are going to show up on. For the most part, YouTube manages that relationship, assigning ads to videos and paying creators
accordingly. So if Southern is getting money from a Wix
ad playing before her video about the end of
white people, she never even has to talk to them, and they likely don’t know she exists. But that relationship between YouTube and
creators is changing. In March this year, a group of 250 brands
pulled back from YouTube after reports that their ads were appearing
before extremist content, including white supremacist videos. As a result, YouTube demonetized a ton of
videos without much explanation. Political content creators, including ones
who weren’t peddling hate or conspiracy theories,
were affected by it. We were basically making nothing on YouTube. Existential threat to the show. And people freaked out. They called it: The Adpocalypse Adpocalypse Adpocalypse Most people that are in politics in general, I’m talking left-wing and right-wing, their salary has been halved just because
of the whole Adpocalypse situation where advertisers don’t
want to touch anything remotely controversial. And it wasn’t just demonetizing. In August, YouTube announced new guidelines
for how it would deal with hateful content, stating
that these videos “won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments,
suggested videos, and likes.” Southern calls that: Shadowbanning is happening. These moves have gotten blowback from basically
everyone. They’re trying to censor conservative media, nationalist media on YouTube. Telling the truth is just not advertiser-friendly. And that’s because there’s really no good
way to regulate this stuff. YouTube sees about 400 hours of video uploaded
every minute. It’s impossible to monitor that much content with any kind of precision. But even if it wasn’t, it’s really tough
to figure out what counts as hateful speech on YouTube. Southern’s video about gay pride parades? I don’t like it, but it sounds like pretty
typical right-wing talk. It got demonetized. Southern’s video about immigrants replacing
white people? That feels a lot more like white nationalist
stuff, but there’s still an ad running on it. It’s tough for creators to predict what YouTube will deem as too toxic for advertisers. So I asked Southern: Where should YouTube
draw the line? The people that I’m seeing censored a lot
of the time are people that are sitting down and making
legitimate arguments. I’m sure you’ve seen that Jared Taylor
was the first one to have his videos totally sandboxed. Time out. Jared Taylor. The white nationalist who thinks whites are
genetically superior to blacks and Latinos. And I would like to talk to you about racial differences in intelligence. That Jared Taylor. Yeah, you can disagree with what he’s saying. But he wasn’t sitting there just spewing
hatred. That’s the thing. As a social justice warrior I think this stuff plainly qualifies as hate
speech. But a lot of people don’t. And YouTube has to make that call for a staggering amount of content. Cast the net too wide, and tons of creators
get punished for even mentioning politics. Cast it too narrowly, and risk another mass
advertiser boycott. These two groups, advertisers and creators, need wildly different things from YouTube. Creators need it to be an open space where
they can speak their minds and test ideas without fear
of a corporate overlord. But advertisers need to see that YouTube can
rein in the platform’s worst excesses. That it can avoid being exploited by demagogues and conspiracy theorists and people making yet another makeup haul
video. I get it. You bought more foundation. Leave me out of it. The rise of the YouTube right is scary, but it’s helping force the world’s biggest
video platform to figure out what it wants to be. If you've ever tried to use eye drops...you
know it's hard to do without some of it rolling down your cheek. I used to think that was because I missed. But turns out, I'm not actually so bad at
this. Well, most of the time anyway. Eye drops run down our faces because the typical
drop is larger than what the human eye can physically contain. Some are more than twice what the eye can
hold. That means using a single eye drop is like
pouring water into a glass that's already full. Or like in those Clear Eyes commercials... It's incredibly wasteful to make over-sized
drops. They cost a lot of money. The waste from each one is like a tiny snowflake. It's easy to overlook, until they've piled
up into a billion dollar snowball. It's wasted medicine, and all of us are paying
for it. The eye drops industry is huge. They're sold by volume, and some can cost
hundreds of dollars for a small bottle that only lasts a month. The financial cost is a particular problem
for the millions of patients with chronic conditions that require expensive drops every
day. Last year US drug companies brought in about
$3.4 billion for dry eyes and glaucoma drops alone. Eye drops are far too big for our eyes. That's Dr. Alan Robin, an ophthalmologist
and glaucoma expert who teaches at Johns Hopkins Medicine. It's very wasteful. We see that patients are basically spending
twice as much money as they need to on drops. Everyone's body is different, but experts
say almost every eye drop on the market is larger than the eye can hold. So the excess just washes out, and we end
up paying for a lot more medication than we can use. Wasted eye drops are part of a much bigger
problem. Experts estimate the U.S. health care system
wastes $765 billion a year. That's about a quarter of our overall spending. And it's actually more than the entire budget
of the Department of Defense. ProPublica has been investigating the kind
of wasted health care spending that exists right in front of our eyes. Literally. Cancer drugs are also a big ticket waste item. They can cost thousands of dollars per infusion
but are frequently wasted just because of the way they're packaged. Most cancer drugs are infused based on body
size, so patients need different amounts. But most of them come in single-use vials
that can be much too large for an individual patient. So once a patient gets the needed dose, the
rest of the expensive drug in the vial is thrown out. Drug prices driving patients and their families
into bankruptcy. And on top of patients paying for expensive
cancer drugs to help them, they're also paying for in some cases a lot of extra cancer drug
that's just going in the trash. That's Dr. Peter Bach, the director of the
Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Waste hurts people because it costs money. If you waste half of a vial that costs $5,000,
somebody is paying that money, $2500 back to the drug company. And the drug company benefits, because they
count that as revenue or profit. Take the case of Herceptin, a popular, and
pricey drug that's mostly used to treat breast cancer. The drug company used to make vials that patients
could share, so little of the drug would be wasted. But then it announced in May that the shareable
vials would be replaced by single-use vials. And the switch would mean throwing away any
medication left over from an infusion, and billing the patient for the waste. Genentech, the company that makes Herceptin,
told me that they had to make the change for supply chain reasons, to go to a size that's
more common worldwide. Every milligram of Herceptin costs about $9,
so a cancer patient's monthly infusion can run more than $3,000. One administrator at a California cancer treatment
center calculated her average patient would waste 110 milligrams per infusion with the
single-use vials. That's an average of almost $1,000 of wasted
spending per infusion. The waste associated with over-sized cancer
drug vials is substantial. A study led by Dr. Bach in 2016 calculated
the waste associated with the top 20 cancer drugs packaged in single-use vials. It estimated that 10 percent of the medication
gets wasted, costing $1.8 billion in a single year. But here's the thing: this is a waste problem
that's fixable. For cancer drugs, manufacturing shareable
vials, or vials in varying sizes, are proven ways to reduce waste. For eye drops, why not just make the drops
smaller? Dr. Robin knows it can be done - because he
and a team of experts already did it in a study about 20 years ago. He consulted with global eye care leader,
Alcon, when its researchers developed what they called a microdrop for patients with
glaucoma. It was a 16 microliter drop -- one that was
half to a third of the size of most drops on the market today. Then they studied the performance of the microdrop
compared to regular size drops. There was no significant difference between
the smaller and larger eye drops. Not only were the microdrops just as effective,
they also reduced some the uncomfortable side effects. And all the participants actually preferred
the microdrop bottle. But instead of being a breakthrough, the innovation became a case study in how profits can come before patients. I tried personally to get the microdrop accepted. And they looked at me as though I was a pariah. The pharmaceutical company would be losing
half the money that they could be making. Officials from Novartis, the drug company
that now owns Alcon, declined to discuss their microdrop study. They said eye drops are designed with a "margin
of safety" to help patients, but they wouldn't go into specifics. You'd think that regulators would care about
all this wasted medicine. But the FDA regulates the safety and effectiveness
of a drug...not its price or the cost related to waste. Patients paying billions of dollars for wasted
medicine...is just one more reason America has the highest health care costs in the world. Hi guys, I'm Ranjani. A video fellow working at Vox and ProPublica. And this video is part of a new collaboration
between our newsrooms. For the full story at ProPublica, check out
the link down below and stay tuned for more stories coming this year. Let's pause here. I'm driving on the road
that separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. Right here. It's the border that
divides two very different countries. If you're born in Haiti, you're
2.5 times more likely to die as a baby than if you're born in the DR. You'll be almost ten times poorer and you can expect to have a much shorter
life. I came here to find out how the two countries that share this one island can
be so different, with a politically volatile and impoverished Haiti on one
side and the stable and relatively rich Dominican Republic on the other. How did this line produce two totally different worlds? My journey starts here, at this beach
village in southern Haiti, where Haitian merchants, most of them women, are
preparing for a nighttime boat ride. The women boarding this boat have one goal:
to make it to the border where they will be let into a Dominican market, to buy
and sell goods before returning to their villages. It's international trade at its
most informal. We're taking these boats because the next door mountain range
makes the land journey almost impossible. These worn-out wooden boats have been
making this exact journey twice per week for decades and yet the process remains
chaotic and unorganized as if it's happening for the first time. All of this energy, time, and effort all to transport a handful of goods that, in most
countries, would be shipped in bulk inside one of these. We make this seven-hour journey to the
border town arriving around, 4 am. The sun rises and we walk to the border
market. This market was established right on the border as a partnership between the two nations, to give vendors from both sides a place to buy and sell on equal footing. As we approach the border I quickly realize that's not what's happening here. So I'm looking across the border right now, into the market and you can see that
Dominicans are already setting up. This is one of the big complaints of the
Haitians: they're stuck on this side waiting to cross the border and the
border guards are just delaying it and meanwhile the Dominicans are able to set
up and get the best spots. These Haitians come from miles away on this grueling
boat journey, that I know now firsthand is very grueling, and they get to the
border and the guards stop them for no reason. They're supposed to open it up for
everyone at the same time. The guards keep the Haitian women from
crossing, not letting anyone know how long it will be. The tension grows and
then finally, hours after the Dominicans were allowed to enter, the guards open up
the bridge. They buy and sell for the day, before
returning to the boats to make the journey home. The grueling boat journey,
the senseless discrimination, it embodies the asymmetry that exists on this island.
Watching it happen, it's impossible not to ask how it got like this. There are a
few key things that explain how this island produced two very different
countries, but if you want to get at the very root of it you have to go back to
when this island was owned by two European powers: France and Spain. This
island is actually the first place that Christopher Columbus set up a colony in
the new world on his first voyage back in like 1490. France wanted a piece of
this island because it was rich in resources like sugar and coffee, so they
fought a war with the Spanish and they ended up splitting the island in two: one
side would be the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo and the other side would
be the French colony, with the same name, Saint-Domingue, just in French. And that is
the most important part of understanding this whole thing, is how these imperial
powers treated their colonial posessions. The French exploited the
land. They brought in tons of slaves and they were interested in making Saint-Domingue solely an economic producer. They destroyed the soil from aggressively
harvesting the same crop year after year, and they created a group of very
resentful, overworked, and abused slaves that eventually rebelled. The Spanish had
a different approach. After establishing domination on this island by massacring
the indigenous population, they didn't exploit it like the French did. Instead they went to places like Mexico and Peru, to look for gold. So they didn't bring nearly as many slaves onto this island, and as a result they weren't nearly as profitable a colony. Instead, the Spanish integrated with the remaining indigenous population, by recognizing the native leader's authority and intermarrying with the locals. The result was a smaller and more racially mixed
population, with a sustainable economy and a political system, something totally absent from
France's colony. This becomes really important in the
early 1800s, when independence comes around. Haiti declares independence,
fights off the French, and basically declares itself the first black, former
slave republic in the world. They do so with very little framework for a society
and for a government and they also do so with land that has been exploited, year
after year, with the same crop which basically destroys the fertility of the
land. And to add to all of that, because they were this first black Republic, the
world essentially isolated them. The United States didn't want to recognize
the independence of a black nation. They thought it might become a slave empire
and seek revenge. The French showed up on Haitian shores
soon after independence, and said you owe us a debt for all of the assets that you
stole from us when you became independent, all these economic assets,
you owe us that debt and you have to pay it over the next thirty years. This
crippling debt Haiti did pay back over years, but it really hampered their
development. This history doesn't exonerate the dictators and corrupt
politicians that have plagued Haiti's development since its independence, but
it helps explain them. Suffocating embargoes and the independence debt, as
well as the lack of any tradition or investment in governmental institutions,
guaranteed Haiti's failure from the moment it was born, and a racist world
made sure of it. That racism isn't just embedded into Haiti's history, it is in
fact very alive today. As I drive up the border, by coincidence my driver is also
a Dominican border patrol official. We have hours in the car, where he slowly
and cautiously tells me about how immigration policy has changed in the
Dominican Republic in recent years. "Regularization Program". That's a euphemism. He's talking about a policy of targeting anyone of Haitian
descent, even citizens, rounding them up and deporting them.
There's always been anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic,
usually resulting in racist violence, but since 2010, that sentiment has been
seeping into legislation. The Dominican Constitution that was drafted in 1929,
says that anyone born in the country is automatically a citizen, even if your
parents were undocumented immigrants. This is the same in places like the
United States, but the DR rewrote its constitution in 2010, to only give
citizenship to those born on DR soil, to legal residents. Then, in 2013 the high
court in the DR ruled that this new definition would be applied
retroactively. All the way back to 1929, meaning any citizen who had been
born in the DR to undocumented parents would have their citizenship revoked. More than 200,000 Dominican citizens, were suddenly stateless. It is clearly an illegal act, it is an
immoral act, it is a racist act by the Dominican government. And it's happening
because these people are black. Dominican law said that if these
stateless people wanted to stay in the DR, they would have to go to a government
office and put their name on this foreigner registry. The government gave
these people one year to either get their name on the registry or face
deportation. Over 55,000 have been officially deported since the
June 2015 deadline. The UN estimates that 128,000
people have voluntarily fled to Haiti, a country many of them have never lived in.
Some came here to this camp on the border, where they've been living in
limbo for years. The moment I cross into the DR, I start
to see what this crackdown looks like. On a 75km bus ride, we pass eight
security checkpoints in which security personnel board the bus, to eye who was on
it, and in some cases check papers. But each time we stop, they seem to only
check the papers of the same few passengers. That's my translator, Pascale. He's an American
citizen, but everywhere we go in the DR, security forces keep asking him
for his passport. Halfway through the journey, we pull off the road into a facility where a few young military guys are sitting around. And our driver brings
this woman and her two children over to the military guys. She's speaking in
perfect Dominican Spanish to them, claiming that her children are Dominican
and that the driver brought us to this checkpoint to turn her in because she's
black. None of this seems to matter, she doesn't have her papers and her skin
color seems to be all the guards need to see. Haiti's land and people were abused
when it was a colony of slaves. The world then shunned it, with embargoes and
independence debts when it was a new nation, and today Haitians in the DR
experience racism that is overt enough to be enshrined in law. As we drive up this very curvy road, I
have the DR to my right and Haiti to my left. Back when the French were here, this
was the richest colony on earth, but that came at a price. Not only to abused slaves, but also to the land that they worked. Clear cutting and
single crop planting continued after the French left, but instead of being used to
make fancy French furniture, the trees were burned to cook food. This explains what I'm seeing when on my right there's lush jungle. and on my left
there's bare and eroding hillsides. Zoom out a little bit and it's very clear. I follow the border road all the way north,
until I hit another market town. I wanted to see if the same discriminatory
dynamics played out up here as they did down south. This market was built
with money from the European Union, and the UN development program, with the specific intention of creating a space where communities from both sides could come and buy and sell on equal footing. Rolling through the market, and
once again like we saw in the southern market, the Dominicans are first setting up. I walk to the border and find this huge group of people at this gap in the
fence, paying a border guard to get in early. The dynamic is the same as down
south, only with a few more overt bribes and border guards who seem to have no
problem hitting Haitians with a stick. After hours of waiting for guards to
open the gate for everyone, the Haitians are finally let in. This is a story about a border that
separates two vastly different countries, but it's moreso a story about policy: how centuries of racist policies, from the French, from the U.S., from the world,
from the DR, can hold a nation back from progressing. Haiti, this first black
republic, has experienced some of the most predatory and racist policy from outside
forces. For Haitians this story isn't just their history. It's their present. It's the stage on which they live their lives. So, I want to say a big thank you to lululemon, who is a sponsor for Borders. They sent me these ABC pants, which are these really versatile, flexible pants. They're super sturdy, and they're meant to be basically used for hiking and for activewear, but also around the house when I'm kind of just hanging out, I've been using them for both as I've been making Borders. I love them. Thank you lululemon for sending me these pants, but more importantly thank you for sponsoring Borders and making this happen. If you want to try out some lululemon ABC pants, You could get a pair of your own. You should definitely check that out. My name is Johnny Harris and I make videos here at Vox. For the past six months, I've been traveling around to faraway places, to tell the story of borders. I traveled to six different borderlands around the globe, to tell the story of what happens when you draw lines on a map. And I'm finally ready to share these stories with you. On October 17th I'm going to publish the first episode, and I'll be publishing weekly thereafter. Driving through a river right now. Borders are strange and interesting places and each one has a unique human story surrounding it. That was my goal, was to try and capture these stories and to tell them through these short documentaries. So I hope you'll tune in, October 17th. This is a picture of a song. Its fingerprint. Its visual identity. It was generated by a tool that visualizes
matching data. And it reveals something really cool about
how a song can be structured around lyrical repetition. By the way, this is Vince Staples “Yeah
Right”, and it’s been stuck in my head for months. Boy yeah right yeah right yeah right. Boy yeah right yeah right yeah right. This is Colin Morris. He’s a computer programmer that who loves
pop music. I did a master's degree in computational linguistics. Colin created this tool called Song Sim. Each row
and each column is a word in a song from beginning to end. But the interesting thing is when you see these structures off the diagonal. Those moments off the diagonal represent some
form of repetition. I think my favorite example and one of the
earliest ones that I played with was Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. one of the coolest things about this song
is just how many different hooks she manages to squeeze into it. Ra ra ah ah ah roma roma ma gaga oh la la
want your bad romance. Depending on how you count, there are at least
five different lyrical themes that repeat to the point where you start running out of
words to describe them. Usually verses aren’t that repetitive. Here, they are. The only part of the song that is falls into
a traditional song structure is the bridge. And it really stands out. Still, though, it’s highly repetitive. Walk walk fashion baby work move that bitch
crazy. Bad Romance came out in 2009 and since then
some of biggest pop songs every year have only gotten more repetitive. We’ll get back to this chart but first,
I want to get something out of the way. I really really really really really really
like you and I want you do you want me to? Yes that’s true. But not exactly what I want to say. You see, there’s always been a pretty strong
sentiment that if a song is structured around excessive repetition it’s uncreative, it's
unchallenging or it lacks complexity. That anti repetition sentiment goes back a
laughably long time. All the way back to November 6, 1882 when
composer Ferdinand Praeger gave a case against repetition called “On the fallacy of the
repetition of parts in the classical form.” Here’s what he said: All will readily admit that a first impression,
however striking, is weakened when followed by an immediate repetition. Would ever a poet think of repeating half
of his poem; a dramatist a whole act; a novelist a whole
chapter ? Such a proposition would be at once rejected as childish. Why should it be otherwise with music? Praeger believed repetition was beneath music
when in fact, repetition is decidedly musical. There's this phenomenon called the speech
to song illusion. Have you run across that? That’s Elizabeth Margulis. She directs the Music Cognition Lab at the
University of Arkansas and has written a book on musical repetition. There’s this really interesting process
where you can take a little bit of speech, you can take a little bit of speech, you can
take a little bit of speech. Repeat it a number of times and for many people
what initially just sounded like somebody talking to you now sounds like somebody singing. Psychologist Diana Deutsch discovered this
illusion in 1995 ironically when she was editing the audio of her CD 'Musical Illusions and
Paradoxes'. Margulis’ music cognition lab has conducted
a number of studies on repetition but there’s one that is really is pretty fascinating. She selected music from renowned 20th century
composer, Elliot Carter whose work was is atonal and explicitly non-repetitive. She presented a few versions to a class of
33 students who were unfamiliar with the work. One version was the original, no alterations. The other two versions were digitally altered
just to be repetitive without regard for the aesthetic quality of the music. And it turned out that the excerpts that had
been kind of adulterated to insert this literal kind of repetition were viewed not only as
more enjoyable and more interesting but also was more likely to have been composed by human
artists rather than randomly generated by computer. So repetition in music not only feels intentional
to our brains we actually enjoy it. Let’s take a look at that chart you saw
earlier. It illustrates that our love of repetition
was increasingly reflected in pop music. I was surprised by how clear the trend was. Oh yeah, Colin made that too. It turned out that you could basically take
any 10 year period over the last 50 years and there would always be an increase in repetition
over those 10 years. Yes, pop songs have gotten more repetitive,
But repetition can be used to flip predictable song structures to make them completely unpredictable. And that’s really cool. I don't know if you saw the visualization
for "Formation" by Beyonce? Oh yes. Okay ladies now let's get in formation It's almost like two songs glued together. With the first half of the song you have this
very clear chorus. My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana
You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama Once you get to the second half - that hook
disappears and Beyonce replaces it with this catchy hyper repetitive chant. Cause I slay (okay)
I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay),
I slay (okay) You can't deny the power of this song. Repetition doesn't just make it memorable,
it reinforces its central message. But when I listen to "Yeah Right" by Vince
Staples I'm reminded of the speech to song illusion. When Vince repeats Yeah Right over twenty
times,I start to shift my focus from the meaning of the lyric to the rhythm and musicality
of it. Boy yeah right yeah right yeah right. Boy yeah right. Repetition grabs a hold of our brains in a
way that we often can’t quite control. And that might feel like the music is playing
us rather than us playing the music. But if repetition makes songs like Formation,
Lose yourself to Dance, Beat It and I wanna dance with Somebody both great and memorable. It can rule the charts forever. Check-check. We're doing this. I cannot believe there are 3 million of you. That's like 1, 2, 3 ... We see you UK, Canada, Australia, India, Germany
—I don't want to leave anybody out, but according to Google, the only country where
we don't have a subscriber is North Korea. Thank you so much for watching, we really
appreciate it. Everytime we know that someone is watching
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you. It will help us grow, and help us make more
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to make money as a team, but we also don't want to be like annoying advertiser sellouts. We want to do it in a way that you are okay
with. And after the survey we're going to do something
fun too. We're going to commit to make a video on the
top comment from this video. Is there a question you want answered? Or a topic that you want us to weigh in on? We're gonna do something, no matter what,
on the top voted comment on this video. Please take the survey and have at it in the
comments. It may not be exactly what you expected, but
we're going to do something. Stay tuned, we've got some great series coming
up. Borders finally starts Tuesday. Our partnership with ProPublica starts next
week. And Earworm is back on Friday. We're excited to hear as much feedback as
you'll give us. What kind of videos you want us to do, what
you might like to see in the future. We do see the letters and emails that you
send us and we appreciate it a lot. And please, do take that survey below. Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing. It's insane how fast we've grown. <3 you, thank you. See you soon. “Yeah, I like the granite countertop!” Wait a second. No, no, no, no... listen, listen. Your granite countertop’s: beautiful. My counters are awful. But the hype is a little over the top. "I love this granite countertop. I like it, I like it very much.” That’s good you like it. But if you watch these house hunting shows, it's like granite countertop hunting, maybe with a house attached. "Granite is the cherry on top of the sundae when it comes to your kitchen.” Isn’t this all a bit much? When Consumer Reports looked at countertops, they noted that while granite is great for 
heat and scratches, it can chip, and it needs periodic resealing. Quartz can be similarly priced and is 
“more durable and requires less maintenance.” Our dream kitchens used to look like this.  So how did we get to: “To be able to have granite countertops is just awesome.” “Glad we could help you with a life goal.” Granite countertops are about hype, not quality alone. And that hype says something about how trends trickle down from the elite to everybody else. This is a grainy 1955 video where a woman 
brags about her awesome kitchen. "This whole kitchen was designed for efficiency and convenience.” She shows off hot new countertops that definitely weren’t granite. “No danger with Formica, won’t ever stain.” Formica was the flashiest brand of laminate that 
kept counters stain and scratch free. The technology flourished in the 50's, and 
it was part of a national trend. After World War II, there was a sustained housing boom. Laminate counters were in, and they
went in all those new houses. “Housing, for the seventh straight year, 
the industry has topped one million starts.” Prominent companies like the one that 
made Youngstown Kitchens benefitted from the boom. After supplying steel for military orders during World War II, they went on to sell all-steel kitchen cabinets with laminate tops that fit right in. These installed kitchens set a standard 
across all the new homes in America. And it was easy to put in countertops, like “Cusheen,” a weird type of vinyl, linoleum, and sweet, sweet laminated edge grain maple. These laminates were a luxury compared to wood, but they were more affordable thanks to a booming industry 
and lots of construction. And manufacturers were darn proud of their steel kitchens, as this Youngstown choir sings. Laminates showed up in millions of homes. So how did we go from, “No danger with Formica...” to “Oh my god the color... the iridescence is so sparkly ” The answer is surprisingly similar
To what helped laminates take over in the 1950's. Emerson Schwartzkopf at Stone Update put together this
data on Worked granite imports from 1996 to 2016. “Worked granite” basically means granite 
that’s ready to be cut into gorgeous countertops. 1996 shows where granite was, with a relatively low 206,000 
metric tons imported to the US.  It was elite.  So what made it ten times more popular a decade later? Granite had cred because it was rare. In 1987, the LA Times said it could get you “status points.” So, in the 2000's, a few things had to happen to make the elite 
material accessible to the middle class. You might think of granite as Italian, “You know there’s actually one mountain less in Italy because of all this, hahaha.” But these days, it’s often Brazilian. Look at 2014, for example. Brazil was 54% of US imports. Italy was just 6%. That big shift to a worldwide supply of granite 
made it more accessible. Granite became easier to mine and ship. New technological advances, like computer controlled cutting, made it easier to cut all that granite locally. Finally, look at when that chart peaks. 2006. The granite bubble and housing bubble 
came at the same time. Just as laminates rode technological and 
construction booms in the 50's, granite rode the similar waves in the 2000's. Granite was good, but its timing made it overrated. and that might be why we’re starting to correct. The end of that chart shows a dip in granite. That’s for a lot of reasons, some of which are
bigger than interior design trends. But if you watch house hunting shows you’ll see 
there are other materials catching on. “My wish list would include quartz countertops..” That might be the reason we keep searching for it. “Our homes acquire new grace, 
new glamour, new accommodations, expressing not only the American love of beauty, but also the basic freedom of the American people, which is the freedom of individual choice.” There are so many amazing 
laminate patterns from the 1950's. I have to point out one, and that is the Formica boomerang. You'll never guess why it's called that. It’s called … it looks like a boomerang. Chances are you’ve seen this tomato before. It’s become ubiquitous — and quite contentious This chart helps to explain why. We’re releasing more films now than ever
before. And in a world of excess choice, people need
guidance to make tough decisions. Which is why we need services like Rotten
Tomatoes The internet staple got its start in the late
90s. And in 2016, Fandango bought its parent company. Now, you go to buy a ticket, and there it
is. Which makes that rating important to understand. Because the tomatometer — it’s more complex
than you might expect. Films can earn one of three designations:
rotten, for movies rated 60% of critics gave a positive review. Fresh, for those earning a rate above 60% Or Certified Fresh. That's reserved for films that were reviewed
80 times and 70% or more of the reviews are positive. 5 of those reviews need to be from top critics. Critics submit a review with their own rating,
or sometimes Rotten Tomatoes asks the critic if it's positive. If it's borderline, Rotten Tomatoes usually
says the review is fresh. Rotten Tomatoes depends on a small army of
reviewers to make the tomatometer work. There's about three thousand critics that
are counted right now though not every critic reviews every film so it's usually a few hundred
per film. That’s Alissa Wilkinson — she’s a staff
film critic at Vox.com. Which means her reviews count toward the official
Tomatometer. But the nuance in Alissa’s writing is largely
reduced to the rating you’ll find near the top of her articles. Because Rotten Tomatoes uses a thumbs up thumbs
down method on everyone's reviews it means that it kind of makes a vaguer statements
of consensus. we don't get a sense so much of people who
have mixed ideas about a film. Look at these two films: Ridley Scott’s
Alien: Covenant, and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. Both films are certified fresh, but the similarities
end there. Alien was an underwhelming blockbuster sequel
with a reported budget of 97 million dollars. Moonlight was an Oscar winning drama from
a fledgling director with a budget 1/24th the size of Alien's. Both films achieved the blanket consensus
needed for the certified fresh badge. Alien finished with a Tomatometer at 70% — toward
the low end of the certified fresh spectrum. Moonlight received a 98 percent Tomatometer
— near total consensus. But Alien was rated 6.4 out of 10 on average,
after Rotten Tomatoes converted critical star ratings, letter grades, and number scores
to its 10 point scale. Moonlight, on the other hand, earned an average
rating of 9 out of 10 per review. Most critics loved it and agreed with one
another. So the two films earned the badge, but were
qualitatively world’s apart. This demonstrates the imperfection of the
Rotten Tomatoes system. This imperfection also appears when you compare
two of 2017’s most critically acclaimed films. Here’s another scenario:
Both Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out are highly rated and certified
fresh. But according to the Tomatometer, Get Out
edges out Dunkirk by 6 percentage points. If you saw these scores on the Fandango purchase
page, you might think that critics rated Get Out higher than Dunkirk. The Rotten Tomatoes page for each film shows
that Dunkirk earned a higher average rating per review. Dunkirk earned a lower tomatometer because
there was less agreement among critics — more variance in the data. And when there is less consensus, the rating
is lower. But a cute single tomato rating just can’t
give you all that information. Other rating systems try to circumvent these
problems with their own methodology. Metacritic, the most visible aggregator aside
from Rotten Tomatoes, is very subjective. It casts a much smaller net than Rotten Tomatoes,
and generally does more interpretation and weighting in their scoring. Metacritic is also less transparent about
their rating system than Rotten Tomatoes. So, is there a one-size fits all, killer method
to get digestible and accurate reviews of film in a fraction of time than it logically
could take? Absolutely not. That’s preposterous; the whole point of the Tomatometer is to help
you make a decision quickly. If you want context, you click and then you
read. Or, watch. And in a world of limited time and excess
choice, we all benefit from a bit of guidance. Just make sure you know how your guide is
getting you there. The United States has a problem with income inequality. People have different ideas about 
why this is happening. CEO pay climbs every single year without exception. The United States has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since the year 2000. big shifts that's happened in the economy that is lead in part to a decline in union membership. But one if the biggest drivers of inequality is hiding here, in these 2,000 pages. It's the US tax code. President Trump and Republicans in Congress have a plan to alter that code. and if they get their way it'll get even better for the richest Americans. First let's look at a few things that Trump and the Republicans don't want to change about the tax code. the charitable deduction and 
the mortgage interest deduction. Here's how they favor the rich: Let's say Dan makes $100 donation to his church. 
He makes about $30,000 a year. Roughly, the median income for individuals in the US. Which puts him in the 15% tax bracket. It means he would save at most $15 on his taxes. But let's say Dan's boss Steve makes the same donation to his church. Steve makes $500,000 a year which puts him in the top tax bracket. And the same $100 donation could save Steve $39.60 on his taxes. Dan and Steve give the same amount to their church but Steve saves more than twice as much. Small examples like this add up. People making $100,000 or more account for about 57% of all the charitable contributions in the US but they get 76% of the tax benefits. This deduction is also really expensive. The US spends $70,000,000,000 a year on it. More than eight times what it spends on Head Start the federally funded preschool program and more than twice what it spends on Pell grants for low-income students to go to college. Plus there's all kinds of ways to bend the rules. Billionaire Mitchell Rales gets tax break for donating his collection of modern art to a museum that he built right next door to his house. A museum that's only open for private tours. But the worst thing about about the charitable deduction? There's not great evidence that it works. Turns out you don't need a tax break to
encourage people to be generous to others. In the 1980's the top tax rate
for the richest people was 70% and through a series of reforms it dropped to 28% and the Council on Foundations, it's kind of a trade group for charities, said, 'Oh my God, you do that we're going to lose all our contributions.' Guess what? No difference. People gave just as much with a much lower tax rate. Austria, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and New Zealand have all gotten rid of their deductions for charitable contributions and that hasn't had an impact on
donation rates. One easy way to make things more fair? Replace the tax deduction with a tax credit. If Dan and Steve both give $100 to their church, give them each a $15 tax credit. That's how they do it in Canada. A tax credit reduces the amount you owe, so the same donation gets the same benefit no matter how rich you are. There's another tax deduction that's a boon for the wealthy. The mortgage interest deduction costs about $100,000,000,000 a year to the Treasury. We could use that money to treat wounded veterans, to build hospitals, to build highways but instead we give it to rich homeowners. Here's how it works: Let's say Dan buys a house for $100,000.
He doesn't pay for that all at once. Each month he writes a check to the bank for $1,000. Let's say $800 goes to paying for the house, and the bank keeps $200. That's interest! Dan writes twelve of these checks a year, so he pays $2,400 a year in interest. The mortgage interest deduction let's Dan subtract that interest from his taxable income which could save him as much as $362. "Nice," thinks Dan, that is until he hears about Steve. Steve also buys a house for $100,000. He also writes a $1,000 check each month paying $200 in interest. So after a year, Steve can also deduct the $2,400 from his taxable income. But that same deduction can save Steve more than $960. Nearly three times as much as Dan for the exact same mortgage payments. It doesn't stop there. Steve can buy a second home, deduct the interest, and save even more. Or he can get a mortgage for his yacht, count it as a second home, and deduct the interest. Sorry Dan, your fishing boat doesn't count. There are deductions everywhere. The money you lose from gambling? Deduct it. Fancy business dinners? Yep. Money you put in a retirement account? That too. You can even deduct the fees you pay an accountant to help you find more deductions. And while theoretically Dan could take advantage of these same deductions the fact is, people like Steve benefit a whole lot more. People who make about $400,000 a year or more make up about 5% of taxpayers but they get more than half the benefits from these tax deductions. Now there's a third part of the tax code that Trump and the Republicans want to keep and it's even better for the richest Americans than all of these deductions The preferred rate for capital gains. Here's how it works: According to the US tax code, there are two different kinds of income. Earned income is when you go to work and somebody pays you a salary or wage a paycheck. That's earned income and we have a whole set of income tax rates for that income that go up to 39.6%. This is where Dan and Steve's tax rates come from. Unearned income means guys who trade paper. Guys who sell stock or buy commodities and then sell it. Invest in real estate properties and then sell them. That's capital income and we tax that at a lower rate. Let's say Steve earns $500,000 a year as a surgeon and Laurie earns the same amount as a hedge fund manager. Even though their income is the same, Steve's tax rate is 39.6% but Laurie's tax rate is nearly half that, 23.8%. So Steve ends up with a much higher tax bill. This is why billionaire investor Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. His money comes from capital gains while hers comes from a salary. Debbie works just as hard as I do and she pays at twice the rate I pay. Ronald Reagan thought the same thing. Reagan had been a very high, high bracket taxpayer. In fact, he paid at the 90% rate in the 1950s. He was a movie star. His accountant kept telling him well sign these documents and that'll shift your income from labor to capital income and Reagan saw that that was hokey. Why should that be? Reagan's landmark 1986 tax bill tax capital income and labor income at the same rate. People said, "Oh my God, you can't do that. Then nobody will invest. Investments will plummet." This chart shows the value of the S&P 500, a stock market metric that measures how well big businesses are doing. After Reagan raised the capital gains rate in 1986, businesses continued to prosper. Reagan's successors, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also raise taxes and the on the wealthiest Americans. And the 1990s saw America's longest period of consecutive economic growth ever. But the changes that Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress want to make to the tax code look very different. While the Trump and GOP plans get rid of some deductions neither gets rid of the charitable
contribution or mortgage interest deductions Both plans would lower taxes on capital income for people like Laurie the hedge fund manager. And both plans would reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three. and cut the top tax rate. Which would mean big tax savings for someone like Steve and minimal savings for working and middle-class people like Dan. Rather than working to reduce the growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else these new tax plans would make that gap even wider. These monkeys live on a giant rock
called Gibraltar, which is a part of the mainland of Spain, here on the Iberian
Peninsula but it's right on the very tip and it actually belongs to Britain. Back
when the world would fight wars with like big countries fighting each other,
this place was very strategic for Britain. They have all these military
assets up here that are a holdover from when they had this whole place decked
out and militarized for war. Gibraltar, the town of 30,000 people has a
really weird feel to it. It is Spanish, kind of, kind of feel Spanish, you know
it's kind of sun-soaked and things like that. But it's totally British at the same
time. It's abnormal, it's extraordinary. To add to the strangeness, there are
monkeys here. These monkeys are a part of the Barbary macaques species. They're the
only primates living in the wild here in Europe, besides humans. The monkeys have
been here for no-one knows how long. They're indigenous to northern Africa,
but you'll notice that there is a large body of water called the Mediterranean
Sea in between this place and Africa so no one really knows how they got over here. There's
a lot of theories and legends. Some people say pirates brought them
over in like the 14th century from Morocco, some people think they came
across like thousands of years ago, but there's been a lot of digging on this
rock and there's really no evidence that that's the case. One thing I love about
these monkeys is that the male's play a huge role in raising the infants. In fact
all sexes and all ages are involved in the raising of children. I respect that.
So, there's actually a problem with these monkeys in Morocco being exploited for
tourism. When they eat food that is given to them by humans,
or are subject to having photos taken of them all day, it can cause some really
bad and psychological outcomes for monkeys. What the people in Gibraltar
have tried to do is basically ban anyone from feeding them. This guy found food on
his own. And they've also trained the monkeys, they've almost domesticated them
in a way to where interaction with humans is not psychologically stressful.
That being said, they are the biggest tourist attraction of Gibraltar. And of
course during World War Two this place was bombed everyone had to flee, but the
monkeys have stuck around. The British Army actually took the monkeys under
their wing and actually had in their budget, nuts and berries and apples for
the monkeys. So while the whole global empire, strategic value of this place is
long gone, there still is value for Britain to have
this place. So much of the world's trade comes through this little bit of water
between Europe and Africa, and Gibraltar is situated right here on and strait.
There's actually weird superstition that has made it into politics. Some British
people have thought in the past, that as long as the monkey stay here
Britain will for sure have control. After World War Two, Winston Churchill
reportedly heard that because of the bombing and things there were only seven
monkeys left, and because of this superstition he ordered that the monkey
population be replenished. So this place is strategic, it probably will
stay strategic in some ways and Britain has no plan to give it back to Spain. The Borders documentaries are finally
launching. Up until now I've been making these dispatches, just little videos
while I've been traveling, but all of this has been to build six documentaries.
I'm going to be publishing the first borders documentary on October 17th, and then
publishing weekly thereafter on Tuesdays. The videos are going to be publishing on
Facebook and YouTube, and if you don't want to miss the updates on when they
publish, you can sign up for the newsletter, which I'm putting the link
down in the description. Really excited to share these with you, you should tune
back October 17th to watch the first one. What do P Diddy, Donald Trump, and Martha
Stewart all have in common? Christine Cornell. She's a courtroom artist who's captured all
of them at their trials. I’ve been covering trials for the last 1,000
years, which is about 1975. I did Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. I’ve drawn Mick Jagger a couple of times. I’ve drawn Mike Tyson. I did just come off the Cosby trial recently,
but I drew him probably 20 years ago. We live in an age where people’s phones
have 4K cameras and every dips*** on a snowboard has a GoPro
attached to their head, so why do we still see old-school pastel sketches
of so many trials? Courtroom illustrations are part of an old
tradition that dates back to the infancy of the United
States. But to figure out why we’re still relying
on them, we need to turn to Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 53, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds. It’s a law that basically says you’re
not allowed to broadcast or take photographs of criminal proceedings
inside federal courtrooms. The ban on cameras was adopted in 1946, but its origin is often linked to the sensational
coverage of the 1935 trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the murder of the Lindbergh
baby. Most state courts have had a similar ban on
cameras as well, which is why news outlets relied heavily on
artists like Christine to document the trials. Courtroom photography has been a hotly debated
issue for a long time. There are many who believe having cameras
in all courtrooms will make for a more transparent judicial
process. On the other hand, some people point to the
O.J. Simpson trial as a prime example of why it might not be
a good idea: A lengthy, complicated judicial process
was turned into a primetime spectacle. It’s an unfair burden, I think to put on
a defendant. Because they are presumed innocent, for starts, and the camera is a brutal exposure, and the
artists are a filter. There’s just something that’s a little
more human. It’s a little bit softer. It mitigates a little bit on behalf of the
person. One great thing about drawing as opposed to
cameras in the court is you can shrink the space. You can put people in juxtaposition to each
other that dramatizes or allows the drama to come out. I asked Christine to do a drawing to show
me her process. I requested one of me in a prison jumpsuit
getting tased by guards, but she suggested we do it sitting instead. When I look very hard at someone that I’m
about to draw, then I look at my page, their face is actually glowing on the page. And it’s kind of like when you watch film
develop, except it’s the reverse. I watch that image fade. Studying anatomy is very useful because I
have to do an awful lot of recreating of things that
I just saw happen in front of me. But then they just happened, and now they’re
not there anymore. And you have to be able to do that from your
knowledge. If you think too much about what your feelings
are about somebody, it’s going to interfere
with your drawing. But what about all the awful people you’ve
had to draw over the years? I think you need to have a huge dollop of
compassion, because that's the only way you're going to
capture soul on the page. And that way, you’re going to get your most
true likenesses. You wanna make those portraits speak to you
on the page. When people cry, you gotta get it. It’s, like, part of the court artist’s
contract, you know, do not miss the tears. Unfortunately for Christine, I’m from Minnesota,
so I’m unable to express my emotions. Drawing this fast is just, it’s totally
insane. Sometimes you can churn out as many as six
drawings a day; I’ve churned out as many as eight drawings
a day. You’re always taking it all in as it comes,
but there’s always certain things that catch your eye and that you find particularly appealing. Like when Martin Shkreli was in court, he had a bunch of gestures where he would
take his hand and just sort of go like this, and it was sort of fun because you could see
the white around this part of his eye, you know. When Bernie Madoff was sentenced, he was taken,
remanded directly, and they cuffed his hands behind his back and led him through a door, and of course
I had to draw that. Christine’s captured a ton of memorable
moments. But the laws have changed her profession over
the years, and a number of bills have been introduced
to allow cameras inside federal and supreme courts. Once upon a time, there were so many artists
they had to give us the whole front of a courtroom, you know, front row on both sides. And now there’s just a few of us. They allowed cameras on an experimental basis
in New York State Court, and that sort of eviscerated the business, that took away the bread and butter, because
state court was where we did most of our work. The business has changed, but there’s still,
you know, there’s still crime. This is a semi-automatic weapon. It’s legal, and it’s one of the guns used
to kill 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas. Normally, these guns can shoot about 30 rounds
in ten seconds. But the guns in the Vegas shooting were modified
to shoot nearly as fast as an illegal automatic weapon; About 90 shots in 10 seconds. Automatic weapons can fire 98 shots in 7 seconds
with a single pull of the trigger and since 1986, it’s been illegal to own
one in the United States. So how did the Las Vegas shooter manage to
nearly replicate the destruction of a gun that’s been illegal for more than 30 years? Mass shootings almost always involve these
semi-automatic weapons, which is why they’re so deadly
These semi-automatic weapons fire much more quickly than the kinds of firearms that have
been around for most of American history. Shooters used semi-automatics in the Virginia
Tech, Ft. Hood,
Aurora, Sandy Hook,
San Bernardino, And Orlando massacres. Most of these shooters also used high-capacity
magazines, which make semi-automatics even more deadly by reducing the time spent reloading. But the Las Vegas shooting was different. The semi-automatic weapon the shooter used
had been modified to be even more deadly, using a $99 add-on called a bump stock which uses the gun’s recoil power to automatically
put pressure on the trigger. This seems hard to square with the text of
the 1986 law, signed by President Reagan, Reagan: “I do believe that an AK-47, a machine
gun, is not a sporting weapon, or needed for defense of the home”
Which not only made it “unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machine gun,”
it also outlawed “any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination
of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun.” But a 2010 letter from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms posed on the website for one bump stock manufacturer
says that because the product attaches to the exterior and doesn’t have any mechanical
parts, it’s legal. In 2013, a few months after the Sandy Hook
shooting, Senator Diane Fienstein proposed a bill that would’ve ban bump stocks. But the bill never came up for a vote. Stop! Let’s break this down. We all know open offices are bad.  There've been studies that show that private offices 
“clearly outperformed” open ones. Open offices are about saving money. Pricey real estate means that every square foot’s a dollar sign, and that’s fine. But we don’t like to talk about it that way. We act like it’s about interaction and collaboration, even though studies have shown that ease of interaction
is not an issue in any type of office. To be clear, I am throwing stones from a glass office. This is where I work. My desk is incredibly close to my poor neighbors, I always have to wear headphones to concentrate, and nobody ever... ...talks. But when you look at really cool companies,  across the board they all have open offices  to “encourage interaction and openness.” Dog vacation website? Open office. Charity website? Open office. But this is not just penny pinching. We talk about them like they’re better, and they used to be. Open offices were once works of art. They were just ruined... by too many bad copies. This is an open office. It’s a post office from 1872. Open offices weren’t invented by hip millennials. This is not a barista. This is not a Feng shui consultant. Clerical work was done in big open spaces as early as the 1750's. But small rooms were most common. By the 1900's, more and more people were spending their days in offices. One genius wanted to make offices more open, and he wanted open spaces to work better. “The Eminent American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright”. “Come in lad. Instead of a building being a series of boxes and closets, it became more and more open,
more and more a sense of space.”  Wright’s known for his houses, often with open plans, but he designed offices too. In 1909, he experimented with open offices 
in a Buffalo building. In 1939, he created a masterpiece in Wisconsin. The SC Johnson company needed a new headquarters, so they asked Wright to design it. They make cleaning products like “RAID!!!!”
(bugs screaming) “Yes Raid, new bug killer discovery from Johnson's Wax.” The administrative building was the highlight. It was a stunning open office. Wright believed new materials, like steel, enabled bolder designs. “The box was a fascist symbol  and the architecture of freedom and democracy 
needed something beside the box.” Just in case you missed that, he just said boxes are fascist. Yeah. Doesn’t that sound a lot like modern open office hype? But there were big differences between what
Wright made and what we have today. This thing was incredibly well designed. First are these dendriform columns. Dendriform means tree like. They were so elegantly skinny, 
they worried building inspectors. The ceiling let in natural light. Visitors compared it to a cathedral. Wright also specially designed each of these desks and chairs. Just look at all the space between them. And managers got private offices on a mezzanine.  Wright said that it paid off. “One of the first consequences was tea in the afternoon,  and they didn’t like to go home.”  But Wright’s open office was very different from the open drudgery in, say, 1960s “The Apartment.” People eliminated Wright’s careful design work and made a copy of a copy of a copy. Open, but without Wright’s genius behind it. That’s why people thought a “cubicle” might be the solution.  The May 1968 issue of Progressive Architecture has a lot of gems. Like this flooring that’s…asbestos tile? Hindsight 20/20 probably shoulda gone with linoleum. Page 174 has a spread about a movement called Bürolandschaft. It means “office landscape,” and started in Germany in the 1950's. By the 60's, it had made its way to America. Look at this diagram of DuPont Chemical’s boxy, very organized offices before Bürolandschaft. And now look at the fluid, organic layout they ended up with. The idea was to make offices open, but keep them flexible. Herman Miller did the same with their "Action Office." “And what exactly is Action Office?” “Well, I’m walking through it right now.” Herman Miller’s Robert Propst designed it to break up space, but it allowed for easy interaction and rearrangement. There were even special task groups for 
each part of the office. The idea was constant flexibility with specifically designed furniture. But when people copied Bürolandschaft and Action Office, they forgot the flexibility and
attention to detail.  They only saw the walls. So over the decades we got a copy of a copy of a copy. And went from thoughtful design to cubicle farm. “We’ll go ahead and get this all fixed up for you.” "Great." Today’s supposedly hip open offices are, 
in part, a reaction to cubicle hatred. But many lack the care and attention of the open offices
of Frank Lloyd Wright, or the partitioned privacy of Herman Miller and Bürolandschaft. We’ve kind of got the worst of both worlds. The open offices we have are overrated bullpens, but the idea is worth executing well. Because it matters too much to stop trying to fix it. “By that we mean the 40 hours a week, the 87,000 hours, the nearly 10 full years of your life you spend 
inside the four walls of one room.” So I don't wanna leave you with the impression that
Frank Lloyd Wright's open office was perfect. His custom-designed three legged chairs
turned out to be kind of unstable, and they were eventually replaced. I’m going to botch how it’s pronounced:
antifa? Antfee? Antifa? Antifa? Yeah, antifa. Antifa, short for anti-fascist. It’s an umbrella term for a group that shows
up at protests to confront neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They dress in all black, they wear masks,
and they occasionally engage in violence. Once again, antifa members attack peaceful
demonstrators. The group’s tactics and appearance have
garnered them a lot of media attention over the past few months. America is waking up to the menace of antifa. They’re known as antifa, and they’re also
known for being violent. But for a group that’s getting so much airtime
for being violent and dangerous, they’re not causing that much havoc. In Berkeley, where about 4,000 people showed
up to protest a white supremacist rally, there were 100 antifa, nine injuries, and a total
of 13 arrests. In Boston, where 40,000 protesters showed
up, no major injuries, 33 arrests. In Portland, thousands of protesters at opposing
rallies, no major injuries, 14 arrests. That might sound like a lot, but it’s about
the number of arrests you’d expect at a rowdy NFL game. Antifa look scary, but they make up a tiny
part of the protests they show up at. So why have they become such a powerful boogeyman
in protest coverage? What is antifa? What is antifa? What is antifa? To understand why the media focuses on outliers
like antifa, I talked to Doug McLeod. He’s been studying the way the media covers
protest movements for… Basically 30 years. Anti-war movements, anti-pornography movements,
various civil rights movements, anarchist protests, abortion protests. Okay, don’t brag. You’re already in the video The specific panic about antifa might seem
new, but McLeod says it’s part of a much older media problem. You can see the media’s fixation on radical
protesters in coverage of a lot of big protests. During the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, cameras
focused on anarchists destroying property. A group we now know as anarchists called the
black bloc began terrorizing the city. With Black Lives Matter in Baltimore, peaceful
protests against police brutality were overshadowed by images of violence and property damage. Rioting has broken out in the street. During Occupy Wall Street, reporters focused
on protesters who looked weird or destroyed property. Anarchists sprang out of the crowd and launched
this full-on assault. You cannot cede public space to thugs and
lawbreakers. Lawlessness, violence, filth. Now, it’s antifa. The peaceful counterprotest against racism
turned violent. The result is a type of outlier bias, where
a small group of violent protesters ends up dominating news coverage. You saw it in Berkeley. By any measurement, nine injuries in a protest
of 4,000 people is an outlier. But headlines fixated on antifa violence instead
of the vast majority of protesters. Berkeley’s mayor says it is time to confront
the violent extremism on the left. In other cities, images of clergy and peaceful
protesters are overshadowed by images of isolated violence played on a loop. I would compel you to air the three hours
of footage where we marched through the streets with literally no violence. A lot of this is about ratings. Images of violence and property damage create
a spectacle, which makes them really hard to look away from. What’s more interesting to watch: a bunch
of smiling protesters banging on drums, or antifa fighting Nazis? Yeah, agreed. But for a lot of reporters, it’s also about
convenience. Protests are kind of a nightmare to cover. They're leaderless, disorganized, and often
focus on big issues that are hard to reduce to quick soundbites. A lot of journalists are really trying to
get a story straight and they’re trying to get it out there. But they’re operating under a lot of constraints. You’ve gotta find something, you’ve gotta
get back, and you’ve gotta tell it quickly. Those time constraints mean a lot of journalists
rely on official sources for quick summaries of what happened. Gotta get a quote from the police chief. Which means that a lot of protest coverage
gets told from the perspective of law enforcement. Who broke the law, who was arrested, who are
police worried about? The police chief is concerned about today’s
influx of anarchist protesters. That outlier bias has a big effect on how
viewers at home think of protesters. As audience members, we make inferences based
on that small appropriate sample. And it really creates this sort of false sample
of who those protesters really are. That false sample creates an unwinnable situation
for protest movements. In the age of Fox News, images of violence
and property damage get played on a loop to demonize protesters as dangerous and illegitimate. Left-wing thugs have been smashing windows,
burning buildings, beating people up who disagree with them. It’s the normalization really by the left
of police hatred, and there is a war on cops. But this happens even without Fox News’s
help. Media fixation on the most extreme members
of a protest can make the public turn on protesters as a whole. This is not populism, this is maybe anarchism. So that can turn off viewers where people
become angry and hostile and kind of averse to protest. That kind of coverage can also build public
support for aggressive police crackdowns, like the ones we saw in Ferguson and Baltimore. What is stopping Michael Bloomberg from enforcing
the law and cleaning up this health hazard called Occupy Wall Street. If they’re going to assault cops and try
to kill them, the cops will use deadly physical force and do what they have to do to bring
peace back to that community. We have police who are not doing their job. They’re allowing antifa to enter this park. Oppositions will start calling for the police
to take some action. “It’s time to start restoring order to
our communities and stop this lawlessness.” That can kind of embolden the police who were
initially passive into being more active combatants in the conflict. But the most frustrating thing about this
kind of coverage is that it shifts focus away from what protesters are actually organizing
about. It forces us into an endless debate about
tactics over substance. What does that get you? Smashing the windows of a Starbucks, of a
Nike store. What’s the point? Aren’t you becoming a public nuisance? There’s no excuse for that kind of violence,
right? Are you at all concerned, though, about the
rise in violence? That violence begets violence begets violence? And it tends to shut us down to ideas. So instead of confronting big issues like
globalization or police brutality or white supremacy. We get think piece after think piece about
whether protesters are going too far. When you think you’re punching Nazis, you
don’t realize that you’re also punching your cause. Groundbreaking. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t care about
violence or property damage. But you should be wary of how you’re reacting
to a biased sample. News cameras are always looking for the worst,
most radical people who decide to show up to a protest. But those outliers don’t offer you meaningful
information about who most protesters are, what they’re protesting about, or whether
they’re right. Those are the questions that actually matter. And they’re the ones that get lost in endless
debates about fringe groups like antifa. This is Puerto Rico on a calm night in July
2017. Here it is again, after Hurricane Maria in
September. The storm's impact has been catastrophic. It was at its strongest when it was passing
over the most populated parts of the island, which is home to about 3.4 million people. The impact has been catastrophic. It knocked off Puerto Rico’s power grid
and now it’ll be months before most of the island has electricity again. What’s made recovery particularly hard is
that the government has no money and that’s partly because of its complex relationship
with the US mainland. Puerto Rico became a US commonwealth in 1952. But nearly half of all Americans don’t know
that people born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens. The island’s economic downturn can be traced
to the 1960s and 70s, when a special tax break from Congress led US companies to set up shop
in Puerto Rico. Then, between 1993 and 2006, Congress phased
out those tax breaks, and companies left the island in droves, taking thousands of jobs
with them. Economic growth slowed to a crawl, and hordes
of people started leaving the island. The number of Puerto Ricans living in mainland
U.S. doubled between 2005 and 2015. As the tax base shrank, Puerto Rico went into
massive debt to pay its bills. Today, it owes more than $70 billion, mostly
to Wall Street creditors In May of 2017, it filed for protection similar
to a bankruptcy. Budgets for hospitals, schools, and roads
were slashed. Another US policy that partly led to PR’s
economic turmoil is the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or the Jones Act. It places huge tariffs on any foreign imports. And although President Trump suspended the
Jones Act in the wake of hurricane Maria, these costs have been passed on to Puerto
Ricans for decades. Since Puerto Rico imports 85% of its food,
people often pay double for food and other basic necessities. The high cost of living is one of the reasons
43% of residents live in poverty. Crucially, the island’s financial woes have
kept it from investing in the kind of modern, automated power plant technology that’s
characteristic of the mainland US. That's going to make recovery difficult. Most power plants in the mainland rely on
natural gas, with some coal, nuclear, and renewables. But Puerto Rico’s old-fashioned plants still
generate two-thirds of the power from burning oil. And all that oil has to be imported. In the aftermath of hurricane Maria, the power
plants are mostly intact. But nearly 80 percent of the transmission
lines that carry power are down. And so are the roads that bring oil to the
power plants. While the island’s power plants are on the
southern coast, most of the people live in the north. And between those two ends sit dense forests
and mountains. Apart from the challenging terrain, Puerto
Rico’s electric utility company, PREPA, relies heavily on workers with extensive knowledge
— and those workers have been leaving. Since 2012, 30 percent of PREPA’s employees
have retired or left for the mainland in search of better jobs. Electrical engineers from Puerto Rico can
make about 27 percent more money on the mainland. According to its director, “PREPA is on
the verge of collapse because there’s no personnel to operate it.” And that was before the storm. Without technicians to repair all the broken
transmission lines, Puerto Ricans are expected to be without power for months. And the consequences of that can be dire. Without electricity to pump water into homes,
it’s difficult to find water for drinking, bathing. No air conditioning or fans can mean increased
risk of heatstroke. And no refrigerators to keep insulin from
expiring. People are at risk of dying. All of this means millions of US citizens,
for the foreseeable future, will be living in conditions we usually associate with places
very far away. Check out that giant calendar over there This city was home to the Teotihuacán
people, which archaeologists really don't know a lot about. No one really knows
where they went and how they were destroyed. They left this place totally
abandoned. But they did leave us their city and if you poke around the city and
look at the configuration of this huge, goes for 20 kilometers, city you start to
see that they really prioritized keeping track of time throughout the year. And
the technology they used to do that was their huge pyramids that they
constructed, and the sun, the stars, the mountains. Their entire city was built in
order to track the movement of the celestial bodies. This civilization was able to track time by keeping track of whenever the sun would
rise at the peak of one of these mountains. They aligned it so that the
Sun and the mountains would be a perfectly aligned clock for them to see
what time of year it was. Today, people come here to this ruin to celebrate the
spring equinox, which is an important time for planting seeds and preparing
for the fertility of the land. We don't know how important the spring equinox was
for this ancient civilization, but they did leave a few clues that
suggests that it could have actually been a really important day. Tracking the celestial bodies wasn't
just about agriculture, it was also about religious practices and ceremonies. Every
year at the same time they would perform certain rituals that they would offer up
to their gods. Sometimes that was terrible things like human sacrifices,
animal sacrifices. And the celestial bodies helped them know when it was time
to do that. This section is the top of the city, the highest point in this whole
valley. You see all these wide open plazas. And some people theorized that
these were meant to be filled with water when it would rain, so that people could sit up
on the surrounding buildings and look down and see the reflection of the stars.
And they would do this so that they could track the stars and study the
constellations, some people theorize that this is how they were able to understand
the stars and construct their city based on constellations. We really don't know a lot
about these people, like where they came from, what language they spoke, where they
went in 600 AD, when they kind of just disappeared off the archaeological map.
But we do know that they cared about tracking the sun and tracking the stars
and their entire city was constructed and configured in order to be able to do
that. The borders documentaries are finally launching. Up until now I've been
making these dispatches, just little videos while I've been traveling but all
of this has been to build six documentaries. I'm going to be publishing
the first borders documentary on October 17th, and then publishing weekly
thereafter on Tuesdays. The videos are going to be publishing on Facebook and
YouTube and if you don't want to miss the updates on when they publish you can
sign up for the newsletter which I'm putting the link down in the description.
Really excited to share these with you you should tune back October 17th, to
watch the first one. This exploding kitten can explain the truth about crowdfunding. And this one, and this one, and this one. [explosion sound effect] This is all part of a game called Exploding Kittens. If you draw an exploding kitten, you blow up unless you have the right cards. Some cards have special abilities, like Skip and Attack, others are just funny, like the “Cattermelon.” [kitten yowling] If you haven’t played it, think Old Maid, and strategy, and death. [explosion sound effect] Elan Lee: It was basically Russian roulette with a deck of poker cards. We said, there’s gonna be a bomb in this
deck. We took the joker and wrote “bomb” on it. That’s Elan Lee. He and Shane Small and Matt Inman, the famous artist behind The Oatmeal webcomic, made this game. EL: And uhhh, we put it on Kickstarter expecting to raise 10,000 bucks and instead broke every record that Kickstarter had. They raised almost 9 million dollars. 219,000 people joined them, giving them more backers than any other Kickstarter project. Ever. With Exploding Kittens, they raised millions of dollars and went on a ton more copies. You can get the game in Target. But when they made a second game called Bears versus Babies, they crowdfunded again, even though Kickstarter has a lot of risks. In case you forgot, Kick-starting is when you kick down on a pedal to get your engine going. These guys did not need a kick-start — they had an engine of exploding kittens. But they still went back and gave Kickstarter a 5% fee to return to the platform. So why did the biggest crowdfunded game in history do it all over again? [ticking sound effect] This guy has backed a ton of Kickstarter projects. Yancey Strickler: Yeah...I have backed something like 1,950 projects. Which I believe puts me at like number 15 on the global leaderboard. So that does not make you number 1, I am both happy and sad to say. He just cracked 2,000, by the way. And some of those projects are weird. YS: There was recently a project to make a gigantic sculpture of Cristiano Ronaldo made entirely out of shrimp…obviously I had to back that. It’s a real shame, Ronaldo should have really pitched in to that last 40 grand to make it happen. He’s made his own projects too. YS: Over the next month I’m gonna make a simple zine of about 12 essays about alternate NBA universes...A world where Isaiah Thomas is a giant living on a Gulliver's island of his own creation. My name is Yancey Strickler and I’m the CEO and one of the co-founders of Kickstarter. “My life before Kickstarter was as a culture vulture writing about music and film for a living, for almost ten years. And so, my entire life has been looking for the new, what’s on the vanguard, you know? What's on the edges of things. Kickstarter is just nothing but that. All that backing isn’t just a hobby. It’s key to what they he thinks is important about crowdfunding. And it’s not the dollar signs. EL: What we were really trying to raise was a crowd. If you look at the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter page, you’ll notice a few things. There aren’t a lot of options for money. A few tiers, that’s it. But there are a ton of rewards they invented, without money in mind. They’re as random as Exploding Kitten Beard Cats. They made people do stuff to unlock rewards. EL: 10 Batmans in One Hot Tub. What the hell does that even mean? Who would possibly do that? Here’s an awesome 3d printed model they got back in response. In return, Exploding Kittens unlocked features, like a fancy hinged special edition box that...“Meow.” Yes, meowed when backers opened it. They even said “help us build this game”
to the community too, because it was part of their crowdfunding strategy. This is not a store. This is the place where you don’t build infomercials...you enlist a community.” It’s not money, but engagement, that drew them back to crowdfunding for their second game, even though there are risks. EL: We had no idea that the phrase, "Exploding Kittens", should ever be trademarked… Once the game hit day seven or eight on Kickstarter, we realized, ok, we actually do need to worry about this. And so, I called a trademark lawyer and said hey there's this is probably a thing we have to do now... and he said, you’re too late, somebody's already registered it. They registered it yesterday. And it’s so heartbreaking. Crowdfunding allows competitors to see the future. EL: A year later, and many lawyers later, and so much time later, we finally had the rights back. Because as long as you can prove prior art and prior commerce, and all these things... But, so many people have to work on that. The popular Fidget Cube faced a similar problem. They raised millions of dollars, but debuting on Kickstarter forced them to give up an element of surprise. YL: In Shenzhen, there were Chinese copycats of the Fidget Cube that hit the market before the fidget cube itself did. So, that's a whole new universe of copying a product that does not exist yet to beat it to market. I felt concerned about that. I felt badly for those creators that that happened. And I'm not sure how to stop that. And I think that people will appreciate that fidget cube is the original. And I'm sure they're going to continue to do well. But creators of games like Exploding Kittens deal with the risks of crowdfunding and Kickstarter’s 5% fee because it’s worth it for their business. EL: We looked to crowdfunding in general, as a possible way to launch it. And every site that we played around with and kind of even the people we talked to about it kept looking at the term "crowdfunding" and they kept emphasizing the funding part. And we looked at Kickstarter, we started talking to the people that worked at Kickstarter, they really talked us into shifting that. ...and focusing on the word crowd instead. The funding will happen. What you’ve got to do is build the crowd. That Bears vs. Babies game that the Exploding Kittens guys took to Kickstarter? They got 85,000 people to come back with them. Exploding Kittens is a beautifully designed box, with well-drawn cards and a funny gimmick. But without a crowd and without people,
it’s just paper. That’s (ocean) bloom, a Radiohead and Hans
Zimmer composition for BBC’s Blue Planet II series. It’s a lush, orchestral song that feels
like the ebb and flow of the ocean. But it’s a rework of a 2011 Radiohead track
that sounds a lot different. When Radiohead’s Thom Yorke first wrote Bloom, he was inspired by the original Blue
Planet series from 2001. The song turned out to be a complex mix of
piano loops and syncopated drums. In 2017, the band was brought in to adapt
that track for the Blue Planet sequel with composer Hans Zimmer. This time, they were faced with a unique challenge:
How do you turn an experimental rock song into a soundtrack — for the ocean? They found their inspiration in a painting
technique in which small individual dots create a whole image. Pointillism, painting pointillism. And started to talk about these ideas — I used to draw exactly that after going surfing, I would do exactly that. Alright okay so we were obviously, there
seems to be a consensus here that we were on the right track. And we came over here, and  just started to do these gestures withthe orchestra, these tiny little fragments of sound. Sometimes it would be like light, sometimes it would be like little
waves. They sort of became the vocabulary for this. I think that was part of the idea — let's
not just start with the tune, let’s start with figuring out a new technique. A new method of how to present whatever the
notes are. If you listen closely to the track, you can
hear that method at work — it’s a trick they call the “tidal orchestra”. This sound forms the base layer of the entire
soundtrack — it’s always present. It creates a whole musical environment that’s
built out of a single note. Hans has done that before — the Joker Theme
in The Dark Knight is just one stretched cello note. But that was just one instrument — here, you have
an entire orchestra playing a single note -- and that was made possible because of one simple rule. We instructed the players to not play at the same time when there was a long note. The conductor would say: “when the guy next
to you is playing, don't play.” You can hear this when you isolate the tidal
orchestra track. You know, as your note dies away, just look
at you know, whoever’s sitting next to you — let them swell in their note. … And you get these beautiful sort of waves,
and just for a moment the individual player is heard and then sinks back into you know,
the mass. It's exactly what, if you look at the ocean long enough, that’s exactly what it does. In terms of, back to the pointillism things,
it's basically, if you really look at it, it’s triangles that come in and out, and seep in and out
all the time. And they never stop, they never never never stop. Think of it like a musical version of mathematician
John Conway’s Game of Life — there’s a basic rule about when a note dies, when
it remains, and when it reproduces. Let that play out, and the orchestra takes
on an organic feeling. This track follows in a rich tradition of
using randomness in music. As far back as the 1700s, compositional dice
games were quite popular. Players would roll dice to generate a song
based on pre-composed musical fragments, and then perform it. In 1953, composer Earle Brown wrote a piece
called Twenty-Five Pages — it’s an unnumbered set of pages of music that can be played in
any order, with either side up, and with notes read as either treble or bass clef. Shortly after, Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote
Klavierstück XI, where a performer can pick from 19 segments randomly — the song is
over after they’ve played one fragment three times. And in 1964, composer Terry Riley wrote “In
C”. It’s a series of 53 short musical phrases
that players can move through at their own pace, weaving in and out of sync. Music like this is called “aleatoric”
— it’s when a part of the composition or performance is left up to chance, or to
a player’s choices. The “Ocean Bloom” rework makes those choices
available on an orchestral level, but it's an effect that was already part of the original
Radiohead track. You can hear it when you take away the drums,
which is exactly what Thom did at a performance in Paris in 2016. I thought hang on, maybe I can do it on piano
and came up with a way of really crude way to play on piano. Which was kind of discovering the song again,
in a super simple way. Because up until that point, it had always
been about the rhythms that shift in and out, and fall apart. Fall apart. Sometimes come together if we're lucky. Usually fall apart. Usually fall apart. It's very interesting hearing Thom talk about the piano version, because that had a similar sort of, degree of randomness, building all those loops on the piano. Didn't know what I was doing. You see the song in a different way. It’s interesting how such a small scale
thing that Thom is doing is sort of — you’re subconsciously doing the
same thing. But with a huge orchestra. As soon as you have an orchestra involved,
the complexity of that, all these players playing together, that’s the glorious thing. There’s no sound like it. I think that's why it sounds so vital. Blue Planet II airs from October 29th on BBC One in the UK and is coming soon to BBC America in 2018. Why does every keyboard look like this? OK, so this top strip here, there is a 99% chance that on your keyboard it's:  We all have these QWERTY keyboards. There’s probably even one in your pocket, on a screen. But why? Why is this pattern of letters so familiar? “This of course, is the keyboard.” But why, "of course?" QWERTY was just one person’s invention from the 1870s. It’s almost 140 years old,  yet, it's still the standard. “All of these machines are alike in many respects.” We all use it, but don’t know why.  That’s the definition of overrated! And it turns out that this little keyboard is the subject of intense debate, some lies you’ve probably been told before, and a few real explanations that might surprise you.  Including an old fashioned cartel. Lots of people have tried to arrange these jumbled letters. There was a half century period of indecision. Debate. In the 1840's, Hughes Printing Telegraph arranged 
the keys like a piano keyboard. Or, look at the Hansen’s Writing Ball from 1865. People’s fingers pecked at this thing. The letters varied per version, but they showed up in this pattern. This 1868 typewriter looks weird too, 
but it was the start of something. The inventor, was Christopher Latham Sholes. He looked like typewriter Santa Claus,
and he kept going. In 1870, he developed a pattern like this. As of 1873, he’d come up with a keyboard that 
looked a lot like QWERTY. But there were quirks. Notice that period where the R should be. And the A and Z are flipped. The M 
also sits next to the L. Remington, a company that made machines for shooting and sewing, bought the design. Suddenly, they were in the typewriter business. The design Sholes patented in 1878 was basically QWERTY. Along with the numbers, the only weirdness is that M next to the L, and the C and X are flipped compared to a
contemporary keyboard. The company that made Remington Typewriters was soon sending out 
sales packets with the QWERTY we know and love. But that doesn’t quite explain how QWERTY got big. There are urban legends. One’s that QWERTY was designed that way to keep typewriter keys from jamming. But lots of designs could do that, and there’s not a lot of good evidence that 
that's why QWERTY was designed. Other options were even still around in 1890, like the Merritt Typewriter. You moved this handle to the right spot
for your letter and pressed down. The letters weren’t in QWERTY, they were in a big long strip that looked like this. So it was  a KWBHGP keyboard. Many typists believed it worked as well as QWERTY. But the best evidence of all that
QWERTY wasn’t “the perfect design,” might be this invention from 1889. The keyboard? Not QWERTY, but XPMCHR. The inventor? Christopher Latham Sholes, the guy who invented QWERTY. He created it just before he died. Even the creator of QWERTY wasn’t settled on QWERTY! And that’s where the cartel comes in. Look at this king. He has something to do with QWERTY. See the label on his crown?  "Trusts." In the 1890s, many companies merged into trusts that allowed 
them to fix prices and control markets. In 1893, that happened with typewriters, when some of the biggest manufacturers came
together to form Union Typewriter Company. Manufacturers cared most about price and technical improvements, like how the typewriter worked. But there was another effect of the trust. The biggest company made Remington Typewriters, and they used Sholes’ QWERTY keyboard design. The trust did the same. Most experts think the trust didn’t work to fix prices. It had trouble beating innovative competitors. But their market power did fix a pattern on the keyboard. And there’s one more reason why that pattern stuck. Look at these old typewriter ads. Or these early typists. Now you might notice that most of these students are women. That is worth noting! But for the story of QWERTY, it’s more important 
to notice that they’re in a class, together. Typing wasn’t like it is today, where you get one of these at the office, or one of these when you’re born. Typists trained. They took classes. If you took a class, you took it for the most common keyboard. That was QWERTY. People still debate whether QWERTY’s the best. Some say the 1930s DVORAK keyboard is better, others say it too is overrated. Whether it’s the best system or not, QWERTY isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “How you type is more important than what you type.” “This is the mark of a good typist.” There are so many other unprovable theories 
when it comes to QWERTY. One of my favorites is that the 
keyboard was arranged that way so that sales people could peck out TYPEWRITER 
all on the top of the keyboard. "I want to tell you my secret now..." "I see..." Do you want to know what Haley Joel Osment says in The Sixth Sense? What about this noise? For many Americans, slow internet or no internet is still a reality, and the internet speed in Nashville, Tennessee, might not be as fast in Nashville, Kansas. Besides missing "Stranger Things, having a slow connection can mean increased health risks, a limited education, or having less money, all of which, creates a divided country, because the fact is: all American internet is not equal. In 2015, The FCC defined "broadband" as internet with download speeds of at least 25 Megabits per second and uploads of at least 3. That basically means, a constant connection capable of streaming videos, sending messages, and transferring data. On multiple devices. Overall, 10 percent of Americans don't have broadband. But rural areas suffer most. 39 percent of rural Americans, about 23 million people, don't have high-speed internet. This map shows where broadband is available and areas it has yet to reach. In places where broadband adoption is higher, so is the number of people who've earned a college degree. Fewer people are unemployed, and the rates of poverty are also lower. Without fast internet, rural Americans have a difficult time accessing government services, like Medicare. And as education moves online, students struggle to complete assignments at home. In a few rural districts, superintendents have loaded school buses with wi-fi and parked them overnight in neighborhoods where kids need it to do their homework. These communities would benefit from broadband, so why don't they have it? In cities, most broadband is "wireline", which typically means it is delivered through fiber optic cables that have been laid in the ground. Laying cables is expensive, but there's an incentive for providers: high population density means hundreds of people pay to access the same network. In rural areas, that's not the case. So large telecoms, like AT&T and Comcast, don't prioritize extending cable lines if they only reach a few people. But there is an alternative, and that's "wireless" broadband: which is either beamed from a satellite, or relayed from the nearest fixed wireless point by antennas. In places like Appalachia or The Rocky Mountains, a wireless system can be an effective way to provide internet. But its quality is not as reliable as wireline. Outside of traditional providers, a few tech companies are trying to create new wireless options that could be used in rural areas around the world. This video is from Project Loon: Alphabet's internet-beaming balloon system designed to connect people in remote areas using wireless technology. Like Loon, Facebook also has its own wireless project: a solar-powered drone called Aquila, which Mark Zuckerberg hopes will help reach, "half the world's population -- 4 billion people -- --[who] still can't access the internet." And then, there's Microsoft, which is focusing on rural broadband, here in America. Their plan is to send wireless internet using unlicensed television frequencies, called "white spaces". While these companies pursue futuristic projects that focus on wireless, a proven example for providing wireline connections, in The US, lies in the opposite direction: The Past. In 1935, President Roosevelt created The Rural Electrification Administration, or "REA", to deliver electricity to rural America. Before then, most Americans receiving electricity got it from private companies. But The REA changed that. It loaned federal funding to electric cooperatives that built power lines private companies wouldn't. Within a few decades, most of America was electrified and now some of those same co-ops are providing internet. But unlike electrification, which relied almost entirely on co-ops, there are many models for deploying broadband. For example, the city of Cedar Falls, Iowa built its own municipal network and later used a portion of a federal grant to extend the network to nearby rural communities. "We are seizing the potential of the internet and other technologies." For the past two decades, presidents have been allocating federal dollars for high-speed internet. "We must bring the promise of broadband technology to millions of Americans." But rural broadband has been an evolving challenge. "When you look at the speeds we're going to need for all the apps and the videos, and all the data, new software that is constantly coming onto market. We've got to keep pace. We've got to be up to speed." President Obama increased funding and enabled municipal networks like the one in Cedar Falls, which are prohibited in other states. Now, President Trump is calling for even more investment, while also scaling back Obama's policies. Standing near a tractor in June, President Trump announced his new infrastructure plan. "That is why I will be including a provision in our infrastructure proposal -- $1 trillion dollar proposal, you'll be seeing it very shortly to promote and foster enhanced broadband access for rural America, also!" The speech drew a big applause in Iowa, but but Trump's commitment may have been misleading. Not only because the proposal has not arrived yet, but, less than two months after his speech, The FCC outlined priorities for the new administration, Including a suggestion to set a lower mobile broadband benchmark of 10 Megabits per second. That's roughly equivalent to 4G mobile phone coverage, which most of America already receives from  major providers. So if the broadband benchmark becomes 10, nearly all of America would be covered and the government could claim they've fulfilled their promise to increase rural broadband. But in reality, all they've done is redefined what it means to offer high speed internet. It would be a standard sufficient for social media and other apps, but falls short of the high speed service that can help schools, businesses, and rural healthcare facilities. On an international scale, it would signal that The FCC is fine with connectivity slower than mobile speeds in Kenya or Greece, both of which rank higher than The United States. Dropping the benchmark lowers the broadband goal, but using electrification as a funding model could help reach it where it is. Expansion is expensive. But history and research show that providing equal internet for all Americans is worth it. There are thousands of refugees entering
Bangladesh every day. They cross the border of Myanmar where the state
military has launched a violent offensive against an ethnic minority
group – the Rohingya. The UN reported that since August 2017 about 400,000
Rohingya men women and children have fled their homes in Myanmar's Rakhine
State. Reports claimed that the military has been killing and raping the Rohingya
and has set their villages on fire. Satellite imagery showing burned
villages confirms those reports. Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators, the current situation cannot yet be fully assessed
but the situation remains or seems a textbook example of ethnic
cleansing. The term ethnic cleansing has been reserved for some of the worst
atrocities in history. The UN defines it as a purposeful policy designed by one
ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror inspiring means the
civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic
areas. What makes Myanmar a textbook example is that the military has been launching attacks on the Rohingya – a Muslim
minority in a majority Buddhist country. Violent tactics have forced tens of
thousands of Rohingya to flee their homes. While many fled to Malaysia and
Thailand most ended up in Bangladesh. The recent wave of violence is the latest in a pattern of discrimination that started over 50 years ago. In 1962, Myanmar –
then called Burma – was taken over by the military in a coup. They got rid of the
country's constitution and created a military junta. Like many dictatorships
they promoted fierce nationalism based on the country's Buddhist identity and
when they needed a common enemy to help unite the population the Rohingya were
singled out as a threat. Tensions between the Burmese Buddhist population and the
Rohingya go back to the Second World War when each group supported opposing sides. The Rohingya sided with the British colonialists who ruled the country and
the Buddhists mostly sided with the Japanese invaders hoping they'd help end
the British rule after the war. But even in modern Myanmar the Rohingya
minority continued to be an easy target. Although their lineage can be traced
back to 15th century Burma, the government has been forcing them out
claiming their illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
It started in 1978 after a massive crackdown called Operation Dragon King
forced about 200,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. The military reportedly used
violence and rape to drive them out. About a hundred and seventy thousand Rohingya reportedly returned to Burma. Then in 1982, the government passed the
Citizenship Act recognizing 135 ethnic groups. The Rohingya, with a population
of about 1 million, were not on the list and became a stateless people. In 1991,
Myanmar's military launched another campaign literally called "Operation
clean and beautiful nation." This time about 250,000 Rohingya fled to
Bangladesh. Tensions continued to build against the Rohingya in the 2000s. Violence broke out in 2012 when four Muslim men were accused of
raping and killing a buddhist woman in Rakhine. Buddhist nationalist backed by
security forces attacked Muslim neighborhoods, burned homes displacing
tens of thousands of Rohingya again. Human Rights Watch deemed it an ethnic
cleansing campaign. By this point the Rohingya were persecuted
disenfranchised and stateless. In 2016, a Rohingya militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, emerged and coordinated small-scale attacks on
border police stations. An attack on August 25th 2017 left 12 police officers
dead and sparked the current crisis against Rohingya civilians. A brutal
retaliation by the state security forces has led to about 400 deaths and the mass
exodus of about 400,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. Since the August attack 210
villages have been burned to the ground. The violent campaign has triggered the
fastest growing humanitarian crisis in recent years, but Myanmar's de facto
leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Ky has barely acknowledged the attacks. More than 50% of the villages of Muslims
are intact they are as they were before the attacks took place. When she says
that, you know, 50% of the Muslim villages are still present in Rakhine State wel,l
I mean, what are we talking about? 50% are gone. 50% are burnt out. You know in any school I went to 50% is a failing grade. Recent
reports claimed that the military has planted landmines along the Bangladesh
border to prevent the Rohingya from returning. Myanmar's government has systematically driven the Rohingya out of the country.
Over the last five decades it has stripped their citizenship, terrorized
them, and destroyed their homes, and now it wants to keep them from ever coming
back. “4...3...2...1”
“T-Zero!” This is the Operation Ivy nuclear test in
1952. And this is using a level for really nice
masonry on your fallout shelter. It’s from 1960’s Walt Builds a Family
Fallout Shelter. The idea was that you’d deck out your basement
so you’d be safe when the bomb went off and
this happened. “Well, this finishes my fallout shelter.” Yes, Walt is smoking a pipe. The Federal agency that made this film,
and the agencies that preceded it, helped craft the domestic response to nuclear
armageddon in the 1950s and ‘60s. Fallout shelters like these were an inescapable
part of Cold War culture in America, promising a place to hide from the radioactive fallout. Federal agencies promoted them, Presidents
advocated them, and the effects are still around today. This is the garage in my urban, Washington
DC apartment building. And it’s a designated fallout shelter. That’s the sign. Right here. How am I pointing? There were almost a thousand designated fallout
shelters in Washington, DC, and they’re a reminder of the fallout shelter boom, both
in public fallout shelters like this one, and in private ones where people gave a lot
of tours, like this one. “Well folks, I’m glad you could come down
to see my fallout shelter. Just finished painting it last night.” Fallout culture wasn’t just awkward, though
it was that. “Say, isn’t this nice?” It poses some questions: like where did this
stuff come from? And were duck and cover drills,
and desk crouching, and canned water,
and fallout shelters worth the Cold War paranoia they helped fuel? How did this happen? “Fortunately, there are means of protecting
ourselves.” And would any of it have actually worked? “Folks, here is a message from the honorable
Leo A. Hoegh, director of Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization.” “You’ve just seen how Walt has built a
family fallout shelter in his own home.” “No home in America is modern without a
family fallout shelter. This is the nuclear age.” To understand how we reached that vision of
bunkered down modernity, you have to understand the timeline of Civil Defense. The 1950s and early 60s weren’t just one
period — they were a few different eras that we mush together because of Cold War
kitsch. Timing matters. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt created a pre-nuclear
council that coordinated some emergency programs. As World War II heated up, Civil Defense grew,
turning into the Office of Civil Defense Planning. In 1949, civil defense became more urgent
when the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb. The stakes became higher. So after some more bureaucratic shifts, Congress
created the Federal Civil Defense Administration, which was meant to help guide the states in
defense at home. And that’s the name you see at the beginning
of 1951’s “Duck and Cover.” “There was a turtle by the name of Bert,
and Bert the Turtle was very alert. When danger threatened him he never got hurt,
he knew just what to do. He ducked...and covered...ducked...and covered…” As stupid as that seems, a movie about a nuclear
paranoiac turtle named Bert wasn’t that foolish. Ducking and covering would help provide some
protection. At the time, the Soviet nuclear threat was
terrifying but their bomb was relatively limited in range and would be dropped by a plane,
which meant we'd see them coming. “You may be in your schoolyard playing when
the signal comes.” Running inside might make a difference. Or even ducking and covering. But that explosion in the beginning of this
video? That actually came after “Duck and Cover.” It’s from the United States’ 1952 test
of the hydrogen bomb, which was more powerful than any weapon that came before it. “Remember those final last seconds? “Fiver, four, three, two, one, t-zero.” “This is the largest fireball ever produced. At its maximum limit it measures about three
and one quarters mile in diameter….the fireball alone would engulf about one quarter of the
island of Manhattan.” “Later figures put the Mike yield at ten
megatons, or about 10,000 kilotons. This means there was more energy released
in this one shot, roughly 10 times more than in all previous atomic blasts combined, including
probably those of Russian origin. Or to put it another way, four times more
power in this one shot than in all the high explosives dropped by the entire Anglo-American
air force on Germany and the occupied countries during the last war.” Then the Soviets claimed to have tested their
own hydrogen bomb in 1953, and “Duck and Cover” became outdated. The FCDA questioned its own relevance. Coupled with the Eisenhower Administration’s
preference for evacuation and military deterrence, the organization’s head briefly considered
its elimination. But another hydrogen bomb test in 1954 revealed
a greater threat. “The width of the fireball at this time
about three seconds after detonation was four miles.” But it was the fallout Americans noticed. “It is now known that fallout from the larger
Castle shots blanketed areas of more than 5,000 square miles with radioactive material
that would have been lethal to unprotected personnel.” In America, this new awareness of fallout
forced Civil Defense to pivot. “You need to know about fallout.” “What is this fallout anyhow? Just bits of radioactive matter fall out of
the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion and settle on the ground.” The FCDA and subsequent offices of civil defense
recommended finding refuge. “The goal is adequate fallout shelter space
for every man, woman, and child.” They started with recommendations to evacuate
to public fallout shelters. But the 1957 Soviet development of an intercontinental
ballistic missile made even evacuation...outdated. Unlike in the era of planes, there’d be
little warning of a strike. There were big fallout shelter proposals. But the Eisenhower administration balked at
charts like this one from 1957’s Gaither Report. The sweet spot for fallout protection, seen
here, would cost an untenable $25 billion. The government didn’t want to pay that,
but they also couldn’t kill civil defense. In 1958, Eisenhower’s National Shelter Policy
was simple: do it yourself, because we don’t want to bother. The result? Telling people to build their own fallout
shelters, like in this 1960 film. “We all have a responsibility to help.” “Every member of the family should understand
radioactive fallout and how to protect himself from it.” That paired with those aw-shucks-nuclear-devastation-of-everything-we-know-and-love
preparation videos, like Walt’s. “If we should ever have a nuclear war, we
could have a heavy fallout even though we weren’t anywheres near the target area.” But it took one last push to get us here. “From the White House in Washington DC,
we bring you an address from the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.” “An attack upon that city will be regarded
as an attack upon us all.” John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech about the
Soviet blockade of West Berlin intensified the Cold War. Military growth was a goal, but the speech
was also a platform to announce a shift in civil defense policy. “Tomorrow I am requesting of the Congress
new funds for the following immediate objectives.” “To identify and mark space in existing
structures, public and private, that could be used for fallout shelters in case of attack….”
Kennedy requested the civil defense budget increase to about $207 million, which was
much less than the $25 billion recommended in the Gaither Report. But it did mark a change in emphasis. It was part preparation, part message to the
Soviet Union that the US could survive an attack. He reorganized the agency yet again. The government had stocked a number of public
fallout shelters, though the effort was scattershot. Some people had made their own home versions. “Then you can rest assured that no matter
what the fallout threat in the future, you and your family will be ready for it.” So would any of this have actually worked? Let’s go upstairs. In 1961, the Soviets tested Tsar Bomba, the
largest bomb...ever. It was more than 50 megatons. Historian Alex Wellerstein created a tool
called Nuke Map that lets you simulate what historical nuclear bombs would look like had
they detonated over various cities. Put in Tsar Bomba and Washington DC, and you
get this. The entire city would be gone, destroyed. The initial blast, the subsequent firestorm...forget
about radioactive fallout. That fallout shelter in my basement would
not exist. All those urban fallout shelters would probably
collapse in a massive nuclear exchange. And beyond those cities? “More than 100 million people living well
beyond the destructive range of blast and heat could be subjected to dangerous or deadly
amounts of radiation from fallout.” Walt out in the suburbs might survive in his
fallout shelter. But he’d emerge in a country where all the
major metropolitan areas were husks. This chart shows the decline in civil defense
spending during the Johnson administration, due both to JFK’s assassination and the
buildup in Vietnam. Civil defense agencies limped along with enough
money to survive and run programs, publish pamphlets, and make some videos. But they didn’t make a meaningful commitment
to a fallout-sheltered nation. The fallout shelter was a place to hide from
the bomb, and radioactivity. But it was also a place to hide from the truth
that there was no good plan. There were only different ways to wait. “This is the nuclear age.” So if hanging out with Bert the turtle didn't depress you too much, we've made another video where I watch the entirety of "Duck and Cover, provide some additional research and an opportunity to laugh at those kids diving into the floor. This is the first Apple computer mouse. It came with Apple’s ten thousand dollar Lisa computer, and it was designed by a product design consulting firm that would eventually become known as IDEO. The assignment was straightforward: they had to take the computer mouse — a 400-dollar device at the time — and bring it down to
under 35 bucks, make it mass-producible, and reliable. And above all, it needed to be simple. [Apple commercial] "We control these so, by pointing to these images on the screen with this unique item called a mouse." Fast forward about thirty years, and IDEO
doesn’t really create products anymore. They’ve transitioned to designing networks and experiences — things like Los Angeles’ voting system, and the Red Cross’s method for finding donors — even entire schools. So what does making a computer mouse have to do with creating a school system from scratch? It turns out, quite a lot. [Tim Brown] “The world we live in is one where, really, the complex things are the things that are mostly broken." "Not the simple things." "We have lots of great products, lots of beautiful products." "Lots of products we can use everyday, everything from furniture to tableware, to consumer electronics." "— and they’re mostly pretty good, right?" "Yes, there’s opportunity to do better, and
to do more, but I'm interested in things that" "don't work very well, and the things that
you can impact society with." "And they’re mostly the more complex things.” Back in 1971, a designer named Victor Papanek wrote a book called, “Design For The Real World”. The premise was pretty simple: creators could take some of the same design strategies from the creation of industrial products and use them to tackle problems like pollution, overcrowding, and food shortages. By 2001, IDEO had done just that, pivoting
from products to real world experiences. But the design steps? Tim Brown says they stay just about the same. “The first piece is observing the world
in order to ask an interesting question, right?" "I mean, you could observe the world in lots of different ways — when we talk about human-centered design," "we're really talking about observing the way humans live their lives and asking" "interesting questions about, 'Hey, why does somebody do this? And not that?' "Why is somebody struggling with this problem?" "Why is it hard for somebody to open that, why are they struggling to open up that jam jar lid?” “Maybe I could redesign the jam jar, or
maybe I could give them a tool to help them, right?" "So why is this happening?" So, the first step is looking at the world and coming up with good question.” For making a mouse, that means watching how people use computers, observing what they want, and what they don’t. For designing a school, that meant spending a month in Peru, meeting with students, parents, teachers, investors, and government and business leaders to address needs like academic planning, modular classroom space, accessible technology and affordable tuition. “The next step is taking all the insights
that you have from those questions, and starting to imagine ideas—" "Like here's what I could do, here's what I might imagine doing better, or differently." " So, that's what we often call ideation or ideamaking.” Then comes the fun part. You test it out. “Right at the beginning of the process might be a really simple cardboard model, or a quick sketch." "Or if it's digital, it might be a quick digital simulation, or something, and you try out on people." Sometimes those drafts can be pretty rough — the first prototype for the mouse was a roll-on deodorant stick and a butter dish
from a Palo Alto Walgreens. “And you test it. If that doesn't work okay, so I need to rethink my idea and I do it again." "And this is where the iteration comes in:
you learn from the prototype, you realize what's not working." "Or maybe it’s a crummy idea and you have to go back and find a new idea again." “And you go through that loop over and over again: asking the question, having ideas," "prototyping, learning and until you get to something that truly meets somebody’s needs, or a set of people's needs.” “Now the last bit of the process… which arguably happens in that iteration also, is the storytelling piece." Because always you're trying to explain to people why your idea is interesting.” [Apple commercial: “A computer for the rest of us.” “I think what you need to design a complex system is not one brain — you need lots of brains." "You need lots of brains with different perspectives different creative contributions, working together" "to get to an outcome that is that
is literally rich enough, and sophisticated enough" "to be able to behave like a system, instead of being like an object.” It's two people, a house, and some sky. Isn't it a little overrated? Just a second, just a second... put down the three-tined pitchfork. So, I understand that Grant Wood made an incredible painting. You can see it in all the little details. Like how the pitchfork's lines are repeated in the house, and farmer's shirt. Or how there are complementary patterns in the window drapes, and the woman's dress. The painting is technically complex. But look at this, this is what you get when you Google "American Gothic parody." Pages and pages of the exact same joke. Star Wars, Minions... (giggles) ... Minions. There are so many parodies. You don't get everywhere from Rocky Horror Picture Show, "Janet," to Mulan, "Not to mention they'll lose the farm," with nice lines alone. These parodies happened because there was something
bigger that made this painting so famous. And understanding the secret to American Gothic's success actually helped me to appreciate it for the first time. Nobody would have guessed Grant Wood's painting
would be a huge success. Born near Anamosa, Iowa, he grew up in the big city: Cedar Rapids. But in the 1920's he frequently traveled to Europe. Impressionism was an inspiration. So was Pointillism. Older artists influenced him too. He said Jan van Eyck's look changed his art.  I think you can see it in these long, flat faces that Wood drew himself. The result of that traveling was a guy who was half European artiste, half Iowan farm boy. So, when Wood passed by this house in Eldon, Iowa, he saw something. Something gothic - that weird, slightly ominous window - and something American, too. He made sketches of the house, and enlisted his dentist, and yes, his sister, as models for the painting. There were some tweaks as the painting developed - the weeds in front of the house disappeared.  The original rake became a pitchfork. Wood promised he'd elongate his sister's face so she wasn't recognized as the wife of this older dentist. Wood completed it in 1930. That year, the painting made its way to the Chicago
Art Institute, for a contest. But it got bronze. Third place. The first mention in The New York Times was dwarfed by
an ad for stomach acid medication. Wood sold American Gothic to the museum for $300. That's the big question. How did a third place, $300 painting, featuring a dentist and the artist's sister, turn into an icon? America changed a lot from 1880 to 1920. This chart shows all the jobs. The big one to notice is agriculture. In 1880, almost half of all Americans were on the farm. Now let's go to 1920. Agriculture went from 48% to just 25%. In 1880, about 30% of Americans lived in cities. By 1920, it had jumped to more than half. America was split between city and country. In the 20's and 30's, city people started snarking. The critic H.L. Mencken is a good example. (Imagine Bill Maher, but more famous with 20 extra IQ points, and less pot.) Mencken called small town people the "booboisie." This kind of thing was common. In 1920, Main Street was a hit novel that was basically about how
small towns stunk. American Gothic was perfectly balanced for this big, nasty fight. Some city people saw the couple as the "booboisie." Some country people saw them as authentic Americans. Remember that blue and black dress, (or white and gold dress)
that went viral on Buzzfeed? That didn't go viral because it was a great picture, it went viral because it was a great fight. In 1930, American Gothic wasn't that different. Grant Wood knew what he was doing. This is Grant Wood's 1935 self-portrait, Return from Bohemia. He's trying to look like a solid Iowa artist. But he was always Bohemian, too. In 1932, Wood painted Daughters of the Revolution. He said it was his only satire. An American myth blocked by women clinking their tea cups. Or look at 1939's Parson Weems' Fable. It honors the story of George Washington refusing to lie
about chopping down a cherry tree. Then, the curtain pulls back. That American story is just something Parson Weems made up. Farmer, artist, real American, artistic snob. Grant Wood kept everybody guessing. If you think about it, his approach to art was not that different than all those stupid parodies that try to have it both ways. Half the time, they are honoring the painting, and the idea
of a solid American couple. And half the time they are calling it a joke. What the satirists might not realize, is that when Grant Wood
painted his sister and his dentist, in front of a house in Eldon, Iowa, he was doing the same thing. Just in case you were worried about Grant Wood's sister
hating her famous portrait, she did convince her brother to paint another portrait, that was a little more glamorous and
probably a little more true to life. Back in kindergarten we were all taught that
there are five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Aristotle defined these in his book De Anima. He then wrote: “One might be confident
that there is not another sense beside the five” and we’ve been listing them this
way ever since, but... Who’s to say an old greek was right? Our ability to “sense” is incredibly
complex. When Aristotle came up with his definitive list, he linked them to visible "sense organs." But modern neuroscience recognizes that there's
more to it than that. If you close your eyes and put your finger
near to your forehead – don’t touch it. How do you know where your finger is? It’s because you have position sense – or
proprioception. That’s Bruce Durie, a Scottish genealogist
and author who wrote about sensory perception. You can open your eyes now. If you get up and walk around. Do you trip over your own feet? Hopefully not. Your sense of sight prevents you from walking
into a wall, but proprioception tells your brain where your feet are, so you can walk
without falling over yourself. And this is different from just feeling the
ground under your feet. Scientists believe this sense works with receptors
in your joints, ligaments, and muscles to give you an awareness of your body. It's also why your little league coach told
you to “keep your eye on the ball.” You didn’t need to watch where your hand
was in order to catch it. It doesn’t stop there. There are actually some pretty extensive lists
of “other” senses that vary depending on how you define them. By their popular definition, senses are restricted
to five sensory organs. But what about organs that didn’t make the
cut? There are two sensory organs in your ear alone
and they’re responsible for very different things. One picks up sound waves for your sense of
hearing, and the other maintains balance or equilibrioception. We can stay upright because there’s a vestibular
system inside our inner ears. It’s made up of fluid-filled semicircular
canals and small hairs that pick up movements. The brain combines signals from the vestibular
system with other senses to maintain balance. Try standing on one leg. Easy, right? Now shut your eyes. It’s hard to do that with your eyes closed
– at least without practice. That’s because vision makes it easier to
balance as it clarifies the orientation of the world around you. This partial reliance on vision is also why
some people get motion sickness – when the movement you see around you doesn’t match the signals your vestibular system is sending to your brain, you get disoriented. Organs aside, the list of senses really starts to expand when you define them based on receptors in the body. We’d arguably have to list thousands based
on smell alone. Or we’d create subcategories like we already have for taste based on an outdated taste map. Touch can be broken down into categories too. When you hold your hand over a hot stove,
you feel heat without touching it. That’s thermoception – it takes an entirely different group of receptors in your skin to recognize changes in temperature. We can also separate things like pressure,
and pain. These are different sensations based on different receptors that send signals to a different part of your brain. Listing just 5 senses means we’re leaving
out a lot of things that actually keep us alive and functioning on a daily basis. And don’t even get me started on the senses we don’t have. So this begs the question: is teaching five
senses really the best way? It’s just an easy shorthand. I think the thing about the other five – the classic ones – and they don’t only work that way it’s how we tend to talk about them – it’s about
the outside world.” When we’re young, learning these five senses is a really simple way to make sense of the world around us. These senses are based on external stimuli. And because we have visible organs to link them to, they’re easy to test in a classroom. We can touch objects, hear music. See the classroom. Smell a flower and taste lunch. But what happens when we feel hot or cold in a room or if we lose balance and fall over? These senses are hard to ignore but they can’t be classified as the ones we learn. We don’t have a lot of conscious awareness of how complicated our physical bodies are when they move about the world and the processing involved in that. Because as soon as you do start to think about that then you have to start thinking about these issues around sensation within the body. Learning five basic senses might be the right place to start. But next time you stub your toe -- think about that sensation -- it's one of the many senses your kindergarten teacher never told you about. Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented onslaught Onslaught of rain Onslaught of waves ripping apart the coastline South Beach right in the line of fire. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, also in
the line of fire. News networks do this a lot: They cover natural
disasters using the same tricks they use while covering
war. Basically looks like a warzone. Compared to a warzone Warzone Looks like a warzone? Like a warzone. There’s dramatic graphics, helicopter shots of widespread destruction, acts of heroism in the face of danger — they even send reporters into hostile territory. Stop putting Chris Cuomo in harm’s way. He’s a national treasure. This wartime approach gives news networks
a compelling way to tell stories about things like major hurricanes. Thankfully, reinforcements are beginning to
arrive. The problem is, when you treat natural disasters
like war, you need to find an enemy, some “bad guy” to fight against. And that’s made us all really angry at the
wrong things. The first and most obvious “bad guy” in
any natural disaster story isn’t actually a guy. It’s Mother Nature’s fury Trying to stop Mother Nature Mother Nature has no boundaries. I hate that phrase. The only people you should call mother are your actual mom and RuPaul. Mother. News networks use concepts like Mother Nature because it gives audiences a clear culprit
to blame for what’s happening. The struggle against Mother Nature continues. Swirling mass of Mother Nature’s fury right
now. and we are, by the way, separate from it. That’s Katherine Fry, who wrote a book on
media coverage of the Great Midwest Flood of 1993. It’s a nice storyline and it’s easy because you can easily pick out the good guys and
the bad guys. It’s like “good guys: people; bad guys:
nature.” Mother Nature at her worst, human nature at
its best. That when we see the worst from Mother Nature, we sometimes see the best from human nature. Like you have mentioned before, while we are seeing the worst of Mother Nature, we are seeing the best of people, Chris. Best of human nature, Rosa. The problem with this frame is … well … stuff’s not that simple. In a lot of cases, human choices explain why natural disasters end up being so catastrophic. Take Houston, for example. One of the worst flooding disasters in American
history One of the reasons Harvey caused so much damage is because developers have been allowed to
build over the area’s natural floodplains over
the past few years. That’s put tons of people and property in
harm's way and made it way harder for the area to absorb
stormwater like the kind that came from Harvey. A similar situation has happened in Tampa, where unrestricted development has put people
and property right on the city’s vulnerable coastline. Lot of the infrastructure here is very low-lying. Barrier islands, like Miami Beach, which are supposed to shield the mainland
from storms like Irma, are now bustling hotspots, increasing the
chances that any major hurricane will cause massive damage. The problem is made worse by reckless federal
policy. The National Flood Insurance program heavily subsidizes flood insurance, so people
are incentivized to keep rebuilding in the same spot. The family says that they will rebuild. All of this is happening at the same time
that climate change is raising sea levels and making powerful
hurricanes more likely. But last year, the former head of the Harris
County Flood Control District said he had no plans
to study the effects of climate change on flooding. And Florida Gov. Rick Scott has banned government
officials from even using terms like “climate change”
and “sea level rise.” None of that is Mother Nature. But news coverage that frames these as “humans versus nature” stories helps politicians
shirk responsibility by depicting Mother Nature as some big, uncontrollable monster we can do nothing about. Was the issue poor planning or is the issue
that this storm is just so overwhelming? A reminder that man is sometimes no match for the forces of Mother Nature Which might explain why, the Sunday after
Irma hit, only one of the Sunday morning news shows even mentioned climate change. Sometimes that’s to the detriment of the
bigger context — the larger discussions around why are these
natural disasters occurring? Why is so much damage happening? This framing of disaster as war gets worse
after the storm is over. That’s when news networks focus on a new
enemy: dangerous survivors. Mass devastation in Houston has brought with
it a breakdown in law and order. Caught on camera, a man seen looting from a tanning store in the middle of Hurricane
Harvey. Fears now of looting, many people say they’re
carrying guns. And they’re now afraid of looters. Reporters, who often rely on law enforcement and government sources for information, tend to overhype the threat of criminal activity
after natural disasters. Law enforcement says this was needed to crack
down on looting. Police say they’re also going to be out
here to prevent looting. They want to make sure no one's kind of looting
any of these stores. It’s an easy way for news networks to keep
that warzone frame going after the storm has passed. There are good guys and bad guys, innocent victims and looters. It’s also bullshit. even though 60 years of empirical research tells us that looting is quite rare when disasters occur. That’s Kathleen Tierney, who studied the impact of media coverage after Hurricane
Katrina. They don’t loot in disasters unless they’re
absolutely desperate. Experts actually agree on this point. Reports of looting tend to be greatly overexaggerated. But it’s become a staple of hurricane coverage, and it can have really dangerous consequences. Fear of looting could convince people in harm’s
way not to evacuate. A lot of homeowners have said they are hesitant
to leave because they’re worried about looters. The looting myth often reflects racist stereotypes. Like in Katrina, when news reports identified
black scavengers as looters, but white scavengers as just looking for food. Media panic also gives license to politicians
and law enforcement to overreact. Reporting about looting carries a very strong
message about the need for authoritarian social control to prop up the idea that we need the cavalry to guard against these unsavory elements that
are in our communities. That overreaction can include aggressive,
militaristic responses, like the kind we saw in the aftermath of Katrina: deploying military units to noncombat situations, enforcing strict curfews that discourage civilian
rescue efforts, and ramping up police presence in disaster
areas — steps that Tierney argues could actually make
it harder for survivors to get the help they need. Sometimes the authorities misallocate resources to law enforcement that could be better allocated to actually saving people because of this
myth that people are dangerous. The result is that disaster areas end up looking
like the warzones the media compares them to. Good news there, troops are on the way. I’m really happy to hear that the Marines
are headed in because it does look like a war zone. Natural disasters are chaotic and devastating. And it’s tempting, in the face of that destruction, to look for an easy scapegoat, whether it
be looters or Mother Nature. But things are just more complex than that,
and reducing natural disasters to dramatic “us versus
them” narratives makes it harder to think critically about
the choices we make before the next big storm hits. If you listen to mainstream music these days,
you know this rap flow. If you love it, you’re in luck - It’s
probably not going to go away anytime soon. If you hate it, I’m sorry. But, hey, you have something in common with
Snoop Dogg now. Everybody tryin to rap the same style. I don’t know who created it if it was Future
or Migos but all them ni**s sound the same. That rapid fire style of rap has been dubbed
the “Migos Flow” even the “Versace Flow.” It’s come to define mainstream artists in
recent years. But the musical principle that drives that
flow — the triplet - It’s been around forever. In 2013 Migos, the Atlanta rap trio - released
a song called “Versace” I’m just gonna pause that for a second. Drake loved it so much, he freestyled over
it. and it blew up. You can’t deny “Versace.” Like my grandma would walk around singing
Versace and she didn't even know the words of the song or what it's about but the hook
is so catchy that's how big of a song it was. That’s Justin Hunte you might know him as
the former editor in chief of Hip Hop DX. He covers hip hop trends and news on his own
youtube channel. you have like a lot of forces that just sort
of combine at the right time for that flow to finally to make it to prominence even though
its origins have been around for a while. Triplets are a standard in musical composition. They occur when you divide one beat into three
notes instead of their usual two or four. Recognize this? That’s probably the most famous measure
with triplets. But they go back even further. These are types of rhythms that have been
at the foundation of cultures where hip hop came from in the first place. It's African rhythms and so that’s as old
as the equator. In rap, triplets work the same way. Just take a listen to Young Thug’s “Get
High” featuring Snoop Dogg. Now, compare that to earlier in the song where
there are no triplets. And you start to hear the difference. It’s hard to say exactly when the first
triplet was rapped, but a lot of people point to Public Enemy's “Bring the Noise” as
one of the earliest examples. Another track with triplets from 1987? The Dismasters’ “Small Time Hustler.” Triplets existed during the east coast / west
coast era of hip hop, but they didn’t define those artists. They emerged out of the midwest and south
when those communities started developing their own style. Like that whole Ohio down to Tennessee corridor. There was a lot of stylistic similarities
to a few of the different artists. Listen to Krayzie Bone verse off of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s debut album. That flow stands in stark contrast to the
way Easy-E approached the same beat on that song. And then there’s Three 6 Mafia from Memphis. I think it's very difficult to give anyone
else credit other than Lord Infamous. Mystic Stylez is a joint that I remember really
early. Tommy Wright III - he's another artist from
Memphis as well. He had a song called “Gangsta Forever.” All these artists released their debut albums
in the mid ‘90s. And they weren’t just rapping fast, they
were manipulating the beat with triplets. So how exactly did they pull it off? You have to look at the structure of the beat. For triplets to really eventually come and
be so famous they needed to steal the show and to steal the show they needed space. That’s Martin Connor. You might remember him from these two videos. So, you can create a hip hop beat in a couple
of different ways. This is the beat, and I can interpret this
beat in a rap song in two different ways. I can go. Boom, tuh, boom tuh, boom , tuh, boom, tuh. Or I can go like this. Boom, tuh, boom boom, tuh, but my snaps have
always come at the same speed, right? But the snare drums? They come half as often giving the rapper
more space to play. “Notorious Thugs” illustrates this perfectly. And it's also one of my favorite songs so
I want to talk about it. This instrumental sounds like a slow downtempo
beat, that's because we're used to hearing the snare on the two and the four. The acutal bpm though is double the speed. Essentially the instrumental beat has two
rhythmic lanes for the artist to rap in. Biggie, Bizzy Bone, Krayzie Bone, they all
keep you on your toes by constantly changing those lanes. Because the beat is stretched out and feels
slow, they can very naturally divide those notes further into triplets. Let’s switch back to Lord Infamous of Three
6 Mafia. That slow beat allowed him to rap an entire
verse in triplets. From the 90s till the mid 2000s southern hip
hop artists slowly took over the charts and with that they brought the sound of trap. That stretched out beat is the foundation
of that sound but you’ll also hear, a deep 808 kick drum, driving synths, and rapid fire hi-hats that
are often programmed in triplet patterns. Triplets were always in rap. Triplets were waiting for trap music to come
along, and then trap music came along and it was just a marriage made in heaven. A song like "Versace" made the sound and rhythmic
feel of triplets super catchy. Just listen to how that hook plays back and
for those explosive hi-hats. Five years later it’s pretty easy to see
why triplets are Migos’ bread and butter. I don't think Migos trailing off or fall off. I think they have legitimate star power and
most importantly I think they put together an incredible album this year. Not only that, they’ve been featured on
tracks by some of the biggest artists of today. Triplets aren’t just popular, though. They’re really complex. The triplets sort of challenges the
rhythms and the counts that we're used to. They can rev up the energy of a song almost instantly. Kendrick used them on Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
and then five years later on one of the most dramatic moments of DAMN. I got loyalty got royalty inside my DNA. This is why I say that hip-hop has done more
damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years. Chance the Rapper has a similar dramatic transition to
triplets on the opening track of Coloring Book When he starts flowing in triplets there are no
base kicks there are no snares. So what does Chance do, but he makes the triplet
the manifestation of the beat. These are two of the biggest artists outside
of the south using triplets. They're no longer a niche southern style. They’ve been the dominating sound of hip
hop for over five years now. Now, when a rapper uses that rhythm they’re
tapping into this great collective artistic movement. So Snoop’s not entirely wrong That's what's wrong right now everybody try to rap the same. I don't know who created it if it was Future
or Migos but all them ni**s sound the same. But he kinda misses the point. The fact that triplets are super popular now
shouldn’t undermine the fact that they’re actually a really powerful rhythmic tool that’s
been around for a long time. “AAHAHH!!!” Two questions. Number one. Why is Mel Gibson fighting a beaver puppet? Two. How did this movie get made? The Beaver is a 2011 dark comedy about depression. It is so pitch black dark it’s basically
a drama — with a talking beaver puppet. The movie was not a hit. It was a failed comeback attempt for Mel Gibson after anti-semitic tirades, DUIs, and allegations of abuse. But you can’t forget that this movie is
deeply, unflinchingly, weird. It got made at a time when the top ten movies at the box office were all parts of larger franchises. Jacob: "You guys... ...really look great together." How did this happen? “Allow me to briefly explain.” If you go to screenwriter Kyle Killen’s old Blogspot blog, there’s a clue. A post from December 11th, 2008 called
“Blacklisted.” That’s because in 2008, Kyle Killen landed on the top of “The Blacklist.” Since 2005, a survey called The Black List
has recorded the most liked, unproduced screenplays bouncing around Hollywood. Industry insiders submit their favorite unproduced screenplays, and then the anonymous votes are tallied and published. It’s that simple. But it’s quickly become a huge source of
buzz. And it’s based on scripts alone. And by looking at The Blacklist's success,
you can learn something about how all these movies — from number one to number 216 — actually get made. When Franklin Leonard started his black list survey, he didn’t have a master plan. Just a big idea. Franklin: You have a much greater chance of making a great movie with a great script, than you do if you don’t have one.” So he started something in December 2005. “The Black Llist started as a...survey.
My job was I was working for Leonardo DiCaprio’s film production company." "My job was to find great scripts." "I felt like I was doing a very bad job at my job. I wanted to do a better job at my job." “I sent an email to 75 of my peers and said send me a list of your 10 favorite screenplays that haven’t yet been produced, and in exchange I will send you the combined list.” "They all voted." "And I put it all on an Excel spreadsheet." "Ran a pivot table" "Output it to PowerPoint." "Put a quasi subversive name on it: 'The
Black List,' was a reference to both the Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era." "And sent it out.” "I think that the The Black List only could have come into existence at the time it did." The first Black List went viral the same
weekend that Lazy Sunday went viral online — from Saturday Night Live." “The way in which we consume information online and the way in which we share information online, that was, I think, the beginning of that moment where all those relationships and all of that that we were comfortable with in terms of sharing information, for better or for worse, started changing.” Suddenly, a list of great stories could show up in one place and be distributed around the world, thanks to the internet everywhere. That 2005 Black List included future hit movies like Juno. But to understand its real influence, you
have to go beyond the list. Let’s say getting a movie made requires a certain amount of buzz. Let's make the metaphor really literal here. Take 2011’s top movie, Harry Potter And
the Deathly Hallows, Part II. It’s a franchise, last one was a hit, it
has huge stars — there’s no question about buzz. It gets made. Now imagine a movie like The Beaver. “I think it's important to remember that, every year, there are something like 50,000 screenplays registered at the Writers Guild. Every year." "If you are a particularly industrious reader, maybe you’ll read a thousand screenplays a year. So, obviously, there’s a gap of some 49,000 scripts. Just in that single year that are submitted to Hollywood generally— that you're not going to read.” Now The Beaver was not plucked from nowhere. Kyle Killen had representation, and it had been picked up by a production company. Steve Carell was even attached before the
2008 Black List came out. But this movie was not Harry Potter. Winning the Black List made the buzz public and, at the same time, sustained that buzz through actor and director changes. It kept going until a movie about a talking
beaver puppet improbably, miraculously, actually got made. “We just say: send us a list of your favorite screenplays that haven’t yet been produced.” “You end up with a list that includes everyone from, Aaron Sorkin and David Benioff, and people who literally  this is their first screenplay and they've just arrived in  Hollywood or they're still living outside of LA. Kyle Killen was not yet a Hollywood insider. But the Black List clearly helped his movie
keep buzzing. Dissecting hype is hard. Take 2012’s Argo. It got 28 votes on the 2010 Black List. It already had a reputation. It was based on a great 2007 Joshua Bearman Wired article, optioned by George Clooney. They got former CIA agent Tony Mendez involved. So it had energy. But the buzz kind of leveled off. Then after the 2010 Black List came out, Ben Affleck decided to direct. The Blacklist didn’t make Argo or Juno happen, but it got the scripts noticed. It didn’t singlehandedly greenlight the
hundreds of movies it’s featured. Some you’ve heard of. Some you haven’t. But it has amplified buzz that isn’t about big stars in amusement park ride adaptations, toy friendly sequels, or superhero franchises. It’s buzz about words. Stories. Today the Black List is a well-oiled machine, including its own podcasts, events, and online submission network. And it’s all focused on generating hype
about...writing. “I know when I am reading a good script
because the rest of the world ceases to exist...and and when you’re finished, you’re a little
sad because you don’t get to spend more time with those characters.” The Beaver was not a box office hit. It ended up in 216th place in 2011. The Rotten Tomatoes rating? 61%. Fine, but not great. In the beginning of The Beaver, there's a scene where Mel Gibson is about to walk back to his car... and drive home. But then he stops. Mel sees something mangy and weird in the pile of trash. He pulls The Beaver out. And then? Everything changes. What if I told you that To Kill A Mockingbird is overrated? “Can you, uh...can you read and write?” Wait, Atticus, let me explain, let me explain. What I’m saying is it’s weird how this book is so, so famous. Let me tell you a story. I read this book for fun in fourth grade. I lived in Tennessee, thought it was amazing, even though I probably didn’t understand it. Moved. Read it in sixth grade class. Moved. Read it ninth grade. Moved. Read it again. By the end of school, I had read this book six times. Six times. I personally never read any of these books for school. So was To Kill A Mockingbird really 600% better than all of these other books? I think there’s a surprising reason it’s so famous. Beyond Atticus Finch being great. “I don’t care what the reasons are.” Please. Give me a chance. To understand why this book was a school staple, you need to understand other books. Like the illicit love in The Hangman’s Whip. When Harper Lee got To Kill A Mockingbird published in 1960, she never expected it to be a massive hit. As she said in her only radio interview: “My reaction to it was not one of surprise, it was one of sheer numbness.” It got a good review in the New York Times (though it earned less coverage than “Ceremony in Lone Tree” by Wright Morris). But let’s be clear: it sold millions of copies in hardback. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. The hit movie came out in 1962. Here’s Gregory Peck, AKA Atticus, and Harper Lee, posing as... well, I don’t know why they’re posing like that, but I like it. The movie poster had a big picture of the book on it. So this book was a big critical and popular hit. But it didn’t win all of the awards. And it wasn't the best selling book of the year. So what took it from hit to legend? The most important thing to notice about that 1961 Pulitzer Prize isn’t the prize. It’s the year. You probably recognize this logo. It’s from Penguin Books, and it’s familiar because the company has been around, with pretty much the same waddling logo, since 1935. When Allen Lane founded the UK company, paperback books were revolutionary. The idea was to print good books, in paperback, so they’d be cheaper than hardbacks. That revolution quickly spread to America with Pocket Books and other competitors. But it wasn’t just about cheap paper and tiny, mass market size books. Distribution was key. Suddenly, cheap books flooded dime stores, newsstands, and gas stations. Crime writers like Mickey Spillane became huge stars. Just look at this guy. He’s an author. The books started out seedy. Popular Library published stuff like Silence in Court! and Devil Take Her. But respectable stuff trickled in too, occasionally with sexy covers, like this shirtless Great Gatsby. *whistle* Paperbacks became mainstream quickly. By 1961, the New York Times was calling it “The Paperback Revolution.” They said paperbacks weren’t just for “sex, sadism and the smoking gun.” The books were actually being used...in schools. That’s where To Kill A Mockingbird comes in. Remember that book, The Hangman’s Whip? Popular Library published that, and in 1962 they also put out the mass market paperback for To Kill A Mockingbird. Paperbacks were finally coming into their own. And To Kill A Mockingbird had perfect timing. Teachers had a cheap, popular, respectable book. And throughout the 60s, paperback publishers thought of education as El Dorado. El Dorado’s a mythical city of gold, in case you forgot. Margins on mass-market paperbacks were small, so publishers made money by selling huge numbers. Paperbacks sold a lot of copies worldwide. 5 million. 11 million. And on and on and on. That’s why To Kill A Mockingbird is so famous. And you get the sense Harper knew it, too. When Lee died, her estate almost immediately said they would discontinue the mass market version of the book. Even if you think the paperback revolution made the book overrated, it’s still kind of sad. These books, these cheap paperback, kinda hard to read mass-market books — they're worth more than their price. Maybe they shouldn’t be killed. “Mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in the corncribs. They don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.” This video is actually the first in a series we're doing about Overrated icons. You can look down below for our Facebook page where we have more videos and articles and all sorts of other stuff about things that might be just a little overrated. Ezra Klein: Secretary Clinton, thank you for being
here. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Thank you, Ezra, glad to talk to you again. EK: So I wanted to start with a part of the
book that surprised me the most, which was you almost ran on the beginning of a universal
basic income in America, which you were gonna call Alaska for America. Tell me a bit about that idea and why it didn’t
make it into the final campaign. HRC: Well I wanted very much to convey a commitment
to trying to figure out ways to raise incomes. Most of the emphasis on the campaign was,
as you know, on jobs and some big projects like, really, the infrastructure program that
I put forward. But I was also really interested in what else
we were gonna be needing to do. And so I looked at a couple of different approaches
to what’s called UBI, universal basic income. The experiments that had been tried elsewhere. And the Alaska for America idea was really
intriguing to me because in effect it was to argue that our natural patrimony really
does belong to every American — to try to break mindset that the extraction of resources
is a totally private sector effort. That we, as Americans, have a stake in it
for all the reasons that you can understand. And the Alaska model where they write a check
to every single Alaskan every year based on a formula about the oil and gas revenues was
really intriguing to me. And we dug deep, we tried to explain it to
some people, and it just was hard for people to grasp what we were talking about because
most Americans in the Lower 48, as we like to say, didn’t have any idea about what
was going on in Alaska. So I kept looking for an opportunity to put
it in but not to make it a centerpiece of the campaign. EK: What would’ve going into a program like
that? When you talk about our natural patrimony,
what would have been the inputs to that income? HRC: Well that was one of the challenges we
had — trying to figure out exactly, when you look nationwide, are we talking about
fossil fuels, which then might perversely encourage the continued extraction of fossil
fuels, which would be an outcome that we weren’t necessarily thinking was in the best interest. Other kinds of natural patrimony — whether
it’s minerals or anything else that you could look at and say, “Extracting that,
making private profit off of that, is really part of America’s legacy.” There were lots of really interesting questions. We debated it for a long time — the fossil
fuels, climate change issues was one of the complications. EK: So the reason I start with that is when
you talk about, in the book, you say at the end, “You know, maybe I should’ve proposed
that and left the details to be worked out later.” And it seems to me that this is one of the
pieces of the campaign that you’ve been left reevaluating. You say that you now have more of an appreciation
for the power of big, galvanizing ideas. Do you think that one of the lessons of watching
Bernie Sanders, of watching Donald Trump, is that perhaps the correct role for policy
in a campaign is to inspire? And that the place for technocratically sound,
more pragmatic policy is in the legislative process? HRC: Well, that certainly is a fair conclusion
to draw from the way I try to raise the question. If I could, Ezra, because you’re a policy
person and I love that about you, let me talk about this a little bit more, because this
was a struggle from the very beginning. This wasn’t something that I only thought
about retroactively. I felt that I was in the following posture:
I was running to succeed a two-term president from my own party who I happen to believe
did a really good job on some very difficult issues. And whether it was saving the economy, saving
the auto industry, getting us on the path to universal health coverage with the Affordable
Care Act, I knew how hard it was to actually get to where we got. And I worried that if I were to say, “Well,
let’s go all the way, you know, with this and we’ll leave the details ‘til later,”
the natural question is, “Well, why didn’t that happen before?” And I knew that would be my burden to bear,
because I would have the responsibility having been in the administration to be able to answer
that question. Secondly, I don’t think I’m held to same
standard as anybody else. I believed that if I were to say let’s do
a carbon tax, let’s do single-payer tomorrow, let’s do whatever it is that might be viewed
as universal and inspiring, unlike either my primary opponent or my general election
opponent, who were never pinned down — except in one case in the primary with respect to
Sen. Sanders — I would’ve been hammered all the time. “Okay, how are you going to do that? How are you going to pay for it? Where’s the money going to come from?” If I had said we are going to leave it to
the legislative process over here, they’ll figure it out, people would’ve said, “Well,
you’ve been around, you know how it works. How are you going to do that? You don’t have 60 votes.” I think I would have been hit with a thousand
different legitimate questions, and I think I would have felt an obligation to answer. So finally, you know, I do think policy matters,
and I think where I came out really made sense for the country, made sense for the Democratic
candidate. But it was hard to compete with, you know,
just the big claims and the assertions that I got from both sides. And maybe I could’ve been — in fact, I’m
sure I could’ve been — somewhat more adept at trying to maneuver through that, so that
I got the benefit of saying here’s what we are going to do. I thought saying, “Look, we are gonna get
to universal coverage ’cause that’s my goal — we’re at 90 percent now. I think getting from 90 to 100 is a lot easier
than starting over” — I thought that made sense to people. I think in the end, a lot of people who were
going to vote for me believed that. But, you know, that’s what you do when you
take a retrospective, like what could I have done differently? EK: So as someone that would have been asking
those agenda questions — HRC: You would’ve been pinning me down,
and it would have been quite hard! EK: And here is my question on that, though:
Do you think that those questions matter because people would care about them? Or because you would care about them? Something that I have observed watching Trump
and other politicians in this era is that a lot of what we thought can hurt a politician
is actually a relationship between them and the press. It’s their own shame, their own sense that
they’ve been pinned down, their own desire to actually respond to what they feel is a
fair critique. If you just don’t have that desire, if you
don’t care about that particular kind of critique, it appears to lose at least some
of its power. HRC: Ezra, you are 100 percent right. EK: Thank you. HRC: I feel like we are having a therapy session
in front of this camera. You are 100 percent right, and I can’t change
who I am. I knew that. I knew that I am not someone who will say
things that aren’t true, that will not take responsibility. I had to run as me. I love when people say, “Oh, if only we
knew her more, or she were more authentic.” I’ve been around a long time. I am what I am. I care about being absolutely as accurate
as possible so people know how to judge what I’m saying. But I think this was not just a slight shift;
this was a ground-shaking shift. Because I’m someone who’s observed presidential
elections a very long time, and I always saw there would be a moment, maybe one or two,
where in a debate or in a really important interview the candidate was asked, “How
are you going to do that? Explain to me how that would work.” That was certainly my experience in ’08. I saw my husband go through it — in fact,
it probably saved his campaign. I saw, you know, President Obama go through
it and be able to say both in ’08 and ’12, look, here’s what we are going to do, and
I think this is realistic and we are going to get it done. But it’s going to make a difference. He went from the specific to the upstretched
hands of the aspirational promise. Yet it had to be connected to something that
was real. And, you know, I’ve been around a long time. I know how hard this is. And I didn’t want to be either not telling
the truth about what was going to happen and not being responsible about what I thought
we could do and get done together, which I thought could be a pretty big deal. But clearly in a reality TV campaign like
the one we were seeing in 2016, it was not the same at all. I never had those moments that I thought would
come. EK: So you talk about you are what you are. HRC: I am what I am. EK: You are what you are. And one of the things that was interesting
to me in the book was actually how you frame your own history in political organizing. So I’ve read your speech from Wellesley,
and it had always sounded like the words of a radical to me. But when you explain about how you thought
about running for student body president, you said that “I ran for student government
president in 1968 because I thought I could do a good job convincing college administrators
to make changes students wanted.” You talk about your work with the Children’s
Defense Fund and focus on field work and making reports. This is all in a period when a lot of people
around you were interested in upending systems. How did you become more of a pragmatist who
wanted to work within the systems in a radical era? HRC: Well, there are always people who want
to upend system. And I respect the desire for being part of
big change; I think that’s important particularly when younger when you want to see that happen. But I also became convinced early on that
in my understanding of change, it was rare that in America you got those huge moments
of opportunity. We saw it with President Johnson, with voting
rights, civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, with enormous Democratic majorities in the
House and the Senate, so a governing party could actually implement what it chose to
pursue. But that’s not that common in American political
history. And as I watched what the hard, slow boring
of hard boards that Weber talks about meant in our country — it was really digging in,
getting to know what you’re talking about, making the case. And sometimes you still ran into an immovable
political obstacle, but then you regrouped and you went on again, which is what I did
with health care in the 1990s when we ended up with the Children’s Health Insurance
Program. So I’m really interested in change, I’m
really interested in the principles and the values that I believe America stands for,
but I also know what it takes to get where we need to go politically. And that’s what I decided was the most effective
way to achieve what I was looking for. EK: This feels to me like the argument that
has been at the center of both your ’08 and ’16 candidacies and that you have had
trouble making. In both of those elections — in the primary
of ’08 and then both in the primary and the general of this year, last year — you
ran against people who in some way or another were saying they were going to upend whole
system. They were going to bring hope and change,
they were going to bring a political revolution, they were going to drain the swamp, whatever
it might have been. In those cases you’ve always taken the stance
that you actually need to understand the system, you need to work within it, the angels are
not going to come down with their violins. And that has been I think simultaneously a
realistic and very hard-to-sell message. I had a piece that I had written for if you
had won, and it was called “Hillary Clinton’s Political Realism,” and it was about the
ways in which your vision of success was much less about upending America’s political
system and much more about the change you can bring within it. Why is that such a hard message to sell to
the American people? HRC: I don’t think it used to be quite as
hard. I think it could be made harder because of
the environment in which we find ourselves right now — but you see, I think I’m also
very realistic about the forces arrayed against the kind of change I want to see. There’s a big move for change coming from
the right that I think would be disastrous for our country. They want radical, pull-em-up-by-the-roots
change, they want to have a constitutional convention to rewrite our Constitution to
make it friendlier to business, to inject religious and ideological elements. So talk about radical change — they are
pursuing it, they are funding it, and they are electing people who are either true believers
or willing vehicles for it. So what do we do on the other side? Because we don’t control media the same
way the right does; it’s harder for our message to get out. So it’s okay to say all right, let’s really
work for change, but you’re going to have to build an edifice under that that has the
kind of hard-fought political realities that are going to be necessary to stand against
the right. I thought and obviously came close — won
the popular vote and all of that — but I thought at end of day, people would say, look,
we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic
and is going to make difference in my life and my family’s life and my paycheck. That’s what I was offering. And I didn’t in any way want to feed into
this not just radical political argument that was being made on other side but a very negative
cultural argument about who we are as Americans. So there was so much happening in this campaign
and a lot of it for the first time — some of it as a result of long trends — that
I was running just trying to figure out, okay, people are really that anti-immigrant? Are they really, or is that just a convenient
excuse to rally a base? How far does that really go? It was a tough terrain that we were moving
through and trying to understand. EK: This is something I think about in my
own writing. Is it possible to be too realistic about the
forces arrayed against change, about the institutional constraints against change in the American
political system — so realistic that you miss openings, so realistic that it’s hard
to inspire people? And as such, it actually begins driving the
outcomes themselves. I feel like this is the critique of this kind
of politics. HRC: I think it’s a fair critique. I understand that critique. But I don’t think the press did their job
in this election, with very few exceptions. So the hard questions about what was real,
what was realistic, and what could happen with the right kind of election outcome were
never really joined. And so I found it frustrating obviously because
I think I could’ve defended and lifted up a lot of what I believed we could do. But really, Ezra, when you get 32 minutes
in a whole year to cover all policy, how does that work? Compare it even with ’08, when you had 200
minutes on broadcast TV — you think, well, is it that people are really not interested,
or is it that it’s just not as enticing to the press because the other guy’s running
a reality TV show, which is hard to turn away from. And whatever we says we think is kind of goofy,
but hey, it’s good TV, and she’s over there saying here’s how we’re going to
raise taxes on wealthy and here’s what we’re going to do to close loopholes and here’s
where I think I can do it, and you know what, she’s going to win anyway. So let’s cover other guy ’cause he’s
a lot more fun. And I think, in addition to everything you
say, which is fair and needs to be considered, it was such a difficult environment even to
have that conversation, so who could tell what was or was not realistic? It was kind of all bets were off in the coverage
of the campaign. EK: So Democrats are going to face a question
like this as we speak. So right now in Washington, we’re interviewing
Sanders — another one of my reporters is — who is proposing his single-payer bill
this week. And a lot of Senate Democrats are expected
to sign on to the bill. This bill would be quite sweeping; it would
upend every insurance arrangement, every private insurance arrangement, in America. Do you think that the Democratic party should
sign on, even aspirationally, to a bill that is that radical in its vision? HRC: Well, I don’t know what the particulars
are. As you might remember, during the campaign
he introduced a single-payer bill every year he was in Congress — and when somebody finally
read it, he couldn’t explain it and couldn’t really tell people how much it was gonna cost. So I haven’t seen whatever it is they’re
gonna be introducing and signing on to, so I don’t know. I’m for universal health care coverage that
is high-quality and affordable for every American. And I think there’s a lot of ways of getting
there that I’ve advocated for, to open up Medicare, to open up Medicaid, to do more
on prescription drug costs, to really make sure we get costs down and we do everything
we can to sort of break the stranglehold that a lot of the pharmaceutical companies, which
are unfortunately still driving prices, have on health care costs. And I think it’s going to be challenging
if within that bill, there are tax increases equivalent to what it would take to pay for
single-payer, and if you’re really telling people — about half of the country — that
they can no longer have the policies they have through employer. I’ve been down this road! This is not the first time we’ve tried to
confront this. When I was working on health care back in
in ’93 and ’94, if we could’ve waved the magic wand and started all over, I said
it numerous times, maybe we would start with something resembling single-payer plus other
payers, like other countries that have universal coverage and are much better at controlling
costs than we do, primarily in Europe. But we were facing the reality — talk about
reality — of not just strong, powerful forces but people’s own fears as well as their
appreciation for what they already had. So when the bill is actually introduced, I’ll
read it, I’ll look at it, but if it doesn’t have some kind of grandfathering in, if it
doesn’t have some kind of cost estimate — because look at what happened in Vermont. It wasn’t for lack of trying in Vermont. The Democratic political establishment was
behind single-payer, and they worked for years to achieve it. This is in, you know, a small state, where
it might’ve been possible. They were talking about an increase in the
payroll tax of 9.5 percent, or I think, no, maybe 11.5 percent, they were talking about
a sliding income scale, they went up to 9.5 percent — it just was so difficult to put
pieces together. Now, clearly if you had a national plan, that
would be more likely to avoid state-by-state comparisons, but I think it’s gonna be a
big challenge. Our goal should be universal health care coverage
— universal, affordable, quality health care coverage for everybody, bar none. EK: Let me ask you about the other side, about
Obamacare — which seems, for the moment, to have withstood the attacks on it — but
that was a policy that was really built with an eye toward realism. An eye toward what could pass, but also an
eye toward how could you overlay something on the existing system that wouldn’t disrupt
too many of the existing arrangements. And those pieces of the plan — the exchanges,
the private insurers — have been the most substantively difficult to implement and to
defend, and then also the most politically difficult. It’s left the administration, first Obama
and now Trump, at the mercy of private insurers deciding whether or not to sell, with premium
increases they can’t defend, and what has really ended up being popular in that and
defensible in that is the Medicaid expansion. Is that a place where Democrats overread what
realism required and ended up in a position where what they had wasn’t that inspiring
and wasn’t, in the end, that easy to either implement or sustain? I think you have to unpack what you just asked,
because even embedded in it was your reference to Medicaid. It was really unfortunate that because of
the drafting of the bill, it gave the Supreme Court the opening to eliminate the Medicaid
requirement, the expansion requirement. But what has happened is that Medicaid has
become very popular even in Republican states because it does save money and it is a universal
program below a certain income level, and it takes care of middle-income people when
it comes to nursing homes and disabilities and all the rest. So I think we should be focused politically,
realistically, and aspirationally on expanding, continuing the expansion of Medicaid, and
going to those states that have not yet expanded it. And making the political case every day for
as long as it takes. I was in favor of a Medicare buy-in; if you
start slowly moving the age down, it would make a very big difference. People’s health begins to have more problems
after 55, so let’s get Medicaid down to 60 and then maybe down to 55. I am in favor of a public option, and the
Democrats thought they were going to get a public option and at the very end didn’t
have votes for reasons that I think were inexcusable at the time. But that was just the fact. You know, you gotta pass it. So is that realism or aspiration? Well, at the end of the day it’s votes. And it didn’t pass. So there are pieces that became less popular
partly because of a really well-funded, nonstop campaign against it. But then all of a sudden, with all this talk
about repeal and replace — which was just nonsense; they never had a plan to replace,
it was just a political talking point, and I don’t think Democrats did a good enough
job defending it against those attacks — so when it came time to take something away that
people had gotten used to, everybody said no. And that’s my larger point about what our
goal really is. You’re going to tell 50 percent of America,
“You are no longer to have your employer-based health care, but oh, trust us, it’s going
to be really good when we finally work out all the kinks” -- you’re going to have
massive resistance by people, who are gonna say, “I’m happy with what I’ve got.” But if you say, “You know what, we need
to lower age for Medicare, and here’s how we can do that, and we need to continue the
expansion of Medicaid,” we will be at universal coverage. Then once we’re at universal coverage, and
people know what that feels like, then can begin to say, “Okay, here’s what we’re
going to do to make it work better, to get the costs down.” I think that’s — you know, I think that’s
not just realistic, I think it’s thrilling. You know, as somebody who was one of the main
advocates for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, I see the difference it’s made
in people’s lives. And all through the campaign, people would
come up to me and say, “I was on that program,” or, “My family wouldn’t have been able
to afford my sister’s care if it hadn’t been for that” — I find that exhilarating
because that, to me, is what public service is supposed to be about. The Children’s Health Insurance Program
is set to expire at end of this month — what are the forces going to be that will say no,
you’re not going to take this away from 8, 9 million kids, where are they gonna go? So what I think is really motivating about
being in politics in public service is you can actually see the positive changes, whether
it’s civil rights or economics or health care or whatever it might be — and I think
at the end of the day, that’s more important than, you know, how realistic was it or aspirational
was it. EK: So one of the pieces of the book that
really outlined, I think, the disagreement between you and some of the public is right
around here. So we’re talking here about the practice
of politics, what is realistic, what isn’t, but there’s a real feeling among a lot of
folks that the long-term practice of mainstream politics is itself a corrupting exercise. And I think back to 2008, I was at [something]
when you were there for a debate with the other Democratic candidates, and there was
this really interesting exchange about lobbyists. And you defended them as part of the political
system: They have a role to play. The represent people you don’t like but
also people you do like. There’s a version of that in your defense
of the speeches, in which you sort of say, looked bad, shouldn’t have done it, but
you see it as somewhat ridiculous — the idea that Goldman Sachs paying you could have
changed what you think. This to me feels like an actually pretty central
fault line in our politics now, the feeling that a lot of the public has that if you’ve
been in politics a long time, in mainstream politics, that you’ve probably gone a little
bit bad from it. And Barack Obama coming in as an outsider
in 08, Donald Trump as an outsider, Bernie Sanders, who had held back from a lot of the
political system during his career in Washington — that seemed to be a place where there
was a lot of friction. How do you think about politics versus this
anti-politics sentiment? HRC: Look, anti-politics is part of the American
DNA — it goes back to the very beginning. I have no doubt that it’s just built into
America’s skepticism and disdain for the people in politics. So that’s just part of the background of
being in politics. But I think it’s important to again try
to recognize what’s real and what’s not. You know, I can’t help it; I’m like the
Velveteen Rabbit. I believe in reality. I like living in a reality-based world. I don’t like alternative facts, I don’t
like the very concerted, well-funded effort to try to distort news. I don’t like any of that. I think a democracy like ours depends upon
trying to have a vigorous, fact-based debate. So: Nobody on the Republican side cares about
any of these issues, Ezra; you know that. I voted for McCain-Feingold; I said in my
campaign one of the first things I would do is introduce a constitutional amendment to
repeal Citizens United. So I take a back seat to nobody in standing
up for sensible, hard-hitting campaign finance rules. But everybody’s got politics. You know, I go after Bernie really hard on
the NRA — that’s politics for him. And the idea that he’s set off from politics
— he’s been in politics his whole adult life. Donald Trump wasn’t in politics, but he
was somebody who funded people on both sides to in order to curry favors. Until we get to public financing, which I
wholeheartedly endorse, and we have this crazy system where you have to go out and raise
the money — we don’t have a party structure that funds campaigns, we don’t have public
financing — then if Democrats unilaterally disarm and say, “You know, we’re holier
than Caesar’s wife, and we won’t say or do anything that might raise a question”
— there is no compunction on the other side. And there is such an imbalance right now in
our politics, in the amount of money that’s on the other side — the Koch brothers say
they’re gonna spend $400 million in the 2018 campaign — so yeah, I think, you know,
people have to be willing to say, okay, I understand how this might look, it’s not
really how I felt or how I acted, but okay, I understand that, so let’s agree on that. But at the end of day, it is very much an
unbalanced political environment right now between the resources that are behind Republicans
and their campaigns — because it’s not just a straight line between who gave you
money, it’s all the rest of the operation — and what stands behind Democrats. And you know if we don’t care about that,
then fine, but I don’t think that’s gonna come out very well for us. EK: But in terms of demonstrating that kind
of purity, isn’t there a dimension here where Republicans who do not have a very high
opinion of the government do not mind particularly the feeling that the government is corrupt,
that it does not work on their behalf, that it might even work on behalf of special interests
— that that is not actually a threat to their particular version of politics? Whereas for Democrats, who do want people
to trust the government, who do want people to have faith in public institutions, there
is a higher bar. HRC: Yeah, and I think Democrats by and large
try to reach it. I mean, Barack Obama took more money from
Wall Street in 08 than any other Democrat has ever taken, and turned around and imposed
the toughest regulations under Dodd-Frank since the Great Depression. I tell people that all the time — if you
give me money, you will know, because I will tell you publicly and privately what I’m
for. So if you’re in a high income tax bracket,
I wanna tax you. If you still want to give me money, you are
going in with your eyes open. I think it’s theoretically an interesting
conversation, but you look at somebody like President Obama, who inherited this disastrous
economy and, you know, I think did an incredible job pulling it back out of the abyss — took
a lot of money from a lot of different interests, but it didn’t affect how he governed. And so let’s get to the second level here. EK: I do think that’s strong, though, that
it didn’t affect how he governed. HRC: Right. EK: I think a lot of President Obama’s policies
were pretty sound, but also a lot of people feel he could’ve done more to punish bankers,
that he could’ve gone further on health care, there were deals cut before the fact
with the pharmaceutical industry, with the insurance industry. And there are other political realism considerations
in all these questions, but one thing here is that it’s true, I think, directionally
what you’re saying, that a lot of these cut against the interests who funded him. But what a lot of people feel and what I think
there is evidence for is that these kinds of donations, etc., they do give people more
of a voice, they do give these interests more of a voice, and that does affect things certainly
on the margins, certainly in the details. HRC: Well, but, you know, it’s always been
thus. I mean, if you’ve seen the musical Hamilton,
you know, if you’re running a raucous — EK: — I actually haven’t gotten tickets
to that. HRC: — well, we’ll see if we can help
you on that. If you’re running a raucous, pluralistic,
diverse democracy where there are literally millions of different voices, you are going
to hear from all kind of voices. I was a senator for eight years -- I bet the
vast majority of people who came through the doors of my Senate office to talk to me, to
advocate, whatever they were doing, were not political donors or certainly not political
donors to me. They were constituents, they were citizens,
they had something to say. So part of what -- we’ve shrunk the political
process to such a narrow set of questions, and that’s in the interests of both the
far right and the far left, both of whom want to blow up system and undermine it and all
the rest of the stuff they talk about. I think we operate better when we’re kind
of between center right and center left, because that’s where at least up until recently,
maybe it’s changed now -- until recently, that’s where most American were. Look, they didn’t get up every day obsessed
with what the government and politics was going to do -- they wanted to know what were
the results and is it going to make a difference to my life. And I thought we had a pretty good balance,
but I again will argue that this has gone on for decades. The right has been on a mission to disrupt
and overturn the political system to the benefit of their commercial, ideological, and partisan
interests. I don’t see how you can argue with that. And it has been pretty effective, all said. Their gerrymandering, their suppression of
votes — they have a clear agenda, and it’s fascinating that Trump wasn’t really particularly
interested in any of this but he was, it turned out to be, a great vehicle for them to promote
these interests. So we’re watching the internal debate within
their party play out. On our side, you know, I just disagree. I was in that Senate for eight years, I know
how hard it is to get to 60 votes. Now, you can say we shouldn’t have to get
to 60 votes, but the fact is whether you’re in the majority of in the minority, and I’ve
been in both, that has been the rule: Get to 60 votes. Because that then demonstrates at least a
broader cross section of representative Americans being in favor of something. So when you talk about bankers, if you look
at the laws we had at the time, maybe more could’ve been done, but I’ve heard very
credible, very tough people say not really because of the burden of proof and the evidence. I’m not defending it; I’m just saying
it’s not for lack of trying that a lot of things were not undertaken. There were barriers to trying that had to
be knocked down and changed. And the same with Dodd-Frank. I mean, if Dodd-Frank had been in effect before
the crash, more could have been done, but it wasn’t. It had to come after. EK: So I want to talk and move us a little
bit to the 2016 election and what happened. HRC: What Happened. EK: The subject of the book. HRC: My book, yes. EK: There’s a premise that is not really
articulated one way or the other in the book, and I wanted to see where you fell on it. Was Donald Trump more or less a normal Republican
candidate who 1) should have expected to begin with 40-42 percent of the vote? And so you’re just explaining how did a
Republican candidate win the election? Or is Donald Trump an abnormal candidate who
you should have expected to begin with 30-35 percent of the vote, and so you have to have
this very large, explanatory lead as to how he came close enough to actually win? What are you explaining? HRC: I think given the hyperpartisanship in
the country right now, once he became the Republican nominee, the odds were very high
that Republicans would come home to him as their nominee. Because regardless of what he said or how
he behaved or what came out about him, he was their path to tax cuts, he was their path
to a Supreme Court seat. There is an agenda on the other side that
really does motivate the right. So at the end of the day, I think something
like 90 percent of Republicans voted for him and 90 percent of Democrats voted for me. That’s unfortunate in lots of ways — I
wish we weren’t in such a hyperpartisan political era — but that’s what I always
expected. I always thought the election would be close. I never was one of those people who said,
oh, my gosh, he’s so unacceptable and this, that. I always thought it would be close. I didn’t expect to be totally ambushed at
the end, which is what I believe, and obviously have written about it, cost me the election
— but I always thought it would be close. It’s not like there was going to be some
wholehearted rejection of Trump by Republicans who frankly thought they could handle him. They thought, you know what, it’ll be an
entertaining four years, and you know, Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell will take care of
everything for us. I mean, that was the thinking that I believe
went into a lot of the Republicans’ — some of whom sort of took a deep breath before
they did it — but they didn’t take him seriously, they didn’t take a potential
presidency seriously. They thought getting a Republican in there,
that’s going to deliver for these things that I care about. EK: But that’s a kind of remarkable view
of politics. It’s actually one that I share, but it’s
still a remarkable one, to imagine that we are now in a time, for reasons related to
polarization and other things we talked about, that anybody — anybody — who wins a party
primary, and parties no longer have control over their primaries — anybody who wins
a party primary begins within spitting distance of winning the presidential election. HRC: I believe that. EK: Does that mean we’re more vulnerable
to demagogues, to authoritarians, to dangerous candidates than we were in the past? HRC: Yes, we are, Ezra. I mean, if I’d lost to what I guess we could
call a normal Republican — one of the other 16 people on the stage during their primary
— EK: Jim Gilmore. HRC: Well, somebody that might have been able
to win. Look, I would have been disappointed, I would
have been upset and heartbroken, but — first of all, I don’t think it would’ve happened,
but secondly, if it had happened, I wouldn’t feel such a sense of anxiety about the country. EK: I’m sorry, can I stop you there? HRC: Yeah. EK: That was interesting, what you just said. Do you think that Donald Trump was a stronger
candidate than the other Republicans? HRC: Yes. EK: You would have beat the others, but you
didn’t beat him? HRC: Well, I don’t want to speculate like
that, but I think the fact he emerged, and the way he emerged, which was so unlike anybody
ever getting a nomination in recent times, demonstrated the strength he had, which was
really rooted in a very cynical assessment of how he could build a Republican majority. He started on the very first day saying terrible
things about Mexican immigrants — you know, that they’re rapists and criminals — and
all of a sudden, people in the Republican side of the electorate began to say, “Oh,
somebody’s speaking to me.” And then he went on from there. And all of his dog whistles and all of his
appeals began to coalesce in the primary, and then once he won the nomination, he had
some additional advantages like Russian help and sophisticated data analytics operation,
weaponizing information, all of that. But his core base — and he was right when
he said, “I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and my supporters won’t
leave me” — because he was, in a visceral way, feeding into their prejudice and paranoia. EK: So then that’s an argument — because
I want to make sure I try to understand you here — that’s an argument that Donald
Trump was stronger than other Republican candidates because he was willing to play white resentment
politics in a way that others weren’t. Is that a fair reading of what you just said? HRC: I think that’s part of his appeal,
yes. And he was willing to play, let’s not forget,
Islamophobic politics, homophobic politics, sexist politics — I mean, hit hit every
single area of resentment and grievance that people were feeling. And his racism, which was endemic to his campaign,
wasn’t subtle at all. And there’s now been so much analysis done
since the election demonstrating clearly that so-called cultural/racial anxiety and prejudice
was the primary driver for a lot of his support. EK: But one way of reading the election results
is that Donald Trump, through these appeals, was able to get white voters to act as an
interest group, to coalesce them in a way they had not recently been coalesced, to motivate
them, particularly downscale whites, in a way they had not recently been motivated. That didn’t happen as much with women voters. You talked about watching the Women’s Marches
after the election — where was this solidarity during the campaign? Where was this outrage during the campaign? Why do you think that politics worked for
Trump but you didn’t see a corresponding surge, particularly among female voters? HRC: Well, let’s start with this fact, though:
I did carry the women’s vote. EK: You did carry the women’s vote. HRC: Right. I lost the white women’s vote, but I actually
got more white women votes than Barack Obama got. So this was part of a trend. EK; In 2008? HRC: I can’t remember if it was ’08 or
’12. Yeah. And so white voters have been fleeing the
Democratic Party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would. There is no surprise to that. Of course I hoped I could get more than a
traditional Democratic nominee did because I was the first woman with the chance to be
president — but gender is not the motivating factor that race was for President Obama. And so many women — and let’s talk about
white women, because that’s the group of women that I lost — are really quite politically
dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society, what works
and doesn’t work for them. So as I say in the book, I had this really
revealing conversation with Sheryl Sandberg before the campaign. And she’s immersed herself in every bit
of research about how do women think and what do they expect. And she said look — and we’re talking
predominantly about white women — okay, she said the research is really clear: The
more professionally successful a man becomes, the more likable he becomes. The more professionally successful a woman
becomes, the less likable she becomes. When a woman is advocating on behalf of others,
or working for someone and working hard for that person, the way I did as secretary of
state when I was so popular in the public opinion polls, that is favorably received
by people. But when a woman advocates for herself — so
if I go and say to Vox, I think Ezra deserves a raise, people say, Boy is she a good person. I mean, she’s out there advocating for Ezra. If I go and I say, you know, I think I’m
working really hard and I think I deserve a raise, it’s like wow, what got into her? What’s the deal? So Sheryl ended describing all this to me
by saying remember, they will have no empathy for you. Now, I believe absent Comey, I might’ve
picked up 1 or 2 points among white women. I’ll give you the example I used in the
book. Before the Comey letter on October 28, I was
26 points ahead in the Philadelphia suburbs. That could’ve only happened if I had a big
vote from women, Republican women, independent women. A week later, 11 days later, I win the Philadelphia
suburbs by 13 points. I needed to win by 18 points to be able to
counterbalance the rest of the state. That wasn’t just me; that’s how Democrats
win Pennsylvania in presidential campaigns. It stopped my momentum, and it hurt me, particularly
among women. And I have so much anecdotal evidence for
this, and now researchers are starting to pull some of this together. You know, all of a sudden the husband turns
to the wife: I told you, she’s going to be in jail, you don’t wanna waste your vote. You know, the boyfriend turns to the girlfriend
and says, She’s going to get locked up! Don’t you hear? She’s going to get locked up. All of a sudden it becomes a very fraught
kind of conflictual experience. And so instead of saying I’m taking a chance,
I’m going to vote, it didn’t work. So I think that there is a lot of work still
to be done to try to appeal to as broad an electorate as possible, but not by sacrificing
the constituents we have who have stuck with us who are part of a majority if they aren’t
suppressed and if they can be motivated to turn out. And I hope that happens in 2018. EK: The premise of a lot of these conversations
— you would imagine what we’re talking about is persuasion. You imagine we’re talking about how do a
candidate, you in this case, get the most votes? But in this case, you did. And one broader question that you don’t
really take on in the book, but since the turn of the millennium, 40 percent of the
presidential elections have seen the popular vote won by Democrats and seen the result
overturned in the Electoral College. HRC: That’s right. Which is just crazy in these days. EK: Do Democrats have a democracy problem? HRC: No, we have an Electoral College problem. EK: Should there be an Electoral College? HRC: As far back as 2000, I’ve said no. I think it’s an anachronism. I won in counties that produce two-thirds
of the economic output in the United States; I won in places that were more on the optimistic
side of the scale than the pessimistic side. I won in places that understood and appreciated
diversity. I won in places where African-American and
younger voters were not suppressed, as they successfully were in, for example, Wisconsin
and other locations that I didn’t win. So I think you have to take this and pick
it apart. If you come with just one answer, it’s not
going to give you what you need to go forward. But at the end of day, if you look at what
where we are right now, if we don’t convince — and when I say “we,” it’s the great
big Democratic we, not me — but if we don’t convince people to register to vote and vote,
the simplest exercise of your citizenship in our country, in the 2018 election, then
I really do think we’re going to see the clear and present danger to our democracy
that I’ve been talking about come to fruition. We will see a constitutional convention. Now, whether it ever finally gets ratified,
I’m not sure, but so it will be so divisive and it will rile up so much of our population,
we will see the continuing efforts on the right to disenfranchise people, to roll back
regulations that are good for our health and our environment and so much else, we will
not recognize America. So part of the reason I wrote this book was
not just to say okay, there’s a lot of theories floating around, here’s what I think happened,
and I’ve got evidence behind what I say, and I hope you’ll pay attention because
if we don’t, what happened to me will continue to happen, and I don’t want to see that
in America. EK: But one question about that is actually
where the geography of that is going. You talked about winning more of the economic
output, probably more than any Democrat has before — HRC: Yeah, probably. EK: But part of that is that Democrats are
clustering in urban centers, they’re clustering in big states, and the American political
system is not built to advantage that; it’s built to disadvantage that. It seems to me that the Democratic Party could
be in a position where it’s winning a lot of moral victories. HRC: No, I’m not interested in that alone. I mean, obviously if we don’t win elections,
we don’t win. But there are pieces of this you can address,
Ezra. Let’s start with voter suppression, which
is one of the five reasons why I believe I lost. Compare Wisconsin to Illinois or Wisconsin
to Minnesota — Wisconsin has had a concerted voter suppression campaign going on under
Scott Walker and the Republicans. The AP says maybe 200,000 people were turned
away. Illinois has had none of that. In fact, they’ve made it easier to vote. Minnesota is an easier-to-vote state. I won both of those. You’ve had voter suppression in Michigan. You’ve had voter suppression in Pennsylvania. Now, that is not about me. That is about what’s right and decent and
constitutional. And I was shocked when the Supreme Court threw
out the guts of the Voting Rights Act. I was in the Senate, I voted for it, we voted
98 to nothing, George W. Bush signed it, and along comes the Republican majority on the
Supreme Court and they throw it out, and Republican governors and legislators could not have been
more gleeful. Now, that is not a big-ticket item. That is hard work. We need to elect legislators, we need to elect
secretaries of state, we need to bring court cases, because if we don’t deal with this
voter suppression, yeah, the electorate will continue to shrink. And it won’t just be the Electoral College;
it will be within these states. A shrinkage of the legitimacy of our constitutional
democracy. So I care passionately about this because
this will determine what kind of country we have for my grandchildren. And so I’m going to be out there day in
and day out trying to do what I can to support efforts to give back voting to people, whoever
they are, across our country, so that their voices can be heard and we have a democracy
that really functions right. EK: Hillary Clinton, thank you very much. HRC: Thank you. How 9/11 changed Disney's Lilo & Stitch A 747 airliner was changed to an alien craft. City buildings were switched to Hawaiian mountains. This scene was cut entirely. This scene was cut too. In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina was moving its way across the Gulf coast. It was classified as a Category 3 storm. Dangerous, but in a region with a long history
of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, it wasn’t expected to be the most intense. Katrina was only one day away from the Louisiana
coast when the mayor of New Orleans issued an evacuation order. Unfortunately, it was too late. The sea level had already risen in a phenomenon
called storm surge. Water rapidly rose up against the city's levees,
a series of walls designed to keep the area from flooding. Before Katrina made landfall, the levees broke. A wall of water rushed into the city, trapping
thousands. What followed was one of the worst natural disasters in US history. "We're expecting storm surge of 20 to 30 feet high" "Flood waters are drenching city streets "A levee broke during the height of the storm" "There are bodies...uh... floating in the water there." Storm surge was the main cause of death during
Hurricane Katrina. In fact it can be the most dangerous part
of any hurricane. It occurs when strong winds from an approaching
hurricane push water into the shore. As the sea rises, a bulge of water sweeps
over coastal areas, causing destruction along the way. These are the normal astronomical tides at
Dauphin Island to the east of New Orleans. When you compare them to the water levels
during hurricane Katrina — you can see the dramatic rise. That’s the storm surge. What makes this rise dangerous is that it
starts to build up before the hurricane makes landfall So the coastal flooding from it can make evacuation
procedures and the impact of a hurricane much worse. In 2008, hurricane Ike caused a big storm
surge around Galveston, TX a day before landfall. The rising water cut off evacuation routes
stranding hundreds. More recently, the National Hurricane Center
issued dire warnings for the storm surge accompanying Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to ever rage through the Atlantic Ocean. A storm surge can also be unpredictable. Rising sea levels caused by global warming
increase the risk of storm surge. But there are many factors that can change
its size and strength. For example, the largest one recorded before
Katrina was about 22 feet, during Hurricane Camille in 1969. But Camille was a category 5 storm with 190
mph winds. Katrina was only a category 3 with 130 mph
winds, but it had a storm surge of about 28 Katrina had slower winds than Camille but
it was twice as wide, which dramatically increased the storm surge. These calculations help forecasters warn communities
at risk. But they’re often not enough to prevent
damage on the ground. This map shows the highest storm surge events
worldwide since 1880. In the US, the eastern and southeastern coastlines
are among the most vulnerable areas for storm surges in the world. Along the east coast, hurricane Sandy got
its strength from a massive storm surge in 2012. On the Gulf Coast side, places like Texas
and South Florida have seen multiple hurricanes so they've built infrastructure to help defend
against excessive flooding. Levees and seawalls are designed to stop or
redirect rising water away from cities. But even those can be inadequate, as seen
during hurricanes Katrina and more recently, Harvey. What really concerns experts, though, are
places that don’t experience a lot of hurricanes but are still vulnerable to storm surge. This map shows that in the event of a big
hurricane, based on the characteristics of the shoreline, the coasts of Northwest Florida
and Georgia would be at comparable risk to the Gulf Coast. These areas have shallow water, which means
sea level can rise faster and water can reach further inland making the flooding worse. But they’ve seen fewer hurricanes than the
Gulf Coast and they are likely to be less prepared. So when a major hurricane like Irma hits low-lying
areas like these, the storm surge can be the first and deadliest thing headed their way. It’s almost kind of like a blank canvas
with some, like some texture. I do see a white dot there but I don’t know
if that’s supposed to be there. It looks like something I would cook on,
like a baking sheet. Could be a lot of flies stuck to
a bit of paper. Yeah, ’cause I would put this down on my
floor, my floor tiles. These people are describing Robert Ryman’s
painting “Bridge.” It sold for $20.6 million at a Christie’s
auction in 2015. How is an all-white painting considered art, and why would anyone shell out millions for
something like this? There are a lot of these “white paintings.” Many people trace them back to Kazimir Malevich’s
1918 work “White on White.” But there are many artists who created these
kinds of paintings: Most of these artists were associated with
an art movement called minimalism, which emerged in the late
1950s. When I say the minimalists I mean minimalism
with a capital M, not a lowercase. This is Elisabeth Sherman, she’s an assistant
curator at the Whitney Museum in New York. It’s tempting to look at one of these paintings
and think that some jerk just took a tube of white paint and spread it on a canvas — but it’s not actually that easy. I mean mine rules, obviously, because I’m
a f****** genius, but there’s usually a lot more than meets the
eye. White isn't really a pure thing. White is
always tinted in some way. Paint is made up of a variety of pigments. If you've ever painted the walls of your house,
you know how many different whites there are to choose from. And maybe if you only look at one it looks
like pure white, but when you hold them up in an array you
can see the subtle differences. It's blue, it's green, it's purple, it's warm,
it's cold. And when you get close— HEY! Not too close, there’s a lot going on here. Lines, texture, patterns, even color. There are a lot of subtle intricacies that
make it more than “just a white canvas.” Minimalist artists wanted their work to embody
order, simplicity, and harmony. These artists began with these ideas as a
rejection of abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism was a movement of artists
in the 1940s and 50s who thought that art should be gestural, expressive,
and emotional, evoking the unconscious mind through movement
and color. So if we think about Jackson Pollock as being
kind of the abstract expressionist that many people
think of, you can take that picture of him with the
canvas on the floor of his studio spilling paints everywhere, and it's his gesture, it's his physical body,
it's his arm, it's who he is as a person that's creating that canvas, that painting. Minimalists weren’t about that. All that paint splashing everywhere? No thanks. There was a lot of desire to get away from
that sensibility where the individual's expression was put
into the canvas. The idea was that the art object — be it
sculpture or painting or installation — should kind of be as far removed from the author as possible. You can see what she means when you compare
the two schools of art. Okay, you get it. Minimalist artists stripped art of the burden
of being about “something else.” They presented art not as an imitation of
reality but as an object unto itself. Artist Frank Stella summed it up nicely when
he said, One of my favorite things about modern art
is the rage that it seems to provoke in some people. Cue videos of men freaking out: I’m not gonna sit there and try to find
a meaning in a red circle on a blank white canvas, ’cause I’m not gonna find any meaning. I may not understand art
but I do understand the English language, and that's pretentious nonsense. Did you see the painting that was just a white
painting that had nothing on it? It’s like super pretentious meets uber pretentious. Modern art sets. people. off. And believe me when I say that I am here for
it. But with modern art, by definition every interpretation
is genuine and legitimate and okay. Or not, how about not? I love it. There’s even an entire play about a group
of lifelong friends who are torn apart when one of them buys an all-white painting for $200,000. With a very kind of absent blank painting
you have to do a lot more work in some ways than maybe you have to do with, let's say,
pop art that has tons of obvious references and you see the Coca-Cola or the American
flag and you can say, I have all of these relationships with these objects with these brands with
these things. When you're looking at simply a square of
white paint, you have to do a lot more work, but sometimes there maybe is something more
rewarding in the end. Another common reaction to modern art, specifically minimalist pieces like white
paintings is, c’mon, say it with me now, Almost no matter what show I've worked on
in my career somebody has said that. While there is a lot of skill in a lot of
modern and contemporary art there's also a lot of art that is more about
the idea than it is about skill. And so yes you could do it but you didn't. Damn Elisabeth. And that may sound obnoxious or flip but the reality is is that once art begins
to live just as much in the mind as it does in the eye you have to bring your ideas
as well as your physical construction of the work. White paintings are a fascinating kind of
Rorschach test. They offer viewers an ambiguous, I’m so
sorry, but, canvas to project their own interpretations, emotions,
beliefs, and stories onto. So if looking at a white painting makes you
feel angry or excited or soothed, those are all
valid responses. But take a moment to think about why that
was your response. It's very easy to be dismissive of things
that we’re not immediately attracted to. So if you have a kind of negative gut reaction,
one of defensiveness or fear or anxiety or rejection maybe try to move past that and see what's
available afterwards. And it doesn't have to change your mind, but it's sometimes the process of working
through that reaction that you learn the most about
the work but also about yourself. Elite universities love to market themselves as engines of upward mobility. Elite and egalitarian. And for low income students they do offer incredibly generous financial aid. I found out that for a family like ours, we wouldn't have to worry about affording Harvard. I'm really grateful because I wouldn't have been able to get here were it not for the amazing financial aid package I received. Thanks to some new economic data, we can now see just how good these colleges actually are at lifting students out of poverty. And when we do, the results aren't what you'd expect. A group of economists looked at two sets of records: Income tax forms from the IRS and graduation data from the Department of Education. with all the identifying information taken out. They looked at 10.8 million people born between 1980 and 1982. The tax forms showed how much money their families made. And the researchers placed each person in a group based on that income. From the bottom 20%, whose families made about $25,000 or less per year, to the top 20%, whose families made about $110,000 or more per year. They looked at where each person went to college and how their position on the income ladder changed about 10 years after graduation. If you look at kids from the bottom 20% who go to elite colleges like Harvard, they do really well. Over half of them go from families in the poorest fifth of the American economy, to being in the top fifth by the time they're in their mid-thirties. Same thing at Stanford, Yale, and Princeton. The problem is, these schools don't let in very many kids from the bottom rung of the ladder. In the class of 2013 only 4.5% of Harvard students came from the bottom 20% of the income distribution. So, about a fourth as many people as you would expect if Harvard were representing the American population. Testing data show there are plenty of qualified low income students out there. They're just not applying to elite schools. Many, many, many more people who were born into privilege and have wealthy families get to go to these places. Then there are colleges with the opposite problem, like Moultrie Technical College in Georgia. Thirty-four percent of their students came from the bottom rung of the ladder. So, it's really good at access, but a very small fraction of them make it to the top fifth of the income distribution. But there are some schools who are good at both. Cal State LA, it's a commuter school, it's enrolling a lot, a lot, a lot of poor kids. Twenty percent of students come from the bottom rung of the ladder and half of them end up at the top rung. PACE University in New York. Which, does a little worse on access, Ten percent of its students come from the bottom rung of the ladder. But, well over half of them wind up in the top 20%. David Leonhardt at the New York Times refers to them as America's Great Working-Class Colleges. And, I really like that saying that they're not the famous ones they're not the ones that get a lot of press coverage or get represented in movies. There's no 'Social Network' about Cal State LA. But, they're doing the work. That's Juan Escalante. When he was 11 years old, Juan and his family
came to the United States from Venezuela, where life had become dangerous. We were driving, and we stopped at a red light. Juan made it to college, and graduated. But, because he was undocumented, he couldn’t
work, and he worried about being deported. But that changed in June of 2012. Effective immediately, the Department
of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young
people. If you’d come to the US when you were under 16. Then you could apply for the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program -- basically, a permit that protects you from getting deported,
and allows you to work legally in the U.S. Juan got this protection, and so did nearly
800,000 others who applied. But now, that protection is gone. I'm here to announce that the program known as
DACA, that was effectuated under the Obama administration, is being rescinded. DACA was designed to protect a generation of young undocumented immigrants known as
DREAMers, named after a bill called the Dream Act
which had been floating around Congress for more than a decade,
with bipartisan support. The bill would have given unauthorized immigrants
who grew up in the US a way to gain legal status and eventually apply for citizenship. And even though it fell short of 60 Senate
votes in 2010, the idea was still popular with the American public. When President Obama announced
DACA, it was in the middle of the 2012 Presidential
campaign, but it didn't turn into a huge campaign issue, because Republicans were really ambivalent, about turning immigration
into a wedge issue. We need to help accommodate these kids,
who through no fault of their own find themselves in this legal limbo. We cannot forever have children who
were brought here by their parents when they were small children to live in the shadows. But in 2014, Obama proposed making older immigrants
eligible for DACA, and creating similar protections against deportation
for undocumented parents with children who were US citizens. And a lot of Republicans said,
"whoa, that's too far." These new actions would have protected about
4.5 million people -- nearly half the estimated undocumented population. A group of 26 states sued the Obama administration
over the expansion. And they won. A federal judge stopped the DACA expansions
from going into effect — hinting that they were probably unconstitutional. People had started thinking back to, well
if those bigger programs were unconstitutional, what does that say about this DACA program
that's already in place? Then came Donald Trump. Trump: When Mexico sends its people, they’re
not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing
crime. They’re rapists. Once Donald Trump became the leading
Republican presidential candidate, running on an immigration hard line platform, Republicans started to look at things in a
new light. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration. When Trump won, DACA's fate seemed sealed. But even though he revoked lots of Obama’s
other executive orders on immigration, nearly 8 months into his term, he still hadn't ended DACA. A lot of the immigration hawks began
to go “wait, we were promised that you were gonna get rid of this amnesty that exists
right now, what the heck happened?” So a bunch of states threatened
to sue the government over DACA again if Trump didn’t get rid of it. Which brings us to early September, 2017 It is my duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are enforced and
that the constitutional order is upheld. It's a very stark message that leaves a whole lot of people, who only consider themselves to be Americans, in limbo for the next several months. In the five years it’s been around, DACA
has had a big impact on young undocumented immigrants. A survey of DACA recipients found nearly 70
percent got a job with better pay. More than 60 percent opened their first bank
account Nearly 65 percent bought their first car, and a similar share say they’ve pursued educational opportunities they previously couldn’t. But when these protections expire over the
coming weeks, months or years, they'll be back where they started before 2012 -- unable
to work legally and constantly at risk for deportation. I want to put my hand in the border. I'm standing in the United States, it's 103
degrees, and I'm looking across a river into Mexico. If someone wanted to they
could just swim across in like, two minutes. Border patrol has all of these mechanisms for making sure that
doesn't happen. Eyes in the sky. GPS coordinates. Conex box. Motion X. Raid tower. ATVs. There's a laser. Alpha 5. Shallow draft rain vessel. One sensor. Another sensor. Tactical operation centers. Binos. Scouts. Mobile units. Agents on horseback. There's been all this talk about building a wall on our southern border. It could cost up to
seventy billion dollars. We're building the wall. We're building the
wall, folks. We're building the wall. Turns out there already is kind of a
wall. In addition to the hundreds of miles of physical wall that exists,
there's a wall of technology, of surveillance, where people and technology
and infrastructure spend days and nights staring at the border. That's what I
went down to Texas to look at and I want to understand if the billions of dollars
that we spend on this technology is actually worth it. These white blimps, which are actually
called aerostats, are tethered to the ground. And they have cameras on them. These
cameras can zoom in to miles and miles away to see what's going on in the
ground. They can see in the dark with infrared. They're able to see any sort of
movement. This thing is called a raid tower. I just spent like 20 minutes
inside of the control room. Man, we were able to like zoom in on people on the
other side of the border and it was like super clear and perfectly focused. Then
you have seismic sensors. It's picking up movement. Sensors are set up to kind of create a path. Let's say you have one sensor go off. A few minutes later, another sensor goes off. So that lets the agent know that they're taking
a certain route. Now, if it's that one sensor and another sensor: okay they're
taking another route. And you know how long it takes from point A to get all
the way to, let's say, the highway. So it kind of gives us an opportunity to gauge
the amount of time that we have to respond. Another way the border patrol
does this job is with motion sensor cameras. Basically, cameras that are out
in the middle the brush that have motion trackers on it. So when someone walks by,
it takes a photo. Hunters actually use these to track, like, deer. And they can
see where deer are by taking a picture of them whenever they come in front of
the camera. Down in this area of southern Texas, there's not a lot of walls, but
they use the walls strategically to funnel people to other places: other
parts of the border that don't have walls, but where they have cameras and
where they have a lot of eyes. Now it's time to go on some boats with
the border patrol. You have to get past us before you can even touch dry land. One of the tricky things about this specific sector, is that there's a really
windy river that goes throughout the entire thing. Because of that a straight
line between two cities might be a hundred miles, but it covers 300 river
miles. No matter how much fancy technology they have here to stare at the border, the most important function and skill that these border patrol
agents have, is what they call cutting sign. There's brand new fresh sign right there. There's gotta be somebody here right now. What's that? There's somebody here right now. Sign can be anything: it can be a boot print, matted down grass, stuff left behind. His heel right here and how it's kicked up,
that tells us that he's running. They use old hunting techniques in order to find
out: who was in an area, where they went, how many people, what they were carrying.
Over the years these border patrol agents have developed a keen sense for
tracking down migrants. The Native Americans did tracking. It goes way back. If you're hunting, you track. Might be a child. You never want to see children making this trip. One of the benefits to having the border patrol be this collection of people and
technology, is that you can move it around. Instead of having permanent
infrastructure always in one spot, you're able to have this kind of fluid range of assets. We're constantly adapting. We're constantly looking at new technology and
different aspects that we can throw in their way. All of this costs us a lot of
money. The border patrol's budget is 14 times bigger than it was in 1990. It's just
gotten bigger and bigger every single year. A lot of that increase in budget is
going into this new technology, into this infrastructure. And so the next question
is: is this actually effective? Only 30% of the people who are actually crossing
into our country get caught by the border patrol, 30%. Even with all of this
technology and all these people and all of these mechanisms for staring at the
border, including walls, they still have a very difficult time keeping people from
entering our country. So in American politics if we're gonna have this
discussion about securing our border, we need to come to terms with the fact that
this is an expensive and very complicated enterprise. And the idea that we can put
up a wall or any other technology that would just solve the problem is ignorant
and naive to the reality on the ground. A lot can be said about Rihanna and
Drake's hit song work. It completely owned the charts in 2016. Its dance hall
beat and endless repetition were the ultimate example of where the sound of
pop was going. It did everything most top forties hits were doing - except for one
thing - it faded out. Let me start by making a confession here, I used to hate
when songs faded out. it felt like a cop-out. A lack of creativity. A boring
anti-ending to a song that I otherwise really loved. It turns out that this is
the wrong opinion. The fade out is misunderstood and under-appreciated.
There's an art to it. A science to it. And when executed correctly, the fade out
makes a song feel like it'll live on forever. This chart, which is pretty cool,
shows the number of songs that had a fade out on the Billboard top 10 from
1946 to 2016. It was made by this guy. My name is Bill Weir and I'm a writer -
mostly about music and specifically about technology of music and history of
the music technology. So the chart starts in 1946 but the story of the fade out
actually begins in 1918. Gustav Holtz was conducting his world-famous piece "The
Planets" and he devised a unique way to convey the distance of Neptune - at the
time the farthest known planet in the solar system. So he wanted to create the
sense of almost unimaginable distance and the mysteriousness of the cosmos. He
had the women's choir offstage in a room and he instructed a stagehand
to slowly close the door to create the effect of it fading out and going off
into the distance. People loved that, it went over huge. I mean
today we take the fade out for granted, but in 1918 it was like a whole
new whole new sonic adventure for them. In the early days, the fade out was a
novelty. It was really only used to convey real-world scenarios like
distance and space. That is until the 1950s and 60s when sound recording
wasn't just used to preserve a live performance, it became its own art form.
The fade out quickly became a creative and functional tool for record producers.
Functional, because radio deejays demanded songs be three minutes or less.
If the album version was longer producers would typically cut a shorter
radio-friendly version that faded during the chorus. Fade outs were also used to
fix flubs here's the full waveform for strawberry fields forever. You can see a
really long fade out and then it suddenly starts coming back. George
Martin, the Beatles producer, wasn't crazy about the percussion towards the end of
the song and so he faded the song out. But then he hears all the great music
that happens after the fade-out that the Beatles continued to play and he hated
to waste that so he faded back in. Not only is there an art to the fade out,
there's a science to it also. Here Susan Rogers. To do a fade properly you have to
do something called chasing the fade. So we know from the Fletcher-Munson
curves that our ears don't perceive frequencies of sound equally when played
at the same volume. if you've got the speakers cranked you're hearing
approximately equal levels of bass mid-range and high-end. But as soon as
you turn the level down, it becomes really hard to hear the high highs and
the low lows, but you can hear the mid-range very well. If you lowered everything
equally the singer would just be hanging out there all by themselves. You can hear
that on Prince's "Slow Love" which Susan worked on. The fade out became so ubiquitous that
by 1985 all top 10 songs of the year had one. But there's something more to the
fade out than being another fashionable trend in music. When psychologists
studied how different types of song endings affected our experiences with
them, they found something pretty amazing. The researchers, they had a group of
subjects listen to the same song but two different versions, one with a
fade out one of the cold ending and they had them tap along to the beat of each
version. If a song had a hard ending, participants on average stopped tapping
along to the beat 1.04 seconds before the end of the song. If it had a
fade out they'd stop tapping along to the beat 1.40 seconds after
the song ended. In a sense that song was living beyond its physical self in the
mind of the listener. That might help explain why The Beatles
7-minute "Hey Jude" has a fade out that's about as long as their entire early
singles. "Hey Jude" was released after The Beatles stopped touring, they didn't need
to perform it live. Well until they did this one TV performance. It's my pleasure
to introduce now in their first live appearance for goodness knows how long
in front of an audience the Beatles. It took at least 12 takes a lot of editing
and a visual fade to black to recreate the same epic fade out of the recorded
version. The fade out was such a long-lasting
record making tool, it was used in some of the biggest hits for decades, but its
future isn't looking so great. Yeah I mean it's kind of sad because the
fade out's demise is kind of a replication of the
effect itself in that its actually literally fading out in popular music,
and so slowly and gradually that I think most people don't even notice. There are
plenty of songs over the last few years that would have been better served with a
 fade out like Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know" It just suddenly ends and
they they threw at Tom or something in there they just went boom and it sounds
so pasted on to my ear. Bruno Mars'  "24k magic" and "That's what I like" have abrupt
endings to when they sound like they could fade out forever. Pick any number of songs these days and
those pasted on endings are the norm. Want to know what work sounds like with
a hard ending? It's terrible. The fade-out it turns out, is important and often
necessary. It's a tool in a record producers arsenal that makes us tap our
feet along even after our ears perceive the very last notes. And I hope, just like
the ending of "Strawberry fields forever" it comes back. It's hard to say whether
or not the fade-out will actually be as prominent as it was 30 or 40 years ago I
just look at the Top 40 today and only three songs had legitimate fade outs that I could find. could find. Those three songs are
actually really good hint for the next earworm episode. So go listen to the billboard top 40. Try to find those three songs. And let me
know what you think the next episode is gonna be about. Donald Trump has made roughly 500 false statements
in his first 200 days in office. That’s about 2.5 falsehoods per day. He’s turned news outlets into full-time
fact-checking organizations. Give us a fact-check here. Let’s just do a quick fact-check. Quick fact-check. Uh oh, time to fact-check. The problem is, for a lot of people, those
fact-checks don’t seem to be working. Two-thirds of Republican voters still believe
millions of people voted illegally. A majority of Trump’s supporters think Obama
spied on him. And almost half actually think Trump won the
popular vote. How is that possible? Why is bullshit so hard to debunk? To understand what makes misinformation so
durable in politics, I talked to Brendan Nyhan. He’s a political scientist who’s been
studying the science of fact-checking since before Destiny’s Child broke up. I’ve been working on this now for more than
15 years in different ways. I was one of the founders of a website called
Spinsanity that was a forerunner to the existing fact-checking websites. I checked, and you can actually still find
Spinsanity online in all its beautiful, early-2000s internet glory. Oof, look at that font! Sorry. Since then, he’s spent a lot of time researching
what makes people hold on to false beliefs. I came back to that in my research as a political
scientist and returned to the subject of In theory, this should be a no-brainer. If someone has a false belief, and you present
them with accurate information, they should change that false belief, right? Right? There’s good evidence, including from my
own research, that Balls. Unfortunately, he’s right. In a recent experiment, for example, people
were asked to read an article debunking Trump’s false claim that violent crime is on the rise. And though some people accepted the fact-check,
most of those who initially believed the myth continued to believe it. We can observe some responsiveness if we give
people information, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to make these misperceptions
go away. There are a couple of big reasons why this
happens. One is: It’s costly just to say, “I was wrong.” That’s hard for me. That’s hard for anybody. We’d all like to think we’re dispassionate,
but That defensiveness is even stronger when a
false belief is linked to a political party or president. If you identify as a Republican, and a fact-checker
tells you a Republican belief is wrong, you’re more likely to reject the fact-check. Fox & Friends starts right now. We’ve always had misperceptions, but now
they’re becoming aligned with our partisanship and our partisan identities and that’s kind
of supercharging them in terms of their relevance to our political conversation. At the same time, the cost of sustaining a
false belief is very low in politics. Being wrong about stuff like voter fraud or
Obama’s birth certificate has no real impact on our day-to-day lives, so there’s very
low incentive to change our false beliefs. Having a strictly accurate belief on the one
hand versus having your own sense of yourself and your worldview called into question, you
can see how sometimes people, without intending to By the way, Nyhan says this is true of both
liberals and conservatives. Being a beta male cuck does not make you magically
immune to this. Dammit! A second reason it’s so hard to debunk misinformation
has more to do with how we fact-check. Modern news media is incentivized to be attention-grabbing and immediate. To report what Trump says and does the moment
it happens. New Trump tweet coming out. Trump just tweeted. I just want to interrupt because President
Trump just tweeted. I sat down about 21 minutes ago and President
Trump has tweeted three times, so this is hot off the presses. Oh, wow. It’s why news networks started airing full,
unedited Trump rallies during the campaign. It’s why they started airing the White House
press briefing live. Every major website has a tribe of content
gnomes in the basement furiously typing up articles aggregating the news saying, ‘Trump
says this,’ right? Side note: “Content gnome” is my actual
Dungeons and Dragons character name. Can you focus, please? The emphasis on immediacy means that a lot
of misinformation is presented in a totally unfiltered fashion. Last December, for example, Trump claimed
that he’d gotten Sprint to stop from outsourcing 5,000 jobs to other countries. Because of what’s happening and the spirit
and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they’re going to be
bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. It was a big declaration, and newsrooms across
the country rushed to report it, repeating the claim over and over in headlines and tweets
and news chyrons. Sprint is bringing 5,000 jobs back to America. The problem was Trump’s claim was false. Sprint had planned to bring those jobs to
the US even before Trump got elected. It’s only later that day or the next day
or the day after that that we find out that actually those were jobs that had already
been saved. Those follow-up stories often get much less
of an audience and the damage may already have been done. That problem is compounded when news networks
invite Trump surrogates and White House spokespeople to defend Trump’s claims on air. People like Kris Kobach or Stephen Miller
or… What? I don’t want to say her name. A popular convention in journalism is that
it’s important to interview White House spokespeople, but Nyhan says that norm breaks
down when those spokespeople use interviews to repeat misinformation. The idea that we must interview representatives
of the administration only works if there’s a But we don’t have that shared commitment. So far Trump’s spokespeople have used these
interviews to repeat falsehoods about things like voter fraud, even while being fact-checked
by the hosts. Do you believe Hillary Clinton won the popular
vote by 3 to 5 million votes? You know, we may never know the answer to
that. Voter fraud is a serious problem in this country. There are dead people registered; there are
illegal people registered. And continuing to invite spokespeople like
this on air essentially defeats the purpose of fact-checking. You make wild and controversial claims on
TV and you get invited back. You’re an interesting guest. You’re provocative. You’re controversial. Which explains why, when Alisyn Camerota asks
this Trump supporter where she heard that millions of people voted illegally, So where are you getting your information? She says, From the media. Some of it was CNN, I believe. None of this is to say that better fact-checking
will suddenly fix our misinformation problem. Even without Kellyanne Conway’s help, the
human brain is really good at holding on to bullshit. I convinced myself to wear cargo shorts in
public for 20 years despite overwhelming evidence it was a bad idea. Why are you mad at me? And Nyhan admits there’s not really a silver
bullet for debunking people’s incorrect political beliefs. If I knew what it was, I’d be out there
doing it instead of us doing this interview. Hurtful, but okay. But the bottom line is our brains are uniquely
vulnerable to a White House that’s so comfortable with lying. News networks need to be extra careful that,
in the rush to cover Trump’s falsehoods, they’re not accidentally amplifying them. and... Alexa, what’s the weather today? with clear skies and sun. Today’s forecast has partly sunny weather
with a high of 77°F and a low of 61°F. UHHHH… I still don’t understand the use of Fahrenheit. Virtually every country on earth uses Celsius
to measure temperature. But the US still uses Fahrenheit. And for that reason, we —at Vox— often
get comments like these. *Okay, we get it.* Besides the fact that the majority of the world uses it— the metric system makes conversions
a lot easier. The Celsius scale even looks simpler. It has freezing and boiling points at nice,
round numbers— zero and 100. Where in Fahrenheit, it’s a bit of a mess. And of course, this isn’t just an issue of aesthetics
or weather updates. America’s unwillingness to switch over to
the metric system has had serious consequences. In 1999, a 125 million dollar satellite sent
to Mars, disappeared in the Martian atmosphere. It’s a setback to years of work already
done in the vastness of space— all it takes is one navigation error. And this colossal mistake was largely due to a conversion error between US and metric measurements. Fahrenheit was really useful n the early 18th
century. At the time, no one really had a consistent
way to measure temperature. But then a German scientist, came up with
the Fahrenheit scale when he invented the mercury thermometer in 1714. To make the scale, the most popular theory
is that he picked the temperature of an ice/water/salt mixture at the zero mark. He then put the freezing point of water, which
is higher than a salt mixture, at 32. And placed the average temperature of the
human body at 96. From there, he placed the boiling point of
water at 212 degrees. In 1724, Fahrenheit formalized that scale
and was inducted into the British Royal Society, where his system was a big hit. As Britain conquered huge parts of the globe
in the 18th and 19th centuries, it brought the Fahrenheit system and other Imperial measurements, such as feet and ounces along with them. And Fahrenheit became a standard system for
the British Empire across the globe. In the meantime, the metric system was gaining
popularity during the French Revolution. It was put in place to unify the country at
the national level. So by the second half of the 20th century,
Celsius became popular in many parts of the world, when many English-speaking countries
began using the metric system. Even America attempted to switch over. The change would have been good for trade
and scientific communications with the rest of the world. So, Congress passed a law, the 1975 Metric
Conversion Act— Which led to the United States Metric Board
that would educate people about the system. This created the only metric highway sign
in the US— the Interstate 19 connecting Arizona to Mexico. But it didn’t go much further than that. The problem was that unlike the UK, Canada
or Australia, the law made the switch voluntary instead of mandatory. And of course people resisted the change,
and the Metric Board couldn't enforce the conversion. So, President Reagan ended up disbanding the
board in 1982. The next nudge to metricate came when the
metric system became the preferred measure for American trade and commerce in 1988. But nothing really stuck with the general
public... ...Even though bizarre measurements like Feet
and Fahrenheit are not doing them any favors. Students have to train for two sets of measurements,
making science education even more difficult. And companies spend extra dollars producing two sets of products, one for the US and the other for metric. There’s also an argument for public health. According to the CDC, about 3 to 4000 kids
are brought to the ER due to unintentional medication overdose, every year. And conversion errors for dosage are to blame. So it seems like a no brainer— America needs
to switch to the metric system to match the rest of the world. But it is still struggling to make that change. That’s because it’ll take a lot of time
and money but there’s no financial proof that this will all be worth it. So unless that change is proven to be economically
better… We’re not going to be using celsius anytime
soon. What’s 77°F in Celsius? 77°F is 25°C. Ah! Okay. "Thirty inches of rain ahead." "Could climate change be fueling  the history-making nature of this storm?" We know that humanity's carbon footprint has shifted the baseline conditions of the climate, the context in which every weather event takes place. But trying to isolate the human influence from everything else that is going on can be really hard, especially for hurricanes, or what scientists call "tropical cyclones." They're super complex and the quality of the historical data we have for them isn't great. We do have physics, though. Hurricanes are driven by the transfer of heat from the sea to the air  through evaporation. The storm's maximum possible wind speed, or its potential intensity, depends in part on how warm the ocean is And of course, we're warming the ocean. So researchers expect intense tropical cyclones to become frequent if we continue to warm the planet. "That's one place I think you'd find a very strong consensus among scientists who study the connection between hurricanes and climate, that the frequency of the high-end events will probably go up." And that shows up in climate models. This is from the intergovernmental panel on climate change It summarizes the computer model results for tropical cyclones near the end of this century, compared to today. The first bar represents the total number of tropical cyclones globally. That's projected to go down a bit. But the second bar represents the  frequency of the most intense storms, categories four and five, and the models show those increasing And that's bad news because those are the storms that cause the most damage and the biggest loss of life. Now when they try to look at specific regions, it gets really messy. In the North Atlantic, for example, the models show category four and five storms maybe increasing by 200% or maybe decreasing by 100%. So, yeah, the resolution of their simulations just isn't fine enough yet to give us good regional projections, even if they expect more intense storms globally. But there's another really clear consistent result here - this fourth bar, it represents the amount of rain that hurricanes will bring and that's going up. Not just for our Atlantic coast, but for the Pacific coast of North America, the western Pacific, the south Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, everywhere. The hurricanes of the future will be wetter. So coastal cities will face freshwater flooding from the sky paired with storm surge from the sea, which is higher now because we are also causing sea levels to rise. And that trend of wetter storms isn't just for hurricanes. Heavy precipitation events from other types of storms have been increasing in The US and should continue to increase across the country. Even in places that might see less rain over the whole year, they'll get more days with really heavy precipitation. This comes down to basic physics too: warmer air can take up more water before it dumps it back down on us. All of this means global warming worsens floods like the kind that hit Houston, but it's not our destiny to hurt ourselves like this. It depends on what we choose to do now. We could rethink our infrastructure and regulations to minimize the damage, but unless we also start cutting our carbon emissions and shifting the world to clean energy, it's just going to get worse. (slow soothing country music) Venezuela was once the richest country in
Latin America. It has the largest known oil reserves in the
world. And its democratic government was once praised
world wide. But today, Venezuela’s democratic institutions
and its economy are in shambles. The country has the highest inflation in the
world, making food and medicine inaccessible to most Venezuelans. Over the last four years, its GDP has fallen
35%, which is a sharper drop than the one seen during the Great Depression in the US. The country’s murder rate has surpassed
that of the most dangerous cities in the world. These conditions have sparked months of protests
against the president, Nicolas Maduro. And it’s easy to see why: the country has
become measurably worse since his election in 2013. A poll showed that about 80% of Venezuelans
want Maduro removed from office. But instead, the opposite has happened: Maduro
has consolidated his power bringing the country closer to authoritarian rule. Maduro’s political ambition became evident
in December 2015. Two years after he became president, a coalition
of opposition parties called the Democratic Unity Roundtable or MUD, won a two-thirds
majority in the National Assembly, putting Maduro’s rule at risk. In response, Maduro quickly forced out several
Supreme Court justices and filled the positions with cronies loyal to him. In March 2016, the court ruled to strip the
opposition-led National Assembly of its powers -- a move that sparked massive protests across
the country. The ruling was reversed a few days later,
but the damage was done -- protests continued to grow and have left about 100 dead and thousands
injured so far. Despite the violence and public outcry, Maduro
held a vote in July to elect a new governing body called the National Constituent Assembly,
which would have the power to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution and replace the National Assembly. And leave virtually non opposition to Maduro's rule. With Maduro's recent vote, Venezuelans didn’t have
a say in whether the assembly should exist. They only had the option to elect its members. But when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez
proposed a constitutional rewrite in 1999, he first called for a referendum to propose
the election of the assembly. After most Venezuelans voted yes, they elected
a new National Constituent Assembly. See, unlike Maduro, Chavez was a charismatic
and beloved leader. In the 90s, he burst onto television sets
across the country. He blamed government corruption and Venezuela’s
elite for the economic inequality. His populist message resonated with the country’s
poor who eventually helped bring him to power. The key moment in his presidency came in 2004 when oil prices surged. Venezuela’s petroleum- dependent economy started booming and Chavez went on to spend billions from the profits on social-welfare programs for the poor. He subsidized food, improved the educational
system, built an enviable healthcare system and reduced poverty by more than half. These programs certainly helped the poor, but they served a purpose for Chavez as well. In order to be re-elected, he needed to keep
millions of poor Venezuelans happy. So he rigged the economy to do just that... He didn’t scale back Venezuela’s dependence
on oil and his unrestrained spending led to a growing deficit. Which meant all these programs would be impossible
to sustain if oil prices fell. After Chavez’s death, when Maduro took office
as his handpicked successor, that’s exactly what happened:
Oil prices plummeted in 2014 and Maduro failed to adjust. Hyperinflation has made medicines and food,
that was once subsidized, unaffordable for Venezuela’s poor, who now make up about
82% of the population. Like Chavez, Maduro has also rigged the economy
to keep himself in power, but this time it’s not benefitting the poor.
He’s exploited a complex currency system, put in place by Chavez. Maduro’s set the official exchange rate
at 10 bolivars per US dollar. But only his friends and allies have access
to this rate. In reality, the venezuelan currency has become
basically worthless. Most Venezuelans get their dollars on the
black market, where the rate is about 12,000 bolivar per dollar. The military, which got complete control of
the food supply from Maduro in 2016, is reportedly profiting off of this currency crisis. They import food at Maduro’s special currency
rate and sell it on the black market for a massive profit. So military generals and political allies,
crisis has offered a lucrative opportunity which has helped Maduro stay in power. But he can’t rely on that support alone... ...which brings us back to Maduro’s recent
power grab. The opposition boycotted the vote, but Maduro
held the vote for the new constitutional assembly anyway, and won a majority. "Protests on the streets of Venezuela turned deadly after President Nicolas Maduro declares victory. The violence on Sunday very real The bomb went off near some motorcycle police wounding several. Election day clashes between protesters claiming at least 10 more lives. At least one candidate has been murdered, shot to death. Maduro's government is trying to create the illusion of public support. Thegovernment claimed about 8 million people,
or 40% of the country, voted. But experts put that number much lower, at
just 3 million people. The international community including Peru,
Canada, Spain, Mexico and Argentina condemned the election. The US imposed financial sanctions on Maduro
and members of his government. But Maduro’s assembly, filled with loyalists,
convened anyway and it swiftly removed attorney general Luisa Ortega, leader of the opposition. Armed groups reportedly arrested several other
opposition leaders too. Whether the group will rewrite the constitution
or postpone the next presidential election remains to be seen. For now, Maduro has unprecedented power over
a country that continues to spiral out of control. When I say “funeral” this is probably
what you think of, right? The cemetery, the casket, the gorgeous floral
arrangements. Vin Diesel stylishly going two buttons undone
on the dress shirt. But what if I told you that other than Dominic
Toretto’s effortless style, this was probably the worst way you could
dispose of a body? This traditional casket in the ground method
most of us are used to is what journalist Mark Harris calls a “modern
burial.” And that is the chemical embalming of the
remains, the burial of the body or the placement of
the body into a metal casket, and then the placing of that casket and embalmed
body in the bottom of the grave that we call the
burial vault. So that’s pretty much the American way of
death. Aside from being a great name for a novel, the American way of death actually turns out
to be pretty terrible. The average cost of modern burial runs on
average from $10,000 to $12,000. Although you can talk to families who will
tell you they paid a lot more than that. In many cases, a lot more. This KISS casket alone will set you back seven
grand. No word on if the amps are included though. The funeral industry has also been known to
engage in predatory business practices, like selling vulnerable families add-ons and
services that they don’t need. They’ve also been the subject of a number
of class action lawsuits, including one for conspiring to fix the prices
of caskets at artificially high prices. “Modern” burials are also incredibly wasteful. The average grave site takes up 32 square
feet of land in a cemetery. And that’s just space. It uses a staggering amount of resources as
well. Which 
almost sounds kind of fun right? Grill up some hotdogs, toss some diving rings
in for the kids to fetch. Not so fast. Formalin, which is the formaldehyde-based
preservative solution embalmers use, is incredibly toxic. OSHA deems it a dangerous carcinogen and strictly
regulates its use, and the EPA treats it as a hazardous waste. Embalmers experience higher levels of brain,
colon, and prostate cancer as well as leukemia. To embalm a typical body it requires 3 pounds
of this formalin solution and sends 120 gallons of untreated “funeral
waste” directly into the sewage system, including blood, water, fecal matter, organ
fluid, and carcinogenic chemicals, as well as whatever unknown diseases the body
contains. Okay cool, so modern funerals suck. But what are the other options? Well, let’s start with cremation. Countries all across the world cremate bodies. In Great Britain, 75% of people get cremated, in Switzerland it’s 85%, and in Japan that number is almost 100%. Two years ago, for the first time in this
country’s history, more Americans were cremated than buried and then pretty soon we’re going to hit
50% of Americans being cremated. For one thing, it’s a lot cheaper. A typical cremation costs around $1,400 compared
to the $10,000 to $12,000 price tag we mentioned earlier. (Again, a little more for that sweet KISS
casket.) Cremating a body also requires much less space, since there doesn’t need to be a grave. And it doesn’t require a swimming pool full
of formaldehyde either … sorry kids. You can also do all sorts of fun stuff with
your ashes like put them in fireworks, spread them in a National Park, or even turn them into a reef. But is it actually better 
for the environment? So it sounds like cremation is better, although
it’s far from perfect. Is there no way to do this without hurting
the environment? Swedish scientists asked that same question
and developed something called promession. It’s a process where you freeze a corpse
in liquid nitrogen, rapidly vibrate the body so it breaks into
millions of tiny particles in just a few minutes, then freeze dry the particles and remove the
harmful metals leftover from your dental fillings. You’re left with a fine dust which actually
looks very similar to cremated remains. It solves most of the problems of “modern”
burial and cremation but unfortunately hasn’t been approved for
human beings yet. Another option is alkaline hydrolysis, where a body is put into a chamber which is
then filled with water and lye, pressurized, and heated up to about 320 °F. The body tissue is broken down in a process
that’s similar to natural decomposition, and dissolved to nothing but a skeleton in
about 12 hours. Damn, spooky. It’s more environmentally friendly since
there’s zero toxic emissions and it has about one-tenth of the carbon footprint
as a cremation. All that said, the simplest option might be
natural burial. A number of natural cemeteries have sprung
up across the country where unembalmed bodies are buried in biodegradable
containers, or sometimes nothing at all, and allowed to
decompose naturally. It’s inexpensive, natural, and can actually help preserve and restore
vulnerable land and wildlife. Not to mention it’s how humans have done
it for most of recorded history. No matter what the method, though, it’s
clear that we have to reform the way that we bury the dead. In less than a quarter-century 76 million
people in America alone will get to the average life expectancy of
78 years. If all those people were buried in traditional
graves, we'd need a cemetery the size of Las Vegas
to accommodate their bodies. The point is, we're all going to die. The question is, what are we going to do with
all the bodies? Many of those people were there to protest
the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So, this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming
down. Is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop? The Confederate monuments President Trump
mentions are more than innocent markers of American history. Many exist to celebrate the Confederate cause
to preserve the rights of whites over minorities. These monuments can traced back to the Civil
War. But most of the sites and symbols were actually
created during periods of racial conflict long after the civil war. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled about
1503 confederate symbols in public space. Each dot on this timeline represents a monument,
a symbol, or an icon. Some represent statues. Others are names of schools, parks or military
bases. The cart starts with the Civil War, when the
monuments first show up. Then in 1866, there’s a rise that coincides
with the formation of the Ku Klux klan. But the chart reveals a significant rise in
the creation of these monuments in two periods: The first is in the early 1900s, when ex-Confederate
states in the south enacted Jim Crow laws. The response from this period is clear — the
NAACP was founded during this peak. And the spike continues through the 1920s
which were marked by the re-emergence of the KKK. The next cluster of confederate monuments
were built in the 1950s and 60s. Construction of the symbols peaked in 1965
— the 100th year anniversary of the end of the Civil War. During this modern Civil Rights Movement,
until 1970, it became more common for schools to be named after confederate proponents. And it didn't stop there. A movement to erase these symbols of Confederate
ideology has recently surfaced across the country. They are not just innocent remembrances of
a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized
Confederacy ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually
stood for. Critics of that movement equate these monuments
with Southern pride, white heritage and culture. But the fact that a vast majority of the monuments
were constructed during racial conflict reveals the opposite: They honor the Confederacy and
the racism it stood for. Donald Trump owns a lot of things. In fact, The Trump Organization is the 48th largest private corporation in the US. but Trump doesn't pay taxes like a big corporation. He uses a special part of the tax code that lets him bypass corporate taxes that lets him pay only individual tax rates to his benefit. And if he has his way with tax reform, he could make himself even richer. To understand what Trump wants to do, let's imagine you worked at a sandwich shop. Since you're just an employee, when you get paid you have to pay the individual tax rate. But if you're the owner, you would first pay corporate taxes and then pay individual taxes. These add up to about 32% for the average business owner, but there might be a way to pay even less. Instead of being a traditional corporation you could make your business a pass-through entity. They're special because instead of having to go through two layers of taxation like a normal corporation, They can go through just one, like an individual and those businesses pay on average 19% in Federal taxes. This was originally designed for small businesses, but huge companies with less than 100 shareholders structure themselves as pass-through businesses like The Trump Organization. Trump isn't alone though. Over the past 40 years, more and more corporate income has been earned through pass-through businesses. And even though pass-throughs were created to help small businesses, nearly 16% have more than 500 employees. But Trump and House Republicans want to help these businesses even more. Trump's proposal is to make the pass-through businesses go through the corporate lane, but then he want to lower the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan wants to make a whole different lane for pass-through businesses and tax them at the special low rate of 25%. For the largest pass-throughs like The Trump Organization this would mean a huge tax cut. An analysis from the Tax Policy Center found that the top one percent -- people who earn $700,000 a year or more -- would get 90% of the tax cuts under Ryan's plan. He and Trump believe that cutting taxes on these businesses will raise wages for all workers. But right now most pass-through income goes top 1% and most mainstream economists don't believe there's a strong link between corporate taxes and worker wages. But what we do know is that if Republicans give pass-through business a tax cut, Trump will get a lot richer. I’ve always been an artist, I’ve always
drawn pictures, and when it comes to digital art and Microsoft Paint, I’ve taught myself
completely. My name is Pat Hines, I’m from Boston, I’ve
lived here my whole life. I’m sure you can hear my accent. The sad thing is I didn’t even know I had
it until I went to college. I’m from West Roxbury, which is a part of
the city of Boston. It’s not the toughest part, it’s not Southie,
it’s not Dorchester, it’s not Charlestown, but it’s definitely a part of the city of
Boston. What got me started in Microsoft Paint and
in digital art was I was working at a nursing home when I was in college. I was working overnights . And this was before
Facebook, or YouTube, or, you know, I didn’t even know if Wikipedia existed back then. I don’t like Minesweeper or Solitaire or
any of that stuff. It was basically Paint or, you know, I slowly
went insane. It was just kinda screwing around with it
at first, but as the years went by, I sort of developed a technique. And what I noticed about my work in Paint
was that I had an identifiable style, which I did not have ever when I worked in physical
media, with pen and pencil or whatever. Whenever I worked in other media, I was always
aping someone else’s style. Usually I start off, ironically enough with
pencil and paper and I just do a little thumbnail of the most basic composition. And from there I open Paint, and I use — it’s
called the pencil tool — and I do a very very rough version of the composition. And this ends up looking like what most people’s
idea of MS Paint looks like, it’s very squiggly. It’s kind of a mess. This is basically my version of layers if
you were working in Photoshop. I don’t erase those original squiggles,
but I go over them. And from there I select the line tool and
that’s when I create the final line art. I know that’s kind of long and involved,
but that’s Microsoft Paint. It’s just the mouse. I tried using a stylus with other programs,
and I tried using it with Paint. Only the line tool allows me to create really
crisp pictures. I’m always striving to have no pixels, like,
bunched up on each other, no right angles, you know? Because if you do it that way it ends up looking
jagged and blocky. At the beginning I was using the spray can
to do a lot of, like, shading and stuff. When you press the spray can, all it does
is spray out a bunch of pixels randomly. So It took a lot of time to quit the spray
can and use the line tool for pretty much everything. Although, ironically enough, in one of my
pictures there’s graffiti on the walls and I couldn’t figure out how to make graffiti
in Paint. And lo and behold I try the spray can and
it works perfectly for it. In terms of illustration, there’s a Russian
illustrator named Ivan Bilibin, I think that’s how you pronounce it. He lived in the 1800s. But if you were to look at his stuff, you’d
see the connection between his stuff and my stuff. There’s a lot of the flat color but there’s
also a lot of detail. It looks so modern that when you find out
this guy lived in the 1800s you’d just be amazed. I love Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish,
he’s another influence. Drew Struzan, he did all the Back To The Future
Posters. David Mazzucchelli: he illustrated Batman:
Year One and some Daredevil comics, really amazing work. My biggest inspiration for my current style
for the MS Paint work is the illustrator Hergé. He created the Tin Tin comic book series. He was a Belgian comic book illustrator. It wasn’t even a conscious thing that I
wanted my stuff to look like his. I guess they call the style “Ligne Claire”
— it means clear line style, you don’t do
any shading with the line art. It’s just all solid lines, it’s a very
clean image, and then you do all the shading with coloring. “The program kind of dictated it, because
I always did like that style. It looked how it looked in my head originally
or it looked even better. From there I go straight into coloring. With coloring, I use mostly either the paint
can where you just press it and it fills in a huge area. Between that and the eraser is where I shade
it, usually holding, like I said, the right click on the eraser. It’s usually just creating very simple gradients. That’s how I always prove to people that
it actually is Paint. Just zoom in on those gradients and you can
see. It’s very uneven, you know, it’s kind
of messy when you zoom into it. But there really isn’t that much mystery
to the coloring process. I try not to use too many different colors. I always start off by thinking, where is the
light source, where is it coming from. I use two versions of Paint. F or the line art I use the old version and
for the coloring I use the latest version, or I guess the last version. I always wanted to see a horror movie set
at a summer camp, because even with twelve or so Friday the 13th movies, I never thought
there was a good one. I couldn’t get the idea of the summer camp
out of my head, and it kinda grew there until I was creating history for it, and weird traditions,
and from there it kind of just kept going. To create the shading, it’s just a matter
of creating a very simple gradient. Say if it’s a skintone, if it’s a white
person, it’ll be a peach color. And from there I just make it a little darker,
color that shaded part in with the paint can, and then repeat that process with a darker
version of that color to make the shadows deeper. It’s very easy for me to kind of to zone
out when I do it, that’s why I say Paint is like meditation for me. I don’t really meditate, but it’s the
closest I come to meditating. People online, say on like Reddit or other
sites, they always say ‘Oh you can do this in Paint, you can work in Photoshop.’” What they don’t understand is I really enjoy
Paint and I’ve never enjoyed those other programs. That’s like my favorite time. Nothing’s bothering me, I’m not thinking
about the outside world, it’s a very enjoyable time. Thank you so much to Pat Hines for creating
this work of art for us. We’ve got more information about his work
down in the description. We also have two seven and a half hour videos
of an MS Paint masterpiece being made — the one that you just saw. So if you want to watch it in real time, make
some extra popcorn and enjoy. This thing keeps happening every single time
I listen to one of my favorite songs of the last 5 or so years. I hear this weird but familiar drum sound
that just cuts right through the track. I love it. Here it is one more time. That punchy, unnatural drum was the sound
of the 80s and it’s back. It's called gated reverb, and like many of
the greatest inventions, it was discovered by accident. In the 1970s, drums on the radio sounded a
lot like this Host: They're quite dry aren't they? They're just as recorded. To achieve that isolated clean sound, producers
and engineers mic’d the drums all over, including the inside. This was the sound of bands like Pink Floyd,
Earth Wind and Fire, and Genesis. At least up until 1979. That’s when Peter Gabriel was recording
his third solo album. His Genesis bandmate, Phil Collins, was on
the drums playing a simple beat. And here's where something magical happened. So, according to their engineer Hugh Padgham,
their engineer, they had a brand new recording console with some cool features that included
a mic hanging in the studio to talk to the band. That mic accidentally picked up Phil’s drum
and the result was a thick punchy reverb that disappeared in an instant. The reason? The mic had a heavy compressor on it. Which reduces the volume of loud sounds and
amplifies quiet ones - it sort of crunches a waveform. And the console had a noise gate which only
lets amplitudes above a certain threshold pass through and then it immediately shuts
off. The result was such a crazy sound that Peter
Gabriel wrote his album opener, “Intruder”, around it. Now, if you don’t know “Intruder” you’ll
certainly recognize this - made by Phil Collins and Hugh Padgham a year later. "I can feel it coming in the air tonight,
oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord" Thanks to a happy accident, the sound of the 80s was born. "I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord" The drums on “In the Air Tonight” were
recorded in Townhouse’s legendary Stone Room - its reverb came from the walls of the
studio. It was meant to sound like a castle. But not everyone who wanted good reverb had
access to that type of space. In the '80s, once the digital technology came
to the fore not only was the sound of our music changing, but the things that augment
our sounds were changing also. Nothing illustrates this more than the evolution
of reverb. Reverb was achieved in the early days the
most natural way of all, which is to have an echo chamber. You would set up in one corner of the room
a big loudspeaker and in the other corner of the room, you'd set up a microphone. Here’s an echo chamber at Abbey Road Studios. Echo chambers took up real estate and real
estate was expensive so plate reverb was invented. There'd be a big box with an aluminum plate
in it, and the voice would go in one side, travel
along the aluminum plate, and come out the other side with a little bit of reverberation
on it. Plate reverb boxes were 600 pounds or more. Not great for portability. Enter the AMS RMX16, a shoebox sized unit
that created reverb via circuit boards and algorithms. Right there, in a box, we had plate reverbs
and underground garages and big concert halls and small and large echo chambers, and music
clubs. The AMS which debuted in 1982 was the first
reverb unit to be driven by a microprocessor and it had room for 99 presets including a
few that that created that unnatural gated sound with a push of a button. I think a big example was the work that I
did with Prince in the 80s. He loved that gated reverb. Uh, yes, that Prince. Prince used an Linn-LM1 drum machine that
sampled real drum sounds. Susan fed that Linn-LM1 to the AMS reverb
box and used a preset called “nonlinear.” Nonlinear reverb just can’t be replicated
in the real world without technology. Reverb in a natural setting tends to fade
as the audio signal decays. Nonlinear reverb actually gets louder. It makes a drum sound like a whip. Picture it like a tidal wave, a huge wave
suddenly stopping and hitting a brick wall. That's the sound of gated reverb. That was the classic, quintessential example. That was the big one, that was the fat one. "You don't have to be beautiful to turn me
on" A year after “In the Air Tonight,” those
huge drums were no longer an accident, the sound was built into reverb technology. Then for a decade, gated reverb was a sound
you just couldn’t escape on the radio. "It's in the trees! It's coming! When I was a child running in the night" - drum fill - "Oh, let it rock, let it roll" We really kind of used it to death, and by
the next album, by Sign of the Times, I was pretty sick of it. It seemed everybody else was too. When the 90s rolled around musicians favored
those dry drums again. But here’s the thing. After a about 20 year hiatus, It’s back. "Hey! When I needed!" Here’s Ariel Rechtshaid on Song Exploder
he produced Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest album. That drum fill is something that I always
just had in my head. They were inspired by Jack & Diane by John
Cougar Mellencamp. - Drum fill - "I'm in love and you've got me, runaway" Jack Antonoff of Bleachers was born the year
Prince released Purple Rain and here he is in his studio playing that Linn-LM1 drum machine. He produced Lorde’s latest album which has
gated drums. "In your car the radio up. In your car the radio up" And Taylor Swift’s aptly titled 1989. "It's 2am in your car" The 
thing is, producers today don’t need Prince’s drum machine or a physical rack of reverb
units to get that 80s sound. You can go online and download massive Prince
and Phil Collins inspired gated reverb drum sample packs. And that AMS RMX 16? It’s now a computer plug in. Sure, gated reverb drums aren't a timeless
sound. They bring you back to the 80s, but that doesn't
mean they don't sound cool. This episode of Earworm is brought to you
by audible.com If you go to audible.com there are so many
amazing books about music. But there's one that I defintely want to recommend
and that's Listen to This by Alex Ross. Alex Ross is a long time music critic at the
New Yorker and he's written some of my favorite books about music. If you want to understand music more or appreciate
it better, Listen to This definitely has you covered. If you go to audible.com/Vox you can sign
up for a free 30 day trial and download Listen to This for free. And if you choose not to keep the service,
you can still keep the book. On other thing is I made a spotify playlist
for you. The link is in the description. It's called An Ode to Gated Reverb and it
has some of my favorite songs with gated reverb from the 1980s and today. We begin with deadly chaos on the streets
of Charlottesville, Virginia. Brutal eruption of violence sparked by white
nationalists. You had many people in that group other than
neo-Nazis and white nationalists. And the press has treated them absolutely
unfairly. You had a lot of people in that group that
were there to innocently protest. Protesting very quietly. Jews will not replace us! Very fine people, on both sides. Graphic images like this, showing 20-year-old
Deandre Harris being beaten with sticks, going viral. There was a group on this side, you can call
them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. The driver, charged with murder, accused,
of plowing his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators. I think there’s blame on both sides and
I have no doubt about it. It’s hard to overstate the significance
of Trump’s response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. White supremacists are celebrating. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald
Trump. And Republicans are once again scrambling
to distance themselves from the president. But what stuck out to me the most is how news
networks have covered Trump’s comments. In the last Strikethrough episode, I talked
about “normalcy bias,” and how political journalists seem to be unphased by the subjects
they cover. But that hasn’t been true this week. A lot of reporters and commentators seem genuinely
stunned by Trump’s comments. Folks, what I just saw gave me the wrong kind
of chills. Honestly, I’m a bit shaken from what I just
heard. I think we saw the president’s true colors
today and I’m not sure they were red, white, and blue. He’s now given safe harbor to Nazis, to
white supremacists. He’s a disgrace. The president of the United States revealed
so clearly who and what he really is. The president of the United States traded
away the moral authority of the office and lent support to those who would destroy the
values of this country. It’s awful. That kind of reaction is unusual. I don’t know what to say tonight. I usually have something clever, something
smart. I’m just hurt. And I think a lot of people are hurt tonight. And it’s got me thinking of a unique question
about journalism in the Trump era: How should news networks treat a president who is profoundly
immoral? I know even asking that question will make
a lot of people shut down. There’s this expectation that journalists
should stay neutral when covering the president, even if they strongly disagree with him. But Charlottesville is different. What Trump is doing here is not the same as
personal drama or a political scandal or even a massive policy failure. He’s challenging our most basic notions
of right and wrong. He’s suggesting that neo-Nazis are on the
same moral footing as people who protest racism. He’s saying that many attendees at a white
supremacist rally are “very fine people.” After Trump’s Tuesday press conference,
many commentators argued that he had lost the moral authority of the presidency. This president seems to have completely abdicated
the moral authority that should go with the office of president. But even that feels inadequate. What he’s doing is actively using that authority
to play defense for a hateful ideology, an ideology that’s responsible for some of
the biggest human rights atrocities in history. I don’t know how you keep covering Trump
the same way you’d cover any other president. How do you go back to talking about politics
as usual? Keep airing White House press conferences
about infrastructure or tax reform? Keep inviting White House surrogates to defend
Trump during panel debates? How do you talk about Republicans, about Paul
Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who so far have done nothing to punish Trump for his behavior,
without describing them as enablers of white supremacy? I’m not asking those questions in the cute
Voxy way where I’m going to tell you the answer. I genuinely don’t know. We have truly entered into uncharted territory. But here’s what I do know: The reason we pay so much attention to the
news is because it’s how we tell stories about what’s happening, who we are, and
what we stand for. It’s not only immoral, it’s unpatriotic,
it’s un-American. The stories we hear in the news help shape
our understanding of right and wrong, good and evil. I can’t believe people get up here on CNN
and on other networks and defend, actually try to defend, what Donald Trump said yesterday. There is no defense for what he said yesterday. What he said yesterday was disgusting. But if news networks go back to normal after
this, if they end up treating Charlottesville as just another Trump misstep, our story about
what happens when an American politician dabbles in white supremacy will change. Our norm about what’s allowed, what’s
tolerable from a sitting president will change. Trump’s response to Charlottesville tells
us a lot about who he is as a person. How news networks adjust from here on out
will tell us a lot about who we are as a country. These things are very hard to put words to. 
Can I just say? There are insufficient superlatives
 in the English language. No matter what I do, no matter how much I describe it, 
no matter how many videos you watch, they all fall short of
being able to witness this for yourself. But you can always tell
when someone's seen a total eclipse because when you ask them
if they've have seen a total eclipse and they say, "Oh, I think so," 
they haven’t seen a total eclipse. Because you just never forget. 
You never forget that feeling. [Eclipse chasers travel the world
to witness total solar eclipses.] [We spoke to nine of them about their obsession.] My suggestion to anyone
who is seeing this for the first time is: Don't try to photograph it. Please don't. I can just envision people
watching the eclipse through their iphone. You don't want to do that. You want to take it
and look at It with your own two eyes. If you're nearby, and you hear that,
oh, it's going to be a 99% partial. I'll see an almost total solar eclipse. There is no such thing as an almost total solar eclipse. They are completely different phenomenon. It's like getting five out of six numbers 
right on the Jackpot. If you got five out of six, you were close. But you lost. We've only been clouded out once. Knock on Wood! 
Oh, my gosh. I shouldn't even mention it. In 1977, which was north of Bogota, Colombia, nice blue skies, one little puffy 
cumulus cloud came out of nowhere. It's obscured the sun for a couple of minutes,
 and it was a long couple of minutes. And then, you've got the ones that are like in 1999.
It was raining during the partial phases. And just before totality, a blue hole appeared in the sky and slowly crawled over the sun. One friend of mine described it as the miracle eclipse. It's Black... Black, Black, Black
 like the blackest hole you can ever imagine, ringed with these beautiful
wispy white coronal streamers. Bright stars and planets are visible in daytime sky. And you see the colors of sunset in every direction
 you look around the horizon. It's not like night, it's not like day, it's not like twilight. It's like nothing you've ever felt before. Can you imagine
how a primitive ancestors would have felt? Suddenly our world completely changing, and then them not knowing that the sun was going to come back. How Frightening? In our everyday lives, we look up to the sky and what we see mostly is this two-dimensional dome. And stars and planets and the moon 
seemed to creep across that. When I saw a total eclipse of the sun, it catapulted me into a three-dimensional universe. You experience the music of the spheres, as Kepler called them, 
the mechanics of the solar system, in action. Insignificance is not a word I would use. Actually, I feel very special, and all people should feel special that we're alive and intelligent and conscious, and that we're able to be aware of our cosmos. I realized that of course the solar system
is creating that total eclipse. But it's also the solar system looking back at It. It makes you feel a part of the earth.
It makes you feel a part of the cosmos. It makes you feel a part of every single person 
you're standing there with. Just for a brief time, we're not separate.
 We're all the same. It gives you life insights that you normally get only at times when you experience a loss. How life stands still. You have to take life day by day. You understand that all the things
 that we worry about are really irrelevant. And life is precious. It's fleeting. And it's about the moments you have,
and the people that you share it with. One of my latest books is
The 21st Century Canon of Eclipses. So it's got maps for every eclipse
 now through the end of the century. And you're flipping page to page to page. And the years are turning, just like Rod Taylor in The Time Machine. But you're not in the time machine. 
You're getting older and older. And at some point, I'm not going
to make one of those eclipses. I've already told my daughter where she needs to go to watch the 2079 eclipse on May 1, 2079. So I don't expect to make it, but I hope she can. The ability to predict this is magical. We all say, "We don't know what's going to happen in the future." This, assuredly, we can predict. And I knew it as young as 38 years ago, and it was way in the future. So that's it. The last solar eclipse to be seen on this continent in this century. And as I said, not until August 21, 2017, will another eclipse be visible from North America. That's 38 years from now. May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace. ABC news of course we'll bring you a complete report on that next eclipse 38 years from now. You walk around this community and you notice
these weird looking satellite dish things. This thing that looks like a satellite is
actually an ingenious method to cook food using the sun. I'm not talking about solar energy, which
converts the sun into electricity and stores it in a battery. This is much more direct, much more ingenious. She was making food, and then the rain started
coming, and she couldn't make food anymore. She was going to boil some banana. One of the big problems facing Haiti is deforestation,
basically people use charcoal. They burn it in order to make their food. 98% of the forests in Haiti have been cut
down. There's no forests left, and you can see it
when you're going around. On our way up here, we drove through some
of the most beautiful hills I've ever seen in my life, and a lot of them were just totally
bald because they'd been deforested. The weekend of August 12, a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia descended into violence. On Friday night, white nationalists attacked counter-protesters. And on Saturday, a woman named Heather Heyer was killed when a man purposely drove his car into a group of counter-protesters. In response, President Trump blamed both sides. "We condemn in the strongest possible
terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." He didn’t call out the white supremacists by name. He didn’t acknowledge that they were the ones who had initiated the violence or engaged in the lethal violence that killed Heather Heyer. Instead of assuring people that these groups are dangerous and wrong, he actively misled people about what happened in Charlottesville. He implied the white nationalists and the
counter-protesters were equally to blame. That hate was a 50-50 split. "We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together." All of this stands in stark contrast to the rhetoric he uses when he talks about terrorists who are Muslim. "Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland. As they did on 9/11. As they did from Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino. An Islamic terrorist turned his truck into
an instrument of mass murder... Radical Islamic terrorists. And she won't even mention the word. We cannot let this evil continue. Trump doesn’t have a problem calling people out by name. The family of a dead US service member, the cast of Hamilton, Meryl Streep, Barack Obama, John McCain, just to name a few. But Trump’s vague and tepid response to the white supremacists in Charlottesville wasn’t just
annoying or misleading. White nationalists took it as a sign of tacit approval. A post on the white nationalist site The Daily Stormer praised Trump’s lack of condemnation, writing, accurately, that when asked to condemn, "he walked out of the room.” Trump did the same thing during the campaign. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you." "Yeah, get him out, try not to hurt him. If you do I'll defend you in court, don't worry about it." He refused to condemn violence at his campaign rallies. In fact, he offered to pay legal fees of people who beat up protestors. "Knock the crap out of them would you? Seriously, okay. Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees, I promise." "Do you believe that you’ve done anything to create a tone where this kind of violence would be encouraged?" "I hope not. I truly hope not. I will say this. We have 25, 30 thousand people, you’ve seen it yourself. People come with tremendous passion and love for their country." He refused to condemn supporters who beat up a Mexican man in Trump’s name, saying that his followers were very "passionate." He refused to condemn the self-described “alt-right,” an online movement that’s dealt increasingly in white nationalist rhetoric and tropes... "Heil Trump, heil our people, heil victory!" ...while claiming to be simply trolls and provocateurs. "The Trump guys, the alt-right, the Twitter kind of meme and troll brigade." Look. In the streets, it’s impossible to tell the difference between someone who’s giving a Nazi salute “ironically” and someone who’s doing it in earnest. And at a time when the people doing it in earnest are engaging in physical violence, those who claim they’re doing it “ironically” don’t appear to have any problem with the confusion or fear they might cause. The President isn't condemning them the way he condemns Islamist terrorists. It might seem as if he's not taking a side. But by doing that, he is taking a side. He's giving succor to the people who engaged in hate in Charlottesville over the weekend, and refusing comfort to those who live in fear of what that hate could mean for them. Imagine if the Earth and Moon were only 1.5 inches away from each other. In reality, it's over a quarter of
a million miles but that's the scale we used in order to visualize the ten billion miles that Voyager 2 has traveled. This month marks 40 years that the spacecraft has been traveling on its mission to reach the giant planets of our solar system, and maybe, just maybe, deliver this golden record, containing sounds and images of human life, to any extraterrestrials it might encounter. Since 1977, it's been traveling through space space at the rate of nearly 35,000 miles per hour. NASA even has a live tracker on their website that tells you just exactly how far it's gone. But 10,631,811,855 miles... is hard to wrap your head around. So we converted the actual distance to a human scale and headed to Governors Island to visualize just how far away that really is. We started by setting up our cameras 1.5 inches away from one another to represent the distance between the Earth and the moon. The real distance is 239,000 miles. At this scale, the Sun would be about 5.5 inches wide: around the size of a grapefruit and Voyager 2 would be way too tiny to see: around the size of one nanometer. Once we had our cameras set up, I started walking backwards pretending to be Voyager 2 and Tian stayed behind as planet Earth. Within a year, the spacecraft was as far away as Mars. A planet that averages a distance of 50 million miles from Earth. By 1979, Voyager 2 reached Jupiter. Next, it passed by Saturn in 1981 and took this photo of the planet five years Five years later, it was the first spacecraft to visit Uranus and then it moved onto Neptune, which it passed in 1989, the last planet on its journey Since then, Voyager 2 has been been traveling a course to reach interstellar space and it didn't pass Pluto along the way, and Pluto might not even be a planet anymore, but here's the distance on this scale, just in case you're wondering. At this point, Voyager 2 wasn't even halfway to its current location. So I had to do some traveling. Clearly I wasn't able to follow the path of the Voyager 2. In fact, I had to take a ferry to get back to Manhattan. But after a boat ride, and over a mile of walking, I reached a point that represents just how far away Voyager 2 really is. But it's continuing every second. Currently, Voyager 2 is traveling towards Ross 248: a star that it will be 9.7 trillion miles close to in about 40,000 years. Next, it will pass within 30 trillion miles of Sirius: the brightest star in the sky that is over 8 light-years away from Earth. Using my human scale, I would have to travel a distance equal to the whole length of Africa to get to Sirius. In real life, Voyager 2 will reach the star in about 296,000 years. Voyager 2 is only the second farthest human-made object from Earth. Voyager 1 is even farther and has already reached interstellar space. Like Voyager 2, it's also carrying "The Golden Record" and if you want to see the photos NASA chose to show aliens, make sure to check out this video here. If you’ve walked or driven around Washington,
DC, you’ve probably noticed these things. Cast-iron boxes installed on street corners
all over the city, sometimes with art or a little neighborhood history inside. They’re clearly pretty old and not being
used for their original purpose anymore. But what are they? And why are they everywhere? It turns out these cast-iron fixtures were
vital for rapid communication in cities like Washington before the telephone was invented. and they're really old. Some of the original fire boxes, like this
one in DC’s Cleveland Park, even date back to the 1860s. You can tell the original ones by their harp
shape. By 1890, the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph
Co. had installed call box systems in 500 American cities. This map from 1891 shows where they were installed
throughout DC. The red dots are fire boxes, and the blue
dots are police boxes. If you saw a fire in your own house or on
the block, you could run down to the corner and pull the fire alarm key. A huge network of underground cables connected
every box in the city to the central alarm center. There is a fire alarm box on every block of
the great city. The number that the box would tap out matched
a location on a giant map, so the fire department was able to pretty quickly figure out where
to send fire engines. It could be nothing serious. It could be a false alarm. The police boxes worked a bit differently
than the fire boxes. They came a little later and had an oval shape. Like the fire boxes, the police boxes had
numbers corresponding to their location. And police stations expected to hear from
their officers on patrol from a different box at scheduled times. Officers would check in and say all is well,
or they could use the box to call for backup or receive updated orders for their patrol
area. Using the call box system, the Metropolitan
Police Department was able to keep track of their officers throughout the city before
the invention of two-way radio. Technology eventually caught up, though. More people got phones in their homes, and
the 911 system was invented in the 1970s to link the fire and police departments. The boxes slowly lost their purpose. But they’re not totally obsolete just yet. In cities like San Francisco and Boston, for
example, you can still reach the fire department through telegraph. In situations like earthquakes and floods
when power and cellphone services are knocked out, these boxes are still reliably connected
to emergency services. Here in DC, the call boxes were abandoned
in the late ’70s. And they were just kind of … left in place
because it was cheaper and easier just to leave them in place. And then people just kind of forgot about
them. They took off the boxes themselves that had
the little telephone in it. So it just kind of looked like a little blank
piece of Victoriana street furniture that ... a lot of people had no idea what that
was. But that changed in 2000 when members of the
nonprofit Cultural Tourism DC founded a project called “Art on Call.” They gave city officials a cheaper and more
creative way to deal with the iron relics: turn them into art. The city liked the idea, and even helped out
by stripping the lead paint and priming over 700 boxes before handing them over to the
neighborhoods. The idea was not to just refurbish the boxes,
but for neighborhoods to come together and decide on what they wanted their call boxes
to look like. These call boxes have watched over the same
street corners for more than 100 years. And even though they’re not saving lives
anymore, they continue to serve their communities as carriers of culture and local history. This is Washington, DC’s Streetcar. It runs through 2.2 miles of mixed traffic
in the United States capitol. And it was once part of an ambitious 37 mile
streetcar network for the city. But those plans have changed drastically. The project was delivered 7 years past its
deadline and tens of million dollars over budget. The idea was to increase mobility for residents
while revitalizing an economically depressed area of the city... But it's had trouble along the way..... Similar problems sprung up in Atlanta and
Salt Lake City too. Still, there’s a massive resurgence of streetcars
underway. Since 2001, about a dozen streetcar systems
have cropped up across the country. But why do so many cities want streetcars? The general goal is based on the idea that
if we build more densely around our transit stations, then we’ll convince more people
to walk around, bike around, and take transit to get work to get to school and other destinations. Streetcars are also touted for their ability
to add a certain... je ne sais quoi to a neighborhood. You know, every city in the country even around
the world wants to have some type of train going through their city because they see
it as a positive, modern looking and modern feeling public transportation system. The case for building streetcars has historical
precedent. They’ve been around since the 19th century,
when they were first horse-driven. Later, in the 20th century, the electrical
versions became really popular in cities. Their popularity started to fade when cities
turned their focus to building infrastructure for buses and cars. But in the last decade or so, streetcars have
made a comeback. There's been a lot of excitement and enthusiasm
about urban living and some of that comes with excitement about mass transportation. But big, sort of traditional heavy rail subway
projects are very, very expensive. So cities look for something cheaper that
they can do and a lot of them have come up with streetcars. The Portland Streetcar was one of the first
in the new wave and has led the way for other cities. Its success is often cited in proposals to
exemplify the benefits of a modern transit system. But all streetcar proposals are not created
equal. Some have seen roaring success... While others, like in Atlanta and D.C see
a ton of criticism The problem is that having gone for mass transit
on the cheap you get transit that isn't very useful for transportation. It looks nice — you have this cool shiny
new train — but if you're running in mixed traffic you're gonna go as slow, or often
times slower than a traditional bus. Aside from the slow pace, limited connectivity
has kept commuters away in DC. I’ve been living here for 37 years and I
like the streetcar. It’s convenient, the only thing I don’t
like about the streetcar is that it doesn’t go far enough. I wouldn’t use the streetcar over the bus
because the bus takes me straight to my job. Right in front of my job. The streetcar doesn’t go over the hill,
which I didn’t think made sense, but... So if they're not improving the commute, why
is there a push for more streetcars? From my perspective they are almost entirely
designed to support economic development and not increase mobility. In Portland, for instance, planners actively
sought development adjacent to the streetcar. Our narrative was pretty development focused
early on, to the point where people were saying the only the only reason you built the streetcar
was for development purposes. Now that we're carrying upwards of 16,000
passengers a day it's very much a mix. The system succeeded because Portland Streetcar
worked with developers to support their plan. You have to really look at the development
side of things. Having the rail on the ground is significantly
important for them. To see the commitment from the city for them
to make catalytic investments is is important. Right? We're asking these developers to build something
that they may not build anyway, but for the rail investment. There's a little bit of quid pro quo there. That kind of focus on economic development
is at the heart of other projects too. The Brooklyn-Queens Connector, or BQX, a state-of-the-art
streetcar that will run from Astoria to Sunset Park, and has the potential to generate over
$25 billion of economic activity for our city over 30 years. Projections aside, the Brooklyn Queens connector
has already proven to be a contentious issue. I think one clear reason why the project has
been advanced is, is similar to the streetcar projects being discussed around the country
which is that there is an economic development goal in the brooklyn and queens waterfront
by some major investors who want to improve transportation for basically the new towers
that are being constructed along the waterfront. The motivation behind development, and its
effects make for a messy debate. A year after its launch, D.C. is starting
to see the development that tends to follow transit. A string of luxury apartments, restaurants
and stores has fueled a real estate boom along H-street. There is evidence that suggests that government
expenditures of any sort that provide a public benefit will provide a sort of a stimulus
for development You know whether their parks, whether they’re
investments in neighborhood retail improvement, whether they're better sidewalks — but it doesn't have to be a streetcar. There are many ways to attract new investment
and the streetcar may not be the ideal one or even the right one. Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in
this situation. To see how I got here, we first have to talk
about islands. You may not realize it, but New York City
is full of them. Manhattan itself is technically just one 13.4-mile-long
island. You’ve also got Governors Island, Liberty Island, as well as Staten Island. But there’s one island in New York that
you may not know about, and no, it’s not the tiki bar Jade Island, which is fabulous by the way — do yourself
a favor and try the pu pu platter. It’s called U Thant Island. And it’s one island in New York that nobody
is allowed to visit. It sits in the East River, right below Roosevelt
Island near the UN headquarters, and for something so tiny has a pretty fascinating
history. In 1892, construction of an underground rail
passage began that was meant to connect Manhattan to Queens
via a tunnel under the river. Builders had to drill through the granite
under water, and that excavation produced excess landfill,
which accumulated and eventually produced a tiny mound of rocks, or as we in the biz call it, an island. The island was originally named Belmont Island,
after August Belmont Jr., the man who financed the construction project. The original tunnel is now used by the 7 Train. And as for the island, minus the occasional
tanker collision, up until recently has had a pretty uneventful existence. Then an organization called the Peace Meditation
at the United Nations, a Buddhist group that followed spiritual leader, prolific artist, and super-ripped dude Sri Chinmoy, leased
the island from the city in 1977. They rechristened it U Thant Island to honor
the third secretary general of the UN, a former Burmese diplomat named U Thant, who was a friend of Sri Chinmoy. They also did some light landscaping and erected
a 30-foot metal “oneness arch.” But they were only allowed to visit a few
times a year because of the heightened security around
its neighbor the United Nations. All remained peaceful on U Thant until 2004,
when New York City hosted the Republican National Convention. A filmmaker and artist named Duke Riley decided
to protest by rowing a boat out to U Thant in the middle of the night, unfurling a giant glow-in-the-dark flag from
the navigation tower that’s on there, and declaring it a sovereign nation, before being apprehended by the Coast Guard. So I called the New York Office of Land Management
and tried to schedule a visit. Hey, I wanted to call and see if it’s at
all possible to set up a time to go visit U Thant Island on the East River? Oh, it’s not. At all, like, for anybody? I did some checking, and he’s actually right
— nobody is allowed to visit U Thant Island. Turns out it’s now a protected sanctuary
for migrating birds, including a colony of double-crested cormorants
that nest in the “oneness arch.” So you can’t actually go on it, but I still
wanted to get as close as I could. Despite a total lack of experience and a quickly
approaching thunderstorm I jumped in a canoe and headed out onto the
lovely East River. We paddled through the water, passing Williamsburg
and Roosevelt Island, until we finally saw it in all its glorious, tiny
splendor. To most people, it may look like just a pile
of rocks in a filthy river. And ... I guess it sort of is. But there’s also something kind of wonderful
about it too. Being up close to it made me realize that
there’s something special about U Thant. Amidst the hustle and bustle and millions
of people, there’s this 125-year-old speck of land tucked away from— So I learned a thing or two about what not
to do when your canoe starts tipping over. And as it turns out, I sort of did make it
onto U Thant Island after all. Granted, it was in an effort to not drown
in the East River, but I think it technically still counts. I didn’t die, which was good, and I’m
glad I was actually able to see U Thant close up. But for now, I think I might just stick to
this island, which is a little bit more my speed. This is the only dispatch I'll ever do
without a shirt on, so don't get used to it. Right now if you go to big international
competitions you're not going to see any Haitian competitors. And these guys want
to change that. They want to make surfing a legitimate sport in Haiti. 2020 Tokyo Olympics when
surfing will become part of the games for the first time. They've been able to cobble
together money and donations to buy surfboards and start this little shop,
where they run these competitions and they train kids on how to surf. Taught me how to surf today. This has me thinking about roles sports plays in a society Surfing, which may seem trivial, to have your surfers in the Olympics or to have them
in international competition is a symbol of pride and national unity for a country. A lot of sociologists will actually argue
that sports play an important role in a country's development, just as health
institutions and education and things like that. I'm not a sports person,
but I can concede that sports actually do play a role in creating the sense of
shared identity. So we actually just stopped here for a
couple hours to hang out with the surfers and get some food, we're going to
continue the journey down the coast towards the border. Tonight I will be
sleeping on a boat so stay tuned for how that goes. This story is about one of my favorite songs by one of the most beloved bands in the entire world. It begins on September 29, 2008 at a Radiohead show. Thom Yorke, Radiohead’s frontman, is at the piano, and he's about to play a song called “Videotape.” ♪ Or, at least he's trying to. "Temporary loss of information." Thom Yorke, perhaps one of the most critically acclaimed musicians of his generation, can’t seem to play four quarter notes. "This tune called 'Videotape'  that we’ve got is just driving me crazy. Absolutely crazy. We kind of had an idea but we just couldn’t see it through." The reason for all this is that this song draws its power from a musical illusion. "Radiohead are purposefully hiding something in plain sight, or what you might say plain hearing." That's Warren Lain. He teaches his music students how to think just like Radiohead. "For him to struggle with that, it shows
that he's actually hearing something a lot more complex." The mystery is so deep that Warren made a 30 minute video trying to decipher it. "I was getting obsessed. I was getting totally obsessed with this thing." "Videotape" was officially released in 2007 but it wasn’t the first time fans had heard the song. They were actually workshopping it in 2006, most notably at Bonnaroo. And it sounds completely different. On fan forums, Reddit, and Youtube there’s an endless debate over which one is better. The Bonnaroo version is energetic and anthemic. ♪ The album version sounds like a funeral march. ♪ The two versions of the song couldn’t sound more different but they actually share a common musical DNA. And that DNA actually explains Thom’s messy start. You see, the piano in "Videotape" is actually syncopated. So to fully understand what’s going on here, you have to know how to count music. "The vast majority of contemporary music is written in 4/4 time. Which means there are 4 quarter notes in a measure. The down beat carries the most amount of stress and it anchors the rhythm of the song. You can subdivide the 4 quarter notes into eighth notes Those eighth notes can then be subdivided into sixteenth notes. Try clapping on beats 2 and 4. ♪ Seems easy, right? Syncopation happens when you accent those notes outside of the beat, on those “ands”. And that is exactly what Thom Yorke is doing with his piano to pull off this illusion. "The piano should happen on beat one, but it’s doesn’t." In Thom’s head, it’s shifted an eighth note ahead, on the “and” between 4 and 1, syncopating the entire rhythmic pulse of the song. Here’s how you should’ve clapped. ♪ "Have I already lost everybody and no one's watching this video anymore?" Probably, but let’s take a step back. Syncopation is the backbone of a lot of genres of music, to like afrobeat, funk, and jazz. It’s meant to make music sound loose and fun, and it’s really easy to spot in a song. ♪ "That's kind of the heart of why syncopation is so cool. Because it's interesting. It kind of breaks up what otherwise would be a more rhythmic monotony in a song." So, if syncopation is so common then why is it a challenge for him? And if it is syncopated, why does this rhythm sound so monotonous? ♪ In Douglas Fields’ book "Why We Snap," he points out this very conundrum. He says brain waves become phase shifted so that the peak of the brain waves always occur at a precise point relative to the next beat of a rhythm. In short, rhythmic sound synchronizes the
brain waves of groups of people. "So I'm going to do an impression, ok,
of what it sounds like to the audience members that don't know that 'Videotape' is in fact syncopated. So they hear the piano... ♪ their head goes one, two, three, four." Or they clap on the wrong beat. ♪ [audience clapping] ♪ Radiohead is not just fighting their musical instincts when they hear that piano, they’re fighting against their own brain waves. "As I went on and I looked deeper into this quagmire, I found out that Phil had trouble finding out where beat one was. And I'm like, 'Phil's the drummer, what do you mean you don't know where beat one was?' In piano that's like not knowing where middle C is. Here’s one reason why. Take a listen to this clip. ♪ That kick drum — an instrument usually reserved for establishing where the downbeat is — isn’t playing on the downbeat, it’s playing with the piano. "Hearing it as the end of 4 is, especially without anything hitting on the downbeat, that is complex. That requires a really strong sense of internal rhythm and the ability to kind of tune out something else that’s screaming at you, 'this is the downbeat' and you say, 'no that’s not the downbeat.'" That’s really the heart of it. Thom’s piano, with that kick drum, begins to take on the feeling of the beat. And what gets established is pure deception. "That is why Thom Yorke is struggling to play in the '93 Feet East version. "Right there, Johnny Greenwood is giving him a hi-hat on beats two and four. And so he'll try to play his piano not on
the hi-hat, but just after the hi-hat." ♪ "You're seeing a picture of a man who is using 100% of his mental energy to try and get something just right." Thom is playing his piano as if he's joining in with something that's actually already playing. And when you look for this, you can actually see it. You can hear a little metronome very faintly at the beginning and end of the song if you turn the volume up. ♪ "It's kind of like a train, and it's running, and you're like, I gotta catch this train, I gotta catch this train. And if you miss it, you miss it. And music can be very, very unforgiving like that. As fans are bobbing their heads and even clapping like this, ♪ The band is doing something totally different to actually find the beat. "Especially Colin Greenwood, the bass player. "He is playing this really simple thing and he's going like this. ♪ He's just doing one of these, and it's just like what, is he in a club right now? I don't know if this guy knows he's playing a slow song. If we simply superimposed a back beat in the right spot, you’ll hear that club song they’re dancing to. ♪ The appeal of syncopation is that you can hear it, you can dance to it, it serves as a rhythmic surprise in a song. And that’s probably why Radiohead fans love the Bonnaroo version so much. You can hear the syncopation. "There's this moment in the song where it just kind of turns from that subdued energy, and it just turns, and it becomes frenetic. And that moment I'm referring to is when Phil starts to play a simple back beat. ♪ And the only thing left for me to
acknowledge was, if it is syncopated, why the hell did they bury it? The only answer I could come up with is just because they really like it. Because they really, really like amusing themselves and challenging themselves. BBC Host: "Do you have a favorite song on the record?" Thom "Uh, 'Videotape.' I wanted to put it first, until someone pointed out that if we did that, everybody would turn it straight off." "You know how everybody thinks the song is kind of like" [claps] The band actually hears it more like: [claps] It's double the speed. In fact, it's 154.78 BPM. And don't ask me how long it took me to figure that out." It’s hard to overstate how bonkers the news
cycle is right now. Republicans are trying to ram through a train-wreck
health care bill without any hearings. This process is an embarrassment. This is nuclear-grade bonkers. The White House is threatening the attorney
general to derail the Russia investigation. So not only does he call Jeff Sessions beleaguered,
he says he is not doing his job. And Trump is actively asking if he’s allowed
to pardon himself if it turns out he committed a crime. Any one of those stories represents a fundamental
breakdown in political norms. But if you turn on CNN or your local news
channel right now, things will probably look kind of normal. Let’s discuss all this with our CNN political
commentators. When Jeff Sessions wakes up, what is he thinking
when he hears this? This is not your typical president. Even boring. The Senate is trying for a Hail Mary on this
health care bill. What is the latest? We expect the vote in an hour. Do we know if they have the votes? And that’s because our news media isn’t
great at conveying when our politicians have gone truly off the rails. If you look at some of the most well-respected
journalists on TV — Anderson Cooper, Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer
— they all kind of talk the same way. They’re unemotional, even-keeled, and unfazed
by the stories they’re covering. You could watch Wolf Blitzer on mute and not
know if he’s talking about the Kardashians or a nuclear missile launch. The norm in American media is that journalists
shouldn’t get flustered or outraged or even emotional about the political disputes they’re
covering. They should present the facts, let panelists
argue about it, and then move on. And in normal political disagreements, that’s
fine. But in the Trump era, it’s made political
journalism feel totally inadequate. Take the recent Senate health care vote. Republicans voted to consider a bill without
knowing what was in it. They tried to pass it in the dead of night
with no committee hearings. And the bill was so bad they made Paul Ryan
promise not to pass it, hoping they’d come up with something better before it was too
late. That’s a gross hijacking of the legislative
process. It’s gambling with the lives of millions
of people. Even conservative commentators called it “disgraceful.” But on CNN? Business as usual. What is the strategy on health care? What’s amazing, we still don’t know if
there are 50 Republican votes. Can the Republicans come up with something
that gets 50 votes? Can they? No freaking out. If the bill is as bad as Senate Republicans
say, then they don’t have to worry about House Republicans deciding to pass it. Don Lemon just doing his thing. I mean, when you say the “skinny” repeal,
makes it sound like a diet plan. They want to drop the weight of this bill. The same thing happened after Trump started
looking to get rid of Jeff Sessions and Robert Mueller, which would effectively trigger a
full-scale constitutional crisis. News outlets treated it like just personal
drama from the Trump White House. The escalating drama between President Trump
and the Justice Department. Another juicy scandal to let commentators
argue over. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Donald Trump is a bit of a bully. He is who he is. That’s the Popeye defense, “I am what
I am.” I am what I am: I’m a blunt-spoken New Yorker. This is Trump being Trump. This is what normalization actually looks
like. Journalists feel compelled to treat every
news story like the ones that came before it. Not official until, until the gavel pounds. And again, until this gavel comes down, it’s
not official. They just can’t admit that something abnormal
is happening. Think of those people who ignore hurricane
evacuation warnings. What do you mean you’re not leaving? Well, I’m hoping it’s not going to be
as serious as they’re saying. And it’s important to recognize this as
a form of bias. Call it “normalcy bias.” And that normalcy bias ends up making for
misleading news coverage. A huge part of the way that we process news
is by nonverbal cues, how a story is framed and delivered and compares
to every other news story. So when Anderson Cooper is laughing during
a segment about Trump derailing Mueller’s investigation, audiences perceive that it’s
not a big deal. That this is normal. When a segment about Trump pardoning himself
looks and sounds like every other segment, it’s easy to assume that everything is fine. When TV anchors are just casually updating
you on the status of the health care vote, they’re not conveying how dangerous what
happened is. Certainly some drama as this thing comes down
to the wire. It’s not like everyone’s pretending everything
is fine. You know, we get tired of saying, “It’s
shocking, it’s unusual, it’s not normal,” but it’s shocking, it’s unusual, it’s
not normal. But this shouldn’t be the job of commentators
or guests dropped into otherwise normal-looking segments. One of the central responsibilities of journalism
is to tell us when something really abnormal is happening. It’s why Shep Smith goes viral any time
he gets frustrated. Why is it lie after lie after lie? If you clean, come on clean. It’s why Anderson Cooper’s best moment
was when he got emotional covering Katrina. There are people who want answers, and there
are people who want someone to stand up and say, “You know what, we should’ve done
more.” Some stories are too important, too dangerous
to be treated like everyday political disputes. But until news networks adapt their behavior
for this administration, it’s worth remembering that our politics are a lot scarier than what
they look like on TV. The terrorist group ISIS is losing. At the
end of 2014 they claimed a territory the size of Great Britain and a population
of 11 million people. But today it's lost about 60% of that and its population is
down to about two and a half million. It's the result of fighting its enemies
on all sides. To the west and north, ISIS is fighting armed rebel groups and the Russian-backed Syrian military and it's allies. It's also fighting Turkish troops and US-backed Kurdish forces in the north. And to the east and south, there's the US backed Iraqi army. It was this Iraqi army that delivered the latest blow when
they took over Isis's biggest city Mosul. The group's capital in Iraq. It was a
symbolic loss. Mosul is where the group declared a Caliphate, or Islamic
territory, in 2014. This set them apart from other terrorist organizations. They
weren't just a network of jihadists strung out across several countries like
Al Qaeda. They governed actual territory which they called the Islamic state. Now
with the loss of Mosul, the fall of this ISIS Caliphate seems imminent. So what
happens when Isis is gone? Problem number one is that these fighters are going to want to go home. So in 2014 when ISIS captured a huge swath of territory
in Iraq and Syria, tens of thousands of foreign fighters came from all over the
world to join the caliphate. According to UN estimates as of July
2016 there are upwards of 30,000 foreign fighters. So most of these fighters came
from countries like Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, but hundreds also
came from countries like Belgium, Germany, the UK, and even a few dozen from the
United States. So these fighters were drawn to ISIS for all sorts of different
reasons, but a big one was that it had actual territory and was supposed to be
building a Caliphate based on its own extreme interpretation of Islamic law.
ISIS propaganda pushed this narrative in flashy violent videos and magazines
online encouraging people from all walks of life, not just fighters, to come and
help build this glorious Islamic state. And the people who came were not just
young men, they weren't just fighters, there were women children and even
families who came as well. But now as ISIS territory shrinks and the state
that they tried to build collapses, anyone who survives will have to find
somewhere else to go... and that's a major problem because many of these people are
now indoctrinated, there now well-connected and they're capable of
carrying out deadly terror attacks. A similar dynamic actually happened back in the 1980s in Afghanistan. So thousands of foreign fighters flocked to
Afghanistan to help the Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviet invasion.
After the Soviets left a lot of these fighters dispersed to various different
theaters of jihad including Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere.
These fighters ended up forming a loose network of transnational jihadists, most
of whom had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda,
thanks to their time fighting in Afghanistan. And some of them actually
went on to carry out attacks against the West, including attacks against the
United States. So the worry now is that ISIS fighters will do something similar
but this time they might actually make it home to places like Europe and launch
attacks there. So the second problem is what to do with the US military after
ISIS falls. Right now the US is helping local forces in Iraq and Syria
to defeat ISIS. There are currently around 1,000 US troops in Syria and
around 6,000 US troops in Iraq. Mosul which was ISIS's capital in Iraq has
fallen and right now the US is helping Syrian local forces to defeat ISIS in
Raqqa its so-called capital there. So as those two cities fall ISIS has been
spreading out to rural areas. The Trump administration had two choices. Option
one is to keep the US troops there which would lead them in harm's way. Or option
two is to bring them home, which increases the risk that the region
breaks out into war again. Option 1 is a big political risk for Trump. He promised
during the campaign that he would not get involved in foreign wars that he
would actually invest American money and time and jobs and research in the United
States. And so if Trump were to keep troops in the region it would be
admitting that he's going against the political philosophy he espoused during
the campaign and currently during his presidency. Option two is definitely also
a risk for Trump if US troops were to leave that opens a space for sectarian
violence to break out in the region. Let's take a look for example at what
happened in 2011 the Obama administration took most of its troops
out of the region that gave the Shiite government in Baghdad the space to crack down on Sunni population throughout the country and ISIS took advantage of that.
ISIS was seen as the defender against the Shiite government and was able to
gain support and allow for its rise. So while it doesn't necessarily mean
that it's troops leave an ISIS type group or ISIS 2.0 itself would grow out of
that absence of US troops but that risk certainly exists. A deadly California
shooting rampage. A lone gunman to pledge allegiance to ISIS. Both incidents
carried out by so-called lone wolves Problem number three is ISIS moving from a place to an idea. Up until now ISIS had one goal: defend the territory it already
had in Iraq and the territory already had in Syria. The problem is on the verge
of losing both. When that happens ISIS goes from being the kind of place
people go to fight to being the idea that people fight for.
It's an idea that's compelling it's an idea that its followers are willing to
kill for and as followers are willing to die for. When they first came to power
people thought it's a group that has its own territory, it wants to control that
territory, but it's not al-Qaeda, it's not a terror group that wants to carry out
attacks outside of its borders in the West. That was proven tragically wrong in
October of 2015.. "this is the bomb ISIS claims they use to bring down the
Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula." In their online magazine they
posted photos of the bomb that they said had been used to blow up the plane. And
that was a reminder for was about to come. A wave of ISIS attacks that have
killed hundreds of people in London, in Paris, and in Nice. And have inspired
attacks that have killed dozens here at home in California and in Orlando. It's
worth remembering that these are not always attacks carried out by people who
are part of ISIS. In many cases these are people who are radicalized in the
countries where they lived and that's the danger of the idea. Take what
happened in San Bernardino, California where a married couple killed 14 people.
Or in Orlando where a single shooter killed 49 people. In both cases ISIS
claimed responsibility but in both cases there is no connection between those
people and Isis. They got radicalized over the Internet
Isis has known that propaganda matters and ISIS is really good at it. It has
people all over the world who use English language Arabic language to have
Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that are full of incredibly slickly produced
videos. They're really compelling and if you're someone predisposed to have that
worldview, they can push you over the edge from just thinking that's an idea
worth killing for, to actually killing for it. ISIS takes it
so seriously that it refers to these people as media
operatives and says those media operatives are carrying out a form of
martyrdom akin to killing, to literally killing for the cause. And at the end of
the day that's the hardest thing about ISIS. It can be beaten
on the ground in Iraq and Syria. It is being beaten on the ground in Iraq and
Syria, but it's going from being a place to an idea. And it is impossible,
impossible to defeat an idea. "I was about 11 years old." The United States has the most complex health care system in the world. It's our country's immune system, and, like any immune system, it's not perfect. "My immune system doesn't know that my small intestine is a thing it should not attack." That's Matthew. He lives in Massachusetts, and he has Crohn's disease. "Stabbing abdominal pain at like two o'clock in the morning. I had imaging done, CT scan, incredibly expensive IV antibiotic therapy. The worst experience of my life. I cannot imagine the stress that going through that experience and not having health insurance would have caused." Matthew is one of the 70 million Americans — one in five — who gets his health care paid for by Medicaid. "Without Medicaid, without access to really good medical care, I wouldn't be alive. Medicaid paid for all of those things." But the thing about Matthew is, if he lived in a different state, he might not have Medicaid. This state-by-state inequality is baked into the Medicaid system, and the American health system at large. We hear all the time that But that's an average. There are many states that have great outcomes. States where life expectancy, infant mortality, and preventable hospital admissions look like European countries. But not every state. If you look at the states below the US average, those with the lowest life expectancies, the highest infant mortality rates, and the most preventable hospital admissions, they all have something in common. A sizable portion of their population doesn't have health insurance. Regardless of what you see on TV, the most lifesaving medical care in this country isn't sexy. It's the regular medical care you get when you have good, affordable insurance that saves more lives. Most countries around the world improved their citizens' collective immune system with a universal health program. But America has always been a bit different. "The right to adequate medical care, and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." FDR's New Deal to help the US beat the Great Depression in the early 1930s focused way more on unemployment and Social Security than on health care. And there was a reason for that. The American Medical Association, the largest trade group for doctors, lobbied hard against any form of national health insurance whenever FDR proposed it. So he and his administration let it go. And when they did, private insurance companies stepped in. "Private insurance really grew rapidly through the Second World War, because there were federal wage freezes, and there was a labor shortage." "...to fight this war, ten million more people must go to work by the end of 1943..." "So you're an employer, and you're having a hard time hiring people and you're not allowed to offer more money, so what you do is you sweeten the benefit package. But in other countries, like Great Britain, private, employer-based insurance didn't really develop. And before it could, the government began offering health care to its citizens through the National Health Service, or NHS. “This new health service will be organized on a national scale, and so everyone will pay for it, and everyone will benefit from it. When you're ill, you won't have to pay for treatment." But not every European country created a single payer system like Britain’s. As in the US, private insurance companies
cropped up in Germany and France, but unlike the US, those countries regulated these companies closely. They had to operate as nonprofits, they had
to cover everyone, and they couldn’t refuse to pay for something. American doctors and insurance companies didn't want to see this type of system limiting their profits. "The percentage of Americans who had private health coverage just ballooned from about 1938 to 1950. And that's when doctors started to get rich. The physician community which was very very tight, it had very good organization, just put their foot down and said 'No.' 'Never, never, never.' President Harry Truman took up the cause again in 1948. “I have repeatedly asked the Congress to pass a health program." But the American Medical Association spent millions on PR and lobbying, and Truman’s plan went nowhere. In 1961, President Kennedy proposed Medicare, a plan to cover hospital bills for Americans 65 and older and the AMA hired Ronald Reagan, back when he was an actor, to record this ad. “the doctor begins to lose freedoms, and from here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism..." Then, in, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson won the Presidency by a huge margin. “This administration, today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” As part of this War on Poverty, Johnson pushed Kennedy’s Medicare program through Congress. And tucked into that bill was a small provision hardly anybody noticed. It called for the federal government to give
aid to states to help cover medical costs for the poor. And that was the beginning of what we know today as Medicaid. It’s gone through a number of changes throughout the years, but at it’s most basic level, Medicaid is a health insurance plan for lower-income and disabled adults, and children. "Many of them are children, almost half in some states, more, and some of them are adults who cannot afford private health insurance for a variety of reasons. Unlike the Medicare system, which covers all Americans 65 and older, states can decide who gets coverage and what gets covered in their version of Medicaid. There are a few groups of people the federal government says states have to cover: children and pregnant women in families below a certain income, plus some seniors and people with disabilities. But for anybody else, states get to decide who qualifies. In California, a single person who makes $10,000 a year qualifies for Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. When they go to the doctor, they show their
Medi-Cal card, and pay a $4 co-pay. If they need a prescription, they pay $4. The doctor sends the bill to Medi-Cal. The State of California pays half, and the Federal government pays the other half. That split varies by state. The federal government would pay a higher
share for the same doctor’s visit in Alabama. Because federal payments are calculated based on the state’s per-capita income But that same person making $10,000 a year, won’t qualify for the Texas version of Medicaid. In fact, if you’re a non-disabled adult with no children, it’s impossible to qualify for Medicaid in Texas. States also get to decide what services get covered by their version of Medicaid. "Whether you get dental coverage, vision coverage, podiatry, physical therapy. Even hospice, end-of-life care. You may not be able to get a hearing aid, you may not be able to get glasses. There are a lot of services that are highly dependent on what state you live in." One of the goals of the Affordable Care Act was to limit some of this state-to-state variability by making Medicaid available to everyone below a certain income threshold, no matter where they lived. But the Supreme Court struck down that part of the law. "The court is leaving open to the states to come back and opt in to the Medicaid expansion at their discretion." "31 states and the District of Columbia made Medicaid available to anyone in their state who made less than about $17,000 a year. In exchange, the federal government reimbursed those states for the added cost of covering more people. Some governors in states that didn’t expand Medicaid said they were worried about long-term costs. "We can’t afford it. The state of Alabama will have to pay 700 million dollars through our general fund that we really cannot afford." "This is not free money. Every dollar we don't spend on Medicaid is another dollar we don't have to borrow from China." Although the federal government was paying 100 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid at first, by 2020 that share will drop to 90 percent. The Medicaid expansion was paid for by a tax increase, one that only affected the top five percent of income earners. But it is true that Medicaid costs are rising. They made up 10 percent of federal and state budgets 30 years ago, and today that share is more than 25 percent. Part of that increase is a reflection of the rising cost of health care as a whole. Health care spending went from about 9 percent of GDP in 1980 to 17 percent in 2013. Although it's worth pointing out that increase was much smaller in other countries. Conservatives worry that more people on Medicaid will only increase costs further. "Everyone who qualifies based on a given state's rules and eligibility criteria is able to get that service, or able to get that benefit, and there's no cap, there's no limit to how much the federal government will reimburse states." In 1995 under President Clinton and then again in 2017, Republicans in Congress proposed changes that they said would make Medicaid more financially solvent. They would do it by giving Medicaid a fixed amount of cash, called block grants, not a guarantee of coverage." "Block granting basically says, 'here's a big
lump sum, and that lump sum you can do with what you want.'" And that’s what Matthew, the Medicaid patient from Massachusetts, worries about. "My particular course of Crohn's disease is severe and resistant to treatment." That means the medicine he needs to stay alive is really expensive. "Tens of thousands of dollars per year." Before he was on Medicaid, he would fight with private insurers who denied coverage. "Cigna claimed to lose certified pieces of mail and not get faxes in order to stall approval. I continued to lose weight. I continued to be dehydrated. I continued to be malnourished. I continued to be in an incredible amount of pain. And losing Medicaid wouldn't mean he couldn't go to the emergency room. It would just mean that when he does, he wouldn't get the same kind of treatment he gets now, and he'd be stuck with thousands of dollars in hospital bills. "Everything that's happened to me, the dozens of emergency room visits, the surgeries, the months worth of cumulative time spent as an inpatient in a hospital, all of it, could happen to anyone." And if it does, and you live in the United States, which state you live in can mean the difference between life and death. "We don't condition public education on being a model student. If your kid flunks Algebra 1, they aren't kicked out of school. They get to take Algebra 1 again. If someone's sick, they're not morally bad. They're not morally wrong. They just need health care. Hiking has so many benefits. It’s healthy and fun, everyone’s doing
it on Instagram, and it’s the perfect time to snap some aggressively enthusiastic nature pics for your Tinder profile. But, before you rush into the woods with a
selfie-stick or hang out in the fields you need to be aware of these little bastards. Tickborne diseases are on the rise. Cases of Lyme disease in particular have almost tripled in the last two decades in the US. Why are there so many more ticks in the country? Researchers point to climate change as one of the main reasons. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the US. The bacteria typically lives in mice, birds,
deer, and other animals that ticks like to feed on. But it finds its way to humans when infected ticks casually latch on to them in wooded areas. The bacteria enters the human system via tick bites — though in most cases, the tick must be attached to the skin for 36 hours or more for the disease to be transmitted. Lyme disease has a variety of symptoms at various stages including: fever, headache, fatigue, muscle and joint aches, and the classic bulls-eye rash. Catching the disease early is crucial so antibiotics can be used to treat Lyme. But if it’s left untreated the infection
can spread to other parts of the body like the heart and the brain and the effects can be much more dangerous. In some cases, though, the disease can mysteriously persist for years even after treatment and researchers haven’t figured out why. Lyme can be incredibly hard to diagnose. But all kinds of ticks don’t make you sick. This map shows Lyme disease carrying ticks in the US — the western black legged tick along the Pacific coast, and the black legged tick in the northeast and upper midwest. You can see the increasing concentration of Lyme cases on the Eastern Seaboard from 2001 through 2015. And the CDC states that, 95% of confirmed cases were reported from these 14 states. Researchers believe climate change has a lot to do with this dramatic rise of Lyme disease in the Northeast. See ticks don’t survive in cold climates,
so warmer winters are allowing them to venture further up north. Higher temperatures are also boosting their reproduction cycle. Among other explanations, the increase in
deer populations because of hunting protections is one of them. And reforestation of former farmlands in the Northeast is also giving ticks more hosts to feed ... and reproduce on? Damn. Ticks are having sex on deer and Carlos can't even get a date right now. Carlos off-camera: Yes, I can! Me: Heyyy! Right! Lyme disease! Uhhhh, people are also moving further into the suburbs which puts them closer to tick territory in wooded areas. A weird additional factor that's helped
spread Lyme disease is the recent abundance of acorns in the US. More acorns means more food for mice, and increased mice populations means more hosts to carry Lyme-infected ticks. So what do you do when you're dying for that communing-with-nature-selfie, but you don’t want to be the dinner host to guests who actually suck the life out of you? Well, before you head outdoors you can treat your clothes and shoes with an insecticide called permethrin. Using insect repellents containing DEET or picaridin, is also suggested by the CDC. Wearing light-colored clothing, long-sleeved shirts, and hats make it easier to spot ticks. And though it’s not the most fashionable
statement, tucking your pants into your socks or boots helps too. When you’re back indoors, showering within two hours, and doing a full body check for ticks is in order. I’m talking scalp, elbows, knees, buttche...you get the picture. Check your clothes for ticks, then toss those in the dryer. And if you find a tick attached? Now is not the time for folklore remedies,
the tick needs to be removed ASAP. Remove it with fine tipped tweezers. And watch for Lyme  disease symptoms over the next few weeks. Lastly, don’t panic if you find out you’re
a total tick magnet. Carlos off camera: Gross. [whispers] Yeah...Sor...my bad .. my bad... The most important thing is being aware of possible bug-a-boo... I mean ticks in your vicinity and the measures you can take to
protect yourself from Lyme disease. Hans Zimmer’s score for Dunkirk starts
with the sound of ticking. And that’s a common theme in the legendary
composer’s work — you can hear it in Interstellar… ...and in Sherlock Holmes… But in Dunkirk, the ticking makes way for
an overwhelming orchestra that seems like it’s rising higher and higher,
but never actually does. It’s so tense, it makes you cling to your
seat. That is because Zimmer is taking advantage
of an auditory illusion caused by something called a Shepard tone. It consists of several tones separated by
an octave, layered on top of each other. As the tones move up the scale, the highest-pitched
tone gets quieter... ... the middle pitch remains loud ... ... and the lowest bass pitch starts to
become audible. Because you can always hear at least two tones
rising in pitch at the same, your brain is tricked into perceiving a constant ascending
tone. Loop it all together… … and it sounds like a piano scale going on for infinity. When the transition between tones is continuous,
it’s called a Shepard–Risset glissando. And it can sound really spooky: This can happen in the opposite direction
too. You can hear it in the Endless Stairs in Super
Mario 64… And in Pink Floyd… It’s like a barber’s pole of sound, constantly
seeming to rise without actually going anywhere. Put that in a soundtrack… … and it creates this sound of rising tension
that carries the screenplay forward. Christopher Nolan loves this illusion — you
can hear it in the Batpod sound effect in his last two Dark Knight films… And in the music of The Prestige, composed
by David Julyan. Nolan’s films are often all about time — how
it warps in space, in our dreams, and in our memories — and there's tension that comes with that. An illusion like this makes that tension palpable
— all it takes is clever sound design. I just wanted to give a shoutout to Jason Guerrasio at Business Insider for doing this great interview with Christopher Nolan. In the interview, Nolan confirms that a lot of the soundtrack was built around the effect of a Shepard tone. And he also reveals that the ticking that Hans Zimmer uses at the very beginning of Dunkirk is actually a recording of a watch that Christopher Nolan owns. Joss: I guess my first question is… What makes fire ants interesting to a bunch
of engineers? David Hu: Fire ants are one of the few insects
capable of building big structures with their bodies. And they can do it by linking their bodies together. That means fire ants aren’t just animals— they can also be seen as a sort of material that you can test like a fabric or a gel. And you can trace that behavior back to their
evolutionary history. Red imported fire ants are native to floodplains
in South America, where the rainy season regularly inundates
their underground homes. The ants that stick together and stay with
the queen have a better chance of reproducing, so they’ve gotten really good at basically
holding hands and floating until they find a new place to live. In the 1930s or 40s, shipping brought fire
ants to the US and they’ve spread across the southern states. Alabama officials are warning of something that, to me is straight out of a nightmare… It’s a pile of fire ants clustered together
to survive. Now, you can find this invasive species alongside
roads in cities like Atlanta— easy access for the researchers at Georgia Tech, who’ve
done... pretty much anything you could think to do to a colony of fire ants and still call
it science. David Hu: We fed ants iodine which is radioactive… flash freezing this with liquid nitrogen… And then an elastic band to the waist of another ant... and then you coat them in gold. But that’s just standard. They’ve created mathematical models to describe
the ants behavior and they characterize the ant balls as a “viscoelastic
material.” which means they have properties of both a fluid and a solid. David Hu: So they’re a solid in that they’re
elastic, so for example, if I... take a spring, you squish it, it’ll give you back the
energy. But they also act like a viscous fluid when
under stress, breaking and reforming links to dissipate energy in a way that resembles
a slow flow. David Hu: And that’s basically how fluids work. They have very small and weak bonds everywhere— like water has these hydrogen bonds. It’s because the bonds can break and reheal really easily. You can see this happening when they’re
dropped in water. Within a few minutes, they’ve spread out
like a drop of dye. In their study of the towers that fire ants
build after floods, Hu’s team found that the ants release their links when the stress
is more than 2-3 times the weight of an ant. That’s when they transition from solid to
fluid behavior. They’re not sure why the ants build these
towers, but it may have to do with the fact that the ants are more water repellent when
they’re linked together. Which is how they stay afloat during a flood. David Hu: They link their bodies so closely
together they actually generate a weave, like a waterproof fabric. So air bubbles actually have to do work to
escape. The ants aren’t drowning because they can
get air from those bubbles. What’s so incredible about swarming animals
is that there’s no leader directing the colony to do this. And that sort of decentralized, collective
action may be a model for future technologies. David Hu: Modular robotics has been the dream
of roboticists. And they’re
still working on it but these ants have had a couple million years and robotics has only
been around for 40 so, I think robots that do act like a fluid and like a solid, I’m
hoping that this work will inspire more people to pursue that kind of thing. I'm going to go meet up with a guy named
Jerry. He's a graffiti artist, a very renowned graffiti artist. There was a massive
earthquake here in 2010. Devastation in Haiti, stunned victims of the earthquake. We are just now beginning to learn the extent of the devastation. The entire world mobilized to send people to help. Quite a few naval vessels are now anchored off
Port-au-Prince from countries which are 
sending in relief supply. There are
10,000 NGOs, non-governmental organizations, here in Haiti. Ten thousand. Drive
around town and you see tons of international organization vehicles: UN
vehicles, European organizations, American organizations. Haiti's known as the "Republic of aid NGOs". Only a fraction of that money went into the government,
to help with long-term relief and things like that. So it's the private
organizations, these NGOs who are doing really great work, but they're the ones
who are taking on a lot of these services, these services that typically a
government would be responsible for. We just had this interesting discussion about
what foreign aid means for this country. Jerry's now kind of thinking through
what he wants to symbolize this as on the wall. Gathering crowd here watching
Jerry do his work. We always represent Haiti as a beautiful lady. The guy was about to steal the flag, and Haiti said no. Keep your money, I have my flag. I will figure out with our Haitian people, how we can solve the problem. And now, when we have solved the problem, we will call you to help us. One of the weird side industries that has cropped up because of this NGO bubble, is the demand for fixers, translators, and drivers, 
that pay really well. Instead of getting a job that contributes to 
the broader society, you have people who are saying "man, I could make a ton of money if I just became a translator for a U.N. person". And so you have this huge burgeoning
industry: local Haitians who are choosing to support the NGO bubble, as opposed to
something that might help the long-term development of this country. These groups are doing amazing work, with
education, with health, with food assistance where there is a huge need,
here in Haiti. The big critique is that: this is a band-aid. They're here
helping day to day, but in the process they're hindering the development of the
broader institutions, the institutions that are going to be here for decades, the
government forces that are supposed to be the ones providing these services. This is Tucker Carlson, the new king of cable
news. He took over Bill O’Reilly’s slot in April, and since then he’s had the most watched
news show on cable. Fox viewers love him because he takes on the
liberal elite, and Fox executives love him because he’s not embroiled in a sexual harassment
scandal. But there’s someone else who really likes
Tucker Carlson. In replace of O'Reilly we get Tucker, who I think is a much better figure. He’s certainly more intelligent. This is Richard Spencer, one of the most notorious white supremacists in the country. He at least has a kind of open-mindedness in a way that Bill O’Reilly never would. Spencer isn’t the only professional racist giddy about Tucker’s show. Here’s David Duke, former Grand Wizard of
the KKK, tweeting ‘god bless Tucker Carlson.’ And here’s the white supremacist website
Daily Stormer calling Tucker “literally our greatest ally.” So what the hell is going on here? Why are white supremacists so excited about
Tucker Carlson? In a lot of ways, Tucker is a typical Fox
News host. He complains about political correctness,
attacks the liberal media, interviews Fabio. Okay, that was weird. But what’s caught the attention of white
supremacists is the way Tucker talks about immigration. Normally, conservative pundits focus on illegal
immigration. All Americans should welcome legal immigrants, folks who obey our laws and go through the
proper procedures. But Tucker is different. Tucker’s spent the first few months of his show depicting both legal and undocumented
immigrants as potential criminals. We decided to take a closer look at the link
between immigrants and crime in this country. We really don’t have good numbers on the
crimes committed by immigrants, illegal and otherwise. He goes after Latinos. Mexican citizens make up more than fourteen
percent of the entire federal prison population. He goes after Muslims. Why is violent terrorism an inevitability
in Europe? There are a lot of Muslims living in Europe
now. And he goes after refugees. Who would have thought that all those migrants are having a big effect on the crime rate. That talking point is, of course, bullshit. Native-born Americans are incarcerated at
higher rates than both legal and undocumented immigrants. Cities with high refugee populations typically
see their crime rates decrease. And the overwhelming majority of terror attacks
in the EU aren’t religiously motivated. But that hasn’t stopped Tucker from making
that myth a central theme on his show. Foreigners come to our countries and kill
our people. You think our leaders would blame them but
no, they blame us. Oof, “foreigners.” Dropping a hard F. A hard F. Tucker Carlson’s major reason for existing
is to create a frame in which immigrants are a grave threat to
the survival of America as we know it. This is Chip Berlet. He’s a journalist who’s spent decades studying the language of right-wing extremists. That’s the classic right-wing populist idea, that there’s a group of threatening people, they’re not like us, and we need to stop them before they stop
us. Tucker obviously isn’t the first person
to do this. American history is full of demagogues who
used the myth of immigrant crime to smear marginalized
groups. Look at the crime rate that’s changed in
terms of the immigration It’s a myth that’s persisted as the crime
rate has dropped as more immigrants have come to America. But what makes Tucker different, and what makes white supremacists like him
so much, is that, aside from the haircut, he doesn’t look
the part of a David Duke. He makes anti-immigrant propaganda look mainstream. Tucker Carlson is kind of a restatement of
all of these things in a kind of neat, well-dressed package. One of the ways Tucker does this is by cherry-picking, focusing on individual stories of immigrant
crime to smear immigrants as a whole. In March for example, Tucker fixated on the
story of two undocumented immigrants who were accused of raping one of their classmates. We told you plenty about that horrifying crime
in Rockville, Maryland and why wouldn’t we tell you that? It highlights the critical downsides of existing
American immigration policy. It was the perfect Tucker Carlson story because
it let him peddle an old-school, racist trope about immigrants
being rapists without having to actually say it outright. Why are people embarrassed to point to something that actually happened and draw obvious conclusions
from it? He only had to hint at it. Sometimes, when foreign countries send their
people here, they are not sending their very best. This whole way of packaging information is
designed to give plausible deniability while cementing the
bad idea in the minds of the viewers. That case ended up getting dropped, by the
way, after prosecutors found that the facts didn’t
support the charges. But it didn’t matter. Tucker had already made his point. On Twitter, David Duke said Tucker’s coverage
of the story was one of his best performances. This is a common trick that demagogues use
shape the already entrenched prejudices of the audience. Another way Tucker normalizes harmful tropes
about immigrants is by inviting anti-immigrant extremists to
do his dirty work for him. With the Maryland case, it was people like
Ann Coulter. There are all these Americans who wouldn’t
have dead children, who wouldn’t be raped but for our immigration
policy. After the terrorist attacks in the UK, it
was Katie Hopkins, a woman who literally called for a “final
solution” on Twitter. A final- Yeah. People talk about integration, I always hear
the world colonization. We have opened our arms and told everyone
to come and effectively take over. It’s basically the handing off of the concern to a group of people who are more than happy
to take you by the hand and turn it into a fist. Also can we talk about the annoying eyebrow
thing Tucker does when he’s talking to someone
he agrees with? He acts like his mind is being blown by the
most basic comments. He’s doing it right now, isn’t he? But the thing white supremacists love most
about Tucker Carlson is his rejection of multiculturalism. Tucker argues that the problem with Mexican
and Muslim immigrants is that they’re not ‘like us.’ They come from different, inferior cultures. This is a country founded on European culture. Is the Western civilization we’re talking
about superior to the culture that these immigrants are bringing. And Tucker says that welcoming those different
cultures is making America a worse place to live. Our leaders worship multiculturalism so we
encourage immigrants to reject our culture because all
cultures are equal, except that they’re not all equal. This probably goes without saying, but that’s really similar to how white supremacists
talk about immigration. And Tucker peddles this idea on his show constantly. Also you've got a lot of nerve talking about the sanctity of Western culture for a guy who went on Dancing
With The Stars and did this. You don’t have rhythm where you come from? Nice. Y’all never invented hips? Okay. That kind of language means that Tucker’s
anti-immigrant shtick isn’t actually about immigration. It’s about people who seem different. Which is why a Tucker segment about illegal
immigration suddenly veers into why Spanish speakers are
making schools worse. Does it make a school better when people move
in who don’t speak English? Why a segment on that Maryland rape case suddenly becomes about how the defendants
should’ve learned English. What they should’ve done is put him in some
remedial English and learn some English first. Tucker is training the biggest audience in
cable news to be suspicious of people who aren’t like
them. This is having an effect on my kid’s school,
on my culture, on the economy, and your point is you’re
not allowed to have that opinion. To view them as threats. I’m talking about terror threats, I’m
talking about rioting, I’m talking about a massive spike in crime. As invaders. The invasion of Europe intensified this weekend. More than 7,000 African migrants arrived in
Italy. And that’s why white supremacists love Tucker
Carlson. Not because they think he’s one of them, but because as long as he’s teaching his
audience to view difference as dangerous, he’s making
their jobs a lot easier. I’m no fan of Bill O’Reilly, but even he recognized talk of “European
culture” as a dog whistle for white supremacists. I want to preserve my heritage like every
people does. Preserve your heritage? What does that mean? How about European heritage? What does that mean? They’re people! A solar eclipse happens when the moon’s
shadow falls somewhere on the surface of Earth And a lunar eclipse is the opposite -- when
the Earth’s shadow falls on the moon The two sections of the shadow, the dark umbra
and the partially shaded penumbra, their placement determines which type of eclipse
we can see from Earth. But not all eclipses are made equal. The most spectacular, the one for your bucket
list is a total eclipse of the sun. A total solar eclipse begins as a partial
eclipse. You’ll notice trees projecting the crescent
sun, and shadows becoming sharper than normal. The landscape darkens to a bluish-grey and
 you’ll start to feel the temperature drop. From the west, the moon’s shadow rushes
toward you like a silent storm. Look up and you’ll see the last sliver of
the sun sparkling like a diamond ring, before it’s broken into a string of beads
by the moon’s rough terrain. Now you can see the pearly glow of the sun’s
corona and the pink and red light from the hydrogen gas of the chromosphere. Together these make up the sun’s outer atmosphere,
and a total solar eclipse is the only occasion you have to lay eyes on it. This is totality and if you get a chance
to see it, you should. The moon orbits earth every 29.5 days, but
we don’t get eclipses every month. That’s because the moon’s orbit is not
in line with earth’s orbit. it’s tilted about 5 degrees. That doesn’t seem like much but keep in
mind that the scale of the model we’re showing to you is way off. If the Earth and moon are this size, the
distance between them should be around 10 ft. At this distance, 5 degrees is enough to keep
the moon’s shadow off of Earth and the Earth’s shadow off the moon most months. So why do we ever get eclipses? Because there are two points where the moon’s
orbit crosses the sun’s plane, called nodes. And as the Earth moves along its annual orbit,
those points line up with the sun about twice a year. As the moon passes between the sun and Earth
at that time, we get a solar eclipse. When it’s behind Earth at that time, we
get a lunar eclipse. There are a ton of orbital quirks that make
predicting eclipses really complicated, but in general we’ll have a few solar and lunar
eclipses of some sort and a few lunar eclipses of some sort every year. But you’re more likely to see a total lunar
eclipse in your lifetime than a total solar one. The totality of a lunar eclipse can last well
over an hour and it’s viewable for anyone on the night side of earth. The moon often turns red during a total lunar
eclipse because our planet’s atmosphere scatters the shorter bluer wavelengths of
light, while the longer, redder wavelengths pass through. Or to put it another way, a total lunar eclipse
projects all of the world’s sunsets and sunrises onto the moon. Total solar eclipses seem much more rare because
totality lasts just a few minutes, and although Earth gets a total solar eclipse every 18
months on average, each one is only viewable by less than half a percent of Earth’s surface. Eclipse chasers travel all over the world
to put themselves in the path of the shadow. In a total solar eclipse, the moon precisely
covers the sun from the vantage point of some place on Earth. This is possible because by coincidence, the
sun and the moon appear to be about the same size in our sky. While the sun is 400 times bigger than the
moon, it’s also about 400 times farther away. But this alignment isn’t constant. the moon has an elliptical orbit. Its size varies about 12% throughout a month. When it’s closer to us, we can get total
solar eclipses, but less than 30% of solar eclipses are total. More often, we get partial eclipses, where
the alignment is a bit off, or annular eclipses, where the moon is too far away to fully block
the sun, leaving a ring of sunlight around the moon. In the far future, earth will only get annular
and partial solar eclipses because our moon is moving further away. We know that because Buzz Aldrin and Neil
Armstrong left mirrors on the moon in 1969. Astronomers bounce lasers off those mirrors
to measure the moon’s distance. And that’s how they found out that the moon
is moving away from Earth by more than 3 cm per year. So in a billion years or so, whatever creatures
live here will witness Earth’s very last total solar eclipse. “We can see on the Radio One screen, a fantastic
total solar eclipse taken from the pictures above the clouds.” “This is just fantastic.” A lot of early civilizations feared eclipses. They were often seen as an attack on the sun
or moon by the forces of darkness. But now that we understand our place in space,
eclipses are an occasion for awe, and for gratitude. All over the galaxy rocks are casting shadows
on other rocks. But only here, as far as we know, is there
someone to notice them. STEVE JOBS:
“And we’ve come up with a design that puts 12,000 people in one building” Four months before he died in 2011, Steve
Jobs made his final public appearance pitching Apple’s new campus, which opened this year. Central to his vision was turning existing
parking lots into a green landscape. STEVE JOBS
“The overall feeling of the place is gonna be a zillion times better than it is now,
with all the asphalt. so we’d like to plant a lot of trees including
 some apricot orchards…” But Jobs didn’t mention that the new parking
structure on campus would have had more floor space than the office building. That’s because it wasn’t Apple’s plan. The decision came from the city of Cupertino,
which demanded 11,000 parking spots for the campus. But Cupertino is hardly unique. It’s estimated that in America there are
8 parking spots for every car, covering up to 30% of our cities, and collectively taking
up about as much space as the state of West Virginia. The more parking we have, the more we’re
able to drive. The rules that manage our parking needs not
only influence the way we move around but also shape our urban landscapes. DONALD SHOUP: If you look at pictures of the
American cities around 1920 and 1930, all of the curbs are just completely filled with
parked cars. And they couldn’t use prices to manage demand
because the parking meter wasn’t even invented until 1935. This is Donald Shoup. An Urban planning professor at UCLA, whose
speciality is parking. As cars filled cities in the early 20th century,
two inventions came to dominate parking management throughout the United States. The first was the parking meter. DONALD SHOUP: The way the meter manufacturers
popularized parking meters was they offered them free to cities and they kept the revenue
until the meter was paid for in about 6 months – and then the city got all the revenue. They offered to install them on one side of
the street only, so people could see how it worked on one side, and how it worked on the
other. Around the same time the parking meter was
invented, cities invented the idea of off street parking requirements. Off street parking requirement, also known
as mandatory parking minimums, are the second invention. And though you may not be aware of it them,
most of the parking lots you’re used to exist because of these rules in the background. SHOUP: look at any place from the air, any
suburban place from the air – you see an awful lot of land taken up for parking. And most people don’t know why. It’s our policy that we require our cities
to be built with a lot of parking. With the suburbanization after World War II,
off-street parking requirements became popular with city governments. They forced developers to include a parking
for their new buildings, which created a huge supply of parking lots at no cost to the city. SHOUP: Off street parking requirements really
spread throughout the United States faster than really any other urban planning invention. And they arose partly because of the lack
of management of on-street parking. If you can’t manage the on street parking
properly, you need off street parking requirements or everybody will say “how did you let this
building be built when there’s not enough parking.” A typical requirement looks like this: For every 1000 square feet of new building,
there has to be a set number of parking spots which varies by land use. SHOUP: You have to have parking spaces per
something. It could be a number of spaces per bassinet
in a hospital, or per holes in a golf course, or per thousand gallons of water in a swimming
pool. One of the oddest ones is for a funeral home,
because that’s sort of – parking spaces per what? An average parking spot requires about 330
square feet, which includes car storage and empty space for the access aisles. That means If a policy requires 3 spots per
thousand feet, the parking lot needs to be the size of the building. And many parking requirements need more spots,
a restaurant may need 10 spots per thousand square feet, making the parking lot over three
times larger than the restaurant. SHOUP: Planners don’t have any training
in how to set them, and there’s really no way to say how much parking every building
needs, so there’s a pseudoscience that has grown up, like blood letting, which was a
major form of medical treatment for a couple thousand years, and that’s just like parking
requirements today. Building parking is expensive especially when
it involves a large construction project. SHOUP: We pay for the free parking that we
demand in every role that we have in life other than as a driver. As a tax payer, as a resident, as a shopper. And just because you pay nothing for parking
at the parking lot of the grocery store doesn’t mean the cost goes away. It’s still there. It’s just that the driver isn’t paying
for it. Developers who don't comply with parking requirements
pay tens of thousands of dollars for every spot that they don't include. A lot of times, these costs prohibit new development. SHOUP: This is the most valuable land on earth. Land is expensive for housing but its free
for parking. And you wonder why we have a problem? Parking requirements often result in more
parking space than building space, so they lower density of cities, pushing buildings
further apart from each other, making it harder to walk and encouraging more driving. Many of the dense cities that we love like
Paris, Washington DC or Amsterdam or New York wouldn’t look like this with parking requirements. These arbitrary rules continue to shape the
growth of our cities, and increase traffic congestion. But the excessive amount of land dedicated
to parking spaces is able to be repurposed. SHOUP: We have a terrific opportunity to convert
underused parking lots into housing to parking for people who want to live. The upside is that we have a lot of benefits
to reap from changing our policies. SHOUP: To boil an 800-page book into three
bullet points, I have three basic recommendations. Remove off-street parking requirements. Charge the right price for on-street parking, by which I mean the lowest price the city can charge and still have one or two open spaces on every block. So nobody can say there's a shortage of parking. In order to reach that price you have to vary
it by location and time of day. But once you've done that, and make it politically
popular you can spend the revenue on public services on the metered streets. Well I'm worn out. This is me. I'm about to go scuba diving for the first time ever. I went in expecting muffled peace and quiet. I mean, one of the earliest documentaries
on underwater life was literally called “The Silent World”. “They roamed deep under the Mediterranean,
the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, in a mysterious realm, a silent world.” But as soon as I got down a few yards, I couldn't
help but notice sound all around me. It was hard to tell what direction it was
coming from, or how far away it was. It was coming from boats above me. As far as I can tell, the Earth’s water
is not as quiet as I thought. I’ve been binging this podcast all about
sound, and they've been looking into this too "From DeFacto Sound, you’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz: The stories behind the
world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. I’m Dallas Taylor." So Dallas — life underwater can be pretty
loud, right? It can! Just listen to these toadfish— they oscillate
their swim bladders to make sounds that are loud enough to keep houseboat residents in
Sausalito, California up at night. Or these Barred Grunt fish, that make a grinding
sound with the teeth in their gullet. Or these snapping shrimp — they produce a sound by creating tiny popping bubbles with their claws. It’s been measured at 200 decibels. That’s louder than a gunshot. Light doesn’t penetrate very deep in water,
so a lot of ocean life has evolved to use sound as its primary sense. Because water particles are more densely packed
together than air, sound travels farther and faster in water. That makes it an efficient medium of communication
at any depth or time of day. “Let's say we had 440, like the middle
key of your piano, or whatever.” That’s John Hildebrand, he’s a professor
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He's an expert in the field of underwater
sound and how it’s used by and how it affects marine mammals. “If you looked at the wavelength of that
sound in air, that note, the 440 note, would be a little bit less than a meter long. In water, it's more like several meters
long.” What that means is that noise travels about
four times faster and farther in water than it does in air. In an experiment in 1991, sound emitted from
Heard Island was picked up at 16 sites in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. It turns out that one of the most common noises
in the entire ocean that can be picked up almost anywhere these days, sounds like this: It's the sound of boats. Noise from ship traffic has doubled every
decade since the 1960s. “Basically, anywhere you go, the ambient
noise in the ocean is dominated by anthropogenic sound.” “Let's say I made a measurement 30 years
ago and now if I went to the same place and made the same measurement, it would be 10
dBs or more higher sound level than what I measured when I started my career. That’s spooky.” That’s a huge problem for animals that use
sound as their primary sense. Just listen to this audio of how noise from
a passing boat totally drowns out dolphin communication. But arguably the worst culprit of underwater
sound pollution is a process that sounds like this: This is seismic surveying. It’s a process that allows companies to
locate spots on the ocean floor where they can drill for fossil fuels. Boats with about 30-40 airguns that all go
off at once will move back and forth over large parts of the ocean. Bubbles from the horns expand and contract
typically every 10 seconds, creating a huge amount of acoustic energy that maps geological
structures deep in the ocean floor. And it’s about as loud as a jet at takeoff. This can go on for weeks at a time. A study of seismic survey noise between 1999
and 2009 found that airgun sounds were recorded almost 2500 miles away from the survey ship
itself. At some locations, they were recorded on 80
percent of days for over a year. And that changes how animals behave. A study by the Institute of Marine Science
at the University of North Carolina found that reef fish abundance decreased by 78 percent
during seismic surveying. This is what the reef looked like before seismic
surveying in the area. And this is what it looked like after. “Seismic surveying is a constroversial topic at the
coast and new research is only adding to the conversation. “One of those impacted is local fisherman
Jack Cox. He’s seen firsthand the impact seismic
surveying has on fish.” “It does something, that — we just don’t catch fish. For animals like whales — who rely on complex
sound communication systems to socialize, find food, and mate — that poses a huge
problem. If you watch this heat map from a study of
endangered North Atlantic right whales, you can see that shipping paths near Boston squeeze
the whales into a tiny space where communication is possible — it's about a third of what
it was without the ships. Susan Parks, a biology professor at Syracuse,
recorded right whale sounds throughout the early 2000s. And when she compared her audio to some that had
been recorded in 1956, she noticed that the older sounds were much deeper than her high-pitched
recordings. It turns out that the whales had started calling
at higher and higher frequencies in order to hear each other over the hum of ship noise. Apart from habitat displacement and communication
changes, there’s also evidence that boat noise simply stresses these whales out. After the September 11th attacks, researchers
in Canada’s Bay of Fundy compared underwater noise levels during a period of reduced ship
traffic to the stress-related hormone levels in the right whale population. They discovered a 6 decibel noise decrease
in the bay after 9/11, which correlated to lower baseline levels of stress related hormones. Effects like this go all the way down the
food chain. A 2017 study found that there were two to
three times more dead zooplankton after after a day of blasts from a single airgun. And the larvae of krill, which whales rely
on for food, were totally destroyed. In April 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive
order to open offshore drilling in the Atlantic. It directed the Interior Department to consider
allowing seismic exploration by 5 companies that had been blocked under the Obama administration. It’s getting widespread pushback in Congress
— there’s a bipartisan House bill and Democrat-led Senate bill to ban seismic testing
— but if those authorizations go through, companies could be conducting seismic testing
in the Atlantic by Fall 2017. So… is there any good news? Yes, there is. In 2014, the International Maritime Organization
adopted guidelines for reducing commercial ship noise levels with things like noise-muffling
propellers and insulated engines — though they’re not mandatory yet. A year later, the US Navy agreed to limit
sonar testing — which has been linked to whales stranding themselves on beaches in
habitats near Southern California and Hawaii — following a lawsuit from environmental
groups. And in June 2016, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration laid out an Ocean Noise Strategy Roadmap. It’s the start of a 10-year plan to assess
the human impact on underwater sound and the measures required to reduce it. Seismic surveys can work better, too. Norway has started multi-client surveys, so
that seismic data from a particular area is only collected once. US authorities are considering a similar process. The ocean is huge. We’ve explored less than 5 percent of it
so far. So it’s easy to forget that what we do on
the surface affects everything down below. But like plastic, chemicals, and waste, noise
pollutes our oceans. Understanding that is key to doing our part
to protect it. Thank you so much for watching, we loved doing
this collaboration with Twenty Thousand Hertz. They create super highly produced podcasts that tell stories all about sound. If you enjoyed this video, you should absolutely go check out their podcast on the exact same topic. You can find that and subscribe at applepodcasts.com/20k. The Middle East is one of the most complex
regions in the world: Currently there are 4 failing states and 3
wars, with major powers increasingly taking opposite sides. Countless armed militias and terrorist groups
are spreading violence across borders. The region has seen conflict after conflict
going back well into the 20th century. But among all the uprisings, civil wars, and
insurgencies, two countries always seem to be involved: Saudi Arabia and Iran. They’re bitter rivals, and their feud is
the key to understanding conflicts in the Middle East. The Saudis and Iranians have never actually
declared war on each other. Instead, they fight indirectly by supporting
opposing sides in other countries and inciting conflicts. This is known as proxy warfare. And it’s had a devastating effect on the
region. Countries, especially poor ones, can’t function if there are larger countries pulling strings within their borders. Both the Saudis and the Iranians, see these civil wars as both tremendous threats, and also potentially enormous opportunities. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become a fight over influence, and the whole region is a battlefield. It’s why the rivalry is being called: a
Cold War. The most famous cold war was fought for 40 years between the United States and Soviet
Union. Looking forward to the day when their flag would fly over the entire world. They never declared war on each other, but clashed in proxy wars around the world. Each side supported dictators, rebel groups, and intervened in civil wars to contain the other. Like the US and Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia
and Iran are two powerful rivals - but instead of fighting for world dominance, they’re
fighting over control of the Middle East. In order to understand the Saudi-Iranian rivalry,
let’s go back to the origins of each country. In the early 1900s, the Arabian peninsula
was a patchwork of tribes under the control of the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, the empire collapsed, leaving these tribes to fight each other for power. One tribe from the interior, the al-Saud,
eventually conquered most of the peninsula. In 1932, they were recognized as the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia. 6 years later, massive oil reserves were discovered in Saudi Arabia, and, in an instant, the Saudi monarchy was rich. That oil money built roads and cities 
all around the desert country - and it helped forge an alliance with the US. On the eastern side of the Persian Gulf, another country was emerging, but having a much harder time. Iran also had massive oil reserves and an
even bigger Muslim population. But constant foreign intervention was creating chaos. Since the 18th century, Iran had been invaded
by the Russians and British twice. In 1953, the US secretly staged a coup, removing the popular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh. In his place, they propped up a monarch, Reza Shah, who was aggressively reforming Iran into a secular, westernized country. But he harbored corruption and terrorized
the population with his secret police, the Savak. By the 1970s, both Saudi Arabia and Iran had oil-based economies and had governments heavily backed by the US, but the feelings among each population were very different: Ultimately at the end of the day, the
Shah of Iran, powerful as he was, simply did not have the same control over his people
or ultimately the same legitimacy and affection that the Saudi people felt towards their monarchy
at that point in time. That’s because Iran’s Muslims felt stifled
by the Shah’s reformations and by the end of the decade, they finally fought back. Iran's Islamic revolution overthrew a powerful regime, that boasted military might. It’s really in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution overthrow the Shah, that the real tension
between Saudi Arabia and Iran begins. Ayatollah Khomeini was a Muslim clergyman,
who preached against Western-backed secular monarchies. He advocated for a government that popular, Islamic, and led by the clergy. And In 1979, he led a revolution to establish just that. It was a massive international event that
prompted reactions around the world especially in Saudi Arabia. The Iranian Revolution terrified the government
of Saudi Arabia. They were fearful that Ayatollah Khomeini would inspire their populations to rise up against them, exactly the way he had caused the Iranian population to rise up against the Shah. There was a religious threat too. Up until now, the Saudis had claimed to be
the leaders of the Muslim world. Largely because Islam’s two holiest sites,
Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia. But Khomeini claimed his popular revolution
made Iran the legitimate Muslim state. There was another divide; Saudi Arabia’s
population is mostly Sunni, the majority sect of Islam, while Khomeini and Iran are mostly
Shia. Westerners always make a
mistake by drawing an analogy between the Sunni-Shia split and the Protestant-Catholic
split within Christianity. The Sunni-Shia split was never as violent. And in much of the Islamic world, when Sunnis and Shia were living in close proximity, they got along famously well. So, while the Sunni-Shia split was not a reason
for the rivalry, it was an important division. After the revolution, the Saudi’s fears
came to life when Iran began “exporting its revolution”. This CIA report from 1980 details how the
Iranian started helping groups, mostly Shia, trying to overthrow governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. And they prompted the Saudis to redouble their efforts, to fight against Iran. They bolstered their alliance with the US
and formed the GCC, an alliance with other gulf monarchies. The stage was set for conflict. War in the gulf. Iraq invaded Iran in seven areas. With a 5:1 superiority, Iraqi forces moved quickly The rise of Iran as a regional power threatened other neighboring countries as well. In September 1980, Iraq, under the rule of
dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. He was hoping to stop the Iranian revolution,
gain power, and annex some of Iran’s oil reserves. But they didn’t get far. The war bogged down into stalemate complete
with trench warfare, chemical weapons and heavy civilian casualties. When Iran started winning, the Saudis panicked,
and came to Iraq’s rescue. They provided money, weapons, and logistical
help. So it becomes critical to the Saudis that
they build up Iraq, and build it up into a wall that can hold back the Iranian torrent that
they have unleashed. The Saudi help allowed Iraq to fight until
1988. By then, nearly a million people had died. Iranians largely blamed the Saudis for the
war and the feud escalated. Fast forward 15 years and Iraq again became
the scene of a proxy war. In 2003 the US invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Neither Saudi Arabia or Iran wanted this to
happen, since Iraq had been acting as a buffer between them. But problems arose when the US struggled to
replace Saddam. The United States has no idea what it is doing in Iraq after 2003. And it makes one mistake after another, that creates a security vacuum, and a failed state, and drives Iraq into all-out civil war. Without a government, armed militias took
control of Iraq, splintering the population. Sunni and Shia militias suddenly sprang up
all over the country. Many were radical Islamist groups who saw
an opportunity to gain power amidst the chaos. These militias were readymade proxies for
Saudi Arabia and Iran, and they both seized the opportunity to try and gain power. The Saudis started sending money and weapons
to the Sunni militias, and Iran; the Shia. Iraq was suddenly a proxy war with Saudi Arabia
and Iran supporting opposing sides. That trend continued into the Arab Spring,
a series of anti-monarchy, pro-democracy protests that swept through the Middle East in 2011. This had very different consequences for Saudi
Arabia and Iran: That is terrifying to the Saudis who are the ultimate status quo power. They want the region stable, and they don't want anbody rising up and overthrowing a sclerotic, autocratic government, for fear that it might inspire their own people to do the same. The Iranians are the ultimate anti-status quo power, they have been trying for decades to overturn the regional order. Each country threw their weight behind different
groups, all over the Middle East. Just like in Iraq, the Saudis began supporting
Sunni groups and governments while Iran helps Shia groups rise up against them. In Tunisia, the Saudi’s backed a dictator
while the Iranians stoked protests. In Bahrain, Iran supported Shia leaders seeking
to overthrow the government. Saudi Arabia, in turn, sent troops to help
quash the unrest. Both got involved in Libya, Lebanon and Morocco As Saudi Arabia and Iran put more and more
pressure on these countries… they began to collapse. Now the feud has gone a step further, with
both countries deploying their own militaries. In Yemen, the Saudi military is on the ground
helping the central government. They are fighting the rebels, called the Houthis,
who are an Iranian proxy group. The reverse is happening in Syria. The Iranian
military is fighting side by side with militias, some of them extremists groups like Hezbollah,
in support of dictator Bashar al-Assad. They are fighting rebel Sunni groups, who
are Saudi proxies. The more civil wars that broke out in the
Middle East, the more Saudi Arabia and Iran became involved. Neither the government of Saudi Arabia nor the government of Iran are looking for a fight. But the problem is these civil wars create
circumstances that no one could have predicted. Both the Iranians and the Saudis feel that their vital national interests, are threatened, are in jeopardy, because of different things happening in these civil
wars, things they blame each other for. Now the cold war is drawing in other countries. The Saudi government is threatening Qatar, a tiny Gulf state that was developing ties with Iran. Meanwhile in Syria and Iraq, the terrorist
group, ISIS is nearing defeat and both the Saudis and Iranians are angling to take control
of that territory. It’s a Cold war that's becoming incredibly
unpredictable. As the Middle East continues to destabilize,
its hard to say how far these countries will go. Most people know Vincent Van Gogh cut his ear off. But most may NOT know he shot himself at just
age 37. Thirty-seven years of poverty and wanderlust,
with a reputation for failure. He died 2 days later, but left behind, some of the most influential artistic works of his generation. But he also left behind a stunning visual
record of his wanderings. As a teenager, Van Gogh worked at this art dealership in the Hague, and he drew the beauty around him. He was transferred to the Paris branch in
1875, but he got fired. Officially, it was for disappearing over Christmas for an unannounced vacation. He taught at this boys school in Ramsgate, England in 1876, but he quit to pursue his religious fervor and teach Sunday school. He wandered through the Netherlands and Belgium, for some years, jumping from job to job. He painted the miners in this Belgian town
while pursuing a career as a preacher. It wasn’t until 1880, when he was 27 that
he embraced being an artist, evidenced by numerous sketches and in letters to his brother. By 1886, in Paris, you can see his skills
flourish, influenced by the impressionism and post-impressionism movements in France and its notable artists. He was the romanticised idea of a struggling starving artist. But he managed to befriend many artists of the time including Gauguin. You can see their influences on each other here. In 1888, Gauguin stayed with Van Gogh in the infamous Yellow House. It was during these tumultuous years, 1888 through 1890, that he made all those cool paintings you’ve likely seen already. But his talent still wasn’t recognized. He gave a portrait away to its subject during his last year in France. The subject used it to repair a chicken coop,
then gave it away. He finally entered an asylum in Saint Rémy during May 1889, and continued to paint his surroundings. He made his last move to Auvers-sur-Oise in May of 1890. Van Gogh’s life was short and painful, and
he probably thought of himself as a failure. But he wasn’t. Though his life took a winding path, you can see him going straight towards what he did better than anybody else in the world could do. All the mainstream media wants to talk about
is Russia, Russia, Russia! But what about the president’s accomplishments? So it’s been a bad week for the Trump administration. Newly released emails show that Trump Jr.,
Trump’s former campaign chair, and Trump’s son-in-law all met with a Russian
attorney in June of 2016 after being promised damaging info about Hillary
Clinton. And they did it believing that that info was coming from the Russian government, which was trying to help Trump win the election. That’s a huge deal. It shows the Trump campaign’s intent to
collude with Russia, and it potentially violates federal law regarding soliciting information from hostile foreign
governments. That being said, it’s been a hilarious week
to watch Fox News. And I’m not really dating anyone right now, so I decided to compile my favorite Fox News
defenses of Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting. Please enjoy. Mainstream media is once again foaming at
the mouth over Russia, Russia, Russia. Number one, Trump Jr. is the real victim here. Don Jr is the victim here. ... It looked like the whole thing was a setup. If I was Don Jr., I’d be furious. Genius. They think that this meeting could’ve been
a setup, made to give the appearance of Russian collusion. Somebody set up the meeting, got Trump Jr.
to agree to it, and then waited for months until after Hillary lost the election to make
it public. Well, this seems to be a setup of some sort. Two: How was he supposed to know what collusion
is? He’s not a seasoned political operative;
he’s just trying to help his father. There’s a big difference between collusion
and just not knowing better. This just goes to show how far they’ve matured
as the campaign has gone on. ... We were new to this. Nice. Lowest possible bar. Three: Who wouldn’t agree to collude with
the Russian government? I’m sorry, but how could you not listen
to that?... Whoever turns down gossip about an enemy,
no one ever does. And you don’t even give a damn about the
source. That is, like, Fox News’s philosophy in
a nutshell, actually. Four: You guessed it. We know real felonies, real crimes were committed. Hillary Clinton was worse. Hillary Clinton mishandled top-secret information. I am genuinely concerned about Sean Hannity
at this point. What we’re now living through is a massive,
huge double standard. Can you imagine if Hillary had actually won
the election? Hannity’s show would just be him getting
“but her emails” tattooed on different parts of his body every night. Five: This is actually all Obama’s fault. If you have a problem with what Russia’s
doing… Uh-huh. then you have a problem with what... You got this. Barack Obama did to stop them from doing it. He never, apparently... Stick the landing! never stopped any of this from happening. Nice! Makes no sense! Six: The real problem is people leaking to
the press. Wound up in the hands of the New York Times. This White House has got a leakage problem. Are you saying the White House needs a plumber? I’m so dead inside. And the last and maybe least funny one: So
what? The meeting was meaningless. Did nothing to produce anything. Where’s the collusion? Trump Jr. left without getting any dirt on
the rival campaign, let alone making any agreement to sell out his country. There was no collusion because she didn’t
give you anything. What’s so wrong with trying to work with
a hostile foreign government to influence the election? Donald Trump Jr. broke no laws, likely broke
no ethics rules. Listening is not a crime. Listening to people is not a crime. A 20-minute meeting to listen to something
is not collusion. How many lobbyists in Washington routinely
meet with foreign agents who are seeking to influence American policy? That’s standard here and has been for a
long time. This kind of stuff is harder to laugh at. For one, it’s wrong. Having contact with foreign governments is
not the same as working with a hostile one to influence the election, for Christ’s
sake. And soliciting information like this could
actually be a violation of federal law, even if Trump Jr. got nothing out of it. But the real reason this talking point is
scary is because it’s downplaying a gross violation of democratic norms. I’ve never seen liberals so mad. You would’ve thought someone lit a cigarette
in a restaurant or forgot to recycle. I mean, that level of rage. Fox is training its viewers to roll their
eyes. The mainstream media’s obsession with Russia
continues. But do you, the people, even care about that? To treat collusion as just another Democratic
talking point. This is part of the normal process of the
dirty political system that we live in today. Always happens. And if anyone says it doesn’t, it’s a
lie. And as this Russia story keeps getting worse,
we’re going to see just how far the network is willing to go to stay on Trump’s good
side. This is you. This is a professional bowler. He’s got great form. He’s been practicing for decades. But he also sees a hidden pattern on every
lane every time he bowls. Understanding the hidden oil patterns on every
lane is a key to understanding bowling. It separates the pros from the rest of us. And
these nearly invisible patterns can completely change how you bowl. This is not just some guy. This is Parker Bohn III. He’s won a mess of titles and earned more
than three million dollars bowling. He’s been turned into an arcade game. To explain bowling, he’s got to crouch like
this. And point at barely visible lines. Here’s your typical bowling lane. 39 boards. It’s got targeting guides, like the dots
and arrows - if you want a rule of thumb, each arrow is five boards apart, with the
middle arrow at the 20th board. For a strike, you want your ball to hit between
the one and three pins or the one and 2 pins. This area is called “the pocket.” That’s just the beginning. Every lane is coated with oil. It started for protection, but today, these
oil patterns hugely affect strategy and scores. “Right here, the pattern that they’ve
put out onto the lane is roughly 41 feet in length.” Every bowling lane has a pattern, usually
placed by an oil machine like this one. The PBA knows showing oil patterns is crucial. Sometimes they even put blue oil on the lanes. Here’s Bohn bowling on one. “Come on. Yes baby!” Here’s what typically happens. See how the blue is darker in some spots? That represents more oil on the lane. Your ball starts here, and because there’s
a lot of oil, it skids along the top. Think of your tires skidding on ice. As you get further down, the oil thins out. If you put spin on your ball, it starts getting
enough traction to hook a bit as it grabs onto the wood. Less oil, more traction. When there’s no oil left, that spinning
ball will start rolling toward the pins, because it’s picking up a lot of friction on the
lane. That’s really important. To hit “the pocket” - that sweet spot
between pins — only hooking can help you do that,
and hooking depends on oil patterns. You can see it as Bohn bowls. Outside, then a hook in when the oil stops. Strike. But for pros, knowing there’s oil on the
lane is just the beginning. These are the tour oil patterns of the Professional
Bowlers Association. The PBA. They have crazy names like Badger, Bear, and
Cheetah. And they affect play a lot. “I like the Cheetah cause I grew up playing
the gutter. I love throwing my ball out near the edge
of the lane and letting it hook back.” Let’s break down what that means. There’s less oil on the side. Less oil helps his ball hook early, because
it skids less. And because Cheetah is a short pattern — 35
feet instead of, say 41 feet — the ball has more space on the boards, without oil. He can play closer to the edge, because there’s
more time to get back to the pocket and hit the pins. On a longer pattern, you’d want to play
closer to the middle, because the ball would have less time to get back to the pocket once
you leave the oil. A pro bowler adjusts their speed and ball
type around this, and they have to make all these considerations with every different
pattern. And that’s not all. The oil on a lane is constantly changing. “As the day progresses, as your league progresses,
guess what just happened to your lane - it really started to break down.” See this pattern on the right that Bohn drew? These are from right handed bowlers. Their balls drag out oil over the course of
a day. That means bowlers have to compensate by bowling
more weakly or closer to the center, because the lane has changed. You can see where this ball has picked up
oil. Look at the lines. Changing oil makes lanes really complex. “Look right there, you’re gonna see oil
there.” “See, there’s some oil right in here we
can see.” “There is a ball that has brought oil down
there. When? We don’t know.” That means bowlers have to change their strategy
as the lane breaks down. If they’re a lefty like Bohn,
it even gives them an advantage. Fewer people are bowling on their side, so
the oil breaks down less. So although a bowling alley might make you
think of a basketball court, because of the wood floor,
for pros, it’s more like a golf course, where every hole is different. Every lane is different too. So how can people who aren’t as good as
Parker Bohn III use that to their advantage? Let’s say you are a totally recreational
bowler. A high school kid on a Friday night, a half-drunk
college student, a friendless video producer who’s greatest thrill in life was standing
on a bowling lane. You’re not gonna buy a specially engineered
ball or take classes on form. Bowling is complex. This is like advice for the first move of
a chess game. But there are ways you can use your oil pattern
knowledge to improve your game. This is a “house pattern.” You’d find this in a typical neighborhood
bowling alley, probably one like yours. It’s usually about 32 feet, buffed out to
40 feet. It’s designed to help you knock down pins. All that oil in the center helps you stay
longer in the middle if you shoot your ball there, so you won’t hook too early. Less oil on the side helps you hook earlier
if you aim too far from the pocket. The pros have a really flat pattern like this
one in the US open. They get no help at all from the oil. But you get guided to the middle by the oil. It’s like an extra bumper! There’s a rule of thumb for where to aim. “If you take whatever the length is minus
31, that’s the rule of thumb. Minus 31 gives you a very good, formulated,
idea of where your ball should be at the end of the pattern. In this case, we’re looking at approximately
41 minus 31, means that we’re going to be at approximately the 10th board. ”
So shoot for around that 10 board - this arrow - maybe a little further out for your light
ball. And try for that hook. The lane is built to help you, even if you
have a cheap plastic ball and terrible form. So maybe this is not you. But this doesn't have to be you, either. So if you want to learn more about bowling,
this video just scratches the surface. One of my favorite channels is the USBC’s
Bowling Academy. They have really in-depth videos that will
tell you everything you need to know about bowling patterns and also higher strategy
when it comes to bowling. I've often wondered what it felt like to live through Watergate. “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” "Events have been rushing toward one seemingly inevitable conclusion." The disorientation, the confusion, the feeling that you don’t know the truth, but with each and every day that goes by, knowing the truth is worse than you had possibly imagined. I think I know what it feels like now. We are filling in a picture, slowly, that unfortunately makes a lot of sense. Think back to May, when President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. Why did he do that? Why did he put his whole administration at risk? Well, he had an answer. It wasn’t his White House’s initial answer, but he had an answer. "When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won. But now it’s clear that story wasn’t made-up. And what’s worse, and what might explain Trump’s decision to fire Comey, to obstruct justice, to risk his presidency, is that that investigation threatened the people he loves most in the world. Here is what we learned this week. On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. got an email. It was from a British publicist named Rob Goldstone. He was writing on behalf of a Russian businessman, Aras Agalarov, and his son, Emin. Both of these folks had worked with Donald Trump Sr. on the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and they've worked with him on other... endeavors. "Emin wake up, c'mon!" "What's wrong with you?" In the email, which Donald Trump Jr. released on Twitter, in order to get in front of the New York Times releasing it, Goldstone says a few interesting things. First, he writes that Aras, the older Agalarov, met with someone he calls Russia’s “crown prosecutor” — that’s a term that, in other countries, describes a lawyer who argues on behalf of the state. Now, crown prosecutor doesn’t exist in Russia. But just to be clear, the source is later described as a “Russian government attorney,” And what this person has is a pretty big deal. they have “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton” and they want to meet with Trump Jr. and the campaign to hand them over. The most interesting part of the email, the one that leaves no shadow of doubt about what what happening here, is the last sentence: this whole thing, the meeting with this lawyer about the incriminating documents, is, quote, “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Right there, Donald Jr. is told that the meeting is part of the Russian government’s effort to sway the American election to his dad. And how does he respond? Does he go to the FBI, does he ignore the email? No, minutes later he replies: “if it’s what you say I love it,” and he forwards the whole email thread to then campaign chair Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. They all go to this meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. So what does this tell us? What have we learned here? First, we learn that that Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort knew the Russian government wanted to elect Trump. Next, it tells us all three of these men, they weren’t just open to working with the Russian government against Clinton’s campaign. They were actively trying to do it. They were taking meetings at a busy time in the campaign. All three of them. They were taking meetings to try to work with the Russian government. That has not been their story until now. “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you, or your campaign and Putin and his regime?” “No there are not. That's absurd and y’know, there’s no basis to it.” “So no collusion whatsoever between anybody involved with Trump and anyone involved with Russia in the 2016 campaign?” “No.” "Just to button up one question, did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who are trying to meddle in the election? “Oh of course not.” Now Donald Trump says the Russian lawyer ended up having “no meaningful information" for them. So his defense is basically, he tried to collude with the Russian government to influence an American election, but ugh, the Russian lawyer just didn’t have the goods. So first, that might not matter in a court of law. “The law says soliciting, accepting or receiving." "He solicited." "He accepted." "He maybe never received it." "He violated the law."" But also remember, Russia did end up hacking Democratic emails and releasing them in ways and at times that helped the Trump campaign. We know about this meeting now, which doesn’t seem to have been about those emails. But we don’t know if there were other meetings, if there was cooperation on other questions. All we really know now is that the Trump campaign was open to, and actively work towards, colluding with Russia to influence the election. We also know that when they were told Russia was trying to help them, they didn’t react with surprise, or shock, or fear. They said, ‘yeah! Let’s take that meeting.’ It’s always worth asking how people involved in clear wrongdoing might have seemed like the hero of the story to themselves. Trump and his family, they bought into the most fevered conspiracies about Clinton. "She’s arguably the most corrupt politician we’ve ever seen in this country, there's no question about it." “If Hillary Clinton were elected, she’d be the first president who couldn’t pass a basic background check.” "She's a world-class liar." And they likely believed there was information crucial to American interests lurking in her documents. If they had obtained the emails or anything else and proven Clinton dangerously unfit to lead, or revealed that foreign powers had more information or more leverage over American policy-making than we knew, they would have done the country a great service, or at least it’s easy to believe how they would see it that way. But what they were actually doing was working with a foreign government to influence an American election. And that's crossing a very serious line. Behind all this, I wonder sometimes: How hard is Vladimir Putin laughing at us right now? One theory of Russia’s involvement in the election is they never expected to elect Trump — they just wanted to sow doubt in America’s institutions and in its leaders. Look how easily, look how wildly they succeeded. If you believe the dead can return to haunt
the living, you’re not alone. According to one poll, 45% of Americans believe
in ghosts and 28% claim to actually have seen a ghost. They show up in our movies, I see dead people. books, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony music videos. As far back as we can trace human life,
there’s evidence that almost every culture has expressed curiosity about what comes after. Many people believe in them, but is there actually any proof that ghosts
exist? I went to Buffalo, New York, to talk to Joe
Nickell, a paranormal investigator who’s been trying
to answer that question for almost 50 years. I’m the world’s only full-time, salaried,
professional, science-based paranormal investigator. I’m looking to explain a case, not debunk
it, not promote it. Explain it. Nickell is a true renaissance man, drawing from a wide variety of disciplines
for his cases. I mean, at one time or another I’ve used
linguistic analysis, I’ve used blood pattern analysis, psychological insights. Nearly anything could be used
if it would illuminate a particular case. So in the hundreds of cases in his
half-century of investigation, has he ever found anything that would
make him believe in ghosts? Not only have I never found a single case
that I thought was proof of a ghost, neither has science. Not a single ghost or haunting has been
authenticated by science. Part of what makes it difficult to investigate
is all the different ways people have defined “ghosts.” Books flying off a shelf? Orbs in photos? Mysterious footsteps in the attic? Patrick Swayze seductively helping
you throw a vase? Definitely ghost. All of the would-be evidence that
ghosts exist consists of ambiguous photographs, videos, The next day, his HDTV literally begins
rocking violently from side to side all by itself. and first hand accounts, Even if it’s during the day, there’s this
eerie feeling that you get that there’s someone there. which, while fun and spooky, are not
exactly scientific proof. Ghost hunters often use gadgets such as
EMF meters, a tool that measure electromagnetic fields,
which ghosts can supposably manipulate. But nobody’s been able to explain exactly
what the link is, and most scientists are pretty skeptical of
this stuff. So there might not be any empirical, scientific
evidence that shows that ghosts exist, but that doesn’t actually mean that you’re
crazy if you think you see one. One is infrasound, a sound that falls below the audible 20Hz
frequency. Infrasound can be produced by many things,
including or certain machinery like engines or fans. Researchers have hypothesized that exposure
to infrasound can induce feeling of depression, chills, and the sense that somebody’s presence
is near you. The sound can even cause visual hallucinations. At the frequency of 18Hz, it resonates with
the structure of the human eyeball. And if you have a sound that resonates with
something material, it will make the material vibrate at that frequency. And when that happens to you, your eye
begins to see things that are in fact not there. Swiss scientists have also been able to
simulate a ghost in a lab. They made a robot that mimics the movement
of the subject’s hands with a mechanical arm that touches your back,
but with a slight delay. When you delay the movement, it creates
an unmistakable sensation for subjects that there’s a ghostly presence in the room. This time it really felt like I was playing
with somebody, something. So it wasn’t myself that was poking me in
the back, but it was as if I was playing with an animal,
a monkey, that was poking me in the back or something like that. While most ghost sightings can’t be written
off as a robot poking your back, this experiment does highlight how
manipulating certain parts of your brain can produce what researcher Olaf Blanke calls which can easily be misconstrued as a
ghostly presence. Sometimes even just a person’s state of
consciousness can make them feel or see presences. We can actually have people see ghosts, and those tend to be waking dreams that
occur in the twilight between being fully asleep and
fully awake. These kind of waking dreams can also
be called sleep paralysis, which about 8% of people experience at
some point in their lifetime. You feel like you’re awake, but you’re
unable to move your body, and it’s often accompanied by terrifying
visuals like shadows, people, or even monsters, which, if you didn’t know what was happening,
would be easy to confuse for having seen a ghost. Another possible explanation for ghostly sightings
is grief. One study found that up to 60% of people
that lose a spouse claim to see or hear their dead loved ones. In his book about hallucinations, neurologist
Oliver Sacks said that seeing the face of a deceased loved one can actually
help you cope with your grief. This sort of hallucination is not frightening; it’s often very comforting. It seems to be part of the mourning process. A sudden hole has been left in one’s life,
and this helps it to heal over. There is no question that most of the paranormal
promotes something very positive. There are a few exceptions,
but all have to do with our hopes and our fears. We’re hopeful that ghosts exist because
then we don’t really die. Our loved ones are not gone from us;
they are real and alive. I remember when my grandmother died and
how much I did not want that to be the case. But the ghost idea, the idea that we just
get up out of our bodies and continue on, is powerful. Because who doesn’t have an instance in
which he or she would say, I just wish I could’ve told my mother this
one thing. Or I wish my father knew I wasn’t really
mad at him that time. So ghosts may not actually exist, but that doesn’t mean that you might
not see one. We have this mismatch. We have a number of Midwestern cities that are smaller than they used to be. "The city of Detroit has lost nearly two thirds of its population since its post-war peak." "Cincinnati has lost 40 percent of its population since 1950." "In 1950, nearly a million people lived in the city of Cleveland. Now, under 400,000." A lot of the industries that have been based there have gone away. "The plant where they once pumped out 12 million four-speed transmissions is shutting down." "A southern Indiana pillow factory prepares to close." "Hostess Brands says it will shut down its Akron plant." "Heads of American Axle Manufacturing in Hamtramck say the plant is closing its doors." So those are cities that are overbuilt. They have airports and housing stock and cultural amenities for bigger cities than they are today. And then we have coastal cities that have not enough infrastructure to support their current populations. A lot of that, there isn't that much we can do about. Google, Apple, JP Morgan, these are private companies that have chosen to cluster in expensive coastal cities. But the government is something that's under our control. "The Washington area now commands the highest housing prices compared to income in the country. If a certain amount of well-paid government jobs left the Washington area, we would not have a crippling hole. This is a very expensive office space market. Companies would lease that space. It's an expensive housing market. If it was a little bit less demand to live here, people who live here would see rents see rents fall down, and it could give places like Cleveland, Detroit, that have a lot to offer, they have art museums, they have professional sports teams, they have theaters, but have a lack of jobs engines, some more opportunities there. There's a lot of government agencies that don't have a great deal to do with politics, per se. The Centers for Disease Control, which is headquartered in Atlanta, is a really good model for that. It's a government agency, it's very important, but it's not really part of national politics. The sort of technical and scientific agencies, you often find, have already decided to sort of move out to the suburbs in search of cheaper and more plentiful office space, and those are the kind of agencies where we should think about... if we could get an even higher standard of living by moving to lower cost cities, but also to places that, frankly, just have more need of the jobs. There's no need for everything to be so incredibly centralized. It makes people feel like politics and government is happening in a far-off, very distant kind of place. The average income in the DC metro area is the highest in the nation, and people rightly find that to be a little bit troubling to the American spirit. And so trying to spread some of that opportunity around, after all, the tax dollars that support these jobs come from everywhere, and it makes sense to, make sure that the benefits also flow everywhere. In the last year, North Korea has been launching a lot of missiles. They're all just tests, but they're meant to send a message. North Korea is armed and dangerous. They've demonstrated missiles that can destroy Seoul and Tokyo. Hit US bases in the Pacific. And now one that can reach Alaska. US officials have confirmed that over night North Korea has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, an ICBM. Capable of reaching Alaska. Kim Jung Un called it a gift to the Trump Administration. This is the end goal or at least towards the end goal for North Korea. It’s called the Hwasong-14. it’s the newest member of North Korea’s arsenal, and their first working Intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. It's the kind of thing that the US and
Russia have thousands of, and had used as a threat against each other during the Cold War. North Korea has been working on one of its own for a while and they now appear to have one. The North Koreans have had nuclear bombs since
2006, and they could certainly attack their neighbors, but they’ve had no real way to
deliver them to a distant target. They could try and drop one from an airplane, but it would likely be shot down well before getting to the target. The most effective way to use a nuclear bomb is to attach it to a missile. Different delivery systems determine how far the target can be. North Korea already has a huge arsenal of
short and medium range missiles. But it DIDN’T have a working ICBM, which
can hit a target up to 15,000 kilometers away because it’s actually multiple missiles
in 1. Stacked on top of each other, each missile
is used one-by-one to push the warhead into space. Then once it’s over a target, this final
4th section re-enters the atmosphere and detonates. This is a very hard thing to engineer and
tests of a previous long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, failed repeatedly. BUT ON JULY 4, 2017, North Korea successfully tested an ICBM called the Hwasong-14, a missile capable of reaching Alaska. It reached a distance of about 930 kilometers, flew for nearly 40 minutes, and successfully, re-entered, splashing down in the Sea of Japan. This is a major milestone for North Korea. Analysts calculate that if North Korea wanted
to use the Hwasong-14 in a real attack, they would launch it at a lower angle, giving it
a range of more than 5,500km, putting Alaska in range. But this still doesn’t mean North Korea
can nuke Alaska today. The Pentagon says the North Koreans cannot fit a nuclear bomb on the Hwasong-14 and have it reliably detonate. The Hwasong-14 is a relatively small ICBM, meaning it can’t carry a very heavy nuclear bomb. In order for it to make it to Alaska, the
North Koreans would have to figure out how to “miniaturize” the bomb.
And there’s no evidence the North Koreans can do this yet. But the Hwasong-14 test is still very serious, because it shows that North Korea is rapidly improving its ICBM technology and that it’s determined to build one, no matter who tries to stop them. So, this raises the question - Why is North
Korea so dead set on building an ICBM? The North Koreans first got nuclear technology in the 1950s, when their ally, the Soviet Union, helped them build nuclear reactors
for energy. At the time, they were protected from their enemies, South Korea and the US, by the massive nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union. But in 1993, when the Soviet Union collapsed, that protection went away. So, North Korean dictator Kim Sung Il / Kim Jung il took matters into his own hands and started using the nuclear reactors to make
weapons. The US didn’t want an aggressive, rogue
state to have nuclear weapons, so 3 consecutive US presidents all tried different tactics
to get north korea to stop. Clinton negotiated, Bush suspended negotiations and threatened them, and Obama simply tried to wait North Korea out. But every single plan failed to stop the nuclear
program — and there’s a reason for that. See, the Kim dynasty believes their only option for security is to have proven nuclear capabilities. They saw the US invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein because they thought he might have nukes. They also saw Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi negotiate with the US and give up his nuclear program, only to be killed by US-backed rebels. The Kim dynasty is determined not to be next. So they’ve gone on to build an arsenal of
missiles for their nuclear bombs. The No Dong is functional today and has a range of 1,500km. And North Korea’s SCUD missiles are highly effective within 1,000 km. This puts North Korea’s main enemies, South Korea and Japan within range as well as the 62,000 US troops stationed there. In fact, North Korea wants to make that loud and clear. And it does so by successfully testing these short range missiles - a lot. The tests provide a chance for them to improve their missiles but more importantly, they send a political message. South Korea and Japan wouldn’t attack North Korea because they’ve seen the missiles that could devastate some of their largest
cities. Also…they don’t have any nuclear weapons of their own. So what’s keeping North Korea from attacking its sworn enemies? The US - which has promised to protect South Korea and Japan with the largest ICBM arsenal in the world. This puts North Korea at a disadvantage. It knows the US can obliterate it, but it
can’t reach the US just yet. This is why the US can safely to cut off North Korean trade and enact other punishments. And this brings us back to why North Korea has been trying so hard to build an ICBM; it’s what they need to tip the scales in
their favor. Right now, North Korea can only attack US allies but if it can successfully test any of these ICBMs, it would be the same as telling the US “if you nuke us, we’ll nuke you”. If the US knows North Korea can target an
American city, it‘ll be less likely to come to the aid of South Korea or Japan This would effectively break up the alliance that’s designed to keep North Korea in check. But the implications of this would go far
beyond the Korean peninsula. Suddenly in charge of their own protection, South Korea and Japan would potentially develop nuclear weapons of their own -- something Donald Trump once said he would be fine with. This would trigger a process called nuclear proliferation and it’s exactly what the US has been trying to prevent since the Cold War. Right now, there are 9 countries with known nuclear weapons of their own, while 190 states that maintain a non-nuclear status because of the Non-proliferation treaty. But the success of a North Korean ICBM could change that. If South Korea and Japan start looking to
change their nuclear status, it could encourage other countries to do the same. So experts are urging the US to take action now while it still can. President Trump is pressing China to help. See, China continues to trade and have a diplomatic relationship with North Korea, essentially keeping the regime alive. So if Trump can get China to leverage or cut off that support, North Korea might decide that it’s not worth continuing to pour money into developing better ICBMs. But for now, as North Korea continues to test and parade missiles, tensions continue to rise. Three US presidents have said they’d prevent the North from building better nukes and missiles. Three US presidents have failed. At least for now, it looks like Donald Trump will be the fourth. Twice as many. In 2016, more than 130,000 people worked as solar installers in the US, while 51,000 worked in coal mining. So, what happened? First, solar panels got a lot cheaper. Ten years ago, rooftop solar systems were more than twice as expensive as they are today. The price drop in the earlier years was driven by a huge manufacturing surplus, mostly from China. Later, around 2013, the price continued to drop, but more slowly. These reductions were driven by other
factors, like more efficient panels, and by the fact that adoption of solar power spread by word of mouth. You can see it in this map from SolarCity, the United States’ largest solar installer. It shows residential solar panels in the Fort Collins, Colorado area. Each dot represents a customer: the yellow dots are ordinary customers, and the green dots are customers referred by friends. Let’s watch that again. Look at this area just north of the city proper. The yellow dots are kind of all over the place, but the green dots start in one area then radiate outwards. Cheaper more efficient panels, this contagion effect, plus tax credits and financing options that make it possible to buy panels without paying a lot upfront, are all these factors that have led to a massive increase in solar installations. On average, a new rooftop solar system is installed in the US every four minutes. And all of those installations require a lot of workers. Which is why the number of solar employees has more than tripled since 2010. Meanwhile, the number of coal jobs in the US has fallen sharply. But if you look at the data, you can see that this trend has been in the works for decades. At its peak in the mid 1920s, the coal mining industry employed about 900,000 people. But that number has been falling ever since. The Great Depression, decreased demand, and technological innovations drove the first wave of job losses. More recently, the numbers dropped thanks to a major competitor to coal: “Energy companies are increasingly scouring the country for natural gas...” "Hydraulic fracturing is behind the coast-to-coast energy boom." “...cracking the shale rock thousands of feet beneath the ground, and freeing the precious fossil fuels inside.” "Fracking is a remarkable innovation." The electricity that charges your phone and powers your refrigerator gets there through wires that are controlled by an electric utility company. These companies build and manage the power plants that turn fuel like coal and natural gas into electricity. But not all fuel is created equal. Because advancements in fracking technology have made natural gas cheap and accessible utility companies are buying way more of it — and way less coal. In 2005, coal-fired power plants produced about half the nation’s electricity. By 2016, that share had fallen to about 30 percent. Natural gas has another big advantage over coal: it gives off significantly less carbon dioxide when it’s burned for electricity. Power plants are responsible for about a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions, and that’s why the EPA under President Obama issued 10 different regulations targeting coal-fired power plants, which critics often blame for the coal industry’s decline. "President Obama has hurt the heart and soul of my state, our proud coal miners and the communities where they live." "An onslaught of over-regulations, federal regulations, have made it harder to mine coal and harder to burn coal." "We're going to save the coal industry, we're gonna save that coal industry, believe me, we're gonna save it. But the truth is, a lot of this might be out of President Trump’s hands. A group of researchers from Columbia University studied the factors that led to the 27 percent drop in coal production between 2011 and 2016. And they found that Obama’s new regulations were responsible for about three to five percent of that decline. Natural gas, decreased demand, and renewables like wind and solar played a much bigger part. The coal industry’s troubles started way before Obama, but his regulations continue to be the focus of Trump’s rescue plan. "The war on coal is over." "We will put our miners back to work." Unless the president starts to acknowledge some more important factors behind coal’s decline, there’s not much he can do to bring back those jobs. *America the Beautiful plays* Be careful out there, America. Americans love to blow things up on July 4th. The tradition goes all the way
back to the Declaration of Independence. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with... Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other
from this time forward forever more. — John Adams
In a letter to his wife Abigail, July, 3, 1776 So we do just that. And then people get hurt. Fireworks were implicated
in 11,100 hospital vistis in 2016. An estimated 7,600 took place
between June 18th and July 18th. When you're driving down the highway it's hard to avoid a deer because you never know when it's coming. By the do time you see it, it's often too late. But what if there were crossings for animals
just like the ones used by humans? In some places, planners have built exactly that and data shows that animals are using them, which means that close calls like this are far less likely to happen. Hitting an animal is a risk anywhere roads
are built through animal habitats. And as more roads are built, there are more
opportunities for collisions. According to a 2008 study commissioned by
the US Congress, the number of animal vehicle collisions was increasing. Experts blamed the rise on more vehicle miles traveled combined with a growing North American
deer population. But the official tally excludes accidents
that have less than $1,000 in property damage. If you account for minor collisions, unreported
accidents and other variables, experts estimate at least one million
collisions with large animals meaning deer, elk, and moose occur every year in the United States. And while animal vehicle collisions rarely
cost lives, they do cost money. In the US, wildlife vehicle collisions cost
over $8 billion dollars every year. Money that is spent on vehicle repairs, medical
costs, and other expenses. And although humans tend to survive, animals
often get killed. In the same report, researchers found that
vehicular traffic threatened 21 endangered including the bighorn sheep. In some places, highway planners
have solved the problem by building fences to keep animals off the road. A relatively cheap solution
that has been proven to reduce roadkill by over 50%. But although fencing reduces roadkill, 
it neglects a wider problem: Besides the risk of collision, roads harm
animals by dividing wildlife populations and limiting their ability to find mates, food,
and other necessities of life. In Canada, wildlife scientist Tony Clevenger has been studying how road construction affects animals in Banff National Park. "It can have important impacts
on the reproductive success because females aren't being
able to access important spring habitat because they are not crossing the highway, So it's important that we maintain these
movements and we maintain this access to the important biological resources
throughout the year and wildlife crossing structures do that." Beginning in the 1980s, authorities began installing a system of underpasses and overpasses in Banff. The structures were for animal use only and were located where animals were likely
to cross the road. "The data speaks for itself, for example here on the Trans-Canada Highway
in Banff National Park there were on average more than one hundred
elk-vehicle collisions per year before the fencing and the wildlife crossing structures and now it's down to less than a half dozen. So these are huge reductions by having these
mitigation measures in place that are improving motorist safety, they are saving lives, and also, in a protected area like Banff National Park, it's important because the objective of this National Park is to protect wildlife." Instead of blocking the road entirely, planners used fences to funnel wildlife
towards the crossing structures, which were planted with native vegetation. A few species, like deer, elk, and moose,
immediately started using them and were followed by more skeptical species,
like wolves and grizzlies. Within a few decades, even the most reluctant species, like lynx, had adapted to using the crossings. In 2012, a male grizzly was recorded crossing
the structures 66 times in one summer. By crossing the highway, the bear's habitat
expanded to include potential mates on the other side of the road, which decreases the
likelihood of inbreeding. "What we've been able to show is that, by
having these overpasses and underpasses in place, we've restored genetic connectivity across the highway
here in Banff National Park." Wildlife crossing structures are fairly common
in some parts of the world, particularly in Western European countries
like the Netherlands. But there are relatively few in North America and the success of the Banff crossings has
encouraged similar projects in The United States, like this rendering of an overpass being built
in Washington State. And in 2012, The Wyoming Department of Transportation built an overpass that reconnected an ancient migration route
of the pronghorn antelope. So, if these crossings are improving safety
and restoring habitats, why aren't they everywhere? "Probably the biggest factor that would limit
construction of wildlife crossings is cost and having the funding within the
transportation agency budgets to build these wildlife crossing structures.". Structures can save money in the long run, but the initial investment is significant. Constructing an overpass like this one in
Banff typically costs several millions of dollars. So to create more cost-effective solutions, Clevenger organized a design competition with a group of experts that included
ecologist Nina-Marie Lister. They named it "ARC": short for "animal road crossing". Instead of adapting traditional plans
from highway engineers, ARC encouraged different stakeholders
to collaborate on structure design. "There had to be a landscape architect, an architect, and an engineer, as well as ecologist. And so for the first time ever, you had a very different way of designing a structure and we asked for them to be ecologically sustainable. They had to consider materials that were recyclable, reusable, or modular and moveable. The contest was a success and ARC generated
groundbreaking solutions, including a winning design that reduced costs
and improved safety by removing the need for pillars on the highway. "The cost of that overpass was about 30-35%
cheaper than overpasses that were being built at the same time
in Banff National Park." The state of Colorado agreed to build the
design, but more immediate needs, including a flooding event in 2013,
have prevented development. "...you can see entire roads washed out." The design was never built, but
that doesn't mean it won't be. As climate change strains ecosystems
and reduces habitats, animals will change their patterns of movement and the need for effective crossings
will become even more acute. To solve the problem, Lister hopes that
planners will return to the ARC designs, which remain viable solutions. "These things work and they solve the problem
once and for all." "It's done. Problem solved." These 13 male senators wrote a health care bill without the help of any women, and it's really bad for women's health. "Nobody is being excluded based upon gender ." "You know you need to write about what's actually happening, and we're having a discussion about the real issues." The bill cuts funding for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income people, which pays for half of all U.S. births, and two-thirds of all unplanned births- including prenatal care. This is important, because the number of women who die in childbirth is increasing in the U.S., even if that number drops in other developed countries. "The number of women in the U.S. who died in childbirth is nearing the highest rate in a quarter century." "60 percent of the deaths in the U.S. at least, are preventable." "African American women are four times as likely to die of pregnancy-related complications." The bill also cuts funding for planned parenthood by preventing clinics from getting reimbursed for treating Medicaid patients. Millions of women depend on planned parenthood for contraception, cancer screenings, and pregnancy and std tests. The congressional budget office estimates that defunding planned parenthood would result in several thousand more unplanned pregnancies each year. This would reverse the current trend. Unplanned births and pregnancies have been falling steadily in the U.S. The bill also targets maternity care, for women who get their insurance through a plan from one of the state insurance marketplaces. Under Obamacare, plans on these state marketplaces had to cover basic health benefits like mental health treatment, prescription drugs, and maternity care. In this bill, states no longer have to force insurance companies to cover this stuff. Before Obamacare, 88% of marketplace insurance plans didn't cover maternity care and if this bill passes, we might end up there again. In the event that the world destroys
itself: historic flooding, crops failing, may mean the extinction of the human species. Through some sort of terrible catastrophe... There is one insurance policy and it is right behind me. The seed vault is a place where the world has
stored the genetic information of thousands and thousands of plants and
crops, in some scenario that the world is not able to facilitate the growth of
past crops, they will come to the seed vault. The seed vault has 135,000 genetic
deposits. It's not just a deposit of seeds, it's actually a deposit of genetic
information, it's ingredients that scientists could use to engineer new strains of plants,
new strains of DNA that could be suitable for whatever state the world's in. So this is just the entrance to the vault it's just like the first layer. It
goes way back into the mountain. Last October, an unexpected rain in this
area got water into the main entrance Hopefully the flooding would get in and
just kill the cauliflower seeds. It froze and turned into this kind of icy mess,
which didn't necessarily threaten the seeds, but what it did is it woke people
up to the fact that this wasn't as future-proofed as we thought it gonna be. The lesson from this flooding drama, is
that as this whole region warms two times faster than the rest of the world, it has these crazy consequences that happen seemingly overnight. Alex Crossan, otherwise known as Mura Masa,
isn’t like most amateur musicians. In 3 years, he's gone from independent productions
in his bedroom to collaboration with a roster of marquee talent for his debut album. But how does a guy making music in his bedroom
gain recognition so quickly? For Mura Masa, things started changing when
his music was posted on a channel he was posted by a group called Majestic Casual. When Majestic Casual started up, they were
just sourcing music they thought was cool and kind of uploading it to youtube. It's almost like a blog. I think they really helped me boost my online
following. Their catalog pulls influence from many corners
of the world. You can hear hybrids of pop, shoegaze, jazz,
house, soul, j-pop. This multi-genre, global orientation is a
big part of Mura Masa’s appeal. This is Lovesick — it was a breakthrough
track for Mura Masa's career. It’s also one of the most played on the
Majestic Casual page. if you break down the elements of that song
it’s all quite random. It actually started with the drum loop. that drum pattern is built from the ground
up from individual samples. then I wrote the piano part next. And that just kind of spawned the rest of
the song, it's all based around that. He added organic touches like steelpan drums
— It’s an amazing mix of percussive and melodic. If you have bass sitting under it and percussion
sitting on top of it, it really rounds out an idea. [In his music] There are manipulated vocal
samples. When I'm sampling vocals it always to add
something to the original. It feels unnatural, but it’s so human. it just adds something that’s very digital
and modern to it. And in other songs he likes to use unorthodox
instruments. I’m a sucker for a good harp. The harp has such nice traditional sounding
quality to it. That when you juxtapose that with the kind
of harsher electronic production, it always sounds nice and sits in a really kind of organic
place. Same thing goes for steelpans. It’s difficult to imagine someone like Mura
Masa coming about with a sound like this in another era. He’s from a british island off the coast
of France, but samples UK dance, hip-hop, and japanese flute. And that's because the internet allows artists
like him to source inspiration from anywhere. And when you can find sounds from across the
world in your bedroom, you can make an album feel like trip around the world. Mura Masa’s sound revolves around unexpected
mixtures. Federal courts had previously put two different versions of the ban on hold, to resolve questions about its constitutionality and on June 26th, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban can take effect with some limitations before the High Court reviews it in the fall. The ban stops all tourists from six majority Muslim countries from entering the US for at least 90 days and all refugees for at least 120 days, unless they already have a visa or have a bona fide relationship with a person or organization in America. Trump's bans could almost be over by the time the court hears the case. Trump called the Supreme court's decision a clear victory for our national security and he did title it  The Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States. After the first ban was put on hold by a judge in Washington and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump signed what was in his words, a quote watered-down version with the same title, but there is absolutely no evidence for such security benefit. Americans were more likely to be killed by their own clothes than by an immigrant terrorist and nobody in the US has been killed in a terrorist attack by immigrants, from these particular six nations in the last 40 years. But while the temporary bans have gotten all the headlines, the order has sent the US down a path of a fundamental shift in American refugee policy. reviewing all admitting procedures and announcing that in the future, refugees will only be admitted from countries that ensure the security and welfare of the United States. This is the opposite of how the US has defined refugees in the past. People fleeing persecution and violence that their own governments cannot or will not protect them from. And this comes at a time when the world faces its biggest refugee crisis since World War II, when 1 in 122 people are displaced. So if you're worried about US terrorist attacks like 9/11, San Bernardino, or the Orlando pulse shooting, This order would have prevented none of them. But if you happen to be afraid of Muslims, this ban might sound pretty good. It falls in line with Trump's anti-muslim statements, the most famous of which he said during the campaign Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. The attitude, that people fleeing terror, war, and famine are dangerous, that attitude resulted in the infamous decision in June 1939 to turn away the St.Louis, a ship carrying 937 Jewish Refugees fleeing another hostile government: Hitler's. First they were turned away in Cuba - the liner St. Louis turned back from Cuba, then they approached Florida but the US coast guard patrolling the waters kept them away too. They eventually disembarked in Belgium, The Netherlands, and France. Jewish unfortunates without a country permitted to land in Belgium after five weeks of suspense afloat. And hundreds died in Holocaust. Since then, the US government has been the world's leader in resettling refugees. They finally reach a haven of safety. The State Department website still brags about it, claiming three million refugees resettled around all 50 states since 1975. The Statue of Liberty bears these goals too. A plaque on the pedestal reads Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. America hasn't always lived up to these lofty goals But since World War II, we've lived in an era where the diversity of who gets to come to America has gone up and up. Regardless of where you come from. The Trump administration has been trying to end this era since January. After multiple defeats, it's won its first battle, and seeing through this vision. Lawyers and protesters are sure to try to preserve it, around the country and this fall in the Supreme Court. If we were to make a mood board for each decade... It would probably look something like this,
right? Even if we didn’t live through the ‘50s,
‘60s, and the ‘70s… We can pretty much agree on the defining look of the time. This is my favorite—the ‘80s. And minus the questionable hairstyles...
the ‘80s set the trend for bright colors, graphic patterns, and geometric shapes. Which made me wonder, who created the look of the ‘80s? Is it even possible to point to a specific
person or a moment in time? Well, in this case, we can. GLENN: I think it’d be hard for us to think of any other design phenomenon that could be located as specifically to a group of people… The Memphis Group dominated the design world
in the ‘80s. The collective led by Italian architect Ettore
Sottsass came together in 1981. They had a huge impact on the postmodern designs of the decade. GLENN: Memphis is probably as influential as a design group there has ever been. And they did originate a lot of that visual vocabulary. So I do give them a lot of the credit for the look of the
'80s for sure. Although majority were Italians, the group had architects and designers from all around the world. Japan, France, Britain, Austria, America... And unlike the name, the group wasn’t from Tennessee. They were actually based in Milan, Italy. The name Memphis came from a Bob Dylan song
that was playing during a meeting. “..mobile with the Memphis blues again” First thing to know about Memphis is that it comes out of a long tradition
of Radical design in Italy in the 1960s. Radical design was a movement—formed by architects
in reaction to the minimal and practical aesthetics of modernism. “Modernism was put into some kind of  a
box. We gave it a lot of rules—which I think a lot of people felt trapped within these rules.” Radical design allowed designers to express
distortion and irony, moving far away from functionality of design. Sottsass was a big proponent of the movement. According to the Guardian, he tried to stay away from modernist way of designing “like a well-educated schoolboy.” He didn’t follow the rules, which made the
Memphis Group’s work unpredictable. PETER: We wanted to be excited. We wanted to be anxious. We wanted to be thrilled. This is Peter Shire, one of two Americans
who were a part of the Memphis Group. PETER: We were doing it mechanically, because we didn't have the computers. They existed—We were seeing signs of it. And you look at that kind of overlay. Look at Memphis—You know, pattern on pattern with stuff flying out. In 1981, the group showed their work for the
first time at the Milan design fair. The entire collection was named after luxury
hotels. GLENN: The Carlton… the Belair Chair that Peter
Shire did... The Plaza Vanity that Michael Graves did. Which is like a joke, right? About taking plastic laminates and
putting it on cheap composition wood, and naming it after luxury hotels… it's all part of this faux-chic
thing that they were interested in. The New York Times wrote that the show “appalled
some and amused others but put everyone attending the fair in a state of high excitement.” GLENN: Sottsass and one of the other designers were on their way to the opening on a taxi, and they thought a terrorist bomb had gone off in downtown Milan. They realized gradually that the chaos and
crowding was actually because of their own exhibition. They got out and walked, and it was like a mob scene. Their work spread quickly through design magazines
that were popular at the time. And soon enough you saw their influence everywhere. GLENN: I always think it’s important that it happened
virtually simultaneously with MTV which also launched in 1981. And if you think about the logo of MTV with
all those colors and patterns and the kind of scratchy graphics. Clearly relates very closely to some of the graphic design ideas that were coming out of Italy that were context in which Memphis emerged. But, despite the impact that the group had, their furniture never quite made it in to people’s homes. GLENN: It was very very unusual to decorate with
Memphis at that time. There’s only one single piece of furniture from Memphis that was ever mass produced and that's the First Chair. I think about 3000 of those were made. With a circular disk at the back and two black
orbs to rest your arms, the design was unlike any other chair on the market in 1983. PETER: Which was a brilliant idea and a terrible chair. But the trouble is that they always fell
over backwards. And that was pretty funny. A few years later, Sottsass left the group
to build his own studio, and the Memphis Group held their last show in 1987. GLENN: Whenever people would say to me what would
be the ending of postmodern period, I would say more or less it is around 1987. Because there is a recession then, that takes some of the air out of the art market— and it's like a real turning point. The life of the Memphis Group was short lived,
6 years to be exact. And even though their designs failed to serve
a function in people’s homes… they left a colorful mark in history and inspired
many designers to come. Like this first Apple watch which was created
in 1995. They were given out for free to anyone who
bought the Mac System. Or this 2011 Dior couture show, which was
an ode to Memphis design. Karl Lagerfeld was among the few who collected
their pieces. And the Sotheby’s Auction House sold David Bowie’s Memphis collection last year—which also included Peter’s work. The designs have a distinctive look that continues to come up time and again... And that’s how design works sometimes, it often spreads around the world without the designers’ names attached. So even if you recognize this look as the look of the ‘80s, most people probably have
never heard of Memphis at all. PETER: I should ask somebody. I should ask a man on the street. Most people would go “...What?” Here’s what I think we can say about the
health care bill Senate Republicans released today.   You’re always going to hear ‘healthcare’
as ‘complicated.’ It’s something that people say to make you
turn away from it, to let them do what they want. "Nobody knew that health care could be so
complicated." It’s not that complicated. This bill has a lot of moving parts, but you
can really get down to what it does in 140 characters. Health care expert Larry Levitt did it today. That is the core of this bill. That is what so many of the policies in it
do.   The first thing the bill does, the biggest
thing is does, the main way it changes American health care, is it guts medicaid. So beginning in 2021, Obamacare’s medicaid
expansion begins to phase out. That medicaid expansion was responsible for
11 of the roughly 20 million people who got covered with insurance under Obamacare From 2021 to 2024, that expansion phases out
entirely. Beginning in 2025, all that’s left is the
medicaid we had before Obamacare, and then the bill takes aim at that. It moves that medicaid onto a growth rate
that doesn’t keep up with how much healthcare actually costs. So year by year, Medicaid is getting cut pretty
deeply against what it actually needs to spend to cover people. Now, why do you need to do all this? Why do you need to put hundreds of billions,
and over time even trillions of dollars, in cuts, to the health insurance that the poorest
people in this country rely on? There’s actually a reason, and you can see
it right here in the bill: Those couple of words, that is a huge tax
cut. It’s a capital gains tax cut. Capital gains is investment income. And in Obamacare, investment income on rich
people got taxed a little bit more to pay for health insurance for poor people. That Obamacare tax increase is repealed. And in order to fund the repeal of it, the
Republican party needs to gut Medicaid, they need to find a way to pay for this huge tax
cut for rich people. How big of a tax cut to rich people is this? A similar version of this in the house bill
got looked at by the center on budget and policy parties. The 400 richest families in America would
get a $33 billion tax cut. That is about as much as it would cost to
keep the medicaid expansion going in 4 states that are covering 700 thousand people. Back to the point about insurance that covers
less. You’ll see on page 41 some language about
essential health benefits. This recurs at different points in the bill. What this does is it changes the very definition
of what insurance has to cover, in order to count as insurance under the law. One thing Obamacare did was to define what
qualified as real insurance. It had to cover things like pregnancy, like
mental health, like hospitalization. The Republican bill lets states waive out
of the essential health benefits clause. So you can have insurance that doesn’t cover
hospitalization. You can have insurance that doesn’t cover
pregnancy, which was very often the case before Obamacare. This is important for a reason people don’t
always realize. In addition to meaning insurers can rip you
off, with insurance that really doesn’t cover what you need it to cover, it’s also
a backdoor way of making it possible to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. If you have an expensive condition, insurance
that doesn't cover anything related to that condition is not worth anything to you. And you won’t sign up for it. Another really telling policy in the bill
that gets at the same idea in a different way, on page 5 they change what the bill defines
as ‘an applicable median cost benchmark plan’. That is obviously a beautiful turn of phrase,
but what it means is that when you get subsidies under Obamacare, it’s not just tied to how
much money you make. It’s tied to how much a good plan costs
in your area. And the way the law defines a good plan is
a plan that is about 70% of your expected health care costs. The Republican bill changes that benchmark
plan, it brings it down to 58%. That is lower than the lowest plan that most
people can buy under Obamacare right now. What’s remarkable about all this is that
Republicans actually knew what people didn’t like about Obamacare. Listen to Mitch McConnell, the guy who wrote
this bill, talking about Obamacare just a few months ago: “Well, what you need to understand is that
there are 25 million Americans who aren’t covered now. If the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone
covered, that’s one of the many failures. In addition to premiums going up, co-payments
going up, deductibles going up. And many Americans who actually did get insurance
when they did not have it before, have really bad insurance that they have to pay for and
the deductibles are so high that it’s really not worth much to them.” He’s right. Those were the problems with Obamacare. The bill didn't cover enough people. It did have too high deductibles, it did have
too much cost-sharing. It did mean that people ended up sometimes
buying insurance they couldn’t use because it cost them too much to use it. He understood that people were angry about
it and that they wanted something better. And he promised them that he would give them
something better, and then he’s created a bill that is going to make every single
one of those problems worse. “We'd love to have some Democrat support but they're obstructionists – they'll never support. We won't get one no matter how good it is. But we will hopefully get something done and it will be something with heart. And very meaningful. The problem with calling Trump a... is that we have a really narrow idea of what it looks like when
democracies fail. We imagine democratic failure as being some spectacular event
a military coup or an illegal power grab or the declaration of martial law. To protect the Republic of the Philippines and our democracy. We don't really
imagine it looking like this. This is a child's desk, but that's okay. It's the smallest desk I've ever seen. But political scientists do, because in a
country like the US, the death of democracy is going to start off looking
kind of normal. So normal, you might not even notice it's happening until it's
too late. Well I respect the group but the entire thing has been a witch hunt and
there is no collusion. Trump's firing of former FBI director James Comey has gotten a lot of
media attention, in part because it's really easy to explain why it matters. If Trump fired Comey over the Russia investigation that would be obstruction
of justice, which is a crime but a lot of what worries political scientists about
Trump is tougher to explain in a soundbite like that. Because for the most
part it's stuff that's totally legal. It turns out that government officials can
exploit weaknesses in the law in ways that are destructive to the rule of law as
a whole. This bearer of bad news is Aziz Huq. He's a law professor at the
University of Chicago and he's written a lot about a concept called "democratic
backsliding", which kind of sounds like something Hillary Clinton does at a
wedding. Backsliding is what happens when a democratically elected government,
starts attacking the institutions that make democracy work. I know the dance
thing was cooler. And Huck argues that what makes backsliding so dangerous is
that it's really hard to know when it starts. In many other countries the way
that we see democratic backsliding happening is through a series of
discrete legal changes, each of which is on their own completely lawful. A great
example of what backsliding looks like is Venezuela's former President Hugo
Chavez. Ah, the 90s. Chavez was elected as a
democratic populist, but over time he changed. And while remaining popular Chavez
has been anything but democratic. He got frustrated with opposition from courts
and the media, so he started doing things like firing judges, using anti-defamation
laws to silence journalists, and even describing unfriendly news organizations
as quote "enemies of the homeland". What's scary about Chavez's story, is that he didn't need a military coup
to screw up Venezuela's democracy. The man who came to office by democracy, he's
doing everything he can just snuff it out. He did it legally, by slowly turning
his supporters and political allies against the country's democratic
institutions. Autocrats in other parts of the world
have gone after those institutions very early on in the process of backsliding. And that's what worries political scientists about Trump. Trump shows a
deep distrust of America's democratic institutions. He lashes out at judges,
calls journalists, the enemy of the people, accuses watchdog agencies of
conspiring against him. He questions the legitimacy of an election that he won. His White House stonewalls reporters to avoid answering questions. Off. It's off-camera. Off. It's off. He's suspicious of the mechanisms that limit his authority. This is an unprecedented judicial overreach. And he encourages his supporters to be too. that is a catastrophic thing to be happening in a democracy. It's how democratic backsliding starts, but the thing is none of this is illegal. As long as Republicans
in Congress go along with it, there's nothing to stop Trump from publicly
criticizing basic democratic institutions. Our Constitution just
doesn't do a very good job of protecting us against certain
kinds of democratic failure. Whether you're in a moment of democratic backsliding really
depends upon the character of our political leaders. Which brings us back
to Comey and why it's so hard to talk about Democratic backsliding without
sounding paranoid. We live in a media environment that is really bad at
putting things in context, that is designed to bombard us with breaking
news and discrete pieces of information and that makes it hard to identify
democratic backsliding when it starts. Because unless it clearly breaks the law,
it's really tough to explain why any one Trump tweet or scandal poses a threat to
democracy. Wo when Trump calls a federal judge a "so
called judge", it's just a one-off comment. Does anyone honestly believe President
Trump is going to ignore this judge's order because he's a quote so-called judge? When Trump calls the press the enemy of the American people, it's all talk. He sounds like a broken record it's just kind of like what else you got Donald Trump? I don't think that new media are well designed to tell this kind of story, because those
media are designed to convey information in very small chunks. The real story is not the discrete action in a particular moment in time, there's some
bigger picture. Democratic backsliding is one of those things that you can't really
see from up close. It is only when you when you look at changes in the
aggregate that one sees the effect upon democracy after, a set of
institutions and practices. That doesn't mean the Comey stuff isn't important. Obstruction of justice is obviously a big deal. But some of the biggest threats
to democracy are way less dramatic, way more normal looking. And if you're
waiting for the CNN chyron announcing that it's time to panic, you're going to be waiting for a long time. Stonehenge was built and modified several
times over the course of a thousand years starting around 5,000 years ago. This kit shows what the final version probably
looked like based on the ruins that are there today. But some of these stones are simply missing
so archaeologists can’t know for sure that this plan was ever actually completed. These tall structures are called trilithons,
and the tallest one is 9 meters, or 30 feet. There's only 3 of them still standing today, but it would
have been just two, except they propped one back up in the 1950s. These smaller stones are called bluestones. The geological source for these is over 200km
away, and there’s an ongoing debate about whether they were carried to the 
site by people, or by glaciers some time long ago. Even these smaller stones weigh around 3 or 4 tons,
so it would be like moving 40 dead hippos from DC to Philly without a wheel. This is a prehistoric project, which means that the neolithic people that built it didn't leave any written records about why or how they were doing this. But they did leave behind some clues, like
the antlers they used as picks to dig holes. Because antlers are organic material, they can
be radiocarbon dated, which is how archaeologists can estimate the chronology
of all of this. These outer stones weigh around
25 tons. Their source was more local, but they still
had to be moved some 20 km. and archaeologists can only guess how they did that. They’re called sarsen stones and they’re
harder than steel but they were shaped into these fairly uniform blocks using stone tools. And then they were pushed into pits before being pulled upright. The stones in the top ring are called lintels
and you can’t tell from this model but they actually had joints - like woodworking joints. There were grooves in the lintels that fit into bumps on the top of the upright stones and then on the side of the lintels, they also fit together like puzzle pieces. And not only that, but the neolithic builders who made this were able to carefully calculate the heights of all the stones so that the monument
was level even though it’s not on level ground. Grass! Ta- da! Except we’re not actually done. The stone circle was just part of the Stonehenge
site. It sits in a much larger circle that was drawn
in the earth with ditches and mounds. There was an avenue leading up to the entrance
of that circle, a big stone on that avenue called the Heel stone, and four other stones
that form a rectangle and may be linked to certain moon cycles. This site must have been incredibly important
to the neolithic people that built it, but despite hundreds of years of analysis and speculation,
we’ll never know for sure what it really meant to them. But we do know that it’s design involved
an early form of astronomy. In the 18th century, a historian noticed that
the central axis of stonehenge points toward the location on the horizon where the sun
rises on the summer solstice. So if you stood in the center of the monument and looked toward the Heel stone, you'd see the sun rise there on June 21st — it’s not
a perfect alignment, but it's close. Summer solstice is when the sun’s path is
furthest north, rising in the northeast and setting in the northwest. That makes it high in the sky in the northern
hemisphere and low in the southern hemisphere. This is all because the earth is tilted relative
to it’s orbit around the sun, and the solstices are where the sun’s path appears to pause and change
direction. But the people that built stonehenge didn’t
know the earth moves around the sun or spins on a tilted axes. They probably didn’t even suspect it was
round. They just saw the sun bring longer days in
the summer and shorter days in the winter and those turning points would have meant a lot for their food security. And there’s reason to think that the winter
solstice was particularly important for the people at Stonehenge. The winter solstice sunset is on the same axis as the summer solstice sunrise - just on the other end, toward the southwest. And the midwinter alignment shows up in other monuments, like the
Newgrange tomb in Ireland which has a window that allows the sunrise to illuminate the inner chamber
on the sunrise of winter solstice. Archeologists also found pig bones from a
settlement near Stonehenge that they believe were slaughtered in the wintertime, based
on the pigs’ age. Their findings suggest an annual winter solstice pilgrimage and feast. The idea is that people would have approached the monument by walking on the avenue, which
would have put the midwinter sunset in their sightline, right in the window of the tallest
trilithon. Historian John North argued that when viewed
from this side, the monument’s silhouette would have looked like a solid black form,
with the setting sun bursting through bringing the promise of another spring. There’s this scene in the movie Flashdance, where some b-boys are toprocking, busting out backspins, freezes, and a move that would later be called the moonwalk. But they aren’t just some random kids; they’re members of the Rock Steady Crew — one of the most influential [dance] crews that brought Hollywood fame to breaking. Many people recognize the term breakdancing, a name coined by the media in the 1980s, but the pioneers and practitioners of the dance form call it b-boying or breaking. The name breaking is broadly believed to have come from DJ Kool Herc in the Bronx in New York City. When hosting block parties in the 1970s, he started isolating the beats to create breaks in the songs. Joseph: It refers to a moment in the song where you build tension by having the instruments drop out and just having percussion or percussion and bass. Basically just the rhythm section. A really important scholar, Barbara Browning, had this great way to describe it where she says, “You feel compelled to fill the silence with motion.” The break is a part of a lot of African American and Afro Caribbean music, especially Latino music is a big part of the roots of this dance. Puerto Rican and Cuban music in particular. Traditionally, b-boys and b-girls danced to a mix of funk, soul, jazz, techno, rock, and disco. Joseph: The sound of the music is very aggressive, and very percussive. It’s a battle dance, so the music get people in the mood to battle. Joseph: You want to really be able to rock the beat, you want to be able to play with those rhythms, and reflect them in your body. Breaking is made up of four elements: toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. Toprock is the foot movement from a standing position. It’s the first display of style and a warm-up for the acrobatics of downrock. Downrock is when breakers use their hands and feet on the floor. This is where they show off foot speed and control of their footwork. From there a b-boy can move into power moves like the windmill and headspins. These moves need momentum and a ton of physical power. And the last element is a freeze, when a b-girl stops dancing and holds a position that requires incredible balance. These elements often draw movements from disciplines like kung-fu, tap dance, gymnastics, and capoeira. But there’s more to it. When Breaking first began, it was a way for disadvantaged kids in the Bronx to be recognized. It helped transform their street culture -- where gang violence slowly made way for neighborhood crews that used dance to compete against each other. Now, with those competitions being commercialized, breaking means something different for the newer generation of b-boys and b-girls. Miguel: Competitions for me with breaking is a huge asset. I started competing because, the energy of the battle is like, amazing, plus it was money to win. I wanted to provide for my mom, my family, and help them out. You know? It’s a way for me to just prove myself, and put myself out there, and get better. I feel like I get better at competitions. But there those who believe that mainstream breaking has left some traditions behind. Chief 69: A lot of people don’t have that original style no more.The original b-boys would go to parties more—they would do more party rocking. They would interact more like on a personal level with the crowd, with the fly-girls. The b-boys today, they just go to competitions. They don't necessarily dance at parties. Joseph: People are attracted to the acrobatic aspects of it, people are attracted to the flamboyance aspect of it. But bottomline of it it's a dance and all that the gymnastics, the acrobatics, are all flavoring to add on top of the core which is really dancing, which is rhythm and movement and self expression. Breaking in its original form is more than just the dance. It’s a connection to your family, your friends, your neighborhood rivals—your community. Chief 69: In hip hop culture it’s very important to be connected to the community. Because we come from these communities. If we can’t even attempt to give back in some type of way, culturally, financially, economically, spiritually, philosophically -- I feel we fall short. Joseph: A lot about hip hop dance and hip hop in general is getting people to notice you. I think that’s a personal thing for each individual person, but it’s also a political statement. All of that stuff is embedded in the dance. Just to say, not only am I important as an individual, but community is important, and the concerns of my community are important, and the perspective, the point of view of my community is important. “My opponent asks her supporters to recite
a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads, ‘I’m with her.’ I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads, ‘I’m with you, the American
people.’” Donald Trump’s health care plan and budget
are a test of our capacity for outrage in American politics. A test of what we believe to be a scandal. Can we be as shocked about lies Donald Trump
told in public as we are about lies his staff told in private? "As far as I'm concerned, your premiums they're going to start to come down." Will we care as much about Trump’s betrayal
of the poor and the sick and the disabled as we do about his betrayal of James Comey
and the Israeli intelligence services? Because we should. This stuff matters. Trump told 60 Minutes before being elected: "I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much
better than they’re taken care of now." That is not true. According to the Congressional Budget Office,
the American Health Care Act, Trump’s bill, would lead to 23 million fewer people with
health insurance than if Trump simply left the system alone. You have to work hard to get a coverage loss
that big. And that’s not the end of the lies. Trump told the Washington Post: “There was
a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” That is exactly what is going to happen with
him. That is what the bill he is pushing does. The reason so many people lose health insurance
under his plan is because they can’t afford it, and under Trumpcare, if you can’t afford
it, you don’t get it. Trump promised he would make sure everyone
had health insurance plans with “much lower deductibles.” He does the exact opposite. The American Health Care Act removes regulations
stopping insurers from offering yet higher deductibles than they do now. I want to stop on this point for a minute:
what people hate about Obamacare, what Trump said is the problem with Obamacare. “Deductibles are so high you never, unless
you are going to die a long, hard death, you never can get to use your health care.” So what are they doing? They are taking the regulations that keep
deductibles lower than they would otherwise be, repealing them, taking the money they
give people to help them buy plans with lower deductibles, taking that money, putting it
into tax cuts, and the result is pushing people into cheaper plans with much, much, much higher
deductibles. That is not what he promised. The Congressional Budget Office estimates
that the results are so dystopic that they expect millions of people to end up in “policies
that would not cover major medical risks.” Again, they expect people to end up paying
for something that isn’t even health insurance. “Preexisting conditions are in the bill
— and I mandate it. I said has to be.” This is also not true. The crucial provision that permitted the American
Health Care Act to pass the House… "Let me show you what is in the MacArthur Amendment. States can actually seek waivers to get rid
of the pre-existing condition rules. States can also seek waivers to get out of
the essential health benefit rules." The thing that the deal was about allows states
to waive the Affordable Care Act’s protections for preexisting conditions. That was the whole deal; that’s why the
thing passed the House. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that
about a sixth of states would use those waivers, and in those states, “less healthy individuals
(including those with preexisting or newly acquired medical conditions) would be unable
to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might
not be able to purchase coverage at all.” But it’s not just the health care bill. Trump’s budget also represents a breathtaking
reversal on core campaign promises with the exact same result — harming the most vulnerable
Americans. His budget cuts Medicaid by $1.49 trillion,
and it slashes Social Security’s disability insurance program by $31.4 billion. He promised not to do this. It was what made him a different kind of Republican. As recently as last year, Trump told Chuck
Todd: “For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it's going to go up. And you know what it? It should go up.” That also was not true at all. His tax plan is a festival of cuts for the
richest Americans in general, and for Donald Trump in particular. Look, I know that politicians lie. I know that we’ve become used to that, that
we sweep it under the rug, that we assume it’s all in the game. Politicians exaggerate, they misdirect, they
obscure. This is different. This is saying you’re going to go up when
you’re really going to go down. Trump is doing the opposite of what he said. These are lies of complete direction. “Are you going to make sure that people
with preexisting conditions are still covered?” Trump: “Yes.” He was a Republican who was going to protect
Social Security and Medicaid, cover everyone. “And I’m not going to cut Social Security
like every other Republican, and I’m not gonna cut Medicare or Medicaid.” Trump ran as an economic populist. He was a Republican who was for you, for the
little guy. “Everybody is going to be taken care of,
much better than they’re taken care of now.” “The uninsured person?”
“Right.” And raise taxes on rich people like himself. “It reduces or eliminates most of the deductions
and loopholes available to special interests and to the very rich. In other words, it’s going to cost me a
fortune.” He lied, and this should be a political scandal
of massive proportions. And the reason it should be a scandal is that
it’s not how politics is supposed to work. To vote correctly, politicians need to tell
us the truth. We need to know basically what they’re going
to do. He ran promising to protect the sick and the
poor. He is governing in ways that will grievously
harm them. We should be outraged. I'm training a sled dog right now. My friend sasha is curating a pack of cute
cuddly sled dogs, that she's training to be a team. I was told to turn around as soon
as I got to the polar bear warning sign. Sasha gave me this vest and said that if
you leave the settlement without a gun you have to be wearing something bright
to scare off polar bears... Okay. Now I'm running with a dog named little
snowball. Come on Little Snowball, let's do this. So it Sasha's
goal to curate a group of Russian dogs. This dog is named Dan, and
he's giving me a run for my money. Here's a tricky thing about these dogs being
Russian dogs: even though they have an origin in Russian traditional culture
meaning these breeds were literally created by Russian communities many
years ago - even though that's the case dog breeding in the 20th century became
this very official enterprise and with that came all this authority and
bureaucracy surrounding and it's kind of these international conventions and
authorities to set the parameters of what is a husky? And what is a golden
retriever? Excuse my ignorance I don't really know many dog breeds. But during this time, when dog breeding became super official and international,
the Soviet Union was isolated from the world. People from the Soviet Union
couldn't go to dog shows in Spain and Portugal and the United States and so
because of that the Western world kind of co-opted these breeds. So, all these Russian dogs that we're looking at here, are technically under the authority
and administered by the Nordic Dog Union. It's kind of a strange irony. I'm not
going to tell Sasha that, it might burst her bubble, but to me little snowball you'll always be Russian. Here we are again with
Tor, who happens to be not only Norwegian and Nordic but also the son of a
world-renowned dog breeder and dog show judge. So Tor, are these dogs Russian or
do they belong to the authority of the Nordic Dog Union? Yeah, so I've talked to my mom
about this and she was like oh yeah they're all Nordic. But then I was like, but it's Siberian husky and it's Samoyed and it's from Siberia. Like, clearly these are Russian. I think they're Russian. They're developed 3,000 years ago by Inuits and Siberian
peoples and then some Europeans just "discovered" them or take them away from the Communists and just say like oh we're going to take over from here, good job. I think they're Russian. This is a 20-minute VHS tape about a LEGO
character called Jack Stone. When it came out in 2001, it was the first
real computer-animated Lego movie. … but it hasn’t aged that well. "Incredible!" "Fantastic." Thirteen years later, The Lego Movie looked
like this: Let’s watch that again. This is 2001. "There you have it." And this is 2014. "Yes, that's me." That is a huge difference. Here’s how they made it happen. “My name is Grant Freckelton, I’m a production
designer at Animal Logic.” He’s overseen the animation style of movies
like Legend of the Guardians, 300, and more recently, The Lego Movie, with co-directors
Chris Miller and Phil Lord. “Chris and Phil were determined to sort
of make sure the audience was confused about what they were seeing. You know is it actually stop motion, or is
it CG film?” And that became a big debate. Before the movie came out, there was a lot
of conversation about whether the movie was stop motion or computer animation. "It is, I would say 99% CG animation, but
it respects the rules of stop motion animation, and is designed to emulate that style.” To understand what made that style so unique,
you have to look back at what Lego movies used to look like. Early productions for themes like Bionicle,
Star Wars, and Batman helped establish the whimsical feel of Lego movies — but the
animation didn’t fit the physics of the toy itself. “There was this tendency to sort of treat
the plastic like it was flexible rubber, which meant that the characters could flex and move
a lot more than they might be able to in real life.” That style is typical of more traditional
computer animation, like what you’d expect to see in a Pixar movie. Take a shot like this, for example. The background isn’t made of actual blocks,
plastic limbs are bending in ways they couldn’t, and the faces are a bizarre blend of skin-like
texture and Lego geometry. It doesn’t look like a scene you could make
at home with your own Legos. Compare that to scenes from The Lego Movie,
where everything — gunshots, smoke, water, fire, explosions, clouds, even mud on the camera
lens — are all made up of Lego pieces as they look in real life. “We respected the hardness of the plastic
by not necessarily bending on the elbow, which you can’t do on a real Lego minifig.” That means that any movement you see onscreen
simulates the adjustment or replacement of an individual Lego piece. A joint or facial expression will never actually
bend or stretch — it’ll either move slightly or be replaced by another piece. Early Lego movies lacked that level of discipline. They struggled because they fought back against the limitations of the medium instead of embracing them. But the creators of the Lego Movie saw things
differently. “Characters that have limitations force you
to find solutions and charming ways of doing things in different ways. I mean, look at R2-D2: he’s like, the ultimate
limited character, he’s basically a bin with wheels that makes beeping noises, and
that’s all he's got to work with. And yet he’s a really charming character and everybody loves him. Same with BB-8. And other characters. Same with the Muppets, they’re essentially sock puppets with googly eyes that you don't really have much control over. But it’s from those limitations that you actually get a lot of charm.” Every now and then, the Lego movie animators
would let some joints overextend slightly to make room for a nod or a shrug of the shoulders... But overall, sticking to the plastic rule
made for a believable movie. You can freeze frame any part of the Lego
Movie and look at a scene that you could practically make at home. “We were always trying to echo and hark
back to how a child might make a film. So we would alternate between thinking like
responsible filmmakers working on a large-budget Warner Brothers animated film, and then we
would suddenly approach a scene as if we were like a kid animating in their basement.” But the history of Lego movies actually does start
with kids animating in their basements. In 1973, two Danish cousins, aged 10 and 12,
shot a short film called Journey to the Moon on Super 8 film. They made it for their grandparents’ 50th
wedding anniversary — and it’s widely considered to be the first time anyone made
a motion picture with Lego blocks. Note that the “people” in this film are
just little cylinder blocks — this was before any version of the minifigure design came
out. Movies like this came to be known as “Brickfilms.” When fans were making these at home, they
shot them in traditional stop motion. Footage was usually shot “on twos,” which
meant that they would take 12 pictures — adjusting the characters every other frame — to make
one second of film. Shooting “on ones” meant taking 24 pictures
per second — this was usually reserved for making faster movements like running look
smoother. When the Danish cousins sent their movie to
the managing director of the Lego Group, they were rewarded with a tour of the Lego factory
and sent home with large Lego sets. But Lego hasn’t always had the most positive
reaction to homemade fan films like this one. Between 1985 and 1989, a teenage animator
named Lindsay Fleay worked on a 16-minute short called The Magic Portal. He used borrowed equipment to shoot it in
his parents’ basement. Before entering festivals and competitions,
Fleay sent the film to Lego to see if they were interested in doing something with it. At first, Lego responded with a letter of
approval. But soon, the company started expressing legal
concerns and issued a letter demanding Fleay surrender all copies of the film within seven
days. Lego ultimately backed down, but Fleay had
already missed out on most major film festivals by then. Fleay actually went on to work at Animal Logic. He left before production on Lego projects
began, but his movie had a huge influence on the world of Brickfilms. “If you look at the live action portion
of The Lego Movie, you'll see Finn, the little kid, holds up a sort of cardboard  tube and across the side is written Magic Portal." The Lego Movie, of course, was a huge technical
feat. There are 15,080,330 animated Lego pieces and 182 unique minifigures in the movie. Early mockups of buildings and vehicles were drafted on a free software called Lego Digital Designer Later on, in the animation software Maya,
each brick was given profiles for fingerprints, dents, seam lines, scratches, and dust. It’s hard to imagine what The Lego Movie
would be if it weren’t for the legacy of these early home experiments. Where most animated films use soft lighting
modeled after paintings, The Lego Movie’s lighting was harsh, replicating the actual
lamps that animators like Fleay used. Playful non-stop motion interludes — like
levitation via fishing line — were part of Journey to the Moon long before they appeared
in The Lego Movie. Even the final break from the Lego world into
the real world to meet a human creator parallels The Magic Portal really closely. Ah, my film! It’s easy to miss on-screen, but The Lego
Movie pays tribute to fan films in the background of this scene — these four clips are shorts
submitted by fans. “Look at all these things that people built!” The homage was a nod to the fans. By doing that, the movie embraced the idea
that amateur creators matter — and sometimes, the way they handle source material is far
better than the way major studios are used to doing it. If you want to try any of this at home, you
can actually use the same software that the animators of The Lego Movie used. It’s called Lego Digital Designer, it’s
totally free off the internet. When I talked to Grant Freckelton, he challenged
me to make this sort of pig-drawn carriage. I tried. I got the pigs, I got the wheels, but not
much else. It’s very, very difficult. This is The Room. Arguably the worst film ever made. You are lying, I never hit you. You are tearing me apart, Lisa! Thousands of people have willingly paid
money to watch this, often many times. Which begs the question: why? This is Tom Bissell. He literally co-wrote the book on this movie. The Room is about a perfect American named
Johnny who does an amazing job at his bank
and is constantly saving them money. Did you tell them how much you save them? Of course, what do you think? They already put my ideas into practice. And he lives with his future wife, After all, she’s my future wife. Lisa’s your future wife. and he thinks he has a great life with them
together, but she’s secretly sleeping with his best friend, Mark. Oh, hi, Mark. I’ve seen The Room more than 100 times
and less than 150 times. It is like a movie made by an alien
who has never seen a movie but has had movies thoroughly explained to
him. A lot of the dialogue makes no sense. Characters say and do things that
never really line up with how actual humans behave. -How much is it? -That’ll be $18. -Here you go. Keep the change. Hi, doggy. -You’re my favorite customer. -Thanks a lot, bye! And there’s a table full of framed photographs
of spoons for some reason. There’s not often that a work of film has every creative decision that’s made
in it on a moment-by-moment basis seemingly be the wrong one. It’s a famously incoherent piece of American
cinema that’s established a rabid cult following, a celebrity fan base, I’ve had Tommy Wiseau up here. Tell me everything. I remember I saw it with Jonah Hill, actually,
randomly. And then, and, like, we became obsessed with
it. And there are still sold-out monthly midnight
screenings in countries across the globe, even 14 years after its release. Why is a movie that’s so incoherent and
so critically panned still so popular? The Room falls into a category that some call
“paracinema,” which comprises all forms of cinema outside
of the mainstream. Including, The Room is more specifically referred to
as a “trash film,” a genre of films that are It may seem like only people with bad taste
would like movies that are literally categorized as trash, but studies show that a taste for trash cinema
might actually indicate higher levels of intelligence. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for
Empirical Aesthetics asked people who regularly watch
trash films about what attracts them to the genre. They found that one of the main factors that
draws people to trash cinema is its transgressive nature and its subversion
of the standards of mainstream filmmaking. Which are often the same reasons people
are drawn to avant-garde art cinema. If you look on Amazon the movies that people
bought in addition to The Room Is a solid mix between trash classics like
Birdemic and Troll 2 and arthouse films like The Holy Mountain
and Dancer in the Dark. One of the other reasons that people
are drawn to trash cinema is an ironic viewing stance, which is also called “camp.” Susan Sontag once wrote that Ironic enjoyment of bad entertainment
can be a powerful social tool that can strengthen bonds between people. Just look at Rebecca Black’s viral sensation
“Friday.” It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. Despite having almost universally bad reviews,
this video has a 108 million views and counting. It’s hard to deny that many of us like to
collectively bask in the warm glow of campy entertainment. Fun, fun, fun, fun. Looking forward to the weekend. Fans of cult films like The Room are no different. They establish what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
termed “cultural capital,” which is a form of social currency that
dictates one's position within a group. People at the screenings who know the most
lines by heart and participate in all the inside jokes are
deemed Room veterans. And the screenings are a sight to see. The mood ranges from People throw plastic spoons, wear costumes, and yell call-and-response
lines at the screen. Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! The fan interaction is similar to other cult
classics like Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Room, to me, shatters the distinction
between good and bad. Do I think it’s a good movie? No. Do I think it’s a strong movie that moves
me on the level that art usually moves me? Absolutely not. But I can’t say it’s bad because it’s
so watchable. It’s so fun. It’s brought me so much joy. How can something that’s bad do those
things  for me? There’s a common sort of idea out there
that Trump is a toddler, he’s a child Acting like a toddler, having a major meltdown...acting
as a child...the mind of a toddler...he’s a giant toddler, and there’s nothing going
around inside his head And what people mean by that, I think, is that he has poor impulse control. Something the way he’s wired, where he can’t
help himself...can’t seem to help himself...he can’t control himself...he just can’t
seem to help himself, Howie! And it’s a way, it seems to me, of trivializing
some of the wrongdoing that you see from Donald Trump. When he said to Billy Bush, He’s not saying he doesn’t understand
the consequences of his actions, he’s saying that based on his experience in life, there will not be consequences. And that’s actually really different from
a child’s perspective on the world. A real toddler misbehaves all the time. I mean, José, earlier this week,
he stuck his foot in a serving bowl. He sometimes likes to try to attack small
birds at the park. But if you explain the rules to him, he normally
follows them. It’s a constructive process. And Trump is...old. He’s been around. He's not learning. Donald Trump is a man who has had a lot of
different brushes with the law. The very first time he appeared in the New
York Times, it was because there was a federal investigation into illegal racial discrimination
in houses that he was running. Soon after the election he paid a $25 million
settlement for defrauding students at a fake university. The first time he tried to move beyond the
real estate business, he had a casino in Atlantic City, the Trump Taj Mahal. He build the casino with a lot of loans, a
lot of debts, And in December of 1990, he comes to this
moment of crisis where he doesn’t have the funds to make the payment, if he can't cover the interest. So what happens is his father sends one of
the family attorneys down in a car to Atlantic City with over 3 million dollars. And he has him go buy chips from the casino,
giving cash to the Taj Mahal So in effect, that’s a loan And eventually, the New Jersey Gaming Authorities ruled, and he had to pay a fine for it. But if you look at the balance of considerations,
right If he hadn’t taken the illegal loan, he
would have lost the whole casino. With the illegal loan, he pays a fine, but
it’s not that big of a fine, and he keeps the casino. And that’s basically the impunity lifestyle
of Donald Trump: this calculated decision was made that to break the rules would be
better for Donald Trump, even if he got caught. Looking for loopholes, and working with smart
lawyers to find them is what you’re supposed to do. We have very much normalized a culture of
rule breaking in American business, And Trump is an extreme example of that, but
extremes tell you something about what’s going on beneath the surface. "We travelled to Leer county and it
was there that we crossed over, by just a mile or two, into rebel territory. And a man approached me. He started describing the horrendous violence
that had happened there. He said government troops came in
and killed his 5 year old child and forced him to eat some of her body..." That’s Jane Ferguson, a journalist who was
just in South Sudan covering a famine that’s left about 100,000 people starving and 5.5
million at risk. She was here in Unity, a state where the UN
officially declared a famine in February 2017. It's also where the worst violence in South
Sudan’s 4 year old civil war has taken place, and that’s not a coincidence... The violence has destroyed crops and markets
and has forced people to flee. As a result there’s no food. In the past, humanitarian aid has been the
best solution for famines. But today, the South Sudanese government is
blocking access to much of the country in an attempt to starve the rebels. It's why South Sudan’s famine is man-made. And so are the 3 other famines developing
in Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen. Wars in these countries are threatening to
starve 20 million people "No one country is the same, no one conflict is the same, but what we are seeing are some very dangerous patterns; the use of food, or lack there of, as a weapon
Fighting groups in each country have created food shortages to starve each other. South Sudan became an independent country
in 2011, but fell into civil war just 2 years later. It started as a personal rivalry between president
Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar. But with each leader belonging to a different
ethnic group, it soon became a tribal conflict. What we see now is this war almost
cannibalizing, where its disintegrating into smaller and smaller groups across the country. What we saw when we got there is clear evidence of ethnic cleansing." The government has blocked humanitarian aid
to parts of rebel territory, leaving millions of civilians trapped without access to food. And it’s created chaos. The fighting has forced tens of thousands
to leave their homes, often for dense marshlands that surround cities. "It’s such a good hiding place but
it’s also where people starve to death. They have no means of finding food." There’s a similar situation in Nigeria,
where the government’s been fighting the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram since
2009. The terrorist group controls large portions
of Borno State. And its responsible for mass killings, suicide bombings, and kidnappings
in the region. Their violent tactics have displaced nearly
2 million people and collapsed the agricultural economy. The Nigerian government restricts aid to keep supplies from reaching Boko Haram territory,
where civilians continue to be at risk of starvation. Over in Somalia, another al-Qaeda linked terrorist
group al-Shabaab controls at least 10% the country. Getting aid to those areas has proven difficult
as well. Back in 2011, during the last famine, the
group killed aid workers and looted supply trucks. Now a drought has re-created severe famine
conditions in Somalia. And limited access to humanitarian aid has made the situation worse. This time Al-shabaab claims it will allow
people to move and find aid, but if they don’t, millions will be trapped without food again. The clearest example of a man-made famine
is just north of Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, in Yemen. Civil war broke out in 2014 between the government
and a rebel group called the Houthis. They’ve received weapons, personnel, and
support from Iran. In response, Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival
in the Middle East, intervened in 2015 on behalf of the government. It began bombing Houthi territory, but also
roads, bridges, and ports to block Iranian supplies. Saudis also set up a naval blockade that keeps
85% of the food supplies out of Yemen. Meanwhile, in the interior, 7 million people
are at risk of starvation. Yemen's food shortage is caused by internal
conflict but it's controlled by the geopolitics of the region. This makes man-made famines incredibly hard
to solve. "So, if it comes down to simply trying to save lives, that’s easy to do, unless you cannot get access, unless there are warring sides trying
to push hunger deliberately on people, and unless the food simply can’t reach them. If you get food to people they won’t starve
to death. That's why its not particularly complicated." But the crisis is only getting worse. Massive streams of refugees are overwhelming
neighboring countries. Uganda’s BidiBidi camp now holds 800,000
people making it the largest refugee camp in the world. Overcrowded camps are breeding ground for
disease, and cholera outbreaks have been reported across the entire region. It’s why humanitarian groups are struggling
to keep up. The UN reports that it needs $4.4 billion
to address the famines, and they've only raised 14% of that so far. But if the conflicts that are driving these
famines aren’t addressed, no amount of aid will solve these man-made crises. There are Teslas everywhere in this
city. Up until today I'd seen a total of about five Teslas my entire life. And three of those five were behind glass cases in luxury malls. I've been in Oslo
for like a couple of hours and I've seen like 50 Teslas. There's one right there. They're beautiful, they're sleek, they are efficient, they're fast and they're
$70,000. Here comes another one up the road. Oh yeah. 100% electricity, no gas, and it
can go from like zero to 100 kilometers in like five seconds. I have no idea, I'm not
a car person, so I don't know if that's right. Here in Norway in 2014,
Tesla actually broke a record for number of cars sold in a month for a single
model, of any kind of car not just electric cars. And you look around for a
few minutes and you realize it's not just Teslas. There are electric cars
everywhere. Like, I see electric cars in the United States but nothing like this.
Oh, there's a Tesla, there's a Tesla. There it goes. Turns out that Oslo is
actually the epicenter of electric cars generally. You can tell which cars are electric by
their license plate. So this "E" at the beginning determines if it's electric.
In 2016 in the United States of all the new cars that were purchased about 1% were
electric, more like 0.9%. In Norway it was 29% and that trend is only speeding up:
in January this year the share was like 37% or something of all the cars
purchased being electric. Where on earth have I ended up? I've
been kind of wandering around and I feel like I'm about to enter a secret cave.
The real question is can I fly my drone over this amazing waterfall? I've never flown
a drone in Norway before so we'll see how this goes. 99% of Norway's electricity comes from
hydropower which is like dams. So you have really cheap clean energy that can
be used to power these electric cars. The real core explanation here, the reason why
there are so many Teslas and so many electric cars on the road comes down to
government policy. The government incentivizes very very strongly people
to buy electric cars. This happens in various forms: you get
free parking if you drive an electric car, you get access to the HOV Lane, which
has way less traffic, you don't have to pay registration fees, you get tax
deductions on your income tax, and perhaps the biggest incentive of all is
on the business side: companies like Tesla don't ha ve to pay sales tax for
selling here in Norway and so all of this combined makes it actually way way
cheaper for someone to buy a Tesla here in Norway than to buy one in the United
States. Well it's been fun exploring this random
little area I think the big takeaway from this whole entire journey so far is
even thugz cry. So just remember: even thugz cry. Alright, this is perhaps my favorite sight so far. There are 2,000 of these charging stations here in Oslo. Excuse me can I ask you a couple, I'm so
curious about - can I record it? Yeah, of course. So it's it's all free. It's free? Yeah, it's free. This is what you get from buying an
electric car. You get free charging and you can go in and out of Oslo without
paying for the "bompenger" (toll). All of these subsidies we're talking about that,
help fund these electric cars are funded by what's called sovereign wealth fund.
It's this huge fund that Norway has it's worth almost a trillion dollars. The
government owns it it's basically their rainy day fund and this is what they use
to fund the subsidies. The sovereign wealth fund in Norway is comprised
almost entirely of oil money, oil and gas money, fossil fuels. Norway's a huge
producer of oil and gas and they sell that to other countries and reap the
benefits in terms of revenue and put that into the sovereign wealth fund
which then gets funneled into subsidies for electric cars. So they're not burning
the oil here and releasing carbon into the atmosphere but they're sending off
to go be burned somewhere else. I asked my friend Tor what he thinks about this.
Tor, what do you feel about Norway being this green sustainable society, but
really depending at the end of the day on fossil fuels in order to make that
happen? Is that a tension within the Norwegian
psyche? So I think the way we resolve it is basically that the world needs oil.
It needs, you know there's a lot of countries are developing: China, India,
that will always need energy and we would argue that we extract it more
greenly than other countries. We're buying good conscience for
sure yeah but like it's better than doing anything. We're fully aware that
there's like green shift we're talking about is funded by you know oil money.
The irony is not lost on us in any way. So I think Tor is right -- I think that the
fact that Norway is exporting its carbon footprint to other countries, it doesn't
cancel out all of the wonderful progressive green things that they're
doing here. This is a story about incentives and green infrastructure and a green society but it's also a story about how fossil fuels continue to make
the world go round. I am tired and jet-lagged and haven't
slept in like twenty three hours. I'm gonna go to bed. It was a fun day chasing Teslas. Tomorrow, we go to the North Pole. Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? So long as
Donald Trump is president, the actions of the US government and the men and the
women who work for it cannot be trusted. To understand why, I want you to watch
two particular parts of James Comey’s testimony. At the time, did you say
anything to the president about, that is not an appropriate request? Rubio was talking about Trump's request that Comey end the investigation into Michael Flynn. end the investigation into Michael
Flynn. Sir, did you tell the White House Counsel that is not an appropriate
request, someone needs to go tell the president that he can't do these things? I didn't, no. Ok. Why? I don't know. As I said earlier, I think the
circumstances were such that it was, I was a bit stunned and didn't have the
presence of mind. Then there was a similar exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Now here's the question. You're big.  You're strong. I know the Oval Office, and I know what happens to people what happens to people they walk in, there is a certain amount
of intimidation. But why didn't you stop and say, Mr. President, this is wrong. I
cannot discuss this with you. It's a great question. Maybe if I were stronger I would have. What is amazing about these exchanges if they're the favorite exchanges of Donald Trump’s defenders. But they're they're so scary if you listen to them closely. I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in. And the only thing I could think to say, in my mind, because I could remember every word he said. Republicans see these back and forths as devastating to Comey. The reasoning, as I understand it, is that if Trump's request of Comey was so
egregious, so awful, then how come Comey didn't tell Trump on the spot – PAUL RYAN: "The president's new at this." – that it was over the line? How come he didn't quit right then and there? I remember saying, I agree he's a good guy, as a way of saying I'm not
agreeing with what you just asked me to do. Again, maybe other people would be
stronger in that circumstance. But that was how I conducted myself.
I hope I'll never have another opportunity. Maybe if I did it again I
would do it better. You can see Trump’s son making a version of this argument on
Twitter. He even does it with a laughing/crying emoji. But James
Comey was a director of the FBI. As director of the FBI he had a 10-year term
designed to grant him unusual independence. He led an agency with a
proud culture of resisting outside interference. He was exposed daily to the
most unnerving secrets and profound threats that face a country. In other
words, Comey is one of the hardest civil servants to intimidate. But when trapped
in a room with the president of the United States, and when his job and all
the good he believed he can do in that job is dangled before him, even he felt
the pressure. We know this is how Trump works. Asked for qualities he looks for in
new hires, Trump replied: “The thing that is most important to me is loyalty.” Then
there's this extraordinary passage from The Art of the Deal.
In it, Trump is praising his mentor Roy Cohn. Compare him with all the hundreds
of respectable guys who make careers that are boasting about their
uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty. They only care
about what's best for them and don't think twice about stabbing a friend in
the back if the friend becomes a problem. What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that
he would do just the opposite. So of course Trump asked Comey for loyalty.
Of course he asked him to protect his friend Michael Flynn. It's a height of
naivete to believe this same story isn’t playing out elsewhere in Trump's
Administration, to believe that it ends with James Comey, or to believe that every public
servants Trump tries to intimidate or asks for loyalty will fare as well or have
as much integrity as James Comey. Think of how this could have gone. Imagine it
wasn't Comey who Trump had invited to dinner, but a candidate for the FBI directorship
who shared Trump's values, who was more focused on his own career advancement
than on his integrity. Imagine Trump asked for loyalty and this person
immediately agreed. We would never know that conversation had happened, but the
Federal Bureau of Investigation would now be serving Trump, not the American
people. And this is what scares me: It might have
already happened. On Wednesday, Trump nominated Christopher Wray to replace James
Comey as FBI director. How do we know the reason Trump chose Wray over all the
other candidates isn't because Wray said yes, I will be loyal to you. Is what I'm
saying fair to Wray? Maybe not. Maybe he didn't do any of that. But this is a
cloud of suspicion the US government will be under so long as Donald Trump is
president. We know Trump holds an office gives him vast power for intimidation,
for vengeance. We know he's a man who will use that power to serve his own
ends. We know that people who survive in
Donald Trump's employ are those who carry out his commands. We know that
those who refuse get fired, like James Comey. In the American system, the
presidency is an office bounded by constitutional limits and competing
institutions, yes, but it is just as importantly bounded by the morality and
personal rectitude of whoever occupies it. There was little doubt before Comey’s
presentation that Trump was of poor moral character. There is no doubt after it.
Trump is dangerously unfit for this role. The defense cannot be, maybe the
President United States isn't “technically” a criminal. And then only
maybe. I would ask Republicans hearing this to imagine the word Trump replaced
with Clinton or with Obama. How would they feel if everything I've described
here was done by Hillary Clinton? How afraid would they be if it was President
Obama acting like this? That is how they should feel now. The country needs more
from them right now, needs more from all of us, than excuses for behavior that we
know is wrong. Of course there needs to be a degree of
independence between DOJ, FBI, and a White House, and a line of communication is
established. The president's new at this. He's new to government, and so he
probably wasn't steeped in the long-running protocols that established
the relationships between DOJ, FBI, and White Houses. He's just new to this. If you’ve kept up with recent trends in
urban music, you might’ve noticed one genre coming up again and again. I’m talking about grime — a British genre
that’s slowly making its way over to the rest of the world. Skepta, among other grime artists, was recently
featured on Drake’s More Life. And Stormzy, whose debut album charted at
No. 1 in the United Kingdom, is set to play American festivals this summer. But grime has yet to make its mark outside
the UK. In fact, it’s often mistaken for garage,
dubstep, or even hip-hop. And to call it any of those genres really
just misses the point. Grime celebrates a heritage and sound that’s
very specific to inner-city London, where it was born. To understand what that represents, I caught
up with a leading voice on grime. Excuse the pun, it’s quite grimy in the
club… And it’s just got this raw — it’s the
most raw form of energy in music that we have in the UK, in that it feels, at times it can
feel aggressive. Julie Adenuga is the London DJ on Apple Music’s
Beats 1 Radio. And she’s from a family with two of grime’s
biggest names — Skepta and JME. As a radio presenter, she’s been bringing
grime to listeners since her early days on Rinse.FM, a London-based station that played
a huge part in the rise of the genre in the early 2000s. It used to be a pirate radio station that
featured early MCs. And those people comprise the old guard of
grime. Their roots can be traced to the UK garage
scene that was heard both at raves and on popular charts at the time. Grime evolved out of garage in just a space
where people were like, “We want to be able to go into a club and hear music and say lyrics
and not have people stop dancing. We want that vibe to continue. A good example of that is “Pulse X” by
the Musical Mob, often called the first official grime track. The song is at about 140 beats per minute,
which is a favorite tempo for many grime producers. A lot of the artists in the US that make hip-hop,
or in Canada that make hip-hop — they couldn’t sit on a grime beat because it’s too fast
for how they would naturally flow. So for me, a real distinction there is definitely
the speed. Apart from the tempo, early grime tracks have
something else in common — most of them came out of the neighborhood of Bow, London. My name’s Wiley, I come from Bow E3, 07961897033,
I’m so E3. The whole of E3’s got so much talent, I
hope you see. That was MC Wiley. He’s often referred to as the godfather
of grime. And that neighborhood he’s talking about
— the E3 section of Bow — that neighborhood held an all-star roster of grime talent, including
grime’s first celebrity: Boy in da Corner, it came from Dizzee Rascal,
who was an MC, who was quite young at the time. It was the first grime album that anyone who
understood what grime was was able to see in the charts in some way, was able see in
a mainstream way. Despite the success of the Boy in da Corner,
grime largely remained an underground sound. It mostly played at parties that sometimes
ran into trouble. I wouldn’t say there was more trouble in
a grime club than there was in any other club, you know? Grime got sort of focused on as the aggressive,
sort of the catalyst, the starter of what the issues were in within club nights and
nightlife in London. We had records like Pow! by Lethal B That was banned in all clubs. DJs were not allowed to play that song anywhere
in a club because it was seen as something that would incite a riot of some kind. That discrimination was later formalized in
the Form 696. It was a controversial document used by the
London police for risk assessment. Until 2009, the form required details on the
ethnic makeup of the expected audience in attendance. It just felt quite … it was patronizing,
and it felt like grime was being sort-of penalized and they were taking precautions to beat around
the bush and not directly say, “We just want to stop these parties from happening
because we feel like they’re dangerous." Even now, more than a decade later, the police
continue to use that form to target parties. But shutting down grime events hasn’t kept
the genre from gaining popularity. In 2015, Kanye West brought an army of MCs
— including Skepta and Stormzy — to the stage at the BRIT Awards. For many, the performance was a celebration
of grime. According to others, the MCs went unnoticed
in the shadow of the American hip-hop star. But in the end, the fact that the two worlds
came together at a mainstream event says more about their similarities than their differences. I hate comparing grime to hip-hop because
I think that’s where the lines get really blurry. But one thing that I think stands so strong
between those two genres of music is the fact that they’re lifestyles now. They’re not just songs that you hear on
the radio or that you can buy from iTunes. These are actual communities and lifestyles
that people live. my folks back it up back it up it in person feedback I'll bring it back in bring it back in it down there she's not in the game Oh that's right yeah yes statement today that he won't be as forthcoming as he wasn't opening stay here oh you know I think he's going to try to give all the facts that he feels he can without jeopardizing Robert Mueller's the special counsels investigation but he is aware of those lines since he has walked them for many years and I think he will walk the line today but with an eye towards he wouldn't have agreed to publicly testify if he wasn't willing to to give as much information as he could about the circumstances thanks very much Oh mycology Reba worry director Comey and I appreciate your willingness to appear before the committee today and more importantly I thank you for your dedicated service and leadership to the Federal Bureau of Investigation your appearance today speaks to the trust we have built over the years and I'm looking forward to a very open and candid discussion today I'd like to remind my colleagues that we will reconvene in closed session at 1:00 p.m. today and I ask that you reserve for that venue any questions that might get into classified information the director has been very gracious with his time but the vice chairman and I have worked out a very specific timeline for his commitment to be on the hill so we will do everything we can to meet that agreement the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence exists to certify for the other 85 members of the United States Senate and the American people that the intelligence community is operating lawfully and has the necessary authorities and tools to accomplish its mission and keep America safe part of our mission beyond the oversight we continue to provide to the intelligence community and its activities is to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 US elections the committee's work continues this hearing represents part of that effort Jim allegations have been swirling in the press for the last several weeks and today's your opportunity to set the record straight yesterday I read with interest your statement for the record and I think it provides some helpful details surrounding your interactions with the president it clearly lays out your understanding of those discussions actions you took following each conversation and your state of mind I very much appreciate your candor I think it's helpful as we work through to determine the ultimate truth behind possible Russian interference in the 2016 elections your statement also provides texture and context to your interactions with the president from your vantage point and outlines a strained relationship the American people need to hear your side of the story just as they need to hear the president descriptions of events these interactions also highlight the importance of the committee's on going investigation our experienced staff is interviewing all relevant parties and some of the most sensitive intelligence in our country's possession we will establish the facts separate from rapid speculation and lay them out for the American people to make their own judgment only then will we as a nation be able to move forward and to put this episode to rest there are several outstanding issues not addressed in your statement that I hope you'll clear up for the American people today did the President's request for loyalty your impression that they that the one-on-one dinner of January 27th was and I quote at least in part an effort to create some sort of patronage relationship or is March 30th phone call asking what you could do to lift the cloud of Russia investigation in any way alter your approach or the FBI's investigation into general Flynn or the broader investigation into Russia and possible links to the campaign in your opinion did potential Russian efforts to establish length with the individuals in the Trump orbit rise to the level we could define as collusion or was it a counterintelligence concern there's been a significant public speculation about your decision-making related to the Clinton email investigation why did you decide publicly to publicly announce FBI's recommendations that the Department of Justice not pursue criminal charges you have described it as a choice between a bad decision and a worse decision the American people need to understand the facts behind your action this committee is uniquely suited to investigate Russia's interference and then 2016 elections we also have a unified bipartisan approach to what is a highly true urghhh partisan issue russian activities during 2016 election may have been aimed at one party's candidate but as my colleague senator Rubio says frequently in 2018 and 2020 it could be aimed at anyone at home or abroad my colleague senator Warner and I have worked in it work to stay in lockstep on this investigation we've had our differences on approach at times but I've constantly stressed that we need to be a team and I think Senator Warner agrees with me we must keep these questions above politics and partisanship it's too important to be tainted by anyone trying to score political points with that again I welcome you director and I turn to budge chairman for any comments you might have well thank you mr. chairman and let me start by again absolutely thanking all the members of the committee for the seriousness in which they've taken on this task mr. Comey thank you for agreeing to come testify as part of this committees investigation into Russia I realized that this hearing has been obviously the focus of a lot of Washington in the last few days but the truth is many Americans who may be tuning in today probably haven't focused on every twist and turn of the investigation so I'd like to briefly describe at least from this senator standpoint what we already know and what we're still investigating to be clear this investigation is not about relitigated the election it's not about who won or lost and it sure as heck it's not about democrats versus republicans we're here because of foreign adversary attacked us right here at home plain and simple not by guns or missiles but by foreign operatives seeking to hijack our most important democratic process our presidential election Russian spies engaged in a series of online cyber raids and a broad campaign of disinformation all ultimately aimed at sowing chaos to undermine public faith in our process in our leadership and ultimately in ourselves and that's not just this senator's opinion it is the unanimous determination of the entire US intelligence community so we must find out the full story what the Russians did and candidly as some other colleagues have mentioned why they were so successful and more importantly we must determine the necessary steps to take to protect our democracy and ensure they can't do it again Charlie mentioned elections in 2018 and 2020 in my home state of Virginia we have elections this year in 2017 simply put we cannot let anything or anyone prevent us from getting to the bottom of this now mr. Comey let me say at the outset we haven't always agreed on every issue in fact I've occasionally questioned some of the actions you've taken but I've never had any reason to question your integrity your expertise or your intelligence you've been a straight shooter with this committee and have been willing to speak truth to power even at the risk of your own career which makes the way in which you are fired by the president ultimately shocking recall we began this entire process with the president and his staff first denying that the Russians were ever involved and then falsely claiming that no one from his team was ever in touch with any Russians we know that's just not the truth numerous Trump associates had undisclosed contacts with Russians before and after the election including the president's Attorney General his former national security adviser and his current senior adviser mr. Kushner that doesn't even begin to count the host of additional campaign associates advisors who've also been caught up in this massive web we saw mr. Trump's campaign manager mr. mana for forced to step down over ties to Russian back entities the national security adviser general Flynn had to resign over his lies about engagements with the Russians and we saw the candidate him Spratt himself express an odd and unexplained affection for the Russian dictator while calling for the hacking of his opponent there's a lot to investigate enough in fact then director Comey publicly acknowledged that he was leading an investigation into those links between mr. Trump's campaign and the Russian government as the director of the FBI mr. Comey was ultimately responsible for conducting that investigation which might explain why you're sitting now as a private citizen what we didn't know was at the same time that this investigation was proceeding the President himself appears to have been engaged in an effort to influence or at least co-opt the Director of the FBI the testimony that mr. Comey is submitted for today's hearing is very disturbing for example on January 27th after summoning director Comey to dinner the president appears to a threatened director's job while telling him quote I need loyalty I expect loyalty at a later meeting on February 14th the president asked the Attorney General to leave the Oval Office so he could privately ask director Comey again quote to see way clear to letting Flynn go that is a statement that director Comey interpreted as he as a request that he dropped the investigation connected the general Flynn's false statements think about it the president United States asking the FBI director to drop an ongoing investigation and after that the president called the FBI director on two additional occasions March 30th and April 11th and asked him again quote to lift the cloud on the Russian investigation now director Comey denied each of these improper requests the loyalty pledge the admonition to drop the Flint investigation the request to lift the cloud on the Russian investigation of course after his refusal director Comey was fired the initial explanation for the firing didn't pass any smell test somehow it replicas me was fired because he didn't treat Hillary Clinton appropriately of course that explanation lasted about a day because the President himself then made very clear that he was thinking about Russia when he decided to fire director Comey shockingly reports suggests that the president admitted as much in an oval office meeting with the Russians the day after director Comey was fired disparaging our country's top law enforcement official as a quote/unquote nutjob the president allegedly suggested that his firing relieved great pressure on his feelings about Russia this is not happening in isolation at the same time the president was engaged in these efforts with director Comey he was also at least allegedly asking senior leaders of the intelligence community to downplay the Russian investigation or to intervene with the director yesterday we had DNI director Coates an NSA director Admiral Rogers who were offered a number of opportunities to flatly deny those press reports they expressed their opinions but they did not take that opportunity to deny those reports they did not take advantage of that opportunity my belief that's not how the president United States should behave regardless of the outcome of our investigation into the Russia links director Comey's firing and his testimony raised separate and troubling questions that we must get to the bottom of again as I said at the outset I've seen firsthand how seriously every member of this committee is taking his work I'm proud of the committee's efforts so far let me be clear this is not a witch hunt this is not fake news it is an effort to protect our country from a new threat if quite honestly will not go away any time soon so mr. Comey your testimony here today will help us move towards that goal I look forward to that testimony Thank You mr. Chari Thank You vice chairman director as discussed when you agreed to appear before the committee it would be under oath I'd ask you to please stand raise your right hand you solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God please be seated director Comey you're now under oath and I would just note to members you will be recognized by seniority for a period up to seven minutes and again it is the intent to move to a closed session no later than 1:00 p.m. with that director Comey you are recognized you have the floor for as long as you might need Thank You mr. chairman ranking member Warner members of the committee thank you for inviting me here to testify today I've submitted my statement for the record and I'm not going to repeat it here this morning I thought I would just offer some very brief introductory remarks and then I would welcome your questions when I was appointed FBI director in 2013 I understood that I served at the pleasure of the president even though I was appointed to a 10-year term which Congress created in order to underscore the importance of the FBI being outside of politics and independent I understood that I could be fired by a president for any reason or for no reason at all and on May the 9th when I learned that I had been fired for that reason I immediately came home as a private citizen but then the explanations the shifting explanations confused me and increasingly concerned me they confused me because the and I had had multiple conversations about my job both before and after he took office and he had repeatedly told me I was doing a great job and he hoped I would stay and I had repeatedly assured him that I did intend to stay and serve out the remaining six years of my term he told me repeatedly that he had talked to lots of people about me including our current Attorney General and had learned that I was doing a great job and that I was extremely well-liked by the FBI workforce so it confused me when I saw on television the president's saying that he actually fired me because of the Russian investigation and learned again from the media that he was telling privately other parties that my firing had relieved great pressure on the Russia investigation I was also confused by the initial explanation that was offered publicly that I was fired because of the decisions I had made during the election year that didn't make sense to me for a whole bunch of reasons including the time and all the water that had gone under the bridge since those hard decisions that had to be made that didn't make any sense to me and although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray that it was poorly led that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader those were lies plain and simple and I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them and I'm so sorry that the American people were told them I worked every day at the FBI to help make that great organization better and I say help because I did nothing alone at the FBI there are no indispensable people at the FBI the organization's great strength is that its values and abilities run deep and wide the FBI will be fine without me the FBI's mission will be relentlessly pursued by its people and that mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States I will deeply miss being part of that mission but this organization and its mission will go on long beyond me and long beyond any particular administration I have a message before I closed for the my former colleagues of the FBI but at first I want the American people to know this truth the FBI is honest the FBI is strong and the FBI is and always will be independent and now to my former colleagues if I may I am so sorry that I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to you properly it was the honor of my life to serve beside you to be part of the FBI family and I will miss it for the rest of my life thank you for standing watch thank you for doing so much good for this country do that good as long as ever you can and senators I look forward to your questions director thank you for that testimony both oral and the written testimony that you provided to the committee yesterday and made public to of the American people chair would recognize himself first for 12 minutes vice chair for 12 minutes based upon the agreement we have director did the special counsels office review and/or edit your written testimony No do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections none do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the DNC and the d-triple-c systems and the subsequent leaks of that information no no doubt you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the cyber intrusion in the state voter files no do you have any doubt that officials of the Russian government were fully aware of these activities no doubt are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered I'm confident by the time when I left his director I had seen no indication of that whatsoever director Comey did the president at any time ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 US elections not to my understanding now did any individual working for this administration including the Justice Department ask you to stop the Russian investigation no director when the president requested that you and I quote let Flynn go general Flynn had an unreported contact with Russians which is an offense and if press accounts are right there might have been discrepancies between facts and his FBI testimony in your estimation was general Flynn at that time in serious legal jeopardy and in addition to that do you sense that the president was trying to obstruct justice or just seek for a way from Mike Flynn to save face given he had already been fired the general fund at that point in time was in legal jeopardy there was an open FBI criminal investigation of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves and so that was my assessment at the time I don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation I have with the president was an effort to obstruct I took it as a very disturbing thing very concerning but that's a conclusion I'm sure the Special Counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that's an offense director is it possible that as part of this FBI investigation the FBI could find evidence of criminality that is not tied to to the 2016 elections possible collusion or coordination with Russians sure so there could be something that just fits a criminal aspect to this that doesn't have anything to do with the 2016 election cycle correct in any complex investigation when you start turning over rocks sometimes you find things that are unrelated to the primary investigation that are criminal and director director coming you have been criticized publicly for the decision to present your findings on the email investigation directly to the American people have you learned anything since that time that would have changed what you said or how you chose to inform the American people honestly no I mean it caused a whole lot of personal pain for me but as I look back given what I knew at the time and even what I've learned since I think it was the best way to try and protect the justice institution including the FBI in the public domain is this question of the steel dossier a document that has been around now for over a year I'm not sure when the FBI first took possession of it but the media had it before you had it and we had it at the time of your departure from the FBI was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the steel document mr. chairman I don't think that's a question I can answer in an open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation director the term we hear most often is collusion when people are describing possible links between Americans and Russian government entities related to the interference in our election would you say that it's normal for foreign governments to reach out to members of an incoming administration yes at what point does the normal contact cross the line into an attempt to recruit agents or influence or spies difficult to say in the abstract it depends upon the context whether there's an effort to keep it covert but what the nature of the requests made of the American by the foreign government are it's a it's a judgment call based on a whole lot of facts at what point would that recruitment become a counterintelligence threat to our country again difficult to answer in the abstract but when when a foreign power is using especially coercion or some sort of pressure to try and co-opt an American especially a government official to act on its behalf that's a serious concern to the FBI and at the heart of the FBI's counterintelligence mission so if you've got a thirty six page document of specific claims that are out there the FBI would have to for counterintelligence reasons try to verify anything that might be claimed in there one and probably first and foremost is the counterintelligence concerns that we have about blackmail would that be an accurate statement yes if the FBI receives a credible allegation that there is some effort to coop coerce direct employ covertly an American on behalf of the foreign power that's the basis on which a counterintelligence investigation is open and when you read the dossier what was your reaction given that it was 100% directed at the president-elect not a question I can answer an open setting mr. chairman okay when did you become aware of the cyber intrusion the first cyber antis all kinds of cyber intrusions going on all the time the first Russia connected cyber intrusion I became aware of in the late summer of 2015 and in that timeframe there were more than the DNC and the d-triple-c that were targets correct there was a massive effort to target government and non-governmental near governmental agent agencies like nonprofits what would be the estimate of how many entities out there the Russians specifically targeted it in that timeframe it's hundreds I suppose it could be more than a thousand but it's at least hundreds when did you become aware that data had been exfiltrated I'm not sure exactly I think either in late 15 or early 16 and did you the director of the FBI have conversations with the last administration about the risk that this posed yes and share with us if you will what actions they took well the FBI had already undertaken an effort to notify all the victims and that's what we consider the entities that were attacked as part of this massive spear phishing campaign and so we notified them in an effort to disrupt what might be ongoing and then there was a series of continuing interactions with entities through the rest of 15 into 16 and then throughout 16 the administration was trying to decide how to respond to the intrusion activity that it saw and the FBI in this case unlike other cases that you might investigate did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected in the case of the DNC and I believe the d-triple-c but I'm sure the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves we got relevant forensic information from a private party a high-class entity that had done the work but we didn't get direct access but no content correct hidden content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint it is although what was briefed to me by my folks the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016 let me go back if I can very briefly to the decision to publicly go out with your results on the email was your decision influenced by the Attorney General's tarmac meeting with the former President Bill Clinton yes in in a ultimately conclusive way that was the thing that kept it from me that I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation which meant both the FBI and the Justice Department were there are other things that tributed to that that you can describe in an open session there were other things that contributed to that but one significant item I can't I know the committee's been briefed on there's been some public accounts of it which are nonsense but I understand the committee has been briefed on the classified facts probably the only other consideration I guess I can talk of an open setting is that at one point the Attorney General had directed me not to call it an investigation but instead to call it a matter which confused me and concerned me but that was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude I have to step away from the department if we're to close this case credibly director of my last question you're not only a seasoned prosecutor you've lived the FBI for years you understand the investigative process you've worked with this committee closely and we're grateful to you because I think we've we've mutually built trust in what your organization does and and what we do is there any doubt in your mind that this committee can carry out its oversight role in the 2016 Russian involvement in the elections in parallel with the now special council that's been set up no no doubt it can be done it requires lots of conversations but Bob Muller is one of this country's great great pros and I'm sure you all will be able to work it out with him to run it in parallel I want to thank you once again I want to turn to the vice chairman Thank You mr. chairman and again director Comey thank you for your service and your comments to your FBI family I know we're heartfelt know that even though there are some in the administration who tried to smear your reputation you had acting director McCabe in public testimony a few weeks back and in public testimony yesterday reaffirm that the vast majority FBI community had great trust in your leadership and obviously trusting your integrity I want to go through a number of the meetings that you referenced in your testimony and let's start with the January sixth meeting in Trump Tower where you went up with a series of officials to brief the president-elect on the Russia investigation my understanding is you remained afterwards to brief him on again quote some personally sensitive aspects of the information you relate now you said after that briefing you felt compelled to document that conversation that you actually started documenting as soon as you got into the car now you've had extensive experience at the Department of Justice and if the FBI you've worked on the presidents of both parties what was it about that meeting that led you to determine that you needed to start putting down a written record a combination of things I think the circumstances the subject matter and the person I was interacting with circumstances first I was alone with the President of the United States or the president-elect soon to be President the subject matter I was talking about matters that touch on the FBI's core responsibilities and that relate to the president president-elect personally and then the nature of the person I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting and so I thought it really important to document that combination of things I'd never experienced before but it led me to believe I got to write it down and it got to write it down in a very detailed way I think that's a very important statement you just made and my understanding is that then again unlike your dealings with presidents of either parties in your past experience in every subsequent meeting or conversation this president you created a written record did you feel that you needed to create this written record of these memos because they might need to be relied on at some future date sure I created records after conversations and I think I did it after each of our nine conversations if I didn't I did it for nearly all of them especially the ones that were substantive I knew that there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened not just to defend myself but to defend the FBI and and our integrity as an institution and the independence of our investigative function that's what made this so so difficult is it was a combination of circumstances subject matter and the particular person and so in all your experience this was the only president that you felt like in every meeting you needed a document because at some point using your words he might put out a non truthful representation of that meeting now right Center and I as I said my written testimony as FBI director I interacted with President Obama I spoke only twice in three years and didn't document it when I was deputy attorney general I had one one-on-one meeting with President Bush about a very important and difficult national security matter I didn't write a memo documenting that conversation either send a quick email to my staff to let them know there was something going on but I didn't feel with President Bush the need to document it in that way again because the combination of those factors just wasn't present with either President Bush or President Obama I think that is very significant I think others will probably question that in art the Chairman and I have requested those metals it is our hope that the FBI will get this committee access to those memos so that again we can read that contemporaneous rendition so that we've got your side of the story now I know members have said and pressive said that if you were a great deal has been made of whether the present you are asked in effect indicate whether the president was the subject of any investigation and my understanding is prior to your meeting on January 6th you discussed with your leadership team whether or not you should be prepared to assure then president-elect Trump that the FBI was not investigating him personally now my shiny's your leadership team agreed with that but was that a unanimous decision was there any debate about that wasn't unanimous one of the members of leadership team had a view that although it was technically true we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on then president-elect Trump his concern was because we're looking at the potential again that's the subject of investigation coordination between the campaign and Russia because it was president Trump present like Trump's campaign this person's view was inevitably his behavior his conduct will fall within the scope of that work and so he was reluctant to make the statement that I made I disagreed I thought it was fair to say what was literally true there is not a counterintelligence investigation of mr. Trump and I decided in the moment to say it given the nature of our conversation at that moment in time did you ever revisit that as in in these subsequent sessions with the FBI leadership team sure and and the the leader had that view it didn't change his view was still that it was probably although literally true his concern was it could be misleading because the nature of the investigation was such that it might well touch obviously it would touch the campaign and the person the head of the campaign would be the candidate and so that was his view throughout let me move to the January 27th dinner where you said quote the president began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI director he also indicated that lots of people again your words wanted the job you go on to say that the dinner itself was seemingly an effort to quote have you asked him for your job and creates some sort of quote unquote patronage relationship the president's seems from my reading of your memo to be holding your job or your possibility of continuing in your job over your head in a fairly direct way what was your impression and what did you mean by this notion of a patronage relationship well my impression and again it's my impression I could always be wrong but my common sense told me that what was going on is either he had concluded or someone had told him that you didn't you've already asked Comey to stay and you didn't get anything for it and that the dinner was an effort to build a relationship in fact yes specifically loyalty in the context of asking me to stay as I said what was odd about that is we already talked twice about it by that point and he'd said I very much hope you'll stay I hope you'll stay in fact I just remembered sitting here a third one when you've seen the picture of me walking across the Blue Room and what the president whispered in my ear was I really look forward to working with you so after those encounters and that was just a few days before you yeah that was on the twenty the Sunday after the inauguration the next Friday I have dinner and the president begins by wanting to talk about my job and so I'm sitting there thinking wait a minute three times we've already you've already asked me to stay or talked about me staying my common sense again I could be wrong but my common sense told me what's going on here is there he's looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job again we all understand I was the governor had people work for me but this constant requests then again quoting you him saying that he despite you explaining your independence he kept coming back to I need loyalty I expect loyalty had you ever had any of those kind of requests before from anyone else you'd work for in the government no and what made me uneasy was I'm at that point the director of the FBI the reason that Congress created a ten-year term is so that the director is not feeling as if they're serving at with political loyalty owed to any particular person the the statue of justice has a blindfold on because you're not supposed to be peeking out to see whether your patron is pleased or not with what you're doing it should be about the facts and the law that's why I was that's why I became FBI director to be in that kind of position so that's why I was so uneasy well let me let me move on my time for running out February 14th again it seems a bit strange you were in a meeting and your direct superior the Attorney General was in that meeting as well yet the president asked everyone to leave including the Attorney General to leave before he brought up the matter of general Flynn what was your impression of that type of action had you ever seen anything like that before no my impression was something big is about to happen I need to remember every single word that is spoken and again I could be wrong I'm 56 years old I've been seeing a few things my sense was the Attorney General knew he shouldn't be leaving which is why he was lingering and I don't know mr. Kushner well but I think he picked up on the same thing and so I knew something was about to happen that I needed to pay very close attention to and I found it very interesting that in the memo that you wrote after this February 14th pull aside you made clear that you wrote that memo in a way that was unclassified if you affirmative Lee made the decision to write a memo that was unclassified was that because you felt at some point the facts of that meeting would have to come clean and come clear and actually be able to be cleared in a way that could be shared with the American people well I remember thinking this is a very disturbing development really important to our work I need to document it and preserve it in a way and this committee gets this but sometimes when things are classified it tangles them up it's hard even to share it with an investigative team it's you have to be very careful about a handle it for good reason so my thinking was if I write it in such a way that I don't include anything that would trigger a classification that'll make it easier for us to discuss within the FBI and the government and to hold on to it in a way that makes it accessible to us but again it's our hope particularly since you pretty knowledgeable guy and you wrote this in a way that was unclassified that this committee will get access to that unclassified document I think would be very important to our investigation let me just ask this in closing how many ongoing investigations at any time does the FBI have tens of thousands of thousands did the president ever ask about any other invested ongoing investigation no ever asked about you trying to interfere on any other investigation no I think again this speaks volumes this doesn't even get to the questions around the phone calls about lifting the cloud I know other members will get to that but I really appreciate your testimony and appreciate your service to our nation Thank You senator Morra you know I just I'm sitting here going through my contacts of them I had one conversation with the president that was classified where he asked about our and ongoing intelligence investigation it was brief and entirely professional but he didn't ask you to take any specific action unlike what he had done visa vie mr. Flynn and the overall Russian investigation erect thank you sir senator rush thank you very much mr. Comey thank you for your service America needs more like you and we really appreciate it yesterday I got and everybody got the seven pages of your direct testimony that's now part of the record here and the first I read it then I read it again and all I could think was number one how much I hated the class of legal writing when I was in law school and you were the guy that probably got the a after after reading this so I find it clear I find it concise and having been a prosecutor for number of years and handling hundreds maybe thousands of cases and read police reports investigative reports this is as good as it gets and and I really appreciate that not only not only the conciseness and the clearness of it but also the fact that you have things that were written down contemporaneously when they happened and you actually put them in quotes so we know exactly what happened and we're not getting some rendition of it that that's in your mind so thank your to be complemented by great parents and great teachers who beat that into me that's obvious sir um the chairman walked you through a number of things that the American people need to know and want to know number one obviously we're all know about the active measures that the Russians have taken I think a lot of people were surprised at this those of us that work in the intelligence he didn't it didn't come as a surprise but now the American people know this and it's good they know this because this is serious and it's a problem I think secondly I gather from all this that you're willing to say now that while you were director the president United States was not under investigation is that a fair statement that's correct all right so that's a fact that we can rely on it yes sir okay I remember you you talked with us shortly after February 14th when the New York Times wrote an article that suggested that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians you remember reading that article when it first came out I do it was about allegedly extensive electronic surveillance the correct communications yes and and that up should set you to the point where you actually went out and surveyed the intelligence community to see whether whether you were missing something than that is that correct that's correct I want to be careful and openside on I'm not going to go any further than they've ended so thank you in addition to that after that you sought out both Republican and Democrat senators to tell them that hey I don't know where this is coming from but this is not the cave the this is not factual that you recall that yes okay so so again so the American people can understand this that report by the New York Times was not true is that a fair statement yeah in the main it was not true would and again all of you know this maybe the American people don't the challenge that I'm not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don't really know what's going on and those of us who actually know what's going on are not talking about it and we don't call the press to say hey you got that thing wrong about this sensitive topic we just have to leave it there I mentioned the chairman the nonsense around what influenced me to make the July fifth statement nonsense but I can't go explaining how it's nonsense thank you all right so so those three things we now know regarding the active measures were the presence under investigation and the collusion between the Russian the Trump campaign in the I want a drill write down as my time is limited to the most recent dust-up regarding allegations of the President and states obstructed justice and boy you nailed this down on page five paragraph three you put this in quotes words matter you wrote down the words so we can all have the words in front of us now there's 28 words there that are in quotes and it says quote I hope this is the president speaking I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go to letting Flynn go he is a good guy I hope you can let this go now those are his exact words is that correct correct and you wrote them here and you put them in quotes correct okay um thank you for that he did not direct you to let it go not in his words no he did not order you to let it go again those words are not in order no he said I hope now like me you probably did hundreds of cases maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses and of course you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there that where people have been charged do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or for that matter any other criminal offense where this they said or thought they hoped for an outcome I don't know well enough to answer and the reason I keep saying his words is I took it as a direction right I mean it's the president United States with me alone saying I hope this I took it as this is what he wants me to do no I didn't I didn't obey that but that's the way I took it you may have taken it as a direction but that's not what he said correct I said he said I hope those are exact words correct yeah you don't know of anyone that's ever been charged for hoping something is that a fair statement I don't as I sit here yeah thank you thank you mister senator Feinstein thanks very much of mr. chairman mr. Comey I just want you to know that I have great respect for you Senator Cornyn and I sit on the Judiciary Committee so we have occasion to have you before us and I know that you're a man of strength and integrity and I really regret the situation that we all find ourselves in I just want to say that let me begin with one overarching question why do you believe you were fired guess I don't know for sure I believe the prank the president had his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation something about the way I was conducting it the president felt created pressure on him they want to relieve again I didn't know that at the time but I've watched his interview I've read the press accounts of his conversations so I take him at his word there now look I could be wrong maybe he's saying something that's not true but I take him at his word at least based on what I know now yeah I talk for a moment about his request that you pledge loyalty and your response to that and what impact you believe that had I I don't know for sure because I don't know the president well enough to read him well I think it was cuz our relationship didn't get off to a great start giving the conversation I had to have on January 6th this was not this didn't improve the relationship because it was very very awkward he was asking for something and I was refusing to give it but again I don't know him well enough to know how he reacted to that exactly do you believe the Russia investigation played a role and why I was fired yes yes because I've seen the president say so let's let's go to the Flynn issue um senator riche outlined I hope you could see your way to letting Flynn go he's a good guy I hope you can let this go but you also said in your written remarks and I quote that you had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December and quote please go into that with more detail well the context and the president's words are what led me to that conclusion as I said in my statement I could be wrong but Flynn had been forced to resign that day before and and the controversy around general Flynn at that point time was centered on whether he had lied to the vice president about the nature of his conversations with the Russians whether he had been candid with others in the course of that and so that happens on the day before on the 14th the president makes specific reference to that and so that's why I understood him to be saying that what he wanted me to do was drop any investigation connected to Flynn's account of his conversations with the Russians now here's the question you're big you're strong I know the Oval Office and I know what happens to people when they walk in there is a certain amount of intimidation but why didn't you stop and say mr. president this is wrong I cannot discuss this with you it's a great question maybe if I were stronger I would have I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in and the only thing I could think to say because I was playing in my mind cuz I remember every word he said I was playing in my mind what should my response be and that's why I very carefully chose the words and look like I've seen the tweet about tapes lordy I hope their tapes I I remember saying I agree he's a good guy as a way of saying I'm not agreeing with what you just asked me to do again maybe other people would be stronger in that circumstance but that that was a that's how I conducted myself I hope I'll never have another opportunity maybe if I did it again I would do it better you described two phone calls that you received from President Trump one on March 30 and one on April 11 where he quote described the Russia investigation as a cloud that was impairing his ability and as president and asked you quote to lift the cloud end quote what how did you interpret that and what did you believe he wanted you to do I interpreted that as he was frustrated that the Russia investigation was taking up so much time and energy I think he meant of the executive branch but in the in the public square in general and it was making it difficult for him to focus on other priorities of his but what he asked me was actually narrower than that so I think what he meant by the cloud and again I could be wrong but what I think he meant by the cloud was the entire investigation is is taking up oxygen and making it hard for me to focus on the things I want to focus on the ask was to get it out that I the president of not personally under investigation after April 11th did he ask you more ever about the Russia investigation did he ask you any questions we ever spoke again after April 11th you told the president ice I would see what we could do what did you mean it was kind of a slightly cowardly way of trying to avoid telling him we're not going to do that that I would see what we could do was a way of kind of getting off the phone frankly and then I turned and handed it to the Acting Deputy Attorney General mr. Bente so did I wanted to go into that who did you talk with about that lifting the clouds stopping the investigation back at the FBI and what was their response well the FBI during one of the two conversations I'm not remembering exactly I think the first my chief of staff was actually sitting in front of me and heard my end of the conversation because the president's call was a surprise and I discussed the lifting the cloud in the request with the senior leadership team who in typically and I think in all these circumstances was the deputy director my chief of staff the general counsel the the deputy directors chief counsel and I think in a number of circumstances the number three in the FBI and a few of the conversations included the head of the national security branch so that group of us that lead the FBI when it comes to national security okay you have the President of the United States asking you to stop an investigation that's an important investigation what was the response of your colleagues I think they were as shocked and troubled by it as I was some said things that led me to believe that I don't remember exactly but the reaction was similar to mine they're all experienced people who had never experienced such a thing so they were very concerned and then the conversation turned to about so what should we do with this information and that was a struggle for us because we are the leaders of the FBI so it's been reported to us in that I heard it and now I've shared it with the leaders of the FBI our conversation was should we share this with any senior officials at the Justice Department our absolute primary concern was we can't infect the investigative team we don't want the agents and analysts working on this to know the president United States as as asked and when it comes to the president I took it as a direction to get rid of this investigation because we're not going to follow that that request and so we decided we got to keep it away from our troops but is there anybody else we ought to tell the Justice Department and as I laid out in my in my statement we considered whether to tell the Attorney General decided that didn't make sense because we believed rightly that he was shortly going to recuse there were no other Senate confirmed leaders in the Justice Department at that point the Deputy Attorney General was mr. Bente who was acting going to be shortly in that seat and we decided the best move would be to hold it keep it in a box documented as we had already done and then this investigation is going to go on figure out what to do with it down the road is there a way to corroborate this our view at the time was look it's your word against the president's there's no way to corroborate this that my view of that changed when the prospect of tapes was raised but that's how we thought about it then thank you thank you sir senator Rubio Thank You director call me the meeting in the Oval Office where he made the request about Mike Flynn was that the only time he asked you to hopefully let it go yes and in that meeting as you understood it that was he was asking not about the general Russian investigation he was asking very specifically about the Jeopardy that Flynn was in himself that's how I understood yes sir and as you perceived it while it was a request that he hoped you did away with it you perceived it as an order given his position to setting and the like in the some of the circumstances yes at the time did you say anything to the president about that is not an appropriate request or did you tell the White House Counsel that is not an appropriate request someone needs to go tell the president that he can't do these things I didn't know okay why I don't know I think the sir as I said earlier think the circumstances were such that it was I was a bit stunned and didn't have the presence of mind and I don't know why you know I don't want to make you sound like I'm captain courageous I don't know whether unified the presence of mine I would have said to the president sir that's wrong I don't know whether I would have but in the moment it didn't it didn't come to my mind what came to my mind is be careful what you say and so I said I agree Flynn is a good guy so on the cloud we keep talking about this cloud you perceived the cloud to be the Russian investigation in general yes sir but this specific ask was that you would tell the American people what you had already told him what you had already told the leaders of Congress both Democrats and Republicans that he was not personally under investigation yes sir that I was asking you to do what you have done here today correct yes sir okay and again at that setting did you say to the president that it would be inappropriate for you to do so and then talk to the White House Counsel or anybody so hopefully they would talk to him and tell him that he couldn't do this first time I said I'll see what we can do second time I explained how it should work that the White House Counsel should contact the Deputy Attorney General you told the president said okay I think that's what I'll do and just to be clear for you to make a public statement that he was not under investigation would not have been illegal but you felt it made no sense because it could potentially create a duty to correct if circumstance has changed yes sir we wrestled with it before my testimony where I confirmed that there as an investigation and there were two primary concerns one was it creates a duty to correct which I've lived before and you want to be very careful about doing that and second it's a slippery slope because if we say the President and the Vice President aren't under investigation what's the principal basis for stopping and so the leadership at justice acting Attorney General Ben Tay said you're not going to do that now on March 30th during the phone call about the general Flynn you said he abruptly shifted and brought up something that you call quote unquote than the cabe thing specifically the McCabe thing as you understood it was that McCabe's wife had received campaign money from what I assume means Terry McAuliffe yes sir that was very close to the Clintons and and so why did you had the president any point in time expressed to you concerned opposition potential opposition to McCabe I don't like this guy because he got money from someone that's close to Clinton he had asked me during previous conversations about Andy McCabe and said you know essence how's he gonna be with me as president I was pretty rough on him on the campaign trail he was rough on McCabe he was roughed by his own account he said he was rough on McCabe and mrs. McCabe on the campaign trail how's he going to be and I assured the president Andy is a total Pro the no issue at all you got to know the people the FBI they are not so that so the president turns to you and says remember I never brought up the McCabe thing because you said he was a good guy did you perceive that to be a statement that I took care of you I didn't do something because you told me he was a good guy so now you know I'm asking you potentially for something in return is that how you perceived it I wasn't sure what to make of it honestly that's possible but it it was so out of context that I didn't have a clear view of what it was now on a number of occasions here you bring up let's talking now about the general Russian investigation okay and page six of your testimony you say the first thing you say is he asked what we could do to quote-unquote lift the cloud the general Russian investigation and you responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could and that there would be great benefit if we didn't find anything to having done the work well and he agreed he reinforces the problems it was causing him he agreed so in essence the president agreed with your statement that it would be great if we could have a investigation all the facts came out and we found nothing so he agreed that that would be ideal but this cloud is still messing up my ability to do the rest of my agenda is that an accurate assessment yes sir he actually went farther than that he said and if some of my satellites did something wrong would be good to find that out well that's the second part and that is the satellites he said it's one of my satellites I imagine by that he met some of the other people surrounding his campaign did something wrong it would be great to know that as well yes sir that's what he said so are those the other are those deal only two instances in which that sort of back-and-forth happened where the president was basically saying and I'm paraphrasing here it's okay do the Russian investigation I hope it all comes out I have nothing to do with anything Russia it'd be great if it all came out if people around me were doing things that were wrong yes as I recorded it accurately there that was a sentiment he was expressing so what it bears it comes down to is the president has asked three things of you he asked for your loyalty and you said you would be loyally honest honestly loyal honestly loyal the the he asked you on one occasion to let the Mike Flint thing go because he was a good guy by the way you're aware that he said the exact same thing in the press the next day he's a good guy he's been treated unfairly etc etc so I imagine your FBI agents read that I'm sure they did your breath the president's wishes were known to them certainly by the next day when he had a press conference with a prime minister going back the three requests were number one be loyal number two um let the Mike Flynn thing go he's a good guy he's been treated unfairly and number three can you please tell the American people what these leaders in Congress already know what you already know you told me three times that I'm not under personally under investigation those are the three things he asked yes sir you know this investigation is full of leaks left and right I mean we've learned more from the newspapers sometimes than we do from our open hearings for sure you ever wonder why of all the things in this investigation the only thing that's never been leaked is the fact that the president was not personally under investigation despite the fact that both Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of Congress knew that and have known that for weeks I don't know I find matters that are briefed to the gang eight are pretty tightly held in my experience finally who are those senior leaders at the FBI that you shared these conversations with as I said in response to senator Feinstein's question of deputy director my chief of staff general counsel the deputy directors chief counsel and then more often than not the number three person at the FBI who is the associate deputy director and then quite often the head of the national security branch Center what Thank You mr. chairman mr. call me welcome you and I have had significant policy differences over the years particularly protecting Americans access to secure encryption but I believe the timing of your firing stinks and yesterday you put on the record testimony that demonstrates why the odor of presidential abuse of power is so strong now to my questions in talking to Senator Warner about this dinner that you had with the president I believe January 27th all in one dinner the president raised your job prospects he asked for your loyalty and denied allegations against him all took place over one supper now you told senator Warner that the president was looking to quote get something looking back did that dinner suggest that your job might be contingent on how you handled the investigation I don't know that I'd go that far I got the sense my job would be contingent upon how he felt I excuse me how he felt I conducted myself and whether I demonstrated loyalty but I don't know what I go so far as to connect it to the investor the president was trying to create some sort of patronage relationship in a patronage relationship isn't the underling expected to behave in a manner consistent with the wishes of the boss yes or at least consider how what you're doing will affect the boss as a significant consideration let me turn to the Attorney General in your statement you said that you and the FBI leadership team decided not to discuss the president's actions with attorney general sessions even though he had not recused himself what was it about the Attorney General's own interactions with the Russians or his behavior with regard to the investigation that would have led the entire leadership of the FBI to make this decision our judgment as I recall was that he was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons we also were aware of facts that I can't discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia related investigation problematic and so we were we were convinced in fact I think we'd already heard that the career people were recommending that he recused himself that he was not going to be in contact with Russia related matters much longer and that turned out to be the case how would you characterize Attorney General Sessions adherence to his recusal in particular with regard to his involvement in your firing which the president has acknowledged was because of the Russian investigation that's a question I can't answer I think it's a reasonable question if as the president said I was fired because of the Russian investigation why was the Attorney General involved in that chain I don't know and so I don't have an answer for the question your testimony was that the president's request about Flynn could infect the investigation had the president got what he wanted and what he asked of you what would have been the effect on the investigation but we would have closed any investigation of general Flynn in connection with his statements and encounter statements about and encounters with Russians in the late part of December so we would have dropped an open criminal investigation so in effect when you talk about infecting the enterprise you would have dropped something major that would have spoken to the overall ability of the American people to get the facts correct and and as good as our people are our judgment was we don't want them hearing that the president United States wants this to go away because it might have an effect on their ability to be fair and impartial and aggressive now the acting Attorney General Yates found out that Michael Flynn could be blackmailed by the Russians and she went immediately to warn the White House Flynn is gone but other individuals with contacts with the Russians are still in extremely important positions of power should the American people have the same sense of urgency now with respect to them Nicole I can say senator is it's a the special counsels investigation is very important to understanding what efforts there were or are by the Russian government to influence our government is a critical part of the FBI's mission so and you've got the right person in Bob Muller to lead it so it's a very important piece of work vice president Pence was the head of the transition tier knowledge was he aware of the concerns about Michael Flynn prior to ordering general Flynn's tenure as national security adviser I don't you're asking including up to the time when Flynn was forced to resign my understanding is that he was and I'm trying to where where I get that understanding from I think from acting Attorney General Yates so former acting Attorney General Yates testified that concerns about general Flynn were discussed with intelligence community would that have included anyone at the CIA or dan coates --is office the DNI I would assume yes Michael Flynn resigned four days after Attorney General Sessions was sworn in do you know if the Attorney General was aware of the concerns about Michael Flynn during that period I don't as I sit here I don't I don't recall that he was i I could be wrong but I don't remember that he was and finally let's see if you can give us some sense of who recommended your firing besides the letters from the Attorney General the Deputy Attorney General do you have any information on who may have recommended or have been involved in your firing I don't I don't okay Thank You mr. chairman senator Collins Thank You mr. chairman mr. Comey let me begin by thanking you for your voluntary compliance with our request to appear before this committee and assist us and that's very important investigation I want first to ask you about your conversations with the president the three conversations in which you told him that he was not under investigation the first was during your January 6th meeting according to your testimony in which it appears that you actually volunteered that assurance is that correct that's correct did you limit that statement to counterintelligence investigation sir were you talking about any kind of FBI investigation I didn't I didn't use the term counterintelligence I was speaking to him and briefing him about some salacious and unverified material it was in the context of that that he had a strong and defensive reaction about that not being true and my reading of it was it was important for me to assure him we were not personally investigating him and so the context then was actually narrower focused on what I just talked to him about though it was very important because it was first true and second I was very very much about being in kind of a kind of a J Edgar Hoover type situation I didn't want him thinking that I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over him in some way I was briefing him on it because we had been told by the media it was about to launch we don't want to be keeping that from him and if there was something he needed to know this was being said but I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him and so that's the context in which I said sir we're not personally investigating you and then on and that's why you volunteered the information yes ma'am Rhett Bennett on the January 27th dinner you show you told the president that he should be careful about asking you to investigate because quote you might create a narrative that we are investigating him personally which we weren't again were you limiting that statement to counterintelligence investigations or more broadly such as a criminal investigation the context was very similar I didn't I didn't modify the word investigation it was again he was reacting strongly against that unverified material saying I'm tempted to order you to investigate it and that in the context of that I said sir you want to be careful about that because it might create a narrative we're investigating you personally and then there was the March 30th phone column with the president in which you reminded him that congressional leaders have been briefed that we were not personally the FBI was not personally investigating president Trump and again was that statement to congressional leaders and to the president limited to counter intelligence investigations or was that a broader statement I'm trying to understand whether there was any kind of investigation of the president under way no I'm sorry if I misunderstood I apologize we briefed the congressional leadership about what Americans we had opened counterintelligence investigation cases on and we specifically said the president is not one of those Americans but that there was no other investigation of the president that we were not mentioning at that time what the context was counterintelligence but I wasn't trying to hide some criminal investigation of the President and was the president under investigation at the time of your dismissal on May 9th no I'd like to now turn to the conversations with the president about Michael Flynn which had been discussed at great length and in first let me make very clear that the president never should have cleared the room and he never should have asked you as you reported to let it go to let the investigation go but I remain puzzled by your response your response was I agree that Mykel plan is a good guy you could have said mr. president this meeting is inappropriate this response could compromise the investigation you should not be making such a request it's fundamental to the operation of our government that the FBI be insulated from this kind of political pressure and you've talked to bed today about that you were stunned by the president making the request but my question to you is later on upon reflection did you go to anyone at the Department of Justice and ask them to call the White House counsel's office and explain that the president had to have a far better understanding and appreciation of his role visa be the FBI in general I did I spoke to the Attorney General and I spoke to the Deputy Attorney General mr. Rosen Stein when he took office and explained my serious concern about the way in which the president is interacting especially with the FBI and I specifically as I said in my testimony I asked the told the Attorney General it can't happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me but look in the room and and but why didn't we raise the specific it was of investigative interest to us to try and figure out so what just happened with the President's request so I would not have want to alert the White House that it had happened until we figured out what are we going to do with this investigative Lee your testimony was that you went to attorney general sessions and said don't ever leave me alone with him again are you saying that you also told him that he had made a request that you let it go with regard to part of the investigation of Michael Flynn no I specifically did not I did not you mentioned that from your very first meeting with the president you decided to write a memo memorializing the conversation what was it about that very first meeting that made you write a memo when you not done that with two previous presidents as I said a combination of things a gut feeling is important overlay on the but the circumstances that I was alone the subject matter and the nature of the person that I was interacting with in my read of that person and yeah and and and really just a gut feel laying on top of all of that that this it's going to be important to protect this organization that I make records of this and finally did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside of the Department of Justice yes and to whom did you show copies I asked a president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that I better hope there's not tapes I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn't dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation there might be a tape and my judgment was I needed to get that out into the public square and so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel and so I asked a close friend of mine to do it and was said mr. Widders no no who was that a good friend of mine who's a professor of Columbia Law School Thank You senator Heinrich mr. Comey uh prior to January 27th of this year have you ever had a one-on-one meeting or or a private dinner with a President of the United States no I met dinner no I had two one-on-ones with President Obama that I laid out in my testimony wants to talk about law enforcement issues law enforcement and race which was an important topic throughout for me and for the president and then once very briefly for him to say goodbye were those brief interactions no the one about law enforcement and race and policing we spoke for probably over an hour just the two of us how unusual is it to have a one-on-one dinner with the President did that strike you as odd yeah so much so that I assumed there would be others that he couldn't possibly be having dinner with me alone if do you have a impression that if you had found if you would behave differently in that dinner and I am quite pleased that you did not but if you had found a way to express some sort of expression of loyalty or given some suggestion that the Flyn criminal investigation might be pursued less vigorously do you think you would have still been fired I don't know I get it's impossible to say looking back I don't know but you felt like those two things were were directly relevant to your the kind of relationship that the president was seeking to establish with you sure yes the president has repeatedly talked about the Russian investigation into the u.s. or the Russian Russia's involvement in the u.s. election cycle as a hoax and as fake news can you talk a little bit about what you saw as FBI director and obviously only the parts that you could share in this setting that that demonstrate how serious this action actually was and why there was an investigation in the first place yes sir the there should be no fuzz on this whatsoever the Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle they did it with purpose they did it with sophistication they did it with overwhelming technical efforts and it was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government there is no fuzz on that it is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community and and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence it's not a close call that happened that's about as unfazed you can possibly get and is very very serious which is why it's so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that because this is about America not about any particular party so that was a hostile act by the Russian government against this country yes sir did the president in any of those interactions that you've shared with us today ask you what you should be doing or what our government should be doing or the intelligence community to protect America against Russian interference in our election system I don't recall a conversation like that never no do you find it now not with President Trump right I attended a fair number of meetings on that with the President Obama do you find it odd that the president seemed unconcerned by Russia's actions in our election I can't answer that because I don't know what other conversations he had with other advisors or other intelligence community leaders so I I just don't know sitting here did you have any interactions with the president that suggested he was taking that hostile action seriously I don't remember any interactions with the president of other than the initial briefing on January the 6th I don't remember it could be wrong but I don't remember any conversations him at all about that as you're very aware it was only the two of you in the room for that dinner you've told us the president asked you to back up the Flint investigation the president told the report not in that dinner fair enough told the reporter he did never did that you've testified that the president asked for your loyalty in that dinner the White House denies that a lot of this comes down to who should we believe do you want to say anything as to why we should believe you probably my mother raised me not to say things like this about myself so I'm not going to I think people should look at the whole body of my testimony because as I used to say to juries that when I talked about a witness you can't cherry pick it you can't say I like these things he said but on this he's a he's a dirty rotten liar but you got to take it all together and I've tried to be open and fair and transparent and accurate a really significant fact to me is so why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office why would you kick the Attorney General the president the chief of staff out to talk to me if it was about something else and so that that to me is as an investigator is a very significant fact and as we look at at testimony or as communication from both of you we should probably be looking for consistency well looking at any witness you look at consistency track record demeanor record over time that sort of thing thank you so there are reports that the incoming Trump administration either during the transition and or after the inauguration attempted to set up a a sort of backdoor communication channel with the Russian government using their infrastructure their devices or facilities what would be the risks particularly for a transition someone not actually in the office of the president yet to setting up unauthorized channels with a hostile foreign government especially if they were to evade our own American intelligence services I'm not going to comment on whether that happened in an open setting but the risk is primary risk is obvious you spare the Russians the cost and effort of having to break into our communications channels by using theirs and so you make it a whole lot easier for them to capture all of your conversations and then to use those to the benefit of Russia against the United States the memos that you wrote you wrote did you write all nine of them in a way that was designed to prevent them from needing classification no and on a few of the occasions I wrote I sent emails and my chief of staff or others on some of the brief phone conversations that I recall the first one was a classified briefing although it wasn't it asked if it was in a conference room at Trump Tower it was a classified briefing and so I wrote that on a classified device the one I started type engine in the car that was a classified laptop that I started working on any reason in a classified environment in a skiff that this committee would it would not be appropriate to see those communications from at least from your perspective as the author no Thank You mr. chairman senator blunt Thank You mr. chairman mr. call me when you were terminated at the FBI I said and still continue to feel that you have provided years of great service to the country I also said that I'd had significant questions over the last year about some of the decisions you made if if the president hadn't terminated your service would you still be in your opinion the director of the FBI today yes sir so you took as a direction from the president something that you thought was serious and troublesome but continued to show up for work the next day yes sir and six weeks later were still telling that we're telling the president on March the 30th that he was not personally the target of any investigation correct on March the 30th and I think again Ani I think on April 11th as well I told him we're not investigating him personally that was true well the point to me the concern to me there is that all these things are going on you now in retrospect or at least you now to this committee that these were you had serious concerns about what the president had you believe directed you to do and had taken no action hadn't even reported up the chain of command assuming you believe there isn't up the chain of command that these things had happened do you have a sense of that looking back that that was a mistake no in fact I think no action was the most important thing I could do to make sure there was no interference with the investigation and on the on the Flynn issues specifically I believe you said earlier that you believe the president was suggesting you drop any investigation of Flynn's account of his conversation with the Russian ambassador which was essentially misleading the vice president and others correct and and I'm not going to into the details but whether there were false statements made to government investigators as well the any suggestion that the general Flynn had violated the Logan Act I always find pretty incredible the Logan acts been on the books for over 200 years nobody's ever been prosecuted for violating the Logan Act my sense would be that the discussion not the problem misleading investigators or the vice president might have been that's fair yes sir and in your had you previously on February the 14th discussed with the president and the previous meeting anything your investigators had learned or their impressions from talking to Flynn no sir so he said he's a good guy you said he's a good guy and that was no further action taken on that but he said more than that but there was no the action was wrote it up briefed our senior team tried to figure out what to do with it and it's made a decision we're going to hold this and then see what we make of it down the road yes sir was it your view that not briefing up meant you really had no responsibility to report that to the Justice Department in some way I think at some point and I don't know what director Muller is going to do with it but at some point I was sure we were going to brief it to the team in charge of the case but our judgment was in the short-term doesn't make sense through no fuzz on the fact I reported to the Attorney General that's why I stressed he shouldn't be kicked out of the room but didn't make sense to report to him now you know you said the Attorney General said I don't want to be in the room with him alone again but you continued to talk to him on the phone what is the difference in being in the room alone with him and talking to him on the phone alone yeah I think I would I stress the change I was a little broader than just the room I said you I report to you it's very important you be between me and the White House but after that discussion with the Attorney General did you take phone calls from the president yes sir so why did you just say you need to talk to it when you say I'm not taking that call you need to talk to the Attorney General well I all I did on the April 11th call and I reported the calls the March 30th call in the April 11th call to my superior who was the Acting Deputy Attorney General I don't want to run out of time here let me make one other point in reading your testimony January the 3rd January the 27th and March the 30th it appears to me that on all three of those occasions you unsolicited by the president made the point to him that he was not a target of an investigation correct yes sir one I thought the March 30th very interesting you said well even though you don't want you may not want to step was the 27th where he said why don't you look into that dossier thing more you said well you may not want that because then we couldn't tell you you couldn't say with we couldn't answer the question about you being a target of the investigation but you didn't seem to be in answering that question anyhow senator Rubio pointed out the one unanswered unli question seems to have been that in this whole period of time but you said something earlier I don't want to fail to follow up on you said after you were dismissed you gave information to a friend so that friend could get that information into the public media correct what kind of information was that was not what kind of information did you give to a friend that the pred the the Flint conversation that the President had asked me to let the Flint man forgetting my exact own words but the conversation in the Oval Office so you didn't consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document you considered to be somehow your own personal document that you could share with the media as you wanted to correct my friend I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president as a private citizen I felt free to share that I thought of very important to get it out so we're all of your memos that you recorded on classified or other documents memos that might be yours as a private citizen I'm sorry I'm not following the question well I think you said you'd use classified classified oh you're not the classified documents unclassified I don't have any of them anymore but gave them to the Special Counsel but yet my view was that the content of those unclassified the memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded so why didn't you give those to somebody yourself rather than give them through a third party because I was worried the media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point and I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide and I worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach if if it was if it was I who gave it to the media so I asked my friend make sure this gets out it does seem to me that what you do there is create a source close to the former director of the FBI as opposed to just taking responsibility yourself for saying here are these records and like everybody else I have other things I'd like to get into but I'm out of time okay senator King thank you first I'd like to acknowledge senator Blumenthal and earlier senator Nelson I think the one principal thing you'll learn today senator is that the chairs they're less comfortable than the chairs here but welcome you to the hearing mr. Comey a broad question was the Russian activity in the 2016 election a one-off proposition or is this part of a long-term strategy will they be back oh it's a long-term practice of theirs it stepped up a notch in a significant way in 16 they'll be back I think that's very important for the American people to understand that this is this is very much a forward-looking investigation in terms of how do we understand what they did and how do we prevent it would you agree that that's a big part of our role here yes sir and it's not a Republican thing or a democratic thing it really is an American thing they're going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of and they're not devoted to either in my experience they're just about their own advantage and they will be back that's my observation I don't think Putin is a Republican or a Democrat he's an opportunist I think that's a fair statement uh with regard to the several of these conversations in his interview with Lester Holt on NBC the president said I had dinner with him he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on is this an accurate statement no sir did you in any way initiate that dinner no he called he called me at my desk at lunchtime and asked me was I free for dinner that night and called himself and said can you come over for dinner tonight I said yes sir he said well six work I think he said six first and he said I was going to bite your whole family but we'll do that next time I want you to come over and is that a good time I said sir whatever works for you and then he said how about 6:30 and I said whatever works for you sir and then I hung up and had to call my wife and break a date with her I was supposed to take her out to dinner that night and that's one of the all-time great excuses for breaking it happen in retrospect I would have loved spending time with my wife I wish I had been there that night that's one question I'm not gonna follow up mr. cook but in that same interview the president said in one case I called him and in one case he called me is that an accurate statement no did you ever call the president no I yeah I might the only reason I'm hesitating is I think there was at least one conversation where I was asked to call the White House switchboard to be connected to him but I never initiated a communication with the president uh and it is press conference on May 18th the president was asked whether he had urged you to shut down the investigation to Michael Flynn the president responded quote no no next question is that an accurate statement I don't believe it is thank you with regard to the question of him being under personal personally under investigation does that mean that the dossier is not being reviewed or investigated or followed up on in any way I obviously can't come I can't comment either way I can't talk in an open setting about the investigation as it was when I was the head of the FBI and obviously it's it's director Muller's Bob Muller's responsibility now so I just I don't know so clearly your statements to the president back in those these various times when you assured him he wasn't under investigation whereas of that moment that correct is it right correct now on the Flyn investigation is it not true that mr. Flynn was and is a central figure in this entire investigation of the relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russians I can't answer that in an open setting sir uh and certainly mr. Flynn was part of the so-called Russian investigation can you answer that question I have to give you the same answer all right we'll be having a closed session shortly so we will follow up on that in terms of his comments to you about I think you're in response to mr. rish just sent her wrist you said he said I hope you will hold back on that but when you get it when a president in the United States in the Oval Office says something like I hope or I suggest or would you do take that as a directive yes yes it rings in my ear as kind of well no one rid me of this meddlesome priest I was just going to quote that in 1170 December 29 henry ii said who will rid me of this meddlesome priest and then the next day he was killed thomas a becket as exactly the same situation you're we're thinking along the same lines of several other questions and these are a little bit more detailed what do you know about the Russian bang VEB nothing that I can talk about in an open setting well I know it ignore my next three quests yes sir you know it exists what is the relationship of ambassador the Ambassador from Russia to the United States to the Russian intelligence infrastructure well he's a diplomat who is the chief of mission at the Russian embassy which employs a robust cohort of intelligence officers and so surely he's witting of they're very very aggressive intelligence operations least some of it in the United States I don't I don't consider him to be an intelligence officer himself he's a diplomat did you ever did the FBI ever brief the Trump administration about knew the advisability of interacting directly with ambassador Kissel yeah Nicola can say sitting here is there were a variety of defensive briefings given to the incoming administration about the counterintelligence risk back to mr. Flynn would the wood closing out the Flynn investigation have impeded the overall Russian investigation no it unlikely except to the extent there's always a possibility if you have a criminal case against someone and you bring it and squeeze them you flip them and they give you information about something else but I saw the two as touching each other but separate with regard to your memos isn't it true that in a court case when you're weighing evidence contemporaneous memos and contemporary contemporaneous statements to third parties are considered probative in terms of the the the validity of testimony yes thank you Thank You mr. chairman senator cotton excuse me senator Langford well director Comey could see again - we've had multiple opportunities to be able to visit as everyone on this daya's has and I appreciate you and your service and what you have done for the nation for a long time what you continue to do I've told you before in the heat of last year and we had the opportunity to visit personally that I pray for you and for your family because you do carry a tremendous amount of stress and that is still true today Thank You Mia let me walk through a couple things with you your notes are obviously exceptionally important because they give a very rapid account of what you what you wrote down and what you perceive to happen in those different meetings have you had opportunity to be able to reference those notes when you were preparing the written statement that you put for us today yes I yes I think nearly all of my written recordings of the conversations had a chance to review them before filing my statement do you have a copy of any of those notes personally I don't I turn them over to Bob Muller's investigators the individual that you told about your memos that then sent on to the New York Times did they have a copy of those memos or where they told orally of those memos had a copy I had a copy of the time do they do they still have a copy of those memos it's a good question I think so I guess I can't say for sure sitting here but I I guess I don't know but I think so so the question is could you ask them to hand that copy right back to you so you could hand them over to this committee potentially I would like to move that from potential to see if we can ask that question so we can have a copy of those obviously those notes are exceptionally important to us how to be able go through the process so we can we can continue to get to the facts as we see it as you know the written documents are exceptionally important but there other documents that we need to be aware of that you used in your preparation for your written statement that we should also have that would assist us in helping with this not that I'm aware of no past the February the 14th meeting which is a very important meeting obviously as we discuss the conversations here about Michael Flynn when the president asked you about he hopes that you would let this go and the conversation back and forth about being me being a good guy after that time did the president ever bring up anything about Michael Flynn again to you you had multiple other conversations you have documented with the president no I don't remember him ever bringing it up but did any member of the White House staff ever come to you and talk to you about letting go of the Michael Flynn case or dropping it or anything referring to that no the Director of National Intelligence come to you and talk to you about that no did anyone from the attorney general's office the Department of Justice ask you about that no did the head of NSA talk to you about that no the the key aspect here is if this seems to be something the president's trying to get you to drop it this seems like a pretty light touch to drop it to bring it up at that moment the day after he had just fired Flynn to come back in and say I hope we can let this go but then it never reappeared again did it slow down your investigation or any investigation that may or may not be occurring with Michael Flynn no though I don't know there are any manifestations outward manifestations of the investigation between February 14th and when I was fired so I I don't know that the President of any way of knowing whether it was effective or not okay it's fair enough if if the president wanted to stop an investigation how would he do that knowing it's an ongoing criminal investigation or counterintelligence investigation would that be a matter of trying to go to you you perceive and to say you make it stop because he doesn't have the authority to stop or how how would the president make an ongoing investigation stop again I'm not a legal scholar so smarter people answer this better but I think as a legal matter president is the head of the executive branch and could direct in theory we have important norms against this but direct that anybody be investigator anybody not be investigated I think he has the legal authority because all of us ultimately report an executive branch up the president would that be to you would that be the Attorney General would that be to who that would do that suppose you could do it if you want to issue a direct order could do it in any way could do it through the Attorney General or issue it directly to me well is there any question that the president is not real fond of this investigation I can think of multiple hundred and forty word character expressions that he's done publicly to express he's not fond to the investigations I've heard you shared before in this conversation that you're trying to keep the agents that are working on it away from any comic the president might have made where frankly the president has informed around six billion people that he's not real fond of this investigation do you think there's a difference in that yes okay well there's a big difference in kicking superior officers out of the Oval Office looking the FBI director in the eye and saying hope you let this go I think if our if the agents as good as they are heard the president knighted States did that it's you there's a real risk of a chilling effect on their work that's why we kept it so tight okay you had mentioned before about some news stories and news accounts without having to go into all the names in the specific times and to be able to dip and all that have there been news accounts about the Russian investigation about collusion about this whole event or accusations that as you read the story you were stunned about how wrong they got the facts yes there been many many stories purportedly based on classified information about about lots of stuff but especially about Russia that are just dead wrong I was interested in your comment that you made as well that the president said to you if there were some satellite associates of his that did something wrong it would be good to find that out but the president seemed to talk to you specifically on March the 30th and say I'm frustrated that the word is not getting out that I'm not under investigation but if there are people that are in my circle that are let's finish the investigation is that how you took it as yes sir yes and then you made a comment earlier about the Attorney General previous Attorney General asking you about the investigation on the Clinton males saying that you've been asked not to call it investigation anymore but to call it a matter and you had said that confused you can you give us additional details on that well it concerned me because we're at the point where we had refused to confirm the existence as we typically do of an investigation for months and it was getting to a place where that looks silly because the campaigns were talking about interacting with the FBI in the course of our work the Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds of euphemisms security review matters things like that for what was going on we were getting to a place where the attorney Jo and I were both gonna have to testify and talk publicly about it and I want to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we had an investigation and she said yes but don't call it that call it a matter and I said why would I do that and she said just call it a matter and again you look back in hindsight you think should I have resisted harder I just said all right isn't worth this is an ill worth dying on and so I just said okay the press is going to completely ignore it and that's what happened when I said we have opened a matter they all reported the FBI has an investigation open and so that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI's work and that that's concerning it gave the impression that the campaign was somehow using the same language the FBI because you were handed the campaign language and told to be able to use the campaign but and I get out of whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the Attorney General was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way political campaign was describing the same activity which was inaccurate we had a criminal investigation open with as I've said before the Federal Bureau of Investigation we had an investigation open at the time and so that gave me a queasy feeling thank you senator Manchin Thank You mr. chairman Thank You mr. Comey I appreciate very much your being here West Virginians are very interested in this and in this hearing that we're having today I've had over 600 requests for questions to ask you for my fellow West Virginians and most of them have been asked and there's quite a few of them we're quite detailed while asking our classified hearing I want to thank you for of all for coming and green to be here volunteering but also volunteering to stay into the classified hearing I don't know if you had a chance to watch our hearing yesterday I watched part of it yes much and it was quite troubling my colleagues here had some very pointed questions they want answers - they weren't classified they could have answered this open setting they refused to do so so that even much makes us much more appreciative of your cooperation sir the seriousness of the Russian aggressions in our past elections and knowing that it'll be ongoing and Senator King had alluded to this what's your concerns there I mean what what should American public understand people said well this is a why we worried about this why make such a big deal now this Russian investigation can you tell me what your thoughts Ghazi and then the final thing is on this same topic did the president ever show any concern or interest or curiosity about what the Russians were doing Thank You senator as I said earlier I don't remember any conversations with the president about the Russia election interference did he ever ask you any questions concerning this well there was an initial briefing of our findings and I think there was conversation there I don't remember it exactly where he asked questions about what we had found and what our sources were what our confidence level was but after that I don't remember anything what the reason this is such a big deal has we have this big messy wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time but nobody tells us what to think what to fight about what to vote for except other Americans and that's wonderful and often painful but we're talking about a foreign government that using technical intrusion lots of other methods tried to shape the way we think we vote we act that is a big deal and people need to recognize it it's not about Republicans or Democrats they're coming after America which I hope we all love equally they want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world they think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them and so they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible that's what this is about and they will be back because we remain as as difficult as we can be with each other we remain that shining city on the hill and they don't like it this is extremely important is extremely dangerous what would what we're dealing with and it's needed is what you're saying yes sir do you believe there were any tapes or recordings of your conversations with the president it never occurred to me till the president's tweet I'm not being facetious I hope there are and I'll consent to the release of the both of you both of you are in the same findings here you both hope there's tapes and recordings well I'm new all I can do is hope the president surely knows whether he taped me and if he did my feelings aren't hurt release the entire release all the tapes I'm good with it got you sir do you believe that Robert Mueller the our new special investigator on Russia will be thorough and complete without political intervention and would you be confidence on these findings and recommendations yes Bob Muller is one of the finest people and public servants this country has ever produced he will do it well he is a dogged tough person and you can have high confidence that when it's done he's turned over all the rocks you've been asked a wide variety of Crush of questions today and then we're going to be hearing more I'm sure in our classified hearing something I'll often ask folks when they come here what details of this saga would be should we be focusing on and what would you recommend us do differently hmm or to just our perspective on this I don't know I one of the reasons that I'm pleased to be here is I think this committee has shown the American people although we have two parties and we disagree about important things we can work together when involves the core inches of the country so I would hope you'll just keep doing what you're doing it's good in and of itself but it's also a model especially for kids that we we are a functioning adult democracy and you also mention you mad I think what two six six meetings three times in person six on the phone nine times in conversation of the president did he ever at that time allude that you are not performing adequately ever indicate that at all no in fact the contrary quite often yeah he called me one day I was about to get on a helicopter the head of the DEA was waiting in the helicopter for me and he just called to check in and tell me I was doing an awesome job and want to see how I was doing I said I'm doing fine sir and then I finished a call got on the helicopter mr. Comey do you believe you would have been fired if Hillary Clinton had become president that's a great question I don't know yeah I don't know you have any thoughts about him no I might have been I I don't know look I I've said before that was an extraordinarily difficult and painful time I think I did what I had to do I knew it was gonna be very bad for me personally and the consequence of that might have been filler Clint was elected I might have been terminated I don't know I really don't my final question will be after February 14th meeting in the Oval Office you mentioned that you asked Ernie general sessions to in short that you were never left alone with the president did you ever consider why Attorney General Sessions was not asked to stay in the room oh sure I did and and have and in that moment I never talked to him about no you never had discussions with Jeff sessions on this no not at all on any of your meetings no did he inquired he did he show any inquiry whatsoever what was that meeting about no oh you're right I did say to him I'd forgotten this when I talked to him and said you have to be between me and the president and that's incredibly important and I forget my exact words I passed along the President's message about the importance of aggressively pursuing leaks of classified information which is a goal I share and I passed that along to the Attorney General I think it was the next morning in our in a meeting and but I did not tell about the Flynn part you believe this arrives to the obstruction of justice I don't know that's Bob Muller's job to sort that out thank you sir he's chairman senator cotton mr. Comey you encouraged the president to release the tapes will you encourage the department justice or your friend at Columbia or mr. Muller to release your memos sure you said that you did not record your conversations with President Obama or President Bush and memos did you do so with attorney general sessions or any other senior member of the Trump Department of Justice no did you I think you I'm sorry did you record conversations and memos with attorney general Lynch or any other senior member of the Obama Department of Justice no not that I recall in your statement for the record you cite nine private conversations with the president three meetings and two phone calls there are four phone calls that are not discussed in your statement for the record what happened in those phone calls President called me I believe shortly before I was inaugurated as a follow-up to our conversation private conversation on January the 6th he just wanted to reiterate his rejection of the allegation and talk about he thought about it more and why he thought it wasn't true the the the verified unverified in salacious parts and during that call he asked me again hope you're going to stay you're doing a great job and I told them that I intended to there was another phone call that I mentioned I think was good of the day wrong March the first where he called just to check in with me as I was about to get on the helicopter there was a secure call we had about an an operational matter that was not related to any of this that's something the FBI was working on he wanted to make sure that I understood how important he thought it was totally appropriate call and then the fourth call probably forgetting may have been I may have meant the call when he called to invite me to dinner I'll think about it as I'm answering other questions but I think I got that right let's turn our attention to the underlying activity at issue here Russia's hacking into those emails and releasing them the allegations of Cole illusion do you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia it's a question I don't think I should answer in an open setting as I said that we didn't when I left we did not have an investigation focused on President Trump but that's a question that will be answered by the investigation I think let me turn to a couple statements by one of my colleagues senator Feinstein she was the ranking member on this committee until January which means she had access to information that only she and chairman Byrd ed she's now the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee meaning she has access to the FBI that most of us don't on May 3rd I'm CNN's Wolf Blitzer show she was asked do you believe do you have evidence there was in fact collusion between Trump associates in Russia during the campaign she answered not at this time on May 18th the same show mr. Blitzer said the last time we spoke senator asked if you had actually seen any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign in the Russians and you said to me and I'm quoting you now you said not at this time has anything changed since we last spoke senator Feinstein said well no no it hasn't do you have any reason to doubt those statements I don't doubt the senator Feinstein was saying with what she understood I just don't want to go down that path for something because I'm not in the government anymore and answering in the negative I just where he leads me deeper and deeper into talking about the investigation in an open setting I don't I want to be I'm always trying to be fair no be unfair to President Trump I'm not trying to suggest by my answer something nefarious but I don't want to get into the business of saying not as to this person not as to that person On February 14th the New York Times published a story the headline of which was Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence you're asked earlier if that was an inaccurate story and you said in the main would it be fair to characterize that story is almost entirely wrong yes did you have at the time that sort of published any indication of any contact between Trump people and Russians intelligence officers other government officials or close associates of the Russian government that's when I can't answer sitting here we can discuss that in classified setting then I want to turn attention now to mr. Flinn in the allegations of his underlying conduct to be specific his alleged interactions with the Russian ambassador on the telephone and then what he said to senior Trump administration officials and apartment justice officials I understand there are other issues with mr. Flynn related to his receipt of foreign monies or disclosure of potential advocacy activity on behalf of foreign governments those are serious and credible allegations I'm sure will be pursued but I want to speak specifically about his interactions with the Russian ambassador there was a story on January 23rd in the Washington Post it says entitled FBI reviewed Flynn's calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit is the story accurate I don't want to comment on that senator because I'm pretty sure the bureau has not confirmed any interception of communications and so I don't want to talk about that in an open setting would it be improper for an incoming national security adviser to have a conversation with a foreign ambassador might in my experience know but you can't confirm or deny that the conversation happened and we would need to know the contents of that conversation to know if it was in fact improper yeah I don't think I can talk about that an open setting I and again I've been out of government now a month so I don't also don't want to talk about things when it's now somebody's else's responsibility but maybe in the in the classified setting we can talk more about that you stated earlier that there wasn't an open investigation of mr. Flynn in the FBI did you or any FBI agent ever since that mr. Flynn attempted to deceive you or made false statements to an FBI agent I don't want to go too far that was the subject of the criminal inquiry did you ever come close to closing investigation on mr. Flynn I don't think I can talk about that in open setting either I can discuss these mornings with a closed setting then mr. Comey in 2004 you were a part of a well publicized event about a intelligence program that had been recertified several times and you were acting Attorney General when Attorney General John Ashcroft was incapacitated due to illness there was a dramatic showdown at hospital here the next day you've said that she wrote a letter of resignation signed it before you me went to meet with President Bush to explain why you refused to certify it is that accurate yes I think so at any time in three and a half months you are the FBI director during the Trump administration did you ever write and sign the letter of recommendation and leave it on your desk let her resignation no sir letter of resignation no sir so despite all of the things that you've testified to here today you didn't feel this rose to the level of an honest but serious difference of legal opinion between accomplished in skilled lawyers in that 2004 episode I wouldn't characterize the circumstances in 2004 that way but to answer no I didn't find encounter any circumstance that led me to intend to resign consider to resign no sir Thank You senator Harris director Comey I want to thank you you are now a private citizen and you are enduring a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing and each of us get seven minutes instead of five is yesterday to ask you questions so thank you know from I'm between opportunities like oh so well you're you you are I'm sure you'll have future opportunities you know you and I are both former prosecutors not going to require you to answer I just want to make a statement that um in my my experience of prosecuting cases when a robber held a gun to somebody's head and and said I hope you will give me your wallet the word hope was not the most operative word at that moment but all you don't have to respond to that point I have a series of questions to ask you and and they're going to start with are you aware of any meetings between the Trump administration officials and Russian officials during the campaign that have not been acknowledged by those officials in the White House that's not it even if I remember clearly that's not a question I can answer in an open setting are you aware of any efforts by Trump campaign officials or associates of the campaign to hide their communications with Russian officials through encrypted communications or other means I have to give you the same answer senator sure in the course of the FBI's investigation did you ever come across anything that suggested that communications records documents or other evidence had been destroyed I think I got to give you the same answer because it would touch on investigative matters and are you aware of any efforts or potential efforts to conceal communications between campaign officials and Russian officials they got to give you the same answer senator thank you um as a former attorney general I have a series of questions about your connection with the Attorney General during the course of your tenure as director what is your understanding of the parameters of General Sessions recusal from the adverse Russia investigation I think it's described in a written release or statement from DOJ which I don't remember sitting here but just was he would be recused from all matters relating to Russia and that and the campaign or activities of Russia and the 16 election I think something like that is so is your knowledge of the extent of his refusal based on the public statements he's made or direct okay so was there any kind of memorandum issued from the Attorney General or the Department of Justice to the FBI outlining the parameters of his recusal not that I'm aware of and do you know if he reviewed any FBI or DOJ documents pertaining to the investigation before he was recused I don't I don't know and after he was recused I'm assuming it's the same answer same answer and as aside from any notice or memorandum that was not sent or was what mechanism our processes were in place to ensure that the Attorney General would not have any connection with the investigation to your knowledge I don't know for sure I know that he had consulted with career ethics officials that know how to run a recusal at DOJ but I don't know what mechanism they set up and the Attorney General recused himself from the investigation but do you believe it was appropriate for him to be involved in the firing of the chief investigator of that case that Russia interference that's something I can't answer sitting here it's a it's a reasonable question but that would depend a lot of things I don't know like what did he know was he told did he realize that the president was doing it because of the Russia investigation things like that I just don't know the answer you've mentioned in your written testimony in here that the president essentially asked you for a loyalty pledge are you aware of him making the same request of any other members of the cabinet I'm not do you know one way or another wait he I don't know one way or another I've never heard anything about it and you mentioned that on you had the conversation where he hoped that you would let the Flynn matter go on February 14th or there abouts it's my understanding that mr. sessions was recused from any involvement in the investigation about a full two weeks later to your knowledge was the Attorney General did he have access to information about the investigation in those interim two weeks I I don't I in theory sure because he's the Attorney General I don't know whether he had any contact with any materials related to that to your knowledge was there any directive that he should not have any contact with any information about the Russian investigation between the February 14th date and the day he was ultimately recused or recused himself on March 2nd not to my knowledge I don't know one way or another and did you speak to the Attorney General about the Russia investigation before his recusal I don't think so no do you know if anyone in the department and the FBI I forwarded any documents or information or memos of any sort to the attention of the Attorney General before his recusal I don't I don't know of any remember any sitting here it's possible but I don't remember any do you know if the Attorney General was involved in fact involved in any aspect of the Russia investigation after his recusal on the 2nd of March I don't I would assume not but I don't I don't well let me say this way I don't know of any information that would lead me to believe he did something to touch the Russian investigation after the recusal in your written testimony you indicate that you when you after you were left alone with the president you mentioned that it was inappropriate and should never happen again to the Attorney General and apparently he did not reply right that he did not reply what did he do if anything did he just look at you was there pause for a moment what happened I don't remember real clearly I have a recollection of him just kind of looking at me and there's a danger here I'm projecting onto him so this may be a faulty memory but I kind of got his body language gave me the sense like what am I gonna do did he shrug all right I don't remember clearly I think the reason I have that impression is I have some recollection of almost employment imperceptible like what am I going to do but I don't have a clear recollection of that he didn't say anything and on that same February 14th meeting you said you understood the President to be requesting that you drop the investigation after that meeting however you received two calls from the president March 30th and April 11th where the president talked about a cloud over his presidency has anything you've learned in the months since your February 14th meeting changed your understanding of the President's request I guess it would be what he has said pub in public documents or public interviews correct and is there anything about this investigation that you believe is in any way biased or is is is not being informed by a process of seeking the truth no the appointment of a special counsel should offer great especially given who that person is great comfort to Americans no matter what your political affiliation is that this will be done independently competently and honestly and do you believe that he should have full authority mr. Muller to be able to pursue that investigation yes and I and knowing him well over the years if there's something that he thinks he needs he will he will speak up about it you believe he should have full independence oh yeah and he wouldn't be part of it if he wasn't gonna get full independence thank you senator Cornyn Thank You mr. chairman mr. Comey off I'll repeat what I've said at previous hearings that I believe you're a good and decent man who's been dealt a very difficult hand starting back with the Clinton email investigation and I appreciate your willingness to peer here today voluntarily and answer our questions and cooperate with our investigation as a general matter if an FBI agent has reason to believe that a crime has been committed do they have a duty to report it that's a good question I don't know that there's a legal duty to report it they certainly have a cultural ethical duty to report it you're unsure whether they would have a legal duty yeah it's a good question and I've thought about for I don't know where the legal is a statute that prohibits misprision of a felony knowing of a felony and taking steps to conceal it but this is a different question and so look let me be clear I would expect any FBI agent as reason information about a crime being committed to report it me too but where you rest that obligation I don't know it exists and let me ask you is a general proposition if you're trying to make an investigation go away is firing an FBI director a good way to make that happen by that I mean it doesn't make a lot of sense to me but I'm obviously hopelessly biased given that I was the one fired I understand it's personal now given the eight nature of the FBI I meant what I said it's no indispensable people in the world including at the FBI that there's lots of bad things about me not being at the FBI most of them are for me but the work is going to go on as before so nothing that's happened that you've testified to here today has impeded the investigation the FBI or director molars commitment to get to the bottom of this from the standpoint of the FBI and the Department of Justice would you agree with that correct especially the appointment of director and former director Muller is critical part of that equation let me take you back to the Clinton email investigation I think you've been cast as a hero or a villain depending on the whose political Gok ox is being gored at many different times during the course of the Clinton email investigation even even now perhaps but you clearly were troubled by the conduct of the sitting attorney general Loretta Lynch when a client came to the Clinton email investigation you mentioned the characterization that you'd been asked except that this was a matter and not a criminal investigation which you said it it was there was the matter of President Clinton's meeting on the tarmac with the sitting Attorney General at a time when his wife was a subject to a criminal investigation and you suggested that perhaps there are other matters that you may be able to share with us later on in a classified setting but it seems to me that you clearly believed that Loretta Lynch the Attorney General had an appearance of a conflict of interest on the Clinton email investigation is that correct I think that's fair I didn't believe she could credibly decline that investigation at least not without grievous damage to the Department of Justice and to the FBI and under Department of Justice and FBI norms wouldn't it have been appropriate for the Attorney General or if she had recused herself which she did not do for the Deputy Attorney General to appoint a special counsel that's essentially what's happened now with director Muller would that have been an appropriate step in the Clinton email investigation in your opinion certainly a possible step yes sir and were you aware that miss Lynch had been requested numerous times to appoint a special counsel and it refused front yes from I think Congress had members of Congress had repeatedly asked yes sir yours truly did on multiple occasions and that heightened your concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest with the Department of Justice which caused you to make what you have described as an incredibly painful decision to basically take the matter up yourself and led to that July press conference yes sir I can say after the President Clinton former President Clinton met on the plane with the Attorney General I considered whether I should call for the appointment of a special counsel and it decided that that would be an unfair thing to do because I knew there was no case there we had investigated it very very thoroughly I know this is a subject of passion it just agreement but I knew there was no case there and calling for the appointment of Special Counsel would be brutally unfair because it would send the message AHA there's something here that was my judgment again lots of people have different views of it but that's how I thought about it well if the special counsel had been appointed they could have made that determination that there was nothing there and declined to pursue it right sure but it would have been many months later or a year later let me just ask you - given the experience of the Clinton email investigation and what happened there do you think it's unreasonable for anyone any president who has been assured on multiple occasions that he's not the subject of an FBI investigation do you think it's unreasonable for them to want the FBI director to publicly announce that so that this cloud over his administration would be removed I think that's a reasonable point of view the concern would be obviously because that boomerang comes back it's a going to be a very big deal because there will be a duty to correct well we we saw that in the Clinton email investigation yes I recall that yeah I know you do so let me ask you finally in the minute we have left there was this conversation back and forth about loyalty and I think we all appreciate the fact that FBI director is a unique public official in the sense that isn't it not he's a political appointee in one sense but he has a duty of Independence to pursue the law pursuant to the Coty's got the Constitution laws of the United States and so when the president asks you about loyalty you got in this back-and-forth about well I pledge you my honesty and then it looks like from what I've read you agreed upon honest loyal tea or something like that is that the characterization yes thank you very much thank you sir Senator Reid Thank You mr. chairman Thank You director Comey there have been press reports that the president in addition to asking you to drop the Flint investigation has asked other senior intelligence officials to take steps which would tend to undermine the investigation to Russia there's no reports that he's asked DNI coats and Admiral Rogers to make public statements exonerating him or taking a pressure off him and also reports about Admiral Rogers and director Pompeo to intervene and reach out to the FBI asked them are you aware of any of these do you have any information with respect to any of these four allegation I don't I'm aware of the public reporting but I had no contact no conversation with any of those leaders about that subject thank you you have testified that you interpret the discussion with the president about Flynn as a direction to stop the investigation is that correct yes you've testified that the president asked you to lift the cloud by essentially making public statement exonerating him and perhaps others you refused correct I didn't I didn't do it I didn't refuse the predator the president I told him we would see what we could do and then the second time he called I told him in substance that's something your lawyer will have to take up with the Justice Department and part of the underlying logic was that was we've discussed many times throughout this morning is the duty to correct that is one of the theories but also for a practical issue it was there your feeling that the direction of the investigation could in fact include the president well in theory I mean as I explained the concern of one of my senior leader colleagues was if you're looking at potential coordination between the campaign and Russia the person at the head of the campaign is the candidate so logically this person argued the candidates knowledge understanding logically become a part of your inquiry if it proceeds and so I understood that argument my view was that that what I said to the president was accurate and fair and fair to him I resisted the idea of publicly saying it although if the Justice Department had wanted to that I would have done it because of the duty to correct and the slippery slope problem uh and again also you've testified that the president asked you repeatedly to be loyal to him and you responded to you would be honest we loyal which is I think your way of saying I'll be honest and I'll be a head of the FBI and independent of that fear correct I tried honest first and also you know you've seen it in my Testament also tried to explain to him why it's in his interest and every president's interest for the FBI to be a part in a way because its credibility is important to a president and to the country and so I tried to hold the line hold line it got very awkward and I then said you'll always have honesty from me he said honest loyal T and then I acceded to that as a way to end this awkwardness at the culmination of all these events you're summarily fired any explanation or anything else well there was an explanation I just don't buy it okay well ah yes so you're fired so do you believe that you were fired because you refused to cooperate to take the president's direction that the ultimate reason I don't know for sure I know I was fired again I take the president's words I know it was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russian investigation was in some way putting pressure on him in some way irritating him and he decided to fire me because of that now I can't go farther than that the Russian investigation as you pointed out and as all my colleagues have reflect is one of the most serious hostile acts against this country in our history undermining the very core of our democracy in our elections is not a discrete event it will likely occur it's probably being prepared now for 18 and 20 and beyond and yet the president United States and buys you because in your own words some relation to this investigation and then he shows up in the Oval Office with the Russian Foreign Minister first after classifying you as crazy in a real nutjob which I think you've effectively disproved this morning he said I face crush pressure because of Russia that's taken off your conclusion would be that the president I would think is downplaying the seriousness of this threat in fact ya took specific steps to stop a thorough investigation of the Russian Edessa Russian influence and also from what you've said or what was said this morning doesn't seem to particularly interested in these hostile threats by the Russians is that fear I don't know that I can agree to that level of detail there's no doubt that it's a fair judgement it's my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation I was fired in some way to change or the endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted that is a that is a very big deal and not just because it involves me the nature of the FBI and the nature of its work requires that it not be the subject of political consideration and on top of that you have the Russia investigation itself is vital because of the threat and I know I should have said this earlier but it's obvious if any Americans were part of helping the Russians do that to us that is a very big deal and I'm confident that if that is the case director Muller will find that evidence finally a the president tweeted that James Connelly they hope that there are no tapes of our conversations where he starts leaking to the press with that rather unsubtle attempt to intimidate you from testifying and intimidate anyone else who seriously courses his bath of not doing it I'm not going to sit here and try to interpret the president's tweets it to me it's major impact was as I said occurred to me in the middle of the night holy cow there might be tapes and if there are tapes it's not just my word against his on the direction to get rid of the Flint investigation thank you very much Senator McCain in the case of Hillary Clinton you made the statement that there wasn't sufficient evidence to bring a suit against her although it had been very careless in their behavior but you did reach a conclusion in that case that it was not necessary to further pursue her yet at the same time in the case of mr. Comey you said that there was not enough information to make a conclusion tell me the difference between your conclusion as far as former Secretary Clinton is concerned to end and mr. mr. Trump the Clinton investigation was a completed investigation that the FBI had been deeply involved in and so I had an opportunity to understand all the facts and apply those facts against the laws I understood them this investigation was under way still going when I was fired so it's nowhere near in the same place least it wasn't when I was what is still ongoing correct so far as I know it was when I left that investigation was going on this investigation is going on you reach separate conclusions now that one was done they only had the investigation of any involvement of Secretary Clinton or any of her associates is completed yes as of July the fifth the FBI completed its investigative work and that's what I was announcing what we had done and what we had found well at least in the minds of this member there's a whole lot of questions remaining about what went on particularly considering the fact that as you mentioned it's a quote big deal as to what went on during the campaign so I'm glad you concluded that part of the investigation but I think that the American people have a whole lot of questions out there particularly since you just emphasized the role that Russia played and obviously she was a candidate for president at the time so she was clearly involved in this whole situation where fake news as you just described it big deal took place you're going to have to help me out here in other words we're complete the investigation of anything that former Secretary Clinton had to do with the campaign is over and we don't have to worry about it anymore with respect to secretin fused center with respect to Secretary Clinton yeah we investigated criminal investigation in connection with her use of a personal email server understand and that's the investigation I announced inclusion of on July 5th so clicked in at the same time you made the announcement there would be no charges brought against then Secretary Clinton for any activities involved in the Russia involvement in our engagement in our election I don't quite understand how you could be done with that but not complete done with the whole investigation of their attempt to affect the outcome of our election no I'm sorry we're not at least when I left when I was fired on may tonight there was still an open active investigation to understand the Russian efforts and whether any Americans work with them but you reach the conclusion that there was no reason to bring charges against Secretary Clinton so you reached a conclusion in the case of mr. Comey you the president call me search me case of present Trump you have an ongoing investigation so you got one candidate who you're done with and another candidate that you have a long way to go is that correct I don't know how far the FBI has to go but yes that the Clinton email investigation was completed the investigation of Russia's efforts in connection with the election and whether there was any coordination and if so with whom between Russia in the campaign he just was ongoing when I left you just made it clear and what you said this is a quote big deal unquote I think it's hard to reconcile you in one case you reach complete conclusion and the other side you have you have not and you in fact obviously there's a lot more there as as we know as you called it a quote big deal she's one of the candidates but in her case you say there will be no charges and in the case of President Trump there the investigation continues what has been brought out in this hearing is is more and more emphasis on the Russian engagement and involvement in this campaign how serious do you think this was very serious but I I want to say some be clear it was we have not announced and there was no predication to announce an investigation of whether the Russians may have coordinated with secretary Clinton's campaign secretary Clinton's kaleb they may not have been involved with their campaign they were involved with the entire presidential campaign obviously of course yes sir and that that is an investigation that began last summer and so far as I'm aware continues so both president Trump and former candidate Clinton are both involved in the investigation yet one of them you said there's going to be no charges and the other one that the investigation continues well I think there's a double standard there to tell you the truth then when the president said to you you talked about the April 11th phone call and he said poke because I've been very loyal to you very loyal we had that thing you know did that arouse your curiosity is what quote that thing was yes why didn't you ask him it didn't seem to me to be important for the conversation we were having to understand it I took it to be some an effort to to communicate to me this that there is a relationship between us where I've been good to you you should be good to me yeah but I think it would intensely arouse Mike curiosity if the president I state said we had that thing you know I'd like to know what the hell that thing is particularly if I'm the director of the FBI yeah I get that senator honestly I'll tell you what this is speculation but what I concluded at the time is in his memory he was searching back to our encounter at the dinner and was preparing himself to say I offered loyalty you you promise loyalty to me and all of a sudden his memory showed him that did not happen and I think he pulled up short that's just a guess but a lot of conversations with humans over the years think I would have had some curiosity if it have been about me be honest with you so are you aware anything that would believe you to believe that the president other members the administration or members the campaign could potentially be used to coerce or blackmail the administration that's a subject for investigations not something I can comment on sitting here but you reach that conclusion as far as Secretary Clinton was concerned but you're not reaching a conclusion as far as this administration is concerned are you aware of anything that would lead you to believe that information exists that could coerce members of the administration or blackmail the administration that's not a question I can answer senator Souter's times expired thank you all times expired for the hearing can I say four members will reconvene promptly at 1:00 p.m. in the hearing room we have a vote scheduled for 1:45 I would suggest that all members promptly be there at 1:00 o'clock we have about three minutes I'd like to have order photographers photographers return to where you were please this hearings not adjourned yet hear that it will remove you to members we have about three minutes of updates that we would love to cover as soon as we get into the closed session before we have an opportunity to spend some time with director Comey based on our agreement it would be my intentions to adjourn that closed hearing between two and two ten so that members can go vote and I would urge you to eat at that time Jim several of us on this committee have had the opportunity to work with you since you walked in the door I want to say personally on behalf of all this all the committee members we're grateful to you for your service to your country not just in the capacity as FBI director but it's prosecutor and more importantly being somebody that loves this country enough to tell it like it is I want to say to your workforce that we're grateful to them with the level of cooperation that they have shown us with the trust we've built between both organizations the Congress and and the bureau we couldn't do our job if it wasn't for their willingness to share candidly with us the work that we need to see this hearings the ninth public hearing this committee has had this year that is twice the historical year-long average of this committee I think the vice chairman and my's biggest challenge when this investigation has concluded is to return our hearings to the secrecy of a closed hearing to encourage our numbers not to freely talk about intelligence matters publicly and to respect the fact that we have a huge job and that's to represent the entire body of the United States Senate and the American people to make sure that we work with the intelligence community to provide you the tools to keep America safe and that you do it within the legal limit or those limits that are set by the executive branch we could not do it if it wasn't for trusted partnership that you have been able to lead and others before you so as we depart from this this is a pivotal hearing in our investigation we're grateful to you for the professionalism you've shown and your willingness I will turn to the vice chairman I simply want to echo want to get into thanks for your appearance and there clearly still remain a number of questions and the one thing I want to commit to you and more importantly I think the chimer I want to commit to all those who are still potentially watching and following there's still a lot of unanswered question and we're going to get to the bottom of this where I get the facts out the American people deserve to know there's the questions around implications of Trump officials and the Russians but there's also the macro issue of what the Russians did and continue to do and I think it is very important that all Americans realize that threat is real it is continuous it is not just towards our nation it is all towards all Western democracies and we have to come to a solution setter Thank You mr. chairman director Comey thank you once again on behalf of the committee this year into jury it's hot no problem so look thank you [Music] [Music] thank you back it up right there yeah Russell Sherman Republicans are having a real bad time defending
their health care bill. … and now these people don’t have the
insurance they need ’cause they’re poor. It’s expected to cause about 20 million
Americans to lose health insurance over the next few years, and people are pissed. The fight and the fury mounting over the House
health care bill. Blowback for Republican Congress members who
voted to repeal and replace Obamacare. It’s gotten so bad that Republicans have
just stopped talking to their constituents altogether. Will we see you tomorrow night at the town
hall in Austin? I don’t think so. Like Darrell Issa, who decided to just hide
out on the roof of his office instead of facing his voters. Hello darkness, my old friend. Thankfully, we have cable news to hold politicians
accountable. To ask the tough questions and explain what’s
really at stake in the debate over health care. Take me inside the Oval Office, what was President
Trump’s sales pitch to you? Has President Trump convinced you to get on
board? Are you going to the White House tonight or
maybe bowling next week? Has the president contacted you? Trump is in a full court sales pitch. Do you see any scenario where you will be
a buyer? God da— Cable news tries to make big congressional
votes more exciting by treating them like an episode of House of Cards. By focusing on the drama of getting a bill
through Congress. The negotiating, the running through Congress,
the suspense of a final vote. I want an immediate call of the roll, don’t
let half a second pass. Yes, sir. Cable news loves this stuff And you could see it in the coverage of the
House health care bill. Interviews with politicians running through
Congress, How you feeling this morning? Do you guys think you’re going to get the
votes? graphics tracking the updated vote count, and tons of focus on how Trump was persuading
Republicans to vote for the bill. President Trump on Capitol Hill trying to
close the health care deal. The question now becomes, “Can they close
the deal quick enough?” It was CNN’s best attempt to make reality
look like a political soap opera. Cable news’ fixation on the spectacle of
a big vote makes for good TV, The pressure, the arm-twisting, the ultimatum. but it’s terrible for viewers at home. It tells viewers nothing about whether the
Republican health care bill is actually a good idea. Do you have a sense of whether or not the
White House has enough votes? What do you think, do you have the votes? You can watch hours of these segments and
still not understand what the bill does. So you’re a “no” vote. That sounds like you’re going to be a “yes”? Are you a “no” or a “yes”? I am still a “no.” Thank you, I’m glad we got that out of the
way. This kind of tunnel vision turns news coverage
into a circus of spin and misinformation. Like in this interview with Wolf Blitzer and
Republican Tom Garrett. Congressional Budget Office report, as you
know, 24 million would be uninsured by 2026. The interview starts strong. If the bill fails, do you think President
Trump will be blamed for the failure? Kind of a dumb question, but okay. It’s absolutely undeniable that Obamacare
is in a death spiral, and if we just let the status quo go, we’re going to see what real
pain and suffering looks like. Okay, this would be a great time for some
good journalism. Obamacare is not in a death spiral. Experts actually worry that the Republican
health care bill would be a recipe for death spirals because it reduces healthy people’s
incentives to stay insured. Come on Wolf, easy follow-up, you’ve got
this! You were supposed to go to the White House
for a pizza and bowling event with the president tonight. I take it that’s been canceled? Are you serious? When is that pizza and bowling event going
to be rescheduled for. What kind of a wolf doesn’t have a taste
for blood? Carlos. Sorry. A better use of this airtime would be to talk
to actual health care experts, like any of the major medical organizations that have
come out against the GOP bill. The bill is garbage, Donald. But the House of Cards approach to news means
that most interviews go to politicians or pundits, who haven’t read the bill and aren’t
going to give straight answers to begin with. I could probably tell you that I read every
word and I wouldn’t be telling you the truth nor would any other member. So even when journalists do ask good questions,
you get train wrecks like this. Their premiums will not go through the roof? The goal is to make certain that they do not. Will their premiums rise, Congresswoman? My hope would be that their premiums would
not rise. People who have preexisting conditions, can
you assure them that their premiums will not rise? The goal… But the real danger of this type of news coverage
has nothing to do with dumb interviews. It’s that when you treat big congressional
votes like soap operas, you train audiences to think in terms of politics instead of policy. Train people to ask “What’s stopping this
from passing?” instead of “Should we pass this at all?” What do you want to see in this bill, how
would you change it? Why won’t you vote for it in the form that
it’s in now? So the problem isn’t that the GOP bill cuts
coverage, it’s that it doesn’t appease the House Freedom Caucus. What changes would you need to see in order
to get to “yes?” What could the president say to get you on
board? The problem isn’t that it slashes Medicaid,
it’s that Democrats aren’t doing enough to compromise. Are you making efforts to come together? What have Democrats done so far to help improve
this bill and work with Republicans? Just like on House of Cards, success becomes
less about making good policy, and more about just passing something. We need a bill we can pass. Resolving the drama. If it doesn’t pass, then what? Which means if the bill we end up with is
a disaster for the country, but secures enough votes, it looks like a win. A big win for Republicans on this day after
a major setback only six weeks ago. House members said it was the kind of deal-making
that won rave reviews. This is a huge moment of competence and that
is no small thing. We show unity! We offer progress! That approach is a nightmare when dealing
with any policy issue, but it’s especially reckless when it comes to health care. When people’s lives are actually on the
line. And the frustrating thing is, you don’t
need the drama to get people to watch. People want clear, fact-based information
about what’s happening to their health care. And you actually saw a glimpse of this during
a CNN town hall with Tom Price. Question after question from real people about
stuff that actually matters to them. Why do you want to take away my Medicaid expansion? The bill allows insurance companies to charge
much higher premiums for people in my age group. How can you justify that change? It was this surreal moment of clarity and
thoughtfulness on cable news. And then, at the very last second: How are you going to get this plan through
Congress when you can’t get these members of your own party to support it? Kia LaBeija: I was inspired by voguing because voguing allows you to be anything and anyone you want to be. Archie Burnett: Vogue is within the realm of a dance family. Archie: And that's what it's supposed to be—a dance family. The name voguing comes from Vogue magazine. The movements that define the dance are based on model poses from the fashion publication. Willi Ninja, who's called the godfather of voguing, also drew inspiration from martial arts, ballet, gymnastics, and even pantomimes. In the critically-acclaimed documentary called Paris is Burning, Ninja defines the dance as an extension of throwing shade. Instead of fighting, two people would settle their beef on the dance-floor. So whoever had the best moves, would be throwing the best shade. During the 1970s, in Harlem, houses were formed within the larger drag ballroom scene. These house serve as surrogate families, primarily for Black and Latino queer youth. Each house is led by a mother or father who serves as a guide to the ballroom community. House of LaBeija was the first to form in the late 70s. Other notable houses include the house of Xtravaganza, Ninja, Pendavis, Corey, the House of Wong, the House of Dupree, and many others in New York and across the US. While many of these names come from the founders, other houses are named after couture designers like Chanel and Saint Laurent. Members come together to walk against one another in various categories at elaborate balls. Beyond the performance or throwing shade, though, these balls create a safe space for empowerment and belonging. Kia Labeija: Whatever you carry with you, you leave it on that floor. Whether it’s suffering for illness, whether it’s suffering for... acceptance. Kia: Whether it's suffering from not having a place to call your home. Kia: Your house becomes your home. After the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, when a large population of the ballroom community was hit hard, the legendary balls and the houses that organized them also became a place for activism and awareness. Younger generations of voguers can be seen taking the stage at smaller Kiki Balls hosted by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an organization that advocates for prevention of AIDS. Luna Luis Ortiz: It all started at GMHC when, GMHC was trying to figure out how to get young people to come into the building. And so, Kiki balls began so we could sort of attract them to come in for services. These balls serve as an outlet for self expression, activism, and offer a resource for gay and trans adolescents at risk of HIV, homelessness, abuse and depression. Outside the ballroom culture, voguing has long been synonymous with fashion and glamour. It's often confused with Madonna's co-opted version of the dance form. But it means much more to the community that made it. Archie: Dance is the one thing that you can control with your body. Archie: That's something that comes from you. Archie: When you can take anything that comes from you, and gives you a certain amount of... of being comfortable in your own skin. I think that's great! Archie: You know? And that is empowerment. Kia: When you get up there, when you walk that ball, and everyone is cheering for you. In that moment, you feel... ...like everybody sees you. Kia: It makes you feel like you're not alone. If you were to put sports and games on a continuum,
where the outcomes reflect pure skill on the right side,
and pure luck on the left side, where would the big team sports go? Somewhere in the middle right? But in what order? There’s actually a way to estimate that
using statistics, and this is where they end up. “What you find is the NBA is the sport that’s
farthest away from random, and then you go down the line and hockey is actually the sport
that’s closest to randomness.” Michael Mauboussin did these calculations
for his book, The Success Equation, and his findings remind us what we love so much about
these sports. Mauboussin’s continuum is based on the regular
season for each league. And he found that skill explains less than
half of the season standings for the NHL. But that’s not to say hockey players are
any less skilled. “All these athletes, all these players are
amazing. Amazing. Almost inconceivable how good they are.” The continuum doesn’t tell us how skilled
the players are, it’s more like how well their sport measures their skill. So a big factor is the sample size, or the
number of games in a season. Major league baseball teams play 162 games. Compare that to the NFL, where teams play
only 16 games. The small sample size pushes football toward
the luck side of the continuum, since it’s harder for skill to emerge from the noise
with so few trials. But the number of games doesn’t explain
everything. Both the NHL and the NBA play 82 games in
a season. So their placement has more to do with the
dynamics of the game itself. Like the number of chances teams have to score
during the game-- that’s another type of sample size. “Basketball, they’re coming down, and
they have a shot clock and they have to take lots of shots. They’re forced to take shots,
so there’s a lot of samples that go back and forth. Ice hockey of course is much more fluid, possessions
are much less discrete.” They don’t even have a way to measure possessions
in hockey, which gives you a sense of how little sustained control those players have. The number of players matters too. Tennis is a sport where skill plays a much
bigger role, in large part because there simply aren’t many people involved. That’s why Serena Williams could hold the
number one rank for 186 consecutive weeks from 2013 to 2016. When skill dominates, outcomes are more predictable. In a sport like swimming or sprinting, the
activities are even more individual. Essentially racing a clock. There’s nothing standing between the athlete’s
skill and their ranking. But in team sports you have more players and
lots of interactions. And what matters isn’t just how many are
on the field at a time, but how possession is distributed
among a team’s players over the course of the game. Baseball requires the nine hitters on a team
to take turns at bat. “Ideal would be, wouldn’t it be awesome
if our best hitter hit every time? And our weaker players never play at all. In basketball, in a sense, you can do a little
bit of that. I mean, not quite, but you can have LeBron
James playing most of the game, whereas the very best hockey player, Sidney Crosby, is
going to be on the ice 22, 23 minutes per game. He’s their superstar. Hockey is inherently really fast and erratic,
so even the best players need to rest, putting some limits on how much their skill can influence
the results. Whereas in football you have the quarterback
involved in every offensive play. “I think football does boil down to a few
skilled players, typically. And I would say probably the quarterback - head
coach combination becomes the most important determinant or predictor of success.” And then you have the question of the talent
pool. Basketball inherently rewards unusually tall
players. This chart shows the height and weight of
different positions in different leagues. These are NBA players, and here’s the height
of the average American man. “So what happens is you shrink your sample
size, in anything, a small sample size, you get a lot of variance. So saying that differently, there are 7-ft
players that are really skillful, and there are 7 foot players that are not quite as skillful,
and they’re both in the NBA by virtue of their height. As a consequence you get more variance
and so skill tends to assert itself more.” Soccer and hockey don’t require such an
outlier body type, so you’d expect less variance in player skill. And that leaves more to luck. To understand what that means, you have to
see how Mauboussin calculated all this. “I learned this, by the way, from the sports
analytics guys, so I wasn’t clever enough to come up with this myself. But there’s a really interesting concept
in statistics called pythagorean theorem of statistics.” It says that you have two random, independent
variables, then you can add their variances. Variance is a measure of how spread out a
dataset is. For our purposes, the equation looks like
this: The variance of the observed, real life results equals the variance of skill plus
the variance of luck. Skill plus luck equals everything that happened. “So you think about how do we apply this
to sports, and we’ll use basketball as an example. So what do we know? We know the actual variance of win loss records
of all the professional sports teams right? Basketball teams. So that’s a known.” Over a season, some teams win about half of
their games, some do a lot better than that, some a lot worse. So if the variance is a measure of how spread
out those win-loss records are for the league, you can see that you have more variance in
basketball than hockey. The other part of the equation estimates what
the results would be in an all-luck world. “So if instead of playing every basketball
game, the teams just went out and flipped a coin, and whoever won the coin toss, and
they went back and took showers and went home.” The variance of luck varies from sport to
sport depending on how many games are in a season. More games mean lower variance of luck, just
like the more times you flip a coin, the closer your data gets to 50-50. “Now we have two out of the three pieces
of the equation, and what that allows us to do is then estimate the contribution of the
other distribution.” Basically what this asks is: how different
does the real world look from a world in which the winners are just chosen at random? He averaged the results of 5 seasons for each
sport, and that’s how he placed them on the continuum. If you were to look at just the playoffs rather
than the regular season, you might get a different result. According to one analysis, baseball playoffs are the worst
at ensuring the best team wins. Which raises the question of what we want
our sports to do. Do we want to measure skill as precisely as possible? Or do we just want to feel alive? “We’re there to enjoy the journey, right,
to have both the highs and lows, and having the highs and lows is kind of what makes it
engaging as a fan. I think that’s part of the whole human condition
that makes it really fun for us to watch. There is a vending machine for every 23 people in Japan. That's the highest vending machine per capita on the planet. After the business card fiasco I started to become keenly aware of all the vending machines that I saw here in Japan. I noticed:  they are everywhere! Indeed, what we're looking at here is a Japanese institution. Behind me sits an entire shop dedicated to chopsticks. Yes, I'm about to go inside. The first thing you have to know in order to understand the vending machines, is that Japan is an aging country. The average age here is 46 years old, which is almost double the world average. And the fertility rate is 1.4 which means the population is actually shrinking. This is actually a looming crisis for Japan generally, but one of the effects of it is that the labor market is very expensive. There's a scarcity of low-skilled labor. So, instead of paying a sales clerk to sit and collect your money when you buy a piece of gum, they just put it in a machine and automate the whole thing. And the same goes for real estate. Japan is one of the densest countries in the world. 93 percent of the population lives in cities. People literally live in apartment smaller than your SUV. So instead of paying a lot of money for a store front, retailers will just slip a little machine into an alleyway to save a lot of money and they can still turn a really good profit. According to one essay that I read from a Japanese economist here in Tokyo, the bigger explanation for the vending machines is a fascination or even an obsession with automation and robotics. Everything that can be automated here, is automated. When I go into order like a ramen or breakfast, more often than not i order on a machine and I give a little ticket to someone. It's indicative of a broader cultural trend of wanting to automate every system you possibly can. Every taxi in Tokyo has automated doors that the driver controls. I don't want to overstate this. There's still a major appreciation for handcrafted artisanal goods here in Japan. A good example of this is the seven-year-old coffee shop I just got out of, where they literally use a weighted scale to weigh their coffee beans before grinding them and brewing them to order To cool down their coffee they put it into a metal vessel and spin it around a giant ice cube. So yes, they love automation but they're still very much in touch with the handmade. So another thing that totally contributes is this: coinage. So much coinage. The one big caveat to the whole automation thing is that they haven't really gotten on board with credit cards yet. Everything is cash based. And because of that you always have coinage. One of their highest coin is worth like five dollars and let's be honest: there's nothing more satisfying than unloading some of the change in your pocket into a vending machine for some yummy treat. My personal favorite item is hot green tea comes out wonderfully warm and you just wonder how you got so lucky. So Japan is an aging nation with expensive labor and a love for robots and too many coins in its pocket When you think of the fight for women’s
rights you probably think of pivotal figures such as Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, and
Sojourner Truth. But squarely in the center of this battle
was one tool that completely changed the game. Susan B. Anthony said that it did “more
to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” That tool was … the bicycle? To understand how, you first have to understand
the bicycle craze of the late 1800s. By the mid 19th century the “ordinary,”
or penny-farthing, was the most common kind of bicycle. It was named that because its vastly different
wheel sizes resembled the coin currency of the day, a penny and a farthing. You got it. You may have seen examples of these in Victorian
illustrations or at your local steampunk meetup. Aside from looking completely ridiculous,
these bikes were unwieldy, difficult to operate, and actually super dangerous. Because of the unstable center of gravity,
hitting even the smallest bump in the road could send a rider over the front in what
was affectionately referred to as a “header.” They were also difficult for women to ride. It turns out it’s virtually impossible to
ride a penny-farthing while wearing the giant hoop skirts that were in fashion at the time. Then in 1885 a man came along named John Kemp
Starley who said he “felt the time had arrived for solving the problem of the cycle.” He released his invention, the “Rover safety
bicycle,” which was basically the first incarnation of what we now consider the modern
bicycle. It had two 26-inch wheels, a diamond shaped
frame, and a rear drive chain system. Bikes became smaller, safer, and more practical
— and guess what, America f***ing loved them. Men and women alike flocked to these “noiseless
steeds” in droves. In 1897 alone, over 2 million bicycles were
sold. Even though these new modern bicycle designs
were becoming enormously popular, and the “drop frame” construction did make it
safer and easier to ride, biking in a big, flowing skirt still sucked. At that time many women dressed in voluminous
skirts with lots of slips underneath and ruffles and that was not practical on a bicycle. The new bicycle craze helped usher in a “rational
dress movement” among women, which advocated moving away from uncomfortable, restrictive
dresses. “Bloomers,” baggy undergarments that were
more comfortable and practical than hoop skirts, were popular in the 1850s. With the growing popularity of bicycles though
in the late 19th century, they came back with a vengeance and were adopted by prominent
suffragettes of the time. These changes were threatening to some men
though, and many viewed women wearing pants as somehow depraved or immoral. For some reason some men were not happy with
the idea of women wearing bifurcated garments. Doctors also chimed in, warning about potential
health risks for female cyclists like depression, heart palpitations, as well as something called
“bicycle face,” which was said to cause women to become “flushed,” “pale,”
and could result in “dark shadows under their eyes.” Still, none of this deterred women. In 1894, after hearing two wealthy Boston
men bet $10,000 that a woman couldn’t travel around the globe on a bicycle, Annie Londonderry,
a 5’3”, 100-pound housewife that had never ridden a bike before, took on the challenge
and with only a pearl handled revolver and change of underwear, braved the desert, wars,
and collisions with pigs on her journey around the world, which she completed in 1895. This mass adoption of bicycles significantly
helped the feminist movement of the day. It changed the modes of dress and gave women
increased mobility, but more importantly it gave them a sense of autonomy. In 1890, just five years after the introduction
of the safety bicycle, the National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed with
the express purpose of lobbying state to state for women’s right to vote. Two of its founders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton are quoted as saying that "woman is riding to suffrage on the bicycle.” And that's exactly what they did in 1920. Day two in Tokyo and I'm discovering some interesting things. So I've got a major problem. Every time I show up to an interview here, there's this like ceremonial moment at the beginning where everyone in the room pulls out a business card. And there's like this exchanging of business cards and it's lots of bowing and lots of observing the business cards and showing how impressed you are with the beautiful design of it. People love business cards here, and my problem is I don't love business cards. and I didn't bring any to Japan. So during these like really intimate, special trust earning moments, everyone looks to me like where's your business card? I don't have any! I don't use business cards. Luckily I found a machine that would solve all my problems. Thanks to this machine I was able to design and print 30 business cards in like two minutes. My brand new business cards are printing out as we speak. The two videos I'm working on are going really well. I've been talking to a lot of people from North Korea getting some interesting perspectives, so stay tuned. Again and again and again, Trump has taken
real problems — real problems but manageable problems, which he has then turned into disasters. All of it is Trump recklessly, impulsively
endangering his own presidency. And in doing, he has reminded Republicans
what they feared a Trump presidency would be like — unconstitutional, unfocused, chaotic,
scandal-plagued, and damaging to both America’s standing in the world and the GOP’s brand
at home. I’m not saying Trump is about to be impeached. There’s a long way between here and there. Republicans still see that as a calamity for
their party. But this is a moment in which the tectonic
plates that underlie political opinion in Washington are shifting. It’s a moment in which the unthinkable is
being thought, announced, and perhaps even hastened. “About the only thing I can say is, I think
we’ve seen this movie before. I think it’s reaching the point where it’s
of Watergate size and scale and a couple of other scandals that you and I have seen.” Donald Trump’s been doing this all himself. Trump’s feud with the intelligence agencies
began in earnest after the CIA concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election
to help Trump win. Trump could have just been angry at Russia. He could have said it’s bad that a foreign
government is interfering in American elections. Instead, he turned his ire on the CIA. And then this happened: There was no evidence for his claims, and,
unusually, the heads of the FBI and the NSA refuted him during sworn congressional testimony. “Director Comey, was the president’s statement
that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower a true statement?” “With respect to the president’s tweets
about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information
that supports those tweets. And we have looked carefully inside the FBI.” “Michael Flynn told the transition, told
Don McGahn, in early January that he was under federal investigation for his work on behalf
of Turkey throughout the campaign.” Of course Trump named Flynn national security
adviser anyway, ’cause why not have an agent of a foreign government as your national security
adviser. And then there’s the story that dominated
the news. “There’s word tonight that President Trump
may have jeopardized a secret source of intelligence on the Islamic State group. The Washington Post is reporting that the
president divulged highly sensitive information when he met with the Russian foreign minister
and Russian ambassador last week. That means that whatever Trump said made it
possible for the Russians to figure out where the intelligence was coming from, which in
turn means it’s possible Israel will lose a key source of information on ISIS because
of Trump’s actions. So investigations — and calls for investigations
— have swirled around Trump since the beginning of his administration, but congressional Republicans
found it reasonably easy to ignore them. “The point I was trying to make is I don’t
think there needs to be a political or politicized investigation. Law enforcement is always free to investigate
people they think broke the law so if someone broke the law here, and I’m still not aware
of what law was broken and who broke it, but if they did, we have mechanisms for trying
people in the courts. But I don’t want a politicized investigation
here, that detracts from doing the things that we need to do. First, Trump asked Comey to stop investigating
Michael Flynn. He also asked Comey to announce, publicly,
that Trump was not under investigation. Comey refused both requests, and in addition,
he took notes on both encounters. Then Trump fired Comey, and he fired him over
the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. The timing of the firing, it was bizarre,
and the way it was handled alienated both Comey and the FBI. This, too, was a problem Trump created for
himself. But there was a quasi-reasonable explanation
for Comey’s firing, and the White House, Trump’s White House, tried to offer it:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s pretty widely respected, they said had reviewed
Comey’s handling of the controversial Clinton email case, and they concluded his credibility
was now compromised. Fair enough. People didn’t quite believe it, but it had
a shred of truth to it. But then Trump destroyed it, telling NBC’s
Lester Holt: “Regardless of recommendation, I was going
to fire Comey. I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump
and Russia is a made-up story; it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election
that they should have won.” No one made Trump do this. And then no one made Trump in an Oval Office
meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov — the same meeting where he
gave up that intelligence — nobody made him brag about firing Comey. “The latest bombshell, a New York Times
report that the president told Russian officials in an Oval Office meeting earlier this month
that firing Jim Comey as FBI director removed great pressure on him.” I don’t know why you would do that. What would possess a human being in Trump’s
position to do that? Some things cannot be explained. Notes from that meeting were subsequently
leaked to the New York Times, and press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed the account. The remarkable thing, looking back on the
timeline, is that none of it was necessary. Trump could have simply treated Comey well
and tried to win him over as an ally while offering bland statements of support for his
work. As recently as two weeks ago, Republicans
thought it safer not to know the crimes Trump may have committed or the lines he may have
crossed. Today, the GOP is facing the grim reality
that Trump is not disciplined enough, and the bureaucracy he leads is not loyal enough,
to keep his misdeeds hidden. Some Republicans — some Republicans, not
all — are concluding that the truth will emerge, as it appears to be doing now, so
they may as well be the patriots who uncovered it rather than the hacks who suppressed it. And that, more than anything, is what endangers
Donald Trump’s presidency. You might have seen some of these colorized
photos on the internet. Mark Twain, Amelia Earhart, a young Charlie
Chaplin. It’s incredible how normal these people
look because they’re no longer in black and white. Like they’re someone you could pass by on
the street and not someone unreachable or from another time. What I love about these photos is that they
show people and moments in history that have never been seen in color — except by those
who were actually there. I talked to several artists who do this work
to try to figure out what it is about adding color to photos that seems to make years of
separation fade away. One of those artists is Jordan Lloyd, and
he actually does this for a living. He and his small London-based team at Dynamichrome
use modern technology to digitally reconstruct history’s black and white record. When you’re missing the color, you’re
kind of looking at the entire composition as a whole. Whereas when you add the color you start looking
at the photograph in a slightly different way, and you start picking up all these really
interesting details that you might not have noticed before. This change in perspective is why these images
feel like they’ve suddenly “come to life.” Like, when you see workers from over 80 years
ago wearing blue denim, you instantly see something you can relate to. Colorization makes old photos look more current. But adding color to black and white photos
isn’t new. It’s a practice that is nearly as old as
photography itself. It dates back to the 1800s when images were
colored by hand or through a process called Photochrom, which added anywhere from six
to 15 layers of color to a photo negative. But these didn’t exactly end up looking
super realistic, at least not like this, for example. With digital colorization, the difference
is that software like Photoshop, along with a vast number of online resources, has made
it possible for artists to reconstruct images with far more accuracy. They can turn to historical documents to find
the exact colors that would recreate a moment in time. Sounds simple, right? Yeah, it’s a shitload of work [laughs]. The secret to doing the research for the colorization
is, you now have a wealth of information, it’s just knowing where to look. It means digging through diaries and memoirs,
government records, old advertisements, and even consulting historical experts to be sure
that the colors and styles of the time are faithfully represented. A good colorizer has a good network of people
to call on. We had one guy, he’s like a specialist at
ethnographic dress. You know, he was showing me, like, museum-grade
samples, you know, and he lives and breathes this stuff so, like, every single little detail,
like the color of beads on a Laplander necklace or something, you know, it’s really: “This
has got to be the exact thing.” Take this photo series of Tutankhamun’s
tomb, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. Jordan colorized these images based on the
archaeologist’s detailed hand-written notes. And by cross-referencing his journals with
restored artifacts on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, he was able to recreate what
that day looked like almost a hundred years ago. Research like this allows colorizers to stay
true to the historical moment. And sometimes a single photograph can reveal
a thing or two about the past. Like, did you know that until the late 60s,
7UP’s logo was red on black, instead of the green we know today? That’s really important to know if you want
to colorize this photo from 1938. And if you wanted to recreate this day in
Paris in 1888, you would need to know that the incomplete Eiffel Tower was painted a
color called “Venetian red.” All right, so how do they actually do it? Essentially, it’s literally taking a graphics
tablet and, you know, literally coloring within the lines. Okay, obviously it isn’t actually that simple. It all starts with the careful repairing of
any cracks and scratches the black and white photo picked up through decades of deterioration
in storage. Once the image has been restored to its original
state, dozens and up to hundreds of layers of color are painstakingly added and blended
together. Human skin alone can have up to 20 layers
of pinks, yellows, greens, reds, and blues to simulate what a living person is supposed
to look like. It can take hours, even days to finish a single
image. I think the longest I’ve spent on an image
is nearly a month. What comes next is pretty interesting, because
even after meticulous research, restoration, and blending of colors, there’s something
that every good colorization artist needs to have: an intuitive understanding of how
light works in the atmosphere. Light affects our perception of color, so
even though research can give you the color information, you’ll need to take into account
how those colors looked under a specific lighting condition. But how can you tell? You can usually tell what the atmospheric
conditions were based on things like shadows, and triangulation of light location, things
like that. For example, this photo was taken in the late
afternoon. Look at the long shadows the people are casting
on the sidewalk. The sun is low, and at this time of day, often
referred to as “the golden hour,” everything is cast in a sort of orange glow, which you
can see in the reflections of this car. Or take a look at this photo of Harry Houdini
from 1912. The cloudy and hazy sky, the soft, almost
invisible shadows, and Houdini’s windswept hair are all strong indicators that this was
a dreary day at the New York docks, which calls for muted colors and a greenish tint. But weather conditions aren’t the only thing
to consider. Reflected light off of certain materials influences
color too. Like the orange glow of molten steel, or light
bouncing up from a blue carpet, for example. These kinds of details are critical to simulating
an environment and achieving true photorealism. I should take a second here to mention that
not everyone is into the work colorization artists are doing. There’s been some pushback, with critics
arguing that these photos should be left untouched. There’s a lot of accusations, not just to
me but to pretty much anyone who does it, which is that, you know, we’re vandalizing
art or fucking up history. And the thing about that is that these things
are not supposed to be substitutes for original documents. It sits alongside the original. But it’s not a substitute; it’s a supplement. Colorization artists are able to create such
high-quality versions of old images because institutions like the Library of Congress
and the US National Archive have carefully digitized and cataloged thousands of original
documents from over a century and a half of photographic history. And since these photos are in the public domain,
they can be altered in any way. Which means that we get to see a color photo
of Abraham Lincoln, blue eyes and all. Beyond the fact that these are really fun
to look at, colorization presents a new perspective on history. It offers a more relatable look at huge moments,
like the construction of the Hoover Dam. And small ones too. You find out all these amazing stories. When you start looking at all the individual
things. What happened to all these companies? What happened to this person, what happened
here? And all of a sudden, you no longer see history
as a linear timeline, but rather it’s a tapestry of all these extremely rich moments. It’s really mind-blowing, actually. Cable news loves American weapons. Whether it’s Tomahawk missiles. Tomahawk missiles. Tomahawk cruise missiles. Or the “mother of all bombs.” MOAB, also called the “mother of all bombs” The “mother of all bombs” TV news is saturated with images of American
firepower. They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments. But cable news’ fixation on bombs and missiles isn’t just mindless entertainment. It sanitizes violence and makes it harder to think critically about why America uses deadly force, and what happens when it does. If you watched even five minutes of cable
news last month, you probably saw this. It’s the Pentagon’s footage of Tomahawk
missiles being launched at a Syrian airfield from US
destroyers. You couldn’t watch a segment about Syria
without seeing them, even if they were just playing in the background. They were on Twitter, too, where news networks
just published the Pentagon’s footage unedited and without context. There’s a reason those clips got so much airtime on news networks. On a very basic level, it’s about attracting eyeballs and having
something to look at. Would you rather watch Tomahawks taking off, or would you rather watch Brian Williams? This is Deborah Jaramillo. She wrote a book on the way news networks covered and packaged the Iraq War, and she argues that cable news’ fixation
on images of weapons is essentially about keeping us entertained. If we have CNN, and MSNBC, and Fox, and they’re all showing the same news, they need to differentiate their product. How do you keep viewers watching? You have a good narrative and you have spectacular
visuals. You saw that happen after the US dropped the “mother of all bombs,” the MOAB, on
Afghanistan. Forget the puny explosion of a single Tomahawk
missile, today, the “mother of all bombs.” Tons of impressive military footage, fancy
animations, and segments explaining how the bomb works. One study found that CNN aired almost an hour of MOAB test footage in the six hours after
the story broke. You could almost hear the Team America theme
song playing in the background. America, fuck yeah! Coming again to save the- Jaramillo saw a lot of this kind of thing
during the Iraq War, like when CNN developed special graphics to teach viewers about different types of
weapons. They called these graphics Baseball cards! That’s what we call them here, baseball
cards. It’s got 120mm cannon, three machine guns. Now, I know what you’re thinking: A. Anderson Cooper hasn’t aged a day. And B. Who cares? Of course cable news is going to talk about
weapons in war time. The problem is, when corporate media sees
weapons as a product, they run the risk of sanitizing and even glamorizing
tools of violence. You can see this most clearly from NBC’s
Brian Williams, who fawned over the use of Tomahawk missiles like he was trying to sell them. We see these beautiful pictures. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.” But the truth is, he wasn’t the only one giddy about the use
of force. CNN, a news network, basically ran an infomercial for Tomahawk missiles. This is the newest version of the missile. Tomahawk can fly 1,000-plus miles. Each Tomahawk weighs about 3,500 pounds, so when 60 of them are fired toward Syria, that was about 210,000 pounds of firepower. So it swims and it flies. Swims and it flies. The same thing happened with the MOAB: segment after segment about how powerful the
bomb was and how it worked. This is such a heavy bomb, such a large bomb. Frightening weapon, it makes a lot of noise. You would want to terrify your enemy, shock
and awe. And Fox News might as well have been doing
body shots the day after the bomb dropped. That is what freedom looks like: that’s the red, white, and blue. Well one of my favorite things is watching
bombs drop on bad guys. The problem is compounded when news networks invite ex-military guests to talk about weapons
on air, framing the discussion around how we engage
in violence, rather than why. General, walk us through what is this thing and how much damage can it do. It will collapse caves, it will blow up things. And it’s guided to the target by GPS. So it’s accurate. Oh, it’s precision accurate. If you’re alive afterwards, you’re going to have perforated eardrums
and a lot of trauma. The use of military analysts to explain the
weapons is a way of giving us the military’s point
of view and getting us to think in terms of strategy rather than in terms of people. You’ve probably noticed by now that all
these clips of America’s arsenal at work have something
in common: no dead bodies. You see the Tomahawk’s launching, but not the casualties they caused. You see the MOAB exploding, but it’s test footage from over a decade
ago. We have video we’re showing of the testing
of the bomb. That’s not an accident. Cable news has an incentive to not show the dead bodies that American weapons create. They don’t want to alienate audiences, so even when they’re dealing with something that’s very uncomfortable, like killing
people overseas, they don’t have a financial incentive to
show us really disturbing things when those disturbing
things directly impact us or the way we feel about
ourselves. Which helps explain why networks use graphics
and animation so much when talking about weapons. Like this 2003 CNN clip showing how a bunker
buster bomb works. You see crates and barrels being destroyed,
but There are no animated figures being blown
to bits, right? Further removing viewers from the actual lethal consequences of these weapons. Now, I know by this point, I probably sound
like an anti-war, tree-hugging beta male, YUP. But this kind of coverage should worry you even if you think these specific strikes were
justified. We can’t make informed decisions about if and when to use military force if cable
news is selling us a glamorized version of what
violence looks like. If we’re focused on weapons and focused
on how mighty our military is, then we’re not
thinking about the consequences. We’re not thinking about what happens when those weapons actually hit their targets. When you see someone like Brian Williams fawning over Tomahawk missiles, he’s not being a monster. He’s showing what happens when tools of
violence become disconnected from their real consequences. When corporate media treats weapons like a product to be packaged and sold for higher
ratings. So I just landed in Tokyo. the one place where getting off the Metro, you can get lost in an underground mall. The flight from DC to here goes over Alaska and it flies over the  Bering Sea which is just south of the Arctic Circle and I was going to the bathroom or something and I peeked out the window and I saw this vast amazing sight of a frozen ocean that was basically kind of breaking up and melting. And it made me so curious about ice! By every measure, what I was looking at out that window is a record. It's a record low of ice pack for the Arctic Ocean. We're talking like over the past  past like several thousand years. Ok fine I'll go to unique love this Uniqlo This Uniqlo has row has 11 stories...12 stories So it turns out that ice is actually more important than you think. At least it was way more important than I thought. One of the more interesting functions that ice plays that it acts as a giant reflector basically bouncing a bunch of sunlight back up into space so that the earth doesn't have to absorb it. And this is actually super vital for keeping the earth systems regulated. The ice also keeps ocean currents running smoothly which a lot of species depend on including humans. Ice is more than just important for polar bears. It actually has huge ramifications for like our entire global ecosystem and all of the many systems that support I came to Tokyo for a totally different story. It  has nothing to do with climate change I'm pretty sure jaywalking in Japan is like a total faux pax. Definitely. Everyone's laughing at me . The view I had while flying over Alaska was beautiful. But the story it tells is one of potential disaster for our globe. I'm actually in Japan working on a couple of really interesting videos. I won't give any spoilers away but I'll give you a hint. It has to do with North Korea and with racist people. Everyone has met a vegan who has been rude
to them or who has been outrageous or just angry or yelling at them. This milk was stolen from mothers. Mothers whose freedoms were taken from them! So it's not surprising that someone like Anthony
Bourdain will call vegans Hezbollah— Vee-jans or ve-jans or whatever they call
themselves, they’re the Hezbollah of, uh, they share a lot similarities with dangerous
fundamentalist groups. because we just have this reputation. Rightly so, because of how many of us act,
of just being absolute fanatics. Basically no one eats meat because they want
animals to suffer. No one goes to the grocery store and says,
"Yeah, I love what Tyson does to this chicken. That's what I'm going to support." Chickens were punched, kicked, swung, and
thrown by their fragile wings. People eat meat because everyone around them
eats meat. It's what they're used to, it's what's familiar,
it's what's easy and cheap. KFC we’re making value simple. For a limited time get a 10-piece bucket for
only $12.99! What some friends and I decided is we should
take a different approach. Rather than just pushing veganism,
we should take the opportunity that people have to take one step that will have a profound
impact on the number of animals suffering. And that is to have them not eat chickens
anymore. No matter what they eat instead, if they cut
out eating chickens they will remove the vast majority of their support for factory farms. The average American diet causes about 25
land animals to be factory farmed and slaughtered every year. If people just stopped eating chickens, they
will spare 23 of those animals. This is because it takes over 200 chickens
to provide the same number of meals as one steer or over 40 chickens to provide the same
number of meals as one pig. There have been a number of studies, the most
recent by Faunalytics, that shows over 80% of people who go vegetarian go back to eating
animals, and almost half of the people surveyed on this say that they go back because they
can't stand the pressure to maintain a pure diet. So when we're pushing people to eat the way
we eat— I was thinking of going vegan. I’m a level 5 vegan, I won’t eat anything
that casts a shadow. Wow. we are driving people away. We are driving people back to eating meat. Around 2% of people are true vegetarians and
about a .5% of the people in the United States are vegan. Now this is after decades of advocacy. Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation came
out in the 1970s. PETA came around in 1980. So groups and advocates have been at this
for decades and yet the percentage of people in the United States who are vegetarian has
basically not changed at all. So it really is time for us to reconsider
our message, reconsider our advocacy, and do something that has a chance of being different. That has a chance of breaking through to the
general public. Because we know, just by looking at the graphs,
just by looking at the numbers, that we have been failures at this so far. While I was in Japan I got my hands on a Japanese
history textbook. But this isn't an ordinary Japanese textbook. It's a very political one, and if you look
inside you'll see a version of history that is very different from the one the world knows. An example is the Nanking Massacre, the 1938
event in which Japanese troops murdered tens of thousands of Chinese civilians. To the world this this massacre is considered
one of the most infamous war crimes commited by the Japanese during their takeover of Asia,
but in this textbook it basically gets no attention It's referred to as the "Nanking Incident"
and the only attention it gets in this book is basically disputing the facts. There's no mention of the hundreds of thousands
of Korean women who were forcibly brought over to serve in brothels on the front lines
of the Japanese wars. They're these comfort women that are a huge
part of Japanese history, but they don't show up in this book. When I was in Tokyo for a Borders story, I
actually visited the people who publish and write this book. It's this group of old Japanese men who are
part of this lobbying society that basically try to push a different historical narrative
into Japanese schools, and they've been quite successful. This textbook publishing society is one of
many expressions of a rising Nationalism in Japan This is Makoto Sakurai. He's the public face for the Japan First Party. This group launched just a month after another
rightwing faction across the Pacific Ocean took power of the White House, proclaiming
a like-minded message. "America First! America First!" Within the first five minutes of Sakurai,
and even through a translator, I could tell that this guy would get along great with Donald
Trump. Sakurai's Japan First Party hasn't won any
elections yet, but other Nationalists in Japan have, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
in 2012. He has surrounded himself with advisers and
ministers from some of these fringe groups, who are now influencing policy. Up until now these guys, and yes most of them
are guys, have been known for driving around in their decked out vans preaching the restoration
of Japan's pre-World War II greatness. Their agenda is similar to nationalist movements
in other countries: they want to restore strong military, they call for the deportation of
Koreans and limitation to the little immigration that Japan even has. I chased after these guys and filmed them
for an afternoon, watching them spar with the Tokyo police. This yearning for a return to some ill-defined
golden age is the basis of many far right Nationalist movements around  the globe The main historical fixation of these Nationalists
is the 1860's, when Japan underwent a massive transformation, giving the Emperor lots of
power which he used to rapidly educate the people, grow the economy, and develop a massive
military. Japan became an economic and military powerhouse
in just a few years and over the following decades, they did what powerful countries
did back then: they started expanding, committing horrific atrocities like mass genocide in
the process. By the mid-1900s, this aggressive expansion
brought Japan into a natural alignment with Hitler's Germany, who was doing the same thing
in Europe. And then, at the height of the Japanese empire... The bomb was exploded above the city and in
the towering mushroom, Japan could read its doom The U.S. and Allied powers won the war. They came in, dismantled Japan's military,
and wrote them a new constitution that ensured they'd never get so powerful again. To the Nationalists, this was the moment that
everything was lost. Japan was brought to its knees, stripped of
the pride and national values thousands of years in the making, emasculated by these
western powers who were now occupying their country In Tokyo there's this huge controversial shrine
called Yasukuni. It's where all the people who died in the
wars under the emperor are memorialized, including all those who died in World War II. After Japan lost the war, a huge trial was
held. Thousands were convicted of war crimes and
thrown into jail and even some were hanged. And what's tricky about this very beautiful
shrine that I'm walking through, is that over a thousand of those war criminals are enshrined
here, and are prayed to every day. But a lot of Japanese people have a different
narrative about what happened after the war. According to this narrative, the tribunals
after World War II were not an impartial exercise in justice, but rather an emotional backlash
against the atrocities that had just occurred during the war. So, the fact that they're here in Yasukuni
doesn't bug a lot of these people. In fact, they revere them and they worship
them for their sacrifice to the emperor. All of the symbolism and the memorials point
to a glorification of the imperial period, not necessarily an apology for it. The shrine is at the symbolic heart of the
Nationalist narrative, censoring any mention of atrocities and glorifying the imperial
age as worthy of restoration. Upon leaving the shrine, I come across a rightwing
group that was visiting the shrine to pay tribute to the spirits. So it's tempting to draw parallels with what's
happening in Japan with Nationalism and what we see happening in the U.S. and Europe, with
figures like Donald Trump. But while that parallel works for a little
bit, it breaks down really quickly, and the differentiating factor that is the most important
for understanding the difference is a word that we've heard a lot lately. "Populism" Many of these movements in the U.S. and in
Europe have been led by outsiders, populists who want to dismantle the establishment. in Japan that's not the case; people like
Shinzo Abe are through and through establishment politicians. There isn't a disruptive figure who's coming
in from the outside and winning elections. While the rise of rightwing nationalism is
similar between Japan and the United States and the West, it's still fundamentally quite
different and it appears that the rise of a Japanese Donald Trump is still a ways off. If you picture a warlord's Instagram, does it look like this? That's Ramzan Kadyrov: ruthless leader of
Chechnya and proxy of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Here he is nuzzling a deer. These posts entertain millions of followers, but what they mask is a dark reality. Kadyrov recently attracted international criticism
when reports revealed that gay Chechens are being rounded up, tortured, and killed by authorities. At a safehouse in Moscow, a Chechen survivor
described the brutal interrogations. After the news broke, Kadyrov's spokesperson,
Alvi Karimov, denied the reports, claiming that: Given the severity of the allegations against him, it's hard to reconcile the brutality of Kadyrov's leadership with his bizarrely entertaining online profile, where he features animals, celebrities, animals and celebrities, and, above all, his admiration for Vladimir Putin. What you don't see is the violence and regression
that have been rampant under his watch. Chechnya is one of 21 republics in Russia, where regional ethnicities are allowed semi-autonomous systems of governance. It is a mountainous republic in a mostly Muslim
region of Russia known as The North Caucasus. In the 1990s, Chechnya suffered two devastating wars. The first was fought by separatists who tried
and failed to free Chechnya from Russian control following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A few years later, Russia initiated a second
war to eliminate Islamist radicals who they blamed for bombings that killed hundreds 
 of Russian civilians. The war was brutal and Putin's forces
destroyed Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Putin later placed Akhmad Kadyrov, Ramzan's
father, in charge of rebuilding the republic. Akhmad became President of Chechnya in October 2003, but the insurgency continued and in 2004 Kadyrov was killed when Islamist separatists bombed a parade he was watching in Grozny After the bombing, Ramzan was swiftly ushered to Moscow, where he met Putin that same day. At the time, he was leading Chechen security
forces and had been blamed for several kidnappings. But, despite the allegations, Putin positioned
him for leadership and he has been ruling the republic ever since 2007. In that time, Putin has given Kadyrov ample funding in exchange for keeping the Chechen conflict under control. The Kremlin funds at least 80% of Chechnya's annual budget and Ramzan Kadyrov spends that money lavishly Not only on himself, but also on construction
projects he constantly promotes. He often features Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque, an opulent building named after his father that symbolizes both Chechen renewal and Ramzan's self-proclaimed commitment to Islam. He has also used the money to fund an army
of loyalists called the "Kadyrovtsy: a militia that has roots in the security forces
he ran for his father. On Instagram he touts their strength and discipline,
offering a clear threat to possible insurgents. So far, his methods have delivered results. Kadyrov has brought down Islamist violence
in Chechnya, which has solidified his authority and served as a major political victory for Putin. Part of his strategy has been promoting a
strict interpretation of Islam. Online, he maintains a steady stream of overtly religious posts and in public statements he insists that women wear headscarves and has supported honor killings as part of what he calls a "virtue
campaign". He has also endorsed men shooting women on
the street with paintball guns when they are not fully covered, like in this YouTube video. In addition to shaping his Islamic agenda,
Kadyrov uses social media to craft a warrior persona that is based in historical notions
of Chechen identity. It's an identity that can be traced back
to the early 20th century, when Leo Tolstoy wrote about the Chechen rebellion in his book "Hadji Murad". Ever since then, ethnic Russians have perceived
Chechens as fierce warriors. And that image has played out over the course of history: From the two Chechen wars... ...to the more recent photos of Chechens
fighting for ISIS in the Middle East. Now, copies of Tolstoy's novel come with
a photo of a modern soldier on the cover. The tough guy stereotype has also travelled
beyond Russia. It is telling that a mobster in "The Dark Knight"
is known simply as "The Chechen". Scrolling through his feed, you can see that
Kadyrov channels that identity with training montages, martial arts clips, fitness selfies, "Sport!" and close encounters with threatening creatures. But Kadyrov also poses as the benevolent leader
of Chechnya, who enjoys quiet moments with animals, bike rides, playing with his friends, And performing the "Lezginka",
a regional dance. He also poses as Chechnya's biggest advocate, and has paid for several Western celebrities to visit Grozny. Past visitors have included the boxer Floyd
Mayweather, the actor Steven Seagal, and the actress Hilary Swank, "...a great honor to learn more about you and your country and what you're building." who visited for Kadyrov's birthday in 2011. "Happy Birthday Mr. President!" Apart from hosting celebrities, Kadyrov constantly leverages his relationship with Putin to bolster his authority. On Instagram, he regularly demonstrates his
allegiance to the Russian President. But at times, his enthusiasm backfires. He once framed a photo of a Putin critic between
the crosshairs of a rifle scope, a reckless provocation that led some people to wonder
if Putin might be losing control of Kadyrov. These missteps do not go unnoticed. Kadyrov's nearly three million followers on Instagram are around twice the entire population of Chechnya. Some of his posts have already led to repercussions
from Moscow. In October, he proudly posted this clip from
an MMA fight featuring ten year-old boys, including his own sons. In response, Russia's ministry of sport
launched an investigation into the event and later that month, Anton Siluanov, Putin's
finance minister, announced possible cuts to the Chechen budget. Now, revelations about Kadyrov's persecution
of gays have caused global protests and created fresh tensions. At a recent meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Putin to discipline his Chechen subordinate. By then, Putin had already summoned Kadyrov
to the Kremlin for a meeting, but whether this did anything to change Kadyrov's behavior remains to be seen. For the time being, Kadyrov continues to be
Putin's man in Chechnya and as long as he can keep the region stable, things are likely to stay that way. But Bill, isn’t it a problem when science
guys attempt to bully other people. It’s not working with the public. … That’s the same with tornados….  
This is how conversations about climate change often go down. Scientists say climate change is real, but
people still doubt them. So, why isn’t the science enough?  
It’s not like there’s a shortage of scientific facts out there spelling it all out for us.  
But let’s be honest — not many people can relate to scientists sharing their data,
no matter how compelling it is.  
When I give talks as a scientist versus when I’m talking to a friend, I don’t think
I’m any more persuasive. In fact, I think as a scientist, I may be
actually less trusted. The problem is you have people who are very,
very smart when it comes to reading data, but they’re dumb when it comes to dealing
with people. So people's relationship to smarty-pants people,
I think you have to take into account. People don't care how much you know until
they know how much you care.  
But this guy? He cares.  
Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan — known by many as “Ram” — is an atmospheric scientist
at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And for decades, he’s been a leading and
prescient voice on climate change, long before the term was widely known.  
Ram also designs instruments to measure climate data on satellites, aircraft, and ships, but
he feels like he’s really just writing obituaries for the planet.  
Every time I come back from one of my expeditions, it’s always I bring back bad news
  His scientific findings were simply not inspiring
public action. So, Ram got creative. He’s been a science adviser for the Vatican
since 2004. In 2014, Ram was chosen to speak directly
to Pope Francis.  
Now, he only had three minutes, literally a “parking lot pitch,” outside the pope’s
apartment at the Vatican. Ram had memorized a few sentences in Spanish,
but when he saw the pope emerge from his Fiat, he just blanked out. I completely panicked, a panic attack! Then I said the heck with it, I’m going
to tell him in English. With a translator between them, Ram told the
pope that climate change was a moral and ethical issue.  
Most of the pollution comes from the wealthiest 1 billion. And the worst consequences of that is going
to be for the poorest 3 billion who had almost nothing to do with this pollution. At this moment, I had finished my two sentences. In English, hopefully. In English. Yeah… And he asked me in Spanish, what can he do
about this? And you’re looking quite confused, trying
to get your brain around what to say. Yes. I had not planned that. I told him, look, you are now the moral leader
of the world. So in your speeches, if you can ask people
to be better stewards of the planet that will have a huge impact.  
Not only did Pope Francis include this message in an address several days later, but he even
took his message to Twitter.  
This caused a sensation because it was the first time that the Catholic Church came out
and talked about climate change to a global audience of over 1.2 billion Catholics. This chat with Ram and the pope actually led
to what’s since been called the “Francis Effect.”35% of Catholics said that the pope’s
message changed their personal views on climate change. I know if I had planned the whole thing, it
would have been totally different. I would have gone into carbon dioxide, this,
all the pollution, scientific details. Since I was not prepared, I went to my heart. I could have blown this! Instead, Ram jokes that those three minutes
were the best scientific moments of his life. They were certainly one his most influential. Just by switching the messenger from a scientist
to a religious figure, people listened.  
And perhaps nowhere is the messenger more important than in politics. In the US, climate change has become a fiercely
partisan issue. The majority of Americans are concerned about
climate change, but there’s a sharp difference between liberals and conservatives on the
issue.  
And that’s largely attributed to who they’re getting their information from, regardless
of what the science actually says.   
  If the Earth becomes a partisan issue, everybody
loses. The good thing is, you’re now seeing people
on the conservative and libertarian right saying, hey, hold on a second. We have a right and a liberty as American
homeowners to power our homes as we please.  
Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Tea Party movement, is one of these conservatives.  
People that did not know me made the mistake of calling me a tree hugging, left-wing liberal. A founder of the Tea Party movement! I laughed and I said, well clearly they don’t
know me!  
I am probably the first well-known conservative in Georgia to come out on a grassroots level
and advocate for solar. I don’t like monopolies — they deserve
competition and choice.  
And Debbie agrees that there really is no reason that climate change should be a partisan
issue. It’s more fiscally responsible to prevent
damage to the environment than it is to clean it up. As Ronald Reagan said, “Being good stewards
of the environment God gave us should not be a partisan issue.” Focus on the message that resonates no matter
if you’re a Republican or a Democrat or Independent. And the last time I checked, this Earth belongs
to all of us. All of us want clean air or water. And we need to protect it. To get this message out, Debbie founded Conservatives
for Energy Freedom. And they recently helped defeat an anti-solar
amendment in Florida that was pushed by the state’s utilities.  
The only message conservatives heard was from groups that were funded by monopolies or fossil
fuel that wanted to stop competition from alternative energy. They’re hearing a different message from
Conservatives for Energy Freedom. We’re giving them the facts and we’re
having an impact. But not everyone is moved by politics or religion. Often what resonates most with us and gets
us motivated is simply understanding what’s going on in our own backyard.  
Oakland-based artist and grassroots activist Favianna Rodriguez uses art to draw awareness
to climate change.  
I grew up in the Latino district of Oakland and I always understood the impacts of environmental
devastation just by looking around where I live. The asthma rates that were in my community
were astonishing. The accessibility to clean, whole food was
very tough. And so for me, these are all impacts of what
it means to not live in alignment with the environment.  
When I think of environmentalists I think of native people who are at the front lines. I think of people who are impacted, who are
really trying to fight for clean air and clean water. The organization that I co-founded, CultureStrike,
one of the main areas we focus on is to show the many faces of environmentalism.  
And, Favianna isn’t just talking the talk.  
I just converted my entire home to be powered from solar energy, and I'm the first in my
community to do so. I want to model to my predominantly immigrant
Latino community what it means to go solar. And that this is actually a less expensive
way to get our energy. And that we can be the leaders. We are among the most impacted, we can be
the solution bearers.  
So while scientists should definitely be part of the conversation, they can't be the only
messengers. Of course everyone wants clean air, pure water,
even cheap energy. So what we need is a chorus, a diversity of
many voices to deliver this message and to deliver it in a way that gets their community
to sit up and listen.  
You are a messenger too. Maybe the most important one we have. We hope we’ve given you some tools to think
more about climate change and how our lives intersect with this giant issue. Head over to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu
for more tools and resources. [rhythmic tap sounds] Tap is one of the first original American art forms. [rhythmic tap sounds] It’s an instantly recognizable combination of movement and sound. Jane Goldberg: It’s such a fun thing to see because people wants to see what’s in the bottom of the shoe. Jane: How you make the sound, that’s always a curiosity. Jane: This is how we made the sound, with the aluminum. Originally they were wooden. Tap dancing started in Five Points. Now Chinatown in New York City. This slum was one of the city's first melting pots. The percussive dances that nurtured tap, came from african ceremonies, irish jigging and british clogging. In the early 1800s, African-American and Irish people lived and worked side by side. Martin Scorsese referenced the origins of tap in Gangs of New York. Some historians who believe that enslaved people in America started using their bodies and feet for percussion after drums were banned to discourage rebellion; that part of the history is shared with jazz. And with improvisation as an essential element, tap is also considered jazz. Jane: We were considered musicians. We considered ourselves, musicians. Historical records from the mid 1800s describe early tap as a popular entertainment for blacks and whites in cellars and dance halls. Minstrels performed along with folk music on violins and banjos. Those Irish reels were the pop music at the time, and as pop music evolved, so did the fancy footwork. Early tappers, like Master Juba, even went on tour to Europe. By the end of that century, black minstrel shows made people laugh and, over time, tap dancing became associated with American comedy. In the 1900s, tap appeared in films even before they had sound. The style became very popular in the 1930s and ‘40s, when it was featured in major Hollywood movies and Broadway shows. As the decades passed tap was displaced by other styles in popular music and was relegated to musical theater. Traditional tap became an underground expression. In the 70s in New York, Jane Goldberg and Brenda Bufalino produced shows to return the old hoofers back to the stage. Jane: It really was a movement and i think that we were looking for authenticity. And we knew that the Broadway Tap wasn’t, quote, “the real thing.” Jane: We don’t go 5, 6, 7, 8. We go, uh uh uh uh. You know in other words, Jane: You don’t count, just do it rhythmically. The style is still strong in New York City, where young dancers honor the old hoofers. Jason Bernard: To make music from your feet, from your ancestors and your spirit to come out that way. I think it’s quite amazing. Jason: I would say that the most important thing is the music. When the music isn’t there anymore. Jason:  And this is being substituted say via the arms or the face, or not being honest... Jason: that’s when it becomes a problem. It’s all about the music. There are old moves still in force. A basic routine from the 1920s the shim sham is still danced worldwide. And tap moves on, merging with new immigrant styles. Felipe Galganni: Always felt very connected with the rhythms that I grew up with.  And so I decided to just put it together with my other passion, tap dance. Felipe: ...Bossa nova, samba, maracatu, all those rhythms together. Felipe: I mix the American art form—tap dance—with my Brazilian influence. As tap evolves, dancers who preserve the old hoofer style are hopeful that it will continue to capture audiences into the future. Jason: Something that is so intimate and so rare. I believe is always fresh, always new. Jason: Whenever people see tap dancing, they say, "Wow! How can you do that with your feet?" Jason: It just always makes people smile. This is an article published by the Guardian
back in 2014 ― It’s an obituary for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Two years later, Outside magazine published this ― it’s... another obituary for the reef. And more recently, we got this news: BBC News: And also this hour, the Great Barrier Reef is at a terminal stage. Have we really killed the Great Barrier Reef? The answer is no… but we sure are trying. It’d be hard to call the time of death for the Great Barrier Reef because it’s actually some 3,000 reefs spread over an area the size of Italy. So there’s plenty of room right now for
there to be widespread damage and lots of relatively healthy reefs ― that’s something
dive operators there really want you to know. “The contrast in colors down there and the
water ― when the light hits the different colors down there and yeah it’s absolutely
amazing.” But the world’s coral reefs, including the
Great Barrier Reef, have had a really hard time the past few years. After decades of degradation from local threats like pollution, and overfishing ― coral reefs have now also undergone a record-breaking
“global bleaching event.” That’s when coral turns white, which puts
them at a high risk of dying. It started in 2014, during the Northern Hemisphere
summer. Abnormally warm water caused corals in Guam
and the Northern Mariana Islands to start bleaching en masse. By the end of 2014, corals around Hawaii,
Florida and the Marshall Islands were bleaching too. When summer came around in the Southern Hemisphere, bleaching spreads to coral reefs in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. And towards the end of 2015, corals throughout
the Caribbean were bleached too. Hawaii’s corals bleached for a second time. By now El Nino was in full force, and when
combined with global warming, it kept sea temperatures high enough to continue the bleaching
event into 2016, hitting corals in Asia, the east coast of Africa, and ... the Great
Barrier Reef too ― the worst bleaching, in fact, that the
Great Barrier Reef had ever seen. Bleaching continued into 2017, when the Great
Barrier Reef was hit, again. ABC News: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in grave
condition tonight... FOX News: For the second year in a row, this
video showing bleaching… BBC News: Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef
has now been devastated by severe coral bleaching which is caused by rising water temperatures. Researchers first documented global coral
bleaching in 1998 ― a record warm year ― and it happened again in 2010. But this third global bleaching event is by
far the worst. And looking at this temperature trend, you
can get why people are starting to say goodbye to coral reefs. But to really get what makes them vulnerable,
you have to understand how coral reefs work. Corals are related to jellyfish and sea anemones,
but you’ve probably noticed that they don’t look quite as... squishy. There are a couple reasons for that. For one thing, they live in colonies. Each coral structure is made of hundreds or
thousands of individual coral animals called polyps. Each of these little bumps is where a polyp
lives. They’re easy to overlook if you’re snorkeling
but if you look closely, you can see them, especially at night when they’re less likely
to be hiding. Those polyps build a skeleton together. Not all corals do this but the ones that build
reefs do so by creating a calcium carbonate skeleton underneath them, layer by layer. So the living polyps sit in little cups on
top of an ever-expanding skeleton structure which, in turn, sits on top of the compacted
skeletons of previous corals from thousands of years ago, otherwise known as limestone. By building these structures with all these
nooks and crannies, corals provide homes for hundreds of other animals and plants ― an
estimated 25% of all marine species, even though they take up less than 1% of the ocean floor. Those reefs provide billions of dollars worth
of economic value to people every year, through fisheries, tourism, and protection from storm
waves. But here’s the thing: corals can’t build
reefs on their own. Coral reefs exist because of an incredible
partnership between animal and plant. That’s because reef-building corals get
the majority of their energy and nutrients from single-celled algae that live inside
coral polyps. It’s where they get their greenish-brown
color too. They’re called zooxanthellae, and like other
plants, they make energy from sunlight, that’s why coral reefs mostly grow near the surface
of the ocean ― where the sun shines. But this partnership breaks down under heat
stress. After multiple weeks of temperatures even
just a couple degrees celsius hotter than the maximum temperature that they’re used to,
The photosynthetic system in the algae starts to accumulate reactive oxygen molecules like
hydrogen peroxide, which leak into the coral polyp cells. To protect themselves from damage, the coral
polyps kick the algae out of their bodies, leaving the pale skeleton showing through. By warming the planet, we are, among many
other things, breaking up the team that built the ocean’s most diverse ecosystem. But bleached corals don’t necessarily die. What happens next depends on how severe and
long-lasting the high temperatures are. When researchers assessed the damage to the
Great Barrier Reef in 2016, they found that coral death was concentrated
in the northern section of the reef, where bleaching had been the most severe. In the central section, 33% of the reefs bleached
severely, but there was only around 6% mortality. That’s because zooxanthellae can return
to a coral colony within a few weeks if the water cools back down fast enough. If not, the coral dies from starvation or
disease. If enough coral colonies die, a reef can get
taken over by fuzzy brown seaweed. Some coral reefs have transformed into…
this. If there are enough fish and other grazers
to eat up the seaweed, new coral larvae can settle there and the reef can start building
up again. After the 1998 bleaching, the corals of the
Great Barrier Reef eventually recovered. But it takes a decade or more for even the
fastest growing corals to build back up, and that 10 year timeline assumes one very important
condition: That they don’t bleach all over again. And they almost certainly will. Climate models project that in the coming
decades, the conditions now causing mass bleaching will become increasingly frequent, until eventually
they happen every summer. How soon that happens depends a lot on whether
we start cutting our greenhouse gas emissions. If we don’t, annual bleaching conditions
are projected for parts of the Great Barrier Reef by mid-century. At that point, few coral reefs could survive. If we buy them more time by slowing down global
warming, corals and their zooxanthellae may be able to acclimate or eventually evolve
to tolerate warmer weather. Coral reefs would still change, and probably
still shrink, but we could give them a better chance. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to pronounce
them dead. This ecosystem is dynamic. There are forces building it up, that are  battling the forces tearing it down, and those factors vary by species & by location. But with global warming, humans have sided
against the world’s coral reefs to an unprecedented degree. Some of the damage is now unavoidable. But the battle isn’t over, and it’s not
too late for us switch sides. If you’d like to learn more about what the
climate change is doing to the biodiversity of our planet ― go over to audible.com/vox. Their massive collection of audio books includes a lot of titles about climate change, including “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.” This is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Elizabeth
Kolbert, covering not just coral reefs ― but animals and plants around the world that are
struggling to keep up with environmental change. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial at
audible.com/vox, and if you decide not to continue on with them ― you still get to
keep your book. So sign up at audible.com/vox and start spending your commute, or your cooking time, or your cleaning time, learning more about the role
that our species is playing in the history of life on Earth. Right now, American protest music sounds like
this. ...we don’t believe you, cuz we the people...
...a million dollar loan... ...If I don’t say something should I just
lie still... But it wasn’t always this way. While today’s protest music serves the same
purpose as music like this, the way it reaches the audience has reshaped the genre time and
time again. Early American protest songs like Yankee Doodle
and John Brown’s Body were pretty simple. The melodies came from songs people already
knew. The lyrics were repetitive and easy to remember
and that made it easier for the songs to spread through the oral tradition. But the rise of electrical sound recording
in the 1920s changed the way music was created. It allowed artists to use complex tunes and
lyrics. A famous example of that is Billie Holiday’s
Strange Fruit from 1939. It was a powerful take on lynchings in the
South. People had a really strong response to the
song — they either loved it or they hated it. It was almost completely banned on the radio,
which meant that most Americans heard about it, if they heard about it at all, through
word of mouth. But its omission from the radio didn’t take
the song out of history. After World War two, protest music changed
again when folk music became popular through the radio. Woodie Guthrie is probably one of the most
famous folk music protest writers. one of his most famous songs is This Land
is Your Land, which he wrote as a protest song in response to this super popular song
the time called god bless America Guthrie’s music became popular with the
working class and went on to inspire musicians like Bob Dylan. The times, they are a changin But Dylan himself edged away from the suggestion
that he was a protest movement leader. I got nothing to say about these things I
write. I just write em. I don’t have to say anything about them. I don’t write them for any reason. There’s no great message. If you want to tell other people about that,
go ahead and tell em. People turned to Dylan’s music for its unifying
message despite his reluctance to be a part of any sort of movement. But there were other artists, who were less
coy than him. And everybody knows about Mississippi / god
damn Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam”
in response to the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi. Mississippi goddam In it, she also sings about the bombing of
the 16th street baptist church in Alabama that same year. Alabama’s got me so upset
The civil rights movement produced several notable pieces of protest music. But the late 60s and early 70s also saw a
lot of political unrest in the states. So this is Marvin Gaye’s 1971 hit What’s
Going On. brother brother brother / there’s far too
many of you dying… It was a part of the famous wave of protest
music that followed the Kent State massacre when the National Guard opened fire and killed
four unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War. Later as the Vietnam war came to an end, protest
songs in America re-focused on issues of class. The shift coincided with the rise of VH1 and
MTV in the 1980s which gave artists a visual medium to express themselves. Hip-hop quickly gained notoriety, in part
thanks to groups like Public Enemy and N.W.A. Fuck the police / and that’s straight from
the underground While hip-hop became a burgeoning space for
political thought, a feminist punk rock movement also began to take shape. the riot grrrl movement was led by all women
bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater Kinney. and it was in the early to mid nineties when
all these women came together with a focus on making their music try to forward progressive
agendas, specifically feminist ones All girls should have A real man Should I
buy it? I don't wanna Our way of life, our very freedom came under
attack in a series of deadly terrorist attacks. After 9/11 there was this huge pool of emotion
and frustration that helped singers make some really good music. But the lack of a unifying political movement
left a millennial protest song resurgence sort of dead in the water. But bands like Green Day gave a really good
effort and the title track of their 2004 album American Idiot took aim at the war in Iraq Don't wanna be an American idiot The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought
a different energy to protest music. With the first black president in the White
House, musicians took up the empowerment song. Kendrick Lamar’s Alright became a rallying
cry for Black Lives Matter toward the end of Obama’s presidency. Do you hear me / Do you feel me / we gon be
alright And in this era social media became the biggest
tool for sharing music. That change is even more evident in the face
of Donald Trump’s presidency. A good example of that is Milck’s song called
Quiet The songwriter, Connie Lim, used the internet
to recruit a choir for the song which became an anthem for the Women’s March. the purpose of protest music is to bring a
movement together. So as long as people continue to leverage
these new tools that we have with social media and with the internet to make these songs,
protest music will continue. and it should worry
anyone who cares about trying to hold the president accountable. It's been a hell of a week. First there
was the Russia leak. The Washington Post reports that Trump reveals highly
classified information during a White House meeting with the Russian
ambassador. Not good. The next day, the Comey memo. The New York Times reports
that a memo by former FBI director James Comey describes Trump asking him to drop
the investigation into Michael Flynn, which sounds a lot like obstruction of
justice. Both stories are damning, they're confirmed by multiple news organizations,
and they come amid growing concerns about Trump's ties to Russia and his
abrupt firing of Comey. By any reasonable measure, this all looks very very bad for
the White House, but that's not what you see on Fox News. Fox spent the week masterfully deflecting focus away from Trump. And
though the Russian leak and Comey memo scandals are very different,
Fox handles both stories basically the same way. Attack the story. Raise doubts in the viewers mind about the credibility of
the reporting. For the Russian leak, this meant calling the story a
conspiracy theory. Mainstream media starts launching many conspiracy
theories. Criticizing the story's anonymous sources. All the Washington
Post sources are anonymous I don't know how credible those sources are. So many anonymous sources with literally no accountability. Outside sources and
sources from Mars apparently. Calling it fake news. Bogus fake news story it's fake news and parroting the White House's talking points. Ok, it was denied
by the Trump administration officials and McMaster has said absolutely that did not
happen. Do you thinks that the Washington Post moved too fast? For the Comey memo, it
meant suggesting the story was made up. A so-called memo magically surfacing in
the New York Times. Criticizing anonymous sources. These unnamed sources, is this a
way to would be reporting the news? And just saying I don't believe it. Risking that much politically or otherwise around general Flynn, I just can't see it. You could write anything in a memo, it doesn't mean it was right. That seems highly unlikely For the Russian leak, that
meant going after the Washington Post. The Washington Post, just like the rest
of the destroy-Trump media, has no credibility. It's just an extension of
the DNC. Completely unreliable. For the Comey memo, that meant going after Comey. Jim Comey has major credibility problems. But had nothing to do with the
good of the country, it only had to do with his own ass being fired. That what James Comey was doing tonight? Seeking revenge? Comey is a little bit of
a drama queen. This is very Mean Girls by the way. And in both cases, it meant
obsessing about the leakers who are talking to reporters in the first place. The real story here is who's leaking to the press. Who is leaking? Leaks. Constant leaks. What do we do about the leaks? The leaks are a bigger story than the
substance of what is leaked. You're saying President Trump
is under attack by the deep state intelligence community. The deep state. Deep state. You're worried about the deep state leaking. Blame the media for
covering the story. Would any other administration get this kind of scrutiny? This is something that every Republican President has to deal with, the press is
against them Does their hate for President Trump cloud their ability to bring you
the facts? Attack Hillary Clinton. It was their own presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton who severely mishandled classified information. Where the fake news media back then? And Barack Obama. Why the hell not? And if we want to
talk about obstruction what about President Obama? Let's see the documents
about President Obama. I want to see the Obama Comey memos. And when
all else fails... Just dismiss the story entirely. The way people are
reacting is if the world is coming to a close because of what may or may not
have been reported. It's like a three days story if it's true. I don't think
there's a lot in here. It's a boring scandal. What's wrong with revealing some
highly classified information to the Russians? Why wouldn't the President of
the United States share that with Russia? Right, it makes it easier for Russia to
figure out who our ally is, although you gotta figure a Russian as well all our
allies are anyway. And what even is "obstruction of justice" anyway? "I hope you can let it go" he's not directing him to let it go. He just said "I hope", he didn't
say I command you or I order you to do that. "I would hope", that's not the same. It's just not. If you understand language, it's not. Fox's entire strategy
for dealing with Trump's scandals is to downplay the significance. But if every
story is Watergatem, is any story Watergate? Make the audience suspicious
of the media. They've succumbed to trump hatred, that is so intense it has
destroyed their judgment and in some cases affected their character. And then
deflect their attention to literally anything else. The world is a very
complicated place, what you think is happening often really isn't happening. If you're not a regular Fox viewer it's easy to roll
your eyes and laugh at this stuff, but imagine if you were. Imagine if Fox News
were your main source of information and news every day. For a huge portion of
Trump supporters, that's the reality. They get their news primarily from Fox, which
means that even powerful, well-sourced and incredibly damning reporting about
Trump's behavior might not be enough to change his supporters minds about him. There are obviously a lot of people in high places in Washington who will do
anything they can to undermine his position. It just doesn't penetrate the
Fox News echo chamber. The destroy Trump propaganda media, they have been working
around the clock to smear, slander, besmirch, character assassination. And if you're hoping that Congress will pose some check on Trump's behavior, this
should worry you. Before anybody rushes to judgment, we're not going to base our
opinions solely on a news article. Republicans and Congress are unlikely to
break rank with Trump, unless their constituents pressure them to. Unless Republican voters think these scandals are big enough to take seriously, but if
those voters are watching Fox that might never happen. This didn't really fit in the
video but Tucker Carlson did a totally bananas segment where he yelled about the
bathrooms in Penn Station, so here you go. Normal people use the men's room in the train station. Yours are disgusting. And now you're complaining about his tax returns? When Hollywood does any kind of movie or TV
show about counterterrorism, about spying, they tend to have Jack Bauer doing something
dramatic. They have James Bond doing something dramatic. They have Carrie Mathison doing something
emotional and dramatic. You said you had information about an attack. But it’s, like, one person, in one dangerous
place, doing one powerful thing. And that’s not the way the world actually
works. In reality, the US relies on a web of intelligence-sharing
agreements with other countries. The best known is the Five Eyes agreement
between the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. But the US also gets intel from countries
that are geographically closer to terrorism hot spots. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates , Turkey,
Israel, These countries often have agents undercover
inside groups like ISIS. They get something valuable, they trust us
with it. That could be an intercept of a phone call,
drone imagery showing somebody that one country is looking for. It could be a plot. This was the case in 2010, when intelligence
sharing between the US and six other countries stopped an al-Qaeda plot to bomb two cargo
planes en route to the US. And what makes it all work, what kind of greases
that relationship, is trust. They believe that if they tell us a secret,
that it’s safe. One of the most important of these intelligence-sharing
relationships is the one between the United States and the Israelis. So, when the Israelis found out about a specific
threat from ISIS, that they planned to use laptops to bomb airplanes,
The New York Times reports that the Israelis shared that information with the US, with
the understanding it would stay secret. But the Washington Post reports that President
Trump shared that information with the Russian foreign minister during his visit to the US. And in doing so, he seriously jeopardized
that relationship with the Israelis. To understand why, you have to back up a little
bit and look at what Russia is doing in Syria. President Trump has said Russia is a key ally
in the fight against ISIS there. Trump: I say it's better to get along with
Russia than not. And if Russia helps us in the fight against
ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world — major fight —that's a good thing. The problem is that, in Syria, Russia’s
goal is not to fight ISIS. Russia’s goal is to protect Bashar al-Assad. Russia fights ISIS only insofar as it sees
ISIS as a threat to Bashar A\al-Assad. And one of Russia’s main partners in this
objective is Iran, who the Israelis consider to be their greatest
threat in the region. The greatest danger that we face of the hatred for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, comes from the East. It comes from Iran. For months, Israeli spies have expressed this
fear that any intelligence they shared with the US could end up, via Russia, in the hands
of the Iranians. And Now those fears have been confirmed. If they no longer trust the CIA, that means
that the plot that might have otherwise been stopped or disrupted potentially happens. Because they don’t trust that if they tell
it to us, that it won’t go to an enemy of theirs. And it’s not just Israel. Now other allies may become wary of sharing
intelligence with the US. Without trust, these intelligence-sharing
relationships break down. And without these relationships, it’s harder
for US intelligence officials to do the very thing Trump says he wants to accomplish: defeat
ISIS and disrupt terror plots. When you think of the word nuclear, what comes to mind? It’s probably some terrifying thought. I can’t blame anyone for being nervous. It’s a technology that we’ve been using
for decades that can really reduce global warming, but it’s not exactly something environmentalists
are that excited about. The first thing many people think of is nuclear
war and mushroom clouds. You add into that major events like Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl and now most recently Fukushima, and those have had incredibly profound consequences
on people’s immediate feelings and images and associations with this technology. This isn’t something where the public has
the view wrong. It is a technology with a reputation that’s
been earned. I mean, if a nuclear power plant was being
built in my town, I’d be pretty nervous about it. However, as a conservationist, that makes
me feel really conflicted because these power plants don’t emit CO2, and that’s the main pollutant that’s causing
climate change. When you look at the technology and you ask
yourself: How are we going to solve this problem of
climate change? To not have nuclear energy be on the table
makes the job much harder. Now for the most part these plants work really
well. They supply about 20 percent of the electricity
on the US power grid. But almost all of them in the US were built
over 35 years ago. In fact, they look like something out of a
vintage movie set. And historically they’ve had two big problems: They produce radioactive nuclear waste and
they can be vulnerable to a disaster like a nuclear meltdown. Nuclear meltdowns happen because water that’s
used to cool the radioactive fuel rods can’t be pumped in. Usually due to something like a backup power
failure. This fuel heats up rapidly, and since these
reactors operate at high pressure, there can be explosions from all of this excess heat. You can think of it like a balloon popping
and releasing the air inside — but in this case, radioactive air. Leslie Dewan is trying to fix this. She runs a startup company called Transatomic
Power. They’re trying to build new power plants
without this problem. Our reactors operate at atmospheric pressure
and you don't need that typical containment dome. You don't need the big stacks. You have a lot more flexibility in the architecture
of the plant. And that low pressure also means there’s
no way to have that nuclear balloon pop scenario. But it isn’t just about stopping disasters. The fuel itself is toxic and has to be stored
underground for thousands of years. And unfortunately we don’t use it very efficiently. The solid fuel can only stay in the reactor
for a limited amount of time before it starts to break itself down and you have to physically
remove it. You can only extract about 4 percent of the
energy that you could conceivably get out of the uranium, and the rest is left behind
as waste. This is like opening up a bottle of water,
taking a sip, and then tossing it out. But that’s actually how older reactors use
nuclear fuel. The next-generation reactors are using fuel
much more efficiently. Transatomic’s reactor design will use the
fuel in a liquid form so that it can stay in the reactor for a longer period of time. A lot of the advanced nuclear reactors can
consume much more of the energy from the uranium. You can get much, much higher fuel utilization. Which means that you're leaving significantly
less waste behind. And this is a trend in the field. There’s a huge interest to phase out conventional
fuel rods for different forms of fuel, for a variety of reasons. In the last 20 or 30 years, we've developed
different types of fuel, which cannot melt. And which in fact— What do you mean by that? Physically cannot melt. That’s Per Peterson, he’s a nuclear engineer
at the University of California Berkeley who’s working on a next-generation reactor design
that uses an entirely different form of fuel. Many older plants still use conventional fuel
rods. This new design, known as a fuel pebble, encases
uranium in a golf-ball sized sphere. It’s made of a very strong ceramic material
that can withstand much higher temperatures, so it cannot melt and is safer to use. Now this one was built to demonstrate that
you can fabricate it. So it does not have uranium in it, but every
other way it is identical to the real thing. Same weight and everything like that? And they’re designed to be very safe. You can drop this thing from 10 meters onto
a steel plate and it won’t break. Or if I wanted to I could drop it right now. So essentially, that fuel pebble is designed
to be its own self-contained system. If a power failure does happen, the pebbles
just empty into a holding tank where they cool down on their own. No need for backup generators or water to
keep it cool to prevent a meltdown. Okay, so why hasn’t this happened yet? I mean we have better materials, we have reactors
with new designs and fuels that makes less waste. It actually sounds like we have the answers
to our problems. So what’s the catch? You know the old phrase, you never get a second
chance to make a first impression? People’s first impression of nuclear energy
and nuclear power was mushroom clouds. And if it's got the word "nuclear" associated
with it, it's just going to be very difficult to convince people, no, no, we mean it this
time. This one’s safe. It puts nuclear energy in a very challenging
place. Right now even solar and wind are cheaper
than nuclear power. So there isn’t a lot of economic incentive
to build these power plants. And if no one wants to build them, then companies
that make the parts go out of business or go somewhere else where new plants are being
built, like China. Those that are under construction now, the
economics have been really grim. The number of plants that have been started
and the price overruns have been massive. One of the problems is just simply transporting
the components. Instead of getting parts locally like we did
in the 1960s and ’70s, the parts today are shipped from overseas. And these aren’t just basic nuts and bolts
— these are huge complicated components. If a section of a reactor vessel breaks during
transport, it needs to be fixed or a new one needs to be built and reshipped, taking more
time and money to complete. I think that it's going to be very interesting
to see how startup companies tackle those problems. And this is a very different space from where
the traditional technology evolved. Now rapid innovation has happened in other
industries. Look at SpaceX for example. They went from a concept rocket to delivering
supplies to the International Space Station in a matter of years. The technologies that are being researched
now that look very promising range from small modular reactors where the whole nuclear power
plant comes on the back of a flatbed truck, gets parked, plugged in, and when the fuel
is used up simply gets taken away as a unit to be reprocessed. These small modular reactors could have specific
uses. Like powering a data center that’s using
electricity around the clock. We have startups building cheaper, smaller
reactors that don’t melt down. We have engineers making fuel that doesn’t
produce much waste. While the public image of nuclear energy is
rooted in the past, the nuclear energy of today is a whole different ballgame. People like me view nuclear as being a necessary
piece of carbon-free energy production. There's less of that fear of nuclear, and
more of, sort of a need to use everything in our toolbox to combat climate change. There are other energy sources that we may
be overlooking. For example, scientists are actually turning
to poop to power cars. Head over to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu
for more. If I showed you this paint chip and asked
you to tell me what color it is, what would you say? How about this one? And this one? You probably said blue, purple, and brown
— but if your native language is Wobé from Côte d’Ivoire, you probably would have
used one word for all three. That’s because not all languages have the
same number of basic color categories. In English, we have 11. Russian has 12, but some languages, like Wobé,
only have 3. And researchers have found that if a language
only has 3 or 4 basic colors, they can usually predict what those will be. So how do they do it? As you would expect, different languages have
different words for colors. But what interests researchers isn’t those
simple translations, it’s the question of which colors get names at all. Because as much as we think of colors in categories,
the truth is that color is a spectrum. It’s not obvious why we should have a basic
color term for this color, but not this one. And until the 1960s it was widely believed
by anthropologists that cultures would just chose from the spectrum randomly. But In 1969, two Berkeley researchers, Paul
Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book challenging that assumption. They had asked 20 people who spoke different
languages to look at these 330 color chips and categorize each of them by their basic
color term. And they found hints of a universal pattern:
If a language had six basic color words, they were always for black (or dark), white (or
light), red, green, yellow, and blue. If it had four terms, they were for black,
white, red, and then either green or yellow. If it had only three, they were always for
black, white, and red. It suggested that as languages develop, they
create color names in a certain order. First black and white, then red, then green
and yellow, then blue, then others like brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. The theory was revolutionary. [music change] They weren’t the first researchers interested
in the question of how we name colors. In 1858, William Gladstone — who would later
become a four-term British Prime Minister — published a book on the ancient Greek
works of Homer. He was struck by the fact that there weren’t
many colors at all in the text, and when there were, Homer would use the same word for “colours
which, according to us, are essentially different.” He used the same word for purple 
to describe blood, a dark cloud, a wave, and a rainbow, and he referred to the sea as wine-looking. Gladstone didn’t find any references to
blue or orange at all. Some researchers took this and other ancient
writings to wrongly speculate that earlier societies were colorblind. Later in the 19th century, an anthropologist
named W.H.R. Rivers went on an expedition to Papua New
Guinea, where he found that some tribes only had words for red, white and black, while
others had additional words for blue and green. "An expedition to investigate the cultures on a remote group of islands in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea. His brief was to investigate the mental characteristics of the islanders. He claimed that the number of color terms
in a population was related to their “intellectual and cultural development”. And used his findings to claim that Papuans
were less physically evolved than Europeans. Berlin and Kay didn’t make those racist
claims, but their color hierarchy attracted a lot of criticism. For one thing, critics pointed out that the
study used a small sample size — 20 people, all of whom were bilingual English speakers,
not monolingual native speakers. And almost all the languages were from industrialized
societies — hardly the best portrait of the entire world. But it also had to do with defining what a
“basic color term” is. In the Yele language in Papua New Guinea,
for example, there are only basic color terms for black, white, and red. But there’s a broad vocabulary of everyday
objects — like the sky, ashes, and tree sap — that are used as color comparisons
that cover almost all English color words. There are also languages like Hanunó’o
from the Phillippines, where a word can communicate both color and physical feeling. They have four basic terms to describe color
— but they’re on a spectrum of light vs. dark, strength vs. weakness, and wetness vs.
dryness. Those kinds of languages don’t fit neatly
into a color chip identification test. But by the late 1970s, Berlin and Kay had
a response for the critics. They called it the World Color Survey. They conducted the same labeling test on over
2,600 native speakers of 110 unwritten languages from nonindustrialized societies. They found that with some tweaks, the color
hierarchy still checked out. Eighty-three percent of the languages fit
into the hierarchy. And when they averaged the centerpoint of
where each speaker labeled each of their language’s colors, they wound up with a sort of heat
map. Those clusters matched pretty closely to the
English speakers’ averages, which are labeled here. Here’s how Paul Kay puts it:
“It just turns out that most languages make cuts in the same place. Some languages make fewer cuts than others.” So these color stages are widespread throughout
the world… but why? Why would a word for red come before a word
for blue? Some have speculated that the stages correspond
to the salience of the color in the natural environment. Red is in blood and in dirt. Blue, on the other hand, was fairly scarce before manufacturing. Recently cognitive science researchers have
explored this question by running computer simulations of how language evolves through
conversations between people. The simulations presented artificial agents
with multiple colors at a time, and, through a series of simple negotiations, those agents
developed shared labels for the different colors. And the order in which those labels emerged? First, reddish tones, then green and yellow,
then blue, then orange. It matched the original stages pretty closely. And it suggests that there’s something about
the colors themselves that leads to this hierarchy. Red is fundamentally more distinct than the
other colors. So what does all this mean? Why does it matter? Well, it tells us that despite our many differences
across cultures and societies ... there is something universal about how humans try to
make sense of the world. Look at this picture. You know the music we’ll play. Even if you have the volume off. “I’ll find you...” Nope. “I’m ready for my closeup…” No. Yep. Why is this song the “graduation song?” How did “Pomp and Circumstance” become
the soundtrack to every...single...graduation? Its path — and fate — is surprising. And to understand it, you have to know about
the British empire’s war for gold. Let’s get technical first: this song is
part of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Military Marches. Specifically, it’s the tune from 1901’s
March No. 1 in D. “Land of Hope and Glory” is the version with words. But to get there, you have to go back. In 1901, Queen Victoria was coming to the
end of her 63 year, seven month reign. That period marked a big expansion of the
British Empire. In 1901, a central conflict was the Boer War
in South Africa. It was basically fought over packed diamond
and gold mines. Boers were the Dutch South Africans opposing
Britain. Black South Africans were largely caught in
the crossfire, though some fought with the Boers. For all South Africans, the war was brutal. The British destroyed a lot of territory and
built incredibly harsh internment camps. For the British, that was the march of empire. That fight was in the background when Queen
Victoria died in 1901. When her eldest son, Edward VII, prepared
to be coronated in 1902, he needed a program. At that time, Edward Elgar was already famous,
and so was his military march. So Edward VII asked him to play it at the
coronation and add some words. Elgar got AC Benson to write lyrics, and they
were….warlike. Here’s an early recording sung by Dame Clara
Butt. “Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee? Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be
set;” Just a second, Dame Butt. Rewind that. “Wider still and wider.” “Wider still” means empires expanding,
for the coronation of a king. And the name “Pomp and Circumstance” comes
from an Othello quote about, well, here’s Orson Welles:
“Pomp and circumstance of glorious war.” This song’s about empire. So why do Americans think it’s about graduation? Pomp and Circumstance was a near instant hit
in America, too. The tune was famous from its premiere, and
it was quickly used in graduations. In 1905, the University of Chicago and University
of Cincinnati both used Edward Elgar’s March at their commencements. Later that same year, Elgar went to Yale to
get an honorary degree for his world famous compositions. In his honor, they played Pomp and Circumstance,
without lyrics, as the ceremony ended. The New Haven Morning Journal called it “a
military march,” but early elite adoption helped it spread across universities. For example, here’s the University of Minnesota’s
commencement programs from 1900 to 1950. Here are the ceremonies where Pomp and Circumstance
played. In 1931, the tune was so popular that Elgar
recorded it for a record — it was the very first session recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Yes, the Beatles Abbey Road. The song established a legacy. That legacy just depended on which country
you were hearing it in. In the UK, Pomp and Circumstance remained
like an unofficial national anthem, while in the US it became graduation kitsch. That’s obvious in the parodies: in Kubrick’s
Clockwork Orange, the song satirizes government. In Disney’s Fantasia 2000, the joke is about
a graduation march. Elgar wears a mortarboard in America and
a crown in the UK. But in either case, his military march endures,
even if it’s not fully understood. The British Empire has shrunk, but the song
Elgar wrote for it? It grows mightier. Take it away, Dame Butt:
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet. So this is probably not the first time this
has happened, but I wanted to call out that we actually got the idea for this video from
a comment. So thank you for that comment — and that
is the reason that you have just learned the history of Pomp and Circumstance and that
I have had this song stuck in my head for the past two weeks. “Good afternoon” We might be watching the death of the White House press briefing. Or at least, its credibility. This week, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee scrambled to explain why Trump fired FBI director James Comey -- who was in the middle of overseeing multiple investigations into the Trump White House’s ties to Russia. “The President, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey.” The official White House explanation was – and bear with me – that Trump fired Comey after hearing from the Deputy Attorney General who raised concerns about Comey’s handling of the Clinton emails during the campaign. Got it? No? It’s okay, this whole story is a complete
s***show. Reporters were super skeptical of the White
House’s explanation because it made no sense. Trump repeatedly praised Comey’s handling
of Clinton’s emails during the campaign. “I have great respect for the FBI for righting
this wrong.” And he’s been president since January. Why would he wait three months to fire Comey – in the middle of an investigation? “What changed?” But Huckabee was adamant: “Isn’t it true that the President had
already decided to fire James Comey, and he asked the Justice Department to put together
the rationale for that firing? “No.” She stood in front of reporters and insisted
Trump fired Comey because of how he handled Clinton’s emails. “The basic… uh, atrocities, in circumventing
the chain of command in the Department of Justice.” And he was only doing it now because he was convinced by the Deputy Attorney General. “I think that was the final catalyst.” And then, Trump ruined everything. “What I did is – I was going to fire Comey. My decision.” Holt, NBC News: “You had made the decision before they came in the room.” “I was going to fire Comey.” And he fired him because he wasn’t happy
with the FBI’s investigation into his Russia ties. “When I decided to just – I said to myself,
you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia
is a made up story, it’s an excuse for Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.” The whole saga reveals a basic problem with Trump spokespeople like Huckabee, Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer -- they don’t actually speak for the president. Conway says Trump has confidence in Michael Flynn: “Yes, General Flynn does enjoy the full
confidence of the president.” Trump asks for his resignation. Spicer says Trump has confidence in Comey: “The president has confidence in the director.” Trump says he’s wanted to fire him for a
while: “There’s no good time to do it, by the
way.” This is all really unusual -- the whole point
of having a White House press shop is that these spokespeople are expected to accurately reflect the views of the president. But Huckabee admitted she didn’t even talk to Trump before speaking on his behalf about Comey. Even Trump admits reporters shouldn’t trust his spokespeople. The day after his NBC interview he tweeted that we should cancel the White House press briefing and that no one should expect his spokespeople to be perfectly accurate because he’s very busy. And he’s not wrong – there is no credible White House press shop anymore. The only person who speaks for Trump is Trump. Everything else is damage control. “I say this over and over again; this is
not a system that belongs to Tayyip Erdogan” It's really never a good sign when
a person one refers to himself in the third person. “I am a mere mortal… i can die at any time.” and more importantly has to repeatedly deny that they're a dictator. "Here we have an election, if you say a ballot box produces a dictatorship, then you are being unfair to the ballot box process”
On April 16, Turkey narrowly voted yes on a referendum that will dramatically reorganize the government. It allows changes that give sweeping powers to the President, Tayyip Erdogan. He could have complete control of Turkey’s budget and military, will be able to appoint judges to the courts without a vote, can dissolve parliament whenever he chooses, and can stay in power until 2029. This has prompted concerns that he’s becoming too authoritarian - and these concerns aren’t that outlandish. Mostly because Turkey was built by an authoritarian... What’s interesting about this vote is that
if you look at the arc of modern turkish history, it begins with Kemal Ataturk Ataturk was a military general who created the Republic of Turkey out of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in 1923. During his 15 years in office, he enjoyed
similar powers now held by Erdogan. And he used them to build Turkey into a modern and secular state. Turkey's new government separates church and state. He banned head coverings, To Kemal, this headgear, the fez, symbolizes Turkey's oriental fatalism and ignorance. He will abolish it. He put mosques under state control, Islamic traditions are shattered He made it basically illegal to discriminate against women. He takes pleasure in the company of emancipated women. He made women's education compulsory, he made literacy rates rise,
he made schools opened everyone, To make a modern nation, all Turkey must be sent to school. Ataturk also industrialized his country. Under his watch, the industrial sector saw
a sharp increase. And his liberal foreign policies built a close
relationship with the West which paved the way for Turkey to join the NATO alliance in 1952. We know that Ataturk succeeded because for decades Turkey was a modern secular Western country, like he wanted it to be. Ataturk is dictator, so that Turkey will never again have a dictator. And now you have President Erdogan, President Erdogan is going in literally the opposite direction. He wants to make the country more openly religious. He wants to get rid of and has already gotten rid of much of what Ataturk had done. But how does a religious conservative leader acquire so much power in a secular country? To understand this, you have to know what
happened to Turkey after Ataturk’s death. For 5 decades, the country was constantly in a state of upheaval. Ataturk had given the military the responsibility of keeping Turkey secular. And they did so by staging coups in 1960,
71, 80 and again in 1997. While the interventions were meant to keep Turkey democratic, the instability left the country in poor shape. So in the nineties and even to the early two
thousands Turkey had a totally completely stale economy,
the GDP growth would slow unemployment was very high, it was seen as a very corrupt country, the government didn’t function. Enter Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He was the mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to
‘97. Two years later he was arrested for a public
reading of a politically charged Islamic poem by a Turkish Nationalist. Turkey was still a majority Muslim nation
and his arrest made him popular with many who felt oppressed by years of the secular,
military rule. After a short jail sentence, he formed a moderately-conservative political party, the AKP, which went on to win a landslide victory in the 2002 elections,
and he became the Prime Minister of Turkey. Erdogan went on to pull the country out of
poverty by giving more opportunities to Turkish entrepreneurs and expanding access to foreign markets. This led to a sharp rise in the GDP and inflation plummeted. Turkey’s success even prompted efforts to
join the EU. This all made Erdogan wildly popular. It was like he came onto a boat that was listing, and taking on water, and managed get the water out of the boat and made the boat sail straight again. So for many years, you could see why a man like this became as powerful as he became But then he went too far. Over the next ten years, Turkey continued
to grow economically but Erdogan started pushing more Islamist and authoritarian policies. He was quoted saying he did not believe
men and women were equal and that women are meant to be mothers. His government also began arresting protesters
and journalists under the guise of anti-terrorism laws. This stirred unrest in Turkey’s more liberal
urban areas. In 2013, there was a small, peaceful demonstration
in Istanbul’s Gezi park to protest Erdogan’s plans to reconstruct military barracks that
would include a shopping center and a mosque. Seeing the demonstration as opposition, Erdogan
sent in riot police to remove the protesters which quickly attracted more protesters. And it got bigger and bigger because it became
a proxy. From a protest over a park to a protest of
Erdogan, against how religious he was becoming... And it got violent Previsouly he had not been a brutal ruler. After this, he became a brutal one. Erdogan began removing Ataturk’s secular laws more aggressively. He ended the ban on wearing headscarves, tightened
restrictions on alcohol sales, and freed mosques from government control. Then in 2014, Erdogan was elected president
which in Turkey, is a ceremonial role with little real power. But that didn't put an end to the arrests
made across the country, which indicated that Erdogan was still in charge. And there were two groups of people who are
terrified by this one were the kind of secular Turks who look back to Ataturk and said what
the hell is happening to our country?! And the other was the military and they were the ones, again, who believe that their core mission in life was to keep Turkey secular and that he was a threat. So in July 2016, they staged a coup and it
almost worked. There was one problem -- the military couldn’t
get the public’s support this time. Erdogan had found a way to reach his supporters... I want to encourage my people to the streets and invite them to the airports. And together as people gather, to show them, by letting them come with their tanks, to see what they are going to do, do it right there to the people. Erdogan had this amazing moment where he used
face time on his iPhone to kind of rally the country defend the country defend us against the military, come Turks, come to me, come rally around me. and it worked. You had secular Turks for the first time in
years defend Erdogan. You have religious Turks literally stream
from mosques into the streets to fight the military. The military overstepped, you had Turkish
F-16s fire rockets and missiles at parliament, Turkish tanks fired on people on the streets. That was very effective for him. Erdogan emerged from the fighting more popular
than ever and ramped up his purge of the opposition. More than 100,000 journalists, academics,
military officers, and politicians have been arrested since the coup attempt; tens of thousands
remain in detention. This brings us to the recent referendum, which
follows Erdogan’s post-coup popularity. He set it in motion to acquire more power
and make it permanent. But the vote was much closer than he it was
anticipated, suggesting that much of the country wants to hold onto the secular Turkey created
by Ataturk and they are willing to fight for it. I think you’re gonna have the inevitable
tension between a president who believes he’s entitled to more power, taking more and more
of it, and what remains a somewhat secular country not comfortable giving him that power. Do those tensions
play out politically in the courts or in the streets. If it’s actual fighting and violence then
what we know as a democratic Turkey will be be over. President Trump fired his FBI director James Comey on Tuesday afternoon. When a president fires an FBI director who
seems to be investigating his inner circle The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with
the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Questions will naturally arise over whether
he's trying to cover something up. The termination and removal of James Comey
raises the critical question as to whether the FBI investigation of Russian interference
in the last presidential campaign will continue and whether the investigation into any collusion
or involvement by the Trump campaign will also be investigated by the FBI. This is the kind of thing that goes on in
non-democracies. A presidential firing of an FBI director is
extremely unusual. They're nonpartisan officials who serve 10-year
terms, and they're meant to go on from one president to another. And it's important to note here that back
in January during President Trump's first week in office, he actually asked Comey to
stay on in his post. You're stuck with me for about another six
and a half years. In fact, it's hard to come up with a comparison
to a president firing a top law enforcement official investigating his own inner circle
unless you think back to Watergate. The country tonight is in the midst of what
may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history. There are reports tonight that President Nixon
has ordered attorney general Elliot Richardson to fire the special Watergate prosecutor Archibald
Cox. Because of the president's action, the Attorney
General has resigned. Elliot Richardson has quit, saying he cannot
carry out Mr. Nixon's instructions. The fear that many Democrats and even some
Republicans have is that Trump will be able to replace Comey — who is an independent
actor — We’re not on anybody's side ever. with a more compliant FBI director who could
slow-walk the investigation or perhaps bury it. The political people are in charge of the
FBI, not the street agents; the street agents do what they're told. The reason Trump’s Justice Department lays
out for Comey’s dismissal is that he mishandled the Hillary Clinton email case by essentially
being too tough on her. But this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In the past, President Trump has criticized
Comey for being too easy on Clinton in the email case. Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people
know it. Some new information in just now, the FBI
may be reopening an investigation into the Hillary Clinton email server. There was a letter that apparently was just
sent out. When you have a 5- or 6-point lead two weeks
before the election, and then magically becomes 2 to 4 points right on the election eve — something
happened. And it lines up perfectly with when Comey
released his letter. Look, this was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that
we might’ve had some impact on the election, but honestly, it wouldn't change the decision. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is on record
praising Comey for some of the very actions that his deputy now cites as a justification
for Comey’s firing. He didn’t think that there was enough evidence
to charge her previously, and now he's received new evidence; he had an absolute duty, in
my opinion, 11 days or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let
the American people know that too. The president has made no secret of the fact
that he's very unhappy about the Russia investigation. Russia is fake news. In a recent tweet, he said that it was a “taxpayer
funded charade.” It's unclear where this move will lead. When Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor
investigating Watergate, there was a bipartisan backlash. More than 50,000 telegrams poured in on Capitol
Hill today, so many, Western Union was swamped. Most of them demanded impeaching Mr. Nixon. In my three district offices in one Republican
area, my phone calls were 100 to 1 in favor of pursuing the path of impeachment. But it's not clear that will happen again. There's much more partisan polarization in
the US political system today, and Republicans in Congress have seemed eager to defend Trump
from potentially damaging investigations. My message is: Suck it up and move on. Some Republicans have criticized and questioned
Trump’s move. You don't buy the Clinton email explanation? I don't believe that that is sufficient rationale
for removing the director of the FBI. But others have seemed to be willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt. I think we need a new face and a new guy or new gal and move on. That’s the president’s decision to make, I don’t anticipate it would impede any of the work of the FBI. His administration has already been plagued
by leaks from intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Firing Comey could well make this problem
worse for him. After all, in the Watergate scandal, Woodward
and Bernstein's most famous source, Deep Throat, was a high-ranking FBI official. MIT is known for developing a lot of impressive
technology. But hidden in the kitchen of MIT’s Media
Lab is, perhaps, my favorite MIT invention: the FoodCam. Okay, so it may not look like much but it’s
actually quite brilliant. Let’s say you have some leftover food. You put it under the camera and you hit the
button. FoodCam posts a photo to Twitter, Slack, and
a mailing list. All with a simple message: Come and get it! It looks like a pretty good box of donuts. Yes. It looks yummy under FoodCam. It does. Getting the food can actually be pretty competitive. By the time we got here, just 30 seconds after
it was placed, the whole building had swarmed and all the
pizza was gone. There’s a mad rush of people that come from,
like, every entryway in here to get the pizza. So you got to kind of move pretty quickly. Yeah, it’s a game — it’s like the Hunger
Games. Where... Will and Jon invented the FoodCam all the
way back in 1999. This was before Facebook. Before Gmail. Before social media as we know it. The idea came from a building-wide leftovers
problem. And in some ways, this simple invention gets
at the big problem of food waste. I mean that's sort of the serious part of
what you have done, really, right? There is no doubt that this completely helped
reduce food waste at the lab. Almost all of the catering people know that
if they have spare food from their event, they can just hit the button and people will
consume that food. And those are not even Media Lab events that
are now fueling the FoodCam. When we picture the stuff that’s hurting
our planet, what do we think of? We think of, like, smokestacks, cars, oil
spills. We don’t really think about all the food
we throw away. In the US, roughly 40% of the food we produce
never gets eaten. That's over 365 million pounds of food each
day. While that’s happening, about one in eight
Americans still don’t have a steady supply of food
to their tables. And all of this wasted food is a huge contributor
to climate change. If global food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse
gases, just behind China and the United States. So it really is an enormous problem and one
of the easiest ways to address climate change. It takes a ton of resources to produce food. On top of that, you have all of the energy it takes to keep
it cold and transport it around the country. And when food decomposes, it isn’t just
stinky. It releases potent greenhouse gases. Basically, we’re trashing our planet to grow food that
no one eats.But here’s the thing: No one actually likes wasting food. It’s just something that we haven’t been
paying much attention to. Of all of the challenging problems out there,
reducing the amount of food we're wasting is one of the easiest. In the US, consumers collectively make up
the largest portion of food waste. A family of four spends about $1,500 on food
that they never eat. Meat is less as a percentage of what we buy
but when you consider it in particular, as a greenhouse gas intensive product, meat
waste actually has the highest greenhouse gas impact. And you don't have to be an expert to understand
why food is going to waste in our homes. We’re all busy and on the go. Sometimes I buy food without thinking, “Do I really need that?” There's even been a little bit of research
to show that once something goes in the refrigerator it's actually worth less
to us than before.   Researchers asked people how they would feel
if they got home from the grocery store and dropped a carton
of eggs. And then they asked, well if your eggs sat
in your refrigerator for six weeks and then you didn't use them, how would you feel about
that? And people felt a lot less remorse. I think a lot of the waste in our society
does come down to choice and wanting to have the
option to eat something at any time, whether or not we use it. Part of the reason we over-buy food is that
we’ve got tons of space to store it in. Refrigerators have grown about 15% since the
1970s. One of the things we found in our research
is that people are uncomfortable with white space when it comes to food. So we love it in buildings, or in design, but when it comes to food, we do not want
to see empty space in our refrigerators, on our plates, and so I really believe that
in some subliminal way we're just filling everything. And if we had smaller refrigerators, that
let us see everything that was in there, that in itself would lead to quite a bit less
waste in our homes. And it isn’t just our refrigerators that
have gotten bigger. The average dinner plate has grown by 36%
since 1960. When you have a big plate, you tend to put
a lot of food on it —  whether or not you can eat it all. This is something Jill Horst noticed at UC
Santa Barbara. You have a tray that's 14-by-18 inches and
you feel you need to load it up with food. You would see students that had four glasses:
water, juice, soda, milk — and you'd go to the tray return and they would
still be full. In 2009, the dining halls stopped using trays. Students can take as much food as they want,
but there isn’t a tray to pile it onto. The food waste per person, per tray, reduced
by 50 percent. I mean so that was huge. Let’s say that the average student wastes
six ounces of food per meal. That may not seem like a lot — but UC Santa
Barbara serves 13,000 meals per day. So that’s nearly 5,000 pounds of wasted
food. It's like throwing 350 Thanksgiving turkeys
into the garbage every single day. And when you take the trays away and it becomes
three ounces, that's a significant impact to help with not only the food waste, but
food cost. So, it turns out that something very small
— like removing a tray or changing the size of a plate — can have this profound
impact on our behavior. And it doesn’t take much effort, because
the effect is subliminal. The other thing they’re paying attention
to at UC Santa Barbara is portion size. Each plate is portioned one portion for a
student. They can take as many portions as they like, but we are actually plating the right size,
the right amount that we should be eating. We’ve gotten used to these gigantic portion
sizes at restaurants. And in a subtle way, it encourages us to overeat
and throw away a lot of food. If you look around, there’s not a whole
lot of food waste on the plates because of the proper portioning. I mean that’s somebody’s meal. That’s all they have left. None of us are perfect. Wasting less food isn’t just going to happen
overnight. But just having it on our radar can really
help us waste a lot less.   And if we do have extra food, then let’s
at least try to get it to people who could use it. There is so much high-quality surplus that's
wasted, that just needs to find the people that need
it the most. Komal is the founder of Copia, a startup that’s
trying to recover all of this perfectly good food. If you imagine the world's largest football
stadium filled to its absolute brim that's how much food goes wasted every single
day in America — and I'm not talking about last night's pad
thai or this morning's half-eaten pastries, but untouched, uneaten, perfectly edible food.   So we don’t need to purchase or make more
food. We just need to figure out how to get it to
the people who need it. MIT’s FoodCam is great at recovering food. But when you start scaling this up from one
building to an entire city or an entire country, it becomes much more difficult. Let’s say you’re a small company and have
200 sandwiches left over from an event. That’s a lot of food — but it takes time
and effort to figure out how and where to donate it. Most people really don’t want to deal with
all this. It shouldn’t be this hard to do a good thing. Like, how cool would it be if people who have
food could say, hey, we have food, and people who need food could say, hey we
need food, and we could connect these two people and
clear the marketplace? So Komal is trying to make food donation easy
and intuitive. If you have some food, you type your info
into the Copia app. A driver will then come pick up your food
and deliver it to shelters that need it. And during big events, like Super Bowl 50,
there’s a ton of extra food. The issue is that it has a short shelf life. Imagine four 16-foot refrigerated trucks filled
to their absolute brim — that's how much food we recovered. We fed 23,000 people in two days. Nobody slept. And it's not you know hot dogs and popcorn. It was lobster rolls and pulled pork sandwiches
and $300 cheeses. High-quality food. If we can get food that would otherwise be
wasted to people who need it, we’re not only fighting hunger, but we’re
actually slowing global warming. It really is a win-win. And Komal doesn’t want to solve hunger in
just California. She wants to solve world hunger — period. It's not about optimism or pessimism. I think it's just that we're hell-bent on
making it happen. This isn't going to be an overnight thing. It's got to be policy change. It's going to be other entrepreneurs. It's going to be really big companies and
institutions also taking a stand and saying that you know what? We don't tolerate perfectly great food being
wasted. Look, no one likes throwing out food. So we made a simple guide to help you waste
less. To find out more go to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu. My name is Johnny Harris and I make videos here at Vox. For the past year, I've been focusing on making documentaries about how people live around the world. For next set of videos I want suggestions on where I should go next, and I'm looking for ideas surrounding a single topic: Borders I'm going to go to 6 different borders around the world and look at the human outcomes of what happens when you draw lines on a map. And I haven't picked out these six places yet I'm looking for suggestions. So you can go to vox.com/borders to submit an idea. Look at the border between Brazil and Bolivia Brazil is clearly harvested it's forest very aggressively leaving few trees while Bolivia hasn't. So this random looking straight line on the map actually determines where a forest end and affects the people and animals living there Between Haiti and Dominican Republic, Haitian women cross a muddy river every morning to sell goods in a guarded Dominican market for the day before trekking back at night all because someone decided to draw a line at some point on this island. Interesting borders are everywhere so if something comes to mind I want you to tell me about it. Borders aren't always lines between two  countries. Sometimes as interesting state borders, or borders within a city or even a neighborhood. Regardless of what kind of border it is I want to go to these places  to help  humanize the map and show what borders look like in real life, and the effect that it has on people. The six documentaries about borders aren't going to publish until the Fall but while I'm going to these places and making these videos I'm going to be up keeping a travel log on my Facebook page where I'm going to publish little video dispatches of what I'm seeing and what I'm learning along the way and you can follow along if you want to keep up to date on the progress and hopefully help me out as I'm doing this. I'm not really sure where I'm going yet or what's going to happen along the way but I'm pretty sure it's going to be an adventure If you've ever tried to meditate, you know
that it doesn't take long for the mental chatter to get...loud. And, if you keep trying to get rid of those
thoughts it can get really frustrating, really fast. This is Satyani McPherson. She's a meditation teacher with a nonprofit
called Minds Incorporated, and she's challenging these students at Eastern High School in Washington,
DC, to examine their relationships with those distracting thoughts. Look for a thought. Where is it? When I'm closing my eyes, it comes across
my eyelids. It's a figment of imagination, you should
say. It's like, if you're imagining it, it's not
real, it's not true. Satyani isn't trying to teach these students
to get rid of their thoughts, but to change their relationship with those thoughts. And she's part of a growing movement of nonprofits
and foundations whose mission is to bring meditation into public schools. So if you're having negative thoughts, you
start to get into this mood and your body begins to feel heavy. To understand the connection between our emotions
and our bodies, we have to look inside the brain. This is Sara Lazar, she's a neuroscientist
at Harvard. And, a few years ago, she started practicing
yoga after a running injury. What was interesting was that, after a couple
weeks, I started noticing that I was calmer. Sara did some research, and found a bunch
of studies showing that yoga and meditation made people feel less stressed out and more
empathetic. But, the scientist in her was skeptical. Her yoga teacher had told her this might happen. I thought, well, maybe, you know, it's just
a placebo response, right. She told me I was going to feel this, so maybe
that's why I was feeling it. She started doing studies. We took people who had never meditated before
and we put them in the scanner. Then the subjects went through an 8-week program
where they meditated for about 30 minutes every day. And, at the end of the 8 weeks, she put them
back in the MRI scanner, and found that certain parts of their brains had gotten thicker. The hippocampus, this is an area that's important
for learning and memory. It's also important for emotion regulation. Another region we identified was the temporoparietal
junction, and it's important for perspective taking, and empathy and compassion. It's important to say that we don't know for
sure that these students' brains are experiencing the same changes that Sara Lazar found her
in subjects. But, that hasn't stopped meditation programs
from popping up in schools all over the country. And, they've received plenty of media attention. Taking time out of the school day for meditation. Misbehaving children are sent to the meditation
room instead of the principal's office. And, although these programs are happening
in many different schools and communities, news stories tend to show those serving children
of color. David Forbes is a professor of school counseling. And he wrote an article for Salon that criticizes
the movement to bring meditation into public schools. One of the realities that students maybe shouldn't
get comfortable with is the persistent problem of segregation by race and income in America's
public schools. We've had a rapid, massive resegregation since
1988. Bruce Gill disagrees. He runs the meditation program at Eastern
High School, and he's brought the practice to dozens of other schools around DC. We're definitely not teaching our kids to
be passive or to accept just anything. In fact, it's their very survival that requires
just the opposite. We don't want them to react in the face of
a threat from a police officer in such a way that provokes something destructive happening,
that provokes something fatal happening. In a situation that you consider stressful,
your thoughts can either drive you to insanity, or you can drive your thoughts. Even if it's only mental thoughts, it can
have a great effect on your physical body and your emotions, and how you portray yourself. They have to be very clear-headed and clear
about what's going on so they can make decisions in the moment when they are being threatened. Bruce doesn't think meditation teaches kids
that these threats are fair, or something they should passively accept. He sees meditation as a tool to help them
survive, and to thrive, in a flawed system. If you want to try meditation on your own, there's a couple of apps out there that can help make your journey a little bit easier. But, you don't really need an app or any fancy equipment to get started with your meditation practice. All you need is a comfortable chair or a pillow on the floor, and a little bit of patience with yourself. This bill is really similar to the bill that Republicans have been debating for six weeks now although there are some really key differences. The bill that Republicans passed lets insurance companies charge sick people higher premiums. Kimmel: Before 2014 if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was there was a good chance you'd never be able to get health insurance because he had a pre-existing condition It also lets them cover fewer benefits so they could cut out things like maternity care or prescription drugs The big question now is what happens in the Senate. There are a number of Republican Senators who have already raised big concerns about the House bill they don't like the fact that it does some big cuts to Medicaid and it also defunds Planned Parenthood. I don't support pulling the rug out from under those who have received coverage and I do not believe that Planned Parenthood should even be part of this debate. The expansion of Medicaid is tremendously important to 184,000 West Virginians. If Republicans hold a big press conference and pat ourselves on the back that we've repealed Obamacare and everyone's premiums keep going up people will be ready to tar and feather us in the street and it quite rightly. There are a few Republican Senators who are even talking about writing another bill from scratch in the Senate. I don't expect that we will vote on the House bill as it is. I suspect we would before it or our alternative. The president has said he is going to protect people with pre-existing conditions and not cut medicaid. Trump: Pre-existing conditions are in the bill and I mandated. I said it has to be. Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it. The House bill doesn't do that, but it seems like he is ready to sign the American Health Care Act anyways. The other big question is what is in this bill for Republicans? It is incredibly unpopular. Most Americans do not like the American Health Care Act so why are they pursuing it. One reason Republicans might like this bill is that it a huge tax cut for the wealthy. There are about $600 billion dollars of tax cuts in this bill and most of them go to the .01 percent at the top. Republicans have spent years now complaining about two key things about Obamacare they say it's too expensive and doesn't cover enough people. There are 25 million Americans who aren't covered now if the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone covered that's one of the many failures. In addition to premiums going up, co-payments going up, deductibles going up. But the American Health Care Act could make those problems worse. The best estimate we have is that And the Congressional Budget Office says that deductibles will go up under the American Health Care Act not down. Republicans have spent seven years now promising to repeal and replace Obamacare and now that they're in control of Washington they really want to make that a reality no matter what the obstacles. There's a common question that people might
ask: Is the world better off if Donald Trump stayed off Twitter? I actually think what I would just rather
see is Donald Trump not be mean on Twitter. I really worried when Donald Trump started
using Twitter as a way to be demeaning and degrading, and he would call people out, he
would attack people's character. And that to me was very frustrating, when
I watched candidate Trump take his rhetoric from the campaign trail, use Twitter to elevate
that kind of toxin into our American dialogue. And now he's president of the United States,
and I do worry about foreign policy done by Twitter. Not because it couldn't be a strategic use
of larger-scale messaging. I mean, Donald Trump seems to have followers
all over the globe. I just worry about him using that platform
in a way that could be shooting from the hip, that could be dangerous. Could undermine even his aspirations for peace
in communities, or for solving international conflicts. So the great thing about Twitter is it's this
platform that's neutral, but it's a powerful platform, in the same way that radio became
powerful in politics. On a Sunday night a week after my inauguration,
I used the radio to tell you about the banking crisis and about the measures we were taking
to meet it. In the same way that TV, suddenly in the Kennedy-Nixon
debates, became a powerful platform. The candidates need no introduction. The Republican candidate, Vice President Richard
M. Nixon, and the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy. Well now technology, innovation, has brought
us to a new level of social media. Since I've been in Newark politics, I've noticed
that a lot of people pick on cities in America. And so I get kind of tired of that, and a
long time ago I began to respond to people who had big platforms, who were attacking
our city. My first person was Conan O'Brien, who, on
his show, attacked us. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, wants to
set up a citywide program to improve Newark residents’ health. That’s good. If the health care program would consist of
a bus ticket out of Newark. It wasn't even on social media, but I responded
with social media Last week Conan O’Brien took a swing at
our city. And before you knew it, this Cory-and-Conan
kerfuffle, this fight we kept going back and forth on social media and on his show, that
it ended up getting millions and millions of people tuning in to a fight where I was
getting a chance to brag about Newark. You failed to understand that city is one
of the fastest-growing cities in the Northeast. I’m officially putting you on the Newark,
New Jersey, airport no-fly list. Try JFK, buddy. Eventually I went on The Tonight Show With
Conan O'Brien. The two buried the hatchet in their tongue-in-cheek
standoff. O’Brien called it the most expensive joke
ever told, making a $100,000 donation to Mayor Booker’s Newark Now charity. And so my point is that I've learned that
social media can be a great platform. That when you encounter people who are trolling
cities, that you can do something about it. So whether it's Conan O'Brien, Mindy Kaling, Cory Booker? I can’t believe he came. I guess anything to get out of Newark. I think that when you defend your city, but
defend it with kindness, and defend it with humor, or defend it with generosity of spirit,
you actually can turn people around, or at least get them to profess the truth. That America is great, and America's great
because we have great communities everywhere, including in places like Newark. Look, I don't wanna throw advice at President
Donald Trump. I mean, clearly he must think to himself,
"I don't need Cory Booker's advice; look how well I'm doing. I'm president of the United States." But I do think that Donald Trump would shock
the world if he shifted and just said, "You know what? I'm going to live kindness on the internet.” Our president should always be calling us
to be a nation that we actually all wanna be, a nation that is indivisible, a nation
that works for liberty and justice for all. And to do that we must all evidence patriotism,
which is love of country. And to love your country, you got to love
your fellow countrymen and countrywomen. And so, Donald Trump, stay on Twitter, but
just elevate the conversation. Be a uniting force, not a dividing force. Be an elevating force, not a degrading force. Everyone has one of these. It's like your
phone graveyard and with mine they know there's like a couple of Kindles and
then iPad at least one and they're all these like phones. And once upon a time
these were like the most important things I had. And now it's just sort of in
this drawer and I shut it and I hope they kind of go away. As a scientist I
spend a lot of time in nature. I'm also a tech geek.
My phone is pretty much my entire life, but it isn't just an environmental
problem once I'm done using it. Around 80% of the greenhouse gas emissions that
come from a smartphone occur before it even reaches your hands. On average, Americans
swap out their phone every two years. And about 1.4 billion phones have
produced and sold every year, but where these phones have put together matters
as far as how big the energy footprint is. They make these massive trips around
the world to be built, assembled, and then shipped. Much of the journey's down on giant
container ships, that go for a country to country for each step of the process. This happens with most things we buy that are made overseas. We often associate
smog with our cars, but collectively these ships can cause the same amount of
smog and particulate pollution as all the cars in the world. That's kind of a
big deal Once a phone is put together, it really isn't designed to be taken apart.
And that means it's hard to repair. We are users of electronics, we aren't
participants with them anymore. There's a great history of tinkering, for many
other types of products, cars especially. And I have a really really robust repair
and tinkering community that surrounds this. And you know like getting underneath our
sink and taking things apart, and figuring out how they work and really
feeling confident about that. Our phones are these futuristic looking devices.
They almost seem like sci-fi. So it's intimidating to open them up and
look inside. But fixing your phone isn't impossible.
It could save you a ton of money along with reducing waste. Ifixit's Gwendolyn
Gay gives tutorials on how to take apart and fix your electronics. So I went to
see her, to see if she could make this process less scary. So this is my
personal cell phone that I'm gonna show. How many times you open your personal
phone? I've opened it a couple of times and this is relatively new, so I don't I
don't I haven't needed to go in there other than just of curiosity. Sure you want to do this? You're very worried for me. No because you know it's like
the reason is everything from banking to travel, everything is on my phone. Right.
And I think that's why we get so nervous about monkeying with it. I think that holds people back, but I also think the price of the phone holds people back. Knowing that you're voiding your warranty, so if you open your phone, this
$600 phone, you're just S.O.L don't do it right. Right. So there are
resources if you're brave enough to repair your phone but what if opening your
phone wasn't so complicated in the first place? There actually is a company trying
to do exactly this. It's called The Fairphone Now I didn't even know you could
actually build a phone like that, like you could actually build it. Like a Lego
set like that, but but so that's the Fairphone. Fairphone, this is actually the
second one. Fairphone 2, and they're only available in Europe and I can actually
do, So easy pie, we're already in. And you can take out the battery just
like that. Wow. No tools needed and then the display is very similar, you
just unlock it here and then you can slide the display off. Really. So yeah and I
can do that whole process in less than 20 seconds. If all I had to do was pull a
few tabs to fix my phone, I would be more inclined to fix it myself. Now the Fairphone has plans in the future to release phone to the US, but
with no specific date set, I'll need to figure out another option. Like getting
rid of my old phones responsibly. So let me ask you a different question. Why don't I actually want to throw this away? You don't want to throw this away because it everything inside here is going to
create some kind of waste and it's going to be toxic waste and if we're sending
it to a place that is recycling it, say, we still don't get everything out of it. What's the most toxic thing in a phone? I'd say the battery for sure. You remove it wrong, it will explode, so you have to take out the battery. Really, this can blow up? Yes, yeah. mm-hmm yes. Don't do that. So what
do we do with our cell phone graveyard? Now most of us just hoard them like I do,
because it isn't just as simple as your typical curbside pickup. But there are
easy ways to do this. In New York and California, stores that sell you a cell
phone are required to accept it back from you for recycling. Companies like
gazelle will even buy your old phones off you. There's also organizations
dedicated to mapping out where you can drop your electronics off. Companies like
Apple are starting to figure out a better recycling process. They have a
robot called Liam that can take apart an iPhone 6 in 11 seconds. That's roughly
1.2 million iPhones per year. The small screws and other components can be used
again. Raw materials like silver found in the phone's circuits, can be used in solar
panels And the tungsten that makes your phone buzz, can be reused in tools. But what if we could design a phone that just lasted longer? Now one of the big
reasons why we replace our phones is because our batteries just stop holding
a charge. Now imagine your battery charging in minutes instead of hours. And measuring its lifespan in decades rather than just a couple of years. University of California researchers are starting to turn to 3d printing, to make this
happen. There's the potential there that you can basically design the battery to
improve its performance, so you could start to play around with design
parameters that you just didn't have control over in traditional
manufacturing. With 3d printing, if we can now print a battery in any arbitrary
shape that we want, what you can do then is
design your phone however you want to design phone, and then fill it, the empty
space in there, with your energy storage material. These batteries would be made
using an exciting new compound called graphene. This means we could avoid
harmful mining of materials like lithium found in today's batteries. All of this
technology is in its early stages, but it could radically transform the lifespan
of AI electronics. Look, it's perfectly common in the airline industry to get on
a plane that's like 30 years old. You can't possibly imagining making a
phone call on a 30 year old cell phone. You wouldn't even know how to charge it
today. And that's the fundamental way we use technology today and that it's
innovating so fast and built in such a way that it actually promotes
disposability, but I think we're actually at a very interesting tipping point. As
people become more aware, companies become more sensitive to this issue. Hey Liam what are you doing for Earth Day? So, the next big flashy thing with our smartphones might not be better graphics
or a faster processor, but instead making them more sustainable. Ever wondered
about the carbon footprint of your smartphone or some amazing materials
that could revolutionize your electronics? to find out more. This is Gudetama. It’s an egg yolk with a little butt crack. Gudetama looks like a character someone gave up on… it has limbs but no fingers or toes. It has a mouth but no teeth — and yet people can’t get enough of it. You can find it on backpacks, cups, airplanes, credit cards, and it even has its own themed cafe. But Gudetama’s cute looks aren’t the driving force behind its insane popularity. Its main attraction is its lazy personality. Gudetama comes from a Japanese company called Sanrio. You might have heard of them. They’re the creators behind Hello Kitty. In 2013, Sanrio held a company wide competition to come up with a food-based character. And once people voted, Gudetama didn't end up on top. DAVE MARCHI: Kirimichan, the salmon filet came in first — we actually started to release products based on the salmon filet and its friends. Gudetama, the lazy egg came in second, but we also released products based on Gudetama and it really really took off. The appeal of Gudetama’s melancholy stands
in contrast to the American concept of cuteness, which is pretty straightforward. The idea of cute represents goodness and optimism,
while pessimism tends to define evil. This is evident in some of Disney’s early
films. SNOW WHITE: Oh, they do look very delicious! WITCH: Yes... As you can see— there’s a clear divide between good and evil. Villains are usually depicted as unappealing, scary, and old — draped in shadows and dark colors. They are meant to be identified as evil, which
means that they can never be cute. But in Japan, there’s more of a gray area
to this. The word "kawaii" is widely used to describe
the quality of being like a child — which means that you can be cute and lazy at the same time. The term emerged in the 1970s and became a
big part of Japanese culture. It was shown through fashion, handwriting,
and even behavior. And many Japanese artists and academics believed
that this popular culture around cuteness happened for a reason. In Japan, the kawaii culture is often linked
to the country’s post-WWII years. TRUMAN: ... a message from the Japanese government. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration... The idea is that because of its trauma and defeat, the country leaned into its vulnerability. And since then, the concept of kawaii has grown
and even formed smaller subgroups. This is kimo-kawaii which is sometimes also called gro-kawaii. And there’s Yuru-kawaii. Yuru means relaxed and calm. According to cartooning expert Aya Kakeda,
this particular group became popular because of the stress in modern society. She points out that in the US, people are
drawn to spas and meditation for relaxation. But in Japan, Yuru’s calm appearance brings
comfort to a lot of people. You can also see a shift in Sanrio’s characters
throughout the years. They’ve started giving them a personality
to make them more relatable. When Hello Kitty came out in 1974 — she was
more traditionally cute than Gudetama but she has remained somewhat emotionless. She doesn’t even have a mouth to smile or frown with. And that makes her more of a blank canvas;
she can be whatever we want her to be. But many people feel a connection with Gudetama
because of its gloomy personality. This approach to cuteness extends beyond appearances
— it evokes a reaction. These characters can make you laugh, or feel
relaxed, and you can relate to them by observing their personality. So at a time of confusion and turmoil all
around the world — maybe this is just what we need:
An egg yolk with a little bum, that’s just done dealing with life. Donald Trump won the presidential campaign
by breaking all the rules, and so it’s tempting to imagine that the rules no longer applied
to him. His presidency was unpredictable. That he could do things no one had done before. Well, we’re now about 100 days into Trump’s
presidency, and we’re learning, and maybe more importantly he is learning, that what
works in a campaign, when your strategy is get the most TV time possible, it doesn’t
really work when you’re governing. And there’s a lesson here, a lesson for
Trump and a lesson for those who will come after him: The campaign might be turning into
a reality TV show, but governing still isn’t. The same things Trump did to win attention
as a candidate, and to show he wasn’t a normal politician, that’s what’s breaking
him as a president. It’s worth digging deep into his record
so far. Health care, Trump’s top priority, it crashed
and burned, and it crashed and burned because Trump didn’t understand the American Health
Care Act. He didn’t know what his legislation did,
he didn’t seem to realize it broke almost all of his promises, it was wildly unpopular,
and he didn’t have a good argument to make it more popular. He didn’t get the the legislative maneuvering
needed to pass it. So he ended up endorsing an incredibly, incredibly
unpopular piece of legislation and then declared defeat after only 17 days. I have milk that lasted longer than Trump’s
health care bill. And yeah, he keeps talking about bringing
it back, but he still doesn’t have a strategy, he has no new ideas to make it more popular
or make it a better bill, and doesn’t even seem to understand why the first bill failed
in the first place. Perhaps because of all that, Trump is historically,
incredibly unpopular. Less than three months into his presidency,
he is less popular than Obama was at any point. To underscore how dubious of an achievement
he has here, Trump is more unpopular with unemployment at 4.7 percent than Obama was
when unemployment was 10 percent. It took President George W. Bush a disastrous
war to hit Trump’s current polling nadir. This makes everything else Trump wants to
achieve harder — vulnerable congressional Republicans have little political incentive
to back a president this unpopular on a hard vote. Trump’s most consequential executive orders
are stuck in the courts and imperiled by his own words. So far, Trump’s most unusual and controversial
policy change is his executive order banning travelers from a number of majority-Muslim
countries. But the slapdash first iteration of that order
was stopped by the courts, and the substantially scaled-back sequel suffered the exact same
fate. And the biggest problem here, the reason his
executive orders keep getting stopped by the courts is Trump. It is the things Trump himself said. TRUMP: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a
total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” And, for that matter, the things his surrogates
say he said. Giuliani: “So when he first announced it,
he said 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.' " Having said he wanted an (unconstitutional)
Muslim ban and then having Rudy Giuliani confirm it on television, it’s difficult for Trump
to now convince the courts that the policies descending from that promise are not targeting
Muslims. Because of course they are. Trump’s administration, meanwhile, is historically
understaffed. Critical positions ranging from chief economist
to undersecretary of state remain unfilled, and so large swaths of the executive branch
are operating without direction, oversight, or alignment with Trump’s agenda. This is why there’s something comic about
Trump appointing his son-in-law to lead a task force on improving government: To build
a better government, first you need to understand how to work the one you’ve got. Trump’s key staff have also dissolved into
infighting and factionalism; they are leaking constantly to the press. You have a war  between the conservative
wing of the Trump administration — led by the often-squabbling Reince Priebus and Steve
Bannon — they’re trying to head off a power play from the New York business wing
of the Trump administration, led by Jared Kushner and ex–Goldman Sachs vice president
Gary Cohn. Bannon is losing power fast, it seems, and
the amount of leaking and ass covering both sides of this battle are doing is intense. This does not bode well for the White House’s
internal processes or functioning. Trump’s administration is, of course, also
under investigation, as is his campaign, his associates, and there are already casualties. It was weird, during the election, to watch
Russia helping Trump, and being helped by Trump, and to have the media treat it all
as a curious sideshow. But that’s over now, and the fallout has
already consumed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, probably Trump’s most dangerous
and abnormal key aide. Flynn, by the way, is now seeking an immunity
deal from federal prosecutors and Congress in exchange for his testimony. Always a good sign. One of the strangest pieces of Trump’s presidency
is how much he has backpedaled on the major promises of his campaign. Everything that set him apart, that made him
a populist, he’s just throwing it away. Remember when he was going to cover everybody
with health care? Trump: “Everybody’s gotta be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say. Universal health care? I am going to take care of everybody.” Yeah his bill didn’t do that. Remember when he was going to brand China
a currency manipulator? He had been talking about that for years. Trump: “They are the single biggest currency
manipulator that’s ever been on this planet.” And then he became president and haha, just
kidding. Remember when he was going to avoid fights
like Syria, he criticized Obama for drawing the red line in the first place? “President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your powder for another (and more important)
day!” -We are just getting in some video of US strikes
in Syria. Turns out he just hadn’t thought it through. In some cases, these flip-flops represent
Trump coming to a more grounded position, and great that’s fine. But the fact that he has no coherent philosophy
of governance, and his ideas are so weakly held, that they’re this easily changed — that’s
bad, that’s evidence of how unpredictable and volatile his presidency is. How little the president himself knows. And that can lead to real disaster.   The other problem Trump is facing is he has
no magic fix for the GOP’s internal tensions. It is striking how taken aback he was by the
resentments and factionalism splitting House Republicans during the health care debate. TRUMP: “I like Speaker Ryan; he worked very,
very hard. A lot of different groups, he’s got a lot
of factions, and there’s been a long history of liking and disliking even within the Republican
Party, long before I got here." What you just heard Trump say there is a sign
of how weakened he is. His White House is even worrying they won’t
be able to prevent a government shutdown even though their party holds complete control
of Congress. Look, take a step back here. Imagine I’d had told you a few months ago
that America would soon elect an unpopular, undisciplined, inexperienced, scandal-plagued
reality television star to the presidency, and that he would staff his White House with
warring advisers who had never worked in government and who would spend their time trying to undercut
each other. You probably would have predicted a presidency
that looks very much like the one we have now. Which isn’t to say Trump hasn’t accomplished
anything, much less that he won’t. Neil Gorsuch got confirmed to the Supreme
Court, for instance, and a number of Trump’s executive orders are consequential — his
recent climate change directives in particular. And if nothing else, Trump prevented Hillary
Clinton from taking office and turning the Supreme Court Democratic for the first time
in a generation. As one Republican Hill staffer said to me,
“If we get Gorsuch and avoid a nuclear war, a lot of us will count this as a win." And look, fair enough, but what we’re learning,
day by day, is there’s no magic to Trump. When he does things people hate, he becomes
unpopular. When he backs bad legislation and bad processes
—the bills fail. Trump has not found a shortcut for American
politics. To succeed at a hard job, he has to work hard
in ways and at tasks that he has, until now, shown little aptitude for and less interest
in. Trump himself may never be a normal president,
but the system he leads remains more normal than many expected. You can imagine scenarios where that changes
— a terrorist attack, for instance — but the fact remains that so far, incompetence,
not autocracy, has defined the Trump administration. He has achieved much less than his predecessors
at this point in their terms, and he has done so at great cost to his own popularity. It is possible, of course, Trump will yet
recover. But it is also possible he’ll enter a failure
loop, where his unpopularity and his scandals and his failed initiatives and his poor management
lead to more public anger and more aggressive congressional investigation and more failed
initiatives and more fracturing and infighting among his staff. The 2018 elections are a long way away, but
Donald Trump is off to a very bad start. We begin tonight with the bombshell announcement from Fox News that their biggest star is out. This comes after several advertisers dropped
his show due to allegations of sexual harassment. It is hard to overstate how stunning a development
this is. Dude, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you celebrating? Have you seen O'Reilly's replacement? Not good? Not good. Look, Fox News firing Bill O'Reilly is a big
deal. The guy was the biggest name in cable news, and the fact that Fox fired him after a ton of pressure from advertisers is a good thing. But before we get too excited, consider O'Reilly's replacements. Dude, not a good time. Sorry. Taking over O'Reilly's 8 pm slot is Tucker
Carlson, a guy who downplayed Trump's sexual assault
comments ...grab ’em by the pussy... by saying this: The words are indefensible, they're not inexplicable... Nobody is actually shocked by this, and everyone's pretending to be. He's also said things like this. It's not like Hillary's some communist... there's just something about her that feels
castrating. When she comes on television, I involuntarily
cross my legs. I don't think anybody would be standing with
Wendy in Texas if she weren't a handsome woman. Great. These are probably the least offensive clips you'll see in this video, by the way. Taking over Tucker's spot is Fox News's nightmare Greek chorus The Five. ...is hairy! You look like you can handle those things. She got 100 catcalls, let me add 101: Damn, baby, you're a piece of woman. She's a slut. Perfect. The Five also has a new permanent co-host, Jesse Watters, who used to go on Bill O'Reilly's
show and harass women during bro-on-the-street
segments like this: Do you ever do the ThighMaster? I can't say she's got really nice legs? What have you done to contribute to that sexiness? So let me see your sexiest look right now. Do you take a lot of bubble baths here? You smell really nice. Oh, I would not like that at all. Am I doing anything wrong? No, you're just being ... yourself. Taking over the 5 o'clock spot is Eric Bolling, who now has his own show. This guy. Migraines may ensue, or you'll bleed from
your eyes and your nose, or whatever. Oh, my god. Would that be considered boobs on the ground,
or no? Gretchen, you look wonderful. Gretchen, very, very beautiful dress, great
color. In summary, Gretchen's beautiful. Look at her today, beautiful dress, you look
wonderful. Fun fact about Eric Bolling: He's hosted a few segments with professor
Caroline Heldman, who's one of the women who accused Bill O'Reilly of sexual harassment. Wanna guess how those segments went? The great Dr. McHottie said it's the most
American thing you can do. All right, let's go to Dr. McHottie, Dr. Heldman. It's not just Fox primetime. Turn on Fox during the day and you'll see
the same thing. The only thing hotter than Brenda's outfit
today... If you were making love with your boyfriend,
Andrea... All right, Bo. When you interview her, will she be sitting
on your lap? One can only hope. The worst, though, might be Fox & Friends, where Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade have
spent years harassing women, including their own co-hosts. If you're wearing something, please get naked. That goes for you too, ladies. All right, when we come back from commercial,
we'll see if they listen. Let's take a second and think about Molly's
quad development. Okay, we're done. Babes, chicks, what do you call them Steve,
skirts? She is a wonderful actress, and she's got
a great body. Do you like a woman masseuse or a male masseuse? Just so I know. Now you know what I go through. Come on over and make my dinner, will ya? Absolutely. I'll jam some stuffing. And that doesn't touch on the sexism and objectification that occurs on Fox every day. I think it's better to be a dude in all situations. Just saying. Shhh, chicks, shhh. Didn't men give you the kitchen? Like Fox & Friends' bizarre obsession with
lingerie football. They are the perfect combination of sex and
violence. Doing some sideline ogling, our own Brian
Kilmeade. He's going down, Brian's going down! Brian, oh! Geraldo, Geraldo. Still not a good time. How much confetti did you buy? This all reflects a deeper problem inside
of Fox. Last July, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes resigned after widespread allegations of sexual harassment. Roger Ailes is out, stepping down amid allegations
of sexual harassment. A New York Times investigation found a culture
of harassment at Fox, with multiple women reporting inappropriate
behavior from their supervisors. And the problem goes to the top of Fox's corporate
ladder. Fox executives like Bill Shine, who got promoted after Ailes resigned, are reported to have helped cover up sexual
harassment complaints. A lot of the main players, especially Bill
Shine ... played an integral role in the cover-up of
these sexual harassment claims. They pushed women into confidential mediation, signing nondisclosure agreements in exchange for their contracts to be paid. Even the allegations against Bill O'Reilly
aren't new. They date back to 2004. Fox News protected their superstar for over
a decade before advertiser pressure forced them to
take action. But even if you ignore what's happening inside
of Fox News, Fox's on-air programming should be enough to make advertisers think twice about sticking
with the network. I think the studio crew has found something
that has pique their interest. What do you think about this? And if you think O'Reilly's firing will change
that, watch what happened just hours after Fox announced that he wouldn't be coming back to the network. Call your dressmaker. And give him a raise. That's what I'm saying. You are giving America ... a raise. That was Greg Gutfeld, on The Five, joking on live TV about how his female co-host's
dress was giving the country "a raise." Now, thanks to O'Reilly's firing, he has a primetime spot on Fox News. Okay, so I try to recycle. I’ve got my grocery tote bag. I even have solar panels on my roof. But in the back of my mind, I can’t help
thinking: Does any of this actually make a difference
when it comes to climate change? If you read the headlines, you quickly begin
to see that climate change is a massive problem. So is my reusable bag really going to change
the world? But not everyone feels that way. This is all of my trash from the past four
years… Oh, my god. This is Lauren Singer. She runs a website where she gives tips and
answers questions about living a zero-waste life. Okay, so you’ve got tiny little ends and
bits and things… Yeah. Are you really telling me that everything
else that you use for four years— Is— You’ve found some other use for? Totally, is compostable, infinitely reusable,
or 100% easily recyclable. You may look at the extremely eco-friendly
way Lauren is living and find it inspiring. Or maybe, like me, you’re totally skeptical. But a lot of what she’s doing is actually
pretty simple. When she wants coffee, she brings her own
cup. Or let’s say she wants to buy a pastry;
she’ll put it into a reusable cotton bag. A safety razor instead of plastic ones. There’s all this disposable stuff in our
lives that we’re not even thinking about. And what Lauren’s done is find some easy
substitutes. Everything else ends up in the jar. This is macaroni-and-cheese packaging, and
this was, like, four years ago, right when I started. That was, that was my weekend at Dad’s house. So these are… Oh, I know what these are. Plastic straws… Hot chocolate. This was a bad day, wasn’t it, for you? No, actually someone sent that to me in the
mail. These aren’t huge trash problems. The EPA isn’t up in arms about plastic straws. But you can see how these little bits of waste
can really add up. The United States is the No. 1 trash-producing
country in the world. If every country lived like the US, we’d
need over four Earths to make all the stuff we consume. Do you think little things make a big difference? Totally. If you reduce single-use coffee cups from
your routine and you’re a daily coffee drinker, that’s 365 cups per year. That’s not an insignificant change. If every single person did that, that’s a massive shift toward a more sustainable
future. And good policy can encourage this kind of
shift. Take plastic bags. Americans throw away about 100 billion a year. But California is trying to change this. Three communities have found that if you offer
a plastic bag for free, 75 percent of people will take it. But if you charge 10 cents for a bag, only
16 percent take it. It’s subtle, but this small fee makes people
question whether they really need a bag. And it reminds people to bring their own. Communities across the country are beginning
to adopt this policy, and it could create a large-scale shift. If New York City had a bag fee, we could save
roughly 7 billion plastic bags a year. And without good policy, it can be really
hard to do the right thing. Take recycling: In a place like Missoula,
Montana, where I live, you can’t recycle glass because doing so, it turns out, costs
my city too much. I think this is a fundamental flaw of governments
and their relationship with businesses. Businesses aren’t held accountable for products
that they’re putting into the waste stream. So they’re allowed to sell glass in Montana,
where there’s no adequate recycling, and completely wipe their hands free and not have to subsidize any infrastructure
to adequately recycle their product. So that responsibility for disposing of that
product falls on you, as a resident and the government. That is completely unfair. The funny thing is, we used to have a really
great system for dealing with glass. After you were done with a bottle, you would
just return it. Companies would clean it and use it again
and again. Around the 1950s, companies began experimenting
with single-use bottles and cans. Lots of other things became single use too. Like Don Draper here, people were just tossing
their garbage wherever. And all this trash started to annoy people. Do you remember that very famous commercial? Of this Native American, he’s, like, going down a river and there’s
all this waste, and a tear goes down. People start pollution; people can stop it. And it’s often credited for quote unquote
“cleaning up America” because we were reminded that we need to pick
up our trash. You see this commercial every Earth Day, but
it was actually funded by a group of companies — many of them from the can and bottle industry. They were worried that states would ban their
single-use products because people were getting sick of all the trash. So they created this incredible ad, which
is very powerful, which made us pick up trash. Which is actually trash that they were creating… And selling to us… Yeah— And profiting off of— It actually shifted. That was the moment… I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t
pick up trash. But as far as I can tell, it was the first
moment where we shifted this responsibility from the person selling to the person buying. That needs to change really quick. And once it does, we won’t even have to
talk about providing adequate recycling systems because
businesses will create products that are easily and conveniently recyclable
because it will make more economic sense for them if that burden is put on the business
instead of the consumer and the government. This gets to the heart of the matter. Climate change is a giant problem. We’re not going to solve it without government
and industry taking action. We live in this complicated web of carbon
emissions. I mean, every single thing we do as individuals
creates pollution. It’s overwhelming. But there’s one simple policy that could
make going green easier for all of us — and it could have an enormous impact:
We could put a price on carbon. Right now, companies can emit as much pollution
as they like. We’re basically treating our sky like a
giant sewer. As long as it’s free to pollute, no one’s going to stop doing it. You can't just go out there and find one source
or one factory, one business, and shut it down and clean up your air. Everybody in a sense is part of the problem. If companies had to pay for the carbon they
produce, it would encourage better behavior. This is what California did in 2006. The state set a cap on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and they lowered
it over the next few years. Companies could either reduce their pollution
or pay for carbon allowances. And so far, it’s worked. The state is on track to hit its 2020 goal — and they are looking to cut emissions
by another 40% by 2030. Now, California isn’t perfect, but this
is a huge reduction in emissions. It’s really larger than anything a person
could achieve on their own. The fears that were raised by opponents have
not come to pass. We've not seen an exodus of industries from
California or people unable to drive their cars. And as the state cut emissions, California’s
economy has actually grown by 12% — outpacing the national average. Going green at this scale isn’t an overnight
process. People like Mary Nichols have spent decades
fighting for better policies. We certainly have enjoyed a lot of political
support from all sides. I think that's largely just because the public
in California has demanded that clean, healthy air is something that everybody ought
to have access to. So individual climate action does matter,
in the sense that it creates cultural change. When Lauren makes a video tutorial or shares
one of her zero-waste tips on Instagram, it has a social ripple effect. Do you want everyone to live the lifestyle
you’re living? I would never tell anyone how to live their
life. But I’d like to show everyone that there
are options. That the way that we’re told we have to
live in this hyper-consumeristic way isn’t the only way we have to live in order
to live in a modern world with modern luxuries. Folks like Lauren really help build the bottom-up
support you need for large-scale transformation. Look, climate policy can be complicated, and
sometimes it can be boring. But we need it to solve global warming. And to get better policies like a price on
carbon, you need to have public support. Because politicians and businesses won’t
take action unless people come together and demand it. So you may not be able to fit all your trash
into a Mason jar. But psychologists have been developing “green
nudges” that trick us into being more green. Want to know whether they are working their
magic on you? Visit to learn more. When we think about sanctuary cities, we tend to imagine, depending on our political view, either lawless cesspools where federal law is utterly ignored; pretty much the definition of anarchy human sacrifices, rapes, murders, Satan worshippers American lives are being lost they are breaking the law, they are harboring fugitives this is absolutely nuts or havens for one of the nation's most marginalized groups. You are safe in Chicago. This is about human beings, families. and will continue to be a place of refuge But, in reality, neither of those descriptions quite fit. And to understand why, you have to put yourself in the shoes of a local police officer. These policies are different in different places. In Chicago, it means city employees aren't supposed to share residents immigration status with other people. In Washington DC, it means police officers are barred from asking residents about their immigration status. But often, it comes down to this: how does the local police officer handle an unauthorized immigrant that he's already arrested for some other reason? Let's say a cop pulls someone over for speeding. The cop notices this person has an unpaid speeding ticket, and they missed their day in court. So, the cop arrests the person, books them into the local jail. While they wait for someone to post bail, the person gets fingerprinted. That's part of the booking process. Those fingerprints then get sent to an FBI database, and then a database kept by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. That step is mandatory. Whether or not a city calls itself a sanctuary city, it still has to send those fingerprints through the FBI database. If the fingerprints match up with someone who ICE knows is an unauthorized immigrant, they might send the local cops holding this person something called a detainer request. The detainer request is just that: it's a request. The federal government is asking, not demanding, that police hold that person for an extra 48 hours after they would normally be released. That gives ICE time to come by, pick them up, start the deportation process. Now, ICE can't force local law enforcement to hold someone and just by sending one of these detainer requests. The Constitution's Tenth Amendment prohibits state governments from having to enforce federal law. And some federal courts have decided that detainer requests fall into that category. So, if you're a local police chief or sheriff, and you get one of these requests, you have a choice. Do you honor the request? Or do you let the person go? Let's say you honor the request and keep the person in jail for an extra 48 hours. Ice comes to pick them up, and they get deported. Word gets out around the immigrant community: any time you interact with local police, it could mean deportation. Eventually, immigrants will be afraid to call the police, even when they're the victims of crime, or the witnesses to it. And then, immigrants become easy targets. Because the bad guys know that many immigrants will not call the police. For a local police chief, this is a big problem. It's impossible to do their jobs when they don't have people's trust. Five hundred thousand Angelenos, people who live in Los Angeles, are undocumented immigrants. I need their cooperation. I need them work with their local police stations. I need them to be witnesses to violent crime. What about the other option? What happens if you ignore the order, and let this person go home? First, there's no guarantee that they won't get deported anyway. Whether a city considers itself a sanctuary or not, local law enforcement can't stop ICE from deporting someone. Think of the levels of government like rungs on a ladder. You have the federal government at the top level; that includes agencies like ICE. You have the state government: governors, legislatures, in the middle. And then, at the bottom, you have local government: mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs. If the federal government issues a detainer request, and the local police department refuses to accept it, the state government can step in by taking away one of the state funding streams from the local police. That's what happened in Texas in 2017. The governor of the great state of Texas, Greg Abbott, has declared he will sign a law banning sanctuary cities. He's already issued an order that cuts funding to those sanctuary cities. This is dangerous and I will not allow it as governor of Texas. This map shows the counties in red that always cooperate with ICE, and the ones that don't; those are an orange, yellow, and green. The green counties have the most restrictions on when they cooperate with ICE detainer requests. In late January 2017, shortly after he got into office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that opens the door to withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities or counties. The wording of that order is vague, and it's already being challenged in federal court. But if Trump's plan does move forward, it could put local law enforcement officers across the country in a lose-lose situation. For them, deciding whether to honor a detainer request is often about choosing between financial security on one hand, and public safety on the other. you This mural is one of thousands in Philadelphia. They’re in yuppie Rittenhouse Square
and working class Fishtown, near the Liberty Bell,
and in West Philly too. Why does Philly have so many murals? And how did they make it happen? It’s not just because they’re pretty,
though they are that. Murals aren’t paintings, but tools….that
create wealth, employ people, and can help reimagine any city, one wall at a time. At Broad and Spring Garden you’ll find
Meg Saligman’s “Common Threads.” Across the street from that, near a grate,
you’ll find this humble pole. This is kind of the thing that started Philly’s
obsession with murals. Graffiti. “It was
all like an unknown world to me. In a way, but it was also super
exciting.“ Jane Golden founded Philly’s mural arts
program. She came to Philly from LA, where she’d
painted more than 50 murals. She was hired in the 1980s in to work as a
part of Mayor Wilson Goode’s “Anti-Graffiti Network.” People saw graffiti as a plague. So the idea was to stop graffiti by recruiting
graffiti artists to make murals. “If you had met me back then, my colleagues
would have been Baby Rock, and Knife, and Cool Earl, and Disco Duck. It was unbelievable, it was so great. I like fell in love with Philadelphia through
the eyes of young people and community leaders.” Here’s Dr. J. in a suit. He looks good, right? When this mural was painted in 1990, people
were certain it’d be defaced with graffiti. When it wasn’t, it proved an anti-graffiti
strategy — murals could serve as an artistic shield against vandalism. That’s become a model for lots of cities
nationwide. “At the end of the day, it was like the
perfect vehicle to really move these kids from where they were to another point, without
being like a fascist or a dictator or too prescriptive.” But for Philly to grow into a city with thousands
of murals, it took a total transformation— not just for the city, but for the program
that covered it, too. Murals need money. Mural Arts scrambles to get it. That was the case with Common Threads, when
Meg Saligman approached Jane Golden with an idea. “She said, do you have funding?” “And I was like, mmm, not really,” I said,
“but I’ll find funding.” “She said ‘really?’ and I was like, ‘yeah,’ so she said, ‘OK,
guess what, I got a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.’ It was a grant for however much money.” “So I said, OK, that’ll be our start.” “So then I went and I found somebody from
the city, so we put that in the pot.” “Then we applied to a few little foundations
and we got some grants, and then we kept raising money.” “And we’d run out of money, and it’d
be like halfway. And we’d be like, oh my God, we better raise some more money!” And I remember we got further down and further
down the wall, and then finally, I remember the guy who came, he was working for the Philadelphia
Foundation, he had a check for us for $5,000, and he drove up to the wall
and he goes, “Here’s your check!” And it allowed us to finish the mural. That scramble was only possible because in
the mid-90s, Mural Arts restructured to use both public and private money. The organization brings in an average of $1.50
in private funds for every dollar it gets from the city. “I think our key ingredient is the leveraging
of public and private funds, because without both sectors at work, we would do less work,
and I think having the long term support of the city has ensured our longevity.” That means it gets city perks, like the historic
building that’s home to the program. But it also seeks private dollars to pay for
artists and materials. And that money doesn’t just change a city’s
colors. It changes its character, too. Let’s say you don’t care about Theatre
of Life on Lombard and Broad or One World just over on 16th. The walls are just part of the program. Murals can boost property values and combat
blight. That Common Threads building? Today it’s being marketed as the “Mural
Lofts.” People see those murals, too. In 2014, tours of the city brought
15,000 people to see the murals, with 65% leaving the center of the city to see more
neighborhoods. Across the street from Common Threads, you’ll
find a mural on a school. In addition to employing a staff of artists,
Mural Arts includes education programs for about 1,000 students. Mural Arts also designs some programs specifically
for artists with mental health and substance abuse challenges. The Yale School of Medicine found that this
“public art” helped “public health.” And the Mural Arts Guild program, for formerly
incarcerated individuals, reduced the rate of return to prison. The laundry list of benefits is impressive. But these murals are really about communities
expressing themselves, whether it’s a photo-realistic picture of a legendary pool
player, Or a modern collage featuring icons like The
Roots. The goal is to help communities make the city
their city, whether they like Shepard Fairey, or Keith Haring, or Frank Sinatra. “What we want is for the community to be
ok with it, right? To be inspired by it, so that it has meaning
for them.” “And then all of it together, it’s like
this giant crescendo, that really speaks to the importance of
not just beauty— but beauty does have importance— but also representation, and how that representation
happens. It can happen all different ways.” “How great is that? That we get to experience all these different
narratives that, in the end, speak about our lives? But isn’t that what art does, that it shines
a light on our diversity, but lifts up our commonality and
in the end connects us to all that makes us human? I think that at the end of the day that probably
inspires me almost more than anything.” “I am a very serious wallhunter. This means that no matter where I am, no matter
what city I am in, I will notice really good blank walls.” There has never been a king of the United
States. But there have been times when Google would
tell you, at the very top of the page, that there was. Their source? A joke headline on a Breitbart article from
2014. This isn’t the only time something like
this has happened: This Google first-answer box has told users that dinosaurs never existed,
that God only loves Christians, and that all Republicans are Nazis. "According to debate.org, yes, Republicans = Nazis." So what are these featured search results? And why can they be so, so bad? Responses like this are called a featured
snippet. They’re part of what are called “rich
answers” on Google — answers that are given special priority beyond the usual list
of links. If you want to know the score of the latest
Warriors game, or how to say thank you in Arabic, or check the weather in Guatemala
City, with Rich Answers you don’t actually have to click on any of the search results. Those answers are powered by what Google calls
its Knowledge Graph, which is a database of related search information that was launched
in 2012. But Featured Snippets are a different thing,
even if they don’t look that different. Knowledge Graph information is limited to
verified sources like Wikipedia and the CIA’s World Factbook — but Featured Snippets can
pull information from any third-party website. That's where results can get tricky, as The
Outline's Adrienne Jeffries has reported. For a while, when you asked Google why firetrucks
are red, you got back a long Monty Python joke. “Right! Stop that! Silly.” Snippet answers are usually from one of the
top search results. But they don’t have to be: Google places
priority on how directly a statement answers a question, how many words it takes to do
it, and whether or not it's presented in a simple list. Engagement factors like how often people visit
a site and how long they spend on it also play a part. So when you ask a question like “how to
cook asparagus,” the featured answer isn’t the first answer. It’s the tenth. But that site does format the answer in a
simple bulleted list, and answer the query directly. Google guesses which part of the page most
directly answers your question, and quotes that portion in the snippet box. Problem is, the Snippets aren’t always right
— users have asked questions like “Is Obama planning a coup” or “which presidents
were in the Ku Klux Klan”, and gotten back Featured Snippets from really bad parts of
the internet. One thing we do know is that the sites in
these Featured Snippets change a lot. Of the answers with snippets in January 2016,
more than 55 percent either didn’t have a featured snippet or featured a different
URL just six months earlier. What that means is that Google has an automated
process that decides whether or not to keep snippets based on how they perform. In addition to the user-reported “Feedback”
button, Google also has several thousand contractors who review search results pages on how well
they answer questions. Rich Answers make up a big part of Google’s
overall strategy — a group called Stone Temple Consulting conducted a study where
they entered 1.4 million queries into Google and found that about 30 percent of questions
returned answers that pulled from the Knowledge Graph or Featured Snippets. Featured Snippets are a key part of what gives
Google’s voice search and Google Home an edge over other digital assistants. Danny Sullivan, who runs a blog called Search
Engine Land, demonstrated this by asking both Google Home and Amazon Echo whether or not
he could feed his guinea pig grapes: Amazon’s device, which pulls answers from
Bing, couldn’t answer, but Google’s could. The reason why? It’s a Featured Snippet. So yes, these snippets can go wrong, and they’re
going to require a lot of algorithm policing from Google. But they’re a key part of their strategy
to provide answers that are useful and sound natural — so don’t expect them to go away
anytime soon. So Google is pretty good about fixing these mistakes when they've happened. But sometimes when they think they've fixed something, the answer is still actually wrong. After Searchengineland.com wrote about how ridiculous it was that Google was citing Breibart as saying that Obama was the king of America, the snippet changed. And instead it cited Searchengineland.com. But it still said that Obama was the king of America. Vive le Front National! Vive la République! Vive la France! Marine Le Pen is a leading candidate in the
French presidential race. The first round of voting is on April 23rd, which will narrow the field to two for a runoff election on May 7. Marine Le Pen is a far-right candidate and
represents the “Front National”, The National Front, which is the far-right party. The National Front has existed for a little
over forty years and Marine Le Pen has been running the party since January 2011. Marine Le Pen is the daughter of the founder
of the National Front: Jean-Marie Le Pen. He founded it in the early 1970s and it was
considered a pretty racist anti-Semitic party and always very marginalized. The party was seen as anti-Semitic in large part because her father had often minimized the Holocaust. But Marine has distanced herself from her
father since 2015. In part, that’s because she has tried to
change the message of the party and change the branding of the party. I excluded from the National Front my very own father. We could not tolerate words, unacceptable words, that would lead to a caricature of our movement. By removing her father, Le Pen hoped to move
the party away from anti-Semitism, but a recent comment has undercut those efforts. Speaking to the press, Marine Le Pen denied
that France was responsible for the Vel d’Hiv roundup, which took place when French
authorities arrested Jews and brought them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver indoor cycling track in Paris for eventual delivery to Nazi concentration camps. She said this despite the fact that French
president Jacques Chirac formally acknowledged guilt on behalf of the French state in 1995. By questioning French culpability in the Holocaust,
her comments have reopened old wounds. But for the time being, Le Pen remains a leading contender, as she has been throughout the campaign, and that’s largely due to her successful efforts to rebrand the National Front. Instead of being seen as anti-Semites, Le
Pen has worked to portray the party as protectors of French identity and French values. Her big thing is about France for the French,
which gets into some of her policies, which actually we would perceive as racist or xenophobic
but she sees them as returning to a sort of mythical France. In a way, it reminds us a little bit of Trump. The forgotten men and women of our country
will be forgotten no longer. I am very happy about the election of Donald
Trump. I think that The United States will once again
regain its former image in the world, which had become very damaged. To Marine Le Pen, there is a certain French
culture that should be upheld and that that’s being lost in the tide of globalization. She’s particularly anti-globalization. She’s against The European Union and she
would like to radically reduce the number of immigrants. We are not going to welcome any more people. Stop! We are full up! During the 2015 refugee crisis, asylum seekers
fled to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East, eventually landing in places like Calais, France, home to a notorious refugee camp called “The Jungle”. Many Europeans felt overwhelmed by the sudden
influx and Marine Le Pen seized the opportunity to elevate her nationalist platform. France didn’t absorb the same numbers of
people as Germany did or parts of Northern Europe. But, at the same time, there was a sense that
it was out of control: that Europe did not know how to control its borders. Even though it was not connected, having the
attacks in Paris in the fall of 2015, and then again in the summer of 2016 in Nice,
exacerbated a sense of a changing Europe. …reports are coming in of an attack… …a shooting in central Paris… …hearing at least twenty shots and seeing
more than fifteen dead… …two young men, no older than twenty-five,
with Kalashnikovs… The fear of attacks, the actuality of attacks,
tend to bolster support for closing borders, closing down the immigration policies and turning an eye on the community that people feel is at fault. While many leaders carefully avoided making
any assumptions about the perpetrators… I don’t want to speculate at this point,
in terms of who was responsible for this. …Marine Le Pen was quick to point the finger. Speaking on the floor of The European Parliament
shortly after the attacks, she forcefully blamed Islamic fundamentalism for the tragedy in Paris. In 2010, France was home to nearly five million Muslims. Over a million more than The United States,
a country nearly five times the size of France. And many French Muslims are perceived as far
more religious than they are French. In part, that is due to the very visual issue
of the veil in public space. An issue that has been under debate in France
for over twenty-five years. Right now, as of 2004, it’s not allowed
in public schools, but they’ve stopped short of banning it in the street because that’s
seen as a personal liberties scenario, right? Marine Le Pen would like to ban it in general. By setting classic liberal ideals against
Islamic fundamentalism, Marine Le Pen promotes French nationalism by claiming she is protecting French identity. Similarly, she has framed globalization as
a threat to French values. Marine Le Pen has said she will hold a referendum
to pull France out of the EU. She would like to ask for a “Frexit”,
as we just had a Brexit. She would like a return to a sovereign currency and she very much would like to return to a France of a different era. If France was to be able to be actually removed it would be the end of the European experiment as we know it. Vive la République! Vive la France! As the National Front’s poll numbers have
risen over the past decade, the rhetoric of other political candidates has begun to shift to the right. The parties to the center-right begin to adopt
a number of her ideas. Even if she doesn’t succeed, there is a
conversation taking place that is much, much more skeptical of immigration. Now it has become radicalized and tinged with
this sort of anti-Islam Islamophobia space, as well. The real question is: do European nations, are they nimble enough to move into a space of multiculturalism and is that what they want? And one of the things that Marine Le Pen will say is, “This is not a battle for an election, this is a battle between globalization and patriotism.” So, she sets it up as the idea that one is
not a patriot unless one buys into the idea of a very specific type of France, which a
lot of people would see themselves left out of. "We are hurtling toward the day when climate
change could be irreversible." "Rising sea levels already altering this nation’s
coast." "China’s capital is choking in its worst
pollution of the year." "5% of species will become extinct." "Sea levels rising, glaciers melting." Okay. Enough. I get it. It’s not like I don’t care about polar
bears and melting ice caps. I’m a conservation scientist, so of course
I care. I’ve dedicated my entire career to this. But over the years, one thing has become clear
to me: We need to change the way we talk about climate change. This doom-and-gloom messaging just isn’t
working; we seem to want to tune it out. And this fear, this guilt, we know from psychology
is not conducive to engagement. It's rather the opposite. It makes people passive, because when I feel
fearful or guilt-full, I will withdraw from the issue and try to think about something
else that makes me feel better. And with a problem this overwhelming, it’s
pretty easy to just turn away and kick the can down the road. Somebody else can deal with it. So it’s no wonder that scientists and policymakers
have been struggling with this issue too. So I like to say that climate change is the
policy problem from hell. You almost couldn't design a worse problem
as a fit with our underlying psychology or the way our institutions make decisions. Many Americans continue to think of climate
change as a distant problem: distant in time, that the impacts won't be felt for a generation
or more; and distant in space, that this is about polar bears or maybe some developing
countries. Again, it’s not like we don’t care about
these things — it’s just such a complicated problem. But the thing is, we’ve faced enormous,
scary climate issues before. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? As insurmountable as that seemed in the 1970s
and ’80s, we were able to wrap our heads around that and take action. People got this very simple, easy to understand,
concrete image of this protective layer around the Earth, kind of like a roof, protecting
us, in this case, from ultraviolet light, which by the way has the direct health consequence
of potentially giving you skin cancer. Okay, so now you've got my attention. And so then they came up with this fabulous
term, the “ozone hole.” Terrible problem, great term. People also got a concrete image of how we
even ended up with this problem. For decades, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs,
were the main ingredient in a lot of products, like aerosol spray cans. Then scientists discovered that CFCs were
actually destroying the atmospheric ozone. People could look at their own hairspray and
say, “Do I want to destroy the planet because of my hairspray? I mean, god no.” And so what's interesting is that sales of
hairspray and those kinds of products and underarm aerosols started dropping quite dramatically. People listened to scientists and took action. Now scientists predict that the hole in the
ozone layer will be healed around 2050. That’s actually pretty amazing. And while stopping the use of one product
is actually pretty easy, climate change caused by greenhouse gases … that’s much trickier. Because the sources are more complicated,
and for the most part, they’re totally invisible. Right now, there is CO2 pouring out of tailpipes,
there is CO2 pouring out of buildings, there is CO2 pouring out of smokestacks, but
you can't see it. The fundamental cause of this problem is largely
invisible to most of us. I mean, if CO2 was black, we would have dealt
with this issue a long time ago. So CO2 touches every part of our lives — our
cars, the places we work, the food we eat. For now, let’s just focus on one thing:
our energy use. How do we make that visible? That was the initial goal of UCLA’s Engage
project, one of the nation’s largest behavioral experiments in energy conservation. What we're trying to do is to figure out how
to frame information about electricity usage so that people save energy and conserve electricity. The idea is that electricity is relatively
invisible to people. The research team outfitted part of a student
housing complex with meters that tracked real-time usage of appliances and then sent them weekly
reports. So you can see how much energy the stove used
versus the dishwasher or the fridge. We realized, because of this project, the
fridge was like the monster. So lucky for them, their landlord upgraded
their fridge to an energy-efficient one. They also learned other energy-saving tips,
like unplugging their dishwasher when not in use and air-drying their clothes during
the summer months. And researchers, in turn, discovered where
people were willing to cut back. The Engage project wanted to know what types
of messaging could motivate people to change their behavior. We wanted to see over time over a year and
with repeated messages, how do people, behave? How does that impact the consumer behavior? And what we found is that it's very different. Some households were sent personalized emails
with their energy bill about how they could save money; others learned how their energy
usage impacted the environment and children’s health. Those who received messages about saving money
did nothing. It was totally ineffective because electricity
is relatively cheap. But emails sent that linked the amount of
pollutants produced to rates of childhood asthma and cancer — well, those led to an
8% drop in energy use, and 19% in households with kids. Now, in a separate study, researchers brought
social competition into the mix. First, they hung posters around a dorm building
to publicly showcase how students were really doing: red dots for energy wasters, green
for those doing a good job, and a shiny gold star for those going above and beyond. This social pressure approach led to a 20%
reduction in energy use. This strategy was also used at Paulina’s
complex, and it definitely brought out her competitive streak. For me, the competition was what motivated
me, because seeing your apartment number and telling you that you are doing at the average,
but you are not the best, was like, Why? I’m doing everything you are telling me
to do. I always wanted the gold star, because it
was like, “Oh, my god, I want to be like the less consumption of energy in the whole
building.” And psychology studies have proved this. We are social creatures, and as individualistic
as we can be, turns out we do care about how we compare to others. And yes, we do like to be the best. Some people don’t want to say, Oh, I'm like
the average. No, my usage is different and I want to be
able to act on it. And people can act on it because with these
meters, they can now see their exact impact. A company called Opower is playing with this
idea of social competition. They work with over 100 utility companies
to provide personalized energy reports to millions of customers around the world. Now consumers can not only see their energy
use but how it compares to their neighbors’. Like the UCLA study found, this subtle social
pressure encourages consumers to save energy. It’s been so effective that in 2016, Opower
was able to generate the equivalent of two terawatt-hours of electricity savings. That’s enough to power every home in Miami
for more than a year. And they’re not alone. Even large companies are tapping into behavioral
science to move the dial. Virgin Atlantic Airways gave a select group
of pilots feedback on their fuel use. Over the course of a year, they collectively
saved over 6,800 tons of fuel by making some simple changes:
Adjusting their altitudes, routes, and speed reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by
over 21,000 tons. These behavioral “nudges” do seem to be
advancing how we as a society deal with some pretty complicated climate change issues,
but it turns out we’re just getting started. There is no “quick fix.” We need people changing their companies, changing
their business models, changing the products and services they provide. This is about broader-scale change. And part of this change includes embracing
what makes us human. That it can’t just be a guilt trip about
dying polar bears or driving around in gas guzzlers. We need to talk about our wins, as well — like
how we’re making progress, really being aware of our energy use, and taking advantage
of that competitive spirit we all have in order to really move us from a state of apathy
to action. Global warming is by far the biggest issue
of our time. Climate Lab is a new series from Vox and the
University of California, and we’ll be exploring some surprising ways we can tackle this problem. If you want to learn more, head to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu. This is my cell phone, okay? Does that look like that is the cell phone
case of a liberal? My dad is a retired baptist minister. He told me that in order to get people to
hear your message, you have to get them in the church. That is a mistake that a lot of environmentalists
make when talking to Republicans and conservatives about solar, about clean energy. They lead off with climate change. That is the wrong message. If you deliver the message of energy freedom,
energy choice, competition, national security, innovation — all of the sudden you have a receptive audience
and they will listen to you. If you lead off with climate change, they're
not going to pay a bit of attention to anything else you say. They've been brainwashed for decades into
believing we're not damaging the environment. Unfortunately, a lot of these fossil fuel
interests and giant monopolies have been telling activists for decades that we're not damaging
the environment… Everyone agrees that burning fossil fuels
releases carbon dioxide, and that such concentrations in the atmosphere are rising. But it’s a long and dangerous leap to conclude
that we should therefore cut fossil fuel use. You have industries that have a lot of money
in deep pockets and they're willing to use that money to put out negative facts and bogus
studies to convince us that renewables are bad. Get the facts about these out-of-state solar
companies at AZSolarFacts.com And by God, they are not going to get away
with it. You have to understand one thing: The Republican
party has always been, in the past, a party of conservation. Richard Nixon, a Republican president, actually
created the EPA to make sure we had clean air and clean water. Each of us all across this great land has
a stake in maintaining and improving environmental quality. Ronald Reagan is not actually known as an
environmental president. But he was a conservationist. He actually believed man was damaging the
environment and he advocated very strongly for and signed the Montreal Protocol that
banned fluorocarbons. If Ronald Reagan were alive today and he wanted
to ban aerosols, fluorocarbons, because he saw scientific evidence that they were damaging
the environment, some of these same groups that are attacking renewables would be attacking
the conservative icon Ronald Reagan. One of the reasons I’m fighting very hard
to bring conservatives on board and to educate conservatives to advance renewables: Failure
is not an option. This earth is not a Republican earth. It’s not a Democrat earth. This earth belongs to all of us. If you think fossil fuel is not damaging the
environment, pull your car in a garage, start up your engine and inhale the exhaust fumes
for a few minutes and see what happens. Trump has made CNN into an unlikely hero. You are fake news. Repeatedly criticizing the network for its
coverage of his administration. Your ratings aren’t as good as some of the
other people. That’s let CNN play the part of the embattled
news network. Are we fake news, Kellyanne? Is CNN fake news? But the truth is a lot of this is theater. CNN plays a really important role in mainstreaming
Trump’s misinformation. And that's because CNN’s approach to covering
politics often prioritizes drama and spectacle over serious truth telling. If you want to understand how CNN covers Trump,
you have to understand Jeff Zucker, the network’s president since 2013. Zucker came to the network from NBC, where
he oversaw shows like Fear Factor and, yes, The Apprentice. His background is entertainment television,
and to Zucker, politics is essentially a big game. He told New York Times magazine: Can’t believe that’s a real quote. Oh boy. You can see that approach in a lot of how
CNN covers politics: flashy countdown clocks, dramatic graphics, pre- and post-debate panels. It’s essentially become the ESPN of politics. You a big ESPN fan? You know what… But the clearest parallel between CNN and
typical sports coverage is the screaming matches. Turn on CNN, and you’ll almost certainly
see an argument between hosts, pundits, and commentators. Turn on CNN’s primetime shows and you’ll
see that same argument between a much bigger panel of people. [crosstalk] I don’t know what we’re yelling about. These shows are clear relatives of ESPN shows
like First Take, which pit commentators against each other to argue about whatever news story
was happening that day. This is the pro- hold on. This is the problem. You can actually see some pretty clear parallels
in the formats and studio sets of these shows. This type of news coverage, centered around
pundits arguing with each other, makes for cheap, easy TV. It’s loud, it’s dramatic, and it requires
no original reporting. Yeah, unlike you. But in the age of Trump, it’s turned CNN
into a circus of misinformation. It’s created a huge demand for people who
are willing to go on TV and defend Trump, and that leaves CNN booking less and less
credible guests. People in the studio are even laughing. So you end up with arguments between seasoned
political analysts and the “death panel” lady. Stop, stop, stop, or I’m going to have to
cut this interview short. Betsy, where are you getting that from? About 5 million people will lose coverage,
not 24 million. Look, there are so many things wrong with
what you said, I’m not going to have a chance… And it’s resulted in CNN hiring a small
army of paid Trump supporters, people like Jeffrey Lord and Kayleigh McEnany, for the specific purpose of participating
in arguments about Trump. While hiring paid political commentators isn’t
new for a news network, CNN’s Trump pundits are unique in the ridiculous lengths they’ll
go to to defend Trump. Has Trump ever said anything about race that’s
wrong? He hasn’t said that much about race. Oh he can’t stop. They make inflammatory arguments that shut
down entire segments. [crosstalk] They misrepresent Trump’s positions. That’s not what he said, that’s what it’s
being spun into. That’s not what the president said. Again, that’s not what the president tweeted
and alleged. That’s not what he said, and that’s not
what those stories say. That’s what you’re saying! I’m lost now. And they say false and misleading things on
national TV while being paid by CNN. This article does not say what you and other
Trump surrogates are saying that it says. Susan Rice was unmasking American names, disseminating
that information to numerous different agencies— No, no, no, no, that is not true. In a lot of cases, CNN’s Trump pundits are
repeating the misinformation that CNN’s serious journalists spend all day trying to
debunk. We’ve had the reporter on twice saying,
“You are wrong, my article did not say what Sean Spicer and the White House and you are
claiming it says.” CNN does this because they know that fighting
makes for entertaining TV. In a quote that should make your skin crawl,
Zucker told New York Times magazine... Jesus. I know. Zucker sees his pro-Trump pundits as “characters
in a drama.” And they are. CNN’s fighting-based approach to politics
is nothing if not dramatic. But much like on Fear Factor or The Apprentice,
it’s manufactured drama. Side by side, it should be noted. This is about arguments, not insults. CNN books wackadoodle Trump supporters to
make sure that every segment is poised to become a disorienting screaming match. Just look at how CNN reacted when Jeffrey
Lord went on live TV and said this: Think of President Trump as the Martin Luther
King of health care. CNN knew it would get people angry and watching,
so within hours Lord was back on air to spend two full primetime segments arguing about
it. Our very own Jeffrey Lord making a statement
that raised a lot of eyebrows. Let’s discuss it now. CNN hired a bullshit artist, invited him to
say ridiculous things on TV, and then turned that bullshit into its own mini TV drama. We don’t judge people by color in this country. That is racist, it’s wrong. [crosstalk] And it’s drama that Trump directly benefits
from. BuzzFeed recently reported that Trump quietly
pushes his surrogates to appear on CNN, even while he publicly criticizes the network’s
coverage. Jeffrey Lord, oh he fights so hard. This would all be fine and normal if this
was reality television or ESPN. But it’s not. At its most basic level, political journalism
is about keeping viewers informed about how the government is impacting their day-to-day
lives. That can’t happen when CNN treats every
story as a chance to reopen the Thunderdome. When you treat politics like a sport, you’re
going to end up with news coverage that cares more about watching people score political
points than about telling the truth. In prior administrations, the government has
supported the fight against white extremism. They've recognized the threat within our own
borders, but some of those policies might change. Maybe we hear things about white extremism
being removed from the countering violent extremism focus, and I think that's a mistake. From dozens of Jewish community centers receiving
bomb threats Yesterday alone, bomb threats phoned into
11 Jewish community centers across several cities in this country. to cemeteries and synagogues being desecrated to police officers in Las Vegas being targeted
specifically because they are law enforcement by militiamen, The couple entered this pizzeria around 11:30
yesterday and shot officers Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck at point-blank range. The Millers then covered the bodies with a
swastika and a Gadsden flag. we have a domestic terrorism issue that we
hardly talk about because we're so focused on the threat coming from overseas. When Dylann Roof writes a manifesto proclaiming
his hate for people and saying that he wants to murder people to progress
his agenda, that to me is terrorism. That's no different than an ISIS propaganda
video. The imagery of white supremacy has changed
over the last three decades. It’s gone from what you would consider your
normal racist to something that's more mainstream — suits and ties, fashionable haircuts,
and clothes that would never identify them as neo-Nazis
until they open their mouths. So you think the solution is that we designate
certain nations, maybe certain states in the United States
as white states? I think that might perhaps be the ideal. And that was a concerted effort because we
knew that we were turning more people away that we could eventually have on our side, if we just softened the message. These days with our political climate we see
a lot of coded language or dog whistles, the use of the Star of David, when talking
about politicians. We used to say that the Jews controlled the
media, and now they've just massaged the phrase to call it liberal media. And "Make America Great Again?" Well, to them, that means make America white
again. White nationalists, just like any other extremist
group, promise paradise. They promise that the problems of crime and
the problems of “white genocide” are going to go away. And that you come from a very white, noble
cause and that your culture is worth protecting. The problem is that nobody is trying to take
that away from you. The only problems that they have are the ones
that they inflate with propaganda, with fake news. Where they teach you that blacks commit more
crimes against white people or that Jews control the media and the finance system. These are all conspiracy theories, there's
no basis in truth. And I know this because I helped create those
lies from the very beginning and I helped spread them and ultimately I believed them
myself. And I infected that lie into other people
that were innocent. And even 20 years later after I left the movement,
I'm still pulling up the weeds from all those seeds of hate that I planted, which is why I have dedicated the last 20
years of my life to help eradicate racism. When I googled the “fastest animal” this
is what I got. A cheetah. A cheetah. A little mammal bias maybe? The truly fastest animal on Earth has a max
speed 3 times greater than the cheetah. Peregrine falcons can leisurely cruise through
the skies between 40 and 60 miles per hour, but when they’re diving toward their prey,
they can reach speeds over 200 miles per hour. That comes out to 293 feet per second. It’s like flying the length of a football
field in 1.2 seconds. Or the length of this DC block. So how is it even possible for peregrines
to dive this fast? A peregrine falcon is around the size of a
crow—weighing between one and three pounds with a wingspan up to 3.6 feet. They prey on other birds by dive-bombing them
and snatching them mid-air. The first thing you see when a peregrine goes
into its dive, also called a stoop, is their bullet-shaped bodies. Notice how the peregrine tucks in its feet,
and sweeps back its tail and wings. This streamlined figure reduces wind turbulence,
maximizes maneuverability, lift, and speed as it cuts through the air. It wouldn’t be able to do this nearly as
efficiently if had broad wings like a hawk or an owl. But the peregrine’s wings are pointed and
angled back. And because of its stiff unslotted feathers,
it experiences less drag—the wind would pull on loose feathers on other birds. Peregrines also have a large keel — that’s
this breast bone. A bigger keel supports stronger chest muscles. Acute vision allows them to spot prey a mile
away. The nictitating membrane, or third-eyelid,
helps to maintain their vision in their high-speed dives, and the secretory gland keeps their
corneas from drying out because of all that wind. But none of this would be possible if the
peregrine couldn’t breathe. The air speeds that Peregrine falcons experience
while diving would make it impossible for most animals to breathe, but they have a bone
in their nostrils to slow down the airflow. They also have robust hearts that beat around
600 to 900 beats per minute. All birds have a vastly more efficient respiratory
system than mammals. Then to finally catch her prey, the peregrine
is pulling around 25 G’s coming out of a stoop—compare that to a F-16 fighter pilot
who endures up to 9 G’s during some maneuvers. On speed alone peregrines are formidable birds
of prey but it isn’t their only adaptation of note. Footage from our friends at BBC Earth shows
where this wanderer has made its mark in some unexpected places. After a sharp recovery from near extinction
in North America—bustling cities with soaring skyscrapers and towering cathedrals have become
many peregrine’s new kingdom; a plentiful hunting ground with high perches and deliciously
plump pigeons. A lot of people have asked me what it was
like to wake up to the images that were coming out of Syria with the victims of the sarin
gas attack. “Witnesses and some activists said the toxic
substance was delivered by Syrian and Russian jets in an attack in the rebel-held region.” Obviously it was painful, it was infuriating,
it was frustrating, but at the same time, there have been so many mornings like that
in the last six years. It is an interesting, sort of, you know, question
as to why we object to the methods of slaughter but not the overall slaughter that the Syrian
people have been facing over the last six years. Syrians have been dying by bullet, by mortar,
by barrel bomb. And they've been killed both by the regime
and the armed opposition to the regime. I think a lot of people paid attention recently
because there's something horrific about death by air, death by breathing in chemicals. There's something that's sort of tantalizing
about the horrificness of evil. It's a way that you can see it in a more blatant
way. I think we've become a little desensitized
to the other kinds of death. The problem is after so many years of dehumanizing
Arabs and Muslims and Syrians in the global imagination... Do you think Islam is at war with the West? I think Islam hates us. ..that kind of dehumanization has led people
to sort of tune out and to think that what's happening there is sort of inevitable. This is a question of culture, a question
of religion. I think part of the reason we're willing to
let Syria go or let these sorts of things happen is because we've become accustomed
to really simplistic narratives about Arabs and Muslims. They will never have refugees or “rapeugees”
in their backyards. They just will not. This is part of the problem, is that we have
no idea who Syrians are. We have no idea what Syria is, even though
it's this place of great culture and great civilization and great humanity. If it's consuming our headlines, yeah, it's
probably at that point risen to the level where we should take the time to learn something. I think the American public in many ways has
its own problems, but it has to realize that we are implicated in what's going on in Syria. In the last six years, it has been unfortunately
only mostly Syrians mourning the loss of Syria, but this is something that the whole global
community should feel the loss of, because it's our loss collectively. The places might not completely disappear,
but the people who make those places are going to have disappeared. It would be a tragedy if we only found out
about it too late, once we couldn't do anything about it. So the tradeoff to me is that I get to stay in
bed and watch Jane the Virgin for two weeks and then someone gets to live an entire life for
7 years and I don't care who that person is; that's a trade that i'm willing to take. We’re going to the transplant center at
Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. Oh that button. All right. And what you’re here for today? Oh and I’m here to get checked up and meet
my surgeon before I give my kidney to a stranger. The number of Americans waiting for organ
transplants has risen dramatically. But the problem is there’s already a national
shortage of kidneys available. And there aren’t enough donors. Which means thousands die waiting. There’s probably about almost 100,000 people
on the kidney transplant wait list right now. And every year the list grows higher and the
amount of kidneys that are donated really is staying the same. So just to to lay out what it's like before
you get a kidney transplant, most people are on dialysis. So if it's in a hospital, it's generally 3
days a week, 4 hours at a time. It's almost impossible to hold down a job
with those hours. You're exhausted. It's a like immensely physically draining
process. The one year death rate, I believe is, is
20 percent. And the survival prognosis over 5 years is
33 percent, which is about the same as brain cancer. And getting a kidney transplant, on average
extends lifespan by about 7 years or more. At this point I’ve done two 24-hour urine
collections which are as gross as they sound. And the results were inconclusive so now I’m
going to get some radioactive particles shot through my kidneys, see what comes out. The transplant committee at Hopkins has officially
looked at my case. I apparently have a resting heart rate that is
slightly below normal, because I’m just chill as hell, and they wanted to have me
talk about that with a cardiologist. To be able to do this, you generally have
to have an employer with generous family leave. You have to either not have kids or have really
good childcare that can get you through a recovery period. But I think it's definitely a situation where
I'm very privileged to be able to do this. If you're like going paycheck to paycheck,
it would be an insanely tough thing to do. Dear Dylan, you have been approved as a kidney
donor by our multidisciplinary transplant team at the Johns Hopkins hospital. Thank you for coming forward as a living kidney
donor and we look forward for assisting you through your donation. Sincerely, Pam Walker. Let’s say there’s a mother and son who
don’t match but the son needs a kidney. And there’s another father and daughter
who are in the same boat, but that father’s kidney matches the other family’s son’s
kidney and that mother’s kidney matches the other family’s daughter’s kidney. They can do a swap. And you can even expand it out from there
and make them loops with more than two. But the issue is that you need to close the
loop. And that can be reallly tricky to do and really
delicate to put together. And so that’s where non-directed donation
comes in. I don’t need a kidney. Like, if you gave me a kidney I would be pretty
weirded out. I’m just giving one with no expectation
of reciprocity. So if I give to someone and then their family
member has someone that is on the list who they match with, they can give to that person,
and then that person has a family member who can give. And so it’s sort of a chain that doesn’t
need to loop back. It’s all happening. So it’ll be a 5:15 surgery on Monday because
they’re shipping out the kidney to Ohio for its ultimate recipient. It’s part of a chain with four transplant centers
so yeah. I think this is emblematic of Dylan in many
ways. I think he has a moral certainty that a lot
of us lack, where he's really able to collect the information available and decide that
something is a moral good. That it will make the world a better place
and then he goes and does it. I read someplace that there was some year,
recently, 2013 or 14 when it was like 100 or 200 people in the country made undirected
kidney donations. It's a pretty rare thing, and we've all got
reasons. I'm not doing this. But Dylan looked at all the reasons why not
to do them, and he didn't find any that swayed him. So — so here we are. I don't post on Facebook a whole lot and
I was really nervous with posting anything that would come across as like self aggrandizing
or like, you know, look at me I'm such a great person for doing this and I think
the reason to do it in spite of that concern would be if I can persuade someone to do it. I think that kidney donation is contagious
in that way. Well and it certainly was for me, that I did
it because people I knew had done it and so hopefully that chain, which will remain open-ended
can keep going. I’m trying to steel myself and know that
it’s not going to be a cake walk recovering and that it’s going to involve imposition
on people I care about more than I’m usually comfortable with. We have to mark your left side before we go
back. My left or your left? Your left. My left, OK. But knock wood, in two months time I’ll be
doing all the same things I was doing before. Someone will have a kidney in Ohio and be
living a more active life. So we had the conference call last night kicking
off this chain. It’s a big deal and you know, a lot of people
will get transplanted because of this chain that’s created. So it’s a great thing. And we’ll see you back there. And when we’re done we’ll come find you
in the waiting room, OK? Any questions? So here’s Dylan. His kidney went to this hospital, The Christ
Hospital in Ohio. And then the Christ Hospital donor went to
Georgetown Hospital in DC. Then the Georgetown donor went to a recipient
at UCLA in California. And then the UCLA donor went to University
of California, San Francisco. The last person would have been someone on
the waiting list. So, how are you doing? I’m good. I’m good. I’ve only thrown up once so far. So there’s that. And they have a bunch of exercises that I
have to do. And so on. Apparently that keeps me from getting pnemonia. Science is a magical thing. And then I have to do coughs with my cough
buddy 3 times an hour. Still pretty painful but not super painful
the way it was yesterday or the day before. Yeah well and it’s not something I would
have envisioned yesterday or the day before, that each day has been sort of an exponential
improvement on the last. So the first few days are really painful. I shouldn’t sugar-coat that at all. But really amazing thing is how fast it went
away. It was two weeks to get back to work and then
another week after that to just feeling totally fine. And do you think other people should do this? Totally. I think if this is something you want to do,
you should do this. In the most basic of senses, everyone does
not need to do this because if everyone gave their kidney, there would be way too many
kidneys floating around. But more people should do this and people
in a position to do this should do this. And you know, I think people who struggle
with whether their career is making an impact or if they're doing the right thing, as we
all struggle with that and I struggle with that, it is one way to really make a concrete
impact and really help someone and know that you're helping them. It’s now March. March 30th. And I got a letter from my recipient. He was on dialysis for 15 months. I’m in relatively good shape physically
and have high hopes to now live perhaps 20 or 25 years with the kidney which you so graciously gave,
which was an excellent match for me. Let me say again, thank you from the bottom
of my heart and assure you I will take most excellent care of your kidney. That’s all I can really ask. Every 10 years after the Census, states redraw
the borders of their legislative districts. In most states, politicians get to control
that process, And if they’re clever about how the districts
are drawn... they can make it easier for their own party
to win more of them. It’s called “partisan gerrymandering”
and it’s bad for democracy, but the Supreme Court hasn’t intervened in decades. the Supreme Court has yet to settle on a standard
or definition of political fairness. They just simply don't want to declare a partisan
gerrymander without some way to measure them. That’s what Cho’s research team is trying
to fix...with a supercomputer. [Vox]
So we're trying to build a measurement tool to help the court measure whether political
parties have manipulated a map to gain an unfair advantage. In other words, they’re making a gerrymandering
ruler. So when you re-district there's a phenomenal
degree of possible manipulation. Almost any shape you want to make is possible. That’s led to a bunch of oddly shaped districts. The court wants to be able to determine the
intent behind the district maps. Basically they want to read the mind of the
map drawer. It doesn't have any way to do this. The team started developing their tool by
identifying what criteria are important to the court. Some criteria are required by law
for instance we have to have about the same number people in every district, and all districts have to be contiguous. Contiguous means they can’t be broken up
into a bunch of pieces, with some exceptions. The court wants districts to preserve political
subdivisions like cities, counties, municipal boundaries... Whenever you find an identifiable community
of like minded individuals, the court likes it when those people are kept together in
the same district. Wendy’s team is using a supercomputer to
generate district maps based on those criteria. so we can create a million or billion maps
using only the criteria required by law, and the traditional districting principles. And we don't use any political information. ... So these are by definition non partisan
maps because they don't use political information. If the current map doesn’t look like any
of the possibilities generated by the algorithm... That’s a good indication a partisan gerrymander
has occurred. If a billion of these different possible nonpartisan
maps are really different from the map the court is evaluating then the Supreme Court
has some evidence that partisanship was part of the motivation behind the alleged partisan
gerrymander. If we then have a computer draw another billion
maps where we we actually code in partisan information in addition to these other criteria
that the court likes and those maps actually appear similar to the map in question then
the Supreme Court can rightly infer partisan motivation. Right now, there’s no guarantee that this
particular algorithm will ever be used as evidence in a court argument. But a handful of cases could be heard by the
Court this year. Syria's war is mess. After 6 years, the conflict is divided between
four sides, each side with foreign backers. And those foreign backers don't even agree
with each other on who they are fighting for and who they are fighting against. And now, Syria’s use of chemical weapons has
provoked President Donald Trump to directly attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This is a major development, because, up until now, the US has only been focused on fighting ISIS. To understand the criss-crossing interventions
and battle lines in Syria today, and how it got this way, it helps to go back to the beginning of the conflict and watch to see how it unfolded. The first shots in the war were fired, in March
2011, by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against peaceful Arab Spring demonstrators. In July the protesters start shooting back, and some Syrian troops
even defect from the Syrian army to join them. They call themselves the Free Syrian Army
and the uprising becomes a civil war. Extremists from around the region and the world start traveling to Syria to join the rebels. Now, Assad actually encourages this by releasing
jihadist prisoners to tinge the rebellion with extremism and make it harder for foreign
backers to support them. In January 2012, al-Qaeda forms a new branch
in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. Also around that time, Syrian Kurdish groups, who
had long sought autonomy, take up arms and informally secede from Assad's rule in the
north. That summer is when Syria becomes a proxy
war. Iran, Assad's most important ally, intervenes
on his behalf. By the end of 2012, Iran is sending daily
cargo flights and has hundreds of officers on the ground. At the same time, the oil-rich Arab states
on the Persian Gulf begin sending money and weapons to the rebels, mainly to counter Iran’s
influence. Iran steps up its influence in turn, in mid-2012 when Hezbollah,
 a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, invades to fight along Assad. In turn the Gulf States respond, Saudi Arabia really stepping up this time, to send more money and weapons to the rebels, This time through Jordan who
also opposes Assad. By 2013, the Middle East is divided between mostly Sunni powers, generally supporting the rebels, and Shias, generally supporting Assad. That April, the Obama administration, horrified by Assad's atrocities and the mounting death toll, signs a secret order authorizing the
CIA to train and equip Syrian rebels. But the program stalls. At the same time, the US quietly urges Arab
Gulf states to stop funding extremists, but their requests basically go ignored. In August, the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, provoking condemnation around the world Obama: "Men, women, and children lying in rows – killed by poison gas..." It is in the national security interests of
the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons
through a targeted military strike. Russia proposed on Monday that Syria surrender
control over its chemical weapons to the international community for its eventual dismantling, to avoid a US military strike. The US ends up backing down, but the whole thing establishes Syria as a great-powers dispute, with Russia backing Assad and the US opposing him. Just weeks later, the first American CIA training
and arms reach Syrian rebels. The US is now a participant in the war. In February 2014, something happens that transforms
the war: an al-Qaeda affiliate, based mostly in Iraq, breaks away from the group over internal
disagreements. The group calls itself the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and it becomes al-Qaeda's enemy. ISIS mostly fights not Assad, but other
rebels and Kurds, carving out a mini-state it calls its Caliphate. That summer, it marches across Iraq seizing
territory, galvanizing the world against it. In September, one year after the US almost
bombed Assad, it begins bombing ISIS. Obama: “We're moving ahead with our campaign
of airstrikes against these terrorists, and we're prepared to take action against
ISIL in Syria as well.” That summer, in July, the Pentagon launches
its own program to train Syrian rebels — but will only those who'll fight ISIS, not Assad. The program fizzles, showing that America
now opposes ISIS more than Assad, but that there's also no like-minded Syrian proxy forces on the ground in Syria. In August, Turkey starts bombing Kurdish groups in
Iraq and in Turkey, even as these Kurdish groups are fight ISIS in Syria. But Turkey doesn't bomb ISIS. This gets to one of the big problems in this conflict: the US sees ISIS
as its main enemy, but the US’ allies like Turkey and a lot of other Middle Eastern states have
other priorities. This makes for a lot of unclear and confusing alliances. The next month, in September, Russia intervenes
on behalf of Assad, sending a few dozen military aircraft to a long-held Russian base in the
country. Russia says it's there to bomb ISIS, but in fact only ends up bombing anti-Assad rebels, including some backed by the US. The next year, Donald Trump wins the White
House, vowing to stay out of Syria, and signaling that Assad should be able to stay in power. At the end of 2016, Assad, helped by Russian
airpower and Iranian sponsored militias, retakes the Syrian city of Aleppo, knocking the rebels
out of their last remaining urban stronghold. Then, in Spring 2017, Assad once again
uses chemical weapons against his people, killing 85, including 20 children. Back in the US, Trump says his attitude toward
Syria and Assad has “changed very much” due to the attacks. He vows to respond and within days the White House launches dozens
of tomahawk missiles that strike an airbase in Syria. This is the first time the United States has directly attacked the Assad regime. This adds yet another criss crossing complication
to an already multidimensional civil war. So as it stands now, Syria is in ruins. Even as Assad recaptures land, the rebellion
perseveres. And with outside countries fueling each of
the groups, it’s clear that there is still no end in sight. [Music] on Tuesday Syrian dictator Bashar al-assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent tonight I ordered a targeted military statement on the airfield in Syria from where a chemical attack was launched it is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter to spread and use of deadly chemical weapons [Music] you [Music] There’s a problem with Neil Gorsuch’s
nomination for the Supreme Court, and it’s actually not Neil Gorsuch. He is, by all accounts, a brilliant jurist
and a kind man. But he is an extremely conservative judge
at a moment when an extremely conservative judge makes a mockery of the popular will. Look, this is a time, if ever there was one,
for a compromise nominee, and Gorsuch just isn’t a compromise nominee. Republicans do not need to nominate a liberal,
but Democrats should insist they nominate a justice more in the mold of Anthony Kennedy
than Scalia. A bit of history is important here. Antonin Scalia’s seat came open under a
Democratic president and a Republican Senate. This should have led to a centrist nominee. And President Barack Obama, to his credit,
tried to offer one: Merrick Garland, who had previously been suggested for the Court by
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Republicans, it’s important to note, did
not oppose Garland. They just refused to consider him, or anyone
else, for the opening. Reporter: Senator, just to confirm. McConnell: This nomination ought to be made
by the next president. Reporter: So just to ... so just to put a
button on this, are you ruling it out 100 percent? McConnell: Yes. They insisted no opening on the Court could
be filled in an election year — an absurd faux principle which implies that vacancies
on the Court must be left unfilled fully 50 percent of the time. They don’t believe that, nobody believes
that. But having blocked efforts to replace Scalia
under Obama, Republicans were of course relieved when Trump won the Electoral College. But, and this is important, Democrats decisively
won the popular vote and gained seats in the Senate. I don’t want to overstate this: US elections
are not decided by simply tallying up votes. But though the public will doesn’t decide
elections, it should still weigh on those who hold power. This is a time for a center-right nominee,
just as Obama put forward a center-left nominee in Garland. The choice is all the more important because
the Supreme Court is, itself, a strange and undemocratic institution. It is insulated from popular opinion, and
judges serve for life. Forcing it unnaturally out of step with the
public is bad for both the Court and for the country. Senate Democrats have the power to filibuster
nominees to the Supreme Court. And I don’t agree with those who think they
should filibuster anyone who isn’t Garland, as Sen. Jeff Merkley has threatened. But Democrats should insist on a compromise
nominee — it would be wise of them, actually, to offer a realistic list of more centrist
candidates, center-right candidates — and use the filibuster to give their position
teeth. It’s true that Republicans could eliminate
the filibuster with only 51 votes, but it’s actually not clear why that’s relevant. If the Supreme Court filibuster will be destroyed
the moment it is used, then it’s actually just a fiction, and there’s not much cost
to seeing it unmasked as such. If Republicans would prefer to destroy the
filibuster than make any accommodation with the majority of voters who wanted a Democratic
making this pick, that is their prerogative — at least the country and the Democrats’
base will know their Democrats did their best. Democrats need not be in the business of protecting
a filibuster they cannot use. It’s a mistake to see Supreme Court nominations
as about individual résumés rather than the country’s wishes. If the question is whether Gorsuch is qualified
then yeah, he’s qualified he’s very qualified. That is not the question. The question is whether Gorsuch should be
on the Court — whether he is the right pick for this moment, and for the decades in which
he’s likely to serve. And he is not. Republicans lost the popular vote in the presidential
election preceding Scalia’s death. They lost the popular vote in the presidential
election after Scalia’s death. The will of the people might not be all that
matters in politics, but nor should it be completely and utterly meaningless. The Supreme Court is undemocratic enough as
it is. It does not need to be made more so. More chune for your headtop so watch how you
speak on my name you know? If you’ve been keeping up with Drake’s
last few albums, you probably noticed a recurring Jamaican theme. There’s the implicit homage in some beats. And then there’s Drake’s use of patois. For a guy whose style goes from here to here he’s had mixed luck crafting a character
that can pull off this dialect. So, how does a kid with an American father
and European-Jewish mother end up with valid links to Jamaican dancehall? You can thank Toronto for that. It's where Drake grew up. And it’s a fact he loves to shout from the
rooftops. The city is known for its multiracial identity
– and it shows up in Drake’s music, his life, and also in the data. In ‘Still Here’ Drake asks ‘How did
I finesse all this shit from Jane and Weston?’ That intersection, Jane Street and Weston
Road, is on the outskirts of an enclave of Jamaican-Canadians. It’s on the west side of the city, where
Drake grew up... until he moved to a wealthier section in the center of the city, in the
6th grad. On the Eastern side of the city, you can see
another concentration of Jamaican neighborhoods, around Scarborough. That’s the filming location for Drake’s
pop culture debut on Degrassi. He references it in Worst Behavior. This ain’t the son you raised who used to
take the Acura at 5am then go and shoot Degrassi up on Morningside. So in 2001 about 71% of Canada’s Jamaican
population lived in Toronto. And Drake has really been playing up his connection
to that identity in his music lately. Take that track at the top of this video;
it was produced by Boi-1da, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, but raised in Toronto. That migration is pretty common in Ontario. The province has by far been the most popular
destination for Caribbean-Canadian immigrants since the 1960s. Granted, only 3% of Toronto citizens are Jamaican. So people on the internet are having this
conversation about whether all of this is authentic, or if Drake is taking advantage
of some convenient cultural cachet. But when you hear Drake breaking into this
accent, know that it’s because he just wants you to see him as a young guy from Toronto. Even if he lives in LA now. I cannot believe there are two million of you out there. Just last July, there were 1 million 
and we recommended some channels. So this time, we're just going to recommend some more videos that we think should get some more eyeballs. The one I'm going to recommend, 
it's been seen by a lot of people, but I think many many more should see it as the progenitor explainer videos called powers of 10. It's by Charles and Ray Eames was made in 1977, and it shows you life from the closest perspective
and the widest possible you can see it from. And if you're not going to listen to my recommendation; you should probably listen to Estelle. Estelle: You have to watch this interview 
with Nardwuar and Questlove. Narduar is a Canadian radio DJ,
and he blows Questlove's mind over the course of 40 minutes
with the amount of knowledge he has about hip hop, Philadelphia and Questlove himself. MAC: My video is slow TV, and it's just shot from this train in Norway, and it's seven hours of pure relaxation. Now, all sorts of people are doing it,
and there's all sorts of versions of slow TV. But, I want to recommend the original if you're ever feeling like you need a break. Gina: The video I want to recommend is Tank And The Bangas from NPR Music Tiny Desk series. They are the 2017 winners, and their music is awesome. Or, check out Carlos's recommendations, 
Carlos Maza, there's two Carlos yet. Carlos: I recommend Lighthouses by Patrick Maloney which is a spoken word poem about fear, ambition, humility and love, 
and it's something through a lot of really rough times. It is when you need poetry the most. Carlos: I love this videom,
it's called the watch town of turkey. And it's just really good cinematography
and sound design, so enjoy it. Matteen: All right, check out Matteen's film:
Shouting In the Dark. It's about what happened in the tiny island nation
of Al Jazeera: Arab spring in 2011. It's still timely. - Or, whatever John says, Joss: So there's a video series you can see that was produced by a German Public radio station ilive and it features a Canadian pianist breaking down
your favorite pop song. Check out! Phil: This video by cinematography database
is a great breakdown of the movie arrival. I love it because it's just as typically detailed and kind of nerdy, as everything that you'll find The Channel. Christophe: My favorite
internet video recently is from GQ. They did a compilation of every time
Sean Spicer on his misspoken. He's made up words like
Laster Day and all around the Globe. Sean Spicer: Congress is lowering Drung prices, recast a historic deciding vote for secretary of "Esidesigejucation". Val: So I happen to be googling city relaxation,
and I found this video. It's got chet baker music. It's the old lady, 
checking out a chair, and it makes no sense. but I think it's art. Dean: So New York Car Guys is a Web series, where the two hosts Joe Formaggino and another Joe Formaggino talk about something that most new Yorkers
just can't get enough of cars and Vans. Coleman: Mine is a video essay by the criterion collection on how swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was inspired by his own dreams, and how he used films convey what it feels like can't be true. - And you should watch Cosmo because with really really good music and creative editing, you can make a video that's even
about fishing really really exciting. - I like to watch [Dion], it's at work, and I rewatched
this clip of Nathan for you the other day. And I was like crying, while I was working. - So my favorite video for the past year has been this one with Black Thought who's the lead MC, the Roots. He's at Harvard doing this like an interview.
And he goes on this five-minute freestyle that to me, is one of the most beautiful 
and intelligent things on the internet right now. You should definitely check it out. Thank you so much for subscribing, 
and thank you for sticking with us. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. This is all what I said, 
thanks for watching. Late-night comedians have become rock stars in the Trump era. [John Oliver] "He's tweeting the chancellor of Germany like a drunk guy masturbating in a subway car!" Between Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Colbert, Myers, SNL, Comedians are playing a big part in how we talk about politics. [Seth Myers] "Trump does have a tendency to lie his ass off. That's why Chris Christie is always there to catch it." But if you look past the jokes and side gags, these comedians are doing a really good job of covering Trump. Sometimes better than serious news networks. [Samantha Bee] "Nice misdirection Chris Angel, but you can't just shake your keys and distract us. We're not cable news, we're Americans." And that's because political satire has something that TV news lacks: a really low tolerance for bullshit. Part of what makes Trump such an easy target for satire, is that a lot of what he says is ridiculous. [Donald Trump] "I know more about ISIS than the generals do." That makes him a gold mine for political comedians. [Seth Myers] "How low has President Obama gone to tap-puhpuh my phones." But it poses a real challenge for traditional journalists who aren't used to covering someone like Trump. [Sophia McClennen] "The news media sort of seems like it has to take it seriously in order to be taken seriously." This is Sophia McClennen, She's written a couple of books about how political satire makes us smarter new consumers. And she argues that part of why satire is better at covering Trump, Is that traditional journalists don't always know when to call bullshit. Look at what happened after trump tweeted that Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. Comedians all covered it basically the same way. They said it was baseless. [Stephen Colbert] "Trump has not produced a shred of evidence." [Oliver] "There was no evidence, to Trump's claims." Pointed out that it came from a fringe conspiracy theorist. [Bee] "A do-laly radio host." [Myers] "Right-Wing radio host and unlicensed Gynecologist Mark Levin." And then made clear how bonkers this whole thing was [Colbert] "The craziest thing about trump calling for an investigation without any evidence... Is that it actually worked! Congress is going to investigate Trump's wiretapping claim." Now compare that to the way that major news networks covered that same story They correctly reported that Trump's claim was false [Anderson Cooper] "No facts to back up this startling allegation." But then went on to spend segment after segment after segment hosting debates about it. [arguing] They interviewed intelligence experts and government officials. [Interviewer] "What did you think when you first heard about it?" They argued with paid Trump supporters about basic reality. [Interviewer] "Andre, read the story that's not it said." [Woman] "This would be included in the definition of wired," [offscreen] "That's not what he said." [crosstalk] They spent hours fixating on whether there might be evidence at some point down the road, maybe, That shows Trump wasn't just making it up. [Woman] "Look, I think he is going off of information that he's saying that has led him to believe, That this is a very real potential, and if it is, if this happened--" [offscreen] If! If! If! If! [laughing] I- I.. The problem with this kind of coverage isn't that it's inaccurate, It's that it takes bullshit way too seriously. [Woman] "There could be something that comes out in two weeks, and if there is we're having a different conversation." It'd be like hosting a serious debate about whether the Earth is flat. Or whether Celine Dion can sing. Or whether I wear underwear on recording days. [offscreen] dude. It gets really hot here. And research shows that this kind of coverage rots our brains. When we watch these kinds of he-said she-said debates, We're less likely to think that we can figure out the truth. We get disillusioned, our brains check out. And this could happen even when a news outlet tells you one side is wrong. The mere repetition of rumors and falsehoods makes audiences more likely to see those things as credible. [Man] "I don't think that he owes them an apology. I think what we need is an investigation." And the inability to separate real stories from bullshit, Means news networks have less time to focus on things that actually affect people lives. Which is why while 24-hour news networks fill their airtime with screaming matches, Much shorter comedy shows have found time to do in-depth storytelling, about things like net neutrality, and State Legislative battles. [Bee] "Remember a year ago, We told you about a rape kit bill that was blocked, Here's the rest of that story." But this is bigger than debunking any one conspiracy theory. Satire is powerful because it trains your brain to be skeptical. To think critically about what politicians are saying. [Comedian] "He's using your words when you use the words and he uses them back. It's circular using of the word and that's for real." [McClennen] "Political satire is about showing you that the system is faking you out. It's kind of opening your eyes to basically lying. [Myers] "Yeah, that's a guy who's definitely lying." [McClennen] "It fires up the mind to say hmm... this doesn't seem right." Look at the coverage of Trump's address to Congress in February. TV news commentators applauded his Presidential tone. "Not only was he more presidential, he was a politician." "Truly extraordinary moment." "That was one of the most extraordinary moments." It was the comedians who saw through the theater of Trump's performance. [Colbert] "Trump may have changed his tone, But that doesn't change the content of what he said." [Bee] "Managed to talk about his dystopian agenda using an indoor voice. HORRAY!" In cases like this satire isn't debunking specific falsehoods. It's encouraging you to look behind the curtain. To recognize bullshit artistry, and laugh at it even when journalists don't get the joke. [Bee] "If Pundits set the bar for President Trump any lower, Even Jeff Sessions will be able to walk under it without bumping his head." Thankfully some journalists are starting to get the joke. Like CNN host, and permanent fixture on my vision board, Jake Tapper. Tapper has started using sarcasm and humor to deal with his visible frustration with covering Trump "Obama tapped my phone" island. Population: President Trump. Listen to his reaction when a trump supporter accuses him of nitpicking trump's comments. [Woman] "Just beating down on certain little one-word sentences." [Tapper] "How dare we cover the comments he makes." Ooh! God damn, Jake What Tapper's doing here isn't bias or partisanship, he's using common sense people think of satire is very partisan, but, the point is that, satirists are after, good rational thinking what you see that the satirist have that would be lovely to see in the Basic news Media is this sort of defensive reason What makes satire such a powerful antidote to Trumpism, Isn't that it's funny. It is not possible that millions of people voted illegally and nobody noticed. It's that for satire to work, it has to be able to point out what is ridiculous and absurd To cut through talking points and endless panel discussions and describe the world as it really is but comedians Shouldn't be the only ones doing that. We think that the journalist's job is to show all sides of the story but the journalist's job is to show the truth and sometimes, in this case, going after truth is going to be funny because the lies are so absurd that you can't help but laugh. Volunteer Transcribed. Alvin: So when you get your dog, and you’re
like 11 years old… they never tell you what to expect down the road. The only thing that they tell you is...
"You have to clean after your dog." This is Alvin and his dog Rainbow. They spent 18 years together since Alvin was
just 11, and last year... My dog was dying, and I couldn’t work. When a dog's dying… it really does feels
like a human is dying and there’s a reason for that. Keep going! Come here! When I graduated college, my parents went
away to work abroad and so when Rainbow was 10 years old, she came to live with me in
New York. Everytime my dog got sick or every time I
had to go home at 6 o’clock to feed my dog— I was a 22 year old, I didn’t really know
how to do that. But eventually we kind of figured out how to talk
to each other. We figured out what each other needed. Even as she was losing her vision, and her
hearing, and her continence… there still was that communication. Dogs are the most popular pet in the US — more
than one in three households have one. And if you’re among them, you can probably
relate to this non-verbal communication that Alvin’s talking about. The relationship dates back tens of thousands
of years, when wolves and humans became companions. Scientists disagree about whether it was wolves
or humans that initiated the relationship, but both stood to benefit. One anthropologist, Pat Shipman, believes
a hunting alliance between wolf-dogs and people helps explain why humans survived while Neanderthals
died out. Shipman: I think our relationship with animals
has really been fundamental to our survival. And by starting this cooperative arrangement
with wolves or wolf-dogs, we began laying the foundation for relationship we have with animals, we have domesticated today. But the idea of non-working, dependent animals
is fairly new. The word “pet” was first used in the early
1500s to describe spoiled children or “any person indulged or treated as a favorite.” Then by the mid-sixteenth century, the word
took on animals as well, specifically orphan lambs that needed to be raised by hand. These days, 86% of adult pet-owners in the
US say that they consider their pets part of their family. According to historian Katherine Grier, the
reason we began caring for animals is "... connected to changing ideas about human nature, emotional
life, individual responsibility, and our society's obligations to all kinds of dependent others.." That empathy easily extends to dogs, who we’ve
had social relationships with for thousands of years. Shipman: Because we’re both genetically
programmed for that interaction. We have helped the survival of the ones that
communicate better with us. There’s a lot of evolution underlying this. And that gives us that feeling with our cats and dogs, that they’re basically furry family members. To understand the human-dog relationship,
some psychologists have invoked a concept called Attachment Theory. Most humans have this biological need to form attachments with other humans. This idea was first developed by a British
psychiatrist, John Bowlby. And he believed that evolution programmed
humans to form attachments to boost their chances of survival. First, it’s your mom and then you find other
people... Like your friends or romantic partners. But researchers have found that we can form
these attachments with our pets as well. Especially dogs. Studies have shown that dogs’ interactions
with their owners are similar in some ways to infants’ responses to their mothers. They experience separation anxiety and look
for  their owners when under stress. [Dog crying] It’s a much more simpler relationship. I struggle with with anxiety a lot. A lot
of times, it's anxiety about other human beings. And having a dog who I never had
to question, whether or not, my dog loved me or whether or not my dog wanted to be around
me. It was such an honest relationship. It might be a silly... A silly thing to cling to but it was important. It was definitely important for survival. I think that plays a part in why I was so
thankful for her. Researchers have found that interacting with
a dog can reduce stress hormones and blood pressure. But the unusual bond we form with dogs — a bond tens of thousands of years in the making — it means that saying goodbye is... hard. I remember one day I came home and I said
I think I have to call the vet… I called my mom and couldn't say it. I just couldn't tell her that
I was scheduling my dog’s death, essentially. And... Literally that night I went to a bar and
from the back of the bar I Googled ‘How do you know when it’s time for your dog’ And... All the... everything that I read.... Not really helpful, because I just knew it was time. I just wanted someone to tell me that it wasn’t
time for my dog... There are 2 shots. The first shot calms your dog down, and the
second one stops your dog's heart. And the vet asked me "Do you want... Just tell me when..." "Whenever you’re ready.” And... It's like... what do you say? “Okay, I’m ready?” So… it was very mechanical. “Okay, go ahead… okay, go ahead.” And a lot of the feelings I was having... They were very similar to when my grandma had passed away. I was there during her last days... and we knew she was passing. She was in hospice
care. It was a feeling of... both it is time. You've meant so much to me... and I'm so thankful, and I don’t know how to tell you. So the reason it feels like a human has died
is because dogs are a lot like us. Their life arc is our life arc. From city to suburb, from tragedy to bliss. And... when they pass away, that’s what we lose. Luna... Aww... [Laughing] This video was based on an article that Alvin wrote last year about losing Rainbow. I'll link the article down below, make sure to read it. We’ve all been there: after a long day at
work, you sit down and binge-read some Arthurian romances. They’re called “illuminated manuscripts”
- because they’re illuminated with illustrations in the
borders, colorful drawings,
and very … special doodles in the margins. But among all those steroidal rabbits
and this hooded person laying literal eggs, there’s actually a theme... A lot of medieval knights in these manuscripts
are...fighting snails. Why is this happening? The largest snail alive is 15.5 inches, snout
to tail. So why does this knight look like he’s in
for the fight of his life? Illuminated manuscripts were handwritten. Scribes painstakingly transcribed the same
bibles, devotionals, and stories. They also decorated the margins. By the 1960s, one scholar thought those margins
were worth attention. Lillian Randall
was particularly intrigued by “The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare.” She developed a theory about why a book like
this might include a winged knight fleeing snails. And why it showed up again and again and again. Randall found more than 70 snail-fighting
heroes in just 29 manuscripts, most of which were made between 1290 and 1310. Pray for yourself, knight. Pray that the snail will kill you quickly. Sometimes the margins riffed on the text,
sometimes they were disconnected. But Randall connected them to historical stereotypes. The biggest was that the “Lombards” were
greedy, mean, and cowardly. The Lombards were a Germanic people that had
invaded Italy. They were warriors. But in 772, they were
badly beaten by Charlemagne. That permanently stained their reputation. By the late 1200s — when those snail pictures
started getting popular — the Lombards had become lenders and pawnbrokers spread throughout
Europe. They didn’t have full rights, they couldn’t
even own arms. But they did have power. That combination of power and impotence, Randall
argued, made them targets. “Snail” was the appropriate insult. Snails carried their houses on their backs
as they retreated, just as the Lombards had from Charlemagne. They were slimy, like a lot of Europeans probably
saw their lenders. Calling Lombards snails was an anti-foreign
slur that later grew into a bigger trope. It appeared in what was probably a medieval
pattern book, with models that helped other scribes draw. And snails showed up in many different combinations
later on. Here’s a snail/monkey/rabbit battle royale
from the 1400s. Snails were slow. But they spread. We can’t be certain what the knights and
snails meant because they meant different things as the image became a cliche. The same way people don’t explain their
memes today, scribes didn’t annotate their games in the margins. Randall’s argument fits with the timing
and history. But people also speculate that snails represented
the slowness of time, or the insulation of the ruling class. We can only be certain about one thing. The snails reveal something, along with everything
else in the margins. As scribes labored over transcriptions of
hallowed works, reproducing every line, they snuck in additions, jokes, and riffs,
in the margins of the text. The drawings were fantasies. But they were made by artists who sought to
parody the indignities and absurdities of their own world. The margins were the only space left. So they turned them into a self-portrait. Except for this guy. He’s just going to get murdered by a snail. So this video just scratches the surface when
it comes to weird medieval art and possible interpretations. Michael Camille wrote a whole book about art
in the margins and he highlights one figure: it’s the gryllus, and he’s supposed to
represent bodily appetites. It’s very cute and a little disgusting. Old TV shows made it seem really easy to appeal
to the Supreme Court. Like when this lady wanted to fight her speeding ticket. Or on Gilligan’s Island, when Thurston Howell
is locked in a bamboo jail and he says, But even though they make it sound like a right, nobody is entitled to an appearance at the Supreme Court. That’s entirely at the discretion of the Justices and they choose very carefully. Only a small number of cases get to the Supreme
Court, and it’s getting smaller. Roughly 8,000 cases are submitted each year,
but only 80 cases are accepted. That’s a 1% acceptance rate. And to get to that 1%, most cases start at
the bottom. The federal court system consists of three
layers and the lowest is the district level. If you lose in a district court you can appeal
to the circuit level. Most of The United States is divided into
eleven circuits, but there’s a twelfth for DC and a federal circuit that mostly hears patent
and military cases. Above the circuit level is the Supreme Court,
the highest court in the land as long as you don’t count the basketball
court that’s above the Supreme Court. And to get to the Supreme Court, nearly all
cases require submitting something called a "petition for a writ of certio- certioror? certiori? “The writ of certiorari”, which is shortened,
usually, to “the writ of cert”. A petition for the writ of cert is a written
request asking the Supreme Court to hear a case. Instead of asking the court to resolve the facts of a case, which are nearly always settled in lower courts, the reasons for granting the petition concern important questions about federal law. The overarching goal of the court is to make sure that federal law is the same across the country and, so, by federal law I mean the
US Constitution and laws passed by Congress. Professor Greene clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens, where he became very familiar with cert petitions. That’s because the clerks review cert petitions
for their justices, who then choose to grant a petition if it
passes “the rule of four”, meaning that four justices want to hear the case. When the court does not grant cert, it does
not imply a decision. It doesn’t mean that it agrees with the
lower court. It doesn’t mean that the individual justices agree with the lower court decision.
It just means that the court has decided that this particular case is not a case where the court is going to choose to set law for the whole country. If cert is granted, a case probably falls into one of three categories describing most Supreme Court cases. The first is a case of national importance, such as when the court decided Bush v. Gore in order to help determine who had won the 2000 presidential election. “Drawing on very rarely used legal powers,
The Supreme Court has, for the first time in American history, decided to step into
a legal dispute in the midst of a presidential election." A second type of case is when a lower court
issues a ruling that invalidates federal law. An example is "Gonsalez v. Raich", in which
Angel Raich, a California woman, challenged federal drug laws after agents destroyed marijuana plants she had been consuming for medical use. On her appeal in the Ninth Circuit, judges
ruled in favor of Raich, deciding that she was compliant with a state
law authorizing her use of medical pot. But that ruling conflicted with federal law
prohibiting marijuana use. So when the Ninth Circuit said "it doesn’t
apply" that means that if you are medical marijuana user in California then you can use it without
fear of federal prosecution, but if you are a medical marijuana user in Florida or in New York then it’s still banned under federal law. By ruling on the case, Justices were able to establish the authority of federal law
prohibiting the use of medical marijuana. In the Raich case, the Supreme Court overruled
the Ninth Circuit and said that the federal drug laws can apply to local marijuana use,
which means that someone like Angel Raich can still be prosecuted under federal law
even though she can’t be prosecuted under state law. Third, the court accepts cases in order to
resolve a split decision in the lower courts. This happened in the case "Obergefell v. Hodges", where a Sixth Circuit ruling that banned same-sex marriage conflicted with rulings in other
circuits that had upheld the right to same-sex marriage. Obergefell was someone living in Ohio who wanted to marry his same-sex partner and was not permitted to do so under Ohio law. It made its way to the Sixth Circuit. The
Sixth Circuit said, “you have no right to be married because you are a same-sex couple” and that created a “split”: a division of authority between
the Sixth Circuit, which governs Ohio, and a number of other circuit courts. And so, once that happened, it was fairly clear to, I think, most legal observers that the Supreme Court was likely to hear the case because it meant that federal law, the federal Constitution in this case, applied differently in Ohio than it would in Pennsylvania, for example. By ruling in favor of Obergefell, the court
resolved a circuit split and made same-sex marriage a right nationwide. But these three categories are just a framework for understanding why The Court might select a case. They are not rules. Ultimately, which cases get to the court depends
on the decisions of individuals: the sitting justices of The US Supreme Court. This is Amber Galloway Gallego, she's interpreting a song for you in traditional American Sign Language. Now here's the same song but it's in a specialized version of American Sign Language just for music. You might actually recognize this riff it's from "Don't Wanna Fight" by Alabama Shakes. So which one connects you more with the music? Hi I'm Amber Galloway Gallego. She's interpreted concerts in ASL for literally every artist view you could think of. Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Drake. I think it's up to 400 a little bit over 400 now. Amber is a part of a growing number of ASL interpreters that work to translate a hearing centric music world into a visual one. I want to introduce you to three very talented women please welcome Holly Maniatty.  That's Holly. and Jo Rose Benfield and Amber Galloway Gallego each of these women is a nationally certified sign language interpreter and even more importantly they have fun with it. ASL, American Sign Language is fairly new it was only technically like really approved in the early 1960s saying yes it's an official language. It has its own rules for grammar and syntax and there are five parameters that everyone has to follow. The first is hand shape. Now this is a sign for mom and this is a sign for dad. The hand shape in both cases has to look like this. You have palm orientation, so your palm can't be facing down or up. And then there's location. The hand has to be placed on the chin for mom and the forehead for dad. And then you have movement. The fingers have to wiggle or they can bounce. And finally there are the nonmanual markers. These nonmanual markers are vital in conveying instrumental sounds. That's going to be the expression here, but also the expression that happens on your body right like usually it's like mom but it's like mah, dah. The deaf community is made up of a diverse group of people who have a wide range of residual hearing. Some might be able to hear lower frequencies like drums or bass but not higher frequencies like vocals or guitars. And of course, everyone can feel the vibrations of music especially at live events. So what the interpreters have done for many years is they've ignored the sounds and solely focused on the English. So this is a sign for music right like this can you see it? So you'll hear music and this is what the interpret does "music" and that's all they do and that's what they have been doing for years and years and years. So here's how Amber solved this problem. I thought about basses and how thick they sound right?   And when there's a fat person they'll be like this like they'll show a person like this but they do this. You have to do this to show thickness and density right so you'll see my lower sounds are lower put here and then my higher sounds go up and you'll see my facials move to that so I'm like wow like the wow wow wow so you'll see that bow wow and then I show this to show the waviness. There's actually footage of her doing this exact thing on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers if we merely show the sign for music then we are doing an injustice as an interpreter. So after listening to the beat and how their their tonality is and all the instruments then what I do is I break it down from English to ASL. So rhyming, metaphor, and wordplay are an intrinsic part of lyrical music especially hip-hop so how do you translate that to a visual form of communication? Let's look at Eminem's "The Monster" featuring Rihanna. Ok where he says "in the draft turn nothing into something still can make that straw into gold chump I will spin Rumpelstiltskin in a haystack" Rumpelstiltskin is the fairy tale about straw turning into gold. So that part is where I take it and I take it the rhymes out of my pocket and I write and then I show it like that like it's like I'm expressing it that's how you like express and then I show it become a gold record and then I say "poom" where he says "chump" where it's like "I beat you." Of course this all has to happen at the rate in which Eminem raps. "It's payback Russell Wilson Falling way back in the draft Turn nothing into something still can make that, straw into gold chump, I will spin Rumpelstiltskin in a haystack. You can also combine two signs in ASL to convey wordplay. Amber did this with Future's "F*ck Ups Some Commas" Fuck up some commas let's fuck up some commas. Let's fuck up some commas This is a sign for like commas like showing the number but I did it with the "fuck up" with "fuck" so i did that. So you might not be able to rhyme in ASL but you can certainly get the cleverness across. You have to truncate your signs to be able to keep up with the beat to make sure it's looking like rap. Since the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 concert venues have been required to provide interpreters for deaf attendees. When asking to get services that is the biggest barrier that we have in the world today. It's vitally important that concert venues hire interpreters who understand the emotional power of music. Like for example like the national anthem like if you were to interpret Whitney Houston's is going to be drastically different than like Barbra Streisand's right? And we can't just say I'm standardizing the sign and this is what I'm going to always sign. Like for the sign "brave" right you do "brave" and I'll see some people just go through the motions of the actual signs and then they'll do "brave" and Whitney Houston still singing you know going through her long-ass "brave." That's the whole reason to go to music events is to be a part of this experience and forget about the rest of the world and be there in that moment and so many times deaf people are not allowed that experience because we as hearing people choose to say no For an urban listener, there are several
choices on the radio dial and NPR is going to be one of them, but here in rural Alaska
and lots of rural parts of the country, NPR, or tribal stations that carry NPR, are the
only station. Without KYUK without public broadcasting here,
it would essentially be an information dark zone for households all over this area. Right now in Washington, DC, there’s a bill
to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting... The CPB receives about $450 million a year
from the government and then distributes it to PBS, NPR, and hundreds of local TV and
radio stations. ...on top of that, we’ve got a president
who’s put out a budget that also calls for the elimination of public broadcasting. Can we really continue to ask a coal miner
in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we
will. But we can’t ask them to continue to pay
for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We do have internet but a lot of the time
the speeds are slow. We are looking at some of the highest rates
in the nation. So not everyone can afford it. But even if everyone could afford to have
cable or dish or internet, what they would be lacking without KYUK is any sort of daily
local journalism and information. We live in a census area where Yupik is the
main language spoken. So we translate our newscasts in Yupik. so that everyone can understand in a language
that they understand best what’s going on in the world. Threats to government funding of public media,
it’s nothing new. I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the
subsidy to PBS, I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like
you too. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting began
in 1967; By 1969, Mr. Rogers was already before the US Senate, testifying for them to not
cut funding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides
about 60% of our funding. 10% of our funding comes from the state. The other 30% we raise on our own. As a small station operating in an area that’s
economically impoverished, the economy is not strong. Government funding is vital. If federal funding were cut for the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, there would be information blackouts in parts of the United States because
we simply couldn’t serve all the areas that we serve now, and other stations would be
in the same boat. I tell everyone that I come across, and I
would tell every politician, senator, congressperson the same thing: that without a fully informed
electorate we’re not a strong democracy, and to realize that information is something
that they need to prioritize as well, and that we can do it relatively inexpensively. A zero funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting would be devastating for rural Alaska. Absolutely devastating. Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia since 1999. In that time he's shaped the country into an authoritarian and militaristic society. He successfully invaded two of Russia's neighbors and strengthened ties with Syria and Iran. He's intent on pushing back against the Western world order... and it appears to be working. [Vladimir Putin, 17 years in power. The most powerful man in the world] To understand how one man could have such a powerful influence on his country, you need to go back to the chaos and corruption that gripped Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. When the Berlin walll fell, a 40 year old Putin was working as an undercover spy in East Germany for the Soviet security agency the KGB. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 new countries, including the new Russian Federation. In Putin's eyes Russia had just lost two million square miles of territory. He later called this a major geopolitical disaster of the century. Lamenting that tens of millions of his co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. The new government had to sell off nearly 45,000 public businesses like energy, mining, and communication companies that had been run by the communist regime. And it was chaos. The Russian economy was in a freefall and all these companies ended up in the hands of a few extremely wealthy men, known today as Russia's oligarchs. At the same time the new Russian state was having a hard time establishing itself. Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin was wildly unpopular for cooperating with the west. And to make matters worse he was an alcoholic and many Russians thought he was an embarrassment. In order to stay in power, he leaned on the support of these oligarchs, surrendering an immense amount of political power to them. This graph shows how inequality actually worsened after the fall of the Soviet Union. This is where Vladimir Putin enters politics. He leaves the KGB in 1991 and becomes the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Putin uses his position to give special treatment to friends and allies in the private sector. He helps them structure monopolies and regulates their competitors, quickly becoming a favorite among the oligarchs. Before long he's assembled a support network of oligarchs, crime bosses, and security officials, mostly fellow former KGB officers like he was. With their help he rapidly ascends to the upper echelon of the new Russian state. In 1999, president Boris Yeltsin appoints Putin, still relatively unknown in national politics, to be the prime minister. A fierce nationalist, Putin feared Yeltsin was letting the US dominate Russia and that NATO, the alliance that worked for decades to contain Soviet influence, would expand into the new liberated countries and surround Russia. Putin's goal then became to build a strong Russian state, one that would be both stable at home and capable of exercising more influence over its neighbors. And he quickly got his chance... During the post-Soviet chaos there was escalating violence in Chechnya, a region thatinformally seceded from Russia in the mid-90s. Chechen war lords and terrorists were pushing into Russian territory and attacking the border. In August 1999, a series of deadly bombings killed more than 300 people in several Russian cities, including Moscow. Putin, the new prime minister, immediately blames Chechen separatists for the attack. He regularly appears in Russian television claiming he will avenge Russia. The population quickly rallies around him. Putin's approval ratings jump from 2% before the bombing to forty-five percent after the bombings. Journalists later uncovered evidence that suggests Russian security services could have been complicit in the Moscow bombings, perhaps knowing they would spark support for a strong man like Putin. But a closed state investigation quickly quashed any dissenting theories. So Russia launches a popular and devastating war in Chechnya. The capital city of Grozny was leveled by Russian bombing and some estimated close to 80 thousand people died. And in less than a year russia successfully brings Chechnya back under its control. In December 1999 Yeltsin resigns making Putin the interim president. In May, during the bloody campaign in Chechnya, Putin wins the presidential election. He begins to shape the Russian state to his vision. Patronage and corruption remain some of his key tools, but he quickly suppresses the oligarchs under his rule. Those that support Putin are rewarded, those that don't are eliminated. "Well once Russia's richest man, imprisoned Kremlin critic and former oil magnate, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to 14 years in jail. This on a new conviction of embezzling oil. This is effectively a vendetta from Vladimir Putin. for getting involved in opposition of politics." With the oligarchy tamed, Putin was now free to move his vision outside of Russia's borders. At the time relations with the US are fairly good. Putin even vacationed at George W. Bush's summer home. "I looked a man in the eye I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy". But things were about to change... In August 2008, Russia invades Georgia, a former Soviet republic. It's a display of aggression and strength on behalf of pro-Russian separatists there. Russia quickly annexes two small parts of Georgia, drawing condemnation from all over the world. Interestingly though Putin was not president during the invasion. See, the Russian Constitution says the president can only serve two consecutive terms, but sets no limit on the total number of terms one can serve. So Putin took the Prime Minister role again when his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev served as president. When Obama is elected US president in 2008, he attempts to reset relations with Russia. And they make some progress. Most notably to limit both country's nuclear arsenals. But Putin remains paranoid about US intentions and remains opposed to these new relations. He's particularly bothered by US interventions in the Middle East, especially in Libya in 2011. He publicly criticized Medvedev for not vetoing the action in the UN Security Council. Putin announces his candidacy for president and wins the 2012 election by a preposterous margin. "Injustice says Dmitry this outrage can't continue. I'm here to say no to Putin". Putin starts his third term once again amid chaos. He doubles down on his authoritarian governance style at home and his militaristic strategy abroad. But in both cases, he showcases a mastery of information. He first took office in 2000, Putin has kept tight leash on Russian television. Essentially all news outlets are state-owned propaganda machines. His regime decides which stories air and how, always depicting him as the strong Russian leader. In 2012, he cracked down on human rights and civil liberties, making clear there was no room for dissent in his Russia. Using state television for example he administered a blistering campaign against a feminist and gay rights music group Pussy Riot. "The latest of the loudest of such performance for the so-called punk prayer the Christ the Savior cathedral where they were yelling things which were rather profane to be yelled in Church. Of course, three members of the punk group Pussy Riot were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Putin also bolstered his aggressive foreign strategy. He used traditional military methods like sending weapons and fighter planes to help dictator Bashar al-Assad fight a bloody civil war in Syria. But Putin's regime has also developed and fostered the most effective cyber army in the world and he's used it to wreak havoc in the West. These hackers have stolen classified US information hacked politicians email accounts, even shut down Georgia's internet while Russian troops invaded. And of course, they tried to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016. Russian hackers have also launched propaganda campaigns in support of right-wing candidates in Europe. With this, Putin hopes to exploit and deepen the political divide in Western democracies. In 2014, the Putin vision culminated in the targeting of Ukraine; another former Soviet country. Ukraine's president was opening up to the west and Putin feared he would join NATO. So Russian hackers launched a propaganda campaign against him stoking protests in the pro-Russia eastern part of the country. He then sent in disguised Russian troops and before long violence erupted. In goes the Russian military and in early 2014, Putin annexed Crimea. He continues to support the fighting in Ukraine and as of 2017 over 9,000 people have died. The world erupts in protest but Putin doesn't give in. See his aggressive foreign policy successfully weakens his neighbors while also rallying Russians around him. But he has done all this at the expense of his own people. His invasions have prompted harsh sanctions from the west, barring Russian businesses from trading in Western markets. Russian currency has plummeted in value and the energy industry that Russia relies on is collapsing. It's hard to imagine Russia can continue under these circumstances. But the election of Donald Trump brings new hope for the Putin vision. Trump's rhetoric has been notably soft on Russia. He could lift sanctions and weaken NATO, potentially freeing up space for Putin's Russia to become a dominant power once again. This is Bao Bao. She was born in 2013 at the National Zoo in
Washington, DC. Here she is biting her foot. Here she is in the snow. And here she is in a jumbo-sized FedEx crate
bound for a one-way trip to Chengdu, China. Bao Bao left because she was never ours to
keep. Her parents, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, came from
China 17 years ago. But they weren’t a gift – they were a loan. And that loan stipulated their offspring will
also belong to China, as do almost all of the pandas in zoos worldwide. Pandas’ natural habitat exists entirely
within the borders of one country. And that means these animals are more than
just mascots for China: they’re also tools in China’s global diplomatic strategy. What China figured out as it kind of became
more of an international power in the second half of the 20th century was that this was
something it could use to its advantage. Pandas have been part of Chinese foreign policy
since at least the 1950s. Initially, it was just kind of given in the
same way that you know governments have usually given exotic animals to others. It gave pandas to its allies. Then after pandas officially became endangered,
and that looked kind of tacky, they started giving pandas as loans. In return, the receiving
zoos pay $1 million, per panda, each year in fees. And if a cub is born, zoos pay an extra “cub
tax” of $400,000. The thing is ... China doesn't give pandas to
any country that can put up the money for a loan; it's much more selective than that. Researchers at the University of Oxford have
noticed a correlation between panda loans and China’s international trade deals. In 2010, China realized that it needed to
find more market capacity to buy salmon.Their traditional trade partner, who was Norway,
had been kind of... The Nobel Peace Prize had gone to a Chinese dissident, China didn't
feel like rewarding that behavior, so instead they turned to Scotland, which also produced salmon, also produced Land Rovers, which was something
else that the Chinese affluent class were interested in, and so they inked that trade
deal and a panda was sent to the Edinburgh Zoo. But what China gives, it can also take away. Consider the case of Tai Shan, Bao Bao’s
older brother from DC. China had made it known toward the end of
2009 that it wanted to take back the panda Tai Shan. It hadn't really set a date yet. Officials at the National zoo asked China
to extend his stay, but the answer was no. Experts suspect a couple of factors were involved
in that choice. One, President Obama met with the Dalai Lama,
who is a strong critic of the Chinese government and a fierce advocate for the independence
of Tibet, which the Chinese government denies. And second, the US announced an rms sale
to Taiwan, over Chinese objections. A week later, Tai Shan and another panda
from the Atlanta Zoo were on their way to China. It considers pandas as kind of another arm
of diplomacy in the same way that, in the event of a diplomatic spat, one country might
recall its ambassador or might impose economic sanctions, China sees, or certainly appears
to see, from the way that its agreements go, pandas as kind of a way to reinforce international
relationships that it's building and it wants to continue. More recently, we saw China delay a panda
delivery following the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 152 Chinese
nationals. In 2014, Malaysia was all ready to get its
first panda. They had the enclosure ready at the zoo and all of that. And the day of the panda's supposed arrival
came and went because the Chinese government was extremely frustrated with the Malaysian
government's investigation of the flight, didn't feel that it was doing enough, and so
kept the pandas for another month or two as a way to demonstrate to the Malaysian government
that yeah, we've signed a regional trade deal with you, we're interested in pursuing a relationship,
but you're not making us super happy right now. Currently, the US still has 12 pandas, including
Bao Bao’s new little brother, Bei Bei. But future relations with China could change
that. It's entirely possible that, whether in a military respect in the South China Sea
or in a political respect with regards to Taiwan, that China will find good reason to feel that
the US is no longer interested in pursuing the kind of warm partnership that they've had. So what that means for panda diplomacy is
really anyone's guess. There’s this moment at the Oscars, right
before La La Land was mistakenly awarded Best Picture, where you can really tell that whatever
Warren Beatty is looking at doesn’t make sense. "For Best Picture..." "You're impossible." He knew something was wrong, but he wasn’t
sure. But here’s an idea: what if better typography
could have prevented this whole snafu? Let’s walk through what that could have
looked like. We know from this shot that the announcement
card looks something like this. The card is serving two purposes: on one hand,
it’s a beautiful souvenir for the winner, and on the other hand, it’s a cue card for
a very high-pressure public presentation. So how do you make this easier to read in
front of 30 million live viewers? Let’s look at how the card compares to the
line that the announcer has to say. We read things from top to bottom, but at
the top is “Oscars”... that’s not useful information for the people on stage... at
the Oscars. "That’s like a few milliseconds of extra time that
those presenters have to go through when they're presenting, they have to go through all this information. That’s benjamin bannister, he’s a graphic
designer who put together an alternate design for the announcement card. "It’s like driving on the side of the road,
you literally have a few seconds to read all the information on the signs, or else you're
going to make a wrong turn.” ‘Best Actress’ should be the first thing
on the page. Make it a little easier to read, and now,
the presenters have a clear sign that they’ve got the wrong card. But this still treats the winner with the
same emphasis as the movie they appeared played in, which, while it’s nice to have, is really
just extra context. You solve that by making the name of the winner
the biggest thing on the page. If the presenters were given this card, one
of two things would have happened: their eyes would have first read “Best Actress,”
or “Emma Stone”. Not La La Land. You can apply the same fix to the card that
prompted Steve Harvey to crown the wrong person Miss Universe in 2015. No bad typography, no confusion, no embarrassing
mix-up. The consequences of bad graphic design extend
far beyond award shows. In the fall of 2000, the supervisor of elections
for Palm Beach County, Florida was tasked with designing a ballot with more candidates
than could fit on a single column. It wound up looking like this — it was called
a “butterfly ballot” because of the way the text occupied two columns. If you were voting for Bush, this form made
enough sense — to pick the first candidate, you punched in the first bubble. But then, to vote for the second candidate
on the list, Al Gore, you had to punch in the third bubble. See the problem? The Palm Beach Post estimated that over 2,800
Gore voters accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan. "A number of voters here in Palm Beach County have filed lawsuits asking for a new election because they claim they either voted for the wrong candidate or double punched their ballots because of confusion over the ballot design." Bush won Florida by a margin of 537 votes. Better typography here arguably could have
changed US history. Graphic designer Michael Beirut put together
this version of what that ballot could have looked like. It uses the same format, but consolidates
information horizontally, so that you can fit all the same candidate names in the same
amount of space. Instead of there being two conflicting visual
paths to follow, there’s just one. There’s also a lesson here for public health. When it comes to health, there’s probably
no single piece of household typographic design that’s as common as this one: the orange
prescription bottle. These have been around since just after World
War II, and they haven’t changed much apart from the addition of a child-safety cap in
the 1970s. But they’re not the easiest things to read. Just look at how information is prioritized
here. The pharmacy branding is often the first and
biggest thing on the label, which is fairly unimportant information for the user. The rest of the text on the label is small,
and it’s all the same size and weight. Even these confusing numbers, which the user
doesn’t need at all, get the same amount of emphasis as everything else. On top of that, some key warnings are printed
on hard-to-read color combinations, like black on dark red. Put all of that on a curved bottle that you
have to rotate to read, and you’re left with a pretty unfriendly design. A design student named Deborah Adler,
created a model for what a new and improved pill bottle could look like. She called it Clear Rx — she was inspired
after her grandmother took her grandfather’s medicine by accident. And it’s a common problem. Experts estimate there are 500,000 cases per
year in the U.S. of people misreading prescription bottle instructions. In Adler’s design, The branding moves to
the bottom, and the most important information for the user is big at the top. Adler also included color-coded rings, so
that the packaging clearly distinguishes between users, not just between medications. The extra surface area on the back allows
for space to be dedicated to warnings for the user. Target bought this design and rolled it out
in 2005 to positive reception. But 10 years after that, Target sold its pharmacy
business to CVS, and the new pill bottle disappeared. Stories emerged afterward that some users
had actually fished their old Target bottles out of the trash because of how much they
liked them. Others took to Twitter. CVS has said that it’s developing a new,
similar model — but it hasn’t released it yet. As with a lot of designs, it’s hard to notice
the things that are done well until they aren’t there anymore. “I think it was a good moment to show people
and educate them on the fact that design does matter. And most people seem to forget, and say it’s
not a big deal. Until something like this happens. Designers are there to prevent things like
this from happening.” So would different typography have totally
changed outcomes in any of these cases? Maybe. But if you’re Warren Beatty or Steve Harvey
or Al Gore — that’s a pretty big “maybe.” what will you do the next time you hear there's been a major terrorist attack hmm chances are you'll turn on a TV possible terror attack and specifically cable news apparently there's been an explosion if it's a big attack you'll watch hours of coverage over the next few days it's emerging now as a mass casualty situation try to find out exactly what's going on - a very disturbing situation and learn excruciating details about the attack we don't know the extent of the injuries see images of it replayed dozens of times watch sensationalized segments about how it happened what our response should be we need to close our border and when the next attack might come this kind of tragedy will not be the last one of its kind watching this will make you feel scared stressed and anxious could the UN be next but you'll keep watching anyway most people find tears and coverage almost impossible to turn off we watch news like this because we want to be informed about potential threats to our safety could what happened in Paris happened in the u.s. so what if it does the opposite what if watching terrorism coverage makes us worse at knowing how to keep ourselves safe one basic problem with how we understand scary news is that our brains care a lot more about stories and they do about statistics we're not very good at math so we often judge the severity of a risk by how often we encounter it that's Bruce Snyder he's a security expert who's written a lot about why our brains overreact to scary news stories and those stories stick to us more than the data does so we make risk decisions more based on the stories than a reality so if we see a bunch of stories about shark attacks we think shark attacks are common if we see a story about a plane crash we will overestimate the risks of flying we don't do this because we're dumb it's a basic psychology problem news by definition is something that almost never happens but that's not the way our brains work if it's in the news if it's talked about if we hear about it a lot we confuse that with it being common and you can see this problem most clearly when it comes to terrorism the chances of you or someone you know dying from tears are virtually zero terrorism looks scary but it kills a shockingly low number of Americans you are way less likely to die from terrorism than you are from choking on food while watching TV that being said after 9/11 Americans consumed a ton of extreme shocking news coverage about terrorism and our fear that we would be killed by terrorists spiked now you think as time went on and we went years without another 9/11 that our fears of terrorism would go down the same way they went down after the Oklahoma City bombing for example but they didn't we stayed scared and you only need to turn on cable news to understand why terror in the streets of Paris we have not ruled out terrorism digital terrorism homegrown terrorist [ __ ] news is packed with round-the-clock coverage of the war on terror footage of Isis training exercises a violent new Isis video and endless debates about potential threats posed by refugees and sleeper cells and homegrown radicals so-called lone wolf threat only when there is a terrorist attack near or far cable news turns into 24-hour terror networks the fear of terror attacks as many people wondering if their country even their city is next news networks get big ratings boost during terror attacks so they have no incentive to tone down their coverage this is the economics of news the way you get that readership and viewership is by being spectacular going with the stories that are scary that are threatening that are terrifying every year MSNBC re-airs footage of the 9/11 attacks so we never forget it's hard to watch this stuff and not feel like terrorism is a constant looming threat the reign of terror shows no signs of abating which helps explain why terrorism made up to of Americans top 10 beers in 2016 our heightened fear isn't due to a change in risk it's due to a change in our perception of that risk how quickly we can hear the word terrorism and imagine a scary story about it in our heads and that heightened fear causes us to overreact a study conducted after 9/11 found that for people who thought another terror attack was imminent watching TV news made more likely to support hawkish responses to terrorism including things like military action and also causes us to pursue security measures that sound good but don't actually make us safer and schneier invented a term for it he calls it security theater security theater is a security measure that looks good but doesn't do anything and IR sees examples of security theater and things like the border wall and the Muslim ban the things that Trump has made centerpieces of his national security strategy we're talking about this race from the beginning all the efforts to keep the foreigners out of the u.s. a prime example of security theater they're not gonna make us safer but they're big they're public and there's a segment of the United States that is scared and sees those things and feel safer it's not just that these strategies don't work it's that they're the opposite of the types of strategies that actually do make us safer if we actually want to be safer often the best things to do are the things that don't make a splash it's gonna be espionage intelligence and Emergency Response hiring foreign translators this is boring stuff the problem is the same sensationalist coverage that makes us overestimate the risk of terror makes it really hard for politicians to say no to security theater do you think President Obama fully understands the extent of the threat when CNN is a 24-hour Horror Story there's a lot of pressure on the President to overreact are we doing enough to stop these kinds of attacks and this helps explain why Trump security theater is so popular with his supporters he echoes the fear and panic they see on cable news it's gonna get worse and worse you're gonna have more World Trade Centers when you're scared you're gonna be drawn to the politician that does things that are big that are public that are spectacular invade a country build a wall now when I started writing this episode I was sure that Snyder's answer was gonna be to stop watching but I was wrong of course we all have to watch the news we can't turn away I couldn't force someone to do that I can have trouble doing that myself well what then in some ways our best defense is understanding what's going on we can't stop our brains from reacting the way they do all we can do is observe it recognize that we have these biases and try to correct for them if I have one takeaway it to understand that your brain isn't processing risk properly and the more you can do that the safer your be I know it's not a satisfying answer we will almost certainly see another major scary terrorist attack in our lifetime one that dominates the news cycle and fills our brain with extreme and violent images we're gonna hear pundits and politicians calling for dramatic response and we're gonna feel very very scared I even noticed myself freaking out while researching clips for this episode we are humans not machines we can't just look at charts and data and fix the part of our brains that misjudges risk what we can do is remember to be skeptical of our fears our politicians and of the people on TV for whom our terror is good business [Music] cable uses obsession with scary terrorism coverage can backfire pretty hilariously like in this CNN segment from 2015 an unnerving sight today at a London Gay Pride celebration an Isis flag only problem that is not an Isis flag that is a bunch of dildos It seems like beards are everywhere. Celebrities, athletes — cat beards are even
a thing, because why the hell not? A report by Simmons estimates that 20% of
men in the US have beards. Which is up from 14% in 2009. But beards weren’t always this popular,
and history tells us that there might actually be a limit to their popularity. Like all trends, the popularity of facial
hair ebbs and flows. Sociologist Dwight Robinson conducted a study
going back through 130 years of the Illustrated London News, examining the prevalence of facial hair among
prominent members of British society in its pages. And he found that beards were extremely popular
during the late 1800s, with almost half of men featured in the paper
having facial hair during that era. But around the turn of the 20th century, Robinson
noticed a major drop that’s continued over the past century. Curiously enough, this trend is almost perfectly
reflected in the facial hair of US presidents too. Most presidents have been cleanshaven. But between 1861 and 1913 all but two, Andrew
Johnson and William McKinley, rocked facial hair. William Howard Taft was the last US president
to have facial hair, with the end of his tenure almost perfectly coinciding with the drop-off
in Robinson’s study. And every president since Taft has been totally
baby-faced. So why do beards come and go like this? Researchers have a few ideas on the matter. Author Stephen Mihm says that the prevalence
of beards is inextricably tied to trends in capitalism. You  begin to see, among business elites, a significant
growth, no pun intended, of beards on the kind of robber barons and titans of
industry. It seems safe suddenly to wear beards. Beards became a signifier of strength and
rugged individuality and were proudly worn by some of the wealthiest
and most powerful men in the country. And then in the late 19th century, you see
a return of the bearded radical. In this case, a lot of anarchists depicted
in caricatures and cartoons wearing huge Karl Marx-style beards. It’s around that time, by the early 20th
century, I think, as beards become synonymous with anti-capitalism again, that you really begin to see beards eclipsed
once more. Beards began to be associated with these radicals
and fell out of favor in general society, and have largely remained on the fringe until
relatively recently. During this period, the cleanshaven look became
a la mode in the US, signifying distinguishment and middle-class
status in what Harper’s Weekly labeled “the revolt against
the whisker.” Now let’s fast-forward about 100 years. The tech boom provided loads of money and
power to a lot of characteristically disheveled figures. Well, I certainly see a parallel between the
tech sector generally and the kind of Gilded Age titans. Breaking away from the sterilized corporate
style of CEOs of the ’80s, these new tycoons fancied themselves eccentric
outsiders and nonconformists, helping usher in a new era of beard acceptance
and popularity. Whether of the artisanal, designer, or woodland
varieties, beards are back. Beards seem to be enjoying a moment in the
sun, but could their days be numbered? Actually, maybe. A study from 2014 hypothesizes that there
might be something called “peak beard.” Or negative frequency-dependent selection. Which is a super-fancy way of saying that
when beards get too popular, cleanshaven men begin to be perceived as rarer
and more attractive by comparison. If that theory holds true, then given how
popular beards have gotten in the past few years, we could expect to see a lot more cleanshaven
faces on the horizon. I think most Americans believe that after
you commit a crime and pay your debt to society, the punishment ends. You have the chance to rebuild your life and
get a fresh start. But the reality is much harsher. We punish people with criminal records long
after they’ve paid their debt to society. And we all suffer for it. Even simply being accused of a crime is just
the beginning of “perpetual punishment”: a cycle of legalized discrimination, poverty,
and reincarceration; a cycle kept in motion by 47,000 laws and regulations nationwide
that restrict critical rights and opportunities. After contact with the criminal justice system,
millions of Americans are: denied employment and housing, denied college educations, excluded
from public benefits, separated from their children, deported, despite being legal residents. These restrictions trap the poor and people
of color in invisible cages that extend far beyond prison walls and criminal courts. Cages that lead to a lifetime of obstacles
that undermine even the most earnest efforts at rehabilitation and redemption. Cages that send the message: You will never
be a part of society again. This is not some isolated problem. 95% of all incarcerated people will return
home at some point. Each year, more than 600,000 people are released
from jails and prisons. That’s roughly the population of Boston
or Seattle. Millions more are completing non-jail sentences
like probation, community service, or fines. As a reentry specialist at Brooklyn Defender
Services, a public defense firm representing 45,000 clients per year, I work on the front
lines to help people with criminal histories overcome their past and navigate the obstacles
of their present, so they can build a sustainable future. I try to help folks take responsibility for
their own lives. But it’s hard to do when the outlook is
so bleak. Even for low-level offenses and misdemeanors,
the aftermath of one individual’s experience with the criminal justice system ripples out
to entire families and neighborhoods, and gets passed down from generation to generation. The result: more poverty, more crime, more
incarceration. I see Javon, an 18-year-old young man who
cannot live with or even visit his family, and cannot find an affordable apartment, because
he was convicted of gun possession and banned from all public housing. I see the dangerous shelters and street corners
where he’ll sleep. I worry about what he's going to have to do
to survive; how long it’ll be before he’s back behind bars. I see how society loses when Judy, a 58-year-old
grandmother charged with a misdemeanor, is fired after her arrest and barred from her
lifelong profession as a home health aide. Unable to work, she’s faced with eviction
and can’t support her family. When Malik, a 26-year-old father, is denied
the opportunity to further his education because of the mistakes of his past, I think about
how he and so many others are set up to fail. How a conviction on a rap sheet is only a
snapshot of a moment in time, when all of us are dynamic, changing over time. The criminal justice system disenfranchises
these men and women, preventing them from growing, from truly being free. I am among the very few fortunate enough to
be living a second chance. Three decades ago, I was involved in a crime
that took the life of another human being. I spent over 24 years in prison for my role
in that reprehensible crime. While incarcerated, I had the chance to participate
in a pilot program, offered to only 15 inmates, that allowed me to pursue a formal education.  Upon release, I found an employer willing
to look beyond my criminal record; one that saw the hard lessons I learned in prison as
an asset, not a liability. Affording people a real opportunity to reenter
society isn’t just good for individuals and families; it’s good for all of us. Meaningful reentry increases productivity,
reduces poverty, and saves money. Most importantly, it makes us safer, by eliminating
the circumstances that perpetuate cycles of crime and punishment. People already get punished harshly by the
system — but they should not receive a second sentence that makes discriminating against
them legal for the rest of their lives. By restoring full rights of citizenship to
people after they’ve been through the system, we can start to end this cycle of perpetual
punishment. We can start to abolish the justice trap. Elephants are one of the most iconic creatures on this planet. They’re the largest land animals, the only surviving members of their order, and they’re highly intelligent, social beings. Reporter #1: "They're a lot like human babies, actually." Reporter #2: "These elephants in Thailand can even paint." Reporter #3: "It is the matriarch who guides the herd. It's the older females vast life experience that gives them these skills." African elephants have been here for a million and a half years. And now, human intervention is literally changing the face of this incredible creature. During the 1500s, an estimated twenty-six million elephants roamed the African continent. Today, it’s less than 500,000. In the 1970s and 80s, elephant poaching reached crisis-levels, so in 1989, an international agreement banned the global ivory trade. But in the past several years, poaching has returned to high levels. This chart shows the percentage of african elephant deaths caused by poaching since 2003. Their ivory tusks are basically just large teeth, but for centuries, they’ve been used in artworks, ornaments, jewelry -- even piano keys. Ivory’s value has been compared to diamonds -- it’s a status symbol. And the rise of China’s middle class has pushed up demand for ivory there, where it sells for around $1100 per kilogram. One-third of an elephant's tusks are in its skull which contains a pulpy cavity of tissues, blood vessels, and nerves. That means they can’t be preemptively removed by conservationists, an approach that has been applied to rhino horns, which aren’t ivory but are also sought after in Asia. Conservationists can safely remove up to 93% of a rhino’s horn, but it’s not possible to remove that much from elephants. But in recent decades there’s been an increasing trend of elephants being born tuskless. While most African elephants of both sexes have tusks, around 2 to 6 percent are naturally born tuskless. Now, decades of heavy poaching have made that trait more common. This chart shows that elephant populations subject to poaching have higher rates of tusklessness compared to undisturbed populations. Let’s use Gorongosa National Park as an example. Of the older female elephants who survived the war, over half were tuskless. And of the younger females born after the war, 33% were tuskless. Because tuskless elephants were less likely to be killed by poachers, the tuskless trait became more common in the next generation. Scientists have also found that on average, tusks are smaller than they were a century ago. Like tusklessness, smaller tusks provide a survival advantage against poaching. But it comes at a cost. Tusklessness is not likely to save the species from poaching and habitat loss. Yet, there is some hope. Through determined conservation efforts, some African national parks are seeing growth in their elephant populations. And China has announced that by the end of 2017, they will end domestic sales and processing of ivory. Those steps, along with stronger incentives to protect elephant habitats and support local anti-poaching programs, might give elephants the leg or tusk up they need to secure their future on this planet. A big thanks to African Parks and the experts I got to interview for this video. If you wanna learn more about their work in elephant conservation, links to their web sites are in the description box. And if you need a little pick-me-up, don't worry I got you covered. Links to baby elephant videos are in there too. I have rarely seen a document in politics
as completely devastating as the analysis the Congressional Budget Office just released
of the Republican health care bill. We’re going to get into details in a minute,
but here’s a one-sentence summary: Under the GOP bill, the more help you need, the
less you get. It will make more people uninsured than live
in New York state. And those raw numbers, those headline numbers,
they actually obscure how cruel the underlying policy is. It is particularly bad for the old and the
sick and the poor. It is particularly good for the rich and the
young and the healthy. And to understand why, you have to go into
the specifics of what the bill does. So here’s how it works. The bill guts Medicaid, it cuts the value
of Obamacare’s insurance subsidies in half, and it lets insurance companies charge older
Americans 500 percent more than they charge younger Americans. Then it takes the subsidies that are left
and reworks them to be worth less to the poor and less to the old. It takes the insurers that are left in the
market and it gives them the ability to change their plans, their plans to cover fewer medical
expenses for the sick. And then finally it rewrites the tax code
to offer hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich. As my colleague Dylan Matthews wrote, it is
an act of incredible class warfare by the rich against the poor. Imagine the set of questions you would have
had to ask to get a bill like this. Who is sitting back and saying, what American
health care needs is more uninsured people, coverage that doesn’t cover as much, coverage
that is higher deductibles, more power for insurers to charge old people more money than
young people, and finally, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich. Is that the populism Donald Trump ran on? Is that what any Republican’s seen at polls
even of their own voters? Because I have looked at those polls. And even Republican voters, they actually
want better health care that is more affordable to them and that actually does cover when
they get sick. The result of all this isn’t just 24 million
fewer people with insurance: Of the people that are left with insurance, the pool is
tilted toward younger, healthier people who needed help less, because many of the older,
poorer, sicker people who needed help the most have been driven out of the market. They don’t have insurance they can actually
afford. The example that keeps getting me: A 64-year-old
making $26,500, somebody who very well might have voted for Donald Trump, would see his
premiums rise by 750 percent. And now that 64-year-old gone, no insurance,
but because he’s gone, the pool is a little bit younger, and so the premiums for the young
people left are a little bit cheaper. That is the context that is required to read
Speaker Paul Ryan’s response to the report. He tweeted — and this was the most amazing
part of the whole thing for me — he tweeted: “CBO report confirms it, American Health
Care Act will lower premiums & improve access to quality, affordable care.” Let’s break that down. So according to the Congressional Budget Office,
the lower premiums Ryan is celebrating (those premiums, to be sure, they’re only 10 percent
lower after 10 years, and that’s after they rise initially) — those lower premiums,
the reason you get them, his bill drove older people out of the market, it let insurers
offer plans that covered fewer medical expenses and required more out-of-pocket spending. That is not “lower premiums” as most Americans
understand the term. Getting lower premiums by cutting out the
people who needed help the most? That's not what health care's supposed to
do. We have health insurance because people get
sick, because they need it. But it is Ryan’s last five words that demand
the most attention. He says his bill will “improve access to
quality, affordable care.” I am trying to find a way to read this statement
generously. Ryan is not arguing with the CBO score here. This is what I can’t believe. He is not saying the CBO is wrong and more
people will be covered under his bill. He is saying the CBO is right, its analysis
proves his bill will improve access to quality, affordable care. He is saying that a bill that throws 24 million
people off insurance is a bill that improves access to quality, affordable care. Look, I am schooled in health policy wonk
rhetoric. I know what is being said here. I know that “improves access” is some
kind of dodge, ’cause you can have access to affordable health insurance even if you
choose not to buy it — but a bill that makes health insurance too expensive for millions
to afford doesn’t improve access under any definition of the word. A bill that makes the insurance not worth
buying, it doesn’t improve access, it doesn’t improve choice. And look, maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe Ryan did not know what his bill will
do, and he is now stuck defending it because it’s his bill, and he sees no other choice. Maybe he has become the “This is fine”
dog, cheerfully explaining away the fire raging around him, a fire he himself has set. But this is not fine. It is not decent, it is not compassionate,
and it is not what Republicans promised. It is a betrayal of Donald Trump’s vow to
protect Medicaid from cuts. It’s a betrayal of Donald Trump’s vow
to pass a health care bill that covers everyone with insurance that has lower deductibles
and better coverage. It is a betrayal of Paul Ryan’s promise
to give Americans more choices, because it is only when you can afford insurance that
you really have the choice of which plan to buy. And it is a betrayal of the older, rural voters
who put Republicans in power and who will pay the most for health insurance under this
proposal. It is hard to imagine the electoral reckoning
that would follow the implementation of this law. But that’s the thing about setting a fire. You’re often the one who gets burned. When you spend all day in English
and everything around you is words, you know, I imagine it's like
being a podiatrist where like the whole world is feet. My name is Kory Stamper. I'm an associate editor at Merriam Webster,
where I write dictionary definitions, and my new book is called “Word by Word:
The Secret Life of Dictionaries.” For a while, people would ask what I did and
I would just say I work in publishing, because the minute I said, “Oh, I write dictionaries,”
the first two things out of their mouth were, "Oh that's so cool," and, "Oh my God, I better
watch what I say around you." Which was so sad to me because that's not
my job. My job isn’t to police what people say,
or how people talk, or things that people write even. My job is to record the language and not impose
some sort of order on it. I kept my practice defining slips. So, every definer, you practice writing dictionary
definitions. There is one in here that I kept because it
was the only definition the director of defining said, “Oh, that’s pretty good,” and
didn’t mark up. And that is “bird strike”, which I defined
as a collision in which a bird or flock of birds hits the engine of an aircraft. The editorial floor is incredibly quiet. Not just really quiet, but sort of sepulchrally
quiet. And you also know that when people are looking
up, if you happen to be walking by someone’s cubicle and they’re looking up and staring
at nothing, you know that you absolutely should not interrupt them. So there's two different processes that go
behind it. The first is a daily thing, and that’s called
reading and marking. And that’s where editors spend some time
every day basically reading sources. And you’re reading sources to find new or
interesting vocabulary. The second part is defining. So when we revise a dictionary, we go through
it A to Z, and you take all the instances for the word
you’re looking up.You’re matching up the word and its contextual use with the existing
dictionary definition. Sprachgefühl is a German word that we borrowed
into English. It's a word that refers to the feeling for
language. You have to be able to look at a sentence
and know that "planting out the lettuce" is different from "planting information." It’s really sort of where you can look at
the warp and weft of language and read it. So for a word to get into the dictionary,
it needs to meet three basic criteria. The first criteria is widespread use. If something’s used in the Wall Street Journal
and Vibe, then you figure that’s pretty widespread use. The second one is it needs to have a shelf
life. Once words get into the dictionary, they tend
to stay in dictionaries. The shelf life of a word really depends. There are other words that have very very
little use for a lot of time and then suddenly have tons of use. The indian word korma is a great example. It first was used in English back in the 1830s
or 1840s, and it had very very very little use, really until the 1990s when people started
eating lots of Indian food. So korma’s a more recent addition to the
dictionary, even though it’s almost 200 years old at this point. The third criteria is a word has to have meaningful
use — which means it has to have a meaning. The example I trot out is antidisestablishmentarianism
— “Freddy, can you spell antidisestablishmentarianism?” “Uh...no.” — which most people know as a long word,
but it doesn’t get used much in print. It gets used as an example of a long word. “Antidisestablishmentarianism.” [Laughter from crowd]
You want to make sure that the word has a meaning and is not just an example of letters
smushed together. People think of English as something that
needs to be defended. It's this beautiful pristine tower...actually
it's much more like a child. It’s an organic, living thing. You bring English into being, and then the
minute that it gains gross motor skills, it goes right where you don't want it to go. So there are two main approaches to language. One is prescriptivism, one is descriptivism. Prescriptivism essentially promotes the best
practices of English. Prescriptivism is, by its nature, exclusionary. Descriptivism on the other hand, as an approach
to language, it follows where language goes. Dictionaries exist on more of the descriptivist
end of the spectrum. Dictionaries record language as it is used,
not as you think it should be used. “Irregardless.” “Not a word.” “Well, irregardless of that.” Irregardless is a word that people have a
specific and vehement hatred for. Irregardless, really for about 150, 175 years
has been pegged as being uneducated, hickish, representative of people who don’t speak
English very well. It's also entered into dictionaries, which
just infuriates people. It does me no good as a lexicographer to enter
irregardless into the dictionary if I don't tell you that when you use it, people are
going to think you're a moron. So all dictionaries are descriptivist and
prescriptivist. “It’s too dangerous.” What is the drama with decimate? “With the soul sword activated, Valentine
could decimate the entire downworld.” It is a favorite of people called etymological
fallicists, who believe that modern words should only mean what they meant in their
origin language. Decimate comes from a Latin verb that means
to select and kill one tenth of. You just don't really need a word that refers
to selecting and killing one tenth of all that often. So decimate gained what’s called an extended
sense, which means that people began using it to refer to widespread devastation, or
killing of a bunch of people. They also will ignore things, like that the
word stew used to mean whorehouse. Nobody says, “I hate that we call this chunky
soup stew, stew should only be used to refer to a whorehouse.” They want English to be pure. And in their minds, purity means that you
stick to the root word as closely as you can. And that’s fine, except that’s just not
how English works. People think of English as this monolithic
thing, but it’s really not, it's much more like a river. Every dialect of English is its own current. And all of these currents come together to
make this fairly cohesive looking ribbon of water. But every one of those is integral to the
direction of English. Controlling water’s pretty difficult. If you say, well, you know, “Youth slang
really is stupid, and there’s no point in paying attention to it,” you’re actually
stopping this really vital way that new words come into English. If you say business jargon is ugly and stupid,
and no one should ever use business jargon, I might agree with you, but that’s also
another important part of how words come into English, and that’s an important way that
words are created. This idea of English being a river really
sort of celebrates that every single part of the language is important for the whole. It's all part of the same thing, you need
all of it for it to survive. I am so happy to explain what those dots in
the middle of the words are. Those dots in the middle of the words are
not marking syllables. What they are is for people who have to break
a word. So the whole word won’t fit on a line, so
they have to find a place to put the hyphen and put the rest of the word. If you walk away and that’s all you remember
of this, you will make every dictionary editor the happiest person in the world. This story is about small cats... ...that look like big cats... and the people that made that possible. But before we get there, let’s back up a bit. We went to an event at the Westminster Dog Show and this year cats were invited. So we went to film them, and we weren’t the only ones. In the middle of a crowd there was a man,
holding his pet cat called a Bengal. That’s Anthony Hutcherson and his whole
life, he’s had one dream: “I always wanted a pet leopard, or a pet ocelot.” Wanting a pet ocelot might sound odd, but until recently owning an exotic cat was not unheard of. People had pet leopards and pet cheetahs and here’s Salvador Dali and his pet ocelot
named Babou. But exotic cats weren’t just for celebrities,
this family in Denver had a pet leopard. They named him Pasha. Growing up, Anthony found books about owning
a pet ocelot, and he was fascinated. “Fortunately the library was a little outdated
so there were still books from The Fifties" "and Sixties in my public school that said
things about having a pet ocelot, and made" "it seem normal...and I thought that could be me too!” But in the 1970s, authorities began restricting ownership and seizing exotic pets. So, instead of owning an ocelot, Anthony’s
dream became breeding a pet cat that looked just like one. He began after seeing a magazine at a grocery store, "At the checkout: like, alien spotted and
woman creates domestic cat that looks like" "leopard and so, I remembered it, and followed
up and found her, and called her.” The woman on the phone was Jean Mill, the
first American Bengal breeder. “At one point I remember saying to her," " 'no, I can’t afford these cats, but I really want one, this is my dream.' " " ' I really wanna do it.’ " "I described to her in specific detail what
I wanted and she said," " ‘That cat doesn’t exist. I want that too.' ’” Jean told Anthony about asian leopard cats:
a wild species native to Asia that was bred with a domestic cat in order to create a first
generation hybrid, called an "F1", which is 50% wild, 50% domestic. Jean owned an F1, which she received from
Dr. Willard Centerwall, a scientist at Loma Linda University. Dr. Centerwall was breeding hybrid cats in
order to study their leukemia heredity factors, which could help in understanding and combatting
leukemia in human beings. But he only needed their genetic samples and once he bred the cats they needed homes, so that’s how Jean Mill received an F1 kitten in 1980. By breeding her F1 with a domestic cat, Jean
created second generation hybrids. But the males were sterile, so Jean could
only continue breeding through the female offspring. “And when they are four generations away
from the asian leopard cat, fertility is much" "more regular and, in terms of being able
to be shown and be considered a 'domestic cat'," "they have to be four generations away
from the asian leopard cat" *banging sound* "Sorry, that’s my cats running through the
room!” By reaching the fourth generation, Jean had
developed a new breed: the Bengal, which was officially recognized by The International
Cat Association in 1986. After his phone call with Jean, Anthony decided
to start breeding on his own, so he bought an F1 bengal and began attending cat shows. “This cat is awesome.” “For the future of the Bengals, I’d like
to see them" "move more in a direction toward looking wild." "Being instantly identified as 'oooooh.' " "But I want them to be as sweet, turn them
over on their side, or pull on their tail," "or kiss them, if you have to.” *applause*” Over the years, Anthony’s goal hasn’t
changed. He’s continued to pursue it by carefully
selecting cats for his breeding program. “When I make that decision to breed them," "I have an idea of what I think the kittens will look like" "and when they are born I try
to pick the one" "that looks the most like what I wanted it to look like." “It’s like any good chef will probably tell you." "it’s not adding a bunch of different stuff into a soup." "It’s what you choose to add and how much and when you add it.” Choosing breeding partners to develop certain
traits is called "selective breeding". “All cats are beautiful, but I’m not trying
to make all cats." I’m trying to make a very specific cat.” A specific cat with qualities like rosettes,
the naturally occurring marks on leopards that he describes as a pattern, “…with that same spot that’s maybe black
or brown, and in the center of that spot is a color somewhere between, say yellow or orange-” You get the picture, Anthony knows what he
wants his cats to look like. But selective breeding can put animals at
risk if breeders pair close relatives. So to prevent inbreeding, owners like Vicki
Jeffers come to cat shows. Where they can exchange cats in order to develop new traits, like the shaggy coat we saw on this longhair Bengal. “If I bred her to Jefferson I might get
the beautiful tail and the nice ears" "and the kittens might get this wonderful pattern." “So what you do is you look for traits in
cats that yours don’t have" "and you look at the pedigrees to be sure that you are not inbreeding too much.” To avoid inbreeding, breeders need a large
gene pool, which means breeding large numbers of cats. “People are convinced that there are too
many cats in the world" "and there are an awful lot of cats in rescue." "And they say, ‘well, here you are breeding
superfluous cats" " 'when there are cats that are wanting for a home.' " "And, I mean, they have a point." "They have an important point." "But if you look at these cats, they justify
the breeding" "because they are just wonderful, wonderful, animals.” Animals like Anthony’s cat Ovation. “Her name’s Ovation, she’s the greatest
cat in the world.” And while the development of bengals has taken
decades, other breeds are just getting started. This is a Savannah, which were developed by breeding domestic cats with a serval: a wild carnivore native to African savannahs. Unlike the Bengals, we found just a few cats at this booth. and that’s because the Savannah is a newer breed. The first F1 Savannah was born in 1986. So there are fewer late generation Savannahs compared to Bengals. A cat like this can cost over a thousand dollars. But earlier generations of Savannahs are even more expensive An F1 Savannah can cost upwards of $20,000
and owning one isn’t only expensive. It can be illegal, depending on local laws. In New York State, it’s legal to own a hybrid
as long as it’s sixth generation or later. But any generation of Savannah is illegal
in New York City. So even though these cats had a special exemption,
the cats we saw at this show-- they’re technically illegal. And that’s a major reason why breeders come
to the show. By showing their cats, breeders hope to demonstrate
that hybrid species are just as safe as any other cat. But what if you aren’t into leopards, what
if you what you really want is a tiny tiger? This is Tony, one of Toygers we met. That’s Toyger for “toy” and “tiger”. This newer breed was created by Judy Sudden. And before you make any assumptions, NO, she
did not breed a tiger with a house cat. As feline geneticist Steven O’Brien explained
to me, that...wouldn’t work. “As the time has elapsed, the further apart
a species might be to another species," "the less likely they will produce fertile offspring at all." "The reason is evolution is a gradual process.” If you look at the cat family tree, you can
see that domestic cats and asian leopard cats separated from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, which is about half the time that has passed since they separated from great cats, like lions and tigers. “It’s not exactly half, but it’s on that order." "So there has been twice as much time for gene differences that inhibit compatibility." "Which means that you are twice as likely to
have generated reproductive isolation," "which just means it’s just not gonna work, Charlie." "It’s just not gonna work." It’s not gonna work means you can’t breed with tigers. So Judy Sugden created Toygers by selectively
breeding domestic cats. “…and so then you breed that kitten to another kitten…” As a result, there’s nothing wild about
these guys. “We just wanna go until…" "To make it reminiscent of a big cat." "And so, on a tiger, the chin is big and kind of sticks out." “Well, they are beautiful." “Well, thank you very much” And while breeding a tiny tiger might seem
ambitious, Judy had help along the way. “I started breeding in the mid Eighties." "My mother developed the bengal and that was
to look like a little leopard." "So I said, as we were watching that thing
progress," "Well maybe we need a little tiger!” Judy’s mother is Jean Mill. The first American Bengal breeder and Anthony Hutcherson’s mentor. It turns out, the world cat breeders is pretty small. Like Anthony, Judy has spent her entire life developing a new breed to resemble its wild counterpart. "His name is Tony." And also like Anthony, she’s still pursuing
that goal. "What's your name again?" -"Max" "Max. Anthony. I'm Anthony." Because although you might think these cats already look like tiny tigers and little leopards, they see something we don’t. Something to improve. Something that will keep pushing them closer to that goal: the cat that they always dreamed of. “My motivation hasn’t changed." "And...I went back to the public libraries and used bookstores and I bought those books." "Because they inspired
me then and," "in moments when I think my fellow breeders have no idea what they are doing" "or I question how many litter boxes I can clean in a day," "I still flip through those
books and think," "Well, I’m almost there." When America’s founding fathers were debating
how to set up a brand-new government, they ran into a problem:
What should happen if a president, in Benjamin Franklin’s words, has “rendered himself
obnoxious?” Most countries didn’t have elected leaders. Or ways to get rid of them, if necessary. So Franklin and the framers turned to a provision
of British common law known as impeachment: Trial, conviction, punishment. In Great Britain, impeachment could be brought
against anybody, any citizen. And it also could result in any punishment,
including death. Michael Gerhardt is a constitutional law professor
who literally wrote the book in impeachment. So they put impeachment in the constitution
and then set up a whole series of unique american features in it. The constitution lays out three offenses for
which any federal official, including the President, can be impeached. The first two, treason and bribery, are pretty
straightforward. Treason means helping enemies of the United
States. Bribery, taking money or gifts in exchange
for a political favor. And the last phrase, other high crimes and
misdemeanors, is not defined in the constitution But these were thought to be serious offenses
against the Republic, and serious breaches of trust. For three U.S. presidents, Andrew Johnson,
Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, the question of whether to impeach and remove them from
office centered around whether their behavior fit in this third category of high crimes
and misdemeanors. The process of Impeachment has to start in
the House of Representatives. Any member can introduce an impeachment resolution. A resolution, that President George W. Bush
be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors But plenty, like this one, go nowhere. That’s because impeachment charges, have
to be approved by a majority of the House Judiciary Committee. Next, the full House of Representatives votes
on whether to impeach. If a simple majority votes yes, the President
is officially impeached. But that doesn’t mean they lose the presidency. That decision happens in a Senate trial. The Senators act as the jury. They hear evidence from both sides
And if 67% of those Senators vote to to convict, the President is removed from office. This has never actually happened. In 1863, a House majority voted to impeach
Andrew Johnson for firing is Secretary of War. This was after months of conflict after Reconstruction
following the civil war. The only other president impeached by the
House was Bill Clinton in 1998. But in both cases, not enough Senators voted
to actually remove them from office. Johnson was only one vote short, but in Clinton’s
case, it wasn’t even close The Respondent, William Jefferson Clinton,
is not guilty as charged in the Senate article of impeachment. That’s because votes in Clinton’s impeachment
in the House and trial in the Senate were split almost completely by party. part of the disagreement within the Senate
had to do with the context in which Clinton's actions had taken place. The whole thing started when Clinton was sued
for sexual harassment by a woman named Paula Jones, who worked for him when he was Governor
of Arkansas. In a deposition for that case, Jones’ lawyers
asked Clinton if he’d had a sexual relationship with a different employee-- a White House
intern named Monica Lewinsky. Clinton said he hadn’t. I did not have sexual relations with that
woman. Ms. Lewinsky. But that wasn’t true. I had intimate contact with her that was inappropriate. The house will be in order. Republicans in the house argued Clinton should
be impeached for lying under oath. What the defenders want to do is lower the
standards by which we judge this president, and lower the standards for our society by
doing so. Democrats disagreed that the offense was serious
enough to be called a “high crime.” At one point, they walked out of the chamber
in protest. There is one small segment on the far-right,
who have lost all objectivity, and are determined to impeach the President at all costs. House Resolution 6, 11, resolved, that William
Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, is impeached, for high crimes and
misdemeanors. But Clinton’s popularity didn’t really
suffer. There was not a sense the American people
are demanding that he be tossed out of office. Not a single Democratic Senator voted to remove
Clinton from office. Typically, you need to have members of more
than one party That’s one of the major differences between
Clinton’s case and President Richard Nixon’s. Over the course of several months in 1973,
members of Congress, and the American people, learned about Nixon’s possible involvement
in a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee. By the time the charges had been shown to
have some evidence supporting them, the public began to kind of render a judgement against
Nixon, which was, his popularity plummeted. That evidence came out because Republicans,
members of Nixon’s own party, in both the House and Senate, called for investigations
into the President’s behavior. In the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans
joined with Democrats to approve Articles of Impeachment against Nixon. But Nixon resigned before the full house could
vote on impeachment because Republican leaders had told him there was no way he’d survive. Which explains why no president has ever been
removed from office by impeachment. For that to happen, the president doesn’t
just have to commit some high crime or misdemeanor. He has to lose his own party. In which case, history suggests he’ll see
himself out. the wait is over Republicans finally have a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare I am holding it in my hand it is a real bill and it is stranger than I expected it to be there is a lot more of Obamacare left in this bill than I think anybody expected there are differences of course we'll get into those but there's a lot of popular parts of Obamacare Republicans now keep they are definitely working in an Obamacare world can continue on your parent's insurance until 26 that's still in there requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions check still in there preventing insurers from setting lifetime limits check still in there tax credits so people can afford health care check still in there covering the people on Medicaid today it is in there now I don't want to overstate this there's a lot in the bill that changes huge huge tax cuts for rich people for one thing the tax subsidies the the way we help people forward insurance that's gonna be based on age not income and it's gonna be a lot leaner the Medicaid expansion that covers more than 10 million people now if you read this it stops adding new people in 2020 these details they will change as a Senate and House argue over the bill but for this plan to work at all one thing Republicans have to figure out is how to bring healthy people into the system and here's why if you think of a group of people on a continuum from the healthiest to the sickest the sickest people they use the most health care so they're the most expensive to insure that's why to get a good mix of people to get premiums down on average you need a lot of healthy people signing up for insurance they use less health care so they pull premiums down for everyone this is the core question of insurance markets how to have enough healthy people to balance out your sick people the reason this is difficult is it healthy people they don't need insurance as badly so when more sick people come on board and the prices come up it is a healthy people who leave without them the insurance gets even more expensive which drives out the next group of healthy people and so on and so on until insurance is completely unaffordable the way Obamacare tries to fix that problem is the individual mandate everyone has to either have insurance or they pay a small fine the Republican plan replaces Univision mandate with a provision saying if you get sick and you need to rejoin the insurance pool insurance companies can charge you a 30% premium that's not gonna work already Obamacare's individual mandate is too weak to pull in as many healthy people as a lawn eating that's why premiums have been rising in a lot of markets this this is weaker it could lead to death spirals in a bunch of markets as healthy people flee and sick people are all that remain and make no mistake if they pass this mill Republicans will own these death spirals but that's just one problem in here look hypocrisy is a minor sin in politics people are hypocritical all the time but it is remarkable how much hypocrisy there is to be found in this legislation remember when Mitch McConnell said this there are 25 million Americans who aren't covered now if the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone covered that's one of the many failures in addition to premiums going up co-payments going up deductibles going up so after years of Republicans complaining that co-pays and deductibles are too high in Obamacare not enough people can afford insurance this plan the Republican plan it lets insurers offer coverage with higher co-pays higher deductibles makes it harder for people to have it to actually use it and then not only make that insurance harder to use they make it harder to afford in the first place particularly for the poor under Obamacare the government gives subsidies to poor people to help pay their premiums the Republican plan it replaces these subsidies with tax breaks based on age not income and without the income based subsidies a lot of people aren't gonna be able to afford insurance the the credit rating agency Standard & Poor projects between six and ten million people will lose their insurance under this bill a lot more would suddenly find the coverage they can afford has huge deductibles and doesn't actually cover that much that can go wrong the biggest problem this bill has amaura read it is it it's not clear why it exists what it's trying to achieve what it makes better in reality what I think we're seeing here is Republicans have lost sight of what they were trying to achieve in the first place they are trying so desperately to come up with something that will allow them to say they've repealed and replaced Obamacare they've let repeal and replace become not just a political slogan but a goal this this is Obamacare light it's a worse version of Obamacare and it's a lot of political pain to endure for a bill that won't just fail to improve many people's lives but will badly hurt millions Republicans you need to really look at this and ask what are they trying to it 'chief here what is the point of all this [Music] This is the Doomsday clock. It was designed back in 1947 by artist Martyl
Langsdorf. And the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
sets the clock to show how much time we have left until midnight. Midnight in this case meaning nuclear armageddon
and the end of humanity. In January 2017, the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists revealed that the clock ticked 30 seconds closer than last year to
the end of times and cited, among other things, climate change, cyber security, nuclear weapons
and Donald Trump as causes. At the announcement, executive director of
the Bulletin, Rachel Bronson, said there were two concerns that stood above the rest. “The first has been the cavalier and reckless
language used across the globe, especially in the United States, during the presidential election
and after. And the second is a growing disregard of scientific
expertise.” Cold war and world conflict have influenced
the clock’s time over the years, but disregard for scientific expertise by global populist
leaders, including an American president, has never been cited as a doomsday
factor. That said, the newest changes to the clock
are the smallest in its history, meaning doomsday, thankfully, isn't necessarily any more imminent. So how accurate is the Doomsday Clock, and
why was it made in the first place? The “Doomsday Clock” first debuted in
1947 as a graphic on the cover of the first edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’
magazine. Artist Martyl Langsdorf was married to Alexander
Langsdorf Jr., a Manhattan Project scientist. Langsdorf and other concerned scientists founded
The Bulletin two years prior, feeling a responsibility to warn and educate the public about the possibly
disastrous consequences of their creations. Atomic bombs had been used for the first time
in 1945, killing 130,000 residents of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Initially, the time on the clock depicted
the hour hand pointing straight at the zero hour, with the minute hand placed at just
seven minutes before midnight. The time was completely arbitrary, though. Langsdorf just thought “it seemed the right
time.” The graphic quickly adopted the name of The
Doomsday Clock, and eventually gained world recognition as a symbol for the threat of
an impending nuclear apocalypse. Since 1947, the Bulletin has regularly adjusted
the clock face when they perceive a change in threat level, also taking into account
other, non-nuclear factors, like climate change, bio weapons and cyber threats. Doomsday seems just a few ticks away now,
but time on this clock doesn’t really reflect actual time, nor is it particularly linear. In 1949, the Bulletin set the clock to three
minutes until midnight due to Soviet Union nuclear testing. “Truman’s dramatic announcement
that Russia had the atom secret!” and to two minutes until midnight in 1953 thanks
to the US developing the hydrogen bomb. But a decade later, the clock turned back
to 12 minutes before midnight thanks to the US and Soviet Union ending atmospheric nuclear testing “A milestone in ‘63. East and West ban the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere.” The minute hand has continued to fluctuate
through a range of minutes before midnight since then, from seven minutes ‘til in 1968
thanks to Vietnam, to 10 minutes ‘til in 1972 at the signing
of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, “This is not an agreement which guarantees
there’ll be no war, but what this is is the beginning of a process that is enormously
important to three minutes ‘til in 1984 thanks to
the heightened tensions between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, “None
of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It is weakness that invites adventurous adversaries
to make mistake in judgements.” and all the way back to 17 minutes ‘til
in 1991 after the end of the Cold War and the signing of START, the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty. “Whether about issues on which we agreed
or disagreed, the spirit of candor and openness a desire not just to understand, but to build
bridges has shown through. In every case, dangerous or potentially dangerous
events dictated whether the minute hand moved closer to or away from Doomsday, but 2017
is the first time since the Cold War that the Bulletin expressed deep concern about
the disposition of an American president toward science and the nuclear weapons. "First of all, you don't want to say take everything off the table, because you're a bad negotiator if you do that. Look, nuclear should be off the table, but would there be a time when it could be used? Possibly." Even though the outlook seems grim, it’s
important to remember what the time on the clock is really meant to show: it’s not
Doomsday yet, and on THIS clock, we can turn back time. This is a black sicklebill bird of paradise
at dawn in the forests of New Guinea. It’s one of 39 birds of paradise, a family
of birds known for the males’ extraordinary courtship dances and ornate feathers. They’ve been called the holy grail for wildlife
filmmakers, in part because for decades, they were really hard to film. GUNTON: One of the one of the really challenging
things about animals is that they do a lot of stuff at dawn and at dusk, just when the
lights are going. The black sicklebill only performs its courtship
ritual at the first light of day. When the BBC aired this footage in 1996, it
was the first ever captured of this behavior. Two decades later, the black sicklebill is
still dancing at dawn in New Guinea, but this time the humans have sharpened their tools. Light-sensitive digital cameras can now pull
back the curtain of darkness around sunset and sunrise. But what about behaviors that happen at night? Like the animals that they pursue, nocturnal
filmmakers have had to find ways of seeing in the dark. Film cameras struggled in low light because
film stocks with higher light sensitivity produced a grainier image. The film emulsion literally had coarser grains
of silver salts. So for decades, when they did try to do nighttime
stories, BBC producers resorted to using artificial lights. That’s not ideal for the animal, but it’s
not great for the filmmaker either, since they’re trying to capture natural behaviors. GUNTON: Animals that are out at night, they’re
out a night for a reason, which is they don’t want to be out in the light so as soon as
you start flashing lights around they don't like it, they don't behave properly or they
disappear. It took several months to habituate these
bulldog bats to artificial light so that the producers could show in slow motion how they
fish. So for the past couple of decades, the BBC
has often turned to infrared cameras. That requires setting up lights too, but they’re
lights that emit wavelengths outside the range that humans and many animals can see. That infrared light bounces off the scene
and into the lens to form a monochrome image, but as far as the animal is concerned, they’re
just going about their business in the dark. ATTENBOROUGH: Mantises defend themselves in
two ways, either by camouflage or with an aggressive display like this. By 2002, the quality of infrared cameras was
high enough that the BBC could use it extensively for the Life of Mammals series. It allowed them to film the rare water opossum
in the wild for the first time. And it was the technology the BBC used to
capture the iconic scene in Planet Earth of lions hunting an elephant in the dead of night. They installed infrared lights on a truck
and powered them with car batteries. For Planet Earth 2, the producers used infrared
lights in the Deserts episode to capture a showdown between a long-eared bat and a scorpion. But this time, it’s infrared with
 high resolution and slow motion, combined. CHARLES: So the cameras we were shooting on
were Red Dragons and they’ve taken out the part of the filter, which means that it’s
now sensitive to infrared light. So you've got this incredibly crisp 5K image
-- you can use your zoom lenses and shoot at your higher frame rates all in infrared,
which is fantastic. When it’s not possible to set up infrared
lights near the animal, there’s another option: Thermal cameras. NIGHTINGALE: Originally there sort of multicolored
cameras, the reds and oranges and so on were rather artificial. Whereas now, there's a camera, which gives
you a really nice and very fine detailed view of animal of heat gradients. Thermal cameras detect infrared radiation
too, but longer wavelengths, or what we experience as heat. Instead of collecting infrared light that’s
reflecting off of the subject, it senses the heat that’s being emitted by the subject
itself. This technology was developed for military
use and it’s become so advanced that in Planet Earth 2, we can see every whisker of
the leopards that stalk the streets of Mumbai. NIGHTINGALE: There's a scene where these leopards
are hunting the pigs. Pitch blackness. And what was strange is in the sequence, you
also see people walking through the park at night. Of course, they can't see a thing. They can't see the leopards. The leopards can see them, the leopards aren't
interested in them, the leopards are interested in the pigs. So you get this incredible observed view on
a pitch black night, you need no ambient light, not even starlight. The thermal camera is really the only way
they could have filmed this hunt. But it can’t capture color, which is essential
for some stories, like this bioluminescent railroad worm, filmed for the first time for
the Jungles episode of Planet Earth 2. GUNTON: On it’s side it’s got these bright
yellow dots and those are warnings to other creatures that don’t eat me because I’m
poisonous. And it also has on its head little red lights. They’re little search lights. When it gets close to its prey and switches
to hunting mode, it turns the yellow lights off so the prey cant see them, but the red
lights, which the prey can’t see because it's infrared, it keeps them on so it spots
them. This was filmed at night with a Sony A7s,
a small, relatively affordable camera that came out in 2014 and blew people away with
it’s abilities in low-light. You can see how it compares with some of the
other cameras we have here at Vox, with the same settings. Digital camera sensors are bigger than ever. The Sony A7s has a full frame 35mm sensor,
but it actually has fewer megapixels than most comparable cameras. That means each pixel is bigger and can take
in more light. They’ve also engineered two steps of noise
reduction to keep the image cleaner. Sensor technology is changing so fast that
the Sony a7s didn’t exist when the BBC first started working on Planet Earth 2. Now, it’s opening up new opportunities for
filmmakers. NAPPER: We can now put it on drones. We can take it underwater. Suddenly there’s a lot of animal behavior
which we’ll be able to reveal using that camera. It’s hard to imagine what wildlife films
will look like 10 or 20 years from now, especially as so many species face existential threats,
but as long as engineers keep innovating, filmmakers will keep finding new ways of revealing
the beauty and diversity of Planet Earth. Thank you for watching! You can find Planet Earth 2 on BBC America. It will be airing Saturdays through March
25th. You can also find tons of clips from their
archive on BBC Earth’s mobile app. It’s called Story of Life and it’s actually
where I found a lot of the clips that I used in this video. And it’s free! So check it out. we are witnessing one of the weirdest love stories in American history and no I'm not talking about The Bachelor for Christ's sake I'm talking about Fox News President Trump he's moving very fast to fix the country and keep his promises to you the American people thoughts his treated me very nice wherever the Fox is thank you he is like the New Testament character of Nathaniel and he's creating jobs getting promises it's like he's addicted to results and I will say Fox treated a great they said it was great he's securing our borders trying to stop crimes against Americans Sean Hannity is a great great person Fox and Friends in the morning he's not afraid of anybody he'll go into the lion's den the very honorable people he's the Fox News president it's like Romeo and Juliet if neither of them believed in climate change but like with all Perfect Couples something is off about them because it turns out that Rupert Murdoch the most powerful person in the Fox News empire doesn't actually like Donald Trump he's described Trump as an embarrassment to the country Vanity Fair called him the billionaire Donald Trump can't win over so what the hell is going on why is the man who should be Trump's most powerful critics letting his network become a 24-hour Trump Channel [Music] one thing you should know about Rupert Murdoch is that despite owning Fox News he's actually a vocal supporter of immigration reform and as an immigrant I've been an obligation to speak up for immigration so when Trump entered the GOP primary by attacking Mexican immigrants Murdoch with not a fan no less than Rupert Murdoch tweets that Donald Trump was wrong that tweet was just the beginning Murdoch grilled Trump on Twitter saying he had lost it and accusing him of embarrassing his friends and the whole country sound like my ex back on Trump on several fronts that's Gabe Sherman he literally wrote the book on the inner workings of Fox News Murdoch was alarmed at how Roger Ailes the former head of Fox News was advising and helping Trump at using the network to boost Trump so before the first GOP primary debate which Fox News was hosting Murdoch had an idea Murdoch told Ailes and put an end to it and boxes moderators Chris Wallace Bret Baier and famously megyn kelly at very tough questions of trunk and really tried to bury him that debate sparked a long nasty public fight between Trump and Fox News I don't know what games Roger Ailes is playing but what's what's wrong over there something's wrong Trump went after Fox on Twitter said Kelly had blood coming out of her wherever he even pulled out of a Fox News debate forcing the network to cancel it Pro Trump websites like bright bar went after Murdoch for his support of immigration calling him an open borders globalist it was all super surreal Trump and his supporters were taking Fox News's media bias stick and using it against Fox you did something very dishonest you didn't report it and it was working a source at Fox News told Sherman that they take a ratings hit every time they ran an anti Trump segment deluge of emails and texts and phone calls from angry viewers who were bad that night Kelly was buting with Trump Murdoch's audience is firmly in the Trump camp murdock was losing the fight he had picked the Donald Trump at the beginning of 2016 Murdoch changed his tune support Tuesday was a sweeping victory for Donald Trump after Super Tuesday Murdoch tweeted that Republicans would have to unify behind Trump Trump and Murdoch met privately and Fox News went back to being the Trump Channel Trump and Kelly had made peace and Hannity was airing hour-long Trump infomercials in primetime all I want is for a guy to look at me the way that Sean Hannity looks at Donald Trump the trumpet vacation of Fox News has only gotten worse since the election not only was he presidential not only was he being honest but he's being funny when megyn kelly announced that she was leaving for NBC Murdoch hand-picked tucker carlson to replace her meaning fox's primetime lineup is now three unbroken hours of Trump cheerleading if he let him have it and I loved every minute of it and aside from a few standouts like Chris Wallace and iconic heartthrob Shep Smith Fox News has basically become the Trump PR Channel I hear from my sources inside Fox News who are frustrated that almost every story that producers program has to be filtered through a pro Trump narrative and so we're very clearly being Murdoch heavy hand and who's gonna pay for the wall Jakub neck pickle [Music] things between Murdoch and Trump are a lot better now they visit each other's offices sit in on each other's interviews even awkwardly climb into golf cards together and here they are on their way to dinner and for Murdoch there are obvious perks to staying on Trump's good side in January Trump asked Murdoch to submit names for the new chairman of the FCC which regulates much of Murdoch's media empire Murdoch probably also wants to see restrictions put on the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner one of his major competitors there's a lot of regulatory issues that Murdoch will want to weigh in on and having a friendly Commissioner at the FTC but if you look past the PDA this relationship is less of a romance and more of a hostage situation for years Fox's business strategy has been appealing to conservatives while attacking all other outlets as being part of the mainstream liberal media the abandon is absolutely right the media is the opposition party and that strategy has worked for them a Pew study found that 40% of Trump voters got their election news primarily from Fox but the strategy has also backed Fox News into a corner take a look at this chart and shows the ideological makeup of the audience's for the cable news channels Fox's audience is way more homogeneous than the others if it loses Trump voters it loses everything that's fine when Trump likes them when he's giving Fox primetime interviews and telling his supporters to tune in by the way thank you very much for the shout-out you gave at your press conference but if Trump is ever unhappy with Fox's coverage again the network is extremely vulnerable Trump has the power of the relationship like someone who can't afford to move out of their crappy boyfriend's apartment Fox News is stuck defending a White House that could get harder and harder to defend you This is Timmy. He’s Six, and he lives with his parents
and little sister in a town between Washington, DC and Baltimore. "He insisted on a trash themed 5th birthday party. We decorated the whole house with recycling He's into Angry Birds and monsters. He's drawing, he's writing. He's reading really well. Timmy was born 7 weeks before his due date. He was only 3 pounds 9 ounces. He spent the first five months of his life
in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit (or NICU). Timmy has a rare genetic condition which requires
him, among other things, to breath through a tube in his throat and get most of his food
through a tube in his abdomen. Every room in Timmy’s home doubles as a
medical supply stations for his daily medical needs. But when you’re around him, it’s impossible
to avoid Timmy’s amazing energy -- a 6 year old bursting with vivid imagination, fixated
on trucks, legos, and building binoculars out of toilet paper rolls. Timmy’s mom Michelle is showing us the medical
bills from that NICU period. Timmy’s been put under anesthesia 42 times,
and between all the surgeries, medicine and intensive care, the bills added up quickly
Michelle: “773,000 dollars by the time he was 2.5 months old. We figure by 3, or 3.5 months we hit a million.” Like many insurance plans, Timmy’s policy
had a clause which caps how much the insurance company will pay over his lifetime, cutting
him off once he hits a certain dollar amount. This is called a lifetime maximum. Timmy’s lifetime maximum was one million
dollars which he hit within just a few months of being in the NICU. According to his policy, after he hit a million
dollars of care, he would be on his own. But something happened just six days before
Timmy was born that would dramatically affect him and his parent’s lives. "The patient protection and affordable care act goes into affect today" "The new healthcare reform bill kicks in today." "Health insurers can no longer impose lifetime limits or discriminate against kids with preexisting conditions. "The issue of lifetime limits: that is not going to be the law any more after tomorrow. " The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is
best known for requiring insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions and letting
kids stay on their parents’ insurance til age 26. But one of the lesser-known parts of the law
is that it banned insurers from putting a cap on how much care they will pay for over
a year or over a lifetime. This came right in time for Timmy’s family. “He would have lost his insurance
at a million dollars which would have been about half way thru the NICU stay. I think we have $4000 dollars in savings right
then which would have covered less than a day of care in the NICU and I don’t know
what would have happened. See, we’ve only experienced life post Obamacare. Before Obamacare, 60% of all bankruptcies
in the US filings were tied to medical bills. And it was the sickest patients with complicated
blood infections and heart conditions who were losing their insurance due to lifetime
limits. These are the patients who needed insurance
the most. When the family moved to Maryland they intentionally looked for a new insurance company so that they could start from zero in case lifetime limits came back. But even on this new plan they are getting close to a million dollars. “As of this morning, it’s at
985,147.19. That’s for the current insurance plan we
are on now which started when he was 8 months old” You're not eight yet. How old are you? Six I said 8 months. Do you know how old 8 months is? It's when you were a little baby. You couldn't even walk. As of now Timmy and his parents are safe from
a lifetime limit to his benefits. But 20 miles away, congressional republicans
and President Donald Trump are working on dismantling the law that got rid of lifetime
limits and saved Timmy’s health coverage Republican replacement plans are split between
staying with unlimited coverage and reimposing the lifetime limit. A late February draft of a Republican bill
would keep the ban on lifetime limits — which would be good news for Timmy. But legislators say this is far from the final
version, and likely to change significantly But overall, the lifetime maximum issue is
not a huge part of the debate, which mostly focuses on things like “pre existing conditions. And allowing folks to stay on their parent's insurance until the age of 26 But for Timmy’s parents who have a good
employer provided health insurance plan, the lifetime limit issue is the only thing that
matters in this debate. That's the only thing we think about. I mean more so than the preexisting thing. Actually when you said the other day when we were talking you were like "Oh the lifetime maximums dont get covered enough" I was like "really?" Bedtime in the Morrison home looks similar
to bedtime in many homes with story books and stuffed animals. But things are more complicated. Once a week, Timmy’s parents replace his
throat tube. This is one of many steps that is Timmy’s
family goes through to keep him healthy. But Timmy and his family have a routine to
manage all of his care. It consists of lot of medical supplies, equipment,
help from nurses and doctor’s visits. This routine has been enabled by the fact
that the Morrisons don’t have to worry about Timmy’s insurance going away once they hit
a million dollars. But this dependable routine in under threat
as the healthcare debate may result in lifetime limits coming back. If that happens, Timmy could lose his insurance
and this predictable if complicated routine will be turned upside down. You know we're not trying to say that it's not our responsibility to be paying for his care. I mean that's our responsibility. It's just that the reason you have insurance is that's so far above what's possible. So I guess I don't want to come across as saying that I want someone to swoop in and pay for everything. That's not what I'm saying. But we want it to be manageable. Something that we have some hope of paying. This map shows the 'Black Belt' region of
the United States. Its name comes from the fertile soil associated
with the region. And for most of America’s history, more
than 90% of the country’s largest minority group lived here. Starting in the early 20th century, nearly
half of the African American population left this region to resettle in emerging Northern
and Midwestern cities. It was one of the largest internal migrations
in US history. And now, data indicates that a new movement
is taking shape. To understand why, let’s go back to 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery
and started a new era for colored people in the states. Shortly after, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments
enfranchised people of color at large. For the first time, the majority of black
Americans controlled their own destinies. In the years immediately following emancipation,
most freed slaves chose to stay in their communities. After all, the only America they had known
was the south. It was common for their descendants to work
as sharecroppers on plantations. Sometimes their only payment was permission
to live on the property. But that wasn’t the worst aspect of the
south for blacks. The Jim Crow caste system determined where
you could eat, what platforms you sat on when you catch a train. This was a rigid caste system where any breach
could literally mean your life. That’s author & journalist Isabel Wilkerson--
She spent 15 years compiling the stories of black exodus to cities in the north, midwest
and west. The movement would come to be known as the
Great Migration. The great migration was really a seeking of
political asylum within the borders of our country. Many of them were fleeing for their lives. They were fleeing a rigid caste system known
as jim crow in which everything you could and could not do was based on what you looked
like. In 1915, African Americans began to leave
the Black Belt for these new industrial centers. By 1929, 1.5 million African Americans had
resettled in new, northern metro areas. At the time, America’s participation in
World War I drove demand for manufacturing labor. But strict immigration laws left Northern
factories with a shortage of workers. Factories in the north started recruiting
low-skilled workers from the south. The workers faced discrimination in their
new homes, which culminated in the Red Summer of 1919. Migrant blacks, whites, and european immigrants
were all competing for limited housing and resources, which exacerbated relationships
in city centers. The most prominent of these settlements for
migrating blacks was in New York City, and the art, music and theater that emerged from
this community became known as the Harlem Renaissance. These artistic achievements redefined the
cultural image of blacks in America. But the stock market crash of 1929 and ensuing
Great Depression slowed the influx from the South and effectively ended the first migration. A second wave began in the ‘40s when World
War II kickstarted manufacturing again, while agricultural employment in the South plummeted. Once again, people living in the rural south
began to migrate to cities. Manufacturing hubs in the West were far more
prominent in this second movement. But only a fraction of skilled labor positions
went to African-Americans. That kind of discrimination was a common experience
for participants in the great migration. Throughout history, the segregated neighborhoods
that southern blacks flocked to often became the ground-centers of massive racially motivated
rioting. In most cases, the protesting began in response
to perceived unfair treatment of the black community. This is a trend that continues today, as seen
in modern violent protests in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Milwaukee. By the end of the 2nd migration, an estimated
5 to 8 million blacks had resettled outside of the south. Moving ahead to the 1960s, the Civil Rights
Movements had introduced a new vision of racial identity in America. This movement’s leaders argued for the political
rights and equality of all people. Meanwhile, the definition of ‘all people’
was changing. Changes in immigration policy starting in
1952 started a new era of a skills-based, multicultural immigration. This includes African migrants, adding a new
black perspective to the American story. By the 1990s, a new, multicultural American
identity had emerged. During this period, the rise of the black
middle class was evident. You know we're used to thinking about white
flight to the suburbs and black segregation, black concentration in cities. That’s the voice of William Frey. He’s been tracking the shifting demographics
of America over the past 5 decades. To some degree that still exist. But there's also been a noticeable movement
of blacks to the suburbs and it's fairly pervasive it's not just in two or three cities but it's
and and a lot of cities across the country. Northern cities, Southern cities, Western
cities. Starting in 1970 African Americans started
to make this move. Especially in the last 20 or 25 years, really
large numbers of blacks moved to the South. I attribute some of it to the younger generation
several generations since the civil rights laws were enacted in the 1960s who now do
have an opportunity to get advanced education's. At least some college. Getting that foothold into the middle class,
I think is an important part of what's going on. Today, the geography established by the Great
Migration is beginning to fade away. Southern states have been leaders in black
population growth since the 1970’s. Still, these states have only captured a 4%
increase in the share of the black population over the last 4 decades. So while we are seeing a reversal of the trend
of African-American migration to cities, it’s unlikely the movement will be as far-reaching
as The Great Migrations of the past. And it's because this migration is about the
search for agency and opportunity -- not about fleeing violence. The stakes are not the same now as they would’ve
been during the great migration. They are quite different in character and
magnitude. Many of them were fleeing like refugees, and
had no idea of how they would make it in this alien land.That was a watershed moment in
American history, and like many watershed moments it’s hard to recreate. This is the moment Estelle and I began to
question our sanity. There's definitely a promising cave down there. I don't know if it's a bear den or a mountain
lion den. We’re right about here just outside of Yellowstone
National Park. And we’re looking for a tiny box about the size of a happy meal that’s filled with over a million dollars
worth of treasure. We’re here because of a guy named Forrest
Fenn. You might have heard of him. Well you've likely heard of that Santa Fe
author Forrest Fenn. Forrest Fenn
On to this a Santa Fe art collector and author, Forrest Fenn. Fenn is one of those rare characters he's
like straight out of a wild west film. He served as a pilot in the Air Force, took
up a hobby as an amatuer archeologist, then later moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and opened
an Art Gallery. Over the years, he amassed a collection of
artifacts worthy of the finest museums. He made a fortune selling his wares to US
Presidents and Hollywood tycoons. In 1988, Fenn was diagnosed with cancer. He fought it off — but it got him thinking
about his legacy. When faced with his own mortality, he decided
to do what any eccentric man might do to ensure his spirit lived on after death. He buried a treasure chest. Some time between 2009 and 2010, Forrest claims
that he trekked out into the Rocky Mountains and hid a 12th century bronze chest containing
42 pounds of his finest treasures — gold nuggets the size of chicken eggs, 16th-century
Spanish jewelry, and even a ming dynasty jade sculpture. In 2010, Fenn self-published The Thrill of
the Chase, the memoir And in the back of the book there’s a poem. That poem contains 9 clues that supposedly
lead to the treasure’s exact location. It goes a little something like this. As I have gone alone in there And with my
treasures bold, I can keep my secret where, And hint of riches new and old. Begin it where warm waters halt And take it
in the canyon down, Not far, but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown. From there it’s no place for the meek,
The end is ever drawing nigh; There’ll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high. If you’ve been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease, But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace. So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek? The answers I already know,
I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak. So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold. If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold. Ten years later, nobody’s found it — and
many have tried. But Forrest, who’s now a cult-like figure
in the treasure hunting world, has admitted that four of the nine clues have been solved. And apparently, some people have gotten within
250 feet of the gold. Update this morning on a story we have been
telling you about for years a man who decided to give away his fortune claimed to have buried
it somewhere out west several years ago. The treasure is real. The treasure story is real. The treasure is hidden where I left it and
the search goes on. In public and private Facebook groups, more
than 8,000 members rage in these deep philosophical debates over the interpretation of the clues. The “FindingFennsGold” sub-Reddit boasts
1,600 regular contributors, who pose questions like “What kind of hill can an 80 year-old
man climb?” and “Does anyone else here have dreams about the treasure?” Over the past year, we talked to a lot of
these treasure hunters. Like Ricky and Greg. You can see big red behind me. We’re here in historic Natchez, Mississippi
today. They’re engineers on a steamboat. So this is a daily search for you? Every night. Every night I'm looking. If you ask anybody that works with us on the
boat they will tell you that Greg, oh yeah, he's the one looking for Forrest Fenn's treasure. No I'm not this type of person at all. I do crossword puzzles I don't like camping
it was the extreme opposite of anything I've ever done. So how did you first hear about Fenn's treasure. Well I've never heard of it before until this. There it is. Treasure hunter dies in search of writers
$2 million gold. In the morning I get this newspaper delivered
and by about 2 o'clock in the afternoon i think I've solved it. I studied geography in college so I'm all
into maps. I spent hours upon hours just looking through
google maps at all the places he went. It's really easy to become obsessed with this
story. This is Josh and his Dad, they spent a week
traversing New Mexico for a family vacation. Just looking for the chest. I’d say about 8 weeks of really hard research,
google maps, little sleep, too excited to sleep type of stuff A lot of too excited to sleep for me. And that obsession? It happened to us too. I asked Zack if he wanted to help me find
the treasure. I said “absolutely yes.” So we went to the Rocky Mountains with a foolproof
plan to find Forrest Fenn’s gold. [Cow moo] Come on buddy, please move. We are definitely in Wyoming. [Phone rings] Hi it's Scott Hey Scott? It's Zack. So you're wondering Montana looking for treasure? Actually we're on the road right now we just
came from Bozeman and we're driving down toward Wyoming. We're pretty convinced the treasure's there. Wyoming? Okay. Well Wyoming is the right state, no question. Oh yeah? Really? Absolutely. Have you been to your spot yet? I have. I made a mistake. You probably heard this story from multiple
people as well. It's what keeps me awake at night at the moment. But if you were to go back you know what the
mistake was? Absolutely. You're scaring me I feel like we're going
to come back from this trip and just not sleep for weeks. Is this your first time that you’ve been
out searching? You’ll be out there and you’ll find what
everybody else finds. Your reaction will be “wow we could spend
the next 10 years right here right where we are and never stumble across a 10x10x6 chest. Dude I’m shocked he just said it’s in
Wyoming like I expected him to be really adamant it’s in colorado - yeah and I feel pretty good right now that this
established esteemed treasure hunter thinks that it's uh in the same general at least
the same state where we're going. At least we’re in the right state, Estelle. There's a weird unspoken dynamic with Fenn
treasure hunters. We're a community and we're all collectively
scratching our heads trying to decipher what Forrest Fenn is telling us. But we don't want to give away too much after
all we want to be the first ones to find that treasure. In our research, we came across this map made
the amatuer cartographers. Using geographic data from the clues they
were able to narrow down the original search area from 27 million acres to 591,636 acres. That’s a 98% reduction in size. Even just in that area, we’re looking at
23,310 acres of wild land. We now think it's probably more towards Yellowstone. Where specifically did you go in Yellowstone? I can't give you too many clues! I haven't found the treasure yet. If I got it, it's more about being know as
the person that found it. That's all I want. Zack and I each spent week coming up with
our own theories. Zack spent an entire afternoon trying to convince
me that the longitude and latitude markers on Fenn's map were a clue. Obviously that was crazy. He actually owns Sitting Bull's original peace
pipe. What? It's worth $1.1 million dollars. That checks out. All the old men look like Forrest Fenn out
here. Every elderly gentleman I drive by I just
the first my first though is - I'm like it's Forrest! Yeah. What does that say about how obsessed we are. We reached out to Fenn early on in our research
with the same starry eyes that many treasure hunters do. He denied our request to interview him. Yeah I wonder how many people he emails and
he's just like god damn why do I have to answer another one of these emails. Maybe it's because he knew we were getting
close to the treasure. And with that, here is where I think the treasure
is. So first you start with "Where warm waters
halt." That's the Firehole River Falls right in the
heart of Yellowstone National park. Now the name of the river speaks for itself. Oh okay. There's the cave. There it is. Oh man, that is not what I expected. Actually in 2007 water temperatures in the
falls rose to 82 degrees and it killed a bunch of trout there, pretty much halting life. So coincidentally right above the falls there's
this canyon and it leads to the Madison River. Now if you take the Madison River straight
to Hebgen Lake that's "too far to walk." So at this point we're right on the border
of Montana and Wyoming but it's a place Fenn explored as a kid so that counts for something. Now above Hebgen Lake is grizzly bear territory
"Home of Brown" and Red canyon creek "No paddle up your creek" So in 1959 a massive earthquake shook this
region and the Hebgen Lake dam gave way creating Quake lake along with a deadly landslide. That's heavy loads and water high. But Estelle, what's the blaze? Honestly it could be anything. A lot of people think you'll only be able
to see it if you're standing in the exact right spot. So all of that sounds really good to me but
the skeptic in me says "hold on Estelle" this is a highly interpretive poem thousands of
people have come up with hundreds and hundreds of different theories that seem to fit perfectly
like puzzle pieces. Are you going to tell me that I'm wrong right
now? I will not crush you in this moment. Forrest himself has acknowledged that this
treasure may very well be around for 10,000 years before someone finds it. At least one person has been within 200 feet
of the treasure and if that has happened - someone was standing 200 feet away from
millions of dollars! Yeah if that happened with six years of it
being hidden then how could it possibly last 1,000 years. radio: make the bears aware of your presence
and carry bear spray. Bear spray has been shown to be over 90% effective
in deterring bear attacks. So we realized very quickly that despite these
cute pictures of bears in yellowstone they are very dangerous and we could very easily
get mauled by one today if we're not careful. So apparently this thing has 7 seconds of
spray in it. That's about enough to ward off one grizzly
bear. Hopefully we won't need to use it today. Fenn's treasure has lured many unprepared
hunters into the wilderness. We talked with a park ranger actually who
said people had ventured into snow impacted mountain ranges with just tennis shoes. This morning we're waiting on the office of
the medical investigator find out how a hiker searching for Forrest Fenn's treasure died. In January 2016 Randy Bilyeu went missing
in search of the treasure six months later he was found dead. Somewhere in this area which is a huge area
of land is the treasure. And it's just a matter of figuring out that
exact spot. We're a mile pass the trailhead and I think
we found something. It's a tiny little cave that you could easily
miss. Zack has now decided to climb up the entire
face of this cliff and try to get into a cave that's about a couple hundred feet high. There was a time when I thought the Fenn treasure
could be in a cave because one thing he said was that it's in a spot that you could come
back to in 10,000 years and it might hypothetically still be there. A cave protects things from the elements so
I thought maybe that was a possibility Definitely not in that cave though. We're wondering Wyoming constantly asking
ourselves. What would Fenn do? Where would an adventurous fly fisherman who
loves history artifacts and practical jokes hide a treasure chest? Do you think Fenn's going to watch this and
think we're a bunch of idiots? I think Fenn is the kind of guy that thinks
a lot of people are idiots so Look I just don't want him to think I'm an
idiot. I'd like to make a film that gains his respect
a little bit. Like I would like to think that Fenn is sitting
somewhere tipping his cowboy hat to us. It's really clear from every treasure hunter
we talked to that once you have a potential solve it's really hard to entertain any other
theory, even if it makes total sense. Here it is six years later and I found the
spot. At the first opportunity he gets to go back
out there I think he'll find it. That's the beauty of it everyone knows where
it is one of us has got to be right. You could completely solve the poem and be
on totally the right trail and you still might miss the treasure. There are some theories that this is all about
poop. Heavy loads. Oh my god. There's like - Home of Brown, heavy loads No paddle up your creek I think that just proves how interpretive
this is. You could literally take every clue in that
poem and make it about a piece of crap. So where are we going? So today we are heading back into the heart
of Yellowstone park which is apparently the oldest park in the United States. Actually last night I did a little sleuthing
and found out that Forrest is a board member at Buffalo Bill center. Some hunters seem to think that Fenn hid the
treasure while up here on a trip for a board members meeting and he just took off one morning,
hid the treasure and came back for his black bow tie event in September of 2009. That theory would definitely correspond with
the Lamar Valley area and also with Fenn's fascination of the Native American history
that this valley holds. We are going to drive all the way down highway
212 to a place called Icebox Canyon. In this canyon there's a creek called Soda
Butte creek. Soda Butte is this extinct geyser in the middle
of the Valley. Soda Butte. It's also along highway 212. 212 being the temperature at which water boils. And it's right near Icebox Canyon. There's no way this isn't the place "where
warm waters halt." A bear completely mauled this area we're standing
in right now uh all the trees around us are just completely scratched up. That's insane. Okay so that's just one clue Zack, where do
we go from there? The Lamar Ranger station. Now every hunter has a line from the poem
they obsess over And the line that seems to get the most people's
attention is "put in below the home of Brown." Everybody focuses on the home of Brown. Everybody. Any searcher you speak to they're going to
say "if we can find the home of Brown we can find the treasure." Like a lot of the poem, it’s pointing to
a specific location. Have you talked to any treasure hunters what’s
the take on that Brown? Give me some insights. Looking at a map, there are literally hundreds
of locations it could refer to. You've got all of America looking for house
of Brown One of the things that led us to the brown
one is that the B is capitalized in “Brown.” If you Google the Lamar Ranger Station it’s
clearly a hot spot for Fenn’s treasure hunters. It’s this old ranch in the historic district
of the park. And back in the day, there was a really well-known
ranger there named Gary Brown. Home of Brown. Well this is the home of Brown. Looks like the main facilities are closed
down and uh it's not open to the public besides that I guess. Maybe they shut it down because so many treasure
hunters came through asking. If it's not clear on our faces our confidence
is completely shot right now. Every treasure hunter will tell you this you
start a hike with rose colored glasses and by the end you realize that your task was
nearly impossible. You're trying to find a 10x10x6 inch chest
in 3,000 square miles of land if we're completely wrong about Yellowstone that's 300,000 square
miles of land. We started all the way up here at icebox canyon
followed down soda butte creek all the way down to the lamar ranger station which is
our home of brown and then from there all we know is it's somewhere below the home of
Brown. It could be on anyone of these trails or ridges
or rivers or creeks. You should just point to random spot on the
map be like let's just go there. Alright. Fossil forrest. That would be 10 miles of walking for forrest
fenn and about 1200 to 1600 feet of elevation gain. I'm sure forrest is an absolute beast on the
trails but how much does an 80 year old man do? I came to this with a limited amount of optimism
and I think most of that optimism is now gone. Fenn says that his poem specifically leads
to a very very concrete spot and I just don't see it. The clues are so vague and interpretive that
I just can't possibly imagine them culminating on an exact spot on a map. We really have become crazy about this - yeah. I feel like this journey has changed me. Where are we going? I don't know. After coming back and maybe going into this
convinced that you knew where the treasure was like a lot of other hunters and then coming
back and realizing it wasn't there, did it change your mind at all about maybe that there
is no treasure? There was a time frame when we started to
wonder if it was real. He's gone through far too much trouble for
it to be a hoax. Why would he do it? This is his legacy to the world. I think it's a great legacy. And I think he'll be happy if someone finds
it in his lifetime. One thing about Forrest is that he's genuine
about hiding this treasure. So if anybody that has that type of ability
to get that type of stuff has no issue in my opinion putting together a box of the stuff
he said he had. It's certainly plausible that he'd be able
to do such a thing and i think he's eccentric enough that he would. I feel like we're just taking random guesses
at this point you know? I think really we're lost after the first
three or four clues. He probably put it in some secret Forrest
Fenn cave somewhere. Uh there's a huge herd of deer or something
crossing the street up there. Let's go check it out. What are they? Those look like mountain goats. Those are mountain goats. Holy crap. Okay. Let's pause for a second. We thought for sure those were cute little
mountain goats but in our excitement we failed to realize that these were big horned sheep. Nonetheless we lost our minds. Oh look at the rainbow in the background. Oh dude are you kidding me? That's insane. The treasure at the end of the rainbow. Unbelievable. The whole entire trip left a lasting impression
on me. Take on this poem. I don't even know the right word for it. It's just a very cryptic poem, but it's a
fun poem. I'm starting to think about why Fenn planned
this and why he did it and I'm starting to think that the treasure itself isn't so important. As hokey as that sounds. It's pretty hokey It is pretty hokey. His story about surviving a terminal kidney
cancer diagnosis really helped me with my own health struggles and just being able to
go out there and follow in his footsteps too. I'm so proud to be able to go out and do it. Is this sort of like a moment in your past
or do you think you're going to continually think about it all the time. Oh no, oh my god no. The best is yet to come. Let me put it to you this way, in the end
everyone is going to be left with a smile on their face. You're as ambiguous as Forrest is. We went down dozens of trails over the past
five days and we came up completely empty. We didn't find the treasure. We probably didn't even come close. But maybe we did and we'll just never know. In the Jungles episode of the BBC’s Planet
Earth II, there’s a stunning scene of hummingbirds in Ecuador, flying in slow motion. And when it aired in the UK, some viewers
wondered if the BBC actually created the footage with computer graphics. And you can’t blame them. With our own eyes, we’ll never see hummingbirds
looking like this, just like we’ll never see plants growing like this. That’s because the camera is warping time. Slow motion shots are made by increasing the
camera’s frame rate. To slow down action without losing quality,
you have to capture more frames. Like the hummingbirds, many of the shots in
Planet Earth II are at least somewhat slower than real time, or what producers call “off-speed.” Shooting at 60 or 100 frames per second, with
playback at 25 frames per second — that tends to heighten the drama and smooth out
camera movements in the footage. But slow motion can do more than that — it
can also give us a chance to look at processes that our naked eyes could never catch. That’s why ultra high speed cameras were
invented in the first place - Cameras that can shoot thousands, even tens of thousands
of frames per second. They gave scientists and engineers a way to
study all sorts of physical and mechanical processes that happen over milliseconds. And when trained on animals, high speed cameras
can teach us about anatomy and behavior, like the function of these drumstick-shaped organs
on flies. ATTENBOROUGH: By beating very fast, and here
they’re slowed down 120 times, they give the fly stability in the air. The BBC’s Natural History Unit filmed this
crane fly around 40 years ago. We’re used to seeing this kind of thing
now, but it was much more of a challenge in the days of film. GUNTON: You almost always had to do it in
a kind of almost a studio setting and you’d kind of sit there with this button. And you wait and hope that something will
happen. You press the button and the camera goes whirrrr
to speed up. You then get about two seconds of shot and
then you hear the film going shhshhhshh out of the camera as it spun out. You then get it off to be developed and find
that, you know, in those the two seconds that you had, the animal had lept out of the frame
so you throw it away and start again. The switch from film to digital cameras changed
everything. For one thing, they could review the footage
on monitors, to see if they got their shot. But also, digital high speed cameras came
with a continuous recording feature. Instead of pressing a button to start recording
and then pressing it again to stop, they could press the button as soon as they saw some
action, and the camera would save the seconds that happened before the button was pressed. That’s how the cameraman captured this great
white shark coming out of the water, not just in the air, for this sequence in the 2006
Planet Earth series. Unpredictable action was still a challenge
-- this took them a couple of weeks on a boat to get. But with digital cameras, the BBC brought
high speed photography out of the studio and into the wild, where they could capture things
like a chameleon hunting in Madagascar. GUNTON: They're notorious for these tongues
that fly out and catch things and they're really hard, I mean really hard to film. GUNTON: When we filmed this- you saw  how
the tongue kind of unfolds as it goes out. And everybody thinks they’re sticky, they’re
not. At the end of the tongue is a kind of a muscular
blob at the end. It's almost like a hand inside a glove and
this end goes like this and almost grabs the head of this creature and then drags it back
which is sort of ghoulishly ghastly but also amazing. Digital cameras also transformed the process
of making timelapse sequences -- for when real life isn’t too fast but too slow. The timelapse process is basically the opposite
of slow motion. Instead of capturing more frames, you take
fewer over a longer period of time. Timelapses can help show animal behaviors
that take hours to unfold, like these sand sand bubbler crabs that make balls of sand
as they look for food at low tide. But the BBC’s timelapse work really got
started when they decided in the 1990s to make a series entirely about plants. Timelapse would be the key tool for bringing
the drama of plant growth into our timescale. But no technology existed at the time to automate
time lapse photography. So, they invented their own. NIGHTINGALE: So we developed little computer
boxes, about this size, which would drive the time lapse cameras, would drive the flash
guns, which we'd use to make sure the light was the same whether there was a cloud out
or the sun was out, the sun was in and so on. And we built these little programmable computers
and we took them all around the world long before we had laptops like you've got, you
know, sitting on your lap there. Some shots could take place out in the wild,
but others required more controlled conditions and elaborate sets. These waterlily leaves were grown from seeds
in huge vats. The water levels, temperature, and lighting
all had to be controlled for consistency from shot to shot. NIGHTINGALE: Then, of course, we had to get
lots of different shots, closeups, wideouts. We wanted to get shots in the tank, looking
up, seeing —So I mean, it took months. Just a huge, huge, effort and hopefully when
you look at it, it'll feel seamless. That series also introduced the technique
of tracking timelapse, where the camera moves too. Now, digital cameras come with the ability
to program a timelapse sequence, and motorized sliders can automate tracking timelapses. So the BBC keeps pushing the technique further. In 2009’s Life, they took the it underwater
in the frigid Antarctic ocean to show ribbon worms and sea stars feeding on a dead seal. And in the cities episode of Planet Earth
2, they showcased a new type of timelapse called “hyperlapse.” Now, instead of just moving the camera slightly
on a slider, the camera’s moving through whole cities, taking thousands of huge images
that get stitched together in precise ways on a computer. GUNTON: So it gives you a kind of a journey
in timelapse. It might not look like the style of traditional
wildlife films, but in fact the tradition at the BBC has always been to seize new technology
and techniques to capture the world in brand new ways. GUNTON: That’s one of the things that’s
so wonderful about television — is when you can take an audience and show them something
that no human eye could ever see, that only the camera can see. Thank you for watching! You can find Planet Earth 2 on BBC America. It will be airing Saturdays through March
25th. You can also find tons of clips from their
archive on BBC Earth’s mobile app. It’s called Story of Life and it’s actually
where I found a lot of the clips that I used in this video. And it’s free! So check it out. You know Futura. With those knife sharp Vs and
wide circle Os, it cornered the market on that retro-future-cool
thing. Futura defined Barbara Kruger’s art and
helped streetwear company Supreme rip her off...I mean, create a loving homage
to her work. It’s such a Wes Anderson cliche that complaining
that it’s a cliche is a cliche. It’s on wedding invitations from those friends
of yours who put Urban Outfitters on their wedding registry. But Futura overcame a lot to get this far. Like Nazis. (Yes, those Nazis.) Paul Renner designed Futura, and he came to
it from book design, where it was key to communicate
clearly. It was the 1920s and the Bauhaus school of
design was becoming popular. Think cool looking chairs that are really
uncomfortable. Renner wasn’t part of that school, but like
Bauhaus designers, he wanted function and beauty. At the time, when people thought of German
typography, they thought of fraktur style typography, and Renner thought it didn't work. He said fraktur was like lederhosen. Outdated and quaint. So after a couple of years of development,
Futura went on the market in 1927. It was sold as “the typeface of our time.” This thing was modern. Some early designs were even crazier, with
extremely geometric figures, like this g, or this a. That look was in the air with other typefaces,
like Johnston and Akzidenz Grotesk, but Renner thought Futura was unique. He called it an “eminently German typeface”
and the type foundry, Bauer, sold it as the type
of the future. It gained broad international distribution,
showing up on charts or being overlaid on pictures. It became a symbol of the future - and for
the Nazis, that was the problem. That fraktur - the Gothic style Renner rejected
— became the Nazi look in the 1930s. And the Nazis starting scrubbing out modern
fonts in favor of ornate styles. At the same time, Renner became an outcast
after he wrote a famous anti-Nazi essay. He was arrested and briefly in exile from
Germany. Sans-serif type was cast out too. But Nazis were inconsistent. Renner returned to Germany, and Nazis occasionally
even used Futura. Look at these pages from a Nazi design manual. Aside from the Fraktur and little Nazi paper
cut out dolls, which were uniform guides, there are a couple of charts in Futura. In 1941, the Nazis reversed course. Out of the blue, they decided their beloved
Fraktur was a “Jewish” style, so they banned it. They’d really come around to Renner’s
idea, that the German typeface of the future had to be more readable. But by that time, Futura was established as
an international typeface. That might be what saved it. During World War II, a lot of different, modern-looking
sans-serif fonts were kicking around NASA’s predecessor, NACA, and the rest of the American
military. At the time, people chose fonts based on the
availability of physical pieces of type. Futura was...around, and it was clear and
modern . That made it an obvious choice for a very important job. When NASA needed a plaque for Apollo 11, they
chose one font; they pulled from a typeface the would become
beloved by Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson alike. They used the uniquely German design that
through a talented and idealistic creator, traveled beyond the Nazis, beyond the 1940s,
beyond Germany, and beyond this planet, too. “We’ll read the plaque that’s on the
front landing gear of this L.M. Here men from the planet Earth first set foot
upon the moon. July 1969.” They chose Futura. There are a lot of reasons that Futura has
that extremely modern, international feel. One of those reasons, though, is really German. A lot of people credit Volkswagen with bringing
Futura to a new generation and also into the mainstream. Since his campaign 2016, there's been a lot of attention on Donald Trump's connection with Russia. Personally, he's made his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin quite clear and some of his administration members have either a long history of ties to the Russian state, Pro-russian views or both. Back in August 2016 his campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned when it was revealed that he had been a paid consultant to Ukraine's pro-russian former president. Since then, there have been allegations that the Trump campaign knew about Russia's hack of the election, improper contact with the Russian government, and even blackmail, resulting in several government investigations. In order to understand the scandal surrounding Trump and Russia, it's important to first distinguish the three main storylines. The first centers on Russia's interference in the US presidential election. The second revolves around former National security adviser Michael Flynn. And the third concerns the private intelligence report that claims Russian are blackmailing Trump known as the Steele dossier. Let's start with the first. In June 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing private emails attacking the Democratic National Committee. At the time, Russia was the main suspect, but this remained unconfirmed. Emails from the hack continue to be leaked throughout the summer, always targeting the Clinton campaign. "Russia if you're listening I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. In August 2016 close Trump confidant Roger Stone said that he was in touch with WikiLeaks. "I actually have a communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation. On October 2, Stone sent a tweet appearing to show inside knowledge of an upcoming WikiLeaks publication targeting Clinton. In October 7th, WikiLeaks released the first batch of hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager, John Podesta. Now on the same day, a joint statement by Obama's national security advisor and the Department of Homeland Security officially declared that the DNC hacks were intended to interfere with the US election and that they believe that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities. December 10th, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that there were contacts with Trump's entourage throughout the election. And that quite a few have been staying in touch with the Russian representatives. On January 6th, the CIA, FBI, and NSA together released a report confirming that Putin had ordered the attacks and intended to hurt the Clinton campaign specifically. On February 14 and 15, phone records reportedly show that members of Trump's campaign and other Trump associates made frequent contact with Russian officials during their campaign. While US intelligence is still investigating Russian interference the big unknown is did the Trump campaign know about Russian hacks targeting clinton? Now the second scandal involves Trump's former National security adviser, Michael Flynn. It's related to the first because it begins on December 29, when the Obama administration announced a series of new sanctions on Russia as punishment for its interference in the election. On the same day, Michael Flynn called Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak multiple times. Flynn was not in office yet but has a long-standing relationship with Russia. On December 30, Putin announced that they would not retaliate against the sanctions. A move that Trump publicly praised on Twitter. Now this led some to suspect that the Trump administration was telling Russia that they would rethink the sanctions once they were in office. On January 12, news of the Flynn calls broke. Press secretary Sean Spicer and vice-president Mike Pence, each told reporters that the calls were not about sanctions. On January 24 Flynn told FBI investigators that he did not discuss sanctions in the phone call. Sometime in late January, acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the White House legal counsel that she believes Flynn was lying to the Trump administration about what he talked about on the phone call with Kislyak. Which would make Flynn potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail. On February 9, the Washington Post confirmed that Flynn had spoken about sanctions with Kislyak because the FBI had Kislyak's phone under surveillance. The report said Flynn urged Kislyak to not react to Obama's sanctions because the incoming Trump administration would be reconsidering them. On February 13 Flynn resigned, saying he had given Pence and others incomplete information about his conversation with Kislyak. On February 16 the House Intelligence Committee announced that its including Flynn its investigation of Russia interference in the US election. So at this point the big unknown is whether Trump new Flynn had reached out to Russia to discuss the sanctions. Finally, scandal number three is by far the most bizarre and the least confirmed. It begins sometime during the summer of 2016 when intelligence documents began circulating around the US intelligence community and media organizations. The documents were from a former British intelligence agent who was hired by Republicans and Democrats to investigate Trump. The documents claim Russia has information they could use to blackmail Trump. They also allege that Trump and Russia exchanged information during the campaign to hurt Clinton. On January 10, BuzzFeed published the entire unverified report after CNN reported that Trump and Obama had been briefed on it. On February 10, CNN reported that investigators had in fact verified a minor part of the report. "But now multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN that intelligence intercepts of foreign nationals confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days. At this point investigations into the report continue and the question of whether Russia could blackmail Trump remains unanswered. These 3 scandals continue and there are many unanswered questions but what is clear is that the uncertainty surrounding Trump and Russia is not going to go away anytime soon. I loved the 1980s when Chuck Norris used to
kill swaths of my people with a machine-gun in some brown bouillabaisse of a country. It was awesome to watch. -Muslims are always terrorists. Violent terrorists. Terrorists. Bad people. Shows like "24". “Allahu akbar!” (explosion) True Lies. "The last thing you will see will be your blood spraying across his face." We constantly have this reinforcement of a very negative image of Muslims. They were like these cardboard angry stock brown characters “Al-Tar!” (explosion) who used to waste bullets shooting machine guns in the air, which I thought was very inefficient. No son of immigrants would ever be that wasteful. Muslim women are always portrayed as the oppressed woman, the terrorist, or the hyper patriot. I remember when I was a kid, I would pray that,  like, Bart Simpson became Muslim, or I’d pray that Spiderman became Muslim. It’s cause we didn't have any role models. Producer: If you could create a Muslim protagonist, what would they be like? A black man with an African name who is elected President. Just kidding. I would love to see a Muslim character who saves the day. A Muslim woman who's at the forefront fighting the system, fighting oppression. Who’s, like, binge watching television, who, like, really loves doughnuts, like, who's very bad at bowling. An awkward guy that sweats a lot. “Look, he's eating chicken biryani and, uh, you know, watching 'Game of Thrones'.” Just human beings, you know. Someone like me, you know, living from paycheck to paycheck, dating Scarlett Johansson. Who just so happens to be a Muslim. (laughs) And that's really the portrayal that I want to see, like, just normal human beings. Uh, but now you have shows like “The Night Of”, where at least we’re getting accused of crimes of passion for once as opposed to terrorism. So, we’re slowly moving on up. What we as Muslims have to do is learn to harness the power of pop culture as a means of reframing perceptions towards Muslims. Right now we need those shows where you have Muslims playing good people. We need it. There’s this scene in the movie Arrival
where Jeremy Renner’s character, who's a scientist, is brought in to try to help the military
deal with alien spaceships that have landed across the globe. And in an early version of the script, he asks
if the aliens have responded to Fourier series sent out by the humans. Problem is, that wasn’t really the right
math reference. “Well, a Fourier series is a mathematical
concept, but it's not, like, a series of numbers so I, I changed that to Fibonacci series — which
is in fact a series of numbers that aliens might actually send us as a way of getting
our attention.” Phil is an astronomer and science blogger,
and he’s also part of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, an organization that connects creators
in Hollywood with scientist script advisors. They set up a phone number for screenwriters
like Arrival’s Eric Heisserer, who want their scientific references to sound right. “Here’s one of the things I wanted to
make sure to do with this movie — and that’s not to be embarrassed about complicated ideas,
not to be embarrassed or ashamed of hard science. That these are the words and the terms that
people in this position would be sharing with each other.” Phil’s advice to use “fibonacci” added
that extra bit of credibility. “And a I didn't really think much of that
but then you know, I go see the movie, and Jeremy Renner actually says that…. “Have they responded to anything — shapes,
patterns, numbers, Fibonacci?” “… and I'm nudging my wife like, pointing,
pointing to the screen, pointing, like yeah, he said what I wrote, that's so cool!” There’s a lot of really bad science in TV
and movies. “I’m getting hacked!” There’s bad computer science, bad geology,
bad physics. So in 2008, the Office of Communications at
the National Academy of Sciences launched the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Here’s how it works: you call the number,
you describe your question, and then the team filters through their database of 2,400 scientists
and engineers to put you in touch with the right person. They estimate that they’ve done between
1700 and 1800 consultations since they started. That includes almost every Marvel movie, and
two 2017 Oscar nominees. A lot of times, the consultation boils down
to changing a line to include a scientific concept. In early discussions for the 2011 Thor movie,
producer Kevin Feige needed a way to represent the “rainbow bridge” that reaches between
Earth and the realm of the Gods in Norse mythology. So he met with Sean Carroll, a physics professor,
who later paraphrased their conversation in a blog post. Carroll suggested they describe the bridge
as wormhole. Feige didn’t want to do that, because it
sounded too Nineties. MERCHANT: And he said, “Well, there is this
thing called the Einstein-Rosen bridge.” “Einstein-Rosen bridge? What is that?” Einstein-Rosen Bridge is the technical name
for a wormhole. And they said “We LOVE Einstein-Rosen bridge.” Listen to the dialogue in the movie, and you
can hear where they added in the concept of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. "An Einstein-Rosen Bridge is a theoretical connection between two different points of space-time." "It's a wormhole." But the team’s focus isn’t just about
what characters are saying — it’s also about who is saying them. In the original Thor comics, Natalie Portman’s
character — Jane Foster — is a nurse. The physics professor who consulted the filmmakers
argued that it would make more sense for the plot if she was a physicist studying the
wormhole that brought Thor to Earth. And for the Exchange, that sounded like the
perfect opportunity to break down gender stereotypes. “We love nurses, but we also really love
the idea of a strong female character who was an astrophysicist.” So the writers changed it. “You're an astrophysicist, not some storm
chaser.” "I'm telling you, there's a connection." Two years later, that character was the focal
point of a contest hosted by Marvel and the Science and Entertainment Exchange, where
young women interested in STEM careers could interview female scientists in the Exchange’s
database for a chance to tour laboratories and film sets. “We are very concerned with the way that
scientists are portrayed onscreen. We want them to be — I mean, you always
want them to be the hero, that’s the best thing — and a main character is fantastic. But we want to see women, we want to see people
of color, and we want to see them woven into the fabric of the everyday life that you see
onscreen.” Since 1983, repeated studies have shown that
when children are asked to draw a scientist, they overwhelmingly draw old, white men. Children usually cite film or cartoon characters
as their main source of inspiration. In the original research, children drew these
stereotypical characteristics more and more frequently as they got older. Science has had another image issue in Hollywood,
too. A survey of over a thousand horror movies
distributed in Britain between 1931 and 1984 found that scientists and their work were
the villains of 41 percent of films. Scientists were heroes less than 1 percent
of the time. In the decades since then, perceptions of
science have gotten better. An analysis of over 3,000 interviews on public
opinion about scientists found that American adults in 2001 were much less likely to hold
negative stereotypes about scientists than they were in 1983. And they were much more likely to believe
that a science career was a good choice for their children or for themselves. “I mean, people do learn from film and television. Whether you want them to or not. We often refer to it as an ‘accidental curriculum.’” One of the most talked-about examples of that
is what’s called the CSI Effect — the idea that chart-topping crime shows increased
interest in forensic science, but also spread a lot of misinformation about 
the field. CSI didn't just launch a franchise, it created a false impression when it comes to solving crimes. Researchers in 2010 found that watching the
show is associated with perceptions of DNA evidence as much more reliable than it actually
is. The Exchange wants to mobilize that kind of
effect — and hopefully make science more understandable and more accessible for everyone. These images of a swarm of locusts are from the
BBC’s groundbreaking Planet Earth series in 2006. And this footage comes from the brand new
sequel to that program — this is Planet Earth 2. You might notice the improvement in resolution
from HD to Ultra-HD. But another big change is that in Planet Earth
2, it’s not just the grasshoppers that are moving. The cameras are moving too. These dynamic tracking shots are part of the
reason why Planet Earth 2 is the BBC’s most cinematic wildlife film yet. GUNTON: We know when we go to the cinema now
the camera’s never static. It's always on the move, it’s always on a steadicam, it’s
always on tracks, it’s always flying. And I think we wanted to reflect that in our
approach. Not just because we wanted to do homage to cinema but because the reason
why cinema does that is because as soon as you have that sense of moving camera it feels
more immersive, it feels more connected. Watching Planet Earth 2 feels a bit like watching
a hollywood blockbuster. You almost forget that these actors are hiding
in remote corners of the globe and they do not follow scripts. The BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol
has been producing wildlife films for 60 years. Their frequent presenter, sir David Attenborough,
is most recognizable voice of the genre. “This extraordinary creature is half blind,
half deaf, and this is just about as fast as it can move”
And through the decades, they’ve continually raised the bar for the look and feel of nature
films, too. That evolution, as we’ll explore in this
3-part series, is in large part a story of technology. The first big breakthrough was lightweight,
16mm film cameras. NIGHTINGALE: If you remember, television began
as a studio operation. It just had ginormous video cameras that were
larger than a person. Then in the film industry, of course, that
was all movies, and again, they were very, very cumbersome. There simply weren't cameras that you could
take into the jungles and deserts and so on. 16mm cameras were portable, but they were
controversial inside the BBC, seen as amateur cameras, since 35mm film was the broadcast
standard at the time. But Attenborough insisted on the smaller cameras
for his first trips overseas. And sure enough, he came back with footage
of animals that had never before been filmed, like these Indri lemurs in Madagascar. Fifty-six years later, filming the Indri means
moving the camera around them and traveling with them through the trees, but the technology
they used to do this has only come around in the past few years. The issue is stabilization. You can see the shaking in these rare handheld
shots from the BBC’s 1990 series The Trials of Life. Aerial shots had the same problem. And if they tried to zoom in, those bumps
just got magnified. Producers could achieve cinematic motion with
cranes, dollies, and sliders where it was practical to do so. But for decades almost all the shots that
weren’t underwater involved a camera on a tripod — panning, tilting and zooming
to follow the action. There’s definitely no shortage of incredible
animal behavior to film that way. But it all changed around 2002. That's when BBC switched from film to digital HD cameras for the Planet Earth series. That switch gave them access to a tool called
the Cineflex heligimbal, a stabilization system for a helicopter-mounted camera. The heligimbal delivered the smooth sweeping
scenic shots that defined the epic look of that series. But it also let them film individual animals
from a kilometer up in the sky, and zoom way in to follow them without the noise of the
chopper scaring them off. And that changed the way they could capture
behaviors like hunting. GUNTON: If you look at how people shot and
edited hunting sequences, because of the nature of where you had to put the camera, you could
never get long continuous shots because you would you get a shot on a tripod, the wolf
would run off, you had to jump up and get in the land rover, run across, put the tripod
down and get another shot. So it always had to be quite edited and quite
constructed. Compare that to the wolf hunt in Planet Earth. GUNTON: Once that wolf started hunting you
could just fly along, keep your distance and in one shot, you just see how that drama played
out. And you just do not know what's gonna happen:
is it gonna stumble, is gonna catch it, is the little caribou gonna run away, is it gonna
stumble? It was so gripping because it was unmediated. The Cineflex system required digital cameras
because it separates the lens from the camera’s data storage, which at the time was digital
video cassette tape. You just can’t do that with film. The 400mm zoom lens is mounted inside a series
of rings called a gimbal, that isolate it from the movement of the helicopter, with
the help of small sensors called gyroscopes. Those sensors detect changes in orientation
so that motors can correct for those movements almost immediately. So the camera operator can control the
lens with a joystick inside the helicopter and zoom in without losing any stability. Ten years later, that stabilization technology
comes in smaller, much more affordable forms. It’s embedded in drones, and built into
rigs that you can hold in your hands. And that technological change aligned perfectly
with what the BBC wanted to do with Planet Earth 2. GUNTON: We wanted to push the proximity, getting close to the animals because we wanted to see the world's landscapes, our planet, through the animals' eyes. Gyro-stabilized drones provided more intimate
aerials, and handheld shots showed what it feels like
to really move through these habitats. WHITE: I think we've gone for a much more
emotional narrative in these. It's much more trying to put you in their
world and what would that animal be feeling. Trying not to be anthropomorphic about it,
but just sort of taking the viewer on a journey where they can start to relate to how that
animal might work in that world. It's a slightly warmer, closer take on Planet
Earth. Hollywood filmmakers have been able to get
stabilized walking shots for decades using a Steadicam. That’s a bigger, more complicated rig that
stabilizes the camera with balanced weights and a spring-loaded arm attached to a vest
that the operator wears. Those long walk-and-talk shots that ER and
The West Wing made famous, those are all Steadicam shots. The producers of Planet Earth 2 used Steadicams
for a few sequences, like this footage of a serval cat hunting in South Africa. But it most cases Steadicams have been too
cumbersome, expensive, or inflexible for shooting in the wild. Instead, the Planet Earth 2 team relied heavily
on smaller handheld stabilizers. Like the heligimbal, these rigs have gyroscopes
that measure orientation along 3 axes and motors that counteract those movements. These rigs are so small and versatile they
can often replace several other tools like sliders and cranes. WHITE: On some of the trips, like the trip
to film the penguins, we took a crane with us, we talked about taking sliders. The reality is it didn't come out of the box. Everything was done with a cameraman holding
a camera on a gimbal. In an environment like that, just to be able
to move around quite freely, have a camera that you can put down at penguin level but
be able to pick up and get above the penguins was just so useful. Handheld stabilizers are most effective when
you can get close to the animal, and a lot of animals don’t like that, so they’ll
never replace tripods. Rather they add to the rapidly growing arsenal
of tools becoming available not just to pros, but to everyone, to be able to get shots that
look like hollywood blockbusters. But ultimately, what makes a movie great isn’t
just the pictures, it’s the story. The Natural History Unit’s style has shifted
over time from more educational to more cinematic, but they haven’t forgotten that. GUNTON: The imagery of course is that first
thing that catches the eye, catches the attention but without the revelations the storytelling
brings, in the end, it palls quite quickly. So no technology will ever replace the ability
to be able to tell a story that grips and fascinates and emotionally connects with an
audience. Thank you for watching! You can find Planet Earth 2 on BBC America. It will be airing Saturdays through March
25th. You can also find tons of clips from their
archive on BBC Earth’s mobile app. It’s called Story of Life and it’s actually
where I found a lot of the clips that I used in this video. And it’s free! So check it out. This is Fiery Cross island. It's a little more than one square mile in size and it's home to a Chinese military base. There's a 10,000 foot airstrip, an advanced radar station, a missile defense system, and about 200 troops. But the strangest thing about Fiery Cross Island is that two years ago, it didn't exist. And neither did the six other Chinese military bases that have been built on man-made islands in the South China Sea. If you look at this satellite image from 2014, you can see huge Chinese ships collecting around remote reefs in the Spratly Islands. An archipelago in the South China Sea. In this image, these ships are rapidly pumping sand and rock up onto the reef. They're building islands. And less than a year later, the Chinese had seaports air bases and buildings on their new islands and the world had taken notice. We continue our look this morning on what China does not want you to see the superpower is reclaiming land in seven spots in the South China Sea adding on average more than three-and-a-half acres everyday. With these islands times trying to lay claim to one of the most important areas of ocean in the world the South China Sea. The South China Sea is incredibly rich in natural resources 11 billion barrels of oil, 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and ten percent of the world's fisheries. Most importantly though, 30% of the world's shipping trade flows through here to the booming population centers and economic markets of Southeast Asia. It's an extremely important body of water and right now five countries lay claim to some part of it. Now, most countries base their claim off the UN Law of the Seas, which says a country's territorial waters extend 200 miles off their shore. An area called the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. Countries have exclusive rights to all the resources and trade in there EEZ. It's their sovereign territory. So for example, any oil that's found within 200 miles off the coast of Vietnam belongs exclusively to Vietnam. But any area that isn't in an EEZ is regarded as international waters and it falls under UN maritime law which means everybody shares it. Now, every country in the South China Sea region uses this 200-mile EEZ threshold to determine its claims. All except China. China argued they have a historical claim to the South China Sea dating back to naval expeditions in the 15th century. And they mark it using a really confusing border called the nine-dash line. Following World War II, Japan who had dominated the entire region, lost all control of its surrounding seas. China used the moment to claim the South China Sea by drawing this imprecise line on the map that encompassed ninety percent of the South China Sea. It became known as the nine-dash line. When the UN established the 200-mile EEZ in 1973 China stuck to its own line, refusing to clarify its boundaries and ignoring claims by other countries. Now that brings us to the Spratly Islands. It's a remote barely inhabited cluster of islands currently claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The Spratlys are both geographically and symbolically at the heart of South China Sea. That's because any country that can claim the Spratly islands can extend their EEZs to include them and gain exclusive rights to the surrounding territory. But it's really hard to legitimately claim uninhabited piles of sand so a few nations have built small buildings and ports on their claimed islands and even stuck a few people there. But China believes all the Spratly Islands belong to them which brings us back to why they're building islands there. Installing military bases on these new artificial islands took the dispute to a whole new level showing how China's potentially willing to defend its claims with force. Now this is about when the United States took notice. While the US has no claim in the South China Sea, it is the world's lone superpower and uses its massive Navy to defend international waters. China sees the US presence in the area as an encroachment in their backyard. When a US destroyer ship sailed just 12 miles off the shore of one of China's man-made islands and the Spratlys China sent out their own destroyer and a patrol boat as a warning. China is building these islands in order to increase control around the surrounding waters. Using a strategy that they've deemed "The Cabbage Strategy". Where they surround a contested island with as many ships as possible. In May of 2013 China sent several ships to Ayungin shoal, which is just 105 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines, well within that 200 mile EEZ. The Philippines has eight soldiers stationed there. Like wrapping leaves around a cabbage the Chinese sealed off the Philippines access to Ayungin Shoal with fishing boats, surveillance ships, and navy destroyers creating blockade so that the Filipinos can't receive shipments of food and supplies. By building their own man-made Islands China's essentially building naval bases. The more Islands they have the more ships they can support and more territory they can slowly take control of. And the Chinese cautiously use the cabbage strategy in the Spratly islands, taking over contested territory but in small steps avoiding the possibility of igniting a bigger conflict. But the disputes are intensifying. Countries are now actively arresting trespassers in waters that they claim and China could go a step further. Since 2015 they've threatened to declare an air identification zone above the South China Sea, declaring that all aircraft that fly through it would need Chinese permission. Now, publicly China insists that their intentions are not militaristic but their actions say otherwise and it's heightening tensions in the region Steve Bannon who sits on the US National Security Council and who is one of President Trump's closest advisors is almost certain that the US will go to war in the South China Sea. "We're going to war in the South China Sea, I was a sailor there, a naval officer, we're going to war the South China Sea in five to ten years aren't we?" "there's no doubt about it" But for now the disputes remain only in the legal and diplomatic realms that only occasionally break into minor clashes. In July 2016 the international court at the Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines who charged China with invading their rightful territory in the South China Sea. China dismissed the ruling and enforcement of the law doesn't seem likely. Even from the US who released a vague statement urging the two countries to "clarify their claims" and "work together to resolve their disputes" which is another way of saying "we don't really want to deal with this". In fact, as the conflict escalates and international courts get involved, the US is stuck in a tricky position. On one hand, they do not want to risk provoking a conflict with China. But on the other they want China to stop bullying their allies in the region. Up until now the US has managed the situation by continuing to patrol through the South China Sea. It's also likely that the US would fly fighter jets above the sea if China actually does declare an air identification zone. These are symbolic but effective ways of keeping Chine in check while not getting too involved in the details of the conflict. So far the disputes in the South China Sea have not become violent but countries are starting to defend their claims by increasing troop numbers, weaponizing their territory and provoking each other. It's a complex situation that will continue to gain international attention for better or for worse. The average person has 27 unique web logins. To create an account on a site, you have to
register with a username and password. And most people pick passwords that are easy
to remember. Actually, a lot of us end up using the same
password for all of our websites, which is understandable,
but risky. There are many different ways that hackers
can get your password. They can use programs that try to guess it
by randomly cycling through different combinations, hacking the website itself, or phishing, by sending fake emails that look
like they’re from a website or company, but actually
aren’t. All of this spells bad news for people that
reuse the same password because you’re putting yourself at much higher risk
for hackers being able to get into your emails, your photos, and even your bank info. Last year Yahoo made headlines when it was
the victim of a massive cyber attack, With sensitive information being stolen from
1 billion accounts. So if you had a Yahoo account and you used
that same password for other sites, you were now vulnerable to all those other
accounts being hacked too. Every time there’s a big hack like this,
experts tell us to stop using the same password for every website. In fact, they say we should stop memorizing
our passwords altogether, recommending that we use something called
a password manager instead. I know, I know, it already sounds complicated. But trust me, it’s really not. And it will help make all of your accounts
much more secure. We currently think of passwords as things
that we memorize and store inside our heads. But since we’re really bad at remembering
random things, there’s a limit to how complex your password
can be, and how many different ones you’ll be able
to remember. As a result, most people have really simple
passwords, and many use the same one across all their
logins. This sucks because if a hacker gets access
to your one password, they then have access to all of your different
accounts. And if your password is uncomplicated, it’s
astonishingly easy for hackers to guess it. For instance, if you use a password like,
well, password, which is actually the eighth most commonly
used one, it would take a hacker mere milliseconds to
guess it. But if you use a password manager to generate
a 15-digit series of random upper and lowercase letters
and numbers, that time jumps up to 609 million years. The biggest thing we need to do is stop keeping
our passwords inside our heads. Instead, we need to put them somewhere else
and lock them up, like a virtual safe. This is what the password manager does. It’s basically an app that keeps all of
your passwords secure inside of a safe that only you can unlock. This way you only need to remember one password. And once you unlock the safe you can see all
of your many different passwords in one place. Since it’s an app, you can access your passwords
from any device you’ve installed it on. And since you don’t need to remember all
your passwords anymore, you can make them really long and
complicated. So what happens if your password manager gets
hacked? They would have access to all your individual
passwords then, right? Not necessarily. The password manager encrypts your data, so if a hacker looks inside your safe, all
they’ll see is scrambled passwords. LastPass was hacked in 2015 and users had
to change their master passwords. But the individual passwords inside were safe
because of this encryption. It may seem like it would be annoying to have
to retrieve your password for every single website. But, actually, most password managers have
browser plugins that automatically fill your info in for you. So in many cases, it’s actually easier. And besides, it’s better than the alternative: becoming one of the millions of Americans
that get hacked every year. This year a grand technicolor film about showbiz
is a favorite for best picture at the Oscars. Yes, it was well regarded amongst critics
and audiences around the country. But is La La Land hands down the best film
of the year? Is it good enough to beat out films like Moonlight
that are widely considered more daring and unique? History says yes. Because the oscar voting process favors mediocrity. Back in 2009 the the Academy switched from
a straight popular vote to instant runoff voting or preferential voting. The Academy wanted to better insure that the
film with the broadest support won. But the other side of that coin is that bold,
polarizing films get pushed to the side. At its most basic level, instant runoff voting
involves ranking a number of choices rather than choosing just one. Then the choice with the fewest votes is removed. And then those who voted for that candidate
have their votes counted according to their second-favorite candidate. Then the candidate that now has the fewest
votes is removed, and so on. It goes all the way until a candidate has
50% + 1 of the vote. This applies to both the nominations process
(although that does get a little weedy) and the process of selecting a best picture winner. So, how would instant runoff voting ultimately
play out in a real scenario? Let’s look at 2011 where the King’s Speech
beat out: 127 hours, The Fighter, Black Swan, Winter's Bone, True Grit, Inception, The Social
Network, and The Kids are Alright. All these films were probably 1st place picks
on a lot of ballots and dead last on others. It’s very possible that the passionate fan
bases of each of these films all had the King’s speech ranked 2nd or 3rd. When their 1st place vote wasn’t enough
to stay in the game their 2nd place votes were counted and re-added to the mix, ultimately
allowing The King’s Speech to come from behind. Because the King’s Speech had the broadest
support rather than the most passionate support, it took home the prize. The new voting system seems to favor a certain
type of film. Todd: We’ve had instant runoff voting for
6 years and fully half of those films have been movies about the movies. And I’d count the King’s Speech as being
adjacent to that. It’s a film about performance and elocution. Think Birdman, Argo, The Artist. The Academy is made of 6000 film industry
professionals who probably enjoy movies about themselves. They might not rank a film about showbiz as
number 1 but many might place it 2nd or third which is precisely where it's most dangerous. In 2005 before instant runoff voting was instituted,
Crash, won best picture. It’s a film people either despise or love. Todd: Crash is the worst best picture of all
time but there are people out there who really love that movie. I think we really want those movies that inspire
those extreme reactions one way or another. Sometimes the movie wins that you hate and
sometimes the movie that you love. I’d rather see that than the movie that
everyone was kind of okay with. In fact, Crash beat out a film that might
have easily have won in today's instant runoff system: A period film about entertainment
(the radio industry) directed by Hollywood royalty, George Clooney: Goodnight, and Good
Luck. When talking about the world’s 1.6 billion
Muslims, American presidents are traditionally very careful to differentiate between the
vast majority who practice the religion peacefully and the small minority who don't. There's nothing in there, in Islam that condones
the kind of brutality that we've seen Our actions today were not aimed against Islam,
the faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace-loving people. We are not at war with Islam, we are at war
with those who have perverted Islam. President Donald Trump has not continued this
tradition. Do you think Islam is at war with The West? I think Islam hates us. There’s something, there's something there
that’s a tremendous hatred. To understand why Trump is breaking with his
predecessors, you have to understand his chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon
ran the far-right website Breitbart, where he hosted a daily radio show. The face of terror is not the true faith of
Islam. Islam is peace. If you listen to Bannon's radio show, and
watch his speeches, you start to get a sense of how he sees the world. Bannon believes that the US and Western Europe
are in the middle of an historical struggle against Islam itself. Bannon isn’t talking about the American
founding fathers, he’s talking about European leaders who fought off Muslim conquests in
the 8th and 16th centuries. That is the context in which Bannon approaches
policy today This context also helps us understand Bannon's
views about refugees from the muslim world. In a 2015 interview, Bannon and then-Representative
Ryan Zinke of Montana discussed Obama’s plan to take in10,000 refugees from Syria. Bannon seems to think Syrian refugees are
incapable of adapting to the American way of life. Before Breitbart, Bannon made documentary
films. In the outline for one film, which he didn't
end up making, Bannon warns of an Islamist takeover of the United States. The opening scene features the call to prayer
and a flag of the Muslim star and crescent flying over the U.S. capitol building. Though his current focus is on Muslims, Bannon
has expressed a desire to keep all foreign-born people out of the U.S. In a 2015 interview, he disagreed when Donald Trump said we should keep high-skilled immigrants in the US. Less than 14% of Silicon
Valley CEOs are Asian. But the fake statistic supports his view:
that legal immigrants are just as problematic if not more, than those who are here illegally. The number is closer to 13 percent, but Bannon’s
point is that immigrants somehow make America less American. He believes they don’t share American values,
and that, even when here legally, they take jobs away from native-born Americans. And, in this view, Bannon is way out of sync
with mainstream Republicans, who, along with business interests like the
Chamber of Commerce, have long said they welcome legal immigrants. We're gonna need more legal immigration. Immigrants are an economic engine of vitality
for our country, they make things happen. We need to figure out how to have more legal
immigration. Immigrants are the lifeblood of our society. I think probably, you know, the most dedicated
Americans are those who come here as immigrants. Bannon blames legal immigrants for what he
describes as a bleak economic landscape for native-born Americans. If you’re under 30 years old, your children
are going to be poor, and your grandchildren are going to be paupers. The only way to stop this from happening,
Bannon says, is to rise up against those whom he calls the ruling political class, those
who allow immigration, legal and illegal, to continue. Think about it. If the elites are so good, how did we get
in this jam? This is the fourth great crisis in American
history: we had the Revolution, we had the Civil War, we had the Great Depression and
World War II, this is the great fourth turning in American history Bannon’s views have already started to influence policy. Multiple news outlets have confirmed that
he was behind the executive order temporarily banning travelers from 7 majority-muslim countries
and almost all refugees from entering the US. A federal judge has temporarily halted the
ban, but with the president’s ear, and a seat on the National Security Council,
Bannon's vision of a closed America, at war with Islam will continue to influence policy. this is Kelly Anton way she's Trump's campaign manager turned senior White House adviser in a big part of her job for the past eight months has been defending Trump in TV interviews there is no dead she will not go into that may sound like the hardest job in the world but Conway is ridiculously good at dodging tough questions and it drives her interviewers crazy Kelly yeah that's not what I asked you're trying to distract from my question you're answering the question I'm not asking the question is the question is so how does she do it what makes Kellyanne Conway such a nightmare to interview last December ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Conway a very simple question why does Trump falsely claim that voter fraud costs him the popular vote that claim is groundless isn't it irresponsible for president elect to make false statements like that watch how Conway answers I think it's groundless for if we talk about fake news that fake news is that somehow the popular vote is more important than the electoral college vote now catch that instead of answering Conway goes in a totally different direction Stephanopoulos tries again no one is questioning the victory I said is it appropriate is it responsible for a president elect to make false statements like that and again Conway dodges well first many people are questioning the victory you've got people spending millions of dollars wasting money and time in the Clinton his sign camp it's so frustrating it's like watching someone try to staple jello to a wall I needed to talk to an expert someone who had truly mastered at the dark arts of verbal combat hey Carlos this is Seth Gannon and at first glance he might seem like a sweet unassuming guy but he's actually one of the most talented debaters in the country you are true to form far too kind he won the national debate tournament the Superbowl of competitive college debate as a junior in 2008 and he made it to the finals again the next year here he is celebrating his big win and Here I am still being a virgin in college I was a late bloomer now Seth is a debate and public speaking coach a professional smooth talker have you watched a lot of Kellyanne Conway interviews as much as I can stand fair what is her secret with any question she is looking for an opening to take it somewhere else especially if she could make the administration as the victim she's listening for concepts that she can latch on to and go on often this is Conway's bread-and-butter she hears a key word or concept she can use for pizza to sound like she's answering the question and then introduces a total non sequitur to trip up the host it's like really bad improv watch what Conway does when Chuck Todd backs her into a corner about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd look alternative facts are not facts they're falsehoods Chuck do you think it's a fact or not that millions of people have lost their their players or health insurance and their doctors under President Obama do you think it's a fact that everything we heard Tom made she's not actually answering Todd's question at all but because she repeats his word it kind of sounds like she is here's another one you don't know what his finances are because you haven't seen his tax returns either so you don't know who you know the government of Qatar hasn't given him a million dollars here's what I do know I know we've got the Democrats on the run running around a blue state like did she wink she's seriously wink Conway that says Conway is essentially preying on an interviewers natural impulse to be polite for the interviewer to insist again and again on the original question and to ignore 90% of what she said in the meantime is Ruth stop this catch-and-release thought the sanctuary cities well if I can just interrupt because and I hate to do that but I would have a number of things I want to ask you about she trusts that they're going to move on to their next topic rather then ask the same question over and over when Conway does have her tangents cut short she has another trick passing the buck Conway doesn't actually make policy and Trump's white house so she often gets the site set tough questions by saying I don't know I have not been in those briefings no I you've earned half a skin and when that fails when tongue weight is really up against the wall she has one last trick make something up she doesn't seem to let fats or even other administration statements stand in her way she has this postmodern quality where words and statements that you may have heard and knew exactly what they meant well Kellyanne Conway has a very different interpretation of those same words she often reinvents Trump's positions into more defensible versions of themselves after Trump spent weeks falsely claiming in plain language that there was widespread voter fraud Conway went on TV and said he was actually talking about voter registration fraud something very different I will tell you that what the president is talking about is registration and voter rolls these registration rolls are a hot mess but that is not voter fraud no no but this is what the president was talking about he's talking about registration and rolls no that's not what he's talking about that's what Conway wishes he was talking about Jesus and this gets to the fundamental problem with trying to interview Kellyanne Conway the points of interviewing administration officials is to get clarity about what the president is doing or at least beliefs but Conway interviews do neither what she has decided not to give meaningful answers to questions there is no way to have a successful interview by traditional measures there are only gradations of failure only gradations of the non answers you're receiving she is so good at dodging questions and tripping a post that you're likely to end up more confused and lesson formed at the end of one of her interviews than you wore at the beginning Conway is a master of deflection but inviting her to wreak havoc on national TV does it actually help audiences better understand what's going on in their government so the next time you find yourself yelling at your TV during a Kellyanne Conway interview just remember she's doing her job it's them you shows they keep booking her that are letting you down I actually think anybody could do the Conway misdirection thing if they really put their mind to it yeah that's up question [Music] “Announcer: First to fifteen moves on.” “And there it is! Muhammad ducks the assault." When I qualified for the Olympic Team, the
focus was about me being the first Muslim woman in hijab to represent Team USA
at the Olympic Games. “She’ll become the first American athlete
to compete in the Olympics wearing a hijab.” “The traditional covering worn by some Muslim
women.” “Do you know how important that is? And what is a hijab?” I wanted to challenge the narrative that Muslim
women are meek and docile and oppressed. Being unapologetically Muslim, black, a woman,
and, it’s like, either you like it or you don't and I don’t really care either way. I’ve always been super active. As a kid I played softball, I tried tennis,
I ran track. My teammates wore tank tops and shorts, but
my mom always had to adjust the uniform so it would adhere to the tenants of my faith. When I was about twelve years old my mom and I were driving past the local high school and we
saw athletes that had on long jackets, long pants, and they had on
these masks. That’s when we discovered fencing. Once I found fencing it was the first time
where I looked like my teammates and it was just this really gratifying experience for me. As a young athlete I really looked up to Serena
and Venus. They never conformed to what the tennis community
wanted them to be and through their prowess, they forced society
to accept them as they were and that was something that I wanted for myself
within fencing. When I qualified for the Olympic team, my
life immediately changed. “Can I?” “Yes.” “I thought you were wearing like a shield?” “No that’s abs. Those are abs.” “How many swords do you have?” “Uh, a bunch. Do you want one?” “Yes.” “Target area is from the waist up. Anywhere you see silver? Valid target.” “-Waist up? -Waist up.” “Good to hear.” “When Team USA marches into the next Olympics,
one of the Americans waving the red, white and blue" “will be a fencing champion wearing her hijab.” It wasn’t until opening ceremonies that
I was overcome with emotion. Like, man, this is actually happening! “I told her to bring home the gold!” No one thought we would win a medal. We were underdogs. "Announcer: And onto the battle for bronze
now, Team USA meeting Team Italy." It’s something that you can only dream about. And you pray that all the stars align and
everything happens right that day. “Announcer: There it is! She has done it. The Americans have taken the bronze.” When it happened, I’m like, oh my God, I
can’t believe this is happening. From the time I walked onto the podium, to
the time they put the medal around my neck, literally just like complete disbelief. I was just, like, fighting back tears, and
just very very thankful. You can’t ask for a better day. I met Serena and Venus in the Olympic Village. I was very fangirly when I first met them. I was just like, “You mean so much to me, and you’ve done so much for African American
girls and how we view ourselves.” I was just rambling, just like that. And I’m sure they thought I was crazy. But I felt like I had to tell them in that
moment how much they meant to me growing up. And now I get a ton of fan mail and even personal
encounters with parents and their kids about what it’s meant for them to see a
Muslim woman who observes the hijab not just be a member of Team USA, not just
medal at the Olympics, but have that ability to do so. Being a source of inspiration, hopefully being
a source of light for our community is the most rewarding experience that I’ve had. Mhmm...! Okay. So, there’s this question that I’ve been asking
myself a lot lately. I’m constantly distracted... Wait...wait...wait. Umm... I wasn't listening. My room is a mess. I cleaned this yesterday. And I keep forgetting my keys everywhere. Do I have ADHD? And it seems like a lot of people on the internet
are asking the exact same question. But the thing is... diagnosis can be a bit tricky. And the ADHD community is divided into two sides:
People who think ADHD is being overdiagnosed, and people that think it’s being underdiagnosed. A key criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is that, it shows up at a very early period of life. And that's according to the DSM, a manual published
by the American Psychiatric Association. It’s essentially a huge guide with standardized
criteria that doctors use to diagnose mental disorders. And according to the latest edition, there
are 5 big things that need to be checked off to determine if someone has ADHD. First, you need to show persistent patterns
of at least 6 symptoms from at least one of two categories. And these symptoms had to exist before the age of 12. Be present in two or more different settings. Interfere with your social, academic, or professional
abilities. And not be “better explained by another
mental disorder”. If you do meet these criteria, the good news
is that ADHD medications are super effective. You might be familiar with Ritalin. It was introduced in back in 1955, and since then more
pharmaceutical companies developed new types of ADHD medication. Today, about 75% of ADHD patients respond
to 1 of 2 types of stimulants. Methylphenidate —  which is in brands like Ritalin and Concerta — and Amphetamine, which is found in Adderall. But not everyone thinks this boom in drugs
is a positive thing. This is Dr. Allen Frances, and he believes that ADHD is being overdiagnosed. According to a number of studies done in the US, Taiwan, Iceland, and Canada — the youngest kid in the classroom was way more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest kid. In 2013, the DSM’s criteria broadened to
include children who had symptoms by age 12. Where previously, it required symptoms before
the age 7. This looser criteria could possibly increase
the risk of more children being misdiagnosed for ADHD and put on drugs. And all drugs have side effects — even
the effective ones. Studies have found that ADHD medications increase
heart rate and blood pressure. Other side effects include strokes, depression,
and addiction. In rare cases, misdiagnosis can mean treating the wrong problem altogether. On the other hand... This is Dr. David Goodman and he thinks ADHD is being underdiagnosed. And this is a big problem, especially for
women. Women are generally harder to diagnose because while hyperactivity is more common in men and boys, inattentiveness is more common for women and girls. Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD as girls are. But many argue that it’s not necessarily
because it’s more common in boys. According to psychologist Ellen Littman, studies
of ADHD were based mostly on hyperactive young boys, — leading to a distorted understanding
of the disorder. Dr. Goodman also argues that media portrayals
of ADHD can add to a stigma that keeps people from seeking treatment. “Hi there! What’s your name? My name is Abernathy Darwin Dunlap, but you can call me ADD… on the count of the fact that I have ADD.” “Wow. You were just the worst student in the world,
weren’t you?” “They said I have AD… something. Can we have class outside?!” An extensive study has shown that ADHD patients
who get treatment have much more beneficial academic and social outcomes in the long run
than those who don’t. So the real problem here isn’t really whether there are too many or too few people diagnosed with ADHD. It’s... are the right people, getting the
right treatment. And that’s something you’re not going
to find on the internet. I idolized Chad Muska as a 13-year-old. I wore the whole getup, you know, with my
skater pants and my skater sweaters. I dropped into my first half pipe at 14, it
was the most remarkable day of my life and I was like, "Yo, look guys, I dropped in! I’m a vert skater now!" Other people describe me as fearless, curious,
energetic, probably against the grain. I grew up in a very "girl power" type of
family where my parents had 6 children and my father and mother had the same exact
expectations for my sister and I as they did my brothers. (laughing) While I was a very proud young
Muslim-American woman, I didn’t have role models to point to. Princess Jasmine, from "Aladdin" by Disney,
that might have been my only option. The mainstream view is so misrepresentative
of so many young Muslim-Americans across the nation. They were generally represented in one way instead of an amalgamation of
many identities like myself. I definitely consider myself
an artist and a skater girl. Somebody in tech, but also a faithful Muslim. Not being willing or able to
accept these stereotypes, my friends and I decided to take
our favorite parts of ourselves and turn it into a music video. To Jay Z's "Somewhere in America". I called up my friends and said, "Hey
Humna, you have a motorcycle," "bring it, let's get some footage." "Hey Ibtihaj, you're a fencer for Team
USA, let's shoot you fencing." "You have dope style and you're an
attorney, come and look really cool." I happen to really like fashion,
so I got really dressed up. I like skateboards as well,
so I threw that into the mix. We had no idea that the video would
get such a wide reception. I get on my social media and I
just have a zillion notifications. The opinions ranged from "this doesn't
represent me" to "this is awesome." And we were kinda happy to see the whole
"this doesn't represent me" piece, we're like, "Yeah, nothing represents you
right now which is why you have to take control of our narrative and make something that represents
you, 'cause this sure as hell represents me." And the next thing I knew, I was in the pages
of Glamour and Marie Claire, even GQ. At some point, I had a French girl walk up
to me and say, "You're the girl from the Mipsterz video," "you guys are a big deal in France"
and I'm like, "That's cool!" Mipsterz ended up turning into a huge community
of young Muslim-Americans across the nation. The most important things and
the best things that I saw were the tons of notes from young girls like, "I used to be so self-conscious about my identity," "It's so awesome to know that we have
role models that we can look to" "and are a more accurate
representation of who we are." The most unexpected outcome
of this video was probably this. I actually, um, met my husband
because he saw the video and decided that he absolutely had to meet me. By the third date he told me, "I'm gonna marry you." My husband is definitely a Mipster, and we
hope to have very Mipster babies one day. I had no idea that those Wednesday afternoons
in the skate park would be so critical in shaping the Muslim-American narrative
that my children will ultimately be raised in. Donald Trump has a very nationalistic overall
worldview that carries over into his trade policy. “...remember that! America first! America first!" He sees these kinds of things as very much zero-sum: in which one side wins and another side loses. “We’ve lost our jobs like we’re
a bunch of babies. They’ve gone to other countries. They’ve gone to Mexico. They’ve gone to many other countries. ...It’s all so easy, believe me. It’s all so easy.” But in a complex system like global trade,
it’s not always easy to tell who is winning. Trump has suggested really really really strongly
that he wants to crack down on imports from Mexico. “...and plants and factories and everything else going into Mexico.” ...and that has driven down the value of Mexico’s
currency an enormous amount. Ironically, making the peso cheaper makes
it an even more attractive place to locate production because it means that, in effect,
Mexican workers are being paid less and makes it harder for American factories to compete
with Mexican ones. But that’s not what Donald Trump says is
going to happen. “...but here's what happens: I will tell them, ‘You’re gonna move back, right?’ and they are going to say ‘Yes, sir. We’re moving back to the United States. We’re going to build our factory in the
United States. We’re not moving to Mexico and
we are going to create a lot of new employment!'" Trump blames the loss of manufacturing jobs on trade deals like NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement that reduced barriers to trade between The US, Canada, and Mexico. "NAFTA will tear down trade barriers between our three nations. It will create the world's largest trade zone and create 200,00 jobs in this country." "We're not getting anything. We have NAFTA, which is a total and complete disaster." While trade deals are an easy target on the
campaign trail, they are only one part of the equation. When you look at the really long term, you
can see that manufacturing jobs have been declining as a share of the economy very steadily
for a very long time and that tells us that, even though trade
deals matter, they are not the driver of this big trend. It’s just, over the long haul,  because of automation, as
economies evolve and advance, more people work in the service sector, fewer people work in the manufacturing sector. Trade plays a role in that, but it’s not
the primary driver. Despite this fact, it’s exactly those jobs
that Trump is claiming to protect by withdrawing from the TPP: The Trans-Pacific Partnership. “A great thing for the American worker, what we just did.” This particular trade deal, it was designed to take a lot of Asian countries and bind
them more closely together with The United States; one reason countries were eager to do a trade deal with The United States, rather than with China, is that they are closer to China and thus they are a little bit afraid of China and they want to keep The United States invested in Asia. If we pull out, that may leave some of these countries feeling exposed or alone and like they need to enter into a Chinese economic orbit. This decision means fewer cheap imports, but it also affects the market for American exports. One thing that's worth noting here is that
farmers would've been big winners under Trans Pacific Partnership. In particular, I think the expectation was
that the United States would be able to export a lot more agricultural goods to
Japan. If The US has joined the TPP, American farmers would have had a stronger relationship with Japan, the world’s fourth largest agricultural consumer. Rural voters broke very very heavily in favor
of Donald Trump, but they may actually lose out by his sort of less trade-friendly policies. And it just shows that the world is complicated
and it’s difficult to change things. And, you really do need to talk to expert
people. “I am a free trader one hundred percent, but we need smart people making the deals and we don’t have smart people making
the deals.” Trump’s view is that for us to win at trade
somebody else has to be losing. "This country is going to start winning again. We don't win anymore." I don't think that that is true. If he proves me wrong, you know, I think he’ll
have a great deal to brag about, but I think he’s going to find that, you know, the forces
dragging American manufacturing employment down are fairly profound and that the kinds
of things he thinks will fix it are just as likely to make things worse as better. All of these pictures: the sun-dappled landscapes
and surreal undersea worlds, the abstract sculptures and slightly-hazy futures were
all made...here. In the video game called Minecraft. It’s the type of art that gets collected
in coffee table books and gets made by design collectives. With more than 100 million copies sold, Minecraft
has become more than a game. This game has become an artistic medium. And it is also a business. But even though Minecraft is a liberating
game, building a business in a virtual world
can be just as tricky as building it in the real one. “At first I thought, OK, you know, the graphics
aren’t great, but I had a sort of childhood fascination with Lego. About two weeks I got bored with the whole
survival aspect and then started looking at this thing called creative mode.” James Delaney is from London, and he’s one
of the people who runs Blockworks, an artistic collective and company. He’s talking about how Minecraft works. Players choose between two different modes:
one is survival mode, which is a little like a traditional video game, since scary spiders
and other creatures come out at night. There’s also creative mode. It is a blank canvas, in which players can
design unique worlds. It really is like making something out of
Legos - you arrange a variety of digital blocks with tons of options to increase the complexity. As Minecraft grew, a new industry grew with
it. To play Minecraft online, players choose from
a bunch of different servers that can host the game. In the beginning, these servers weren’t
owned by Mojang, the company that created Minecraft. So as different servers tried to attract players,
they added lots of bells and whistles, like intriguing worlds, or maps, and even their
own mods of the game. An industry was born. All sorts of companies and guilds sprung up
to make Minecraft maps. Just like players, they were located all around
the world. “We have another director, Sean Davidson,
who’s over in Canada. We have 62 members from over 20 different
countries. But everything’s done remotely, so there’s
no office with more than one person in it.” Their company, Blockworks, started with maps
for servers, but the artistic potential kept them going. Though they might beautify their work using
plugins and textures, all of it is made in game, with obsessive detail that fans can
download and appreciate for themselves. They create beautiful surreal worlds, like
a map about...Minecraft, the game, or a beautiful dreamscape of clouds. “I started thinking about this city which
would be constructed from giant musical instruments with a very sort of mechanical steampunk theme.” As Minecraft grew, big companies saw potential
to promote their stuff through Minecraft maps. Blockworks scored tie-ins for movies like
Tomorrowland and Batman v. Superman. They even made a Batmobile. But as unusual as it sounds, building ads
inside virtual worlds is not a new idea. This is Chex Quest, a 1996 game built on top
of Doom’s engine. People got it from a CD-Rom inside Chex boxes. At the time, Doom was considered an ultraviolent
video game. So they remade it with… Chex. For a small fee, Chex licensed the software
and built a world inside a world. That trend of virtual world ads continued
in Second Life, a platform launched in the 2000s that’s still going today. Companies from Reebok to American Apparel
built virtual stores there, earning a lot of press. But as the platform started to decline in
popularity, the headlines disappeared. Minecraft, however, might have the biggest
opportunities and risks. In May 2016, Minecraft and Mojang’s current
owner, Microsoft, declared that branded partnerships - like the glorious Batmobile - were no longer
allowed. Microsoft said it “didn’t feel right,
or fun.” It also meant they wanted to retain control
of how money was made off Minecraft maps. Blockworks made out OK — Microsoft hires
them to make gorgeous maps like the seven wonders of the ancient world. They stayed in the club when other mapmakers
got kicked out of the branded map game. “We’re lucky enough to work with Microsoft,
and obviously they’re exempt from their own guidelines. I think a lot of other teams did struggle
as a result of that. And it closed a lot of doors. At the same time, it’s quite understandable
that Microsoft want to keep control over how their platform is used.” Collectives like James’s might not mind
that much. In addition to Microsoft gigs, they have artistic
projects and historical collaborations. “So this was commissioned by the Museum
of London, it ties in with and exhibition they’ve got commemorating the Great Fire
of London in 1666.” But the change in rules shows the risks of
building your business in another person’s world. Promotional map crackdowns, and even limits
on private servers, have kept the Minecraft economy kind of uncertain. When you’re playing another person’s game,
night could come at any time. And then, it’s always survival mode. We put links to all the maps we used in this
video in the description, so there’s a lot to explore and have fun with. Now I’m gonna put this gold block on the
ground. OK. Today’s football players are huge. It’s easy to see the difference when you
look at modern players versus the old-school players side by side. This is William Heffelfinger. In 1892, he became the first person to be
paid to play football. And he’s a decently big guy: 6’ 4”, 178
pounds. But compare that to players today, and he
looks tiny. Take the New England Patriots’ Alan Branch
— 6’ 6’’, 350 pounds. Or the Atlanta Falcons' Jake Matthews — 6’
5’’, 309 pounds. Back in 1970, only one NFL player weighed
over 300 pounds. By 1980, there were three. By 1990, 94. By 2000, 301. And in training camps in 2010, 532 players
weighed over 300. These charts by Alex Bresler show the change
in NFL players’ height and weight from 1936 until 2013. Over time, players got taller and heavier
on average. Notice that while most positions had a slow
increase in weight, these two skyrocketed. Those are the offensive and defensive linemen,
the guys that ram into each other at the start of each play. You can think of it as a kind of weight class
specialization happening over time based on player positions. Receivers and the guys who guard them need
to be fast down the field, while the linemen are basically sumo wrestlers trying to either block or buy time for the players moving the ball. That size specialization probably had to do
with the ways the rules have changed over time. Before the 1950s, substitutions were limited,
so players played multiple positions, offense AND defense. That discouraged specialization. And then in the 1970s, blocking below the
waist became illegal, which basically moved offensive line action above the waist. Before that, if linemen were too top-heavy,
they would be more vulnerable to “old-school” blocking techniques that would knock out their
knees. On top of that, new training and dieting practices
have helped players get bigger and stronger more efficiently. These heavy players are still really athletic. But the rapid increase in weight comes with
some serious health concerns. A government study in 1994 found that NFL
linemen face a substantially higher risk of dying of heart disease — 52 percent higher
than the general population and three times the risk compared to other NFL players. And a 2008 study found that retired linemen
were almost twice as likely to have metabolic syndrome, which includes a bunch of risk factors
like obesity and high blood pressure. That makes them a lot more likely to suffer
from heart disease and diabetes down the road than non-linemen. So yes, many players have gotten bigger as
the game of football has evolved. And they've helped their teams by bulking
up, but it does come at a price. President Trump's temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has been criticized as being unAmerican. One of the people who is detained over the weekend was a five-year-old who is detained for hours separated from his mother whose from Iran. But the ban is also having an effect on American military strategy in the Middle East. Instead of protecting the US, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are warning that the ban could be a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism. It was obviously rushed out but no effort was really made to consider what the strategic impact was in any of these seven countries. This is Tony Cordesman. He writes and advises on military policy not immigration.But Cordesman sees Trump's executive order as more than an immigration policy. It already has had a major effect on ISIS propaganda. They picked up on it immediately. Already some jihadist groups are claiming victory over the executive order. Saying that the policy proves the United States is at war with Islam. They're calling President Trump's action the "Blessed ban". The policy plays perfectly into ISIS's most vital narrative, that the West persecutes Muslims and that is a holy duty to fight back. That message carries even more weight when paired with the fact that Trump has explicitly tailored the ban to make it easier for Christians to immigrate to the US. As it related to persecuted Christians do you see them as kind of a priority here? Yes. You do? Yes The ban is also rattling relationships with key partners in the Middle East and around the world It tends to alienate Muslims even if they're not in the seven countries and people outside those countries now have no idea of what's going to happen next. Most of the world's Muslims are not in the Middle East. A substantial number are in Africa. But others are strategic partners in Asia, Indonesia. India is a country that has very large number of Muslims. Iraq is one strategic partner that is bearing most of the burden in the fight against ISIS. And has lost thousands of soldiers along the way. It's a country that the US needs on its side. But Iraq is one of the countries included in the ban and they're not happy. It's humiliating, its like spitting in the face of Iraqis. When you are essentially fighting side-by-side with Iraqi troops to ban all entry from Iraq. Made no real sense at all was an almost perfect way of alienating a partner. In three other banned countries, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen the US has a small military presence to monitor terror groups and conduct counter-terror operations. And the impact the message you are sending all of these countries is that regardless of who they are, how much they cooperate with the United States, They're going to be excluded. The US also counts on a broader coalition of security allies for intelligence sharing and other counterterrorism operations. Every one of these countries are Muslim-majority nations and many have spoken out against the ban. And we heard from Pakistan Foreign Minister the move will not affect terrorists however it will increase the miseries of the victims of terrorism. So in many ways you've taken a threat which gets an immense amount of media attention but actually produces almost no casualties. And you've used it in ways which threaten our strategic partnerships and military relations with critical largely Muslim states roughly from Morocco to Malaysia. The hasty release of the executive order is also creating rifts within Trump days old national security team. There is a secretary of defense has a great deal of competence in this area and is focused on the far broader issues of security. Particularly in the countries that were named and he was not consulted. Secretary Mattis reportedly saw a draft of the executive order just hours before it was signed. Trump gave him no input. This may be because six months earlier Mattis said publicly that a Muslim immigration ban would quote, "send shockwaves through the entire international system." And he was right. Trump's ban didn't just affect the people immigrating to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. It is having a much broader negative effect on the security partnerships that the US depends on in the Middle East and Asia. A network of relationships that is not easily repaired. This is the VHS for An Extremely Goofy Movie. It’s the follow up to the cult classic A Goofy Movie and it’s one of my favorite animated films. Now, there’s a moment in this movie where Bobby Zimmeruski, Max’s stoner friend — You know, the one that chugs Cheese Wiz? He says, “Do you ever wonder  why we’re always like... wearing gloves?” That’s a damn good question, Bobby. Let’s figure this out. Does the question, "Why do Animated characters wear gloves?", come up a lot for you? John: The question rarely comes up, but when it does, there are a number of answers to it. That’s John Canemaker, he’s an animation historian and professor at NYU. The most basic theory is that gloves saved time. John: Animation of any kind— even with computers— is a very work-intensive or labor intensive process. "Pardon me. I've always wondered how they were made." At the dawn of animation, everything was hand-drawn over and over and over again. And certain techniques to make the process more efficient shaped the style of the cartoons. John: Felix the Cat, for example, was a very boxy-looking character. As Felix was becoming more popular, the animator Bill Nolan decided to remove his snout and make him more circular overall. John: And that design—what they call the rubber hose and circle design, very spaghetti-like arms of the characters— continued to the design of Mickey Mouse as well. This rubber hose and circle aesthetic allowed animators to quickly draw arms, legs, and heads without spending too much time developing realistic details of the character’s body—like elbows and knees. A round edge was much faster to draw than an angle, and that certainly applied to hands, with all those fingers and knuckles. But hands posed another a problem for animators in the age of fuzzy black and white film. John: Characters were in black and white films difficult to see against their black bodies. Take a look at Mickey Mouse. In 1927’s Plane Crazy he had black hands and feet, just like Felix. He gained shoes by 1928’s Steamboat Willie and in 1929 he’s wearing gloves in The Opry House. The rubber hose style of animation is in full effect here. Every character is exaggerated, round, and simple. And like many of the glove-wearing cartoon characters of his time, Mickey Mouse is a non-human doing very human things. In his 1968 biography, "The Disney Version", Walt Disney addresses this very issue. He says, "We didn't want him to have mouse hands, because he was supposed to be more human. So we gave him gloves.” So in addition to saving time and providing color contrast, gloves bring non-human things to life, making their grand gestures stand out. These 1935 tea kettles from Van Beuren Studio have them. This movie camera does too. When Pinocchio is a puppet, he wears gloves. But when he becomes a boy, they disappear. They’re no longer needed. But there’s another, less practical influence behind cartoon characters’ white gloves. The Opry House is a film about Mickey putting on a big vaudeville show. That film and many of the animations that predated it were inextricably linked to vaudeville performance and the blackface minstrel shows of the time. In fact, early animators often performed on vaudeville stages. Nicholas Sammond writes in Birth of An Industry that early animated characters like Felix the Cat, Bimbo, Bosko, and Mickey Mouse “weren’t just like Minstrels, they were Minstrels.” Both the cartoons and the stage characters were portrayed as mischievous and rebellious yet good natured. They wore loose clothes, had painted faces, and … they wore white gloves. In the 1930s vaudeville and blackface minstrelsy declined. White gloves were no longer associated with vaudeville to a new generation of viewers. Instead, they were just part of the cartoon style people came to expect. John: There’s also The Band Concert, do you know that film? It’s from 1935. John: One of the characters is Clarabelle Cow and she plays the flute and her glove gets stuck in the flute [chiuckles] so, really strange without the glove on it. Sixty years later Goofy takes off his gloves before getting in a pool and it’s quite frankly, really disturbing. Now what’s really bothering me is why Daffy Duck and many other animated birds don’t wear gloves. We might never know. Daffy: Look, let’s not split hairs. Why do you even wear gloves? Bugs Bunny: Because, I’ve always worn them. It’s who I am. Why do you wear that thing around your neck? Touché Bugs Bunny. Touché. Donald Trump's press secretary did something really weird during his first White House press conference he walked out in front of a room full of reporters look them in the eye and he holds an obvious lie about the size of Trump inauguration crowd this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration purine both in person and around the globe then he accused the media of lying above the crowd and walked out without taking any questions I will see on Monday a lot of veteran journalists were floored by what Spyder had done he had it just lies he lied about something so silly and obvious on his first day as press secretary and two days later he did it again you stand by your sentence that was the most-watched inaugural my team dressin sure it was the most-watched inaugural shirt it wasn't even the last slide that sponsors pulled that week the next day he defended Trump bogus claim that millions that people voted illegally during the election for reporters covering the White House the whole week probably felt like it was straight out of a spy light zone and it raised a really tricky journalism question how do you cover a White House that isn't afraid of being caught line [Applause] look it's not like White House press briefings are super interesting to begin with the White House doesn't want to get caught lying to the public so they're usually super careful about what they say at evening I'm in decline a comment on that specific question and as a result journalists pay a lot of attention to what little the White House does say there is an expectation when the White House talks it's not just making stuff up but Trump is different he and his surrogates have shown themselves to be really comfortable with life during the campaign the fact-checking site PolitiFact caught Trump lying 249 times and it wasn't just a campaign thing since being elected Trump has lied about voter fraud is fight with the CIA and saving a Ford factory that he didn't actually save I talked to Jay Rosen who teaches journalism at NYU and he sees Spicer's press conference as a symptom of a much bigger trump problem it's way beyond a press secretary willing to stand up and spout untruths Trump's political style is an attack on the very idea that we could have a common world of facts that we disagree about and whether you think Trump is doing this on purpose or not it poses a really big challenge for news networks because blatantly false information from the White House is basically propaganda and journalists have to treat propaganda differently for one news networks need to start acting as a buffer between the White House and the public not just an uncritical messenger and CNN actually did a good job of this during Spicer's first press conference while MSNBC and Fox News both ran live feeds the site should comment in one CNN held off and waited until it was over to tell viewers that happened Sean Spicer the White House press secretary just made a statement where you are tell our viewers what he said that may seem minor but it actually made a big difference Fox and MSNBC viewers had to wait five minutes to find out Switzer was lying and that's only they kept watching after the press conference we're on CNN the fact that Spicer lied was the story this was not obviously the biggest attendance at an inauguration in u.s. presidential history to be fair CNN went back to just live-streaming expenses comments two days later so you know a forever another approach would be to stop thinking creeping all that seriously Rosen recommend sending in terms to cover White House press briefing instead of seasoned veterans who could be using their time doing investigative reporting that's what the more experienced people should be doing it should be wasting their time waiting around for a briefing that's going to contain either no information or misleading information the bottom line is news networks are going to have to start taking government information with a grain of salt the government releases a ton of data about the world about crime health foreign relations major policy initiatives journalists under Trump are going has to get used to triple checking and independently verifying everything the government says and if on day one you're willing to tell two inaccuracies like that on issues that don't matter that much you no matter less than when wheel stuff starts happening that's that's a concern these changes might sound obvious than easy but it's actually a big shift in approach for a lot of newsrooms you have reporters who have spent their careers developing contacts and relationships at the White House and they now have to accept that the White House is not a useful source of information or could even make the reporting work that's a big change to accept Rosen refers to it as a grieving process there's a grieving for a loss ritual yeah that they have to go through and they want it to be the same they want the briefing to be useful they want to have cordial relationships with Sean Spicer they wish it could go back to what it was but it's not going back at least not for a while we live in a world where the White House is now a major purveyor of misinformation believe me Oh believe me and these networks that don't change their behavior accordingly are going to have a really hard time calling you when their audiences need to hear it some folks thanks for watching strikethrough is a do box video series focusing on media coverage in the age of Trump or a Sean Spicer would say the biggest most impressive video series of all time period More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than
for Donald Trump. More Americans voted for Democratic Senate
candidates than for Republican Senate candidates. And Trump, he's  really unpopular. The most unpopular new president we’ve had since, well, since we invented polling. He’s so unpopular that his inauguration
was greeted with the largest single day of protests ever ever in American history. This is a message. It is a message from the voters to him. If Trump were wise, he would govern with some
humility. He needs to turn his minority into a majority. And he can do that. He could reach out to the majority
of Americans who didn’t vote for him, who don’t approve of him — and show them, in
word and deed, with compromise candidates and compromise legislation, that they were wrong about him That he’s better than they thought. That he’ll a president for all Americans. Another round of sweeping immigration changes expected from President Trump, after he signed off on his signature promise, to build a border wall. President Trump will sign an executive order today related to a voter fraud investigation, in the absence of information to suggest there was voter fraud. In his every move since winning the election, Trump has shown he will govern as the most extreme version of himself. He has made Breitbart’s Steve Bannon his
chief strategist. He made retired Gen. Michael Flynn his national security adviser. He said that Jeff Sessions will be his attorney general. He’s still sending out tweets attacking John Lewis, He's getting in fights with the CIA. His inauguration address made no effort at
all to reach out to the other side...instead he told his own supporters that he’d be
here, governing for them. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. You came by the tens of millions to become
part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before. So far, there’s been no effort, at all,
to reach out to the other side, or to play against type. There’s no Democrats in his cabinet, as
there were Republicans in Barack Obama’s cabinet. Trump won’t even admit he’s unpopular. He just tweets the polls are rigged. So Trump is not going to represent the bulk
of Americans, he’s not even apparently going to try. But someone needs to. So far, Democrats have slipped very comfortably
into the position of minority party. They aren’t demanding that Trump put forward
compromise candidates for key posts. They aren’t laying out a proactive agenda
that would serve as their basis for negotiations with Trump and the Republicans. And they aren’t, in their public messaging,
emphasizing that most voters opposed Trump’s agenda, and that both Democrats and Republicans
need to take that seriously. Democrats have confused being
out of power with being in the minority. And that is a mistake. They are out of power, but it's not clear at all that what they represent is a minority. And somebody, somebody needs to represent the majority of voters who do not want to buy Trump is selling. As grim as the situation is for Democrats
— and it is grim — it’s not going to take long for Republicans to recognize they're in some trouble too. They’ve lost the popular vote in six of
the past seven elections. That has never happened for a political party before. And, remember, it's the out-of-power party that tends to
gain seats in midterm elections. All of which leaves an opening for Democrats. If Trump doesn’t intend to represent the
majority of the country, well, they can. They don’t hold much power in Congress,
but they hold more than Republicans did in 2009, and Republicans were able to cause plenty
of problems for Obama’s agenda. They were able to make it very clear that Obama was governing on his own. Democrats should insist, in both appointments
and legislation, that Trump govern with some consideration for the majority of Americans
who voted for someone else. That is not mindless opposition. That is a reasonable cost for cooperation. Democrats should demand both that the media and
Republicans to take seriously the fact that Trump is governing without a majority, or
even a plurality, of the American people behind him, and that that carries with it a responsibility
to govern modestly. There’s been a lot of talk about “normalizing” Trump, but what's happening here is more fundamental. To ignore the election results, and his poll numbers, and act like the strongest possible version of Trump’s agenda has been endorsed by most voters, it and this is important, it gives Trump license to govern in a way that he shouldn’t. Elections decide who wins power. They don’t decide how it should be wielded. If Trump governs in a way that respects the
center of opinion in the country — a center Democrats appear to hold — Democrats should
work with him. If he doesn't, then they should keep pointing
that out, and force him to govern alone. This is the Joint Strike Fighter or F-35 Lightning II. It's planned to be America's new advanced fighter jet. The $100 million plane is stealth, can fly at supersonic speeds and one version can even take off and land vertically. It's one plane designed to replace the aging fleets of the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. It's the jet fighter of the future. But in December, Donald Trump put the entire project in doubt with a single tweet. saying it's too expensive. And Trump's not wrong the 16 year, $1 trillion project is seven years late and seventy percent over budget. But the F-35 is much more than a government purchase and canceling it is nearly impossible. That's because it's deeply woven into the US government, military, and economy. President Trump meet the Military-Industrial complex. So US defense companies make a lot of money. Their best client is the largest military in human history and they sell their products to other countries too, making the US the largest arms exporter in the world. As a result, they are some of the biggest companies in the world. This all requires a unique relationship with the US government. Not only defense companies bid on contracts from the Pentagon, but all of their domestic and foreign sales must also be approved by Congress. As a result, these companies try and get as much support in Congress as they can and they've adopted a pretty smart strategy to do so. One thing every member of Congress can support is jobs in their home state. So major US defense companies spread their operations across as many states as possible. By doing so they can maximize the number of legislators inclined to support their projects regardless of political party. I did a quick search and found just a small portion of Boeing and Raytheon locations across the US, along with legislators who voiced support for these companies in Congress. Now if you include subcontractors like the 3,000 hired by Boeing in California, you can imagine how many jobs are at stake across the country. This strategy is called political engineering and defense companies have gotten pretty good at it. In August 2015, Lockheed Martin purchased Sikorsky aircraft known for making the iconic Marine One helicopter used by American presidents. That brought the company into the lucrative defense helicopter market. It was a smart business move but a smarter political one. See, Sikorsky aircraft is based in Connecticut and the northeast is one area where Lockheed had little political influence. Rivals, General Dynamics United Technologies and Raytheon were the area's major defensive employers and therefore wielded the most important in Congress. But Sikorsky has 8,000 employees and Lockheed instantly became the third largest contractor in Connecticut and gain the political influence that comes with it . The Northeast is home to some of the defense industries most vocal supporters in Congress like Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut who wants Sikorsky to build the next Marine One in her own district. There's no doubt political engineering the smart strategy; Defense companies get more business and more jobs are created in America. But with so much political support and widespread economic impact some of these defense companies have been deemed "too big to fail" . Even when they appear to be failing. Now, back to that F-35 project Trump threatened to cancel. Despite deep design flaws and constant problems, there have been no serious efforts to cancel or scale back the project. In, fact through more than three years of cuts to defense spending funding for the f-35 entirely been touched. That's because the project was politically engineered to near-perfection. The Pentagon starting bidding for the F-35 in the mid-nineties It would be the largest defense contract in history, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin quickly emerged as the two contenders. Both had loyal supporters in Congress who were very eager to create jobs in their state. It was an intense competition and when Lockheed won the contract Boeing supporters quickly mobilized in Congress. Immediately they drafted legislation proposing to split the work between the two companies. When that failed they pushed award Boeing contracts for KC-767 tankers, C-17 cargo planes and radar-jamming Growler planes. Ensuring the Boeing factories in their states remained open. Today, the Lockheed Martin F-35 project supports a hundred and forty-six thousand jobs across 46 states. In fact, this interactive map is straight from the Lockheed Martin website. Parts for the plane are produced all over the country maximizing the number of stakeholders and ensuring broad bipartisan support in Congress. Lockheed Martin has also hired subcontractors in eight other countries to build components for the plane. And several allied countries have placed orders for their own militaries. Anything done to hurt the F-35 project could hurt those relationships. A procedure called concurrency also complicated things Concurrency is when a product goes into production before all the tests are complete. This is intended to speed up job creation because the sooner production starts the sooner jobs are created. So both defense companies and Congress are inclined to strike a deal quickly. But it's a flawed practice that's delayed the F-35 project by seven years. When testing reveals a problem, planes that have already been built need to be sent back and retrofited. The radar, still a problem. The helmet is too heavy. Inadequate fusion of sensor information, shortfalls in the performance distributed aperture system. That is not good. The autonomic logistics information system and other issues that are classified. And each military branch is also asking for its own distinct modifications, complicating the entire process. And its still inconclusive when the plane will be ready. The F-35 has been delayed so long it's now unclear whether the US military even needs it anymore. America's current enemies in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan don't even have air forces, and the F-35 is far more advanced than anything Russia or China have planned. Despite all of this the F-35 project keeps moving forward with enthusiastic support in the US government. In 2010 the Department of Defense allowed Lockheed more time to fix design flaws. And in 2015 Congress actually added more money to the project without the military even asking for it. That's because canceling the project would be an economic and political disaster. Thousands of jobs across the country would be lost, international relationships will be tested, and billions spent in taxpayer dollars would amount to nothing. But that's exactly why Trump's tweet was so surprising. See traditionally, defense companies negotiate projects privately with Congress and the Pentagon without any input from the president. But Trump seems to want to take a more hands-on role in contract negotiations which has completely rattled defense companies. And rightly so because while Trump can't cancel the entire program he can refuse to purchase future F-35s. And that's put a surprising degree of uncertainty in the defense industry and the US companies are scrambling to figure it out. Did you miss that? Here it is again. And again. A little slower. It’s probably still not slow enough. This is sport stacking, or maybe you call
it speed stacking, or cup stacking. But whatever you call it, it has become a
huge sport. It’s in the Junior Olympics. Versions are taught in PE classes, and show
up on The Tonight Show
and Ellen. Last year, more than 600,0000 people set a
world record for stacking at the same time around the world. This is a lot more than a hobby. Sport stacking’s basically a combination
of formations in which stackers upstack (stack up cups)
or downstack (bring them down again). It’s all a race against the clock, for new,
mind-bendingly fast times. The most common patterns are 3 cups, 3 cups,
and 3 cups, 3 cups, 6 cups, and 3 cups — or a 3-6-3 —
and then the cycle, which has you do a 3-6-3, followed by a 6-6 and then a 1-10-1, which
top stackers can do ...like this. “My name is Melissa Gomez. I won the
the 2014 and 2016 U.S. Nationals for women. And I won the Junior Olympics in 2015 for
women.” The guy next to her is Mark Sykes. He’s a former high school football and baseball
player who is coach of the U.S. Sport Stacking team. He’s a Masters level competitor too. (Masters basically means that he’s a grown
up, since a lot of stackers are teens or younger). He holds occasional practices in his church’s
basement, and those practices attract some of the best in the region. “Once I went to that first competition,
then I was kinda hooked. And then I kept going with the kids and kept
competing.” Amazing stackers like Melissa — and Mark
— have put in hours and hours of practice. Their goal is to break personal and world
records, but you can see their skill when they aren’t even trying. This is Melissa just practicing. Look at how quickly she does a slow set, just
to clear her mind. Or look at this. She’s setting up a 1-10-1. Notice where her eyes are looking. She’s not showing off. She just doesn’t need to look anymore. Here’s a newbie stacking and here’s Melissa. The point is not that Ellen is bad. The point is that people like Melissa have
gotten so, so good they can do it all on autopilot. And then when they really try? But at the same time, stacking is not just
raw talent, or even practice alone. The best stackers have to develop highly advanced
tactics. When you become a speed stacking pro, you
need to optimize for the milliseconds. Like Zhewei Wu does. “I started stacking when I was in 6th grade,
so I was 12 at that time, and I was introduced in PE class, and we’ve
been practicing since then.” That means breaking down the quirks of the
timer, cups, and different competition
formats to get record-breaking times. This is a stacking mat and timer. It starts when your hands leave the timer
and stops when they return. In that space in between, there’s room for
tactics to shave off crucial fractions of a second. “Most recently it’s the way that people
start the timer. So in the past people put their hands
on the timer flat, like this. But now people will cup their hands around
the cup and they have their hands on the timer like this. It’s not the conventional way to do it,
but doing so enhances the time it takes for you to get on the first cup. And having just those little differences
makes a huge difference on your time.” Playing to the timer is crucial. Here’s Melissa completing an amazing cycle,
but because the stack falls after she hits the timer too hard—
“6.17 - scratch.” — it’s what’s called “a scratch.” The time doesn’t count. You have to be sure you don’t miss the timer,
too. “When that happened to me,
I touched the timer and started celebrating, and just going back to my friends, but the
timer never stopped. That took another 2.1 seconds added to my
time, otherwise it would have been my fastest time ever.” To top stackers, the right cups are just as
important. You can see that on the pro cups, the holes
in the top are wider than the ones on my cups. That allows more air to get through. Different stackers like different cups (these
are just a few of the sets Zhewei’s owned). “These inks, you can really feel them.” And that knowledge, along with different grip
styles and all sorts of other adjustments, gets used in all different events. It even works in the truly mesmerizing doubles
event. “I’ll take that.” Because this sport is for a YouTube generation,
new strategies travel almost instantly. That keeps the competition really fierce. That’s led to blazingly fast — and close
— world record times, as well as some growing pains for the sport. Stacking started in a California Boys and
Girls Club in the early 80s. This is patent number 4,586,709, for the original
cup holding device. But kids and PE teachers embraced it far beyond
Oceanside, California. “You get a wide range. You get some kids who really really enjoy
it and they enjoy the competitive side of it. Some kids like the idea that you don’t have
to compete at it. They’ll build pyramids, they’ll build
towers, they’ll try to stack the cups and balance them in different ways. So it really brings in so many things other
than the stacking just as a sport.” The sport quickly professionalized, both as a business
and in the intensity of the competitions. This is the patent for that stack mat, which
is sold to stackers and, yes, speed Rubik’s cube competitors. Naturally, there’s a lot of other merch
you can buy as well. Because speed stacking is a pretty young sport,
the sport and the brand are kind of inseparable. Here’s the address for the people who make
speed stack cups. And here’s the address for the World Sports
Stacking Association, which runs the competitions. You get the idea. That may be a problem, it may not, as the
sport tries to mature. But those business concerns don’t really
affect why people stack. “I think for every stacker it’s different,
what attracts them. I have always been involved in sports. I’m very competitive. When I’m stacking the cups, I’m listening
for little things that make me feel good, like the rhythm, the sound. Sometimes you’ll get a really good time,
but you don’t feel like the stack was clean, for me, that’s what pulls me in.” “I want to better myself. I like seeing improvement in what you do.” And that drive, that's always there: when the
stacks are loud and the crowds are rapt, but it’s also there
in dorm rooms and bed rooms, and
in the quiet moments in basements, too. So, after an embarrassing number of attempts,
I was able to get my 3-6-3 just under 5.3 seconds. So you have some context as to how old and
slow I am, the world record for that event is 1.786 seconds. Donald Trump just said we're not capable
through his comments. I saw interview from the ... his reality show. When he was telling one of the women there
that she was pretty and she would look even pretty if she was on her knees. Committed sexual assault and admitted it,
was proud of it. It's ... I have never ... I still don't believe it. There's the whole pussy-grabbing thing. His comments about grabbing women by the genitals. Absolutely appalling. The pussy grabbing. Stop trying to normalize sexual assault. It's not normal! Who treats a women that way?
And he's setting that example for all the kids that are growing up in America, that it's okay to treat women the way he treats them, which is wrong. I think a lot of people who did vote for Trump
saw that and decided that it just didn't matter. And that's something that this march is very much
trying to prove, that it does matter. We have someone who's been
accused of sexual assault, who has bragged about inappropriate sexual behavior, and we have still allowed him into
the most powerful office in the nation. I teach, like, dance classes to younger children, and immediately the day after the election, there was a distinct difference between
the girls' attitudes before and after. They felt ... they felt as if they were not valued. Here you have, like, boys going to school telling girls,
"Hmm, see? You're not worth anything." If that is the way that he experiences men talking
about women, then that's a problem. And I think that speaks to what we're here today
to make a statement about. Like, people shouldn't be talking that way about women,
and if they still are and that's being normalized in American society,
then that needs to change. Definitely my first march, and
it's what called me to action was Trump and his comments during the election cycle. I haven't done any kind of activist work before this. Because of the election, this really did force us to say, "We need to do more," and this was the
first opportunity that we could jump on it. So I think all of that made a lot of people
more politically active. A lot of people have said
"I've never done this before." But they've reached a threshold where
they've said, "I cannot sit still anymore. It's become so abhorrent that I have to stand up." For little girls at home to be able to
watch the TV and say, "I'm gonna listen to her, I'm gonna listen to her and
I'm not gonna listen to that guy. Because ... Because we do matter." The weirdest question I’ve been asked
about hijab is probably if I shower in it. The answer is no. If I wear it during sex. What does covering your hair have to do with it at that point, you know? You’re seeing other parts. Hijab, in Arabic, means “to cover”. It normally refers to the piece of fabric that some women use to cover their hair. Hijab is a concept. It's meant to kind of promote modesty. A hijab is a thing that a male Muslim should have absolutely no opinion about. Not all Muslim women wear hijab. I've never worn a hijab, except when I actually pray. There are many ways to wear it, depending on culture and preference. There's the "just got here from the Middle East" hijab. There's the turban hijab. I wear my hijab like this. Sometimes I put a turban up, sometimes I'll just drape it. Amani's like the Muslim hipster. She just,like, goes out, throws on that hijab, and she's like "I'm Muslim, and what?" Mine is the bluetooth hijab. This is how easy I could be walking around the city. With this. And then mine is like... Yeah. There's this western stereotype that a Muslim woman who wears it did not have the choice to do so. It is seen as a symbol of oppression rather than a symbol of devotion. The minute that I put it on I felt like my identity became whole. When I wasn't wearing hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City. Wearing hijab made you know that I was Muslim. It’s, for me, a reminder to lead my life with religion first. For me, putting on a head scarf was emancipation because that was the moment that I reclaimed my identity. I say, “Hey peeps! I'm a Muslim. What's up?” My hijab takes nothing away from my intellect, takes nothing away from my passions and my values and the principles that I hold. How does it look, good? Producer: I think it looks great! Okay, making sure. Donald Trump has business dealings all over
the world. With Trump in as president, leaders in at
least 18 countries have more than political interest in the United States. They will also have potential business leverage
to curry favor with President Trump. Take China. China is home to the country’s largest state-owned
commercial bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. But it has an office in Trump Tower in New
York City. Which means that a foreign government, China,
will be paying its landlord, who also happens to the President of the United States, nearly
$2 million a year in rent. Trump has expressed pride in this arrangement. "People think I don't like China -- I love
China. The largest bank in the world is a tenet of
mine in Trump Tower.” But it could get him in trouble A section of the Constitution called the Emoluments
Clause says Presidents can’t accept payments or gifts from foreign governments. The Founders added it during the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 because they were worried about foreign governments using money to influence
American politicians. But it’s never really been tested by a President. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all
had business ventures before entering the Oval Office, but they entrusted their businesses
and investments to outsiders who they didn’t communicate with while in office. This arrangement is called a blind trust--
which is also what Donald Trump calls his plan to put his children in charge of his
business. But as long as his children can talk to him
about the business, this won’t exempt him from conflicts of interest. You can see why if you look at Japan. When Trump met the country’s Prime Minister,
Shinzo Abe, a few days after the election, Ivanka Trump was also there. At the time, Ivanka was working to close a
business deal between her clothing line and a Japanese company called Sanei International;
a company whose largest shareholder happens to be a state-owned bank controlled by the
Japanese government. Ivanka’s old company is still part of her
father’s company. So if Abe were to put pressure on the bank
to finalize the Sanei deal, Trump would benefit financially. And even if Trump keeps Ivanka out of future
meetings with heads of state, they’ll still have her husband, Jared Kushner’s ear. Trump’s son-in-law will serve as a senior
advisor. Vice President Mike Pence has tried to downplay
Trump’s conflicts of interest. “If his kids are running the business, and
we’re talking about buildings here, if he doesn't divest himself of the business, a
lot of people are saying turn it into cash, he’s going to know who the kids are doing
business with. In fact there was just a meeting in the last
few days with some of his partners form India. Doesn't that create a tremendous danger of
a conflict of interest?” “In a recent interview, after the election,
Donald Trump summed up his view of his business life with two words. He said, who cares?" But his actions indicate that that he does
care. After the election, Trump met with British
politician Nigel Farage. During their meeting, Trump complained about
a proposed wind farm wrecking the view from his golf course in Aberdeen Scotland. Trump reportedly urged Farage to oppose the
proposal, and though nothing has happened so far, Trump’s willingness to mix private
and political matters creates the impression that he might be willing to trade political
favors for personal profit. In Turkey, that seems to have happened already. After Trump called for an American ban on
Muslims, Prime Minister Erdoğan demanded that his name be removed from the Trump Towers
in Istanbul. But when a military coup threatened Erdoğan’s
power, Trump expressed his support. “That was a quick coup, I was actually surprised
to see how well it was handled.” Erdoğan backed down, and Trump’s name remains
on the towers. Since Trump refuses to disclose all of his
business dealings, we can’t know how many others might exist. But the one that looms largest is Russia. A leaked intelligence report indicates that
Putin and the Russian government may have compromising material on Trump. But we don’t need unverified reports to
know that the relationship between the two is odd. Trump and Putin launching a mutual admiration
society of sorts. Do you want to be complimented by that former
KGB officer? Because Trump has refused to release his tax
returns, we don’t know if he owes money to Russian oil billionaires close to Putin. Molly McKew: “the discussion in intelligence
circles is that his behavior looks like someone who maybe compromised, who may be concerned
about something, and nobody knows what that is, if it’s financial ties or financial
leverage, something more than that, I don’t know”
The only way for Trump to deal with all these conflicts of interest is to sell his companies,
And then put someone besides his children in charge of the financial proceeds. Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that
would require Trump to do this If this doesn’t happen, we’ll never really
know whether Trump is putting the American people first, or his business interests. Republicans have a major problem on Obamacare. The parts that they don’t like and the parts the public doesn’t like, they are not the same parts. You can see this if you watch Mitch McConnell from Face the Nation. Watch what he says here really closely. Because it shows where "repeal and replace" is going to be incredibly hard for the GOP. "What you need to understand is that there are 25 million Americans who aren't covered now." "If the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone covered that's one of the many failures." "n addition to premiums going up, co-payments going up, deductibles going up—many Americans who actually did get insurance" "when they did not have it before have really bad insurance that they have to pay for, and the deductibles are so high that it’s really not worth much to them." "So it is chaotic. The status quo is simply unacceptable." And it's not just McConnell. Donald Trump just gave an interview to the Washington Post. He said, his Obamacare replacement will cover everyone. He says that the insurance will have lower deductibles and it doesn't matter if you can't pay. Somebody's going to take care of it for you. I agree with this case against Obamacare. The law really didn't cover everyone. Premiums, copays, and deductibles, they really are too high. Forty-three percent of enrollees have a deductible above $2,500. There are a lot of people being pushed to buy insurance that will break their budget before they ever get an opportunity to use it. But, here then is a question McConnell and trump need to answer. Are they really promising, REALLY PROMISING the Republican replacement will feature more coverage, lower premiums, copays, and deductibles? I asked McConnell’s office this question. They refused to say. His spokesperson just said, "He's been clear not to predefine the replacement measures" "other than to say it won't be one single bill." Which is to say, they're not sure yet. And fine. Fair enough. But here is why this question is so hard for them to answer. It shouldn't be a hard question to answer. It's the most obvious simple question in the whole debate. But I've read a number of the Republican replacement plans that have come around. All of them will lead to more Americans without health insurance coverage, much higher deductibles, or both. And that’s because the Republican vision on health care is not to have more people covered with more generous insurance. Don't take it from me. Phil Klein -- no relation -- is a conservative health wonk and writer who has literally written the book on Republican healthcare plans. And he wrote recently that Republicans “are having a tough time stating a simple truth," which goes something like this: ‘We don't believe'—"we" here being Republicans— 'We don't believe that it is the job of the federal government to guarantee that everybody has health insurance.’" Klein also says the Republican Obamacare replacements will lead to cheaper plans that carry higher deductibles. So, just to recap. At the core of Republican ideology is that: One. Not as many people should be covered by the government. And two, that they should deregulate insurance, so that insurance can have higher deductibles. Does that sound popular to you? Does it sound like it fulfills any of these promises? Donald Trump likes to say that he's going to repeal and replace Obamacare with, "...something terrific." "It's gotta go. Repeal and replace with something terrific." Here's the hard truth about health care policy. There is nothing purely terrific sitting around out there. What you could do—what you really could do—is repeal Obamacare and replace it with something that makes a very different set of painful trade-offs. The problem is Republicans are afraid to say which tradeoffs they want to make because those trade-offs aren’t actually that popular. The GOP's real problems with Obamacare are not how many people it covers or how high the deductibles are. Their problem with Obamacare is about its taxes, about its regulations, and about its expansion of government programs. That is not what the public's problems are. It's not even what Trump's voters are upset about. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently polled Trump voters on the Affordable Care Act. And, you know what? They like the stuff congressional Republicans hate. The medicaid expansion? Popular among Trump voters. Taxing rich people to pay for poor people's health care? Popular among Trump voters. Limiting out-of-pocket costs? Popular among Trump voters. Republicans have spent years now trying to destroy Obamacare. And to do that, they have been willing to make whatever argument is politically convenient at that moment. What they have not done is build any support for what they want to do. They haven't even figured out what they want to do among themselves. And, so now they're in a tight spot. They’ve made voters think that they’re going to replace Obamacare with that voters like more, something that covers more people, that gives better insurance at a lower cost. And they’re not. And what happens when voters find that out? An inaugural address can be a defining moment
for a president and certain lines become iconic. "Ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country." But why do some addresses echo through history
while others don’t? I asked Kathleen Hall Jamieson I am director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at The University of Pennsylvania And what she told me is that an inaugural
address should do three things: unify the country, announce guiding principles, and
affirm the limits of power. So let’s take those one by one, starting
with the need to unify the country. One of the more important characteristics
of an inaugural is that it establishes that this is the president of all the people. Coming after a campaign, a president’s first
task to heal a divided electorate. In 1801, Jefferson welcomed his opponents
when he said, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference
of principle. We have called by different names brethren
of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” And in 1953, Eisenhower echoed Jefferson’s
plea for unity, "May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual
aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political
faiths…” Eisenhower’s inaugural explicitly suggests
that we are coming together in this moment regardless of the kind of partisan divisions
that we have had in the past. That’s actually a common theme across the inaugurals. We remember it more when it is phrased more
memorably, as it is with Jefferson or Eisenhower, but you’ll actually find
an element of it in virtually all of the inaugural addresses. Second, an inaugural should announce principles
that will guide the presidency. “We'll restore science to its rightful place,
and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.” But, unlike the state of the union, the inaugural
should focus on principles, not policy. When you get to policy proposals, you’re
back in campaign mode. “In this present crisis, government is not
the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Notice that when Reagan said, ‘government
isn’t the solution, government is the problem’, what he was essentially doing was articulating
a principle, not saying, ‘and as a result, I recommend that we do x, y, and z.’ The philosophy of the president is embodied
in an inaugural and if it’s maintained at a level of principle it is not highly problematic. Third, an inaugural affirms the limits of
power, stating that no one is above the law. One concern -- when you let some president
-- particularly among those who didn’t vote for the candidate -- is that person may overreach
and may misuse the power or use the power in ways that will hurt the people that did
not vote for the president. Look at the passage in Gerald Ford’s inaugural
address -- which was, in effect his inaugural address -- that begins, “...our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws
and not of men.” That is a repudiation of the Nixon Presidency.
Ford is affirming it explicitly: that no president is above the law. That’s the speech that tells us that, in
language that we should always remember. Besides indicating what the address should
be about, past inaugurals suggest how a president should deliver it. First, they should keep it short. People who assume that you have to speak at
length in order to be eloquent are wrong. A leader’s message should be clear and concise. The three shortest speeches were delivered
by some of the most respected presidents, albeit during subsequent inaugurals; while the three longest came from some less well-known presidents, including William Henry Harrison,
who aggravated a cold during his epic inaugural and died the next month from pneumonia. Second... Put the campaign behind you. Do not be Ulysses S. Grant, who whines about
having a scandal-ridden campaign. “I have been the subject of abuse and slander
scarcely ever equaled in political history, which today I feel that I can afford to disregard
in view of your verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindication.” If you come out of an inaugural address feeling
as if the candidate is still there and the president isn’t -- we’re still in campaign
mode, this isn’t a president speaking -- it’s a failed address. A third caution is to avoid making it about
yourself, which a president can do by using “we” instead of “I”. When you’re trying to speak to a nation
that has been divided by a campaign, the unifying rhetoric requires that the audience hear itself
in the rhetoric. And as a result, the collective rhetoric -- the
rhetoric of “we” -- is the characterizing rhetoric of the best inaugural addresses. “…let me assert my firm belief that the
only thing we have to fear is... fear itself.” Lastly, and most importantly, we tend to remember
inaugurals.. ...because history vindicated the observation
and the observation was made memorably. So, you might say that the deciding factor
for a successful inaugural speech is the presidency that follows. There’s a reason we remember FDR and Kennedy. Both were speaking at a point of crisis and
their words inspired a future that would follow. But no president did this better than Abraham
Lincoln, who on the eve of Civil War, predicted a Union victory when he said: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot
grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” This is Whitley County. Like many counties
in this region, voters here overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in November’s election.
The county has a median per capita income of around $16,000. It’s 97% white and 88%
of the residents over 25 don’t have a college degree. It also happens to be the birthplace for Kentucky Fried Chicken And yet these are some the Americans who have also benefitted most from Barack Obama’s
signature healthcare policy. The Affordable Care Act “I'm running around with Vox V O X dot news and all that, and there's a news
person and he's following me around to learn about southeastern Kentucky and how the effects
of the healthcare have been on us” That’s Kathy. She works as an enrollment
counselor for Obamacare, helping people sign up for the program.
Since the law was implemented in 2013, the percentage of people in this county with health
insurance went from 75% to 90%. And Kathy has signed up a lot of those people. "Over a thousand..I've lost count" But here’s the curveball
Who did you end up voting for? "Trump" Since Obamacare launched in 2013 the number
of lower income, less educated white Americans with insurance increased by not just in Kentucky,
but nationwide. This group benefitted disproportionately from the law. Yet this same demographic showed up in huge
numbers for Trump in November. I went to Kentucky to talk to Kathy. I wanted
to understand why so many people would vote for a candidate who swore to repeal a program
they depend so much on. Vox would soon be hosting an interview with
President Obama and we invited Kathy attend to share her perspective and ask a questions.
…”they invited me to the white house Oh my god oh my god oh my god, YES, the white
house, right, guess where I'm going Friday? To the White House. You've got to get on Facebook
you've really missed out on a lot of stuff. Oh, get on Facebook. Oh, you'll read all about
it.” Before going to DC, we traveled around South
Eastern Kentucky, talking to Trump supporters who are also enrolled in Obamacare to hear
their opinions about the law and what they think the next administration will do to make
it better We landed on a couple of explanations for
this Trump-Obamacare paradox. The first is that people in Kentucky believe
Trump and the GOP would never actually repeal a program that benefits over 20 million people
“So you don't think that that, that they would actually do that?”
“No, they couldn't. That would be like He's got children, he's smarter than that. you
know what I'm saying” A lot of people thought Trump’s campaign
rhetoric against Obamacare was all talk and that there’s really no way he would actually
repeal a program that so many are dependent on.
And it wasn’t just these Trump Voters who thought that. I have been covering the healthcare law as a journalist for about 7 years now. It actually felt like a safe assumption that the ACA, rolled out, covering 20 million people That it was going to stick around. I remember I wrote a story for Vox and the headline was something like "Obamacare survived its final hurdle and its here to stay" Republicans up through the election and up after the election remained so committed to repealing the ACA. I did not expect that. I thought we were going to see a backing off of those attitudes. And I was wrong. Many Obamacare enrollees in Kentucky, as well
as policy experts and journalists all assumed Obamacare was too widespread to be repealed.
But Congressional republicans are proving them wrong, moving as aggressively as they can to repeal it. "Mr Ryan has said a top priority for the new congress is the repeal of Obamacare. But perhaps the stronger theory on why Obamacare beneficiaries voted for Trump was a general
dissatisfaction with the cost of the program and the believe that Trump would somehow make
it better for them. We met up with Perry, a security guard recently
signed up for Obamacare. It’s the first time he’s ever had health insurance in his
life. Perry: "I've not been to a doctor...you weren't even in this world last time I went to a doctor" Thanks to Kathy, Perry was able to sign up
at healthcare.gov just a few months ago. But his deductible ended up being $2000. "Unless something drastic was to happen, how
many times will I have to go to the doctor, to the hospital or something
Before I, you know, use up over 2000 dollars, I just wish that, if they're gonna shove it
down your throat, have something that you can afford We headed to an Antique shop in where the owner Bobby, another Obamacare enrollee, talked
to us about her experience with the ACA "I had breast cancer last year. I was very
happy to have my insurance. But I didn't realize that the government was subsidizing my health insurance. And I do think everybody deserves quality
healthcare. I just think the American form of healthcare is just totally out of hand
price wise. One of Bobby’s complaints with the program is that it’s been linked to a president she strongly dislikes "And I absolutely detest hearing the word Obamacare. Detest it." We traveled out to mall right on the border with Tennessee where Kathy sets up a booth to sign people up for Obamacare. We talked to the mall manager about all of what he see with his co-workers and employees. “Initially, it seemed that everyone was
excited uh that they were going to have an opportunity to have health insurance that
they could afford. To them, some of them, first time in their whole life that they'd
ever had coverage. The following year they were faced with the the cost was increasing
so they had to make changes again. And most of the time, it meant they were looking for
policies that had even higher deductibles So that they could just try to keep insurance.” While Obamacare lead to 20 million Americans
getting health insurance, half of the enrollees who get their insurance on the obamacare marketplace
say deductibles are still too high. “I'd say the people are disappointed, yeah, because some of them, because they have such tight budgets. Frustrated with the high rates, ACA enrollees
have high confidence that Donald Trump will fix the problems with the health care law. “I think he will try because he's
a business person first. And he knows money. So I think he'll fix a lot of things. I think that he will replace it
with, or I'm hoping that he will, at least judging by the way he talks, you know, he's
going to replace it with something even better. Donald Trump didn’t campaign on a plan to
replace Obamacare. Instead he focused on a promise repealing it. It will be repealed and replaced and we'll know and it will be great health care for much less money. An analysis by the non partisan Commonwealth Fund found Trumps proposals would lead up to 25 million people uninsured. But the people we talked
to didn’t seem to need a plan. They felt frustrated with the current version of the
law and seemed ok to take a gamble on Trump’s promise to “ repeal and replace it with something terrific” Kathy and many others took that gamble.
We traveled through a snowstorm, to Fly to DC to meet the president. “Go ahead Kathy” Hello, President Obama, I’m very excited
to meet you. Many Kentuckians are looking at the Affordable
Care as unaffordable and unusable. how do you think this happened? How can we fix it?
Do we start all over again? What do you think we should do? “this is my main criticism of Obamacare
is that the subsidies aren’t as high as they probably should be for a lot of working
people. So the two things we could do that would really
make it work even better for people in Kentucky would be, number one, to provide more subsidies
to folks who are working hard every day but still find the premiums — even with the
subsidies — hard to meet. The problem is that’s not what’s being
proposed by Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky Obama’s answer to Kathy lasted almost 8 minutes and you should watch the full thing
to really hear his defense But the gist of his answer is that The Affordable
Care Act is imperfect but that the existing law can be improved upon. But the GOP isn’t proposing improvements
to the existing law. They are proposing repeal and have yet to articulate how they will legislate
something better to take its place I am saying to every Republican right now:
“If you can in fact put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare
is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan.”
But I want to see it first. I want to see it first Many took the gamble on Trump without seeing any such plan. And now that the GOP controls
congress we will see if they can make good on their promise to build something better
than Obamacare. “I thought well, we need something
different and that's why I made a joke it was like Russian Roulette or pushing the little
Vegas little bar saying hey, I'm going to vote." I live and breathe Brooklyn. People describe me as argumentative, talkative, um, super friendly, I literally can talk to
a wall, and I have, um, perfected the art of telling it like it is. That’s the first, uh, way that you know that I’m a true Brooklynite. Brooklyn, for me, is a place of resilience, it’s a place of diversity, it’s a place that I love, almost as much as I love, like, a human being. Growing up as a New York City public school student, every time there was a Muslim high holy holiday, I had to choose between going to school and celebrating my faith. I was conflicted about it. Most often, as an overachiever, I actually chose to go to school on my high holy holidays. When I was 21 years old, 9/11 happened. My mom was running out of the house and I said to her, “Where are you going?” And she said, “Oh, I gotta go pick up your brother from school.” And I said, “Wait a minute, but you don’t have your hijab on, like - where are you going?” She said, “We can’t wear it right now.” That really made me - it gave me, like a - something in my stomach just made me feel nauseous. My whole perspective on what country I lived in just changed in a matter of minutes. My community was being directly targeted in these post-9/11 law enforcement sweeps. I thought, maybe my people need me right now, maybe I can use the skills that I have, being bilingual, understanding two cultures. So, I chose to go and volunteer at the Arab American Association of New York. I was gonna do it temporarily, and then, 15 years later, I’m still here. In 2006, the New York State Department of Education scheduled state-wide exams on Muslim
high holy holidays. Children would have to choose between celebrating their faith with their family and taking a very critical exam that will determine whether or not they go to the next grade. Parents were like, “1 out of 8 students are Muslim, we should be able to close schools.” “Just like we close schools for Jewish holidays and Christian holidays.” This was about asking for dignity and the respect and inclusion that our children deserve, and that led us on a mission. “There is a culture clash going on in the classrooms. A group is pushing” “for New York City schools to recognize Muslim holidays.” My organization really helped shepherd it. Muslims from all backgrounds came together. We organized, we mobilized, we worked with our allies, Jewish groups, Christian groups, Hindu groups, and at the front lines were Muslim women. A lot of the leaders who worked with us on this campaign said, “We’ve never seen anything like this.” One man literally embodied the entire opposition of our campaign. “Everybody would liked to be, uh, recognized,” “but the truth of the matter is we more school days, not less.” I was in a meeting with Mayor Michael Bloomberg face-to-face, and he said, “Hell no, not on my watch” and that really was a very low point for us in the campaign. I have three children that go to New York City public schools, and the last thing that I wanted to do was to turn around and tell my kids “Guess what, we gave up.” In 2013, New Yorkers were going to choose a new mayor. I figured out a way to use my political connections to make this the issue. My 8-year-old daughter stood up in a mayoral candidate forum and said, “As mayor, what would you do to make sure that me and the other hundred thousand Muslim students” “don’t have to choose between going to school and celebrating our faith?” We were able to get six Democrats, one Independent, and even the Republican candidate to actually say on the record that “when we become mayor of New York City,” “we will incorporate Muslim holidays.” “The Department of Education will now be recognizing two Islamic holidays.” “The move comes after years of lobbying, with the resolution leaving one in tears.” I am very humbled to have been chosen by my coalition, by my community, to stand with the mayor of New York City in front of my family and my children to say “I’m your mother, and I did this for you.” “This is a win for our children and for future generations in this country.” In the summer of 2015, my daughter gets the school calendar in the mail and she’s like, “Oh, my God! Look, look it says Eid al-Adha, it says Eid al-Fitr on it, like, on the calendar!” She’s so ecstatic, you’d think the girl got a million dollar check in the mail. For the largest public school system in the entire country to say, “Wait a minute, you matter, your faith matters”, that was really a big deal. “Muslims are part of the fabric of this country, we make our country proud,” “and today, New York City made us proud.” In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin
was not very popular among Republicans or Democrats. Which made sense given that he's a somewhat murderous strongman with the nasty habit of invading his neighbors. This is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. Breaking news, signs of a Russian invasion
in Ukraine tonight. Since 2000, 25 journalists have died under
mysterious circumstances. The Russian military campaign in Syria after
a week of airstrikes now escalating dramatically to prop up Syrian president Assad. This chart
shows Putin’s net favorability among Republicans. That's the percentage of people who view him favorably minus the
percent who view him unfavorably. You can see the net favorability
begin to rise steadily through 2014 and 2015, and then, all of a sudden, in August 2016,
it spikes. By December 2016, the share of Republicans
who saw Putin favorably had more than tripled. His popularity fell among Democrats, but by a smaller margin. So, what’s going on here? And what does it mean for the United States’
relationship with Russia? What I think you're seeing is two years of constant Republican propaganda about how Vladimir Putin is a strong leader. Putin decides what he wants to do and he does
it in half a day...He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly, then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. People are
looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears
mom jeans. What you see is this Republican talking point
that builds and builds and builds, and finally really hits a peak with Donald Trump. I think I’d get along very well with him. I respect Putin. He’s a strong leader. If he says great things about me I’m going
to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is very much of a
leader. I mean you can say, “Oh isn’t that a terrible
thing.” The man has very strong control over a country. What we're seeing with Donald Trump is that
he believes in the "Great Man Theory" of history, both the great part of it and also the man
part of it. He's a man who sees himself as a tough decisive
leader, authoritarian if necessary but willing to do whatever it takes to push through what
he thinks needs to be done. He looks to Vladimir Putin in Russia, someone
who has made clear, if you're a dissident who criticizes him you may disappear, if you're
someone in the public who isn't fully in support of him, you may lose your job. And he looks at that and thinks, it works. There's also a financial connection. Trump has had trouble getting
loans from US banks following his multiple bankruptcy filings since 1991. We know from a speech his son, Donald Jr.,
made in 2008 that Russian investors have played a big role in financing Trump projects since. Most wealthy Russian business people maintain
warm relationships with Putin, who holds absolute power in the country. That means the investors who helped save Trump’s
business empire are likely to include several close Putin allies. We're in this extraordinary moment when a US President is potentially financially beholden to an enemy country led by a dictator. There's an intelligence report
in which a former British spy claims the Russian government has compromising information on
Trump that they could use to blackmail him. This isn't Hollywood, this isn't conspiracy,
this isn't paranoia, this may actually on some level be true. Republican voters may be taking their cues from Trump when it comes to Putin, but Republican lawmakers are a different story. Vladimir Putin is a person who's killed. He's jailed and murdered journalists, political opponents. Putin is an aggressor that does not share
our interests. Vladimir Putin is violating the sovereignty
of neighboring countries. It certainly appears he is conducting in state-sponsored
cyber attacks on what appears to be our political system. The Russians undermining democracy throughout the entire world. They're taking land owned by others by force. They did hack into our political system, they're doing it to other political systems. Before he was Donald Trump’s Vice President, then-Representative Mike Pence held a similar position. And now an increasingly antagonistic
Russia has been rewarded for bullying and threatening its neighbors. Seven years later, he was singing a different
tune. I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin
has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country. When Trump praises Putin, he’s also flouting
his party’s long history of skepticism toward Russia. When you think of Republicans and the kind
of leader they venerate, it's Ronald Reagan. They come back to Reagan again and again and
again. I remember when Ronald Reagan was the president. He stood on principle standing up to the Soviet
Union. Ronald Reagan reignited the American economy,
rebuilt the military, bankrupted the Soviet Union and defeated Soviet communism. And they come back to him because they think
he won the Cold War, and because they think he beat the Soviet Union. The march of freedom and democracy which will
leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which
stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. This is not just a break from Republicans
on the Hill in 2016, this is a break with the last 30 years of ideology, dating back to a President, Ronald Reagan, who they hold up as a near god-like figure. Trump has also been slow to accept the CIA
and FBI’s conclusion that Russia sought to influence the Presidential election. Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee Servers, it hacked the personal email of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman As far as hacking I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people. Vladimir Putin weaponized the fact that we
have a free press. He used Wikileaks to kind of launder the information,
and then dribbled it out day by day by day. So for weeks, in the run up to the election,
all you saw was negative press coverage of Hillary Clinton driven by selectively chosen
leaked emails. In response, President Obama issued economic
sanctions against Russia, which Donald Trump doesn't have to keep These were weak, these sanctions, they're
gonna do nothing. Vladimir Putin will look at this and
say, I got what I wanted, I can pay this cost, I'll do it again. This is Shigeru Miyamoto. If you’ve played video games any time in
the past 30 years, you’re probably familiar with his work. Donkey Kong. Zelda. Star Fox. And then, of course, this guy:
It’s a me, Mario! When Miyamoto makes games, he always tries
to do things differently than other designers. Here he is — back in 1998 — explaining
why he wasn’t focused on online gaming. And why he wasn’t adding small in-game purchases
to Mario for iPhone in 2016. Miyamoto has helped define a lot of what makes
a game great. So how does he do it? In 1981, one of Miyamoto’s first assignments
at Nintendo was to design a replacement for a game called Radar Scope. It had performed poorly in the US,, leaving the company with 2,000 unsold arcade units. This is what he came up with: Miyamoto based the story on the love triangle
in Popeye between a bad guy, a hero, and a damsel in distress. But since Nintendo couldn’t secure the rights
to use those characters, Miyamoto replaced them with a gorilla, a carpenter, and his
girlfriend. In later games, that carpenter became a plumber. And his named changed, from Mr. Video, to
Jumpman, and then to Mario, after this guy, the landlord of a Nintendo warehouse near
Seattle. This was one of the first times that a video game’s
plot and characters were designed before the programming. That change in approach came at a key time
for video games. When Donkey Kong was first released in 1981,
the video game market in North America was on the verge of collapse. It was saturated with a lot of different consoles,
and the boom in home computers made a lot of people question why they’d want a separate device
just to play games. But the storytelling in games like Super Mario
Bros. and The Legend of Zelda — which you could only play on Nintendo's own hardware — helped set them apart as best-sellers. A lot of Miyamoto’s genius can be seen in
the first level of Super Mario Bros. — probably the most iconic level in video game history. It’s designed to naturally teach you the
game mechanics while you play. If you look at a breakdown, there’s a lot
of really subtle design work going on here. Though Mario is usually at the center of the
screen, in this first scene he starts at the far left. All the empty space to the right of him gives
you a sense of where to go. This character’s look and movement suggest
it’s harmful. But don’t worry. If you run into it, you’ll just start the
game over without much of a penalty. Next, you see gold blocks with question marks. These are made to look intriguing — and
once you hit one, you’re rewarded. That then encourages you to hit the second
block, which releases a mushroom. Even if you’re now scared of mushrooms,
the positioning of the first obstacle makes it just about guaranteed that you're gonna run
into this thing. When you do, Mario gets bigger and stronger. And just like that, you’ve learned all the
basic rules in the game without having to read a single word. Immersiveness in a video game has a lot to
do with the controls — the more precisely you can move your character, the more you
feel like you’re part of the story. And Nintendo has always been a pioneer with
controllers. It was the first to have the classic setup of the  directional pad on the left and buttons on the right, the first to have left and right shoulder buttons,
the first to have a 360-degree thumbstick, and the first to bring motion control to the
mass market. But with 2016’s Super Mario Run, Nintendo,
for the first time, made a game for a controller it didn’t design: the iPhone. The Wii U flopped when it came out in 2012,
and Nintendo 3DS sales are far below those of its predecessor. But the number of American gamers playing
on mobile phones has doubled to more than 164 million between 2011 and 2015. You can think of Super Mario Run as a shift
from immersiveness to accessibility. And that’s kind of been Miyamoto’s design
philosophy from the very start: make fun games that everybody can play. The rest is in our hands. "These controls direct the characters, the better your eye-hand coordination, the better you do." These two guys were standing behind us, and I'm clearly pregnant, and we've got our two-year-old, and this guy was like, "Uh, I wonder
what she's hiding under there." "I wish I could rip that f****** thing off
her f****** head." You know, knowing that I could hear him. When Mona and I met, it was 2012. I mean it's, it's hard not to be
corny and sentimental, but, you know, for me, it was really love at first
sight. Islamophobia just wasn't the thing that it
is today. I don't know if I would've converted as
readily or as publicly, um, now as I did then. I kind of experience these two different,
like, cities when I go out now. Like, I spend most of the day with Safi, and the world is just this kind of, like, friendly, you know, great place. And going out with Mona, people
are not shy about staring. Sebastian's like, "Oh, this is my wife, Mona." People are like, "Oh. Nice to meet
you, like, Muslim lady." (laughs) [Clip] "The FBI now believes the
massacre in San Bernardino" [Clip] "was an act of foreign-inspired terrorism." [Clip] "Shootings in Paris
in two or three locations." After San Bernardino and the Paris
attacks, it was really intense. As soon as we heard about the event,
there was hardly time to mourn before it was, like, bracing for the backlash. There was a significant rise in
Islamophobic hate crimes. [Clip] "Just this afternoon, there was a fire
at a Mosque in southern California." [Clip] "It is the latest in a string of
violence directed at Muslims." We didn't leave the house for,
I think, two or three weeks. I had this sense of this kind of blanket of
dread. We just, we felt like we had
to do something to, like, you know, replace some of that
trauma with love and connection. We were like, "How do we get people to talk to us?" And so it was like, "We bribe them with donuts." I kind of had this idea of, like, Lucy
and her, like, lemonade stand. The psychiatrist thing, this very homemade thing. We took our son with us. We took my mom's dog with us, like, three big boxes of coffee
and three dozen donuts. So many people were like, "Don't do it, you're basically putting a bullseye on yourselves." We set up, and there was kind of this little
inhale of, you know, "What’s gonna happen?" [Clip] "Do you guys want some donuts?" The very first person, this kid walked up,
and he said, um, "I just want you to know I'm Muslim," "and I think what you're doing is really cool." You know, and I just felt this, like, this
kind of tingle. And the very next woman walked up
to us with eyes full of tears saying, "I'm so sorry for what your community is
having to suffer through right now." [Clip] "I'll give you a hug." A lot of people, they'd come up, and they'd say, "I don't, I don't really know what to ask..." "but, um, can I have a donut?" I was like, "Yeah, you can have a donut, you know." Some people really asked you, like, "Where's the-?" "Where's the Muslim? I want to talk--" I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Right here. Yeah." "What should I ask you?" Like, "Well, ask us about our son. We're trying to potty-train him. Ask us about potty-training." "Ask us about, you know, the Red Sox." That exchange meant everything. [Clip] "Nice talking to you guys!" It was a lot of curiosity and a lot of joy. After that very first day that we went
out, I posted just a picture of us standing in front of the signs that said,
"Keep your heads up, Muslims of America." Friends kept sharing it, and then their friends shared it, and eventually, it just went crazy viral. NPR was calling me and, like, the
Boston Globe and Huffington Post and People Magazine and Al Jazeera. [Clip] "Mona Haydar wants to fight fear
with free donuts and dialogue." The #AskAMuslim, it's still going on. On college campuses and at functions
and events all over the country, you know, people will just set up Ask a Muslim. It's that magic connection that I want to
be the lasting thing from Ask a Muslim. [Clip] "That's your dog?" [Clip] "Yeah, that’s Ben-Ben." [Clip] "Oh, that's sweet." [Clip] "Yeah." “We decided, let’s put a message in a
bottle, why not?” “This channel, that we had to cross to get
to the next island, this was the one that was infested with sharks and stingrays. I mean, I say infested but there were several,
you know, and that’s a little worrisome when you can’t touch the bottom and you’re
in their domain!” “We wrote a note, we dated it, and we signed
our names to it, we rolled it up, and we put some cake into the bottle. And we put the cork that came with the wine
bottle, just popped it right onto it. We got up and we went out to the ocean.” “I get like five or ten feet away from this
bottle and there’s just this like, lightning flash, where I’m like, oh my God, there’s
paper in there, there’s clearly paper in there.” “I tossed a bottle into the ocean and then
it traveled around for a few years, a few thousand miles, it washed up on a beach, and
then you found it.” These two met in one of the strangest ways
imaginable: through a message in a bottle. And it’s largely thanks to this guy, Clint
Buffington, who one might say has a certain knack for finding these bottles on beaches
around the world. “You know I thought that I had maybe found
84, and I opened one recently and it turned out to be a receipt, so I’m gonna say 83.” “I’ll tell you some of the stuff that
I found on the beach.” “Yeah. So, definitely bottles, obviously. Lightbulbs, shoes, yeah, of all kinds, sneakers,
flip flops, every other kind of clothing, shirts, socks, refrigerators. microwaves, televisions, computers. Found a bunch of blackberry phones, I’ve
found cameras washed up, film canisters, cleaning detergent. Did I mention light bulbs? Yeah that’s a big one.” “Fluorescent tubes, yeah those things are
terrifying. Some places I go it’s just like a carpet
of light bulbs. You just have to tiptoe because it’s like
you never know when you’re gonna get a piece of glass through the leg.” Aside from the usual pollutants and trash,
Clint has found lots and lots of bottles with messages inside. Here’s him holding that wine bottle Carol
and her husband Ed stuffed with cake and tossed into the sea on their first wedding anniversary. He’s also got opinions on which types of
bottles are best for protecting messages, and which ones look the best. “Probably the best, believe it or not, is
the most classic beautiful thing that you think of with a message in a bottle, which
is just a wine bottle that has a cork in it, an actual cork.” It isn’t always clear where the messages
come from — and sometimes, Clint spends months tracking down the sender. He found Carol and Ed after contacting a local
news reporter, who wrote a story about the bottle that brought them together. But Clint also has an innate understanding
of the ocean. Ed and Carol Meyers dropped their bottle from
a resort in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Clint found it about a thousand miles away
in the Turks & Caicos islands. This bottle’s journey wasn’t entirely
random: there was some science involved. The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle
for 1843 has a lot of interesting stuff in it; stuff like keeping up morale by doling
out lots of rum. But you’ll also find tables and tables of
so-called “bottle papers.” For centuries, researchers used bottles to
study the ocean’s currents. They’d toss a bottle into the sea, and track
not only where it ended up, but how it got there. For example, in one study a bottle was dropped
a bottle at 24 degrees north, 19 degrees west and eventually showed up in Cuba. Sailors could use this information to learn
about the ocean’s various current patterns. Surface currents travel in big gyres - think
of them as these whirling circles - and they carry stuff like trash and messages in bottles
around the world. Looking at these current patterns, we know
that Carol’s bottle, departing from North Carolina, most likely traversed the entire
North Atlantic ocean and made its way down the coast of North Africa before being redirected
to the Caribbean where Cliint found it. Clint will often use these currents to determine
where to look for his treasures. “If you’re looking for messages in bottles
on the northwest coast, you’re probably going to find some from Pacific Island Nations,
or maybe from Japan. Say you’re looking for messages in bottles
in England, you’ll probably find a lot from the States because we’ve got the Gulf Stream
that goes right up the east coast of the States and heads straight over to Europe, so a lot
of stuff washes up in Europe.” You can even, to a certain degree, predict
it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
has a current simulator, using data from electronically updated tracking buoys. Drop a pin near Hawaii, and you’ll find
it ends up in Taiwan. And the message in a bottle stories seem to
match right up. Clint frequents Turks & Caicos, which is perfectly
situated to receive bottles from all over the east coast and Europe. He’s found bottles off the Missouri River
and in other odd places, but the Caribbean islands are something of a treasure trove
for bottles that travel through the North Atlantic Gyre. Clint’s real trick, though, isn’t finding
these bottles, but tracking down the people who send them. “You know, if somebody sees this bottle
on the beach, which is empty, that’s obviously trash. Right? But then this bottle is not. In my mind, that’s treasure, that’s trash.” Messages in bottles may not be the best way
to exchange information. But they connect people in ways an email never
could. “We wrote, Ed and Carol Meyers celebrated
their first wedding anniversary at the Sanderling Inn Resort on February 14th, 1999. They were wed on Valentine’s Day in Fredericksburg
Virginia. Included in this note is some of our wedding
cake. Peace and love to you, we wish you happiness. And then we each signed it.” Currents are predictable; Clint can more or
less determine where a bottle will end up. But he can’t predict who sent it. And that’s really the beauty of the message
in a bottle: it leaves the connecting part to the ebb and flow of the natural world. There’s no algorithm, no social network
— just the pulse of the sea, and the promise of a mystery. “When we found each other, it was also a
point in my life when my mother had been diagnosed with cancer and she was going to quickly die
shortly thereafter. And doctors found in me an unruptured brain
aneurysm. And in the middle of all that horror and pain
and grief was this magical, really mystical experience of you finding this bottle that
we had forgotten about.” “And it was a huge turning point in my life,
too. I mean, I never really thought about it this
way, but finishing college and going out to the world, it’s a time when everybody’s
trying to figure out who they’re going to be. Having this as a hobby, it really defines
who I am now. It’s interesting that it came at such a
pivotal moment for both of us.” “It’s probably unfair to ask this, but
do you have a favorite message in a bottle?” “Well, I do, and it’s yours, but don’t
tell anybody else.” “Don’t tell anybody else, for future bottle
messages.” “I think Sting is probably the first one
who really takes the message in a bottle and blows it up in pop culture.” Sting: “Message in a bottle, yeah.” In recent years, a number of for-profit colleges have closed across the US. “For-profit college closed its remaining 28 campuses affecting 16,000 students.” “Their campuses were closed. And we’re talking all of them for good.” “Some of the nation’s largest for profit colleges are seeing steep declines in enrollment.” The Obama administration led a crackdown after years of shady recruiting tactics, predatory lending, and sub-par academics. But in days after the 2016 election, the stock prices of for-profit education companies spiked. Donald Trump hasn’t laid out his policies on for-profit colleges, "I'm a tremendous believer in education." but he previously owned a for-profit school, Trump University. And with a Republican Congress that also opposes strict government regulations, these companies may see their fortunes changing. For-profit colleges have been around since 1854. They mostly provided short-term certificate programs for specific occupations. But their growth accelerated sharply in the last 2 decades. The federal government was expanding student aid and the poor job market during the Great Recession pushed more people into college. For-profit schools added more and more 2-year and 4-year degree programs. Compared to other colleges, for-profit institutions attract more low-income people, veterans, and other non traditional students. Also known as proprietary colleges, for-profit institutions are operated by private, profit-seeking businesses -- which means earnings get passed on to owners or shareholders. That sets them apart from most universities and colleges, which are non-profits. Those state schools, community colleges, and private nonprofits are funded by a bunch of different sources in addition to tuition, like donations, investment income, or government subsidies. But for-profit schools rely almost entirely on tuition and fees paid with federal student aid money. So they have a strong incentive to recruit more students and set them up with large financial aid packages, or tap into veterans’ military benefits. That means they spend a lot of money on marketing and recruiting, promoting convenient locations, specialized courses, and flexible class scheduling. You’ve probably seen their ads on TV or heard them on the radio. "You're ready for Strayer University." "Build your personal education plan at Strayer.edu. You can see how aggressive their recruiters are--
I recently filled out a request for information through the University of Phoenix’s website. And within 48 hours I received 1 email, 2 texts, and 8 phone calls. An undercover investigation of 15 for-profit colleges in 2010, found that all of them made deceptive statements while recruiting. They exaggerated their employment and graduation outcomes, misrepresented their costs, and in some cases, actually encouraged students to lie on their financial aid forms. “You’re not supporting anyone else? Or anything?” “No I’m not.” “So now if we go back and say ok you make $30,000 and you’re claiming a couple of people…I’ll make the corrections according to what you’re telling me.” “Is there a reason why you put this amount in for cash?" “I got an inheritance last year...” “They don’t need to know how much cash you have, that’s why you do the tax return...just to fyi they don’t need to know your cash.” When students finally enroll, they’re presented with loan packages to cover tuition costs. But they’re often not set up to succeed and pay back those loans. The combination of higher tuition, a poorer student population, and a lack of counseling on financial aid and career goals has meant that many students end up worse off than if they hadn’t enrolled at all. By 2014 for-profit colleges accounted for just 11% of the higher education population, but 44% of federal student loan defaults. Back in 2000, only one for-profit college was among the 25 colleges with the most student debt. In 2014, more than half of that list was for-profit schools. And many of the students saddled with debt didn’t even graduate. Of the students who began a 4-year degree program in 2008 -- only 27% of those in for-profit schools had graduated 6 years later…. Compared to 65% at private nonprofit colleges and 58 percent at public colleges. The Obama administration responded with several new regulations on the industry. If you look through for-profit college web sites today, there’s a section labeled disclosures that helps students compare schools. The “gainful employment” regulation also says some programs can be disqualified from federal student aid if their students end up with a debt-to-earnings ratio that’s too high. With tighter regulations and lower enrollments due to the improving economy, many for-profit campuses closed. Now the future of those regulations is uncertain. For-profit colleges continue to have a role to play in higher education. They’re often more accessible to students who have families or have to work full-time. Many of them enroll students who couldn’t get into traditional schools. And they provide an alternative to crowded and underfunded community colleges. But their incentives can cut against the well-being of their own students, who know that college doesn’t last forever and hope that their student debt won’t either. If you defaulted on your federal student loans or need help with repayment, visit StudentAid.ed.gov. Links to repayment plans, what to do if you defaulted, and eligibility for student loan discharge are in the description box below. Good morning and welcome to The Blair House. I’m Ezra Klein, founder and editor-in-chief of Vox, here alongside my colleague Sarah Kliff. We are honored to be here today to speak with President Obama about the Affordable Care Act. Its performance, its passage and its now uncertain
future. I think we would all prefer to hear from him
than from me so I won’t waste any more of your time with introduction, please join me in welcoming
President Barack Obama. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you! Thank you. Good morning. Good morning! Thank you for being here. It is great to be here. Thank you so much for all the good reporting
you guys have been doing on this important issue. Well, thank you. So we will get started. There was an expectation that was shared among many
of your staff — many congressional Democrats — that as the Affordable Care
Act rolled out, as it delivered benefits to millions of people, that it would become more popular. It would be safe from repeal or even substantial reform. It appears at this point that doesn't seem to be quite true. What do you think that theory got wrong? Why didn’t the health care law become more popular? Well... Let’s back up and say from the start, 
there’s a reason why, for 100 years, no president could get expansion of health
care coverage beyond the work that had been done for Medicare and Medicaid, targeting primarily seniors. And the reason was that this is hard. The health care system is big; it is very
personal; families, I think, recognize the need for health insurance, but it’s not something
that they think about except when things go wrong — when you have an accident, or
you’re sick. And so, any costs, particularly at a time when families
are feeling stressed economically — any added costs, higher premiums, higher copays — all that ends up having real impacts on families. So the challenge of getting it passed was
always the fact that, unlike other advanced countries, we didn’t start with a system in which everybody was covered. And we have a very complicated marketplace
and we have third-party insurers. And what that meant was that even after we got the law passed, anything that dissatisfied people about the health care system could
be attributed to, quote unquote, “Obamacare” — even if it had nothing to do with Obamacare. And that was something that we recognized even when we were trying to get the law passed. The other thing is the fact that the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress and around the country, including some governors, to, after the fight was over, to say, 'Alright, let’s try to make this work,' the way Democrats did during the time when President Bush tried to expand the prescription drug program, part D. Meant that the public never heard from
those who had originally been opposed, any concession that, you know what, this is actually doing some good. And that ends up affecting public opinion. And the third thing is that, whenever you look at polls that say 40 something percent are supportive of the law, 40 something percent
are dissatisfied, in the dissatisfied column are a whole bunch of Bernie Sanders supporters
who want a single-payer plan. And so the problem is not that they think
Obamacare is a failure. The problem is that they don’t think it
went far enough. That it left too many people still uncovered,
that the subsidies that people were getting weren’t as rich as they should have been, that there
is a way of dealing with prescription drug makers in a way that would drive down those costs, and so... All of those things meant that even after
the law was passed, there was gonna still be a lot of tough politics. Having said all that, the thing that I’ve
been most proud of is the fact that not only have we gotten 20 million people covered;
not only have we been able to reduce the pace at which health care costs have been going
up — ever since the law was passed, basically, health care inflation has been as low as it’s
been in 50 years, which has saved the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, extended the Medicare trust fund by eleven years. But, most importantly for the people who have gotten insurance through the exchanges, there has been pretty high satisfaction rates, as
surveys have shown. So, rather than look at public opinion as a
whole, the thing I have been most interested in is, how is this affecting families who
have gotten benefits? These are real families who have gotten real coverage. And... I get letters every single day from people who say, “This has saved my life,” or, “This has saved my bank account,” or, “This has made sure that my son, who got hooked on some sort of opioid, was been able to get
treatment,” or, “I was able to get a mammogram that caught a cancer in time.” That, ultimately, is the measure of the success of the law. Do you think this dynamic where when you reform
the health care system, you own it, goes the other way? Republicans are beginning with the repeal-and-delay
strategy. President-elect Trump has said that he does
want to repeal Obamacare, but he also wants to replace it with something that covers as
many people — or he’s said that, at least at certain points. Do you think that the dynamic in which you
became responsible for what people didn’t like is going to hamper Republican movement in their
efforts to change a system that maybe they don’t like, but does have a lot of people
relying on it? Well, let me start from a very simple premise: If it works, I’m for it. If something can cover all Americans,  make sure that, if they have a preexisting condition, they can still get coverage. Make sure that prescription drugs are affordable. Encourage preventive measures to keep people healthy. Make sure that, in rural communities, people
have access to substance abuse care, or mental health care. That Medicare and Medicaid continue to function effectively. If you can do all of that cheaper than we
talked about, cheaper than Obamacare achieves, and with better quality and it’s just terrific
— I’m for it. I think that part of the challenge in this whole debate
— and this is true dating back to 2009, back to 2010 — is this idea that somehow
we had a fixed way of trying to fix the health care system, that we were rigid and stubborn
and wouldn’t welcome Republican ideas, and if we only had, they had all these great solutions. In fact, if you look at how this law evolved
— and I’ve said this publicly before, if I was starting from scratch, I probably
would have supported a single-payer system because it’s just easier to...for people to understand and manage and that’s essentially what Medicare is: a single-payer system for people of a certain age and people are very satisfied
with it, and it’s not that complicated to understand or to access services. But that wasn’t available. We weren’t starting from scratch. So what did I then do? I said, 'Well, where's a system out there
that seems to be providing coverage for everybody that politically we could actually get through
a Congress and where we could get Republican support?” And, lo and behold, in Massachusetts, there was a plan that had been designed on a bipartisan basis, including by a Republican governor who ultimately
became the nominee for the Republican Party, that, came close to providing universal coverage. And, I would have thought — since this was
an idea that had previously gotten a lot of Republican support — it would continue to
get a lot of Republican support. And yet, somehow magically, the minute we said,
“This is a great idea and it’s working,” the Republicans said, “This is terrible,
and we don’t want to do this.” So I say all this, Ezra, simply to make something
very clear. From the very start, in the earliest negotiations in 2009 and 2010,
I made clear to Republicans that if they had ideas that they could show would work
better than the ideas that we had thought of, I would be happy to incorporate them into
the law. And rather than offer ideas, what we got was
a big “no, we just don’t want to do this.” After the law passed, for the last six,
seven years, there was an argument that “we can provide a great replacement that will be much better for everybody than what the Affordable Care Act is providing.” And yet, over the last six, seven years,
there’s been no actual replacement law that any credible health care policy experts have said would work better. In fact, many of them would result in millions
of people losing coverage and the coverage being worse for those who kept it. And so now is the time when Republicans have
to go ahead and show their cards. If, in fact, they have a program that would
genuinely work better, — and they want to call it whatever they want, they can call it Trumpcare, they can call it McConnellcare or Ryancare — if it actually works, I will
be the first one to say, 'Great! You should have told me that back in 2009. I asked.' I suspect that will not happen and the reason it will not happen is because, if you want to provide coverage to people, then there are certain baseline things that you’ve got to do. Number one: Health care is not cheap. And for those who can’t afford health care or don't
get it through their job, that means the government has got to pay some money. Number two: All those provisions that the
Republicans say they want to keep and that they like — for example, making sure that people
can get health insurance even if they have a preexisting condition — well, it turns out that the only way to meet that guarantee is to either make sure that everybody has
some modest obligation to get health care, so that they’re not gaming the system, or
you’ve got to be willing to provide huge subsidies to the insurance companies so that they’re
taking in people who are already sick. And I think what you’re going to see now,
now that you have a Republican president-elect, you have Republicans control both chambers
in Congress, is that all of the promises they made about how they can do it better,
cheaper...everybody's gonna be satisfied, are going to be really hard to meet. This is why this strategy of 'repeal first
and replace later' is just a huge disservice to the American people and is something that
I think, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you should be opposed to. These are real lives at stake. I’m getting letters right now from people
who say, “I am terrified, because my son’s or daughter’s insurance, their ability to
get life-saving drugs, their ability to get drug treatment, their ability to get mental
health services are entirely dependent on us being able to afford and keep our insurance.” And if, in fact, there's going to be a massive
undoing of what's one-sixth of our economy, then the Republicans need to put forward very
specific ideas of how they’re going to do it. People need to be able to debate it, they
need to be able to study it, the same way they did when we passed the Affordable Care Act. And let the American people gauge: Is this going to result in something better than what Obamacare has produced? And if they’re so convinced that they can
do it better, they shouldn’t be afraid to make that presentation. It is really interesting to try to figure out, 'Why is that they are trying to rush the repeal so quick?' What is it that they’re afraid of? Why wouldn’t they want to say, 'Here’s
our plan,' and show, side by side, 'Here's why our plan is better than what Obamacare
has produced. Because they have said absolutely, adamantly,
that they can do it better. I am saying to every Republican right now:
“If you, in fact, can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare
is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan.” But I want to see it first. I want to see it first. And I want third-party, objective people — whether
it’s the Congressional Budget Office, or health care experts across the ideological
spectrum, or Vox, or — We’d be happy to, yes. — to just evaluate it. And the public will not have to take my word
for it. We can designate some referees. And if they show that they can do it better, cheaper,
more effective, provide better coverage, why wouldn’t I be for it? Why wouldn’t I be for it? This idea that somehow, 'Oh, this about Obama preserving his legacy' — keep in mind, I’m not the one who named it Obamacare. They were the ones who named it Obamacare,
because what they wanted to do was personalize this and feed on antipathy toward me in their
party as an organizing tool, as politics. But I don’t have a pride of authorship on
this thing. If they can come up with something better,
I’m for it. But you have to show — and I would advise
every Democrat to be for it — but you have to show that it’s better. And that’s not too much to ask. And that’s the challenge. And the question right now for Paul Ryan and
Mitch McConnell is: Why is it that you feel obliged to repeal it before you show what it is that’s going to replace it? Because the majority of Americans have been very clear that they think that’s a bad idea. You now have Republican governors, and some Republican senators, who have said, 'We don’t think that’s a good idea.' And there’s been no real explanation why
you would actually try do this before the new president is even inaugurated. What exactly is this rush? Particularly if you’re going to delay the
actual repeal. If they were making the argument that this
is so disastrous that we actually think we have to repeal it completely today because it’s
just terrible, well I would disagree, but at least I could understand it. But here, you’re saying, 'We’re going
to vote to repeal it, but we’re going to delay its effects for a couple of years.' Well why, if it’s so bad? And if the answer is, 'Well, it would be disruptive and we don’t want to take people’s insurance away right away,' well then that means you have time
to show us — and, more importantly, show the American people who need health insurance — what exactly you’re replacing it with. In that sense, Ezra — I know
that was a long answer here — but in that sense, the answer is: The Republicans, yes,
will own the problems with the health care system, if they choose to repeal something
that is providing health insurance to a lot of people and providing benefits to every
American who has health insurance, even if they’re getting it through the job, and they haven’t shown us what it is they
are going to do. Then they do own it because that is irresponsible,
and even members of their own party, even those who are opposed to me,
have said that that is an irresponsible thing to do. Let me follow up a little bit on the congressional
fight. So we saw yesterday, President-elect Donald
Trump, he said on Twitter, “It’s time for Republicans and Democrats
to get together and come up with a health care plan that really works.” Which is something, you know, I remember you
saying similar things in 2009, 2010 when I was covering this debate. Knowing what you know now: about partisanship,
being a president who has tried to do this — was, like you said, unable to get Republican
votes, what three pieces of advice would you give
to someone trying to attempt to pass a bipartisan health care law? Well. Look, I think I sort of gave the advice just
now, which is: if, in fact, this is not about politics but
this is about providing the best possible health care system for the American people,
then my advice would be to say, 'What precisely is it about Obamacare that
you think doesn’t work?' Because you’ve already said there are some
things you think do work. The Republicans keep on saying, 'Well, we
want to keep the things that people like and that are working well.” So, they think it’s a good idea that Obamacare
says your kids can stay on your health insurance plan until they’re 26. They think that’s a good idea. They think it’s a good idea that, if you
have a preexisting condition, you can still get health insurance. I assume they think it’s a good idea that seniors have gotten discounts on their prescription drugs — we closed the doughnut hole during the course of Obamacare. They approve of some of the changes we’ve
made to encourage a health care system that rewards quality
rather than just the number of procedures involved, and how we pay providers. So we could make a list of all the things that, as terrible as Obamacare is, actually, they think works — according to them. Alright, well, let’s make, then, a list
of the things they don't like or the American people are concerned about. Well, what we know is that people would always
like lower costs on their premiums and their out-of-pocket expenses. And although the Affordable Care Act provides
a lot of subsidies to a lot of people so they can afford health insurance,
what is absolutely true is that we would love to see even higher subsidies to relieve the
costs even more, but that costs money. What we also know is that where we’ve seen
problems in the implementation of the Affordable Care
Act, it has been in certain areas — particularly more rural areas, less densely
populated areas — where we’re not seeing as many insurers,
so there’s not as much competition. Well, one way that we’ve suggested you could
solve that problem is to say that, 'If, in fact, there aren’t enough
insurers to drive competition and reduce costs and give people enough choices,
then we should have a public option that’s available.' So, if you look at the things that people
are frustrated about with Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, the big things are: the subsidies aren’t as high as they’d like and they don’t have as many options as they’d like. And I’m happy to provide those...both those
things. I’d sign on to a Republican plan that said,
“We’re going to give more subsidies to people to make it even cheaper,
and we’re going to have a public option where there isn’t an option.” Here’s the problem: I don’t think that’s
the thing that they want to... I don’t think so, no. ...to do. So, but, I guess my point is this: that, it is possible for people of goodwill to try
and come up with significant improvements to the law that we already have,
but it does require to be specific about what it is that you think needs to be changed. And that, so far, has not happened. And my advice to the president-elect
— in fact, we talked about this when I met with him for an hour and a half after he got
elected — I said, “Make your team and make the Republican
members of Congress come up with things that they can show will
actually make this work better for people.” And if they’re convincing, I think you would
find that there are a lot of Democrats out there
— including me — that would be prepared to support it. But, so far at least, that’s not what’s
happened. So I think Obamacare has exposed an interesting
tension between controlling costs in the system and
controlling economic pain for individuals. So the law has, until now, come in under budget. But, in part, the way it’s done that is
higher deductibles than people expected, higher copays, narrower networks;
in a couple of years, if it doesn’t change, the excise tax on high-value insurance will
come into play, the individual mandate, and these things to individual people, while
they keep the usage of health care down and they keep the cost of health care down, they
make health care feel more expensive, they make health care feel unusable. Do you think the Affordable Care Act got the
balance right on controlling system-wide costs versus insulating individuals from their health expenses? Well, let me make a couple of distinctions. First of all, part of what happened at the beginning of the marketplaces…
and for those who aren’t wonks, I was teasing Ezra and Sarah, I said this
is like a “wonkapalooza.” This is some serious policy detail here. So the marketplaces are basically just those
places where insurers put up, ‘Here’s…you know, here’s the insurance
package we’re offering and you can choose from a variety of different
packages; and then once you’ve chosen, you can figure
out the subsidies that you’re qualified for and it will give you a sense of what your out-of-pocket costs are. And what we’ve discovered was that a lot
of insurers underpriced, early on, because they had done surveys and, look,
people were purchasing health insurance like people are purchasing everything else — they'd
like to get the best deal for the lowest price. What makes health care tricky
is, when you buy a TV, you can kind of see what the picture looks like;
when you’re buying health insurance, it’s tempting to initially buy the cheapest
thing until if, heaven forbid, you get sick and it turns out,
gosh, I can’t see the doctor I want, or the specialist I want,
or, you know, this is more inconvenient than I expected. So what ended up happening was, people bought
the, oftentimes, the cheapest insurance that they could. Insurance companies wanting to get as much
market share as possible ended up creating very low-cost plans. But those are going to have restrictions on
them — and that’s not just if you’re buying health
insurance in Obamacare; that’s generally how it is even when employers
buy health insurance for their employees. Now, I think that what we’re seeing is insurers
now making adjustments, saying, ‘Okay, we need to charge more.’ And that is something that, the good news
is, appears to — may have stabilized, that might be kind
of a one-time thing  — and now we're in a position to be able to
do an evaluation of have we gotten this balance right, as you say. We can’t get health care for free. You’re going to have to pay for it one way
or another. Either the government is going to pay more,
so that people don’t have as many out-of-pocket costs or... — and that means, in some fashion, higher taxes for somebody — or individuals are going to have to pay more out of pocket, in one way or another. The same is true for employers. Either employers pay more for a really good
health care package, but that takes something out of the employer’s
bottom line, or they’re putting more costs onto workers
in the form of higher deductibles and higher copays. And I think that a lot of the good work that
can be done in lowering costs had to do not with cost shifting but with
actually making the system work better. And we’ve done a lot of work on that. What I referred to earlier: incentivizing
a system that, instead of ordering five tests because doctors
and providers are getting paid for the test, you now have a system where you’re going
to get reimbursed if the person gets healthy quicker and does not return to the hospital. Well, it turns out that that can, over time,
be a real cost reduction. Those are the kinds of things that we’re
implementing in the system as a consequence of Obamacare. The more we do that kind of stuff, the less
we’re going to see this cost shifting. But the intention has never been to say, 'Let’s make it more expensive for people to get health care so they are going to access the system more.' And I think the proof of that is that, even
though per-person costs have not gone up a lot, the overall spending on health care has gone up because more people have come into the system. We want people to use the health care system. We just don’t want them to use it in the
emergency room. We want them to use it to stay healthy, and
smoking cessation plans, and making sure they’re getting regular check-ups, and mammograms — those are the things that will save us as much money as we can. I have a wonky follow-up question... There you go. ...since this is a wonkfest. What about controlling prices? We have some of the highest health care prices
in the world in the United States. Most other developed countries, they regulate
how much you can charge for a MRI, for an emergency room visit, an appendectomy. That seems like it’s really at the core
of this tension: the fact that we have these very high prices. Americans don’t go to the doctor more, we
just pay a lot more when we go to the doctor. That is something the health care law did
not tackle and I’m curious as to hear you reflect on that and what you would think about the role of price controls in American medicine. Well, look, this is the irony of this whole
debate: is … The things that people are most satisfied
with about Obamacare, about the Affordable Care Act, are things that, essentially, in other countries are solved by more government control, not
less. And so Republicans are pointing at these things
to stir up dissatisfaction, but when it comes to, ‘Alright what’s
the solution for it?’ Their answer is less government regulation
and letting folks charge even more and doing whatever they want and letting the marketplace
work its will. I think that there are strengths to our system
because we have a more market-based system. Our health care system is more innovative. Prescription drugs is probably the best example of this. It is true that we essentially come up with
the new drugs in this country, because our drug companies are fat and wealthy enough that they can invest in the research and development. They make bigger profits, which they can then
plow back into drug development. And, essentially, we have a lot of other countries
that are free riders on that system. So they can negotiate with the drug companies
and force much lower prices, but they generally don’t have a drug industry
that develops new drugs. That’s true. This is an example where you probably do want
some balance to maintain innovation, but to have some tougher negotiations around
the system as a whole. And we are trying to use Medicare as the place where, since there’s no health care provider or
stakeholder in the health care industry that doesn’t in some ways want to get Medicare
business, we’re trying to use Medicare as a lever
to get better deals for consumers and better prices for consumers. Not just those in Medicare, but also people throughout the system. But as I said, the irony is that when we try
to do that, the people who are most resistant are the
very Republican members of Congress who are criticizing us or at least telling the American people that you should want lower prices on various procedures. If we want to control prices for consumers
more, then the marketplace by itself will not do that. And the reason is because health care is not
exactly like other products. It’s not like buying a flat screen TV. If you’re sick, or if your kid is sick,
most of the time you’re not in a position to negotiate right there and then. You can’t walk out of the store and just
say, 'Well I’m going to see if I can get a better deal.' You’re trying to figure out, like when Sasha
got meningitis when she was four-months-old, make my child better and that’s all and
I’ll worry about the cost later. And that’s the mentality that most people have when it goes into health care. So the traditional models of the marketplace
don’t work perfectly in the health care system. There are areas where we can increase marketplace competition. There are ways in which we can make it work better. But ultimately, if we want to really get at some of these costs, there has to be some more extensive regulation in certain areas than we currently have. So, I recently took a trip to an area of Kentucky
— on a slightly different topic — that saw some huge coverage gains under the
health care law, but also voted overwhelmingly for President-elect Trump. And one of the people I met there was Kathy
Oller, who is here with us today. She is an Obamacare enrollment worker who
has signed up more than 1,000 people for coverage. She supported you in 2008 and 2012 but voted for President-elect Trump in 2016 and expects
him to improve on the Affordable Care Act and she would like to ask you a question about that. Go ahead, Kathy. Is it working? Let’s see if it’s on. Yeah, it’s on. Yeah, it looks on. Oh. Ok, I'm supposed to karaoke now. Hello, President Obama, I’m so excited to
meet you. President Obama: It's good to see you. Thanks. I'm a little bit nervous, as you can see. But, over the years, I’ve enrolled and talked
to numerous Kentuckians and I have signed up some for even the first time, so it was working — the Affordable Care Act — and also we’ve been going over the years
and I’ve talked to people, but recently we found out that there was fewer
choices in our area and the increase in the premiums and deductibles and our facilities aren’t even taking some them. Many Kentuckians now are looking at the "Affordable
Care" as unaffordable and unusable. And I have the opportunity to ask you a few
questions that you have probably went over, but how do you think this happened? How can we fix it? Do we start all over again? What do you think we should do? Well, first of all, Kathy, I want to thank
you for being out there enrolling people — that’s been hugely important. [applause] The second point I would make is that Kentucky is a place where this has really worked. And it’s worked for two reasons:
one is Kentucky expanded Medicaid. And we haven’t talked a lot about that,
but a big chunk of Obamacare was just making Medicaid accessible to more people. And those states that expanded Medicaid have
seen a much bigger drop in the uninsured than those states who didn't. And, by the way, those states that didn’t? They didn’t do so just out of politics. I’ll just be very blunt. Because the federal government was going to
pay for this Medicaid expansion. And states...there are some states, because they had all this uncompensated care, ended up making money by providing more health insurance to your people. It was a hard bargain, a hard deal to turn down, and yet, you got a number of states that turned it down mainly because Republican governors and Republican state legislatures didn’t
want to make it work. Kentucky, under Steve Beshear, was one of
the people that did expand Medicaid, had a really active program. Because I don’t poll that well in Kentucky,
they didn’t call it Obamacare; they called it “Kentucky Connect”, right? Right. And so there were a whole lot of people who said, “Well we don’t like Obamacare, but I like this program” and we'll sign you up, right? You signed people up. You didn't tell them it was Obamacare all the time. And it's actually worked, right? Now, what is true in Kentucky though, is true
in some other states. You had a governor who ran explicitly on the
idea of rolling back Obamacare, even though it was working. And so the state marketplace — the state
exchange — he dismantled, which means we had to shift everything on to the federal exchange. Most people got shifted, but it indicated
a lack of interest and effort on his part in making the thing work. He promised to roll back Medicaid, but he
started realizing that wasn’t as good politics as he thought it was when he was running. So he hasn’t done that. But what is also true is — and this is my
main criticism of Obamacare, of the Affordable Care Act — is that the subsidies aren’t
as high as they probably should be for a lot of working people. If you don’t qualify for Medicaid, where
you don’t have to pay, for the most part, for your coverage, and instead you’re buying
health insurance on the marketplace — so you’re a working person but you don’t
have a lot of money, and particularly if you are older, where you use the health care system more and you need a better benefit package than somebody 18 or 20 might — then there are families where the premiums are still too high. And as I said earlier, there are some parts
of the country where there are only a handful of hospitals and a few doctors and where you
don’t have a lot of competition. And the insurers are looking, and they’re
saying, “We’re not going to make a lot of money there.” So you don’t end up having a lot of insurance plans in those areas. So the two things that we could do, that would really make it work even better for people in Kentucky, would be, number one: provide
more subsidies to folks who are working hard every day but still find the premiums — even
with the subsidies — hard to meet. And, have the public option for those communities
where they’re not getting a lot of competition and insurers aren’t coming in. The problem is, is that is not what’s being
proposed by Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky. Instead, what he’s proposing, I gather, is you’re going to repeal the law, then you’re going to come up with something. Except you will have taken away all the… The way we pay for the subsidies for working people is we’re taxing wealthier folks a little bit higher. So he wants to cut those taxes, and that money
would be gone right away. And then he’s going to promise you, or those
people you’ve been signing up, better health care. Except there’s not going to be any money
to pay for it. And nobody’s explained to me yet how that’s
going to work. And so I think this takes me back to the point I made earlier: If, in fact, the people you’ve been signing
up and the folks in your communities are not fully satisfied with the benefits that they’re
getting now and are hopeful for something better, then, at the very least, you should
be putting pressure on your members of Congress to say, 'Show us exactly what the deal is
going to be for us before you take away the deal that we got.' Because the people you sign up for, they
may not be exactly as happy as they’d like, but — tell me if I’m wrong — they like
it better than not having any insurance at all. Kathy Oller: Correct, and some never even had insurance. And some people didn’t have insurance. Because I get letters from folks who say,
“For the first time in my life — I have had a bad hip for 15 years, and I’ve been
pain-free for the first time because I finally got insurance.” So... The answer is not for them not to have insurance. And if we go to a system where they’ve got
to buy it on their own, they are not going to buy it. Because they’ll have even less subsidy. How much time do we got? I think we’re quite low. We’ve got low time? Because I’ve got all kinds of more stuff. Well, it’s your schedule. We’re happy to keep you as long as you like. Well, why don’t you … there are couple
points I want to make in closing, but why don’t you ask some questions? So, one thing we haven’t touched on yet in
much detail is the delivery system reforms, which are a big part of the law. So what is a policy or an experiment or change
in that space that has over performed your expectations, and what’s one that has maybe
not panned out as you’d liked or hoped? You know, I think a good example of something that’s
worked better than we expected, or at least worked as well as we expected, is the issue
of hospital readmissions. Now, it turns out that a lot of times you
go to the hospital, let’s say you get your appendix taken out. And then you go home and then there’s a
complication, and then you have to go back into the hospital. That’s obviously inconvenient for you and
it’s expensive for the system as a whole. And it turns out that there are just a few things that
you can do to help reduce people being readmitted. First of all, making sure that the first procedure goes well. But, secondly, making sure that there is good follow-up. So it might be that a hospital or a health
care system pays for, when you do go home, you just getting some phone calls to remind
you to take the medicine that you got to take to make sure you heal properly. Because they may have done a study and it
turns out that people forget to do what they're supposed to do. They don’t follow exactly their doctor's
instructions, and they can't afford to have a nurse in their house who's doing it for
them. Well, maybe there are just a few things that
can be done to help make sure that they do what they are supposed to do, and that way
they don’t have complications. What we've seen is a significant reduction
in hospital readmissions over the course of this law just by doing some smart incentivizing,
just saying to the hospitals, “We'll reimburse you,” or, “We'll give you some other benefit
for doing smart follow-up.” That's an area where I think we've made some real progress. The other place, and this is connected, where
I think we've got some good bipartisan support is just encouraging what's called...shifting
from what’s called "fee-for-service payments", where you get paid by the procedure. Which means that you may end up getting five
tests instead of getting one test that is emailed to five providers who are treating
you. And we’ve started to see some real movement
when we say to the system as a whole, "We're going to pay you for outcomes.” "Did the patient do well?" And that has been helpful. In terms of areas where I think we haven’t
seen as much improvement as I’d like, it's probably...one thing that comes to mind is on the electronic medical records. If you think about how wired and plugged in
everybody is now, you know, I mean, you can basically do everything off your phone, the fact that there are still just mountains of paperwork and you don’t understand what these bills
are that still get sent to your house. Nobody...and the doctors still have to input
stuff and the nurses are spending all their time on all this the administrative work. We put a big slug of money into trying to
encourage everybody to digitalize, you know, catch up with the rest of the world here. And it’s proven to be harder than we expected,
partly because everybody has different systems, they don’t all talk to each other, it requires
retraining people in how to use them effectively. And I’m optimistic that over time it’s
inevitable that it’s going to get better because every other part of our lives, it’s become
paperless. But it’s been a lot slower than I would have expected. And some of it has to do with the fact that, as I said, it's decentralized and everybody has different systems. In some cases, you have sort of economic incentives that are pushing against making the system work better. For example, there are service providers — people make money on keeping people’s medical records — so making it easier for everybody to access
each other’s medical records means that there’s some folks who could lose business. And that has turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected. Do you have any closing remarks? And one thing I’m interested in is, kind of, what you see your role, in this debate we’re gearing up for, as. Well let me make a couple of closing remarks. Number one, I think it is important to remember
that just because people campaigned on repealing this law, it is a much more complicated process
to repeal this law than I think was being presented on the campaign trail, as my Republican
friends are discovering. The way this process is going to work — there’s
this rushed vote that’s taking place this week, next week, to “repeal Obamacare.” But really all that is, is it is a resolution that is then
instructing these committees in Congress to start actually drafting a law that specifically
would say what’s being repealed and what’s not. And after that, they’d have to make a decision
about what’s going to replace it. And how long is that going to take? And that stretches the process out further. And so... I think whether you originally supported Obamacare
or you didn’t, whether you like me or you don't, the one thing I would just ask all
the American people to do is adopt the slogan of the great state of Missouri: "Show me." Show me. Do not rush this process. And to Republicans I would say: "What are you scared of?" If you are absolutely convinced — as you
have been adamant about for the last seven years — that you can come up with something
better, go ahead and come up with it. And I’ll even cut you some slack for the fact
that you’ve been saying you would come up with something better for seven years, and
I’ve never seen it. But we’ll restart the clock. It’s interesting that we’re here in Blair House,
because this is a place where I met in front of the American people with Republicans who had already indicated their adamant opposition to health care. And I sat with them for a couple of hours. How long was it? Eight. Eight hours. Kathleen Sebelius, who was my secretary of health and human services, remembers, for
eight hours on live TV, to talk about here’s why we’re trying to do what we’re doing
here, and challenging them to come up with better answers than the ones we had come up with. And we spent a year of really significant debate, and I would think that, given that we now have proof that 20 million people do have health insurance, that we are at the lowest rate of uninsured in our history, that health care costs, rather than spiking way up, have actually gone up slower than
they have in 50 years, given that the vast majority of people who get health insurance through Obamacare have said they are satisfied with their care, and that they are better off than when they didn’t have care, given that, even though a lot of people don’t know it, even if you’re not getting health insurance through Obamacare, you've benefited because if you get health insurance on the job it now doesn’t have a lifetime limit. It doesn’t have fine print that could end
up costing you a lot of money. Given all of those things, I would think you’d
at least want to explain to the American people what it is that you want to do. And that, I think, is a minimum expectation out of this Congress and out of the president-elect. I would make a second point. And that is that we just worked on a bipartisan
basis to sign something called the CURES bill that included two really important bipartisan priorities. One was Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot initiative,
because we’re seeing so many medical breakthroughs in so many areas that we have an opportunity
to make a real dent in how we deal with cancer, which affects everybody in some fashion. Somebody has been touched in your family with this terrible disease. So we got a lot more money for researching that, and the bill also contained a big investment in opioid...the opioid challenge. As many of you know, you're seeing more and
more communities that are being ravaged by, initially by prescription drugs, then that
ends up being a gateway into heroin. Some of which — like synthetic heroin being
produced called fentanyl — just has terrible rates of overdose death. And this is not an inner-city problem, per se,
but this is reaching every community, and in some ways it’s a lot worse in a lot of
rural communities. So there was a bipartisan effort for us to
put some more money into that. But here’s the thing: if we just put more money into cancer research
and we just put money into dealing with the opioid crisis, and now we’re taking away
money that is providing drug treatment services in those very same communities by repealing Obamacare
and taking away the ability to access a doctor to get new cancer treatments, then we’re
not really helping anybody. So that’s a second point I want to make. A third point I want to make is that I would encourage local communities to get involved in this process. And... You know, I think that part of the problem with this whole law has been that the people who benefit aren’t out there making noise. The people who ideologically have opposed it have been really loud. Well now is the time for people who have
benefited or seen their families benefit to tell their stories. Because ultimately this is not a political game. This is really something that affects people
in the most personal ways. My friend Natoma Canfield is here, in the
front row. Some of you’ve heard Natoma’s story before: where a cancer survivor who, because she had now a preexisting condition, was faced
with either keeping her health insurance at such a high rate — the only way she could get health insurance with a preexisting condition was to basically pay so much that she could no longer afford to pay the mortgage on her house. And I remember her writing to me. And I thought, you know, 'That could be my mom; that
could be yours.' And that’s not a choice that people should have to make. And when most people, even if they’re not
Obama supporters, hear Natoma’s story or the stories of other people who have been
helped — they know it’s wrong to just take away their health care. And it becomes less about who is winning here
in Washington and it becomes about how we are doing right by our fellow Americans. But those stories have to be heard. And I would just encourage people to start
telling their stories, and tell their stories... you know... ...you’re not always going to get a lot
of attention here in Washington, because they want to know about 'this vote' and 'this
insult' that was hurled back and forth between whoever. But you know what? Tell that story in your local newspapers;
talk to your local reporters; congregations that are involved in caring for those in need. Make sure that you’re telling stories in
church and in services so that people know. Because the one thing that I’m convinced
about is that the American people want to do the right thing. It’s hard to get good information and, unless you’re reading Vox everyday, which is hard to do. It’s not that hard to do. Getting the details of all this policy is… It is hard. It is complicated. You don’t know what’s true, you don’t
know what’s not true. I mean, those folks in Kentucky that you’ve signed up. There are a lot of people who voted for not
just a president but also for a member of Congress who said, explicitly, “we’re going to eliminate this.” Well I understand why people might think,
'Okay, well he’s going to eliminate it but he will give us something better.' But this is hard. You know, and what you don’t want is a situation
where they make a promise that they can’t keep. And I worked on this a long time — if we had
had a better way to do this, we would’ve done it. It would have been in my interest to do it. Because I knew I was going to be judged on
whether or not it worked. And those areas that don’t work have to
do with there not being enough money in the system and not having a public option. And I’m more than happy to put those fixes
in place, anytime, anyplace. But that’s not, so far, what the Republicans
are proposing. You deserve to know what it is that that they are doing. So, anyway, I appreciate you guys taking the
time to — Real quick sir, Sarah asked about your role
going forward. Oh, well, my role going forward? Well, look, I mean... I do deserve a little sleep. So... And I’ve got to take Michelle on a vacation. So, but... I’ve said consistently that the most important
office in a democracy is the office of citizen. And I will be a citizen, who still remembers
what it was like when his mom died of cancer younger than I am now. And who didn’t have all the insurance and
disability insurance and support and wasn’t using the healthcare system enough to have
early detection that might have prevented her from passing away. Michelle’s dad had multiple sclerosis, MS,
 but was part of that generation that just didn’t have a lot of expectations about
health care so just kind of suffered for years. Those are our stories, so it’s not like
I’m going to suddenly fade away on this. I will be a part of the work of our fellow
citizens in trying to make sure that the wealthiest country on Earth is able to do the same thing
that every other advanced country is able to do. I mean, it’s not as if this has never been done before. If you’re in Canada, you got health care. No matter who you are. If you’re in France, you got health care. If you’re in England, you’ve got health care. If you are in Australia, you got health care. If you’re in New Zealand, you’ve got health care. I remember talking to my friend John Key,
who was the prime minister of New Zealand. He is part of the conservative party in New
Zealand, and he said to me, in the middle of this health care debate, he said, “If I proposed that we took away people’s health care, that we repeal it, I’d be run out of office by my own party.” Because it was just assumed that in a country
this wealthy that this was one of the basic rights — not privileges — of citizenship
in a well-to-do country like ours. So I’ll be working with all of you. But my voice is gonna be less important than
the voices of people who are directly affected. And so I would urge everybody to make your voice heard. Now is the time to do it. The people who have opposed this were opposing
it not based on facts but were opposing it based on sort of on an ideological concern about
expansion of the state and taxes on wealthier people that are helping people who don’t
have as much money — and I respect their role in the democracy, they’ve been really fighting hard. Well, folks here gotta have to fight just as hard. My final piece of advice would be to the news media. Which is... Generally speaking, when Obamacare has worked well, it wasn’t attributed to Obamacare. And when there were problems, they got front
page headlines. And I think that hopefully now is the time where people can be a little — this doesn’t apply to Vox by the way — but I think it would be a good time for people to be a little more measured and take a look at what are the facts of this thing. Because the stakes are high. Even on this whole premium issue, increase issue, that happened right before the election. It is true, as I said, that insurers adjusted
and hiked premiums. But I kept on trying to explain, number
one, if you’re getting a tax subsidy this wasn’t going to affect your out-of-pocket costs because the tax credit would just go up, but nobody kind of heard that. And, number two, these increases in premiums
only apply to people who are buying health insurance on the exchanges. In fact, 85 percent of the people
don’t get health insurance through Obamacare. And for you, your health care premiums, actually have
gone up a lot less since Obamacare was passed than they did before Obamacare was passed. The average family has probably saved about
$3,000 in lower health care premiums than if you had seen those same health care cost trends
increased at the pace that they did before the law was passed. But I didn’t see a lot of headlines about
that, which I understand because it's not controversial enough or it's a little bit too complicated to get in a soundbite. So that’s why individual voices are so important
and that’s why I’m so appreciative of journalists who actually know what they’re
talking about. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks, appreciate it. Thank you. You are, according to the FBI, more likely to die as the result of faulty furniture than by an Islamic terrorist. So, you should really be scared of your La-Z-Boy. For a very long time, really the only Muslims that you saw on TV were the Muslim villain who would scream, “Allahu akbar!” and then blow himself up. [Clip] “Allahu akbar!” And then there was, like, the “good Muslim”. So you have that great movie “Body of Lies", and you’re like “Oh, look it’s a Muslim guy who’s good, he’s, like, with the CIA!” No! He’s dead. Like, three minutes into the movie. He’s done. In the 1980s, being Muslim in America was like being Martian. I grew up in a predominantly Mexican community. So I just told everybody I was Mexican. I didn’t really know that much Spanish. I knew, like,“Órale!” and I just, like, would throw that out every once in a while. “Órale!” And people would be like, “Oh, you’re obviously Mexican”. It was very important that we kept the whole Muslim and Iranian thing on the down-low as much as possible. I was longing for a way to express myself spiritually. And so, I started reading about Islam, I started reading the Quran. The more I read, the more I realized this is what I already believe, I just didn’t know there was a word for it. [Clip] “Please welcome back to the program, Reza Aslan.” [Clip 1] “Reza Aslan.” [Clip 2] “Reza Aslan.” [Clip] “Reza, let me start with you.” The hardest part for me when I’m being interviewed, is to tamp down my astonishment. [Clip] “The question at the bottom of the screen that everyone is looking at: does Islam promote violence?" The thing that’s mostly going through my mind is “calm down, calm down”. [Clip] “The justice system in Muslim countries, you don’t think, is somehow more primitive” [Clip] “or subjugates women more than in other countries?” [Clip] “Did you hear what you just said? You said ‘in Muslim countries’.” Please don’t generalize about 1.7 billion people in the world. [Clip] “You’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?” [Clip] “Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in biblical Greek.” The Fox News video, that one really touched a nerve. I woke up the next day and realized I had ten thousand new followers. I mean, everybody was talking about it. I got a lot of positive comments from people. Muslims who were saying, you know, for the first time, "Okay, now we have proof of how we are being dealt with all the time. This is what it’s like to be Muslim in America." The negative stuff, however, was much, much louder. I’ve got an entire file folder of just death threats. After about ten years of being cable news’ favorite Muslim, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t think it’s doing any good. Bigotry is not a result of ignorance, it’s a result of fear. And fear is impervious to data, fear is impervious to information. The only way that you’re gonna dissipate that fear is by getting people to know someone that they’re afraid of. In this country, we went from overwhelming majorities who were against same-sex marriage to overwhelming majorities supporting same-sex marriage within the span of a couple of years. What changed peoples’ minds was “Will and Grace”, was “Modern Family”. Was watching people who were gay, on television, being, you know, normal. They’re struggling with the same issues that you’re struggling with. They are human beings. And so for the last few years I’ve decided that what I’m gonna do is try to change peoples’ minds through pop culture, through film and television. Stories have the power to break through the walls that separate us into different ethnicities, different cultures, different nationalities, different races, different religions. Because they hit us at the human level. I used to see in the supermarkets the Weekly World News. It was full of fake news stories. They were famous for this ongoing saga about the bat boy. It’s not even new for Hillary Clinton. There was another story in which Hillary Clinton was 
supposed to have found an alien baby and adopted him. So this kind of thing, as an editorial strategy, has always been around, but there wasn’t
a lot of money in it, and there wasn’t much incentive to produce it. Because the big money was in advertising. If you’re trying to make people think ‘this
expensive watch, these kind of clothes will make you seem like a savvy, cool person,’
advertising in a fake news publication, it doesn’t meet any of those objectives. What is new are the incentives of the internet. A lot of advertisement these days is served
by remote computer algorithms. They know who you are because they’ve been
tracking your web browsing, but they don’t care what site you’re on. And within Facebook, it can be hard to tell where a story is coming from. The way that’s presented, you don’t have
a strong sense of what is the brand and what is their reputation. So fake news can zoom around facebook faster
than anything before, it can make money, and people might not know if it's coming from a credible source. And fake news was definitely rampant during
the 2016 presidential election. One Buzzfeed News report found that the top fake news articles on Facebook were either pro-Trump or anti-Hillary. Which makes fake news a convenient target for liberals who are upset about the election results. While established media outlets
are brands based on accuracy, rogue websites, some masquerading as legitimate, are reporting
misinformation But when you look at it, as best we can tell, the kinds of things that really hurt Hillary Clinton in the campaign were true stories. Gallup asked voters what they’d read, seen, or heard about Hillary Clinton, and they found stories about Clinton’s email dominated throughout the campaign. Network television news devoted more minutes of total airtime to covering Hillary Clinton’s email server than to all policy
issues combined, and it wasn’t even close. Clinton violated security guidelines when she used a private email server. The Hillary Clinton camp back under the cloud of the email controversy. Thousands of emails under the microscope. Clinton's email scandal is back in the spotlight. you have two candidates out there you have a team of reporters, you divide up your team. Reporters are smart, they want to be adversarial. So the upshot is that you naturally end up with the result that both candidates are pretty similar, because you have similar numbers of people, writing similar numbers of investigative stories about both of them. So if it turns out there’s two big knocks on Hillary Clinton, her emails and her foundation, you get a lot of stories about each of those subjects And if it turns out there’s a million knocks against Donald Trump, each story winds up getting less coverage because you only have a certain amount of Donald Trump space This is called false equivalence, and you can see some evidence of this in the Gallup data. Emails consistently are at the top for Clinton, with Trump stories shifting around. Facebook is finally beginning to fight back
by partnering with proven fact-checking organizations. But don’t expect this to fix everything. Many voters are making a lesser of two evils assessment right now. You have two flawed candidates this year, which one can you tolerate the most. Scandals surround both campaigns. Both candidates are facing serious trust issues. Real news, very mainstream outlets did not present the stakes well. I think that means a lot of people went into this election not really understanding what was at stake. Twenty million Americans have gained health
insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The uninsured rate in the United States is
at an all-time low. Having coverage has become just as common
as wearing a seatbelt. Obamacare is a crucial part of President Obama’s
legacy — but that is all about to change. President-elect Trump and Congressional Republicans
have promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something else. "Immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare" Economic estimates predict that this will
lead to anywhere from 3 to 21 million Americans losing health coverage, depending on which
plan Republicans pick. Republicans have attacked Obamacare viciously. "Obamacare isn't working, and it never will. " "This law is hurting families in America" Some of the problems they point out are quite real. About half of Obamacare enrollees say that
their deductibles and premiums are too high. Premiums on the Obamacare marketplace went
up 22 percent last year. Will Republicans fix those problems? Or will they make them worse? On Friday, Ezra Klein and I will host an in-depth
discussion with President Obama about the health care law, It will be one of the president’s
last chances to defend his most sweeping legislative accomplishment — just as Republicans begin
the work of dismantling it. Our conversation will be live streamed and we hope you join us. In November, experts from the UN visited the
South Sudan, the world’s newest country. They found a conflict marked by mass slaughter
and what they described as a “warped environment,” where rape of women and girls has “become
normal.” What they saw was shocking. They issued an urgent report on the conflict
and mass slaughter they witnessed, saying that in this ‘warped environment,’ rape
of women and girls has become ‘normal’. The UN says the world has an obligation to
intervene and prevent an ethnic cleansing, potentially as devastating as the Rwandan
Genocide of 1994 when the world stood by and watched the slaughter of 800,000 people .
Since the South Sudanese civil war broke out in December 2013, over 50,000 people have
been killed. More than 2.3 million people have been forced
to flee their homes. Around 6 million people are currently at risk
of going hungry, and 70 percent of schools have been closed due to the fighting. It’s a nightmare for a country that gained
its independence just five years ago -- a move that was supposed to bring peace to an
area that had known only war. Before it became independent in 2011, South Sudan was part of Sudan. Since before colonial times, a deep divide
has existed between the predominantly Muslim, Arabic-speaking north and people from the
south, where people are mostly Christian or follow traditional religions. The divide began to turn violent in the 1950s,
shortly after Sudan gained independence from British and Egyptian rule. Positions of power were given almost entirely
to northerners , and the Sudanese government in Khartoum increasingly centralized around
a small group of elites. A predatory government emerged, serving only
to enrich its members by seizing natural resources and ignoring the desperate needs of the Sudanese
people. The two parts of the country fought for decades
in a civil war that ended in 2005 with an agreement allowing the south to govern itself. It also opened the possibility for South Sudan
to officially vote to break away from Sudan With help from the UN and international community,
that vote was held in January 2011 and passed overwhelmingly, with nearly 99 percent of
South Sudanese voting in favor of independence. The US had spent years pushing for the creation
of an independent South Sudan, and the Obama administration celebrated the vote. Susan Rice, then the American ambassador to
the UN, said it was “a day of triumph for all who cherish the rights of all people to
govern themselves in liberty and in law.” And then everything fell apart. South Sudan contains more than 60 ethnic groups. During the civil war with the north, these
groups put their differences aside in the push for independence. The two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan
are the Dinka and Nuer. The new president Salva Kiir, was a Dinka,
and in an expression of unity he asked Riek Machar, a Nuer, to be his vice president. But the arrangement didn’t last -- and the
peace was short-lived. Generals and warlords were put in political
positions but were ill-suited for the jobs. To make matters worse, the international community
had essentially stepped away after independence. Tensions between South Sudan’s many factions
had been overlooked in order to achieve independence from the north. So, when the fighting was over and the state-building
began, old rivalries and tensions re-emerged. Vice president Machar started criticizing
president President Kiir’s policies, saying he would run against him in the next election. The conflict between the two leaders escalated
and in December 2013, when forces loyal to Machar clashed with forces loyal to Kiir. To mobilize support for themselves, Machar
and Kiir exploited the ethnic divides throughout South Sudan by mobilizing sectarian militias
and having their allies use hate speech to encourage violence against civilians. The political fight quickly morphed into an
all-out ethnic conflict, with people loyal to both sides taking up arms and slaughtering
each other. More than 1,000 people were killed and another
100,000 displaced in the first week of fighting alone. And it’s only gotten worse since then, with
other tribes joining the fight. A cycle of violent retaliation, spurred by
the politicians, has reignited old tensions. Fierce competition over resources, intervention
by neighboring countries, and the heavy flow of weapons into the region have only served
to escalate the violence while several attempted truces have failed. And while the UN is calling for immediate
intervention from the world, there’s no clear proposal for what the intervention would
be. For its part, the US has proposed an arms
embargo for all weapons sales to South Sudan. But it's unlikely to pass the Security Council
because China and Russia are deferring to South Sudan’s neighbors, who have their
own vested interests in South Sudan and are divided over what to do to stop the violence. Until they agree on a solution, China and
Russia will block any sanctions or embargos by the UN. This crisis is also happening at the worst
possible time, as it comes right at the end of President Obama’s presidency as well
as Ban Ki-moon’s tenure as the UN’s secretary general. They are two of the only people in the world
with the standing and clout to push African nations to take concrete steps to the stop
the violence. It’s not clear that President-elect Donald
Trump knows about South Sudan at all. And it seems incredibly unlikely that he would
make a serious effort to end the bloodshed After the Rwandan genocide, world leaders
established an international criminal court designed to prevent such atrocities from taking
place in the future by holding out the threat of punishing those who’d carried them out. Two decades later, another African country
is at risk of descending into mass slaughter. The Obama administration is pleading for calm
and pushing the two sides to find a deal before it’s too late. But there isn’t much the US or its allies
can do to force South Sudan’s warring factions to lay down their guns. And that means the world’s newest country
could soon be ravaged by the type of carnage its independence was designed to prevent. I have a terrible memory. I can’t remember birthdays, I notoriously butcher movie lines, and I forget somebody’s name five seconds
after I meet them. But by the end of this video I’m going to
be reciting an entire chapter from Moby Dick by heart, because, as it turns out,
there’s a way for anybody to hack their memory. The way that we normally try to memorize stuff
is inefficient and pretty bad. Flash cards, rote repetition, anxiously putting
your hand on your forehead just don’t work. That’s because as much as we’d like to,
our brains don’t respond well to brute force. What we are good at is remembering things
when we have a context, be it visual, emotional, or spatial. We’re good at remembering faces, we instinctively remember what song was playing
during our first kiss, and we can effortlessly walk a few blocks
to the store and get back to our house without even having
to think about it. Why is that? Well, it turns out that the same part of our
brain that’s thought to be involved in emotion and spatial
navigation, the hippocampus, also happens to control short-
and long-term memory processing. Now, I know what you’re thinking:
If only there were a way to combine the two. Enter: the memory palace. A memory palace is a memorization technique
that makes it easier to remember things by giving it a visual and spatial hook. It combines something that humans are innately
pretty bad at with something that we’ve been doing for
ages. Basically, you assign images to the content
you want to memorize, then place them on a path in a real-life location. Then when you retrace the path in your mind,
you see the images, are able to recall the content, and all of the sudden you look like a memory
genius. So does this actually work? Step 1: choose a location that you know really
well to serve as your memory palace. It seems pretty generous to deem it a palace,
but for this example I chose to use my apartment. I went around and mentally mapped out the
space, making sure I had a clear image of the layout, where the furniture was, and whether or not
I needed to change my cat’s litter box, which, it turns out,
I did. Step 2: choose what you want to memorize. You can choose anything that you want:
a poem, the state capitals, the first 25 digits of pi. Whatever. I chose a chapter from one of my favorite
books, Moby Dick. Granted, it’s one of the shorter chapters,
but it’s really good, and you’ve got to start somewhere, so how about everyone just play it cool, all
right? I’ve read this chapter a number of times,
but I don’t remember more than a few words off the top
of my head. So I know that the first line is, “I leave
a white wake.” There’s a line where he talks about a heavy
crown. And his destiny is on rails at some point. Step 3: create a really compelling visual
image for each line or item. What I did was take the chapter and break
it up into individual sentences, 38 in all, each one getting their own image. So for the first line — “I leave a white
and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail” — I create in my mind an image of John Waters,
pale and dressed in white, crying uncontrollably at somebody’s wake. Pretty memorable image, right? You want to make all of your images as distinctive
and interesting as possible. The weirder and more emotional that they are,
the easier it will be for you to remember. Feel free to make them vulgar or outrageous. Nobody needs to know what’s inside your
memory palace. Step 4: place your images along a path through
your memory palace. I took the John Waters image and placed it
on the first stop of my path: the landing on the stoop of my
apartment. I did this for the rest of the chapter, line
by line, until each line had a unique, weird image. Step 5: memorize. The thing about memory palaces is that they’re
not going to help you memorize anything instantly. You still have to go through and do the work. And it is work. But studies have shown that students who use
memory palaces or other mnemonic techniques to study consistently and significantly outperform
students that don’t. It’s also proven to be a powerful learning
tool for students with disabilities. So does this actually work? I got up in front of all my co-workers to
find out. I leave a white and turbid wake. Pale waters, paler
cheeks, wherever I sail. The envious billow sidelong swell to whelm
my track, let them, but first I pass. Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the
warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plums the blue. The diver sun — slow dived from noon — goes
down, my soul mounts up. Spending three or four hours everyday practicing,
it only took me about four days to memorize the whole thing. The path to my fixed purpose is laid with
iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled
hearts of mountains, under torrent’s beds, unerringly I rush. Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle,
to the iron way. So now that I know some of the secrets to
memorization, does that mean that I’m going to enter next
year’s US Memory Championship? Um, we’ll see. Ladies and gentlemen, the first American to
orbit the Earth. Here's to Flint. The latest now in Flint, Michigan. A water crisis there. No justice, no peace. At times it seems like the forces pulling
us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational
waves. Opioid addiction is now officially an epidemic. We now lose 100 Americans a day from overdoses
on prescription medicines and heroin. I went from smoking weed and snorting pain
medication in in my dorm room, to being homeless and shooting heroin under a bridge. The British people have voted to leave the
European Union. This is mass hysteria at the moment. Those on the losing side of the argument,
myself included, should help to make it work. Today marks the most deadly shooting in American
history. Some 50 dead reported in Orlando. The shooter targeted a gay nightclub he frequented We've taken a lot of steps forward and something
like this just makes all those steps be erased. And love is love is love is love is love is
love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the
Phillippines in May, on a promises of waging a "bloody war on drugs." I'd be happy to slaughter them. Breaking news out of Turkey where tensions
remain high this morning after a night of explosions. President Erdogan called into Turkish television,
using FaceTime and urging citizens to flood the streets and resist the coup. More than 10,000 civil servants have now been
fired after the July 15th coup attempt. The question among terror experts is not will
there be another terror attack, but when? Please don't tell me that he's gone. Please officer, please don't tell me that
you just did this to him. Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot
and killed by police within a day of each other. Rallies and protests across the country, in
response to the violent scene during the sniper style takedown of officers in Dallas. Pray and hope that this never happens in America
again. The selection must be about bringing our people
together. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. I'm not gonna pay for that fucking wall. And just as with our founders, there are no
guarantees. It truly is up to us. The WHO today rejected a plea by 150 health
experts who argue that the games risked speeding up the spread of Zika globally. The most decorated athlete in Olympic history
is calling it quits by hanging another gold around his neck. Millions of people worldwide are hunting for
pokemon everywhere around them. But it seems there are some places anyway
they can't go. How sweet it is, after a 108 years the Cubs
win the world series. The star quarterbacks refusal to stand during
the world anthem. This country stands for freedom, liberty,
justice for all. And it's not happening for all right now. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. Whatever you want. Grab em by the pussy. And I can't believe that I'm saying that a
candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. In a stunning upset that reverberated around
the world Donald Trump won with 306 electoral votes,
even though Hillary Clinton got nearly 2.5 million more popular votes. This political stuff is nasty and it's tough. But please, never stop believing that fighting
for what's right is worth it. Thousands fled Aleppo after government forces
captured large portions of the city from rebel fighters. 10s of thousands of terrified civilians were
streaming out of eastern Aleppo. The UN weather agency says 2016 could break
the record for the hottest year since they started keeping track in the 19th century. Eventually, history suggests there will be
some doomsday event. The path this country has taken has never
been a straight line. We zig and zag. For many, many thousands of years, people
had looked up and wondered about what was up there. The alternative is to become a space-faring
civilization and a multi-planet species. And we must consider ourselves among the most
fortunate of generations for we have lived at a time when the dream became a reality. I hope you would agree that is the right way
to go, yes? A broken arrow is the Pentagon's phrase
for a serious nuclear weapon accident that could threaten the public. According to the Pentagon there have
been 33 broken arrows in history of our nuclear program. That's the official number. But I feel
very confident in saying it's a lot more than 33. "There is a ball of fire. It has reached a point 1 mile above the
earth." This technology has constantly been on the verge of slipping out of our
control. The very first test of a nuclear device in 1945 in the desert of New
Mexico could have ended catastrophically. J Robert Oppenheimer who was the
scientific director of the Manhattan Project got worried someone might try to
sabotage it so he asked a young scientist, Donald
Hornig, to climb to the top of the shot tower – a hundred foot steel tower – and
quote babysit the bomb. You've got a young scientist atop a
hundred foot steel tower and a totally flat desert. "It was a deeply philosophical experience" Now while Donald morning was up there an incredible lightning storm occurred There's no doubt that if lightning had
struck that tower or near that tower that device would have most likely
detonated and this young scientist would have been the first victim of the
nuclear era. "An atomic bomb breaks loose from a mounting shackle in a b-47 jet over
Florence South Carolina, plummets to earth, causing a sensational freak accident." I got a document through the Freedom of
Information Act that lists more than a thousand accidents and incidents
involving nuclear weapons just between 1950 and 1968. Palomares, Spain. During aerial refueling
the tanker and the bomber had a collision and it dropped four hydrogen
bombs over Spain. Damascus, Arkansas. A workman drops a tool in a missile silo. The tool hits the missile causes a fuel leak and on top of the missile is the
most powerful nuclear warhead the United States has ever built. Maintenance work is being done on an
atomic bomb and the worker doesn't realize that one of the pins in the plug
of the testing equipment is bent when he plugs the pin into the atomic bomb it
fully armed the bomb and nearly detonates the bomb which would have
destroyed a large part of the Florida coast. So. "Although a beautiful sight this swirling
boiling mushroom cloud is certain death" One of the problems with complex
technological systems is you never know where a potentially catastrophic problem
can begin. Our principal nuclear bomber is the b-52 and we haven't built a b-52
since John F Kennedy was president. That was a long time ago. And what concerns me most
is the infrastructure. The wiring the cables computers in our launch control
centers that rely on eight inch floppy disks. We're very good at creating complex
technological systems. Not as good at managing them and not very good at all when something goes wrong with it. Search Google Earth for China and you’ll
see this. But an unedited satellite photo might look
more like this. That gray smudge is air pollution and it’s
coming from Chinese cars, factories, and power plants. But it’s not only here. In cities around the world, air pollution
is a big problem. A majority of humans now live in cities and
that number is only going to rise, which means more cars, more factories, and
more power plants. As officials explore options for fighting
air pollution, there is one tool that is often overlooked: trees. Cities are centers of industry, but the resulting
pollution is filling our lungs and making us sick. One major culprit is particulate matter: airborne
particles of dust, soot and smoke that are released when we burn fossil fuels or kicked
up during construction and farming. When we inhale them, they can cause asthma and they can also enter our bloodstream to cause strokes and even death. Experts estimate that outdoor air pollution
kills over three million people a year and as cities grow, leaders are funding creative—and
often expensive—solutions for the problem. In London, the mayor spent over a million
pounds spraying city streets with an adhesive that was supposed to glue pollutants to the road. and in the Netherlands, designers have created
a giant air purifier they call "The Smog Free Tower", which is cool, but there is another,
simpler solution… A new report from The Nature Conservancy shows
that planting trees can be a cost-effective way to improve public health, which they do in two ways: First, a tree removes particulate matter when
polluted air blows through its branches. The particulate matter settles on the leaves
and when it rains the dust is washed down the gutter so we don’t inhale it. Second, trees cool temperatures by providing
shade and releasing water through photosynthesis, which cools summer temperatures by about two
to four degrees fahrenheit. But there is a catch! Trees can only clean and cool the air within
a close radius: about one hundred feet, so city officials need to be careful where they plant. Officials can maximize pollution reduction by planting trees where population density and air pollution overlap. The Nature Conservancy report uses data from
Washington D.C. to create a map showing where planting trees will have the highest return
on investment. And some trees work better than others: trees with larger, stickier leaves, like maples and elms are more effective, but they also
need to be considered within the larger ecosystem. Compared to DC, many cities around the world
have even more to gain from planting trees: this map shows where return on investment
is highest for reducing particulate matter. With proper targeting, planting trees can
be just as cost-effective as other strategies like converting public transportation to use less diesel fuel. But there is one major limiting factor: water
access. What might work in Boston, will be less feasible
in a city like Doha, Qatar, where water is a scarce resource. And on top of that, many mayors don’t yet
think of trees as a public health resource. Trees might not look like giant air filters,
but that’s exactly what they are, and the sooner we start thinking of them that way, the sooner the air we breathe might be cooler and cleaner in cities around the world. If you’re living in a house where your wastewater
runs into your yard, that means you’re at a higher risk for diseases like cholera, e.
Coli, for diarrhea. These are diseases we typically associate
with developing country settings, and not with the wealthiest country in the world. So the waste just comes out of your house
and into your backyard. And are you worried about your kids and your grandmas playing
in it? B: Yes I am. Concordia is a place where infants die at
3 times the rate the healthiest county in a rich state like Maryland. It’s a place
where nearly half of the children live in poverty. Nearly half the population is obese. ¼ of
the people never finished high school. There aren't a lot of job opportunities, and unemployment
is higher than the national average. We know a lack of education and poverty drives
down health outcomes, and for this and other reasons, Concordia has become one of the sickest
counties in America. So we wanted to go down to Concordia and really
understand why do places like this in central Louisiana, why are they always at the bottom
of these health rankings? Why are they struggling so much with their health? What I did hear again and again was that people
really felt forgotten and left behind by Washington. They felt like their needs weren’t being
addressed, that their problems weren’t being looked at by anyone. We can’t get any help from anyone. I went
to State rep, I went to the health department. Went to the Congressman. No help. There were no biological reasons why people
here were less healthy than in any other counties, but there were clear political failures that
made them sick. If you compare Concordia to the U. S. overall,
the people there are doing worse on pretty much any health measure or health indicator
you can think of. The people in Concordia have gone through
long periods without clean drinking water, and they had to have water tanks shipped in
by the National Guard, and go to these water tanks every day so their kids wouldn’t be
sickened by what was coming out of the tap. Barbara and her neighbors, they've gone to
the mayor of Ferriday, and they've gone to the mayors of neighboring towns. They’ve
asked local lawmakers for help, they asked the health department for help getting their
sewage system fixed, and they say no one will help them. They keep hearing that local health
officials don't have the money, they don't have the budgets to fix the problem. You don’t typically think people are living
without the basic fundamental requirements for healthy living with the wealthiest country
on the planet. Over the last three years between 2008 and
2016 Louisiana had this Republican governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal really believed that
in order to grow the economy in Louisiana he had to cut down on government. So he slashed
about 30,000 jobs in the state's work force. He dismantled and privatized the charity hospital
system, which was set up to care for the poor. He nearly halved the staff at the Department
of Children & Family Services. He refused the funding Obamacare gave to states
to expand Medicaid which would give more people health insurance. Governors are hurting and they don't want
a Medicaid expansion that they're seeing in these House and Senate bills. They really
need more funding, especially Louisiana. Jindal’s successor, John Bel Edwards, on
the second day in office, signed an executive order that would expand Medicaid finally and
give more people health insurance. More than 300,000 people have signed up in
Louisiana. So if Obamacare is repealed, all these people who just got health insurance
are gonna be in limbo again. In Louisiana, I met the medical director for
central Louisiana. He oversees public health for Concordia and some of the other counties
with really poor health outcomes. So much funding for public health comes from
federal sources that if there's really a change in direction and a desire to ratchet back
federal participation, it will affect maternal and child care, reproductive health, nutrition... When you look at state health rankings, they
are like this for Louisiana. And if you were in the ICU you would say was a flat line.
I mean you would say the patient is dead. In his ten years on the job, his staff has
been whittled down almost in half. And that meant firing the health providers who see
patients who can't afford health care. To fill in the gap, Holcombe stepped outside
of his role as medical director, and he's now seeing up to 100 patients a month. This is an enormously difficult problem. Because
the black / white disparities of this are enormous. And for HIV aids, it's also like
the prison population. 3/4 of the people are African American in a state that has 33% percent
African Americans. One of the really startling things about Concordia
and these other counties with very poor health outcomes is that they're all dotted along
the Mississippi River and on the other side you have these grand antebellum plantation
homes just a short drive from Concordia. I think a lot of the political attention has
been focused on places like West Virginia, PA, OH, the rust belt, where people are seeing
their economic prospects dry up and they’ve been really affected by trade and changes
in technology and globalization. But in that conversation, communities like
Concordia have been completely lost. These are the places that have been arguably struggling
for a much longer time, with more complicated, systemic difficult problems. And they didn’t
get a shred of attention in this election campaign. Well, you see large residual African American
populations that have more or less been left behind. So they've been left behind economically,
they’ve been left behind educationally. They have low socioeconomic status and that's
your triangle that determines health. So you have lots of people in little triangles, little
incomes, little education, and low social status. We did see a state government that dismantled
the safety net, put in policies that benefitted the rich and hurt the poor, and we’re looking
at a republican federal government that his campaign now promises to do something very
similar. If Donald Trump and the republican party make
good on their promises, we might see more communities that have their own version of
what happened in Concordia, when it comes to public health. The internet was supposed to make us better
and more intelligent but it's just shown how stupid we are. You know what’s funny I used to tell people whenever they would
ask me questions about Muslimness I would say, "Just google it." Now I'm like, "Please don't google that." Just come to dinner with me and my family. We're going to answer all of your questions. When you're a Muslim and I think when you're a Muslim woman especially it can be full of hate mail, and death threats and...hate tweets. Do not read the comments. You will lose your mind. Uhhhhhh. I could be talking about muffins, right. And then people would be like "Ya know. In your country they don't even have the right
to eat muffins." "If you were in your own country, you would
get stoned." "Oh yeah, you Muslims. Leave this country" ...and this and that. "Well if you don't like it here, why don't
you go back to your country." First of all, I do like it here. Secondly, this is my country. Thirdly, the whole point of this country is
to be able to speak your opinion. If you look at comments on an article its
almost like looking inside the toilet of a porta potty. Like, it's just the worst of worst garbage. I'll be like, "Hey, way to go Raiders you
beat the Saints!" And people are like, "Oh, You hate saints,
huh?!" "It's cuz you hate Christians!" "Go screw a goat." "This fat mother effer." So I would just be like, [gasp] Why'd they
call me that? It's like, what about my honor, you know? "She's got acne, I bet she doesn't have a
boyfriend." "That bald headed loser, terrorist sympathizer," and I'm like mom get off the computer. Stop writing on my videos. I do have a vision that they're back there
like this, "Ha, this is gonna get them mad!" The dregs of humanity. Interviewer: What's the meanest comment we're
going to get about this video? The meanest comment about this video is that
they will call you A Muslim lover. They're gonna say that this is some kind of
conspiracy. This is probably the first step to Sharia
law. One thing I'd really like to say to the meanest
commenter on the internet is I hope you have someone in your life that
can give you a hug Go read, man. You know (laughs). Go read! Educate yourself. Let's just talk. Like human beings. We begin the day with what is looking more and more like the final fall of Aleppo. The regime of Bashar al-Assad, Russia, Iran, and they're affiliated militia are the ones responsible for what the UN called a complete meltdown of humanity. The battle for Aleppo is over "Are you truly incapable of shame is there literally nothing that can shame you?" Aleppo has fallen. The city, formerly the most populous place in Syria was the site of a major battle between Bashar al Assad government and rebel forces. The rebels control the eastern half of the city and Assad the West. The story of Syria's Civil War is a story of flip-flops. Early on it looked like the Assad regime was finished, intervention by Iran and support by Russia help prop them up. Then the rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and several other sides turned the tides and this happened a number of different times inside the conflict. September 2015 was a turning point in the Syrian civil war. That's when Russia intervened directly for the first time. Russian airstrikes began pounding rebels under the cover of hitting ISIS. Russian airstrikes played a decisive role in allowing Assad to encircle Aleppo. The bombardment made it very difficult for rebels to operate freely allowing Assad to move towards Aleppo and eventually encircle the city. A siege is a military tactic where forces on one side surround the other side, including any civilians trapped in there and deny supplies from entering the city. There is a grim logic to imposing a siege on Aleppo. If you deny the rebels food and medicine eventually they lose the physical and mental capability to fight. Assad's vicious siege worked as intended. The rebels collapsed allowing assad forces with Iranian and Russian backing to stream into eastern Aleppo. Almost immediately reports of massacres started filtering out of civilians being killed on the streets of women committing suicide to avoid being raped by Assad's forces. It's hard to know how many were killed in this initial purge. We do know shortly after the siege was broken an evacuation agreement was struck allowing again an unknown number of civilians to escape into other territory mostly to the city of Idlib, still in rebel hands. The United States had the military power to break the siege of Aleppo and prevent the city from falling but doing so would have been extremely dangerous. For one thing the United States would have needed to have coordinated with rebels on the ground, some of whom were extremists. For another it would mean that American planes would have been flying in hostile airspace with Russian planes. If the United States were to engage Russian planes that would mean a direct exchange of fire between two nuclear-armed powers a risk that very few in Washington were willing to take. Third, even if the US had temporarily broken the siege of Aleppo and prevented it from falling it would have required a tremendous an open-ended commitment to prevent Assad from simply reimposing the siege after Americans left. Whether or not you think an American intervention would have been worth the risks there's no way to save Aleppo now. The city has fallen and Assad's troops have gone and committed untold atrocities with who knows how many more left to go. The rebels have been dealt a devastating blow one it's not clear they can recover from. This victory for Assad has been achieved with the support of two major international powers Russia and Iran and it has involved atrocities that are supposed to be prevented under international law. They fought horrifically and they won that's the lesson of Aleppo. If you look at cars from the 1970s and cars
from the 1990s, there’s really one big difference in their designs. The ones from the 70s are boxy, and the ones
from the 90s are curvy. For some car models, you can even tell the
exact year when that change happened. Just look at this commercial for the Buick
LeSabre, showing the 1991 model — and then the 1992 model. See the curves? Let’s watch that again. ‘91 is boxy, sharp edges. ‘92? Smooth and round. Since then, cars have become curvier and curvier. So how did this happen? When manufacturers started making curvy cars
in the 90s, it wasn’t a totally new concept. Back in the 1930s, streamliners like this Chrysler
Airflow used this sleek design to reduce wind resistance. But as the 50s and 60s rolled around, American
streamliners stopped selling well — they were outsold by bigger, boxier cars. Gas prices were on fairly steady decline at
this point, so streamlining for fuel efficiency was less of a concern. Well into the 1970s, just about every car
made in America had sharp edges and very few curves. They were basically designed as a series of
three boxes — the hood, the cabin, and the trunk. That model worked really well in the US market. But in Europe, fuel was always more expensive. In the 60s, a gallon of gas in France cost
a whopping 73.1 cents while it was just 31 cents in the US. So European designers started experimenting
with more aerodynamic designs to help cars move more easily so they’d waste less gas. Automakers like Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz
— they all started rolling out car models that had curved exteriors. Eventually American automakers started to
copy the European aerodynamic look to try to attract upscale consumers. The mass market was a different picture. In Europe, a designer named Uwe Bahnsen was
the first person to push for a curved design for the average driver, and he did that with
the 1982 Ford Sierra. It was curvier than any car in its class at
the time. But critics just laughed at it. And it didn't sell very well at first. It was nicknamed the “jelly mould” because
of how much it looked like the kind of circular shape you’d make JELL-O with. But one of the designers from that European
Ford design team — this guy, Jack Telnack — took over the US design team in 1980. American gas prices at this point were skyrocketing
due to conflict in the middle east. So Telnack brought wind tunnel testing into
the design process. He first did that with the 1983 Ford Thunderbird. But the real breakthrough came a few years
later: "The result was the groundbreaking 1986 Ford
Taurus." It might not look that groundbreaking now,
but this style was revolutionary at the time. It was a mass market car with curvy edges
— and people liked it. “Taurus! Now a North American car with a shape and
a feel we’ve never seen before… Taurus for us!” They used it in RoboCop as the car of the
future. The sales basically saved Ford, which had
really been struggling at the time, and it inspired a whole wave of copycat curvy cars. And streamlining became even more popular
because manufacturers were facing new fuel economy regulations in the US. Starting in 1978, the average fuel efficiency
of each manufacturer’s passenger cars had to meet higher and higher levels. According to one Ford designer, aerodynamic
design was a much more affordable way to boost efficiency than doing engineering work under
the hood. The rise of computer modelling in the 80s
also made it easier for car makers to design and manufacture curved lines. All these years later, the influence on today’s
cars is pretty clear. Even the models that we criticize for being
ridiculously boxy these days — like the Scion xB — are actually really round. And if our modern day sci fi movies have anything
to say about it, that won’t be changing anytime soon. You probably walk by a bunch
of Muslims everyday and you don't even
know they're Muslim. Now, how scary is that? (laughs) My identity, my upbringing everything
has sort of shaped where I am today and what I ultimately want to be doing. And what I want to be doing
is challenging power. I've always wanted to be a journalist. I grew up watching CNN, and 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly news, PBS, they were always on. [Clip] This is the main Dakota
Access Pipeline resistance camp. These water protectors have run over the hill to the machinery over there and stopped the active construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. From a very young age I grew up with sort of this,
like, cloak of insecurity. You know, it wasn't easy to be proud and be Muslim. I didn't have role models that looked like me, that sounded like me Newscasters at that time were predominantly all white. It wasn't just the news it was like, you know, as a child in elementary school watching Aladdin. How come the villains are the ones that sound like my parents? [Clip] "I had to slit a few
throats, but I got it." Only the bad guys have Arabic accents. [Clip] "Do you know what the
penalty is for stealing?" And I would just see how demonized Muslims were and how demonized Arabs were. I was pretty critical of how I saw the coverage of refugees in a lot of various outlets. There was this narrative that
you had these ominous herds of Arabs, you know, refugees like infiltrating Europe, and
infiltrating the West and I wanted to tell the story
differently. These refugees are fleeing war. They're not here to steal your jobs, they're not here to bring terrorism to your country. That was an assignment where I would go home every night and cry. There's just like too many stories to tell and every little sound bite that we would cut out I would feel gutted. Sorry I don't want to get emotional on camera back to being like objective and whatever. I get a lot of messages from people, from my community, from Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans, younger people
who say, "When I grow up I want to be
like you." I'm proud to be a positive representation
and a role model for those who are younger than me who could say, "I can grow up and be on camera." "I can grow up and ask a presidential candidate something", you know? like I can- The sky's the limit. Did we get that on camera? We did. Good.   One of the Middle East's bloodiest conflicts is also one of its most overlooked. It's not Syria or Iraq. It's in a different place entirely. Yemen. The twenty month old civil war there killed more than ten thousand people and triggered a massive humanitarian crisis but press coverage is been minimal overshadowed by the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq In Yemen one side has the Houthi rebels backed by Iran. On the other you have the former Yemeni government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi backed by a coalition of ten countries led by neighboring Saudi Arabia who is ultimately also backed by the US The civil war there erupted in 2015 when the Houthis a Shiite group who receive money and weapons from Iran took up arms to overthrow Yemen's government which is Sunni and backed by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis complain that the government discriminated against them for years. Mistreating them on a large scale and that their fight is a fight to be treated fairly. Many in the region by contrast see it very differently They think it's the latest front in a shadow war between Saudi Arabia and Iran for control over the entire region. In March of 2015 Saudi Arabia began bombing Houthi held territory across Yemen Causing mass civilian casualties. They've destroyed targets ranging from marketplaces to hospitals from schools and even to a funeral recently where one hundred forty people were killed in a single strike. In August the Saudis bombed the vital part of al-Hudaydah severely damaging a main source of Yemen's food any humanitarian aid shipments. And increasing the chances of mass starvation and what is already an impoverished country. the indiscriminate bombing has prompted investigations by the U. N. for possible war crimes While the Saudis are leading this bloody campaign, the blame also spreads to great power whose support is directly contributing to the carnage to the United States. the US has supported Saudi Arabia militarily since World War II selling arms providing military aid training the Saudi military on how to use US manufactured planes tanks and other weapons in recent years Saudi Arabia has bought more weapons from the U. S. than any other country in the world just since March of 2015 the U. S. authorized twenty two billion dollars worth of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia the most recent deal includes twenty Abrams tanks listed as battle damage replacements. The battle of course is Yemen. The weapons the U. S. sells also include cluster bombs banned by most of the international community and F-15 fighter planes which is making up the vast bulk of what the Saudi airforce is currently using as it bombs Yemen. But America's aid to Saudi Arabia goes way beyond weapon sales. And it's directly contributing to the current fight. That's because Washington is literally helping to refuel Saudi planes. while they strike targets across Yemen. When the Saudis ask the U. S. to refuel one of their planes, giant American tankers such as KC-135 Stratotanker take off from Incirlik air base in Turkey or from US carriers in the Arabian Sea they then linked up with Saudi F-15s in international air space these airborne refuels give the Saudi planes a much longer range and allow Saudi air campaign to become more lethal. because the planes can stay in the air longer and hit targets much more frequently as of late November the U. S. have flown more than sixteen hundred refueling missions to over sixty three hundred aircraft in the skies bombing Yemen that's an average of two a day so why is the U. S. so supportive of this bloody campaign? The most important reason is the Iran nuclear deal. In 2015, the Obama administration offered to drop its crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear program Without those sanctions Iran's political and economic power has significantly increased making Saudi Arabia nervous that they're enemy will gain new influence in the region. To countries from Iraq to Lebanon and Syria to Yemen. Now that Iran and influences in Saudi Arabia's backyard the Saudis fear that Houthi rebels loyal to Iran will now be literally on the footsteps of their country. They want U. S. help beating them back. Secondly the intervention Yemen is also a part of the U. S. is broader counterterrorist strategy for the Middle East the goal of US policy in Yemen is to make sure that Yemen cannot be a safe haven that extremists can use to attack the west and to attack the United States Yemen is home to the most active and dangerous branch of al Qaeda The US has a major interest in preventing this terror group from taking advantage of the power vacuum in Yemen to plot new attacks. Finally the US is the only one of its longstanding most important allies since World War II Saudi Arabia has been a vital partner against communism and now terrorism the Yemen campaign is a high priority for Saudi Arabia and that makes it a priority for the United States. But as the war devolves into bloody stalemate the administration is increasingly worried about being complicit in actual war crimes State Department documents obtained by Reuters a meeting agenda from January 2016 talks about limiting exposure to LOAC. which means the law of armed conflict. Some in the White House worried that the U. S. was potentially violating that law because of its assistance to Saudi Arabia. In those documents State Department Officials also discuss the implications of a 2013 international court decision implying that if the US were to provide practical assistance encouragement or moral support to the Saudis the U.S. could be charged with war crimes In an effort to avoid this the U.S. issued a no strike list to the Saudis try to mitigate civilian casualties it included things like known hospitals universities schools cemeteries. The Saudis appear to be ignoring it. The U.N. estimates 10,000 people have died in the fight three hundred seventy thousand children are malnourished. and the ten thousand other children have already died from preventable diseases. nearly three million people have been pushed out of their homes in the last year of fighting alone Truces have come and gone. While hopes for peace talks falter. The Houthis continue to run the government in the capital of Sana'a raising questions about what Saudi Arabia has actually accomplished and whether any of it could possibly be worth the cost Here at home in Congress some lawmakers in both parties have talked about stopping weapons sales to Saudi Arabia Until there's more to keep the air war in Yemen from causing massive human rights abuses. Others argue that America's relationship with Saudi Arabia is so important that the US needs to keep selling weapons despite the carnage in Yemen. The Obama administration for its part has repeatedly urged the Saudis to do more to avoid accidentally hitting targets like schools and hospitals the White House is also condemned individual attacks. But the reality is that the U. S. finds itself increasingly complicit with the actions of a coalition led by Saudi Arabia That means president Obama will leave office with America helping an ally fight a bloody war causing mass civilian suffering that shows no signs of ending and that is not a legacy to be proud of The 1995 movie The Net is a paranoid thriller
about this oddity called the internet. “Our whole world is sitting there on a
computer, it’s in the computer.” Sandra Bullock’s character chats with Cyberbob,
orders her pizza off Pizza.net, and hangs out with Dennis Miller during that
brief window when he was a feature film actor. “This is, this is bizarre.”
As an early cyber thriller, The Net introduced the internet and, as importantly, a
“look” for the internet to a lot of people. But those webpages weren’t real. Someone
had to get those invented graphics on Sandra Bullock’s computer screen. “My name’s Todd Marks, I’m a computer
video playback supervisor for feature film, television, and
commercials. I’ve been doing this for about 25 years
now.” Todd’s work shows the incredible detail
that goes into major motion pictures, and reveals secrets behind the screens within
screens in movies from The Net to
Steve Jobs. But it also uncovers a key to how big stories
are told well. A computer playback supervisor gets the
graphics on the screens in TV shows or movies. Sometimes the screens you see in movies are
added after the fact, and sometimes they’re prepared beforehand to shoot along with the
scene. People like Todd have to figure out how to display and make those graphics. Well,
as Todd explains: “Well, the challenges of doing any production
graphics, motion graphics, or playback graphics for a film is to do something that’s
visually interesting, conveys the message, and is plausible — those are my three big
things.” In the comedy Anchorman II, challenges common
to Todd’s job are especially clear. The comedy’s set in the early 1980s at the
dawn of cable. “We’re starting a 24 hour news channel.
GNN, the global news network.” “That is without a doubt the dumbest thing
I’ve ever heard.” That meant there were tons of old TVs in the
background — each of which had to be period appropriate physically and display something
period appropriate, too. They filmed a lot of the footage on their
own, because the easiest way to get something that looked like it was from the 80s was to
make it. “OK, what’s gonna go on this screen, what’s
gonna go on that screen, and what’s happening... Will Ferrell is coming into the studio, so
we’re not on air yet. What’s on the screens then?”
In this case, Todd had to plan — a lot. This chart is typical of how a playback supervisor
would need to plan for a busy shoot. It breaks down the necessary shots.
Ron smokes crack on air? There’s a neatly ordered cell in the spreadsheet to get everything
necessary for the shot. Other documents carry more specifics. When
Ron and the team meet their new co-worker, Linda Jackson,
Todd had a list of exactly what background elements were necessary, like the three wall
TVs. That planning allows big gags to work without
a hitch. When idiot weatherman Brick, played by Steve
Carrell, went in front of a green screen in green pants, it was clear the scene would
work better if Todd and his team made the effect happen live.
“It wasn’t that tricky. But the production hadn’t really planned on doing it live,
and we were like, no, we’re doing this live, and they were like, ‘Oh, great.’”
The result of all that is “AAAHHHHH.”
In Team America, planning meant finding the perfect tiny LCD screens for Kim Jong Il’s
palace. “The smaller scale there’s little 7 inch
screens right there, 7.5 inch screens, and you can see me, I had to like
lean in without falling into the set.” In the comedy, The Internship, which was set
at Google, it meant finding the right giant screens for corporate presentations.
But these screens aren’t only important details. Sometimes, they can be a key turning
point for a story. “With Date Night, in that particular scene
with Mark Wahlberg, he was a high tech security expert.”
Now you might not expect Date Night to include a technically driven moment. It’’s a very
light 2010 comedy. But Todd’s work in this scene is crucial
to landing one of the movie’s best jokes. In it, Mark Wahlberg parodies a trope of over-the-top
action movie computer stuff. It ends up being pretty funny — and that joke required a
lot of work. “Sp then we have to create a whole logic
to the thing and kind of map out what we want to do.”
One silly gag required elaborate mockups, rejected concepts,
and designs to perfectly sync the digitally inserted screen
with the practical side units on the wall. You might not be looking for a coherent user
interface design in Date Night. But see how they bothered with the color of that circular
control? The filmmakers cared because it was key to making the joke work.
That attention to design was important in a different way in the period piece Steve
Jobs, which was about design, computers, and presentation
— basically everything someone like Todd cares about.
“As far as the challenges, there were so many challenges
involved in that project.” Challenges like making computers from 1984
look new again. “You could put the old Macs apart and put
this paste on them, and leave them out in the sun and bleach the plastics.”
...Or finding the perfect build of blueberry iMac. These details were key to making the
movie — and the movie’s emotions — feel real.
One of the most touching scenes in the movie is when Steve Jobs connects with his daughter
over a new computer. The character is normally distant, but he’s able to be more open and
warm because of software. And in the movie, they didn’t fake it.
“That was a Macintosh, and that was a special one. John, our engineer, had actually built
a special video card for that one.” “Push that key and the S at the same time.”
“And we had to load everything off of floppies.” “Now type your name.” “The artwork was created by our artist in
Photoshop, so now we had to figure out how to get this Photoshop file back down to a
400k floppy.” “Do you know which box is save?” “it was really booting off the real Macintosh
software. You know, it’s craziness!” “If there’s something that the actor can
act against, it’s much better...it’s better for the director, it’s better for timing
when things are cued and when people can respond. It’s better for the editors, because they
have something to edit against, versus trying to cut to something that’s not there. It
just makes the whole process smoother, even if there’s something that needs to be changed
later and they have to burn it in later, which sometimes happens.” That makes it worth the difficulty and the
stress, worth doing live instead of after the fact.
The gimmick in The Net was a hidden backdoor that basically unlocks the
internet. “You click on the little Pi symbol while
you’re holding this key, and then you get into that, which again was pretty ridiculous
— at least it moved the story forward and didn’t pull you out.”
The idea’s implausible, but kind of compelling: there is a whole world, tucked in the bottom
right of a screen somewhere, hiding in plain view.
That’s how movies build worlds. With obsessed over details that make it easier to produce
and see emotion, because there aren’t any distractions. Because the world feels real.
To see it, you have to take the time to search for it.
“This picture is of when I worked on Star Trek Nemesis. And that’s the little ship,
the plaques they have on the bridge, and it has a lot of names of people who worked on
the movie, so I’m in there.” The magician David Blaine was on The Tonight Show recently, promoting his new special. He does 9 minutes of amazing card tricks
FALLON: “This is what i’m talking about, man. What is going on, David Blaine?!” And then he sets up his finale... BLAINE: "100 years ago there’s a guy who
converted his stomach into an aquarium, where he could store live creatures, and then he
could bring them up at will." Down goes a glass of water... And out comes a live frog. "Yo! Oh my god!" I’ve looked into this trick, and I can say
with fairly high confidence that the secret to how Blaine makes it seem like he’s swallowing frogs... Is that he’s really swallowing frogs. Yeah, the frog thing. There’s no trickery. It’s not hidden in his mouth, there’s
no palming. It’s just there. This is Kieron Johnson, he’s a magician
based in the UK, and one of the handful of people in the world who perform regurgitation
tricks. It’s just like a relaxed thing. So I’m aware the coin is there, traveling
down. And I’m aware it’s there but when I bring
it back, it’s kinda tense. So if I start focusing here, it becomes tense
and then as I get to here to open my throat. Kieron works mostly with coins. He can bring them up on either heads or tails
by feeling the texture of the coin inside his esophagus. And he can regurgitate a stream of water for
over 30 seconds. “Water spouting” is a stunt that dates
back to at least the 1600s. Performers drink dangerous amounts of water
and then spout it out in a controlled, continuous regurgitation. Water spouting was revived in the Vaudeville
days by a performer named Hadji Ali, who pushed it further by purportedly drinking kerosene,
which would sit on top of the water in his stomach. He’d then set a fire with the kerosene and
extinguish it with the water. Regurgitation of live animals is also a rare
but old trick. Scottish performer Stevie Starr has been working
with a goldfish for a while. The performer Blaine mentioned on Jimmy Fallon
was Mac Norton, who was active in the 1910s. He was known as the human aquarium because
he would swallow a dozen creatures — frogs and goldfish — before bringing them back
up one by one. In his 1920 Book, escape artist Harry Houdini
recalled a time when Norton “could not account for the entire flock” after a performance
and “looked very much scared.” With David, he’s absolutely fearless. Absolutely Fearless. Like... incredibly. He has no fear. The thing to understand about David Blaine
is that when he wants to do something with his body, he’ll do it. This is a man who held his breath for 17 minutes. Back in 2010, Blaine was on the show Iconoclasts,
where he showed artist Chuck Close the clip of Hadji Ali’s kerosene trick. He said nobody has done it since. “It’s real but nobody’s been able to
do it since.” Three years later, he was doing it on Jimmy
Kimmel. So he already mastered controlled regurgitation. But swallowing liquids is a lot easier than
swallowing frogs. Our gag reflex pushes unusually large objects
back toward the front of the mouth to prevent choking. Like sword swallowers, Blaine had to learn
through practice to overcome the gag reflex. His new special shows him practicing with
small potatoes. It’s similar to a method described by the
Great Waldo, he was a performer in the 1940s and 50s, who regurgitating goldfish and even rodents.
Which he would drug with cigarette smoke. According to the writer Daniel Mannix in his
1951 memoir, The Great Waldo trained his stomach muscles by swallowing a small potato on a
string. Regurgitators have learned to voluntarily
open the upper esophageal sphincter, a band of muscle at the top of the esophagus that
keeps stuff down, away from our windpipe. At the same time, they contract muscles in
the abdomen to create upward pressure on the contents of the stomach and the lower esophagus. A drink of water can help re-open the channel. And with enough practice, they can control
precisely where the item goes. I can hold things there. I can hold things down here. The thing is I start pointing to things when
I try to explain to a doctor and they think I’m making things up and they go ‘that’s
not even possible.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not a doctor. I just know how it feels.’ The stomach secretes gastric juices that include
hydrochloric acid. Not a great environment for a live animal
that’s already enduring abnormally high temperatures. Maybe Blaine dilutes the acid with water or
other substances, or maybe he keeps the frogs in his esophagus. That’s presumably what the Great Waldo did
to keep the mice alive. But now that he’s proven he can really swallow
and regurgitate a frog... Let’s hope he never does it again. Paying a fee to check luggage has become a
routine part of air travel but it wasn't always this way. In The United States, baggage fees started
in 2008, right around the time oil prices were peaking. “Another day, another dollar" “Crude oil broke another record" “We’re going to go from a profitable year
in '07 to a ten billion dollar loss in '08 and the only thing has changed is fuel.” "Jet fuel prices have them taking drastic measures..." "Including a fifteen dollar charge for the first checked bag." "Fifteen dollars? Holy cow! I'll have to put my underwear in my pockets!" To avoid the new fees, passengers started
cramming everything into their carry-ons. But two years ago fuel prices dropped and
they’ve stayed low ever since. The fees, however, haven’t gone anywhere. The only exception among major carriers is
Southwest Airlines, which is famous for their “bags fly free” marketing campaign. "We duffel bags, golf bags, small bags..." "These bags right here, they fly free!" "I wouldn't pay to fly in here." "Why would these airlines charge for bags?" "Why do you charge for bags?!" To make money. Lots of money. Last year, revenue from baggage fees was nearly
4 billion dollars. And the 7.5% excise tax that airlines have
to pay on ticket prices doesn’t apply to baggage fees. So the tax code actually encourages the use
of fees. And they haven’t stopped at checked bags. With carry-on space now increasingly scarce, airlines can charge a fee to board early so you can claim spots in the overhead bin. Revenue from the fees, combined with other factors like major mergers, have meant higher
profits for airlines. But what’s good for the airlines has not
benefited consumers... Airlines haven’t lowered airfares in proportion
to higher profits. The planes are filling up anyway, so they
don’t need to compete on fares. And all those carry-on bags are contributing
to longer lines at airport security. This summer, passengers were stuck at two,
three, and even four hour lines at airports across the country. In response, a group of senators and the head
of Homeland Security asked the airlines to waive baggage fees. "We've asked the airlines to consider possibly eliminating the checked baggage fees." "There has been an increase in the carry-ons due to these fees." So, isn’t it time to get rid of baggage
fees? Well...there’s more to the story. A recent study has revealed a major benefit
to consumers that came from baggage fees: better on-time performance for all airlines. According to the research done by a group
of business school professors charging fees to check two bags decreases the average departure delay by two minutes. What they found is that the increase in luggage above the cabin has not off-set the reduction below the cabin. Although it seems like carry-ons make the
boarding process longer, down on the ground the airlines are handling fewer bags. When you carry your own bags between connecting
flights, that’s work they don’t have to do and it seems to be saving time overall. That means fewer flight delays and fewer missed
connections. There’s also been a decline in the number
of lost bags. So, when it comes to baggage fees, it’s
not all bad for airline consumers. It’s just mostly bad. I was born and raised a Jersey girl through and through. I spent my childhood summers on the Jersey shore. I knew all of the boy bands. I followed along with all the news about Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. I watched every single episode of the Jersey Shore. I was listening to Hot 97 from, like second grade. When I think back to grade school and my childhood, it is distinctly shaped by my experience getting bullied. The year that 9/11 happened was the first time that I was called a racial slur and it was in my classroom. I remember going straight to my guidance counselor, and telling her, you know like, every single kid in my class is attacking me. And my guidance counselor said, "Well, if everyone feels that way then, maybe you need to change." My father had an electronic store, on the beach. Immediately after 9/11 another vendor created a petition to kick out all the Muslim vendors. They would, like, come to my Dad's store, right in front of me, like harass him, call him names. Our house started getting teepeed, egged, water ballooned, on the regular. That's when I started actually learning about the history of this religion and what its basic principles are, what it stood for. I decided that I wanted to wear a headscarf as my public defiance of islamophobia. Right off the bat, umm, my friends just stopped communicating with me all together. The summer after I finished elementary school my Dad opened up a new store on the boardwalk. That had an internet cafe. My Dad was one of the first people, like, on AOL instant messenger. And I remember just being fascinated by it. I was like, "what are you talking about?" you're talking to your friends, through your computer screen right now? Instead of being at the water park or the beach like I normally would be, I instead spent the entire summer on the computer. Teaching myself HTML and coding, and I was just obsessed. I decided to make a website with the intention of finding other Muslim girls that were experiencing the same thing I was. And my Dad thought, "Oh my God, that's such a great idea." "Make sure you talk about Islam." "Make sure to tell people what it's really about." "Oh my God, like share the actual principles of it." "Share some good on" and stuff like that. And I remember thinking, like, "Okay Dad, we're going to do it in our own style." One of the first blog posts on Muslim Girl was about your period. Things that seemed taboo or conversations that seemed hidden away for most of our lives were things that we just opened up about. After I graduated college I started to focus on Muslim Girl full-time. We developed a team of volunteer editors. And started really developing it as a company. And now, this little thing that started in my bedroom when I was a teenager, has really grown to take on a life of its own. Muslim Girl was blessed with a lot of great moments this year. Our video series with Teen Vogue. Getting a TED Talk in Greece. Or when I spoke at the Cannes Lions festival in France. Muslim Girl was in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. One of the most touching moments was when I met a Hindu mother, who told me that: she read Muslim Girl and she would print out an article from it that she would read to her fourteen year-old daughter every night, when she put her to bed. And that, that was their self-esteem building exercise at the end of a long day. I was just flooded with so much happiness and tears of joy in that moment because I was that fourteen-year-old girl at one point. It made me realize what this was all about. Making these girls believe that they can do whatever the hell they want. Yes, we can be successful in a society as adverse and islamophobic as this. We can survive, and we can stay true to our identities at the same time. And that's a wrap. after months of protests from Native Americans and environmental activists construction of the Dakota Access pipeline will stop it's a tremendous victory for Standing Rock, for the Oceti Sakowin, for the countless tribal nations, indigenous communities, and millions of Americans and people across the world who hit the streets in support of Standing Rock the company building the pipeline was waiting for a permit on the very last section, which would have crossed the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation instead of granting the permit, the US Army Corps of Engineers says it will find an alternate route for the pipeline for months Native Americans and environmental activists have protested arguing the pipeline poses an environmental hazard the Missouri River's the only water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that gets contaminated, they don't have a water supply the company building the pipeline says it would be safer than sending oil via trucks or trains this pipeline is being built to safety standards that far exceed what the government requires us to do with the increase in US oil production oil pipeline leaks are up sixty percent since 2009 sunoco logistics spills more crude than any of its competitors, 200 oil leaks in the last six years doesn't that safety record indicate that the concerns of the Standing Rock Tribe ought to be listened to? the tribe also claim construction had already disrupted some of their sacred sites and burial grounds we have a sworn declaration from one of the tribe's cultural experts that describes some of these sites, multiple grave sites and burials we put all that in front of the court, and the next morning it was gone they took that information and bulldozed the entire site the law tries to keep this exact thing from happening through a process called consultation any time there's a project on federal land, American Indian governments have a right to consult with the United States agencies before those projects go forward the tribe says this consultation didn't happen the way it was supposed to, and for months, they've been occupying land that's owned by the pipeline company, but which the tribe says belongs to them and county law enforcement officials have been aggressively trying to get them to leave the CEO of the company building the pipeline had hoped that president-elect Donald Trump could push the project through, and the Trump says he supports the pipeline, he'd have to go through the courts to reverse this decision from the Army Corps, which means for now the tribes water source is safe If I want to turn this globe into a flat map, I’m going to have to cut it open. In order to get this to look anything like a rectangle. I've had to cut it in places. I've had to stretch it so that the countries look all wonky. And even still, it's almost impossible to get it to lie flat. And that right there is the eternal dilemma
of map makers: The surface of a sphere cannot be represented as a plane without some form
of distortion. This guy proved that with math a long time
ago. Since around 1500s, mathematicians have set
about creating algorithms that would translate the globe into something flat. To do this, they use a process called projection. Popular rectangular maps use a cylindrical
projections. Imagine putting a theoretical cylinder over
the globe and projecting each point of the sphere onto the cylinder’s surface. Unroll the cylinder, and you have a flat,
rectangular map. But you could also project the globe onto
other objects, and how exactly a map maker projects the globe will affect what the map
looks like once it’s all flattened out. And here’s the big problem: Every one of
these projections comes with trade offs in shape, distance, direction and land area. Certain map projections can be either misleading
or very helpful depending on what you are using them for. Here’s an example. This map is called the Mercator projection. If you’re American, you probably studied
it in school. It’s the projection Google Maps uses. Mercator projection is popular for a couple
of reasons. First, it generally preserves the shape of
the countries. Brazil on the globe has the same shape as
Brazil on the Mercator projection. But the real purpose of the Mercator projection
was navigation -- it preserves direction, which is a big deal if you are trying to navigate
the ocean with only a compass. It was designed so that a line drawn between
two points on the map would provide the exact angle to follow on a compass to travel between
those points. If we go back into a globe, you can see that
this line is not shortest route. But it provides a simple, reliable way to
navigate across oceans. Gerardus Mercator, who created the projection
in the 16th century, was able to preserve direction by varying the distance between
latitude lines while also making them straight, creating a grid of right angles.. But that created other problems. Where mercator fails is its representation
of size. Look at the size of Africa as compared to
Greenland. On the mercator map they look about the same
size. But look at a globe for Greenland’s true
size, and you’ll see it’s way smaller than Africa. By a factor of 14 in fact. If we put some dot that are all the same size
on a globe, then we projected as a mercator map, we would end up with this. The circles retain their shape but are enlarged
the closer you get the poles. One modern critique is that this distortion
perpetuates imperialist attitudes of European domination over the southern hemisphere "The Mercator projection has fostered imperialist attitudes for centuries and created a ethnic bias against the third world." "Really?" If you want to see a map that more accurately
displays size, you can use the Gall-Peters projection, which is called an equal-area
map. Look at Greenland and Africa. The size comparison is now accurate. Much better than the mercator. but it’s obvious that the country shapes
are now stretched. Here are the dots again so you can see how
the projection preserves area while totally distorting shape. Something happened in the late 60s that would
change the whole purpose of mapping and the way we think about projections. Satellites orbiting our planet started sending
location and navigation data to little receiver units all over the world. This global positioning system wiped out the
need for paper maps as a means of navigating both the seas and the sky. Map projection choices became less about navigational
imperatives and more about aesthetics, design, and presentation. The mercator map, that vital tool of pre-GPS
navigation, was shunned by cartographers who now saw it as misleading. But most web mapping tools like Google maps
still use the mercator. According to Google this is because the Mercator’s
ability to preserve shape and angles makes close-up views of cities more accurate -- a
90 degree left turn on the map is a 90degree left turn on the street you’re driving down. But when trying to display something on a
world map, cartographers rarely use the mercator. Most modern cartographers have settled on
a variety of non-rectangular projections that split the difference between totally distorting
either size or shape. In 1998 The National Geographic Society adopted
The Winkel tripel projection because of it’s a pleasant balance between size and shape
accuracy. But the fact remains, that there is no one
right projection. cartographers and mathematicians have created
a huge library of available projections, each a new perspective on the planet. The best way to see what the earth really
looks like is to look at a globe. But as long we use flat maps, we will deal
with the tradeoffs of projections, Just remember: there’s no right answer. I just got a package from my grandma in Belgium. She’s sent me one at the beginning
of December, for as long as I can remember, to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. That’s when their traditional version of
Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, comes to visit kids and reward the good ones, and punish the bad ones. And there’s always lots of good stuff in
here — there are belgian waffles, there are speculoos cookies, chocolate, there's lots of chocolate — and then, sometimes, there’s this:
This is Zwarte Piet, that’s Dutch for Black Pete. He’s St. Nicholas’  traditional “assistant,” he's the guy who carries all the presents around and punishes all the bad kids. You can kind of think of him like one of Santa’s
elves — except he’s a blackface caricature. Black Pete has painted black skin, big gold
hoop earrings, oversized red lips, and he wears colorful Renaissance-era clothing. Throughout Belgium and the Netherlands, people dress up as Black Pete around St. Nicholas day. This is what it looked like in 1930, in a
small town north of Amsterdam. And in 1970, at a local gym. And in 2006, at an elementary school. And in 2014, at a parade. I grew up with this tradition in Belgium. People dressed up as Black Pete and St. Nicholas would come visit my school and take pictures and pass out candy But Black Pete is a racist caricature. It’s a remnant of the Netherlands’ colonial
past. And this tradition is now at the center of
a heated political debate. “It’s a bit disturbing to realize that
you have enjoyed, as a child, something that now turns out to be problematic. That’s disturbing. So they say, ‘don’t mess with my memories.’ ”
Those in The Netherlands who defend Black Pete argue that it can’t be changed because
it’s a tradition that’s been around forever. The prime minister even made this argument
when he was asked about it at a nuclear security summit in 2014:
“What I said is that Black Pete is black. I cannot change that, because the name is Black Pete. This is an old children’s tradition, Sinterklaas
and Zwarte Piet, Black Pete. And it is not Green Pete or Brown Pete, it
is Black Pete, so I cannot change that. On top of that, you’ll hear a lot of people
say that the black face paint is okay because doesn’t represent skin color — instead
it’s just the soot from the chimney. But historically, neither of those defenses
is actually true. Zwarte Piet was originally written as a black
slave character, and the blackface tradition was invented fairly recently. Though St. Nicholas folklore had been celebrated
since the Middle Ages, there was no slave character involved until 1850, when this guy
— a Dutch schoolteacher named Jan Schenkman — wrote a children’s book called “St.
Nicholas and his Servant”. The story describes how St. Nicholas visits
a Dutch town, rewarding the good kids, punishing the bad kids. But just looking at the original illustrations
for the book, you can tell that Black Pete isn’t just a white Dutchman covered in soot. He’s portrayed as a Moor from Spain, carrying
St. Nicholas’ heavy loads, wrapping up all the presents, and punishing naughty kids by
hitting them with a switch or kidnapping them in a knapsack to take them back to Spain. He’s not exactly a pleasant character in
this original version of the story. “What I remember vividly is the sentiment
of being scared. What if suddenly a Zwarte Piet comes out of the chimney while I’m there alone? Terrifying. And the terror of young children who don’t
feel safe is quite a powerful emotion, that stays with you. If you habituate children to this response
to these strange characters with black faces, that’s their model of black people.” When Schenkman wrote his children’s book,
slavery was still alive and well in the Dutch colonies — it wasn’t abolished for another
13 years, in 1863. Even then, slaves had to work for another
10 years as reparations to the slaveholders. The government treated abolition as a financial
inconvenience. Beyond Dutch history, blackface originated
for the purpose of mocking and dehumanizing black people. In minstrel shows in the mid to late 1800s,
white actors would use black grease paint on their faces to depict black people on stage. You could watch minstrel shows like this as
recently as 1978 on BBC. Taking place in societies that systematically
mistreated black people, these portrayals served as a tool of oppression. Though Black Pete is the most beloved blackface
character in European culture, he’s not the only one. If you look at Belgian comic strips like Tintin,
French ones like Asterix and Obelix, or Dutch ones like Sjors & Sjimmie, you can see versions
of blackface caricatures everywhere. Black Pete, no matter how innocent the Dutch
might think him to be, normalizes these portrayals. “Of course it is political. You don’t invent a tradition like this in
innocence.” It’s really common to hear stories about
black people being called “Zwarte Piet” by children. It also serves as a basis for racialized bullying
in schools. “Black children are hurt, and parents are
keeping their children home from school, rather than send them to grow up with this stereotype
that makes them feel that they’re inferior to the white kids.” And it’s common to hear people saying that
black people in The Netherlands are totally okay with it, that their black neighbor or
black friend actually likes it. Here’s Prime Minister Rutte again, making
that argument: “I can only say that my friends in the Dutch
Antilles, they are very happy when they have Sinterklaas because they don’t have to paint
their faces. And when I’m playing Black Pete, I’m for
days trying to get off the stuff on my face.” That was the prime minister saying that a
blackface tradition is really more annoying for him, because when he puts on blackface,
it’s hard to get the paint off. “These people were angry about Black Pete,
who’s Santa’s traditional sidekick there. 60 people were arrested for demonstrating
away from locations that were set aside for protests, 30 more for disturbing public order.” Public opposition to Black Pete has been building
since the 1970s. When Suriname won its independence in 1975,
almost a third of the population moved to the Netherlands in order to keep their Dutch
citizenship. A lot of those people were of African ancestry. And Demographic changes brought a change in
the way people talked about Black Pete. Still, that didn’t stop the show from featuring
Black Pete in every yearly St. Nicholas episode after that. Protest grew steadily, getting international
attention in 2011, when two protesters from an awareness campaign called Zwarte Piet is
Racisme were violently arrested in the city of Dordrecht. The Dutch National Ombudsman later ruled that
the arrest was unlawful, disproportionately violent and in violation of their human rights. “If you have eyes and you have a little
heart, you would know that this is wrong.” That’s Jerry Afriyie, he was one of those
two protesters arrested. “What we are fighting is institutional racism
approved by the government, approved by the police, approved by professionals, approved
by schools, everywhere. It’s so much embedded in the whole society
that it makes it very difficult to bring changes to it, and everyone is using their
power to suppress us, and it's very difficult.” Afriyie lost his job as a security guard after
being arrested at a protest a few years ago, but he’s kept showing up to demonstrate. Just a week after we spoke, he was violently
assaulted by police again at a protest in the city of Rotterdam. In July 2014, Amsterdam’s regional court
ruled that Black Pete was a “negative stereotype of black people”, stating that the mayor had six weeks to remove Black Pete from city celebrations But just a few months later in November, the
Netherlands’ highest administrative court overturned that ruling, just in time for the
holiday. But in August 2015, a UN committee in Geneva
called on the Dutch government to get rid of the aspects of Black Pete that promote
black stereotypes. Since then, parade organizers have made some
efforts to gradually minimize Black Pete’s racist characteristics. My job, being the spokesperson of Sinterklaas,
is to make the party of Sinterklaas for everybody. Not only the white people in the villages,
but for everybody in cities and bigger cities. One of the ways they’ve done that is by
introducing a version of Black Pete that is clearly just a person covered in soot — without
the earrings, lipstick, or afro. They call it the Chimney Pete. RTL — one of the biggest TV networks in
the region — stated in October that they wouldn’t air anything except for Chimney
Pete for the 2016 holidays. “Bear in mind the objectives. The objective is to have smiles on the faces
of the children, to be happy. So if you want to change things, take the
time, don’t do it overnight. If you want to change an attitude like that,
it’s not going to go easy.” And in an unexpected announcement, the team
organizing the parade in Amsterdam said Chimney Petes would replace all Black Petes in 2016. But changing a tradition like this is slow
and difficult. Every move away from Black Pete has been met
with resistance. A Jamaican researcher on the UN panel was
met with a flurry of racist emails after their statement was released. A group in the northern Netherlands that was
planning on dressing as multicolored Rainbow Piets had to cancel their plans after getting
death threats. And a Dutch contestant at the 2013 Eurovision
music competition received racist messages and death threats after she spoke out against
the custom. “And how could you possibly make this such
a big deal? Because they have been trained this way in
childhood.” People defend the tradition because it was
important to their childhood, and they want to pass it on to their children. But understanding the impact this has on children
could also be key to changing public opinion. Just this year, the national children’s
ombudsman released a report arguing that the tradition violates children's rights regarding
equal treatment and protection from discrimination. “It has tormented a lot of black people, even children who start to hate their own skin color, who come home to their
parents crying, and and saying stuff like ‘I don't want to be black, they say it’s
dirty, people are calling me Zwarte Pete, that I'm dirty, my skin color,’ you know, it’s
very confusing and dramatic.” In the fourth Transformers movie, there's
a scene where a random guy in an elevator helps Stanley Tucci beat someone up. That guy? Turns out he's a Chinese boxer,
Zou Shiming - a world champion & gold medalist. Elsewhere in the movie, you’ll see a Chinese
milk box, and even a Chinese bank ATM in Texas of all places. If you didn't recognize these references,
that's because they weren't meant for you. The growth of China’s middle class has created
a massive new market for the entertainment industry. Next year China’s box office revenue will
likely surpass the US, making it the largest movie market in the world. China has built 27 new cinema screens per
day on average this year, and as of November 2016, the country has more screens in total
than the 40,475 in the US. Obviously, the movie makers in Hollywood want
to reach those customers. Transformers 4, a movie criticized for making literally no
sense at all, was the only film in 2014 to collect over 1 billion dollars worldwide at
the box office, thanks to Chinese viewers. The problem is the Chinese government only
allows a certain number of foreign films into the country each year. And each one has to pass through the government’s
censorship agency. There's kind of contradictory impulses. On
the one hand, China wants to be the best at everything. They want to succeed. On the other
hand, they want to promote what the leader is promoting. Chinese propaganda and socialist
core values. Before the 1990s, very few Hollywood movies
made it to Chinese audiences. The Chinese government had its own film industry
to distribute propaganda, but it was failing. In 1979 $23.9 billion tickets were purchased
in 1993 that dropped to $9.5 billion. In 1994 things started to change. The Fugitive
became the first new American film set for a general release to the Chinese public. It was so popular that scalpers outside theaters
were getting double the price of the ticket. One dollar and twenty-five cents.
Ten foreign movies were allowed in 1994. Since then, Hollywood has pushed the U.S. government
to continually negotiate for higher quotas. These days, a U.S. film typically makes it
into a Chinese movie theater in one of three ways. Through revenue-sharing, co-producing with
a Chinese company, or through a flat fee. The most common is the revenue-sharing model
where the studio gets 25% of the revenue. But only 34 foreign films per year are allowed. Over the last 10 years American films have
strategically incorporated positive Chinese story elements to bolster their chances of
being one of the films selected. In Red Dawn, the enemy was originally China
but was changed to North Korea in post production. In the film 2012 Oliver Platt says praising China for building arks in advance. World War Z the book had the virus start in
china due to illegal organ trade that’s not the case in the movie. In the Martian, the Chinese space industry
saves the day. The Chinese based Bona Film Group invested millions in the film. It’s important to note though that studios
don’t have to do this. Harry Potter is great example. If you look at the regulations in a very strict
sense, theoretically something like a Harry Potter film should not be shown because you're
not supposed to have superstition and wizards and things like that. But it's very hard to
deny the Chinese audience Harry Potter. There are two ways to get around the 34-film
limit. The least popular among big Hollywood studios
today is the flat-fee model because they’re selling the film at fraction of the cost and
China gets 100% of the ticket sales. The other option is co-producing the movie
with a Chinese company so that it’s not technically a foreign film. But co-productions
are the most tightly regulated, with strict guidelines on things like the film’s shooting
location and its finances. It has to also have at least ⅓ Chinese actors in the cast.
In short, China somehow has to play a significant role in the film, and it can’t be as the
villain! Drop your weapons! Or I kill the man! Before Looper was released its director and
studio partnered with DMG, a Chinese based entertainment company to help adapt the film
to a Chinese audience. DMG invested 40% in the film too. The script was re-written to
take place in Shanghai rather than its original location, Paris. But ultimately, separate American and Chinese
versions of Looper were released because the Chinese scenes in the film didn’t resonate
with U.S. and other international markets audiences. That’s always the issue when you’re dealing
with China and deciding on a co-production. As important as the China market is, it’s
not the only market. Ultimately China wants their own films to
outnumber and outplay their foreign competitors so they’re building their own Hollywood. It’s an $8.2 billion dollar investment slated
to open it’s doors in April 2017 from the same company that bought AMC in 2012 and subsequently
doubled their ticket sales. Sure, China will share their facilities with
U.S. studios but their doors are still only half open. That film quota that has held the
US at bay for the last two decades will also apply to Hollywood studios vying to book the
state of the art facilities. Mark Stroman was in a shooting rampage to kill as many Muslims as possible as a retaliation of 9/11 terrorist attacks. He killed Waqar Hasan a man from Pakistan. He shot and killed a man from India,Vasudev Patel. And on September 21st, 2001 he shot me in the face. As a child my impression about U.S.A. was it's a great country, a beautiful country. I remember watching a lot of Western movies. For a Few Dollars More. The Good, Bad, and The Ugly. It was a dream, that one day I should visit the wild wild west and see all those things. After graduating from a military school in Bangladesh. I went to Dallas and loved it. Worked pretty hard and within like a month, I was working as a clerk in a gas station. It gave me an opportunity to get to know the people, to learn the culture. I moved to Dallas in May, 2001 three months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Ten days after 9/11, I was behind the counter, a customer walked in. He was holding a double barreled shotgun pointing at my face. I said, "Sir, here's all the money. Please do not shoot me." And then he mumbled a question, "Where are you from?" I was confused and I said, "Excuse me?" As soon as I said excuse me, he pulled the trigger. I felt at first like a million bees stinging my face, and then I heard the explosion. Frantically I placed both palms on my head thinking I had to keep my brain from spilling out. Images of my mother, my father, my siblings and my fiancee appeared one after another one. And I was begging God, do not take me today. [Clip] Ten days after 9/11 Stroman went on a shooting spree. [Clip] Mark Stroman, a white supremacist wanted revenge, and shot three clerks, who he thought were Muslims. [Clip] Here in America everybody will say it, "Let's get them". Two of his victims died. Stroman was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. I went to Haaj in 2009 with my mother during the pilgrimage she was rubbing on my face she was crying...and I heard my mom telling God that whatever my son wants to do with this life, help him. In my faith, in Islam, it says that saving a life is like saving the entire mankind. Mark Stroman has committed a heinous crime, there's no doubt about that. But, all the good things I was taught inspired me: go and do the right thing. [Clip] Mark Stroman has been in this prison behind me for nearly ten years. [Clip] As he sits on Death Row, an unlikely champion is fighting to save his life. [Clip] Bhuiyan will be partially blind for the rest of his life because of his injuries. [Clip] But he wasn't interested in eye-for-an-eye justice. I went to the US supreme court asking for clemency for Mark Stroman. Went to the US Federal court, went to the US State court of Texas. [Clip] For this man to forgive me, which I've done unforgivable, for him to come forward, the way he did, [Clip] it speaks volume. It speaks volume for the human race. He wrote a long letter to me. He said that, "My step-father taught me some lessons that I should have never learned." "I have unlearned some of them, and I'm still unlearning some of them." "I don't know who your parents were... but it is obvious they're wonderful people to lead you to act this way: to forgive someone who is unforgivable." On the day he was executed he put my name on the list of people that he would like to talk. As soon as he came on the phone I said, "Mark you should know that I never hated you." "I forgive you." And he said, "Rais, I love you bro." The same person ten years back his heart was filled with hate and ignorance. But when he came to know me he saw me as a human being. He was able to tell me that he loved me and he called me brother. Today, I am the Founder and President of a non-profit called, "World Without Hate". Educating people about the transformation of power of mercy, and forgiveness. Based on the hope that we can build a better world. A world without violence, a world without victims, and a world without hate. [ring] “Hello?” Hi, I’m calling for
the president of the Sweet Potato Council. “You got him.”
There’s something Americans have been confused about for a long time.
Yeah, we were hoping you could clear something up for us: What is the difference between
a sweet potato and a yam? [laughs]  “OK. A sweet potato and a yam are
nothing alike.” It turns out that what grocery stores in the
US have been calling yams...they’re actually just sweet potatoes.
“A sweet potato is the orange-fleshed potato you see in your supermarket.”
The orange kind are most common today but they can also be purple, and originally, all
sweet potatoes had white or yellowish flesh. And a yam looks like this.
“It’s kind of brown-covered and white on the inside. And you would only find it
in a specialty store in the United States.” More than 90% of yams are grown in West Africa,
where they’ve been a staple food for thousands of years.
“So if they’re completely different vegetables, why do the grocery stores label sweet potatoes
as yams?” “That name came about in the United States
in the 1920s.” Louisiana farmers advertised their moist orange
sweet potatoes as “yams” to try to stand out from the other sweet potatoes.
But they didn’t come up with that word out of nowhere. It was already being used for
sweet potatoes in the 19th century So where did it come from? Well, here’s
a clue: The word “yam” was probably derived from these West African words
And the most obvious way that African words could travel to the Southern U.S.? Slavery.
So when West African people were forcibly moved to the new world, they probably used
the word yam to refer to the root vegetable that they found there: the sweet potato. The modern United States is the most powerful country in human history. With over 800 military bases and 37% of global military spending, the United States has become the leader of a vast interconnected global system that has helped usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity and low levels
of conflict. To understand America’s position in the
world, and why it’s so pivotal for world politics as we know it, you have to go back
to the country’s founding — back to when America wasn’t a global power in any sense
of the word. During the first 70 years of its existence,
the United States expanded in both territory and influence in North America eventually
reaching the Pacific Ocean in a wave of expansionism that resulted in the wholesale slaughter of
the indigenous people who populated the continent. But early Americans were deeply divided as
to whether the country should expand beyond the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This became a major debate after the civil
war, when some leaders, like post-war Secretary of State Seward, argued that America
should push to become a global power. Seward succeeded in pushing a plan to purchase
Alaska from Russia, but his attempts to buy Greenland and Iceland, as well as annex territory
in the Caribbean, were all blocked by Congress. That’s because some Americans, including
many on Capitol Hill, had a strong anti-imperialist bent. These people worried about America getting
more involved in global politics, as well as having to integrate populations from “inferior”
races. And this opposition applied major checks on
the imperialist urge to expand. But something was happening in the late 1800s
that would change the debate about American expansionism. The industrial revolution produced explosive
economic growth, and the bigger US economy required a more centralized state and bureaucracy
to manage the growing economy. Power became concentrated in the federal government,
making it easier for expansionist presidents, like William Mckinley, to unilaterally push
United States influence abroad. The key turning point came in 1898, when President
McKinley dragged the country into war with Spain over the island of Cuba despite intense
opposition. The rising US easily defeated the moribund
Spanish empire, acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in the process (1898). Over the next two years, the US would annex
the Kingdom of Hawaii (1898), Wake Island (1899), and American Samoa (1900). A few years later the US took control of the
Panama Canal Zone (1903) and sent troops to occupy the Dominican Republic (1916), it also
purchased the American Virgin Islands (1917). This period of rapid acquisition of far flung
territories put the US on the map as a truly global power. During this time, America also began using
its influence to protect its growing commercial and military interests abroad, installing
pro-American regimes in places like Nicaragua and playing a major role in international
diplomacy regarding the Western presence in China. World War I showed how just how much America’s
influence had grown. Not only was American intervention a decisive factor in the war's end But President Wilson attended the Paris Peace
Conference which ended the war and attempted to set the terms of the peace. He spearheaded America’s most ambitious
foreign policy initiative yet, an international organization, called the League of Nations,
designed to promote peace and cooperation globally. The League, a wholesale effort to remake global
politics, showed just how ambitious American foreign policy had become. Yet isolationism was still a major force in
the United States. Yet isolationism was still a major force in
the United States. Congress blocked the United States from joining
the League of Nations, dooming Wilson’s project. During the Great Depression and the rise of
Hitler, the US was was much more focused on its own region than on European affairs
Ultimately, though, America’s ever-growing entanglements abroad made it impossible for
it to stay out of global affairs entirely. In East Asia, the growing Japanese empire
posed a the direct threat to American possessions and troops bringing the United States and Japan into conflict. This culminated in the Pearl Harbor attack bringing the United States into World War II. World War Two would transform America’s
global presence forever. The United States was the only major power
to avoid economic ruin during the war, and it was the sole country equipped with atomic
weapons. As such, it was in unique position to set
the terms of the peace — and, with the aim of preventing another war in mind, it took
advantage. The most famous example of this is the creation
of the United Nations. The UN charter set up a system of international
law prohibiting wars of conquest, like the ones waged by the Nazis and the Japanese. It also served as a forum in which the international
community could weigh in on disputes, and help resolve them. This way, the Americans hoped, great powers
could resolve their differences through compromise and law rather than war. But while the UN is the most famous of the
post-war institutions, it isn’t the only one. 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations
came together in a small vacation haven in New Hampshire. Their goal? To establish a global financial system that would prevent another Great Depression and World War. The resulting agreement, called the Bretton Woods Agreement  ultimately became backbone of the global financial system. Resulting in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. By creating these institutions the United
States committed itself to being deeply involved in the world’s problems. The issue, though, is that the world’s second-largest
power — The Soviet Union — saw things differently. World War II had made allies out of the democratic
West and communist East in the fight against Hitler, but that couldn’t last. The United States saw Soviet expansion in
Eastern Europe and elsewhere as a direct threat to its vision of a free-trading world. "To a substantial degree, in one form or another" Socialism has spread the shadow of human regimentation Over most of the nations of the earth And... the shadow is encroaching on our own liberty. Fearful of Soviet intentions towards Western
Europe, the US and other European nations created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
a military alliance meant to stop Russia from invading other countries in Europe. Globally, the US committed to a strategy called
“containment” — so called because it was aimed at containing the spread of Communism
everywhere on the globe. This new global struggle meant that the US
had to exert influence everywhere, all the time. Instead of disbanding the massive military
machine created for World War II, its wheels mostly kept turning. This had two main results: first, the US was
pulled into unlikely alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and South Korea,
seeing each of them as bulwarks against communist influence in their region. Secondly, the US began intervening, often
secretly, in dozens of countries to contain Soviet influence. Sometimes this meant propping up sympathetic
dictators like in Iran, other times supplying rebels with arms and money like
in Afghanistan in 1979 and Nicaragua in 1985. Over the course of the Cold War, the US intervened
in hundreds of disputes around the globe, ending up with a complicated set of alliances, tensions, and relationships in basically every corner of the earth. After the Berlin wall fell, the US could have
withdrawn from this system, severing ties with its allies and drawing down the size
of its military. And while the US did military
spending, much of the military infrastructure and alliances from the Cold War war remained. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton
decided that it was in both America and the world’s interests for the United States,
now the sole superpower on earth, to continue actively managing global affairs. " We should be and we must be Peacemakers" NATO, created solely as a tool for countering
the Soviets, stayed together and even expanded, a way of keeping European nations united in
the absence of the Soviet threat. Washington’s support for countries like
Israel and Japan stayed intact, ostensibly as a means of preventing war in those regions. The global system of alliances and institutions
created to keep the peace during the Cold War became permanent — as did the American
military and political commitments needed to keep them running . This system remains in operation today, and no leading
American politician since the Cold War has seriously called for dismantling them — except, perhaps for Donald Trump. Trump has said contradictory things about
these commitments. But he’s consistently argued that American
allies are not paying America enough for its protection, and questioned the value of free trade. That calls NATO and even the World Trade Organization into question. At some point, we have to say, you know what, we're better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We're better off if South Korea is going to start to protect itself -- and Saudi Arabia?-- Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. This is a sharp divergence from the consensus
that has dominated US foreign policy since 1945, and something closer to the isolationism
that came before it. So will President Trump act on some of candidate Trump's ideas, and reverse decades worth of institution building and alliances? We'll find out, soon enough. This is the grocery ice cream aisle. And this is a witness hiding behind a screen
to protect their identity and their business. The two are connected. This is a frost-covered door to a world of
delicious treats, and this is John Kerry in September 1999,
listening to a witness whose voice is scrambled to preserve their anonymity. “It’s not about the product.” Really weird voice-scrambling here, by the
way. There is a war going on in the aisles of grocery
stores. A lot of grocery shelf space is bought by
companies selling you stuff, long before you see it while you’re shopping. It can cost as much as $5 million dollars
to get your candy bar near the checkout in a bunch of grocery stores. And even if you know about these so-called
slotting fees, the arguments for and against them might surprise you. Slotting fees say something about the hidden
transactions that let buyers and sellers work together — and occasionally fear each other,
too. Imagine you’re a new ice cream maker and
you want to sell delicious Generic Ice Cream, the ice cream with delicious generic bits. You can’t just start selling your ice cream. If you want to be in a major grocer, you have
to pay. Journalist Gary Rivlin recently wrote about
the slotting fee economy in a report for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. His story of a real ice cream brand called
“Clemmys” is a guide to what might happen to your Generic Ice Cream brand. To get Generic Ice Cream inside a freezer
door, you’d have to pay $30,000 to get in 350 stores — and that’s at a discount. Once you got in, sometimes you’d have to
pay up to stay on the shelf. And you’re competing against giants like
Nestlé and Unilever. Rivlin reports they control basically 90 percent
of the freezer doors because they’d already paid up. For giants like them, a $30,000 fee isn’t
a lot — for you, however, it might be a major cost. Even then, paying for your Generic Ice Cream
to get on the shelves wouldn’t necessarily give you control — instead, category captains,
the big guys who pay the most, draft where every item goes, which can determine how well
things sell. Drawings like these, called planograms, help
stores keep things organized. See, Generic Soda goes here, Generic Energy
here. But they also help retailers sell space. Each spot comes at a cost. The same is true of most of what you see in
the candy, cookie, chip, and soda aisles. To writers like Rivlin, it’s no better than
a bribe. Soda and candy pays up, and consumers have
limited choice. Your delicious Generic Ice Cream never hits
the shelves. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
banned stuff like this for alcohol in 1995. And if you’re a regular reader of Frozen
& Refrigerated Buyer, you’ll know vendors are constantly fighting against these slotting
fees. So why are vendors resigned that slotting
fees are here to stay? Imagine you’re the grocery selling that
Generic Ice Cream. There are a lot of reasons for slotting fees. There’s have so much shelf space to sell
from, and food makers — like Generic — throw too many products at them. Slotting fees help the store prioritize. Mary Sullivan wrote early studies defending
slotting fees. See this chart? It shows how many new products that manufacturers
came up with in the 80s, thanks to technological advances like scanners that made it easier
to spin off products. Retailers needed to cut through the glut. Some argue that slotting fees hel the store
prioritize. And as this chart from the Federal Trade Commission
shows, slotting fees are typically higher where space is scarcer, like the ice cream
aisle or the candy bar aisle near the checkout. The purple ice cream here in this chart is
clustered at the higher end of the slotting fee scale. The FTC and other academics have found that
for retailers, slotting fees don’t just cull the offerings, but they also help them
see that a manufacturer is willing to put their money where their mouth is. If you threw $30,000 into a slotting fee for
Generic Cookies and Cream, it might signal to the retailer that you’re able to guess,
thanks to market research and other testing, that the product will succeed. The retailer might then decide it’s worth
a try, which is important, since 80% of new products fail. The argument’s that slotting fees don’t
just offset the costs of adding new products to the system, but they also show if a manufacturer
thinks a product is a winner. It's a conundrum – the closer you look,
the more supermarkets seem rigged, but at the same time, the more the rigging makes
sense. The only thing that’s certain is that behind
those freezer doors, and behind that screen, there is a war going on. The Food Marketing Institute, which represents
grocers, told me that Rivlin’s article “seriously mischaracterized the legitimate food industry
practice of slotting fees.” Meanwhile, Rivlin and advocates like him want
the FTC to look at slotting fees again. Each retailer has their own strategy — A
Walmart spokesperson told me they don’t charge slotting fees because they believe
it raises prices. Whole Foods reportedly has a similar stance,
preferring free trials of goods to cash. Both sides have solutions: sellers would rather
retailers opt for more test stores to give products a chance, instead of demanding high
slotting fees . And grocers, well, they say slotting fees
are necessary to “recoup the labor, spacing and shelving costs entailed in marketing new
product lines.” They also push in store brands to take more
control — think Trader Joe’s or your grocery’s branded soda — and that makes space scarcer
for manufacturers. Only a few things are certain - your grocery
aisle, where you see happy cereal boxes and yummy ice cream — is oddly tense. Hide behind a screen tense, because large
groceries have the ability to keep your product off the shelves with just a snap of their
fingers. Selling your Generic Ice Cream is a lot more
complicated — and controversial — than you might have realized. And maybe, now, buying it is too. Slotting fees are ultimately a form of negotiation,
and even if you don’t pay them, you still might be making compromises. You could sell your Generic Ice Cream in Trader
Joe’s, but if you do, you might have to sign a strict non-disclosure agreement, promising
not to reveal that it’s your ice cream Trader Joe’s is selling under their own brand. Interviewer: What's the weirdest thing you've been asked about being Muslim? Do I worship a moon God? Are you allowed to have sex, during Ramadan? I bet you like to hump goats! Like... [laughs]. Like, I don't even know what to say to that. What's a mosque? What do you guys really do in there? The weirdest question is: if I'm planning to blow anything up. Why are you guys like that? Why don't Muslims denounce terrorism? Aren't you hot? Are you circumcised? I do denounce terrorism. Really? You guys can laugh? You guys can smile? Aw. A Muslim is a great many things, depending on your perspective. Muslim is the word we use to label people that follow the Islamic religion. And believes in the oneness of God. And that Muhammad is his messenger. That's really all that it is. There's no secret handshake. You don't have to run through a gauntlet. Things like not cheating, not stealing, not killing, not hurting folks. Are principal to the faith. We can't eat pork. There's no pork on my fork. No swine on my mind. A practicing Muslim prays five times a day. I'm not jiggy with the piggy. I'm not achin' for the bacon. Every chapter in Quran except one starts with God is merciful, God is compassionate. Compassion, mercy, these were the two concepts. I'm not hostage to the sausage. There's a lot of these phrases. I think the question of: "What is a Muslim?" 100% can not be answered. We're talking about over a billion people. People think a Muslim is traditionally, basically someone looks like me, with a beard. Maybe not as much swag because that's unique to me. But, Muslims come from all different walks of life. A Muslim is anyone who says he's a Muslim. There's all levels of Muslims. That includes, you know, the secular Muslim who eats BLT's and washes it down with a glass of Pino. There are some that are very devout in practicing, and there are some that are not, just like with every other faith. Nobody in Islam gets to say who is, and who is not a Muslim. God is the one who determines that. We don't have a Muslim pope, although it would be cool if we did. And I think it should be me. If you really want to break down the Arabic word it literally means "the one who submits." To God. To peace. According to my father, a Muslim is any person who surrenders to a force greater than themself. When I introduced my atheist whitey-white infidel boyfriend to my dad. My Dad goes, "Listen listen Zahra, ...the word Muslim just means one who surrenders to a force greater than himself." "That's it. Does he believe in gravity?" "So he surrenders to the gravity, it is a force greater than himself." "He's a Muslim. So, welcome". A great majority of us are just ordinary boring people. You know, schmucks like us. But, what do I know? I'm just one Muslim, out of 1.7 billion Muslims. This is me, and this is my sister, Annie she’s 28, mom to two cats, freelance designer and part-time grad student There’s just something about freelancing. I feel a lot of creative freedom She’s also had had chronic back pain, neck pain, migraines for as long as she can remember She health insurance through Obamacare, and without it, there’s no way she’d be able to afford
all her doctors’ appointments and medications And because she doesn’t have to depend on
an employer for insurance, she’s able to work for herself the flexibility works really well with being able to make my appointments around my work schedule on election night, my first thought was, "what does this mean for my sister?" Donald Trump, elected president of the United States and for the 22 million other people who get their health insurance through Obamacare “Today, after over a year of debate, health insurance reform becomes law in the
United States of America” “We’re gonna try and repeal this” “There’s only one way to fix Obamacare, and that’s a full repeal” “Can we replace this law, completely, in the next presidency, in the next congress. That is our goal, and the answer is yes we
can.” "When we win on November 8, we will be able to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare” Obamacare is a big law, with lots of different parts And there are some parts that Trump and Republicans
in Congress say they want to keep. For example: before Obamacare, companies could
refuse to sell insurance to people with lots of health problems. Obamacare says they can’t do that anymore,
and Trump and the Republicans say they want to keep it that way. The problem is, this piece of the law that
they like only works because of another piece of the
law that they don’t like...a piece they’ve promised to get rid of That’s the part of the law that says you
have to have health insurance, or pay a fine. For health insurance to be affordable, you
need a lot of healthy people to sign up for every one sick person
That’s because health insurance is worth more to sick people, and they’ll pay more
for it, which pushes up premiums for everyone. The healthy people in the pool help keep those
costs down. If Trump and the Republicans get rid of the
individual mandate, which they say they will, a bunch of healthy people are going to stop buying insurance, premiums
go up, more healthy people leave Until all that’s left are sick people who
are really expensive to cover. Without a bunch of healthy people to offset
that cost, insurance companies would pull out of the marketplace we know this because in some places, it was already happening before the election. Too many healthy people were choosing the
fine over health insurance As a result, states like Alabama
and Oklahoma only have one insurance plan on the market--and without competition, premiums
shot up last year. If Trump and the Republicans get rid of the
individual mandate, we’ll likely see this happen in other states. Like Texas, where my sister lives So, what might her life look like under the Republican replacement for Obamacare? Right now, Obamacare makes it illegal for
insurance companies to charge her more just because she has health problems.
Under Paul Ryan’s plan, that changes. Insurance companies would be allowed to charge
her more if she ever let her coverage lapse. Instead of forcing insurance companies to
offer affordable plans to people like my sister, Paul Ryan’s plan would fund “high-risk
pools,” insurance plans specifically for people with lots of health problems, but we
don’t know exactly who would be eligible for them. These pools were around before Obamacare--
and without healthy people to balance the sick
people, these plans end up being about twice as expensive for participants. Paul Ryan’s plan does call for refundable
tax credits to help offset those costs. Congressional Republicans have tried getting
rid of the individual mandate before. But those votes were largely symbolic
But it’s real now. My sister has built a life for herself where she can take
professional risks go back to school , be her own boss, and not have to rely on an employer for health insurance. Now, she and 22 million others are asking
how long that will last. Between 1940 and 1960, the amount of mail doubled in The United States. That’s largely because companies began using
computers to send automated mailings. Soon, the flood of mail sent by banks, advertisers, and other businesses was overwhelming postal workers. The Postal Service needed a solution. In 1963, the Zone Improvement Plan divided the country into ten regions and assigned five digits increasing in specificity, from region, to large sorting centers, to smaller post offices. Where previously mail workers had to figure
out which post office went with which address, now the zip code provided that information for them. The government promoted the new system with a cartoon character, Mr. ZIP, and a song from a zip-code lovin’ band called The Swingin’ Six. You know you’ve gotta have a zip code on
the envelope, a zip code so you won’t just have to hope. A zip code morning, noon and night, and everything will be alright. And it worked — by 1969, 83% of Americans were using zip codes, and between 1971 and 1980, the number of pieces of mail that were processed per year, increased by 17 billion. But the system was limited. Zip codes are made from digits, unlike the
alphanumeric Canadian system, which can encode more information per character. As America grew, zip codes got longer. In 1983, a four digit suffix was added to
denote specific addresses like city blocks or large buildings. While this update improved delivery, it requires zip codes to be continually managed to reflect changing destinations and delivery routes. Instead of a system dependent on structures, a geocoded zip code would be dependent on place. This gives every point on earth a unique permanent
address. And geocoded deliveries can be sent to specific
pick-up points at an address. More specificity would also benefit industries
that use zip codes for purposes other than sending mail, like analyzing data. In Britain, the postal service has already
geocoded their system and London realtors have used that data to make more detailed
maps of housing prices. Without geocodes, American addressing is limited
to zip codes and building numbers. Any further detail has to be written. With a geocode, sending mail directly to The Oval Office is as easy as remembering 38.8973603,-77.0374162. Or not that easy. Complex numbers hard to remember, so systems
have been created to simplify geocodes. One system called Natural Area Code, converts
latitudes and longitudes into alphanumeric “NAC” tags. Which is netter, but still not great. A different system uses words, which we tend to remember more easily than characters. A company called What3words has divided the world into 57 trillion squares, and given each square a unique string of three words. Each combination of words goes with a specific latitude and longitude. If our postal service used What3Words, you
could send your letter to “rich.soup.noble”, and the President could pick it up at the window of the Oval Office. While language makes geocodes easier for humans,
machines prefer to process numbers. So the zip code will probably evolve in ways
we won’t notice. Right now, computers add delivery instructions
by converting zip codes into a barcode that is printed on a shipment. In the future, a similar process might incorporate
geocoding, which would leave us with one question: If we don’t need to learn a new system,
do we still get to a new song? We’ve told you everything we know. It’s up to you to make zip code go. The next frontier for human spaceflight is
obvious. We have to go to Mars. You might’ve heard a lot of people talking
about this recently — from tech innovators to NASA scientists, even President Obama has
made the case that we should go to Mars. So we talked to Chris McKay, a senior scientist
at NASA's Ames research center. He's involved in the planning of future Mars
missions, and he walked us through some of the hazards. I'm Brian Resnick, I'm a science reporter
at Vox. I will never go to Mars, and here the top
seven reasons why. Here's number one. Your rocket could blow up before leaving Earth. This is pretty obvious. NASA has a pretty good track record with sending
astronauts to space, but we also know that there have been tragedies. For some context, the NASA space shuttle program
carried 833 people to orbit between 1981 and 2011, of which fourteen people died in
two big explosions. SpaceX has a checkered history of trying to
launch rockets and land them. Number two: So if you successfully leave Earth and it's all safe, and it's all good, there are
still some dangers in that journey to Mars. The biggest danger here is radiation exposure. The vacuum of space is not really empty. There's radiation emanating from the sun,
and it goes out in all directions. There are gamma rays, and X rays, and ultraviolet
light, and all these things that can damage our cells. Here on Earth, we have a dense atmosphere
and a magnetic field that helps keep this radiation out of our daily lives. According to measurements from NASA’s Curiosity
rover, there’s more radiation on the surface of Mars than there would be on Earth. Perhaps the more worrisome risk of radiation
in space is from solar flares. Occasionally and randomly and in a way that's
hard to predict, the sun emits very large batches of radiation in great flares. Number three: you can crash on Mars' surface
trying to land. One thing about landing on Mars that the atmosphere
is a lot thinner. That means there's a lot less of a cushion
— another way to think about it is there's a lot less friction in the atmosphere that
will naturally slow your spacecraft down. You would need a system of rockets to help
you land smoothly on Mars. We saw with the Curiosity rover, that was an incredibly intricate and choreographed
maneuver to get just that one-ton rover down onto the planet. Could you imagine getting
6, 7, 10, a hundred humans down onto that planet? You would need a very complicated, very sophisticated,
and very well-tested system to help people descend down to the Martian surface. Number four: Mars’ low gravity might wreak
havoc on your bones and muscles. Many astronauts who spend six months or more on the Space Station have vision loss that doesn't get corrected when they come back down to the Earth. There was one astronaut that went from perfect
20/20 vision to 20/100 vision just in six months. Other things that happen in the microgravity
of space is that your muscles start to deteriorate, your bones start to deteriorate, and this
can be staved off by some regular exercise, but NASA really hasn't found a complete solution
to this problem. Think about a six-month voyage to Mars. You know once you get there, the Martian gravity
isn't as strong as Earth's. It's not as light as you would be on the moon,
it’s not as heavy as you would be on Earth. So will muscles and bones and eyesight continue
to deteriorate on Mars is not yet known. Number five: your space suit or habitat could
leak, and you just can't breathe Martian air. The pressure of Mars’ atmosphere is just
a fraction of the pressure of the earth's atmosphere. Your house on Mars would be like the cabin
of an airplane: Any crack in your house any slit in your space
suit will lead it to depressurize … and that's an obvious problem. Mars is filled with dust and dirt
that just gets everywhere — it could quickly clog all of your intake vents, it
could quickly destroy some of your electronics, and people could die if you inhale it. So the dream is that one day we could potentially
breathe Martian air. This is an idea that has long obsessed science
fiction authors: it's called terraforming. And the idea is that maybe we can change the
Martian atmosphere to be more like Earth. We could start some global warming on Mars,
and raise the temperature of the planet, and entrap more greenhouse gases in. We
can raise the level of CO2 so we can start growing plants there, those plants could then
start to produce oxygen. This is probably the most far-fetched idea
out there — not to say it's impossible, but just, it is well, well into the future. Number six: the planet Mars could literally kill you. The soil of Mars is toxic. You might have seen the movie The Martian,
where astronaut Mark Watney grows potatoes on Mars in the Martian soil. We probably shouldn't do that. It contains a very high concentrations of
chemicals called perchlorates. These are salts that can do serious damage
to the human body, especially the thyroid. You wouldn’t want to grow your potatoes
in it. It's okay to get Martian dirt on your hands
but you really wouldn't want to get into your drinking water or food or get into your habitat. Number seven: your fellow travelers could
drive you crazy. This is been a surprising challenge for NASA to learn and to get over: how do you craft a crew for a spaceship that will be
alone with each other for months on end, and also be the only human beings on an entire
planet for perhaps months or years, and spending
only their time with one another? If there's going to be a mutiny, or if there's going to be interpersonal strife on Mars, that is an element that could be the riskiest of all. There was this project called Biosphere 2
in 1994. "Living in it was supposed to be like living
in a space colony." It was a seven-person crew, and they split up into warring factions and the mission
had to end prematurely. So it will take some calibration to find
who are the right people for this type of mission. The first people who go to Mars should go with the expectation that they might never
come back. But that hasn't stopped explorers for centuries:
There's always gonna be a drive in humans to go places we've never been before. And for the most part, that drive is something
that has aided our survival at times. So will the risks on a trip to Mars be great? Absolutely. Should we go? Absolutely. I was twenty-four years old when I started working at the police department as a Muslim Chaplain. and the uniform in it of itself, just commands a lot of respect. Everyone's calling you "Sir". You have men who are twice your age who stop everything to salute you. There was times I walked into the bathroom, guys are standing at urinals, they would turn around and salute me. I'm like, "guys don’t do that." [Laughs] But that's because I'm in a uniform, right? I still have the realities of not in a uniform. Where I get pulled over and asked, you know, "do I actually own my car, did I steal my car?" When I engage in conversation and I show my police credentials, I show my badge, the tenor changes quite drastically. Announcer: "He is the University Chaplain for NYU, Executive Director of the Islamic Center here... as well as chaplain for the New York City Police Department." Announcer: "Working tirelessly to foster dialogue with people of others faiths in order to clarify misconceptions and encourage mutual education." One day, I was asleep in my bed, one of my friends was staying over. He came into my room and he said "Hey, the FBI is here." Two agents came into my living room, I got them seated and I said, you know, "What is it that you really want from me?" And they said, "look.... you're just too good to be true, and we want you to know that we're watching you." When I land on international flights, you know, the announcement would go off, "TSA is doing random checks, have your passports ready." Essentially, I was the random check. They'd then take me, escorted to a detaining room. I've seen women who are as old as my grandmother in detaining rooms being railed into by people because they can't speak English so well while their thirteen year old grandsons are sitting and watching. When they would go through my belongs and they'd find my police credentials. If I was traveling on behalf of the State department. they'd find my State department paperwork. You know, folders with big golden eagles embossed on them. They'd start asking me “You know why are we stopping you?” and I'd say to them “Why do you think you're stopping me?” they said “Look man you’re, young and you’re male and you're muslim and those things don't go so well together right now.” I've sat down with people like Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, I've met with President Obama on multiple occasions, his senior staff. And these are the kinds of things that happen to people like me, with those connections. You got to really think what's happening with people who don't have those connections And what their lives are like day to day. When my wife and I went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon, I said to her “don't get off the plane with me, you don't wanna go through this” And she said “No, you're my husband you know I'm going to walk with you through everything” And we got to the doorway there was nobody there, We got to the baggage claim and I took my suitcases, we left the baggage claim. We're standing in the outside part of the airport. I hadn't seen that part of an airport in about six years. My wife starts joking around and she says to me “You should've gotten married to me much sooner, maybe you wouldn't have the problems you had before” And I responded by putting my head on her shoulder and just crying. The deeply entrenched racisms that exist in our country have to be addressed and they have to be addressed not for the sake of any singular minority population. But really for the sake of all of us just as human beings. I really believe that things can change. What makes a street a street and an avenue an avenue? They're not just named at random. There’s no rulebook for building a city, but there are naming conventions that are surprisingly strong, ones you’ll find across the world. There are exceptions, but if you comb through postal service guides, state departments of transportation, and dictionaries, you can start to decipher a code behind our roads. It starts simple: a road can be anything that connects two points. A way is a small side street off a road. But then things build up. Streets are public ways that have buildings on both sides. And you’ll recognize them because they often run perpendicular to avenues, which will have trees or buildings on both sides too. The cardinal directions — North, South, East, or West — vary by city, but that perpendicular pattern of streets and avenues is common to many places. This is a boulevard — a big wide street with trees on both sides. You’ll find a median in a lot of boulevards, too. It’s basically the opposite of a lane, which is a narrow road, often in a rural area. A drive takes its cues from the environment — it’s a long winding road that might have its route shaped by a nearby mountain or lake. That might lead to a terrace: a street that follows the top of a slope. A place, however, is a road or a street with no throughway (basically a dead end). Meanwhile, a court will end in a circle or loop, without a throughway. It’s like a cousin to a plaza or square — an open public space that’s surrounded by businesses or streets. And all of these roads connect to the wider world. A frontage road (or access road or service road) runs parallel to a larger road, providing local access. That larger public road might be a highway — a major public road that connects larger cities. An interstate is part of a highway system, but it’s defined by being a federally funded network of roads. It often goes between states, but it doesn’t have to — Hawaii has Interstate H1, and you don’t want to take an interstate to get there. A turnpike is part of a highway, but it usually means you’ll hit a tollbooth, while a freeway is distinguished by size, with 2 or more lanes on each side. A beltway, meanwhile, is a highway that surrounds a whole city (like a belt). A parkway is a decorated public road, usually called that for the parkland on the side of the road. Wanna know why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? Parkways were originally more pastoral, and they had that parkland on the side, and driveways were often longer, making them “ways” off of “drives.” A junction is where two roads cross — in an interchange, it’s at a different height, while at an intersection it’s at the same height. Causeways are different raised roads that pass across low or swampy ground, or water. And the rest of the most common roads are the odds and ends. Crescents are winding roads that usually resemble...well, a crescent, and often attach to a road at both ends. An alley is a small pathway between buildings, which might not be driveable. And then there’s an esplanade — a long open path or road near the ocean, that’s also called a promenade if it’s primarily for walking. All these names aren’t there to confuse us, but to make roads and cities clearer. And now you won’t just know where you are, but how you got there, too. So these street naming conventions are just that — they are conventions, they are not hard and fast rules, and there are plenty of exceptions. And that is the case in Tuscon, Arizona, because in Tuscon, the streets run East/West, the avenues run North/South, and something called the Stravenue — postal abbreviation “STRA” — runs diagonally. INTERVIEWER: For all practical purposes, do
you think a woman in the United States today can actually be nominated on the ticket as
president? CHISHOLM: Because how dare you? Have you forgotten that you are a woman? SCHROEDER: If I had to say that all of America
was ready, uhhhh no. It’s not quite there yet. CLINTON: Well this isn’t the party I planned,
but I sure like the company. INTERVIEWER: For all practical purposes, do
you think a woman in the United States today can actually be nominated on the ticket as
president? CHISHOLM: Because how dare you? Have you forgotten
that you are a woman? SCHROEDER: If I had to say that all of America
was ready, uhhhh no. It’s not quite there yet. CLINTON: Well this isn’t the party I planned,
but I sure like the company. CLINTON: Now, I -- I know -- I know we have
still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will and
hopefully sooner than we might think right now. MARGARET CHASE SMITH: There are those that
make the contention that no woman should ever dare to aspire to the White House, that this
is a man’s world and that it should be kept that way. Margaret Chase Smith was the first Republican
woman to run for president. She was a three-term senator from Maine. QUESTION: Who will be your running mate? SMITH: None of the announced candidates have
indicated any desire. The day she announced, Washington Post columnists
had already dubbed her campaign “non-serious.” NATIVIDAD: The idea of a woman running for
President of the United States wasn’t taken seriously Smith had spent the previous 24 years in Congress,
initially elected to her husband’s seat when he died. But around the country, opportunities for
women to enter male-dominated jobs were shrinking after WW2. NATIVIDAD: Rosie the Riveter had to go back
home and start making dinner again. Women gained traction, if you will, as workers,
but then the men came back and there was an understanding that they had to be employed. O’NEILL: There was no organized women’s
movement there to fight for them and this is why the 1950s women’s rights went into
a deep, really a deep crater. DEBBIE REYNOLDS: Don’t you think marriage
is just the most important thing in the world? I mean a woman isn’t really a woman at all
until she’s married and had children. This was the era when the National Weather
Service started giving hurricanes female names and when airline stewardesses were fired when
they turned 32. For two decades, there was little change in
the percentage of Americans who said they would vote for a female presidential candidate
if she was qualified. That stagnation coincided with a broad effort
to reassert traditional gender roles as part of the ideological battles of the Cold War. LEAVE IT TO BEAVER: They say a woman’s place
is in the home and I suppose as long as she’s in the home, she might as well be in the kitchen. It had become popular for Freudian psychologists
to blame working women for society’s ills. NARRATOR: Everywhere children with working
parents are being left without adequate supervision or restraint. FARNHAM: Catastrophic social forces have propelled
American women away from femininity and into careers a terrific cost to themselves and
society. Political operatives were able to leverage
these trends to end the career of Minnesota Congresswoman Coya Knutson in 1958. She lost her re-election after they arranged
for her estranged husband to publish a letter asking for her to come home and care for their
family. And those women who somehow managed to get
a law degree at that time faced open discrimination when they graduated. SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR: I called at least 40
of those firms asking for an interview and not one of them would give me an interview.
I was a woman and they said we don’t hire women. When the women’s liberation movement got
up and running in the late 60s and in the 70s, the early priorities were fighting job
discrimination and securing equal rights in the law. During this time, the number of women in Congress
barely changed, but the Democratic party saw a female presidential candidate in Shirley
Chisholm, a Congresswoman from New York. CHISHOLM: I stand before you today as a candidate
for the Democratic nomination for presidency of the United States of America. O’NEILL: She was a truly feminist, anti-racist
lawmaker. CHISHOLM: I believe we are intelligent enough
to recognize the talent, energy and dedication which all Americans, including women and minorities
have to offer. Chisholm was one of the prominent feminists
who created the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, with the goal of electing
more women to Congress. In response, the Secretary of State at the time reportedly joked with
President Nixon that the women resembled “a burlesque.” By 1977, fully half of the country still agreed
with the statement that most men are better suited emotionally for politics than most
women. INTERVIEWER: You both have combined, it seems
to me very successfully, marriage and politics. What do you say to people that say the two
are incompatible. How have you done this? MINK: Well I think that’s probably the most
offensive question that’s ever asked, because I truly believe that men and women are equal.
And I’ve never heard anyone ask a man, how has it been on your family? I mean, it’s
seldom asked. MALCOLM: We had made very little progress
from the dawn of the women’s movement. In fact Democratic women had lost seats in the
House. Nevertheless, in 1984 women’s groups convinced
the Democratic presidential candidate to choose a Congresswoman as his running mate. MONDALE: I looked for the best vice president
and I found her in Gerry Ferraro. NATIVIDAD: Oh, I thought our lives would change. FERRARO: If we can do this, we can do anything. MALCOLM: Women were coming out in record numbers,
and they would bring their children and hold their babies up, and show their daughters
what it would be like to have a woman running for vice president. NATIVIDAD: Everything will be different after
this. It wasn’t. MEET THE PRESS: Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrat
who wants to be vice president. Ms. Ferraro, could you push the nuclear button? BUSH: Let me help you with the difference,
Ms. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon. FERRARO: Let me just say, first of all, that
I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach
me about foreign policy. The majority of women, like the majority of
men, voted for the popular incumbent president that year. It would be more than two decades before one
of the major parties nominated another woman for vice president. In the 1980s women caught up to men in college
enrollment, and they’d surpassed them in voter turnout rates in presidential elections. But the public and the press still didn’t
know what to make of women seeking elected office, as Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder
found when she briefly considered running for president in the 1988 election. SCHROEDER: The first thing you always get
is, ‘Well you don’t look presidential.’ My answer was always ‘I know that. There’s
never been a president of the United States that looks like me. I find that regrettable.
But, you know.’ O’NEILL: When she announced that she was
ending or suspending her campaign — it was clear that she was not going to win in the
primaries — you know, she became emotional just for a moment. SCHROEDER: I could not figure out how to run
and not be separated from those I serve. There must be a way but I haven’t figured it out
yet. O’NEILL: She was roundly pilloried. ‘Oh,
this proves it, women are too soft. Women are too emotional.’ And you know, the impact
on Congresswoman Schroeder was not very great. I’ve met her, she’s an an amazingly tough,
optimistic, extraordinary person. The impact was on bystander women who might have been
thinking that they might want to run. Women running for office faced a double bind.
They had to appear tough enough to lead, but if they were too tough or too confident, they
violated norms about how women are supposed to behave. This is how the Washington Post described
Barbara Mikulski after she became one of two women in the Senate in 1986. MALCOLM: There was one Republican, Nancy Kassebaum,
and Senator Mikulski, and 98 men. Malcolm’s new fundraising organization,
EMILY’s List had helped make Mikulski a credible candidate. Together they set out
to bring more Democratic women to Congress, and they got a boost when law professor Anita
Hill was called to testify about a Supreme Court Nominee. NEWS 4: Clarence Thomas called Anita Hill
a liar. Hill says Thomas sexually harassed her and she passed a lie detector test. O’NEILL: The all-male panel doing the hearings
for Clarence Thomas decided to simply attack her. HEFLIN: Are you a scorned woman? SIMPSON: I would think that these things with
you describe are so repugnant that you would never have talked to him again, and that is
the most contradictory and puzzling thing for me. O’NEILL: What Anita Hill was describing
was absolutely resonant with what so many women had experienced in their own lifetime.
They knew she was telling the truth. MALCOLM: Women were furious. And when they
found out there were only two women in the Senate, they decided they were going to do
something about it. And they did. CBS NEWS: They’re calling it the Year of
the Woman. What impact will it have on Congress? JORDAN: And what we see today is simply a
dress rehearsal for the day and time we meet in convention to nominate madam president. O’NEILL: For the first time in the United
States House of Representatives, the number of women increased to fully 10 percent. The 1992 election brought in 24 congresswomen
and 4 female senators. MIKULSKI: Some women spend their life looking
out the window for Prince Charming. I’ve been waiting six years for new women to come
to the United States Senate. MOSELEY-BRAUN: And I was telling the students
at the time that eight women had been elected to the United States Senate. And one little
girl looked at me and said, ‘Is that all?’ Her universe, her world showed her the possibilities
and that is the progress that we have achieved. While women continued to make slow but steady
gains in Congress, lack of money and party support prevented female candidates from making
credible bids at a presidential nomination. DOLE: I think what we’ve done is pave the
way for the person who will be the first woman president. MOSELEY-BRAUN: We are committed to opening
up our democracy. We will get there one day. So when Hillary Clinton entered the 2008 primaries
as the presumptive front-runner, it was utterly unprecedented. COURIC: If it’s not you, how disappointed
will you be? CLINTON: Well, it will be me. Like Congressional candidates in the 80s and
90s, Clinton’s strategy was to campaign as any man would, emphasizing strength and
minimizing gender. O’NEILL: Her advisers were absolutely determined
to downplay that. CAMPAIGN AD: If we have the will, she has
the strength. If we have the conviction, she has the experience. MALCOLM: It was a 1990s strategy, because
certainly in the early days, that’s  what we had to do with candidates. O’NEILL: I think it started changing at
the end of the primaries in 2008. CLINTON: But I am a woman and, like millions
of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious. Her attempt to run a genderless campaign didn’t
keep sexism out of the election. CARLSON: That is so perfect, because I have
often said when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs. CAFFERTY: She morphed into a scolding mother BARNICLE: Looking like everyone’s first
wife standing outside a probate court by the time of her concession speech, Clinton
seemed to recognize that her supporters didn’t want to ignore gender. O’NEILL: I had managed to somehow get on
a platform so I could actually see her from very far away. And what was really striking
to me is I’m looking around and many, many, many women in tears. CLINTON: Although we weren't able to shatter
that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks
in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope
and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. Eight years later, Clinton’s openly campaigned
on her experiences as a woman. CLINTON: Look, I’m not asking people to
vote for me because I’m a woman. But I think if you vote for somebody on the merits, one
of my merits is I’m a woman and I think that makes a big difference in this world. Oddly, the first woman to come close to the
presidency faced an openly sexist opponent. TRUMP: You know, you could see there was blood
coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her...wherever. CNN: “Look at that face,” he cries, “Would
anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that? The face of our next president? I mean she’s
a woman. I’m not supposed to say bad things but really, folks, come on, are we serious?” HOLT: Earlier this month you said she doesn’t
have, quote, a presidential look. She’s standing here right now. What did you mean
by that? TRUMP: She doesn’t have the look. She doesn't
have the stamina. But women have never voted as a unified block. MSNBC: The exit polls, sir, shows that Trump
did better with women than expected. For example, white women ages 45-64. Trump won by 19 points
there. So how much longer will it be?  That depends
on how many women are in the pipeline. LAWLESS:  We just don’t have that many
women in the Senate or in governors’ mansions and those are the two most likely paths to
the presidency. The focus on the presidential race can obscure
the fact that women who run for Congress and governor are just as likely as men to win.
The problem is fewer women are running. LAWLESS: We identified a national sample of
lawyers, business leaders, educators and political activists. And across the board there was
about a 16 point gender gap in political ambition. They’ve done this survey twice and the gap
didn’t shrink between 2001 and 2011. When asked to assess their qualifications
for public office, the women rated themselves lower than men. HALEY: We second-guess ourselves. We always
try to say well what if this happens or what if I’m not ready or what if I don’t know
enough. And that’s where women hold themselves back. The confidence gap between men and women is
a broad societal problem, but there’s one easy way to continue working toward gender
parity in politics. LAWLESS: Women are less likely than men to
be recruited or encouraged to run for office. And when women and men get that encouragement,
get that boost, they’re far more likely to throw their hats into the ring. MALCOLM: There’s a lot of ways we can find
support for you, but we need your leadership and your intelligence and your hard work to
make this democracy work. So think about it. Maybe you should be running for office. NATIVIDAD: All the rights that we have are
tenuous. It depends on administration, it depends on current politicians. It depends
on memory. So be vigilant. Be the voice for change. Don’t just be a recipient of it. CLINTON: You will have successes and setbacks,
too. This loss hurts. But please, never stop believing that fighting for what’s right
is worth it. Donald Trump has won the presidency. Those are not words I thought I would say tonight. I will be president for all Americans and this is so important to me. Now it is up to America’s institutions,
and the people within them, to check his worst instincts. There is danger in Trump. He’s a man with authoritarian impulses, "Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" He's got a mind of a conspiracy theorist. Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? He has an alarming temperament, little impulse
control, and less decency. If you see someone trying to throw a tomato, beat the crap out of them would you? He has a demagogue’s instinct for finding enemies, and a bully’s instinct for finding
their weaknesses. He is uninterested in policy, unrestrained
by shame, and unbound by norms. He surrounds himself with sycophants and enablers,
and he believes both the facts and the falsehoods he finds congenial. But he is entering an office that is weaker
than many realize. For all the same reasons Barack Obama could
not bring about the change he had made people believe in, Trump cannot wrench America to
his vision of greatness. He is constrained by the House and the Senate,
by the Supreme Court, by the executive agencies, and — in ways less formal, but no less powerful
— by his own staff and party. There would be more comfort in this if there
was more opposition inside these institutions. But Republicans control everything — the
House, the Senate, and, after an appointment, the Supreme Court. If Trump is to be checked, it will be because
his own party checks him. So far, the GOP has not shown much interest
or ability in standing up to their standard-bearer. Top Republicans closed ranks around Trump
despite believing him fundamentally unfit for office. Their embrace did not, however, lead to Trump
surrounding himself with more professional staff, developing sounder policy, or moderating
his worst instincts. Already, the Trump campaign has leaked that
they will fill their administration with the most supportive staff they can find, not 
the best. But the numbers of jobs they appear to have
candidates for is slim. They will need many more bodies to fill both
the White House and the executive agencies. This is a place where the Republican Party
could potentially play a role in surrounding Trump with calmer, wiser advisors who could
provide him better information, and curb his worst impulses. The Republican Congress will use Trump to
pass the agenda they have already crafted —
Paul Ryan’s bargain has always been that he will endorse a man he clearly believes
to be dangerous so long as that man will sign his budget. I ask, do I believe that these principles and these policies have a better chance of making the law with Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton? Absolutely! Trump is a dealmaker and he’ll presumably
hold up his end of the deal. The question is whether Congress will attempt
to check Trump elsewhere — on surveillance, on wartime powers, on trade. But our institutions are only as good as the
people running them. Parties have strong incentives to back their
president — that’s how Trump united the GOP after he became the nominee, and it’s
how he’ll hold it together after he takes the White House. There’s been little evidence that Republicans
— even the ones who clearly recognize Trump’s danger — are willing to risk electoral sanction
to protect the country they profess to love. House and Senate Republicans know that Trump’s
success is their success, that his strength is their strength. The same goes for his staff, and his appointees. The question is whether they can structure
a version of success for him that keeps the country safe, and whether they will be willing,
if the worst comes to pass, to cross their president for their country. If there is hope, it is here: the incentives
of governance are different than the incentives of opposition. The Republican majority will have to face
the voters in 2018, and then again in 2020. If they have taken health insurance from tens
of millions of people without replacement, if they have ripped open families and communities
with indiscriminate deportation, if they have embroiled us in disastrous wars or confrontations,
if they have sent the economy into tailspin, those elections will not be pleasant. Republicans have a majority, and it will be
one they hope to keep. To keep it, they will need to govern well,
or at least convince the electorate they have governed well. And to govern well, they will need to keep
Trump’s worst tendencies in check. Now we’ll see how strong the American system
really is. There is this story from the Constitutional
Convention of 1787. When it ended, Ben Franklin walked out of
Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to find this anxious crowd. And there was a woman from Philadelphia who was the first to speak to him. And she asked "Well, doctor, what have
we got, a republic or a monarchy?" And Franklin’s reply is really famous: "A republic,”
he said. “If you can keep it." If we can keep it. We have lost something Franklin had: a sense
that this is an experiment, and it can fail, things can, truly go wrong. And I think one lesson of Trump is we need
to rediscover that catastrophic imagination, because there is a big flaw at the center
of America’s democracy, and Trump found it, and he used it, and other people are going
to find it and use it too. This election is close. Close enough that something small could have
completely thrown it — if Trump were just a bit more self-disciplined, if he hadn’t
bragged about sexual assault while wearing a microphone, if Clinton’s pneumonia had
lingered a bit longer, America would be ruled by a cruel narcissist with authoritarian ambitions. And when I say authoritarian ambitions, I
mean it. One of the truly important things we’ve learned
about Trump is that he he admires dictators for being dictators. He was asked about Vladimir Putin, and said: "He's running his country, and at least he's
a leader, unlike what we have in this country." "Yeah but again, he kills journalists that don't agree with him." About North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, he said: He goes in and he takes over, he's the boss. It's incredible." And here Trump was on Saddam Hussein: "He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights." The thing to note there is it’s not just
that Trump admires authoritarians. What he admires about them is that they are authoritarians. He likes that they dispense with niceties like a free press, due process,
and political opposition. Trump has promised to bring this perspective to
America. He says he’ll jail Hillary Clinton if he’s
elected. He wants to strengthen libel laws to make
it easier to cow the press. During rallies, he pushed his followers
to assault protestors, and promised to pay their legal fees if they get arrested. Imagine someone like that with the power to pardon. So even if we dodge the bullet, we still need to understand how it is that we as a country came to be standing in front of a gun. It would’ve been no surprise to the Founding
Fathers that Americans have proven susceptible to the charms of a demagogue. In Federalist 10, James Madison wrote that “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices,
or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain
the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of 
the people.” That is Founding Father speak for, "yeah, demagogues are appealing." They can win elections. And then they can betray the very people who elected them. That’s why we have a representative government,
not a democracy. It’s part of why the American presidency
is so weak. They always saw the popular will as
a point of failure, a weakness. And it is credit to the long success of the
political institutions they created that we think dangerous men can only win elections in far-off lands. But what’s happening here, what's happening now is that our institutions are weakening. And that’s where we have to turn to understand
Trump. To our institutions. Donald Trump did two things to get this close to the presidency. The first was that he won the Republican primaries. The second is that after winning the primaries,
he united the Republican party behind him. These are not the same thing, even though they're often conflated. Trump only had 13.8 million votes when he won the Republican primaries. The distance between those 13.8 million votes and the more than 60 million votes he's expected to get in the election is vast. In 1972, for instance, George McGovern won
the Democratic primary even though much of of the Democratic Party hated him. Major Democratic interest groups, like the
AFL-CIO, refused to endorse him in the general election, and top Democrats, including former
governors of Florida, Texas, and Virginia, organized “Democrats for Nixon.” McGovern went on to lose with less than 40
percent of the vote, a dismal showing driven by Democrats who abandoned a nominee they
considered unacceptable. A similar path was possible for Trump. Top Republicans viewed
him with horror. "This man is a pathological liar. A narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen." "Donald Trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded." "Donald Trump is a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag. A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president." And then every single one of those Republicans endorsed Donald Trump. So did Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell It is not surprising with this kind of elite support that Trump managed to get Republican-leaning voters behind him. The final NBC/WSJ poll of the election found
that 82 percent of likely Republican voters were supporting Trump — a precise match for the 82 percent of likely Democratic voters supporting Clinton. There are two things to say about this. The first is moral. There are many Republicans who honestly believe
Trump would make a good, or at least adequate, president; their endorsement of his candidacy
is perfectly honorable, even if I think it wrongheaded. But many of the Republicans mentioned here
believe Trump is a threat to world peace and to fundamental norms, values, and institutions
of American democracy; their endorsements of his candidacy will stain their
careers, and if he is elected, and if the worst comes to pass, they will be remembered
by history for their abandonment of country. But the second thing that needs to be said here is structural. And, believe it or not, that’s where it actually gets scary. Here is the single most important sentence
for understanding both Trump’s rise and this dangerous era in American politics: That sentence comes from political scientist Julia Azari,
and her point is this: Parties, and particularly the Republican Party, can no longer control
whom they nominate. But once they nominate someone — once they nominate anyone, even Donald Trump — that person is guaranteed the support of both the party’s elites and
its voters. Let’s look at that in two pieces. First, how did parties lose control of their
primaries? Primaries used to not matter
that much...party officials made the decisions that counted at the conventions, where they had almost total control. But we’ve moved in recent decades towards primaries, they're more democratic, they give voters more of a voice. That's made parties and party officials less important. But one way parties kept influence in primaries was through money. Party organizations, they signal to party donors which candidates to back, who to take seriously. But money turned out to be much less important
to winning primaries than anyone thought — just ask Jeb Bush, who spent $130 million only
to be humiliated, even as Trump spent almost nothing to win. Similarly, parties used to drive media attention
by signaling to reporters which candidates to take seriously. But that process has also democratized — just
look at Trump’s twitter feed, and how it can drive news coverage on its own. But the most important thing parties have
is the trust of their voters. That’s why endorsements matter...They represent
party officials using the credibility they have built with their supporters to tell them whom to vote for. Trump didn’t have any Republican endorsements
of note until he had already won a bunch of primaries. And that arguably helped him — it was proof
that he really was untouched and untainted by the unpopular Republican establishment. That Republican elites have so totally lost the faith of their base that their efforts to persuade Republican voters were ignored at
best and counterproductive at worst is a tremendous failure of the Republican Party. So that's how the party loses control of its primaries. But then there's a puzzle: If partisans
have so little faith in their party, then why are they so much likelier to back
whomever their party nominates? The answer, in short, is fear and loathing
of the other party. In 1964, 31 percent of Republicans had cold,
negative feelings toward the Democratic Party, and 32 percent of Democrats had cold, negative
feelings toward the Republican Party. By 2012, that had risen to 77 percent of Republicans
and 78 percent of Democrats. That is a lot more anger and fear toward the other party. Today, fully 45 percent of Republicans, and
41 percent of Democrats, believe the other party’s policies “threaten the nation’s
well-being.” This fear is strongest among the most politically
involved. Which makes sense: You're more likely to take
an active interest in American politics if you think the stakes are really high. But that means the people driving American
politics — and particularly the people driving low-turnout party primaries — have the most
apocalyptic view of the other side. The angrier and more fearful partisans are,
the more of a market there is for media that makes them yet angrier and yet more fearful. It is no accident that the CEO of Breitbart
News, a hyper-ideological conservative media outlet that specializes in scaring the hell
out of its audience, is leading Trump’s campaign. One reason Trump has been able to unite Republicans
is that Republican-leaning media has convinced itself, and its base, that the alternative
to Trump is a literal criminal who belongs in jail. This offers a rationale for voting Republican
even if you don’t particularly like your candidate: a majority of Trump voters say
they are voting against Clinton rather than for Trump. This helps explain the unified party support
for Donald Trump. Republican officeholders are terrified that
if they don’t support him, or are seen as in any way contributing to Clinton’s election,
they’ll face the wrath of their conservative base. So here, then, is the key failure point in
modern American politics, and observing it in action requires looking no further than
the Republican Party: Voters’ dislike of their own party has broken the primary process,
but fear of the opposition has guaranteed unified party support to the nominee. That means whoever manages to win a flawed
competition dominated by the angriest, most terrified partisans ends within spitting distance
of the presidency. Elites are often blamed for Trump’s rise
— he is said to be the backlash to their failures, their corruption, their obliviousness,
their self-dealing, their cosmopolitanism, their condescension. All that may be true, but past moments in
American politics have also featured angry voters, out-of-touch elites, and social problems. Those moments, however, featured political
and media gatekeepers with more power, and so Trump-like candidates were destroyed in
primaries, or at conventions, or by a press that paid them little mind. Now, however, traditional gatekeepers have
neither the power nor the cultural capital to stop Trump-like candidates. And in the Republican Party, where the collapse
of institutional authority is most severe and most dangerous, the aftermath of a Trump
loss will further weaken the party’s center, Trump’s supporters are going to turn on the Republican Party officials whose tepid backing they feel doomed their candidate. Sean Hannity has already called
Paul Ryan a “saboteur.” The country is on a fast path to becoming
majority minority, and many white male voters will continue to perceive this change as a
loss in both status and political power, which, in some ways, it is. Now it's not to say Republicans will always,
or even routinely, nominate candidates as dangerous as Trump. Much had to go wrong for him to be nominated. The lesson of this unnerving year is that
less can be taken for granted than we thought — the American people are not immune to
demagogues, and the American political system is too weakened to reliably stop them. America, like all the world’s other countries,
is vulnerable to catastrophic political failure. It can happen here. Trump is a crude and undisciplined demagogue. But we need to remember: The world also produces clever, disciplined
demagogues. And they are the ones who truly threaten republics. My ideas are simply this: America was built by and for the white Christian people of this nation! We have been seeing, really ever since Barack Obama first won election in late 2008, A growth in groups on the radical right. In the last year, though, Donald Trump has
added fuel to that fire in a very big way. Why the hell are you here?! Kim, why are you here? Why are you here, man? Why are you here? Al Gore and George Bush and people like Mitt
Romney, these people, they are all the same. They are all the same type of candidates. So it’s pretty interesting this year to
see something a little bit different. We support those nationalist principles like
closing the borders and things of that nature. So we do support those things, but we are
not going to come out and endorse him. Donald Trump wants to bring back jobs to America! Give dignity to the American worker! It’s not that Trump is telling these groups
what to think. They have had their own white supremacist
ideology for many decades now. What Trump is doing is legitimizing. I came here to speak on behalf of Donald Trump. I’ve never met the man. But I can tell that he has nothing but the
best interests of this country at heart. Some of the things that he is saying are issues
that we have been tackling for years now. We talk about globalism, we talk about America
first, these sort of things, bringing back American jobs. These are the things that he is hitting on. So it’s put a lot of our… Nationalism is sort of becoming mainstream. All we want is to change America back to what
it was! We do want to see whites rise and have our
own state in this country. I do think that Trump will probably help the
movement grow as a whole. We may not see that reflected at rallies,
but I think we will see that reflected on the number of people who are engaging with
the ideas of the white supremacist movement. Whether that is electronically on the internet
or in actual person, in face-to-face encounters. I mean, we are all across the country gonna
be watching the polling places. Where we have chapters and where we have members,
we are going to be unofficially monitoring those polls in different parts of the country. Today’s Democratic Party believes government
has an important role to play in society. It fights against economic inequality. It advocates policies that battle racial and
gender discrimination. But it wasn’t always this way. The Democratic Party was once the party of
white supremacy, supporting slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. To understand how the party made such a huge
shift, you have to go back to the party’s origins in the mid-1820s, when it sprung up
supporting the presidential candidacy of a popular former general, Andrew Jackson. Jackson was an outsider challenging the political
establishment and elites of his day, and his critics disparaged him as a “jackass.” But Jackson embraced the animal as a symbol
of determination, and donkeys started appearing in newspapers to represent him and his followers. In the 1828 presidential election, which saw
record-breaking popular participation, Jackson won a landslide victory. So his supporters argued that they and not
the old elites represented the popular will of the country — and they started calling
themselves the Democratic Party. Jackson’s administration immediately began
expelling Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River, an issue that defined
the new administration. After he signed the Indian Removal Act into
law in 1830, five large tribes were rounded up and forcibly marched to territories and
camps further west. And Democrats’ ambitions didn’t stop there. In the 1840s, the party adopted the doctrine
of “manifest destiny” — the idea that Americans — white Americans — were divinely entitled to dominate the whole North American continent. Democratic president James K. Polk put this
idea into action, massively expanding US holdings by annexing Texas, acquiring Oregon, and winning
much of what’s now the southwestern US in a war with Mexico. But soon afterward, national politics devolved
into bitter controversy over whether new states entering the Union should be permitted to
allow slavery. Democrats said they should, since their support
base was strongest in the slaveholding South. Yet a new Northern party — the Republicans
— sprang up in opposition to expanding slavery any further. When Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidency,
the South seceded, and the Civil War began. Once the Civil War was over, the Republican
party was bitterly unpopular among white Southerners, who wanted to maintain their supremacy over
former slaves. So the Democratic Party promised to limit
federal government intervention on behalf of black citizens. Democrats became effectively the only political
party in the South, aided by intimidation and suppression of black voters. Democrats also won on the state and local
level leading to constant abuses of the rights of black citizens. As the 20th century began, the country was
changing, and the Democratic Party was changing too. A handful of individuals and corporations
had grown enormously rich and powerful, using their vast fortunes to influence politics. As a reaction to this, some reformers began
pushing an agenda of progressivism — arguing that the government would take more of a role
in regulating big businesses and improving ordinary people’s lives. At first, these progressive reformers were
present in both parties. But it was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who won
the presidency in 1912 and put much of this agenda into action, over Republican resistance. So the Democratic Party became the main home
for progressives, and Republicans became more the party of business. But it was the Great Depression of the 1930s
that sealed the Democratic Party’s new identity as the party of government activism. In an effort to combat the crippling economic
situation, President Franklin Roosevelt signed what was then the largest package of domestic
government projects in American History, calling calling it the New Deal. His administration dramatically expanded the
size of government. Yet the party was still split over race. By the mid-20th century, it contained Southerners
who staunchly supported segregation, liberal reformers trying to end it, and many politicians
happy to look the other way. But it was 1964 when the senate voted on the
anti segregation civil rights act that shows how the progressive reformers in the party
had gained the upper hand, steering the party away from its racists past towards equality. But the democrats in the south voted against
the civil rights act, remaining wedded to the idea of segregation. This chart shows the presidential vote of
black voters. Around the 1960s the Black voters who had
already been moving toward the Democratic party would begin overwhelmingly support Democrats
from then on, and conversely the republicans would take a huge hit in black voter support. Meanwhile, white Southerners, moved away from
the Democratic Party they had been loyal to for so long — in part because of race, but
also because of suspicion of big government and a desire to defend “traditional values”
against liberal activists. Democrats would go from dominating the South,
to losing almost all influence in the region. Thanks in part to this drop in popularity
among white voters, Democrats started losing elections, often losing by huge margins. But demographically, the US is becoming an
increasingly non-white country, and the democrats have had a comeback thanks in part to minority
voters. The huge influx of hispanic voters has especially
benefitted democrats. These demographic shifts helped the Democratic
Party, once the advocates of white supremacy and slavery to elect the first black president
in 2008, showing just how much the party had changed over the years. Yet it’s still not entirely clear where
the future of the Democratic Party will lie. But as America becomes more diverse, it’s
likely that the democratic party’s appeal among minorities will continue to be its strength
into the future. In October 2016, Wikileaks released over 33,000
pages of emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair. The Clinton campaign has refused to authenticate
individual emails provided by wikileaks, instead, saying correctly that the Russian government
appears to be behind the attack. There are no bombshells in these emails. If you were planning on voting for Hillary
Clinton, you’re probably still going to do so, and if you weren’t planning on voting
for Clinton, you probably won’t. That said, I think these emails will be really
concerning to a lot of liberals who fear and have already feared that Clinton is too close
to bankers on Wall Street. Sanders: Our job is to take on Wall Street,
not to take their money Bash: Secretary Clinton, the question was
about the transcripts of the speeches to Goldman Sachs. Why not release them? One of the ironies of this story is that we
know about these emails at all because the campaign itself did self-opposition research
to find what in her Goldman Sachs speeches could prove damaging should they leak. Among the stuff that’s gotten the most attention
is Clinton saying that Dodd-Frank, Obama’s signature initiative to reign in Wall Street,
was, quote, “passed for political reasons.” that doesn’t mean necessarily that her bank
regulation platform is any weaker than Donald Trump’s. It’s not, it’s much tougher. But for the left wing of the party, that sees
Clinton as already too close to a lot of these interests, this is just going to confirm those
suspicions. You can see aides in the emails, internally debating how
to make sure that her apparent tone deafness on Wall Street didn’t seep out into the
public. One example that really drives this home is
that right after the campaign launched, Bill Clinton was planning on giving a speech at
Morgan Stanley, and Clinton’s aides freaked out about this. They said this is something we shouldn’t
do and Hillary herself appeared to be okay with it. Now, again, if you are a Clinton fan, you
probably don’t think that’s a big deal, you probably think that Clinton and her husband
can march into Wall Street, say what they need to say, collect the money, and not change
their viewpoints at all. I have never, ever been influenced in a view or a vote by anyone who has given me any kind of funding. But it does speak to, I think, something that
we’ve long suspected, which is that Hillary herself doesn’t really see the political ramifications
for appearing close to Wall Street, or doesn’t care. Another piece of context that people really
should keep in mind is that if you’re going to hold Clinton herself to blame for a lot
of this stuff, you also have to find fault with Obama. Similarly, Republicans crying foul over this
is pretty rich. The Republican party has curried extensive
ties with big money donors, and for years maintained that it wasn’t influencing their
politicians. The emails also show that Clinton agreed
to go to Morocco in exchange for a $12 million donation to the Clinton Global Initiative. Now, Clinton herself wasn’t Secretary of
State at this time. There’s no reason to believe that there
was a quid pro quo in which she promised to do a government favor in exchange for something
that the Moroccan government wanted. But it does, again, add to this idea that
Clinton was more likely to meet with people who gave lots of money to her husband’s
private charity. We should be very clear, the Clinton Foundation
has done genuinely live-saving work all over the world. That said, it certainly won’t erase fears
from the left wing of the Democratic party that the reason people were giving to the
foundation was to curry favor with a potential Clinton white house. One of the interesting debates from the emails
has to do with the Cadillac Tax, which taxes luxury healthcare plans at a higher rate than
other plans. You can see from the internal debates in the
emails that the Cadillac Tax sharply divided Clinton’s team. On the one hand you had her political aides,
which were strongly urging her to back away from the Cadillac Tax in order to win the
endorsement of unions, who she needed in the Democratic primary. On the other hand, her policy aides clearly
thought that this was the right agenda, and urged her to support it. This is how all politicians operate. They take a policy position that they think
is good, and they weigh it against the political considerations. That said, getting a chance to see how that
works yourself can sometimes be an ugly sight. Okay, here you go, Mr. President. Oh, are you the new speechwriter? Uh, yeah, sure. New speechwriter. Okay, we're live in three... two... one... My fellow Americans – but mostly the dudes. We need to talk about some stuff,
just between us, from one Broseph Gordon-Levitt
to another – 2016 has been a really f****** annoying
year for women. And they've put up with a lot of s***. Brock Turner, the Zika virus,
Ryan Gosling having a second baby. It's been tough. Donald Trump is accused of assaulting, groping,
or harassing 17 different women. Yet he's still got a serious shot at
sitting behind this desk. Wait, what's going on? This was supposed to be a budget speech. I don't know, some new, intrepid speechwriter? Sounds pretty smart and awesome to me. And now, the latest October surprise for the
first female candidate of a major party — is because of Anthony Weiner? Are you f****** kidding me? And look, it's not all bad for women this
year, like one woman had her wedding day photobombed
by a shirtless Justin Trudeau. But she's Canadian. And Canadian women always get all the good
stuff. Like no tax on tampons and ketchup-flavored
chips. A whole raft of Republican leaders have
abandoned the Trump ship, many in solidarity with their daughters or
wives after audio of Trump surfaced bragging
that he could grab them by the – are you seriously going to make
me say this? So, fellow broskies: Maybe let's stop mentioning the fact that
we have sisters, mothers, and wives when we oppose sexual assault. You don't have to have a wife to know
women are people. I don't know any robots, but I still
wept during WALL-E. Women don't need your pity. They need you to treat them as equal
members of society. And to stop explaining why it's actually
pronounced "jif." Actually, the guy who invented it
pronounces it "jif" – Shhhhh! And just so we're all on the same page, "nasty woman" is a compliment. If you don't think you're a nasty woman, just try being a little more successful and
you'll get there. Just look at me. I am such a nasty woman. And one day,
you can be one too. And another thing – Oh, man, he's going off script! Wait, you did this? Donald Trump doesn’t represent all men. In fact, he gives decent, respectful men
a bad name. We men need to lead by example. And set our own definition of what
masculinity is. Not let some sleazy reality host define
what it is to be a man. Huh. I never thought about it that way. Thank you, my fellow Americans. God bless America. And God bless Beyoncé. And we're out. How'd I do? Um, it  was good. I mean, you could've smiled more. Should I say anything? "Ahmed Ahmed take one?" Boo! I played a terrorist in the movie "Executive Decision." [“Executive Decision” clip] I played a terrorist on the sitcom "Roseanne." [Clip:] "Nothing you can do will make me talk!" [Clip:] "Oh, really?" [Clip:] [Scream] In a film called "Steel Sharks," I played this evil, Persian submarine commander. All my lines were like "I'll kill you in the name of Allah!" You know, or like "Off with their head!" [Clip:] "Your time has come, American." You always see the same guys at every audition. You can hear the actor in the audition room with the door shut. You know "I'll kill you in the name of Allah! I'll kill you!" [Muffled] And the door opens up, and the guy's like "Thank you very much for having me in." "Hope to get the part, see you on set!" Yah know. There was never the Arab friend. Never the Arab doctor on "ER." They never had like the guy like me. I'm about as American as you come. I called my agent one day and I said, "Don't call me for these terrorist parts anymore." And the phone stopped ringing. I started waiting tables at a restaurant. The restaurant I worked at didn't serve great food. So I had to make people laugh in order to get the tips that I was trying to get. That's when I made the decision that I can be a stand up comedian. "The very funny, Ahmed Ahmed!" [Ahmed Clip:] "And my parents are practicing Muslims, so they pray five times a day." [Ahmed Clip:] "and my American friends always walk into my house when my parents are in mid-prayer." [Ahmed Clip:] "Like, 'Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed, what'd you lose?" [Ahmed Clip:] "'What's going on over there?'" [Ahmed Clip:] "What're you looking for?" Slowly but surely, you start picking up tricks of the trade. I spent a lot of time in the comedy clubs, sitting in the back of the room til' two in the morning. Just watching and studying comics. I became friends with Mitzi Shore who owns the little famous Comedy Store. She became almost like a mentor, grandmother. And then September 11th happened. Right after September 11th, a lot of hate crimes were happening. Mitzi said, "I'm gonna open the club this Friday, you have to go on and talk about being Arab." and my opening joke was, "My name really is Ahmed Ahmed." "I had nothing to do with it." "Just telling you so you don't follow me out to my car after the show." [Ahmed Clip:] "I got to the airport, man, I checked my bags and the guys said," [Ahmed Clip:] "Are these your bags?' I said 'Yes.'" [Ahmed Clip:] "He says 'Did you pack them yourself?' I said, 'Yes.'" [Ahmed Clip:] "And they arrested me." [Ahmed Clip:] [Laughter] I worked with a couple other comedians, Arab and Middle Eastern guys. We started touring around. We went all over America, we ended up going to the Middle East. Selling out 20,000 tickets, in five countries, in thirty days. We were the first ever Middle Eastern comedy show on Comedy Central. [Ahmed Clip:] "If you think about it, both Jews and Muslims have more in common than any other religion ever." [Ahmed Clip:] "Both Jews and Muslims don't eat pork, we don't celebrate Christmas," [Ahmed Clip:] "We both yell on the phone when there's no emergency." [Ahmed Clip:] [Laughs] Stand-up comedy allowed me to have a voice to talk about being Muslim in a funny way, without having it be imposing or threatening. I had a woman come up to me one night after a show and said, "Are you really a Muslim?" I said "Yeah," she said "You're wearing a nice suit and you have a smile on your face." I was like... [laughs] The impressions that America is getting, the negative impressions of Muslims, it's not good. I get profiled all the time. If you Google my name, "Ahmed Ahmed," there's a guy from Egypt who pops up, who's a terrorist, who kinda looks like me. He's a lot shorter with a mustache, he looks like a porn star actually. But he has all these aliases he goes by, and the first two are "Ahmed Ahmed" and "Ahmed the Egyptian." I'm like... I gotta find this guy, cause he's ruining my life. They all think that I'm him. And then it dawned on me, maybe he's in the Middle East googling me like, "Hey bro, look! There is this this comedian in America, who's using my name." Like random Arabs walk up to him. "Bro, you're so funny! I saw you on YouTube, tell me a joke." He's like "I'm not a comedian!" If someone was looking to rig a major election, they probably would not want to start in the United States. That’s because the system we have for casting and counting ballots is extraordinarily difficult to tamper with. Because the constitution gives the states the primary authority to set their own election rules. So, the presidential election is really 51
separate elections. One for each state and the District of Columbia. And those 51 elections? They’re actually
thousands of elections that are administered at the country or town level. This decentralized system makes it nearly
impossible to “rig” an election in favor of one presidential candidate. In order to really influence the outcome,
you’d have to to rig a whole lot of elections. The safeguards start even before you set foot in the voting booth. Because before you can vote, you need to register. You fill out a form with your name, signature, and identifying information, which is added to a giant list of all registered voters
in your state. Those voter rolls are periodically checked
for accuracy. On election day, you show up to your polling
place. Depending on what state you live in, you might show the poll workers your ID, or sign a book, or state your name and address. Now, if someone wanted to try to vote more than once, or pretend to be somebody else, they’d have to convince the poll workers. Which is a risky strategy, because if they
get caught, they’re looking at jail time and big fines. Depending on where you live, you’ll either vote using a paper ballot with an optical
scanner, or what’s called a direct-recording electronic machine, or DRE for short. DREs are more vulnerable to hacking, but each machine is tested ahead of time by local election officials, who are supervised by local representatives from both political parties, then the machines are locked and sealed until election day. These machines aren’t connected to the internet, so if someone wanted to “hack” them, they’d have to break them open in person. Over 70% of Americans will vote with a paper ballot and an optical scanner which reads and adds your vote to its internal
count. The scanner keeps your ballot, and lets you
know your vote has been counted. After the polls close on election night,
Both the DRE’s and the optical scanners print out multiple copies of their internal
tallies. The poll workers — again, working in pairs, and overseen by poll watchers from both parties — count up the totals from each machine. The poll workers send the results to the county board of elections, who sends them on to the state board of elections, who reports them to the media. Even if someone did manage to mess up the
reported totals, either on purpose or by accident, the printouts from the machines would prove
them wrong. And many states conduct audits of random precincts,
where they hand-count ballots or DRE receipts to verify that the machines counted them properly. To “rig” a presidential election, you
would need to conspire with lots of people, from both political parties, who are willing
to risk federal prison, or you would need the ability to break in and physically alter
a ton of voting machines. Which might make a good movie plot, but it's
extremely unlikely in real life. Who are you consulting with consistently so that you're ready on day one I'm speaking with myself number one because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things stabilizing dangerous, dangerous to United States dangerous to the world order if you will Here to explain at Donald trump's foreign policy Oh boy, don't do that to me it's very easy think about trump as basically just saying incoherent things we talk about the world in part because he often does I would bomb the shit out of em the issue though is that when you look underneath all of that he had he has a world it's actually fairly clear for donald trump his worldview is transactional if you pay a lot of money the US will help you if you don't pay a lot money US won't and really is that simple we are being ripped off by everybody in there with defending other countries we are spending a fortune doing it they have to bargain of the century you need to take those ideas seriously and to engage with them and say let's assume it's president trump let's look at the fact that of all the things a president can and cannot do foreign affairs foreign policy is the area where he has the freest hand he doesn't need Congress when I heard that we were first going into Iraq some very smart people told me well we're actually going for the oil I said alright I get that I get that there's nothing else I get it we should take it and pay ourselves back what what are we doing Trump's idea of taking the oil speaks to two things really about the way that he views the world the first one is that he sees basically everything through the lens of what does America get out of it they pay us peanuts we're defending them the second part is that trump thinks of good for the United States as controlling stuff I say keep the oil keep the oil I mean we could theoretically do it but Iraqis wouldn't just give the oil to Americans almost certainly would fight a war thousands of people would die it would be an immensely complicated and dangerous occupation dwarfing even the 2003 Iraq invasion the two years I've been telling you take the oil hit the oil bomb the oil he thinks of things in this narrow mercantilist what's good for me is when I own stuff and sell it to you good deals versus bad deal are we gonna take the oil how are we going to do that just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil that foreign policy is about managing your relationship with other countries it's not just about dominating them more to the point we don't believe in imperialism as a mode of governance in the old days when we won a war to the victor belong to the spoils the twenty eight countries of NATO many of them aren't paying their fair share one that bothers me because we should be... were defending them that they should at least be paying us what they're supposed to be paying the issue of the NATO countries promised to pay certain out their GDP towards defense other than the U. S. almost no countries doing so trump says they're not paying their fair share he's right and it is too expensive because we can't afford this anymore and people are being brought in for a free ride where it's dangerous is how we take that to an extreme and extreme isn't therefore NATO should pay more therefore if Russia invades or we'll rethink when we come to the defense of NATO countries if they don't make us whole they may have to defend themselves in the NATO charter itself is one article in particular called article five I don't think he knows what article 5 is which says that if you attack any NATO member the other twenty seven NATO countries have to come to its defense What Donald Trump is saying is that that core mission of NATO not only doesn't necessarily matter as much but it's something that can be tossed aside NATO exists solely to deter Russia I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible absolutely possible for Vladimir Putin this is his top strategic goal in many ways they have spent twenty years trying to weaken NATO and what Donald Trump is saying is I'll give that to you he's not going into Ukraine okay just so you understand he's not going to Ukraine you can mark it down you can put it down you can take it anyways are Well he's already there isn't he? What you have Donald Trump saying about Vladimir Putin it is astounding if he says great things about me I'm gonna say great things about him with Vladimir Putin is to Donald Trump is a model of a good leader a model of an effective leader and a model the popular leader he's running his country and at least he's a leader you know unlike what we have in this country it's a very scary model and any aspect of it that Vladimir Putin does right now that Donald Trump would like to do would mean an America that we would not recognize. well he does have an eighty two percent approval rating he's also a guy who annexed Crimea invaded Ukraine supports Assad in Syria supports Iran North Korea's has nukes Japan has a problem with that I mean they have a big problem with it maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea with nukes? we would be better off including with nukes yes including with nukes and South Korea with nukes South Korea is right next door instead of having South Korea Japan and other allies develop their own nuclear weapons programs they rely on our nuclear forces if they're attacked they don't have to worry about having their own nuclear weapons because they know for a fact that we will come to their aid we extend our nuclear umbrella over them what trump is saying is that we should withdraw that for decades one of the bedrock of American foreign policy has been stopping nuclear proliferation and specifically providing security to some of our allies in exchange for at least in part that they not seek nuclear weapons that's been true under all the administrations Republican and Democrat Donald Trump is promoting a new policy with Trump you have him wanting to withdraw nuclear umbrella which means that our allies Japan and South Korea are more likely to want to try to develop their nuclear weapons because they feel threatened and they don't have that guarantee anymore our alliance with Japan and the Republic of Korea has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation and conflict it would completely destabilize the kind of security structure that we've had in East Asia for the last several decades  the person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally that also means that we no longer really have influence there so we can use the fact that we are your security guarantee we are your backers and we have your back we can use that to say okay but we need you to do X. Y. and Z. with this long hellish election finally coming to a close it's been easy throughout I think this is a reason Donald Trump has done as well as he has done to just laughed at his funnier comment seems a bit of a buffoon and a clown and just not engage with what he says any serious level and that's a disservice that's dangerous especially in foreign policy because that's where president trump would have to freest hand to do what candidate trump says he would do What if you could analyze the odds behind
fairy tale coincidences that people forward in email? Like the twins who died on the same day, or
the woman who won the lottery four times. It's hard not to share the amazement yourself,
but there's always more than meets the eye. “So with any of these stories, what you
are told is the outer shell. Think of it as a walnut shell,
or I like to think of it as a Russian Troika doll, and you have to try to understand what
is behind that shell or the first doll.” That’s Joseph Mazur, and he’s not a folklorist. Or a novelist. “My position is
Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Marlboro College.” How a mathematician approaches stories like
those emails can teach us something about the coincidences in our lives. So let’s tell a story. In 1929, an American named Anne Parrish went
to Paris with her husband (that’s why you’re hearing this French-sounding music). On one sunny June Sunday,
they went to mass at Notre Dame. They visited the bird market. They had lunch at Deux Magots. And Anne went for a stroll. She ended up at a book stall along the Seine
and found Helen Wood’s children’s book, “Jack
Frost and Other Stories.” She haggled, but it was worth a franc because
it had been her favorite book as a child growing up in America. She rushed back to her husband to show him. He turned the pages. And he found a child’s writing scrawled
in the front: “Anne Parrish, 209 North Weber Street, Colorado
Springs” That book she bought, an ocean away from home
was the very same book she’d cherished as a child. How could that be anything but fate? “What you’re doing is you’re looking
for the hidden variables. You’re never told, in the initial story,
the hidden variables.” “I started to dig, and I looked into how
could that book have gotten to the stall at that particular time, just when Anne Parrish
was walking through the stalls. How is that possible?” “When you start to dig, you find biographies.” Anne Parrish wasn’t just a random person. Her mother was friends with Mary Cassatt,
the famous impressionist painter who moved to Paris. That could easily be how the book traveled
across the Atlantic - through Mary. But Anne Parrish’s husband is also a key
detail. “Charles Corliss is important in this story. In this case he happened to be a very wealthy
industrialist.” That wealth made it more likely for Anne Parrish
to do what most Americans of the time didn’t — sip wine near the Seine, after a 5 day
boat trip all the way to Europe. And Paris was one of the most likely destinations. Mary Cassat died in 1926, just three years
before Anne visited Paris. Her estate was probably liquidated, meaning
Anne’s book went on the market. And for English books in Paris, sellers didn’t
have many options. “What are the book stores in Paris? There are only two in those years: It was
Shakespeare & Company and the Paris book stalls.” Another missing detail? Anne Parrish was a children’s book author
herself. So that was the first section she’d check
when browsing books. With all these facts together, you can start
to make some estimates. How likely is it that Anne would go to Paris
in 1929? Joe Mazur guesses .1 - a tenth. He looked at Anne’s actual travel records
and saw that she and her husband went to Paris every two years, like clock work. Ten to one odds she’d go to Paris in 1929
is actually pretty conservative. The likelihood of her visiting bookstalls? Conservatively it’s .3. She was an author on a long trip! There’s definitely a one in three chance
she’d browse for some books. And the likelihood the book would be in those
stalls in the first place? With all those factors together, it’s probably
.01 - one in a hundred. Multiply them out, and the odds in favor of
her finding that book aren’t a miracle. They’re about 3331 to 1. The odds for getting a four of a kind in poker?
4,164 to 1. “ I could be dealt that in, let’s say
an hour’s worth of playing poker.” “Yes, I’m getting numbers, but they’re
very approximate numbers. These are stories that are human stories. If you start to mathematize these stories,
you are breaking it down too far and you are approximating things that probably are not
really true..” “I make approximations, but deep down in
the set of Russian Troika dolls, it’s endless. You don’t get the real kernel doll that
doesn’t open any more.“ “In these stories, those kernel dolls keep
opening and opening. And, I mean, I’m not sure it goes to infinity,
but it surely goes very deep.” The most important variable might be if you’re
curious enough to open the first one. Thanks a lot to Joe Mazur for talking to me
about his book, and thanks to Alexander Woollcott, who wrote the New Yorker article that gave
us Anne Parrish’s story. So I’ll close this video the same way he
closed that 1932 article: “Somewhere in fahtomless space a star chuckled — chuckled
and skipped in its course.” Good stuff, Alexander. This is a map of Yellowstone National Park. For the most part the park is in Wyoming, but it extends a bit into Montana and Idaho. This little 50 square miles section in Idaho is what concerns us. It's called the zone of death, because of a loophole that exists in the Constitution of the United States. If someone were to exploit that loophole they might be able to get away with murder. Yellowstone was established in 1872 before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana joined the Union. It's federal land and always has been, but federal land across the U.S. is split up and divided into its corresponding state district courts. Except for Yellowstone. And this is where the loophole begins. Law professor Brian C. Kalt points out in his 2005 paper, "The Perfect Crime", that Yellowstone National Park was assigned fully to Wyoming's district court, even though small portions fall into Montana and Idaho. "Unlike every other district, the district of Wyoming includes land in other states." So Kalt asks the question: what happens if you're caught for a crime you committed in that 50 square mile Idaho region of the park? The first thing law enforcement would do is bring you to Cheyenne, the hub of the district court of Wyoming, because the crime technically happened within Wyoming's jurisdiction. But Article 3 Section 2 of the United States Constitution says that the trial should happen in the state where you committed the crime. If you're a savvy murderer you'll invoke your right to a trial in Idaho. So they bring you back to Idaho no big deal. "In the sixth amendment they said that they would require local juries and the language they use is that the jury has to be from the state and district where the crime was committed." This is called the Vicinage Clause. That leaves you with a sort of venn diagram. You have the right to demand jury from that middle area, where the state in which you committed the crime, that's Idaho, overlaps with the judicial jurisdiction where you committed the crime: the Wyoming district that has jurisdiction over Yellowstone National Park. And here's the problem: "nobody lives there. There's there's no way for them to give you a trial and so I argue they should have to let you go." This could also happen in the Montana portion of the park, except a few dozen people do live there, so a jury could theoretically be called. Kalt has proposed numerous solutions to Congress to fix the loophole, but they have yet to act. "All they have to do is redraw the district line so that the district of Wyoming is Wyoming, the district of Idaho is Idaho, and the district of Montana is Montana and if they do that this all goes away." So if you're planning a gathering of your adversaries, exes, and debtors, maybe try Yosemite. Throughout this election, pundits
and analysts have wondered whether identity groups like millennials,
women, Latinos might come out to vote. But what about a group of Americans who desperately
want to vote — but often can’t? I’m talking about Americans living with
disabilities. Voting is a pain in the butt. That’s Victor Pineda, an award-winning scholar and disability
rights activist. Victor was able to vote in 2008,
but not without great difficulty. Because he uses a wheelchair, Victor had to
wait for 30 minutes outside a fraternity while poll workers scrambled to find an
accessible voting booth. The solution that poll workers ultimately
came up with was to have Victor forgo his privacy rights and vote from the sidewalk. Yes, I voted, but it did not make me feel
like I was voting privately, nor with dignity, when I was trying to express
myself like everybody else. Each one of us wants to feel like we belong. And having to have this sort of
cumbersome process — it just makes you feel like you’re an afterthought. But Victor’s story is not an isolated incident. According to a 2013 study by Rutgers University, a third of the estimated 35 million American
voters with disabilities say that they experienced some trouble voting
in the 2012 election. The same study found that almost half of polling
places examined had accessible voting systems that weren’t easy to navigate for voters with
a disability. In the time that I spent with these voters,
I found it extremely difficult to even find one person that didn’t have an embarrassing story about
a voting experience. But this time I had trouble voting because
there was only one wheelchair-accessible booth. They moved it to a gas station. It was really very precarious for somebody
in a wheelchair. And these stories aren’t just anecdotal. According to UC Davis researcher Mindy Romero, people with disabilities tend to have lower
voter turnout rates, partly because of these barriers to access
that other Americans take for granted. Voters with disabilities, it’s a population
that is very determined to be seen and be represented, but they do have lower turnout levels. Issues with voting range from: difficulty in reading the ballot, difficulty in knowing where the polling site
was. We talked to a couple of people that had experiences,
they were blind, they walked into the polling site, and they
were told there wasn’t a machine. And what’s most shocking is not only the
frequency at which these problems occur, but how easily preventable they are. And we aren’t talking about a major overhaul
of the entire voting system. We’re talking about small fixes, like training
staff to use a machine or ensuring that there are ramps on site. And the Rutgers study shows that if Americans
with disabilities voted at the same rate as non-disabled Americans, there could be 3 million extra people voting. That’s an amount that has the power to swing
an election. And compounding this problem with access
is isolation. People with disabilities are more likely to
be isolated, and this makes navigating the voting process
even harder. There’s a lot of people who have disabilities
who don’t have relationships, they don’t have transportation, they don’t
have employment. I think voting is very complicated. A lot of people, even professionals, are overwhelmed
by voting. So people that the education level is not
as high might have problems with voting as well. We need help with transportation because in
LA we’re the road rage capital of the United
States. And although voting by mail seems like the
solution to all these ills, it doesn’t solve the biggest problem facing
people with disabilities, which is invisibility. I’ve voted in every presidential election
and primary since I was 18, and I’m 51 now. I have a disability and I have rights and
I’m part of the community like everybody else. So I like to exercise my right to vote. For me, it was important that they saw me. It’s really important that people with disabilities
come out. And it’s not just physical barriers that
prevent people with disabilities from exercising their right to
vote. For instance, David Rector used to be a producer
at NPR and, after suffering a brain injury, lost
his ability to vote because he was assigned a guardian. He is fighting for his right to vote despite
being well informed and desperate to vote in what has become a high-stakes election,
to say the least. And of course, the voting system being ill-prepared
for people with disabilities is a larger metaphor for the priorities of
a political system that fails to prioritize the needs of disabled Americans. Despite the fact that they make up 20% of
the population. And our media has been a culprit too. When Hillary Clinton made a push to appeal
to disabled voters, the Washington Post labeled the effort as
“unusual.” So what’s the solution to this problem? We need to see people with disabilities, but
actually see them. And in order to do that, we need to adapt
our world to make that inevitable. We need to build environments with
people with disabilities in mind and adapt public spaces to them,
not the other way around. I’d actually challenge you to say that we’re
not a minority. We’re actually part of every single community
that exists. And what probably is holding us back is the
stigma that is associated with disability. Most people look at it as a problem to fix
or something tragic or a burden, when really it’s just a normal, natural
part of life. Voting is the bedrock of democracy. Americans have fought tooth and nail for the
rights of African Americans and women to vote. There’s no reason why Americans who
are differently abled should be left out of exercising that same
fundamental right. During a pivotal election where both candidates
have such contrasting positions on people with disabilities, feels like a good time to ensure that they
all get a say in who gets the keys to the White House. these candidates really don't like each other Americans agree they don't like them either and that means many voters might just stay home this election according to Gallup a lower percentage of young people said they definitely plan to vote this year compared to the last four general elections but this election is not just about the president Americans will also decide on other elected officials and important ballot measures first there's Congress Republicans have controlled legislature ever since they won the house in 2010 in Senate in 2014 with that control they've blocked Obama from advancing his agenda on issues like gun control immigration and a Supreme Court vacancy you might remember the government shutdown of 2013 yeah that too but thanks to Trump's ongoing scandals and attacks on his own party many down pallette Democratic candidates are gaining more momentum than they were expecting in fact control of both the House and Senate might be in play in states like New York Texas and Arizona so-called battleground congressional districts are up for grabs and there are at least nine competitive Senate seats the agenda of a president Trump or a President Clinton may depend on who shows up to vote in these down ballot races then there's state governments 80% of State Legislative seats and twelve governorships are on the ballot this year since the 2010 midterms Republicans have been dominating state level politics where they've increased abortion restrictions curtailed labor unions and passed tax and spending cuts crucially state legislators will also redraw US congressional district boundaries in 2021 at that time whoever controls the states will have a huge impact on national politics for years to come you could check out our video on gerrymandering to see how that works so votes matter down here and it's not just politicians on the ballot in some states you can vote directly on policies four states are voting on health care measures including one to create the nation's first single-payer system in Colorado five states are voting on minimum wage proposals for that would increase the minimum wage and one that would decrease it for minors four states are voting on gun control measures in five states are deciding whether to join Washington Oregon and Colorado and legalizing marijuana including California where twelve percent of the country lives now here's the bottom of the ballot where you might vote on local politics these votes effect governance of utilities bond issues and other items but let's go back to one section that I really want to highlight judges by pouring money into these races special interest groups have been able to swing elections for judges that will decide in their favor on issues like same-sex marriage in Alabama coal lawsuits in West Virginia and fracking in Pennsylvania in Kansas five Supreme Court justices are up for attention which is a yes/no vote on whether they get to keep their job four of the five have ruled in favor of repealing anti-abortion laws passed by the state legislature unhappy with their decisions pro-life activists are lobbying to get them off the bench this election so they can be replaced with a socially conservative majority so for those of you who don't like Donnell the Hillary there is still a lot you can influence with your boat yes it might take a little bit of research but it can go a long way to learn more about what's on your ballot into research voting records make sure to click the links below [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 2015 this man Joshua Boyle wrote a letter to his parents in Canada telling them his wife Caitlin had just given birth to a son he wrote that he delivered the baby himself in the dark holding a flashlight in his mouth this was the second time that Caitlin had given birth while the couple was being held captive by the Taliban in the remote mountains of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border in late August of 2016 the families released a really startling video videos have come out at different points showing this couple what was unique in this video is for the first time Caitlin Coleman explicitly said there have been threats to her entire family and by implication to her children willing to kill us willing to kill women to kill children so why would the Taliban keep this family alive for so long it doesn't fit with what we're used to seeing on the news these barbaric images of Western hostages killed in the name of an ideology we often conflate Taliban al Qaeda Islamic state and we think that they're all kind of the same and they're not the Taliban thinks they can get something out of keeping this family alive it's a mindset that sets them apart from other militant groups and it's key to understanding how they operate Coleman Boyle and their children are being held by a Taliban affiliate group known as the Haqqani network the Haqqani has got their start in the 1980s like the Taliban they were part of the rebel group known as the Mujahideen who fought against the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979 the Mujahideen was armed and financed by the CIA you'll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail and you'll have your homes and your mosques back again because your cause is right and God is on your side the Mujahideen drove out the Soviets in 1989 then came years of civil war with Haqqani x' and other groups fighting to gain power makani's allied themselves with the Taliban when that group took control of the capital Kabul in 1996 the Taliban in the years before 9/11 were government they had ministries they had courts they had an army that all disappeared after 9/11 when we invaded bombed and basically broke the government the Taliban had set up in Afghanistan the Taliban wants to have that government back they see themselves at the rightful government of Afghanistan they want to run Afghanistan again since the us-led invasion the Taliban and Haqqani have worked together orchestrating kidnappings and bombings all with the goal of retaking the country in 2013 the Connie is negotiated in exchange with the US for an American service member named Bowe Bergdahl whom they captured four years earlier private first class Bowe Bergdahl was captured after leaving his base in Afghanistan for reasons that are still unclear the US government considered Bergdahl a prisoner of war rather than a hostage and secured his freedom by exchanging five Taliban prisoners who were held at the US base in Guantanamo Bay Cuba and with this latest video we get a glimpse of what the Taliban and the Haqqani are hoping to get out of holding Coleman and her family I told that the Afghan government is executed from among the prisoners they have taken of these men and that recently they hanged them and our captors are terrified at the thought of our own mortality approaching and saying that they will take reprisals on our family he's referencing six Taliban prisoners who the Afghan government put to death in May for their roles in a suicide bombing and when he talks about his captors being fearful for their own mortality he's likely talking about an AUSA Connie the son of the group's founder an Afghan judge sentenced him to death for helping raise money for the Haqqani network and it seems pretty clear what the Haqqani is and the Taliban want to trade Coleman Boyle and their family for a nossa Connie but in order for that to happen the US would have to do something it says it do no she ate with terrorists because although the Afghan Taliban is not on the US government's list of terrorist organizations the Haqqani network is the United States says again and again and again we do not negotiate with terrorists there will be no negotiation with terrorists of any kind no nation can negotiate with terrorists we didn't negotiate with terrorists and that's just empirically false the United States talks to terror groups all the time groups like the Taliban are seen as very rational groups groups like al-qaeda and especially the Islamic state are seen very very differently for Isis taking hostages is about fear and propaganda if they capture an American they wouldn't necessarily want to trade them more likely they'd want to kill them and unfortunately they'd want to kill them in as brutal a fashion as possible but the Taliban and the Haqqani --zz have very different goals from al Qaeda and the Islamic state the Taliban and the Haqqani --'s want to control Afghanistan unlike Isis and al Qaeda they have no interest in a worldwide Islamic caliphate no interest in attacking other countries no interest in inspiring lone wolf attacks halfway across the globe instead they're looking to make a deal you For some of you, the book that I’m holding may invoke some feelings of nostalgia. But, for others, maybe some feelings of inadequacy. These are Magic Eye stereograms. They created a sensation when they came out in the 90s, and it’s easy to see why — a 2D picture that creates a 3D image, if you do a certain thing with your eyeballs!? ELAINE: Look there’s a space ship. That is so cool! MR. PITTS: WHERE IS IT!? I feel like I didn’t realize back then how neat these are. But I do now, so let’s talk about it. Stereograms can be designed to be viewed cross-eyed
but all the ones in this video are for divergent viewing. That means that rather than having your eyes
pointed at the image itself, you’re supposed to over diverge your eyes, as if you’re
looking through the image at something beyond it. It’s tricky because normally the lens in
our eyes focuses on the thing our eyes are pointed at, but for these, you need to focus
on the image while pointing your eyes at a spot beyond it. Some stereogram books come with a handy guide — these two dots at the top should help position your eyes. You want to relax your eyes until you see
double vision, so 4 dots, but then pull it back so that they overlap and you get 3 dots. Then glance down and you should see the cathedral
of Saint Basil in Moscow. If you still can’t see them, there’s a
trick you can do in Photoshop. Duplicate the image and use the “difference”
blending mode — which highlights where the two images are the same — in black. Then if you pull the top copy across... A silhouette of the hidden image appears. I’ll explain how all this works, but first,
it helps to understand how Magic Eye emerged from a long history of research on visual
perception So, our pupils are about 60mm apart — that
means each eye gets a slightly different picture projected onto its retina. WAYNE: Camera 1. Camera 2. Camera 1. Camera 2. The reason we don’t have constant double
vision from these two different pictures is that the brain immediately combines them into one. And in doing so, it uses the differences in
the 2 pictures to add depth to our visual perception. This is stereopsis, or 3D vision,
and it was first described by an English inventor in the 1830s, Charles Wheatstone. It took scientists a while to realize that
having two eyes gives us depth information, because it’s not the only depth cue that we have. Shut one eye and it’s probably tough to
thread a needle but the world doesn’t become completely flat. Wheatstone revealed stereopsis with a device
that could display a slightly different image to each eye, simulating how each eye would
take in a real life 3D object, but with flat images. And it successfully tricked the brain into
perceiving depth. This was the first stereoscope. After the invention of photography, a Scottish
physicist named David Brewster developed a handheld stereoscope and a version of it was
displayed at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Queen Victoria was reportedly delighted by
it and before long it was a super common household item through the last half of the 19th century. The dual photos were made with stereo cameras,
which have two lenses spaced eye-distance apart, and they were used to document all
sorts of historical events. Stereo cameras eventually went out of style
but you might recognize this more modern version of a stereoscope. And that same principle of creating a 3D image
by showing each eye a slightly different picture continues with 3D glasses and virtual reality
headsets. But it’s not all for amusement. Stereoscopy has also been used for all sorts of aerial imaging applications. British photo interpreters in World War 2
used overlapping images taken from airplanes to detect Nazi military assets. This ability of stereoscopes to thwart camouflage
by making objects pop out of seemingly flat aerial images inspired the development of
the random dot stereogram — that’s the kind with a hidden 3D image. In 1960, a leading vision researcher named Bela Julesz created a computer-generated random-dot stereogram. He started with a grid of random dots and duplicated it, but in the copy, he shifted
a square patch of the dots slightly to the left, filling in the leftover space with
other random dots. If you look at these images through a stereoscope, or if you’ve trained your eyes enough to free-fuse the images by pointing one eye
at each one, you’ll see the square pop out from the random dots. With this experiment, Julesz showed that the
brain could detect depth even without any recognizable objects in the images. What’s different about the Magic Eye-type
of pictures, also known as “autostereograms” is that you don’t need any special device
to view them because it’s one image instead of two. Instead of two different pictures, autostereograms
repeat the images within one picture. To understand how these work, let’s first
look at a simpler type of autostereogram. This is a so-called “wallpaper stereogram.” It doesn’t have a hidden image. Instead, it just has repeating patterns that
appear at different levels of depth when you diverge your eyes. So relax your eyes as though you’re looking
through the screen and you should see the airplanes fall back with the rest of the grid. The dinosaurs, which are repeated at slightly closer intervals, should appear in a plane nearer to you and the cakes, repeated at even shorter intervals, should be even nearer. You should also see one more of each icon
than there really is — there are only 6 cakes in the image but you’re seeing 7. And all of the icons should appear to be slightly bigger than they really are. So why is this happening? This diagram shows the view from above your
head and these dots represent icons on a simple autostereogram like the one i just showed
you. When you let your eyes diverge, instead of
fixing them on one of the icons, each eye is seeing its own icon. Because your brain is used to turning two
similar pictures into one — it assumes the two icons are actually one icon that’s further back and larger, rather than two that are closer. This illusion happens across the image, with
every pair of repeated icons being wrongly interpreted as one. The right-most and left-most icons don't have pairs on their other side so you end up with 7 — 5 illusory icons plus the edge ones. Pairs that are repeated at closer intervals,
like the cakes were in the previous image, appear nearer to you. So it’s the interval of repetition that
can be manipulated to adjust depth. And if we go from icons to something smaller,
you can start to see how they build a 3D image that can be easily camouflaged with noise. You can see that in this stereogram we made
using letters instead of icons. If you diverge your eyes, you should see some
of these words pop out to reveal a message. The two asterisks are there as a guide — you should see 3 of them, and then slowly bring your eyes down. What’s happening is that the regular repetition interval in this image is 16 characters, including spaces. But in this interval, we removed a letter,
bringing this pair slightly closer together than all the other pairs. So as your brain fuses that pair, the
resulting image appears closer to you than the rest. Autosterograms start with a base pattern that repeats across the image but with select dots or pixels shifted to vary the depth and compose the 3D figure. The first random-dot autostereograms were
made by hand in the 1970s. This one by a Japanese graphic designer shows
an array of hidden squares and this one by a Swiss painter has overlapping rectangles. But by the 1980s, vision researcher Christopher
Tyler and programmer Maureen Clark had come up with an algorithm that could embed more
complicated depth images into a random-dot autostereogram. Using the red dots as a guide, you should
see a 3D surface pop out that’s much more complicated than a wallpaper or a simple rectangle. The algorithms that produce these images work from a depth map — that's a black and white image that tells the program to make the repetition interval shorter for the dots that make up the lighter, and nearer, parts of the image. In the final product you can’t tell which
dots have been shifted or how much, but if you go back to that Photoshop trick
and scan through the image — you can see how the nearest parts of the shark repeat at closer intervals than the most distant parts of the shark. Everything in the base image repeats at the
same interval, except the dots that make up the shark. In the 90s, artist Cheri Smith and engineer
Tom Baccei developed their own method, using bright colorful patterns as their base. They branded them as “Magic Eye” and published
the first of many books in 1993. After that, they were everywhere. “Hey can you see it? You gotta see it. You really gotta see it, come on give it a
try” Magic Eye put out VHS tapes that included
animated stereograms; they sold posters; they were printed in newspapers. And some people...got left behind. “I’ve been staring at this thing for a
week now, from opening to closing, and I can't see a gooddamn thing!” If you can’t see them, it may be that you have some visual impairment that affects your
stereo vision. But for most of us, learning to diverge your
eyes just takes a little bit of practice. “Today’s my day. I brought a lunch and a soda...
and I’m not going to leave until I see this sailboat everyone keeps talking about.” "In fact one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power,  and that  no  matter how hard fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to  the winner, not saying that you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner,  and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country  — are you saying you're  not prepared now to —"  "What I'm saying is that I will  tell you at the time, I'll keep you in suspense." "Well Chris,  let me respond to that because that's..." What she did here is actually visible in the polling: on the eve of the first presidential debate, she was up by 1.5 points. By the second, she's up by 5.6. By the third, it was over seven points and that is a a huge lead and not a normal one; most presidential debates actually don't move polls, it's very rare — if you look at the political science here — to find a debate series have actually has an enduring effect on the shape of the race. These ones did. Now, the way Clinton won is nontraditional, it's not the way we're used to candidates winning. We're used to candidates winning because they themselves did a good job, they delivered a brutal zinger they just killed on the answers. And Clinton did some of that, but the real way she won the the real achievement here and it is one of the most stunning political achievements in modern campaigning was it she figured out her opponents weaknesses and goaded him into basically completely collapsing. "To replenish the social —" "Such a nasty woman." She and her campaign analyzed Donald Trump, figured out what it was they could exploit, and then relentlessly ruthlessly did so. You can see it begin in in the first debate, she just started calling him "Donald." "Donald, it's good to be with you ." Nnobody really knows why Donald Trump hates the sound of his first name so much but he does, he immediately tries to shame Clinton into referring to him with more respect." "Secretary Clinton, yes? Is that okay? Good? I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me. Clinton isn't having it. And this really sets up the way all these debates will go. Trump, every time, begins calm, cool, collected. He he gives answers that sound quasi-presidential: "Well the DC versus Heller decision was very strongly, and she was extremely angry about it..." But pretty quickly Clinton gets under his skin. She needles him, she goads him, she makes fun of the fact that he got his business started with a loan from his father. She attacks whether not he's actually that rich. Whether not he pays taxes. Every time, Trump just begins taking the bait, and taking the bait, and taking the bait. there something for him about being attacked and being humiliated by a woman on national television, that he absolutely cannot handle. And so at about the thirty minute mark in every single debate, he just begins to lose it. "No puppet, no puppet." "You're the puppet." "You won't admit that the Russians..." He becomes less coherent, he's not able to focus on the questions he's asked. Instead goes back to things Clinton said about him awhile back. He just tries to throw any attacks he can think of up against her. It's a bad look for him, it'd be a bad look for anyone, but it really really shows the effectiveness of her strategy. But the big way in which she managed to dominate these debates, was that at the first debate she sparked a meltdown in Trump that weeks later he was still working his way through, and it came here at the end: "And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest (he loves beauty contests, supporting them, and hanging around them.) And he called this woman Miss Piggy then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina Donald she has a name —" "Where did you find her?" "Her name is Alicia Machado," And she has become a U. S. citizen and you can bet she's going to vote this November That Alicia Machado trap and it was a trap they had a web video ready they had a whole press tour for Alicia Machado. That Alicia Machado play, that was a beginning of the conversation over Donald Trump's language and treatment of women. It was the context for the leaked Access Hollywood tape that came out later. It was the context for the sexual harassment claims that came out later. It forced Trump into a corner. He was so angry that he began trying to lash back in any way he could think of. In ways that were completely non-strategic. An example was in the next debate, right before it he held a press conference with three women who had accused Bill Clinton of assaulting them. Whatever you think of the Bill Clinton— assault allegations this was an insane strategy. He should have been preparing for the debate. He should've have been on his own message. He should have been finding a weakness of Hillary Clinton's. Instead he did something that not only made no sense but scared other Republicans about whether or not he was truly figuring out a way to turn this race around. It was a disaster for him. And a disaster Clinton and the Clinton campaign goaded him into. In every debate, Clinton has managed to both push Trump into nonsense and mistakes. While being herself, prepared, clear, calm, disciplined, and cautious. In that way she created a preparation gap between the two candidates. Trump would be there really offering just total nonsense gibberish answers. And then Clinton would basically exhale an entire briefing book of knowledge. Trumps campaign bragged a little bit about how little the candidate was preparing for the debates. But in the end it really hurt him. And Clinton's over preparation, her tendency to know absolutely everything on a topic—a tendency that often makes people mock her a bit. See her as robotic, see her as over-prepared. It really worked here. It really showed that one of these candidates knew something about the issues facing the country. And the other didn't. Look, it's easy to underestimate what happened here. It's easy now to look back and think of Trump's total collapse as completely inevitable. But remember Trump triumphed in debate after debate against a sixteen person Republican field—that included what many thought were some of the most talented Republican politicians in generations of politicians who had been in many debates before. Who were experienced, who were skilled, who were effective. He was good at bullying them and taking over the stage. He had a macho, insulting, blustering demeanor that really worked particularly against other male politicians. Jeb Bush: [unintelligible] Trump: Let me talk. Quiet. Somehow Clinton short-circuited all of that. He was not ever able to get his footing in the debates. She kept him completely off-balance. She attacked him in ways that worked and upset him. As opposed to ways which you saw over and over again in the Republican debates that strengthened him and made the attackers look bad. She was able to use her gender and his chauvinism and his weaknesses and her discipline to put him into trap after trap that he never figured a way out of. Trump is losing and he's losing a part because he himself is a flawed vulnerable candidate. But Clinton is winning because she had a strategy a fairly high-risk strategy actually. And she executed it. She stuck to it. She did it at every single debate and it actually worked. This is not the way we're used to seeing candidates win debates. We're used to seeing them win debates because of how they performed not because of how they were able to trap their opponent into performing. But the fact that this is a non-traditional kind of win— a win that relies on Clinton's unique skills and characteristics and not the things we're used to from other politicians that doesn't make it less impressive, it makes it more impressive. After three debates, Donald Trump's campaign is in smoking ruins and that's because Hillary Clinton turned in a truly effective, strategic, and ruthless performance. when I first saw the tape of Trump, I was shocked but not surprised we've known this about Trump for a long time he's been accused of sexual assault in the past by Jill Harth a former business associate he pushed me up against the wall and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again and I had to physically say what are you doing stop it was a shocking thing to have him do this it is sexual assault to grab a woman's private parts without her consent to kiss her without her consent without warning which is exactly what Trump described on those tapes the reaction of Trump supporters to the phrase sexual assault was almost unbelievable this is suggesting sexual assault and that's a very unfortunate phrase and people really should stop using why because I know him better and I know better that's what he said this term sexual assault has been bandied about I don't think he was advocating sexual assault on that bus you had a lot of surrogates focusing on the words it's shockingly lewd it was guy talk well those words are horrendous they're dreadful there they're appalling they're foul that's what is said in a locker room I've been in a lot of locker rooms absolutely guys don't kid yourself okay the language is inappropriate it's not acceptable and I think a lot of these people who are focusing on the words just don't really understand what sexual assault means he said he starts to his woman and they let him do X Y or Z that implies consent that's not consent consent is not imposing your will on someone and having them just not resist consent means that the other person wants to be doing the thing that you are doing take me to pleasure town oh, we're going there there's this great cartoon and it's about how consent is like tea you wouldn't try to force tea down the throat of someone who says no thank you i would not like tea whether it's tea or sex, consent is everything we understand this with food but we don't really understand it with women's bodies all of a sudden his hands were all over me he was like an octopus it was like he had six arms he was all over the place there's been a weird tendency on the right in general to minimize the role of consent and sexual assault what rush limbaugh doesn't get is that if you don't consent to sexual activity it's not legal it has a lot to do with traditional gender roles boys will be boys and you know guys are pretty dusty and you needed to be careful when you got them around young women particularly if there's parties and alcohol so the rules are pretty tight with the sexual revolution that began the sixties did away with all that the problem with some of these more traditional views of gender is that they just don't know how to deal with the idea that women are autonomous beings when it comes to sex that women have sex women like sex women can know when they want to have sex and how they want to have it and with whom they want to have it and that they are entitled to make choices about this after we actually had women come forward and say yes Trump did these things to me that he denied doing on national television the conversation had to shift it couldn't be about words anymore it was very clearly now about alleged deeds Trump's alleged deeds he turned to me and embraced me and give me a kiss on the lips and I I remember being shocked I mean I was very young and I remember feeling kind of embarrassed like wanting to turn and almost wipe my mouth like what just happened he just came strolling right in there was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything some girls were topless other girls were naked Natasha Stoynoff a writer for People magazine claims that she was physically attacked by Trump Trump took tic-tac suggested I take them also he then leaned in i'm reading this catching me off guard and kissed me almost on the lips I was really freaked out he and his campaign in order to protect him have sort of no choice but to say that these women are crazy or politically motivated I think it's very difficult if you've been on an airplane you I know you've been on an airplane sitting in first class that someone would notice of an octopus was grabbing you and all the sudden she's so enraged by this she gets up and goes back to the back of the plane I think there's a lot of holes in this story why wait for 26 days out from the election this is a political hit piece there's good reason why women often wait this long to come forward victims know very well that they're going to be disbelieved they know Temple Taggart was a 21 year old beauty contestant watching him relive his sexual aggression on this video she said in an interview on Saturday made me feel a lot better she said it was like thank you now no one can say i made this up these women who say that Trump has groped them are watching him say to Anderson Cooper's face that he doesn't do that you describe kissing women without consent grabbing their genitals that is sexual assault you brag that you have sexually assaulted women do you understand that no I didn't say that at all i don't think you understood what was it so for the record you're saying you never did that I said things frankly you you hear these things they're said and I was embarrassed by it but I have tremendous respect for women have you ever done those things women have respect for me and I will tell you no I have not they wanted to tell their truth so that his testimony would not be all that was out there about this about what really happened to them In 1997, JK Rowling published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone. But most of her audience didn’t actually read that book. They read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone. or Harry Potter A L'Ecole des Sorciers Harry Potter va Sang-e Jadu Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal [cool humming of "Hedwig's Theme" ] The bewitching Harry Potter books have reached readers in over 200 territories in over 60 languages. The authorized translations came from separate publishing houses with little oversight from the author. So translators were not only tasked with adapting the text from english into their target languages and cultures, but also making assumptions about Rowling’s intentions and translating the spirit of her approach. Their task was particularly challenging because the Harry Potter series is filled with invented words, alliteration, wordplay, and British cultural references. The main characters first names: Harry, Hermione, and Ron mostly stayed the same across languages, with small changes to accommodate different alphabets and phonetics. That’s easy enough for conventional names like Harry Potter. But many of the other proper names in the book carry loaded meanings — meanings that would be lost if it’s not translated. Take Severus Snape. The name invokes severity and sounds like “snake.” So the Italian translator made the jump and named him Severus Piton —which is basically python. In French, he’s Severus Rogue which means Severus "Arrogance". As you can tell, both solutions sacrificed Rowling’s alliteration. The name “Hogwarts” combines two English words, but because the name stayed the same in most languages, those connotations were lost for those readers. In an attempt to preserve Rowling’s approach to the school’s name, the French translator used “Poudlard.” "Pou du lard" means lice of bacon or fat. The Hungarian version went with “Roxfort” a mix of the British university Oxford and Roquefort—a well known blue cheese. The house names and founders, also experienced unique adaptations in some of the target languages. In Catalan the names became: Nícanor Griffindor, Sírpentin Slytherin, Mari Pau Ravenclaw, and Horténsia Hufflepuff. There’s a ton of word play that happens in the Harry Potter books as well. The famous Diagon Alley, a play on the word "diagonally" and the infamous Knockturn Alley from "nocturnally". This type of pun is a real puzzle for translators, and most dropped it in favor of literal translations. The Spanish translator was able to rhyme at least with “callejón diagon.” And translators had several approaches to  Quidditch, an invented game made from the invented words Quaffle, Bludger, and Snitch— the 3 types of balls used in the game. In Spanish, the words were not changed. The French translator kept the word Quidditch but changed the names of the balls. And others changed the game’s name altogether. In Dutch, quidditch is “Zwerkbal.” In Norwegian, it’s “Rumpeldunk." OWLS and NEWTS, standardized tests in the wizarding world, weren’t always able to retain their animal acronyms. But in Swedish their implied meanings remained while the wording was changed. OWLs became Grund Examen i Trollkonst or G.E.T meaning goat in Swedish. And NEWTs were changed to Fruktansvärt Utmattande Trollkarls Test or F.U.T.T. derived from "futtig" meaning measly or mean. The infamous anagram of Tom Marvolo Riddle’s name was altered by many translators to achieve the same revelation of “I Am Lord Voldemort.” In Danish, Tom is named "Romeo G. Detlev Jr." and in French he is “Tom Elvis Jedusor” which was extra clever because "Jeu du sort" means “fate riddle.” Culturally, the Harry Potter series is unmistakably British but translating that for a global group of readers wasn’t easy. Some food items were changed to make them less foreign for the target country. Sherbet lemons, a popular candy item in Britain, became krembo, a chocolate covered sweet from Israel. Crisps became chips in the US and in the Arabic version, bacon became eggs. Sometimes a foreign setting undergoes translation too. For the Ukrainian translation, the atmosphere of an English boarding school was swapped out for an orphanage. In the books and films, Hagrid has a provincial west country accent. Hagrid: "No? Blimey Harry, didn't you ever wonder where your mum and dad learned it all?" "You're a wizard, Harry." For the Japanese translations, it was replicated by using Tōhoku dialect, which is a pastoral accent from northeastern Japan. Other translators chose to have Hagrid simply speak more informally, while others dropped his accent entirely. Despite translators’ best efforts to remain true to the text some things still were lost in translation. In the mainland Chinese editions of Harry Potter there were footnotes to explain puns and cultural references. The Spanish translator sometimes used italics to signal an invented word with no translation. But in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re reading Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone or the many translations of it. One thing that always seems to translate is the love fans around the world share for tales of "The Boy Who Lived." Here’s a hotel meeting room with a bunch
of clocks that are apparently set at random. But it still seemed appropriate because these
clocks were behind this man. “I’m James Gleick and the book is Time
Travel: A History.” And there is one obvious question for a person
who has studied the history of this strange idea. Would he travel back in time and kill baby
Hitler? “Oh, I don’t even know.” Seriously? That could not be the real answer? “No. Well…” OK let’s go back. When did we start asking this? Baby Hitler has a publicity pop every few
years, like this New York Times poll. Or when former Presidential candidate Jeb
Bush gave his answer to the Huffington Post. “Hell yeah I would.” But this dilemma has a longer history than
what just went viral. It reflects how we think about time travel
and history. And maybe the present, too. Time travel is...oddly new. Well, it depends how you count. Some might count stories like A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the Mark Twain story that sent a modern man to medieval
times once he got hit on the head. Or there’s even a Spanish novel where the
protagonists traveled in a cast iron box to the 1860s, 1400s, 690s, 220s, and 79 AD before
going to the distant past. But HG Wells’ Time Machine was one of the
first to truly put the words “time travel” together. Time travel through a machine wasn’t a longstanding
Greek myth, or something Shakespeare invented in the 1500s. “That was the surprise. HG Wells’ Time Machine — we think of that
as being in the middle of the time travel story — but really, it turns out to be the
very beginning.” “What was in the air was a kind of confluence
of things. One thing was an understanding of the speed
of advancement of technology.” “If you were living in the 16th century
and somebody appeared from the sky and said, how do you think life is going to be for your
grandchildren?” “You would have said, what? It’s going to be the same.” “If something new came along, a new kind
of plow, that seemed like an accident. It didn’t seem like part of inevitable progress.” But by Wells’ time, technology’s pace
was evident. The telegraph had taken over and reduced the
world’s news to a few taps and clicks. And Wells’ time travel had the spirit of
the era’s most futuristic gadgets. “You look at the prose carefully and it
describes quartz rods, and there’s a saddle, and he seems to have an oil can, or something,
he puts drops of oil in the gears, but it’s all a little mysterious what this machine
is, until suddenly it hits you — it’s a bicycle.” Wells’ description of the machine seemed
inspired by bikes - which at the time were exciting and new. But it was the idea that really took hold. People instantly understood the complexities
and contradictions of Wells’ fantastic machine. “You know, Wells thought he was just creating
a fanciful story, an adventure. But very quickly a reviewer said, no this
is impossible, what if you went back into time and met yourself? What would happen then?” “We’re you, dude!” “No way.” As time travel became more popular, so did
all the twists that instantly enthralled an audience. And it was only a matter of time until time
travel was used to kill. This is Roger Sherman Hoar, a state senator
and assemblyman from Massachusetts. He was the author of 1932’s Unemployment
Insurance in Wisconsin, among other works. He was also Ralph Milne Farley — that’s
the pen name he used to write “I Killed Hitler,” the first story in the killing
Hitler time travel genre. “Pulp magazines, aimed at especially teenage
boys, started to produce an outlet for people who wanted to write this kind of fanciful
story.” Farley’s story actually appeared before
the Pearl Harbor attack. His narrator was supposed to be HItler’s
cousin, who traveled back to 1899 to kill Adolph. And it opened up an enduring time travel dilemma. “It’s two problems at once. There’s a scientific problem — you can
set your mind to work imagining could such a thing possible and how would that work. And then there’s an ethical problem — if
I could, would I, should I...time travel is so often about regret. It’s about something in your past that you
wish you could do over. In this case, here is the entire planet allowing
this monster to arise and kill millions of people, does that justify, in advance, the
preventive killing of this dictator?” Killing Hitler, and time travel assassinations,
gave a philosophical problem narrative tension. Pulpy stories like “I Killed Hitler” took
advantage of an increasingly time-travel savvy public. And assassination became a tradition, maybe
even a cliche. Time travel assassination plots soon showed
up in arty sci fi movies like La Jetée, And its remake 12 Monkeys. It motivated naked Arnold,
And almost naked thespian Jean Claude Van Damme. Killing some version of Hitler himself shows
up in video games and comic books. And somehow the trope even has to be addressed
in a time travel rom com by the guy who made “Love Actually.” “I can’t kill Hitler or shag Helen of
Troy unfortunately.” “OK stop.” With all that, the most interesting thing
about Killing Hitler might be how the story manages to stay alive. That story by Ralph Milne Farley: you can
probably guess that killing Hitler didn’t work. The narrator killed Hitler, but then he became
a Hitler-like figure himself. Even former future President Jeb Bush realized
“it could have a dangerous effect on everything else.” “The moral of the stories that I find somehow
most believable is that when you change history you don’t get the result you’re looking
for. “Every day, everything we do is at a turning
point in history, whether it’s obvious to us or not. And of course some of these points really
matter tremendously and others don’t. But the difference is not announced to us. Nobody rings a bell and says that what you
do in the next five minutes may change the course of history.” “We are contemplating momentous decisions
that we have to both feel the weight of and at the same time, have to feel the futility
of, because of the many laws of unintended consequences. We just have to do the best we can.” “Now I can’t imagine a circumstance in
which doing the best I can would involve killing a person, much less a child, even if I had
what you would consider quite certain knowledge that that person was about to kill six million
innocents.” “So alright, I guess I wouldn’t kill baby
Hitler, given the chance.” Thank you to James Gleick for talking to me
about Time Travel, and thanks to Roger Sherman Hoar for writing awesome time travel stories
under a pen name, and other books under his own name, like “Constitutional Conventions:
Their Nature, Power, and Limitations.” That’s gonna be a Bruce Willis movie any
day now. This is one of my favorite hip hop records. It’s Ghostface Killah’s Ironman released
in 1996. Listen to “Fish”, the 9th track on the
record My triple sevens broke the slot machines out
in Queens Grey Poupon is revlon rap, smack pawns, swing
like batons Yes, this archetypal Ghostface verse is cryptic,
stream-of-consciousness, and in your face. But...it also gave me a sense of de ja vu. That’s because 4 tracks before you’ll
hear this verse from Raekwon First of all before we move on, this shit
is like a Yukon, don Spread it out like Grey Poupon Wu-Tang must just love Grey Poupon, It makes
sense -- they rap about food a lot. But as I was working on a video about Kanye
West, I heard him too rap this on his 2016 song “Facts” Yeezy yeezy this is pure luxury I give em
Grey Poupon on a DJ Mustard That’s fully 20 years later. I listen to hip hop all day long so I started
logging anytime I heard Grey Poupon referenced in rap lyrics. It turns out Grey Poupon is everywhere. Why is this little jar of fancy mustard so
ubiquitous in rap music? Well it starts here. The finer things in life. Happily some are affordable. Like Grey Poupon Dijon mustard. These ads started in 1981 and immediately
they were a hit. When the first ad was tested in Seattle, the
brand reportedly saw a 100% jump in sales. They tested it again in in New England and
the same jump in sales happened, proving it wasn’t a fluke. Previously, the brand had only ever used print
advertising, to appeal to an upper class audience. But mustard was the condiment of the 80s,
and Grey Poupon wanted a piece of the pie even at a higher price point. A jar of Grey Poupon was nearly double the
price of French’s or Guldens. So in 1981 this ad aired, telling consumers
across the US that Grey Poupon was gourmet AND affordable while the phrase Pardon me,
would you have any Grey Poupon? Inserted itself into the American lexicon. Over the next 10 years the campaign emphasized
the mustard’s affordability while traveling on trains, planes, and yachts. This brings us to the early 90s when Nabisco
wanted to change up the campaign. Usually you like the opp to create something
new. But it’s pretty memorable why change it? We should just figure out how to make it more
approachable. That’s Lee Garfinkle. He worked for the agency that made the ads. We came back with the idea of the guys poking
fun of each other. Is this about the mustard again? Yes. Would you have some? Oh since you're offering yes I would. They added a squeeze bottle to emphasize that
Grey Poupon was a fancy mustard you could use every single day. Sales took off again. That same year Das EFX, the influential east
coast hip hop duo, began recording their debut album Dead Serious. Das EFX are the ones who crammed multiple
syllables in a bar by adding “igity” at the end of words. Wiggity-wait a minute, giggity-guess who,
well it's, umm, me The bumble B boogity woogity book the loopy
Double O-K-iggity S When Dead Serious was released in 1992 it
went platinum and the single “They Want EFX” quickly reached the Top 10 on the Billboard
Charts. But it’s the song “East Coast” that
marked what is probably the first recorded Grey Poupon reference in Hip Hop history. He's the Don, have you seen my grey poupon? Bust this, we roll more spliffs than Cheech
and Chong Within that same month Wayne’s World premiered. Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon? By the spring of 1992 this glass jar of bougie
white wine mustard spread itself across the pop culture landscape and started one of the
weirdest trends in hip hop. [Boots as waiter] Fuck naw I ain't got no
Grey Poupon [Rich female guest] Well anyway, I said, 'That's
no burglar! That's my butler.' Mr. Rockefeller, let me in on the gossip
I heard you and Mr. Getty are getting into rap music or something] This chart shows the rise of Grey Poupon in
recorded music from 1992 to 2016 and it reveals something interesting about how words are
used in hip hop culture. This particular brand of Dijon mustard has
been like referenced a lot in rap music. I've used it a bunch. It comes up in freestyles all the time. That’s rapper Mike Eagle. I think in this particular case there's a
couple of reasons for it. In one aspect I think it’s how convenient
of a rhyme it is. You have a word like poupon and it rhymes
with words like futon, neutron, and cupon. 26, and I done lived a lifetime a few times. From futons to Grey Poupons
In church tryna get a little savings; yeah, a coupon. I spit that A1 everyday I'm hitting new primes. Out of the 118 songs mentioning the mustard,
the most common rhyming word is coupon with 20. Followed by futon and crouton. I got the Grey Poupon, you been warned / Cause
all beef return well done filet mignon / The Don, smell of Dom on my breath as I
Yawn, (slow) Not only is Grey Poupon a good rhyming word. It also represents something. Hip Hop has always had this obsession with
status symbols. If you have money you have grey poupon you
don’t have french’s mustard. I think it’s just a very effective commercial
in that way. Most of the songs mentioning Grey Poupon over
the last 24 years have used it as a symbol of class. Half of them were used to brag and half were
used as a juxtaposition to how poor they were. But I want to be in that limo askin' for the
Grey Poupon, for a change / I'm sick of saving change from a coupon Others have used the Dijon mustard to signifying
how exquisite their rapping skills are. Yeah, you're like a half-off coupon
Me, I'm like a fresh jar of Grey Poupon Give me the mic quick, I need something to
poop on And the rest, well Grey Poupon sells sex. Get you in the mood throw them slow grooves
on / Spread you on a futon like Grey Poupon Have you been able to find a 2007 event that
made it spike? I think I did, Mike. By 2007 the commercials hadn’t been on the
air for a full decade. So why was it that from 2007 on there's just
a huge jump in the number of references? Well, the majority of Grey Poupon songs in
2006-2007 were on albums that debuted at #1, had hit singles, and got a lot of radio airplay. For instance Jim Jones’ says Grey Poupon
in his hit song “We Fly High.” Talk a buck 80 If the bentley is the topic
(That grey poupon) But of course gotta fly ...? (Where?) The track took off in late 2006 when the New
York Giants’ Michael Strahan started celebrating sacks to the song with a Jump Shot, a reference
to the song. By 2007 kids in dance clubs across the country
were jumpshotting everytime “Ballin” was sung. It was the 28th most popular song by the year’s
end. “2 Step” by Unk had an accompanying dance
called the “2 Step” and it features a Jim Jones verse that references Grey Poupon
again. I get bread like croutons (dough), I make
dough like crouissants (bread) I'm Grey Poupon (yep), Bentley shit baby (baby) The same year produced “Show it to me”
by T.I. with a Nelly verse. That album debuted at #1. Country niggas in the chevy passin' Grey Poupon and “Boom” off of what is probably Lil
Wayne’s greatest mixtape, Da Drought 3. I got more clips then any movie you've saw
/ I pull up on ya like I need some Grey Poupon Did I mention “Southside” the Kanye West
Common collab? Look at that neutron on his green like croutons
People asking him, "do you have any grey poupon" It was nominated for a Grammy for best rap
album that year. From 2007 to 2016 TK% of the grey poupon songs
ranked on the billboard charts or were on albums that did. The commercial itself probably had little
to do with the recent rise of Grey Poupon in lyrics. It seems that the more Grey Poupon was in
people’s ears, the more it was rapped by other artists in subsequent years. Nothing proves this more than the song Straatmeermin
by the Dutch rap group, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig. It’s entirely in Dutch except for this line. Money uit de let's get it on
Geen pindakaas maar alleen Grey Poupon En dan nodigde ze me uit in haar con I reached out to Kraft Heinz, who now owns
the Grey Poupon brand to see if the Dijon mustard is even sold in the Netherlands. I got this. No Estelle. It's not. Did you ever notice that a lot of rappers
use the word? Being the kinda rapper I am I've always paid
attention to words. When I looked at your list I was just dumbfounded
that it was used that many times. Looking at that list it almost has to be subconscious. I think if anybody was aware that it was used
that many times they wouldn't still use it. Nothing is quite as ubiquitous as that. If you’re watching local news right now,
it’s hard to avoid stories like this one: "A clown started chasing us up here." "On Facebook they said there was killer clowns around here that were killing people." We saw a man with all black on,  clown mask on, and like a red wig. This wave of clown panic started in late August,
when police in South Carolina received reports about a suspicious character dressed as a
clown who was trying to get children to follow them into the woods. Residents reportedly took matters into their
own hands and began firing shots into the woods. “We do know that it’s striking fear among
members of our public. And so we have patrols out in each of these areas and wherever we think we might anticipate that person. We've added patrols to see if we can intercept the person and the activity. Since then, police around the country have
been inundated with complaints about clown sightings, and prank calls falsely reporting
sightings. Residents in some communities are asking if
they’re allowed to shoot clowns on site. “You’re under arrest for disorderly conduct." "I was not scaring nobody, I promise you." "Alright, how did we get a 911 call?" "I just came out the door, I swear." As you can hear the police officer saying,
the arrests are usually made for disorderly conduct, though some states also have anti-mask
laws that prevent people from concealing their identities in public. The consequences of these copy-cat pranks
are playing out in a very real way. Schools in several states have been put on
lockdown after threats from people posing as clowns on social media and word-of-mouth
reports of clown sightings. On top of that, one student in Georgia was
arrested for bringing a knife to school to defend herself against clowns, and another
in Virginia was arrested for posting a request on social media for a clown to kill her teacher. At Penn State, hundreds of students flooded
the streets in search of clowns that had allegedly been seen around campus — though police
reported that there were no credible sightings or threats. Turns out the clown backlash may be more dangerous than the pranksters themselves. At the end of September, a 16-year-old who
was allegedly scaring neighborhood kids while wearing a clown mask was stabbed to death
after a confrontation. Now, this isn’t the first time things like
this have happened. As recently as 2014 there was a similar clown
craze in the U.S. that became a small social media trend and spread to France. But the roots of people dressing up as clowns
as a prank are a lot older than social media. In 1981 in neighborhoods around Boston, police
received over 20 calls about children having seen mysterious clowns. Local schools panicked. Police questioned a clown they believed to
be the one children had seen, only to find that he had just been making rounds to department
stores as part of his job. A few days later, police in Kansas City were
flooded with an estimated 60 to 100 calls about a “demon clown” scaring children,
armed with a knife. Parents were on edge after a local parochial
school sent home a note warning them about a “killer clown” — but police weren’t
able to find any real threat, and blamed the hype on prank calls and children’s imaginations. Now, all of this happened just a year after
John Wayne Gacy was charged with the murders of 33 people, mostly adolescents, committed
over the course of the previous decade. Gacy worked as a clown for charity — so
there was a lot of preexisting fear around this image of a dangerous clown. And for the next 25 years, appearances kept happening. East Chicago in 1991, Washington, DC in 1994, South Brunswick in 1997. When you think about what first made people
afraid of clowns, it’s tempting to pin it to Gacy or movies like “It,” “Poltergeist,”
and “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”. But to understand how clowns gained the dark
associations that they have today, you have to go back to the British Regency era, back
when a clown named Joseph Grimaldi was the most popular entertainer in England. If you look at the costumes that he wore,
you can see how he invented a lot of the classic “clown” look as we know it today: the
colorful hair, the extravagant clothes, the white face makeup. But Grimaldi rose to stardom at a time when
what it meant to be famous in pop culture was changing. "An interest in celebrity culture began to
emerge, you know, people were interested in the personal lives of people that they saw
in public. So being a public person was no longer enough, people wanted to know about the private individual and the secret and
potentially scandalous aspects of their private life." And that private life had a dark side: Grimaldi
suffered from depression and alcoholism. When he was first starting out as a writer,
Charles Dickens edited Grimaldi’s memoirs, and later immortalized a version of that disturbed
clown character in his first novel, the Pickwick Papers. The image stuck, even though entertainment
went through major changes. Slapstick clown humor had always worked well
in situations where you couldn’t always fully see or hear what a performer was doing,
like in large auditoriums or in movies without sound. As mainstream culture changed, clowns became
darker characters. “Think of a wildly popular clown who's very
highly visible in popular culture — there isn't one, or rather there are two: There’s
the Joker, who’s a sinister psychopath, and there’s Krusty the Clown, who’s morally,
financially, and physically bankrupt… "Oh I don't know what you're saying, it all sounds so crazy to me." "So the days of Howdy Doody and others figures
are unfortunately gone.” “I do have some sympathy for the clowning
community I mean their numbers have dwindled and then they really have been reduced to
a children's party performers and ... that's quite a considerable demotion from the place
that they've occupied in our culture really for two thousand years if not longer, into
ancient classical history.” "We wanna encourage people who may be inclined to dress in clown outfits not to do it. And to avoid doing it at all." A lot of police statements have made sure
to clarify that these aren’t “real clowns,” they’re people dressed as clowns. And while that might sound like a silly distinction,
it’s actually really important for the professional clowning community. “It does frustrate us because we work very
hard at our art form, and we take it very seriously. It brings bad light on clowning as a profession.” Traditional professional clowning is in a
rough spot. Membership in the World Clown Association,
which is the nation’s biggest trade group for clowns, reportedly dropped from about
3,500 in 2004 to 2,500 in 2014. And since the latest wave of sightings, many
professional clowns are afraid to make public appearances. Some have even canceled previous events out
of fear for their own safety. “I’m more afraid for the clown than for
the citizens, because everybody down here got guns. I don’t want to be the one to ride up on
you and have an encounter with you, because I don't think it's gonna end well.” If you want a better idea of the scale of the clown prank epidemic that's going on right now, you should go over to Atlas Obscura. This guy named Erik Shilling has put together this interactive map that looks at all of the sightings, all of the reports, and all of the false reports that have come out in recent weeks. I haven't tried to count everything on this map, but there is a lot. Moderator: "The republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and the democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy." Presidential debates in The U.S. have become bigger and bigger spectacles. "Ronald Reagan's presidential plane
as our backdrop." But a smaller share of Americans are actually watching them, compared to The '70s and '80s. That may be partly because the debate format is not nearly as useful as it could be. It does more to create news than give voters information. Newscaster: "...and while The Donald sniffed, Hillary shimmied." 'Whew, OK!' Without having to confront one another on the issues, candidates can focus more on landing zingers “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy. (applause)” and less on explaining their positions.   "That is a mainstream media nonsense. Put out by her." Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and a bipartisan group of former campaign advisers are trying to fix that. Their first recommendation is ditch the live audience. “...he referred to my hands: if they’re
small, something else must be small. I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee it. (applause)” Do you hear the audience? Now listen to how it plays without them. “if they’re small, something else must
be small. I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee it.” (silence) The audience at home is being cued by the audience in the studio and it is not being consciously cued. It has no control over that. “I am not going to exploit, for
political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. (laughter)” Like a sitcom laugh track, researchers have shown that an audience reaction can influence voters at home. "...for political purposes, my opponent's
youth and inexperience. (silence)" When the applause is removed, Reagan’s performance rating drops. There's just too great a risk that there is going to be an outbreak of applause or jeering or cheering that provides enough of a cueing to enough of an electorate to swing a close election. The Kennedy-Nixon debates didn’t have any
live audience, those were terrific debates. Since Nixon-Kennedy, the moderator at every single presidential debate has been a network journalist. They’re the ones asking the questions, except in Town Hall debates, where the audience participates. What they do for a living is: they produce
breaking news. So, what they are trying to do is advance
a news agenda. They also produce news on the assumption that
you have been following news for a long period of time. Well, most people watching debates are not high news junkies. They don't pay a whole lot of attention to news. Moderator: "Quote, 'one high-tax, Common Core, liberal-energy-loving, Obamacare Medicaid-expanding president is enough.' Do you think you went too far on that and
do you want to apologize to the governor?" Someone who doesn’t live, breathe, and sell
news might be a better proxy for the American public. Jamieson: And so we recommended looking, for example, to former retired judges, looking to college presidents, looking to historians. The thought being, that they might ask different questions but they also might think differently about
what the electorate needs to know. In addition to asking questions, a moderator has to manage time and try to keep the candidates on topic. Moderator: "Your two minutes has expired." Moderator: "Let me interrupt just a moment-" Trump: "I'd just like to respond." Moderator: "Please respond then I've got to follow up..." "I got him to give the birth certificate so
I'm satisfied with it and I'll tell you why I'm satisfied with it: because I want to get on to defeating ISIS." Lester Holt was the one who had to follow
up to say, 'But the question was...' Trump: "Just like she she can’t bring back jobs,
she can’t produce." Moderator: "I'm sorry, I'm just going to follow up --and I will let you respond to that because there is a lot there-- but we are talking about
racial healing in this segment." Our thought was: pull the moderator role back, increase accountability of candidates and increase their obligation to hold each
other accountable and the moderator needs to play that role less so. To create that obligation, the Annenberg group
suggests a chess clock model, where each candidate gets a chunk of time to allocate as they see fit. In the chess clock model, the moderator tees
up a topic. Then, first candidate who wants to take it would hit the chess clock, start talking. If the other candidate wanted to interrupt,
hit the clock. "My tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I'm very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs,
but- What I have proposed would cut regulations
and streamline them for small businesses. Regulations. You are going to regulate these businesses
out of existence. What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy because they have made all the gains in the economy. You want to increase the regulations and make
them even worse. I'm going to cut regulations. But I'm going to cut taxes big league and you're going to raise taxes big league. End of story. Moderator: Let me get you to pause right there..." Right now, the candidate simply interrupts and the other candidate tries to continue to speak. "Donald supported the invasion of Iraq-" Trump: "Wrong." "...that is absolutely-" Trump: "Wrong." "...proved over and over again." "'Wrong." In some of the cases where Donald Trump is saying "wrong”, “I do not say that..." well what is he going to say after that? “...I do not say that." He’s benefitting by tagging the statement
as inaccurate, but not having to take on any obligation to explain why. In the chess clock model, interruptions carry
the burden to continue speaking, which might mean fewer one-liners, more staying on topic, and, as a result, we might better have a better idea of what they would do as president. If debates are good at something that no other
form is good at, it’s at getting both candidates on the same topic saying things about the same subject so that you can forecast what they would do as president. You want the format to increase that likelihood. It looked like the longest war on this side
of the planet had finally ended. For 52 years the Colombian government has
been fighting a civil war against the FARC, the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia,
a marxist guerilla organization. That have been bloody, and horrible, and have
cost over 220,000 lives and displaced over 5 million people. This has been going on since 1964. And peace negotiations have been in progress
for four years in Havana, Cuba. Finally, in June, there was a breakthrough. Signed a ceasefire agreement today, for more
on this I'm joined by... In September, President Santos of Colombia
and Timochenko, the leader of the FARC both sides signed the deal. It was a historic peace agreement. Leaders, heads of state all over the world
came together, it was a massive celebration. All that was left was to put it to a vote,
to the people. It was a formality, part of the deal. The polls showed it winning. The deal was going to pass. And it didn’t. Everyone was wrong. The polls were wrong. It was a really close vote - 50.2% voted against
it. Why would Colombians vote against such a momentous
peace agreement? There are a few reasons. To understand, let’s go back to 1964. In the mid 60s, there were a lot of leftist,
marxist, communist type rebellions, particularly in South America, and Latin America. You might recognize this guy. Or this one. They took over nearby Cuba. The FARC claimed to represent the interests
of the rural people in Colombia. There was intense inequality. Here's an example: 0.2 percent of farms owned
30% of farmland. This inequality had fueled a previous civil
war from 1946-1958, too, with 2 million peasant farmers forced off their land. Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda took up their
cause, forming FARC in the 60s after a government assault on communist groups. He wanted the government to redistribute land
back to the poor, and rid the country of multinational companies. But they ended up funding their fight in horrifying
ways. The FARC specifically got especially powerful
and wealthy from capitalizing on the drug trade. Taking a lot of the wealth from the drug trade
and using that to kind of funnel back into the rebellion. They used kidnappings and ransoms this way
too. Some of the kidnapped were forced to fight. They recruited child soldiers. There was a lot of sexual violence, a lot
of rape. All this should give you a sense of why many
Colombians opposed the specifics of the peace deal. The FARC agreed to end their drug trafficking,
to give away their weapons. They’d do community service removing their
landmines. They'd have turn over all of their weapons
to special UN inspectors who would be on the ground. But in return, they’d face no jail time. The Farc would also get 5 guaranteed seats
in each of Colombia’s two houses of congress, and financial aid for fighters who demobilize. The groups on the right and the government
also engaged in plenty of crimes, so it wasn't just the FARC. This sounded like justice and forgiveness
to some. But to others it sounded like surrender. The previous president of Colombia, Uribe,
led the campaign to vote against the deal. He said repeatedly that he wasn’t against
peace, he wasn’t against a peace agreement in principle. In fact he had led a crackdown on the FARC
that had brought them to the negotiating table in the first place
– with heavy support from the US government. Top leadership was killed, a lot of people
demobilized, disarmed they went from 20,000 fighters at their peak down to 6 or 7,000
fighters currently. It was effective, it kind of brought them
to the negotiating table. Uribe clearly wasn’t satisfied by their
outcome. This tweet is representative, “With these
agreements, there is no justice, nor truth.” But the thing is, if you look at a map of
how people voted, some of the areas that were hit hardest by the conflict? They voted yes most strongly. In Bojaya, the site of one of the FARC’s
worst massacres, bombing a church and killing 119 people, 96% voted for the peace agreement. And now everything is in complete disarray. It’s unclear what's even going to happen. But at this point, they cannot implement the
peace agreement as agreed. At least one thing is sure: the FARC and Colombia
have not gone back to war. At least not yet. And Santos, the current president, and Uribe,
the former, met for the first time in 6 years and vowed to work toward peace. Given anyone under 60 in Colombia has basically
only known a country at war, let’s hope they succeed. This girl is telling me about a moment when someone
threw a Molotov cocktail, which she's calling hot paint, over that wall into
her apartment complex, but the casual nature with which this little girl is
telling me this story is a clue that this isn't your typical apartment
complex. I'm in East Jerusalem in a Palestinian neighborhood, but I'm in a
compound where a number of Jewish families live
surrounded by fortified walls and private security. This girl's school bus
has bulletproof glass. I got into this compound to ask them why they're living
here. One component of this buildin,g these buildings, these six buildings is
that they are a physical structure in eastern Jerusalem with a flag on top and
says the Jews are here Israel's here. She is one of about 2,600 hard-line
religious Jews, who buy up homes from Palestinian families in Palestinian
neighborhoods, often clandestinely and with huge sums of money from
international donors. I visited some of these families to better understand the
motivations at play here and to see what life is like at the
ideological epicenter of this conflict. In 1948 the newly declared State of
Israel was fighting a war with its Arab neighbors. That war ended with a
ceasefire line called the Green Line. If you zoom in to the Green Line you'll see
that it goes right through Jerusalem with Israel controlling the West and
Jordan controlling the East. And Jerusalem's Old City, which is this tiny
piece of land where Jews Christians and Muslims all have holy sites, was right on
the Green Line, but it was on the east side controlled by Jordan. And during
that time Jews were not permitted to visit the Western Wall, which is the
holiest site in Judaism. Then in 1967 Israel seized control of the entire West
Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel then pulled a highly controversial move:
they declared that the eastern part of Jerusalem as well as 27 Palestinian
villages surrounding it, were now a part of Israel. They erased the Green Line
that separated the city and drew a new municipal border, announcing that it was
now unified Jerusalem the capital of Israel. On paper this map does look
unified, but in reality the city remained completely divided. The Palestinians in
the East didn't want to be a part of this new country that they had just been
annexed into, so in order to cement their claim and establish a Jewish presence in
Eastern Jerusalem Israel built 12 huge neighbourhood blocks adjacent to
Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, while simultaneously creating
policies that limited Palestinian urban development in the east. The world saw
this as illegal and refused to recognize Israel's new definition of Jerusalem, but
that didn't stop Israel from building these neighborhoods. But there's a difference between the 200,000 Israelis that are living in these 12 big
neighborhood blocks and the Israelis who buy up individual properties in
Palestinian neighborhoods. The big neighborhoods serve as a way to
establish a large Jewish presence in East Jerusalem. It's part of a political
strategy to claim large sections of land, preventing any future division of the
city, but the Israelis that are buying individual Palestinian homes have a
mission that is different. Their objective is based
more on the biblical significance of tiny pieces of land throughout the city.
The settlers of East Jerusalem have a thermal map. Not everything glows with
the same intensity. They settle areas that resonate with biblical history and
have a proximity to the Temple Mount or at the very least are within the visual
basin of the Temple Mount. That is their homeland. There are two right-wing
organizations that are dedicated to this aggressive settlement project. They have
targeted a handful of spots in the city that they want to occupy, but that are in
Palestinian neighborhoods these organizations raise large amounts of
money from international donors and they use this money to buy properties from
Palestinians for a price that is well above market value. The settlers are
perseverant and they will spend years chipping away to try and get one
property. Once they've secured a property they will move a Jewish family in,
sometimes under the cover of night and escorted by soldiers. The families are
then protected by 24-hour private security that is provided by the Israeli
government costing about $25 million per year to the Israeli
taxpayers for these 2,600 Israelis living in Palestinian neighborhoods.
Needless to say Palestinian neighbors are not thrilled about these secret
militarized move-ins into their neighborhoods. I spent a Friday evening with several of
these people to better understand their motives. We walked up from one compound
up the Mount of Olives to another compound for Sabbath prayers. This one
was purchased from a Palestinian man who was in debt from a gambling problem. And they bought the house from them. And they bought the house from them for a very good price. I watched these settlers pray as they look down over the city and as I talked to them, I began to
realize that in order to understand why they do this you have to understand the
internal logic that they adhere to. The whole project of the State of Israel is
a Jewish project the State of Israel is the biggest Jewish organization. If
you want to vote in the Jewish country there's an easy way: become a Jew. We have
a way in. And then you can you can have an effect country if you so wish, but if
you're another minority then god bless you. You have a huge region. Allah loves
you. These hardliners believe that Israel
exists primarily for Jews and thus they're entitled to rights and benefits
that others are not. We like democracy, but it's not a god. All
it is is an operating system. If it needs to change, if it needs an update, you know
if you need to download the latest version, it needs to change for your
particular environment. To them, going out and buying Palestinian homes isn't a
politically dubious land grab. In fact it's a noble spiritual mission, one that
has been prophesied about for thousands of years. When I'm living in this
place give me a purpose it gives me a reason. Even if I'm not doing
something ideological that at that moment, I'm living in a place that's ideological. It gives my life, every second a meaning. And thanks to effective
lobbying by these groups, the Messianic paradigm has seeped into government
policy as well, aiding the settlers on their mission to sink roots into the
eastern part of the city. An example of this is a law that says only Jews can
buy property in the Jewish quarter of the Old City, but that anyone can buy property in the other quarters. The settler organizations
have targeted the Muslim quarter for their purchases due to its proximity to
the Temple Mount and they now have dozens of holdings there. The government
has also granted these two organizations jurisdiction over many of the public
spaces in the city that have been deemed archaeological sites, or national
parks. Some of these sites are situated in Palestinian neighborhoods that are at
the top of the list for the Jewish home purchases. Places like Silwan in the City
of David. These right-wing organizations are using their jurisdiction to shape
the public realm of Palestinian neighborhoods, to reflect their agenda of
a Jewish Jerusalem. The result is a government supported, militarized,
ideological gentrification of Jerusalem. One house at a time. As we zoom out, you
can see that between the national parks and the individual properties, these
organizations have amassed a strong influence both public and private in and
around the old city, where their holiest religious sites are. Meanwhile the
Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem are in this weird legal limbo, where they
live in the municipal borders of the annexed city of Jerusalem, but they don't
have Israeli citizenship. They can't vote in national elections. This leads to
severe neglect from public investment. The reason for that is politicians never
allocate resources, funds, time, entitlements, to people who don't vote or
can't vote. Almost 90% of the sewage pipes, roads, and
sidewalks in Jerusalem are found in the West. And you can see that the
proportions of public resources are heavily skewed towards West Jerusalem,
even though a third of the population lives in the East. Last week the municipality said we will renovate the schools in East Jerusalem that are
in desperate need, they're dilapidated and overcrowded, but you have to adopt the
Israeli curriculum, something that the Palestinians have refused to do since
1967. So your kids can study in a decent physical environment, provided that you
peddle your national identity in exchange for that. That's the kind of
Faustian deal that the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are not going to
accept. It's hard to imagine when or how this situation will ever be resolved.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem don't want Israeli citizenship. They were
annexed against their will into a country that doesn't recognize their
full rights. And as Jewish neighborhoods grow in East Jerusalem, Israel's grasp over
the city becomes tighter and tighter. In September of 2008, something unheard of happened in the art world. A British artist, Damien Hirst, took 223 pieces of his new work to Sotheby’s auction house and sold every single piece. I’ll start the bidding here at £2,500,000. It was a 2 day event, and the total sale was about $200 million. It broke the record for single artist auction
of $20 million back in 1993. Hirst’s work included things like this
zebra, this unicorn, and this painting made from butterflies. So how did he – how do artists – do this? Well for the most part, the artists aren't
the ones behind it. Okay, so obviously money isn’t the only value that defines a work of art, and who knows how history will remember this unicorn. But order to sell a million-dollar artwork, you need strong market value– and you need extremely high demand.
And a ton of work goes into creating that. As Don Thompson describes in his book, the formula for art pricing goes something like this. The bigger the work, generally the more expensive it is. But, the biggest variable is the reputation
of the artist. Sometimes you’re world-famous, and sometimes you’re not. What? But when a new artist steps into the art market, the reputation of the artist heavily relies
on the name of the dealer. This shark by Damien Hirst is a good example. Hirst first began working with an art industry giant, Charles Saatchi, in the 1990s.
Saatchi commissioned Hirst to make anything he wanted for £50,000 after seeing this cow’s head at a show shortly after Hirst’s graduation in 1990. Hirst bought a shark for £6000 from an Australian fisherman and created this, injecting it with tons of formaldehyde. Later in 2004, it was sold for $12 million to a billionaire hedge fund manager, Steve Cohen.
It was roughly 130 times the original price but it makes sense considering Saatchi’s reputation. And it makes more sense when you think about how it was bought – dealers can use selective information to get potential buyers to pay more. Hirst’s huge auction I mentioned before… For dealer-sold work, everything is private,
including the prices, which gives dealers the upper hand in pricing.
In 1988, New York City tried to ban this by reinforcing the Truth in Pricing law, and
galleries fought back HARD, paying fines and protesting saying that showing prices will
be “getting in the way of the enjoyment of the exhibition.”
By keeping the price private, art dealers can rely more on their reputation to make
the artwork feel more valuable to the buyer. Outside this equation, the basic laws of economics also apply. The next step of operations for the dealer is creating scarcity.
In 1999, when Jenny Saville, a new emerging British artist became affiliated with Charles Saatchi, he convinced her to cut her work down to only 6 paintings per year. He sold them for $100,000 each. So what does this all result to?
According to Artnet, the estimated size of the art market was $64 billion in 2015.
And market is growing outside of traditional sales of galleries and auction houses.
This chart shows the art world might be learning the lesson Saatchi taught Jenny Savile –the total value of the art that’s being sold is growing faster than the number of pieces. Sell less of it, for more. But to sell that million-dollar artwork, you’ll need reputation bigger than Hirst’s, or Charles Saatchi’s.
The dealer model still dominates the fine art world, but for the rest of us, selling
art online has never been easier. The prices are open and it’s accessible for a broad
group of people. And for one thing, now you know where to start: think big. If you visit the National Mall, the Lincoln
Memorial feels like it’s always been there. It feels like the anchor. But there was a ten year battle before construction
could even begin. When journalist Susan Mandel investigated
it in 2008, she was dumbfounded. “I can’t think of anything that seems
less controversial than the Lincoln Memorial.” “It just belongs. And it’s so magnificent...and, you know,
beautiful. It’s like, what’s there to object to?” She found one person at the center of that
conflict, somebody who may have been the most powerful Speaker of the House — ever. And he was a Republican — just like Abraham
Lincoln. Why would a Republican fight the temple that
immortalized his party’s most famous leader? The reason behind the fight isn’t just one
stubborn Congressman. It’s the same dynamic that holds back all
monuments at the National Mall, even today. And it shows why we’ll always have trouble
asking politicians to envision greatness. There’s a story that in the early 1900s,
one voter asked their Congressperson for a copy of the House rules. He got back a picture of Joe Cannon. In this picture, by the way, he’s explaining
how to use toothpicks as suspender buttons. Joe Cannon was like the love child of Frank
Underwood and a corn maze. His background was like Lincoln’s. He was a Republican from Illinois. (Danville, specifically.) And he even met Lincoln as a boy. Yet he was the reason that the Lincoln Memorial
proposal stalled from 1902 on. “He fought tooth and nail every step of
the way against putting the Memorial there.” But the problem wasn’t that he hated Abraham
Lincoln. It was that he admired him. Part II
The National Mall didn’t always look like this. In 1870, the Army Corp of Engineers started
dredging the shallow, swampy Potomac river. See how there used to be water where the National
Mall extends today? Look at this map from 1861. Watch the Potomac River shrink as it transitions
to a satellite picture from today. The Army Corps of Engineers significantly
changed the Washington landscape. When Republicans took control of all three
branches of government in 1896, they had a new opportunity to move past the Civil War
and memorialize Lincoln. Some wanted to use that new space to do it. In 1902, a plan proposed remaking the mall
by incorporating the new extra land. But the area was still a recovering swamp... “That land was relatively shabby looking. I mean, it had just been dredged, there was
stuff growing on it but it wasn’t uniform, it wasn’t kept.” “There was definitely opposition to the
Lincoln Memorial.” Joe Cannon was a pragmatist who was happy
on a small town porch. A $2 million Greek temple scared him. Putting it in a neighborhood — Potomac Flats
— known for being a rundown former swamp — seemed even more absurd. “Congress had discussed turning Potomac
Flats into a park, well he wanted there to be a garden for the poor.” “When Congress needed new space for office
buildings, he suggested putting skyscrapers on both ends of Congress So he didn’t have
an artistic sensibility. He was very practical.” So for a decade, Cannon blocked putting Lincoln
on the Mall. He couldn’t see the potential of the National
Mall. He once said, "So long as I live, I'll never
let a memorial to Abraham Lincoln be erected in that goddamned swamp." The only way to build the Memorial was to
remove the obstruction. Joe Cannon had solidified power by controlling
the House Rules Committee, which helped him keep legislation off the floor. In addition to the relatively minor fight
over the Mall, Cannon was a powerful ruler in general. His grip on the House was so strong that
his own party rebelled. “What essentially forms is this insurgent
bloc, but those insurgents were all motivated by different things. Some of them are motivated by policies that
Cannon is keeping off the table, others are simply POed that the speaker is using all
that power by gumming up what they thought of as the legislative process.” In 1910 he was overthrown as Speaker. Insurgents had organized their opposition
so they’d know what to do when opportunity struck. “Part of what makes Congress work is that
there’s all this stuff going on in the background and you have to be ready for your moment. And what the organization did was allow all
these people...to vote together on whatever they agreed to do.” With Cannon weakened, more ambitious plans
could succeed despite his protests. Stripped of power, Cannon still frantically
promoted other plans, like a Memorial near a relatively far away park, Meridian Hill. But with Democrats incoming in 1912, they
had to hurry to memorialize Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial location we know was
finally approved. Thanks to swift action, it was built, even
though Cannon still couldn’t see the potential. “I think he lacked the vision to see how
the architecture of the Memorial would be powerful and symbolic, but I also think he
failed to see the power of that place. He saw it as a place no one had gone, and
why would they? It was brand new land, it was overgrown and
kind of on the banks of the Potomac. It didn’t have anything there, so why would
anybody go there?” Joe Cannon was temporary. A major historical figure who’s still now
largely forgotten. Today he has an office building named after
him. It’s not a skyscraper. But even though Cannon’s gone, we still
ask our politicians to be visionaries. Today, we can see the Lincoln Memorial’s
greatness because it’s already great. But when it comes to change... “Lack of vision, fiscal conservatism, and
lack of political will all coming together in kind of like the perfect storm of nothing
happens.” Before icons are iconic, they’re risks. All of them. The powerful hayseed named Joe Cannon had
a change of heart. He later said, “We tenderfeet perhaps ought
not to have our way in matters of art.” But for the time being, they still do. We can see what’s always been there. Seeing what’s next is the tough part. Henry Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial
and it was dedicated in 1922. But I wanted to show you one more of the rejected
designs, like that one on Meridian Hill. This one from John Russell Pope is the Lincoln
Pyramid. Yes, the Lincoln Memorial could have been
a pyramid, and oh how sweet it would have been. If you imagine a typical American city street,
and you take away the space that’s dedicated to cars, you aren’t left with very much. There are some narrow walkways on the side,
and some bridges in between them, but not much else. Cars dominate cities. Spend some time walking around most cities
and you’ll find yourself pushed to narrow sidewalks, waiting for crosswalk lights. You’ll find cyclists navigating really narrow
strips of space. Americans are used to cars the way that fish
are used to water. That’s so ubiquitous in the U.S. that I
think for most people, it just never occurred to them that it could be otherwise. But what if there were a way to change that? To give space back to pedestrians and bicyclists,
and to make cities more friendly to life outside of a car? It turns out Barcelona might have a solution. In 2014, the city was faced with serious air
pollution problems. Barcelona and its 35 surrounding municipalities
consistently failed to meet the EU’s air quality targets. Studies were showing that air pollution in
the region causes 3,500 premature deaths every year. Traffic in the city also causes severe noise
pollution. So the city developed an extensive Urban Mobility
Plan with the hope of reducing traffic by 21 percent. The coolest part of the plan were these things: They call them "superilles". Superilles? “Si, superilles.” That translates to “superblocks”. It’s this urban design concept intended
to minimize the presence of cars in city centers. The word “superblock” has been used before
to describe huge city blocks without any passageways for cars. But that’s not what’s happening here. So here’s how Barcelona’s plan works. You take nine square city blocks and close off
the inside to through traffic. So buses, big freight trucks — or any vehicles
that are trying to get from one part of town to the next — have to drive around the perimeter. Inside the superblock, the speed limit is
kept to 10 kilometers per hour — that translates to just over 6 miles per hour — and curbside parking is replaced by underground parking. That means you wind up with street space for
markets, outdoor games, and events. Within this nine square block perimeter
you're gonna have kind of a pleasant streetscape where people can walk around and mingle and
do things without this kind of constant fear of cars around. The concept is going to be tested out in five
neighborhoods, but the city has identified 120 possible intersections throughout the
region where it could be implemented. So how do we know what the results of this kind
of plan would look like? Well, northwest of Barcelona is a city called
Vitoria-Gasteiz, which has implemented superblock designs since 2008. In the main superblock at the city center,
pedestrian space increased from 45 percent of the total surface area to 74 percent. With so much less traffic, noise levels dropped
from 66.5 dBA to 61 dBA. Most impressive of all, there was a 42% reduction
in nitrogen oxide emissions and a 38% reduction in particle pollution in the area. On top of that, business is up. What you consistently see when people change
their streetscapes to prioritize human beings over cars is you don't see any decline in
economic activity, you see the opposite. You get more people walking and cycling
around more slowly, stopping more often patronizing businesses more, and that … center of social
activity will tend to build on itself. So here’s the question: could something
like this work in an American city? Barcelona has some unique advantages getting
started on this plan, in that a lot of it was built before cars, and a lot of it was
built on a simple grid. The district of Eixample — where the superblock
plan is based — was designed in 1859 in this repetitive grid structure by this guy, Ildefons Cerdá. He basically invented the word for (and the study
of) “urbanization” when he laid out this grid plan for Barcelona that evenly distributed
resources like schools and hospitals. But superblock designers insist
that cities don’t need a simple grid structure to implement this kind of plan. It can work anywhere. Now, cities in the US have have attempted some
car-minimizing projects like this. The problem is, they’re usually done in
wealthier areas with lots of existing businesses. Zoning policies often require separation of
residential and commercial areas — but an ideal walkable area would be a mix of the
two. On top of that, zoning minimums on parking
availability encourage the presence of cars and parking lots, and minimums on street width
make for wide, unwalkable streets. Because of that, walkable districts are basically
isolated luxury items in the US. What makes the Barcelona plan different is
that they aren’t setting aside one fancy neighborhood or town square to make pedestrian-friendly — instead, by proposing superblocks throughout the entire city, they’ve declared car-free
spaces a right for everybody, no matter what part of town they're in. Maybe — this might be overly optimistic — but I think it has sunk in in the U. S. that the model whereby every city resident comes with a car — and drives a car everywhere – is just inherently limited. It limits the growth of your city, it limits the health of your city and the growth of your city. So one way or another we have to find ways of having a lot of people live close to one another without all of them having cars. You know, being able to get around and work and play in live and have enjoyable lives without cars. That’s me driving towards an authorized
outpost deep into the West Bank. This is disputed land I’m driving on. And when I got to the outpost I expected the
family I was meeting to hit me with an earful of ideology and a sermon on the Jews deserve
this land more than Palestinians. Instead, we played music, ate the food from
their land and talked more about perks of living in the desert. Close to Jerusalem, the best view, the best weather, close to my parents. Excellent. It's perfect. These people don't own guns. They don't lock their doors. I visited 15 settlement to find out what motivated people who are on the forefront of one of the world's most protracted and difficult conflicts. west bank is home to 2.2 million arabs and
seen by the international community as part of a future Palestinian state, but there are
more than 400,000 Israeli settlers living here now, about 5% of Israel’s population. You can learn all about how they got here
in the first part of this series. Many The first Jewish settlers who trekked
out here 1967 were driven by an strong ideology to claim the this land for Israel. But things have changed quite a bit since
then. [People talking in English] Spend ten minutes in the settlements today
and you can sometimes feel like you could just as easily be in a New Jersey suburb. [Guys talking about baseball] We're out here to play a game and gave a good time. Clean roads, big houses, quality parks, good
schools, close-by shopping, a university. You ask people why they moved here and instead
of the original mission to push forward the Israeli state, you hear things like.. Great educational system. There's a very nice country club. We wanted to be in a bigger place. It's a great place to raise kids. This is such a beautiful view and it's our land and we love looking at it all the time. We were looking for a Jerusalem suburb that we could afford that was a manageable commute. Close to Jerusalem..Extremely close to Jerusalem. The quality of life is so much better. It has nothing to do with politics. Having a bit more quiet. Most people here work in the city. Then you come back here at night or in the afternoon. And it's just relaxing and quiet. Between the puppet show, the bumping Bar Mitzah
party, and a hundred other examples of seemingly ordinary suburban life, it’s hard to remember
that these settlers are living at the edge of an intense conflict. My wife and I had certain criteria. One was we wanted to walk out our back door and be hiking in 5 minutes. There is still ideology here. Many residents of these communities feel connected
to the settler’s original mission to resettle the hills of ancient Judea and Samaria, which
they call… "The cradle of our entire civilization" But ideological motivations for living out
here are usually 4 or 5 items down on the priority list, with quality of life reasons
being the main drivers. To tell if you my ideological motivations were the major motivations to move over I won't lie. That wasn't one of the major things. I wasn't looking to make a statement. I was trying to find a place that would be a good place, a safe place for us to raise our kids, and this was the choice. It wasn't at all something that was one of the criteria but it ended up being a real perk. Course the hard core back-to-the-land settlers still exists. Here I am with a guy who doesn’t want his
name or face in my video. He lives on an outpost, illegal even to the
Israeli government. There’s no baseball league or bagel shop
in his community. God promised to us that this is our land. And we can grow here if we listen to him. This renegade culture of taking over hilltops
once characterized the settlement movement. But now, the zealous ideology that started
the movement has been diluted by more practical factors like house prices and the quality
of schools. This real estate ad for a settlement community
I think perfectly captures the blend of quality of life motivations with a hint ideological
fervor sprinkled in: "If you've always had a deep yearning for Jerusalem, Now is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not only to stand within its gates but to build the home of your dreams there. The tranquility of a picturesque setting and crisp mountain air with all the benefits of Jerusalem. Ramat Givat Zeev is adjacent to the city of Givat Zeev and is connected to Jerusalem via two main highways. But make no mistake. Threre's still a conflict here. An occupation of land that has enormous impact on the lives of Palestinians. It sounds paradoxical, but this just seems like the safest place in the world. One of the reasons life in many settlements
is so peaceful and pleasant is that the government invests proportionally more public money into
the settlement communities than it does mainland Israeli communities. Schools in the settlements receive better
funding than mainland Israeli schools in the form of better salaries for teachers and other
educational benefits. Nearly one third of all subsidized housings
in Israel is in the settlements even though only 5% of Israelis live there. In the past the government ran a mortgage
subsidy program that made living out here much cheaper than mainland Israel. Things like public transportation are also
cheaper for settlers than mainland Israelis. An Israeli think tank found that the government
spent around $950 on each West Bank resident in 2014, more than double what it spends on
people living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The settlement enterprise has become a fixture
of Israeli institutions and society -- which helps explain why you don’t need to be an
ideological activist to want to live there. I can't hide the quality of life that people are enjoying here ok? I can't hide the fact that people are moving from the United State from very luxurious homes and choose to live in Efrat.. And their not suffering in Efrat. They are managing to maintain a similar quality of life. On top of government support, lots of the
gyms, theaters, and parks in the settlements are funded in part by American donors with
ideological motivations. So what you end up with is attractive communities
that feel totally normal and livable but that are built with an ideological mission and
carry heavy political significance. even unauthorized outposts that are illegal under
Israeli law enjoy support from the government. Like this government-provided soldier to protect
the community, a playground built by the government as well as public waste and recycling collection all in a place that is deemed illegal by the government. My house, the government built it [laughs] [Laughs] that's a fact. These places are connected to public water
and electricity. They’re totally supported in spite of 
being “unauthorized". We have here everything from internet to water to electricity. Like everywhere. But often to appease the international community, the government still tries to appear tough
on unauthorized settlements. Back on the illegal outpost, my contact tells
me the authorities show up once every year or to knock down a settler’s house and then
take a picture of it to show the world they don't allow illegal outposts. But in reality they clearly do. Since 1967 there has been government support
from both right and left wing parties in Israeli politics which both have separate reasons
for supporting the settlements. And while this support is not the only or
even the main reason settlements are growing, but it has surely helped turn the settler
experience into a mainstream, livable, and often enjoyable situation. The original mission of the settlement movement
was to claim land deep into the West Bank, preventing a Palestinian State. Here are the Palestinian population centers,
and here are the settlements. Any proposal for giving palestinians their
own state now has to take into account the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living deep
into the West Bank. No one seriously considered it possible to
remove all 400 thousand residents. And while negotiations are in a stand still, Israel keeps issuing permits and settlements continue to grow. These whole peace talks are like two guys negotiating over a pizza, while one of them is eating a pizza. Just a few weeks ago the housing minister
announced that he foresees this region down here growing from seven thousand residents
a half a million in the next 10 years. Israeli settlements are one of the most universally
condemned issues among the international community. But no matter what you think of them, it’s
hard to imagine them going away any time soon. What did you think that I was living in? You thought that I was living in some sort of tent? riding camels? What did you have in your imaginary picture of the settlement movement? There are half a million people living out here in solid homes. Before 1996 there were only 100,000 Jews living over the Green Line. Today we're approaching half a million. And that number is just growing. The jewish people have come home. That's not going to change. In this video I talked to a lot of settlers whos motivations were more practical than ideological. In the next video I'm going to go to Jerusalem and talk to the settlers who are at epicenter of the conflict. Settlers whose motivations are much more ideological. I also wanted to point out that I talked to a lot of American settlers. 15% of settlers are American. I also talked to settlers from Holland, Russia and all over the place. The West Bank really is full of settlers from all over the world. The Democratic Party is in much greater peril
than its leaders or its supporters recognize, and it has no plan to save itself. It's true, it seems like the Republican party
that's in crisis, with its very extreme, very unusual candidate. And pollsters believe the presidency is more
likely than not to stay Democratic. But that all hides something more important: Since Obama was elected in 2008, The Democratic
Party has been obliterated at the state level. And they have no plan to make up the gap. So let’s rewind to Obama's election. You can see the map looks a lot more blue
right? Back then democrats fully controlled 20 state
governments. Now this is a current map of state legislatures. And 4 of those 12 states where democrats control
both houses? They have Republican governors. That means democrats control only have total
control in 8 states. For the 23 states with unified Republican
control, that’s meant an unprecedented wave of restrictions on abortion. The spread of anti-union “right to work”
laws into once pro-Union territory. Redrawing districts and making it tougher
to vote, tilting the electorate on balance richer, whiter, older. And large scale layoffs of teachers and other
public sector workers who are likely to support Democrats. Now to be fair to the Democrats, it isn’t
new for the party in the White House to lose states. Obama & the Democrats have lost 68 house seats,
11 senate seats, 10 governorships, and 15 state legislatures since he became president. But every two-term president has seen these
numbers because of what’s called wave elections – a backlash to continued control by one
party. And you can see that pretty clearly in this
chart of state control – the country turned strongly against democrats in 1994, 2 years
into Bill Clinton’s tenure, and turned strongly for them during the latter half of George
W. Bush’s administration. But one problem is that continuing to keep
the presidency will make a wave election to rebuild Democrats on the state level highly
unlikely this November. Or the next election in 2018 – by that time
political scientists would expect more of a wave against them if they stay incumbent. But another problem for the Democrats is that
since Obama has been successful personally, and Clinton is viewed as likely to win, the
party has moved left in its national ideology. Even though moderately liberal ideas can’t
be enacted in Congress. That’s because Congress looks pretty similar
to the state legislatures chart – and Democrats haven’t been weaker in congress since 1949. So policies that are even more left wing aren’t
likely to help more Democrats win in the House or states. It’s true that Donald Trump’s unpopularity
could pull down Republican candidates across the board. But Democrats counting on that to rebuild
the party need to consider that the bulk of Governors and other statewide elected officials
won’t be on the ballot until 2018. Democrats are notoriously bad at getting their
base to turn out for midterm elections. And Hillary Clinton isn’t viewed that popularly
herself, so by 2018 Republicans might have an unpopular president to run against. So while Democrats seem pretty good at winning
presidential elections, they’re realistically not going to keep that streak up forever. When they do lose the presidency, Democrats
are going to find that, unlike Republicans, they have almost nothing to fall back on. Since the Hubble Space Telescope went into
orbit back in April 1990, it has sent back a ton of incredible photos. Each has its own story,
but one of Hubble’s greatest images is this one, from 1995. This is a snapshot of nearly the entire history
of the universe - and the first of its kind. The Hubble Deep Field is an unusual image
that came from an unusual process. Typically astronomers apply to use Hubble
to look at a particular known object. “You want to study a star? Okay you know what star you’re going to
study. You point the telescope at that star.” That’s Robert Williams. He became the director of the telescope in
1993. It was his decision to create the Deep Field
image by pointing the telescope at nothing in particular. “What we're doing basically was just the
opposite — we're trying to find a sort of indiscriminate area of sky where no observation
had been made before.” They wanted to test how well Hubble could
survey very distant galaxies. But they didn’t know what they’d see. And It wasn’t a great time to be trying
new things. “After spending 2 billion dollars for 12
years, to have this kind of unexpected, very large mistake take place..” The Hubble team was still repairing the reputation
of the telescope after a flaw in the main mirror produced blurry images for nearly three years. “We were the brunt of jokes and the newspapers,
political cartoons you know Johnny Carson show. NASA was being made fun of
for having made such a monumental screw up of such an expensive project.” NASA sent astronauts on a 5-day mission to
install a module that would fix the problem. And it worked. So Williams’ team spent 1995 planning the
deep field observation. For one thing, they had to decide where to
point the telescope. The goal was to see far beyond our galaxy,
so the spot needed to be away from the galactic plane of the Milky Way and away from any known
large galaxy clusters. They didn’t want anything bright to block
the view. And to get continuous observations,
it needed to be a location that wouldn’t be obscured when Hubble went around Earth,
as it does every hour and a half or so. They settled on a region just above the big
dipper -- a dark, unremarkable, peephole into the universe. The field of view was extremely narrow. Astronomers measure the apparent size of objects
in the sky in angular degrees, and a degree can be divided into 60 arcminutes. From Earth, the moon is about half a degree
across, around 30 arcminutes. But the area that Hubble photographed was
just 2.6 arcminutes across. “A little larger than a pinhead at arm's
length. So it’s a teeny patch of sky.” The observations began on December, 18, 1995,
collecting 4 different wavelengths of light. And over the next 10 days the telescope took
342 images of that teeny patch of sky. “We were relieved that we are getting good
data but we had to keep adding it up and so it wasn't until ten days that we realized oh, we really got something.” There are a few nearby stars in the image
but pretty much all the other objects here, including these tiny blue dots -- they’re galaxies. The light from these different galaxies has
been traveling for vastly different amounts of time so the furthest galaxies are shown
pretty early in their evolution, more than 12 billion years ago. That’s just a billion and a half years after
the big bang. It’s as if you could point a telescope across
the earth and actually photograph ancient Egypt, with a neanderthal in the background
and then further back there’s a dinosaur. The research team sampled another tiny spot
two years later, this time in the southern sky. “We wanted to know okay then we got one
spot of this you never know maybe it was some weird spot and so we thought it was important
to repeat the observation.” The datasets boosted estimates of the total
number of galaxies. They allowed researchers to track the history
of star formation through the universe. And they helped confirm the bottom-up theory
of galaxy formation, by revealing galaxies that are small and irregular early in their
evolution. But one of the most important legacies of
the Hubble Deep Field is how it changed the culture of astronomy. “Until this time astronomy had a history
of people taking the data and keeping it to themselves until they had fully analyzed it
after all this was intellectual property.” Instead of hoarding the discoveries embedded
in the dataset, Williams and his team formatted and released it immediately to the wider scientific
community. It’s been cited in hundreds of papers. “Nowadays it is so much more common for
people to take interesting observations and make the data available to the public even
though they might have a right to keep it for a certain period of time to themselves.” Thanks to servicing missions that installed
more advanced cameras, Hubble has since made even deeper deep field images, and those data
too, were released to the public. “I think it it moves forward the march of
human understanding human knowledge tremendously and the Hubble deep field did that.” If you want praise of Leonardo daVinci’s
Mona Lisa as art, you can find it. But what if you think it’s just….
fine? What’s the cynic’s explanation for the
Mona Lisa? Why is the Mona Lisa so, so famous? Is it really that much better than da Vinci’s
Lady with Ermine? That seems better. There’s one more ermine. But it’s Mona who is so famous that the
director of the Louvre, where Mona Lisa lives, said 80% of their visitors are only there
to see that one painting. If you don’t think Mona Lisa is famous just
because she’s somehow 10 times better than every other painting, her story reveals something
more interesting, something about how art breaks into wider culture. And it might never have happened if the Mona
Lisa hadn’t disappeared. Before Mona Lisa became a mass culture star,
before she vanished, one critic made her a work of art worth taking. And he was so over-the-top insanely in love
with the painting that he single-handedly made it a masterpiece. Walter Pater’s 1873 book, The Renaissance,
was key. It came out more than 350 years after Leonardo
painted it, but it defined the painting for Victorians. That was key in an age when it was hard to
actually see the art. So the words did the work. Here is the epic semi-colon-stuffed paragraph
at the center of his ode to Mona Lisa. Highlights? “The animalism of Greece”
“She is older than the rocks among which she sits.” “Like the vampire, she has been dead many
times.” This was the purplest prose of all time. But people loved the stuff. Oscar Wilde thought the essay’s writing
was great. He praised “the musical of the mystical
prose.” And every general interest profile of the
Louvre, from academic guidebooks to discussions clubs in Paducah, used Pater’s words to
talk about Mona. Other critics jumped on — Mona was a popular,
secular painting that they could analyze. Unlike da Vinci’s Last Supper, they could
supply all the meaning. But even at her peak, Mona Lisa was just art
world famous, not the most famous painting of all time. In 1907, a vandal at the Louvre targeted a
picture by Ingres not da Vinci. And in 1910, amidst rumors of theft, papers
called Mona just the second most famous painting in the Louvre, after Raphael's Sistina Madonna. It took a real theft to take Mona from art
syllabus highlight to mass culture icon. These are Vincenzo Peruggia’s fingerprints. This is Vincenzo Peruggia’s mugshot. He has one because on August 21, 1911, the
former Louvre worker lifted the Mona Lisa off the wall and...took it home. It took the Louvre a day to even notice, but
the media didn’t have as subdued of a reaction. The painting went missing for two years, and
every time, the press — often quoting Pater — called it the greatest portrait there
ever was. They speculated that Mona’s smile had driven
the thief mad, they wrote art thief fan fiction, and they constantly daydreamed about Mona
Lisa’s whereabouts. Thousands went to the Louvre just to see empty
hooks hanging on the wall. The robbery and manhunt were like a two year
ad campaign for the painting. And because you couldn’t just Google “Mona
Lisa before it was stolen,” it was hard for people to see the actual painting and
say, “What’s the big deal?” When Peruggia was caught, he said his goal
was to bring Mona back to her native Italy. By then, she was the most famous painting
in the world due, in part, to her absence. Just as critics could smear prose on her blank
face, the press could hang a reputation on those empty hooks in the wall. When Mona Lisa was stolen, she left a masterpiece. After her recovery and a two week tour in
Florence, she returned to the Louvre bigger than just art. She was a story and a legend
and prominently shown in every paper that reported her recovery. It was the big reveal after 2 years of suspense,
now with a story that merited Walter Pater’s hyperbole. From that point on, she attracted Presidential
speeches and parodies. “Also come to pay homage to this great creation
of the civilization which we share.” The momentum never stopped. In the end, the cynic’s interpretation and
the gob-smacked critic’s interpretation have something in common. Mona Lisa isn’t a portrait, but a blank
face. A place for critics to paint meaning, and
people to find mystery. That’s why she was so famous — not because
of how she’s painted, but what we see in her. If that’s not art, then what is? I found one 1909 description of the Mona Lisa
that seemed particularly prescient. The writer said: “Even those whose first
expressions [sic] is ‘huh’ and proclaimed frankly that they cannot see her beauty or
her interest find themselves disputing hotly over both.” That’s probably still the case today. This is me driving in what I think is one
of the most bizarre places in the world. I just crossed over from Israel into the West
Bank. If you look at a map of where I am right now,
you will see a jumbled mess of of Palestinian towns shown here in green, and Israeli
settlements, which are blue. Many people think of this territory as Palestine. But of the 3 million people living out here,
almost twenty percent of them are Jewish Israeli citizens. The Israelis living out here are called settlers. They live in the West Bank but are citizens
of Israel. As I drive I’m looking at effectively two
different nations, woven into each other through decades of conflict,
I visited 15 settlements all over the West Bank, talking to the people who have decided
to pack up and move to middle of this disputed land. We’ll meet them in coming videos. But first let’s look at the maps that explain
how the West Bank got to looking like this. So let’s first go back to 1948, when the
map looks a lot different. Back then, all this land was controlled by
Great Britain. Due to growing tension between Jews and Arabs,
the UN worked with the Britain to split the land into two states, one for Jews, Israel,
and one for Arabs, Palestine. The Jews accepted the plan and declared independence. But the Arab states in the region saw this
plan as just more European colonialism. They didn’t accept the plan and declared
war with Israel. Israel won the war, pushing well past the
borders of the UN plan. During the peace negotiations, a ceasefire
line was drawn in green ink. It became known as the green line. It wasn’t a border, just a ceasefire line
with this being the state of Israel, and this section being controlled by Jordan, who had
taken control of it during the war they just fought. The Jordanians named this newly-seized land
the West Bank because it was West of the Jordan River. The fragile ceasefire remained until 1967
when Israel fought another war with its Arab neighbors. Israel wasn’t looking to take over land
in the war, but In just six days of fighting, it blew past the Green Line and seized a whole
swath of land, including the entire West Bank. Suddenly Israel had a decision to make: do
they make the West Bank a part of Israel and give the 1.1 million Arabs living there Israeli
citizenship and voting rights? Do they give back the land to their enemy
Jordan or else let the people create their own Palestinian state? This became a major debate in Israeli politics. Many Israelis saw this war they just won not
only as a military victory but a religious sign that the Jews were meant to return to
the the place where a huge amount of Jewish ancient history happened, the hills of ancient
Judea and Samaria, which was basically the entire West Bank. So while the government was debating what
to do, Israeli civilians began moving into the West Bank without any permission from
the government. They just starting setting up homes, establishing
a Jewish presence in this region. Suddenly, any debate about what to do with
the West Bank had to take this growing number of Israeli civilians into consideration. This is how the the settler movement was born. The rest of the world did not approve of this. As the settler presence grew, the UN issued
a resolution saying that the settlements had “...no legal validity and constitute a serious
obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” Two different narratives emerged here: One
said Jewish civilians were moving onto mostly empty plots of land that they had captured
in a war and that had deep historical and spiritual significance to them. The other side, which is the side most of
the world took, said that these settlers were colonizing land to expand their nation. The settler project was widely seen as apart
of an illegal occupation of the West Bank. In spite of international condemnation, the
number of settlers grew quickly. Over the next few decades, more and more factions
of the Israeli government began to support the settler movement, allocating public resources
and granting permits for building. The Israeli housing ministry and military
began developing plans for how to build up the West Bank. They built roads throughout the entire region,
allowing for easy access between settlements and mainland Israel. More and more building permits were given
out and new planned communities began popping up all over the West Bank. The settlements slowly shifted from a fringe
group of motivated civilians to an institutionalized part of Israeli society, totally supported
by the state. Here are the Palestinian towns in the West
Bank. As settler activity surged in the 80s and
90s, watch how the settlements weave around these towns. Palestinians didn’t like this encroachment. They began protesting, sometimes with extreme
violence. Between the violence and the condemnation
from the international community of the settlements, the situation became unsustainable. So in the mid 90s American president Bill
Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed
the Oslo Accords, agreements that established Palestinian government and split the West
Bank into 3 sections. Area A gave Palestinians total control over
security and government. This makes up about 18% of the West Bank but
most of the palestinian population centers. This gave the Palestinian government self
rule for the first time. Area B was designated for Palestinian government
control while retaining Israeli security control, meaning the Israeli military remains very
present. Area B is about 22% of the West Bank. Area C Remained completely under Israeli military
and government control. This is where all the settlements are. It is about 60% of the West Bank. So this is how we ended up with this mess
of a map. Israelis can easily come and go to mainland
Israel through really nice roads that go straight to settlements. They call these “flyovers” because they
bypass Palestinian villages and give easy access from one settlement to another, although
not every settlement has a flyover road like this. Palestinians can drive on almost all roads
in the West Bank but their movement it often more difficult, having to stop at checkpoints
or have their car inspected by a soldier. But perhaps the biggest difficulty faced by
palestinians is how restricted their economy is due to this carved up land. Area C contains the majority of the West Banks
agricultural land, as well as water and mineral resources. Palestinians companies are severely restricted
in accessing these resources which takes a huge hit on their economy. So with these three sections agreed upon by
both sides, the settlements continued to grow within Area C. But in 2005 something happened
that would ignite even more passion for the settler movement., Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon decided to remove 8,500 settlers from the Gaza strip, another disputed area. Seeing Israelis being evicted, their homes
demolished, left a huge mark on the country, especially the settlers. They immediately redoubled their efforts to
settle the West Bank. The numbers continued to grow. Most people who think about resolution to
this conflict propose a two state solution, meaning giving the Palestinians a state somewhere
in the West Bank region. But if you look at this map you can see what
it’s getting harder and harder to do that. The settlers living in Area C of the West
Bank are not living in tents or Caravans. They are living in developed communities with
schools, hospitals and even a university. In the next video I will go inside the settlements
and talk to the people living there. In this 1995 episode of The Simpsons, Homer
walks with Marge through downtown Springfield and says Careful now. These are dangerous streets for us upper-lower-middle-class
types This is Homer’s first admission to being
"middle-class" For the rest of us, this always seemed obvious. He lives in a modest home in the suburbs with
his wife and three children. He’s not a college graduate and his job
appears to require a minimal amount of technical training. This is all confirmed when we get a tight
shot of his paycheck in season 7. Hey, how come my pay is so low? According to this stub, Homer receives a pre-tax,
weekly pay of $479.60 works out to $11.99 an hour. So, he’s looking at an annual salary of
$24,395. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $37,416 per
year. What? This is an outrage! There are a lot of fans who think the show
is based on the real life town of Springfield, Oregon. And if we look at Homer's salary there it
places him pretty comfortably in the lower middle class income bracket. Of course, this is all based on one job as
a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. But Homer has had over 191 jobs in 27 seasons
and they’ve placed him across the entire economic spectrum. You know, I've had a lot of jobs. Boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty,
baby proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman,
carnie, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, garbage commissioner, mountain climber,
farmer, inventor, Smithers, Poochie, celebrity assistant, power plant worker, fortune cookie
writer, beer baron, Kwik-E Mart clerk, homophobe and missionary. But protecting Springfield, that gives me
the best feeling of all. Some of these jobs were literally impossible
to determine salaries for — like “beer smuggler,” or “the grim reaper.” There were also some seasonal jobs (“mall
santa”), and those had to be excluded. In the end, I narrowed Homer’s resume down
to 100 jobs, then looked up the average salary for each one. Here’s what we found. Three of Homer’s 10 highest-paying jobs
have been at the power plant. In season 13, he tried his hand as the plant’s
executive VP before momentarily taking over Mr. Burns’s post as CEO the following season. Dad please you're the head of a major corporation. You're right. Three years later, he served as the facility’s
manager. Dohhhhhhhhh. Uhhhmmmm. Uhhhh. Duhhhhhhh. Around half of Homer’s jobs place him in
the middle class. And his least lucrative jobs were pretty odd. He was a mascot, a carny, moonshine taste
tester, a cannonball performance artist, and a walking billboard. What are those doing there?! Earning us a hundred bucks a week that's what. I plotted out Homer’s hypothetical job salaries
in a linear order, by episode number. And over the course of 597 episodes — from
1989 to 2016 — it’s clear that he hasn’t really ascended economically. Estelle: Despite a few successes here and
there, he has stagnated and that makes him just like the actual American middle class. Until the 1970s, the income of the average
American family grew alongside national economic productivity. Since then, wages have stagnated, and have
failed to keep up with inflation. Economists refer to this as the ‘middle-class
squeeze’. Homer’s median income has never surpassed
the median income in the United States. Despite brief forays into the 1 percent, Homer
remains a paradigm of middle-class America: Three decades later, he’s right where he
started. For Americans, the colors red and blue are
deeply linked to the Republican and Democratic parties, but it’s really only been that
way since the 2000 election. After all, this is what election night results
used to look like on American TV. -Kennedy victory, gentleman let me tell you
this. If they ever teach this machine to talk, you
and I, well we are out of business. The wide adoption of color television in the
late 1960s and 1970s changed all that. But it would still be several decades before
the media settled on the color scheme we know today -what are the hardest states to turn from
blue to red? What are the easy ones? -President Obama has won everyone of these
blue states. -He has to turn states that have been voting
blue. To understand where this red state, blue state
business comes from, let’s go back to the very first time a television network used
colored maps to report election results. That happened in 1972, which also was the
first year that a majority of American television households owned color TVs. Each of the big three networks broadcasted
their election coverage in color. But here’s what CBS did to differentiate
themselves from their competition. They created the first color election map
in American television history. And just look at Alabama on CBS’ map. That oh so reliable conservative state. It was colored pure Republican blue. No, your eyes were not deceiving you. The states that Republican Richard Nixon won
that night in his 1972 landslide victory were colored blue on the CBS map. CBS’ great broadcast innovation would soon
inspire the other networks to introduce red and blue maps to their own election night
broadcasts. For its part CBS would keep the republican
blue and democratic red scheme through the 1980 election. -For Reagan well it’s a different story. There shown in blue and this country is almost
solidly in the Reagan colors tonight. Those pairings may seem odd today, but they
weren’t back then. That’s because blue, as NPR’s Ron Elving
has noted, was a color closely associated with the Union army led by Republican Abraham
Lincoln. Red on the other hand was a color associated
leftists and left leaning parties throughout the world as it is today. In fact, NBC’s 1976 election chief told
the Smithsonian Magazine that it was British Tory Blue and Labour Party red that influenced
NBC to go with this color scheme for twenty years. -It’s beginning to look like a suburban
swimming pool over there. -Walter Mondale the winner of the state of
Minnesota colored red tonight for Walter Mondale. -It is shaping up as a George Bush map
as we look at it back there. -It certainly is Tom. -It goes into the Clinton column after having
voted with the republicans the last three times. And as you can see we color in the state of
Kentucky. ABC News on the other hand, had it’s own
state color logic: -The red states are states we have projected
having gone for Mr. Reagan. Red R reagan, that’s why we choose red. By 1996 ABC AND CBS had used the now familiar
democratic blue states and republican red states on their maps over several election
cycles. So NBC decided to make the switch too for
a very simple reason. -NBC decided to adapt the same color pattern
as ABC and CBS so as not to have a confusion for the viewers. But it wasn’t until the 2000 election that
the political concept or term “red state” versus “blue state” took hold. On that election night, the network anchors
and pundits relied heavily on the colored maps to explain to how close the race was
between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Very soon, those red states and blue states
that the country saw over and over again on TV became rooted in American culture. David Letterman was one of the earliest cultural
figures to pick up on this just a few days after the 2000 election. -The candidates will work out a compromise,
and thank God, not a minute too soon. Here's how it's going to go. George W. Bush will be president for the red
states. Al W. Gore will be president for the blue
states. And that's -- that's the best they can do. Those same television maps would also help
make “red state” and “blue state” a popular term among political pundits and
newspaper headline writers. It was useful shorthand as memories of the
2000 election were burned into the American psyche. Over time, the term came to mean not just
the states that voted for Bush and Gore, but also a way to describe the cultural values
associated with American electoral geography. All this was not lost on then state senator
Barack Obama when he addressed the DNC in 2004. -The pundits like to slice and dice our country
into red states and blue states. Red states for republicans and blue states
for democrats But come election night in 2004, the term,
the coloring, and the maps still stuck. Now, you can see the red and blue terminology
all over the place in American life: It’s in modern party iconography In the names of consulting groups In coffee brands And even at this Kentucky barbecue joint. There’s even a color now for States that
could vote either Democratic or Republican. And while many may lament the divisions that
the terms have brought to the country. Maybe they should look on the bright side. At least it inspired CBS’ Harry Smith to
record this AMAZING song. -I’m from a red state. -I’m from a blue one
-We met in the middle and don’t see eye to eye. -She’s a bleeding heart
-Your’s is made of stone -Sometimes I wonder how we get by. In 2007, a science advocacy group called Sense
About Science reached out to the manufacturers of 15 detox health products. They wanted to figure out one thing: what
exactly was the toxin that those products were targeting? After talking to the makers of everything
from smoothies to supplements to shampoos, the researchers came back with absolutely
nothing. Not a single company could identify what “toxic
substance” their “detox” product eliminated. Long story short, detoxing — for weight
loss, for beauty treatments, for fitness — is bullshit. But it’s been kept alive thanks to some
really archaic misconceptions about how our bodies work, and a whole lot of celebrity
endorsements. In fact, I've created a great 48-hour detox plan on DoctorOz.com. So how did we get here? Now when we talk about detox, we're thinking about
getting rid of things we've overconsumed, too much food, too much alcohol, or dangerous chemicals that have entered our bodies from the environment. But if you go back to about 3000 BC in ancient
Egypt, physicians thought that toxic substances were actually produced within people’s bodies, and that these toxins were the cause of disease, and that they
needed to be expelled. Remember how we used to use leeches to get
out the “bad blood” when people were sick? That’s kind of the same idea. People thought that the body would poison
itself when toxins from feces were absorbed back into the blood. They called this idea autointoxication, and
it lasted for a long time. And even microbiologists believed in it through
the last century. By the early 1900s, our understanding of physiology
evolved, and we stopped taking the idea of autointoxication seriously. But in the realm of health pseudoscience,
detoxing still stuck around. And a lot of that detox culture has been shaped
by celebrity culture. Movie stars and other performers will use
detox products, and their stories will get written up in magazines. Gwyneth Paltrow is a fantastic example
of that, her website is just a panorama of pseudoscience. She’s famously endorsed different types
of cleanses that she allegedly uses herself. What you don’t see is that those products
are just one part of a multi-million dollar business promoting easy exercise and diet
solutions. It’s very appealing to just believe you can
take something from a store shelf, take it for a few weeks, and somehow have this very quick transformation into something
that will look as wonderful as she does. Here’s the thing: our bodies are already
fantastic detox machines. We have the skin, the lymphatic and gastrointestinal
systems, the kidneys, the liver — they’re all working together to convert toxic substances
that enter the body into harmless things that your body can either store or eliminate. But the best things you can do to boost your wellbeing and maybe even improve your long-term health outcomes are just sleep, don't drink too much, don't smoke, exercise, eat a balanced diet
— and these don’t come in a magical pill form, they don’t come in a tea form, you
can’t put them on your face in a special cream. At the same time, “detoxing” is a real
process for people suffering from substance addiction. The detox that you see on the side of a shampoo
bottle, or vitamin bottle — that’s marketing hype. But there’s actual, real, legitimate medical detox
procedures for people who have levels of alcohol or drugs or poisons in their body  that are too high, and they need to go through some kind of treatment to get them back to levels that basically won’t kill them, or overwhelm their organ systems. Again, that’s not something you can buy
on the shelf at the grocery store or the pharmacy. The bottom line is, over the counter detox
products just aren’t supported by science. And they can also actually be dangerous. More extreme detoxes like colon cleanses can
deplete electrolytes to dangerously low levels. There have been reports of perforations of
the gut and even death when people use these kinds of products. "And the things that these 'detox' and 'cleanse'
products claim to accomplish? Your body does those things on its own." So any time you see words like ‘detox’
or ‘cleanse’ on a product label, remember: it’s just marketing hype. And it’s time we start treating it accordingly. One of the things we didn't get into in this story is that Amazon, one of the world's largest retailers, is also selling hundreds of detox products on its site. So everything from colon cleansers to help you lose weight to detox footpads, teas. So it's not just Gwyneth Paltrow selling this stuff, it's everywhere, and it's a reminder of how critical we need to be of health claims that seem to good to be true. You may have heard that Mercury is retrograde
again. But if you try to find out what that means,
search results are dominated by astrologers who believe Mercury can make you spill coffee
on your favorite shirt or cause your car to break down. But if you set aside all those creative interpretations,
there’s actually a real astronomical phenomenon underneath. So let’s start with the basic layout of
our solar system. The planets closest to the sun move faster
and the outer planets move slower, but they all go in the same direction. “Apparent retrograde motion” is when planets
appear to temporarily change the direction of their orbit. They don’t change direction, it just looks
that way from Earth. It’s an illusion that unfolds over a matter
of weeks or months. In this image, Mars was photographed every
5-7 days between October 2011 and July 2012. Once all the photos were combined by aligning
the stars in the background, it appears as though Mars looped back on itself before continuing
on its orbit. A retrograde illusion happens when we lap
an outer planet, like we do with Mars every 2 years, or when an inner planet laps Earth,
like Mercury does every 4 months or so. But for both Mercury and Venus, the illusion
is hard to actually capture since they’re located on Earth’s day side, not our night
side. When those planets are visible, it’s only right
around sunset and sunrise. But assuming you could see it, here’s a
diagram of how the Mercury retrograde illusion would work. This line shows our view of Mercury against
the background stars. As Mercury passes us by, our line of sight
shifts so that for about 3 weeks Mercury will appear to loop back on itself when viewed
from Earth. It’s simply a function of two objects orbiting
in the same direction at different speeds. If you stood on Mercury, you would see Earth
make an apparent loop too. I wanted to recreate this illusion on a tabletop
so I stuck a post-it note to the wall in the background to represent the fixed stars. I grabbed a ball of play-doh to be Mercury and my phone
camera is Earth. I took 10 photos of them orbiting in the same direction with Mercury
passing by Earth. If you simply view the images in sequence,
you don’t really see the loop, but remember, the illusion is relative to the background
of fixed stars. So once you line up the images so that that
post-it note star is fixed, the retrograde loop appears. Here’s another visualization of the retrograde
loop of Mars as Earth passes it. The bottom part shows the positions of the
planets and the top is the corresponding view of Mars from Earth. The key is to always remember that Earth is
moving too. So retrograde motion was baffling to early
astronomers who thought that Earth was stationary and at the center of the solar system. In the 2nd century, Ptolemy devised a complicated
system of loops and orbits within orbits to account for the apparent retrograde motion
of planets. That model was accepted for 1500 years because
it seemed to fit the observations, even though it was completely wrong. Once Copernicus showed that all the planets,
including Earth, move around the sun, then then retrograde motion was easily explained as
an illusion. So if there’s any life lessons to learn
from Mercury retrograde, it’s that we may be vulnerable to illusions
when we think everything revolves around us. It's really frustrating how misleading the scale is on every illustration of the solar system So I feel compelled to point out that the real distance between Earth and Mercury, when those planets are closest together, is more than 6,000 times the diameter of Earth. Hillary Clinton: "You know, I suppose I could
have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was to fulfill
my profession which I entered before my husband entered public life." Hillary Clinton has been a major political
figure my whole adult life. I’ve been covering her, in one way, or another
since I became a journalist. And no politician I’ve covered has left
me so confused. There is the Hillary Clinton I watch on the
nightly news and that I read described in the press. She gets described as cold, unlikable, Bill O'Reilly: "One of the most robotic statements
I've ever seen." calculating, manipulative. She’s not a great campaigner. The private email server and the Goldman Sachs
paydays frustrate even the people who like her most. Polls show most Americans doubt her honesty. And then there is the Hillary Clinton described
to me by people who have worked with her, people who understand Washington in ways I
never will. Their Clinton is described in superlatives. She’s brilliant, warm, funny, authentic. And she gets things done. Everybody says that, she gets things done. Bob Greenstein: "A master policy strategist
– how do you move the policy to make things actually happen?" She inspires this real loyalty which, to be
honest, is an order of magnitude greater than what most politicians get in DC. Neera Tanden: "Even when I don’t work for
Hillary – like, I don’t technically work for hillary – it still feels like I work
for Hillary." I've come to call this "The Gap." And I spoke to dozens of her colleagues, going
back to her time in college, in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, everybody who's worked
with her acknowledged the gap. And so does Hillary Clinton herself. "It’s always amusing to me that when I have
a job, I have really high approval ratings. When I’m actually doing the work,[..] Then I seek a job, and all the discredited
negativity comes back out, all these arguments and attacks start up." And so after interviewing Clinton, I interviewed
all these people who have worked with her, who know her, people who like her, people
who have clashed with her. And I asked every one of them to begin. What is true about hillary clinton when she’s
governing that is not obvious about her on the campaign trail? What accounts for the gap? To my surprise, all these people I spoke to,
at some point in our conversation they all the said the same thing every time. Tom Harkin: "She really, truly, is interested
in listening to people." Thomas Nides: "Part of her gift is her ability
absorb a lot of information. But not just clinically reading a briefing
book. She wants to hear information from real people,
real voters." She listens. The first few times I heard this it sounded
like such bulls***. What a gendered compliment, “she listens.” Neera Tanden: "Her strengths are to really
hear what people are saying and incorporate it into what she's doing." After 11, 12, 15 times though, I began to
take it more seriously, to ask more questions about it. Clinton actually kicked off her 2000 senate
campaign with a "listening tour." The press hated it. They thought it was was just one more way
she was dodging having to say real things about the hard issues. But to her, it wasn't bulls***. Hillary did another of these listening tours
to kick off her presidential campaign. Tanden: "She was doing a bunch of events in
new hampshire and heard a ton about the Opioid addiction problem in New Hampshire. So she decided to put forward a policy on
Opiate addiction – And a bunch of other political leaders have done that since." Let’s state something obvious here. Let's stop and talk about the elephant in
the room. There is a gender dynamic at play here. Women weren’t guaranteed the vote in this
country till about 1920. And you don’t have to assert some grand
patriarchal conspiracy to suggest that campaigning, a process created by men, dominated by men,
and until recently, limited to men, might subtly favor male traits. Male traits maybe like talking over listening. It’s really interesting to look at the Democratic
primary through this lens. He’s a great talker. That’s where his skills come from. She’s a great listener, that’s where her
advantages come from. And this time, the listener won. But it felt illegitimate to a lot of people
– Clinton’s endorsements, her firewall of allies made her look like a tool of the
establishment, while Sanders’ speeches left people marveling at his political skills. I want to be very clear here. I’m not saying that anyone who opposed Clinton
was sexist. I'm not saying she should have won. What I’m saying is that presidential campaigns
are built to showcase the stereotypically male trait of standing in front of a room
speaking confidently. A campaign built on charismatic oration feels
legitimate in a way that a campaign built on deep relationships does not. But here’s the thing: deep listening, building
those relationships it is crucial to being President. And it can also get you in trouble. I’m going to walk through a couple ways
Clinton uses her real skill, and it is a skill, at listening as a leadership style. But you also get a sense of how her process
can go awry. This guy, Bob Greenstein, he’s devoted his
life to understanding and improving policy that affects the poor. And when I asked him about whether Clinton’s
listening ends up in anything he got really specific about how this works. Greenstein: "Bill Clinton had run on a platform
that included the slogan" Clinton: “If you work full time, you shouldn’t
have to raise your kids in poverty. We should reward working families and lift
them out.” Clinton: "By expanding the refundable Earned
Income Tax Credit, if you work 40 hours a week and you've got a child in the house,
you will no longer be in poverty." Greenstein: "When his first budget came out
in 1993, it indeed had a large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. But It fell short." A policy is flawed in a pretty technical and
complicated way. "So we did a paper showing this. I had a little quote from Bill Clinton, and
the lede said but his plan falls short of the goal." "I sent it to her top policy adviser, who
gave it to her, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon." She actually listens. She engages, she reads the memo. "At 9 AM the next morning, I receive a phone
call from the White House." And then she goes and gets the change done. "To my amazement, they withdrew the original
proposal and submitted the revised within a few days, and it became law in '93. This was the heart of the Earned Income Tax
Credit of 93, that is one of the biggest anti-poverty advances of the last several decades and lifts
millions of people out of poverty. " I heard stories like that again and again. Clinton apparently has a habit of talking
to people and stuffing little notes from her conversations in suitcases, and then every
few months, she makes her whole staff assemble, they would dump out these suitcases of basically
trash. And then they would try to organize the notes
to extract policy ideas, or figure out problems they should address, based on what she’s
heard. People in her senate office told me that this
really did lead to legislation, to new amendments. You can't understand her without understanding
this part of her process. Nides: "I think one of Hillary Clinton's real
gifts is to listen to you – shut up, not talk, not just sit around and tell me what
i want to hear and just blather on and on – which many of my friends who have been
in the political world do. She basically hears, thinks, and then talks
about where her views are. And you don’t walk away thinking you just
wasted an hour of my time." I heard another story about her at the State
Department, that when she came in there, she had to win the trust of career staff, people
who didn’t know her, who hadn’t come to work for her. And one thing she would do is invite these
diplomats and researchers to big meetings and then reference something they had written
deep in an obscure memo years ago. And they were thrilled that a secretary of
state was actually digging into their work, and it helped her win over a lot of support
in the building. They felt respected. One reason people like working for her, a
reason she has a very loyal staff, is she actually listens to them, takes their advice,
reads their memos. A lot of politicians don’t. Clinton uses listening, in a very real way,
to win over allies. In 2000, when she got to the Senate, she was
already a very polarizing figure. Trent Lott – majority leader during Bill
Clinton’s impeachment trial – he first said “She will be one of 100 and we won’t
let her forget it” A few years later, they teamed up on Hurricane relief. And it wasn’t just Lott. In 2006, the times tallied her weird alliances. It was Tom DeLay on foster children. New Gingrich on health care. Bill Frist on medical records. Bob Bennett on flag burning. Rick Santorum around children's exposure to
graphic images. John Sununu on SUV taillights. Mike Dewine on asthma. And the way she did it, again, was listening. She surprises people who expected to hate
her by being really friendly, and by paying close enough attention that she's able to
figure out where they can collaborate. But a process based on listening doesn’t
always get you to the right answers. You have to listen to the right people, for
one thing. And Clinton sometimes doesn’t. Clinton:"I will take the President at his
word" It’s part of how she ended up voting for
the Iraq War: she listened to people who were giving her the wrong intelligence and whose
appetite for war was perhaps stronger than she thought. Clinton: "that he will try hard to pass a
UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible” Another problem is she can listen to too many
people. The biggest government reform Hillary ever
sought, the health care bill in 1993 and 94, it was a disaster. She created this massive sprawling process
with 500 policy experts. Clinton: "There are so many lessons to be
learned." Everybody was being heard, everybody's ideas
were being reflected in the bill. Advocacy ad against bill: "A national limit
on health care?" And so we ended up with a bill that was so
complex that nobody could understand it. You can hear this in her speeches too, her
speeches often sound like a laundry list to people. And that's because so many different voices
are in them. Consensus in that way become an enemy of inspiration. Health care advocacy ad: "There's gotta be
a better way." Listening can also be a way of delaying tough
decisions. Joshua Green did an exhaustive review of private
communications of her 2008 campaign for president and concluded that aides “routinely attacked and undermined each
other, and Clinton never forced a resolution.” “Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific
decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make,” There is one group Clinton never listens to. And that is the press. In some ways her distrust here is understandable
- there’s been an incredibly long history of media-fueled scandals that have amounted
to very, very little. "Today [...] the House Select Committee on
Benghazi finally released its 800-page report on the attack." "After a two year, seven million dollar investigation,
the eighth investigation to date, the authors of the report make no new accusations, and
provide no new evidence of wrongdoing against the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton." But in our interview, she seems blind to the
fact that her own behavior is, correctly, under a brighter spotlight. Clinton:“A democracy relies on the glue
of trust,” “There’s got to be that rock-solid belief
that this transaction between us as voters and citizens rests on something deep and sacred." "And I don’t know how we get back to that.” If she's that worried about trust, a start
would have been turning down Goldman Sach’s 2013 offer to accept $675,000 for three speeches. Anderson Cooper: "Did you have to be paid
$675,000?" Clinton: "Well I don't know. That's what they offered." That was 2013. People already didn't trust Goldman Sachs. I think she sees the loss of public trust
in her as caused by the same forces that led to the loss of public trust in everything
else: a press corps obsessed with controversy, uninterested in substance, and incapable of
in policing the boundaries of decency and truthfulness. And look. I’m a member of the press, I’ll cop to
some of that. But Clinton’s explanation here has become
a rationalization. She has lost sight of the bar she should be
held to and now plays loose with the public’s trust herself. Clinton: "I did not email any classified material
to anyone." FBI Director Comey: "110 emails, in 52 email
chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information." Now it’s not the press who will be Clinton’s
toughest opponent if she wins. She gleefully called Republican’s enemies
she was glad to make. Cooper: "You've all made a few people upset
over your political careers. Which enemy are you most proud of?" Clinton: "Probably the republicans." And when I asked her if she regretted that
comment, because she worried about all the negativity in politics, she kinda said not
really. Clinton: ”Not very much. You can go back and look at how i’ve worked
with Republicans." "But you know they terrible things about me,
much worse than anything I’ve said about them. That just seems part of the political back
and forth now." Now, it’s interesting and weird what Clinton
said there. She doesn't apologize, she says Republicans
say worse about her, but she says she will nevertheless be able to work with Republicans. "I think I have a very strong base of relationships
with them and uh, evidence of that." And what's weird is there is some evidence
of that actually. You can hear in her approach to working with
Republicans a gentle critique of Obama. His approach is summed up by this 2013 joke
he made about Mitch McConnell. "Of course, even after I've done all this,
some folks still don't think enough time with congress. 'Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell,'
they ask. "Really?" "Why don't YOU get a drink with Mitch McConnell." This is where Hillary differs. Clinton: “A lot of governing is the boring
of hard boards. There’s nothing sexy about it. I think it is getting up every day, building
the relationships, finding whatever sliver of common ground you can occupy, never, ever
giving up in continuing to reach out even to people who are sworn political partisan
adversaries.” And look, a Hillary Clinton presidency, it's
not going to be some peaceful era in politics. if she’s in the White House, Republicans
will spend every waking moment working to recapture it. It is easy to imagine reading an article,
in the third year of a Clinton presidency, that sees this process as the root of her
failures. Where the president gets lost in the details,
where she’s searching for common ground with Republicans she can’t find. But Clinton will try, and there may even be
moments when she succeeds, even small pieces of common ground. She will build these relationships. No one will ever accuse her of not having
Mitch McConnell over for enough drinks. Hell, he may even like having a drink with
her. He’ll probably find she’s a pretty good
listener. When we talk about gender equality in the US there’s this one statistic you see all the time: "Women earn 79 cents for every dollar men make." And while that statistic is factually correct, there’s a lot it doesn’t tell you. It simply compares the median wages of men and women who work full time. It doesn’t tell you how the wage gap plays out for women with different educational levels or different ages, or who work in different fields. And you need that information if you want to start closing the gap. Part of the wage gap reflects the fact that women are more concentrated in lower-paying occupations. But to fully understand the issue, you  have to look within occupations too. Back in 2009, three economists set out to understand the wage gap by following a group of MBA graduates from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. They looked at thousands of men and women who graduated between 1990 and 2006. And their data showed that men had slightly higher salaries right out of the gate. One year out of business school, women were making an average salary of $115,000 while men earned $130,000. But nine years out of business school, things looked really different. Men were earning an average salary of $400,000, while women were earning 60 percent less —$250,000 on average. The gap had widened considerably. But research suggests the gap doesn’t stay that wide — that it shrinks as women enter middle age. This chart shows how the wage gap for college graduates changes as women age. The lower the line, the bigger the wage gap between men and women. If you look at women born in 1973, you can see the wage gap growing as they go from their mid-twenties to their mid thirties. Better than previous generations but heading in the same direction. Same thing for women born in 1968. The pay difference for men and women continues to grow as they move from their mid-thirties to their mid-forties. And for women born in 1948, things started off the same. The gap widens as they get older. But then, all of a sudden, it starts shrinking. As working women approach their 50s and 60s, the difference between men’s and women’s salaries gets smaller Which makes sense if you think about what often happens during a woman’s 20s and 30s. In the Chicago MBA study, women with kids had a wage gap twice as large as women without. The truth is that women take on a disproportionate share of child-rearing tasks. A survey from Pew found that in 2-parent households, women did more than men when it came to managing kids’ schedules, taking care of them when they’re sick, and handling the majority of household chores. And that was a survey of families where both parents worked full-time. But these additional responsibilities seem to hurt some women more than others. This is a key research finding from Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard who is a leading researcher on the gender wage gap. She shows this by exploring how gender pay gaps vary in different fields. This is one of her charts. Each of these dots is a different higher-paying job. The lower the dot, the larger the gender pay gap. The further to the right, the more the job pays, based on the average income of men in that job. These green dots represent jobs in the tech sector. For the most part, the jobs are pretty close to the 0 line, meaning the difference in pay between men and women is fairly small. The same is true for jobs in science. The yellow dots. But look as these red dots. They represent jobs in business. And they’re mostly clustered toward the middle and the bottom of the chart, meaning they have some of the largest wage gaps. There’s a fairly simple way to explain some of these differences—some jobs require specific hours. Others are more flexible. Take your prototypical businesswoman. Maybe she’s a venture capitalist, maybe she’s an accountant. Either way, she has a standard 9-5 schedule so she can meet with other businesspeople or with clients. If she’s not available to her clients when they need her, her bosses won’t think she’s doing a good job. Compare that to a scientist who works in a lab. Most of her work is self-directed. It doesn't’ really matter when she runs her experiments, as long as she gets them done. If she gets her work done, her bosses think she’s doing a good job. For the millions of women in with jobs that demand very specific hours, the wage gap is larger than it is for women in jobs with more flexible hours There’s one job where we can see this really clearly. In 1970s, women pharmacists earned about 66 percent of what men did. Pharmacies used to be mostly independent businesses where a single pharmacist might be responsible for keeping his shop open whenever people needed it. Today, most pharmacies are owned by large chains. They stay open longer, which means they need more pharmacists. Women pharmacists now have a lot more options and a 6am to 2pm shift is just as good as a 9 - 5 shift. Nobody gets rewarded for working exceptionally long hours. And the wage gap for pharmacists has shrunk dramatically. Today, female pharmacists make 92 percent of what their male counterparts do. Of course, we can’t all be pharmacists. There will always be jobs where it’s important to  work particular hours. But there are lots of jobs where hours could potentially become more flexible than they are right now. And research tells us the more we can make that work, the more the wage gap is going to shrink. Superheroes are mass culture, but comic books
are niche. Tens of millions of people saw Captain America:
Civil War, but this past May, Marvel only sold 177,000
copies of Civil War II. But if you took Marvel’s opening credits
and replaced this with this,
even the people who’d never touched a comic book page..would notice. Everybody knows the “comic book font.” How could there be a universally recognized
font for something that, for a half century, was written by hand? Is it a font at all? How is that possible? These fonts are made by people called “letterers.” And their work shows how hundreds of lettering
artists can come together into a single recognizable style. And how we, as consumers, then manage to get
it completely wrong. If you go to a comic book store,
you can see comics that were gloriously lettered by hand,
like this 1964 issue of Thor. (Yes, it was a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby production.) And they worked with Artie Simek. Artie probably gave Thor this epic WHOOM. Letterers place and draw expressive dialogue
bubbles like this one. But in Artie’s day, they also hand wrote
every word in a dialogue bubble. And a lot of practical conditions shaped the
artistry of the letters. “What I think of as comic book lettering
is 1960s Marvel comics. They were mainly lettered by two guys: Artie
Simek and Sam Rosen. For me, they kind of nailed it.” That’s John Roshell, who founded Comicraft,
a comic book font company, with Richard Starkings. They’re letterers and writers, and they
make fonts like this one and comics like this one. The fonts they design imitate a style that
formed out of necessity. That style came out of the newspaper world
and newspaper technology. Early comics like “Little Nemo,” which
came out in the 1900s, started to develop a style that was readable on cheap paper. You can see it forming in this bubble — it’s
all caps, like a comic book font, but it’s somehow...wrong. As time went on, that changed. “Certainly early on, comic strips and comic
books were lettered by the artist. As they gained popularity, that’s when the
production model started to get split up, basically to meet the demand. The letterer was probably just somebody in
the office who had good handwriting, who could do it fast enough.” But the form’s limitations shaped the style
that emerged across the industry. Most letterers used an Ames guide like this
one to create their lines, which meant each letter hit the same height and, more likely,
hit middle in the middle of the line. These letters became kind of squat because
they’re really trying to hit the lines on the top and bottom of the guide. That led to generally rounder Os
and fatter As with lower crosses. Earlier letterers also used a Speedball Nib
pen or a technical pen. These things here: they’re nibs. They determine a letter’s shape, and an
artist could use any type they wanted. But a lot of the time, they chose nibs that
gave them a consistent stroke width. Compare this “Loki” to one that shows
up in Times New Roman. Now look at the Times one. It has a skinny base on the L, a very narrow
O at the top, and all sorts of other little details where the stroke width varies. Arti Simek’s Loki, however, has a really
consistent width to it. The quality of the pages also influenced the
style that letterers chose. Here’s that 1964 Thor next to Thor from
2016. Just look at the difference between the pages. Today’s glossy Thor can handle all sorts
of letters, but 1964’s couldn’t. Letterers wrote in all caps to compensate. Look at this ad from 1964’s Thor. The ink is blotchy and hard to read. All caps helps fix that. And see how the tail on the y and g forces
that whole line to be longer? All caps helped letterers fit more dialogue
into less space, and keep it clear on lousy paper. Other rules emerged too. Never cross an I, unless it’s by itself,
always italicize and bold for emphasis — and all of them were made to make comics printed
on bad paper easier to read. Consistency also mattered in case another
letterer jumped in to finish a page or fix up a typo. And all those constraints and choices created
the handwritten style we recognize. But today to call it handwriting would be
lying. Richard Starkings, who runs Comicraft with
John Roshell, was frustrated with the work involved in lettering. This is the Killing Joke, it’s a classic,
controversial 80s comic that’s been reprinted in deluxe editions. And Richard Starkings lettered it. Starkings
had an experienced letterer’s appreciation of detail. He was frustrated by the work involved in
lettering, and an industry that knew that computers were the future, but wasn’t willing
to go there just yet. There’d been earlier attempts to standardize
fonts in comics — most famously a publisher called EC comics
used a guide to trace every letter, and the result ended up looking kind of mechanical,
like type. Other publishers played with type too. But Starkings and Roshell led the charge into
digital fonts. “For a long time we had things our way because
there were a lot of technophobes in comics. There were a lot of people who didn’t want
to change. Those people have grown old and there are
people in their 20s editing and designing comics now, and they expect you to have every
font in our library and then some.” Today, companies like Comicraft and competitors
like Blambot make fonts that letterers can download and then work with in programs like
Adobe Illustrator. They still make the bubbles and design the
text — they just don’t use ink to do it. But those companies don’t just sell one
“comic book font.” They sell a ton. And that’s because the idea of a “comic
book font” is a mistake in the first place. The general public only really became aware
of fonts with the rise of personal computers. This chart shows the appearances of the word
“font” in books from 1960 to 2000. We can see Helvetica, and Arial, and Futura
because our computers have trained us to look for them. Some fonts came with our machines or condensed
in the document cloud. We notice them. We see these tiny differences. There have always been hundreds of “comic
book fonts” too, attuned to the idiosyncrasies of the artists who used to letter them. But most people, just like me, haven’t been
trained to see the nuance in their work. Comics fans and letterers do. “That’s a Todd Klein R. Different letterers
have their letters of the alphabet that are kind of their signature.” “Dave Gibbons, his D and his G, his G is
almost a six, it’s a real loop around on itself.” Even Richard Starkings has a quirk — a jagged
hook on the S that always stands out. As technology allows for variety and ease
of use, creativity continues to flourish, even if handwriting gets digitized. Comics like Klaus can use color with abandon,
and artsy comics like The Joyners are able to experiment with all kinds of fonts without
worrying about cheap paper reducing readability. The “comic book font” is a starting point
— an idea we keep around because it shows the verve of comics. Within that style is the variety of different
artists and designers, expressing a key element in every story. And maybe even some of those superhero movie
fans will notice it. So in addition to identifying a letterer by
their handwriting, sometimes you can spot one by the style of their bubbles. John Workman is famous for creating word bubbles
that jut right into the gutter of a page, and it creates a really distinctive style
that’s easy to spot. In 2002, Kanye West – known at the time
mostly for his contributions to hip-hop as a producer – recorded "Through the Wire." He rapped it just a few weeks after his infamous car accident while his jaw was
completely wired shut. It's not crisp and clear. "If this ain't clear at all, man. They got my mouth wired shut for like I don't know the doctor said like six weeks. You know we had reconstru...
I had reconstructive surgery" Not many artists would record their debut single in that condition, but Kanye did,
and that decision illustrates something very very unique about his work. "Kanye West almost considers the best, ideal, most greatest instrument ever to be the human
voice." Now a traditional hip-hop track consists of an instrumental beat and a
vocal. What makes Kanye such an innovative producer is how he's never
really limited a vocal performance to just singing or rapping. He's filled
every single nook and cranny of his music with the human voice and it's
always pushed hip hop forward. Kanye's debut album, The College Dropout, was released in 2004. It's an hour and 16 minutes, 21 tracks. It's literally jam-packed with music and one of the standout tracks on that album is "Jesus
Walks." It won him a Grammy and got him a BET nomination for Best Gospel Artist. His use of the gospel song "Walk with Me" by the ARC Choir fills the entire song to
the brim with vocal samples. They become the baseline, the percussion, and the
melody – and it's even layered over more vocal samples like this military drill
sargeant: And that exotic flute sound: It's actually John Legend's voice. Kanye layers vocals like choirs a lot. He does
it throughout Late Registration on songs like "Hey Mama," "Celebration," and "Crack
Music." On these tracks he's not really manipulating the vocals at all. On the
final track your hearing a recognizable human voice: But on his next album, Graduation, a very
synth and electronic driven record, Kanye starts doing something different: "So he chose synthesizers that sound like
vocals, but it's important because the orientation – the orbit here – is still
around the human voice." You can hear that very clearly on "Good Life" featuring T-Pain
especially in the first couple of seconds: And even more so on 808s and
Heartbreak. Kanye doesn't have a great voice, even he'll admit that, but he sings
in nearly every song on 808s and sometimes he sings the entire song. Of
course, with the help of auto-tune. He does this especially well on the opening
track "Say You Will" where that booming 808 drum alternates in your left and right
ear, while synthy vocals fill the space like a choir: Now, seven years after he released that
track he chose to re-release it, but instead of that synthy instrumentation
he enlisted Caroline Shaw to record acapella: Shaw is the youngest person to
win a Pulitzer Prize in music and she's known especially for how she composes
vocals. West was the single producer on all 21 tracks of The College Dropout, but
by 808s he's starting to curate really top talent to help him push hip-hop forward. According, to Pitchfork it really marked the birth and flowering of
West's creative CEO method of album making. Now My Beautiful Dark Twisted
Fantasy is eight songs shorter than The College Dropout, but it runs nearly as
long and it really stands out because it's the first time where Kanye turns the
conventional structure of a rap song completely on its head. A great example of this is the song
"Runaway." At nine minutes it's far longer than any normal hip-hop
track and five minutes and 45 seconds in Kanye really pushes into new territory
with a really interesting counter melody: Now the first thing you hear is that
solo piano melody introduced at the very beginning of the song. It's super, super,
memorable and then you hear Kanye's voice: But it's processed through a
vocoder to sound like a distorted guitar now he could have easily disguised that
vocal completely but instead he chose to reveal that it was his voice by
seemingly testing it out before diving into the counter melody. According to
Rolling Stone "there's no way it should work but it keeps rolling for three more
minutes without breaking a spell." That outro is longer than most rap songs. If My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was Kanye's maximilist perfect album, then Yeezus
is bare bones minimalism. It's Kanye deconstructed. Everything that Kanye was
known for up to that point: pitched up vocals, autotune, choir samples, layered
voices – they're all here – but they're spliced into songs without much
decoration or orchestration. For instance, take a listen to this pivot on "New
Slaves:" Or the transition from a sample to a
vocal on "Bound 2:" Or these blown-out, layered vocals
from Justin Vernon on "Hold My Liquor:" Now, "Ultralight Beam" from 2016's The Life of
Pablo is a culmination of everything Kanye has produced since The College
Dropout. It's a gospel song like "Jesus Walks," but instead of sampling an
existing choir – he created his own. Like "Runaway" it doesn't have a traditional
structure and its sparse and minimal like Yeezus: The choir, led by gospel artist Kirk
Franklin sounds like it's recorded in a church even though it's probably in a
pretty small studio. "They sound close. They sound far. They sound loud. They
sound quiet." At 4:20 they're right in your ear. By 4:25 they sound distant: But right where you expect him to rap – he doesn't. He passes the mic to
Chance the Rapper whose voice matches the emotion of the song so perfectly
it's instantly clear why: "This is my part nobody else speak. This is my
part nobody else speak. This little light of mine." "Glory be to God. Imma make sure that they go where they can't go." "If they don't wanna ride imma still give them raincoats know what God said when he made the first rainbow: just throw this at the end if I'm too late for the intro." Kanye West started his career as a producer known basically for one thing: those pitched up vocals. Almost nobody would put him at the top of the list of best
rapper alive, but ever since his decision to rap with his jaw wired shut he's used the human voice as his weapon
to bring hip-hop into a completely new space. And he's still looking for the
edge of where he can push the human voice. Looking at Gene Wilder, it might seem he was a showoff. "The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!" And in a lot of ways he was. He could sing & dance "Hop, hop, that's the dance for me" He was a great actor. "Is the grizzly reaper mowing? Yes!" And he was hilariously funny. "I'm gonna tear them apart!" "What if they have guns, Eugene?" "Listen, we better get the police and let
them handle this." You can see these all come together at this
moment in Young Frankenstein: "If you're blue and you don't know..." Wilder does the work here. He’s singing. He’s dancing. He mugs, he grimaces. He co-wrote this with Mel Brooks, garnering
an oscar nomination. But he gives the big laughs to the monster: "Why don't you go where fashion sits..." [Unintelligible screaming] Wilder’s comedy wasn’t about hogging center
stage. It was about finding a way to share it. In another highlight of his career, The Producers,
his fever pitch is pretty … wild. That's all because he’s signing onto co-star
Zero Mostel’s plan. Hey, he’d even share the screen with a sheep. "I don't think I've ever known such peace
and happiness in my life. I hope you feel the same way." [Unintelligible sheep noises] Once he was an established comedic talent
in the early ‘70s Wilder could be the box office insurance that would let studios take a chance on a comedian who hadn’t yet proved himself as a film
star. That was definitely the case with Richard
Pryor. The two first paired on Silver Streak. But watch how ably they trade off the role
of the comedic lead in 1980’s Stir Crazy. First Wilder freaks out, "So long suckers!" and Pryor covers for him. "He's sick!" Then they completely switch. [Unintelligible screaming] "Take your pill, there you are" Even in Wilder’s most over-the-top role,
he was sharing the screen. He’s not exactly sharing the screen in the
same way here.He dominates every scene he’s in, to the degree where the book — Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory — had the name in its title swapped out for Wonka’s. What’s interesting though is that he doesn’t
show up until 45 minutes into this film. Yes, he takes over the movie after his grand
entrance outside his factory. But the power of his character comes from
his role as an antagonist. The guy little Charlie has to outlast and
outwit to ultimately win the prize of a gigantic chocolate factory. "There it goes!" Compare this with, say, Johnny Depp’s turn
in the role in the 2005 retelling of the story. "This isn't just an ordinary up and down elevator,
by the way. This elevator can go sideways, longways, slantways,
and any other ways you can think of!" Depp becomes the hero. "No son of mine is going to become a chocolatier!" "Then I'll run away." And the kids fade into the background a bit
as a result. "Just press a button and zing! You're off." Not so with Wilder's Wonka. "And until now I've pressed them all. Except one." "This one." "Go ahead, Charlie." Wilder didn’t write or direct that film,
and he sat out almost the first half. It takes a certain kind of talent to still
dominate people’s imaginations afterward. And, oh, did he. "Come with me and you'll be in a world of
pure imagination." In most of the world, this is a strange sight. It’s a TV commercial for a prescription drug. These ads are illegal in most countries. but in the US, they’re everywhere. On average, 80 of them air every hour on American television. "Ask your doctor." "...my doctor told me..." "Ask your doctor." The American Medical Association, a major group of doctors, has called for a ban on these direct-to-consumer ads. But there’s a case to be made for them too. So today we’ll take a look at both sides. First, a little background. Before the 1980s, prescription drug commercials were unheard of in the US. Drug companies focused their marketing solely on doctors, and they didn’t want to hurt those relationships. When asked by Congress in 1984, if direct-to-consumer advertising should be allowed, one pharmaceutical executive said: And an executive at Schering-Plough, which is now part of Merck, said: Needless to say, they changed their minds. At the time there was a larger cultural shift
in health care toward empowering patients to make decisions rather than just listening
to their doctors. And advertisements fit with that trend. Drug Ads started appearing in print publications, but there was still another thing keeping them off TV, and that was FDA’s regulations at the
time. They were interpreted as requiring ads to
include all of the information about the drug’s risks and side effects, which simply wasn’t feasible to do in a tv or radio commercial the way it was in
a magazine. There was a bizarre loophole though: The ads didn’t have to mention the drug’s risks, if they also didn’t mention the disease
or condition that the drug was supposed to treat. Here’s what that looked like — in an ad
for Claritin back before it was available over the counter: "It’s time." "It’s time!" "Don’t wait another minute with Claritin." "Claritin." "I’ll ask my doctor!" "It’s time to see your doctor." "Mr. Wilkin, the doctor will see you now." "At last, a clear day is here." Confused? Yeah, everyone was. So in 1997, the FDA clarified that the industry could run the full drug ads and wouldn’t have to give ALL the risk information from
the label, as long as they included the major side effects and referred viewers to another source for the rest. That’s why the commercials direct us to
phone numbers or print ads. Come for the pharmaceutical fine print — stay for “the secret to crisp contact in soggy conditions” That new FDA guidance removed the main barrier keeping drugs off of television. and you can guess what happened next... spending on ads quadrupled by 2004. And now, we know the names of prescription drugs like we know the names of cars and clothing brands. "Lunesta, Xanax, Celebrex, Flomax, and HGH." "And as of Thursday, Lipitor." "Oh and if you have trouble sleeping, Marla has Ambien. I prefer Lunesta." "Lipitor, Baby Aspirin... Flomax." "Flomax?" "…and some Cialis! I’m just assuming." So that’s how we got here. Drug ads are now the most frequent form of health communication that most Americans see. So what does that mean for public health? Are those prescriptions going to the right
people? Or are they going to people who probably won’t benefit from the drug — people for whom the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits? Well, the answer seems to be: both. A clever experiment in 2005 tested this by
sending actors to real primary care doctors. Dr. Richard Kravitz: We helped them make appointments. In half of the visits, the actors reported
symptoms of depression. In the other half of the visits, the actors
said they were feeling down after becoming unemployed. The study authors called this an “adjustment disorder.” In some visits, the actors mentioned seeing
an advertisement for Paxil on TV, that's an antidepressant. In others, they didn’t bring up medication
at all. And the doctors seemed to take patients more seriously if they mentioned seeing the Paxil commercial. They were more likely to refer patients to
a mental health consultation, And much more likely to prescribe an antidepressant. That may be a good thing for those with major depression, who might benefit from an medication. But it’s more questionable for those with
a more temporary condition. This study, and others, have shown that doctors can be persuaded to broaden the scope of who gets treated with drugs. And advertisements often seem designed to encourage that. Take Androgel — it was approved to treat men with hypogonadism: that’s extremely low testosterone levels due to injury or disease. But here’s how it was promoted by Abbott:
"Millions of men 45 and older just don’t feel like they used to. Are you one of them? Remember when you had more energy for 18 holes with your buddies? More passion for the one you love." Some middle aged men don’t feel like they
used to? You don’t say. A study looking back at 10 years of testosterone prescriptions found that only half had been diagnosed with hypogonadism in the previous year. Drug ads give the industry an incentive to
make healthy people feel unhealthy. “Latisse is the only FDA approved prescription treatment for inadequate, or not enough lashes.” And they contribute to unrealistic expectations about what pharmaceuticals can do. So what’s wrong with that? Well, every single drug comes with risks. Big ad campaigns are usually for newer drugs, for which not all the risks may be known yet. In the case of the painkiller Vioxx, a massive ad campaign led millions of people with arthritis to switch to Vioxx instead of sticking with
older drugs like Ibuprofen. “It’s a beautiful morning…ask your doctor
today about Vioxx, and find out what Vioxx can do for you." Vioxx was more expensive and not actually more effective, and... “The manufacturer of Vioxx have just recently pulled this popular arthritis drug from the market over health concerns." Merck withdrew the drug after it became clear that it increased the risk of heart attacks
and stroke. A Kaiser Permanente study later confirmed
that ad exposure was linked to inappropriate prescribing of Vioxx and a similar drug called Celebrex. So that’s a worst case scenario. But there is also an argument that these ads can be good for public health. Sidney Taurel: “There are many diseases for which people don’t seek treatment. So if you can educate through direct-to-consumer
about the fact that this can be treated, you will get a better outcome for everyone.” In their view, more communication with your doctor is always a good thing. And it’s up to the doctor to make the right
prescribing decisions. Surveys of the public have confirmed that
drug ads prompt people to visit their doctor, in some cases for diabetes, hypertension, depression — these are conditions that are thought to be under treated. In the case of the HPV vaccine, that's now recommended for all pre-teens to prevent cervical and other cancers, Merck’s ad blitz for Gardasil
probably reached more people than a government communications effort could. And whatever you think of erectile dysfunction drugs, they got men to see their doctors and undergo the required heart screening, potentially catching problems not yet treated. But the strongest argument in favor of drug
ads may be the legal one. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of prescription drug advertising back in the 1970s, when the state of Virginia tried to prohibit pharmacists from advertising their prices. Harry Blackmun: “We further hold that so called commercial speech is not wholly outside the protection of the 1st and 14th amendments. The individual consumer and society in general may have strong interests in the free flow of commercial information.” It was the first time that the Court said
advertisements were entitled to free speech protections. There was only one dissenting Justice at the time: William Rehnquist — who Ronald Reagan would later appoint Chief Justice —
In his dissent, Rehnquist wrote a kind of uncanny prediction of the type of commercials that would come decades later: "Don't spend another sleepless night. Ask your doctor to prescribe Seconal without delay." Rehnquist worried that ads would “generate patient pressure on physicians to prescribe” drugs; and that they’d end up being “advertised on television.” And as we know now, for better or for worse, that’s exactly what happened. A few months ago I took a road trip from Chicago
down to New Orleans. And on the way back up (we were somewhere
either in Tennessee or Missouri), I got pulled over — it was my first time getting pulled over. And it wasn’t for speeding. it was because I was driving in the left lane. So there are basically two types of drivers
in the world. There are people who get really upset about
all the people driving slowly in the left lane. That’s Joey. He fits into that first group. And then there are a lot of drivers who had
no idea that this is even a problem. Yeah, that was me. Sorry about that. I don’t drive much. The truth is, when drivers hang out in the
left lane, it makes traffic worse and more dangerous for everybody involved. Here’s what that looks like. If you have relatively slow drivers scattered
amongst the right and left lanes, faster drivers have to repeatedly slow down and weave back
and forth, changing lanes many times to pass all of them. So if you're going five miles slower than
everyone else and you're traveling in the left lane, it forces them to make dangerous moves
trying to pass you on the right which is more likely to cause an accident. But there’s a better way for traffic to
flow -- and that's if we only use the left lane for passing. If all the slower drivers are in the right
lane, a faster driver can pass several at once, and get back over to the right, which
cuts down the total number of lane changes and eliminates the slowdowns. Move over, or get a ticket. That's the message from state troopers to people driving too slowly in the left lane. Some people argue that as long as they’re
going the speed limit, they shouldn’t have to move over. But there’s evidence that that slowing down
and changing lanes is actually more dangerous than speeding. Research has shown that the strongest predictor
of an accident is variance from the average speed of traffic. And a car going five miles per hour slower
than the surrounding traffic has a greater chance of causing an accident than one going
five miles per hour faster. That’s why every state has some law on on
record that restricts the use of the left lane. In 29 states, any car that’s moving slower
than the surrounding speed of traffic should be in the right lane. And in 11 states, the laws are stricter —, they
say that the left lane is only for turning or passing. Historically police didn’t really pay that
much attention to slow left lane drivers, but more recently there have been campaigns
in places like Washington, Texas, and Ohio where police are actually issuing tickets
to people they spot traveling slowly in the left lane. "The reason why I stopped you is the law in the state of Washington is keep right except to pass." "This is something that has always been illegal and against the law here in Michigan, But now officers are rolling out this new education effort to help the public understand just what they can and they cannot do when it comes to this type of driving. Now, it doesn’t have to be this way. A good example of this is the German Autobahn
— so this is Germany's highway network, which has long stretches of road with no speed
limits and it has surprisingly low accident rates. One reason for this, some researchers think,
is that German drivers are more likely to stay in the right lane for traveling and only
use the left for passing. That shared norm helps keep them safe. So fellow drivers I am sorry — I didn’t
know the rules. But I’m not alone, and if more people understand
how this works, we will have much fewer traffic jams. And our roads will be a lot safer, too. To contemplate death is to understand that
life must come to an end. Death is the opposite of vitality, of breath
and pulse and movement. But the idea that death occurs in a single
moment isn’t quite right: what seems black and white is now understood to be a series
of events. Death is a process. We understand this process through the instruments
that we engineer to peer inside of our own bodies, and as the instruments and methods
evolve, our definition of death changes. Death in mammals was historically grounded
in what we could see and hear and feel: we see and hear breathing cease and feel the
heart stop beating. As circulation of oxygen and nutrient-carrying
blood slows, the flesh and skin loose color and cool. For centuries the only sure sign of death
was decomposition, and many lived in fear of the possibility of a live burial. Early forms of CPR were used for drowning
victims in the 18th century and CPR techniques have continued to advance as we learn more
about resuscitation. It was a momentous shift: the end of breath
no longer meant the end of life. In the 1940s ventilators mechanized breathing
and in the 1950s defibrillators shocked hearts back into normal rhythm. With these innovations, a body could outlive
its brain. Brain death came to define the medical end
of consciousness after a historical convening of doctors at Harvard in 1968. When electrical activity in the brain ceases,
the brain is no longer able to keep the body alive without life support. The “I” has died when neurons cease firing. When doctors call time of death, restarting
the heart is futile because the brain has stopped working. We still maintain hope, with cryogenics and
even more futuristic attempts at slowing or circumventing brain death, at pushing the
boundaries of death even further. "Dude it was called @ Cafe — and they didn't
know what the @ symbol was." "Welcome to @ Cafe, as in that little a with
a circle around it." "I was actually bitter that I named it @ Cafe. I had to explain to everybody, every reporter,
every human, every — even people who came to work there — I had to explain what the
@ symbol was." "That little mark, with the A and then the
ring around it." "At." "See, that's what I said. Katie said she thought it was about." "Yeah." "Oh." "But I'd never heard it said." "And they're like, 'I get it, at the cafe.' I was like, no, it's used in e-mail. 'What's email?'" This is Glenn McGinnis in July 2016 and this
is Glenn McGinnis in July 1995. In January of 1995, Glenn and his cofounders,
Nick Barnes and Chris Townsend, opened one of New York's first internet cafes: @ Cafe. Their story isn't just about running a cafe,
though it is definitely that. "Um, you know it's fun to hang out, you can
drink around your computer and not worry about it." It's a window into how it felt to be around
the internet just as a mass audience was discovering the exhilaration and exhaustion of a new medium. "I'm terrified and excited." And from the beginning, Glenn McGinnis knew
one thing: "How fast it was gonna hit. And that it was going to be completely pervasive." In the 1880s, St. Marks Place was part of
a German-American neighborhood called Kleindeutschland. 12 St Marks Place was home to the German American
shooting society clubhouse. They came together to shoot, drink, and bowl. By the 1920s, it was a homeless shelter run
by a guy who called himself Mr. Zero. He sheltered a thousand people who he affectionately
called "Old Bucks and Lame Ducks." And after that, the building continued to
house legendary tenants. "We selected 12 St. Marks Place. It was the old St. Marks Bookstore. And that has a really storied history with
all sorts of amazing authors reading their work there. And so to me it was very symbolic of internet,
the new media, and you know, I wanted to be there. In that spot. It seemed so appropriate." But convincing investors was harder. The idea was a really new one. "I lived overseas a lot as a kid. I was always obsessed with video games. I played Pong and they could not pry me off
it, and in 1980 we moved to Tokyo, and it was like the Japanese were my people. I mean, they just adored computers and video
games." "In Asia, most of the video games were tabletop. So you'd sit — you could have coffee or
whatever on the games — and they had coffeeshops with these tabletop games. I thought of the internet cafe probably because
of the Tokyo experience with the tabletops." Internet adoption was pretty low at the time. Six months after @ Cafe launched, just 14%
of Americans were using the internet. How much more did the investors know? "Zero! They didn't know what it was. They'd never been online. It was Netscape 1.0. They could only think of it in terms of Hard
Rock. That was it. It will be the Hard Rock Cafe, but with computers
rather than rock and roll." "I was determined to do this thing, so I was
like, fine." "Well the @ Cafe, which is a cyber-bar down
in New York City's East Village is where we went to visit." The @ Cafe didn't have dial-up. Instead, they paid for a premium T1 connection
— the type that universities and really large businesses had. It was much faster than dial-up modems, but
that stability came at a hefty price. "The T1 cost $9000 a month! I think my FIOS which is 75 megabits, synchronous,
is $100. Maybe $200. It's amazing how in 20 years..." The @ Cafe had a world class internet connection
for the time, and they personally negotiated to get it. "We basically, for Chris Townsend and myself,
just created hell for ourselves. The pipes for the hot water and everything
ran through the server room. We didn't know anything, we had no money to
ask anybody. So there was no ventilation. And we had no money for air conditioning. So we made it a responsibility of the dishwasher
to fill up a garbage can — I mean a giant garbage can — with ice from the ice maker,
and drag it into the server room. And that thing would melt to water every two
hours. And that's how we cooled the server room,
was with a friggin' thing of ice." The excitement came from the idea itself,
that people would want to go on the internet for fun, to connect. "If you go back and look, anybody can go into
the Internet Archive and look at what the websites looked like back then. I mean, it's freaking hysterical. I mean, there was not a lot out there. And these pages were text — they weren't
high bandwidth pages." Despite the headaches, it still felt like
the start of something. "Everyone is like waking up to the internet. I mean, you have to understand, no business
had a website. Very idealistic and then the corporations
started to hit and that's when they just came knocking at the door and it was like they
all wanted to do web launches because there was nowhere they could all put their homepage
up on all the computers." And a bevy of new websites had launch parties
at the @ Cafe. "I was working non-stop." They did events, they ran an ISP, and they
continued to serve the weird culture of a still-bohemian St. Marks. Artists like Mark Yankus even made ads for
them. "Everyone, college students, artists, East
Village freaks, Phiber Optik and his whole crew, when he got out of jail, he made that
his hangout spot, he was there all the time." "That's Phiber Optik with a PH." "Today, five hackers were indicted on Federal
wire fraud charges." "When we changed the menu he got bummed, and
we saw less of him." "A lot of hackers were there. A lot of artists, a lot of students, it was
an amazing mix of people. The media was all over it, and so people were
coming from Japan specifically to see the cafe." But despite all that, a little over a year
later, in 1996, @ Cafe closed down. "It was horrible from the beginning. We never ever broke even, it was the most
stressful thing...it was very stressful." It'd be simpler to say that people retreated
from internet cafes to use the internet at home, and there were a lot of AOL CDs offering
people free trials. "We had hundreds of AOL CDs at the cafe. I mean just the amount of CDs was just ludicrous." But the cafe closed for a lot of reasons. It was tough to make money with a T1 connection,
but it was also just tough to run a restaurant in general. The internet wasn't the problem, the business
was before its time. "It was so idealistic, what we were doing. It was just to educate, and the internet would
never be monetized." "The idea was really to create a physical
space to present virtual space, to extend the invitation to the public and say, 'Here
is the internet at its best.'" Today, 12 St. Marks Place is not a German
shooting gallery, or a homeless shelter, or a bookshop, or an internet cafe. It's apartments, a yoga studio, and a Latin
organic vegan restaurant. There's no shooting gallery, bowling alley,
bookshop, or old bucks and lame ducks. But they do have one thing. "So I was wondering if I could ask you a few
questions about the business there, just to check my information. Do you have internet there?" "Yes." "Do you know how fast it is?" "I don't know how fast it is. I know it's fast enough, all of our guests
use it fine." Glenn told me that video chat was actually
really popular in the early days of the cafe, but the quality left something to be desired. This is what most video chats would have looked
like using the CUCMe software that was popular at the time. So I’m at my neighborhood grocery store,
doing my shopping for the week. I’m kind of a health nut, so I go right
for the stuff labeled “natural.” What is carrageenan? Alright, all-natural chicken breasts. Wow, okay. Corn syrup solids? Maltodextrin? Dextrose? Got some natural cheese. Natamycin? What the hell is that? I’m not alone in my confusion. There have been more than 100 lawsuits filed
since 2011 over this word, natural. The magazine Consumer Reports has called on
the FDA to ban the term. Because, when it comes to food, natural doesn’t
mean what you might think. In one survey, 60% of Americans thought “natural”
products were free from chemicals, artificial ingredients and pesticides. But that’s not the case at all. At least, not according to the two government
agencies who regulate our food supply... the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA,
handles processed foods like cereal, chips, shredded cheese. Altogether, the FDA regulate 80% of our food
supply. And according to the FDA, there is no strict
definition for what makes something “natural.” Their website says that’s because most of
what we eat bears little resemblance to anything that comes from nature. But this lack of clarity seems to just cause
confusion among consumers. The other government agency at play here is
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA. It regulates eggs, meat and poultry. And their definition is a little more specific. It basically says you can’t add anything
after an animal has been slaughtered and call the thing you've made “natural.” The label doesn’t tell you anything about
how the animal was raised, what kind of food it ate, or whether it was given hormones
or antibiotics. For eggs, the term is completely meaningless. The fact that most of us don’t know what
the “natural” label does and doesn’t ...this translates to big bucks for food
companies. The line here shows the sales of organic food
products over the past ten years. They’ve jumped from nearly $14 billion in
2005 to almost $40 billion in 2015. If companies want to call something “organic,”
regulators have to check to make sure it’s mostly free of synthetic pesticides, chemical
fertilizers and GMOs. It’s an expensive and time-consuming process. So they use the word “natural” to try
to tap into a growing market without the hassle and expense of actually going organic. But that could be changing. The FDA just wrapped up a public comment period
where they asked whether they should create a stricter definition for the term “natural.” But even if the government defined the term
“natural,” it wouldn’t mean the same thing as “healthy.” Lawsuits have argued that genetically-modified
crops can’t be called “natural,” but plenty of evidence shows they’re safe to
eat. And while some food additives may be dangerous,
most of them are safe, at least according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The bigger risk when it comes to processed
foods may not be their synthetic additives, but the perfectly natural ingredients that
get thrown in in surprisingly high amounts. The CSPI says there are two things that cause
more harm than all the food additives combined: salt. And sugar. Welcome to the Wide World of Sexism,
where we judge Olympic sexist coverage as a sport. The field is really looking strong this year. Let's take a look at some of our best competitors. Up first, here's Adam Kreek from the CBC, talking about Canadian tennis player
Eugenie Bouchard. And he describes her as "not being a competitor"
because she posts selfies with toothpaste. She's posting pictures with herself, she's holding up the toothpaste,
and she's trying out different hairstyles, and maybe she wants something different
than to be a competitor. It's definitely impressive to claim that a
female athlete who has dedicated her entire life to her sport may not be interested in "competing.” But he could have made his sexism more explicit by ... I don't know, asking her to twirl after
she achieved a huge feat like winning a match at the Australian Open
or something. Can you give us a twirl and tell us about
your outfit? Next, watch this unnamed NBC commentator talking about the US female gymnastics team. They might as well be standing in the middle
of a mall. Ah, a classic sexist/ageist combo there. He's suggesting that these teenage girls
belong in malls, not destroying the competition on an
international stage. But he could've racked up a few more points,
maybe making his accusation a little more explicit with a Forever 21 mention. While we wait for the next competitor, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a new,
emerging discipline: Olympic Bro Appropriating A discipline where a female athlete's success is repackaged and presented as a male one. Like Dan Hicks representing NBC after Hungary's Katinka Hosszú shattered
the world record and won the 400-meter individual medley. And there's the guy responsible for turning Katinka Hosszú, his wife,
into a whole different swimmer. Coming up next is the Chicago Tribune,
who have entered in tweet form. Impressive. This comment makes no mention of
this female athlete's name or the sport that she plays. That is ace dehumanization. And here comes John Inverdale
representing the BBC. He's somewhat of a veteran of the sport, attempted a backhanded body-shaming
comment in 2013, but let's see if he can take his sexist commentary
to the next level this time. You're the first person ever to win two
Olympic tennis gold medals. That's an extraordinary feat, isn't it? No hesitation! Well, to defend the singles title. Um, I think Venus and Serena have won about
four each. Ouch. Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it is grand salami sexism time. I mean, that play deserves a standing ovation. Asking a man to take credit for a record that
two women have already broken, I mean, male privilege of steel. The next contestant looks like a headline
describing Katie Ledecky setting a new world record in the women's
800-meter freestyle, becoming the first woman to win gold in the
200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle races since 1968. But his article put that second to a silver
by Michael Phelps. Even when women come in first,
the media puts them second. And here's Mercury News. They're really the Cinderella story of Olympic
sexism. This tweet refers to gold medal champion
Simone Manuel like Donald Trump refers to his black supporters. Look at my African American over here. Look at him. He just wanted it more. But the last contestant is really a collaboration
between many, many news organizations having just some flawlessly demeaning debates,
like whether an Olympic athlete got breast implants, or racially charged debates about an athlete's
hair, and energetic yet slightly Islamophobic
segments exoticizing hijabs. But structural sexism takes collaboration. I mean, it really takes a village. A recent study that looked at over 160 million
words within the domain of sport demonstrated “higher levels of infantilising
or traditionalist language for women in sport.” But then again, what do we expect when
90 percent of sports editors are white and the same proportion are male. But things are changing, and newsrooms are
becoming more and more diverse, which would hopefully mean that shows
like The Wide World of Sexism would become completely obsolete. Until then, join us tomorrow night for our
special edition of "Is it a burqa or a bikini?" Let's just definitely not call it what it
is — which is a hijab. Also, who the f*** cares? The Netflix horror-mystery show Stranger Things
has been praised for its pitch-perfect homage to the 1980s, and that includes its great
opening credits sequence. It plays for almost a full minute before every
episode, but it looks so good I never skipped over it. Watching it made me wonder — what does it
take to make something like this? So I called up Michelle Dougherty. She’s a creative director at Imaginary Forces,
the studio that made the title sequence. "You want it to feel, original, you want it
to feel like that title sequence couldn't work in front of another show." You may not have heard of Imaginary Forces,
but you’ve probably seen their work. They’re responsible for the opening credits
to Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Chuck, The Pacific, Jessica Jones, Late Night with Seth Myers
— I could go on, it’s a long list. When they first got on the phone with Stranger
Things showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer, they knew they wanted to go for a style similar
to what the studio R/Greenberg Associates did in the '70s and '80s with Alien, The Dead
Zone, and Altered States. "The Duffers had sent us these paperback books,
probably ones that they read as kids. We looked at the typography on those and,
you know, they may range, right? But they're all kind of in the same vein of
popular typefaces of the '80s." She sent me their early drafts of the title
sequence, and you can clearly see the influence of those book covers. The Duffer brothers picked this one, which,
eventually, became this. Let’s talk about the typeface. It’s called ITC Benguiat, and it was made
in 1978 by a jazz percussionist-turned designer named Ed Benguiat. Here it is on the “Choose Your Own Adventure”
book series from the '80s and '90s. And on The Smiths’ 1987 album “Strangeways,
Here We Come.” It’s also been the font of Paramount’s
FBI piracy warning since 1995. I often think of the sequence as a celebration
of that typeface in a way, because you really get to see the most beautiful parts of it. In the old days before animation software,
title sequences were shot “optically” — which is just another way of saying they
were made manually, frame-by-frame, with a projector and a camera. For Stranger Things, the title designers wanted
to replicate that gritty look; they wanted to make it look like there were imperfections
in the image. So to do that, they rigged up these things:
they call them kodaliths, it's basically an old film format that produces a really
high contrast image. And they filmed what it looked like when light
shined through those film letters. "We referenced some of those inconsistencies,
what you call mistakes. We wanted it to have this tactile feel … and we
wanted it to feel organic and of the time period." They then used those  
animate the titles digitally. That’s why you see subtle flickering and
shaking in the text. The end result is an eerie mix of digital
and physical mediums — and with this great track from the synth band Survive, it sets
the tone for one of this summer’s biggest TV hits. Elon Musk thinks it's almost certain that we are living in a computer simulation. "There's a one in billions chance that this is base reality." He says that humans are basically some advanced version of The Sims. Yes, that idea sounds pretty absurd. But we shouldn’t just write this off. People used to think the solar system worked like this. But almost 2000 years before Galileo proved it didn’t, Aristarchus of Samos posited the exact same, crazy idea. Reality is probably not as it seems. Musk is echoing a paper on this theory by philosopher Nick Bostrom. His argument goes like this... “40 years ago we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot.” 30 years after Pong, we got The Sims. “Now 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year.” So let's go about 10,000 years into the future It’s possible that when we get there, civilization will be entirely gone because there is a ceiling to our advancement. Maybe it’s because of global warming — or self-replicating robots. “...if civilization stops advancing, that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization.” But another possibility is that if we keep advancing — and assuming everything in the physical world CAN be simulated — eventually, we’ll simulate ourselves. Every synapse in entire human brain, for everyone on earth. Getting enough computing power to run billions of ancestor simulations could be a problem. But Bostrom thinks we’d send tiny, self-replicating robots to other planets, which would turn the planet into a huge computer. And some of the simulations would start making their own simulations. In this scenario, there are billions of universes that are indistinguishable from our own. That means, chances are, we are in one of the simulated universes. And given the other possibility —  which is human civilization has an inevitable ceiling — Musk thinks we better HOPE that we’re in a simulation. “Either we’re going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will to cease to exist. Those are the two options.” There is one other —maybe future humans just don’t want to run ancestor simulations. Maybe they think it’s unethical, because there is a tremendous amount of suffering in the world. And that suffering would still feel real to simulated humans. Or maybe they have other priorities. So to recap, there are three possibilities. 1. Humans go extinct before we’re able to run a simulation this big. 2.  Humans don’t run simulations because it’s wrong or boring. Number three, we are living in a simulation. Elon Musk thinks that there’s only a tiny chance we are in scenario 1 or 2 – The philosopher Nick Bostrom thinks it’s more like a 20% chance that we’re in a simulation. But if you’re not into futuristic predictions, Bostrom thinks the argument also provides other rewards. He says, “It suggests naturalistic analogies to certain traditional religious conceptions.” In other words, if we’re living in a simulation, there is a higher-level being — but it’s some version of us! This leads to a rabbit hole of conversations, which is why Elon Musk has rules about when he can talk about this. “It got to the point where every conversation was the A.I.-slash-simulation conversation and and my brother and I finally agreed we would ban such conversations if we were ever in a hot tub.” In 1908, Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin
spoke the phrase that would become the Olympic creed: "The important thing in life is not
the triumph, but the fight. The essential thing is not to have won, but
to have fought well." This is the fight. This is race walking. Why are they walking like that? This is an Olympic event where men and women
walk 20 kilometers. 12.4 miles. And men go as far as 50 kilometers — 31
miles! And the best go at less than 7 minutes a mile. 7 minutes. It's hypnotic and — you know, with all that
hip action — it's very dancey. They look like they're rushing to the bathroom. Tell me, do we know why they walk like that? Phil, we're in luck — we do know why they're
walking like that. People study this. There are actually dozens of papers about
race walking. I talked to one researcher who wrote his PhD
thesis on the biomechanics of the race walk. He has studies with names like "Kinematic
characteristics of elite men's 50 km race walking." This is some serious science here. OK, so they actually study why race walkers
walk like that. Yeah, they don't just study it — they track
it. This little Tron like thing that is on the
screen with the race walker, this is an actual top race walker who they've studied how she
walks. Yeah, this is a top race walker. They are tracking her every articulation of
the joint, they're seeing what makes her go so fast while walking. There's a good reason why they walk like that. They're pushing their bodies to the extreme. They have to conform to one very important
number: 230.2. What is 230.2? You don't know 230.2? No, what is 230-2? It is the rule of race walking. Researcher Brian Hanley explains. "There's one rule, it's rule 230.2." Judges use rules to make sure people are walking,
not running. There's a big difference. "So one part states that you can't have any
visible loss of contact with the ground." So if one foot is kind of in the air, like
this, then another has to be on the ground? Or at least to the human eye? Yeah, walkers can trick the judges for about
40 milliseconds. So you know when you're running, there's this
point where you have no feet on the ground, it's kind of crazy if you watch that in slow
motion of how people run — we're kind of jumping from one foot to the other. Judges are looking out for this. They call it "flight time." And it's illegal. And judges do boot people out. So it's kinda like traveling in basketball
— sometimes these guys'll take an extra step, and if the ref doesn't catch it or call
it, it just means they're a good player, it means they know what they're doing. You figured it out. It's all about that. If the judges can't see, flight time flies. "And the other rule is that the knee must
be straightened from when you make first contact with the ground until it passes under your
body." OK, so it looks like they almost kind of lock
their knee. "That's what gives it its sort of unusual
look." The speed of your walk is your stride length
times your stride frequency. So you can take long steps or fast steps,
ideally you're gonna do both. But race walkers have a limited stride length. They can't jump. They can't bend their knee. They can't run. So they have to figure ways to step faster. They rotate their pelvis like this. "So that helps them get longer steps." OK. And they also drop their hips down lower. "It will keep your center of mass low. So you don't end up with a bouncing motion. You kind of end up with a smooth motion." It does look really smooth, if you just look
at their upper body. It's just a straight line, there is no bouncing. They walk in a very straight line. "Race walkers put their feet in a straight
line. A good analogy is like a tightrope — it
helps them do that rotation of the pelvis, it makes their steps longer." So basically, these walkers figured out how
to fit the rules and make walking more efficient, but more efficient ends up looking kind of
weird. That looks weird to you, but this is strategy. The best athletes look for an edge. Bicyclists drift to reduce wind resistance,
wrestlers dehydrate to lower their weight class, and race walkers... They wiggle. OK, I got it. I have one more question. Ugh, fine. OK, so is this actually fun to watch? Yeah, it actually is. Because it's so cutthroat and exhausting. Plus, there's this:
"But it's really interesting as well, because you never know who's going to win, because
they can always get disqualified. So it makes it more exciting than running
is. You can see the real, sort of, human struggle
in it." And we can learn things from this struggle. "Race walkers are walking differently, because
they've got these rules, it forces them to walk a different way, and that can teach us
more about normal people walking." We're all walking based on rules. Rules our body sets. The way we're built. Like the bounce in this guy's step, or how
this woman swings her arm. That's the excitement of sports. You're giving people these absurd, sometimes
really absurd, rules, these confines to work within. And we know what the rules are. The drama is how people deal with them. Getting disqualified from an elite race walking
race would be a brutal blow, so they try to keep it fair. Most rules require that three different judges
each give you a red card before you can be disqualified from a race. Most sports in the olympics are really pretty
easy to watch. You cross a finish line, hit a target, jump
the farthest, score a point. But fencing is different. It’s so incredibly fast and precise, that
even after watching several matches, for the average viewer, it’s hard to understand
exactly how a point was scored. This is footage from 3 different bouts at
the 2015 world championships. On the surface, they look pretty similar. But what you’re looking at is in fact 3
very different events. There’s the foil, epee, and sabre. They each have their own weapon and set of
rules and their roots can be traced back centuries. My only cultural reference for fencing comes
from the 1998 remake of the Parent Trap, so I decided to travel 2 blocks from our NYC
office to a veritable fencing oasis in the middle of Time Square, the Manhattan Fencing
center. It’s produced 3 Olympians just this year. That’s me, struggling. That’s my very patient coach for the day,
Brando Messinese. Perfect. Very good job. Retreat. Retreat. Parry. Reposte. But it all happens in a half a second
Yeah it happens pretty fast. So, where did fencing come from? An early form of fencing for sport can be
traced back to ancient Egypt but fencing, as we know it today, derives from the European
duel. The design of swords evolved from a defense
and hunting strategy of cutting and slashing to thrusting because it was far more deadly
and effective. The foil is the lightest of the 3 fencing
weapons and it appeared around the 17th century Europe as a practice weapon for the smallsword,
a fashionable weapon often used in a duel to settle disputes. Fencing schools were established in Italy,
Spain, and France elevating the practice to a form of exercise and art Foil fencing rules are the most limiting. You can only hit the torso and back and only
with the tip of the foil blade. This is where the term touche or (touch) comes
from. In the 19th century a sturdier weapon called
the epee was introduced. I would say for a first time viewer of fencing,
the easiest one to watch is epee. That’s because it’s the slowest of the
three events because fencers are more hesitant to initiate an attack exposing their whole
bodies to their opponent. Fencers are more hesitant to initiate an attack,
exposing their whole body to their opponent. It is also the only of the three weapons where
the “right of way” rule is not enforced. What’s “right of way?” Well, in a classic duel the only way to win
if you’re attacked first is to parry or deflect your opponent's weapon AND THEN riposte
or attack your opponent. With the epee, simultaneous hits can occur
and both fencers will receive a point. And now, the fastest event. The sabre. Sabre is the second fastest sport in the Olympic
games after rifle shooting. That means the blade is moving almost as fast
as a bullet Instead of just thrusting, the sabre fencers
can score on any part of the upper body with slashes and thrusts and because the right
of way is enforced, sabre fencers are more incentivized to attack first. You’ll immediately recognize the difference
between an epee and sabre bout because of the shape of the hand guard and speed of play. Fencing holds a special place in Olympic history
because it’s one of only 5 sports to be featured since the first modern games in 1896. It was a hugely popular sport, drawing crowds
in theaters like big boxing fights would today. This of course is where the salute comes from. Until the 30s, fencing bouts like boxing would
take place in theaters. This of course is where the salute comes from. In the mid 20th century electricity replaced
red chalk to make judging easier. And between 1900s and the early 2000s many
fencing maneuvers further distanced the sport from it’s dueling roots. Nothing did that more than the “flick.” People were used to flick their blades on
the backs of their opponents. But they changed the timings of the machines
and that wouldn't work anymore. Because a flick was so quick, it’s less
likely to register as a hit. Despite that, foil fencers still attempt this
maneuver. The international fencing federation and the
IOC have done a lot to try and draw outsiders to the sport. At London 2012 the lighting systems alone
looked like a techno dance floor and the masks closely resembled daft punk head gear. But the essence of the sport, a fight between
two people remains. If you can just train your eyes to watch split
second bouts, it’s really exhilarating  to watch. When animals first evolved, they did so in
a microbial world. They did so on a planet that had been home
to all these organisms for billions of years. This is Ed Yong, he’s written a book about
the microorganisms that live inside us and all around us.. and that pre-date us, by a lot. If we condense all of earth’s history into
a single calendar year, then life emerged around about March, and multicellular life,
all the organisms that we are familiar with only really came up in October or so. And humans emerged very, very recently indeed. So we're just the icing on life's cake. From the time humans evolved, bacteria and
other microbes would have colonized every nook and cranny of our bodies, just like they
had other animals. And they lived with us like that for some
200,000 years until eventually someone looked close enough to notice. That person was Antony van Leeuwenhoek. So this is the late 17th century in the Netherlands
and he is not a trained scientist. He’s not a scholar.
But he has two things that are really important: One is an insatiable curiosity and the other
are really really good lenses, which he grinds himself. At that point, microscopes had been around
for decades. In England, Robert Hooke had published a book
of observations that was a  popular success. It introduced the term “cell” for
the pores that he saw in a slice of cork, because they reminded him of the cells of a monastery. But bacterial cells are much smaller than
plant cells. While Hooke was using a compound microscope
that could magnify 20-30 times, Leeuwenhoek used single-lens microscopes that
could magnify up to 260 times. Though you might not expect that from looking
at them. It’s really like two brass rectangles that
sandwich this tiny tiny glass lens, this spherical lens between them. But it basically looks like a door-hinge. The whole thing was just a few inches long and the lens was as small as a grain of rice. And he would have held it really close to his eye. He would have had to basically press his face up against this thing and look through the lens. It would have been deeply uncomfortable and
very straining. To understand why his lens was so small, you
have to know how magnifying glasses work. Like any other lens, they make use of the
fact that light bends when it enters glass at an angle. That’s because light moves more slowly through
glass than air, and so the portion of the wavefront that enters the glass first will
slow down while the other part continues at the faster speed. That’s what makes it change direction, both
when it enters and exits the lens. Now if you put an object close enough to the
lens, the bending light creates a virtual image that’s not the real size of the object,
but the size it would be if the light from the lens had traveled in a straight line all
along. And if the lens is more curved, those lines
are even steeper, meaning greater magnification. So Leeuwenhoek’s lenses weren’t just biconvex,
they were spherical. And he knew that he could make that curve
even more drastic by shrinking the whole lens down as small as possible, even if it meant
he’d have to get his eye uncomfortably close to it. And with that tiny bead of glass, Leeuwenhoek opened
a peephole into a whole new world. He looked at his blood and discovered blood cells. He looked at his semen and discovered sperm. He looked at samples of water and saw algae
cells, protozoa, and bacteria. He called them little animals. He went on to peer into his own dental plaque
and found bacteria there too. And he described what he saw in letters to
the Royal Society. He's the first person to see bacteria. He’s the only creature, let alone human,
he’s the only organism in the entire history of life on earth to actually see the things
that have been the dominant players in life’s history. And I think the great thing is that he wasn’t
disgusted by it. He saw tiny living things living in his
own mouth and, you know, he thought they were cool. It would be nearly two more centuries before
microbes were linked to disease. And even longer before we understood that
our microbes help us digest food, train our immune system, and crowd out harmful bacteria. Now microscopes are much more powerful than
Leeuwenhoek’s were, but these days it’s a different tool altogether that’s enabling
researchers to explore how microbes affect human health. Just like Leeuwenhoek found microbes because
he had the right tools, now we’re seeing that the microbiome is important because we
have the right tools, because we have the ability to sequence the DNA of microbes, to
identify them by just scooping up a sample from the environment and looking at their
genes. If you were to take all the water out of your poop, 25-50% of what's left is bacteria, both dead and alive. So if you were feeling sad that you can't see the microbes that make a home on your body, Well, it turns out you kinda can! When Donald Trump made his entrance on the
first night of the Republican National Convention, he did it to this song — Queen’s 1977
hit “We Are the Champions”. The band was quick to clarify that the use
of the song was, quote, “unauthorized.” They’re not the first to speak up against
Trump using their music: in the past few months: Steven Tyler, Adele, Neil Young, and R.E.M.
have all made it clear that they don’t want their music being played at his events. And it’s far from the first time this argument
has played out between candidates and artists. Bruce Springsteen complained about the use
of “Born in the USA” by Reagan in 1984, Bob Dole in 1996, and Pat Buchanan in 2000. And in 2008, Sam Moore from Sam & Dave objected
to Barack Obama using the song “Hold On, I’m Comin”. Meanwhile John McCain got a whopping nine
complaints from Van Halen, Heart, Jackson Browne, Bon Jovi, The Foo Fighters, John Mellencamp, John Mellencamp again, Tom Petty, and ABBA. That was pretty funny, John. But how do those rights work? Legally speaking, Trump would be required
to get a legal license to use the music — but not necessarily from Queen directly. The required permissions are available from
a performing rights organization called Broadcast Music Inc. Today, three Performing Rights Organizations
have licenses for the vast majority of music published in the US. If you run a concert venue, or even a restaurant
or bar that runs background music, you can pay a flat fee to those organizations for
the right to play just about any music you want. But BMI, which licenses “We Are the Champions,”
has slightly different rules for politicians. They require campaigns to get something called
a Political Entities License. That license allows campaigns to play music
wherever they make public appearances. But there a clause in BMI’s Political Entities
License that allows any artist to ban their songs from being used by a certain politician,
if they want to. And that’s exactly what Queen is doing right now with Trump. And Adele did the same thing this year — the
artists’ representatives sent a notice to BMI that they want their songs pulled from
Trump’s available catalog, and BMI notified Trump’s campaign of the change. After that, Trump’s campaign is legally
barred from using that music for any event. It’s important to note that securing music
for campaign ads is a separate process. That requires the campaign to contact the
song’s publisher and potentially the record label to negotiate the appropriate licenses. And politicians can get in a lot of trouble
for not going through that process. When Charlie Crist used the Talking Heads
song “Road to Nowhere” in an ad, bandleader David Byrne sued for $1 million. Crist paid an undisclosed sum, and posted
this apology video to YouTube. "I sincerely apologize to David Byrne for using his famous song, and his unique voice in my campaign advertisement without his permission. But most of the time, lawsuits aren’t the
end goal. Musician complaints like this are usually
just to send a political message. And in a majority of cases, the politicians
actually do respect requests from musicians to stop using the music. By using legal pathways to get their songs
pulled from events while making news for doing it, Queen and Adele might be setting a new
precedent. But hey, if Trump needs any song recommendations,
he’s gotten endorsements from Ted Nugent, and Wayne Newton, and Kid Rock — so maybe he
can start from there. So of course there are other ways that musicians can make their political beliefs known to their fans. At the Republican National Convention, the band Third Eye Blind trolled everybody  who showed up to their concert. They didn't play any of the major hits, they criticized the GOP platform and they even asked the crowd at one point "who here believes in science?" Look at this note. It's from the Blue
Book Modeling Agency in 1945. It says Norma Jean, who you might also know as Marilyn Monroe, was in fact, a size 12. LYNN BOORADY: She was. but back in the 50s, a size 12 was very thin. That was a model. You know, a size 12 then would be about a size 6 now. Well, to be exact, she would be a size 8 at
Topshop, 6 at Zara, and 4 to 6 at American Apparel. ..to actually show you the inconsistencies,
I went shopping. I bought 3 jeans at 3 different stores, all
in the same size. We’re already off to a bad start. These all look different. This is not a 4. This one is the one in the middle. This one fits! Hold up. It won’t zip. I give up. Let’s wind back a little bit. It was the Napoleonic wars and later
the Civil War in the US that demanded a sizing system for the mass production of clothing for the first time. It was for men’s uniforms. After that, men’s suit sizes were based
on the chest measurement and the rest was calculated accordingly, assuming that their bodies were in proportion. The demands for mass production of uniforms escalated and ready-made clothing became really popular. By the end of the nineteenth century, most
people were wearing ready-made clothes. In 1939, the US government funded statisticians
to collect the weight and 58 measurements of 15,000 women. LYNN BOORADY: They only used white women, even
though they took measurements of women of color, they didn’t include them in the study
or the calculations. The women who would’ve turned out for these studies were the poor women because they would be paid. So the data set even back then was possibly malnourished women, certainly poor women, and not very diverse group of women… and that’s what
we started with. They were looking for key measurements that
could predict the sizes of other parts of the body, the way chest sizes had for men. But women’s bodies, with variable breast
and hip sizes, were much harder to summarize with a single number. So, the data was used to create a
system in 1958 with sizes from 8 to 42, an arbitrary number based on bust size, combined
with a letter for height and a plus or minus for hips. The sizing chart was really unpopular, so
they made some updates, but finally in 1983 it was completely withdrawn. In the 1970s and 80s, companies started labeling the sizes down, and adding lower numbers like
2, zero and now even double zero. So the waist measurement that used to be a
size 12 became an 8. LYNN BOORADY: Vanity sizing specifically, is when the size on the label is lowered artificially, in order to tempt to get somebody to buy
the garment. So you’re appealing to the person’s vanity. Sizing has become a marketing tool. LYNN BOORADY: I think it’s done because the women are getting bigger,
we’re just addressing that. When the first standardizing chart came out
in 1958 it was mostly built out of malnourished, white women. Now, that there’s such a wide group of people
to cover, the retailers are picking a certain group of people to sell to, honing in what
works with that group and what doesn’t. LYNN BOORADY: I think we’re more aiming for our own target markets. So, when Abercrombie & Fitch does their sizing,
they’re sizing to their target market not to me. We kept tweaking that information
until we sold more garments and could lower the return rate. That means, even brands owned by the same company will have inconsistent sizes. A size 8 at Banana Republic will have the
same hip size as a size 2 at the Gap. So if you get frustrated while shopping…. LYNN BOORADY: It’s not you, it’s the industry, it’s not women’s bodies, we’re fine the way we are. They are just random numbers, they don’t
mean anything. And if you don’t like your size just cut
it out of your clothes. If you go to a Google map of Rio de Janeiro and put it into 3D mode, you can see what the city looks like as it was designed by urban planners. But you will also notice parts of the city
that don’t look like the rest. See the difference? The people who live in these parts of the city, with the clean lines and the well thought-out design, are called
“people of the asphalt.” The people who live in these parts of the city are called
“people of the hill.” Even though the people of the asphalt and
the people of the hill live closely intertwined throughout the city, they live vastly different
lives. These informal communities that look like houses stacked on top of each other, sprouting out of the jungle, are called Favelas,
home to both vicious drug gangs as well as some of the most peaceful, creative, and resourceful
people in Rio. I want to show you want they looks like on
the inside. A favela is a community that was built without
any oversight from a public authority--no zoning, no building codes, no public services. These places just grew out of the hills over
time thanks to two main factors: First was slavery. Brazil imported 11 times more slaves than
the United States and Rio alone was home to more slaves than the entire American south. Slavery ended in 1888, and free slaves, still denied
many rights in society, built informal communities on their own. In more recent times, favelas have been fueled
by massive migrations, from rural Brazilians coming into the city looking for work. Not able to find affordable housing, these
workers built their own communities. Today, 25% of Rio’s residents live in these
favelas. I spent time in 6 of Rio’s favelas to figure
out what happens when parts of a city develop without the presence of a government. This is Rocinha. It’s Brazil's largest favela and has been
dubbed a city within a city. It’s a completely self sufficient economy,
the result of decades of makeshift solutions to basic needs like electricity and running
water. Without a formal government presence, the
residents of Rocinha created their own association which helps coordinate public
projects and resources. Since these associations grew up totally informally
by people who had no training in public administration, the resulting community design brings with it a little
more zest and creativity than your traditional city. But make no mistake, Rocinha is a full-on
functioning mini city with the city of Rio de Janeiro. This impromptu resourcefulness is common within
favelas. Here I am in Vidigal, a favela not far from
Rocinha. This man Paulo is showing me his garden. But it wasn’t always a garden. 15 years ago, this hill that we stand on, was teeming with garbage. Paulo decided to cleaned it up, planted trees and cultivated
a garden space that now produces fruit. He did this without asking permission, because, after all, there was no one to ask permission from. If you look around the graden, you'll realize that everything is made from trash. On the other side of the city is a Favela
called Maré. The people of this community have created
art centers for young people to come learn new skills. They also support established artists to create
projects around the city that explore and communicate life in the favela. Here they are building a model of their favela
out of recycled wood. In Providencia, a favela near the port zone,
I met up with this guy. Mauricio, a photographer who lives in this
amazing house. Mauricio photographs life in the favela, providing
transparency to the good and the bad of these places He thinks of photography as a weapon to fight
against everything from drug cartels to the government when they show up trying to remove
parts of his community Whenever he sees corruption or foul play in his community, he photographs it and distributes it to a network of local and international media contacts. Over the years, people have learned not to mess with him. Why are these people who live in poverty and
neglect, so driven to create beauty in order to survive? This reality of neglect from public investment, has created a culture of creative survival. But there’s a dark to this too. Right now we are traveling over Complexo Do Alemão, which is a huge complex or block of favelas We're not going into the streets today, because this place is still very much run by drug trafficking gangs I would be sugar coating the situation if I didn't talk about the fact that drug gangs stil have major influence in a lot of the favelas and Alemão is one of those places. Perhaps the most powerful gang in Rio is called the Red Command, a group that began as a left-wing political rebellion and whose headquarters are in Alemão. Cocaine arrived in Rio in the 1980s, enriching
the gangs and allowing them to grow in power and territory. The Red Command became more violent and lost
its political ideology, focusing entirely on drug and arms trafficking. The fact that favelas aren't formal and aren't regulated, means that both that they can become incredibly vibrant because people can take this attitude and build on qualities and be creative and change your environment, but it also means that you can get incredibly dysfunctional places when the energy and the approach is the opposite. So you have these two extremes and they come out of the same force: informality, lack of regulation, and flexibility. In 2008, the city of Rio was ready to take
over this lawless territories of Rio. They assembled a special force of police officers
to enter the favelas and drive out the gang influence. They call this process “pacification of
the favelas” But this gets tricky really fast. There’s been a big discussion in the United States
about police brutality. But Brazil is on a whole different level when
it comes to police violence and corruption. Human right watch estimates US police officers
kill one person in every 37,000 arrests. In Rio that number is 1 in every 23 arrests. So you can see why some felt skeptical of letting the police come into the favelas to try to restore order. This is Santa Marta. It’s the first favela that received pacification
forces back in 2008. It also happens to be the place where Michael Jackson decided to shoot a music video. Pacification worked for Santa Marta and a few other favelas, for the first few years after 2008, but this favela is small, and the city dedicated
its best police forces to the job. It’s been a whole different experience in a place
like Alemão and other bigger favelas. Many of the favelas that I visited that had apparently been pacified, were still very clearly under the influence of the Red Command. So while there have been some successes in pacification, the city still has a huge challenge ahead of it in taking control of these places. International attention paid to favelas is
usually directed towards the conflict between the gangs and police. There’s movies and video games about this. This problem has been perhaps disproportionately amplified across the world. But while gang violence is certainly a problem,
it represents one small slice of the favela experience. What seems to me as the more striking and interesting aspect of favelas, are the thousands of men and women who are thriving in creative way in spite of being neglected
by their government. Donald Trump isn’t exactly known for thinking
in foreign policy details. My foreign policy will always put
the interests of the American people and American security above all else. But recently, Trump got specific about something
important — NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And what he said shocked everyone. NATO is a military alliance between the U.S.,
Canada and a large chunk of Europe. It began in 1949 as a means of deterring a
Soviet attack on Western Europe. In Washington, the United States breaks
a 170-year-old tradition as it joins eleven nations in the signing of the Atlantic
Defense Treaty. Basically saying, "if you attack one of us, you'll get a response from all of us." NATO has since grown to include 28 countries,
including former members of the Soviet Union. It intervened to end the Bosnian War in 1995,
and responded to the 9/11 attacks with a decade-long mission in Afghanistan. The alliance has helped keep the peace
in the Northern Hemisphere for more than half a century. And now, Donald Trump has threatened to destroy
the whole thing. So, Trump was in an interview with the New York Times on July 20. And Sanger asks him... Trump replies... And then Trump says... Trump is probably referring to the fact that
all the NATO countries have agreed to spend 2 percent of their GDP on national defense as part of the treaty. The U.S. is one of just five countries
that met that benchmark in 2016. Trump isn’t the first to call out countries
that haven’t. The majority of allies are still
not hitting that 2 percent mark....everybody has got to step up and everybody has got to
do better.” But Trump is the first and only one to suggest
that our commitment to NATO should be contingent on those spending levels. And even his fellow Republicans are calling
him out. Now, I have friends that serve in parliament in places like Estonia, that every day worry about the Russians deciding that this is the time to re-annex and to take them back. And comments like this are not only ill-informed, they're dangerous. I, mean, it's the most successful military alliance in the history of the world. I want to reassure our NATO allies that, should any of them be attacked, we'll be there to defend them. And I'm willing to chalk this up to a rookie mistake. But Trump isn’t backing down. If Mitch McConnell says that, then he's wrong. So all I'm saying is they have to pay. So why is this such a big deal? Because of the way that NATO works. NATO deters attacks through something called credible commitment. There’s no organization that can force the
United States to go fight for Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. A country like Russia has to believe that
the United States is willing to intervene even if it risks World War III. That’s why political leaders of both parties
haven’t wavered from the commitment to defend the NATO alliance. And he used the NATO alliance almost as a transactional, business alliance. So that is a complete break with American policy. And Trump’s remarks come at a time when
NATO is particularly relevant. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, even annexing
part of the country. This came just six years after its invasion
of Georgia. That’s why the New York Times asked him specifically
about the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russia is getting increasingly aggressive
on its boarders, and if it seems like the United States is wavering, Putin might
be more tempted to attack one of the Baltic states as a part of a plot to destroy NATO. And the Republican presidential candidate
has just invited him to try. -Liz, why are we going to Ikea? Because we're going to unite the Democratic
Party. And also, I kind of want meatballs. You would think that uniting a party running
against a Republican billionaire that calls Mexicans rapists and women fat
pigs would be a piece of cake. But guess again. Are you voting for Hillary in the fall? No way. No, no, no. No. Not at all. No. No, I couldn’t. I am not. There's no way in hell I'm voting for Hillary. Despite Hillary clinching the nomination
and Bernie himself endorsing Clinton, a large number still refuse to put their support
behind the Democratic candidate. Of course, the DNC email leak confirmed what
many Bernie Sanders supporters were already feeling: That the party favored Clinton
and that they never stood a chance. The Bernie or Bust movement persists with a YouGov survey showing that only 44% of people who voted for Sanders in the primaries intend to vote for Hillary Clinton come this
fall. And this is bad news for her. For instance, in the battleground state of
Pennsylvania polls show that Clinton only has a 1% lead
over Donald Trump. But if she could get half of Sanders supporters
behind her that lead could go up. I wanted to know if I could find a way to
bridge this gap. Using a method devised by a therapist to
help practice better communication, we had our subjects construct a small night
table. We locked up Katie, a self described Bernie
Bro, and Ben, a Hillary supporter, in a room with no AC, no water, and with
one frustratingly simple task. What could go wrong? Oh my God. Let's take these screws and secure them. And unscrew America. Yeah. But screw together this weird a** table. What Bernie Sanders did is amazing. Bernie Sanders engaged an audience of voters that have never been engaged like
that before. Literally, he broke records. But some of those people aren't politically
experienced. They haven't seen how our democratic system
works, and so they get angry when they don't get
the results they want. Every single step of the way Hillary's defenders, not all of them, but I'll say the most vocal
and closest to the campaign, have been pushing back on all efforts to hold
her at all accountable and move her to the left. Katie, that's not true. Look at Social Security, Where Hillary Clinton has changed her– But that wasn't because of– That was because of progressive voices coming
together and fighting to push her to the left. Okay, I'm talking about the people who–
and you're not this– but there are lots of supporters of Hillary who attack Bernie people and say that they have to get in line and
that they're going to let Trump win. What Donald Trump is trying to do is to make
America more hateful, more racist, more xenophobic
-I know this, he's terrible. Then oppose him. I am opposing him but I think you can do it better if you don't
try to beat Bernie people over the head and blame them. All I'm saying is that we have a real threat
to this country, to marginalized communities across this country, and the way to combat it is to encourage as many people as possible to get out and vote against Trump. And right now the other option is Secretary
Clinton. If you don't like that option, which makes sense for a lot of people, then push her to be more like the person that
you want her to be. After almost an hour, they still hadn't reached
consensus or successfully built a night table. But still, data shows that although there
are some differences between Sanders and Clinton supporters, there is an even bigger ideology gap between
Trump and the Bernie camp. So what gives? One factor might be who's voting for Bernie
in the first place. According to data from FiveThirtyEight, the Sanders campaign attracted voters who are less likely to vote in elections. Add to the mix their declining view of Hillary
Clinton over the course of the primary and it's not hard to understand the discord. So when I spoke to FiveThirtyEight's Harry
Enten it wasn't Ikea that he suggested as a solution
to Hillary Clinton's Bernie Bro woes. What does Hillary need to do to really get
a grasp on this coalition of voters? I think one of the things she already did,
they adopted a very progressive platform. I think that could get the activists on her
side and then those activists could be thought
of as leaders and people look to them. I mean for a long time we've been dividing,
right– it's a two-party system, it's Republican, Democrat. Could we be seeing a shift in terms of how
people affiliate? Could it change to insider and outsider,
or establishment or anti-establishment? Absolutely, I mean we've seen a number of
votes in the House over the past few years in which, you know, people who were part of
the establishment– so called, I don't know if that's necessarily
a good title, but part of the establishment – voted together
while those on the far left and the far right who are really outsiders, voted together. It's quite possible that in fact we do see a multi-dimensional
system. In fact, that's the way it's been throughout
most of our history. It's only been more recently where we've been
able to put things on a left and right spectrum. So why can't things change? There's nothing special about the system we
have now. Bernie supporters have had a huge impact on
the Democratic Party and changed the way that we view the two-party
system. But now that their candidate has endorsed
Hillary, where do they go from here? Will they back her and work within the system, or will their disappointment encourage them
to opt out or vote for a third party? Or they do have another option. Bernie Sanders voters, please, vote for Trump. Come on over, the water's fine. We welcome you to the Republican Party. You may not feel comfortable at the beginning– So consider Donald Trump, people, it's for
God and country. Come to the other side, we'll welcome you
with open arms. I totally welcome all of you Bernie supporters
to the Trump team. It's so inspiring, it really shows how we
can work together. Not to construct anything or debate but in theory we can work together. Organize so Hillary Clinton is more electable and doesn't get defeated by Trump. Just cut to that. Okay, editors. Let's cut there, we got it. We got the shot. "Oh yeah!" "Cool!" "Yum yum yum." So hopefully now you'll get a chance to make your own garum. In the description below I have put
links to a bunch of different recipes as well as some clarifications about the terminology
that's used, and there's even a version that you can make in less than six months. So I
hope you do, and I'm off to wash my hands now. It was the most peaceful, joyous, incredible,
life changing experience I've ever had in my life. There were scary parts, foreboding
parts … I always knew there was beautiful and joy and peace on the other side of it.
It was freeing, it was really freeing. This is Alana. She’s describing what she
felt after she took a dose of this stuff — psilocybin. It’s a naturally occurring psychedelic compound,
the kind you find in magic mushrooms. But she wasn’t tripping in a dorm room or
at Woodstock — it actually wasn’t recreational at all.
If anything became unreal or I was feeling nervous or not in touch with reality, I would
squeeze his hand and he would squeeze mine back just to reassure me that I was okay and
everything was alright. It was part of a controlled medical test to
see if psychedelics could be useful in helping people quit cigarettes. Alana had been smoking
for 37 years before her session with psilocybin, and she hasn’t had a cigarette since. Research on psychedelics for medical use is
preliminary. Most studies suffer from really small sample sizes. That’s partly because the
federal government lists LSD and psilocybin as Schedule 1 drugs. So researchers face extra
red tape, and funding is really hard to come by. Vox writer German Lopez reviewed dozens of
studies that have been done. He found that psychedelics show promise for treating addiction,
OCD, anxiety, and in some cases, depression. One small study of 15 smokers found that 80
percent were able to abstain from smoking for six months after a psilocybin treatment.
In a pilot study of 12 advanced cancer patients suffering from end-of-life anxiety, participants
who took psilocybin generally showed lower scores on a test of depression.
And smaller study suggested psilocybin treatment could also help people with alcohol dependence
cut back on their drinking days. We don’t have all the answers as to what
exactly these treatments are doing in the brain. But they seem to work by providing
a meaningful, even mystical experience that leads to lasting changes in a patient's life. The issues that I talked about, or thought about, or went into during my experience were transformative in the sense that I got to look at them through a different lens. I know this sounds weird, I feel like I have more connections in my brain that I couldn't
access before That feeling that Alana is describing is actually
pretty spot-on. When you take LSD your brain looks something
like this. You can actually see a higher degree of connectivity
between various parts of the brain, it’s not limited to the visual cortex. This communication inside the brain helps explain visual hallucinations — and the researchers argue that it could
also explain why psychedelics can help people overcome serious mental issues.
They wrote that you can think of psychiatric disorders as the brain being “entrenched
in pathology.” Harmful patterns become automated and hard to change, and that’s what can make
things like anxiety, addiction and depression very hard to treat.   That’s Albert Garcia-Romeu, he’s a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on studies of
of psilocybin and smoking addiction, like the one that Alana's involved with. He says that when participants take psychedelics, One of the big remaining questions here is
how long these benefits actually last after just the one-time treatment.
A review of research on LSD-assisted psychotherapy and alcoholism found no statistically significant
benefits after 12 months. And a recent study on psilocybin and depression
found that benefits significantly dropped off after three months. And of course are some big risks to using
psychedelic drugs. It’s hard to predict a patient’s reaction
and some might actually endanger themselves. Those predisposed to psychotic conditions
are especially at risk for having a traumatic experience while on the drug.
It’s difficult to draw solid conclusions from the existing studies.
But there’s more than enough promise here to merit further research and further funding
for that research. As Matthew Johnson of Johns Hopkins said,
"These are among the most debilitating and costly disorders known to humankind.” For
some people, no existing treatments help. But psychedelics might. One thing you might still be wondering is why so much of this research is so new, when we've known when we've known about psychedelics for thousands of years. Well since these drugs are so old, they can't be patented, which means that pharmaceutical companies don't really have any incentive to fund any research into them. So that really leaves it up to governments and private contributors to fund all these studies. And there actually was a lot of research done into these drugs in the 50s and 60s, but there was a big enough backlash to the abuse of psychedelics in that period, especially around events like Woodstock, that funding really dried up, and research stopped. And that's why it's only now that we see this research happening, with private, not government contributions. okay it's recording thank you for
subscribing to vox there are a million of you this is insane I cannot believe that and we all just
wanted to thank you so much by recommending some other YouTube channels
that you should definitely subscribe to i'm joe i make some videos and I
lead the team and I think you should watch skunk bear they're part of NPR they make incredible
science videos in the most creative unique strange way you can imagine i'm
johnny i make videos about international stuff I recently discovered a youtube channel
called you suck at cooking what I love about this channel is the
guy really really is good at it but he doesn't take it too seriously kind of
mocks the idea of being really into cooking so just wind up and just give it a
nice firm strike dammit see I went too hard and I got
black beans hi I'm Joss i make videos about science
and sometimes other things I'd like to recommend the youtube channel of Jon Bois it's probably the best kept secret on youtube jon is a writer for SB nation but he's
also been making this video series called pretty good and they're extremely
well-researched hilarious videos about sports and culture and I think you guys
would love them i never posted on this forum I don't know any of these people but
it's a story I have to talk about it is the dumbest internet fight I have ever
seen my name is Dion I'm a video producer and an animator for observatory the youtube
channel that i recommend is called this the scran line it has a very beautiful collection of
French cookies and cupcakes hi my name is phil edwards and make
videos about history and culture and other weird stuff one of my favorite YouTube channels is
objectivity and what they do is they give you a tour through the archives of
the Royal Society in London my name is Estelle and I'm a pop culture
video maker for vox.com i want to recommend one of my favorite YouTube
channels which is ironically called is this how you go viral it's run by a guy named Adams Schleickorn
and basically what he does is he mashes of classic TV shows usually for kids and
classic hip-hop songs bow bow bow now tell me what you gonna do they're all super hilarious they'll all
make your day and they are completely useless sup my name is Carlos I'm a video
producer at vox.com a channel that I think you guys should all check out
would be a Blogotheque they're all music videos but their people walking around
town it's beautiful scenes really really great music really really great
cinematography my name is Matteen and I'm a video
producer here at vox com please go and subscribe to my friends
over at democracy now Amy Goodman a team do an amazing job every day of an
independent news broadcast I'm matt vree I'm the executive producer of video here
at vox and the channel i want to recommend is called deep look from kqed
and it's a series about macro photography and they take really small
science stories to make the really big i'm Liz and I produce 2016 ish a show
about the election I am such a huge fan franchesca ramsey's
youtube channel following her gives you insight into a
world that's very important and into issues that you probably never thought
about people make you way smarter hi my name is Liz Shelton i make
videos for vox.com , about politics social science nutrition health animals food
you name it and i would like to endorse the Center for Investigative Reporting
reveal channel on YouTube they do incredible investigative documentary
work they really hold public officials accountable and if you guys are really
gonna like them I'm dean Peterson work here at vox on the
show 2016ish with Liz Plank so there's one channel that subscribe to
that i recommend to all my friends that's a bit of a hard recommendation
but it's called Alan tutorial it started with like a normal tutorial
and then over the years that kind of slowly devolved into this like odd fever
dream nightmare ok bye guys thanks for watching alan
tutorial hi everybody I'm Christophe I do videos about a little bit of
everything if you're a big fan of the weird part of YouTube as I am you're really like Bill wurtz my
favorite thing that he's done is this incredible history of Japan so the Mongols came over ready for war
and died in a tornado but they tried again and had a nice time fighting with
the Japanese but then died in a tornado hey ya'll my name is gina i make
videos here vox.com you should totally check out yale courses when youtube they have a bunch of different classes
like chemistry astro physics english poetry some of them even have syllabi and
transcripts so plus thank you guys for subscribing to vox
keep commenting keep asking questions keep giving us your suggestions we
really appreciate you checking out our stuff is that good? yeah that's good Would you guys date a Trump supporter? No. Absolutely not, sorry, no. A recent study by the dating website Plenty
of Fish shows that only 33% of women on the site
are willing to date a Trump supporter. And male Trump supporters are almost twice
as likely to be blocked than non-Trump supporters. I wanted to bridge the partisan dating divide
so I went to the most polarizing place in America. The Republican National Convention. The perfect place to put my matchmaking
skills to the test. But finding a democratic woman who would want to date a Trump supporter turned out to be
a little harder than I thought. Would you ever date a Trump supporter? Probably not. I can't imagine dating a Trump supporter. I think it would make me sad. Yeah I would go on a date with him and tell
him don't support Donald Trump. To try and convince him not to vote for
Donald Trump? Have you ever gone on
a date with a Trump supporter? Absolutely not. Would you go on a date with a
Trump supporter? Would you try it out? He would have to be really good looking. I'll tell you what.
Dean will pay for all the wine. Ok I'm in. -Wait, what? So I stood outside Chipotle until I finally
found Ryan. A young, 27 year-old Republican that was DTF. Down to fix the tax code. Has supporting Donald Trump been good for
your dating life or made it harder? We talk about Netflix and what TV shows
we're watching, we don't talk about politics We should though, I should have more
open-minded conversations on my dates Maybe that's why I'm single. Would you like to go on a date where you will
have open-minded conversations about politics? As long as she's cute, yes. Yes! So since we blew out budget on last minute
plane tickets to Cleveland we invited them over to our Airbnb ordered Papa John's, and gave them a $7
bottle of wine. Thanks Dean. The night started off fairly carefree. So what brought you to Cleveland? Uh, the RNC. The RNC? So are you a republican? I am not, I am not.
Are you? Yeah. Are you voting for Donald Trump? Yeah, probably. What about you? Uh, I am voting not for Donald Trump. But then they started talking about politics. Do you feel like Donald Trump has a lot
of foreign policy experience? No it's not good, I'll be honest. I don't agree with the whole build the wall
thing but it's a signal like we have to
strengthen our borders. Do you hate immigrants? No I like them, but I want immigrants to pay
taxes if they're going to work here. Well a lot of them do already. I know. How do you feel about a tax system?
I feel like we should be on a flat tax. A flat tax? I mean I, I think that You're not going to agree with this. I know I'm not. I can already tell. You're like, I can tell by the way you're
saying it. No, I think that, I mean and I can just speak for myself I would actually be fine if my taxes were
raised if it meant that– You're such a Goody Two-Shoes. I'm just saying, would you really care? Can I get a little bit more wine?
Please. What do you think about Black Lives Matter? I feel like there is a tension between the
police force and African Americans and then there's a part of me that's just
like I feel like the media just blows it up. Like, I feel like, I guarantee you there are
cops that kill white people. No, there definitely are. Here's my thing. Being a cop does not give you a license
do to whatever you want. And if you're a cop, I have rights. When a cop tells me to do something,
I'm going to do it. And I have no, I have no problems with the
cops. But how often are you interacting with cops? I interact with them quite a bit. White men are not being stop and frisked on
the street regularly, I'm sorry they're not. It's interesting that we're kind of politically
and idealogically polar opposites but there are things that we agree on. We touched ground on certain bases and I feel
like I maybe stirred you in the right way on some. And it's not just Ryan and Bridget that are
bad at predicting differences across political ideologies. Research shows that Americans think they're
much more different than they actually are. One study has gone so far as to suggest that
liberals and conservatives while differing systematically in their
moral world views are actually more similar in their moral
judgements than anyone thinks. A study of over 18 million couples found that among married couples under 30 only 40% had partners in the same political
party. Whereas when you look at couples over 80 that number jumps to over 71%. And given that a growing margin of millennials don't identify with either party maybe political ideology won't be as important. So maybe we shouldn't be so afraid of
dating outside of our political comfort zone. If this evening is any indicator maybe there's still hope for love in America. I feel like we killed that. Good date. Good date. I think, you know, we found some common ground
when we could. I think he is smart. I never thought I would
say a Trump supporter would be smart. I would go on a second date with him. I would. Maybe if we talked less. Maybe if we went to a movie. -Would you go on a second date? Yeah I would. I would. As long as she said yes. That’s all! If she didn’t, then no. After Pokemon Go was released in the US, it
took less than a day before it was making more money than all the other apps in both
Apple’s and Google’s app stores. “It’s already earned $14 million in revenue
since launching last Wednesday — not even a full week.”
But users didn’t have to pay a cent for the game. All that money was coming from optional
purchases people were making as they played. This is the world of Freemium apps — a business
model that, in the past few years, has largely wiped out the market for paid games.
Now game designers have to monetize the gameplay and one way to do that is by applying some
fundamental lessons of behavioral psychology. The first thing these games do is set up a
virtual currency so that it doesn’t feel like you’re spending real currency, even
though you are. This is a variation on something we’ve known
for decades - which is that people find it harder to spend money when they’re paying
in cash than if they’re using a card. “So when you pay cash for something, you
see it leave your hands and you get a very immediate sense of how much your cash reserves have
dropped, how much your wealth has dropped.” Games add yet another layer. You pay for lollipop
boosters with gold bars and you pay for gold bars with your credit card, which is already
distanced from actual payment. And then on top of that, they don’t make
the exchange rate simple. It’s not 50 gems for 50 cents.
“They’re always something weird like 1 dollar will get you 12 purple diamonds, and
that sort of off kilter exchange rate is the same thing you see with people spending — tourists
spending money that they’re not familiar with in foreign countries.”
If incense costs 80 pokecoins and a batch of 550 pokecoins costs $4.99, how much real
money does incense cost? Yeah i don’t know either.
So you’re spending money that doesn’t seem real and it only takes a second because
the app store already has your credit card. The whole payment process is designed to be
painless. Other parts of the game, however, are designed
to be painful. A key finding of behavioral research is that
people tend to experience unexpected losses more intensely than comparable gains. That
can inform the timing of purchase prompts. In Puzzle & Dragons, players progress through
a dungeon before facing a boss, and if they die, they stand to lose all the rewards they
just earned. That’s when they’re presented with the option to save their coins and their
points by spending magic stones, which you can by in the store with real money.
Other developers actively embed inconvenience into the games, so that you can purchase convenience.
In Clash of Clans and Game of War, everything you try to build has wait times that get progressively
longer but are skippable, for a price. “So they build incentives to remove pain
points into the games and then if they want that, then they have the incentives to insert
pain points into the game.” Ultimately though, only a tiny percentage
of players actually become payers. And a small percentage of payers are those so-called “whales”
— people who will pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars in the app.
The marketing firm Swrve estimates that about half of the revenue for mobile games is coming
from less than a half of a percent of all players.
Which means that for some of these games, non-paying users, which is most people, are
essentially pouring time into a game designed to hit the pain points of a small, susceptible
group of players. If you’re really having fun, that’s fine.
But it might be worth rewarding games that find another way. As of now, the monetization
in Pokemon Go is unobtrusive, it’s kind of tucked away. And that lack of manipulation
is a pretty good reason to buy some lure modules and some incense. One argument in favor of free-to-play games
and in-app purchases is that they give developers a reason to keep updating the games. And they’re
collecting tons of data in order to inform those updates — things like where you get
stuck, where you close the game, which features are most popular. All that data can help them
keep making a game that you want to keep playing. But it also means that they can tweak the
prices based on individual profiles and behavior. If it seems like you’re about to quit, hey
here’s a discount. Or if you’re the type of person who will spend a lot of money, maybe
they bump up the prices a bit. They can even look at how fancy your phone is and what country
you live in and set the prices accordingly. According to one survey, 40% of game developers
said they were setting different prices for different players. But the survey was anonymous
and it’s pretty hard to tell which games those are. Today’s Republican Party opposes big government. It’s culturally conservative. Its demographic support is strongest among
white voters, and it usually dominates elections in the South. And its 2016 presidential nominee has been
heavily criticized for inciting racial tensions. But things weren’t always this way. Yet over the past 160 or so years, the party
has undergone a remarkable transformation from the party of Abraham Lincoln… to the
party of Donald Trump. And to understand how the GOP got the way
it is today, you have to go back to when it first came into existence — in 1854, just
7 years before the Civil War. There are two parties at this point, the Whigs
and the Democrats. America is quickly expanding westward and
there’s an intense debate over whether the new states should permit slavery The Democratic Party, with strong support
in the South, has become increasingly pro-slavery. But the Whigs are divided on the issue. Their northern supporters are really afraid
that the growing number of slave states would have too much political influence, which they
feared could hurt free white workers economically So In 1854, the country is debating whether
or not the new states Kansas and Nebraska will allow slavery. The can’t agree and the party ends up collapsing. The former whigs in the north form a new party
that will fight against letting slavery expand further; they call it the Republican Party. By 1860 the Republican Party become increasingly
powerful in the North, enough so that a little known Republican named Abraham Lincoln wins
the presidency. Even though Lincoln promises he won’t interfere
with slavery in the states that already have it, he and his party are still too anti-slavery
for the South to tolerate. So 11 Southern states secede from the Union,
forming the Confederate States of America. The Northern states decide to fight to keep
the Union together, and the Civil War ensues. The result is a Northern victory and the abolition
of slavery nationwide. After the war, Republicans begin fighting
to ensure freedmen in the South have rights. A year after Lincoln’s assassination, the
party passes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said black citizens have the same rights
as whites. They fight to make sure that black men have
the right to vote, with new laws and constitutional amendments. But something had happened during the civil
war that began changing the young Republican Party. Government spending during the war made many
northern businessmen really rich. Gradually, these wealthy financiers and industrialists
start taking more and more of a leading role in the Republican Party. They want to hold on to power, and they don’t
think that fighting for black rights in a mostly white country is the best way to do
that. Meanwhile, the South is resisting these new
racial reforms, often violently. And most white Republican voters and leaders
now feel that they’ve done enough for Black citizens in the South, and that it was time
to emphasize other issues. So in the 1870s, the party basically gives
up on reforming the South, deciding instead to leave it to its own devices, even if that
meant black citizens were oppressed and deprived of their new right to vote, and the region
was politically dominated by white Democrats. Fast-forward to the new century. By the 1920s, the Republican Party has become,
essentially, the party of big business. This works out quite well for them when the
economy was booming, but not so well when the economy crashes in 1929 and the Great
Depression begins. Franklin D. Roosevelt and other Democrats
are swept into power, and begin dramatically expanding the size and role of the federal
government, in an attempt to fight the Depression and better provide for Americans. Republicans oppose this rapid expansion, defining
themselves as opposition to bigger government, an identity that the party still holds today. Then, going into the 50s and 60s, race and
the South return to the forefront of national politics, with the civil rights movement attempting
to end segregation and ensure blacks truly had the right to vote. Civil rights isn’t purely a partisan issue,
it’s more of a regional issue with northerners from both parties supporting it and southerners
from both parties opposing. Then 1964, it’s Democratic president Lyndon
Johnson who signs the Civil Rights Act into law. And it’s Republican presidential nominee
Barry Goldwater who opposes it, arguing that it expands government power too much. A massive switch-up takes place. Black voters, many of whom had already been
shifting from Republicans, convert almost entirely to their new advocates, the Democrats. And white voters in the South, who had been
staunch Democrats, start to really resent “big government” interference here and
in other matters, like abortion rights and school prayer. Over the next three decades, whites in the
South switch to the GOP, which makes the South an overwhelmingly Republican region. By the 80s, the party begins to resemble the
GOP we are familiar with today. Republicans elect Ronald Reagan, who promises
to fight for, business interests, lower taxes, and traditional family values. Then, as the 21st century begins, America
is going through a major demographic shift in the form of Hispanic immigration, both
legal and illegal. Democrats and business elites tend to support
reforming immigration laws so that over 10 million unauthorized immigrants in the US
would get legal status. But “tough on immigration” policies and
rhetoric become popular on the Republican right. Then, when Mitt Romney loses his bid for the
presidency in 2012, he gets blown out among Hispanic voters — exit polls showed that
71% of them backed Barack Obama. And the Republican Party starts to look more
like a party for white voters in an increasingly nonwhite country. Given demographic trends, Republican leaders
worry that if they keep losing Hispanic voters by that much, they’ll lose their chances
of winning the presidency. So in 2013, some key Republicans in the Senate
— including rising star Marco Rubio — collaborate with Democrats on an immigration reform bill
that would give unauthorized immigrants a path to legal status. But there’s a huge backlash from the Republican
party’s predominantly white base, which views the bill as “amnesty” for immigrants
who broke the rules. This exacerbates GOP voters’ mistrust of
their own party’s leaders, which had already been growing. And that makes the political landscape of
2015 is fertile ground for a figure like Donald Trump, an outsider businessman who wants to
build a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump isn’t a traditional conservative,
but he appealed to Republican primary voters’ resentment and mistrust of party elites, as
well as their strong opposition to growing immigration trends. And even though he was loathed by party leaders,
he won enough support in the primaries to become the GOP nominee for president. Now, the Republican party is once again at
a major crossroads as it tries to meet the political challenges of the 21st century. It’s possible that the turn toward Trump
and his ideas this year will be remembered as an aberration, and that a new generation
of Republican politicians will find a way to be more than just the party of white resentment
— rediscovering their roots as the party of Lincoln. But it’s also possible that Trump is just
the beginning, and that the party will increasingly play to white voters by appealing to racial
tensions. It’s up to Republican voters and leaders
to decide just what they want their party to be. We had it.
From January 21, 1976 to October 24, 2003,
we had a commercial supersonic passenger plane called Concorde.
Today it takes 7 hours to fly from New York to London. On the Concorde it took
About 3:30 (just under 3 hours if it was record time).
A journey that would have taken the Titanic 137 hours had become just barely long enough
to Watch Titanic while crossing the Atlantic.
The Concorde came to represent class, style,
and the miracle of engineering. Here’s a normal plane landing and here’s
the Concorde landing. Which one are you looking at?
With Concorde, we all looked up and pointed. And then in 2003… it stopped.
We had commercial supersonic flight and just let it go.
Why? Why did the Concorde become a museum exhibit?
This is the Smithsonian’s Concorde, and the curator who got it flew on it, too.
“I did see the color of the sky at 60,000 feet. It’s this most gorgeous deep, deep
purple.” How did a breakthrough become a piece of memorabilia?
The answer says something about how innovation really sticks. And it’s complicated. “I’ve got a personal interest in the SST,
and I’d like to tell you about it.” SST equals Supersonic transport, any transportation
that’s faster than the speed of sound. It became a dream
after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947,
And a technological race in the 1950s and 1960s, combined
Cold War competition with a classic mid-century faith in engineering. Americans, Russians,
and the British and French governments dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into supersonic
R&D. (Think rooms full of engineers in short sleeves
and ties.) The then Seattle-based Boeing won the American
design contract in 1967, (that’s where a certain basketball team got its original name). “Seattle Supersonics win the game!” But development stopped after a 1971 funding
cut. Russia’s effort, the Tupolev Tu-144, flew,
but it was grounded after an extraordinarily spotty record over just 55 flights.
But there was a winner. “Concorde. The paper dart jet liner conceived
jointly by Britain and France to shrink the world and cut air journey times in half.” From the beginning, Concorde was a marvel
of design. It wasn’t designed with computers, but through math and trial and error.
They had to innovate constantly to make a supersonic passenger plane possible.
“The airplane needed to be very long and narrow to go supersonically comfortably.” And the paint was twice as reflective as other
jets just to compensate for the heat from air friction. “Because you’re traveling at Mach II,
twice the speed of sound, even though you’re at 60,000 feet...the airframe would actually
heat up, dramatically.” “I actually touched the window. It wasn’t
warm, it was hot.” Fuel flowed around the plane, during flight,
to adjust its center of gravity for takeoff, cruising, and landing. “So these pumps are working the whole flight,
but you can’t tell.” But it was the beautiful wing that distinguished
the Concorde for its greatest fans. “It’s a Delta Wing, but it’s called
an ogival delta wing because of its unique shape.” Delta because it was triangular, like the
Greek Delta; ogival to reference its curve. The Delta Wing helped the Concorde get lift
at takeoff and limit drag while in flight. The rest of the plane compensated. “The one compromise in it, it required a
very high angle of attack at takeoff and landing. Since pilots couldn’t see out of the plane
because of angled landing, engineers put together a solution. “The Concorde featured a droop snoot.” Droop snoot? “The snoot would droop.” The snoot drooped. “The reason being that it was a Delta wing
design and had a very high angle of attack on landing. So, in order to see, they were
able to lower the nose.” It flew at Mach 2 - more than 1300 miles per
hour — faster than the earth spins. “You couldn’t tell — the only way you
knew your were doing Mach Two was that they had a Mach meter up on the bulkhead. Everybody
was focused on that, because it would creep up. As soon as it went to Mach One, everyone
would break out into applause.” To minimize drag, it soared so high you could
see the Earth’s curve. The Concorde defined the glamor of high speed
flight: “Now this is a very important part of the
seven piece wardrobe, this washable dress that she wears in hot climates”
And the admiration of celebrities like...Sting. “It’s always exciting flying Supersonic
and it’s always exciting to get to New York before you’ve left.”
It was a stratospheric cocktail party. “Normally people complain about how bad
the airline food is...I will attest, in this case, that was not true. This was one of the
best meals I ever had. It worked beautifully — a normal French meal takes 2.5, 3 hours
— by the time dinner was over, we were here.” So what went wrong? On July 25, 2000, the Concorde punctured a
tire during takeoff for Air France Flight 4590. 113 people died.
Though failure happened shortly after takeoff, it was due to a problem specific to Concorde
tires. The plane was grounded, until November of
2001. By that time, the September 11th attacks had already depressed the industry.
But while both tragedies did affect Concorde, they’re only a couple of pieces of the fundamental
challenges for the plane. Noise levels on takeoff were high. But massive sonic booms had no comparison.
In the 60s, the Air Force a ran a test of sonic booms over Oklahoma City, and residents
reported hundreds of damaged windows and noise disturbances.
All that meant limiting supersonic flight to above the ocean — there would be no New
York to LA Concorde. That’s part of what quashed the American
supersonic experiment with Boeing, and it limited demand for supersonic planes from
the beginning. Noise concerns were paired with environmental
concerns. “There will be severe environmental damage
to the ozone layer.” The plane’s high flight pattern made scientists
think its exhaust gas could be more threatening to the ozone than normal jets.
“What was noticeable was that you kept climbing, and climbing, and climbing. We were flying
much higher than a normal airliner.” A massive fleet of supersonic planes probably
would have caused real damage, setting red flags for a supersonic future.
Fuel requirements also limited range to Transatlantic journeys, without any Transpacific cash cows.
It guzzled enough fuel that price fluctuations could hit particularly hard. With ticket prices as high as $12,000 a seat,
that was a significant risk. And tickets had to be expensive, since at
most only 120 passengers could fit on the plane. It couldn’t distribute the price
tag. That was compounded by the need for specially
qualified crewmembers and maintenance that came at a premium. And it was all for a very
demanding crowd. “Air France and British Airways had to position
a spare Concorde in New York in case the flight had any problems. So there’s airplanes sitting
on the ground, not making any money, just in case. Because Concorde passengers expect
to walk onto a Concorde because they paid a lot of money to it.”
None of these factors stopped the Concorde, but they all boxed it in until it had nowhere
to go but down. When Air France and British Airways announced
the Concorde’s closing on April 10, 2003, it wasn’t about past, but the future.
The manufacturer, Airbus, decided supporting the Concorde was impossible.
An aging Concorde — it still had analog controls and a flight engineer, both of which
newer planes had lost — would cost too much to upgrade or redo.
In a way, Concorde economics were similar to this toy model’s economics.
I got it for ten bucks because the manufacturer could distribute the cost of factory workers,
tooling, and distribution over thousands of cute planes.
Airbus loves doing the same with its family of jets. Even if a flight were profitable
for an airline, the airline couldn’t afford a new small batch of planes.
All the factors that boxed in Concorde kept its scale so small, it would be wildly unprofitable
to service, rebuild, or revive. The best option was to land for good. We like to think breakthroughs only end because
of disaster. With a crash.
But they can fall short without disaster, despite a breathtaking wing or a jaw-dropping droop snoot.
They have to come with a business model and supply system, a political resolve, and a
plan to expand. Even as future dreams for Supersonic transport
still simmer, all those business model questions remain unanswered.
“They don’t exist unless they make money...some people don’t like that idea, but it’s
a fact of life. They’re there to make money If they’re making a product that doesn’t
make money, they’ll stop making it or go out of business. Or both. You never know.”
So the flight time to London can return to a double feature slog.
But we lose something with the drudgery. Progress...slows. And we have to wait for something else to
look up at. Something worth pointing at. So I have fallen completely in love with the
Concorde, but it was not that comfortable of a ride. Bob told me that while the legroom
was pretty good, the headroom was not and neither was the seat width — it was kinda
like a coach seat. And you can see that in this video of Sting. He looks pretty cramped 
— especially for Sting. My parents impressed on me the values that
you work hard for what you want in life. And Barack and I were raised with so many
of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life;
That your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. that your word is your bond and you do what
you say you're going to do; That you treat people with respect. that you treat people with dignity and respect,
And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. [Cheering]
and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children in these nations
to know Because we want our children — and all children
in this nation — to know that that the only limit to your achievements is
the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. [Cheering] the only limit to the height of your achievements
is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. Over 250 people are dead and thousands of
military members have been arrested after an attempted coup against Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Though he was on vacation at the time, Erdoğan reached the media through
Facetime and urged his supporters into the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. Now the increasingly
authoritarian president is likely to use the botched coup as pretext to continue consolidating
power. We don’t yet know who was behind the plot, but a faction within the military
issued a statement saying they sought “to reinstate constitutional order, human rights
and freedom.” They called themselves the Peace at Home council. That’s reference
to Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, the military officer who established Turkey’s secular state from
the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire in 1923. Since Turkey’s founding, the military has
seen itself as defenders of the secular and democratic principles of Kemalism. So whenever
the nation’s political order was challenged, the military would intervene. But the latest
attempt didn’t appear to have the full support of military leaders, which is likely one reason
it failed. Erdogan is blaming the latest coup attempt on Gülenists, the followers of exiled
Sunni cleric Fetullah Gulen, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Once an ally to Erdoğan,
Gülen’s media outlets have accused the president of corruption. And in response, Erdoğan seized
Gulen’s media assets and labeled his sizeable political party a terrorist movement. Now,
Erdoğan is calling for the US to arrest and extradite Gulen, who in turn, alleges that
Erdoğan himself staged the whole thing. There may not be an appetite for military coups
among Turks today, but Erdoğan is increasingly unpopular. As prime minister for 11 years
before being elected president in 2014, he has pushed for constitutional changes that
would grant him more power, cracked down on domestic protests, and prosecuted dissenting
academics and journalists. This guy was even put on trial for photoshopping Erdoğan next
to Gollum from Lord of the Rings. And the fact that he built himself a thousand-room
palace didn’t calm concerns that he’s got plans for long-term rule. A publicly religious
man, Erdoğan raised eyebrows among Turkey’s staunch secularists with school reforms that
expand Islamic education. And he’s been criticized for allowing Turkey’s southern
border with Syria to remain porous. This has made Turkey an entry point for ISIS fighters.
The European Union may have some leverage to encourage reform, since Turkey has long
sought to join the union. But Turkey’s political stability is vital.
Europe depends on Erdoğan to help manage the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. and the US
uses airbases there to stage bombing raids against ISIS in Syria. Right now Turkey’s
first order of business will be to re-establish political order. And early indications from
Erdoğan and his allies suggest his methods will not be democratic in nature. Here’s the nightmare. The light turns green, it’s clear to go through. You make your way down the intersection, but out the corner of your eye… *car crash sounds* And an instant later, there’s another notch added to the 30,000 deaths from car crashes a year, of which up to 23% are intersection-related. So law enforcement and city officials all over the country have tried to solve this problem by installing red-light cameras to get drivers to slow down, stop, and save lives rather than just blowing through red lights. "The ultimate hope is to improve safety at the intersection by reducing traffic crashses..." There’s just one problem. These cameras don’t just stop car crashes, they create others as well. Since the 1960s, thousands of red light cameras have been posted around intersections across the US. And there’s no denying that these cameras really can and do save lives. But they also show an increase in less deadly rear end collisions because of drivers abruptly stopping to avoid red-light tickets. And depending on where cameras are placed, they create more crashes were there weren’t many or any at all to begin with. Crashes at intersections are most often caused by cars turning left at an intersection, while cars cross on the opposite side of the road. Many tickets are going to drivers who “California roll” to turn right on red. But those cars only make up only about 1% of  intersection crashes. There is, of course, another reason beyond safety why cities would install red light cameras. Tickets from red light cameras can cost a driver between $50 and $500. Cities like Orlando, Florida, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, DC bring in million of dollars in fines from red light camera tickets. Camera vendors such as RedFlex Traffic Systems, American Traffic Solution, and several others have incentive to get a lot contracts because they take care of the installation, operation, and maintenance of those cameras, which in turn cost cities millions of dollars. In Chicago, one ex-city official was convicted in receiving up to $2 million dollars in bribes for red light camera contracts And in a lawsuit, a fired RedFlex executive named 13 other cities that allegedly participated in receiving bribes from the traffic camera company as well. If safety were really the biggest, or only, concern, there are alternatives to red light cameras that would be just as effective and cost less—it would take just a bit more city planning. For example, the timing of yellow lights is key. The federal guidelines specify that yellow lights need only to fall between 3 and 6 seconds. But red light cameras might give cities incentive to stay at the shorter end of that range. In Florida, one intersection’s yellow light intervals were adjusted from 3.9 seconds to 4.8 seconds and there was a 79% drop in issued citations. Curb extensions and speed humps also force traffic to slow down. Visual cues like signs are another way to signal to drivers to be even more aware of an impending stop. Even the unpopular roundabout is not only safer than a 4-way or T intersection it also increases traffic flow efficiency. So now, several cities across the US are rethinking their red-light camera programs. And Albequerque, New Mexico ended their program in 2011. “The bottom line is that this is a company that is for profit—they’re going to make a profit. And that’s what these cameras do.” This scene from season 3 of The CW’s hit
show The 100 unexpectedly set off a firestorm of anger and shock from it’s fans this year. The episode called “Thirteen” premiered
on March 3rd. Right where this google trend chart for the
show peaks. So, what happened? Well, these two characters, Clarke and Lexa,
were in love. And after seasons of pining for each other Caroline: Finally get together, have a happy
moment, Lexa walks out of the bedroom and gets shot by a stray bullet meant for Clarke. Fans were deeply deeply hurt on a level that
the writers did not anticipate So, a character died, and that seems to happen
all the time these days. What’s the big deal? Well, the scene perpetuates a pretty toxic
trope, called “Bury your Gays” where LGBTQ characters just seem to never have happy endings. Caroline: The thing is it didn’t start with
television. To understand what’s happening here you
have to go back to lesbian pulp novels that sprung up in the 1950s and 60s. The genre was notorious for building up a
relationship between two women and then at the very end they would be punished in some
way. Caroline: Marijane Meeker was one of the most
famous Lesbian Pulp novelists of the time She wrote under a few pseudonyms including
Vin Packer for Gold Medal. Caroline: And her first novel Spring Fire
followed that to a tee Meeker was told by her editor from the beginning
that the book should not have a happy ending or the post office might seize it as obscene. In the end, one woman goes crazy and the other
renounces her lesbianism altogether. Caroline: This is why when Patricia Highsmith
wrote The Price of Salt, which the Movie Carol was based on, it was immediately a big deal
simply because it had a happy ending. Caroline: If you look at the history of queer
women dying on television it goes back to even the 70s. Autostraddle has a pretty comprehensive list
of queer deaths on TV. One of the first deaths comes from the show
Executive Suite where the character Julie died Caroline: Her love interest had just walked
into traffic after realizing her lesbianism and Julie was chasing her. Autostraddle currently lists 152 queer deaths
since 1976 Caroline: One of the main ones that people
always point to is Tara on Buffy which actually The 100 death really eerily mirrored. Caroline: The same week that Lexa died on
The 100 a character on The Magicians was introduced as a gay woman of color And then killed herself two scenes later Caroline: Also that week Denise on the Walking
Dead got an arrow in the eye when in the comics that happened to a guy. Caroline: On Vampire Diaries a gay witch couple
decided to kill themselves together rather than one of them just dying. So they both died. On Empire, Camila killed her wife, Mimi with
poison and then was killed herself. All of these deaths on their own might not
seem that crazy. But let’s put this in perspective. During the 2015-2016 tv season, 22 lesbian
characters that appeared in 3 episodes or more were killed off. That’s 25% of all female deaths on TV and
10% of all deaths on TV. Caroline: Proportionally speaking that makes
no sense. So, why did lexa’s death ignite such a visceral
reaction? Caroline: These fans being able to talk to
the creators in a way that they’ve never been able to really accelerated a lot of this
conversation. The creator of The 100, Jason Rothenberg,
later apologized to fans in an open letter, acknowledging that in trying to heighten the
drama, he ended up perpetuating a disturbing trope. Caroline: I would never suggest that a TV
show could never kill off a gay character or that anything is forbidden from writers. But I do think it’s worth being conscious
of this trope and knowing what they’re doing when they are doing it. And making sure that the death has some resonance
and really that’s what we should be doing anyway is making sure that a character death
means something. In the wake of the largest mass shooting in
U.S. history Congress finally puts it's partisan politics
aside and banded together and passed the first major piece of gun control
legislation in the last 20 years. -Really? No, no.
Literally nothing has changed. Well, not nothing.
There was a fifteen hour filibuster then a twenty five hour sit-in, a bunch of doughnuts were eaten and pizza
was ordered but no bill was passed. To find out why so much got so little done we went to the place where nothing gets done. The nation's capital. Ignore the scaffolding, it's not usually there. We sat down with the man behind the fifteen
hour filibuster that had America on the edge of
it's seat. So wait let me get this straight. You stood for fifteen hours, didn't sleep,
didn't drink, didn't go to the bathroom, and no bill was
passed. What gives? You know when you're in the minority you only
have certain rights and abilities and so I don't get to schedule votes, but
I can protest the fact that votes aren't being scheduled. And that's called a filibuster. I got up and I stood for as long as I could
demanding that we take votes on two common sense measures, things that I
think everybody agrees on. Which is stopping terrorists from getting
guns and making sure that wherever you buy a gun you've got to prove that you're not a criminal. So why don't you think that the sit-in and
the filibuster, why don't you think that these things worked? We still have a lot of people here who are
loyal, obedient to the gun lobby, not to their constituents. You know this is not a controversial issue
out in the American public. You know, polls show that 90% of Americans
support background checks before you buy a gun and support keeping terrorists, or would-be
terrorists from getting guns. There's virtually nothing in this country
in which 90% of Americans agree. This is an exceptional issue to have that
much consensus. And yet, the NRA, the gun lobby, doesn't support
it and right now there are a lot of members of
Congress that are listening to them instead of their
constituents. And during a week where Americans witnessed
unprecedented and horrifying acts of gun violence, the House also decided
to delay voting on a high profile gun bill. We're not going to rush it, we're going to
get it right. So why are politicians so slow on pushing
gun reform? You may think that they're listening to the
NRA over their constituents because they get tons of money from them. But actually it's much more complicated than
that. Sure, in 2014 the NRA contributed a million
dollars to Senate Republican PACs. Which may seem like a lot but actually only accounts for less than 2% of all contributions. The NRA may not spend as much as other special
interests but they're very strategic with their war
chest going after vulnerable candidates early and
often inciting fear in members of the House and
Senate who are up for re-election and worried about losing their seats. For instance, after the NRA gave Senator Dick
Lugar an 'F' rating for his positions on assault
rifles and poured half a million dollars into the
Indiana primary he lost his bid for re-election. And the NRA hasn't backed down. We have a God given right to defend ourself and the politicians who want to divert attention from the underlying problems and suggest that we're somehow to blame will pay a price
for it. But although politicians have remained afraid
to disagree with the NRA some are starting to rebel against it. Republican senator Kelly Ayotte voted with Senator Feinstein's democratic
proposals despite potential backlash from the NRA and
being in a very tight race for her seat this fall. Her re-election could be a test case for
other politicians who may want to stray away from the NRA's
hard line. And if she wins it could encourage others
to stand up to the NRA as well. And maybe, just maybe, we'd see more politicians start
passing the gun reform that most Americans and gun owners say they want. Can we do a face swap? I don’t know what a face swap is. Do you prefer cronuts or cupcakes? This is really, really creepy and it’s very hard to answer questions while doing this. I totally understand. What was the first thing that you ate after your filibuster was over? The first thing I ate was a bag of Combos in one of the care packages that was sent back to me. But in my defense, it was the first things that I saw when I got back to my desk and I was so hungry that whatever was in that care package I was going to eat. Oh my God. So Combos... -yeah keeps our... democracy functioning. Yeah. Ezra Klein: So let’s start with poverty. Scholars have estimated or found that the
number of American families living in extreme poverty, under $2 in cash income, has skyrocketed
in the last 20 years. You have about 1.5 million families and 3
million children. Given how many children are now in that condition,
should we be following the model of countries — like Sweden, Germany, and now Canada under
Trudeau — that have a universal child allowance to cut or eliminate child poverty? Hillary Clinton: Well, this is a very personal
and important issue to me — because, as you know, I started out my work as a lawyer
for the Children’s Defense Fund. And I have been focused on child poverty and
what we can do to alleviate it for a very long time. I would just slightly amend your question,
because we were making progress in the ’90s. We had more people lifted out of poverty. We had a 33 percent increase in the African-American
family income. We were on the right track. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have been
looking at more ways to lift more kids out of poverty, but we were on the right trajectory
— and, unfortunately, we changed direction. We had policies that I think contributed greatly
to the increase in childhood poverty, starting in 2001, the Great Recession being the worst
of those. But there were also policy decisions, regulatory
changes — providing more leeway to the states, so that they did not have either the requirement
or the incentive to continue lifting people, particularly kids, out of poverty. So we’ve got a big problem, and it’s a
problem that’s a reflection on our political as well as our economic systems. And I do think we should focus on how we’re
going to support more families, and there are a number of inputs. But trying to create more financial support
is something that we should look at. I’m not ready to adopt a plan that comes
from some other country, because we have to look to see how we would do anything in our
federal system — and how it would be workable and what the cost-benefit analysis might be. But while we’re looking at how we lift incomes
— which is the defining economic challenge that we have for working, middle-class, and
poor families — we need to do much more to provide the proven interventions in early
childhood education that help families, even poor families, know more about how to better
prepare their kids. We need to do more with nutrition — and
we’re making progress with health care thanks to SCHIP [the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program] and the Affordable Care Act. So it’s not just a decision about whether
or not to increase the child tax credit or some other means of providing a greater financial
safety net. It’s also what we can do to really support
families. And I think we have to move on both tracks. EK: But to ask a big-picture question about
that policy shift: Something a lot of poverty scholars argue to me is that we made a very
big change toward trying to support the working poor — welfare reform was, of course, part
of that. It went, from in the numbers I’ve seen,
from bringing a million of these families out of poverty to around 300,000 in more recent
years. But the expansion of the EITC [earned income
tax credit], other things we’ve seen — do you think we do too little now to support
the poor who for, whatever reason, cannot find or cannot keep a job? HC: I do. I know there’s a big debate — and it’s
an, important debate — about welfare reform. Because when welfare reform was passed, there
was an expectation — certainly on my part, and I think on the part of many who had supported
it — that there would be an expectation, in fact a requirement, that states would have
to be contributing to the broadest possible safety net, particularly in economic downturns. So that we wouldn’t help the working poor,
particularly through the EITC — which I think is one of the best anti-poverty programs
that we have devised — we would not be doing it at the expense of the poor. We would also be providing a continuing safety
net for the poor. And that’s one of the programs that I was
referring to when I said that after 2001, there were a lot of decisions made that basically
did not carry on what had been not just the spirit but also the requirements in the law,
because we had set the base payment at the highest possible rate and expected states
to do that. So we are back to a serious problem of poverty,
and I think we have to do much more to target federal programs to the poorest, where intergenerational
poverty is once again a cycle. Congressman Jim Clyburn has a creative idea
called the 10-20-30 approach, where you woul’d put a percentage of federal funds — 10 percent
of federal funds — in those communities that are most impoverished and have been for
30 years. So I think we’ have got to address really
systemic, generational poverty differently. We still have to lift up working people, we
have to make it worth everyone’s while to work, we have to create more good jobs, we
have to have the training pipeline there. But we are now, unfortunately, back having
to face poverty that we thought we had a better approach toward ending than it turns out — given
the change in administrations and attitudes — that we did. EK: Let me ask you about how to pay for that. So I looked at the Treasury’s real daily
yield curve website today, as I do every morning when I get out of bed. And short-term interest rates on US government
debt are negative; they will pay us to take money. That is how much the market wants more US
government debt. Should we be taking the markets up on this
offer of free money? Should we be doing more short-term deficit
spending for infrastructure, for poverty, for middle-class tax cuts — and worrying
less in the near-term about deficits? HC: I think we have missed an opportunity
over the last eight years to make some big bets on America — to make some investments
with, as you say, money that is as low in terms of interest rates as it’s ever going
to be. I have put forth ways of paying for all the
investments that I make, because we do have the entitlement issues out there that we can’t
ignore. But we are failing to make investments that
will make us richer and stronger in the future. And that’s where I think our biggest gap
is. I think it’s important that we look for
ways to pay for our investments. But I think there can be short-term decisions
about the kind of federal dollars that are available now, with a revenue stream to pay
them back in the future that would bridge the gap if we can’t do everything we need
to do to really give the economy and job creation the kind of boost that it needs. But I’m not going to commit myself to that
because I would like first to figure out what we’re going to do, because I think we’ve
had a period where the gains have gone to the wealthy. The Great Recession wiped out $13 trillion
in family wealth. And a lot of people have come back roaring
— they are doing better than ever, corporate profits are up, whereas so many Americans
are stalled or have fallen backward. Real family income hasn’t moved. In fact, it’s below where it was in 1999
and 2000. So we do have a problem. It’s a real problem. Because we are a 70 percent consumption economy,
so we’ve got to get more growth going. And the best way to do that is to invest in
these jobs, and I think we can pay for what we need to do through raising taxes on the
wealthy and making it clear that there’s a commitment to these investments if we’re
going to grow the economy, which will benefit everybody. EK: So that’s interesting. I’ve not heard you say it that way before. So part of the argument of doing pay-fors
in the near term is not just balancing the budget or reducing the deficit but also bringing
a distributional fairness to the aftermath of the recession. HC: That’s right. Last summer, I gave two economic speeches
which called for strong growth, fair growth, and long-term growth. And I think the three go together. It is important that we look at how they can
converge, because I do believe we’ve got to grow the economy. I’m an economic growth Democrat, so I believe
that. But we also have to make it fairer, and part
of the way we make it fairer is by shifting some of the tax burden onto those who have
done really well despite all of the macro- and microeconomic ups and downs in the global
economy and here at home. And that’s why the Buffett Rule; that’s
why a fair share surcharge on incomes above $5 million; that’s why closing the loopholes,
like the carried interest loophole. It’s not just a symbolic effort to say,
“Hey, we gotta get rid of the gimmicks and the games.” It’s also to get money to do what we need
to do to lift the bottom and the middle up. And it is a way of making clear that growth
and fairness have to go together. EK: I think it’s probably an understatement
at this point to say that immigration has been a big part of this year’s campaign. We talk a lot about the folks who are already
here — the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are already here. And I know you’re supportive of comprehensive
immigration reform. But in the broader question around immigration
and the economy, the economic data I’ve seen suggests pretty straightforwardly that
immigrants are good for the US economy; particularly they are as the population ages. So do you think it’d be good for the economy
to double or triple the number of people who could come here legally? HC: I think we have to deal with first things
first. It is certainly the case that immigration
has been and continues to be good for our economy. Immigrants start businesses at a faster rate;
they seem to grow those businesses more successfully; they do fill certain gaps in skills and knowledge
that are good for the overall economy. But I think there are three big problems we
have to address. One is just the human cost of those 11 million
undocumented immigrants. I have met many of them — in fact, we all
have, whether we acknowledge it or not. And these are hardworking people. These are people who are contributing already
to the economy, whose children are in schools, who are really absolutely committed to the
American dream. The little girl I met in Las Vegas who is
living in fear that her parents are going to be deported, with stomachaches and all
kinds of physical ailments, and she should be a kid and she should be enjoying school
and learning and deciding what she’s going to do. So I do think we have to be very understanding
and accepting of the human stories that are behind these statistics that people like Donald
Trump throw around. I think also, though, there’s a lot of evidence
that moving toward comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship would be
good for our economy. We already know that undocumented workers
are putting about $12 billion into the Social Security trust fund with no anticipation at
this point that they’ll ever get anything out. They’re paying payroll taxes; they’re
paying other forms of taxes — state and local as well as federal. So we do have a productive part of our economy,
and most of the analysts that I have seen suggest that this idea of deporting everybody
would be a severe blow to the economy. That it would cost millions of jobs, that
it would depress economic growth. There’s a moral, humanitarian kind of “American
values” argument, and there’s an economic argument. I think it would be very difficult to do anything
on immigration until we make the decision that there will be comprehensive immigration
reform. Because otherwise we are mixing up a lot of
the concerns about immigration in a way that I think will hurt both the side of immigration
about people who fill jobs we need, particularly high-value jobs, and the people who are here
living in fear that someone’s going to round them up and deport them. I think we have to look at all of these issues. The idea of a comprehensive immigration reform
with a path to citizenship that I would envision is one that would deal with a lot of these
concerns, not just the 11 million people here: how we would regularize them, what kind of
steps they’d have to go through. Because I believe they do have to meet certain
standards if they’re going to be on a path to citizenship. But I don’t want to mix that with other
kinds of changes in visas and other concerns that particularly high-value technical companies
have. In fact, I think keeping the pressure on them
helps us resolve the bigger problem, and then we can look to see what else, if anything,
can and should be done. But I would also add one of the biggest complaints
I hear around the country is how callous and insensitive American corporations have become
to American workers who have skills that are ones that should make them employable. The many stories of people training their
replacements from some foreign country are heartbreaking, and it is obviously a cost-cutting
measure to be able to pay people less than you would pay an American worker. I think it’s also a very unfair and sad
commentary that we don’t want to invest in training American workers because that’s
just “time-consuming.” And it’s a cost — so even if they could
do what we’re wanting them to do, it’s just easier to get someone who will be largely
compliant because they want to stay in the country. And that’s just wrong. So there’s work we have to do on all sides
of the immigration debate, and I want to see companies have to do more to employ already
qualified Americans. EK: Why do you think it is that it is so intuitive
to people, or so intuitive to many people, that there is a zero-sum competition with
immigrants for jobs? As you said, that’s not what the economic
evidence shows, but it’s powering a lot of politics in this country. HC: I think it’s because everybody with
six degrees of separation either knows or thinks they know someone who knows somebody
who lost a job to an undocumented worker or to a worker brought over on a visa to do their
job. There’s just a lot of churn that suggests
this is a real problem. Now, the argument that I have been making
is: Look, part of the reason why Americans are agitated about immigration is because
they do believe their jobs are being taken out from under them — and there is an unlevel
playing field — because if you are employing undocumented workers, and no one is holding
you accountable — which we haven’t, we haven’t enforced those laws in a very comprehensive
way — then it’s easy to undercut the market and to say, “Hey, roofer, come down, I’m
substituting this man for you. Goodbye. Thank you very much. Here’s your last paycheck.” Because the man they’re putting up there
will cost maybe as little as a tenth of the price as the guy who was on the roof. So I think it’s real. It’s hard to argue an economic, analytics
abstraction — that, you know, really it’s not that much job displacement; and, you know,
the overall economy is better; and they’re making these investments in Social Security
trust funds — it’s really hard when you’re the one who has lost the job. When you are at Disney in Orlando and you’re
told to retrain your successors and then kicked out the door. Or when you’re on a construction site, and
all of a sudden you show up the next morning and they tell you they don’t need you anymore
because they’ve picked up a bunch of folks at a job corner in the neighborhood. So there’s enough real-world experience
that gives people the anxiety that we’re seeing in the political environment. Is it a big job displacement? No. But is it something? Yes. Is it something that is painful and personally
hurtful to somebody you know, maybe not you but someone down the line? Absolutely. And I think it’s a mistake to just make
the economic argument. I think it’s important that we see the undocumented
as people with real stories, with kids who are going to school, with people working 70
to 80 hours a week to have a good life. But it’s also important we see the other
side of the story, with people who feel doubly hammered. They feel hammered by global competition,
particularly from China taking their jobs, and then they feel hammered from within by
employers who are willing to hire undocumented workers and never get held accountable for
it. EK: During the debates with Sen. Sanders,
you guys clashed on free college. And you made the argument that you did not
want to be subsidizing the tuition of Donald Trump’s children, and fair enough. But that argument could also be made on public
elementary school, on public high school, on public libraries. So how do you think about when a policy should
be universal in nature and when it should be specifically targeted at the needy? HC: I think about that in the following way:
We have always had a mixed public-private higher education system. And although we do have private schools within
elementary and secondary education, they have not been as big a factor as private higher
education has been. So what we’re really talking about already
is a hybrid system. Because even Sen. Sanders is not talking about
subsidizing private higher education. And I think that’s a significant difference. The cost of higher education has always been
an individual family responsibility aided by scholarships, grants, work-study programs
— the whole mix of ways we enable people to go to college. But we don’t pretend we’re going to do
anything for those who choose a private college. Now we let the GI Bill go to either public
or private schools; we let Pell Grants go to public or private schools. So we do help to subsidize individuals at
private colleges or universities, but we have never taken the position that there is no
difference between the two of them. Just like we have a big fight — as you know,
all the time — in federal and state legislatures about: Will we subsidize private elementary
and secondary education? And with very few exceptions, the answer has
been no. That we do believe in the importance of a
public education system, so we have adopted these approaches. I had several concerns about Sen. Sanders’s
program. I thought it was hard to justify claiming
it was free when it was going to have to be paid for by state governments, by a lot of
state governments — up to a third of the cost — that were not particularly well-known
for supporting higher education. They’ve in fact been disinvesting. And I think it’s more important that we
incentivize reinvestment in public higher education. So rather than holding out the promise of
free college — which wasn’t really free; it was going to be paid for by state and federal
dollars — I think it’s important that we say: We’re going to subsidize as far
as we can responsibly go, but we’re going to expect states to reinvest in higher education. And I know the arguments that have been made,
and he was an eloquent advocate for the argument that it should be like Social Security. It never has been; it’s not how we view
it; and it would be incredibly expensive to do that as he had proposed. And even he relied on states which had been
disinvesting, and we need to reverse that so they start investing. So I want to go as high up the income scale
as I can to make sure that middle-class, working, and poor families don’t have to borrow money
to go to college. But I don’t want to add the cost of subsidizing
me, or subsidizing Donald Trump, at this point. I don’t think that’s a sensible way for
us to approach this. EK: To ask about another interesting fissure
from the primary: You often said that your preference was that we built on Obamacare
to get to true universal coverage. And I’ve read your plan around Obamacare,
and it doesn’t do that yet. So what would be your approach for taking
that program from the roughly 90 percent covered that it’s at now to 100 percent? HC: Well, let’s celebrate that we’re at
90 percent coverage. And I think that is one of the differences:
I see the glass at 90 percent full, not empty. And starting over again — either by repealing
it, as the Republicans advocate, or by coming up with a whole new plan. So I think it’s tremendous. There was a new Robert Wood Johnson study
that pointed out that just in the five years it’s been implemented, health care spending
has gone down $2.6 trillion from the projection that it originally thought it would increase
by. So we are really making progress, and I think
it is important to build on that progress. We have 20 million people who are now in the
Affordable Care system. We’ve expanded Medicaid, which I want to
see expanded in every state that hasn’t, because I think that was an ideological rather
than economic or moral decision, and I want us to build on the Affordable Care Act. Now, how are we going to do that? We’re going to have to be clear about the
competition that is needed to keep costs more reasonable. It is going to require us to take a hard look
at premiums, copays, deductibles, and see what we can do to limit the kind of additional
costs — particularly for prescription drugs — that policyholders have under the exchanges. We have got to encourage more competition. Not just by working with the existing insurers
but really trying to open the door — more successfully than was achieved — to other
forms of insurance. The cooperative insurance plan hasn’t worked
in most places, but it’s worked in some places. What are the lessons we can learn from that? So I’m actually very excited about this,
and I think we will get to 100 percent coverage, and I think we will do it by building on what
people are now accepting by spending their own dollars and by our subsidies of those. And it is a much more acceptable, less disruptive
approach than starting over and trying to impose a single-payer system — because,
remember, the vast majority of Americans are getting their health insurance through their
employment. There’s very little evidence they are unsatisfied
by it. I certainly saw that firsthand when I was
working on this back in ’93 and ’94, and I favor a public option so we can try to lower
the costs even further for people who have a larger risk of bad health problems. EK: Should that public option be able to link
with Medicare to bargain down prices? HC: I think it’s going to be something we’ll
have to look at. I have long been in favor of giving Medicare
the authority to bargain. And I voted for it; I’ve spoken out for
it— EK: You mean on prescription drugs? HC: On prescription drugs. And if it were to be a broader public option,
maybe there as well. Because it is clear that we don’t have enough
bargaining power yet to deal with some of the big cost drivers, like prescription drugs,
that are still not reacting the way we had hoped that they would. In fact, there’s a lot of new gimmicks to
try to drive up the cost of prescription drugs. But I’m actually optimistic. I think we’re on the right track with the
Affordable Care Act. And of course we’re going to have to make
adjustments. We did with every other program that people
now defend and love, and we’ll have to do it with the Affordable Care Act. EK: So we’ve talked about a number of policies
here — not so much about how to get them done. What are the qualities you think you possess
that are needed for an effective presidency that aren’t rewarded or revealed by the
campaign trail? HC: Well, I think a lot of governing is the
slow, hard boring of hard boards. I don’t think there’s anything sexy, exciting,
or headline-grabbing about it. I think it is getting up every day, building
the relationships, finding whatever sliver of common ground you can occupy, never, ever
giving up in continuing to reach out even to people who are sworn political partisan
adversaries. I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen it work. And I’ve been part of seeing it and making
it work. I really believe there’s no shortcut; there’s
no quick answer. Now, if there’s a major national disaster,
then — like the Great Recession — you could get things done that you couldn’t
otherwise. And you have to seize those moments, and I
think President Obama did that. But I think you’ve got to try to push forward
as many different issues as you can all at the same time, because you never know what’s
going to turn the tide. So I just think it’s that getting up every
day and working on it. It is not flashy, and you don’t telegraph
everything you’re doing, because that would be breaching the relationship and the negotiation
that you may be involved in. I certainly saw my husband do it, and he did
it with people who were trying to destroy him. Every single day, he’d meet with them at
night; they’d hammer out deals; they would negotiate over very difficult things; they’d
shut the government down; he’d veto them; they’d come back. You just keep going. Because we’re dealing with a hyperpartisan
opposition who has decided their ideology is more important than actually getting results
— either for their constituents or for their country. They really have put ideology above everything
else, and I don’t know all the reasons — I’m going to wait for a smart political scientist
to explain it all to me — but it makes the negotiating harder. Back in the ’90s, after criticizing Bill
all day, Newt Gingrich would come over to the White House at 9 o’clock and they’d
negotiate for a couple of hours. And certainly with the work that I did on
the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the work I did as a senator — I worked
with people who were very much political opponents, but we found that common ground. And the same as secretary of state. I had to round up, I think, 13 Republicans
to pass the New START treaty. And you just keep working at it. It takes a lot of effort, but if you’re
persistent you can get things done. EK: The background for that is a real structural
rise in partisanship and division. Barack Obama is the most polarizing president
since we began polling; before him, it was George Bush; before him, Bill Clinton. Both you and Donald Trump begin as the least
favorably viewed major party nominees since we began polling. What do you think are the background drivers
of the higher polarization, higher bitterness, that seems to afflict politicians of both
parties now? HC: I think there are a number of factors. Again, I’m not sure I totally understand
it all. The media environment — particularly the
social media environment — drives negativity. It’s what captures eyeballs. It’s what gets people to tune in or log
on. It is just human nature. Saying something negative about somebody,
whether it was a negative ad 30 years ago or a negative tweet or other allegations today
— there’s just a really rich environment for that to capture people’s minds and change
their attitudes. There’s a lot of behavioral science that
if you attack someone endlessly — even if none of what you say is true — the very
fact of attacking that person raises doubts and creates a negative perspective. As someone Exhibit A on that — since it
has been a long time that I’ve been in that position — I get that. I get it. And it’s always amusing to me that when
I have a job, I have really high approval ratings; when I’m actually doing the work,
I get reelected with 67 percent of the vote running for reelection in the Senate. When I’m secretary of state, I have [a]
66 percent approval rating. And then I seek a job, I run for a job, and
all of the discredited negativity comes out again, and all of these arguments and attacks
start up. So it seems to be part of the political climate
now that is just going to have to be dealt with. But I am really confident that I can break
through that and I can continue to build an electoral victory in November. And then once I’m doing the job, we’ll
be back to people viewing me as the person doing the job instead of the person seeking
the job. Look, I’m not making any special plea, because
it’s just reality. But every recent study has shown that if you
take all of the media and all of the Republicans and all of the independent expenditures, tens
of millions of dollars of negative attacks have been run against me. And that’s just something I’ve learned
to live with, and I don’t pay a lot of attention to it anymore. EK: Do you think you get pulled along that
substream? I think here of the debate when you say you
were proud of having Republicans as enemies. Do you think part of this environment has
put you in a place of feeding it and running more negative campaigns? HC: Not very much. I mean, you can go back and look at how I’ve
worked with Republicans, and I think I have a very strong base of relationships with them
and evidence of that. But, you know, they say terrible things about
me, much worse than anything I’ve ever said about them. That just seems to bea part of the political
back and forth now — to appeal to your base, to appeal to the ideologues who support you. We have become so divided, and we’ve got
to try to get people back listening to each other and trying to roll up our sleeves and
solve these problems that we face, and I think we can do that. EK: I know we have to let you go, and I’ll
ask you this one final question. What are three books that have influenced
how you think about policy that you think everyone should read? HC: Oh, my gosh, there are so many I’ve
read over the years. I wrote one called It Takes a Village, which
I highly recommend— EK: You can’t plug your own book. HC: [Laughs] I think there’s a lot of wisdom
in Bob Putnam’s latest book, Our Kids. I think there’s a really great story that
he tells about going back to the town he grew up in outside of Cleveland, where kids of
all different backgrounds, economic family standing, and they’re all together and everyone
was in it together. And there was so little distinction, and there
was so much economic integration in that small town. Now he goes back to it, and it’s so divided. It’s divided on income; it’s divided on
race; it’s just a very different environment. And winners and losers are preordained at
a very early age. So I think that’s a book that people should
read right now. I think that a lot of Christopher Lasch’s
work and Alan Wolfe’s work and Habits of the Heart — that wonderful old sociological
work that was led by Robert Bellah — are also really helpful. Because we need to be reminded of what is
unique about the American experience. De Tocqueville saw it. Habits of the Heart came from his writings,
and you can see how more difficult it is in a 24/7, 360-degree media environment to find
the time to think, to breathe, to spend relaxation hours getting to know people. We just don’t do that. We don’t build relationships; we don’t,
on the Republican-Democratic divide in Washington, spend any time with each other — even less
than what I did when I was there, and that wasn’t that long ago. So I think looking at writings both by political
scientists and sociologists about how America worked well and trying to sort through what
did we lose that has made it so hard for people to even listen to each other. And I do think — and I keep saying this,
because I believe it — I think the media environment where people are rewarded for
being outrageous, for yelling at each other, for saying things that are untrue without
being held accountable for it has contributed to this attitude of divisiveness and separation. And I regret that. I think people — maybe it’s not the media’s
role to say, “Well, wait a minute, that’s just not right.” I mean, it was shocking when CNN fact-checked
some of Donald Trump’s sayings the other day. But it’s hard for the average viewer or
listener to do that himself, and there is no guide any longer. It’s just not easy to sort out what you’re
being told. And if people are being addressed in their
fear — as opposed to their openness, their tolerance, their hopefulness — it just creates
an even more hardened view about whether we can work with each other or not. And I worry about that; I worry it is undermining
our democracy. A democracy relies on the glue of trust. You don’t have to agree with me, but I do
have to believe, whether it’s an economic transaction or my vote, that there’s a certain
expectation. That, yeah, there are people who go off the
rails — everybody’s not what they pretend to be, we all know that — but in general
there’s got to be that rock-solid belief that this transaction between us as voters
and citizens rests on something deep and sacred. And I don’t know how we get back to that. EK: To ask just one more follow-up, and then
I swear I’ll let you go. The invocation of trust there I think is really
interesting. You bring up the media. We are one of many institutions that the public,
if you look at the polling, has lost trust in tremendously over the last 50 years. They’ve lost trust in their politicians;
they’ve lost trust in business; they’ve lost trust in the media. So when you say that there are gatekeepers
who should fact-check — and at Vox we do a lot of fact-checking — but one issue is
that people don’t listen anymore. Why do you think there’s been such a systemic
loss of trust across so many different institutions all at once? How do you explain that change in America? HC: Well, because I really believe that none
of us have done what we should have done in being really straightforward about what we
know and what we don’t know. And being willing to say, “We reported that
story last week; it turns out we were wrong.” Or, “We didn’t tell you everything you
might have needed to make a decision.” I’ve argued with network executives for
25 years that somebody is going to really figure out that running a news program where
you actually say, “Hey, we got that wrong,” or, “I’m not so sure what he just said
was right, and I don’t think it is and let me tell you why, and here’s the evidence
to that effect,” where someone is trying to pull the curtain back as opposed to everyone
going back to their corners, whether it’s ratings or whether it’s an ideological position
— that’s really what we’re about. As opposed to, “We have a really solemn
responsibility, and we’re going to level with you. You may not like what you hear, but we’re
going to try to the best of our ability not to get it wrong. And when we do, we’re going to be the first
to tell you.” I think politicians — look at the nonsense
that people say running for office, just ridiculous stuff, and they get away with it because there’s
no big gong that rings; “Oh, my God, look what so-and-so just said.” But there should be some reward for trying
to get it right and for trying to correct it when you get it wrong. And maybe it’s too threatening — whether
you’re in politics, business, media, wherever you are — maybe it’s just too threatening
to admit that. I don’t know how we’re going to rebuild
the trust, because it really starts with saying, “Hey, I made a mistake,” or, “I didn’t
get it right,” or, “Hey, I’ve got more information, and let me tell you,” and just
doing it in a very matter-of-fact way. There are some shark species that seem to
do okay in aquariums. You’ll see a lot of nurse sharks, zebra sharks, some reef sharks
and sand tiger sharks. But not the great white. For decades, aquariums have tried to contain
the world’s largest predatory fish. Institutions like Marineland, SeaWorld and
the Steinhart Aquarium repeatedly took in white sharks during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, at times
drawing huge crowds. But they never lasted long. Some needed help swimming. None of them would eat. The longest one lasted was just 16 days. A 1984 report by the Steinhart Aquarium put it this way: "In most cases it could be said that all these
captive sharks were merely in the process of dying, with some taking longer than others."
They had constructed an elaborate transport tank with a harness and IV fluids, but still
couldn’t keep the sharks alive. It wasn’t until 2004 that the Monterey Bay
Aquarium proved that it was possible to keep white sharks for at least six months. It took
a massive effort, and no one’s done it since. JON HOECH: Our approach was one of sort of
a systematic, logical sequence of things leading up to our success and it started with designing
a tank. The Monterey Bay Aquarium had a million gallon,
egg-shaped tank, 35 feet deep, designed for open-ocean animals like tuna and sharks. So
you need a big tank. You also need a small shark. Adult great whites reach 15 feet on average. The Monterey Bay Aquarium nabbed one in 2004
that was 4 feet, 4 inches, less than a year old. That made it easier to move and easier
to keep. JON HOECH: When they’re young they feed
on fish. And as they get older they transition to feeding more on mammals. And so we were targeting
the age bracket where we knew we were more able to feed their natural diet.
And once they collected the shark, they didn’t take it straight to the aquarium. Instead,
the Monterey Bay team set up a 4 million gallon pen right there in the ocean.
That way they could monitor the shark and see if it would feed before they moved it
into a transport tank to travel from southern California where the sharks were born up to the aquarium.
Sharks, like all fish, need to have water continually passing through their gills in
order to get oxygen. Most species can open and close their mouths
to pump the water through. But white sharks and a couple dozen other species don’t do
that. To breathe, they have to move forward through the water with their mouths open.
That’s why white sharks start to weaken as soon as they’re caught in a net. And
that’s why they needed a custom built transport tank with mobile life support.
JON HOECH: Everything from oxygen sensors and video cameras and lighting and filtration
systems that were needed for what turned out to roughly be 9 to 11 hour transport time. Aquarium attendance jumped 30 percent while the shark was on display. After 6 and a half months, they decided to release it because it had killed 2 other
sharks. Over the next 6 years, the aquarium displayed
5 more baby white sharks - some they paid fishermen to hand over, some they caught themselves.
Their stays ranged from just 11 days up to 5 months. The Monterey Bay Aquarium had succeeded
in doing what no one else could. But it did take a toll on the sharks. They
developed visible sores from bumping into the sides of the tank.
SEAN VAN SOMMERAN: We actually snuck in with photographers and took pictures of the sharks
as they were beginning to attrit and fail due to the constant scraping against the walls
basically. As we viewed it, it was a vase of flowers that would be kept for the visitors.
Historically, aquariums kept sharks that lived near the seabed or near reefs. That makes
sense - it’s easier to recreate those habitats in a tank. But in recent decades,
aquariums have wanted to bring in bigger, more pelagic sharks, those that spend time
roaming the open ocean. They’ve even been able to exhibit the largest
shark in the world, the whale shark, if they have a big enough tank.
But pelagic sharks are used to being able to swim long distances without obstructions,
changing directions only as they please. So the faster-moving sharks like the
white shark, mako shark, and blue shark, they have trouble with walls when they’re
put in a tank. That’s what was happening with the Monterey
Bay Aquarium’s sixth white shark in 2011. They decided to release it after 55 days and
its tracking tag revealed that the shark died shortly after being released. They’re not
 sure why. But since then, they haven’t tried bring in
another great white shark. JON HOECH: It’s just a very very very resource
intensive program and we felt like we had accomplished our goal of introducing the general
public to a live white shark. It took a huge, carefully planned system to
keep a white shark alive. And even then, the sharks didn’t quite fit there.
We can’t seem to stop trying though. Earlier this year, an 11.5-foot great white shark
was taken to an aquarium in Okinawa, Japan after getting caught in a fisherman's net.
It was the only adult white shark ever to be put on display, and within 3 days it was dead. I wanted show you a great resource online
called the Biodiversity Heritage Library - it’s the product of a couple dozen
museums and libraries all agreeing to scan millions of pages from books related to biodiversity.
They’ve got a bunch of great albums on Flickr, including one that's all about sharks.
Some of these go back to the 16th and 17th centuries, back when the naturalists used to call sharks “sea dogs” which is funny because as we now know sharks were roaming the oceans for about 300 million years before the first mammals showed up. In 1999 a tiny little independent film called
The Blair Witch Project was released. Zachary: And it went on to be this smash hit. It made $250 million dollars worldwide. It also got rave reviews. Zachary: Even from Roger Ebert. He called it “an extraordinarily effective
horror film” It was actually one of the most successful
independent films ever made. Riding on this success its sequel, Book of
Shadows: Blair Witch II was released just a year later. Z: It was universally hated by every single
critic. Someone called it "a club footed vomit launch
of teen horror cliches" It was bad. Really bad. And it got us wondering what are the best
and worst sequels of the past 20 years? Anytime you google search a film you’ll
immediately be presented with it’s metacritic rating. Z: Basically you have all these movie critics
all around the united states and they use different systems to review movies. Metacritic normalizes these rankings on a
1-100 scale, putting more weight on critics with more clout. Zachary, my colleague here. Metacritic normalizes these rankings on a
1-100 scale, putting more weight on critics with more clout. Zachary, my colleague here. Was given a data set of 13,000 films from
Metacritic and found every movie with a sequel since 1996. 532 films total. Z: What we wanted to know was what were the
films that were really good the first time around and really crappy the second time around. In other words, the biggest disappointments. That’s where films like Book of Shadows:
Blair Witch 2 comes in. Z: So the original got a score of 81 points. The sequel got a score of 15 points. CLIP FROM MOVIE: You know if you don’t believe
in the Blair Witch then why did you bother to come? I thought the movie was cool
Zachary: The sequel got a score of 15 points. The 66 points less. Or take Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the
first Mandarin language film nominated for Best Picture. It went on to win Best Foreign Language film. 16 years later Netflix released a sequel,
in English. The orginal got a score of 93. The sequel? Z: So unfortunately it fared much worse. CLIP FROM MOVIE: Too much blazing flame! It got 47. Z: So on the flip side you have films that
did really poorly the first time around and somehow miraculously did better when they
were made into a sequel. Z: This is a really small contingent of all
the sequels we looked at. Less than 25 of the 532 films were improvements. Outside of movies like The Dark Knight and
Kill Bill vol 2 most of these movies were tremendously bad to begin with. CLIP: Awe good boy! See I knew you could do it if you put your
mind to it. Z: Like for instance Garfield got a score
of 27. It’s not that hard to improve on that. Like Garfield Part 2 got 37 which is still
pretty bad. Z: The worst ones fall into 1 of 3 categories. It’s either a horror, comedy, or action
film. So I wanted to see if that’s a bigger indication
of how critics rate those movies. Z: So I looked at a randomized selection of
200 films from every single genre. And then averaged out the score for each genre. This chart reveals that the genres with the
worst sequels also fair pretty badly amongst critics in general. Despite all of this, Hollywood loves making
them. So much so that this year alone an unprecedented
37 sequels will be released. The reason? Money. Z: The average sequel makes 8x the average
original release. That’s $160,000,000 dollars over the $20,000,000
original. Grown Ups, the Adam Sandler movie which was
rated an abysmal 30% on metacritic received 270 million dollars worldwide. Its sequel, which somehow dropped 11 points
still managed 247 million dollars worldwide. It was a box office hit. Audiences had no reason to give Grown Ups
2 a chance. And yet they did. Roger Ebert famously said “No movie executive
was fired because he greenlit a sequel.... But movie critics despair of sequels as betraying
a lack of imagination and originality." If you have any doubts about how true that
is give Grown Ups 2 a whirl. This is a perfectly normal elevator ride. This elevator ride is incredibly uncomfortable. What if you could measure these awkward moments? What if you could transcribe them like a conversation? In the 1960s, an anthropologist did just that. Edward Twitchell Hall was known for conceptualizing
the personal space bubble, and he also created a whole system of notation to record how people
navigate shared space. Hall had been around the world and taught
thousands of foreign service personnel how to communicate in different cultures. He believed culture and communication were
inseparable, and that communication was as present in silence as in speech. He once wrote, "Man has developed his territoriality
to an almost unbelievable extent. Yet we treat space somewhat as we treat sex. It is there but we don't talk about it." Hall called his study "proxemics," and it
dissected personal interaction with eight key modes of analysis that each had their
own code for recording. 1) Posture and sex
These drawings used simple lines to show if it was a man or a woman, and if they were
standing, sitting, or lying down. Every symbol got a number, too, so each position
could be clear in an instant. 2) How people interacted
Sociofugal relationships preserved an individual's privacy. Sociopetal ones encouraged interaction. Drawn as if from above, he could show if people
were facing each other or not. Here's a couple side to side; here's one back
to back. And they could measure the effects of space
on interaction. 3 and 4) Touch and space
He built a grid to describe every touch. 00 was closest with a caress; 66 meant no
contact at all. And in between was the nuance of human interaction. 22 might be a hug; 33: a high five. 5) A visual code
Even eye contact could be quantified. From the center of one retina to the center
of another, it could be dazzlingly direct, or it could be the peripheral vision that
dodged real connection. 6) Body heat
Body heat could be recorded too as another way of measuring connection. Hall quoted one subject who said she could
feel her dance partner's stomach heat up. 7) Smell
He even monitored smell and breath, giving it its own code. DBO means smell as "differentiated body odor." A wafting smell could be as loud as a word. "This is the section about smell, isn't it. Sh--"
8) Loudness Now, if somebody said:
"Jeremy, I got you the documents." it could be coded on a scale to measure the
nuance. "Jeremy, I got you the documents. [louder]"
Now observers could describe interactions like a meeting without needing to use words. Instead, they could show a man sitting in
a group, touching no one, with indirect eye contact, no heat or smell, and a soft voice. And together, all of these precise measurements
helped discover the personal space bubble we all know. Hall refined it in other papers and books,
but his personal space bubble is the one we know well, as he defined it in his book, "The
Hidden Dimension." Surrounding a person, he found a 1 foot bubble
split in two for intimate space, a bubble of personal space followed out to 4 feet;
beyond that was the social space of 4-10 feet and public space beyond that. It became how we think of space, just because
one person bothered to observe it. Today, we still use proxemics to understand
space and people. It's guided us not as a rulebook, but as a
theory. For everyone from theater directors, to intercultural
communicators, to video game designers. "He's nice, bit of a close talker." "A what?" "So how long you folks in town?" [Laughter]
It won't make the elevator ride more comfortable. But now at least you know how to describe
it. So Hall had a lot of different inspirations
for proxemics, but I wanted to talk about one that was kind of unexpected: an ornithologist. He was inspired by H.E. Howard who wrote about territory in bird life. With the United Kingdom leaving the European
Union, it's natural to wonder what this means for the EU going forward.
And there's really two different ways to think about it.
One, if you want to be optimistic about the European project,
is that the EU could actually be stronger without the UK in it.
To understand how, it helps to look at the history of the EU
And the idea is to take this continent that is the cradle of a wonderful civilization,
but has also been the scene of some incredibly destructive wars, some horrific political
crimes, and make sure that kind of thing can never happen again.
And the idea was if they unified the steel and coal industries across national boundaries,
they wouldn't be able to fight wars with one another.
But the UK was never completely on board. They weren't one of the six original countries
to join up they joined a little bit reluctantly, they
didn't want to join the single currency project. And English people have, in a geographic sense,
often not felt that they are even quote unquote part of Europe. So, to an extent they've always
been the marginal member, and if anyone is going to leave, it would be them.
Once the UK is out, the remaining countries might be able to get some important
things done, like crafting a common immigration and foreign policy, which the EU doesn’t
have, and trying to figure out a way to make the common currency work better.
They don’t have a common tax policy, they don’t have a common welfare state
It may be easier for the countries that remain to build stronger institutions,
And you may ultimately see a stronger, even though it’s a smaller Europe.
That’s the optimistic view Now, another view could be that we're looking
at the beginning of the unraveling of the whole thing.
You start pulling a thread on the sweater, and it's all going to collapse. You see polls
from France and even Germany, the countries at the very heart of Europe, showing that
it's become unpopular. They don’t feel ownership over European
politics. It's a bunch of guys, sitting around in a
Belgian city, negotiating deals in a language they don't speak.
They don’t have a spirit of European patriotism and a deep, emotional European identity.
The EU has a lot of the attributes of a nation state. It has a flag, they have a national anthem, but it doesn't have any words. If you fielded a single EU soccer team, it would
win the World Cup every time, but no one would cheer for it. So, a lot of how this turns in the end has to do with what kind of deal the UK can reach with the EU. If the UK manages to get out but to then still have a really favorable free trade deal with the EU and really sort of prosper, that's going to make it easier for other countries to say well, they want out too every time a decision happens that they don't like. So there's a strong incentive  to make this messy, to make it really as painful as possible. If EU leaders manage to exact a high price from the UK in leaving, that means that probably the rest of the union is not going to break up. We have this idea that if we want to lose
weight, we join a gym on January 1st, we start working out regularly, and eventually we’ll
slim down. Well, here’s some bad news.
I read more than sixty studies on this, and it turns out exercise is actually pretty useless
when it comes to weight loss. Dr. Kevin Hall at the National Institutes of Health has done some of the most important studies on exercise and weight loss
We need to rebrand exercise … exercise isn’t a weight loss tool per se, it's excellent
for health is probably the best single thing that you can do other than stopping smoking
to improve your health. But don’t look at it as a weight loss tool.
Exercise will definitely help you live a longer, happier life…. It’s just not the best
way to lose weight. And the reason has to do with how our bodies use energy.
You may not realize it, but physical activity is actually a tiny component of your daily
energy burn. There are three main ways our bodies burn
calories. These include your resting metabolism, so
that's how much energy your body burns just for its basic functioning, just to keep you
alive, basically. The other part of energy expenditure is the
thermic effect of food, and that’s just how much energy is required to break food
down in your body. The third part of energy expenditure is physical
activity. For most people, physical activity - that’s
any movement you do, only accounts for about 10 to 30 percent of energy use.
So the vast majority of energy or calories you burn every day comes from your basal or
resting metabolism, over which you have very little control.
While 100% of your “calories in” are up to you, only up to about 30% of your “calories
out” are in your control. One study found that if a 200-pound man ran
for an hour, 4 days a week for a month, he’d lose about 5 pounds at most, assuming everything
else stays the same. And everything else doesn’t stay the same!
Researchers have found we make all kinds of behavioral and physiological adaptations when
we start increasing the amount of exercise we’re getting every day.
For one thing, exercise tends to make people hungry.
And I'm sure you know the feeling: you go for a spinning class in the morning, and
then by the time you eat breakfast you're so hungry you maybe double the size of the
portion of oatmeal you normally eat. There's also evidence to suggest that some
people simply slow down after a work out, so if you went running in the morning you
might be less inclined to take the stairs at work.
These are called “compensatory behaviors” -- the various ways we unknowingly undermine
our workouts. Researchers have also discovered a phenomenon
called metabolic compensation. As people start to slim down, their resting metabolism can slow down. So the amount of energy you burn while at rest is lower. That means this bar might shrink as you start to lose weight. There’s still a lot of research to be done,
but one study from 2012 is particularly interesting. They went out into the middle of the Savannah
in Tanzania to measure the energy burn among a group of hunter gathers called the Hadza.
These are super-active, lean hunter-gatherers. They’re not spending their days behind a computer at a desk. And what they found was shocking. What we found is that there was no difference at all. So even though the Hadza have a much more physically active lifestyle, they weren't burning any more calories every day than adults in the US and Europe.
Somehow the energy they used for physical activity was being offset or conserved elsewhere.
So how do they stay slim? They don’t overeat. We can undo the calories that we burn off in exercise pretty quickly. It would take about an hour of running to burn off a Big Mac and fries. You’d have to spend about an hour dancing
pretty vigorously to burn off three glasses of wine you might drink with dinner.
An hour of cycling really intensely on exercise bikes to burn off about two doughnuts.
That’s why exercise is best seen as a healthy supplement for a strategy that’s focused
on food. But despite extremely high obesity rates in
the US, government agencies continue to present exercise as a solution
... as do companies with a real interest in making sure we keep eating and drinking their
products. Since the 1920s, companies like Coca-Cola
have been aligning themselves with the exercise message.
The idea here is that you can drink all these extra bottles of soda as long as you work
out. But as we're seeing, it doesn't work like that. Actually burning off those extra calories from a can of soda is really, really hard. We have an obesity problem in this country, and we shouldn't treat low physical activity  and eating too many calories as equally responsible for it. Public health policymakers should really prioritize improving our food environment to help people make healthier choices about what they eat. It's not impossible to lose weight through exercise, it's just a lot harder. And we need to recognize how that works. If you do go to the gym, and you burn all these calories, it takes you a long time to do so and you put in a great amount of effort, you can erase all of that in five minutes of eating a slice of pizza. Relative magnitude is actually quite surprising, and most people don't fully appreciate that. JOE: Hey Joss, I have a question for you. Do you know how these Snapchat filters work? like behind the scenes? JOSS: Hmm, I have no idea. JOE: Well do you think you can find out? JOSS: You got it! These are what Snapchat calls their
lenses, but everyone else calls filters. They are very silly but the engineering
behind them is serious. JOSS: Oh my god. The technology came from a Ukrainian startup called Looksery which Snapchat acquired in
September 2015 for a $150 million dollars. That's reportedly the
largest tech acquisition in Ukrainian history. Their augmented reality filters tap into the large and rapidly growing field of "computer vision" -- those are applications that use pixel
data from a camera in order to identify objects and interpret 3D space. Computer
vision is how you can deposit checks, with your phone, it's how Facebook knows who's in your
photos, how self-driving cars can avoid running over people and how you can give
yourself a doggy nose. So how to snapchat filters work? They
wouldn't let us talk to any of the Looksery engineers but their patents are
online. The first step is detection. How does the
computer know which part of an image is a face? This is something that human brains are
fantastic at. Too good even. But this is what a photo looks like to a
computer. If all you have is the data for the color value of each individual pixel,
how do you find a face? Well the key is looking for areas of
contrast, between light and dark parts of the image. The pioneering facial
detection tool is called the Viola-Jones algorithm. It works by repeatedly scanning through
the image data calculating the difference between the grayscale pixel
values underneath the white boxes and the black boxes. For instance, the bridge
of the nose is usually lighter than the surrounding area on both sides, the eye sockets are darker than the
forehead, and the middle of the forehead is lighter than the size of it. These are crude test for facial features,
but if they find enough matches in one area of the image, it concludes that there is a face there.
This kind of algorithm won't find your face if you're really tilted or facing
sideways, but they're really accurate for frontal faces, and it's how digital cameras have been putting boxes around faces for years. But in order to apply
this virtual lipstick, the app needs to do more than just detect my face. It has to locate my facial features. According to the patents. It does this
with an “active shape model” -- a statistical model of a face shape that's been
trained by people manually marking the borders of facial features on hundreds,
sometimes thousands of sample images. The algorithm takes an average face from
that trained data and aligns it with the image from your phone's camera, scaling
it and rotating it according to where it already knows your face is located. But it's not a perfect fit so the model
analyzes the pixel data around each of the points, looking for edges defined by brightness
and darkness. From the training images, the model has a template for what the
bottom of your lips should look like, for example, so it looks for that pattern in
your image and adjust the point to match it. Because some of these individual
guesses might be wrong, the model can correct and smooth them by taking into account the locations of all the other points. Once it locates your
facial features, those points are used as coordinates to create a mesh. That's a 3D mask that can move, rotate,
and scale along with your face as the video data comes in for every frame and
once they've got that, they can do a lot with it. They can deform the mask to change your face shape, change your eye color, add accessories, and set animations to
trigger when you open your mouth or move your eyebrows. And like the IOS app Face Swap Live,
Snapchat can switch your face with a friend's, although that involves a bunch
more data. The main components of this technology
are not new. What's new is the ability to run them in real time, from a mobile
device. That level of processing speed is a pretty recent development. So why go through all this trouble just
to give people a virtual flower crown? Well Snapchats sees a revenue
opportunity here. In a world that's flooded with advertisements, maybe the best hope that brands have to
get us to look at their ads... is to put them on our faces. Facial detection has a creepy side too,
particularly when it's used to identify you by name. Both the FBI and private companies like
Facebook and Google are massing huge databases of faces and there's currently
no federal law regulating it. So some privacy advocates have come up
with ways to camouflage your face from facial detection algorithms. It's actually illegal in a lot of places
to wear a face mask in public, so this project by artist Adam Harvey
suggest some things that you can do with your hair and your makeup that can, for
now, make your face Invisible to computers. When you leave the International Airport
of Rio de Janeiro and head towards the south of the city which is where all the
beaches are, you pass a sprawling informal settlement called Maré. it's one of hundreds of neglected shanty
towns like this in Rio. It goes on for miles. But when you pass
by there today all you see is this wall. Look at this map of Rio: Here's the part that you probably know.
It's the South Zone it's where all the iconic beaches are. Maré is in Rio's
North Zone which is where most of the city's poor live. They don't have sewage systems they
don't have housing rights they don't have anything, but you know the city is
really concerned about how loud the cars are because they're worried about you
know the ears of the poor people that don't have food in their stomachs. The city just install the big new schoolin this community a few months ago. You'll note that when we get to this
part of the highway, the wall becomes totally transparent,
giving us a perfect view of the shiny new school Every time international attention comes to Rio, the
city scrambles to build up infrastructure around tourism for
visitors to see that it's this amazing city The problem is the visitors will come
and they go, but the people of Rio are here to stay, and they're frustrated that their governments spends
so much money to build up certain parts of the city and completely neglects
others. The Olympics is no different in this
case. In fact it's probably the biggest excuse Rio has to pour tons of money
into making the city look good. This is Patricia. She rides the buses
here in Rio and has noticed a major change in the bus routes recently. Patricia is showing me a few examples of the 11 bus
lines that were cut between the poor North zone and the touristy rich South
Zone, all in preparation for the Olympics. It's now much harder for a resident of
the North Zone to get down to the beaches of Ipanema or Copacabana. So why put the bus lines? If discriminatory bus lines are bad here's where it gets worse. So back to this
map: out here in the west is a place called Barra (Baha) R's are pronounced like H
in Portuguese. This is a new part of the city where a lot of the Olympics action
is happening. It's where the Olympic park is going to be built. And because of
this it's home to what one real estate publication is calling a "cosmopolitan
awakening." Tons of real estate investment. And of course a bunch of dramatic
promotional videos to go with it. there's this one guy in Carlos Carvalho. He's
a real estate developer and owns 64 million square feet in Barra. Last year
in a series of interviews with big publications, Carvalho sketched out his
dream for Barra. His goal is to turn this place into a
"new Rio" a city for the "elite ... of good taste noble housing not housing for the poor." This guy's that 12 richest person in
Brazil and he's got a ton of political influence to make his dream happen. Here
he is with Rios mayor who's reelection campaign he generously donated to. They're
just, you know, looking over plans for how they're going to reshape Barra. But there's one big problem for people
like Carlos carvalho and his dream to make Barra a haven for the rich. If you're
interested in land value, the less poor people you who have in your land the greater value can give to it.  They
think of the city as a place for you to invest and not a place to live in. Over the years little settlements of a
few hundred families have popped up in Barra. It's usually workers unable to find
affordable housing and creating communities of their own. These places
have been around for decades and many of them have gained legal status for their
property. But to the luxury-minded developers of this new part of town, these informal settlements represent a
barrier to their plan. So when the Olympic park was planned for
this area of Rio it wasn't much of a surprise when the
city came in with eminent domain eviction orders, telling these
communities that they would be moved to public housing complexes usually far out
of sight of any international visitors. Most communities left, some happily
taking the money that the city gave them, some mounted intense but failed
resistance. But I visited one community that didn't give up on the fight to keep
their homes. Vila Autódromo was a community of around 600
families near where the olympic park is being built. it's not on the actual park property but
it's in the sight of the park. This is what it looks like today. People
chose to go there because there was no drug trafficking or militia. It was very
safe very-- a good sense of community. close to jobs and schools. It's hard to know that when you just
visit the community, but you kind of get a sense of that by seeing the people
who are still resisting, because they're holding on to that memory and
they want to keep some of that alive. After years of fighting with the city
hall, only 20 families of the original six
hundred remain in this community. Fierce protesting in a flurry of international
press got the mayor to finally concede, saying that the twenty families could
stay, on condition that the city would build them nicer-looking homes, lest, heaven forbid, the international
community catch a glimpse of the real Rio. Through the long fight, some of Vila Autódromo was able to stay. But this is rare. Most
communities that receive eviction orders no longer exists. At least seventy seven
thousand two hundred people have been removed from their homes in Rio de
Janeiro since 2009. That's according to government data. And
much of this to make way for infrastructure and real estate projects
associated with the World Cup and the Olympic Games. So it's kind of a shame because the
Olympics end up coming in and kind of whitewashing areas and reframing them  you lose a
lot of the personality of the city. of course there have been numerous benefits
to the people of Rio thanks to the Olympics investments: New
bus lines, revitalization of all parts of the city, museums, parks. This stuff will make life
better in the city for sure. But in the end Billions of public dollars that were
supposed to benefit the people ended up bowing to the interests of a few people
with a lot of money. And instead of investing in the underserved Rio will once again hide them from view. Voters in the United Kingdom have voted
to leave the European Union. "I hope this victory brings down this failed project and leads us to a Europe of sovereign nation state" It’s a major blow to European political and economic integration, and a huge embarrassment for Prime Minister David Cameron, who might lose his job as a result. *Cameron just announced he will resign "Britain is better off inside the EU than out on our own. At the heart of that is the single market.  500 million customers on our doorstep. A source of so many jobs, so much trade, a such a wealth of opportunity for our young people." Britain’s exit will also have huge implications for the British economy. 
The EU functions as a single integrated economy kind of like the United States. And now that Britain
is out regulations could make it harder to move goods across the English Channel. Lots of multinational corporations have
their headquarters in London, but now they might find that it makes more sense
to have their European headquarters in the European Union, which could lead to
job losses in Britain. The EU also allows for the free movement of people within
its member states, which means that any EU citizen can live and work in any
other EU country without a visa. And the UK high employment rate has drawn
migrants from poorer countries in the EU like Poland and Lithuania. But many in
Britain resent these migrants, and that resentment was a key driving force in
the decision of for Britain to leave the European Union. So now that Britain's out,  nobody really
knows what's going to happen to all those EU migrants. So what comes next? A long negotiation
between the UK and the EU member states where they have
to hash out issues like trade tariffs agriculture immigration and a whole host
of other issues. Nobody really knows what this means for
the other EU countries – they could rally together and push for even more
integration, or some countries could look at Britain and say we should get out too.
But one thing is clear: Britain's exit is a huge blow to the
dream of a united Europe. More than 25 years ago America's leading
Republican talked about disability like this. Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. And now America's leading Republican is
talking about disability like this. You gotta see this guy. Uh, I don't know what I said. I don't remember. How did that make It made me feel invisible. Anyone can make fun of me and
get away with it. When Donald Trump insulted other identity
groups like women, Mexicans, and African Americans TV news rightfully sought to
hear from those voices. And when Donald Trump mocked a reporter
with a disability I don't remember! Twice. By a guy that can't buy a pair of pants,
I get called names? The news put on lots of able-bodied people
with no apparent disability to talk about how people with a disability
should feel. talk about how people with a disability
should feel. it wouldn't be fair to just single out TV
news. In fact it would be totally inaccurate to
do so because generally speaking there is a dearth of people living with a disability whether it's in television or film Scholar and disability activist Victor Pineda believes the issue runs much deeper than this We are visible if you're willing to look. And I think that we represent
every constituency group. We are old, we are young. We are black, white, Hispanic, Asian. We are men, women, transgender. We are part of every community. And all we want is an equal opportunity
to express ourselves and contribute our talents. The fundamental point about visibility is
that we're here, we matter, and we do have a stake in this election. But despite this lack of representation there's a certain kind of invisibility
that goes with disability. For instance, when Hillary Clinton's Super
PAC tried to take advantage of Donald Trump's disrespect for people living with a disability their ad didn't even feature the voice of
a person with a disability at all. So since we don't often hear or see
people with disabilities their issues never get addressed in the media and then we don't press candidates on it and then they don't include it in
their political platforms and then it leads to more invisibility
and then they're even less accountable... -Whoa, whoa, whoa Liz. -So, what are we going to do about it? What are we gonna do about it? You know what we're gonna do about it, Dean? We're gonna go to f****** Pasadena. What would be your message to the candidates? There's so much power in being disabled. The little hurdles that we go over,
they're humongous. We are part of the future and if that's the world that they create,
you know, then we should be first in line. Another topic would be employment,
and you know, ending sub-minimum wages and making sure that everybody is paid equally
and that employment opportunities are not segregated. The average American makes about $40,000
a year so we don't have a lot of income. So we have to watch every cent we have. I do think that some candidates do more
for disability than other candidates. But, I mean, they can say all they want
what we really want is action. I want to say to all the presidential candidates:
good luck. I wish you the very best. Whoever wins I know you're going to make
the country much better. We're differently abled but
very capable. So why should we all care about this? Because the first President Bush was right when he signed the
Americans with Disabilities Act and said that America will never be a prosperous nation until all within it prosper. Community organizer, Ted Jackson,
made the point that Americans living with a disability
make up a huge voting block that no candidate has tapped into yet. It's open to either party. Who's going to be taking those sharp moves
and making their campaigns accessible for people. Who's talking about pro-disability policy
and engaging people with disabilities in the creation of that policy. Because that's the candidate, that's the party
that's going to lock in this voting block. So although it would be easy to point the
finger to politicians or the media for countless people living in this country
this isn't a Republican or a Democratic issue, it's an American issue. The Kardashian-Jenner sisters get a lot of
hate for supposedly having no skills. You don't sing, you don't dance, you don't have any...any talents! Kendall Jenner is here. I'm not exactly sure what she does... But they’ve built a business empire — with
revenue coming not just from their tv show, but also fashion and makeup lines, mobile
apps, games, and endorsements. Kim Kardashian's net worth is $85 million,
she made $52.5 million last year They’ve stretched fifteen minutes of fame
into nearly a decade, and figured out how to monetize their every move.
How? Well, they understand something about marketing that most companies don’t. Advertising surrounds us...and we’ve become
experts at tuning it out. People are very, very good at recognizing the source and the persuasive intent. We’re so used to
that, we immediately ignore it. That’s why the majority of advertising is really not
successful.” Communications professor Dr. Jennifer Lueck
thinks that businesses trying figure out how to make money online should take a lesson
from the Kardashians. Most celebrity Twitter feeds are overtly promotional. They're full of corporate-looking ads and tweets clearly written by PR handlers
Compare that to Kim Kardashian’s feed...she whines about jet lag and asks her followers
what TV shows to watch and whether to embarrass her husband
Kim: "Guys, I've hired a new glam team" It is a dynamic that comes very close to perceived friendship, but it’s
completely one-sided Communications scholars call this Parasocial
Interaction. The researchers who coined the term in the mid-1950s used it to describe the feeling of friendship and closeness people felt with TV personalities
they had never met. It's almost like when you're at a concert and somebody is singing and that person is looking into the audience and you feel like they're looking at you, and they're singing at you A reality show like Keeping Up with the Kardashians
is fertile ground for the beginning of a parasocial relationship, and
Kim and her sisters nurture it by speaking to their fans on social media like they’re
friends. "Hey guys, it's been so long!" "How pretty are those?" Ooh! Ooh! And it probably doesn’t hurt that this includes
a fair amount of nudity So, when Kim and her sisters hawk products,
it doesn’t feel like an advertisement. "I'm obsessed with the app Jet Smarter" It feels like a recommendation from a friend.
A richer, better-looking friend who’s getting paid thousands of dollars to tweet about swimsuits
and teeth whitening. The Kardashians every digital tool
imaginable to make millions of people feel like they know them, and make millions of
dollars for themselves in the process. And you don’t have to approve of them or
even like them to acknowledge that’s a talent. Some people love the Oxford comma. Just ask Vox's copy editors, Rob Lowe and
James Van Der Beek. Wait. Add a comma. Just ask Vox's copy editors, Rob Lowe, and
James Van Der Beek. The Oxford comma, serial comma, whatever you
want to call it comma is that comma plunked down before the "and" on a list. People who like it say it adds clarity and
makes reading things easier. But organizations like the AP don't use it
in their style book. They're what's technically known as...wrong. It's a heated debate. There's a whole Twitter account that just
asked celebrities about their Oxford comma preferences — that's how we know Rob Lowe
is "pro" and Van Der Beek thinks only "animals" would ditch the Oxford comma. But where did the world's most controversial
punctuation come from? Oxford is not the whole answer. Communication researcher Jasso Lamberg wanted
to know: who invented it? It required a kind of detective hunt. "I tried Googling it and I just couldn't find
the actual history of it." Usually, he checks things on the Oxford English
Dictionary, but the Oxford English Dictionary didn't have a good answer about the Oxford
comma. "So according to the OED, the first recorded
use of this term is supposed to be Peter H. Sutcliffe's book from 1978." The phrase "Oxford comma" was kind of new,
but could its usage really be that recent? In his book, Sutcliffe explains the comma
came from rulebooks written a hundred years ago. A guy named F.H. Collins wrote those rulebooks, codifying the
punctuation that Lupita Nyong'o said she couldn't live without. But that's not all — Collins said he got
the idea from a letter from Herbert Spencer, who thought the comma was key in "marking
out the elements of a thought." And at the time, Herbert Spencer was a legend. Charles Darwin did not come up with the term
"survival of the fittest" — Herbert Spencer did. Spencer was a classic Victorian generalist. He was a jack of all trades who did philosophy
and science. In the 1860s, Darwin, Spencer, Thomas Huxley,
and others all pushed evolution into the mainstream of culture. Here's Darwin and Spencer, just chattin'. Spencer's survival of the fittest expanded
to social Darwinism, the competition between people, not just species. He was massively influential, selling hundreds
of thousands of copies of his books and inspiring authors, like H.G. Wells's divergent races
in "The Time Machine." But over time, his worldview lost to the competition. Darwin became the name people associated with
evolution. Spencer turned into an often maligned figure
in philosophy and a footnote to the culture at large. Social Darwinism became of a piece with eugenics
in the popular culture. But Spencer really did believe in efficiency
and clarity. Our culture and science have changed from
a mutton-chopped Victorian's theories, but our sentences still need to be clear. And that's why the Oxford comma is still the
right choice for my coworkers, Neil de Grasse Tyson and Adam Savage. Uh, comma please. OK, so what is the best argument against an
Oxford comma. After all, there are people who don't like
it, from the AP to Talib Kweli — who is the son of of an English professor. And they might say that the Oxford comma can't
hide bad writing. So, for example, if you looked at our sentence
in the beginning of the video and made "copy editors" singular, even an Oxford comma would
make it look like Rob Lowe had a job at Vox which, sadly, he does not. I, however, have to side with Spencer, because
in that letter to Collins he said that commas equal pauses. And when you have a list, you want a pause
for each item, and only an Oxford comma can do that. So that hopefully will settle it and there
will never be another argument about this ever again. There...yeah... “Tower, look at to the south, there's an aircraft crashing” On Veterans’ Day in 2001, an airplane carrying 260 people dropped out of the sky shortly
after taking off from JFK. “An aircraft just crashed to the south of
the field” The top fin of the plane broke off and fell
into Jamaica Bay, and the rest of the plane crashed into a residential
neighborhood in Queens. Everyone onboard and 5 people on the ground were killed.
This was just 2 months after September 11th, and it was reasonable to assume, as many people did,
that New York was being attacked again. But investigators concluded that it wasn’t
terrorism that took down Flight 587. And they knew that because of what they found
on the airplane’s black box. What the press calls the “black box” is
actually 2 orange flight recorders. The idea dates back to the 1950s, when the
first commercial jet had 5 accidents in its first 2 years of passenger service,
and investigators realized how useful it would be to have a record of what was happening
on the plane before the crash. Early generations of flight recorders etched
the data onto metal foil. By the 1970s they’d switched to magnetic
tape, and by the 90s, solid-state memory chips. But overall, the concept has remained basically
the same, with 2 components: The cockpit voice recorder stores the last
2 hours of sound from cockpit and from the pilots’ headset microphones, on 4 different
channels. In some cases, these audio recordings alone
can reveal what happened, as they did when a Germanwings flight crashed into the French
Alps in 2015. NBC report: “The plane begins to descend.
Air Traffic control calls. No answer. The captain begins banging on the door, yelling,
‘For God's sake, open the door.’ Passengers scream in the background.”
In the case of Flight 587, that's the plane that crashed into those houses in Queens -- the
cockpit voice recorder offered some hints about what happened.
The transcript showed that before crashing, the plane ran into some wake turbulence from the large 747 that took off just ahead of Flight 587.
But that turbulence alone wouldn’t have been enough to take down the flight.
So investigators needed information from the second box: the flight data recorder. It captures
at least 88 types of data about the plane’s position and instruments for the past 25 hours.
That data feeds into computer animations of what happened before the recorder lost power. And the black box data revealed that the pilots lost control of the plane over the course 
of about 10 seconds. And this line in particular stuck out -- it
shows what the copilot, who was flying the plane, was doing with the rudder pedals in
response to the turbulence. Pilots can maneuver planes along 3 axes, pitch,
roll, and yaw, which is what the rudder controls. But they rarely use the rudder, because as you’ve
probably noticed, they can change direction by rolling. Investigators concluded that the copilot probably didn’t realize that his aggressive rudder pedal
movements were making things worse, that they were putting enough pressure on the
the vertical stabilizer, that it detached causing the plane to crash.
Because of the flight data recorder, authorities could rule out both terrorism and mechanical
failure, and instead, blame pilot error and poor training. No two airplane accidents are the same, but the flight recorders are useful for every
case, provided that they survive the crash. And they usually do. The recorders are installed
near the tail of planes where the force of the impact is somewhat lessened.
And the memory boards are kept in steel or titanium cases and surrounded by materials
that protect against high temperatures. Often, the rest of the box will be destroyed,
but that doesn’t matter as long as the memory unit is intact.
Of course, flight recorders that are never found are useless.
They do have a beacon that activates underwater and sends an ultrasound signal every second
for 30 days. That signal can travel through 14,000 feet of water. But as flight MH 370 showed, sometimes investigators
aren’t even within that range. BBC report: "But the batteries from MH 370 black boxes are almost certainly starting to fail. If they haven't already." That’s why some have proposed new systems
that don’t leave the data on the plane, but rather transmit it in real time to
satellites or ground stations. There are privacy and cost concerns to consider,
but in the future, they might not need to find a box, in order to find the answers the that investigators, and families need. Why does the press call it a black box when it's orange? Very good question. The term "black box" is not actually used within the aviation industry. I was told when I originally came here  there were a couple of different theories. One, that the term black box is often used in engineering for a device where you have a lot of inputs. It may go back to the early days of the recorder, where they used light-sensitive paper to record traces from the stylus. And that equipment was housed in a light-protected black box. There's also the idea that, as a result of the accident, once they've been expose to heat and fire, that they turn black or a dark brown. Nobody really knows where the term came from. But as I say, they're more appropriately called flight recorders or onboard recording devices and they're always painted a very bright orange. Why did the truffle get invited to all the parties? ‘Cause he’s a fungi! Get it!? A fungi? Sorry about that, but there is some truth in it! A trufflie is the most exciting fungus you could find at a party. "Mmhmm." "That's a ..." [laughs] "Ohh it's cold—it's like a rock." "Ewww it's smells so bad!" [sniffs] These warty balls of decadence have a smell and taste that’s been described as musky but intoxicating. An experience to be had...if you can afford it. The top truffles in the business are the Italian white truffles of Italy and the Périgord black truffles from France, which can cost thousands of dollars per pound. We got our hands on a lesser truffle, the summer or burgundy truffle — they grow throughout Europe. "Kind of looks like a dragon egg, you know? Like from Game of Thrones. It's very interesting." So why are truffles so expensive? Well for one thing, they’re really hard to cultivate. While there are over 200 species of truffles, only a handful are fit for consumption and even fewer are considered a prized culinary gem. Found in temperate forests and countrysides across the globe, truffles are the "fruit" of an ectomycorrhizal fungus. That means they only grow underground near the roots of certain trees, through a symbiotic relationship with those trees. Truffle farmers can inoculate orchards with truffle spores, but they can take years to grow and there’s no guarantee that the spores will take hold. This fungus is sensitive to soil, temperature, moisture, and even other fungus spores. Cultivation has been especially difficult for the famously aromatic Italian white truffle, adding to their hefty price tag. Farmers and foragers alike are then tasked with finding the fungus. Truffles that’ve grown closer to the surface of the soil can be found because of cracking in the surrounding soil and because of their smell. But most truffles are found by dogs that are trained to sniff out the ripe ones. Then you have to carefully unearth it with a trowel and keep the truffle from being damaged. Female pigs were once widely used for truffling because they’re naturally drawn to truffles’ smell, but it was hard to stop them from eating the treasure that they found. Plus, pigs aren’t very subtle. Truffle hunters are highly secretive about their harvesting spots. Time is also a big part of why truffles are so expensive. Truffles generally have short seasons of just a few months. And once they’re harvested, there’s a limited window when truffles are fresh. They’re best enjoyed right away. But after that, you’ve got around seven days before it begins to lose all its flavor and rot. Even then, half the aroma dissipates around 4 or 5 days. Truffle yields are much lower than they used to be, in part due to climate change. A century ago, France produced hundreds of tons of black truffles per year. Now it’s down to 40. Because of truffles’ scarcity and high prices, they are subject to the shadier sides of the trade. There’s always a risk of counterfeit. It is not uncommon for less regarded Asiatic truffles to get mixed with the good stuff. Truffle oils have also popped up everywhere, but they’re usually made from synthetic compounds, not from real truffles. On the more extreme side, farms have been raided, truffle hunting dogs have been kidnapped and poisoned. One man was even killed in an attempted truffle burglary. It’s hard to know how much of it is hype. But there is something to be said about the truffle’s elusive nature—sidestepping the commodification of its spores to the masses. It’s like Miley Cyrus. Love 'em or hate 'em, the world’s most expensive fungi cannot be tamed. I feel like a cave with a lot of Glade PlugIns around... You know like they're trying to beat the cave smell with all the Glade. the story is horrifyingly familiar the shooter reportedly bought his guns legally and pledged allegiance to isis in a call to 911 last minute he announced allegiance to ISIL but what makes this attack even worse is that it was also the deadliest attack against the LGBTQ community on record the attack came against the backdrop of Pride Month a time when the LGBTQ community commemorates the fight for equal rights and acceptance in America to understand we have to go back to the New York City of the late 1960s back then it was not uncommon at all for the New York City police to raid gay and trans friendly bars so in 1969 patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted this police harassment and four nights of rioting commenced historians note that the Stonewall riots were the turning point that helped to make the gay rights movement into a national one it was only a year after Stonewall as the late activist Frank committee notes that at least 1,500 gay rights groups emerged where only 50 existed before along with the civil rights groups the United States saw a proliferation of bars and clubs that were friendly to or for the LGBTQ community these places became central as a safe place for this community to socialize and meet this is a time where large portions of the American public felt homosexuality itself should be illegal it was also a time when the HIV and AIDS epidemic further cast the gay community into a negative light over the years that would follow attitudes slowly started to shift in the United States and gay bars and clubs like pulse where the attack occurred are part of this history places where everyone no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity should feel safe to be themselves in a world where homophobia remains the norm and while it took a long time to get from here to here the LGBTQ community continues to face violence and challenges in American life and across the globe while the outpouring of support after this devastating attack also suggests significant progress there are still no truly safe places for LGBTQ people and it will still be a long journey seeing that there are Okay everybody — major, major Game of Thrones
spoilers here. For the last five seasons of Game of Thrones,
we’ve understood the show to be a linear storyline. One thing leads to another thing,
to another thing — you get the idea. But in the past few episodes, that’s totally
changed. In his training with the Three Eyed Raven, Bran Stark has learned how to travel
through time in dreamlike visions. And that makes Game of Thrones one of a whole
lot of works of fiction that have experimented with time travel.
Scientists have debunked the idea that we’d ever be able to travel into the past. But
that hasn’t stopped physicists from theorizing how it would work, logically, without creating
a paradox. This is sort of the internet's go-to explainer
on how time travel works in fiction. My name is Harrison Densmore and I'm a graphic
designer and writer. I created this infographic about 7 years ago.
You can generally break down time travel in movies into one of three different styles.
There’s the multiverse timeline, the dynamic timeline, and the fixed timeline.
In a multiverse timeline, there are an infinite number of parallel universes. Any time travel
immediately creates a new timeline, and the traveler can do just about anything — only
that timeline is affected. Kill your grandfather, and you’ll have just
created a new universe where you don’t exist. This is what you see with Terminator 2 and
3, Rick and Morty, Doctor Who, and the 2009 Star Trek.
Then there’s what he calls the dynamic timeline, where altered events in the past have a real
impact on the present. Go back and try to kill your grandfather here,
and you create a paradox, a logical contradiction. If you time-traveled to kill your grandfather,
you wouldn’t exist in the future to travel back in time to kill your grandfather.
And you can see the idea of a dynamic timeline presented in Back to the Future.
It doesn’t really make sense, because the traveler is returning to a present day that
he wouldn’t actually exist in. Then there’s the fixed timeline.
In a fixed timeline, when a person travels back in time, they can’t change the future
that they just left. This is the version you see in the Prisoner of Azkaban, or 12 Monkeys.
Everything that they do just confirms the present that they left. Try to kill your grandfather
here, and you’ll inevitably fail. You can’t change the past.
And it seems like this is how Game of Thrones interprets the idea.
It all starts with this moment right here, when Bran is watching a young version of his
late father: “Father!”
Because Ned Stark turns around seemingly in response to Bran’s voice, it seems like
Bran might be able to change the past. So when the Raven says this:
"The past is already written. The ink is dry." It sounds like he’s not telling the truth.
Clearly if Bran was able to get his father to react to his voice, then it seems like
he has the power to change the past, right? But what happens to Hodor dispels this idea.
When Bran takes control of Hodor’s body in the present while also observing him in
the past, he creates a psychic link between past and present that destroys Hodor’s mind.
So, Bran created Hodor as we've always known him on the show.
That could mean Bran can affect the past, but only in ways that lead to outcomes we
already see in the present. Bran’s powers seem to operate in what's
called a “closed timelike curve” in mathematical physics. What that means is that all time
travel is consistent with its starting point — every change he creates is already true
in his present world. That’s different from Back to the Future, where actions in the past
produce a new, different future. The Game of Thrones approach to the theory
follows something called the Novikov self-consistency principle.
It’s a physics conjecture that assumes a single timeline, stating that if there is
an event that would cause a paradox, then the probability of that event is zero.
In 1990, the Russian physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov teamed up with researchers from Caltech
to write a paper in which they argued that there are no unresolvable paradoxes in the
singular timeline framework. That means that no matter what a theoretical time traveler
does, they could never succeed to create a situation that doesn’t work logically — they
would never be able to succeed in killing their grandfather, for example.
And that is basically what appears to be happening in Game of Thrones.
It seems like Bran can interact with past, but only in ways that confirm the existing
present reality. Unfortunately for Bran, that means that he can’t change any of the bad
things that have happened to him. But it opens up the possibility that he could
be the source behind a lot of major events. The internet already has a lot of theories.
He could turn out to be the voices in the Mad King’s head — or partly responsible
for the creation of the Wall itself. And that could make him the most important
character in the whole story — for all we know, he could be orchestrating everything
we’ve seen in the show so far. This is the Coexist logo you might know:
star and crescent, peace sign, the well-known gender...e, star of David, Wiccan i, yin yang,
and Christian cross. It's the bumper sticker gibberish you see
on that 1998 Volvo that just cut you off. But the real story doesn't start in a co-op
in Montpelier, Vermont. The story of Coexist begins in Poland — and
it's had its own battles. "My name is Piotr Mlodozeniec. I am a graphic designer. I am making posters, book covers, record covers,
some layouts. I paint also." This is his son's room and here's a poster
designed by Piotr's dad. In 2000, a contemporary art museum in Jerusalem
held a competition. The theme was coexistence. And Mlodozeniec decided to enter. "I started to write this coexistence in many
ways. You know, handwritten, printed, and so on
and so on." The C reminded him a typical Muslim sign of
the crescent. T as the Christian cross. And with the X, suddenly he imagined that
he could do a Jewish star, so he took it and wrote Coexistence. "But then I thought that I don't need this
'ence' at the end." The poster became part of a worldwide touring
exhibition, blown up to massive proportions, and that's when other people saw an opportunity
to take it as their own. "I do the work, and I throw it into the open
world." Mlodozeniec had let his design travel around
the world, but then he forgot about it. In 2005, he got the first news that something
was happening. Some Indiana University students trademarked
an extremely similar design without Mlodozeniec's or the museum's permission. They started to sue anybody else selling Coexist
gear. Average t-shirt price: $58. They registered it as their own logo. One used it to get his "lifestyle design"
degree from the university. Another co-founder told Newsday that Mlodozeniec
was "OK with its use." "I was really mad at this, because nobody
asked me for permission." Soon, Bono had made the logo a central part
of U2's 2005 Vertigo tour. "Some graffiti sprayed up on a wall not too
far from here. This is Co-Ex-Ist." The Indiana guys told reporters they got a
call that Bono was wearing a headband with "your" logo. "Jesus, jew, Muhammed, it's true. Jesus, jew..." "And when I heard that leader of U2, Mr. Bono,
is using this sign, I even was pleased." But they didn't ask him for permission, and
after the contact with him, they gave him a tiny credit on the DVD label. Soon, another Coexist logo showed up with
completely nonsensical additions. "The better is the enemy of the good. Whoa, I will put the Tao sign in it, I will
put the hippie sign in it, I will put Osiris sign. Oh it will be great! It will be all the religions! Whenever you have something good and you want
to make it better—it will spoil and it will be worse than the original." Mlodozeniec had been lumped in with lawsuit-happy
luxury shirt sellers and a bad design from California, and it wasn't what his work was
really even about. Mlodozeniec comes from a school of Polish
poster-making that emphasizes color and organic looking pictures. It's really vibrant. It's not the ascetic, black and white appearance
of the Coexist sign — it's something more alive and more representative of the work
that he's a fan of. But even though Coexist is different from
most of his work, it has a lot of meaning. Coexist isn't just a bumper sticker everywhere. To a graphic designer living in Poland, post
9/11, with refugees coming in from an unstable Syria, it means a lot more. "In 2000, the situation was not so...complicated
like today. This logo was not so, maybe...actual. I didn't know that the world will go in this
direction. That, you know, this coexist is, you know,
a must. You have to do it." So maybe you couldn't quite see that poster
in the background. Fortunately, early on we had some camera adjustment
time where it was clear. This is Horse and Plume, and it's a CYRK poster
— CYRK — which means "circus." Because this poster and many posters like
it were made to promote the Polish circus and they quickly became representative of
an entire school of really expressive Polish poster design. When you think of styles of hip hop, braggadocio,
gangsta, and conscious hip hop might come to mind. But what about Art Rap? Art rap is a style of hip-hop that Open Mike
Eagle has embraced throughout his entire career The first thing you need to know about Mike
to understand his style of rap is this: he loves the band They Might Be Giants I will talk about them all day. All day! They Might Be Giants is a weirdo art-rock
band from Brooklyn formed in 1982. They’ve released 19 studio albums including
a handful for kids. Mike Eagle II is a hip hop artist born in
1980. He’s from the South-Side of Chicago. I went to school in the projects and that
wasn’t always an easy conversation to have with people. I used to lie about it a lot. When Mike was about 9 years old he heard Birdhouse
in Your Soul for the first time. Musically that song is just thrilling to me. “Birdhouse in your Soul” is a song about
a night light. It changes keys 18 times in 3 minutes. Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you Make a little birdhouse in your soul If you ever listen to their songs. The feeling of their songs is very happy,
jovial, high energy. But if you ever read the lyrics they say some
fucked up shit. One of Mike’s favorite verses comes from
“Where Your Eyes Don’t Go” Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow
waves its broomstick arms And does a parody of each unconscious thing
you do When you turn around to look it's gone behind you On its face it's wearing your confused
expression Where your eyes don't go That to me that’s just like that’s just
perfect. Mike’s childhood obsession with They Might
Be Giants can really be felt in his music. My antenna span's killin'
I'm all full of data like a Spiderman villain I'm part flesh and part energy
The last text I sent you was from the heart literally I was inducted into the hip-hop tradition
in the South Side of Chicago. And what that meant was the style in this
time space was this punchline style. We got Juice from Chicago in here. Cause I mack right I track light like photosynthesis. Rappers is wack as hell and I'm gonna put
it in parenthesis. No pause or comma cause I'm gonna keep you
fearing this. You got a question mark I'm the n**ga here
period. Mike has turned the whimsical and dark style
of They Might be Giants and the punchline-y style of Chicago hip hop into a really special
style of rap. On his latest album he’s managed to turn
really serious topics like addiction and racism into pointed and humorous verses. Today I saw a lady say hi to a stranger / Then
avoid my eyes like I'm a white-person strangler / Walking past voters in a democratic blocks
that hit / The windows and the automatic locks if not / Reparations give me free black therapy
/ And tell people you're scared of them it makes them act scarily A lot of these ideas and premises they came
from these really vulnerable places. So if I say something heavy in a way that
makes me chuckle then it makes me feel better about it. The final song I’ll leave you with is haunting
and beautiful. The beat is uplifting, the lyrics are dark. We've gone too far
We don't want to go back home We don't like to see each other but
We don't want to go back home It’s about this group of people who go to
a dive bar because they don’t want to go back home. It runs counter to the idea of a support group
because typically that’s about people trying to be sober. Ma I"m done I call up the homie
I borrow his gun, I'm not gonna run I'm my father's son
I hold up the legacy Macho, masculine all in my pedigree
Angry and cold Bolder than tensile
Trying not to be overly sensitive Fail, fail, everyday, damn... Muhammad Ali was, the story goes, the greatest
boxer of all time. But that’s not why he’ll be remembered as the greatest. Yeah, he was incredibly fast in the ring. Ali: There’s not a heavyweight in the world
fast enough to stop me He was so powerful, his biggest fights never
went 16 rounds. But ali's greatness is all about the other punches he threw. “I SHOOK UP THE WORLD, I SHOOK UP THE WORLD, I SHOOK UP THE WORLD” He always made his boxing about something
much bigger than himself Ali: I wanna fight for the prestige – not
for me, but to uplift my brothers who are sleeping on a concrete floors today in America. For example, listen to this story about after
he won the gold medal in the 1960 olympics. Ali: I took my gold medal. Thought I’d invented
something I said “I’m gonna get my people [?] I’m the champion of the whole world.
I know I can eat downtown now. I went downtown and had my big old medal on. And at that time
things weren’t integrated the black peoples couldn’t eat downtown. And I went downtown
and I sat down and I said “cup of coffee and a hot dog” this young lady she said
“We don’t serve negroes” and I was so mad I said “I don’t eat em either just
give me cup of coffee” So it might not be a surprise that an early
mentor was Malcolm X, then of the Nation of Islam. Have you been advising him as far as his religious
affiliations are concerned? Malcom X: Well no I don’t give advice to
anyone. Most people know he changed his name based
on his religious beliefs. But while most accounts say Cassius changed
his name to Muhammad Ali, that’s not the whole story. The morning after Cassius became
heavyweight champ, he confirmed publicly that he was a member of the Nation of Islam and
he and Malcolm X announced his new name. David Remnick: He said he was Cassius X. Ali: Clay was a white man’s name. It was
a slave name. The X was the Nation of Islam’s way of rejecting
a name bestowed by whites. Days later, Elijah Muhammad, the leader of
the Nation of Islam, went further. Manning marable: bestowing upon Cassius X
an original name Muhammad Ali, which “beloved of god” Ali: So I’m now Muhammad Ali But he refused to change it legally:
Ali: The judge is what color? He’s white. In other words I’d have to ask a white man
“May I call myself Muhammad Ali, boss?” He refused the draft to serve in vietnam as
a conscientious objector. That meant losing his title, losing his profession. and being
convicted in court. Ali: My conscience won’t let me go shoot
my brother or some darker people or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful
America and shoot them for what? They never called me nigger. They never lynched me, they
never put dogs on me, they never robbed me of my nationality, raped and killed my mother
and father. Shoot them for what? I don’t have to go and shoot them. Just take me to
jail. But his moral stand brought him into the civil
rights movement. He befriended Martin Luther King Jr. despite their differences, Reporter: What did you discuss back in the
hotel room? Ali: Nothing. We’re just friends. Just like
Kruschev and Kennedy United against oppression and the war. MLK: As Muhammad Ali has just said, we are
all victims of the same system of oppression. And even though we may have different religious
beliefs, this does not at all bring about a difference in terms of our concern.
Ali: Still brothers Reporter: Do you share the same concern that
Muhammad has for his draft status? MLK: Oh I certainly do. You know my views
on the draft are very clear. I’m against it. And he took his case of conscientious objection
to the supreme court. Ali: I haven’t burnt my own draft records.
But what I’m doing is legal. This is why I believe I’ll receive justice in the higher
courts. You can deny the draft on any grounds but you gonna have to go to court. It’s
law. If you lose you go to jail which I said I’ll do. My fight is legal. Most people avoided the draft however they
could, burning their draft cards, or using a complicated series deferments like Future
president Bill Clinton did. Ali: But if you notice I’ve been the most
persecuted. I’m not allowed to work in American I’m not allowed America. Home of the brave
land of the free. Reporter: Are there times when you miss being
heavyweight champ of the world? Ali: No, they miss me.
Reporter: I know that Ali: You know I don’t miss it. I’m not
missing it. Though he was able to return to boxing, he
never stopped shaking things up. Ali: The Vietcong are not all bad but America
are still dropping bombs. In Hiroshima, Japan wasn’t bad but she still dropped the bomb.
In Korea they wasn’t bad but they still dropped the bomb. So now I’m gonna forget
the 400 years of lynching and raping and depriving my people of freedom and justice and equality…
and I’m gonna look at two or three white people who are trying to do right and don’t
see the other million trying to kill me? He used these media appearances over and over
to try to promote trying to live a moral life. Ali: As you know in this country a black athlete
or entertainer has a lot of influence. Some of them promote some of them make movies.
I’d like to do all i can to uplift the people morally, and spiritually as far as Loving
ourselves, sticking together and helping ourselves. Before uh, expecting others to help them,
to respect them when they don’t respect themselves.. Johnny Carson: Well having known you for as
long as I do, I don’t know anybody who’s better qualified to do that than you, and
I know you mean it. After he retired, he even saved a man from
jumping to his death in 1981: Reporter: The former heavyweight champion
went to a window and reportedly yelled “I’m your brother. I want to help you.” Recognizing
Ali, the man finally opened the fire escape door and Ali approached him on the ledge. He helped negotiate the release of 14 hostages
in iraq. He stood with Nelson Mandela against apartheid.
He delivered medical supplies and food to kids all over the world.
And though his genetic disease, parkinson’s, cruelly impaired his function, that never
stopped his ability to inspire billions. Three billion people watched this in 1996. And in one of his final public appearances,
he spoke out about islam after the devastating attacks of September 11th, even though he
could barely speak. Ali: I’m a Muslim. I’ve been a Muslim
for 20 years. And I’m against killing, violence. And all Muslims are against it. I think the
people should know the real truth about Islam. You know me, I’m a boxer. I’m called the
Greatest of All Time. People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of truth. And
I wouldn’t be here representing Islam if it was really like the terrorist look. I think
that all the people should know the truth and come to recognize the truth because Islam
is peace and against killing, murder, and the terrorist that do it in the name of islam.
And If I had the chance, I’d do something about it. And last winter, when he could no longer speak,
he wrote a statement against comments from Donald Trump that lumped the actions of a
few murderers in Paris and San Bernadino with 1.5 Billion muslims around the world. He said “Speaking as someone who has never
been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their
position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided
murderers have perverted people's views on what Islam really is” Ali was a fighter, but i don’t think his
muscles are really the part we care about. And it’s not what he cared about either Ali: “Boxing was just my way of introducing
me to the struggle. My main fight is for freedom and equality. Money don’t really mean nothing
because gave up the title not knowing if I’m coming back or not for four years. So these gloves represent a lot more than
physical punching. And today, a pair of them have been in the President’s private offices
the past 8 years. Ali: For this fight I’ve wrestled with alligators
I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning and put thunder in jail. You know
I’m bad. I murdered a rock, Injured a stone, and I Hospitalized a brick. I’m so bad,
I make medicine sick. I’m so fast, man, I can run through a hurricane and don’t
get wet. When George Foreman meets me he’ll pay his debt. I can drown and drink of water
and kill a dead tree. Wait till you see Muhammad Ali. every election cycle the American voter has to grapple with controversial issues like terrorism or abortion but this year the debate is taking place in an area that most of us would want to avoid the public bathroom and want to use the bathroom you would be fine with her using any bathroom she chooses that is correct proponents of a new line North Carolina say that allowing transgender people to go to the bathroom in the bathroom the fits with their gender identity would cause the end of public schools as we know it if this prevails this will be the end of public schools as we know it although it's a hot topic right now other cities have already implemented this policy in fact the three largest school districts New York Los Angeles and Chicago all already have that policy in place with no notable uptick in assaults so if this bathroom policy is already in place in so many areas in the United States then I know people so terrified I know this is chase Tran Gio he's a lawyer at the ACLU and he's transgender you do yeah I know why why tell me why well I think people are really anxious about the fact that we have to share public space with people who are different from ourselves in general and right now there's all this attention on transgender people so people are focusing all of the fear and confusion about who trans people are around their anxiety about the bathrooms in general and trying to expel transgender people from public space we've seen it over and over again throughout history the reality is that bathrooms have long been a battleground and we saw this in the context of the civil rights movement and efforts to expel black people from spaces that white people dominated including bathrooms and locker rooms wait what are you doing in the women's bathroom if I was in North Carolina I would have to use the women's bathroom because I was assigned female at birth so I would be a dude in the women's bathroom that's with a lot of required that these lawmakers are literally causing the problem that they say that they want to avoid in the first place yeah that's what I'm saying but can you give me a minute oh yeah sorry sorry to be fair creating gender-neutral spaces is tricky there's a rec center in New York where they allow a gender-neutral locker room and some parents were concerned about girls being in the same room as men but if these lawmakers are so worried about men entering women's bathrooms then why are they passing a law that will effectively do just that the biggest irony is that HB 2 and laws like it would in fact force trans men to enter and use women's bathrooms if public officials want to spend money and time debating a real problem it should be the dangers that transgender people face in America like the homicide rate that has hit a historic high in the US or the fact that 41% of trans people have already attempted suicide just last year a transgender homecoming king and activist in North Carolina committed suicide why aren't lawmakers in that state alarmed by that instead and if lawmakers insist on elbowing their way into the restroom maybe they should address the real and well-documented harassment of transgender people in restrooms one study found that 70 percent of trans individuals have experienced some form of harassment in a bathroom and bills like hb2 cutting that danger bills like it even if they don't even pass could cause a public health crisis in the transgender community maybe those should be the numbers keeping lawmakers up at night the GIF is one of the Internet's most
loyal friends. And the story of people trying to make money off the GIF is one
that goes back to the earliest days of the internet. The graphics interchange
format was invented by this guy in 1987. He, by the way pronounces it "Jif." It wasn't long before people try to use this technology for business. The biggest operation was a website
called Animation Factory which produced and sold GIFs of every imaginable variety. "It seems like they set out to try and
animate the entire world, starting with the most arcane and bizarre
ideas they could think of." That's Alex Goldman he's the co-host of
one of my favorite podcasts called Reply All He recently ran a story about Animation
Factory's rise in the late '90s. "I gotta say my favorite is: there is a
faceless man and he sort of wriggling and floating above him as a UFO." "There are tens of thousands the owners
say that there's something like half a million GIFs on the site." "It's just a an insane insane amount." "There was a time on the internet when
these animated GIFs wre the thing you would decorate your
website with. There was no aesthetic for the internet." Who knows who needed this
image of a guy with an automatic hammer machine but someone did and Animation
Factory was there to make it. "The business model of Animation Factory was
if if there's something that someone may have wanted one of, we're going to make
15 of that thing." "amazingly that was a viable business
strategy in like the late 90s early 2000s." Alex said that he heard from
someone who was on the board of the company that owned Animation Factory in
the early two thousands. "He told me that animation factory in at
a day was making about 2 million dollars a year in profits." "I mean the internet of the late nineties
and early two thousands was a pre blog world. "it was before the internet had templates
that allowed people to easily make attractive-looking blogs." But the
internet matured and by the mid 2000s, web design was informed by
professional standards. Blogs showed up with their standardized templates and
GIFs lost their place as the design elements and place holders on the web. then something started happening around
the late 2000s that would pave the way for a GIF renaissance: Bandwidth
improved and people started making GIFs out of existing video content, not for
web design purposes but solely as a mode of expression the rise of places like Tumblr and Reddit
meant there were more places to put these little bite-sized expressions.
GIFs were back. The gift Renaissance also spurred on
some huge business ventures surrounding the potentially lucrative GIF economy "We're biologically wired for visual
consumption and communication." That's Adam Leibsohn, the chief operating
officer of Giphy which is the biggest of the new GIF companies. They're basically
a GIF search engine and they plan to make money by partnering with huge
brands to create GIFs of that brands content that people can share in their
day-to-day communication. "So, traditionally an advertiser would
have to spend a lot of money to get their message through the market and
they're using all this stuff to interrupt your experience and they're
just hoping that like that message will sink in. And we're making it a bottom-up
approach in that we're making this content accessible and expressive. People
are taking those branded objects--that piece of Game of Thrones, that clip of
Seinfeld, and they're sending it to their friend. Instead of the brand shoving the
message on somebody's throat, people are the ones being the brand ambassadors. They are
self identifying with the content because they selected it they're endorsing it because they sent
it to you and you're both bonding over it emotionally because you're using it to
communicate." So while you might send a GIF of Zach
Braff expressing exactly what you need to tell a friend, Hulu sees this as
advertising for their show scrubs. If advertisers looking for "engagement"
with their content it doesn't get much better than this. Big
production studios see this is a way of sneaking little advertisements in to
your email and text feeds and they may be willing to pay big bucks for
partnerships with places like Giphy. But as of now there are no paid gifts on the
site and Giphy says that they don't have specific plans on if or how they
will mark sponsored gifts as advertisement For now they seem to be focused on
making GIFs ubiquitous and accessible on every communication platform "You can't
buy an ad inside of our iMessage conversation that's just never gonna
happen." 'And venture capitalists seem to think
that this is a safe bet as well: Giphy is valued at 300 million dollars
even though doesn't even make money yet. "Everyone searching for content anyways,
everyone searching for expressive content: hello goodbye how are you they're really searching for that
content translated or sort through the lens of whatever is the cultural
phenomenon of the moment whether it's Game of Thrones or some other new movie
or some other big TV show. From an advertising standpoint what we're
suggesting is we should be doing more." Late sleepers get a bad rap. Maybe your friend who wakes up at 5 a.m. every day is a little quirky, but I bet they’re
productive. Your friend who wakes up at 11 every day, what do you think about them? But it turns out, sleeping late isn’t just a preference or a bad habit. Research is showing
that our bedtime could be coded into our DNA. Each of us has an internal clock, but my clock
isn’t necessarily in sync with yours. That’s because we all have our own chronotypes,
or preferred sleeping patterns. Scientists study chronotypes by tracking when
people go to sleep on days they don’t have to go to work or school. This chart shows the the mid-point of people’s
sleep on those free days. If you go to bed around 11 pm and get up between around 7 am, you have an
average chronotype. A very small number of people on either end of the chart have very early or very late chronotypes. But even those of us who are just slightly
behind the average chronotype can feel jet-lagged every day.
If you have an average chronotype, you’re generally getting the same amount of sleep on both free days and work days. Your sleep schedule fits with society’s
schedule. But the later your chronotype, the bigger
the difference between the amount of sleep you get on free days versus work days. So going back to a work day after a free day
is like flying over several time zones. And to understand why, you need to look at the master clock in our body. It's a bundle of neurons called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, or SCN.
If you have a normal chronotype you SCN tells your pineal gland to start
producing melatonin around 9 pm, that makes you sleepy. Around 10:30, your colon starts suppressing bowel movements. Your
body temperature drops to its lowest point around 4:30 am, and your blood pressure reaches
its highest point around 6:45 am, so you’re at your most alert around 10 am
But for people with late chronotypes, all this stuff happens later in the day.
And there’s not much they can do about it. That’s because inside the neurons that make
up the SCN, scientists have discovered something called clock genes.
These genes turn on and off throughout the day to keep your body on a 24-hour cycle.
This time-lapse of the SCN shows these clock genes releasing proteins every 24 hours for
a week like...clockwork Researchers who study families of extreme
early-risers show that many of them share the same mutation on one of these clock genes.
Studies have found similar mutations in hamsters hamsters with early chronotypes. But when scientists took out these hamsters’ SCN, their body clock, and replaced them with the SCNs of normal
hamsters, they still woke up and went to sleep super early.
That’s because the SCN isn’t our only biological clock.
you also have all these little clocks in every single cell of your body In the early-rising hamsters, these clocks
in the body preserved the early chronotype, even after the brain’s SCN was taken out.
And for humans, this helps explain why it’s nearly impossible for late sleepers to adjust
to society’s schedule...the cells in their bodies literally won’t let them. And that’s
a problem. In one study, researchers took healthy people and messed with their sleep schedules. After
three weeks, they had early signs of diabetes. People with late chronotypes are also more
likely to be smokers and to develop depression. and maybe that should change the way we think
about sleep, it's not this nuisance, it's this fundamental part of life. Maybe some late sleepers are lazy, sure. But
the rest have been sorely misunderstood. Want a preview of the battle between traditional
cars and self-driving ones? Don't look to Tesla, Apple, or Google. Look back a hundred
years, when automobiles took on horses — and the cars played dirty to win. "Ransom Olds, who founded the Olds Motor Works,
Oldsmobile, was particularly aggressive in his attacks on the horse. This was like a
psychologic thing — I don't know where it would fall in a diagnostic sense, but he
really hated horses." That's G. Wayne Miller — he wrote "Car
Crazy," a book that's about the really early days of cars. And early car marketers had
the horse on their mind. Those cars were unreliable and traveled on really bad roads, so carmakers
had a lot of work to do and a lot of gimmicks that they used. People were scared of cars;
one undertaker used to leave his card on automobile dashboards. So automakers had to be pretty
aggressive selling their invention. They raced cars around the country and manufacturers
insulted their competitors in ads. But some of their marketing firepower was
reserved for the horse. Of course, they invented the term horsepower, defining a car's power
by how many horses it could replace. But they also rigorously tested horse braking power
against their own cars, like a 15 horsepower De Dion against a team of horses. Yeah, the
machine stopped more quickly. And they taunted mercilessly. One Olds ad said, "Nature made
a mistake in giving the horse brain." The company claimed cars were cheaper and easier
than horses, even though most cars were really pricey and often required a home mechanic. Henry Ford hated horses too. "The horse is
doomed," Ford told a reporter. "These horses will be driven from the land, their troubles
will soon be over." Carmakers took on horses in public shame-races and in 1895 a new magazine
launched with a name that was not subtle: it was "The Horseless Age." On the road, cars often collided into horses,
and conflicts between car owners and farmers were common. But hating on horses wasn't just
personal. It was...logical. By the early 1900s, the laboring horse wasn't
noble — it was a public health hazard. Thousands of horses died each year from disease, overwork,
and old age, and those that lived produced millions of pounds of manure. "Those were significant and real public health
hazards." And urbanites were aware of it too. As cities
like New York grew really quickly, streets became jammed with horses and tons of horse
waste. "And there was another despicable downside:
not every horse owner was a kind person. And so horses were frequently whipped and beaten,
and when they died, you know, these despicable owners, often would leave a one ton, or ton
and a half, horse in the streets. Just leave it there. And that was a clear health hazard." Cars helped change that. Even Horseless Age
spoke up for the horse, saying in its first issue that cars would "spare the obedient
beast." So, yes, cars and horses did have a knock down, drag out fight, but there were...two
winners. And that's how it might be when self-driving cars come around: a fight to convince consumers,
followed by a likely decrease in fatalities and pollution. It might not always be easy. Motor World's
1905 headlines claimed that "since time of chariots" people have "opposed all new vehicles,"
and that might still be true. But, as Horseless Age put it more sweetly in their very first
issue, "Streets will be cleaner, jams and blockades less likely to occur, and accidents
less frequent." Thanks to G. Wayne Miller for talking to me,
this video is basically a chapter of his book and there are a lot of good stories in there.
I wanted to share one more insult, however, and it comes from the first issue of The Horseless
Age. This is what they said in response to the argument that the automobile scares horses:
"Suppose it does. So do locomotives, bicycles, street cars, Fourth of July celebrations,
and a dozen other things. Horses must get used to it." Boom. I was very little...about one-and-a-half.
My uncle gave me a spoon. I spelled it S-P-O-O-N. And that's it, that's how it started. My first
spelling bee was two-and-a-half. Ok. So I just get the letters in my mind. As I
speak- say the letters, the letters come out of my mind. And I say the first letter every
time the letters come out. Steps I can use for getting the word right. Number one is alternate pronunciation. May I have the alternate pronunciations please? Next one, am I pronouncing
the word correctly? You can make sure you're pronouncing the word right. Now three, language
of origin. May I have the language of origin, please? Well the language of origin will help
you out with many parts of spelling the right word. I can give an example...Bondon, B-O-N-D-O-N.
Which is a very tricky word. The -ons in that word will be pronounced nasally...like, it'll
be pronounced with the nose. Like...so...so it's like...and then you say, like, "on,"
it's like "oink, oink, oink." Like "on," so it's like "bon-don." Now let's move on to
definition. It will give what the word means, so, if it's a homonym, that definition can
really help you out. Next up is part of speech. It might be optional but most of the time
I have to use it. I can ask that so I know if it's a noun ending in -us or an adjective
ending in -ous. So, finally, say it, spell it, say it: I say the word, spell the word,
say the word, and I'm done! Whole Foods? Refrigerated section by the fish on ice. 7-11? Beside the fruit cups in light syrup. Trader Joe’s? By the packaged sausage. It is everywhere. But as sushi made its way into foodies’ hearts across the globe, one thing has persisted in making sushi sushi. And it’s right there in the name. The word “sushi” actually refers, not to the fish, but to the rice that was originally used to preserve the fish. Some of the earliest documentation of sushi comes from China thousands of years ago. During the monsoon season, floods pushed fish into rice paddies and farmers who caught the fish needed a way to store them for extended periods of time. So they salted the whole fish, packed it under weights with cooked rice, and sealed it in a barrel. Months later, bacteria had converted sugars in the rice into lactic acid, which helped prevent the fish from spoiling. The pickled fish was eaten and the rice was tossed out. This preservation method spread to Japan around the 8th century, where they later shortened the fermentation time and began eating the sour-tasting rice with the fish. And when rice vinegar was invented around 1600, it was used to flavor the rice instead of waiting for it to ferment. Later, the invention of nori sometime before the 19th century led to maki, or rolled sushi. 18th century sushi was often 3 to 4 times bigger than what we see today and was served as a street food in Japan. As it moved indoors, restaurants wanted to distinguish their sushi as more refined, so they started making the petite nigiri we know today. Only after the invention of refrigeration in the 20th century did raw fish sushi become more common. In the 1960s, sushi landed in the US and ended up at the first American sushi bar, Kawafuku, in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. It eventually became popular all across the US by the 1980s and the rest is history. Sushi rolls in particular are continuing to make their mark in American cuisine. You’ve got the Philly roll with its very un Japanese-ingredient of Philadelphia cream cheese, the the California roll made with avocados and fake crab meat. And many many more nontraditional ingredients. "Oh my God! The sushi burrito is living." "This is deep-fried sushi." It was also in the States where the maki roll was turned inside-out, reportedly in response to an American squeamishness about seaweed. But through it all, the flavor of the vinegared rice is still a staple, tying today’s sushi back to its very practical past. Let’s be clear about something: Barack Obama
has been one of the most consequential presidents in recent American history. "You can't say it, but you know it's true." In the past eight years, he has completely transformed the American healthcare system.
He got tough reforms to Wall Street passed after the biggest financial crisis in decades. He appointed two of the 4 women to ever serve on the supreme
court, both of whom were part of the historic decision legalizing same sex marriage.
He put in place the toughest climate regulations in American history. He opened the US to Cuba
for the first time in half a century. And he reached a peaceful settlement to the nuclear
standoff with Iran that lasted for a decade before he took office.
You can celebrate or bemoan these accomplishments. Liberals will think they’re great, conservatives
will think they’re awful. But it’s hard to deny that they’re big deals. So…. where do we start?
Obamacare is a big fucking deal. For at least 100 years, the big goal of American
liberals on domestic policy was to get a national health insurance program done.
A lot of countries implemented universal health care in the 20th century — the UK, Canada,
France — but the US always lagged behind. There were attempt after attempt after attempt
by American progressives of both parties to try to get the US to where everyone else was
going. And each of those attempts failed. Teddy Roosevelt failed, FDR failed, Truman
failed, Nixon failed, Carter failed, Clinton failed… and then Obama succeeded. And he established for the first time in American history that healthcare is a right. The plan
still leaves millions uninsured, but it laid a foundation for universal health care. To understand what Obama did for foreign policy,
you have to go back to a moment in 2007, this moment in particular:
“Would you be willing to meet separately without preconditions, in Washington or anywhere
else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, in order to bridge
the gap that divides our countries?” Obama: “I would. And the reason is this,
that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has
been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”
So, this was considered a gaffe. The safe thing that you’re supposed to say is “yeah,
diplomacy’s great, we’ll talk to some people, but there have to be preconditions.
No preconditions is silly.” And this is what other Democrats did say at the time .
But he didn’t accept that. And with two of the countries listed in that
question — Iran and Cuba — Obama led some of the biggest changes to those diplomatic
relationships in recent history. I’d be remiss in not mentioning the importance
of the fact that Obama is the first black president.
After 8 years it seems obvious to point out But the history of America is a history of
learning to deal with racial diversity, and with the legacy of white supremacy. In a very
real way the history of America is the history of race relations.
There’s a famous photo that still hangs in the White House of a black toddler in the
White House who asked to touch president Obama’s hair because he thought it was great that
the president had hair that looked like his. It seems cheesy, but it really is a big deal
that a generation of black children are going to grow up knowing that they could be the
president. Overall it’s a pretty extensive track record.
You can generally divide American presidents into two camps. There are the ones who were
maybe a little good, a little bad, but are sorta forgettable: Grover Cleveland, Benjamin
Harrison, Zachary Taylor, William Howard Taft, Bill Clinton.
And then there are the ones who were hugely consequential either for good: FDR
(ending the depression, winning WWII), Lincoln (winning the civil war), George Washington
(establishing what a president is), or for ill.
Andrew Johnson, destroying reconstruction and subjugating black people for a century.
Andrew Jackson committing genocide or ethnic cleansing against the Southeast Indians.
I think it’s hard to argue that Obama is in the sorta iffy, “eh” camp rather than the
big consequential camp. He did a lot, he accomplished a lot.
And I think in the next 10 or 20 years when we have a bunch more presidents many more of whom are alright or slightly bad but ultimately forgettable. We’re going to look back and realize what a
rare thing a presidency that active and that accomplished is. “He’s a war hero because he was captured.
I like people who weren’t captured ok? I hate to tell you.” The 2016 Republican presidential nominee disregards
the norms of adult behavior. He disregards the norms of American democracy
as we know it. “It should be heartbreaking to every American
that we have a frontrunner who suggests there will be a religious test for anybody that
wishes to come to our shores.” He’s so unusual, his rhetoric at times so
extreme, that political experts and commentators were blindsided by his rise. "We better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the republican ticket." [Laughter] "I know you don't believe that" How did Donald Trump attract such broad support
within the Republican party? And what does it mean for the US, beyond this election? And it turns out that this is
a question that can be answered to a really surprising extent via this niche field of
political science. It developed a theory about what’s called authoritarianism. We’re not talking about dictatorships here.
Authoritarianism is a term political scientists use for a worldview that values order and
authority, and distrusts outsiders and social change. And when authoritarians feel threatened, they
look for strongman leaders. Leaders who are punitive, who target
out-groups and have a simple, forceful leadership style that makes them feel strong. And if
you were going to grow that candidate in a lab... "I’m going to bomb the shit out of
them." He would look a lot like Donald Trump. "When you get these terrorists, youhave to take out their families. They care about their lives. Don't kid yourself. But they say they don't care about their lives. You have to take out their families. Authoritarianism is not, in an of itself,
necessarily a partisan issue. For most of this country’s history, authoritarians
were likely divided between the two parties. But now, only one of the parties really appeals
to them. What happened was the Republican party
started to embrace what it referred to as traditional values, and it stood against a
series of major social changes in this country. After initially supporting civil rights, Republicans
began courting southern white voters who opposed racial integration. They turned against the
Equal Rights Amendment, denounced abortion, and later, fought against same-sex marriage. Our nation must enact a Constitutional
amendment to protect marriage in America. More recently, foreign threats like terrorism
have become major political issues, with Republicans taking positions that align with authoritarian
fears and preferences. 2002 headline: Republicans get a bonus from
War on Terrorism So Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler,
two political scientists. They tracked data over several decades, and they found that
authoritarian voters were shifting into the Republican Party. So that means that when
authoritarians become scared, when they become activated by a particular social change or
issue, the Republican Party can’t ignore them. And they are a ready-made constituency
for a candidate like Donald Trump. Are you going to have a massive deportation force? "You’re going to have a deportation force." "’d bring back waterboarding. And I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding." Testing people for authoritarianism is a bit
tricky. You can’t just ask people, you know, ‘Are you really freaked out by social change?
Do racial differences unsettle you? ‘Do you support strongman leaders?’ because
those are very sensitive questions and people won't necessarily answer them honestly. So instead, political scientists ask people
about something more neutral: their parenting preferences. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence, or respect
for elders? Obedience or self-reliance? These questions seem like they’re about
raising children, but really what they’re asking people is how much they value order
and authority. So when political scientists tested these 4 parenting questions against the behaviors
they knew authoritarians exhibited, they found out that the correlation was very close. It was very predictive, at least for white voters. Using this 4-question test, Vox worked with
Morning Consult in February to poll a large sample of likely voters. Our results yielded a few really interesting things. The first one was that, yes, scoring
high on the authoritarianism questions was very predictive of support for Trump. A political science PhD student named Matthew
MacWilliams has found similar results. He’s done 2 polls, both of which found that authoritarianism is not only strongly
predictive of Trump support, but that it seems to do a better job of predicting it than virtually
any other factor. We also looked at what authoritarian voters
are afraid of. On things like gun violence, or car accidents, or prescription drugs, there wasn't a huge difference between authoritarians and nonauthoritarians. But
when it came to threats associated with people, and particularly foreign people, authoritarians
were much more afraid. And we identified policies that authoritarians
were more likely to support. So authoritarians were much more likely to say for instance that the United States
should use force rather than diplomacy when dealing with countries that threaten our interests
overseas. And they were much more likely to want to sacrifice civil liberties in exchange
for safety. "I want surveillance of certain mosques,
ok? If that’s ok. I want surveillance." It’s a set of priorities that doesn’t
always align with the Republican establishment. They don’t seem to have that much
interest in small government. And they definitely don’t seem particularly interested in shrinking entitlements like Social Security or Medicaid. This theory doesn’t fully explain the Trump
phenomenon -- researchers will probably study this election for decades. But what it tells us is that he’s benefitted from a larger shift in this country - one that goes beyond any
one candidate. Trump isn’t just a fluke. He’s not somebody who is just doing well because he had name recognition or was a famous TV star. This is a large group of people. They want these things. And they’re going to be looking for politicians
who can give it to them. And that means that Donald Trump could be just the first of many Trumps in American politics. A few weeks ago, I interviewed one of my favorite
rappers, Open Mike Eagle. And immediately we started geeking out over the masked emcee,
MF Doom. His flow I have to be careful with his flow
because his flow lives in my mind and in my heart. I can almost get into his mind on how
he writes. You know? This is what MF Doom sounds like. Just listen. He’ll have entire bars that rhyme. Like
the entire set up bar rhymes with every syllable in the punchline bar. It’s incredible. It made me wonder: What can I learn from rappers simply by looking
at how they rhyme with the beat? I try to start off with 16 dots on the paper. That’s Rakim. He’s widely regarded as
one of the most influential MCs of all time. If 4 bars was this long. I see like a graph
between them four bars. I could place so many words and so many syllables. I could take
it to the point where there were no other words you could put in those 4 bars. So, before we get into rhymes we need to know
what beats and bars are. Martin: I always try to find the beat of the
music first. That’s Martin Connor. He’s analyzed the
most rhythmically dense rap songs down to the last syllable. And he writes about it. Martin: A bar is a grouping together of 4
beats. Before guys like Rakim came along, rhymes
in rap songs were pretty basic. Take one of the first commercially successful
rap songs from 1980, “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow This simple AA BB rhyming pattern with no
word play or puns is pretty predictable, lyrically and musically But, fast forward to 1986 and you’ve got
songs like “Eric B. Is President” from Eric B. & Rakim. Compare this to “The Breaks” and it’s
clear the frequency of rhymes is greater. But not only are you seeing more rhymes you’re
also starting to see different kinds of rhymes. “Indeed” and “Proceed” are internal
rhymes because they happen inside the sentence. “Man made a mix” and “band-aid to fix”
are multisyllable rhymes The other thing Rakim does later in the verse
is cross the bar line and he does it in a tremendously clever way. Crossing the bar line happens when a sentence
like “The rhyme can’t be kept inside” doesn’t end when the bar ends. If you listen closely you’ll hear that the
second syllable of inSIDE Lands on the first beat of the next bar. Rakim even references this in the lyric. And
it’s pretty clever. Now, fast forward 11 years and Notorious B.I.G's
“Hypnotize" cleverly used Rakim’s techniques to make one of the smoothest rap songs ever. Martin: What I like most about this is that
it’s not predictable and it’s always changing. So sometimes Notorious B.I.G.s sentences are
long. Sometimes they’re short. Like the moment in this verse here: He’s also completely comfortable delivering
a sentence across the barline. But, what makes this song stand out the most to me
is that before one rhyme scheme ends, another one begins. Like this moment in verse 2. The first group of rhymes is the “oo”
rhymes and it links the first and second sentence which then begins the “ih” and so on. It’s a huge reason Biggie sounds so smooth
here. Now, as much as Biggie daisy chained an entire
song together with rhymes, he was, for the most part using single syllable and single
word rhymes. And this is where artists like Mos Def push
things even further. His verse on “Re:Definition” from 2002
hits nearly every note within the bar with 4 syllable rhymes. And he does it across a whopping 14 bars. In Re:Definition, Mos Def is very clearly
rhyming each word with the beat. This is where Andre 3000 shakes things up
with his verse in Aquemini. Focus on the beat first. Now listen to each syllable, with the beat in mind. Most rappers would have dollars, parlors,
and bottles all rhyme similarly on the beat. But Andre is accenting each rhyme within different
places relative to the beat and bar. People say that the word orange doesn't rhyme with anything. 
And that kinda pisses me off because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange... In fact, Eminem, does this exact thing on
his 2002 song “Business” Eminem doesn’t just pack in tremendously
dense multi syllable rhymes, he also tells incredibly vivid stories. And for a lot of people that wins in a battle. This is where “Lose Yourself” comes in.
It was the first rap song to win an Academy Award. Whew the Oscar goes to Eminem, for Lose Yourself
from 8 Mile. Martin: I’ll see the line and I’ll separate it all into not just words or sentences, but into their syllables. When you group all of these rhymes together,
this incredibly complex rhyme scheme emerges. It’s unpredictable, it’s complex rhythmically
and lyrically but - It’s not just that you’re rhyming, 
It’s that while you’re rhyming you’re still telling a good story. And "Lose Yourself" is like that. Today, rappers like Kendrick Lamar are carrying on the tradition of artists 
that are able to use the musicality of rhymes to create really memorable songs. Let’s look at Kendrick Lamar’s “Rigamortus” The first thing you’ll notice is that Kendrick
has created a very clear motive with his rhymes. What’s a motive? It’s a short musical
idea. A musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in
a composition. Here’s probably the most recognizable motive
in the history of music. That “du du du dummmmm” is carried out
through the entire piece. It’s 3 quick notes followed by a long note. The musical motive in “Rigamortus” is
two short notes followed by a long note, stringing the entire
song together. When Kendrick goes into 4th gear he
keeps the motive going. And the motive keeps him in check. As much as Biggie’s “Hypnotize” sounds
completely different from “Rigamortus” there are a lot of musical similarities. Remember how Biggie daisy chained rhymes?
Kendrick does that too here. In “Hypnotize” Biggie also creates a motive with the sequence
of rhymes here: Now, let’s get back to MF Doom. Two years
after “Lose Yourself” won an Academy Award, MF Doom released 3 full albums including Madvillainy - which is widely considered one
of the best underground hip hop records period. Mos Def can’t even contain his excitement
talking about Doom. For the most part, MF Doom rhymes on the beat
but he uses multi syllable rhyming phrases up with wazoo often rhyming entire lines together. This is called a holorime. Mike: He’ll do setup punchline. Like his
following bar will be referencing the punchline but not in a way that he’ll be setting up
a another one, he just starts to go in another direction, but just acknowledges where the last bar was. This is what Mike is talking about. MF Doom understands the power of rhyme and
the beat and completely manipulates it in a humorous way. As Pitchfork points out “the rhyme's pattern
and rap's topical stereotype demands the word "bitches," yet Doom hilariously says "booze"
and uses that rhyme to connect the next sentence. Where artists like Kendrick Lamar, Eminem,
and Andre 3000 are telling very vivid stories with their rhymes, MF Doom is using his dense
rhymes like a villain would use his superpower. Before you know it you’re being hit with
a killer punchline, double entendres, and clever wordplay. Martin: I love rappers with that  syncopated uneven phrasing where the sentences don't line up with the bars because, like you said, you can't predict what's going to happen. The point of appreciating it is to see what the very most clever human beings are capable of doing that you didn't think possible. For a long time, running was for weirdos. It wasn't always like it is today. Today, we're used to people pushing past us
on the sidewalk, dressed in neon and kitted out with iPods and FitBits. It's normal that everybody looks like cyborg
highlighters. And in America, the metric system is basically
kept alive by 5k races alone. But back in the 60s, running was so unusual
that it had to be explained to people. On October 15, 1968, the Chicago Tribune devoted
an entire page to a strange new trend: "Jogging: The Newest Road to Fitness." A typical recreational runner, Andre Mandeville,
ran 11 minute miles. He also smoked three to four packs of cigarettes
a day. That same year, in New York, runners like
Dick Cordier got ticketed for "illegal use of the highway by a pedestrian." And in Connecticut, Ray Crothers was chased
by five squad cars cruising the streets because he was...running. Small town athletes suffered too, women especially. One woman wrote that there was no thing odder
than a woman jogging in a small town. She decided to swim instead. Athletes always ran, but for recreation, it
was rare. Boxers, track stars, and soldiers, sure, but
normal people rarely ran before the late 60s. It wasn't just odd outdoors, either. The most infamous use of a treadmill wasn't
in a gym, but in a prison. In 1895, the Chicago Tribune described a treadmill
for its readers. It was "the great bugaboo of the English convict." The prisoner in that case? The writer Oscar Wilde, who was serving a
two-year sentence for sodomy. His hard labor included the treadmill. Long story short, you did not jump on the
treadmill while watching House Hunters after work. Treadmills had been used as a power source
for thousands of years, but in the 1820s, the Brixton prison made them famous as a tool
in jails. If there was nothing for the treadmill to
grind, they had it power a fan to grind the wind — yes, even prison treadmills had
a difficulty setting. And while treadmills were used by medical
professionals and athletes in the 1900s, the prison treadmill was a symbol of what running
meant: at worst, torture. At best, training. But by 1969, treadmills were being developed
for home use, and that reflected the sea change that ultimately made jogging mainstream. The New York Times reported the reason inventor
William Staub believed his mainstream treadmill could work. A 1968 book, Aerobics, convinced him of the
health of an aerobic workout, and it was one of many books that pointed to jogging as a
way to get fit. Much of the credit for jogging specifically
goes to legendary University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman, who discovered cross-country
jogging on a trip to New Zealand in 1962, after meeting with pioneering runner and coach
Arthur Lydiard. Bowerman's 1966 pamphlet was a hit, and it
was followed by a massively popular book. Others followed — runners like Steve Prefontaine
became celebrities, and writer/runners like Jim Fixx continued the 70s running boom with
hit books. Around the same time, a young company called
Nike, cofounded by Bowerman, had financial incentives to push the new sport forward. Nike and other companies also meant those
early jogging shoes and outfits got a lot better. And it's continued that way to the present. Race participation alone has quadrupled since
1990, and there's almost no shame about incredibly colorful tights and talking about your quads
to strangers. It's become a sign of political vigor. But even in the 60s, people like Secretary
of the Interior Stewart Udall were confident that jogging's "here to stay." It turns out they had good reason. As another runner put it in 1968, "At first
you think everyone is staring at you—and they are. After a while, you enjoy jogging so much that
you don't give a damn." I'm a runner myself, really slow, but technically
a runner, and that might be why I find some of these anecdotes amusing. One of my favorites is from 1968, when Senator
Strom Thurmond was running around Greenville, South Carolina and he was followed by a squad
car because he was suspiciously...jogging. Show that Mitt Romney map. Look at that map. Let's go back to the 2000 map. And it is in dire need of a redesign. Just look
at this map. It's not just unhelpful, it's actually misleading. It shows the states
that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama won in 2012.  Without more information it's
really hard to tell that Obama actually won. He beat Romney by more than a
hundred electoral votes. So, while this map does a great job telling you that Romney
won Montana, for example, it doesn't tell you is how much that victory
doesn't matter. That's because montana only gets three electoral votes. Massachusetts gets four times as many, and you can barely find it on the map. That's because the people who made this
map made a choice. They chose to prioritize geographic accuracy over
electoral importance. And geographically accurate maps are great for road trips,
but they don't do a very good job telling account the country voted. So,
some designers have tried other solutions. They're making different maps called cartograms. These maps distort the state's shape so that their physical
size corresponds not with their geographic boundaries, but with the
number of electoral votes they get. Here's a version designed by the New
York Times, with each state scaled by electoral votes. They've ditched the
precise borders of each state in favor of squares, but still arranged them
geographically, so it's easy enough to find your own state. Another approach
from the Daily Kos makes room to report the popular vote from each
congressional district. But so far these ideas haven't been widely adopted. So
does this mean that we're stuck with bad maps for another election cycle? Not
necessarily. There are so many different ways to visualize information. Why not show a list of states? Or a series of bar charts? All of these methods tell you so much more than those ubiquitous red state, blue state maps. It’s hard to picture American cities without
the highways running through their core, but highway removal projects, like this one
in Boston, can give us a sense of how disruptive it was when the US built huge highways through
the cities after World War 2. “These new highways will have a far reaching
economic impact on the entire nation!” That was definitely true. Highways revolutionized
the ways we transport goods. But inside cities, they demolished and isolated entire neighborhoods,
...they gave wealthy taxpayers a way out of the city and gave air pollution and traffic
noise a way in. And they redesigned urban life around the
car: Now 85 percent of Americans drive to work every day. So why did American cities agree to build
highways that were bad for cities?? It’s a really interesting question, and
part of it goes back to the 1930s, when a group of auto interests such as General Motors
and AAA formed something called the National Highway Users Conference.
They began lobbying for taxes that would help fund highway construction.
General Motors started to design what a new highway system could look like. And they displayed
that vision at the 1939 World’s Fair with “Futurama”, an exhibit featuring expressways
that not only connected cities, but ran right through them. It was a design that allowed
for more cars and less congestion. By 1955, the Department of Commerce echoed
GM’s vision with something called the “Yellow Book.” It laid out all the routes that interstates
would take throughout the country under Eisenhower’s Federal Highway Act of 1956, which funded
the national highway system. A lot of it is logical, its connecting most
of the US’ major cities, but the really interesting thing is that you also have highways
slicing right through the downtowns of many of these cities. Pretty much every major city
in the country — New York, DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia — you have major highways cutting through neighborhoods,
requiring the demolition of lots of housing and other sorts of buildings.
That’s largely because some of the key contributors to the plan were auto industry members — but no urban planners.
And that’s because the profession barely even existed at the time. Nowadays there’s
a value placed on preserving neighborhoods, keeping cities intact, and that concept really
just didn’t exist in the 40s and 50s ... So when people were talking about connecting
the country with highways it seemed natural to drive them through the centers of cities
as well. Local municipalities were particularly eager
to build highways under this plan because 90 percent of funding came from the federal
government and the other 10 percent from states. There’s also a darker side to the reason why all these
planners wanted to build highways through downtowns and urban neighborhoods.
Highways not only paved the way for more and more white people to move into homogenous
suburbs, they also provided cover for targeted demolitions inside the city.
During that era, federal policies and implicit priorities in planners dictated that if you
had vibrant dense downtown neighborhoods filled mostly with African American residents, instead
of being preserved under the plan, they were slated as targets for removal. They were considered
“blight,” and an easy way of getting rid of that blight was by demolishing them and paving
a highway through it. "Neighborhoods and streetcars were pushed aside to make way for the automobile." Look at the neighborhoods of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley in Detroit. When you go back to the 30s and 40s, these
are thriving, dense neighborhoods filled with hundreds of thousands of residents, of businesses,
and if you go back today, they’re mostly just empty grass plots.
This wasn’t just a historical accident, it became a pattern in cities across the country.
Poor and minority residents were displaced to make way for highways, and white residents
used those highways to commute into the city for jobs and commute back home at night.
The only exception to this pattern is in places where highways were slated to go through wealthy
neighborhoods. There were actually proposals to put a highway
through northwest DC. And through Greenwich Village in Manhattan. But you can guess what
happened there. Anywhere where residents had the means to
organize and protest, they were often able to stop the highways from being built, whereas
in places where residents didn’t have the political capital, and other sorts of privileges
that allow you to do that, their neighborhoods ended up being demolished, and they’re now highways today. Even before he signed the Federal Highway Act of 1956 Eisenhower was already a really big fan of highways in general. Part of that has to do with his time in Germany during World War 2, where he realized how important it is to have a good system of highways to transport goods and people very efficiently. But it also has to do with this military road trip that he took in 1919, where he went all the way from Washington, DC to San Francisco, California. And that road trip took 62 days at the time. Today, it takes about 42 hours. And part of that had to do with the state of cars at the time, but it also had to do with the state of roads at the time. After seeing that, he realized that 62 days was way too long to wait in any situation where they might need to defend the country. And that's where he became such a big fan of highways. For an issue that’s been front and centre
during the election, there’s quite some disagreement on whether the pay gap even exists. Clinton: Too many women still earn less than
men on the job. Joe: Does it exist? Liz: It does, right? "If you become president, will a woman make the same as a man?" Trump: You're gonna make the same if you do as good a job. I just don't know if it's real. Oh my god are you Hope Solo. We're you talking about the wage gap? Yes! Boy do I have some stories for you. [Funky music] Hope Solo helped her team win the world cup
last year. Hope Solo is also suing the soccer federation league for wage discrimination
because it chooses to pays its male players more than its female players. I was always the asshole -- sorry. Oh wow. I was always kind of the -- asking questions,
that nobody wanted the answers to. And just kind of stirring things up. Did you feel like people thought you were
an asshole just for bringing up--equality? Absolutely. And these -- thank you -- and
these were my own teammates. It was, ‘Hope, just be happy we’re getting paid. This has just been instilled inside my teammates
and women for such a long time that I don’t know how to break that thought process. I mean it’s not just what’s right, I mean
you guys -- so the men’s soccer team is good, you guys are like really good. You brought
in $20 million in revenue, but you’re paid 4x less than the men’s team. It’s funny, I mean when you look at the
numbers alone, logically it makes sense. Pay the women not equal to the men, pay the women
more. Because they’ve brought in almost $21 million in revenue, while the men’s
team has lost $2 million. So they didn’t bring any revenue into the federation. Not
to mention we had more viewership, we broke records. Most watched soccer game? Most watched soccer game. We beat the men’s
record which took place in 2014. And I’m sure it will continue to grow and continue
to compete, but the pay scale doesn’t compete. It doesn’t even compare. But I get comments all the time like just
not believing the pay gap is real. Just, you know, that women accept lower paying job.
It’s our fault as a women’s national team because we accepted a lesser contract. So if women like Hope Solo are actually experiencing
the wage gap, why are even well-regarded journalists and academics denying it even exists? Well, they say it boils down to choice – women
often “choose” lower-paying professions, and work fewer hours. But women like Theresa Younger, the CEO of
the Ms. Foundation makes a crucial point. That assumption that women aren’t working
as hard as the premise of that conversation is a farce. Do you think we value women's work less? We do, the fastest growing jobs are around
caregiving and teaching: we still have not made those professions really reflective of
the important role they play in society. She's right. A good portion of the wage gap
is explained by the fact that society has decided to value the jobs that women often
work in less. And research supports this. For instance,
as more women enter male-dominated fields, research shows that men’s pay tends to go
down. Jobs that were previously male dominated like
being a ticket agent, as it became female dominated, saw a decrease in pay of 43 percentage
points. And even in female-dominated professions,
the men in those jobs still make more than women. Male nurses make on average $5,100
more than their female counterparts. This phenomenon of men being advantaged in jobs
that are female dominated, is so common, it's a phenomenon that has a name: the glass escalator. But the wage gap gets even wider when you
add race. Black women are making .60 to the dollar a
white male is making. A Latina is making, I believe its 0.54, and if you break down
the data further to the southeast asian community, you find that we have different communities
within that one making 34 cents. But despite this, surveys show that most employees
don’t think the wage gap exists in their workplace. And men, are more likely to deny
it exists. We have to ask men, which we don’t often
times do, how the wage gap affects them, do they understand what’s going and what is
being said when we talk about the wage gap. It seems like it’s not just an issue that
affects women, it affects men too. How do we get them involved too? Hey you guys are men, get in here! Do you know her? This is actor Matt McGorry and former NFL
player Wade Davis. They both identify as men. Why don't more men care about the wage gap? I don't think that they know it exists. I didn't know. I don’t think men think about
the issues that impact women. I'm just being honest. They heard the term, but don’t necessarily
believe it, it’s not like there are men who actively say I hate women I don’t want
them to have the whole dollar. It's not as simple as that. Men don’t think it impacts them. They don’t
realize that if they have a wife, it brings in money as well, it impacts their household
income. So maybe if we didn't spend so much time arguing
about whether the wage gap exists we'd have more time to actually fix it, and we’d all
be better off. Thank you. Oh shit do you have 22 cents? I
only have 78. [Throws coins] Thank you! If I don't have kids, what's the main thing
you think I would be missing? Well, it's really fun to share experiences.
It's really fun to see the world together. And when you're my age, you won't have you. But even if I lost you all tragically somehow,
it would've been worth it to me. You kids growing up, and making mudpies, and just the
funny interactions. Those memories are so precious to me. Somebody very wise once told me that babies
grow up in spite of their parents. I truly believe that. I think we made so many sort
of practical mistakes when we were new parents. I don't think babies are that fragile. As a parent you're more of an observer of
your child and their life and their choices and their thought process and the way they
do things. You don't want to change that. You watch it, and observe it and embrace it,
but you have to just let them be. The only big thing when you open up the instruction
manual is love your child. The effects of not feeling loved, or that the people who
are raising you don't love you or approve of you will absolutely, completely, unequivocally
damage a person for the rest of their life. I don't believe they ever get over it. The hardest thing as a parent is knowing you
kid is so unhappy, and you can't fix it. I remember dropping you off at school, I think
it was fourth and fifth grades, knowing you were miserable, knowing that it was just really
hard. What were considered your disabilities as a young person, those have turned into
the best features of you and the very things that have you thriving now. I guess what I
would hope is that we didn't kill what was best in you. Beat you down for being who you
were. The biggest thing, and maybe it was because
we were in a closed adoption, was somebody stealing you. So I always kept you close. If I was sweeping the kitchen floor and looking
out those nice big windows to see you kids playing and running and arguing and creating,
I just thought - does it get any better? Does it get any better than this? Though the physical umbilical cord is cut
at birth, it never is cut between a mother and a child. I think for me the biggest feeling in pregnancy
has been that my life is not fully my own anymore. I've already had to make certain
changes to accommodate this new life that's growing inside me. But that was just the tip
of the iceberg. But life is like a lot of balls in the air.
Who ever really has balance? I'm glad we did it! Thanks mom. Thanks for doing it. This guy — the one shrouded in darkness
— he's the world's greatest internet troll. "I prefer to call this bringing a banana to
a gunfight." He leaves notes on broken comment sections
like those on Yahoo, syndicated news sites, and branded Facebook pages. And it works — he has more than 150,000
fans on Reddit, a 40,000 person strong Facebook page, and it's all for leaving...comments. "I'm Ken M — carthy — and I play a well-meaning
moron on the internet." When it comes to the brain, Ken M says:
"Brain Cells Can Outlive the Body." "um cells can't be destroyed, they just get
recycled. The cells we're made of were once the cells
of dinasaurs and before that they were the cells of a star etc." "STUPID statement from any world view point." "It isn't stupid, although it isn't the cells
per se, but rather the molecules that make up the cells. We are all a part of everything. I think it's kind of beautiful." "the very cells in our brains were once the
cells of planets, it make us all related" "'It isn't stupid, although it isn't the cells
per se' says Ophelia THAT IS MY POINT It isn't cells, and Ken just continues with his ignorance." "theres actualy more cells in our brains than
there are brains in our entire body" This is how Ken M practices his craft. "Calling it a craft? You know I guess I should actually go with
it." Ken M uses anonymity. This is what Ken M looks like. Or this. Or this. Or this. His avatars and appearance are anonymous,
but we know his name. "Ken M was the name that I used when I tried
to engage with people seriously on Yahoo News stories. When I slowly realized that it was such a
futile effort to try to have like a rational discourse, I suddenly decided to make it as
irrational as possible. It's literally my name." The face, however, is hidden for a reason. "The people that like what I do have expressed
that they have absolutely no interest in seeing my face. It sort of demystifies the character that
they have visualized in their mind. It's not as funny if they see that it's just
some late 30s dude with a stupid hat." Hey — it's a nice hat. And Ken's not a total recluse. We didn't disguise everything, right? "Use my mellifluous, chain-smoking voice that
I've cultivated over many years." He was discovered by being consistently funny. "It all happened very organically and accidentally. Ken M was my username on Yahoo because I am
an aging Gen X-er and I actually have a Yahoo account. It accidentally got noticed by College Humor
and Reddit. That is the origin story of Ken M."
But along with Ken M's anonymity, the audience is just as important. Ken M finds collaborators. "Top Shots of the Week: October 14, 2013"
"most restaurants have giant servings of spaghetti that only consist of a few noodles and that
is how they rip off their customers" "So they rip off their customers with more
meat than noodles?" "no they make extra long spaghetti so they
can fill a giant plate with only 2 or 3 noodles" "The sites that have the most dysfunctional
comment communities are the ones that I go to. Yahoo is interesting to me because these are
older people who still for some strange reason feel compelled to misbehave in this way. Some of these interactions that I have, it's
like Borscht Belt stuff. I say one thing and somebody's like, 'Whaddya
mean?' and then I drop the punchline. And there's something so pure about that corny,
old-timey joke structure that I love, and I love the fact that these people don't know
that they're part of it." "The one I'm thinking of is 'we make our OWN
bacon and it is healthier with tastier flavor.' And then somebody's like, 'Whaddya mean?' And I say, 'my wife crushes hot dogs with
a rolling pin.'" "It becomes an improv session. I've called it coward's improv. And if I fail, nobody will know because I'll
just not post it. Sometimes I'll have a joke in my back pocket,
but when I start with something and somebody sort of forces me to take it in a different
direction, that challenge is really really fun. How to double down without blowing your cover." "It's a funny and endearing surprise when
people try to help me out. When people are goodhearted about my ignorance,
it just adds more color to the interaction, cause it's unexpected." And it's not just people who play along. Ken M uses brands. "Another thing I'm really fascinated by is
the way brands cynically and smugly pass themselves off as authentic. These people are unwittingly playing a straight
man role. It's some like nonsense complaint followed
by the brand covering their ass by helping me out in any possible way that they can. This is not really criticism as much as a
hilarious dynamic." "i was suppose to get a free sample of your
sausage product but they ran out" "Hi Ken - Thanks for getting in touch. Can you please send us a direct message (located
under our cover photo) with your contact information so we can help?" "thank you please send the sausage to 3250
Beulah Rd Pensacola FL 32526" "Hi Ken - Can you send us a direct message? The link to send us a direct message is located
under our cover photo?" "{please put this as a direct msg} well they
were handing out pieces of your sausage at wallmart but they ran out when i was next
in line and some folks took more than 1 piece" "Hi Ken - Can you send through your phone
number, please?Thanks so much!" "Thank You i sent my number but have not received
a call" "Hi Ken - You only provided us with your address. Can you share your number as well? Thanks so much!" "Thank You our phone # is a landline so we
had to send it to your headquarters in the regular old mail." "Hi Ken - We have a package waiting for you
at FedEx in Pensacola, and they need your phone number. Are you able to post it in a private message
so that you can receive it, or can you share it on here? Thank you!" "THANK YOU I will have my grandson drive me
to FedEx this evening after church here is my social security number"
"They mailed me like eight pounds of sausage. But the funny thing was by the time it go
to me, it was rancid. So they won." Ken M finds the humor in our tragic internet. "I like — as a writer I've always been
driven towards a combination of funny and sad, and I think that the nastiness online
is completely unnecessary but apparently necessary to a lot of people...is the sad part. So if I can inject hyper-silliness in the
service of finding a strange joke, it just became a cathartic exercise." "It's not about highlighting how nasty people
are so much as I find it to be a very funny dynamic." "Innocent Idiot Nice Guy Vs. Unnecessarily
Hostile Assholes." "Inside the Mysterious Underground City That's
5,000 Years Old" "today's archeologists seem hellbent on making
discoveries at any cost, leaving nothing for future generations"
"That is quite possibly THE stupidest post I have ever seen on Yahoo. Congratulations!" "but they are squandering the limited discoveries
left to be unearthed" "Very STUPID comment..." "they should at least plant new discoveries
to replace the ones they harvested" "And the STUPIDITY continues..." If you're a Ken M fan, you can find links
to all of his stuff — he posts it – but I wanted to make sure to point out what a
funny songwriter he is. This is just a short sample of a song that
he wrote and performed with that beautiful mellifluous chain-smoking voice:
"The world is run by hypocrites and liars, by greedy turds who want us all to fail. They shit on our heads and tell us it's raining
candy bars, but still I always knew that I'd prevail..." That’s my wife. And she’s pregnant.When
you have a baby, there are lots of costs to consider. Isabel: Carseat, and a bassinet,
a baby carrier, thermometer. Johnny: Wait, wait, but how much is the actual hospital
birth going to cost? Healthcare in the US is significantly more
expensive than in other countries. Some experts say that this is partly because consumers
don’t go around looking for prices comparing them between hospitals. Like they do when
they buy a car or anything else for that matter. So I decided it’d try it out. And see if
there was any way to discover in advance how much we would be paying for our baby’s birth.
What happens next is at once depressing and horrifying, showing how broken and expensive
the American health care system is. There's no way I'm the only person who's ever
had this question. Childbirth in the US is the number one reason why people go to the
hospital. Almost 4 million women are going to give birth this year and most births are
relatively uncomplicated. So you would think that with such a common procedure the price
would be generally well known. VO: I wanted to know how much child birth
usually costs, so I did what any good child of the internet would do I found this really disturbing study from
the Yale medical school .It analyzed almost 800,000 low risk deliveries in the US, looking
for the variation in cost just for the facilities, meaning the hospital rooms and supplies and
stuff like that. For just the cost of the hospital room, this
study found that the price varied between $1,189 and $11,986. So I realized I am going
to have to go ask the specific hospital where my wife is giving birth figure this out. Every
hospital has a giant list they call the chargemaster which details all the services they provide
and what they cost. And each item and service in the hospital has a code. If a doctor spends
20 minutes with you, that’s a different code and a different price than if they spent
40 minutes with you. Your insurance company then negotiates a lower price for every single
item on the list. So when my wife goes into the hospital, The nurses have a bar code scanner
that they use to scan every item she will use. Everything from the IV tubes to the Ibuprofen
gets scanned onto the bill. At the end of it all, they put all the codes and prices
onto one piece of paper which they call a “claim" and send it off the insurance. The
insurance looks at it and pays a certain percentage of it based on my policy. The hospital then
sends the remaining balance to me. So I figured if I could get my hands on that master list
of prices I could add up the price of the delivery. Right? Well it wasn’t that easy.
I called the hospital where Isabel is going to give birth and got a message machine. So
I decided to call a some other hospitals to see if anyone could give me general pricing
information about the cost of birth. So my wife is pregnant. My wife is pregnant. My
wife will be giving birth. My wife's pregnant and I'm trying to get an idea of how much
different services cost. Items that would be on a bill. Different costs associated with
labor and delivery. Hospital: One moment. Ok give me one moment let me talk to my team
lead. Certainly, let me connect you with the billing office. I can connect you with our
financial coordinator. What I'll have to do is transfer you to the pricing line. I can
transfer you. Johnny: So now I'm being transferred to another line. Or something. I don't know.
They're transferring me somewhere. Answer the phone. Message Machine: I will be out
of the office until Monday February 18th. Johnny: I'm going to hang up and try this
again. Message Machine: You've reached the voicemail of Patient Priceline. I will be
out of the office until February 18th. Johnny: Everyone's out of the office. All agents are
currently busy with other customers. Currently, all of our operators are busy. I'm sorry,
extension 59 didn't answer. Mash up of hold messages. Johnny: No music this time? I just
have to sit her on hold with no music. I'm just trying to see if I can get a number.
Hospital: You will not get a copy of that until after the procedure. Johnny: Ok. Do
you have that information though in terms of like how much certain items cost? Hospital:
no, um they will not present the cost until after. Johnny: So there's literally no way
for me to discover what the cost is until after I buy is that right? Hospital: We do
not keep that information on hand. Everything is processed after. Johnny: Certainly that
information exists in your hospital system somewhere. Hospital: The itemized copy, all
of that information is done after the procedure, not before. Johnny: I haven't heard a single
number from anyone about how much anything costs. This is actually starting to become
frustrating. Finally, after two weeks and thirty phone calls I got ahold of a pricing
consultant from the hospital where Isabel's going to give birth. I finally just got a
call back from a pricing consultant I wasn't able to record it because she called me out
of the blue. She had taken down all my insurance information and was able to run it through
her system and come up with an estimate quote. And finally for the first time in two weeks,
I heard a number. She said I would be paying $347 for my wife's birth. She wasn't able
to give me a breakdown of what that meant or any items specifically. She was able to
only give me that number. And when I pushed on certain items she said she frankly didn't
know. Apparently prices in a hospital are beyond even a pricing consultant. And then
one day, this happened. I think Izzy may be going into labor. Here we go. I forgot about
healthcare prices for a moment and watched my amazing wife go through a night of painful
labor. She was the hero of the night and at the end of it, we had a new member of our
little family. Oliver was born with no complications and a two day stay in the hospital. All very
typical. Well, I got the bill back in the mail The insurance negotiated a lower--[Oliver
cries]. So the bill that came to us--[Oliver cries] So the bill that came to -- [Oliver
cries]. Isabel: We got the final bill back and the hospital charged sixteen thousand
dollars. The negotiated price with the insurance company was eight thousand dollars. They covered
90% of it and sent us the bill for $841 dollars. Johnny: That's 500 dollars more than the pricing
consultant quotes me for a typical, uncomplicated birth which is what Isabel had. Our healthcare
system suffers from a big problem which is that there's huge variation in costs. But
what seems to be the bigger problem is that us consumers have no tools to find out where
we fall in that pricing variation. The hospital down the street could be a fairly cheap hospital
or it could be an extremely expensive one--it could be 10 time more expensive than the cheap
ones. You have no idea and there's no way to tell. And hopefully someday this will change.
But in the meantime, we got a really cute baby out of this whole thing. So, I'm not
complaining. Thank you for for calling the patient Priceline.
At this time we are assisting other callers. But your call is important to us. Please speak
clearly and leave your name and a number where you can be reached and someone will return
your call within... There has been this amazing, kind of hilarious
conversation recently where the media has become convinced, absolutely convinced that
Donald Trump is all of a sudden going to remake himself into a moderate. Trump's comments appear a more moderate shift
and some are asking, is it a sign of things to come? To be fair, this is something Donald Trump
and his campaign keep telling them. His aide Paul Manafort went to a private meeting
with Republican National Committee members and he told them that Donald Trump knew his
negatives were terrible, he knew he would need to change to win a general election,
and so, Manafort said, [Trump's] "image is going to change." Donald Trump has been saying the same thing
himself. Back in January he told a bunch of voters in Iowa: "When I'm president I'm a different person,
I can do anything. I can be the most politically correct person that you've ever seen." Which is not usually what politicians tell
voters, that they're completely lying about who they are and they'll just totally change
it as soon as they win the election. But here's the thing: Donald Trump can't be the most politically correct person you've ever seen. He can't be some other guy, the image isn't going to change. To see this, go back to 1990, when Donald
Trump gave this amazing, incredibly telling interview to Playboy, almost everything Donald
Trump says there, he could say today. But one part of the interview in particular,
it sums up his ideology so perfectly. He says: "People need ego, whole nations need
ego. I think our country needs more ego, because it is being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies ... They have literally outegotized this country." For Donald Trump, being this brash, confident
egotist, projecting this kind of intense charisma and power hunger, it's not just personality,
it's ideology. And it has served him in good stead it is
the core of not just his presidential campaign, it is the core of his business. Trump is a man who puts his name on buildings,
on steaks, on board games, on books, on bicycle races, on golf courses, on bottled water. He puts it on cologne, he literally has a
cologne called "Success" by Donald Trump, whatever that smells like I can't imagine. He puts his name on eyeglasses, he became
a reality television star through sheer force of personality. He was a bit character in the World Wrestling
Entertainment, where he body slammed Vince McMahon and shaved his head. There's a reason Donald Trump is more famous
than your average rich guy. This is who Donald Trump really is, it is
who he has spent decades becoming, it is who he believes that he needs to be, it is who
he believes countries need to be. This is how he has gotten so rich, it is how
he's become so successful, it is how he's gotten his name everywhere. It is how he has dominated the Republican
primary. None of it is changing, it's worked to well
for him for it to change. Now, I can imagine what some of you are thinking,
that moderation, it's not just about personality, it's also about policy, and couldn't Donald
Trump just come out and have more moderate policies. But if that were true, if it were just that, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. The fact of the matter is, Donald Trump, in
many cases, has more moderate policies than most Republicans do already. He's promised to protect Social Security and
Medicare from cuts. "We're going to save Social Security, we're
not going to cut Social Security, we're not going to cut Medicare." He's promised that he will cover everyone
with government-provided health insurance. He's promised to tax the rich. "It reduces or eliminates most of the deductions
and loopholes available to special interests and to the very rich." None of this has made him a moderate in the
eyes of the press, in the eyes of the voters, none of it has fixed his image problem. And there's a reason for that: for better
or for worse, and sometimes it's for worse, moderation in American politics is as much
a personality type as it is a political position. The candidates, the politicians who get called
moderates, they're cautious, they're compromising, they're sober, they're comforting in their
public demeanor. Moderation is a political style, not just
a political position. Donald Trump is the opposite of that political
style. He is uncompromising, offensive, even when
he's saying things that are moderate in their substance, he says them in ways that shock
people, that insult people. He's completely contemptuous of political
institutions. "No you're a tough guy, Jeb." He routinely violates existing standards of
decorum. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell
you" To reinvent himself as a moderate, in other
words, Trump would need to discover not simply gentler policies, but a gentler personality,
a whole different personality. But he can't do that, not after decades of
being Donald Trump, of learning to be Donald Trump, of finding success by being Donald
Trump. Like all of us, Donald Trump can't escape
who he really is. And he's not some sober, reassuring moderate.
He's this guy: "I could be presidential. But if I was presidential, I
would only have about 20 percent of you would be here because it would be boring as hell, I will say. Now
let me be unpresidential just for a little while longer, and maybe I'll be a little bit
unpresidential as I beat Hillary..." If you’ve opened a magazine in the past
20 years, this is probably a familiar image. It’s easy to flip past these ads and
think, “Hey, great. Stars promoting a healthy alternative to sugary sodas and sports drinks,” awesome There’s this idea that we have to drink milk to be healthy. But where did that idea come from? There are plenty of foods with just as much calcium,
potassium and protein Willet: Individuals can be very healthy with
no dairy consumption at all. In fact, a quarter of Americans can’t even
digest milk! and researchers have found that people who
drink lots of milk aren’t any less likely to get fractures.
milk was a bad choice And yet… the federal dietary guidelines
recommend three servings of dairy a day. Why!? Willet: Our dairy industry has become a very
powerful economic force For most of human history, milk was a small
part of the lives of a small number of people. Willet: Milk was really a survival technology
for living in cold places where the long winters made it difficult to grow fruits and vegetables.
Then, around World War I, The US government sent huge amounts of canned and powdered milk
overseas, to fight malnutrition among soldiers. And farmers made huge changes in response.
Many got rid of their other crops to focus exclusively on dairy.
But when the war ended, demand dried up, and the country was left with a whole bunch of
milk it didn’t need. At this point, farmers and milk processors
had invested too much to shift away from large-scale, year-round milk production
So instead of making less milk, they convinced people to drink more.
“Milk education” campaigns in public schools encouraged students to drink four glasses
a day. And milk producers got a boost from legislation
that created the national school lunch program in 1946, and required those lunches to include
a glass of whole milk. Even with all this promotion, the U.S. still
saw huge milk surpluses in the 1940s and 50s. So the federal government started buying up
the extra. It sent some to schools, the military, and to other countries as food aid. But much
of the surplus sat unused in vast, underground storage caves.
By 1980s, the government was spending $2 billion a year on surplus milk. The Reagan Administration,
in its quest to cut government spending, put a stop to the buying program.
That didn’t sit well with dairy producers. They convinced Congress to change the rules
so that they could create something called a dairy checkoff. Dairy farmers would into the checkoff with a mandatory fee. That fee would go toward advertising campaigns aimed at making
people buy more milk. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture would approve those campaigns.
The “Got Milk?” Ads are one example. The fees also pay for partnerships with restaurants
like Domino’s, Taco Bell and Starbucks to develop dairy-heavy menu items, like a pizza with 40% more cheese.
This means the USDA, the same federal agency writes our dietary guidelines, is also in
charge of a multi-million dollar campaign to get us to eat a cheese pizza where one
piece has two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat.
So, if we know milk isn’t necessary, then why not change the recommendation? Instead
of milk with every meal, why not tell people to drink water?
Willet:...I think it’s impossible at this point in time...because the political forces
would not allow the dietary guidelines to say antying about limiting red meat or dairy consumption.
The dairy industry gives millions to politicians, who protect their interests whenever the nutrition
guidelines come up for review Susan Del Bene: how do we continue to make
sure students have access to appealing and nutritious dairy products?
Glenn Thompson: what can we do to remove policies that are hindering milk consumption or promote
policies that enhance milk consumption? Milk and other dairy products can be a part
of a healthy diet, but the idea that they’re essential? That’s just marketing.
And it's not like there's broccoli trade groups giving money to politicians and running multi-million
dollar ad campaigns. If there were, our dinner tables might look a little different. Let's clear something up. Vikings never wore horned helmets. Minnesota Vikings logo? Lie. Super Nintendo Classic The Lost Vikings? Not
historically accurate. Hagar the Horrible? Horribly inaccurate. And Elmer Fudd's magic helmet, perfect for
rabbit killing? It's a cartoon. Historians have settled the question if Vikings
wore horned helmets or not. They did not. So why do we still think they did? "The paper I wrote on those famous horned
helmets is called 'The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet.'" There's no documentation or archaeological
evidence that the Vikings wore horned helmets. Instead, the helmets show up hundreds of years
later, thanks to the German composer Richard Wagner and the very operas that Bugs Bunny
parodied. Professor Frank found very rare smatterings
of earlier illustrations of Viking helmets with horns, like this one from 1856. But for the most part? "The first horns put on Viking heads would
have been right after the 1876 performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen. That's "The Ring Cycle," Wagner's bombastic
marathon four-part opera. The costume designer was Carl Emil Doepler,
who created gorgeous designs for Wagner's saga of Norse mythology. They were enormously influential, and completely
made up. Upper-class characters got feathers and other
fancy adornments. But the lower-class characters.... "I found that Carl Emil Doepler had put these
horns on the heads of the lower-class barbarians." To really understand the horns though, you
have to understand why Doepler and Wagner bothered with Vikings in the first place. Wagner's goal wasn't just to retell Norse
legend, but to establish a new German one through it. The German Empire was in search of a national
myth, they wanted their own ancient origin story, apart from Greek and Roman classical
history. The Norse sagas provided a third option. "This happened during a period of German nationalism,
and the idea of the free barbarian, strong and true ... could be blended with that of
the Viking, the great sea warrior. I mean poor Germany had very little Medieval
material, the Scandinavians had it all." And in a game of historical telephone, the
Germans wanted the Norse story to be their story. Those horns had appeared in German drawings
of ancient and medieval warriors. So Wagner cut and pasted. From the 1870s on it became storybook history. The horned helmets quickly showed up around
the world. And in the end, the helmet did do something,
it created a raw and beautiful image that was ... completely mythical. It wasn't just some Viking horns. It became,
in a way, a magic helmet. "Yes! Magic helmet, and I'll give you a sample." One of the things I like about Frank's paper
is that she tracks down the evidence when it comes to helmets. And you can do that by looking at different
editions of the same story. For example, in the original 1861 History
of Burnt Njal, there were no Viking horned helmets in the entire book. But by 1890, this picture appeared in the
first few pages. Oh I have a joke. Alright, what is it? Knock, knock. Who's there? Abortion. Liz! So every year, abortion is an issue that divides voters, candidates. There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yes. There has to be some form. We've had eight debates before, this is our
ninth, we've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decision about
reproductive health care. But this year, it could be the defining issue
of this election. The vacancy on the Supreme Court could look
gaping if it leads to new law. So as divisive as abortion is with passionate
people on both sides, there's one side that's been particularly vocal lately. The crushing of body parts [inaudible] and
the harvesting of body parts. Liz aggressively shakes her sugar. The sale of these infant body parts. But how much do these passionate Americans
really know about abortion? Well a lot of them are probably here. We went
to the Supreme Court for the first day of oral arguments hearing the biggest abortion case the court has heard in over a decade. The case deals with a Texas law called HB2. It's a law that forced abortion clinics to meet the standards of surgical centers. It's simple things like making the hallways
of abortion clinics wider so that a gurney can pass though. Which means million dollar renovations for
things like wider hallways or new janitor closets. It also lead to two thirds of abortion clinics
in Texas shutting down. It could force even more to close down as
well. So opponents say this is just to close down
abortion clinics but proponents of the law say that this is just about women's health...no no wait we're gonna go to the Supreme Court now. This law is about implementing common sense
regulations that will keep women safe. To make sure that they don't die on the abortion
table. To make sure that they aren't butchered by abortionists. To just go in there with somebody that has
a medical degree but a facility that doesn't help them if they start bleeding out. How often is surgery and sort of cutting involved when there's abortion? "I am not a medical student." Most abortions don't actually involve any
kind of cutting or surgery. But in the protestors' defense, a Vox poll
showed that most Americans on both sides of the aisle don't know this either. How safe is abortion? "I have no clue." "Many women in Texas and other places around the country have been hurt in abortion facilities that aren't up to basic medical standards." "I mean I don't know a specific number but a lot." Actually abortion is safer than a host of
other really common procedures like getting a colonoscopy or getting your wisdom teeth
removed. If you're only looking at the safety of the
mother, abortion is actually safer than childbirth. And again, it's not just anti-abortion protestors who don't know this. So why do even the most motivated activists know so little about abortion. I asked an abortion provider Dr. Rachael Phelps. It's not just that Americans don't know these facts, though they don't, it's that the whole debate around abortion has shifted and the pro-life movement is capitalizing on this myth that abortion is inherently dangerous, and it's not. And the whole strategy of shifting the abortion debate to a safety argument is working. There have been about as many abortion restrictions enacted over the past five years than the previous fifteen. If you think abortion is inherently dangerous, why wouldn't you support these restrictions? There are far more effective ways of actually improving women's health like increasing access to health care, contraception, prenatal care. But the majority of us don't know the facts. Or worse the facts that we do know are wrong. Around 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Maybe it's time to talk about it with them. VIKKI: They’re so expressive. You just can’t
believe it. GK: The primates are so real and so close
to us. This is G.K. and Vikki Hart. They're the husband
and wife stock photography team behind those great office baboons you’ve probably seen online
over the past year. Those video clips that, oddly enough, seem
to perfectly illustrate the subtle emotions of everyday human life.
Like when you’re in a meeting that was called in order to plan another meeting. Or when the recipe calls for ground rose petal and grape molasses. Or when your boss emails to ask if you can work on Saturday. The Harts couldn’t have predicted that their work would become prime fodder for animated gifs because they filmed the baboons 13 years ago. That was before the birth of twitter, tumblr, and reddit. This is what the internet looked like 13 years
ago There were animated gifs back then but they looked
like this. The Harts just thought it’d be fun.
VIKKI: We’ve been working with animals for ages. GK: And the great thing about the animals
is they’re universal, and so people love them everywhere. Their images go onto greeting cards, books,
ads. And before the internet found the baboons, they appeared in a Steve Carell movie. VIKKI: And it’s so funny, we go to the movie
and we sit and watch it and we go 'Oh, it’s our baboons! It's our baboons!' and everyone thinks we’re crazy. "He's eating paper!" It wasn’t until April 2014 that digital
artist Steph Davidson came across the baboons while looking for stock footage and she made a
gif for her tumblr. Then, a year later, the baboons really took
off on twitter. The Harts spent about a month preparing for the shoot. They made special baboon-sized props
like the newspaper and rigged up the chairs so they could turn them by pulling a wire. The trainers for the 3 baboons involved in
the shoot knew in advance which behaviors they would need, like typing and holding phones.
GK: And then the best stuff was the stuff that we never expected. And those are always
the fun takes. The one who ate the paper...that was 100%
baboon improv. And so was this. VIKKI: It was a brand new laptop! GK: And I still remember looking through camera and thinking oh no! And i’m so glad I kept the film rolling
or I would have missed the whole thing. That pile of money was real too.
GK: A few hundred dollars and it was pretty well torn up by the end of the shoot. So we
have some souvenirs. The baboon video clips are managed by Getty
but the Harts own the copyright. Still they’re refreshingly relaxed about the unlicensed
use of their work. VIKKI: Sure it would be nice if they made more money but to make people laugh and for people to take it and use it their own way -- you just can’t buy that. I just wanted to give a shoutout to Melvin Backman. He interviewed the Harts back in September, which is how I found their names. I also wanted to one of my favorite baboon clips which isn't part of the office baboons series, but was filmed by G.K. and Vikki on the same day. It's a baboon in a chef hat. Prince was an icon. He was a performer. "Let's
go crazy" "Go crazy!" He was an actor. "That ain't Lake Minnetonka." He was one of the most talented musicians of his generation. But above all he was a
songwriter. "Purple rain, purple rain." And he was such a prolific songwriter, that he wrote songs for other artists. And more than a few artists covered his lesser-known songs to
make a name for themselves. The most famous example starts with this image of a beautiful
woman with a buzzed head. "It's been seven hours and 15 days..." Sinead O’Connor’s incredible one-hit-wonder
torch song Nothing Compares 2 U gives me chills every time I listen to it. But if numbers and the letter U in the song
title didn’t remind you of Prince – "Nothing compares – nothing compares to
you." Making a pop song this slow is another good
clue. Listen to the intro of Purple Rain. Once you hear that, it’s less of a shock
to hear it out of Prince’s mouth, in 1985 on “The Family” album. "It's been seven hours and 15 days..." …which was just Prince by another name. "... since you took your love away." And if you put that version over Purple Rain.. "I go out every night and sleep all day..." well, they’ve got a lot in common. "...since you took your love away." Another surprise is Manic Monday by the Bangles
(1985). "Six O'clock already I was just in the middle
of a dream." You can’t deny these hooks – they really
sound like Prince. "I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive
me if it goes astray." "Just another manic monday." He wrote it under a pseudonym, “Christopher.” He launched Morris Day and the Time to the
national stage in Purple Rain. Jungle Love – which he co-wrote as “Jamie Starr”
with Morris Day and produced as “The Starr Company” – that was probably their biggest
hit. But he also wrote many other songs for The Time. He gave “Sugar Walls” to Sheena Easton
in 1984. He gave “The Glamorous Life” to Shiela
E., a collaborator on Purple Rain, and it hit #7 on billboard. And he co-wrote a song with Stevie Nicks. "...Stand back, stand back." This melody came to Stevie while she was listening
“Little Red Corvette” on her wedding day in 1983. And when she was recording it, she called
up Prince from the studio to tell him she was going to give him 50% of the royalties.
According to Nicks, he showed up 20 minutes later and played on the song. He co-wrote with Madonna in 1988. "Say what you mean, mean what you say. Don't
go and throw our love away." And Chaka Kahn grabbed an old Prince song
from 1979 – "Baby, baby when Iook at you, I get a warm
feeling inside..." – and turned it into a platinum selling
album. "I feel for you. I think I love you." Prince grabbed a Grammy for his then 5-year-old
song. Alicia Keys tried this too in 2001. That song was a B-side to this song you might
have heard before. "So, tonight we're gonna party like its 1999." TLC dipped into the Prince well too– "If I was your girlfriend" But it's not like "If I Was Your Girlfriend"
was completely unknown before that. It was the second single on "Sign 'O' The Times."
That wasn't the last time it'd turn up either. Beyoncé and Jay-Z quote it in their song
Bonnie and Clyde – "If I was your girlfriend..." – which is actually mostly a cover of Tupac's
"Me and my girlfriend." "Look for me, lost in world..." But in that song, Tupac's girlfriend is a
gun. "One shot making N****s heartbeats stop." Obviously this could go on and on. No video
about the gigantic influence of Prince would ever be complete. But let’s end with MC Hammer. "Can't touch this." After he sampled another titan of 80s music,
Rick James, "She's a super freak. Super freak. She's super
freaky." He needed another hit. So he went with
a no brainer. "That's why we pray. All my live I've wanted
to make it to the top. That's why we pray." He sampled When Doves Cry. When someone like Scarlett Johansson is cast as the lead in an adaptation of a Japanese comic franchise, it’s important to understand that the ensuing anger isn’t just about that movie. And it’s not just about Tilda Swinton playing a Tibetan character in Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Or Emma Stone claiming to be part Chinese and Hawaiian in Aloha. “My dad was half-Chinese and half-Hawaiian, and my mother is Swedish.” It’s how all of these casting decisions combined, dating back to the earliest days of Hollywood, have made asians invisible at best, and at worst, the butt of a cruel joke. That’s why fans notice when the characters from the Last Airbender cartoon become much lighter-skinned for the live-action movie. And when John Rico goes from being Filipino in the novel Starship Troopers, to being played by someone named Casper Van Dien. "I want to try it again, but this time we need you to do an accent." The fact is, things aren’t getting better fast enough for Asians in Hollywood. In 1944, Aline MacMahon was nominated for an Oscar for her yellowface role in Dragon Seed. Later on, Linda Hunt would win an Oscar for playing a Chinese man in The Year of Living Dangerously. “Billy Kwan” That was 1982. Almost 40 years later. Basically everything else in the country had changed except white people being cast as Asians. For a solid two decades, the Chinese detective character Charlie Chan was played by white men in makeup. But that was the 30s and 40s right? Well here’s Jim Sturgess and Hugo Weaving reincarnated as Koreans for parts of Cloud Atlas. “Who are you?” Everyone remembers Mickey Rooney’s infamous 1961 performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as just fully unacceptable and racist right? “Miss Golightly.” Well 24 years later, Joel Grey delivered this Korean caricature in Remo Williams. “I think I can do something with him.” And another 2 decades later, here’s Rob Schneider in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry “Now the rings are a symbol of eternity” Schneider is a quarter Filipino, so….progress? Or how about Peter Sellers’ 1968 role as a clueless Indian man at a dinner party? “You really crushed my old Indian hand.” A full 20 years later, Fisher Stevens was in brownface for Short Circuit 2. “It’s not possible. We are the type of people who…” And another 24 years after that, Ashton Kutcher is doing this in a Popchips commercial. I'm  Raj. I’m a Bollywood producer. I’m looking for the most delicious thing on the planet.” Arguably worse than white people playing Asian characters is white people playing real life Asian humans, which is what happened to Cora Lijeck in Argo and to Jeffrey Ma, who appeared in the movie 21 as this character even though in real life he was this guy. “Ben Campbell was the most gifted student at MIT.” It’s not surprising that directors want to hire big names to attract producers and funding But when they want to do stories about Asians and won’t cast Asian actors, they should know the blowback against that has been building for the better part of a century “Sakini by name. Interpreter by profession.” One of the early examples of a white cast playing Asian characters was The Good Earth in 1937, based on the hugely popular novel by Pearl S. Buck. There was an Asian actress who wanted the lead part. Her name was Anna May Wong, and she was basically the only Chinese-American movie star at the time. One of the reasons that MGM reportedly snubbed her was that in the 30s and 40s Hollywood was censored by a moral code, and it prohibited things like nudity and profanity, but also interracial romance. So once they cast a white man to play Wang Lung, they couldn’t cast Wong to play his wife. The role went to a German-born actress named Louise Rainer, and she went on to win an Oscar for it. Here's some amazing news: A new study found
that after more than 35 million bike share trips in the United States, nobody's died.
Regular bike rides are much riskier: 21 of every 100 million trips are fatal.
Bikeshares are an increasingly popular way of getting around: systems have popped up
in dozens of cities in the past decade. And fewer people get injured on bike shares
too – In DC, the collision rates are 35% lower than for regular bikes
So why would bike shares be safer? A few reasons. First, they tend to be designed with safety
in mind. So this was is a lot heavier, with a low center of gravity. This one is a lot
lighter. This one has really wide tires, this one has thin tires.
Which makes it hard to go very fast. And that means you’re less likely to topple
over when you hit a bump or a pothole. Plus, the bike’s bright colors, flashing
lights and upright seating make riders easier to see.
The second reason is about where bike shares are.
Bike share stations are mostly located in dense, urban areas with lots of foot traffic.
And drivers tend to be going more slowly. They’re already on the lookout for pedestrians
So cyclists are safer. And third, people who use bike share tend
not to be very experienced cyclists. And weirdly enough, this can be a good thing,
because it means they’re more cautious riders. People are less likely to wear helmets. Now,
that might make you think, oh, they're more dangerous. But it actually could be the opposite.
One study found that passing drivers stayed further away from cyclists who didn't have
a helmet. But if you do get in a crash, wearing a helmet
significantly lowers your odds of a head injury. So if you have a helmet, it's a really good
idea to wear one. But, if you don't, your mom's not watching, and the odds, well, they
are  in your favor So, there has been one death in Mexico and two in Canada But, as the study notes, the injury rates there are way lower for bike shares than for regular bike riding When you call the nation of Sweden, you learn
a few key things. "Hi, is this Sweden?" If you know nothing about soccer, you'd learn
about Zlatan. "Who would you say is the most famous person
in Sweden?" You  learn how they cope with low light in
winter. "One thing I wanted to ask you was about the
darkness. And you learn about ... foraging. This isn't dumpster diving, it's a national institution that a lot of people do.
In the fall months it's mushrooms, in the spring, all different kinds of berries.
The search for food is a pan-Scandinavian tradition, but it's so Swedish that the government
issues pamphlets about how to forage well. And that foraging is part of a Swedish right
called... In 1994, Sweden added it to the constitution.
It's the right to temporarily stay on public and some private land, walk on it, and, yeah,
forage too. The line between public and private property
is a blurrier one than in America. It can seem a little weird to Americans.
"So if you have private property, there's no way to protect your berries?" "Alright, talk to you later." "Ah, yeah, no I'm definitely familiar with
them. That makes sense." New Yorkers turn up for a lot of stuff. [Music: "Turn Down for What?"] Broad City: "We don't have a bathroom, we
don't even have dressing rooms. This is a pop-up, bitch." But there’s one thing they’re really bad at turning up for: voting. Lena Dunham: "Ok, we're going to vote now" Only 25% of New York’s registered voters voted in the 2014 gubernatorial race.
In the 2008, only 61% of registered New Yorkers showed up at the ballot box, which was the
worst voter turnout for any major American city and the turnout was even lower in 2012.
The truth of the matter is that New Yorkers don’t vote. It’s so bad the state ranked
48 out of 50 in 2014 in terms of voter turnout. With all eyes on the New York primary and
candidates trying to publicly eat as much pizza and flawlessly swipe as many metrocards
as humanly possible, a lot is riding on the New York vote. So we went to a Bernie Sanders
rally at Washington Square Park to find out what is up with all these New Yorkers not
voting. So many people I know, especially young people
and students totally missed the deadline, even thought they really wanted to vote. And
they probably would have. But they missed the deadline. Or didn't know how to do it.
Do you have friends who missed the deadline? Yeah my friend didn't register in time. Actually,
a couple of them didn't. I think it's intentionally a complicated process
where every state has difference rules. Some are open, some are closed. some are caucuses,
different dates, things like that. Of course we were at a Bernie Sanders rally,
so one specific issue kept coming up. They make it hard for you to switch parties
it's like 6 months in advance of the primary, which I think is not really cool. I think
they make it harder. He’s right, the primary is closed to registered
members of each party and the date to change party affiliation was October 9th of last
year even though the primary is happening in April. So a lot of people on both sides
of the aisle missed that date, including…Donald Trump’s own children.
"It's one of the most onerous rules in terms of registration, and it required us to register
a long time ago, almost — close to a year ago. And we didn’t do that. We found out
about it sort of after the fact.” This makes it especially hard for independents
who want to be part of the primary. I had to switch over from independent and
when I heard Bernie was running last fall I immediately switch over because I looked
it up but I know a lot of people who are not going to be able to vote who want to.
Do you think that puts Bernie Sanders at a disadvantage?
Yeah I mean it's clear. No question the party system is set-up to keep an outsider out.
It's abundantly clear everyone can see it the veil has been lifted we see what happens
when an outsider tries to run for the highest office in the country, there's no question.
That guy standing on the fence is sort of right, caucuses with same day registration
have favored Bernie and could explain why he’s done so well in those contests.
“The caucuses, he does better in the caucus situation because people vote on election
day. They've had time, don’t have time for early voters. They tend to go for Hillary
because they’ve known her for a long time. The people wait and wait and they vote on
election day, so Bernie has done well. But New York’s voting problem goes beyond
this primary. And it’s not like some people haven’t tried to make it easier to vote
in elections in New York, many have tried to amend laws to make it easier to switch
parties, or allow for early voting, but since the state doesn’t have a secretary of elections,
like most states do, those changes just haven’t happen because no one is championing them.
In all fairness, it’s not like New Yorkers are all that different from the rest of Americans,
the US has one of the worst voter turnout rates in the world. In fact, according to
PEW, it trails most developed countries. So modernizing our electoral process wouldn’t
just benefit New York, it could benefit us all.
Or alternatively, we could all just move to Sesame Street and start our own democracy.
Supper Bernie is registered to vote in the state of Sesame Street.
Sesame Street! How long have you been registered there?
You know, I think about 74 years. 74 years.
It's Bernie. Oh my god. I'm going to go talk to him. Getting a show from script to screen is
a fast and furious process. Some crews make thirteen episodes of scripted TV
in the same amount of time it takes to make a single blockbuster movie. So how do they do it? This process applies to all types of scripted TV shows – both dramas and comedies – but we're gonna use an hourlong drama with a 13 episodes season as an example. Let's say you're the showrunner. This is what the next year of your life is going to look like. First thing's first: you and the writers break the story. Meaning you plot out the major moments of the season. And then you assign  writers to break the story for each episode. After multiple drafts a script around 45 pages is created. That's about six hundred pages of material for
the whole season. At this point episodes are assigned to directors and
directors of photography who begin planning on their own and then there's
the art department. They're in charge of the whole look of the show. Let's say the
show takes place in New York City in 1980. The art department researchers the
period so that everything as big as buildings and cars and as small
magazines and jewelry look realistic. Now let's get shooting. To shoot 45 pages of material in about 8 days you need a serious schedule. A traditional script isn't all
that helpful to a crew. So first each scene is assigned a location, time of day, and actors. After all these factors are prioritized the result is a document
called a white schedule. Once shooting begins every episode requires a table read.
That's when the whole cast gets together and reads the script from beginning to
end. At this point the director works with the
director of photography to correctly block all the actors and every scene is
shot from multiple angles. A one-minute scene in a show could easily take a few
hours to shoot. Now you might not think your typical drama would not have a lot of
visual effects but something as little as a TV playing in the background of a
scene requires post-production work. Ever heard the phrase "we'll fix it in post."
Here we go. A post production team is comprised of
editors, sound designers, visual effects artists, and all the assistants and
coordinators that go along with them. Editors make the first cut of the
episode and give it to the director. Then the director's cut goes to the showrunners.
The showrunners give notes, create a producer's cut, and that goes to the
studio which then becomes the network cut. During this entire process things
like that TV with the green screen get pushed through visual effects. Once all
of the edits are final, a color corrector and sound designer begin to work their magic.
The dialogue needs to be cleaned up, sound effects put in, and the entire edit
needs to be mixed. OK, we're almost done. It's now several months after writing
began and the episode, fully mastered, gets serviced to broadcasters around the
country. But the rest of the show isn't finished. Every episode is finalized just a few weeks, and sometimes just a
few hours, before it premieres. Since the end of World War Two, the world
has been built on an idea called deterrence. It says if you attack me or my allies, I'll
retaliate, so we're both better off not fighting. It's why the Cold War stayed cold, and why
there hasn't been a war between major powers in 70 years. It's kept the world stable. It's the reason we still have nuclear weapons
— and the reason we haven't used them since 1945. But deterrence is changing. New forms of warfare are blurring the old
lines and rewriting the old rules.So I went to ask Secretary of Defense Ash Carter what
this means for the world and for the US. He said the stakes are high, and that the
military's challenge will be to establish new norms of deterrence to convince America's
adversaries that the old rules still hold. It has the word "terror" inside it, right? "Deterrence." That's what it's about, is you scare someone
away from doing something you don't want them to do by making them fear the consequences. To do that, they must know what the consequences
are, and you're right, it needs to be understood. There needs to be some sort of normality to
the idea that this threat will be offered and it should deter. As we get into new domains, like cyber and
space, and we try to situate old and very solid ideas like deterrence in those new domains,
it requires some thought. The old rules of deterrence set hard, clear
lines for what would trigger a military retaliation, and those lines usually fall across b orders. But no one knows how or where to draw that
sort of line when it comes to things like cyber attacks. In the physical world, it's easy to tell when
you're under attack by a foreign military, but not so online. In 2013, for example, hackers based in Iran
accessed the control system for a small dam in New York state, but it took months for
US investigators to accuse the Iranian government of being behind it. The hackers didn't cause any physical damage,
but they could have, and it raised questions — which are still unanswered — about when
a hack becomes like a military attack, and when and how the US is obligated to respond. If you attack us in cyber space, it's an attack. I'm very straightforward. An attack is an attack. We won't necessarily respond in space, or
respond in cyber, we may respond in some other way, but we will respond and you need to understand
that: that if you're attacking American interests, there will be a response. But it's important to communicate that fact,
that you're prepared for it, we know exactly what we're going to do, and you will regret
the consequences of your act and you should be fearful of those consequences and thus
not do it in the first place. The threat isn't just that new tools of warfare
like cyber attacks let countries get away with things they normally couldn't. In regular war, we have what are called norms
of proportionality. You bomb me, I bomb you back. But tools like cyber are so new, there are
no norms yet. No one knows what sort of response to expect,
and Carter says this can be dangerous. Proportionality does mean if you do something,
I'm going to do something back to you, but I'm not necessarily going to do something
that's out of proportion and that makes it necessary for you then to do more, and more,
and more. That's called escalation, obviously nobody
wants that. The US, he says, has to have responses strong
enough to make any adversary stand down — but not so strong that it could make the other
country feel obligated to respond, which is how things could spiral out of control. So whenever we think about deterrence responses,
we craft them in such a way that they are not by themselves intentionally or unintentionally
escalatory. We always have retained the capability to
escalate still further, that's part of deterring the next move. But it's not our intention, in general, to
escalate something. It's to stop it from ever occurring in the
first place, and if it does occur, to punish it quickly, which makes the opponent say,
"Okay, I realize my mistake. I stand down from my objectives," and then
it's the end of it. But it's not just cyber war. Russia is developing new postmodern techniques
known as hybrid war. Special forces dressed up as vigilantes. Attacks meant to create chaos more than seize
territory. Propaganda and misinformation meant to spark
panic or even popular unrest. Deterrence works on certainty — who is
doing what, and what actions will spark retaliation. But hybrid war is about creating uncertainty. It makes it harder to determine who's doing
what, and blurs the lines between what is and isn't war. And, like with cyber war, the rules of hybrid
war are still unclear. Carter says the way to deal with that is by
keeping lines of communication open so that both side can control any misunderstanding
or escalation before it gets out of control. It's very important to keep dialogue, even
with potential enemies. That's why I believe, among many other things,
very strongly in military-to-military dialogue and dialogue between me and my counterparts. You can't stop a conflict that your enemy
deliberately provokes, but you can try to prevent ones that they blunder into by underestimating
you. One of the ways you do that is by signaling
clearly and having dialogue. Are you satisfied with the level of military-to-military
communication with Russia and China? No, I'd like to see more in general, but it
takes two to tango. It's not just the amount, it's the character
of the dialogue and the willingness of those parties to have a dialogue of a kind that
we would regard as fruitful. That's not everything that it should be. In the last year of the Obama administration,
Carter has been arguing that the American military needs to prepare for a new era of
great power competition, primarily with Russia and with China. That means an era where deterrence is even
more important. And that deterrence, ultimately, is backed
up by nuclear weapons. My bedrock of this department here is our
commitment to nuclear security, and also to deterrence in our nuclear arsenal. It's not in the headlines every day, and thank
goodness for that, but it's in the back of my mind every day. The US has about 7,100 nuclear weapons, of
which about 1,500 are deployed. Russia has about the same. Combined, that's 90% of all nuclear weapons. They mainly exist to never to be used — to
deter other nuclear states. But there's a strange logic to this: to make
sure we never have to use them, we need to credibly threaten to use weapons that would
kill millions and send the world into nuclear winter. To ask you about that deterrence, there's
a story that I love from when Dick Cheney had your job. In 1989, he was getting a briefing on US nuclear
war plans, and there was a slide that came up for retaliatory strike plans for Moscow. One of the things it showed was, I think it
was something like 70 strikes on one radar facility in some suburb of Moscow. He turned to his aides and he said, "What
the hell is this? Why are we doing this kind of thing?" The reason I bring that up is I think that's
the reaction a lot of people have when they are confronted with the logic of nuclear deterrence,
and they see its ends. What do you tell people when they have that
reaction?  I do, I hear it all the time. You never get quite used to how terrible such
a situation would be. But until someone has an alternative to deterrence
as dealing with someone who might use nuclear weapons against you — and we haven't found,
in all those years since the Manhattan Project, any effective defense against nuclear weapons
— until those are found, the only defense we have is the threat of retaliation. As the lines of deterrence blur, what does
that mean for nuclear weapons? The US plans to spend $1 trillion on modernizing
its nuclear weapons, and Russia is making upgrades as well. Carter says this is about maintaining the
status quo, a balance between the nuclear powers that keeps them away from conflict. But he acknowledges that this carries some
risk. Do you ever want to use it? Of course not. That's the whole purpose, is never to use
it. Thank goodness in all these decades since
1945, a nuclear weapon has not been used in anger since then. That's a remarkable achievement. But it's one I don't take for granted. But with the growing uncertainty about what
does and doesn't triggers retaliation, and about what kind of retaliation to expect,
I asked Carter whether he worried that an unintended escalation to war could happen. He said the answer was for the US military
to replace that uncertainty with as much certainty as it could bring. We have awesome power in our military. We're not eager to use it, and we hope it
causes others not to do provocative things, but if they do, I don't have any doubt that
we will prevail. We certainly think through every scenario
that is possible and make sure that we have plans that provide for the most sensible thing
we could do at the time with the capabilities we have. That's what we're here for. That's a world where stability and peace come
from making everyone certain about exactly when and how the US will use military force. But there's no such thing as perfect certainty,
especially when the technology and norms of war are changing so quickly. America's challenge will be to constantly
create new norms, and clarify new lines of deterrence, to keep pace with those changes. It's a different role than we're used to,
but one that we'll need to learn quickly. America is opening up relations with Cuba,
and it's a big deal, ending decades of hostility, and beginning a new era between the two countries. But to understand just how big of a deal , where
that hostility really came from, and why it took so long to end, you've go to go back
— way back, not to the 1950s as many Americans think, but to the 1850s. The story starts with America divided between
pro-slavery and anti-slavery politics. And one of their many fights is over the Spanish
colony of Cuba. Pro-slavery lawmakers want to buy Cuba from
Spain, or take it by force, to turn into a new slave state. Anti-slavery politicians oppose this, calling
it imperialism. In 1898, after slavery ends, Americans have
a different version of this argument again, when Cubans rise up against Spain. The US joins them, starting the Spanish-American
war. But Americans divide: should the US seize
Cuba from Spain for itself, or liberate it? This is part of a much bigger debate at the
time over whether the US should explicitly become a European-style imperial power. So this is an argument about Cuba, but it's
also an argument about America and what kind of country it should be. Should America be the kind of country that
controls Cuba, or that respects it as a fellow sovereign nation? That argument has continued, in different
forms, ever since At this point, in 1898, the fight happens
in Congress. Each side passes laws trying to force their
way. It ends with a weird split-baby policy, with
Cuba winning independence, but under quasi-imperial rule. The US would take over Guantanamo Bay, dictate
Cuba's foreign policy, and give itself the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. Then come the next American interventions
in Cuba, in 1906 and 1917. Each time, the US military takes over for
a few years, ostensibly to resolve some political crisis, but that usually means protecting
American interests, such as sugar imports. Today, when Americans think about the US and
Cuba, we think of the Cold War, but Cubans often think back to this imperial era. That era technically ends in 1933, with an
uprising against Cuba's government. Under US law, America is supposed to intervene,
but President Franklin Roosevelt want to end America's imperial era, so he declares neutrality. Over the next 20 years, Cuba becomes a democracy,
and one that's generally friendly with the US. That changes in 1952, when a former president
and military leader named Fulgencio Batista seizes power in a coup, suspends the constitution,
and imposes an increasingly oppressive rule. Cuba's Communist uprising begins the next
year, led by a young Fidel Castro. American politics at this point is obsessed
with fears of communism, so the US backs Batista in the war, no matter how brutal he becomes. For Americans, this feels like a front in
the struggle against communism. But for Cubans, it feels like Batista is an
extension of American imperialism, and the guerrilla war a continuation of their long
fight for freedom. The communists win in 1959 and Castro takes
power. The US, fearing communism's expansion, sets
up the embargo to strangle Cuba's economy, tries to assassinate Castro, even, in the
disaster known as Bay of Pigs, sends in CIA-trained Cubans to try to take over the island. Castro turns to the Soviets for help, and
in 1962 they nearly start World War Three when the US blocks Soviet efforts to put nuclear
missiles in Cuba. The incident scares everyone enough that things
settle into a tense but peaceful status quo. Over time, ordinary Cubans are squeezed between
the US embargo and Castro's dictatorship. In 1980, Castro tries to relieve some political
dissent by briefly allowing Cubans to leave the island, and 125,000 arrive in Florida. No one realizes it at the time, but this adds
a completely new dimension to the conflict. It's now also about the internal Cuban battle
between Castro and Cuban dissidents, which plays out through American politics. This becomes really important in the 1990s. After the Soviet Union collapses, President
Clinton, seeing Cuba poses no threat, wants to end the conflict. So does Castro, who can't count on Soviet
aid any more. But Cubans in America, who suffered terribly
at Castro's hand, want to see him fall, and push for keeping the embargo. In 1996, Cuba shoots down two private planes
chartered by Cuban-American activists. There's a big backlash in the US, and Clinton
backs down. 20 years later, President Obama tries again
to end the conflict. By now, Americans don't really support the
embargo. Lots of Cuban-Americans are now economic migrants,
rather than political exiles, so they want openness. Fidel is getting old, and in 2008 hands power
to his brother Raul, who knows the country needs to change. The US and Cuba start secret talks in 2013. The new Pope, Francis, helps negotiate. In 2014, they reveal their agreement to end
the conflict, and the next year Obama becomes the first president to visit since Calvin
Coolidge in 1928. The US and Cuba have never really had "normal"
relations until now, and that's crucial to understanding why it took so long for this
to happen. So much has passed between the two countries
over the past century, and the US has at times treated Cuba as more of a colony than a real
country. It's a lot to get over. But it looks like they might both finally
be ready. The dream of the pneumatic tube will never
die. They’re a few quirks from mainstream —
an oddity at bank drive thrus, a retro vision of a smokeless and frictionless future. But the hope lives with inventions like the
Hyperloop that try to combine pneumatic tubes and maglev for high speed transport,
The thing most people don’t know is how long the dream has been alive — and that
they’ve been trying to move people for more than 150 years. Pneumatic tubes are pretty simple. At their most basic, a sealed tube allows
a fan to make a vacuum. When a canister pops into place, a fan whirs
to life and creates a difference in air pressure that sucks the tube to its destination. As early as the 1850s, people adapted artificial
vacuums for powering the mail system, and they sent lots of packages — including cats. Part II
The New York City underground pneumatic mail system launched in 1897. It carried the mail from one post office to
another. The first cannister had a Bible, a flag, and
a copy of the Constitution. As an inside joke, the second carried an imitation
peach. The third had a black cat (it survived). Operators called themselves “Rocketeers”
and at its peak the system could send 200,000 letters an hour. It wasn’t close to the first. Pneumatic mail systems were surprisingly common. They’d been running in London since the
1850s, and were in Paris, Prague, Philadelphia, and tons of other places. But as cities spread out and automobiles developed,
tubes became too difficult to install, maintain, and staff. They saw more widespread adoption in department
stores, offices, and yes, banks. NASA used tubes for memos. As interoffice mail, tubes were more practical,
until smaller offices and email made them an extravagance there, too. But the dream was always bigger than that. They wanted to put people in the canisters. Part III
Before the mail was the pneumatic railway, including New York’s first subway system,
30 years before construction of today’s familiar underground subway began. Opened in 1870, Alfred Ely Beach’s experimental
subway debuted under Broadway, modeled on experiments in England. It sold more than 400,000 short rides as just
an experiment: for New Yorkers of the era, it wasn’t a subway —
It was an advance in civilization. Like London’s Crystal Palace atmospheric
roadway in the 1860s, it promised easy, clean, transport. But Beach’s proof of concept closed before
more stations could be built. Investors got scared. There was no pneumatic disaster, just reality. The same thing that eventually took down the
mail took down the pneumatic subway. It wasn’t easy or cheap enough to be sustainable. The airless tube had too much friction. Pneumatic tubes are still around. Until 2011, they were used in at least one
McDonald’s drive-thru. And they’re still used in hospitals to transport
lab samples quickly and safely from
one floor to another. But it’s the Hyperloop that has the original
spirit, the conviction that the pneumatic tube isn’t a pipe dream. It’s the idea part Victorian, part Jetsons:
that tubes won’t just push people from one place to another,
But maybe into the future, too. Any history of pneumatic tubes is going to
involve a lot of omissions. I had to leave out the trash disposal on Roosevelt
Island, pneumatic dating, and also the pioneering pneumatic mail in Philadelphia, where they
sent a rooster, guinea pigs, and a goldfish in a goldfish bowl through the pneumatic — and
none of them were injured. Ahh..springtime. That warm breeze, the sun on your face... and lots and lots of plant sex. [sexy music playing] "Let's take it slow, baby." Yes, flowers, grass and trees are getting it on, and seasonal allergy sufferers are miserable. That’s because our immune systems mistake harmless grains of pollen for dangerous intruders. They go into overdrive mode, releasing a chemical called histamine that triggers those annoying symptoms. Seasonal allergies are affecting more and more people, and scientists are scrambling to figure out why. One idea that’s gaining traction is the hygiene hypothesis. The theory is that our immune systems needs training when we’re kids to learn how to respond to organisms that cause disease. If the immune system doesn’t get enough exposure to things like bacteria, it might not be able to tell what’s a real threat and what’s harmless. It’s also more likely to misfire and overreact to innocent visitors like pollen. When it does, it releases the histamine that triggers those annoying seasonal allergy symptoms. This is still just a theory… and it doesn’t explain why some people get allergies and others don’t. But it is helping scientists understand some interesting relationships. Like, why kids who grow up on farms or who have more siblings tend to have fewer seasonal allergies. And babies born via c-section tend to have more. The hygiene hypothesis proposes that farms, siblings, and vaginal birth expose kids to the kinds of “good” bacteria that give their immune systems plenty of practice separating friend from foe. Evidence for the hygiene hypothesis also shows up in...other places. Studies analyzing the fecal matter of people with seasonal allergies found that they were missing lots of the “good” bacteria. Which could be why some allergy sufferers say they had fewer symptoms when they added bacteria-rich foods like yogurt to their diets, though scientists say more research is needed to find out why. The hygiene hypothesis might also help explain why kids with higher levels of a chemical called triclosan in their bodies tend to have more seasonal allergies. Triclosan is the active ingredient in most antibacterial soaps, hand gels and wipes. According to the hygiene hypothesis… it’s killing good bacteria along with the bad, which makes kids’ immune systems more likely to mistake pollen or for a serious threat. That’s why it’s probably a good idea for us to stop buying antibacterial products and stick with regular soap and water. Now, the take-home message from these studies isn’t that you should stop cleaning your homes or washing your hands in an attempt to try to keep allergies at bay. The hygiene hypothesis is more of a starting point. A way for us to start thinking about how our modern environment might be shaping our health. Let’s say you save your quarters in a piggy bank that you keep on the shelf in your bedroom. But your mom keeps checking up on how much you’re putting in and taking out. You don't like that, so what you need is a second piggy bank that you keep somewhere else. Your friend Johnny’s mom is busy and she doesn’t have time checking on piggy banks. You bring your spare bank over there and money can come and go without anyone being the wiser. But maybe Johnny’s mom isn’t really “too busy.”
Maybe she’s just lazy. Maybe she’s deliberately telling the neighborhood that for a small fee, she’ll safeguard their piggy banks and not pay attention to what happens. That what countries like Panama and the Cayman Islands and other tax havens do. They have very weak regulations in terms of watching when money is coming into or out of bank accounts. And they have rules that make it easy to form a corporation without disclosing who owns it. So basically everyone gets to write a fake name on their piggy bank. There's a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca. They've got over 40 offices in dozens of countries around the world. They specialize in setting up these kind of special piggy banks. They’re called “shell companies” — hollow vessels that don’t conduct any business, they just own
financial assets on behalf of their real owners. There's been this massive leak of over 2 terabytes worth of Mossack Fonseca documents to the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists. And it sheds an unprecedented light on the world of shell companies. People can use shell companies for legitimate reasons — sometimes you just need privacy. But they’re also useful for covering up scandalous or embarrassing information. The Panama Papers show close that associates of Vladimir Putin have taken over $2 billion in assets owned by offshore shell companies. And that the prime minister of Iceland actually held financial interests in bankrupt Icelandic banks even as he was simultaneously involved in political negotiations over what should be done with the banks. And the main use of offshore shell companies is avoiding taxes — because the government can’t tax money it can’t find.
One of the memos says “95 percent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes." These tax havens are generally small countries that could be persuaded to clean up their act, but so far political leaders in the big countries haven’t wanted to do
it. “I’d rather stick my head in a bucket
full of scorpions and battery acid than say anything about Donald Trump.” [funky music] Donald Trump says that he's bringing the Republican
party together. Trump: I get along with people. I'm a unifier. I'm very much a unifier. But the GOP is more divided than ever. Romney: Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark. Liz: Is the GOP as divided as it seems? More than six months ago, you pledged to support
the Republican nominee whoever that may be, do you continue to pledge whoever the Republican
nominee is? No I don't anymore. You don't? No. We went to CPAC, the mecca of the conservative
movement, to see how they’re dealing with the rise of Donald Trump. Do you think Donald Trump is a conservative? [Awkward giggling] Hum. The senators he helped elect are the ones
who wrote Obamacare. It's made the transition to being a Republican
a lot harde for my personally. I feel like I have to answer for every single
thing that he said or how people in his audience are because for me I actually do believe in
conservative values. Many conservatives don't even think Donald
Trump is one of them. I don't know how people consider him a conservative
really. So they really really don't want to vote for
him. Ok let's play a game. [laughter] Would you rather vote for Donald Trump or
walk across hot coals with Joe Biden holding your hand the whole time. Joe Biden! Can I frolic with him and at the end can he
kiss me on the cheek? Absolutely. Ok then I'd be okay with this. Would you rather vote for Donald Trump, or
have to eat kale for the rest of your life? Only kale. I’m a pescetarian, so I’d rather eat Kale. That would actually be amazing. It’s like the super food. So, for sure, Kale. Would you rather vote for Donald Trump or
have to attend a 12-hour long seminar on micro-aggressions? I’m feeling a little triggered right now. I’m a huge micro-agression right now aren't
I? I would call it a macro-aggression. But of course…. there is a limit. Scenario. Which probably could potentially happen. Would you rather vote for Hillary or Donald
Trump? I’d vote for Bloomberg. I'm just saying. I would probably have to research third parties
and go with that. If a gun was to my head and you said I had
to vote for one of the two of them, I would take the bullet. You only have two options! They’re both democrats! In reality I think the Republican party needs
to rally around whomever is going to win the nomination at this point. If it’s against Trump or Hillary, gotta
go with Trump then. You would rather vote for Donald Trump than
Hillary? Yes, yeah, yes. [awkward acquiescence] So if conservatives are all making that face,
where is Trump's support even coming from? Right. Oh my god. My friend Chris works right here. This is perfect. "Bernie Sandwiches" Hi Chris, I have a question for you. Yup. Do you have a couple minutes? I do. So if conservatives don't think Donald Trump
is a conservative, how is he the front-runner? Because conservatism isn't that important
to a big part of the Republican base it turns out. Conservatism in the conception of so-called
conservatism is about limited government, free-market, but what the base is responded
to is just straight up nationalism. It's not a question of how big government
should be but who government should work for. Limited government conservative, when you
think conservative, you think the government shouldn't do X, Y, Z because that interferes
with the market. If you're a nationalist, you don't really
care where those lines are drawn, you care about who is the government delivering for,
who are they protecting, who is at the center of what the government does. We've seen that kind of nationalism that kind
of right-wing nationalism in Europe with lots of parties that are perfectly happy to be
part of the big government as long as they control it for their people. That's what Donald Trump is tapping into. Thank you so much Chris. You're the best. I'll see you soon. Oh and here's your sandwich. [Chris intercepts sandwich flawlessly] Chris is right. A majority of Republicans believe preserving
Social Security and Medicare is more important than cutting the deficit. And 52% of Republicans say they're annoyed
that corporations aren't paying their fair share. So maybe Donald Trump isn't a conservative
but he's clearly tapping into the conservative base. But the problem for him is going to be that
17% of Republicans will not support him if he's the nominee. So Donald Trump may not seem like a unifier
right now but he's going to have to be one if he wants to win. [funky music] You having fun yet? So you would rather die than vote for Donald
Trump? Yes. I would much rather. Is there a specific kind of death that you
would not want in order to not vote for Donald Trump? I would take eternity and hell. I think the Republican party needs to realize
that it's changing. And they gotta figure out what to do because
the train is leaving the station and a guy like Trump if he wanted to could probably
turn around and grab a couple other people that are running for office and say let's
start the new Republican party. It's not as if history hasn't done that before. Chris: Yeah. I think that's true. I think there's a real cleavage moment and
a huge part of it has to do with the fact that I don't think conservatives in Washington
the processional Republican political class, the professional conservative movement have
delivered much for their base, frankly. Joe: Oh shit. Liz: Don't die. I talked about the fact that I'm a FEMINIST as often as I can and every time I do it gets huge reaction and media reacts and the Twitterverse explodes and things like that because Here I am saying I'm a feminist I will keep saying that until there is no more reaction to that when I say it because that's where we want to get to it's just if you're progressive you really should be a feminist because it's about equality it's about respect it's about making the best of the world that we we often talk about the role models for for women and the need for more role models for women what about men what kind of role models are they need well my own role models on that have been my mom who went through some very very tough times as a as a young woman in in a political world that was uncompromising in terms of the role of women and the expectations of what a First Lady of Canada would would actually do Indian and she she ended up being a very strong voice for me for women's rights my dad was too cuz he was good on equality wasn't great on feminism but he was good on equality and rights and that was his generation that's that's where I sort of come from my wife Sophie continues to challenge me and one of the things that you know we were having a conversation at one point I said look I talked to our daughter Ella I talked to Ella all the time about how you know she can do anything she wants and she's just as good as me it was just better than any man because she's brilliant and she's wonderful and everything and Sophie's like good that's great but how are you saying that to our sons as well you know how are you training your sons to be focused on women's rights and women's opportunities the way you know you're focused on you know telling your daughter that she can be anything and that for me was a really important wakeup and that's that's great for me they're so young how do you do it at such an early age um a part of it is modeling showing that you know that I'm attentive and respectful and very much in a partnership with Sophie in a certain sense highlighting gender stereotypes has been a little more challenging because we're in a family where you know Sophie does a lot of great activism and work in public speaking but she's mostly a mom and I'm the one who's the breadwinner and we live in a place because of my job so that's a little more from that's been a little more challenging in some ways then getting them to be open to LGBT issues I mean because we have friends who have yeah one of my you know close friends is married to a wonderful guy and they've adopted a child there's a much greater awareness of you know gay rights equality then sometimes the you know the gender imbalances that still remain so this there's a challenge to be thoughtful about all those things together and we had a great conversation about mental illness and what that means and you know sick not weak and stopping my son who's eight now and the two-year-old we're still easy him all of the eight year old is is getting it but you know you when you look at what conversations they have in the schoolyard and I caught Ella grace at one point leafing through yeah magazine of older Cosmo or something as saying yeah she's a ten she she's just sort of an eight I mean she's nice but the face is sort of medium it's like my god Ella what ain't good ooh you did you just I died Sophie come here I mean it was just yeah Sophie Ella you can't you can't judge people by their appearance it's your skill but this is this is a magazine that is all about judging on appearances someone's like okay I'm I'm raising a good debater there that's that's really but but just talking about it and getting through that reflections and and sort of engaging with you know inner strength inner beauty real people personality like all that stuff it's messy being a parent but it's it's exciting how do you balance fatherhood of with being the prime minister um there's no question that you know I worked extremely hard I'm traveling around the country now a little more around the world I've worked long long hours being able to get home to see them every night almost every night when I'm in Ottawa is great being able to bring them with me on trips when I can is really important to doubt with us he'd bring us with him one of us that him when he would go on overseas trips and we got to see the world and engage in mostly got to spend good quality time with our dad but throughout I just sort of remember look I'm in politics not in spite of the fact that I have kids but because of the fact that I have kids and they keep me really grounded in well am i doing things that are meaningful or am I just sort of playing the game I mean is it is it worth it I never know whether I could have the perfect solution on that of the perfect answer but just asking the question is the time I am away from them compensated by the fact that I'm busy making a better world for them and am I am I getting that balance right and then am I remembering to turn off my blackberry am I remember you turn it off well I'm not I'm not supposed to anymore because I need to be accessible in case something happens but do I put my work aside and do I focus on them when I'm with them so I'm not sort of half oh yeah that's nice or you know working or reading I take time to work I take time to play with them and get similar with Sofie I have time where I'm working and time where I'm just a goofy husband do you know feminists Ryan Gosling the meme that I've seen a little bit of it there's a study that shows that when men were exposed to the meme they were more likely to identify as with feminist beliefs would you be willing for us to use a photo of you and put the feminist mean like wool we'll put it for you it got started because the fools of the Kings and decided to unionize and the King action is something used by others he offered their wish the slopes overlooking lake lugano have already burst into flower it's resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop there's always the chance of a lake frost which while not entirely ruining the crop generally impairs the flavor but now these dangers are over and the spaghetti harvest goes forward well we have to enjoy ourselves as road racing gets fully into its stride we'll continue to do our best to cover sport in the way that you like backed up by now Nixon for president in 1992 an act of complete political lunacy or another extraordinary development in an already history-making campaign for the White House reaction this hour on Talk of the Nation our number I'm Regina Crimp. Traci Reardon. I'm Ho Ho. I'm a naughty elf. My name is Big Sue I uh firmly believe in
everybody's right to have a slice of pizza pie. My name is Todd. I don't really care if I'm grounded. My name is Lauren Lapkus and I'm an improvisor
and actor. So you might know Lauren from her roles in
Orange Is the New Black or Jurassic World. You might even know her from her own podcast. I however was introduced to her through the
podcast Comedy Bang Bang where she often improvises slightly unhinged oddball characters. On the 377th episode of that podcast, she
and Paul F. Tompkins created one of the most delightful and weird comedic moments of the
last year. And it was all completely improvised. Chazmin: "We used to sleep in a vault." Scott Aukerman: "Really?" Sunny: "Yeah that got tight. Once we started making money!" Chazmin: "I think that's where we developed
a clausterphobia as well." Sunny: "Maybe a little!" Paul F. Tompkins and I played characters named
Chazmin and Sunny and all we decided before we recorded the episode was that were going
to be radio show hosts together and that we had this morning talk show. Chazmin: "I don't know how you feel about
it Sunny!" Sunny: "The same you know that!" Chazmin: "Ahhhh that was a trick question." Sunny: "Razzle dazzle!" I think characters really spoke to me because
I could be anyone and especially because I started when I was younger it felt more comfortable
to not play myself and to play something else and something totally different. I find voices in my car all the time and one
of the most recent ones I found was Big Sue who's a she talks like this. She likes pizza. Her big thing is pizza. She's always concerned about getting another
slice. Uh she describes pizza very in depth even
though we all know what that is. Uh but finding that voice was really fun for
me cause it's like a new thing that I discovered I could do. I definitely feel like I embody characters
as I'm doing a podcast. A lot of my characters have really absurd
descriptions. There's one character, I believe if I recall
correctly her eyes were extremely close together and her butt crack was fused. I have Pamela from Big Bear who's a meth head. She's got crazy teeth. For sure missing some of them. And then there's Ho Ho the Naughty Elf who's
the size of a dollar bill uh he's a naughty elf that works in Santa's workshop. He has a candy cane penis? Can I say that? He has a candy cane penis. He's evil but lovable. One of the things that gets hard the more
episodes of my podcast I do is finding new voices. It's basically impossible. I've done like 70 episodes now and it's a
different character every time. So I have Traci Reardon who's a 17 year old
girl she talks like she has a rhotacism which means she can't say her "r's". Regina Crimp who she's the singer of The America's
Funniest Home Videos theme song. Her hair gets bigger it doesn't grow longer. She sings "We've got lives from coast to coast"
and she talks like this she really is like she's just happy about life and you know she
lives in her car, sure, she lives in her car. She uh grills hamburgers on the engine some
nights just to kinda heat em up. She doesn't have a microwave or anything like
that. She's pretty sad. She spent all of her money from her theme
songs uh pretty quickly and now she doesn't have anything. When I was in Chicago there was a group called
Ragdolls. An all female improv group. They were so amazing and to watch a group
of women just go totally insane together and follow whatever was saying was completely
and totally support each other was really inspiring to me. As I was younger it was a lot harder for me
to start a conversation with a stranger for instance and I think improv taught me how
to just go with it and now judge myself and trust that I have something worth saying. Thanks so much for watching the video. I'm going to put a couple of links down below
with podcast recommendations for all of Lauren's characters. They are all super funny they all had me in
tears by the end I was laughing so hard and it's really some of the best comedy and improv
you'll ever listen to. Here’s america. And here are 100 dots representing 100% of
the population. At any time, about 30% of the population has
been considered eligible to serve in the military based on a shifting definition. But that number has been surprisingly stable. Here the portion of Americans that served
in the Revolution. Here’s how many Americans served in the
Civil War. and World War I. World War II was our peak, at 17% – over
half of the likely eligible population. During Vietnam, fewer served. Today, the portion of Americans who served
in the Global War on Terror, America’s longest war, mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, is down
to less than one percent. So where are we now? Civilians, and military are simply getting
further apart. While 76% of Americans over 65 say an immediate
family member served, the same is only true for 33% of 18-29 year olds. And military service is becoming concentrated
in fewer families. 79% of service members have an immediate family
member who served. Fewer of our leaders served than ever before. And none of the year’s presidential candidates
served. But having less veterans isn’t, necessarily,
a bad thing. It’s a direct consequence of ending the
draft, which was a great idea for all sorts of reasons, from moral objections to involuntary
service, to arguments economists made, like average skill of soldiers and cost of training. And the death toll of war has also dropped
around the world, so fewer soldiers are needed. But, of course, there are consequences. Veteran populations feel misunderstood and
unappreciated. Stereotypes of veterans as heroes or ticking
time bomb dominant the media. And while "Thank you for your service" and
“we support our troops" are everywhere. For many veterans this feels like a deflection
rather than a real recognition. Lets face it, most people don't think a whole
lot about the men and women who fight our wars. During the 27 years of the draft, the military
was deployed 19 times. In the years since, it’s been deployed 144
times. And the burdens of these wars are shouldered
on that ever narrower group of Americans. While the consequences of our modern war machine
feel ever further from the rest of us. This video was produced in partnership with
Veterans Coming Home, who are digging deeper into the story of the military-civilian divide. Learn more at VeteransComingHome.org. Lens flare is everywhere. It glows on our Supermen, near our Iron Men,
and around our method-acted oilmen. It’s in the fifth dimension, the final frontier,
and definitely the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio. The lens flare is a technical phenomenon and
distinct sensibility — that’s taken over. Lens flares can get pretty complicated. There are countless lenses from the past century
of filmmaking, not to mention the physics involved. But a movie fan can identify flare pretty
quickly. The basics are that each lens has a bunch
of parts, and when bright light shines at the right intensity or angle, it can bounce
around in those parts. That bouncing produces a bright haze as well
as lens flare. The flare’s shape depends on how diaphragm
blades — these things — close to create the aperture, which is where light gets in. If they have fewer blades, you might get a
hexagon-shaped flare. More blades and it’ll be closer to a circle. Anamorphic lenses have a different flare. They’re designed with an oval-shape to squish
more information onto a piece of 35 millimeter film. When they’re projected out with another
lens, it’s in a wider format. And all that makes lens flares that can be
like stripes of light across the picture. But these flares weren’t always so trendy. For decades, cinematographers fought to hide
them. When Gregg Toland shot Citizen Kane, he and
director Orson Welles innovated — constantly. Famously, they used deep focus to show a lot
of stuff clearly and at the same time. They increased the depth of field by making
the aperture tiny and using really really bright lights. So, Toland coated his lenses with Vard Opticoat
to reduce glare and lens flare from all that light. And it set a norm and a path for innovation. Lenses were constantly coated with new and
better technologies that helped keep light from bouncing around and creating flare. It also set an expectation: to make an immersive,
professional movie, you did not have flare — until a revolution in moviemaking changed
it. In the 1960s, new filmmakers wanted to show
their movies weren’t made in a box. They turned to flare to capture a documentary-like
look. Legendary cinematographer Conrad L. Hall’s
work in Cool Hand Luke was a rebellion that turned into a movement. He even talked about it in 1992’s Visions
of Light: The Art of Cinematography. “I feel particularly involved in helping
make mistakes acceptable. If the light shone in the lens and flared
the lens, that was considered a mistake. Somebody would report that, the operator would
report — oh, it hit the lens, it flared the lens. Cut!” He showed the heat of chain gang life by keeping
in the flare, and that quickly spread to rebel movies like The Graduate and Easy Rider. They symbolized authenticity and, as a result,
lens flares did too. Just as flare helped sell the reality of characters,
it could sell a sense of wonder. Flare spread really quickly, like in 1968’s
Planet of the Apes: “You maniacs!” And later, Steven Spielberg brought it into
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Flare had entered the sci-fi and action canon. If early flare said, “these feelings are
real,” now it said, “these spacemen and explosions are real, too.” And though J.J. Abrams gets slammed for his gratuitous lens
flare use, its use as a tool of realism and wonder has impressed everyone from schlock
jocks like Michael Bay to true artistes from Sofia Coppola to Terrence Malick. Malick can’t get enough. It’s in videogames, political logos, and
maybe your phone’s weather screen. Movies in the 60s had to prove they weren’t
made in this box, and in the 90s they used lens flare to try to prove they weren’t
made in this one, even though flare’s become available with just a few clicks. Lens flare used to be a mistake you tried
to avoid. Now, it’s a choice you can’t escape. So you’ve seen a lot of computer generated
lens flare today, but all of this stuff is actually legitimate. However, to get it to show up reliably, I
had to place the light really close to the camera. That’s because modern lenses have a protective
coating that’s pretty good at stopping flare. It’s also the reason that cinematographers
on movies like There Will Be Blood and Saving Private Ryan have actually stripped away that
coating just so that they can get the old school flare look. Trump: I cant' believe this. I'm a politician! Liz: Un-f*cking-believable "You can see the excitement!" Trump: Look at those hands. Are they small hands? Liz: People want to move, people want to move to
Canada. They're not acting like politicians, they're
acting like middle school kids. If Donald Trump is President, it's going to
be a really big disaster and I'll probably have to leave the country.
Liz: Where would you go? I'm going to Canada
Liz: You're going to move to Canada? Hello Kitty: I love Canada
Liz: 28% of Americans say they'll move to Canada if Donald Trump is elected president, 15%
if Hillary is elected president I agree, I would move too
We brought the immigration forms for permanent residency in Canada. I have application forms for permanent residency
in Canada. Would you fill them out? [commotion, laughing] Liz: And they were like, hell yeah. It would
be a great reality show, like I would watch that show, it would be very well written honestly
if it was a reality show, but it's real life. [funky music] I was shocked that people actually filled
them out. Joe: But what do we do now, what do we do
with them? Liz: Right. Yeah we didn't think about that.
There is one person we could ask. Joe: You can't just text the Prime Minister.
[Laughs] Trudeau: Perfect day. So glad to be here.
Justin Trudeau. Prime minister of Canada. Hearthrob phenom who rode a wave of flowers
and sunshine to victory last fall. He’s such a phenomenon that he inspired this Man: Could you run for President here? Trudeau: No no no, you know what, you know
what. Man: We will literally beg you. Trudeau: Get up guys. Trudeau: I don't know if you noticed but I
actually have a job and it's a pretty good one. Liz: Once I got him away from the thronging
bros, I asked him about the impending 86.8 million Americans. That's like so many millions of Americans? Trudeau: If you remember George W Bush's election,
George W Bush's reelection especially, there was a lot of people saying, "Oh, no. If he
gets elected again I'm moving to Canada." Then other people were saying the same thing
around Obama and Obama's reelection. Every election cycle that's the easy go-to threat
for people in the States to say when something happens they don't want it to happen. The
candidate I want doesn't get elected, I'm moving to Canada. If you actually look at
what happens after elections, the immigration numbers don't necessarily spike. Liz: So we actually talked to New Yorkers.
Do you mind if I share their messages with you? Hey Prime Minister Trudeau.
Please help us Please help us
If you can grant me refugee status from Donald Trump I'm totally going to move to your country
Let all Americans come to Canada so we can be safe, happy and free.
You had a quote that your cabinet is diverse because it's 2016, that's the kind of thing
we need, we need to move forward and be more inclusive.
Move that border we don't want no border between us anymore, we don't want that, we want one
country, one nation, one president. If things go rogue, you know, in that bad
direction, Save us
Save us from Trump Please save us
Thank you Trudeau: This actually gives me tremendous
confidence. Liz: Really? Yeah. Because people are realizing that this
election does matter, and they have strong opinions, and people who might not have thought
about voting are now going to make sure that their voices get heard, and they're going
to make sure that the government that gets elected in the United States reflects their
values and their priorities and that's what democracy is supposed to be all about. We had difficult, discussions in our election
campaign. We've had challenges around all sorts of things, and I think the sense is
that we're a place that has been able to work through it and work it out a little bit better
than some other places because Canada is one of countries that figured out a fair while
ago that differences and diversity are actually a source of strength, not a source of weaknesses,
and when you draw people together with a whole bunch of different perspectives but a similar
desire to succeed and create a good future for themselves and their neighbors, there's
a lot of good things that happen. Not many countries beat Canada in terms of
immigration. 1 in 5 Canadians weren't born there and I out of 10 refugees resettled across
the world is resettled in Canada. And yet all of this diversity is not causing
the chaos that many people feared. And that diversity now shows up in its leadership.
One of the first things that Justin Trudeau did as Prime Minister was design a diverse
cabinet of an equal amount of men and women. What would the world look like if every cabinet
or every office was 50/50. First of all citizens around the world would
be more comfortable that their issues might be noticed and taken seriously. The question
when you have a broadly diverse cabinet is not, I mean because there's always in a group
of thirty people no matter how you put it together, there's going to be groups Quite
frankly we need a new set of solutions. We know that Einstein was right, the problems
we have created for ourselves can't be solved at the same level of thinking that created
those problems, well we need to try a different approach that's much more heterogeneous in
our decision making. But it's not like it's rainbows and butterflies
either, in the 90s the country was so divided it almost separated. And many Canadians aren't
on board with this multiculturalism. There's even a poll showing that a third of
Canadians actually agree with Trump's Muslim ban. How do you govern for all Canadians including
those? For me I try to bring it down to the actual
people and the individuals. There's two ways to do it. The first one is that, on individuals,
and you ask if they really, when they think about that, they're really thinking about
the shop keeper down the street who they see every day and goes, "No. No. No. No. That
guy is great, but, you know, it's just in general." You realize that it's a nebulous
fear that has latched onto an idea, perhaps enhanced by politics, perhaps enhanced by
media, but it's not actually tangible. A great example of that was the issue of Quebec's
Charte des Valeurs. This was a highly controversial but popular
bill recently proposed in Quebec. It would have banned state employes from wearing religious
symbols while working. When people actually realized what that would
mean was, for example, a young woman would have to choose between her job and her faith,
people said, "Well, no. No. No. That's not what we wanted at all, and that's not what
we need at all." I think a lot of what we need to do is really
unpack the consequences of things, and the idea of rights and freedoms and being a free
society, I mean a society that tells a woman what she has to wear on her head in the case
of a veil or a niqab is not a free society, but then how is a society that tells a woman
what she can't wear on her head or on her face? How is that a free society? It's not
an easy question, it's not an easy answer, but it's a conversation that should be had
in a responsible, respectful way, and what I've found is whenever I've had genuine conversations
with people there's a reasonableness and a openness that shines through with most people.
You will always find exceptions. The challenge is politics doesn't work in
thoughtful, reasonable conversations anymore. It happens in soundbites, in shouted slogans,
in bumper stickers, in ten second video clips, and how we take those tools that we have to
use and tie them to reasonable conversations is the big challenge that politics is defined
by now. So even though we love to dream about running
away to Canada, these problems seem pretty familiar. And Canada has its own issues. We're doing okay but there's a lot of work
to do. What's the work left to do, what's left to
fix? A big one, Canada has for generations if not
centuries broken its relationship and its partnership with indigenous peoples. We ignored
the fact that thousands upon thousands of indigenous women and girls went missing and
murdered over the past few decades, and we need to reengage with that responsibly. We
need to look at the fact that a kid who grows up in an indigenous community doesn't have
the same access to education or positive outcomes that any kids born anywhere else in the country
have. There's a lot of work to do on that. There's more work to do even on feminism.
A lot of people are talking about how it's 2016 and we're doing well, and there are good
things that we've done, but we're still way down on the list of countries in terms of
pay equity. Canada is worse than a lot of other countries including ones we wouldn't
suspect we would be worse than on are women paid as much as men. There's a lot of work
still to do. Thank you guys, I've got a really good job
right now. When has running away from our problems really
solved anything? Maybe instead of running away to Canada, we can learn something from
it. What did you drop? [Giggles] Do you known feminist Ryan Gosling, the meme? Yes. I'd seen a little bit of that. There's a study that shows that when men were
exposed to the meme they were more likely to identify with feminist beliefs. Would you
be willing for us to use a photo of you and put the feminist meme? Trudeau: Absolutely. Absolutely. I have applications to apply for permanent
residence in Canada. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. What if it was 3 degrees warmer? I just know this girl from Canada and I hate
her so much and so she ruined the country for me. I'm not even kidding. If you can kick
this one person from the country and grant me refugee status from Donald Trump, I'm totally
going to move to your country. Where do I put my email? Like your height, color of your eyes, it's
like a tinder application. Does he get it? Yes How do I put like dating two people? Is that
an option? Yeah. Just put like polyamorous or whatever
you want to call that. Dating two men. The robot dance is the greatest novelty
dance of all time. You can do it if you're a kid, or an expert. And the robot’s rise is the result of style and technology playing at the same beat. The robot goes back before the word robot was invented. Some of the first films show people doing mannequin dances that have the same stilted motion. With the invention of the word “robot” in 1921, it was possible to become a new type of creature for a newly mechanical age. As robots became part of pop culture people sought ways to interpret them. But the modern robot dance has different parts. In the late 60s, a mime named Robert Shields (and later his partner, Lorenne Yarnell) were inspired by mannequin dances, and Shields brought his robot onto shows like Merv Griffin’s, where he dissected them with an engineer’s precision. But the dance wouldn’t exist today without the performers who later set it to music. Some were inspired by Shields, and some were independent inventors. Don Campbell —the inventor of Campbellocking— locking formed to crew that included
poppers, lockers, and robotters like Charles “Robot” Washington and Bill “Slim the Robot” Williams (who actually had worked as a living mannequin in a clothing store). They popped, locked, and robotted in recognizable dances. Soul Train gave them a platform. Key pioneers  like Damita Jo Freeman robotted next to James Brown on TV. robotted next to James Brown on TV. Together, all these influences — Soul Train, lockers, and the occasional mime — made what we call the robot. lockers and the occasional mind made
what we call the robot but its have But it tool another spark another spark to make the robot mainstream that spark was the Jackson 5 The Jackson 5 performed their hit 1973 song “Dancing Machine” on Soul Train, but that was just the beginning. There were other songs, like Rufus Thomas’s Funky Robot, but by 1974, Dancing Machine was a worldwide hit. with world wide professional campaign. They performed it on the Mike Douglas Show and on Carol Burnett. They telethoned it with Jerry Lewis, showed off for Johnny Carson, and even enlisted Cher to do it with them. The dance, assembled by street dancers, Soul Train, (and a few cutting edge mimes) took over thanks to the Jacksons. They ensured it was forever known as a dancing machine — that is, a robot. All those parts gave us the robot we all know today, equally enjoyed by uncoordinated five-year olds, uncles at weddings, and practiced professionals. And it succeeded because for a mechanical dance, the robot is surprisingly flexible. A big thanks to all the robotters who
let us use their footage in this video. You can see more of their dance scene in
their own YouTube channels down below in the description. Great way to waste to
a few hours late. In addition to getting footage, I also wanted to get some expertise. So I asked Adrian Barambila a.k.a "El Tiro" what this move is called. And he said that if you were pressed to find a name for he'd call it an arm isolation. However he'd also probably it the cheesy robot dance move because it's the go-to move for non-professionals ISIS just claimed a major new terror attack in the Belgian capital of Brussels to understand why they would do this, you have to look at something that changed for ISIS about a year ago and pretty far away in the middle east So ISIS in the summer of 2014 had had a huge sweep across the region, seizing lots of cities Starting in early 2015, the group began to suffer some real defeats in Syria and Iraq lost some major cities and started to come under attack from American airstrikes and in just a few months it lost a quarter of its territory but this posed more than just a military threat to ISIS It had always operated on a narrative of victory and invinsibility and it used that to recruit and motivate fighters of other Jihadist groups and it needs those fighters to survive the was caliphate was losing ground so it was losing that narrative and it needed something new to keep that going so first they tried to expand abroad, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen but those efforts all fizzled, in the summer and fall of 2015 ISIS found its solution, by launching mass terror attacks against civilians abroad and this helped the group portray itself once again as on the march but then Europe faced a big problem in how to deal with these attacks because the hard truth is that most of these attackers aren't foreigners. They aren't refugees or migrants they're actually European nationals and you can't just close the border to keep them out if they're actually from Europe and a lot of them are people who went and joined ISIS or other terrorist groups, so-called foreign fighters and now that ISIS is losing territory, those fighters are coming home, and they're bringing their battled hardened experience and skills with them and these are really hard problems to solve, rooted in socio-economic problems grievances that go pretty deep in European society you can't solve this with bombs or with border closings So what now? It seems likely that as ISIS keeps losing its territory its going to become something like what it was before, when America was fighting the Iraq war in the mid 2000's Not a state, but still an insurgency and a terrorist group capable of doing terrible damage abroad. hi I'd like to get a prescription for birth control getting a birth control prescription can be a huge hassle ask your doctor if birth control is right for you then ask your boss put it online and see how many likes again okay maybe it's not that bad but still you've gotta schedule the appointment three weeks take time off work it might mean an awkward conversation with your parents do you take it for your skin who do you think she has a tight knit sweaters and then you got to do it all over again no refills I have to go through all this again next month yep see you then but what if you could just get birth control without seeing a doctor well an Oregon in California you can pharmacist there can prescribe birth control without having a doctor involved several other states are considering similar measures in many experts want to go even further birth control is a relatively safe drug with few complications so why not make it as easy to buy as advil or vitamins over-the-counter access could help prevent some of the 45% of pregnancies that are unplanned each year in the US and lots of countries already let you buy birth control without a prescription one study of a low-income border community found that women who obtain the pill in Texas were 60% more likely to stop using it compared to women who went to Mexico to buy their birth control over the counter one potential downside would be that fewer women go to get annual cancer screenings if they don't need to go see their doctor in order to get birth control but overall most doctors support the idea of making birth control easier to get and a handful of Republican politicians say that they're in favor of it too the Phil lot to be available over-the-counter round-the-clock two-thirds of women back over-the-counter birth control and one in three women who aren't taking the pill say that they would take it if they could get it without a prescription plus reducing unintended pregnancies could save the u.s. a ton of money the federal government pays for 68% of unintended birth through Medicaid and other programs which cost us taxpayers 21 billion dollars a year fewer unintended pregnancies means fewer abortions fewer miscarriages and lower health care costs pregnancy is expensive and it should be easy to prevent you Your body is a temple, but it’s also a museum
of natural history. Look closely and you’ll see parts that aren’t
there because you need them but because your animal ancestors did.
No longer serving their previous function but not costly enough to have disappeared,
these remnants of our deep history only make sense within the framework of evolution by
natural selection. With your arm on a flat surface, push your
thumb against your pinky and tip your hand slightly up.
If you see a raised band in the middle of the wrist, you’ve got a vestigial muscle
in your forearm. That tendon you see connects to the palmaris
longus, a muscle that around 10-15% of people are missing
on one or both of their arms. It doesn’t make them any weaker though.
There’s no difference in grip strength. In fact, it’s one of the first tendons that
surgeons will take out so they can use it in reconstructive and cosmetic surgeries.
You can find the palmaris longus across mammal species, but it’s most developed among those
that use their forelimbs to move around. In primates, that means the muscle is longer
in lemurs and monkeys and shorter in chimps, gorillas, and other apes that don’t do a
lot of scrambling through trees. It’s not the only leftover muscle that we've got. Look
at the three that are attached to our outer ear.
We can’t get much movement out of these muscles, especially compared to some of our
mammal relatives who use them to locate the sources of sounds.
Presumably this would have been quite helpful for early nocturnal mammals.
In humans, you can still detect the remnants of this adaptation with electrodes.
In one study researchers recorded a spike of activity in the ear muscle cells in response
to a sudden sound. Not enough to move the ear, but detectable.
And you can probably guess the location of the sound based on the results - it came from
a speaker to the left of the study subjects. So this is their left ear subconsciously trying
(and failing) to pivot toward the sound. You can see another futile effort by our vestigial
body parts when you get goosebumps. When we’re cold, tiny muscles attached to
our body hairs contract, pulling the hair upright which causes the surrounding skin
to form a bump. For our furry mammal relatives, the raised
hair increases the amount of space for insulation, helping them stay warm.
Birds can do this too. you’ve probably seen a puffy pigeon on a cold day.
Adrenaline is one of the hormones involved in the body’s response to cold temperatures,
and it’s also part of the fight or flight response.
So it helps some animals appear larger when they’re threatened.
And it may be why surprising and emotional turns in music can give some people goosebumps.
And then there’s our tail. At the end of our spine are a set of fused vertebrae - some
people have 3, some have 5. We call it the tailbone.
It now serves as an anchor for some pelvic muscles but it’s also what’s left of our
ancestors’ tails. Every one of us actually had a tail at one
point. When the basic body plan is being laid out at around 4 weeks of gestation, humans
embryos closely resemble embryos of other vertebrates.
And that includes a tail with 10-12 developing vertebrae.
In many other animals it continues to develop into a proper tail.
But in humans and other apes, the cells in the tail are programmed to die a few weeks
after they appear. Vary rarely though, a mutation allows the
ancestral blueprint to prevail and a human baby will be born with a true vestigial tail. The most adorable vestigial behavior is the palmar grasp reflex, where infants up until
they’re about 6 months old have this incredible grasp on whatever you put in their hand. There’s
a similar reflex for their feet. I wanted to show you this great piece of footage from
the 1930s where they demonstrated this behavior. These babies are only 1 month old and you
can see that their inner monkey can support their entire weight. During a rally in St. Louis, Donald Trump
lamented, yeah lamented, that nobody wants to hurt each other anymore. Look, he said
it right here. [TRUMP] Nobody wants to hurt each other anymore,
right. And, they're being politically correct the way they take them out. So it takes a
little bit longer, and honestly protestors they realize it. They realize that there are
no consequences to protesting anymore. This is the core of Donald Trump's ideology.
The protestors who interrupted his rally, the political correctness that kept police
from cracking their skulls and the media that always seems to take their side, this is what
is keeping America from being great again. We used to be strong and tough, we didn't
take shit from anybody. Now we're weak and sensitive, and we're political correct. And
we take shit from everybody. [TRUMP] I love the old days. You know what
they used to do to guys like that when they're awful in a place like this? They'd be carried
out in a stretcher, folks. I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell ya. Trump's core question to his supporters, to
the country, is how are we going to beat China if we can't even shut down a protester? How
are we gonna crush ISIS if we're so afraid of hurting people's feelings? Violence is scary. But violence as a political
ideology, that is something different. It is something terrifying. And that's where
Trump, and Trump's campaign has gone. This is Donald Trump's promise to his supporters. You protect him, you do what's necessary and
he'll protect you. He'll pay your legal fees, he'll back your lie. That's his promise, you
protect him and he'll protect you. He'll use his money, his power, his anything. If they
fix his problem, he will make sure they don't pay any consequences for it. [TRUMP] So if you see somebody getting ready
to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. Seriously, just knock the hell out of them.
I promise you, I will pay the legal fees. I promise, I promise. But months later, Donald Trump made good on
that promise. At a rally of his, a African American protester was being taken out of
the building. And while he was being taken out, and you can see it on the video, he was
sucker-punched by a Trump supporter. [MCGRAW] Yes, he deserved it. The next time
we see him, we might have to kill him. Completely cold-blooded assault. That Trump
supporter has been arrested, he's been charged with the crime. And Donald Trump was asked
on one of the Sunday shows [if he] would he pay for this man's legal fees. [TRUMP] I've instructed my people to look
into it. The great mistake the media makes with Donald
Trump is that he doesn't have an ideology, that he's just some kind of reality star,
or celebrity, or carnival barker. But he does have an ideology. He is a nationalist. At the core of any appeal like that is a very
simple equation: the us must defeat the them. That's it. That is the core of nationalism. And there's a reason nationalistic appeals
like that easily lend themselves to violence. What Trump supporters hear at his rally's
is that America used to be great, and that its greatness has been taken away. And they're
told why; they're told who took it away. Those protesters, the Chinese, the immigrants, the
Muslims. They're told that the reason these losers, these outsiders are being able to
drag America down is that we are letting them. We are letting these protesters stand up and
interrupt our rallies. We are letting the Mexican government give us this terrible deal.
And they're told what they need to do to stop it too. That, they need to be tough again.
They need to believe again. They need to not be so politically correct. And that if they're
willing to stand up and do that, Donald Trump will have their back. He'll pay their legal
fees. There is an authoritarian impulse in America
there always is, there always has been. And now they have found their leader. And he is
telling them exactly what to do and why they need to do it. This is ugly, but it is coherent.
What Donald Trump is offering is an argument and a solution. An explanation and an ideology.
What he's saying isn't unclear, it's not confusing, it might be dangerous, but it is extremely,
extremely clear. [TRUMP] I honestly, can I be honest with you?
It adds to the flavor. It really does. Makes it more exciting. I mean, isn't this better
than listening to a long, boring speech? And this is why Donald Trump is something
new and something scarier in American life. He is a man with an evident appetite for suppressing
dissent through violence. He is a man who believes security forces should be unleashed
from political correctness. He's a man who will not just play to the violent instincts
of the crowd, but promise to protect them if they become violent. He's a man arguing
for a country where protesting has terrible, terrible consequences. Where dissent is put
down with force. And his supporters are listening. The results are playing out before us on television,
night after night. If Donald Trump wins this election and America
goes down a dark path, we will never be able to say that we weren't warned. We'll never
be able to say we didn't know what was coming. Donald Trump was very clear, he told us all
and we saw it. We knew exactly what he was. The question is will we reject it. Somewhere tonight, in the Verizon center in
Washington DC, magic will happen. Maybe not here. But maybe here, or here, or here. And definitely
here. The kiss cam's magic doesn't happen by chance.
They have to select the kissers, keep a few secrets, and work an arena crowd, not just
a couple. The kiss cam is the story of a high-tech theatrical production and a business model,
falling in love. A few decks above the court is a guy locked
into a headset. Zak Grim's the manager of
game entertainment. "Anything that happens in the arena bowl on
a game night that is not the game of basketball is kind of my domain." That means he's cutting through the activity
of a game night to find the right couples. "We are the ones that kind of execute it.
So we create all the graphics that go around it, we're on headset trying to pick out where
all the couples are in the crowd, saying 'Oh, section 220 looks like it's got a lot of good
people in it. Put a camera on that, let's find a couple there.' So we're the ones actually
executing it." And Zak's always connected to somebody in
the windowless control room on the ground floor — somebody who's put a president and
the first lady on the kiss cam. "I was the one who did that, yes." Quentin, Q for short, has a feed of every
camera constantly ready, and he's locked into cameramen who can give him options. He cuts
between them as Zak fills each discrete programming segment, from the Wizard Girls, to the money
machine, to the kiss cam, making the whole night a production with a ton of moving parts. All that effort only makes sense because the
kiss cam isn't an accident — it's a business model made for modern sports. The history of the kiss cam is recent, but
hazy. Some people credit the Dodgers, others think the Marlins came up with it at some
point in the early 90s. And it makes sense, because nobody knew kiss cams would become...a
phenomenon. But, in some ways, they were a foregone conclusion. Arenas have big incentives to maximize revenue
in the facility. That money's often kept in a different pot from the NBA and sometimes
the arena and team are separate entities. So that's why you see a bevy of sponsored
fan packages, sponsored blimps, LED wraparounds courtesy of large banks, and, though basketball
fans are passionate about the folk dances of the Republic of Turkey, you're probably
only seeing it thanks to a check from Etihad Airlines. And that's why the kiss cam is sponsored too.
Videoboards — Jumbotron's the branded term — are a big and shiny example of arenas'
profit centers. "They are powerful sales tools in serving
ads to fans, basically, and they're also part of sponsorship deals. Because of the location,
fans are a captive audience and they are amazingly effective at getting the attention of people
in the arena. And that's one reason they put so much work
into making the kiss cam click. If a couple doesn't kiss, that's not a bad thing. "We'll come back to them."
"Hold on, we're gonna come back." Whatever makes for a good show is a good kiss. "Go back."
"Go back. See...there you go." The kiss cam is part of a sponsored package
with two audiences — the fans, and the people who pay for it. "Let's go to our people, Q." The occasional plant happens too. "Ready to unleash." But usually, the love is legitimate. What
happens in Verizon Center is not a game. It's different every time because new people want
their shot at video board glory. "There you go. Oh gosh. Three underneath...dissolve." "One more after them Q, one more after them." There's no referee here, just applause. "What is this usher doing?"
"He's giving them certificates. OK, let 'em kiss. We're gonna stay with them. Honey, honey
look!" "Beautiful. Fade music." "Go clean." "Great way to end it, perfect." It's a professional show put on by people
at the top of their field to make fans happy and bring in a lot of cash. Oh. There's a basketball game too. "One of the workers came and asked if we would
do this little skit on the kiss cam." "All we had to do was be prepared for her
to be pulled out of the camera and there'd be a lot of silly string. She thought he was
furry and cute, so I was like, I hope he doesn't steal my girl." come on people stop taking antibiotics for your colds it needs repeating the results of this w-h-o survey indicates that at least 64 percent of the respondents actually thought antibiotics could treat their flus or colds but that's wrong antibiotics actually treat bacterial infections colds and flus those are viral infections that's not the same thing bacterial infections are things like strep throat or a urinary tract infection and you can take antibiotics for these if they're prescribed by your doctor and make sure you finish what you start you'll only encourage the growth of resistant microbes if you don't that's why we shouldn't abuse antibiotics when we use them when they're not necessary or we don't finish our prescriptions we give bacteria more opportunities to evolve and outsmart the drugs we have patients aren't the only ones abusing antibiotics farmers do it too 80 percent of antibiotics are used on livestock and that's usually to combat poor farming conditions another complication there aren't many new antibiotics coming to market there were dozens of unique antibiotic solutions that were discovered in the 20th century lately though there's been a discovery void that's mostly due to a lack of economic incentive antibiotics are really expensive to develop and research and people only use them for short periods of time antibiotics are arguably the greatest achievement of modern medicine share this video and keep it that way Celtic cross, finger pointing, Star of David
does the Wingdings font exist? How many people are sending crucial interoffice memos that chronicle the saga of a mailbox? It turns out that Wingdings has a purpose — and a history — that ties back to the very beginning of printing. Printing wasn’t always typing.
It involved manually setting every letter, and every word, and every line on every page. Just printing text was a tedious process. Pretty text was a whole different matter.
So printers invented a shortcut. Enter the dingbat.
Dingbats were ornamental pieces that could transform any page from plain to ornate. Instead
of making an new piece of type, slotting in a dingbat decorated text efficiently. We don’t know where the name came from - it might be from the Dutch word for “thing”, or maybe it’s just what a piece of type
sounds like when it hits the floor. But we do know the purpose — saving time, beautifully. And those same limitations brought dingbats to the modern era. You might recognize typographer Hermann Zapf from Zapfino, the gorgeous calligraphic typeface that’s showed up on a lot of computers. He was a bridge between the old and new — he embraced computers, but was such a talented calligrapher that Hallmark made an entire movie about him in 1967 just to watch him write. That sense of history and embrace of change led him to make Zapf Dingbats, a classic dingbat font designed in the late 70s. Just as printers wanted to save time using dingbats, a generation of computer typographers saved time with dingbat fonts. His proteges, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, were inspired by him when they created their own digital dingbat font, Lucida Icons, Stars, and Arrows. Microsoft bought the rights and called them Wingdings, combining Windows, Dingbats, and the party-like feel of a “wingding.” But people missed the point from the beginning. In 1992, the New York Post freaked out because typing NYC in Wingdings spelled what looked like an anti-semitic message (they changed it to I Heart NY in Webdings). Conspiracy theorists had a new toy.
But Wingdings was never intended to be typed. Just like Dingbats, it was meant to save time, in an age when pictures were hard to make.
Wingdings was, in a way, before its time. It was the offline predecessor of the emoji — a way to send messages quickly, using pictures. And in that way, it endures. And that is capital C C C. I wanted to know what Charles Bigelow's favorite Wingdings were. So I asked him. And he said he was partial to these fleurons. They're the flowery dingbats that you see here. And he said that these were inspired, at least in part, by some real flowers that were growing in his and Kris Holmes's garden the summer they designed what would become Wingdings. Your wedding day is supposed to be the
happiest day of your life. So why do these people look like they're going to
a funeral? But it wasn't just formal occasions. It was teens, children, and lots
of people with mustaches. Why didn’t people smile in old pictures? The simplest explanation is exposure time. That's basically how much light a camera needs to record an image. The longer the shutter is open, the longer the film is exposed to light. Early cameras and film took longer, so the thinking’s that it was easier to hold a serious expression than a smile a smile if you were waiting minutes for your portrait. See this 1838 picture by Louis Daguerre? It’s blurry because it probably took 10-15 minutes to take. All the people presumably moved during exposure — except for this bootblack and the guy getting his boots polished. You’d pose for a normal picture and a blurry one came out. But that problem was...fixed. Rapid advances in film technology, as well as commercial availability, made it easier to take pictures quickly. By the 1870s, bleeding edge photographers like Eadweard Muybridge were taking photographs that could split a second. To understand the real reason old pictures were so serious, you have to understand what portraits meant to people back then. Remember, before there were photos, portraits were….painted. They were time-consuming, one-of-a-kind. That scarcity made the occasion pretty serious. And that mentality carried over to early photographs. Mark Twain, a professional humorist, said near the turn of the 20th century that “...there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.” This is a guy who wrote stories about jumping frogs. But his viewpoint was typical. Take, for example, the oddly popular practice of posing dead bodies for “lifelike portraits.” The photos weren’t a snapshot. They were a passage to immortality. A record of one’s existence. By looking at the exceptions, it’s easier to understand why most portraits were so grim. There are lots of smiling Victorians, hiding in photo collections around the world. As early as 1853, Mary Dillwyn captured a boy’s smile on camera. Victorians were not constantly miserable
—they just usually got serious when they thought a portrait was being taken. As
cameras became more common and photography improved, aesthetics changed and smiles returned. Later movies expanded the possibilities of recording real life.
Portraiture broke free from the technology and aesthetics of painting.
They discovered the possibilities of a new medium. People always knew how to
smile. They just had to learn how to show it. So one of my favorite old photographs was somebody smiling, actually comes from an early 1900s anthropological expedition to China. It was taken by Berthold Laufer and the American Museum of Natural History has the photo. Which is absolutely perfect. This photo shows that the attitudes in old photographs really were about aesthetics, not technology. And if you didn't have an idea of a how a photo should look like, it could look like anything. And in this case, that is absolutely perfect. Here's a scary fact: in 2014 47,000
Americans died from drug overdose. That's a new record. But if you peel back the
numbers, many of these Americans are not dying from illegal drugs. The main killer is not cocaine, meth, or
heroin. Instead, totally legal opioid painkillers were the biggest cause of
overdoses. How did we get to this point? LOPEZ: "So in the 1990s, doctors were under a lot of pressure from advocacy groups of federal government to treat pain is
this really serious medical issue and there was a pretty good reason for that.
There were about a hundred million Americans suffering from chronic pain." NARRATION: "The undertreatment of pain is a major public health problem whatever the cause, some end up shuttling from doctor to
doctor desperate for relief." Under this pressure, doctors turned to opioid
painkillers: highly potent drugs that bind to receptors in the nervous system
and reduce pain messaging to the brain. And one reason doctors turned to opioid
painkillers is because drug companies like Purdue Pharma said that they were
safer and less addictive than other painkillers on the market. DOCTOR: "We now find that these medicines much so much more powerful much more versatile than we
used to think. And we feel that they should be used much more liberally for
people with all sorts of chronic pain." LOPEZ: "Yeah, that wasn't true at all that these drugs were safer than the other ones on the market and in fact Purdue Pharma ended
up paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for its false claims
later on." The damage had been done and by 2012, physicians wrote 259,000,000 prescriptions for opioid painkillers, enough to give a
bottle of pills to every adult in the country. Since opioid painkillers are so
addictive, millions of patients got hooked on the drug. And as use
proliferated, many patients overdosed. In 2014, nearly 19,000 drug overdoses linked to opioid painkillers. About 40% of all drug overdoses recorded that year. LOPEZ: "So yeah, here's where it gets like really ugly. Doctors began pulling back these prescriptions, but what that actually ended up doing is that because these painkiller addicts were already using and addicted to
opioids, is that they just went to another opioid: Heroin. People who are addicted to painkillers
are 40 times as likely to be addicted to heroin since 2000 heroin overdoses are up by 500% more than 10,000 people died of heroin overdoses just in 2014." The
government is finally responding to this whole problem. The Obama administration, along with local state and private efforts have significantly increased
funding for prevention and treatment programs. But fundamentally doctors still
need an alternative to treating chronic pain. One option that has gotten
surprisingly little attention is another contentious political issue, medical marijuana. LOPEZ: "The research on pot -- it's still pretty early in large part because they're so many restrictions. The
research that has been done suggest pot is actually really good. Not for every
chronic pain patient, but for a lot of chronic pain patients. And unlike
opioids, pot isn't linked to deadly overdoses. That doesn't mean it's
perfectly safe, but it doesn't kill people in the way opioids do." Studies also show that states with
medical marijuana dispensaries tend to have fewer opioid overdose deaths. In the
best study done so far the research said that providing broader access to medical
marijuana may have the potential benefit of reducing abuse of highly addictive
painkillers. LOPEZ: "I mean I wouldn't say that medical marijuana's like the only option
for dealing with opioids. But right now doctors are in a really bad position. They want to treat pain as a serious medical issue. The drugs that they were relying on, opioids, have caused this massive, very urgent crisis, and marijuana it might not be the perfect solution, it
won't work for everyone, but at least it's something to go on right now." Voters in some of this year's presidential
primaries may be in for a rude awakening. A dozen states have passed laws since the
last presidential election that require voters to show government-issued photo ID at the
polls, which could keep millions from casting a ballot. Wendy Weiser: 11% of eligible Americans don't
have these categories of state-issued photo IDs. When you're looking at particular demographics,
the percentage is even higher. Indiana was the first state to pass such a
law, and Republicans in other states followed suit But most attempts were blocked by judges or
by democratic legislators and governors. Then, in 2010, the Republicans won big at
both the national and state level. They picked up 11 governorships and gained
control of 57 state legislative chambers. Where they quickly got to work passing strict
Voter ID laws These states got a boost from the Supreme
Court when it rolled back parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Now, states with a history of discrimination
wouldn’t have to worry about the courts stepping in and calling their Voter ID laws
unconstitutional. The majority of these voter ID bills were
approved on party-line votes. Democrats opposed them, and Republicans argued that voter ID
laws helped prevent voter fraud. But a Justice Department investigation under
George W. Bush only prosecuted 86 cases of voter fraud in five years. Wendy Weiser: it really just doesn't happen.
Americans are more likely to get struck by lightning than they are to find someone who's
committed the kind of voter fraud that gets stopped by voter ID laws When voter fraud does happen, it’s much
more likely to involve the use of absentee ballots. From people using fake names to
vote, to groups that go to nursing homes and pressure
residents to sign absentee ballots for a certain candidate. But absentee ballots are more likely to favor
Republicans, and these strict voter ID bills don’t deal with them. It doesn’t help the GOP cause when its members
admit these laws are about keeping people from voting. Yelton: The law is going to kick the Democrats
in the butt Turzai: Voter ID, which is going to allow
Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: done There’s research to back up the idea that
this is a political strategy for Republicans. Two political scientists found that states
with increased minority turnout between 2004 and 2008 were more likely to pass restrictive
voter ID laws than other states. And voters in these places...they can’t
help be reminded of another time when opponents sought to limit their right to vote. The tools have changed, but the goal sounds
all too familiar. Maria Ligero is on her way to demand approximately
$600 from Garden Fresh, a small company in Brooklyn that neglected to pay her for two
weeks of her work in food preparation. In the US wage theft costs workers $50
billion a year. Yes, $50 billion. In New York alone, 2.1 million workers are victims of wage theft annually cheated out of cumulative $3.2 Billion in wages and benefits they are
owed.” In New York alone 2.1 Million workers are victims of wage theft annually. They are
cheated out of $3.2 Billion in wages and benefits. Maria works as a day laborer to support herself
and her four children. When her employer refused to pay her, she reached out to an organization
called the Worker’s Justice Project. So the organizers decide to write a letter to
demand the outstanding pay and they decide to deliver the letter personally to Maria’s
employer. HAMAJI:
"New York has one of the strongest wage theft protection laws in the country but despite
this wage theft is still very pervasive and that’s because we need stronger enforcement."
MARIN: "And that’s what I see in a lot of the day laborer cases, these are not complex
legal cases because the law is clearly on the worker’s side but this shows how these employers, unscrupulous employers really don’t care about the law." CARLOS: "Mr. Elk, good
afternoon, how are you? I am Juan Carlos, I am here with the Worker’s Justice Project,
I am with Maria here outside of your business, we’re trying to deliver a message to you
but you are not in, I am wondering if you will be stopping by your workplace today?" CARLOS: "Good afternoon, sir. Hello we’re here to talk regarding Maria’s pay." ELK: "What’s the problem?"
CARLOS: "She was not paid for the hours that she worked." ELK: "So?" CARLOS: "We are here to ask as an organization--" ELK: "I got a phone, I got an email, what's going on here now?" CARLOS: "You haven't paid." ELK: "I understand but I got an email. What's the problem? I don’t care. Do whatever
you want." "What's done is done. I don't care. I do whatever I wanna do. You can do whatever you want. Be happy! Bye!" When it’s time to pay many employers simply
disappear. HAMAJI: "And it is often a very systematic part of an employer’s business strategy." And women day laborers are especially vulnerable. MARIN: "They’re often working
mainly in isolation and Maria worked only with one other person. They’re also working
much more sporadically than let’s say a male day laborer who’s doing a construction
job." Fortunately Maria can provide legal evidence for her case. MARIN: "We do have some pay records, we do have a set schedule that she followed." In Maria’s case she would
need to go to the small claims court because her claim is under $5,000. MARIN: "And right
now in New York City the small claims court cases are backlogged and workers are not getting
their first hearing for at least six months." And even after Maria wins in court she will
still have to take additional legal steps to go after the employer’s assets. MARIN:
"This could take months, years before she sees these two weeks of wages that she’s
owed - which is absurd!" The organizers try to use Maria’s case to create greater solidarity
among the women day laborers in Brooklyn. The Workers’ Justice Project does not stop
calling Maria’s employer. One month after the first confrontation he finally offers
to pay. He tells them to pick up the check When people envision a future in art
most often it's seen through a white lens. Only 8% of the 100 top grossing sci-fi and fantasy films featured a protagonist of color. Half the time the protagonist was Will Smith. The future looks different, if you look at it through the lens of black experiences. But we’re not all white or Will Smith. The future looks different, if you look at it through the lens of black experiences. That’s why we have this thing called Afrofuturism. The term was coined by culture critic Mark Dery in 1994 to point out the lack of black writers and black stories in science fiction. But this kind of art existed long before the term Afrofuturism did. Just look at music. Jazz musician Sun-Ra is probably one of the most recognizable Afrofuturists. He lays out an afrofuturistic design is his 1973 album Space is the Place, which you’re listening to now, and also became a film. The key is that his future was afrocentric – linking his futuristic self, to ancient forbears in Egypt. These ideas were more politically direct, and a lot more funky, in George Clinton’s Parliament during 1975. In “Mothership Connection” he connects the struggle of civil rights and “We Shall Overcome” to a positive future with evidence the struggle will work: "You have overcome. For I am here" He not only references an old song from the underground railroad to escape slavery: "Swing down, sweet chariot.
Stop and let me ride." But he flipped a desperate history into positive futuristic ride on his spaceship as evidence the struggle is over and we’ve won "Swing down, sweet chariot. Stop and let me ride" — so of course everybody wants to get on. [Dr. Dre's "Let Me Ride" playing] And people did get on, [Dr. Dre's "Let Me Ride" continues] or at least some 90s hip hop heavyweights did. But Afrofuturism also critiques the way the future looks today like André 3000 did on his ATLiens verse. “Because the future of the world depends on" "If or if not the child we raise gon' have that n***a syndrome." "Or will it know to beat the odds regardless of the skin tone.” He wants his unborn kid to get the future they want, not the one society created for them because of race. And that’s why he takes pride in the difference. They alienate us cause we different keep your hands to the sky. Like Sounds of Blackness when I practice what I preach ain't no lie. And empowers black people to fight to get what’s ours. "I'll be the baker and the maker of the piece of my pie." 'Cause that’s the thing about afrofuturism — it’s rooted in black people a better future for ourselves on our terms, like Janelle Monáe does in "Q.U.E.E.N." "Even if it makes others uncomfortable" "I will love who I am." This is the common thread of Afrofuturism. To overcome the current ways society remains unequal There needs to be futures where those problems are solved. Afrofuturism shows us what that looks like. It looks like hope. [Crowd shouting "We goin' be alright." "Will you be electric sheep? Electric ladies, will you sleep? Or will you preach?" What if The Oregon Trail were made for grown-ups?
This is the R-rated Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail was a wonderful game — and
it went to great lengths to be accurate. On the trail from the 1840s to 1869,
people really did shoot buffalo, ford rivers,
and trade beads. But there were some things they just couldn’t
teach kids. People had really dumb accidents.
When you chose to be a banker or farmer, in the game, you probably focused on the money.
But a banker and farmer have something in common:
these people knew nothing about traveling the trail.
And that meant they shot themselves. A lot. People shot themselves and then just had to
wait by the side of the road, hoping a doctor might come along.
Guns fell off the back of wagons and fired. And little kids — the age of Oregon Trail
players — were constantly getting crushed under wagon wheels.
Soldiers were newbies too. They chased after buffalo and were so dumb that one guy literally
rode his horse into a river. Which meant they needed a lot of medical care. The problem
is that medicine was terrible
Doctors prescribed stuff like cornbread, bacon, and whiskey -— and whiskey was the most
common of them all. People combined whiskey and opium pills for
almost every ailment. A little girl got a snake bite? Pour whiskey
on it. That was if you were lucky. Clueless doctors
left people with gangrene and maggot-filled legs.
And for the venereal diseases? At Fort Laramie, you got boiling water on the penis. Which
brings us to the parties were wild
Independence, MO is where the Oregon Trail began. But the people were so drunk they were falling
off the port city’s steamboats. Ferry rides were canceled because of hangovers.
Drunks bought whiskey by giving away their buckskin pantaloons.
Next to beloved Fort Kearney was Dobytown,
a city with 6 saloons and a fine establishment known as the “Dirty
Woman Ranch.” What one miner wrote shows the mentality:
“Gambling & gambling rules the camp. Dance tonight. Men danced in women’s clothing
to represent the sex.” People loved whiskey so much they drank it
using buffalo stomachs as a cup. Yes, the trail was disgusting
And you didn’t just hunt buffalo. Women had the job of collecting buffalo chips. Don’t
know what buffalo chips are? People sang songs about women gathering them. They were buffalo...waste.
Try cooking your mince pies, bread, and meat over buffalo dung. And you can leave out the
infamous cannibalism of the Donner party and still find interesting cuisine.
Dog eating happened, including the occasional puppy. It was reported as more common among
Indians than Easterners, but everyone got hungry.
In 1844, they served dog with the head still sticking out of the kettle, teeth in tact. Kids played around too. One game included
butting their heads against a slaughtered ox’s stomach and bouncing off it. They stopped
when a kid got his head stuck inside. All that meant there were
bones and corpses, everywhere. Sometimes you’d find a dead baby buried
in the hollow of the tree. We all left graves in Oregon Trail. But a
permanent stone grave was actually an optimistic scenario. You were lucky if you got a post.
There were so many bones, people wrote messages on them,
and you could probably use them like mile markers.
If you were buried, your bones were almost guaranteed to be dug up by wolves. And for
some people, that was the end of the trail
But don’t be sad. The Oregon Trail didn’t have to end with
death from disease or dying on a river.
Most people think it ended in 1869 with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
While that was being built, a town followed behind it to cater to the workers.
It had gambling and booze and prostitutes that crossed the country.
And it was one of many “helltowns” that brought parties to the travelers who weren’t
so wholesome. The name of the town is even the source of
a famous expression. And it should be the title of the next Oregon
Trail game. They called it Hell on Wheels. Not everything that happened on the Oregon Trail was incredibly depressing. I found a couple of examples that were actually sort of sweet. One comes from Edwin Bryant. He went out to California in the 1840s. And he witnessed a wedding in the woods. The couple got married —they didn't have fancy cake, they didn't have candles. But they did have love and a crowd. And that was all that mattered. And he writes that... After the wedding, the happy pair was left to the enjoyment of their "connubial felicities." So even on the Oregon Trail, you have the occasional connubial felicity. which we can all use. However, I also found some examples of guys who snuck into their girlfriend's tent and then got shot. So, you win some you lose some. [Sound of subway announcements] We live in a world built for people who hear. Hello? Can you hear me? [Sounds of many different day-to-day activities] But what would our man-made world look like if it were designed for those who don't hear? Gallaudet University in Washington, DC is a school for the Deaf and hard of hearing And they are redesigning entire buildings based on the sensory experience of those who don't hear. We've only just begun to challenge ourselves to examine how we could design entire buildings, entire campuses, or even cities, to be aligned with DeafSpace. Deaf people as a culture have been marginalized largely We've been, as a marginalized community, developing our own culture and that defines what kind of place we call home, how we claim and occupy space. And so we've begun to ask ourselves these questions and because of that have gotten a lot more creative and think bigger about how we can find different ways to align our ways of being to our environments. The classrooms are oriented in a semi-circle
 or U-shape so that classmates and continuously visually connect with other classmates. So if you want to be involved in a discussion, everyone has a front row seat to seeing. In a wider hallway, two people can walk in parallel signing with each other. But we do have specific distance parameters wherein we can observe the whole body and its signing. Hearing people, though could disregard that kind of a distance requirement they can be just next to each other speaking to each other without that need for the visual field. Stairs also require more visual attention to your footing and so ramps reduce that. So if you are communicating with someone while navigating a ramp you can do so much more easily. Within DeafSpace we have always relied on a heavily visible environment because we are not getting information auditorily. So if you are sitting at the top of terrace you can see all the way to the bottom of the terrace. It's one distinct place that can be unified or have three distinct areas. Color and lighting are highly aligned to communication access. Blues and greens will usually contrast with most skin tones enough to reduce eye strain You may want to have more diffused lighting. A lot of the lighting here is directional so that it can be aligned. There are mirrors present to allow somebody to know and have a sense of what's happening behind them. Through the use of that reflection they can know if someone is nearing behind them or if sombedody taps them. They can look up and that reflective space lets them know who's there. Transparency of, say, doorways. So that when a person is in an office they can either have a transparent doorway or passageway or one that is opaqued. So that I can see lighting and shadow and movement and know somebody is at the door But not clearly see who's there. Very often, people refer to "hearing loss" as an example which negatively frames the whole approach from the outset. But let's imagine the Deaf baby who has never heard and yet is still described as experiencing "hearing loss". And instead we propose a different framing: that of "Deaf gain" What is it that we gain by the experience of being or becoming Deaf? DeafSpace, I believe is born of the idea that we have something to offer the world That being Deaf confers some very interesting perspectives on life. This November, Americans will see two names
at the top of their ballot for the presidential election. But who decides what those two names will
be? turns out... it’s a shockingly small share of the American
public In most presidential election years, just
20 percent of American adults cast a primary ballot. While more than half of adults usually vote
in the general election You don’t go vote in a primary unless you
are really, unusually, weirdly into American politics. Traditionally, primary voters tend to be older,
more well-educated, and stronger partisans than your general election voters because
they tend to be really motivated voters And this means primary voters don’t represent
most Americans, and maybe don’t make the choices most Americans would make. For instance, 62% of Republican voters who
identified with the Tea Party said they “Always” vote in primary elections. Compared to just 45% of non-tea party Republicans And only around 10% of people under 30 typically
show up to vote in the primaries. But it’s not just laziness and apathy. There are also a couple of good reasons why
turnout is so low. For one thing, 16 states have closed primaries,
meaning you can only vote if you’re a registered Republican or a Democrat. And these days, more and more Americans are
calling themselves independents. But there’s another big reason many people
don’t vote in primaries: because they know it won’t matter. The states with primaries early in the year
have the greatest influence over the outcome And by the time Super Tuesday is over, the
nomination is often a done deal. I mean, it is rational…if you're in California
and it's June and somebody won the magic number of votes in April, you can see why people
don’t vote. Super Tuesday began in 1988, and since then,
primary turnout has been falling, with the exception of the historic and competitive
2008 Democratic primary Because the early states generate momentum
and tons of media attention candidates focus on voters in Iowa and New
Hampshire - responding to their concerns and making them promises. These are two states that are a lot more rural
than the American population is They’re also substantially less diverse,
with black and hispanic residents making up a much smaller share of the populations of
these states compared with the country as a whole And that is why several years ago, the Democrats
led the way in adding two early states, South Carolina (southern state, large African American
population) and Nevada (western state, growing Latino population). If a lot of our votes don’t matter, the
ones that do should at least resemble the diversity of the American public. Depending on how you look at it, this could
very well be the chart that represents internet culture the most. It shows the birth, peak and ultimately the
replacement of a meme. These charts are from Google Trends. I got
them by typing in seapunk and vaporwave. It started on June 1st, 2011 with a Twitter
exchange between two multimedia producers. Here, in this moment, Seapunk was immortalized
via a hashtag. But the group of people who retweeted and
liked that tweet were just getting started. ‘First, do you mind introducing yourself?’ ‘My moniker is Ultrademon. I was considered
to be one of the godparents of Seapunk’. They began sharing art and music, chopping
up and remixing 90s inspired visuals and sounds, utilizing elements of cyberpunk to develop
an oceanic aesthetic that they could get behind. ‘I didn’t really have much of a community
I guess like that and for me it kind of came from feeling like an outsider.’ Buzz around Seapunk spread quickly and small
publications began tracking its every move. But, it was still super underground and largely
based on private Facebook groups. If you asked anybody on the street in 2012
what Seapunk was, they’d have no idea. Then in March 2012 the New York Times attempted
to capture Seapunk in an article. The headline? The Little Mermaid goes punk. Seapunk, a web
joke with music, has its moment. ‘Being a part of something that’s a meme.
It makes you question your own work. So,is this a joke? Or is what I’m doing any good?
Can it be taken seriously?’ It’s debatable whether Seapunk was a joke
or a real attempt at developing an oceanic themed subculture. But the article cites Katy Perry, Lady Gaga
and Azealia Banks as artists co-opting the style. But it doesn’t stop there. 8 months later, at only a year old, Seapunk
had an infamous week. Without any warning, it hit TV sets across
the country. [Rihanna SNL performance clip] Ladies and gentlemen, Rihanna. Most writers tasked with covering Rihanna’s
green screen performance had no idea what to think, characterizing it as “odd” and
“trippy”. And then quickly moving on to saying the she
“redeemed” herself with the emotional ballad “Stay.” But the small band of web artists who spent
the majority of 2011 and 2012 cultivating that look knew exactly what was happening
and it split them up on a very philosophical level. Many people claimed Seapunk died the moment
Rihanna took the stage. But others weren’t so angry. ‘I approached it as a positive. I think
it’s almost better to be a part of something that’s inspiring people on that level in
some way.’ In fact, this sort of thing has happened on
SNL before. Back in 1979, David Bowie performed on SNL
with Klaus Nomi, an opera singer who was a fixture of the East Village art scene of the
mid-’70s. Like Rihanna, Bowie was taking the opportunity
to confront a large television audience with something from the underground. The difference here was that Nomi was onstage
performing with Bowie. It’s true that Rihanna, Azalea Banks and
Lady Gaga might be more associated with Seapunk than the artists that originated it. But in the age of the internet underground
styles, aesthetics, and movements are always transforming and adapting — they are two
steps ahead. Today, Seapunk is still alive and kicking,
but it’s mutated for the most part, into an even more popular musical sub-genre called
Vaporwave. It features elements of public access TV graphics
and sounds, elevator music and future funk. And Rihanna very well might be on to this
sub-genre too. You see last year, Tame Impala, the musical
project of Kevin Parker, released the album Currents. The album art, music videos and sound all
have elements of Vaporwave. Rihanna’s latest album, Anti, features a
cover of a song from Currents called “Same Ol Mistakes” And it was produced by Kevin Parker himself. If you listen to that track and “James Joint”,
a 1:50 interlude on Anti, you can’t deny it. That elevator music and future funk sound
signature to Vaporwave is there. To understand leap year you have to know this
one fact: Earth rotates 365.24219 times during one full
orbit of the sun. That’s right, a year is not 365 days. It’s 365.24219 days.
Which means our 365-day calendar is off by a quarter of a day, or about 6 hours, every
year. It’s pretty annoying. Julius Caesar thought so too. Back in 45 BC,
he came up with a solution. For three years, we ignore that extra quarter
of a day, then every four years, we add those four quarter days together and stick an extra
day at the end of February. Without that leap day, the gap between the
calendar year and the true year would gradually increase.   
After 100 years, the calendar would be about 25 days off.
So why does this matter? Billions of years ago something smashed into
earth and knocked its axis about 23 degrees. And thus were born the seasons. Winter when
we’re tilted away from the sun and summer when we’re tilted toward it. And we’re
used to these seasons lining up with our calendar. It’s handy for all sorts of record-keeping.
But without leap year, our calendar would become disconnected from the seasons.
After 700 years or so, Christmas would show up in the middle of summer. We’d have Thanksgiving
in the spring, St. Patrick’s Day in the fall, and Labor Day in the winter. Chaos!
It’s still not a perfect system though. Leap year actually overcorrects slightly,
so every 100 years we skip a leap day, but that puts the calender slightly behind again,
so we skip skipping leap day every 400 years. And even still, after a few thousand years
we’ll be off by a day. There’s this door on the 10th floor I just
hate so much. Goddammit! Do you ever get this door wrong? “pretty
regularly.” How often? “like 30% of the time.” Have you seen people misuse it? All the time. Every day. Constantly. I hate this door. Me too Kelsey. But here’s the thing: as soon as you start
looking for confusing doors. They. Are. EVERYWHERE. Why? I feel like Roman Mars would know why. Roman: This is 99% invisible, and those doors
you hate are called Norman doors. What’s a norman door? Roman: Don Norman wrote THE essential book about design. He is the ‘Norman’ of the ‘norman door.’ Alright – and where is this guy? Roman: ”You Must Go to San Diego” Okay! Don: Hi joe! I’m Don Norman. I’m… gee it’s hard
to describe what i am. Roman: Well, he’s been a Professor of psychology, professor of cognitive science, professor of computer science, a vice president of advanced technology at apple. But for our purposes Don: I was spending a year living in Cambridge, England, and I got so frustrated with my inability to use the light switches and the water taps and the doors even, that I wrote this book. If I continually get a door wrong, is it my
fault? Don: No. Roman: A norman door is one where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you’re actually supposed to do, or gives the wrong signal and needs a sign to correct it. Don: Why is such a simple thing, why does it need an instruction manual? That is, why do you have to have a sign that says Push
or Pull. Why not make it obvious? Roman: It can be obvious if it’s designed
right. Don: There are a couple really basic principles of design, and one of them i’ll call discoverability. When I look at something, i should be able to discover what operations i can do. Roman: The principle applies to a whole lot more than doors. Don: "And it’s amazing with many of our
computer systems today, you can look at it and there’s no way of knowing what’s possible. Should i tap it once, or twice, or even triple tap? Discoverability, when it’s not there,
well you don’t know how to use something.” Roman: Another is feedback. Don: So many times, there’s no feedback
– you don’t know what happened, or why it happened. Roman: And these principles form the basis of how designers and engineers work today: commonly known as User- or human-centered design. Don: I decided user was a bit degrading, why not call people people? It’s amazingly simple, and amazingly seldom practiced.” We call it iterative because it goes around in a circle. We observe what is happening today, people doing the task. And from that, we say we have some ideas. Here’s what we propose to do. Joe: Then you prototype the solution, and
test it. And  this process has spread all over the world, and is improving lives - from better every day things like the ones Don wrote about,
to using the process to solve huge problems in public health in developing countries – water, sanitation, farming, and lots more. So what’d be a better, human centered door? Don: An ideal door is one where that as I
walk up to it and walk through it. I’m not even aware that I had opened a door and shut it. And I don’t have to be aware because it’s so well designed that it’s just automatic. So if you had a door which had a flat plate,
what could you do? Nothing. The only thing you can do is push. So, see? You don’t need
a sign. Flat plate – you push. Roman: This kind of push bar with the piece
sticking out on one side works well too, so you can see what side you’re supposed to
push on Don: Vertical bars could go either way. A
simple little hand thing sort of indicates pull. Roman: But we still have terrible, terrible
doors in the world. So many of them. Don: There are lots of things in life are
fairly standardized. Whether I buy this house or not is not a function of whether it has
good doors in it. Except for safety reasons, doors tend not to be improved. Roman: But the tyranny of bad doors must end. I think that it’s a really shitty design
the fact that the put A PULL HANDLE when it’s a push. So it should be a flat panel here.
And not a GODDAMN pull handle. that’s how i feel about this door. it’s very misleading.
(I agree) Roman: You’re right becky. You’re goddamned
right. And if we all thought like you, well, we might just design better world together. "It won't open because it's a security door!"
"What the **** are you two doing in here?" Hey, so as you can see, since I started making
this video, they've since changed the door a little bit. Guess it's a step in the right
direction. Thank you so much for watching and to 99% invisible, one of my favorite podcasts,
it was so much fun getting to collaborate with with them. Check them out on any podcast
app or 99pi.org. Serious talk about a brokered convention
Brokered convention The Republican party would be signing a suicide
note if there is a brokered convention The brokered convention. It’s sort
of the white whale of politics. Exciting, extremely rare, and honestly, pretty unlikely
to happen. But whether it happens or not, understanding
how it works is key to understanding the primaries. A brokered convention happens when one candidate
fails to get support from more than half the delegates in the convention’s first round
of voting. Right now, the candidates are crisscrossing
the country in the hopes of winning a bunch of state primaries. Because those victories translate into more
delegates at the party convention. For example, take Iowa. The winner of the
caucuses there gets more Iowa delegates the bigger their margin of victory And even candidates who don’t come in first
place in Iowa can still get a share of the state’s delegates. But take Florida. The winner of that primary
gets all of that state’s delegates...no sharing required. Once the delegates from all the different
states have been counted up, we could have a situation where no one candidate has 51
percent majority. Then we’d have a brokered convention. Neither party has had a brokered convention
in decades. But here's an example of how it played out in the past, for Republicans in
1948 In the first round of voting, Thomas Dewey
got the biggest share...but he was still short of a majority. Dewey’s supporters went to the delegates
who had supported other candidates in the last round and basically said Why don’t you join the winning team and
vote for Dewey?” It worked. By the third round of voting, Dewey
clinched the nomination. In recent years, there haven’t been many
surprises at conventions because so many primaries are early in the year. That means the winners
get momentum early, the losers drop out, their delegates pledge to other candidates, and
the need for a convention fight goes away. But this year really is different. The possibility
of Trump or Cruz as a republican nominee is scaring the hell out of the republican establishment,
who know both of those candidates are unlikely to win in the general election. But with Trump and Cruz polling so strong,
a divided convention might be the only hope for an establishment candidate like Rubio,
or Kasich. So who knows? Maybe this year, the myth will
become reality. If that happens, we'll definitely be there. “We need rescue inside the auditorium.
Multiple victims.” The United States has a problem with gun violence. BUSH: We hold the victims in our hearts. CLINTON: Perhaps we may never fully understand
it. “A man with a semiautomatic weapon.” We talk about it after mass shootings. But
it’s much larger, and more complicated than those debates allow. Here’s what you need
to know about the state of gun violence in America. It’s true that the US sees many more mass
shootings than these other developed countries. Between 2000 and 2014, there were 133 mass
shootings in public, populated places. That’s excluding gang violence and terrorism. Of course, the US is a much larger country,
but if you adjust for population size, it still ranks higher. Of these countries, Finland is next, with just 2 shootings over 14 years, but a much, much smaller population. And this type of tragedy seems to be happening
more often in the US. Each of these squares represents a public mass shooting with 4 or
more fatalities. Before 2011, they happened 6 months apart on average, but since then,
only 2 months go by between them. OBAMA: I hope and pray that I don't have to
come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these
circumstances. That was October 1, 2015. And just about 2
months later. OBAMA: Yesterday, a tragedy occurred in San
Bernardino. Our first order of business is to send our thoughts and prayers to the families
of those who've been killed. Public mass shootings get all the attention
because they’re often so indiscriminate, but the truth is mass shootings are unlike
most gun deaths in America. Here’s how it breaks down: According to the most recent data, 92 people
are killed with guns every day on average. About 30 of those are homicides of which maybe
1.5 at most can be considered part of mass shootings. Most of those killed, 58 people a day, are
suicides. The rest are accidental shootings, police actions, and undetermined incidents. Those suicides - they show up in international
comparisons, too. These are the 10 countries ranked highest on Human Development by the
UN. The US has the highest suicide rate among them, and this darker bar shows how many of
those are with guns. Some people think suicide isn’t really relevant
to the gun issue. LOTT: To go and think some type of gun control
regulations that are being talked about are going to stop somebody from committing suicide
when there are so many other ways to commit suicide. But the methods that people use are important
because suicide attempts often stem from temporary crises. The vast majority of people who survive
suicide attempts don’t end up dying from suicide. But guns make it nearly impossible
to get that second chance. The victims of gun suicides are overwhelmingly
men, and mostly white. And the rate of gun suicides has been increasing
in the US. At the same time, the rate of gun homicides has been decreasing, especially
since the 90s when crime rates in general were higher. But if you compare the US to other developed
countries, it doesn’t look like good news. These are homicides adjusted for population
size. The US would probably have a higher homicide rate even without guns, but you can
see how gun violence pushes that rate far beyond the other countries here. The victims of these shootings — they’re
not the ones you often see on the national news. They’re disproportionately young black
men. SHUNDRA ROBINSON: You guys can leave here
and go on with your lives, but we gotta go home to empty rooms. Because our children’s
lives were taken away by people who should not have had guns anyway. One possible explanation is that US simply
has more crime than those other countries. But if you set aside homicides for a moment
and look rates of burglary, or assault, you don’t see the same spike that you see with
homicide. It’s not that America has much more crime.
It’s that crime in the US is much more lethal. Altogether, the number of gun deaths in the
US from 2000 to 2013 exceeds the number of Americans killed by AIDS, by illegal drug
overdoses, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and terrorism, combined. It should be clear by now that this level
of gun violence is a uniquely American problem among the developed world. And here’s one
reason why. There are a ton of guns in the US. This chart
of shows the estimated number of guns by country. It’s adjusted for population size and it’s
still not even close. OREGON SHOOTER’S FATHER: The question that
I would like to ask is how on Earth could he compile 13 guns? How can that happen? If you take a look back at the 10 countries
with the highest levels of human development, you can see that it’s relatively really
easy to get a gun in the US. All of the other countries require a license to purchase most
guns and those purchases are recorded into an official registry. To get that license
people have to state a reason for why they want a gun, and in most countries, they have
to pass a safety test and are required by law to store their guns safely. In part because of its lax laws, there are
well over 300 million guns in the US and counting. This chart doesn’t reflect private sales
but it shows the number of background checks, which all federally licensed dealers have
to run. It suggests the demand for guns has been increasing steeply since Barack Obama
took office. So we’ve looked at gun deaths and at gun
ownership. This chart puts them together. It shows that among highly developed countries,
the more guns in a country, the more gun deaths. You can see that countries like Switzerland,
which have relatively more guns than a country like the Netherlands, also have a higher gun
death rate. And here’s the US. Likewise, US states with more guns have more
gun homicides. There are outliers like Idaho, which has high rates of gun ownership but
low rates of gun murders. But overall, there’s a correlation between gun ownership and homicide
rates, and that relationship has held up in studies that control for things like poverty,
unemployment, and crime. The correlation between gun ownership and
gun deaths is even stronger for suicides. It make sense. Depression with a gun is more
dangerous than depression without one. Likewise, fights, domestic disputes, road
rage, drunkenness -- all much more dangerous with a gun than without. That said, you might need different policies
to keep guns away from potential mass shooters than you’d need to keep them out of inner
city gangs or out of the hands of someone who might hurt themselves. America doesn’t
have a gun problem, it has several of them.   Donald Trump - you have to admit it - is fun to watch. "Is this a Donald Trump reality show with nine supporting actors?" TRUMP: "We look fantastic." "Donald Trump turns this from a circus into a full-fledged reality
show." TRUMP: "And I mean really fantastic." And he's putting on the greatest show in a
presidential election by far. He's red-faced, he's angry, he's funny, he's strange, he's
unpredictable, he's real in that way that only reality television stars are real. Larry David: "Trump's a racist!" He's so fun to watch that it's easy to lose sight of how terrifying his rise really is. But Donald Trump is the most dangerous major presidential candidate in memory. Trump is a serious contender to win the Republican presidential nomination. If he wins the presidential nomination, he may win the general election. He's a man who could be deciding who the next Supreme Court nomination is, be making decisions of war and piece, could be deciding which
regulations to enforce and which to let go of. Presidents represent America on trade
negotiations, they represent us before the community of nations. This is not political
entertainment. It's not entertainment at all. It's real, live politics. Trump's rise has
been scary and it's been extreme. He rose to prominence in the Republican party as the leader of the birther movement. TRUMP: "I was just informed on the helicopter that our president has finally released a birth certificate. I wanna look at it, but I hope it's true."
He climbed to the top of the polls in this election by calling Mexicans rapists and killers. TRUMP: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're bringing rapists." He defended a poor debate performance by accusing Megyn Kelly of being on her period. TRUMP: "You
could see that there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her...wherever." He responded to rival Ted Cruz's surge by calling for a travel ban on all Muslims. TRUMP: "Total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked Trump about his affection for Vladimir Putin. SCARBOROUGH: "This is a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries." Trump replied, "he's running his country and at least he's a leader unlike what we have in this country." Trump later
had to clarify, "by the way I hate some of these people, but I'd never kill them." That
is usually not something that in American politics presidential candidates need to clarify. TRUMP: "Ehhh, no, I wouldn't." Trump's view of the economy is entirely zero-sum. This
is what's behind his arguments on immigration. This is what's behind his arguments on immigration. He thinks that for Americans to win, others must lose. TRUMP: "They beat us all the time." The day before Trump won in New Hampshire, he had a rally in Manchester. And at that
rally, he heard a woman in the crowd call Ted Cruz a pussy. TRUMP: "She just said a terrible thing." And Trump, rather than ignore it or move on from it, he went to the woman and he said, "say what you said again." TRUMP: "Shout it out, because I don't wanna--" and
eventually, he spoke it. TRUMP: "She said he's a pussy. That's terrible. Terrible!"
And the media, we jumped all over it. It's traffic, it's clicks, it's takes, it's fun,
it's funny, it's interesting. What was so unnerving about this wasn't that Trump used a vulgar word. It was the demagogue's instinct for finding the angriest voice in the mob
and amplifying it. Trump is a racist, and he's a sexist, and a he's a demagogue. But he's also a narcissist, and a bully, TRUMP: "You're a tough guy, Jeb.", and a dilettante. Trump has just a complete lack of shame. Most people feel shame when they're exposed as liars or when they're seen as uninformed and cruel. Or when their political elders think
that what they're doing is wrong or dumb. It's one way we keep politicians in check.
We exploit their sense of shame. But Trump doesn't seem to have that. COLBERT: "Is there anybody you'd like to apologize to yourself?" TRUMP: "No." COLBERT: "No?" He's got that reality television star's talent for not caring what he seems like on-camera. "I'm not here to make friends." "I'm not here to make friends." "We're not looking to make new friends." The rest of us, we're all worried about making friends. We want to be seen as polite, and
gentle and kind. Trump doesn't care about that. And it's the reason he's fun to watch,
it's the reason that he's succeeding in the primary. But it's also why he's dangerous.
The fact that he'll do things that others wont means that he'll do things that, until
now in American politics, we've been protected from. But if Trump wins we won't be protected
from it. And so today's a day to repeat: There is something dangerous in Trump's rise. It
isn't funny, we need to stop laughing. It's something we should fear. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate but you probably noticed — 
SANDERS:“Millionaihs and Billionaihs” — that his voice represents another place
entirely. And another time. “New York City: Where the world’s nations
sit side by side” Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s. The city had long ago developed a distinctive
accent. Surprisingly, its features can be traced back to the early English settlers
rather than the big waves of immigration that came later. NEWMAN: “The most famous feature of the New York City accent is what linguists call the ‘thought’
vowel -- and I just said it in a very New York way.
SANDERS: “Tawk the issues to the people” “And second of awl” “There is a brawd consensus” When Bernie Sanders says these words, the
position of the vowel is raised. What does that mean? For me it was helpful
to look at this chart of vowel sounds. It’s shaped like this because it’s basically
a diagram of your mouth, with the vowels mapped according to the position of your tongue when
you say them. Try saying eeee and oooo and pay attention
to your tongue. Eee-ooo. No, really, try it. eee-ooo-eee-ooo. It’s moving forward and
back, but it can also move up and down. Without moving your jaw too much try aaa-eee.
aaa-eee-aaa-eee. Researchers measure the position of these sounds by analyzing their frequencies.
So what’s happening with the New York City “thought” vowel is that it stays back
but moves up. Instead of “thought” you get “thawt”
This feature is becoming less distinct with each generation, according to a recent survey
of native New Yorkers — particularly among white people.
The more recent the birth year, the lower the “thought” vowel. It goes from cawfee
to coffee. “So the cawf - none of my nephews or nieces
will say it that way” You can also hear Bernie Sanders’ New York
roots in his Rs ...or actually his lack of Rs. “Democratic pahty” “Our computas”
“Denmahk” “In Novembah” Like dialects from Boston “Are you a nahk?”
and Savannah “I like to drive undah the speed limit”, the New York City accent is
historically non-rhotic, meaning Rs often get dropped, except before
vowels. So newscasters call him “Bernie Sanders”
but he calls himself “Bernie Sandahs.” R-dropping is something that became fashionable
in London in the late 1700s before spreading to the East Coast of the US.
“There must be an end to speculation with othah people’s money.”
But now, it too is fading. NEWMAN: “Particularly after the second world war
it lost its prestige. “ Americans were focused on their own identity
rather than maintaining ties to England. And as pop culture increasingly portrayed
New Yorkers as criminals, the stigma led some to intentionally lose their accents.
As with all dialects, the New York City accent is more pronounced among the working class.
Which may help explain why Sanders — who grew up in a lower-middle class home — has
a heavier accent than Donald Trump, also a native New Yorker. "Law enforcement. "Law enforcement."
But the accent also varies by ethnicity. So, many people might recognize Sanders’ Jewish intonations. “My name is rabbi Manny Shevitz.”
One thing you might notice is the Ts at the end of some his words.
“Profound and important.” NEWMAN: “Normally you wont say the T very much.
You’ll say, ‘where’d you go?’ ‘I left.’ But you would rarely say ‘I lefT.’
And It’s kind of typical of Jews to do that, to say ‘I lefT.’”
SANDERS: “This country, in facT.” “I very much rejecT.”
But it’s also in the pacing and the rise and fall of how he speaks.
Which is why, to do a really good Bernie Sanders, it helps if you’re also a Jew from 1950s
working-class Brooklyn. DAVID: “This may not be great politics, but I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” One of the things both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are known for is their pronunciation of the “hyu” sound. SANDERS: “A yooge voter turnout. And I say yooge!” Why do New Yorkers drop the h at the front
of the word? Well the answer seems to be that it takes less energy to say yooge than huge.
Consider another H that most of us have dropped — the H one in what, where and when. Back
before the 18th century, it was considered uneducated speech to say what instead of hwhat.
Maybe in the future all English-speaking yoomans will say yooge. This is the opening scene of season two of
Broad City. Abbi and llana, the show’s creators and best friend protagonists are just trying
to survive a chaotic subway ride. “Val? Val!” And the camera kinda lands on these other
two women who are standing there with pepper sprayed eyes. That's Caroline Framke I write about culture at Vox. I’ve watched
and analyzed this show to death. Like many of the best moments in Broad City,
the entire scene is super surreal, so the two women probably wouldn’t stand out to
a first time viewer. But, if you watch Broad City religiously like
we do, you’ll immediately get the joke. Those two women are a callback to a moment
in the first season when Abbi and Ilana actually got pepper sprayed. They’re wearing the
same clothes and have the same devastated looking faces. Ilana’s doppelganger is even
holding the same curtain rod. That’s a callback. Your typical joke in a TV comedy requires
very little space between the setup. Take the classic Dick Van Dyke Show Rob: “Honey will you grab me a handkerchief?”
Laura: “We’re only going next door!” [ VOX CITY LOGO ] Your typical joke in a TV comedy requires
very little space between the setup. [CLIP] Dick Van Dyke Show:
Rob: “Honey will you grab me a handkerchief?” Laura: “We’re only going next door!” and the punchline. Rob: “Well I guess I’ll run back here
to blow my nose.” If you’ve never seen the show before you’re
still guaranteed a good laugh. [Audience laughter]
But there’s another set of much more intricate jokes that are written specifically for diehard
viewers. They are callbacks, running gags, and easter
eggs. So, what’s a callback exactly? A callback references a moment or joke that
most likely happened in a previous episode. Seinfeld was one of the first shows to employ
callbacks pretty regularly. To use two famous Seinfeld episodes. One to
set it up is “The Contest” Where all the characters compete to see who could go the
longest without masturbating. “So you’re still master of your domain?”
“Yes yes I am.” Caroline: George wins. Then later in the “Puffy
Shirt” episode - That’s Season 5 George is trying to be a hand model. A client makes a reference to a previous client
being "Master of his domain." Client: "He was not master of his domain." And George says not to worry about it George "You don't have to worry about me.
I won a contest." If you’re a casual viewer you’re not gonna
know what that means. But if you’re a viewer that’s stuck with
Seinfeld a little bit you know exactly what that means. Callbacks can very easily turn into running
gags if they keep happening again and again. Like, no one knows what a chicken sounds like
on Arrested Development. That is not how a chicken sounds. Chickens
don't CLAP! coo ca coo coo ca coo chi cha chi cha chi cha
Awe this is priceless. Coo ca coo A coo da doodle doo a coo da doodle doo You're a chicken! coo coo ca chaaw coo coo
ca chaw! You're the chicken, not me. Clock clock clock
clock claaaawwwww Or how Kenneth the page is an immortal flesh
vessel in 30 Rock. Kenneth: I've worn this old jacket since 19
hub a dah You killed the bird I had for almost 60 years.
Sure I was legally dead for 5 minutes Who said I've been alive forever?
Because when I look into a mirror there's just a white haze. And in Broad City? Abbi always having to clean increasingly gross
things out of the gyms bathroom. Trey: Got something for ya.
Abbi: Oh okay Trey: Big ol clogged toilet in the women's
room. Trey: We got another pube situation in the
women's locker room Trey: We could really use some Abbi magic
there's a pube situation in the locker room that is unprecedented. Trey: Somebody barfed on an excercise ball
and then in bounced down 2 flights of stairs. So. Trey: There's a bloody shit spew in the spin
studio. But really there's a bloddy shit spill in the spin studio. A good example of how intertwined callbacks
and running jokes can get is a stylistic choice that Broad City has made for a couple of moments.
When Abbi and Ilana are thrown off or disoriented by a piece of news. Morgan: “Oh my God, she doesn’t know?”
Ilana: “Know what?” And it’s because Ilana finds out that Abbi
made out with a friend of theirs. Morgan: “Darcy and Abbi made out!” Ilana has always wanted to make out with Abbi
and has never gotten to, so this is a very personal blow to her. This is a direct callback, shot for shot,
to a moment when Abbi misses a package delivery that’s she’s supposed get for her neighbor
/ crush, Jeremy. At this point? That’s a callback. If they
use it again and keep using it, that can become a running joke. One of my favorite callbacks in Broad City
actually begins in “Working Girls” when Abbi has to track down Jeremy’s lost package. Operator: "Your borough's distribution center
is on North Brother Island. Abbi: "Is that in New York? I've never even
heard of that." Operator: "Yeah it's in the East River" Here we're introduced to Garol. Abbi: "Hello, Garol. I'm not sure I'm in the
right place." Garol:" You are." Garol was the keeper of lost packages. In other words an old lady eating yogurt alone
in a warehouse on North Brother Island. You would think Garol is just an amazingly
cast one hit wonder, but fast forward 12 episodes and she’s the patron of a speakeasy that
Abbi performs at when she’s blackout drunk. Abbi performing as this sort of Liza Minelli-ish
lounge singer with this very exaggerated accent is so wonderful because if you are a diehard
Broad City fan you might remember what we’ll call an easter egg. Abbi: Val about town. Town about Val. Crowd: Hey Val! Val! Ilana: “How did I not know that when Abbi
gets blackout drunk she becomes Val?” Wait, Val? Let’s rewind back to the 2nd
season premiere. “Val? Val!” The best part about this entire moment is
how Abbi is just as confused as we are. At that point we’d never heard of Val before. It's a very elaborate set up. It's an amazing easter egg. Almost every viewer will get a running gag.
More attentive viewers will get callbacks. Only diehards will get easter eggs. If a TV show can pull off Callbacks, running
gags, and easter eggs it can really build out a much more satisfying world. Watching the presidential candidates zip around
the early primary states, it’s easy to feel...left out.
It makes you wonder: One study estimated that voters in Iowa have
five times the influence of voters who live in states with later primaries.
Which doesn’t exactly square with the idea of “one person, one vote”
The idea of a national primary day isn’t exactly new. It’s been proposed in Congress
more than 100 times since 1911. but none of those bills have gone anywhere and one reason is that the national political
parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, they don’t like the idea
they worry that a 50-state campaign would basically just become a giant TV ad war, where
the candidate with the most money always has the advantage.
The national parties have helped protect Iowa and New Hampshire, in part because these are
small states where candidates have to engage in the tradition
of “retail politics”: shaking hands, kissing babies, and eating fried food with the locals
Iowa and New Hampshire also fight to protect their own calendar positions, which originally came about more or less by
historical accident. EK: They have resorted to blackmail, there's
no doubt about it. From time to time, when they've been challenged, what they've 
let it be known to the presidential candidates Back in 1996, Louisiana tried to jump the
line and hold its caucus first. But Iowa politicians told candidates if they campaigned in Louisiana...they’d
be sorry. The candidates obliged, and the pundits and
press deemed the Louisiana contest meaningless. Iowa and New Hampshire fight tooth and nail
to keep their first and second status and the national parties have no interest
in challenging them. If other states try to leapfrog Iowa or New
Hampshire, both states have laws requiring them to schedule
their contests even earlier. so instead, other states schedule their primaries
as close to Iowa and New Hampshire as they can...a process called frontloading
...which is how we get this schedule where the contests after Super Tuesday don’t really
matter much and where most people, rationally, choose
to stay home when their state’s primary rolls around Astronaut ice cream...is not something we
eat because it tastes good. “Oh, I think I broke a tooth!”
“Very chalky.” “Some kind of flavored medicine.”
“It’s the marshmallow bits in Lucky Charms.” We do it because “it’s what the astronauts
eat.” But here’s the problem.
“Is that what this video’s about? Do they not actually eat space ice cream in space?”
Astronaut ice cream is a lie. A crumbly, chalky lie. This is the National Air and Space Museum’s
Storage Facility. It really looks like something from Indiana Jones. And they have
a lot of space food. Stuff like John Glenn’s feeding tube,
Apollo era chocolate cubes and the solar system’s greatest cookie feeder.
“The dispenser on the tube here is very much like what you would think of as a Pez
dispenser.” But when you ask to see the astronaut ice
cream: “We don’t have any.”
It’s surprisingly hard to track down the truth about the stuff.
The only original info we have is a press release from NASA and a newspaper clipping
from 1968 suggesting that vanilla ice cream might have gone up on Apollo 7.
The people who make astronaut ice cream can’t confirm it either.
“Right now I’m going to be calling the people who make this.”
“I can not verify one way or the other. I wasn’t with the company then.”
So I called an astronaut who was actually there.
“I’m Walter Cunningham, I flew on Apollo 7, October 11th through 22nd, 1968.”
It was the first manned mission after a deadly cabin fire on Apollo 1, and Cunningham, Wally
Schirra, and Donn Eisele had big worries. “Meals were scheduled and we put up with
them — we put up with them because we were really there to test the spacecraft and we
were busy all the time.” But I asked about astronaut ice cream anyway.
“The only citation I’ve found is people saying it flew on Apollo 7. Is that true?”
“No, they don’t know their ass, obviously. We never had that.”
Cunningham says it was one of many myths that just got repeated by the press. Like the legendary
cold that all the crew members had? “Pure bullshit. I never had a cold, I think
Donn thought he might be getting one, but Wally’s the one that had a cold.”
And the transcripts don’t show ice cream either — there was a lot of chatter about
other foods like the many puddings on board. The Apollo list was primarily rehydratable
foods — like salmon salad, not ice cream. And for the most part, astronauts hated sweet
foods. They traded a lot of food on board, and sweet stuff was awful. They tried to get
rid of their puddings. Donn Eisele said: “Wally and I want to give away our butterscotch
pudding, but nobody will take it.” But even out of the hated sweet foods, Cunningham
says astronaut ice cream was not one of the options.
“After it came out, and I was long gone from NASA, I remember thinking, gee, wouldn’t
it have been nice if we had that.” And it makes sense if you know about space
travel, too. “Plus it’s super crumbly, so I just imagine
all these particles floating through…” “Flying into the controls...”
“These bite-sized objects were designed to remove the problem of having so many crumbs
floating around the cabin.” Look at Neil Armstrong’s fruitcake. See
how it has a gelatin layer on it? That helped reduce crumbling in early missions.
And food just got better anyway. By Skylab’s launching in 1973, they had a freezer on board.
Today, astronaut ice cream is...normal ice cream.
But that didn’t stop NASA, museums, and space camps from selling the imaginary “space
food” to generations of kids. There is a better way. Sell kids astronaut
peach ambrosia, astronaut shrimp cocktail, or astronaut crawfish etouffee.
Or sell the thing that Walt Cunningham loved so much he smuggled it in his suit in case
Apollo 7 was marooned. “Before launch, we put a few things in our
pockets in case we aborted during launch and would be out at sea some place. We wanted
to have a little food with us in case we needed it. “And I had those bacon squares down in the
pocket down in the bottom of my suit.” Teach the children about astronaut bacon.
But let the ice cream go. We use every day as a stand-in for
love and the human heart. But it doesn't look like the real thing.
Zackary Crokett at Priceonomics has looked into the history of this. He says that there are relics resembling the
heart shape from 3000 BC. But these shapes stood for ivy or fig leaves, not the heart.
It wasn’t until several centuries later that the heart became a symbol representing
"love." But the problem was, they didn’t really
know what the heart looked like. ...partially because the Catholic church prohibited
autopsies. So when artists tried to draw the heart as
a symbol of love, like in this French manuscript from 1250... it looked like this. By the time detailed anatomical drawings appeared,
like those of Leonardo Da Vinci in the early 16th century, the simplified symbol had already
taken root. It became a popular image in Catholic symbolism
as well as secular things like decks of cards. Eventually New York City’s 1977 campaign
turned the heart symbol into a verb, "I love New York!" replacing the word "love".
Now it's used in everything romantic: Valentine's Day cards, emojis, chocolate. But you can also find it in video games, on
twitter, and in ads for heart healthy food. It might be a poor likeness for the human
heart, but that’s what makes it such an enduring and versatile symbol. There's something that might seem confusing
about Iran. The country has an unelected Supreme Leader
at the top, but it also has a president who's democratically elected in votes that are far
from perfect, but sure look pretty important. So is Iran a dictatorship or is it a democracy? As it turns out, it's both, and seeing that
goes a long way to explaining why the country is the way it is. Iran as we know it today began with a revolution
in 1979, which culminated in a simple referendum that March: Islamic Republic, Yes or No? But what is an Islamic Republic? How can a country's government be both theocratic
and representative? Iran's revolutionary leaders didn't really know the answer either, and they never agreed. So they ended up creating a government that has these two systems mashed together. Some parts are elected, some are unelected,
and they're all tangled together in this kind of mess.. There's a real tension between those two systems. Iranians elect (more or less democratically)
the president, the parliament, which is called the majles,  and a really important
body called the Assembly of Experts. We'll get to that later. At the same time there's the unelected theocracy:
the Supreme Leader, the judiciary, the military, and others. Still, the Supreme Leader really does dominate
Iran. He sets the tone for the country's politics
and policies, including its nuclear program and its official hostility to the West. But what happens when the Supreme Leader dies
or gets sick? This turns out to be a really important question. The Supreme Leader is picked by a group of
about 90 senior Iranian political and clerical leaders that's called the Assembly of Experts. But here's where Iran's Islamic Republic system
gets important: the Assembly's members are elected in a national vote. This year, on February 26, Iranians will elect
an entirely new Assembly of Experts for an 8-year term. Even Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader,
has acknowledged that he's like to die in that time. Iranian politics are really split right now,
with moderates rapidly rising after the nuclear deal helped open the economy. If they do well in February's election, then
when Khamenei dies, they might pick a new Supreme Leader who shares their views. That could change Iran as we know it for a
generation. This all goes to show that we think of Iran
as just another dictatorship, and indeed it does have a dictator at the top, but it's
also a democracy. It's got loud political disagreements and
vigorous debates over its future. This election in February is a rare moment,
once in a generation, when Iran's democratic elements become more powerful than its theocratic
elements. Iranians have an opening here to try to transform
their country. If the take it, and if they're successful, Iran could look very different
in for quite awhile. Pennies are basically worthless. Why do they still exist? Back when bacon cost 14 cents a pound, you actually used them to buy stuff. And 100 years ago, a penny was worth almost what a quarter is worth today. Pennies are impractical. Vending machines don’t accept them, and some stores give them away for free. They can be dangerous. Dogs can even be poisoned and die from swallowing a penny. Pennies cost more to make than they’re worth. In 2014, the US Mint lost more than $52 million manufacturing pennies. It costs 1.7 cents to make a single penny. That's why countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have all stopped using pennies in recent years. Why does America still have them? “It’s one of those things where I think people get attached emotionally to the way things have been.” Well, it’s about money too. A lobbying group called Americans for Common Cents has been influencing lawmakers to keep the penny alive. They're backed by Jarden Zinc Products. They sell coin blanks to the US Mint which are then stamped into pennies. Between 2006 and 2014, Jarden spent over $1 million on penny lobbying. So that $52 million a year in lost taxpayer money flows straight into their pockets. Every 4 years the Democrats and Republicans they have these elaborate presidential nominating conventions. These events are basically political theater- voters have already chosen the nominee. But until 1968, regular voters had no say
in who their party nominated for President. In 1952, 1944, an ordinary voter would just
tune in at the convention and say, "Oh, look who's being nominated." A few states had primaries, but they were
meaningless...people called them “beauty contests” since they had no effect on the
nomination. The state Republican and Democratic parties
would send a group of voting representatives called delegates to the national convention Back then, the party bosses would basically tell
the delegates under their control which candidate to nominate and everybody else found out later,  in the papers or on TV … and they thought that this was legitimate,
by the way. There were no cries of illegitimacy. That is, until there were Delegates: Why are you trying to strong-arm?
He's an elected delegate! The 1968 Democratic Convention got so crazy,
so chaotic, that it paved the way for massive Behind the tumult was a growing divide between
the Democratic Party and its voters — liberals were furious with the incumbent President,
Lyndon Johnson, over his support of the Vietnam war. So two anti-war Senators, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, challenged Johnson for the nomination Kennedy: think the basic fact and the basic lesson if we've learned anything from Vietnam is that we can't go in and straighten out all of the world with our own military force and picked up primary votes throughout the Spring Johnson dropped out, Johnson: I shall not seek the nomination of my party for another term as your President But then his Vice President,
Hubert Humphrey, threw his hat in the ring. But, Humphrey didn’t enter any primaries. And then, around midnight on June 5, 1968... Announcer: we now know that Senator Kennedy
was shot as he left the platform from which he made his victory statement for his win
here in the California primary. When the party gathered in August for its
convention in Chicago, the delegates nominated Humphrey instead of McCarthy. Humphrey: I proudly accept the nomination of our party They picked the pro-war candidate who hadn’t
even entered a single primary. Ordinary Democrats were stunned. They felt
overruled by party bosses and backroom deals. One group calling itself the Youth International
Party held its own “convention” where they nominated a 145-pound pig they named Pigasus. The protests, violence and confusion made
the party look pretty bad. Humphrey ended up losing the general election to the Republican
nominee, Richard Nixon. Afterwards, the Democrats realized they needed
to change the way they picked their nominee. They made new rules to make the Democratic
Party more, well, democratic: voters in each state would vote in primaries or caucuses. Then, at the convention, the delegates from
that state would have to cast their ballots based on the results of those contests. The Republican Party made similar changes…and
by 1980, primaries had replaced party bosses. So voters got a much bigger say. But is this system perfect? Um, not at all. Come back for our episode next week where we explain why. So, I want to introduce you to one of the
stars of our primary series. This is a political boss, who we based off of a real-life machine politician from the late 1800s named Boss Tweed He was a Democratic machine politician out of New York City, and he's known for a quote, he said 'I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." That's Boss Tweed. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for the rest of our series, Vox Explains the Primaries. The virtual yellow line in NFL broadcasts
is great. It tells viewers how far the offense needs
to advance for a first down. It looks really simple and elegant but creating
that line was a massive engineering challenge. It started in the mid 90s when the Fox Sports
network tried to make hockey easier to watch. “Scientists at Fox Sports laboratories
are working on new technology.” "You won't believe your eyes." They embedded infrared transmitters inside
the puck and placed sensors around the rink, So that live tv viewers saw a blue glow around
the puck at all times and a red comet tail if it traveled over 70 miles per hour.
Hockey fans didn’t really embrace “glow puck” as it came to be known.
So the technology was retired when the broadcasting rights for hockey switched to ABC a few years
later. But the team of engineers they had assembled
for the project was just getting started. They left Fox Sports to create a new company
called SportVision. and in 1998, they debuted the “First and
Ten” line on ESPN. “Until now, this marker was
the only reference fans in the stadium and at home had for the first down.”
The key challenge in making the yellow line is that the scene is constantly changing,
which means the yellow line has to constantly change.
Not only are there 3 different cameras used for the wide shots of the field, each camera
pans, tilts and zooms to follow the action. So the first thing Sportvision does before
the game is create a 3D mathematical model of each football field using laser surveying
tools. And during the game they gather data from
the cameras about their pan, tilt, and zoom positions for every single frame.
So when the operator specifies that the first down is at the 43rd yard line, for example,
the computers combine the camera data with their own model of the field to draw the yellow
line in the proper perspective ..and to redraw it, for every frame being
broadcast to viewers. The final step is what makes the line kind of magical
-- removing any part of the line obstructed by players, refs or the ball so that the line
looks like it’s underneath them, almost painted on the field.
The way the computers know which pixels to remove is by sampling the colors - think of
the field as a giant green screen. But anyone who has worked with green or blue
screens knows that you need a really uniform and evenly lit background for it to work well.
So Sportvision identifies in advance which shades of green and brown are in the field
given the lighting conditions -- those are the colors to be covered by the yellow line.
And they identify which colors are in the players uniforms and should never be covered
by yellow. It works amazingly well. Here’s the Packers,
wearing green, in the rain. No problem. It only fails in the most extreme weather,
like this 2013 game in Philly. The line ends up all over players, but on the other hand
the system was helpfully used to insert the yardage numbers that had been covered up with
snow. The whole yellow line process delays the live
broadcast by less than a second. And not surprisingly, it was an immediate
success. Sportvision won an Emmy for it, and went on to make virtual visual aids for
NASCAR, baseball, sailing and the Olympics. And football broadcasts have since added more
graphics, like the line of scrimmage and perhaps unnecessary large arrows showing the same
information that’s in the scorebox. But if that’s annoying consider this:
This type of technology is being used insert ads into stadiums and onto fields for a lot
of sports broadcasts. But the NFL doesn’t allow it. In the grand
tradition of the yellow line, the graphics on the field are not there to sell you things,
but to help you follow the game. This guy just held his breath for 23 minutes. His name is Goran Čolak, it was 2014, and
he was breaking the Guinness World Record for Static Apnea. 23 minutes! That’s a whole episode of a
sitcom without commercials. JERRY: "Great! What?" So how’d he do it?
Static apnea is when a person holds their breath underwater for as long as possible
without swimming any distance. COLAK: “Basically I try to visualize a white wall l with a black dot on it. So I don't actively pursue any thoughts. I just stare at the blank wall. Most people can only hold their breath for
a minute or so before feeling the urge to breathe. It's the excess carbon dioxide more than the lack of oxygen that makes this uncomfortable. Push through that discomfort and eventually
the diaphragm and intercostal muscles will start to spasm in a series of painful contractions. COLAK: I just concentrate on counting my contractions,
I try not to think about anything else.” David Blaine experienced these contractions during a stunt that aired on ABC. It can feel like being punched in the stomach. It’s the excess CO2, more than the lack
of oxygen, that creates this reaction. Colak inhaled pure oxygen for about 15 minutes
to get his blood super saturated and ready for a long breath hold. For Guinness, that’s okay. It was an event
for charity. But underwater sports organizations like the
World Underwater Federation actually consider this to be doping.
In training, Colak practices breath-holds with short recovery times to get used to all
that built up carbon dioxide. Not to mention the cardio that he does to
keep his resting heart rate low, because the faster his heart is beating, the faster his
oxygen supply is used up. For the same reason, Colak practices staying
calm under water, while the rest of us would probably start to panic. Competitive breath-holders take advantage
of something called the mammalian diving reflex. It's an automatic reaction that helps mammals survive underwater. For humans it's best
triggered by cold water to the face. For static apnea, some of the most useful aspects of this reflex are when the heart
rate slows to conserve oxygen. The capillaries also close off in the extremities
so blood can be directed to the most important organs: the heart and the brain. At some point, the spleen shrinks, squeezing
out precious extra blood cells. But Don’t try this at home. If you don’t
know your body’s limits and go without oxygen for too long, this can cause a blackout. KRAMER: "What?" JERRY: "Yeah!" This is a president and the elephant he killed.
Teddy Roosevelt killed 512 animals in a single hunting trip.
A lion. Like this one — and eight others. Five common elands,
and, oh, a crocodile. He and his son Kermit
killed all of them, and 497 more, on one trip in 1909.
These days, a lot of people aren’t fans of big hunting trips.
So if you made historical figures explain themselves,
how would Teddy Roosevelt defend his massive kill list?
He might say he explained it all in his 1910 book on the
subject. when he went on the safari, just after his
Presidency, he was a conservationist. He and Kermit only kept 12 animals for themselves
and the rest were eaten or used in a museum.
The trip wasn’t for fun — it was sponsored by the Smithsonian, and
they collected more than 11,000 specimens for science.
That’s simply how conservation worked, and safaris like his were the best way to share
animals with the world. After all, scientists thought the mountain
gorilla was a myth until the early 1900s — so people had a lot to learn.
He even wrote that, "game butchery is as objectionable as any other form of wanton cruelty or barbarity."
Still, TR’’s kill list was massive, and it’s hard for modern conservationists to
understand killing 15 zebras. He also said that creeping after game, “made
our veins thrill.” That leaves it up to you: did TR explain himself?
Or was his kill list is an indictment? If you’ve never heard of the Zika virus
before this year, you’re not alone. It was isolated from monkeys in 1947 in the
Zika rainforest in Uganda and since then it hasn't really bothered humans much at all.
Until now. The Zika virus appeared in Brazil for the first time in 2015, and more than
a million people have been infected since then.
Just to put that into perspective, the last largest outbreak happened in french polynesia
and it really only spread around to a couple hundred people.
80% of people with the virus don’t have symptoms at all.The others have mild symptoms
including fever and a rash. So here’s why public health officials are
concerned. Now we're learning that when pregnant women
contract Zika, they can pass it on to their fetuses and this in turn can cause terrible birth defects.
This is microcephaly. It’s a birth defect that involves incomplete head and brain development.
So they look like they have very small heads, and what that means is that they're basically mentally
disabled, they have a shorter life expectancy and it's just an absolutely devastating disease.
Microcephaly has multiple causes, but officials think it might also be linked to Zika.
That’s why public health officials in Latin America and the Caribbean are cautioning women
not to get pregnant right now. In the US the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention took a similarly extreme measure when they issued an unprecedented travel advisory
telling women who are pregnant to avoid traveling to countries in Latin America where the virus
is circulating. That included their very own territory, Puerto Rico.
Zika virus is carried by mosquitos. it might be transmitted through sex as well.
And the type of mosquitos that spread Zika live in warm areas all over the world, including
the US. The main vector for this disease is called the Aedes
aegypti, and it's mostly found along the southern US. But there's some question about whether
it's also carried by another mosquito called the Aedes albopictus and that has a much broader
range. Right now there's no cure or treatment for
Zika. They're working on vaccines but that could
take years. So really the only way to protect yourself is to try not to get bitten by mosquitos,
which is difficult to do. It’s especially important that pregnant
women are aware of the risk. There needs to be a lot of awareness about
the virus and about this potential damage to the fetus later. We all love sleep. But most people don’t get enough of it. Each year, the average American loses 11 days
worth of productivity from lack of sleep. This sleepiness can lead to memory loss, difficulty
concentrating, and lack of motivation. The average adult needs between 7 and 8 hours
of sleep a night. But the quality of sleep matters, too. Here
are a few tips for the best rest possible: First, Cool down your room. The best sleep, on average, happens when the surrounding environment is around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. And you might fall asleep faster if you warm
your body up just before bed. Coming out of, say, a warm shower into a cooler
room causes a slight decrease in body temperature that can help make you drowsy by slowing down
your metabolism. Even if you’re tucked under a warm blanket,
researchers find that a cool head is conducive to better sleep. Next, use light to your advantage. Your body has a natural sleep cycle regulated
by exposure to light. So in the morning, get a nice dose of light
to tell your brain it’s time to wake up. An hour before  bed, dim lights and
turn off screens. This cues the brain to prepare for sleep. Finally, if you really want to get really serious about good sleep, you can incorporate herbs into your nighttime routine. You can either breathe in a lavender oil before
bed or put a lavender pillow on your eyes while you sleep. Now this probably sounds really new agey,
but the controlled trials done with lavender as a sleep aid actually really back up its
benefits. The effect is likely stronger if you pair
lavender with some other relaxing evening routine like journaling or meditation. So give these a tips try and see if better
sleep can help improve your life during the day. More than 200 species of Salamanders have
been banned from entering the US. "Some are brightly colored and secrete irritating substances." The government is worried that foreign salamanders could
infect American salamanders with a devastating disease.
Brian: “You might be thinking Salamanders? What’s the point? But they’re a huge part
of our ecosystem.” Brian: “I’m Brian Resnick, I'm a science reporter
at Vox.” We don’t think of salamanders as an iconic
American animal—but they are. Brian: “I spoke to Matt Gray a professor
at the University of Tennessee of wildlife ecology and he was telling me that if you take all the bears, the racoons, the birds in the Great Smoky Mountains and you put them on a scale and then you put on
the other side of the scale the salamanders in the forest, the salamanders outweigh everything
else.” About 50% of all salamander species in the
world come from North America So, what’s going wrong? Well, there’s
this fungus - Brian: “Batri - Btricchal - okay I have
no idea how to pronounce it." Batrichocitrium There’s this fungus called Bsal, which is believed to have originated in Asia.
It spreads in water and erodes the salamander’s skin, which they use for breathing and excreting
toxins. For many species of salamanders, when they get this fungus they die.
So, how could a fungus like Bsal travel all the way across the world to the US? Asian
salamanders are colorful, so they’re imported for pet shops and zoos. They have developed
an immunity to Bsal but they’re still able to carry it to regions like the US where salamanders
have no immunity and are the most vulnerable. A few years ago biologists in the Netherlands
discovered the fungus in a prevalent species of fire salamanders there. Brian: "Their populations got reduced by 90%, or more than 90% The fungus is also related to the ones that have
been killing frogs around the world. So, understandably, scientists are doing everything they can to
stop it from coming to the U.S. The sheer density and diversity of salamanders
make them a vital link in forest food chains. They’re a source of food for Mammals like
raccoons and foxes, for birds, fish and reptiles as well. Brian: “They eat anything that’s smaller
than them. So they eat tons of insects, tons of little bugs." And here’s something to think about, Salamanders
help prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere. Brian: “When leaves fall down into the forest
there’s all these insects, worms, or larvae that eat the fallen leaves and in doing so they kind of shred them up and release CO2 into the atmosphere.” Salamanders prey on these bugs and in doing
so, the help keep carbon locked in leaves. Brian: “There are so many salamanders it’s
hard to imagine what ecosystems would look like without them.” If you look back at hip hop in the mid 90s,
you might notice a political theme. Rappers like Ice Cube transcended music and
began to tell the story of the ghetto through film. Lauryn Hill was preaching gender equality
in songs like Everything is Everything. [More powerful than two cleopatras, bomb graffiti,
on the tomb of Nefertiti, emcees ain't ready to take it to the serengeti, my rhymes is
heavy, like the mind of sister betty (el Shabazz!)] Rappers like Tupac, Nas, and Biggie Smalls
who made music that uplifted and educated young people from the projects But somewhere around the turn of the decade,
things changed. Politically conscious hip-hop gained steam
underground, but began to exit pop-culture. Underground artists like Mos Def stayed true
to to conscious rap. But the rise of crunk & gangster rap made
hip-hop look more like a rowdy party scene. But in 2015, Hip-Hop returned to politics. Kendrick Lamar spearheaded the return with
his grammy nominated album To Pimp a Butterfly. The title itself is commentary on the role
of black artists in commercial music. President Obama named a song from the album
-- How Much A Dollar Cost -- as his favorite of the year. In it, Lamar disregards a homeless man who
turns out to be god. The lyrics weigh the literal value of a dollar
against that of helping someone in need. And Kendrick isn’t the only one who made
a statement last year. [Borders, what's up with that?] Killer Mike gained notoriety on the strength
of the anarchy-themed Run The Jewels project. He also endorsed presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders. [And you make sure that when they leave, they
are on fire, because they have felt the Bern] And for four weeks straight, Straight Outta
Compton topped the box office. It tells the story of NWA, the 1980s rap group
known for criticizing the police. But the forefathers of hip hop have always
been sociopolitical. [Fight the Power] They were influenced by protest music that
came before theirs. So, why is now different? Over the past couple of years, several cases
of police brutality against unarmed black people have drawn the nation’s attention. Groups like #BlackLivesMatter are meeting
with presidential candidates; And conversations about injustice travel faster than ever through
social media. If you look at this chart of public opinion
on whether racism is a “big problem” - you see it was pretty high in 1995. By 2009, when Obama took office, it had dropped
to 26%, but has since spiked back up to 50%. Since 2013, the number of Americans saying
race relations are “good” has dropped by 15 percentage points among blacks and 27
points among whites. Public awareness has clearly shifted. And in many ways, the success of political
hip hop reflects that change Most people think it’s patriotic gibberish
when they hear the most well-known version of Yankee Doodle Dandy:
“Yankee Doodle went to town a-riding on a pony
stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.”
We’ve all wondered why this guy is naming his hat feathers after pasta.
But what most people don’t realize is that Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally a British
song making fun of American doodles — that’s a word for simpletons. And the macaroni wasn’t
lunch. This was a macaroni.
Macaroni was a catchall term in England for the scenesters of the time, who sat between
the Restoration Era fop and the dandy on the historical timeline of trendy looks.
They were called macaronis because when they left England (usually on mommy and daddy’s
dime), they toured Europe and brought back this totally amazing new pasta they discovered
in Italy. It was … yep, macaroni.
So macaroni became the nickname for the pretentious elites of the 18th century and their fancy
style. Macaronis didn’t have Mac Book Pros. But
calling them hipsters of the time isn’t far off the mark. The sad part is that the
Americans wanted to be just like them. Americans like to think of themselves blazing
their own path. But they still had a desire to import customs
of elite society from England. That included fashion, and yes, they even
thought macaroni was cutting edge cuisine. That’s the joke in Yankee Doodle Dandy
— not that they were naming a feather, but that they thought a lame feather in their
hat made them high society macaronis, which nobody should want to be in the first
place. During early Revolutionary War battles, the
British used the song to mock Americans, but Americans embraced a chance to throw it back
at them. So when the British surrendered at Yorktown,
the Marquis de Lafayette taunted them by playing Yankee Doodle as they walked away, and that
secured its place as an unlikely anthem. So you’re right to imagine something patriotic
when you hear Yankee Doodle. Just make sure you imagine this when you hear
macaroni. Some of these macaroni loving Americans like Thomas Jefferson were eating macaroni and cheese. We know from a Reverend who ate with Jefferson what his recipe was. We know from these papers that he did dine at the President's. And there he had a pie called macaroni, which he thought was made of onions or shallots, but somebody explained to him that it was in fact an Italian dish. And he still didn't like it that much. So, I have this problem. When I plug my laptop
charger into an outlet, that weird box between the plug and the part where it connects to
my computer, it gets super hot, like I can’t even touch it.
So, I’ve invited Audrey Quinn from NPR’s Planet Money team to help explain what’s
going on with my super-hot laptop charger. So, Audrey, what’s the deal?
QUINN: "The first thing you have to understand is that the kind of power that comes out of your
wall is actually different from the kind of power that your electronics want.
It comes out in the form of alternating current electricity. That means the electrons are pulsing
back and forth And your electronics want what’s called
direct current power, that’s where the electrons are flowing straight like a river
So, they have to convert it. And  when they do that conversion is energy is wasted, so
what you’re feeling is energy lost in the form of heat."
Okay, so, why can’t I just alternating current? If that’s coming out of the wall?
QUINN: "Yeah, that works just fine for things like lightbulbs or a hairdryer, but electronics
are a little more complicated.---- If you were to send that alternating current
directly to your laptop, you’d probably see a puff of blue smoke." 
Oh god, that sounds bad. Okay, so, if DC power is so great, why don’t
we just have it in our houses in the first place?  
This goes back to the late 1800s. There were two guys who represented the two different
kinds of power. There was Thomas Edison, he was all about
DC power, and then there’s Nikola Tesla, he’s your AC guy.
They’re totally duking it out. Every time a new building goes in, it’s kind of this
'oh, what’s going to happen? Are they going to use AC or DC?'
What happens eventually is that AC power is much better at traveling long distances.
So, ultimately, the entire power grid gets set up to spread AC power."
But today we have all of these devices. We have smartphones, we have electric cars, we have tablets, we have computers, and all these things are hungry for DC power. Do you think we could ever switch back and maybe realize Edison’s original dream of DC power in every home?
QUINN: "The US has one of the best, most reliable power grids in the world, so people aren’t
saying 'let’s knock out this entire grid.' You could just have one converter box in your
house, and that way you’re not converting AC to DC at the level of every single device."
So, if we can reduce the number of conversions from AC power to DC power, even a little bit, we’re going to save a lot of energy. The images of the water are shocking enough. And then come the headlines: An American city failed to provide basic protections to its citizens, and now the children of Flint have
much higher than normal levels of lead in their blood. Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan has apologized. President Obama declared a national emergency starting to weigh in. CLINTON: "The governor of that state acted as though he didn't really care." Lead poisoning is terrible and terrifying. No amount of exposure is safe. There’s evidence that years after we
got it out of paint, gas, and more, it contributed to a drastic drop in crime in the 90s. The city has switched back to cleaner water,
but the effects will last decades. We take clean water for granted. How could
this possibly happen in 2016? You’ve got to rewind back to 2011. Flint was broke.  It had lost about half
of its population after the car factories closed. closed. It had $1.1 billion in unfunded pension costs.
 It had to cut half its police force. These managers can make cost-cutting measures without the normal political procedure. They decided the city could save money on
water. Flint would stop buying water from Detroit and  join a new regional water system. And as a temporary measure, Flint would use water from the Flint River. The switch happened in 2014. 2014. But regardless of blame, the story gets worse. Residents saw and tasted the dirty water, and started complaining. But regardless of blame, the story gets worse.
 Residents started complaining, but the city MAN: "Water's brown, has a bad odor. I'm afraid to even feed it to my cat or to my dogs." WOMAN: "We should not have to pay for the water, it's nasty." But the city claimed federal tests showed the water was safe. An employee at the Environmental Protection
Agency leaked a Michigan report to local activists which showed the water had higher than normal lead levels. The city’s response? Flint told the woman the lead came from her plumbing. It took an outside investigation by Virginia Tech researchers that found elevated lead levels in the water for the state to admit there was a problem in September 2015. EDWARDS: "So the corrosion's eating up the pipes, it's eating up the iron pipes. It's causing main breaks, discolored water. And in about 20 percent of the homes, there's just too much lead." In October 2015 the government bought water
filters for its citizens and switched back to water from Detroit. Before all this, 2.1 percent of the city’s children had high blood lead levels. After, it was 4 percent. For kids under 5 in the most affected zip
codes, it was 6.3 percent. Why did Flint poison its citizenry?  Under
emergency managers from the state, it wanted to save money. To reverse the affects will cost dearly. Just switching
back to Detroit's water cost $12 million. A class action lawsuit against the city is pending. One of the biggest myths about the Israel-Palestine
conflict is that it's been going on for centuries, that this is all about ancient religious hatreds. In fact, while religion is involved, the conflict
is mostly about two groups of people who claim the same land. And it really only goes back about a century,
to the early 1900s. Around then, the region
along the eastern Mediterranean we now call Israel-Palestine had been under Ottoman rule
for centuries. It was religiously diverse, including mostly
Muslims and Christians but also a small number of Jews, who lived generally in peace. And it was changing in two important ways. First, more people in the region were developing
a sense of being not just ethnic Arabs but Palestinians, a distinct
national identity. At the same time, not so far away in Europe,
more Jews were joining a movement called Zionism, which said that Judaism was not just a religion
but a nationality, one that deserved a nation of its own. And after centuries of persecution, many believed
a Jewish state was their only way of safety. And they saw their historic homeland in the Middle
East as their best hope for establishing it. In the first decades of the 20th century, tens of thousands of European Jews moved there. After World War One, the Ottoman Empire collapsed,
and the British and French Empires carved up the Middle East, with the British taking
control of a region it called the British Mandate for Palestine. At first, the British allowed Jewish immigration. But as more Jews arrived, settling into farming
communes, tension between Jews and Arabs grew. Both sides committed acts of violence. And by the 1930s, the British began limiting Jewish
immigration.  In response,  Jewish militias formed to fight both the local Arabs and to resist British rule. Then came the Holocaust, leading many more
Jews to flee Europe for British Palestine, and galvanizing much of the world in support
of a Jewish state. In 1947, as sectarian violence between Arabs and Jews there grew, the United Nations approved a plan
to divide British Palestine into two separate states: one for Jews, Israel, and one for
Arabs, Palestine. The city of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have have holy sites, it was to become a special international zone.   The plan was meant to give Jews a state, to
establish Palestinian independence, and to end the sectarian violence that the British
could no longer control. The Jews accepted the plan and declared independence as Israel. But Arabs throughout the region saw the UN plan as just more European colonialism trying to steal their land. Many of the Arab states, who had just recently
won independence themselves, declared war on Israel in an effort to establish a unified Arab Palestine where all of British Palestine had been. The new state of Israel won the war. But in
the process, they pushed well past their borders under the UN plan, taking the western half
of Jerusalem and much of the land that was to have been part of Palestine. They also expelled huge numbers of Palestinians
from their homes, creating a massive refugee population whose descendants today number
about 7 million. At the end of the war, Israel controlled all
of the territory except for Gaza, which Egypt controlled, and the West Bank, named because
it's west of the Jordan River, which Jordan controlled. This was the beginning of the decades-long
Arab-Israeli conflict. During this period, many Jews in Arab-majority
countries fled or were expelled, arriving in Israel. Then something happened that transformed the
conflict. In 1967, Israel and the neighboring Arab states fought another war. When it ended, Israel had seized the Golan
Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from
Egypt. Israel was now occupying the Palestinian territories,
including all of Jerusalem and its holy sites. This left Israel responsible for governing
the Palestinians – a people it had fought for decades. In 1978 Israel and Egypt signed the US-brokered
Camp David Accords and shortly after that, Israel gave Sanai back to Egypt as part of
a peace treaty. At the time this was hugely controversial
in the Arab world. Egypt President Anwar Sadat was assassinated
in part because of outrage against it. But it marked the beginning of the end of
the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the next few decades, the other Arab
states gradually made peace with Israel, even if they never signed formal peace treaties. But Israel's military was still occupying
the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and this was when the conflict became
an Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which
had formed in the 1960s to seek a Palestinian state, fought against Israel, including through
acts of terrorism. Initially, the PLO claimed all of what had
been British Palestine, meaning it wanted to end the state of Israel entirely. Fighting between Israel and the PLO went on
for years, even including a 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to kick the group out of Beirut. The PLO later said it would accept dividing
the land between Israel and Palestine, but the conflict continued. As all of this was happening, something dramatic
was changing in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories: Israelis were moving in. These people are called settlers, and they
made their homes in the West Bank and Gaza whether Palestinians wanted them or not. Some moved for religious reasons, some because
they want to claim the land for Israel, and some just because housing is cheap — and
often subsidized by the Israeli government. Some settlements are cities with thousands
of people; others are small communities deep into the West Bank The settlers are followed by soldiers to guard
them, and the growing settlements force Palestinians off of their land and divide communities. Short-term, they make the occupation much
more painful for Palestinians. Long-term, by dividing up Palestinian land,
they make it much more difficult for the Palestinians to ever have an independent state. Today there are several hundred thousand settlers
in occupied territory even though the international community considers them illegal. By the late 1980s, Palestinian frustration
exploded into the Intifada,  which is the the Arabic word for uprising. It began with mostly protests and boycotts
but soon became violent, and Israel responded with heavy force. A couple hundred Israelis and over a thousand
Palestinians died in the first Intifada. Around the same time, a group of Palestinians
in Gaza, who consider the PLO too secular and too compromise-minded, created Hamas, a violent
extremist group dedicated to Israel's destruction. By the early 1990s, it's clear that Israelis
and Palestinians have to make peace, and leaders from both sides sign the Oslo Accords. This is meant to be the big, first step toward
Israel maybe someday withdrawing from the Palestinian territories, and allowing an independent Palestine. The Oslo Accords establish the Palestinian
Authority, allowing Palestinians a little bit of freedom to govern themselves in certain areas. Hard-liners on both sides opposed the Oslo
accords. Members of Hamas launch suicide bombings to try to sabotage the process. The Israeli right protests peace talks, with
ralliers calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and a Nazi. Not long after Rabin signs the second round
of Oslo Accords, a far-right Israeli shoots him to death in Tel Aviv. This violence showed how the extremists on
both sides can use violence to derail peace, and keep a permanent conflict going as they
seek the other side's total destruction. That's a dynamic that's been around ever since. Negotiations meant to hammer out the final
details on peace drag on for years, and a big Camp David Summit in 2000 comes up empty. Palestinians come to believe that peace isn't coming, and rise up in a Second
Intifada, this one much more violent than the first. By the time it wound down a few years later, about 1,000
Israelis and 3,200 Palestinians had died. The Second Intifada really changes the conflict.
Israelis become much more skeptical that Palestinians will ever accept peace, or that it's even worth trying. Israeli politics shift right, and the country
builds walls and checkpoints to control Palestinians' movements. They're not really trying to solve the conflict
anymore, just manage it. The Palestinians are left feeling like negotiating
didn't work and violence didn't work, that they're stuck under an ever-growing occupation
with no future as a people. That year, Israel withdraws from Gaza. Hamas
gains power but splits from the Palestinian Authority in a short civil war, dividing Gaza
from the West Bank. Israel puts Gaza under a suffocating blockade,
and unemployment rises to 40%. This is the state of the conflict as we know
it today. It’s relatively new, and it’s
unbearable for Palestinians. In the West Bank, more and more settlements
are smothering Palestinians, who often respond with protests and sometimes with violence,
though most just want normal lives. In Gaza, Hamas and other violent groups have
periodic wars with Israel. The fighting overwhelmingly kills Palestinians,
including lots of civilians. In Israel itself, most people have become
apathetic, and for the most part the occupation keeps the conflict relatively removed from
their daily lives, with moments of brief but horrible violence. There's little political will for peace. No one really knows where the conflict goes
from here. Maybe a Third Intifada. Maybe the Palestinian
Authority collapses. But everyone agrees that things, as they are now, can't 
last much longer -- that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is too unstable to last, and that, unless something dramatic changes, whatever comes next will be much worse. The Illuminati’s that shadowy cabal that
controls the entire world and ensures free will is an illusion.
They’ve got a big Facebook page, Celebrities like Jay-Z are accused of being members, and there are weird YouTubers like this guy. "They had weirdos standing up everywhere, and then Beyonce--show a document of this if you can. She does the Illuminati symbol." But what about the real history of the Illuminati
and how it became what it is today? This is Bavaria, and in 1776
Adam Weishaupt, a law professor, founded the Illuminati. It’s real.
He wanted to spread enlightenment ideals around the world.
The goal was to infiltrate the monarchy and make them more enlightened by entering their ranks. Even though they were so high-minded, they had weird rituals. See these owls? The Illuminati really loved them. And they had invented hierarchies like Novice,
Minerval, and Illuminated. Even though they were weird, they did have
some success around the world. Anywhere from 650 to 2800 members infiltrated
Freemason chapters, may have had influential members like the
writer Goethe, and even might have influenced the Jacobins,
the political club that spurred the French revolution to its most radical heights. But they were destroyed in 1785.
This is Karl Theodor — the Duke of Bavaria — and that year he banned secret societies.
That included the Illuminati. Most historians think that it worked
and the Illuminati disappeared. But if that’s true, then why do we still
think that Drake’s Illuminati today just because he wears owl sweaters? Since the beginning, conspiracy theories have
been part of the Illuminati. This guy, Xavier von Zwack, actually did have
plans to take over the world that were found after the Illuminati was banned.
American historians and preachers thought the Illuminati planted some seeds for the
French Revolution and George Washington even wrote a letter
that claimed the Illuminati had once been a threat.
But the Illuminati lost the limelight thanks to the Freemasons.
This is George Washington as a Freemason, and a lot of founding fathers really were
Freemasons. That inspired the anti-Masonic party.
It was a legitimate movement with big names like John Quincy Adams,
and the Illuminati paranoia faded around the world. So how did the myth stay alive? There were always random books, like this
one from 1918, or book reviews that mentioned the Illuminati.
But most people think the Illuminatus book trilogy of the 1970s
deserves credit for bringing the Illuminati back. It might also be why weird secret symbols
like these pyramids and triangles are associated with the Illuminati.
It was a funny series and gave new life to the conspiracy for an ironic, connected age.
They were an evil organization bent on ruling the world, sure, but they were also kind of
funny. The Illuminati was vague enough to be refit
to any purpose, from the new world order
to religious paranoia, to pop culture curio like Angels & Demons.
It became a joke. But you might believe that's what the Illuminati
wants you to think if you noticed the 14 evil yellow triangles
of power hidden inside this video. The Illuminati only really endures because
it’s disappeared and can look like anything. There’s nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all. Illuminati, Illuminati, Illuminati. So this is my humble little crazy wall and
one of the disadvantages of a crazy wall is that things aren’t as legible as you’d
like them to be. That includes this letter by George Washington. However, the Library
of Congress does tell us what it says, and it says, “It was not my intention to doubt
that the doctrines of the Illuminati and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United
States.” So he thought the Illuminati didn’t make it in the United States, so you can rest
assured, but, they were a threat. So, the issue of who to let into this country and who to not let into this country is about as old as the country itself. It’s an issue that America’s 
debated since the early 19th century and we’ve admitted people 
from nearly every single country since. But it hasn’t really been an even admission process. So, this line represents 200,000 
legal immigrants to the US and we’re going to stack them up to see when they came to the US and where they came from. So early on, most were European, 
largely Irish, German, and British. And there were also, Chinese and Canadian immigrants. But in 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. That was extended and then made permanent —and it wasn’t repealed for 61 years. The economic depression of the 1890s 
decreased European immigration and nearly stopped Canadian immigration entirely. But after the depression, the 
demographics of immigrants changed. And there was a rise in Russian, Italians, 
Spanish, and Japanese immigrants. In 1917, the US banned immigration from 
Asian countries entirely— except from the Philippines and Japan. In 1921, the US capped 
immigration based on nationality. This severely limited the ability to immigrate to the US for people not from the western hemisphere or a country with older roots in the US. Then, the Great Depression happened. All immigration plummeted. Then, World War II happened. The US refused to increase immigration caps for 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi rule. It also stopped naturalization proceedings 
for Italians, Germans, and Japanese. In 1952, the US stopped excluding 
immigrants based on race. But more stringent quotas meant most 
slots were for Western Europeans. In 1965, the quota system was entirely repealed. It allowed for a far more diverse group of immigrants, particularly from Central America and South America, but also Asia. In the 1970s and 80s, Asian immigrants 
arrived in huge numbers, largely from the Philippines, 
South Korea, India, and Hong Kong. The US also evacuated a 130,000 people 
from Vietnam after the war. In the 1990s, the US increased
immigration caps to 700,000 annually. The country began to invest in border security to discourage unauthorized immigration, but in exchange allowed nearly 
1.7 million Mexican immigrants in the 1990s. Immigration to the US is now more diverse than ever, but with the rise of ISIS and the Syrian refugee crisis, prominent politicians are again talking about 
which immigrant groups to restrict. If you want to see how people from a specific country came to the US, click here for the full interactive. And for this final one, I’m going to try
to make it a little shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa. I’ve
been there. I will be shaking hands afterwards, if you want some tips. We have to make college affordable for every American. Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did. For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the
families we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. What do you say, Joe? We’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by
nearly 60 percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth. Rather than subsidize the past, we should
invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. 60 years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and 12 years later, we were walking on the moon. Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the
science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll
be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it. American leadership in the 21st century is
not a choice between ignoring the rest of the world — except when we kill terrorists;
or occupying and rebuilding whatever society is unraveling. Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right. But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages, they pose an enormous danger to civilians, they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. We need to reject any politics, any politics, that targets people because of race or religion. When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called names, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like
it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder
to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country. It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. I have
no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office. We've got to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around. A little over a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen — inspired by those
voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far. Voices that help us see ourselves not first and foremost as black or white or
Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born; not Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed. David bowie’s massive influence is a lot
wider than can be catalogued, but one way is through samples and quotations. The highest profile would definitely be…
Vanilla Ice That bassline famously quotes Under Pressure
by Bowie & Queen. Though Mr. Ice also denied using bowie’s
song – "We sampled it from them, but it's not the
same bassline" – he eventually had to share songwriting
credits and a cut of his royalties. Another big one is Puff Daddy’s “Been
Around the World.” Puffy sampled Bowie’s biggest commercial
success — the title track from 1983’s Let’s Dance. But there are so, so many more
less obvious ones, "Star Guitar" by the Chemical Brothers has a very inventive sample from
"Starman" off Ziggy Stardust. And Beck’s “Debra” basically takes one
melody from “Win” off Bowie’s 1975 album Young Americans, and stretches it into a 6-minute, hyundai name-checking masterpiece “...i said lady, step inside  my Hyundai…” Jay Z sampled him in The Takeover. Lady Gaga sampled the same song. Nine Inch Nails sampled him. Groove Armada sampled him. Hell even Unkle sampled him. And when he became famous he championed lesser known influences on him like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. And he continued throughout his  life – he helped the Arcade Fire reach the masses when they were coming up in 2003.
Beyond the myriad of artists he inspired – his core message to be yourself, no matter how
weird, how different from anybody else – that might be what endures the most of him: There’s this phrase you hear in the news
sometimes: the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s shorthand for how schools are funneling
students — especially black students — into the criminal justice system. It started in the 90s, when schools responded
to fears about crime with zero tolerance policies, which mandated suspensions and expulsions
for certain violations. They also cracked down on little things like
talking back or uniform violations. But as a result, out-of-school suspensions
have doubled since the 1970s, and keep increasing even though juvenile crime rates have now
been dropping for years. Around the same time, the number of police
officers stationed full-time inside schools has increased — by a third between 1997
and 2007. Ostensibly, they were there to prevent mass
school shootings like the one at Columbine. But they end up being a way for schools to
basically outsource discipline to the police. Schools with officers have five times as many
arrests for "disorderly conduct" as schools without them. Sometimes the results are shocking. But the less visible effect is that schools
are feeding the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Consider the fact that schools are more likely
to have an officer on their campus if their student population is more than 50% black. You might assume that’s because there’s
more crime at these schools. But although students at policed schools are
more likely to be arrested, they’re not actually more likely to be charged
in court for weapons, drugs, alcohol, or assault, at least according to one study. During the 2010-2011 school year, one in six
public school students in the U.S. were black, but they accounted for one in three arrests
at school. Same goes for other forms of school discipline. Black students are suspended or expelled three
times more frequently than white students. It actually begins in preschool. 18% of preschoolers
are black, but of all preschoolers suspended more than once, 48% are black. Studies show that differences in behavior
can’t fully account for these disparities. Black students and white students are sent
to the principal's office at similar rates, but black students are more likely to end
up with a serious punishment. One study found that white students are more
likely to be suspended for provable offenses like smoking or vandalism, while black students are more likely to be
suspended for subjective reasons like talking back or insubordination. Students who are suspended in school are more
likely to later drop out or get arrested, so the federal government is asking schools
to make suspension and expulsion the absolute last resort. In Oakland, California, public schools are
trying something called restorative justice, where both parties to a conflict talk it out
with a counselor, instead of relying on punishment. The results are pretty encouraging— in the
past ten years, chronic absenteeism is down and graduation rate are up in the schools
that have tried it. Other cities and districts are also trying
new policies — so that if their students end up in the criminal justice system, it
won’t be because the schools pushed them there. When Jimmy Carter left office one of his big goals was eradicating this terrible disease, guinea worm. "Yeah, I'd like for the last guinea worm to
die before I do." And it looks like we're really close to making that happen. His foundation, in 1986, started a campaign to kill off this really horrific
parasitic disease. Over the span of 30 years we've gone from an estimated 3.5 million cases to 22 reported cases in 2015. "We hope and expect that within a year or
two there will be no more guinea worm, anywhere." That's happened without a vaccine, it's happened
without a new drug, it was an incredible public health success. The guinea worm is a really devastating parasite
that is contracted when people consume bad drinking water. The worm can grow to about a meter or so,
about 3 feet long. They don't know that this worm is growing inside of them. The real obvious
symptom is when the worm breaks through the skin and starts coming out. "The only treatment is wrapping the worm around
a stick and pulling it out - inch by inch - every day, for weeks." There's no drugs there's no vaccines. You
can't work, you can't go to school. It's quite painful. And when people are in pain with
this worm coming out of their body, they'll sometimes go to a local lake or water source,
put their foot in it. That releases more larvae into the water, people drink the water, they
consume the larvae. The larvae mate with each other and the whole cycle just starts again. Without drugs or vaccines, the Carter foundation
was tasked with coming up with affordable ways of preventing the disease. One strategy was keeping infected people away
from the water source. They employed elderly African men in the villages where they were
having these outbreaks to kind of be water source guards. Another one was encouraging
people to filter their water. So providing filter material that are necessary to get
the larvae out of the water. The other thing they would do is very closely monitor where
outbreaks are happening and really control an outbreak before it gets to big. Seeing an incredibly pervasive disease shrink
from 3.5 million cases to only 22 in a lifetime is incredibly remarkable. The list of eradicated diseases very short,
it's basically smallpox. We've never eradicated a parasitic disease before. So, if we do that,
this is really unprecedented and it leaves him with this remarkable public health legacy. Every few months, this debate flares up. It's about women who work, which is to say, most women. About how tough it can be succeed at work and still feel like a good mom. And we often ask, what can governments or corporations do to promote work-family balance? But what if we started thinking smaller? What
if one part of the solution was men doing more at home? [music transition] Between 1950 and 2000, the share of women in the US workforce jumped from 34% to 60%. But women were still expected to do most of the work when it came to raising kids and running a house. Goldscheider: "The second shift of women working and taking care of the home was very stressful for the family." That stress is partially what led to the trope of the frazzled working mom. "I don't know how she does it." People started to blame working women for the high divorce rates in the 1970s and 80s. And now, with fewer people getting married and  having kids, it’s still popular to pit working women against family. <<Venker on Fox News: "If you were a real feminist, you would support housewives and see them as the heroes and women who work, wasting their time." "Do you all think working moms still get treated unfairly?" But while the stress of the second shift may have contributed to divorce at first, things are changing. New research is showing that men and women who share responsibilities at home are happier than those in more traditional marriages. Goldschnieder: "Where men become more involved in the family....they’re more attractive as a partner, they are less likely to divorce, they’re more likely to have children" Heterosexual couples in which men do more household chores are less likely to divorce. And the more time men spend with their children, the more satisfied both partners say they are with the relationship. Take couples who have kids, but aren’t married. In those relationships, men who were more involved with caring for the kids were more likely to make the transition to marriage compared those who were less involved. So maybe someday that iconic “frazzled working mom” trope will go the way of the fifties housewife: a symbol of a time when women, and men, were trapped inside a narrow definition of what it meant to be a partner and a parent. In the last half of 2015, around 500 people
in states ranging from California to Massachusetts had two things in common:
They all ate at Chipotle, and they all had severe diarrhea.
Every year there are hundreds of food poisoning outbreaks in the US, but it’s unusual for
one company to see six outbreaks, from three different germs, in just six months.
“In 22 years of doing these kinds of cases, I can’t think of a chain that has ever had that happen.”
Obviously, not ideal for a company whose brand is serving higher-quality food.
“If you’re like other Americans, you love to eat Chipotle, but you hate all those terrible
blood stains in your underwear.” To understand how Chipotle plans to fix it,
you have to look at the different ways the food was contaminated.
For the two large outbreaks in Boston and Simi Valley, California, the pathogen was
norovirus. “I just vomited for many hours straight.”
Norovirus doesn’t come from the food supply itself, but rather from a restaurant employee
who was sick but came to work anyway. The two locations spreading norovirus were
closed and sanitized, and Chipotle says it will strengthen employee training.
An outbreak at 22 Chipotle locations in Minnesota involved Salmonella bacteria, which did come
from the food itself. “State health officials now are blaming
tomatoes” Chipotle then switched to a different tomato
supplier. But the E. coli outbreak has been tougher
to nail down, in part because cases popped up in nine different states. And then:
“There is more trouble for Chipotle.” The CDC later announced more E. coli cases
from Kansas and Oklahoma, which may or may not be related to the previous
outbreak. The types of E. coli that make humans sick
live in the intestines of cattle. So people can often get infected from undercooked
beef. But fruits and vegetables exposed to contaminated
water or manure can also transmit the bacteria. So here’s what’s a little unnerving for
Chipotle customers. “The CEO said that they have tested every
single one of the 64 ingredients that Chipotle uses, and they still can’t find the problem.”
Unfortunately, in multistate cases, the CDC can identify the specific source of the food
poisoning only about half the time. And it’s particularly challenging with the
type of food Chipotle serves. “Almost everything that is in a burrito
is in a taco is in a taco bowl. So it’s hard to parse out and say, 'Oh it was the cilantro,
oh it was the lettuce.'" In the meantime, Chipotle hired an expert
to devise a wide-scale food safety plan. It includes routine DNA testing of ingredients
before they’re shipped to restaurants. “The testing protocols that he sets up on
the supply-chain are pretty rigorous. So assuming you can get the supply chain to go along with you, I think that’s going to be a really positive thing, and especially if they want to do fresh items in their stores.” There can be a tradeoff between safe food and fresh food, as Chipotle seems to be acknowledging.
Instead of shredding cheese and chopping tomatoes, lettuce, and cilantro inside the restaurants,
they’ll now be processed and packaged off-site in centralized kitchens.
Chipotle’s stock has been dropping, but it’s worth remembering that other chains
have weathered much worse. In 1993, E. coli from undercooked hamburgers
at Jack in the Box sickened 700 people and killed 4 children.
“They brought in a vice president in charge of food safety who had carte blanche to turn
the company around from a food safety perspective. I think that’s something that Chipotle really
needs to think pretty hard about doing.” After the Jack in the Box outbreak was over,
they launched a marketing campaign to signal the corporate overhaul.
“I’m ready to make Jack in the Box better than ever.” The message wasn’t subtle. On January second, an armed group of men seized unoccupied buildings on a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. Saying they want to use the refuge as a “base” and to live in it indefinitely with their guns. Ammon Bundy: "we need you to bring your arms, and we need you to come here to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. "We're prepared to be out here as long as
we need to." And donated snacks. Basically, they want the government to turn over government owned land to local ranchers, loggers and miners. But these aren’t locals. In fact that guy, Ammon Bundy? His father Cliven had a similar armed standoff with the government in 2014 over cattle-grazing rights. Cliven Bundy: One more thing I know about the Negro…. I’ve often wondered, were they better off as slaves? Picking cotton,
having family life, and doing things... or are they better off under government subsidy?" Now Bundy's sons are trying to promote the cause of two Oregon ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond. They were convicted for arson in 2012 for setting fire to public land. The were sentenced for federal arson under a terrorism statute, which carries a mandatory minimum for five years. But the judge didn’t impose that minimum. So the Hammonds have already been to prison, and now are headed back after a Federal judge intervened. So this mob is trying to stand
for them. "We have had enough of this tyranny, you are
going to leave us alone, it will not change." Of course it’s exceedingly unlikely their
demands will be met. Politicians on both sides of the aisle had denounced their actions. Ted Cruz: "We don't have a constitutional
right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others." The government’s response has been, so far,
cool headed. Press secretary Joshua Earnest: "The FBI has
said they are working with local law enforcement to resolve the situation." Of course, non-white, unarmed “protesters”
have had a very different experience with police over the past couple years. But there’s
a reason the government hasn’t rushed in guns blazing, and the reason is in the history
of other standoffs. At previous standoffs Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, scores of people were killed after the FBI and US Marshals used force during
the standoffs. And the Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 innocent people was, according to bomber Timothy McVeigh, a response to the Federal Government's violent reaction during those standoffs. After that bombing, public support for the
FBI’s actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge dropped from 70% to 42%. After 81 days, not a single shot was fired. And the Government also backed down during that Cliven Bundy Nevada standoff in 2014. In 2015, 1,137 people were killed by law enforcement. Let’s hope it’s fewer in 2016. After the attacks in Paris, 31 governors
in the US said that their states won't accept Syrian refugees even though the
attacks were carried out by European nationals. Nearly every Republican
governor in the nation joined the chorus, but one refused-- this cartoon from The
Salt Lake Tribune depicts Utah Governor Gary Herbert standing apart from the
pack. This is somewhat unexpected because Utah is one of the most conservative
states in the US. Republican presidential candidates have won Utah by at least 19 points in every presidential election since 1964. It's a really red
state. Why then is Utah the one conservative state that has pro-refugee? The answer? Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the
Mormon Church religious persecution hits really close to home. Shortly after the
church was founded in 1830 it started growing rapidly, it wanted to create a
new religious and political community it called Zion, and that didn't go over
very well with the people of Ohio where the church set up its headquarters. The
Mormons were violently driven out after just a few years. Persecution continued as they moved west,
violent clashes broke out in Missouri instigated by non Mormon trying to evict the Mormon settlers and prevent them from voting the governor of Missouri even issued an
extermination order stating that the Mormons must be treated as enemies. By
1840 the Mormons were widely seen as a growing political and economic threat
and no one really wanted them around. At the same time they started openly
practicing polygamy, an illegal practice that gave mobs even more legal
justification for hating the Mormons. By 1846 most Mormons were violently driven out of the
United States. They settled in the high desert of Utah,
which was a part of Mexico at that point. Every Sunday Mormons are reminded of
this history from paintings that hang on the walls of their church to songs they
sing to commemorate the early pioneers and their struggles. "Whether or not you
are a descendant of pioneers, the Mormon pioneer heritage of faith and sacrifice
is your heritage." now mormons may not be known as the most progressive or
tolerant..."A Mormon bishop excommunicated a woman who demand equal rights inside
the church" "The church has now clearly laid out that anybody who enters into a
same-sex marriage is considered an apostate." But when Republicans turn away
Syrian refugees and Donald Trump goes even further "Total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States." Mormons remember that as the governor said
recently in a Facebook post, "Utah is a state that was settled by religious
exiles who withstood persecution after persecution" ...and that's enough to get
them to break with the conservative mainstream   This is Michael Bierut. “I’m Michael Beirut. I'm a graphic designer” You might be familiar
with is work, but interestingly he thinks that logos are just kind of overrated. "I'm actually often very ambivalent about
them." Let’s back out a second. What is a logo? Basically a face of a company. "Some are beloved. Some... the swastika is a logo and it's reviled. You know?" They have to work at tiny sizes, and huge. There are three specific types. First type is the Wordmark. "the wordmark is the easiest one. And it's the one we're all the most familiar
with. I mean John Hancock's signature is kind of
a word mark. It can look crisp clean and modern like the
new Google logo looks. Or it can look somehow that it has roots in
a shared heritage the way the coca cola logo looks. You know?" The second is PICTORAL. "Pictoral logos often function as a kind of
rebus. It's a picture, and it's identifying the name
of the company. Sometimes directly like Target. Sometimes indirectly like LaCoste." The third kind is kind of the holy grail. Abstract inconography. "The third type is favorite kind of category
because it just seems almost like magic." As a designer people will come to me and they'll
say I want something like the Nike swoosh. They think the Nike swoosh was the Nike Swoosh
the day it was drawn. But it was nothing the day it was drawn." The company that birthed nike commissioned
a design student named Carolyn to draw some ideas. The Nike founders didn't really like it. "They sort of said awww let’s use that one." It wasn’t an overnight success. And then they started putting it on the sides
of shoes. The shoes were good and then the genius of
Nike's marketing apparatus made us further associate that product not merely with performance
athletic gear but with the very idea of athletic achievement itself. And that's how over a long time a little mark
means something big. "That’s exactly how religious symbols work
– it’s obviously not just anything inherent in about these shapes, but what these shapes
have come to represent in the minds of the people who are looking at them." But there's a fourth type of logo that goes
beyond these three types, and can use elements of each of them: The Logo System. A kind of framework, but one that can have
endless permutations. The first huge, popular example of the logo
system would be MTV. But google’s daily “doodles” are another
great example the logo system – a familiar mark that also can point to other ideas and
issues. This approach all has to do with technological
change. "It used to be if a company was doing a logo
there'd be this military operation by which it would be inscribed on all their equipment
and on their airplanes and their retail facilities and gold pins and cufflinks would be made
for the executive suite and put on spitoons in ashtrays, the top of the skyscraper, and
everyone’s business card. Right? Nowadays none of that’s important as an
email signature or your twitter avatar or the little thing that sits next to your URL. Those things are much more ubiquitous and
they can be changed at the drop of a hat.” Bierut used this system approach for his Hillary
Clinton logo. "we wanted to have a mark that could reflect
the electorate, and reflect the issues. The simple forms that comprise the H with
the arrow in it are actually designed to hold not just two colors such as red and blue,
but any colors you want" The use of logo systems seems to be continually on the upswing – probably
because it allows the the brand using it to expand the conversation beyond it’s own
name. "The logo really reminds people that’s what
our priority is today." But at the end of the day, regardless of the
shape, style or system, it might not matter what the logo is. "It really is about thinking of these symbols
as being empty vessels in a way. And then you pour the meaning into them. Some vessels are better at holding one kind
of meaning." So what’s this all add up to? Basically, those fights people get in about
new logos are pretty misguided. "They think they’re judging a diving competition,
but actually all these organizations are in swimming competitions. It’s not what kind of splash you make when
you hit the water. It’s about how long you can keep your head
above that water." Logos need to have a long life, not win points
in a discussion. 12 years after the birth of the nike logo,
Nike came back to that graphic design student Carolyn with a gift "A Nike ring with her
own trademark on it, the swoosh. Thank you very much it's beautiful." And an undisclosed amount of Nike stock. "Wow." In 1973 when it was designed, her was $35. if you go into a grocery store and you buy
pretty much anything: a bottle of water, a bag of chips, that thing will have a nutritional
label on it if you go buy beer or wine or liquor, it usually
doesn't, and that's crazy the reason why is kind of complicated so it all dates back to 1935 shortly after prohibition was repealed, Congress
formed a new agency that would regulate alcoholic beverages booze got its own agency, it wasn't regulated
by the food and drug administration, which meant that in 1990 when the FDA told food
companies they needed to start labeling all of their packaged foods, that rule didn't
apply to alcohol in the years since, there's been a weird hodgepodge
of complicated rules put into place for nutrition facts on alcohol super weird, for example, most beers are made
out of something called malted barley but, if you're an alcohol company and you
happen to make a beer that doesn't have malted barley in it sorry, you need to put a label on that same goes if you're a wine maker, and say
you have a particular vintage that happens to contain less than seven percent alcohol
by volume sorry, put a label on that one too but, for most of the alcohol that we drink,
labels are optional so, they can list calorie counts if they want,
and if they do, they also have to list carbs, protein and fat, but they can also just leave
all that out which means that those of us who are super
conscious of ingredients or trying to count calories are pretty much out of luck consumer groups have tried six different times
to get the regulations changed, to get labels put on alcoholic beverages and they've even gotten close a few times,
but the beverage industry, as you might have guessed, has some powerful lobbyists a few different industry groups said that
if they were required to put nutrition facts on alcohol, it would mislead consumers into
thinking that alcohol was nutritious wine producers also said it would be way too
hard to test every single vintage for things like calorie content or grams of sugar, especially
when these things vary so much from year to year in the end, the consumer groups lost their
fight basically, regulators just sided with manufacturers
and made labels optional the fact that alcoholic beverages don't have
nutrition labels on them, this has consequences for people's health when people don't have information about how
many calories they're consuming or how much sugar, they're not as good at making smart
decisions about how much to drink it's certainly not a guarentee that people
would drink more responsibly if they knew this information, but putting it on the label
definitely can't hurt just from a consumer standpoint, it seems
like our right to know that, if we know it for bottled water, if we know it for a package
of chips, it's really bizarre that we're not allowed to know it for beer Why did Santa start partying so hard?
This is SantaCon in New York City. In cities around the world people gather to dress up like Santa and get fantastically jolly (that is, really drunk).
It’s where our intrepid Santa reporters learned
“the whole Slip ‘N’ Slide was covered with eggnog.”
But how did SantaCon become SantaCon? “I don’t care what it is, it’s just
drinking and having a good time.” But what if it started way before you thought,
and in a really weird way? “Just out of curiosity, when did it all
begin?” Thank you for asking! Like all great stories, SantaCon’s begins in an abandoned military base in Denmark.
Here, in 1971, squatters claimed 84 acres they called it “Freetown Christiania.”
And that unusual free state inside Copenhagen was the North Pole for the first group of
Santas. They were a theatre group, established in 1969, and they went by the name of...
“Solvogneyn?” “Solvagon?” “Solvognenon!" OK, I had no idea how to pronounce it either, so I called someone who does. NS: “Solvognen, Solvognen, so 'sol' is sun and 'vognen' is wagon. Solvognen.” PE: (Struggles immensely) NS: "So it’s kinda like ‘whoa,’ that sound, 'vognen'."
They took the name from a relic of early Norse religion. NS: “So it’s the wagon of the sun, and of course the chariot is how we usually translate
it, the sun chariot, because it carries the sun across the sky.” But their mission was modern: in 1974, around 75 Santas dressed up and formed a Santa Claus army. NS: “Denmark was in this oil crisis and just crisis in general.” So they performed a miniature parable of Santas learning about the consumerism of Christmas. The first day they were followed by angels,
proudly parading with Danish flags. The next day, they caroled.
Then they visited a closed factory, and things went downhill.
The less-than-jolly Santas soon protested unemployment and mobbed a department store, giving away free gifts. Children wept as their Santas were arrested. The first “SantaCon” was performance art
with purpose. So how did we get from that to Santas who shotgun Natty Ice and have vape pens? Mother Jones wrote an article in 1977,
and that article later inspired a prankish art group in San Francisco who escapaded around
the city and danced through the room at dinner parties. From there it snowballed and lost the anti-consumerist sentiment as the Santas got jolly. It became a party so wild ….that Santa has been banned in several New York
City neighborhoods. Will SantaCon ever get back to its roots?
Maybe not. Now it has its own new meanings. “Santacon is my favorite thing that happens
in New York. In the world.” The Santas might be drunker, but they’re
happier as they tiptoe around the holiday vomit.
But Danish Santas, don’t worry. At least the elves are keeping up the fight.
“My elf brother and sisters work 24/7 to make little toys for children.” [singing] Amazing grace
We're hearing this morning more about the mass shooting at a church in South
Carolina last night We have
no room for hate Gray was a young African-American man.
He suffered neck and throat injuries that killed him.
I am calm! But we're not thugs! Gunman entering the office of the satirical
magazine called Charlie Hebdo today. [clapping] Charlie! Charlie!
The use of speech, the use of images, can It was a night of clashes and petrol bombs outside the Greek parliament as inside lawmakers
argued bitterly over bailout terms. Kelly is seventy-five days into a yearlong
mission. He's been frequently posting stunning images of home.
After a voyage of three billion miles, nine and a half years, the New Horizons spacecraft
is just about 20 minutes away from flying by Pluto.
Five...four...three...two...one! [cheers] American Pharaoh has won the Triple Crown!
Off the post and in! Hat trick for Lloyd! An ecstatic crowd here in front of the Supreme
Court. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of
the law. The constitution grants them that right. I never thought that someday I'd be able to do this. The only thing that separates
women of color from anyone else is opportunity. And she's done it. Serena Williams is Wimbledon
champion I got big news! This is it! This is the final episode! All of us who were lucky enough to work with you are better at our jobs because we got to watch you do yours. but I think the Secretary is right.
And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!
Thank you. Me too! It is a high risk journey with young children yet thousands want to cross, fearful of the violence they fled in Syria. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total
and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. There's been another mass
shooting in America. Thoughts and prayers, that's great Another
strong earthquake shook Nepal today, adding to the devastation caused by the massive earthquake
there two and a half weeks ago. The U.S. attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz was not just
an attack on our hospital. Today we say "enough." The Paris attacks came
a day after ISIS carried out a double suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. Today, President
Obama announced an agreement he says will keep an atomic bomb out Iranian hands for
more than a decade. The Iranian regime and the world should know that the majority of
members of this Congress do not support this deal. No one should control Never before has there been such a unifying issue as climate change.
And it is time now to set aside everything that divides us. Hello from the other side. I see that the reaction is positive. I do not see objections. If you’ve been watching the 2016 campaign,
you know that Donald Trump has been saying increasingly extreme things about Muslim people. A complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. But his poll numbers seem to only go up. So i’m in Detroit on the way to Des Moines
to go to a Trump rally and talk to supporters of his My conversations started out pretty much how
you’d expect. "I’m not one who is a bigot
or anything, but I will tell you that I think we need to look much harder at the people
who are causing the problems." Who is that? "Radical Muslims. Radical Islam." "After all the crap that’s going
on everywhere, it would be nice to have someone who would show some balls." And of course, people were savvy about what Trump was doing, too. "First of all, I don’t think
it’s plausible he’s going to get that through." "I consider that
a marketing ploy." But the issue is that these sentiments easily slip from the perpetrators of real crimes, to everybody else. "The Muslims pose a threat. Not
all Muslims. But you can’t tell the good ones from the bad ones. His thing is put a
pause in until we can figure out a way to vet the people who are coming in…" "I do think we need to put a
halt on the visa situation... I don’t have a racist bone in my body. I’m not that way,
i just think we need to vet people a little better and find out why they’re here..." The comments weren’t really pointing to
a cult of personality around Trump. They were pointing to pre-existing fear. We want our country back. And
I don’t appreciate that I have to be not safe in my own country because there are some
tenets of their religion that basically teach them to kill people who don’t believe that
they believe." "He’s trying to
secure the country. The country needs more security, and it appears that they are a problem
so we have to address it." But is it really fair to say that Muslims
are a problem? "If you break it down, yeah, they’re a problem. Sorry to say it, but can’t help it. Can’t help but feel that way. Right now, I don’t
feel safe. And I think a lot of the country feels the same way." That’s true. These views are held by many
Americans. It used to be that trying to protect against
terrorism and Islamophobia were both bipartisan issues. George W Bush: "I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims
throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of
Americans" But that seems to be over. And so, as there have been more terror attacks in the news, it seems hate speech is accepted a lot more in the mainstream media. Judge Jeanine Pirro: "We need to kill them. We need to KILL them...
And there’s only one group who can stop this war — the Muslims themselves." Don Lemon: For the most part, there’s not a free and
open society for women in those States. Reza Aslan: Well it’s not in Iran or Saudia Arabia.
It certainly is in Malaysia and Indonesia; it certainly is in Bangladesh, it certainly
is in Turkey. But again this is the problem — you’re talking about a religion with
one and a half billion people, and certainly it becomes very easy to paint them all with
a single brush. I think that the thing that became most clear to me talking to the Trump supporters was that it really is not Trump. "Rand Paul just said the same thing, but he said it in different words. He said we’re going to stop 34 countries. It’s
the same thing." Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz also called for accepting
refugees from Syria only if they are Christian. Cruz: "Christians who are being targeted
for genocide or persecution; Christians who are being beheaded or crucified. We should be providing safe
haven to them." "If there are even a few bad apples out of a billion, that amounts to quite a few people. It’s the Muslims that are killing Americans, right now, isn’t it." This culture of Islamaphobia, it really does do harm. There really are more hate crimes now than there were, certainly before 9/11. Days after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, a man in Chapel Hill shot three Muslim students to death. And there has been a wave of threats and violence since November’s terror attacks "You are terrorists.  Every one of you are terrorists.  I don't care what you say." "Demonstrators carrying long rifles gathered at a North Texas mosque again today." "A customer questioned the driver's heritage before shooting him." "He was called a member of ISIS before being shot in the face" According to the FBI, most terror attacks
in America were not carried out by Muslims. But Muslims are the No. 1 victims of ISIS
terror, and so Muslim views of ISIS are overwhelmingly negative. And Islamophobia in the US does function as a recruitment tool for extremists. Still, there are a shocking number of Americans who support Trump’s Islamophobic proposals. I don’t think it’s a coalition large enough
to win an election. But it’s a reminder that our country has
many times had a political coalition plenty large enough to subjugate groups who are “different.” "Franklin Delano Roosevelt was
elected four terms as President of th United States. Four terms. People absolutely loved him. WWII, he gathered up all the Japanese and put them in encampments." Do you think that was a good thing? "He did what he thought was best for protecting the United States. And that’s all Trump is suggesting…" The idea that anyone would defend the Japanese internment is a good reminder that the consensus against things like bans on Muslim travel
is much more fragile than many realize. Ronald Reagan: “The legislation that I am
about to sign provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 survivors, surviving
Japanese Americans of the 120,000 who were relocated or detained. Yet no payment can make up for those lost years.” We’ve targeted groups like this, again and
again. So we can’t just laugh this off. "The establishment media just thinks
this guy’s a joke. Well he’s not a joke. He says what people think when nobody else can. He’s not politically correct. He’s going to close the borders. That’s what
people want. They want to feel protected; they want to feel safe. And that’s what
he’s going to provide. So that’s why I support him." The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a phenomenon
so terrible and shocking it seems impossible. It controls an area the size of the United
Kingdom, commits mass atrocities, and launches terror attacks abroad. To understand ISIS, it helps to tell the story
of its rise. That story begins far away and many years
before ISIS existed. In 1979 the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
to defend a puppet dictator against rebels. Young men from the MidEast flock to join the
rebels. Many see it as a religious struggle, and some
develop extremist views. Among them is a well-educated young Saudi
named Osama bin Laden. Also in Afghanistan is a semi-literate former
street thug from Jordan named Abu Musab Zarqawi. They do not get along, and never will, but
will create the groups we today know as al-Qaeda and as ISIS. The Soviets withdraw in 1989 and the Arab
fighters return home. Bin Laden grows al-Qaeda into a global network,
to continue the struggle against Islam's enemies. Zarqawi forms his own group, but it fizzles. Both men later return to Afghanistan, now
ruled by the Taliban. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks America
from its base there. The US invades Afghanistan and bin Laden flees
to Pakistan. Zarqawi, still obscure, flees to a remote
and lawless corner of Iraq. Two years later, the US does something that
will transform the Middle East and set the stage for ISIS: it invades Iraq. The Americans topple Saddam Hussein's secular,
Sunni dictatorship and disbands the Iraqi army. Thousands of Sunni Iraqi soldiers, angry and
unemployed, join the insurgency. Jihadist groups, also Sunni, see this as a
repeat of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and again flood in to fight. Zarqawi is among them. Zarqawi's group becomes Iraq's most ruthless. He especially attacks Shia, Iraq's majority,
deliberately sparking a Sunni-Shia civil war. By 2004, Zarqawi is a jihadist superstar. Al-Qaeda, isolated and weakened, attempts
to bolster its image by forming an alliance with Zarqawi's group, which becomes known
as al-Qaeda in Iraq. But in 2006, Iraq's Sunnis rise up against
Zarqawi, and the US kills him in an air strike. Over the next few years al-Qaeda in Iraq is
largely defeated. The Americans withdraw in 2011 from an Iraq
that finally looks stable. In 2011, the Arab Spring spreads across the
Middle East. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad cracks down violently
on protesters. They eventually fire back, leading to civil
war. Assad fears the world will intervene against
him. So he releases jihadists en masse from Syrian
prisons, tinging the rebels with extremism and making it harder for foreigners to back
them. Back in Iraq, what little remains of Zarqawi's
group is still allied with al-Qaeda but now known as the Islamic State in Iraq. It's led by a bookish religious scholar who
calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In early 2012, Baghdadi sends a top deputy
to Syria to start a new al-Qaeda branch to fight alongside the rebels: Jabhat al-Nusra. Baghdadi also attacks a series of prisons
in Iraq. They free former jihadists and recruit new
ones, growing stronger. In April 2013, Baghdadi announces he is taking
control of all al-Qaeda-allied forces in Syria and Iraq. His group expands into Syria, becoming the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Al-Qaeda rejects Baghdadi's power grab and,
in 2014, formally exiles him. The two jihadist groups, long at odds, are
now at war. ISIS grows powerful in Syria, in part because
Assad tolerates its rise, which he does because it divides his enemies within Syria, and foreign
powers are too focused on ISIS now to worry about Assad. By June 2014, ISIS has built an army in Syria,
and it launches a military-style invasion into Iraq. The Iraqi army, weakened by corruption, folds
with little fight. Many Sunnis are tired of their Shia-dominated
and increasingly authoritarian government, and welcome or at least tolerate ISIS's arrival. Within days, ISIS controls a third of Iraq
and a big part of Syria. ISIS's goal is more audacious than anything
imagined by al-Qaeda: to revive the ancient Caliphate and expand it to encompass all Muslims. It earnestly believes its holy war will then
bring about the apocalypse as foretold in scripture. Thousands of Muslims, mostly from the Middle
East and from Europe, flock to join the group. Some join for religious reasons, but many
are just disillusioned or angry, and feel that ISIS offers them answers and a purpose. ISIS quickly overreaches. That August, it invades Kurdish territory
in Iraq and Syria, sparking counter-attacks from better-organized Kurdish forces. It launches a genocide against Iraqi Yazidis
and murders the American journalist James Foley on camera, outraging the world and provoking
an American-led air campaign against it. ISIS is unable to withstand the onslaught,
and loses more than a fifth of its territory. In response, it begins launching increasingly
spectacular terror attacks abroad: Kuwait City, Sinai, Beirut, Sousse and then Paris. So-called lone wolves inspired by ISIS propaganda
also launch attacks, though they're often amateurish and less effective. Eventually, ISIS will lose its state. It is simply too weak, has no allies or outside
funders, and is surrounded by enemies. But ISIS will respond by reverting to what
it was before, as AQI: an insurgency and a terror group still capable of horrifying violence. In that form, it could be around for years. There’s one thing we all know about El Nino. FARLEY: El Nino is Spanish for The Nino But what IS the nino? So El Nino is this complex weather phenomenon
that occurs every 2 to 7 years in the Pacific. And it affects weather around the world. To understand how it works, it helps to know
about the normal conditions in this part of the ocean. You have these trade winds across the Pacific
that blow from South America all the way to Indonesia. Those winds cause warm water to pile up near
Indonesia, where the sea level is half a meter higher than it is in South America. But during an El Nino year... We don’t really understand why, but those
trade winds start to weaken. And that water that was all piled up over
by Indonesia starts sloshing back east. Scientists start seeing the water temperatures
in the central and eastern Pacific jump way above normal. And the rain follows that pool of warm water
toward the east. So that means less rain in Indonesia, Papua
New Guinea. You start getting droughts. You start getting more rain in places like
Peru where you start getting floods, mudslides. The warmer water off South America also hurts
the fishing industry. It was fishermen there who first gave El Nino
its name. Around the 1800s, these Peruvian fishermen
started noticing a warm current would appear around Christmas time. And they started calling it the christ child. So that’s El Nino. Yeah, baby Jesus. El Ninos can vary in strength , and strong
ones will noticeably affect weather in different ways all over the world. In Indonesia, the fires that people set to
clear land for agriculture burn out of control with less rain to put them out. And the warmer water in the Pacific fuels
storms there. So Hawaii got hit by a bunch of hurricanes
recently. Mexico got this record-strength hurricane. And all the way on the other side of the globe,
El Nino upends rain patterns in Eastern and Southern Africa, where food insecurity is
already high. The lack of rainfall and subsequent drought has led to a massive spike in food and water needs across the country. El Nino and its inverse, La Nina, also tend
to show up in global average temperatures. Paired with global warming, El Nino made 2015
the hottest year on record. And you can see a similar spike back in 1998,
during a record-breaking El Nino. 23,000 people died. $35 billion of damage for the last strong
El Nino in 1997-98. So, it’s much bigger than any individual
hurricane or storm, and it’s something that really can have these huge impacts. One of the mistakes people make about climate
change is saying that the planet is at stake. "Is it the last chance to save the planet from climate change?" "Tens of thousands of activists warning climate change is destroying the earth." "The biggest cause in Hollywood is saving the Earth. Climate change and all that." That’s not really the right way to think about
it. Earth has gone through immense climate changes
many, many times before, in some cases leading to mass extinctions.
but life persisted. Mammals evolved from reptiles, and primates from mammals.
They stood up. And walked out of Africa, eventually reaching the corners of every continent. But Only after well over 100,000 years of wandering
did the real human innovation happen, when 12,000 years ago we stopped foraging and started
farming. Agriculture meant villages, cities, society,
government: the birth of civilization. but why did it take so long for humans to
take control of their food? well If you look at this chart of global temperature change
going back 100,000 years, you might notice something special about the last 10,000 years.
That’s when the climate settled into a period of unusual stability.
It was on this ledge that human society developed, where reliable seasons fed more and more people...where knowledge accumulated and science began. Until eventually, inventors created machines
that could unleash unimaginable growth and mobility. All they needed was fuel to burn.
and they found it in the form of ancient forests buried for under dirt and compacted over 300
million years. With these coal deposits, humans unearthed tons and tons of carbon that had been locked away long
before our species appeared. And that’s how we began to disrupt the climate
that birthed us — the climate that our food systems and infrastructure are built upon.
After 10,000 years of temperatures that varied only within about 1 degree Celsius, scientists
now say we’re on track for 3 degrees of warming by 2100 if we don’t change course.
Humans have been around for .004% of Earth’s history. And of all human history - the 200,000
years since our species began, we’ve had agriculture for just 5% of that time. We’ve had
electricity for .07% of that time. The simple truth about climate change is that
it isn’t new to the planet, but civilization is.
Andd here's what's even newer: In the past hundred years, the number of people alive has quadrupled.
And thus so has the capacity for suffering So slowing climate change isn’t about saving
the planet. It’s about us, about our vulnerability to a level of climate disruption that human
civilization has simply never seen before. The World War II memorial in DC is imposing
and serious. And it should be. But it would be a mistake to forget the joke
that helped keep GIs going. It was amazingly similar to a modern meme.
And his name was Kilroy. Soldiers scrawled this face and “Kilroy
Was Here” all around the world. The joke was that Kilroy, peeking out, had
been everywhere before the GIs got there. He greeted them in Okinawa and Casablanca,
and in Sicily he cheered them in Berlin. Everywhere soldiers went, seeing unfamiliar
landmarks and reading signs in languages they couldn’t speak, they graffitied the same
picture and signed the same name on every available surface. He was a joke, but he was also a kind of assurance,
a hero who’d been there before and still made it out OK. We don’t really know where Kilroy came from. The picture showed up around the world — in
England, he was Mr. Chad, where he complained about skimpy rations. At some point, that guy was mashed up with
the phrase “Kilroy Was Here.” Who was Kilroy? The legend’s that a shipyard inspector named
James J. Kilroy wrote “Kilroy Was Here” on all of his inspected work. Soldiers saw it and turned it into a joke
that showed up on bomber wings and became latrine literature. James Kilroy won a contest for supposedly
being the real Kilroy, but - eh - Kilroy was bigger than him. There were rumors Stalin was spooked by Kilroy
graffiti at Potsdam, and after the war he popped up in movies, whiskey ads, and really
weird novelty songs. “Kilroy was here. We want Kilroy. And even
Edgar Hoover admits he’s quite a mover — Kilroy was here. Ha, I’m Kilroy!” Today, Kilroy’s faded from bathroom walls,
but if you go to the World War II Memorial, past a fountain you can’t make wishes in,
near an area that’s closed for construction, you can peer through a fence and see that
even in this place Kilroy got here before you. After 9/11, a ton of things changed in the US government. Including the drug war. "I helped the bomber get a fake passport" "All the kids do it" President Bush reframed the war on drugs to make it a part of the Global War On Terror. Bush: "And the drug trade… supports terrorist
networks” The White House even spent around $4 million
on two SuperBowl ads in 2002 saying so. The Drug Enforcement Administration embraced
its new role and began assembling the tools it needed to pursue narco-terrorists anywhere
in the world. Rep: Henry Hyde: "Mr. Chairman I have an amendment…” They got a statute added to the PATRIOT act which Hyde: “...Makes it a federal crime to engage
in drug trafficking that directly or indirectly aides or provides support to a foreign terrorist organization…” By 2007, the agency was armed with a 75% increase in its international budget. But…. there was just one problem. Ginger Thompson: "In almost all of those cases, the nexus between drugs and terror happens with an informant working for the DEA. In
other words, it’s created or manufactured by the DEA’s own conspiracy." Let’s just say that again: in almost all
the cases the DEA pursued, without the DEA informants there would have been no connection
between drugs and terrorism. Let’s start with a particularly high-profile
example from 2008. Ginger: "The DEA begins to target West Africa.
" They saw cocaine was moving through the region,
on its way from Colombia to Spain, and asked their informants to investigate whether any
of the money was going to terrorists. They posed as members of the FARC – a Colombian
rebel organization that's considered a terrorist group by the United States. Ginger: "One of these informants, who was
identified in the court files as “Mohamed” led them to a Malian smuggler named Harouna
Touré" The informants offered to pay Touré millions
of dollars if he could help them smuggle cocaine through the Sahara. And they told Toure that
they wanted to work with Al Qaeda. Informant: "Al Qaeda is Arab."
Touré: "Exactly, Qaeda is Arab." Informant: "Do you know, do you know somebody
with al..." Touré: "I do!"
Informant: "Good." Ginger: "Mohamed keeps trying to test Touré to demonstrate that he really is who he says he is. Can you bring someone who is actually
a member of Al Qaeda to one of these meetings, and I’ll bring my Farc commander to one
of these meetings." Touré obliges. And, soon after, the Ghanian
police swoop in and arrest them. "You're under arrest" Ginger: "The Ghanians turn them over to the DEA, and they are loaded onto a private jet. In 24 hours they land in NYC still wearing
their long daishikis and sandals and land here in new york on one of the coldest days
of the year that year in 2009." This is where things start to unravel. The
DEA provided no evidence — outside of the meetings recorded with its own informant—
that Touré had any connections to Al Qaeda at all. Ginger: "Harouna never brought up Al qaeda. He would parrot it back to them, because it became clear that that’s what they wanted
him to say." And his Al-qaeda friend? Touré had brought
a childhood friend to play the role of an Al Qaeda member. He told his lawyers that he had pretended
to be a terrorist because of the chance to get rich. And to the DEA, that was enough
to arrest him. But Federal Judge Barbara S. Jones didn’t
agree. She concluded there was no “narco-terrorism.” Ginger: "She said, “there was no actual
involvement by the defendants or the undercovers either in the activities of the FARC or Al
Qaeda.”' The government dropped the narco-terrorism
charge. Toure pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Ginger: "These guys weren’t al qaeda operatives.
They had been set up by an informant." He and his friends were sentenced to between
four and five years in prison Ginger: "And I thought – are they the only
ones? And I started asking my DEA sources and one of them sent me this brag book. And I started going through the cases and
I realized the Malians were not the only ones." The brag book makes reference to 32 people.
37, counting related cases. Ginger: "In almost all of these cases, the
only connection between drugs and terror is the one established by the DEA’s conspiracy." Three were convicted by juries. Others pleaded
guilty to avoid lengthy prison terms. But while the DEA claimed victories against Al
Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the FARC — almost none of those charged were proven
to be members of those groups. Ginger: "We can’t think of a terrorist attack
that was directly funded by drugs. The closest that comes to that is the Madrid train bombings." That attack, which killed 191 people on March
11, 2004, was funded in part by hashish sales. But there was no direct link to a major terror
network. The biggest threats to the US currently get their money other ways – ISIS, through oil and extortion. And Al Qaeda? The 9/11 commission
and a more recent Senate report found no evidence of an Al Qaeda role in drug trafficking. So does drug trafficking fund terrorism? There’s
evidence to suggest that it has in Colombia and it funds both sides of the war in Afghanistan.
But for the bigger threats to the west that the DEA boasts about in this book, there just
isn't compelling evidence. The DEA strongly defends its use of sting operations, and says
it has gathered lots of convincing evidence – beyond meetings set up by paid informants
– to prove the links. It has presented almost none of that evidence
in court. Outlet stores, as most people understand them,
are a place to get a good deal on a high-end product. And that’s certainly how they started. Back in the 1930s, clothing stores offered
excess or damaged goods to their employees and then later started offering those same
goods to non-employees. Shoppers go to outlet stores thinking that
they’re going to get steep discounts either on stuff that was returned and couldn’t
be resold or items that weren’t a best seller last season. But the truth is that these days, you’re
probably not getting that great of a deal. Chavie Lieber, a Racked reporter, has written
about the tactics that brands use to make shoppers believe they’re getting more for
less. Lieber: The point is to make you think that you’re
actually buying products from the brand itself, when in reality, they’re probably made by
third party vendors or brands that license the name out but were actually never part
of the original label or collection. In a 2014 letter to the Chairwoman of the
Federal Trade Commission, four members of Congress wrote that an estimated 85% of merchandise
in outlets were specifically manufactured for outlets. They wanted the FTC to investigate unfair marketing
practices that make it really hard for the average shopper to tell which clothes
were never actually sold at the higher end retail store. Lieber: The ethics are definitely murky especially
when you look at how these items are priced because the labels will say 'originally sold
for $350, your price is $150'. But in reality if the item was made specifically
for the outlet is was never sold at $350. Last year a woman in California actually sued
a Michael Kors outlet for misleading her with this tag. The truth is these jeans were never really
sold at $120. Kors agreed to pay a class action settlement. They said they would use the word “Value”
instead of “MSRP” on the tag and would install signs in their stores to help clarify
what that means. Lieber: Neiman Marcus’s vice president of corporate
communications, Ginger Reeder, she insists that the products are not necessarily inferior
in quality. But she’ll either say that the fabrics might
be different, the buttons are less expensive, but certainly because they’re made specifically
for outlets they’re probably not designed by the same team that’s making it for the
regular priced stores. Some brands will signal which items were manufactured
for outlets, but you have to know what you are looking for. Consumers might not ultimately care if the
items were made at a lower quality for the outlets but they should at least know what
they’re buying. I hate math, but there’s this statistics
problem that has me geeking out. It’s a question that seems really really simple but
it’s stumped me. And not just me, it has stumped thousands of people around the world
including math professors and leading statisticians.But before we dive in I’m going to introduce
you to Zachery Crockett. He first introduced me to the puzzle and I called him up to talk
about it. My name is Zachery Crockett, I’m a writer
for Priceonomics. Zachery and his girlfriend were confused by
the problem too. We just sat there debating the answer to this
problem for two hours and I don’t think any of us really understood it.
The puzzle we were all stumped by is called the Monty Hall Problem -- named after the
host of the game show that made it famous. the problem goes like this: there’s a brand
new car behind one of three doors. Behind the other 2 are goats. Say you pick door 1.
Monty then shows you the goat behind one of the doors you DIDN’T choose - say, door
3. Now here’s the question: You’re allowed to change your answer to Door 2. Do you switch?
Or stick with your original choice? So yeah, I got interested in the Monty Hall
Problem, did a little research, and then I found out there was this whole second angle
to the story. You’ve never met a man that feared you a
little bit because he thought you were much brighter than he was?
That’s Marilyn Vos Savant in 1988 being interviewed by Joe Franklyn.
Yeah maybe I’ve met a man or two, maybe a couple a hundred like that.
Marilyn is very intelligent. In fact:Back when the Guinness World Records actually kept
track of this she was the world’s highest IQ.
She now writes for Parade Magazine and has for the last 20 years.
So the premise of the column was of course, like, here is the person with the world's
highest IQ here to answer your challenging math questions.
This brings us to September 1990, when a reader submitted to Marilyn... the Monty Hall Problem.
Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?
Now, if you’re like me the obvious answer is no. There’s no advantage of switching
doors at all, There are two doors so the chance of getting a car and not a goat is 50/50.
Bing. Bang. Boom. But that’s the wrong answer, and Marilyn
knew that. She replied: “Yes; you should switch.”
And here’s why. Here are 3 doors.
There’s a goat behind 2 and a car behind 1.
In a blind test, you’re more likely to pick a goat than a car. In fact, you’re 2/3RDS
likely so let’s use that as our main scenario. You pick door 1.
So now, Monty Hall, who knows what’s behind all the doors, is forced to reveal a goat
regardless of the door you pick. Since, in the most probable scenario you’ve also picked
a goat, the only door left is the one with the car.
So, now Monty Hall asks, “Would you rather keep the door you’ve picked, or switch?”
Well, you should most definitely switch. If you do you get the car 2/3rds of the time.
Turns out when Marilyn correctly answered the Monty Hall Problem, she received thousands
of letters from across the world telling her she was flat out wrong.
I think part of her was a little bit surprised that she received 10,000 letters calling her
an idiot. There was, without a doubt a little bit of sexism at play here. Not only was her
answer right, it wasn’t anything new. The first time the Monty Hall problem was
published was in 1975. This guy named Steve Selvin at Berkeley presented the problem in
The American Statistician. Selvin said you should switch and no one argued
with him. And over the next 15 years multiple other academics reiterated the same problem
without and no one ever told them that they were wrong.
Then in 1990 Marilyn answered the same question correctly and people went bananas.
Marilyn ended up and tallying up what percentage of the 10,000 responses claimed she was wrong.
Only 8% of readers actually agreed with her and after subsequent columns she was able
to raise that to 56%. And among academics: It was 35% among academics initially supporting
the answer. And about 70% of academics ultimately decided to agree with her.
The only way she managed to get people on her side was by asking them to do the experiment
themselves. Elementary, middle school, and high school teachers from all over the country
wrote in, astounded that their students were able to prove her right.It’s easy now to
do a simple google search of this little sucker of a problem and get a million explanations
on how to arrive at the right answer. There's something about this problem that
really strikes a chord with, not only statisticians, but just everyday problem solvers and people. To the people of Paris: Keep spreading love.
You don't need to shy away from living your lives. You should never be afraid of any terrorist
because I'm telling you that the terrorists are more afraid than you are. Nobody can imagine
what you're going through right now and the emotions going through your heart. But you
don't want to live your life with hate. You don't want to live your life in anger. My mom pulled me over and she said, 'There
was an accident today. There was an attack on where dad works. And we don't think he's
ever going to come home.' He was killed. He didn't just die. It wasn't a car accident.
He didn't have cancer. He was killed. It was a pre-determined, pre-mediated terrorist attack
and I guess you just don't understand that when you're a kid. And I grew up and I understood
and everything just froze for me. I know what it's like to have my father killed on national
television. It's no longer something that is your own experience. You're sharing it
now with hundreds of thousands of people. And it sort of takes away from the fact that
you can grieve and move on and just live your life. My dad's favorite number was 33. I went
to the gym today and I put my locker in the only locker that was left open and it was
number 33. And I thought, 'OK, wow, OK. I'm ok today. I'm good.' I do believe that it
is up to us now. Because we know what anger and hatred looks like. And we can't add to
that anymore. People look at you and they shouldn't see tragedy. They should see hope
because you mean so much to society and you're so valuable. And for you to be happy is just
what everybody want to see and it will give everybody hope. And that's the best, I think,
attack that you can have on a terrorist or a terrorist group or anything, you know, to
smile and to show your teeth and to just love life. We make a lot of charts at Vox.com. And, of course, charts have axes. And pretty much every time we make a chart
with a y-axis that starts anywhere other than 0, someone winds up emailing to complain. You see, there's a very famous book called ‘How to Lie With Statistics’ and it contains a discussion of how you can create
a misleading chart by messing with the y-axis. And it’s definitely true that you can do
this. Here's a chart from Fox News, for example. It's a total disaster.. But the y-axis dogmatists take it way too far. The big problem with people who lie with statistics
is that they are trying to lie to you. It’s true that misleading charts are one
way to lie. But the English language is also a tool that can be used for lying, and that doesn’t mean we should never speak English. Sometimes you need to fiddle with the y-axis
to tell a story properly. Right now, for example, the share of American
adults who have a job has fallen to a generation-long low. This is a really big deal. But if you chart this data with a y-axis at 0,
you can’t see the change at all. Narrowing the range to dramatize what we’re
talking about isn’t “lying” with statistics. It’s emphasizing what’s relevant. The way Edward Tufte puts it is you need to “use
a baseline that shows the data, not the zero point.” After all, 0 is just a number like any
other. Sometimes to make sense of the data, you need
to be able to show numbers that go below 0. Halting at 0 in those cases just doesn't make any sense. But extending every chart way below 0 would be crazy, too. And of course where 0 even is depends on the
units you are using. If you do a chart of a person’s temperature in
Fahrenheit, you’re likely to miss the fever if you’re zoomed all the
way out to 0. But if you redo it as a Celsius chart, it’s
not quite as bad. But if you switch to Kelvin and extend everything
to Absolute Zero then your charts become useless. When people are really lying with charts,
the main thing they’re normally doing wrong is leaving out the context, not leaving out
the 0. Now back to that Fox News chart. You would never know from this chart that
the top marginal rate was 39.6 percent back in the Clinton administration. Or that in the first half of the Reagan administration
it was 50. Or that back when Eisenhower was president,
it was 91. The missing 0 was really the last of that
chart’s problems. They left out the entire history of taxes
in the United States. So just remember, y-axes don’t lie to people.
People do. On November 13th, gunmen and bombers attacked
a number of locations throughout Paris. They killed over 120 people, and wounded an
even larger number. ISIS, otherwise known as the Islamic State,
claimed responsibility for these attacks. [A group of believers from the Soldiers of
the Caliphate, set out targeting the capitol of prostitution and vice -- the lead carrier
of the cross in Europe, Paris.] In the past, ISIS hasn't really launched any
major terrorist attacks abroad. ISIS's basic goal is holding on to its territory
in Iraq and Syria. Why change your strategy now? One theory, according to the Brooking Institute's
Will McCants, is that they are trying to warn off their enemies abroad. Recently ISIS has been losing territory. Bombing
from the US-led coalition, which includes France, has hurt the group. [They have lost something like 25 percent
of their territory.] So ISIS has a problem: it has strong foreign
militaries fighting against it, and it doesn't have a good way to attack back at them. So one theory according to McCants, is that
this attack is a means of showing these enemies that ISIS will hurt them if they keep attacking
them. Evidence for this theory includes the fact
that ISIS recently a part of Lebanon that's a Hezbollah stronghold. Hezbollah is a Lebanese militia that is fighting
on the same side as Bashar al-Assad in Syria, nominally an ISIS enemy Similarly there is strong suspicion that Syria
bombed a Russian airliner in Egypt. So the idea here is that ISIS wants to show
that you will pay a price if you attack ISIS in Syria and Iraq. So ISIS's attack in Paris might not have been
out of strength. It might have been out of weakness. breaking news out of Paris and what looks to be a city under terror attack on several fronts more than 100 innocent victims were killed this is a heartbreaking situation and obviously those of us here in the United States uh know what it's like uh we've gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves we've always been able to count on the French people uh to stand with us and uh we intend to be there with them [Music] for my message to the French people is [Music] simple we stand with you United when the French people left the Stadium after that shocking attack they were not coward they sang their national anthem proudly and that is how all free people should respond to these assaults Freedom stands up for itself stands up for its values in the face of [Music] terrorism [Music] planet The president and the chancellor of the University
of Missouri are both out of a job. They resigned under pressure from groups who
say that they hadn't responded quick enough or intensely enough to some racist incidents
on campus. After threats of a faculty walk out and a
strike by several of the black players on the football team, both men agreed their time
was up. The players’ strike and the resignations
have thrust Mizzou into the national spotlight, but they’re just the latest developments
following a string of racist incidents on campus. Black students are underrepresented at the
University of Missouri. And they’ve faced racism for years. In 2011, a statue on campus was sprayed with
racist graffiti; in 2010, cotton balls were strewn outside
the Black Culture Center. This September, the school’s student body
president, Payton Head, wrote in a Facebook post that a group of white
men shouted the n-word at him from a pickup truck. The post went viral, and Head and other black
students wanted a response from University administrators. Then, in October, members of a student group
called the Legion of Black Collegians were rehearsing for their homecoming performance when they too say a man started yelling racial
slurs at them. The university’s chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin,
denounced the slurs in a video and said the entire university would be required
to take online diversity training. <<It’s enough. Let’s stop this. Let’s end hatred and racism at Mizzou.>> But black students said they wanted a response
from Loftin’s boss, University of Missouri system president Tim
Wolfe. Graduate student Jordan Butler said he and
other black students tried reaching out to Wolfe, but were ignored. They staged a protest during the school’s
homecoming parade. They stood in front of Wolfe’s car for about
15 minutes, blocking its progress through the parade route. Wolfe refused to engage with the protesters,
and ten days after the the parade they wrote a list of demands, including Wolfe’s resignation, a handwritten
apology, and an increase in black faculty and staff. The protesters called themselves Concerned
Student 1950, which was the year black students were first allowed at the university. Tensions increased on October 24, when a swastika
made from human feces was smeared on the wall of a communal bathroom in a new dorm. Nearly a week after they released their demands, Wolfe met with members of Concerned Student
1950, but the group said he did not address any
of the demands they had sent him. So six days after that meeting, graduate student
Jordan Butler said he would go on a hunger strike until Wolfe was fired or resigned. Wolfe later issued an apology for ignoring
the homecoming protesters, but it was too little, too late. In support of Butler, a good chunk of the
football team announced that they wouldn't play until Wolfe was removed from office. A group of faculty members urged their colleagues
to cancel class in solidarity with the protesters. That same day, Wolfe and Loftin announced
their resignations. The dustup shows that college administrators
can’t ignore students’ demands for social change on campus-- especially if football teams start getting
involved. The players at Mizzou have shown they can
wield tremendous power off the field, if they choose to. Who do we blame for the soul patch? Most narrowly defined, the soul patch is that
thicket of hair that sits alone beneath the lower lip. It looks like somebody missed a spot shaving
for three and a half weeks. How did this happen? And how did it become the facial hair most
likely to be worn by a member of Smashmouth? You have to go a lot further back than the
brooding 90s to find out. You have to go back to jazz. As early as 1947, Dizzie Gillespie was one
of the first celebrities to shape American soul patch culture. He sewed the seeds with his jazz dab, a tiny
beard with a moustache that came along for the ride. But usually his beard was on its own, and
it became world famous. Because of Dizzy and the general jazz and
bebop embrace, beatniks — aka “hipsters” — copied the beard and quickly picked it
up. “This is gonna start a new trend.” Though Beatnik beards often had extra hair
like Bob Denver on the 60s sitcom Dobie Gillis, there were soul patches without a chin beard,
too. Even as hippies redefined counterculture hair,
soul-influenced artists like Tom Waits kept beatnik beards alive in the 70s and occasionally
went full soul patch. Equal credit slash blame should also go to
the Blues Brothers, whose soul patches were some of the first to appear in print, and their iconic SNL performance of “Soul
Man” may have helped attach “soul” to the beard forever. (Yep, Ray Charles had a famous one too) In the 90s, soul facial fashion fused with
grunge, both in movies with beatnik-style super patches and examples that were the platonic
ideal of patch. (A patch was even a plot point in the Buffy
the Vampire Slayer movie.) Patches were in the biggest bands too, like
Pearl Jam. In the late 90s, Garth Brooks proved patches
had gone from grunge to emo when he gave his alter ego, Chris Gaines, an ample tuft. Soul patches weren’t soul music, but soulful.
They claimed the faces of even our greatest heroes. (It was probably for a role.) Is there a deeper meaning to be found here? Trends are always changing. Soul patches went from the ultracool trademark
of a joyful genius to, well, you know. The moral? Keep your eyes open and - please
- have your razor ready. This is a story of witches – and LSD. So you might know what happened during the
Salem Witch Trials. From February 1692 to May 1693, the Puritan
community in Salem, Massachusetts was overtaken by a witch hunt that resulted
in the execution of 19 people. We have an idea how it started: two girls, the daughter and niece of the town’s
reverend, reportedly had attacks “beyond the power of epileptic fits or natural disease.” After that, other girls said they had attacks,
a lot of accusations flew, and the town was engulfed in witch mania. The Salem witch trials are traditionally explained
as a form of mass hysteria, political sniping, or Puritanism gone amok. But what if there
were another reason? And what if that reason was bread? Rye, to be specific. In the 1970s, psychologist Linnda Caporael
theorized that a fungus called Claviceps purpurea might have had something to do with the witches
in Salem. The fungus is commonly found on rye grains
and when ingested, it can cause a condition called ergotism. It’s either gangrenous ergotism, causing
limbs to fall off, or convulsive. And convulsive ergotism matches some reports
at Salem, where people accused witches of giving them symptoms — like grievous torment in the bowels, pain
in the belly, pinching and pricking, and choking. Compulsive ergotism could have been the real
witchcraft in Salem. Because ergotism isn’t just pain. Ergot also is used to synthesize LSD — yes
that LSD — “I looked down at the hot dog and there
was a face on it.” and, in a lower concentration, has some of
its hallucinogenic effects. That might explain some of the apparitions
people in Salem saw, like the light one man saw quivering in his chimney. Villagers also fed a dog “witch cake”
to see how it would react. The ingredients? A so-called witch’s urine and yep. Rye. We don’t have records of what the dog did,
but its reaction apparently pushed the witch trials forward. Conditions were right for ergot to flourish,
too. A stormy summer in 1692 was perfect for fungal
growth, and most of the accusers were in the Western
area of Salem, where contamination may have been more prominent. Caporeal proposes that the minister was paid
in grain from that area, which led to his daughter’s poisoning by
the rye bread they made. And the next year, a drought kept ergot from
happening again. It sounds like fungus has solved the witch
trials. But it’s not that simple. “It’s the witch from next door.” “We have no bread.” “I don’t want your bread.” Others have published rebuttals saying the
symptoms aren’t right: the people of Salem were too healthy to have
a vitamin deficiency that would help ergotism flourish, and key symptoms were missing: The most concrete theories say that a slave
introduced the girls to witchcraft, while high concept ones claim the witch trial girls
were socially infected — they say it was less CSI, more the Mean Girls
of Salem, Massachusetts. In that first paper, Caporeal happily admits
that we can’t know what happened for sure. She and supporting academics say that, at
most, ergotism kicked off the craziness, but ultimately society sent the trials spiraling
out of control. Whatever explanation you prefer, we should
all embrace the one thing the people in Salem weren’t willing to: And that’s a little
uncertainty. [Music] and I don't frankly have time for total political [Music] correctness see when I take someone to the room I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are the skin doesn't make them who they are if I'm our nominee how is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck I was raised paycheck to [Applause] [Music] paycheck I love my brother I love my dad but I'm My Own man and My Views are shaped by my own thinking we'll kill the terrorists will repeal Obamacare and we will defend the Constitution every single word of it when you challenge the status quo you make enemies I made a few Steve Jobs told me that when he called me the day I was fired to say hey been there done that twice [Music] it's time that we recognize the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being look I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in [Music] Washington we need to give everybody a chance treat everybody with respect and let them share in this great American [Music] dream I am a republican in New Jersey I wake up every morning as an outsider [“A doctor ends up making about $40 a month. On my worst days driving taxi, I bring in
$60--In one day”] Did you catch that? This guy makes more in one day than a doctor
makes in a month. And he’s a taxi driver. He’s actually trained as an engineer but
engineers make even less than doctors. “I like being a taxi driver, not an engineer” Welcome to the Cuban economy. Right after the socialist revolution in 1959,
Fidel Castro’s government seized almost all private businesses and land. [You won’t have to worry about next year. The state will do your planning from now on.] Every restaurant, factory, hospital and home
was property of the government. The State set prices for everything and decided
how much people got paid. The private sector disappeared overnight. [The men in this world desperately need: economic
reform.] You can see the result of this when you go
looking for food in Havana. When I showed up, I was pretty excited to
see what street food was on offer. But all i could find was this. Everywhere I turned. This is a typical scene in a Cuban eatery:
too many employees in an empty establishment with empty shelves, just waiting for food
deliveries from the government, and putting in their eight hours so they can go home. They get paid the same whether they sell one
plate of food, or fifty. This model doesn’t work. Cuba survived for many years with subsidies
from the Soviet Union. But since its collapse, the economy been getting
worse every year. This lady is showing me her government ration
cards that she’s kept for decades. Cubans use these monthly cards to go the storage
house to get their monthly rations. The 
government realized this in the 90s and has started giving out private licenses, fueling
a small but growing private sector. I stumbled upon a private restaurant in Havana
that was a totally different experience than the public ones. There was actually movement, and good service. The owners had to actually sell good food
if they wanted to stay in business. Which brings me back to the Taxi driver and
the doctor. The reason a taxi drivers make so much more
than doctors is because they have private licenses. Their salaries are not set by the state. And they can charge tourists high prices. I paid 25 dollars to get from the airport
into Havana. And inn that 30 minute drive, my driver made
more than the average monthly salary of a Cuban, which is $20. One of the problems with this is that you
have highly trained workers leaving their trade to go do remedial work in the private
sector. This guy is an engineer, but he’s cooking
in a private restaurant. These guys are accountants by trade but make
a killing driving around tourists on taxi bikes. This woman is a nurse, but she hasn’t been
in a hospital in years. This guy is an electrical engineer but opened
up a barber shop in his house and makes ten times more than he would in his field of study. Imagine trying to live on the Cuban average
of $20 per month. When you ask them how they do it, they all
have the same response. “Everyone has to do something in addition
to their official salary.” Just beneath the surface in Cuba is a bustling
informal market where Cuban’s make an additional income on top of their official salary, just
to survive. We tend to associate black markets with dangerous
activities. But in Cuba, people sell illegal popsicles,
or newspapers — not to get rich, but just to survive. But things are slowly changing. Since Fidel’s brother Raul took over in
2008, the number of private licenses has increased significantly every year. And now 20% of the economy is now private. Still, most Cubans are jaded by the decades
they have had to use illegal creativity just to survive. “There is one party. They control everything. What change could there possibly be?” If you’re feeling sleepy and need a jolt
of energy, there’s something you should try. It’s more effective than drinking coffee
or taking a nap. It’s drinking coffee and then taking a nap. it’s called a coffee nap. It might sound kind of crazy because most
people realize that caffeine interferes with sleep. But it takes a little while for the caffeine
to affect you. The caffeine has to go into your small intestine,
pass into your bloodstream, and enter your brain, and that takes about 20 minutes. If you spend those 20 minutes unconscious,
you’re going to wake up feeling pretty great. To understand why, it helps to know what’s
making you groggy in the first place. So there’s a molecule inside your brain
called adenosine and it plugs into little receptors inside your brain and makes you
feel tired. Adenosine is a byproduct of brain activity,
so it builds up throughout the day and starts to slow down your neurons. Caffeine chemically looks a whole lot like
adenosine. And when you ingest caffeine and it enters
your brain, it blocks adenosine from fitting into those receptors. A lot of people have said that this like taking
a car and putting a block of wood under the brake pedals. Caffeine keeps your brain from slowing itself
down. The great thing about coffee naps is that
sleep naturally clears out adenosine from the brain. So the caffeine doesn’t even need to compete
with the adenosine to fit into those receptors. So what’s the evidence that this really
works? There’s not a huge body of work but there
are some studies. When people took a 15-minute coffee nap, they
went on to commit fewer errors in a driving simulator than when they only drank coffee
or only took a nap. As the test subjects were doing this really
boring hour-long drive simulation, they were asked every 3 minutes to report their sleepiness
level. And the coffee nap group was consistently
more alert. Meanwhile a Japanese study found that people
who took a caffeine nap performed a lot better on a series of memory tests. The challenge of the coffee nap is to time
it just right. You want to drink it quickly, so it maybe
you could do espresso shots or iced coffee if that makes it easier. And then set an alarm before you fall asleep
to wake up before 20 minutes because if you nap too long you’re much
more likely to enter deeper stages of sleep, and you’ll have what scientists call sleep
inertia, which is basically grogginess. If you have trouble falling asleep, the studies
found that you can still benefit from the coffee nap. Even just drinking the caffeine and getting
a few minutes of restful half-sleep is going to make you feel more alert when you do get
up 20 minutes later. We never stop hearing about how the internet's
in the cloud. But really, it's in the ocean. About 300 undersea fiber optic cables are
responsible for 99% of international data traffic. It's basically the same way we connect to
each other in a single country, except under water instead of underground. They transmit PewDiePie from Europe to America
and they connect stock traders in New York and London. And these cables, placed by private companies,
are the backbone of the internet, but if you held one in your hand it'd be no bigger than
a soda can. There are just a few layers of protection
from the water, including petroleum jelly (yes, your internet is covered in Vaseline). They're vulnerable to earthquakes, at least a few times, confused sharks have
bitten them. But many cables are beneath sea life, because
in some places they go as deep underwater as Mount Everest is high. Ships lower a plow that digs a tiny groove
in the ocean floor, lay in the cable, and it's naturally buried by sand, thanks to the
ocean's current. And that process -- it's both stunningly simple
and mindblowingly complex -- is responsible for making the internet a truly global network. It's an idea so audacious and crazy, and you
think that it has to be cutting edge. And it is. But it's also been going on for 157 years. Electric telegraphs have been around for a
long, long time. Experiments in the early 1800s connected two
ends of a garden, using a clock that revealed letters, then they moved on to two neighborhoods, to help signal trains,
and then multiple cities, thanks to the network of railroad lines. Underwater "submarine cables" were an obvious
next step. So they played around. Instead of petroleum jelly, the first ones
were coated with exotic tree sap to protect them from the water. And though the undersea cables came in spurts
-- one of the first ones was knocked out of commission by a fishing boat -- and by 1858 they reached around the Atlantic
and across the world. And that's how it's kind of gone since, laying
cables that circle the earth's oceans. The cables are unwound from the back of a
ship, sink to the ocean floor, and the world is connected in speeds measured in milliseconds. There are ideas to bring the internet above
sea level. Along with cell phone towers, there's internet
beamed from Facebook satellites to Africa and balloons
lifted by Google. But for speedy international travel, undersea
cables are still where companies like Facebook and Google place their bets. That's because the best way to create the
cloud is still by going under the sea. You may have heard the word 'Benghazi' a
few times are few thousand times in the past few years – "Benghazi" – – "Probes about Benghazi" – – "Benghazi committee" – – "You wouldn't have had your Benghazi situation" – Whether from Fox News and
Republicans in Congress who insist it's a major scandal or some liberals joking
about it on Twitter, it all has to do with Republicans' deeper beliefs about Barack Obama's
presidency and with the politics surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential
campaign. But to see how Benghazi fits into all of
that you need to know exactly what happened in Benghazi, in the first place. On the night of September 11th 2012 a
group of Islamist militia members attacked a US diplomatic outpost in
Benghazi Libya. They killed four Americans including the US ambassador to
Libya Chris Stevens who was visiting from Tripoli that week. The city was a centre
of the US-backed rebellion that toppled Muammar Qaddafi the year before, and a number of armed groups had emerged in the aftermath. It was a dangerous environment. However, the US had no intelligence suggesting a specific attack was imminent. At 9:42 pm, the the militiamen easily breached the gates of the compound and set fire to the building. A subsequent State Department
review blamed systemic failures at the department's senior levels for the
mission's poor security. Stevens had previously requested more security and
not gotten it. In the chaos of the attack US security officers were separated
from Stevens and Sean Smith, another State Department official. The two men
died of smoke inhalation later that night A team from the nearby CIA annex arrived and engaged militants before taking survivors back to the extra mile away at 11:15PM.  40
minutes later the attackers laid siege to the annex as well. resumed around 5:15 a.m. with two more
Americans security agents Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed by mortars
firing on the annex. This later became a big controversy. Republicans accused
Obama of withholding further military support that might have saved the day. 
But there were simply no military assets that could have gotten there in time. Starting
around 7 a.m. the Americans were able to escape the compound and leave the country. The CIA initially blamed the attack on a mob protesting an anti-Islam movie which had
sparked protests elsewhere in the middle east. Then UN Ambassador Susan Rice made
this claim on several Sunday talk shows RICE: it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some RICE:hours earlier in cairo. That turned out to
be mostly wrong. The attackers were members of Islamist militias we now know; not
random mob. Republicans accuse the Obama administration of campaign with
intelligence specifically in races talking points for the sunday shows to
hide the fact there was a terrorist attack. WALLACE: Did the Obama administration
play down what happened in Libya what WALLACE: happened in cairo because it would make
Obama foreign policy look better? But later investigation showed that she'd
honestly repeated CIA analysis rather than deliberately lying. Still, amidst the
controversy, Rice withdrew herself from consideration to become the next
Secretary of State There have been eight official investigations into
Benghazi mostly involving or led by congressional Republicans and none has
found any real evidence of a cover-up, or wrongdoing by the administration with
the exception of the state department's internal report blaming its own
incompetence for failing to provide sufficient security. So why are republicans
still investigating? Partly out of a certainty that something was wrong stemming from deep-seated Republican
beliefs that Obama is both week on terror in corruptly authoritarian, enough
to hide the truth. But this is also about politics. Republicans want to embarrass
Obama and damage Hillary Clinton who was then Secretary of State the time of the
attack. House majority leader Kevin McCarthy
admitted as much on national television. MCCARTHY: Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? but we put together MCCARTHY: a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her MCCARTHY: numbers are dropping. Why? Cause she's untrustable. And its kind of worked. The Clinton email scandal rose from one of the
Benghazi investigations. So you can bet we'll be hearing about Benghazi well
into the presidential election. So there's a 93 question test called the Myers
Briggs type indicator. You've probably heard of it. It's the most widely used personality test
in the world. And the company that makes, CPP, reportedly
earns about $20 million dollars from the 2 million people that take it and companies
that administer it every year. You answer these 93 questions and it tells
you you're one of these 16 different personality types. But the only problem is that this test is
totally meaningless. Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, anyone
working to understand human behavior who doesn't have a stake in the financial success of this
test doesn't believe in it. They don't use it at all. So, let's step back a little. In 1921 Carl Jung, an enormously influential
early psychologist, hypothesized that humans fall into a number of different types. There are perceivers and judgers. People who prefer sensing over intuition. There are thinkers and there are feelers. But even at the time he realized that most
people don't fit neatly into one category or another. Most people are extroverted in some circumstances
and introverted in others. He wrote: "Every individual is an exception to the rule." A few decades later a pair of Americans who
had no formal training in psychology, Catherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs-Myers decided to take these ideas and turn them
into what they called a type indicator. In 1942 they first began testing it. They took Jung's types but slightly altered
the terminology and changed it so that every single person was assigned only one possibility
or another. You couldn't be a little bit of an extrovert
or a little bit of an introvert. But people don't actually work that way, so
the results simply aren't reliable. One study found that as much as 50% of people
who took the test twice arrived at different results even though it was only 5 weeks later. CPP peddles the test as 'Reliable, valid,
backed by ongoing global research and development investment.' And a reported 89 of the Fortune 100 companies
and 200 federal agencies use the test to separate employees and potential hires into
'types' and assign them appropriate training programs and responsibilities. But multiple studies have shown the test totally
fails to predict people's success in various jobs. The really strange thing is that there are
leading psychologists on their board and none of them use the test in their personal research. In 2012, Carl Thoresson, a Stanford psychologist,
admitted that it would be questioned by his academic colleagues if he used the Myers Briggs
in his research. "Why is the Myers Briggs so popular?" Well, it really on gives positive results
and it plays into the idea of people fitting neatly into categories. People love categories. You can't take the test and be told you're
selfish or lazy or mean. Because the descriptions are vague, they're
hard to argue with. This is called the Forer effect, and is a
technique long used by purveyors of astrology, fortune-telling, and other sorts of pseudoscience to persuade
people they have accurate information about them. There's something really attractive about
assigning ourselves personalities. That's why horoscopes are so popular and Buzzfeed
quizzes go viral. But the truth is that human personalities
are really complicated. We all have different facets and different
nuances that make us span a lot of different categories at once. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking
the test as a fun, interesting activity. The Myers-Briggs is useful for one thing:
entertainment. ♪ Music  ♪ The internet is incompatible with totalitarianism. Totalitarianism need to have control of information. Whoever controls information controls the minds of people. There are 353 people playing. [NARRATOR]
This is Yuta. He's playing World of Warcraft with a few hundred others in Havana. But, he's not connected to the Internet. Instead, Yuta is using what's called StreetNet. It's one of the many bootlegged inventions Cubans have come up with to bypass their government's resistance to Internet access. [JOSE]
Five percent of the 11 million people in Cuba actually have access to the Internet. [NARRATOR]
A few years ago, some young tech-savvy gamers in Havana started connecting their computers through long Ethernet cables, running them from rooftop to rooftop across the city. And soon, they started using wireless routers to expand even further. They created a giant mesh network, which has no central server. Instead, each participant holds a piece of the network on their local computer, creating nodes that connect the city to one giant network. Today, there are over 10,000 users connected to StreetNet throughout Havana. Using StreetNet is strangely similar to searching the real web. There are blogs and forums, dating sites, and social media that looks like Facebook. You have to remind yourself that you're actually looking at an illegal makeshift network invented by Cuban gamers. [Fidel Castro speaking in Spanish] [NARRATOR]
In 1959, Fidel Castro led a socialist revolution that flipped cuban society upside down. [Fidel Castro speaking in Spanish] Castro established a regime that limited all unapproved expression, punishing anyone who spoke out against the government. Decades later, the world started adopting the Internet. "Hey! Why should I be on the Internet?" "Why?" But Cuba is the most censored country in the Western Hemisphere, and the advent of the Internet in all of it's uncontrollable and decentralized glory posed a unique challenge for a regime that really wants to keep control over information. [OBAMA]
The states of America is changing it's relationship with the people of Cuba. [REPORTER]
The United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba. [OBAMA] 
I believe that we can do more to support the Cuban people. [REPORTER]
to the thawing of diplomatic relations with Cuba-- [REPORTER 2]
and to improve Cuba's internet-- [REPORTER 3]
includes U.S. equipment to improve Cuba's internet. connect Cuba to the internet [REPORTER 4]
a surge in Internet usage-- [REPORTER 5]
One of the companies watching closely, Google. [REPORTER] 
Google has gone to Cuba in a push for a free and open internet. [REPORTER]
It hasn't been easy for Google. There's no Internet not when you land at the airport, but we are right now at one of these new WiFi hotspots that the government has set up just in the last few weeks. Now to get on the internet you have to buy a card like this. Featuring a relaxed looking woman in Spandex meditating. It costs Two Dollars and with it you can go to one of the 35 WiFi hotspots in the country and enter a code to get one hour of unadulterated access to the uncensored internet The government often runs out of these access cards so most people have to buy them off a black market dealer for three or four dollars. Since these hotspots opened a couple months ago, people have been flocking to the internet, mainly to connect with family members. Many Cubans buy into the official state line that internet deficiency is caused by a combination of the embargo from the United States and a lack of telecoms infrastructure. A quick look into this and you start to realize that the infrastructure argument is completely bogus. In January 2013 a submarine Fiber-Optic cable running from Venezuela went live on the island. The cable is called Alba 1 and it was supposed to support a more widespread and faster internet on the island. Experts say that with this cable, connecting the island should be easy. When the network goes online this summer, Cuba's bandwidth will increase by 3000.The question is, will Cubans then have access to the web without restrictions and without excuses? Even Google's gone, over the past year, year-and-a-half, they've made several trips to Cuba. They offered, "we'll help you create that infrastructure," and and I believe that Cuban government politely declined. This is not an infrastructure issue. This leaked video from a government training session shows a presenter talking about "the threat of new technologies." Cuba now employs a Cyber Militia that has started harassing and discrediting dissident bloggers on the island, but that doesn't seem to stop them. There are now 1,600 blogs run by Cubans. Yoani Sanchez is among the most visible of these underground bloggers. The idea is that, you know, Yoani or one of her journalists will write an article and she'll get, you know, access to one of these WiFi points or the internet somewhere, and she'll email the article to her colleagues in Spain or wherever and they'll publish It and download all that information onto a PDF, and then send it back into the island. You know Remi is a visitor that's coming with a flash drive. Yoani considers this the boomerang effect. And then that gets put on the flash drives and CDs and DVDS and literally gets passed hand to hand ♪ Music  ♪ Ta-prohm isn't the most impressive ruin in
the world. It's not even the most impressive in the neighborhood. Angkor wat sits only a couple miles away -- it's
the largest religious monument ever built. But Ta-Prohm is a bit more human scale. And
it has merged with nature It's original name was Raja Vihara -- the
royal monastery -- and was dedicated to the Buddhist personification of wisdom. But it is a new place now, silk-cotton trees
and strangler figs have merged with the carved rocks to create new structures. The temple was built about 1000 years ago,
around 1186, just after Angkor wat, during the golden age of the Khmer empire in what's
now Cambodia. The Khmer controlled most of southeast Asia,
and the capital city Angkor was the biggest urban center in the world before the industrial
revolution. They had incredible technology to support
such a large congregation of humans for the time. Southeast Asia gets heavy rainfall in one
season, and less in another -- so the Khmer built water management Huge reservoirs, canals, channels and dikes
allowed them 3 harvests a year. It might have been the best technology of
the time. They built the temples at their peak. Khmer
empire ruler Jayavaraman VII, who also built Angkor Thom nearby, is the man credited. But a man's name doesn't really capture the
true size of the project. About 2 or 300 years later, the society collapsed. It wasn't all at once, or for one reason. But a factor archeologists and ecologists
hypothesized was that the incredible water management system failed due to a change in the climate -- dire drought,
then heavy floods. This possibility had been hypothesized before,
but a PHD student named Mary Beth Day spent 6 years digging and found evidence for the theory in the form
of sediment records in the reservoir. What also is sure is that the ruling class
moved south. It's a beautiful place, but haunting: what
hundreds of thousands people would be living here had it survived? For around 400 or 500 years the forest merged
with Ta-prohm until it was 're-discovered'. It should give us pause. Our civilization
is a collaboration with nature. A giant structure must sway with the wind
and roll with the earthquakes, or else it will surely, quietly, fall. Hollywood films often depict the destruction
of urban centers. But the crisis comes at once, so we can band
together to fight it. In reality, giant cities have existed and
then died before. This one did. It just takes time -- the rain falls, the
roots grow, and nature eats what we built. The best technology of the time wasn't enough. Oh $20 I wanted a peanut $20 can buy many peanuts explain how money can be exchanged for goods and services I laugh eat meal for you and a nostalgia meal for me oh I remember about the last two months just give it a guest lecture at Villanova I remember it was a street corner hey it's little face it is guts and I hate the way he's always barking where are the new knockers the taxpayers paid for dudes you could be so cool when you're sober I can hook you up with Pinto and black beans no problem you could wear the store sock how many people in this corner are thinking of killing her right now I'm obsessive-compulsive will be revealed in time unsuspecting humans let's go over to the County Courthouse live to Kent Brockman oh if I know I tell you I swear I'm glad you're all here to witness what may very well be Mac Risley dead you start a car as well as you start a family this place is where we came after my bar mitzvah we have 17 kids and you want us to take three more no windows no parking and a man died here I'd like a love note in the sky take my top off but I do anyway I am sure you have noticed the many small imperfections that fill me with shame you're that Simpson kid Bart right my candy this is an outrage he didn't even notice my side braid you are the manger he's got a heart as big as my boobs well we've all got that voice in our heads telling us to kill you just have to drown it out good race good Cuddy good gun day let's hurry I don't think a healthy bank a break that kind of smell sorry ma'am we don't negotiate with elephants will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring Ethernet LAN configuration chief can I ask why do you want to be a policeman well then rendezvous in mr. Simpson's lower colon are you gonna shoot those Google Earth folks what caught me with my britches damn t-shirt why don't you just give me a sandwich board that says male prostitute I was thought that if I'd had braces I'd have smiled more Jonathan Livingston Seagull we're on a collision course hard a-starboard she doesn't want anyone to know she's got no eyebrows I love this job I find it no use for you in my kitchen Nevada there's no fly in my soap disco Stu slides in front of you with my diet you can eat all you want any time you want if you go on the wagon make sure it's the Duff beer wagon if I could turn back the clock on my mother's stair pushing I would certainly reconsider it someone's cranky I listen with no keep Crusader mom bargman including all known lanthanides and actinides go ahead break a chair on me [Music] the kids never lonely when he has Bologna except me mistake daddy where babies come from Manjula got to see La Boheme your story made everyone at the orphanage so sad a few more details about this year's company picnic it's at the plant no food will be served the only activity will be work and the picnic is cancelled I discussed this with our lawyers they consider it murder open as a tomb on Easter now what can I think dong Diddley do for you not now Bart I'm trying to urinate alcohol and night swimming it's a winning combination holy this Noah has been accused of killing two of every animal and then dived only to come back to life and his name was 18 or healthy baby you can bring upwards of $60,000 I've never been called an adult before the drag is one thank god it's Wednesday it's Friday international drug yesterday if you could and all it does is tell your coconut with banana cream dreams that can never come true you'll excuse me I have to appear in a tortilla in Mexico small world mindfulness tiny nuisance phone oh I've been very sick we love a bread dipping we'll be right back with a special report on soccer moms who hates soccer this is a kind of shot only get once-in-a-lifetime once-in-a-lifetime smart as a whiz with cold drinks aren't you bar don't understand lemonade myself not my forte must learn to be less of an individual and more efficient the slug some guys at MIT are sending his reasons why Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk and ultra like to express my fondness for that particular beer there is nothing to fear I am Kang the abductor our next candidate is Homer Simpson please hold your applause forever for attempted insecticide and aggravated mugger II i sentence you to 200 hours of community service [Music] not so fast two eyes come on let's slice him open and get our food back take a memo in your Newton be at Merton an operation ladybug is a go Lisa nobody likes a gloater right homie hmm say always a bridesmaid only occasionally a bride Lisa it's time you learned the truth about men and here's a picture of me getting arrested for indecent exposure I'm sorry I'm not as smart as you Kirk we didn't all go to Gudger college howdy howdy margin home oh my mistake homers not even with you I don't judge homer and Marge that's for a vengeful God to do the children are right to laugh at you well I'm just as unpopular with the ladies as I am with the chaps Oh wouldn't talk Oh would you care for a bite off my fingers close the ball I'm so hungry I could eat at Harveys [Music] science is already proving the dangers of smoking alcohol and Chinese food but I can still ruin soft drinks for everyone how most of you will never fall in love and marry out of fear of dying alone [Music] There are some things in life that Canada
is just better at. Poutine, for instance. Being polite. Appreciating Robin Sparkles.
And these days, elections. America does something very weird in its elections. The way elections are supposed to work is voters choose their politicians. But in America, politicians often get to choose their voters. The word gerrymandering comes from Eldrige Gerry, he was Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812. After he took office, his party redrew the map of the state's senate districts in a shockingly partisan manner. The aim was to help his party win as many elections as possible by creating as many districts as they could where at least 51% of the voters would favor Gerry's allies. And that's basically what Gerrymandering is. We've got 435 Congressional districts in this country. Somebody needs to divide them up. And amazingly, most states let politicians divide them up. The results are totally predictable. You can see how this works in North Carolina. Democrats won 50.5% of the House vote in 2012, but Republicans won 9 House seats to the Democrats' 4. If you want to see why, just look at the
map. Look at District #4. It kind of looks like two legs running away from this whole mess. Look at District #9, which is getting punched in the neck by District #5 and kicked in the gut by District #12. And damn, look at District #12. It's like a little worm,
wriggling away from North Carolina. These districts may look weird, but they're what
political scientists call "efficient." They cluster the state's Democratic voters into
a few districts where they have huge majorities, and they spread the state's Republican voters into more districts where they have slimmer majorities. So in District #12, the Democrat won by almost 60%. No Republican won a district by more than 30%. That meant that they could win more districts and more House seats in total. And that's what happens when you let politicians choose their voters. This is how Canada did it too, but then in the 1960s,
they took the power away from partisan politicians and gave it to independent commissions. America could do this too if it wanted, and then we could stop feeling bad about how much better Canada is at elections, and instead feel good that we get to wear such a nice, polite country as a hat. Hey, I'm Joe, I run Vox Video. Thank you so much for watching. We wanted to play this older video, it's from about a year ago, because I think only about a thousand of our subscribers had seen it so far. Now there's 200,000 subscribers, and we're just so thankful for you joining up. And we hope you get your friends to join up too. We'll have a lot more for you in the future. If you love making videos, we're actually hiring, there's a link in the description. You should click that and come join us! When you want to watch a movie or a TV show,
you know what to do. You tap your fingers and within a few seconds
you are watching whatever you want. It's frictionless. It's easy. But in some places, it's not so easy. "There's no other way we don't have foreign
TV, it's national TV." Officially, there is one source of permitted media in
Cuba. And it's the state. "It's because I don't know what to tell you
tell you brother. I just know that's the way it is."   But Cubans found a way to work around this media blockade to distribute the latest in global entertainment to the entire country, coordinated entirely by an informal market of underground data traffickers, based both in Havana and in the United States. It's the fruits of the internet, without any
of the guts. "One guy will gather TV shows. The other Movies.
Music etc. and that's how they go about collecting media until they have 1 terabyte." Once all the latest media from around the
world is gathered onto one hard drive, the top dealers in Havana will prepare it for distribution. This extensive collection of digital media is affectionately called 'El Paquete Semanal' -- The Weekly Package. "Someone brings it to me. It's from someone
who gets it from someone else who gets it from someone else. In the end it's a chain. It costs about $2
and what most people do is fill their flashdrive with the content they want." A quick look into the Paquete, and you realize
just how massive the system must be to gather so much content in such a short of time especially in a country that has 5% internet
penetration and agonizingly slow connection speeds. Who's behind all this? I found a couple of 20 year olds who make
their living hustling Havana's streets, participating in the thriving industry of shadowy odd jobs
. Between driving taxi bikes without a license
and giving unofficial city tours to European tourists, these guys move The Paqeute between
distributors from time to time. They led me behind the scenes in Havana where
I saw how the Paquete makes its rounds every week. The distribution centers are usually in the
back of a cell phone repair shop or a DVD store. Hardware flowing in and out of these places
doesn't attract unwanted attention. Distributors were not keen on appearing on
camera, but they showed me their operation and explained how clients come to their shop
with a weekly order of content. American TV shows are some of the most demanded
content, but some people show up with an empty drive every week to transfer the whole thing everything from the iPhone app updates to
the indie film section. After poking around, I finally worked my way
up the chain to discover who is coordinating this massive enterprise. They call him Dany Paquete, and he agreed
to meet with me. Dany was with a client so I waited for an
hour in his impromptu lobby. I didn't know what to expect Dany Paquete
to be like. But i definitely did not expect this. He's a 26 year old who was wearing board shorts
and not shirt when I arrived. He looked a lot more like an lazy college
sophomore than the king pin of a national black market of pirated media. But after five minutes sitting in his office
with a client in the room, I quickly gained a respect for Dany and the media machine he
is running. As Dany's 40 year old assistant helped load
the hard drive of a local distributor, I watched a live feed of Telemundo digitizing on the
screen. Dany must have an illegal satellite hidden
in a fake water tower on his roof, a fairly common Cuban practice. Dany's girl friend wandered in and began watching
a discovery channel documentary about a farmer who almost died in a tractor accident in Iowa. This is a Shirley card. And if you developed color film between the
1940s and the 1990s the accuracy of the colors in your photos
was largely based on this skin-tone. Shirley was probably the the name of the first
person who was pictured on the cards. And Shirley became the subsequent name of
the all of the people pictured on the cards. That's Lorna Roth, a professor and researcher
at Concordia University in Montreal. She's been studying race, representation,
and technology for well over 20 years. Usually they were very white women who wore
very colorful dresses. Color film works like this. There are layers of chemicals stacked on each
other that are sensitive to different colors of light and there are a series of different
types of chemical solutions that are used to
develop them once exposed to that light. A combination of all of these chemicals creates
a film's color balance and for many decades chemicals that would bring out various reddish,
yellow, and brown tones were largely left out. The consumer market that was designated in
the design of film chemistry was that of a lighter skinned market. So, when defining what an idealized skin tone
would be, it turned out to be a lighter skin tone than a darker skin tone. It wasn't until the 1970s where things started
to change. Companies that were advertising different
kinds of wood furnitures were complaining that Kodak film did not render the difference between
dark grained wood and light grained wood. The other companies that Kodak responded to
were chocolate makers because the film couldn't render the difference
between dark and milk chocolate. If you want to sell in the global marketplace,
you can't just have whiteness as the dominant basis for your technologies. As the film and television industries became
more diverse, color balance issues at the professional level
became more apparent and in the 1990s a team of designers at Philips
in Breda, Holland tackled the issue head on by developing a camera system that used two
different computer chips to balance lighter and darker skin tones individually. The first people to buy these cameras, they
were called the LDK series, were Oprah Winfrey and Black Entertainment Television. People who were very aware of these issues. It was around this time that the White Shirley
card was joined by the black Shirley card, the Latino Shirley card, and the multiracial
Shirley card. And Kodak's Gold Max marketing campaign
emphasized their film's improved dynamic range. If you were his parents would you trust this
moment to anything other than Kodak Gold Film? No other film in the world gives you truer
color than Kodak Gold. Today color film and digital camera sensors
have a much broader dynamic range, but the default towards lighter skin in technology
still lingers. Digital sensors, for the most part, still
look for the lightest area of the frame and automatically calibrate to that. One of the big mistakes emerged in 2009. I'm
sure you heard about it. My co-worker Wanda and I are sitting in front
of an HP media smart computer. It's supposed to follow me as I move. I'm
black. I think my blackness is interfering with my
computer's ability to follow me. So she moved this way, and the camera followed
her. And then he would get into the screen and
it would be completely stable. No face recognition anymore buddy! The 
fact is, there is still a cultural bias towards
lighter skin, certainly in how we use technology, and sometimes, still, within the technology
itself. It was when I was talking to Bryan Harris
at the Black Entertainment Television network in the U.S. when he said, 'You know color film could have been developed
very differently had black people developed it they would've taken very different factors
into consideration.' And of course, he's right. Technology should be the ultimate equalizer.
It should serve everyone's needs without an inherent bias. If a child is born into a society where all
of the range of skin tones is the obvious norm, than they could no longer assume that
whiteness is the default. Recent history has brought incredible progress for the LGBTQ community in the form of this map "...Total victory for the advocates of same
sex marriage.." But lesser known is this map over here – where things get tricky. "So does becoming a business owner mean you have to check your convictions at the door?" "Right now the state of Michigan does not
include sexual orientation and gender identity in its law" "I'm just really nervous" "I actually have something important to talk to you about today." The fact is, in most states, it's still currently legal to fire LGBTQ people, kick them out of a store or business that serves the public, or evict them from housing because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. "The ayes are 49, the nos are 50, the bill
is not agreed to." Often it's as subtle as a boss picking another job application. Or a landlord denying rent, without explanation. These are the rights
protected by the civil rights act of 1964. "My fellow Americans... those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning." Following the passage of the Civil Rights
Act, federal and state laws prohibit this type of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. This is called Enumeration. If you list the
characteristics that are most often the subject of discrimination it removes any doubt that those people are protected. "Since these early days, I have seen and I
have experienced many other types of discrimination, and all of them were rooted in the fear of
people that were different from the majority." But sexual orientation and gender identity
are not enumerated in most states and a report by the Human Rights Campaign found that lawmakers in 29 states have actually proposed bills that would actively discriminate against LGBTQ people. "We have what's called a patchwork of civil rights protections on this issue in this country." Sam Brownback, the governor of Kansas, went so far as to write an executive order to reverse a measure that barred employment discrimination against LGBTQ people. On top of all of this, there’s systematic
discrimination in many schools throughout the country. "Ellen Degeneres has been speaking out, voicing her outrage about the cruelty that spiraled out of control in our schools and beyond." "Today is October 20th, 2013. Hopefully today will be a big day of my life. In a positive way." The states in red here have “no promo homo” laws that forbid teachers in public schools from even mentioning homosexuality at all. "If you are reading this, it means that I
have committed suicide. Those words written on a warren country teenager's tumblr page, and now sparking an outcry from the LGBTcommunity tonight." That's where coming out videos on YouTube like Drew's and Adam's are so helpful. "So I have something serious I want to talk to you about." "Yeah, I like guys." "I have to tell you that I'm gay. Always have been, always will be." "And do you know how I drew that in 7th grade, and how in 7th grade I wanted to kill myself? It's been something that I've not liked for
a while. Especially when people call me fag a lot." "There are too many kids out there suffering from bullying, rejection, or simply being mistreated because of who they are." And there's proof that enumeration works. GLSEN, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ students, says students who go to school with enumerated LGBTQ policies experience significantly lower levels of bullying. "Federal investigators are looking into accusations that Minnesota's largest school district discriminates against gay students following 7 student suicides in fewer than 2 years." These are laws that save lives. 2012 was the first year in US History where more people supported same-sex marriage than people who didn't. "I know I'm kind of destroying every hope
and dream you ever had for me..." "No! Not at all." 2015 will be remembered for marriage equality. Public figures have been more open discussing their own sexuality. And popular TV shows have begun to incorporate more LGBTQ characters, and the stories they tell. But if you look at these two maps, side by
side, it's clear the LGBTQ civil rights battles are far from over. so in a cave in south africa scientists found fossils from a totally new species of ancient human called homo naledi it's got a tiny brain with human-like arms but a ape-like thorax and chest the hands are a mix between very very advanced human-like hands but the fingers are curved from mid-thigh down it looks like a human long legs human-like feet really a combination that we've never seen before in the fossil record two years ago a pair of amateur cavers came across the chamber really deep in this cave that held the fossils and they notified scientists this is located in south africa it's 30 miles northwest of johannesburg the two cavers working their way through this cave crawled through a really small opening called superman's crawl after that they climbed over a big jagged wall of rocks into a new chamber filled with stalactites keep in mind this is totally pitch black so they're exploring with headlamps but they don't really have a clear idea of what everything looks like and what's going on and then one of them noticed a tiny little opening uh in some places less than eight inches wide that led to the chamber where the scientists ultimately found all these fossils they had to hire basically really small cavers six different women who could crawl through this tiny little space and in total they've excavated more than 1500 pieces of fossil so far this find included fossils from 15 different individuals of this species which is just an absolutely huge discovery there was a couple infants a bunch of juveniles one particularly old individual and i suppose most surprising is what they were doing in this chamber the conclusion though it's not certain is that their relatives may have been putting them there on purpose after they died in national geographic's cover story about this discovery uh jamie shreve details how the scientists eliminated all their possibilities to figure out that likely these were intentional burials so there's no tooth marks on the bone it doesn't really seem like predators drag these bodies in there's no evidence that water carried them in that would be a big deal just because right now the oldest clear evidence of intentional burial is a hundred thousand years old and that's homo sapiens so this would predate it by maybe millions of years if it's if it's accurate you So you might have have heard the NFL made
one of the biggest changes to game play in its 94 season history. “First the change the field goal from 4
points to 3 points in 1909 and now this, when will it end?” Before this season when a team scored a touchdown,
they’d start the ball at the 2 yard line and attempt an extra point kick - or they
could run or pass the ball into the end-zone for 2 points. This season the 2 point conversion will stay
at the 2 yard line, but the ball will be moved back to the 15 yard line for extra point kicks. 30 of the 32 NFL team owners voted for this
rule for one main reason… extra point kicks have become really boring. With only 8 out of 1,230 missed last season,
it’s pretty much guaranteed a kicker will make it. Sometimes the NFL doesn’t even bother to
return from a commercial break to show the extra point. But why change the rules now after 94 seasons? Extra points weren’t always guaranteed the
way they’ve become. Over the years kickers gradually have become
more specialized and accurate. Last season, an average of 5 points per game
were scored from extra point kicks. And because over a quarter of all games since
2002 were decided by less than 5 points, this rule change could have drastic impacts. What do you think? Is the NFL violating the sanctity of gameplay,
or are they adapting with the times and making the game more exciting? So in the past few years, we’ve seen state
legislatures introduce bills that basically require that students have
to learn cursive writing in elementary school. Cursive handwriting is not in the Common Core
state standards which have replaced the English and Language
Arts standards in 43 states. And so this is led to a concern that if it’s
not on the test, if students can type their assignments or
print their assignments, cursive handwriting is just going to disappear
and die out. But the truth is, cursive was really fading
out before the Common Core. In 2006, the SAT started to require an essay
-- and this is how we have data on what students chose to write.
And only 15% of students used cursive, this was kids who were in elementary school in
the 90s. Cursive handwriting became taught more
commonly at the same time that education become more democratic.
So it started with something called the Spencerian script.
If you’ve seen a college diploma, if you’ve seen a wedding invitation with that really
loopy, fancy writing, that’s what the Spencerian script was. It’s beautiful.
But obviously it’s not very practical to learn to write this really gorgeous, loopy
handwriting. And so in the 1920s, which was when education
was becoming much more universal, not just at the elementary level but continuing on
past that, that’s also when they developed a new method
of writing cursive. It’s called the Palmer Method. Certainly
if you have a grandparent with beautiful handwriting, they’re probably writing the Palmer method.
And there were two major cursive styles that were taught from the 1960s on: The D’Nealian
method, and the Zane-Bloser method. This is a big debate. Is there a reason to
learn cursive, besides sort of a nostalgic idea that this is an important skill that
you have as an adult? The arguments in favor are that it’s a fine
motor skill thing, it’s good for kids to have learn to use their hands this way.
And there’s also this sort of patriotic argument that the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence are written in cursive, and what if kids can’t read these founding documents
in the original print. The arguments against teaching cursive are
mostly that nobody has shown that there’s really a major benefit to learning cursive.
So it’s a lot of time and energy spent in the third and 4th grade, learning basically
a second system of writing after you’ve already learned to write. “The immigration crisis in europe…”
“…Three children drowned…” “…Syrian refugees…”
“…it’s become a symbol of desperation…” “…a surge of refugees…”
“…Among the dead, several children, including a baby girl.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): “One issue that
needs to be addressed is the overly broad prohibition in our immigration law that excludes
any refugee who has provided any kind of support to an army rebel group. Even a group that
we in the United States support.” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): “This would
be a federally sanctioned welcome party, if you will, to potential terrorists in the United
States.” Sam Stein, Huffington Post: Could we take
more? I mean Germany is taking 800,000… John Kerry: Well i’m not talking about taking
more on a permanent basis. Josh Earnest: It warrants mentioning has provided
more than 4 billion dollars in humanitarian assistance. But no thinking of bringing more Syrian refugees
to the US? Earnest: At this point, I don’t have any
announcement along those lines. so most dentists are totally trustworthy and honest but they're upset about a small minority of dentists within the field that are taking advantage of patients I spoke to eight different dentists and ask them what sorts of things patients should be looking for to see if they might be getting ripped off one big red flag is a lot of people will go into a new dentist and he or she will say oh we have to rip out all your old silver fillings they're falling apart or they're leeching mercury into your body and we need to take them out there's no truth to the idea that mercury and old silver fillings is actually leaching into people's teeth you might have one or two fillings that are cracked or wearing down but in most cases you don't need to get all of your fillings replaced at once another thing to look out for our dentists that advertise especially if they're offering free deals like a free cleaning free whitening a lot of the time they're just doing that to get you in the door so they can prescribe more treatment all the dentists I spoke to said the best way to find a dentist is through word of mouth for children sometimes these fluoride treatments can be helpful but for most adults especially if you're not getting tons of cavities you don't need prescription fluoride toothpaste those are things that are commonly not covered by dental insurance and they're also things that are not necessary for most adults throughout the course of our lives we all grind our teeth a little bit some more than others a lot of people you know might do a little bit of grinding and then stop for several years and then do some more and it doesn't mean that you need a $700 night guard it's a huge markup item you know both that in the fluoride toothpaste they're products that the practice sells directly to you so they're getting that markup so veneers are basically these artificial tooth services they go on top of the tooth and they look really big and white and beautiful but they cost thousands of dollars and ultimately they're a cosmetic choice if you don't like the color of your teeth but the shape is fine you can just go for whitening when you get x-rays done it's your legal right to have those files and if you tell a dentist okay can I please see the x-ray I want to go get a second opinion and there's someone reluctant to let you do that that could be a sign that they might be ridden off but it's a field where if you need to make a little more money you know you just air a little bit on the side of aggressive treatment rather than conservative treatment and no one is going to know with all these claims it's before remember if you're having some kind of pain a problem then I probably do need work done if you go in in your mouth feels great you just wanted a cleaning and the new dentist tells you you need to have seven new fillings done it's probably good reason to go get a second opinion Barack Obama recently became the first sitting
president to ever visit one of these: a federal prison. And the president used the occasion to call
out a particularly poorly designed policy at the heart of our criminal justice system. Mandatory minimums require judges to hand
out specific sentences for certain crimes deemed uniquely harmful to society. So under federal law, using, say, a chemical
weapon to kill someone automatically gets you life in prison. Or, and this is true, tampering with a telegraph
line will get you five years Federal minimums are supplemented by state
laws. Louisiana, for instance, requires a four year
prison sentence for LSD possession. But the species of minimums now being singled
out for reform were birthed at the height of the drug war in the mid-80s. In 1986, congress passed a sprawling anti-drug
criminal justice bill, a central feature of which was a mandatory sentencing disparity
punishing crack violations much more harshly than those for powder cocaine. That difference has had catastrophically racially
disparate effects. These effects have prompted critics to decry
excessive crack minimums as purely the products of reagan-era white supremacy But that narrative is ever so slightly complicated
by this: Congressman Rangel, along with much of the
black political leadership, was a key advocate for erecting these laws in the first place. This minimum sentencing regime has proven
to provide a grotesque case study in unintended consequences There are thousands of stories just like this Someone gets snapped up on a low-level, nonviolent
drug offense. And the presiding judge is forced to apply
a devastating arithmetic in which minor violations exponentially add up to a gigantic prison
term. fortunately, the notion that harsh minimums
could seriously dampen the drug trade has collapsed in light of the manifest failures
of the drug war. And that's opened up political space for serious
bipartisan reform And the few remaining defenders of the status
quo have been left to regurgitate magnificently unpersuasive talking points like this Here's a look at it on the satellite picture, and... Boy, this is not good. It's exhausting knowing that you work a lifetime to acquire things, You know, homes and different things of that nature. And then it all can be taken away so easily. As we're coming on the tenth year anniversary, talking about all of it, brings back a lot. Everybody's Katrina is different. There's a lot of similarities, but there's so many different personal stories. Okay guys, here's the deal in Gulfport. As we mentioned, we were at 27 feet above sea level. Guess what? That's not high enough. Basically we are part of the Gulf of Mexico right now. I've got to ask you a question -- what are the options? This is the first moment I've started to grasp what Hurricane Katrina has done. Because everything we know is gone. And I remember for a second I couldn't breathe. It kind of felt silly, but it was just that overwhelming. And I remember getting to this one woman who was crying, and she said 'it killed my mother' And I said 'what do you mean it killed your mother?' And she said 'our house was full of water and I was holding her hand, and I was holding her hand. And then I couldn't do it anymore.' An entire ward of this city -- the 9th Ward -- appears to be up to its rooftops in water. That Monday morning it was dry. The storm had passed. But then, the levees started breaking. When that water came, it knocked down houses. I mean, prone 'em up. And water just kept getting higher and higher. It seemed as though water was racing me up the ladder. As we was walking up the bridge, there were people that I had seen every day. Dead. We walked one way, they was alive. We walked back, they was dead. Riding in that truck, we were tired, but no one knew what to say. And as we turned off I-10 down into Hancock County to work our way down to Bay St. Louis which was just a little coastal city, it was the most surreal bizarre scene I've seen. The headlights are on, and people -- just bunches of people -- are walking north along this roadway. Their clothes are shredded and they all look shell shocked. Katrina taught me a lot of good things. And a lot of bad things. It changed my life. When you're at your home and in your city, that's where you find your normalcy, and none of it was there. It's not about no money; it's about being treated like a person. It's hard to explain, it really is. I guess it's not a physical thing, it's more of a psychological thing. I lost my house, I lost my friends. You mourn what you lost, but eventually you have to move on. So wifi waves are basically just radiowaves,
so that's the same as the electromagnetic waves you pick up with your cell phone or
a radio. But wifi waves are fairly short. They're only
12 cm long, the conventional kind. Compare that to AM radio waves, which are
hundreds of meters long. The signal gets a lot weaker as it gets further
from the router. And generally they can't go more than 150 feet from a single router.
They actually get absorbed and blocked by walls and metal surfaces.
So the way you position your wifi router makes a huge difference in how strong your signal
is throughout your house. One thing you definitely want to do is put your router
near the center of your house. Because it broadcasts the signal out in
equal strength in all directions. You want it out in the open. If it's in a closet, the walls of the closet
are going to absorb and block some of the signal. And if you have it closed up in a cabinet,
it's the same thing. A good way to think about it is just use line
of sight. From whatever position you can see the furthest
in your house and you can see the most number of rooms, that's probably a good place to
put your router. You also want to lift your router up off the
ground because the signals can't penetrate some of
the materials that make up floors, like metal, or concrete, or cement. And also, the way most routers are designed,
they broadcast the waves slightly downwards, so that way you're projecting less of it down
into your basement for no reason. A lot of other electronics can interfere with
the router's signal, things like TVs, computers, microwaves, pretty
much anything that has a motor inside it. So you want to keep the router away from other
electronics. Most routers have two antennas in them. Ideally
you could position one vertically and one horizontally. Devices work best when their internal antenna
is parallel with the router's, so most antennas inside laptops are horizontal, But if you're using a mobile device or a tablet,
it totally depends on how you're holding it. So that way if you have one horizontal and
one vertical, you have the highest chance of having a parallel match with antennas. If you find that your network isn't working
well, you can go around and measure your signal strength. There are a lot of apps that you can download
on your phone. You could create a rough map and
figure out what you need to do to fix it. that's the board it's gold and classy kids for three to four players aged and old the smallest bill is ten million dollars the rent gets paid from the bank not by you servers also a Trump strategy I think that's one way to interpret it I think it says he's more into expansionary monetary policy everyone starts with I believe 500 million buildings yeah it's like for instance if you start life with a gigantic inheritance from your father who's also Trump and then forever you're just playing with all that money when you're bidding on a property and we'll get to that anyone and knock someone else out of the bidding you've played them you're fired card like a bidding works it's I don't know there are four the Donald cards in the deck the only thing that can defeat at your fire card is of the Dom when did you get the tea you're allowed to choose another player and steal one of their trump cards don't know why Trump associates and so forth how do we do that okay the game ends when all of the properties have been bought and the winner in the game as in life is the person with the most money I just spent two hundred and seventy million dollars on this Akron hotel like we're playing the second edition is my understanding you can imagine it like the first edition of this game actually maybe had some type of like intellectual structure to it and then by this second edition we're now we've got these youth you're fired cards inexplicably but it's a part of his new persona so I think really what we want to be doing is playing the third game and maybe we could call Hasbro about that this country doesn't have time for political correctness card yeah or like you lose a bunch of sponsors because you said some races about immigrants yeah but you maybe you picked up a hundred million supporters 150,000 people are going to die today. And one of the brutally unfair realities of
life is that where you are born can dramatically change how and at what age
you die. There's a really fascinating measurement called
"years of life lost" which measures how many years shy of the realistic
life expectancy people die. So if a person can hope to live to age 86
but they die in a car accident at age 21, those 65 years are considered "lost years
of life" due to car accidents. It's basically a way to measure why people
are dying early. Hundreds of researchers from around the world
collaborated to collect and analyze that data for each country, and the result is this map. It shows the leading cause of early death
in each country for 2013. Look at Africa. People die early here mainly
because of infectious diseases like Pneumonia, Malaria, and Diarrhea which are easily treated
in places with stronger health infrastructures. And people are dying young in these places:
4 out of every 10 deaths in these poor countries are among people under 15. Meanwhile in Saudia Arabia... Even though half of the population is forbidden
to drive, traffic accidents are the number one cause of lost years of life. There's a big trend among young guys to see
how crazy they can get on the road. Between that and the lax speed limit enforcement,
19 people die every day on Saudi roads. It's the same problem facing young guys in
neighboring countries. Over in Venezuela, 25,000 people were killed
in homicides last year making violence the leading cause of years lost. Only around 8% of crimes are prosecuted, so
gang violence usually goes unchecked. It's a similar situation in neighboring Colombia. Syria, where a bloody conflict rages on, war
was the leading cause of lost life. In China, a lot of people are dying from stroke.
This is actually an indicator of a major transition in the region. As the economy in China has industrialized
and surged over the past 3 decades, infectious diseases like the ones we saw in Africa, dropped
dramatically due to better health infrastructure. But a stronger economy means eating more fat
and sugar, moving less, and breathing in a lot more air pollution. Plus they are living longer. All of these
factors increase the likelihood of stroke. Then there's the wealthier countries, where
heart disease is the number one cause of early death. Strangely, it's actually the sign of the privilege
of old age since heart disease is generally considered an age-related disease. See, in poor countries, the biggest threat
is diseases that kill people early on in life. But in rich countries, death typically comes
after a much longer life, even if it is earlier than the life expectancy. So the good news is that, overall, "years
of life lost" are decreasing in almost every category worldwide. People are living longer overall. So even though all of this talk about death
seems kind of depressing, it's actually really good news. Every meme is in the same typeface. It’s called Impact. But how did that happen? Impact was designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1963. It was bold, condensed & sans-serif, in line
with the style of the 60s and ideal for short pieces of text and punchy
headlines. Impact was influenced by a movement called
the International Typographic Style or Swiss Style, which emphasized readability and cleanliness,
with typefaces like Helvetica and Univers. It took those staid fonts and gave them a
dash of mod flavor. Those were the days of metal typesetting,
so Lee had to carve each letter by hand. Lee sold it to the type manufacturer Stephenson
Blake. This is their original ad for the font. Impact was later sold to Monotype, another
typeface company -- they’re known for creating Times New Roman. And Monotype in turn licensed fonts to Microsoft. So that’s how Impact ended up being included
in the Windows Operating System which was starting to dominate the market
in the 90s. And in 1996, Microsoft chose 11 “core fonts
for the web” a free, standard font pack that would work
across the internet. Impact was one of them. By the way, that’s Webdings. That distribution advantage helped Impact
become the default in online forums. Those memes were called ‘image macros’
after ‘macro instructions’ a term in computer science for a line of code
that requests a pre-defined sequence of instructions. And in 2003, one of these image macros — a
picture of a cat with the words “I can haz cheezburger” — launched the
wave of modern memes. Several meme-generator sites subsequently
adopted Impact as well, adding a black outline on the white font. There are more than 11 fonts on the internet
now. But we expect memes to look a certain way,
and that includes Impact. And that’s probably not going to change
anytime soon. For most people, when they drink alcohol, it can
make them feel more confident and comfortable. But for me, drinking makes me feel less confident
and UNcomfortable. That’s because, thanks to my DNA, alcohol
makes my skin turn red. It’s called Asian flush, and it affects
about 36% percent of Northeast Asians, with higher rates among Asian Americans. I guess We should probably show you what it
looks like. [For Science. For Science.] [Are we slamming?] People tend to assume that a red face means that we’re
drunk but that’s a myth. These are completely separate processes. Facial flushing, whether from embarrassment,
exercise, or alcohol, happens when blood vessels under the surface of the skin dilate. In the case of Asian flush, this is part of
an immune response. The body is detecting a threat. The threat
isn’t the alcohol itself, but a substance that our livers produce while breaking down
alcohol. [For me at least, the warmth starts in my
chest and then moves its way up.] [My cheeks are warm, my ears are warm.] [It’s weird, it’s almost like my eyes
are almost puffy] When people drink ethanol - that’s the chemical
name for booze - the liver gets rid of it using two main enzymes. The first reacts with the ethanol molecule
to produce a substance called acetaldehyde. And the second quickly turns acetaldehyde
into acetate, which is similar to vinegar, and easy for the body to eliminate. It’s that second enzyme that really screws
things up for people with Asian flush. If you look inside our DNA, you’ll find
that the gene providing the instructions for that enzyme was tweaked at some point in our
history. And that gene mutation produces an inactive
enzyme. So when we drink our bodies accumulate acetaldehyde
at a level about 6 times higher than normal If acetaldehyde sounds familiar, that may
be because it’s similar to formaldehyde. It’s toxic. that's why it triggers the immune
response. And the red face is really the least of it. After having that one beer, I didn’t feel tipsy
at all, but my heart rate doubled. My eyes were bloodshot, and within a half
hour, I had a headache. Even worse, acetaldehyde can cause cancer. It’s a problem because people actually can
develop a tolerance to Asian flush, and that allows them to drink pretty heavily. Studies have shown that heavy drinking raises
the risk of esophageal cancer for everyone, but especially for people with Asian flush. So it’s potentially problematic that alcohol
consumption in Asia has been increasing, especially in China. So if you have Asian flush, be careful - your
body is freaking out for a reason. And if you don’t flush, just don’t expect
us to keep up with you. So a lot of people know that the U.S. has
a lot of gun deaths. We had over 33,000 in 2013. But not a lot of people know that the majority
of those, two thirds of those, are suicides. Most public attention on guns focuses on these
big mass shootings. I don't want to minimize these tragedies,
they're horrible. But, I do think press coverage of this can
obscure the actual nature of the gun problem in America. The overwhelming majority of people who die
because of guns in the U.S. don't die because someone shot them, they die because they shot
themselves. The U.S. owns more guns per resident than
any other country in the world. Yeah, there is about one gun for every person in America. We own more than Switzerland which requires
people to have guns in their houses as members of militias to defend the country. For comparison people often talk about Canada
that also has a big gun culture. But, we have almost three times as many guns as Canada
per capita. Public health people who are concerned about
suicide are really really concerned about access to guns. About 6-7% of attempts involving poisoning or cutting/slashing your wrists -- only 6-7% of those attempts succeed. Whereas the rate of success if you try to
kill yourself with a gun is over 90%. The most dangerous myth people have about
suicide is that it's inevitable. Suicides are usually impulsive actions. They're decided within minutes or hours, or
less than a day before the attempt. People can be talked down from them which
makes the method that they choose to attempt extremely important. There have been a bunch of interventions that
suggest pretty strongly that reducing people's access to guns reduces suicide rates. There was a case in Israel where the Israeli
Defense Force instituted a policy whereby soldiers couldn't bring their guns home on
the weekend. And they found that firearm suicides dropped
by 40%. Similarly, Australia instituted a massive
gun buy back in 1996 that took about a fifth of the country's guns, and there is evidence
suggesting a truly massive decrease in suicides after that. If someone told you that there was a pollutant
in your house that was killing 21,000 people a year, you would want to do something about
it. It�s worth asking ourselves if guns are
that kind of pollutant and if so, what we�re gonna do about it. Generals elections -- the big showdown between
the Democratic nominee and the Republicans -- attract more interest than the primary
campaigns that determine the nominees. That goes for debates, too. Hillary Clinton against
Jeb Bush or Scott Walker would produce big ratings for a news program. If she faced-off
against Donald Trump it would be off-the-charts. But most scholars who've looked at it find that these
debates don't really matter much. A study of several years of presidential debates found
that a vast majority of voters kept their same voting intention after watching the debates. One reason is that
the voters most interested in the debates already have their minds made up. They're
watching for kind of the same reason that people tune in to watch their favorite team play in the World
Series. But primary debates are different. The same study found that most of voters were
swayed by the primary debates. In primaries, the candidates don't differ as much ideologically.
Everyone in the GOP field likes lower taxes and less regulation. They all think abortion
is wrong and gun ownership is a fundamental right. They all want a tougher foreign policy
than Obama's. But the activists and voters who pick a nominee don't just want someone
who agrees with them, they also want a winner. And many of the contenders aren't very well
known and don't have much experience addressing national issues or appearing before big-time
national audiences. In 2012, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty had the opportunity to define
himself as the authentic conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. But he had too much "Minnesota
nice" in him to back up his attacks in a face-to-face confrontation and it made him look ridiculous:
Later that same year, Texas Governor Rick Perry looked like he might be the Romney-killer.
But then oops happened Primaries are also much more complicated than general elections.
Shortly before the Iowa Caucuses in 2004, Dick Gephardt started dishing hard hits on
Howard Dean This helped bring Dean's numbers down, but it also made people dislike Gephart.
The ultimate winner was John Kerry who just floated above the fray. In 2016, the Republican
debates have a good chance of mattering again .Jeb Bush leads the field right now. He's
the best-known, he's raised the most money, and he has the biggest network of inside support.
But Scott Walker has a more conservative record and has run and won three times in a blue-leaning
state. If he can show he can shine on a big stage, he stands an excellent chance of breaking
out as a true conservative alternative to Bush. But if he wilts in prime time -- or
ends up outshines by flashier alternatives like Donald Trump or Ted Cruz -- the front-runner
will cement his lead. So, even though the primary debates aren't going to draw the same
crowds as the generals, they are actually where the real action is, showing us which
candidates will rise or fall. You ought to be paying attention. When you look at a picture like this, what do you see? Chances are you see a face. You see eyes, you see a mouth, you see emotions, even though these are just inanimate objects, there's nothing there. But you've
heard this story before, the internet loves pictures like these. They sell on
eBay for a lot of money, and they make headlines all the time.
"They say it's the face of Jesus etched by nature on a hillside look at
this." "I certainly feel blessed." "Jesus." It's clearly the image of what we know to be Jesus, and there must be a reason." It's caused by this phenomenon called pareidolia, which is Greek for "beyond the image." Way
back in the day it was considered a symptom of psychosis Leonardo da Vinci wrote about it in a
notebook as good inspiration for painters, and psychologists started to use
it as a mental evaluation technique. The idea behind it is that our brains
consume a lot of random information all the time and they're constantly trying
to pinpoint patterns to make sense of everything around us. So when we look at something like concrete
floor, our brains pick up the stuff that makes sense like a letter of the alphabet or two eyes and nose. And
these are the things that we're most comfortable with and familiar with, so whether or not they're
actually there, they're what we tend to perceive because they make sense to us. In this one experiment from 2011, people
were shown faces hidden inside a noise background and they recognized them really well, over
90 percent of the time in each trial. But when they were given noise-only
images without faces hidden in them, participants kept seeing faces about
40 percent of the time, even when there was nothing there. Now scientists believe that this response is caused by a specific part of the brain called the
Fusiform face area which is specialized for facial recognition. And it starts working really early in
humans. Studies have shown that babies who were given drawings that look like this will
consistently gravitate towards the one that's arranged to look like a human
head by about 12 months old. "On the tortilla
takes on the appearance on Jesus his head his facial hair the whole thing." But here's where it gets
interesting. In a 2013 study, researchers at the
University of Helsinki tested 47 people for pareidolia. Some of them were religious or paranormal
believers, and some of them were not. And they found that the believers were
consistently more prone to perceiving faces in random patterns than the
skeptics were. So really it's no surprise that so
many of these incidents involve seeing a face of a religious figure in a
random pattern, and that's what makes this so interesting. Our constant search for meaning in
everything is actually hardwired in our brains. And that's what makes us who we are. Over the past three weeks, an anti-abortion
group has been releasing a series of sting videos on 
Planned Parenthood. They pretended to be a company that procured
fetal tissue from abortion clinics and gets it to researchers. They're essentially using little cameras,
presumably pinned to their shirt, and they argue in the videos that Planned Parenthood
is profiting off of the sale of fetal tissue. And if Planned Parenthood were making profits,
that would be illegal. It is illegal under federal law to make money off of any body
parts -- fetal or otherwise. However, those regulations do make space for
people who provide tissue and organs to be compensated for whatever work has to happen
to preserve those organs. And I should mention that these are heavily
edited. If you watch the full unedited videos, you do see Planned Parenthood officials repeatedly saying that 'we're
not going to make profits, this is to cover our costs'. There is a Congressional investigation into
the issue that is happening, but at this point they don't seem to prove that Planned Parenthood
makes profit. They do show some things that are uncomfortable
even for people who do support abortion rights. They do show the actual fetal body parts. And I think it was surprising to see that sometimes
Planned Parenthood is willing to slightly alter the abortion procedure to make sure
that tissue comes out more in tact so it's able to be used in research. I think that raises some ethical issues about is this a good practice for women? Are their patients ok with the procedure
being changed in the service of procuring better tissue? There's been a very swift political reaction
to these videos. About 40% of Planned Parenthood's money comes
from the government -- from both state and federal public funding. And most of it's moving through Medicaid,
which is the healthcare program that covers low-income Americans. Planned Parenthood is not allowed to use government
funds for abortions. What they mostly use it for are for other reproductive health services
that they offer -- things like cancer screenings, and contraceptives, and other STD screenings. The 
defunding effort is pretty much done out of
rival. President Obama has said he's not going to defund Planned Parenthood. But if you were
to see an administration -- say the administration after the Obama administration -- that did
want to defund Planned Parenthood, it would probably make it very difficult for the clinics
to operate. > "Hello?" I'm, uh, planning a wedding
for next spring."  "a quick quote for a venue for a family gathering" "between 120 and 130 guests." "for 125 people" "we're aiming for April 16th"  "the 16th" "That's going to be a $15,000 food and beverage minimum" "The food and beverage minimum is $17,000." This 2000 dollar
difference is what's known as the "wedding mark-up" where some venders charge a higher price
for weddings than for other similar parties so why are weddings so expensive? The wedding website "The Knot"surveyed thousands of its members and found that the average cost of their weddings was thirty-one thousand dollars last year that's not including honeymoon wedding dresses average at thirteen
hundred dollars and catering comes in its $68 dollars per
person. And those numbers are a lot higher if you live in places like New York
Chicago DC or San Francisco the wedding industry is kinda weird and
it's an industry that I have quite a bit of experience in my way Isabel and I run a wedding
videography business in Washington DC and here's my take on my way to so
expensive There's this economic concept called asymmetric information. With most things you buy you have a pretty good gauge in what you're getting for what you pay for. you pretty sure that an 8 dollar avocado
is way too much because you've bought avocados before.
Familiarity with a market produces balanced information between
buyers and sellers and so they can settle on a fair price This is like economics 101. but most people shopping for wedding
stuff and very little if any experience with what they're
buying. cake, dress, napkins, catering, venues, flowers. This is something you just don't buy
very often so you have a very good gauge on what should be paying. This is made a lot harder by the fact
that we wedding vendors have a hard time posting our prices. You usually have to reach out and inquire to get any sort of pricing information. Imagine if you had asked for pricing for
every item in the grocery store. Shopping would be a
lot harder. When I first was starting my business I read on a blogs about marketing to
prospective clients. And overwhelming message that I kept
reading is "steer away from talking about price" Blogger: "we've put together a free report that shows you how to answer "price question" with those email  leads
in a way that steers them away from price quickly so you can get them on the phone or to a
meeting where you can book them!" And then there's Pinterest. Planning: "Pinterest can
be really useful I think using it as a starting point" It's an
amazing tool for wedding inspiration or if you have an experience wedding
planner by your side, but usually doesn't help with the price question. "...and you see all these like amazing dresses and you can click on it to like get more information. you're going to get a lot more pictures , but you're not gonna find any pricing information. And of course
there's always the option to "repin" it if you'd liked. If you 
are like a normal person with a budget like you're setting
yourself up to be let down. Another thing that makes
wedding so expensive is the once in a lifetime mentality. The classic line for brides shopping for
a wedding dress is: Designer:  "It's the dress of your life , and if there's ever one picture will have of you, it's the one in your wedding dress wedding dress." That's wedding dress designer and artist
talking on Planet Money. I'm as guilty as anyone at this: Here's were very first ads. it's all
about that once in a lifetime feel. It's just really hard not to splurge
when you put so much weight into one day. So, it's easy to look at this and think
there's no doubt that wedding vendors are ripping off their clients. But there's another side to the story
that i think is important to mention. Planner: "Corporate flowers for example all
there's probably going to be direction but maybe there's a little bit
more flexibility where as a bride had dreamt up a certain flowers and she in want to talk to the florist multiple times
about the bouquet and the ribbon treatment and the fact that her
grandmother's broaches gonna be on that Bouquet. It's a lot of time and energy spent
on those flowers and that's gonna be reflected in the price." The upshot of this is that the emotional
weight of weddings usually means more work for vendors, and thus higher prices. And the most
demanding clients are the ones that set the prices for
everyone. So the best thing you can do to avoid being swindled is to demand the price range before
hearing a sales pitch. we vendors might hate it but it's the
fair thing to do. Ezra Klein: Something that’s in what you
said being a democratic socialist, is a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously
it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration
we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...
Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal. Ezra Klein: Really? Bernie Sanders:Of course. That's a right wing proposal which says essentially
there is no United States ... Ezra Klein: But it would make ...
Bernie Sanders: Excuse me ... Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global
poor richer, wouldn't it? Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in
America poorer, you're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think
there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country
called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation
in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would
love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or
$3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country,
I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment in the United
States of America today? If you're white high school graduate, it’s
33%, Hispanic 36%, African American 51%. Do you think we should open the borders and
bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for
those kids? I think from a moral responsibility we've
got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international
poverty but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer. Ezra Klein: Then what are the responsibilities
that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards is quite
well off by say, Malaysian standards, so of the calculation goes so easily to the benefit
of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility? I guess I'm asking for – I agree. You have a nation-state structure. You always are going to, the politics don’t
allow anything else. But I guess philosophically, the question
is how do you weight it? How do you think about what the foreign aid
budget should be? How do you think about poverty abroad? Bernie Sanders: I do weigh it. Well first of all, again, as a United States
senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make certain kids in my state and kids
all over this country have the ability to go to college, which is why I am supporting
tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe we should create millions of jobs
rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest people in this country
to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise the minimum wage
to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some 20% of
our kids living in poverty in America. Now how do you do that? What you do is understand there's been a huge
redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top 1/10 to 1%. The other thing that you understand globally
is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1% will own
more than the bottom 99% in a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and
so forth and so on. I think what we need to be doing as a global
economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent paying jobs, have education,
have healthcare, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't
do that as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers which has
already gone down very significantly. Bernie Sanders: When you talk about foreign policy... as important an issue as any, is the issue of climate change. If you talk to
the CIA, if you talk to the Department of Defense, and I have, what they will tell you
is that one of the great security issues facing this planet is the fact that as we see more
and more drought, as poor people around the world are unable to grow the food they need to survive, you're going to see migrations of people in international climate.
I happen to believe that when you talk about foreign policy, a the very top of the list
is the need for the United States to lead the world, to work with China, work with Russia,
work with India in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy
efficiency and sustainable energy. This is not just a, "Environmental issue," this is
also a global national security issue as well. It is an international crisis and I have to
tell you, without being overtly political here, it is an embarrassment to me that we
have a major political party called the Republican Party, which with few exceptions refuses to
even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone is prepared to do anything about
it. That is an embarrassment. That you have a major party refusing to listen to science.
Ezra Klein: Do you believe we need to price carbon?
Bernie Sanders: Yes. Ezra Klein: Would you do it through a carbon
tax or cap and trade? Bernie Sanders: Carbon tax. It's the simple
and direct way to do it and I've introduced legislation with Senator Boxer to do just
that. Once you're into cap and trade you're into all kinds of complicated stuff. Folks
on Wall Street are going to make a whole lot of money.
Look, we have got to come up and answer a simple question. Are the scientists right
or are they wrong? If they are right they're telling us that the planet earth will be 5
to 10 degrees warmer by the end of this century Fahrenheit. That will cause cataclysmic changes
in terms of drought, weather disturbances, rising sea levels, acidification of the ocean,
international conflict. If they are right, I believe they are right, we have got to move
in a very, very bold way. We have to do it yesterday. Candidates are increasingly dependent on the very, very wealthy. I'm a regular politician and I'm proud, by
the way, the vast majority of our money comes from working people, not from the rich, but if I'm a normal politician who needs to raise $20, $50 million, where am I going to go?
I'm going to sit down with the wealthy, I'm going to go to the country club, I'm going
to do my fundraisers at fancy resorts and I get to know those people. But that's the
whole point of this corrupt campaign finance system. If you're going to contribute a million dollars to my super PAC, well maybe it's you're a hell of a nice guy and you like to participate or maybe you want something. I think you want something and you and I are going to become really good buddies so I can do your bidding. In other words, the millionaire class and
the billionaire class increasingly own the political process and they own the politicians that go to them for money. I worry very much, and I say this from the
bottom of my heart that we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person one vote, to an oligarchic form of society where billionaires will be determining
who the elected officials of this country are. I'm going to do everything I can to stop that. Ezra Klein: When you say you want to see elections be publicly funded, do you want to cut the ability to privately fund them? Bernie Sanders: The first thing that I want
to do is overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which is a total disaster.
Free speech does not equal the ability of people to buy elections and what I've said
is if elected President of the United States, any Supreme Court nominee I make will make
it very clear that he or she is going to vote to overturn Citizens United. Second of all, I think what you want to do
is at least make sure that candidates who are running will have as much money as their
opponents who may have unlimited sums of money. Thirdly, I think there are various ways, and
we're going to come out with a position on it, various ways that you can approach the
issue. One way which I find intriguing is that you basically provide $100 for every
citizen in the United States of America and you say to that person, "Here's your hundred
bucks, you can make a contribution, you can get a hundred dollar tax credit if you spend
$100 on any candidate you want." I think that would democratize very significantly the political
process in America and take us a long way away from these super PACS controlled by billionaires
who are now buying elections. Ezra Klein: Tell me what it means to be a
socialist. Bernie Sanders: A democratic socialist. What
it means is that one takes a hard look at countries around the world who have successful
records in fighting and implementing programs for the middle class and working families.
When you do that you automatically go to countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and
other countries which have had labor governments or social democratic governments, and what
you find is that in virtually all of those countries, health care is a right of all people
and their systems are far more cost effective than ours, college education is virtually
free in all of those countries, people retire with benefits, wages that people receive are
often higher, distribution of wealth and income is much fairer, their public education systems
are generally stronger than ours. By and large their governments tend to represent
the needs of their middle class and working families rather than billionaires and campaign
contributors. When I talk about being a democratic socialist, those are the countries that I
am looking at and those are the ideas that I think we can learn a lot from.
Ezra Klein: What is the underlying principle there? What are the situations where you look
at a given area of the economy say, "That's something we should turn over to the market,"
or, "That's something we should possibly federalize?" Bernie Sanders: Good questions. Health care,
to my mind, is a right of all people. That's what I believe. I think every man, woman and
child is entitled to health care and that right exists in virtually every other major
industrialized country on earth. We are the odd guys out there. Despite the modest gains
of the Affordable Care Act we have 35 million people who still have no health insurance,
and more importantly, millions more are under-insured with high co-payments and high deductibles.
I believe in Medicare for all people and I believe that is not an area where private
insurance companies should be functioning, because once you have private insurance companies,
their goal is to make as much money as possible, not to provide quality care. In terms of health
care, yeah, we should have a public healthcare system guaranteeing health care to all people
in a cost effective way. I'm thinking a Medicare, full single payer approach is the way to do
it. In terms of education, I don't know how you
have the United States being competitive in a global economy if we do not have the best
educated workforce in the world. What does that mean? It means that everybody should
be able to get all of the education they need, regardless of the income of their families.
What does that mean? It means we should go back to where we were 50 years ago and what
Germany and many other countries [are doing], and say, "You want to go to college? You have
the ability to go to college? You have the desire to go to college? Public colleges and
universities will be tuition free," because education must be a right of all people.
It seems to me that when you look at basic necessities of life: Education, health care,
nutrition, there must be a guarantee that people receive what they need in order to
live a dignified life. Ezra Klein: Implicit in what you just said
and knowing some of your sort of policies around this, you want to see the government
barking down healthcare prices quite a bit lower than they are now. Americans pay much
higher prices ... Bernie Sanders: Let me interrupt you, the
answer's absolutely yes. Ezra Klein: Yeah, so I have a slightly different
question off of that, though. The argument people make about that is that a tremendous
amount of healthcare innovation around the world are other countries freeloading on the
amount of money Americans pay to induce innovation in the pharmaceutical sector in the medical
device sector. Do you worry that if we got to that point we would actually see a slow
down in healthcare innovation? Bernie Sanders: I don't. A lot of the money
in health care research goes into me-too drugs, copycat drugs where they will come up with
another drug that really doesn't substantially increase the kinds of benefits that it has
on the patient. In my view, this issue of the high cost of prescription drugs is a huge
issue, it's an economic issue, it is a moral issue and I very much reject what goes on
in this country right now. Right now in America, uniquely among major countries, drug companies
can double the prices for a drug tomorrow for no particular reason, just because they
can make more money. We have seen that with name brand drugs, now we're seeing it increasingly
with generic drugs. I think absolutely that the cost of prescription
drugs should be regulated. I will never forget - it was kind of a moment I will remember
for my whole life - taking a group of Vermont women across the border to Canada where they
purchased medicine they needed for breast cancer at 1/10th the price they were paying
in the United States of America. I also find it very interesting that many of my friends
who are great free traders, who want to see lettuce and tomatoes brought in from small
farms in Mexico, have no problem with the fact that we cannot import prescription name
brand prescription drugs from other countries around the world. That speaks to the power
of the pharmaceutical industry. Pharma, very powerful lobbying forces, forcing us to pay
high prices in this country. I talk to physicians who work in working class
communities and they tell me one quarter of the prescriptions they write are not filled.
That is insane. I think we need to deal with the cost of prescription drugs very, very
differently than is currently the case. Ezra Klein:
Something that’s in that answer, but also in what you said being a democratic socialist,
is a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously it leads
you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply
raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About
sharply increasing ... Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a
Koch brothers proposal. Ezra Klein: Really?
Bernie Sanders:Of course. That's a right wing proposal which says essentially there is no
United States ... Ezra Klein: But it would make ...
Bernie Sanders: Excuse me ... Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global
poor richer, wouldn't it? Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in
America poorer, you're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think
there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state
or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have
an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing
people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people,
work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think
we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create
the millions of jobs. I was just on the floor a few minutes ago.
You know what youth unemployment in the United States of America today? If you're white high
school graduate, it’s 33%, Hispanic 36%, African American 51%. Do you think we should
open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try
to get jobs for those kids? I think from a moral responsibility we've
got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international
poverty but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.
Ezra Klein: Then what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards
is quite well off by say, Malaysian standards, so of the calculation goes so easily to the
benefit of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility?
I agree. you have a nation-state structure. You always are going to, the politics don’t
allow anything else. But philosophically, the question is how do you weight it? How
do you think about what the foreign aid budget should be? How do you think about poverty
abroad? Bernie Sanders:
I do weigh it. As a United States senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make
certain kids in my state and kids all over this country have the ability to go to college,
which is why I am supporting tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe
we should create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest
people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise
the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in
poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some 20% of our kids living in poverty in America.
Now how do you do that? What you do is understand there's been a huge
redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top 1/10 to 1%.
The other thing that you understand globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth
in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1% will own more than the bottom 99% in
a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and so forth and
so on. I think what we need to be doing as a global
economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent paying jobs, have education,
have healthcare, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but
you don't do that as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers
which has already gone down very significantly. Ezra Klein: Do you think service-sector jobs
can be made into high wage jobs? Bernie Sanders: Not only do I think they can,
I know they can. If you look at what the culinary workers have done in Las Vegas, you have people
who are cleaning toilets, who are making beds, who are making $35-40,000 a year and have
good health-care benefits. So the answer is there's nothing magical. I mean, what we have
historically seen in this country, until recently, is that if you worked at a union factory in
Detroit, and this is changing, sadly as part of the race to the bottom – you can make
a middle-class wage, $20-$25 an hour, you have good benefits, you have a retirement
program. And that's being attacked every single day.
There's nothing holy about working in a factory as opposed to making a bed or cleaning a toilet.
In the case of workers in the hotel industry, we have seen with good unions they can in
fact earn a living wage and good benefits. Ezra Klein: So is it fair to say then that
your strategy for bringing back that middle class for improving those jobs is increasing
union density? Bernie Sanders: Oh absolutely. No question
about it. Ezra Klein: How do you do that?
Bernie Sanders: You do that by passing legislation which makes it easier for workers to join
unions. Right now it is pretty hard. I'm not telling you every worker wants to join a union,
that's not true, but you've got millions of people who do. Right now employers are able
to take workers, put them in a private room, threaten them that if this company becomes
union we're moving to China, or say that if you try and organize the union, well, you've
been late lately, I'm afraid we’ll have to fire you.
I think we have to make it easier. There's legislation — which I support — the Employee
Free Choice Act that says if 50 percent of workers in an agency plus one sign a union
card, they have a union. And I believe in that.
Ezra Klein: That legislation had, as I remember, virtually every Democrat sign onto it in 2008,
and Democrats had huge majorities in Congress in 2009 and it just didn't go anywhere. What
makes you optimistic it can be passed? Bernie Sanders: I think what we need in this
country is to understand that given the power of corporate America, the billionaire class,
the big campaign contributors, what takes place in the United States Congress today
has nothing to do with the reality of middle-class working families in this country. It has to
do with the power of big money. The only way that real change is going to take place is
when millions of people get involved in the political process and tell the United States
Congress and any president of the United States that you have to start working for us and
not just for the wealthiest people in this country. When that happens, huge things occur.
Let me give you an example. Three or four years ago, the minimum wage was 7 and a quarter,
and no one was talking about it. You know what's happened because of grassroots organizing?
Not only have city and states raised the minimum wage because of grassroots activism, what
you saw recently a few weeks ago in a Wall Street Journal poll, by a 10% margin the American
people think we should raise the minimum wage, not to $10.10 which Republicans oppose, but
to 15 bucks. Give you another example. Social Security.
You have heard here in Washington virtually every Republican wants to cut Social Security,
right? That's their mantra. You know what the American people want according to that
same poll by a 3 to 1 margin? They don't want to cut Social Security, they want to expand
Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on taxable income.
When you organize at the grassroots level, whether it's gay rights, raising the minimum
wage, expanding social security, that's when change takes place.
Ezra Klein: I think a lot of people would have thought that the amount of grassroots
support democrats had in 2008 would've led to that kind of effect. Why don't you think
it did? Bernie Sanders: Because the democrats to a
large degree, are separated from working families. Are the Democrats 10 times, 100 times, better
on all of the issues than the Republicans? They surely are, but I think it would be hard
to imagine if you walked out of here or walked down the street or went a few miles away from
here and you stopped somebody on the street and you said, "Do you think that the Democratic
Party is the party of the American working class?" People would look at you and say,
"What are you talking about?" There was a time I think under Roosevelt,
maybe even under Truman, where it was perceived that working people were part of the Democratic
Party. I think for a variety of reasons, a lot having to do with money and politics,
that is no longer the case. In my view that is exactly what shouldn't be happening. Instead
of spending all of our time raising money I think we should go out organizing people
and getting them to unite around a progressive agenda which expands the middle class, which
tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all, which says to corporate America,
"You're going to have to start paying your fair share of taxes," which says we're going
to raise the minimum wage, we're going to make college available to all regardless of
their income, that we are going to have pay equity for women workers, that we are going
to create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. You need a progressive
agenda, then you need the ability to go out and organize people. When that happens, things
change here, it's not the other way around. Ezra Klein: What does it mean to organize
people? Bernie Sanders: That's a great question. In
terms of my campaign, on July 29th we will be holding, as I understand it, at least 1,000
organizing meetings simultaneously all over this country involving 20 or 30,000 people.
What we will be urging our supporters to do is to go out, knock on doors, register the
people to vote, talk about the important issues facing our country in a way that the media
very often does not. Talk to our Republican friends and neighbors and ask them why they
are voting for candidates who are prepared to send their jobs to China, deny their kids
the ability to have healthcare or get a higher education, engage people in that discussion.
I often make the joke, although it's not such a joke, is that if we can spend half of the
time in this country talking about why the middle class is collapsing as opposed to football
or baseball, we would revolutionize what's going on in America. I want that discussion.
I want to know why the rich get richer and everybody else gets poorer. I want to know
why the United States is the only major country on earth that doesn't provide health care
to all of its people. The only major country that doesn't have family and medical leave
so that women can stay home with their kids when they have a baby. Those are the questions
we should be discussing. Ezra Klein: You talk a lot about the class
outcomes in the American economy. Another way of cutting a lot of these issues, and
it came up when you talked about youth employment, is by race. Do you think we need specific
issues to address the racial wealth gap, the racial jobs gap?
Bernie Sanders: Sure. Everybody knows that racism has existed
from day one. Think about what we did – what people who came from Europe did to the Native
Americans, the atrocities committed. Think about the horrors of slavery. Think about
what we did to the Asian folks that came to build the railroads and the Asian Exclusion
Act. Think about discrimination against Italians, Irish, Jews, virtually everybody else who
was not like the people who were here. What we're seeing today is of course some people
developing a wage issue between Native born Americans and those people who have come into
our country. We have 51% of African American kids who are
unemployed, the poverty rates in the African American community are far higher than whites,
the wealth ownership much lower than Whites, so of course we have that gap.
What we have got to do is create economic policies that improve the lives of all of
our people. The white working class is disappearing, the middle class is disappearing, and it's
worse in Hispanic and African American communities. We've got to come together and create policies that improve the lives of all working class people. In terms of prejudice, yeah of course, that's
an extra issue. Is there racism in America? Of course there is. We've seen an explosion
of that recently. Ezra Klein:
What about the social networks of politicians. And what I'm asking there is the most trackable relationship between the rich and the middle class are donations and lobbying expenditures. But a lot of the reason Democratic administrations have so many Wall Street members in them is that politicians end up traveling in the
CEO/Wall Street class. I'm curious how you think the actual class of people's social
networks ends up affecting political outcomes. Bernie Sanders: The answers is you're right,
but I would approach it from another way. If I am a regular politician and I need to
raise $20 million to run for the United States Senate or $50 million, where am I going to
go to? You think I'm going to go to the American Legion hall? A trade union hall, talk to working
class people? Especially with Citizens United, candidates are increasingly dependent on the
very, very wealthy. I'm a regular politician and I'm proud, by
the way, the vast majority of our money comes from working people, not from the rich, but
if I'm a normal politician who needs to raise $20, $50 million, where am I going to go?
I'm going to sit down with the wealthy, I'm going to go to the country club, I'm going
to do my fundraisers at fancy resorts and I get to know those people. But that's the
whole point of this corrupt campaign finance system. If you're going to contribute a million
dollars to my super PAC, well maybe it's you're a hell of a nice guy and you like to participate
or maybe you want something. I think you want something and you and I are going to become
really good buddies so I can do your bidding. In other words, the millionaire class and
the billionaire class increasingly own the political process and they own the politicians
that go to them for money. I worry very much, and I say this from the
bottom of my heart that we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one
person one vote, to an oligarchic form of society determining who the elected officials
of this country are. I'm going to do everything I can to stop that.
Ezra Klein: When you say you want to see elections be publicly funded, do you want to cut the
ability to privately fund them? Bernie Sanders: The first thing that I want
to do is overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which is a total disaster.
Free speech does not equal the ability of people to buy elections and what I've said
is if elected President of the United States, any Supreme Court nominee I make will make
it very clear that he or she is going to vote to overturn Citizens United.
Second of all, I think what you want to do is at least make sure that candidates who
are running will have as much money as their opponents who may have unlimited sums of money.
Thirdly, I think there are various ways, and we're going to come out with a position on
it, various ways that you can approach the issue. One way which I find intriguing is
that you basically provide $100 for every citizen in the United States of America and
you say to that person, "Here's your hundred bucks, you can make a contribution, you can
get a hundred dollar tax credit if you spend $100 on any candidate you want." I think that
would democratize very significantly the political process in America and take us a long way
away from these super PACS controlled by billionaires who are now buying election.
Ezra Klein: I want to make a turn to foreign policy. Is there a particular foreign policy
school of thought you ascribe to? Do you describe yourself as a realist or a democratic socialist?
Bernie Sanders: I don't know what that means. I trust we're all realists.
Ezra Klein: I’m not sure we are. Bernie Sanders: I don’t know what that word
means. Look, here's what I will tell you. When you talk about foreign policy you're
talking about many, many things, but maybe the most important thing that you're talking
about is war. Voting to go to war is the most difficult decision that any member of Congress
has to make. I'll tell you a little bit about my foreign policy history, if you like.
I was elected in 1990 to the House. You remember the first Gulf War once Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait? The first Bush was telling us the only alternative was war. The only way we
can get them out, you have your whole world united against Saddam Hussein and President
Bush was saying the only way we can get him out is an invasion of that region. I voted
no. No was a tough vote because most people believed that we should go to war.
In 2003 the second Bush told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it was
absolutely imperative that we invade Iraq, that our soldiers would come home in 6 months,
that we would establish democracy in Iraq and perhaps the whole region, everything would
be wonderful. I didn't believe it and if you check the speeches I gave on the floor of
the House, sadly much of what I said about the destabilizing impact of that invasion
turned out to be true. I'm not a pacifist and I understand that sometimes
you do have to go to war. I think war is the very, very, very last option. In terms of
Iran, which is what we're dealing with right now, I applaud the President and I applaud
Secretary Kerry for their enormously difficult work of trying to reach out an agreement with
the P5 plus 1 in Iran, to try to figure out how we can prevent Iran from getting a nuclear
weapon which to me is an absolute imperative, but you do it in a way that doesn't go to
war. I get very nervous, I get very nervous listening to many of my Republican colleagues
who apparently have learned nothing from the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and they're
ready to go, to war again, that's the simple truth.
I am the former chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee. Most people don't know that. People
know that we lost 6,700 brave women in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't know that 500,000
came home with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury and they don't
know what that has done to those individuals and to their families. Before you go to war,
you explore every other option. That would be the basic tenet of my foreign policy.
Ezra Klein: If it came down to it do you think it is worth it for America to go to war to
prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? Bernie Sanders: That's a hypothesis. You're
asking me a hypothetical and I surely applaud what the President has done to prevent us
from looking at that option. Ezra Klein: You won't say if that was the
choice whether ... Bernie Sanders: That is not the choice right
now. I've got to examine this proposal. It just came out the other day and I can't tell
you I've read every word of it, I haven't. What the president has tried to do is to make
it certain that we have a verifiable agreement that prevents Iran from getting a nuclear
weapon and I applaud him very, very much. That's where we are right now and I hope after
examining this treaty, I hope and expect that I can be strongly supportive of it.
Ezra Klein: Let me ask you then not a hypothetical but a retrospective. Should America have intervened
to stop the Rwandan genocide? Bernie Sanders:
Yes. Yes, but it's not just America. This is the damn problem that we face. We are spending
more money on the military than the next nine countries behind us. Where is the UK? Where
is France? Germany is the economic powerhouse in Europe. They provide healthcare to all
of their people, they provide free college education to their kids. You know what? Germany
and France and the UK and Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, all of us have got to
work together to prevent those types of genocide and atrocities and we have to strengthen the
United Nations in order to do that. Ezra Klein: Do you view yourself as a Zionist?
Bernie Sanders: A Zionist? Ezra Klein: A Zionist.
Bernie Sanders: What does that mean? Want to define what the word is? Do I think Israel
has the right to exist, yeah I do. Do I believe that the United States should be playing an
evenhanded role in terms of its dealings with the Palestinian community in Israel? Absolutely
I do. Again, I think that you have volatile regions
in the world, the Middle East is one of them, and the United States has got to work with
other countries around the world to fight for Israel's security and existence at the
same time as we fight for a Palestinian state where the people in that country can enjoy
a decent standard of living, which is certainly not the case right now. My long term hope
is that instead of pouring so much military aid into Israel, into Egypt, we can provide
more economic aid to help improve the standard of living of the people in that area.
Ezra Klein: Let me ask you about the economic side of foreign policy. I think one of the
overwhelming background issues, and sometimes the foreground issue, is whether the economic
rise of, particularly, China, but to some degree India and others, necessarily means
a diminishment in American power and sway. Do you see it as zero sum in that way?
Bernie Sanders: No. I should also tell you when you talk about foreign policy, what you
didn't ask me, which may be as important an issue as any, is the issue of climate change.
If you talk to the CIA, if you talk to the Department of Defense, and I have, what they
will tell you is that one of the great security issues facing this planet is the fact that
as we see more and more drought, as poor people around the world are unable to grow the food
they need to survive, you're going to see migrations of people in international climate.
I happen to believe that when you talk about foreign policy, a the very top of the list
is the need for the United States to lead the world, to work with China, work with Russia,
work with India in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy
efficiency and sustainable energy. This is not just a, "Environmental issue," this is
also a global national security issue as well. Ezra Klein: Do you think the international
capacity and relationships exist to price carbon in a verifiable way?
Bernie Sanders: Yeah, I do, and we've introduced legislation to do that.
Look, I happen to agree with Pope Francis and with virtually all of the scientific community.
I'm a member of both the Energy Committee and the Environmental Committee. I listen
to what the scientists say not only in America but around the world and that is climate change
is real, it's caused by human activity, look at California, it is already causing devastating
problems. Not just in the United States, look at Pakistan – heat waves.
It is an international crisis and I have to tell you, without being overtly political
here, it is an embarrassment to me that we have a major political party called the Republican
Party, which with few exceptions refuses to even recognize the reality of climate change,
let alone is prepared to do anything about it. That is an embarrassment. That you have
a major party refusing to listen to science. Ezra Klein: Do you believe we need to price
carbon? Bernie Sanders: Yes.
Ezra Klein: Would you do it through a carbon tax or cap and trade?
Bernie Sanders: Carbon tax. Ezra Klein: Why?
Bernie Sanders: I've introduced legislation. It's the simple and direct way to do it and
I've introduced legislation with Senator Boxer to do just that. It is the simplest and clearest
way. Once you're into cap and trade you're into all kinds of complicated stuff. Folks
on Wall Street are going to make a whole lot of money.
Look, we have got to come up and answer a simple question. Are the scientists right
or are they wrong? If they are right they're telling us that the planet earth will be 5
to 10 degrees warmer by the end of this century Fahrenheit. That will cause cataclysmic changes
in terms of drought, weather disturbances, rising sea levels, acidification of the ocean,
international conflict. If they are right, I believe they are right, we have got to move
in a very, very bold way. We have to do it yesterday.
Ezra Klein: Then that goes a little bit to the question of China India. What do you say
to countries that look at us and say, "Well, you got rich off of cheap energy, now you're
telling us we can't?" Bernie Sanders: That's a fair point and a
good question. Let's understand that the United States could do everything right. We could
transform our energy system tomorrow to significantly cut back on carbon. And yet if other countries
are producing enormous amounts of carbon, the game is lost. It has to be a global commitment.
It's not an accident that people in China are wearing surgical masks when they walk
the streets, and their water systems are being destroyed. They have major, major, major environmental
problems. I think the role that we can play with our scientific community is to work with
these countries and talk about a win-win proposition. Can solar actually be cheaper than the more
mature forms of energy, coal, oil? I believe it can. Wind as well. But we have got to start
investing in the kinds of technologies which are useful not only in America but work with
China, work with Russia, work with India. These countries need energy. There's no question
about it. No one should go to them and say you've got to cut your energy in half. What
we should be able to say to them, "We're going to work with you to transform your energy
system to make sure you have the energy you need to maintain a strong economy," but it
is not in India's advantage, China's advantage, to destroy this planet. Nobody gains from
that and I think many of them understand that. Ezra Klein: Do you think that the way Americans
view China's rise in economic development is accurate or misguided? I mean particularly
there to go back to the question whether it is a zero-sum competition between us for influence?
Bernie Sanders: I think what the average American sees is that for many decades now, what corporate
America has said is, "Hey, I'm not going to pay you 20 or 25 bucks at a factory, I don't
need you anymore. We're going to shut your factory down. I'm going to move to China,
pay people there a buck or two an hour. I don't have to worry about environmental regulations,
I don't have to worry about unions and I'm going to produce products there and I'm going
to bring them back to the United States of America.” Now is that the fault of China?
No. That issue has to do with the greed of corporate America who sold out American workers
and essentially moved manufacturing to China and other low wage countries.
Are Americans concerned about that, are they concerned when they walk in a department store
and product after product after product is not made in the United States but is made
in China, are they concerned about it? Yeah, they are. So am I, as a matter of fact. Does
that mean that we have to make China into an enemy? Absolutely not. What we need is
a trade policy in this country, among other things, that works for the American worker
rather than the CEOs of large corporations. I voted against [Permanent Normal Trade Relations]
with China, that was the right vote and if elected President I will radically transform
trade policies. Ezra Klein: If I were Chinese, though, that
would sound very zero sum to me because those factories have been part of the tremendous
rise in living standards there. Bernie Sanders:
That's great but you know what? At the same time the living standards of the American
people have gone down. As I indicated to you earlier I am an internationalist. I want to
see poor people around the world, see their standard of living increase, but you talk
about zero sum. I don't think you have to do it. A lot of people tell me this. Oh yes,
the American worker's going to have to become poorer so we can help poor people in China.
I don't believe that for a second. I want to see the people in China live in
a democratic society with a higher standard of living. I want to see that but I don't
think that has to take place at the expense of the American worker. I don't think decent
paying jobs in this country have got to be lost as companies shut down here and move
to China. I think we can work with China, I want to see American workers maintain a
strong ... I want to see the middle class expand not shrink, I want to see the Chinese
people do as well but I do not want to see the collapse of the American middle class
take place and I will fight against that as hard as I can.
Ezra Klein: To go to another continent, do you think the Euro was a mistake?
Bernie Sanders: That's a very good question, I can't give you a definitive answer right
now. I am concerned – I will tell you this – of what's happening in Greece. I am very
concerned that the Germans have led an effort to squeeze blood from the stone. The Greek
economy has contracted by about 25% over the last 5 years, unemployment is 26%, youth unemployment
somewhere around 60% and the idea that Germany and European banks are pushing more austerity
on the Greek people I think is not only a terrible economic mistake, it's a political
mistake and I'll tell you why. The third largest party in Greece is the party
called, "Golden Dawn," you know who they are? They're a Nazi party. Not even neos. These
are real Nazis. If you remember what happened in 1932 in Germany when you had hyperinflation,
when you had an economy that was in a terrible depression, that's the kind of climate that
a Hitler could come to power in. I think that the European community has got to work with
Greece to create economic growth, deal with unemployment, create an economy so that they
can, over a period of years, pay back their debt, but you cannot keep squeezing that country,
so I have concerns about that. Ezra Klein: Let me end on a question about
a policy that is is getting, seems to be some momentum but it's not often talked about in
Washington, which is a universal basic income. You've begun to have people go back to both
Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr., saying we should really have a fundamentally
guaranteed standard of living in this country. Bernie Sanders: I am absolutely sympathetic
to that approach. That's why I'm fighting for a $15 minimum wage, why I'm fighting to
make sure that everybody in this country gets the nutrition they need, why I'm fighting
to expand Social Security benefits and not cut them, making sure that every kid in this
country regardless of income can go to college, but that''s what a civilized nation does.
What a civilized nation does. Here's the point. This is the wealthiest nation
in the history of the world, but nobody in America knows it because their standard of
living is going down and almost all of the new wealth is going to the top 1%. That is
an issue that we have to deal with. In the wealthiest nation in the history of
the world, top 1/10th of 1% should not own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Everybody
in this country should in fact have at least a minimum and dignified standard of living.
All right? So you're going to the museum and it's great. The guards check your bag so you, I don't
know, shoot a painting; you go up some fancy escalators, you see naked statues. And then it happens. You see a super ugly Medieval baby. Why do medieval babies look like ugly middle
aged men? This baby looks like he wants to tell you
to that 'a boat is just a money pit'. It might seem like medieval artists were just
bad at drawing. But it turns out that babies in medieval art
are actually ugly for a reason. While there were breakthroughs in anatomy
and perspective that happened later in the Renaissance, ugly medieval babies were an
intentional choice before that time. If somebody told you to paint like Pablo Picasso
and you gave them Norman Rockwell, you would have screwed up. And it's the same way for artists working
in churches in Italy. It's because most of these babies were depictions
of Jesus and Mary. They were influenced by the idea of the homunculus,
which is Latin for little man. These babies looked like Benjamin Button because
philosophers believed Jesus was born perfectly formed and unchanged. The adult Jesus was represented in the baby
Jesus. Until the Renaissance, when everything changed. Generally, we think of the Middle Ages lasting
from around the 5th to 15th century, and it kind of overlapped the beginning of the Renaissance
in the 14th century. The Renaissance probably began in Florence
Italy, but it's important to note that it unfolded over centuries and countries in a
time when everything moved slowly. So, it wasn't instant beautiful babies everywhere. Still, the change in style did happen, and
it happened for a couple of reasons. Places like Florence were getting richer and
churches weren't the only places that could afford paintings. People could get their own babies painted,
and they wanted them to look like cute chubby babies, not homunculi. And because the Renaissance was all about
classics, they looked at Greek and Roman art, which was all about idealized forms that ditched
the medieval abstraction for beauty. Anyway, the point is that after the Renaissance
cherubs didn't seem out of place, and neither did cuter pictures of baby Jesus as the Renaissance
spread through Europe. And it's kinda stayed that way since. We want babies who look like they need their
cheeks pinched, not their prostates checked. We want them chubby and cute, and we want
babies that fit our ideals. Because those medieval babies? They have a face that only a mother can love. In the mid-1970’s, Erno Rubik invented the
Rubik’s cube. But that doesn’t mean knew how to solve it. It took him a few moths  to figure
it out. By the time the first World Rubik’s Cube
Championships were held in 1982, The winner -- he could solve the cube in a
little less than 23 seconds. And these days?
[news montage of collin’s record] This is world record holder Collin Burns, and
today, we find out how he did it. [TITLES] “It could last another day; it could last
another few years. The previous record lasted for just over 2 years. But with single solve,
especially, you just need to get lucky. Or at least that’s a big part of it.” Collin tends to downplay his skills but it’s
worth noting there are two types of world records.
The way speedcubing competitions work is that volunteers scramble the cubes according to
instructions that are generated by a computer, so competitors all get the same scramble. They do 5 solves and their three middle scores
are averaged. So Collin holds the world record for a single
solve. But the world record for an average score
is held by a 19-year-old in Australia. Still, Collin’s record is a huge deal. At
the competition where we met up with him, kids were asking him for his autograph. He’s now being sponsored by a cube company
and by a cube retailer, which are paying for him to travel internationally. And he wants
people to know, you could do this too. “The biggest misconception about cubing
is that it’s difficult, which it really isn’t.”
Pop culture treats the Rubik’s cube like some sort of IQ test, but it’s not. At least
not anymore. “Generally average is much more impressive
because you have to be consistently fast.” Still, Collin’s record is a huge deal. At
the competition where we met up with him, other kids were asking him for autographs.
“are you that famous cube guy?” I recently bought a cube online and it came
with instructions for beginners. And if you memorize those, you can solve the cube in
a couple minutes. It helps to understand the design of the puzzle.
At first glance, it looks like a cube made out of cubes — right, three layers of nine. But if you look closer, you’ll see there
aren’t actually any cubes here. So that tells you that the corners will always be
corners, the edges will always be edges, and the middle pieces determine the color of that
face. Speedcubers will buy special cubes. They can
lubricate them and adjust the tension. But the real key to their speed is efficiency
- they’re looking several moves ahead, and they use fewer moves to get the same result. So there are 43 quintillion possible arrangements
for the cube. A few years back, some researchers borrowed
computing power from Google to find out that any scramble can be solved in 20 moves or
less. They call it God’s Number. But humans just aren’t that good. The beginners’ method that I learned uses
100 to 200 moves. Speedcubers use more around 50 to 60 moves.
And they can do that, in part, because of the knowledge gained by the previous generation
of speedcubers. When the cube first spread around the world
back in the 80s, people had to learn through trial and error. This was happening in a lot of math departments
and campus clubs. People were discovering the cube at the same time, and they were sharing
what they learned. The method Collin uses was developed by Jessica
Fridrich, an engineering professor who was a college student at the time. It starts with a cross on one of the faces.
And that face becomes the bottom layer. Then what they do is solve the corners of the bottom
layer and the middle layer simultaneously. “So, now you can see that all of this is
solved.” And for the final layer, they’re choosing
from dozens of algorithms that they’ve memorized. And those are sequences of moves that mess
up the cube temporarily to move certain pieces into place. And then put the rest of the cube
back where it was. The Rubik’s cube has made a comeback in
recent years along with that same ethic of sharing tips and strategies. So all the resources you need are there, there’s
just one other thing. Practice! This is Collin nearly 5 years ago. world records
are not built in a day. Joshua Oppenheimer: There was this weird opportunity
to do something unprecedented in the history of nonfiction film. To confront a perpetrator
while the perpetrator still holds a monopoly on power. Joe Posner (Vox): This is Joshua Oppenheimer His two films are the most frightening, and
moving I have ever seen. They're essentially a series of confrontations with the perpetrators
of a horrifying chapter in Indonesia’s history: Oppenheimer: In 1965 there was a right wing
military coup. The military took over Indonesia with the help of the united states and other
western countries. And within 6 months to a year, somewhere between half a million and
two and a half million people were killed. Anyone who was seen as unlikely to just embrace
the new dictatorship was accused of being a communist and killed. Posner: First, In The Act of Killing, he confronts
people who carried out these killings with, essentially, a mirror.Never held to account,
they boast. So Oppenheimer asks them to dramatize their actions. Oppenheimer: I said. You’ve participated
in one of the biggest killings in human history. I want to know what it means to you and to
your society. You want to show me what you’ve done. So show me what you’ve done in whatever
way you wish, I will film your dramatizations – and they’re not re-enactments, they’re
dramatizations. Because re-enactments are about what happened in the past, dramatizations
are actually acting out how they want to be seen in the present. Posner: The perpetrators involved start to
realize that they will not be seen as heroes. Oppenheimer knew releasing the film would
mean likely never going back to Indonesia, but it created an opportunity. Oppenheimer: I was perceived to be close to
the highest ranking perpetrators in the country. Posner: Before release, he orchestrated a
second set of even more direct confrontations. Oppenheimer: Adi the youngest son, in a family
of survivors, his oldest brother was killed, he feels trapped in this kind of prison of
fear as a survivor that comes from living surrounded by the still powerful perpetrators. He feels the need to go to them, in the hope
that he will be able to make peace with his neighbors. We had to take many safety precautions. While
shooting including bringing a second car, having Adi’s at the airport ready to evacuate.
Adi would come with no id, no telephone, so they wouldn’t be able to figure out
who he was until we were able to get help. The 
Indonesian government perhaps in response
to the changes these two films have helped to catalyze, has introduced a truth and reconciliation
bill in the parliament. It’ll be a struggle, though, to make sure that bill has teeth and
is credible. The oligarchs in Indonesia,the wealthiest,
the most powerful, will not want their power and wealth exposed as the fruits of plunder
and atrocity. Posner: But there’s another perpetrator
confronted in these films, too. Oppenheimer: There’s a moment in the Look
of Silence where a perpetrator looks straight at me because he knows i’m an American and
says “we killed because we know the Americans told us to kill the communists. The Americans
taught us to hate the communists.” And then there’s a long pause while he looks at the
camera – and of course he’s looking at me. But because, just as in this interview i’m
looking at the camera and at the audience, he’s also looking at the audience. And for
an American audience, it’s a direct implication. The details that have come to the surface
are damning. To have an embassy official who’s compiling a list of thousands of names asking
that they be killed. It’s directly implicating all of us. The
film is a mirror in which we hopefully see ourselves. An internet troll is somebody who deliberately
gets under the skin of someone else. You get angrier and angrier as you're being
trolled as someone keeps insisting on a position that seems crazy. And what we're seeing with Donald Trump, at
least in effect is that with Republican leaders. This all started with his announcement speech
in New York, it was a rambling affair, but he said some of these controversial things
about immigrants and started to attract some attention to his campaign there. "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing
crime, they're rapists." And then, more recently, what we've seen over
this past weekend in Nevada and in Phoenix, Arizona, he's been very much attracting bigger
crowds. He's speaking for what he calls a "silent
majority." Now the truth is, it's not a majority of the
American public, it's not a majority of the Republican Party, but it is a segment of the
Republican Party that has been silent, and now has this huge megaphone to make its case. The Republican Party, as it stands now, is
largely white and aging. It's very difficult for the Republican Party
to reach out to Latino voters at a time when the surging candidate in the Republican presidential
primary is a guy who basically says, "send 'em home." "We have horrible, we have some terrible people
coming in." He's lost some deals. Most notably, his relationship with NBC, where
he was basically the main guy on The Apprentice. But the bigger problem for Trump has been
the Republican side, where party leaders are trying to put pressure on him to tone it down. Reince Priebus got on the phone with Trump
and basically said please, pull this back a little bit, you're making us look terrible. And Trump's reaction was to dial it up. There's no incentive for him to not be a troll. The more he does it, the more attention he
gets, the more attention he gets, the more voters he seems to be attracting to his candidacy. And look, right now, he's virtually tied with
Jeb Bush for the lead of the Republican presidential nomination. Not bad for a guy who used to be laughed at
as he screamed "You're fired" on national television. We're almost a year and a half away from the
election, so there's a lot of time for Donald Trump to implode, and Republicans are praying
that he does. But right now, what he's basically doing is
making it impossible for establishment Republican candidates to go more moderate on this question
and portray themselves in a way that will be appealing to the general electorate without
alienating the now Trump-led conservative base. If you're the Democrats, if you're Hillary
Clinton, you're watching from the sidelines, popcorn in your mouth, soda by your side,
and hoping that this movie never ends. So negotiators from Iran and 6 world powers just emerged from months of negotiation in Austria and Switzerland to announce that, believe it or not, they have an Iran nuclear deal. "Every path way to a nuclear weapon is cut off." But what does that actually mean? How does all that actually work? Well this gets technical really fast but it helps if you go through and look at some of the most important issues One of the big ones is uranium thats the stuff, you dig it out of the ground and use it for nuclear fuel for a power plant, or even for a bomb The deal requires Iran to give up 97% of its enriched uranium almost all of it, down to just 300kg stockpile--not very much Uranium comes in different levels of enrichment and this restriction is really severe, Iran is only allowed to have its uranium up to 3.67% enrichment and to give you a sense of what that really means, medical research grade uranium is enriched to 20% and weapons grade uranium is enriched to 90% so, iran's uranium is going to be way down at 3.67% very safe and energy graded, not something that is anywhere near what can be used for a nuclear weapon Iran is going to give up most of its centrifuges. It's going to go from 20,000 centrifuges to just 5,000 that are spinning fissile material. Plus another 1,000 that it can use for research and development but can use fissile material And if Iran decided one day, you know what, we don't like this deal anymore we're gonna build a bomb...it would take it a really long time to do it. And that gets to another really important issue, and that's inspections. Inspections, and monitoring, are how we make sure that Iran is sticking to their end of the deal and that they're not cheating The inspections that the US got out of this deal are frankly, just astonishing. One arms control analyst said he thought there was "almost a 100% chance that if Iran cheated it would be caught by these inspections" That's how good they are. So what does Iran get for accepting all of this? What Iran gets is relief from the economic sanctions that have been just crippling its economy What these sanctions do is they cut off Iran's economy from the outside world, They cut it off from international banking, international finance, and these have been just devastating Iran's economy and they are really desperate to get out from under these. This is a big deal, not just for Iran the state but for the 77 million people of in Iran It's a big middle class and they've been suffering under economic sanctions for too long And they will finally get to have the chance of having a real economy hopefully very soon after this. Serena Williams is good at tennis. Really
good. She's won the French Open, the US Open, the WTA Tour Championship, and Olympic golds. And a
lot of people say she's the best female player of all time. But for her entire career she's been
followed by a dark cloud of racism and sexism. The first instance a lot of fans will
remember was the 2001 tournament in Indian Wells California. Serena and her sister Venus were booed by
fans who accused them of match fixing Keep in mind that tennis fans are typically well-behaved. Then, according to the Williams family,
things got worse. Serena said she heard people shouting
the n-word. And then she heard someone tell her to "go back to Compton." What's crazy is that even after that first
incident these comments didn't stop. And it's not just racial slurs. A lot
of the language used to praise Williams' skill is also based in racial stereotypes. Example: Peter Larkins, a sports doctor in Australia, tried to explain Williams' win by saying "it's the African-American race. They just have this huge gluteal strength... with Serena, that's her physique and
genetics." She's had to deal with a ton of bizarre scrutiny of her body that taps into the politics of racism and sexism. For some commentators that has meant stripping her of her femininity. the President of the Russian Tennis
Federation infamously called the Williams sisters "brothers." Others have sexualized her body. One writer decided he should comment on
the size of her breasts. Another said that her butt was bigger
than he preferred. There was even this incident in 2012 where
Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki mocked Williams' body by stuffing her top
and tennis skirt with towels at an exhibition match. People have also linked her sexualization to that a a woman who was called the
Hottentot Venus Her name was Sarah Baartman and she was an
African woman who was put on display basically as a freak show exhibit for Europeans. Unlike most other tennis
stars, Williams' incredible career has been surrounded by racism and sexism. And that's why her wins often feel like
victories over these things as much as over her opponents. 3, 2, 1. The date was January 19, 2006.
Cape Canaveral, Florida. A spacecraft the size of a grand piano left
Earth on top of a rocket traveling 36,000 miles
per hour. This is New Horizons. It's a NASA probe and its mission is to complete humanity’s initial tour of our solar system by flying past Pluto
and its moons. On board are seven scientific instruments,
a generator fueled by decaying plutonium, and a few other things...
It has a container filled with the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh. That’s the astronomer who discovered
Pluto in 1930); Two American flags;
Two state quarters: from Florida and Maryland; A CD-Rom containing the names of 400,000 people
who signed up in 2005; A CD-Rom with pictures of of the New Horizons
team; A piece of SpaceShipOne (the first privately
owned spacecraft); And a US stamp from1991  
that says “Pluto: Not Yet Explored.” New Horizons has been traveling through space
for over 9 years now. And its date with Pluto has finally arrived. To understand how big this is, you have
to get that Pluto is really far away. Really, really far away. Billions of miles
away. So back in grade school we modeled the solar system like this. But actually this is a huge lie. OK so if the Earth is the size of a basketball, Pluto would be the size of a golf ball, and on that same scale, the distance between them... OK tell me when to stop Keep going…. keep going...now, go outside…. and
get on a train. That golf ball would be over 50 miles away.
Holy sh*t!! Yeah that’s at its closest distance from us. And at the same scale, New Horizons, NASA's robot would be a tiny fraction of
the size of a grain of sand. And despite this immense distance, NASA’s engineers
have successfully guided New Horizons toward its target
and they’re retrieving data back over radio waves….very slowly The radio waves take 4.5 hours to come all the way from New Horizons to us. NASA has to use 200-foot-wide
antennas just to even detect the signal, and typical download speed is 1 kilobit per
second. How slow is that exactly? So if you had an image that’s 1024 pixels
wide, it would take about 40 minutes just to download it. That’s 50 times slower than the dialup modems
from the 90s. And one of the key pieces of data New Horizons
will be retrieving is good photos of Pluto. Right now we don't have any good photos of Pluto. The best things we have, from the Hubble space telescope -- it still looks like a blurry blob. But New Horizons is going to return historic, high-definition photos of Pluto.
It already got some great shots of Jupiter when it flew by in 2007 to use the giant planet’s
gravity as a slingshot. So right now New Horizons is traveling at over 31,000 miles per hour — and it's pretty much used up all its fuel so it can't slow down as it approaches the target, so all the observations will happen quickly. And after that?
After that, New Horizons is just going to keep going and in 2019, engineers will fly it past another small, icy body at the edge of the solar system to collect more data.
And as for Pluto, it will continue on around the sun, taking 248 years to complete one revolution.
That means that the entire history of the United States has unfolded in the time it's taken Pluto to orbit the Sun once.
The last time Pluto was in its current position, we didn't understand how species
evolved or how germs transmitted diseases. Wow.
Aviation was still decades away — and spaceflight wouldn't happen for nearly 200 years.
But this time around, when Pluto finishes an orbit,
it's going to be met by a tiny robot sent by a curious species of apes living on a planet billions of miles away. When a plane crashes, it's kind of a big deal. "Continuing coverage now on the Asiana plane crash investigation." "Investigators try to figure out what went so terribly wrong." People freak out. There's usually a big investigation and a bunch of policy changes to make planes safer. A plane crash investigation committee from several nations including the United States are meeting in Tripoli to try and figure out what happened. There's pretty much a ''zero-tolerance policy'' for plane crashes in our society --and luckily planes are very safe because of it. But when a car crashes it's not really a big deal. No one hears about car crashes on the news. We've decided as a society that car crashes are a cost of a really convenient thing. It's not worth a big investigation or a bunch of news coverage. This video isn't about cars and planes. It's about hospitals. Sometimes doctors and nurses, despite their best intentions, hurt patients. A tricky procedure goes wrong, and the patient suffers or dies. This happens all the time in hospitals. One estimate says that at least 210,000 people die every year due to preventable harm in hospitals. That's a huge number. You know I think we think of hospitals as this place where you go to get better and that's just what happens, but there's a lot of risk in, like, going to a hospital, like, there's, like, a lot of things that go wrong and they don't necessarily have to. Some hospitals treat medical harm incidents like plane crashes. An unacceptable problem that needs investigation and policy change Other hospitals treat them like car crashes Just a tragic loss of a risky business, but not ultimately preventable. The way hospitals react to harming their patients can have a huge impact on how often these errors occur. And that's what this video is about--how hospitals react when they harm their patients. So I got interested in medical errors Because it's this massive problem that we don't really talk about in health care Sara and I headed to California to visit some people who would help us figure out how and why people are being harmed in hospitals--and whether or not it's preventable. I quickly realized that we were looking into something that was rarely talked about, but had a huge effect on hospital patients around the country She loved dancing and running and jumping and she never sat down. I mean it's funny because we had these, like, family... That's Claire. Her daughter, Nora, was born with an underdeveloped lung, that required her to be in the hospital for quite a bit of time So we were using the beater and I was like, oh, yeah, there's a song called Beat It so we put it on, and I mean, she used the beater as a microphone, and like I had a spoon and we would Just play it like as loud as possible and she would just sing like "Beat it" During her treatment, Nora contracted something called a central line infection, which I'll explain in a minute. The day before she got that first line infection, I had a friend over with her daughter and like she was showing Nora how to do push-ups, I mean it was just you know, like totally fine. And then, that was like just that, and then like two days later she got the infection... Our lives, completely, and Nora's life, completely changed with that first line infection. A central line is a tube that is placed in a vein that goes right to the heart. It's given to patients who need medicine that's too acidic to go through a normal IV or to those who need to get their blood drawn often The tube stays there. People walk around with this thing in, and it gives doctors and nurses really quick access to the blood stream. It's a super useful invention. But we're talking about putting a tube, through veins that go right to your heart Just as it's good for giving medicine quickly into your bloodstream, it's also a foreign object in your most vital organ. So if any bacteria gets in there, it's a very bad news Nora had four of these central line infections over the course of her life. That's way above average. Claire thinks that the Stanford hospital, where she was being treated, could have prevented them-- and that's the question we're trying to answer: Can these infections be prevented? There has to be a better solution! Like this cannot be, because every line infection just... ...took it out of her. Every line infection, you know, just took more out of her and more out of her... She's saying, "Hi, Nora!" Yeah, because I turned it that-- you know, I turned it so she could see herself. Doctors and nurses have sanitation protocols when dealing with central lines. But, even so, she contracted three more line infections while she was in the hospital. Her health was rapidly deteriorating as she approached her fourth birthday... And she just like turned to me and was like, "Hold me." And so I picked her up, and she... like, put her arms and legs around me, and her head kind of went back and she was sort of like gasping to breathe, and then she... She said, "please help me feel better" And she just grabbed me around my neck, like so... ...I mean I can still feel it, like it's so much strength, you know, like just squeezing me, and then she just basically lost consciousness, and just kind of... Nora died. Her arms around her mother's neck, on November 22nd 2013. Just three weeks before her fourth birthday. There are so many points along the way where like things could have gone differently, you know And there were so many... ...unnecessary mistakes that just led to that moment. It's hard to know whether or not the line infections were the direct cause of her death It's hard to disentangle everything that was going on with her to give a neat causal story of how she died. But what's sure is that these line infections caused her and her family immense suffering. Claire thinks that they should have never happened in the first place. She wrote a letter to the Stanford Hospital where Nora died. She basically lined out the mistakes that she saw in the hospital, and offered feedback on patient safety failures. She got this letter in return: "Unfortunately, the placement of center lines is associated with a risk of infection... " "There is a risk of infection even in the best of circumstances which can never be entirely eliminated... " "Please be assured, that multiple procedural protocols are in place, to promote hand washing techniques and minimize the chance of infection..." "We understand and recognize your feelings regarding Nora's care. And we apologize that you were dissatisfied with your experience of LPCH." So were Nora's line infections just the result of a risky business, or could they've been prevented? Stanford looked at central line infections with the car crash mentality, just an inevitable tragedy, -  instead of with a zero tolerance plane crash mentality. But we headed north to a hospital outside of Sacramento, that went seven years in a row without a single central line infection. We wanted to figure out what they were doing to achieve this perfect record I was really interested in this concept of like, should there be any central line infections given what we know... Is zero possible? Like what does it take to get to zero? What are the obstacles there? In 2005 this hospital had 11 central line infections. Research was just starting to come out on how to avoid these central line infections. And this Roseville hospital began to implement it. They had a few powerhouse nurses, that were dedicated to making a difference, and they did. We kind of thought you had infections. Yeah, there was no biggie. It was no big deal it developed over time You know we looked at people we looked at equipment we looked at skill set and Kind of all that came together to really develop the bundle that has been quite effective here. You can't accept Good enough You know You have to go for eliminating those. If you've been at zero and you have an episode you go in and you say you pick it apart and you do a root cause analysis and you say what went wrong? They treated land infections like plane crashes A zero tolerance policy was instituted and they began to see results We got to see these nurses in action as they inserted a central line They suited us up in sterile dressing and began their work. The nurses were meticulous about the procedure They'd instituted standards of sterilization that assured minimum risk of infection Now what I'm going to do is because my hand is not sterile, I touched a tourniquet I'm going to take my first glove out, that I'm going to throw away. Now I'm still sterile. And these weren't just compassionate nurses who had an intrinsic motivation to do right instead They were operating in a culture where they were expected to do it right. It was a team effort where they had ownership and accountability Where the line infections were unacceptable. When you have an outcome that isn't what you wanted If you don't say is there anything we could have done better? Is there any way we could have changed our interventions and resulted in a different outcome? People are gonna get really really sick and they're gonna die We left the hospital understanding how they had made it to zero central line infections ...you just get this very different approach from the two hospitals. One saying: Every error is a mistake, every error can be prevented in this particular type of error. And then one saying this is inevitable, this is the cost of doing business. And... It's just really striking, two hospitals like three hours away from each other with, very diferent attitudes. As I headed back to DC I kept thinking of Nora If Stanford had an attitude a little bit more like Roseville, maybe she would still be alive today. Just another five year old little girl Surely she and her family wouldn't have suffered as much To get the final word on this subject. We went to Baltimore to talk to Peter Pronovost at Johns Hopkins Medical Center He's basically the Godfather of all of the research behind preventing central line infections we started investigating every infection as a defect again a very Important culture change where in the past we just accepted them and we said no no if we really view these as defects Everyone needs to be investigated and reported on and find out why they would happen We routinely invite patients back to inform us to learn with us to share with us It is both healing for them and our clinicians But importantly it also is wise and fruitful for us to learn and improve mistakes We finished up reporting, Sarah and I realized that Nora's death actually represents two tragedies The first was of course the fact that a little girl suffered and died, but the second and perhaps more harmful tragedy Is that the hospital where it happened didn't take the opportunity to learn from it. I think that's worse for patients who are gonna be treated there in the future. It really makes a world of difference in healthcare whether you see patient harm as something that's preventable or inevitable and Getting people to the preventable mindset from the inevitable one. It has the potential to alleviate a lot of suffering, to prevent a lot of deaths. I became convinced, like attitude towards harm makes all the difference, and That there's space for our healthcare system to improve to taking a more preventable attitude towards patient harm. I think if we move her to the chair she might die. And that's when I realized she wasn't going to make it. And I said, "I think she's going to die anyway." And she just like turned to me and was like "hold me" Then she put her arms and legs around me and her head kind of went back. And she was sort of like gasping for air trying to breath. And then she said, "please help me feel better" One of  the craziest things about ISIS is how many people it recruits around the world By one count over 20,000 people have come to Iraq and
Syria to fight their, most of them for ISIS if that's correct it would be a historical
record for the number of people who volunteered for this kind of conflict. why would anyone give up their life to join in brutal vicious militant group, one that's fighting on all sides and in
the long run is facing a really long shot of holding on to the territory it
controls. It's a critically important question
because these foreign fighters are major source of ISIS' strength. Expert: many other
people coming have not had a sense of purpose. Have not had dignity and respect or something to do; a life Project.
And now they have one. one of the things that makes ISIS
unique relative to terrorist organizations that came before it is the degree of
sophistication of their social media operation. ISIS has invested a lot of effort in
developing a very slick social media presentation including
sophisticated videos with narratives and high production
values. Expert: they're clearly focused on the glory of the battle and what the state has accomplished.
Very inspirational for these young man many of whom, not all,
but most of whom have not had a sense of purpose in life
and have not had any means to or earn a living to get married to do the kind of things
that they feel would bring them into an adult life And now here's an opportunity to
prove themselves as young men. In February 2015 The Islamic State was able to shoot
down a Jordanian F-16 They captured the pilot and paraded before some of the bodies that is bombing resulted in. Some of the dead. Just demonstrating that Jordanian aircraft have brought death to civilians and of course the constant
imagery the charring. And then they burn him. This is about settling scores and seeking justice. And so that his terribly stimulating for these young
men to see that. ISIS' video portray them as saviors as heroes as people resisting evil and violent regimes that
oppress Muslim specifically Sunni Muslims. That way, you motivate people who might
want to join ISIS to go travel around the world and fight for
what they perceive as being justice. That way ISIS, a violent, terrible, brutal militant group ends up
being seen as the good guys. This isn't a small problem. ISIS has recruited tens of thousands of
people. This is made their military empire their stronger and,
because these foreign fighters have so much conviction, often more radical more dangerous for the
people that live there. So these things are serious problems and no one really knows how to solve them There was a bizarre controversy
yesterday that went all the way up to President Barack Obama about whether you should put peas in guacamole This all came from a New York Times' recipe; the Internet erupted in outrage by the idea that you might possibly do this Have you ever tried peas in your guacamole?
We don't do peas in guacamole my man. Sorry. This is going to be the weirdest breakfast ever. That's Chipotle, for sure. A hundred percent. Yeah, that's Chipotle This is Chipotle. I eat Chipotle too much to not know that Also you should know I love peas. It's one of my favorite foods - avocados and peas I thought the whole guac and peas thing looked gross, so I came in with different priors It tastes very smooth, but I can't tell if that's smooth like avocado or smooth like peas. Are you double dipping your chip? I'm not I turned it around. You're double-dipping your chip. I turned it around That's the pea one. Really? I think so; maybe not. I can't tell. It will be a little embarrassing if we're totally wrong. We're confidently asserting this is peas. Solidarity, Alison, solidarity! I think this is peas. Yes!
better yet another picture they pleaded These peas aren't bad. This did have whole peas in it which is why I think everyone freaked out. What was different about that recipe was not the peas at all The peas make the recipe a little greener, but they don't add much taste to it. What really you taste in that recipe 
is the boil a jalapeno. And a boiled jalapeno is a much
stronger flavor than a couple of blended peas.
I don't know actually if I like the New York Times recipe or not But if I don't it's not because of the peas To understand what's happening with Greece
and the Eurozone, think about a dinner party. If you're cooking just for yourself and your
spouse, it's easy: you make something you both like. But if you've got guests, things
get harder. If you need to accommodate a vegetarian, and someone who is gluten free, and someone
with a soy allergy, your options get really limited. And that's the problem with Europe's
idea of having a whole bunch of countries all use the same currency. So Greece's economy
is in a disaster. A quarter of the population is unemployed, and it has this very high debt
burden. Normally, if you've got really high unemployment, what happens is that a country
makes its currency cheaper by printing extra money. That makes its products cheaper on
world markets, it makes it a more attractive tourist destination, and it means that foreign
investors can get great bargains. But if unemployment is really low, a country likes to have an
expensive currency. That increases people's purchasing power and it keeps prices down.
And in Europe, you have a bunch of economies that are really different. A price of Euros
that's appropriate for Greece, where they have a 25% unemployment rate is way too low
for Germany, where the unemployment rate is below 5%. And Greece's problem is that it's
small, poor, and geographically isolated from the rest of the Eurozone. It's like the only
vegetarian at a barbeque, except when it comes to currencies, there's no side dishes. And
so there's plenty of specific decisions we can second-guess, plenty of things Greece
did and various banks did that we can question, but fundamentally having all these countries
come to a dinner party with only one dish on the menu was a mistake. The euro was a
project that Europe set about on for really political reasons. It was a symbol of their
determination to have peace on the continent, but they didn't really take the economics
of it seriously. So Greece joins the euro in 2001 and initially, it works out great
for Greece because all of a sudden everyone was like 'yeah, sure, let's lend them money.'
So they borrowed lots and lots and lots of euros, except that didn't change the fact
that their economy is a lot weaker than some of the other European countries. So to really
work, you would need a much, much, much closer union, where you had big financial transfers
coming from the richer places to the poorer places all the time. In the United States,
the poor states like Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, they're constantly getting money
from the richer states like Massachusetts, California, New York, through the welfare
system, through Social Security, through Medicare, through Medicaid. And you know, people may
complain about this or that program, but we don't dispute the idea that it's all one country
so money is going to circulate around. Europeans, you know, they just don't feel that way. Germans
are willing to support poor German people, but they don't want to support Greek people
with their tax dollars. So they're kind of like half-way integrated in a way that doesn't
really work. This is a story about a deadly tooth, and
a paleontologist named Jack Sang. JT: I like to study animals that look weird
or awesome. And few animals look as weird and awesome
as the saber tooth cat, Smilodon fatalis [SMILE-oh-don fat-TALL-is] JT: Their mouths are their weapons. And that's part of the draw to study them. What were these animals doing they're so weird
looking. Imagine you're in Los Angeles … 30,000 years
ago. JT If you came across a Smilodon it would
probably look like a mountain lion on steroids. And the teeth would not be hidden from under
the fur; they would be showing. So it’s pretty scary looking. And if you’re close enough to see those
features you’re probably… uh… dead. THE MECHANICS OF THE MOUTH SWORD These teeth were not to be trifled with. Some could grow to nearly a foot long. JT: And oftentimes they are serrated just
like steak knives. The saber has evolved six times in different
lineages.. JT: That’s evidence for that tool being
a great weapon for carnivores. But just how the saber tooth used its weapons… Well, that’s a matter of hot debate. Some people have even suggested: JT They could not hunt because they looked
so awkward. But Jack says that theory couldn't cut hot
butter. JT: If you were a scavenger you probably would
not need that extreme of a tool. Another idea is that they didn’t use them
to hunt, they just looked sexy with them. But most agree that these mouth daggers had
but one purpose: JT: Killing tools. Stabbing tools. Or cutting tools. You kind of make this surgical cut on the
neck, hopefully either severing a major artery or the windpipe. And they can actually use the back teeth,
the cutting teeth, to just chew off pieces of their prey. If your blood is starting to run cold from
terror and revulsion… JT: Pretty much. And people -- well I don’t know if other
people do it but I do in my office-- I try to reenact in my office with different skulls
when nobody is looking. MAMMAL THEATRE  HOW DO YOUR WEAPONS
GROW? So the cat would prow very low and slowly,
stealthily to their prey. And at the last moment it would probably just
hop. And they use their powerful neck musculature
to drive those canines in to the throat. Many mysteries remain about these animals. The one Jack and his colleagues wanted to
solve was: how long did it take these sabers to grow? To figure it out, they looked at fossils from
the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. They employed a combination of technologies:
CT scans… JT: Because CT uses X-rays to blast through
these fossils or bones… And created 3-D images of the teeth. They also looked at the chemical composition
of the teeth. This tells them about the tooth growth rate. See, teeth absorb nutrients as they grow. JT: And there’s some natural fluctuation
in the composition of the elements over the course of the year that you can actually see
a seasonal cycle. And they found Smilodon sabers grew about
6 millimeters per month. JT: That doesn’t sound like a lot but if
you put it into context, human fingernails, for example, grow at 3.4 mms per month. And lions, their canines grow half as fast. But it still takes Smilodon longer than modern
big cats to finish growing their extra long teeth. JT: To grow a seven inch saber it would take
up to three years. And this tells us a little about the life
of baby saber-tooths. JT: Since it took longer to grow these weapons,
it probably would have been beneficial for these cubs to be following their parents,
or for their parents to care for the cubs for a longer period of time. And this is the wonder of modern paleontology. You can start to understand, and even imagine
the life of a baby saber tooth cub, an animal that went extinct 10,000 years ago, just by
studying some ancient teeth, yanked out of a tar pit in L.A. You probably know what this tastes like, or
this, or even this. It tastes as good as it smells, every time.
But there are about 10 to 15 million people in the US with taste and smell disorders,
and for them, these might not taste exactly like they're supposed to. People say it feels
like eating air. Eating a steak might feel like chewing salty leather, M&Ms might feel
like crunchy rocks, tofu — well tofu might taste the same. But point being, there are
a lot of people out there who don't experience flavors normally.
"There's a hidden epidemic of this problem in the United States, and even in the world."
Issues like this happen for so many different reasons that it's hard to pinpoint one cause.
And you might think, you know, whatever, it's just taste. This is the kind of thing that
movies joke about. "I think I lost my sense of smell."
"You gone smell blind, son." But taste and smell disorders can cause some
serious problems. People almost always stop eating normally: they either overeat because
they eventually hope to feel satisfied, or they undereat because nothing satisfies them.
And because they can't taste or smell, they run the risk of consuming a lot of things
they shouldn't: rotten food, spoiled milk, or even harmful smoke and gas.
"I had something in a toaster oven. My then-husband walked in the house and went 'you have a fire!'
He unplugged it. I didn't smell anything, unless I had turned around I wouldn't have
seen it." Fortunately there are rehabilitation programs
that can help cure this. There's no official universally accepted treatment as of right now, and sometimes
the fix is only temporary. But when it does work, it can be a huge lifestyle change. And
that is a pretty sweet deal. The movie makeover is you know sort of the
convention is boiled down to the girl takes off her glasses and she's hot. That's Todd Vanderwerff, Vox.com's culture
editor. We got together to talk about makeover movies. You know the ones. "Given the right look, the right boyfriend,
bam, in six weeks she's the one being crowned prom queen." For all that it gets made fun of, and justifiably
made fun of, I think Rachel Leigh Cook sells the makeover sells the makeover in She's All
That to the degree that I'm like "Okay, sure" nobody noticed that she looked like Rachel
Leigh Cook until now. One of the very first movies with a makeover
as its central plotline was a film called Now, Voyager starring Bette Davis. Charlotte, played by Davis pretty much had
every single convention you see in makeover movies today. She was shy and nervous, she wore glasses,
she had a unibrow and after a brief stint in a sanatorium, she came out looking like
real winner. "I've lost over 25 pounds it won't fit!" It's rooted in Cinderella it's rooted in any
story of the girl or the boy who discovers they are secretly royalty which is a famous
fairytale convention. "Me, a princess? Shut up!" Alright, so there are a few things that always
happen in a makeover movie. 1. You have to establish that the girl or guy
is invisible to the people around them or clumsy or both. 2. You have to find them a seemingly unattainable
love interest. " Yeah see what'd I tell you? Hot right?" 3. Their friends convince them that the only
way to get out of their shitty situation is a makeover. "Let's do a makeover" 4. The big reveal. "She looks beautiful" It's occasionally been
gender flipped and you have the guy like does his hair a different way and suddenly everyone
is like "Oh wow, what a good looking guy!" "Yes yes, big improvement." What I think is interesting about the makeover
story is that, at least in past 30 years, we don't want it to be that easy. Clueless is perfect for this. "Sher's main thrill in life is a makeover
okay it gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos." Clueless is based on the Jane Austen novel,
Emma. It gets at some of her themes of social class
and propriety and what women are allowed to be. The character that who needs the makeover
basically is Alicia Silver Stone's character. She doesn't realize that until the very end
and like in someways the audience doesn't as well. It's a marvelously structured movie if you
look at it at that level. Let me just do a shout out the recent movie,
The Duff. "How could you guys not tell me this whole
time that I was your "Duff" "Your what?" "Your designated ugly fat friend." The Duff really got understood that Mae Whitman's
character in that movie was not going to put on a pink prom dress and suddenly be Taylor
Swift. She was always going to be kind of the quirky
funny girl. "Are you wearing pajamas?" "Oh my God! You know, I get it Wesley! I'm a disgusting, I'm a swamp thing, I'm a
regular Bela Lugosi!" The makeover was not about becoming someone
that was conventionally attractive to dudes, and more about becoming the kind of girl she
would be when was a junior in college and had sort of figured her shit out. "With some intensive work, she'll be ready
for the world's finest trailer park." Makeover movies aren't the most sophisticated
stories in the world, but it's a trope that resonates with people. Teenagers constantly want to hear they're
okay the way they are. That's ultimately what the makeover movie
is about. It's about that when you put the glasses back
on and the prom dress comes off, you're dressed in your artsy pain spattered overalls, you're
still a worthwhile person. just after midnight thousands celebrated what was once just a dream gay couples are tying the knot legally for the first time in Connecticut and now in the past week both Iowa and Vermont chairs in New Hampshire where same-sex couples celebrated the first same-sex couple to legally Wed in the nation's capital judges across the state will be opening their doors today big wins for same-sex marriage Maine Maryland and Washington have become the first dates to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote it's a historic day for Maryland the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down in proposition 8 effectively invalidated again legalizing same-sex marriage in California Rhode Island and Minnesota are the latest states to legalize same-sex marriage same-sex marriages are being recognized in the state of New Jersey and Hawaii will become the sixteenth state New Mexico has become the latest state a federal judge has struck down Oregon's same-sex marriage bans a federal judge in Pennsylvania and starting today same-sex couples in Illinois can legally marry United States Supreme Court here in Washington has now decided not to hear appeals on same-sex marriage the court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in these states more than half all Americans now live in a state where gay marriage is legal a federal judge has struck North Carolina's gay marriage bang we're gonna take you to Alaska now legal in the state of Idaho Wyoming is the latest state in Montana South Carolina's same-sex marriage officially became legal in the Sunshine State at midnight full-blown civil rights battle in Alabama now 36 states and the District of Columbia currently allow gay marriages the landmark decision the US Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriages what this means is that it is now the law of the land in the fourteen states that now ban same-sex marriage - this will take a while it won't be immediate What is the earliest age that a baby can learn
how to swim?  My family has been testing this with my nephew. He was only 6 months old when
we enrolled him in classes with a group called Infant Swimming Resource. Now, of course he's not "swimming." babies this young aren’t developmentally ready to move themselves forward through the water. Instead the goal was to teach him to survive. I have to say I was a bit skeptical when I first saw these clips. How could a baby who can’t even walk or talk learn
how to float. I mean, it kind of looks like torture. But before a month had passed, my nephew proved
me wrong. Every day 2 American families lose a child
to drowning. Drowning deaths are declining overall but it is still the #1 killer of kids
ages 1-4, aside from birth defects. And Arizona, where my nephew lives, has a higher
drowning rate than average, which isn't surprising given that in the Phoenix area, 43% of homes
have a swimming pool. These classes they put my nephew in should really be
the 3rd line of defense. The first is a fence wraps around the pool latches shut, second
is constant supervision. But if those safeguards fail and a baby slips
into the water, it sounds kind of farfetched but the question is what skills, if any, can the baby
use to keep itself alive? That’s where ISR comes in
“It’s completely different than other programs that are out there.”
This is Jennifer, one of my nephew’s instructors. “There’s not a lot of singing and games
even though there’s a ton of positive reinforcement.” She told me that unlike other programs where kids
might play in the pool or use floaties, ISR classes are geared entirely toward preparing
a baby for an emergency situation. The instructor is shaping his behavior through
basic operant conditioning. When he positions his body correctly in a float that behavior
is reinforced with a good breath of air and with her picking him up. They did this every day for a few weeks and
by the end my nephew could put himself into a float after being tipped in face-down.
They also tested him with clothes on because in most drowning situations, the child is
clothed. Now that he’s 1 year old and he's walking, he’s
enrolled in the second set of lessons, which teaches him to look for the stairs and swim toward them under water, taking breaks to float when he needs air on the way.
So is all of this good for him? Some people worry that this type of lesson
is traumatizing. My nephew certainly doesn't like the lessons, and doesn't really like Jennifer.
“If they're not happy with me, I’m the teacher, I’m the bad guy. But just as long as they’re successful in all the
skills that are being taught.” He never developed a fear of the pool.
And his tears don’t seem that different from the ones that come when he doesn’t want to take a nap. They also keep the lessons to just 10 minutes
a day to reduce any health risks of being in the pool.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says swimming lessons for kids 1 year and up can be
effective in preventing drownings, but they don’t support programs for babies younger
than that. “The water-survival skills programs for
infants may make compelling videos for the Internet, but no scientific study has yet
demonstrated these classes are effective.” What they’re really worried about is that
these classes could give parents a false sense of security - if they made parents even a little
less vigilant, they would do more harm than good.
So the doctors are waiting for more data. But for my family, there’s kind of only one data point that
we really care about right now. The #1 goal is to make sure he'll
really be tested. But if my nephew does find himself suddenly under water, it won’t be the first
time that he’s had to find his way back up. Susan Bennett / Siri: Hello. You have a new
email from Generic Incorporated. Do you want to reply? A siri-like voice is still, at this point
in time, basically fairly robotic. Most people who just hear me on a daily basis don't recognize
me as the original voice of siri because the pitch is... A little bit lower. Siri talks down here a
little bit. It's not as evenly paces as if you were speaking
naturally – there are little what I like to call bumps. And the concatenated voices
that came before Siri were very, very robotic. You'd hear things like [robot voice] Hello.
How. Are. You. You know, you would never say, Hello, you
have three appointments for today. You'd say "hey, you've got three appointments today." Well, when you see a direction that says very
peppy and energetic, so of course that's what you do, that would be a younger-sounding voice
than my regular speaking voice, so I would pitch it a little bit higher. [Fake Ad]: Sometimes when you walk through
the grocery aisle, those other water brands just all seem the same. They're flashy and
desperate when you just want something refreshing. That's why you should drink Generic Water.
The water that doesn't try to be anything it's not. I would pitch it a little bit higher – pitch
it in my head, instead of in my chest – la, la, la, la, la – see and all of the sudden
you hit your break and then you'd have to go into falsetto. La- la-la-la-la-la. You
can tell very much from the copy what kind of person they're looking for. It's important
for you to keep in your mind who you're talking to. Typically, we associate a deeper voice with
authority. [Fake Ad]: You think you know the truth about
Jake Gerald. But who really controls him? In the last year, he's taken more than $100,000
from corporate bigwigs, at Generic Incorporated. Who do you want to represent you? Somebody
who listens to the people? Or someone who listens to Big Water? In this case, the voice actor needs to sound
urgent – it's taken such a long time for women to really break into this aspect of
voiceover because people generally think of authority voices as male. Fortunately, that
has changed. But, [high voice] you're not going to get
someone talking like that and saying "you think you know the truth about Jake Gerald,
but who really controls him?" It's not a person you probably would.. run
into on a daily basis. [Fake ad]: Listen up. You think you know the
best water around? You have no idea. Generic water's the hot new thing from Miami to Ft.
Lauderdale. Guys and girls everywhere are saying the same thing. Let's get generic! That one was just a – yeah – that was
a little over the top. [Laughs]. Adding breath, yeah breath and just a real edge. A real edge
to the voice. You know, suddenly you're the monster. You know? You will drink the water. So people that do voice acting for a living
have to think about all those things. About the pitch, and the tone, and the pacing, the
cadence of their speech, who their audience is, who they're speaking to. It's perhaps
a little bit more challenging than people might imagine. To a lot of prominent people, the attack that
killed 9 members of Charleston's Emanuel AME church on Wednesday night – "Mr. Roof is
charged with 9 counts of murder" – was shocking and inexplicable. Lindsay Graham: "I can't explain this. I don't
know what would make a young man, at 21 get so sick and twisted that he would kill 9 people
in a church." Fox anchor: "The gunman's horrifying attack
on faith, killing 9 including a famed pastor." The got part of it right. Obama: "Mother Emanuel is, in fact, more than
a church. This is a place of worship that was founded by African-Americans seeking liberty." One of the founders of the church was Denmark
Vesey, who was later executed after planning to lead a slave revolt in the 1820s. The church
itself was actually burned down after that, as white retaliation increased. And it was
banned in South Carolina after that time. Clementa Pinckney: "The State of South Carolina,
because of the work of black congregations in Charleston, fomenting this desire that
all people should be free in the state, instituted a law that closed Emanuel. I mean, by state
law the church was closed. And it was about 40 years until the church was reistablished." That wasn't the last time the black church
would be targeted by white supremacists, either. In 1963, you have the bombing of the 16th
street Baptist church , which famously killed four young girls. In the 1990s there was a
spate of mysterious fires, many of which were found to be white supremacists targeting black
churches. The reason the black church is a target is because of what it symbolizes. Clementa Pinckney: "Many of us don't see ourselves
as just a place where we come and worship. But as a beacon, and as a bearer of the culture,
and a bearer of what makes us a people. " To white supremacists, any pride in in black
identity has been a reason to retaliate with violence. And throughout American history,
that's just what they've done. In South Carolina alone, from 1866-1868, the
Federal Government compiled reports of nearly 130 attacks on freed men and elected officials.
And many of those attacks, especially those intimidating voters and would be voters, were
orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan. That led to, essentially, the nation's first anti-terrorism
law. The enforcement act of 1871, which is often called the Ku Klux Klan Act, made it
a felony to use "force, intimidation, or threat" to keep anyone from voting or participating
in trials, or from carrying out their duties of a government official. So, was the Charleston shooting an act of
terrorism? One way to look at terrorism is the way that
political scientist do. It's in the service of a very particular political ideology. And
for the Klan, that's preventing black Americans from excersizing their rights as citizens.
Today, it's looking to racist, apartheid countries like Rhodesia, or apartheid South Africa,
as models for what we should be doing here in the states. That might be the reason that
we saw those patches on the jacket of the alleged Charleston shooter. But there's also
another way to look at it. Do people feel terrorized? When Fox News asks if churchgoers
are safe, it's just about one shooting. When the congregants of the Emanuel AME church
ask it, there's a century and a half behind the question of: "Lord, tell us where we are safe at? We need
some answers from you, God? Speak now to us, God. Tell us where to go. Tell us what to
do. You tell me what to say." [Music] I've had to make statements like this too many times we don't have all the facts but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun it may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy but this much we do know no faith justifies these murderous and Craven acts no just and loving God looks upon them with favor already we've seen a national conversation commence not only about the motivations behind these killings but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health system then all across this land of ours we have wept with you whatever measure of comfort we can provide we will provide there gonna be other days for politics this I think is a day for prayer and reflection as president I have now grieved with five American communities ripped apart by mass violence and these mass shootings occur against a backdrop of daily tragedies as an epidemic of gun violence tears apart communities across America any shooting is troubling obviously this reopens the pain of what happened in for 35 years ago at some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries and at some point it's going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it [Music] and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively [Music] Russian President Vladimir Putin is know for his bizarre photos ops. In the West these seems crazy. They're the type of things we turn into Internet memes They make great animated gifs. There are entire Tumblrs dedicated to "Shirtless Putin Doin' Things" Action figures showing him riding bears and doing other crazy things. But where we in the West see this as the crazy antics of an ego maniac In Russia they actually have a very important political purpose. "That's an image that looks like it should be airbrushed onto the side of a van in New Jersey rest area." So, in Russia, Putin's image is crafted to make him seem like a figure that is both powerful and lovable So that is what it says when Putin is interacting with Animals or children. But also is very careful in these photos To stage them so that he's powerful: He's riding the horse, surveying the land around him. Often they show him as if he's stepped into someone else's profession for a day and had incredible success. On one occasion he appeared as a dentist. He's famously had a photo op in the Black Sea where he was shown emerging from the water carrying two ancient Greek amphorae which are these incredible archeological finds. And the initial story is that he had just happened to be swimming and discovered them. But it quickly came out that they had been planted there for him to discover. So the message from all of these is that he is this incredibly impressive individual. But it also has a more simple and direct message which is: The truth is that power in Russia is centralized with Putin to an incredible degree. There no clear successor in place. It's not clear at all what the government would look like without him. And that makes it pretty scary for people to contemplate what would happen if Putin were to become seriously ill. They also reassure Russians that Putin is healthy and strong. He is trying to live up to this Russian ideal of the "real man" the person who is strong and impressive and macho and powerful. A lot of these photos are also designed to show impressive Russia is. When he's hunting that a reminder of its wealth of wildlife and natural resoures. No one is as popular as Putin. No one is as recognizable. No one as that populist appeal. And when he shows that he has these high levels of popularity, that's how he shows the elites, "I got this" You  don't need to worry that the country is going to slip from my grasp. And it's also a way of reminding them that there is no one else but Putin. There is no other figure in Russia that has the same level of bother popular support and elite support. (Putin singing) These photos might seem weird and crazy to us But they also tell us a lot about Putin's strategy about where he stands both with the Russian public and with Russian elites. Something really wild just happened: scientists
grew a rat leg from bone and collagen in a petri dish, and it could change prosthetics
forever. For most of human history, a prosthetic limb
was a piece of wood or metal roughly shaped like a hand or leg. Even through the 19th and 20th centuries,
prosthetics were mainly designed to look like our natural limbs, whether or not they functioned
like them. But we’re now in a renaissance of prosthetic
engineering, with devices that can do everything a natural limb does — and sometimes more. One of the early models in this new wave were
Cheetah blades, first worn by Aimee Mullins to compete in track and field at the NCAA
level. Made from carbon fiber, they harness and release energy generated by each step
a person takes, like a pair of springs. These are what Oscar Pistorius ran on them at the
2012 Summer Olympics. Engineers have also built legs for extreme
sports, like mountain biking or skiing. There’s also bebionic — often called the
“Terminator” hand — which has different grips and gestures that can be controlled
by the flexing of various forearm muscles. Other engineers are working on something even
more amazing: prosthetics that can be controlled by a user’s mind. These typically work with electrodes implanted
in the brain. Through training, people can learn how to activate specific brain areas
that correspond to particular movements. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital
call the rat arm creation a biolimb. They say it’ll be at least a decade until we
might do this with human arms. But already, we’ve gone from Jaime Lannister to Luke
Skywalker — in less than a century. I grew up in a small village. That's why I think America is too big for me. There are a lot of families in Iran that are not like my family when the compulsory hijab was applied on women some families started to cry for their daughters. As a kid my brother was an example of freedom
freedom--was a symbol of freedom that I didn't have.  How was free to run in a green, lovely farm; how was free to ride a bicycle in a nice village... my village is the best! Just look at them. I love that Two women with head scarves, and two women without head scarves. look at how they are free. They just, you know, walk past each other without judging each other. Without getting arrested by the morality police. Isn't that beautiful? I want to see this in my own country. I started to publish this one: It's me, and me. So that's why people started to send their pictures and I ask women to sharing experiences which they did. Women who take pictures of themselves, outside, in Iran without their headscarves
which is a punishable crime. every individual
story makes me really happy there are a lot of women sending their
pictures holding a sign saying that "we believe in hijab, but we hate compulsory hijab" Some of the pictures come from those young girls saying that they just want to feel the wind in their hair. It's a simple demand. Like this. It's forbidden. To be like this is forbidden in Iran. They take off their scarf in front of these signs. This is the "Proper Islamic Hijab" There are a lot of pictures that you can see men supporting women. All the women in my family, they wear hijab. This is not a black and white issue. All families in Iran are not like my family. There are so many families in Iran who do not believe in compulsory hijab. Iran is for all Iranians. You cannot just hide one side of Iran and say "this is Iran" This is a lie! Iran is me and my mother. my mother wants to wear a scarf. I do not want to wear a scarf. Iran should be for both of us. When Jurassic Park first came out in 1993,
it was a pretty groundbreaking depiction of dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg certainly took plenty of
artistic liberties, but overall, the movie was so much better than what had
come before, in terms of recreating what scientists knew about how dinosaurs looked and how they
moved. The character Alan Grant was actually a bit
ahead of his time. “Look at the half-moon shaped bones in the
wrists. No wonder these guys learned how to fly…Seriously!”
Back then, the claim that birds evolved from dinosaurs was still controversial. Now it’s
widely accepted. But in the late 1990s, the science started
speeding ahead and the movies just didn’t keep up.
Even the latest installment, Jurassic World, shot in ultra high-definition 3D -- it features
dinosaurs that are out of date. Three years after the first Jurassic Park
movie was released, scientists in China uncovered a feathered dinosaur for the first time -- Sinosauropteryx.
It takes very specific conditions for the earth to record soft tissues like these primitive
feathers. The animals had to buried quickly, before decomposing, in fine-grained sediment.
It turned out that this part of China, Liaoning Province, saw major volcanic eruptions around
120 million years ago, which provided these very conditions.
And more than 30 feathered dinosaur species have been unearthed there and in some other
places since 1996. These fuzzy dinosaurs were mostly 2-legged
meat eaters, part of a group that’s closely related to birds in the dinosaur family tree.
That group includes many of the dinosaurs featured in the Jurassic Park movies. “Gallimimus”
These guys probably had feathers of some sort for insulation or decoration. And that includes
the raptors. Jurassic Park III sort of nodded to the new
research by giving them a little bit of a hairdo. But their feathers probably looked
more like this. A velociraptor fossil from the Gobi desert
revealed bumps on the forearm similar to the wing attachments on modern birds. That means
raptors had wings. And what about T-Rex? There’s no direct
evidence, but a few years ago, scientists found a 30-foot dinosaur with some feathers
- the biggest so far. Yutyrannus is thought to be closely related to T-Rex, so it’s
possible that the most famous and feared dinosaur might have been sorta fluffy. It’s not clear how universal feathers were
among dinosaurs. But while most of the specimens are theropods, there have been a few
interesting findings from way over on the other side of the family tree. These two have bristles of some sort, which
may or may not be related to bird feathers. And this one, found last year, has even more
complex feather-like filaments. These fossils may indicate that feather precursors date
back to some of the dinosaurs’ earliest common ancestors.
Jurassic World could have introduced feathered dinosaurs to a huge audience this year. But
it didn’t. According to Jack Horner, a paleontologist
that worked on all four films, the decision was made for the sake of consistency.
But you have to assume they also just weren’t up for the task of making feathers…into
something scary. On these humble pages, scientific inquiries
stack one upon the next to form a magnificent castle of human knowledge. Trevor Bedford (TB): We’re looking at how
flu moves about the world and we’re trying to trace back where viruses come from. In a new study, Trevor Bedford and his colleagues
investigate the lifestyles and travel habits of flu, to understand the origin of outbreaks. Think of it: when millions come down with
a strain of flu, TB: someone existed in the world that had
the flu and that now everyone who had the flu descends from that one sneeze. We don’t know that person, obviously, but
we can establish the region that they lived in. Trevor says, the person who sneezed the sneeze
that would give rise to flu season, TB: that person was most likely and usually
in south China, India, or Southeast Asia. You might be thinking, ‘wow..that’s crazy.’   TB: Yes, yes it it is. Trevor compared the genetic material - the
RNA - of flu samples from all over the world and put together a giant family tree of flu. Which Trevor agreed to recreate using paper
and pipe-cleaners. TB: I mean, this is my level of abstraction
anyway. it’s fine. Think of each circle as a flu sample. TB: Here’s the virus…Both of these viruses
share a common ancestor here… This virus actually seeded kind of two infections… Flu mutates…So mutation has occurred… Subsequent people infected. And this goes on … TB: How’s that looking? And on... Now imagine almost 10,000 circles. That’s the size of Trevor’s tree, making
it perhaps the largest study of flu evolution in history. TB: Yeah, depending on how you parse it. i think this, i think this is it. What did this flu family tree reveal? That the life of flu has more twists than
a pretzel factory. TB: So, the biggest surprise is that Influenza
B behaves very differently from flu A. You see, there are different kinds of flu. Flu A… includes the strain H3N2. That was the most common and deadly strain
of seasonal flu last year. And H3N2, Trevor found, leads a very different
lifestyle from Flu B. TB: So, H3N2 evolves very quickly. So your immunity to H3N2 doesn’t last long. The flu evolves, escaping our immune system. TB: Then you’ll get it every 5-10 years
for the rest of your life.   Flu B lives a quieter life. It evolves more slowly. It infects a higher proportion of children,
who haven’t been exposed to flu before. TB: Everyone get it as a kid. but then you’ll have immunity to it for
the next 20, 15 years. These flus also travel differently, Trevor
found.  Flu B can settle for years in one place. TB: We can see one variant of B that sticks
around Southeast Asia for 6 years and doesn’t go anywhere else. And H32N, on the other hand, travels faster
than small town gossip. Which was kind of mysterious. Why would H3N2 travel while Flu B is stuck
in one place? The answer? Airplanes. And the people who ride ‘em. TB: Adults get on airplanes and travel around
the world and spread flu. Whereas  Flu B infects primarily children
and kids don’t get on airplanes as much and don’t spread the virus about the world
as, as quickly. Because Flu B evolves more slowly and infects
mostly kids, it travels when kids travel. And kids don’t travel that much. H3N2 evolves more quickly, infects more adults,
and hitches a ride with them all over the world. Trevor’s data showed H3N2 often migrates
from Southeast Asia, where flu circulates all year long. It heads to North America, where it deplanes,
outcompetes local strains, and takes over. Knowing how different flus operate can help
us make better vaccines. We could tailor B vaccines to specific regions. And H3N2’s migration patterns tell us where
to look for strains that dominate seasonal flu. TB: All of this geographic work points you
towards where in the world we should be picking our vaccines from. Enigmas about this world are a dime a dozen. But, with every study published, our view
of the world gets a little bit more interesting. Until next time. Here’s a theory: Game Thrones is really
all about climate change. Climate change We are hurtling toward the day when climate
change could be irreversible. Why it’s so bad, and why it’s so hard
to do anything about it. Think about the White Walkers, those horrifying
monsters with the zombie army that killed everyone in that crazy battle at Hardhome.
They’re an inhuman destructive force that literally changes the weather during their
onslaught. Like climate change, the White Walkers are
a threat to the whole human race. Noble houses like the Starks, the Lannisters, the Baratheons,
the Martells, and the Boltons are too busy fighting with each other over control of the
kingdom to come together over a common threat. Sometimes, they even deny that White
Walkers are real. I don’t believe that giants and ghouls and
White Walkers are lurking beyond the Wall. You’ve probably seen charts of CO2 emissions
skyrocketing in the 20th and 21st centuries as humans industrialized. And you’ve probably
also seen charts that show just how bad that’s going to be if we don’t stop it. Rising flood levels, droughts, ocean acidification.
Climate change is this massive global threat. But stopping it requires the world’s biggest
nations —like China, India, and the US — to sacrifice a little in the short term and put away their political competition with each other. In the meantime, the world’s poorest people
— the Wildlings in the show — suffer. And the experts in the real world, our own
Night’s Watch, stand on the sidelines. That’s why Charli Carpenter, a political
scientist at the University of Massachusetts, calls Game of Thrones a "collective action story" "The story of the Northern Wall and the forces it holds at bay," she says, "is about the mistaken belief that the industrial civilization can stand against the changing forces of nature." People love yelling at the characters on the
show for ignoring the zombie threat in the north. But if our zombies are climate change,
and we’re not doing nearly enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, who should you really be annoyed with? Anyone who has played a claw machine can relate
to the experience of having the claw perfectly positioned only to see it weakly graze the
prize before pulling back up. "No Man!" It may seem like the machine isn't even trying.
And well... "It is not your imagination, those claw machines are rigged!" There are a couple
of beloved stuffed animals that I have that are from a claw machine, a koala and a bear.
That is Vox.com writer, Phil Edwards. "I looked at the instruction guides for a few
of the biggest claw games out there. Take for example, the manual for Black Tie Toys
advanced crane machine. If you look at page 8, section subheading Claw Strength you will
see a horrifying piece of information. "Managing profit is made easy. Simply input the coin
value, the average value of the merchandise, and the profit level. The machine will automatically
calculate when to send full strength to the claw." Alright, so if it cost 50 cents to
play the game, and the prize inside cost 7 dollars. To make a profit of 50% full power
will be sent to the claw only about once every 21 games or so. That sucks. They also randomize
that winning game within a range so that players can't predict when exactly it will happen.
And you might notice a subheading that says "dropping skill" they can program the machine
to make you think you almost won. They taunt you with it. You see the stuffed animal flying
in the air. And then it drops it. And that just ruins everything. So, most of the time
claw machines are more like slot machines, than like skeeball or wack-a-mole. "Who's
in charge here!" "The claw!" The question of whether claw machines are a game of skill or chance goes back decades. The earlier versions back in the 1930s had very little element
of skill and were marketed as highly profitable for their owners. This was the depression
era and people were desperate for ways to get money moving. During a crackdown on organzied
crime in the 1950s federal law classified claw machines as gambling devices and prohibited
the transporation of them across state lines. After those laws were relaxed in the 1970s
newer claw machines from Europe and Asia spread throughout the United States. They actually
started calling them "skill cranes" because the joystick gave players more precise control.
But owners had increasing control over profits as well. And they've been met with a patchwork
of state and local laws and regulations. If machine operators want to make that claw really
really unfair against the players, there's not a lot stopping them. Most of the regulations
focus on the prize size, not the strength of the claw. That's a reason that you might
see fewer of the "win a free iPad" claw machines or "win a free iPhone" claw machines around.
And more of just old fashioned stuffed animals. It's great if players know what they are up
against. Especially since sites like Youtube have enabled claw machine enthusiast to broadcast
their victories. Like this guy. "I'm Matt Magnone. Join me as I venture out and win
as much crap as I can from claw machines!" My best outcome of this is not that all the
claw machines go away. Since I first wrote this article, I've spent a dollar on claw
machines... and I've lost. All I want for people to know is that they are not the problem.
The claw machine is the problem. "Ah, you piece of crap!" The 2016 campaign is under way – Hillary Clinton: "I'm running for president" – and it's pretty clear who's leading in
internet sharing. So how do you become the president of the
internet? Well, you say what you think, and you give
no f***s about the consequences. George Stephanopoulous:"I can hear the Republican
attack ad right now – 'he wants America to look more Scandanavia.'" Sanders: "And what's wrong with that? In those countries, health care is a right
of all people, in those countries college education, graduate school is free. Retirement benefits, childcare are stronger
than in the United States of America." Bernie Sanders is running as a democrat, but
he's really like a Scandanavian social democrat. Not a USSR socialist. But he's a guy who believes that free markets
should be really sharply curtailed by expensive public services. Even if it means very high tax rates. There's not that many politicians who stand
up for this so frankly. Or who don't really care about raising money
from rich people. Sanders: "This great nation and its government
belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires." And the public really does agree with a lot
of his positions. People are with him on labor law reform. They're with him on raising the minimum wage. They agree with him that the rich pay too
little in federal taxes. And Sanders is the guy who launched a one-man
filibuster to try to stop the Bush tax cuts. Sanders: "...giving tax breaks to millionaires
and billionaires who don't need it." There's even a new poll indicating that over
50% of likely voters might agree with Sanders about the merits of a completely government
run health care system. Still, Sanders isn't quite poised to capture
the White House. So even if relatively few Americans agree
with all of Sanders' views, they agree strongly enough to like it all on Facebook, to upvote
it all on reddit. Six months ago, if Bernie Sanders had started
talking about free college tuition, nobody would have covered it. But because people saw how much enthusiasm
there was about some of his earlier statements, lots of people, Vox.com and every website
I know, wrote about it. The American party system is unusual around
the world. We have just two parties representing over
300 million people. Canada has about a tenth that population,
but there are five parties in its parliament. Israel's tiny but they have 10 parties in
their legislature. Sanders: "People are frustrated and angry
about a two party system which is dominated by big money, and which does not pay attention
to the needs of working people, or elderly people, or poor people." This is how Bernie Sanders is winning the
internet. He's not speaking in the bland, lowest common
denominator model of most presidential candidates. He's like a third party candidate, who just
happens to be running inside the Democratic party. Which is literally what he's doing. If the movie is good enough the effects won't matter. You look back at the original King Kong,
and you can tell that's like a puppet, but the movie is so good, you don't care. You really feel for that damn puppet when it falls off
the Empire State Building in the end. A practical effect is anything
that primarily exists there on the set. The actors can interact with them and they have a real sort of gravity and feeling to them that computer effects can often lack, kind of [like] the first big movie that had a lot of visual effects in it was the 1924 version of the movie, "The Thief of Bagdad", which has all these incredible creations and concoctions and on-screen tricks that make it seems like there's actual magic going on when obviously there isn't. The height of practical effects for me 
is probably the late 70s and 80s. *music* The best special effects are probably in the original Jurassic Park. That was the height of practical effects and also kind of the start of computer effects. *shows diagram of a model of a raptor(?) used in the film* And for the most part they still hold up in a way that a lot of other computer-generated effects of the air at Dome. I think the "trend-away" really was kinda in the late 90s. You look at something like the Matrix. It's definitely sort of this watershed 
where people were like "Oh, we can use computers 
to make things look really cool." And then Hollywood just overdid it. I don't think computer effects are all bad necessarily. But they certainly have sort of a feeling to them 
that they don't exist in any physical reality whatsoever and that creates kind of a disconnection 
between the movie in the audience. Now in the Hobbit movies
where the story doesn't work as well. I found myself really distracted, 
especially in the most recent one by these gigantic moments of battle that have no real feeling of, like, weight to them of the characters like behaving as physical beings in a universe in particular there's a scene where Legolas
runs up a crumbling staircase as it's falling out for beneath him. It takes you out of the movie because it's so ridiculous. The primary argument for practical effects 
is a storytelling one. It forces you to zero in on what you really want to do. I think that practical effects necessarily limit you by what is physically capable for actors in a certain situation. Ezra Klein:  why don't you describe for me as vividly as you can what it is you're worried about. what it is
nightmare scenario looks like? Bill Gates: Fortunately, there's very few things
and most of them are very low probability some big volcanic explosion A giant earthquake, asteroid At least in the nuclear case you gotta say we take it quite seriously.
We budget a lot of money, have a lot of people who think about nuclear deterrence, I'm very glad that works being done and I rate the chance of a nuclear war in my
lifetime has being fairly low. I rate the chance of a widespread
epidemic far worse than Ebola in my lifetime as well over 50 percent. If we look at the 20th Century, and we look at the death chart of the 20th Century, I think everybody
would say oh yeah there must be a spike from World War I and you know sure enough there it is like
25 million and I must be a big spike for World War II,
and there it is – like 65 million but then you'll see this other spike
that is as large as World War II, right
after World War I – and most people, a lot of people say what?  Wait a minute – what was that? There's two kinds of flus: There's flus that spread between humans very effectively and there's flus that kill lots of
people. And those two properties have only been combined I into a widespread flu once in history.  That is Spanish Flu. We have no idea where it
came from  – it's called the Spanish flu because the Spanish press was the freest, they were the first to talk openly about it. and so in the annals of epidemic
history that's the big event. I funded a disease modeling group that
uses computer simulation and that work has been phenomenal in
helping us target our polio eradication resources
– which parts of nigeria should we work harder on? And it's very natural if
you have a group like that to say hey look at something like the Spanish flu
in the modern day. Health systems are far better and so you'd think, hey that wouldn't be very bad. Well, we tried it –  and there are some assumptions we had to make – but what we showed is that the force of infection, because modern
transport which be compared to 1918 is over fifty
times as great, if you get something like the [Spanish] flu
and you look at that map of how within days it's basically in all urban centers of the entire globe That is very, uh, eye-opening. that didn't happen with Spanish flu in
the past. The opportunity in did do more than just let it run its course is really only in
the last decade basically when you talk about drugs, you can talk about small molecules or you can talk about these complex biological protein like things
which is a subclass called antibodies antibodies are the molecules the immune
system naturally builds to attack disease Today, the idea that somebody says oh
here's an antibody make a lot of it made it very quickly
that's right on the cutting edge. and the Ebola epidemic showed me that
we're not ready for a serious epidemic. An epidemic that
would be more infectious and would spread faster than Ebola did. This is the greatest
risk have a huge tragedy. This is the most
likely thing by far to kill over 10 million excess people in a year. We don't need to invest nearly
what we do in military preparedness. this is
something where less than a billion a year on R&D,
medical surveillance, on standby personnel, cross-training the
military so they can play a role in terms of all the logistics here. This can
be done and we may not get many more warnings
like this one to to say okay it's a pretty modest
investment to avoid something that, really, in terms
of the human condition would be a gigantic setback. At the end of March this year, NASA astronaut
Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko launched into space to start a year-long
mission at the International Space Station And they did this to test the effects of long-term
space travel on the human body. This’ll be the longest trip ever taken by
a NASA astronaut. Most trips usually last between 4-6 months. There are a bunch of issues with spending
time in space we already know about — muscles waste away, there’s bone loss, and circulatory
system troubles. “It’s amazing how your body adapts to
this environment and how it remembers actually being here” Space programs have ways of preparing astronauts
for space itself: there’s underwater practice, there’s parachute training, there’s even
this airplane called the “vomit comet” that simulates zero-G. But staying healthy in space is a bit different. Exercise is a big issue. On Earth, our muscles and bones stay strong
because we have to constantly fight against gravity. Without gravity, they get weak, and that can
prevent astronauts from doing important physical tasks on the job. To prevent this, they’re required to do
up to two and a half hours of exercise per day, strapped into cycling machines, treadmills,
and resistance lifting machines. During long periods in space, astronauts also
develop a weakened immune system. It doesn’t adapt the way it does back on
earth, which leaves astronauts prone to infection due to immune system dysregulation. And this his is a pretty recent discovery. Scientists aren’t exactly sure what causes
this to happen — it could be any combination of lack of sleep, zero gravity, radiation,
and isolation. Even beyond the physical complications, the
psychological aspect is significant, too. Astronauts are in tight, closed conditions
with other people, and their days are not defined by natural light. The Space Station orbits the Earth every 90
minutes, which comes out to about 16 times per day. Even just getting a good night’s rest can
be difficult: over 75 percent of astronauts report using sleeping pills regularly. Scott Kelly’s twin brother Mark is a retired
astronaut, and he’s serving as a live subject of comparison for the effects of spending
time in space. And the more we understand about this, the
closer we get to longer and bigger projects in the final frontier. These are 3 red wines that are made from the same grape, but at different prices. The most expensive: a 2011Honig cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley. Wine Spectator magazine
rated it Outstanding. And it cost 5 times more than the one on the right.
So does it taste 5 times better? 19 Vox staffers tasted and rated each of the
wines. And almost half of them correctly identified the most expensive one. But that’s
not because they liked it more. "Very nuanced. Complex. Didn't enjoy it." The average ratings of the cheapest and most
expensive wine were actually the same. "I'm glad I have cheap taste. That's going to make my life really easy." And this is consistent with a 2008 study
that compiled 6,000 blind tastings in the US. It found that unless they had undergone
wine training, people didn’t actually prefer the taste of more expensive wines. In fact they
enjoyed them slightly less. "Yeah, that's really not very pleasant." There seems to be something about wine that can make us feel a bit lost. “That has sort of an oaky afterbirth." That’s probably why a single
movie can move the whole wine market. “That's tasty.” “That’s 100% pinot
noir. Single vineyard. They don’t even make it anymore.”
After Sideways was released, sales of Pinot Noir jumped up compared to other red wines.
And sales of merlot? “I’m not drinking any f*cking merlot.”
They slowed down. But who decides what good wine is? 
Professional judges give medals in wine competitions, but they’re really inconsistent
One statistician showed that most wines that received the highest score in one 
competition also got the lowest score in another. This is the distribution of gold medals that
you would expect if they were awarded by random chance. It looks a lot like the actual distribution
of gold medals entered in US wine competitions. That suggests judges often disagree with each
other. But it gets worse: they often disagree with themselves. When surreptitiously given
the same wine 3 times, only 1 in 10 of the judges at the California State Fair wine competition
consistently awarded it the same medal. Wine ratings published in magazines can be
all over the map too. Here’s how two of the top critics described the same wine in
2004. “A brilliant effort”  “completely unappetizing”
“a wine of sublime richness” “overripe aromas” “remarkable freshness and definition”
“more reminiscent of a late-harvest zinfandel than a red bordeaux.”
One problem is that not all wine publications require tasters to be blind to the price
and the brand. And that matters because people can’t seem
to avoid associating price with quality. One experiment in Australia showed that people
rated the same wine higher when they thought it was $53 rather than $16 or $6. But get
this - the experimenters had actually made that wine objectively worse by adding tartaric acid.
It didn’t matter -- the price tag overwhelmed their own taste buds.
In another study, scientists scanned the brains of people tasting wines they thought were
either $10 or $90. In reality, it was the same wine, but when they thought it was expensive,
their brains showed more activity in a region associated with pleasant tastes
and smells. so expensive wines may actually taste better after
all, as long as you know that they’re expensive. "You can feel free to finish it if you want." "I'll take the expensive one." "Early in the history of warfare, man
learned that the best formula for victory was compounded in striking power,
mobility, and self-protection." The US is easily the most powerful
country to have ever existed. And it certainly spends more on its
military budget and any other country does today. That's all pretty well-known, but less well-known is the fact that the
US has around 800 military bases around the globe. This map can't even show that many dots. These are just 200 or so dots to give you
an idea of where these bases are clustered. These bases are everything from massive military compounds to small airstrips in the middle of the ocean. If you combined all the foreign bases that every other nation has outside of its own borders, you get a total of about thirty. There's never been a country with such a massive global presence. And the big question is: how did these bases
get there the first place? And how much is it costing US taxpayers
to keep them open? Most to these bases cropped up after
WWII, when the US set up in places like Germany and Japan to help maintain peace, after an era of intense global war. "But we cannot expect these people to
discard Nazi ideas with the casual air with which they
abandoned their uniform. Slowly, steadily. they must be taught the
fundamentals of democracy. Our task is to  supervise this training in
democracy." Even though these countries are now stable, robust democracies, and allies, US still has 50,000 troops in
Japan and 54,000 in Germany. The Korean War brought an influx of American military infrastructure to the Korean Peninsula, where we now have 28,500 troops
stationed. The Cold War made the US expansion
to every corner of the globe imperative to US strategic goals. "Here, in Russia, you see the reason why we are spending billions of dollars in military production and why your family is paying the highest taxes in our history." But even now that the Cold War's over there's not a place on Earth that's not still
covered by US military influence. This includes everything from naval
compounds like those in Guantanamo Bay, to small drone
bases like those in the Horn of Africa, to little-known posts in the middle and
the Indian Ocean like that of Diego Garcia. And it's not cheap. Keeping the US
foreign bases open, costs taxpayers between 70 and 100
billion dollars per year. That's more than any other government
agency receives in taxpayer money, besides of course the
Department of Defense itself. Taxpayers pay between ten and forty thousand dollars more per soldier stationed abroad than they do for those stationed here
domestically. But this cost seems to be worth it to most lawmakers. The idea that US military leadership
provides an indispensable stability to the globe is now a fixture of our global strategy
and our foreign policy. "In an uncertain world full of breathtaking
change, the one constant is American leadership." "You can't have stability without American
leadership there's only one nation in the world capable of rallying the freedom-loving people
of this planet to confront evil." "American leadership is not just
respected it is required." So over the past seven years the
US has set up bases all over the world in response to
threats and then they just never left. These eight hundred bases around the
world represent a massive system of military power that isn't often talked
about, and it's us, the American taxpayers, that are
financially supporting this. We've all decided that it's worth it to
pump a hundred billion dollars out of our economy, to keep these bases open on
the far corners of our globe. the deadliest border crossing in the world is the Mediterranean Sea between Africa and Europe the first four months of 2015 were the most dangerous yet in a few cases migrants are coming from countries that have been dealing with conflict or civil war the Syrian civil war has created millions of refugees often migrants will come from sub-saharan Africa for economic purposes to Libya since Libya has become much less stable itself in the last few years they have nowhere to go but north if you're a migrant in sub-saharan Africa and you want to make it all the way to Lampa do so it costs about ten thousand dollars that's about eighteen years worth of salary so what they do is go as far as they can pay and then work for a while in forced labor to the people who are transporting them at that point it's no longer smuggling if you're being coerced into labor or being and forced into labor then you're a victim of human trafficking so people stop lying to try to swim what they cannot swim many people die inside the water it was very hard often you'll have hundreds of migrants on the ship at once in one case that got a lot of attention throughout Europe earlier this year and generated a lot of humanitarian outcry a boat with 700 migrants on it sank the frantic spruce operation will substitute to take over Marin Ostrom when they took over this operation in the Mediterranean last fall the European Union said that we weren't going to solve the problem unless we tackle the root causes to address the long-term problem without addressing the short-term solution leaves a lot of people in the dust first of all what will make the situation worse is doing nothing in the wake of cases that brought attention to just how deadly the Mediterranean had become the European Union has decided that it's going to restore some search-and-rescue in the Mediterranean I'm going because of Italia my country is not good every time it's fighting like me I'm working some people is telling me if you work in that work we're going to kill you that way I'm fear there is a lot of xenophobia going around Europe right now UK domestic politics have definitely taken an anti-immigrant turn over the last few years both the Conservative Party and the center-left Labour Party have been moving right on the issue of immigration not just from outside Europe but even within the even the u.s. may have something to teach Europe about how it views immigrants and how openly xenophobia is expressed and tolerated but Europe has something to teach the US about whether or not you can expect a long term policy solution to pay off immediately or whether you're leaving people to suffer in the short term So the Daily Show and the Colbert Report were
both responses to the Bush years. They were about this alienation liberals felt from their
country at a moment when Fox News seemed the authentic expression of the American psyche
and George W. Bush kept winning elections. But then what happened is that liberals began
winning elections. "Did you guys hear? It looks like the Mets and the Tampa Bay Rays
are in -- they're in some trade talks. Oh! by the way, did you guys hear about this?" The
constant crises of Obama's early presidency gave the shows a lot to work with at first,
but as the Obama era quieted down, I think it put the Daily Show and the Colbert Report
in a pretty strange position because Colbert and Stewart became the voices of the dominant
political coalition. Punching Fox News kind of became punching down. "Your distortions
and lack of fact footholds against mine. To start us off, here's 50 of yours in a 6-second
Vine." Their replacements -- Trevor Noah at the Daily Show and Larry Wilmore in Colbert's
slot -- are both talented black comedians. They have a real skill for taking on America's
complicated, often really frustrating racial politics. "Yeah I just flew in and boy are
my arms tired." "Ok, alright there, oldie but a goodie. Very nice." "No, no seriously,
I've been holding my arms like this since I got here." And so their takeover is a recognition
of one of the lessons of the Obama era, which is that American politics isn't moving past
race. It's moving into it. This political scientist at Brown University, a guy named
Michael Tesler, he goes and shows how in the 80s and 90s, when you polled racial controversies,
you didn't see a big partisan split. So the number of Democrats who agreed with the O.J.
verdict was 50% and the number of Republicans was 41%. But now you look at any controversy
that has even a hint of race in it, like say the verdict with Zimmerman right, around Trayvon
Martin. 68% of Democrats were angry about that. Only 20% of Republicans were angry about
it. There was a poll about whether 12 Years a Slave should win an Oscar, and 53% of Democrats
thought it should and only 15% of Republicans agreed. That isn't the kind of thing we've
seen the political parties splitting on before. Tesler's book, "Obama's race" describes an
inconvenient truth about the 2008 election: It was the most racialized election in modern
American history. There's been no recent campaign in which racial attitudes did as much to drive
political behavior and it's continued on. You even have racial differences in how much
people like Obama's dog. If you show people a photo and you tell them it's Obama's dog,
folks who rank as having a little bit more racial resentment, they tend to like that
dog less than if you show them the same dog and tell them it's Ted Kennedy's dog. America
is sort of at the end of the Obama era, working through its attitudes about race in a way
it sort of hasn't had to for a very very long time. And you're seeing these shows try to
update for that. "I thought that Barack Obama was post-racial." "Yeah. He is. We're not." would you like to never have to cook again that sounds like my current state that sounds like a decent idea it seemed kind of dystopian to be honest that sounds like a weird idea that sounds like a good idea maybe I think it's a dystopic nightmare I don't know what multi dextran is malt it looks like coffee it's over a little bit of a greenish like undertones can I smell it that's curious oh that's weird it's not good it's kind of like a yeasty it doesn't taste that different from protein shakes it's just like it's aggressively neutral oh it's really gross it does in fact taste like raw pancake batter but thinner this is good for me that is not as bad as I feared that's gross I don't enjoy it oh that's terrible actually saw their bad I kind of I mean I could live with this Gunfire We all got on rooftops and started shooting. Rapid gunfire So, I launched grenades and to a
fixpoint do if there was an insurgent more a mother of 10 or an astronomer or the future Nobel
prize-winning scientist or a murderer or rapist like
it didn't matter who was there they're gonna catch that...   Explosions and cheering So it's all the moral mess of difficult experiences. War dishes them up in spades it's the processing that can bring on
enormous moral anxiety and a lot of moral hurt.That's really
what moral injury is. You deploy somewhere like Iraq and everything's really really gray but
you learn the see in black and white. I had to make these decisions in a moral
vacuum, you know those those instant ones, like this guy that's running across the road. do I shoot him or not? This guy moved from from left to right in
my view across the street. think I hit him twice.. like in a sternum 
and like this side area. So what's tough about that is like somehing like that happens and you're relieved but you don't think
about it: "what do that mean?" A year passes or three or four years
pass... what did I do that guy? what does that mean? explosion There can be this dissonance you know,  "I thought i was a good person--
a good woman, a good man and Here I am killing my counterpart. That that hits a party
the brain but doesn't quiet itself easily The morals and the right and
wrong and things and make you a good person or a bad person or just a person are removed from the equation. But
then come back in those things are reapplied. How am i someone who gives to
nonprofits and goes to church and, you know, helps people that are in need but also that guy who shot somebody who was not even sure that they were a bad guy. There's this moral essence knocking on the door saying "why did you do this why did you do that? Couldn't you have done this better?" It's just always kind of humming in the background. My set of moral values is different than when I was 22 getting into gun fights. Using the same moral lens... it's bad news. It just doesn't work and it will take you to some dark places if you try that. So here’s a controversial opinion: Pigeons
are underrated. Does each one of them create an estimated
25 pounds of shit each year? Yes. Can that shit spread disease? Yes. But the same applies to a couple of animals
that we often share our beds with. And pigeons, though they may seem useless,
have actually played an outsized role in world history and in the history of science. If you read the first chapter of Darwin’s
book On The Origin of Species - it isn’t about the animals he famously observed in
the tropics. Instead, he opened his book by talking about pigeons. Darwin noticed how pigeon fanciers had created
a huge variety of pigeon breeds from a single species -- columbia livia, the rock pigeon. And he used this example of artificial selection
to help communicate his own game-changing theory of natural selection. By that time, rock pigeons had been domesticated
by humans for thousands of years, for food and as pets. It was actually once a status symbol to build
giant bird houses for pigeons -- they’re called dovecotes and they’re still standing
today in many parts of Europe and Asia. That’s ultimately why there are pigeons
in American cities: Europeans were fond of them, and they brought them here. And until recently, pigeons were seen as useful
companions. For instance, they were deployed in war for
thousands of years, including the World Wars. “Sleek and well-fed pigeons, busy raising
families of more flying messengers for use by troops in the field” They delivered a lot of messages. That’s Phil Edwards - he writes about history
here at Vox. It didn’t need power. It didn’t need electrical
lines. All it needed was the ability to fly and it would carry the message with it, and
reliably it would get home. One pigeon saved 200 stranded American soldiers
by delivering a message during World War 1, despite being badly injured. In the second world war, the UK expanded their
pigeon corps to 250,000 birds and sent parachutes carrying pigeons into occupied Europe- like
a prepaid envelope- to solicit information. 32 pigeons ended up winning a medal for valor,
the Dickin medal. Scientists haven’t quite figured out the
mechanism behind their homing abilities, but some pigeons can be driven hundreds of miles
away and still fly right home. It’s a skill that hasn’t gone unnoticed
by criminal elements. “Brazilian prison authorities have discovered
a new smuggling scheme used in jails. Carrier pigeons are used to deliver drugs and mobile
phones to inmates” And it’s the secret to those ceremonial
white “doves” - they’re pigeons. And they just go home when they’re released. During World War 2 pigeons were also part
of a long-shot project headed by famous behaviorist B.F. Skinner. And the idea was that pigeons could be used
to guide a missile toward its target. Skinner found that he could train pigeons
to peck at a target with high accuracy by rewarding their behavior. And they were able to hit a single street
corner on a map with enough training. But ultimately the army decided not to use it
because there were better advances in guided missiles and probably because it was pigeons. Skinner kept working with pigeons for the
rest of his career though. They helped him show how reinforcement could shape even complex
behaviors. “I will try to pick out some particular
pattern of behavior and make it a more frequent part of the repertoire of the bird.” Building on these ideas, a project headed
by the Coast Guard later on tried to use the pecking behavior to search for people lost
at sea. They lived in a little bubble at the bottom
of a helicopter when they were on these missions. What they did was they pecked when they saw
objects floating in the water. And they did really well. “The contest was on. Who would spot the
target first: The human observers or the pigeons? They had an accuracy rate that was significantly
higher than humans because they never fell asleep, they had better eyesight and they
were simply more interested in the task of trying to find things because they believed
that it would give them a reward. The program never moved beyond testing because
of equipment failures and budget cuts. But also, our relationship with pigeons shifted.
They became widely seen as pests. In fact they’re one of the the birds not
protected by federal law, and there’s an entire industry dedicated to their removal. "The sun shining bright. Everything seems alright when we're poisoning pigeons in the park." Maybe because we have drones and email and
GPS, all we want from our animals is for them to be cute. But these little bastards could
guide our f***ing missiles. I mean come on, they deserve a little respect. We'll murder them amid laughter and merriment, except for the few we take home to experiment." "Habanero." Why is it that some people like spicy food and some people hate it? [Coughing] "Oh, man." How does that work? "I regret it." Most spiciness is caused by one of two chemicals: Allylisothiocyanite, which is what you find in wasasabi or mustard, and capsaicin, which is what you find in peppers. Plants usually use these to fend off predators like ants or fungi who would otherwise destroy
their seeds before they had the chance to spread. "It's like a snake bit my tongue." So why do you feel that burning
sensation when you're eating spice? "When I swallow I feel it on the back of my throat?"
Almost like there's actual temperature change going on? "Yeah, if I don't talk it's actually better.
You can definitely feel heat build inside your face." Well, the way your
body reacts to capsaicin is the same way it reacts to high
temperatures. "A chunk just went down my throat." OFF-SCREEN: "So, what is the feeling you have right now?" "Regret." "Starting to regulate my heartbeat." Your palate is essentially being tricked into
thinking that it's actually burning. Receptors in the throat and the mouth and the
tongue detect the presence of the capsaicin and they send pain signals to the other parts of the body. "Breathing in and out hurts."
"I'm starting to cry." When you consume capsaicin, your body releases endorphins which are natural stress-fighters. People learn learn to like spice by associating the pain of capsaicin with the positive rush of endorphins. "I feel like, I'm like gassed from a marathon." We rate spice with the Scoville
scale which was invented by an american
pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville back in 1912. Bell peppers are at the bottom with zero.
Jalapeno peppers range anywhere from 2500 to 10,000 which is actually pretty low on the
scale. Jump to two million and you've got standard US-grade pepper spray. And pure capsaicin clocks in at 15 million. That's $*%#ing hot. We've been eating spicy food for
about six thousand years if you think about the genres of food that are
usually spicy like Mexican, Indian, and Thai, they're all very hot regions
and there are a couple reasons for that Cooking with spice traditionally helped
get rid of bacteria that could make people sick. Especially in places with high humidity
and heat. "I'm sweating right now." "Oh, s*&#, it's getting worse actually." And the next time you're sweating from a particularly spicy bite don't go for water. It's
almost totally useless. What you need is milk, yogurt, rice, liquor or even peanut butter. Oils, fats, and
alcohol help dissolve the capsaicin. Water just doesn't. "It helps." Your receptors don't dull or get any less sensitive. the more spicy we eat. "In 30 minutes, we're all going to be laughing about this. I read on the Internet that this helps." Your body just has to learn to associate the pain with pleasure. "It hurts but it tastes really good." "Yeah, it was worth the pain. All the burps just taste like delicious spicy food." Lily Carollo:I used to shower at night when
I was a boy. But when I went full time, I switched to morning
because of the hair. The hair thing. Isn't it pretty? That right there is my mommy. This is my mommy. She's been very supportive. And my father... I would prefer not to talk about. So that's me and my dog, Speedy. I miss Speedy. He's.. he was such a good dog. This is the best Star Trek series. DS9. This is the vinyl version for The Smile Sessions. It's one of the best albums. You remember such a small percentage of the
dreams that you have, especially those from your earlier childhood. But I remember this one clearly. I was onboard the Enterprise D, and there
was this transporter accident, and I had switched bodies with a female classmate of mine in
the second grade. And instead of being freaked out about it,
I was kind of content with it. I was happy with it. That was the first instance of... what was
going on. From coming out, to getting hormones, to wondering
if you'll get the surgeries that you need, finding employment, what other people will
think, it's, it's all hard. And I'm not going to be here forever because
I have one last thing I need to do for my transition, and I need to be around family
and friends to take that last step. My mom has been so supportive, she's just
been completely – I am her kid first. It would be so much more difficult, without
family support. Maybe near impossible. Surf's Up is about -- it's a song about a
man coming to realize that the only way to achieve real happiness, the only way to be
really happy, is to have childhood innocence. Is to have that childhood innocence. And once you lose that, and because – you
cant, you know, get that type of innocence back. That's where the whole tragedy of the song
comes from. Joe Posner, Vox: I think that you might be
connecting some of the lyrics to your experience. Lily: Um -- I love kids. I love interacting with kids but when I usually
see little girls I kind of look at them with envy. Because, you know, I'll never be a little
girl. I was never a teenage girl. [Singing along] ...Aboard a tidal wave ... I can't be a little girl I can't be a teenager. I feel like my high school years would have
been so much better. My college years would have been so much better,
had I been just, you know, born a girl. [Music: "A children's song..."] If I was the wealthiest person on earth, and
if there – if I had to give it all away to be born with a female body, I would give
it all away. Am I going to look like your average girl? Am I going to, is transitioning going to turn
out all right? Am I going to find a job? Am I going to ... will I get all the surgeries
that I think I need to get? Joe: How long has it been, that you've been,
like, working toward that? Lily: About two years and nine months. When I don't have to wake up and be worried
about something big, that is, that is when I know I will be through it. Do you recognize this face? Most people probably
do, but try describing it from memory. Kind of like a taller head. Does he have brown
eyes? They’re not exactly deep-set. Green eyes? Bland features. I don’t remember like any
dimples or moles. Ben Affleck’s nose... Not flat but not super pointy either.
So this is the challenge faced by police sketch artists. They interview
victims and witnesses about a criminal’s face and their drawings go out to the public
with the goal of soliciting tips. Take a good look at that sketch. If that man looks familiar... If you have any information you're asked to call metro crimestoppers. we wanted to find out how accurate these sketches
are, and if there might be a better way to put those memories onto paper. There really isn’t any good data on how
often a sketch helps police catch a criminal on the loose.
but by the looks of it, more often than not, they don’t achieve a very strong likeness.
There are certainly some notable exceptions, like this sketch made of Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh. or cases where the suspect has a really distinctive
look. but mostly they’re kind of a shot in the dark.
In academic experiments, sketches were identified only around 8% of the time
Now that’s arguably better than nothing, but there are also risks to putting out a bad
sketch. This man served 12 years in prison for a crime
he didn’t commit after someone said he looked like the sketch of a rapist and then the victim
wrongly chose him from a lineup. Here’s why this is so hard. Psychologists
have long known that we process human faces holistically, rather than on the level of
individual features. Here’s an example: take a look at this photo. Now which of these is the mouth you saw? Generally people are worse at getting this right than
if the mouths are shown in the original facial context. Or try this - are the top halves of these faces the same? How about these? We’re generally
quicker to answer when the halves are misaligned than when they're aligned. That suggests that it’s difficult for us to focus on just one part of a face. The rest of the face tends to interfere.
So our brains aren’t well suited to describe individual facial features but that’s typically
what victims and witnesses are asked to do. And that’s been the fatal flaw for the many
attempts to improve upon the hand-drawn sketch, dating back to the 1960s when police tried
using these mechanical kits of interchangeable features. Picture puzzles to put mugs in the jug. Then came computer programs that were slightly more customizable but still relied on feature-by-feature
reconstruction. In laboratory tests, these systems performed
pretty badly. But the latest generation of computer programs
seems more promising. This system was developed by psychologists at the University of Winchester
in the UK. It makes use of the fact that we’re good and recognizing faces but bad at recalling
their parts. After the victim or witness specifies the
gender, age and race, it presents randomly generated faces instead of individual features.
and all the person has to do is choose a few faces that most resemble the suspect. Using
what’s called a genetic algorithm, those faces then get bred together and a new set
of faces appears. They can also adjust holistic variables, like attractiveness.
When they tested this program in the lab, participants were able to generate these celebrity
faces from memory. And when they tried it in 5 real police departments,
it led to arrests around 40% of the time on average and up to 60% in the most recent trial.
For example, this composite helped police catch a man who raped two women in Manchester.
Someone called in after they recognized the image as a local fast food worker.
Nearly half of violent crimes go unsolved in the US. that includes around 60% of forcible
rapes. Sketches are easy to poke fun at but they’ve been one of the only tools detectives
have in the absence of other evidence. So it’s good news that in the future, they
might be slightly less of an art and more of a science. There's this moment in this incredible
single-take hallway fight scene in Netflix's daredevil that's the best
thing that happened on my television in a long time.  It's this moment where Matt
Murdock, the blind lawyer who puts on a mask and becomes daredevil, slumps into the wall on the floor and he's so
exhausted he can't even stand. You hardly ever see this in fight scenes.
The traditional way fight scenes work is usually a flurry of kinetic punches
in shots between two tireless fighters. But Daredevil's doing something different
here. The concept for the scene isn't novel at all It's a gauntlet; Murdock needs to get to the
end. This is reminiscent of The Raid where a police team gets stuck
in a tenement building and the hallways become a death trap.  Or John Woo's  classic
gauntlet in Hard Boiled. Daredevil captures the
same idea of surprise, but it takes it a step further. The
camera turns in a door frame obscures the scene, making up the match in the action
to Murdock's blindness while they switch out stunt doubles. This
one-shot aspect and  Daredevil is the main reason it's been compared to Old Boy, a Korean film
released in 2003. It's another film where this man wants revenge, and in one scene fights a hallway of men to do it. But the
most similar thing between the two is How exhaustion plays into both. Dae-su, the hero of Old Boy, and Murdock, the hero of Daredevil look like they're out of it. 
The punches get sloppy, it's a battle to get to the door. This
battered exhaustion, which the single take approach
guaranteed, drives home what makes Daredevil powerfully different from other Marvel
efforts. Violence takes a toll on everyone involved. Even when you win. "this message are delivered to you
the people of American" The situation in Iraq and Syria is a 
disaster. But there's one happy fact about this scenario ISIS is stalled and in Iraq it's
actually losing ground. If these trends continue ISIS will be unable to hold on to territory in Iraq in the foreseeable future. When ISIS
swept northern Iraq in June 2014 they looked unstoppable. "How these
victories possible these victories come only from Allah  and that is how with the small numbers of soldiers that we have we take these massive victories" But their weaknesses began to be exposed starting as early as August 2014 when ISIS made boneheaded mistake.
It invaded Iraqi Kurdistan and threatened Erbil the Iraqi Kurdish capital.  "we will not stop fighting will not put down our weapons until you reach your lands." The Peshmerga defended themselves and then turned the tables on ISIS and began offensive
maneuvers which seriously crimp ISIS' style in
northern Iraq.  bring every nation that you want to come
and fight us it means nothing to us. moreover, there were Americans in Erbil and the
United States was not going to allow ISIS to pose a serious threat to its own
citizens. So, in August United States began bombing
ISIS to protect kurdish holdings and to protect the Yazidi minority in Iraq
who ISIS threatened to exterminate. "And to the leading to Obama , to Tony Abbott, I say this: these weapons that we have the soldiers
who will not stop fighting will not put down their weapons." Iraqi army that was swept over June was
week disorganized and were people who fled from the first site of battle. It's smaller now
but it shown battlefield capabilities  particularly the special forces in combat with ISIS and it's buttressed
by an enormous amount Shia militias. These militias together with the Iraqi
army are much more disciplined and much more effective than the scattered week Iraqi
army in June 2014 was and now that ISIS is facing a serious
foe that has adapted itself to their tactics, they're no longer is capable of taking anyone by surprise.  the US air strikes since August and September have been more effective than most observers suggested. The reason that's true is ISIS'
obsession with territory. They wants to openly defend territory and that means
putting troops out in ways that make them vulnerable to
air power in conventional battles. that's why US air strikes have been so
effective in disrupting ISIS. "Bring your planes, bring everything you want to us
because they will not harm us. Why? because we have Allah! And this is something that you do not have." To say ISIS is losing isn't to say that ISIS is going to
disintegrate sometime in the next year or so. this may take a while. And moreover the
group may somehow reconstitute itself as an insurgent group or terrorist group
after loses control territory. The fact that ISIS is losing refers to the
fact that it it increasingly incapable of holding on the territory which is its key mission right at the Islamic State     Shouting in Arabic In 1927 Time Magazine took a survey of all
the major department stores across the country. They wanted to know which colors they associated
with girls in their clothing lines. The answers came back pretty mixed. There's also a catalogue in 1918 that suggests
that little girls should all wear blue because it's a delicate and dainty color. That’s Jennifer Wright, she’s an author
and often writes about history and fashion for Racked. It was only after the war that pink got the
symbolic association that we have today. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, the general who
won World War II, becomes president and this actually turns out to be a pretty important moment
in the history of pink. It was Ike's inauguration and Mamie Eisenhower
came out in this enormous rhinestone-studded pink ballgown, the likes of which you never
would've seen during the war when women were wearing much simpler styles. Mamie Eisenhower loved the color pink, and
she was known for it. She thought that the pink really brought our her
complexion. She had really pretty blue eyes, it was a
nice contrast. In fact, a quick search of newspaper headlines
mentioning Mamie Eisenhower also reference the color pink pretty frequently. And it wasn’t just called pink, it was
called “Mamie pink” And she went around giving quotes like "Ike
runs the country, I turn the pork chops." But yeah, it was a very arbitrary decision
that she just loved pink and everybody else decided, OK this is the color that lady-like
women wear. There's a great song in Funny Face called
"Think Pink." Where the lady editor of the magazine who
is very much based off of Diana Vreeland sings about how women in America today have gotta
think pink. And there's a great line in it where she says
"banish the black, burn the blue," which are two colors the women would've seen a lot of
during the war years. Around this time, pink became a popular color,
not only in just women's clothing, but also in the home. This was something a lot of women liked, by
the way, it wasn't seen as a terribly oppressive thing. But, there were definitely women like Diana
Vreeland who didn't really want to revert to those traditional roles. It was at this point where you start to see
the color pink representing women real and fictional who were anything but traditional. The champion racecar driver Donna Mae Mims
is a really good example of this. She had a pink uniform and a pink helmet and
a pink racecar. There's the pink ladies in Grease and the
Plastics in Mean Girls. The girls who are incredibly canny and kind
of terrifying, brightly explain There's a great cover of Hillary Clinton on
the cover of People magazine wearing a bright pink jacket and the caption next to it is
how we need to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling as women. So she's pretty much doing the opposite of
what Mamie Eisenhower wanted to do. This isn't just about the color pink, it's
about how it's used to define a person's personality and what we think they're capable of. She still wants to show people that really,
I'm just a girl, just like you. So math in some ways is like baking.
And math used to be taught as a recipe, as a series of steps you do, and then you get
a result. And what you understand if you’re a cook
or a baker is that you add things in certain proportions for a reason.
And that, you know, your cake has to have this percentage of fats to this percentage
of flour in order to work. And what Common Core tries to do is to do
the same thing with math. Sort of developing what they call “number
sense,” and number sense is understanding more or less why we do the things we do.   Common Core is taught in a way that most people over 20 don’t recognize. “We find ourselves
tearing out our hair at the new math.” “It’s the same thing I do when I get a
check at a restaurant: Draw a bunch of shapes and tell the waitress to find my error.”
“Parents taking to twitter, posting unbelievably complicated homework assignments.”
These math problems circulate that just seem really nonsensical.
Which is really frustrating. If you have a kid who has this simple problem that looks
like it’s being made way too complex for no reason, it’s totally understandable why
people would say: this recipe that I learned is the quick and easy way to do it. Why aren’t
they just teaching kids to do that? So for example, we all learned to borrow when
we subtracted, but this doesn’t really show you what you’re
doing. It doesn’t really show you what borrowing is.
And so one of the ways the Common Core tries to explain this is with a number line because
subtraction is really about finding the distance between two numbers.
You start with the number you’re subtracting and you take little hops up to a more round
number. So you go 10 between 90 and 100. So you’ve sort of broken down the distance
and you add these numbers together. There’s another method called the counting
up method, and this is also for subtraction. Count up from 38 to 40. Then from 40 you want
to go up to the next big round number, which is 100.
Then you need to go from 100 to 300. And then from 300 to 325.
So that’s the distance between 38 and 325 are these numbers that i’ve circled.
You get this idea in your head that numbers are flexible things made up of other numbers.
40 is a 38 and a 2 The standard algorithm is the easy and quick
way to do it. Students absolutely still have to learn to do it that way.
But the idea is that this gives them a better understanding of what they’re doing.
And that there are a lot of ways to do this. There isn’t just one right way to find the
solution to a math problem.   You read through the standards and they seem
like really reasonable, good ideas. The most important thing is how they’re taught.
Teachers understanding what’s expected of them, having the resources to teach it well.
Because otherwise you do end up with  math problems that don’t seem to make any
sense at all. And in some cases that’s just the parents
not understanding it. But it some cases it probably is a bad lesson
plan, a bad textbook, a teacher who doesn't quite understand what they’re supposed to
do differently now.  There are definitely bumps in the road. Would you characterize yourself as pro-life,
pro-choice, both, or neither? Uh...Both? Can you explain that? I wouldn't, but I can't choose for other people.
That's kind of what we are as America, is you know, letting people have their freedom. I'm Christian, so I'm what do you call it
-- pro-life. It's a life you're taking. It's really considered murder. The baby has a fetal
heartbeat. The baby's alive. So I think when a baby gets a heartbeat, that should be the
cut off point. That's just my stance. I'm not the kind of guy -- like, I want everyone
to follow my stance. All these laws that are making it more difficult for women to get
an abortion, I think that's crazy. They should have all legal rights to have
an abortion. It's our own rights. It's freedom. That's a human being's body so I think they
have a right to have control over they body. I think in situations where the woman had
– where it can be proved that the woman had control over the situation, they should
not be allowed to abort the baby because they were part of that conscious decision. I would
characaterize myself as pro-life. I think that by making it illegal, it makes
it more dangerous for women in the world. I identify as pro-choice. I was brought up Catholic. If you're a Christian,
then, you would let people do what they wanna do, you would be able to understand. I would
say pro-choice. If I had to pick, I would say that I'm....
pro-choice? But personally I'm more on a... somewhere in the middle. I don't want to discuss anything like that. I don't want to go there. Probably pro-life. This life that you're taking
out of the world probably could be something better, or more famous, or bigger than you
could ever even imagine. This is probably the next president. But if you don't allow
them to get an abortion, you best believe they're going to find a way to abort it themselves.
I've seen it. It should be illegal but, it's a fifty-fifty
on that. It really is. Like there's some good points, there's some pros and cons. When I first learned about Iran like most people I was exposed
exclusively to stuff like this:   But as I started to look closer, I started
to see a much different Iran then what the Islamic Republic
regime represents. The reaction in Iran to the news about a
potential deal is a good example of what I'm talking
about. Immediately following the news of this deal with the West, people lined up to greet foreign
ministers Zarif as he returned from Switzerland. They spent all night celebrating the
potential lifting of sanctions and closer ties with the West.   So what's going on here? Is Iran this? Or is it this?    A while back I reached out to twenty five Iranians on Facebook. These were people between the ages of 21
and 35 who lived all over the country. I started following them and realizing that
they were totally normal people. They posted cat videos and took pictures of 
their food and talked about clothes and sports and took plenty of selfies. I never once saw a dogmatic the
religious posts and I certainly never saw anything anti-western I started to realize that there is a big
difference between what  I had studied about this regime and what the people were actually like. These were people who were born after  the 1979 revolution. They were not a part of the emotion and
their zeal that brought about the current Iran and all of its hostilities towards the West. Instead they grew up in an environment of
increase in seclusion from the world   on one hand while gaining huge access to
the world through the internet on the other hand   So in today's Iran people are less
likely to hate Americans. In my effort to befriend Iranians on
Facebook, I don't have a single person reject my
friend request. In fact most have them sent me a message
telling me how happy they were to connect and how they would love to talk more
about our different cultures. Politics wasn't a big part of this
conversation. So, no matter how easy it is to label
Iran is this pariah nation bent on hard-line
religious fundamentalism, remember that while they're definitely
supporters that ideology, there is a whole other side to this country
that we rarely see. Most Iranians are normal people living
normal lives. They want to connect, they want to feel
safe, and they want peace as much as you and I do.
That's something I think we can afford to talk about a little bit more. Baseball players aren’t used to watching
clocks. But that changes this season. Major League
ballparks have installed timers for the commercial breaks between innings, requiring players
to resume the game as soon as those clocks hit zero.
It’s one of the small steps the league is taking to speed up the pace of play after
average game times hit a record high in 2014 -  3 hours and 8 minutes.
It would be one thing if those 3 hour games were action-packed, but actually both hits
and runs per game are down in recent years. So what’s going on? It’s like watching Lord of the Rings 160 times in 6 months or something. Every night you’ve got Lawrence of Arabia. This is Grant, he watches baseball sometimes.
I watch probably about 200 baseball games a year.   
He says there’s no one thing slowing down the pace of play. But part of it is that the
some of the players are kind of dawdling. The time between pitches has gone up.
Last season pitchers took an average of 23 seconds between pitches.
There’s actually a rule on the books that the pitcher has to throw the ball within 12
seconds if the bases are unoccupied. But it hasn’t been enforced.
Just limiting pitchers to 20 seconds would cut around 15 minutes of game time.
The off-season league started testing a pitch clock last year — 20 seconds without a pitch
and the umpires calls an automatic ball. That’s something that may be coming to the
majors next. If they already have the clocks in place for
between innings, I don’t think they’re going to be too delicate with the idea of
a pitch clock. It’s not just pitchers that set the pace
though. Batters have their own bad habits. This year, they can be fined $500 if they
don’t keep one foot in the batters box between pitches. But there’s a pretty long list
of exceptions. Still some players are not happy about this.
I call that bullshit. Batters are already at a disadvantage in this
era of hard-throwing pitchers and stricter drug testing. It can be a strategic move to
be able to slow things down. If you force a hitter to do that, 70% you
are out because you don’t have no time to think.
But baseball purists say if you go back and watch classic games, before velcro gloves,
before players came on the field with a soundtrack, there was a lot less fiddling going on at
the plate. Some other factors are a bit harder to tackle.
There’s been a shift in how teams deploy their pitchers, and it has to do with something
called a loogy. Lefty one out guy.
It’s a pitcher brought in just to face a left handed batter. And it’s one of the
ways that the bullpen has become more specialized, which means more pitchers playing in each game than
before. You’ve got the loogy, maybe two loogys,
7th inning guy, 8th inning guy, maybe a couple of 8th inning guys then 9th inning guy.
More relief pitchers mean more game delays and more commercial breaks. But it’s working
for the teams so, this trend is probably here to stay.
The new instant replay process may have also helped slow down games last year. In theory,
reviewing calls should eliminate arguments on the field, but it ended up that managers
were stalling while their bench coach tried to decide whether to use their challenge.
New rules this year should keep the managers in the dugout during challenges.
The league hopes that by cutting out some of the dead time in the game, they’ll make
baseball more palatable for young people whose attention span can’t survive the 23 seconds
between pitches. Baseball knows that it has the oldest demographic
of the four major North American sports and it’s not particularly close.
But here’s the thing -- football games are actually longer than baseball games, with
more dead time and more commercials. And the kids love football.
But it doesn’t hurt to try. And there’s one way that baseball could become more relevant
rather than less, in this era of constant digital noise.
I think baseball can survive as something of an oasis around that.
Where people come and say we need at least one leisurely sport that we can go to and
just relax. And if we miss an inning,you know, we’re not going to feel bad. We’re going
to go to the park and sit in the sun for the whole express purpose of a leisurely game
with punctuated bursts of excitement. In order to understand the Iranian
nuclear negotiations you need to understand the trilateral relationship
between the United States Israel and Iran.   At first blush it seems very simple: The
United States Israel allies they're both opposed to Iran. But the way
these negotiations have gone down has severely  complicated the matter. To understand by we need to look at the
individual personalities that are involved in the negotiations. First off, and perhaps most importantly is
President Obama. Resolving the Iranian nuclear standoff
peacefully is a major foreign policy priority for President Obama however it's difficult to resolve given
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is rather hostile to Western interests
specifically the United States. However while he does have final control
over the Iranian government he can be pushed by factions inside Iran specifically more moderate
ones that are interest in sanctions relief in exchange for a deal President Hassan Rouhani is widely seen
one of these modern figures and his 2013 election suggested too many
americans that Iran and the supreme leader might be willing
to make a deal. This has infuriated America's ally in Israel's 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees the Iranian nuclear programs as an existential threat. Netanyahu:  "we need a better deal a different deal because this new would
leave Iran was sufficient capability 6,000 centrifuges enables them to break
out to a bomb very quickly."  This has  put
Netanyahu at odds with Obama, and order to deal with this disagreement
he's turned to republicans in the United States   Boehner: "I've invited prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress" Netanyahu: That's why this deal is so bad. It doesn't block Iran's path
to the bomb it paves Iran's path to the bomb." News reporter: "47
Republican senators put their names today   to this open letter to Iran."  This type of
alliance between a foreign leader and domestic american opposition it
basically unprecedented. So you've got a strange situation where
the United States is at loggerheads with its closest ally in the Middle East,
where the United States is divided amongst itself on foreign policy and where you've got
President Obama desperately trying to bolster the
standing of moderates inside Iran, a country the United States has regarded as a
serious enemy since 1979. I think in a lot of ways March Madness is
more fun than the NBA I mean the NBA has elite players who have been
working on their craft for years, but the NCAA is a lot more unexpected.
Because it features tiny schools like Georgia State beating off much bigger powerhouse schools
like Baylor This isn’t by accident. The very structure
of the tournament increases the chance of upsets occurring, compared to the NBA playoffs. Obama: "There's going to be an upset somewhere!" The biggest thing by far is that each round is just a single game instead of a best of
seven series Obama: “There’s gonna be an upset somewhere!”
If you had the games if you had two teams playing 1000 games, the favorite would definitely
win. But the smaller the sample size, means theres
a higher chance of the unlikely outcome occuring NCAA games are also shorter -- 40 minutes instead of 48, further reducing the sample size. When you’re on offense the shot clock tells
you how long you have before you have to take  a shot. In college you can take up to 35 seconds.
Which means that underdogs can slow down the game and cut down on the number of posessions
for their opponents. All these games are also played on neutral courts, so the favored team usually doesn’t
have any home court advantage And often times if you have a neutral crowd,
they’ll start cheering for the underdog because they want to see the upset.
Additionally, the three-point line is closer in to the basket than in NBA. Which means
that three pointers are easier to shoot. The closer three allows for a “high variance
strategy” Shooting a lot of threes can backfire. But if you hit the shots, it can allow you
to beat a team you wouldn’t otherwise. All these factors mean that, every year, a
few big underdogs upset top teams. Usually, this happens in the earlier rounds, but on
occasion, it happens in the final four — or even the championship. It's been a year since Russia first occupied Crimea and
nearly a year since a full-blown separatist conflict broke
out in eastern Ukraine We in the West tend to look at this conflict solely
through the lens Russian aggression but there's so much more to understand. you need to understand Ukraine's history
and in particular how that history has left the country
with deep politica,l linguistic, economic, just fundamental
national divisions. So we can see this first of all by just
looking at a pretty basic political map of Ukraine. If you look at the result in the
election that brought Yanukovych to power, you can see that the eastern regions of the country were
far more likely to support Yanukovych, and the western regions were far more
likely to support Tymochenko. And the interesting thing about that is
the that political divide that you see comes up in a ton of different aspects of
Ukrainian's history and geography. So one area is the linguistic divide. The divides the different regions of the
country that are predominately Russian-speaking as opposed to predominantly Ukranian
speaking really closely mirrored that political divide. Russia went through a series of policies to do what they called "Russification" in the 1700s under Catherine the Great, so
this goes back hundreds and hundreds of years those policies involved everything from settling ethnic Russians in those
regions to forbidding people from speaking the
Ukrainian language.  It continued well into the 20th century. Stalin essentially orchestrated this massive famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine. After that, they increase the resettlement of Russians into Ukraine. You were left with a Ukraine that looked
different. Parts of the country were much more likely to speak Russian, be culturally Russian, be ethnically
Russian, and it's had a lasting impact on the country as a whole. Fast-forward to modern Ukraine. When Yanukovych was elected,  he was negotiating with the EU about a deal that would have brought closer EU ties. So then when he abandoned that and took a bailout from Russia instead, that was perceived as him really kinda
turning away from the west and turning towards Russia. And that was
very controversial. It prompted protests that were largely
clustered in the western part of the country and the capital city Kiev. And eventually it forced Yanukovych
out of office. Point is that this is not just Russia invading Ukraine The point is that there are Ukrainian
separatists who are actively trying to achieved independence from Kiev. Different parts of ukraine have a very
different idea what kind of country Ukraine should be. And that doesn't make
it OK--that doesn't make it acceptable as the matter of international law. It
certainly doesn't justify  what Russia has been doing, but it also shouldn't be something that you
ignore. One of my arguments has been that Kimmy Schmidt
is a sixties gimmick sitcom that's been updated for the 2010s. The premise of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is
that Kimmy Schmidt, herself, was in a bunker for many many years. After she was rescued she decides that she's
going to stay in New York City. She's gone from this world of terrible terrible
trauma to a world where everything is bursting with new opportunity and the color represents
that in many ways. Television has had color since the 1960s but
it's one of those things where a lot of shows haven't had time to really build out color
pallets. Now we've had some great shows with lots of
color in them. Pushing Daisies is one that comes to mind. There's a show where everything in it was
color coordinated. That's from creator Brian Fuller who frequently
does such things. He also does tremendous work with color on
Hannibal where he uses rich blood reds to accent the scenes of death and horror. Kimmy Schmidt definitely wants to signal to
you that this is taking place in a weird heightened world. Kimmy and Titus the roomates, they're both
often colored in just very bright accent colors that stand out from the rest of the scene
or if you look carefully are often color coordinated with sets and with the props around them. Another example would be Jacqueline who is
the woman that Kimmy works for. She's very often in dressed in whites, beiges,
things that sort of blend in with her environment. She is a woman who is from the very rich upper
class world and so she, of course, doesn't want to rock the boat too much and her color
reflects that. And finally the guy that kidnapped Kimmy is
always in very white and black tones. This sort of represents, kind of, his religious
world view but it also represents that fact that he's trying to drag Kimmy back to a world
of monochrome. I think episode 6, in general, is really interesting
in terms of color coordination. When Kimmy is at school where she's trying
to get her GED from a teacher who just doesn't care, he's again, dressed in sort of the colors
of white of beige. The monochrome is the hue of the people who
are trying to keep Kimmy down on this show. Where as Kimmy is dressed in a very bright
green that contrasts well with the green of the blackboards and with everybody around
her. This is a show that, I think, has a couple
of small issues here and there but it's definitely a show that, by the end of season one, I was
very much in to. I just really want to spend more time in this
world because it's so interesting and colorful and unlike anything else on television. So a bunch of scientists from a company called
Carbon 3d just introduced a totally new kind of 3d printing. They were actually inspired to make it from
the movie Terminator 2. Conventional 3d printing involves a printing
head that passes over and over across a platform, depositing a thin layer of material each time. And this 3d printing, forms an object continuously
out of a liquid resin. So what's happening here is you have a bath
of liquid resin that solidifies when light hits it. The platform dips into this resin, and as
it rises up, you have a projector underneath the resin pool that's projecting a series
of cross sectional images that are in the exact shape of the object you want to make. So as the platform slowly moves upwards, the
projector moves through the different images, the different cross-sections, and that causes
the object to form in the shape you want. Wherever there's ultra-violet light hitting
it, that's where the plastic solidifies. So this could be a big deal because it's a
lot faster than conventional 3d printers. It works in minutes instead of hours. Right now 3d printing is still kind of a niche
industry. People use it to make models or prototypes,
but if this new 3d printer can be perfected, it could be possible for it to be used to
make mass produced goods. Let's just be honest. When we look across the street to the Supreme
Court and see "Equal Justice Under Law" -- when you have drug laws that so severely disparate
enforced against some groups -- let's pick African Americans for example -- there's no
difference between black and white marijuana usage or marijuana sales in fact. But blacks are about 3.7 times more likely
to be arrested for it. African Americans are more likely to get mandatory
minimums. Are more likely -- about 13, get 13% longer
sentences. And it's created these jagged disparities
in incarceration. In my state blacks are about 13 or 14% of
the population, they make up over 60% of the prison population. And remember, the overwhelming majority of
people we arrest in America are non-violent offenders. Now you've got this disparity in the arrest,
but that creates disparities that painfully fall along the system. When you get arrested for possession with
intent to sell -- do it in an inner city, now you're within a school zone -- so now
you face even higher mandatory minimums. Now you're 19 years old, with a felony conviction,
possession with intent to sell in a school zone. Forget even all that, if you just have a felony
conviction for possession, what do you face now? Thousands of collateral consequences that
will dog you for the rest of your life. You can't get a pell grant. You can't get business licenses. You can't get a job. You're hungry? Can't get food stamps. You need some place to live? You can't even get public housing. And what that does is has created within our
country, concentrated areas where you have massive levels of men being incarcerated. You create a caste system in which feel like
there's no way out. And we're not anything as a society like we
know we could do -- because there's tons of pilot programs that show if you help people
when they are coming back from a non-violent offense, that their recidivism rates go dramatically
down. If you don't help them, what happens is, left
with limited options, many people make the decision to go back into that world of narcotics
sales. What's more dangerous to society? Somebody smoking marijuana in the privacy
of their own home, or somebody going 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, racing down
a road in a community -- what is more dangerous to society? But yet that teenager who makes a mistake
for doing things the last 3 presidents all admitted to doing, now they have a felony
conviction because it's more likely they're going to get caught. And for the rest of their life -- they're
29, 39, 49, 59, they're still paying for a mistake they made as a teenager. Now that's not the kind of society that I
believe in, nor is it fiscally responsible. It's undermining their productivity. Undermining their ability to take care of
their family. This is so wrong that those conversations
that I'm having with conservatives as well as Democrats are resonating. And so when you have people like Rand Paul
standing up and talking about racial disparities in incarceration, this convergence in understanding
-- of fiscal conservatives, of christian conservatives, of libertarians, shows me that this is a time
of great hope for our country. And so I'm not going to question people's
motives. This is one of those issues like the civil
rights movement of the 1960s, where it should pull all Americans together to say "enough
is enough." What you’re looking at is the world’s
rarest cat. This is a leopard subspecies that lives in Eastern Russia and a 2007 study counted
only about 30 individuals in total. This footage comes to us from a camera trap,
which is a camera that's triggered by heat and motion and can be left in the wilderness for weeks
at a time. Using thousands of photos from cameras like these, scientists recently found
that the Amur leopards have actually doubled in number in less than a decade. Camera traps are especially useful for monitoring
rare and elusive animals whose habitat is difficult to survey, such as the Snow Leopard,
which lives at an altitude of 10,000 feet in the mountains of central Asia. Or the rare
Andean Mountain Cat, which lives even higher in the Andes in South America. The endangered Bay Cat had never been filmed
before 2009. That's when a camera trap caught this short clip. Scientists know next to nothing
about the biology of this animal, which lives only on the island of Borneo in Southeast
Asia. And in 2011, a camera trap captured the first
known video footage of the African Golden Cat. This is a species that few researchers have ever
seen in person. And then earlier this year, a camera trap caught this incredible clip of
a   Golden Cat in action. The idea of photographing animals remotely
has been around for a while. The first camera traps used trip wire and loud powder flash
guns, which must have terrified the animals, but the images were captivating. When National
Geographic published these images in 1906, they were the first wildlife photos to ever
appear in the magazine. But it just wasn’t practical for widespread
use until the technology caught up. It was actually demand from hunters that really spurred
the commercial market and with the switch from film to digital, the number of scientific
studies using camera traps has increased year after year. Most camera traps today have what’s called
a passive infrared sensor, which detects the sudden changes in temperature when an animal
walks into frame. For nighttime, they’re equipped with either a regular flash, or an
infrared flash, which provides less clarity but won’t startle the animals. Camera traps really showed their scientific
value starting in the 1990s when scientists studying Bengal tigers in India began combining
camera trap images with statistical software. This let them produce measurements of things
like tiger abundance and density, which are necessary for any conservation plan. Tigers and many other cat species essentially
wear their fingerprints on the sides of their bodies with these unique markings. So if you
want to estimate the total population in an area, you set cameras out and get a sample
of cats that you can identify. And then you do it again. The number of cats photographed twice gives you enough information
to approximate what the total population is. It’s an adaptation of an older method that
involved actually capturing and tagging animals, but instead of tagging them, you just photograph
them. This was the method used in a recent study
of Saharan cheetahs in Algeria which found that this critically endangered subspecies
is living at extremely low densities. Camera traps also have some law enforcement
applications. Conservation groups are starting to use cameras to catch poachers and they
can send the images in instantly over cell phone networks. Right now about 80% of wild cat
species are believed to be declining, and several are critically endangered, like the
tiger. Just a century ago there were 100,000 tigers in the world, and now there are around 3200. The population of Sumatran Tigers in Indonesia
is down to 450. And this video from a camera trap in what was supposed to be a protected
area, shows part of the reason why. Recognize this sound? If you pop or crack your joints, you probably
do. What happens to our joints when we crack them? And is it bad for you? Synovial fluid is this lubricant-like substance
that's found in between your joints. It kind of looks like an egg yolk. So when you stretch out your joint, you are
releasing gas, and that gas forms a bubble and it collapses and pops. In order to crack the same knuckle again,
you have to wait about 20 minutes for the gas to return back to that fluid. So how is that different from a pop you hear
when you stand up quickly? The sound you're probably hearing then is
the snapping sound tendons make when slide between muscles or over bones. When a joint moves, the tendon snaps quickly
over and it makes a popping sound. So is the knuckle cracking habit safe? Probably. Donald Unger was sort of a self-described
researcher who chose to pop the joints in one of his hands for 60 years, but not the
other one. And he wanted to find out if popping your
knuckles would actually give you arthritis. After 60 years of doing it, he found that
he didn't have any more arthritis in one hand than in the other. But there's still a chance it's not good for
you. One 1990 did find that cracking your knuckles
over a long period of time led to hand swelling and decreased scrip strength, but there hasn't
been any follow-up research on that. So while cracking your knuckles might not
be bad for you, there's still no guarantee that your popping habit won't annoy the people
around you. What greater expression of faith in the American
experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that
America is not yet finished." Just this week, I was asked whether I thought
the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report shows that, with respect to race, little has
changed in this country. I understand the question, for the report’s
narrative was woefully familiar. It evoked the kind of abuse and disregard
for citizens that spawned the Civil Rights Movement. But I rejected the notion that nothing’s
changed. What happened in Ferguson may not be unique,
but it’s no longer endemic, or sanctioned by law and custom; and before the Civil Rights
Movement, it most surely was. We do a disservice to the cause of justice
by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, or that racial division is
inherent to America. If you think nothing’s changed in the past
fifty years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or L.A. of the Fifties. Ask the female CEO who once might have been
assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed. Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be
out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress – our progress – would
be to rob us of our own agency; our responsibility to do what we can to make America better. Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest
that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and
that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the “race
card” for their own purposes. We don’t need the Ferguson report to know
that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and
hearts, to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, the race
is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content
of our character – requires admitting as much. Facing up to the truth. And with effort, we can protect the foundation
stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right
to vote. Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma,
there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination
of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of
wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor. How can that be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning
achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he
was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he
was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come
here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred
go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their
mission to restore the law this year. Of course, our democracy is not the task of
Congress alone, or the courts alone, or the President alone. If every new voter suppression law was struck
down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples. Fifty years ago, registering to vote here
in Selma and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles
on a bar of soap. It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes,
your life. What is our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for
which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our
voice, in shaping America’s future? "Fellow marchers, so much has changed in fifty
years. We’ve endured war, and fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch
every aspect of our lives, and take for granted convenience our parents might scarcely imagine. But what has not changed is the imperative
of citizenship, that willingness of a 26 year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young
mother of five, to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything
to realize its promise. That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America
is exceptional. For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring
ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities
through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much
passion and conviction, because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it. We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea – pioneers
who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit. We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer,
women who could do as much as any man and then some; and we’re Susan B. Anthony, who
shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That’s our character. We’re the immigrants who stowed away on
ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – Holocaust survivors,
Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We are the hopeful strivers who cross the
Rio Grande because they want their kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be. We’re the slaves who built the White House
and the economy of the South. We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened
the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized
for workers’ rights. We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to
liberate a continent, and we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans
who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied. We’re the firefighters who rushed into those
buildings on 9/11, and the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on
the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge. We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists
who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell
truths that need to be told. We are the inventors of gospel and jazz and
the blues, bluegrass and country, hip-hop and rock and roll, our very own sounds with
all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom. We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and
spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his head, and stealing home in the World
Series anyway. We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of,
who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who
for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so
long as we can see far enough.” That’s what America is. [Music] so we just had oral arguments in King versus Burwell which is a huge challenge to the Affordable Care Act if the government gets ruled against it could be really bad for Obamacare the justices were asking about a lot of issues we didn't expect them to and so that made it a really interesting morning Justice Anthony Kennedy asked a really interesting question about constitutionality basically he's worried that the people challenging Obamacare said their reading of the Affordable Care Act would allow the federal government to coerce States in some ways he wouldn't like Kennedy's question was read as good news for the Obama administration Ruth Bader Ginsburg she also asked a very surprising question whether the plaintiffs had standing in the case that they'd actually been harmed by the law if they could bring this case to the Supreme Court in the first place which is something that none of the lower courts have really asked at all so that was a big surprise and then we got a smaller surprise from Justice Alito who was suggesting the idea if the Supreme Court does rule against Obamacare they might allow the subsidies to go for the entire year so people don't lose coverage in the middle of the year so those were the three really big surprises we don't know how this case is going to go Justice Roberts did not ask a single question he's a really important swing vote so without hearing from him reading the tea leaves on this case it's pretty difficult and we're stuck waiting until June together decisions the decision is gonna be really really important what's at stake here are subsidies for millions and millions of Obama care enrollees this is the president's signature legislative accomplishment if the Supreme Court does rule against Obamacare it really does dismantle the law in most of the country and both the White House and congressional Republicans don't have a plan right now to fix that [Music] members of Congress today everyone's talking about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to a joint session of Congress this Capitol dome helped build our Iron Dome is it a music speech was coordinated behind the president's back with congressional Republicans illustrating his opposition to President Obama's proposed deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions Netanyahu thinks this would be a disaster here's the basic meat of this argument I don't believe that Iran's radical regime will change for the better after this deal this regime has been in power for 36 years and its voracious appetite for aggression grows with each passing year this deal would whet appetite would only whet Iran's appetite for more would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger if Iran is gobbling up four countries right now while it's under sanctions how many more countries will Iran devour when sanctions are lifted would Iran fund less terrorism when it has mountains of cash with which to fund more terrorism why should Iran's radical regime change for the better when it can enjoy the best of both worlds aggression abroad prosperity at home the case that Netanyahu is making there is that Iran is a rogue radical regime bent on overthrowing the political order in the Middle East and using its nuclear capability as a tool to enable the kind of aggression that it's doing right now through fun and militant groups let's bowl up huh Netanyahu thinks a nuclear-armed Iran like this would be an unacceptable danger and would probably cheat on any deal to get a weapon Obama by contrast thinks Iran does do bad things he also thinks that Iran can respond rashly to incentives so it knows that sanctions are hurting its economy but is willing to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for a healthier better Oh you you There's something really scary happening in
the economy right now. Since the great recession of 2008, we've gotten
a lot better in a lot of ways, and there's a lot to be happy about. But if you look closer, the scars of the great
recession are still with us. It probably changed the economy permanently. The share of unemployed workers who have been
out of work for a very long time is still way higher than it was. And this problem's been growing with each
subsequent business cycle. Long-term unemployment is way worse then the
ordinary kind. It's demoralizing, but it's not just that. The longer you've been out of work, the less
likely you are to find a new job. Studies show that unemployed workers face
discrimination from employers. Otherwise identical resumés are less likely
to get a call back the longer you've been out of work. Not surprisingly, when the long-term unemployed
stop being unemployed it's often because they've stopped looking for a job entirely. That's one big reason the United States has
seen this really disturbing decline in the share of working-age men in the labor force
at all. It used to be that recessions led to a lot
of short-term firing followed by rapid re-hiring. But recent recoveries have been slower. With much less rehiring and more people trapped
in long-term joblessness. So how do we fix this? Well, we've got the unemployment insurance
program, and it's a useful bridge for people who need some money to get by between jobs. But for people really struggling with long-term
joblessness, it doesn't offer what they actually need, which is a path back to work. One option here would be for the Government
to hire them directly. That's the way the WPA helped get the country
out of the Great Depression. Another would be for some kind of much more
rigorous job training and job placement program. Either way it would be really hard to design
a program, hard to pull off, but very crucially important to solving this huge, huge problem. And right now, no one in Congress is even
talking about it. Kevin Spacey grew up in California, but in
House of Cards, he plays a politician from South Carolina. "As we used to say in Gaffney..."
The first thing you'll notice about Spacey's accent when he's playing Frank Underwood is
what happens to a lot of his Rs. "Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling
apart after 10 years. Power..." This is called r-dropping, and it's a feature of several
well-known dialects. "He would rather the poor were poorer." "The greatest wilderness
on Earth." "In the tradition of bipartisanship." "Metropolitan Museum of Art." But it's also
associated with the upper class of the plantation South. "This war talk's spoiling all the fun
at every party this spring." R-dropping emerged as kind of an affectation among posh people
in southern Britain in the 18th century -- the English didn't always talk that way. And then
it spread to elites on the East Coast of the US. At the same time, r-dropping was a feature
of the creole and West African languages spoken by some of the slaves in the South and their
descendants. But after World War II, new generations of white Southerners essentially abandoned
r-dropping, so today you'll see it mostly in the very oldest generation, or more frequently
with African-American speakers from the South. Take Lindsey Graham as an example. Like Kevin
Spacey's character, Graham is from the northern part of South Carolina, and his Rs are largely
intact. "going to sell the oil to another customer." And that may be because language
in the Southern Appalachian areas was influenced by settlers from Ireland, where people aren't
exactly shy with their Rs. "Seriously. Serious. How close does that sound to the Kentucky
accent where they talk like that and I'm talking like this?" Regardless, R-dropping probably
can't be the shortcut that white actors use to sound Southern in the future. Instead,
the main feature that unites Southern dialects is something called /ay/-ungliding. For people
outside the South, this vowel has two parts. You can probably feel your tongue shifting
as you say the word "buy." But in Southern speech, /ay/ is a one-part vowel in many cases,
sounding more like ah than ay. "Five" "and livelihoods" "terrified." But there's an important
distinction here that Northerners might not be aware of. Most Southerners only do ay-ungliding
before what's called voiced consonants, or at the end of a word. The difference between
voiced and voiceless consonants is whether your vocal chords vibrate when you say them,
and ay-ungliding before voiceless consonants is stereotyped in the South as a less-educated
way of speaking. "But I don't want your life." Ay-ungliding triggers a shift in the vowels,
or in the space in the mouth where the vowels are formed. The ey-sound shifts lower in the
mouth. "And then blame somebody else." The eh-sound moves forward to the front of the
mouth. "Just as strong and opinionated as men." As do the vowels pronounced in the back
of the mouth like go and boot. "Thank you." These vowel shifts occur to different degrees
in different parts of the South, and they're certainly fading in cities where there's a
lot of migration and generational change. But if you're an actor from the North or the
West, the vowels are really the key  to sounding Southern. Network neutrality advocates just scored a
huge win. A win that a year or two ago didn't even seem
possible for them. Tom Wheeler: "No one, whether government or
corporate, should control free and open access to the internet." The Federal Communications Comission said
that both wireless and wired internet providers are actually public utilities and as such
the government can effectively regulate them and force them to abide by net neutrality
rules. Now if you don't know what net neutrality
is -- it is the idea that on the internet we shouldn't be discriminating against different
kinds of traffic. Google should not be able to pay better, sorta
faster internet connection to people's homes than some upstart, startup search engine. Net neutrality is considered by a lot of the
people who were core in the growth of the internet to be the secret sauce in why the
internet has become such an incredible, innovative place. The idea is it's why you've been able to have
startup after startup after startup come and revolutionize the entire industry, why you've
not just had the complete cementing of superpowered, big monopolies in the way that you did with
past technologies. The problem is they didn't want to call internet
public utilities. That felt to them, you know, old school, big
government. It's like what the government would have done
in the 1950s. They wanted to seem like they were coming
up with a more 21st century, lighter touch alternative. And so they kind of tried to split the difference. They said we're going to regulate you a lot
like we'd regulate a public utility, but we're not going to classify you as a public utility. Verizon, which is a big internet provider
looked at that and said 'you can't do that at all' and sued and won. And as such, they gutted the net neutrality
rules the FCC brought out a couple years ago. That looked to a lot of people like the end
of the rules that had allowed the internet to flourish. But the Federal Government, particularly the
FCC, went back and instead of backing down, they actually went harder. So they went and just reclassified all these
internet providers as public utilities. that gives the Federal Government much more
power to regulate them. And they did it, which a lot of people didn't
expect, not just for the fokls running a cable to your house to give you the internet, but
also to the providers of internet for smartphones, tablets -- the wireless internet providers. So this actually means that pretty much all
internet providers now have to abide by net neutrality rules. What is interesting here isn't just the regulation
but the philosophical point. The idea that internet providers are so crucial
to modern life that they actually need to be regulated in a completely different way. The government is essentially raising them
to the level of electricity providers, or water providers. A public utility that the public has an interest
in making sure is distributed and run fairly. I was watching this episode of the simpsons
the other day where Lisa thinks she’s going to get dumber as she gets older because she
has the Simpson’s gene. Lisa: "It can't just be a bad day. I feel like I'm getting dumber by the minute." Her brother and her father and her uncles
have it, so she must have it, right? Grandpa: "That's right, then the Simpson's gene kicks in!" But she finds out, there’s a catch "The defective Simpson's gene is on the Y chromosome, so only men are affected" And it got me thinking, what do we actually
really know about the Y chromsome. And how did we get there? "What does the "Y" stand for?" There were a lot of fascinating TV shows about
genetics in the 1950s "We are about to unfold for you an adventure in the world of science" They taught us that nearly every person has 23 pairs of Y chromosomes "In every male human being, the 23rd pair of chromosomes is a mismatch" "One type has a long X chromosome. The other type has a short Y chromosome" Early on we learned that most girls have two x
chromosomes and most boys have an X and a Y And then this happened A man with XYY was discovered He was a normal guy living a normal life A few years later some researchers started
drawing lines between having an extra Y chromosome and a life of violent crime. "Some studies from the 70s said that a man with an extra Y chromosome meant a man was more aggressive"  It all started at a scottish mental institution
where 315 men were genetically tested for chromosomal abnormalities. 9 of these men
were above average height, had severe mental impairments, had criminal records, and had
XYY chromosomes. Although these 9 men had criminal backgrounds
almost identical to men without XYY. Scientist concluded that their history was directly
related to their genetic disorder. "So he has an extra Y chromosome, that's the criminal gene" Then, Mary Telfer, a researcher in the U.S.
began searching for the XYY chromosome in developmentally disabled boys in institutions
in Pennsylvania. They were tall and had moderate acne on their face and in her mind these were
clear signs of XYY. "Kilhurst research center says he's an XYY man. Do you believe in that theory?" Around that time a tall man in Chicago with
visible acne scars on his face brutally raped and murdered 8 nurses. His name was Richard
Speck. It immediately made sense to Telfer that he was XYY. The New York Times latched onto this story
and ran a series about the genetic disorder stating that Speck’s criminal disposition
was directly related to the fact that he was a “supermale” with an extra Y chromosome. Genetic testing however, concluded that he
was XY. But the damage was done. The idea of a genetic mutant supermale quickly became
a cultural phenomenon. "Well they've found I've got this, um, extra male chromosome" Not surprisingly there was this huge bias
in the research conducted on XYY men. Nearly all genetic testing of these chromosomes were
conducted in prisons and mental institutions. "Wait, so the extra Y chromosome doesn't lead to violence" The fact is, about 1 in 1000 men have XYY
syndrome and a vast majority are completely unaware of their condition. There’s just
no proven correlation between aggressive criminal behavior and having an extra Y chromosome. "The extra Y means nothing at all" Most people know that there’s not a murder
gene in our bodies that make us criminals, but we still use the Y chromosome as a huge
cultural symbol for aggression and masculinity. "Pick up a Y chromosome while you were there, you might be short one" A lack of a Y chromosome means a guy is super
feminine and an extra Y chromosome means he’s a killer. And then there’s Jenna Maroney. "Jenna is an Ashkenazi Jew with an extra Y chromosome?" "What's that now?" When you’re watching your favorite TV show,
it’s important to remember that masculinity and femininity are as much defined by the
world around us, as the genes inside us. The majority of Americans are getting their music on the radio like, we have a huge population of people that here mostly top 40 hits. And so what's in the top 40 really matters to the way that people see the world in the way that we kind of care. Style is such a pop song. And when I listen to the song on repeat for hours a few years ago, I realized that, part of what I really like about the beating of that song is that, there's almost a question and an answer format And you hear this riff the whole way through the song all of the songs in this album are 100% pop And some of them tell stories they are stories like the ones she was telling on 'Fearless' or 'Speak Now' ♪ She wears high heels, I wear sneakers ♪ ♪ She cheers captain and I'm on the bleachers ♪ It's a video that doesn't make a lot of sense when you watch it. There's no storyline that it follows. ♪ Midnight ♪ But the word 'Style' many people have taken as a reference to Taylor Swift's relationship with Harry Styles, the lead singer of One Direction Taylor has been very consistent in saying Taylor: You know this song is about my life and I've never revealed who it's actually about. And then, 14 seconds into this video, you see that paper airplane necklace. The one that she, and Harry Styles exchanged with each other. She's giving you that clue. When you're creating a song and hoping to get a radio play, what you want is for listeners to be hooked. What that normally means, is you put the chorus of the song as close to the front as you can. A lot of songs start with the chorus. In this song, the chorus isn't coming for a full minute. And so she's kind of pushed that back Taylor: And when I wrote the next song, I was thinking about how we have these kind of fashion staples that, never quite, we never quite throw them out of our closet right? Like, no one's gonna be like why are you wearing a little black dress? No one wears that, that was so 2 years ago ♪ You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye ♪ ♪ And I got that red lip, classic thing that you like ♪ This is a pretty classic chorus structure and, it's using all major chords except for one line. On every single line, you have this like positive feeling to the song. ♪ We never go out of style ♪ ♪ You've got that long hair slick back, white t-shirt ♪ And then in the second half something changes. Tiny minor chord that gives you that question ♪ And when we go crashing down, we come back every time ♪ Is this really a happy song? But that B-Minor says like, is this a good thing? She is notorious for writing songs that are completely about affairs she has had in the past. And here in this song, she says that he has cheated ♪ I say "I've heard that you've been out and about with some other girl" ♪ She has historically played the victim But, in this song, you have her kind of taking a little bit of blame. ♪ What you heard is true, but I ♪ ♪ Can stop thinking about you and I. I said I've been there too a few times ♪ ♪ 'Cause you get that James... ♪ There's a lot of like sensual imagery going on here. Taylor Swift like kind of hugging herself against the wall, her like running her hands up her body Taylor Swift isn't a sex symbol But she's trying to show you like, I am sexual like she's trying to come out and say: I'm an artist I'm someone who is a mature adult. And that's a lot of what this album is, it's kind of a coming-out party for Taylor Swift to say like look at me, I'm a pop star. I'm an adult I'm no longer this country's startlet. I'm someone who has made mistakes and been in hard situations and failed. During the first week of this year, Islamist
militants captured a army base in Borno, Nigeria, and reportedly massacred hundreds of civilians
in nearby towns. These satellite images show the aftermath of the violence.
It was part of a string of escalating attacks by Boko Haram — the same group that kidnapped
more than 270 high school students last year. The group dates back to 2001, but became much
more violent starting in 2009. In the past few years, the attacks have grown increasingly
frequent and brutal, threatening to destabilize Africa’s most populous country.
Boko Haram wants to replace Nigeria’s democratic government with an extremist theocracy.
Still, because they operate out of the northeastern states, most of their victims have been the
poorer, Muslim communities that live there. Broadly speaking, Nigeria’s population is
split between Christians, mostly in the south, and Muslims, mostly in the North.
This dates back to British colonial rule, when distinct ethno-linguistic societies were
stitched together to form Nigeria’s current borders.
Poverty, health, and literacy are worse in the North than in the South and the violence
only contributes to the marginalization of the region. Poor government, high unemployment
and low school attendance set the stage for Boko Haram.
And the government’s security forces have alienated much of the North by at times doing
nothing to stop the attacks and at other times detaining and killing people indiscriminately.
An investigative report by Frontline revealed that civilian militias working with the Nigerian
military have carried out mass executions of seemingly innocent men..
The government’s inability to contain Boko Haram became a major campaign issue in the
lead up to this year's national elections. Both President Goodluck Jonathan, and his
opponent, former dictator Mohammadu Buhari promised to stamp out the insurgency.
Jonathan, a Christian, was already really unpopular in much of the North. When he ran for office
in 2011, he violated an informal agreement that the presidency would alternate between
a Muslim and a Christian every 8 years. Hundreds of people were killed in the riots that followed
that election. So when Nigeria postponed the 2015 elections
by 6 weeks, citing security concerns, the delay was viewed by many as a political move
to help Jonathan regain ground lost to his opponent.
In the meantime, neighboring countries agreed to send forces to battle Boko Haram, which
now controls most of the state of Borno and has declared a “caliphate” there.
But ultimately it will take much more than military force to make Nigeria inhospitable
to terrorism. We've been hearing a lot about anti-vaxxers in the news lately, but they've been around since the beginning of vaccines. Vaccines
date back to the the research of Edward Jenner, a doctor who was working in rural Britain
in the 1700s. He noticed that on the farm, the milk maids didn't get smallpox in the
way everyone else around him seemed to. So one by one, he started scraping pus from sick cows into the skin of his family members, and miraculously they didn't get sick. His
discovery led to the smallpox vaccine, and later the world's first and only infectious
disease eradication. "This child has what's called active immunity. He has acquired this active immunity by actually having the disease. Fortunately, there's a safer way to get immunity. This is through vaccination." Edward Jenner was basically ostracized from his community. People thought it was disgusting that he would inject his family with pathogens from a sick animal. Fast forward to today, and the same kinds of concerns continue. Jenny McCarthy:"We do not need that many vaccines." J.B. Handley: "People overly generalize about them as if
they're only good." Doctors have to ask brand new parents to give otherwise healthy babies dozens of needles, based on the promise that they'll avoid some future, abstract disease. One discredited paper made many, many parents think there is a link between the Measles,
Mumps, Rubella vaccine and Autism. Andrew Wakefield: "The parents understand it. They get it. Because they've lived it." Anderson Cooper: "The messages from the BMJ could not be clearrer or more shocking: Wakefield's research, they contend, has been a fraud."
And we have other anti-vaxxers today who aren't only worried about autism. There are the delayers like Rand Paul: "We sometimes give five and six vaccines all at one time, I chose to have mine delayed." There are deniers of all stripes. There are the Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. There are the parents of children with medical conditions who have to opt out. There are even unvaccinated kids visiting Disneyland. The majority of last year's massive uptick in measles cases actually involved the Amish of Ohio. More than 350 people there were infected by one man who had travelled to the Philippines. These outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the US typically happen just like that. An un-immunized person travels to a place where one of these diseases is circulating, returns to his community with other similarly un-immunized people. And boom. We don't remember what Measles or Polio or Hepatitis B look
like and felt like. Elizabeth Warren: "These vaccines work so well that the memory of these diseases has faded." Viruses and bacteria don't know any borders. All it takes is a
single traveler to spark an outbreak, even in the happiest place on earth. Ezra Klein: So let’s begin with the economy. We're in a point where the economy is growing. We have very high corporate profits. We have a record stock market, and yet for
decades now we've not been seeing significant wage increases for the American people. How have we gotten to a point where we can
have high corporate profits, and businesses can be doing so well, but the workers don't
necessarily share in that prosperity? Barack Obama: Well, this has been at least
a three-decade-long trend. And this was a major topic in my State of
the Union address. We obviously came in at a time of enormous
crisis, and the first task was making sure we didn't have a complete global economic
meltdown. The steps we took, whether making sure the
financial system was functioning — saving the auto industry, encouraging state and local
spending. All those things made a difference in buoying
the economy, and then it’s been a hard but steady slog to the point where now we're growing
at a robust pace and unemployment has come down faster than any time in the last 30 years. In some ways we're now back to the position
where we can focus on what is this longer-term trend, and that is a larger and larger share
of wealth and income going to the very top, and the middle class or folks trying to get
into the middle class, feeling increasingly squeezed because their wages have stagnated. Now, there are a whole bunch of reasons for
that. Some of it has to do with technology and entire
job sectors being eliminated: travel agents, bank tellers, a lot of middle management,
because of efficiencies with the internet and a paperless office. A lot of it has to do with globalization and
the rest of the world catching up. Post-World War II, we just had some enormous
structural advantages because our competitors had been devastated by war, and we had also
made investments that put us ahead of the curve, whether in education or infrastructure
or research and development. And around the ‘70s and ‘80s and then
accelerating beyond that, those advantages went away at the same time as, because of
technologies, companies are getting a lot more efficient and one last component of this
is that workers increasingly had less leverage because of changes in labor laws and the ability
for capital to move and labor not to move.  You combine all that stuff and it’s put
workers in a tougher position. So our job now is to create additional tools
that, number one, make sure that everybody's got a baseline of support to be able to succeed
in a constantly moving economy. Whether it’s healthcare that survives job
loss, whether it is making sure we have child care that allows a two-working-household-family
to prosper while still caring for their kids. Having a certain baseline in terms of wages,
through the minimum wage. So that's one set of issues. A second set of issues then becomes: how do
we make sure that everybody has the tools to succeed in an economy where they constantly
have to adapt? And how do they move up the value chain, essentially
because they can work in higher-wage, higher-skill professions, and were able to compete for
those jobs internationally? Then the third thing is making sure that we
have an economy that's productive. Now if we do all those things, then what I'm
confident about is that we can continue to lower the unemployment rate, increase the
participation rate, and continue to grow and increase productivity. We're still going to have a broader, longer
term, global question and that is: how do we make sure that the folks at the very top
are doing enough of their fair share? The winner-take-all aspect of this modern
economy means that you've got some people who just control enormous amounts of wealth. We don't really resent their success, on the
other hand just as a practical matter, if we're going to pay for schools, roads, et
cetera, and you've got you know, fifty people or eighty people having as much wealth as
three billion, you know you're going to have problems making sure that we're investing
enough in the common good to be able to move forward.  So that's a long term question.  But right now, there's some very specific
things we can do that can makes a difference and help middle class families. And that's why I called it middle-class economics.   Ezra: To focus a bit on that long term question,
does that put us in a place long term where redistribution becomes, in a sense, a positive
good in and of itself, that you have an economy or potentially you have the government playing
the role not of powering the growth engine which is what a lot of what had to be done
after the financial crisis, but of making sure that while that growth engine is running,
that it is ensuring that enough of the gains and prosperity is shared that the political
support for that fundamental economic model to remain strong? Obama: That's always been the case. I don't think that's entirely new. The fact of the matter is that relative to
our post-war history, taxes now are not particularly high or particularly progressive compared
to what they were, say, in the late ‘50s or the ‘60s. And there's always been this notion that for
a country to thrive, there are some things, as Lincoln says, that we can do better together
than we can do for ourselves. And whether that's building roads, or setting
up effective power grids, or making sure that we've got high quality public education, that
teachers are paid enough, the market will not cover those things. And we've got to do them together. Basic research falls in that category. So that's always been true. I think that part of what's changed is that
a lot of that burden for making sure that the pie was broadly shared took place before
government even got involved. If you had stronger unions, you had higher
wages. If you had a corporate culture that felt a
sense of place and commitment so that the CEO was in Pittsburgh or was in Detroit and
felt obliged, partly because of social pressure but partly because they felt a real affinity
toward the community, to re-invest in that community and to be seen as a good corporate
citizen.  Today what you have is quarterly earning
reports, compensation levels for CEOs that are tied directly to those quarterly earnings,
you've got international capital that is demanding maximizing short term profits. And so what happens is that a lot of the distributional
questions that used to be handled in the marketplace through decent wages or health care or defined
benefit pension plans, those things all are eliminated. And the average employee, the average worker,
doesn't feel any benefit. So part of our job is what can government
do directly through tax policy? What we’ve proposed, for example, in terms
of capital gains. That would make a big difference in our capacity
to give a tax break to a working mom for child care. And that's smart policy, and there's no evidence
that would hurt the incentives of folks at Google or Microsoft or Uber not to invent
what they invent or not to provide services they provide. It just means that instead of 20 billion dollars,
maybe they've got 18. Right?  But it does mean that mom can go to work
without worrying that her kid's not in a safe place.   We also still have to focus on the front end. Which is even before taxes are paid, are there
ways that we can increase the bargaining power and the -- making sure that an employee has
some ... measurable increases in their incomes and their wealth and their security as a consequence
of an economy that's improving.  And that's where issues like labor laws
make a difference, that's where, say in shareholder meetings,and trying to change the culture
in terms of compensation at the corporate level. Those things could make a difference. And there's been some interesting conversations
globally around issues like inclusive capitalism and how we can make it work for everybody. Ezra: When you drill into that pretax portion,
one thing you can find in wages is health care costs. Obama: Yeah. Ezra: And when you drill deeper into the health
care costs, one thing you find is that a major piece of why Americans pay so much more is
that when we go to a hospital, an MRI, or an appendectomy, or even a bottle of cholesterol
drugs, just costs much more for an American to buy than it does in Germany, in Japan,
in Canada, in Great Britain. Why do you think Americans pay so much higher
health care prices than folks in other countries? Obama: Well, you know there are a lot of theories
about this. But I think the evidence points to a couple
of key factors. One is that we've got a third-party system. Mostly we've got a system where everybody
gets their health insurance through their employers. Obviously the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare,
helps to cover the gap for those who aren't in that system. But for those of us who have an insurer, we
don't track it. And the market then becomes really opaque
and really hard to penetrate. Health providers are able to, I think, charge
without much fear that somebody's looking over their shoulders and asking well why does
this cost that much? So that's part of it. That's one of the reasons the Affordable Care
Act, a lot of the attention’s been on making sure that the uninsured have peace of mind,
and people who currently have insurance but at some point might lose it or have pre-existing
conditions are going to have it, that's obviously the moral basis for what we did. But people haven't been paying as much attention
to the delivery system reforms that we're trying to institute through the Affordable
Care Act as well. I can't take credit for all four years of
the lowest health care inflation in the last fifty, that we've seen since the Affordable
Care Act passed. Some of the trends I think were already on
their way. But we are accelerating a lot of reforms,
for example. What do we do to make sure that instead of
paying a doctor of a hospital for just providing a service, let’s make sure that they're
being rewarded for a good outcome? Which may mean in some cases fewer tests or
a less expensive generic drug, or just making sure that all your employees are washing your
hands so that you're cutting the infection rate, or making sure that hospitals are reimbursed
when there's a lower readmissions rate, as opposed to when they're doing more stuff. And using Medicare as a lever, I think, is
creating an environment in the health care field where we can start getting better outcomes
and lower costs at the same time. There are still going to be those who argue
that unless you get a single-payer system, you're never going to get all the efficiencies. There's certain areas like drugs where the
fact that Congress has not been, and the Republican Party in particular, has been resistant to
letting drug makers and Medicare negotiate for the lowest price. It results in us paying a lot more than we
should.  But if we're paying four, five, six, eight
percent more than other countries for the same outcomes, I'd be pretty happy where we're
only paying two or three percent more. Because that represents hundreds of billions
of dollars and means we can do a lot with that money. Ezra: When you talk about Medicare as a lever,
Medicare tends to pay a lot less per service than private insurers by a margin. Before single payer there's also this idea
you hear occasionally of letting private insurers band together with Medicare, with Medicaid,
to jointly negotiate prices. Do you think that's a good idea? Obama: You know, I think that moving in the
direction where consumers and others can have more power in the marketplace, particularly
when it comes to drugs, makes a lot of sense.  Now you'll hear from the drug companies
that part of the reasons other countries pay less for drugs is they don't innovate. We essentially through our system, subsidize
the innovation and other countries are free riders. There's probably a little bit of truth to
that but when you look at the number of breakthrough drugs and the amount of money that drug companies
now are putting into research and where they're putting it, a whole lot of it is actually
in redesigning, modestly, existing drugs so they can renew patents and maintain higher
prices and higher profits. That's not entirely true... but there's some
of that. So there is a lot of savings that could be
achieved while still making sure that our drug industry is the best in the world, and
will still be making a healthy profit. Ezra: To turn a bit towards politics, at this
point according to the polls, you are the most polarizing president really since we
began polling, but before you the record was set by George W. Bush, and before George W.
Bush the record was set by Bill Clinton. It seems that there's something structural
happening there in terms party polarization and the way it affects approval ratings and
cooperation with presidents. In your State of the Union you struck back
at critics who say that the idea of healing some of these divisions is naïve or impossible. So when you welcome your successor into office,
what would you tell them there is worth trying to that you think that can still work, that
would reduce the polarization? Obama: Well, there are a couple of things
that in my mind, at least, contribute to our politics being more polarized than people
actually are. And I think most people just sense this in
their daily lives. Everybody's got a family member or a really
good friend from high school who is on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum. And yet, we still love them, right?  Everybody goes to a soccer game, or watching
their kids, coaching, and they see parents who they think are wonderful people and then
if they made a comment about politics suddenly they'd go, 'I can't believe you think that!'  But a lot of it has to do with the fact
that a) the balkanization of the media means that we just don't have a common place where
we get common facts and a common world view the way we did twenty, thirty years ago. And that just keeps on accelerating, you know,
and I'm not the first to observe this but you've got the Fox News Rush Limbaugh folks
and then you've got the MSNBC folks and the -- I dunno where Vox falls into that, but
you guys are I guess for the brainiac nerd types. But the point is that technology which brings
the world to us also allows us to narrow our point of view. That's contributed to it. Gerrymandering contributes to it. There's no incentive for most members of congress,
on the House side at least, in congressional districts, to even bother trying to appeal. And a lot of it has to do with just unlimited
money. So people are absorbing an entirely different
reality when it comes to politics, even though the way they're living their lives and interacting
with each other isn't that polarizing. So my advice to a future president is increasingly
try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues
within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable. You know yesterday I did three interviews
with YouTube stars that generally don't spend a lot of time talking about politics. And the reason we did it is because they're
reaching viewers who don't want to be put in some particular camp, on the other hand
when you talk to them very specifically about college costs or about health care or about
any of the other things that touch on their individual lives, it turns out that you can
probably build a pretty good consensus. Now that doesn't ignore the fact that I would
love to see some constitutional process that would allow us to actually regulate campaign
spending the way we used to, and maybe even improve it. I'd love to see changes at the state level
that reduce political gerrymandering. So there's all kinds of structural things
that I'd like to see that I think would improve this, but, you know there’ve been periods
in the past where we've been pretty polarized. I think, there just wasn't polling around. As I recall there was a whole civil war, that
was a good example of polarization that took place. Ezra: Do you think if we don't get some of
those structural reforms, and more to the point if we continue along this path, in terms
of where the parties are in Congress, are there ways to govern with polarization? It occurs to me that your argument when you
came to office, but before you, Bush was a "uniter not a divider" and before him Clinton
who was going to moderate and change the Democratic party with his sort of Third Way approach,
the last couple of presidents have come to office promising the way they would get things
done is to reduce polarization. Is there an argument or an approach that can
be made to govern amidst polarization? Obama: A couple observations.  Number one is that in American history,
even during the so-called golden age where, you know, you had liberal Republicans and
conservative Democrats and there was deal cutting going on in Congress. Generally speaking, big stuff didn't get done
unless there was a major crisis or you had -- and/or you had big majorities of one party
controlling the Congress and a president of the same party. I mean that's just been the history. There have been exceptions, but that's often
been the case in terms of big muscle movements in the political system. And you know, my first two years in office
when I had a Democratic majority and Democratic house and Democratic Senate, we were as productive
as any time since Lyndon Johnson. And when the majority went away stuff got
blocked. Probably the one thing that we could change
without a constitutional amendment that would make a difference here would be the elimination
of the routine use of the filibuster in the Senate. Because I think that does, in an era in which
the parties are more polarized, it almost ensures greater gridlock and less clarity
in terms of the positions of the parties. There's nothing in the constitution that requires
it. The framers were pretty good about designing
a house, a senate, two years versus six year terms, every state getting two senators. There were a whole bunch of things in there
to assure that a majority didn't just run rampant. The filibuster in this modern age probably
just torques it too far in the direction of a majority party not being able to govern
effectively and move forward its platform. And i think that's an area where we can make
some improvement. Ezra: One of the powerful things that's happened
as polarization has increased politically is it's begun structuring people's other identities. The one I'm particularly interested in here
is race. If you look back at polling around the OJ
Simpson verdict or the Bernhard Goetz shooting in New York, Republicans and Democrats you
basically couldn't tell them apart. Now you look at the Zimmerman verdict or you
look at what's going on in Ferguson and opinion on racial issues is very sharply split by
party.  Do you worry about the merging of sort of
racial and partisan identity? Obama: I don't worry about that because I
don't think that's going to last. I worry very much about the immediate consequences
of mistrust between police and minority communities. I think there are things we can do to train
our police force and make sure that everybody is being treated fairly. And the task force that I assigned after the
Ferguson and New York cases is intended to produce very specific tools for us to deal
with it. But over the long term, I'm pretty optimistic
and the reason is because this country just becomes more and more of a hodge-podge of
folks. Again, this is an example where things seem
very polarized at the national level and media spotlight, but you go into communities -- you
know one of the great things about being president is you travel through the entire country and
you go to Tennessee and it turns out that you've got this huge Kurdish community. And you go to some little town in Iowa and
you see some hasidic Jewish community, and then you see a bunch of interracial black
and white couples running around with their kids. And this is in these little farm communities
and you've got Latinos in the classroom when you visit the schools there.  So people are getting more and more comfortable
with the diversity of this country, much more sophisticated about both the cultural differences
but more importantly the basic commonality that we have. And you know the key is to make sure that
our politics and our politicians are tapping into that better set of impulses rather than
our baser fears. And my gut tells me, and I've seen it in my
own career and you see it generally, a politician who plays on those fears in America, I don't
think is gonna over time get a lot of traction. Even, you know, it's not a perfect analogy
but if you think about how rapidly the whole issue of the LGBT community and discrimination
against gays and lesbians has shifted. The Republican party, even the most conservative,
they have much less ability I think to express discriminatory views than they did even 10
years ago. And that's a source of optimism. It makes me hopeful. Ezra: On Obamacare, something that members
of your administration have always said, and I think you may have said, there's been a
lot of language about it being a good start, a platform to begin building. It's full of experiments, the idea is that
there will be learning, and there will be change. It's been going -- now we're in the second
year of open enrollment -- what would you like to see, if Congress were able to take
up a bill, to tweak, to improve, to change, to build on that platform. What specifically from what you wanted in
there originally or what we've learned since it's actually been in operation. How would you like to see it improved? Obama: Well, I'm not sure, Ezra, that we've
got enough years of it being in place to know perfectly what needs to be improved, where
there's still gaps.  It's been a year. So far the verdict is that this thing's working
for a lot of people.  You've got 10 million people who've been
enrolled, you've got more folks who've been signed up for the expanded Medicaid coverage,
you've seen health care inflation stay low or actually be significantly lower than before
the ACA was passed, satisfaction with the insurance seems to be high. We haven't seen major disruptions to the medical
system that a lot of people had predicted. So, there's a lot of stuff that's working. Over time, I think seeing if we can do more
on delivery system reform, making sure that we fill the gaps in those states that haven't
expanded Medicaid. The big problem we have right now with Obamacare
is that it was designed to make sure that some subset of people qualified for Medicaid
and that's how that's how they were going to get coverage, and others were going to
go into the exchanges because they had slightly higher incomes. And because of the decision of the Roberts
court that we couldn't incentivize states to expand Medicaid the way we had originally
intended, you’ve got a lot of really big states, you've got tens of millions of people
who aren't able to get their Medicaid coverage. And so there's this gap. And that's probably the biggest challenge
for us. The good news is in dribs and drabs, much
as was true with the original Medicaid program, you're starting to see Republican Governor
and Republican State Legislatures realize that we're cutting off our nose to spite our
face. We've got an ideological objection to us helping
our own constituencies and our own health care systems. And to their credit, you've got folks like
John Kasich in Ohio and Snyder in Michigan and now, most recently the governor up in
Alaska and others who are saying ‘You know what this is the right thing to do. Let’s go ahead and expand it.’ So until that kind of settles, I don't think
we'll fully know where there's still gaps in coverage, what more we still need to do. But I think that so far, at least, the performance
of the plans itself, not the website in the first three months but the performance of
the actual plans, you know has at least met and perhaps exceeded a lot of people's expectations. The website, by the way, works great now. Ezra: I'm going to tag out and let Matt in. Thank you very much for taking the time, sir. Obama: Thank you, really enjoyed it. Matt Yglesias: This is a really sort of big
picture question, but over the years, I've heard a number of different members of your
team refer to your kind of philosophy in foreign affairs as realism. Is that a term you would use? Barack Obama: You know, traditionally, a lot
of American foreign policy has been divided into the realist camp and the idealist camp
and so if you're an idealist you're like Woodrow Wilson and you're out there with the League
of Nations and imagining everybody holding hands and singing Kumbaya and imposing these
wonderful rules that everybody's abiding by. And if you're a realist, then you're supporting
dictators who happen to be our friends and you're cutting deals and solely pursuing the
self-interest of our country as narrowly defined. And I just don't think that describes what
a smart foreign policy should be. I think it is realistic for us to want to
use diplomacy for setting up a rules-based system wherever we can, understanding that
it's not always going to work. If we have arms treaties in place, it doesn't
mean that you don't have a stray like North Korea that may try to do its own thing. But you've reduced the number of problems
that you have and the security and defense challenges that you face if you can create
those norms. And one of the great things about American
foreign policy in the post-World War II era was that we did a pretty good job with that. It wasn't perfect, but the UN, the IMF, and
a whole host of treaties and rules and norms that were established really helped to stabilize
the world in ways that it wouldn't otherwise be. Now I also think that if we were just resorting
to that and we didn't have a realistic view that there are bad people out there who are
trying to do us harm and we've got to have the strongest military in the world and we
occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do if
it weren't for the various economic or diplomatic or in some cases military leverage that we
had. If we didn't have that dose of realism we
wouldn't get anything done either. So what I do think what is accurate in describing
my foreign policy is a strong belief that we don't have military solutions to every
problem in the 21st century. That we don't have a peer in terms of a state
that's going to attack us and bait us. The closest we have obviously is Russia, with
its nuclear arsenal, but generally speaking they can't project the way we can around the
world. China can't either. We spend more on our military than the next
ten countries combined.   So the biggest challenge we have right now
is disorder. Failed states. Asymmetric threats from terrorist organizations. And what I've been trying to do is to make
sure that over the course of the last six years and hopefully the next two, we just
have more tools in our tool kit to deal with the actual problems that we have now and that
we can project into the future, rather than just constantly relying on the same tools
that we used when we were dealing with Germany and Japan in World War II. And so ending two wars was important, not
because I was under any illusions that that would mean we wouldn't have any terrorist
threat. It does mean, though, that by not having 180,000
people in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can then more strategically deploy, with a smaller
footprint, special forces, trainers partnering, that allows us to get at the actual problem
and then frees us up to be able to send a team to prevent Ebola. To double down on our investments in things
like cyber security. To look at the new threats and opportunities
that are out there. And that, I think, has been the real challenge
over the last six to eight years. Matt: So in the Middle East, where we're still
very much engaged despite the draw down from Iraq. The Clinton Administration had a policy they
called Dual Containment of Iraq and Iran. The Bush Administration had an idea about
preventative war and about rollback and Democracy promotion. Under your administration, the country is
still very involved in that region, but I don't think we have as a clear a sense of
what is the sort of strategic goal of that engagement. Obama: Well, partly it's because of the nature
of what's happened in the Middle East. I came in with some very clear theories about
what my goals were going to be. We were going to end the war in Iraq. We were going to prevent Iran from getting
a nuclear weapon, trying diplomacy first. We were going to try to promote increased
economic development in the Muslim countries to deal with this demographic bulge that was
coming into play. We were going to promote Palestinian and Israeli
peace talks.  So, there were all kinds of theories. And then the Arab Spring happened. I don't recall all the wise men in Washington
anticipating this. And so this has been this huge tumultuous
change and shift and so we've had to adapt even as it's happening in real time to some
huge changes in these societies. But if you look at the basic goals that I've
set: making sure that we are maintaining pressure on terrorist organizations so that they have
a limited capacity to carry out large-scale attacks on the West. Increasing our partnering and cooperation
with countries to deal with that terrorist threat. Continuing to prevent Iran from obtaining
a nuclear weapon. And using the tool of sanctions to see if
we can get a diplomatic breakthrough there. And continuing to try to move the Israeli
-Palestinian relationship into a better place, while at the same time helping the region
as a whole integrate itself more effectively into the world economy so that there's more
opportunity. Those basic goals still hold true. But what people rightly have been concerned
about that the forces of disorder – sectarianism, most tragically in Syria, but lingering elements
of that in Iraq as well, the incapacity of Israelis and Palestinians to get together,
and the continued erosion of basic state functions in places like Yemen, mean that there's more
to worry about there than there might have been under the old order. We're kind of going through a passage that
is hard and difficult, but we're managing it in a way to make sure that Americans are
safe and that our interests our secured and if we can make progress in restoring a functioning
multi-sectarian Iraqi government, and we're able to get a diplomatic breakthrough with
Iran, then we have the basis I think for a movement towards greater stability. But this is going to be a generational challenge
in the Muslim world and the Middle East that not only the United States but everybody's
going to have to deal with. And we're going to have to have some humility
in recognizing that we don't have the option of simply invading every country where disorder
breaks out. And that to some degree, the people of these
countries are going to have to, you know, find their own way. And we can help them but we can't do it for
them. Matt: It seems to me, on that point, that
members of your administration often seem acutely aware of sort of the ideas of limits
of American power, maybe to a greater extent than they always feel comfortably articulating
publicly. Is it difficult to say, in the political and
media system, that there are things that you can't really do?   Obama: Well... American leadership, in part, comes out of
our can-do spirit. We're the largest, most powerful country on
earth. As I said previously in speeches: when problems
happen, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us. And we embrace that responsibility. The question, I think, is how that leadership
is exercised. My administration is very aggressive and internationalist,
in wading in and taking on and trying to solve problems.   Where the issue of limits comes in is what
resources do we devote that are going to be effective in solving the problem. So, in Iraq, when ISIL arises, if you think
you have no constraints, no limits, then I have the authority as commander-in-chief to
send back 200,000 Americans to re-occupy Iraq. I think that'd be terrible for the country. I don't think it’d be productive for Iraq. What we've learned in Iraq is you can keep
a lid on those sectarian issues as long as we've got the greatest military on earth there
on the ground, but as soon as we leave, which at some point, we would, we'd have the same
problems again. So what I said was Iraqis have to show us
that they are prepared to put together a functioning government, that the Shia majority is prepared
to reach out to the Kurds and Sunnis, and that they're credibly willing to fight on
the ground, and if they do those things, then we can help and we're going to have a 60-nation
coalition to do it. So, if you look at that strategy, yes, it
acknowledges limits. It acknowledges that its a bad idea for us
to, after 13 years of war, to take over a country again. But that doesn't mean we're not engaged, and
it doesn't mean we're not leading. And so, I think the real challenge for the
country not just during my presidency but in future presidencies is recognizing that
leading does not always mean occupying. That the temptation to think that there's
a quick fix to these problems is usually a temptation to be resisted. And that American leadership means wherever
possible, leveraging other countries, other resources, where we're the lead partner because
we have capabilities that other folks don't have. But that way there's some burden-sharing and
there's some ownership for outcomes. And many of these problems don't get solved
in a year or two years or three years.  I mean, the Shia-Sunni split in the Middle
East right now is one that has been playing itself out over centuries. We have the opportunity, I think, to lessen
those tensions and to lift up voices that are less prone to exploit those sectarian
divides, but, you know, we're not going to eliminate that stuff overnight. The trend towards extremism among a small
segment of Muslim youth in the region, that's a trend that's been building up over a period
time in part because of broader demographic problems and economic problems in the region,
partly because of a perverted ideology that's been hypercharged through the internet. It's winning the hearts and minds of that
cohort back. That's a multi-year project. And so in the mean time, you take the victories
where you can, you make things a little bit better rather than a little bit worse, and
that's in no way a concession to this idea that America is withdrawing or there's not
much we can do. It's just a realistic assessment of how the
world works. Matt: You seemed to resist the realist label
earlier, but when you talk about your goals earlier, you seem very concerned about disorder
and you didn't mention anything like democracy and human rights and the country you mentioned
partnering with, it's places like Egypt where they came to power in a military coup, Saudi
Arabia, with public beheadings, Bahrain, where during the Arab Spring they were beating nonviolent
demonstrators and repressing that violently, do you have any concerns about those sort
of long term sustainability of those kind of partnerships? Obama: This is a perfect example, Matt, of
where the division between realism and idealism kind of breaks down. I think any realist worth their salt would
say that any society that consistently ignores human rights and the dignity of its citizens
at some point is going to be unstable and not a great partner. So it's not just the right thing to do, it's
also very much in our interest to promote reforms throughout the Middle East. Now, the fact that we have to make real time
decisions about who are we partnering with and how perfectly are they abiding by our
ideals, and are there times where we've got to mute some of our criticism to get some
stuff done, are there times where we have an opportunity to press forward, that doesn't
negate the importance of us speaking out on these issues. As I said during the State of the Union speech
and as I've said in any speech that I’ve made in the Middle East or anywhere else in
the world, it just means that we've got to do more than one thing at a time. We need a strong bilateral relationship with
China to achieve a bunch of international goals like climate change that are of great
national security importance to us and billions of other people. That doesn't mean it's not smart for us also
to speak out about censorship and political prisoners in China. We have to do both those things and there's
going to be some times they come a little more into the fore than in other times. And the same is true in the Middle East and
elsewhere. But I am a firm believer that particularly
in this modern internet age, the capacity of the old-style authoritarian government
to sustain itself and to thrive just is gonna continue to weaken. It’s gonna continue to crumble that model. My argument to any partner that we have is
that you are better off if you've got a strong civil society and you've got democratic legitimacy
and you are respectful of human rights. That's how you're going to attract businesses,
that's how you're going to have a strong workforce, that's how ultimately you've got a more durable
not-just economy but also political system. But in those conversations, I'm also going
to acknowledge that for a country that say has no experience in democracy or has no functioning
civil society or where the most organized factions are intolerant, you know, religious
sects, that progress is going to be happening in steps as opposed to in one big leap. And that's, I think, the goal of any good
foreign policy is having a vision and aspirations and ideals, but also recognizing the world
as it is, where it is, and figuring out how do you tack to the point where things are
better than they were before. That doesn't mean perfect. It just means it's better. The trajectory of this planet overall is one
toward less violence, more tolerance, less strife, less poverty. I've said this before and I think some folks
in Washington were like, "Oh, he's ignoring the chaos of all the terrible stuff that's
happening." Of course, I'm not ignoring it. I'm dealing with it every day. That's what I wake up to each morning. I get a thick book full of death, destruction,
strife, and chaos. That's what I take with my morning tea. Matt:  Do you think the media sometimes overstates
the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos as opposed
to a longer term problem of climate change and epidemic disease? Obama: Absolutely. And I don't blame the media for that. What's the famous saying about local newscasts,
right? If it bleeds, it leads, right? You show crime stories and you show fires,
cause that's what folks watch, and it's all about ratings. And, you know, the problems of terrorism and
dysfunction and chaos along with plane crashes and a few other things, that's the equivalent
when it comes to covering international affairs. There's just not going to be a lot of interest
in a headline story that we have cut infant mortality by really significant amounts over
the last 20 years or that extreme poverty has been slashed or that there's been enormous
progress we set up when I first came into office to help poor farmers increase productivity
in yields. It's not a sexy story. And climate change is one that is happening
at such a broad scale and at such a complex system, it's a hard story for the media to
tell on a day-to-day basis. Look, the point is this: my first job is to
protect the American people. It is entirely legitimate for the American
people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of concerned when you've got a
bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks
in a deli in Paris. We devote enormous resources to that, and
it is right and appropriate for us to be vigilant and aggressive in trying to deal with that. The same way a big city mayor's got to cut
the crime rate down if he wants that city to thrive. But we also have to attend to a lot of other
issues and we've got to make sure we're right sizing our approach so that what we do isn't
counterproductive. I would argue that our invasion of Iraq was
counterproductive to the goal of keeping our country safe. And despite the incredible valor of our troops
and I'm in awe of them every single day when I work with them, you know, the strategy that
was crafted in Washington didn't always match up with the actual threats that were out there. And we need to make sure that we're doing
the right things and doing those well so that we can also deal with future threats like
cybersecurity or climate change or different parts of the world where there are huge opportunities
but before I came into office, we had neglected for quite some time, Asia Pacific being a
perfect example. Or our own backyard, the Western Hemisphere,
where there's been real progress in Latin America and we've got the opportunity to strengthen
our relationships. But there are also some big problems like
Central America where, with a relatively modest investment, we could really be making a difference
and making ourselves safer. Matt: So there's this idea of a pivot to Asia
and what does that mean to you in specific terms? A transfer of hard military resources, a transfer
of time on your agenda in the national security council? Is it something you've really managed to pull
off or does the Middle East really still have us kind of sucked in? Obama: I think it means all of the above. Look, Asia is the fastest growing region in
the world, the most populous region in the world and you've got the largest country in
the world, China, that has undergone this incredible, dramatic transformation over the
several last decades. How well America does, economically, from
a security perspective, is going to be linked to our relationship to that region. So we've said, a) we've got to make sure we’ve
got a constructive relationship with China, one that is hardheaded enough to make sure
they're not taking advantage of us, but also sends a message to them that we can create
a win-win situation as opposed to a pure competition that could be dangerous. And in order to do that, China, you've got
to step up and help us underwrite these global rules that in fact help to facilitate your
rise. Things like free-trade rules that are fair
and maritime rules that don't allow large countries to bully small ones. So that's one big piece of it. A second big piece of it is making sure that
our allies like Japan and South Korea feel confident that we're always going to be there
and that our presence is not one that over time wanes, because they're looking at a really
big neighbor next door. They want to make sure that if America is
their key partner, that America is going to stand with them through thick and thin. Then you've got all these smaller countries,
or countries that are developing, and are coming into their own in the South Pacific,
in SouthaEast Asia and what we see there is this enormous hunger for more engagement with
America. They want to do more business with us. They want to have more defense cooperation
with us. And what we've been able to do over the last
six years is to have systematically build this set of relationships and strengthen trading
platforms, strengthen security cooperation, everything from how we deal with disaster
relief, so if something like what happens in the Philippines happens in other countries
can work more robustly and we’re building resilience to how we're dealing with deforestation. All these things are areas where we've made
an enormous investment and there have been significant payoffs. Matt: You mentioned the Philippines, and earlier
the idea that there are big gains potentially to be made by giving some assistance to Central
America. Does it really make sense to have so much
of America's foreign aid going to a country like Israel that's quite wealthy when there
are other democratic allies in other regions in the world that seem maybe more in need
of assistance? Obama: Well, our relationship with Israel
is in many ways unique. It's our strongest ally in the region. Our people-to-people ties are unmatched. And partly because of world history, the vulnerabilities
of a Jewish population in the midst of a really hostile neighborhood creates a special obligation
for us to help them. I think the more interesting question is if
you look at our foreign assistance as a tool in our national security portfolio, as opposed
to charity, and you combined our defense budget with our diplomatic budget and our foreign
assistance budget, then in that mix there's a lot more that we should be doing when it
comes to helping Honduras and Guatemala build a effective criminal justice system, effective
police, and economic development that creates jobs. Matt: So you're saying it would make sense
to reallocate those resources? Obama: Well, and part of the challenge here
is just public awareness. Time and time again, when they do surveys,
and they ask people what proportion of the foreign budget is spent on foreign aid? They'll say, ‘uh, 25%’. They're pretty sure all their hard-earned
money that they pay in taxes is somehow going to other folks. And if we can say, it varies between 1-2%
depending on how you define it. And if we were to make some strategic investments
in countries that really could use our help, we would then not have to deploy our military
as often and we would be in a better position to work with other countries to stand down
violent extremism. Then I think people could be persuaded by
that argument, but we haven't traditionally talked about it in those terms. It's one of the things I'd like to do over
the next couple of years is to try to erase this very sharp line between our military
efforts in national security and our diplomatic and foreign assistance efforts. Because in this environment today, we've got
to think of it all in one piece. Matt: The transformation and growing prosperity
in China is really probably the biggest story of the times we're living through. And it's something that it seems to me as
something that causes a lot of anxiety to a lot of Americans. You know, we've been having our own economic
struggles, but also from a geopolitical standpoint, it's a country with a very different political
system, with very different values. Is this something that you think people should
regard as alarming? Obama: No, we shouldn't alarm at it. In fact, we should welcome China's peaceful
rise. Partly from just an ethical perspective. To see hundreds of millions of people rise
out of dire poverty and be able to feed their children and have a decent home. That's a good thing and we should encourage
it. In addition, a China that is disorderly is
a big problem because there are a lot of Chinese in the world and if they're not doing well
and they're unstable, that's very dangerous for the region. Where Americans have a legitimate reason to
be concerned is that in part this rise has taken place on the backs of an international
system in which China wasn't carrying its own weight or following the rules of the road
and we were and in some cases we got the short end of the stick. This is part of the debate that we're having
right now in terms of the Trans-Pacific partnership, the trade deal that, you know, we've been
negotiating. There are a lot of people who look at the
last 20 years and say, why would we want another trade deal, that hasn't been good for American
workers? It allowed outsourcing of American companies
locating jobs in low-wage China and then selling it back to WalMart and, yes, we got cheaper
sneakers, but we also lost all our jobs. And my argument is two-fold. Number one1: precisely because that horse
is out of the barn, the issue we’re trying to deal with right now is can we make for
a higher bar on labor, on environmental standards, et cetera, in that region and write a set
of rules where it's fairer because right now it's not fair and if you want to improve it,
that means we need a new trading regime. We can’t just rely on the old one because
the old one isn't working for us. But the second reason it's important is because
the countries we’re negotiating with are the same countries that China is trying to
negotiate with. And if we don't write the rules out there,
China’s going to write the rules. And the geopolitical implications of China
writing the rules for trade or maritime law or any kind of commercial activity almost
inevitably means that we will be cut out or we will be deeply disadvantaged. Our businesses will be disadvantaged, our
workers will be disadvantaged. So when I hear, when I talk to labor organizations,
I say, right now, we've been hugely disadvantaged. Why would we want to maintain the status quo? If we can organize a new trade deal in which
a country like Vietnam for the first time recognizes labor rights and those are enforceable,
that's a big deal. It doesn't mean that we're still not going
to see wage differentials between us and them, but they're already selling here for the most
part. And what we have the opportunity to do is
to set long-term trends that keep us in the game in a place that we've got to be. Matt: Why is you think that you haven't been
able to persuade your friends in the labor movement of that? They presumably look at these issues pretty
closely, they know the interest of their members. Obama: Well, look, the story, the narrative,
the experience that people have seen over the last 20 years, that's a real experience,
that's not something we deny. That's why during the State of the Union address,
I was very explicit. I said, look, not every trade deal has lived
up to the hype. And there are real gaps in the current trading
regime that means there are a whole lot of Toyotas sold here and almost no Fords or Chryslers
sold in Japan. But what I say to them, if in fact, the current
situation disadvantages us, why would we want to stick with the current situation? Now, sometimes their response will be well,
what you're doing isn't enough, what we need to do is to have union recognition in Vietnam
or we need Japan to completely open its markets and not have any barriers whatsoever and we
need that immediately. And I say, well I can't get that for you. But what I can do is make the current situation
better for American workers and American businesses that are trying to export there. I can open up more markets than what we have
open right now, so that American farmers can sell their goods there. And, you know, better is better. It's not perfect. Those experiences that arose over the last
20 years are not easily forgotten, and the burden of proof is on us then to be very transparent
and explicit in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. It's similar to the challenge we've got on
the Iran negotiations. And maybe I'll close with that point because
that's been an issue of great interest. People are right to be suspicious of Iran. Iran has sponsored state terrorism. It has consistently, at the highest levels,
made deplorable anti-Israeli statements. It is repressive to its own people and there
is clear and unavoidable evidence that in the past they have tried to develop a weapons
program and have tried to hide it from view. So that's a given. And it's understandable why people are concerned,
both here and around the world. But what I've also said is that the deal that
we've struck, this interim deal brought about by the tough sanctions regime that we put
together, offers us our best opportunity to solve the problem of a nuclear Iran without
resort to military force. Iran is negotiating seriously for the first
time and they have made, so far, real concessions in the negotiations. We have been able to freeze the program, for
the first time, and in fact roll back some elements of its program, like its stockpiles
of ultra highly enriched uranium. And so, for us to give an additional two to
three months to exhaust all possibilities of a diplomatic resolution when nobody denies,
including our intelligence agencies, and Mossad and others, nobody denies that Iran right
now really is abiding by the terms of our agreement, so we’re not losing ground. They're not surreptitiously developing a weapon
while we talk, for us to give two three months to figure that out, makes sense. Now, same thing with respect to trade. You're going to meet some folks who are going
to be skeptical and their impulse is going to be well, let's pile on some more sanctions,
and let's squeeze them a little bit more, and any deal that you're going to strike,
they’re gonna cheat, and we can’t trust them, and it’s gonna be a bad deal, and
I get all that. But my message is that we have to test the
proposition, and if in fact, a deal is struck, then it's going to be a deal that everyone
around the world is going to be able to look at. And everybody's going to be able to determine,
does this in fact prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? And if the answer is yes, then it's a good
deal. If the answer is no, then it's not a deal
that I'm interested in striking. There may be some technical arguments, in
part because, there are some who will only be satisfied with the Iranian regime being
replaced. They don't even like the idea of Iran having
any nuclear technology or nuclear know-how. Matt: In your first campaign, there was talk
of the idea that you might hold direct negotiations with countries like that. Obama: Well, we have had direct negotiations. That's exactly what we're doing. We're now testing the proposition and the
question then is, Matt, is whether or not Iran can say yes to the world community that
has determined this is a fair approach that gives Iran the ability to reenter the international
community and verify that it's not pursuing a nuclear weapon. But this is another example of the overall
point that I was making at the start. So it's a good way to summarize: We can't
guarantee that the forces inside of Iran take what should be seen as a good deal for Iran. We can't guarantee that they make a rational
decision anymore than we can guarantee Russia and Mr. Putin make rational decisions about
like something like Ukraine. We've got to guard against their efforts militarily. Any aggression they may show we've got to
meet firmly and forcefully. But we've also got to see whether things like
diplomacy, things like economic sanctions, things like international pressure and international
norms, will in fact make a difference. Our successes will happen in fits and starts
and sometimes there’s gonna be a breakthrough and sometimes you'll just modestly make things
a little better. And sometimes the play you run doesn't work
and you've got to have a plan B and a plan C. But the overall trajectory, the overall
goal is a world in which America continues to lead, that we're pushing in the direction
of more security, more international norms and rules, more human rights, more free speech,
less religious intolerance. And those efforts over time add up and I'm
confident that there's a way for us to maintain our idealism, be hardheaded, in assessing
what’s out there, confronting the dangers that we face without exaggerating them. America, I'm pretty certain, is going to be
the indispensable nation for the remainder of this century just like it was the last
one. Alright. Thanks so much. Matt: Thank you. Obama: Appreciate it. Matt just kept on going man. I had to like. I gave him like three cues and he just blew
by them. Did that go over like a half hour longer than
it was supposed to? Ezra was definitely better behaved. It was a good conversation. I hope you guys thought it was useful….. Obama: My butt is sore. One of the things I'd like to do over the
next couple of years is to try erase this very sharp line between our military efforts
in national security and our diplomatic and foreign assistance efforts. Because in this environment today, we've got
to think of it all as one piece. If you look at our foreign assistance as a
tool in our national security portfolio, as opposed to charity, and you combined our defense
budget overall with our diplomatic budget and our foreign assistance budget, then in that mix there's a lot more that we
should be doing when it comes to helping Honduras and Guatemala build an effective criminal
justice system, effective police, and economic development that creates jobs. Matt Yglesias: So you're saying it would make
sense to reallocate those resources? Barack Obama: Well, and part of the challenge here is just public awareness. Time and time again, when they do surveys, and they ask people what proportion
of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid? They'll say, ‘uh, 25%’. They're pretty sure all their hard-earned
money that they're paying in taxes is somehow going to other folks. And you know right now, It varies between 1-2% depending on how you
define it. If we were to make some strategic investments
in countries that really could use our help, we would then not have to deploy our military
as often and we would be in a better position to work with other countries to stamp out
violent extremism. Matt Yglesias: Over the years, I've heard
a number of different members of your team refer to your kind of philosophy in foreign
affairs as realism. Is that a term you would use? Barack Obama: You know, traditionally, a lot
of American foreign policy has been divided into the realist camp and the idealist camp
and so if you're an idealist you're like Woodrow Wilson and you're out there with the League
of Nations and imagining everybody holding hands and singing Kumbaya. And if you're a realist, then you're supporting
dictators who happen to be our friends. And I just don't think that describes what
a smart foreign policy should be. What I do think what is accurate in describing
my foreign policy is  we don't have military solutions to every
problem in the 21st century. The biggest challenge that we have right now is disorder. Ending two wars was important, not
because I was under any illusions that that would mean we wouldn't have any terrorist
threat. It does mean, though, that by not having 180,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan,
it frees us up to be able to send a team to prevent Ebola. To double down on our investments in things
like cyber security. To look at the new threats and opportunities that are out there. And that's in no way a concession to this
idea that America is withdrawing or there's not much we can do. It's just a realistic
assessment of how the world works. Matt Yglesias: You seemed to resist the realist label earlier, but when you talked about your goals in the Middle East,  you seemed very concerned about disorder. And you didn't mention anything like democracy or human rights and the countries
you talked about partnering with, it's places like Egypt where they came to power in a military
coup, Saudi Arabia, with public beheadings, Bahrain, where during the Arab Spring they
were beating nonviolent demonstrators and repressing that violently, do you have any
concerns about those sort of long term sustainability of those kind of partnerships? This is a perfect example, Matt, of where
the division between realism and idealism kind of breaks down. I am a firm believer that particularly in
this modern internet age, the capacity of the old-style authoritarian government to
sustain itself just is gonna continue to weaken. But in those conversations, I'm also going
to acknowledge that for a country that say has no experience in democracy or has no functioning
civil society or where the most organized factions are, you know, religious
sects, that progress is going to be happening in steps as opposed to in one big leap. Tthe goal of any good
foreign policy is having a vision and aspirations and ideals, but also recognizing the world
as it is, where it is, and figuring out how do you tack to the point where things are
better than they were before.  That doesn't mean perfect. It just means it's better. Ezra Klein: At this point according to the polls, you
are the most polarizing president really since we began polling, but before you the record
was set by George W. Bush, and before George W. Bush the record was set by Bill Clinton. Barack Obama: Well, there are a couple of things that in my mind, at least, contribute to our politics being more polarized than people actually
are. The balkanization of the media means that
we just don't have a common place where we get common facts and a common world view the
way we did 20, 30 years ago. And that just keeps on accelerating. Technology which brings the world to us also
allows us to narrow our point of view. That's contributed to it. Gerrymandering contributes
to it. And a lot of it has to do with just unlimited
money. But, you know there have been periods in the
past where we've been pretty polarized. I think there just wasn't polling around it.  Even during the so-called Golden Age where
you had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats and there was deal cutting going
on in Congress. Generally speaking, big stuff didn't get done
unless there was a major crisis and/or you had you had big majorities of one party
controlling the Congress and a president of the same party. I mean, that's just been the history. There have been exceptions. My first two years in office
when I had a Democratic House and Democratic Senate, we were as productive
as any time since Lyndon Johnson. And when when the majority went away, stuff got blocked. Probably the one thing we that could change without
a Constitutional amendment that would make a difference here would be the elimination
of the routine use of the filibuster in the Senate. Because I think that does, in an era in which
the parties are more polarized, it almost ensure greater gridlock and less clarity in
terms of the positions of the parties. There's nothing in the Constitution that requires
it. The framers were pretty good about designing a House, a Senate, to assure that a majority
didn't just run rampant. The filibuster in this modern age probably
just torques it too far in the direction of a majority party not being able to govern effectively
and move forward its platform. Ezra Klein: How have we gotten to a point
where we can have high corporate profits, and businesses can be doing so well, but the
workers don't necessarily share in that prosperity? Barack Obama: Well this has been at least
a 3-decade long trend. Now there are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Some of that has
to do with technology and entire sectors being eliminated. Travel agents, bank tellers, a
lot of middle management. A lot of it has to do with globalization. The rest of the
world is catching up. Post-World War II, we had just some enormous structural advantages
because our competitors had been devastated by war, and we had also made investments that
put us ahead of the curve, whether in education or infrastructure. Those advantages went away
at the same time as workers increasingly had less leverage because of changes in labor
laws. You combine all that stuff, and it's put workers in a tougher position. So some
people who just control enormous amounts of wealth -- we don't resent their success. On the other hand, just as a practical matter, you're going to have problems making sure that we're investing
enough in the common good to be able to move forward. Ezra Klein: Does this put us in a place long
term where redistribution becomes, in a sense, a positive good in and of itself? Barak Obama: That's always been the case.
I don't think that's entirely new. I mean, the fact of the matter is is that relative
to our post-war history, taxes now are not particularly high or particularly progressive
compared to what they were, say in the late 50s or the 60s. There's always been this notion
that for a country to thrive, there are some things, as Lincoln said, that we do better
together than we can do for ourselves, whether that's building roads, or setting up, you
know, effective power grids, or making sure that we've got high-quality public education
and that teachers are paid enough. The market will not cover those things and we've got
to do them together. Basic research falls in that category. So that's always been true.
I think that part of what's changed is that a lot of that burden for making sure that
the pie was broadly shared took place before government even got involved. If you had stronger
unions, then you had higher wages. If you had a corporate culture that felt a sense
of place and commitment, so that the CEO, they felt a real affinity for the community
to reinvest in that community and to be seen as a good corporate citizen. Today what you
have is quarterly earning reports. You have compensation levels for CEOs that are tied
directly to those quarterly earnings. You've got international capital that is demanding
short-term profits, and so what happens is that a lot of distributional questions that
used to be handled in the marketplace through decent wages or health care or defined benefit
pension plans -- those things are all eliminated and the average employee, the average worker
doesn't feel any benefit. American Sniper is currently one of the most
popular movies in the country. It's about the life of Chris Kyle, the sniper with the
most confirmed kills in American military history. It focuses on his life, his failures,
his successes, and the trauma that he experienced as a soldier. But viewers of the movie may
be surprised at the way that it talks about the Iraq War in general. From the very beginning
of Kyle's military career, it's about a response to terrorism. He joins the military after
we see the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And we see his and
his wife Taya's stunned reaction to 9/11. But then bam. Shortly after that...  "I just got the call, boys. It's on!" Kyle's at war in Iraq. There's no intervening time spent on George W. Bush, weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), or Saddam Hussein. The implication that the viewer gets is that the invasion
of Iraq was a logical response to 9/11.  Of course, that's not actually what happened.
We know that after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan, were Al Qaeda actually was. The decision to
invade Iraq came as a result of a preexisting political project that members of the Bush administration
had and was sold on the pretense of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "The main reason
we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns
out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of -- but I also talked about
the human suffering in Iraq. And I also talked the need to advance a freedom agenda." In
the movie's narrative, there's no intervening time between the American invasion and Kyle
fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. "He's trained by bin Laden. He's loyal to bin Laden. His name
is Zarqawi. Now this asshole is right now the crown price of Al Qaeda in Iraq." That
leaves viewers with the impression that the Iraq War was against Al Qaeda at the outset
and that America had invaded Iraq because it had become a hotbed of Al Qaeda operations.
The reverse is true. Al Qaeda in Iraq grew out of the American invasion. It was weak
and wasn't even Al Qaeda in Iraq when the invasion happened. Its leader, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, correctly assessed that the US invasion would allow him to build up his group.
Eastwood wanted to make a movie about one guy. He didn't set out to make a movie about
the Iraq War. The problem is, though he himself is anti-war, he ended up letting the film
get wrapped up in Kyle's perspective. "You want these motherfuckers to come to San Diego
or New York? We're protecting more than just this dirt." While it's easy to go sit at a
movie, especially one that tries hard not to shove politics in your face, and appreciate
it as simply a movie about heroism, this movie isn't just that. It's a movie that's going
to leave viewers with a false perception of what happened. This is the Empire State Building. With 102
floors, it's one of the tallest buildings in the US. But it's 4 floors shorter than the MSC Oscar.
Which isn't a building, but a boat: The largest container ship in the world. Launched in January 2015, the MSC Oscar is nearly the size of four football fields laid end-to-end. It has a draft of 16 meters, which means that
if you were to stand at the bottom of the ship, you'd be 5 stories underwater. It's one of 5000 container ships crossing
the world's oceans, carrying the vast majority of products you buy and the parts those products
were made from. These ships are the engine of the global economy, but 60 years ago, they
didn't even exist. How did all this happen? For hundreds of years,
shipping was a bit of a nightmare. Goods had to be unloaded into storage at ports, then individually packed onto ships and unpacked afterwards. This process was painfully slow and expensive, and it left items vulnerable to damage and theft. In 1956, Malcom McLean, an American trucking
executive, proved that you could save time and money by loading truck containers directly
onto ships. On the other side they'd be put back onto trucks or trains, and reach their
destination without ever being opened. McLean later got the government on board by
using containerized service to help the military provide supplies for the Vietnam War. "Some of the more notable innovations in solving the logistical problems in Vietnam have been in the field of containerization" After the industry recognized how efficient
container shipping was, the use of container ships exploded. International standardization was the key. The unit of measurement is TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent. Most containers used today are
twice as long. Shippers quickly realized that the larger
the boat, the cheaper the shipping price per container. So the size of the largest ships has
grown exponentially. In 1999, a shipping executive predicted an
eventual ceiling of 12,000 TEU.  But the MSC Oscar has a capacity of over 19,000. To accommodate these huge ships, ports have
been rebuilt, with vast yards to store the containers and huge cranes to load and unload
them simultaneously, in a specific order. Today's biggest ships are so huge that they
can't actually fit through the Panama canal or dock at any American port. They're used
mostly for shipping between Europe and Asia. It's hard to overstate how much all this has
transformed the world economy.  After containerization, global trade in merchandise
soared while insurance costs and inventories decreased. Jobs at ports and in factories in the U.S.
dropped while consumers gained access to a greater variety of products at a lower price. As a result, products we buy can be made with parts from several different countries, by people on the other side of the world. And it's hard to imagine any of this happening
without someone first deciding to put the stuff in a box and put the box on a boat. it has been and still is a hard time for many but tonight we turn the page what's fascinating about that turn the page rhetoric isn't this is year seven of the Obama presidency he's been doing this for a long time and yet this is the first time he feels able to come in front of the American people and say we were actually turning the page that is a lot of confidence a confidence he hasn't had until now that the crises it were over running the country when he came into office they are on some level over that the drawdown in the Middle East is actually a drawdown that will continue that we're not gonna get sucked back into that in a big way but much more importantly that the drop in the unemployment rate the recovery of the economy is strong enough now and widespread enough now that Obama can safely talk about us as being passed the crisis moment he can begin giving speeches begin proposing policies that are promised on this being not a period of emergency in America but a period of normalcy in America our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999 our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis that right there is why you see all this confidence in President Obama at the State of the Union the fact that unemployment is underneath 6% the fact that we're seeing the longest run of sustained private-sector job growth that is big it allows him to come out and make this argument that we are actually past the crisis but more than that it allows him to offer a different kind of policy proposal than he has before raising the minimum wage taxing the rich to give tax cuts to the middle class these are proposals that would have been at home in the Clinton administration these are how Democrats deal with a good economy not a bad one and so you're not just hearing the turning the page kind of thing in the rhetoric you're actually seeing it in the policy agenda Obama puts forth and in the past year alone about 10 million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage what is interesting about that sentence is what Obama doesn't say this is his signature legislative achievement and by all accounts it's actually being pretty successful right now and yet he doesn't spend even a couple of sentences running through it not only that but healthcare.gov Obamacare is in open enrollment right now here he gets a State of the Union the biggest audience he himself will command probably this year and rather than use it as an opportunity say hey Obamacare is working and now is a great time to go get signed up go buy health insurance he barely mentions it the only explanation I can come up with the only thing that fits with the theme of the speech and can at all explain why Obama does so little to mention or promote Obamacare is it this for Obama for the Obama administration is a speech about looking forward they're trying as I said to turn the page that's what middle-class economics is the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot everyone does their fair share everyone plays by the same set of rules it is important to note those words middle-class economics so one you see Obama and the Democratic Party in general here turning towards 2016 the middle class is what swings and size elections but to every other State of the Union you were dealing with the unemployed you were dealing with people in poverty you were doing the people really hurting to move the focus from the folks who are really in pain over to the middle class which is in anyway struggling it is a big shift in the rhetoric and not just rhetoric but the target of Obama's policies mr. Putin's aggression it was suggested was a masterful display of strategy and strength that's what I heard from some folks well today it is America that stands strong and United with our allies while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters this is a little victory lap here for Obama on foreign policy for much of the year all kinds of foreign policy commentators observers pundits were talking about how Obama is getting outplayed by Putin Oh Putin was a sort of grand chess master and Obama was just playing checkers and now you have Russia endure incredible stress the currency is under incredible pressure the economy's doing terribly a lot of what Putin did seems to have isolated them internationally this year is Obama kind of taking a victory lap throwing it in the face of his critics and arguing that in fact they were playing chess while poo was playing checkers the American people expect us only to go to war as a last resort and I intend to stay true to that wisdom as much as anything is this right there that one sentence is a summation of Obama's entire foreign policy something that is maybe not unique about Obama but unusual about him is it most politicians most presidents most foreign policy folks in Washington they think a lot about the problems of American inaction they worry about all the things we aren't doing in the world Obama worries a lot about the problems of American action I think if you sat him down and he was gonna be real honest I think one of the things Obama is proudest of is all the conflicts that he has not gotten America embroiled in we are 15 years into this new century 15 years that dawned with terror touching our shores that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly Wars that saw a vicious recession spread across our nation and the world it has been and still is a hard time for many but tonight we turn the page tonight the shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong middle class economics works expanding opportunity works and these policies will continue to work as long as politics don't get in the way that's why my plan will make quality child care more available and more affordable for every middle-class and low-income family with young children in America by creating more slots and a new tax cut of up to $3,000 per child per year and everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage I say this if you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year try it and that's why I'm sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of Community College to zero let's close loopholes so we stop rewarding companies that keep profits abroad and reward those that invest here in America let's use those savings to rebuild our infrastructure we can use that money to help more families pay for child care and send their kids to college of course if there's one thing this new century has taught us is that we cannot separate our work here at home from challenges beyond our shores instead of sending large ground forces overseas we're partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America last year mr. Putin's aggression it was suggested was a masterful display of strategy and strength that's what I heard from some folks well today it is America that stands strong and United with our allies while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters and on Cuba we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date when what you're doing doesn't work for 50 years it's time to try something new the Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security we should act like it just over a decade ago I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn't a liberal America or a conservative America a black America or white America but a United States of America over the past six years the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision but I still think the cynics are wrong I've seen something like gay marriage go from a wedge issue used to drive us apart to a story of freedom across our country a civil right now legal in states that seven in ten Americans call home so the question for those of us here tonight is how we all of us can better reflect America's holds a better politics is one where we appeal to each other's basic decency instead of our basest fears a better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other I have no more campaigns to run my only agenda I know because I won both them my only agenda for the next two years is the same as the one I've had since the day I sworn oath on the steps of this Capitol to do what I believe is best for America thank you god bless you god bless this country good luck the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosts a little show every year called the Oscars a group of mostly old mostly white men vote on their favorite movies in 2006 some of these men publicly commented that they could never vote for a movie like Brokeback Mountain because homosexuality was kind of gross you guys the Academy is trying to diversify its membership to diversify the types of movies it nominates in turn and hopefully shake this old white men thing has it pulled this off yes and no I was so surprised I fell off my knee the organization invited a bunch of younger voters as well as women in people of color and that has led to a more diverse Awards body and more diverse nominees the Best Picture lineup is now much more likely to include blockbusters like Toy Story 3 as well as smaller movies like beasts of the southern wild in the acting categories at least people of color have been much better represented a woman won Best Director for the first time ever in 2010 and in 2014 12 years of slave became the first Best Picture winner ever descent her soul in a black characters journey rather than that journey is filtered through a white person's point of view you're my best friend I thought about something from the point of view to help but the Oscars were first awarded in 1929 and it took the Academy 81 years to give an oscar for direction to a woman plus you have to go back to 2003 to find the last best picture of the female protagonist since then we've had a white Hobbit a white guy the City of LA white guys white Cowboys a guy from India like King black and white guy white guy playing Hispanic guy in 12 years slave and in 2015 things somehow got worse with no people of color nominated in acting categories no women nominated for directing or screenwriting for the first time in 15 years and not a single Best Picture nominee about a woman for the first time in nearly a decade yes these stories mostly white men have value but they're not the only stories is the Academy's choices too often suggest just look at this year's nominees American sniper whiplash the grand Budapest hotel the theory of everything the annotation burden Whaler there are some great movies on that list I do find this very exciting I was missing a whole host of good to great films about moment without con girl what about Wilde what about two days one night now what about the babadook this is a big Oscar problem and it's won the Academy will have to fix You may think you know exactly what race you
are, but how would you prove it if somebody disagreed with you? The fact is, even though race drives a lot
of social and political outcomes, race isn't real. One of the first people to attempt to categorize
humans according to race was a german scientist in around 1776. He came up with 5 different groups according
to physical appearance and geographic origin of their ancestors. American's of European descent eagerly bought
into this type of thinking around the same time. Some historians have said the idea that there
are different races helped them resolve the contradiction between a natural right to freedom
and the fact of slavery. If whites were their own distinct category,
then they could feel a lot better about denying freedom to people who they labeled black and
decided were fundamentally different. But as political priorities change, definitions
of race in America adjust right along with them. For example, if were of Mexican birth or ancestry
in the United States in 1929, you were considered white. Then, the 1930 census changed that to non-white
to limit immigration. Later, when the US needed to increase its
labor force during World War II, these people were switched back to white. And what it took to be "black" once varied
so widely throughout the country, from one quarter, to one sixteenth, to the infamous
"One drop" of African ancestry, that people could actually change races just by crossing
state lines. Then, suddenly, in 2000, the government decided
that Americans could be more than one race and added a multi-racial category to the census. This has left many Americans scratching their
heads when it comes to selecting who they are. As many as 6.2% of census respondents selected
"Some other race" in the 2010 survey. The idea that someone might look one way,
and identify another way, or that they might be really hard to place in a racial category,
is not new. This is why there was a public debate about
whether MSNBC's Karen Finney could say she was black, or how we can't even agree on the
racial label assigned to the President of the United States. Of course many people feel their racial identity
is very clear and very permanent, but the fact that some people have changed theres,
and that nobody can really argue with them, shows how shaky the very idea of race is. This is all because there isn't a race chromosome
in our DNA that people can point to. It simply doesn't exist. When the medical community links race to health
outcomes, it's really just using race as a substitute for other factors, such as where
your ancestors came from, or the experiences of people who may have been put in the same
racial group as you. Dorothy Roberts explains that sickle-cell
anemia is a prime example of this. The disease is linked to areas with high rates
of malaria, which includes some parts of Europe and Asia in addition to Africa. It's not actually about race at all. This of course does not mean that the concept
of race isn't hugely important in our lives. The racial categories to which we're assigned
can determine real life experiences, they can drive political outcomes, and they can
even make the difference between life and death. But understanding that racial categories are
made up can give us an important perspective on where racism came from in the first place. god is good price at the pump continues to go up gas prices have jumped 10 cents over the past two weeks gas is $3.99 so this dumb getting around it's on e4 empty like my wallet in a couple of minutes I don't even need it good news gas prices at their lowest in the last three months and it's in part because of a dip in oil prices when a gas 308 tho dollars dansgame oh is so good to me 268 holy crap this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life to the federal government estimates that if prices remained this slow us drivers will save an additional five hundred and fifty dollars next year I just filled my tank up about $30 low gas prices spoiled me with 177 now it's 193 it's like I will not pay a dollar ninety three for down the can Singh crazy you On January 7th masked gunmen attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris they killed 12 people and wounded at least 11 others Charlie Hebdo is a satirical French weekly publication that is most known for its biting humor and more specifically for a string of cartoons that it has published about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad this isn't the first time that Charlie Hebdo has been attacked but for the editors of the magazine the offense was the point they believe that the short term decision to avoid offense would damage French secular culture in the longer term secularism or lazy day as it is called in France is a very important part of French culture that's even been described as a founding myth of the French Republic and that goes far beyond that separation of church and state that we have in the United States the magazine's cover this week appears to be a reference to the controversy over French novelist Michelle Lula Beck's latest book submission which is about a Muslim governing the country in accordance with the rules of conservative Islam in 2022 the magazine's final tweet before the attack was a cartoon depicting Isis leader Abu Bakr al-baghdadi offering politically correct best wishes for the holiday season but past covers have been far more biting in 2011 the magazine published an article guest edited by Mohammed after that issue was published the magazine's office was firebombed and its website was hacked the attackers posted a notice on the hacked site that read you keep abusing Islam's almighty prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech be God's curse upon you the next week it published a cartoon declaring love stronger than hate showing two men kissing sharvani a firmly rejected the idea that the magazine should stay silent in order to prevent violence perpetrated by those who sought to silence it this tells me that we're right to publish the magazine and we're right to continue defying Islamists and make their lives difficult as much as they do ours what I am saying maybe a bit pompous but I prefer to die standing than live on my knees he told Lomond in 2012 a number of cartoons have emphasized that the magazine's chief target was extremism not Islam itself indeed some of the magazine's covers suggested that the Prophet himself would take charlie Abdo said in the debate in 2010 during the debate over a controversial new law that banned French women from wearing full-faced veils in public Charlie Hebdo is cover depict in a frolicking naked woman shouting yes to wearing the burka on the inside no person or institution no matter how venerable was safe from being targeted by the magazine satire and after French designer John Galliano was caught delivering an anti-semitic rant in a Paris bar Charlie Hebdo suggested that right-wing politician marine lepen had become the new model in his studio but the magazine that withstood so much and offended so many has finally been silenced today visitors to the Charlie Hebdo website find only a single graphic je suis charlie it reads I am charlie [Music] you People just f----- hate Congress. They really
hate it. If you don't like Congress, and Congress is
fundamentally an ongoing fight between the democratic party and the republican party,
isn't the thing that would fix it a third party? I think I get that question more than any
other. The thing there is that it really comes down
to what you mean by the word "fix." Do you remember the underpants gnomes from South
Park? "I don't get it." "Phase 1, collect underpants. Phase 2 [pause]. Phase 3: Profit."
"Oh, I get it." "No you don't, fatass." It gets a bit like that. You have step 1: A third
party. Step 2: [Shrug] Step 3: Politics is fixed. Let's talk for a second about step
2, those question marks. The problem third parties can solve is a problem of idea suppression.
For some reason there's a popular idea or popular grouping of ideas and neither party
wants to back them. Third parties can break the monopoly Democrats and Republicans have
over which ideas they consider. The problem they can solve, the problem they might actually
make worse is a problem of no ideas, not even the ideas backed by Democrats and Republicans
being able to make it through the hellscape of fail that is the U.S. Congress. In fact,
a third party might make that hellscape of fail even worse. One of the people I spoke to about
third parties who's been trying to figure this out is Ronald Rapoport. He's a political
scientist at William & Mary, and he wrote the book on third parties. I mean that totally
literally. The book is called "Three's a Crowd." The thing he says is third parties, to survive,
need a "unique agenda." If somebody is actually going to go through the trouble of supporting
a third party, they need a damn good reason. And that reason is usually that the third
party is saying something that those people really believe that the big two parties are
not saying. It's worth stopping on that point for a moment. Because Washington forgets it
completely. The constant talking about a third party is a third party by elites and for elites.
The third party of unity '08. Michael Bloomberg running for president, Simpson Bowles. Of
technocrats, of the Brookings Institute. Sober moderates, things people in Washington already
care about. That is not how successful third parties look. They're about the things that
Washington elites don't care about, or at least don't care about in the correct combination.
Ross Perot supporters for instance, they were completely pro-choice, totally anti-affirmative
action and really nationalist. Which is to say, they weren't moderates. Third parties
are not moderate. They were extreme in ways that went left to right and then back to right
and then back to left again and again and again. So if that's your problem, that no
one in Washington talks about what you care about, then a third party is a weapon that
can help. Again, think about Perot. Bill Clinton was much more focused on reducing the deficit
because Perot showed the issues total power. Newt Gingrich's Contract with America was
a very close echo of Perot's United We Stand. By 1996 there wasn't that much left for Perot
and his party to do. But ideas are not Washington's problem right now. The problem is that no
ideas are moving at all. The basic machinery of government, the thing that is supposed
to take ideas and make them, if they're popular and sound into laws has stopped functioning.
[Thunderclaps] A third party might actually make that worse. Let's start with the likeliest
third party win, a third party president. Some super charismatic probably super rich
figure comes in and wins the presidential election. Right now the basic problem in American
politics is that one of the two major political parties has an interest in destroying the
president at any given time. The new senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell said in 2010,
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one
term president." With a third party president, both parties would have an interest in destroying
the president, not just one. In fact, the party the president was actually closer to
on policy might be even more committed to her destruction. Because a third party is
a bigger threat to the party it agrees with most. Think of Ralph Nader being a spoiler
for Al Gore. So that would be the problem for a third party president. They would get
even less Congressional cooperation than a Democrat or a Republican. But it's also possible
for a third party to win a bunch of seats in the House, in the Senate, and try to fix
Congress from the inside. That's also damn hard. Everything in Congress is structured
by the two major parties. Committee assignments, debate rules, floor time, all of it. A third
party that didn't play ball would find itself powerless. That's why third party candidates
who do win Congressional seats tend to work with one of the two parties. Think of Bernie
Sanders from Vermont or Angus King from Maine. They won their seats as third-party candidates,
but they caucus with and act like traditional democrats. In Congress, even when you have
three or more parties, you quickly realize you only really have two. But the other problem
is that even if a third party did win seats in Congress and accepted less institutional
power, it's hard to see what problem it would actually solve. Congress is split by disagreements
it can't resolve and an inability to compromise. A third party would simply add more disagreements
and more people who needed to be compromised with into the mix. Which is to say that all
the crazy incentives and screwed-up structures that are causing so many problems in our two-party
system would end up causing just as many problems if not more for third parties. A third party
might change the ideas that Washington takes seriously, but it's to see it fixing the fact
that Washington can't do anything with the ideas it already does take seriously. okay so it's Christmas and we are on our way to the National Cathedral to look at some nativity scenes there's this new pullout from Pew that says 65 percent of the American public believes in basically the truth of the nativity stories I am a Christian and I also went to seminary and I studied religion in school we spent a lot of time studying the Bible and so I got to read a lot of what scholars were saying about you know the infancy narratives as we would call them from the Gospels that one's from Mexico so we can't really know with certainty one way or another this is exactly how many Nativity story unfolded we can't really say with certainty this is how anything really unfolded that long ago the first claimed December 25th is Jesus's birthday it could be Jesus's birthday but it's likely not December is you know month when pagans would be celebrating Saturnalia in the third century this Roman Emperor declares December 25th to be Sol Invictus is his birthday some scholars think well maybe Christians latched ahold of this since that well we're gonna have our own version of a December 25th holy day claim to Jesus was born in a manger because there was no room for him in the end a scholar by the name of Kenneth Bailey questions the translation the word that we translate in from Luke's Gospel a better translation might be guestroom so he thinks there was no room for Mary to give birth in the guest room of this house that was already taken so she had to give birth in the main room of the house to be clear this isn't like a 21st century you know living room this is like first century main room and animals actually would have been brought in at night claim three is that three wise men came to visit Jesus the night of his birth and brought him gifts the Bible never says that there were three of them how we get three is because the Bible talks about three gifts gold smart and in a sense could have been a dozen or could have who knows that's the point we don't know what's really astonishing is most Americans believe the Nativity story to be true whether or not people agree on all the specifics of the story I think the point is that most of us want it want the heart of the Christmas story to be true which to me is you know peace on earth goodwill to men Cyka Blyat (Male Reporter) 2014 is shaping up to be the warmest year. (Female Reporter) Warmest year. (Another Reporter) Warmest year, ever recorded, for planet earth. In an extraordinary move, the United States
is pursuing full diplomatic relations with Cuba, but this won't mean the end to the economic
embargo, which only Congress can fully remove. It's a comprehensive set of economic sanctions
on Cuba that has existed since roughly 1962. It has been an absolute disaster for both
the United States and Cuba. Here are 7 reasons why the embargo needs to end. #1. American
diplomats in Havana admit that the embargo is a failure. The goal of the embargo was
to put pressure on the Cuban government -- economic pressure that was supposed to create popular
anger and resistance to the government and eventually overthrow it. But, according to
a 2009 cable from the U.S.'s top diplomat in Havana at the time, that has failed to
happen. 2. Sanctions have failed to ruin Cuba's economy. Cuba has seen a fair amount of economic
growth since the sanctions were created, indicating that there wasn't nearly enough pressure to
send the economy into a full tailspin and thus foment rebellion. #3. The embargo has
probably killed Cubans. The 1992 Cuba Democracy Act restricted the flow of medical goods into
Cuba from the United States. This resulted in a precipitous decline in access to medical
supplies inside Cuba. According to a 2010 review by two Stanford researchers, they believe
that the lack of access to this medicine was responsible for several disease outbreaks
in the country, including an increase in Tuberculosis fatalities. 4.) The embargo has not significantly
reduced Cuba's human rights abuses. Cuba has a terrible human rights record. Among other
things, it's one of the worst countries on freedom of the press in the Western Hemisphere,
and it throws dissidents and bloggers into jail merely for criticizing the regime. However,
there's zero evidence that the sanctions regime has done anything to make those abuses better.
5.) Almost the entire world opposes the United States's policy. For 23 years, the United
Nations has voted to condemn the American policy towards Cuba. The last vote in 2014
saw 188 out of 193 UN member states opposing it in the General Assembly. 6.) Cuba is not
a state sponsor of terrorism anymore. Some of the sanctions on Cuba come from the U.S.
designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism because of its support for the Basque terrorist
group ETA and the Columbian group, the FARC. Now, according to the State Department's most
recent review, there's no evidence that Cuba is providing material military support to
these groups. Moreover, Cuba is cooperating with Spain on the transfer of ETA prisoners,
and it has been sponsoring a peace conference in Havana for the FARC and the Columbian government
-- one that appears to have resulted in a unilateral ceasefire declaration by the FARC.
7.) A majority of Americans support normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba and majorities
support relaxing major parts of the embargo, including restrictions on US companies doing
business in Cuba. Now, Cuban-Americans also appear to oppose the embargo. If the people
who have the most reasons to hate the Castro government have come around to thinking the
embargo isn't worth the costs,  it's time to reconsider the policy. If you go on Lyft's website right now, it says drivers can make $35 per hour.  Is that realistic? A few weeks ago, I spent a week
 driving for Lyft to find out. All right, it is 12:30, and I'm logging in to my Lyft App
to start my first Lyft job of the day. Driver mode is on. 
And, so far nothing is happening. I drove for 50 hours.  I had 54 passengers. And I made just under $600,
which works out to about 12 bucks an hour. And that's before subtracting the cost of gas. A big reason for my low earnings
was that I spent a lot of time waiting around. So with the traditional salaried position,
you work your 40 hours. And it's a company's job to make sure that you have enough work for it to be worth your salary. With this kind of business,
I, as an independent contractor, am on my own. I sit here for the next 5 or 6 or 7 hours,
and nobody wants a taxi ride, I'm just out of money. Like on Tuesday morning, I drove for about three hours and didn't get a single passenger, and so that was pretty frustrating. So the day that one best was on Saturday. 
I worked about 10 hours, and I made 163 dollars, after gas, it was about 14 dollars an hour. Why Saturday was my best day? For one thing, I had passengers in my car 
35% of the time, a higher percentage than any other day. Second, four of my 14 rides had prime time bonuses, where passengers are charged
a premium of 25% - 100%. Still, $14 an hour isn't great.
 And it's a lot less than the $35 Lyft is promoting. The fundamental issue is that right now at least,
the roads are crowded with people offering rides. Now that I'm looking around, I'm noticing
that I have a lot of competitors around me. That's partly because both Lyft and Uber
are aggressively recruiting drivers. While I only earned about $600 from customers, Lyft was running a promotion in November
that guaranteed divers would make at least $30 an hour. So Lyft paid me another $900 out of their own pocket. As Uber and Lyft throw a lot of money at drivers to drive, it's expanding the number of drivers in the market. That means the drivers spend more time sitting around, and so, they actually make less. They need to grow quickly in order to compete with Uber, and so, I think they're spending a ton of money. They both have raised hundreds of
millions of dollars in venture capital, and they're spending that
to build out their networks as quickly as possible, and so, they're willing to spend a lot of money
in the short run to make sure that they're large as Uber, somebody who needs a steady paycheck, this is probably not a good choice for you because we really don't know what the long-term future is gonna be, and it's hard to predict from week to week. This isn't just something that people, 
do as a full-time job. There are a lot of people that do it
as a supplement to some other job. It can give employees a lot more freedom because if I feel like, you know, not working later today
I can just take the day off and nobody cares. this model isn't for everyone, but for some people,
it's a great opportunity. [Music] today in Colorado we shipped marijuana from the underground and into a regulated market so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's forces are searching for a hundred teenage girls the world you remember that deep golden hands of the terrorist Swami extremist known as Isis have taken over about a third of the rock they have rampaged across cities killing innocent unarmed civilians and cowardly acts of violence Netanyahu says Hamas will pay following the deaths of three Israeli teenagers more than 2,000 Palestinians and more than 16 Israelis have been killed since the conflict in Gaza began on July 8 how horrible must have been final moments of their licks months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history the world is losing the battle to contain it it's as if you need an awareness and an award that everything is not working within this happening and all you're looking for is a divine goose invasion of privacy impacting some of the biggest stars in the world I spent this week answering seemingly impossible questions mom why did he do that why is he in jail why didn't he get fired the people of Scotland have spoken we have chosen unity over division we want a true democracy we want genuine universal suffrage but on the whole I don't have to die the way that it's been described to me that my brain tumor would take me on its own you may kiss your bride in the course of 36 hours we have gone from being a country where same-sex marriage is legal in 19 states in the District of Columbia to 35 states plus DC states that represents 65 percent of the population which state is going to be lost who could it possibly be Mississippi we don't know old saying you know the Americans they always do the right thing after they've tried everything else first they say ten point three million people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act if you've been in America for more than five years you'll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation the warmest temperatures since record-keeping began in 1880 the latest Wall Street Journal NBC News poll finds climate change at the bottom of voters priority list [Music] the idea is one girl one person with five foot two inches tall if you include my high heels I am NOT a lone voice I am those 66 million girls for the pride of education and today I'm not raising my voice it is the voice of those 66 million girls [Music] [Music] a conservationist Paul Rosalie set out to be eaten alive by a green anaconda the armor will be Paul's only barrier between life and death so we have the force sensor on your back we're going to be able to measure how much force can this Anaconda constrict with if this snake does try to eat me this is because I'm so head to toe in Pig's blood so I really smell like dinner to this animal First Strike hits Paul's helmet snake can't latch on that one he's here foreign all right man she was trying to do everything she could to kill me if I didn't have that suit my rib cage would have lasted 30 seconds if that snake in command This winter, there's good news for drivers.
Gas prices are cheaper than they've been in years. But it wasn't so long ago that people
were complaining about high prices. So what happened? The first thing to know is that
gasoline prices are largely driven by oil prices, and those oil prices are set in a
global market, and largely determined by the supply and demand of oil. The countries that
produce the most oil right now are Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States. Saudi Arabia
is part of an organization called OPEC. In the past, OPEC has often tried to coordinate
its production in order to try to get the price it prefers. On the other side, the biggest
consumers of oil are the U.S., China and Japan. Starting in the 2000s, oil prices began rising
rapidly. That was because China was growing fast and oil production wasn't keeping up.
This led to a huge spike in prices and a lot of talk about peak oil. But those higher prices
also made it profitable for the U.S. and Canada to start going after harder-to-extract oil
in shale formations and tar sands. That led to a rise in supply. By 2014, that extra supply,
combined with a slowdown in demand in Europe and Asia all came together to create a price
crash. And that's better news for some than others. In Russia and some OPEC countries,
low oil prices threaten their national budgets. OPEC could try to cut production to try to
prop up the price of oil, but they haven't done that this time. They're hoping that low
prices will make some of the newest U.S. producers unprofitable. In the meantime, American consumers
are getting a big break. If gas stays under $2.80/gallon, families could save $700 over
a year, by one estimate. That would boost the economy. In recent years, the U.S. has
been using less and less oil because people are buying more fuel-efficient cars. But when
gas prices go back down, we do the reverse and start buying more gas guzzlers and SUVs.
So when buying a vehicle, keep in mind that a car can last 10 years or more, but if history
is any guide, low oil prices won't last that long.    After months of grand jury deliberations in
the case of officer Darren Wilson shooting teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
the grand jury has decided that Wilson should not be prosecuted for Brown's death. A key element in that case, as in all police
shootings, all cases involving police use of force is whether the officer's decision
about whether force was warranted was reasonable or not. For an officer's deadly force to be legal,
he has to have believed that the target of the force was a threat to his own life, or
another innocent person, or that the target was fleeing from a violent felony. But the question isn't whether the person
being shot actually was a threat. The question is whether the officer thought
he was a threat. Whether the officer's state of mind at the
time of the shooting was reasonable. And whether that state of mind is enough to
support the decision to shoot. And officers will rely on this defense that
in a split second, they did the right thing. They thought that they were in danger, and
they pulled the trigger, and that it's not reasonable to question that. And that's a really effective defense. Even if it turns out that they were wrong. "Get your hands out, now!" There are a couple of reasons for that. People believe that police officers are credible. Another reason is that citizens are more likely
perceive black people as criminals. Juries are made of citizens. So that is an advantage for an officer whose
legal defense is that he felt threatened by a black man. The result is that police can and do kill. And a disproportionate number of people killed
by police are black. In recent years, young black men have been
twenty one times more likely to be shot by police than white teens are. Police have to use force in their jobs and
they will sometimes have to make a split second decision. But over time, cases of police officers making
that decision wrong and shooting an unarmed person because they wrongly perceived them
to be a threat keep happening. These cases keep piling up. It's time to re-evaluate when we allow police
to use force, and what the consequences should be when they get it wrong. The Obama administration just announced a
massive executive action. It's going to protect about 4 million unauthorized immigrants from
deportation, and it's going to let them work legally in the U.S. Since 9/11, the number
of deportations has risen drastically. Since President Obama came into office, there have
been about 400,000 deportations every single year. But we're not going to deport all 11
million unauthorized immigrants, so given that choices have to get made about who gets
deported and who doesn't, the administration has decided that it doesn't make sense to
deport people who have lived in the U.S. for several years, who have not committed crimes,
and who have families here that they need to take care of. For the last decade or so
the unauthorized immigrant population has been really well settled in the U.S. As of
2013, almost 2/3 of unauthorized adults had been here for 10 years or more and a least
4 million have children who are U.S. citizens. Those are the people who the Obama administration
has decided to protect with this new action. These protections already apply to a group
of younger unauthorized immigrants called DREAMers because they would have benefited
from the DREAM Act. We know that Republicans are extremely angry about this. There are
lots of pro-immigration-enforcement people out there who say that there should really
be a threat of random deportation on any individual unauthorized immigrant, but it is not legitimate
to say that it's somehow illegal for the president to decide who to deport and who not to deport
-- plenty of presidents have done that in the past. George H.W. Bush gave similar protections
to family members of people who were going to become US citizens it was a smaller number
of people, but about an equal percentage of the unauthorized population. This won't give
anyone official legal status and it won't put anyone on a path to citizenship. Only
Congress can do that. But it allows them to apply for something that promises they won't
be deported for 3 years, apply for a work permit, and millions of families will know
for sure, for the first time in years, that they won't be torn apart. ♫*Music*♫ Where Silk Comes from Well, worm spit Bombyx Mori 
aka. Silkworm The silk production process 
is also known as Sericutlture. It dates back to around 4,800 years ago in China. Here is the process in action at the silk farm
Artisans Angkor, near Siem Reap, Cambodia Larvae hatch out of these eggs after 14 days Those eggs were laid by adult moths 
This one is dead After millennia of domestication, 
the adult moths cannot fly The larvae feast on MulberryLeaves They eat continuously For about 42 days Then it's cocoon time They spin their silk cocoon for 3-8 days One strand. Secreted by sailvry glands. About 1,000 feet long. The chrysalis inside is then killed by steam
 or by laying in the sun or boiling The cocoons are loosened in hot wtr and unwound Several strands are spun together into a thread Raw silk (outside of cocoon) Fine silk (inside of cocoon) Workers painstakingly remove lumps and debris The silk is dyed any color of the rainbow A  warping whel divides the fine silk thread Fine silk Raw silk It takes about  2500 silkworms to make 1 pound of silk There's always this tone when you read articles
about poverty, that this is this intractable problem that we barely understand, let alone,
like, have the tools to deal with. We have the tools. It's called cash. The government
spends billions of dollars on these really complicated schemes to end poverty, but the
problem with poverty is not having enough money. The simplest solution when someone
doesn't have enough money is to give them money. And so that's more or less the idea
of a universal basic income. So lots of people have supported a basic income, or a guaranteed
income or whatever you want to call it. Martin Luther King endorsed one in his last book.
Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist, outlined a specific plan for one. Charles
Murray, who wrote The Bell Curve, is an avid proponent. One thing that gets lost is that
it really was a mainstream political idea in America, as recently as the 1970s. Richard
Nixon tried to pass a guaranteed minimum income inspired by Milton Friedman. It got very close
to passing. George McGovern, who ran against him, ran against him on a platform that included
a more generous guaranteed minimum income. Jimmy Carter tried to pass a minimum income
as president. But the point is, this was a really mainstream idea. It wasn't something
that was like crazy, like it sometimes feels like today. And a few things happened to make
it that way. The big one was that there were a bunch of experiments that tried out a version
of a basic income called the Negative Income Tax in a bunch of different cities in the
US and in Canada. And it's one of those experiments where people will still argue about what the
results actually said to this day. What got reported and passed along by politicians was
no one is going to work if you implement this. That's not true. There was an effect on -- people
worked fewer hours, but it was a pretty modest effect and it's really hard to say where it
came from. Like one place it probably came from was people staying in school longer.
But the overwhelming feeling in Washington was, OK, we had this idea; we tried it; it
didn't work; let's move on. But it's totally possible to end poverty, and we shouldn't
act as though this is something that no one has thought up a way to fix. People have thought
up a way to fix it --  the question is if we think it's worth it. We've just reached an entire new milestone
in space exploration. "A mission to go to a comet, drill out a sample, and bring it
back to Earth." The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft just landed a small, 220-pound
robot onto a comet, making it the 7th celestial body we've ever landed a spacecraft on. Previous
missions have flown by comets, and in 2005, NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into
a comet to analyze its interior, but this is the first mission to make a controlled
landing on one. Comets are frigid chunks of ice and rock that orbit the sun. They're a
bit like asteroids, except they have more elliptical orbits that sometimes take them
so close to the sun that they start to vaporize, creating the bright tails they're known for.
Scientists think comets may have brought water and complex organic molecules to Earth, which
we can thank for our existence. The comet in question is called 67P/C-G, named after
the Ukrainian astronomers who first spotted it in 1969. It's sort of duck shaped and about
2.5 miles wide. Picture a rock the size of Japan's Mt. Fuji, rotating every 12 hours
and moving through space at about 84,000 miles per hour, millions of miles away from Earth.
Comet 67P orbits the sun every 6 and a half years from a point just beyond Jupiter. To
reach it, Rosetta had to loop around several times, passing by Earth and Mars to use their
gravity as a slingshot. As a result, it's been traveling for more than a decade. It
left Earth way back in March 2004 and has traveled over 3.5 billion miles to reach the
comet. That's nearly 40 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. As it traveled
too far to be powered by the sun, the spacecraft went into hibernation for 2.5 years on the
way there. Rosetta woke up at the beginning of this year and caught up with the comet
in August. Just putting the probe in orbit around the comet was a major feat -- we'd
never done that before -- especially since engineers expected a potato-shaped comet,
and ended up with a duck. Last month, scientists picked out a site for the lander, a nice smooth
flat spot on the comet's smaller lobe. The lander flew down to the comet over the course
of several hours, slowing itself down and eventually landing at the speed of a person
walking. "Here we have very very low gravity. So this lander, which has a mass of about
100kg, will have the weight of about a sheet of paper when it comes down on the comet.
The problem is to stay there." After 10 years of flight, the lander has an incredibly short
amount of time to conduct science on the comet's surface: 64 hours. That's how long its battery
lasts, and that's how long it has to drill into the comet, collect soil samples, and
chemically analyze them. After that, the lander deactivates unless it can get enough solar
power to recharge. But Rosetta will continue to orbit the comet and keep sending back photos
and other data until December 2015, when the comet heads back out of the inner solar system.
All this research will tell us more about the composition of comets than we've ever
known before. And because comets are the oldest things we can reach, this information could
help us better understand the very beginnings of our solar system. all right we're on our way right guys all three hands up the the marathon generates millions of dollars in Charity donations every year just the one charity I ran for Fred's team raised over $5 million for cancer research all right we just started just often times when you're talking about the marathon people ask why is it 26.2 mies there's a good reason for that it's the distance between marathon in Greece and Athens there was a battle that the Greeks fought against the Persians in Marathon and a guy named fodes who ran all the way back to Athens to bring the news unfortunately for those of us running the marathon fi's died at the end of this run regardless the popularity of marathon running has exploded we're going to get some high five from children okay woohoo so I wanted to know why do people run the marathon I've just completed a world record for most marathons across seven continents in one year having around 160 marathons finishing up in April at Boston so I do it basically to inspire the Next Generation and in memory of my mom and St mom the both lost cancer he what's your name try Mar CI Australia we're about 9 miles in my shins are starting to feel it but you know the energy in the crowd is probably going to power us through my name is Janet and I'm from queen born and raised in Queen I love to run I've been running since I was 18 my name is Carrie I'm from Chicago and I run to stay in [Music] [Applause] shape my name is think I don't cuz I can where are you from I'm from Philadelphia there's also an entire constellation of health reasons to run regularly which marathon training makes you do we're between mile 20 and 21 this is the part of the race that is the absolute shest everything my name is Salo and where are you from I'm from Argentina and where do you run I just wanted to run a marathon and if I going to go you go big you going to make it yeah I'm going make so why did I run the marathon I wanted to see if I could do it I wanted to see if it would bring my wife Amy and I even closer and I wanted to know if the regular training would help improve my mood like several studies suggested in my it [Music] did on Friday November 7th the Obama administration got what is arguably even more snooze for them than Republicans taken over in the Senate the Supreme Court has decided to take a case called King versus Burwell which is as big a threat to Obamacare as the individual mandate case was a few years back it is an existential threat and the reason why is this Obamacare is a three-legged stool one leg is the individual mandate you have to buy insurance another leg is the ban on pre-existing conditions the insurer has to sell you insurance even if you're sick or have been sick but the third leg of the stool and the one that's most important are the subsidies that is a way the government makes this thing that they're telling you you have to buy and then insurers have to sell affordable and what King versus Burwell does is it says it in 36 states where the federal government is running the health insurance exchange the subsidies the federal government uses to make insurance affordable are illegal now this all comes down to nine words in the law where arguably the government was unclear and what the plaintiffs argue about those nine words is it you could only get subsidies if as a state you built your health care exchange yourself the drafters of law pretty much everyone who wrote it covered it conceptualized it anything they all say the same thing that's ridiculous we gave the federal government power to create exchanges on behalf of states and of course we always meant for those exchanges to have subsidies otherwise we've crippled the entire law if they rip these subsidies out of 36 states that's more than 7 million people for whom insurance becomes almost instantly unaffordable and when those people leave the people left are older and they're sicker then you get an insurance and death spiral as premiums begin jacking up and up and up because there aren't enough healthy young people in the system in 36 states a lot of them that are working pretty well under Obamacare where millions of people have been covered this would overnight if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs destroy Obamacare and send those people back to the ranks of the uninsured before today most people thought the Supreme Court just ignored us because that seems absolutely too partisan and crazy for them to do but there's a whole lot better chance today they're gonna do it than there was yesterday you you The personhood movement began six years ago
in Colorado. It was started by a 21-year-old law student there and she had this idea that
she should help pass a law that would add unborn fetuses to some of the protections
that everybody else gets. And basically this was driven by her belief that life begins
at conception, and therefore any unborn fetuses should have the exact same protections that
she has under the law. And she got this onto the Colorado ballot. It did not succeed. It
failed. But now here we are six years later and there have been five separate personhood
ballots, all of which have subsequently also failed. It's shown that this strain of the
pro-life movement is not really having success at the ballot box that these generally considered
to be more extreme measures, which could potentially ban abortion, they could ban in vitro fertilization,
are not a way for the pro-life movement to win. The pro-life movement has been really
successful with more incremental regulations. They passed 205 separate abortion restrictions
since 2010. That's more than the last decade before that. But when you look at these giant,
sweeping personhood amendments, these ones that would say life starts at conception or
add what they would call unborn humans to the criminal code, those are not succeeding,
and two more defeats in North Dakota and Colorado last night suggest that they're not going
to be having much traction in the future either. I think pro-choice groups are generally very
happy with what happened in North Dakota and Colorado. They were very worried particularly
about the North Dakota amendment passing and it failed by a pretty wide margin. So I think
that's reassuring to pro-choice groups. However, there will probably be dozens more abortion
restrictions that will pass in 2014 with the state legislators who are just being elected
into office, and that they're certainly by no means in the clear, that they have a rough battle to fight in the years ahead. One of the bad habits we have in the media
is trying to give each election a narrative, as if there is one story going right through
it. Doesn't work. So instead of giving you one story about it, I'm going to give you
five takeaways that I think -- I think -- are true. Number one is that this was just a goddamn
disaster for Democrats. They got destroyed. They got destroyed in the states. They got
destroyed in the governors' races. They lost in Maryland, in Massachusetts, in Maine. This
was a wholesale rejection of the Democratic party. This was a Republican wave. But takaway
number two is that liberalism actually did a whole lot better than Democrats did. Across
the country, you had ballot initiatives that were pretty damn liberal. A couple of them
were liberal enough that you couldn't even have imagined them being serious contenders
a decade ago. In Washington, DC and Oregon they legalized marijuana. They increased the
minimum wage in Illinois and Nebraska and Arkansas. They expanded background checks
on guns in Washington state. A lot of these ballot initiatives were in states where Republicans
won the election, which suggests voters are very angry at the Democratic party, but they
don't necessarily agree with the Republican party on very much. Takeaway number three
is that Democrats, as every party does every time they win an election, had told themselves
a bunch of stories that just turned out to be bullshit. They thought that there was a
whole new electorate that had emerged, and that pollsters simply weren't counting the
rush of Latino voters and young women who would be coming to the polls. And they're
right about one thing, the polls were wrong. But they weren't wrong because they underestimated
Democratic strength. They were wrong because the underestimated Republican strength. Takeaway
number 4: There are actually a couple 2016 winners in this bunch. And the two big ones
are, for the Republicans, Chris Christie, who ran the Republican Governors Association and
so gets a lot of the credit for the fact that Republicans won a bunch of governor elections
in blue states. So now Christie can go in 2016 and argue to Republicans that not only
has he shown that he can win in a blue state like New Jersey, but he was actually able
to lead other Republican governors to win in blue states like Maine and Massachusetts
and Maryland. That's going to be a really powerful appeal to a party that has not won
a presidential election in a long time. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton comes
out of this looking pretty good actually. Democrats are going to know they can lose
an election so they're going to want a trusted commodity who's pretty damn good at running campaigns.
And a lot of possible competitors to Hillary Clinton who could have rose up during a successful
Democratic election either don't exist or they got cut down. The fifth: It is just going
to be a lot harder for the Obama administration to really do anything going forward. That's
true obviously because there are going to be more Republicans and Republicans have not
shown much inclination to compromise with President Obama. But also Democrats have just
lost an election, in part because the president was an anchor around their campaigns because
his approval ratings are bad; they feel like he did not do a good job helping their campaigns
by sticking to a good message in the run-up. So he's going to have even less leverage among
members of Congress. Meanwhile he's been promising a big executive action on immigration reform.
Is he really going to legalize millions of immigrants? The administration thinks they
will. They reiterated it on election day, but it's hard to believe. In the end, most
of this comes down to one thing: This was a bad election for Democrats. It was a bad
election for Democrats because the electorate is unhappy and they're angry. They haven't
necessarily changed their opinions on very much. They don't necessarily think Paul Ryan
is right about everything and they certainly don't think President Obama is right about
everything. But they are tired of watching Washington fail them. And they are very, very
angry at the party that is supposed to be in control for letting that happen. We're at a pretty dangerous moment in the
ebola outbreak, not just because itself is so bad – though it really is, it is really
something worth worrying about – but because it is getting us so afraid that we are beginning
to consider doing things that are really stupid, that would really make the outbreak worse. One of those things is a travel ban. "Many on the right are calling for an all-out
travel ban" And it comes from an understandable but really dangerous misconception about what
about Ebola is dangerous to us. The way to stop it, the way that will work
to stop it, is not keeping people out of the US, because we will never do that at a big
enough scale and every time we've tried travel bans – and we have tried travel bans a
bunch of times before –  OBAMA:"22 years ago, in a decision rooted
in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban... for people living
with HIV/AIDS" All they do delay disease. The key to stopping Ebola in America is stopping
it in West Africa. And in order to do that, you can't do things
like a travel ban that make it harder for us to get doctors and more resources there. You can't do things that make people who have
Ebola want to hide. We shouldn't be freaking out about small,
isolated cases here. We can stop those. But we can't stop is a situation where Ebola
gets to 100,000 or 5 million infections in Africa, in Asia. The scariest thing that I've heard about Ebola
– its that for every four cases we know about, there are six in West African that
we don't know about. Those cases are the dangerous ones. Anything that makes people more afraid to
go to a hospital and say yeah I was with somebody who had Ebola and I'm feeling Fluish, that's
really dangerous. We need to create enough resources in West
Africa to stop the outbreak. We need to create a culture where people aren't
afraid to go and get care. And we need to be putting our best minds and
our energy and our policy into stopping Ebola there in order to keep it from ever becoming
a threat here. "I drove trucks." "I've been a paperboy."
"I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm." An estimated $2 billion or more will be spent
on political ads for the 2014 midterms. And with the surge of outside money unleashed
by the Supreme Court in 2010, we can only expect to see more of these ads going forward.
So you might wonder: Do these ads even work? TV spot ads for political campaigns date back
to 1952. It didn't take long for TV ads to go negative, a trend that's worsening still. An infamous 1964 ad from Lyndon Johnson's campaign suggested his opponent would start a nuclear war.  "These are the stakes." Johnson soon won in a landslide, but it wasn't because of the ad. He was even
further ahead before it aired. These ads can be so vivid and memorable that it's easy to
overstate their influence. But studies on whether or not they matter are surprisingly
murky. Think about how small the target is: Ads work if they persuade those few Americans
who vote but lack political allegiances and also live in a state or a district where the
election might be a close call. So it's a hard topic to research. The available studies
find limited effects of ads in a few cases. But by one estimate, having a massive ad advantage
delivered only half of a percentage point advantage in vote share in the 2008 presidential
election. Ads had an even smaller effect in 2004. In one real-world experiment during
the early months of Rick Perry's 2006 governor reelection campaign, researchers randomly
assigned this ad to certain media markets in Texas. "I'm proud of Texas. How bout you?"
They conducted a poll afterwards and found stronger support for Perry in the areas that
saw the ad, but only during the week it aired. By the following week, the effects had disappeared.
They only examined positive ads though. Might negative ads work better? "Found in a strip
club." "Toasted the Chinese Vice President." "Obamacare." The most comprehensive review
so far concluded that negative ads are more memorable, but hurt the attacker as often
as they help. It's not necessarily so irrational though that candidates spend so much money
on ads. Even if there's no guarantee that ads can swing a race, there's only a few ways
a campaign can get its message in front of voters. If the race is close, even half a
percentage point might make a difference. The simple fact of the 2014 election is that
its basic structure is a disaster for Democrats. It is a perfect storm. Here is the first basic truth. Midterm elections simply favor Republicans. The electorate is older and it is whiter than
it is in presidential elections. The Republican-leaning portion of the electorate
also happens to be older and whiter, so you get more Republicans and fewer Democrats. The next simple fact is that midterm elections
favor the part that does not have the White House. It almost always is a huge boon for the minority
party. In the last century there have only been three
midterm elections - three - where the minority party has actually lost seats. And those were extraordinary moments in American
history. That was 1934 during the Great Depression,
it was 1998 after Republicans tried to impeach and remove President Clinton, and it was 2002
after 9/11. This is not like one of those elections. Third, both in the House and the Senate, the
map itself favors Republicans in a very, very big way. Part of that is because of where democrats
live - they're clustered in urban areas. And part of it is because after 2010 when
Republicans took over a lot of state legislatures, they gerrymandered the hell out of a lot of
the maps. In 2012, Democrats won 1.4 million House votes
more than Republicans, but they got beat by Republicans by 33 seats in the house. Winning more votes is not enough for Democrats
to win back the House. The Senate is totally another story. Unlike in the House where everybody is up
for re-election in every election, in the Senate roughly a third is up in any given
year. This election is coming in cycle from 2008. Democrats had a great year in '08. They won a lot of Senate seats, and so now
they are defending a lot more than Republicans are. Of the 36 seats up this year, Democrats are
defending 21 of them. Republicans are only defending 15. That just flatly means Republicans have a
lot more opportunities to win seats this year than the Democrats do. But Republicans shouldn't get too excited,
because the 2016 election – it's basic shape is going to favor the Democrats. It is an election where the electorate will
be younger and more non-white. It is an election where Democrats will have
many more opportunities to win Senate seats than Republicans. It is a presidential election, where the President's
party often has some advantage around fundraising. This year is likely to go very bad for Democrats. But one reason you do not see them freaking
out the way you might normally is that they figure, even if they lose the Senate this
year, they're probably just going to take it back 2 years from now. And how much harm can be done in 2 years? I am going to get a flu shot. Like every adult
American should this flu season. My insurance card. Ready to get a flu shot. You should
get a flu shot. Everybody should get a flu shot. Unless you have some particular medical
condition that would prevent you from getting a flu shot. The last time there was a survey,
58% of Americans didn't get flu shots. Flu shots are usually really cheap. If you have
insurance, it's probably not going to cost you anything. Just bring your insurance card,
very important. If you don't have insurance, usually they're in the $15-25 range. The flu
is very contagious, and sometimes we have really bad flu outbreaks. In 2004, the flu
killed 48,000 people. So far Ebola is tragic and terrible -- it's a very terrifying disease
with a very high mortality rate, but it's killed about 3,000 people at this point. The
flu typically kills thousands of people each year. These tend to be people with weaker
immune systems, who are older or sicker. Essentially what you're getting is an injection of an
inactive flu virus. One of the misconceptions about the flu vaccine is that you could actually
get the flu from getting the vaccine. That's not true. It's an inactive virus. You might
get sore. It's like possible to get a very minor-grade fever, but you cannot get the
flu from the flu vaccine. We're here -- look, they have a sign outside. No-cost flu shots.  "Are you waiting?" "Oh yeah, I wanted to get a flu shot."  "Do you take an anti-coagulation medication? No. And I'm not pregnant or nursing." You know, one of the reasons to get the flu shot is obviously to vaccinate yourself, to protect
yourself against the flu season, but arguably the more important reason is to help with
something called herd immunity. Let's say that there's one guy out there in the whole
U.S. who gets a flu vaccine. That doesn't really stop the disease. It might help him,
but it doesn't really stop the disease from spreading. But let's say 90% of the American
population gets the flu vaccine. Then it's really difficult for the flu to bounce form
person to person. And you're setting up a firewall. So that's really important for people
who have more fragile immune systems. Maybe your grandparents -- they're the ones who
are must susceptible to the flu, the most likely to be killed by the flu. So really
when you're getting a flu shot, you can do it for selfish reasons to protect yourself,
but you know, let's say you're not completely selfish. "Does it matter which arm I get it
in? I'm kind of nervous. I really don't like needles."  I got a flu shot! You should get
a flu shot too! Everyone! Go get your flu shots! That was not very nice. If you are a responsible citizen of the Internet,
then surely you have heard of one Nicolas Cage. "I said, put the bunny back in the box." The actor is one of the best of his generation,
an Academy Award winner who makes a great film every few years. But in between, he takes
pretty much any gig offered to him, then he commits, goddammit, which results in this. "No, no, not the bees! Not the bees! Aggghhh!" But Television should get its own Nicolas
Cage, and in the grand tradition of TV, he should sort of feel like a department store
knockoff of Cage. Fortunately, we TV fans have just that, and
we’ve had him for years now. His name is Dylan McDermott. He might have been Emmy-nominated for his
work on The Practice, but his true strength? It’s shouting about things. "I needed you, and you got a dog!" "It was me you should have been curling up with at night!" It’s entirely possible McDermott himself
didn’t know he was TV’s Nicolas Cage, but as with so many things, Glee co-creator
Ryan Murphy looked deep into McDermott’s soul and saw a raving lunatic just waiting
to get out. He made McDermott the male lead of the first season of American Horror Story,
and a legend was born. "She's having twins, and only one of them
is mine." "The sad fact is that I'm shooting blanks.
You can ask my ex-wife. We tried for five years."
"All it takes is one good swimmer." Throughout that season, McDermott gave the
pitch of utter, defeated angst to so many terrible lines that it became possible to
watch the show entirely to see what he would say next. "You ruined everything!" Even better: it was never entirely possible
to tell if McDermott was in on the joke or not, which made his performance seem all the
more bizarre. He returned for an arc in season two, in which he played the main character’s
murderous offspring. [Screaming] Sadly, it was a bit of a letdown. "This is delicate work!" He went from Horror Story to CBS’s Hostages,
but he brought with him a strong sense that what TV needed was frowny faces and random
words being whispered. "You're gonna kill the President of the United
States, Helen. Otherwise, we will... kill your family." Now, he’s on CBS’s new 'Stalker.' The
show is awful, and it tries too hard to make him “serious.” But there are flickers
here and there. What new horizons of insanity will Dylan McDermott open up for us? Only
time will tell. Here's a chart that shows something a little
bit shocking. Who actually reaps the financial gains when
the American economy grows. It ignores recessions and just looks at periods
of economic expansion. And it shows that for decades, the majority
of the gains went to the bottom 90% of the population. And that's what you'd expect, since that's
where most of the people are. But since 1980, the top 10% has gotten the
most of the gains, and in the most recent recovery, incomes for the majority of households
have actually fallen. That's why so many people say it feels like
the United States is in recession, even though it technically isn't in one. I don't think anyone really knows exactly
why this is happening, but it's clearly the biggest problem we've got, and it's a clear
sign the economy is broken. Protests started in Hong Kong in late September.
What had happened is that the Chinese government had come out and said 'hey we know we promised
your first fully-democratic election in 2017, but we're going to approve any of the candidates
who can run.' People started protesting and then few days later, the thing that really
escalated it was when Hong Kong police came out with an unprecedented level of force to
crack down on the protesters, which only further outraged a lot of people in Hong Kong, drove
more people into the streets where they're now shutting down the financial district.
To understand what's really happening here, the larger forces at work, you have to go
back to 1997. That's the year of what people in Hong Kong call the handover, when it went
from one of the last vestiges of the British Empire to part of China. As part of the handover,
China promised that Hong Kong would be able to keep this really unusual level of freedom,
and it would get to have these first fully-democratic elections in 2017. It's called the One Country,
Two Systems policy. So when China reneged a little bit on its plan for the 2017 elections,
it looked to a lot of people in Hong Kong like it was the beginning of the end of One
Country, Two Systems. And the thing that you have to understand is that it's about more
than just democracy, although that's important. There's a kind of sense of Hong Kong exceptionalism.
People there are much more affluent, much more worldly. They really see themselves as
very distinct from the rest of China. And any move like this that feels like it's pulling
them into the dictatorial rule of the communist party in China is very scary to them. And
part of what really makes that so scary is the memory of Tiananmen Square, right, which
happened in 1989 in Beijing. That memory is much, much stronger in Hong Kong, where they
hold an annual vigil every year. They're keeping the flame alive for their fellow Chinese who
can't, so that when police started coming out in force late in these protests, they
thought 'hey this doesn't look like Hong Kong, this looks like Beijing.' So what you're seeing
is not just a fight for, can we keep the election rules that we have for 2017, it's a fight
for, can they stay Hong Kong or are they going to become just like the rest of China? I first heard of Ebola on the 24th of May,
and that was the first time I went on Google and Googled what Ebola is. It was a kind of
very scary and unimaginable name. What the hell is Ebola? You're trying to figure out
where did that come from? This is the very first time that Ebola has struck Sierra Leone.
So people have little or no preparedness. When we first had Ebola, the area that is
affected is the opposition political party's stronghold. So there were a lot of misconceptions
that 'Oh, census is coming in December. The country is supposed to have census in December.
And so what these guys are trying to do right now is to kill some of us and reduce the numbers.'
But then, as we get along the reality begins to show itself. So denial was not an issue
anymore. It's about the level of understanding and the level of literacy that people do have.
The outbreak has tremendously affected the lifestyle of people. Right now, around 8 o'
clock, 9 o'clock, everyone will be running home. There are no more nightclubs. There
are no more pubs. There are no more restaurants. People don't shake hands anymore. People don't
hug anymore. Everyone is suspicious about someone. My kids have been home
since July, and they cannot go to school because schools are not functioning. That will hamper
on the socio-economic development of the country -- a country that is recovering from 11 years
brutal civil war. It's not just the Ebola that is killing people in the country. It's
the poverty. It's the feeling of being left alone. It's the feeling of hopelessness. Our
health system was just not prepared for an emergency like Ebola. We were struggling already
on a regular basis, or on a day-to-day basis in providing healthcare for people, the basic
primary health care. We have very limited number of medical practitioners, especially
doctors. All the holding centers we have are full. All the hospitals are full. People die
of hypertension, people die of stress, people die of common illnesses, maternity-related issues.
If you were pregnant in Sierra Leone today, it would be a very difficult situation because
where do you go to hospital? People's life at risk. Nothing is working in the country.
It's as if you live in a world that everything is not working, nothing is happening, and
all you're looking for is a divine grace. president obama recently announced a campaign to attempt to destroy the islamic state in iraq and syria we will degrade and ultimately destroy isil the american strategy is to use air power and local allies in iraq and syria to try to eliminate the group and push it out of its strongholds this plan might be able to contain isis but it will not be able to destroy it why not there's two big reasons the syrian civil war is a catastrophe in humanitarian terms it's claimed about two hundred thousand lives it's displaced an extraordinary number of syrians but in political terms there are so many different factions inside syria with competing incentives that it's very difficult to create an effective and stable anti-isis coalition isis is powerful it's defeated al-qaeda in syria it has defeated bashar al-assad and has defeated moderate syrian rebel groups on the battlefield right now the moderate rebels which obama is going to support are very weak and even training 5 000 or 6 000 as his plan seems to call for won't be enough in order to defeat isis a force the cia estimates between twenty thousand and thirty one thousand five hundred let's move on to iraq the problem in iraq is that there are two really large religious groups that are competing for control over the iraqi government shia muslims and sunni muslims the iraqi majority is shia the iraqi minority is sunni the majority the shias have oppressed repeatedly the sunnis after taking control of the state from saddam hussein after the original american invasion that is fueling isis's power because iraqi sunnis flock to isis they don't trust the government to maintain their basic rights and they're willing to try out isis rule rather than the central government's rule the us needs to turn sunni iraqis against isis otherwise isis will have cities to hide in and a large supply of recruits in order to replenish itself since 911 the united states has not destroyed a single major jihadi group the reasons that they exist have to do with politics rather than a lack of military force to counterbalance them alone it's hard to imagine that the united states will have its first success with isis one of the strongest jihadi groups we've ever seen you One of the most interesting sentences I've
read about American politics recently is "Democrats and liberals are more likely to focus on policymaking
because any change that occurs is much more likely to be liberal than conservative." This
chart is proof for that. What you're seeing here is an effort to code major policy changes
according to whether they were liberal -- which is to say they expanded government -- or they
were conservative, which is to say they shrank it. And both in the sort of 1945-1980 period,
which is maybe the New Deal era and in the Post-Reagan period, which is a more conservative
period in American government, liberal policy changes are just much more frequent than conservative
policy changes, which is to say two things: One is that it's actually rational for conservatives
to be very very skeptical of cutting deals, of really governing. Because governance just
has a liberal bias, even if there's a Republican in the White House. And the other is that
it is just very hard once the federal government begins doing something, to get it to stop.
In terms of looking for an effective federal government, a federal government that is not
continuing to do things that don't work or that should no longer be done, this should
be a worrying chart even to people who believe in federal action. Right now, we're facing the biggest Ebola
outbreak we've ever seen in history. More than 2,000 people have died and that's
more than the total number of people who have ever died from Ebola since the first recorded
outbreak in 1976. And the bulk of the deaths have happened within
the last month, so things aren't getting better. There are a couple of things that have helped
this outbreak really spin out of control and one is the fact that the response just wasn't
fast enough. It wasn't until August that the World Health
Organization declared this a public health emergency, and that was 5 months after the
first international spread. In the past, Ebola outbreaks tended to be
in really rural, remote areas, and this time it wound up in a border region in West Africa,
where people might cross the border for work, or they might cross to go to the market. With that, you get international spread. This is a region of Africa that's never seen
Ebola, so they didn't have the awareness of what this disease was in the population. These are also regions of Africa that have
some of the lowest literacy rates, so that made mounting a public health information
campaign all the more difficult. And there was fear. There was mistrust of health professionals. People, in this part of the world, they're
used to being cared for by their families when they're sick in the home, and in this
case they have to be ripped from their homes and put into containment facilities. And these are places that have some of the
weakest and poorest health systems in the world. In some of the hospitals there are days when
they just don't have gloves, gowns, and masks. Because of this, there have been health care
workers who have just walked off the job. They don't want to put themselves at risk
anymore, and I don't know if you can really blame them. In Liberia people are taking their family
members to the hospitals, but being turned away. There are no free beds for Ebola treatment
in the country right now. So as a result, Ebola's going back into the
community and spreading further. We could look at this epidemic as a kind of
warning that we need more robust global health systems, especially in a world that's increasingly
connected. That's something that we don't have now, and
that's one of the reasons why we've seen things get so out of control in this outbreak. my fellow americans good afternoon everybody good evening good morning everybody over the last several days we've seen significant gains made by isil a terrorist organization that operates in both iraq and in syria iraqi security forces have proven unable to defend a number of cities this is not solely or even primarily a military challenge but what's clear from the last decade is the need for the united states to ask hard questions before we take action abroad we're prepared to create joint operations centers in baghdad and northern iraq and we're prepared to send a small number of additional american military advisors up to 300. today i authorized two operations in iraq targeted airstrikes to protect our american personnel and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death countless iraqis have been displaced and chilling reports describe isil militants rounding up families conducting mass executions when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre then i believe the united states of america cannot turn a blind eye today the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of jim foley by the terrorist group isil there has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so that it does not spread i don't want to put the cart before the horse we don't have a strategy yet isil poses a threat to the people of iraq and syria and the broader middle east including american citizens personnel and facilities left unchecked these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region including to the united states i can announce that america will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat our objective is clear we will degrade and ultimately destroy isil through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions so that we're hitting isil targets as iraqi forces go on offense moreover i've made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists and threaten our country wherever they are that means i will not hesitate to take action against isil in syria as well as iraq may god bless our troops and may god bless the united states of america today we're introducing three revolutionary products an iPod a phone and an internet Communicator an iPod a phone are you getting it these are not three separate [Music] devices this is one device and we are calling it iPhone today today apple is going to reinvent the [Music] phone When I was reporting on education in
Washington, D.C. back in 2009 I went to an event where Arne Duncan, President Obama's secretary of education, was speaking. And he said the following, "A great teacher is a miracle-worker, a great teacher can walk on water." And that was just staggering to me. The idea that to be a great teacher you have to be like Jesus Christ— or that you have to essentially be better than human. That's not realistic. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, she wrote that a great teacher can trump poverty. And the best research done by three economists— Raj Chetty, Jonah Rockoff, and John Friedman — found that teachers are responsible for approximately 7% of the current achievement gap. So that is 7% of the current gap between how poor children perform and how middle-class kids perform is due to differences in teacher quality. The rest of the achievement gap is driven by socioeconomic factors and the family and in the neighborhood. The "magical thinking" has really been a part of American history and art education history from the beginning. If you looked at Catharine Beecher and
Horace Mann be founders of the Common School Movement back in the 1830s they were very alarmed about inequality
between Protestants and Catholics. And they really were like, "Oh teachers, teachers are going to solve this problem!" And then if you go to the Progressive Era when there were really horrible conditions in the streets of New York and Chicago— tuberculosis coming out of water hydrants, tenements. Jacob Riis, the famous muckraker, he wrote that the teacher the was the most important influence on this entire social scene. This was a time when there were very few labor rights, children were working in factories. It wasn't even compulsory to go to school past age 12. And again, he was putting all this hope in the teacher. We see the same thing during the Civil Rights era. The hope that Brown v. Board and the integration of schools was going to lead to closing achievement gaps. It helped. It didn't get us all the way there. And we see it today with the Standards and Accountability movement, the idea now that socioeconomic inequality, differences between the classes can be closed by teachers. We need to address making the job an
attractive job, more than we need to focus on things like telling teachers that they can trump poverty. It might be inspiring at first but even the great work you can do with an individual child to open up opportunities for them which can change their individual life, 
there's a big gap between that and systematically on a national scale using teachers as the means to address our inequality crisis. And if they're going to help get us there, is the way we're doing it now the best way? It's hard to imagine today, but about 100
years ago, boxing was one of the most popular sports in the U.S. More people went to some
championship bouts than could fit into any NFL stadium today. But for boxing, it was
all downhill from there. There are a lot of reasons why, but one of them is that a lot
of people see the sport as barbaric because it causes brain damage. "After the most murderous
beating a man ever took in the ring. And there's the bell." After years of getting hit in the
head, many boxers developed dementia and depression as part of a disease called dementia pugilistica.
Nowadays, dementia pugilistica has a new name: CTE. And it's not just found in boxers, but
in increasing numbers of football players, even causing some people to question the future
of the NFL. So people have always known that playing tackle football causes injuries. Ok
i'm going to play football and maybe I'm going to break my legs, maybe I won't be able to
run when I'm 50. Players have known that forever. But what we didn't know is that tackle football
can cause really long-term brain injuries. There's something a lot less sad about a 50-year-old
who can't run versus a 50-year-old who can't think. "The things we do to one another....
ok ..... uh ... hell I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just tired and confused right
now. That's why I say I can't really -- I can't say it the way I want to say it." Over
the past few years, a number of former players have committed suicide after battling depression.
Afterwards, they gave their brains to science and upon examination, they showed telltale
signs of CTE. Scientists don't yet have a way of diagnosing CTE for sure, besides doing
an autopsy. So apart from the 50 deceased former players confirmed to have it, they
can only suspect that hundreds more are living with it right now. "9-7-8-4-3-2... 9-7-8......" For a while the NFL was completely repressing research. They were telling players that concussions
were a relatively safe type of injury to suffer. But with pressure mounting, the league changed
course, settling a class-action suit for $765 million and pouring money into CTE research.
The issue hasn't gone away at all. The NFL's been trying to solve it, and it seems like
they're putting genuine efforts into it, but it just might not be possible. In theory,
concussed players are no longer allowed to enter games. They've moved the kickoff 5 yards
down the field so a lot more kickoffs become touchbacks, so you don't have the high-speed
impacts happen when the kicking team is trying to cover the kick and tackle the player. They've
changed the rules in terms of head-to-head hits. On defense, you can't use your head
or your helmet as a weapon. If you're a running back, you also can't lead with your head to
hit other players' heads. Those are the easiest things to target, they're kind of the lowest-hanging
fruit. They can't get rid of concussions entirely - those rule changes. Some concussions happen
on the most random, incidental plays. I mean you have these huge, fast guys running at
high speed so even if you ban specific types of hits, we're still seeing concussions happen
with alarming frequency. There's another problem - even if they got rid of concussions completely,
some of the scientists think that subcuncussive hits, so even milder type of hits that we
might not even notice watching on tv, also lead to CTE over time. They're still trying
to figure that out, but if that were true, that would basically mean that the game of
football as we know it is fundamentally unsafe. The NFL is more popular than ever. The Superbowl
gets over 100 million people, so that's a third of the country, watching it. And just
on a week-to-week basis, you know, more people watch football than any other sport. It's
more popular by an order of magnitude. But lots of parents are worried about the safety
of the sport. A lot of people have come out and said they wouldn't let their kids play
football because of the health risks. "If I had a son, I would be real leery of him
playing." The number of kids under 16 playing tackle football nationwide seems to be declining.
And some state lawmakers have even considered banning it for kids under 14 entirely. It's
unlikely that people are just going to turn off the TV because they realize the sport
is unethical. What's going to kill football, if it dies, would be parents not letting the
next generation of players put on a helmet. "We've got to find a way in this game to help
eliminate that play right there. And I don't know how you do it." Max Fisher, Vox.com Foreign Editor: Russia
is invading Europe in 2014. This is a big deal. CNN Anchor: "The Russian military now being
directly involved in fighting Ukrainian government forces." Samantha Power: "Satellite imagery show Russian
combat units -- combat units southeast of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine." So President Obama, western leaders, everybody
is furious about this. Obama: "Russia has deliberately and repeatedly
violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." To understand why this all happening in Ukraine,
you have to go actually have to go back to 2012, which is when Russian President Vladimir
Putin ran for re-election. There were big protests in Moscow, St. Petersburg,
and a couple other places. He completely panicked, and that's when he
shifted political strategies from economic growth to anti-western paranoia, conservative
Christian orthodoxy, and a Russian imperial revival of nationalism. Then jump ahead to November 2013, that's when
the Ukraine crisis breaks out. You have protesters in Kiev that want to topple
the pro-Russian government and replace it with a pro-European government. Putin sees this as a direct threat, fomented
by the Americans against Russia. When the government falls, that's when he
invades to annex Crimea. He gains a huge popularity boost in Russia
over this, it works out for him wonderfully politically. And he gets addicted to it. And that's why shortly after that, he starts
supporting these pro-Russia separatist rebels in Eastern Ukraine. The rebels take over a couple of cities, Putin
starts escalating, and in July he hands the rebels these very sophisticated surface-to-air
missiles which they use to shoot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17. CNN anchor: "US officials say pro-Russian
rebels are responsible" Ukraine is fed up, the west is fed up, Ukrainian
military moves in to re-take these eastern cities, and actually push out a number of
these rebels. Putin really panics because he thinks he's
going to lose everything and has bared this huge cost of economic sanctions for doing
it. He couldn't afford to build up the crisis
as so crucial for Russia and then just kind of watch these rebels lose. So he was pulled into an invasion that clearly
is not going to work out in his long term strategic interests. And the thing that makes that so scary is
that if that's the case, that means he has no strategy, it means he has no actual objective
that he's trying to achieve, and it means that there's no clear end in sight for this
crisis. The Sopranos created a world where audiences were willing to watch anti-heroes they did that through the character of Tony Soprano a mob boss who was a brutal murderer but also a family man that also built up the show series finale to massive levels of hype part of the audience wanted to see Tony Soprano pay for his crimes while part of it wanted to see him get away with everything so how David chase ended the show with the last scene is legendary Tony goes to a diner to have dinner with his family then some believe he is murdered while others think not David Chase just came out and said in a Fox interview that Tony Soprano didn't die but he wanted audiences to be unsure I think David chases admission is not going to quell this debate people will be debating about it until the end of time here's how he provoked that debate in the first place we see a shot of his face and then we see a shot of his point of view and this continues throughout as he greets his various family members and the last shot is him looking up to see his daughter come in and we never see his daughter come in we just cut to black and the people who believe that he died say that this argues that he was shot in the back of the head that this guy coming in right in front of his son AJ is the guy who kills him the guy in the Members Only jacket he's somebody we've never seen before but in the line of Tony's work you know anybody could die at any time onion rings here we have his daughter doing parallel parking so the idea is that David Chase is ramping up the suspense here so much you expect something to happen but the argument for the idea that this is more ambiguous is that David Chase is specifically setting us up to have this reaction to feel this tense and then never have that resolved David Chase loved to do stories that featured dream logic that were more about psychology than plotting and that's one of the things that made the show revolutionary was it refused to conform to traditional narrative structures and having the show and without a real ending would be very in keeping with that one of the arguments I've always liked about this is that Tony's spirit is already sort of morally dead we know that he can't evolve we know that he can't change as a person and whether he dies at the end of this scene or he dies 30 years later of a heart attack or he dies getting hit by a bus crossing the street he's still dead because he can't change you He may be a surgeon, he may reach more people
in an hour than most doctors treat in their lifetimes, but it's no secret that TV star
Dr. Oz doesn't exactly prioritize evidence-based health advice. Especially when it comes to weight loss. He was even called before a senate sub-comittee
recently to explain, "I don't get why you need to say this stuff because you know it's
not true." Dr. Oz once told me in an interview that he
didn't have the "glitzy stuff," nobody would watch his show. The trouble is viewers get common sense advice
along with a big dose of nonsense. It can be hard to tell the difference. Here are three of Dr. Oz's biggest weight-loss
lies to watch out for. Number one - so on the show Dr. Oz often likes
to claim "metabolism boosters" are the holy grails of weight loss. "Behind these walls I've got five revolutionary
metabolism busters to bust through the fat after forty." He tells people to invest their money in everything
from special powders to teas and extracts for their "mega metabolism boosting capability." There are certain foods that will boost your
metabolism momentarily like coffee or chili spices, but the change is so small that it
would never have an impact on your waistline. We're talking less than half a calorie per
minute for a short period of time. So Dr. Oz's metabolism boosters won't burn
your fat, but they will burn your money. Number two: Dr. Oz will often say that you
can "blast away your belly fat" by going on a diet or taking supplements. "Add these to your diet to get rid of your
belly once and for all." The truth is there's just no evidence whatsoever
to support this notion that targeted fat loss is possible. You just can't lose weight in one part of
your body, no matter how appealing it sounds. Number three: on almost every Oz show, he
likes to claim certain supplements can help you lose weight. "Supplements: those simple, safe, no perscription
required pills and potions that can blast your fat, kill your cravings..." Garsenia cambotia, rasberry ketones, green
coffee bean supplements -- most of these supplements have not been properly studied in people and
some have actually never studied in humans. Or if they have, the studies are generally
so small and flawed by design there's no way to know whether they actually work. And lets face it, if there was a fat buster
in a bottle, we wouldn't have an obesity problem. So when should you listen to Dr. Oz? I'll let him explain: "What works for most
people?" "What works for most people is a diet based
on real food, food that comes out of the ground looking the way it looks when you eat it that's
not been processed, with some physical activity. Most of weight loss, I believe, is about the
food choices you make. Most of keeping your weight low is about the
physical activity you engage in." The ALS ice bucket challenge is this kind
of viral charity phenomenon meant to raise awareness and raise money towards a cure for
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that most people know better as Lou Gehrig's disease.
It is a terrible degenerative disease. People end up trapped in their bodies. They don't
typically survive beyond 2 to 5 years. The way this challenge began -- the way it really
kicked off was with a guy named Peter Frates, he was a Boston College athlete. He is living
with ALS and he took this challenge. The idea was that you would either get an ice bucket
dumped on your head or you would donate $100, but soon enough people just did both and they
would name 3 more people. The challenge went incredibly viral. You had Mark Zuckerberg
and Bill Gates doing it. You've had celebrities like Vin Diesel doing it. Vin Diesel was my
favorite because he challenged Vladimir Putin to do it next. And it's raised a tremendous
amount of money for ALS research. How does it work? You get challenged by somebody. So
I got challenged by Nilay Patel, the editor of the Verge, and then like what happens is
you simply just like dump a bucket of ice on your head and...  Are there any good criticisms
of the challenge? There are. So what's happened is that ALS, while a terrible disease, is
not the only disease out there. Just since the challenge began, the ALS Association has
raised more than $23 million. That is incredible. It's an incredible success. It's good for
the world. But there are a lot of other worthy charities out there as well. One of the ones
that GiveWell, which rates charities, reccommends is the Deworm the World Initiative, which
is an incredibly cost-effective, incredibly well-run charitiy to get rid of parasitic
worms in developing countries which really really really are hurtful, sometimes fatal,
terrible for development. So I will be donating both to the ALS Association and to the Deworm
the World Initiative. Oh right, and who am I challenging? I challenge Arianna Huffington
of the Huffington Post, Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight, and Sommer Mathis of CityLab. You all have
24 hours.  That is really cold. Ferguson, Missouri, has responded to the police
shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, with outrage. While the Brown shooting
was a catalyst for  the protest, the roots of the community's outrage run deeper. Ferguson
is about 67% black, but that's just not even remotely represented in its local government.
The police force is 53 police officers, and only 3 of those are black. Only one of the
council members is black. The mayor and the police chief are white. At the same time,
Ferguson police have had a disproportionate number of run-ins with African-Americans.
In 2013, police arrested 483 black residents, compared to just 36 white residents. So in
many ways, what happened to Michael Brown, for a lot of the black community, represents
what could be happening to them and their sons. "You took my son away from me. You know
how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many
black men graduate? Not many. Because you bring them down to this type of level where
they feel like they don't got nothing to live for anyway. They're going to try to take me
out anyway." The police reaction to the protests has done nothing to repair that broken trust.
Police are using full body armor. They have snipers on armored vehicles, which are basically
tanks. They have been using dogs. They have shot tear gas into neighborhoods. They also
have used rubber bullets on the protesters, even when it doesn't seem like they're posing
an immediate threat. Crowd control is a really normal part of police work, but the goal is
to de-escalate the situation. This heavy militaristic response is likely to do the opposite by provoking
fear and defensiveness from the crowd. Some of these tactics may be the result of federal
programs that provide local police forces with military-grade equipment but do not provide any training
or oversight on its use. The 1033 program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer weapons
to police departments, requires that the equipment must be used within one year. This might inspire
police to use the equipment even when it's completely unnecessary. The result is that
the streets of Ferguson are looking more like Iraq than a Saint Louis suburb. Sharks are really, really cool. They've been
around about 400 million years. There's over 400 species of them, and they even have the
ability to detect electromagnetic fields in the water. All of which is why it's so baffling
that Discovery Channel's Shark Week has so little biology in it. Recently, it's become
more like a reality tv show than a series of nature documentaries. And in the past two
years, it's veered into really weird territory, with Discovery Channel actually deceiving
viewers about sharks. It wasn't always like this. Back in 1988 when it started, by all
accounts the shows were great and educational. But slowly it's become more and more sensational.
In the last few years, most of its shows have been about Great Whites attacking humans.
Surely there's something thrilling about that. But there's something backwards about it too.
Shark attacks are really rare. And in truth, we're a bigger threat to sharks than they
are to us. These shows about shark attacks are great for making people scared of sharks.
They don't do much for making people care about them. Now if Shark Week was just sensationalized,
that might be disappointing but tolerable. But last year, Discovery Channel entered new
territory, completely making up a story. They aired a documentary with a scientist who told
us that there was a 100-foot shark called Megalodon roaming the oceans, and it killed
4 people off the coast of South Africa last year. "Zoom in. Once more. And to the right.
I know it's kind of blurry but look at that. Look at that. That's a fin!" But here's the thing. The scientist
was an actor, the footage was faked, and the deaths didn't even happen. Viewers had no
way of knowing this. There was just a disclaimer saying that the scenes were dramatized. All
shark researchers agree that megalodon went extinct 2 million years ago, but an online
poll afterwards showed that 73% of viewers thought it was real.  This was the highest
rated episode in Shark Week history, which is probably why Discovery is doubling down
with fake shark programming this year. First, in a promo, they hoaxed viewers by claiming
there was a shark in Lake Ontario, which they had to admit was fake after Canadian officials
believed it and started getting worried. Then they kicked things off with a new fake documentary,
Shark of Darkness, about a non-existant 35-foot white shark. "What made this incident particularly
horrifying was that the attacks were captured on camera." Featuring another fake scientist
from a fake research institute, blaming a fake shark for a death that didn't happen.
Finally, they're following up with a megalodon sequel that claims to have new evidence. The
worst part about all of this? Discovery viewers have a real appetite for actual science. When
the channel debuted BBC's series, Life, it got over 11 million viewers, more than twice
as many as megalodon. Discovery calls itself the world's #1 nonfiction media company. But
it's apparently decided that the natural world isn't interesting enough for TV. The U.S. is launching airstrikes right now
in Northern Iraq in response to the militant group ISIS, which as been controlling parts
of Northern Iraq for months now. President Obama, who had worked so hard to pull the
U.S. out of Iraq, authorized airstrikes against ISIS if it threatens Irbil, which is the capital
of the Kurdish region in the North, or if it threatens Mount Sinjar where thousands
of an ethno-religious minority called the Yazidi are hiding out from ISIS. And this
seems like a really good thing for the Iraqis who are behind Obama's red line around the
Kurdish region, but the thing is is that most Iraqis are not behind that red line. Most
Iraqis in Northern Iraq have been living under ISIS's rule for 2 months. There's no sign
that President Obama's airstrikes are going to push ISIS back from there. So why did Obama
do this? Why did he draw a red line that just protects a tiny sliver of the country and
not the rest of the country that has already been conquered by this awful group. The first
reason is that the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq is semi-autonomous. It has a stable government
of its own. It has a strong military that has been pretty good at keeping out ISIS forces.
There are a number of Americans based there. But the Iraqi government based in Baghdad
is a complete mess. The military deserted en masse when ISIS invaded. The civilian government
has been on the verge of collapse for months. America does not like the prime minister very
much, who they think has been making the crisis worse. So Obama's calculation, which is cold
but probably correct is that he can save the Kurdish region in the north, but there's probably
nothing he can do for the rest of Iraq. Good news for some Iraqis, but for the many millions
who have spent the last few months under rule by ISIS, there is no end in sight. Time zones were originally invented by railroads
in the late 19th century because it was inconvenient for each town to have its own time pegged
to the local movement of the sun. But while dividing the world up into a couple different
times is easier than having hundreds, it's way harder than just having a single global
time. That doesn't mean half the planet would have to wake up in the middle of the night
or sleep in the morning. 7AM might be a normal time to wake up if you live in London, while
a New Yorker would be more likely to rise at noon and an Angelino at 3PM. By midnight,
bartenders are still at work in Paris, but most of France would be asleep even as Chicago
sits down to dinner. But if you wanted to schedule a call with people in Detroit and
Dubai, you could just name a time, with no ambiguity. You wouldn't need to remember if
Detroit's in Central or Eastern time. A 6-hour flight would land 6 hours after it took off,
regardless of whether it went east or west. It's simple, practical, and it's a logical
extension of  why we created the zones in the first place. If you were to take a big, flat, rigid map
of the United States and rest it on something sharp and pointy, and if every person in the
United States weighed the same, the Mean Center of Population is exactly where that map would
balance. The Census comes out with this figure every 10 years. It seems meaningless on its
surface, but really that one little point carries in it a lot of information about how
our population is moving. The first Mean Center of Population was in Kent County, Maryland.
In the 1800s when the U.S. was adding on states all the time and people were moving out West
all the time, the Center sped West. A big influx of European immigrants to the Northeast,
plus movement of Southern Blacks to the North in the early 1900s put on the breaks. Tacking
on Alaska and Hawaii later in the century started to pull it out a bit West a bit
more but also it started to move South a bit, particularly in recent years. Part of that
is because of a booming Latino population in the Southeast and in Texas, and part of
that is economic factors like the growth of the Texas oil industry. One other thing: Air
Conditioning. The growth of air conditioning, some experts say, has made the South more
livable. Today the Mean Center is just near Plato, Missouri, which in 2010 had just 109
people. So though that's the Center of Population, it's not at all a population center. [Music] Americans spend seven percent of the household income on food which is not just less than people developing countries in Pakistan it was like 49 percent but it's less than people in the UK less than people in France listen people intelligent lesson people in essentially any other industrialized nation do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing the scariest thing about that statistic is that people will say hey it's great we spend so little money on food but you know we're we're getting clobbered on other costs I mean we have a higher rates of obesity than all those countries - we've higher rates of diabetes than all those countries - you could spend real small portion of your income on food and you're basically buying calories you're not buying nutrition and that's that's a deadly thing to be doing I mean and this is one of the places where I think it gets very the way it works out gets very unfair we talk a lot about income inequality but there's this yawning health inequality there is very very large life expectancy gains for richer people much lower ones for poor folks there's pretty good health into old age for for richer people pretty bad health into old age for lower-income folks and it seems to me that increasingly more so than I remember being true you know when I read sort of food histories of the 70s or 80s or even the 90s that how people eat is become beginning to magnify that inequality because not just of the the cost beside but at the cultural side of what's considered sort of appropriate in different groups you know I think there's a lot there's a lot to unpack in what you just said one you know you start talking about it as if it's a food issue but really it's a justice issue or a rights issue or an equality issue or whatever you whatever you want to call it it's a class issue that's number one number two I would say we need to make the distinction between eating decent food and eating let's say elite food or really really special food and I think you know we know what it is we ought to be eating it's more fruits and vegetables that's less animal products and processed stuff let's talk about that let's set the local Organic and and you know microgreens aside and say if you like that stuff if you can afford that stuff more power to you but the important thing is that everybody focus on eating real food and then you sort of take it out of this elites fear of only wealthy people only the top 10% or whatever can afford to eat well it's really not true probably eighty ninety percent of the people united states can afford to eat real food they just choose not to and time is an issue but again it's a question of priorities if you want to live a healthy life and you want to live into your 80s or even your 90s and and not develop diabetes it's important when you're young to be eating well eating less processed food less junk and so on are you enthused by the rise of this sort of group of chains like I don't know Chipotle chopped that have been very very fast growing and have had more of an emphasis on sort of Whole Foods this idea that it's possible that sort of these chains actually can be more of the directory1 even the pricier which is obviously one of the problems sapote Lee I was an early supporter of Chipotle and I think they've done great things in moving things in the right direction and chopped and sweet green and in places like but they are more expensive there's no question that they're more expensive but they're in a way putting their priorities where they ought to be it's it's a very tricky combination because you have fast food combinations that are serving not such great food or let's say a step up from McDonald's where maybe they're treating their workers much better so you support you support one chain for one thing and one chain for another thing but really what we're looking for is if you think of the iPhone we're looking for the Jesus chain you know the one that says okay we're gonna reduce our cruelty as much as we can we're gonna try to eliminate antibiotics from our food supply we're gonna use real food we're gonna try to serve nutritious food we're gonna treat our workers right that's a lot of demands on a fast food chain and you are not going to do that at a four dollar price point but it's also a lot of informational demands on the consumer right I mean and this is true whether you're buying food in the supermarket or you're buying food at a chain or at any kind of restaurant where there are so many dimensions not just of Health but now of morality of what you're doing to the environment to what you're doing to the animals of what you're doing to the workers with this is all great by the way that yes there's awareness is there but it is very hard to know it just has become I think incredibly stressful honestly fit to eat and feel like you are not screwing someone or something over possibly yourself a very badly well it's true and at some point you know from a personal perspective at some point you just have to say happy you know just have to eat because you know I need two to three times a day so I think it goes back in a way to if you're if you're eating whole food real food natural there's really no good word for it but real food you are definitely reducing your carbon footprint I mean unprocessed food versus processed food you're definitely making a less of an environmental impact what you're dealing and you and you're also eating better for yourself so you so bite by choosing a little corny sounding but by choosing to increase the amount of plants and other real Foods in your diet you're both helping the planet and helping yourself Labor's a whole nother issue I mean and and it's not labeled so you don't know you have to do research if you can and sustainability in a way is a whole nother issue you don't know what's going on with fish it's so complicated I mean you have people who will say yes we can afford to manage our wild fish stocks in a way that makes it so people can be fish and people say no that's completely impossible you and I are not going to know the answer to that and and that's if we think about it every generation has things that future generations finds unconscionable about what it did and it's not always predictable at the time I tend to wonder about the way we grow and produce our food in particular I mean it seems very very plausible to me that the way we treat animals will be in a hundred years or a hundred fifty years helped along by like loud meat just seen is absolutely unbelievable food plays into this but climate change and sort of just emitting all kinds of greenhouse gases and pretty heedless ways will be seen as having been a genuinely irresponsible and potentially tragic thing that that we were complicit in in this generation and I mean those are the two that always come back to and and they're really food is really really really interwoven into them to me in a discussion like the one we're having right now I look at how long it took us to see the problems with tobacco because this the links between tobacco and cancer went back 50 years before it was really handled in an intelligent way and it continues to evolve right and I think the thing we're gonna be really smacking our heads about now is soda and other you know really non-nutritive straight calories that are only damaging kinds of food which are not food and I think 20 if not 20 then certainly 50 years from now we're gonna be saying what were we thinking eating you know 50 pounds of sugar a year or whatever it is per person this was really dumb so I think there are there are small strides being made now but I'd like to think we're gonna see this snowball that we're gonna see more and more recognition that you know food is health food does have an impact on the environment food is really AG is really really important how we grow things really affects everything else it's just unavoidable to see that more and more and we're gonna have to see change about that what is it what do you think snowballing there looks like how what are what are the things in society that you think need to tip for these to become more mainstream issues I think there are three things I think the more research we see a bad let's say added sugars is the is the easiest way to to put it the more research we see about that the more damaging we'll see that someone somewhere is going to put a not stop but some kind of limit on the ease with which at least we're able to market added sugars to young kid who really don't have that kind of judgment a second thing might be antibiotics in the food supply because all you need is one big epidemic of mersa or you know one antibiotic resistant bacteria that you can trace back to the overuse of antibiotics and in animal production to say okay we have to we have to stop this we have to limit this then you see you know the FDA is doing that but they're doing it in a kind of weak way um and I'm you know we probably want to get into the ins and outs of this tiny little bit of policy but the FDA could be stronger about limiting antibiotics and the food supply and I think the third thing which is related is look the way animals are treated confined animal feeding operations where more and more people are seeing or at least were seeing before laws were passed to try to keep people from seeing we're seeing just how badly animals were treated and just what you know I said this for years if you're gonna produce animals like widgets you're gonna lose your own soul and I think that we're you know we produce eight or ten billion animals a year it's a really big number and we eat we eat that meat as if it didn't matter but it does matter and it matters you know not only from environmental health perspective but from cruelty is a little abstract but we are responsible for that we did this feature of 40 maps and charts around food so one of the fun one of the interesting things about it was one of the first ones we showed was this chart of how much of the population worked in agriculture worked in food production and it goes from like 70% ish around on the republic down to I think it's 2% or something now same time you see this freely sharp rise in how much food were actually producing right it's not like what happened is all the food production moved to South America or somewhere but we just became so good at industrial production right we automated so much production it's so much more about tractors and pesticides and all this and it is about human beings now the agricultural system has driven a wedge between AG and food between production and it used to be you know you grew stuff and you ate it and and there was a you know there was a level of big level of interdependence Eon farms and now you have a state like IO which was a farm state in the sense that there were farmers and people were farming and they were yes they were growing corn and yes they were growing soybeans but they were also had chickens in the backyard and families had pigs and they grew vegetables and so on then line and now the whole state is industrial production and it's corn and soybeans and pigs and chickens but not backyard pigs and chickens you go to Iowa and you see abandoned farmhouses everywhere it's just hundreds and hundreds of acres I mean we've all seen the pictures but the system has changed it's changed dramatically and has changed for the worst yes food is cheap or it appears to be cheap but it's not good for us that's a problem [Music] you [Music] North Korea is a bit of a black box, right?
It's got this rogue nuclear program. It's under heavy international sanctions. There's
gulags. There's famines. The people appear to worship this deified kid of a national
leader. To understand why that is, you really have to go back to 1910 when Japan first colonized
Korea. And Japan at the time was its own super crazy fascist imperial state, which Americans
know all about because we fought a war with them. Japan wanted to convince Koreans that
they were a subset of the Japanese race and to rally them to the imperial cause. And then
Japan collapsed, 1945, the North came under Soviet occupation but the ideology stayed
there. So we think of North Korea as like this last holdover of Soviet-style communism,
but actually it's the last holdover of Japanese fascism. And you still see that today. North
Koreans are told that they are the purest race on Earth and that their superiority means
that they need a strong leader to protect them from the outside world and then they
have this leader who's kind of deified because he's a holdover from the Japanese emperor
who was actually, you know, a quasi-religious figure. So then in 1991 the Soviet Union collapses,
stopped giving North Korea all these subsidies, and the North Korean government needed to
find a new way to keep its citizens' support because they were so poor that they could
not feed their own people and 1 in 10 North Koreans starved to death. So that's when Kim
Jong-Il, who was the leader at the time, came up with the Songun policy, military first,
which is this big lie they tell the country that they're constantly at this like low-boil
war with the entire outside world, especially the American imperialist dogs, so you have
to give up everything towards the military cause. It's really effective. Everybody buys
into it. There are studies that show that even North Koreans who leave the country and
see how poor North Korea is, most of them actually come back willingly. When Kim Jong-Il
died, there were millions of North Koreans crying in the street, and even defectors say
that was more real than fake, which is kind of amazing given that the country is really
poor and 1% of its population lives in prison camps.  And then one effect of this that works
really well in the North Korean government's favor is that this militarism also distracts
the U.S. and the rest of the outside world, so we're so worried about their nuclear program
and their crazy attacks on South Korea that we actually don't bother that much with the
way they treat their own people,  who are the real victims of the North Korean system. why should NC double-a players be paid I don't think anybody should be paid I think they should have the same rights as anyone else the bargain to be represented than anyone else has so they have they should have the right to ask for pay and ecologists should have the right to bargain in good faith with them right now what happens is that by collusion all the universities say you can't ask for pay and if you do it is unethical and I'm saying that's wrong to deprive them of rights that all the rest of us take for granted so the response I think you hear to this argument is twofold one is that these are amateurs and there's something in the spirit of amateur sports of college sports it would be irreversibly infected if pay was brought into it yes and the other is that they cross subsidize a set of other sports that are not that are more amateur why don't you find those objections Bible they're both true but they're both evasive right to their heart to say that amateur sports are essentially amateur misses the whole meaning of amateur which is a vocation it's out of love it is self done you can't proclaim that somebody else is amateur and that you're taking the money you've got seven million dollar coaches you've got million-dollar assistant coaches and you've got this vast Taj Mahal Athletic Complex it's spreading all skimmed off of the talent and labor of athletes who are forcibly unpaid they are declared amateur they have no vote in that in that sense it's a false use of the word amateur it's very convenient and people like to think of it that it has a rosy purity amateur but amateur has another meaning to amateur meaning you don't know what you're doing you're an amateur and I think they're using that ambiguity to try to take advantage of the athletes so you're you're a historian need to come at this is a historian talk me through a little bit how we got to the expectation that you would have the sports be unpaid how we got to the idea there's this very sharp distinction amateur called sports and professional paid sports sports started off as an avocation initiated by the students for the first 50 years of collegiate sports students schedule their own games they hired their own coaches a Harvard Stadium was built in 1903 without a nickel from Harvard it was all built by alumni students control it but then the universities moved in took control over it and then starting in the 50s when television came along they started making a lot of money off of it and it and it happened so slowly and so gradually that most people don't realize that there is now a fundamental difference between the University where the university's giving benefit to the students and the students are their learning and soaking it up and big-time college sports where the athletes who are students are delivering enormous amount millions hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools a lot of this has happened by habit and it's happened slowly but in fact this is a wholly separate thing it has very little to do with the academic mission of the place it's a it's a money-making engine that's taking advantage of the students and this isn't at this point just an argument there is a court case it I believe you're a witness in yes walk me through a little bit about of the key issue there the lawsuit is basically an antitrust case can the universities band together and and take the images in sports from these athletes and use them in perpetuity even after they leave school and still sell video games of star players like Bill Russell who's one of the plaintiffs you know he hadn't played he played 60 years ago but his image is still used and the the NCAA argument is that they were amateurs then and they they became amateurs in perpetuity so that they that players have no image rights they have no rights in the use of their of their image forever and that case is about to come to trial now strictly speaking about X players but it also applies to or at least could this is one of the issues at trial as to whether it applies to the rights of current players to a piece of to be able to bargain if people are selling their Jersey if people are selling their image quite apart from pay or anything can they take those video rights property rights talent rights name recognition rights on forever in other words a college athlete if they get a Christmas card from somebody involved in professional sports or anything having to do with their own interests or or advancing their interests their branded unethical and so they have no individual bargaining rights they have no due process rights they have no they don't even have Fifth Amendment rights in any dispute within the NCAA they have no right of representation or anything they all of the power in the current system all the votes are is packed into the athletic directors and the coaches well this to me because you read about it a lot is one of the most insane dimensions of the system you don't simply have something set up where the colleges do not pay the athletes you haven't set up where the colleges will not permit the athletes to profit off of their status as star athletes in any way right they can't get dinner they can't get transportation I mean for very very technological I can't have a ride across campus I would like to better understand when you speak to college directors because you did a tremendous amount of reporting on this how that dimension of it is justified the defenders of the system see the whole thing is going to collapse and that if you allow them to have any bargaining rights whatsoever that that the current system that that basically makes them captive will fall apart people tend to deal with these issues by by instinct oh they should shut up and play or gosh they're not going to go pro anyway or why should they'll get their money later it never occurs to them that the people who are actually generating all this have no voice at all and it doesn't seem to bother people I had a college president he wouldn't let me quote him on the record tell me that his salary was probably twice what it would otherwise be because his board of trustees other was embarrassed by the gap between his his salary and the football coach's salary there are these huge gaps and in universities about where priorities are and it reflects the power of the Alumni it reflects in my view the abdication of many faculties college faculties that they from their their essential role in the governance of the of the university and in managing this conflict between academics and sports how good of a job do these schools do educating their student athletes and I mean primarily by these schools the it's the big sport powerhouses well not very well I mean athletes are general in the big sports the money sports are steered into certain majors they're not allowed to take difficult majors they're steered into certain courses where the athletic departments have cooperative relationships with the teachers and if a teacher is too tough on an athlete then that teachers course will be scratched off oh and you think you'd think that the athletes would have the choice over that but if the athletes want to play and the athletes want to keep their scholarships they have no they have no independent recourse here so one of the analogies you've used it in this discussion is to the plantation mmm-hmm explain that a bit walk me through that idea well the plantation is an area in which supervisors supervise harvest the labor and value from people who have lesser rights than they do who are lower in the food chain than they are if colonialism may be even a better example in old European colonialism around the world that prevailed from the mid 18th to 20th century is that not only would you own and harvest the work of the of the Colonials but you would say that you were doing it for their own good to bring them around to civilization and in that sense I think college sports are like that because the money the money is controlled by the people who are supervising but not actually performing nobody disputes that the producers of the value are the players because that's where the camera is pointed the camera is pointed on these athletes who are not amateurs nobody wants to see an amateurish performance in the sense of not very good right oh the the camera is pointed there and if you think the coach is really deserving of all the money you know see how long you can point the camera at the coach oh during during a final four basketball game The fighting between Israel and Hamas is the
worst we've seen since 2009 in Israel.  What began as a limited conflict has escalated
into a major Israeli ground offensive into Hamas-held Gaza. It's resulted in hundreds
of deaths. Here's what happened and what it means. It started with the murder of 3 Israeli young
men in the West Bank. They were students. They were kidnapped and killed. Israel responded to this, because it believed
that the killings were done by Hamas operatives. It arrested a large number of Hamas people
in the West Bank and launched airstrikes into Gaza. Palestinians from Gaza fired rockets in response.
Israelis were furious and a Palestinian boy was murdered by 6 Israelis, essentially, from
what Israeli police say, as an act of revenge. Moreover his cousin was beaten in Israeli
police custody. This led to a wave of anger on the Palestinian
side. On the morning of July 8, Hamas launched a wave of 40 rockets in the direction of Israeli
towns with very little guidance or aiming. They don't often hit targets or produce many
casualties but nonetheless create a climate of terror  inside Israel. These rocket attacks were the first that Hamas had claimed responsibility for since 2012, the last major conflict. In response, Israel
launched more strikes in Gaza, as part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said was an effort to make Hamas pay a heavy price. By July 11th, 100 Palestinians had been killed by about a thousand airstrikes. By July 14th, the total casualties had exceeded the 2012
conflict. And then on July 17th, Israeli troops entered
Gaza to root out tunnels into Israel that would allow Hamas to strike Israeli targets
or send soldiers in on the ground to attack Israeli cities or military bases. After the
ground offensive, casualties have skyrocketed. We've come a long way from 2009 when the Obama
administration came into office thinking they could get the two sides on the same side,
that is, get a peace agreement done. Let alone the heady optimism in the 90s that we saw
about Irael-Palestinian peace. The sad path that led to an incredibly devastating
ground offensive in Gaza has illustrated just how hair-trigger the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
is. Even slight provocations, even things that may not be planned by one side or the
other one, can lead to massive escalations in violence. There's just too much mistrust
and too much division to be able to solve these problems any time in the near term.
And that's the sad truth of this conflict. so you've been working on this article for about a year now ah total Shoob about again half almost two years so I mean that's like a book that's an amount of time you probably hear about a boy how do you go about it I mean the article begins with Claude Ross right and the article is substantially set in Chicago where you don't live right how did you choose Chicago how did you find Claude Ross what is that well okay so we can start the last question for his finding claros um the Astoria Narborough satyr who's at Rutgers for an extraordinary extraordinary book called family properties and family properties is a history of redlining and housing in Chicago set in North Lawndale particularly about one of the you know the big activist groups the contract by his league in their claros is mentioned in the book and a bunch of other people who are alive at the time that that uh dr. Sauter professor cider published the book are in that book but the other thing that's in that book which is absolutely fascinating is an Atlantic article from 1972 and that article made people think my article was on that I think that ought it was like thirty thousand words and it's all about the contract buyers League and redlining cly Ross is in that article I didn't know like mr. Ross's story at all so I didn't like it wasn't like I went looking I was you know signed a book I said I want that guy but the first thing I did after I finished it was I I'd sent an email to Berlin I said you know any of these people still alive do you think any people I think a book mighta came out like oh five so significant time it passed now as I said do you think any people are still alive and she said you know I don't know but I can put you in touch with Jack McNamara who's one of the big organizers for the contract bias league uh I wrote him we talked on the phone a couple times he said well I'll go see I'll go see who's alive um and he Jack was that angel oh my god people think of a spreadsheet I'm a members and what their status was and you know whether we could get to children or whether we could get to them I mean this was the cause of his life for a while so the idea was gonna you know instead that somebody was saying is still had residence was just so you know I think it just just warm just hot and so we went I went to Chicago a Clyde was I'm mr. Ross was one of the people on the list in fact he's the first person on the list and I talked to him and the first thing he said was on I said mr. Ross where were you born they said Clarksdale Mississippi and I said why did you leave Clarksdale and he said I wanted the protection of the law and you know mr. Ross is a thick Mississippi accent I wasn't sure if I was hearing oh right and I said why he said no no I wanna I wanna he said i wanted protection of the law i said what does that mean he said well when I was in Mississippi there were no black police officers there were no black prosecutes no black judges no black defense attorneys no no black anything we were effectively outside of the law if something happened to us we had no recourse at all people could basically do whatever they wanted to us um and then you know I asked him how when he went you know write down the list you know as he said his list of losses that he had taken you know we read about this sort of thing in books right and by the time I got to mr. Ross it must have been like the spring of last year Bonnie and I have been doing quite a bit of research I had probably about six to eight months of research that I had already put in just trying to understand housing in Chicago nothing compares to somebody actually telling you you know in detail how they were ripped off mm-hm um it was extraordinary one of the things about the article that I think when you first see the framing when people think about reparations they think about slavery right reading the article slavery is not the moral core of it no no um housing discrimination is rightly marilee right and is that why is it this idea that slavery abhorrent as it was was actually like sanctioned law mm-hmm and then after that America moved into a gray period where we actually had essentially the legal regime right around I think that the thing is that um obviously we have reconstruction we had this period where we where we tried to make it right briefly we could have made it right and you know had we made it right we wouldn't be having you know this discussion at all you're right slavery is you know to the back and the story but housing discrimination is actually the legacy of slavery there would be no reason for you know housing discrimination for redlining if not for enslavement that that's what you know the reason why it happened to begin with that's the long echo of never having to deal with it to begin with so I mean I don't you know I focus on a particular portion of it you know a particular portion of the legacy of white supremacy but I it's very tough and I might actually separate one from the other fact in the way I wrote it when I wrote the historical portion I tried to write it as a continuance as you know it's a continuum not as a break and then you had this and then you had that the dominant feature in african-american life and african-american history in this country is unfreedom is having less freedom than our fellow citizens and you see that in obviously in slavery in its most extreme you know after enslavement you lose you know thank God the right to sell his children and put them on the auction block but I'm freedom is still in the form of debt peonage in the form of a vagrancy laws where people are arrested and you know put in prison and having having to work Douglas Blackmon has that great book slavery by another name and in housing discrimination well you don't have a right to live what you want and you're effectively crammed into you know slums and you know all these awful sort of things happen so I saw it as a continuum focusing on you know a particular point you're correct I think the fact that folks are still alive and still around makes a particularly poignant that I start not with some guy who died in 1890 but a guy who's right there living on you know the west side of Chicago right now you know who was stolen from I think that helps the the emotional power of it but um you know it's very hard for me to break it you know in the end imperious like that this article is kind of hit like a bomb and one of the things that I think is fascinating about the reaction and the direction I had to it as a reader is I don't just come on throne wait there's nothing new in there no it is synthesis not right uncovering new details it's not um it's not investigative reporting in that way why did you think that an article like this had to be written now when you sent that email to your editor I guess a year and a half what why did you think that there was need for an article that summed up what we knew all right about American racism I guess because uh we don't know and by which I mean there are people who are experts in this field they're people who write about American history the people who write sociology who know a guy who you know is they say job to know there are considerably fewer journalists who know and they're considerably fewer Americans who know and that was clarified for me repeatedly in the kind of back-and-forth debates I would get - you know about any old thing you know with folks online it was quite clear there's a whole era so my reason why I told Chicago is because Chicago had been in news you know as you know sort of this episode of quote-unquote black black on black crime you know it had been always talked about murders died out of that but the conversation was so a there was no question why do people live like this how did it how did this come to be to begin with you know like how did this situation actually transpire I went to Chicago for the first time as an adult in 1995 and I was driving down the Dan Ryan express in at that time there was a stretch of projects infant infamous projects you know the famous Robert Robert Robert Taylor homes it occurred to me as an absolute monstrosity uh and I thought of it as a moral monstrosity it never occurred to me as somebody with specific specific attention to race and racism have plotted for people to live to live and to live in that sort of way and I mean that you know anybody who does any research on public housing in Chicago that's exactly what happened public housing was put up on a segregated basis but somehow have we forgotten that or we want to forget it you know I mean I think it all you're right it doesn't uncover anything new it's a reminder of that you know if you're gonna go on television you're gonna talk about the murder rate in Chicago you're gonna talk about you know the shape of african-american families you're gonna you know stand up and lecture black men about what they need to do never forget that you're talking to a community that has repeatedly gotten a raw deal in this country never forget that don't don't talk to these people like somehow the American government over the course of its history has been a friend to black people in the black community mm-hmm you know we need to have some context here and be very very clear about the conversation we've had over you know the course of our existence and that should inform the conversation that we're having now it seemed to me in that way that this article is actually kind of in dialogue with the article that I remember reading for me first was in the Atlantic I think about vineyard first their lending piece about Bill Cosby and his kind of tour of making this case about sort of African American culture right and how it was behind a lot of problems and African Americans were having and through your writing I think there's been a lot of engagement today with Obama President Obama and his kind of arguments on this and peg has always been this part of your writing that is arguing with this kind of scolding thread in sort of American discourse towards african-americans and this seemed to me to kind of be about that and then turn around that as opposed to being sort of reactive to that narrative to be trying to set out a vision of what you thought the correct narrative actually was but it kind of set a different frame for that entire conversation did you think about it like that I mean how much is part of this procession I am vaguely aware that I am mission service and that I mean you can probably look at most of my magazine work in the Atlantic and just trace it thread right as you said right on that Cosby right right to Cosby piece right to here but I think the deeper thing um I can't think of a woman's name you know this book the submerged state yeah um Metzler is met so Suzanne metal exam bachelor and um you know I've read pieces of I gotta you know give myself some time to just absorb that whole thing but you know this basic idea of how things that are done by you know a state or by government somehow become the property of individuals so it's very clear that that that housing as we know it today in America could not exist without government it's just I mean this was not you know people walking out you know out into the wild and then putting a pole down and saying I'm gonna build my house I mean it's very very clear government's hands all over it um and yet somehow in the iconography of what housing is of what the suburbs is it's seen as like an individual achievement you know buying into the American you view in somehow individually achieve something and so where we see the hand of government and where we see the power of individuals you know and how those two things are conflated and Confused is fascinating you know timmy's specifically to african-americans if you say that african-americans have you know an inferior culture I have you know cultural pathologies that they're carrying with them um it seems to me you have to act why that would be why would that like my my whole you know beginning of you know like when I start any argument when it comes to african-american when it comes to race is that whatever action here is makes sense now it doesn't mean it's a good action I want that you know to be very clear it doesn't mean it's a good actually doesn't mean it should be applauded but that it makes sense and it likely has something to do that with something that's going on it you know so when you here people say things like well you're just being irresponsible why why would you be irresponsible for instance if you look at you know the rates of you know present father's in the african-american community you can observe that maybe you know african-american fathers are less present then say why father's right let's just put that out there the next question is why would that be is it because african-american fathers are irresponsible why why you know on some level I feel like in these you know conversations we either have to get to actual historical processes we got to get to genetics yeah one of the other you know and we have a totally rejected connective I think mostly we have so you know in many ways culture becomes like a cover for something else what's actually happening you know if you say an individual is not exercising okay so I understand that about my son right like I understand it on a one-to-one basis you can say Tallahassee is not being responsible got it when you're talking about thousands and millions of people are you know what it what is it about a community of millions that they would make them less responsible how can that be what's going on there so I've been you know since that time over the past six years just trying to dig at that as best I can what is the answer you'd give at this point I mean that's it the way you frame that question is not the way it's framed in this article I'm actually not really even the way I've seen it framed right on on your site alright so if that's kind of the question animating it what at this point is the answer well I'd say you know this part of me because this is so rejected that I feel even stupid saying this you know it's like when you have no consensus you're out here by your so saying but you know to me it's pretty clear I mean the african-american community is one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country you know we've been here since 1619 okay if you examine if you know an alien came to this country said okay I'm gonna do a thorough examination of what the policy you know of you know precut you know in the colonial times in the history of America also what was the policy you know of this country and it's you know ancestor colonies you know that person would have to conclude that policy was one trying to ensure these people occupied a PR class ensuring failure ensuring ensuring failure when I approach it that way when I think you know that when I remember that the epoch the period for which I for which our enslavement in this country last it was 250 years freedom's only lasted 150 years and that freedom has been really really halting but at least 100 of those years it you know you can question how much freedom it actually does um we have 50 years of kinda trying to fix 350 is are really really immoral wrong you think of it that way I'm not sure how it becomes much of a question like it just seems like common sense it's pretty clear you know if I said you know I'm spent three hundred fifty years mistreating a group of people and if 50 years haltingly going back and forth kind of trying to fix it kind of not or maybe I'll just you know stop doing some of the worst stuff I was doing well what would be your expectation for the socio-economic indicators for that group of people looked at looked at it from that perspective I think African Americans are about exactly where we would expect them to be but something in not just that answered in the article that I think until you word it this way that I'd not thought about you said early on there that there's been a intentional policy of creating a pion class mhm and something I think you'd go through the article the hardest parts of the article to read are not about the monetary plunder mmm it's not people taking other people's well there's a aridness to that even if it's horrific right the hardest part I ought to go to read was about the breaking up of families right right and at the top of the article you get into something else which i think is much more important than I think even we really know how to talk about its idea that you can rely on the rule of law the difference between an entrepreneur or a family who thinks they can rely on the will of long-stay to protect them in the protector business and one who doesn't right we have this incredible um lion ization of risk takers it's a hell about easier to take risk if you believe your property is going to be protected if you get it and that it's kind of the totality of that what I thought was so stark in your piece was it's the totality of what got taken in terms of how that would make you think about how to operate in our economy or in my life right you know I think it's something you do it's interesting is you don't really go into sort of what reparations would mean and one of the things that piece commits me is there almost is no way to repair or some of this they're just you can remake families you broke up 150 years ago but it has to have some kind of fact right no no and I think um there's a our sociologist and I'm blanking on his name he's gonna kill me for this he wrote this book about Chicago great American city I was very influential on my work I'm so sorry I'm blanking on his name it's the cameras um but I we were having a discussion online uh you know over email you know about this culture then he had seen some of the debates I hadn't he'd you know what I do engage and we went back and forth and knowing him as a sociologist I wanted to make sure I was as sharp as I was and he was talking about culture and one of the things he was saying like we were talking about say like the stop snitching then big for a moment um if you live within the community and you've experienced the police for instance if you know like that um if you do in fact snitch that there will be no protection for you you know by the police the police actually can't protect you if you know that the police sometimes are not you know always you know the most law-abiding themselves that creates a certain attitude that you then carry forth through Authority that's a very very small example yeah um when I ask people to think about when they you know hear about like the contract a loan situation I talk about an article when I asked them to think about people losing their homes and being evicted it's not just the people who are being evicted ask them to think about the community around who watches that happen who knows that this person works three jobs that our wife works two jobs they got three because they really trying to take care of and they got evicted and you're a fifteen year old kid just struggling with school you having whatever issues are fifteen year old kid you know might have and you see that happening in your community as a message being sent about you know what the social contract is between you in this country and then there's a whole other world that you see I'm talking personally here that you see when you cut on the TV and you know that it's somewhere out there people aren't living like you're living it's just you it's just you I've got to leave you feeling a certain way about your country why did you do this as an article not a book that's a good question well I work for the Atlantic a lot of people work video like everybody else well you know the thing is this I thought it would have much more in fact first of all I mean I think that the cover of the Atlantic and specifically the company designed actually I hate to say this but books get ignored all the time yeah I mean the cover space of the Atlantic it may be you know in terms of you know the world of ideas it may be the most valuable in all the magazines you know which is not to say other magazines that do great articles with the Atlantic is one of the last ones that really just puts its ideas out front has a certain certain heritage and cachet so I mean you know for magazine I work for uh just say yeah we should talk about reparations that that's gonna attract some attention you know so that was the main reason and also you know I adore my editors at the LA I just absolutely absolutely adore them and I'm after the lash in a really big piece I did for them the only message I got back was go out there go out there you know as long as you can substantiate it go out there find something for us find something you know big some big idea so what was on the other side of that question um you run a blog yeah and actually and I think it's like and I actually mean that like sort of in the old sense right like although less in line every day is so funny maybe I was writing but I had which is the blogging used to kind of mean a kind of writing right it was it had a voice and it was in conversation with your readers and a lot of people who began to Swagger's myself included have kind of like moved into these other places where it's merged much more with other kinds of writing works has more institutional voice where it is kind of more about the next article as opposed to the ongoing conversation right and your blog I think is arguably the best example like an ongoing conversation with readers but exists anywhere on the Internet and I'm curious kind of the role that the blog played in this piece because I think that the sort of traditional view of bloggers is that they can't even think long and yet it felt to me like you know you could see this piece coming together week by week yeah on the blog I mean there was a sense of recognition reading it sort of understanding how all these different things I'd read and these different conversations you were starting right we're sort of being woven together into a whole ya know since I since I started blogging in the in January 2008 that's largely been true it is a I'm innocent online you know it's a blog is what it says it is it's a you know a log you know on Ohio web of you know my thinking that that's interactive you know it played an absolute a big role because first of all you know like you just had this notebook where you can just write okay so why can I write this at his is what I'm taking from her right but then I'm lucky enough that I have like graduate student graduate you know students and historians and sociologists themselves who would then write in know jump in the comment section to say you know you should check out this is I know you thought this but you should really look at this it was huge whose absolutely absolutely huge the book I mentioned at the top Burroughs saddest family properties I'm pretty sure somebody in the comment section suggested that to me I know I didn't stumble into that on my own um it's gigantic if you want it to be you know I don't really you know I know people say that I don't understand how blogging keeps you from writing long um if you want to write along you're right oh you know me as about I mean I understand how if somebody said to you you got a you know blog ten item today how that we keep you from writing I understand that you know how to churn can write but um the other piece of that is people say well the reward of having published something will keep you from writing nothing you know can you know equal to what I got from publishing that that reparations be there's nothing that's gonna come close to that well I think the other thing that I don't have people think about this exactly but something I think about Abed is that there is a I think something that is true early on is it a difference you had between people who kind of emerged in the blogging medium and who kind of emerged in institutional spaces and journalism is it there's a provision ality in blogging it's okay if this isn't the final word it's okay this may not even be the right word you want it to be right but you recognize you're kind of right in a conversation and if you're writing sort of in the first person if you're saying I think or this is my reaction it leaves a space for you to be wrong right that publishing in a newspaper publishing it magazine doesn't and one of the interesting things is a sort of transition right I mean that policy codes personal blog something that you are particularly I think very good at doing and very committed to doing is making clear kind of the person behind the site making clear that you are trying to learn that you are sometimes wrong and then you move to this article right and this article does not have space for I does I may not be right this right I'm just trying I'm trying to do a better job being a journalist I mean there's a difference in the way between those two places that I think has it's often but I think tough for writers to navigate but you sort of navigate both I think to the sort of the extreme provisional side right and then also in a space like this to the extreme definitional right well you spend like a year and a half you know just trying stuff out practicing this yeah I think and then eventually you start getting to some conclusions you know no no this is what it is you know um but I think it's very very important to have that other space I mean III that article would look too icky I almost can't imagine that Autocode out blogging yeah um again a good deal of the sources I got you know because I was writing about it and the other thing is when people don't realize this cuz you don't tell them with articles about that you're working on um but our great many of the arguments yeah I had already been tried out you know on the blog you already debated this already had this guy looked at you know what was the strongest argument about XYZ okay I looked at that thought about that so very rarely I mean even in a response to this pistas almost I think almost nothing that's caught me off-guard and that's what I always worry about like I'm always like okay well what argument am I not am I missing here that I need to answer I think a lot about that it was the strongest possible I even that can be made against it then I write really hard to answer that you know I don't um and journalist unfortunately do this columnist do this a lot where they take you know that the weakest arguments right no I want the person who is you know being the most intellectually honest making the case and then you try to go answer that so there's though to pick up on that there's an argument you kind of don't answer an essay you kind of leave as a big open space and that is the argument that yeah everything you say is right mm-hmm that the legacy not just of slavery but of lack of rule of law of housing discrimination of discriminatory policing of everything is real and it's powerful it's had an effect but that reparations are too politically hard they would tear the country apart they would lead to more racism not less it'd lead to more anger not less they it's impossible to kind of decide who they would go to and you have I think a very interesting way of dealing with what you say there's a bill by congressman Conyers it just would study it why don't we just study it right but if we passed that bill at some point we would kind of get to that next step we would um and I Karis what you think what happened there because something I noticed in the piece you had a great piece on your blog after the article came out about how you went from being against reparations being formed and in it you publish the email you sent your editor proposing the piece and one thing you say in there the proposed conclusion in that initial email is I think there might be a case for President Obama to come out reparations and you say nope actually I've come to differently though the terrible acting but so if you think that it would be such a bad idea for the sort of leader of the country to do so I'm care sort of well see it would not be a bad idea to go to country to do it it would be a bad idea for Barack Hussein Obama to do it it can only get I mean with is this all this date on how he polarizes everything he can only polarize this yeah you can all he can only make it worse I mean it can't it if he you know if they really that onion article the night before the election ever see that no no I think now is the time to talk about reparations hahahahaha if he you know everything what is this some research eat they show a picture the dog yeah it's Obama sitting yeah you if you show people Portuguese water poodles a stick any so that's a good dog you show me people with high levels of racial resentment bill Obama so bad right but so but you know you you made this kind of choice to leave a sort of ultimate question of what okay we should talk about reparations where what are we talking about I'm curious a little bit about your thinking behind that choice because I think I'm you know I think people think like I'm dodging or something no I mean we really need a stamp senior site you know I know how you you know looked at yeah I think you would take a look at some of the math me how with slavery isn't and that sort of thing the problem is we are just talking about that yeah I mean how do you you know okay so we take that and then you say take like uh like like just the blanket wave of terrorism you know domestic home groans I just washed over the country for about a hundred years um you add to that say like our ap story that I Lou to about the land I was just straight take yeah but we know we know that happened to uh you you add into that the flaws in the New Deal the housing aspect oh my god and you start calculating what african-americans missed out on housing that has to be some us that is just some ridiculous number okay but I think we should know that number yes I think first of all we should know what that number is but then even after that even if it's like okay we can't pay that back maybe we should think about this in all of our policy going forward to make this perfectly concrete for you here's a way I would think about this in a world in which in an America in which you know you could talk about reparations openly and you know you wouldn't get this sort of you know uh you know wouldn't be just for explosive thing that that that it is now we would talk about the affordable care act and part of what we would talk about is undoing past injustice to black people and we would actually say that we would say that you know we would say listen this is you know something that's going to help everybody but yes yes it will disproportionately help black people and that's a really really good thing because in three hundred fifty years you know we did you know we tried to disadvantage black people so we should do that we would talk about policy you know in a very specific way and I think liberals particularly right now you know why we try to bury it we try to do the other thing actually you know we know they don't know disproportionately help black people in some way in the back of our minds we do know that's a good thing but really want to emphasize no no it'll help everybody you know that might be like a flight of fancy in terms of what is politically possible right now um let me let me cite one one others amplify answer I thought you know in a world with people you know not just a for reparations but understand their history understand it there's a debt to be paid understand a debt was damage done with somebody but a Supreme Court justice no less says something like uh the way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race anybody with any sort of knowledge of that history would laugh it and this is Chief Justice this Chief Justice Roberts because what they would understand right away is that America has never discriminated I've said this before but has never discriminated on basis of race race was as we understand it race was invented by racism and America is always you know up until fairly recently discriminated on the basis of racism that's what we want to undo that's what we want to undo and we would understand that redlining would not be a shock-like we wouldn't be a shot we wouldn't think that this ended in 1960 I think it would have a profound effect on our policy and people talk about reparations in this way fences Charles Ogletree you know who are brought through on behalf of the race riots in Oklahoma when I interviewed him that was exactly actually how you talked about robbery this thing was that this should be part of a broader social justice thing at the legacy of african-americans should inform programs and policies that we note we disproportionately help black people but you know might help other people who are not black to it's very important to say that though I mean it's not just you know you can't just know that and I think as we all want to do for political reasons understandable political reasons I want to not you know explicitly talk about the history and who deceives to be talked about so finder in understand what you're saying let me try to echo it back to you so there is a somewhat pervasive rhetorical move among liberals where you begin a conversation about affirmative action right and it moves in really to a conversation about class-based right it should say what wasn't right as well right this will help this will disappoint you help African Americans anyway might even do a better job right and what you're saying actually isn't that the problem is talking about class-based affirmative action you're saying that it might actually be the right thing to have a class-based affirmative action policy that you justify on racial grounds so long as you are actually talking about the intent of the policy that the plan there's got to be yeah I think part of like specifically with the example of a first we simply that part of the problem is that um so there's the class-based piece but the other piece of this is it becomes a university which is the absolute I mean look there's an argument for diversity there's an argument for class-based affirmative action and it might be that class-based affirmative action is ultimately the best way to help African Americans right um but that really isn't a moral argument against anti-racist affirmative action affirmative action specifically meant to help black now as we know since Bakke you haven't been able to make that argument is part of the reason why liberals make other arguments but um akka being the supreme court yes yes yes but you know the queasiness about that goes back as I say in a piece it goes back before that Lyndon Johnson's people were queasy about this I mean how do we say we know it has been some sort of data crew how do we say that was specifically gonna you know deal with this that this is that we and we know that african-americans are suffering in a way to other people are not how do we say that we've got to have some level of policy that's going to be specifically engineered to deal with them and I suspect you know and this is just me spit ball because I don't know because we don't have HR forty but I suspect that which you would have is some you know confident combination some sort of cocktail of remedies which would be you know some of it would be probably class-based some of it would be you know specifically anti races throughout the design directly to deal with African mines probably would be you know some sort of mix of things but that's why we need a study you know it was not you know in attempt to like avoid you know something I mean we i spent sixteen thousand words writing you know you know making the case for why this should happen right I would love to spend another sixteen thousand telling you what that might look like it would be my honor to do that but what that would entail would not be you know me just you know writing you know spending a week you know sort of doing the math and then writing that out I mean I would want to travel to that fences to other countries and find you know okay so can I find something analogous we somebody has some sort of great historical scent and they've had to deal with it with the population still living in that country what did they do how successful was you know because what you need to understand is are we at the you know limits of human justice itself or is this something that we just you know haven't figured out um I think when people see study and that's because you know we get like reports like with they're constantly reports that I never acted on it never go anywhere but study is more than you know at least in my eyes you know it's more than just stuff you know a few people sitting in a room and then you know producing a briefing paper I mean this is actually a deep question about humanity a human justice when you think about something like HR forty or when you just think about reparations in general I think one of the interesting questions is are you trying to target justice or are you trying to park it some kind of outcome and the answer obviously can be both but it's relatively I think I want to say easy but you can it's a matter of arithmetic to say here's what the wealth gap is right here's how much money we would need to transfer to close a wealth gap and we're going to use that as a kind of a rough sort of calculation of what it is right and then it's kind of another to say here's what is owed here is what is owed in a kind of moral debt right in this country right because of what we've done right and I feel like a study might be able to answer the first question right a study can probably based on a certain set of parameters like help you target outcomes right I kind of am skeptical as much as I'm like a technocratic right a study being able I mean I've read a lot of studies on this and your article is a lot more powerful right and it's because I feel like the line would just studies and frankly the the tools they have right I don't know how you but what difficulty I think again know like if we thought and I'd like to read the study but I said well first of all what you make obviously nothing can answer for the moralia nothing can make that right let's just let's so stipulate that when Germany paid reparations it didn't make it right right you know it was and people fear that but it most certainly didn't and I don't think anybody thinks that that that it made it right expected on some level we have like a you know a dialogue that we can have about like what social programs or what whatever what we might do to close the wealth gap but I think what you're alluding to is on the profound injury in terms of morality in terms of the state as a whole does it have to just be programs I mean are we talking about what our museums look like for instance are we talking about for this is what our curriculum should look like right you know I know we don't have a national crowby I mean when we get in close right we get with this Common Core but what you know what students should learn you know what should be you know what are their specific days they should be set aside for certain things all the common core new people out there excited you just associated pending reparations right happy very happy right they're very happy doing that um yeah reparations curriculum comes but it doesn't just have to be limited to social programs you know it really really does it a world in which we would have reparations is a very very different America yeah it's a very very different America is a different America than one we live in right now but sometimes sometimes talking about that different world is the way you get to that different world you know I mean think I always thought listen 1860 anybody who was calling for the mass abolition of all black people who were enslaved in the South was considered crazy I mean I wasn't even Abraham Lincoln's position it wasn't the Republican Party this was the party ostensible it was not in position at all people you know also should be you know immediately liberated it was Frederick Douglass's position you know uh and when he was advocating it it seemed you know uh totally and completely unlikely um did that mean that he then therefore shouldn't say it you know I mean I that's really and I think like this is actually a question for um pundants intellectuals writers people who have the public space ok because I think often we confuse ourselves with like Senate aides maybe because often is an overlap you know so what you end up talking about is what could possibly get past you know make it you know pass a 60-vote you know a pastor Phillip Brenda and that becomes like the the you know paradigm for all we talk about what are our politics like right now let's talk within that narrow space and that's probably because you know writers intellectuals pundits analyst they want to have impact you know I mean they want to have you know you want to be I wrote this and then this happen you know that's that's what you hope to happen but what happened to imagination you know I mean I think that's actually an important one not not the world we live in now but the world we hope to live and I think people need to write compellingly about that you know um I and I have a friend you know whose name who shall go and mention mutual friend I'll tell you once well camera um who keeps saying he wants to write this piece arguing that private school in America should be abolished would love to read that piece I'm not even sure I agree with him but it's so far out you know what I mean and you know as he made the case it was you know interrogating so many things I was on a school told my son that dad's probably why so on the brain at a private school and it was just more religious outrageous I'm offensive but we have to say things that are that way way out you know I mean that may be correct and impossible also I don't think we're improved by just sort of living right here you know within the confines of what our politics are right now but one of the point you make about being a Senate aid um and I'm a guy who like is basically build my career I'm writing what can another filibuster so I wrote it it seems to me that what are you able to do that but everybody shouldn't do but but this is what I think it's interesting about sort of the path you've taken like I'd say like over the last year mm-hmm like a theme in your work in your blog over the last year has been a real lurch towards history and and the sort of historians way of knowing right right that you really I think had some some fairly impatient I think um debates or discriminated that you've got in what they've said more depressed you've got a more fatalistic and it you know I think that you have political journals right which is like the place where people who end up commenting on politics and to come from they have modes of knowing we I have modes of knowing right right call Sena dates right and I read books by people involved in the political process and I feel like your work has gotten bigger and more radical the more you've moved away from that yeah that's that's true that's true and just to be clear you know I'm I'm not arguing against calling Senate he's absolutely not making America worse I get it no no no no no that that needs to happen and other things need to happen to you know um I think one of the things that has sort of amazed me is um if I you know assembled a panel of you know political scientists economists sociologists historians and you know people have done this have you know I've been lucky enough to travel around and people have done this for me we you've gotten into a room what that conversation sounds like what the conversation sounds like when I talk to people who write you know for magazines or publications or websites its holy holy different now it's at it amazes me you know and I haven't quite been able to put my finger on why you know uh but if folks think what I am saying is depressing I mean I I don't like I don't like I dropped out of school so I have a hard time understanding this because the people who are teaching you know the next generation of people gonna be doing this writing I just I don't know they they lay it all out there I'm struggling because I don't want to call them fatalistic cuz I don't think they are you know I think what they do have I think what they do have I think what academics generally have is a realistic view of humanity um listen I'm an American that is an unusual sentence you just gave there what did I forget if you do have as a realistic view member in that in their writing maybe not in their politics you know within the departments but but do ever but the but I agree this but they have a perspective yes they do it right they they are forced to have a perspective right right it is bigger than they are and bigger than their intuition right right right I mean you can't like a be a historian of any respect and no and right you know the adventures of flag and ribbon you just can't you can't do that you may you know be American you may be very happy to be American may be very proud of America you know win want to live anywhere else but at the end of the day you you have to view your country you know as a state within world history I mean that's that's the way you you had Disney and there's no room for like religion or theology or myth really in that you know you can't in fact you know you got to kind of reject that you got to get that out of your head and try to take some sort of you know objective and this is like why I keep hammering this point if you take a view of african-american history and I think I say this in the piece you know you say okay what is the relationship the American state to the african-american community across the broad swath of time I mean what are you gonna say no no I mean you you can't you know you're not gonna say hey everything is great and I'm gonna go so far as to say you can't even say things were bad before and they're getting better now because we've had about 50 years of just kinda getting better nothing is a sure no one knows no one knows what we hope that you don't continue to get better that's what we hope that's what you hope and if that happens that'll be great you know um but as it stands now I mean you you you you have to just take a realistic sense of where we are you know you just can't you can't be afraid to say that at a history professor in college who had what he called the 9090 90 role mm-hm and he said that 90% of Americans forget 90% of what's happened within 90 days and he he compared it to World War one where they got into a world war mm-hmm based on grievances like from hundreds of years mm-hmm-hmm but he said that um that at times that's been a great advantage of this country because it can forget so fast they can renew itself fair and Randle mmm-hmm but that but if you widen that aperture way right if you stopped forgetting so quickly right things look a whole lot different right I mean that did to circle back to where we began you know the man who begins your piece is alive and terrible things happen is that's right terrible things happen that we're like not done by a distant right pass not done by people who have a sepia tone in photographs I know photographs at all right and you know one of the reasons I think that you this good line in there that you know there's a kind of a laughter that masks a fear we've been talking about this that it's just it's so much easier to forget right well I think you know just a minute though as well I I think we we do remember I think we remember the things that fly to us very no it's fur nobodies don't forget George Washington you know well if they forget a lot of it well yes yes you're exactly right they do forget a lot of him but they remember the part that flatters them so that's totally right we remember the part of flight as ourselves yeah again on some level like this becomes like existential questions you know can a stay create the kind of memory that say a mother has of a child you know our brother has of a sister where you love somebody right mm-hmm but you don't think that they're perfect but you would you know you would leap in front of a truck for him not nevertheless you know Kenneth state have that kind of patriotism can't can that kind of love for country actually exists or is the only kind of level country where no no we're the best we're better than everybody else and you know we've never done anything wrong and if we did do anything wrong you know our you know everything about our goods so clearly our our badge that we don't even really need to talk about it you know um it's really interesting to hear you bring up this concept of memory or because in a way I feel like this is what the piece is about but one of the things you leave is sort of there's an accounting about reparations that is the work of the sort of possible study committee but that one of the things that no matter what form it ultimately took it would be one of the things that the reparations would be would be kind of a restoration of this memory not just this kind of idea that there's slavery and then we fought it and we this great national cleansing and then went over but that sort of that there would be a recognition of kind of what the history here actually was and that would be part of the package actually right right right and you know this isn't as depressing as people think you know because you know within I'm reading this I I just finished Ron Charles book of watch and that's why use on my brain and I'm now reading our Henry wine sex book which is just about Washington it and slavery and um as bad as things are you you you see these glance of individual nobility you know I mean when people recognize this is horrible I'm gonna try really really hard to do the right thing here you know and sometimes I succeed very often they don't um but those are the moments that you know even me you know all the way out here with my radicalism you know you you you you come to some greater understanding you know about America I think you know like you take like Abraham Lincoln's uh second and our gold address yeah I just it's not just you know a sort of profound you know statement you know on the country but it's just a profound statement on freedom period Perry I mean they're all of these moments like this through American history um when you talk about something like the civil war okay on some level you're talking about you know at the end biting into a car you're talking about you know liberation and enslavement right but you're also talking about at that point in history one of the few functioning quote-unquote even theoretical democracies in the world then that continue or not can I continue I mean and it did you know there's something to be said there I guess what I'm saying is you don't at the end of you know all of this accounting you don't have to hang your head and is the other thing other states have to do their thing to reg is not like you know uniquely evil with some you know what I mean is not like you know what is I spent a great deal of my time talking about the force of white supremacy and racism in America but if I were in France you know well actually I guarantee you just looking around I could find something near to you know this is just true societies period and I think you know if we can sort of accept that about ourselves accept our own humanity you know and accepted that that that's okay and also can I just get away from this this sense of individual guilt so when I talk about reparations I am talking about America as a country as a state as a society I am NOT talking about white people and that's you know I got to be really clear and we understand you know that the state you know acted you know to benefit white people but ultimately you know the whole society has to come to some sort of accounting you know when we're talking about red line we're talking about things that the American government did so you know like the county you get is well what's specific why people are going to pay I didn't know you know you're part of a society you're part of the state and the state outlives you you know what I mean when you die to state continues you the state you know has no natural and you benefit from the things that the people before you did yes you do yes you do yes she doing there people around were being hurt by it and so if we can get to that level you know I think you know and I say this and if he's I think we actually will be much improved beyond reparations um and just to add on it outside you got me carried away here the other thing I think about this is it's like um if we can't deal with this and I did actually a question for you how we gonna deal with climate change it seems to me that the problems are very very similar like getting people to face up to something that is not immediately in their interests you know like how do you how do you how do you get people to do that do you build the society that does that do you actually want my answer on that yes I would I would love you I don't think we are hmm well I think that climate change is an issue that now you're a pessimist yeah oh I'm a realist here in 2008 John McCain and Sarah Palin had a cap-and-trade bill in their platform Sarah Palin was running on a national ticket right in favor of cap-and-trade right her first major statement after that election was a Washington Post op-ed um I forgot what cabin tax or something you know using some sort of Sarah Palin ISM to distance herself from N um John McCain was the first to introduce a cap-and-trade bill and his Senate a couple of years ago this debate seemed real tractable mm-hmm and a couple years later it seems almost impossible now you cannot you can take a bow optimistic view you can say that'll flip quick right but I'm a structuralist about American politics I don't I think very little about individuals in it and what they want and what they mean and much more about the big thing and in that issue I see a problem that the worst effects won't happen for a long time yeah it the worst effects will happen in countries that are not us yeah that the both the cost end of the problem end of the solution would be highly regionally dispersed and an effective solution require a level of global cooperation there's almost no precedent for mmm and it's like if you wanted to design if you wanted to create if you wanted to weaponize it shoo such that both the American political system in assembly the International and couldn't deal with it that is a that is how you would make it right and that most of the serious solutions to it in some form or another basically attacks mm-hmm which is something we have weird quasi religious feelings about in American politics I would not be pessimistic if climate change were an issue like the budget or even like health care where you can let it fester for a long time all right then you can flip the switch right and you can cause a lot of damage but you can you know you can fix it right but once you get 600 parts per million of carbon particles in there you're done right and so I just don't think we're gonna get there in time we just got barely a not quite universal health care bill under roughly a hundred years of trying it I'm trying so so can I just have this confident but I think it's very important people to talk like that I I just do you know I think um we have a tendency in this country for whatever reason and maybe in all countries to think that you know well I think in this country oxy oh it's gonna we we went in here we went into you yeah what have we done until we don't you know and I think like we need to have the possibility in front of us that we don't you know and I think you know just to you know switch this back you know cuz I think about these things together all the time um we need to face the possibility that you know until the end of this country um black people might never be equal that's impossible I mean that could happen you know I think you know we see you know Jackie Robinson nineteen sixties you know Voting Rights Act Obama clearly would you know progressing towards a place when is going to be a quadrant maybe not maybe not something that you actually heard about just this week it was the way this article and this perspective of yours is kind of more realist perspective let's burn it um stands on the shoulders of the Academy yes and stands on the shoulders to what would be kind of a reading list here what are what are some of the things that if people cared about this and were touched by this and wanted to sort of understand follow some of the intellectual path you've walked what would you wear would you tell them to go so it'd be uh yeah dance electro godmother this piece is isabel wilkerson zinc credible book I the one with the other side it isn't incredible yeah no justjust just epic I mean just yeah it's just you can't say enough you know about about about Isabel Lucas's work professor Wilkinson is reversing one of the sort of commonly held views on the great migration denies that you have a flooded people from the south through came appear who were totally unprepared for city life and that explains a lot about what happened in our northern cities you know in through you know painstaking you know meticulous work like looking at actual sociology Rosa she proves that in many cases these folks were better educated in the black communities that were already in some if you educate a few cases they were better educated in the white immigrant you know communicate communities that were there very often they actually came from cities and not you know straight like plantation in Chicago the story that you always hear in many cases you know these these were people who are married you people who did find work these were people who did you know were church-going basically doing everything that you know uh America says that people should do you know how were they then rewarded and that was like you know that's a question that she you know an answer that she you know lays out throughout the book and what you see I mean I finished it was you know a kind of almost effort to ensure there was no successful black middle class I hate to speak in those terms but it's very hard to avoid that conclusion when you see people you know working their butt off and you see the kind of avoids they got so that that's that's a really important borough saddest book um family properties you know is extremely extremely important history of redlining and housing in general in Chicago with with focus on North Lawn down to focus on the contract buying system uh Kenneth Jackson's crabgrass frontier absolutely absolutely essential it's ostensibly another one of these books that's ostensibly history of the suburbs in America but actually ends up having a lot to do with race white supremacy and redlining inevitably it has to get to that auto Hersh's book uh the second I'm making the second ghetto all about Chicago and just a great great pattern of some of the most unwanted probably one of the most forgotten waves of terrorism in American history and that is the housing riots against people in Chicago and again you know how black people were greeted as they went into these neighborhoods just absolutely absolutely essential and then engaging in some of the broader questions you know about justice and that sort of thing I think Tony Jets book post-war history of Europe after after World War Two you know it's very very much obsessed with this question of forgetting and what we remember we don't in fact a jet kinda argues that it's good this society's forget I think that that was an absolutely huge 1 Timothy Snyder's blood lands another one you know just really obsessed with memory and what happens when you have just a [ __ ] rent horrendous horrendous you know atrocities and how countries you know you know deal with that and process that the memory and the last one that I would recommend it's IRA Katznelson I fear itself which you are very familiar with history of New Deal politics in America professor Katz Nelson really you know between that book and his other book when affirmative action was white did a lot of work in terms of just educating me on how the New Deal was passed and you know what what what what it left open also I would recommend Robert Samson's great great American city and our Patrick Sharkey stuck in place and I would recommend them in tandem because these are two sociologists who kind of come out of the William Julius Wilson you know school of sociology and that is that we have to understand neighborhoods that even you know traditionally when people talk about race which we will try to do is will say okay let's look at black people with this income white people this income see what the outcomes are and try to figure out what's going on here even wealth well that's another one let's look at you know wealth black black family with X wealth white family why why are we getting different outcomes and what uh Samson and Sharkey and both of these works show is that no no think about neighborhood think about the neighborhoods that these people don't think about them because if you think about how people actually function a function as communities who you know who you see you know you you know which are daily you know interactions are and that I mean is uh that that that way he's really mean you talk about pessimism you want to be that will make you very very pessimistic Sharkey shows presence in his work the income gap is really not changed at all where african-american families live regardless of income regardless of income as compared to where white families live and I'm talking about what the income tends to be around them is ridiculous I'm a offense as a black family don't average I think his numbers black family on average bringing in about $100,000 a year tends to live in the same neighborhood that a white family making about $30,000 lives in terms of the quality of the neighborhood I mean these present like serious serious challenges to where we are Sampson looks at on all of the neighborhoods in Chicago and produces this stunning graph of like the rates of incarceration and on one side you know you can see like just a line like this and on one side you can see all of the white neighborhoods on the other side you see all of the black neighborhoods way up here I mean even the black neighborhood with the lowest incarceration rate has some you know degree you know number some ridiculous number times the rate of the highest incarcerated white neighborhood these I mean you know our books make you know just a really really powerful argument taken together for the regrettable persistence of racism you know in our in our in our country they were he sent you to me [Music] [Music] [Music] what do people get wrong about what life is like in prison on one end of the spectrum is the fantasy that every single prisoner jail is a place of uncontrollable violence because it's filled with uncontrollably violent people which is part of the justification for locking them up in the first place so in reality as much as half of our prison and jail population are folks who are there for nonviolent offenses you know I never witnessed an act of violence during the time that I was incarcerated so that's one end of the spectrum at the other end of the spectrum is a fantasy that prisons and jails are these incredible engines of rehabilitation and that there's all these programs going on and that's really untrue in most prisons and jails there's very little rehabilitative activity of any sort going on in the American correctional system and those misperceptions get I think to a deep ambivalence that we have about what prison is actually for so there's an idea that prison is for locking people up so they can't hurt us there's an idea that prison is for rehabilitating people there's also an idea out there I think the prison is just a raw punishment it is an unpleasant thing that happens to you to create an incentive to not do what ever was again and one of the things that I think is an open question is whether it actually achieves at this point any of them well because it was not meant for any one of them in particular our recidivism numbers are as high as two-thirds of people coming home from prison in jail so if the goal is to rehabilitate clearly we're failing if the goal is to make us safer then clearly those systems are sort of failing as well because if 2/3 of people come home and either violate their probation or parole or commit another crime there is a distinction between those two things then what was really the point of their incarceration in the first place and then there's a question of the third right which is there is an argument that our crime policy which is a different way of putting them making a safer point is to just lock violent people up for very very very long of time there was an incredible study I thought the other day or at least a just look at the raw numbers that show that even the most liberal states in the u.s. Vermont have higher incarceration rates in almost any other country in the world and I think the argument that people get at when they try to justify that is that well this is part of why crime went down so much in the 90s because we just began lock everybody up a huge percentage of the people who are in our prisons and jails right now are there for nonviolent offenses a huge huge percentage so in terms of protecting us from violence that's simply not what our current system is doing people who commit violent crimes do go to prison for very long periods of time though frankly people who commit nonviolent drug offenses sometimes go to prison for comparable sentences in terms of what has driven down the crime rate not only in the United States but all around the world there's a real lack of consensus around that so many individual small theories have been trial balloons but if you talk about the reduction in index crimes which are the seven violent crimes that most concern us those crimes have that the incidence of those crimes has declined worldwide in most places that measure those index crimes so we can't really claim that any American criminal justice strategy can take the credit for our decline in crime rates because there's really a lack of clarity and consensus around why crime has dropped so much but what many people don't realize is that our crime rates are so very very low and have been for a long time so we're in a place now where you have very similar reported rates of drug use for white Americans and African Americans and yet there is a 3.6 3.6 times as likely for an african-american to be arrested and imprisoned for drug use then a white American now one of the arguments people offer around that is that this really isn't around drugs at all that drug charges are being used to imprison people for for other reasons I know you've done a lot of work in New York around stop-and-frisk and how that actually worked in practice I was one of you could just expand on that and that kind of policing using small infractions to try to get it what are perceived to be larger crime problems what we saw in New York is an explosion of the use of stop and frisk while Ray Kelly was the head of the NYPD hundreds and hundreds you know like half a million New Yorkers were getting stopped and frisked with a tiny tiny number of weapons retrieved and a very low level of citations being written for very very low level not even crimes misdemeanors those stop and frisks were disproportionately focused on communities of color to a stark stark extent so if you lived in Brownsville you were highly likely to be stopped and frisked multiple times any any day of the any day or night if you live in Park Slope which is where I live the likelihood of you being stopped and frisked was negligible so the use of the misuse of the criminal justice system as a tool of control for poor people poor communities of color is perhaps the most deeply distressing and morally repugnant realities of the last 30 years of criminal justice policy what about what happens after presento just mean here about rehabilitation but I mean about the size of the probationary in the parole state which is larger than the actual prison population at this point and is a place where people end up under really a tremendous amount of somewhat uncertain often quite underfunded government surveillance and I've heard a lot of arguments that this is part of the problem with reentry that the structures we put on people about where they can go what they can do how often they have to check-in whether or not they have the transportation to get there it ends up creating a system in which both actual actual infractions are not reliably punished but people end up getting sent back or finding that they cannot reliably integrate back into society because what we are asking them to do in terms of checking back in with the state in terms of submitting to oversight is so is unreasonable I remember when I came home from prison in 2005 you know if you are released from prison or jail you feel on some level like you've broken the tape like you have crossed the finish line you've done your time and then you need to report to your probation or parole officer immediately and it is brought home to you so powerfully that actually no you have not completed your sentence the main thing that we should be most concerned with is having fewer people who have felony convictions and so that question of criminalization of low-level nonviolent offenders and whether stamping people with a felony record for the rest of their lives and all of the sort of second sentence things that follow along with that whether that makes good sense is a really important question to consider a lot of this I think does come back to this question of racial justice because the truth is that in this country we have a long standing history of control of some people's bodies and lives and that government control of African American people and people of color has morphed over time over hundreds and hundreds of years from one system to another and currently I think you know Michelle Alexander's analysis of our present-day situation is very on point that too often the criminal justice system is being used to control communities of color in very direct ways you know I think people from all ends of the political spectrum could agree that more citizens need to be free of government control in their everyday lives a lot of the same people who exist within the sort of tough-on-crime dimension the the high sentencing dimension in the prison conversation are also the folks who believe that the core problem in a lot of these communities is a breakdown of the nuclear family and when you have a policy that is putting so many young african-american men behind bars and so just by almost definition ripping apart those families one of those things needs to stop for the other to improve I reflect upon the things that drive crime in the case of women and those things are really clear we know what they are it's substance abuse it's mental illness and it is the experience of violence whether sexual violence or other physical violence in a person's personal history so if you don't get at those root causes and frankly if you don't address those root causes before a person ever krumitz a crime or you know is at risk of getting involved in crime then you've basically failed in terms of a crime strategy some of the things that drive mens involvement in crime differ but still we know what they are and so our reluctance particularly in poor communities of all colors and most especially in poor communities of color to address things like substance abuse mental illness and cycles of violence you know those things are just failures there was a study that came out recently showing that we have more severely mentally ill people behind bars in America than we have in psychiatric hospitals what would be a better way to approach this correctional systems must have the resources to provide mental health care services and substance abuse care services as part of what they do but it would be a huge mistake to enshrine substance abuse care and mental health care for poor people in the criminal justice system which is sort of where we we've arrived when you look at the three biggest providers of mental health care in this country they are the Los Angeles County Jail Rikers Island and the Cook County Jail in Chicago but resources have to go into poor communities to provide mental health care and to provide you know substance abuse care separate from the criminal system dramatically separate they need to go into the public health system if we want to change that and there is a very compelling reason to change it because I can tell you from personal experience putting mentally ill people in prison and jail does not make them better it makes them less healthy how do you think the conversation on this has moved in recent years how well do you think the people who are working on this and have power over it understand the underlying issues I think that when you have conversations with folks who work in the criminal justice system and I include people who work in Corrections you hear a significant recognition of the fact that the system does not work the way we expect it to and we need to do things differently as is so typical legislators are almost always the last ones to sort of catch up to public opinion and to also sort of the professional opinion of folks who work in these fields we need a lot more work on the legislative front reform on reentry is moving in good directions and and I would say over the last 10 years that's sort of the first place that we began to saw see a significant public conversation because it's always easy to talk about you know oh people have paid their dues so they deserve a second chance and that is you know on some level a really fundamental American value we've seen more movement on the conditions of confinement so a lot more interest and comprehension of things like solitary confinement and the fact that we have shockingly high numbers of people in solitary confinement sometimes her in defensively long periods of time but the name of the game is putting fewer people in prison in jail in the first place and that requires legislative change so the smarter Sentencing Act is alive and moving in Congress right now there are both House and Senate bills they have good Republican sponsors right now and that is very encouraging so it would reform mandatory minimum drug sentencing it would not repeal mandatory minimums it would simply bring them a little bit more in line with what common sense dictates around nonviolent drug offenses a lot of the innovation and the leadership is definitely coming out of the states and those states are not necessarily blue states either you know there states like Texas states like North Carolina and North Carolina closed I think for prisons recently and that's exactly where we need to be going we need to be closing prisons certainly not building more prisons or shunting off public money into private prison corporations in the long run I think a lot of people look at the lines on the budget and they just can't keep going the way they were going over the last decade and is that part of why it's become in states a lot less of a partisan and less of an ideological issue just because it's become an economic issue I believe that that is true I believe that the economics particularly since the collapse of the economy in 2008 have driven state capitals to really reconsider what they're doing in terms of criminal justice and specifically prisons and jails I think that as more and more conservatives have come to the issue perhaps via that economic question and they have become more and more educated about what has transpired over the last 30 years the moral questions are also very resonant to those folks sometimes I think that there are a host of different values that we can bring to bear in terms of why we should reduce our prison and jail population those include economics they include racial justice there's a host of different reasons that we can care about doing things differently and doing things much better you What is this John Boehner lawsuit? John Boehner
is trying to do something that has never been done before. He's trying to have the House
of Representatives institutionally sue President Obama. What's weird is that the particular
nature of the suit is John Boehner demanding that Obama enforce a law that John Boehner
doesn't like more stringently. John Boehner wants to repeal all of Obamacare. He wants
to repeal pretty much every part of Obamacare and there's one part of Obamacare that Barack
Obama delayed for a year, this employer mandate -- the part where employers would have to
insure their employees or pay a penalty, at least if they have enough workers who aren't
ensured. If John Boehner won his lawsuit, the outcome of that would be that President
Obama would have to more quickly implement a part of a law that John Boehner does not
want implemented at all. Does that seem weird to you. What could it be about? John Boehner
was a member of Congress in 1998. He watched Republicans lose an election they were supposed
to win because they hated Clinton so much that they impeached him over the objections
of the American people. They made themselves look crazy. He watched Speaker Newt Gingrich
resign because of that loss. John Boehner knows impeachment fever is rising in the Republican
party. There are books being written about why Barack Obama should be impeached. Calls
coming from conservative activists. Sarah Palin. So maybe John Boehner is giving them
a way to safely release a little bit of tension, a way to get it all out. What's interesting
about this lawsuit is he is not just bringing it. He's bringing it to the House. He wants
to have a long drawn-out process where the House of Representatives decides whether or
not to join his lawsuit against President Obama. It's almost like an impeachment process
where they come down on the floor and they go on every TV show and they make the case,
except at the end of making that case what happens is not impeachment. What happens at
the end of making that case is not that Republicans do something extremely stupid, it's that they
do something that is just kind of probably a waste of time. Central America is in the midst of what the
world recognizes as a humanitarian crisis. Criminal gangs are taking over much of the
region and a civilian was more likely to be murdered in one of these countries over the
last several years than to be killed in Iraq during the height of the insurgency. Those gangs are recruiting young teenagers,
and if the teenager resists recruitment, will threaten, injure or even kill the teenager
or family members. As a result, many teenagers and younger children
are choosing to leave their home countries and seek asylum elsewhere in the region. They're going to Mexico, to Costa Rica, to
Nicaragua, and many of them are going to the United States. Since October 1st of last year, 52,000 children
unaccompanied by adults have been apprehended by Border Patrol. And that's not counting the tens of thousands
of mothers who are bringing their children into the United States to flee as well. Of course having so many people coming into
the country admittedly without papers is causing a lot of controversy. Part of this is because they've strained the
existing system, which was built under the Bush administration to deal with 6,000 to
8,000 kids coming across the border alone every year, not 52,000. But part of it's because some would like the
border to be a forcefield, to automatically refuse anyone who doesn't have the proper
papers from being able to set foot in the United States. But there are very good reasons that the border
isn't a forcefield. U.S. law has an established process so that
when someone comes across the border and doesn't have papers but fears for their life there
can be a way to determine if they're eligible for asylum or another form of humanitarian
relief. But that's the system that's currently being
overwhelmed. So the question facing the United States right
now is how far are we willing to go in the name of immigration enforcement without undermining
the humanitarian commitment that if you fear persecution and you escape to America, we
will try to find a place for you. Here's something most people don't know about
marijuana. Officially the U.S. federal government classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug. That is
the strictest classification they have, period. Full stop. That means the government thinks
marijuana is more dangerous than Schedule 2 drugs like cocaine or meth. It means they
think marijuana is on the same plane as heroin. About 3,000 people died from heroin overdoses
in 2010. You know how many people died directly of overdosing on marijuana? Zero. And I don't
mean zero in 2010, I mean zero in basically recorded human history. Which isn't to say
that smoking hay bales worth of pot is a good idea. It's not. But notice what I did there.
You hear that all the time. That's what we in the media business call the "to be sure"
paragraph. It's the paragraph where we cover our asses. Almost everyone says that. Even the 
people who think legalizing marijuana is a great idea don't say it's a good thing. The
argument for legalizing pot isn't that pot is good, but that the war on pot is bad. But
there is a way in which legal pot could be  a huge public health win. I mean one of the
biggest public health wins we've had in decades, saving huge numbers of lives. Let's go back
to that drug schedule. There is one drug you won't see on there, even though it is a hell
of a lot more dangerous than pot or even cocaine. That's alcohol. The thing about alcohol is
it's really bad for you, lethally bad for you. I don't want to be a hypocrite here.
I enjoy a drink. But the evidence on this, you cannot run away from it. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention say there are 88,000 deaths each year attributable to alcohol.
About 25,000 of them are just direct overdoses. The numbers here are really amazing. A Columbia
University study found that being drunk increases the risk of a fatal accident 13-fold. Pot,
by contrast, increases the risk by less than 2-fold. Then there's all the other nasty stuff
alcohol leads to. It's a big contributor to violence, to crime, to addiction. It breaks
up families. It gives people cancer. It gives them liver failure. People forget this but
prohibition -- we laugh at it now but it was happening for a reason. People drank more
then and it was a scourge. So this is the question with legal pot: Would people use
it as a replacement or a complement to alcohol. If it's a replacement, it's a huge deal. Marijuana
is a lot safer to use than alcohol. People don't die from it. They rarely kill others
while on it. More marijuana and less alcohol means fewer deaths from intoxication, fewer
drunk driving fatalities, less crime, less violence. But if marijuana complements alcohol
rather than replacing it, then it's a problem. If it makes people for whatever reason, drink
more, then legalizing pot might actually make our alcohol problem worse. Now I'm going to
say something that kind of sucks: we actually don't know the answer here. There is encouraging
early evidence. In a survey of Canadian medical marijuana users, 41% said they replace alcohol
with marijuana. Another survey of California medical marijuana users found they drank less
than the national average. But those are medical marijuana users. They might be different from
the general population. People using marijuana for fun might have a very different relationship
to alcohol than people using marijuana because they're sick. But this isn't just something
we can study, it's something that we can affect, that we can change. Since we know that a lot
of people want to use some kind of mind-altering substance, we could arrange public policy to push them
towards the safer one. But right now, we can't because the federal government, against all
the evidence, thinks that marijuana is an incredibly, insanely dangerous substance with
absolutely no redeeming value under any circumstance.  What are they smoking? The weird thing that happened when Eric Cantor
lost his primary is that the House Republicans replaced Eric Cantor with basically the other
Eric Cantor. His name is Kevin McCarthy. He was the #3 to Eric Cantor's #2. And he was
Eric Cantor's choice to succeed him. So you have this moment where Eric Cantor loses in
a primary because Republican voters in his district reject him, and then just gets replaced
by a guy who is like exactly the same. But Kevin McCarthy wanted to show that he had
heard the dissatisfaction of the Republicans who ousted Cantor. And so what he did was
he came out against something called the Export-Import Bank. "I think that Ex-Im bank is one, something
that government does not have to be involved in." The Export-Import bank is an 80-year-old
program that subsidizes foreign buyers of American exports. So an Indian airline gets
loan guarantees to buy Boeing's airplanes. It usually passes with no problem, but right
now -- and this is where it gets interesting -- the Export-Import Bank has become the proving
ground for a movement inside the Republican party called the Conservative Reform. And
what they want to do is they think that recent Republican presidents -- when Republicans get
a chance to govern they are not sufficiently conservative. The accept the basic structure
of the democratic welfare state. What they don't do is build a new conservative state
in its place. So what the conservative reformers are arguing is that if conservatives are actually
going to change the government, if they're actually going to make it smaller and more
free-market-oriented, then Republicans need to learn how to fight big business. And the
Export-Import Bank is the first place you're really seeing them get Republicans to fight
big business. It is supported by the Chamber of Commerce. It's supported by the National
Manufacturers Association. It's supported by all the big business trade groups you normally
think of Republicans as being very, very close to. But in this case, they're beginning to
lose the support of key Republicans. They lost Kevin McCarthy now. They lost Paul Ryan.
They lost Jeb Hensarling. Rand Paul is an opponent of the Export-Import Bank. This is
like for conservative reformers what the Keystone XL pipeline is like for the climate
justice movement. It doesn't solve the problem on its own, but it's a win. And you build
movements off of wins. For the first time it looks like conservative reformers might
be able to actually change how Republicans vote on an important matter of policy. So
this is a fight worth watching. Not because the Export-Import Bank itself is such a big
deal. There are good arguments on both sides of that. But if it is flattened, if it is
allowed to expire then we're actually looking a potentially a different Republican Party.
We're looking at a movement that began as an intellectual idea become a real political
force. And we're looking at the possibility that the next Republican president might govern
really different than the last couple. [Music] [Music] so you have over the course of the last six eight years a series of Supreme Court decisions it systematically dismantled protections against money in politics and you write in this great piece you did for media about the way in which you a constitutional law professor you clerk the Supreme Court actually misunderstood the effect that you thought this would be corporations rushing in but actually it's politicians who need to buy insurance it's not about the money that gets spent but about the money that could be spent right this was a point that Evan Bayh articulated in an exchange that I saw him have with Senator Specter where he was describing the dynamic that super PACs create he said the the thing that I'm most fearful of that any incumbent is most fearful of is that 30 days before the election some super PAC will come in and drop a million dollars against you so you need to prepare for that and the way you prepare for that is these weren't his words but this is the way to understand it you buy super PAC insurance and what that means is you affiliate with somebody on your side who would be willing to drop a million dollars to defend you against the million dollars that was spent against you um well how do you buy insurance like this well like any insurance policy you gotta pay the premium in advance and how do you pay the premium in advance here you basically signal that you're the kind of person that this super PAC would want to support so they might have standards they might say we can only support people who get a 90 percent voting a score on our voting card and so now you have a target to aim for ninety percent and this becomes the economics of a protection racket this is the sort of thing that Tony Soprano would have understood because now you have people behaving in a way that assures the kind of protection they need and not a single dollar has changed hands the super PAC has achieved it's exactly its objective and that dynamic I think nobody was expecting nobody was planning or thinking about when they unleashed the series of decisions that created the super PAC I think the way that most of us understand or conceptualize this kind of interaction it's that the rich guy or the lobbyist or the head of super PAC goes to the politician and says that you're gonna vote my way or I'm gonna drop a million dollars on you and for your opponent I spoke a while back to some folks who are involved in passing the mccain-feingold one thing they said which is interesting was it they had had a lot of support from rich folks because rich guys were tired of being hit up by politicians and the politicians often do it almost in Reverse that well if they don't get the donation who knows how they'll vote and that dynamic is shot through that system and my favorite example is the doc fix right so the Medicare Act has this provision where they're supposed to reduce the reimbursement rate for doctors every year and every year the question comes up whether they will reduce the reimbursement rate and every year they vote not to reimburse the reimbursement rate but before they vote that way of course there are lots of efforts out to doctors saying we need to build the support to stop the the doc fix right so this becomes a money printing machine for congressmen because of the threat of how it's going to affect the interests of doctors same thing with you know Al Gore tell the story in my book Al Gore when he was vice president had this idea for deregulating a significant chunk of the telecommunications interesting his chief lobbyist takes it to Capitol Hill and as he reports it back to me response from Capitol Hill was hell no if we deregulate these guys how are we gonna raise money from them right so the point is you have your hands in as much as you possibly can so you have as many chains as you can possibly pull when you need to raise money from people to fund your elections and this is why I say you know to people on the right all the time you know you can say that the solution to all of this is smaller government but how are you gonna get smaller government when the way we fund elections gives congressmen an interest in larger more invasive government you've got a thumb on the scale against your objective of shrinking the side of government because if you shrink the size of government they can't fund their campaigns anymore you're running something called the Mayday PAC and you raised a million dollars that'll be matched in a-and you're trying to raise five million dollars to be matched with another five million dollars in June and if you do that you'll have 12 million dollars to spend on the 2014 election kind of as a first step how can you fight money in politics by raising an enormous amount of money in order to win elections well the only way we solve the problem of money in politics is changing the rules to changing the rules of how campaigns get funded now to change the rules we need a Congress to get a Congress we have to have a super PAC capable of exerting enough coordinating influence to achieve that and so that's the strategy because in my view the critical problem is not the corporation's can speak or that money is speech or that there's lots of money spent on negative ads the critical problem is we've out sourced the funding of campaigns to the tiniest fraction of the 1% and we can change that by electing a Congress that's committed to a system of small dollar funded elections whether it's the Republican version of that which would be vouchers or the Democratic version of that which would be matching funds either way you change the rules and you can radically change the way campaigns get funded let's just back up on the mechanics here for a second so I favor um what a lot of conservatives talk about as the solution even though that's not my politics but I favor a voucher system and about your system um basically says every voter gets a voucher in my book I talked about every voter getting a $50 voucher and they can give that voucher to any candidate who agrees to fund his or her campaign with vouchers and maybe small contributions on top what are the unintended consequences you worry about in a system like that well you know there's a lot of right thinking reformers people who you know whose views I respect because they've been in this fight forever people like Fred Wertheimer um who I think are genuinely concerned that if we shift too much power to people to kind of creates these coalition's and you know groups through this kind of small dollar funding they'll be driving for their own kind of special interests legislation that will get more special interest legislation than we have right now it'll just be driven by coalitions of voters AARP or NRA instead of by K Street lobbyists you donate to the NRA slate ya would be the word yes you allocate your voucher the way it and RA says you should allocate it or the AARP or a planned parent or whatever you know and so this is aggregating at a much lower level it's bundling at the $50 level and you might think well the policies that come out of that are just not good policies and in my response to that is right democracy isn't a guarantee of good government and there's gonna be many things that a democracy does that I disagree with you know of course I'm an elite member of a Harvard Faculty of course I'm gonna disagree with it but I don't see the alternative to empowering a responsive democracy at least in the current political context we're not gonna pick 12 law professors to decide how we should make policy in the United States we're not gonna turn more over to the courts people don't trust the courts so in some sense we've got to revitalize democracy and then engage in the hard fight to convince people at the Democratic level what they ought to do when I read the political science on this stuff I think that you I think that what you end up having are highly polarized highly ideological highly involved people and then folks who and this isn't many ways the most salient polarization in American politics who just don't care all that much and there's really interesting research summit by a guy named David Brookman over at Berkeley that folks who just don't care that much if I'm recalling this paper write it so much that they are moderate although they often appear so in polls it's that when you pull them they have extreme views in all kinds of different directions they're not coherent ly organized by an ideology the way a hardcore conservative is or where hardcore liberal is they have used it or somewhat vaguer and you can I think kind of imagine that following any sort of way it might follow that what they want is a more inspiring politics of politics they can trust and they might want a politics where people work together or it might turn out that when you have to cut through to people who are listening with a volume to down solo do you actually have to scream much louder I don't know this is all very speculative but I think it's an interesting question that would have to be yeah this actually is completely code consistent with great work that's been done to demonstrate the polarized Americans are the politically active Americans and the non politically active are not polarized maybe it's because they're mixed in this way but maybe they're just more moderate in their view um but then again if you think about the business model of funding a campaign when you do it at $50.00 pops you create an incredible incentive for politicians to figure out how to get those people engaged now in that system you know $50 a voter is about seven billion dollars which is about three times the total amount raised and spent in the last congressional election so it's real money but the point is to raise that money you're not talking to the tiniest fraction of the 1% you're talking to the wide range of potential people who could be supporting you so it spreads out the funder influence and in doing that it removes but I think is the core corrosive dynamic of the current way in which we fund elections which is to create this incredible incentive to bend government and policy to make this tiny tiny number of people happy so that they fund your campaigns [Music] you [Music] we could do so much more to help people live longer healthier more productive lives tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of death in this country it still kills more than a thousand Americans every day and yet if you look at the communities that have done the right things they've driven rates way down by twenty thirty percent teen smoking rates down by 50% or more we could drive those numbers down dramatically if we focus on take blood pressure controlled heart attacks and strokes kill more Americans than any other cause in fact cause more inequalities in health than any other disease two million Americans a year get a heart attack or a stroke and yet many maybe even most of those could be prevented by simple things like controlling your blood pressure taking an aspirin a day here at risk getting your cholesterol under control and not smoking and vaccine preventable diseases are still too common we're seeing for example outbreaks of measles now in communities that haven't vaccinated well we're seeing cervical cancer that's going to continue if we don't get our HPV vaccination rate stopped and we see thousands of people going to hospitals every year who don't have to if they just got a flu shot every year what are the big opportunities out there and health what are the opportunities for us to not die as often or as early oh I guess we're likely to dies often I would start with tobacco control you know if people sometimes think oh tobacco that's yesterday's issue it still kills more people than anything else in this country and around the world and there's a lot more that we can do about it it doesn't just kill people it disables disfigures causes disease increases our healthcare costs so tobacco is really the number one enemy of health in this country and around the world when you say that a lot of people think tobacco is yesterday's news what is the next step on policy I mean at this point you're dealing with taxes in New York say that are high enough that one out of three packs is basically smuggled into this state so you say there's a lot more to do what is there more to do first off there are a lot of places that haven't yet implemented the things that we know work whether that's protecting people from secondhand smoke at work or increasing tax or reducing smuggling which there are ways to do or running hard-hitting ads which we know make a major impact save lives and save money so these are some of the things that work a healthcare system can do much better at helping people quit medications will double or triple the chances that you'll succeed but really the things that are going to make the biggest impact are price image through hard-hitting ads and smoke-free laws what do you think about e-cigarettes a cigarette may help in some ways but they are definitely harmful in many ways as well if they get kids hooked on tobacco and nicotine which they are doing if they get smokers to continue smoking rather than quit if they get smokers to quit to come back to smoking if they Riegel a memorize the act of smoking or confuse smokers about what works to quit these are all real problems with only at this point potential benefits whoa what's your view of the evidence on whether to actually help people quit there's one small well done study they helped a little bit the patches helped a little bit and look that study - the two weren't statistically different so we don't know but we do know that people who are using e-cigarettes are not quitting at higher rates than the who aren't using them now and as we learn more I have no doubt that an individual here or there can be helped by them that they might be helpful for some people but as a societal issue they're only going to be helpful if they're well regulated and if cigarettes are well regulated so I'm a dedicated reader of the CDC's vital signs newsletter in the culture when you think about drugs that are hurting people you think about illegal drugs when I read your newsletter it scares the hell out of me about legal drugs it's about tobacco it's about alcohol and it's about opiates and prescription drugs which I think there's been according you guys a 400% increase in female deaths from prescription drug overdose the last couple of years and then also it's about antibiotics and overuse of antibiotics and the rise of superbugs you guys have scared the hell out of me about things that are supposedly if not safe at least safer adults to consume in reasonably regulated ways in health care there's something that sometimes called the inverse care law people who get care the most needed the least and vice versa that's also sometimes true in terms of medications we overuse a lot of medications but we also under use important medications we don't get it right one of the most striking weeks I've had a CDC director in my five years there was when I had in the course of one week alone looked at the increase in prescription opiate overdoses in death numbers an increase in babies born addicted to opiates because their mother was taking an opiate during pregnancy in distracted would drop drugged driving an increase in hepatitis C from kids who started out using pills then graduated to heroin because was cheaper and an increase in HIV in that same population this isn't the course of one week it's every age group from babies to seniors there are enough opiates prescribed in this country for every single adult to get 75 pills every year really that's a huge problem we're awash in these and one of the things that we need to do as a society of course we need to improve the prescribing practices we need to improve what states do on opiate monitoring we need to improve what medical boards do we need to ensure that there's a good collaboration between law enforcement for that tiny number of people who are breaking the law and treatment and public health programs to support people need help and support but what we also need to do is start looking at what we what we think about as a society because some of the things that are going to help our health most isn't gonna be taking another pill it may be getting physical activity may be eating healthier may be joining a book club it may be building linkages in society that are are getting eroded by some of the things in our society this will be a really basic medical question so forgive it but what does it mean when an infant is born addicted to opiates it is horrific opiates changed the way your body works and developed dependency or addiction if you remove the opiates then the opposite of what the opiate causes happens that are very high rate and you can get a rapid heartbeat you get sweating you can get profuse problems you can get hyperactivity and you can actually get death infants who are born opiate addicted need to be very carefully detoxified from that in a way that will not harm them I want to talk through for another minute the antibiotics and superbugs because when I sit around thinking about what should I be neurotic about that's typically what I come to when I've spoken to some people really study those issues you really do work on that they talk about what sounds like an from a medical perspective an almost post-apocalyptic landscape where we are entering a post-antibiotic world because we're not coming up with them fast enough and the one we have are rapidly losing their effectiveness how worried are you or how worried should I be about the rise of superbugs in a sort of constricting pipeline of antibiotics of new antibiotics you should be worried enough to make sure that we have the resources at CDC to reverse this problem and slow it I'm not I don't think I have as much money as you think I have well first off I'll just tell you two stories it's not often that top scientists at CDC come to me and say we have a problem we need you to sound the alarm that happened here that happened here with a class of organisms called CR E or carbapenem resistant Rebecca Shay they are gram-negative our organisms which tend to be pretty deadly particularly people in hospitals and they have developed resistance to virtually all or in some cases all of our antibiotics and over the past decade we've watched them spread where they were just in one state now they're in nearly every state in the US where they were just occasional now there's many one in ten of some of the deadliest organisms that spread in our hospitals these are truly nightmare bacteria the good news is that we know how to control them we've now recommended that every single Hospital in this country have an antibiotic stewardship program and will help them to set those up we recommend that every hospital tracks what their resistance patterns are what they're prescribing patterns are and we're focusing on hospitals because half of all hospitalized patients get an antibiotic in their course of treatment but maybe a third of those antibiotics are either inappropriate or unnecessary they're given too long they're too broad-spectrum they're not necessary the result of that kind of problem with antibiotic prescribing that we have more than 23,000 deaths a year from resistant organisms and in addition to that what about 14,000 deaths a year from what's called c-diff or Clostridium difficile which is an organism you get if you take antibiotics so it's a serious problem we do have the risk of being in a post-antibiotic here and I'm cleaned as an infectious disease physician so I think back to my years of training in my care of patients with tuberculosis and HIV where we had patients who we had no treatment for and you really do feel like you're in a post-antibiotic era you you're back to doing things like removing parts of lungs and trying experimental therapies and hoping that the patient's own immune system kicks back in but we can make a big difference we think that with a modest investment we'll be able to cut drug-resistant organisms particularly CRE by 50 percent in five years and c-diff by 50 percent in five years we can do this we can make a big difference what about the other side of the equation what do we need to do to reopen the new antibiotics pipeline because when you talk to folks they don't seem to think we've had a point or the human race cannot discover or create not a bother safe seem to think that the economics of doing so simply aren't advantageous for the drug companies we don't know how long and how likely it it's gonna how long it's gonna be and how likely it will be that we'll be able to succeed in making new antibiotics but we've got to try there are a few different moves afoot in Congress to make it more economically advantageous for companies to develop new antibiotics we want to make sure that when new antibiotics come onto the market they're used well so that companies can both make a good profit a reasonable profit and also we don't abuse the medications and lose them in a couple of years if we don't improve our system for using antibiotics the new ones are gonna be lost just as quickly as we're losing the ones we have today there is a study you probably saw that came out of Oregon on Medicaid but broadly on on whether health insurance made you healthy and what they found is Medicaid worked like normal health insurance you got the money to go see a doctor the Medicaid would finance it you had reasonably good access but when they looked at things like blood pressure things and cholesterol things it should have been brought under control within two years they didn't see a huge difference our system actually does not reliably translate all that money we're spending on care and on coverage into actual health you have to say that having coverage a way to get care without going broke isn't necessary but not a sufficient condition for a big health improvement we published an article a few years ago about the Massachusetts experience initially they had a big increase in coverage but not a big increase in access because we had a gap in primary care availability and that's fundamentally because we don't pay primary care providers enough but you also have to look at the time horizon we need to be able to look 10 or 20 years down the line if I get your blood pressure down from 160 over a hundred down to 130 over 80 with a couple of medications that's gonna substantially reduce your risk of all sorts of problems but it may take 5 10 even 20 years for those for that prevention to happen but getting the quality and then waiting to see the results is important okay so I'm the kind of person who like literally will not go see a movie about a disease outbreak because it will activate my ancient lineage of neurotic approach to dizzy you sit around and you marinate in what appears to me to be the most horrifying data that mankind can produce every day how does your family live differently what do you have them do that is different than what most folks do to be protected from what you whatever you've come to perceive is high risk very little is different really it's basic wash your hands regularly get regular physical activity eat foods you love that are healthy it's not anything particularly different from what's routine that's one of the things that's so challenging take physical activity as an example you don't have to have much 30 minutes a day and doing that which can be three ten-minute walks is going to make a huge difference in your life you'll feel better even if you don't lose an ounce you will be much less likely to have high blood pressure high cholesterol cancer arthritis depression you'll feel better you'll sleep better doesn't cost a cent so there's a lot of things that can be done that are not very difficult and can make a really big difference of course get your shots get vaccinations get a flu shot every year and see the doctor regularly and if you have a problem make sure to get follow-up do you remember the old Michael Pollan line that eat food not too much mostly plants yep it kind of sounds like if you are doing that you would say eat real food walk 30 minutes and wash your hands don't smoke alcohol in moderation but it kind of sounds like from this conversation the big stuff you could probably fit into less than 15 words compose a sentence for me huh eat right and get physical activity don't smoke alcohol in moderation spend time with friends you you So if you read the headlines, it kind of seems
like the world is a terrible place, full of violence, despair, and war. But it turns out
war is actually declining. We live in the most peaceful time in human history. There's
lots of reasons why, but here are three of the biggest ones. First, the spread of democracy
around the world. International relations scholars have found consistently that democracies
don't fight wars with each other. Now why is that true? There might be plenty of reasons
but one big one is that people who live in democracies think it's wrong to start wars
with other democracies. They're legitimate governments -- it's wrong to attack them.
But there's a flipside to this. Democracies do often fight wars with autocracies. Luckily,
most of the world's countries are democracies now, so the democratic peace is probably making
the world a much more peaceful place. Second big reason why war is declining is nuclear
deterrence. Nuclear weapons, obviously big and scary. However, nuclear deterrence may
have prevented a devastating war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Everyone
recognized that they would lose. Statistical evidence suggests that that is true -- that
most countries are too scared of the consequences of nuclear war to fight one. There's a dark
side, and not just the risk of global annihilation from an accident. If a country gets nuclear
weapons, they feel rather safer in being aggressive in little ways, you know, small conflicts
or bullying around their non-nuclear neighbors. This weird paradox, that nuclear weapons make
the world more violent and more peaceful at the same time, is called the Stability-Instability
Paradox. The third reason that war has declined has been the spread of the idea of national
sovereignty. This idea is hundreds of years old, the idea that you shouldn't interfere
inside the borders of another state. But people didn't take the idea too seriously, because
stealing new land used to be a major cause of war. Think American European colonialism or
World War II. But after World War II, nations pledged to stop. Since 1976 there hasn't been
a single successful war of conquest, except for maybe Russia in Crimea, really recently.
Again though, sovereignty has a flip side. Sometimes governments go to war against their
own people, and poor, weak governments often collapse into civil war. Sovereignty makes
it hard for the international community to intervene to stop either of those kinds of
wars. But on the whole, when you see those terrible headlines, remember the world's way
better off than it ever has been. There's less war and less violence than almost any
other time in human history.  That's something worth celebrating. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has
taken over about a third of Iraq. They're called ISIS for short, but it's easier to
understand what they are if you know them by their old name, al-Qaeda in Iraq. They
were a key part of the insurgency after America's 2003 invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. And
at the time, they had a lot of support from the country's minority Sunnis. They held a
lot of territory because Sunnis were furious, both at the Americans who had kicked Saddam
Hussein out of power, and the Shias who had taken over the government. But al-Qaeda in
Iraq had big ambitions. They didn't just want to kick America out. They wanted to set up
an Islamic state. So they banned music, and they banned smoking. Women couldn't show their
hair and they began beheading civilians who disobeyed their rules. Starting in 2006, their
brutality lost them the support of Iraqi Sunnis, who partnered with US forces to help push
al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the country. America takes a lot of credit for this. We call it
the surge. We're very proud of it and we should be, but the big thing we did in the surge
was we helped the Sunnis, Sons of Iraq, as they called themselves, rise up against al-Qaeda
in Iraq's savage theocratic rule. So al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated, but they weren't destroyed.
They were driven out of much of the territory they used to control, and then they began
rebuilding. In particular, they became heavily involved in the fighting in Syria. They were
trying to overthrow the Shiite Assad regime. Their tactics in Syria were so brutal and
their ambitions were so grand that al-Qaeda itself actually cut ties with them. Al-Qaeda
thought al-Qaeda in Iraq was bad for the al-Qaeda brand. After their split with al-Qaeda in
February 2014, they renamed themselves ISIS and they began setting up extortion rackets
from Syria. They took over part of the oil industry. They sold electricity back to the
Syrian government that they were fighting. Meanwhile in Iraq, Prime Minister Malaki had been ruling
on sectarian lines. Maliki is a Shiite and he was empowering Shias. He was violently
breaking up Sunni protests. He was arresting Sunni politicians. So the minority Sunni population
began to hate him and fear him. So ISIS returned to Iraq and they began selling themselves
as the Sunni champion against Maliki. And they gradually grew strong -- strong enough
to challenge the Iraqi government in the country's second-largest city, Mosul. So when 800 ISIS
soldiers challenged 30,000 Iraqi army troops in the mostly-Sunni city, the Iraqi troops,
most of them, they put down their arms and ran. This was a group that was largely Sunni.
They simply refused to fight and die for a Shiite government that they didn't think cared
for them. That ultimately is where ISIS's real power comes from. They get weapons and
they get money from the territory they control and they have skilled fighters, but they're
facing a government that's widely unpopular among Sunnis. Only a tiny percentage of Sunnis
actively support ISIS's goals, but at least for now they appear willing to let ISIS operate
in their territory freely because they see it as an alternative to a Shiite government
they despise. But ISIS wants do to much more than that. They want to set up a new state
that reaches up into both Iraq and Syria, one that governs according to a medieval interpretation
of Islamic law. And so Iraq's Sunni population is caught between two terrible forces: A Shia
majority that violently represses them to hold on to political power, and a theocratic
militia that will kill them  if they step too far into modernity. Ok so, most rodents can live about five years
- small rodents. But naked mole rats, this exotic species from
africa, can live up to thirty years. One of the most amazing things is that in
all the colonies of naked mole rats kept in labs around the world, scientists have never
once observed them to develop cancer. That's not true for any other mammal species. Over the past few years scientists have looked
into the naked mole rat cells in petri dishes and started to find all these interesting
mechanisms that might account for why they can live so long. When they grow cells in petri dishes, most
animal cells grow to extremely high densities. But naked mole rat cells, they've observed,
stop when they're relatively far apart. This might be related to the fact that they
don't develop tumors because tumors are an uncontrollable cell growth that keeps growing
when there's no room for it. And even when they dosed the naked mole rat
cells with carcinogens -- cancer causing chemicals -- there's no tumors there either. So one of the explanations for this, scientists
have found, might be a chemical called hyaluronan that builds up between the naked mole rat
cells. Our cells also have hyaluronan, but the naked
mole rat's version is five times longer than ours. But when the researchers used enzymes to hyaluronan
down to our length, they could see tumors forming in the naked mole rat cells. Another thing that might be involved with
these animals being able to live so long is these little things inside cells called ribosomes. Ribosomes are what take the genetic information
in your DNA and translate that into proteins that allow your body to function. Allow you to live. And almost every animal species has a particular
structure to their ribosomes that has two pieces. Researchers have found that the naked mole
rats have these really weird ribosomes with three pieces. One hypothesis is that these strange ribosomes
may be better at accurately translating DNA into proteins, they make fewer errors. So to test this, researchers devised this
interesting experiment where they took a gene from a firefly, that's a piece of DNA, and
this gene inside the firefly, is responsible for the fluorescence. The glow that fireflies give off. But they interfered with the gene so that
it doesn't produce fluorescence unless the ribosomes make an error when translating it. And they took this gene and they put it in
both naked mole rat cells and mouse cells. And they found that the naked mole rat cells
only shone 10% as brightly -- which means that the mouse cells made ten times as many
errors when translating the protein. For a fair number of diseases, the build up
of inaccurate proteins seems to play a role in long-term diseases like Alzheimer's. So the fact that they produce so many fewer
inaccurate proteins might be one of the reasons that naked mole rats are able to live such
a long time. In the early part of the last century hundreds of thousands of people got whooping cough every year. It wasn't  always lethal, but it was always miserable and we figured out a way to solve that.
We got a vaccine. We started giving people the vaccine and
sure enough by the 70s only about a thousand people were getting it per year but it's ticked back up since then and it's
now fifteen times what it was in the 1970s. There are a lot of
reasons for that but a big one is that people have just stopped vaccinating their kids. Studies have shown that in areas where a lot of parents don't vaccinate their kids they're significantly more likely to see
outbreaks of things like whooping cough or measles. Measles was officially
eradicated in 2000, and yet there have been 288 cases  of it so far this year. That's way beyond anything in recent memory but its part of a trend. There are a handful
of celebrities who have committed themselves to telling people the vaccines present saving lives are
really unsafe. "The vaccines... that push children into this
neurological downside...  which we call autism." The doctor who started all this in the late 90's has been thoroughly discredited. He's actually barred from practicing medicine in Britain because he made up his numbers. But that doesn't stop unqualified celebrities from spreading fear. And fear matters. The Anti-Vaccine Body
Count counted 128,044  vaccine-preventable illnesses including
1,336 vaccine-preventable deaths in the US since 2007. But in the
rest of the world vaccines have been nothing short of a miracle. According to the Gates Foundation, about 2.5 million lives are saved every year by vaccines. A lot of that is just small pox alone, which used to kill about 2 million
people every year. And today it kills zero because we vaccinated everyone against
it. So when it comes to vaccines stop listening to the kooks. Start
looking at the evidence. And just vaccinate your kid. What happened to Eric Cantor last night is
the rarest of things in American politics. It was a genuine earthquake. "Eric Cantor
beaten by a political unknown." Because no one was prepared for it, it's effect is going
to be massive. "Huge is an understatement." "Why did he lose? The big issue was immigration."
If you really dig into the numbers, it wasn't a massive event. It was a very tiny one. Eric
Cantor's loss comes down to 36,000 people in a country of 300 million people, in a district
of 758,000 people. Thirty-six thousand people, 5% of his district voted for his opponent.
Five percent. What you're going to hear a lot is theories that feel to people big enough
to do justice to such a momentous event in American politics, but the problem is the
way American politics works is that it has these very tiny but very, very important primary
elections. What happens in them can change the course of not just the election but of
American history. If there's one lesson that is just completely clear in last night's election:
No matter how big you get in American politics, you can't forget how to run a campaign. On
Tuesday morning, Eric Cantor wasn't in his district getting out the vote. He was here
in DC at a Starbucks, meeting with lobbyists. He was fundraising. He thought he was so safe.
His internal polls showed him up by 30 points. So he had polls that were bad and then a get-out-the-vote operation that didn't work. And it doesn't matter how big you are. It doesn't matter
how important you are. It doesn't even matter how good you are. If you can't run a good
campaign, if you can't do the most fundamental act of American politics well, you're going
to lose your election. Doctors. They help you when you're sick. But
they also need expensive training before they can get their degrees, so they end up being
really expensive to visit. And lots of medical problems aren't that serious. Maybe a nurse
could help with them, instead. Studies show that for routine care needs, outcomes for
patients treated by licensed nurse practitioners are actually no different from those treated
by doctors. And the patients actually enjoyed the experience with nurses more. So why don't
more people skip the doctor and go see the nurse instead? In 19 states and DC, where
nurse practitioners have full practice rights, they actually do. But in California, Texas,
New York, Florida, and other states where most Americans live, they have much stricter rules
about what nurses are allowed to do on their own. These regulations pop up in blue states,
and they pop up in red states. And the rationale is always patient safety, despite those studies.
In 2010 the Institute of Medicine, a federally-chartered, independent scientific advisory group strongly
recommended the other states move to liberate their nurse practitioners. But the real political
problem is that nurses are cheaper. Medicare pays them 15% less than it pays doctors. And
MDs don't want the competition. But as America expands the number of people with health insurance,
we need to expand our capacity to deliver healthcare to people without breaking the
bank. That means building a regulatory system that's actually about defending patient safety,
rather than defending doctors' incomes. so at the beginning of the year Republicans shut down the government and they became more unpopular than the party had been at any time in its history Obamacare rolled out it had a very rough implementation but it ultimately came to the other side to sign up more than eight million people and you think I think from afar with those two things happening that that would put by the end Democrats in a pretty good position but certainly conventional wisdom in Washington is that you're going into the election in rough shape so why in the air where there is a reasonably large policy success do things seem rough going into the midterms well the fact is is the Republicans went way down in the polls with the shutdown of government we are they're opposed to governance they're anti governance they're anti science they're anti Obama they're a triple threat I have a trifecta going and they act upon their beliefs they don't believe in any of those things and so everything is to obstruct the president everything that is evidence-based is unimportant to them and again to shut down government anti governance was a victory they saw that as a plus they didn't see that as a shortcoming they celebrated that so the public made its reaction to it but one evidence of governance would be how we rolled out the Affordable Care Act it is intact it's beautiful it is with everything it's a work in progress we need to improve it but the website didn't work and now it's well and and we go forward but again it was a setback so we're in a place now where I think in another month or so the public will really look up and say what's the difference between these two parties and when they do that the main blueprint for each party is the budget and that's where we'll have the debate I saw a number this week that anti Obamacare ad spending on anti Obamacare ads is out running spending on pro bono care ads by 15 times are Democrats going to make up that gap are they going to on Obamacare this year well first of all it is called the Affordable Care Act and that word affordable is the word that we want the public to understand the Affordable Care Act for like four hundred and twenty five million dollars were spent on ads against the Affordable Care Act twenty seven million dollars were spent on ads supporting the Affordable Care Act that's just ridiculous you know it's more than it's really an incredible difference but we're not as I said we're not running on or from of the Affordable Care Act we're very proud of it it's about wellness it's about prevention it's about technology taking innovation taking us forward it's about valve unit volume of procedures and and people really don't know that and I think part of that it accrues to us for not having an initiative that inoculated the public against some of these false attacks that the Republicans were making on it so I think it turns out to be a wash I think that's one of the reasons the Republicans have talked about Benghazi again they're going to come back to Benghazi because the Affordable Care Act has lost some of its weight in terms of being a political issue for them but the way you put that was interesting so you said Democrats are not going to run on or away from it so it's not going to be it's not something you feel as a political liability but nor is it going to be core to the Democratic sort of affirmative messaging you don't think that the signups arness electoral plus I think they are a plus and members will make a judgement about their own districts about it being a plus I think the Democrats will run on saying that the Affordable Care Act is a is really important for America's families and that we stand ready to improve it as we see how it is implemented I think that's a really important message not to let it be repealed or retained but to have the Affordable Care Act and improve upon it I have some of my own suggestions that I couldn't get through on the first round so I like that message how would you like to see it improved well of course I want a single-payer and I want your public option but that that not being in the mix you have to prioritize what it is you want to get over the finish line and now let's refine and improve and some of that relates to how it is implemented so you see how it is implemented the US Congress doesn't seem to be getting a tremendous amount done but it also seems to be engaging in less somewhat disastrous high-stakes brinksmanship there is not talk of shutdowns anymore the debt ceiling gets raised without too much debate or discussion are things running at least at the basic level of keeping the government's lights on more smoothly in Congress now no I don't think so first of all it's important to note that when we lifted the the debt ceiling not 199 Republicans voted to default on the Full Faith and Credit of the United States of America that's who we're serving with 199 people who would default when they shut down government and then opened it again over 60% of the Republicans voted to keep it shut down so you know there is a conversation with the American people that has to be had and it doesn't say nothing means we're getting along better it means opportunity cost opportunities lost we should be passing an immigration bill the Senate has done so in a bipartisan way the public supports it we should be raising the minimum wage so many things that we should be doing that we're not doing and and that should not be considered a plus in the 2012 election House Democrats won and you can you'll notice number better than I do about 1.5 million more votes in a popular vote than Republicans did and it wasn't enough to capture the chamber have you guys done the math on what it what the margin would have to be to capture the chamber well this is a completely different race because that was a presidential and so the numbers we had a million and a half more votes but that did not up to a majority because they were not run all the right places because we it's like saying the World Series they got more runs than you did well you didn't get them in the game different things so what we do know is that we have to increase the turnout in the off year which is traditionally goes down considerably from the presidential but again a campaign is not just about winning or losing the election that's certainly an important part of it it's about winning or losing on the ideas President Lincoln said that public sentiment is everything and so what we want to do is have public sentiment express itself because we know the polls tell us where they are on raising the minimum wage unemployment insurance the education of our children all of those issues but it does not necessarily transfer into votes unless they know the difference between the two parties on those subjects and so from all of our Em's from our messaging from our mobilization at the grassroots level which is to pent fueled by messaging and the money to make it all happen on all of those scores we are way ahead of where we thought we would be at this time the most important part of it all are the candidates and the candidates are superb they're excellent you mentioned a moment ago the money in the race and there's a fascinating tension here I think for for Democrats like you you've been pushing very hard on campaign finance reform Democrats have said our House Democrats have said that there should be revisiting even how the Constitution deals with money in politics on the other hand you need a lot of money you need to do a lot of fundraising to remain competitive you can't have the Republicans have super PACs and you have not and on how do you navigate that tension how can you sort of simultaneously before aggressive campaign finance reform by participating in a system that is sosa fused with cash well the equities that you have to weigh our first and foremost recognizing that our founders sacrificed everything their lives their liberty their sacred honor for a democracy a government of the many not a government of the money and that's what this could become now that's one equity the court has wrongly and my view decided that they could take off all these limits and have undisclosed secret special interest money flow into elections we have to fight that the only way we can fight it and win it in order to change the law and even maybe have a constitutional amendment to overturn citizens united is to raise money to do it question is what money is that money I raise I'm probably right up there with the biggest fundraisers in the country I know about raising money it's a very idealistic group of people from around the country who really do want to see the role of money reduced in politics and it is a motivator for them to participate there they're about the air we breathe the water we drink the safety of our food they're there for the people's interest not the special interest but surely some of them want something some of the industries and some of the lobbyists I mean that donate to Democrats want things well I think maybe some of those people give to both sides but that's not where I spend my time I start about my time and say it probably not 10% of what we raise comes from any Washington lobbyist community and I say that because that includes a lot of our friends and who are here about the environment or here about workers rights labor environmental and all the rest are included in in that number but many people who share their views support us but it isn't but that's a small percentage of what we raise and I don't disassociate myself from it I just say you would be surprised obviously to know that our small donor base is huge idealistic pragmatic to about winning and generous in small donations and that's the biggest part of our fundraising there's definitely more money in Paul than there was in previous decades but compared to when you came to Congress do you think money is more capable of buying votes in Congress oh I don't think it's a question of buying votes I think it's a question of electing people who share your view or not and if you know one of the reasons that it's hard to get some things passed here is because there are people who share the view of their donors who have a special interest view of the world and a view of governance you know there's what is the role of government is it to protect our air our water our food safety and all those things they don't believe that I've always thought that whatever the role of money is in even and I don't subscribe to what the Supreme Court says it's only if it produces corruption does it matter let's pick some of what they've said I'm not saying that people who accept money they may share their views and that's a legitimate place for them to be I don't think it's right for our country but that's the debate we have but I do think it tremendously negatively impacts the confidence that the American people have in government produces the cynicism of skepticism about what difference does it make whether I vote or not because my voice is a very small one compared to this big money voice I think that is more undermining to our democracy more wrong and made that Supreme Court those Supreme Court decisions McCutcheon and Citizens United really in my view dangerous to our democracy you mentioned a moment ago the u.s. is progression in its economy and actually made me think the big article people are talking about right now is pond hockey coach this piece on reparations in the Atlantic as curious if you read it no I haven't seen it yet one of the things the article goes through it at some length is HR 40 which is congressman Congress Mill about doing a study on reparations I'm curious you ever looked at it well I think that the value of mr. Conyers legislation is that I think that it's really important for us to have a renewed examination of conscience in terms of what happened in our country frankly I mean I at tremble at the thought that slaver existed in this the greatest country that ever existed but what stuns me more than anything is that some of the horrors of discrimination that existed in my lifetime not yours but my lifetime if they're in civil rights movement and the rest of that that people would unleash dogs and clubs and all the rest that would keep people from library reserves schools or whatever it is we considered ourselves to be in a more enlightened time I would have thought well that was actually that's why I was fascinated by this bit about sort of Congress's ability to at least begin asking questions around this because I agree what's incredible about it is a compression of the time period it wasn't 300 years ago or 200 years ago or even 100 years ago we were setting dogs loose on the streets on African American children and yet when you talk about things like a um even a billet alike study the question of whether or not there's there's recompense that's needed it is an hour made to the for the house and it's I think considered basically like a ridiculous marginal idea in a lot of circles anyway well the I think the purpose of what you have to speak to in but mr. Conyers this bill is one that wants to provoke the discussion the and a good deal of discussion has to be had before you can bring something to the floor of that consequence and so I look forward to reading that article to see how it frames it all now but I always talk to this building that we work in capital here when a Lincoln was inaugurated the second time it was the first time that African Americans blacks whatever they would call them Negroes I guess were able to come to an inauguration as a class of people as free people and then whether it was terrible during that time it was raining and it was off and it was on that and so they didn't know whether it would be inside or out it ended up outside with the Sun coming out for a moment there but in the days leading up to it streets were mud of course they were largely mud anyway they weren't paved but with the rain they were mud in the sir so the white okay the white folk who came to inauguration came in their foul weather gear the blacks came in their Sunday finest first time that they would be an inauguration as a free people and that's really how they have presented themselves everything ever since and their Sunday finery whether it's their finery of their voices and turns up speaking out on issues and making our country a fairer place more American or the the value of their leadership in this building and I sometimes think when I walk through the halls how those people that day would be so proud of our Congressional Black Caucus who the conscience of the Congress who serve and speak here when they were coming the first time to a Presidential Inaugural history people on a somewhat related note of 50 some senators put out a letter this week saying that Dan Snyder said to lettuce saying he should change the name of Redskins I'm curious if you've given that any thought oh I've called for them changing the name and in fact I mentioned that their laws in terms of copyright and the rest and trademark which government that you cannot use terms that are deemed to be shall we say slur slurs and your title so I think that's something that we should look at you know I'm glad that the Senators row thought was actually 49 wrote one letter in one word another letter but some others support it but having written the letter yeah but whatever it is but it's a strong that's a strong voice what can Congress do about the gender wage gap we're very excited because on the steps of the Capitol last July on this 160 fifth anniversary of the declaration of sentiments that said when all men and women are created equal in Seneca New York on that day on the steps we announced our initiative when women succeed America succeeds we had passed the first half of the year listening to women across the country about what were the priorities to unleash the power of women in the economy this was just workplace and that was about equal pay raising minimum wage because 60% of minimum wage more than 60% of minimum wage earners are women it was about paid sick leave which benefits men and women it's about families the greatest country that ever existed I keep saying that in the history of the world you shouldn't have to to put your child on a bus sick to go to school because you can't stay home for work or be docked from pay or fired and you have no financial ability to have childcare and you have no picks paid sick leave so that shouldn't be the case and that's very popular as well and then children learning parents earning the missing link in the women getting the right to vote women in the workplace women higher education women making their own choices of being at home or at work but needing a little children needing early childhood education regardless of what their moms are doing and this was really the thrust of it a three-legged stool of women's economic success our title when women succeed America succeeds is their title for economic agenda for women and their families but it's also a statement of fact when women succeed America that's succeed what is your position right now on the ongoing scandal in the Veterans Health Administration what do you think we know about it what do you think should be done about it well I think anytime that our men and women in uniform are not served in the manner at which they deserve you could perhaps call it a scandal because it's scandalous that they're not whether it is a scandal with intention and the rest that the evidence remains to be seen but the fact is that that they haven't been served worthy of their sacrifice or their role in our country this issue when I became leader I made this and now I'm going back even before speaker we didn't have the majority yet but we the Democrats planted a flag for the veterans we said this is one of our priorities as we go forward and we put forth initiatives working with the veteran's service organizations to hear what their priorities were which were many and saying to them now you prioritize them we'll time these how we go forward and some of the initiatives we put forward are required more funding and this is in the minority the Republicans not only opposed what we were doing to increase the funding etc but the chairman of the committee Chris the Republican chairman of the committee agreed with us on some scores and the Republicans not only deposed in this chair they took them off the committee so we believe I mean we're glad to see the cooperation bipartisanship now but Democrats have real standing on this issue we promised the groups that when we and when we would take the majority we would go for it with some of the grander initiatives which were advanced appropriations a veteran's budget we did the GI Bill the biggest one since the first GI Bill so when we took the majority we did what we said we would do we also at that time passed a of mental health parity legislation and then in the affordable care act carried forth that mental health parity which has a big impact on our returning vets but I think what is necessary now instead of you know spending time calling it a scandal or signing blame which you have to you have to assign responsibility is that I really do think that we have to take a look at the capacity of the Veterans Administration the Committees of jurisdiction which I think there would be strong bipartisan cooperation to do in the house and in the Senate to say this is what the need is how do we fill it rather than this is the capacity we have how do we incrementally get it to meet those needs because incremental ISM is not my thing when you guys did the change on Agent Orange what you did was you made it essentially an automatic eligibility if you'd been exposed and a lot of the VA backlog is this sort of haggling over whether or not somebody got an injury and war not you said you're not for incrementalism but a lot of people think that it should just be more or less you should accept the injury and then do bad things yeah in fact present you on home and he was here that was a bill that he had put forth you're there this is your condition nothing more to discuss you know so what is the point of having to document and prove and all the rest of that first of all administrative Lee it's a nightmare secondly it costs money and what's the point what's the point I've had stories from young people telling me if they were weren't for their wife for their mother or their father somebody else to manage the documentation and the scheduling of appointments and that this and the proof of this or that they would not be able to not to have achieved the successes that they have achieved that shouldn't have to be part of it I mean we're asking these young people to not only go and die for our country which I think almost anybody would say I would die for my country but we're asking them to kill for our country that's pretty dramatic when you have to go and do it and I think there's enough experience in our country from previous war but from veterans of other wars especially the Vietnam War of more recent memory but it's really hard to revisit it's really hard to revisit that especially in the very near term as we observed Memorial Day the end of May the debt that we owe our men and women in uniform the recognition that we have to have for their family members who are their unpaid in money most cases unpaid caregivers stories that people came up and told me that said I had a job I have someone my own career path my daughter was injured in Afghanistan now I'm her caregiver I tried to balance work and home but I lost my job and now I've lost my unemployment insurance just because I was trying to take care of my daughter and you know there isn't enough buy-in from the rest of our society and our economy to say if you have a job and you have a war wounded child that you might need more time at home so when Memorial Day was here originally it started because the widows are women some widows some not decorated the graves of soldiers north and south whether they were Union or whether they were Confederate it didn't matter everybody's wave would be decorated because they were had suffered in the war of course we're at a different place now we are not fighting each other but we really have to come together to to recognize that when we make a decision to go to war we'd better charan play beyond the level about what it's about but its purpose is what its prospects are what its costs are not only in dollars but in our precious treasure of people and what it means to those families not just for life but if they die for the rest of time for their for their families I think we have to think in a bigger way rather than incrementally thank you very much my pleasure There's this graph that I saw recently. It's
the most unsettling graph I've seen in American politics in a very, very, very long time.
And yet it's really boring to look at. It's just a nearly straight horizontal line.
The line doesn't do anything interesting at all.
But what the graph shows is something that's somewhat terrifying. What that line shows
is the relationship between what the average voter wants, and what they actually get.
In a huge study, looking at over 2000 surveys of people's policy opinions, whether people
were on the left side of the line which meant they opposed something happening, or on the
right side, which meant they all wanted it to happen, it didn't matter.
Once you controlled for the opinions of affluent Americans and interest groups and other lobbying
organizations -- average people, their voice was not heard at all. Or at the very least
their voice didn't appear to matter at all. Average folks only get what they want if economic
elites or interest groups also want it. And all this data comes from a time when these
groups were arguably less powerful in American politics. America never sold itself as a democracy. It sold itself as a representative democracy.
There's accountability from voters onto politicians, but politicians, they get time in office.
To step away from the passions of the electorate for at least a little while. And do things
that are right for the country, and then voters will judge them on whether they did a good
job. So maybe its the case that affluent Americans
and interest groups and politicians just -- they're always right. And average voters. You can
just safely ignore them. But it doesn't look like America's been run so well. We had a
massive financial crisis because we didn't do enough to regulate Wall Street, we got
into a disastrous war in Iraq. We have median wages that haven't substantially grown in
many, many years. It doesn't seem that we are so incredibly
good at running this country. Maybe we need a little more democracy in
our representation. Ezra Klein: Why should we feel like we did
a good job responding to the financial crisis despite the fact that today unemployment is
still a whole lot higher than anyone would like it to be?
Tim Geithner: This was a classic financial panic, the most dangerous type of financial
crisis and something that hadn't happened to the world in really almost a hundred years.
If you look at what happened in the Great Depression, when you look at what happened
around history, this is devastating. In the Great Depression, you had a shock to wealth,
GDP fell 25 percent, unemployment went to 25 percent, and it took 10 years to get back
to a place where roughly like where we are today.
Our crisis was caused by a shock that was 5 times greater in terms of loss of wealth
than what happened at the beginning of the Great Depression. Because we responded dramatically,
more forcefully, much more aggressively, again, it was messy; it wasn't pretty to look at,
we were able to prevent unemployment from rising beyond 10 percent. The economy started
growing again within 6 months. That was not an accident. That was a result of a conscious
set of choices we made to do, some pretty unpopular things, pretty counterintuitive
things to prevent the panic from getting so much momentum, it would collapse the economy.
Ezra Klein: I think when people hear this. When they hear the argument that we were bolder
here than we were during the Great Depression, it feels counterintuitive.
Tim Geithner: It does. Yeah. Ezra Klein: Because people can name so much
that happened out of the Great Depression though, Works Progress Administration, Social
Security. I mean you can really just go down the line ... What was it called? The alphabet
soup of responses. Tim Geithner: We did 2 sets of things that
are very different, not just from the Great Depression, than really what almost any country
has done in the hundred years since. Or what Europe's done in the last 5 years. First thing
we did was We used the full force of the central bank monetary policy and the fiscal authorities,
stimulus, tax cuts, spending increases, as well as a set of financial programs to prevent
a collapse. We used those in concert together. Typically, what you saw in the Great Depression
is they're working against each other where you leave some of those tools unaddressed
or they're hidden in the closet. Very unique what we did. Again, It was a little late the
beginning, and it wasn't sustained as long as we would like, but we used that full force
of things very dramatically. The fiscal stimulus, for example, was larger
than what Roosevelt did in the Great Depression in relative terms. Even though it was a little
over too quickly, it wasn't as large as we needed, so that was the first thing we did.
which was use those tools very aggressively, in concert together. They were much more powerful
together being used in concert, than they would have been if they had been used just
individually. Simple reason, if your banking system's broken, monetary policy doesn't really
work. You can't get the oxygen where it's needed.
Second thing we did was to do a very aggressive restructuring, recapitalization of the financial
system. We cleaned out the worst parts of it, and we left the core of the system with
much more capital against future losses, and that meant the financial system was able to
give more oxygen to the economy as it recovered; it wasn't a huge drag on the economy. The
tools we used to do that and backstop the commercial paper markets, the credit markets
for the average consumer, they were very innovative, very creative, and their scale remarkable.
We backstopped indirectly, directly about 30 trillion dollars in financial assets. They're
very complicated mix of programs. That had never been attempted or done. It
was the scale of that response that made it possible for us to get the economy growing
again within 6 months, really remarkably quickly. It made it possible for us to return to the
taxpayer a positive return on the financial programs. Remember, people thought even in
early '09, that we would lose 2 trillion dollars. If you just look at the returns today, expected
returns, the taxpayer's going to earn ... We didn't do it for this purpose. They're going
to earn between a hundred and two hundred billion dollars. In effect, we made the financial
system pay for the support we gave them. We didn't do it for them. We didn't do it
for the banks. We did it to protect the Main Street from a failing financial system.
Ezra Klein: You talk about in the book, the paradox of financial crises, and it goes to
this point exactly. When people I think look back on it, and they think about backstopping
these 30 trillion dollar markets, when they think about bailing out AIG, there's a feeling
that, one, it was really bad. Even if it could've been worse, it was really bad.
Tim Geithner: It was terrible. Ezra Klein: A lot of these guys got away.
Part of what you're saying here is that restraining the impulse to go in and punish was part of
what permitted a speedy recovery than what we've seen in other countries and what we've
seen in other times. Why would that be? Why wouldn't disciplining the market in a more
aggressive way, disciplining, making an example out of people, marching them out in cuffs,
help at least set a lesson, bring confidence back to folks, that we're setting the rules
down and this won't happen again? Tim Geithner: That's the core question. It's
what I try to explain, write about it in the book. It's the central paradox of panics.
In most crises, in most states of the world, the basic instinct you described is the necessary
right instinct. You want people to fail if they took mistakes. You want them accountable
for doing dumb things. You want them to bear the consequence of those choices. That's the
natural response, and it's the right response. In a panic though, in the classic financial
panic, where the risk of complete collapse of the financial system is present or at the
edge of the abyss, then you have to suspend that impulse, not indefinitely, but just temporarily
and make sure you're focusing all your attention on this simple moral imperative, and it's
a moral imperative, of keeping the lights on in the financial system.
Because if you let the system collapse, the damage to the average person is catastrophic.
It doesn't mean you should suspend that sense of justice and the sense of outrage. It's
just you have to figure out ... You put out the fire first, and then you got to figure
out how to, not just create stronger set of rules, but hold people accountable for what
happened. In our system, what we tried to do was put out the fires. We protected people
from even more damage. You're right. There's still a lot damage, but then try to move very
quickly to put in place a stronger enforcement response and to put in place tougher set of
rules over the system going forward. Ezra Klein: Let me ask you a broad question
about that. When you were going through it, even just looking back now, did you feel that
there were people who in a perfect world should be held accountable, or did you feel this
was a systemic period of overconfidence, and it wasn't that individuals were doing things
that they should be, even in a perfect world, punished for, it's just that everything got
a little bit out of hand? Tim Geithner: No. There was an appalling amount
of fraud and abuse and bad behavior in the run up to the crisis that caused a lot of
damage. I think the American people deserved a more forceful enforcement response, more
forceful response to that. That was very important. In fact, you could say that period of optimism,
the mania, the period of exuberance, it in some sense provided the oxygen for a huge
amount of abuse and fraud. Absolutely, it was a lot of it. Even if it wasn't central
to causing the worse parts of the crisis, it was very damaging. It caused a huge loss
of confidence in the fairness of the system. Again, in a panic, because of the consequence
of panics, you have to do a little bit of sequencing of your actions. You've got to
make sure the lights stay on first because if they don't, the damage to the innocent
victim is much more traumatic. Why would that be just?
Ezra Klein: You ultimately end up, despite being I think pretty frustrated with the American
political system, with a fundamentally optimistic take on it, that when the chips are down,
the system responds effectively, not beautifully, but ultimately effectively. I was thinking
about that a little bit in terms of which problems we are and are not good at solving.
I think if you look back at the financial crisis, when firms were at the risk of collapsing,
ultimately the American political system would respond, I mean-
Tim Geithner: Not because of the firms though. Ezra Klein: I recognize that, but nevertheless,
we then had a really extended and continue to have unemployment crisis. At a certain
point, the American political system stopped responding.
Tim Geithner: I agree with that. Ezra Klein: We have decided to live with that.
Why do you think that is? Why do you think that the sort of urgent collapses on Wall
Street did ultimately force action, whereas at a certain point we decided, if these millions
of people just become long term unemployed, that is a cost that we'll live with?
Tim Geithner: I think in the midst of the darkest days of the fall of '08, there was
enough fear and panic about the cost of the average American that congress felt they had
to respond. They didn't really know what it was going to take, but they really had to.
There's no alternate at that point. That wasn't because of the power of the institutions in
Wall Street. It's because of a widespread recognition that the value of America savings
had just fallen by a level 5 times greater than what started the Great Depression. It
was a overwhelming existential imperative at that time. People have written over time
that our system is pretty good at crises. It's really pretty good, over time facing
existential threat, marshaling the unique strengths of the United States to deploy the
type of response you need. Then, what happened? What happened is that
the basic divisiveness of the American political system, the loss of confidence in government,
the scale of the political opposition to government, the scale of the skepticism about deficits
in that context took over, and there was a bit of premature austerity fever. That saps
the will and the strength to do a bunch of things that would have helped make the recovery
stronger. We were growing, but growing at pace that was too slow to bring unemployment
down as fast as we could have in that context. I guess you could say it was what history
has shown about the United States, which is in the acute extremes, when you're at the
edge of the abyss, our system; again, it's sometimes messy, responded pretty well. Remember,
that was a very dangerous moment because we were at the midst of a political transition
across parties, no strong governing majority in congress, a very dangerous moment. Yet
at that moment, you had Democrats and Republicans come together and say, "We're going to do
what it takes," in that context. That's a good thing for the country.
It's not enough though because a lot of the challenges we still face as a country, they're
going to require compromise and accommodation and legislation that's going to require majorities
that include Democrats and Republicans. Unless we rebuild that capacity, it's going to harder
for us to make a bigger dent on some of these long term challenges.
Ezra Klein: How different was dealing with Republicans in the House and the Senate behind
closed doors, versus what it was like in public at a hearing or even non-direct negotiations
with just the two parties kind of coming to their positions and articulating them to the
public? Tim Geithner: It's very different worlds.
The world that most Americans see is the world of extreme, adolescent political theater.
When you're in a room, and you're trying to solve a problem; you're working through something.
It's a sort of more encouraging thing about those individuals on the Hill and their willingness
to try and think about problems. Ultimately, what happens though is you leave the room,
and they go back and try to figure out, can they get the votes for something in their
party? Most of things that the country needs today, they're pretty divisive.
Ezra Klein: As a reporter, one of the things I found over and again, is that all these
processes begin in a room, to some degree. When they begin, you'll call the people who
are in the room, and these are the folks with the information. They'll say, "God, that was
really encouraging. I really think we might be able to get something done here." With
every step people takes out of the room, and eventually you have to go out of the room,
it becomes more and more remote, and typically it ultimately, completely falls apart. It
often felt to me that the room doesn't mislead anyone in Washington so much as it misleads
the people in it -- because the feeling of working things out on an individual level,
it feels so normal, and as you say, it's more adult.
Then, when you leave that room, the basic dynamics of American politics at this moment
in time with the parties as polarized as they are take over. All of a sudden, how goodhearted
the individuals are, it doesn't matter much that anymore.
Tim Geithner: True, but remember the people in those rooms are masters of the craft. They're
realists; no naive idealists in those rooms. They're pretty pragmatic people. They understand
the constraints. It's better to try. It's better to try rather to just sitting back
and saying you're only going to play at the level of theater. Unless you get in a room
with people and understand what their constraints are, what their incentives are, what their
interests are, what they need, there's no way you can govern and compromise. You have
to do that. It's worth the attempt. Ezra Klein: There's a different spin on the
room that I think relates to the question of whose problems we solve effectively. It
seemed to me that one of the inequities in the crisis response as it has gone over times,
is that Congress can do more directly for Main Street than the Federal Reserve can,
or at least than Federal Reserve believes it can. Yet, Congress is much more gummed
up political polarization. The Federal Reserve has been able to continue what it sees as
a pretty aggressive policy of helping the economy long after Congress has had to stop,
and so you've had, it seems to me, a longer period of support. It's not meant to just
help the financial system, but it does help the financial system than we were able to
get for Main Street, simply because the actual processes by which we help the 2 groups are
different. The Fed's is at this point more technocratic.
Tim Geithner: The only thing that I want to change your view on a little bit, is the way
you describe the way those 2 different policies work and who they help in that context. Monetary
policy doesn't exist to help the financial system. Just look at the history of mistakes
of central banks. Who bears the burden of the mistakes? Both ways. The burden of if
it's too much inflation or unemployment way overshooting, that's a challenge, a burden
that the average person bears. The reason why people invested so much and effort over
time in designing institutions around central banks that have that level of independence
and expertise is because it's the only way to improve the odds that the outcomes for
the average person are better than what we see in countries where central banks are not
independent or they're run politicians. In fact, you could say the opposite in some
sense. You could say that in those more politicized systems, the outcomes of central banks are
much more favorable to the financial interest than is through in a system with this, "Do
we have independence?" Your central point is true that in our system of government,
the fiscal powers that can affect the economy, help us grow faster, bring down unemployment
fast, equip people to compete more effectively in this tough world we live in. Those powers
overwhelmingly exist, or Congress's powers, any action has to go through Congress. If
Congress is unable and unwilling to act, then you're left with much worse economic outcomes
than are achievable. The Fed cannot compensate that for that. It
just puts a greater burden on the Fed instruments to do it, but it can't compensate for that
failure. Ezra Klein: Right. I wouldn't argue that the
Fed is motivated by the banks, but I would say is that, the set of tools the Fed believes
it has right now ... Sitting not too far from me is Matt Yglesias, who thinks that Ben Bernanke
should be doing something a whole lot closer, or now Janet Yellen rather, she should be
doing something a whole lot closer to just sending people checks.
Tim Geithner: Right. Ezra Klein: In terms of powers of Fed it feels
that it has, you've got a lot of money and a lot of easing going in the financial system,
and the banks are not often taking the next step of lending it out aggressively, of actually
pumping that money through the economy. Congress could do that. Congress could take those really
low interest rates and turn them into tax cuts, but they're not doing that. They could
it into infrastructure investment. It doesn't seem to me in any way to be a issue
of motivation, but is a structural issue in the way economic policy is set and who has
control over what in the American economy, has seemed to me that there is a greater capacity
to respond at this point of problems in the financial system than there is to respond
to say, the fact that the labor force participation rate has fallen, and it's staying whole lot
lower than anyone thinks is a good thing because that requires Republicans and Democrats in
Congress to come together and agree on some kind of remedy.
Tim Geithner: Yeah. I think we're in violent agreement. It would be better for the country,
if it were more active ... If you had a more active fiscal powers deployed to address these
things like high levels of long term unemployment and growth that's not as fast as it should
be. I completely agree with you. Just one qualification since you raised it.
When the Fed lowers interest rates or lowers long term interest rates, when that works,
it works in part by raising the value of people's savings and lowering the price of their mortgage,
how much they have to pay for their mortgage in that context. When that works, it works
because it changes decisions people makes about how much they spend and how much they
borrow because it improves the rate of income growth of the average person in that context.
I'll say it a little differently. It's just that the power of that instrument is inherently
limited, and it can't compensate for the failure to use those other things that effectively.
You're right. There's that moment of peril when we use those 2 tools and the financial
programs in concert with pretty enormous force. Maybe in some sense, the cost of what happened
in that context was the constraints of the political system reasserted themselves kind
of quickly, and we lost the power to do enough fiscal.
Ezra Klein: Well, one of the weird dramas of most of last 5 years on Capitol Hill seemed
to me to be Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chair, a George W. Bush appointee, going up
and begging Congress to use the money he was giving them ... I mean you talked about interest
rates a second ago. It always seemed to me that Ben Bernanke had a really big housing
plan, which was, "I'm going to bring interest rates down to almost nothing. You guys need
to help everybody in the county refinance their mortgages." There was plan for that
that came out from the Obama administration, and it never went anywhere in Congress at
all. The Fed did take the hard part of that tool
and put it on the table, but the next step that had to be taken, which is it actually
pushed the banks and make it simpler through Fannie and Freddie and other things, for people
to go and use that money- Tim Geithner: It's a little better than what
you said though. Something north of 20 million Americans refinanced in the crisis. About
a third of those I think were directly things that were supported through our programs through
Fannie and Freddie. The rest of it was just the natural fact that interest rates came
down and so was economic for people to refinance. Now, we had a bunch of proposals we gave Congress
for expanding the reach of those things. Again, it would've been better if Congress acted
on those things. So I guess I'm agreeing with you again.
Ezra Klein: Let's talk about those housing programs for a second. When I talk to folks
both inside the administration and out, the part of the crisis response, there is the
most either ambivalence or anger over- Tim Geithner: -- or frustration --
Ezra Klein: Is the housing side. Tim Geithner: Yeah. Absolutely.
Ezra Klein: I mean there are a couple of dimensions of this, but 2 of the main ones are, one,
that there was money sitting in administration programs, sitting in treasury essentially
that was not used, and they could've been used theoretically with executive action.
Tim Geithner: Can I just respond to that piece? Ezra Klein: Yes.
Tim Geithner: We put aside 50 billion dollars from the initial TARP of 30 to spend on housing
programs. We supported over time a pretty broad mix of programs. When the money wasn't
flowing as aggressive as we thought, we substantially increased the incentives. We did that over
and over again. What we found over time that we couldn't get enough take up. We tried to
be as aggressive as we could in using it, and we had the right incentives.
I mean we had some of the best minds in housing in the country sitting there, accountable
for this. We had the president putting enormous pressure on this, on us. We looked at every
idea, and we a tried a huge number of things. We were as frustrated as everybody was with
this. Certainly, the President was frustrated. We had the right incentives, and we worked
really hard at it. We were very creative, but we were unable to figure out a way to
get a reach broader than what we had and to have it more aggressive. It wasn't because
we were not focused on it or not worried about it, not trying. We did a lot of experimentation
too. Ezra Klein: Why did the program so underperform?
When you guys dug into it, what did you find was actually the obstacle?
Tim Geithner: Let me step back and try to do what we tried to do and what we achieved
in this context. We tried to do 3 key things. One was to make sure housing prices didn't
fall. They fell 30 percent. When the president came in, the futures market said they were
going to fall another 20 to 30 percent. That would have been devastating, so we were very
focused on reducing that risk because this is the most valuable piece of savings for
most Americans. It would've been devastating to the economy. Very successful in putting
a floor under house prices and ultimately helping them to start to get going again.
We did that in part by ... What the Fed did in part by trying to make that people could
borrow to finance a mortgage again. Those markets didn't shut down dramatically.
Second thing we tried to do was to make sure people could refinance on a broad scale, had
a big tax cut like effects, very substantial. In some sense for the average who refinanced,
those tax cuts were larger than the Recovery Act in that context. Again, somewhere north
of 20 million Americans were able ... That's a pretty broad reach program in that context.
Then, we tried, and this was the hardest thing, to help as many Americans as we could who
could afford to stay in their home if you gave them some help staying in their home.
Ultimately, there was something like 5 million foreclosures avoided because of the mortgage
modification that we supported directly and put money behind and because of those that
the private markets did on their own on the model of programs. That 5 million, it wasn't
10 million, but it couldn't really have been 10 million. It was probably going to be 5
million no matter what because there was a whole range of people who had financed a second
a home or financed a home that was just going to be unaffordable for them in that context.
There was a limited number of people we could reach. The basic constraint on doing more
quicker was in part because we were working through a pretty broken banking servicers
industry. We had to go work through those pipes. Couldn't go around them, and they were
terrible, terribly staffed, terrible resources, and way inadequate to a calamity like this
in that context. Again, we did as much as we could with the authority we had. We had
all the right incentives. We had just demonstrated we could be enormously creative and a range
of other things where we're taking a lot of risk. We brought that same mix of talent with
a bunch of better housing talent to it. We looked at every idea that was out there. Again,
we had a president putting enormous on us to try and do it.
In the end though, the reach of our programs just wasn't enough. It wasn't strong enough,
wasn't large enough relative to the force of the pressures.
Ezra Klein: Within that though, one of the arguments people make isn't you guys actually
relied too much on the pipes, on the existing housing market, that what you should have
done was push much harder for what folks call, "cramdown" and use the legal system.
Tim Geithner: Good argument. Yeah. The president supported what you call a cramdown. This was
bankruptcy reform to give the borrower a little more leverage in renegotiating their mortgage.
Good idea. He supported it when he was a senator and a candidate. We tried twice in Congress
to get that through. Again, we had a support of president, a pretty talented legislative
staff at that moment, and they run against a pretty immovable force in terms of ... We
couldn't get enough Democrats who support- Ezra Klein: How hard did you guys try that?
Because when I spoke to people in Congress who were behind cramdown, they felt that the
White House kind pro forma supported it and did not put their shoulder into it.
Tim Geithner: My view is ... You had the president of the United States who was for it. He wanted
it. He thought it was important. He campaigned on it in some sense. You had a pretty talented,
pretty creative staff at that point with the right incentives. My sense, is watching from
a distance, and I wasn't the main architect of this, was that they worked at it, and they
were unsuccessful, but you have to be a little realistic about what the alternative could
have produced in that context. It's not clear that would have given such a dramatic change
and actual leverage. You'd still be still working through the same pipes, maybe worse
pipes because you have to go through the court system or inside the court system.
I don't think it addresses the concern you raised about we were mistaken to rely on the
existing plumbing. The other thing people suggest is why don't you just create your
own plumbing, create a whole institution separate going around all that broken plumbing of servicers
and try to write a direct response mechanism to homeowners? Our judgment was, and I'm very
confident in this, that would ... We have to appropriate money for that. That's creating
a whole new government agency. It would have taken a really long time, really complex to
do. Probably would have been slower than working through those existing pipes and doing what
we tried to do to get them more quickly. Anyway, most frustrating thing for all us, the most
disappointing in outcome. The outcomes were more a function of the basic
constraints we were facing, than they were a function of either lack of incentive, lack
of effort, lack of creativity. Ezra Klein: To look forward for a second,
the other big thing that you guys did around the crisis was attempt to keep another one
from happening. Those rules, Dodd-Frank, some of them are now in place, some of them are
still working their way through regulatory process. When I look at them, when I try to
figure out how to tell myself the story, that I don't need to keep my money in the mattress,
the thing that worries me about them is that they seem to me to give regulators, they put
a lot of faith in the regulatory system. Yet, the periods of time when crises happen are
the periods in which regulators are the least likely to use that authority.
I mean I think there's a very good case to made that Alan Greenspan could have stopped
this crisis from happening in the early 2000s. That there were things that regulators could
have done in terms of forcing more capital banks in terms of being much more aggressive
in terms of regulating how the housing market was moving at that point. That really could
have mattered, but people psychologically, a lot of the folks in power, didn't think
they needed to. That is endemic to the periods that create financial crises. If people were
looking for the crisis, they wouldn't stop it, So why are you confident that the Dodd-Frank
had created a situation which the next time we're in this kind of a buildup, regulators
will want to use the tools and the authority they had.
Because the other option is doing much blunter rules like ... People talk about breaking
up big banks, meaning more to the point, having very raw, crude leverage ratios that you just
have to keep a lot more capital on you at all times.
Tim Geithner: Good question. Let's do the causes, and then I'll explain the theory behind
our response and reforms. This crisis was so damaging because of the
panic. The panic was the result of the fact that over time, our financial system outgrew
all the protections we put in place after the Great Depression. We had a set of constraints
on risk taking in banks, around banks, that we think in retrospect weren't conservative
enough, but they were conservative enough so that there was a huge build up in risk
outside the banks where it's unconstrained. Risk was just able to migrate around that
and go into a set of institutions, very large ones, investment banks like Lehman or Bear
Stearns or the rest of them, AIG, GE Capital, Fannie and Freddie, that existed outside those
protections and were terrible vulnerable to panic and runs.
That's what caused the crisis. When you think about what the defense about that is, what
you need to do is to make sure not just that that you have thicker shock absorbers around
banks, better constraints, simple constraints on risk taking, but they're extended broad
enough, so you don't recreate again a situation where banks are a small fraction of credit
and all the risk in a panic vulnerability is out there. That's why our crisis was so
damaging. That's why it's so hard to arrest. Now, in your basic theory though, I very much
agree with you which is, you don't want to design a system that depends on agile, prescient
regulators with perfect foresight, no political constraints, tightening up these rules in
a discretionary basis as things feel kind of frothy because there's just a risk that
they'll be late or, I don't know, indifferent or sort of think it's a new normal kind of
thing, great moderation kind of thing. You don't want to do that.
We tried not to do that, actually. We need a more simple imperative which is very similar
to what you said, which is we said, "Most important thing you can do, is to make sure
you have much tougher constraints on risk taking applied more broadly across the system,
so that you can be closer to be able to be indifferent to the fate of individual institutions."
You want a system as Larry used to say, "Safe for failure."
The theory behind our reform is very much like that. It's saying, you get these things
thicker, and you keep them thicker, and you apply them more broadly. It's the best defense
against panics you have. The most important thing down those reforms was those set of
changes to the regime of capital. They're dramatically more conservative today, and
they're applied more broadly. Now, over time like water flows around stones
in a river, they're going to ... Risk will migrate around that. It's the forever war.
You've got to keep at it, keep looking at ways to makes sure you can protect against
that risk. It's much better against ... Yours is the right standard. Again, you don't want
a system that's vulnerable to the wisdom and courage of regulators that depends on foresight
and preemption because financial crises really aren't amenable to that.
Ezra Klein: I have a couple of very specific questions about your book. I would like to
hear more about the time you called Dinesh D'Souza a dick.
Tim Geithner: I don't know if I can say more about that. I'll tell a story. I went to Dartmouth
College. I met my wife there. I don't know if you remember at that time. That was a time
when - Ezra Klein: I don't.
Tim Geithner: It was the early- Ezra Klein: I do not remember the time when
you were in college- Tim Geithner: You were born. You were alive.
It was a time when there's the early stage of the conservative movement among college
campuses, and Dartmouth was one of the epicenters of that movement. We see the echoes of that
today across the political system. There was a group of conservative students at that point
that started a newspaper called The Dartmouth Review. They published in their newspaper
a confidential list of members of the Lesbian Gay Student Alliance and including a bunch
of people who hadn't come out to their friends or their parents. It was devastating to them.
Did it without their consent. I ran into them in a line at the dining hall
or one of the café's and said what you quoted. Ezra Klein: What did he say in response?
Tim Geithner: I don't remember him saying anything in response.
Ezra Klein: You were a republican in college. You say in the book.
Tim Geithner: I was. I wasn't really a political ... I've never really been a political person.
Ezra Klein: One of the things that actually surprised me in the book was that your father
voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. Tim Geithner: He did. I was surprised by that
too. Actually, I wasn't that surprised by that, but he's a sort of classic moderate
republican. I think of it that way. He voted for Obama in '08, but he's a more conservative
person by instinct, so it wasn't that surprising to me in 12.
Ezra Klein: You weren't able to win that argument? Tim Geithner: I didn't really try to talk
him out of him. First of all, he has his convictions. I was doing my thing. I didn't really think
it was job to try and change his mind. Ezra Klein: One of the things that comes up
a lot in the book, and I was surprised because the book is in a lot ways was actually more
personal than I would have thought, and primarily in this way; there's a lot of guilt in the
book about how you were as a husband and as a father during the years you were in Treasury.
This is not something that I ever heard you express before publicly, but it recurs throughout
the length of the book. I'd be curious to just hear you say a little bit more about
that, about the interplay between, on the one hand trying to be in a position where
it's public, and it's incredibly important, what you do affects hundreds of millions and
arguably if you take the global view, even more than that people, and then also trying
to be a human being on the other side of it. Tim Geithner: Well, it's a kind of a terrible,
irreconcilable tension. My work was hugely compelling to me. At times it felt very consequential.
I had no control over its claim on my time. There's no control over that at all. If you're
raising a family, it means that you're going to miss huge parts of their lives, and you're
going to put an overwhelming burden for being a parent on your spouse, a pretty unfair burden.
Then, you inflict on them again the additional burden of having a father, a mother, and public
life. It's a huge loss of privacy then. You don't want your kids to be defined by the
profile of their parents. It's not a very healthy thing for them. It's a very hard thing
to do. I mean I love my work. I felt really lucky
to do it, and I had an amazing marriage, amazing wife, amazing supportive kids throughout that
period of time. I think because of them, because of the support, I was a better decision maker
than I would have been. I was a more careful decision maker, more thoughtful than I would
have been, so it was a great benefit to me, but hugely costly to them.
Ezra Klein: One of the 
things I was thinking about reading was some of that was that it seemed that it was possible
for you to do because you did have an amazing wife who's willing and capable of taking on
more of that burden. In a gendered way in this society, that would be a lot rarer for
a young female civil servant who have risen to your level. I'm curious what you think
about the tensions, that the pressures on the family play in terms of who actually can
rise up or how many women can rise up, women who have families, can rise up to the very
top levels of positions of power and politics. Tim Geithner: I mean my wife had a profession.
She's a practicing therapist, and she had a private practice, and then she became a
writer. That profession gave her in some ways more flexibility than what I would have, and
that was sort of the necessary part of making this work because we wanted to be really engaged
in raising our kids. I think you're completely right. I would say though that at Treasury
during that period of time I was there, those 4 years, there was huge number of senior women
in those jobs, many of them with kids. It's not like "It's not possible to do." It's possible
but it puts a really difficult set of choices on them and a much a harder thing to balance.
Ezra Klein: Do you think it's in general harder on women?
Tim Geithner: That balance? Ezra Klein: Yeah.
Tim Geithner: I think it's harder on any woman. I do think it is. Of course, lots of people
find their way through this. It depends a little bit on the choices their spouse makes
in their work. Ezra Klein: When you left Treasury, which
wasn't that long ago, how long have you been out?
Tim Geithner: About a year and 3 months. Ezra Klein: Are you happy to be out?
Tim Geithner: Well, I love my work and the people I work with, but it was sort of time.
It was time. Ezra Klein: There was a big guessing game
in Washington about where you'd go, and one of the things that there was a lot of fury
about during the period of the financial crisis was this feeling of revolving door between
Washington and Wall Street. I mean in the highest profile post-crisis I think. Example
you would either or was I'd go to Citi Group which was one of the institutions that ended
up getting a lot of bailout money. Prior to that you had a lot of folks from Goldman Sachs
become Treasure Secretaries. I mean there had really felt to people like-
Tim Geithner: Maybe people thought I came from Goldman Sachs.
Ezra Klein: Yes. Many people thought you came from Goldman Sachs, and you didn't go into
an investment bank, but you went to private equity. I'm curious about that decision, both
for you personally, but also why does it seem or why is it the case in fact that so many
economic policy makers end up in some dimension of the investment world as opposed to at sort
of name brand companies are producing things that people have heard of. You hear about
a lot ... Larry Summers for instance, consults for D. E. Shaw. What you don't hear a lot
of is, "Well this top policy maker went to General Mills and is now involved in managing
their production process." Tim Geithner: That's a good question. I'm
not sure I can speak to the other piece of it. Can I explain my piece of it?
Ezra Klein: Yeah. Please. Tim Geithner: Then, I can maybe talk about
that. I had this great privilege. I spent all my life doing this one thing, but I couldn't
do it forever. I needed to something new, and I wanted a different kind of challenge.
I was very worried about this perception, and I thought about it quite a bit. I did
not want to go work for a firm that we had regulated or that we had rescued. I tried
to be as remote from that as I could. I was very careful in trying to make sure I was
working with a group of people that I thought were very ethical, and they were doing something
I thought was valuable. I feel very lucky in that basic choice.
Now, on your broader question, I agree with you about the perception. I think it's a very
damaging perception ... The typical thing is people who go run Treasury, will go run
senior parts of Treasury, understandably people look for people with financial experience.
That's a good thing. It's not a bad thing because you want people who working on the
side of the American people, who have the knowledge to be only good decisions about
how to protect their interests. That does require experience. Now, a lot of people think
that experience is tainted, and it's complicating in that sense. I think you're probably better
with it than without it. It's that reality that creates most of this
impression of people when they leave going back into finance. Now you cited some examples
of people who didn't come from that in that context. Even the 2 you cited had worked in
that area before, but that's the typical thing. There's nothing wrong with that. You just
want to make sure you run a set of protections so that you eliminate completely the risk
or the perception of risk that that experience affects people's judgments when they're in
office. Our system has very good protections against that.
Ezra Klein: What are the protections there that should make people confident? It is a
I think a difficult thing to believe, that folks who have come from the world of finance,
will not in a very natural, very human, very sort of deep way have a particular affinity
towards the arguments being made by the people they liked and knew. I mean humans have a
tendency to trust more things that come from trusted sources than from outside. I take
the point about the expertise, but what are the protections that make you confident that
that isn't a problem? Tim Geithner: Well, the choices you make in
those jobs are subject to enormous checks and balances. First of all as you pointed
out earlier, most of the authority that matters that affects the incentives in finance, affects
what you do with the taxpayers' resources or decisions that Congress owns. Where they
delegate them, they're highly qualified, and there's a set of protections around when rules
are written and how they're disclosed and put out for public comments so people can
see them. We try to go way beyond that too and to make sure that when we put together
rather elaborate, complicated mix of financial programs in the midst of the panic, and we
made the terms of those completely transparent to people so people could see them.
You have to very careful that the decisions to make are subject to very, very tough sets
of checks and balances, so that you're never in the position where the private interest
can--This is in the executive branch--can get in the way of the public interest.
Ezra Klein: When you look forward now, I think ... We just got word the other day that we're
now in a expansion as an economy. It is unusually long. We've gone now an unusually long time
for the American economy without a recession. There doesn't look to be a recession right
around the corner at least, and yet I think that the recovery simultaneously hasn't been
as a deep as people expected. In particular, I think the main manifestation of that is
you've got a lot of folks who dropped out of the labor force. While the unemployment
rate is coming down quite a bit, it to some degree overstates the progress-
Tim Geithner: I agree with that. Ezra Klein: We actually made. Do you think
that we've kind of entered a new normal of somewhat slower growth and somewhat less employment,
or do you think that the recovery is proceeding and will ultimately get us back to the kind
of normal we believed in, in 1999 and 2004 and 05?
Tim Geithner: I have the latter view, but it depends a bit on the choices the political
system makes in the next few years or so. Let's just go back to the basic thing about
why this recovery has been only a sort of like 2 percent recovery a year rather than
a 3 and half percent recovery. Of course, you know about this, written eloquently about
it. A bunch of this is just because we had a terrible financial crisis that followed
a wave of too much lending and too borrowing, too much leverage. As we work through all
those problems, it slowed growth. As Rogoff and Reinhart written, recoveries following
financial crises are much slower. They're much more fragile. They take a much a longer
period of time because the things you're doing to repair the damage and to heal and create
a better foundation for growth, they slow growth in the short term.
Then, we had 2 other things that happened. One is we had fiscal policy and a little bit
of premature austerity fever turned too austere too quickly. Deficits came down to fast, and
that sucked about a percentage point out of growth for on average, most of the last 3
and a half years. Then, we had some a little bad luck in terms of some external shocks
from Europe, Japan, some other things like that. Those were material in aggregate.
Reason I begin with that because if you look at the causes for why people have been disappointed
by the performance of the economy, you can attribute more than all that disappointment
to those identifiable factors, so you don't have to look for some new dark theory of our
loss of the goods they produce -- Ezra Klein: -- It's secular stagnations --
Tim Geithner: I think to explain the performance of the last 5 years ... It's explainable in
a more simple and somewhat more reassuring things because those are transitory things.
My own view is that most of what you're seeing today in the economy is just the echoes, the
aftershocks, the tragic aftershocks of the devastation of the crisis. Most of it is the
function of the fact that we haven't been growing as fast as we could grow. Those headwinds
are receding now, and we have a change now. We can grow a little faster for a while. That
should help bring more people back into labor force more quickly.
Ultimately we won't know the answer to your question till we get through that and see
where we are at that point. I think it's right to worry about the risk that ... You've left
people very underemployed, long time out of labor force, and you have an education system
that is not good enough really in equipping people to compete in this world. Those are
things you want to work at. You want to need to work at it relentlessly over time.
I don't think it's quite as dark as that perspective implies, but that's not a good reason not
to worry about doing things like how could you get more infrastructure, create more demand
and more jobs now, and how do you create better outcomes out of the education system, so that
we're improving the odds of people come into this pretty challenging world with a better
set of skills to compete. Ezra Klein: Your old colleague Larry Summers
has begun considering this darker theory that he calls "secular stagnation." When I spoke
to him about it, one of the things he said was important was coming up with a test for
how he would be wrong. What is the information that would come in that would begin to make
you think that we weren't just in an extended period of bad luck or aftershock, but that
something was deficient within the economy's either growth engine or its distribution of
jobs engine? Tim Geithner: You want to look at ... Short
term unemployment is back down to normal levels now, but long term unemployment is very high,
so you want to look at what happens, how quickly that starts to come down again, how quickly
people start coming back in the labor force, and what do you start to see the conditions
that suggest broader based income growth over time. There's reasonable basis for thinking
that's going to happen as long we're creating the conditions that create stronger growth.
If we have a period of stronger, a relatively strong, a little stronger growth through better
policies, and you're still left with this mix of bad outcomes for the average for the
median income and for people long term unemployed, then you'd worry.
My view of this is you don't have to debate the thing. We don't know the right answer
to it. Don't let the debate get in the way of doing a range of powerful things we could
do now that would be good independent of the outcome of that debate. It's not a good argument
to change the obvious prescriptions for policy for the country now. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that
all men and women are created equal.  [laughter] Just kidding, sorry, no. We're not all equal. Inequality,
in fact, gets a ton of attention these days. President Obama called it, quote, the defining
challenge of our time. But usually when people are talking about inequality, they're talking
about income inequality. And income inequality is at its highest level since the Great Depression.
Before taxes, the top 1% take home about 22.5% of the national income. Really think about
that for a second. For every dollar paid in income in the U.S., almost a quarter of it
goes to the top 1 percent -- a quarter!  But income inequality is actually less dangerous
than its cousin, wealth inequality. The top 1% hold close to 40% of the national wealth.
So for every dollar in American assets -- that's homes, stocks, savings, all of that -- 40
cents of it belongs to the top 1%. The top 1% holds more wealth in America than the bottom
90% of the country, combined. And a lot of that money gets passed on to their children
or their children's children. Take the heirs of Sam Walden, founder of Walmart. None of
them founded Walmart. None of them were created equal either. The six of them have more than
$140 billion in wealth. That makes those six people wealthier than the bottom 40 percent
of Americans, combined. Now, there's an upside to income inequality. That income is a reward
for people who start businesses and do great things. You can like income inequality or
you can hate it but usually it is money they earned in this lifetime, usually through talent
or risk or hard work, with a little bit of luck. But wealth inequality isn't like that.
That money is often a reward for people who were just born into the right family. And
it's money that keeps growing. That's a big point economist Thomas Piketty makes in his
new book, Capital. The rate of return on capital, or wealth, is higher than the growth rate
of the overall economy. So people who have a lot of wealth, they tend to get wealthier
and wealthier and wealthier unless something like a war or a tax intervenes. One way to
get wealthier, by the way, is politics. A lot of money can buy you a lot of political
speech, particularly now that the Supreme Court is systematically dismantling the limits
on buying political speech. This is the doom loop of oligarchy: wealth buys power, power
buys more wealth, more wealth means more power, more power means more wealth, and on and on
and on we go until a very small fraction of the population has a whole lot of power and
a whole lot of money.  So no, all men and women aren't born equal.  Some are born really, really
wealthy. if there are a lot of measures that show women are less confident in very different ways some of them have to do with salary you've probably seen some of them are when women get out of college or Business School they tend to ask for approximately twenty to thirty percent less money than the men do and in fact when asked whether they deserve they also say they deserve less money than the men do a great study that we found by Hewlett Packard that has since been replicated about promotion women tend to put their hand up for a job permission when they feel they have roughly 100 percent of the qualifications for the job men will do it at sixty percent so you can imagine what that means over the course of her career also some studies done by two psychologists who looking at confidence they've given college students tests in math and science mostly they found that the the spores were the same but when the women were asked before they knew how they had done how they thought they'd done on these tests they always underestimate how they've done by a large margin the men overestimate how they've done and the most interesting test for us really in some ways was one that Zach s DS ran about spatial ability and confidence and he used spatial ability because it's viewed as something that men tend to be better at in IQ tests men are often seen as better at that in women at verbal ability so the original scores came back yes the women did worse but he started looking at why and it was that the women weren't answering a lot of the questions and when he said everybody has to answer all of the questions the scores were almost the same and then another twist when he said everybody answer all the questions then after each question he said how confident are you of that answer the women's scores dropped again so just bringing up confidence in the test at all Forrester dropping the scores there are a couple parts of the book in drawing out the implications of those findings that are really depressing on some level so I think you might step back from that and say yo that's great if men are overconfident fools and women correctly have more humility about what like we as fallible human beings know about the world that's gonna be a huge advantage for women and then you actually run the numbers and you find know that people projecting overconfidence in the workplace in academic settings ends up being a huge advantage a guy out at Berkeley Cameron Anderson who studies overconfidence he has found that in many cases overconfidence is valuable that confidence can be more important than competence and for us that's such a clear divide because women strive to be competent when we think if we just do a good job somebody's gonna notice and move us to the next level and what he's found is no people who are actually not just confident that slightly overconfident there get more success they're viewed as leaders of the pack their ideas carry more weight we were depressed yes naturally and we went back to people some of the scientists we talked with who study confidence in rats really brilliant guy at Cold Spring Harbor labs Adam capex who screws these electrodes onto these rats heads and runs them through tests he put it the best to us Adam capex because he said confidence ultimately should be a calibration tool your life a really important compass and at the end of the day you want it to reflect reality but you want it you want to have a little bit of overconfidence because that's what will spur you to act and if you don't have a little bit more confidence than maybe your ability would call for you might not do anything then you have the flip of it so on the one hand you find that confidence is important for getting ahead in life but there are a lot of manifestations of confidence yes that when men put them forward are considered to be very attractive and when women put them forward to just people on about it the women are then spoken about behind their backs as a right there's a study you guys mention about female CEOs they're judged is more confident when they talk less yes and male CEOs are judges more confident when they talk more and so to me what was depressing about the book which is kind of this confidence bind on the one hand society is built to reward confidence but kind of only in men well not I think we are in a bind to some extent right now for a certain period of time but I think the landscape is changing quickly I think with certain generations of male managers men who are you know boomers and older there may be a sense that that kind of traditional looking confidence is what is valued but more and more what's so what's is exciting is that the way we work in the workplace women is is really valued people see that listening conciliation negotiation that let a lack of hierarchy that is actually what's valuable in the 21st century workplace and so this is happening you know christine lagarde put put this paradox to as best she said you know you we can't in pursuing confidence which is necessary for women we can't try to be like men because we're gonna lose all of those other qualities we have to dare the difference we have to make a virtue of the fact that we're doing something different whenever you look at studies like these you have to think about the fact they describe in the world as is and that's a really important thing to do but how do you both prepare deal with the world as is trying to make a world where maybe a certain amount of just being an arrogant is not hugely selected for I didn't say put it quite that harshly one of the questions that our requests you have to be a jerk I think this it's it's so interesting to think about what the workplace would look like if it were completely run by women or had been created by women I mean again to come back to Christine Lagarde she was talking about a panel she was on at Davos look for women and one man and she said the man just kept interrupting everybody and I of course being a TV journal I said well yes of course and that's what women need to learn to do I mean we have to interrupt her we're never gonna get stuck well no actually in that setting he seemed really rude you have a daughter yeah and so you're you know raising a young woman and you have all of this data in your head I mean what is it say then about being a parent like what do you again I guess do differently or how do you implement doing everything wrong you know what am i doing so my my daughter is a tomboy and is actually not a girl who wants perfection and that this is one thing we've talked about with with what happens with our girls today is that it's not that they're they feel that they can't do things they don't know girl grows up thinking I can't be an astronaut anymore it's that they're so focused on getting everything right that they're not learning to screw up and they're not learning to fail and then realize that oh okay I could take a risk I fail so what I mean they get all the way through college and it's like and soon they don't want to go you know try to join a new company they don't want it they really are worried about this and so I have been trying to embrace this side of my daughter more which is it's difficult I mean she is doesn't wanna comb her hair doesn't want to dress a certain way doesn't sometimes didn't care if she turns her homework in that was not me at all and I just think okay so this may be this is gonna be good for her she'll learn that maybe it is okay not to turn your homework in or it's not but I'm gonna try to step back a little bit and it's also refreshing to feel for parents that failures okay that that you can step back and watch your child fail and it's painful but that if you can also then at the same time of yourself wow great life lesson it stops you from wanting to jump in and and fix it so what is the single lesson that you think men should take from the buck a lot of people you know people have been asking us that too and some of the talks we've been giving men have been have been saying what is there something we can do I'd like to make this about I think it's really important for men to understand that that women are not always maybe their female colleagues are just not always speaking up about their own accomplishments and if if men care about it to give them a nudge I mean this is what we've actually said in the book - that the best thing you can do for a colleague or a friend or a daughter is not oh it's okay you're great you're great really tell me more yes you know what get out there and do that what what go ahead with what do you have to lose and give a little push that women often need that little push that men just don't seem to need although some men do it's funny because I feel like all the relationship advice until like this moment in my life has been do not respond to people being upset by confidently giving them advice on how to solve their problems dr. Phil no this is yes I think I'm I don't know that I'm speaking about relationship advice because that's true I'm trying to think I'd want my husband saying what's wrong with you just get out there and do it but I do think in the workplace a nudge or a have you thought about this why don't you think about that I mean it really the Murry Wilson who ran for a long time the the White House project which is all about getting women in politics said that they have found with all the studies they've done over the years that women just don't naturally look in the mirror as she said it see themselves as senators but all it takes is one listen saying to them you should run for City Council and that push is what can make the difference So what is the Keystone XL pipeline?  830,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta, Canada, down to refineries down on the Gulf coast. That's
what the proposed Keystone pipeline would do. But since the pipeline crosses the U.S.-Canada
border, the White House gets a say in the matter. Oil companies and the Canadian government
want the pipeline approved. Alberta's tar sands are rich with oil, but companies are
having trouble shipping all that oil to refineries who can turn it to gasoline and usable fuel.
Building the pipeline would also create thousands of temporary construction jobs, which may
be one reason why the proposal polls well in the United States. Environmentalists, on
the other hand, want Obama to block the pipeline. From start to finish, tar sands oil produces
17 percent more carbon dioxide than regular oil does. And there's an enormous amount of
oil up in the tar sands. That means more global warming. Bad news. Better to leave the oil
in the ground, green groups say.  President Obama, for his part, has said he won't approve Keystone XL if it has a significant impact on climate change. But a recent State Department
review may have given him some wiggle room It argued that the pipeline might have
an insignificant impact. That's because even if it was blocked, most of the oil would just
get shipped by rail anyway. Green groups are disputing that analysis and the argument continues. you know you wrote a sentence that is really foundational appel I think about politics but I also think of as an incredibly scary sentence basically that every time the president succeeds it hurts the minority party and every time the president fails and helps the minority party Anson has definitely are against cooperation if you support initiatives that the president proposes are cut a deal with the president such that both parties vote in favor of the of that proposal it becomes hard to say why we should have a change in power layered on top of this intense two-party competitiveness has been a sorting out of constituencies so that very few Republicans represent districts that went for President Obama there's much less reason for politicians to look for ways to distance themselves from their parties by striking cross party alliances [Music] if you are coming to agreement if you're cooperating then it suggests to the public that things are working just fine and it undercuts the whole logic of your campaign against the president or the the president's party's continuation in office so it's it confers legitimacy on the opposition party and now on the power structure as it currently stands there was a political scientist named Charles Oh Jones who wrote about the Republican Party back in the 1970s and he criticized the party for suffering from what he called a minority party mentality meaning that they who were reconciled to and you know expected to continue on in the minority and he said that this they were too willing to cut deals for little crumbs that they might get from the other party because that that was all they could really expect to do that minority party mentality seems to be something that the Republican Party is solved it's lost and Democrats after Democrats lost their majorities you know first 1980 in the Senate in the 1994 in the house they never saw themselves as a permanent minority that they always saw themselves as in striking distance of a return to power and there was good reason for them to think that the margin of control was narrow by historical standards and and so you know we've had two parties since since 1980 and especially since 1994 that see themselves as potential majority parties so we inhabit a remarkably two-party competitive period in American history that every election holds out the possibility of a change in party control of one institution or another this makes American politics more zero-sum than usual this is not a normal set of circumstances in American politics that it's been normal for us basically since 1980 but if you look at the broad sweep of US history say you know before the New Deal after the Civil War Republicans were the dominant party in American politics after the New Deal and up through 1980 the Democrats were the dominant party and so elections were a lot less interesting you know politicians were much less focused on elections during a time when there was less expect for real change alright if Mitch McConnell went to voters this year he said you know what President Obama's done a pretty good job he had a very reasonable stimulus include a lot of tax cuts we thought that was really terrific we appreciated him reaching out like that Obamacare he really brought in a lot of our ideas into that law the individual mandate you know the the use of private insurance there's no public option he's really done a good job reaching out we've been proud to partner with him on these legislative initiatives vote for Republicans that it's not a pitch it would work it's all he's almost laughable if the minority party consistently bargains with the administration to come up with proposals that the both parties can support then what's their case for a change of power how do they make their case there is an interesting tension I think in Washington where we treat politics as a kind of an epic drama in which the president is the lead actor and people want to see things happening from the president if people care about immigration they perform they want the president to lead on immigration reform but they care about the budget deficit they want the president to lead on the budget deficit and an implication of your research something you actually say directly is it for the president doing what people think of as leading going public making big speeches getting people excited that can actually be harmful to passing his agenda because the more the president associates himself with an idea the more important it is for the minority party to make sure that idea doesn't pass because if it does pass and part today if it passes with their help then it will be popular the president be seen as successful and the majority party will be likely to make gains in the next election the president is the single most understandable symbol of national government for the broad public and so that's to a great extent how the public interprets Washington politics you know is the president doing well or not doing well so that if the reason why the news media embraced that particular approach to covering Washington politics is because it fits very well with how Americans think about it makes sense of what's happening in Washington what do you think then that we are so bad at picking up on this pattern it is completely predictable the way this goes you begin with an issue there's a lot of talk of maybe something getting done and then eventually the issue polarizes as the two parties kind of figure out their positions on it and yet in in Washington among people who watch politics every single day there is an utterly omnipresent belief that if only the president or the majority leader or somebody acted correctly then cooperation be possible cooperation is always just out of our grasp we don't think of it as something that the system really doesn't allow we think of it as something that individual actors fail to achieve you know many of the leading lights the opinion leaders of Washington grew up in a time where the parties were less competitive and less sorted out there were more incentives for politicians to engage in some cross-party negotiating so that they look back with nostalgia to that time and they assume that we can get back there that the idea that there's something in the system that gets in the way of that is not an attractive thing to think about that you know it suggests that the system itself may not be self-correcting this is I think a really important point in your research in American politics has in fundamental ways ways that really matter changed over the last 40 or 50 years that the American political system of 1960 of 1970 maybe even in the early 80s were famously Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were having drinks that is not the system we have today it's easy to see from a variety of indicators you know one way is you know every time we hold a presidential election we see this red blue map you know that is not historically how presidential elections used to look it used to be far more common for a single presidential candidate to win all across the country then that would make it much easier for him to then seek out and get cross-party support because many of the members of the opposing party represented states and districts that went the other way and voted for the President as we've become more geographically polarized we don't have politicians who have reasons to look for ways to you know blur the party lines instead you know they they have more reason to dig in and differentiate themselves when Obama's country with LBJ for example people often forget that Democrats had roughly two-to-one margins over Republicans during that period is knew that the highly productive Great Society Congress and in even though many of those Democrats were conservative Democrats they had an a political interest that they shared in not humiliating Adam a president of the Democratic Party so we've talked so far here about the theory and one of the interesting things about your work is I think you've proved this theory in a really clever way you looked at non-controversial issues you looked at things like whether we should send a man to Mars could you sort of outline some of that research how it worked and what you found when the president takes the stand on an issue that to some extent makes it a partisan issue you know when when presidents give a State of the Union address the opposing party in Congress goes line by line looking for opportunities to rebut it the parties will come together in opposition to to the President on issues where there had not previously been clearly defined party lines or you can even see situations where the parties completely reversed positions based on who controls the presidency you know over the period that I was you know looking at this very closely in the 1990s and early years of the George W Bush administration the contrasts in the way in which the parties behaved on issues of testing in schools it was quite remarkable you might recall that Democrats were very strongly against No Child Left Behind and they ran against that more or less the whole time that george w bush was in office well if you go back to when President Clinton was in office Clinton proposed a less ambitious version of No Child Left Behind and it was Republicans who opposed a testing local control of local schools was the watchword and Democrats supported the President on those on those issues so it's very easy to take positions as as inevitable that opposing No Child Left Behind well that's just the liberal position as if it was set in stone because Democrats were largely doing that through the george w bush's notice we've heard very about No Child Left Behind since the George W Bush years much less focus on that among Democrats and as it became less useful as a cudgel against an administration well this is actually one reason that I sometimes get frustrated by the labels conservative and liberal right now if I say somebody's a liberal you know what I mean but over any even reasonably short period of time it becomes much more complicated that today a liberal is somebody who thinks the individual mandate is a constitutional idea probably a good idea and a conservative is someone who thinks the individual mandate isn't absolutely abhorrent affront to the Constitution whereas in 1994 a conservative with someone in many cases who supported the Senate Republican plan there was the alternative to Bill Clinton's health care plan that had an individual mandate in it and a liberal thought that was a pretty ridiculous way to do health care demanding that people buy private insurance and you see it on the NSA that in the Bush years the idea of broad-based surveillance was something liberals and Democrats know were appalled by and if you actually look at polls around sort of surveillance currently folks who have self-identified liberal are more comfortable with it than folks who self-identify as conservative and so liberal and conservative end up shifting around and what a liberal believes now is maybe not what they believe ten years ago or conservative now it's not what it was ten years ago and I find it genuinely frustrating yes yes I do too this is just the natural way party politics plays out and this is where I think where political science begins to move into political psychology of every explanation for human behavior in Washington the most overused in my view of cynicism almost nobody ever no politician no staffer and I don't say never literally never but almost never walks out and takes a position they believe is wrong because it feels bad to do that and people don't like to feel like scummy used-car salesmen politicians they come up with highly complex reasoning and rationalizations for why it's right but nobody ever says I am for this because in the next election I would like my party to win people are only for things because having done a thorough an honest look at the true evidence on this issue any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that whatever I need to believe is a thing that is the correct thing to believe well governing is difficult and it involves trade-offs and so any proposal that a president you know but for words seriously is it staffed out you know it's you know a serious policy proposal it's going to involve trade-offs in one way or another so as you look at it closely and you know especially as you look at it with a skeptical eye they're all there will always be reasons to to question political interests may prompt you to do this but it doesn't take very long before you see the flaws in the president's proposal and you can come to a considered judgment that those problems outweigh the benefits and that we need to get a president of our party backing off [Music] A lot of people talk about bitcoin as a new
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to find out. continued prohibition is probably the worst thing we could do about cannabis right now alcohol style legalization which is where we're headed is probably the second worst if we had a national debate now we might settle on a temperate cannabis policy and that would get us the benefits of legalization without an upsurge in heavy use and use by juveniles without a national solution that a national framework for state cannabis policy we're going to wind up going down the road we went down with alcohol toward commercial sale low taxes loose regulation and that's a bad place to be proud of although it's not as bad a place to be for cannabis but it's the worst place we could be why is it a dumb idea to regulate cannabis in the States a lot of things you might want to do is just a government that you can't do while it remains federally illegal and in addition each state is hostage to all the other states so if Washington wanted to have tight restrictions and high taxes and Oregon wanted to have loose restrictions and low taxes guess what happens apart from Oregon floods Washington will get a race to the bottom even with tobacco right we see now New York State and particularly North City have very high tobacco taxes and something like a third of all the cigarettes sold in New York City or smuggled not from Kaliningrad but from Virginia and it's really hard to stop that stuff an ounce of cannabis at illicit market or in the medical stores now costs around $300 a pack of cigarettes community waste just about one ounce new york city and state are trying to collect eight dollars on a pack of cigarettes and substantially failing so now try to collect $300 on an ounce of cannabis and the concentrates which i think is going to be the dominant form I think burning plant leaves and flowers and breathing the smoke is going to be completely out of fashion in ten years along with burning tobacco leaves I think we're going to go entirely cigarette for both markets well one of the consequences is that's much more so my global because even much more compact than herbal cannabis so collecting state-level taxes on this may really hard if there's any substantial estate gradients it's a little weird to be giving state licenses to commit federal felonies and it would be nice that to have a legally sane system when you dug into the evidence on how cannabis is actually used and how it might work on the legalization and what did you end up thinking were the policy problems of legalizing weed it's only one thing wrong with legalizing weed and that's that a certain number of people will get in trouble with it and you don't mean legal trouble no I mean we'll wind up with cannabis habits that are bad for them and many of them will know it and some of them won't and also that teenagers will use more of it we don't really want to get back to 1979 when 10 percent of high school seniors reported that they were daily or near daily cannabis smokers a lot of people on the pro legalization side are still in denial about the cannabis abuse problem but the numbers are about 33 million people will say in a survey that they've used cannabis in the last year about half of those about 16 million say they've used in the last month of those about a quarter say they use 25 days or more per month and eat a different survey that Bo kelmer Tran did the people who smoked many days per month also use a lot more per day and so that very heavy user group accounts for 85 or 90 or 95 percent of the total cannabis consumed and about half the people who are daily or near daily users just from their own self-report in the surveys meet clinical criteria for abuse or dependence cannabis is interfering with their lives and they've tried to cut down them they can't so it's not as bad as an addiction to cocaine or methamphetamine or the opiates or alcohol plenty bad enough that happens to you or your brother or your kid or your and one of the questions about a legalization policy is that waltz banned for people to end up in the extreme heavy user category it is incredibly profitable for a cannabis company to have people in that category that if you legalize in a very broad way you would have incredibly strong economic incentives to add problem users as opposed to focus on casual user like it's not just that the problem users are profitable it's that nobody else is profitable more than eighty percent of what you sell is going to go to people are smoking too much which is true of alcohol today as Sholem Aleichem says an innkeeper loves to drunkard except for a son-in-law and that's where you are I mean though when they when the booze companies tell you they're in favor of responsible drinking they must mean they're planning to go to business responsible drinkers don't build breweries breweries are built by people who drink for more drinks a day average year-round that's the top decile of the alcohol population it's 50% of the alcohol consumed but in a different way 46% of all drinks consumed in the US are consumed as part of drinking binges anybody who tells you you can legalize cannabis and not have more drug abuse it's fully himself of course we're gonna have more the questions how much more and my belief is if you can keep the prices close to the current illicit prices you won't get a big upsurge in having used because the heavy users and the kids who care most about price if you're a casual cannabis user this stuff is so cheap you know with your costs right I mean if you're if you're a naive user you can get stoned for about two bucks right the doritos cost more you're not going to get stoned a lot more often if it costs a buck instead who care I mean it's not that it's not the money that's limiting you if you were smoking eight joints a day cost of a joint matters to you talk me through the other side of it what are the costs of prohibition now but also the potential revenues of legalization the rand report that just came out estimates the cannabis illegal cannabis market around forty billion dollars a year forty billion dollars and people are earning for breaking the law that strikes me it's a pretty bad thing that's now the largest of the illicit drug markets its its cocaine and cannabis have flipped over the last ten years still around that trade six hundred and fifty thousand people get arrested for possession every here and about forty thousand people are behind bars at any one time now that's not big compared to the half million we have behind bars for drug offenses generally but it's forty thousand people buying bars that seems to me like a big cost and I don't know for how many people cannabis selling is their introduction to illicit trafficking 30 s remain people are breaking the law and therefore find themselves on the wrong side of the law and therefore don't think the policeman is their friend ironically the repeal of cannabis prohibition could greatly strengthen drug law enforcement I mean it's it's the equivalent of repealing the draft to oppositions get now more right a lot of the people who are now Crusaders for for ending drug prohibition won't care once their drug is legal revenue prospects producing that forty billion dollars for the cannabis and distributing illegal market might cost you five million dollars but only if you did it clumsily John Konkan says he's done the estimates you can breeze all the THC teaches the main active agent cannabis produce all the THC now being consumed in the u.s. for that forty billion dollars a year on twenty thousand acres of corn land basically a dozen Midwestern farms could produce all of the campus for the u.s. well I know what it costs to run those dozen farms but but not a lot of money and then you'd have to you know cure it and process it and test it and package it and label it and distributed and marketed it still a couple billion dollars and so the rest of the forty billion plus whatever the spending is by the new users is available as tax why do you think concentrate is going to be come so dominant ten years I'm curious about that very a number of reasons most people don't like to call and we should say concentrate is when you've essentially extracted the act of angry Yeah right so there are a number of different technologies for taking cannabis flowers and leaves and extracting from them the cannabinoids the active agents not just the THC but can have a dial and the 90 other chemicals that are in there and then that gets put in a variety of forms there's a liquid form that can go into something that looks like an e-cigarette there's also a solids or a waxy form that can go into a different kind of vaporizer but in any case you've got some device that it applies external heat to the concentrate and you breathe the vapor as opposed to the current technology which is you burn the plant matrix in order to vaporize the active agents and breathe the smoke well come on guys breathing smokes not a good idea and it's no fun and so I think people particularly people only use it occasionally will pay extra not to cough the more advanced vaporization devices will actually deliver two measured puffs which a joint really can't or a pipe really can well if you had a measured puff of a tested concentrate you could actually know how many milligrams are getting to your brain you could actually start to control your cannabis use in a halfway reasonable way as much as you can control your drinking experience by having some number of drinks right if you have three drinks you know what that does to you you can't really know that with cannabis now the product is different the smoking behaviors are two different it's not really reproducible from instance to instance so I think concentrates will take care of that in addition half of the active agents in the plan aren't the flowers right the current cannabis market only recognizes flowers as salable material some of us old guys remember when when leaves were sold um but that's that's gone that's that's now regard to the shake there's a problem here other than that once we discuss if you have the concentrate particularly the solids forms the concentrate you can take a rather large love of it put it on a metal surface that's been heated at hot with a blowtorch and flash vaporizing and breathe in all those humans at once and then pass out and fall down that's called dabbing and it's fashionable partly people would kind of people who chug a bottle of vodka but partly people who are habituated enough to cannabis so they really don't get stoned anymore and I'm this destroyer was somebody who dabs the first time and said for the first time in 20 years I'm stoned on the other hand three other people on that occasion went to the emergency room so if Davin gets to be popular that could be sort of the crack of cannabis I think it's probably a fad but we'll have to see and again the market is going to be dominated by the tastes of the people who use a lot of it but to talk to anybody my age who smoked cannabis back in the day and they'll complain about today's cannabis way too strong um and you ask well why does the market deliver that and I think the answer is because most the people are buying in the market need something very strong to get through their dollars how is the political lobbying of the political coalition's around this changing now that there appears to be a path for more money to interest actually make some real money it does appear to be a path path for people to make a lot of money I think it's actually mostly a path to be able to lose a lot of money I think the people running the venture funds will get rich by fleecing the investors I think most investors will be wiped out the sure way to double your money in the legal cannabis business used to fold it over and put it back in your pocket because nobody has calculated the price trajectory here people are making million-dollar investments on the theory that they're going to be able to sell legal cannabis at ten dollars a gram and when they're selling instead at two dollars a gram plus tax they're gonna get foreclosed on but in the mean time they're going to be driving a lobbying effort right the National cannabis Industry Association just hired a typical k street suit to be their lobbyists and their interest is in selling as much as they can again they can only make money by selling to people who use too much do you think given how Colorado and Washington are progressing it is likely that people will look at those experiences and move quickly to legalize in other states or do you think that the difficulties are facing are going to slow this down I think the main thing that's slowing people down is the 2014 years off year and you want your cannabis legalization on the ballot in 2016 which is a presidential year on the other hand if you were a Democrat you don't count it kind of as legalization on the ballot in 2014 to bring out the kids I think the medical marijuana bill in Florida may very well elect Charlie Crist huh because people come out for that but yeah I think people are waiting for 2016 I think there going to be some bad outcomes in Colorado in Washington and not any bad outcomes the voters know or care about the the bad risks are mostly long-term so we're in the situation of the guy you jump to the off the Empire State Building and as you passed the 42nd floor somebody said how's it going says so far so good and I think that's what we're going to be in 2016 I do not think I mean I think there will be some bad outcomes I don't think they'll be bad outcomes that that move the voters there'll be more heavy cannabis use by minority kids not something that's going to drive the political process very hard and my buddies on the drug war side of this debate are telling you is me horrible outcomes maybe a backlash I think they're dreaming your dream an end but but because they're having that dream or because of their own sort of career needs we're not getting the people who are worried about drug abuse arguing well now that we legalized let's do it in a sensible way you know if I had to guess what the outcome is it will be will get a patchwork of relatively loose state level policies and then at some point the federal government will recognize that and will have essentially the alcohol system for cannabis without ever having gone through the debate about what a tight system would be you Taxes don't have to suck to file. Really, they don't. There is a very simple way tax day could stop
sucking for tens of millions of Americans: The IRS could simply do their taxes for them. The IRS already knows what you make and they
know what you're probably going to owe. So they do your taxes for you, they send you
the tax return, and they let you make any changes you want. If you want to make your taxes more complicated
-- great. If you don't -- and most people don't -- you
can simply sign off and that's it. You're done. Because this is the 21st goddamn century. We can order luxury cars on phones and listen
to Jefferson Airplane B sides stored in the cloud. The NSA can do, i mean god knows what they
can do. But if they can do all that, surely the IRS
could save us some the hardship of figuring out what we owe the government, right? Economists certainly think so. Austan Goolsbee, an expert on taxes, he's
run the numbers on this plan: He says having the IRS autoprepare taxes would save Americans
more than $2 billion dollars tax preparation fees and 225 million hours in time spend preparing
our taxes. Imagine what you could do with that time. If it sounds too good to be true, considering
this. It's already how taxes work in Denmark, Sweden
and Spain. California tried it as an experiment and 98
percent of the people in the program said they'd do it again. You know who liked this idea? President Ronald Reagan. You know who else likes it? President Barack Obama. There's legislation in Congress right now
that would make it law. It'd make the IRS your friend. But it keeps failing. Why? Because the people who make money doing your
taxes now -- people like Intuit, makers of TurboTax -- don't want the IRS and congress
destroying their businesses. Intuit makes more than a billion dollars annually
from Turbotax and Turbotax-related services. So it was just good business for them to spend
almost two million trying to kill California's experiment. And the more than $11 million they've spent
lobbying Washington in recent years -- well, that's just good business too. And Intuit has some powerful friends. Friends like Grover Norquist, king of the
anti-tax forces. He hates this idea because if taxes are too
easy then people won't hate them as much. Norquist says the IRS is, quote, trying to
"socialize all tax preparation in America." Yeah, because having the government use the
information you're already giving them to prepare an automatic tax return that you can
completely ignore if you want to? That's totally what Karl Marx had in mind. So if you're sitting up late this April 14th
wishing there was an easier way -- well, there is. People have really strong opinions on single-payer
healthcare. It could be the silver bullet that fixes our healthcare system, or it could
be....  But most people don't even know what single-payer means. So let's start with what we have. You can think of the American healthcare system as a series of tubes.  We do not have
single-payer healthcare. We have thousands and thousands of payer healthcare. And each
of them typically pay different amounts for the exact same medical service. And that's
a lot of administrative work. For every three doctors in the United States, you have two
billing staff standing behind them just handling all that paperwork that comes in and out of
a doctors' office. If you think of a single-payer system, it is just one tube of payments. All
money flows from the government to the doctors. And it's actually pretty popular elsewhere.
Medicare here in the U.S. is like that -- it pays all the healthcare bills for people over
65. But there's also a catch. When the government is the one paying all the bills, they get
to decide what they will and will not pay for. If the system isn't funded well enough, if
they haven't raised enough taxes from their citizens, that could lead to longer wait times
and fewer doctors being available. Vermont right now is trying to set up the very first
single-payer system in the United States. By one estimate, Vermont could save 25 percent.
But it's also expensive. The state government in Vermont needs to raise $2 billion. That
is a lot of maple syrup. But people really dislike the American healthcare system. It
gets pretty poor marks from Americans. And if you look at neighboring Massachusetts,
their healthcare experiment in 2006 did lead to Obamacare. So if this does work in Vermont,
who knows what could be next. how does Obamacare change us the Affordable Care Act is gonna change how we buy insurance through the exchanges instead of insure selling it the companies they're gonna sell it to individuals and individuals are gonna be looking for value they want a low premium low deductibles with a high quality program and that is gonna force the insurers to not just take premium and pay doctors but they actually get into the business of how care is provided to make sure people are kept healthy and not use a lot of unnecessary services or services that could have been avoided similarly providers are gonna come in and they're gonna say hey I can offer insurance too and I can take care of the whole patient and I can do it cheaper than the insurance company and you're gonna have this big competition between providers which are now offering insurance insurance companies that are now owning hospitals and doctors and I think that's gonna make the whole system more efficient much more of a keep patients helping a health care system rather than what we've had is a sick care system when people say we got a sick care system not a health care system well the reason we have a sick care system is you pay people to take care of the same if you paid people to keep people healthy and the way to do that is to give them a capitated amount of money you've got to take care of Ezra Klein and I'm giving you a twenty seven hundred and fifty three dollars for it then suddenly if you can care for him at you know two thousand dollars all the rest is profit that's gonna be the key and if he's with you for a long time you don't just want to stint on care you just don't want to not do a lot for him because at some point that's gonna come back to haunt you I think someone on the left hearing this conversation would say these are a lot of good but somewhat complicated theories of how insurance can be somewhat defanged and the problem is having insurers as a middleman at all and that what we should have done here with single-payer and that so long as you have a system in which insures are there at all you're going to have these four problematic incentives yeah well but a single-payer has a same perverse incentives right Medicare all right what's their incentive to actually get it right especially if you don't want to piss off voters and Medicare is not necessarily the most nimble agent out there sometimes it has behaved nimbly but it hasn't all the time and if you had all 300 million people in there are lots of areas we don't know the best way of either delivering care or paying for care and we're gonna have to run a number of experiments over the next four or five years to get that right doing that in one organizations who are doing that with private companies trying some things out we're gonna come to the answer much more quickly it seems to me are you I am actually a little bit surprised that Obamacare got to seven million in the exchanges and I'm curious if you are oh no in December mid-december after with all the disasters I made a bet with a private equity guy in New York that we would make seven million and he was like you're crazy what it tells you as we're really the pent up demand for affordable health care insurance in this country huge they haven't gone without health care coverage because oh I like going naked they've gone without it because I can't afford it now you give them a mechanism to afford it and they're gonna come out of the walls if we can get this you know website and the whole exchange thing working really well so that shoppings under 30 minutes the website behaves like REI or Zappos you know you're gonna see a lot more people come out and I think then the CBO projections for max of 25 million gonna look I mean I predict in the book that we're gonna get up to 75 million by the end of the decade in exchange yeah Wow yeah the theory of Obamacare the part that I think people miss they get the sound of the uninsured part yeah they don't see as clearly the change the way medicine is actually possible I think it's fair to say the theory of it is that you put these people into the exchanges and this massive base of customers connected then to Medicare which is going to begin adding in different kinds of pain mechanisms gives government driven health care systems in America the leverage to begin changing how hospitals work medicare deliver care and then how private insurers end up actually acting with consumers I would put it a little differently okay what the exchange does is change insurance from a b2b business the business to a business to consumer situation and we know one thing about consumers really really well price mainly premium but premium with deductible and co-pays are what they are shopping on they're willing to not go to the big brand name to get a lower premium deductible combination that downward price pressure is going to translate into initially lower prices so hospitals gonna have to take lower prices Doc's gonna have to take lower prices and then there's only so much of that you can do and then the next stage is you got to have to transform your care to lower prices and you know we've seen in the marketplace the best places that really have transformed their care have really focused on keeping people healthy keep them out of the hospital those place can cut about 20 percent off the cost that is a lot of money and so I think that's the wave that's how I think Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act is really going to transform the system and that that's why I think having a large number of people in exchanges is really the key because of their buying power is gonna translate into the insurers and then the delivery system saying you know to make to keep the cost down here and make money and have people in we needed to really transform how we deliver care and we talked an enormous amount about cost and in the political world yes and I actually think that's a a mistaken frame right that value is what matters here if health care cost exactly as much but it made people live twice as long I would not be concerned at all about costs right now right do what degree do you think that the other piece of the value proposition is going to change which is to say to what degree do you think Obama care what's happening these markets will actually change the quality of the care we get the likelihood that if I go to the hospital I make it out in good shape right so first of all I'm not sure I completely agree with you at least personally that it's only value I actually do care about the absolute cost and I care about the absolute cost mostly because of the deficit long-term deficit of the federal government you know that is health care costs not value at state government levels its Medicaid crowding out primary education Medicaid crowding out support for the State University system so I am concerned about the cost and it's not just the value but to get to the second part of your question which is about can we improve quality the first thing I would say is in the Affordable Care Act we had a number of incentives to change quality one of the things I'm proud of that has gotten hardly any attention is the partnership for patients so in 2010 Don Berwick and a bunch of us in the White House helped design a program to work with hospitals to reduce their infection rate to reduce their elective cesarean section rate to reduce Falls and other things and you know recently of 3-year evaluation remarkable success of central line infections down 40% if you're on a respirator down 50% early elective c-sections down 50% falls down I think 11 or 12 percent big success not turn the corner not you know we're done but improvement and the last thing I would say is that part of the secret at least of most places that have been able to really reduce cost is to focus on the chronically ill but ten percent who used most of the money and keeping them healthy that's a big quality improvement and that I think is gonna have to be the focus for the next six seven eight years until we get that exactly right and the White House feels no they actually had seven million I think they feel fantastic I'm just a little worried that they might think well you know success we got the gold medal we can go home now the problem with medicine is there's no going home there's no final gold medal there's no resting point it's a three trillion dollar industry it's very dynamic and you're constantly have to change so you know the website has to be upgraded substantially before open enrollment starts in the fall because you have to get it to be much more user-friendly you have to get the shopping experience down under thirty minutes you have to get better products out there you know they've been so concerned just about the website and getting the mechanics right that I think running it is a real startup that gets the customer experience really optimal is something that they really need to shift their focus to why should we have a public option for internet access we need a public option for internet access because internet access is just like electricity or a road grid this is something that the private market doesn't provide left to its own devices what they'll do is systematically provide extraordinarily expensive services for the richest people in America leave out huge swathes of the population and in general try to make their own profits at the expense of social good when it comes to fiber penetration that's the world-class kind of network we should have we're behind Sweden Estonia Korea Hong Kong Japan I mean a whole host of other developed countries we should be looking the rest of the world in the rearview mirror instead for more than 77% of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity connection is their local cable monopoly so just as we have a postal service that's a public option for communications that the form of mail we also need public options in every city for ubiquitous very high-capacity very high speed fiber Internet access that way we'll make sure we can compete with every other nation in the 21st century why does the apartment market fail to offer Internet access that that you see is acceptable well here's the problem this is a very expensive thing to build in the first place like the highway system also very expensive to build and so as a profit-making company what they're going to try to do is focus on those areas where they feel they can reap the highest rewards and those are often richest neighborhoods richest suburbs they're going to leave out you know less dense areas and places that are more remote but we're one country and every American needs this access just the same way every American needed a telephone line it seems that core to this argument is the idea that internet is almost a right and not just internet but extremely high-speed Internet fiber Internet why should we see that as a right and not as a luxury well I wouldn't frame in terms of a right I think it's just a utility other countries just take it for granted I went to Stockholm in December they pay about 30 bucks a month for gigabit access something we can't even imagine in the United States how fast are we typically 10 megabits per second or less so this is a hundred times faster what's happening in Stockholm in Seoul and Japan and Hong Kong and a whole bunch of very reasonable northern European countries they just say that this very high capacity connection is needed to power many screens with very high resolution so that for example many people in your house can be using this connection businesses can populate entire walls with information look the historical analog here the reason that this is the utility is that when electricity was first invented my grandmother would have called it the light bill the electric bill because it was only used for one device in a house same thing here we have this image of Internet access just being for a single PC or a single connection by one family member inside a building that's not where we're going everything we're doing is going to be powered by Internet data and in order to make new things that will be useful in that world we've got to have those very high-capacity networks you talk about internet as utility yeah but when you explain it it sounds almost more like a platform the argument is that this is a platform for the next economy much as rows or a platform for the interconnected economy that we had prior much like the postal service ended up being a platform for the integration of the country and that in order to have all kinds of other things because they don't exist yet can't pay for the services will need I call it a utility because that's the model of oversight that it should have but the larger vision is just the what you roll out that it's an input into absolutely everything we do particularly the economy moves more towards being an information services based economy or we're not making things as much as we used to we're certainly not an agricultural nation so this is the essential input into entertainment social life cultural life economic growth everything else we do so one way of understanding your argument is that it's highly government centric and yet something you really emphasize is that the problem here is actually a lack of competition that for most people in most cities you don't have a bunch of choices for the internet you have one choice and because that choice ends up being a local monopoly they can charge too much and deliver too little why has it ended up that way well what happened is that we deregulated this entire sector about ten years ago and the cable guys already had exclusive franchises across the country they were able to very inexpensively upgrade those two pretty high-speed Internet access connections meanwhile the telephone companies have totally withdrawn from this market they are they were they had copper line in the ground is expensive for them to build it up replace it with fiber so because of both deregulation and in sweeping consolidation in the cable industry we've ended up on this plateau where about 80 percent of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity internet access connection is their local cable monopoly you know in a sense I'm trying to have it both ways what I'm saying is that this is by nature a natural monopoly it really makes sense to have one wire going to your house the problem is we've gotten stuck with the wrong wire we've got a cable wire and it should be fiber and it should be then shared by lots of competitors that's what drives prices down that's what gives people choice but if you hand the one company the ability to control that market they'll just reap the rewards and price discriminations make lots of profits that are in their interest and not malign but not in our social interest and having a complete coverage for the entire country I think the the numbers tend to say we're 26 27 28 worldwide in terms of cost for internet access you know holding speed constant and yet we are by far it seems the best at innovating atop the Internet and the best of taking advantage of what it has to offer so does that argue that this infrastructure that making it better and better and better actually isn't that important that that may not be the the operative binding constraint here oh that's so interesting no actually it turns out that their culture in these other countries is not as innovative as ours and that has been a comparative advantage for us this I went to Stockholm the Swedes there say we have a very fast Network but our city is too neat nobody bumps into each other there's no grit there's no energy for innovation at same thing in Seoul I visited there and the kids there said well if we invent anything Samsung will just crush us so we've got this huge advantage in an innovative culture but if we don't have the networks to play with we won't be the place where new ideas come from that take advantage of very high capacity applications those other countries are catching up something you've done a lot of work on is the idea of the open Internet the the road where anybody can travel upon it no matter how heavy the truck is so to speak there's recently been a series of court decisions that have put that a little more into threat where net neutrality has become somewhat more under question there has been news it Netflix is paying comcast in order to get direct access to the Comcast backbone what is the open Internet and is it actually something that we need to be concerned about well the reason the Internet the most exciting thing that happened in my adult life is that it doesn't require permission see The Bachelor love The Bachelor that's great if only no but the reason the Internet is the most important development in my life is that you don't have to ask anybody for permission to start something new you can launch something in your garage and it becomes this extraordinary thing like Facebook or Google and there what has happened is that because of the regulation that the FCC did ten years ago they're trying to simultaneously say here's some rules for the open Internet but we're not going to label Internet access as a utility and the court the DC Circuit just a month ago or so said you can't have it both ways you can't both say the Internet access is a luxury you know an unregulated product and have these rules about keeping this permissionless Internet open so that's why net neutrality which is the idea that anybody can use the internet for whatever application or service they want to is under such threat it's because our regulator has given up its authority to say anything to the providers of high-speed Internet access and in that vacuum we've got the tremendous consolidation so Comcast this enormous company the largest media company by revenue in the world at this point it has been able to force Netflix to pay tributes in order to reach Netflix as subscribers that's possible because again our regulator has given up all oversight of these high-speed Internet access networks if cobrowse were sitting here yeah they would say I think that you began that answer by saying that the beauty of the Internet is that any new company can come on to it but that at the end of the answer it was about Netflix a massive incumbent who uses tremendous amounts of bandwidth and they would argue that in a limited bandwidth world of which they are in with their technology and in order to keep space for the new entrants there needs to be some help from the folks who are taking up tremendous amounts of bandwidth who are at this point massively established incumbents you don't I think think that is a reasonable in response No not at all actually I mean right now they're charging Netflix but you know Netflix got a pretty good price because it's so big this incumbency you mentioned what about the next person the next company that uses a lot of capacity could be a telemedicine services could be distance education they're also going to have to pay tribute to Comcast Comcast is making north of 95 percent profit on its provision of high-speed Internet access services its capital expenditures as a percentage of its revenue are down to fourteen percent it's in harvesting mode it's making tremendous amounts of money it doesn't need to charge those companies that want to reach their subscribers it's just it can and so that's what's going on and what is constraining cities now is a problem a money one is a problem regulatory it's almost funny in 20 states the United States states have passed laws saying cities don't have the choice to do this these laws have been rammed through often by incumbents because they just hate change and they're happy with the way things are so one thing that needs to happen is we need to it's called preempt block the effect of these state laws so that cities can make this decision for themselves and the FCC to its credit chairman wheeler has announced that this would be a good direction to investigate making clear that state legislators can't stop cities from at least having this threat of a public option in mind what is the argument of state legislature makes when it stops the city why do they say it should be illegal for the city to build a fiber backbone so it has faster internet we went through exactly the same story the electrification so often the state legislators don't quite understand what's going on or they think of this as a luxury that should only be provided by the private market and so they just say it's gonna be a waste of money for cities to have anything to do with this and so it's in the state's interest to constrain the cities from wasting their own money that's the argument it's all a complete canard as it was in the time of electrification so I'm curious what you think is the political circumstance under which a project of the size that you're talking about could happen historically what have been the forcing mechanisms that have made it possible to make these this investments and changes in the way we deliver fundamental infrastructure well this is fundamentally a question of leadership in the absence of Eisenhower at the time of the federal highway story it wouldn't have happened in the absence of Roosevelt who really took on the electrification special interests and decided he was going to fix the situation it wouldn't have happened so the first step is actually leadership and someone who understands this issue and understands that we're falling farther and farther behind and is concerned about our future as a nation this requires long-term thinking but these infrastructure issues are not partisan by nature the free market only functions if it has these you know level playing field inputs that are in place like electricity and communication services and roads it isn't at all unusual or that say this state to get involved in these kinds of things so you add together leadership plus great unhappiness on the part of the American people plus some ability to tell this story plainly so people understand it and they're not confused and I think in time you'll see quite a movement towards Nass fiber ization of the United States The United States' national debt is $12.5
trillion. So lot's of people are freaked out. But how big is that really? National income,
the total value of everything the U.S. makes each year, is also huge. And all that misses
the most important point: the U.S. government can never run out of dollars. Unlike you,
or the company you work for or the town you live in, the federal government prints dollars.
Or, actually, the Federal Reserve mostly makes it with computers. The only think to worry
about is inflation. If you have too much money chasing a fixed amount of stuff, that means
higher prices. And if inflation gets out of control, the Fed will slow down the economy
by raising interest rates. Higher rates for the government mean even higher rates for
businesses. That means less investment in the private economy and slower growth. That's
why you worry about deficits, because they lead to inflation and higher interest rates.
But these days inflation is the lowest it's been in 30 years, and interest rates are also
near record lows. So we could reduce debt with higher taxes, or by cutting benefits,
but that would take money out of people's pockets -- means fewer jobs, it means lower
incomes. So trying to reduce debt might actually make the debt situation worse. So let's think
of something else to worry about...  Debt just isn't a problem right now. what have we made progress in that people don't always recognize it's almost a shorter list to come up with things that haven't been improved if you look at life expectancy it is shot up worldwide if you look at child mortality a number of kids dying before the age of five going down in every country a half worldwide over the last 20 years the number of people in school the number of people learning has been going up the number of people dying in murders has been dropping the number of people dying on the battlefield has been dropping beer consumption it's been going up the number of countries a Democratic has been increasing the number of countries that actually really respect you civil and political rights going up not as fast but going up measures of anything almost apart from the environment carbon dioxide output has been rising very dramatically and we've got the serious problem with climate change on the horizon with that big caveat aside almost every other trend is just in the right direction worldwide an improvement has been faster in the countries that were serviced by and these trends are to some to be obscured by one that is flatlining there which is income in developing countries how are all these things getting better if incomes aren't going up I guess some two big things are going on why is a bunch of technologies have made the quality of life cheaper vaccines bed nets sugar salt solutions that cure diarrhea these things all save millions of lives a year add to that changing norms it used to be a bit of a nutty idea to send your girls in particular to school you know why would you want to do that now all worldwide the norm is just course bill should get school what do you think are the ideas even simple ones that have had the biggest empirically obvious positive impact on real people's lives over the last 30 and they'll be the ones that have spread the most I guess so it would be things like the norm not even the idea but just sort of the the norm that you should send kids to school it would be things like I should get my kids back to nated it'd be things like I should get the vote for the person who runs my country I mean these are really very simple ideas that have had revolutionary effects I'd also say you know that the technology of the internal combustion engine has spread worldwide has just changed lives everywhere I mean you know you can be in rural Africa you're quite likely still to be within sort of ten miles of an all-weather road which quite often will have a bus going along it periodically that's just revolutionary compared to 50 years ago you know the world has just a lot more interconnected than it used to be they'll also say another mobile phone I used to scoff as a development professional that this was a toy for rich people right I was very wrong people have voted with their wallets if you will you know there are now more mobile subscribers worldwide than people I think even in developing countries very poor people are willing to spend some of their very limited income on getting access to the mobile phone and it's just all sorts of effects on the quality of life through this you know what is now a really simple and really cheap device if somebody in China tomorrow invents a continuously renewable cheap energy source or a cure for cancer yes for America I mean it's gonna be a huge boon for the Chinese economy it'll accelerate Rises I mean hopefully write accelerate rising living standards it'll accelerate and come and it'll accelerate the amassing of the geopolitical power but possibly people in America won't die from cancer in people in China invented paper or fireworks we don't that be a bad thing for us or do we actually quite like having paper or fireworks you know I mean I'd you know July 4th would not be the same in this country if it were it not for Chinese inventors so I think it's just very clear that especially when it comes to innovation a richer planet is a richer healthier happier America they are just hugely tied into the global economy they are a part of a whole bunch of production chains that if you know tomorrow global trade broke down because of a war their economy would gum up overnight the United States 19:18 kind of you knows could stand alone it produced a lot of oil it produced a lot of raw materials it could do the whole it could build the tank from the ore in the ground and the oil you know all the way to the final tank with its shells china can't do that kind of thing nearly in the way we used to be able to States you know the world is just a different place when it comes to the threat of global war I think then it used to be when I read some of the American decline this literature the arguments take a very particular structure the structure is America is declining and as such we need to rapidly implement the policies the other favors currently right and it makes me wonder sometimes how much the American decline estar the fear of the rising powers elsewhere is about trying to find consciously or subconsciously a galvanizing threat in the way communism once was right that pundits writers politicians think will be enough to motivate people to ultimately embrace their agendas III accept that we and we're running out of others in a really positive way you know we're not allowed to discriminate as many people we used to discriminate against and so who are we gonna have as the threat and and and and maybe what we're left with is China I hope we discover Martians soon if that is because you know China's are really bad other and and we really need to be cooperating with China so treating them as a threat is going to be really counterproductive to our own quality of life a mass extinction is just defined as a moment in time which is a geologically speaking a short moment in time when the diversity of life on earth plummets one very well-known paleontologist has described the whole history of life as as long periods of boredom interrupted occasionally my pen and these are the moments of panic and your chances as a species of going extinct at any you know given moment are very very low except during moments of mass extinction when they skyrocket in the case of the five major mass extinctions of the last half billion years roughly three-quarters of all species have been eliminated at those moments and then after that diversity starts to pick up again but it takes somewhere usually between five and ten million years for that recovery process to take place and your thesis with one of these you've seen is it we might be causing another bbq's yes we're really in year to extinction so we see stories all the day there's just a story but I think it was today about how you know lemurs 90% of all lemurs on Madagascar not in percent of the species are endangered many are critically endangered down to like 18 individuals so we're just like oh another extinction is if that's something that happens all the time but what what history shows us is that if you view as recline you know can see one species going extinct in the course of your lifetime right you're a young man you've already the species have already gone extinct in your lifetime something really unusual is going on you should not be able to see a single species of mammal go extinct in your lifetime and how what what level of dial are we talking you need yeah so Jim rise to mass extension or even a minor mass extinction well the minor mass extinction is a little bit a little bit fuzzy but the major ones the five are they're sometimes called the big five the cut off if you if you will is roughly three-quarters of all species on the planet I'll disappear in as I say in a relatively short amount of time I think it is at this point conventional wisdom though as you write it it hasn't always been that the extinction the mass extinction led to the death of the dinosaurs was a nasty at hitting the earth but what are the kinds of events because I don't think folks know I didn't know the other for Ray what are the kinds of events have been recognizing that not everything is fully proven yeah that have typically been behind these kinds of extinction events well it's it's it's sort of an unfinished story as you say when when the what's called the the impact hypothesis that you know that an asteroid impact was what ended the Cretaceous period and get in the the the dinosaurs in the hole what's known as the whole Mesozoic fauna there's this whole fauna that that disappeared at that moment and when that was confirmed only in the 90s only let's say 20 years ago people went back and they sort of thought well we're going to find an asteroid impact at all of these junctures that would make sense I'd be very elegant you know and we're good that and they really looked hard and they couldn't find any evidence of that and now the general there's a sort of a consensus that the first one which happened 440 million years ago when most of life was confined to the water was caused by this snap sort of glaciation world suddenly got very cold so that's the working hypothesis there the most severe mass extinction of all time was about two nor fifty million years ago at the end of the Permian period and it seems pretty clear that that was caused by some kind of massive outpouring of carbon dioxide which caused really serious global warming and acidified the oceans change the chemistry of the oceans very radically and one of the really sobering things to think about is that is what we're doing massively born carbon dioxide into the air and into the water so increasingly people are drawing parallels between what we're doing and the worst mass extinction of all time so what do we think happened I mean obviously at that period we didn't have a lot of STDs from God so how did all the avid oxide get released well you right you put your finger on a big scientific mystery to be honest Incredibles yeah yeah where did it come from it's so it was so much carbon dioxide that's very been very difficult for people to even think of what the source might be and and the sort of lead candidate is a sort of burst of volcanism these volcanic events that happen and create these huge what are called igneous provinces a lot of Siberia is covered with this ancient lava from this event that's sort of the lead candidate but people who have tried to date that they've had those dates have not exactly lined up so we're not sure not exactly sure and one of the really terrifying parts of your almost non-stop terrifying book is that the quantity of carbon we're emitting at the moment every day every year every month of year is not just similar to but potentially faster than the carbon dioxide emission that led to vadik's yes yes yes people who have looked at tried to compare what we can tease out I mean scientists have come up with amazing methods of you know fallings cold cases a 250 million year old you know murder mystery of teasing out from things like shells the bodies of shells and things like that how much carbon was poured into the atmosphere at that point in time and have concluded that the rate that we are pouring co2 into the air is certainly comparable and perhaps greater than was occurring then so this I thought was one of the really fascinating like conceptual things open book but I had not I think ever understood or put my finger on before which is the thing you really emphasize is the rate of change in kind of the rules of survival so the issue is not that the world has not changed before so as it does on very slow geologic time frames but that in these mass extinction events it's usually not necessarily the the singular impact or the one or the you know it's not that everybody dies in the lava it's that oftentimes what happens in changes temperature changes the climate it changes the oceans and it does so at a rate of change that organism simply can't adapt to the way you say it in the book is that the rules of life change more rapidly than that then life can actually keep alright um and all of those fascinating because I think that that that is in some ways to me what really offends or is a problem with our intuition on global warming that things seem to us with our tiny blink of the geologic eye lifespans to be happening slowly it's not right that much warmer was than a week ago but that in terms of the earth and in terms of how rapidly species evolved this is like shocking dramatic fast-forward training montage style change absolutely I mean that is really the heart you know of the book and when you think of try to think about things in the in the grand scale which is what a lot of the scientists you know that I went out with paleontologists biologists are trying to do you know one theme that came through and a lot of their remarks was it we will look back this event you know our whole human history all of every since our species evolved will be compressed eventually in geological time you know down to this very thin layer like we look back on the past and see this very thin layer that represents say at the end of the Cretaceous period and changes occurring so fast that it will look not just similar to an asteroid impact because you know the difference between a year a hundred years a thousand years is erased in in geological time so that's absolutely right that what we say well you know things are not changing that quickly in in in this whole course of geological history things are changing very very rapidly and just to give one example that I think people can relate to or or understand you know the Arctic ice cap okay which has been there for millions of years is probably going to be gone in your lifetime you're going to be able to go to the North Pole in the summertime and swim around paddle around if you're very you know we're in the Polar Bear Club or whatever and that is a huge change on the surface of the earth and it will occur you know in the lifetime of a lot of people who are alive today I want to ask the same question here from two different directions first direction is I think in some ways this sort of selfish unit direction so you would know and I don't remember off the top of my head what the what a plausible estimate of the percentage of all species it will die off over the period of what you might think of this extinction comprising and I think the question some people sometimes ask is who cares who cares if there are fewer kinds of snails fewer kinds of bats right um some of the things in the book I think animagic away anything great those bats will not be around ready to freak me out so we could lead to this incredible die off in species diversity but who cares what are we getting as a mouse out of having all these different kinds of animals in the tropics a well I get asked that question all the time and I sort of have to two answers for one is you know we're talking about life on this planet the diversity and I think many people would say even if you know they live in the middle of Manhattan or the middle of DC the beauty and variety of the planet and it is unraveling and it took tens of millions of years to evolve to this point and it's unraveling very very quickly and so one you know sort of got response I guess I have is if you don't care about that you know I'm just not sure what you'd care about you know what what would what would you care about and on a more kind of okay you know if you don't if you don't if you still don't care I would say I would go back to one of the quotes that you alluded to before which is that at these moments of mass extinction it seems that the rules of the survival game change and once very dominant groups for example the dinosaurs the dinosaurs were not doing anything wrong there's nothing wrong with the dinosaurs and they were they were gone 100 percent of them were gone we don't know exactly why you know why they were particularly vulnerable but they're gone and you know when you're changing the rules of the survival game as we are then you don't know where that that game is going to end out well so and that gets to in some ways the other direction I want that's that question I kept imagining reading your book this book being read by somebody 5,000 years ago by an alien I'm sorry not five years ago 5,000 years from now and that's a far from a certain perspective it is such a monstrous thing to imagine that we know that we are killing off a tremendous quantity like not just a lot of it but a lot of life on this planet right and it's just fine it's inconvenient to think about it would be difficult maybe to change it would just be a hassle and so we just kind of don't worry about it I mean I think to somebody with a somewhat larger in our own to imagine that there was a species existed here briefly at this point in the sort of span of a living of organic evolution and just didn't really care that it was wiping everything else out I don't think we would be judged kindly by that society no I don't think we would and you know obviously I'm going to argue having you know written on this subject that that we shouldn't be judged Conley one of the scientists that I went out with to the Great Barrier Reef a guy named Ken caldera who's out at Stanford made the point to me when we were out on the reef which is you know the Great Barrier Reef which is under siege absolutely but it's still a fantastic fantastic place look if the if the Romans right who are whom we feel a pretty significant me no connection to had burned through all the fossil fuels the way we are burning through now this reef would not exist right it would already be gone at the rate that we are burning through fossil fuels there are very very robust predictions that coral reefs will start to disappear around the middle of this century okay there will be no more quarries by the end of this century so you know the rate at which we're doing these things this once again gets back to rate and then I thought that was a really interesting perspective right I mean we are we are not that far from the Romans uh and yet you know had they done what we did the world would be a totally different place right and then you know I think there's another way of looking at this which is that this kind of die-off is a warming system for us to I mean I think that there is an impression human beings are ingenious or innovative we come up with new plans we come up with new ways we live in places nobody ever thought we could live and yet you think about things like the asteroid hitting the earth there's a lot we actually can't survive earthquakes fires rip through work divorce and it turns out that oftentimes tsunamis in the face of really tremendous natural disaster change our capacity to endure is not only what we'd hoped back in 2006 when you wrote your last book the global sort of goal is to keep warming under two degrees Celsius it now looks very clear that we're going to blow by that we may go up to Ford's possible that we could go higher over the next couple hundred years that's a swing that is bigger upward than the downward swing to the ice age or at least is comparable in size and it is I think a very hopeful but not certain idea that well that might be really bad for the snails but we're going to be fine it isn't obvious to me like I'm the kind of rate of change we're doing that you know particularly if things don't go exactly as we hope on the innovation curve in the next hundred years there we're going to such an easy time handling it well there's you know when you deal with human beings you're you're you are dealing with a creature that you know what certainly one of the main points is what my book is you are dealing with the creatures that's very different from a snail that has this world altering capacity but there are two two levels at which you have to consider the future of human beings in humanity and one is you know on the level of the species right so you know species can survive if a few individuals you know if a few dinosaurs that survived you know we might well still have dinosaurs but then we have human society which is much more vulnerable and much more interconnected you know then then random pockets you know of people and I think once again this is not an original idea at all but many you know sort of people who are looking at at this issue and say well okay what's really under thunders very serious risk here what we're really really putting at risk it's not necessarily our own survival as a species but because we are very clever and you know there are a lot of us and we live all over the planet which is extremely unusual most species do not but our society depends on stability you know and if you start really a destabilizing the natural systems on which we depend destabilizing the climate we we just don't know you know what's going to happen with that and people do point to and it's very hard to know where the analogies lie you know moments for example the Mayans seem to have been done in by a terrible drought they were very sophisticated civilization and the Mayan people there are still mind people out there but my civilization collapsed and so you know where are those thresholds you know the book has this fascinating dimension where it's this incredibly beautiful travelogue of the apocalypse wait for a lot of species it remember I was thinking back to that book that it's big a couple years ago 100 places to see before you die this is kind of like a dozen that you got to see before we kill them right right there's in those troubles what was the most hopeful thing you saw or that you heard along the way yeah that's a good that's a really good question I went to the to the Amazon and um it's not actually in the book but I went out into the forest with the people who were actually trying to sort of incentivize to use the current term people you know not to chop down the rainforests not to illegally log and so we talked to some of these people who used to make a living and it wasn't a good living to be honest illegally logging and for a relatively small amount of money you know they had been converted to people protecting the forest and that was very that was really a great experience in a moving experience and it was a very small scale thing you know it had to be would have to be ratcheted up by you know I'm a millionfold or whatever but it it was a hopeful thing that people you know who had seen themselves as having an investment and cutting down the forest could could turn within a relatively short amount of time to seeing themselves as having an investment in it not cutting down the forest um so I think that you know there are ways to sort of shift our thinking has that and that's a good example of people who you know are living very close to the edge of existence who could shift their thinking and if you think well they can do it then you think that well those of us who really have way way more than we ever could possibly need could also do it Lizabeth Colbert to be fixed extinction by a reader stopping you "Obamacare" "The obamacare sign-up deadline gets closer
and closer" "The most contentious part of the law is the
individual mandate" "The heart of the law." To be affordable, health insurance needs a
lot of healthy people for every sick person it signs up. But the problem with that is
that Health insurance is worth more to sick people than to healthy people. 
Sick people want it more. And they will pay more for it. So here's what can happen. You get a really
good health insurance package. Really good. So all the sick people rush to buy it. Healthy
people decide it's too expensive because of all these sick people pushing up premiums.
So the very healthiest, the people who think they need it the least, leave. That raises
premiums.Those higher premiums push the next healthiest group out too. Up go premiums again,
out go the next healthiest group. Over and over and over again. That is a death spiral. Until now, insurers had a real easy way to
prevent death spirals. Just don't sell health insurance to sick people. Or, if you do, make
them pay so much, that you don't have to charge healthy people more. But Obamacare says they can't do that. Insurers
need to sell to sick people. They can't even charge them more than they charge healthy
people. The can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions at all. Enter the individual mandate. Now rather than
keeping sick people out. The idea is we're going to pull healthy people in. Starting this year anyone who doesn't have
health insurance for longer than three months has to pay at least $95, or 1% of modified
adjusted gross income. That's your income minus some tax deductions. You can calculate
it online. We call it MAGI for short. The penalty is even steeper next year. So imagine your family's MAGI is $80,000 bucks
.If you go without health insurance this year, it's $800 to the government. Next year its
$1,600. And the year after that, $2000. Ouch. Now that is a lot less money than health insurance
usually costs. But you don't get anything for it. You don't get to see the doctor. You
don't get your hospital bills covered. And so people, even young and healthy ones, tend
to buy insurance rather than paying the penalty. We know that from Massachusetts, where Mitt
Romney actually signed one of these things into law. People ended up wanting health insurance.
They just needed that push. In Massachusetts, that was enough to prevent
a death spiral. The question is whether it will be in the United States too. There's a problem in journalism. We call some of the topics we covered 
- the vegetables or spinach - as if they're gross, and people should be reading them,
but they're not going to want to. It's a terrible attitude if we can't take things that are important and meaningful in people's lives and make them interesting, 
that failure is 100% on us as writers. That is entirely our fault. There's so much information out there. It's the most exciting time
to be a reader and a lover of media, if you want information
you can get at any time at any place. But at the same time,
there's all these challenges as a reader. I remember beginning to follow the news. I remember the feeling of anxiety around opening a new article and knowing that I was about to feel stupid. I was about to feel like I was outside the club. This is a real problem, and it's not a problem we could solve in print, 
the nature of the medium, the nature of the space constraint was we couldn't put all the information you needed, but we don't have that constraint on the web. 
We can solve this problem. Digital articles, at least in principle,
lasts forever as web archives; that's something some people
are taking advantage of today. But we don't think that people
are really writing articles with that in mind. Ezra and Matt and Melissa
came to work with us at Vox Media because they knew that we weren't just media company, we're also a technology company. And we could take their idea,
take their vision, and actually make it real. Success in somewhat grandiose terms is that we want to create the single greatest resources available for people to understand the issues
that are in the news. I can't wait to see if what we think,
people need is actually what they need. If it's not, we'll change it. We want to have the ability to move fast. I love the codenamed project X,
but that's not going to be the name of the site. the name of the site is Vox.com. Coming in here and work in with Trei
and his team was shocking. We have had to step up our game so dramatically; they're figuring out ways that this idea will actually work. And so the only thing that made sense
 was to pick a name that reflected that. We can build all the context so that in order to begin to understand it is you don't need to read it for a long time, understand 20% of the first article,
then 23% of the second, and 25% of the fifth. We can actually just put the information there for you. There is no such thing here
as the vegetables of journalism. We have to figure out how to make this stuff,
not just matter to people, not just appealing to people, we have to figure out how to make it
understandable to them, too.